I Love It When A Plan Comes Together: A site for Film/Media Studies students

'Maybe You Got a Kid/Maybe You Got a Pretty Wife/The Only Thing I Got/Has Been Bothering Me My Whole Life': Narrative and Bruce Springsteen's NEBRASKA

2005-09-03T17:58:00.000Z

We're used to studying narrative and methods of storytelling in movies and in written fiction, but sometimes we overlook how narrative is used in music, perhaps because the narratives of contemporary popular music tend to be very simple (and, to be somewhat controversial, incredibly banal).

Before Springsteen acquired his status as a pop music icon in the 1980s, and attempted to shed that image in the 1990s, his 1982 album Nebraska was the high point of his career. Arguably, its pared-down style and its lyrical complexity ensure its status as one of the most impressive pop albums to be released during the 1980s.

What is significant about Nebraska is that each of the songs has a clearly defined narrative, and many of the songs share similar themes: as Georg Gartlgruber puts it, the album 'is a sparse, purely acoustic rendition of the fallacies and drama that everyday-lives implore on regular people. There is a lot of despair, of darkness and even brutality' (CFFA, Year Unknown: np). The songs are about the dilemmas and traumas that face working men: the songs are narrated through the viewpoint of men, with women taking a peripheral role, or as in 'Atlantic City', potentially positioned as the listener. The men who narrate the stories are struggling with their lives, and each song contributes to a greater narrative: the story of Reagan's America, as viewed through the eyes of working men suffering from a depression--this is the narrative of the album as a whole. Springsteen has reputedly claimed that Nebraska is about 'American isolation: what happens to people when they're alienated from their friends and their community and their government, and their job' (quoted in Pawlowsky, 2004: np). Consider the following line from 'Atlantic City': 'I've been looking for a job/But it's hard to find./Down here it's just winners and losers/And don't get caught on the wrong side of that line/Will I'm tired of coming out on this losing end'.

Gartlgruber insightfully comments on the issues confronted in the songs' narratives: they

fall loosely into two categories: Songs about the situation of people [...] who either are about to do something stupid, which will ruin their lives, but find no other way out of the situation life has put them into (“Atlantic City”) or just think about the dirty chips live has dealt them (“State Trooper”, “Open all night”). And then there are songs about the past, some about childhood memories (“Mansion on the hill”, “Used Cars”, “My Fathers house”) which aren’t any good or visibly show that if life deals you a bad start you will have to chew on that forever, or about the way families can run you down even if you are the good guy in the family (“Highway Patrolman”) (ibid).

In each song, Springsteen narrates from the viewpoint of a different character, deconstructing the myths associated with how American society was represented during the Reagan era, including its romanticisation of childhood (in Nebraska, the characters are damaged by their childhoods--as the poet Phillip Larkin once wrote, 'They f--k you up, your mum and dad/They don't mean to, but they do').

Despite the bleakness of most of the songs, there's a strong sense of pragmatism (and potential hope) that runs throughout the album: 'Everything dies, baby/That's a fact./But maybe everything that dies/Someday comes back' ('Atlantic City'). The album is topped off by a track entitled 'Reason to Believe' in which Springsteen asks 'We at the end of every hard-earned day/We find some reason to believe'.

References
CFFA, Year Unknown: 'Bruce Springsteen "Nebraska"'. [Online] http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/TR%20Springsteen.htm

Pawlowsky, Emily, 2004: 'Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska from a variety of theoretical perspectives'. [Online] http://www.monochrom.at/cracked/reviews/TR%20Springsteen2.htm

Original text: ©Paul Andrew Julian Lewis, 2005

ALIEN 2: SULLA TERRA (Ciro Ippolito, 1980)

2005-08-30T00:32:00.000Z

Read my thoughts on Ciro Ippolito's 1980 movie ALIEN 2: SULLA TERRA (ALIEN 2: ON EARTH, aka ALIEN TERROR).

Mise-en-scène: analysis of a sequence from COLLATERAL DAMAGE (Andrew Davis, 2001)

2005-08-29T17:43:00.000Z

Watch the closing sequence from Andrew Davis' movie Collateral Damage.

Analyse the use of mise-en-scène within this sequence. What does the mise-en-scène tell us about the characters, narrative, themes and conflicts within the film?

Analysis: Costume & Props:
Gordy Brewer’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) costume identifies him as a ‘blue collar’ worker (he is a fireman).
He is contrasted with the ‘white collar’ workers who populate the CIA offices: he is a man of action, and is capable of solving a situation in which they simply panic.
However, the CIA agent Peter Brandt (Elias Koteas) is likewise dressed casually, suggesting similarities with Brewer.

The computers and desks tell us that the sequence takes place in an office building; the formal, drab colour scheme tells us that this building is most likely a government building.

The ‘clutter’ of the upper offices is contrasted (or ‘juxtaposed’) with the desolation of the underground transportation corridors.

When Brewer uses an axe to rupture a gas pipe, a sign on the pipe explains his plan to us without the aid of dialogue.

