Today the world is threatened by an extremely serious split between a science that is totally and consciously projected into the future, and a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness. Where is this split most evident? What are its most obvious, its most sensitive, let us even say its most painful, areas?
Consider the Renaissance man, his sense of joy, his fullness, his multifarious activities. Those were men of great magnitude, skillful craftsmen and at the same time artistically creative, capable of recognizing their own sense of dignity, their own sense of importance as human beings: the Ptolemaic fullness of man. Then man discovered that his world was Copernican, an extremely limited world in an unknown universe.
And today a new man is being born, fraught with all the fears, terrors and stammerings that are associated with a period of gestation. And what is even more serious, this new man immediately finds himself burdened with a heavy baggage of emotional traits which cannot exactly be called old and outmoded, but rather unsuited and inadequate. They condition us without offering us any help, they create problems without suggesting any possible solutions. And yet it seems that man will not rid himself of this baggage. He reacts, he loves, he hates, he suffers under the sway of moral forces and myths which today, when we are at the threshold of reaching the moon, should not be the same as those that prevailed in Homeric times, but nevertheless are.
Man is quick to rid himself of his technological and scientific mistakes and misconceptions. Indeed, science has never been more humble and less dogmatic than it is today. Whereas our moral attitudes are governed by an absolute sense of stultification. In recent years, we have examined those moral attitudes very carefully, we have dissected them and analyzed them to the point of exhaustion. We have been capable of all this, but we have not been capable of finding new ones. We have not been capable of making any headway whatsoever toward solving the problem of this ever-increasing split between the moral and the scientific man, a split which is becoming more and more serious, and more and more accentuated.
Naturally, I don’t care to, nor can I, resolve it myself; I am not a moralist, and my film is neither a denunciation nor a sermon. It is a story told through images whereby, I hope, it may be possible to perceive not the birth of a mistaken attitude but the manner in which attitudes and dealings are misunderstood today. Because, I repeat, the present moral standards we live by, these myths, these conventions are old and obsolete. And we all know they are, yet we honor them. Why? The conclusion reached by the protagonists in my film is not one of sentimentality. If anything, what they finally arrive at is a sense of pity for each other. You might say that this too is nothing new. But what else is left if we do not at least succeed in achieving this? Why do you think eroticism is so prevalent today in our literature, our theatrical shows, and elsewhere? It is a symptom of the emotional sickness of our time. But this preoccupation with eroticism would not become obsessive if Eros were healthy, that is, if it were kept within human proportions. But Eros is sick; man is uneasy, something is bothering him. And whenever something bothers him, man reacts, but he reacts badly, only on erotic impulse, and he is unhappy.
The tragedy in L’Avventura stems directly from an erotic impulse of this type: unhappy, miserable, futile. To be critically aware of the vulgarity and the futility of such an overwhelming erotic impulse, as is the case with the protagonist in L’Avventura, is not enough or serves no purpose. And here we witness the crumbling of a myth, which proclaims it is enough for us to know, to be critically conscious of ourselves, to analyze ourselves, in all our complexities and in every facet of our personality. The fact that matters is that such an examination is not enough. It is only a preliminary step. Every day, every emotional encounter gives rise to a new adventure. For even though we know that the ancient codes of morality are decrepit and no longer tenable, we persist, with a sense of perversity that I would only ironically define as pathetic, in remaining loyal to them. Thus, the moral man who has no fear of the scientific unknown is today afraid of the moral unknown. Starting out from this point of fear and frustration, his adventure can only end in a stalemate.
In a very familiar scene and situation the wooden Steven Segal explains to his unwilling sidekick that his main concern in his attempts at freeing the train from terrorists is the hostages’ safety and wellbeing. However, Segal’s initial act of defiance (he fails to surrender) causes the brutal death of three chefs (who appear to be his friends). Segal’s reckless and violent individualism causes three innocent lives – something his attempt tried to save – to be wasted brutally. One could easily argue that the utility (forthcoming happiness) which arises out of his action is eventually beneficial because it enables him to stop the entire train – it robs the terrorist of the deadly weapon. However, it is also as easily argued that Segal’s brand of reckless egoism and self-survival causes the destruction of innocent lives at a comparable rate. The very same expertise and egoism which Segal’s character displays can also be found in his antithesis “Travis Dane”. Dane is a former weapons designer whose technology was utilized by the American Government – without the credit being given to Dane. Although Dane is clearly “evil” in his goal to be rich and powerful – breaking all manner of invisible codes of conduct – his actions display the same reckless individualism as Segal. Both characters use whatever means possible to achieve their end, and the only difference being that at the end of the film Segal wins. This contradiction is common in the action genre however it is often overlooked that both good and evil employ an ethics of “anything goes” because of the cathartic effect of violence metered out upon the evil characters. The ethical stance found within this film and the traditional action genre is interesting and seems to employ a Utilitarian understanding of right and wrong. I will write further upon this issue in the coming year.
