Criminals, killers and psychopaths, all amoral characters which are responsible for many of our nightmares and have been the cause of social panic for decades. Many of these characters have also become the subject of many mainstream commercial films and have since become embedded in popular culture, more specifically postmodern media. These films tend to be generated from the “Horror” genre, or if a studio wishes to broaden their potential demographic a ‘Psychological thriller’. You can also find references in: comics, novels, merchandising, clothes, and even modern art.
Why in a post-modern culture, do filmmakers and artists manipulate these characters into their work? Why do we as consumers feel that it is appropriate? How long is it before we feel it is okay to present these horrific events in a medium like film? Many of these filmmakers could easily be blamed for exploiting these people and victims for profit and self justification.
(1)“It seems to be the tendency of much postmodernist media criticism to remove itself from the activity of society, the real world, to focus lived experience solely as text and discourse.
Such an approach is often considered as cynical, “academic” in the worst sense (irrelevant to public debate and public concern) and a particularly amoral stance when the subject becomes something as charged as the omnipresence of violence in American life” - Christopher Sharrett, Mythologies in post modern media. 1999.
Violence is something that has always been exploited as a means of entertainment. Ancient Romans are a perfect example, the games being held at the Coliseum(s) and other purpose built structures for the paying public (of many classes), where children were also allowed into, to watch the mutilation of human and beast. Each of these resulted in an actual death and dismemberment for most of the “entertainers” involved. It became more important that it didn’t finish without a death, attempting to brand this as a ‘sport’.
The Bible a basis for morality and decency, is itself an incredibly violent and dark work of fiction, although you could argue that many who live by its teachings would not perceive it as such. People do tend to forget how scary and horrific it actually is.
Ed Gein.
Arguably in the last century, there has been more attention being paid to violent crime through all media, most notably in cinematic work post 1950’s. In my opinion this was due to the much-publicized murders of Ed Gein. He may not be the most prolific or even the most famous but his crimes have been adapted and re-created many times, people now may not recognize the source material and from where it came.
Ed Gein was a simple ‘handy-man’ who lived on his family farm just outside Plainfield, Wisconsin. A small town, which at the time these crimes were committed, had an estimated population of 700 people. Gein was initially arrested in 1957 for the murder of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store worker; upon searching his property police discovered her corpse and remains of Mary Hogan, a bartender who had been reported missing. Remains of several other bodies were found, what was more shocking was what Gein had used them for.
Body found in Gein's home.
Human remains were used for upholstery for furniture, ornaments and masks, all made from the skin of bodies, which he had exhumed from neighboring cemeteries, these were just some of the macabre items that were found at Gein’s home.
He was arrested and confessed to both murders eventually being deemed “unfit for trial by reason of insanity” 1968, he was committed to a mental institute where he remained until he died in 1984.
Gein was arguably one of the first individuals to not only affect mainstream Hollywood cinema, but at this time McCarthyism was rife, to be an American was to be part of a wholesome family; moral, upstanding, contributing to the economy by consuming only the best, being religious attending church, anything that would convey the ideal of ‘perfection’.
This image had many an irony especially when it came to media and advertising. This advertisement shows George Reeves playing Clark Kent aka: - Superman with Jack Larson playing “Jimmy Olsen”. This commercial shows the two enjoying a bowl of cereal together at the breakfast table. Noel Neil who portrayed Lois lane at the time was kept out of the advert as producers reportedly had trouble with the idea of the audience seeing Lois and Clark eating breakfast together, which lead to them de-sexualising the on screen couple in fear of what that image would or could imply. Although at the time the irony of two grown men sat at a breakfast table together first thing in the morning may have been lost on some people.
Even more ironic was the reports of Gein’s murders were probably more circulated and widespread because more and more Americans had televisions in their homes as well as a high circulation of newspapers.
Many psychiatrists have theorized that Gein’s psychosis had stemmed from the apparent abuse of his mother she was intent on teaching Ed and his brother the sins of women the horrors of sex and consequences of not worshipping god.
She was reported to be a very religious and an overbearing character that had nothing but disdain for the world that she and her boys lived in. As a result Ed had very little contact with the outside world, it was only when his mother passed away that he ventured outside, Psychologist say that Gein could have been so consumed by loneliness and resentment coupled with an inability to socially interact with anyone that this truly allowed his psychosis to surface and take over completely.