©Paul Andrew Julian Lewis, 2005

Mise-en-scène: analysis of a sequence from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (Terence Young, 1963)

2005-08-29T16:10:00.000Z

Watch the fight that takes place on the Orient Express between James Bond (Sean Connery) and Donald 'Red' Grant (Robert Shaw) in Terence Young's From Russia With Love (1963).

What does the mise-en-scène tell us about the narrative and characters?

Costume:
James Bond (Sean Connery) and Donald Grant (Robert Shaw) share similar dress.

This connotes similarity between the characters, suggesting that the two men are ‘equals’ (making the subsequent fight more evenly-matched, and therefore suspenseful).

The (formal) suits and ties act as an index of professionalism; the costumes tell us the two men are experts in their particular field.

Props (Weapons):

Guns act as symbols of violence.
At the beginning, Bond holds a gun on Grant; later, Grant holds a gun on Bond.
This ‘switching’ of the prop between characters acts as an index of the shifting power balance between Bond and Grant, again reinforcing their status as ‘equals’.

Other Props:
Bond’s briefcase contains gold coins given to him by Q; these act as an index of the wealth of the British Government (for whom Bond works).
We should recognise the set as the interior of a train compartment.

The map on the wall behind Bond indicates that the train journey takes place on the continent of Europe (and not, for example, in America).
When Grant puts on his gloves, we know that he means to harm Bond; the gloves act as an index of his intention to harm Bond.

Space and Lighting:
Director Terence Young stated that the closed confines of the train compartment made the fight seem more ‘intimate’ and more violent (commentary, 2001 DVD release).
The absence of light during the fight scene connotes danger (and is associated with horror movies).
The blue ‘tint’ would usually connote tranquility, but here acts as an index of nighttime (the setting of the sequence).

©Paul Andrew Julian Lewis, 2005

Mise-en-scène: class notes

2005-08-29T16:00:00.000Z

Defining ‘mise-en-scène’
The term ‘mise-en-scène’:

Originates in the theatre
Means ‘staging’
is a French phrase that translates as ‘putting into the scene’

Examining mise-en-scène involves looking for the individual signs/clues that help us to read/analyse the image.

One of the ways in which we can do this involves breaking the image down into a list of key elements which can be analysed according to the rules of semiotics.

Mise-en-scène includes/is made up of

Lighting
Shadows
Costume
Décor: sets & props
Colour within the image
Physical performances/Physical characteristics of the performers
Placement of the actors in relation to each other.

Examining mise-en-scène in still & moving images
When you examine a film sequence, consider:

What is contained within the mise-en-scène;
What these clues within the mise-en-scène tell us about the narrative/characters.

©Paul Andrew Julian Lewis, 2005

MR NO LEGS and HANDS OF STEEL

2005-08-27T01:23:00.000Z

Read my thoughts on MR NO LEGS (aka THE AMAZING MR NO LEGS) (Riccou Browning, 1981) and Sergio Martino's MANI DI PIETRE/HANDS OF STEEL (1986): two obscure films from long-dead genres.

Could these movies be made today? Would they stand a chance in competition with contemporary Hollywood movies? Would they be shown in cinemas? And would they find an audience today?

Semiotics: An Introduction to Analysing Images

2005-08-26T01:08:00.000Z

What is Semiotics?
Semiotics is:
‘The study of the social production of meaning from sign systems […] a theoretical approach and its associated methods of analysis'

O’Sullivan, Tim, 1994: Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge: 281

Semiotics is:

A ‘science of signs’
Derived from the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
Related to linguistics (the study of languages)
A way of studying how ‘sign systems’ (e.g. spoken & written languages, images) create meaning

Signs
Signs are recognisable words/images that we associate with ideas.

A sign has two parts:

Signifier: the object/word (e.g. a red rose)
Signified/Referent: the idea associated with the sign (e.g. love, passion)

Denotative & Connotative Meaning
Denotation:
Concrete or literal meaning of an object or word; the first order of meaning.

Connotation:
The more abstract meanings attributed to the sign by our culture; the second order of meaning.

Signs denote or connote certain ideas: they have two levels of meaning.

Analysis: poster--'Escape From Alcatraz' (Don Siegel, 1979)
The image denotes Clint Eastwood holding a tool and breaking through a wall.

The image possesses connotations of escape and imprisonment; our interpretation of the image may depend on whether or not we recognise the image of Alcatraz--the place has strong cultural associations that may impact on our interpretation of the poster image.

The connotative meaning of an image can be altered by manipulating the framing, focus, lighting and angle.

In films, connotative meanings can be altered by the order in which shots are edited together (or use of sound).

Different Types of Signs
There are three major types of sign:

Icon: the icon resembles what it signifies (e.g. a rose is an icon of ‘real’ roses)
Index: the index acts as evidence of its signified/referent (e.g. smoke is indexical of fire)
Symbol: the symbol has an arbitrary (culturally-constructed) connection with its signified (e.g. a police uniform/siren symbolises authority)

Icon

Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1963)

The image of Sean Connery is an icon (of Sean Connery); it resembles its referent (the real Sean Connery).

Index

The storm clouds are an index of bad weather; they act as evidence of bad weather.

Symbol
Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971)

The gun is a symbol of violence; our culture associates it with violence.

