Jamais Vu

Blossoms & Blood

2012-01-28T06:56:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce that my project on the films of Paul Thomas Anderson has been approved by the University of Texas Press. The book, tentatively titled, Blossoms & Blood / The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson, promises to contribute to scholarship on contemporary authorship, quasi-independent cinema, postmodern media culture and Anderson's five (soon six) films for years to come.

I will spend the next few months on revisions, with particular attention to a redesigned introduction. I plan to have the complete, final manuscript to UT by July. The hope will be for a spring/fall 2013 debut in print. I really wanted it done in time for the debut of The Master later this year, but academic publishing being what it is . . .

On that note, I am thrilled again to be working with UT. My experience with them on Disney's Most Notorious Film over the last 20 months has been nothing but positive. And, especially these days, I really appreciate the folks who believe in me.

On The Descendants; or Postmodern Colonial Culture

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Rare free time this morning, so I thought I would jot down a few thoughts on the new film, The Descendants. This is a movie I’d been looking forward to for a long time for two reasons: the presence of my favorite contemporary writer/director, Alexander Payne, and for its setting, the islands of Hawai’i. Although I have no desire to write anything on him (the Anderson book—stay tuned later today—will be my last auteur study for the foreseeable future), Payne has always had a special place in my heart for reasons I’ll touch on below.

One thing I will be writing a book on in the near future, however, are US media images of Hawai’i—in particular, film and television, but also books, records, and so forth. The Hawai’i project has been postponed a year or so because of the digital cinema project, which has taken precedence only because I’ve spent so much time teaching it in the last ten months or so. Once the Anderson book is completely finished--as in, off to the printer--I imagine the Hawai’i project will slide back in to its slot—probably summer of 2013. Ironically the Hawai’i project doesn’t cover contemporary media—it’s intended to span roughly the 1930s to 1970s, as I will focus on a particular wartime generation (WWII, Korea, Vietnam) of US audiences in relation to those images of the islands. But I’m still very interested in how recent stuff, such as The Descendants, “represent” Hawai’i.

As an auteur vehicle, I was quite disappointed in The Descendants, but as a story of contemporary Hawai’i, its probably one of the better texts I’ve seen in awhile. I think part of why I’ve always loved Payne’s films is two-fold—its keen sense of middle-class, middle-America, and the way they manage to present completely self-delusional characters as nonetheless endearing and even deeply moving. I guess because we are both from the mid-sized towns of the Midwest, I’ve always felt his take on the area and its personalities genuine, even sympathetic.

Some people find his movies condescending, but to me Payne, and his collaborator Jim Taylor, always seemed to understand the complex contradictions of identity, belief, and motivation, which underlined the characters' behavior—and thus I never found them one-dimensional stereotypes. To give one example, they are one of the few in recent years to really get the use of voice-over narration right—using what is a very clichéd, and potentially lazy, device, to really create layers of conflicts in their characters. In its own gentle way, the Payne/Taylor-produced Cedar Rapids (2011) was much closer in spirit to their earlier work than The Descendants. It didn’t have the same satirical bite or sense of melancholia to it as an Election or About Schmidt, but it was dealing with the same kind of people.

As a narrative experience, I found The Descendants one-dimensional, and filled with less interesting characters. I think Clooney gives a good performance, but I feel like he had less to work with than Paul Giamatti, Matthew Broderick or Jack Nicholson. The film establishes itself as a tearjerker in the opening minutes and honestly I was surprised at how it never really evolved beyond that. The whole movie feels like the same scene over and over again—different people finding out that the same person is going to die. There is other plot line (namely, an extramarital affair investigated), but nothing really comes of it, and in the end it feels like a way to just prevent the whole movie from taking place in a hospital room.

Maybe, I’m being too harsh, but I was really shocked at how unrelentingly sincere the film ultimately is—I don’t object to tearjerkers in and of themselves, but if there are no personal contradictions, no narrative inconsistencies, to work through, the movie becomes quickly repetitive. Just a lot of under-developed characters standing around, crying.

****

Anyway, that aside, I found the representation of Hawai’i fascinating—far savvier than Saving Sarah Marshall, the new Hawaii Five-O, episodes of Modern Family and Cougar Town, or even my beloved Punch-Drunk Love. All of those recent texts, and others, perpetuate the same idea—Hawai’i as an ahistorical utopia, a hub of leisure culture connected to, but also firmly uprooted from, the Mainland.

But The Descendants articulates something very different--retaining, but also deconstructing a distinctly white lens on the Islands. To a degree, this latest film certainly depends upon some of the same standard, ancient iconography (i.e., every other beach in Hawai’i apparently has Diamond Head in the background, etc.), but pulls back the curtain slightly on some of the more troubling historical and economic contexts underlining the usual utopic depictions of the islands as pure leisure paradise.

Another subplot in the film is the impending sale of a hugely lucrative piece of beach property in Hawai’i that is owned by the ironically titled "King" family (led by Clooney). The film implies, but never directly states, what is obviously the case—that his descendants stole the land from the Hawaiians, and thus really have no right to profit by selling it. The passage of centuries has allowed generations of the family to plead ignorance on the subject now--even to be ignorant about being ignorant.

Of course, its possible to argue that The Descendants itself may be oblivious to the true, ugly extent of this history as well—since its presentation of “history” is passive at best. But, early in the movie, King narrates a montage of the poverty which exists throughout the islands today, and thus playing up the grotesque income disparity there—particularly, between the haoles and native Hawaiians. This suggests the movie is keenly aware of issues of class, though I suppose its also possible to argue that the moment of “poverty in paradise” is little more than another Payne irony.

The Descendants speaks to the notion of a postmodern colonial culture—I use “postmodern” in two senses of the word. For one, there is the lack of historical consciousness. Most (predominately white) people who view Hawai’i as an escape from their lives are oblivious to the ugly history of direct and indirect forms of colonialism that underline the islands’ contemporary culture of tourism. For another, I mean “postmodern” in that more rigorous Jamesonian sense—the lack of class consciousness (strictly speaking, of course, historical consciousness in the Marxist sense is defined through the aware of class dialectics).

The Descendants shrewdly plays up in a couple of scenes—first in a board room, later at a barbeque—how fat, lazy white guys in floral shirts and khaki shorts are the postmodern iteration of plantation owners, literally descended from the coffee land barons who conspired to overthrow the sovereign Hawaiian monarchy in 1893—unconsciously seeking to exert the same level of control and power today, but hiding behind the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Disney’s Most Notorious Film

2012-01-21T05:39:00.000-08:00

Disney’s Most Notorious Film /
Race, Convergence, and the
Hidden Histories of Song of the South

(forthcoming, University of Texas Press, 2012)

Images of Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus and the “Tar Baby” linger throughout American culture, serving as everything from cultural metaphors to consumer products. Yet few know the origins of these complicated characters. Beginning as 19th century oral slave narratives, they were adapted into literary stories by Joel Chandler Harris. Today, they are also noted as the subject of Walt Disney’s most notorious film, 1946’s Song of the South. Disney offers a vast universe of movies, television shows, theme parks, and merchandise unparalleled in the modern entertainment industry. Its name also evokes a carefully crafted image of wholesome family entertainment. Yet as with all media companies that stretch back to the early decades of the 20th Century, Disney has a complicated history. No film better embodies that troubled past than Song of the South, which the company has refused to release to American audiences since the late 1980s. An early breakthrough in the process of hybrid animation, mixing hand-drawn cartoons with live-action footage, Song of the South is more famous today for its condescending representation of African-Americans. Depicting a romanticized American South as a white musical utopia, Song of the South was even then perceived as a regressive depiction of US race relations, particularly in the wake of World War II activism designed to elevate media images of African-Americans above the degrading slave stereotypes common to many Hollywood films. Although the film was met with criticism and lukewarm box office in the 1940s, Song of the South eventually found a cult following in the 1970s and 1980s. To this day, remnants of the film—such as the Oscar-winning “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”—remain throughout Disney’s media universe. A Frown Upside Down uncovers new insights into how both audiences and the family media empire negotiated the film’s controversies over the last seven decades. It examines the racial and convergence histories of Disney’s most infamous film, seeking to correct the misperceptions that continue to exist around Song of the South today.

"This book is extremely smart, painstakingly researched, and it ties together many concepts and issues that too rarely find themselves in the same book. Sperb is a gifted writer, who holds his reader’s attention with skill, and he provides a fantastic piece of work here, one that will serve multiple publics and that fills in important historical territory while also advancing discussions on race, convergence, Disney, film reception, textuality, and remediation. . . . This is really quite a spectacular achievement." – Jonathan Gray, University of Wisconsin

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Conditions of Possibility:
The Disney Studios, Post—War “Thermidor,”
and the Ambivalent Origins of Song of the South

Chapter 2: “Put Down the Mint Julep, Mr. Disney”:
Post—War Racial Consciousness and Disney’s Critical Legacy
in the 1946 Reception of Song of the South

Chapter 3: Our Most Requested Movie:
Media Convergence, Black Ambivalence and the
Reconstruction of Song of the South

Chapter 4: A Past that Never Existed:
Coonskin, Post—Racial Whiteness, and
Rewriting History in the Era of Reaganism

Chapter 5: On Tar Babies and Honey Pots:
Splash Mountain, “Zip—a—Dee—Doo—Dah,”
and the Transmedia Dissipation of Song of the South

Chapter 6: Reassuring Convergence:
New Media, Nostalgia and the
Internet Fandom of Song of the South

Conclusion

Appendix—Timeline for Song of the South and its Paratexts

2012-01-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

I wanted to pass along the great news that my Cinema Journal article, "Reassuring Convergence / Online Fandom, Race and Disney's Notorious Song of the South," received Honorable Mention for the SCMS Kovacs Essay Award this year. This is a really prestigious award that goes to the top article in the field of film and media studies for its respective academic year. There are a lot of well-known folks who have won this award (and received honorable mention), so I'm in good company. I'm honored to have snagged a close second, and will be recognized at this year's awards ceremony in Boston.

Ironically, I have gotten down on this piece for awhile. For one, it didn't really help me on the job market (though I suppose it did help me get a contract for the book). Then there was this, which really hurt. For awhile, though I always had faith in its argument, the article's reception came to symbolize more of my failed goals--getting published in the field's top journal and yet doesn't receive any (positive) attention.

With the book coming on this summer, I think the window for the article by itself will have closed, and its nice to end that period on what is, in many ways, a very bittersweet achievement.

a tender unconditionality

2012-01-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

"Carry the institution inside one still so that it is in a place accessible to self-analysis, but carry it there as a distinct instance which does not over-infiltrate the rest of the ego with the thousand paralyzing bonds of a tender unconditionality. Not have forgotten what the cinephile one used to be was like, in all the details of his affective inflections, in the three dimensions of his living being, and yet no longer be invaded by him: not have lost sight of him, but be keeping an eye on him." - Metz, The Imaginary Signifier

WWII Disney at the Michigan Historical Museum

2012-01-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

For MSU folks, I'll be introducing a screening of Disney propaganda films from the WWII era at the Michigan Historical Museum next month (link). This includes two of my favorites: one made for Canada before the US got involved, where the Seven Dwarfs literally hike from the mine shaft to the nearby city to buy war bonds, and The New Spirit, which features Donald Duck being encouraged to pay his taxes as part of the war effort (cognitive dissonance: the image above is of Walt talking to the State dept about this short).

1940s is my favorite period of Disney because so much happened. The animator's strike in 1940, as well as Fantasia's costly fiasco. Most people don't know that a great deal of the Disney "classics" were not hits in their initial theatrical runs. Were it not for WWII, Disney would have gone under. But the govt contracts to make these films kept them afloat. This included not only propaganda tied directly to the war, but also their considerable involvement in the Good Neighbor Policy in South America.

They also started doing live action during this time, but a lot of those are hard to find. At the end of the war, Disney began to integrate live action into its own films (not only the hybrid animation films, which didn't take, but also the True-Life Adventures semi-doc films, which proved quite popular and resilient). And, of course, Song of the South--culturally and aesthetically--was very much a product of this period. Probably a third of Disney's Most Notorious Film is about this period (another third is about the 1980s).

If I had to write a book about Disney again--not that I want to--it would probably be about fleshing this period out more. When I went to teach Disney history, I discovered that there was very little good scholarly sources that deal in depth with this period.

That, or it would be about the Ron Miller era of the late 1970s and early 1980s--actually, I really do want to write that one. It would be about the fascinating period of Disney history that's been squeezed out by "Uncle Walt" on one side and Eisner on the other.

Anyway, hope to see people there.

js

ENG332 Historical Approaches to Film

2012-01-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

351 Natural Sciences Building
M 10:20-1:10; W 10:20-12:10

Course Description
This course serves as a general introduction to the process of studying movies in a historical context. On the whole, it’s not necessarily easy to conceptualize film historically. Identifying a relationship between film and history carries very different connotations. The historical developments of Hollywood and of international cinemas, as well as avant-garde and documentary traditions, are one key focal point. Who were the earliest filmmakers and what did they seek to accomplish? How and why did Hollywood evolve as an industry? When did other national cinemas (German Expressionism, Soviet Montage, Italian Neo-Realism, French New Wave) emerge and why? What stylistic and thematic trends in movies developed out of these different historical events? How did genres such as documentary and the avant-garde grow both as a response to dominant narrative models of cinema, and as cultural and institutional histories of their own? What are the histories of 16mm and non-theatrical films? How have technological innovation and the emergence of other media platforms affected film’s economic and artistic development historically? What role have audiences played in shaping film history? In this class, we will focus on these issues in order to fully articulate an introduction to “historical approaches” to film. Yet other questions implied in such a broad topic remain: how does film represent history narratively and thematically? How does it reflect historical events allegorically and/or incidentally? How does a film’s significance change over time? Why do audiences interpret films differently in one historical period versus another? The goal of the class will be in part to both understand and problematize the traditionally linear notions of film history by focusing on the changes, redundancies and resurgences within the production, distribution and reception of movies during different periods of time. The primary textbook, Film History, will outline the major historical developments in film, while secondary readings will more fully flesh out particular case studies.

Textbooks
Bordwell and Thompson, Film History 3rd ed. (McGraw Hill, 2009)
Staiger, Perverse Spectators: the Practices of Film Reception (NYU Press, 2000)
Waller, Moviegoing in America (Blackwell, 2002)

Screenings: You are expected to attend all screenings, even if you’ve seen the film before, and to watch them actively and closely. Refrain from using laptops and cellphones during screenings. WARNING: We will be watching films in this class that contain graphic violence, nudity, and adult themes. If you think this content will offend or disturb you, you should reconsider your enrollment in this class.

Readings: Not everything in the reading will be covered in class sessions, and some of the readings may be challenging. So read closely and take notes. You may need to re-read the more difficult texts in order to understand them. You are responsible for all content in the readings. If you do not understand elements of the reading, feel free to ask questions during discussion and office hours.

Office Hours and E-mail: My door is always open; feel free to come by during office hours to talk about your writing, the readings, the films, or any other aspect of the course. Please allow at least 24 hours before following up on emails sent.

Assignments:
Response Paper 1 (Historical Methodologies) . . . 5%
Response Paper 2 (Historicizing Films) . . . 10%
Response Paper 3 (Press Kits/Promotional Histories) . . . 15%
Research Paper . . . 25%
Final Exam . . . 25%
Participation . . . 20%

*Please note that completion of all assignments is required to pass the course.

Response Papers: These assignments will ask you to respond to particular prompts regarding the relationship between film and some of the various ways for conceptualizing cinema history—thinking about particular methodologies, placing films in historical contexts, and articulating the hows and whys of film promotion. As such, the papers will ask you to closely engage with the course readings. It is important to think about the larger idea(s) put forth by the authors, and not just briefly “cite” them. More specific guidelines for each paper will be presented as we move closer to the due dates. All responses should be about two full pages (typed & double spaced), well-written, proofread, and have a clear point that avoids summary.

Research Essay: The topic of your research paper is open to any major aspect of film and media history. Develop a coherent, convincing argument, using at least three sources (including at least two from outside the class’s assigned readings). Avoid current topics (even those loosely grounded in historical narratives). Also, challenge yourself to go beyond obvious and well-worn topics such as authorship or film noir. Remember that part of the grading criteria (see below) is originality of argument, relatively speaking. Ideally, the project should work through one of the historical methodologies we cover in class—distribution, production, exhibition, reception, historicism, and so forth. As part of that, your paper will want to engage in-depth with the work of film and/or media historians—authors who are actively thinking about how to conceptualize film history, as opposed to just referring generally to past events. The authors you use do not have to be ones we read in class, but their work should in some way reflect the spirit of the area(s) we covered. The topic must be approved by me in advance. The research paper should be at least 6-8 full pages, double-spaced. It will be graded on strength and originality of argument; command and general use of theoretical sources; avoiding too much narrative summary; convincing, specific details to illustrate your points; and, just as important, general writing style, which includes organization, tone, proofreading and so forth.

Midterm and Final: Both exams will be divided evenly between multiple choice and essay questions, covering material taken from course screenings and assigned readings. The multiple choice questions will largely focus on information taken from lecture and Film History, while the essay questions will emphasize analyzing, comparing and/or contrasting the secondary readings and case studies.

Late Work: Essays and response papers will be deducted 5% for each weekday late (excludes weekends). Papers emailed in lieu of attendance will be considered late without prior arrangement.

Attendance: You are allowed six excused absences for the length of the course, including all lectures and screenings. This includes sick days, family emergencies and other documented absences. After that, 5% of the final grade will be deducted for each absence. 10 absences, or more, will result in an automatic failure for the course.

Participation: You are expected to attend every class and screening, for the full amount of time we meet, be actively engaged with the class, and to be respectful of myself, your classmates, and the course objectives and rules. This also includes keeping laptops and cellphones stowed away during screenings. Laptops are only to be used for note-taking.

Academic Integrity: Students are expected to comply with University regulations regarding academic integrity. If you are in doubt about what constitutes academic dishonesty, speak with me before the assignment is due and/or examine the University website. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to cheating on an exam (e.g., copying others’ answers, providing information to others, using a crib sheet) or plagiarism of a paper (e.g. taking material from readings without citation, copying another student’s paper). Failure to maintain academic integrity on an assignment will result in a loss of credit for that assignment—at a minimum. Other penalties may also apply. The guidelines for determining academic dishonesty are detailed on the website: https://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/plagiarism.html.
____________________________________________________________________________

Spring Schedule 2012

Readings can be found in the course textbooks: Film History (indicated as “BT”), Moviegoing in America (“MA”) and Perverse Spectators (Staiger). Additional readings can be found through ANGEL, e-books, or the MSU Main Library Reserves. Readings should be completed before class that day. Readings and screenings are subject to change, though any modifications will be announced in advance.

1/9—introductions; reading: Waller, “Introduction” (MA); screening: Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
1/11—Early Cinema; reading; reading: “The Invention and the Early Years of the Cinema” (BT 3-21) and Gunning, “Cinema of Attractions” (ANGEL); screening: selections from Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1

1/16—no class, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day
1/18—Alternatives to film history; Staiger, “Writing the History of American Film Reception” and “Modes of Reception,” Musser, “Introducing Cinema to the American Public” (MA) and “Handling the Visitor (1909)” (MA)

1/23— Transition to sound; reading: “The Late Silent Era in Hollywood” (BT 128-151), “The Introduction of Sound” (BT 177-194), “Music (1927)” (MA) and “Future Developments” (MA); screening: Sunrise (1927)
1/25— Surrealism; reading: “From Rum Shop to Rialto” (MA) and “The International Experimental Cinema” (BT 290-295); screening: The Blood of the Poet (1932)

1/30—National cinemas; reading: “Soviet Cinema in the 1920s” (BT 105-127), “Germany in the 1920s” (BT 87-104) and “Cinema and the State” (BT 239-258); screening: Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
2/1— Nontheatrical cinema; reading: Streible, Roepke, and Mebold, “Introduction: Nontheatrical Film” (ANGEL), Ackland and Wasson, “Useful Cinema” (ANGEL), and “Our Movie Made Children (1934)” (MA); screening: selections from Treasures of American Film Archives, Centron Film Company, Disneyland Dreams (1956)

2/6—Classic Studio System; reading: “The Hollywood Studio System” (BT 195-217) and Staiger, “The Romance of the Blonde Venus: Movie Censors Vs. Movie Fans”; Screening: Stand-In (1937)
2/8—Classic Hollywood audiences; reading: Staiger, “The Perversity of Spectators”; Response Paper #1 Due

2/13—Reading: “Government and Corporate-Sponsored Documentaries” (BT 282-286), “Wartime Documentaries” (BT 286-290) and Nichols, “How Did Documentary Filmmaking Get Started?” in Introduction to Documentary (e-book); screening: Triumph of the Will (1935), The River (1938), The City (1939), and Power and the Land (1940)
2/15—Neo-Realism; reading: “Postwar European Cinema: Neo-Realism and its Contexts” (324-341); screening: Rome, Open City (1945)

2/20—Postwar Hollywood; reading: “American Cinema in the Postwar Era” (BT 298-323) and “What’s Playing at the Grove? (1948)” (MA); Staiger, “Hybrid or Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood Genre History”; screening: Sunset Boulevard (1950)
2/22—White Flight; reading: Avila, “The Spectacle of Urban Blight” (ANGEL) and Taylor, “Big Boom in Outdoor Theatres” (MA); Response Paper #2 Due

2/27— Television; reading: Anderson, “Disneyland” (ANGEL); Screening: The Disneyland Story (1954) and “Bang, You’re Dead” (1961); Midterm Review
2/29—Midterm (in class)

Spring Break (3/5-3/9)

3/12—New Waves; screening: Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959); reading: Debord, Society of the Spectacle (excerpt) (ANGEL)
3/14 –Promotional strategies; Twomey, “Some Considerations on the Rise of the Art Film Theater (1956)” (MA) and Gomery, “Fashioning an Exhibition Empire” (MA)

3/19—research on press books project (Response Paper #3); reading: “Hints to Exhibitors (1908)” (MA)
3/21—no class (Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference)

3/26— New Hollywood; reading: “Hollywood’s Fall and Rise” (472-493) and Ray, “Right Cycle Films” (ANGEL); Screening: The Wild Bunch (1969)
3/28—Exploitation; Reading: Staiger, “Finding Community in the 1960s” and Durwood, “The Exhibitors (1972)” (MA)

4/2—Hong Kong Cinema; reading: “New Cinemas in East Asia” (BT 643-658); Screening: The Killer (1989); Response Paper #3 (press books) Due
4/4—Film and popular consumption; reading: Paul, “The K-Mart Audience at the Mall Movies” (MA) and Hildrebrand, “Be Kind, Rewind: The Histories and Erotics of Home Video” (ANGEL)

4/9—1990s “art” cinema; reading: “American Cinema and the Entertainment Economy” (BT 661-693) and Sconce, “Smart Films” (ANGEL); screening: Boogie Nights (1997); Proposal Due
4/11—nostalgia and pastiche; reading: Gorfinkel, “The Future of Anachronism” (ANGEL) and McLane, “Domestic Theatrical . . .” (MA)

4/16—Global Cinema; reading: “Towards a Global Film Culture” (BT 694-712); Screening: The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
4/18—Film audiences in the 1990s; Reading: Stones, “Modern Times” (MA); Staiger, “Taboos and Totems”

4/23—Histories of the Digital; reading: “Digital Technology and the Cinema” (BT 713-736) and Cubitt, “Technological Film” (ANGEL); Screening: Hugo (2011)
4/25—Film Preservation; reading: Usai, “Reader’s Report” in The Death of Cinema (ANGEL); Final Exam Review; Research Paper Due

Final Exam

ENG331 Contemporary Film and Media Theory

2012-01-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

313 Ernst Bessey Hall
Tues 4:10-7:00 pm
Thurs 4:10-6:00 pm

Course Description
In the first half of the 20th Century, classical film theory often wrestled with such questions as the nature of cinematic reality and perception, befitting the radically different nature of this new medium at the dawn of modernity. However, with the emergence of larger intellectual movements such as cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, post-colonialism and so forth, theorists increasingly gravitated to issues of ideology and representation. Meanwhile, remarkable shifts in technological innovation and industrial strategies presented alternate media platforms which, by the end of the century, had gained as much cultural prominence as a film medium that was becoming increasingly digitized. This course serves as an advanced introduction into some of the major film and media theories developed since the 1970s. Significant attention will be paid to cinematic ideology and representation in relation to such issues as gender, race, authorship, postmodernism, genre, affect and cinephilia, as well as a sustained focus on developments in convergence and newer media (television, videogames and digital cinema). Since this is an advanced theory course, students will be expected to make a good faith effort to tackle complex ideas in class discussion and in assigned writings.

