Random Musing: Second Response to John Nolte

I probably should not even bother, but I since I feel implicated, I suppose I should respond. To this morning's random musing, BIG HOLLYWOOD Editor-in-Chief John Nolte has offered these "gems":

Hey @bengrimwood, what else is on your NEW PRODUCTION CODE? What else aren't movies allowed to do? Do offenders go on a BLACKLIST?

@rejectnation & @Bengrimwood have a NEW HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTION CODE for us. What movies can & can't do. Its not fascism its sensitivity!

Remember folks, when @bengrimwood & @rejectnation tell u what u can't say, it's not fascism when it's FOR THE CHILDREN. #OrwellSmiles

I feel grossly misrepresented, especially because I am not at all recommending some "Production Code." (I doubt @rejectnation, also known as FILM SCHOOL REJECTS, recommends the same.) Nolte seems like an educated man, so he should be aware that, for decades, "homosexuals" could not be portrayed at all on film due to Hollywood's self-censorship system, the Hays Code (adopted in 1930, abandoned in 1968). Occasionally, films of the time period — especially those of Alfred Hitchcock, including "Rebecca" (1940) and "Rope" (1948) — toyed with these regulations and tenuously bent the symbolic order to the point of breaking before returning hastily to a normative (i.e. "moral") conclusion. When the Hays Code was greatly enervated by the late 1950s, the first gay character debuted on film: the character Sebastian (whose face one never sees) in the film "Suddenly, Last Summer" (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1959). Gay people enjoyed their first representation on film... and they never saw him. Just like in real life, gay people were still marginalized — finally "inside," but nonetheless "outside" the film frame. It has taken years for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer characters not to be popularly represented as victims, monsters, killers, deviants, minstrels, "screaming queens," and/or menaces to society. In 2010, "The Kids Are All Right" was released to much acclaim for its kind portrayal of contemporary lesbian motherhood. A recent survey found that 0% — yes, zero out of one-hundred — of children were "unhappy" in a home with gay or lesbian parents. Seems telling enough to me.

I say all of this to provide some historical evidence for why — let us make no mistake — I am opposed to the practice of censorship in Hollywood film. My representations as a white gay man have much at stake. I fully support the (we will call it) "cinematic liberty" of filmmakers to cull what they want from life itself — no matter how bold or offensive — and to represent that in the film medium (Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" comes to mind). I recommend that filmmakers represent whatever they would like and not worry about another person telling them what they cannot do. You will notice that the single thing that Landon Palmer and I rebuke is one "gay = stupid" joke. One instance does not widespread "censorship" make. "Gay = stupid" has heretofore been dominant, mainstream, and condoned, whereas, in some circles, gay people themselves are still not. All Palmer was doing in the first place was commenting on how fascinating it was that now, in 2010, people are suddenly talking about how "gay = stupid" is no longer okay. What I, as a maligned citizen, propose is that filmmakers simply be more considerate to people of identities that are still crushed in the wheels of society.

I should mention that I will not stop watching films by Ron Howard or Vince Vaughn. They have the right to imply "gay = stupid," even if it offends me. For that matter, I shudder at the idea of composing any "blacklist" because Sen. Joseph McCarthy's red "witchhunt" of the late 1940s/early 1950s destroyed the lives of some of Hollywood's best and brightest actors, producers, directors, screenwriters, etc., even causing the early death (by heart attack) of actor John Garfield (may he rest in peace). If anyone is/was a "fascist," it is/was McCarthy.

If I find anything else offensive, it is that straight John Nolte sits in his cozy arm chair in his white bourgeois lifestyle, comfortably typing up vitriol on his classy home computer. What does he know about gay people or the enormous pressure under which we live? I am certainly one of the more radical members of our community. My scholarly research interests comprise LGBTQ film and media studies, queer theory and film, non-normative sexual practices in the cinema, pleasure, desire, and film spectatorship (especially "cinesexuality"), and LGBTQ discourse. Does that sound like a "fascist" to you, especially since, during World War II, the prototypical fascist, Hitler, sent homosexuals like me to death camps with the Jews and other "undesirables"? Do I sound interested in censorship especially if I enjoy researching "non-normative sexual practices in the cinema"? If John Nolte needs anything "straight," it is his facts.

I am not a "neo-fascist."
I do not support a new Hollywood "production code."
I do not support a new Hollywood "blacklist."

Their historical counterparts have already done too much damage to our world, and I refuse to be complicit in that just because I continue to defend Palmer's right to say that (and the general use of) "gay = stupid" in Hollywood film is indeed no longer okay.

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Random Musing: Response to John Nolte, in Defense of Landon Palmer

One of the most culturally reflective (and divisive) cinematic conversations of 2010 surrounded a film that won’t be released until 2011. While the nation pondered its dense history of homophobic bullying after a string of gay youth suicides starting popping up on the front pages, the trailer for the Ron Howard “comedy” The Dilemma was released with a “gay = stupid” joke as its lead. What would otherwise pass by as an unexamined passive slam against an already-maligned group became no longer acceptable.

The line was unintelligibly defended by Howard, Vince Vaughn, and numerous web commentators who think that a joke too lazy and immature for anybody over 13 to find funny is the same thing as South Park-style take-no-prisoners satire. It’s lazy comedy, and the reaction to it is further evidence that we as a culture have shifted from our Eddie Murphy Delirious days: homophobes, not homosexuals, are now the subject of derisive humor. As The Kids Are All Right and Modern Family have shown, you can have great comedy about homosexuals without making fun of homosexuality.

I have culled this quote from my colleague Landon Palmer's most recent submission to FILM SCHOOL REJECTS, called "Year in Review: Top 10 Topics, Trends, and Events of 2010 That Have Nothing to Do With the 3D Debate." The debate over homophobic language in film comprises one of Palmer's "10 Topics." The following should be taken as axiomatic: The use of "gay" as "stupid" is ideological homophobia, whether the speaker intends to be explicitly homophobic or not. Palmer reflects astutely (as a third-person cultural observer) on how fascinating it is that our society — which is quite conservative, overall — actually talked about one use of "gay" as "stupid" in a movie trailer. If my own upbringing in rural middle Tennessee indicates anything, many people continue to conflate "gay" with "stupid" casually and inconsiderately (members of my own family did so as recently as this past Christmas holiday). Palmer is right that director Ron Howard and actor Vince Vaughn unintelligibly defended the use of "gay" as "stupid" in "The Dilemma." I definitely heard no persuasive argument aside from the middling "Well, that's just how a homophobe speaks, and the film tries faithfully to present that." I suppose I can accept that, and I suppose that this is also the conclusion to which Palmer comes. However, his simple rejoinder is that "comedy" does not have to pick on anyone to be funny and that films should practice more empathy in representing people of various identities.

In response, John Nolte, Editor-in-Chief of the blog BIG HOLLYWOOD, has mocked Palmer's reflection as "just neo-fascism and outright anti-intellectual nonsense." "Neo-fascism"? Is he misusing "fascism" as many contemporary conservatives do, conflating it with "communism" and any abominable anti-Western, non-capitalist, and non-democratic political system one can muster? "Fascism" is any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism. I strongly disagree that Palmer is "fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism." In fact, I would say that Palmer attempts to enrich democracy by commenting on modern discourses around homophobic rhetoric and by suggesting that we be more considerate to the "already-maligned" group of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) people. Is that so wrong? By characterizing Palmer as "neo-fascist," Nolte grossly misinterprets Palmer's empathy toward LGBTQ people as "authoritarian" and bigoted when it is quite to the contrary. One should be more careful with his word use when he sprays God-like ideological key words like urine all over another's work.

