HopkinsCinemAddicts

Sundown: A New Dawn (Beginnings)

Where do I begin talking about this project? Almost a year after its conception, I sit here reflecting on the journey of bringing my “coming of age thriller,” Sundown, to life. I’ll begin at the very beginning, eleven months ago when I wrote the pitch for my script.

 

October 2021 - Early October, when all 'Sundown' meant was the time of day. Little did I know what a turbulent semester this would be, so this is a moment of blissful ignorance, enjoying Hoptoberfest.

 

Fall 2021, the start of my sophomore year, I took Introduction to Screenwriting where I spent most of the term revising a script I grew to dislike by the end of the course. However, our final assignment was to write a new three-to-five-page script. In thinking about what to write, I searched for themes that attracted me. I thought back to a few months prior when I created a pitch for a five-page, no-dialogue film for Studio North’s production committee. In October, the committee was preparing to choose a short film to produce that semester, and I had yet to think of anything to pitch.

Around that time, my Intro class read the first few pages of Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) and I then decided to watch the full movie on Halloween. I resonated with the underlying theme of childhood trauma executed with a predominantly Black cast. Additionally, I thought about what kind of story works well with highly visual, extremely short formats. I needed a compelling exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution— all within five pages. With these elements put together, I settled on a thriller about a kid from Baltimore who experiences childhood trauma after he disobeys his mother one night. Intro Sundown.

 

October 2021 - Initial (and very messy) notes about the story in preparation for Studio North's production committee pitch session. Note the 4:21am edit time.

Writing the origin of the trauma and attempting to inject a semblance of Peele-esque cultural significance into my story, I thought about the phenomenon of “sundown towns” in America. The title alludes to the existence of towns and neighborhoods in the United States that implemented de facto segregation, using signage to usher people of color out of the town after sunset. While the story grew to abandon the idea of racial-based trauma, I enjoyed using “sundown” as a foundation to explore a story about a Black teenager who endures a unique trauma after staying out past sunset. This is where my main character, Mikey, comes in, and where the story of Sundown falls into place.

October-December 2021 - Cover slide for my 'Sundown' pitch deck. Excerpt from an early draft of 'Sundown.' So many lines to be cut in future revisions.

Though the production committee did not vote for my pitch, I decided to revisit Sundown for my final Intro assignment. I had only created a pitch for the committee, so I moved to write my first draft of Sundown in December. While writing the first draft, I had the idea to incorporate a time jump at the end. After Mikey disobeys his mother and gets caught by a “creature” after sundown, we see him ten years later, severely impacted by his childhood trauma. Though this pushed me slightly over the page limit, I was adamant that the reader (and eventually, the audience) should see the lasting impacts of Mikey’s childhood trauma on his mental health. Feeling confident in this addition, and tired after a long week of finals, I submitted Sundown the night of December 21.

December 2021 - The night I submitted 'Sundown' for my Intro to Screenwriting course; I made a last-minute solo trip to the last night of Christmas Village downtown. My COVID-conscious gloved hand holding a bratwurst. So cold, but so worth it.

After a tumultuous semester, I felt like Sundown was the victory I desperately needed, especially after weeks of working on other writing I had little passion for. In a way, I felt that the turmoil of my personal life catalyzed my decision to write about such a dark premise. I struggled with excess demands of my time, a less-than-comfortable living space, and the regular stress and sadness that comes with being a college student trying to do it all. Thankfully, I was able to channel my feelings into something productive: a story that I wanted to take further than a final assignment in an introductory screenwriting class. 

Our professor, Titus Burrell, encouraged all the Intro students to submit their pieces to the Baltimore Screenwriter’s Competition for the 2022 cycle. I knew I didn’t want to submit my main Intro piece, which I had grown to dislike for various reasons. After a bit of thought, and some (read: a lot of) external pressure from an impending January 21 deadline, I made yet another revision of Sundown, bumping it out from six pages to fifteen pages. With high hope (but low expectations), I submitted Sundown on the final day of the competition, emailing the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts at 8:00am and running downtown to drop off my script at 3:00pm since it was too late for snail mail. It would be another four months before I heard anything from the competition (spoiler: I only made it to the second round, which I am still proud of nonetheless!).

January 2022 - Flyer for the Baltimore Screenwriter's competition.

January 2022 - Results from the Screenwriter's Competition. Baby steps (or something like that)!

In the meantime, another opportunity presented itself: the Studio North 2022-2023 grant cycle. The Studio North grant was something I learned about as a freshman, and I always had prospects of applying to it—during my junior year. I had a lot of trepidation about applying to the grant this year, mainly due to my (perceived) lack of experience and absence of an idea to produce. At this point in time, it’s early April, and I had not thought about Sundown in months during the new semester. Contemplating the possibility of applying for the Studio North grant, I eventually found my way back to Sundown and ultimately wrote another revision for the application. Despite my many anxieties, I took a leap of faith and applied to the grant cycle in early May (after much encouragement from Film and Media friends and faculty). In the face of all my self-doubt, I was one of two students to win this year’s production grant— news I celebrated through more end-of-semester stress and a nagging cold.

May 2022 - The Studio North premiere for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 grant cycle films (left to right: Abena Ababio, Ruby Baden, Mary Yan, Ellie Rha, and Brian Song), the day before I pitched 'Sundown,' and two days before I was awarded one of two grants for the 2022-2023 cycle.

This news was as much to my excitement as it was to my chagrin: now, I had to somehow produce a short film. My self-doubts began to creep back in as I looked towards the next year with less-than-positive prospects. However, by this time, I had received coverage notes from the Screenwriter’s Competition, along with pitch notes from the Studio North executive board. Both sets of comments sent me well on my way to beginning a third revision, which I aimed to complete in early June, giving myself approximately one month. Looking at the summer ahead of me, I began to set things in motion to fundraise, cast, and ultimately film Sundown at the end of the summer. With a fast-approaching production timeline and a lot of work to do, I knew I would be dedicated to Sundown as if it were a full-time job. I had much to think about, such as where and how I’ll cast, logistics, budget, art direction, and much, much more. More than anything, I knew I had to trust myself if any of this was going to work, which was the hardest part. Taking yet another leap of faith, I took the first step towards a summer of preparation for my first short film. 

May 2022 - Back home, on a long walk I used to think through my plan for the rest of the summer. I couldn't possibly anticipate the kind of summer I was about to have, but I had my moment of peace before the craziness began.

Violence In To Kill A Mocking Bird: Mythologies Subverted & Perpetuated (Gabe)

To Kill a Mockingbird handles and presents violence in ways I had not previously noted in other works of cinema. During the film’s dramatic climax, in which Gem and Scout are attacked by Bob Ewell and subsequently rescued by Boo Radley, the film limits the horror of the attack while simultaneously subverting the society’s racist, ruling stereotype of black male sexual violence towards white women.

The specific sequence under examination begins at 1:52:10 when Gem and Scout are walking home through the woods from the Halloween pageant.  A detail of the staging that demands attention is that during medium-close shots, both children are isolated in their respective frames with one notable exception. While Gem is shot wholly on his own during coverage, Scout’s close-ups are instead formally dominated by her brother’s hand, which rests on the top of her costumed head. This kindly touch serves as a reassuring point of contact to Scout, whose vision is sorely impaired by her ham-shaped suit, and is juxtaposed by the ensuing violence, whose presence is first visually announced by a pair of hands flying at Gem into the tight frame. Here we see a direct thematic contrast between the gently innocent hands of a protector, and the raging hands of brutality. The reason for the hands’ disembodiment here is that the camera is mirroring Scout’s view of the events. This continues as the second man enters the scuffle. Instead of using a camera masking effect to attain the same cinematographic goal, the director chooses to stage the fight within the unimpeded shot so that it occupies the entirety of the frame while still limiting our, and thereby Scout’s view of the events. This choice unsurprisingly results in furthering our suspense because the viewer cannot tell who this assailant is due to our limited vantage point, but more importantly, by staging the blocking in this way without masking, the hands become a dominant feature of the mise-en-scene. Additionally, there are many quick shots in this sequence that are constructed with at least one adult male hand in the foreground, and thereby while enacting violence on the characters in the story, the hands also present a visual violence by disrupting and overpowering multiple shots. Often the hands enter the shot before any other part of the body, which we see both in the first attack on Gem, and later at 1:55:15. This helps create an effect of fetishization, while additionally endowing the hands with a sense of autonomy, for according to our view, they are literally leading the charge on these two children.

Through the hands of two mystery men dominating the shots in the fight scene, a new and subtle effect is achieved. Here the hands are presented as the perpetrators of violence, in place of the men themselves. Their hands are fetished and become stand-ins for male violence in general. This may seem like a bold claim when taken without contextualization from the rest of the film, so allow me briefly to refer to prior events in the story. In the courtroom, when a black man, Tom Robinson is tried for the alleged rape and assault of a white woman, Mayella Ewell, a great point of focus for the legal arguments is whose hands could have possibly hurt her. Therefore, that scene too presents hands as being intrinsically tied to violence, but instead the narrative at play here is the supposed violence of a black man towards a white woman. This ideology of hatred towards black men as being predisposed to evil lust for white women is subverted by the structure of the later fight sequence, because while the hands are almost all we can see of the two adults fighting, we can clearly tell that both pairs are Caucasian, not black.

This set up an interesting contradiction for me in the film’s content. The crime Atticus is charged with defending is based upon societal racism which mythologizes the lusty black man as a dangerous animalistic figure who must be confined in order to protect the white woman’s honor. However, the only violence the film actually shows is perpetrated by white men, most notably in this fight scene, but also when Atticus shoots a rabid dog and when the lynch mob attempts to enact vigilante “justice” upon Tom. Black male violence doesn’t even exist within the film itself, while white male violence is pervasive. However, the film’s refutation of the mythology of violent black men comes at the cost of perpetuating the idealization of white female purity. In the fight scene, Scout is sheltered from the sight of violence and its physical perils by her brother’s heroic efforts, and then by Boo Radley’s intervention. She is never hurt at all, despite a few tumbles, and escapes entirely safely. The struggle centers around the attempts by white two white males (both an adult and a child) to protect a white female from harm. I thought this was an interesting thematic decision by the narrative’s author, which only slightly undercut the otherwise incisive dismantling of racist mythologies.

When Tragedy Becomes Entertainment (Tori)

   

    When I first heard about the movie Patriots Day, I was shocked.  As a proud Bostonian, the horrific events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon have a personal effect on me, and I was appalled when I heard that a film recounting the attack and its aftermath was going to be made.  There were people who wanted to use those terrifying few days as entertainment?  Less than four years after the event took place?  Spectators re-living a real attack that took and changed lives forever?  I remember that day so clearly.  I remember thinking how unreal it seemed; how it was as if real life had become a film as my family watched the news and listened to sirens blazing and stayed locked down in our home as a manhunt took place.  I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't a movie.  It was real.  It was frightening and disturbing and actually happening.

    Now, it is important to note that I have not actually seen Patriots Day, nor do I know anybody who has seen it, and though I find the link between tragedy and entertainment interesting and thought-provoking, I will not watch this film.  That this painfully real event was turned into a movie so quickly doesn’t seem right to me.  It’s as if the creation of a film could diminish the actual event, as real people are made into characters, and horrifying actions are accompanied by background music and artistic cinematography.  But this is certainly not the first film to depict a tragedy.  In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time, and it is not something I always find so disturbing.  Why is this?  Is it just because of my more personal connection to the marathon bombing?  Is it ever okay to link tragic events with entertainment? 