Textbook: Corrigan, White and Mazaj, Critical Visions in Film Theory (2011) and other assigned readings

Screenings: You are expected to attend all screenings, even if you’ve seen the film before, and to watch them actively and closely. Refrain from using laptops and cellphones during screenings. WARNING: We will be watching films in this class that contain graphic violence, nudity, and adult themes. If you think this content will offend or disturb you, you should reconsider your enrollment in this class.

Readings: Not everything in the reading will be covered in class sessions, and you will find some of the readings challenging. So read closely and take notes. You may need to re-read the more difficult texts in order to understand them. You are responsible for all content in the readings, even if not discussed in lecture. If you do not understand elements of the reading, then feel free to ask questions during discussion and office hours.

Office Hours and E-mail: My door is always open; feel free to come by during office hours to talk about your writing, the readings, the films, or any other aspect of the course. Please allow at least 24 hours before following up on emails sent.

Assignments:
Response Paper 1 (Apparatus/Psychoanalytic/Feminist) . . . 5%
Response Paper 2 (Race/Affect/Genre/Postmodernism) . . . 10%
Response Paper 3 (Cinephilia) . . . 15%
Research Paper . . . 25%
Final Exam . . . 25%
Participation . . . 20%

*Please note that completion of all assignments is required to pass the course.

Response Papers: Response papers should articulate your thoughts on a specific theory presented in one of the assigned readings, which also must be quoted and cited. As part of your own response, it is important to unpack the hows and whys of a given theorist’s position. In other words, show the reader that you have command of the internal argument at hand. The focal point should be on the theory in question more so than on any film or television show(s) screened, though you are welcome to draw on examples from the latter as needed. All responses should be about two full pages (typed & double spaced), well-written, proofread, and have a clear point that avoids summary.

Research Essay: The topic of your research paper is open to any major aspect of contemporary film and media theory. Ideally, the project should build on one of the major movements we covered in class (Feminist Film Theory, Postmodernism, Convergence, Post-Racial Whiteness, and so on). As part of that, your paper will want to engage in-depth with the work of film and/or media theorists. They do not have to be ones we read in class, but their work should in some way reflect the spirit of the area(s) we covered. The topic must be approved by me in advance. Develop a coherent, convincing argument, using at least three sources (including at least two from outside the class’s assigned readings). The research paper should be at least 6-8 full pages, double-spaced. It will be graded on strength and originality of argument; command of theory and general use of outside sources; avoiding too much narrative summary; convincing, specific details to illustrate your points; and, just as importantly, general writing style, which includes organization, tone, proofreading and so forth.

Final Exam: The final exam will be a take-home assignment, featuring essay-format questions. It will be distributed on the last day of class and due at the start of our scheduled final time. The exam will cover material taken from both the course screenings and assigned readings.

Late Work: Essays and response papers will be deducted 5% for each weekday late (excludes weekends). Papers emailed in lieu of attendance will be considered late without prior arrangement.

Attendance: You are allowed six excused absences for the length of the course, including all lectures and screenings. This includes sick days, family emergencies and other documented absences. After that, 5% of the final grade will be deducted for each absence. 10 absences, or more, will result in an automatic failure for the course.

Participation: You are expected to attend every class and screening, for the full amount of time we meet, be actively engaged with the class, and to be respectful of myself, your classmates, and the course objectives and rules. This also includes keeping laptops and cellphones stowed away during screenings. Laptops are only to be used for note-taking.

Academic Integrity: Students are expected to comply with University regulations regarding academic integrity. If you are in doubt about what constitutes academic dishonesty, speak with me before the assignment is due and/or examine the University website. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to cheating on an exam (e.g., copying others’ answers, providing information to others, using a crib sheet) or plagiarism of a paper (e.g. taking material from readings without citation, copying another student's paper). Failure to maintain academic integrity on an assignment will result in a loss of credit for that assignment—at a minimum. Other penalties may also apply. The guidelines for determining academic dishonesty are detailed on the website: https://www.msu.edu/unit/ombud/plagiarism.html.

Spring Schedule 2012

*Readings are in Critical Visions (CV), unless indicated otherwise. All assigned readings and viewings are subject to change, though any adjustments will be announced in advance.

1/10—Introductions
1/12—Psychoanalytic Film Theory; Reading: Metz, “From The Imaginary Signifier” (CV, 17-33)

1/17—Apparatus Theory; Screening: The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985); Reading: Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus” (CV 34-43)
1/19—Feminist Film Theory; Reading: Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (CV 715-725)

1/24—Feminist Film Theory (cont.); Screening: Notorious (1946); Reading: Modleski, “Hitchcock, Feminism and the Patriarchal Unconscious” (CV 377-385)
1/26—Authorship; Reading: Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (CV 346-349) and Christensen, “Studio Authorship, Corporate Art” (CV 430-439)

1/31—Race; Screening: Bamboozled (2000); Reading: Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” (CV 795-799); First Response Paper Due
2/2—Reading; Shohat and Stam, “Stereotype, Realism and the Struggle over Representation” (CV 801-820)

2/7—Affect and Genre; Screening: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); Reading: Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia” (CV 467-477)
2/9—Reading: Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic/Pragmatic Approach to Genre” (CV 488-496)

2/14—Postmodernism; Screening: Videodrome (1982); Reading: Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” (CV 1033-1041)
2/16— Reading, Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (excerpt) (ANGEL)

2/21—Time; Screening: Dawn of the Dead (1978); Reading: Deleuze, “From Cinema II: Time-Image” (CV 185-201); Second Response Paper Due
2/23— Reading: Shaviro, “Contagious Allegories: George Romero” (ANGEL)

2/28: Popular Genres; Screening: American Psycho (2000); Reading: Clover, “Her Body, Himself” (CV 513-526)
3/1: Reading: Tasker, “Dumb Movies for Dumb People” (CV 756-766)

Spring Break (3/5-3/9)

3/13: Cinephilia; Screening: Inglorious Basterds (2009); Reading: Keathley, “The Cinephiliac Moment” (online)
3/15: Reading: Elsaesser, “Cinephilia or the Uses of Disenchantment” (ANGEL)

3/20: Reading: Barthes, “Upon Leaving a Movie Theatre” (ANGEL)
3/22: no class (Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference)

3/27: Television; Screening: Deadwood (2004); Reading: Feuer, “Narrative Form in American Network Television” (CV 611-618); Third Response Paper Due
3/29: Reading: Mittell, “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television” (online)

4/3: Media Convergence; Screening: The Animatrix and Matrix Reloaded (2003); Reading: Jenkins, “Searching for the Origami Unicorn” (CV 620-641)
4/5: Reading: Gray, “From Spoilers to Spinoffs: A Theory of Paratexts” (ANGEL)

4/10: Gaming; Screening: Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (2010); Reading: Galloway, “Origins of the First Person Shooter” (CV 1072-1083); Research Proposals Due
4/12: Reading: Jenkins, “The War Between Effects and Meanings” (ANGEL)

4/17: Digital Cinema; Screening: Tron (1982); Reading: Manovich, “What is Digital Cinema?” (CV 1060-1068)
4/19: Reading: Lessig, “RW, Revived” (CV 1084-1092)

4/24: “Post-Racial” Whiteness; Screening: Minority Report (2002); Reading: Nakamura, “The Social Optics of Race” (CV 1042-1056)
4/26: Reading: Dyer, “White” (CV 823-838); Research Paper Due and final exam distributed

ENG230 Intro to Film (SP12)

2012-01-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

ENG230
Introduction to Film
306 Ernst Bessey Hall
Tues/Thurs 12:40-3:30pm

The experience of watching films is a common bonding experience in our society. Everybody watches movies and everybody can relate to others through the memories of particular titles. People become absorbed in the narrative; they identify with one or more characters. In short, everyone is familiar with the movies. Yet people do not often really know how to “watch” a film. So much of what a movie does is not meant to be noticed by its audience. This course serves as an introduction to informed film study. We will explore movies from general stylistic, thematic and industrial standpoints. The principal focus will be on acquiring the basic film terminology that will allow you to articulate informed film analysis with specificity and accuracy. Understanding film from an analytical, active perspective requires thinking through several complicated questions. What is the history of the Hollywood style of filmmaking? What does a particular shot composition mean? What different genres of film exist and why? What significance does a film carry historically? How do specific editing choices affect an audience’s perception of the story? What other types of film exist beside traditional Hollywood narrative films? How does a film’s sound work to create meaning every bit as much as the visual image does? We will explore these and other questions in the course of the semester. This course is designed to challenge those students unfamiliar with basic film technology to see movies as more than just entertainment which offers a few hours of enjoyment and distraction. This is not a class for those students intent on doing little more than watching movies passively for college credit. By the end of the semester, students will be expected to articulate the basic stylistic, historical and cultural contexts for studying the film medium.

Textbook: Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art (9th Ed.) and other assigned readings

Screenings: You are expected to attend all screenings, even if you’ve seen the film before, and to watch them actively and closely. Refrain from using laptops and cellphones during screenings. WARNING: We will be watching films in this class that contain graphic violence, nudity, and adult themes. If you think this content will offend or disturb you, you should reconsider your enrollment in this class.

Readings: Not everything in the reading will be covered in class sessions, and you will find some of the readings challenging. So read closely and take notes. You may need to re-read the more difficult texts in order to understand them. You are responsible for all content in the readings, even if not discussed in lecture. If you do not understand elements of the reading, then feel free to ask questions during discussion and office hours.

Office Hours and E-mail: My door is always open; feel free to come by during office hours to talk about your writing, the readings, the films, or any other aspect of the course. Please allow at least 24 hours before following up on emails sent.

Assignments:
Response Paper 1 (Textual Analysis) . . . 5%
Response Paper 2 (Genre/Ideology) . . . 5%
Response Paper 3 (Alternatives to Hollywood) . . . 10%
Response Paper 4 (Post-Classical/Documentary/Animation) . . . 10%
Research Paper . . . 15%
Midterm . . . 15%
Final Exam . . . 20%
Participation . . . 20%

*Completion of all assignments is required to pass the course.

Spring Schedule 2012

Most readings are from the course textbook by Bordwell and Thompson, unless a different author is indicated. Additional readings will be available through ANGEL and/or the MSU Main Library reserves. Readings and screenings are tentative, and subject to change, though any adjustments will be announced in advance. All readings should be completed before class that day.

1/10—Introduction; syllabus; “What is Film?”; Early Cinema; screening: selections from Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1
1/12—Mise-en-Scene; reading: “The Shot: Mise-en-Scene” and “Putting it All Together” (118-159); screening: Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (2010)

1/17— Shot Composition: reading: “The Photographic Image” and “Framing” (167-207); screening: Citizen Kane (1941)
1/19—Continuity Editing; reading: “Duration of the Image” (212-218), “The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing” (223-235), “Continuity Editing” (236-255)

1/24—Narrative; screening: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004); reading: “Narrative as a Formal System (78-101)
1/26—Reading: “Film Form” (56-74) and “Writing a Critical Analysis of a Film” (443-449)

1/31—Sound: reading: “Sound in the Cinema” (269-280) and “The Classical Hollywood Cinema after the Coming of Sound” (470-473); screening: Singin` in the Rain (1954); first response paper due
2/2—Reading: “Dimensions of Film Sound” (280-298)

2/7—Ideology; reading: “WALL-E: from environmental adaptation to sentimental nostalgia” (online); screening: WALL-E (2007)
2/9—reading: Jeffords, “Hard Bodies: The Reagan Heroes” (ANGEL); screening: Predator (1987)

2/14— Genre: Westerns: reading: “The Development of the Classical Hollywood Cinema” (455-460), “Understanding Genre” (328-337) and “Three Genres” (338-346); screening: The Searchers (1956)
2/16—Reading: “The Classical Narrative Cinema” (396-407); reading: Ray, “The Discrepancy between Intent and Effect” (ANGEL)

2/21—Genre: Film Noir; screening: Double Indemnity (1943); reading: “Summary: Style as a Formal System” (312-316)
2/23—Naremore, “The Death Chamber” (ANGEL)

2/28—Genre: Horror: screening: The Exorcist (1973); second response paper due; Midterm Review
3/1—Midterm (in class)

Spring Break (3/5-3/9)

3/13—Montage; “Soviet Montage” (467-469) and “Alternatives to Continuity Editing” (256-265); screening: Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
3/15—Avant-Garde; reading: “Experimental Film” (366-381); screening: Un Chien Andalou (1929), Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), Mothlight (1963)

3/20—New Wave; reading: “Narrative Alternatives to Classical Filmmaking” (408-421) and “The French New Wave” (475-477); screening: Breathless (1959)
3/22—no class (Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference)

3/27—Post-Classical Hollywood; reading: Sarris, “The Auteur Theory Revisited” (ANGEL) screening: Taxi Driver (1976); third response paper due
3/29—reading: King, “New Hollywood, Version 1” from New Hollywood Cinema (e-book)

4/3—Blockbuster cinema; reading: King, “New Hollywood, Version 2” from New Hollywood Cinema (e-book); screening: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
4/5—“Independent” cinema; reading: “The New Hollywood and Independent Filmmaking” (477-482); screening: Hard Eight (1996)

4/10— Documentary: reading: “Documentary” (349-365) and “Documentary Form and Style” (422-430); screening: Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010); proposals due
4/12—Reading: Nichols, “How Can We Define Documentary Film?” from Introduction to Documentary (ANGEL)

4/17—Animation; reading: “The Animated Film” (382-390); screening: TBD
4/19—reading: Telotte, “Three-Dimensional Animation and the Illusion of Life” (ANGEL); final response paper due

4/24—Digital Cinema; reading: Belton, “Digital Cinema” (ProQuest); “Machines That Use Digital Media” (13-16); “To See Into Night” (4-8); Screening: Collateral (2004)
4/26—Research Papers due; Final exam review

Final Exam

On Releasing Song of the South

2011-12-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

In honor of finishing the copy-edited manuscript, the last time I can technically make any changes (the next step is typesetting), I thought I would do what I've long considered doing at the end of the process: posting the conclusion here. In it, I briefly summarize Song of the South's reception history, but more important articulate my reasons for supporting its re-release.
js

“Prints are unavailable and a childhood memory is notoriously unreliable.” — Richard Schickel, The Disney Version (1968)

At various conferences in the last six or seven years, I have given presentations which touched on different aspects of my research into the histories of Disney’s most notorious film. In each case, I was greeted with the same dawning awareness of Song of the South I mentioned in the introduction. Many people had forgotten that they remembered the film, or at least the Brer Rabbit books. But I was also always asked the same question that I had studiously avoided in my talks. What did I think about Song of the South? Specifically, did I personally feel the film should be re—released officially? While my project here has been to document historically what others did with Song of the South (both Disney and the film’s various audiences), I have never claimed to be impartial. It should be clear throughout what I personally think of Song of the South. I have not tried to sugar—coat its racist connotations, nor have I defended the film or its supporters.

Since I will again be asked, I wish to end by stating clearly that I do not believe the film should be kept out of circulation either. While I am not sympathetic to its supporters, or to Disney’s bottom line, I do think Song of the South should be re—released. This comes with at least two important qualifications. For one, audiences today need to understand how the film was not inoffensive even in 1946, nor at any other point in time. Of all the myths surrounding it today, I am most troubled by the persistent claim that Song of the South is merely a “product of its time,” an assumption which is racially ignorant, culturally destructive and just plain historically inaccurate. Secondly, detractors should be allowed equal space to criticize the film by calling attention to the various historical and cultural reasons why it was, and still remains, so offensive. In many ways, these two ideas are what I have worked so aggressively to reinforce throughout this book. It is important to bring the film and its racial stereotypes out of the briar patch and back into the open. Once there, we can again make visible the series of larger cultural debates which Song of the South activates, instead of conceding them to a vocal minority which is empowered by critical (and corporate) silence.

Disney's Most Notorious Film

Song of the South has always co—existed with questions of its accessibility and discussions about its controversy. Within that dynamic is a particular history of race, media audiences and technologies in 20th—Century America. This project was less about Song of the South and more about the issues it raises in circulation through repetition and difference. The co—existence of its presence and absence over nearly 70 years offers a uniquely illuminating history of affect, nostalgia, technology and critical race theory. My book explored three inter-related issues: how questions of race have been negotiated through the media, how Disney emerged as the dominant media giant it is, and how changes in media technologies are inseparable from the cultural, political and historical issues with which they intersect. The film’s first appearance in 1946 was met overall with criticism from both white and black audiences, and was kept out of circulation for another ten years, and then another sixteen. In a way, limited access to the film today is nothing new. During many of those years, as with today, the film was less widely available in its full—length theatrical whole than it was in transmediated fragments (books, records, clips, and so forth).

When Song of the South finally succeeded at the US box office in the 1970s, it co—existed with the legacy of the film’s controversy—which along with other factors played a role in Song of the South’s success. That controversy most explicitly manifested itself in Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin (1974)—a blaxploitation satire based on the Disney film. When the film was released again in 1980 and 1986, the film was met more directly with criticism. This was tied in no small part to Song of the South’s perceived affinity with the political ascendency of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan. Because of that enduring criticism, Disney began in the late 1980s and 1990s to rewrite and dissipate Song of the South across its transmedia universe. This was most prominently featured in the Disney theme park attraction, Splash Mountain. The film has now been in the vault for nearly thirty years. However, fan advocacy, bootleg distribution and other forms of internet activity have kept the film as accessible in our current age of digital culture as it has ever been. Throughout all the decades and historical contexts, texts and paratexts, appearances and disappearances, the hidden histories of Song of the South offer a unique but telling glimpse into how nostalgia, whiteness, affect and convergence impact the reception and ideologies of 20th—Century American media.

Whatever happened (happens) to that film . . .

Where is Song of the South today? In 2007, Jamie Weinman wrote in Macleans that the film was “one of the titles that fans most request from the fabled Disney Vault.” This eerily echoes rhetoric around the film from the 1970s. As recently as 2008, USA Today film critic Mike Clark casually mentioned in an otherwise unrelated article that Song of the South ranked up along John Huston’s The African Queen (1951) as the two films highest on “consumers’ DVD wish lists.” Is it a sign of things to come that Huston’s safari masterpiece has since been released onto both DVD and Blu-Ray? The emergent sense with Disney is that eventually the film will be distributed on various home video formats for the primary reason that too much money stands potentially to be made, even more so with the controversy hovering around it. Disney “has to look for potential bestsellers that aren’t on DVD yet. And because scarcity increases value, no film has more potential value than Song of the South.” Back in March of 2007, Disney president Bob Iger (who took over after Michael Eisner stepped down) hinted at a shareholder’s meeting that the film might receive distribution. “Iger’s statement,” wrote Earl Hutchinson, “was a trial balloon to see what, if any, public reaction there is to that prospect.” As in 1970, the studio initially announced Song of the South was to be permanently withdrawn, which only—intentionally or otherwise—increased demand for the film. On the heels of a sixteen—year withdrawal, Song of the South opened to its biggest box—office. Who knows how the film would perform now on the heels of an absence spanning nearly three decades?

The idea that Disney has “banned” its own film is misleading. The company has taken an extremely passive attitude. J.P. Telotte notes “Disney’s uncharacteristic reluctance in this case [of Song of the South] to profit from its past—or even to prosecute those who do.” They have not re—released it, yet they also do not aggressively pursue illegal appropriations of it either. Unlike the late 1960s and early 1970s, the corporation does not need to promote the film’s absence. Disney fandom does the job already, making it ironically easier for the studio to figuratively wash its hands of the film. If Disney were to begin cracking down on the bootlegs and websites, such behavior would only do exactly what the company does not want at the moment—to draw excessive attention back to Song of the South. It would also alienate those devoted followers who, knowingly or otherwise, participate in Disney’s own default marketing strategy.

Another major difference between now and forty years ago is that Song of the South is already readily available on various bootleg versions. With fans keeping the memory of the film alive, they are ensuring attention and publicity if and when the film is finally released on DVD and Blu—Ray. Yet given the existing ubiquity of such illegal copies already available to everyone from the die—hard fans to the passing curious, the total sales of DVDs might be fairly underwhelming. However, the lure of re-mastered digital prints, exclusive special features and the “official” seal of approval would no doubt hook the all-consuming Disney fan always willing to spend more money on the latest novelty unlocked from the Vault. But only time will tell—as it did in 1972—if such a strategy indeed comes to pass.

If the history of the company’s clever distribution strategies—the notorious history of the infamous Disney Vault—has taught us anything over the years, it is that there is little doubt Song of the South will return yet again. Cult fan followers who fondly remember the film as a child, as recently as the 1980s, are not going anywhere anytime soon. Nor is there any reason to think future reactions will be any less eclectic than those responses in the past. Moreover, talking only about people who last saw the film in theatres twenty years ago overlooks the hypothetical child somewhere today watching a scratchy bootleg, possibly even with Japanese subtitles. It was purchased online by Dad, Grandma, or some other family member—that lifelong Disney fanatic who first saw the film three or four decades ago, and is now convinced future generations will experience something similar. There is no reason to believe that the film’s viewership is necessarily dwindling. The longer the film remains out of circulation, yet the more people write about its absence, the more intense Song of the South’s visibility is likely to be when it finally re—emerges.