Metaphor
Metaphors

Are associated with poetry

Communicate the unknown by putting it into the context of the known

Condense two different ideas into one single item

For example, the phrase 'The river snakes through the jungle' explains the flow of the river (unknown) through comparing it with the motion of a snake (known).

We can examine metaphors within images by examining the individual signs contained within the image.

Semiotics: Practice
What signs are contained in this still from Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987)

Studying Narrative: Class Notes

2005-08-26T00:06:00.000Z

Defining 'Narrative'
The word narrative essentially refers to ‘story’.

Narratology is the study of narratives/stories (and their structures and recurring character types).

Narrative:

Common to all forms of storytelling (literature, documentaries, fairy tales, history books, biographies).
Narratives can also be found in painting, mythology and theatre.

How do we study narratives?
The study of narratives involves examining the codes and conventions (traditional ways of doing things) that are used to tell stories.

Most narratives in Hollywood films strive to attain a level of realism (or verisimilitude) in order for audiences to identify with the events taking place on screen.

Narrative & Diegesis
In the 1980s, Gérard Genette distinguished between narrative, narrating and diegesis.

Narrating refers to the actual act of telling the story (e.g. a voice-over telling us the story).
Narrative = story.
Diegesis = to the relationships between the events that make up the story (the causal relationships between events, or the ‘plot’).

The modernist author E. M. Forster made a similar distinction between ‘story’ and ‘plot’ (or ‘diegesis’). For Forster, plot differs from story in the way in which it establishes a causative relationship between events: whereas a story is a description of events, a plot seeks to explain how the events impact on one another.

Forster's example of a story was 'The King died, and then the Queen died'; his example of a plot was 'The King died, and then the Queen died of grief'.

What function does narrative serve for us as spectators?
When we watch a film, we use our experience of similar narratives to try to guess the ending of the film.

We usually expect narratives to be based on cause-and-effect logic (i.e. one event causes the next event, which causes the next event), and to possess a clear beginning, middle and end. These types of narrative are described as linear narratives.

Approaches to Narratology
How are narratives structured?
One of the key figures in the study of narrative is the early-Twentieth Century Russian Formalist Tzvetan Todorov.
Todorov argued that narratives usually start at a point of stable equilibrium (i.e. everything is calm, and under control).
This equilibrium suffers a disruption: something happens that threatens the characters.
The heroes take action against the threat, and at the end of the film the equilibrium is restored and the narrative reaches its resolution.

The basic formula for a narrative, then, is equilibrium—disruption—restoration of equilibrium/resolution.
However, the equilibrium at the end of the narrative is usually different from the equilibrium at the start of the film, very often because the characters have learnt something along the way.

Can you identify the equilibrium—disruption—resolution narrative chain in a recent Hollywood film?

Narratives and Sequences
Film narratives can be broken down into sequences.
Each sequence contains its own mini-narrative; its own equilibrium—disruption—resolution narrative chain.

Sequence Length
In Hollywood films, sequences usually last for between 5 and 10 mins;
An average Hollywood movie (90-120mins) will contain about 25 to 30 sequences.

Sequences in European or Asian cinema can last much longer;
You may find that European and Asian movies contain fewer sequences and work at a much slower pace than Hollywood movies.

Narrative and Character Types
In the 1920s, another Russian Formalist named Vladimir Propp argued that most narratives contained eight key character types
(examples from The Matrix, 1999):

The Hero (Anderson/Neo)
The Villain (The Matrix/The Agents)
The Donor (gives something to the Hero that helps him complete his quest) (The Oracle, or Morpheus)
The Helper (the Hero’s ‘assistant’) (Tank)
The Princess (the ‘love interest,’ who often has to be rescued) (Trinity)
Her Father (an authority figure to the Princess) (Morpheus)
The Dispatcher (the person who sends the Hero on his quest) (Morpheus again)
The False Hero (somebody who appears to be a second Hero, but is in fact a Villain, or is defeated by the Villain part-way through the narrative) (Cypher)

Propp also argued that many narratives possess a structure similar to the following:

