Chuck Palahniuk & ‘autobiographical writing’
Beginning a somewhat theoretical essay on the craft of writing with a cliché is
probably highly inappropriate, and yet when I try and think of what to say
about the writing of Chuck Palahniuk all I can think of is that it ‘speaks to
me’ so I guess it will have to do.
When considering famous diarists, or autobiographers, to discuss, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin and Frida Kahlo come to mind of course, but to be perfectly honest their work means very little to me. While Chuck Palahniuk is known as a novelist rather than an autobiographer his non-fictional work, published in a collection entitled Stranger Than Fiction, informs the reader of his personal life, his attitudes towards writing, and indeed the ‘real-life’ inspirations behind his characters.
What interests me about Palahniuk’s work, as I shall further discuss in this essay, is his attitude toward the notion of memory and our incessant need to record it discussed in ‘Now I Remember…’, and the blurring which occurs between fact and fiction. Upon reading ‘Consolation Prizes’ I began to think of fact and fiction as parallels to the old ‘chicken or the egg’ problem.
Palahniuk thinks “it’s hard to call any of my novels fiction,” [2004,xvii] and says of his most renowned novel Fight Club that “parts of [it] have always been true. It’s less novel than an anthology of my friend’s lives” [2004:228]. Not quite novel, not quite autobiography, not quite biography but rather an amalgamation of all three, it’s what I would refer to as autobiographical writing. It is not exclusively about the life of the author, or one specific person he knows, rather it is the sum of stories he has experienced in his life, both directly and through the retelling and collection stories from others. Ironically Palahniuk adamantly insists the actual institution of “fight clubs are make-believe. You can’t go there. I made them up” [2004:228]. Although, since the novel became a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt in 1999, ‘fight clubs’ have allegedly sprouted up all over the world. An interesting case of what was once fiction becoming fact. Palahniuk claims “what’s left is proof we can create reality” [2004:231]. Although this raises an interesting question; does fiction stop being fiction when it is how people begin to live their lives or do people simply live in a fictionalised reality?
Palahniuk acknowledges this bizarre blurred boundary between fact and fiction in ‘real’ life in ‘Consolation Prizes’ where he accounts the surreal experience of how “friends who’d been anarchist waiters with shaved heads were now being served eggs by a real waiter who was an actor who was playing a fake anarchist waiter with a shaved head” [2004:229]. This is the fact becoming overtaken by the fiction; the simulacrum now more real than the real.
Palahniuk’s ‘novels’, which do not focus on the life of the author and are not wholly factual, function as a journal of sorts for him. He explains that “the world is made of people telling stories...and any long story, any novel, is just a combination of short stories” [2004,xix]. He does not specify who it is the stories ‘belong’ to, and it does not seem to matter, as long as they are not forgotten. Palahniuk says “the books I write are my overflow retention system for stories I can no longer keep in my recent memory” [2004:223]. If a journal is nothing more than a way for us to record that which we do not want to forget, I believe this validates Palahniuk’s work as autobiographical writing.
The works specifically denoted as non-fictional featured in Stranger Than Fiction read more like a series of short memoirs of Palahniuk’s life, they don’t seek to tell a whole story but rather the small important sections he doesn’t want to forget. Although the book is broken into three sections; ‘People Together’, ‘Portraits’ and ‘Personal’ even the stories not featured in the ‘Personal’ section essentially can be considered personal because they are about people he has been in contact with, making their lives now part of his life.
‘Now I Remember…’ focuses on what Palahniuk refers to as the “predominant art form of our time” [2004:222], note-taking, and our incessant need to record and document every moment of our existence. “We record and archive” [2004:222]. I am guilty of this somewhat pointless crime, post it notes border my beside table, my desk, and my computer, I write lists, my digital camera and phone memory cards are always full with photographs and messages I can’t bear to delete, my email inbox is always at capacity, and I can’t throw out any piece of paper because its bound to have some deathly important fact written on it, but honestly what is it all for? It seems unnecessary and yet it’s a habit I just can’t quit. Palahniuk discusses Thamus and ‘pharmakon’ and how “writing would allow humans to rely too much on…external means of recording. Our own memories would wither and fail. Our notes and records would replace our minds” [2004:224]. We take written, photographed, and recorded accounts of our lives as undeniable facts and no longer trust in memory, yet these ‘external means of recording’ lack the ability to recreate how we felt, at least for now. Palahniuk doesn’t fully understand what compels him to keep filing cabinets full of receipts but knows that without them wouldn’t remember anything. I see memory and our documentation as not enemies but allies, both working to help us maintain a sense of history and a future. Palahniuk closes ‘Now I Remember…’ with “don’t bother to write this down,” [2004:226] and yet, he wrote it down, and here I am three years later strangely compelled to write it down again. But why? I say because I don’t want to forget it but that in itself is a rather flimsy argument but once more it’s all I’ve got.
I don’t think in the greater scheme of things it matters which came first the chicken or the egg, just as I don’t believe it really matters who they belonged to, I think all that is important is that they are recorded as having existed at all. Palahniuk writes in his introduction to Stranger Than Fiction; “we spend our lives looking for evidence – facts and proof – that support our story” [2004:xxi]. For me autobiographical writing is about not wanting to forget, my stories, the stories of those I care about, and the stories of those I’ve simply overheard. All these tiny pieces of information probably aren’t all that important to the future or history of the world, but they could be, as our unnamed narrator in Fight Club asks: “Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?” [Palahniuk,1999:15]
REFERENCES
• Palahniuk C, 1996, Fight Club, W.W. Norton & Company, New York.
• Palahniuk C, 2004, Stranger Than Fiction, Anchor Books, New York.
Sunday 17 January 2010
Wednesday 2 December 2009
Der-leuze
Discuss Deleuze’s conceptualisation of the movement-image and time-image, with at least three examples drawn from the history of cinema.
“Of all the arts, cinema is the one Deleuze examines most thoroughly” [Bogue,2003:11]. While he wrote extensively on the subject of cinema, no publication was as thorough as his two books Cinema 1:The Movement Image(1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image(1989). Deleuze believes “cinema tells stories with blocks of movement-time” [2001:100] which explains the titles, and focus of the cinema books. However, this also suggests his books should not be seen as separate studies, but rather two volumes of the same book exploring his conceptualisation of the cinema as “together they constitute…one of the finest contemporary reflections on the liveliness and grandeur of the modern cinema” [Deleuze,1989:xv].
Despite mentioning numerous films and commenting on the “development of cinema from the silent era to the modern age,” [Bogue,2003:11] Deleuze sees the two volumes not as a study of the history of cinema, but rather as a “taxonomy, an attempt at the classification of images and signs” [1986:xiv].
Having such as strong focus on, and interest in, the cinema can be attributed to the fact Deleuze saw the “great auteurs of cinema” as comparable to not only “painters, architects, and musicians, but also to thinkers…[who] think with movement-images and time-images instead of concepts” [1986:xiv].
“Deleuze does not propose rigid or neat classifications” [Totaro,1999] which often makes forming a comprehensive understanding of his ideas difficult, especially due to his penchant for creating new, and multiple terms, for the same concept, however this essay will attempt to outline the fundamental characteristics of the movement-image and the time-image as established by Deleuze in Cinema 1 and Cinema 2.
There is no denying Deleuze borrows heavily from the philosophies of Henri Bergson (throughout his life’s work), and, it is suggested the reader is given the “sense the two books align themselves with the Bergson book that most influenced Deleuze, Matter and Memory: movement-image(matter) and time-image(memory)” [Totaro,1999].
Deleuze begins his book Cinema 1 with an explanation and discussion of Bergson’s theory that “slicing time into a sequence of static moments, or immobile cuts, and then somehow melding them back together again” will give a sense of movement. Deleuze disagrees, believing that when an image is projected onto the screen it is not seen as a set of static moments to which motion has somehow been added later, but rather as an image actually, and immediately in motion; what he calls the movement image. Both Bergson and Deleuze believed in “any-instants-whatever”, based on the idea that time does not consist of a “string of indivisible, quintessential moments, but of a sequence of equidistant, indifferent, and interchangeable instants,” none of which is privileged over any other [Bogue,2003:21-23].
In the book Deleuze On Cinema Ron Bogue defines perception as “a means whereby living images receive movements, and perception is always linked to action” [2003:30]. This definition helps clarify Deleuze’s summary of the body as “nothing but an assemblage [agencement] of three images, a consolidate [consolidé] of perception-images, action-images and affection-images” [1986:66]. While this assemblage refers to the ‘sensory-motor’ perception of the brain, and the reactions of “living images or matters [matiéres]” [Deleuze,1986:61], he also utilises it in his conceptualisation of cinema to describe the three types of movement-image. Deleuze believes a “film is never made up of a single kind of image: thus we call the combination of the three varieties, montage” [1986:70].
In terms of cinema, the ‘perception-image’ is a focus on what is seen, the act of looking, “a framing, whereby some elements are ignored and others rendered visible” [Bogue,2003:35]. Three sub-types of the perception-image are established; ‘solid perception’, ‘liquid perception’ and ‘gaseous perception’, solid being the regular perception of the human eye, liquid being where images flow together, and gaseous being something beyond the human eye [Pisters,2003:227]. In terms of all three they are expressed cinematically through the use of the ‘long shot’.
Even though “one passes imperceptibly from perception to action” [Deleuze,1986:65] “there is no perception without affection.” [2003:37]. The affection-image is the “interval between incoming perception and outgoing action”, what would be referred to within the ‘sensory-motor’ schema for the ‘living image’, as consciousness, decision, or choice. In cinema “the affection-image is the close-up and the close-up is the face.” It is concerned with emotion, not only expressed in the face, but cinematically expressed in “any-space-whatever”; as a ‘facialising’ of an object takes place [1986:37,87,109].
The ‘action-image’ relates to narrative, or structure, and exists in two forms as established by Deleuze. The first is the “large form” which is ‘SAS’ (situation-action-new situation) and the second is the ‘small form’ which takes the shape of ‘ASA’ (action-situation-new action). In cinema, obviously, it is easiest to differentiate between structure utilising genres which is exactly what Deleuze does. He associates the ‘large form’ with the psycho-social film, film noir, nation and historical films, the actor’s studio, burlesque (the works of Buster Keaton) and the western. While he sees direct-cinema, police films, comedy, burlesque (the works of Charlie Chaplin) and the neo-western as belonging to the ‘small form’. In camera, Deleuze defines the action-image as being expressed by the ‘medium shot’ [Pisters,2003,227].
Cinematically speaking Deleuze summarises the three elements of the movement-image thus: “the long shot would be primarily a perception-image; the medium shot an action-image; the close-up an affection image” [1986:70].
Angelo Restivo in his chapter ‘Into The Breach: Between The Movement-Image and The Time-Image’ found in The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, attempts to create an understanding of what happened not only between Deleuze’s writing of the two cinema books, conceptually, but also “historiographically”, as the movement-image gave way to the time-image [2000:171].
“Deleuze places the crisis of cinema history at the end of World War II, in the European reconstruction” [Cubitt,2004:244]. The “collapse of the paternal function”, is the reason for the death of the classical movement-image in cinema, as for audiences the “unities of situation and action [were] no longer [able to] be maintained in the disjointed post-war world” [Deleuze,1989:xv]. This “demise of the action-image is what allowed the cinema finally to fully realise itself: liberated from the grip of narrative” [Restivo:2000:180,175]. While Deleuze felt “Italian neorealism set the conditions for the appearance of direct images of time in the cinema,” [Rodowick,1997:79] he saw the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock as work which perfected, and brought to completion, the movement-image, while anticipating the time-image [Restivo,2000:179]. Hitchcock’s work created a “cinema of perfect thought” as “everything in the Hitchcockian universe is caught up in symbolic exchange…[where] objects…exist only to ensure that the system of exchanges continues to function” [Restivo,2000:179].
While Deleuze is “known as a philosopher of space and place, more than time and history” it is impossible to ignore “his writings on Bergson, and the concept of duration” [Grosz,2005:94], especially considering his “principal thesis in the Movement-Image and the Time-Image, is that cinema has a special relation to duration” [Rodowick,1997:86]. When cinema is broken down to its very fundamental elements, it is simple to see “time becomes the basis of bases in cinema, like sound in music, like colour in painting” [Bogue,2003:11].
In Deleuze’s book Bergsonism, published in 1988, he states: “duration is essentially memory, consciousness and freedom” [1988:51]. This seems to be the most straightforward, and yet most vague, definition he provides. Bogue, extrapolates on Bergson’s notion that “durée, or duration, [is] the dynamic movement of passing yet continuing time” by establishing that the human experience of time is actually that of durée, the experience of “a dynamic continuation of a past into a present and toward a future” and not actually the experience of time proposed by the hands on a clock face [2003:12-14]. Deleuze also calls this “virtual coexistence” [1988:60].
In his book Cinema 2 “Deleuze does not offer a singular definition of the time-image, or give a clear indication of what he means by a ‘direct image of time,’” [Totaro,1999] but he does, as always, offer up many new and interchangeable terms with which the time-image is created and explored. While the time-image essentially arose from the ‘demise’ of the movement-image, the movement-image did not die out completely, rather the movement-image remains in the most prevalent cinema of the day: the Hollywood Blockbuster. Despite arising from a crisis Deleuze sees the “time-image [as] redemptive” [1989:270] and it is the severing of the “relationship between (narrative) action and the diegetic world of the film…that lies at the heart of the time-image” [Restivo,2000:176]. No longer does cinema need to see “time subordinated to movement”, but rather a reversal of this is able to take place, coherence and a one directional construct of time no longer rules the screen, as Hamlet says, “Time is out of joint” [Deleuze,1989:xi].
Deleuze discusses the idea of montage in relation to the time-image, rather than in the movement-image where ‘immobile’ cuts are pieced back together with an attempt to hide the difference between the two, the time-image utilises a reversal of this idea where “the image is unlinked and the cut begins to have an importance in itself” [1989:213]. In terms of the ‘sensory-motor’ schema of the human brain the ‘affect’, the process of the decision is no longer passed over unseen as perception becomes action. Cinema no longer feels the need to fill in, disguise, or hide this interval, but rather chooses to embrace the gap in an attempt to make the audience pay attention. The cinema of the time-image also attempts to de-link not only image from image, but also image from sound.
With the cinema of the time-image the montage also becomes “montrage”, as it can no longer relate to perception, affection and action, rather it must deal with the recollection-image, and the dream-image, expressed through flashback, and the ‘metamorphosis of the real’ respectively, elements of disruption to the traditional pattern of time [Pisters,2003:228]. These “disturbances of memory and the failures of recognition” are expressed, Deleuze believes, in European cinema through the exploration of concepts such as “amnesia, hypnosis, hallucination, madness, the vision of the dying, and especially nightmare and dream” [1989:55].
Deleuze’s Cinema 2 “largely concerns only three kinds of signs: lecto signs, chronosigns, and noosigns” each of which can be related back to “philosophical problems of description, narration, and thought” [1989:2]. All three signs are defined rather simply, and yet again are not so easy to equate with real life examples. In Patricia Pisters’ appendix to The Matrix of Visual Culture she defines them as follows: a ‘chronosign’ is an image in which time ceases to be subordinate to movement and appears for itself (the whole idea behind the time-image), while a ‘lectosign’ is a visual image which is ‘read’ as much as it is seen, and finally a ‘noosign’ expresses an image that goes beyond itself toward something which can only be thought [2003:231].
The most interesting, and most simple, concept of the time-image Deleuze puts forward in Cinema 2 is the idea of the ‘crystal-image’, or the ‘virtual-image’, developed in Chapter 4 ‘The Crystals of Time’. It is also the idea which is easiest to discuss in terms of tangible examples from film, as most, if not all, Deleuze’s writings on cinema, and the work of others concerning his philosophy on cinema, make reference to Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad (1961), Orson Welles’ Lady From Shanghai (1947), and Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962).
Pister’s definition of the ‘crystal-image’ as the “uniting of an actual image and a virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished” seems deceptively simple when compared to the rest of Deleuze’s concepts of cinema [2003:232]. Although perhaps it is just because to a 2007 mind the idea of not being able to distinguish between the actual and the virtual is (frighteningly) no longer a distant subject with cyberspace, computer technology, and the proliferation of digital media, it seems Deleuze’s ‘crystal-image’ has stepped off the silver screen, onto the computer screen, and even further than that has intruded into what we tentatively refer to as ‘reality’.
The idea that the “world is shown as a crystal trapped in endless mirror reflections” is illustrated beautifully in the final sequence of Lady From Shanghai. Delueze declares that the virtual image is expressed in its pure state in the famous ‘Magic Mirror Maze’ where multiple mirrors assume the actuality of the two characters, and the only way they can claim back their actuality is to smash the virtuality, but then find the actuality of each other, which then must die anyway [1989:70]. It is interesting to think that if the actual or the virtual image are so intertwined in the ‘crystal-image’ if they can indeed survive when separated.
Totaro defines the ‘crystal-image’ as being a “shot that fuses the pastness of the recorded event with the presentness of its viewing” where the virtual image is “subjective, in the past and recollected” while the actual image is “objective, in the present and perceived” [1999]. This concept is interesting to consider in terms of the opening and closing sequences of La Jetée (despite the film is a series of still photographs) where, in both cases, it is the Narrator as a young boy witnessing the death of himself as an older man. The virtual image seems to be the memory of his youth, and the actual image is his older self, and yet for his older self to be present in his childhood memory, it would seem to suggest that his older self is also virtual, for having this recollection. The inability to distinguish between the actual and the virtual of the same character is a great example of the crystal-image, constantly reflecting itself.
Deleuze says “in Last Year in Marienbad we can no longer tell what is flashback, and what is not” [1989:122]. Not only is the crystal-image ‘reflected’ by the ‘narrative’, for lack of a better term, but the two important “theatre scenes are images in a mirror, and the entire Marienbad hotel is a pure crystal” [1989:76], a literal representation of a world caught up in reflections, and repetitions. While Deleuze was specifically talking about ‘neo-realist’ cinema, the following can be applied to the time image in general, especially in terms of Last Year in Marienbad which has been identified as “the last of the great neo-realist films”;
“We no longer know what is imaginary or real, physical or mental…not because they are confused, but because we do not have to know and there is no longer even a place from which to ask” [1989:7]
The crystal-image not only confuses character, place, and time, within cinema, but also the audience. If we try to hard to pull apart the virtual from the actual then perhaps we will lose both of them, and as Rodowick says of the representation of time and space in Last Year In Marienbad, “we are only confused of disappointed to the extent that we cannot or will not adapt to this new logic” [1997:103].
Deleuze believes there exists a “cinema of philosophy” [1989:209], which is quite obvious from the amount of work he, as a philosopher, put into attempting to conceptualise cinema so precisely. I happen to agree with Totaro when he proposes that even though Deleuze does not offer the reader one dominant theory, or philosophy of time which can be followed through critical film studies, there is so much generated within the philosophical ideas he raises just waiting to be explored further by film theorists, historians and academics [1999]. Deleuze’s theories may not always be the easiest to form a comprehensive understanding of straight away, but thanks to his extensive references, drawn from hundreds of films, Deleuze leaves the reader with tangible examples of both the movement-image, and time-image, from the ‘reel’ life in their ‘real’ life to further their understanding of his concepts.
References
• Bogue R, 2003, ‘Ch.1: Bergson and Cinema’ in Deleuze and Cinema, Routledge, London.
• Cubbit S, 2004, The Cinema Effect, MIT Press, Massachusetts.
• Deleuze G, 1986, Cinema 1: The Movement Image, Athlone Press, London.
• Deleuze G, 1988, ‘Memory as Virtual Coexistence’ in Bergsonism, Zone Books, New York.
• Deleuze G, 1989, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Athlone Press, London.
• Deleuze, G, 2001, ‘What is the Creative Act?’ in French Theory in America, (eds) Lotringer S and Cohen S, Routledge, New York.
• Grosz E, 2005, ‘Ch.6: Deleuze, Bergson and the Virtual’ in Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, Duke University Press, Durham.
• Pisters P, 2003, ‘Appendix A and Appendix B’ in The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working With Deleuze in Film Theory, Stanford University Press, Stanford.
• Restivo A, 2000, ‘Into the Breach: Between the Movement-Image and Time-Image’ in The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, (ed) Flaxman G, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
• Rodowick, D, 1997, ‘Ch.4 Time, Memory, Orders and Powers’ in Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine, Duke University Press, Durham.
• Totaro D, 1999, ‘Part 2: Cinema 2 – Gilles Deleuze’s Bergsonian Film Project’ in Offscreen [e-journal], http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/9903/offscreen_essays/deleuze2.html.
Filmography
• La Jetée, 1962, Chris MARKER, France, Argos Films.
• Lady From Shanghai, 1947, Orson WELLES, USA, Columbia Pictures.
• Last Year in Marienbad, 1961, Alain RESNAIS, France, Argos Films.
“Of all the arts, cinema is the one Deleuze examines most thoroughly” [Bogue,2003:11]. While he wrote extensively on the subject of cinema, no publication was as thorough as his two books Cinema 1:The Movement Image(1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image(1989). Deleuze believes “cinema tells stories with blocks of movement-time” [2001:100] which explains the titles, and focus of the cinema books. However, this also suggests his books should not be seen as separate studies, but rather two volumes of the same book exploring his conceptualisation of the cinema as “together they constitute…one of the finest contemporary reflections on the liveliness and grandeur of the modern cinema” [Deleuze,1989:xv].
Despite mentioning numerous films and commenting on the “development of cinema from the silent era to the modern age,” [Bogue,2003:11] Deleuze sees the two volumes not as a study of the history of cinema, but rather as a “taxonomy, an attempt at the classification of images and signs” [1986:xiv].
Having such as strong focus on, and interest in, the cinema can be attributed to the fact Deleuze saw the “great auteurs of cinema” as comparable to not only “painters, architects, and musicians, but also to thinkers…[who] think with movement-images and time-images instead of concepts” [1986:xiv].
