Feminism and Society through Melodrama and Noir

Walter Neff gazing at Phyllis Detrichson.

With noir films like Double Indemnity having such a sadistic female protagonist, can the film itself be considered feminist? Claire Johnston states, “Feminist cinema must include a challenge to the fetishistic and sadistic aspects of the scopic drive which Laura Mulvey demonstrates so convincingly.” Theorist Mulvey also pushes that the gaze in cinema, the power by men looking at and watching women, ultimately controls women. Noir contains several men “gazing,” such as Walter Neff being obsessed with Phyllis Dietrichson and staring at her constantly. That is when noir is kind; often there are scenes in which  male characters outright slap women -- or do worse. It would seem that film noir is not feminist in its approach toward women. However, noir is not truly misogynistic, though its characters might be. It is not the characters, but the politics that define the movie.
 
 Films often have a distinctive masculine or feminine appeal. This often has more to do with marketing. Masculine films could be action films, film noirs, and sports films. Whereas feminine films can be considered romantic comedies and melodramas. Without debating the semantics of masculine and feminine I wish to point out the differences between Film Noir and Melodramas, and the social commentary that they carry with them. The commentary that these two genres have upon society reflects mostly upon the gender roles of society. Both noir and melodramas reflect the poor treatment that women have in society, but they also show that in fact everyone is stuck within tight boundaries of society regardless of sex. The genres also blur the personal with the political, because both are interrelated.
 
Margarethe von Trotta, Douglas Sirk, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder are all directors of Melodramatic films, and all originate from Germany. They are considered by many to be auteur directors as well, by putting a piece of themselves into their films. Douglas Sirk was influenced by German Expressionistic cinema in his use of framing. Framing was also used by Fassbinder and von Trotta for the use of isolating individuals from the collective group representing society, or entrapping a character. Shohini Chaudhuri writes about Sirk’s influence on Fassbinder, “Sirkian influences also inspire Ali’s mise-en-scene: pools of saturated color in the Asphalt Pub scenes; the use of mirrors, doorways, partitions, and grilles to internally frame characters within the cinematic frame.”2 Von Trotta’s mise-en-scene is described then in a similar way. “Women looking through windows or waiting at windows frequently appear in von Trotta’s films at key moments in characters’ psychological development and their attempts to relate to another--a sister or a friend.” The framing techniques enhance the story being told emotionally by the filmmakers in their films. 

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Here we see the members of the Asphalt pub gazing at Emmi.

Here Emmi is juxtaposed so we feel her isolation against the rest of the group.

Film Noir functions much in the same fashion. The directors of Film Noir either had a background with, or were influenced by German Expressionist cinema as well as the three previously described melodramatic directors. Shots in such films as Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly often feature a lone wolf male protagonist against the world. One shot in Kiss Me Deadly features protagonist Mike Hammer being surrounded by a large staircase. Visually, this makes us uneasy by enveloping him in a swirling image. Later we find out that he really is in over his head and caught in the middle of a political storm much bigger than he is. Here is another character who sets out into the world, only to be enveloped by it.
 
Both Melodramas and Film Noirs feature protagonists that are trying to live by their basic wants or moral codes but find themselves in some way up against society. Chaudhuri states that Sirk’s “melodramas gave Fassbinder a model for making films that could perform ‘a moral critique of an immoral society’” In the concepts of the individual against society, and society’s moral corruption, we come to the point where these two genres mix and engage. Not every Film Noir or Melodrama has societal commentary that is a conscious effort by the filmmakers. Nor do Film Noirs and Melodramas all have the same commentary.
 
However, regardless of the filmmakers’ intentions, many Film Noirs and Melodramas comment on gender issues. We see this with the femme fatale in noirs, and by the use of a repressed female protagonist in melodramas. Both types of characters can be described in many cases as a female individual who is trying to advance or get ahead in the world on either a grand or micro scale. The femme fatale does so by unscrupulous methods and is therefore ultimately punished. Whereas the melodramatic female character receives societal punishment at some point, she is  sometimes also rewarded by a deux ex machina.
 
Such an ending occurs in Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, so that we gain the catharsis of the protagonist’s happy ending, but we acknowledge that only by an act of God was this allowed to happen in a morally bankrupt society. Fassbinder took it further by taking out the cathartic ending. Chaudhuri writes, “He designed his films’ closures to create another ‘ending’ in the audience’s head-to make it obvious to them that they must change their lives, even if society restricts their choices.”4 In either case the films are designed so that on some level we are aware of societal flaws and attempt to change them. Noir can also draw attention to societal troubles, Double Indemnity is conscious of the fact that Phyllis Dietrichson somewhat manipulated by society to the point she becomes a cold blooded murderer.

At the end of All the Heaven Allows Jane Wyman ends up with Ron Kirby. Yet the mise-en-sene of this scene makes her feel trapped. She is on the inside looking out, and the window serves to act as prison bars. So while it is a touching scene, it also becomes social commentary on the woman's place in society.

The background of the German melodramas and film noir show common similarities. Both are deeply rooted in a postwar atmosphere. Von Trotta and Fassbinder work in family histories that are related to the rise of the Nazi party. To them family history and the rise of the party are rooted in both the personal and the political. “Von Trotta views the political and social reality of postwar and contemporary Germany through the lens of personal relations and family dramas. For Fassbinder, too, politics and power relationships begin at home and are negotiated in interpersonal relations rather than in abstract political debates or historical conflicts.” In noir heroes are often returned war veterans trying to find their place back home. Often they cannot find their place. The world has changed, and it no longer needs them. Paul Schrader states that in this world, “one finds that the upward mobile forces of the thirties have halted; frontierism has turned to paranoia and claustrophobia.” In both melodrama and noir there is an overriding sense of pessimism for the world and mankind.
 

