Quentin Tarantino’s films typically have a break in the action where some characters point out something interesting — something that kinda makes you say, “wow! I never thought about it like that!” Here are some examples:

1. Kill Bill vol. II (2004): Bill talks about how Superman is different from all other superheroes in that he must put on a costume (Clark Kent) in order to blend in with society, whereas Bruce Wayne must put on a costume to become Batman. LINK
2. Pulp Fiction (1994): the “Royale with Cheese” scene comes to mind. LINK
3. Django Unchained (2012): the scene where Candy talks about craniology, or phrenology, being the justification for enslaving Africans. LINK
4. Reservoir Dogs (1992): You could say the opening scene where the men are talking about tipping is a scene which fits this mold. LINK

In Inglourious Basterds (2009), Tarantino brilliantly compares the character of King Kong to the story of the Negro in America. LINK. The comparison is absolutely fascinating and I would’ve loved to have brought it up during class, but the actual comparison didn’t fit with the King Kong article we read and I didn’t want to derail the conversation. Regardless, I highly recommend you watch each of these clips. They’re very entertaining and it’ll probably take you less than 15 minutes to watch them all.

I meant to write this all in response to Michael’s post. He asks whether or not we should:”…’fake it till we make it,'[…] or press the issue” in reference to racial oppression. I didn’t have quite enough space to fit my answer in the comment section so I’ve put my response into the post you see here.

This is a good question but unfortunately there’s no right answer. If we fake it, everyone knows it’s fake and won’t take it seriously. The only issues that film and television seemed to have pressed are outdated; they aren’t properly representing the Struggle. To be honest, unless we were to endow every single underrepresented person with the finances, filmmaking capacity, and audience they need (i.e. make everyone watch each filmmaker’s perspective), there is no indisputable way to properly portray the experience of an entire generation of a race of oppressed people.

Having recognized the impossibility, it’s important to recognize not which stories are being told, but instead to recognize which stories people are listening to. The major news conglomerates are churning out race-based stories daily and society is totally eating that stuff up. The only problem is that the news stations aren’t representing anyone when they tell their stories.

To reiterate the point, too many people rely on commercial film (i.e. blockbusters) to pick up society’s slack. The real problem is that the news media overplays the ultra-rare violent crimes perpetrated by whites against blacks, yet underplays the ubiquitous struggles that black Americans face. This is the norm because violence attracts viewers. And do you know what attracts a lot of viewers? Violence against the oppressed. While these acts of violence do happen from time to time, they are wholly a product of more deeply entrenched, deep-seated institutional problems. That is what the news needs to be reporting on! You may hear a lot about “the Struggle”. Well, the Struggle is real but it isn’t perpetuated through any fear of lynching by whites (which is what CNN and FOX might lead you to believe). The Struggle is part of the micro aggressions blacks face in their day-to-day lives.

From an outsider’s perspective, the black community needs a new Raisin in the Sun. In the play/film, a black family moves into Clybourne Park, which is a township that is just a single stop from the center of Chicago (if you take the Metra from Ogilvie). While Lorraine Hansberry’s novel does infer many verbal threats from whites, it mostly deals with a rich widow’s reaction to her family’s new “white” environment. With one potential suitor coaxing her into appeasing whites by becoming more vanilla and another potential suitor encouraging her to return to her African roots, the main character is literally facing the problems many African Americans encounter today.

We live in a day and age where the idea of burning crosses in a family’s front yard is so archaic that you wouldn’t even believe it if you saw it on the news; yet, at the same time there are communities that aren’t welcoming towards blacks that already live there. Many blacks must still choose between being educated “Uncle Toms” or being Malcolm X’s uppity “Field Negro”.

Fear of being gunned down by some redneck in broad daylight is not the Struggle black Americans face today. Not being welcome in your own town: that is the Struggle. Having to choose between being “eloquent” versus being “hood”: that is the Struggle. These are the stories that need to be told… but the news media keeps interrupting everything by injecting their own narrative. It’ll take a real effort for film and television (read: society) to correct the damage that the news media has done.