Song of the South is a complicated Hollywood text with contradictory legacies. To say anything more specific risks shutting down dialogue which the film can and should provoke, in favor of reductive solutions. Its reappearance would only work if it provoked a genuine debate that avoided easy platitudes. Fans develop attachments for reasons (divorce) which are sometimes irreducible to others (race)—even if ultimately both can be mutually re—affirming in a negative way. Dialogue is important. Yet the need for rhetorical consensus and compromise—linear historical narratives of progress, or regression—are overrated. There’s nothing wrong with saying that disagreements should be allowed to co—exist. Resolutions, in contrast, are a rather tricky matter. We should be wary of compromises or pronouncements.

Premature statements such as Leonard Maltin’s in 1984 that Song of the South had “survived a period of acute racial sensitivity” bleed too quickly into master narratives, where one side is conveniently silenced or simply ignored. Criticisms of Song of the South and its defenses are mutually constitutive anyway. One never exists without the other. Critics attack the film because of its perceived (or possible) success; fans defend the film because people attack it. And then the cycle begins again. One exists in a discursive void without the provocation and presence of the other. Even then, such a binary is too simplistic. There remain still other approaches and responses to the film, beyond the boundaries of the present project.

In the possible future event of Song of the South’s official re—release, many critics, audiences and scholars (including this one) would forcefully restate why the film was so problematic to begin with—a criticism which has been in place since the film was first released in 1946. The difference now is that the film's fans are the most motivated because it has been kept out of circulation for so long. In the 1940s, however, the most motivated group consisted of the film’s critics who were appalled the film had even been made. Today, that outrage has long since passed. In a “post—racial” America that is as evasive on the persistent issue of race as it is reactionary, such widespread progressive conditions are unlikely to return anytime soon. Some resistance has periodically returned with re—releases, but then passed yet again. As time passes, it becomes increasingly difficult to see, in more ways than one, how Song of the South was always problematic. Contrary to what some prominent supporters (such as Jim Hill) believe, the film’s disrespect to African—American communities and white progressives was not just a phenomenon that was cooked up in the politically—correct 1990s by a bunch of elite white California liberals, who only then decided not to release the film any longer. In whatever venue, Song of the South has always been deeply controversial. It is that initial history of the notorious Disney film which has been forgotten today.

For this reason and others, Song of the South should be released. While I personally find the film offensive, its absence on many levels only fuels its most conservative fandom. People should be allowed to see the film for themselves. Fans should be allowed to enjoy the film as they do—to relive their own childhoods and to pass their childhoods on to their children. Irreducible to that, however, critics should be allowed to continue to articulate why the film is so offensive, with the text readily available in circulation as corroborating evidence. More important are the fans of the film, and of Disney, who fondly remember Song of the South from their childhood, and who could see the film today from a more mature perspective. They could, on the one hand, warmly relive fond memories, and immerse themselves in the affect of nostalgia. There is nothing necessarily wrong with wanting to go back to the past for a moment once in awhile. But they would also be strong enough not turn an ignorant shoulder to the issues which others see in the film. No Hollywood text is simple—and Song of the South is no different.

For both critics and fans, the reality is that Song of the South is a much more interesting and provocative film when people cannot see it. The infamous Disney film is not fascinating because some think it’s a masterpiece waiting to be discovered. Nor is it fascinating because others think it’s another offensive Hollywood representation of race relations. Song of the South is fascinating because of how often, and in what ways, the film’s controversies have been exposed paradoxically in the process of being concealed. Hence, releasing the film again would bring the film back from the realm of myth, where it has been built up into so much more than it really is. Re—releasing Song of the South would be appropriately anti—climactic. What else then would fans have to fight for, other than its interpretation? The drive to force Disney to re—release the film is, after all, not really a fight for access. It is a fight for legitimacy, the cultural and social legitimacy that some fans would feel when vindicated by a hypothetical re—release of the film. Fans could feel momentarily that Song of the South had overcome its criticisms, surviving that period of “acute racial sensitivity.” Yet the historical irony in that statement should force one to look ahead with wary eyes. The real history of the film serves as a caution sign to any fan who would be anxious to make grand pronouncements about the Song of the South’s timeless endurance.

Controversy keeps the film alive. However, indifference will one day finally catch up with Song of the South. The appearance of any such legitimacy or approval that fans would feel in the event their advocacy finally pays off would come with a price. There would be less to fight for. They would also discover that there is not a mass of moviegoers out there, waiting to discover and adore the cult film after laying dormant for so long. Once the novelty’s appeal wore off, so too would the film’s. As a cultural and historical object, Song of the South is a deeply fascinating case study in the relationship between race and convergence. As a way to spend less than two hours, however, it is still the same film New York Times critic Bosley Crowther trashed in 1946. Song of the South is an unevenly acted, slowly—paced, overly sentimental, and quite derivative melodrama. It is not even redeemed by the few cartoons arbitrarily thrown which hardly stand out as among the best animated work Disney ever did anyway.

By preserving only the music and animation from the film over the last sixty years, Disney was not only editing the racism out of the film. The company was also preserving the only parts of Song of the South that hadn’t aged as poorly, and thus still would be marketable to the largest possible audience. At best, there would be a considerable size of curiosity—seekers if the film were re—released. Many otherwise disinterested audiences would also see for themselves just how “dated” much of the film really is. Others still would find the film neither enjoyable nor offensive—they would just be extremely bored. 1940s films do not easily translate to general audiences today—even the best of them (an aesthetic category in which Song of the South does not belong regardless). The film will not disappear as long as it is stored in the Vault. But, in the near future, Song of the South could eventually fade away right out in the open.

digital histories

2011-12-29T07:24:00.000-08:00

In the rush of postseason accolades for Martin Scorsese's Hugo, I've recently thought more about Sean Cubitt's work in The Cinema Effect on the "Event Film"--his articulation of the modern special effects blockbuster. The next aspect of Haunted Nerves, a forthcoming project on time and digital cinema, will be focused on the role of nostalgia and franchising in the Event Film (which I probably won't get to until late next year). I haven't had a chance to see the movie yet, so take this with a grain of salt. But there's something about the film's popularity with cinephiles and critics that I find potentially distressing (and not just that it supposedly reinstates the myth that early cinema audiences were dupes).

I think it has to do with Cubitt's premonition that--as special effects become more sophisticated and other genres fail to retain a mass audience--one day all major Hollywood movies will be overt fantasy films--not just the work of Lucas, Spielberg, Jackson and Cameron. Even Scorsese is in on it now. More precisely, I think of this quote from Cinema Effect:

History is no longer intrinsic to films but extrinsic. The description of effects-driven movies as enclosed and enclosing worlds may seem to remove them from the political analyses of ideology critique. That, indeed, is their purpose: to abstract themselves from the temporal to grasp the eternal.

Are we celebrating a film which is the epitome of Hollywood's lack of "historical consciousness"--in every sense of the phrase?

The Postmodern (U)Turn

2011-12-26T14:29:00.000-08:00

Its about that time of year where I go through a fair amount of self-reflection that manifests itself in the form of a particular kind of intellectual autobiography. In the last several months, a number of contexts have forced me to return to one of my original scholarly interests: postmodernity. My first passion in graduate school—a decade ago now—was Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. In retrospect, I didn’t understand it very well (and perhaps still don’t).

Yet there was something, generally speaking, that was very appealing to me about its attempts to reclaim a sense of historical consciousness within a capitalist culture engulfed in mindless consumption and simulacra. I worked through it in earnest in a few seminar papers between Oklahoma State and Wayne State, circa 2002-2004. This resulted in a couple of decent, if minor, publications on Ghost World and American Splendor, respectively, but little else. Then, when I transferred from WSU to Indiana in 2005, I also was making the conscious effort to “re-brand” myself as a film scholar instead of a critical theorist.

While at Indiana, I retained a passing interest in postmodernity, but there wasn’t a lot of room for it in my coursework, so try as I did to make something more of it, it didn’t take. I really didn’t know where to go with it beyond a certain kind of textual analysis, and such ambitions were further hampered by the fact that anything “postmodern” was toxic for upcoming, younger scholars. By the time I finished writing my dissertation, I had left Jameson’s theories behind—even though, symbolically, the cultural logic of late capitalism was all over the argument (the acknowledgements in Disney’s Most Notorious Film pays perhaps belated reference to Jameson’s influence).

My move to historical-materialist reception studies meant conceptualizing history in a more empirical, objective direction, which at the time seemed somewhat in tension with the more subjective, theoretical flourishes of the postmodern, drawn mostly (for me) from a rich and eclectic group of thinkers such as Jameson, Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes. Researching the ugly history of Song of the South’s reception and the civil rights movement was more fascinating than dwelling on the absence of that history in the postmodern era—an argument I still bought, but which seemed somewhat superfluous in the big scheme of things. Like I said, I didn’t know where to go with it—methodologically or institutionally.

I guess another way to put that is highlighting the stigma that comes with even evoking the word “postmodern,” an academic cliché which elicits bemused dismissal at best and active hostility at worst. This is especially sensitive for someone on a job market which seems to prefer reductive labels above all else. There’s no point in bringing in a theoretical tradition—however valid—whose very name will make your academic life harder, not easier. It’s kind of like the cliché of referencing Freud or Lacan—maybe there’s something of substance there, but why bother? There’s got to be a simpler, less antagonistic, way to say it. So I wrote a whole book on Song of the South that’s very much a “postmodern” argument to me, but I don’t once mention that word, or even any theorists associated with it, in whole book (other than the acknowledgements) because I didn’t think it was necessary enough. Postmodernity was not worth the trouble.

Lately, though I’ve been coming back around to it in bits and pieces. For example, a similar issue of a not-postmodern postmodern argument came up in my forthcoming project on Paul Thomas Anderson. I always knew my reading of his body of work was drawing out the ways in which his films themselves articulated a vision of “postmodern” America, but I didn’t bother ever to use that term—let alone flesh out what it meant at length—because it was redundant to the more specific themes I was already highlighting (the social mediation of spectacle, consumer culture, the exchange value of celebrities) . . . . and especially problematic for a book that I always intended as much for a non-specialist reading audience, consisting of cinephiles and film buffs, as for fellow academics who’d put more stock in some form of high theory (even the postmodern) than in authorship.

But as I look ahead to revisions, this matter of the “big picture”—of how to make the book relevant beyond just the self-explanatory analytical framework of examining Anderson’s five feature-length films—the fact of the matter is that I have to do more with it than just another auteur study. Here’s one idea I’ve worked through so far:

“A product of postmodern America at the turn of the new millennium, Anderson’s body of work reveals an evolving, but also strikingly consistent, vision of fractured patriarchy and mediated social relations at the intersection of representation, commodity culture, and the ubiquity of celebrity. While each film speaks to the particular historical and economic exigencies of its production and reception, they accumulatively suggest the traces of an emergent authorship worth a second look.”

Frankly, I worry that this will alienate some of the intended readership for Blossoms & Blood—that some mainstream readers will see the word “postmodern” and immediately think “more academic bullshit.” I suppose that’s what I was fighting in the first place by not being more explicitly theoretical, especially in my introduction (and what I was resisting in the Disney book). But as an academic book, particularly as one rooted in something as academically maligned as theories of authorship, the turn to the postmodern is necessary to give it the intellectual heft required.

But, beyond that, I really do believe that Anderson’s films are about postmodern America in very distinctive ways—mass media’s self-reflexivity, the casting of movie stars, the diegetic role of celebrities, the use of salesmen, the deep sense of alienation, and so forth. I’m not focusing on that because I “have” to in order to make it acceptable to an academic press—I’m sure my initial interest in those films grew out of how they activated pre-existing issues of representation and American consumer culture that I gravitated to in the first place.

So the challenge with rewrites will be to draw out more the postmodern theoretical, cultural and historical contexts surrounding the emergence of Anderson’s films. It is particularly exciting in light of the fact that I’ve never really had occasion to articulate these issues in writing before—namely, the not-insignificant question of how I define a “postmodern” America, from approximately the 1980s on, and how Anderson’s films (as one part of the quasi-indie, “smart” film, movement during the 1990s) reflect a modest but consistently interesting aspect of it.

* * *

The more pressing issue with coming back to the postmodern as a scholar, however, is that I need to find a way to better define myself on the job market. On the surface, my work on Disney, Paul Thomas Anderson, cinephilia, Hawaii, and now digital cinema may not seem to have that much in common. This didn't concern me at first. I consciously fought the need for labels, as I’ve articulated before, but later I gave in and articulated an identity as a “historical-materialist reception studies scholar.” I still embrace that methodology, but the title only makes limited sense without a more explicit acknowledgement of the postmodern as constituting the larger set of cultural issues that I'm approaching through that methodology. In the past year, my tentative work on digital cinema—which didn’t seem to make sense at all without Jameson—and my teaching of basic film history and theory at MSU have really hit home for me how much I read film and media through the postmodern.

Long story short, I think the road through Indiana was a vital step towards fulfilling the intellectual goals I was originally invested in as an MA student--and not a shameful rebuttal to it, as I originally thought. I needed to be a "real" media historian--somebody who made a good faith effort to document past events within well-defined historical narratives, and not just a theorist who referenced history in a generic sense--before I could try to be the kind of postmodern scholar I wanted to be a decade ago. Everything I write comes back to postmodernity—and the next few months will be focused on exploring that more (again) and articulating its significance in my work and in my professional persona.

2011-12-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

“A scar is not the sign of a past wound, but of ‘the present fact of having been wounded.’ We can say that it is the contemplation of the wound, that it contracts all the instants which separate us from it into a living present." - Gilles Deleuze, Difference & Repetition

Blossoms & Blood

2011-12-14T11:55:00.001-08:00

Very good news today, but I'll try not to jinx it with premature announcements.

Sufficed to say, check back in another month or so for hopefully even better (and more specific) news.

js

Postmodern [Time] Out of Joint

2011-12-10T16:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a piece, about a year and a half old, which I don't have a place for now. There are still important possibilities throughout, but when I return to the project next year, most everything will be rewritten from scratch (in particular, the useful reading of time, affect and The Truman Show). Thought I would share here:

The absence of time was ironically long a preoccupation with future-oriented science fiction films as they were analyzed from the postmodern tradition during the late 1980s and early 1990s. And what may be lost today is that postmodern films were always obsessed with time—but it was a preoccupation with time that was rooted in history’s erasure. Working from the influence of thinkers such as Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard, film scholars Scott Bukatman and Vivian Sobchack, among others, found within postmodern science-fiction a particular conception of time as collapsed into space.

Postmodern cinema was obsessed with history’s disappearance amidst the perpetual present of space. Yet, as scholars of postmodern science-fiction noted, these texts represented our future, as simulacrum, to defamiliarize contemporary audiences’ own relationships to the historical present. In retrospect, this atemporality was excessively focused on time—the temporal affect of time’s erasure in postmodern film. It is this affect which has only intensified in the years since, and upon which I will build in the pages that follow.

Before turning to postmodern film criticism, I’d like to take up another science-fiction film, via a brief cinephiliac anecdote. In The Truman Show (1998), Jim Carrey stars as Truman Burbank, a man raised in a giant soundstage meant to simulate a small, sleepy seaside town. His whole life, meanwhile, has been recorded secretly by videotape and relayed across the world as an extremely popular television show. At the end of the film, Truman finally works up the courage to sail off over the sea to another destination, only to have his sailboat crash into an immense painted wall of sky marking the end of the giant soundstage. He is seemingly trapped in simulation. In a poignant moment, he angrily pounds his fist against the wall; his body slumps away from our perspective, a completely defeated man. I’ve always found this image of a hidden, devastated, Truman not cold, like so much of the film, but rather deeply moving—the image of a crushed, programmed man coming to terms with a certain self-aware truth about the artificiality of his life.

Moreover, there are several issues in this cinephiliac anecdote which I find compelling and telling. The Truman Show is certainly a particular kind of postmodern cinema, but what it may say about that genre is a complicated one. The Truman Show’s focus on the character of Truman, his “simulated” life, his “simulated” home, and his “simulated” town, all for the benefit of a live television program, forces any attentive and informed film scholar to consider its postmodern sensibilities and influences. In that sense, if I may go a step further, “postmodern” also refers to an affective connotation that these films generate in circulation—in other words, they provoke a sense of the critical and institutional legacy of the postmodern historically.

Though some postmodern film theorists have reasonably questioned the strength of Jean Baudrillard’s ideas, there is no getting around the fact that historically the French philosopher’s work was crucial to influencing a generation of film scholars interested in the postmodern. For example, as a “postmodern” film, Truman’s existence appears, to a point, to be a too-perfect embodiment of Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and the simulacrum—his hyperreal existence refers only to itself, and there is no “real” world in which he lives. The world outside “The Truman Show” in The Truman Show only refers back to the program itself, as people watch Truman’s behavior obsessively. Moreover, the show only serves to distract its diegetic audiences from the fact that all of America is in a sense as hyperreal as the giant soundstage Truman lives in.

In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard used Disneyland and the Watergate scandal as examples of the simulacrum in American culture. For Baudrillard, the simulacrum was not a representation of anything but itself. It was its own referent. Whereas “representation stems from the principle of equivalence of the sign and of the real,” the simulacrum in its purest stage “has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.” Simulacra are not unreal, but hyperreal. They are real signs in the sense that they exist and achieve a real effect, but they only affirm their own reality and do not point back to, or represent, a pre-existing one. In a section entitled “The Hyperreal and the Imaginary,” Baudrillard famously posited that “Disneyland is a perfect model for all the entangled orders of simulacra.” He argued that people enjoy Disneyland because it is a compacted version of America itself, simplified down to its utopian possibilities—a simulacrum of America itself. Yet, at the same time, Disneyland creates a deceptive effect for consumers, he argued, because the blatant hyperreality of the theme park serves to distract visitors from the fact that all of America is hyperreal—more real than real. Disneyland, Baudrillard wrote:

[. . .] is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus saving the reality principle.

Understanding Baudrillard’s discussion of Disneyland means understanding it as tied into a larger cultural critique of American consumerist culture. Disneyland deters its visitors from having to accept that all of America is a simulacrum, and to convince them that they do not seek only self-gratification and pleasure in all aspects of life. As I stated above, the extent of my narrow interest in Baudrillard’s immensely rich work is with how this notion of the self-referential simulacrum is what for so long structured film scholars’ sense of a “postmodern” cinema.

Truman’s “hometown,” as both a lived environment for him, and a spectacle for everyone else, serves a similar symbolic function. Appearing in American theatres in the late 1990s, the ahistorical utopia of The Truman Show both reinforces and agitates this sense of a “postmodern” film that had been, at that point, gaining steam for over a decade. On the one hand, the hyperreality of Truman’s surroundings and existence become reality itself, especially for a person (Truman) who literally knows no other way of life.

Inhabiting a cave of pure artifice, the breakdown between true and false reality ceases to have any meaning in the constant effect of reality offered in The Truman Show (and in “The Truman Show”). Yet, at the same time, Truman eventually comes to suspect, to feel, late in the narrative that something is wrong with his world (something is not quite good enough). There is a sense of something else, of a time that still exists outside (or within) the seeming atemporality and sterility of his hometown. Despite attempts by the television show’s overseer, Christof (Ed Harris), to frighten him into staying in the town, Truman begins to follow his intuition and actively seeks out what might exist beyond this simulacrum in which he has lived his whole life. Yet as I will discuss later, it is not simply a matter of just leaving, as there is a much more complicated sense of time also at work in this film.

The Truman Show evokes direct memories of Fredric Jameson’s discussion of Phillip K. Dick’s novel, Time Out of Joint (1959), in his seminal text, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1992). Jameson’s book proved to be as influential to film studies as Baudrillard’s, and his work on Dick’s novel came within the specific context of his articulation of a postmodern cinema. In both science fiction texts, the main protagonist lives unknowingly in a world meant to simulate the “real” present world, only to slowly discover the truth and seek to escape. In Dick’s novel, the protagonist, Ragle Gumm, eventually discovers that it is not 1959 but 1998 (the “future”), and he was being shielded from a colonial war Earth was waging with Martians. Whereas Truman was being exploited for a television show, Gumm was suppressed because of the military and technological secrets he knew that could change the outcome of the war, but which were supposedly erased.

While Jameson’s far-reaching book touched on numerous philosophical and cultural issues related to the economic underpinnings and historical contexts for postmodernity, he also importantly made a contribution to film studies about a particular kind of postmodern cinema, rooted in the genre of science fiction. His discussion of movies begins not with a film, but with detailed reading of Time Out of Joint. Dick’s novel is a perfect illustration of the postmodern simulation’s relationship to (the absence of) history. As Jameson wrote in the context of science fiction’s conception of time:

[Postmodern] Historicity is, in fact, neither a representation of the past nor a representation of the future (although its various forms use such representations): it can first and foremost be defined as a perception of the present as history; that is, as a relationship to the present which somehow defamiliarizes it and allows us that distance from immediacy which is at length characterized as a historical perspective.

In other words, representations of the future in science fiction were really about understanding our own present, but from a safe cognitive distance. For example, the melted ice caps in A.I. were really about our own present day ecological anxieties. This is a safe point, but it speaks crucially to a consistent sense of time as out of joint, an endlessly deferred present. Science fiction perpetuated a cyclical focus on the perpetually (ahistorical) present time—a simulacrum which denoted a perpetually displaced present. Hence, such science-fiction images were always really about, as Jameson famously stated, a kind of future-oriented “nostalgia for the present” which denied any sense of a knowable “History” and defamiliarized our relationship to the current world around us.

Like Baudrillard, Jameson’s work was highly influential on a number of film scholars who were at the time writing in the postmodern tradition. They too focused on time in the contemporary science-fiction film. For instance, Vivian Sobchack wrote in the mid-1980s about how recent genre films had collapsed time and space in their preoccupation with the end of the literal and metaphorical space frontier—“Postfuturism.” Science-fiction no longer believed in the epic journey of space exploration, but rather saw in that an idea of temporal duration that was just another part of Modernity’s failed teleology of progress.

Instead, postmodern science fiction films focused on how science and technology affected life on Earth, rather than in an infinitely expanding universe. Postmodern films, Sobchack argued then, employed a renewed emphasis on pastiche (Repo Man, Blade Runner) and surfaces (Tron, Dune) to highlight a postmodern focus on space. In this context, time losses all meaning in a state of perpetual presents. “The new SF film tends to conflate past, present and future—in décor constructed as temporal pastiche,” she wrote, “and/or in narratives that either temporally turn back on themselves to conflate past, present, and future, or are schizophrenically constituted as a ‘series of pure and unrelated presents in time.’” For example, Sobchack points out how Back to the Future (1985) is a movie about a teenager’s trip to an idealized 1950s, where he meets teenage versions of his parents. Strictly speaking, there is no “future” in Back to the Future—only a weird collage of idealized pasts and presents, wherein the present comes narratively to substitute for the “future.” Postmodern science fiction’s sense of time in the 1980s was to, in a sense, deny time’s movement in simulation, yet this move also revealed a deep anxiousness of time’s presence.