    Over winter break, I saw a musical called The Scottsboro Boys at the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston that raised many of these same questions.  The 2010 musical, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, composers and lyricsts of other renowned shows such as Chicago and Cabaret, tells the true story of nine black teenagers in Alabama who were sentenced to death in 1931 for the rape of two white women—a crime they did not commit.  I was actually unfamiliar with this particular story, something I now find appalling, as it is such an important one to know and is thought to have been a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.  At the same time, the story is horrifically familiar, as it is reminiscent of modern day injustice for black men in the court of law.  I found it particularly evocative of the infamous Central Park Five/Central Park Jogger case of 1989.  I received tickets to this show as a Christmas present, and honestly, upon entering the theater, I was very unsure what I was about to see. 

    Musical theater does so many things.  It can provide a means of escape from everyday life.  It can capture you in nostalgia.  It can transport you to faraway places and it can be uplifting and poignant.  But I had never before seen a musical based entirely upon a horrific, disturbing, and, most importantly, true tragedy.  The musical is told through the medium of a minstrel show, a choice that is controversial and provocative given the long history of terrible racism against African-Americans in that particular genre of performance.  The show features big dance and song numbers and on paper sounds as though it could be extremely offensive and destined to be a massive failure.  But, in my opinion, it somehow works.  This musical punches you right in the stomach in the way that it confronts this tragedy in an extremely creative, thoughtful, and heartbreaking way.  It is consistently demands self-reflection.  It asks a plethora of questions—questions about the truth in regard to race (one chilling line that has stuck with me ever since I saw the show was when a lawyer states: “you’re guilty because of the way that you look”).  It asks questions about what it means to be free in the world and in your own mind.  It asks questions about ingrained prejudice and bias in each and every one of us.  This show is truly impossible to accurately convey in words because of the constantly conflicting emotions it incites in you.  The Scottsboro Boys  is so much more than a retelling of a tragic event.  It starts crucial conversations about the long history of racism present in our country.  The music is fantastic, and the choreography is stellar, but you are simultaneously loving it and hating it. 

    Those who know me are familiar with my adoration of musical theater.  Throughout my 19 years, I have managed to see and listen to a multitude of different musicals, and each one has affected me in its own, unique way.  But I can easily say that The Scottsboro Boys provided me with the most profound musical theater experience I have ever had.  However, it is true that what the Scottsboro boys went through is not something I ever have to or ever will have to worry about happening to me.  As a white woman, can I even decide that this musical is justified?  I’m not sure I can.  But I do think that condemning a show like The Scottsboro Boys would prevent crucial conversations from being held.  It would stop people from gaining a better understanding of the tragedy of racial injustice in America.

    So maybe I have misjudged Patriots Day.  It is certainly important to keep these types of stories alive through film and performance and to use these stories to better the world in which we live.  Often people forget what entertainment is capable of doing and how powerful it can really be.  It’s great to go see a film or a musical and forget about your life for a while, as you focus only on the characters and the fictionalized world you see in front of you.  But these types of art forms are capable of so much more.  They can make you think profoundly and painfully.  They can hold up a mirror to reveal the injustices in our world.  They can pose questions so poignant and powerful that you can’t stop thinking about them.  The Scottsboro Boys does all of this.  I’m not sure about Patriots Day, but perhaps it does, too.  The connection between tragedy and entertainment is always going to make me a bit uneasy, but if done right, it can provide a means of improving ourselves and our world.   

Who Killed David Lo Pan? (Conor)

    

The Chinese Characters for "Hero" and "caucasian" respectively

    Big Trouble in Little China still remains one of the freshest takes on the American action film despite its 1986 release date. It is the anti-action movie. On the surface, Big Trouble plays much like an average 1980’s big budget action flick. The plot is a fairly linear rescue story, the lead is a handsome white male, the action is generally over the top and at times completely ridiculous, there are many one-liners. The depiction of Chinese-American culture that provides the film its unique setting is dangerously close to base exoticism. However, Carpenter’s excellent directing subverts the traditional tropes of the action movie and adds an incredible amount of depth to this work.

    Take Jack Burton, ostensibly the main character portrayed by Kurt Russell in arguably his best role. We are introduced to Mr. Burton at first only through vague allusion and the few cryptic lines he broadcasts over his radio in the cab of his truck. The film immediately paints him as a certain type of hero: he is strong, he is mysterious, he is edgy, he is capable, and he is representative of that particular type of American freedom and individualism associated with truck driving. What a surprise it is then when Jack Burton ends up being the most useless action hero of all time.

    Throughout the film he barely manages to contribute to the action at all. At one point he manages to knock himself out before a fight even starts, and it is clear that he can neither use his fists well nor adequately operate a gun. He is entirely incompetent in any category that a traditional action hero would be required to excel in. Nevertheless, this does not stop Jack Burton. He speaks in a drawl that unmistakably imitates John Wayne and walks with a swagger reminiscent of Toshiro Mifune’s Kikuchiyo in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). He may not be able to be the hero, but he certainly still acts like one.

    Burton’s incompetence creates a very unusual inversion of the standard ideological framework of American action films. Burton, the white male, is essentially a sidekick to Dennis Dun’s Wang Chi, the Asian male. In doing this, Carpenter avoids one of the main traps that so many Hollywood action movies fall into: the trap of American exceptionalism. Too often films like The Last Samurai (2003), and Bloodsport (1988), and TV shows like Kung Fu (1972-75) depict a white male entering into Asian culture and, after a brief period of time has elapsed, becoming the true inheritor of that culture. The ideological assumption is that white men are so capable that you could drop them off in any culture, no matter how foreign and they will not only succeed but excel beyond the capability of those who taught him.

    Burton is the exact opposite. He is constantly disoriented within the culture of Chinatown, and he never truly finds his bearings. He is constantly expressing his lack of understanding of the events in the film, and every other character shies away from explaining it to him until it becomes absolutely necessary to do so for the sake of exposition.  His personal motivations are much less compelling than those of his friend, Wang Chi, who also happens to be a much more capable fighter and the real hero of the film.

    In this way, Big Trouble is the anti-action film.  Burton’s complete uselessness is used to draw attention to the ridiculousness of American action movies and to uncover the more damaging ideological implications those films have. Carpenter uses the action flick, usually the most patriotic genre, to critique the idea of the American identity.  Burton is essentially a western hero: a somewhat tragic wandering gun for hire with a mysterious and probably violent past who is incapable of fully re-integrating into society. But by making him useless Carpenter criticizes the entire action movie culture that fetishizes those types of men. I hear that there are plans for a remake of Big Trouble. Unfortunately, it is all too possible and most likely probable that the remake will willfully ignore the nuance in Burton’s character in favor of remaking him into a strong, capable hero, ironically falling for the very trap that the original set out to criticize in 1986.

How to Be a Villain (Treva)

As a junior in the middle of my spring semester, I’ve had to start thinking about my life after college recently. My career path. And, as a junior in my spring semester, at Johns Hopkins, I am very overworked and desperate to avoid anything actually resembling adulthood. So my thoughts have been turning, inevitably, to one ideal career: Disney Villain.

But how? How to set myself up as the perfect Villain(ess)? Well, I am a junior at Johns Hopkins University, and a humanities major to boot, so in order to answer that question, I set out on a research quest. Mostly through video clips of signature villain songs, because those are the best part of being a specifically Disney villain.*

My exhaustive research has led be to two basic conclusions: the strength and impressiveness of a true Villain, and their song, is based on power and social deviancy.

Also, darkness. All the best Villains have dark clothing and dim lighting. But that’s such basic analysis that I feel it almost goes without saying. Lower chords in the music also help, and minor keys.

In support of my claim, I shall compare two famous musical scenes: “Bibbidi-Bobbiti-Boo” from Cinderella (1950), and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid (1989). It’s an interesting comparison because they actually have a number of key points in common, including some notable Villainous qualities. In each, an older woman uses magic to manipulate the environment and transform a young woman—so, in fact, she can go meet and marry a prince.

The use or even just implication of supernatural forces is a hallmark of Villainy, falling under the category of social deviancy—this is the supernatural. It’s abnormal, and thus dangerous. In Little Mermaid, magic is actually a more neutral thing, used also—indeed, first!—by King Triton, an antagonist but not a villain. (Though he does use it for the purpose of destruction, of the human objects that approximately represent Ariel’s hopes, ambitions, and individuality.) Ultimately, however, he uses the same magic to give her the life she dreams of, on land with the humans. It’s much more common for Villains to either introduce or even be the only ones to call on the supernatural. Dr. Facilier, the villainous witch doctor, is the first to use magic in The Princess and the Frog (2009), explicitly evoked in his song “Friends on the Other Side.” In The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), a movie otherwise completely without magic or occult effects—save the living gargoyles who provide comic relief, and whom I for one have never thought fit tonally with the rest of the film—Bishop Frollo’s “Hellfire” is full of supernatural effects. Red hooded figures appear from nowhere to chorus and shame him, and his imagination summons a dancing image of the gypsy Esmeralda in the fireplace. The sound effects suggest that his hand motions are manipulating the flames.

As suggested, Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother actually follows the “only one affiliated with the supernatural” trope more than Ursula does. She not only uses magic, but she specifically affects the protagonist with it, spelling Cinderella into a dress and her mouse friends into horses and a footman. Such an overt exhibition of power and domination is reminiscent of when Ursula not only turns Ariel human but first gives the show of her abilities with the simulacrum: “This one longing to be thinner, that one wants to get the girl / and do I help them? Yes indeed.” Or when Scar (The Lion King, 1994) kicks the hyenas around in “Be Prepared”, or Dr. Facilier concludes his song by literally turning Prince Naveen into a frog. The power expressed in physically manipulating the environment and, better, the protagonist, is another key habit of true Villainy.

The Fairy Godmother, however, is not a Villain, or even an antagonist. Why? And not just as demonstrated in her motives, to help rather than hinder or entrap. How does the film, in animation and effects, express those motives?

For one thing, though they similarly use magic, the Gofmother conforms to society’s expectations in a way that Ursula does not. The Fairy Godmother resembles nothing so much as a kindly grandmother, while Ursula, though white-haired, acts the part of a sensual temptress. Her bright lipstick and eye-shadow pop out of her face, her tentacles are shaped like a low-bodiced, jet black evening gown—with attention drawn to the chest by a dangling gold locket—and she’s…on the plump side, debatably “fat” by model-standards of beauty, particularly relative to Ariel’s lithesome sixteen-year-old self. But she’s also curvaceous, and her body language—and that make-up—positively screams confidence and “look at me!” Remember the exaggerated undulation on, “And don’t underestimate the importance of body language!” Whereas the fairy godmother is covered head to toe in loose robes of pale blue and pink, including a hood and a large pink bow at her neck. She’s gently unfashionable, non-sexual, and the colors suggest calm and comfort. She’s even shorter than Cinderella: totally non-threatening. Ursula’s aggressive sexuality is startling to the point of scariness, particularly in an older woman who insists she’s being grandmotherly, helping “poor, unfortunate souls.” It’s arguably the “otherness” of it that makes her scary rather than the actual sexuality—she also has bruise-purple skin where all other mermaids are fairly pale, or at least human-colored, and octopus tentacles instead of a fish tale. It’s similar to how Scar is the only dark-furred lion (was Walt Disney racist? Well, probably) or Governor Radcliffe in Pocahontas is taller, broader, and more richly clothed than all the other settlers in Pocahontas (1995). Villains are those who don’t fit in.

