EYECANDY FILM JOURNAL

VOL. 24

VOL. 2

BENEFACTORSFILM & DIGITAL MEDIASTUDENT UNTION ASSEMBLY
CORE COUNCIL
COLLEGE 8
COLLEGE 10
COWELL COLLEGE
CROWN COLLEGE
VOL.
24
KRESGECOLLEGEPORTER COLLEGESTEVENSON COLLEGE
PORTER FELLOWSHIPTHE NICKELODEON THEATRESTHANKS TO
L.S. KIMSUSAN WATROUS
TERE ALANIZANGELA ROSSI-STEELE© 2014. All rights revert to original
authors upon publication© 2013. All rights revert to original
authors upon publication

TAMRA SCHMIDTGRAY MATTER 7
A Fan’s Reconciliation with Breaking Bad

byMichelle Nakashima

A CASE OF 13
INFIDELITY

by
Freedom, Deviation, and Audience Alexa Olmos
Reception in Sherlock Holmes Adaptations

THE ART OF
REPULSIVESEXUAL 19
TENSIONCampion, Coppola, andthe State of Feminist
Filmmaking

by
Amanda Ross

FORGOTTEN
FUTURES 27
How the Past Failed
to Depict the Future

by
Zac Stein

THE AESTHETICIZED LIFE
Or, Confection, Commodification, andPrivilege in the Works of Wes Anderson

37

byDebra Bilodeau

THE SIGNIFICANCE OFSINGING AND DANCING
How Bollywood Films Have Bridged the
Binary Between Tradition and Modernity

44

byKianna Anvari

THE COLOR OF
CONTROVERSYBlue is the Warmest Color’s
Forgotten Love Story

51

byMichelle Woo

THE SERIOUSLY
ABSURD 57

The Dialogue Between Existentialism andJewish Comedy in A Serious Man

by
Jessie Janssen

SUSPENDED IN
SLACKERDOM

Reflections on Ennui, Generational
Anxiety, and the Fragile Unknown

65 by

Jon Vorpe

AmandaKianna

Amara

Debra

BrittanyEYECANDY STAFF
CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
Kianna Anvari
Jessie Janssen
Michelle Nakashima
Jon Vorpe
MAGAZINE DESIGN
Debra Bilodeau
Zach Finch
Robbie Hinson
Amanda Ross
WEB DESIGN
Alena McLucas
BLOG EDITORS
Kianna Anvari
Jon Vorpe
FACULTY ADVISOR
L.S. Kim
MARKETING
Jessica Singer
Zac Stein
Katie Stone
Brandon WhiteMichelle N.

FEATURE WRITERS
Kianna Anvari
Debra Bilodeau
Jessie Janssen
Michelle Nakashima
Alexa Olmos
Amanda Ross
Zac Stein
Jon Vorpe
Michelle Woo
BLOG WRITERS
Amara Channer
Brittany Edelman
Zach Finch
Alexa Olmos
Jessica Singer
Zac Stein
D.J. Wong
SOCIAL MEDIA
Robbie Hinson
Kevin Shea
Katie Stone
COPY EDITOR
Alexa Olmos

Alexa

OUR MISSION
EyeCandy Film Journal is an annually published, studentrun media studies collection. Our aim is to focus on
culturally relevant and compelling topics that expand ourrelationships with film, television, and new media forms.
We hope that our publication will motivate readers toengage with media in a more in-depth, critical, andcomplex fashion, and act as a platform for the UCSC
community to consider new and thoughtful perspectives
on visual culture.
EyeCandy provides writers with an opportunity tosynthesize interests in film and television studies. By
empowering students to further express their passions
in a hands-on and productive environment, they
are encouraged to cultivate their own critical andprofessional voices outside of the classroom.
The publication additionally provides an avenue thatconnects student discussion to the wider Santa Cruz
community, broadening a relationship we hope to foster
for the future.

Kevin

Jessica

Zac

Zach

RobbieJessieAlena

L.S. Kim

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Every year, a group of gifted media
enthusiasts gather in the Communications
building to discuss their passions for film,
television, digital media, and everything
in between. With guidance from a faculty
advisor, this team works each week to sustain
a long-standing student-run publication:
EyeCandy Film Journal.
This year, with help from the generous
Professor L.S. Kim, we were able to redesign
our website (eyecandy.ucsc.edu), sustaina series of web-based blogs, create a
promotional video, revamp our social media
presence, conceptualize the look and ethosof the magazine, and, at the core of thisproject, formulate complex essays for the
final printed edition of EyeCandy.

Anderson(ism), the future, lesbianism, andslackerdom, all written by students whowant to share their complex opinions on
media with others.
It’s been a privilege to work closely withthe sharp and talented people involved in
the process of developing this publication.
As we look forward to the coming yearsof EyeCandy, we hope that the ideas andconcepts explored in this edition continue
to be circulated throughout campus, indorm rooms, at the dining halls, in cafés,
anywhere you may find yourself paused,caught re-reading a sentence, or a word,
thinking through one of the essays, trying todecipher for yourself how it is you relate toour society’s media.

In the pages that follow, we explore
We worked hard to create a conversation,issues ranging from feminism, fandom, and we invite you to keep that conversation
adaptations, Bollywood, existentialism, Wes alive.

Katie

Bran-

D.J.

Michelle W.

GRAY MATTER

A Fan’s Reconciliation with Breaking Bad
by Michelle Nakashima“Were you awake around two in the anvil onto my chest. My rapidly intensifying
morning last night? I thought I heard you anxiety pulled me to my feet and compelledyelling. Who were you talking to?” My mom me to hysterically shout and gesticulate at mywas not wrong — I was awake then, and I was television.
yelling, but not at a person. I was watching“What are you waiting for? Why are you so
Breaking Bad. What she believed to be a heated stupid? Get out of there! For the love of God
late-night phone call was actually the seventh — MOVE!”
episode of the third season of the show. If you’ve
No other film or television show has driven
seen the show, you probably remember it: a me to such emotional or physical measures.
certain main character receives an anonymous Truthfully, there are few things besides mycall while sitting in his car. The distorted voice personal safety that will prompt a physicalon the other end of the line warns him, saying, reaction from me. Yet after the three times“Two men are coming to kill you. You have one I’ve rewatched Breaking Bad in its entirety, I
minute. They are coming.”
recognize that the show makes me feel as if
Although three years have passed since my personal safety really is in jeopardy. It is
I watched the scene for the first time, even a show singular in its ability to excite, distress,
writing the words now makes me shiver. After and shock.
the unknown caller hung up, each passing
I have no qualms in admitting how
second felt painful, as if Vince Gilligan himself profound of an effect the show has had on mywas standing over me and dropping anvil after perception of television and those who make it.