A few years later, Scott Bukatman extended the discussion of postmodernity and science fiction in Terminal Identity. Also working from the theories of Fredric Jameson, Bukatman focused in particular on the postmodern notion of a subject decentered by the depthless ubiquity of surface images. Yet rather than lament the loss of the human (and of humanity) in the contemporary technological age, Bukatman argued that the postmodern subject was defined at and through their interaction with technology—“an unmistakably doubled articulation in which we find both the end of the subject and a new subjectivity constructed at the computer station or television screen.”

For Bukatman, science fiction was in part about the present time’s inability to deal with the continual avalanche of technological innovation; fictional representations of the “future” were really about negotiating the present from a distance. Citing Postmodernism’s reading of Time Out of Joint, Bukatman argued that “what science-fiction offers, in Jameson’s words, is ‘the estrangement and renewal of our own reading present.’” Science fiction narratives reinforced a larger cultural logic of postmodernity that collapsed pasts and futures into a perpetual present. They dramatized through fictional narratives (such as, but not only, film) an inability to envision, or sustain, a linear sense of history, in an age where “time” was defined through space and surfaces.

As the comparison to Dick’s novel suggests, The Truman Show also reveals science fiction cinema’s increasingly strained, or perhaps reconfigured, postmodern sense of time. It is important to note that Baudrillard too wrote about time and movies in Simulacra & Simulation, where he outlined a particularly atemporal sense of the simulacrum’s absence of the past. In his subsequent discussion of film as another example of a simulacrum, Baudrillard argued that cinema’s inability to represent a historic past is replaced with cinema’s desire to represent itself. “History,” wrote Baudrillard, “is our lost referential, that is to say our myth.” Any notion of a past then only exists in the present “as nostalgia for a lost referential.” Cinema in particular embodied how history was a myth, he argued, something we may be able to grasp and reflect on in the present, but which no longer exists in a world where images, simulacra, refer only to themselves.

But still I am haunted by the end of The Truman Show, by the image of a man in some sense (literally) at the edge of the simulacrum, the edge of—or the beginning of, or the renewed awareness of—time. Although heavily programmed, Truman, of course, is not a simulation but a living person, a living body. While his home is sterily ahistorical, a perpetually time-less simulation of an idealized (white, upper-class) small town, Truman himself nonetheless has a history—more precisely, Truman embodies a history. Even while the simulated diegetic world around him doesn’t change, Truman does; he begins to sense that there is something else out there. As Bukatman and Shaviro both respectively argued, there was the persistent question of the “body” in postmodern narratives, alternatingly in sync with, and in resistance to, simulation and simulacra.

In a sense, by focusing on the persistence of the body and its haunted nerves, The Truman Show thus inverts a cinematic postmodern sense of time as originally put forth by Jameson, even while still internalizing the larger, self-referential, cultural logic of the simulacrum—it is a sense of the past in the present which defamiliarizes Truman’s relationship to the future. The simulated world affectively compels Truman, motivated by a sense of past time (literally, his father’s staged “death” years earlier in the same waters), to chart a different future. But we never quite see him leave the soundstage, other than to walk into a pitch-black corridor which reinforces the film’s key Baudrillardian theme: “There is no more reality out there than there is in here.” The Truman Show preserves postmodern film’s fundamental ambiguities and contradictions—there is ultimately no “real” world out there for Truman. Yet, at the same time, he is nonetheless haunted by a sense of time generated by ahistorical simulacra. This book focuses on how the presence of the simulacrum in more recent American postmodern films suggests that the present is already defamiliarized— but not by a simulation in, or of, the future. Rather, the present is perpetually disturbed and disoriented by an affect of the past.

Cinephilia Vol 2 . . .

2011-12-10T15:07:00.000-08:00

. . . . is now available on Amazon, complete with cover:

Info is also up on Columbia University Press' website.

The tentative blurb:

Much has shifted since the emergence of the first volume of Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Many of the postmillennial innovations in digital cinema and digital culture which prompted its publication have today become commonplace to the point of invisibility. This development ironically evokes memories of the classic Hollywood continuity system, a structure designed to close off space for the discussion of politics, identity or history. Thus, the original contributions in this new volume seek to illuminate those larger historical and global contexts which the emergence of digital cinema highlights in the process of its erasure. Chapters cover everything from digital spectacles of the US Civil Rights movement to the cinephiliac politics of Wong Kar-Wai, from the transnational cinephilia of Bernardo Bertolucci and Adrian Lyne to the cultural politics of race and media transition in Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. Also included are sustained discussions of what the digital age will mean in the long term for the critical and academic study of film. Contributors include Chris Cagle, David Church, Susan Felleman, Kristi McKim, Adrian Martin, James Morrison, Ted Pigeon, Catherine Russell, Greg Singh and Steve Spence.

Editors:

Scott Balcerzak is an Assistant Professor of Film and Literature in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University. He has published articles on film and performance for such journals as Camera Obscura and Post Script.

Jason Sperb is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies (fixed term) in the Department of English at Michigan State University. He is a member of the Editorial Board at Film Criticism and the author of Disney's Most Notorious Film / Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012).

projects and pubs

2011-11-30T13:24:00.001-08:00

Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Vol. 2 is now available for pre-order through Columbia UP's site, which means the much-hyped (by me) Be Kind Rewind essay will finally see the light of day. Its not perfect, but I think its the best thing I have, and probably will ever have, written on cinephilia--a subject I look forward to leaving behind. Its slated for April, but I'll believe that when I see it. I thought my millions of loyal readers would like to know.

Also, the copy-edited pages--all 538--awaiting my comments for the Disney book with UT Press, now titled Disney's Most Notorious Film / Race, Convergence and Hidden Histories of Song of the South, have been sitting untouched on my office bookshelf for the last month or two. I hope to get to it as soon as this (endless) semester comes to a resolution. I'm loving my classes, but I miss working on my writing (I've done a lot more thinking than writing on the digital cinema project in the last few months).

On that note, I really, really hope to get good news on my Paul Thomas Anderson manuscript any day now . . . .

js

old thoughts, old facade

2011-10-26T12:11:00.001-07:00

Found this piece in my documents today, left over from the old Jamais Vu (I saved certain posts as word docs before deleting the blog). Bittersweet to read it again. I don't really sympathize with any of it now. The more things change . . . the more things really change sometimes. js

5-25-06

Kubrick Facade update

My book went to press today two months earlier than expected. The book was always ahead of schedule, for better or for worse. And, from the original timeline I was given, it looks like they also skipped the final revisions stage--or, if they didn't, I wasn't in on it. I am assuming I won't see it again until its published.

The target date for its release is now mid- to late July, not September, as was originally planned. It will come out exactly two years after I finished my MA thesis at OSU, and 15 months after I sent a proposal and, shortly thereafter, the first draft to Scarecrow. I still remember that day--a rainy April morning in Michigan when I treated myself to breakfast at the IHOP on Woodward (having finished the then 160 page manuscript), sat there reading the document one last time before I mailed it off from the Birmingham post office a couple miles north.

And it came out exactly 4 years and 5 months since I first started writing what would eventually become a part of the book. But, that's deceiving, of course--I didn't write it continuously for 4 and a half years, but rather in short bursts. I wrote it mostly during 2003, the first part of 2004, summer of 2005, and then January of this year. And in the intervening times was when I was working on parts of Afferent Specters, which I started writing during the same semester and in the same seminar as the Kubrick project.

When I get to my dissertation and then when I get to my first job, I will make a conscious effort to focus mostly on one project at a time. I realize now that stretching yourself too thin just hurts all the projects you want to complete, and I'm better now at prioritizing one project at a time. The Kubrick Facade would have been much better if I had just focused on it exclusively for the last 4+ years, but then I couldn't possibly have focused that constantly on the same subject for the whole time. There were many points where I was genuinely sick of Kubrick--and hence I could only write in spurts. In some respects, one writing project was always a break from the other, and vice versa. But maybe being a truly great scholar--not just an accomplished one--means working through that sickness anyway. Maybe that sickness is the trick to a great book, and I've been avoiding it rather than embracing it.

I think invariably it will be something of a letdown when The Kubrick Facade finally debuts in a couple months. Kind of like that postpartum depression that hits at the end of a semester, only much worse. Four years writing this project, and now its gone. I can't attend to it, nurture it, focus on it anymore. Its debut will be its death--the end of the writing process. It will be nothing but a pile of pages. It will come into circulation. No one will read it cover to cover (and I don't blame them), and then it will drop out of circulation just as fast. With only its tombstone on my CV. Gone. Yes, it will get the job (literally), and it will gain some attention, fleetingly. But, that will be the end of it. Like any good parent, I suppose I need to stop being a control freak and just let it go its own way. I've done the best I could.

I guess, what I'm saying is that its difficult to let go of something that's been a part of my life for so long. I'll never again wake up and ask myself if I should be working on it, and what I should be doing with it. That's all over. I guess the sadness is here already. Maybe I jumped so quickly into the next book because I don't know how to let go of the last one. Or, at least, let go of that process. Got too many cats--empty nest syndrome.

It's a relief that it's all over, of course. It was a lot of work, and I couldn't go on forever, like Grady and his 2000 pages in Wonder Boys. The book has reached its happy conclusion. I got it where I wanted it to go, and now I need to move on alone. But its still sad--like that loved one who suffered for far too long and now the suffering has passed. But so have they.

js

Haunted Nerves: Affect, Time, Digital Cinema

2011-10-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

“How can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time?”
—Leonard Shelby, Memento (2000)

Off all the different media forms to persist throughout the centuries—from cave paintings to email—film may be the one that most persistently returns to the question of representation. That is to say, film is not simply another form of communication from one party to another, but more powerfully evokes a complicated reflection on media’s ability to faithfully reproduce the outside world in a text. At the dawn of cinema, the capacity of moving images to reproduce the mimetic illusion of space, time and movement like never before ushered in a new period of aesthetic realism.

Not surprisingly, though, such uncanny reproduction also invited suspicion and skepticism as well. The earliest accounts of film spectators shows not a duped collection of audiences fooled by the illusion of movement, but a savvy one fascinated by the spectacle of movies. The cinema’s capacity to so closely replicate the world paradoxically called closer attention to its own artifice. The question of how faithfully realistic or not the film medium could be was consistently addressed, but never definitively answered, over the course of the 20th Century.

Meanwhile, the emergence of digital media in the latest thirty years of film—visual effects, digital video and cinematography, and various post-production techniques—renewed this debate about realism in interesting ways. Theorist D.N. Rodowick provided a useful guideline in The Virtual Life of Film (2007)—although computers had the potential to generate an image of anything the human imagination could possibly conceive, “digital cinema” ironically judged the strength of its look, movement and spatial relations by its ability to mimic the look of the older medium of film.

Moreover, the technological distinctions between the two media—one analog, one digital—had the unintended effect of privileging film’s perceived realism all over again, since it maintained a direct indexical relationship to the world that the computer programs of digital media could never quite match. Thus, film and digital media exist in both an antagonistic, and a mutually reinforcing, relationship as two of dominant media in our current moment. Indeed, the historical relationship between film and digital media precisely frames the parameters of what I wish to explore.

More specifically, I want to continue to think about more is the cultural, historical and economic implications of this persistent emphasis on the question of representation, of representing time, which film and other visual media consistently evoked by the end of the 20th Century. This was originally the intellectual project of postmodernism, which was not merely an exploration of aesthetic or narrative issues such as the logic of the simulacrum (i.e., a copy without an original).

Rather, cultural critics such as Fredric Jameson were keenly attuned to the ways in which film and television’s inability to “represent” the world were deeply tied into larger questions about the emergence of global capitalism and a decreasingly awareness of historical consciousness which was key to understanding the widening economic disparity in the world. I feel this Marxist-Postmodernist project of went unfulfilled in the age of digital media, even though Jameson himself argued in the early 1980s that “electronic” culture was the most forceful incarnation yet of the cultural logic of the simulacrum and of late capitalism.

My project, Haunted Nerves / Affect, Time and Digital Cinema, looks at the current phenomenon of Digital Cinema as a key site for historical erasure—in the cultural, ontological and technological sense of the term. I do not wish to argue that we have lost history in an age of digital technologies, nor merely that it has been irreversibly problematized by film’s (and now the digital’s) uncertain ability to represent time. Rather, I want to argue that history is embedded within the affect of the (digital) cinematic image. By “affect,” I work from Steven Shaviro’s definition of the term in an age of new media. In his recent book, Post-Cinematic Affect (2010), Shaviro articulates the ways in which our experiences in a fragmented, transmedia world are held together through an affective relationship to media consumption. The distinction is between “representation” (what a text, or collection of texts, actually shows) versus “affect” (the feelings, thoughts and knowledge generated by the text irrespective of what it represents).

In a media landscape more fragmented than ever, we cannot, as Jameson famously argued, “represent” the totality of the world in a text. However, we can map our way through it via our sensory engagement with various media—the internet, music, television, video games and film. I wish to build on this idea further, with specific attention to the idea of “time” as a particular affect in the age of digital cinema. It is a sense of time, I argue, which keeps the spectator oriented to themselves and to the world in spite of (postmodern) film and digital cinema’s inability to “represent” the past. We may not be able to see time, but we can feel it. Moreover, this affect of time becomes an entry point back into the political and aesthetic questions of historical consciousness that Jameson first raised in an earlier period of (the unfinished project that is) postmodernism.

Excerpts:
Thoughts on Michael Crichton's Looker
Digital Cinema and Postmodernism
Essay on Ghost World in QRFV
Essay on American Splendor in Biography

Looker; or an archeology of digital cinema's pre-history

2011-10-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

Capital secretly desires to replace humans—or perhaps just the ones consumers care about (i.e., celebrities and other pretty faces)—with computer programs, with their perfect simulations, so that they are now not only infinitely repeatable but also malleable. Whereas the first generation of virtual performances were simply the digital reproduction of existing footage (Diet Coke commercials, Sky Captain), the presence of virtual Arnold in the latest Terminator (2009) suggests the (endless) possibility of new performances through a combination of archived data and motion-capture performance—or some other yet unimagined innovation.

This may still remain somewhat alarmist in its assumptions (as though there’s anything wrong with waking up). So I would look back to the fascinating cult film, Michael Crichton’s Looker (1981). Two decades before S1m0ne (2002), Crichton envisioned a world where powerful media interests could exploit the digital archiving of virtual performances for an endless supply of free labor and complete authorial control. In Looker, a plastic surgeon named Larry Roberts (played by Albert Finney) discovers an elaborate conspiracy on the part of “Digital Matrix Services” to use computer programs and television signals in order to manipulate viewing consumers at home into buying any range of possible products—ranging from kitchen cleaning supplies to presidential candidates.

To a degree, Crichton’s film echoes similar anxieties about media technology in American science fiction of the period. While Tron (1981) suggested that distinctions between real and “virtual” selves would become increasingly arbitrary, Videodrome (1982) more sinisterly posited that television would not only further blur that difference but also drive us mad to the point of murder and suicide. Looker, meanwhile, offers a hybrid of these two approaches to a postmodern loss of reality—combining Tron’s ambitious vision of the digital’s reproductive capabilities, but stripping it of its inherent hacker utopia, with Videodrome’s more ominous anxiety about audience manipulation, endless consumption, and a loss of personal control.

In Looker, Roberts discovers that Digital Matrix Services seeks to convert “real” glamour models, such as Cindy (Susan Dey), into computer programs so that their virtual avatars can always be re-used and re-imagined later whenever a company needs another commercial. Meanwhile, the models themselves are subsequently killed off as an unnecessary corporate liability, once the conversion is complete. The term “computer model” takes on a brilliant new double meaning as sales pitches are now possible at the click of a button, with no analog (paper) trail behind.

Looker takes Fredric Jameson’s comment about a computer’s ability to store dead human capital to absurdly sublime levels of literalness. This brilliant satire of the early Reagan era so clearly anticipates the corporate desire to reduce human capital to mimetic digital programing, to reduce appealing faces to free-floating, endlessly re-workable commodities, with such utter precision and prescience, that of course no one took it seriously when it first appeared. Political and fiscal conservatism thrives on denying even alternate possibility to accepted norms and practices, which Looker further assists by way of a gleeful embrace of satire that encourages the spectator to enjoy but also dismiss its absurd narrative.

Even the film’s own production betrays its impossibility. The only actual digital image of a human in the film (a first) is a split-second rendering of Cindy on one of Digital Matrix’s computer screens as her nude body is methodologically scanned into the hard drive. Otherwise, all the other “computer” images of models and politicians in Looker are just traditionally shot 35mm footage coded within the narrative as a supposedly digital image. Of course, it was technologically impossible in 1981 to use a computer to convincingly replicate the look and texture of a flesh-and-blood human. No doubt, many envisioned it would remain that way. Yet a perverse historical irony in looking back at Looker now is that the medium of film was required by filmmakers to emulate the “look” of digital media—today, of course, the opposite is true.

Looker, though, still holds onto the necessity of the real world as a material anchor for the digital one—even though we know that’s not really true now. Later in the film, those same stored “digital” images are digitally placed into the images of pre-existing sets in real television soundstages as a demonstration to investors of their potential—setting up one of the film’s best sight gags. Roberts and the film’s villainous henchman (Tim Rossovich) chase each other around the soundstage during the live broadcast, causing to them to appear on the image next to (absent) computer-rendered salespeople for the unintended amusement of diegetic spectators in the movie.

If we were to be suddenly concerned with narrative logic, we would notice that while Digital Matrix depends upon the labor of virtual models, they still inexplicably require otherwise physical locations to pull off the computer-generated footage. Ultimately, Looker’s only failure then was in its continued naiveté, its unknowing nostalgia regarding the persistence of humans and the real world. By trying to scanning Cindy into binary code, or by forcing models to undergo plastic surgery in order to better fit a computer’s pre-existing ideal of aesthetic beauty, Looker erred by holding on to the belief that computers would still need the indexical presence of the human subject to begin with. We know “now” that the actual presence of physical objects in space and time is no more necessary to computer imaging systems than the existence of unicorns and leprechauns.

Digital cinema is a thoroughly historical concept, despite its best attempts at erasure. Comparing digital media to the explosion of nickelodeons at the dawn of the 20th Century, D.N. Rodowick stressed the impossibility of grasping—then as now—what the new medium truly was, let alone where it was headed. Looker may be the ultimate artifact of digital cinema’s pre-history—a past vision of the future so prescient that we are only now beginning to articulate what it said, beneath the satire, about the intersection of global capitalism’s ambition, the ubiquity of advertising culture, the aesthetization of politics, the seamless potential of computer graphics and the inevitability of post-human labor.

Its perceived absurdity in 1981 only reflected the limited awareness then of the digital’s ultimate, still largely unrealized, potential. Philip Rosen's notion of the “not yet” rhetoric of new media seems perpetually in tension with the “always already”—that is, the once unimaginable developments (i.e., the uncanny celluloid mimicry of digital cameras) that have already come to pass and which model for us the future changes still to come.

Digital Cinema and postmodernism

2011-09-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

“the culture of the simulacrum comes to life in a society where exchange-value has been generalized to the point at which the memory of use-value is effaced”—Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

My current project, Haunted Nerves / Time, Labor, Digital Cinema, explores the productivity of time and affect in the age of digital cinema. Employing a historiographic approach to the tension and transitions between film and digital media, I draw in particular from Steven Shaviro’s notion of “post-cinematic affect” as it relates to the production and reception of digital sounds and images in an era of late capitalism. I argue that a sense of time and temporality—while never fixed—is generated by digital texts which otherwise have no ontological sense of duration, let alone indexicality. The impact of the digital image’s affect shifts over time, and within that space opens up a renewed commitment to the kind of older questions regarding history and labor which have been otherwise repressed in the technological rush to “newness.” Thus, following the work of Sean Cubitt, Fredric Jameson and others, the project will explore the material implications of digital cinema and 21st Century capitalism as they continue earlier historical discussions rooted in modernity and postmodernity.

* * *

Digital visual images have a strange, contradictory power. They evoke a sense of time, even while they bear no necessary relationship to time itself (or anything else). Reproducing duration is an impossibility. Digital cinema has finally fulfilled film’s goal—since the early days of montage experiments—to be free of all other existing media (including, ironically, film itself). Digital media also have a strange, contradictory history. They uproot themselves from the material world, offering the promise of pure fantasy and the limitless (immaterial) boundaries of imagination. But, in their very immateriality seem to further impact the material world.

Its been passé for a decade now to dismiss Jameson’s Postmodernism and the larger arguments about the simulacrum’s role in late capitalist culture. Critics largely reduce Jameson’s argument to an aesthetic one, while highlighting the real political struggles which nonetheless remain outside the purview of an all-consuming image which purports to be uprooted from any direct relationship to the material world. Since postmodern visual culture has been criticized for embracing the loss of reality in a world that often seems overrun by its harshest truths, such arguments are often seen as untenable, even insulting. And yet, there is a quiet resilience to Postmodernism’s argument about the cultural logic of late capitalism, particularly as we find ourselves fully immersed in a digital age where images are further privileged, to the point of invisibility, and labor becomes further marginalized, to the point of spectacle (i.e., Madison). Computers, Jameson wrote then, are machines of reproduction, rather than production. One might say that Jameson’s reading of the economic and aesthetic logic of an emergent global digital (“electronic”) media culture in Postmodernism did not get it wrong so much as he got it right too soon. While detractors endlessly rethought Andy Warhol paintings and Bonaventure hotels, or droned on about the definition of "affect," global capitalism was quietly building an immense digital landscape whose resiliency was in direct proportion to its immaterial existence.

But while postmodernism was fading, the emergent dominance of digital media over the course of the last decade of the 20th Century further troubled any remaining confidence in the always tenuous relationship between representation and reality. In film production practices, for example, the shift to digital intermediates, digital sound, digital visual effects and eventually full-blown, feature-length digital cinematography, brought about the expected theoretical anxieties regarding the indexicality of movies themselves. While the luxury of such technological advances were initially limited to the most fully resourced Hollywood studios, they became increasingly affordable and useful over the last two decades to low-budget and no-budget productions (everything from independent and quasi-independent narrative films, to documentarians and emergent global filmmakers). But such accessibility, paradoxically, comes at a cost.

Digital cinema is—in a very material sense—a simulacrum. Digital images are not a link back to a pre-existing referential origin, but a magic trick generated by the recombination of binary code. Of course, film projection was always an effect, an illusion of time and movement created in, through and beyond the persistence of isolated, individual frames. Yet digital technologies offer a new literalness to this dynamic. We no longer need actors performing in space and time to create the illusion of a performance; we no longer need people to see people.

Films still need people “behind the camera,” of course. But that’s a red herring. I put “behind the camera” in quotes because, strictly speaking, there is often no camera—only a computer’s approximation of a virtual camera’s perspective in a digitally generated space—let alone any ability to establish a physical relationship to it. Nevertheless, the use of specialized technicians is essential to creating virtual worlds and virtual performances.