In Mariane and Julianne the two sisters become separated by political views. As they separate ideologically, they become separated physically as well. After one's arrest they are separated by a window and can no longer touch. In another a reflection of one moves over the face of the other, but as soon as it is aligned it disappears off the glass, representing their movement from each other.

Pessimism arises because it points to the fallacies of the world and attempts to get us to create change. While violence and the male gaze occur in the movie, viewers should not allow them to distract from the overall message of the film. Summing up Fassbinder’s thoughts Chaudhuri states, “‘the cultural representations through which we see and are seen’ should be the focus of our political struggle, not the gaze.” The message of the film should be at the forefront when viewed, because events that occur in the film exist to support the message. The message is political, going back to von Trotta’s view of the interrelation of the personal and political. Many noirs and many melodramas are very feminist in their politics, but are aimed at different audiences. I enjoy both and find them entertaining, because they portray similar outlooks of society.

Bibliography:
Chaudhuri, Shohini. “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul." Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. Ed. Geiger, Jeffrey and Rutsky, R.L. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005.
Haynes, Todd. Far from Heaven, Safe, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story; Three Screen Plays. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Johnston, Claire. “Classic Hollywood Cinema.” Movies and Methods Volume II. Ed. Nichols, Bill. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985.
Rueschmann, Eva. “The Politics of Intersubjectivity.” Sisters on the Screen. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.
Schrader, Paul. "Notes on Film Noir." Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

*Note: It should be noted that both Noir and Melodramas had a deep influence by the German Expressionist film movement. Sirk himself came from that background, as well as several other directors and cinematographers of the time. I failed to mention this in the text, and it bears an important part explaining the style similarities of the two genres and their social commentary.

Culture in Mississippi Masala

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi513212697/

Indians and all non-native Africans were forced out of Africa. The film raises questions about racism, what is a home and what is a native?

Mississippi Masala serves as a general human tale of love, loss, and friendship. It does so using a romantic identity, sometimes falling into the melodramatic a little. This format helps to draw us into the film, and relate to it on an emotional level. The movie unfolds like any other basic romantic story in which boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and the two end up together in the end. The story has more significant meaning than just that, however. Meena is an Indian girl who falls in love with Demetrius, a hard working carpet cleaner who is African American. They have cultural clashes as they date, but ultimately they feel that culture should not define them or their relationship. It also tells the story of Meena’s father, Jay, as he seeks penance from the Ugandan government which he feels has wronged him. The story acts as a parable for intolerance and racism in our times; and shows that racism, the act of disliking someone based off of their ethnic background, is not limited to strictly Euro-Caucasian. Identity plays a big part in the unfolding of the story of Mississippi Masala, in that the two characters have strong ties to their cultures which have helped to form their identities. The movie shows an important element of identity, which is that to find ourselves we have to distance ourselves from our cultural selves to see ourselves as we really are.

    Mississippi Masala is set in rural Mississippi. Meena and her family are descendants of Indian culture. Her parents had made their home in Uganda until all non-Africans were told to leave. They moved to England and ultimately Mississippi. Demetrius is African American, and he works hard to be financially independent while all his friends are goofing off or trying to make it big in southern California. He and Meena both have strong cultural identities, but as they fall in love with each other their cultures come into conflict. Meena’s parents do not like Demetrius; there is the underlying problem that he is not Indian. Then Demetrius’s friends and family are concerned because of how “they” – Indians -- are with “our people.” The movie shows how racism is not limited to white people, but is a cross-cultural problem.
 
 The movie Mississippi Masala shows realistic images of two distinct cultures in the film. Robert Stam and Louise Spence write about how many cultures are negatively stereotyped in several films. Then Hollywood overcompensated with “positive images” of cultures in which characters seemed too good to be true, and more often than not were. “A cinema dominated by positive images, characterized by a bending-over-backwards-not-to-be-racist attitude, might ultimately betray a lack of confidence in the group portrayed, which usually itself has no illusions concerning its own perfection.” This became another form of racism, and stereotyping in Hollywood. In Mississippi Masala we are given a more realistic look at an Indian culture relocated in America, and at a Mississippi African American community. This realism shows them in both positive and negative lights. However, it should be noted that many of the white folk in the film are shown as backwards hicks who cannot tell Native Americans from Indians and drive around in pickup trucks with American flags in their back windows. This could be deemed unfair stereotyping, but since this is a reversal of traditional cultural roles in film, and I found it funny as white male, it should be allowed to slide in this movie. On the other hand, Mississippi Masala does a fair job in presenting Indian culture, which is typically portrayed in a stereotypical fashion in American films.

    Key to the idea of culture is that of identity. Culture stems from our identity, because it is “inherited memories” we have gained from our ancestors passed down to us. Stuart Hall explains, “‘Cultural identity’ in terms of one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ‘selves’, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common.” In Mississippi Masala we see this with both families. At Demetrius’s family dinner we get to see everyone gathering around their grandfather for his birthday, talking about growing up together. We see this also with Meena’s family, at the wedding and other various random family get-togethers in which they celebrate with their native India’s customs. Despite the fact that they are in America, and attempt to fit in, they still actively practice their religion, which many of the locals deem foreign.