Ang Lee could very easily be considered one of the best directors of all time (easily one of the best foreign directors to ever work in Hollywood). Just look at the best films he has directed:

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon(2000) — Oscar, Best Director
2. Hulk (2003)
3. Brokeback Mountain (2005) — Oscar, Best Director
4. Life of Pi (2012)

While Lee was born in Taiwan and educated in America, he refutes any notion that he is either a Chinese or American filmmaker:

I was never a citizen of any particular place… My parents left China to go to Taiwan. We were outsiders there. We moved to the States. Outsiders. Back to China. Now we were outsiders there, too – outsiders from America.

This sense of independence (or ostracism, if you prefer) translates to Brokeback fairly noticeably. Lee himself even admitted: “What do I know about gay ranch hands in Wyoming?” Without getting too sappy or poetic, the final product reveals that Lee may or may not know a whole lot about gay ranchers, but he certainly knows a lot about love.

In viewing the director’s work in the four previously mentioned films, one will notice that Lee brings a distinct artistry to his projects. Crouching Tiger is a wuxia film, meaning that it is about ancient China and martial arts. As his first major motion picture, Lee took advantage of the opportunity and essentially painted a colorful picture that would be a hallmark of his later work. The scene where two main characters are fighting in an orange setting amidst flying arrows is choreographed beautifully and represents a much larger conflict between the two characters. Furthermore, the arrows literally look like calligraphy-brush strokes when juxtaposed against the orange background. The way Lee frames his establishing shots is truly a testament to his ability to direct camerawork.

Hulk may be a little different considering it was more of a commercial exploit rather than an artistic piece, yet the artistry still finds its way into the super hero film.

Brokeback, an independent film, was definitely Lee’s return to respecting the beauty of nature. The shots of the mountain and the badlands are charmingly reminiscent of the establishing shots in the bamboo fight scene in terms of coloring, shot length, and mood in conjunction with the context. Lee even matches violence in both films as a metaphor for sex, but he does it in an understated fashion.

Life of Pi follows a similar aesthetic path.  Shots of the boat show Pi’s isolation and despair just as the very first shots of Jack and Ennis show that they are isolated while they wait for the sheep-owner to show up to his trailer. Both are composed much like an impressionist painting, i.e. utilizing the rule of thirds and often saving distinct colors for only the most important objects in the frame.

I love Ang Lee’s films for all of these reasons and I look forward to seeing whatever comes next.

I totally agree with Annie and Ebert’s point that representing the queer community as a whole is an impossibility. It’s impossible to represent any huge, broad concept in one film. As such, it’s important to discuss how Brokeback Mountain vignettes a queer relationship.

First off, I’d like to say that Brokeback Mountain was an excellent film in the fact that it kept my interest throughout its duration. This is due to the diversity of the shots, the dynamic sound, and the script/concept. The first two are results of great production and they are undeniably excellent on their own merits (Gustavo Santaolella deservedly won the Oscar for Best Original Score).

With great standalone components like sound and visuals, there’s naturally going to be a large audience. With that in mind, the script and the representation of a queer relationship are hugely important because a lot of people are going to see it — the stakes are higher than they would be for your average film. That being said, I don’t think Brokeback Mountain does for queer theory what the class thinks it does and here’s why:

I worked for a 93 year-old guy a couple summers ago and he had this to say about why some men are gay: “A man only turns gay when he can’t handle a real woman.” Obviously he was a product of a different time and obviously I neither agree with nor defend what he said, but the fact remains that certain people like him are going to cherrypick information and turn it all into confirmation bias. Perhaps it’s unavoidable, but Brokeback Mountain is chock full of confirmation bias for bigots who view the film through a lens of bigotry. Honestly, it’s painful to view the film in this light because I really think it’s awesome; however, it is important to identify where the film can confirm horrible, socially conservative biases so filmmakers can wholly avoid or successfully navigate them.