However, the history of technological innovation—especially within the digital age—cautions us against arrogantly assuming that the same number of people will always be needed to fulfill the same functions. As a parallel, one might think back to the introduction of the CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) program to traditional hand-drawn animation in 1990. Ink-and-painters and in-betweeners were a thing of the past. At the dawn of computer-aided animation, a fraction of the workforce was now required to do what took so long to perform in the 1930s. CAPS, appropriately, was created by Pixar, the makers of Wall-E (2007). The same people who replaced humans with computers would one day turn around and sell paying audiences—in classic Hollywood fashion—on the idea that computers will still one day bother to come back and rescue us from ourselves.

The shift to digital technologies may offer increased accessibility and affordability, but it also runs the risk of further marginalizing the need for human labor, particularly as it shuts down the flow of capital. One is reminded of the grotesque theme park display in Roger and Me (1989), where an audio-animatronic auto worker sings in unison with the machine that would replace him on the assembly line—the real Michigan auto worker has been thus doubly replaced. As less labor is required to perform material tasks, fewer people can maintain the income levels necessary for a sustainable life. Thus, more money flows to fewer and fewer people. This may not be a profound revelation to some in the age of post-industrial, global capitalism, but what remains slightly disquieting is the extent to which filmmakers seem to accept—even celebrate at the level of spectacle, or “access”—such disturbing economic trends. This becomes especially vivid with Hollywood event films and their devoted fanbase, which is so enamored with the allure of the “new.”

Take, for example, recent trends in “virtual performance”—everything from early digital paranoia films, such as Michael Crichton’s Looker (1981), to recent CGI performances of dead and/or absent stars in Sky Captain (2004), Superman Returns (2006) and Terminator: Salvation (2009). These performances signaled the latest in a long line of attempts by films, television shows and ad agencies to use repurposed older footage of celebrities—dead and alive—as the raw material with which to digitally create an entirely “new” performance. Along with digitally-created crowds and “multitudes,” this is one part of a larger trend which increasingly replaces real humans in movies with partially or fully computer-generated ones.

Although it remains cost-prohibitive to replace real actors with digital ones, examples of virtual characters and performances serve as a useful platform to discuss larger questions regarding posthuman labor, stardom, and history, in an age where digital technologies now affect every stage of the filmmaking process. As the US economy becomes increasingly decimated by both globalization and technological innovation, there is cause to consider how post-Fordist Hollywood’s industrial and aesthetic models are also reflecting a post-industrial age where the importance of physical labor has given way to a smaller, more specialized workforce. Moreover, this trend becomes internalized in films whose aesthetic often celebrates the post-human image as a spectacle. Heavily CGI Hollywood blockbusters—as typical narratives of American individualism—both deny and celebrate the increasing insignificance of humans in a post-industrial, digital cinema.

My own history with PTA's films

2011-09-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

The following is the preface/acknowledgments to my book on the films of Paul Thomas Anderson, Blossoms & Blood. I am fond, upon reflection, of its historical narrative, which is also perhaps an account of my own ambivalence towards cinephilia. js.

I suppose it all began one wintery day in early 1997. In my youthful cinephilia, an upper-middle-class teenager flush with the luxury of time and money, I went to the cinema constantly, devouring every movie I could on the big screen. Living in Indianapolis then, I would often drive up to the arts theatre in Castleton. Once there, I would sometimes view two or three films at a time—coming for one film in particular, and then, if possible, staying for another. Often, I knew little, to nothing, about the second film beforehand, other than its poster, or the critic’s review sitting out on the table, clipped from the local paper.

One such movie was an unrecognized neo-noir that starred Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction and Gwyneth Paltrow from Se7en. That cast was enough to keep me around for an extra show, though it did not really prepare me for the film itself. I do not claim to remember much about that viewing experience itself, but I do remember clearly what happened afterwards. I headed over to Michigan Ave. and 71st St. for a prearranged meeting with my friend and fellow cinephile at his job at Taco Bell. I knew him because we were one of several film buffs who worked part-time at the same movie theatre on the West Side (he was the first one who told me about this new “DVD” thing). We hung out in a booth during his break and I was still on a high from the neo-noir I’d just seen. I told him, “you have to see this movie.” He excitedly pulled out a piece of scrap paper and jotted down the words, “Hard Eight.”

Years later, after Boogie Nights and then Magnolia, I realized that I was probably one of only a few people in the world who could honestly claim that they had seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s very first film in theatres during its initial, very brief and financially disastrous, theatrical run (I discovered only recently that the film had literally made slightly north of $200,000 in domestic receipts total). It was purely a coincidence that I was in a position to discover this movie, of course, but then again what are Anderson’s narratives if not stories built on the after-effects of random chance? I often wonder if I was so impressed with Hard Eight, in retrospect, because I knew nothing about it going in. I had no auteurist expectations and, moreover, it’s a narrative built around the actions and choices of a truly ambiguous character.

In any case, I suppose one could say that I was there at the beginning of it all, and that I thus always had a stake, a certain cinephiliac investment, in the long-term trajectory of Anderson’s career. Every film I clearly remember seeing in the theatres when they first appeared. But this is not to suggest I was, or am, a die-hard fan—quite the opposite. By the end of the 1990s, for example, I was far more personally interested in the films of Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and, especially, David Fincher. As for the other Anderson, my interest had momentarily waned.

With Boogie Nights, I came out amused, but also slightly underwhelmed, especially after all the hype, while Magnolia was thrilling for about forty minutes and then quickly descended into a self-absorbed dullness from which it never recovered. By 2000, I was, if anything, nostalgic for the tight narrative construction and deeper character development of Hard Eight. But that’s assuming I was giving the whole body of work much more thought than I probably was as a typically self-absorbed 22 year-old film student with a whole world of movies still to discover.

Of course, the films themselves did eventually win me over, as the argument throughout the course of this book should make clear. By the end of the next decade, Anderson had become to me the most interesting of those same, now-older “maverick” American directors. Otherwise, there would have been no point in writing this. In particular, Punch-Drunk Love was a turning point, but the change was not immediate. I don’t remember much about the first time I saw it at a Tulsa cineplex in the fall of 2002—other than a pair of college-age white guys, wearing backwards baseball hats, walking out after 20 or 30 minutes. Clearly, they were devastated Happy Gilmore fans. For my own reaction, I thought, as most did, that it wasn’t the kind of film I had expected from Paul Thomas Anderson, but I wouldn’t say it was love at first sight.

Rather, during a long hot Oklahoma summer the following year, I discovered the film again on DVD. I found myself watching it again, and then again, and then again. Its weird visual beauty, its mad sound design, its deceptively simple story—all rewarded repeated viewings in a way that the others hadn’t. Additionally, Sandler’s performance got me thinking more carefully about the use of actors in Anderson’s other films—namely, his work with Tom Cruise, Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds. Suddenly, Anderson’s films were interesting to me again. I had an idea back then for a Master’s thesis on his work with star personas—but alas I was already 100 pages into another one on Stanley Kubrick, so this idea would have to wait. I’m glad it did.

Looking back, my ambivalence about Anderson’s films may have ultimately made me better suited to write this book. In a way, I still feel the same essential way about each respective film personally. But with time, I’ve matured as a person and as a scholar—I see in, through and beyond what someone else might call my own cinephilia. Each one of his films is more complex than I initially gave it credit for. I understand much more thoroughly now the narrative, thematic and stylistic ambitions of both Boogie Nights and Magnolia, their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Thus, the following pages will not be a cultish, uncritical, glorification of his body of work, nor a simplistic hagiography of the filmmaker once known as “P.T.” Rather, it will be an honest intellectual attempt to understand the highs and lows—the many different contexts—in Anderson’s rhizomatic claim to a certain level of deserved admiration from fans, cinephiles, critics and scholars, from someone who hesitantly but conscientiously followed the journey the whole way.

More importantly, I’ve spent so much time thinking about every aspect of every one of his first five feature-length films over the last four years in particular that my own personal evaluation of each feels completely irrelevant in the end. Thus, in the final analysis, I gave the overrated (in my mind) Boogie Nights every bit as much care, thought and attention as Punch-Drunk Love, which remains not only my personal favorite Anderson film, but also quite possibly one of my two or three favorite American films from the whole decade.

If there is a cinephiliac bias here, one could say, with slight exaggeration, that I wrote a whole book about Anderson’s movies just so I could write one chapter in defense of Punch-Drunk Love. And yet, by that same measure, I did not write everything about that film that, once perhaps, I would have liked. By the time I actually got to brainstorming and mapping out this book in the summer of 2010, much of my personal, private reactions to Punch-Drunk Love would simply not have fit with the larger goal of the project (and perhaps I’ve arrived at that point in my career where I prefer to keep my private reactions to films private). Not that my fondness for his fourth film doesn’t still give the book the obligatory polemical edge that every auteur study must have.

Headed to Michigan State

2011-08-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

Its a little late now, but I'm pleased to formally announce that I am heading to Michigan State University in the fall. Back in April, I accepted an appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor (since changed to "Assistant Professor, fixed term") in the Department of English there. I am very excited by the opportunity Michigan State offers. Having been born blocks from U of Wisconsin's campus, having received my PhD from Indiana University, and having taught previously at Northwestern, it seems that my destiny is to teach at every Big 10 school before I die!

In the fall, I will be teaching Introduction to Film, Historical Approaches to Film and an advanced theory seminar which will be shaped around film theories in the age of digital cinema (a variation, minus the CGI, on a 300-level course that I taught last spring at Northwestern). I am happy to be part of a film studies program that is very much in transition. And I hope to be a major contributor to the direction and development of MSU's film studies program in the semesters to come. Onward and upward. And, go Spartans.

js

Writing and Publishing a Dissertation; or, A Frown Upside Down is All Done

2011-07-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning, I sent off the final manuscript of the book, tentatively titled A Frown Upside / Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Disney’s Song of the South, along with images and captions to the University of Texas Press. It was technically due a month ago, but they gave me an extension to work on proofreading, tightening up the writing, and putting the images together.

I feel like I should mark the occasion somehow (that and I have some time to blog now!). But I’m not sure what I want to say. I’ll have pages to proof later, editor queries to look over, etc., so it’s not quite the end, I suppose. But in terms of substance, it is now what it will be for the foreseeable future. The book itself is set to appear in the fall of 2012.

When it does appear, I will probably reflect more on what I think it has to say, and on how I expect it to be received. Then again, by the time I get to that moment, I may have entirely different thoughts. For now, I think I will offer a chronology of the project’s evolution and development. From a personal standpoint, it will be partly a “how did this book come about” post.

More professionally, it may also serve as a more general “this is what it’s like to write, revise and publish a dissertation” post. To that extent, it is, of course, localized and subjective. My experiences are not meant to represent anything universal. A hundred different newly-minted PhDs will give you a hundred different stories.

The idea

The book was a full ten years in the making. The idea began, of all places, with the movie Ghost World (2001), a film which has developed into one of my personal all-time favorites—even though with time I’ve increasingly become aware of the fact that there’s really no third act. This is only glaring because the first two-thirds are pretty much perfect. Anyway . . . Detour. In the movie, the young protagonist, Enid, discovers that the fast food franchise Cook’s Chicken used to be called “Coon’s Chicken,” which featured a racist image of an African-American as its logo. At a certain point, this was whitewashed by the corporation to remain viable. The film’s narrative is a mix of fact and fiction. There really was a Coon’s Chicken a long time ago, but it was never reinvented into another chain that I know of.

Enid’s fascination with how historical traces of racism permeated, unnoticed, throughout American postmodern consumer culture resonated with me. How racism remained hidden right out in the open. This plot point reminded me of another real-life equivalent: Disney’s Song of the South and Splash Mountain. Growing up in a “Disney household,” I knew a little bit secondhand about the old racist plantation movie. I was more captivated with how Disney had adapted it into a theme park ride with apparently little concern for any racial backlash. Its amazing how complicated books grow out of very simple moments.

As a kid, I was obsessed with the Disney theme parks. The other aspects of Disney, less so--and so I suppose this part of its corporate history resonated with me especially. Disneyland built a monument to its racist past; or more precisely, it knew it could use this permanent building as a way to both exploit, and erase, its racist past. I really thought somebody should do more with that history--what does it say about our collective understanding of the past? What does it say about capitalism's relationship to history? What does it say about dominant (white) society's negotiation race and to racism?

This idea came to me around the spring of my first year in graduate school. It coincided with my obsession with postmodern theory. I became convinced (and I suppose in a way still am) that Splash Mountain was the perfect embodiment of the simulacrum, and that Disney's project fit Fredric Jameson's theories on the economic, historical and cultural logic of the postmodern. I was so convinced of this that I knew I had to write something. I was already working on a Master's thesis on Stanley Kubrick, so I decided to shelve the idea for my dissertation. For a lot of reasons, that was the smart move. But I still didn't want to let go of the topic.

The result was this. I wrote it over a long Thanksgiving weekend, during a terrible Oklahoma ice storm in late 2002. It wasn't published for another three years. It is, like most things written during one's second year in grad school, thoroughly mediocre. Well-informed and promising, but nonetheless the product of someone who doesn't know what he's really doing yet. Although I kept (most) of the title in the end, because I still like it, and still feel it fits, the rest of it bears no resemble to the book. I cannot stress that enough--its apples and oranges. I don't now disagree with what I wrote then. I think within its own parameters, it works. But it just doesn't fit with where I ultimately choose to go (with this project and with my career). If there is a criticism, in retrospect, the article was guilty, I suppose, of exactly that which it criticized Disney and American society--being superficial.

So, anyway, I wrote that article as a placeholder--to stake out that ground before I went off and did other projects and topics for awhile. I was afraid that by the time I got back around to writing my dissertation too much time would have passed and my opening would have closed. I was partially right--I had no idea it would be another six years from when I wrote that before I started researching and writing my dissertation. Part of this was that I took longer to finish my MA at OSU than I had planned, and part of this was I went off to Wayne State for a year of doctoral courses before transferring to Indiana, a move which essentially meant starting over with coursework. But, I was also wrong in another respect--the idea was good, but it wasn't in danger of being overexposed as I'd feared. As I've gotten older, I've definitely gotten more patient with my writing. As Jim Naremore once told me, its not important to do it first; its important to do it right.

The prospectus

So, I arrived at Indiana University in the fall of 2005. I knew I wanted to do a dissertation on Song of the South, but the rest of it was still unformed. In the intervening three years between writing the JPC article and starting my doctoral program, two things had occurred. For one, I increasingly lost interest in postmodern theory, and perhaps theory in general. I still respected what it had to offer to film and media studies, but it wasn't what I wanted to define me as a scholar anymore. I had become much more interested in being a historian and in thinking about audiences.

A great deal of this, it must be noted, was due to the influence of Barb Klinger, my adviser. In graduate school, I had a tendency to gravitate to my biggest critics. I didn't come to IU to work with Barb per se, but by the end of my first year I knew I wanted her as my adviser; during two seminars that first year, she challenged my thinking and my writing in a way that always inspired me to work harder. Barb inspired me to see film studies in a new way, and as I began to research the exigencies of my own topic, I became a convert to her way of thinking. The real inspiration was not her books, but one of her more well-known essays: "Film History Terminable and Interminable." From that point on, the topic of Song of the South didn't make sense any other way.

Along those lines, the other thing that changed is, over time, I became less interested in Splash Mountain and theme parks as a scholar, as that JPC article indicates, and more fascinated by the history of Song of the South itself. Originally, my interest in the film didn't extend much beyond thinking about it as a reference point, a lost referent, in postmodern culture. But as I explored my topic more, I saw fascinating histories of race, media practices, and audience reception that were much more engaging than anything to do with Splash Mountain. In a sense, it started out as a dissertation about a theme park ride, and eventually became a book about Disney's most infamous film instead.

So, as I begin to put my committee together in 2006, I knew now what I wanted to write about. Instead of using Splash Mountain to challenge theories on postmodernity, I was going to write a reception history of Song of the South. Yet, even though it was a much better topic, this still presented a series of unexpected obstacles that I am still dealing with to this day, I suppose. Namely, why just Disney's Song of the South? This wasn't just a methodological question in terms of focusing on one text (at the time, I still saw myself as following the "total history" model called for in Barb's article). It was more personal than that--why did I choose this film, of all possible others?

The number one assumption people make is that you only write a whole book on a single film (or television show) if you are an obsessive fan of it. I am not a fan of Song of the South at all. In addition to finding it offensive, I also find it boring to watch. But I find its histories fascinating--I think because I grew up with Disney, and because I became obsessed with cinematic representations of race, discourses of whiteness, the general history of classic Hollywood, and the sort of textual ubiquity that today we call "convergence." I'm confident the book works through this challenge successfully. But to quick-glancing book editors and search chairs, it produces the same response, "why would this guy write a whole book about an old racist Disney movie?"

This is something I didn't really appreciate until it was too late to change the topic. My committee warned me while I was working on my prospectus, and I admit I failed to grasp the enormity of the situation at the time--to me, I was just working on what I felt was a great topic for a writing project. I didn't see that I was working on the only thing that would come to define me as a scholar and a person in the immediate years to come. This is a rather unfortunate side of academia--for all its occasional intellectual richness and nuance, it is just as quick as everyone else to seek out and embrace reductive labels. I thought then that my published work on a number of topics would distinguish me as someone who was both extremely productive and intellectually inquisitive. I've come to see now that the opposite is apparently true. Although that comes with a caveat--I'm glad I didn't realize it then, because I might have changed my topic and produced something less interesting and, dare I say, more generic than what I did.

Another detour--I have come to better appreciate the need to define one's self narrowly in academia (and to define one's self with the right label), but it is something I am still reluctant to embrace. I call myself--accurately and sincerely--a historical reception film scholar. But I resist the obsession with limiting one's self in favor of a healthy curiosity. I came to be a patient, focused scholar through years of hard work, practice and discipline; not because I bought into a particular dogma. The jury is still out on whether that was wise.

The Seminar Paper

I first wrote what would eventually become a part of my dissertation (and book) in the spring of 2007. My third and final seminar with Barb was on Fandom and Fan Cultures. In that course, I wrote a research paper on Song of the South fans. I was trying to accomplish two tasks with the first draft, one of which remained throughout the dissertation and another which eventually became sidelined. On the one hand, I was trying to work through how actual fans and other audience members worked through racist imagery in films (In general, the issue of race and racism remains under-explored in fan studies). With increasing nuance and historical context, this is basically what half the dissertation ended up focusing on.

The other part was affect--another carry over from my high theory days (thank you, Deleuze!), I was originally more interested in drawing out how film and media scholars don't put enough emphasis on the ways in which non-cognitive responses affect reception. This absence is especially ironic in fan studies (one notable exception is Matt Hills' work). This attention to affect was a huge contribution in the original seminar paper, but it largely faded to the background as I worked on the larger project. In fact, I think its the only major part of the original dissertation that I ended up not addressing in the book's introduction, which was the last major thing I wrote, as I discuss more below.

This seminar paper would eventually evolve into my Cinema Journal article. As that would suggest, I am very proud of the piece, but it was a long way from the seminar room to the pages of CJ. Moreover, it underwent a lot of further revision from journal article to book chapter. It was the first thing I ever wrote from the book and it was one of the very last things I ever heavily revised.

In a lot of ways, the essay on Disney internet fandom for a long time existed on its own plane, separate from the dissertation. In 2008, I submitted the article for review at Cinema Journal. I believed it was important to have an excerpt from my dissertation placed at a strong journal when I went on the job market. So I pushed ahead with publication, even as the larger dissertation was still only partially formed. As I waited to hear back from CJ editors, I pushed ahead with writing the dissertation.

I originally submitted the essay for publication in 2008. Around this time, I also presented the research at two separate conferences, including at SCMS's gathering in Philadelphia that year. In early 2009, I heard back from the journal that it would be published pending revisions. By then, I had finished a first draft of my dissertation, and as I waited to hear back from Barb on that, I began revising the article. Most of the changes had to do with fleshing out the larger context for my focus on Disney fans, which proved to be hugely helpful when I returned to the overall project.

Of course, I am very proud of that article. It was the product of a great class, it set me on the path to a good dissertation, and it was placed in an excellent journal. That said, when I return to it now, I feel it might have been rewritten one too many times (kind of like the original introduction to the dissertation, which I eventually discarded). Thus as recently as a couple weeks ago I will still heavily revising the first part of it in the book.

The Dissertation

I finished the last of graduate coursework in the fall of 2007, while also taking the reading hours for my PhD exams. I passed my qualifying exams in January of 2008--my four areas were Reception Studies, Postmodernity, Disney Studies and Critical Race Theory. By the end of the spring semester, I had finished a first draft of my prospectus, which I revised several times throughout that summer. During this time, I also started researching the topic more and working on sections of the dissertation. By the time I defended my prospectus in September of 2008, I had probably already written half the dissertation. By November, I had finished a first draft of the whole thing.

I admit in retrospect I was rushing. Part of it was finally diving into a topic I had been waiting to write for six years, and I just throw myself into the manuscript. I wanted to finish and I knew I was better with revising, a process I probably embrace too much, than with writing from scratch. I wanted to get it all down on paper and then worry about seeing what worked, what didn't, what belonged where, what needed to be trimmed or reworded, and so forth. So I guess looking back I don't regret the approach I took, though I did not have the appropriate context and big picture at the time.

In the spring of 2009, I was revising the CJ article (I did one final small batch of revisions in late summer). By the summer, I was working through the dissertation again, one chapter at a time as each one came back from my adviser. With the daunting weight and pressure of actually writing a whole dissertation now off my back, I was now free to work methodically on bringing each individual chapter into better focus, one by one.

To summarize, I wrote the first draft mostly between April and November of 2008 (not counting the prospectus-turned-introduction and the last chapter, i.e., the old seminar paper). I revised it between May and October of the following year. I spent Halloween weekend 2009 locked up in an old Indiana Holidome as I proofread the entire dissertation. I successfully defended on the first Friday of December. After my defense, Barb said that she felt the manuscript was already very near publication shape.

The Book

Looking back, I realize now the publishing process was probably the easiest part of the whole experience. After I defended, I spent the next few months focused on the job market and on being a new father. In the early summer of 2010, I returned to the dissertation. I revised the introduction, added a preface and trimmed the conclusion. I also tightened up some of the writing here and there, but nothing major in the body of the manuscript.

I sent out some initial proposals in early summer, but nothing came of it. Again, I was faced with the same issue as when I initially started--people didn't understand why anyone would write a book just on Song of the South. I admit this threw me for a loop at first--I thought the combination of Disney and the notoriety of this particular film would make the topic an easier sell--for better and for worse--than a lot of other more obscure topics that come out of academia.

I wish I had waited until the Cinema Journal article came out in late summer of 2010 before sending out proposals. It would have allowed more time to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the project. And because after it did, more editors suddenly were interested. Maybe it was a coincidence. The article had been in the pipeline for over a year, of course, but there was something about making reference to the latest issue that may have made it sound more timely.