    Hall continues with a second position on identity, “As well as the many points of similarity, there are also critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or rather -- since history has intervened -- ‘what we have become.’”2 That is to say, yes we share a social and cultural identity, however, we have an identity outside of that which is defined by our own individual words and actions. Demetrius in the film is shown against the backdrop of his culture, in which many of those amongst his age are just hanging out, and loitering the streets. He stands out because he works hard with his rug cleaning business and takes his life seriously. Meena breaks away from her family heritage by running away with Demetrius, giving Meena an identity away from her culture as well. They both look outward to define themselves, not allowing culture to define themselves.

    Despite the movements that Meena and Demetrius have undertaken to be with each other, they still have personal problems that delve into the realm of politics. Hall continues, “The past continues to speak to us. But it no longer addresses us as a simple, factual ‘past’, since our relation to it... It is always construct through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth. Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points of identification or suture, which are made, within the discourses of history and culture. Not an essence but a positioning. Hence, there is always a politics of identity, a politics of position, which has no absolute guarantee in an unproblematic, transcendental ‘law of origin’.”3 The movie moves into the political realm, when we watch Meena’s relatives try to kiss up to Demetrius after the car accident. They want to get assurances that he will not sue. Then after he sleeps with Meena, they quickly turn on him by stopping all business with him to guarantee that he will no longer have contact with Meena. The scandal goes so far to lose even an actual political client, and sends Demetrius broke to the bank.

    The politics are most in the forefront with Jay, who is suing the Ugandan government for his personal loss of property, and what he feels was an illegal eviction from what he considers his homeland. Jay and Meena were not born in India like some of their relatives, but they were born in Uganda. Meena left while she was a child and has little attachment to it, whereas Jay feels that Uganda is a large part of his culture and identity. In a flashback we see him playing as a boy with another Ugandan boy, and his mother calling the two of them together “brother.” While they are probably not biologically brothers, this goes to serve the idea that identity can be based on land, not just blood, as with the case of Jay. Throughout the movie he spends most of the time being bitter. Through flashbacks we see him with his native Ugandan friend, Jammubhai, undergoing the regime change and Idi Amin kicking out non-native Africans. Jay feels betrayed when his friend Jammubhai tells him in order to help him leave and thereby save his life that “Africa is now for Africans.” Jay is hurt because he feels that despite his cultural heritage he himself is African; he was born and raised there. Rather than see his friend’s words as friendly advice, it makes him angry and bitter towards him and Uganda. Hence Jay sues the government of Uganda.

    When Jay finally gets the government to hear his case and he returns to Uganda he looks up his friend Jammubhai only to discover that he had died years before. The news is such a shock to him that he breaks down emotionally. He realizes that his anger blinded him from continuing correspondence with a person that he considered his brother. This epiphany helps Jay to realize that suing the Ugandan government will not give him justice, nor will it bring back his friend, or give him the thing he realizes is most important of all -- happiness. Jay’s adventure is a parallel with Meena and Demetrius’s love story. The two lovers could have had a falling out, and began to, but in the end overcame those fears, so that they could have love and be together. Jay did not take the step to overcome his fear and anger, and lost his friend.

Jay revisiting his homeland, and gaining a greater realization.

    It through the journeys that Meena, Demetrius, and Jay all go through that they find themselves. They have to distance themselves from their culture to look inward and to see that they are more than what their community would have them be. Demetrius’s friends told him not to go after Meena, even though she made him happy. The same with Meena and her family. When they overlooked the opposition that their communities gave them to run away together they became happy. The greater story is Jay’s acknowledgement that he should look after his own daughter’s happiness and not fight to preserve the cultural heritage if it means destroying the happiness of those he loves. This catharsis in the end of the film then becomes ours, the audience’s. It seems so trivial to fight for something that isn’t real, but is just an abstract concept that we have kept alive.

1 Spence, Louise and Stam, Robert. “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction.” Film Theory and Criticism. Ed. Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. 2009.
2 Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference.    Edited by J. Rutherford. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 
3 Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference.    Edited by J. Rutherford. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990.

Human Values Through Film Design: Chaplin’s Modern Times and The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin learned comedy while working in vaudeville, and he went on to make genre comedies like many of his contemporaries. Compared to his peers Chaplin is sentimental in his story telling; he is more expressive, and his tramp character is lovable. As well as being a top-notch comedian and actor, Chaplin also directed the majority of his films. He was intelligent, and he was conscious of human suffering in the world around him. The times were hard for most people, the Great Depression provided troubles for people. He was gifted with an intuitive sense of cinema that let him make personal films, rich in humanity, when most movies were manufactured by a studio system that felt movies were a product and not art. Modern Times and The Great Dictator are two socially conscious films of his that have continued to find appreciative audiences.

Chaplin plays two roles in The Great Dictator, and each character has their own stories. The Dictator, Hynkel plans and plots to take over the neighboring country, and then the world; but he has to face several political and personnel problems that pop up. Meanwhile the Jewish Barber has to fight to survive; because Hynkel puts pressure on the Jews of Tomania, and is harassed by the Stormtroopers. The Barber is able to find love with Hannah, played by Paulette Godard. The end of the film has mistaken identities, caused by the fact that Hynkel and the Barber look so much alike; this was inspired by the fact that Hitler copied Chaplin’s mustache in real life. The ending of The Great Dictator has the Barber addressing a crowd of the dictator’s soldiers, and he gives them, and the whole world, a plea for peace. In this plea Chaplin stops acting as the Barber and speaks as himself; he stops speaking to the Tomanian troops and speaks to the citizens of the world. It is a beautiful and moving piece because Chaplin speaks his mind, and addresses his audience directly which few filmmakers do.