Despite this deviancy—or perhaps because of it, and which of those options is scarier?—Ursula obviously has power. Supernatural power, and power expressed in blocking, and even in the tempo of the song. It’s fast. It’s aggressive. It actually picks up speed as the song goes on, and Ariel’s choice becomes more immediate. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” has not only a slower tempo, but also significantly less range in its notes and energy in its delivery. Ursula belts notes low and high—though generally lower, menacingly. She moves around, often to literally above Ariel’s head—a simple indication of power by blocking. She draws the focus of the scene and demonstrates her sheer drive. A true Villainess isn’t afraid to commit real effort to her world domination plans. The Fairy Godmother stays on Cinderella’s ground level throughout her song, moving little more than to broadly wave her wand.

So what have I learned, if I want to pursue a career of Disney-style Villainy? Here are the big takeaways:

• Dark clothing
• Own my sexuality, particularly if I’m not expected to. Be unexpected, and confident in it!
• Move around. Speak loudly. Don’t necessarily pay attention to others’ implicit pleas for personal space.
• Try to acquire a unique talent.
• Above all, stand out and carpe diem!

…Or I could continue spending Friday and Saturday nights alone in my well-lit bedroom, wearing pajamas and watching Disney clips on YouTube. Yeah. I might do that. At least I have cool socks.

.

* For reasons of copyright law, I can share neither screencaps nor links to where one might watch such clips. But I’ll admit that I, acting as a private citizen unaffiliated with JHU, have found several on the web. If you’re interested.

What Exactly Is Going on with White and Black Relations in Contemporary Cinema? (Ian)

I recently found a BBC article while web surfing entitled "A Renaissance of Black Cinema?"  The article pointed to the trend of growing variety of "black-narratives" in film, or basically movie narratives featuring African American characters and protagonists that revolve around something other than crime or drugs.  It pointed to several examples released just last year (2013): Fruitvale Station, The Butler, and 12 Years a Slave, in an effort to support their hypothesized trend.  They ultimately claimed that because the independent film scene (not the Hollywood film scene, the article makes clear) is producing more films featuring African Americans on screen, and because these films revolve more around said African Americans' lives, rather than than simply the circumstances of their settings, that we're supposed to swallow the idea that black cinema has recently experienced an exponential increase in authority, presence, and integrity.

Well, no offense to my pals over at BBC, but I wholeheartedly disagree.  Let's explore why:

I'm not saying black cinema hasn't made any growth--increased visibility in the cinema scene is a victory.  Yet, a simple increase in more black protagonists, does not a film renaissance make.  I argue that, despite increased visibility, the dynamics between the audience and black protagonists, and between black protagonists and their white-character counterparts, have not changed as radically as BBC would like us to believe.  Until these dynamics do begin to change no true renaissance can occur.

The particular dynamic I'm interested in here is the interactions between the white and black characters in these so called "black" films.  I suspect that, despite BBC's valiant protests, black characters are still very much at the mercies of white characters; basically, the current paradigm is white people have to help black people, even in "black cinema".  Irony of ironies, most of BBC's examples provide some of the most damning proof of this trend.  Let's take a look:

First, we'll examine one of the movies BBC didn't mention, 2011's The Help, a movie I personally enjoyed.  Nevertheless, the film received kick-back for being a tale of white people helping black people.  

Ironically, I think that The Help is probably the least culpable of this criticism out of all the films talked about here.  Indeed, if anything, I see the relationship between Emma Stone's and Viola Davis' characters as symbiotic, as they help re-awaken one another back into an existence of purpose--neither gains any particular tangible reward by the film's end (before you say it, they split the profits from the book).  However, one can't help but notice that it was Emma Stone who rallied the fearful maids into telling their stories--without them, the maids would have remained silent and decentralized.  So, yes, there is a certain element of Emma-Stone-savior-Manifest-Destiny-something.

Turning to a much juicier example.

Steve McQueen's third flick 12 Years a Slave, winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Picture, was a fantastic movie important for its unflinching look at the horrors of slavery.

Until one point: let's call this point "The Brad Pitt Fiasco."  (Spoilers follow)

In the film's last half-hour of the film Brad Pitt appears, seemingly out of the blue, as a hired hand on the vicious Michael Fassbender's plantation.  Pitt works alongside our hero, Solomon, to build a house (shed? something? it doesn't matter); one day, when Fassbender offers Pitt a swig of booze, Pitt declines and then proceeds to go on to deliver a semi-lengthy monologue to Fassbender about the importance of racial equality and how, for his abuse of his slaves, Fassbender will face religious punishment post-mortem etc etc.  In a film that stares so unflinchingly at the horrors of slavery, that examines so thoroughly the utter nihilism felt by those enslaved, Pitt's speech produces a tonal shift in the film so jarring you almost feel like you've suddenly entered a slightly risque episode of Barney and Friends.  Ultimately, Solomon asks Pitt to deliver a letter to his family, which would allow him to re-gain his freedom.  And Pitt's character makes this so.

The Brad Pitt Fiasco illustrates not only one of the most egregious instances of producer-abuse I've seen in a film--Brad Pitt's production company produced the film, so it makes sickly sense that Pitt would cast himself in the savior role--but it's also a horribly explicit admission by the film that, without the world's most one-dimensional white person, Solomon would've remained in slavery forever.  That sounds an awful lot like white people helping black people to me.  While I would hardly call 12 Years an inspirational tale (it's simply too sad to be one), the majority of the narrative stands as a testament to Solomon's morality, strength, and altruism in the face of inhumane horror.  The fact that all of Solomon's strife is solved by a white dude after having two conversations feels not only too convenient, but it tarnishes the very message the film means to bestow upon our hero.  All I can say is, something smells rotten in New Orleans.

Let's now look briefly at Fruitvale Station, which I saw and enjoyed last summer.  I'm sorry BBC, but drugs and crime are very much a part of Fruitvale, even if they don't seem like they are.  True, the climax of the film deals with the martyrdom of Michael B. Jordan's Oscar, via his death at the hands of white police--here, Oscar is the victim of a crime, rather than the perpetrator.  Okay, one stereotype broken.  However, before that?  Before the film's third act, he majority of the narrative focuses with Oscar debating between whether or not to re-enter the (you named it) drug-dealing business in order to pay that month's rent.  While ultimately Oscar does overcome the temptation to sell a bag of weed the size of a dentist's treasure chest, that doesn't change the fact that the movie, which revolves around an African American male deals largely with the repercussions and temptations of his formerly criminal, drugged ways.  So unfortunately, I believe that one of BBC's key pieces of rhetoric fails here.

Ultimately then, I think BBC's suggestion that Black Cinema is undergoing some form of renaissance is largely misguided.  Nevertheless, I am left with a troubling question--after examining the plots of all these different films, I wonder how contemporary American cinema will manage to make a film featuring a black protagonist that isn't subjected to any form of analysis concerning racial implications, and is simply examined as would be every other film.  I agree with BBC, that perhaps the first step is to simply portray black-protagonists outside of inherently extremely dramatic situations (ie slavery, servitude, drugs, etc); I just don't think that movement has started yet.  Meanwhile, I also can't help but wonder if the whole concept of "black cinema" does more harm than help.  Why not just "cinema" that happens to feature black characters?  Although, then again, this seems to feel wrong, too, as it would mean overlooking the great trials the African American population has faced, and the triumphs they have gained.  It's a head-scratcher.  If anything, I agree with BBC that "Black Cinema" will only truly be integrated into our film culture if its presence increases in the minds of movie-goers.

(You can read the full BBC article here: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130718-a-renaissance-of-black-cinema)

Masterworks of D.W. Griffith (Bedram)

D.W. Griffith did not invent every cinematic technique employed in The Birth of a Nation, but he no doubt took and focused them into his film, creating a masterful epic. The film, widely criticized for its outrageously racist views, seems to be slowly losing its place in history to Intolerance, the film that Griffith made in response to such claims. While critics might still argue which film is Griffith’s masterpiece, it was undoubtedly The Birth of a Nation that changed cinema forever. Whether one would like to factor in influence or not, the film’s brilliance should not be ignored due to its racist content. To do so would simply be ignoring American movie history.

The film consists of two parts, the first covering the Civil War. Two families are juxtaposed, the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons. The two families are closely linked, as one of the Stoneman brothers, Phil, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, and Ben Cameron becomes infatuated with Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War breaks out, however, the young men join their respective sides, broken apart by the war. This domestic separation is mirrored in the state of the country itself, the nation divided politically between the North and the South.

The film, rather blatantly, sides with the South, presenting them as courageous underdogs. They lack food, their struggle shown in a close-up shot of parched corn kernels in a pan. Their much needed food train is intercepted by Union forces, and in the battle that proceeds, Ben leads a heroic charge against the Union entrenchment line. The North simply stands behind their own lines, using their greater numbers to their advantage. Ben, despite the loss of his soldiers, carries a Confederate flag during the assault, shoving it inside a Union cannon before collapsing. The South loses the battle, but their honor remains, having given it all against the greater forces of the invaders.

While Griffith definitely tries to establish the theme of Southern honor, he by no means glorifies the war. He includes a shot of numerous dead soldiers, prefaced by a title card that reads, “War’s peace.” War is connected to death, and is viewed as futile – not only for the South, but also for the North. As the numerous extreme long shots of battlefields show, once a battle begins, it simply becomes men fighting for their lives. The tragedies of war, however, go beyond the battlefield. Phil and Ben, good friends before the war, are forced to fight on opposing sides. Promising relationships, such as the burgeoning love between Phil and Margaret, are put on hold.

The second half of the film focuses on Reconstruction, and most of the film’s staunchly racist views are contained in this part. The beginning of the movie depicts the introduction of American slavery, stating that this mixing of races “planted the first seed of disunion.” This theme of racial mixing leading to trouble is further explored in the second half, an example being Gus, a freedman, lusting after Flora, Ben’s sister. He chases her onto a rocky cliff, and to avoid the possibility of being raped, she jumps to her death. This threatened rape, then, symbolizes the emasculation of the whites in the South by the suddenly freed blacks, now threatening the order of society.

The film’s tense climax comes when Ben leads the Klan to the rescue of Elsie from the hands of Lynch, a mulatto, who was planning a forced marriage. This rescue, and the Klan’s rescue of the Cameron family from Lynch’s black militia, goes beyond showing the Klan as saviors of these individual people. The Klan is shown as the protector and savior of white glory and honor. During the next election they intimidate the blacks into not voting, and the aftermath of all this leads to the reunion of the two couples – Phil and Margaret and Ben and Elsie. Order is restored.

Griffith, labeled a racist by his critics after the release of the film, attempted to answer them with his next film, Intolerance. The film tackles four separate stories, all set during different time periods. One recounts the fall of Babylon, another tells the crucifixion of Jesus, a third showcases the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and the fourth is a modern tale focusing on a couple torn apart by a false murder conviction.  Each story is connected through themes of intolerance and hatred, and the film, rather boldly, alternates between the four stories.

By having four parallel stories, the film forces comparisons to be drawn between the characters and events throughout these different time periods. There is less focus on the Christ story, but Griffith spends enough time to establish the devastating results of intolerance. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre story is also a lesser focus, though it establishes the idea of religious intolerance and the abuse of power by authority. The other two stories, the modern tale and the Babylon story, are where the true heart of Intolerance lies.

