Knocked Up Consumption Analysis

Knocked Up seemed to get a lot of different responses. Judd Apatow, as we even saw in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is not scared to push the envelope and put images on screen that usually aren’t shown. For this post I am going to look at two film critics responses to the movie. The first one by Joey Leydon written on March 13, 2007 (the movie came out June 1st 2008) and the other by Cinema Dave written on June 8th. Joey Leydon seemed to genuinely like the movie saying it was “uproarious” and that the movie was “bound to generate repeat business among ticketbuyers.” He mentions Apatow’s use of colloquial language and dialogue, saying that [Apatow] has a knack or a “perfect-pitch ear” for both. However, in Cinema Dave’s opinion, the words fall flat. Dave seems more put off by Knocked Up and distracted by the sexual elements and the immaturity of the characters to appreciate the movie. He even says that both the crowds he saw the movie with were displeased and goes on to say that “Knocked Up lacks the discipline of executing a well thought out gag or any original thought on baby making.” Looking at this, it is rather obvious that viewers could either be amused by the snappy dialogue or turned off by the sexual behavior of the characters and the sexual references. Or, even arguably, both. I personally liked Knocked Up, I thought it was funny for what it was, though at the same time, I felt, like in most of Judd Apatow’s movies, that nothing really happens, it is just a snippet of characters lives and different actions. At times I was a little taken aback at how graphic the images on screen got, but the dialogue and the comedy was able to make up for it. However, in Cinema Dave’s opinion, the movie’s script couldn’t save it from the “gross humor.”

Reception Studies: Pirates of The Caribbean 1 & 2

Pirates of the Caribbean was a phenomena among movies, making over forty-six million dollars its opening weekend alone and having five Oscar nominations. When it came out in 2003, I remember talking to my friends about it and knowing that it had become instantly popular. However, when the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) a lot of fans of the first movie became overly disappointed. Thought its opening weekend it got over 135 million dollars, overall, the responses to Dead Man’s Chest were less than positive. Even looking at comments on imdb.com I found one that stated “It’s definitely one of the worst films I have ever seen;” while comments from Curse of the Black Pearl sounded more like, “Black Pearl was - and is - sheer magic that does not get old. The second was too heavily weighted with special effects at the expense of actor screen time and character development.” Arguably, the only reason Dead Man’s Chest got so much income was because of the success of the first one. Looking at the two movies through a consumption analysis lens, viewers, after seeing both films, compared them to each other and interpreted them in different ways; the first being more entertaining than the second one. According to the second quote, and in my opinion also, it seems that viewers were more interested in character development and the story than special effects and unnecessary action. Looking at the income that a series gets does not always reflect how much the viewers liked or disliked the movies.

Mulvey's Point in Miss Congeniality

Miss Congeniality, a movie thought to be about a strong female heroine, is actually an excellent example of trapping and taming women. Mulvey talks about the two dominant pleasures that we has viewers have while watching a movie: Scopophilia (or, the love of simply looking at things) and Narcissism (being able to watch a movie and feel like it was made specifically for you.) However, she argues that the camera presents those two pleasures through a man’s point of view, which is very evident in Miss Congeniality. At the beginning of the movie the main character, Gracie Hart, is a tomboyish girl that her later love-interest, Eric Matthews, barely acknowledges. However, when she has her makeover for her undercover operation, he suddenly is entranced by her beauty and becomes more interested in her. There is a famous slow motion scene where Gracie steps out for the first time after he makeover wearing a short dress and flipping her hair. This is a perfect example of how the audience sees through the male perspective. We are looking at her body as she walks toward the camera slowly (allowing us to view her body for an extended amount of time), she cannot see us, we see Eric’s positive reaction to her, and she does not even notice Eric’s reaction. Eric and the audience is able to look at her without her knowing, which Mulvey would argue is what men especially like to do. Also, Gracie gets “put in her place” at the end of the movie by the undeniable fact that she and Eric will end up together. Instead of having a strong woman who is fulfilled simply why solving the crime, she needs to have a man at the end of the movie to feel complete.

Mulan and Mulvey

In the film, Mulan, we see a Chinese girl who is very different than the rest of the women around her. She does not seem to fit the mold of a “good bride” and even fails to impress the matchmaker at the beginning of the movie (the matchmaker is even keen to say that Mulan is a “disgrace.”) However, though Mulan seems quirky and different, going off to fight the Huns in place of her father, in the end she chooses to leave a position of power usually given to men to go home to her family and be a “good daughter.” In Mulvey’s piece she argues that we need to make films that will undermine the idea of giving men the power and making women the objects that are merely looked at and ultimately bow down to giving men the power. Even in the movie, Chi Fu (when he is told that Mulan saved China and is a hero), says, “Tis a woman,” meaning, she most certainly could not have any authority. Another issue with the movie that Mulvey would point out is the fact that at the end of the movie, Shang, Mulan’s love interest, comes to her house. We are not certain why he is there, but before he sees Mulan, Shang addresses her father as “The Honorable Fa Zhou,” meaning, it can be deduced that he is probably there to ask for Mulan’s hang in marriage. Mulvey says that even movies that have a female protagonist, such as Mulan, have the women “trapped” at the end of the movie in a man’s world. In this case, Mulan will probably get married to Shang and fulfill her “place” as a woman, even though she had a different fire about her throughout the entire movie.