In The Great Dictator, while the Jewish Barber is in the hospital, after the first World War, time passes and the world changes drastically. To let the audience know that the world has changed since the end of the war, Chaplin uses a montage sequence. The screen fades from the Barber and his friend being told the war has been lost to whirling newspaper presses. The presses symbolize the gears and wheels of the world spinning, passing, and changing. Chaplin fades through different printing presses, and we see different shots of machines until a newspaper headline comes at us; “Armistice!” The camera fades into a crowd of happy people in the streets cheering the end of the war. Then the Barber is shown in the hospital, with his head bandaged. We are shown more headlines, many of them contemporary with Chaplin’s timeline, giving the audience a sense of time, “Lindberg flies Atlantic.” This is an attempt to speed the audience up to the present. The headlines show terrible times in the fictitious country of Tomania, which is a metaphor for Germany, and this helps us understand the last headline, “Hynkel Party Takes Power!” It parallels Hitler’s rise to power. The montage then shows us one last shot of the barber walking around so we know that he is in good health and alive, before giving us the film’s first shot of Hynkel. The montage sequence is important to the narrative because it gives the audience a greater sense of the timeline. For Chaplin’s original audience, it provided a brief history of the parallel world that he has created, wherein Hynkel stands in for Hitler. For modern audiences the montage gives them a greater understanding of the timeline, reminding and informing them of past events, letting the audience see the deplorable conditions of Tomania and how a person like Hynkel could rise to power. In less than a minute, several years worth of knowledge is given about the Barber and the conditions of Tomania.

The most beautiful and haunting sequences of The Great Dictator is when Hynkel dances with the globe, tossing it up into the air and gracefully catching it. Chaplin uses many long takes, and avoids cuts unless they are needed for an emotional affect, such as a close up of Hannah during Chaplin’s closing speech. In this sequence Hynkel tosses the globe. Rather than have the camera follow the globe up, the camera cuts to the globe and then follows it down. When you become used to this, the camera follows the globe up and then cuts to Chaplin lying down on the table. While it is not an extreme use of editing as many modern editors would use, it is subtly jarring. Hynkel is a pleasant person, but under the personality he is a violent brute. The quick subtle edits highlights this in Hynkel’s dance; he is dangerous. Finally, at the end of the sequence, he grabs the globe and it bursts, just as the Earth would have if Hynkel or Hitler would have conquered the Earth. In the most moving scene in The Great Dictator Chaplin uses little cuts for a greater emotional appeal. When he gives his speech and plea for humanity, which goes about five minutes, the camera cuts only once. Chaplin just stares straight into the camera for each whole take, breaking the “fourth wall” by looking at the audience. This contrasts with Hynkel’s dance and shows that Chaplin uses editing to highlight emotional aspects of the film.

The Great Dictator has a threatening yet humorous scene wherein Hynkel addresses members of the Jewish Ghetto through a loudspeaker. Chaplin speaks so it sounds like German, but it is just gibberish, and no translation is given. It is not what Hynkel is saying, but how he says it, that is threatening. We are set up in a previous scene where he states that he is going to threaten the Jews. While on the loudspeaker we see the Barber and Hannah reacting. They are on a crowded street when Hynkel’s voice booms in, and in seconds they are the last ones standing; everyone else has disappeared. The walk down the street at an increasing speed, but when Hynkel’s voice becomes more threatening they hide. There is no visible danger here, only the perception of Hynkel’s threat to them. The combination of the set-up, the sound production, and the acting make this sequence both frightening and hilarious.

Modern Times has plenty of plot and action by Chaplin’s design, compared to The Great Dictator the action veers away from the story. It is Godard’s urchin propels the Tramp into the next adventure. They dream of a future, and attempt to help each other. Chaplin tries to support her; declaring he will get her a home even if he has to work for it. It breaks off into events, going away from the story and into the plot; surviving the conditions of a city in 1930. We watch Chaplin working, imprisoned, and Godard as she works in a restaurant. Humor often works when the story and the plot diverge from the story, and perhaps this is why it was such a successful film. The Great Dictator on the other has less non-diegetic material, comparatively; and the action keeps more to the story. Plot developments in The Great Dictator build up to the speech in the end of the film; while not every piece of the plot fits the story it is tighter than Modern Times.

Chaplin had a strong ideology that was very pro-humanity, and he portrayed his views in his films. He gave the films implicit meanings that he consciously thought about for long periods. Modern Times shows how Chaplin felt about the industrial era, and how technological efficiency has dehumanized mankind. When the Tramp is working in the factory tightening bolts, he gets so caught up in the work that he does not notice that he is pulled into the machinery as he tightens the bolts of the machine. His body is contorted through painful-looking gears; he has become a piece of the machine itself.  Chaplin’s plea for humanity to the soldiers, 

“Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!...Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!”

Chaplin rose to fame during the Great Depression, and was conscious of the ruin around him. As Hitler rose to power many people in the United States supported him and his quest against the Jews; which appalled Chaplin. He knew that he could use his film as an overt and subtle weapon against social injustices he perceived.