The modern tale echoes some of the frustrations of early 20^th century, displaying the anxiety surrounding big business and interference by outside, moralist forces. One striking example is the mill owner reducing the wages of his workers by 10%, and crushing the strike that follows. One of his employees turns to crime, but tries to break free after marrying. His ex-boss, however, frames him for theft and he is sent to prison. While he serves his sentence, his wife suffers the taking of their child by reformists, who find her to be an unfit mother. What greater intrusion on a mother than the taking of her child? As for the Babylon story, it tackles the issue of betrayal as well as intolerance. The High Priest of Bel does not worship the same god as King Nabonidus, and sees Babylon’s downfall tied to this wrongful worship. This religious intolerance leads him to betray Babylon, setting up a meeting with Cyrus, the Persian invader. The result is the fall of Babylon.

The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance are perhaps two of Griffith’s finest works, both among the most influential films of all time due to their groundbreaking use of various cinematic techniques, including cross-cutting, moving-camera shot, the close-up, the long shot, and so forth. The Birth of a Nation, however, has often been looked at unfavorably, its racism too much to handle. Nonetheless, its importance was recognized, and it was listed in AFI’s Top 100 movies in 1998. Inexplicably, it was removed in the 10^th anniversary edition of the list, though Intolerance found its way onto the list. By removing the film, the AFI is not dealing with the issues the film raises, and is ignoring a monumental moment in film history. It is frightening how effective and brilliant a film that paints the Ku Klux Klan as heroes is, and that is truly the worst aspect of the film. It is undeniably among the most important films in American history, if not the most important, and deserves to be recognized as such. Intolerance arguably shares that honor, but the legacy of The Birth of a Nation should not be overshadowed by it. Both films deserve the recognition.

Are Films a Pretext for Social Dialogue? (Nour)

Until recently, film had been synonymous with spectacle or entertainment: in a word, it was one more consumer good.

                                "Towards a Third Cinema," a manifesto

 

Paris is Burning is a 1990 documentary film by Jennie Livingston. This documentary explores the gay ballroom, drag culture in Harlem. Most of the people interviewed in the film achieved a fair degree of celebrity after its release. In the April of 1993 following the death of the mother of the house of Xtravaganza, Angie Xtravaganze, the New York Times ran a piece titled "Paris Has Burned," an essay about Angie. Here is a paragraph from the essay that is worth quoting at length,

Though she was only 27, Angie had been a mother more than a dozen times. Not in the usual way; she was biologically male. "But a mother is one who raises a child, not one who borns it," Hector [a member of the house of Xtravaganza] pointed out. And as mother of the House of Xtravaganza, Angie had taken many rejected, wayward, even homeless children under her wing; she had fed them, observed their birthdays, taught them all about "walking the balls." Competing in categories like High-Fashion Eveningwear and Alexis vs. Krystle, Angie was legendary, a Queen among queens, achieving in fantasy what the world had denied her in reality.

The characters of these house mothers and the nature of the relations they foster within their houses are relevant to any reading of Paris is Burning. Angie died from an AIDS-related liver disease. She was on hormones to maintain a soft feminine appearance. In the film there is a scene in which a group of men, some of them drag queens but not all, suckle on her breasts. The camera captures a run-down, shabby neighborhood, and then a group of men proclaiming Angie their mother. In fact in Paris is Burning  Angie could easily be mistaken for a woman.

When I watched this film, I became really interested in the house of Xtravaganza because of Angie and also because of Venus Xtravaganza. Venus was killed during the period in which Livingston was making the film. She was a transgender in NYC  who worked as a prostitute in order to save enough money to undergo a sex-change surgery. She was found in a hotel room four days after her death. Livingston interviews Venus only once in the film. During this interview, Livingston asks Venus about her dreams for the future. Venus' reply is arguably understandable, but also surprising. Venus tells Livingston that when she is fully female, she wants to get married, live in the suburbs, have a washing machine. She dreams of the typical bourgeois life. The life-style that she is too different—as a transgender, poor, non-white—to embody.

Paris is Burning enters a space at the fringes of mainstream American society. The expected reaction to have as a spectator watching these atypical modes of existence unfold is to feel uncomfortable, find the images indigestible. The spectator should feel disturbed by sights of awkward bodies that cannot be defined,  movements and gestures that do not fall neatly into the repertoire of appropriate female or male movements and gestures. However, this is not the reaction one gets. It is likely that people come out of the movie-theater feeling that these black (or Latino) gay men are victims. In fact the undertone of the Livingston's remarks on the film reveals that she thinks she is doing them a service. Here is another quotation from the Times "drag queens can't. "If they wanted to make a film about themselves, they would not be able," said Ms. Livingston, who grew up in Los Angeles and is a graduate of Yale University." Livingston is a white lesbian film director. She, however, still has the white-man burden mentality as these comments reveal.

bell hooks wrote about Paris is Burning in her book Race and Representations. Here is one point hooks made about the film:   

 

Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there becausethe film in no way interrogates "whiteness." These folks left the filmsaying it was "amazing," "marvelous," "incredibly funny," worthy of statements like, "Didn't you just love it?" And no, I didn't just love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit.  (149)

hook's observations shed light on the meanings of Venus' dream of living the bourgeois life. Livingston's work in constructed in such a way that she does not "interrogate" whiteness. As such, Livingston does not completely oppose the System, the hegemonic modes of thinking. This is an important assertion in the face of the wide-held belief that Livingston is a radical filmmaker whose films testify to social injustices. This is not to discredit the film, however. Instead, it reveals a necessary aspect of cinema's function in society.

            The film interrogates gender in an interesting way, which undoubtedly has something to do with Livingston's own interests. It reveals some of the causes underlying social injustices. The film might have changed the trajectory of some people's lives by making them celebraties even if briefly. Yet, at the same time the film also has helped maintain a particular relation of power. As hook's comments reveal, this film reproduces ideology in an important way. Cinema's role in society is interesting to explore. Away from close text filmic analysis, it is rewarding sometimes to step away and ask how cinema contributes to the creation and maintenance of social power relations. Although this might not be the most interesting conclusion to some people, it is worth it to remind oneself of the necessary political and historical dimensions of film-making, and film distribution. Let me end with a quotation from Marx: "it is not sufficient to interpret the world; it is now a question of transforming it."

Why Don't the Bad Guys All Look Different From Me?: Subverting Sterotypes on Homeland (Chris D)

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Showtime’s new series, Homeland, takes an enormous risk. In setting the show in the context of the contemporary War on Terror, the show could have easily ended up either completely jingoistic and/or incredibly racist. The topic of terrorism in this country is, at the moment, linked with the topic of racism towards Muslims. As Homeland seems to strive for realism, replacing Islamic radicals with a more politically correct villain would come off as hokey. The show instead attempts to subvert the viewer’s expectations creating a show that shows both sides of the conflict.

The show’s main conflict of a bipolar CIA agent, portrayed by Clare Danes, investigating a recently recovered POW, Nicholas Brody who is played by Damian Lewis, automatically removes some of the racial tension surrounding the issue by shifting the suspicion away from the Arabs and casting it onto a homespun white male. Damian Lewis is generally best known for playing Dick Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and generally gives off the impression of an upstanding American. By placing the doubt and paranoia of the War on Terror onto such an upstanding looking war hero, the show immediately throws the audience for a loop and causes them to question the way that they think about the terrorism issue.

One way that the show maintains the suspicion on Brody is by revealing that he is secretly a Muslim. This revelation draws on the slight culture of fear that permeates America especially once the question of potential terrorism is brought up. The fact that Brody worships Allah automatically draws the viewer to question his loyalty. However, the show points out the ridiculousness of this suspicion when Brody is finally confronted about this practice. He replies that he found religion while being tortured as a POW and that Islam was the only religion in the area. By pointing out that there is a perfectly viable reason for Brody to be a Muslim without it meaning that he is a terrorist, the show pulls the rug out from under the audience’s feet and makes them question what they have believed up until this point.

Once actual Middle Eastern terrorists are introduced, the show continues to make the viewer question what they believe about the racial identity of terrorism. A terrorist couple is introduced, a Middle Eastern man and a white woman. The makeup of this couple plays into the concept that different races are swooping in to corrupt the fair and innocent white women. Just by being shown this couple and being told that they are terrorists, the audience generally believes that the man is the diehard terrorist and that the woman has been talked into it. However, the show inverts the dynamic, and we find out that the woman is the true believer and the man is following her out of love. He is unnerved by the concept of violence and doesn’t truly believe in the cause, but wants to make his wife happy. This inversion subverts both general gender roles as well as racial stereotypes to create an atmosphere, much like reality, in which the characters cannot be judged immediately as they appear on screen.

The show gets a lot of mileage out of subverting the audience’s expectation. This allows them to create an extremely tense environment for the show in which no one can be trusted. The people who are supposed to look like terrorists are, in fact, just people, and the most destructive act on the show was committed by the US government in their hunt for terrorists. By playing with such a controversial topic, the show brings to light a lot of what we believe in this country and proves that much of it has no bearing on reality.

 

Urban Indian as Exile and West Baltimore's The Wire (Shauna)

“It reflects a life that is not true for all Indians, but typical of many.”

So begins the narrative voice-over in The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961), which presents a refreshingly original portrait of American Indians, situating them in a Californian urban milieu, away from their parents and grandparents on the reservations. Over the course of this semester, I’ve looked at a variety of movies concerning peoples historically underrepresented in film art. Constructions of ethnic minorities consistently have as much to do with previous media portrayals and stereotypes as they do the real people. In that sense, films with minority characters share certain conventions of the genre picture (and indeed, many genres incorporate ethnic tropes, including the Italian of the Gangster, or the African-American servant or performer in classic Hollywood or melodrama).

It is interesting to note that 50 years after the release of The Exiles, its particular image of the urban Indian  remains radical. The level of realism is startling: I appreciate its authenticity, and its dedication to a particular subculture rarely explored by the camera lens. According to the 1990 census, 63 percent of Native Americans lived in urban regions.[1] Yet, the construct of Indian as “noble savage” or frontier warrior persists in the nation’s cultural mindset, reinforced by the canon of Western films and America’s collective foundation myth. For most of white America, the Indian is of the continent — and yet, crucially, only particular parts of the continent are recognized as his domain.

The reservation is understood as the Indian’s arena. Even if it is somewhat marred by the history of forced migration and prejudice, there is a resurgence of pride in the reservation as emanation of the Indian self. The magazine section of the Times frequently runs ads for Native American Universities: “If I stay on the Res, I’m more likely to graduate.” The reservation provides a convenient domain for historians and anthropologists to think about the Indian, for there, he is identifiable by tribe, costume, language and rituals.  The “res” simplifies Native culture, segmenting it from the mainstream, in a sense controlling for interference and cultural mingling. But once the American Indian enters the city, abandons “authentic” costume, and internalizes Euro-American constructions of private ownership and anonymity, he becomes indistinguishable, almost invisible to the untrained eye.

The transition into the dominant culture is probably partial (no one can disavow an entire life experience), and certainly gradual. Ultimately, though, urban life presents a dilemma for the American Indian, who experiences ethnic misclassification, and a sense of disconnect from his heritage. The Exiles is extraordinarily compelling in its ability to communicate the ambivalence of the urban Indian experience. Such is the sentiment expressed by Homer in The Exiles: “My people roamed all over the place…I would rather be in that time than now.” It is important that Homer distinguishes between the two systems of Indian life in terms of time and not space. 

