Jaap’s Recitation, April 10th, 11:00-12:15.

Recitation this week was mainly a focus on the clash of ideas of independent and mainstream filmmaking and the questions of identity and masculinity of the late 1980s and the 1990s. Jaap began with a screening of the infamous “rape” scene from Blue Velvet. We discussed the question of as to whether Blue Velvet should be considered an independent or mainstream studio film, and whether David Lynch should be considered the same way. The general consensus was mixed: Blue Velvet has elements of both of these, and some cited the merging and buying up of independent film studios and companies by bigger studios as a reason for this. Jaap also showed a clip from Starship Troopers to further illustrate the skewing of the mainstream/independent boundary. Julien then gave a presentation on Jon Lewis’s discussions of filmmakers who rose to prominence in the 1980s and early 90s and skewed the line between mainstream and independent filmmaking in their careers. Julien also presented the ending of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a recent example of fused mainstream and independent cinema from a director whose career reflects much of the same. Also cited as an aside was the relationship between Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron as ex-marital partners, filmmaking cohorts, as well as Academy Award co-contenders, with Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker beating Cameron’s Avatar for Best Director and Best Picture.

The focus on Bigelow segued into the discussion of the feature Point Break. The discussion focused on Professor Zinman’s questions about identity and masculinity in lecture the night before. This included discussing the characters of the film and the homosocial bonds and communities created within it, the masculinization as well as feminization of the Lori Petty character Tyler, and the conflict between the two ideas of masculinity in the film, the lawless surfer’s way (Swayze) and the cop’s way (Reeves). Tom presented on Christina Lane’s essay “From The Loveless to Point Break” about Bigelow’s portrayals of gender on screen, leading to what was and has been labeled as an “independent” style of filmmaking, although Bigelow has gone between independent and mainstream frequently. Jaap ended the class with a small discussion of how Point Break‘s ideas of masculinity compare and contrast with those of the films of the eighties, and how the “hard bodies” concept of masculinity got absorbed into the ideologies of films that came later on. Thus ended the recitation.

Wizards (1977); cynicism

Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards presents a world that is at a far remove from (dated) modern times—or at least tries to: it’s set in an anachronistically medieval fairy tale world over two million years after atomic warfare and terrorism have buried and destroyed our civilizations. There is not, however, a total remove, for these past civilizations come back to haunt and threaten the new ones: Black Wolf, the evil twin and enemy of the good wizard Avatar, scavenges artifacts from the past, building war weapons from  World War II and finding a film projector (“a Dream Machine”) as well as Third Reich film footage, inspiring all of his mutant henchmen and lackeys to go to wage war against the good elves and fairies and fight to claim the world as their own.

Bakshi, however, manages to portray the past civilizations as still removed in a formalistic way. He used rotoscoping animation, the method of using live-action footage as a foundation for animation—one literally animates over it. The rotoscope animation, however, is merely photographic dyeing and intense, grainy light contrasting of the live-action figures, qualities that keep them visually distinct from the traditional hand-drawn animation. Thus they become another layer of animation on the film, separate from both the background and the traditional hand-drawn animation. Everything live-action based—both rotoscoping and total live-action footage—is given an Other quality, the status of a foreign power in its influence. In this case, the foreignness is temporal; it comes from the past, both formally and thematically.  The traditional and original animation is still the norm, and eventually defeats everything based on and backed by only influences of the past. The present prevails.

It’s difficult enough to figure out much of the logic of this quirky film’s content. Avatar of the good guys is an old pedophile, every woman character has generous, overt cleavage, and many of the dialogues are corny as well as blatant, somewhat political messages on religion, heroism, war vs. love, and other topics of debate from the counterculture 60’s, all of which make the film seem at least partially exploitative. There is also poking fun at the Wagnerian end of the world theory—everything is consumed in flames and drowned, but then things start anew—since that doesn’t totally occur, even with atomic destruction: Black Wolf still regenerates Nazi civilization, and it takes the forces of the present to repress those evil regenerations. The influences  and propagandas of the past are strong, but they themselves do not strengthen. In the long run, we must strengthen ourselves without being possessed by what we are given.

These two clips are back-to-back. I think that together they illustrate my points pretty clearly.