First, Jack couldn’t shoot the coyote for the life of him. Real men have to be able to shoot guns.
Second, Ennis is practically ridiculed for being sick of beans so early on in the summer. Real men can bear minor discomforts.
Third, Jack and Ennis’ employer chastises them for ranching so terribly on Brokeback, “you ranch this and you ain’t never no good.” Real men punch in 9-5 and they do their job well.
Fourth, as Erika Spohrer points out in UFT, they are tending soft, woolly sheep in Wyoming rather than herding cattle in Texas. Real cowboys herd cattle, not sheep.
Fifth, the two men who recognized Jack at the tractor dealership mentioned that he was a terrible cowboy at the rodeos. Real men can ride a bull.
Sixth, neither Jack nor Ennis could keep their wives happy. Real men can keep their wives satisfied (sexually and emotionally).
Seventh, Jack and Ennis aren’t gay — they’re bisexual. Real men aren’t gay and they certainly aren’t bisexual (or perhaps real men at least aren’t indecisive… i.e. they don’t live two lives).
Eighth, Jack doesn’t just die. Death is his punishment for being queer. Retribution?

(To clarify, the stuff I put in bold are all hypothetical bigoted reactions — not my own opinions.)

The list could go on forever but the point remains: when it comes to traditional masculinity, Jack and Ennis fall short. Sure, they were in the west and perhaps you can call Brokeback Mountain a western, but the two men aren’t hypermasculine because they noticeably couldn’t/didn’t handle their environment and they couldn’t/didn’t handle their masculine tasks. To put it bluntly: Jack and Ennis suck at doing traditionally manly stuff. Even Jack’s crowning achievement as a man where he shuts the TV off during Thanksgiving dinner is a struggle and, judging by his wife’s reaction, uncharacteristic.

Look, I’m not saying they had to be the best cowboys in all the land… I’m just saying that they didn’t have to be portrayed as the worst. It makes it seem like the only two representatives of the queer community the viewer is given don’t belong in the west, which is an awfully dangerous implication.

To bring it all back, the film had the first two components (awesome visuals and award-winning sound); however, I would argue that the third component (its Oscar-winning adapted screenplay) still came at the expense of unnecessarily stereotyping the queer community as unmasculine and unfit for the western genre.

Dale Russell, Toby Schwartz, Katie Weeks, and I made a short documentary a couple weeks ago for Professor Smith’s FAMS 340 course: Topics in Documentary.

Our video is about how men are portrayed in the media and how a student can learn media literacy in Gene Kelly’s FAMS course called Masculinity in the Media. Critical media literacy allows the viewer to engage with a piece of media and understand why it was produced or received a certain way.

The video’s obviously not perfect, but I think it fits conveniently well with the chapter on Masculinity in UFT.

Dogme 95 is great in theory but I think it lacks severely in execution.

To me, rules 1 through 5 downplay the cinematic apparatus and therefore leave the spectator to pay attention to the story and the acting. I think this is awesome. Some films today are shallow, visual spectacles with no real depth or passion, so any attempt (though perhaps Dogme 95 is an extreme attempt) to combat that trend is good for cinema as an art form. Similarly, rule 9 standardizes film presentation, which is mostly good even though it limits expression. Rule 10 can even be grouped in with 1-5 simply for the fact that it disrupts the general association between final product and “auteur”. So since these limitations don’t exactly allow the viewer to call a Dogme 95 film likeThe Celebration a visually groundbreaking film, I think that the viewer is left to concentrate on the acting and the plot.