7Television has long been considered the inferioralternative to traditional cinema, but shows
like Breaking Bad prove that television canbe just as, if not more compelling, poignant,and valuable as film. Not only has Breaking
Bad raised the stakes for visual and narrative
quality in television, it has raised the stakes
for audiences as well, possibly in ways that thewriters did not intend.
Creator Vince Gilligan, the writing
team, and the network executives would
most likely not consider someone like me— a bi-racial, Asian American woman — asBreaking Bad’s most ardent fan, let alone theshow’s target demographic. Truthfully, muchof what I identify as is not included in thetarget demographics for any film or television8

program. Homer Simpson once said, “I’m awhite male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens tome – no matter how dumb my suggestionsare.” The ugly truth of mainstream media isthat whiteness and masculinity constitute thefoundation from which everything else grows.
The earliest popular television programs —Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, The
Honeymooners, and others — established theimage of the idealized white American family.
Now it’s a model that has been reiterated inmedia to the point where it’s the natural stateof being for characters, and anything different
is consequently defined and understood by
this difference. Breaking Bad may portray a
perverted image of the white American family,
but it is yet another image of a white Americanfamily nonetheless. At least Vince Gilligan was Walter’s world, ensuring that his family has
smart enough to notice this pattern and assign enough money to survive is not sufficient.
Walter White’s family an appropriate surname. “Being a man” extends beyond the realm of the
Breaking Bad can be considered a show that family and the familiar. In chronicling Walter’s
would strongly resonate with white males ages corrupt transformation into his alter-ego
18 to 49 due to the amount of attention and Heisenberg, the show demonstrates that his
consideration it places on Walter. It traces his toxic masculinity entails having control overjourney from an overqualified, under-paid high his own life as well as the lives of others:
school chemistry teacher to the greatest drug
“Say my name.”lord in the American Southwest. At the start of“I am the danger.”the show, Walter has a steady job, a home, and“I won.”loving relationships with his wife and son. Yet
These quotes from Walter illustrate thathe sees this life — his life — as a failure. His “being a man” is not only about having power,
boisterous, rugged brother-in-law tells him to but taking power away from someone else. The“man up” as he continually outshines Walter as one person who is the most consistently harmeda respected DEA agent and role model to his in Walter’s struggle for power is his wife, Skyler.
son. The diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer Over the course of the show’s five-season run,is merely the motivation Walter needs to she suffers severe emotional manipulation andembody a model of manhood that is not only is coerced into compromising her morals fordangerous, but also deadly.
the safety of her family. Yet she is not a victim.
She acts as a foil to Walter and continually fights
against him, making it clear that, although she
is complicit in an illegal and immoral life, she
is not on his side. Despite the strength andagency Skyler exhibits, she and Anna Gunn,
the actress portraying her, have been the targetof disturbingly negative remarks from viewers
who would rather root for her husband. A
large portion of the show’s fan base has rallied
around two rather misguided phrases: “Skyler
is a bitch” and “Walt is a badass.” Both areequally foul, both are equally wrong.
Under any other circumstance, I would
In Walter’s mind, the measure of a man be wholly disinterested in a show that focuses
is not the relationship he has with his family, on a hyper-masculine white male who claims
but his ability to financially support them. his dominance over everyone in his life. Under
Much of the dramatic tension within the any other circumstance, I would be whollyshow comes from Walt’s decision to sacrifice disinterested in a show whose main female
the former for the latter, even using his role character is treated with such disdain andas provider to justify his actions every time he vitriol both within and beyond the constraints
deceives, wounds, or murders another person. of the television screen. However, these are
Money and masculinity are inherently linked superficial readings of a deeply elaborate
in Breaking Bad, and Walt begins to employ show. There is a vein of complexity that runs
heteronormative codes of masculinity such as throughout Breaking Bad that complicates andviolence and virility to affirm his power as a even refutes its representations of whitenessman who provides for his family. However, in and masculinity, and it is this self-awareness“The ugly truth ofmainstream media isthat whiteness andmasculinity constitute thefoundation from which
everything else grows.”

9

of its uncomfortable aspects that makes myreconciliation with them possible.
It is unfortunate but necessary to admit thatthe nature of mainstream media entertainmentis inherently biased towards those in power
and those who hold traditional views. By andlarge, those are the views that get translated
into what we watch. Although I am deeply
invested in film and television, I am cognizantof the reality that I rarely see characters who
reflect aspects of my appearance or personality.
Yet if I were to dismiss every film or television
program that did not prominently featureminority characters who exhibited complex
understandings of gender, sexuality, and theoppressive structures that thrive within oursociety, the number of media products that
I could allow myself to watch, let alone love,
would be significantly diminished. Beingaware of this dire issue of representation within
our media landscape provides an opportunity
to interact with a subject that we readily
consume and invest ourselves in on a deeper,
more constructive level.
I unequivocally love Breaking Bad. I am afan. I would not have spent countless hours
at my computer diligently throwing my own
theories, observations, and opinions into theaether if I were not. The struggle to resolve thecontradiction between enjoying Breaking Bad
and remaining committed to my values as aconsciously critical viewer not only validates
my own adoration of the show, but legitimizes
modern television as a media format singularin its openness for high quality storytellingand committed audience engagement.
Television’s long-form narrative structureoffers Breaking Bad’s writers to craft a productthat is complicated and can subsequently
generate similar responses from viewers suchas myself. Oversimplifying any element of theshow would be a sore mistake and a disservice
to the quality of writing and acting that helped
it gain the ubiquitous critical acclaim it’s now
known for. Much like Skyler, viewers arecomplicit in Walter’s deadly decisions as well.