Palmer, "anti-intellectual"? Quite the opposite. Palmer is one of the smartest people I know, and his cultural commentary is certainly not "nonsense." If we take his work from a rhetorical perspective, all of the sentences of the two paragraphs I quoted flow coherently. No syntactical errors exist, and he misuses no words. If one cannot read through Palmer's jargon-free (though reference-laden) prose, then one should ask for reading assistance instead of letting fly his unhelpful, vitriolic venom.

This may be unnecessary to point out — though I believe it to be significant — but Palmer does not defend homosexuals because he has a strong political investment as a gay man who has prevailing implications in his own representations. Instead, Palmer is straight and has taken a stand with gay people — regardless of the charges made against him — which ought to be admired. Palmer empathizes with the gay community as human beings. If anyone does not stand with the gay community, it is Nolte. He claims that "this whole bullying meme" provides the urgency of false charity from groups such as FILM SCHOOL REJECTS, who advocate homosexuals as the subject — and not as the object — of comedy. "This whole bullying meme" is serious business. Is he to say that Ke$ha's, Katy Perry's, and P!nk's recent hit singles — "We R Who We R," "Firework," and "Raise Your Glass," respectively — also constitute fascism from the top down? Since all have hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, then it is obviously good oppression for them — and, obviously, the majority of unique individuals in America (who sent it to #1 through radio requests, purchases on iTunes, etc.) enjoy it.

Nolte reflects dismissively: "What attracts bullies is and always will be one thing: weakness. And if you want to prove you’re weak, a good way to start is with the whine of, don’t make fun of me." This statement angers me greatly. "The Dilemma" is probably the couple-hundredth Hollywood film to make fun of gay people (Vito Russo faithfully tallies up most of the pre-1987 ones in his seminal "Celluloid Closet"). It starts using "fag" rhetoric, and I, as a gay man who has endured my own share of such rhetoric, am supposed to suck it up and take it "like a man!?" That is a really unfair statement. Bullying transpires because of the play of ideological forces that teaches children from a young age that some people are better than others. By telling gay people to quit whining "Don't make fun of me" infuriates me. The most you could do is to take into account the ideological systems that have produced your own beliefs. I think Nolte's careful word choice — about his "gay friends" — is absurd because his other claims around it provide evidence that they are not really such.

Nolte says this PC (i.e. politically correct) whining should not be wasted on gays, who can stand up for themselves. Correct me if I am wrong, but would the gay suicide rate be so much higher than heterosexuals' if they felt like they could? Gay teens are 2-3 times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts. "This whole bullying meme" is not an excuse; it is a source of urgency and it must be addressed. Bravo to the humans who stand up together to change it for the better.

If one of Nolte's statements offers some truth (and productiveness), it would be: "Sorry, but you can’t inoculate a particular thing or person or group from satire and/or ridicule unless you’re in favor of inoculating everyone under the same premise." I would agree with this notion. Steps have already been taken to alleviate the damage of some representations of black people onscreen. While some black films of the new millennium have attempted honest representations of social hardship ("Hustle & Flow"; "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire"), you will notice that Hollywood films no longer present white characters in blackface.... However, his further contention that "The only people I would inoculate from ridicule are those who are unable to fight back" is, ironically, indefensible. Nolte suggests that "inoculating" certain minority groups from ridicule would be unfair to "Christians," "Conservatives," "Southerners," "Caucasians," "Dads," and "Fundamentalists," a ridiculous statement since few of these subject positions (especially "Caucasians" and "Dads") would ever face public scrutiny and/or derision. If I were to be called "cracker," it would roll off me easily; however, if I called someone the "n-word," I would hope to be assailed relentlessly. No place exists anymore for such egregious racial epithets. The person who uses a word such as the "n-word" is, indeed, the "neo-fascist."

I demand that John Nolte reflect to a considerable extent and to revise his opinion out of humility. One cannot erase the past (i.e. "Blazing Saddles," "The Birdcage" — comedies Nolte carefully selects for their hyperbolic portrayals of gays and other minorities), but one can intervene for a better future. If gays are Nolte's "friends," as he (politically correctly) calls them, he should treat them as such instead of telling them to suck it up and instead of telling FILM SCHOOL REJECTS and my colleague Landon Palmer to back off and quit "oppressing" them.

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Random Musing: I Am Cinesexual (and So Can You!) — Inspired by 'Lola Montès'

Forget gaze theory. No wonder everyone's always loved the movies. You're about to find out why!

I have always had quite a penchant for big, gorgeous epic films such as "Gone with the Wind" and "Titanic." In the case of "Gone with the Wind," I have always chalked it up to my love of the rich colors in the mise-en-scène and to the lush arrangement of Max Steiner's score. In the case of "Titanic," I have long admired the grandeur of the ship's design, James Horner's "busy" score, and the sheer power of the sound, especially during the ship's sinking. Recently, I succumbed to Barnes & Noble's biannual 50%-off sale on Criterion Collection DVDs and Blu-rays. I was completely ashamed of my wretched DVD copy of Max Ophül's swan song, "Lola Montès" (1955), and so I decided I required this film on Blu-ray simply because of its radiant color scheme. I was not wrong to make this purchase, as I have come to glean from having screened the film in Blu-ray high-definition. The big move I had to make was to realize that I did not want the film simply because it was colorful and deserved to be presented in high-definition; rather, I enjoy that it is colorful, thereby necessitating high definition to amplify it as much as possible. I may have "cinesexuality" on the brain.

"Cinesexuality" is a term coined by scholar Patricia MacCormack to describe the desire to experience the cinematic event sensually before we make meaning of it. By "cinematic event," she means to imply the spatiotemporally fixed confrontation between spectators and the film screen. Influenced especially by French philosopher Félix Guattari, MacCormack uses his theories on "expression" (i.e. abstraction, pre-meaning) and asemiotics to explain how spectators gain pleasure from the film event regardless of their identities and in excess of the meaning of the images. MacCormack puts it, "Cinema is a nexus of reality/fantasy, offering planes of pleasurable intensity of colour, framing, celerity and sound: what Guattari calls cinema's a-signifying elements" (341). Guattari also cites "linkages, internal movements of visual images, ... rhythms, gestures, speech, etc." as conducive to "cinesexual" desire (342). Since this kind of pleasure derived from cinema does not correlate with pre-existing sexualities such as heterosexuality and homosexuality, MacCormack suggests "cinesexuality" — not a sexuality per se, so much as it provides a working expression to qualify spectators' unique desire for the a-signifying elements. The spectator and screen form a symbiotic bond whereby no distinction exists between the two during the presentation of the cinematic event, thereby facilitating the cinesexual expression.

When I say that you can be "cinesexual," too — well, you already are. MacCormack proposes that one must be a "cinemasochist" — one who enjoys pleasure from cinema's punishment — to engage "cinesexuality." What she means to say is that the giant film screen that looms over you in the movie theater dominates you and that you must submit. She calls it "passivity to the possibilities of the affects of the image" (352). This way, the explosion of light, color, sound, movement, etc. flows immediately into you, pleasing you before you make meaning of the images themselves. You enjoy the masochism because you "lose yourself" in the abstraction of the image(s) before you. "Submission to a-signification is a step rather than the taking up of a marginal position," she writes (353). Remember: You "forget" your identity in this process. "Cinesexuality is a form of sexuality enjoyed by all bodies," she concludes (353).

Maybe I am not actually digging Max Steiner's score from 'Gone with the Wind' per se. Instead, I am digging some quality of the horn or of the violins — the pitch, the dynamics, or a particular turn-of-phrase. I have always felt as though the leap between the first two notes of the most famous motif from "Tara's Theme" sweeps me. I usually aggrandize his entire score as "sweeping," although I usually refer only to "Tara's Theme." Meanwhile, I revel in the opulent colors of 'Gone with the Wind' purely for the scopic experience. This engagement with the cinema is not of a readily available sexuality. I seek and derive pleasure for my eyes from the potential for luxuriant color.