The rhizome is a philosophical concept advanced by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. A rhizome is a form of plant-life which spreads, such as mushroom or crabgrass, without a central root, spot of origination or logical pattern. This symbol of rootlessness is used by Deleuze and Guattari because it opposes the traditional, rational and logical approach to knowledge. Often the traditional (logical) approach to knowledge is represented as growing from roots – like a tree does.[1]Deleuze and Guattari explain that the rhizome ‘has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills’.[2] The rhizome is a ’self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end’.[3]The rhizome ‘brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states’.[4] As a concept the rhizome is a rejection of traditional genealogy. It is the interplay between rival sign systems in the production of new ‘variation[s], expansion[s], conquest[s], [and] offshoots’.[5]The rhizome is a rejection of the assumptions and history of the dominant class. Deleuze and Guattari argue that this minor-oriented – rather than dominant-oriented – philosophical approach is achieved by ’surveying, mapping’ those lost or dominated cultures, classes, sexes and races.[6] However, the rhizome isn’t an anthropological study of culture, but rather a living organic continuous effort to free the forces that have been constrained – and in relation to literature, a challenge to the assumed literary canon. Tony Harrison’s poetry could be argued to survey and maps this effect while simultaneously challenging the literary establishment, mixing the form of poetry with the voice of the working-class.
In the poem ‘Them & [uz]‘ Harrison recalls the attitude his teachers had to his accent. The teacher tells Harrison ‘Can’t have our glorious heritage done to death/… We say [Λs] not [uz], T. W.!’.[7] Consigned to the Drunken Porter role in Macbeth the teacher explains ‘Poetry’s the speech of kings. You’re one of those/ Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: Prose!’.[8] Harrison’s accent relegates him to the comic role. In reaction to being told that his accent relegates him to prose and comic roles, Harrison writes ‘So right, yer buggers, then! We’ll occupy/ your lousy leasehold Poetry/… I’m Tony Harrison no longer you!’.[9]Leasehold is a form of property ownership which is temporary: the institution of school only has a tentative grip on poetry – it is as much Harrisons as it is the teachers. As Harrison notes ‘Wordsworth’s matter/water are full rhymes’.[10] The Oxford-English pronouncement of poetry is only one variation: Oxford-English is as much a socio-economic variation of speech as is Yorkshire-English. Harrison also highlights Wordsworth’s northern accent, something lost in the school’s canonization of poetry. Harrison’s poetry exposes the “white-washing” of dialect and literature’s history by the centralized institution of school. As Rosemary Burton notes:
Harrison fraternised with the enemy, schooled himself in the use of their armoury and, equipped with an education, several languages, and a hard-earned facility for the composition of verse, he plotted revenge on his teachers and the class system which had made his parents and people like them feel inadequate.[11]
Formal education, poetry, the arts have not often been tools accessible to the working-class but the scholarship boy offers a link between the two worlds. Harrison occupies poetry, utilizing his formal education to expose the destructive element of education, to survey, map the feelings, trials and life of the educated and not-so educated working-class.