“Deleuze does not propose rigid or neat classifications” [Totaro,1999] which often makes forming a comprehensive understanding of his ideas difficult, especially due to his penchant for creating new, and multiple terms, for the same concept, however this essay will attempt to outline the fundamental characteristics of the movement-image and the time-image as established by Deleuze in Cinema 1 and Cinema 2.
There is no denying Deleuze borrows heavily from the philosophies of Henri Bergson (throughout his life’s work), and, it is suggested the reader is given the “sense the two books align themselves with the Bergson book that most influenced Deleuze, Matter and Memory: movement-image(matter) and time-image(memory)” [Totaro,1999].
Deleuze begins his book Cinema 1 with an explanation and discussion of Bergson’s theory that “slicing time into a sequence of static moments, or immobile cuts, and then somehow melding them back together again” will give a sense of movement. Deleuze disagrees, believing that when an image is projected onto the screen it is not seen as a set of static moments to which motion has somehow been added later, but rather as an image actually, and immediately in motion; what he calls the movement image. Both Bergson and Deleuze believed in “any-instants-whatever”, based on the idea that time does not consist of a “string of indivisible, quintessential moments, but of a sequence of equidistant, indifferent, and interchangeable instants,” none of which is privileged over any other [Bogue,2003:21-23].
In the book Deleuze On Cinema Ron Bogue defines perception as “a means whereby living images receive movements, and perception is always linked to action” [2003:30]. This definition helps clarify Deleuze’s summary of the body as “nothing but an assemblage [agencement] of three images, a consolidate [consolidé] of perception-images, action-images and affection-images” [1986:66]. While this assemblage refers to the ‘sensory-motor’ perception of the brain, and the reactions of “living images or matters [matiéres]” [Deleuze,1986:61], he also utilises it in his conceptualisation of cinema to describe the three types of movement-image. Deleuze believes a “film is never made up of a single kind of image: thus we call the combination of the three varieties, montage” [1986:70].
In terms of cinema, the ‘perception-image’ is a focus on what is seen, the act of looking, “a framing, whereby some elements are ignored and others rendered visible” [Bogue,2003:35]. Three sub-types of the perception-image are established; ‘solid perception’, ‘liquid perception’ and ‘gaseous perception’, solid being the regular perception of the human eye, liquid being where images flow together, and gaseous being something beyond the human eye [Pisters,2003:227]. In terms of all three they are expressed cinematically through the use of the ‘long shot’.
Even though “one passes imperceptibly from perception to action” [Deleuze,1986:65] “there is no perception without affection.” [2003:37]. The affection-image is the “interval between incoming perception and outgoing action”, what would be referred to within the ‘sensory-motor’ schema for the ‘living image’, as consciousness, decision, or choice. In cinema “the affection-image is the close-up and the close-up is the face.” It is concerned with emotion, not only expressed in the face, but cinematically expressed in “any-space-whatever”; as a ‘facialising’ of an object takes place [1986:37,87,109].
The ‘action-image’ relates to narrative, or structure, and exists in two forms as established by Deleuze. The first is the “large form” which is ‘SAS’ (situation-action-new situation) and the second is the ‘small form’ which takes the shape of ‘ASA’ (action-situation-new action). In cinema, obviously, it is easiest to differentiate between structure utilising genres which is exactly what Deleuze does. He associates the ‘large form’ with the psycho-social film, film noir, nation and historical films, the actor’s studio, burlesque (the works of Buster Keaton) and the western. While he sees direct-cinema, police films, comedy, burlesque (the works of Charlie Chaplin) and the neo-western as belonging to the ‘small form’. In camera, Deleuze defines the action-image as being expressed by the ‘medium shot’ [Pisters,2003,227].
Cinematically speaking Deleuze summarises the three elements of the movement-image thus: “the long shot would be primarily a perception-image; the medium shot an action-image; the close-up an affection image” [1986:70].
Angelo Restivo in his chapter ‘Into The Breach: Between The Movement-Image and The Time-Image’ found in The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, attempts to create an understanding of what happened not only between Deleuze’s writing of the two cinema books, conceptually, but also “historiographically”, as the movement-image gave way to the time-image [2000:171].
“Deleuze places the crisis of cinema history at the end of World War II, in the European reconstruction” [Cubitt,2004:244]. The “collapse of the paternal function”, is the reason for the death of the classical movement-image in cinema, as for audiences the “unities of situation and action [were] no longer [able to] be maintained in the disjointed post-war world” [Deleuze,1989:xv]. This “demise of the action-image is what allowed the cinema finally to fully realise itself: liberated from the grip of narrative” [Restivo:2000:180,175]. While Deleuze felt “Italian neorealism set the conditions for the appearance of direct images of time in the cinema,” [Rodowick,1997:79] he saw the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock as work which perfected, and brought to completion, the movement-image, while anticipating the time-image [Restivo,2000:179]. Hitchcock’s work created a “cinema of perfect thought” as “everything in the Hitchcockian universe is caught up in symbolic exchange…[where] objects…exist only to ensure that the system of exchanges continues to function” [Restivo,2000:179].
While Deleuze is “known as a philosopher of space and place, more than time and history” it is impossible to ignore “his writings on Bergson, and the concept of duration” [Grosz,2005:94], especially considering his “principal thesis in the Movement-Image and the Time-Image, is that cinema has a special relation to duration” [Rodowick,1997:86]. When cinema is broken down to its very fundamental elements, it is simple to see “time becomes the basis of bases in cinema, like sound in music, like colour in painting” [Bogue,2003:11].
In Deleuze’s book Bergsonism, published in 1988, he states: “duration is essentially memory, consciousness and freedom” [1988:51]. This seems to be the most straightforward, and yet most vague, definition he provides. Bogue, extrapolates on Bergson’s notion that “durée, or duration, [is] the dynamic movement of passing yet continuing time” by establishing that the human experience of time is actually that of durée, the experience of “a dynamic continuation of a past into a present and toward a future” and not actually the experience of time proposed by the hands on a clock face [2003:12-14]. Deleuze also calls this “virtual coexistence” [1988:60].
In his book Cinema 2 “Deleuze does not offer a singular definition of the time-image, or give a clear indication of what he means by a ‘direct image of time,’” [Totaro,1999] but he does, as always, offer up many new and interchangeable terms with which the time-image is created and explored. While the time-image essentially arose from the ‘demise’ of the movement-image, the movement-image did not die out completely, rather the movement-image remains in the most prevalent cinema of the day: the Hollywood Blockbuster. Despite arising from a crisis Deleuze sees the “time-image [as] redemptive” [1989:270] and it is the severing of the “relationship between (narrative) action and the diegetic world of the film…that lies at the heart of the time-image” [Restivo,2000:176]. No longer does cinema need to see “time subordinated to movement”, but rather a reversal of this is able to take place, coherence and a one directional construct of time no longer rules the screen, as Hamlet says, “Time is out of joint” [Deleuze,1989:xi].
Deleuze discusses the idea of montage in relation to the time-image, rather than in the movement-image where ‘immobile’ cuts are pieced back together with an attempt to hide the difference between the two, the time-image utilises a reversal of this idea where “the image is unlinked and the cut begins to have an importance in itself” [1989:213]. In terms of the ‘sensory-motor’ schema of the human brain the ‘affect’, the process of the decision is no longer passed over unseen as perception becomes action. Cinema no longer feels the need to fill in, disguise, or hide this interval, but rather chooses to embrace the gap in an attempt to make the audience pay attention. The cinema of the time-image also attempts to de-link not only image from image, but also image from sound.
With the cinema of the time-image the montage also becomes “montrage”, as it can no longer relate to perception, affection and action, rather it must deal with the recollection-image, and the dream-image, expressed through flashback, and the ‘metamorphosis of the real’ respectively, elements of disruption to the traditional pattern of time [Pisters,2003:228]. These “disturbances of memory and the failures of recognition” are expressed, Deleuze believes, in European cinema through the exploration of concepts such as “amnesia, hypnosis, hallucination, madness, the vision of the dying, and especially nightmare and dream” [1989:55].
Deleuze’s Cinema 2 “largely concerns only three kinds of signs: lecto signs, chronosigns, and noosigns” each of which can be related back to “philosophical problems of description, narration, and thought” [1989:2]. All three signs are defined rather simply, and yet again are not so easy to equate with real life examples. In Patricia Pisters’ appendix to The Matrix of Visual Culture she defines them as follows: a ‘chronosign’ is an image in which time ceases to be subordinate to movement and appears for itself (the whole idea behind the time-image), while a ‘lectosign’ is a visual image which is ‘read’ as much as it is seen, and finally a ‘noosign’ expresses an image that goes beyond itself toward something which can only be thought [2003:231].
The most interesting, and most simple, concept of the time-image Deleuze puts forward in Cinema 2 is the idea of the ‘crystal-image’, or the ‘virtual-image’, developed in Chapter 4 ‘The Crystals of Time’. It is also the idea which is easiest to discuss in terms of tangible examples from film, as most, if not all, Deleuze’s writings on cinema, and the work of others concerning his philosophy on cinema, make reference to Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad (1961), Orson Welles’ Lady From Shanghai (1947), and Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962).
Pister’s definition of the ‘crystal-image’ as the “uniting of an actual image and a virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished” seems deceptively simple when compared to the rest of Deleuze’s concepts of cinema [2003:232]. Although perhaps it is just because to a 2007 mind the idea of not being able to distinguish between the actual and the virtual is (frighteningly) no longer a distant subject with cyberspace, computer technology, and the proliferation of digital media, it seems Deleuze’s ‘crystal-image’ has stepped off the silver screen, onto the computer screen, and even further than that has intruded into what we tentatively refer to as ‘reality’.
The idea that the “world is shown as a crystal trapped in endless mirror reflections” is illustrated beautifully in the final sequence of Lady From Shanghai. Delueze declares that the virtual image is expressed in its pure state in the famous ‘Magic Mirror Maze’ where multiple mirrors assume the actuality of the two characters, and the only way they can claim back their actuality is to smash the virtuality, but then find the actuality of each other, which then must die anyway [1989:70]. It is interesting to think that if the actual or the virtual image are so intertwined in the ‘crystal-image’ if they can indeed survive when separated.
Totaro defines the ‘crystal-image’ as being a “shot that fuses the pastness of the recorded event with the presentness of its viewing” where the virtual image is “subjective, in the past and recollected” while the actual image is “objective, in the present and perceived” [1999]. This concept is interesting to consider in terms of the opening and closing sequences of La Jetée (despite the film is a series of still photographs) where, in both cases, it is the Narrator as a young boy witnessing the death of himself as an older man. The virtual image seems to be the memory of his youth, and the actual image is his older self, and yet for his older self to be present in his childhood memory, it would seem to suggest that his older self is also virtual, for having this recollection. The inability to distinguish between the actual and the virtual of the same character is a great example of the crystal-image, constantly reflecting itself.
Deleuze says “in Last Year in Marienbad we can no longer tell what is flashback, and what is not” [1989:122]. Not only is the crystal-image ‘reflected’ by the ‘narrative’, for lack of a better term, but the two important “theatre scenes are images in a mirror, and the entire Marienbad hotel is a pure crystal” [1989:76], a literal representation of a world caught up in reflections, and repetitions. While Deleuze was specifically talking about ‘neo-realist’ cinema, the following can be applied to the time image in general, especially in terms of Last Year in Marienbad which has been identified as “the last of the great neo-realist films”;
“We no longer know what is imaginary or real, physical or mental…not because they are confused, but because we do not have to know and there is no longer even a place from which to ask” [1989:7]
The crystal-image not only confuses character, place, and time, within cinema, but also the audience. If we try to hard to pull apart the virtual from the actual then perhaps we will lose both of them, and as Rodowick says of the representation of time and space in Last Year In Marienbad, “we are only confused of disappointed to the extent that we cannot or will not adapt to this new logic” [1997:103].
Deleuze believes there exists a “cinema of philosophy” [1989:209], which is quite obvious from the amount of work he, as a philosopher, put into attempting to conceptualise cinema so precisely. I happen to agree with Totaro when he proposes that even though Deleuze does not offer the reader one dominant theory, or philosophy of time which can be followed through critical film studies, there is so much generated within the philosophical ideas he raises just waiting to be explored further by film theorists, historians and academics [1999]. Deleuze’s theories may not always be the easiest to form a comprehensive understanding of straight away, but thanks to his extensive references, drawn from hundreds of films, Deleuze leaves the reader with tangible examples of both the movement-image, and time-image, from the ‘reel’ life in their ‘real’ life to further their understanding of his concepts.
References
• Bogue R, 2003, ‘Ch.1: Bergson and Cinema’ in Deleuze and Cinema, Routledge, London.
• Cubbit S, 2004, The Cinema Effect, MIT Press, Massachusetts.
• Deleuze G, 1986, Cinema 1: The Movement Image, Athlone Press, London.
• Deleuze G, 1988, ‘Memory as Virtual Coexistence’ in Bergsonism, Zone Books, New York.
• Deleuze G, 1989, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Athlone Press, London.
• Deleuze, G, 2001, ‘What is the Creative Act?’ in French Theory in America, (eds) Lotringer S and Cohen S, Routledge, New York.
• Grosz E, 2005, ‘Ch.6: Deleuze, Bergson and the Virtual’ in Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, Duke University Press, Durham.
• Pisters P, 2003, ‘Appendix A and Appendix B’ in The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working With Deleuze in Film Theory, Stanford University Press, Stanford.
• Restivo A, 2000, ‘Into the Breach: Between the Movement-Image and Time-Image’ in The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema, (ed) Flaxman G, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
• Rodowick, D, 1997, ‘Ch.4 Time, Memory, Orders and Powers’ in Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine, Duke University Press, Durham.
• Totaro D, 1999, ‘Part 2: Cinema 2 – Gilles Deleuze’s Bergsonian Film Project’ in Offscreen [e-journal], http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/9903/offscreen_essays/deleuze2.html.
Filmography
• La Jetée, 1962, Chris MARKER, France, Argos Films.
• Lady From Shanghai, 1947, Orson WELLES, USA, Columbia Pictures.
• Last Year in Marienbad, 1961, Alain RESNAIS, France, Argos Films.
Jamie, Joseph, & Crispin
Discuss “teen-noir” and its capacity to portray the “underside of the American Dream” (Dussere,16) through its use of suburban space as zones of “noir ruination,” and sites of “consumerism and deviance,” (Klein,295) in relation to Brick (2005), The Chumscrubber (2005), and River’s Edge (1986).
It seems these days the word ‘noir’ can be used as a suffix for just about any sub-genre, or style, of film. As characterising film noir is such a arduous task, for the purpose of this essay, the term shall be used in reference to films which “portray the underside of the American Dream” [Dussere,16]. While only applicable to a relatively minor collection of films, ‘teen-noir’, and its dominant location, American suburbia, form the basis of this essay in respect to its capacity to illustrate the dark side of the American Dream, in terms of spaces portrayed as zones of “noir ruination,” and sites of “consumerism and deviance” [Klein,295]. The unravelling of the American Dream will be explored through Brick (Rian Johnson,2005), The Chumscrubber (Arie Posin, 2005), and River’s Edge (Tim Hunter,1986).
These three films offer up so much for discussion in terms of noir, neo-noir, postmodern-noir, or any number of noir related compounds, that, for fear of doing injustice to the films and their filmmakers, before I begin I must express my regret at being able to focus only on the use of space to create both a critique, and an exposition of the American way of life as “citizen-consumers” [Dussere,18].
The idea of a relationship existing between ‘teen-noir’ and suburbia is certainly not an entirely novel suggestion, as Klein argues, “the prototype for suburban noir in cinema is probably Rebel Without A Cause (1955), since so many of these stories involve teenagers in a state of rage” [298]. The ‘mystery’ which teen ‘detectives’, like their noir forefathers Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, attempt to solve is one of identity, not only questions of ‘who killed who?’, ‘who stole what?’, ‘who has the drugs?’, but the all important coming of age question which has doggedly plagued noir protagonists, and teenagers throughout history: ‘who am I?’
The three films, Brick, The Chumscrubber, and River’s Edge, all feature what are loosely classified as traditional noir conventions – an alienated male protagonist, a femme fatale like character, excessive violence, obscured and hidden identities, mystery, and at least one dead body showing up within the first five minutes of each film to get the main narrative plot started. However, as mentioned above, these teen-noir films differ from their predecessors as they pack up and move away from the “pulsating nocturnal metropolis of neon signs and dark alleys” [Dimendberg,210] associated with traditional noir cities, and settle into the “tidy little clapboard houses on grassy plots” [Downs,53] that is American suburbia. Although, if you “start scratching the surface…the dirt you find under your fingernails is the same grime you’ll find in any clipjoint,” [Klein,296] behind the domestic facade the gritty and dysfunctional underworld still exists, which is what these films help both visually, and narratively, expose.
It is just as difficult to create a concrete picture of exactly what the American Dream entails/ed, as it is to pin down a definitive characterisation for film noir. However, one immediately calls to mind stereotypical images of a threat-free existence, success, an abundance of choice, the happy nuclear family, the shiny American branded car, and the house in suburbia with the white picket fence. Whether these images of the American Dream are adequate or correct is irrelevant, for the purpose of this essay they are, what matters is that Brick and River’s Edge show audiences what life is like when this type of dream is only partially achieved, while The Chumscrubber, provides insight into the ”dark side of savage capitalism;” [Dussere,16] what lurks just beneath the surface of those, apparently, already living out the American Dream.
The three films all feature a site of “noir ruination” which is not a physical space at all, even though it is actually reflected by one onscreen; it is the family unit and, by association, the family home. “The suburb is a world of dysfunctional working-class families,” [Klein,297] who generally try and hide “the disintegration of family…and especially [the consequence of] the absent father” [Jackson,151].
This idea helps explain the “syndrome of alienation and aimlessness… depicted in River’s Edge” [Levy,198], especially in the attitudes of brothers Matt (Keanu Reeves) and Tim (Joshua Miller). “Living empty and meaningless lives…[their] father has disappeared, [and their] mother…cares more about her dope than her children,” [Levy,246] their family unit is in ruins. Upon finding Tim and his friend shooting at shrimp in a bucket Matt asks “Why are you two such delinquents” to which his brother smugly replies, “Because of our fucked up childhood.” This lack of stability and permanence in the boy’s lives is reflected in their transient ‘home’ by the sliding glass door to their backyard which is never closed, even during one scene which takes place in the middle of the night. There is no security or refuge as people are free to walk in, and more importantly, walk out of the lives of the family, as they choose, leaving the boys with no single suitable male figure on which to base themselves.
While all the family units in The Chumscrubber experience and express some type of disconnection or breakdown, it is Johnsons and the Bratleys, who live across the street from each other on “Sunnycrest”, who provide the most tangible examples of the breakdown physically reflected by their homes. Over at the Johnson’s, despite Troy (Joshua Janowicz) having such a large house he could’ve shared with his mother (Glenn Close), no mention is ever made in the film of Troy’s father, he chose to live out in the small backyard cabana, no longer even redising in the same building as his mother. After repeating throughout the film to friends and neighbours, “I just thought you should know that, in no way whatsoever, do I blame you for Troy's death,” his mother tears down the final remains of the perfect pearl-wearing suburban housewife ideal she has been upholding at Troy’s memorial finally admitting; “It's all my fault. I didn't even know him.” Despite benefiting from ‘Terri’s Interior Visions’, Teri Bratley’s (Rita Wilson) home expresses nothing but the emptiness of her consumer driven life. In an early scene Terri arrives home and goes about her tasks the camera remains in one place, but pulls back rather slowly to reveal nothing more than an increasingly large and decidedly empty space, as she walks in and out of frame, talking to no-one but herself.
“1250, Vista Blonka, the ink blotter, on the desk in the den, in the basement, of the house with the tacky mailbox” is Brendan Frye’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), description of The Pin’s (Lukas Haas) house in Brick. There is no cohesion in the house, both mother and son aim for their own vision of the American Dream but neither really succeeds. In the kitchen the Pin’s mother (Reedy Gibbs), aims for small-town America with a bowl of cornflakes and milk, and “country-style” apple juice served in a “little country glass”, while her son, with his almost surreal, Lynchian basement office with the very low ceiling, wood panelling, plush carpet, and chair which is far too small for the tall black cloaked, cane clutching, Kingpin of capitalism the Pin aims to be, aims for business successes. The two rooms of one house seem completely different locations, just as his mother seems to have no idea of her son’s standing in the local teen drug community as she kisses him on the cheek as if he were just anybody’s little boy.
“A car was status, freedom, and personal identity,” [Downs,95] and more just than what it stood for individually, it became a symbol of the American Dream. The car as a symbol in these teen-noirs certainly holds as an ideal of the American Dream, and as such as an example of “consumerism and deviance” in terms of what the car represents to others, and what it means to the owner. Layne’s (Crispin Glover) car in River’s Edge is a beat up piece of junk, an old Volkswagen beetle, a foreigner, but as Layne reiterates “It’s my car”, in the “consumer space” [Dussere,18] of America it is better to have a piece of junk then to have nothing at all, there is the insatiable need to own, to be an owner. The downside to this dream of ownership is that it makes owner and possessions complicit with one another, so ultimately you are left with nothing. Layne’s ownership of a car, and his position as (self-appointed?) group leader, sees him insist “none of you know what’s going on,” while in reality his attempts to protect Samson (Daniel Roebuck) in the hope of maintaining group loyalty, stability, and keeping some notion of his own dream alive, are completely misguided.
The cars of Tug (Noah Fleiss), and Billy (Justin Chatwin), the character sources of violence in Brick and The Chumscrubber respectively, may on the surface look like shining examples of cars upholding the American Dream, but under further scrutiny these ideals no longer seem so idyllic. Tug’s black Mustang is sleek and successful looking, but underneath it is simply a fast and out of control machine, representative of Tug himself. Meanwhile Billy’s green Chevy Blazer is big, loud, and intimidating, another not so encouraging reflection of its owner, and the greater American society of ‘citizen-consumers’ at large. The Pin’s decadent van with the superfluous table lamp is nothing more than a reflection on the want for material objects people don’t actually need.