Maybe you could say that this incident was itself indicative of the horrors of repression, the suffocation of our own instincts. I don’t think that it is sheer coincidence that after these events followed by the Vietnam war and Watergate Scandal, the notion of a “perfect” utopian America was crushed.
(2) “The Hyper violence of the post 1960’s cinema seems to have flowed logically from this attitude and from the barbarism of the Vietnam War the political assassination of the 1960’s, the scrapping of the social contract at Watergate.” - Christopher Sharrett, Mythologies in post modern media. 1999.
The first instance of Gein’s story being adapted was in “Psycho” (Dir. A. Hitchcock, 1960) adapted from the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch)).
This told the story of Marion Crane who makes a stop at a motel ran by Norman Bates. Unfortunately he turns out to be a violent killer, his mind twisted by the voice of his dead mother playing over in his head. The film certainly adapts element of Gein’s history although it certainly wasn’t as overtly gruesome as later films. Incidentally the main deviation from the book was the character of Norman himself, in the book he was an older unattractive man. What Hitchcock cleverly did was to present him to the viewer as an all American male. Tall, good looking, polite, a man who clearly loved his mother. This may be seen as an intentional act to communicate to the audience that Norman could be any one of us in society.
(3) “Psycho explores the varieties of middle class entrapment following their troubled protagonists as they negotiate a terrain configured by the interlinked authority structures: - psychic, familial, social, sexual that endanger pleasure and freedom” :- Richard H. Millington Hitchcock’s America 1999.
“Psycho” itself has become one of the most important films of all time and it was also the start of a revolution in “horror” filmmaking.
It has been parodied many times most notably in The Simpsons.
This it-self is interesting in the sense that children can watch The Simpsons and even watching those scenes they do not realise where the original source came from. To me this is a perfect example of post modernism, creating a parody resulting from appropriation.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (Dir. T. Hooper. 1974) is notorious for its tagline
“What happened is true. Now the motion picture is just as real”.
Curiously enough it took the more visceral elements of the Ed Gein story (the upholstery, the skin wearing etc) and to place them into the story of a cannibalistic family living in the heart of Texas, torturing and slaying unlucky passers’ by. The most iconic character is of course, “Leatherface” a man who uses human remains to decorate himself and his house. His actions, although despicable, are the actions of a sociopath and a damaged mind not the actions of someone with any particular motivation. These traits were very much those of Gein, so it could be argued that “Leatherface” is the closest adaption of Gein.
It has not only become a much-loved film amongst independent filmmakers but also a horror masterpiece. It was at the time of its release, considered “immoral” and evil and was banned by the BBFC for over twenty years. You could argue that due to its exploitative nature it deserved its treatment.
It’s not just Film that deals with real life monsters. Art and music have also commented on the deeds of evil people. In fact, many facets of society appropriate images of evil and wear them, as a symbol The Pink Triangle is a great example. In world war two Homosexual males, when being led into concentration camps, were branded with a pink triangle next to their numbers to denote their sexuality. Along with women who were branded with the black triangle, die to them not conforming to the ideals of the Nazi regime. Nowadays the gay rights community uses them to symbolize their rights they have to fight for. Re-merchandising a weak symbol, this becomes a symbol of power and community.
Horror merchandise has become a subculture in its own right. You can buy mugs with the faces of serial killers emblazoned on them. In music, heavy metal bands have long used real life horror stories as the basis for their lyrics, sometimes purposefully presenting a tongue in cheek slant within their songs.
"Myra" by Marcus Harvey.
People may ask why artists choose to use these horrific events as the basis for their art, other than to shock and appall. I think to inject humor to retell these events and re-address these events and to push them into the public eye serves to both make people aware and to strip these horrors of their power to allow us to accept that they happen and as people we all have the ability to commit acts of evil, but in the end we all have the choice not to do so.