Anyway, one of the presses that showed interest in the last summer was the University of Texas Press. Given their past experience with books on Disney and on race in the media, as well as UT's generally excellent reputation within film and media studies, I was thrilled at the opportunity. From there, everything moved pretty quickly, as these things go.

By September, UT was evaluating the complete manuscript. A month later, it was out to the first reader; within another month or so, it was out to the second. Both reports came back positive--the first in November, the second in January. There were specific recommendations for revision in each, but they both supported publication of the manuscript. By the middle of February 2011, UT's board has approved the project and a contract was issued for A Frown Upside Down.

The last, not insignificant, part was revising the manuscript. I wish I could say that I lovingly spent every working moment of the last six months pouring over the material, but teaching at Northwestern sucked up just about all my time. I worked on it here and there, including over spring break, free weekends and summer "break" between spring and summer teaching.

There were two major concerns that came up in both reports. There were smaller concerns in both that I also addressed, but two things in particular that needed some more work. Both felt, in different ways, that my chapter on Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin seemed out of place--methodologically as much as anything else. So I pulled that chapter out and put a newer section on the film in a subsequent chapter.

The other issue was the introduction. As I feared for years, it was just too bloated--not just too long per se, but lacking focus and organization. It was the result of just rewriting it one too many times. It was written and rewritten several times as a prospectus. And then another several times as a dissertation introduction, and then two more times as a book intro. So, in total, there were probably eight or more distinct versions of the introduction dating back to early 2008.

Revision is very important, and I've gotten better at it through the years. But there is such a thing as over-revising. An essay, or even just a section of an essay, gets tinkered constantly with here and there. Sentences are added, sentences are moved around. Emphases shift awkwardly from one idea to another. New sources are consulted. Old sources are taken out, or condensed. Different audiences are written to, at different times. And so forth. The end result is a bloated beast that maybe makes sense to the author who remembers every stage, but which is utterly incoherent to a new reader. And more to the point the only way to fix it is not to revise more and just make it worse.

Instead, its to wipe it all out and rewrite from scratch. That way the things you really want to say are said, and said in the way that you want them to be said. With none of the old junk blocking the way. I did this with several sections of the book ultimately, and I did this with the entire introduction.

Last spring break, I started with a blank sheet of paper and mapped out--just like I used to teach my Comp students--everything I wanted to touch on in my introduction. I wiped away all the old stuff so that nothing would distract me, or become a crutch. And then I started writing the new introduction--section by section by section. The result, I hope, is the strongest part of the entire book, something that actually "introduces" the project, instead of just reflecting all the different possible ideas I had in the course of writing the manuscript.

The last few weeks, finally, have been spent just proofreading the entire manuscript, while also polishing the prose (a fair concern of the second reader). It ended up taking longer than I anticipated because I really was trying to tighten the language, focusing the organization and clarity of the manuscript, cutting out redundancies and ambiguities, and not just checking for typos. Ironically, the final manuscript was over 13.5K words shorter than the original dissertation it was based on, even with several new sections added here and there. Half of it was cutting the whole chapter on Coonskin; the other half was just from cleaning up the writing.

This is the second book I've published. I did not think it would take another six years to finish another one. But I'm glad it did, and the experience with the first taught me to take everything about the last few months very seriously. I can assure you it will not take another six for the next. I don't even think its going to take much more than one.

Onward and upward.

js

Our Most Requested Movie

2011-06-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

The intro to Chapter 3:

In A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, Robert Ray noted the presence of a “right cycle” movement in the 1970s that saw newer conservative films, such as Dirty Harry (1971), enjoy box office success along with the recirculation of old films from Hollywood’s so-called “Golden Age” such as Disney’s Song of the South (re-released in 1972). Ray’s mention of the old Uncle Remus film in this context is crucial for two reasons. For one, it suggests that Song of the South was perceived as being even more conservative by 1972 than it was in the late 1940s and mid-1950s. Moreover, Ray’s comments also indicate that the re-appearance of a film can be as important, if not more so, as the first time it appeared—a fact film scholars sometimes ignore.

Whereas in the 1940s the cinematic “Old South” had been anachronistic, or at least tired, for many post-WWII audiences, such nostalgic texts suddenly came back into vogue, changing fundamentally how the film’s own history was later perceived. Indeed, it has been the re-releases of Song of the South over the last forty years in particular that is the most fascinating and revealing part of its reception history.

There is still another aspect of Ray’s argument that is important—seemingly out of the blue, Song of the South was now popular. After nearly thirty years uneventfully in and out of circulation, which included a harsh initial reception in 1946, an indifferent one in 1956, and an extended disappearance into the Disney Vault that was at least partially motivated by its controversy, Song of the South was suddenly more successful than it had ever been before. It would have made sense if Disney had left Song of the South for dead by the 1960s. Critics dismissed its lame live-action melodrama, while activists lamented its Uncle Tom representations.

Meanwhile, the film barely recouped Disney's considerable investment. The film had been the company's big Post-War hope for another Snow White-sized hit, but within a few years it was largely forgotten. The film had reappeared in 1956, but this was less because it was in demand per se. Rather, even before the 1950s, Disney had figured out that its biggest profits often came from re-releasing the same material to a new generation of children and, most importantly, parents. Song of the South was no different in that regard. Yet still the film underwhelmed again. Moreover, the film's racial politics made it even less worth the trouble.

As late as 1970, Disney announced through Variety that Song of the South would never be released again because of racial insensitivity, despite the fact that, they now claimed, it was the “most requested title” in the Disney Vault. One theatre owner, Jeff Begun, was even quoted as calling the film, quite inexplicably, a “classic.” Not surprisingly, then, within another two years, Disney finally re-released the film again and, this time, it proved to be the biggest re-release in the company history—despite never having been successful before, and even briefly “banned.”

In the span of three decades, the film literally went from being a black eye that the company was trying to move largely beyond to one of its most valuable assets. Song of the South earned over 6 million dollars in only a few months after its January 1972 re-release, more than doubling its total haul, and surpassing the 1969 re-release of Swiss Family Robinson (1960) as the highest-grossing Disney reissue at that point in the company’s history. Song of the South sat on Variety’s list of “Top-Grossing Films” from January 26th to April 5th that year, reaching as high as #5 on February 2nd. The film’s success was so pronounced that Disney then re-released it again for a limited engagement a little over a year later in June 1973.

Meanwhile, Song of the South’s business in the subsequent decade was similarly impressive—grossing nearly seventeen million more dollars during two additional reissues between late 1980 and 1987. As a result of this, I will argue throughout the next several chapters that, in relation to various historical factors, Song of the South is really a product of the 1970s and 1980s. Although produced in the 1940s, the film only became timely thirty years into its existence, and started its run as a successful cult text for the next twenty years. It is the 1972 reissue of Song of the South—more precisely, the myth that the film was always popular—that is remembered today.

Still the question remains—what did happen over the course of thirty years that shifted Song of the South from an anachronistic disappointment, to being seen as a highly sought-after “classic”? Answering that question—documenting what led up to the film’s eventual success in the 1970s—is the goal of the present chapter. It was not simply the decline of the Civil Rights movement and the rise of the White Backlash in the late 1960s, though that was one important factor. Even within African-American communities, there was often an ambivalent attitude towards Song of the South, especially after James Baskett won an honorary Oscar for his performance at the time, then passed away shortly thereafter. Through the subsequent decades, Baskett’s “historic” achievement—the first Black man to win an Academy Award—complicated some people’s attitudes towards the movie itself. Another factor explaining Song of the South’s re-emergence was that Disney itself was changing—both the corporation and its media offerings, and the cultural and critical assessments of the company among American audiences.

Coonskin, Civil Rights, and the “Period of Acute Racial Sensitivity”

2011-06-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

The most significant revision on A Frown Upside Down, aside from a new introduction, has been cutting my significant chapter on Bakshi's Coonskin. Instead, I've trimmed down my discussion of the film into a single section in the larger subsequent chapter on Song of the South in the 1980s and discourses of Reaganism. Understandably, going from forty-plus pages to fewer than ten hasn't been easy (actually, the original draft I submitted to my adviser two years ago was closer to 60 pages). But I think I successfully trimmed the discussion down to that which affects Song of the South the most. Anyway, here's the draft, which I've spent the last three days on fine-tuning:

“If we have to stop making movies that offend anyone, we’ll all be making Disney movies.”
—Coonskin Producer Albert S. Ruddy (1975)

Like many classic Hollywood re-releases, Song of the South had been largely uncontroversial in the 1970s. With a range of contemporary social issues still unresolved, detractors often saw its persistence, at worst, as an unfortunate, but hardly surprising, continuing annoyance from cinema’s racist past. Instead, the racially-charged film that was controversial in the 1970s was the affectively intense satire of Song of the South: Bakshi’s Coonskin. In addition to satirizing Disney, Bakshi’s deliberately shocking representation of life in the inner-city was also a product of, and a subversive response to, Hollywood’s controversial “Blaxploitation” period. This consisted of the numerous studio films, released mostly between 1969 and 1974, that “featured black casts playing out various action-adventures in the ghetto.” Often motivated more by financial concerns than newfound social awareness, these films emerged in large measure from Hollywood’s growing desire to exploit profitable African-American distribution markets. Films like Shaft (1971) and Superfly (1972) offered new cinematic visions of strong, assertive anti-Sidney Poitiers—black stars who celebrated their race rather than minimized it.

Although admirable to the extent that it offered more roles to African-American actors and touched superficially on the concerns of urban life, Blaxploitation also depended upon degrading narratives of murder, drug trafficking and prostitution. Thus, as Ed Guerrero has noted, Blaxploitation also had a contradictory appeal, since it reflected and perpetuated racist white assumptions about the general violence and criminality of black life in the inner-city. Bakshi’s film directly negotiated this contradiction.

Song of the South’s reception history is incomplete without looking at Coonskin. As one of the last Blaxploitation films of the period, Coonskin told the story of Brother Rabbit’s journey from the American South to Harlem to take on an Italian gangster who was ruining the neighborhood. As Michael Gillespie argued, “Coonskin can be thought of as closer to the irrational and transgressive spirit of [the oral slave narrative] Brer Rabbit than has ever been previously imagined.” The film restored Brother Rabbit as a signifier of the black experience (in keeping with its origins), highlighted the grotesqueness of blaxploitation as a genre, and critiqued the ignorant whiteness and sentimental nostalgia of Song of the South.

Although the latter was constructed as a critique of the former, both Song of the South and Coonskin shared quite a bit in common. Both responded to Disney’s legacy and its impact on animation (Song of the South as its affirmation, Coonskin as its rejection). Both reflected childhood memories—the audiences’ own nostalgia with Song of the South and Disney more generally; Bakshi for his own childhood living in a predominately Black neighborhood of Brooklyn and watching Disney cartoons. Both responded to the emergent popularity of Blaxploitation and reflected white visions of the African-American experience. Both worked within, and further perpetuated, cinematic stereotypes of that same experience.

Finally, both Song of the South and Coonskin were criticized upon first release for some of the same reasons. In the mid-1970s, the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and other activist groups protested Bakshi’s film, ironically citing very similar criticisms that marred Song of the South three decades earlier. In both cases, detractors saw the film as an offensive white interpretation of African-Americans which traded on grotesque and anachronistic (cinematic) stereotypes of the race. While Coonskin’s cultural and aesthetic satire of Song of the South was valid, its X-rated approach and knowing deployment of racist imagery was not necessarily unproblematic. As a result of this controversy, Paramount dropped the film in late 1974; it was eventually picked up by Bryanston Pictures and distributed as an “exploitation” picture.

Despite an intense amount of media coverage regarding its controversies, Coonskin quickly faded from theatres and public consciousness within a year. Its affective power and grotesque images left those few audiences who finally did get a chance, out of sometimes morbid curiosity, to see the film, feeling generally confused and alienated. Thus, one survived, and one didn’t.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Song of the South’s popularity was often dependent upon the same cultural appeal as Blaxploitation, the two traditions Coonskin brought together. Disney’s nostalgic vision of the American South spoke to the “large, conservative white audience’s [. . .] desire to, at least on screen, suppress the black revolt in all its manifestations and the white liberal-left social and cultural agenda built during the 1960s.” It was this audience that Guerrero identifies as making white reactionary vigilante fantasies like Dirty Harry (1972), Death Wish (1974) and Walking Tall (1974) popular—those films which often featured white cops cleaning up the same criminal urban spaces that Blaxploitation glorified.

Coonskin merged two otherwise incongruent subgenres (Disney animation and blaxploitation) into one deliberately grotesque and incoherent text to show how both rested on racist, and thoroughly cinematic, stereotypes about African-American identity in the 20th-Century. While made for a different time, the reception of Song of the South was no less a response to factors underlining Blaxploitation as Dirty Harry was in 1972. Coonskin’s appearance highlighted the superficially incoherent, but internally logical, cultural sense in which the early 1970s marked the sudden popularity of both Blaxploitation and Song of the South.

Though hardly embraced by the militant wing of the Civil Rights movement, Coonskin’s aggressive, unapologetic style echoed the racial rebellion of the period, while Disney’s nostalgic vision of pastoral simplicity and institutional racism appealed to audiences rediscovering open spaces via the American suburb. Thus, Song of the South’s successful reissue in the 1970s was a cinematic equivalent to the “white flight” which deeply affected American cities. As Guerrero notes, “After years of urban riots and rebellions, shifting demographics accelerated as racial boundaries eroded, and most American cities found whites heading for the suburbs, abandoning city centers and their movie houses to inner-city blacks.”

Both versions of the Uncle Remus tales appeared within the context of Blaxploitation and urban rebellion in the inner-cities, the latter of which was provoked by years of racial tension and existing power structures sympathetic to white privilege. This coexisted with the large scale migration of both white people and civic resources to the suburbs that originally began with the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s. Likewise, Song of the South provided comfort, in the form of outdated stereotypes, to white people who were unsettled by the sudden power, authority and autonomy blacks had struggled to attain in urban centers such as Harlem, Detroit, Los Angeles and the south side of Chicago. These were power centers that fifty years earlier (such as in the Greenwood district of Tulsa) would have been wiped out in a white-instigated race riot.

Yet Coonskin’s understanding of cultural politics and racial representations isn’t simple. Like all Blaxploitation texts, Bahski’s visually and aurally challenging X-rated film can be also read as a liberatory white fantasy of how hopelessly violent and chaotic US urban spaces had become in the aftermath of mass migration to the suburbs. Although the film itself did not appeal to those audiences, controversy around its aesthetic provocation symbolically reaffirmed for white audiences the need to leave the city, reasserting racial order and boundaries. Symbolizing the lack of direction within the Civil Rights movement, liberals and activists argued amongst themselves over the value of Coonskin.

Coonskin’s satirical logic may have shrewdly highlighted how the presence of Song of the South in the 1970s spoke, at least in part, to racist attitudes about American urban spaces. However, the same can be said for Bakshi’s film—Coonskin was made by a white Brooklyn native who had since moved to a trendy and wealthy section of Southern California at the start of his successful filmmaking career. While detractors such as CORE missed or ignored Coonskin’s attempt at satire, the larger concern about the use of racist stereotypes was not without merit.

Reactions to Coonskin’s controversial reception represent one of the earliest shifts in the increasingly revived perception of Song of the South itself. The confrontational presence of Bakshi’s film during 1974 and 1975, its provocative textuality and critical backlash, was eventually appropriated by proponents of Song of the South to deflect attention from, and even validate, the latter.

In nostalgic contrast to Disney’s old film, Coonskin became for fans an example of a truly “offensive” representation when it came to images of African-Americans in film. They contrasted the negative media attention and the verbal and visual intensity of Coonskin’s satire with the popular and politically uneventful appearance of Song of the South a couple years earlier to imply that Disney’s film was harmless, even morally positive, entertainment. Although Coonskin had been intended as a biting indictment of Disney animation, Song of the South and conservative audiences which embraced both, its reception took a much different shape in the long-run.

Writing in the guise of “Thumper” from Bambi (1942), Arthur Cooper addressed a 1975 review of Coonskin to a now-deceased Walt Disney in Newsweek. As with several reviews of the time, he criticized Bakshi’s film as narratively uneven and unfunny. More interesting was how Cooper also deflected attention back favorably to Song of the South. Bakshi, he wrote, has “made Coonskin. It’s got an R rating, which must stand for Ripoff because what he’s done is turn [Disney’s] Uncle Remus stories inside out.” Instead of analyzing Coonskin further, Cooper nostalgically evoked memories of what he saw as Disney’s more innocent version:
Last night I watched an old print of your “Song of the South,” with all those cute bluebirds and sharecroppers, and I think I’ll send it to Bakshi. Although there were protests about [Song of the South in the past], in this case CORE ought to just let sleeping dogs snore.

Cooper’s nostalgic lament highlighted how Coonskin had received harsher criticism in the 1970s than Song of the South had. It also foreshadowed how the negative reception of Bakshi’s film was later appropriated to even more conservative ends by supporters of Disney. Cooper’s review offered an early glimpse into how the intensity around Coonskin made the seeming simplicity of Song of the South more appealing to sympathetic critics and fans. In the long run, Coonskin’s reception unintentionally worked in support of the very same film it sought to criticize.

Similarly, film critic and historian Leonard Maltin highlighted the Coonskin controversy in an entry on Song of the South in the second edition of his widely-read book, The Disney Films (1984). Unapologetically reverent, his compilation offered detailed information on the production histories, plot summaries and critical receptions of every major Disney film ever made. For the second edition, Maltin added two sentences on Coonskin to his section on Song of the South:
There are still occasional protests [to Song of the South], though the worst of these seems mild compared to the reception given Ralph Bakshi’s live-action/animated Coonskin in 1975—a protest so fiery that the film was disowned by its distributor! Ironically, Coonskin was a modern-day satire based in part on Song of the South.

Maltin did not explain why Coonskin was “so fiery,” or how it was “a modern-day satire” of Song of the South. His reference to Bakshi’s film did little more than deflecting attention away from Song of the South’s past controversies. Disney’s conservative film on the surface is a mild, less overtly offensive, text than Coonskin’s abrasive satire. Yet what gets lost here is that Bakshi’s film was not meant for a child-friendly audience. In fact, Coonskin was meant to provoke.

The intersection of Coonskin, Disney and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement becomes increasingly entangled here. The effect is that these complicated histories become increasingly distorted through historical revisionism. Maltin’s second edition perpetuated and even solidified several myths about Song of the South—one being that it was always a huge box-office hit in its earlier releases. Another was that criticism of the film was muted overall in 1946, save for “some liberal reviewers and Negro organizations.” Maltin also suggested that:
It was only in the 1960s, when Civil Rights became a major concern of the entire United States, that it became clear that Song of the South and films of that kind would be touching sensitive spots if shown again. Even the reissue of Gone with the Wind in 1967 sparked some (relatively minor) protest among certain Negro groups who objected . . . .

However, this is the exact opposite of what happened—the film was most forcefully protested in the 1940s. Yet, in Maltin’s reconstructed timeline, Song of the South’s brief controversy in the “Civil Rights” era of 1960s had been successfully overcome and put to rest. In the 1984 edition, Maltin even reworded one sentence to seem less interested in the conceding the “Uncle Tom” criticism of Song of the South. In 1973, Maltin wrote, “it is difficult to condemn a film of this kind, Uncle Tom accusations notwithstanding, for in spite of its syrupy story line and occasional flaws, Song of the South has some of the most delightful moments ever captured on film.”

In 1984, however, Maltin rewrote this sentence to read, “Accusations of Uncle Tomisms and quibbles over its syrupy storyline are ultimately defeated by the film’s sheer entertainment value.” The difference is perhaps incidental, though no less noteworthy, given that most of the other pages on Song of the South are otherwise identical. Whereas the first edition appears to bracket off the consideration of “Uncle Tom accusations,” suggesting the concerns may have validity, the second edition collapses those criticisms with the other reservations about the film, hence creating the impression that every criticism of Song of the South was overcome by virtue of its affective entertainment. In the context of his second edition, Maltin positioned Song of the South as a happy corrective, as reassurance, to the perceived trauma caused by the controversies around Coonskin.

Just as white opposition increased steadily in the late 1960s and 1970s to the Civil Rights movement, there was another backlash against the backlash to Coonskin. As Maltin and Cooper’s reactions demonstrated, the backlash was not in defense of Coonskin. Rather the controversies around the film were used to deflect the question of racial difference altogether. In the void of liberal disagreements over Bakshi’s film grew an unchallenged conservatism. The criticism of Coonskin was used to implicitly discredit the larger Civil Rights movement for greater equality in cinematic representation. In a review of Daniel Leab’s book, From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (1975), Tom Shales commented in passing on the CORE controversy. He noted that “one would think constructive forms of consciousness-raising, if such are possible, would be preferable to coercive tactics such as” CORE’s call for censorship with Coonskin.

He pointed out that around the same time “pressure groups in New York [had] blocked the airing of a public television documentary because they thought it offensive.” For Shales, these were examples of how counter-productive the protests were. He went further, arguing that the notorious radio and later television program, Amos `N` Andy (which was eventually taken off the air because of African-American protests), was “funny” and that “several black celebrities have said they did not find it objectionable.” Shales’ review criticized Leab’s book—which rightly criticized the history of African-American representations in Hollywood—for “righteous indignation” and for demanding too much progress too soon. By “asking a 1949 film to succeed at a 1975 level [. . .],” he wrote, “Leab apparently expects films to reform overnight.” Yet Shales also worked to undermine that same progress in representation by arguing that protest groups (such as CORE) had gone too far. The contradictions of an evasive whiteness begin to reemerge in Shales’ piece—a type of identity which does not proclaim the importance of being white, but rather denies the category of “race” altogether (in the service of white privilege).

Once devised as a particular kind of critique of Song of the South, Coonskin’s failure and de facto censorship became appropriated by Disney supporters as a vindication of the 1946 film’s innocence and entertainment value, and as a deflection from the controversies the earlier movie had incited. In the 1984 edition of The Disney Films, Maltin declared that “Song of the South has triumphed, and survived a period of acute racial sensitivity.”

As framed, “a period of acute racial sensitivity” conflated both the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s with the controversy around Coonskin in the 1970s. This conservative denial of race in the 1980s celebrated a triumphal environment in which many whites became less racially conscious, while Civil Rights groups and media critics failed to mount a coherent critique of films such as Song of the South and Coonskin like they had in the 1940s. That progressive failure served those who wished for Song of the South’s survival during “a period of acute racial sensitivity”—a confident assertion particularly appropriate to the anti-Civil Rights movement of the decade.

Subsequently, Song of the South’s racist depiction of the Plantation South, generally agreed upon since the 1940s, became increasingly rejected by fans of the film and supporters of Disney by the 1980s. Sympathizers were emboldened by the controversy around Bakshi’s film, by an increasingly conservative political climate, and by the continuing survival of the 1946 film. Although inaccurate to trace all of this back to the release of Coonskin, negative reactions to that film that also touched on Song of the South almost always invariably reinforced this twisted logic.