Over a decade after the making of The Exiles, the American West Center at the University of Utah asserted the dilemma faced by the urban Indian in these terms: “The city is an alien place…[It] demands of the individual to disavow his heritage to become a truly urban citizen.”[2]

Donald Fixico frames the problem as an issue of insufficient information: “People who know very little about American Indians…have very little to base a viewpoint on about urban Indians. They have to rely on stereotypes,” which have been overwhelmingly negative. I am cognizant of the fact that there is a level to Yvonne’s attitudes and desires that I will never fully grasp. For instance, what future does she envision for her unborn child in Los Angeles? Why does she subject herself to Homer, a husband who rarely acknowledges her presence, or leaves her to live vicariously through solitary excursions to the movies? What are her motivations and aspirations as she watches her husband and Tommy walk through the alleyway after a night on Hill X with the women they picked up in a bar? There is no way to read the expression on her face with the system of equivalencies exploited by Hollywood.

 

In trying to qualify my response to the film, I repeatedly came back to The Wire. As I watched Season 1 this week, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of fondness for the characters from West Baltimore. True, I don’t belong to this particular subculture, enmeshed in urban warfare, drug addiction and drug trafficking, bombed-out low-rises, imposing high-rises, poverty and slick Roc-A-Wear and Baby Phat wardrobes, but these characters speak a dialect that’s ubiquitous in the Baltimore's schools. It’s fascinating to hear it spoken on the screen: the show’s creators captured the spontaneity, the diction, the wisdom hidden beneath the layers of archaic-sounding syntax. These actors speak the cadence I heard from the moment I entered Baltimore’s school system in August 2001. Coming from New York, I remember thinking this the strangest place. What language were these people speaking? Baltimore seemed like an island, severed from the realities I had taken for granted on 207^th Street in Manhattan: the subway, Dominicans, Asians, the populated playground, and people in general.

The general absence of human bodies in the street and the alien nature of the speech I did hear presented a weird environment for an outsider. But I guess I became accustomed to it eventually, because watching The Wire today, I felt solidarity with the West Baltimore speakers captured on film and projected on screen — however violent their language, however amoral and degenerate their behaviors. I think this supports the universally validating power of cinema: the recording of real Indians, their accents uncensored and uncorrected, lends an authentic quality and asserts the urban Indian’s realness. It recognizes a distinctive presence in the world.

 

 

 “It’s cool up there, you sing your own tribal songs….you know… anything you want to do… you know”

One of the most interesting scenes in The Exiles follows Homer and Tommy to Hill X, the spot overlooking the LA skyline where the city’s Indians gather and reenact their cultural rites and rituals, modified to fit the urban environment, the particular demographic shift of the Indian populace, and the physical remoteness of the reservation. The modified powwows serve a younger generation of reservation "exiles," integrated into the metropolis. While not particularly young in years, these men and women resemble adolescents. They enter the semi-spiritual peak of Hill X as rambunctious American teens, blasting horns and revving engines. They convalesce, chant, dance, beat the drum as Indians by night, and in the morning, abandon the Hill, returning to the mainstream. The scene they leave behind is once more ambivalent: the land is dusty and beaten flat by tires; empty bottles and refuse clutter the clearing. It becomes clear from the image of the Hill that the urban Indian presents a unique and challenging blend of identities. His values with respect to ownership, environment, and family are an ambiguous mix of two cultures that our media has, for so long, presented as irreconcilable.

---

[1] Fixico, D. Lee. (2000). The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

[2] “Seattle Indian Center Plan,” February 3, 1972, in Mary Ellen Sloan, “Indians in an Urban Setting, Salt Lake County, Utah (1972),” Occupational Paper No. 2, American West Center, University of Utah, 1973, 6.

People on the Fringe: Gypsy Culture in Angelo My Love (Shauna)

    There is something fascinating about delving into the world of a sociocultural Other. And indeed, white America has for centuries enacted such an imaginary process, projecting itself onto alternate groups and peoples located on the fringes of society. The process of projection has involved both revulsion and attraction: the savage has functioned primarily as foil and scapegoat (i.e. the Other of didactic Puritanical stories), but also as an exotic entity, impossible to characterize, explain or fully comprehend. Both constructions expose entrenched prejudices, and neither contributes much in the way of new insights about the people themselves.

    The captivity narrative, while declaring savagery and civility to be incompatible and irreconcilable, also conveys a subtext about the complementary nature of indigenous life. The fact that some Puritan prisoners of war preferred to stay with their captors suggests that the world of the Native imparted certain benefits, particularly for women. These advantages, whether material, spiritual, or psychological, were either inaccessible or nonexistent in the civilized (patriarchal) life of the settlement. Implicit in the captivity narrative was the idea that indigenous life satiated a certain social hunger and filled a spiritual void left by Christian civility and codified European traditions. How would “mainstream” society cope with the Native? The answer lies in exclusion — through physical separation and rhetorical devices. The discourse on native peoples has consistently positioned the American Indian beyond the periphery of the colonial settlement (lurking in the forest, or beyond the butte, dunes or hills), or safely contained on reservations, far from the burgeoning cities and sprawling homesteads.

    The gypsy, in contrast, has been less widely articulated or addressed in America’s historical conversation with itself. Though ostracized through policy, the American Indian has at least been acknowledged in America’s cinema culture. Certainly, the characterization of the Native American has been far from ideal. He is rarely afforded the same level of character development as the white frontiersman, and his language is systematically dismissed as unintelligible (a notable exception is John Ford’s The Searchers, in which Ethan’s knowledge of Comanche partly humanizes his antagonist, Scar). The historical practice of casting white actors to play Native American roles further solidifies Hollywood’s seeming prohibition on nuanced, authentic American Indian performances. And yet, even the most bigoted cinematic portrayals of the American Indian allow for a conversation about how the Native is represented in the movies and the American consciousness. One can hope that as audience sophistication increases, so too will sensitivity to racialized portrayals of the Native.

 

    What does this mean for the gypsy, whose portrayal in American movies is not merely negative, but actually nonexistent? The gypsy is an invisible entity in the space of mainstream cinema, which perhaps should not be surprising, given the limited space he occupies in our collective national consciousness. Given this reality, Robert Duvall’s film Angelo My Love (1983) is essential viewing for anyone interested in the treatment of underrepresented peoples in cinema. His luminous commentary on gypsy life depicts the Roma neither as pitiful victims nor grotesque menaces, but as human beings who are at times exuberant, and at times melancholy. Though we may occasionally perceive their language (a hybrid of English and Gypsy) as jarring, and their gesticulations, dances, and affectations as eccentric, we accept their actions and attitudes as rational, given the context. It is the camera that allows us to see into the crowded apartments, decorated with their plush plastic couches; the masses at the Feast of St. Anne; and the men and women gathered around the campfire near Albany, following Patalay’s acquittal at the Kris. Thus, it is cinema that facilitates our receptivity to the gypsies, whom we might otherwise dismiss as inconsistent with familiar laws, social structures, and behaviors. We come to appreciate misdemeanors as pragmatic choices, necessary given the gypsies' position at the city's social and economic periphery.

    The gypsies’ relationship to mainstream society is a complex arrangement, verging on mutualistic. Their status as Other arises not from systematic exclusion by a non-gypsy majority, but from the gypsies' conscious efforts to keep their culture intact. They are ostracized to some extent, yet they are not completely disconnected from the services and institutions that constitute the fabric of mainstream society. In fact, the gypsies partially integrate themselves into the dominant culture —at least on a superficial level— to ensure their economic survival and, to a lesser extent, their children's literacy and education. Paradoxically, the gypsies work to maintain a distinction between their world and the conventional mainstream. Nowhere is this more evident than when Angelo's mother delivers her ultimatum following Angelo's recovery of the family's ring. Throughout the film, Angelo is characterized as a small adult man. He blurts obscenities, exerts complete control over his body, mesmerizes women with his suave demeanor, and embodies the same machismo as his uncles. Yet, he is moved to tears like a small child when his mother says, “You can be Gypsy or Gadjo [non-Roma]— but not both.” The finality of the statement suggests that commitment to discreet elements of gypsy culture is insufficient; what is necessary is the complete repudiation of the mainstream culture, including its rules, logic, and values.

    The film does not simply dichotomize Gadjo and gypsy cultures. True, the rules, moral codes, and rituals enacted by the gypsies within the context of nuclear families, the wedding and the Kris occasionally seem alien, patriarchal, and even clientelistic. And yet, by integrating scenes in which Angelo socializes with non-gypsies, including an inept grade school teacher, an elderly Puerto Rican woman, and the child country music star Cathy Kichen, Duvall connects Angelo's world to a familiar social milieu.

    A wonderful aspect of Angelo My Love is the unapologetic performances by its cast members. Of course, the men and women in the film are not really actors at all. They are not "performing" so much as they are conveying shared experiences, internal crises, and identities. The film text is as much an episodic narrative as it is an anthropological study of New York City's Roma community in the 1980s.

  The film maintains an interesting balance between Old and New World, conveying something about the adaptability of this formerly nomadic people transplanted from Europe. Even during the Kris (trial), Frankie, the de facto judge (reminiscent of a mafia Godfather), and Angelo vacillate between English and the Roma mother tongue. Sentences and soliloquies meld syntax and vocabulary from both languages; a perpetual high-energy rhythm links them together in an almost continuous vocal flood. This mode of discourse conveys the resilience of the people, seemingly referencing their migrant heritage, which likely required rapid adaptation to new environments, cultures, and resources.

    We also learn of the ethnic and cultural variation that exists within the New York gypsy community, perhaps most clearly encapsulated by the Greek/Russian rivalry that provides the ongoing conflict for the film and context for the theft of Angelo’s father’s ring.

    Finally, the costumes and modes of transport in the movie should not be dismissed, for they reveal something about the interconnectedness between gypsy and Gadjo cultures. Whereas the Amish completely reject "English" electricity and cars, the men in Angelo rely heavily on vehicles to pursue enemies, transport their families to religious ceremonies, and court women. The language of cars is ubiquitous: Angelo and Michael hail a taxi to pursue Patalay, Angelo "drives" partway to upstate New York (seated on Frankie's lap), and lacking cash for a cab becomes the justification for Angelo's failure to take Patricia out on her birthday. This sort of motif reveals something striking about the gypsy culture, at least as it is portrayed in Angelo. There is a high degree of devotion to ritualism, folklore, superstition, cultural pride and family honor, yet a reliance on the modes of contemporary Gadjo life. Still, the gypsies maintain a notably ambivalent attitude toward the mechanisms, bureaucracy, and institutions of the dominant culture. As Angelo's mother asserts (and Michael echoes), "Maybe you'll go [to school] today and not tomorrow."

    But perhaps the most interesting conflicts in the film emerge within the gypsy community itself. As Angelo, Frankie and Michael watch Patalay and his fellow Russians singing around a campfire, Angelo observes their ugliness, horrified. Indeed, his statement articulates a reality we've come to appreciate throughout the film (shots of Patalay often fixate on his grotesque fleshy nose; those of Millie linger on her crooked teeth and aged skin). The ideal physical appearance —a handsome face and smooth skin— becomes emblematic of Angelo's clan (and the Greek gypsies, by extension). Angelo's discourse on beauty reveals something interesting about the construction of masculinity in the larger gypsy culture and among the Greeks, in particular. However, we cannot help but wonder whether Angelo's self-proclaimed beauty is not merely a transient sign of youth. His appearance, too, may be susceptible to the physical disfigurement and moral decay that marks Patalay.

Internal Landscapes in John Cassavetes' Shadows (Shauna)

America was in a state of disequilibrium and flux in 1959. Over the preceding decade, an uncontested post-war order had come to dominate, epitomized by suburban sprawl, escalating homeownership, conspicuous consumption and the primacy of the nuclear family. Yet, those values represented unrealistic, vacuous ideals for certain segments of the youth generation. At the close of the decade, new foci of social and cultural power began to coalesce: the nation’s discontents began to assert themselves.