The use of the sonnet is important in Harrison’s assault on the assumptions of the Oxford-English institutions. As Ken Worpole notes, the sonnet ‘is a literary form derived from the importance of the voice’ and the rhythm of speech.[12]In his sonnets Harrison has combined the traditional literary form with his accent to produce a radical critique of education and class. This ability to write and speak is important, as Harrison notes in ‘National Trust’ ‘The dumb go down in history and disappear/… the tongueless man gets his land took.’.[13]It is vital to the continued survival of minor communities that they retain their ability to speak, and speak in their own language and with their own accent. Harrison’s use of poetry to undermine Oxford-English is rhizomic thinking in its very essence. By combining the sonnet – a symbol of education – with his northern accent and turns of phrase Harrison undermines the centralized, dominant accent of Oxford-English. Harrison combines the canonical literary form of the sonnet with the speech and accent of his minority culture. This rhizomic, nomadic thinking undercuts and undermines the rooted validity and assumed superiority of Oxford-English. Harrison’s accent is a tool of poetry and poetry a tool of expression of his class-origins. At the end of the poem ‘V’ Harrison explains that if the reader wishes to understand his poetry they should read the epitaph planned:
Beneath your feet’s a poet, then a pit/ Poetry supporter, if you’re here to find how poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT/ find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look behind…[14]
To understand the working-class poet, or working class, one has to locate the community and their occupations – and still look further. The working-class are defined by their work – even though at times employment has been scarce – but they are not solely defined by their employment. To understand Harrison’s poetry, and the effect of education of people similar to him, one must look at the communities he grew up in and the culture that fostered him. This can only be achieved by the existence of minor-literature – such as Harrison’s poetry. As the minor-poet Fred Hurst wrote, in full Yorkshire dialect:
Mills cloised, pits cloised, weer wo t’ jobs ta be fahnd?/ Aht o’ t’ industrial muck an’ sweeaht, dialect is seen ta remain,/ Nah t’ Minister states, “From usin’ dialect we must refrain.”/ ‘Victorian businesses built fortunes on ahr Faathers’ back,/Keep talkin’ dialect, we must nivver loise t’ knack.’.[15]
Education is a poisoned chalice for the working class but it offers the space, and the tools, with which to “nivver loise t’ knack” of conversing, mapping and expanding their dialect, their own minor-history. Harrison’s poetry is a perfect example of rhizomic art.
[1] An indicator of this is Saussure’s utilization of the sign of tree in his explanation of his structural linguistic system.
[2] Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, ‘Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia’, in Leitch, Cain, Finke et al (ed), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, London: W W Norton & Company Inc, (2001), pp. 1601-1609, p. 1605.
[3] Deleuze and Guattari, pp. 1605-1606.
[4] Deleuze and Guattari, p. 1605.
[5] Deleuze and Guattari, p. 1605.
[6] Deleuze and Guattari, p. 1603
[7] Tony Harrison, ‘Them & [uz]‘, in Tony Harrison Selected Poems (second edition), London: Penguin Books, (1987), pp. 1220123, p. 122.
[8] Harrison, ‘Them & [uz]‘, p. 122.
[9] Harrison, ‘Them & [uz]‘, p. 123.
[10] Harrison, ‘Them & [uz]‘, p. 123.
[11] Rosemary Burton, ‘Tony Harrison: An Introduction’, in Neil Astley (ed), Tony Harrison, Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, (1991), pp. 14-31, p. 18.
[12] Worpole, ‘Scholarship Boy’, p. 69.
[13] Tony Harrison, ‘National Trust’, in Tony Harrison: Selected Poems (second edition), London: Penguin Books, (1987), p. 121, p. 121.
[14] Tony Harrison, ‘V’, in Tony Harrison Selected Poems (second edition), London: Penguin Books, (1987), pp. 239-249, p. 249.
[15] Fred Hirst, ‘Wahrk An’ Words’, Poetry of Fred Hirst, [Accessed 31st May 2009] http://www.yorkshire-dialect.org/authors/fred_hirst_u_z.htm#wot_abaht_termorrer
As Andrew alluded to in his previous post concerning this Journal’s restructuring, certain areas will be focused upon to enable greater depths of evaluation and investigation. Throughout the year both Andrew and I (Vedette) will continue to collaborate (restart) our exploration of the discourse of Hollywood. The first exploration of Hollywood is here: Discourse Ideology Myth: Hollywood’s Geographical Location. We will also start a new study into the function of the detective in TV and Film. These articles will be called ‘Screening the Detective: The Detective Function’. We will explore the representation, role and social function of the detective figure. This survey will encompass amateurs (such as Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote), private detectives (Sam Spade) and Policemen (Inspector Morse). This study will run through the next year.
In the coming next year this journal will continue to survey all manner of topics, genres and issues. However, a slight restructure of this journal will be made so that it will concentrate more fully on certain specific areas of interest. These cycles of interest will be for a set period of time and will alternate. Over the next year the main genre of interest will be Film Noir – specifically the representation of women. Another issue which will be at the heart of this journal, up until the New Year, is Post-colonialism and Race.
Alongside these focuses the journal will continue to produce a wide array of articles, such as the exploration of basic film techniques and their application in film. Last year’s (unofficial) focus Science Fiction will also be continued. The journal will also be restructured so that articles will be published weekly on Tuesdays (This allows the journal to have a proper structure and deadline for article completion).
I am confident that the changes will be positive and allow for the fermentation and publication of excellent articles which explore every aspect of film and culture.