10

Regardless of whether we choose to support orcondemn him, we are still compelled to watchhim.
The concept of “authentic” and “heroic”
masculinity that some fans of Walter support
is one of Breaking Bad’s chief concerns, andit manifests itself in a number of the malecharacters. Although Walter displays aviolent and assertive brand of masculinity
throughout the majority of the show, it is a
toxic masculinity that is both damaging anddeadly, fragile and fleeting. Heisenberg is
nothing but a large shadow that the diminutive,
ineffectual Walter White casts on the lives of
those he comes into contact with. Breaking
Bad expertly demonstrates how the dominant
notion of “being a man” that Walter attempts
to embody as Heisenberg is a facet of theabsolutist claims of gender that constructed
him as an emasculated figure in the firstplace. It would be irresponsible to ignore theeffort Bryan Cranston and the writers took in
depicting a man fooled by the illusory force ofmasculinity and who effectively threw his life
away for it. It would be uncritical to believethat the writers and actors were not aware of
the powerful and controlling images of raceand gender that they were producing. It would
be inaccurate to believe that they did not, in
reality, criticize those images and the culturalforces that sustain them.
The process of criticizing oppressive anddestructive structures within American societythat Breaking Bad undertakes is comparable tothe one any engaged audience member must
participate in. Media is as much an oppressive
structure as patriarchy or the notion of thenuclear American family, and to consume it
is to support it, both directly and indirectly.
Whether we align ourselves with the images
and messages television produces, its global
influence is undeniable. Television shows
like Breaking Bad must be closely examinedbecause they reflect an image of our society
back to us, frequently magnifying its flaws. To
examine shows is to examine ourselves. Ourrelationship with a television program does
not end when the show ends, nor does it go on
hiatus during commercial breaks. As opposed
to film audiences, television audiences have thefundamental power in forming the medium’s
future; our viewing habits are more closely
analyzed and heeded in the creation of new
programming. It is vital that we remember
this role when we form relationships with theprograms that we give our time and attention
to so that we may become more involved increating a culturally diverse media landscape.
My relationship with Breaking Bad is ongoing
because my love for it affords me the energy andmotivation to reconsider its many meanings as

I change and grow.
In the pilot episode, Walter describes
chemistry as “the study of change.”“It is growth, decay, then transformation.”
The final analytical conclusions I havecome to on my own regarding the show’s
politicized meanings are not, by any stretchof the imagination, the “correct” ones.
However, what is important is the process of
infatuation, contemplation, and compromisethat was crucial in arriving at a deeper, moreconstructive, and more personally valuable
perspective on a show that I will cherish foryears to come.

A CASE OF INFIDELITY

Freedom, Deviation, and Audience Reception in
Sherlock Holmes Adaptations
by Alexa Olmos

Some of the most obvious reasons for the wearing a deerstalker hat and a pipe in hand
popularity of film and television adaptations — this portrayal is now either played for comiclies in their timeless quality, nostalgic feel, and relief or completely dismissed in the present
established audiences. However, in the case day. Today’s Sherlock Holmes adaptationsof the Sherlock Holmes adaptations, as seen have developed their identities through theirin the newly released films, Sherlock Holmes own mixture of infidelity.
(2009, 2011) and television shows, Sherlock
The act of infidelity creates a freedom(2010) and Elementary (2012), the reason, that fans and even casual viewers can discern
much like the detective himself, is complex.
across the media of film and television. This
In 1887 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle achieved distinction made by viewers and fans is how
literary success through his acclaimed Sherlock the Sherlock Holmes legacy has grown throughHolmes novels and short stories. Even before its 127 years of existence and continues in
the last edition in 1927, the Sherlock Holmes these media’s interpretations of the text. Thesefigure had begun to influence other media by contrasting settings of infidelity display how
being adapted close to a hundred times in film, they have branched out significantly fromstage, and radio during Doyle’s lifetime.1 The Doyle’s literary works. Rather than viewing
public that made this literary work so popular this as condemnation of the adaptations, they
adapted his creation in ways Doyle would have insured a stronger collective that forms
never expect.
a greater freedom of creation and perception.
The current popularity of Sherlock In Anne-Marie Scholz’s analysis of film
Holmes should not only be judged as a way adaptations, entitled Adaptation as Reception,of using viewers’ sense of nostalgia for the she argues that film struggles between theoriginal text and past adaptations. While many boundaries of fidelity and infidelity due to its
still envision an actor such as Basil Rathbone audience’s perception of the medium. “Therein a classic depiction of Sherlock Holmes — is a conflict of sorts between the reception of13

the films and the ways the filmmakers attempt
to invent new way of adapting classic works
while simultaneously attempting to appeal
to a large market.”2 The recent Warner Bros.
Sherlock Holmes films (2009, 2011) represent
this same objective. While Scholz suggests
an interesting point that film adaptations arein a conflict between fidelity and infidelity,
the Warner Bros. films do not struggle withmirroring the original text on this level. Thereremains minor differences that viewers andfans may observe and criticize, including its
use of action, abridged narration, and its
condensed storylines that continue from thefirst to the second film.
As for the main characters, Robert
Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes and Jude
Law’s John Watson also exhibit contrasting
characteristics from their original counterparts.
Still, these are small technicalities when taking
into consideration that film is a medium witha shorter timeframe than either literature or
television.
Scholz’s analysis primarily brings attention
to the fear of infidelity from transnational film
adaptations. She argues that transnationalfilms are more susceptible to scrutiny forrelocating outside of the country of origin.
As a transnational British-American film, theWarner Bros. adaptation did not take as many
chances as, for instance, the television series
Sherlock. However, infidelity does not only
consist of the content, but also the nationalityof the adaptation. While the Warner Bros.
adaptation develops little of its own style andcontent, its transnational roots open doors forthe deviation from the original. The film cannever be completely true to its original source
because its mainstream American/blockbuster
influences made for a predominantly American
audience.
Rather than looking down on this formof infidelity, its mixture of cultural references
represents an influence between both nations.
The creation of more transnational Sherlock
Holmes adaptations may push for greater leaps