-Christiana

Regarding Objective and Subjective Narration

I noticed lots of you having trouble distinguishing between these two terms and how they are deployed in the films you viewed for your first paper. I was actually starting to feel that maybe I wasn't explaining it as best I could. Especially when some of you would talk about a character's flashback as being presented in a subjective mode, I began to feel the need for outside assistance.

So I wrote Kristin Thompson. Here are two relevant pieces of her email reply:

I’d say point them to the paragraph on p. 92, “Flashbacks offer a fascinating instance ...” Basically it’s a convention of classical cinema that flashbacks from characters’ point-of-view actually quickly slide into giving spectators information that the narrating character couldn’t know. I guess I’d say that in a film like Sunset Boulevard, we have the illusion of subjectivity, but in order to tell the story fully, the filmmakers slip into a largely objective approach for most of the flashback.

This way of thinking about the relationship between subjective and objective narration holds true for Double Indemnity and Out of the Past as well. The idea is that the film mobilizes the mode of subjectivity in order to access the past, but once there reverts to objective narration of that past for the viewer.

In a different email, she added this:

Thinking a bit further about flashbacks and subjective presentation of narrative information. Another convention is that Hollywood films usually provide some pretext for moving into a flashback. Sometimes there’s just the wavy lines or the dissolve or whatever, and we’re in the past. More often, there’s someone starting to tell other characters a story of the past, a shot of a character remembering, a diary page, or some such device that motivates the flashback. So subjectivity is an excuse to move into the past rather than strictly a way to move into the mind of a character and stay there. And even if a character’s telling or memory is the motivation for the flashback, we are to assume that everything shown in a flashback is objectively true unless there’s some further indication that it isn’t. When a flashback doesn’t show the truth, as in Stage Fright, people tend to think of it as cheating. That’s not logical, since we know this is a character’s story or memory and could thus be inaccurate, and yet we’re so used to essentially objective flashbacks that we see any deviation from that (unless signaled to the audience) as sneaky on the part of the filmmaker.

It is useful to remind ourselves that much of what we see in film is rooted in conventions developed over time (like the notion that what we see in a flashback should be the objective truth), but really aren't set in stone in any meaningful way other than that they are usually followed.

She also added this

another thing I would stress is that the concepts and terms we introduce in the book are analytical tools for us, not rules that filmmakers follow. Conventions have been developed for storytelling that allow them to mix the ways they give us narrative information, but obviously they do so in ways that usually don’t allow us to notice inconsistencies—unless we’re writing term papers and the like.

which is useful for reminding you of something I've mentioned in class at least once if not more, that these concepts and categories are tools for you to use in breaking open a complex film in order to understand it. If a particular textual move -- like having a character initiate a flashback subjectively that is then presented in objective narration -- seems awkward to you, don't try to force it to fit into one or the other set of categories. Instead, use your own analysis of the film and the categories you do have to explain how you see the film working. This is really the best we can do, but with the best film analysis, it is enough to open up entire new perspectives on those films.

What are you thoughts on this way of studying complex art forms like cinema? Is there something lost in approaching films this way? Would prefer our discipline to be more rigorous? Do you see any value in approching films this way?

These Kids Could Be Nipping at Your Heels

This piece in the New York Times (if you don't have one, you'll need a free account to view it) discusses the rise of film education programs in New York area high schools. High Schools! This was a bit surprising to me, but then, its been (several) years since I attended high school. When I visited the Dallas Performing Arts magnet last year, there was film on their showcase program, but not actual courses offering it.

Did you have any courses in film at your high school? If you had, do you think your plans for after college might be any different? What do you think is the value of learning to make films (and/or analyze them) before reaching college?

Screening 4: More Thoughts on The Searchers

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifAs promised, below are some links to arguments made about the film that in some way address the significance of race in the film. Feel free to comment here on your thoughts regarding this issue.

1) Roger Ebert's review
2) The Wikipedia entry on the film's "Themes" section
3) A piece by a film critic entitled "They ain’t white. Not any more. They’re Comanch’": Race, Racism and the Fear of Miscegenation in The Searchers"
4) Another review from a writer on blogcritics.com

What these pieces have in common is an interest in contextualizing the kind of racism found in the film in a way that makes sense given the cultural, social, and industrial context in which the film was produced and consumed. These authors do not agree on the meaning of the film or the role of racism in it, but they do all start by separating the racism portrayed by the characters in the diegesis from any sense of the film as a whole as racist.

This is an important element for budding film scholars to address and be aware of: the characters represented in a work do not always (perhaps even rarely) present an ideology consistent with the film as a whole. Instead, films as narratives present all kinds of characters in specific circumstances so their behavior can be understood by the viewer within a broader context. This kind of approach to film study is an important perspective to begin understanding now as your careers as critics and theorists are beginning.

(As an aside, collapsing the distance between the text's ideology and the ideology of one of its characters--even the protagonist--is the mistake many detractors of media violence make all the time: that because the protagonist is very violent, that the film as a whole text condones or encourages such violence. This is often not the case.)

Nonetheless, these distinctions are quite subtle and open to interpretation as any set of symbols is, which is why we see the four authors above struggling with the precise way to contextualize the block of symbols we call The Searchers.

Having read these four pieces and watched the film, what do you think?