'A member of a family leaves home (the hero is introduced);
An interdiction is addressed to the hero ('don't go there', 'go to this place');
The interdiction is violated (villain enters the tale);The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (either villain tries to find the children/jewels etc; or intended victim questions the villain);
The villain gains information about the victim;
The villain attempts to deceive the victim to take possession of victim or victim's belongings (trickery; villain disguised, tries to win confidence of victim);
Victim taken in by deception, unwittingly helping the enemy;
Villain causes harm/injury to family member (by abduction, theft of magical agent, spoiling crops, plunders in other forms, causes a disappearance, expels someone,
casts spell on someone, substitutes child etc, comits murder, imprisons/detains someone, threatens forced marriage, provides nightly torments); Alternatively, a member of family lacks something or desires something (magical potion etc);
Misfortune or lack is made known, (hero is dispatched, hears call for help etc/ alternative is that victimised hero is sent away, freed from imprisonment);
Seeker agrees to, or decides upon counter-action;
Hero leaves home;
Hero is tested, interrogated, attacked etc, preparing the way for his/her receiving magical agent or helper (donor);
Hero reacts to actions of future donor (withstands/fails the test, frees captive, reconciles disputants, performs service, uses adversary's powers against them);
Hero acquires use of a magical agent (directly transferred, located, purchased, prepared, spontaneously appears, eaten/drunk, help offered by other characters);
Hero is transferred, delivered or led to whereabouts of an object of the search;
Hero and villain join in direct combat;
Hero is branded (wounded/marked, receives ring or scarf);
Villain is defeated (killed in combat, defeated in contest, killed while asleep, banished);
Initial misfortune or lack is resolved (object of search distributed, spell broken, slain person revivied, captive freed);
Hero returns;
Hero is pursued (pursuer tries to kill, eat, undermine the hero);
Hero is rescued from pursuit (obstacles delay pursuer, hero hides or is hidden, hero transforms unrecognisably, hero saved from attempt on his/her life);
Hero unrecognised, arrives home or in another country;
False hero presents unfounded claims;
Difficult task proposed to the hero (trial by ordeal, riddles, test of strength/endurance, other tasks);
Task is resolved;
Hero is recognised (by mark, brand, or thing given to him/her);
False hero or villain is exposed;
Hero is given a new appearance (is made whole, handsome, new garments etc);
Villain is punished;
Hero marries and ascends the throne (is rewarded/promoted).'

Quoted from: Jerry Everard, Year Unknown: 'Introduction to Vladimir Propp'. [Online] URL: http://mural.uv.es/vifresal/Propp.htm

Homework:
a) Research definitions of some terms associated with semiotics (sign, icon, index, symbol)
b) Watch one film: identify the equilibrium—disruption—resolution chain; describe and discuss the e—d—r chain in one sequence; and identify as many of Propp’s eight character types as possible. (2 sides of A4.)

©Paul Andrew Julian Lewis, 2005

THE MACHINIST (Brad Anderson, 2004)

2005-08-24T23:59:00.000Z

The Machinist is Brad Anderson's follow-up to the well-received Session 9 (2001). Session 9 is a story of psychological angst disguised as a ghost story; likewise, The Machinist is a story of guilt, obsession and emotional trauma disguised as something approaching a science-fiction film (complete with 1950s-style theremin-based music on the soundtrack).

In the film, Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a machine-operator who hasn't slept for a year. Reznik suffers from insomnia and, when he begins to encounter a mysterious colleague named Ivan (John Sharian) and causes an accident in which his workmate Miller (Michael Ironside) loses his arm, Reznik begins to suspect that there is a conspiracy to drive him insane. Whether Reznik's paranoia has any basis or not, it causes him to distance himself from his work colleagues.

Reznik sees the prostitute Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) regularly. But he also becomes involved with Marie (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a coffee-shop waitress who has a small son named Nicholas (Matthew Romero). For Reznik, Marie and Nicholas remind him of his own relationship with his mother. Trying to ingratiate himself into family life, Reznik's efforts are to a large extent unsuccessful, and in the process he also alienates Stevie.

At the end of the movie, it is revealed that a year earlier, Reznik killed Marie's son in a hit-and-run accident, and his insomnia is a consequence of his repression of his guilt for Nicholas' death. Much of the film (Ivan; Reznik's encounters with Marie) have been part of Reznik's fantasy. The closing scenes see Reznik imprisoned for the death of Nicholas and finally finding sleep in the release of his repressed guilt.

The coverage of Christian Bale's weight loss (over 60 pounds) for the role of Trevor Reznik has overshadowed discussion of the film's themes. If the film has a central weakness, it is that these themes are not explored in a satisfactory amount of depth: the film's themes hinge on Reznik's guilt at the death of Nicholas. However, because this guilt is not revealed until the closing scenes of the movie, until the final reel the film's themes remain ambiguous, buried under the filmmakers' obsession with exploring Reznik's paranoia.

Much like the 'ghost story' in Session 9, the extent to which Reznik's paranoia has any foundation is ultimately an insignificant non-question, a classic piece of misdirection: whether Reznik's paranoia is 'fantasy' or 'reality' really has no significance next to the issue of his guilt. However, in Session 9 Anderson managed to pull off this misdirection successfully, without detracting from the 'real' issues at the heart of the film—Gordon's guilt at the murder of his family and the question of what causes violence ('I live in the weak and wounded'). But in Session 9 Anderson didn't allow the film's 'ghost story' to take as much hold of the narrative as he allows Reznik's paranoia to dominate The Machinist. Consequently, Anderson's attempt to misdirect his audience in The Machinist is less successful: whereas in Session 9, Gordon's guilt was seamlessly intertwined with the investigation of the 'ghost story' and the final revelation had a natural and seamless connection with what had gone before, in The Machinist Reznik's paranoia is not an integral part of the film's exploration of its central character's guilt. Consequently, in The Machinist the final revelation comes out of left-field, leaving the viewer feeling a little cheated. Ultimately, the film's ambiguity will alienate as many viewers as it will win over, but in hindsight the issues that the film confronts gain added significance.