The reactions to both films in the 1970s served as sobering touchstones in relation to white America’s decreasingly racial consciousness. When Song of the South reappeared in the 1980s within this new condition of possibility, the film seemed tame, even harmless for many. The film was now as a nostalgic journey from a beloved institution’s past (Disney). Audiences during the emergent “color-blind” 1980s were suddenly quite anxious not to see race, or allow others to see race, in the Disney film. In retrospect, attacks on Coonskin were at least partially misplaced. As Bakshi’s film faded, Song of the South would continue to be far more resilient and insidious—the same sort of evasive whiteness that Coonskin had tried to deconstruct.

Disney’s Histories

2011-04-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

As a trailblazing company in the history of convergence, Disney deserves renewed attention. In particular, the media giant’s success since the 1920s has been based on two premises which are today the cornerstones of studies in convergence: technological innovation and extensive cross-promotion among numerous texts. On the one trajectory, Disney long positioned itself at the cutting edge of countless media innovations: music and sound synchronization (Steamboat Willie, 1928), three-strip color (Flowers and Trees, 1932), character animation (The Three Little Pigs, 1933), the multi-plane camera (The Old Mill, 1937), theatrical exhibition surround sound (Fantasia, 1941), hybrid animation (Song of the South), widescreen Cinemascope (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954), television synergy (Disneyland, 1954), Computer-Generated Imagery, or CGI (Tron, 1982), subscription cable television (The Disney Channel, 1983), and computer-aided animation production (The Rescuers, 1990). More importantly, even when the novelty was overstated, such as with Steamboat Willie or 20,000 Leagues, the company was aggressive in promoting itself and these various new technologies and multimedia advances. While the company is largely viewed today with good reason as a media empire built on nostalgia and conservatism, at its core is an impressive, if also often, accidental history of future-oriented technological and economic innovations.

At first, Disney relied on partnerships with other companies to help spread its brand and its merchandise, since its modest revenue allowed for little production ambition beyond animated films. As early as the 1930s, the company was licensing out the rights to Mickey Mouse’s likeness to a variety of businesses—a move that was, as with Disneyland two decades later, largely motivated by the need for money that would offset Walt’s often reckless investments in film production. The same economic logic motivated Disney’s agreement with ABC on Disneyland, as well as Golden Books and others, in the 1950s. The goal was as much to pay for the theme park’s spiraling costs as to spread the company’s brand recognition. Other key innovations included Disney’s partnership with Capitol Records in the 1940s to circulate and promote the various film soundtracks, and its subsequent collaboration with the NBC network and RCA television company in the 1960s to exploit the company’s desire for color broadcasts, beginning the notable run of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (1961). By the time Disney was dominating the television landscape then, the company had become self-sustaining enough to control its own ancillary revenue streams, operating its own distributor for theatrical exhibition (Buena Vista) and for books and records (Disneyland). This emergent ubiquity planted the seed early on for a cultural environment in America in which Disney was now perceived as having “always” been “everywhere”—a socially-constructed logic of media consumption which paid off huge dividends for the company in the long-run, and continues to do so.

Through these ancillary channels, retrospectively, Disney also increasingly promoted its own revised history as a landmark in the annals of classic Hollywood, further cementing its cultural status as an American institution. This prominence, plus its long history of cross-promotional ambitions, paid huge dividends by the time Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg took over in the 1980s. A central part of “Team Disney”’s goal was to further exploit revenue streams such as home video platforms (VHS) and new theme parks and attractions (Disneyland Tokyo), and increased corporate partnerships with companies such as Delta Airlines and McDonalds. Another key business strategy in the 1980s was to idealize Disney’s own studio history, and the larger history of classic Hollywood that images of Uncle Walt, Fantasia Mickey, and so forth, inevitably evoked. There was perhaps no bigger embodiment of this strategy than the building of Disney-MGM Studios in Florida at the end of 1980s. The third Orlando theme park spatialized Disney’s desire to memorialize and idealize its own history, so crucial to the company’s nostalgic appeal, while also rewriting Hollywood’s as being largely defined by the presence of the Disney studios.

Ironically, though, this depiction of the “golden age” of Hollywood is completely inaccurate. Disney mostly struggled economically to stay alive through the 1940s and early 1950s—the generic time period that becomes historical pastiche as the overall mise-en-scene of the theme park. The 1940s was not a period of prosperity but deep financial struggles, marked in particular by the terrible labor strike in the studio, and disastrous theatrical fortunes for Fantasia, both in 1941. There is no shortage of historical irony in the fact that a grotesquely large version of Mickey’s Sorcerer’s Hat now serves as the central image for Disney’s classic Hollywood-themed amusement park. The cap evokes memories of what was Walt Disney’s own biggest theatrical fiasco, the movie that—had it not been for government funding during WWII—would have bankrupted the Disney company and sent most of their work to the dustbin of film history. Even at the height of its early phenomenal success in the 1930s, Disney was a very minor studio—a cottage industry that specialized in state-of-the-art animation, but which was dependent upon other, often bigger, companies for technological innovations, for repurposing, and for distribution. They did not hold a candle, in prestige, revenue, or sheer output, to Hollywood giants such as Warner Bros., 20^th Century Fox, MGM and so forth. In 2008, the theme park was renamed “Disney’s Hollywood Studios.” Hence, its current title even more explicitly rewrites Hollywood history to suggest that Disney’s Golden Age and the classic studio system’s Golden Age were one and the same.

One of the main cultural critiques that has often been leveled at the Disney media empire for decades has been its distortion of history. Disney’s romanticized view of its own history, as the self-appointed king of the Golden Age of Hollywood is one thing. Yet more disturbing is its rewriting of American history more generally. Whether it is Frontierland’s romanticizing of the American West, Pocahontas’ absurd representation of colonial America, or Song of the South’s mythologizing of the post-Civil War South, Disney has a long record of distorting the United States’ collective past in a way that often contains troubling repercussions for modern awareness of the history of economic, gender and racial struggles in America. Disney’s fondness for rewriting American history, often to the benefit of white, middle-class and wealthy consumers, came to a head in the 1990s, when cultural critics, historians and political activists successfully pressured the company into abandoning plans for a history-themed amusement park in the state of Virginia, titled “Disney’s America.” Of undoubtedly questionable taste, this endeavor would have awkwardly mixed Disney’s own idealization and white-washing of history with the uglier and more honest history of the surrounding areas, which feature countless institutionalized reminders of the US’s harsh, unfortunate, Colonial and Civil War pasts. Aside from exploiting these tragedies for profit, Disney’s distortion of history also conditions some audiences to actually believe that its representations of the past are really “the way it was.” We see this appeal to history prominently in defenses of Song of the South—not only the history of the 19^th Century inaccurately depicted in the film itself, but also in the separate subsequent history of the film’s exhibition, recirculation, reception, and repurposing. Yet what is often referred to in this regard is not really history, but nostalgia.

A Few Thoughts on Tron's Blu-Ray Release

2011-04-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

Tron: Legacy (2010) made its home video debut on blu-ray and DVD this week. Perhaps more notably, Disney also finally re-released the original Tron (1982) as well. They had earlier passed over the opportunity to re-release it in anticipation of the sequel’s otherwise much-hyped theatrical debut in IMAX and 3D last December. At the time, this led to understandable speculation that Disney was afraid of its own intellectual property. Of course, on the other hand, Disney is notorious for locking up its older titles into the proverbial “Disney Vault,” restricting them to very limited release windows, and ensuring their demand across decades and generations. This is a business model they’ve exploited as far back as WWII, after stumbling upon it out of economic desperation. As recently as two months ago, a second-hand copy of Tron’s first, since discontinued, DVD release (2002) was going for over $100 on Amazon.

Yet this makes Disney’s initial decision all the more curious; it lent further evidence to the idea that the company didn’t want people to actually see the original, for fear it would dampen, rather than heighten, interest in its sequel. While certainly a true cult classic, the original Tron did not connect with most moviegoers in 1982 and certainly has not aesthetically aged well since then, by any standard outside of nostalgia. The fact remains that Tron is one of the most important films ever made in the history of Computer-Generated Imagery, a milestone its knock-off sequel doesn’t come close to matching. Yet that, by itself, doesn’t equal blockbuster franchise material any more than Kubrick’s visually stunning but narratively-incidental 2001 would. This then prompted the even bigger question: why had Disney invested more than $200 million on a potential franchise that was built on the backs of a brand it seemed transparently ashamed of?

I am unabashedly a fan of the original Tron, but that comes with two important caveats. For one, I’m not exactly sure why. I find something truly sublime about the look and feel of the original. If I had to be more specific, I would probably focus on the film’s unintended evocation now of nostalgia for an earlier period—the dawn of digital imagery and the emergence of public arcade gaming, an era that came and went somewhere between the two Tron films. To wit, my favorite scene in the whole sequel has nothing to do with 3D or CGI—it’s the moment where Sam explores the eerily cavernous spaces of his father’s now-abandoned arcade. I think I also find the clean, cool surfaces of the Grid oddly reassuring in its simplicity, rather than alienating as many do.

There is another reservation to my Tron fandom. Even I was sitting in the IMAX theatre last winter and constantly asking myself, “Who was this movie made for?” Tron has a true base of followers, but not enough to justify such a lavish spectacle and considerable investment. Meanwhile, the story’s representation of computer technology was even more naïve and anachronistic than it had been three decades earlier. In every conceivable way, the new Tron surely felt completely nonsensical to anyone without familiarity to the original, which was in itself hardly a paragon of narrative and thematic logic to begin with. Tron: Legacy definitely made money, but relative to its costs and labor involved it probably did not fare much better than the original. Instead, the movie seemed to be another one of those properties that no one really loves, but which nonetheless coasts to decent numbers on the backs of massive hype, a popular soundtrack, and inflated ticket prices. And now that it’s available on home video formats, the most excited people seem to be Best Buy employees anxious for new material that’ll help move the latest High Definition televisions.

Nevertheless, the franchise seems to be moving forward all the same. In a way, Disney seems to be constructing a transmedia franchise in search of an audience. Marvel Comics released Tron: Betrayal in the fall of last year, the latest in several attempts to continue the narrative from the original. A new animated series is headed to the Disney XD cable channel next year. The property continues to lend itself to videogames on home gaming platforms, and rumors persist that a third film is in the works. Indeed, narratively, Tron: Legacy seemed more interested in the future of the franchise than the past.

But this still doesn’t answer the question: why? Why Tron? Why now? Disney’s attempt to build on the technological and theatrical success of James Cameron’s Avatar is one obvious enough reason (and that, ironically, makes it similar to the original’s attempt to tap into the explosion of interest in science fiction after Star Wars). Yet the new marketplace demand for IMAX and/or 3D films still doesn’t explain why Tron was chosen of all possibilities. The answer to this question, I feel, lies in Disney’s larger corporate history of repurposing, recirculation and cross-promotion.

By the end of the 2000s, Disney was moving away from its traditional interest in the Princess narrative, which had been there since almost the beginning (Snow White, Cinderella), but which really didn’t come to dominate the company until the Eisner era ushered in Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and so forth. Now, in retrospect, it’s impossible to see Disney without it. But this unquestionable stroke of business genius/luck came at a cost—all but the most die-hard of audiences have gradually tired of the same formula. The “Princess” imagery is more effective at selling merchandise than movie tickets. Another problem lays in the fact that this aspect of Disney had essentially alienated half the population—namely, adolescent and teenage boys, who were as lucrative a market as the next. Hence, it was not a coincidence, as others have noted, that Disney’s Tangled (2010) emphasized the male’s perspective, particularly in the promotion, about as much as film based on Rapunzel could.

This brings us back to Tron. In the entire history of the Disney company, very few remotely recognizable properties in the Vault could be realistically considered more favorable to the male demographic than Tron. This is especially true when you take Pixar’s recent innovations out of the equation, a brand that’s been as much in tension, as in collaboration, with Disney’s for the last two decades. The others, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and Black Hole, are appropriately slated for remakes. This is significant because reusing existing theatrical properties is key to Disney’s success, and has been since Disneyland in the 1950s. It’s not that Disney couldn’t come up with new properties to attract boys, but the appeal of using Tron is that it could also triangulate the nostalgia of the father, just as princess films triangulate the nostalgia of the mother. Will it work? Who knows.

But Tron: Legacy, in retrospect, is really as much a traditional Disney film as something more self-evident, such as the fairy tale Tangled. Moreover, it’s better suited to Disney’s style than the (truly groundbreaking) original was. Since the “glory” days of Walt, nearly every one of their successful theatrical films has depended on 1) the shameless nostalgia of a pre-existing fan base (Tron fans from the 1980s); 2) the prominent exploitation of technological innovation (Disney 3D); 3) the presence of hit music which can thrive with, or without, the movie itself (the Daft Punk score); 4) the benefit and familiarity of transmedia ubiquity (videogames, comic books, TV shows); and 5) the white noise of endless cross-promotion. In this regard, Tron’s return—narrative incoherence and all—makes perfect sense. And while the new film may have few fans over the age of 18, we may wish to wait a generation or two before deciding whether Disney made the right choice to bring Flynn and Co. back out of the Vault.

Song of the South and the Civil Rights Movement

2011-03-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

I am currently hiding in an undisclosed location in Milwaukee, trying frantically to get in some writing on my book before the new quarter starts next week. Currently, I am rewriting material on Song of the South in relation to shifting white attitudes towards the Civil Rights movement from the 1940s to the 1980s:

Song of the South’s theatrical reappearances coincided with, and reflected, several key moments in the history of white America’s negotiation with the emergence of increased rights and visibility for African-Americans in mainstream media culture. Invariably, Song of the South was positioned, by Disney as well as by both critical and supportive audiences, as a reaction against particular moments of cultural upheaval. For decades, the appearance and reappearances of the company’s most infamous film corresponded with significant shifts in white America’s attitudes towards African-Americans’ collective struggle for equal rights and equal opportunities. What was occurring in America during the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1980s, and so forth, greatly shaped how people received and interpreted the film. Just as importantly, these periods within the Civil Rights Movement also deeply affected if and when Disney chose to re-release the film, and in what form(at), to general US audiences.

There are in particular three distinct periods within white attitudes towards the progress of the Civil Rights Movement: liberal activism during and after World War II, the “White Backlash” in the 1960s and 1970s, and the era of “post-racial” Reaganism that began to settle in during the 1980s and which largely continues to this day. Collectively, they offer a clearer picture of the socially-constructed discourse of “whiteness” which has historically shaped the recirculation, reception and perseverance of an old racist artifact like Song of the South.

During World War II, America and its allies were engaged with a long and costly global conflict with Germany, Italy and Japan. The country fought itself in a moment that required the deep commitment of every man and woman to supporting the cause, regardless of color. Whether it was fighting in segregated units in Europe, working the factories in the North, or plowing their fields in the South, African-Americans were needed every bit as much as everyone else. At the same time, the ugly White Supremacist rhetoric emerging in particular from Nazi Germany evoked for many Americans an uncomfortable similarity to the same cultural logic underlying decades of Jim Crow laws in the South and institutional racism in the North.

As such, the US Federal Government, through the Office of War Information (OWI), actively worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Hollywood studios to create more positive, less stereotypical, images of African-Americans in feature-length fiction narratives and non-fiction government films. Meanwhile, these images were largely well-received by a wartime and post-war audiences of every race that were anxious to both support the common national cause of the war effort and to see themselves as more racially enlightened that the enemies they were fighting.

Within this environment, Disney foolishly decided to make a film that reduced black characters to the same pre-war stereotypes that the OWI, the NAACP, and most other Hollywood studios had consciously made a decision to avoid. While the company may have hoped Plantation films would still find a receptive audience a mere seven years after Gone with the Wind’s record-breaking success, making the film when they ultimately did revealed a shocking tin ear to the particular activism and racial climate of the time. As such, many people were deeply critical of the racist assumptions in a film like Song of the South, much more than they might have been a decade earlier. This was not a response limited just to African-American activists and white liberals. In the pages of mainstream publications like The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, critics and audiences expressed their disappointment and even anger at seeing old stereotypes return in such a prominent Hollywood film right after the war had ended.

Although Song of the South was not a box office fiasco, it was a major disappointment for the studio in considerable part because of the progressive backlash to its racist images. In short, Song of the South was not typical of other Hollywood films of the time in terms of its depiction of idyllic life on a peaceful Southern plantation. If anything, one could argue Disney’s film was the first of many nostalgic films after World War II that went out of its way to revive this otherwise dormant, even shunned, subgenre of the Hollywood melodrama.

But of course this was not the end of the story for Song of the South, unlike many now forgotten films, despite the best efforts of political activists at the time. If it was, the larger subject of this book would not be nearly as interesting or as worthy of close study. Disney’s film would reappear, and take on new meanings for audiences as circumstances changed. However, this original historical context for Song of the South’s debut in 1946 should not be forgotten or marginalized, either. In particular, accurately understanding the time in which the film first appeared is just as important to understanding the film today. Song of the South was always considered a racist film.

Yet, this truth about the film’s past is easily distorted now by personal nostalgia and by a muddled, generalizing understanding of Hollywood history which mistakenly assumes every film or television show made before the 1960s was either racist, sexist, or both. In turn, this assumption lends itself to historical statements based on a false equivalence—since most films were racist “back then,” the argument goes, Song of the South should not be so harshly criticized now. But aside from oversimplifying the larger history of Hollywood to the point of blatant inaccuracy, this assertion also misses the more local history of Song of the South’s initial reception.

Despite this racial climate, however, Disney was not anxious to give up on a major investment like Song of the South. Even as early as the 1940s and 1950s, the company’s existing feature-length films provided seemingly endless revenue opportunities in the form of theatrical reissues and ancillary markets such as records, toys, television shows and so forth. Yet, even Disney was not completely oblivious to the larger cultural attitudes at the time, and so approached the subject of Song of the South carefully. The company re-released it uneventfully in 1956; both criticisms of the film and its theatrical fortunes were less abundant than they had been ten years earlier. After that, the film did not appear again until 1972. Officially, the film simply “skipped” a reissue cycle, as it would have been due to reappear in theatres around 1963 or 1964. Yet the film’s absence during that time span tells us as much about Disney and the US’s complicated relationship to the Civil Rights Movement as it reappearance ultimately would. And when Song of the South returned sixteen years after its last appearance, America had changed.

1964 was an important year. At arguably the high water moment of the Civil Rights movement, public polls repeatedly indicated that white support for the cause of African-American equality was at an all-time high in the United States. The aggressive activism which had begun with World War II, and persevered throughout the spectacle of racial discrimination and violence in the 1950s, was finally paying off in major ways. This year marked a Democratic landslide electoral victory in Congress and in the reelection of President Lyndon B. Johnson. This achievement would shortly thereafter lead to the passage of various “Great Society” legislations in Congress. These new programs and laws were designed in large part, though not exclusively, to eliminate poverty and combat racial inequality. In addition to providing healthcare and aiding community action programs designed to educate and empower the poor in the inner-cities, the Great Society also included laws that were intended to put an end to racial discrimination at the voting booths, within housing policies, and in employment practices, among others. Accumulatively, the Great Society was arguably the single biggest achievement in the history of the Civil Rights struggle for African-American causes, and it benefitted from widespread support among many white voters. It should not be surprising, then, that Disney decided to “skip” releasing Song of the South in the mid-1960s.

But 1964 was also important in the history of white America’s racial consciousness for other, less honorable, reasons as well. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end for largely sympathetic attitudes among whites, leading to what sociologist Douglas MacAdam has called the “White Backlash,” which was in full effect by the end of the decade. Most prominently, Southern and other conservative Democrats abandoned the Party over time, believing that the Great Society betrayed their core beliefs about the lower social and economic status of African-Americans who should be left to take care of themselves.

Republicans, meanwhile, successfully played upon a building sense of white resentment towards these policies and initiatives by suggesting that blacks were treated better by the government than they were—an astoundingly ignorant, but frighteningly effective, claim that conservatives continue to make to this day. Urban rebellions in the cities and increasing white flight to the suburbs widened the divide further. Even moderates and liberal Democrats who remained deeply sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement in the mid-to-late 60s found their collective attention and energies quickly distracted by the more urgent, costly fiasco that was the Vietnam War.

Thus, almost as soon as the Great Society was coming into effect, conservative politicians were already mobilizing a combination of active hostility and inattentive indifference among whites to seize power throughout the country—reactionary Republican Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of traditionally liberal California in 1966; two years later, Richard Nixon was President. By the 1980s, most racially conservative Democrats were now supporting Reagan for President in droves—the decades-long culmination of white conservative attempts to stop, and begun to undo, the progress of the Civil Rights Movement.

Not coincidently, Song of the South quietly began its resurgence during this same period. Three equally important factors influenced the film’s resurrection from the dead during the 1960s. While Disney’s strategies of convergence and ambivalence among African-American audiences were both key, the shifting attitudes among most white Americans in the wake of the Great Society also cannot be overstated. By the end of the 1960s, as widespread support for the Civil Rights movement dissipated, Disney begin to float the idea of re-releasing its most notorious film, which they claimed was now the “most requested” title in the Vault. By 1972, Song of the South was back in theatres and suddenly doing record business.

As a nostalgic look back to a pre-Civil Rights utopia, Song of the South certainly offered some audiences a reassuring image of harmless and contented African-Americans—back at the Plantation, hard at work for their white masters, and completely uninterested in equality, let alone freedom. It would be inaccurate to pin the film’s newfound popularity only on a post-Civil Rights desire on the part of whites to return to the illusory era of white privilege and superiority which the film depicts. Yet, this was undoubtedly one of the central reasons for its success and certainly helped to create the environment in which Disney could rerelease it without provoking much controversy. By 1980, the film was back yet again, and continued to do strong box office throughout the conservative climate of the Reagan `80s. Song of the South’s conservative appeal was so prominent during this decade that critics and activists began to finally take note of the film again, explicitly tying the film’s nostalgic, reactionary popularity to the larger political atmosphere created by the US President.

New Introduction's Introduction

2011-03-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

One of the major revisions on A Frown Upside Down will be a largely new introduction to replace the old one, which had gotten a bit bloated and scattered. So, I'm testing out a new opening to the book (only a big chunk of the first paragraph is a holdover):

Hollywood history is littered with racist artifacts—but they are not always so lost, and their occasional endurance can tell us as much about media industry practices and racial relations in the present as the time in which they were first made. Disney’s Song of the South (1946) is today one such seemingly forgotten film, another racist relic from a cinematic past filled with no shortage of anachronistic and offensive depictions. As with many such films, it is tempting to toss Song of the South back into the dustbin of Hollywood history. The ideologically conservative Disney Corporation itself—never one to pass up a chance at exploiting older properties—has refused to re-release it to American audiences for over 25 years. On a first mention, the name itself may not even ring a bell. Yet mention Brer Rabbit, the “Tar Baby,” Uncle Remus (James Baskett) or “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and suddenly many people remember that they once were quite familiar with the film, or at least with one of its many textual reiterations (Golden Books, Disneyland records, Disneyland television episodes, etc.).