This reminds me of why I bought "Lola Montès" in the first place.... When I stare at my 47" HDTV, I lose myself in the scheme of sumptuous colors and florid movement in the "Lola Montès" circus show. My subjectivity is unfixed and fluid among the transposition of color, sound, light, and movement. I desire it and take pleasure from it. I am not sure what your opinion is — if you prefer big, showy films, that is — but if something about their bombastic play of color, sound, light, etc. moves you, you ought to consider your own "cinesexuality" and bask in it, like me. ■

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For further reading on "cinesexuality," check out:
MacCormack, Patricia. "A Cinema of Desire: Cinesexuality and Guattari’s A-signifying Cinema." Women: A Cultural Review 16.3 (2005): 340-55. Print.
-or-
MacCormack, Patricia. Cinesexuality. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008. Print.

Note: Citations in this blog posting come from the article and not from the book itself.

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Random Posting: Update/Official Announcement

The announcement first: WE HAVE THE STARS ★★★★ is BACK.

I have missed all of my dear readers the half-a-year I have been gone. Half-a-year is too much time to waste.

2010 has been a year of great upheaval for me — more so than I thought. When I decided to go on hiatus in June, I was burnt out after two weeks of torturous finals in late April/early May and was not feeling much for film criticism. The prospect of a busy semester in graduate school (and it was indeed busy) further substantiated my decision to go on hiatus. I figured it was time to wipe the slate clean — to start afresh, anew. I think I was wrong.

Not in a long time have I felt so disconnected from people. It really is a difficult thing to uproot from a place you feel so comfortable and to re-settle elsewhere. I suppose I thought I could replace the best of Nashville with what I have here in Bloomington, but I have come to realize that things will never be the same. At the beginning of this semester, I compared my courses and my friends to "Vandy, Part Two." Now, it has become its own alien entity. I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I also now realize that it was hasty to cut off everything I was doing to throw myself into my new surroundings. This is why I have returned to this blog. I need an outlet for my thoughts, ideas, and provocations. I, indeed, temporarily lost interest, but I think it was more for the sake of starting my new studies. I felt like WE HAVE THE STARS ★★★★ was a younger Ben, more (appropriately) starry-eyed and determined to succeed in film studies after college. I now realize it can still be that way.

I have at least two people to thank for this turn-of-events, Misters Landon Palmer and Matthew F. Moore. Landon Palmer is a fellow graduate student at Indiana University and a contributor to FILM SCHOOL REJECTS. I have been completely awed by his capacity to keep up with graduate studies and to contribute regularly to FILM SCHOOL REJECTS this semester. Even with his new responsibilities, he proves that you do not have to let go of something you enjoy, despite the graduate work load. Maintaining his online output has been something of an inspiration for me to return to this blog, and for that, I thank him.

Matthew F. Moore is a dear friend of mine, an up-and-coming screenwriter in Brooklyn, New York. When Matt came to visit me in November, he and I had many long talks where I routinely divulged my anxieties about graduate school. At the same time, I was fascinated with his focus — his determination to do things for himself. He spends hours every day in the zone, pumping out his screenplay(s). Graduate school is where I must start getting published, and I had too easily forgotten that by approaching my studies in the day-to-day. Over this winter "break," in fact, I must try to complete a draft of an essay I hope to publish in the spring.

In the last couple of years, I have learned a lot about my writing style and film criticism. Two years ago, an adviser of mine, Rex Roberts of FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, told me, after reading one of my blogs, that "no one wants to hear you speaking." He was referring to how, in the course of the review, I had disclosed my initial impressions about a film, which I used as a foil to explain how all the impressions were dashed. Five semesters' experience later, I have decided kindly to disagree with his opinion. I think the reviewer's voice is as important to a film review as any other contribution. I do not believe in a "totalized" audience or that any one person may have the same opinion about a film that I do.

Granted, to be considered a worthy film critic, one must eliminate that notion and must subsume their own interests for everyone's interests. If you review a film purely to seek your own pleasure, that would be less "seemly" than operating as a critic shrouded in "objectivity," speaking as an expert for the masses. It would also be hard to get paid, and I think that is why Rex suggested any of this to me in the first place (I do appreciate that). Since I do not seek to be paid for my thoughts, I suppose I can maintain my voice in my reviews.

For that matter, I think subsuming one's voice in a film review is a bourgeois practice aiming toward a white, upper/middle-class audience. I adore "Gone with the Wind," as you all know, for its lush art/set direction, gorgeous cinematography, sweeping Max Steiner score, and the tour-de-force performance of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. Conversely, I have heard many black people say "I hate 'Gone with the Wind'" or "It's so problematic...." Am I to assume that just because I like it and that the AFI thinks it's the sixth best American film of all-time that it speaks similarly to all film-goers? While I may take pleasure in the film's a-signified (i.e. pre-meaningful) elements (color, framing, sound, etc.) and its resonance with my penchant for the South, black people have more at stake in seeing their representations. Granted, "Gone with the Wind" could be seen as a triumph for the black community because Hattie McDaniel's performance garnered the first Oscar for an African-American. On the other hand, she portrayed an infamous "Mammy" role....

For that matter, "Gone with the Wind" is not the only film for which I have revised my opinion. Remember my diatribe on "Avatar" when this blog went on hiatus? I may have revised my opinion on that, too. (More on that later?)

In the end, all I know is that I love the movies. I may have been too hasty to say my "critic's eye" had dulled because I still know a good film from a bad one. At the same time, I can still enjoy all films for the meaning of their form and content. Nonetheless, I can no longer say that I speak for everyone. I am just one rabid cinéphile, aiming to get happy again through a medium I adore so much that my life centers on it. I hope you will again take this journey with me. A mentor of mine, Irina Makoveeva, once said that "there is no story that the cinema has not already told." I, on the other hand, have much left to tell. ■

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Random Musing: Avatar and the Death of Cinema

“Hey, what is this stuff?”
“What? Oh, it’s a bunch of s*** I’m using for this article I’m writing on the death of cinema.”
- Mike Dytri as Luke and Craig Gilmore as Jon in THE LIVING END (Gregg Araki, 1992)

Author’s note: I owe the inspiration for the subject of this column to Jon’s statement from “The Living End.” Because of that film, I always wondered what “the death of cinema” would look like. I think I now know.

Do not get me wrong: I loved “Avatar” (James Cameron, 2009). I enjoy filmmakers with vivid imaginations, which is probably why I enjoy the films of Tim Burton so much. However, “Avatar” signals a concomitantly dangerous and naïve trend in modern cinema: the return of 3-D.

Watching part of a documentary on the making of “Avatar” on Fox Movie Channel, I felt a little part of my soul die when producer Jon Landau asserted, “3-D is the best way to engage with audiences.” Is it really now, Mr. Landau? In the 115 years of the cinema, 3-D has been shown to be little more than an ephemeral fad used to make films more appealing when box office returns are down. It was used in the 1950s in such films as “House of Wax,” “It Came from Outer Space,” and “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” when the studios were desperate to reclaim the audiences who were tuning in to television. After enjoying brief popularity, other ways to experience a film sensually were introduced, including Aroma-rama, Smell-O-Vision, and tiny electrical currents rigged to theater seats; needless to say, these extreme trends precipitated the downfall of a heightened film experience. In the 1980s, 3-D made a brief comeback through horror films such as “Jaws 3-D,” “Amityville 3-D,” and “Friday the 13th, Part III.” It was put out of its misery soon afterward, especially because 3-D was unable to be translated to home video, which was booming at the time.