Culturally, 1959 was a tremendous year. Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, Malcolm X articulated a radical racial politics of black “militant separatism,” and Lenny Bruce tackled lewd and taboo topics on primetime television.[1] Artists and independent thinkers were addressing the nation’s neuroses directly and unapologetically.

Allen Ginsberg observed in the summer of ’59 that “America [was] having a nervous breakdown…” but he also asserted that this was no cause for alarm, at least among artists and outsiders: “[T]here has been great exaltation, despair, prophecy, strain, suicide, secrecy, and public gaiety among the poets of the city.”[2] If anything, this was a cathartic moment for artists. The cultural shift threatened the immaculate, formulaic narrative of the 1950s —a narrative that pervaded television, Hollywood and, allegedly, mainstream daily life. But it also marked a renaissance for the culturally estranged, whether Bohemian, beatnik, or black male.

Amidst this turbulent culture, John Cassavetes offered Shadows (1959), a film shot on-location in New York’s Time Square, MoMA’s sculpture garden and Central Park, with improvisational elements infused into the script and the actors’ performances. Although the film was not improvised per se, it evokes the spirit of a neorealist picture or documentary. Whereas Hollywood narratives are structured around a masculine “coherent ego” whose equilibrium is temporarily disturbed, and subsequently “restored,” Cassavetes rejects such plot-driven devices [3]. Instead, he elaborates the worlds of characters whose names are shared by the actors who play them.

Internal dramas and peripheral conflicts converge on three siblings: Benny, a light-skinned deviant juvenile and musician; Hugh, his much darker older brother, who is unable to secure serious musical gigs due to his race; and their sister Leila, a coquettish girl who ultimately reveals her naiveté and vulnerability. Much of the conflict stems from Benny and Leila’s lighter complexions, which allow them to navigate the mainstream space of white America, internalize racial hatreds, and turn against people darker than themselves — even while they remain emotionally close to Hugh. But what is crucial about the film is its level of nuance, achieved through silent dialogues via close-ups, and idiosyncratic speech patterns. Cassavetes is “not afraid to create an inarticulate character,” and this lack of anxiety about conforming a character to an ideal persona is what sets his work apart as strikingly realist and distinct from mainstream Hollywood.

 

 

John Cassavetes’ film Shadows explores issues of race relations, familism, and gender equality through the intimate space of characters’ minds. Internal conflict and mental perturbation dominate the film, so that subtle indicators of psychic tension often take priority over blatant displays of conflict and violence. Indeed, aggression and passion, whether in the form of masculine roughhousing in an alleyway or Leila’s precocious advances toward Tony at the literary party, provide insights into each character's emotional instability.

On the narrative level, Ben accompanies Tom and Dennis in their perpetual and vacant pursuit of women in diners and clubs. The three men seek out ladies who are apparently equally disinterested in relationships. Tom implies that the females' behavior encourages superficial, short-lived romantic encounters: “You want to get picked up, don’t you?” But If Benny is portrayed as a transient cool cat, maneuvering the neon urban jungle and seeming to transcend racial identities (in different contexts he appears more or less African-American), Cassavetes suggests an overlooked level of depth to his persona. This complexity is especially evident on the level of form, as in the iconic composition in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. The shot evokes Ben's introjective mind or spirit, eliciting our empathy for a character who habitually seeks physical intimacy with women prior to emotional discourse. Whereas Ben silently contemplates a single work, Tom dismisses the whole collection as a series of artifacts testifying to the hypocrisy of academia. For Tom, the artworks merely serve to reinforce inflated intellectual egos: the garden signifies a place “for a lot of creeps trying to show off what they know.” Yet, Tom morphs into a similarly detestable intellectual bigot when he accuses Dennis of knowing “nothing” and asserts his own mental superiority (“I went to college, Dennis”). Tom’s relentless belittling is visually accentuated by his dominant height. Though Dennis wears the trench coat, his small stature and strong New York accent endow him with a juvenile quality, as do his vague appraisals of the works (“He’s a statue”). Dennis at least comes to terms with his lack of insights, whereas Tom persists in his blind self-righteousness. The animosity persists until their moods spontaneously shift and harsh language is replaced with frenzied laughter and seemingly authentic bonding over the voluptuous "Standing Woman" by Gaston Lachaise.

A similarly sudden reconciliation is later enacted by Hugh and Benny, and ultimately by Hugh and Rupert; all three resolutions testify to the transient nature of conflict and moods in the film. Prior to the resolution between Tom and Dennis, tight compositions and the telephoto lens collapse the space of the sculpture garden, heightening the sense of antagonism. Two bronze sculptures (a nude and an abstract piece) in the mid-ground divide the frame roughly in two, momentarily allocating "territory" to each man. The nude leans forward slightly, as though enraptured with their conversation, and the diagonal slant of the abstract form mimics her curvature. Long shots in the sculpture garden inter-cut with the tight, low-angle shots of the men, optically diminish Dennis. He seems comically small when Tom scales the bridge, elevated just a few feet off the ground. Even in the least constrained shots (camera pans that punctuate the garden scene), looming trees and flat concrete building facades heighten the impression of enclosure.

During the altercation, Ben withdraws from the dynamic. He is subsequently shot in profile, in front of a carved stone face whose eye sockets, defined brows, and slightly frowning lips seem to represent rounded caricatures of his own features. Cassavetes provides a confrontation of graphic visages. A strange indigenous quality pervades the image of man and his nonliving alternate. It is made all the more bizarre by its modern environmental context — the apartment buildings, just behind the brick walls of the tranquil garden space. Tom’s berating voice (“You’re nothing but an ignorant slob”) further undercuts the sense of epiphany etched on Ben’s expressive features. The juxtaposition of the visually serene, introspective, daringly primordial image with Tom's antagonistic language, imparts an unsettling atmosphere. It's as though we've ventured into the intimate space between dialogues, a realm largely ignored by conventional Hollywood.

 

Conflict between people has traditionally served to forward the plot in narrative cinema. Yet, Cassavetes adopts a decidedly different goal in conveying the transient moods, clashes, and ritual battles between friends, relatives, and acquaintances in Shadows. Rather than exposing power dynamics, social structures, or discrimination, interpersonal conflict primarily functions to reveal what is inconsistent or inauthentic about the individual. Moreover, these clashes —even when they play out against the vivid, magnetic, and external landscapes of New York City— are fundamentally about intimate encounters. They range from vacuous, superficial, and fleeting (like the dates with countless women in restaurant booths) to genuine and nourishing (as in Hugh and Rupert’s conversation in Penn Station at the end of the film).

Whenever Ben and his crew meander through the city space, flattened anonymous figures, graphic signs, reflective windows, and vehicles constitute a dynamic background. The impression is wholly impersonal. For instance, the masher assault on Lelia occurs under a multiplicity of bright lights, movie posters, and shop windows. That is, it plays out in full view and elicits little response from the crowds. Aside from Cassavetes' chivalrous cameo, the assault goes largely unnoticed and unpunished. Though this urban landscape is neither overtly hostile nor strictly bifurcated along race, gender or generational lines, there is evidence of increasing atomization and loneliness amidst the crowds.

Taking this external landscape as the basis for his cinematic “improvisation,” Cassavetes might have encountered problems while addressing social inequality, hostility, housing discrimination, or miscegenation law. But Shadows never devolves into a didactic montage about victimized groups. Cassavetes refuses to demean his characters with pity. Instead, he explores universal problems of authenticity, agency, and identity, allowing Ben, his sister Lelia, and his brother Hugh to possess personalities neither completely wholesome nor wholly flawed. No single figure explicitly emerges as the dominant or "lead" role.

Ray Carney has observed that “[w]hile Hollywood melodramatically externalizes characters’ emotional states, writing them in ten-foot-high letters…to maximize their visibility, the drama in Cassavetes’ work is internalized to the point of being almost subliminal.”[4] The director’s capacity to evoke conflicted personas, ambiguous relationships, and dynamic psychological landscapes culminate in a brilliantly arresting visual spectacle. Cassavetes does not resort to the grotesque or the abnormal, yet there is something profoundly distinctive about the world he constructs. He manages to incorporate conventional spaces, conflicts, relationships, and roles in a completely unconventional, almost surreal manner. Temporal transitions and connections between characters seem smooth and convincing; yet, critics have widely acknowledged the episodic nature of film. It occurs almost as a series of vignettes, each extraordinarily pleasurable to watch and an exceedingly truthful portrayal of what it is like to be human. That is, to experience and to deny prejudices; to project an ingenuously constructed self-image (Leila); to feel isolated, undervalued, or exploited (Hugh and Ben); to share in the common renewal of laughter; to make oneself vulnerable to another.

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[1] Fred Kaplan, “1959: Sex, Drugs and Datsuns,” New York, Vol. 42, No. 20 (8 June 2009), pp. 38-43.

[2] Ibid.

[3]  Maria Viera, "The Work of John Cassavetes: Script, Performance Style, and Improvisation." Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 42, No. 3, Problems in Screenwriting (Fall 1990), pp. 34-40.

[4] Carney, Raymond. The Films of John Cassavetes : Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Russia, Mongolia and Hollywood: A Silent Hybrid in Storm Over Asia (Shauna)

 

 When it comes to Soviet Montage, at least from the American perspective, Eisenstein is the dominant figure, Vertov the experimental artist, and Pudovkin the peripheral character defined in terms of his relation to Eisenstein as friend and aesthetic rival. Perhaps this hierarchy reflects the paltry selection of modern English translations of works by Pudovkin and the comparative wealth of resources by Eisenstein. Or maybe it reflects Eisenstein’s deft capacity to theorize and simultaneously self-promote. In “The Fourth Dimension of Cinema,” he routinely cites his own works as “classic”[1] examples illustrative of all the most crucial formal elements of film art.

Eisenstein was not above criticizing, and occasionally dismissing, works by Pudovkin, particularly when he construed them as veering too far his own artistic vision of montage. Eisenstein cites Storm Over Asia (1928) as an example of metric montage gone awry. The technique, he argues, fails when it is paired with “complex rhythmic tasks.”[2] True, the religious procession to honor the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is highly complex and orchestrated, even prior to the added intricacies of cutting and splicing. The sequence is not Pudovkin’s most glorious in Storm. However, it is neither inherently flawed nor fruitless. The awkwardness, which Eisenstein describes as the “forcible application” of metric montage, suggests an inability to convey all of the nuances of this Mongolian ritual practice. We are inundated with visual information (compounded by the vigorous, ethnic score), yet the meaning of vast ceremony remains oblique. The best moments are those in which Pudovkin exercises restraint, for instance, when the static camera fixates on the exotic dancing bodies, filmed in horizontal and diagonal lines, and finally in a curve that snakes from background to foreground. The slightly jarring cuts, which juxtapose accelerating dancers with static musicians, suggest a level of uncertainty, as though meanings and symbols inevitably elude the westerner.

Pudovkin transplants the viewer to a space that is neither fully human nor divine, but rather exists on the threshold of both of these worlds. He does not impose a vision or attempt to contrive meaning from the indigenous dance and music. Rather, he allows the Mongolian masks and costumes, the formations and the dances, to speak on their own terms. The content is beautiful and enthralling, even if the metric montage is occasionally awkward. The sequence evokes the experience of an outsider far more than it characterizes the Mongolians. We empathize with the camera’s gaze, which is incapable of focusing on a single dancer or musician for long. Who is to fault Pudovkin for evoking the experience of walking in on a ceremony performed by a foreign people or culture — that is, the experience of witnessing but not belonging?