For its part, Song of the South depicts Southern plantation life in the 19th Century, a time marked by unimaginable cruelty, as instead a white musical utopia. Based loosely on the 19th Century literary stories of Joel Chandler Harris, Song of the South mixed live-action footage of Uncle Remus, the kindly ex-slave, and his seemingly idyllic life on a Southern plantation, with animated sequences of Brer Rabbit outsmarting Brer Fox and Brer Bear. Despite being a landmark achievement in cost-cutting hybrid animation, early audiences initially rejected its racial insensitivities, in the wake of World War II, as well as its low-budget aesthetic, on the heels of more polished Disney productions like Snow White and Pinocchio. Yet Song of the South hardly disappeared after modest releases in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, for a particular period as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, this offensive film was actually extremely popular. At the height of the “White Backlash” against the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent rise of Reaganesque conservatism in the US, as well as Disney’s emergent cultural status as a powerful “family institution,” Song of the South was a considerable part of the American media landscape.

The first question one often asks now is “whatever happened to that film?” The truth, though, is that this especially problematic movie has not gone anywhere. Thanks to decades of cult followings and Disney’s own careful corporate remediation, Song of the South and the complicated histories of race and media convergence it embodies is as present and relevant as it ever was. In fact, of all the racist films from Hollywood’s past, Song of the South’s troublingly persistent survival may be the most distinctive for what it tells us today about the history of American media, its audiences, and their at times mutually-reinforcing negotiation of racist images. Beyond the limits of morbid curiosity, there is a more fascinating history of the relationship between media and race hidden here.

Song of the South has been a quietly, but instructionally resilient, film for seven decades, nearly spanning the entire lifetime of the more famous company which spawned, exploited, and eventually tossed it (officially) aside. Understanding the film’s role within the larger history of convergence culture and racial formations requires 1) documenting the ways in which Disney recirculated, repurposed and rewrote the film, 2) appreciating the diverse racial and political climates in which it appeared (and didn’t), and 3) articulating how different audiences responded to the film and its fragments via their own discursive production. This book will triangulate the cult history of Song of the South within all three contexts in order to move us closer to answering several interrelated questions: how have the textual and extratextual dynamics of “media convergence” historically interacted with larger cultural negotiations regarding racial identity in the 20th Century? How have industry strategies of remediation and forms of participatory culture affected socially-constructed notion of whiteness as mediated through, and in the reception of, representations of African-Americans in classical Hollywood films? How does the subsequent repurposing of these films in ancillary venues complicate its (and audiences’) relationship to the “original” text? How do issues such as the larger political climates in America, personal, public and commercial forms of nostalgia, and affective formations, play in further problematizing these questions? More specifically, in what ways do a powerful media institution (Disney) and its considerable, shifting, set of audiences play a sometimes mutual role in embracing, ignoring and exploiting the continuing presence of its racist past?

Embodying a wide range of contexts central to understanding these important but largely unanswered questions, Song of the South is an important text to consider not merely because of its fascinatingly unfortunate cult status as a notoriously racist film at the heart of a particularly image-conscious entertainment empire. Disney’s film has also appeared prominently both in moments of technological change and media platform transitions and in periods of cultural upheaval and racial tension. As older Hollywood films migrated—all or in part—across newer media and ancillary market channels, Disney repeatedly returned to Song of the South as a source for revenue and repurposed material despite its troubled origins and problematic history. Alternately, the film’s theatrical appearances over the last several decades always closely reflected white America’s racial consciousness, and lack thereof. Not surprisingly, then, fragments of the old Brer Rabbit film still exist in a variety of forms to this day. At a time when the future-oriented, vaguely utopian, logic of both convergence culture and post-racial whiteness suggest, even at times insist, that audiences forget the larger history of media practices underlining both, A Frown Upside Down instead seeks to illuminate the powerful ways in which the history of media convergence has alternatingly intensified, shifted and dissipated representations of racism and constructions of whiteness.

A Frown Upside Down

2011-02-18T06:22:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to announce that my manuscript, tentatively A Frown Upside Down / Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Disney's Song of the South, has been accepted at the University of Texas Press. I have a few more important revisions ahead, but the entire final manuscript and images will be due to the press in June. Thus, it should be in print within a year or so.

I'm very proud to be working with Texas--in addition to their long commitment to books on Critical Race Studies and on Disney, they also published one of my old IU committee members' books, Christopher Anderson's Hollywood TV, which includes a chapter that is for my money the best thing ever written on the original Disneyland television program, and arguably one of the key foundational texts in TV studies.

My book will be an illuminating and often troubling historical narrative about America in the latter half of the 20th Century, focused specifically on the ways in which media audiences and producers negotiated the resiliency of racist imagery across multiple platform shifts (film, television, books, records, internet, home video technologies) and racial climates (post-WWII Civil Rights movement, the White Backlash, "post-race" Reaganism). It also offers a distinctive history of the Disney Company, thinking about how crucial seemingly secondary markets, such as re-releases and the ancillary revenue channels, dating back to the 1920s, were to Disney's overall success, as well as the post-1950s reinvention of the Disney brand. It is "about" Song of the South only to the extent that particularly striking moments of reappearance--this film's disturbing resiliency throughout the Disney media empire that continues to this day--speak to the core of such larger industrial, cultural and historical reception issues (though it is also by far the most comprehensive and accurate account of the film's too often distorted distribution and reception history).

The idea began as far back as 2002, so its been a long time coming. The bulk of it was written, of course, as my dissertation from Indiana University, on which I worked from approximately 2007 until my defense in Dec. of 2009, under the guidance of my adviser Barb Klinger and committee members Christopher Anderson, Purnima Bose, Karen Bowdre and Joan Hawkins. In late spring, early summer, of 2010, I revised it quite a bit more, before turning to the Anderson project (I think I'll blog in more detail about the actual brainstorm and writing process when the final version is submitted). I first submitted the proposal to Texas in September and by November the full manuscript was being evaluated and sent out to readers. In retrospect, this process was relatively quick (especially compared to some past experiences).

I really didn't think it would take over five years before I'd publish another book. The last few years have been sobering. Partly because I didn't have perspective on the whole thing--how truly hard it is to publish a book--and partly because I've been working and writing non-stop since then. At one point in 2007, even, I had the option to publish another manuscript at one press (I had even signed the contract), but I pulled out at the last minute because everything about that situation didn't feel right. I'm glad my writing career has worked out this way. I'm finally putting something out there that I am both truly proud of, and that I believe accurately reflects my scholarly interests at this point in my career.

I might blog more about the ideas in A Frown Upside Down in the next few months, since I'll be spending a lot of time thinking through how to say what it is I'm saying. The key revision will be a largely new introduction, which I am excited to write. The bulk of the manuscript itself is strong--with one exception, I love every chapter on its own. But its been tough in a variety of environments selling the overall points I'm making, and so it will take some time to make sure I finally get it right.

peace,
js

Film Criticism Book Reviews

2011-02-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

From Harry Kloman, Book Reviews Editor:

Film Criticism, the tri-quarterly film journal, is now soliciting reviews for its upcoming 2011-12 volume year. These reviews will appear in the Fall 2011, Winter 2011-12 and Spring 2012 edition.

Below is a list of books we have on our shelf now that we'd like to see reviewed. If you're interested in reviewing one of them, please let me know.

OR: If there's a 2010 or 2011 book out that you'd like to review, let me know and I'll see if I can get a copy sent to you from the publisher.

I'll wait a week or so to see who would like to do what and then make some decisions about how to dole things out. If possible, give me your top three in order.

Reviews for the Fall 2011 issue must be in to me by JULY 1, 2011. I'll set slightly later deadlines for reviews that are more likely to run in the subsequent two issues of the year. Reviews should be about 1,200 words long.

OK, here's the list:

- Chion, Film, A Sound Art (Columbia)

- Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War (Princeton)

- Loshitzky, Screening Strangers: Immigration and Diaspora in
Contemporary European Cinema (Indiana)

- Columpar, Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film (SIU)

- Miller, Soviet Cinema (Tauris)

- Amaya, Screening Cuba (Illinois)

- Galt and Schoonover, Global Art Cinema (Oxford)

- Todd Berliner, Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema.
Texas UP, 2010.

If Interested, contact Harry: kloman [at] pitt.edu

Strangers in Our Own Land

2011-02-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

As I first developed in a book on the reception and transmedia histories of Disney’s racist Song of the South (1946), my research interests focus on the ways in which audience formations and industrial practices inform the historical reception of populist 20^th Century American media, with particular attention to the cultural politics of racial identity, affect and nostalgia. My current project, Strangers in Our Own Land: Images of Hawai’i, Racial Utopia, and Leisure Culture in American Media, 1935-1970, will involve constructing a historical narrative of media representations of Hawai’i during this period, focusing closely on how the military presence, industrial promotional strategies, and mediated images of racial identity and consumerist nostalgia served as key reading strategies for a wide range of mainland audiences through the decades.

My dissertation, A Frown Upside Down/ The Affective, Cultural and Convergence Histories of Disney’s Song of the South, originally set out to document how “convergence culture” has a longer and more ambivalent history than often suggested. This research used the fascinating and disturbing history of Disney’s most notorious film to explore how media audiences and industries negotiated the persistence of offensive racial representations through decades of participatory culture, careful repurposing and shifting cultural politics.

First released in 1946, Song is most famous today for its Oscar-winning song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Although it broke modest technological ground for mixing live-action and animation, the film was rejected by critics and audiences for its anachronistic post-WWII representations of idyllic Southern plantations and subservient African-Americans. Yet Disney continued to re-release the film periodically until 1986, while also heavily repurposing the transmediated property—children’s books, television episodes, records, VHS tapes, theme park rides and so forth. Thus, Song’s cult following intensified during the US’s “White Backlash” in the late 1960s and 1970s, and Reaganism in the 1980s, becoming a huge box office draw late in its recirculation. Today, Song maintains a small, passionate, fan base online, despite Disney’s own refusal to re-release it to theatres, or on domestic home video formats, for over twenty years. My dissertation offered a specific history of how participatory culture, transmedia platforms and industrial shifts played a key role in the interaction with, resistance to, or complicity in, the ugly resilience of racist imagery in American media.

Continuing this interest in the cultural politics of populist 20^th Century American media, my next project focuses on images of Hawai’i from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s. During this period, Hawai’i’s symbolic role in US films, books, and television shows, spoke to a powerful set of historical and cultural issues, for a specific generation of American audiences, and which incorporated, transcended, and even contradicted, the islands’ assumed role as an image of escapism. Strangers in Our Own Land will document Hawai’i’s popularity with mainland audiences through the analytical lens involving several interrelated contexts: representations of the islands pre- and post-Statehood; the practices of companies such as Dole Pineapple, United Airlines and others invested in tourist promotion of Hawai’i; images and memories of US combat and military life in the Pacific; complicated attitudes towards understanding native Hawaiian history; alternating narratives of racial tension and utopia; and the promotion and modeling of an emergent middle-class leisure culture.

Beginning with the construction of an emergent leisure culture in films such as Waikiki Wedding and Honolulu in the late 1930s, followed by the mediation of WWII and its institutionalized legacy through the 1940s and 1950s (From Here to Eternity), and culminating in the islands’ remarkable popularity in the 1960s (Elvis films and albums, Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, CBS’s original Hawaii Five-O, James Michener’s Hawaii), Hawai’i maintained a prominent and distinctive place in the American media during the mid-20^th Century, which has yet to be explored. My emphasis on how audiences and American media negotiated representations of nostalgia, leisure and war will complement the historical work done in such books as Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist: A Theory of the Leisure Class (California, 1999), Jane Desmond’s Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago, 2001), Judy Rohrer’s Haoles in Hawai’i (Hawaii, 2010) and Brian Ireland’s The US Military in Hawai’i (Palgrave, 2011). The focus will be a historical-materialist reception study that examines audience responses through various periodicals and cultural contexts—with particular attention to how these texts and audiences negotiated issues of consumerism, memory and nostalgia, race and the construction of whiteness, and the imperialist presence of US military and industry in Hawai’i.

So much of Hawai’i’s popularity stems initially from America’s participation in WWII, as well as conflicts in Korea and Southeast Asia. Numerous titles—Operation Bikini (1963), From Here to Eternity (1953), In Harm’s Way (1961)—situated images of Hawai’i in relation to combat. While many of these texts reinforced a imperialist impulse, the texts themselves negotiated representations and memories of the US’s participation in Pacific combat in sometimes ambivalent ways. Yet, even before Pearl Harbor, the plantation owners and white civilian elites in Hawai’i were dedicated to rebranding the territory from sugar industries to a major tourism destination. Thus, a second context is the industrial history of the Islands’ promotion, and the emergence of Hawai’i in relation to an American leisure culture, rooted in part in a post-war middle class and the sudden availability of affordable airfare.

Finally, a particularly crucial theme is the representation of inter-racial relationships in these texts. Despite a disturbing history of US colonialism and racial tension (such as the Massey Murder in 1931), Hawai’i’s image historically was a place which embraced multiculturalism and racial diversity outside the prejudices of the mainland. This symbolism became re-appropriated in media of the late 1950s and 1960s as a metaphor for the mainland’s own negotiation of racial politics during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

Blossoms & Blood

2011-01-22T07:33:00.000-08:00

This morning I finished the last of my revisions on the Paul Thomas Anderson manuscript. I added quite a bit to the Magnolia chapter that I had always wanted to get back to, but had set aside in November because I needed a break from that piece (namely, I wanted to flesh out Aimee Mann's role more and reflect on information in the Video Diary). Yesterday, I added a lot of material to the chapter of There Will Be Blood, a few basic points of textual analysis that I had overlooked in the initial mapping of the chapter.

At this point, there will not be any more revisions for the time being. Down the road, as my own perspective shifts, and as other viewpoints enter the process, I will be open to revisions again. But for now I will just concentrate on proofreading, when time permits (!), until the entire manuscript is requested.

In all, it turned out to be about 111K and 358 pages. The introduction is quite long, but I am not sure what can be cut, despite constantly returning to it with that goal in mind. The chapter on Magnolia ended up about as long (approx. 45 pages) as the chapter on his first movie, Hard Eight (despite twice as long the running time). Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love were both a robust 50 some pages. The chapter on There Will Be Blood, finally, turned into a real beast, well over 60 pages long. Much of the material covers the production and critical reception of the films, more so than my own textual interpretations. Though there's some of that as well, its about as different in its historical approach from the heavily theoretical Kubrick book as it could possibly be.

I want to set it aside, but I know I'll also want to keep tinkering with it until someone finally takes it off my hands. Luckily, I am knee-deep in my teaching this quarter, among other things, so I have plenty to keep me focused elsewhere.

On that note, too, stay tuned--I expect to make a very big announcement next month.

Monthly Progress

2011-01-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

Today I finished a complete draft of the last chapter, on There Will Be Blood, meaning that essentially I have completed a complete draft of my book on Anderson, tentatively titled Blossoms & Blood (I will rewrite the chapters a bit in the next month or so, and I keep going back and forth on whether or not I want to include a conclusion, but it is largely finished).

After a month of reading everything I could find on the subject, I started writing the manuscript in mid-August. For about a month or so in October and into early November, I started to hit a wall for a number of reasons, but otherwise I've been pretty focused on it the whole time. When everything really is done, I'll take some more time to reflect on that process, which in a way really stretches as far back as 2003.

I'll probably start sending out proposals in Feb (partly to have time to revise and partly with the hopes of being to include some good news on the dissertation in the meantime). Along those lines, one may have noticed that I've pulled a lot of the content off the blog for both Blossoms and A Frown--I fully intend to start bringing both those projects to an end in the next few months, with the expectation that by summer I will be back to my massive Hawai'i project.

The whole thing is about 106K words, which is only about 4 off of the final draft of A Frown Upside Down. I'd like to say its near time for a break, but I know that once I finish this for good, it will probably be time for a few more last minute revisions of A Frown Upside Down, and then . . . . wait for it . . . . back to Haunted Nerves. I am nothing if not persistent.

Companions

2010-12-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

While waiting over a year for There Will Be Blood to find funding, Anderson went off in the summer of 2005 to work with another friend, as well as a major professional influence, the ailing Robert Altman—who was in the process of beginning to shot what would prove to be his final film, Prairie Home Companion, at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. By this point, Anderson had been friends with Altman for nearly a decade—“but,” he said, “I had gotten to know him particularly well in the last three or four years.” Once such instance included Anderson screening Punch-Drunk Love privately for the elder director, hoping that—among other things—he would be pleasantly surprised by the film’s unlikely musical reference to Popeye (1981).

On the set of Prairie Home Companion, meanwhile, Anderson was the standby director, an insurance mandated requirement that he be ready to take over the production in case the 80-plus year old Altman died midway through. Anderson didn’t pass up the chance: “Any hesitation? None. None at all, because I knew he wasn’t going to die." It was not the first time on an Altman movie for such an arrangement—Stephen Frears had served in an identical capacity during the shooting of Gosford Park (2002) four years earlier. Frears and Anderson were “being very generous, I think,” Altman said then, “to take their time to support my project.” But, the honor, of course, was all theirs.

Prairie Home Companion was an adaptation of Garrison Keillor’s famous radio program of the same name, which had been broadcast out of St. Paul in various guises since the 1970s. The public radio version of Prairie Home Companion is a folksy two-hour variety show, hosted by Keillor, that features light humor comedy skits and various musical acts, every Saturday evening. For the film version, Keillor wrote the adaptation and starred in it as himself (along with many of the program’s regular contributors). As with every Altman film, though, the dialogue was also, of course, in large measure improvised on set.

To fill out the cast, Altman brought back old regulars like Lily Tomlin, while also attracting a host of other major stars for the rich ensemble—Kevin Kline, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Virginia Madsen and Meryl Streep. Anderson’s old friend, John C. Reilly, and his live-in girlfriend, Saturday Night Live star, Maya Rudolph (who was several months pregnant during the shoot with Anderson’s first child), also had small parts in the movie.

Prairie Home Companion is more or less a soft-spoken but deeply moving depiction of a night in the life in and around a typical show radio broadcast, while also capturing the show’s pastiche historical image of a mid-20th Century populist media culture (equal parts country music and film noir). The only major plot change to the storyline was to set Prairie Home Companion on the fictional night of the program’s last broadcast, after an unnamed corporation from Texas buys it out and decides to shut it down for the sake of profit (in real life, the show is still running).

That said, there really isn’t a plot per se—in classic Altman fashion, the camera seems to meander around the Fitzgerald Theatre, capturing conversations, wandering actors, musical acts and other performances, as the moment comes and goes. Although it is not a direct adaptation of the program’s content (as much of the film reflexively explores the fictional theatrical life behind the curtain as in front of it), Prairie Home Companion does, like the show itself, capture ephemeral moments of whimsy—on and off the stage—as they pass.

While unquestionably an accomplished filmmaker on his own by then, Anderson no doubt still picked up a bit more by watching Altman work on the set. Ultimately, the influence had less to do with how Altman constructed his distinctive cinematic look—the long takes, the zooms, the overlapping dialogue, and so forth—and more to do with Altman’s on-set demeanor. The influence, Anderson said later, wasn’t “the films themselves. It’s him and the way in which he made films." On the set of Prairie Home Companion, Altman conceded a healthy amount of artistic liberty to his cast and crew, trusting that the professionals around him would do their jobs and—within that sometimes chaotic work environment—there would emerge fleeting moments of artistic beauty.

Kline, meanwhile, put Altman’s style slightly differently: “it’s trust [in cast and crew]. It’s a willingness not to control, to let things happen that you didn’t plan.” Looking back, Anderson took away from the experience a renewed appreciation for the collaborative spirit in which the legendary auteur worked. The cast and crew, he said in early 2008, “really made the film with Bob. How he did that was a lesson to me." Altman understood the important of surrounding one’s self with the best talent, and trusting their instincts.

Principal photography on Prairie Home Companion was a relatively quick, but also at times intensely emotional, experience—primarily because nearly everyone involved recognized that it might well prove to be Altman’s last film. This personal realization came into particular relief for everybody at the very end. On the last day of production, the cast and crew shot what ended up being the second-to-last scene in the film—Guy Noir (Kline’s character) playing a piano, while the Fitzgerald Theatre was being taken apart all around him, on the morning after the show’s last broadcast. Anderson recalled the experience:

[Altman] had a Starbucks coffee in his hand and his coat was zipped up because it was cold in there and he had his glasses on. He was staring at the monitor and he just looked really sad that it was ending. I think we only did the shot twice. I remember sitting there thinking, “Fuck, do it again, do it . . . do more, do more.” I wanted to do more—not ‘cause it wasn’t good, but I wanted to keep shooting.

Ironically, principal photography wrapped ahead of schedule in September of 2005. Always the professional, Altman finished production when the work was done, and didn’t draw it out for days or weeks just to prolong the experience of making a movie. Prairie Home Companion would indeed turn out to be his last film (although he did work on a play in London the following spring). What followed, however, was perhaps one of his career highlights—in March of 2006, Altman finally received an Oscar, not for the film, but an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Later, Prairie Home Companion was released in the summer of 2006 to mild business and favorable, but not overwhelming, reviews—but it wasn’t a film that was trying to be a masterpiece. Rather, Altman’s last film was a much more small-scale, passive mediation on something which largely went unsaid.

Like the radio program it was adapted from, Prairie Home Companion was a melancholic, nostalgic affair. But what Altman, along with Keillor, managed to draw out in the process of adaptation was the spectre of death, the fear of mortality, which underlines most all forms of nostalgia. On the surface, Prairie Home Companion is harmless, light entertainment—but between the cracks was also the question of something much more tragic.

In addition to being about the program’s last performance, Prairie Home Companion is also allegorically about the passing of one medium (radio) and of the era in which it was a dominant form of mass communication. Meanwhile, the theatre is quietly stalked by an angel of death (played by Madsen) who appears periodically and mysteriously to serve as a companion who guides characters on their journeys to the next life beyond.

When she ambiguously appears again at the very end of the film, it is unclear for whom she had come. But, symbolically, it is clear that she has come for Altman himself—particularly as she walks straight into the camera in one of the film’s final images. In October of 2006, Altman looked back on the film:

I didn’t get it until we got to the end. I mean, if at any time in the shooting of this, someone had said, “What is this about?” I could not have said, “This is about death.” Now, in retrospect, I can say this is about death because everyone is avoiding saying that. But that’s what it’s about.

But—in stark contrast to the rage and contempt for the world that barely suppressed itself beneath the cool, detached surfaces of such Altman classics as M*A*S*H (1970), Nashville (1975) or The Player (1992), the melancholic nature of Prairie Home Companion also revealed a quiet, even loving, resignation to the inevitably of time’s passing—a final elegiac acceptance of death, rather than its angry, or even just ironic, resistance. A month later, meanwhile, Altman had passed away, and Anderson, well into post-production on his own film by then, eventually dedicated There Will Be Blood to his old mentor.