The simple fact of the matter is that the film medium, in its inchoate state and as we know it today, is an art that occupies two dimensions. If the cinema is to be exploited for its specific properties, it should be done with a working knowledge of them. The world over cites ubiquitously the film “Citizen Kane” (Orson Welles, 1941) as the “greatest film of all-time,” and it is usually because they recognize with awe the incredible depth cues developed in that film. As a result, an implied “third dimension” is created because deep space makes objects in the foreground appear bigger and objects in the middle- and backgrounds gradually recess into the background.

Am I being conservative, in that I resist “the next step in the evolution of cinema”? Perhaps I am subconsciously protective of the 1200+ DVDs that I own and hope to not have to replace when the digital age brings about the release of computer-engineered 3-D titles such as “Citizen Kane” (to be released on Blu-Ray next year). I do not know if the re-engineering of older, 2-D films is already in the works or not, but I would not be surprised. Orson Welles already did backflips when “Touch of Evil” (1958) was originally hacked to pieces and distributed to theaters by Universal, so why should he have to roll over in his grave because his masterpiece – the only film of his that a studio never bothered – should be 3-D-ed?

I should note that it is not new home video formats that I resist, as I have crossed over successfully into the world of Blu-Ray. Rather, it is simply the precocious defense on the part of studios that viewers desperately want 3-D films. Frankly, sir – and this is for you especially, Mr. Landau – I do not. 3-D will always remain a novelty. I can engage with 2-D films very well, thank you.

I must confess that, because Cameron intended his viewers to see “Avatar” in 3-D, I have not purchased the 2-D version of the film on Blu-Ray, as of yet. Recently, I learned that the film will be released in 3-D at the end of the year… and only if you purchase one brand of HD 3-D TV. Unfortunately, perhaps this 3-D travesty will not be going away anytime soon…

Is the cinema, as we have always known it, in its final days of life before being replaced permanently by a bombastic new format with an “extra” dimension? Is this the death of “cinema”? Only time (the fourth dimension, coincidentally enough) shall tell…

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Random Musing: Update/Official Announcement

The announcement first: We Have the Stars ★★★★ is going on hiatus.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, my loyal readers, but at this point in time, I think it is only fair to inform you of this weighty decision. I could excuse myself by saying I have been busy (fairly cliché, though not altogether untrue - more on that later), but I would be more genuine in saying that my heart is not completely in this project right now.

To catch you up on the details of my life, I shall indulge you with the major events of the past year. After last summer, I took the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and began applying to graduate schools, such as U.C.-Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Bordwell-Thompson Land!), University of Chicago, Indiana University, and the University of Iowa. I decided after the Spring of 2009 that I wanted to pursue film studies in an academic setting (as opposed to a mundane setting), and so to gain entrance into one of these prestigious universities would set me on the course to scholarly success. In late January, I learned that my #1 school, Indiana, had almost immediately accepted me (or so it felt), so my path was set. All I had to do was graduate from college, which transpired this past May, as I obtained my B.A. from Vanderbilt.

In the meantime, I continued writing for "Out & About Newspaper" in Nashville, a rewarding experience that permitted me to luxuriate in the critical reviewing of LGBTQ films. However, I must confess that the Spring of 2010 awakened me to an existential crisis, one of whose ramifications I have still not felt the full weight. After enjoying films such as "Showgirls" and the John Waters' trash entries "Female Trouble" and "Pink Flamingos," I realized that my critic's eye has dulled. I was surrounded by friends during these film screenings and realized afterward that I was the only one who enjoyed them. What did this say about my own tastes? Granted, I was never a film critic like Pauline Kael - who notoriously lambasted more films than the measly amount she actually enjoyed - but I liked to think that my interests could account for and speak for the taste of film-going America.

As a result, I realized that my own film studies heads in the direction of film analysis rather than criticism. I can still critique a film like anyone else (like when I watched "Who's That Girl" a few weeks ago - woof!), but I find myself preferring a film for the ways it makes meaning rather than for the value of its content. In this way, I probably am ready for graduate studies. I knew that to switch gears from being a film critic for a living to being a career film scholar and professor would entail its consequences, but I did not realize in what ways. (By the way, I should note that I also have recently tendered my resignation from "Out & About," an amicable separation as I go to grad school and pursue different interests. Hence, I will no longer be "Queer Movie Tutor"-ing for them.)

In closing, I want to ensure you, my dear, dear readers, that this is not the end. (Cue the introduction to "Apocalypse Now," featuring superimpositions, nauseating colors, and The Doors' "The End." Just kidding.) My film studies, like Céline Dion's heart in "Titanic," will go on - but more likely in an academic setting. My blog postings will likely be infrequent, though, as they have been for the past few months, something for which I wish to apologize. In fact, my hiatus is, in its own way, a formal apology to you and a formal acknowledgment of my absence from the site. Nevertheless, I will continue to post in the future, so have no fear! I had a posting about "the death of cinema" (à la Gregg Araki's "The Living End") lined up, so hopefully you will at least see that one before the end of the summer.

Post-script: In my absence, I did not formally recognize the passings of Gary Coleman, Rue McClanahan, or film legend Dennis Hopper. Rest in peace.

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Random Musing: Happy Two Year Anniversary!

Happy birthday to my blog, which turns 2 years old today! Wow, it has been a great 2 years. On these nostalgic occasions, it is of course always fitting to reflect on both the highlights of the blog and the statistics it has racked up:

• Last year, I officially changed the title of the blog to "We Have the Stars ★★★★."
• Since that time, I have been contacted personally by the webmaster for singer/songwriter Bird York and by Beverley Nero.
• Since 2008, I have apparently scored 3,377 visitors from 91 countries and territories (and 1,757 visitors since this time last year, an increase of 108.5%).
• My average daily visits are up 200% from a year - or even six months - ago.
• My most popular film review has been the one for Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite" (1995) (but in the last year, the most popular has been Ingmar Bergman's "Autumn Sonata" (1978)).
• In a related vein, I made my first appearance on television as a talking head for the local program, "Out & About Today" in their episode on this year's Oscar predictions. The episode is linked to my blog - hence, its connection to these reflections.

Coming soon is a first for this blog: a full-length interview! In the next few days will come the addition of a review for the film, "Fish out of Water" (2009), and an interview with filmmaker Ky Dickens, director/producer of the film.

Also, I have been disappointed with my output for the last year, although a lot of it has been beyond my control. In applying to graduate school and trying to finish my senior year at Vanderbilt, I simply have had no time to dedicate to the generation of content for my blog. Hopefully, that shall change soon! In fact, I challenge myself this coming year to best this past year's output.

Cheers to another year!

*No need to press "Read More". Thank you.*

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Random Musing: Modern Queer Movies and the Search for a Happy Ending

*As seen in the February 2010 issue of "Out & About" newspaper. To access it, click here.*

In keeping with the theme of love (or – as I will argue – lack thereof), I would like to reflect on the status of queer movies in America today.

We are now in the year 2010, but the most critically acclaimed gay film of the year is Tom Ford’s “A Single Man.” Are queers destined to be forever unhappy on the silver screen? How indebted do these modern films continue to be to pre-Stonewall discourse about how miserable gays and lesbians are and should be?

Through queer film history, there have been blips of happy endings (albeit none before the complete demise of the Hays Code in 1968). Two of the few films with happy (or at least seemingly happy) endings that I can think of include “A Very Natural Thing” (1973) and “Parting Glances” (1986) (reviewed in last month’s issue of this very publication). Otherwise, the typical GLBTQ film (the examples are too many) concludes with at least one protagonist’s death (murder or suicide), social or self-condemnation, and/or a sense of general melancholy.