When discussing the American Dream and the specific iconic American frames of reference there is of course the “most distinctly American consumer space, the supermarket” [Dussere,18]. All three films deal with the idea of consumerism and by association capitalism and its darkside in varying ways, but always using space to discredit these icons.
“This was the best of all possible worlds,” the opening narration of The Chumscrubber claims, “but even they needed a little help.” “The supermarket, massive and materialistic” [Dussere,19] of the people of the “Hillside Communities” actually exists in the school grounds, managed by Troy, as the teenagers need to purchase and consume drugs to maintain their state of “Carefree Living”. Upon his suicide the school, and indeed the suburban community, is thrown out of “balance”, they are unable to cope without their supermarket, the system of supply and demand that this version of the American Dream has advocated for so long breaks down.
The ‘Stop N Go’ and the ‘Beer, Wine & Liquor’ convenience stores frequented by the characters in River’s Edge suggest there is a need not only for consumers to have the product they want, but that there is a great emphasis on the now of it. There is an insatiable need to have everything now, Samson’s use of the gun at the ‘Stop N Go’ is not only an expression of the increasingly destabilisation of his mind, but also of the American Dream his society has instilled in him that everything can be his when he wants it. When want outweighs wait there is nothing left to do but take.
There is the well worn phrase someone, or something, is as “American as apple pie”. Brick takes this icon and reveals the other side of this much worshipped image. In one single scene the film succeeds in visually determining the dark side of the American Dream and the cracks in a consumer driven society. Brendan is sent to the store “Coffee And Pie, Oh My” to find Dode (Noah Segan). The front of the store is established in a single stable shot; very clean, straight lines, lace curtains hang in the windows, green bushes surround it. The audience is given a picture of small town middle America, accompanied by a hillbilly banjo on the soundtrack. This whole serene tone dissolves completely when the camera moves behind the facade to the rear of the store, as the dark side of this particular American Dream is revealed. Local youths, stoners, undesirables, are lurking behind the store, not even really lurking, simply existing, but just beyond the sight of the Dream. To enter into what is essentially Dode’s ‘office’ Brendan must pass through a ‘doorway’ formed by two trash dumpsters, where he finds Dode sitting on his ‘throne’: an overturned shopping cart. The idyllic illusion of the American Dream, capitalism, and consumerism all destroyed in one short scene, in one small film.
Teen-noir provides a perfect example of what Marc Auge would describe as “non-places”. The idea of being a teenager is essentially being trapped in a non-place, it is a transient state, fully of uncertainty and confusion between the innocence of childhood and the importance of adulthood. These non-places are represented in these films as public places which are strangely deserted, even during daylight hours, especially noticeable in Brick and River’s Edge. Parks, arcades, schools, carparks, roads, football fields, are all places where people should rightly be but these films express them as empty, just like the houses of The Chumscrubber, people are vaguely existing there, but not living.
Noir, and indeed the video game/cartoon rendering of the Chumscrubber as a character, provide “an abiding, underground American character as resistance to the mainstream consumer culture” [Dussere,18]. The Chumscrubber says during the opening of his television show: “One morning, I awoke to find my head was no longer attached to my body. I'm not dead, but who could call this a life?” The metaphor of the teenager who has lost his head but continues on anyway is one which resonates well not only with the teenagers in ‘reel’ life, but also with their ‘real’ counterparts. The Chumscrubber is the antithesis of the American Dream, his success is in loss, devoid of goals and dreams; he just is. He only exists because his capitalist society was destroyed, and while in his world he despises the source of his downfall, ironically, in the outside world, he himself has become an image to be consumed, a commodity to be traded by all the teenagers in the film. The headless teen symbol is prevalent in the world of the teenagers throughout the film; dolls, t-shirts, hats, video games, posters, comic books, television shows, and even in Dean’s recurring hallucination of Troy. The Chumscrubber’s final scene quite literally shows the destruction of the American Dream in suburbia. The Chumscrubber walks through the ‘real’ world and overlooks the “Carefree Living” of “Hillside Communities” from the ridge. The image of suburban bliss flickers from real to virtual, to real to half deconstructed virtual homes, to real to foundations of the virtual, to a blank virtual landscape as the camera zooms out further and further. The archetypal suburbia is revealed, and then reduced, to nothing more than a myth created by technology. The final voiceover narration of the film serves as either a warning, or a promise to teenagers and society in general, he won’t let our world be destroyed the way his was out of a greed for power. “So I will do what I have to in this city of freaks and subhuman creatures, and this time I will not be ignored. I am The Chumscrubber.”
Noir can be a lot of things, and mean even more. Personally teen-noir serves as a “surreal cautionary tale about an alienated youth forced to confront the disconnection between parents and teenagers in suburbia”. Although this quote refers directly to The Chumscrubber, having been taken from the back cover of the dvd case, it effectively sums up the aim of noir in general, to serve as a warning, against closing your eyes and succumbing to the American Dream, against capitalism, against becoming a ‘citizen-consumer’, it doesn’t matter. But, like all noir, it asks the audience to be careful of who, or what, they trust.
REFERENCES:
• Auge M, 1995, Non Places Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso, New York.
• Dimendberg E, 2004, ‘Simultaneity, The Media Environment and the end of Film Noir’ in Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity, Cambridge University Press, London.
• Downs H, 1998, The American Dream, The 50s, Time Life Inc, USA.
• Dussere E, 2006, ‘Out of the Past: Into the Supermarket’, in Film Quarterly, Fall, vol 60, no.1.
• Jackson K, 1986, Images of Children in American Film, Scarecrow Press, New Jersey.
• Klein N, 1997, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, Verso, London.
• Levy E, 1991, Small Town America In Film, Continuum, New York.
FILMOGRAPHY:
• Brick, 2005, Rian JOHNSON, USA, Bergman Lustig Productions.
• Rebel Without A Cause, Nicholas RAY, USA, Warner Brothers.
• River’s Edge, 1986, Tim HUNTER, USA, Hemdale Film.
• The Chumscrubber, 2005, Arie POSIN, USA, El Camino Pictures.
It seems these days the word ‘noir’ can be used as a suffix for just about any sub-genre, or style, of film. As characterising film noir is such a arduous task, for the purpose of this essay, the term shall be used in reference to films which “portray the underside of the American Dream” [Dussere,16]. While only applicable to a relatively minor collection of films, ‘teen-noir’, and its dominant location, American suburbia, form the basis of this essay in respect to its capacity to illustrate the dark side of the American Dream, in terms of spaces portrayed as zones of “noir ruination,” and sites of “consumerism and deviance” [Klein,295]. The unravelling of the American Dream will be explored through Brick (Rian Johnson,2005), The Chumscrubber (Arie Posin, 2005), and River’s Edge (Tim Hunter,1986).
These three films offer up so much for discussion in terms of noir, neo-noir, postmodern-noir, or any number of noir related compounds, that, for fear of doing injustice to the films and their filmmakers, before I begin I must express my regret at being able to focus only on the use of space to create both a critique, and an exposition of the American way of life as “citizen-consumers” [Dussere,18].
The idea of a relationship existing between ‘teen-noir’ and suburbia is certainly not an entirely novel suggestion, as Klein argues, “the prototype for suburban noir in cinema is probably Rebel Without A Cause (1955), since so many of these stories involve teenagers in a state of rage” [298]. The ‘mystery’ which teen ‘detectives’, like their noir forefathers Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, attempt to solve is one of identity, not only questions of ‘who killed who?’, ‘who stole what?’, ‘who has the drugs?’, but the all important coming of age question which has doggedly plagued noir protagonists, and teenagers throughout history: ‘who am I?’
The three films, Brick, The Chumscrubber, and River’s Edge, all feature what are loosely classified as traditional noir conventions – an alienated male protagonist, a femme fatale like character, excessive violence, obscured and hidden identities, mystery, and at least one dead body showing up within the first five minutes of each film to get the main narrative plot started. However, as mentioned above, these teen-noir films differ from their predecessors as they pack up and move away from the “pulsating nocturnal metropolis of neon signs and dark alleys” [Dimendberg,210] associated with traditional noir cities, and settle into the “tidy little clapboard houses on grassy plots” [Downs,53] that is American suburbia. Although, if you “start scratching the surface…the dirt you find under your fingernails is the same grime you’ll find in any clipjoint,” [Klein,296] behind the domestic facade the gritty and dysfunctional underworld still exists, which is what these films help both visually, and narratively, expose.
It is just as difficult to create a concrete picture of exactly what the American Dream entails/ed, as it is to pin down a definitive characterisation for film noir. However, one immediately calls to mind stereotypical images of a threat-free existence, success, an abundance of choice, the happy nuclear family, the shiny American branded car, and the house in suburbia with the white picket fence. Whether these images of the American Dream are adequate or correct is irrelevant, for the purpose of this essay they are, what matters is that Brick and River’s Edge show audiences what life is like when this type of dream is only partially achieved, while The Chumscrubber, provides insight into the ”dark side of savage capitalism;” [Dussere,16] what lurks just beneath the surface of those, apparently, already living out the American Dream.
The three films all feature a site of “noir ruination” which is not a physical space at all, even though it is actually reflected by one onscreen; it is the family unit and, by association, the family home. “The suburb is a world of dysfunctional working-class families,” [Klein,297] who generally try and hide “the disintegration of family…and especially [the consequence of] the absent father” [Jackson,151].
This idea helps explain the “syndrome of alienation and aimlessness… depicted in River’s Edge” [Levy,198], especially in the attitudes of brothers Matt (Keanu Reeves) and Tim (Joshua Miller). “Living empty and meaningless lives…[their] father has disappeared, [and their] mother…cares more about her dope than her children,” [Levy,246] their family unit is in ruins. Upon finding Tim and his friend shooting at shrimp in a bucket Matt asks “Why are you two such delinquents” to which his brother smugly replies, “Because of our fucked up childhood.” This lack of stability and permanence in the boy’s lives is reflected in their transient ‘home’ by the sliding glass door to their backyard which is never closed, even during one scene which takes place in the middle of the night. There is no security or refuge as people are free to walk in, and more importantly, walk out of the lives of the family, as they choose, leaving the boys with no single suitable male figure on which to base themselves.
While all the family units in The Chumscrubber experience and express some type of disconnection or breakdown, it is Johnsons and the Bratleys, who live across the street from each other on “Sunnycrest”, who provide the most tangible examples of the breakdown physically reflected by their homes. Over at the Johnson’s, despite Troy (Joshua Janowicz) having such a large house he could’ve shared with his mother (Glenn Close), no mention is ever made in the film of Troy’s father, he chose to live out in the small backyard cabana, no longer even redising in the same building as his mother. After repeating throughout the film to friends and neighbours, “I just thought you should know that, in no way whatsoever, do I blame you for Troy's death,” his mother tears down the final remains of the perfect pearl-wearing suburban housewife ideal she has been upholding at Troy’s memorial finally admitting; “It's all my fault. I didn't even know him.” Despite benefiting from ‘Terri’s Interior Visions’, Teri Bratley’s (Rita Wilson) home expresses nothing but the emptiness of her consumer driven life. In an early scene Terri arrives home and goes about her tasks the camera remains in one place, but pulls back rather slowly to reveal nothing more than an increasingly large and decidedly empty space, as she walks in and out of frame, talking to no-one but herself.
“1250, Vista Blonka, the ink blotter, on the desk in the den, in the basement, of the house with the tacky mailbox” is Brendan Frye’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), description of The Pin’s (Lukas Haas) house in Brick. There is no cohesion in the house, both mother and son aim for their own vision of the American Dream but neither really succeeds. In the kitchen the Pin’s mother (Reedy Gibbs), aims for small-town America with a bowl of cornflakes and milk, and “country-style” apple juice served in a “little country glass”, while her son, with his almost surreal, Lynchian basement office with the very low ceiling, wood panelling, plush carpet, and chair which is far too small for the tall black cloaked, cane clutching, Kingpin of capitalism the Pin aims to be, aims for business successes. The two rooms of one house seem completely different locations, just as his mother seems to have no idea of her son’s standing in the local teen drug community as she kisses him on the cheek as if he were just anybody’s little boy.
“A car was status, freedom, and personal identity,” [Downs,95] and more just than what it stood for individually, it became a symbol of the American Dream. The car as a symbol in these teen-noirs certainly holds as an ideal of the American Dream, and as such as an example of “consumerism and deviance” in terms of what the car represents to others, and what it means to the owner. Layne’s (Crispin Glover) car in River’s Edge is a beat up piece of junk, an old Volkswagen beetle, a foreigner, but as Layne reiterates “It’s my car”, in the “consumer space” [Dussere,18] of America it is better to have a piece of junk then to have nothing at all, there is the insatiable need to own, to be an owner. The downside to this dream of ownership is that it makes owner and possessions complicit with one another, so ultimately you are left with nothing. Layne’s ownership of a car, and his position as (self-appointed?) group leader, sees him insist “none of you know what’s going on,” while in reality his attempts to protect Samson (Daniel Roebuck) in the hope of maintaining group loyalty, stability, and keeping some notion of his own dream alive, are completely misguided.
The cars of Tug (Noah Fleiss), and Billy (Justin Chatwin), the character sources of violence in Brick and The Chumscrubber respectively, may on the surface look like shining examples of cars upholding the American Dream, but under further scrutiny these ideals no longer seem so idyllic. Tug’s black Mustang is sleek and successful looking, but underneath it is simply a fast and out of control machine, representative of Tug himself. Meanwhile Billy’s green Chevy Blazer is big, loud, and intimidating, another not so encouraging reflection of its owner, and the greater American society of ‘citizen-consumers’ at large. The Pin’s decadent van with the superfluous table lamp is nothing more than a reflection on the want for material objects people don’t actually need.
When discussing the American Dream and the specific iconic American frames of reference there is of course the “most distinctly American consumer space, the supermarket” [Dussere,18]. All three films deal with the idea of consumerism and by association capitalism and its darkside in varying ways, but always using space to discredit these icons.
“This was the best of all possible worlds,” the opening narration of The Chumscrubber claims, “but even they needed a little help.” “The supermarket, massive and materialistic” [Dussere,19] of the people of the “Hillside Communities” actually exists in the school grounds, managed by Troy, as the teenagers need to purchase and consume drugs to maintain their state of “Carefree Living”. Upon his suicide the school, and indeed the suburban community, is thrown out of “balance”, they are unable to cope without their supermarket, the system of supply and demand that this version of the American Dream has advocated for so long breaks down.
The ‘Stop N Go’ and the ‘Beer, Wine & Liquor’ convenience stores frequented by the characters in River’s Edge suggest there is a need not only for consumers to have the product they want, but that there is a great emphasis on the now of it. There is an insatiable need to have everything now, Samson’s use of the gun at the ‘Stop N Go’ is not only an expression of the increasingly destabilisation of his mind, but also of the American Dream his society has instilled in him that everything can be his when he wants it. When want outweighs wait there is nothing left to do but take.
There is the well worn phrase someone, or something, is as “American as apple pie”. Brick takes this icon and reveals the other side of this much worshipped image. In one single scene the film succeeds in visually determining the dark side of the American Dream and the cracks in a consumer driven society. Brendan is sent to the store “Coffee And Pie, Oh My” to find Dode (Noah Segan). The front of the store is established in a single stable shot; very clean, straight lines, lace curtains hang in the windows, green bushes surround it. The audience is given a picture of small town middle America, accompanied by a hillbilly banjo on the soundtrack. This whole serene tone dissolves completely when the camera moves behind the facade to the rear of the store, as the dark side of this particular American Dream is revealed. Local youths, stoners, undesirables, are lurking behind the store, not even really lurking, simply existing, but just beyond the sight of the Dream. To enter into what is essentially Dode’s ‘office’ Brendan must pass through a ‘doorway’ formed by two trash dumpsters, where he finds Dode sitting on his ‘throne’: an overturned shopping cart. The idyllic illusion of the American Dream, capitalism, and consumerism all destroyed in one short scene, in one small film.
Teen-noir provides a perfect example of what Marc Auge would describe as “non-places”. The idea of being a teenager is essentially being trapped in a non-place, it is a transient state, fully of uncertainty and confusion between the innocence of childhood and the importance of adulthood. These non-places are represented in these films as public places which are strangely deserted, even during daylight hours, especially noticeable in Brick and River’s Edge. Parks, arcades, schools, carparks, roads, football fields, are all places where people should rightly be but these films express them as empty, just like the houses of The Chumscrubber, people are vaguely existing there, but not living.
Noir, and indeed the video game/cartoon rendering of the Chumscrubber as a character, provide “an abiding, underground American character as resistance to the mainstream consumer culture” [Dussere,18]. The Chumscrubber says during the opening of his television show: “One morning, I awoke to find my head was no longer attached to my body. I'm not dead, but who could call this a life?” The metaphor of the teenager who has lost his head but continues on anyway is one which resonates well not only with the teenagers in ‘reel’ life, but also with their ‘real’ counterparts. The Chumscrubber is the antithesis of the American Dream, his success is in loss, devoid of goals and dreams; he just is. He only exists because his capitalist society was destroyed, and while in his world he despises the source of his downfall, ironically, in the outside world, he himself has become an image to be consumed, a commodity to be traded by all the teenagers in the film. The headless teen symbol is prevalent in the world of the teenagers throughout the film; dolls, t-shirts, hats, video games, posters, comic books, television shows, and even in Dean’s recurring hallucination of Troy. The Chumscrubber’s final scene quite literally shows the destruction of the American Dream in suburbia. The Chumscrubber walks through the ‘real’ world and overlooks the “Carefree Living” of “Hillside Communities” from the ridge. The image of suburban bliss flickers from real to virtual, to real to half deconstructed virtual homes, to real to foundations of the virtual, to a blank virtual landscape as the camera zooms out further and further. The archetypal suburbia is revealed, and then reduced, to nothing more than a myth created by technology. The final voiceover narration of the film serves as either a warning, or a promise to teenagers and society in general, he won’t let our world be destroyed the way his was out of a greed for power. “So I will do what I have to in this city of freaks and subhuman creatures, and this time I will not be ignored. I am The Chumscrubber.”
Noir can be a lot of things, and mean even more. Personally teen-noir serves as a “surreal cautionary tale about an alienated youth forced to confront the disconnection between parents and teenagers in suburbia”. Although this quote refers directly to The Chumscrubber, having been taken from the back cover of the dvd case, it effectively sums up the aim of noir in general, to serve as a warning, against closing your eyes and succumbing to the American Dream, against capitalism, against becoming a ‘citizen-consumer’, it doesn’t matter. But, like all noir, it asks the audience to be careful of who, or what, they trust.
REFERENCES:
• Auge M, 1995, Non Places Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso, New York.
• Dimendberg E, 2004, ‘Simultaneity, The Media Environment and the end of Film Noir’ in Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity, Cambridge University Press, London.
• Downs H, 1998, The American Dream, The 50s, Time Life Inc, USA.
• Dussere E, 2006, ‘Out of the Past: Into the Supermarket’, in Film Quarterly, Fall, vol 60, no.1.
• Jackson K, 1986, Images of Children in American Film, Scarecrow Press, New Jersey.
• Klein N, 1997, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, Verso, London.
• Levy E, 1991, Small Town America In Film, Continuum, New York.
FILMOGRAPHY:
• Brick, 2005, Rian JOHNSON, USA, Bergman Lustig Productions.
• Rebel Without A Cause, Nicholas RAY, USA, Warner Brothers.
• River’s Edge, 1986, Tim HUNTER, USA, Hemdale Film.
• The Chumscrubber, 2005, Arie POSIN, USA, El Camino Pictures.
Yo, Bam Bam
Analyse Viva La Bam, a ‘reality TV’ show, in respect to generic hybridity, the notion of realism and format.
After the surprise popularity of Jackass in 2000, October 26th 2003 saw professional skateboarder and Jackass, Bam Margera’s own television show Viva La Bam debut on “the MTV Music Television cable network” [Auslander,1999:91]. The focus of his show was still pulling stupid and entertaining pranks, this time enlisting help from skateboarding friends – Tony Hawk, Tim O'Connor, Bob Burnquist – rock bands – HIM, The Bloodhound Gang, Slayer, Gwar – and the ‘CKY Crew’ – Ryan Dunn, Chris Raab, Brandon DiCamillo, Rake Yohn – but during the first season pranks were concerned with giving his family, their home, and local town of Westchester, Pennsylvania, hell. Throughout the seasons the show became more interested in how the next episode could be bigger and better than the previous one. Viva La Bam is quickly categorised under “the generic label ‘reality TV,’” [Kilborn,2005:51] but it is not so simple to determine its exact place in the realm of reality TV due to principles of generic hybridity, the notion of realism and reality itself, and the format which the show takes. This essay will explore these concepts not with the intent to pigeon-hole, but rather to determine how Viva La Bam belongs to all, and yet none of reality television’s sub-genres simultaneously.
Reality television is created by taking elements from established programme categories and creating new combinations, producing innovative [Kilborn,2005:51], or seemingly innovative, television. Interestingly enough ”most contemporary programmes classified as reality TV are far removed from traditional factual television genres such as news or documentary” [Hill,2005:62]. “Extensive cross-genre borrowing” [Kilborn,2005:61] occurring in the creation of reality TV allows Viva La Bam to span sub-genres such as: docu-soap, staged reality events, reality game-docs, and candid camera shows; belonging to all and none at concurrently. “MTV, the generic Music Television channel, is paradigmatically postmodern in its function, structure and (partly) content” and “postmodern TV is characterized by a high degree of excess, fragmentation…hybridization…stylization, intertextuality, recycling…self-referentiality, and parody and pastiche,” [O'Day,1998:117,118] all of which are present in Viva La Bam, causing it to be a constantly developing show which is complicated to define in terms of a stable generic-hybrid.
Viva La Bam claims to largely be unscripted, but the premise of each episode must be established beforehand, and conventional fiction conventions are used for guidance. There are seven basic plots, from which all fiction is developed. Of the seven Viva La Bam borrows clearly from at least four: man vs. nature, (‘April’s Revenge’ (7/12/03)) man vs. man (‘Fat Boy Face Off’ (9/5/04), ‘Fort Knoxville’ (7/11/04), ‘Vito’s Revenge’ (10/7/05)), man vs. the environment (‘Bam On The Bayou’ (3/3/05)), and man vs. self (‘Don’t Feed Phil’ (2/11/03), ‘Angry Ape’ (28/11/04))[Brooks,2005:213]: further proof of the show’s chameleon-like nature to adapt to various genres and forms.