Week 5, Cynicism and Paranoia; section 3, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM, Jaap

In recitation, section three, on the twenty-second of February, Jaap elaborated from last night’s lecture on the second blog post assignment. Going into the week’s subjects of conspiracy and paranoia in the 1970’s, he presented a clip from the torture scene in John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man. In discussion of its relevance, we pointed out the fact that all parties—Dustin Hoffman in the chair and Laurence Olivier and his henchmen, as well as the audience—are both trying to figure out something to no avail, hence paranoia. We also pointed out that we as the audience—as well as Dustin Hoffman—cannot figure out the meaning of the organized actions going on—Hoffman’s kidnapping, entrapment, repetitive questioning (“Is it safe?”: We do not know what “it” refers to), and torture—, hence conspiracy; the theme of underground Nazism in the film was also mentioned as pointing toward the theme of conspiracy. We also discussed the device of the MacGuffin, an object in a work that drives the plot forward but is not actually very important in relation to the narrative as a whole; in Marathon Man, for example, the “it” in “Is it safe?” is a collection of diamonds stolen from Holocaust victims and survivors, but by the time we figure this out, we care more about Dustin Hoffman’s safety. In The Conversation, there are numerous MacGuffins: Has there really been a murder? Is Harry Caul’s (Gene Hackman) apartment bugged at the end of the movie? Who stole the recording? Whether these are real events or cerebral ruptures in the mind of Harry Caul, they still play as parts of a metastasizing paranoia. With the presence of ambiguity, what remains to be seen is the individual’s response.

Following this discussion, we had a presentation by Julien on “The Man Who Would Be King”, Chapter 5 from Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Pointed out in the presentation were the themes of conflict in the ranks of Hollywood production—namely intergenerational conflict—and the near-fiasco production of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, with Francis Coppola acting as both a sell-out—as maker of mainstream Hollywood films, instead of pursuing his dream of his own independent “auteur” status as per the French New Wave—and as a rebel—refusing to back down from most of his demands, from the actors he wanted to shooting on location in New York City in a 1940’s period setting. Also brought up was the idea that “Success comes from conflict,” which about sums up all of the stories in that chapter, from the production of The Godfather to the production of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. Jaap took over afterward and added on with the reinvention of “old, traditional” genres, with The Godfather reinventing the gangster genre and Chinatown reinventing film noir. He also brought up the sequel boom that followed The Godfather, Part II’s winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, giving rise to multi-film franchises, including Star Wars, Jaws, Death Wish, Halloween and Friday the 13th.

We returned to the topic of paranoia with the close-ups scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. Jaap cited Blow-Up as the inspiration for Francis Coppola’s The Conversation, the two films being similar for their questions of realism and of truth taken through forms of media, as well as the possible corruption of the senses through media. This segued with Emily’s presentation on “Ciné Paranoia: Conspiracies Unmasked, 1973-75”, an excerpt from J. Hoberman’s book The Dream Life. Brought up was a relating of the 70s’ to the 60s’ times of rebellion and denouncing of major authority figures, although instead of protesting rights to freedom of voice, people were now protesting the freedom of the mind in the landscape of media overload and government conspiracy, giving rise to the new question, How much of the media is fiction? Following the presentation, Jaap showed the two consecutive  sequences from the opening of Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, as well as the meeting scene between Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and “Deep Throat” (Hal Holbrook). Jaap focused on “Deep Throat”‘s advice to Woodward—telling him to not follow the media in his pursuit of Nixon in the Watergate scandal, because they blew everything of proportion—as a poignant statement of the relationship of media vs. conspiracy, summing up the recitation.

The Thing (1982)

Of course, any movie about Who’s the enemy? can be easily labeled as Cold War cinema. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), however–like the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) before it–made a much darker, more psychologically provoking version than its 50’s predecessor, in this case Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World (1951) the first film adaptation of John W. Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?” Carpenter’s remake was made in a time when the concern was not to “Watch the skies,” but more furtive things like spies. Carpenter uses the setting of an American science lab based in the Antarctic nighttime to create the little civilization surrounded by the unknown wilderness. Throughout most of the film, the characters are half-enveloped in shadows and darkness. With the added effect of an alien monster that is slowly taking over its hosts at an unknown rate, that darkness becomes almost claustrophobic. So it’s no wonder that it feels a little comforting to see Things burning to death, one reason asides many being that it lights up the screen.