Movies & TV
Burnout Daze - Analyzing Cult Classics
During my Master's studies, I organized a cult movie night at the university. For the most part, the event was not supported by students or faculty. I chose cult classics of the 80s and 90s, but the millennials who profess to adore and admire the culture of that era proved that they are dishonest in those claims. I contemplated showing Harry Potter or Akira to boost the numbers, but didn't want to sell out by pandering to unsophisticated turdlings. I couldn't do much about the poor turnout for the screenings, but I did use the double bills as a scholarly opportunity to find a theoretical point to make about why the films might be connected. Here are some of my conclusions.
Henenlotter's Frankenhooker
Like Yourself...
Femme Fatales are traditionally thought of as women who snare the man... to destructive ends for him. Oscar Wilde's play Salome presents a titular femme fatale demanding the head of her mark. In Jungian psychoanalysis, the femme fatale (although conceived of in heteronormative terms) is a vision of the female conjured in the mind of the man. Perhaps, such ideas can help us to understand both Frank Henenlotter's Frankenhooker and Stuart Gordon's King of the Ants, given that the predominant theme of both films is that a man decapitates himself (in effect) as offering for the femme and as tribute to his obsession for her.
Donald Richie once commented on his multiple viewings of Bresson's Au Hazard Balthazar as being indicative of a deep-seated desire within all of us, where "you go to a city where you like yourself, and maybe, you go to a movie where you like yourself." I have to wonder then, is the femme fatale an expression of male narcissism?...
Donald Richie once commented on his multiple viewings of Bresson's Au Hazard Balthazar as being indicative of a deep-seated desire within all of us, where "you go to a city where you like yourself, and maybe, you go to a movie where you like yourself." I have to wonder then, is the femme fatale an expression of male narcissism?...
Gordon's King of the Ants
Lynch's Wild at Heart
Let's Make a Deal...
In which ways could David Lynch's Wild at Heart and Martin Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead be connected? It isn't obvious as one film is highly linear and the other clearly episodic in narrative structure. Both films deal with the haunting of death... a powerful thread for linkage between the texts. They also feature the enigmatic Nicolas Cage! Perhaps a productive approach to connecting these two films is through the tale of Faust. Without explicating my reasons for this choice, I will add that Lynch's story seems to connect more clearly to the Goethe version of the Faustian tale, while the Scorsese/Schrader story may connect better with the 1926 Murnau cinematic version of the tale. For me, the Wizard of Oz leitmotif in Wild at Heart is a red herring for analysis of the film text as it seems to be inserted in a highly subjective manner, related to Dern's character Lula. Leitmotifs in film as red herrings for textual analysis begs many questions regarding the intentional fallacy and auteurist theory. Perhaps, textual leitmotifs create closed hermeneutics - the range of interpretation is controlled through letimotifs as the author constructs preferred 'readings' by guiding viewers through purposeful encoded meaning. What becomes of Umberto Eco's 'aberrant decoding' in light of this consideration regarding leitmotifs, I wonder?...
Scorsese's Bringing out the Dead
Jones's Life of Brian
Surly Eel... Fishy, Fishy Fishy...
It isn't easy to describe the sheer silliness of Monty Python as a comedy troupe and as a cultural phenomenon. It is interesting to note their trajectory as entertainers has hurtled them through much of the annals of postmodernism. Postmodernist thinkers, such as Fredric Jameson, have posited an apt descriptor for the era - amnesiac. Cultural and technological amnesia is a symptom of the postmodern subject - one who is unable to avow their progression (and thus their past) within their own present experience. Something about this unhinging and splintering of time plays well for an understanding of surrealism. Monty Python reveal the surrealist experience within the postmodern context. In Life of Brian there is a lack of spatiotemporal fixity which has the seemingly intended effect to turn the stomach in a ticklish way and thus induces laughter. It can be suggested that watching Monty Python films is a 'revolution' of sorts while lacking the clear direction to effect a full turn - there is no revolutionary intentions for the troupe. The revolutions are something between a hiccup and hyperbole. Perhaps, we need to question the validity of Baudrillard and Deleuze's application of the virtual and simulcra to describe the postmodern technologically-based experience of existence. It would seem that through a state of cultural amnesia, there is no precession of things to their referents. There is only a surreal flattening, fragmenting and 'souping' of the things to their referents. For how can we experience a simulacrum of something known previously when we have disavowed our understanding of the past in the first place?...