Docu-soap combines “certain structural and narrative features of soap-opera with elements of observational documentary,” [Kilborn,2005:57] it is evidenced in Viva La Bam in the way episodes follow something of a traditional narrative structure, and are strongly focused on the reactions, and relationships of the show’s participants.
“More recently developed reality formats…[which] all to a greater or lesser extent, depend on the staging of an event” [Kilborn,2005:78] definitely includes Viva La Bam. There are rock concerts, skate demos, Christmas celebrations and family reunions staged at the Margera’s house, but, as Kilborn elicits “the idea of being uprooted from one’s normal environment and placed in a strange, exotic or potentially dangerous location strikes a strong imaginative chord in all of us,” [2005:78] possibly explaining why over half the episodes – from five seasons – feature the idea of a ‘road trip’; season four seeing six out of eight episodes occurring somewhere other than Westchester.
“Reality game-docs claim a certain reality status for themselves by focusing on a series of ‘real life’ exchanges between a group of…individuals gathered together in a highly contrived…environment …required to respond to a number of challenges dreamed up by members of the production team”
[Kilborn:2005:59]
A game-show feeling is indicative of Viva La Bam as a whole, but it applies specifically to episodes featuring ‘man vs. man’ or ‘man vs. self’ plots. A challenge is established at the beginning of the episode and by the end the participant/contestant has faced obstacles and trials and is deemed either successful, or a failure, and is celebrated, or punished, accordingly. Winning is never winning unless Bam is victorious, evidenced in ‘Fat Boy Face Off’ which pits his father Phil Margera again his uncle Don Vito in a series of demeaning weight related challenges – concluding with a quiz showdown complete with tacky game show set and outrageous host. Don Vito loses, and sees his car destroyed, while Phil, the winner, sees his wife’s China cabinet also destroyed; at the end of the episode Bam addresses the camera saying: “Fat Boy Face Off proved who the better man is…me.” An element of the game-doc frequently implemented by Viva La Bam is “the extensive use of playful humour and self deprecating irony in the narrational [commentary],” [Kilborn,2005:60] which includes testimonies from the show’s participants concerning events before, during, or after they take place, along with Bam’s narrative input. The audience responds to this technique as the “protagonists entrust confidences to the camera” and then to the audience who enjoy “being spoken to in a generally lighthearted and conversational tone” as it gives an impression they are involved and sharing in experiences as they occur [Kilborn,2005:60,62].
Viva La Bam has its foundations in candid camera shows “where people are set up and filmed without their prior knowledge or consent” [Hill,2005:65]. While cameras are around all the time, it is usually only Bam who is fully informed about every prank. ‘Limo vs. Lambo’ (24/7/05) sees Ryan Dunn racing Bam home, Bam hates losing but falls behind because there’s a surprise for Dunn at home; Bam had the image of an open garage door painted over the closed garage door, something Dunn didn’t expect, as he drives straight through it, and is shocked, but amused, later exclaiming: “It was Wile E Coyote shit!”
MTV’s disclaimer at the beginning of each episode states: “this show features stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals”: the notion pranks are pre-planned degrades the show’s spontaneity severely. The presence of ‘professionals’ and safety advisors, along with the fact the show credits Jacob Pinger as ‘Director of Photography’, and Joseph Franz as ‘Cinematographer’, destroys any further illusions of total spontaneity by implying someone is planning every scene, shot and camera angle. The actual reality of carefully planned stunts places greater importance upon the reactions of participants and witnesses who “are not professional actors” [Andrejevic,2004:102] to inform a notion of realism. April Margera – Bam’s mother – and Don Vito – Bam’s Uncle – drive the show in terms of responses. The most honest and emotional reactions are from Bam’s grandmother, Mum-Mum, but her appearances in the show are brief; she is seen throwing Bam out of her house in ‘Rockstars’ (14/11/04) for tattooing Don Vito, and she sits in the bushes in a state of distress before being driven home stating “This whole family is crazy!” during ‘Family Reunion’ (9/11/03). It doesn’t take much to set April into escalating hysteria with high pitched squealing repeating “Are you kidding me?” and provoking angry and violent responses from Don Vito who exacts a chokehold on whomever he can reach asking them “Live or die?” is too easy.
John Fiske wonders if “realism [is] capable of expressing adequately the relationships [people] have established between each other and the external world” [1987:163]. This is especially pertinent for Viva La Bam not only because of Bam’s previously established high profile public persona, but as co-creator of the show he has a say in the final edit, meaning the relationships and interactions the audience views are partly inclined to portray Bam as a jackass, but a somewhat endearing jackass.
The family dynamic of the Margera’s and their adopted CKY crew are strange, but intrinsic to the show; as “families come in many shapes and sizes, they better fit the definition of a ‘family circle’ – the close group relationship of a household” [Brooks,2005:7]. In ‘Castle Bam’ (25/4/04) Bam says “everybody can all move in with me, but this house is gonna be my way,” initially it appears his suggestion is a ploy to gain dominance; but ultimately he simply enjoys having friends and family so close by. In terms of portraying a typical American family they don’t seem conventional, but they’re the new American family. “The latest batch of television mothers runs the gamut from the passive to the domineering,” [Brooks,2005:7] which April Margera transitions between, as she attempts to mother eight ‘sons’: one is Bam (other son Jess lives elsewhere), another is her gentle placid husband Phil – the opposite of his brother Vito – who wants to be one of the boys, and the rest are the CKY crew.
Kilborn asserts “reality television is not very real” [2005:79], and Viva La Bam shrewdly acknowledges the artificiality of its reality, and its own construction, making it no secret that “the scenarios they portray are in many respects, contrived” [Andrejevic,2004:102]. The show does this in various ways; through use of different camera styles, direct address to the camera, and what is a certain MTV stylistic aesthetic “using computer graphics and special effects to warp or wipe out televisual worlds” [O'Day,1998:118].
The varied use of different cameras, and camera styles to capture footage is an unsubtle nod to the constructed reality of the show. 16mm film, surveillance cameras, mounted dashboard cameras, hidden cameras, steady cam shots, poorly disguised spy cameras – such as Bam’s ‘eyeglass cam’ in ‘Limo vs. Lambo’ where Dunn observes: “You might as well duct tape a betacam to your head”, and of course hand held cameras – Bam himself is often seen with digicam in hand – combined in a 20 minute show give the skewed sense of reality in terms of it being a pieced together show from scraps of footage, but the glaring difference between film and video, and handheld and steady cam, doesn’t fool audiences into thinking everything occurred as it is shown. Differences are clearly visible in shooting styles when comparing skating segments to ‘the rest’ of the show. Repeated use of montage, sped up segments, flashbacks, slow motion, colour graded segments, and cast members wearing personal microphones, make denying the highly constructed nature of the show impossible.
Viva La Bam follows a traditional narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end. During the show’s introduction and epilogue Bam directly addresses the camera, and with his very fast MTV speech informs the audience of the show’s setup, recaps the episode, the direct address is used throughout to guide the audience. Bam’s best examples of self-reflexivity and a playful acknowledgment of the show’s construction include: “Best montage ever”, “This is where the airplane montage happens”, “This is where the montage starts”, and when April asks during ‘Angry Ape’ if her challenge is almost over Bam replies “this is nothing, this is only the second bit Ape, there’s still a commercial to go…” Bam is excited to discover ‘Castle Bam’ but as the camera pans left to reveal the house he grabs the camera, shakes his head saying “Hey, easy, it’s a surprise,” personifying the camera, and giving the audience a greater sense of “immediacy and intimacy” [Auslander,1999:15].
MTV utilises its “visual style, gimmickry, [and] hype” [Frith,1988:210] throughout Viva La Bam serving as a constant reminder of the unrealistic take on what is a realistic life. When people are introduced footage of them appears on the screen then pauses, changes colour, the background fades out and is replaced with graffiti-like paint splashes, as their name/title is displayed; everything is loud, bold and fast. MTV’s proficiency with “digital manipulation and image generation techniques” [Hill,2005:58] ensures things are always popping up on screen: titles, countdown clocks, ‘fun-o-meters’, anger gauges, tallies, scoreboards, amounts of money made/won/lost, things collected, locations, times, maps of travels etc. This convention is actively acknowledged in ‘Viva La Europe Part 2’ (13/3/05) when a tired and subdued Ryan Dunn says “Time’s running out” as a sign appears above his head reiterating it, he then says “Clock”, holds up his right hand and a computer generated graphic falls into it, followed by “Need more product, paint splash” swiping his left arm across the screen, this time a graphic of food appears, followed by the usual graffiti paint splash. Dunn’s clear knowledge of the conventions applied to their show and the way he provokes the editors to implement them is evidence the show admits it is ”principally conceived as…light entertainment” [Kilborn,2005:89].
Viva La Bam adheres to aspects of carnival in terms of the unrealistic reality it presents, employing notions of ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and various genres of billingsgate, to highlight humorous aspects of the show. [Vice,1997:151,152] The element of “the grotesque body” [Vice,1997:149] is brought to prominence via Don Vito and his frequent “eating, drinking, defecation and other elimination (sweating, blowing of the nose, sneezing)” [Vice,1997:165]. Vito is rarely seen without a beer or food, and his main goals seem to be finding “nice girls” and the “best Veal scaloppine.” Vito is shown as out of control and driven by his corporal desires; there isn’t much he won’t do for beer or money, a fact often exploited in the show. His grotesque body is frequently on display; ‘skin tags,’ rotten toenails, scarred stomach, and dent in his back, which “allow the audience to peer in voyeuristically on other people’s lives in a way that carries strong reminders of the fairground freak show” [Kilborn,2005:75,76].
In terms of ‘ritual spectacles’ the ‘Fat Boy Face Off’ game show is a good example, it’s loud, ludicrous and doesn’t even make that much sense. The ‘ratification’ of the ‘State of Bam’ in the episode of the same name (27/3/05) sees Dunn drive his motorcycle into a trailer causing it to explode, before setting alight a giant heartagram monument built on a pile of old cars. Concerning ‘comic verbal compositions’ there are two distinct types in Viva La Bam, the first is Vito’s speech, deemed “authentic because it does not sound contrived, simulated or performed, but rather sounds natural, fresh, spontaneous,” [Hill,2005:75] even though he is unintelligible most of the time and requires subtitles – another example of the show’s humour – which are also gibberish such as: “He’s got no tiddly just joogle, you can’t just goat duggle…Sitting hernwhaga ehhhm, just sitting glawhahwaglahhh”. DiCamillo’s songs, and the invention of words, usually prefixed with ‘Bam’: Bamerican History, Bamzoni, Bamtastic, and slobstacle, are other examples of comic composition. Abusive language used very frequently throughout the show, cursing and verbal insults, serve as examples of billingsgate, eg. Bam deciding: “Now I’m going to start cussing like a sailor: shit, fuck, piss, dick and cunt.”
A question often arises concerning reality TV of: “Whose reality is it anyway?” [Kilborn,2005:67]Viva La Bam never purports to be the reality of the viewing audience – it claims to be Bam’s reality, which, due to his ‘celebrity’ status, is a world removed from that of MTV’s intended “teens and young adults” demographic [Denisoff,1988:317]. People always want what they can’t have, and shows vaguely in the ‘reality TV’ genre such as The Osbournes, The Simple Life, Meet The Barkers, and Tommy Lee Goes To College, give audiences an opportunity to see how the rich and famous live, to assure themselves even ‘celebrities’ struggle, and are as dysfunctional as everyone else.
Viva La Bam’s sense of ‘reality’ is highly constructed, and astutely aware of its own construction; a reality viewers may not understand or perceive as the same as their reality. Bam replies truthfully “Whatever the fuck I want” when asked by the voiceover during Viva La Bam’s opening credits: “Bam Margera. What will he do next?” He destroys things (pianos, cars, houses), embarrasses people (constant derision of Don Vito’s physical appearance), spends copious amounts of money (a customised $250,000 purple Lamborghini), but is still popular enough to have kids line up at the Mall of America to be slapped in the face by him. Bam declares “You’re in Bam World now,” – a world the show depicts as a place where money is no object, consequences are few, and the only real limitation is imagination – which has been packaged stylishly by MTV, creating an appealing version of reality to both the voyeur and the envious within. The show is Bam’s, meaning it will continue to both evolve and evade stringent definition as Bam grows and changes his mind about “whatever the fuck he wants”; reflective of the future of reality television – unsure of what it’s doing, but doing what it thinks is entertaining.
REFERENCES
Books
• Andrejevic M, 2004, Ch. 4 ‘The Kinder, Gentler Gaze of Big Brother’ in Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, New York.
• Auslander P, 1999, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture, Routledge, London.
• Brooks M, 2005, The American Family on Television, McFarland & Company, North Carolina.
• Denisoff R, 1988, Inside MTV, Transaction Books, New Brunswick.
• Fiske J & Hartley J, 1987, Reading Television, Methuen, London.
• Frith S, 1988, Music For Pleasure, Routledge, London.
• Hill A, 2005, Ch. 4 ‘Performance & Authenticity’ in Reality TV: Audiences & Popular Factual Television, Routledge, London.
• Kilborn R, 2005, Ch. 3 ’Playing the reality card’ in Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of Big Brother, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
• O'Day M, 1998, ‘Postmodernism & Television’ in The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, (ed) Stuart Sim, Icon Books, Cambridge.
• Vice S, 1997, ‘Carnival & the grotesque body’ in Introducing Bakhtin, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Television Programs
• Jackass, Dickhouse Productions, Music Television (MTV), 2000.
• Meet The Barkers, Katherine Brooks, Music Television (MTV), Music Television (MTV), 2005.
• The Osbournes, Katherine Brooks, Big Head Productions, Music Television (MTV), 2002.
• The Simple Life, Kasey Barrett, 20th Century Fox Television, Fox Network, 2003.
• Tommy Lee Goes To College, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 2005.
• Viva La Bam, Don’t Feed Phil, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 2/11/03.
• Viva La Bam, Family Reunion, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 9/11/03.
• Viva La Bam, April’s Revenge, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 7/12/03.
• Viva La Bam, Castle Bam, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 25/4/04.
• Viva La Bam, Fat Boy Face Off, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 9/5/04.
• Viva La Bam, Fort Knoxville, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 7/11/04.
• Viva La Bam, Rockstars, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 14/11/04.
• Viva La Bam, Angry Ape, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 28/11/04.
• Viva La Bam, Bam On The Bayou, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 3/3/05.
• Viva La Bam, Viva La Europe Part 2, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 13/3/05
• Viva La Bam, State of Bam, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 27/3/05.
• Viva La Bam, Vito’s Revenge, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 10/7/05.
• Viva La Bam, Limo vs. Lambo, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 24/7/05.
After the surprise popularity of Jackass in 2000, October 26th 2003 saw professional skateboarder and Jackass, Bam Margera’s own television show Viva La Bam debut on “the MTV Music Television cable network” [Auslander,1999:91]. The focus of his show was still pulling stupid and entertaining pranks, this time enlisting help from skateboarding friends – Tony Hawk, Tim O'Connor, Bob Burnquist – rock bands – HIM, The Bloodhound Gang, Slayer, Gwar – and the ‘CKY Crew’ – Ryan Dunn, Chris Raab, Brandon DiCamillo, Rake Yohn – but during the first season pranks were concerned with giving his family, their home, and local town of Westchester, Pennsylvania, hell. Throughout the seasons the show became more interested in how the next episode could be bigger and better than the previous one. Viva La Bam is quickly categorised under “the generic label ‘reality TV,’” [Kilborn,2005:51] but it is not so simple to determine its exact place in the realm of reality TV due to principles of generic hybridity, the notion of realism and reality itself, and the format which the show takes. This essay will explore these concepts not with the intent to pigeon-hole, but rather to determine how Viva La Bam belongs to all, and yet none of reality television’s sub-genres simultaneously.
Reality television is created by taking elements from established programme categories and creating new combinations, producing innovative [Kilborn,2005:51], or seemingly innovative, television. Interestingly enough ”most contemporary programmes classified as reality TV are far removed from traditional factual television genres such as news or documentary” [Hill,2005:62]. “Extensive cross-genre borrowing” [Kilborn,2005:61] occurring in the creation of reality TV allows Viva La Bam to span sub-genres such as: docu-soap, staged reality events, reality game-docs, and candid camera shows; belonging to all and none at concurrently. “MTV, the generic Music Television channel, is paradigmatically postmodern in its function, structure and (partly) content” and “postmodern TV is characterized by a high degree of excess, fragmentation…hybridization…stylization, intertextuality, recycling…self-referentiality, and parody and pastiche,” [O'Day,1998:117,118] all of which are present in Viva La Bam, causing it to be a constantly developing show which is complicated to define in terms of a stable generic-hybrid.
Viva La Bam claims to largely be unscripted, but the premise of each episode must be established beforehand, and conventional fiction conventions are used for guidance. There are seven basic plots, from which all fiction is developed. Of the seven Viva La Bam borrows clearly from at least four: man vs. nature, (‘April’s Revenge’ (7/12/03)) man vs. man (‘Fat Boy Face Off’ (9/5/04), ‘Fort Knoxville’ (7/11/04), ‘Vito’s Revenge’ (10/7/05)), man vs. the environment (‘Bam On The Bayou’ (3/3/05)), and man vs. self (‘Don’t Feed Phil’ (2/11/03), ‘Angry Ape’ (28/11/04))[Brooks,2005:213]: further proof of the show’s chameleon-like nature to adapt to various genres and forms.
Docu-soap combines “certain structural and narrative features of soap-opera with elements of observational documentary,” [Kilborn,2005:57] it is evidenced in Viva La Bam in the way episodes follow something of a traditional narrative structure, and are strongly focused on the reactions, and relationships of the show’s participants.
“More recently developed reality formats…[which] all to a greater or lesser extent, depend on the staging of an event” [Kilborn,2005:78] definitely includes Viva La Bam. There are rock concerts, skate demos, Christmas celebrations and family reunions staged at the Margera’s house, but, as Kilborn elicits “the idea of being uprooted from one’s normal environment and placed in a strange, exotic or potentially dangerous location strikes a strong imaginative chord in all of us,” [2005:78] possibly explaining why over half the episodes – from five seasons – feature the idea of a ‘road trip’; season four seeing six out of eight episodes occurring somewhere other than Westchester.
“Reality game-docs claim a certain reality status for themselves by focusing on a series of ‘real life’ exchanges between a group of…individuals gathered together in a highly contrived…environment …required to respond to a number of challenges dreamed up by members of the production team”
[Kilborn:2005:59]
A game-show feeling is indicative of Viva La Bam as a whole, but it applies specifically to episodes featuring ‘man vs. man’ or ‘man vs. self’ plots. A challenge is established at the beginning of the episode and by the end the participant/contestant has faced obstacles and trials and is deemed either successful, or a failure, and is celebrated, or punished, accordingly. Winning is never winning unless Bam is victorious, evidenced in ‘Fat Boy Face Off’ which pits his father Phil Margera again his uncle Don Vito in a series of demeaning weight related challenges – concluding with a quiz showdown complete with tacky game show set and outrageous host. Don Vito loses, and sees his car destroyed, while Phil, the winner, sees his wife’s China cabinet also destroyed; at the end of the episode Bam addresses the camera saying: “Fat Boy Face Off proved who the better man is…me.” An element of the game-doc frequently implemented by Viva La Bam is “the extensive use of playful humour and self deprecating irony in the narrational [commentary],” [Kilborn,2005:60] which includes testimonies from the show’s participants concerning events before, during, or after they take place, along with Bam’s narrative input. The audience responds to this technique as the “protagonists entrust confidences to the camera” and then to the audience who enjoy “being spoken to in a generally lighthearted and conversational tone” as it gives an impression they are involved and sharing in experiences as they occur [Kilborn,2005:60,62].
Viva La Bam has its foundations in candid camera shows “where people are set up and filmed without their prior knowledge or consent” [Hill,2005:65]. While cameras are around all the time, it is usually only Bam who is fully informed about every prank. ‘Limo vs. Lambo’ (24/7/05) sees Ryan Dunn racing Bam home, Bam hates losing but falls behind because there’s a surprise for Dunn at home; Bam had the image of an open garage door painted over the closed garage door, something Dunn didn’t expect, as he drives straight through it, and is shocked, but amused, later exclaiming: “It was Wile E Coyote shit!”
MTV’s disclaimer at the beginning of each episode states: “this show features stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals”: the notion pranks are pre-planned degrades the show’s spontaneity severely. The presence of ‘professionals’ and safety advisors, along with the fact the show credits Jacob Pinger as ‘Director of Photography’, and Joseph Franz as ‘Cinematographer’, destroys any further illusions of total spontaneity by implying someone is planning every scene, shot and camera angle. The actual reality of carefully planned stunts places greater importance upon the reactions of participants and witnesses who “are not professional actors” [Andrejevic,2004:102] to inform a notion of realism. April Margera – Bam’s mother – and Don Vito – Bam’s Uncle – drive the show in terms of responses. The most honest and emotional reactions are from Bam’s grandmother, Mum-Mum, but her appearances in the show are brief; she is seen throwing Bam out of her house in ‘Rockstars’ (14/11/04) for tattooing Don Vito, and she sits in the bushes in a state of distress before being driven home stating “This whole family is crazy!” during ‘Family Reunion’ (9/11/03). It doesn’t take much to set April into escalating hysteria with high pitched squealing repeating “Are you kidding me?” and provoking angry and violent responses from Don Vito who exacts a chokehold on whomever he can reach asking them “Live or die?” is too easy.
John Fiske wonders if “realism [is] capable of expressing adequately the relationships [people] have established between each other and the external world” [1987:163]. This is especially pertinent for Viva La Bam not only because of Bam’s previously established high profile public persona, but as co-creator of the show he has a say in the final edit, meaning the relationships and interactions the audience views are partly inclined to portray Bam as a jackass, but a somewhat endearing jackass.