So what is a queer to do? Despite the growing number of GLBTQ films circulating these days and the resounding critical acclaim many mainstream ones muster, the subject material is perpetually influenced by historical treatments of gays and lesbians. This means that while heterosexuals will be treated to saccharine romance films that studios churn out at this time of year every year, queers are stuck with “romances” that end in tragedy time and time again. For example (with spoilers), in 2005 Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal shared the love that dared not speak its name in “Brokeback Mountain” until Gyllenhaal’s unfortunate demise to a tire iron. In 2008, Sean Penn had several partners in “Milk,” including those played by James Franco and Diego Luna – until one left him and the other hanged himself. And this was all before Penn as Milk met his fate at gunpoint. Finally, at the present, “A Single Man” enters theaters and not only do queers lose out on another potentially happy film in the canon, but they get to watch lonely Colin Firth as he miserably desires suicide after the death of his life partner.

Will the GLBTQ community ever see a happy gay film? It seems that the problem lies in not just film narratives’ perpetual lodgings in pre-Stonewall ideologies, but more importantly in their passive acceptance of the most miserable aspects of our history. After all, “Brokeback Mountain” is set in conservative 1960s Wyoming, “A Single Man” is also set in the 1960s, and the famous story of Harvey Milk is set in the throes of 1970s gay liberation (and the strong conservative resistance to it).

I believe that it would be a terrible idea for queers to forget their history, but can we consider not adapting Gore Vidal’s “The City and the Pillar” (originally published in 1947)? Instead, we might finally have a film concerning gay protagonists who are not miserable, suicidal, or threatened but are absolutely and irrevocably happy and in love. When will there be a time that such a gay film appears in the mainstream public consciousness?

Unfortunately, I can only wonder at this point. I know that the answer will only come when the public is not only ready and willing – but also ready to set aside the past to document the future.

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Random Musing: No Ontology without Ritual - Feminism in Maya Deren’s Ritual in Transfigured Time

P. Adams Sitney usefully describes "Ritual in Transfigured Time" [Maya Deren, 1945] as the complex “architectonic film,” which, as a concept, aims to blend myth and ritual (Sitney, Visionary Film, pg. 25). Maya Deren’s film unifies mythical tales of the Norns, the Fates, the Graces, and Pygmalion with rituals of marriage, dance, and domesticity. I argue that the openly secret common denominator between these motifs is feminism, specifically as it relates to the ontology of the female protagonist(s). If ontology is the study of the state of being, then my assertion pursues the question of how the film represents the (specifically) female’s state of existence. The death of woman without domestic ritual or as a result of the marriage ritual seems to be a criticism from a distinctly feminist perspective. As any film is presented through the critical lens of its filmmaker, "Ritual"’s Maya Deren presents viewers with her epistemological reflection on woman’s subservience to ritual (woman is born, marries a man, domestically serves a man, is widowed by man, and dies) and how it affects the woman’s ontology.

For Deren, the female protagonist in "Ritual" follows a “sexual rite of passage from ‘widow to bride’” (quoted by Sitney, pg. 26). Furthermore, “'Ritual' has two principal figures, although ultimately the film reduces itself to the initiation of a single persona, the female” (pgs. 25-6). Considering these two thoughts together, Deren’s tale is one of female degeneration – from two personae to one and from widow (the near-“end” of a woman’s life) to bride (the conventional, conservative “beginning” of a woman’s life, especially as it relates to domesticity).

The two personae first come into contact at the beginning of the film. (In fact, it could be said that the presence of the first woman, “the invoker” (played by Deren herself), “wills into life” the second woman, “the widow,” in a feat that is distinctly maternal. Furthermore, it is interesting that the state of being of “the widow” begins at the near-“end” of her “life”). While “the widow” makes a ball of yarn from the wool between the hands of “the invoker,” the act of running out of wool causes “the invoker” to disappear; her ontology is compromised because when the wool in her hands no longer exists, she, as a woman in the domestic sphere, ceases to exist.

On the other hand, the widow’s ontology is questioned at the end of the film, when she runs into the water and sinks (in a negative image). Instead of drowning in her black dress and scarf, she goes underwater in a bridal gown, obviously a particularly feminist criticism of marriage as “the veritable end of female existence.” Technically, then, the bride goes out of existence as the final image fades out. However, I optimistically read the bride’s final freeze frame in the negative image as an appeal for a new ontology. She no longer exists in the conventionally “positive” image, so her position outside of ritual (especially as it relates to cinematography) puts her in the position to grow outside the constricting boundaries of “death” by marriage, filmed as a “positive” image.

"Ritual in Transfigured Time" engages in studying the ontology of female personae, especially in regard to architectonics. Woman (as represented by “the invoker” persona) cannot exist without domestic obligations to give her ontology worth, but woman (as represented by “the widow-to-bride” persona) also cannot exist with the conservative obligation of the marriage ritual (as she drowns in her gown). However, the fact that the final image of this second persona is in negative image offers hope to the evolution of woman to a new ontology outside of ritual and cinematic conventions. Even if this film is full of feminist criticisms of ritual, I prefer to think that my optimistic interpretation of the final shots affirm the potential for the female to escape ritual.

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In the News/Random Musing: The Academy Award Nominations '10

Some of you might have been wondering why I have not blogged at all about this year's Academy Award nominations (being that I am such an Oscar nut). Well, I have two reasons: 1.) I have been extremely busy with school, work, and extracurricular activities and, as a result, have not had time to do so; and 2.) An even better reason, I got to talk about my predictions on television! This past weekend, I appeared on News Channel 5+ (Nashville, TN)'s Out & About Today (the televisual outlet for the newspaper for which I write). Chuck Long (the host) and I only discussed the nominations for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress, but I was able to squeeze my opinion on Director in there, as well. To see my predictions, watch the following video:



Exciting stuff, huh? Not only did I get to appear on television, but I got to do it in the way that I always wanted to: talking about the movies, Ebert-style! I hope you enjoy!

The Academy Awards will air March 7th, 2010 at 8 pm EST on ABC. For a complete list of nominees, click here.

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In the News/Random Musing: SAG Nominations '10

Ah, and now the Oscar race intensifies. The Screen Actors' Guild has released their nominations for the best actors of the past year in cinema, and with this second phase of awards season, pundits begin sweating as they anticipate the selections of the AMPAS, which will finally come next month. In fact, many of the SAG voters will also vote for the Academy, so this round of nominations becomes crucial for those guessing next month's Oscar nominations. For now, let us analyze SAG's decisions and consider what the future will bring, courtesy of the Academy...

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role

JEFF BRIDGES /Bad Blake - "CRAZY HEART" (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

GEORGE CLOONEY /Ryan Bingham - "UP IN THE AIR" (Paramount Pictures)

COLIN FIRTH /George Falconer - "A SINGLE MAN" (The Weinstein Company)

MORGAN FREEMAN /Nelson Mandela - "INVICTUS" (Warner Bros. Pictures)

JEREMY RENNER /Staff Sgt. William James - "THE HURT LOCKER" (Summit Entertainment)


Renner replaces Tobey Maguire from the Golden Globe Best Actor nominations. I still think Firth will take this category, though, as long as voters do not experience a pang of guilt and vote instead for Jeff Bridges, whose long, unrewarded career (to-date) began with an Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor, "The Last Picture Show," 1971).

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

SANDRA BULLOCK /Leigh Anne Tuohy - "THE BLIND SIDE" (Warner Bros. Pictures)

HELEN MIRREN /Sofya - "THE LAST STATION" (Sony Pictures Classics)

CAREY MULLIGAN /Jenny - "AN EDUCATION" (Sony Pictures Classics)

GABOUREY SIDIBE /Precious - "PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL ‘PUSH' BY SAPPHIRE"(Lionsgate)

MERYL STREEP /Julia Child - "JULIE & JULIA" (Columbia Pictures)

Emily Blunt is edged out by Meryl Streep for the SAG Award nomination. I continue to think Sidibe will win, but it is very interesting to think that Sandra Bullock might be getting her very first Oscar nomination next month. It is also interesting to think that next month might bring Streep's sixteenth Oscar nomination.