This is a brilliant excerpt from Ed Guerrero’s Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. If you are interesting in the representation of race, or Hollywood in general, I highly recommend this book. This excerpt surveys the representation of race in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967):
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’s narrative epitomizes the standard Hollywood “problem picture” formula, rendered in the production values of the slick 1940s, big-studio style associated with its principal white stars, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Problem pictures usually present the audience with a communal “problem” completely stripped of its social or political context, reduced to a conflict between individuals, sentimentalized and happily resolved at the picture’s end. Ultimately aimed at box-office profits by shaping films into standardized consumer products, this narrative formula was distilled from a long-established strategy of ideological containment that allowed Hollywood to stay current, keeping abreast of the contemporary social and political climate and simultaneously upholding the status quo and containing all insurgent political impulses. By introducing topical political issues into stable, easily recognized and consumed genres, narratives, and plot structures, Hollywood’s conservative ideology [remains un-] challenged.
…The specifics of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’s plot are those of a gifted and famous thirty-seven-year-old black doctor, head of the World Health Organization, who falls in love with the twenty-three-year-old daughter of millionaire white liberals… The integrated couple returns to San Francisco from a romantic interlude in Hawaii to confront the girl’s parents with an untimatum: either consent to the marriage by nightfall or the girl will be permanently alienated from her parents, and the doctor, the ebony saint that Poitier always portrays, out of personal dignity will break off the relationship and leave.
…By making the black man an eminently qualified and desirable suitor at the top of a professional class to which only the smallest minority of blacks could possibly belong, and by locating the narrative in the exclusive domain of the wealthiest stratum of white society, the film reduces the social dimensions of racial conflict to that of mere contrasts of skin colour while completely avoiding the historical, cultural, and economic legacy of what it means to be black in America. So, because Poitier portrays a black who diligently strives to be white, and because there is no representation whatsoever of the black world in the film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? makes no connection with the contemporaneous struggle raging on a grand social and political scale outside the theatre. What conflict there is in the film is transposed from race into a conflict between black generations, reflective of the surrounding “generation gap”, as Poitier tells his father that he will not submit to the self-limiting boundaries of his father’s generation. In a reversed, contrasting gesture that frames the dominant white perspective as the solution to the race problem, Spencer Tracy works out his conflict with his daughter and lapses into platitudes about love conquering all, thus leading the film to a standard sentimental, romantic conclusion. By limiting the range of emotional experiences to simple expression of sentiment worked out by the use of predictable narrative conventions, Hollywood restricted its political vision and masked its conservative assumptions about race, passing them off as consensus. This narrative formula has served the studios well beyond this specific film, which amounted to Hollywood’s last attempt to explore integrationist theme within the frame of its status quo politics.(1.)
1. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, (1993), pp. 76-78.
In this article I will explore Hugh Ruppersberg’s article ‘The Alien Messiah’ (written in 1987) which explores the uses of a messiah figure in science fiction. Ruppersberg asserts that science fiction reflects contemporary fears that ‘civilization has run amok and is about to destroy itself’.(1.) An important contemporary fear is the concern over the increased mechanization of society and the alienation of the individual in the modern world. Ruppersberg notes that in many science fiction films:
the alien messiah serves to resolve these problems, at least imaginatively, to replace despair with hope and purpose, to provide resolution in a world where solution seems impossible.(2.)
The alien messiah figure is ‘an overtly or covertly religious personage, whose numinous, supra-human qualities offer solace and inspiration to a humanity threatened by technology and the banality of modern life’.(3.) According to Ruppersberg the alien messiah has two major functions or stages in a film’s narrative. The first is to establish or highlight the ‘vulnerability and weakness of the human characters’.(4.) Ruppersberg cites The Last Starfighter (1984), Cocoon (1985), E.T. (1982) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as prime examples of human characters suffering from a weakness or problem beyond their apparent ability to solve (old age, a trivial and meaningless existence, a boy upset over his parents’ collapsed marriage etc.). The second major narrative stage is the resolution of the problems and weaknesses of the human characters (through the alien’s engagement with the humans). In the films Ruppersberg cites trivial lives are made important, the old are granted immortality and everlasting friendship is gained.