 

One of the reasons Storm Over Asia resonates so profoundly in the silent film canon is its thematic, if not contextual, connection to the Soviet heritage and worldview. Although the film does not address Soviet woes, routines, or spaces directly, it grapples with a powerful and pervasive question present in the Russian psyche: To what extent should Russia be construed as “West” or “East”? Pudovkin alludes to the historical debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers through cinematic language, rather than blatant, polemical statements. Few Russians appear in the film, with the exception of the partisans. But the Russians' naturalistic style creates a visual parallel with the seemingly ancient Mongols — suggesting deeper connections to the Mongolians than to continental Europeans.

Storm suggests an underlying ambivalence in terms of Russian identification with either the West or East, though the film tends to empathize with the Mongolians. The sentiment is conveyed through (1) landscapes that manifest an Asian aesthetic in their graphic simplicity and still depiction, (2) the intimacy and sensitivity with which the nuclear Mongol family and its prized ornaments are filmed prior to the son's departure, and (3) the implicit connection between Anglo characters and unnatural processes, including surgical repair of the body, the hygienic and materialistic "rituals" before the visitation to the Buddhist Temple, and the infiltration of technology into the primeval environs of the Steppes.

Throughout the film, the agrarian and uncultivated landscapes range from chillingly vacant, to tranquil, serene and sublime. Ultimately, though, the Steppes pulse with a voracious life force: a mysterious and aggressive wind decimates the British colonial presence. Pudovkin elevates and restores the dignity of the indigenous Mongols through this ostensibly natural (though seemingly supernatural) force. Pudovkin wrote that D.W. Griffith was highly influential in molding his cinematic consciousness. Indeed, the scale and graphic potency of Pudovkin’s landscapes do reveal parallels between the directors' works. But the shots in Storm overlooking the sand dunes, mountains and conifers of the Steppes, are also entirely unique. Prior to Storm, no one had ventured into the rural, nomadic domestic spaces of the Buriat-Mongolian Republic with a movie camera. Pudovkin had attended film school with Valeri Inkizhinov, the actor who played the protagonist, and thereby entered a world previously invisible to film. Had he employed a strictly Hollywood approach, the product would likely not have contained the languid series of stills, dissolving one into the next, forming subtle conflicts of plane and scale, which infuse Storm with a distinctively Eurasian atmosphere. The director complemented his Soviet montage technique with an awareness of Asian art, establishing graphically simple, yet emotionally stirring landscapes, with just the slightest degree of movement (shuddering leaves, shifting ice, or the slow, almost viscous flow of a river).

Storm constitutes an exquisite portrait of Mongolian life, integrating graphic landscapes (in which the individual is frequently subverted to the grandeur and scale of the natural environment) with humanizing close-ups of the native people and the indexical signs present in their lives, such as the amulet that had belonged to the lama, and the prized skin of the silver fox. The Mongolian hunter's family appears aged, crouched, tanned, and wrinkled, yet their faces embody a spirit and spontaneity that is totally absent from the visages of the British Army Commander and his bejeweled and powdered wife. The lighting in the interior of the Mongolian yurt is fascinating and quite beautiful. Whatever wrong Eisenstein perceived in terms of metric montage in the religious dance is fully compensated by the tonal complexity within the shot! The crisscrossing of cast shadows simultaneously gives the impression of individuals trapped within a colonial economic framework, and integrated with the natural space. The continuity between anatomy and environment suggests a higher level of authenticity. These individuals, bound by the complex of shadows, are close to the earth and to each other, in-tune with the seasons, the wildlife, and the hours. In contrast, the British delegate and his wife shroud themselves in unnatural pieces of finery: a long satin sheath wrapped around an obese male torso, the whale-bone corsette cinched unnaturally at the waist, and layers of lotion and powder set on the skin.

The naturalistic quality of the Mongolians makes the surgery performed on Inkizhinov's character all the more loathsome. The victim, after being bound and brutally shot, is essentially reawakened from the dead and brought out of the natural space of the sand dunes into the civilized Anglo interior. Sanctioned violence is followed by sanctioned medical penetration to revive the human form. The body, bound like a mummy, and restricted in its movements, constitutes a mannequin or dummy. It is the physical manifestation of the Mongolian's diplomatic function as a pawn of the British Empire's. The surgical repair is unnatural in that it is totally divested from any spiritual healing (i.e. the sort of healing presented in the earliest moments when the lama prays for the father's recovery).

The Mongolian is wholly castrated, unable to quench his thirst or articulate his thoughts. The moment when he attempts to drink from the fish tank, an action wholly outside the purview of civilized European decorum, is quite poetic: his head on the slick floor, surrounded by the thrashing fish, constitutes a visual metaphor for all the trauma and exploitation he has endured, and his inability to thrive within this world. Yet, like all of the images infused with pathos, it is neither sentimental nor contrived.

The closing scene is perhaps the most unambiguous example of Soviet montage. Pudovkin employs the fastest tempo, the wildest mise-en-scéne, and rapid inter-cutting between a savage, fully restored Mongolian hunter and the intertitles, producing negatives of the image that seem monstrous and supernatural. Yet, it is highly telling that the British defeat is staged without bloodshed: the wrath of the wilderness is the only outpouring of violence. The men fall back, rolling and somersaulting like weightless dolls blown down. It is as though this culminating struggle occurs outside the bounds of mortal life: it is no mere territorial dispute, but a recovery of the dignity and humanity that was lost.

 

 

 

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[1] Sergei Eisenstein, The Eisenstein Reader, trans. Richard Taylor and William Powell(London: BFI Publishing, 1998).

[2] Ibid.

Mexican Women in Salt of the Earth and Biutiful (Shauna)

On a superficial level, there is very little in common between Salt of the Earth (1954), a bare-bones narrative of labor unrest in an arid, desolate New Mexican mining village dubbed Zinctown, USA, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s vivid, saturated, and jarring portrayal of contemporary Barcelona, entitled Biutiful (2010). Iñárritu addresses a distinctive socio-economic underbelly in Spain, filtering experience through a single Mexican protagonist, Uxbal (Javier Bardem). But he suggestively exposes broader demographic and immigration changes underway across Europe.

Javier Bardem in Biutiful. Creative Commons, by Cinema Davar.

At its core, Salt of the Earth is a decidedly local film. It employed neorealist techniques and was subjected to a variety of constraints imposed by Cold War politics. Political pressures helped to mold a particular atmosphere and imparted an unrehearsed quality to the film. According to Rosaura Revueltas, the actor who played Esperanza Quintero, “[The cast] never saw any rushes. The film was shot blindly. Scenes were never repeated. During filming, helicopters flew overhead in order to protest…”[1] Salt exudes a spontaneity that pervades even the most didactic scenes. This natural quality reinforces Esperanza’s radical and incisive soliloquy. In it, she articulates the crux of the conflict with her husband, Ramón: Anglo employers undermine and antagonize the Mexican miners, yet Ramón is complicit in discrimination, debasing his wife by discouraging her political engagement. The dismissive nature of his responses (“You’re talking crazy!” and “Will you be still!”) betray the truth in her words.

 

Biutiful represents an essentially global film, in which characters from developing nations are linked to each other and to Europe in a tightly wound economic network. This is not to insinuate that Iñárritu disregards the local environment. With the utmost care, he conveys textural and chromatic details of Marambra’s (Maricel Alvarez) apartment, the dank sweatshop housing Chinese laborers, and the living quarters of the Muslim Senegalese. Still, a nascent internationalism emerges, with Barcelona functioning as a hub for émigrés, human trafficking, and other illicit activity. The resulting social universe is exceedingly complex, and the wealth of visual information contained within each frame only compounds that impression. Iñárritu’s filmic precision approaches hyperrealism. His style proves expressive and photogenic, if at times unsettling.

Interspersed throughout the film are supernatural moments, which call to mind the magical realism of Latin American literature. Those moments function as visual breaths, which alleviate the slightly claustrophobic and suffocating experience of material poverty. In one sequence, two massive swarms of birds dance in flight over city. For a moment, they exist not as birds, but as abstract entities. Uxbal fixates on this display, which is at once bizarre and extraordinary.

  

Calatrava Bridge, Barcelona. Creative Commons, Zio Fabio.

Stylistic distinctions between the two films reflect their unique historical contexts. Salt of the Earth was produced under tremendous political pressures. Actual workers participated in the production process, lending a greater degree of authenticity and making  Salt slightly more astonishing than if it had relied purely on professional actors. In some ways, Salt of the Earth and Biutiful represent polar opposites; in terms of scale, stylization, casting, sound, and complexity of the mise-en-scene, the films could hardly be more different. Yet, both films convey a particular experience of Mexican transplants, engaging issues of male anxiety, gender equality and inequality, and the adverse consequences of free-market capitalism. They occupy separate parts of the temporal and geographic spectrum (1950s United States, and present-day Spain), yet the films address a number of related cultural questions. A full comparative analysis is beyond the scope of this entry. Instead, I will outline the construction and experience of women in the Mexican émigré culture.

 

Salt of the Earth may be considered groundbreaking for its apparent foray into feminist activism. It subverts, or at least challenges, an established gender order in post-War America, and does so rather obliquely. When Esperanza articulates her condition, it is without flourish or euphemism. Early in the film, she shies away from politics and tacitly accepts her domestic identity. For instance, she asserts her ambivalence about entering the union meeting with the other women. Moreover, it is Consuela (Angela Sanchez) who proposes the women’s auxiliary branch for the miners’ union. In the wake of the meeting, Ramón brusquely acknowledges, “At least you didn’t make a fool out of yourself like Consuela.”

The formation of the auxiliary, and its ultimate effectiveness in maintaining the picket line after a court injunction prohibits future miners’ strikes, reflects a morality in the filmic universe of Salt, which contends that men and women are essentially the same. Although tensions exist between husbands and their wives, a mutually beneficial partnership gradually emerges in the film. Ramón even invokes unity between “brothers and sisters” in the aftermath of the attempted eviction. Still, feminine acquisition of a labor relations discourse, and the subjection of women to physical violence (in the form of strikes and imprisonment), runs contrary to many of the entrenched gender norms espoused by the men.

In one of the most memorable dialogues in the film, Esperanza asserts Ramon’s total reliance on her involvement in the negotiations: “You can’t win this strike without me. You can’t win anything without me.” He responds with a threatening gesture, but it elicits no spasm of fear; rather, it spawns her complete renunciation of “the old way.” Esperanza’s final instructions, “Sleep where you like, but not with me,” convey the transformative potential of her political engagement in realigning power dynamics within the home.

Interestingly, Biutiful presents a far more ambivalent picture of the Mexican female. In Salt of the Earth, men occasionally adopt a feminine perspective, as when Ramón hangs the wash to dry and wonders why indoor plumbing had not been a major union demand from the beginning. But masculine and feminine perspectives in Biutiful seem nearly irreconcilable. Uxbal’s wife Marambra is presented as rather wretched and manipulative, even if these traits are beyond her control and likely symptomatic of her mental illness. Whereas Esperanza is indispensible to Ramon, Marambra seems only to sap Uxbal’s energy: her alcoholism and apparent bipolarity, her incessant need for sex, and her total economic dependence add up to a woman who resembles a child more than a spouse. Marambra also actively undermines Uxbal’s attempts to create and maintain order in the household. His exertion of control is not coercive, but rather intended to establish much-needed boundaries for his children, Ana and Mateo.