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Avary's Killing Zoe
Rupture, Obey, Suture...
Roger Avary's Killing Zoe and David Fincher's The Game recall and rehearse Funt's Candid Camera of the 50s and 60s as well as Milgrim's obedience experiments in the behavioural sciences around the same time. In the case of Canadian filmmaker Avary, there is a bitter irony to this point. That being said, both films present protagonists who are obedient to their ultimate detriment (or perhaps salvation, depending on how you value innocence). However, where Funt, Milgram and others were examining social behaviour in light of the Cold War... well, I'll let Tyler Durden from Fight Club cover this one for me:
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
Avary and Fincher's postmodernist ventures into the void of a spiritual Great Depression play on the theme of obedience as a root-cause as well as side-effect of that depression. However, on a stylistic level both films utilize certain techniques to reify this postmodern anxiety - suture. Perhaps these directors reveal something inherent in the human condition - a need for guidance and parenting... and in this respect it is problematic to claim that postmodernism has been about aspirations toward lime-lit despotism even if only to satisfy a neo-liberal consumerism. Suture as a semiotic device in the language of cinema reveals obedience underlying hermeneutic systems - but also a desire to obey. If open hermeneutics of texts were to imply the existence of a rupture (namely between encoded and decoded meaning), then how could suture function at all... how would we be able to identify 'suture' as a stylistic device in cinematic editing? This is to say, if suture operates successfully then interpretation is part of a closed hermeneutic system. Like Edgar Allen Poe may have been hinting at in "The Philosophy of Composition", all texts are read through closed hermeneutic systems. If Umberto Eco were correct about 'aberrant decoding', then surely suture as an editing system would have no force and effect... it would go unnoticed, unable to even be discussed.
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
Avary and Fincher's postmodernist ventures into the void of a spiritual Great Depression play on the theme of obedience as a root-cause as well as side-effect of that depression. However, on a stylistic level both films utilize certain techniques to reify this postmodern anxiety - suture. Perhaps these directors reveal something inherent in the human condition - a need for guidance and parenting... and in this respect it is problematic to claim that postmodernism has been about aspirations toward lime-lit despotism even if only to satisfy a neo-liberal consumerism. Suture as a semiotic device in the language of cinema reveals obedience underlying hermeneutic systems - but also a desire to obey. If open hermeneutics of texts were to imply the existence of a rupture (namely between encoded and decoded meaning), then how could suture function at all... how would we be able to identify 'suture' as a stylistic device in cinematic editing? This is to say, if suture operates successfully then interpretation is part of a closed hermeneutic system. Like Edgar Allen Poe may have been hinting at in "The Philosophy of Composition", all texts are read through closed hermeneutic systems. If Umberto Eco were correct about 'aberrant decoding', then surely suture as an editing system would have no force and effect... it would go unnoticed, unable to even be discussed.
Fincher's The Game
Oedekerk's Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
D for Disabled...
Gordon Chan's Fist of Legend has a profound dynamism in its editing of finely-tuned choreographed fight sequences. CGI is not employed, so the montage is somewhat essential to attract and distract the spectator from particular details of a shot and of a sequence. This kind of engagement with the spectator's expectations, not only creates certain kinesthetic effects but also creates an aura of authenticity. Only a few years later, the industry would be turned on its head. The Wachowski's The Matrix set a new standard for the medium when employing long shot sequence-shots constructed through digital means to capture a continuous stream of combat actions without ever trying to "fool" the eye with cutaway edits. This is ironic indeed. Perhaps, the capabilities of CGI have seduced some filmmakers into unveiling certain "attractions" through the digital medium of film that simply do not engage the audience in the same manner that clever editing with analog film did. It is a question of course, and one for all cinephiles to freely answer. Steve Oedekerk's Kung Pow simply underscores my point. In 2002, this filmmaker was already openly manipulating the digital medium to achieve even more than what The Wachowski's or Lucas had likely imagined. The "parody" should not offend because it seems less targeted against the kung-fu genre as it is openly defiant of changes in the industry as analog was steadily shifting to digital for film production. Also, keep in mind that a few years earlier, Oedekerk had taken a direct jab at Lucas at the same historical moment that Jar Jar Binks graced the silver screen.
Jet Li in Fist of Legend