The film is built on a series of repeated gestures or motifs, suggesting that the filmmakers are trying to convey either a sense of routine or a pattern of circularity to events. These repeated gestures (for example, the line 'If you were any thinner, you wouldn't exist') are sometimes acknowledged by Reznik, who puts them down as deja vu. Key among these repeated motifs is Reznik's insistent hand-washing, accompanied by his gazing at his own reflection. These gestures tie into the film's central theme of guilt: we first see Reznik washing his hands after dumping Ivan's body in the opening sequence, and at another point he repeats the same gesture after sex. Throughout the film, it is apparent that Reznik seeks cleansing, a washing away of his sins.

The film's other main preoccupation seems to be with depicting the alienation at the heart of industry and urban life: a telling low-angle shot in the opening sequence shows Reznik dwarfed by huge industrial chimney stacks, and during the scenes set in his workplace, Reznik is frequently filmed through machinery, suggesting a sense of entrapment in the routine day-to-day grind of existence. All of the characters are trapped within their lives and, to a large extent, their obsessions: each of the central characters (Reznik, Stevie, Miller, Marie) find their horizons limited—they all live in a prison of sorts.

Reznik's encounters with Marie and her son (whose death Reznik is responsible for) are played against the scenes depicting Reznik's isolation (in his apartment; at work) and scenes in which Reznik seems to deliberately alienate people who are trying to connect with him—for example, his outbursts in the latter half of the film directed at both Miller and Stevie. So throughout the film, there's an odd juxtaposition of Reznik's attempt to 'connect' with an idealised vision of family life (whose destruction he is responsible for) and his inability to 'connect' with people in his daily life.

In this context, there's also something extraordinarily poignant about Reznik's obsession with family life: he's a rogue male whose guilt about inadvertently destroying a family dominates every day of his life, no matter how much he has tried to suppress it; and he's a man who is unable to settle down, restless in his obsessive quest for something he can never attain. It's hard not to see this as symbolic, as representing something much larger: the central obsessions of modern masculinity—a guilt over its inability to find a place in the 'modern family' and an insecurity over the roles men play in society.

Ultimately, this is a film about how a man has created a prison for his mind. This prison has been created through his sense of guilt, but in the film it's inextricable connected to the landscape that Reznik inhabits—a cold, soulless industrial-urban complex. The prison, then, is the prison of modern life, built for us by our own insecurities and obsessions, and regulated by our conflicting desires for both belonging and self-destruction. The Machinist is a film about our failure to connect with other human beings, the self-imposed isolation many of us experience; it's a film that reminds us of the modernist author E. M. Forster's observation that in life, we struggle to 'only connect': '[o]nly connect! [....] Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, And human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die'.

THE WIRE (HBO, 2002- ): Read My Thoughts On This Fantastic Drama Serial

2005-08-24T00:49:00.000Z

Read my thoughts on HBO's drama serial THE WIRE, one of the finest police dramas ever screened on television.

Fernando di Leo's MILANO CALIBRO 9 (1972): Read My Article On This Great Italian Crime Movie

2005-08-23T00:06:00.000Z

Paul's article on Fernando di Leo's MILANO CALIBRO 9 (CALIBRE 9, 1972): a key Italian crime movie of the 1970s.

Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995): Class Handout

2005-07-01T05:11:00.000Z

Dead Man French poster
Originally uploaded by paullewis.

The independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch had long harboured the project that became Dead Man: in the 1980s the project evolved as a proposed collaboration between Jarmusch and screenwriter/novelist Rudy Wurlitzer; had the film been made at that point, it would have starred singer Tom Waits.

However, Jarmusch and Wurlitzer parted company, and in 1994 Jarmusch began shooting Dead Man with Johnny Depp in the lead role.

Wurlitzer's association with the project is important: during the 1970s, Wurlitzer was involved in a number of films that deconstructed the Western genre, taking the genre's 'inner form' (its themes and motifs) apart and critically investigating the values on which the traditional Western was based. Key among these 'revisionist Westerns' was Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), in which Peckinpah and Wurlitzer presented the West as a place without honour, stripped bare by the demands of a capitalism which dictates that Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) hunt down and kill his former friend, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofersson). In the restored director's cut released theatrically in 1989, at the end of the film Garrett meets his own death at the hands of his deputies, who are working for Chisum, Garrett's former employer.

Dead Man provides an ironic critique of many of the conventions of the traditional Western. Chief among these is the journey westwards (from the Eastern seaboard), which in traditional Westerns is seen as a journey back to innocence. In Dead Man, the journey westwards is a journey towards death: William Blake (Johnny Depp) is mortally wounded at the start of the film, and is, as his Native American companion Nobody refers to him, a 'dead man'. Blake's death is certain, and his movement to the West signifies his movement towards his fate.

Blake is wounded after travelling to a town called Machine in search of a job as an accountant. Upon finding that there are no vacancies, Blake wanders into a saloon spends his remaining money on a bottle of whisky; leaving the saloon, he encounters Thel (Mili Avital), a former prostitute. Blake accompanies Thel to her home, where Thel and Blake are confronted by Thel's former fiance (Gabriel Byrne), who shoots Thel and mortally wounds Blake before Blake kills him.