In theory, diminishing superficial action and temporal alienation while also rejecting genre norms is mostly good even though it’s certainly limiting; however, this is where The Celebration and several other Dogme 95 films lose me. They tout great things like cinematic realism, or encourage honest things actual violence amongst the actors, or more generally reject contemporary cinematic norms… but then they base their stories on parents raping their children (The Celebration), unethical and exploitative voyeurism (Fuckland), abled people duping women into engaging in sex under the guise of mental retardation (The Idiots), etc. These plotlines are absolutely absurd. It doesn’t make sense to me that one could jump so quickly from fulfilling the truly honorable ideals in the “Vow of Chastity” to making hedonistic plots that belong on snopes.com.

So I see the theoretical value of Dogme 95. I totally understand why filmmakers would want to reject the cinematic norms. What I don’t understand at all is the Dogme 95 filmmakers’ sick infatuation with absurdity for the sake of shock value. I’d say it detracts from the movement, but the creators of the movement are also the very creators of these disgusting plotlines. Why did Dogme 95 filmmakers feel the need to double-down on their already progressive movement?

On a different note, I think we partially miss out on the ability to thoroughly assess the acting in The Celebration because we aren’t native speakers of Danish. A lot of acting can be attributed to voice and dialogue. With subtitles replacing our auditory capability (and visual attention at times), we are at a severe disadvantage in judging the acting merits of the film. Gbatokai was the only English speaker and he was pretty good, but I hesitate to judge all actors in the whole film based solely on his performance. What I mean to say is this: based on what I said before, I think Dogme 95 places emphasis on acting and plot; without being able to understand what the characters are saying due to language constraints, I cannot wholly cement my assessment of this film movement.

Timothy Corrigan sums up Richard Dyer’s “Entertainment and Utopia” excellently in the quote:

Dyer’s essay, “Entertainment and Utopia,” originally published in Movie in 1977, spells out in clear terms with concrete examples that the Hollywood musical is less concerned with what utopia looks like (although certain movies attempt to depict ideal societies) than with what utopia feels like, and this is conveyed primarily through musical numbers that obey rules different from those of ordinary life. (466)

This plays on the absurdity of the musical. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone break out into a song about doing dishes or starting homework. Similarly, I’ve never seen someone unscriptedly sing about love or ephemerality. It’s just not natural. And that’s exactly it: utopia, in both the political and artistic sense, is not natural. It usually feels good, but it almost never looks “right”. Utopia is unnatural and absurd.

(Un)fortunately,  Ghost Dog (Jarmusch, 1999) is not a musical. How do we relate it to the article? Well, for starters, it’s definitely absurd. The samurai overtones: absurd. The bumbling, child-like, idiotic gangsters (whom we have been conditioned to register as manly and intimidating): absurd. Urban isolationism: perhaps it’s not absurd to some people, but the fact that he can’t talk to his “best friend” is certainly absurd. In this way, Ghost Dog fits the bill of a utopian film; however, utopia is really a subjective term. Whose utopia is it? Not mine. Here’s why:

Like I said, it has samurai overtones. The “code” intertitles, the undying dedication to a master as a theme, and the holstering swishes all point to the samurai films of the past. These gestures are just as out of place as musical numbers are in musicals — the mob bosses even express this absurdity in their first round-table discussion. Yet, in my opinion, Jarmusch doesn’t go far enough in demonstrating his allusion to samurai film because the genre generally utilizes choreographed hand to hand combat and several wide angle and telephoto shots of nature and he does not do this in his film. Ghost Dog doesn’t look like a samurai film and therefore it doesn’t feel absurd like a samurai film should. It’s a boring hardwood film lacking the necessary veneer. As such, Ghost Dog doesn’t do it for me.

“But wait, I thought Dyer said it doesn’t matter what utopia looks like!” Dyer did say this, but I have to disagree with him almost entirely in this case. Jarmusch can tell his viewers a million times over that Ghost Dog is a samurai film — and believe me, he says it as many times as he can– but that doesn’t make it a samurai film. In the case of the samurai genre and many other genres, look and feel undeniably go hand in hand.