14

in content and style, but for the moment its
transnational origins allows the film a unique
freedom of representation. Though content
and style show minimal changes in thismedium, television plays with the freedom of
infidelity, whether or not it’s transnational.
CBS’s television series Elementary diverges
entirely from the classic Doyle stories. By
setting the series in a modern day New York
City, there is an emphasis on America as a fresh
start for the premise and plot to unfold. As forthe main characters, Sherlock Holmes is given
the added trait of being a recovering sex anddrug addict, and John Watson is transformed
into a woman named Joan Watson.
In contrast to both American versions,
the BBC adaptation Sherlock reveals how theoriginal text has developed in its own country.
Taking place in London and with a British castand creators, the series gives the story freedom
to play with boundaries of fidelity in similar
ways to Elementary. Both television serials
take greater chances than the Warner Bros.
films; however, both represent different usesof infidelity that establish new values for theircreators and fans.
Even television shows with the same source
material convey their own unique adaptations,regardless of major parallels. As both shows
take similar steps in their interpretations of
the text, there has been some backlash toward
CBS’s Elementary, because many see it asa reformulation of Sherlock. Since it is wellknown for American networks to adapt British
television programs (e.g. The Office, Shameless,and House of Cards, to name a few), they were
eager to create a series based on Sherlock. The
creators denied this buy-out before it could beprocessed, but that did not deter CBS fromcreating Elementary with an opaquely similar
scenario of dropping the characters into acontemporary setting. In reaction to this, theexecutive producer of Sherlock, Sue Vertue,
stated, “Mmm interesting CBS, I’m surprisedno one has thought of making a modern day
version of Sherlock before, oh hang on, wehave!”3 This statement may have spurned on to be a polite exchanging words. Surprisingly,
fans of Sherlock to reject CBS’s adaptation as a the scene captures the suspense of unravelingsubpar imitation; however, both shows supply the mystery. By the end, Sherlock is left witha collaborative foil to film and to one another. a solved crime and only one name, Moriarty.
While there are some unique qualities While many may consider this scene slow
both television serials possess — particularly paced, this moment actually demonstrates thethe switch to a modern-time period and added intellectual struggle Sherlock faces, mimicking
character attributes — there remain several the original text with a plot developing twist.
In contrast, Elementary takes a darker
content related differences. These different
levels of infidelity provide freedom for the turn in its the introduction to Moriarty. From
creation and interaction within the Sherlock the beginning of the episode “M.”, Sherlock
Holmes universe. Moriarty’s introductions in is confronted with a serial killer who hasboth shows represent their reverence to the followed him to the United States fromoriginal, but they are executed in ways that London. Akin to Sherlock, the foe in thisdisplay how their individual infidelity creates episode only works for Moriarty and knows
little about his employer’s intentions. In thediverse adaptations.
later scenes of the episode Sherlock kidnaps
the serial killer and violently tortures him for
information on Moriarty. While this implies
the beginning between Sherlock and Moriarty,
there is a semblance of history behind themand an emotional stake — one that is not
merely intellectual. The juxtaposition between
both shows could not be starker; however, it
is not a matter of which is truer to the text or
represents a greater story and characters, butrather how these adaptations open up the text
The Moriarty of the original text was a in more creative outlets through their own
mathematics professor who appeared in only distinctive qualities for its creators and fans to
two out of fifty-six short stories. Although draw upon.
Doyle created Moriarty to be both Sherlock’s
Without a doubt, the Internet has suppliedarchenemy and ultimate downfall, the recent that creative outlet for an active audience
television adaptations give him a more sinister and more insights into the popularity of theand mysterious persona in their earliest Sherlock Holmes canon. For online fans, “thebeginnings.
information and interaction helps them to
From the first episode of Sherlock, “A think about a program differently, and perhaps
Study In Pink,” the introduction to Moriarty more critically, adding to their enjoyment
represents an intellectual challenger who of the actual viewing experience.”4 The mostemphasizes the power of wit and deduction active viewers are the online fan communities,
Sherlock Holmes carries throughout his whose engagement with the material usually
future cases. In the final scenes of the episode, leads the way in interpreting these various
Sherlock confronts Moriarty’s first of many forms of infidelity.
lackeys. Instead of what viewers may assume
Through online fan interaction, infidelity
would be a climactic sequence between hero within an adaptation, whether small or large,
and foe, the fight is reduced to two men sitting can create an inspiring parallel experience for
across from one another, in what would appear the creators and fans. In the original source,“The act of infidelity
creates a freedom thatfans and even casual
viewers can discern acrossthe media of film andtelevision.”15

“The Final Problem” was intended to be theend of the Sherlock Holmes series as Sherlock
and Moriarty fell to their deaths down
Switzerland’s Reichenbach falls. Fans wereoutraged and the question after the death wasa resounding ‘Why?’ Doyle, quick to please his
fans, remedied this with his next installmentof the series, where he miraculously brought
Sherlock back to life.5 Sherlock’s last episodeof series two (note: series indicates season in
British television), entitled “The Reichenbach
Fall,” canonically shadowed Doyle’s final shortstory, and like the original, gave way to an
outpouring of fan speculation over Sherlock’s
death. The question now was “How did he?”Why not why? Infidelity comes into play once
again; whereas Sherlock could not produce
the same reaction as the original text, it had
given away a key component by the end of the16

episode that its source had not: Sherlock wasshown alive.
Though it is not a significant departurefrom Doyle’s original story, it led to an
outpour of responses from fans speculating
how Sherlock faked his death.6 With two years
before series three would make an appearance,fans had ample time on their hands to shareand debate their theories. “When it started
to erupt, we saw a couple of them,” Steven
Moffat, a co-creator of Sherlock, said of the fan
fiction that emerged to explain Sherlock’s fakedeath. “We saw some YouTube things thatwere quite funny. Most of the ones I saw were
jokes.”7 Moffat’s playfulness aside, he indicatessome understanding of the show’s online fan
presence; even if the creators do not bend to
the whims of their fans, they are at least inconversation.