Chaplin played with the frame rate in many of his films. By using the frame rate of 18 fps, or another speed, he could give the story a greater pacing he felt that he wanted. It allows for Chaplin to move in a manner he could not on his own; the Tramp could then move faster, be more graceful, or be clumsy. The effect works; it is subtle enough for the audience not to notice it. Paulette Godard’s character in Modern Times is introduced by showing her cutting a bushel of bananas and throwing them to children. She is a desperate and hungry street urchin. The frame rate is sped up; so that she is furiously cutting the bananas, which gives her more spirit and voraciousness as she goes at it. If watched her at a normal fps rate it would not create the same effect; the change is needed to make her seem more feisty. Later the Tramp goes swimming and somersaults into less than a foot of water in the lake. The reaction of Chaplin to this event is intensified by the action being sped up. It is only a short gag, but the audience spends more time watching him prepare for the dive than in the actual water. He stretches, and warms up, then dives. Another person would have somersaulted more awkwardly, and it would have only appeared painful, but Chaplin’s choreography combined with the adjusted fps rate makes it humorous to the audience instead of painful. 

Modern Times, while a “silent film,” still made use of recorded sound; such as music, sound effects, and features Charlie Chaplin singing. The sound is postsynchronous, recorded after filming. It is the amalgamation of silent film techniques with prerecorded diegetic sound that makes the film interesting and unique. Whenever people talk to each other we cannot hear them, instead we read their lips or read the title cards. However, whenever a person talks through a machine, whether it is the Henry Ford-like boss, or a news radio announcer, we get to hear a voice. The only time that we get to hear a voice is through a machine. This adds to theme of the movie—the dehumanization of people because of technology and the “advances” of modern times: people have lost their voices, and they have become slaves to the machines they work for. When Chaplin’s boss comes down to see him and talk to him directly he no longer has a voice as he did when he was on the monitor. Everything he says goes unheard, and only the most important dialogue ends up on a title card. The restaurant scene of the film has Charlie Chaplin singing. However, the character loses the lyrics of the song and has to make up the lyrics. Instead of singing in English he sings in gibberish, imitating French. We can even hear the audience members cheering and laughing at his humorous gestures. Combined with Chaplin’s gestures and dancing, it is a humorous scene. Although the song is the first time many people have heard Chaplin’s voice, the scene is still more about the comical movements and gestures that he performs. This could have been Chaplin’s way of trying to defy modern conventions, which made many of his peers go over to talkies. Even in a historical moment, as Chaplin’s voice being heard, it is still about the pantomime and the mimegesis.

Chaplin would often use a deep focus in his films. He came from a theatre background, and would stage action so that he could use a longer shot, rather than a traditional establishing shot followed by close ups. Characters often speak to each other on screen together instead of two close ups intercut. In the shots of Godard’s Gamin with Chaplin’s Tramp, they talk facing each other, with their sides to the audience. Then in the factory scenes he uses a deep focus, giving us a sense of grandeur and depth in the factory. We can watch the great big gears in the background turning, and men wheeling machinery around with as much focus as Chaplin and other workers in the foreground. He was aware of his body as a comedic tool, and wanted to put it entirely in the shot. 

Chaplin uses suspense as a comedic tool in both films by dangling his characters over danger while neither character is aware of it. In Modern Times Chaplin’s Tramp is rollerskating around a multi-level department store to impress his girlfriend; and while doing so comes close to death by approaching an open ledge. It would be an impressive feat of bravery, but the tramp is blindfolded, and he inches closer to the ledge with each pass. The audience fears for the Tramp, but he is unaware that he is in danger of getting hurt while showing off. The comedy kicks in when his girlfriend, Hannah, warns him and he takes the blind fold off. Now he is no longer graceful and flails about to get away from the ledge, getting closer to it. His surprise combined with the relief he never got hurt is what makes the scene funny. This replays in The Great Dictator when the Barber and Hannah escape the stormtroopers; with all of the friends’ belongings, including a hat box placed over the Barber’s eyes. The two run up to the roof, and the Barber runs out onto a beam unaware that a misstep could mean his death. His friend calls out to him to be careful. The Barber comically drops several items he is holding to his friends dismay, thinking he is placing them on the ground. Again, while we fear for his safety, the true comedy comes in when he takes the hat box off his head and looks down, he finally drops all the items and flails about until he can reach the safety of the roof. The dramatic build-up of Chaplin’s falling climaxes with his becoming aware of his danger, which leads to his safety and the audience’s release of emotion with laughter.

Modern Times and The Great Dictator are a culmination of everything that Chaplin had learned working on film years prior. They also show his ability to adapt and grow; he redeveloped himself to use sound design, and even use speech as a comical and dramatic device. Most impressive of Chaplin is how he used his films not just for entertainment or for self gain, but he used them to promote social values he developed. He was worried about industry destroying men’s souls, and a dictator destroying the world. There hasn’t been anyone quite like Chaplin since.

Control in Gamespace

McKenzie Wark wrote the book Gamespace, drawing parallels between our reality and the beloved video games of our society. In it he drew many life comparisons, about the fomulation of our "gamespace" and ourselves, and the need for video games. Video games, he feels, are necessary because they give us options where movies do not, but unlike reality conform to fairness toward the rules. However, as video games have become more complex and advanced they become more chaotic like this world.