Christian Metz was a french film theorist who was known for trying to make connections between cinema and Sigmund Freud's psychology as well as Lacan's mirror theory. The way he saw film was that it has become a language, because of the films that have told stories which have now become narrative conventions, we as individuals understand these conventions as primers if you will, something that is presented on screen is instantly labelled in our heads, for example a shoe, on screen is always going to be just that, an object we all know and understand, but in most other languages, there is a different word for that object. You could play someone form another country an English speaking film without subtitles and they could know the narrative of that story, basically enough, through images, the words are not important, in fact if you say "bird" to one person, it might drum up a totally different image in someone Else's head. It has been suggested that there are only seven true plot lines in existence, so every movie, no matter, how original they seem to be, will somehow fall into one of those seven stories. Which in fact makes it easier for everyone to understand the supposed "language" of film. It's interesting to note that , if you read a book, your imagination does the work, in film it possibly can't, in these terms film is a fixed medium, which maybe a reason why many adaptions from book to film do not go unscathed by criticism. Many people say that the more you move something further away from it's source material the more it suffers., but in some cases, is that because many people have that film in their heads because they've read the book, their ideas will not necessarily end up on screen , because only the perspective of those involved in the making of the film will maybe get to see what's in their heads put on screen.It's interesting that many films have to deviate from the original novel and to create a cinematic narrative, characters can be changed or removed entirely, large portions of the novel can end up being re arranged and replaced, expanded and reduced for a cinema audience, in fact to film a book page by page would be impossible, simply because linear time is not relevant in a novel, in a film you have only a certain amount of time to tell the story, or one of the seven.In fact when mining for new stories to adapt, some films simply take story threads from author's works Philip K. Dick and James Elroy are two prime examples. Usually a movie based on a Dick story features the tag line "inspired by..." or "based on..."
Film can mean anything to us, we can choose to put as much meaning and information in it as we want to,if we choose to analyse a film, other than the technical and visual aspects we must consider the author themselves, what they maybe trying to say with their work and what context it is in, films are always a product of their time and what the people involved have experienced in the world around them whist making it.Our interpretations may differ from everyone else;s but a film maker in one way or another is communicating and commenting on their environment, culture, political climate, other media and the general state of the world. the best examples of this is when different filmmakers cover similar themes in different time periods, through this you can see how different these films are, in their visual and technical states but also in terms of mood , pacing, sound and themes. These two clips being a very appropriate example of how two completely different films can be made from the same source material in two different times.
I could literally go on about this subject for ages, i really feel that this the very core of theory of film and why it remains a very subjective subject, that anyone can put them selves into whether they are the viewer or the author.Don't worry i will be revisiting this topic at a later date!. Don't fall asleep!
This is a picture of a train travelling between Teignmouth and Dawlish, these towns are very significant for me, as they are the first towns that i lived in. They're dirty, rough, plagued by a failing tourist industry, yet as a child i felt differently. These were the places i made friends, the places i took my first tentative steps, the places i first fell over in the street, anyway you get the point. It has been said that "home" is a point of departure, for me that means, whatever i have seen, experienced and lived through, this place will always be home, for all it's faults and it's fairly non - descript setting it will always hold some sort of significance.To me this is very definition of "place" somewhere that has a very specific meaning and historical significance to it. it represents my "roots" if you will. even so i do challenge the theory of "non place" in the sense that non places describes areas of transience i.e. ; airports, subways, shopping centres etc. but i almost feel like Dawlish train station is part of my home, yes the urine soaked, grey, damp, station where crazy hobos dwell and train arrive when they want to, it's a strange idea that something like this is something that you can regard as "home".
It's interesting to think that as people with actual homes that we retire to regularly, how a homeless person makes that choice or even if they can. I can't imagine how it must feel to think of your home, your point of departure , to where you are now, if you don't have one. De Certeau said " space is a practised place, what we do in it give it it's significance.". This is certainly true if you think about how, subways and stations are seemingly non threatening during the day, they serve their said purpose, yet in the evening, the minute, you see people there that aren't usually there, passing through or hanging around in groups, the place seems to take on a more ominous atmosphere, simply because it's being used for something other than what it's meant for.