Escaping on horseback from Machine, Blake encounters a Native American outcast, Nobody (played by the Native American filmmaker Gary Farmer) who confuses Blake with his namesake, the English poet. The rest of the film documents Blake and Nobody's movement West as they are tracked by both Pinkerton men and bounty killers hired by Thel's fiance's father (Robert Mitchum), including Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen) who reputedly ate his own parents.

One of the most striking things about Dead Man is its structure: in his monograph on the film, Jonathan Rosenbaum likens the movie to a poem in that its structure is built around a series of rhyming scenes, the closing scenes (involving Blake's movement into a Native American village and his journey in a canoe) mirroring the opening scenes (Blake's journey on a train, and his movement into the town of Machine). Each of the film's scenes ends with a fade out, which is unusual for a mainstream American movie and gives the impression that each scene is an isolated 'piece', like the stanza of a poem.

Another striking element of Dead Man is its savage critique of American capitalism and its impact on Native American culture: Jarmusch claimed that he made the film with a Native American audience in mind, and consciously wished to correct the stereotypes of Native American culture usually associated with the Western genre. In the character of Nobody, he avoids the 'noble savage' stereotype of Native Americans which tends to dominate most liberal Westerns. Additionally, as Kent Jones has noted, the film presents an absence of culture, the Native American culture having been largely destroyed by the growth of capitalism: 'In Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, there is no American West. There is only a landscape that America the conqueror has emptied of its natives and turned into a capitalist charnel house' (quoted in Rosenbaum, 2000: 18).

The film is also about isolation: both Blake and Nobody are isolated from their respective cultures: as Jarmusch has stated, 'I wanted to take that simple story, and the relationship between these two guys from completely different cultures who are both loners and lost and for whatever reasons are completely disoriented from their cultures' (quoted in Rosenbaum, op cit: 32).

The film's use of violence also challenges the conventions of the Western: when violence takes place in Dead Man, it is clumsy and abrupt, the perpetrators of violence seemingly lacking the 'skill' associated with the gunslingers to be found in the classic Western. 'In Dead Man, it's probably not all that unrealistic, because boom! gun goes off and guys get hit with metal and fall down like puppets with strings getting cut—which is kind of what we wanted it to feel like, shocking for a brief moment and then very still. Someone's soul got taken' (Jarmusch, quoted in Rosenbaum, op cit: 39).

The music score for Dead Man was created by Neil Young; it is one of the finest music scores of 1990s cinema. In 1999 respected cultural critic Greil Marcus wrote an article for the online journal Salon entitled 'Here are 10 reasons why "Dead Man" is the best movie of the end of the 20th century'. In the article, he also provided '[t]en reasons why Neil Young's Dead Man is the best music for the dog days of the 20th century' (Marcus, 1999: np). Marcus states that

[f]or a film set more than a century ago, an electric guitar, playing a modal melody, surrounded by nothing, sounds older than anything you see on the screen [....] The music, as you listen, separates from the movie even as it frames scenes, banter, recitals. It gets bigger and more abstract, and it becomes hard to understand how any film, showing people doing this or that in specific, non-abstract ways, could hold it (ibid.)

Bibliography:
Marcus, Greil, 1999: 'Here are 10 reasons why "Dead Man" is the
best movie of the end of the 20th century'. [Online] http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/12/02/deadman/ (accessed June 2005)

Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 2000: BFI Modern Classics: 'Dead Man'. London: British Film Institute

Whilst watching the film, consider:
1.What are the conventions (in terms of inner and outer form) that you associated with the Western genre?
2.To what extent does Dead Man either follow these conventions or challenge them?
3.What significance does the poetry of William Blake have for the film?
4.To what extent is William Blake (the character played by Johnny Depp) a 'blank canvas' for whom other characters construct an identity?
5.What could you say about the film's representation of Native American culture?
6.What could you say about the film's representation of violence?

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987): Class Handout

2005-06-24T23:13:00.000Z

Significantly, very few films were made about America’s involvement in Vietnam during the war itself, with the exception of the jingoistic John Wayne vehicle The Green Berets (1968) and Elia Kazan’s little-seen movie The Visitors (1972).

The Visitors was the first fiction film to openly question America’s involvement in Vietnam, but following the success of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s a significant number of American films were made about Vietnam that openly criticised America’s involvement in the war. These films include Hamburger Hill (John Irvin, 1987) and several films by Oliver Stone, who was himself a veteran of the war: Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven & Earth (1993).

Also during this period, American authors began to write about Vietnam; the most significant author to deal with the trauma of the Vietnam War is possibly Tim O’Brien, who enlisted as an infantry soldier in Vietnam following his degree. O’Brien’s most famous books include the semi-autobiographical If I Die in a Combat Zone, the collection of short stories The Things They Carried and the magical realist novel Going After Cacciato.

In 1985, veteran filmmaker Stanley Kubrick announced his decision to make Full Metal Jacket; the film was completed in 1986 and released in early 1987. Kubrick had previously directed such significant films as Spartacus (1960), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), Barry Lyndon (1976) and the anti-war movies Paths of Glory (1957) and Dr Strangelove (1964).