The family dynamic of the Margera’s and their adopted CKY crew are strange, but intrinsic to the show; as “families come in many shapes and sizes, they better fit the definition of a ‘family circle’ – the close group relationship of a household” [Brooks,2005:7]. In ‘Castle Bam’ (25/4/04) Bam says “everybody can all move in with me, but this house is gonna be my way,” initially it appears his suggestion is a ploy to gain dominance; but ultimately he simply enjoys having friends and family so close by. In terms of portraying a typical American family they don’t seem conventional, but they’re the new American family. “The latest batch of television mothers runs the gamut from the passive to the domineering,” [Brooks,2005:7] which April Margera transitions between, as she attempts to mother eight ‘sons’: one is Bam (other son Jess lives elsewhere), another is her gentle placid husband Phil – the opposite of his brother Vito – who wants to be one of the boys, and the rest are the CKY crew.
Kilborn asserts “reality television is not very real” [2005:79], and Viva La Bam shrewdly acknowledges the artificiality of its reality, and its own construction, making it no secret that “the scenarios they portray are in many respects, contrived” [Andrejevic,2004:102]. The show does this in various ways; through use of different camera styles, direct address to the camera, and what is a certain MTV stylistic aesthetic “using computer graphics and special effects to warp or wipe out televisual worlds” [O'Day,1998:118].
The varied use of different cameras, and camera styles to capture footage is an unsubtle nod to the constructed reality of the show. 16mm film, surveillance cameras, mounted dashboard cameras, hidden cameras, steady cam shots, poorly disguised spy cameras – such as Bam’s ‘eyeglass cam’ in ‘Limo vs. Lambo’ where Dunn observes: “You might as well duct tape a betacam to your head”, and of course hand held cameras – Bam himself is often seen with digicam in hand – combined in a 20 minute show give the skewed sense of reality in terms of it being a pieced together show from scraps of footage, but the glaring difference between film and video, and handheld and steady cam, doesn’t fool audiences into thinking everything occurred as it is shown. Differences are clearly visible in shooting styles when comparing skating segments to ‘the rest’ of the show. Repeated use of montage, sped up segments, flashbacks, slow motion, colour graded segments, and cast members wearing personal microphones, make denying the highly constructed nature of the show impossible.
Viva La Bam follows a traditional narrative structure with a beginning, middle, and end. During the show’s introduction and epilogue Bam directly addresses the camera, and with his very fast MTV speech informs the audience of the show’s setup, recaps the episode, the direct address is used throughout to guide the audience. Bam’s best examples of self-reflexivity and a playful acknowledgment of the show’s construction include: “Best montage ever”, “This is where the airplane montage happens”, “This is where the montage starts”, and when April asks during ‘Angry Ape’ if her challenge is almost over Bam replies “this is nothing, this is only the second bit Ape, there’s still a commercial to go…” Bam is excited to discover ‘Castle Bam’ but as the camera pans left to reveal the house he grabs the camera, shakes his head saying “Hey, easy, it’s a surprise,” personifying the camera, and giving the audience a greater sense of “immediacy and intimacy” [Auslander,1999:15].
MTV utilises its “visual style, gimmickry, [and] hype” [Frith,1988:210] throughout Viva La Bam serving as a constant reminder of the unrealistic take on what is a realistic life. When people are introduced footage of them appears on the screen then pauses, changes colour, the background fades out and is replaced with graffiti-like paint splashes, as their name/title is displayed; everything is loud, bold and fast. MTV’s proficiency with “digital manipulation and image generation techniques” [Hill,2005:58] ensures things are always popping up on screen: titles, countdown clocks, ‘fun-o-meters’, anger gauges, tallies, scoreboards, amounts of money made/won/lost, things collected, locations, times, maps of travels etc. This convention is actively acknowledged in ‘Viva La Europe Part 2’ (13/3/05) when a tired and subdued Ryan Dunn says “Time’s running out” as a sign appears above his head reiterating it, he then says “Clock”, holds up his right hand and a computer generated graphic falls into it, followed by “Need more product, paint splash” swiping his left arm across the screen, this time a graphic of food appears, followed by the usual graffiti paint splash. Dunn’s clear knowledge of the conventions applied to their show and the way he provokes the editors to implement them is evidence the show admits it is ”principally conceived as…light entertainment” [Kilborn,2005:89].
Viva La Bam adheres to aspects of carnival in terms of the unrealistic reality it presents, employing notions of ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and various genres of billingsgate, to highlight humorous aspects of the show. [Vice,1997:151,152] The element of “the grotesque body” [Vice,1997:149] is brought to prominence via Don Vito and his frequent “eating, drinking, defecation and other elimination (sweating, blowing of the nose, sneezing)” [Vice,1997:165]. Vito is rarely seen without a beer or food, and his main goals seem to be finding “nice girls” and the “best Veal scaloppine.” Vito is shown as out of control and driven by his corporal desires; there isn’t much he won’t do for beer or money, a fact often exploited in the show. His grotesque body is frequently on display; ‘skin tags,’ rotten toenails, scarred stomach, and dent in his back, which “allow the audience to peer in voyeuristically on other people’s lives in a way that carries strong reminders of the fairground freak show” [Kilborn,2005:75,76].
In terms of ‘ritual spectacles’ the ‘Fat Boy Face Off’ game show is a good example, it’s loud, ludicrous and doesn’t even make that much sense. The ‘ratification’ of the ‘State of Bam’ in the episode of the same name (27/3/05) sees Dunn drive his motorcycle into a trailer causing it to explode, before setting alight a giant heartagram monument built on a pile of old cars. Concerning ‘comic verbal compositions’ there are two distinct types in Viva La Bam, the first is Vito’s speech, deemed “authentic because it does not sound contrived, simulated or performed, but rather sounds natural, fresh, spontaneous,” [Hill,2005:75] even though he is unintelligible most of the time and requires subtitles – another example of the show’s humour – which are also gibberish such as: “He’s got no tiddly just joogle, you can’t just goat duggle…Sitting hernwhaga ehhhm, just sitting glawhahwaglahhh”. DiCamillo’s songs, and the invention of words, usually prefixed with ‘Bam’: Bamerican History, Bamzoni, Bamtastic, and slobstacle, are other examples of comic composition. Abusive language used very frequently throughout the show, cursing and verbal insults, serve as examples of billingsgate, eg. Bam deciding: “Now I’m going to start cussing like a sailor: shit, fuck, piss, dick and cunt.”
A question often arises concerning reality TV of: “Whose reality is it anyway?” [Kilborn,2005:67]Viva La Bam never purports to be the reality of the viewing audience – it claims to be Bam’s reality, which, due to his ‘celebrity’ status, is a world removed from that of MTV’s intended “teens and young adults” demographic [Denisoff,1988:317]. People always want what they can’t have, and shows vaguely in the ‘reality TV’ genre such as The Osbournes, The Simple Life, Meet The Barkers, and Tommy Lee Goes To College, give audiences an opportunity to see how the rich and famous live, to assure themselves even ‘celebrities’ struggle, and are as dysfunctional as everyone else.
Viva La Bam’s sense of ‘reality’ is highly constructed, and astutely aware of its own construction; a reality viewers may not understand or perceive as the same as their reality. Bam replies truthfully “Whatever the fuck I want” when asked by the voiceover during Viva La Bam’s opening credits: “Bam Margera. What will he do next?” He destroys things (pianos, cars, houses), embarrasses people (constant derision of Don Vito’s physical appearance), spends copious amounts of money (a customised $250,000 purple Lamborghini), but is still popular enough to have kids line up at the Mall of America to be slapped in the face by him. Bam declares “You’re in Bam World now,” – a world the show depicts as a place where money is no object, consequences are few, and the only real limitation is imagination – which has been packaged stylishly by MTV, creating an appealing version of reality to both the voyeur and the envious within. The show is Bam’s, meaning it will continue to both evolve and evade stringent definition as Bam grows and changes his mind about “whatever the fuck he wants”; reflective of the future of reality television – unsure of what it’s doing, but doing what it thinks is entertaining.
REFERENCES
Books
• Andrejevic M, 2004, Ch. 4 ‘The Kinder, Gentler Gaze of Big Brother’ in Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, New York.
• Auslander P, 1999, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture, Routledge, London.
• Brooks M, 2005, The American Family on Television, McFarland & Company, North Carolina.
• Denisoff R, 1988, Inside MTV, Transaction Books, New Brunswick.
• Fiske J & Hartley J, 1987, Reading Television, Methuen, London.
• Frith S, 1988, Music For Pleasure, Routledge, London.
• Hill A, 2005, Ch. 4 ‘Performance & Authenticity’ in Reality TV: Audiences & Popular Factual Television, Routledge, London.
• Kilborn R, 2005, Ch. 3 ’Playing the reality card’ in Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of Big Brother, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
• O'Day M, 1998, ‘Postmodernism & Television’ in The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, (ed) Stuart Sim, Icon Books, Cambridge.
• Vice S, 1997, ‘Carnival & the grotesque body’ in Introducing Bakhtin, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Television Programs
• Jackass, Dickhouse Productions, Music Television (MTV), 2000.
• Meet The Barkers, Katherine Brooks, Music Television (MTV), Music Television (MTV), 2005.
• The Osbournes, Katherine Brooks, Big Head Productions, Music Television (MTV), 2002.
• The Simple Life, Kasey Barrett, 20th Century Fox Television, Fox Network, 2003.
• Tommy Lee Goes To College, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 2005.
• Viva La Bam, Don’t Feed Phil, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 2/11/03.
• Viva La Bam, Family Reunion, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 9/11/03.
• Viva La Bam, April’s Revenge, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 7/12/03.
• Viva La Bam, Castle Bam, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 25/4/04.
• Viva La Bam, Fat Boy Face Off, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 9/5/04.
• Viva La Bam, Fort Knoxville, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 7/11/04.
• Viva La Bam, Rockstars, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 14/11/04.
• Viva La Bam, Angry Ape, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 28/11/04.
• Viva La Bam, Bam On The Bayou, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 3/3/05.
• Viva La Bam, Viva La Europe Part 2, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 13/3/05
• Viva La Bam, State of Bam, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 27/3/05.
• Viva La Bam, Vito’s Revenge, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 10/7/05.
• Viva La Bam, Limo vs. Lambo, 18 Husky & Bam Margera Productions, Music Television (MTV), 24/7/05.
I'm Old Gregg...in the Tundra...
Compare & contrast two episodes of the situation-comedy The Mighty Boosh, paying close attention to similarities & differences in tone, structure, & style.
Comedic duo Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, and their created personas, Vince Noir and Howard Moon, are collectively known as ‘The Mighty Boosh.’ They have had success with stand-up comedy, travelling stage shows, a radio series, and as “radio begat television,” [Bushman,1996:122] a television series. For the purpose of this essay The Mighty Boosh will be used exclusively to reference the BBC television program, which first aired with the episode Killeroo(18/05/04). Including the pilot, only thirteen episodes have been produced so far. To investigate similarities and differences within the The Mighty Boosh in relation to the ‘situation comedy’ genre, two episodes, Pilot (previously unscreened) and The Legend Of Old Gregg (23/08/05), have been selected for study.
The Mighty Boosh is classified, on a most basic genre level, as a situation-comedy determined by elements of ”character types, setting, iconography, narrative and style.” [Creeber,2001:3] “Television is stretching and transforming” [Rattigan,2004:160] to accommodate more hybridised genres, meaning one absolute genre for any television show is obsolete. In The Call Of The Yeti (26/07/05) Howard Moon says of himself: “I span the genres Vince, they call me the genre spanner”; a perfect explanation of what the show itself does. Genres it spans include: comedy, fantasy, surrealism, horror, musical, animation, advertising, and even, to an extent, the western; evidenced by Vince’s penchant for cowboy boots, “the white hat…the signifier of a ‘good’ cowboy,” [Fiske,1987:63] his Howard imposed sense of being ‘the sidekick’, and the way there is often a ‘show down’ with an evil character; Nanatoo, Beta Max, and the recurring villain ‘The Hitcher’ who claims: “I’m evil, pure evil!”
The Mighty Boosh plays as a conventional sitcom in “its nature as an episodic series…a program with continuing characters but with a new plot (situation) each week,” [Feuer,1992:122] but it is the nature of the situation which removes it from the conventional realm, placing it somewhere between surrealist territory and fantasy land. Vince befriending a polar bear in the Tundra, and Howard held captive by a lonely Merman looking for love, are two examples of the wonderfully surrealist, yet comedic, situations Vince and Howard find themselves in. The show’s style of comedy, which doesn’t take itself too seriously, directs the audience to believe these absurd situations are normal. Characters react emotionally to situations, eg. Howard’s fear of the romantic advances of Old Gregg (Noel Fielding), while the fact he fished a Merman wearing a pink tutu, white suit jacket, and tie out of a lake is a secondary concern, as if these things happen every day.
The audience understands from the outset the show is not a realistic world, as Barratt’s voiceover invites in the opening credits, “Come with us now, on a journey through time and space, to the world of The Mighty Boosh!” Upon accepting the invitation to join the Boosh in their world the audience must suspend disbelief and accept whatever happens is how it is meant to be. Often in the world of The Mighty Boosh this involves inanimate objects, or mythical creatures coming to life, within just two episodes the audience is exposed to:
• Vince with “the legs of a ram.”
• Black Frost who “makes Jack Frost look like a warm cardigan.”
• Naan Bread.
• Old Gregg – “Legendary fish. Some say he's half man, half fish. Others say it's more of a seventy-thirty split. Whatever the percentage, he's one fishy bastard.”
• A fishwife covered in shells.
• The Funk – “a funky ball of tits from outer space.”
• Bollo – a talking gorilla, ‘familiar’ of Naboo (Michael Fielding), friend to Howard and Vince.
The Mighty Boosh is a world where a self proclaimed ‘Jazz maverick’, a ‘Camden leisure pirate’, a 406 year old ‘Shaman’, and a 40 year old gorilla DJ, live together in a tiny flat in Dalston, but it still abides by the sitcom’s traditional narrative structure which is “constructed as movement from equilibrium to disequilibrium to a new equilibrium.” [Marshall,2002:50] Jane Feuer explains the salient features of the sitcom as the half hour format, an obvious basis in humour, and the advent of a ‘problem of the week’ from which the humour of the episode stems, somehow resolved by the end of the episode. [1992:120] The ending of the Pilot sees Howard and Vince walking across the ”blinding whiteness of the Tundra,” presumably headed for home, providing the audience a sense of narrative closure. They aren’t back exactly where they started, at the Zooniverse in cages dressed as apes, but Black Frost is defeated, they are together again, and out of danger. The Legend of Old Gregg ends much the same way, with the four characters driving home after rescuing Howard from Old Gregg, this ending however offers no narrative closure as the camera shifts focus from characters in the van, panning up to reveal Old Gregg standing on the roof in a wedding dress. This demonstrates the evolution of the narrative structure from series one; although a sense of equilibrium has been achieved; the audience is left with an open ended narrative and a ‘danger’ which is still present.
Of the eight varieties of comedy plots, established by Gerald Mast, it is assumed The Mighty Boosh fits best with “the reductio ad absurdum in which a single mistake produces utter chaos.” [Palmer,1987:28] In the Pilot Vince’s high pitched ‘Cars’ Gary Numan ringtone sounds at an inopportune moment, triggering a sequence of events ending with Howard and Vince held captive at the mercy of “Black Frost.” While in The Legend Of Old Gregg, Vince is warned too late by a local fisherman: “You should never go out on Black Lake when the moon be full,” resulting in Howard’s imprisonment in ‘Gregg’s Place’.
Hyper reality is evident in the visual aesthetic of The Mighty Boosh. Howard and Vince’s world is bright and artificial, reflected in cheap sets, relatively basic special effects, childlike animation, and elaborate costumes.
In series one, Howard and Vince live in a tiny room at the Zooniverse. Music is evidently important to them from the electric guitar and jazz photographs visible in the background. Their apartment in series two (nothing is mentioned of the setting change and disappearance of the Zooniverse) is “retro but modern”; an amalgamation of Howard and Vince’s distinctive styles. Spots, stripes, checks, plaid, and artwork is everywhere. Music is even more important in their lives, it is now the only ‘career’ they have, meaning more instruments and memorabilia are scattered about. The move from a “workplace sitcom” to a “family comportment” does not dramatically affect the style of the show as “all sitcoms involve some kind of domestic unit.” [Creeber,2001:67-69]
“We use clothes…as a sign system, a kind of language to say things about ourselves.” [Marshall,2002:16] Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher), Zooniverse owner, is ignorant of fashion, personal appearance, and life; his ill fitting blue safari signifying this to the audience. Fossil’s ignorance creates his humour, as Henri Bergson says the “comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. The comic person is unconscious.” [1956:71] This is evident in Fossil’s obscure animal descriptions: “You know, grey leg face man, he's got legs, and then another leg on his face.”
Howard and Vince have distinctive costuming styles, even when wearing Zooniverse uniforms. Fashion conscious Vince loves accessorising: belts, hats, badges, scarves, and cowboy boots, while sensible Howard is all about tweed and sturdy boots with an occasional Hawaiian shirt to show he’s relaxed. The Pilot best demonstrates their opposing fashion styles. Howard in full length mink coat, hat, gloves and snow boots, mocks Vince’s “human coke can” outfit, which Vince calls a “glam rock ski suit” with matching headband, and furry pink and white boots.
The use of back projection to create travelling scenes and outdoor locations is discussed in The Making of Series 2 documentary(2006); it is a technique people now generally shy away from, or at least try disguise, due to its less than convincing results, but it’s part of The Mighty Boosh style: hyper realistic, self-reflexive, and, for lack of a better academic term, fun.
Peripeteia, an element belonging to the logic of the absurd, described as “the moment when the fortunes of the principal character are reversed,” [Palmer,1987:39] is often used in The Mighty Boosh. In the Pilot Vince is banished outside in the freezing Tundra night, a towering camera angle with a shadow falling across Vince accompanied by a menacing growl traditionally signifies danger, but not so in the world of The Mighty Boosh. The next time we see Vince he is dancing, reading, and playing badminton with a polar bear. Palmer also explains in his book The Logic of the Absurd, a concept heavily utilised in The Mighty Boosh,
“We know that what we see on the screen is funny in so far as it is simultaneously plausible and implausible, but more implausible than it is plausible, absurd, in short.” [1987:56]
In the Pilot the idea Howard and Vince could thaw out and hear Biggie Shackleton’s final words by placing them in boiling water is at first utterly absurd, but further consideration reveals an element of logic in their plan. Another example of peripeteia is in The Legend of Old Gregg when Naboo asks: “Bollo, get the submarine out of the loft would you…underneath the Christmas tree.” His matter of fact tone makes the audience think while it is highly unlikely anyone would store a submarine in their loft it is still a possibility.
“The moon was always full” in the world of The Mighty Boosh; a constant reminder of surrealist elements, signifying no real sense of time passing, or of a natural flow of life, in this constructed hyper reality. This surrealism jumps to another level when The Moon (Noel Fielding), becomes a regular character in series two. Fielding describes The Moon as “pretty much a simpleton,” and it features twice an episode imparting ‘wisdom’ such as,
“Old Gregg is like a, a big fish finger, but big! Like um, like a garage. As big as a garage. Imagine that fish finger, when you can see it is as big as a garage”.
The surrealist nature of the show is aided by its self-reflexivity. The beginning of the Pilot sees Howard and Vince standing in front of a blank screen (in later episodes it is a red curtain) introducing themselves, discussing what will happen in the show: “I’m Vince, and this crazy character is Howard Moon” as Howard claims “I’m a very powerful actor.”
Vince and Howard’s dialogue establishes, even at such an early stage, their bizarre, somewhat antagonistic friendship:
Vince:…and in one scene I’ll have the legs of a ram.
Howard: …I rewrote that bit.
Vince: It’s the best bit.
This self-reflexivity is continued after the ‘Tundra Rap’ where Vince says: “All right! Proved your point, in song format.”
The relaxed and spontaneous tone of the show is created by the characters, their interactions with one another, and the fact there are a few actors playing most of the parts; Fielding and Barratt often playing up to three characters an episode. Howard and Vince are not stereotypes as they constantly change their opinions of themselves, and each other throughout both series. The repetition of phrases: “they call me the…” and “I’m a…” are used at least once an episode, and help establish previously unexplored sides of the character.
Vince’s claims relate to fashion and pop culture such as:
• I'm Vince Noir, Rock 'n' Roll star!
• I'm King of the Mods!
• I'm like Mowgli - the retro version.
• I’m a Camden leisure pirate
Whereas Howard’s claims are directed towards his internal creative nature:
• Jazz-maverick.
• I’m an explorer.
• I’m a novelist.
• I’m a poet, cyclist, I organise raffles.
The humour of Howard comes from the disjuncture occurring between self image and public perception. Vince tells Howard “you’re rigid…you’re like a breadstick,” he is never willing to admit his knowledge is superficial, or that he is ever wrong. Howard believes he is a man of “grand designs” but his arrogance can be construed as a defence against the world, as he frequently ends up victimised. He thinks more of himself than anyone else, evidenced by his repeated use of: “Don't kill me, I've got so much to give!” whenever he is slightly in danger. Vince’s comedy, however, surrounds his naïve optimistic nature, and his feminised style; often being confused for Howard’s “lady friend.” Howard says of Vince, “everything’s easy for you, you see a peanut and the day’s off to a good start.” While he appears less intelligent it is with Vince whom others connect. Noel Fielding says in the The Making of Series 2 “ Vince has grown up a little more. He was a bit like a tot in the first series and in [the second] series he’s like a teen.” Less naïve but just as optimistic.
The Mighty Boosh may change many elements of its style, tone, and structure, but the premise of the show, and the comedy within will continue to succeed provided a focus on Vince and Howard’s relationship remains, and the moral ‘you should be who you want to be no matter how you’re judged’ is maintained.
REFERENCES:
• Bushman D, 1996, Stand-up Comedians On Television, Harry N. Abrams, New York.