Yet this world is a game. As we play video games and develop theories on how to overcome the obstacles--gamer theory--we also develop theories on how to overcome obstacles in everyday life--gamespace. Gamespace is the world in which we live in. As we continue to develop theories for gamespace, the gamespace changes. McKenzie Wark argues that games like “The Sims” are so popular because this world does not follow the rules it gives. McKenzie writes in Gamer Theory, “If it is a choice between ‘The Sims’ as a real game and gamespace as a game of the real, the gamer chooses to stay in The Cave and play games. The contradiction is that for there to be a game which is fair and rational there must be a gamespace which is neither.”(49) In “The Sims” the player follows the rules given to get to achieve career goals they wish to succeed in. However, in the real world many of us have followed the rules only to get passed over. When I was in Retail Management I followed all the rules to move up the ladder, however, because of office politics that were beyond my reach, another person was given a promotion that was meant for me. This is the gamespace that we live in, a place that contains shifting rules, which do not always result in predictable success.

So what then allows for success in society? Wark writes, “Here is the guiding principle of a future utopia, now long past: ‘To each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities.’ In gamespace, what do we have? An atopia, a placeless, senseless realm where quite a different maxim rules: ‘From each according to their abilities--to each a rank and score.’ Needs no longer enter into it. Not even desire matters.”(21) As if we were in a game, our abilities best determine who we are in society. Our everyday life is like a game; we are driven to compete and succeed, to win against all others. “Gamespace wants us to believe we are all nothing but gamers now, competing not against enemies of class or faith or nation but only against other gamers.”(24)

Those who have control over the gamespace wish to keep control; they are the military-entertainment complex. Like a video game, gamespace and its inherent rules can grow stale and boring. Wark states “Boredom becomes pervasive, uncontainable--a real threat.” Wark continues that the military-entertainment complex displaces the boredom of one game into another, always striving to keeping players entertained. “Boredom with any particular game is always displaced onto another game, before it calls into question the imperfections of gamespace as a poor excuse for how one could live and labor among these richly productive and seductive lines.”(173) The enemy of the game is boredom because it recalls for gamers the fact that “the most deluded of gamers can eventually realize that their strivings have no purpose, that all they have achieved is a hollow trophy, the delusion of value, a meaningless rank built on an arbitrary number.”(166) Wark wrote this examining gamers and games, but in gamespace this can be applied as well. The accumulation of products, goods, money, and land all amount to a hollow trophy. Society has to change the rules of gamespace, the same rules that frustrate us and passed me over for a promotion, otherwise the players may leave or try to change the gamespace.


http://www.amazon.com/Gamer-Theory-McKenzie-Wark/dp/0674025199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331713647&sr=8-1

Societal Backlash against the Images of the Spectacle Society

This was written in December during the beginning of the 99% protests but thought I would publish it now with no good reasoning.

Many Americans among the group that is currently being called “the 99%”--the group behind the widespread “Occupy” activities--have grown tired of not having power over their own lives. The Watts Riot in 1965 was similar to today’s Occupy movement in causation, but different in execution. Debord writes in the Decline and Fall of the Spectale-Commodity Economy, ““The Watts riot was not a racial conflict: the rioters left alone the whites who were in their path, attacking only the white policemen, while on the other hand black solidarity did not extend to black store-owners or even to black car-drivers.” Class separation has long been ignored in America, and class of wealth has now become a spectacle of its own. Those of us in the 99% are given to view the lifestyle of those in the 1% as a commodity, something to aspire to, something to aquire. However the lifestyle of the 1%--and the power that it represents--remains a spectacle for the 99%. The Watts riot and the 99% movement are both about tearing down the separation brought on by viewing the spectacle of the 1% class.

The Watts Riot was a backlash against the spectacle created by capitalism. The blacks in the riot had become frustrated with a system that would not help them, but flaunted, in a spectacular fashion, commodities in front of their eyes. They looted the 1%, taking items from stores. Debord again writes, “The Los Angeles blacks take modern capitalist propaganda, its publicity of abundance, literally. They want to possess now all the objects shown and abstractly accessible, because they want to use them. In this way they are challenging their exchange-value, the commodity reality which molds them and marshals them to its own ends, and which has preselected everything.” After being taunted to want commodities, they wanted to tear down the walls of spectacle and take what they wanted. 

Spectacle creates a schism for society. We experience life without having personal experiences. In an advertisement, we watch people use a vacuum cleaner, and they tell us how great it is; vicariously we understand how smooth and quiet it runs. Yet we have never used the vacuum. Debord writes in the Society of the Spectacle, “Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image.”(3) The combination of separation and spectacle exists not only with commodities, but in all aspects of life. Government becomes a spectacle wherein many people feel that they can witness political events, but that they have no direct effect on them or their world. Tension builds and mounts until people have had enough and riot, or create movements.

The events of the Watts riot raised questions. Looters would take stolen fridges to homes without power. This is an example of the overwhelming desire for commodities. Debord continues in the Decline and Fall of the Spectale-Commodity Economy, “Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and alteration, whatever particular form it may take. Only when it is paid for with money is it respected as an admirable fetish, as a symbol of status within the world of survival.” What is forgotten by the general population is that the images in advertisements and other forms of propaganda spectacle are nothing. As Debord says in the Society of the Spectacle, “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” What is an image but printed ink, or light reflected from a screen. We give meaning to the images; the images have no thought or real power but what society gives them. Steven Shaviro comments on Andy Warhol’s view of images, “Images are nothing like objects. When things retreat into their images, the way they do on TV, they lose their solidity, their palpability, their presence. Images have a weightlessness that is both mysterious and soothing. They haunt us, like ghosts; they empty out space, the better to flicker interminably in the void. Images are premised upon a visibility so extreme that it relegates the world to a state of almost transparency.”