Nowhere is the fissure between male and female perspectives exemplified more clearly than in a late sequence in Uxbal’s brother’s strip club. Whether Iñáarritu intends to communicate something about Mexican, Spanish or European attitudes towards women is not entirely clear. What is evident, however, is that objectification of the female is rampant, and the audience’s limited exposure to such imagery prior to this scene merely reflects Uxbal’s relative dignity within the film’s dubious moral spectrum. Perhaps what is more shocking than the seedy costumes, inflatable decorative flesh, incessant pounding music, and seizure-inducing lights, is the exchange that occurs between Uxbal and a young woman (whom his brother boasts he has slept with). Their physical proximity only amplifies the sense that she and Uxbal are separated by a lifetime of experiences. Her youth underscores his impending death, seemingly accelerated by his drug and alcohol-induced intoxication. When she asks why he isn’t dancing, he responds, “Because I’m dying.” It is unclear why he is doing what he is doing – perhaps it is a defensive strategy in this grotesque and demeaning atmosphere. A profound sense of isolation and male anxiety settles around Uxbal at that moment. It is a loneliness that no female presence can attenuate.

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[1] Esteve Riambau and Casimiro Torreiro,“This Film is Going to Make History,” Cineaste 19 (1992): 50.

Killer of Sheep (Shauna)

In his commentary on Killer of Sheep (1977), Charles Burnett habitually downplays his own role. He seems to construe his sublime compositions and vignettes merely as true-to-life portrayals, or fictitious constructions derived from real people and real spaces. He sees himself in terms of documentation, though the film is not a documentary in the formal sense. Deft attention to environment, dialect, “invisible” characters, and the integration of improvised moments and staged scenes, illuminate Burnett’s tendency to incorporate documentary-style realism into his film texts. He speaks of lighting, framing, and collaboration with actors in terms that are pared down and frank. Perhaps the cinematic and narrative elements had always existed, and Burnett merely had the audacity to cull and splice the pieces together. There is nothing exploitative about the picture. And there is no pompous pretense to his language. Unencumbered by a monolithic artistic vision, Killer strives towards honest portraits that elicit a spectrum of potent emotions: jarring, rousing, titillating, and tragic.

Unique framing, candid blocking, and precise dialogue reflect Burnett’s discerning eye — and his ability to distill from fragmented, contradictory, disordered moments of a day or year, a coherent and lasting impression of the local world and its inhabitants. That Burnett’s work substantiates and gives voice to a group that has been historically ostracized, undermined, oversexed, or undersexed by Hollywood, represents an accomplishment independent of its artistry. Yet, even if we view Killer in a social-cultural vacuum, divested from the disparities, segregation, and inherently unequal parameters of life in the United States, the result is a stunning aesthetic achievement. Killer of Sheep plays out an urban space, interspersed with great expanses, massive trains, open lots, and construction sites resembling war zones. It incorporates elements of the Western, and of the metropolis, yet Killer transcends both of these locales, establishing a potent temporal and spatial coherence. The circumstances of this particular universe in Watts, Los Angeles, vacillate between melancholy and dark comedy. Nuclear families, neighbors, and floaters proceed through life, seemingly unencumbered by the objective eye of the camera. And it is this ambiguous balance between the despondent and the droll, which resonates with the human psyche.

The flexible, agile bodies of the children in Killer navigate their neighborhoods, forming a dynamic pattern against steeply inclined streets, construction lots, and freight trains. Their figures elicit in the viewer a sense of exuberance and compassion, interest and astonishment. We are transfixed.

Nor can the audience help but to indulge in watching the incoherent freeloader rub his face, tug at his bandage, and lick his lips. There is something fascinating about his impenetrable torpor, and the slow dolly back that reveals the car motor beside him. A woman in the same room massages lotion into her decidedly un-Hollywood legs and thighs, rippling, yet oddly enticing, nonetheless. The two figures, each surpassing the bounds of the frame, are united by an ephemeral and disconcerting jump cut that is visual shorthand for her physical blow to his bandaged head, following her comment, “You ‘bout tasteless as a carrot.” It is the odd balance between pleasure and pain that imparts such gravity to the scene. First, there is the electric thrill of her verbal quip (which, incidentally, seems both a trite cliché and a unique turn of poetry). Then, there is the visceral recoil as she delivers the blow, which is abstracted by the violent cut and Stan’s appearance at the side of the groaning, damaged, contorted body that twitches like a squashed insect. All the while, the flamboyantly dressed “uncle,” tugging at a jerrycurl and fawning over his reflection, lends ambivalent comic relief.

Bishetta Merritt has emphasized the juxtaposition of imagery from the slaughterhouse and shots of the children, who are “oblivious to the squalor and poverty around them” (2008: 113). Neither the sheep nor the children, she asserts, are cognizant of their impending demise. But such an assertion fails to convey the full richness of Burnett's visual metaphor. Moreover, the film seems to challenge such didactic principles.

Indeed, children constitute the only truly resilient force in the film's universe. Although they are not immune to suffering, they surely are not doomed. In contrast, the living sheep are inseparable from their limp, shaved counterparts hanging on prongs, or the gelatinous ovine bodies moving weirdly with the spray of the hose. The sheep connote monotony, angst, and suffering. Such qualities are evocative of the lives of adults in the film, but rarely those of children. While Stan's crisis seems uniquely “existential," most adults execute day-to-day rituals of work and family with alternatively dark and humorous perspectives.

Stylistically, the film exemplifies Burnett’s interest in capturing and conveying life in an unadulterated, unspoiled form. These lives transpire in a tactile, emotional, and architectural environment irrefutably linked to his own childhood.

Parallels between the open environments of the Italian neorealists and Burnett’s Watts emerge early in the film and constitute a sustained motif. Burnett, like the neorealists, delights in gritty, naturalistic landscapes. Indeed, part of what makes Killer of Sheep so intriguing is the constant interchange of locations. Although there is a degree of continuity (the camera never ventures beyond a particular cultural and social universe), there is a surprising multiplicity of spaces. Burnett acknowledges that his familiarity with the neighborhoods afforded him a variety of locations for shooting. Although he is ostensibly the master of this realm, he never overtly directs us in how we should judge the space and the individuals who inhabit it. We empathize with Stan, yet never fully understand the social or clinical origins of his depression. Likewise, we identify with the old man who witnesses a burglary across the alley, yet his departure from the yard to contact law enforcement does not seem exactly heroic.

We are complicit in the crime insofar as we recognize it would be a shame to disrupt what Burnett has orchestrated: the balanced composition, with the thieves running down the street, heavy T.V. in tow. Why sacrifice this robbery-dance to bureaucracy and justice? Anyway, the police would likely spawn new problems for the neighborhood.

 

 

Willie Dynamite Saved My Life (Christen)

    In light of the death of another one of my favorite screen legends, Rudy Ray Moore a.k.a. Dolemite, I decided to write about the direction of black cinema. And by direction, I mean a complete U-turn. The revolutionary era of Blaxploitation may have ended with insistence from groups like the NAACP because of the portrayal of blatant stereotypes, but the genre went beyond stories that glorified pimps and hoodlums. The protagonists also consisted of vengeance seeking heroes and heroines that wanted to rid the city of the bad guys in the most visually stunning way possible. Actors such as Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Pam Grier (Coffy) and Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones) were the only black action stars audiences had over 30 years ago, and their films are just as cool to watch today in the privacy of one's own home.

   Take, for instance, Larry Cohen's classic Black Caesar (1973). Copious racial slurs aside, the theme of the black gangster film wasn't different from those that starred James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson: gangsters, and the crooked cops that do business with them, are bad news and should be brought to justice...or at least shot. Tommy Gibbs, played by Fred Williamson, is "Black Caesar" and rises to the top of the crime underworld by killing a lot of corrupt white men and taking what belongs to them. He is a brutish husband to his wife Helen, played by the beautiful Gloria Hendry, and lies to his childhood friend Joe (Philip Roye) about giving the money he acquires back to the black community. Because Tommy got beat up by a bad cop at the beginning of the movie because of a misunderstanding, you want to feel sorry for him; however, this movie is a lesson on where being hellbent on gaining power and revenge will get you: nowhere but down with a bullet lodged somewhere in your mid-section. It should end fatally for our protagonist, but Cohen would have it that Gibbs survives being shot and beaten by a gang of youths to return that same year for a sequel, Hell Up In Harlem (1973). Ah, the magic (and efficiency) of blaxploitation! What also sets this film apart from The Public Enemy, however, was its impressive soundtrack composed and performed by the late, great James Brown. Funk and soul music was a staple of blaxploitation films that blacks could associate with, because the songs had important messages beyond the films they were contained in. Including Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, funk and soul musicians composed soundtracks for their generation, not just the fiction on the big screen. 

    There is a bevy of other black films that were made in the '70s and weren't credited as blaxploitation flicks, were meaningful in black cinema history. Black actresses were getting nominated for Best Leading Actress Academy Awards for the first time since Dorothy Dandridge in 1954; Diana Ross and Cicely Tyson in 1972 for Lady Sings the Blues and Sounder, respectively, and Diahann Carroll in 1974 for Claudine. Richard Pryor was gaining notoriety as a raunchy stand-up comedian who wasn't afraid to talk about race relations at length, and has many films to his credit he wrote and/or appeared in that helped him achieve cult status. The same Gloria Hendry that was in Black Caesar landed the role as the first black Bond girl to lock lips with the agent in the film Live and Let Die (1973); granted, the film was heavily influenced by the blaxploitation surge, but it showed that James Bond didn't discriminate when it came to romancing women. The 70's were such a vibrant, crucial time for black cinema. Black people were writers, directors, actors and producers of work that created meaning for an entire generation; a meaning that can still be understood and appreciated today.

    After the '70s, however, there was a seeming loss of interest in the black movie industry that was never restimulated. In the 1980s there was an influx of movies about breakdancing, and at the very end of the decade Spike Lee was able to squeeze in his landmark social commentary Do the Right Thing (1989). Where did all those black film pioneers go?! There is a movie produced in the late '80s that I appreciated by actor/director/writer Robert Townsend called Hollywood Shuffle (1987). Townsend plays Bobby Taylor, a young black actor who dreams of making a name for himself in Hollywood, despite the naysayers at his job and in his own family. However, during the audition process for terribly written a movie, he realizes he may have to sacrifice his integrity to work for a white Hollywood that wants him to act like Eddie Murphy, as opposed to just act. Hollywood Shuffle takes a no holds barred look at how stereotypes are still present for black actors in cinema, despite the suggestion that the end of blaxploitation era improved the image of blacks on the big and small screens. I respect that Townsend made this movie practically out of his own pocket, and it woke me up enough to write this piece and ask: where do we go from here?

 

     It's been 21 years since Hollywood Shuffle and black actors are winning Academy Awards and Golden Globes in bigger numbers than ever before; they're also being critically acclaimed for their performances as drug addicts and dealers ("The Wire"). Also, most of the roles available to black actors are in bio-pics about popular musicians and athletes overcoming racism and/or poverty; I feel like I'm watching the same movie over and over again. Another problem is that Hollywood is slow to become color blind in casting blacks in leads for modern day romantic-comedies as if interracial relationships in this country exist in small numbers. And what happened to the intelligent, butt-kicking black action heroes I can only see in "Soul Cinema" DVD collections? As a future filmmaker/actor, I'm hoping I can have a hand in changing this, even if only a little bit. Spike Lee can't do this by himself.