The first episode of series three complex, they can faithfully represent the man
was a testament to this fan and creator Doyle had intended, but in ways he nevercommunication. For instance, a few versions expected.
of how Sherlock outwitted death play out
mainly for laughs, but also as a light gesture
to its long awaiting fans. Infidelity allows thefans freedom to think critically and creatively
about the characters and their actions among
themselves and one another. The creators are 1. Rulson, Linda. “Discovering Arthur Conanalso allowed more freedom to play with and Doyle: Sherlock Holmes.” Stanford University
consider a character’s actions while presenting Continuing Studies. 2006. Web.
the mutual growth of creation and perception.
Each current adaptation and those to 2. Scholz, Anne-Marie. “Adaptation as
come will seem to receive worldwide acclaim Reception: How a Transnational Analysis offrom critics and fans alike. While their unique Hollywood Films Can Renew the Literaturecontent and styles are key factors to their to-Film Debates.”Amerikastudien / American
popularity, their infidelity to the original
Studies, Vol. 54, No. 4 (2009), pp. 657-682.
text shows an evolution that will contributeto the Sherlock Holmes universe. In the
3. Gregory, Mathilda. “Why Elementary is far
case of these adaptations, infidelity does not
more than a Sherlock Holmes pastiche.” Themean disregarding the source material, but
Guardian. 28 May 2013. Web.
utilizing it in creative ways to breathe life intoa cherished text. Should the original always
be the standard for every adaptation to try to 4. Costello, Victor, and Barbara Moore.
uphold? To an extent, yes. The classic stories “Cultural Outlaws: An Examination ofand characters are still loved by many and Audience Activity and Online Television
should be preserved. However, an element Fandom.” Television & New Media 8, no. 2
of infidelity not only creates interest and a (2007): 124-143. Web.
uniqueness that allows it to stand out among
the rest, but also strengthens the entirety of the 5. Leith, Sam. “Sherlock: How Detective
Sherlock Holmes character. These adaptations Holmes returned from the dead and fooled
not only show the progression of the Sherlock us all over again.” Dailymail. 19 January 2012.
Holmes universe across media, but also that Web.
infidelity is taking Sherlock Holmes to newcorners of the globe, and new psychological 6. Cornet, Roth. “Sherlock: Steven Moffat on
frontiers that uncover character depth the Fake Death.” IGN. 26 January 2014. Web.
never explored until now. Sherlock Holmes
represents the pinnacle of fictional complexity. 7. Steven Moffat quoted in Cornet, “Sherlock:As adaptations are becoming more and more Steven Moffat on the Fake Death.”17

THE ART OF
REPULSIVE SEXUAL TENSION
Campion, Coppola, and the State of
Feminist Filmmaking
by Amanda Ross

Let’s make a film character. “A” woman. it, wants the power and usually has it. This is
Wait. It could be “this” woman, it could be a system that reinforces its own bad behavior,“that” woman. “A” woman is so replaceable. “A” and “A” woman is likely to be the subject of
woman doesn’t need to say or do anything to their films. When I think of “A” woman, I
be “A” woman — she isn’t much different from think of every person who believes that theirthat of a lamp or any other prop. Where is “greatest asset … [is] a marketable façade.”1“The” woman? “The” woman who aims to hold One important work that defies the hegemony“The” power that comes with her individuality. of “A” woman is Katie Makkai’s spoken word
It’s painful that I hardly see “The” woman piece “Pretty”, an inspiring declaration to bothcharacter actually keep her own power, and I women and men that delves into the societal
grow tired of seeing film after film with just pressures placed on women. In “Pretty”,“A” woman.
Makkai calls dominant representations of the
The hegemonic system, the convention, female body a “self-mutilating circus,” thereby
the man, Hollywood, whatever one may call drawing attention to the fractured way society

19

has pulled many into believing this vainmaterialistic ideology about women.
Women have always been portrayed as theobjects of desire, guilt, and pleasure in classic,
Hollywood film narratives. The individuality
in women characters is so often inhibited andsubjugated to the “male gaze,” a term coinedby feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, whichsuggests that female characters succumb to
the will of the male characters. According tothis concept, female characters are “boundby a symbolic order in which man can live
out his fantasies and obsessions.”2 Now, thisdoesn’t mean we shouldn’t have women as
main characters. What it does mean is that
we should be aware of the dangers womencharacters face, and actively resist these
oppressive representations while working tocreate more nuanced ones. Yet, deplorably,
many do not.
There is “one female film director for every
15.24 males,”3 and there are even fewer female
filmmakers who are inclined to break from theconventions that both society and Hollywood
impose on them. But those few understandthe influence their films embody for female
empowerment. These filmmakers challenge
the status quo by not letting the decadenceof conventions mold their characters. Jane
Campion is one of them.
Campion, a New Zealand auteur, studies
feminist subjectivity and is keenly aware of
how women are perceived on the film screen.
Through her meticulous attention to the frame
and active cinematography, she is a master at
individualizing her women characters anddeconstructing the classic gender roles thatallow the male gaze to sustain its potency.
Her unconventional modes of filmmaking
challenge both the social structure in thefilmmaking industry and the patriarchal
society her women characters face. “The films
that make up [Campion’s] oeuvre explore
characters’ agency, sexual desire, and drivefor self-expression — forces that set them atodds with each other, with the environment,20