We allow the spectacle of society to control and run our lives. However, it is not real, it has no true power. Yet our relations with those images give them power: power to separate our society into classes, power to make us desire commodities that have no use. They, in the end, are nothing. However, we want them to be something, and that is why they have power.

Sources:

¹ Debord, Guy. The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy,The Situationist International Anthology, 2006; http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.Watts.htm

² Shapiro, Steven, 16 Andy Warhol, Doom Patrols, 2007, http://www.dhalgren.com/Doom/ch16.html

International Films as Culture

In class I hear some professors pointing out the cultural differences found in foreign films. I find this odd. Having taken anthropology and psychology classes, as well as being familiar with the ideas of Joseph Campbell, I find myself disagreeing with my professors in this view. While yes, many foreign films are different than American films I believe that there are more elements in common.

To give an example of a difference I will point out the Japenese film Tokyo Story. My professor, Lau, highlighted the fact that the director Yasujiro Ozu risregards the "180" rule. This rule states that there is a line in a room and the camera can only show what is on one side of it. This helps to establish a continuity on a more subconscious element for the viewer. This way the characters on screen always look at the same direction, as if we were talking to them or they were on stage. Ozu will place the camera in a room where ever he pleases, so the characters will face to the right of the screen, and without moving, suddenly face the left within an edit. Now, I will contend that this could be viewed more as a "trend." Since film is relatively knew, and a capitalist country like ours allows for very little experimentation, of course filmmakers in other cultures are going to do something subtle as break the 180 rule. Most of the Japanese films I have watched, and even the more modern ones have not done this.

My teacher also explained that many of us in the audience, being "Western," may not understand the film, since it is about family, and modernization. This is absolutely wonk. Towards the end of the film the mother in the family died, and most of the children recovered emotionally from her death and went back to their busy lives rather quickly. At my Grandmothers death I was upset at the way her possessions were handed and bartered out the same way as in this film. I worry about my parents death, and I worry about life after they die. I worry about dissapointing them, not living up to their expectations. All of this is in the film. So how am I different from the eastern audiences that cried during this? I cried. My favorite How I Met Your Mother episodes dealt with Marshall loosing his father. This troubled me because I realised that I don't know what I will do without him. Visiting my Grandparents there is a conscious effort to try and cut pop culture and technology out of conversations, and many of us family members have failed to do so, leaving my Grandparents in the cold. They haven't caught up to modernity, and we have left them behind. So this element is not limited to Japan.

Joseph Campbell and other people that study story have noticed that you can break stories down into the most base elements. When you do this there are repetitive elements in all stories. There are different arguments that there are only 32 stories, and another for only two, (comedy and tragedy.) The human experience is very broad, and not limited to one nation, ethnicity, gender, ect. I wish people would open up there eyes and understand that. The only thing that seperates us is language. (I make this argument since technology can allow us to overcome geographic boundaries.) Film is in itself its own language, and like any language a director like Ozu can play with it. Regardless of the amount he has tweaked it there is a relatable human story there.

Ken Burns' Unforgivable Blackness

Ken Burns’s documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson is about the world’s first African-American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson rose to prominence during the early 20th century and created controversy by winning the championship title. At the same time that many African Americans were persecuted and limited in their position in society, Johnson went out and did what he wanted, disregarding social trends that were based entirely on race and social mores. Ultimately it was his lifestyle that proved his undoing. He provoked the political powers of the time. The film’s director Ken Burns makes documentaries about people he feels embodies aspects of America. Here Burns presents us Jack Johnson, a man who embodies the American idea: Stanley Crouch states in the film, “Johnson embodied the American idea of being able to go where you want to go on the basis of your ability.” However, despite Johnson fighting for this American idea, Burns also presents us a story wherein he is opposed by America. Johnson represents the fact that America has opposed the American dream out of bigotry and intolerance. He was a fighter for the heavyweight title, racial equality, and freedom.

Gary R. Edgerton writes in Ken Burns’s America about Burns’s biographies being “majoritarian rather than marginalized.” Meaning that they are larger than life people who show the majority of views and movement of America. Edgerton says Burns’s reasoning is to ask, “‘Who are we Americans as a people?’ This preoccupation with the elemental question--‘Who are we as Americans”’--could not be more relevant in an era when multiculturalism has become the source of sweeping and fundamental reappraisals of almost every aspect of national life.” Edgerton wrote this concerning the film Thomas Jefferson, but this line of questioning ourselves as Americans can be applied toward Unforgivable Blackness as well. J.B. Lewis writes in the forward of Johnson’s autobiography In the Ring and Out, “In the story of Jack’s life, there is an abundance of thrill and adventure, but there is also the ripened wisdom of years of experience.” Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in the book Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, “He embodied American individualism in its purest form; nothing--no law or custom, no person white or black, male or female--could keep him for long from whatever he wanted. He was in the great American tradition of self-invented men.” He embodied the American spirit, his actions are what we aspire to be. However those that opposed him show America as it was and as it is.

Two schools of thought existed amongst the African Americans of the time, that of the militant black man, and that of Booker T. Washington. Geoffrey C. Ward quotes a critic of both movements who explains, “The one counsels patient submission to our present humiliations and depredations, it deprecates political action and preaches the doctrine of industrial development and the acquisition of property.... The other class believes that it should not submit to being humiliated, degraded, and remanded to an inferior place. It believes in money and property, but it does not believe in bartering its manhood for the sake of gain.” In the time of Jack Johnson, many of those in the African American community followed Washington’s school of thought, and were outraged as well as white Americans with Johnson’s behavior. White America had become used to Washington’s school of thought, and having submissive black Americans under them.