Ruppersberg notes that the alien messiah figure is also not always non-human. In The Terminator (1984) the messiah is a human time-traveller sent back in time to stop the termination of humanity’s last hope. The messiah is still alien however, because he hails from a different time zone – and therefore holds vital knowledge which will eventually secure the safety of Sarah Connor. Whether the messiah figure is human, robotic or other is unimportant, the essential element, according to Ruppersberg, is that the figure is portrayed as being from a technologically, and often morally, advanced and alternative society. Ruppersberg notes that this essential element to the messiah figure comes with the implicit assumption ‘that advanced technology breeds not only miraculous wonders but moral redemption as well’.(5.) This is not to say that technology never aids immorality, however the corruption and immorality tends to be just as often in the heart of man, rather than an explicit side-affect of technology. This is seen in WarGames (1983), it is not really the super-computer who is immoral or corrupt, it only calculates the cost of strategic moves, it is humanity’s flaws and inability to accept other’s ideological and social differences that corrupts technology. Even in The Terminator you could argue that the killing machines are a human produced inhuman, a consequence of the drive for efficiency and profit.
Ruppersberg uses Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an example of the messianic nature of technologically advanced beings. Ruppersberg notes that the ‘aliens are exalted by their own technological sophistication’ and that ‘Technology has redeemed them from original sin, made them godlike, sent them to us with the best of intentions’.(6.) The aliens technological superiority makes them both morally superior. Their messianic function is also illustrated in the films conclusion when they carry up Roy Neary who attempted to prove their existence. Ruppersberg explains that the aliens rescue Roy Neary because he is ’searching for meaning, for a faith, which the aliens provide by carrying him aloft’.(7.) Roy Neary’s belief in what he witnessed, which continues in the face of disbelief and scepticism, is rewarded with ascension to the heavens. This is evidently a direct allusion to Christianity and religion in general.
Ruppersberg also highlights the religious allusions in E.T. Ruppersberg notes E.T.:
acts out his messianic role by relieving the boy’s confusion and giving him a sense of worth. He does this through friendship more than anything else. He also heals wounds, revivifies dead flowers, and levitates fruit and bicycles.(8.)
The allusion to the miracles of Jesus is clear; the alien in E.T. is imbued with the same messianic ability in the film’s narrative. The consequence of the alien’s messianic role, and the interpretation Ruppersberg agrees with, is that it communicates that nothing on earth is able to provide the boy with hope and a meaning in his life and that it is only faith in something otherworldly which produces meaning and hope.
The alien messiah is not always without its darker side. In The Day the Earth Stood Still Ruppersberg notes:
the robot Gort serves as a policemen to the people who created it. He uses his ultimate power to maintain peace, law, and order, his owner assures us, and to destroy those who turn to violence. Yet we are also told that he is capable of destroying the Earth, which he would not hesitate to do if he found it necessary.(9.)
Obviously the robot is intended as a positive force, but the reality of an earth without violence would be remote even in a technologically advanced world – though the film’s assumption is that technology brings reason and peace – and therefore the earth would be under threat. (There is also the possibility that the robot Gort realizes that all organic-organisms are prone to violence and destroy everything but the mechanical.)
Ruppersberg’s survey and exploration of the alien messiah leads him to the position that those films and filmmakers he explored have a defeatist attitude, an ‘inadequacy and insecurity and a parallel fatalistic certainty that the problems of our contemporary world are insurmountable’.(10.) Ruppersberg continues that the alien messiah and the films he explored ’suggest that the only satisfactory way of addressing the world’s problems is imaginative appeal to super-human agencies’.(11.) Ruppersberg believes the films, which utilize the alien messiah, communicate that humanity is impotent and unable, without the help of higher-beings, to solve their own problems. Ruppersberg concludes by stating that the films:
reflect reactionary, defeatist attitudes in their makers… If they do not reject science and technology, they at least ignore it. If they regard the future with hope and wonder, they simultaneously discourage the hope that humankind will be more capable in the future of handling the problems that confront it today. Entertaining as they are, these films are escapist fantasies grounded in the patterns of the past instead of the possibilities of the future.(12.)
To Ruppersberg, these films cite faith in the metaphysical as the only refuge from the alienating force of capitalism and modernity. Ruppersberg sees this as an attitude replicating reactionary, pre-modern attitudes (accept your lot and you’ll be rewarded after death). Ruppersberg is also arguing that a more positive message would be that it is within humanity’s grasp – if they do x, y or z – to improve and make the world better (without the aid of extraterrestrial deities). Ruppersberg asserts that this would be more in-line with what science fiction should be; films based on the possibilities of the future.