and also, particularly in the case of female
characters, with themselves.”4 Through herprotagonists, Campion explores how to avoid
becoming “A” woman of the male gaze, andhow to become “The” woman of her own
empowerment.
“In their traditional exhibitionist role,
women are simultaneously looked at anddisplayed, with their appearance coded forstrong visual and erotic impact.”5 In her
film Sweetie (1989), Campion develops
her lead character, Kay, to be rather passive
and attractive, as anticipated by the malegaze. However, instead of feeding into theaudience’s desire, their craving is thwarted by
Kay’s disturbing nature. From the openingof Sweetie, Campion dives straight into Kay’s
insecurities, which are immediately challenging
to identify with. The audience’s doubts about
Kay’s inhibition deepen as she gets her fortune
told and participates in increasingly stranger
rituals. Campion frames her characters to
guide and complicate the audience’s desires.
Before Campion reveals that Kay is pulling out
a young tree in her backyard due to her own
superstitions, she uses the frame of the camera
to sever certain areas of the body, implying a
sense of disembodiment.
The audience’s desire to connect with Kay
is further thwarted as Campion composes aneerie montage with a dramatic use of empty
space around subjects to explore the ominous
depths of Kay’s superstitious imagination.
Once Kay closes her eyes, the camera captures
an uncanny string of images into Kay’s
distraught mind. The audience remains distantfrom Kay, as they are disturbed by these eventsin her mind — ranging from oddly arranged
foods to shots of the strange movements of feet,to eerie negative-filtered images. The audience
thus becomes wary of associating themselveswith a suspicious character. Such mistrust
points to a marked layer of unattractivenessthat opposes the desire of the male gaze. In
this way, Campion cuts the cord that ties Kay
to being a subject of voyeurism. The audiencegrows uncertain and disoriented, for Kay’s life
is not one they typically expect nor desire togaze at.

only aspect holding the audience’s attention is
curiosity.
There is an element, a device, a plot
characteristic, if you will, that usually holds
Sex as a Preferred Taboo
the most weight in films: the love plot. Thereis an inevitable hope that this plot will thrive,
Since the audience struggles to identify by exploiting sex as the central factor. The
with Kay or find comfort in objectifying her, audience’s male gaze anticipates that their
they turn to the main male character, Louis. inevitable request for sexual satisfaction will
However, with Louis nearly as dubious as Kay be appeased, and that they can eventually— he has similar suspicions, such as marrying identify with a love between characters — with
Kay because she told him that she saw a sex being the highest form of desire and love.
question mark on his forehead and deemed However, Campion intentionally neglects thisit “a sign” for them to be together — the desire, and in turn, forces sex to represent theaudience lacks a character to connect to. The adverse.

21After not having sexual relations for weeks
because Kay had split from Louis to recoverfrom her cold, they decide to plan to havesex. The audience patiently awaits the scene.
Campion composes a long, gauche shot of thecouple readying the bed. A wall impedes onpart of the camera’s view, which reflects thecouple’s own psychological barrier preventing
them from the act. The characters slowly
remove their own clothing, but only end up
sitting side by side, naked yet never touching.
These uncomfortable forms of sexual desirecause the audience to become repulsed by thesexual presence altogether. Campion forces
sex to become estranged, foreign, and evenindifferent, and thus, the audience continues
to struggle to identify with the characters.

Campion poses this situation enhances thesense of awkwardness in the film and instills
it into her audience, ultimately freeing her
characters from the bondage of identificationand providing them with their independence.
Becoming FrailHowever, even with auteurs like Campion,
feminist filmmaking has weakened, lost
momentum and grown increasingly lessfeminist, as demonstrated by Sofia Coppola,
one of the most high-profile female filmmakers
in the United States. Her debut feature film,
The Virgin Suicides (1999), follows the short
lives of three teenage sisters who gradually
become distant from society when their
youngest sister commits suicide. Filmed fromRemoving the Gaze
the point of view of a group of several boys,
the film seems to obsess from afar over theseThough Sweetie, Kay’s sister, seems to young women. The boys spy on the girls andarrive unexpectedly in the narrative, Campion have fantasies about them because of the girls’
has devised her to dominate the sexual aspect conservative lives and controlling mother.
of the film. She is not a sane, passive or
attractive character — at least to hegemonicstandards — which makes her the ultimate
abhorrent subject for the male gaze. Nearly
indecent in every scene, Sweetie threatens
the male gaze with her grotesque depictionsof sex. In Sweetie’s last few scenes, she poses
completely naked and covered in dirt. The
audience is conflicted by this repulsive sexual
tension. Here, Sweetie is in utter control of
the gaze, as she is often framed in low-angle
shots, high above all the other characters.
However, Campion overpowers themale gaze of desire by literally crushing theonly obvious sexualized icon of the moment:
Sweetie. In the final scene of the film, Sweetie
stands naked above the other charactersin a tree house. However, the tree house
Sofia Coppola’s film explores the malecollapses and she faces her untimely death. gaze through these boys, but it does not
This dramatic and unexpected turn allows work to counter its grasp. In fact, it tends tofor Campion to suspend her audience from perpetuate voyeurism by focusing greatly on
identifying any sexual reference and ultimately, the boys’ stares and how they see the girls. At
to rid her viewers of their male gaze. The way one point the boys spy on Lux — one of the“By framing her
female protagonists
to pose in ways thatare unappealing toconventional male desire,
Campion destroys themale gaze and frees
her characters of its
oppression.”22

