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.

Jaap’s Recitation! (2/22 12:30-1:45)

First, we started off with a clip from the 70’s thriller, Marathon Man, starring Dustin Hoffman. In the film, Dustin Hoffman plays a graduate history student is is thrusted into a giant, international conspiracy.This film directly portrays the themes for this week, Cynicism and Paranoia. In the scene, Dustin Hoffman is taken into a torture room where an evil dentist, played by Laurence Olivier, takes needles to Hoffman’s teeth, asking “Is it safe?” The audience and Hoffman have no idea what “it” is at this point. We are just as confused as he is. Hoffman answers his questions with every answer he can think of, but Olivier does not seem to care. He tortures him through his teeth until he is in so much pain that they take him away. We, as an audience, are shocked and taken aback because we too had no idea what “it” was or whether or not it was “safe.” It is meant to be confusing and jarring.

This is precisely the point of a paranoia film. We later find out what the “it” is, however this is not important. Jaap then went into the idea of a macguffin. Coined by Alfred Hitchcock, a macguffin is a plot device that carries huge weight of importance but does not really matter with the plot. In Marathon Man, this is the “it.” It pushed the plot along, but the actual film is about the journey of Dustin Hoffman’s character.

This also relates to The Conversation, the 1974 thriller we watched the night before. The actual conversation in The Conversation is the macguffin, it does not really matter to the real story, the slow, sad journey into paranoia for the protagonist Harry. It pushed the plot forward, but only serves as a vehicle for his desperate paranoia to take over his life. This is expressed in the way it ended, with Harry destroying his whole apartment, finding no microphone or anything. We are left wondering if this was all in his head, or if it was actually real and he was bugged. His obsession with solving the mystery is more important than the mystery itself. We are left in a sense of ambiguity as to who’s fault was the crime and if Harry was actually insane or not.

We next moved to the Biskind’s “The Man Who Would Be King” in Easy Riders. He provides an overview on cinema with a strong emphasis on The Godfather. With this film, Coppola reintroduced genre to Hollywood. As opposed to Head from the 60’s, being all over the place, the 70’s brought back the gangster genre of the 30’s. The values of that time are reintroduced like the American dream, unity within the family, etc. Also, the New Wave Movements of international cinema bolstered these values. We watched a clip from Blow Up, a french film which inspired The Conversation, focuses on the question “is what we see actual reality?” The protagonist takes photos of this couple and find in the very back is the outline of a person and a gun. The scene we saw was of the protagonist first finding the gun. He blows up and blows up every picture for a long period of time, until we cannot see anything because it is so pixelated. With the distressful order of the pictures in the film, we also wonder if we see an actual gun or not. Like The Conversation, we are never sure if this is just his paranoia or an actual gun. This focuses on the visual image instead of sound. This makes the audience wonder about themselves in the situation. It becomes a morality question, would you say something if you saw it? Or let it go? What are they trying to make us aware of? I believe, that things can be more than what you may see at first glance. The audience wonders if they actually saw the gun, or is it just their paranoia coming out, too, through the different sets of pictures shown and the context and order changing our perception on things, like The Parallax View. This is also shown in the last sentence of The Conversation and how it seemed to change the last time as compared to the first time. The key idea is, if you look for something long and hard enough, you’re going to find it, whether it is reality or not.

Next we discussed paranoia in the media. In the 60’s film The Manchurian Candidate, there is hardly any media paranoia. It is all centered around the government. However, in the 70’s, with the increased spying on American citizens and the technology evolution, people are starting to distrust the way in which the media portrays certain ideas. It becomes a source of paranoia. Does the new technology actually help you? Harry only uses his own because he is so paranoid, but don’t these inventions ultimately lead to his downfall? The technology is a representation of dystopia.

Back to Biskind’s essay, the Godfather, renewed the genre film with it’s values and also it’s distribution. Biskind says this this was the first blockbuster film because of the different way Paramount Pictures distributed it- nationwide immediately. Also, it brought along with Hollywood niche of the sequel. The Godfather 2 was even more successful than the first.

In “Ciné Paranoia: Conspiraces Unmasked,” Hoberman goes on to contextualize the paranoia films. He points out the importance of the shift. In the 60’s we were taught based on nostalgia, no questions of the American life or government. In the 70’s, we learn to question everything. This was partly due to the Watergate Scandal, where Nixon ordered a secret agency to spy on the Democrat candidate. It was covered up, but then found, and Nixon was forced to resign. Later we found out that Nixon ordered bombings on Cambodia, which no one, not even Congress, knew about. Creating more ambiguity was the political assassinations of the 60’s. The American citizens felt they did not know the whole picture and justice was not being dealt. The NY Times also wrote a story about how the government was experimenting with brainwashing and torture, like in the Parallax View. This was real paranoia.

We ended with a discussion on All the President’s Men, where we are taken on the true journey about the people who revealed the Watergate Scandal. “Deep Throat” was a man who actually helped let the information out from the inside. His identity was kept a secret because of the danger he put himself into. Jaap  showed us a clip where the two reporters meet with “Deep Throat” for the first time to get the information. The scene is dark and mysterious, filled with paranoia. The contrast of light and dark add to the mystery behind it all. The flashlights being shaken add confusion. The whole film is shot like The Conversation in that the protagonists are always in narrow, confined spaces. The sound becomes very important. “Deep Throat” says explicitly to not trust the media. It will not point the reporters in the right direction. This is the paranoia everyone is feeling in the 70’s. This film is similar to the other we watched in this section because we are still distrustful. Also, the idea of obsession is explored. Where is the line drawn from professionalism to obsession? For all the protagonists in The Conversation, Blow Up, and All the President’s Men, it started out as a job and became something much more. The films we saw and discussed put us in the mindset of someone in the 70’s, paranoid and questioning everything, from the U.S. government to the media that covers it.