• Creeber G, 2001, The Television Genre Book, British Film Institute, London.
• Feuer J, 1992, ‘Genre Study & Television’ in Channels of Discourse, Allen R (ed), University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
• Fiske J & Hartley J, 1987, Reading Television, Methuen & Co Ltd, USA.
• Marshall J & Werndly A, 2002, The Language of Television, Routledge, London.
• Palmer J, 1987, The Logic Of The Absurd – On Film & Television Comedy, British Film Institute, London.
• Rattigan A & Waddell T, 2004, Lounge Critic – the couch theorist’s companion, ACMI, Victoria.
• Sypher W (ed), 1956, Laughter, Essays on Comedy Bergson & Meredith, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York.
FILMOGRAPHY:
Episodes:
• The Mighty Boosh, Season 1, Episode 0, Pilot, screening date unknown.
• The Mighty Boosh, Season 2, Episode 1, The Call Of The Yeti, 26th July 2005.
• The Mighty Boosh, Season 2, Episode 5, The Legend of Old Gregg, 23th August 2005.
Additional Material:
• The Mighty Boosh: The Making of Series 2, 2006, Dave Lambert, UK, Baby Cow Productions Ltd.
Comedic duo Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, and their created personas, Vince Noir and Howard Moon, are collectively known as ‘The Mighty Boosh.’ They have had success with stand-up comedy, travelling stage shows, a radio series, and as “radio begat television,” [Bushman,1996:122] a television series. For the purpose of this essay The Mighty Boosh will be used exclusively to reference the BBC television program, which first aired with the episode Killeroo(18/05/04). Including the pilot, only thirteen episodes have been produced so far. To investigate similarities and differences within the The Mighty Boosh in relation to the ‘situation comedy’ genre, two episodes, Pilot (previously unscreened) and The Legend Of Old Gregg (23/08/05), have been selected for study.
The Mighty Boosh is classified, on a most basic genre level, as a situation-comedy determined by elements of ”character types, setting, iconography, narrative and style.” [Creeber,2001:3] “Television is stretching and transforming” [Rattigan,2004:160] to accommodate more hybridised genres, meaning one absolute genre for any television show is obsolete. In The Call Of The Yeti (26/07/05) Howard Moon says of himself: “I span the genres Vince, they call me the genre spanner”; a perfect explanation of what the show itself does. Genres it spans include: comedy, fantasy, surrealism, horror, musical, animation, advertising, and even, to an extent, the western; evidenced by Vince’s penchant for cowboy boots, “the white hat…the signifier of a ‘good’ cowboy,” [Fiske,1987:63] his Howard imposed sense of being ‘the sidekick’, and the way there is often a ‘show down’ with an evil character; Nanatoo, Beta Max, and the recurring villain ‘The Hitcher’ who claims: “I’m evil, pure evil!”
The Mighty Boosh plays as a conventional sitcom in “its nature as an episodic series…a program with continuing characters but with a new plot (situation) each week,” [Feuer,1992:122] but it is the nature of the situation which removes it from the conventional realm, placing it somewhere between surrealist territory and fantasy land. Vince befriending a polar bear in the Tundra, and Howard held captive by a lonely Merman looking for love, are two examples of the wonderfully surrealist, yet comedic, situations Vince and Howard find themselves in. The show’s style of comedy, which doesn’t take itself too seriously, directs the audience to believe these absurd situations are normal. Characters react emotionally to situations, eg. Howard’s fear of the romantic advances of Old Gregg (Noel Fielding), while the fact he fished a Merman wearing a pink tutu, white suit jacket, and tie out of a lake is a secondary concern, as if these things happen every day.
The audience understands from the outset the show is not a realistic world, as Barratt’s voiceover invites in the opening credits, “Come with us now, on a journey through time and space, to the world of The Mighty Boosh!” Upon accepting the invitation to join the Boosh in their world the audience must suspend disbelief and accept whatever happens is how it is meant to be. Often in the world of The Mighty Boosh this involves inanimate objects, or mythical creatures coming to life, within just two episodes the audience is exposed to:
• Vince with “the legs of a ram.”
• Black Frost who “makes Jack Frost look like a warm cardigan.”
• Naan Bread.
• Old Gregg – “Legendary fish. Some say he's half man, half fish. Others say it's more of a seventy-thirty split. Whatever the percentage, he's one fishy bastard.”
• A fishwife covered in shells.
• The Funk – “a funky ball of tits from outer space.”
• Bollo – a talking gorilla, ‘familiar’ of Naboo (Michael Fielding), friend to Howard and Vince.
The Mighty Boosh is a world where a self proclaimed ‘Jazz maverick’, a ‘Camden leisure pirate’, a 406 year old ‘Shaman’, and a 40 year old gorilla DJ, live together in a tiny flat in Dalston, but it still abides by the sitcom’s traditional narrative structure which is “constructed as movement from equilibrium to disequilibrium to a new equilibrium.” [Marshall,2002:50] Jane Feuer explains the salient features of the sitcom as the half hour format, an obvious basis in humour, and the advent of a ‘problem of the week’ from which the humour of the episode stems, somehow resolved by the end of the episode. [1992:120] The ending of the Pilot sees Howard and Vince walking across the ”blinding whiteness of the Tundra,” presumably headed for home, providing the audience a sense of narrative closure. They aren’t back exactly where they started, at the Zooniverse in cages dressed as apes, but Black Frost is defeated, they are together again, and out of danger. The Legend of Old Gregg ends much the same way, with the four characters driving home after rescuing Howard from Old Gregg, this ending however offers no narrative closure as the camera shifts focus from characters in the van, panning up to reveal Old Gregg standing on the roof in a wedding dress. This demonstrates the evolution of the narrative structure from series one; although a sense of equilibrium has been achieved; the audience is left with an open ended narrative and a ‘danger’ which is still present.
Of the eight varieties of comedy plots, established by Gerald Mast, it is assumed The Mighty Boosh fits best with “the reductio ad absurdum in which a single mistake produces utter chaos.” [Palmer,1987:28] In the Pilot Vince’s high pitched ‘Cars’ Gary Numan ringtone sounds at an inopportune moment, triggering a sequence of events ending with Howard and Vince held captive at the mercy of “Black Frost.” While in The Legend Of Old Gregg, Vince is warned too late by a local fisherman: “You should never go out on Black Lake when the moon be full,” resulting in Howard’s imprisonment in ‘Gregg’s Place’.
Hyper reality is evident in the visual aesthetic of The Mighty Boosh. Howard and Vince’s world is bright and artificial, reflected in cheap sets, relatively basic special effects, childlike animation, and elaborate costumes.
In series one, Howard and Vince live in a tiny room at the Zooniverse. Music is evidently important to them from the electric guitar and jazz photographs visible in the background. Their apartment in series two (nothing is mentioned of the setting change and disappearance of the Zooniverse) is “retro but modern”; an amalgamation of Howard and Vince’s distinctive styles. Spots, stripes, checks, plaid, and artwork is everywhere. Music is even more important in their lives, it is now the only ‘career’ they have, meaning more instruments and memorabilia are scattered about. The move from a “workplace sitcom” to a “family comportment” does not dramatically affect the style of the show as “all sitcoms involve some kind of domestic unit.” [Creeber,2001:67-69]
“We use clothes…as a sign system, a kind of language to say things about ourselves.” [Marshall,2002:16] Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher), Zooniverse owner, is ignorant of fashion, personal appearance, and life; his ill fitting blue safari signifying this to the audience. Fossil’s ignorance creates his humour, as Henri Bergson says the “comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. The comic person is unconscious.” [1956:71] This is evident in Fossil’s obscure animal descriptions: “You know, grey leg face man, he's got legs, and then another leg on his face.”
Howard and Vince have distinctive costuming styles, even when wearing Zooniverse uniforms. Fashion conscious Vince loves accessorising: belts, hats, badges, scarves, and cowboy boots, while sensible Howard is all about tweed and sturdy boots with an occasional Hawaiian shirt to show he’s relaxed. The Pilot best demonstrates their opposing fashion styles. Howard in full length mink coat, hat, gloves and snow boots, mocks Vince’s “human coke can” outfit, which Vince calls a “glam rock ski suit” with matching headband, and furry pink and white boots.
The use of back projection to create travelling scenes and outdoor locations is discussed in The Making of Series 2 documentary(2006); it is a technique people now generally shy away from, or at least try disguise, due to its less than convincing results, but it’s part of The Mighty Boosh style: hyper realistic, self-reflexive, and, for lack of a better academic term, fun.
Peripeteia, an element belonging to the logic of the absurd, described as “the moment when the fortunes of the principal character are reversed,” [Palmer,1987:39] is often used in The Mighty Boosh. In the Pilot Vince is banished outside in the freezing Tundra night, a towering camera angle with a shadow falling across Vince accompanied by a menacing growl traditionally signifies danger, but not so in the world of The Mighty Boosh. The next time we see Vince he is dancing, reading, and playing badminton with a polar bear. Palmer also explains in his book The Logic of the Absurd, a concept heavily utilised in The Mighty Boosh,
“We know that what we see on the screen is funny in so far as it is simultaneously plausible and implausible, but more implausible than it is plausible, absurd, in short.” [1987:56]
In the Pilot the idea Howard and Vince could thaw out and hear Biggie Shackleton’s final words by placing them in boiling water is at first utterly absurd, but further consideration reveals an element of logic in their plan. Another example of peripeteia is in The Legend of Old Gregg when Naboo asks: “Bollo, get the submarine out of the loft would you…underneath the Christmas tree.” His matter of fact tone makes the audience think while it is highly unlikely anyone would store a submarine in their loft it is still a possibility.
“The moon was always full” in the world of The Mighty Boosh; a constant reminder of surrealist elements, signifying no real sense of time passing, or of a natural flow of life, in this constructed hyper reality. This surrealism jumps to another level when The Moon (Noel Fielding), becomes a regular character in series two. Fielding describes The Moon as “pretty much a simpleton,” and it features twice an episode imparting ‘wisdom’ such as,
“Old Gregg is like a, a big fish finger, but big! Like um, like a garage. As big as a garage. Imagine that fish finger, when you can see it is as big as a garage”.
The surrealist nature of the show is aided by its self-reflexivity. The beginning of the Pilot sees Howard and Vince standing in front of a blank screen (in later episodes it is a red curtain) introducing themselves, discussing what will happen in the show: “I’m Vince, and this crazy character is Howard Moon” as Howard claims “I’m a very powerful actor.”
Vince and Howard’s dialogue establishes, even at such an early stage, their bizarre, somewhat antagonistic friendship:
Vince:…and in one scene I’ll have the legs of a ram.
Howard: …I rewrote that bit.
Vince: It’s the best bit.
This self-reflexivity is continued after the ‘Tundra Rap’ where Vince says: “All right! Proved your point, in song format.”
The relaxed and spontaneous tone of the show is created by the characters, their interactions with one another, and the fact there are a few actors playing most of the parts; Fielding and Barratt often playing up to three characters an episode. Howard and Vince are not stereotypes as they constantly change their opinions of themselves, and each other throughout both series. The repetition of phrases: “they call me the…” and “I’m a…” are used at least once an episode, and help establish previously unexplored sides of the character.
Vince’s claims relate to fashion and pop culture such as:
• I'm Vince Noir, Rock 'n' Roll star!
• I'm King of the Mods!
• I'm like Mowgli - the retro version.
• I’m a Camden leisure pirate
Whereas Howard’s claims are directed towards his internal creative nature:
• Jazz-maverick.
• I’m an explorer.
• I’m a novelist.
• I’m a poet, cyclist, I organise raffles.
The humour of Howard comes from the disjuncture occurring between self image and public perception. Vince tells Howard “you’re rigid…you’re like a breadstick,” he is never willing to admit his knowledge is superficial, or that he is ever wrong. Howard believes he is a man of “grand designs” but his arrogance can be construed as a defence against the world, as he frequently ends up victimised. He thinks more of himself than anyone else, evidenced by his repeated use of: “Don't kill me, I've got so much to give!” whenever he is slightly in danger. Vince’s comedy, however, surrounds his naïve optimistic nature, and his feminised style; often being confused for Howard’s “lady friend.” Howard says of Vince, “everything’s easy for you, you see a peanut and the day’s off to a good start.” While he appears less intelligent it is with Vince whom others connect. Noel Fielding says in the The Making of Series 2 “ Vince has grown up a little more. He was a bit like a tot in the first series and in [the second] series he’s like a teen.” Less naïve but just as optimistic.
The Mighty Boosh may change many elements of its style, tone, and structure, but the premise of the show, and the comedy within will continue to succeed provided a focus on Vince and Howard’s relationship remains, and the moral ‘you should be who you want to be no matter how you’re judged’ is maintained.
REFERENCES:
• Bushman D, 1996, Stand-up Comedians On Television, Harry N. Abrams, New York.
• Creeber G, 2001, The Television Genre Book, British Film Institute, London.
• Feuer J, 1992, ‘Genre Study & Television’ in Channels of Discourse, Allen R (ed), University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
• Fiske J & Hartley J, 1987, Reading Television, Methuen & Co Ltd, USA.
• Marshall J & Werndly A, 2002, The Language of Television, Routledge, London.
• Palmer J, 1987, The Logic Of The Absurd – On Film & Television Comedy, British Film Institute, London.
• Rattigan A & Waddell T, 2004, Lounge Critic – the couch theorist’s companion, ACMI, Victoria.
• Sypher W (ed), 1956, Laughter, Essays on Comedy Bergson & Meredith, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York.
FILMOGRAPHY:
Episodes:
• The Mighty Boosh, Season 1, Episode 0, Pilot, screening date unknown.
• The Mighty Boosh, Season 2, Episode 1, The Call Of The Yeti, 26th July 2005.
• The Mighty Boosh, Season 2, Episode 5, The Legend of Old Gregg, 23th August 2005.
Additional Material:
• The Mighty Boosh: The Making of Series 2, 2006, Dave Lambert, UK, Baby Cow Productions Ltd.
1st Rule About This Essay Is Do Not Talk About This Essay
David Fincher’s films reflect a thematic preoccupation with a conflict over gendered space/s. Discuss in relation to Panic Room, Fight Club, and Alien³.
David Fincher personally “shies away from the auteur label,” [Swallow, 2003:30] and indeed emerged from the film industry during a time when people no longer willingly “award an authorial primacy to the director” [McCabe,2001:36]. It was Roland Barthes who advocated the idea of ‘The Death Of The Author,’ [1977:title] but Fincher, the “fiercely individualistic, rather control conscious [artist],” [Waxman,2005:13] won’t readily accept this idea either. Fincher believes,
this notion that we’re…going to have this reverse-auteurism, that you’re going to be able to posthumously impose narrative structure on something based on momentary whim, is stupid [2003:30].
Whether Fincher agrees with auteur theory or not he seems to satisfy Andrew Sarris’ criteria in terms of what defines an auteur; technical competence, distinguishable personality, and interior meaning which arises from tension between personality and material [Stam,1999:89]. Despite Fincher not being directly involved in writing any of the films he has directed, recognising themes and preoccupations within is easy due to the personal style he imposes. “Perhaps what thematically characterises all of Fincher’s films is an unflinching glimpse into the brutal, violent soul of humanity” [Tibbetts, 2002:205]. Fincher’s portraits of humanity often centre around the existence of, and conflict over, gendered spaces, male and female, physical and mental. More often than not the material space in question is a physical manifestation of existing issues within the mental space. Fincher’s preoccupation with such spaces will be examined within this essay through his films Alien³ (1992), Fight Club (1999), and Panic Room (2002).
The idea physical spaces within Fincher’s films are reflections, or manifestations, of the mind state of characters is echoed by the director’s stylistic traits; the “trademark Fincher tone – brooding, dark” and claustrophobic, in the realm of the repressed. Swallow, in his book “Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher” clarifies this idea best.
In each of Fincher’s movies, he takes us on a journey into realms that lie half-glimpsed off the tangent of the real world, grim domains where the gloom hides things that draw out uncomfortable emotions, scare us, dare us and force us to answer questions we’d prefer to ignore.
[2003:7,145]
Fincher’s “directorial debut,” [Tibbetts,2002:204] Alien³, and his most recent feature Panic Room, best demonstrate gendering of physical spaces, and conflict which arises from the intrusion of an opposing gender. To begin with both films are rather explicit in drawing distinctions between male and female, but, as the films continue, the lines blur.
In Alien³ the planet which Lieutenant Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) crashes on, Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161, has links to three separate, traditionally male orientated, institutions; prison, military, and the church. The prisoners are referred to as “double Y chromos”, stating they are men above everything else. The visual image created by the shaved heads and green ‘uniforms’ of the prisoners allows for a comparison with military soldiers. Alternatively, when they are dressed in their large hooded coats displaying their shaved heads a visual connection can be established between the prisoners and a brotherhood of monks, living in an isolated make-shift monastery. Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) even refers to his inmates as ‘brother’ and the group of prisoners are known collectively as “Dillon’s God Squad”. Inside the prison is cold and industrial, but conditions outside are appalling, making the seemingly endless maze of confined tunnels, vents, and corridors oddly comforting.
The prisoners find some form of peace in their secluded ‘home’ until a woman (Ripley) arrives causing unrest; unwittingly bringing danger and temptation. Ripley’s introduction to the prisoners as a collective occurs in the cafeteria, despite having shaved her head and adopted their uniform it is obvious she is ‘alien’ and a threat in their environment. She is shot from a low angle making her appear much larger than she is, and the low rumbling soundtrack which accompanies her entrance signifies an impending danger. “Ripley fears that she has brought the alien with her” [Swallow,2003:40] which the audience knows is not an unfounded fear, as Morse (Danny Webb) so eloquently puts it later in the film, “She's the one that brought the fucker.” The Alien and Ripley are inextricably linked in the film from the title sequence. Shots of the stars and outer space, ungendered, are intercut with brief shots of the Alien, evoking Laura Mulvey’s idea of the “threatening woman”, the “voyeuristic gaze” and the “deployment of the close-up shot, which almost always fragmented parts of the female form” [Hill,1998:83]. The Alien’s first kill coincides with Ripley and Doctor Clemens (Charles Dance) sleeping together, as if they both share some form of victory.
Alien³ ‘s climactic finale relies solely on closing the male space in around the female, the intruder, to trap her, and regain their dominance over the male space. While the inmates are successful in destroying the Alien, and indeed the woman, as “Fincher’s furious, purifying desire for closure…resulted in the death of Ripley,” [Mulhall,2002:101] they were unable to retain their lives, and in the end Morse is the only inmate survivor.
Panic Room is the inverse of most of Fincher’s films; it is female space intruded upon by males. Even the title establishes the idea of gendered space; ‘panic’, hysteria, states often attributed to females. The idea of mother protecting child signals an overt connection between the panic room and the ever popular filmic imagery of “an enforced return to a claustrophobic womb” [Bell-Metereau,2004:157]. The panic room is clearly gendered female, making the attempts to intrude on the space by the excessively violent males even more sinister. The film inverts the idea of an “active male gaze and a passive female image’” [Hill,1998:82] in the way Meg (Jodie Foster), and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), observe the male intruders and the “unfolding events through the panic room’s monitor screens” [Swallow,2003:173]. The audience is aligned with their female gaze. Even when Burnham (Forest Whitaker) and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) finally occupy the female space, Meg denies them the power of the ‘male gaze’ as she disconnects the cameras, an act which bewilders the men as Raoul asks “Why didn’t we do that?”
The space itself even rebels against its male intruders. So much is made of the safety mechanisms of the thick steel door and the fact “no-one could ever get caught in it” [Swallow,2003:168] making it more shocking for the audience to see Raoul’s hand so violently jammed. The way “the criminals end up becoming victims rather than victimizers” [Bell-Metereau,2004:157] as they are: burnt, injured, killed, and left with nothing, furthers the idea the space is female, and the females are dominant in their space.
To simply say Fight Club is the epitome of a male gendered physical space is remiss; it is the culture of the Fight Clubs, and indeed the male mind space of the Narrator (Edward Norton), which are the focus of the film; the physical spaces in which fights take place are not particularly important. As in Fincher’s other films, the title sequence establishes a gendered space; the audience is quite literally placed in the male mind. A computer generated shot tracks out from the fear centre of the brain, and down the barrel of a gun shoved in the Narrator’s mouth held by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who, as the audience later learns, is the Narrator’s “alter ego made manifest and free” [Swallow,2003:117] establishing the idea of conflict within himself. As so much of the film is psychological, it is important the audience be aligned with the Narrator from the beginning. The second scene is a “Remaining Men Together” meeting for testicular cancer survivors, cementing the mentally gendered space rather explicitly in the physical world.
The intrusion of the female into the male gendered space, the Narrator’s world, is a catalyst for his need to ‘meet’ Tyler, and redefine himself. Marla Singer’s (Helena Bonham Carter) initial intrusion into his is also rather overt. She walks into a ‘Remaining Men Together’ meeting; what should be an explicitly male experience. Marla also later materialises in the Narrator’s ‘cave’, replacing his ‘power animal’ during guided meditation; an indication of her intrusion into his mind space not just his physical world. The cave itself conjures images of Neanderthal man, hunting, and gathering. This strengthens the film’s idea men are “designed to be hunters [but are] in a society of gatherers” [Swallow,2003:120]. Not only ‘gatherers’ in terms of the female implication, but how lives are valued by the amount of material possessions one can gather; a life Tyler Durden strongly rails against.
The Narrator’s empty life is reflected in his condo; it so easily becomes a ‘Furni’ catalogue, and the Narrator himself says “how embarrassing, a houseful of condiments and no food”; affirmations of his consumer driven life and the lack of a woman’s (welcome) presence. Tyler’s ‘Paper Street’ house is the polar opposite of the Narrator’s condo; dirty, old, falling apart, windows boarded up, and no lock on the front door. Tyler feels no need to keep people out, or locked in. The house reflects what Tyler believes the Narrator should aspire to have, essentially nothing.