sisters who is acting out of spite for the rigid commit suicide in response to the male gaze’s
structures of her household — through a oppression, marking the girls as victims totelescope to watch her have sex with a variety the gaze. While there are certain freedoms inof boys.
death, Coppola denies her female characters
At the end of the film, Lux invites the the pains and pleasures of free will.
central group of boys over at night — inmany ways inviting the male gaze directly. Watching Between Your Fingers
The boys believe their sexual wishes have been
granted. They are finally able to be a part ofBy framing her female protagonists
the girls’ lives, or so they think. Lux leaves the to pose in ways that are unappealing toboys in the house to go “start the car.” As the conventional male desire, Campion destroys
boys tour the house, they are invited into the the male gaze and frees her characters of its
girls’ rejection of society — into their suicides. oppression. Jane Campion is one of the few
This scene is disturbing to the male gaze as female directors who has not let conventions
these characters have lost their prime sexual dictate her filmmaking. Because of this, she
attraction, and become objects of a different has been able to grant her characters’ femalekind.
independence. Prevailing in similar stature
As much as I enjoy the idea of frightening are female filmmakers such as Miranda
the male gaze, I don’t believe this scene is July, Catherine Breillat, Lynne Ramsay, andprogressive for feminism. All the girls’ faces are Elizabeth Subrin, to name just a few. These
obstructed from view in their deaths, implying women are “The” filmmakers who challengethat they are merely objects to be gazed upon. the system and how women are perceived.
The boys cannot gaze upon them for long and They also battle societal pressures to conform
eventually run away in fright. While briefly to the filmmaking world they live in. These
encountering something that isn’t pleasurable, filmmakers prove that if more women could
the boys quickly return to their fantasies later enter the movie industry with an underlyingthat night, reminiscing about the girls and goal to withstand the pressures of hegemony,
perpetuating a male construction of desire.
filmmaking wouldn’t feel forced to conform to
I appreciate that the boys never fully these patriarchal ways.
understand the girls because they do not haveNow, it may seem unfortunate that thisa clear relationship with them. However, their is currently the world of filmmaking. But
self-entitled right to objectify them on their “unfortunate” would mean there is nothing we
own terms still demeans the young girls. At can do about it now, which is certainly not
the end of the film, the boys all gaze upon the case. There are stereotypes, prejudices, andsome of the girls’ belongings as if they were hegemonic values pressing upon all systems
memories they experienced together. Even in throughout the world and the filmmaking
their death, these girls cannot escape with their domain is a system with great influencedignity intact — they still remain objectified. on millions. Don’t we have the obligation
Coppola’s attempt to strengthen to pave the way and to construct not just aher women by killing them off is rather future for women in this industry, but aparadoxical. Although Campion also kills her progressive one? If filmmakers can come tocharacter Sweetie, it is justified by freeing her a consensus to regard women in the industry
character from the gaze and allowing her to and their women characters with the respect
die by her own will. Ultimately, the male gaze they deserve, there is a chance these artists
is repulsed by her and can have no influence can slowly diminish the prejudices that theon her. However, Coppola’s characters filmmaking system chooses to exploit. With23

a more open-minded industry, I can only
imagine more women taking on filmmaking
as a career option and further developing thisresolve for more remarkable, resilient women— both within the filmmaking process andwithin films themselves.
I am ready to see “The” unconventional
woman who is empowered by her individuality
and not her sexual appeal. I am ready to see afilmmaking industry that takes a progressive
step away from objectifying their womencharacters, following in the footsteps offilmmakers like Jane Campion. I am ready tobelieve in the words of Katie Makkai: “Theword pretty is unworthy of everything you
will be … You will be pretty intelligent, pretty
creative, pretty amazing. But you will never be
merely ‘pretty’.”6

1. Wade, Lisa. “Katie Makkai on ‘Pretty,’” TheSociety Pages, April 19, 2011, accessed August
8, 2010.
2. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure andNarrative Cinema,” Critical Vision in Film
Theory, (2011): 716.
3. Beck, Laura. “There’s Only 1 Female Film
Director For Every 15.24 Male Ones, andThings Aren’t Getting Any Better,” Jezebel,
January 22, 2013. Accessed February 8, 2014.
4. McHugh, Kathleen, Jane Campion,(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 2.
5. Mulvey, 719.
6. Wade, “Katie Makkai on ‘Pretty.’”24

FORGOTTEN FUTURES
How the Past Failed to Depict
the Future
by Zac Stein

The eminent and late Science-fiction are shockingly accurate in their portrayal of
author Ray Bradbury once wrote that “people events. The unifying bond of all these films,
ask me to try and predict the future when all I however, is that the worlds they depict haven’t
want to do is prevent it.”1 This ethos has come happened and are unlikely to fully transpire.
to represent the objective of most science Many of the scenarios appear to be absurd
fiction, a cautionary tale of the emerging and ruminations, but under the surface, these areforeboding paths ahead.
worlds that stem directly from the issues ofIn the following article I will be looking the time they were prophesied and like theat an assortment of science fiction films that initial quote from Bradbury, they warn us ofpredicted the future. The prophesied dates of the possibilities.
these films have either already passed in our
It would seem that in our present state
present time of 2014, or are so close to passing, of filmmaking the blunt dystopian vision hasthat their ideas of the future are unlikely to become the prevalent cinematic portrayal ofmaterialize. While it is a mere formality to the future. These harsh, visceral realities often
mark the fictional past date as my selection display the fallout of catastrophe, shown inprocess, I find the failure of these futures to be films such as Children of Men (2006), District
a driving indication of the contextual issues, 9 (2009), and Dredd (2012), all of which
technologies and infrastructures that these take place in a desolate world, overrun bystories were created from.
mass poverty and rampant crime. Even theSome of these films have correctly animated film Wall-E (2008) presents to thepredicted specific future trends and some audience a failed future where our hubristic27

reliance on technology has resulted in our
downfall. While this dystopic vision is a very
powerful and popular way to present the
future, they raise fewer questions and tend
to not be as vivid or interesting as the films
examined throughout this essay.
For the most part, this period of forgotten
futures that I will discuss begins in the earlyseventies. Like the futures of today, Hollywood
during this time was on a run of dystopian
pictures that portrayed the next chapter ofhumanity after the end of the world. In a seriesof essays, Keith Phipps describes a period of
filmmaking that was the advent of science
fiction — what he calls the “Laser Age,” whichstarted in the late sixties and faded during the
mid-eighties. Phipps points out that the first
Planet of the Apes sequel, Beneath the Planet of
the Apes (1970), with its powerful yet moroseending, brought about this fixation on theaftermath. When lead character Brent (JamesFranciscus) detonates a nuclear bomb that
destroys the future earth, many audiences andcritics found it a difficult notion to digest.2
This shocking new take on the future inspireda string of films that then asked: what happens
after “the end?” These were popular films,
such as The Omega Man (1971), which, while
being set only a few years in advance of its
release date, is an important film to mention.
The Omega Man’s opening scenes depict
Charlton Heston wandering through deserted
Los Angeles streets, almost certainly a commenton the looming possibility of urban decay andthe failure of commercial infrastructure inside
the modern American city.3 The film is full of
pertinent issues for the time of production,
including the subject of race, which runs
throughout the film. Heston embodies thewhite, gun-toting hero of yesteryear, who now
lives in a world controlled by the vampiric
beings that are pressed to life in the shadows.
Yet Heston’s ally and love interest is an AfricanAmerican woman, Lisa (Rosalind Cash). Theirinterracial love scene may not have been thefirst on screen, but to use a major star like28

