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.

[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  31^st 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.