Kubrick had made his home in Britain, and refused to leave the British Isles. Consequently, Full Metal Jacket was shot in the UK, with the Isle of Dogs (in London) standing in for Vietnam.

The film was based on two sources: journalist Michael Herr’s Dispatches (from which, like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket ‘borrowed’ much of its narrative voice), and a novel by Gustav Hasford entitled The Short Timers.

The film is divided into two sections: the first half of the film depicts the dehumanising training the new recruits experience in the US (and ending with ‘Private Pyle’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) suicide), and the second half of the film follows ‘Private Joker’ (Matthew Modine) during the 1968 Tet Offensive. This section of the film depicts the damage caused by war and the physical and psychological harm experienced by the young men who served in Vietnam. Vietnam is presented as an ‘other place’, something close to a Hell in which moral codes do not apply. The soldiers’ merciless killing of a female sniper at the end of the film is presented as the logical consequence of the training they have received at home, during which they have learned to see both their enemies and themselves as less than human: as one of the characters states, ‘After we rotate back to the world, we’re gonna miss not having anyone around that’s worth shooting’. Originally, Kubrick wanted to end the film with a sequence depicting the troops playing football with the woman’s head, but decided that this scene was too heavy-handed, and chose to omit it in his final cut of the film.

Full Metal Jacket divides audiences: some people see it as uneven, and upon its release the film came under severe criticism for its language and its representation of violence. Other Kubrick movies had been criticised for their representation of violence, including A Clockwork Orange, which Kubrick himself withdrew from circulation in the UK following allegations of copycat violence.

The Technical Advisor for the film was R. Lee Ermey, who had served as a Gunnery Sergeant in the Marines, and who plays the drill instructor during the first half of the film.

‘The dead know only one thing: that it is better to be alive’.

Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971): Censorship and Genre Hybridity: Class Handout

2005-06-24T23:05:00.000Z

Filmed in St Buryan (near St Ives) in Cornwall, Straw Dogs was released during a tumultuous period in the history of British censorship: the long-standing Chief Examiner, John Trevelyan, had recently retired and his replacement, Stephen Murphy, was faced with a number of controversial films, including Straw Dogs, Ken Russell's The Devils and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. As with A Clockwork Orange, the chief problem with Straw Dogs revolved around its sexual violence, specifically a scene in which Amy (Susan George) is raped by two men—with one of her attackers (her former lover), Amy appears to consent to and even enjoy the act.

At the time, films made in Britain tended to consult the BBFC at the pre-production stage and again during post-production. Murphy advised the filmmakers to trim the second rape of Amy; due to the cuts, the sequence appears to involve a moment of buggery, which to some audience members made the already harrowing sequence even more upsetting. (Censors in the US made even more cuts before giving the film an 'R' rating: in this instance, the British censor was more lenient.)

Straw Dogs was given an 'X' in the UK, during a time in which jokes about rape were seen as permissable; in the 1967 PG-rated comedy Western Waterhole 3, James Coburn refers to rape as 'assault with a friendly weapon'. However, during the 1970s attitudes began to change, and by the time the Video Recordings Act came into play (in 1984), rape was considered a taboo subject. Consequently, post-VRA Straw Dogs was denied a video certificate until 2002: it was banned outright in 1999. However, after consulting a team of psychologists, in 2002 the BBFC gave the uncut version of the film an '18' certificate for its home video release: the psychologists concluded that the film contains a problematic but ultimately responsible treatment of the issue of rape: despite Amy's apparent concession to the first rape, the second assault is presented as harrowing.

Based on a middling novel by 'Gordon M. Williams' (a pseudonym) entitled The Siege at Trencher's Farm, Straw Dogs was directed by Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch), and was his first venture outside the Western genre. In fact, the film contains many references to the Western: the Cornish village is presented in the same way as a Western town, and the local yokels ('hired hands' employed to rebuild the Sumner's garage) are quite simply an outlaw gang. The central portion of the film revolves around the siege of the Sumner's house, a narrative device familiar to viewers of the Western (where the forces of the 'wilderness' lay siege to a 'civilised' space: compare with The Alamo, Rio Bravo).

The film also refers to the themes of the Western, and it subverts the Western's attitude towards violence (i.e. that violence is justified and therefore acceptable if it is 'retaliatory'--in other words, in self-defence or an act of revenge). In Straw Dogs, once the characters become involved in violence they lose all semblance of humanity: Hoffman's mild-mannered mathematics professor becomes a bestial monster who murders several men (and, if that wasn't enough, appears to enjoy their deaths) before leaving his clearly disturbed wife (their marriage apparently irretrievably destroyed) and driving off into the night with the local simpleton; at the end of the film, David doesn't 'know [his] way home', and apparently doesn't care. The film depicts men who succumb to their (self)destructive impulses and unlearn their civilised behaviour, apparently celebrating their loss of identity. Is Peckinpah saying that 'real men' should be violent? I don't think so—David's fate is presented with irony. But it's up to you to decide. Critics who took the film's tagline ('The knock at the door meant the birth of one man... and the death of seven others') too literally certainly thought so, and New Yorker critic Pauline Kael labelled the film 'fascist'.