Marc Auge talks about the theory of "super modernity" which i mentioned in an earlier blog, and maybe that gives an explanation as to why as a society our definitions of home are changing. i.e. the world is getting more populated, cities are getting bigger and stretching out wider. We're being slowly consumed by cashpoints, b billboards, franchise restaurants, shopping centres etc, they are meeting the needs of the consumer in us all, "supply and demand" is very much part of the lexicon of modern living, we're willing to let those that supply take up more space, appropriate the land that we once knew as home to make space for more advertisements, more buildings that are there to facilitate the research that decides what we "need" as consumers. I always like to say that as the unique character that we imbue into the places we call home slowly fades away as office spaces grow larger, McDonald's spreads wider and shopping centres have more air conditioning we will lose our ability to know what "home " really is, the space that we call our gets smaller, our back door is slowly becoming everyone's back door. Just like everyone else i let this happen, it shows that i saw a train station as part of my home, where my parents saw the villages they grew up in, the fields they played in homes, spot the difference?, What in the name of Bill Murray are my children going to recognise as home?. It's a scary thought, this is why people hang around where they're not supposed to, because In a world that is meant to meet their needs and give them what they want, they have no place to go. It's scary that you can watch a work of fiction like Blade Runner and what you see is in the city scenes is becoming a very strong reality.
We've been taught about the difference between seeing and looking and how that theory is interpreted in cinema and other forms of art/ media, after attending these lectures i could'nt help but realise how much we are bombarded by images, muisc, advertisments every day, the journey to college in the morning is filled with enough stimulants to make you want to spend your birthday in an sensory deprivation tank on your birthday!.
What do we make of of all these things?, well it's up to us to ignore them , it's up to us to interpret them as we will. Our contextual lecturer asked , when you see a picture of a dog you think dog but you say "chein", you don't know what to think, In fact the word dog is both a verb and a noun and has many different expressions such as " he's such a dog!", which i imagine means ugly, which means seeing as many people have shouted this at me in the street before, i may need a makeover. If you want to get desperately serious think about the idea about have different cultures see the character of father christmas?, every culture feeds their personal identity into this icon therefore our idea of santa is different to Spain . the point being that every individual sees the world differently.
How do we feel when we are being looked at , when we are the ones being watched. I always think it is interesting consideing that we are monitored by CCTV evryday in all areas, yet the idea of us being spied on through a wall whilst we're in the shower makes us very uncomfortable, i still can't pee in front of people in public toilets, unless i'm really desperate. George Orwell warned us about the horror of surviellance, the trappings of a social order closing in on you, for example, we are being monitored all the time, we're assured it's for our safety for our comfort, but how much safer are we truely, with everything that we touch generating some kind of fingerprint are we actually ever turely safe?
The Anthropologist Marc Auge stated
“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity,
then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned
with identity will be a non-place . . . supermodernity produces non-places".
What he was saying is that as the world is getting smaller and smaller as cities and civilisation gets bigger, CCTV and barcodes have made our lives more confined in a sense, we can never truely escape, yet we all live our lives being watched by something we cannot put a face to, even though we, as people have conditioned our selves to not look at each other for too long just in case we make each other uncomfortable. Many films and writers have written about watching and being watched the difference between the two, filmakers look at the meaning of looking, the discourse if you will and how our perceptions govern our world, in essence, the power of the watcher is like anything, it has good and bad applications, it depends who's controlling. To finish off this post, lets talk about something more positive My Girlfriend made a very good observation about the theory of "seeing " is different than "looking" and she used the film American Beauty ( 1999. Dir. S. Mendes) as a good example
.Ricky Fitts: I was filming this dead bird. Angela Hayes: Why? Ricky Fitts: Because it's beautiful.
Seeing is a function, Looking is an ability which implies a greater sense of purpose, this film strives to show that we, as people, rarely actually "look" at anything.
For my example of a post-modern film I have decided to write about Mulholland Drive (Dir David Lynch. 2001).
It tells the story of “Rita” and Betty two women who become deeply involved with each other after Rita is found in Betty’s home with no memory of who she is or how she got thereFrom the beginning we are led to assume that Rita is a successful actress and Betty is aspiring to be one.
This story is played out against the backdrop of Hollywood, the film business and the strange characters that litter this world, this results in several vignettes featuring these people working their way into the narrative.
We have a traumatised man in a diner plagued by nightmares, a film director threatened by the studio bosses to make his movie starring an actress that he has no intention of using.