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

MATT DAMON /Francois Pienaar - "INVICTUS" (Warner Bros. Pictures)

WOODY HARRELSON /Captain Tony Stone - "THE MESSENGER" (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER /Tolstoy - "THE LAST STATION" (Sony Pictures Classics)

STANLEY TUCCI /George Harvey - "THE LOVELY BONES" (Paramount Pictures)

CHRISTOPH WALTZ /Col. Hans Landa - "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS" (The WeinsteinCompany/Universal Pictures)

No change from the Globes. My opinion on the winner has not changed either.

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

PENÉLOPE CRUZ /Carla - "NINE" (The Weinstein Company)

VERA FARMIGA /Alex Goran - "UP IN THE AIR" (Paramount Pictures)

ANNA KENDRICK /Natalie Keener - "UP IN THE AIR" (Paramount Pictures)

DIANE KRUGER /Bridget Von Hammersmark - "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS" (The WeinsteinCompany/Universal Pictures)

MO'NIQUE /Mary - "PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL ‘PUSH' BY SAPPHIRE" (Lionsgate)

Diane Kruger substitutes for Julianne Moore's nomination in this category at the Globes. While I am thrilled by Kruger's nomination, I cannot help but feel some remorse that it is not Mélanie Laurent's performance as Shoshanna in "Inglourious Basterds" that is nominated, instead. In any case, I continue to believe that Mo'Nique will capture the prize.

For the rest of the nominations, click here. The 16th Annual Screen Actors' Guild Awards ceremony will transpire on January 21, 2010 and will be broadcast simultaneously on TBS and TNT.

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In the News/Random Musing: The 67th Annual Golden Globe Nominations

The 67th Golden Globes ceremony will take place on January 17th, 2010. For the full list of Golden Globe nominees (including those in television), click here. The nominees for each category in film and my guesses for each winner in bold when you click "Read More"...

Best Motion Picture (Drama)
("Inglourious Basterds" is the best film I have seen so far this year, but Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" seems to be a potential voter favorite.)

Avatar
Lightstorm Entertainment; Twentieth Century Fox

The Hurt Locker
Voltage Pictures; Summit Entertainment

Inglourious Basterds
The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures/A Band Apart/Zehnte Babelsberg GmbH Production; The Weinstein Company/Universal Pictures

Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire
A Lee Daniels Entertainment / Smokewood Entertainment Group Production; Lionsgate

Up In The Air
Paramount Pictures; Paramount Pictures

Best Motion Picture (Comedy)

(500) Days Of Summer
Watermark Pictures; Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Hangover
Warner Bros. Pictures; Warner Bros. Pictures

It's Complicated
Relativity Media, Scott Rudin Productions; Universal Pictures

Julie & Julia
Columbia Pictures; Sony Pictures Releasing

Nine
The Weinstein Company/Relativity Media/Lucamar Productions/Marc Platt Productions; The Weinstein Company

Best Performance - Drama
(The winner in the Actor category will depend on if voters want to reward the old guard (Bridges) or bestow victory on the most critically hailed performance (Firth).)

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
George Clooney - Up in the Air
Colin Firth - A Single Man
Morgan Freeman - Invictus
Tobey Maguire - Brothers

Emily Blunt - The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side
Helen Mirren - The Last Station
Carey Mulligan - An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious

Best Performance - Musical or Comedy

Matt Damon - The Informant!
Daniel Day-Lewis - Nine
Robert Downey, Jr. - Sherlock Holmes
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - (500) Days of Summer
Michael Stuhlbarg - A Serious Man

Sandra Bullock - The Proposal
Marion Cotillard - Nine
Julia Roberts - Duplicity
Meryl Streep - It's Complicated
Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia

Best Supporting Performance

Matt Damon - Invictus
Woody Harrelson - The Messenger
Christopher Plummer - The Last Station
Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

Penelope Cruz - Nine
Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air
Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air
Mo'Nique - Precious
Julianne Moore - A Single Man

Best Director
(Whoever wins Best Picture will win Best Director.)

Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker
James Cameron - Avatar
Clint Eastwood - Invictus
Jason Reitman - Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino - Inglourious Basterds

Best Screenplay

District 9
The Hurt Locker
It's Complicated
Inglourious Basterds
Up in the Air

Best Original Score
(James Horner - always a fan favorite.)

Up
The Informant!
Avatar
A Single Man
Where the Wild Things Are

Best Original Song

"Cinema Italiano" - Nine
"(I Want To) Come Home" - Everybody's Fine
"I See You" - Avatar
"The Weary Kind" - Crazy Heart
"Winter" - Brothers

Best Animated Feature Film

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
Up

Best Foreign Language Film

Baarìa - La porta del vento • Italy
Broken Embraces • Spain
The Maid • Chile
A Prophet • France
The White Ribbon • Germany

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Random Musing: Chéri

This past year at Vanderbilt, I took a year-long French history and literature class (in French, mind you) called "Textes et Contextes," which aimed to teach the two subjects by the ways in which they interact. The first semester covered the Middle Ages to 1850 (which was really more history than literature), and the second semester covered 1850 to the present (which was really more literature than history). In the latter semester, we analyzed samples from the works of de Maupassant, Camus, Duras, and others. One of the others happened to be an extract from Colette's "La Fin de Chéri." Colette's style of writing was certainly interesting, although the story was a bit nebulous for us English-speaking readers of the original French text (thanks to its focus on nuance).

Not long ago, I happened to discover that Michelle Pfeiffer would be starring in a film adaptation of "Chéri" (with Stephen Frears ("The Queen") directing!). I adore Michelle Pfeiffer, and I admire Stephen Frears' work, so I have been quite ecstatic to see its theatrical release...

...And now it's here. I have read two reviews of the film in the course of the last few hours: one, which is clearly frivolous and elementary (found in "People"), and the other, which is a stirring, thoughtful reflection (as always, coming from Roger Ebert). I cannot discuss my own thoughts on the film any further, having not seen it yet, but I think that Ebert, as usual, has summed up what I am anticipating about the film. (However, he never mentions what I am currently predicting: potential Oscar nominations.)

"Chéri" is currently in limited release nationwide. Boy, I wish I could see it now...

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Random Musing: Andy Warhol (Part Two)

*WARNING: Though this blog has been written for only intellectual purposes, some of the films discussed in this blog are highly sexual in nature and might not be suitable for children under 13. Please get parental permission before reading more.*

In yesterday's "Part One" blog on artist and avant-garde filmmaker Andy Warhol, I discussed his first film, "Sleep" (1963), and introduced him as the kind of filmmaker who challenges conventions and our expectations about film as an art everytime he makes a new movie. Today, I want to explore his other more notable works...

"Kiss" is a 1963 film starring two couples, both of whom kiss in a close-up shot for three minutes each (as a retort to the Hays Code's rule that all onscreen kisses must be no longer than three seconds). And as if that were not enough, the second couple is gay.



"Mario Banana" is a 1964 film starring Mario Montez, a transgendered Factory Superstar who took his name as an homage to the camp icon and famously bad actress Maria Montez.





In the two parts of this queer film (how else would you describe a transgendered person insinuating a taboo act on a banana?), Montez seductively toys with his phallic fruit in one close-up shot. It is important to notice how Montez's erotic eyes constantly strike the viewer during his lewd fellatio. This film is obviously self-aware of its sexuality, and it shows how the relationship between actor and viewer becomes crucial for it to succeed. (It later seems that awareness of the viewer is important for almost all of Warhol's more sexual films after "Sleep" and "Kiss.")