From the siege onwards, the film also refers to the iconography of the British horror film: an isolated house, swirling mists, night. Additionally, the film's cinematographer, John Coquillon, had also shot Michael Reeves' horror-Western hybrid Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General, and with that film Straw Dogs contains an autumnal that is as cold as slate and which reinforces the icy dread at the heart of the narrrative (which snowballs as events progress).

Peckinpah used to like to talk about David Sumner's (Hoffman's) complicity in the violence that befalls him: Peckinpah claimed that at several points in the narrative, Sumner could have stopped events from snowballing, but chooses not to because of his inbuilt bloodlust: subconsciously, although he claims that he's running away from violence, Sumner wants to become involved in conflict—he wants to spill blood. As Peckinpah put it in an interview he gave to Playboy, 'Violence is ugly, brutalising and bloody fucking awful. It's not fun and games and cowboys and Indians. It's a terrible, ugly thing. And yet there's a certain response that you get from it, an excitement, because we're all violent people, we have violence within us'.

At the time of the shooting of Straw Dogs, Peckinpah was becoming interested in the work of Robert Ardrey, the author of The Territorial Imperative and African Genesis. An anthropologist and screenwriter (!), Ardrey argued that at the heart of all human behaviour are the drives for territory and procreation. Because these impulses are built into our genes, they inspire competition, and hence the impulse for violence is a core aspect of all of our personalities. Much of Peckinpah's work has been interpreted as an exploration of Ardrey's thesis. 'Aggressiveness is the principal guarantor of survival'; 'Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditons'; 'we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides': Ardrey

In the film, the horror genre's representation of violence as horrific and disturbing jars with the Western's celebration of violence, and produces a film in which violence is presented with a great deal of ambiguity: Peckinpah provokes his audience, asking them to respond to violence without directing their responses. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Straw Dogs is that we get from the film what we bring to it: the film amplifies our existing attitudes towards violence, whatever they may be, and consequently individuals respond to the film in very different ways.

Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978): Class Handout

2005-06-24T22:59:00.000Z

Released in 1978, Dawn of the Dead is a sequel to Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. In Night of the Living Dead, Romero reinvented the zombie movie: until Night... zombies had been presented in the traditional manner, as the mindless slaves of voodoo priests (see Plague of the Zombies, John Gilling, 1965). In Night... Romero created the zombie as undead monster, feeding on warm human flesh; but as one of the characters notes in Dawn... the zombies are not cannibals—their feeding is intra-species (the dead feeding on the living), not inter-species. Additionally, no concrete explanation is given for the appearance of zombies in his films: they are just a fact of existence which the heroes have to deal with. In Night... and Dawn... the heroes try to come to terms with living in a world overrun with zombies, and tellingly by the end of Dawn... the zombies have become largely a simple nuisance: the heroes have become accustomed to their presence (and for a central portion of the film, they seem to ignore the zombies altogether).

In the three films that form his 'living dead' trilogy (Night..., Dawn... and Day of the Dead, 1985—a fourth movie, Land of the Dead, is due out this Summer), Romero uses the zombie to comment on pressing social issues, and he is one of the few mainstream filmmakers who are happy to talk about the social and political content of their movies.

In Night of the Living Dead Romero gave a starring role to the young African-American actor Duane Jones, and the film obliquely comments on the issue of racial prejudice in 1960s America (remember, 1968 was the year of the Watts Riots). In addition, the film deals with the paranoia of the Vietnam era, and the bickering between different social factions.

In Dawn of the Dead, Romero traps his heroes in a vast shopping mall (the Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh). Significantly, the late 1970s saw the growth of 'mall culture' in America, and in Dawn... Romero comments on this growing fascination with consumerism and material possessions. He uses the figure of the zombie as a metaphor for the mindless mindset created by consumerism, and he uses cannibalism as a metaphor for the way in which people relate to one another in a consumerist society (he is suggesting that in a society dominated by commerce and money, people compete with and 'feed off' each other). Watch how the film's heroes become increasingly fascinated with the material goods in the shopping mall, and see how their relationships deteriorate because of this: they become no better than the zombies they have trapped outside the mall—they display the same mindless fascination with consumption (flesh, stuff—it's all the same).

Additionally, there is the suggestion of a gay relationship between Peter (Ken Foree) and Roger (Scott H. Reiniger); this is not surprising, considering Romero is one of the few mainstream genre filmmakers to make films (e.g. Knightriders, 1982) in which the central characters are gay—with Night of the Living Dead, he was one of the first genre filmmakers to give a starring role to a black actor.

What is the central question of Romero's zombie movies? I think it's this: Can a fallen society rebuild itself?

Other recommended movies by Romero:
The Crazies (1973), Martin (1975), Jack's Wife (1973), Monkey Shines (1988), Bruiser (2000)

Statement of Intent: What This Page Is About.

2005-06-22T17:14:00.000Z

I've created this page for students of Film Studies, and I plan to store on this website every resource and handout I create for my own Film Studies courses.

Address for this site: http://iloveitwhenaplancomestogether.blogspot.com

All of the handouts and materials on this page are my own work; ©Paul A J Lewis, 2005.