A cowboy who cryptically warns the director to comply “or else”.
During the course of this movie, these people meet and interact at different points in the picture, as a viewer you are conditioned to believe that towards the end of the film you will know why all these characters have have been involved, hopefully filling in the narrative gaps, but the film never truly resolves itself.
This is where the idea of post- modernism comes in, in the sense that the film does not feature a linear timeline nor does it feature a definitive narrative, this, in a way, is a more subtle attempt than a film which goes for all out pop culture referencing i.e. Clerks (Dir Kevin Smith 1992).
The story gets even more impenetrable around half way through when the two main characters swap names and motivations or maybe not, depending on your opinion. At this point in the film another character that has appeared to have been living in Betty’s apartment for ages, is seen moving out never to be seen again, People we deem to possibly important to the story are seen once and never again. It appears at the end of the film you are left to try and piece together the various story threads and try and make sense of them and identify what they had to do with each other, In other mystery films,an object is sometimes given a tokenistic meaning in order to provide the necessary building blocks needed to piece the story together, in this case a blue box constantly appears in the film, but it is never divulged what it is doing there, what it contains or its importance to the narrative, frustratingly it does appear important to the characters and does makean appearance just before the two women swap names and it appears personalities.
Dream-like sequences permeate the fabric of the film, although these may not be dreams at all, only the lighting, the camera angles and the character interactions indicate that these scenes may be of a different “consciousness” than the others.
The film is a literal and Metaphorical deconstruction of the Mainstream film system; it also appears to a satire of Hollywood indictments itself. The overly antagonistic and mob like studio execs, disgusted by the poor espressos being served, screaming at the “hip” “tortured” Director.
Betty arriving in sunny, shiny L.A.Surrounded by constantly grinning cutesy older people wishing her success in her acting career. Betty’s first audition in which she wows’s the studio head and steals the scene from the lead actor, because after all, it’s that easy in Hollywood.
A Romantic relationship blossoms between the two women but it seems to be born out of loneliness and desperation rather than love and trust. This film eschews any idea of tradition unless it’s looked at as individual scenes, in which there does seem to always be an emotional truth of some kind.
I think the very definition of why this film is a good example of post modernism is in scene in the film where the two main characters are in a club called Silencio, the two women are watching a singer who is giving a very impassioned performance appearing to bear her very soul to the audience, it moves both the characters to the point of tears, almost like they have both witnessed a pure moment of fragility until the singer faints and falls to the floor, but her voice is still being heard over the speakers, until they realise that she was miming to a backing track. Shattered and broken, they are left to question their own perception of truth and meaning.
Hello folks,
It's been awhile and i'm a lazy git to be honest, so let's crack on!. Over Christmas, i have discovered that for some reason i have lost all my notes from the first term of contextual studies, so i am going to endevour to write it all again, but on this blog page for all of you to read * insert whoops of joy here*.
Thankfully all of the topics which have been covered can be found on the moodle page, so here's to starting from scratch. My Timeline
One of the first things i was asked to do was to think about my past, what events have transpired throughout my lfe what has happened in the world whilst i was growing up?. I't s really interesting to think of the way art, fashion, film changed over the years i have been alive. Are our opinions and our notions influenced by the things around us?, almost certainly. I wonder how many times people have had to listen to me rant about how" music was music when i was growing up, not like the crap these kids are listening to." i never thought it would happen to me, but it did and it'll most likely happen to everyone.
We were asked to look at the year we were born and list some of the things that happened in the world, believe it or not some crazy things happened in 1981...
1. March 30 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John Hinckley, Jr. Two police officers and Press Secretary James Brady are also wounded.
plus these films were released this year...
Superman II
Raiders of The Lost Ark
Time Bandits
On Golden Pond
An American Werewolf in London.
Not too shabby really,also i would like to mention that one of my favourite bands Metallica formed this year, which is kind of poetic seeing as how i now play in a heavy metal band myself. Anyway i think that this is enough from me tonight, i shall be attempting to put together a timeline showing some of the memories i have from my life and show some of the key pieces of film and music that are still very important and influential to me today. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
Dan.http://youtu.be/f63CswacQjc http://youtu.be/anEuw8F8cpE