In the same year, Warhol made the erotic, voyeuristic "Blow Job," which is comprised of one lengthy, close-up shot that studies only the pleasure on the face of DeVeren Bookwalter (who is supposedly receiving oral sex from filmmaker Willard Maas, although the camera never tilts down nor zooms out to see this).





What is so awe-inspiring about this particular film is how Warhol tests our ability to suspend disbelief. For example, when we watch any film in general, we "play along" with its artificial construction in order to make it all believable. However, "Blow Job" forces us to believe in it, even more so than usual, because if we do not, then how do we know the handsome Bookwalter is actually getting his titular "Blow Job" and not just going through the motions he would feel if he were getting one? In addition, because the film is silent, Warhol is tricking his viewers into filling the rest of the film with our own imagination: the man on his knees in the lower off-screen space, the moans and words coming from Bookwalter's mouth, and the sensations Bookwalter must be feeling. Therefore, the film has become what we make of it―a personal fantasy, never the same from person to person. Later, Warhol continues to challenge convention by allowing Bookwalter to break the fourth wall, a perception of the viewer that makes us aware of our part in the film (just like in "Mario Banana") and what we have done to fill in the gaps.

Most important of all, "Blow Job" is a watershed of queer film history. In Roy Grundmann's book, "Andy Warhol's 'Blow Job'," he argues that the film is an allegory for America's relationship with homosexuality on film at the time: hidden, practically invisible (just like the fellator in the off-screen space). Indeed, it was only in 1961 that the Hays Code permitted characters with homosexual desires in mainstream films. In 1964, "Blow Job" became a landmark film by not only implying (and accepting) a subject about which no one ever spoke, but by implying (and accepting) the depicted act as occurring between homosexuals.

Warhol would make many more films between 1964 and 1969, and all of them would challenge more conventions of filmmaking. Warhol is especially important to me for his camp and queer sensibilities, which were groundbreaking for their time. I think there is more to learn from his filmmaking, and I hope to do that soon...

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Random Musing: Andy Warhol (Part One)

For those of you, my dear readers, who follow my blog regularly or at least know my favorite films, then you have an idea of the kinds of films about which I generally write: blockbuster Hollywood pictures, Oscar-nominated or -winning films from 1927 to today, and sometimes the occasional foreign film or documentary. However, for those of you who really know me, you know that I also have a deep appreciation for avant-garde cinema. Several weeks ago, I blogged about Man Ray (an American photographer and surrealist filmmaker in Paris in the early 20th century), and today I want to talk about the American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol, some of whose work has left a big impact on the meaning of film. You may know Warhol better for his Pop Art renditions of actress/goddess Marilyn Monroe and the Campbell's Soup Can, but Warhol has also left an impressionable influence on film culture. Using his Factory Superstars and friends, Warhol made films as short as thirty minutes or as long as eight hours about his subjects. What I want to analyze today is what the questions posed by his films have done to change the way we think about film as an art...



The first film Andy Warhol ever made was in 1963; it was a film called "Sleep." The subject of the film, a young stockbroker and good friend of Warhol named John Giorno, was interviewed in 2002 by London's "The Guardian" about "Sleep," and his narrative offers to us some interesting insight as to why Warhol became a filmmaker:

We used to go to Jonas Mekas' Film-makers' Cooperative in 1962 to watch these underground films. Andy saw them and said, "Why doesn't somebody make a beautiful film?" So he did. On Memorial Day weekend in 1963 we went away for a few days and I woke up in the night to find him staring at me - he took a lot of speed in those days. That's where the idea for the movie came from - he was looking for a visual image and it just happened to be me. He said to me on the way home: "Would you like to be a movie star?" "Of course," I said, "I want to be just like Marilyn Monroe." He didn't really know what he was doing; it was his first movie. We made it with a 16mm Bolex in my apartment but had to reshoot it a month later. The film jumped every 20 seconds as Andy rewound it. The second shoot was more successful but he didn't know what to do with it for almost a year. The news that Warhol had made a movie triggered massive amounts of publicity. It was absurd - he was on the cover of Film Culture and Harper's Bazaar before the movie was finished! In the end, 99% of the footage didn't get used; he just looped together a few shots and it came out six hours long.

Frankly, Andy Warhol made a six-hour movie about a guy sleeping. Clearly, the response to the film was 99% because of people's fascination with the famous artist.

However, what does "Sleep" even mean to us as students of film? Because Warhol is filming his friend snoozing away, it might as well be a home movie. But what distinguishes his film from Dad's home movies of the family on vacation in Orlando, Florida? I think it is because it utilizes the concept of the scientific camera. Warhol was definitely not the first person to ever use the camera in this way (Theodor Dreiser's 1928 "The Passion of Joan of Arc" comes to mind), this way of essentially placing a microscope over a person and studying him or her. But Warhol's film is ambiguous in its genre: is it a narrative film or a documentary? This might be where Warhol breaks ground―after all, a film such as "Sleep" definitely challenges many conventions that make up the way we think about film (and what it means to be a film, in general). We expect most films to have a narrative, and we do not expect a film to last more than two, maybe three, hours. Instead, we are presented with six hours of a pseudo-documentary of a man doing something we do every day. (It should be noted, though, that the six-hour length of "Sleep" probably has something to do with Warhol being on speed at the time; on drugs, time means nothing anymore.) By calling into question our expectations of film, we have learned something from "Sleep."

But the question remains: What kind of film is "Sleep"? There is no wrong answer. The film could be a narrative film in which a man is sleeping, or it could be a documentary of a man who is sleeping. But does it matter that we cannot fit "Sleep" into a box with a label?

In addition, "Sleep" begs the question of if it is art or not. Some people will say "no," just as they did to Marcel Duchamp's "The Fountain" in 1917. Others will say "yes," citing how Warhol has challenged our standards for what makes a film a film (and arguing that "Sleep" is a film, too). Again, there is no wrong answer.

But his work eventually challenges more than we expect. Around the 3:50 mark of the clip I posted (which still lacks the other nearly five hours and fifty minutes of "Sleep"), we see the sexuality of Warhol come out through the camera. Warhol lingers on Giorno's handsome face for some time, and then a shot of Giorno's sensual neck and chest runs on for several minutes. At the 7:36 mark, we see an ambiguous shape... But in the film's final shot, we discover that we have been gazing on his buttocks. Guess what? "Sleep" is actually a queer film. In this way, Warhol turns another convention on its head―the male gaze in film. The male gaze generally objectifies the female, at least in classic Hollywood, when everything was "boy + girl." However, Warhol, who was an openly gay man, homoerotically objectifies another man and makes no big deal about it (while mainstream films of the time were just barely being able to do more than "imply" things under the Hays Code). Essentially, Warhol topples the idea of the heteronormative male gaze with his first film.

And so Warhol will go on to treat more subjects similarly, challenging more conventions of filmmaking.

There is more to come, dear reader, in our study of Andy Warhol, filmmaker. Stay tuned.

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Random Musing: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

On March 5, 2010, director Tim Burton (whose work I have really come to admire more than ever) will release his newest fantasy feature in theaters, a remake of "Alice in Wonderland," based on the Lewis Carroll novels "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass." According to Wikipedia, the film will use a technique combining live action, motion capture technology and stop motion and will be released in Disney Digital 3-D and IMAX 3-D. Only today have I come upon brand-new, just-released publicity stills for the film! ("U.S.A. Today" has them; click here to see them.) These stills feature a nearly unrecognizable Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Mia Wasikowska as Alice, and my personal favorite (as you can tell from the photo that accompanies this blog), Helena Bonham-Carter as a spot-on Red Queen. Is this not exciting? I was hesitant at first about the idea of yet another film adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland," but I think Tim Burton will bewilder us as never before...