Visually, Fincher’s use of the “same palette of colours and fabrics, [suggests] the ‘sameness’ of life”. Hygienic blues and greens throughout the Narrator’s condo, his office, hotel rooms, and planes, give a distinct feeling the outside world is dead, and it is only in the “heavy darkness of Tyler Durden’s secret society” [Swallow,2003:127-28] that the Narrator comes alive.
The film’s ending brings a sense of hope as the Narrator is reunited with Marla and is ready to embark on a new phase of his life. He has triumphed over his emasculated and commodity driven life, and, as Tyler urged, he has finally “let go”. The closing image of the Narrator and Marla standing hand in hand staring out the window at the destruction caused by “Project Mayhem” leaves the audience feeling somewhat content. Of similar height and dressed almost identically; Marla in skirt and coat, the Narrator in boxer shorts and coat, they give the impression the gendered space of the male mind often requires a female mind to complement it, balance it, and equal it.
Behind Fincher’s thematic preoccupation with gendered ‘head’ spaces and the conflict they endure, lies the idea of questioning the existence, and validity of such spaces at all. In The Game, Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is forced to surrender not only his physical materialistic world where doors literally open to him, but also his mind’s perception of the world surrounding him. His fierce struggle to determine what is real, and what belongs to ‘the game’, develops into crippling paranoia which sees him shoot his brother Conrad (Sean Penn), and throw himself off a roof. In ending his films Fincher finds ways to “confound expectation” and has an uncanny ability to “turn your safe world into one of uncertainty and doubt” [Swallow,2003:111]. Fight Club’s Narrator experiences this same struggle of determining what is real, evident in the scene where Tyler confronts the Narrator in a hotel room. A succession of flashbacks in which the Narrator substitutes or eradicates Tyler, rapidly strikes out at the Narrator and the audience; everyone is left reeling as they try determine, and revalue the authenticity of the reality they have been presented with up to that point.
Within Fincher’s preoccupation with gendered spaces is inherent the idea of entrances and exits, whether they be physical doors, Alien³ , Fight Club and Panic Room, or the exits of characters, often through self sacrifice, found in all his films. This self sacrifice, often accompanied by arms outstretched, invokes images of Christ’s crucifixion. As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club “without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.” Ripley throws herself into a lead mould to destroy the Alien spawn inside her, just as Van Orton throws himself from the roof of a building in order to save his soul in The Game. Se7en’s John Doe (Kevin Spacey) sacrifices himself in order to see his “desire to turn each sin against the sinner” fulfilled in the hope of making the world pay attention. It is only through shooting himself, and enduring pain one last time, that Fight Club’s Narrator is freed from Tyler Durden, and can tell Marla; “I’m really ok, trust me,” and have it be true. In Panic Room Burnham is left standing in the rain, arms in the air, while millions of dollars of bearer bonds whirl around him, all because he made a decision to sacrifice his own wealth and freedom to return and save Meg and Sarah.
David Fincher’s films reflect a thematic preoccupation with gendered spaces whether they be physical, mental, male, or female. His visual style has strengthened and developed throughout the five films he has directed to date. Fincher’s penchant for “visual darkness” and the claustrophobic element of his films reflect on the real world, and serve as reminders to the audience how we are constantly rubbing elbows with other people [Swallow,2003:70-71]. Perhaps he is suggesting this connection with people, no matter how invasive or destructive it may be, is all we really have in the end.
REFERENCES:
Books:
• Bell-Metereau R, 2004, ‘The How-To Manual, the Prequel & the Sequel’ in Dixon W (ed), Film & Television After 9/11, USA, Southern Illinois University Press.
• Hill J (ed), 1998, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, New York, Oxford University Press.
• McCabe C, 2001, ‘The Revenge of the Author’ in Wexman V (ed), Film & Authorship, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press.
• Mulhall S, 2002, On Film (Thinking in Action), London, Routledge.
• Stam R, 1999, Film Theory: an Introduction, UK, Blackwell Publishers.
• Swallow J, 2003, Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher, New York, Reynolds & Hearn.
• Tibbetts J (ed), 2002, The Encyclopedia of Filmmakers – Volume 1, New York, Facts On File.
• Waxman S, 2005, Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors & How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System, USA, Harper Entertainment.
FILMOGRAPHY:
• Alien³, 1992, David FINCHER, USA, 20th Century Fox.
• Fight Club, 1999, David FINCHER, USA, 20th Century Fox.
• Panic Room, 2002, David FINCHER, USA, Columbia Pictures.
• Se7en, 1995, David FINCHER, USA, New Line Cinema.
• The Game, 1997, David FINCHER, USA, Polygram Filmed Entertainment.
David Fincher personally “shies away from the auteur label,” [Swallow, 2003:30] and indeed emerged from the film industry during a time when people no longer willingly “award an authorial primacy to the director” [McCabe,2001:36]. It was Roland Barthes who advocated the idea of ‘The Death Of The Author,’ [1977:title] but Fincher, the “fiercely individualistic, rather control conscious [artist],” [Waxman,2005:13] won’t readily accept this idea either. Fincher believes,
this notion that we’re…going to have this reverse-auteurism, that you’re going to be able to posthumously impose narrative structure on something based on momentary whim, is stupid [2003:30].
Whether Fincher agrees with auteur theory or not he seems to satisfy Andrew Sarris’ criteria in terms of what defines an auteur; technical competence, distinguishable personality, and interior meaning which arises from tension between personality and material [Stam,1999:89]. Despite Fincher not being directly involved in writing any of the films he has directed, recognising themes and preoccupations within is easy due to the personal style he imposes. “Perhaps what thematically characterises all of Fincher’s films is an unflinching glimpse into the brutal, violent soul of humanity” [Tibbetts, 2002:205]. Fincher’s portraits of humanity often centre around the existence of, and conflict over, gendered spaces, male and female, physical and mental. More often than not the material space in question is a physical manifestation of existing issues within the mental space. Fincher’s preoccupation with such spaces will be examined within this essay through his films Alien³ (1992), Fight Club (1999), and Panic Room (2002).
The idea physical spaces within Fincher’s films are reflections, or manifestations, of the mind state of characters is echoed by the director’s stylistic traits; the “trademark Fincher tone – brooding, dark” and claustrophobic, in the realm of the repressed. Swallow, in his book “Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher” clarifies this idea best.
In each of Fincher’s movies, he takes us on a journey into realms that lie half-glimpsed off the tangent of the real world, grim domains where the gloom hides things that draw out uncomfortable emotions, scare us, dare us and force us to answer questions we’d prefer to ignore.
[2003:7,145]
Fincher’s “directorial debut,” [Tibbetts,2002:204] Alien³, and his most recent feature Panic Room, best demonstrate gendering of physical spaces, and conflict which arises from the intrusion of an opposing gender. To begin with both films are rather explicit in drawing distinctions between male and female, but, as the films continue, the lines blur.
In Alien³ the planet which Lieutenant Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) crashes on, Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161, has links to three separate, traditionally male orientated, institutions; prison, military, and the church. The prisoners are referred to as “double Y chromos”, stating they are men above everything else. The visual image created by the shaved heads and green ‘uniforms’ of the prisoners allows for a comparison with military soldiers. Alternatively, when they are dressed in their large hooded coats displaying their shaved heads a visual connection can be established between the prisoners and a brotherhood of monks, living in an isolated make-shift monastery. Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) even refers to his inmates as ‘brother’ and the group of prisoners are known collectively as “Dillon’s God Squad”. Inside the prison is cold and industrial, but conditions outside are appalling, making the seemingly endless maze of confined tunnels, vents, and corridors oddly comforting.
The prisoners find some form of peace in their secluded ‘home’ until a woman (Ripley) arrives causing unrest; unwittingly bringing danger and temptation. Ripley’s introduction to the prisoners as a collective occurs in the cafeteria, despite having shaved her head and adopted their uniform it is obvious she is ‘alien’ and a threat in their environment. She is shot from a low angle making her appear much larger than she is, and the low rumbling soundtrack which accompanies her entrance signifies an impending danger. “Ripley fears that she has brought the alien with her” [Swallow,2003:40] which the audience knows is not an unfounded fear, as Morse (Danny Webb) so eloquently puts it later in the film, “She's the one that brought the fucker.” The Alien and Ripley are inextricably linked in the film from the title sequence. Shots of the stars and outer space, ungendered, are intercut with brief shots of the Alien, evoking Laura Mulvey’s idea of the “threatening woman”, the “voyeuristic gaze” and the “deployment of the close-up shot, which almost always fragmented parts of the female form” [Hill,1998:83]. The Alien’s first kill coincides with Ripley and Doctor Clemens (Charles Dance) sleeping together, as if they both share some form of victory.
Alien³ ‘s climactic finale relies solely on closing the male space in around the female, the intruder, to trap her, and regain their dominance over the male space. While the inmates are successful in destroying the Alien, and indeed the woman, as “Fincher’s furious, purifying desire for closure…resulted in the death of Ripley,” [Mulhall,2002:101] they were unable to retain their lives, and in the end Morse is the only inmate survivor.
Panic Room is the inverse of most of Fincher’s films; it is female space intruded upon by males. Even the title establishes the idea of gendered space; ‘panic’, hysteria, states often attributed to females. The idea of mother protecting child signals an overt connection between the panic room and the ever popular filmic imagery of “an enforced return to a claustrophobic womb” [Bell-Metereau,2004:157]. The panic room is clearly gendered female, making the attempts to intrude on the space by the excessively violent males even more sinister. The film inverts the idea of an “active male gaze and a passive female image’” [Hill,1998:82] in the way Meg (Jodie Foster), and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), observe the male intruders and the “unfolding events through the panic room’s monitor screens” [Swallow,2003:173]. The audience is aligned with their female gaze. Even when Burnham (Forest Whitaker) and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) finally occupy the female space, Meg denies them the power of the ‘male gaze’ as she disconnects the cameras, an act which bewilders the men as Raoul asks “Why didn’t we do that?”
The space itself even rebels against its male intruders. So much is made of the safety mechanisms of the thick steel door and the fact “no-one could ever get caught in it” [Swallow,2003:168] making it more shocking for the audience to see Raoul’s hand so violently jammed. The way “the criminals end up becoming victims rather than victimizers” [Bell-Metereau,2004:157] as they are: burnt, injured, killed, and left with nothing, furthers the idea the space is female, and the females are dominant in their space.
To simply say Fight Club is the epitome of a male gendered physical space is remiss; it is the culture of the Fight Clubs, and indeed the male mind space of the Narrator (Edward Norton), which are the focus of the film; the physical spaces in which fights take place are not particularly important. As in Fincher’s other films, the title sequence establishes a gendered space; the audience is quite literally placed in the male mind. A computer generated shot tracks out from the fear centre of the brain, and down the barrel of a gun shoved in the Narrator’s mouth held by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who, as the audience later learns, is the Narrator’s “alter ego made manifest and free” [Swallow,2003:117] establishing the idea of conflict within himself. As so much of the film is psychological, it is important the audience be aligned with the Narrator from the beginning. The second scene is a “Remaining Men Together” meeting for testicular cancer survivors, cementing the mentally gendered space rather explicitly in the physical world.
The intrusion of the female into the male gendered space, the Narrator’s world, is a catalyst for his need to ‘meet’ Tyler, and redefine himself. Marla Singer’s (Helena Bonham Carter) initial intrusion into his is also rather overt. She walks into a ‘Remaining Men Together’ meeting; what should be an explicitly male experience. Marla also later materialises in the Narrator’s ‘cave’, replacing his ‘power animal’ during guided meditation; an indication of her intrusion into his mind space not just his physical world. The cave itself conjures images of Neanderthal man, hunting, and gathering. This strengthens the film’s idea men are “designed to be hunters [but are] in a society of gatherers” [Swallow,2003:120]. Not only ‘gatherers’ in terms of the female implication, but how lives are valued by the amount of material possessions one can gather; a life Tyler Durden strongly rails against.
The Narrator’s empty life is reflected in his condo; it so easily becomes a ‘Furni’ catalogue, and the Narrator himself says “how embarrassing, a houseful of condiments and no food”; affirmations of his consumer driven life and the lack of a woman’s (welcome) presence. Tyler’s ‘Paper Street’ house is the polar opposite of the Narrator’s condo; dirty, old, falling apart, windows boarded up, and no lock on the front door. Tyler feels no need to keep people out, or locked in. The house reflects what Tyler believes the Narrator should aspire to have, essentially nothing.
Visually, Fincher’s use of the “same palette of colours and fabrics, [suggests] the ‘sameness’ of life”. Hygienic blues and greens throughout the Narrator’s condo, his office, hotel rooms, and planes, give a distinct feeling the outside world is dead, and it is only in the “heavy darkness of Tyler Durden’s secret society” [Swallow,2003:127-28] that the Narrator comes alive.
The film’s ending brings a sense of hope as the Narrator is reunited with Marla and is ready to embark on a new phase of his life. He has triumphed over his emasculated and commodity driven life, and, as Tyler urged, he has finally “let go”. The closing image of the Narrator and Marla standing hand in hand staring out the window at the destruction caused by “Project Mayhem” leaves the audience feeling somewhat content. Of similar height and dressed almost identically; Marla in skirt and coat, the Narrator in boxer shorts and coat, they give the impression the gendered space of the male mind often requires a female mind to complement it, balance it, and equal it.
Behind Fincher’s thematic preoccupation with gendered ‘head’ spaces and the conflict they endure, lies the idea of questioning the existence, and validity of such spaces at all. In The Game, Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is forced to surrender not only his physical materialistic world where doors literally open to him, but also his mind’s perception of the world surrounding him. His fierce struggle to determine what is real, and what belongs to ‘the game’, develops into crippling paranoia which sees him shoot his brother Conrad (Sean Penn), and throw himself off a roof. In ending his films Fincher finds ways to “confound expectation” and has an uncanny ability to “turn your safe world into one of uncertainty and doubt” [Swallow,2003:111]. Fight Club’s Narrator experiences this same struggle of determining what is real, evident in the scene where Tyler confronts the Narrator in a hotel room. A succession of flashbacks in which the Narrator substitutes or eradicates Tyler, rapidly strikes out at the Narrator and the audience; everyone is left reeling as they try determine, and revalue the authenticity of the reality they have been presented with up to that point.
Within Fincher’s preoccupation with gendered spaces is inherent the idea of entrances and exits, whether they be physical doors, Alien³ , Fight Club and Panic Room, or the exits of characters, often through self sacrifice, found in all his films. This self sacrifice, often accompanied by arms outstretched, invokes images of Christ’s crucifixion. As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club “without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.” Ripley throws herself into a lead mould to destroy the Alien spawn inside her, just as Van Orton throws himself from the roof of a building in order to save his soul in The Game. Se7en’s John Doe (Kevin Spacey) sacrifices himself in order to see his “desire to turn each sin against the sinner” fulfilled in the hope of making the world pay attention. It is only through shooting himself, and enduring pain one last time, that Fight Club’s Narrator is freed from Tyler Durden, and can tell Marla; “I’m really ok, trust me,” and have it be true. In Panic Room Burnham is left standing in the rain, arms in the air, while millions of dollars of bearer bonds whirl around him, all because he made a decision to sacrifice his own wealth and freedom to return and save Meg and Sarah.
David Fincher’s films reflect a thematic preoccupation with gendered spaces whether they be physical, mental, male, or female. His visual style has strengthened and developed throughout the five films he has directed to date. Fincher’s penchant for “visual darkness” and the claustrophobic element of his films reflect on the real world, and serve as reminders to the audience how we are constantly rubbing elbows with other people [Swallow,2003:70-71]. Perhaps he is suggesting this connection with people, no matter how invasive or destructive it may be, is all we really have in the end.
REFERENCES:
Books:
• Bell-Metereau R, 2004, ‘The How-To Manual, the Prequel & the Sequel’ in Dixon W (ed), Film & Television After 9/11, USA, Southern Illinois University Press.
• Hill J (ed), 1998, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, New York, Oxford University Press.
• McCabe C, 2001, ‘The Revenge of the Author’ in Wexman V (ed), Film & Authorship, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press.
• Mulhall S, 2002, On Film (Thinking in Action), London, Routledge.
• Stam R, 1999, Film Theory: an Introduction, UK, Blackwell Publishers.
• Swallow J, 2003, Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher, New York, Reynolds & Hearn.
• Tibbetts J (ed), 2002, The Encyclopedia of Filmmakers – Volume 1, New York, Facts On File.
• Waxman S, 2005, Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors & How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System, USA, Harper Entertainment.
FILMOGRAPHY:
• Alien³, 1992, David FINCHER, USA, 20th Century Fox.
• Fight Club, 1999, David FINCHER, USA, 20th Century Fox.
• Panic Room, 2002, David FINCHER, USA, Columbia Pictures.
• Se7en, 1995, David FINCHER, USA, New Line Cinema.
• The Game, 1997, David FINCHER, USA, Polygram Filmed Entertainment.
The Pleasantly TrumanVille Show
Recent cinema seems obsessed with the paranoid notion that another ‘ontological’ reality exists hidden alongside of parallel to the one that we experience (whether it be in the form of virtual reality or media/alien surveillance). Discuss this notion comparing and contrasting The Truman Show and Pleasantville.
Recent films such as The Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix Trilogy (1999,2003) and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999) have become obsessed with the paranoid notion another ontological reality exists, hidden alongside, or parallel to, the one we experience, but alternatively, films such as Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Gary Ross’ Pleasantville (both released in 1998) provide cinema audiences with an optimistic exploration of the “theme of reality versus virtuality.” [de Vries, 2005:81] These films utilise the medium of television programs (the titles of which reflect the titles of the films themselves), to provide examples of paranoia based not on fear but on longing. For the characters in these television shows, and the viewers who watch them, the idea other worlds exist outside of our own ‘reality’ is a concept not only from which we learn as much about ourselves and the world we choose to live in, as we are shown in Pleasantville, but also these worlds provide an outlet from which we can gain hope, as in The Truman Show. The existence of “transcendental realities, higher or more absorbing than the apparently relatively disappointing reality in which we live,” [Pomerance,2003:2] in respect to film, are to be explored in this essay through philosophies pertaining to Plato’s cave allegory, the struggle between authenticity and inauthenticity, and Bentham’s Panopticon.
“Most people are so thoroughly conditioned to believe that the world is the way they have been taught to see it that they resist any alternative,” [McMahon,2003:173] which is exactly how Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lived his life until day 10,909 when the light bulb above his head literally went off; “a theatrical light…falls from the sky” [McMahan, 1999], and he begins taking steps toward authenticity, and away from Seahaven.
“Existentialists define authenticity as a state in which the individual is aware of the true nature of the human condition. In contrast, inauthenticity is defined as a state in which the individual is either ignorant of the true nature of reality or in denial with respect to it.” [McMahon, 2003:166]
The idea “ignorance for Plato is not bliss, but rather a form of enslavement,” [Falzon, 2003:22] creates an instant connection between the characters of both films, and the prisoners from Plato’s cave allegory who sat “with chains on their legs and their necks so that they have to stay put, and can only look straight in front of them.” [Plato, 1996:230] While they are not physically chained Truman is isolated in his world, and the citizens of Pleasantville are trapped in reruns.
Originally the citizens of Pleasantville are ignorant to the true nature of their reality, but upon the arrival of David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) in place of Bud and Mary-Sue Parker, who ostensibly release their chains, the residents who do not accept the “certain changes in the town”, are those prisoners who do not get “way out of the cave” [Plato, 1996:232] and are simply living in denial. The youth of the town, followed by Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels) the Soda Shop owner, and Betty Parker (Joan Allen) Bud and Mary-Sue’s mother, choose to embrace the opportunity they are presented with to create themselves, rather than continuing to adopt predetermined identities originally written for them by the show’s creators. They refuse to live inauthentic lives dictated by the scripts, instead choosing an alien and sometimes frightening authentic life where they fill in the blank pages themselves.
The books in the library provide a metaphor for the town’s inhabitants, Mary-Sue asks of David: “Did you know that the books are blank?...they have covers and there’s nothing inside of them,” just as Plato asks of the prisoners in the cave:
“Do you think that people in this situation would even have seen themselves and each other properly? Or just their own shadows?”
[1996:231]
Like Truman, they know only what the creators want them to know, all these years they have merely been black and white silhouettes, outlines, of what they can really be. It isn’t until Jennifer brings her knowledge of ‘another world’, a world outside their ‘cave’, that the pages begin filling in. Those who have made the change and decide to accept all aspects of reality, not just those with which they are comfortable, find themselves and things around them in technicolour, while those living in denial are still literally in the dark; trapped in the monochromatic scheme of the television show. [McMahon, 2003:173-176]
“This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded.”
[Foucault, 1977:197]
Foucault was describing the ‘disciplinary mechanism’ of the Panopticon, but he could very well have been explaining Truman’s world. Foucault goes further, describing the Panopticon thus: in the peripheric ring (Seahaven), one (Truman) is totally seen without ever seeing, and in the central tower (the Lunar Room), one (Christof) sees everything without ever being seen. [1977:201-2] These analogies indicate Truman is a prisoner, just like the prisoners in Plato’s cave watching the shadows. As we watch on a large screen the sleeping figure of Truman in blue and white striped pyjamas, evocative of a stereotypical prison uniform, Sylvia pleads for Truman; “He’s not a performer, he’s a prisoner,” which Christof repudiates saying: “Truman prefers his ‘cell’ as you call it.”
Truman’s paranoia is reflective of a more traditional paranoia than the ‘upbeat paranoia’ belonging to the characters of Pleasantville, but, as the audience knows all along, his suspicions are not unfounded. Truman’s gradual descent into madness as he desperately searches for a way out of Seahaven is best explained in terms of authentic versus inauthentic characters, and does not necessarily reflect a negative change in his character:
“Whereas inauthentic characters are described as existing in tranquil ignorance, characters approaching authenticity are depicted as anxious, alienated, and bordering on insanity.” [McMahon, 2003:167]
Truman’s erratic behaviour, escalates quickly in the “Somebody help me, I’m being spontaneous!” scene where Meryl (Laura Linney) comes home from work to find Truman sitting in the car in the driveway, contemplating the ‘loop’ of people passing their street; “Lady…Flowers!...and…There it is! There it is! There's that dented beetle!” He is slowly pulling apart the world which has literally been created around him, also evident from his calculating comments of the traffic when he and Meryl decide to drive to Atlantic City/New Orleans: “Beautifully synchronized, don’t you agree,” and “Same road, no cars. It’s magic!”