Ruppersberg’s article is interesting and thorough in his exploration of the alien messiah, however he slightly underestimates the prevalence of the messiah figure in Hollywood and western literature. Sometimes sought after [The Magnificent Seven (1960)] or stumbling into the action [Die Hard (1988)] the messiah figure appears in many genres. They facilitate interesting, exciting and action-packed narratives [the antithesis of the messiah-figure narrative can be found in the excellent Umberto D (1952)]. The messiah figure in traditional action films reaffirm humanity’s ability to solve its own problems – and cause them – which appears to be converse to the use of the messiah figure in science fiction. Ruppersberg’s article uncovers this – although there is no mention of the messiah figure in other films than those of the science fiction and biblical genre – and illustrates that a certain mood of despondency, surrounding humanity’s ability to solve their own problems, exists in science fiction films which utilize the messiah figure [whether one agrees with Ruppersberg's conclusion is another matter.] Ruppersberg’s article is important in its exploration of the science fiction genre.
1. Hugh Ruppersberg, ‘The Alien Messiah’, in Annette Kuhn (ed), Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, London: Verso, (1990), pp. 32-38, p. 32.
2. p. 32.
3. pp. 32-33.
4. p. 33.
5. p. 35.
6. p. 35.
7. p. 35.
8. pp. 35-36.
9. p. 36.
10. p. 37.
11. p. 37.
12. p. 37.
Although a little off the normal beaten track of this journal I thought that this was funny. The article starts:
Neither the magic of Harry Potter nor the combined star power of Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler was enough to keep a crew of wise-cracking guinea pigs from scurrying to the top of the box office this weekend.
and here is the rest of the peice. http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/07/26/g-force-box-office/. It seems that, to kids, there’s nothing better than guinea pigs who save the world.
A mixture of work, family and other issues have regrettably slowed down this journals productivity however in the next few days that should be rectified with publishing of several new articles.
Writing in 1947 to the producer of Double Indemnity (1944) – which Raymond Chandler co-wrote – Chandler asserts his belief that film noir (a term coined after this letter, Chandler uses the vague term “mystery story”) is a style or stylistic mood rather than a form of film or literature based on common narrative elements. Film noir is a genre of film whose essential features are predominantly visual and stylistic. Chandler writes:
Back in 1943 when we were writing Double Indemnity you told me that an effective motion picture could not be made of a detective or mystery story for the reason that the high point is the revelation of the murderer and that only happens in the last minute of the picture. Events proved you wrong, for almost immediately the mystery trend started, [referring to film noir] and there is no question but that Double Indemnity started it… The thing that made the mystery effective on the screen already existed on paper, but you somehow did not realize just where the values lay. It is implicit in my theory of mystery theory writing that the mystery and the solution of the mystery are only what I call “the olive in the martini”, and the really good mystery is one you would read even if you knew somebody had torn out the last chapter. (1.)
1. Raymond Chandler in Alain Silver and James Ursini, Film Noir Reader 2, New York: First Limelight Editions, (1999), p. 4.
In this article I will explore Sylvia Harvey’s ‘Women’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’. Harvey believes that film noir is an ‘echo chamber’ which ‘captures and magnifies’ the shift in the foundations of the West. (1.) Harvey asserts:
film noir offers us again and again examples of abnormal or monstrous behaviour, which defy the patterns established for human social interaction, and which hint at a series of radical and irresolvable contradictions buried deep within the total system of economic and social interactions that constitute the known world. (2.)
Harvey is arguing that film noir mirrors the gender issues suppressed by western society. Film noir reproduces sites of tension in exaggerated terms. The faultline cracks, that started to appear along gender issues post-WWI and WWII and were covered deep within normal social interactions, are exposed and examined in film noir. Harvey concedes that the narrative and story structure of film noir is explicitly repressive – they often end with rule-breakers dead or imprisoned – but argues that the visual style of film noir indicates an irrepressible element of contradiction and in relation to the family, the representation of the domestic sphere, film noir’s ‘portrayal of the family… suggest[s] the beginnings of an attack on the dominant social values normally expressed’ through film and literature. (3.)
To Harvey, film noir’s portrayal of the domestic sphere mirrors an underlying sense of decay and complication in the validity of traditional gender roles. Harvey explains:
It is the representation of the institution of the family, which in so many films serves as the mechanism whereby desire is fulfilled, or at least ideological equilibrium established, that in film noir serves as the vehicle for the expression of frustration. (4.)
In many classic Hollywood films the domestic sphere is a realm of desire fulfilment – where the hero gets the girl, marriage etc. – or a place within which stability is found – as in The FBI Story (1959) where John Michael Hardesty’s domestic sphere becomes a bedrock of support – however in film noir this traditional sphere of desire fulfilment and stability is often the site of tension, lust and murder. Harvey asserts that this alternative representation of the family sphere is ‘an attack on the dominant social values normally expressed through the representation of the family’. (5.)