*No need to press "Read More." Thank you.*

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Random Musing: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

In 1987, director Todd Haynes and collaborator Cynthia Schneider wrote a short film based on the life of pop singer Karen Carpenter (You know her as one-half of the 1970s soft rock duo, The Carpenters). Haynes sympathetically and reverently portrayed Karen as an abused celebrity tortured by her family, her record label, and, most importantly, society's obsession with thinness. To represent Karen's struggle for her body's perfection, Haynes ironically used Barbie dolls as characters, being that Barbies (and Kens) are the epitome of ideal bodies.

Having seen Haynes' "Far from Heaven" and enjoying it, I have decided to go back and check out some of his other work. I had heard of "Superstar" and its Barbie characters before, and I knew I had to see it. However, there are some people out there who really did not want to see it and have gone to many lengths to ensure it is not seen...

According to Wikipedia, upon its release, the film was a minor hit in art house theaters and was shown at several film festivals. However, not long afterward, Richard Carpenter (the other half of The Carpenters) viewed the film and became irate with the film's portrayal of his family, in particular because the film insinuated that he had a "private life" (i.e. gay lifestyle). Carpenter was able to get the film pulled from distribution and exhibition by way of a copyright infringement suit, as Haynes had failed to obtain proper licensing to use numerous Carpenters songs in the film. (The Museum of Modern Art still retains a copy of this film but has agreed with the Carpenter estate not to exhibit it.)

Because a copy of this nearly-impossible-to-find cult film exists on YouTube, I would like to share it with you. It is certainly notable for its style (and I am not just talking about the Barbies―I also refer to the interesting editing and symbolism). Watch this infamous film with me now.



UPDATE: While doing some research for a photo for this blog, I just discovered a blog called "Thoughts on Stuff" by Patrick. He wrote a blog about this film four years ago and came to a similar conclusion that I made for Haynes' "Far from Heaven." Patrick says, "I think Haynes' biggest issue is with showing how characters who seem to have it all may in fact be the most unhappy. All of the three main characters here are forced by society to do things they do not want to do, and it leads to unhappiness and reaction against societal norms."

It appears Haynes may have a common theme running through his films... I cannot believe I did not extrapolate the message of "Far from Heaven" to this film. It does fit, after all.

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Random Musing: Films in Five Seconds

*for Antoine*

I was recently introduced to a series of videos on YouTube that were created as comically abridged versions of their theatrically released counterparts. While most of the videos rendered no laughs, I was very amused by two particular ones. Somehow, the creator of these videos (apparently "That Guy with the Glasses") managed to take James Cameron's epic "Titanic" from 195 minutes to 11 seconds and to whittle the 1994 Disney classic, "The Lion King," down to 20 seconds while retaining the essential elements of each film. I want to share both with you, my dear readers, because they will brighten your day and warrant repeated viewings.

"Titanic"


"The Lion King"


*No need to press the READ MORE tab. Thank you.*

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Random Musing: Saturday Night Fever

In 1977, everyone from Pearl the Weather Girl to Stan the Milkman was blasting the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" out of his or her radio, after having seen young John Travolta, his perfect hair, tight, white leisure suit, and hot strut popularize disco onscreen in "Saturday Night Fever." For many people, the film has gone on to completely iconicize the era and would probably be best left alone, a remnant of our memories. After all, there are just some films that you should not remake...

...But no. British record exec Simon Cowell—who you probably know best as that crotchety judge on "American Idol"—has decided that he wants to do a remake. ...A remake!? Can you remake a film like that?

Here's the scoop, according to Britain's "The Sun"...

He has been in negotiations for weeks with legendary film producer Robert Stigwood, who owns the rights to the screenplay [for "Saturday Night Fever"]. The idea for the original 1977 blockbuster came after Robert saw an article in a U.S. mag about teenagers going to dancing competitions. And Simon has drawn up a wishlist of top talent to prove to Robert that his version will be a match for the classic. "High School Musical" star Zac Efron is in line for the lead role. And hip-hop uber producer Timbaland is in the frame to rework one of the most famous movie soundtracks of all time - an album that topped the U.S. charts for a massive 24 weeks.

I mean, Zac Efron is beautiful enough to be Tony Manero, but he should never play the role... I do not think I would say that "Saturday Night Fever" is on the level of classics that should never be remade, such as "Casablanca" or "The Godfather," but it falls in that category of films that are so iconic that to remake it would be to do injustice to its name. "Saturday Night Fever" is basically inseparable from the '70s, so please, please leave it be.

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Random Musing: Pauline Kael/One-Minute Reviews

For some time now, I have been wanting to update my blog with a third sidebar. At first, about a year ago, I was intending to fill it with more advertisements, widgets, etc. However, at the end of this past January, during my independent study on film reviewing, I picked up "5001 Nights at the Movies" (for the Google Books version, click here) by former long-running "New Yorker" film critic, Pauline Kael. It changed a good number of things about the way I review. I was particularly impressed by Kael's (very) opinionated, sardonic writing style. Considering that I was studying my own writing and comparing it to the work of others, I found Kael far more "active" and unabashed in her criticism compared to the times I used to go "passive" in my reviews. She was a true critic, in every sense of the word, and she inspired me, though she has been deceased since 2001, to be a better critic. Therefore, yesterday I (with the invaluable help of Mr. Nathan Skky--to whom HUGE SPECIAL THANKS is due) added the third column, called "One-Minute Reviews," and I dedicate it to Ms. Pauline Kael, whose "5001 Nights at the Movies," culled from her writings for the "Goings on About Town" section of the "New Yorker," first introduced me to her and inspired me way back in January...

For those of you unfamiliar with "5001 Nights at the Movies," perhaps Kael's most famous anthology of her criticism, it collects shorter, more concise "write-up" reviews from her career. By "write-up," I essentially mean a review, of no more than a paragraph, that is intended for a sort of "what you should see" column. These "write-ups" can be read quickly, and Kael's best ones are those that economically summarize and criticize.


Fastforward to four days ago. I decided after seeing "Sordid Lives" that I wanted to make it my next full review, especially because of the ambivalent reviews floating around on the internet (though I loved it!), but I was having trouble making it work. I ultimately abandoned it. However, after seeing "A Place in the Sun" on Monday and seeing the overwhelmingly positive response to it (while mine was, at best, ambivalent), I decided I, as a responsible film critic, had to publish a review, as well as one for "Sordid Lives." Then, I remembered how much I had loved "5001 Nights at the Movies" and how it had ameliorated me as a film critic. I knew at that moment that I had to bring back to the blog my idea of a third column. I also knew that it would showcase what I would call "One-Minute Reviews," a collection of—well, you get the picture. But these would not be like my other reviews, just as Kael's reviews in "5001" are not like her others. These reviews would be critical, concise, and, above all, quick reads, in order to provide you, my dear reader, with more reviews and faster so you know just what to watch.

As a bonus, you will notice that if you click on any review in the accessible sidebar on the right column, you will be given the option, within the column, to also comment. Sounds easy? It is! Feel free to leave any feedback on the films reviewed, just as you do for the longer reviews!

Finally, just for kicks, I have noticed a certain coincidence for my blog. Its births and anniversaries all happen on the 26th of a given month: I created the blog on March 26, 2008, I officially debuted its new name (and celebrated its one-year anniversary) on March 26, 2009, and now, I have debuted the BRAND NEW third column with its "One-Minute Reviews" on May 26, 2009. I am proud to bring you them and hope to keep them frequently updated. Enjoy.

(NOTE: If you want to access the "One-Minute Reviews" alone, then feel free to go straight here. However, it is not necessary, as they are still entirely accessible on the main site.)

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