The behavior of Johnson was that he was a celebrity flaunting his wealth, slept with only white women, and moved into white neighborhoods, further enraging white men. Ward states, “While most negroes struggled merely to survive, he reveled in his riches and his fame. At a time when the mere suspicion that a black man had flirted with a white woman could cost him his life, he insisted on sleeping with whomever he pleased. Most whites (and some Negroes as well) saw him as a perpetual threat--profligate, arrogant, amoral, a dark menace, and a danger to the natural order of things.” Johnson’s individualistic personality isolated him from both black and white Americans. Johnson became a threat to white Americans, and their pride. J.B. Lewis writes, “Steeled by a determination that a man of [Johnson] race should not posses laurels so highly prized in the realm of sports, it was easy to marshal against him native prejudices, and back them with charges of deviation from the moral code and violation of certain statues.” They sought to use the Mann Act. Ward describes it in Unforgivable Blackness as having “barred the transportation of women in interstate or foreign commerce ‘for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purposes.’” Ward continues that the “language of the act was loosely drawn, and both within and without the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation...there were those who believed that “debauchery” and “other immoral purposes” might be more broadly defined to include what the newspapers called “escapades,” sexual relations between consenting adults.” Ward quotes Congressman Seaborn Roddenberry in the book Unforgivable Blackness, “No... degradation in all the years of southern slavery possessed such villainous character... as the provision of the laws of Illinois which allows the marriage of the Negro, Jack Johnson, to a woman of Caucasian strain....Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit.” This was America’s reaction to the first black man winning the boxing heavyweight championship.

Ken Burns presents us the dramatic story of Johnson through cinematic storytelling. Edgerton writes about Ken Burns’s four plot structures for his epic documentary Civil War in Ken Burns’s America, “To start with, he employs narrative descriptions which primarily move the story along. These sections follow a simple chronology and are designed above all else to provide the audience with the basic historical facts and figures on what is happening and who is involved in the action at any given time.” The movie’s companion book of the same name, shares the writer Geoffrey C. Ward. The film’s narration, read by Keith David, follows the text of the book. It is only when we watch interviews with James Earl Jones, Stanley Crouch and Burt Sugar-- living specialists of Jack Johnson--that the film’s narration veers away from Ward’s original text. Most of the film follows the format given by the book for the narration.

Edgerton continues, “Second, he designs what he calls emotional chapters...which have the ‘ability to float between episodes.’ This category of scene is less bound by chronological demands than by its capacity to affect mood and engage an audience emotionally at strategic moments within the plot.” An effective emotional chapter in the film occurs after Johnson’s death in the film; Stanley Crouch reveals a personal story about Johnson arriving in his father’s gym. Johnson gets inside the ring with the fastest boxer there and wears him out. Johnson then leaves abruptly like a magician. Burns forms a story of Johnson to show his character; this gives the viewer a sense of the emotion of the mystery and legend that was Jack Johnson.

Edgerton explains the third type of scene, “Telegrams in a sense, are a mixture of both the scenes of narrative description, because they are bound to whatever event is transpiring in the story line at the time.” An example of a telegram is when Johnson goes to trial under the Mann Act. It is introduced by the narrator and moves into Belle Schreiber’s testimony against Johnson. We are shown pictures of Belle Schreiber and various shots of court houses, while an actress reads the transcript. This creates an illusion that we are witnessing the actual testimony. Then actor Samuel L. Jackson gives his voice to Johnson, and we hear Johnson say he never met with Belle in a hotel. Burns presents us exterior and interior shots of a hotel, suggesting Johnson is lying, that he did indeed meet her there. It could be any photograph of any hotel Burns is showing us, but Burns creates a situation in which we believe Johnson is lying in court.

Edgerton explains Burns’s fourth technique, “‘editing clusters.’ Burns “constructs editing clusters as his way of critically analyzing the various sides of a theme, question, or controversy that is central to a better overall understanding of his subject.” Burns will cut together relevant images with “a montage of commentators,” who give “conflicting and corroborating opinions, creating a collage of multiple viewpoints.” Burns uses this technique during the trial of Johnson by having Congressman Roddenberry give his opinion of mixing races, W.E.B. DuBois defend Johnson’s actions despite his disapproval of them, and using commentators like Stanley Crouch, James Earl Jones, and Randy Roberts. This conflict of opinions gives the audience a greater understanding of the trial and era from differing viewpoints.

Burns used careful research and storytelling techniques to convey the life and historical worth of Jack Johnson. The plot structure: narrative descriptions, emotional chapters, telegrams, and editing clusters convey the historical and the emotional aspects of Johnson in the film. Johnson becomes more than a boxer in Burns’s film, he becomes a symbol of America. He is an example not just of the American ideal of gaining rewards through hard work; but of the opposition individuals receive when they try. Through him we can better understand racism, bigotry, and intolerance, that has held, and continues to hold, America back from embracing individuals and those that pursue the American ideal.

Bibliography:

Edgerton, Gary R., Ken Burns’s America, Palgrave, New York, 2001

Lewis, J.B., Proteus Limited, New York, 1977

Ward, Geoffrey C., Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, Vintage, 2006