Harvey continues that, in classic Hollywood films, the family commonly entails a ‘metamorphosis’, a transference of a man to a father and a woman to wife. (6.) To Harvey ‘this magic circle of transformation is broken in film noir’. (7.) In film noir, family relations are represented as ‘broken, perverted, peripheral or impossible’ rather than as life-affirming, uniting and spiritually enriching. (8.) Harvey identities the film Mildred Pierce (1945) as a good example of the ‘disruption and displacement of the values of family life’. (9.) Mildred Pierce is a woman of the world and business and lastly a mother. Harvey argues that Mildred Pierce coincided with:
the rise and fall of nationalistic ideologies generated by the period of total war. It may be argued that the ideology of national unity which was characteristic of the war period, and which tended to gloss over and conceal class divisions, began to falter and decay, to lose its credibility, once the war was over. (10.)
Harvey is explaining that the feeling of unity over having a common goal and common enemy had dissipated and old class and gender issues reappeared and found expression in film noirs such as Mildred Pierce.
To Harvey the domestic sphere, often a site of emotional support and unity, is represented as corrupted in film noir. Harvey cites a recurring theme of film noir: the concern ‘with the loss of those satisfactions normally obtained through the possession of wife and presence of a family’. (11.) In Double Indemnity (1944) the Dietrichson home is poisoned, all three family members are at each others throats. The husband, named only Mr. Dietrichson, ignores his second-wife physically [symbolically on crutches to indicate his inability to engage physically with his wife], the daughter, Lola, fights with her father over the choice of her lover and the second-wife, the femme fatal Phyllis Dietrichson, invites insurance salesman Walter Neff into her home in order to kill Mr. Dietrichson for money. Double Indemnity seems indicative of the loss of satisfaction that the possession of a wife family affords the husband in film noir.
Harvey also asserts that the traditional desire fulfilment function of women is inverted in film noir. Although women are still desired, the satisfaction is either short-lived or non-existent. In Double Indemnity Walter Neff kills for Phyllis but neither gets her or survives unpunished for his efforts. In Murder, My Sweet (1944) when Moose finally tracks down, with the help of Marlowe, the woman he remembers is not the idol of love and compassion but a femme fatal who Moose dies rather cheaply for. Moose’s journey for his past-love, his symbol of desire fulfilment, is met with death as is Neff’s journey in Double Indemnity. Harvey asserts ‘the ideological safety value device that operates in the offering of women as sexual commodities, breaks down in probably most of these films, because the woman are not, finally, possessed’. (12.)
Harvey concludes the essay by arguing that:
The absence or disfigurement of the family [in film noir] both calls attention to its own lack and of its own deformity, and may be seen to encourage the consideration of alternative institutions for the reproduction of social life. (13.)
Harvey believes that the treatment of the family in film noir highlights the issues and contradictions inherent in the domestic sphere. Harvey sees film noirs’ treatment of family as encouraging and enabling contemplation of alternative approaches to the issue of family and the domestic sphere. Harvey goes on to assert ‘despite the ritual punishment of acts of transgression, the vitality with which these acts are endowed produces an excess of meaning which cannot finally be contained’. (14.) Although many film noir narratives end with the destruction of the femme fatal, and often the man who sought her company, Harvey believes that the acts of transgression cannot be suppressed totally and that film noir remains subversive in its portrayal of family and the domestic sphere.
Harvey’s short essay argues that film noirs’ representation of the family and domestic sphere is converse to traditional representations of family – which posit the domestic sphere as a stabilising force and family as a mechanism where desires are satisfied. Harvey asserts that this representation highlights the issues and contradictions inherent in the domestic sphere as currently imagined. According to Harvey, the repressive conclusion to many film noir narratives doesn’t inhibit this subversive portrayal of the domestic sphere. Harvey’s essay does accurately describe certain traits of film noir however, the essay is far from conclusive. There are two major roles of women in film noir, the first being the striking femme fatal. The second being the redeemer, the woman who offers a chance at domesticity, love, union and a happy[ier] resolution. This secondary trait is much less overt but still important and a classic example of the redeemer role can be found in Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950). Harvey’s scant exploration of the mise-en-scene of film noir is also a strong critique because film noir is a visually striking genre (and I assert strongly that it is a genre) and cinema as a whole is an art form that confers meaning as much through its composition of light and shape than narrative event or dialogue. Harvey also seems to over-estimate the subversive nature of film noir as the representation appears to be that trespassing against traditional gender roles and expectations should and will be met with a violent and destructive end for all parties involved. In fact film noir is certainly interesting as a genre because it follows the French-European narrative structure – and not the Classic Hollywood structure – whereby people are determined by, and stuck within, their boundaries and limitations [I will explore this issue further at a later date].
1. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’, in E Ann Kaplan (ed.), Women in Film Noir, London: BFI, (1980), pp. 22-33, p. 22.
2. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 22.
3. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 23.
4. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 23.
5. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 23.
6. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.
7. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.
8. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.
9. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.
10. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.
11. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 27.
12. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 27.
13. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 33.
14. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 33.
Vladimir Kozlinsky’s Then and Now was a window poster produced in 1920. The poster was produced post-Russian revolution and is a perfect example of early socialist propaganda art. Lenin asserted, writing about Party-Literature and art, that:
Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working-class. (1.)
Lenin is arguing that art must be part of the revolution, and must convey the feeling and aims of the mechanism of revolution. Lenin explains ‘Literature [and art] must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work’. (2.) Lenin believes that art should become the overt tool of the revolution and central party.
Kozlinsky’s artwork is a component of the party with its attempt to illustrate the differences between pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. Kozlinksy creates this interesting dialectic by producing two opposing scenes of then and now. In the left-hand frame three large figures dominate the scene. The medals they are wearing indicate that they are apart of the old-guard. Their size dominates the scene and the stick-like figures below (which look like Lowry’s representations of workers). The workers are also faceless; they are completely dominated by the symbols of the old Imperial system of government.
In the right-hand scene, the “now”, the large singular figures have disappeared and been replaced by workers of the Social-Democratic Party marching in full colours. The faces of the workers are plainly seen and seem to be chanting or singing songs. The upbeat, strong vision of the crowd is a marked difference to the down-trodden appearance of the workers in the first scene. The common man is invigorated, empowered by the revolution. The introduction of a prior scene ensures the difference between then and now is clearly indicated ensuring Kozlinsky’s work communicates its political message clearly and distinctly. Kozlinsky’s work is an interesting and distinct example of overtly political art – in line with Lenin’s assertion that all art must serve the party.
1. Vladimir Llyich Lenin, ‘Party Organization and Party Literature’ in Maynard Soloman (ed.), Marxism and Art, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, (1979), pp.179-183, p. 180.
2. Vladimir Llyich Lenin, ‘Party Organization and Party Literature’, p. 180.
Commonly the construction of a compelling narrative utilizes a “signposting” device in order to draw-in or hook the audience. One signposting technique entails offering a glimpse of the difficulties a character will encounter in their forthcoming narrative. In French Connection II (1975), “Popeye” Doyle’s fish out of water status is alluded to in the first few scenes after his arrival in Marseilles. As this is a sequel, and in its narrative style character-driven rather than action-driven, the foregrounding of the ensuring difficulties overtly allude to the first film’s story. On the streets of New York, Doyle understands the language, culture and customs of the people he encountered on the streets. However, in Marseilles he doesn’t speak the language, nor understand the way things are done.
In French Connection (1971) Doyle, shaking a club down, drags a suspect violently through the bar into the toilets. The suspect is in fact an undercover cop and the display performed to ensure the verisimilitude of the undercover cop’s cover. This elaborate scene indicates the knowledge and savvy Doyle, and his fellow agents, have in breaching the inner-ring of criminal associations. This scene, and Doyle’s general street smarts, is alluded to in French Connection IIbut inverted to communicate that Doyle is currently out of his depth and, in the upcoming narrative, will have to learn fast to adapt to the surrounding culture – So that he can succeed in his mission in bringing back Alain Charnier (Frog One) to American shores and American justice.
The most important early contrasting scene, which alludes to both Doyle’s former street smarts and current cultural alienation, comes after an explosion. The suspect, who easily evades the French police, is chased after frantically by Doyle. The foot chase ends with Doyle catching up to the suspect and attempting to wrestle him to the ground. However, the suspect, and the reason why the French police made no real effort to apprehend him, is a undercover police officer. Doyle’s chase exposes the undercover police officer to a criminal boss and the undercover police officer is killed. This scene comes very close to the beginning, similar to the contrasting one in French Connection, and is utilized to indicate how Doyle is currently out of his depth, it also facilitates and signposts the forthcoming narratives direction – that of Doyle’s growth and adaptation to Marseilles’ cultural climate in order to finally bring down Charnier.
A.R. Duckworth
Vedette Bianciotti