After his attempted driving escape, Truman literally reaches the end of the road, as he and Marlon (Noah Emmerich) sit on the edge of the unfinished bridge drinking beer, as he finally acknowledges his unspoken fear: “it feels like the whole world revolves around me.” Then, in what is a beautifully manufactured moment, we see Christof (Ed Harris), God-like, orchestrating from his “Lunar Room”, feeding Marlon lines through an earpiece, as Marlon tells Truman: “if everybody was in on it, I’d have to be in on it too. I’m not in on it Truman. Because there is no in.” Truman’s apparent faith in Marlon’s speech not only makes the audience admire Marlon’s acting skills, but also incites slight paranoia as to the truthfulness of our own existence, leading us to question authenticity in our own lives; if there is indeed a real or if it is all manufactured.
While these films largely present what can be described as ‘upbeat paranoia’, there is still always a them or a they which is kept very separate from us; it is the ‘other’. In Pleasantville the ‘other’ does not take on one form. There is David and Jennifer versus Pleasantville; “reality versus virtuality,” [de Vries, 2005:81] – “You’re messing with their whole universe”. It is also the world which characters begin to accept exists outside of Pleasantville – “I bet they don’t know how lucky they are.” As the film progresses it escalates into a case of “coloureds” versus “all true citizens of Pleasantville” as proclaimed by signs around town. During Bud and Bill Johnson’s trial the court house segregates the town into “coloureds” on the top balcony, and the remaining “true citizens” on the lower level. Throughout the scene all citizens gradually become coloured, even Big Bob (JT Walsh), despite his denial until the bitter end, “It’s (the other) not inside me!”, and the townspeople are once more unified.
For Truman, as shown in flashbacks, it was Lauren/Sylvia Garland (Natascha McElhone) all those years ago who planted the idea of the ‘other’ in his life, she attempted to explain it all to him moments before being removed from the show: “They’re going to be here any minute…they don’t want me talking to you…everyone knows everything you do…everybody’s pretending….this…it’s fake. It’s all for you…the sky and the sea…everything. It’s a set. It’s a show.” Her ‘father’ then appears and explains “she has episodes” – although ironically she won’t be having any more – but as Sal (O-Lan Jones), waitress from the Truman Bar, explains: “they got rid of her, but they couldn’t erase the memory,” once more indicating Truman’s omnipresent other, and the fact he’s been thinking about this ‘other’ for years now.
While The Truman Show displays the world of the media breaking into real life, and conversely Pleasantville shows real life breaking into the media world, both films seem to “privilege authenticity over inauthenticity.” [McMahon, 2003:167] Despite the opposing outcomes of reaching authenticity – in Pleasantville an authentic life must be lived in the inauthentic world of the television show, whereas Truman releases himself into the outside reality of the viewer – the audience finds themselves on the side of the newly liberated characters, no matter how unsure their new lives may be.
“While authenticity may not conform to our conventional definition of bliss, living authentically affords individual a unique serenity because it ends the maddening run from our being that characterises inauthenticity.” [McMahon, 2003:176]
The ending of The Truman Show sees Truman standing at the edge of his known world in front of an open door suggesting only blackness beyond, but he does not seem afraid of the unknown. He calmly addresses Christof, and the greater viewing audience with his trademark: “And in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight,” before taking a final bow, and cuing, for the first time ever, his own exit. This exit reverses Plato’s cave allegory to an extent as he leaves the sunlight for the darkness, but the result is the same. Just like the prisoners in the cave he has decided to no longer simply sit and watch the false images being paraded before him, and even though “it would hurt him to do all these things…[he would be] a little closer to what is real…[to see] more truly.” [Plato, 1996:231-2]
Pleasantville concludes with similar feelings of uncertainty yet peace brought about by authenticity. Sitting on a park bench George (William H Macy) and Betty Parker discuss the unknown future, the camera cutting between the two characters. A final cut from Betty to George reveals George has mysteriously been replaced by Bill Johnson, but the characters remain positive about the great unknown before them.
George: So what’s going to happen now?
Betty: I don’t know. Do you know what’s going to happen now?
George: No…(laughs) I don’t.
Bill: I guess I don’t either.
A preoccupation with how it’s going to end, or where the character’s stories will lead them is evident in both films. Truman remarks on Lauren/Sylvia’s button: ‘How’s It Going To End?’ with “I was just wondering that myself.” As her red sweater and the button are the only physical reminders Truman has of her, this desire to know his own ending, and to be in control of it, are what drive Truman to ‘escape’. In Pleasantville David knows the ending of the books: Catcher In The Rye, and The Adventures of Huck Finn, he also knows how most of the characters stories develop: “Oh god, are we in that episode?” however, he can not see the ending of his own story.
Due to the complex nature and often undesirable results from the search for authenticity “most people prefer to flee the facts and remain in a ‘dreamworld’ of their own – or someone else’s – design.” [McMahon, 2003:173] Which not only explains why, for so long, Truman had no idea his life was nothing more than a television show, but also explains why recent films have become obsessed with an idea of another ontological world existing alongside our own; it is our human way of testing the waters so to speak. If we, as an audience can accept the possible existence of these ‘other’ worlds – through television camera surveillance as in The Truman Show and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006), virtual game reality as in eXistenZ, complete computer existence in The Matrix, or even the most fanciful idea incited by Pleasantville’s TV Repairman (Don Knotts) that “something’ll put you right in the show” – as an educational ‘other’ rather than a fearful one, we can more readily accept truths of our own reality, and begin our own search for authenticity rather than continuing to dwell in a dreamworld living vicariously through fictional characters as a substitute for our own search for the truth. Christof’s last attempt to stop Truman leaving Seahaven: “There’s no more truth out there then there is in the world I created for you,” is ignored by Truman as he realises he must discover this for himself, and he will no longer be controlled.
Despite both films involving television shows they incite not so much ‘Big Brother’ paranoia of ‘someone’s watching me’ but more an idea of ‘there’s got to be something bigger out there,’ especially in the “dreariness of the…1990s world” [Tyron, 2003:45] Pleasantville and The Truman Show illustrate through the world of the viewers. The grey, cold lives of The Truman Show’s carpark attendants’ office, and the utterly bleak picture of the world painted by David’s teachers in the montage at the beginning of Pleasantville, explain why though we may be already living in a reality, a search for something else is often necessary. Films such as The Truman Show and Pleasantville can be explained away as ‘only a film’ or ‘just fantasy’ if we choose to, because as Christof himself says: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented,” but, more than anything they give us the inspiration and encouragement to make the “existential choice between living honestly and living in ignorance” [McMahon, 2003:166] giving us the confidence to raise our hands without fear and ask: “What’s outside of Pleasantville?”
REFERENCES:
Books:
• de Vries M, 2005, Teaching about Technology: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology for Non-philosophers, USA, Springer.
• Falzon C, 2003, ‘Ch.1: Plato’s Picture Show – The Theory of Knowledge’ in Philosophy Goes to the Movies, London, Routledge.
• Foucault M, 1977, ‘Ch.3: Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York, Pantheon Books.
• McMahan A, 1999, ‘Watching You Watching Me’ in Film – Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 24 (e-journal).
• McMahon J, 2003, ‘Popping a bitter pill: Existential authenticity in The Matrix and Nausea’ in The Matrix and Philosophy, (ed) Irwin W, Chicago, Open Court.
• Plato, 1996, ’34. Republic 514A-519A’ in The Plato Reader; (ed) Chappell T, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
• Pomerance M, 2003, ‘Neither Here nor There: eXistenZ as “Elevator Film”’ in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, volume 20.
• Tyron C, 2003/4, ‘Virtual Cities and Stolen Memories: Temporality and the Digital in Dark City’ in Film Criticism, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2.
FILMOGRAPHY:
• A Scanner Darkly, 2006, Richard LINKLATER, USA, Warner Independent Pictures.
• eXistenZ, 1999, David CRONENBERG, Canada, Alliance Atlantis Communications.
• Pleasantville, 1998, Gary ROSS, USA, New Line Cinema.
• The Matrix Reloaded, 2003, Andy WACHOWSKI & Larry WACHOWSKI, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The Matrix Revolutions, 2003, Andy WACHOWSKI & Larry WACHOWSKI, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The Matrix, 1999, Andy WACHOWSKI & Larry WACHOWSKI, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The Truman Show, 1998, Peter WEIR, USA, Paramount Pictures.
Recent films such as The Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix Trilogy (1999,2003) and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999) have become obsessed with the paranoid notion another ontological reality exists, hidden alongside, or parallel to, the one we experience, but alternatively, films such as Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Gary Ross’ Pleasantville (both released in 1998) provide cinema audiences with an optimistic exploration of the “theme of reality versus virtuality.” [de Vries, 2005:81] These films utilise the medium of television programs (the titles of which reflect the titles of the films themselves), to provide examples of paranoia based not on fear but on longing. For the characters in these television shows, and the viewers who watch them, the idea other worlds exist outside of our own ‘reality’ is a concept not only from which we learn as much about ourselves and the world we choose to live in, as we are shown in Pleasantville, but also these worlds provide an outlet from which we can gain hope, as in The Truman Show. The existence of “transcendental realities, higher or more absorbing than the apparently relatively disappointing reality in which we live,” [Pomerance,2003:2] in respect to film, are to be explored in this essay through philosophies pertaining to Plato’s cave allegory, the struggle between authenticity and inauthenticity, and Bentham’s Panopticon.
“Most people are so thoroughly conditioned to believe that the world is the way they have been taught to see it that they resist any alternative,” [McMahon,2003:173] which is exactly how Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lived his life until day 10,909 when the light bulb above his head literally went off; “a theatrical light…falls from the sky” [McMahan, 1999], and he begins taking steps toward authenticity, and away from Seahaven.
“Existentialists define authenticity as a state in which the individual is aware of the true nature of the human condition. In contrast, inauthenticity is defined as a state in which the individual is either ignorant of the true nature of reality or in denial with respect to it.” [McMahon, 2003:166]
The idea “ignorance for Plato is not bliss, but rather a form of enslavement,” [Falzon, 2003:22] creates an instant connection between the characters of both films, and the prisoners from Plato’s cave allegory who sat “with chains on their legs and their necks so that they have to stay put, and can only look straight in front of them.” [Plato, 1996:230] While they are not physically chained Truman is isolated in his world, and the citizens of Pleasantville are trapped in reruns.
Originally the citizens of Pleasantville are ignorant to the true nature of their reality, but upon the arrival of David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) in place of Bud and Mary-Sue Parker, who ostensibly release their chains, the residents who do not accept the “certain changes in the town”, are those prisoners who do not get “way out of the cave” [Plato, 1996:232] and are simply living in denial. The youth of the town, followed by Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels) the Soda Shop owner, and Betty Parker (Joan Allen) Bud and Mary-Sue’s mother, choose to embrace the opportunity they are presented with to create themselves, rather than continuing to adopt predetermined identities originally written for them by the show’s creators. They refuse to live inauthentic lives dictated by the scripts, instead choosing an alien and sometimes frightening authentic life where they fill in the blank pages themselves.
The books in the library provide a metaphor for the town’s inhabitants, Mary-Sue asks of David: “Did you know that the books are blank?...they have covers and there’s nothing inside of them,” just as Plato asks of the prisoners in the cave:
“Do you think that people in this situation would even have seen themselves and each other properly? Or just their own shadows?”
[1996:231]
Like Truman, they know only what the creators want them to know, all these years they have merely been black and white silhouettes, outlines, of what they can really be. It isn’t until Jennifer brings her knowledge of ‘another world’, a world outside their ‘cave’, that the pages begin filling in. Those who have made the change and decide to accept all aspects of reality, not just those with which they are comfortable, find themselves and things around them in technicolour, while those living in denial are still literally in the dark; trapped in the monochromatic scheme of the television show. [McMahon, 2003:173-176]
“This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded.”
[Foucault, 1977:197]
Foucault was describing the ‘disciplinary mechanism’ of the Panopticon, but he could very well have been explaining Truman’s world. Foucault goes further, describing the Panopticon thus: in the peripheric ring (Seahaven), one (Truman) is totally seen without ever seeing, and in the central tower (the Lunar Room), one (Christof) sees everything without ever being seen. [1977:201-2] These analogies indicate Truman is a prisoner, just like the prisoners in Plato’s cave watching the shadows. As we watch on a large screen the sleeping figure of Truman in blue and white striped pyjamas, evocative of a stereotypical prison uniform, Sylvia pleads for Truman; “He’s not a performer, he’s a prisoner,” which Christof repudiates saying: “Truman prefers his ‘cell’ as you call it.”
Truman’s paranoia is reflective of a more traditional paranoia than the ‘upbeat paranoia’ belonging to the characters of Pleasantville, but, as the audience knows all along, his suspicions are not unfounded. Truman’s gradual descent into madness as he desperately searches for a way out of Seahaven is best explained in terms of authentic versus inauthentic characters, and does not necessarily reflect a negative change in his character:
“Whereas inauthentic characters are described as existing in tranquil ignorance, characters approaching authenticity are depicted as anxious, alienated, and bordering on insanity.” [McMahon, 2003:167]
Truman’s erratic behaviour, escalates quickly in the “Somebody help me, I’m being spontaneous!” scene where Meryl (Laura Linney) comes home from work to find Truman sitting in the car in the driveway, contemplating the ‘loop’ of people passing their street; “Lady…Flowers!...and…There it is! There it is! There's that dented beetle!” He is slowly pulling apart the world which has literally been created around him, also evident from his calculating comments of the traffic when he and Meryl decide to drive to Atlantic City/New Orleans: “Beautifully synchronized, don’t you agree,” and “Same road, no cars. It’s magic!”
After his attempted driving escape, Truman literally reaches the end of the road, as he and Marlon (Noah Emmerich) sit on the edge of the unfinished bridge drinking beer, as he finally acknowledges his unspoken fear: “it feels like the whole world revolves around me.” Then, in what is a beautifully manufactured moment, we see Christof (Ed Harris), God-like, orchestrating from his “Lunar Room”, feeding Marlon lines through an earpiece, as Marlon tells Truman: “if everybody was in on it, I’d have to be in on it too. I’m not in on it Truman. Because there is no in.” Truman’s apparent faith in Marlon’s speech not only makes the audience admire Marlon’s acting skills, but also incites slight paranoia as to the truthfulness of our own existence, leading us to question authenticity in our own lives; if there is indeed a real or if it is all manufactured.
While these films largely present what can be described as ‘upbeat paranoia’, there is still always a them or a they which is kept very separate from us; it is the ‘other’. In Pleasantville the ‘other’ does not take on one form. There is David and Jennifer versus Pleasantville; “reality versus virtuality,” [de Vries, 2005:81] – “You’re messing with their whole universe”. It is also the world which characters begin to accept exists outside of Pleasantville – “I bet they don’t know how lucky they are.” As the film progresses it escalates into a case of “coloureds” versus “all true citizens of Pleasantville” as proclaimed by signs around town. During Bud and Bill Johnson’s trial the court house segregates the town into “coloureds” on the top balcony, and the remaining “true citizens” on the lower level. Throughout the scene all citizens gradually become coloured, even Big Bob (JT Walsh), despite his denial until the bitter end, “It’s (the other) not inside me!”, and the townspeople are once more unified.
For Truman, as shown in flashbacks, it was Lauren/Sylvia Garland (Natascha McElhone) all those years ago who planted the idea of the ‘other’ in his life, she attempted to explain it all to him moments before being removed from the show: “They’re going to be here any minute…they don’t want me talking to you…everyone knows everything you do…everybody’s pretending….this…it’s fake. It’s all for you…the sky and the sea…everything. It’s a set. It’s a show.” Her ‘father’ then appears and explains “she has episodes” – although ironically she won’t be having any more – but as Sal (O-Lan Jones), waitress from the Truman Bar, explains: “they got rid of her, but they couldn’t erase the memory,” once more indicating Truman’s omnipresent other, and the fact he’s been thinking about this ‘other’ for years now.
While The Truman Show displays the world of the media breaking into real life, and conversely Pleasantville shows real life breaking into the media world, both films seem to “privilege authenticity over inauthenticity.” [McMahon, 2003:167] Despite the opposing outcomes of reaching authenticity – in Pleasantville an authentic life must be lived in the inauthentic world of the television show, whereas Truman releases himself into the outside reality of the viewer – the audience finds themselves on the side of the newly liberated characters, no matter how unsure their new lives may be.
“While authenticity may not conform to our conventional definition of bliss, living authentically affords individual a unique serenity because it ends the maddening run from our being that characterises inauthenticity.” [McMahon, 2003:176]
The ending of The Truman Show sees Truman standing at the edge of his known world in front of an open door suggesting only blackness beyond, but he does not seem afraid of the unknown. He calmly addresses Christof, and the greater viewing audience with his trademark: “And in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight,” before taking a final bow, and cuing, for the first time ever, his own exit. This exit reverses Plato’s cave allegory to an extent as he leaves the sunlight for the darkness, but the result is the same. Just like the prisoners in the cave he has decided to no longer simply sit and watch the false images being paraded before him, and even though “it would hurt him to do all these things…[he would be] a little closer to what is real…[to see] more truly.” [Plato, 1996:231-2]
Pleasantville concludes with similar feelings of uncertainty yet peace brought about by authenticity. Sitting on a park bench George (William H Macy) and Betty Parker discuss the unknown future, the camera cutting between the two characters. A final cut from Betty to George reveals George has mysteriously been replaced by Bill Johnson, but the characters remain positive about the great unknown before them.
George: So what’s going to happen now?
Betty: I don’t know. Do you know what’s going to happen now?
George: No…(laughs) I don’t.
Bill: I guess I don’t either.
A preoccupation with how it’s going to end, or where the character’s stories will lead them is evident in both films. Truman remarks on Lauren/Sylvia’s button: ‘How’s It Going To End?’ with “I was just wondering that myself.” As her red sweater and the button are the only physical reminders Truman has of her, this desire to know his own ending, and to be in control of it, are what drive Truman to ‘escape’. In Pleasantville David knows the ending of the books: Catcher In The Rye, and The Adventures of Huck Finn, he also knows how most of the characters stories develop: “Oh god, are we in that episode?” however, he can not see the ending of his own story.
Due to the complex nature and often undesirable results from the search for authenticity “most people prefer to flee the facts and remain in a ‘dreamworld’ of their own – or someone else’s – design.” [McMahon, 2003:173] Which not only explains why, for so long, Truman had no idea his life was nothing more than a television show, but also explains why recent films have become obsessed with an idea of another ontological world existing alongside our own; it is our human way of testing the waters so to speak. If we, as an audience can accept the possible existence of these ‘other’ worlds – through television camera surveillance as in The Truman Show and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006), virtual game reality as in eXistenZ, complete computer existence in The Matrix, or even the most fanciful idea incited by Pleasantville’s TV Repairman (Don Knotts) that “something’ll put you right in the show” – as an educational ‘other’ rather than a fearful one, we can more readily accept truths of our own reality, and begin our own search for authenticity rather than continuing to dwell in a dreamworld living vicariously through fictional characters as a substitute for our own search for the truth. Christof’s last attempt to stop Truman leaving Seahaven: “There’s no more truth out there then there is in the world I created for you,” is ignored by Truman as he realises he must discover this for himself, and he will no longer be controlled.
Despite both films involving television shows they incite not so much ‘Big Brother’ paranoia of ‘someone’s watching me’ but more an idea of ‘there’s got to be something bigger out there,’ especially in the “dreariness of the…1990s world” [Tyron, 2003:45] Pleasantville and The Truman Show illustrate through the world of the viewers. The grey, cold lives of The Truman Show’s carpark attendants’ office, and the utterly bleak picture of the world painted by David’s teachers in the montage at the beginning of Pleasantville, explain why though we may be already living in a reality, a search for something else is often necessary. Films such as The Truman Show and Pleasantville can be explained away as ‘only a film’ or ‘just fantasy’ if we choose to, because as Christof himself says: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented,” but, more than anything they give us the inspiration and encouragement to make the “existential choice between living honestly and living in ignorance” [McMahon, 2003:166] giving us the confidence to raise our hands without fear and ask: “What’s outside of Pleasantville?”
REFERENCES:
Books:
• de Vries M, 2005, Teaching about Technology: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology for Non-philosophers, USA, Springer.
• Falzon C, 2003, ‘Ch.1: Plato’s Picture Show – The Theory of Knowledge’ in Philosophy Goes to the Movies, London, Routledge.
• Foucault M, 1977, ‘Ch.3: Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York, Pantheon Books.
• McMahan A, 1999, ‘Watching You Watching Me’ in Film – Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 24 (e-journal).
• McMahon J, 2003, ‘Popping a bitter pill: Existential authenticity in The Matrix and Nausea’ in The Matrix and Philosophy, (ed) Irwin W, Chicago, Open Court.
• Plato, 1996, ’34. Republic 514A-519A’ in The Plato Reader; (ed) Chappell T, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
• Pomerance M, 2003, ‘Neither Here nor There: eXistenZ as “Elevator Film”’ in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, volume 20.
• Tyron C, 2003/4, ‘Virtual Cities and Stolen Memories: Temporality and the Digital in Dark City’ in Film Criticism, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2.
FILMOGRAPHY:
• A Scanner Darkly, 2006, Richard LINKLATER, USA, Warner Independent Pictures.
• eXistenZ, 1999, David CRONENBERG, Canada, Alliance Atlantis Communications.
• Pleasantville, 1998, Gary ROSS, USA, New Line Cinema.
• The Matrix Reloaded, 2003, Andy WACHOWSKI & Larry WACHOWSKI, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The Matrix Revolutions, 2003, Andy WACHOWSKI & Larry WACHOWSKI, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The Matrix, 1999, Andy WACHOWSKI & Larry WACHOWSKI, USA, Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The Truman Show, 1998, Peter WEIR, USA, Paramount Pictures.
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