Heston — at the time a liberal who supported
Kennedy and advocated for the Civil Rights
Movement — was a strong message to send.
The fact that the world had to be devastatedfor union to take place also put the topic ofrace into perspective — that in the end of
the world, we are all still human and we must
work together.
The fourth film in the Apes series, Conquestof the Planet of the Apes (1971), places theaudience in the then-futuristic world of 1991,
in an unnamed city of tomorrow with a cold
cement infrastructure. The world has hints ofdictatorships with high levels of surveillance;
the city is covered with CCTV, and every
human and ape is on a registered database. In
this time, a disease has killed all cats and dogs,
leading humans to use apes as their householdpets.
One troubling scene worth mentioningshows a character named Armando being
tortured for information at the hands ofthe machine called “The Authenticator.”
The device forces people to tell the truth,
further reinforcing the Orwellian setting,and referencing the growing power of thegovernment over its citizens and theirthoughts. Conquest is most important here as
being the first in my list of films to display
the “failed utopia,” the sinister underbellyof a surface-level, highly-functional society.
It features an immaculate city free fromexpressive stylized architecture. In fact, thefilm was shot entirely in the then-newly built
and uninhabited Century City, on what wasonce an old Fox Studio lot in Los Angeles.5
This untouched polished cityscape greatly
heightens the sterility that we see in many of
the future utopias from the time, as well as
raising issues of our conformist society.
Richard Fleischer’s 1973 film Soylent
Green comes at the interim between thedystopian and utopian. The world of Soylent
Green is an uneven dichotomy in favor of thewealthy elite who live in their plush highrises, while the rest of humanity is forced tolive in the worn down tenement buildings. away — even one of our primary senses, taste,Charlton Heston, in the starring role once has been reduced to the three flavors of Soylent
again, encapsulates the bygone American wafers that are available to the poor. These
everyman. Here, he plays a tough cop in wafers provide people with the basic nutrients
2022 New York City, where global warming to live in misery. Another scary notion is thatfrom mass industrialization has left the world due to overpopulation, Heston’s character ispermanently polluted and overcrowded — able to be stalked and chased by the masses;
all encapsulated in a hazy yellow tint that however, his pursuers are dressed exactly likepervades most exterior scenes.
him, which enhances the sense of fatalism at
The film uses the idea of devaluing human the core of the film — that everyone is thelife, a prevalent theme in most future science enemy for the right price. Even though thefiction, and takes it to the most extreme film concludes with a small thimble of hopepossibilities. Here, the wealthy leaders of — as Heston spreads the word to the houselessthe corporations rent luxury “furnished” of the true nature of Soylent Green — Keithapartments — the furniture being young Phipps excellently states that “the battle has
attractive women who maintain the apartment already been lost.”6and have sex at the renter’s request. Other thanAnother method to combat the
overpopulating of this future is through thelegalization of euthanasia. At one point in
the film, Heston’s only friend, the elderly Sol,
(Edward G. Robinson, in his final role before
his death), goes to a assisted suicide clinic
called “Home.” Heston races to stop him but
is too late and witnesses the procedure. As
the lethal drug is administered, Sol is showna glorious vivid montage of forests, oceans,nature and every other natural wonder thatis now extinct. While Sol’s death is shown asa moment of nostalgic beauty, this moment
actually exposes the menacing notion that Sol
dies with the realization that humanity let thishappen.
On the surface, the world of Rollerball(1975) is miles away from Soylent Green: set
the titular inhumane product, there are also in the year 2018, all the nations have gone
horrifying scenes of crowd control that echo bankrupt and the world has been turned
the realities of police brutality. During a huge into a global corporate state. As a result
mass protest, giant garbage trucks with solid of the “corporate wars” that “no one talks
metal scoops collect the hordes of protesters about anymore,” each conglomerate owns
and pile them into the giant collectors with no and controls different cities around thedifferentiation or care. In this world everyone world. Humans have given up their right tois equal, which is to say they are worthless, democracy for the common good, as in thisas humanity has been turned into a literal future all poverty and sickness have been
human cattle.
eradicated. The titular sport at the heart ofSoylent Green’s future suggests that the the film is the distraction, a bloody deathly
many facets of a human life have been taken pastime that resembles roller derby, which“Many of the scenarios
appear to be absurd
ruminations, but under
the surface, these
are worlds that stem
directly from the issuesof the time they were
prophesied...”29

feeds all of humanity’s competitive urges. 451, except here the destruction is an act ofJames Caan stars as Jonathan E., the captain of liberation, the wanton chaos is a privileged
the Houston Rollerball team, which is owned means of self-expression in a world that isby the Energy Corporation. The Energy highly governed by the corporations.
Corporation chairman Mr. Bartholomew
Like Soylent Green and many other future(veteran stage actor John Houseman) is keen films already discussed, the primary goal infor Jonathan to retire, as he has become too Rollerball’s future is control, yet the methods
popular and has amassed a heavy following, are far more sinister. The titular sport iswhich therefore makes him a threat.
practically the reality television of today,
Rollerball reveals a deeply satirical notion for with an ever-changing roster of heroes andthe mid-seventies but a frank possibility today, villains. Jonathan’s partners are chosen at willas the strong corporate lobbying continues by the Energy Corporation. Like the Soma
to further influence our present government. pill in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, theThroughout the years, the Corporation has population is controlled by humanity’s vices
tried many tactics to quell Jonathan’s fighting with a legal, mood-stabilizing drug that is
spirit by directly interfering in his life. They distributed with as much care as a breath mint.
took his wife away from him using the excuse
The most haunting scene in the filmthat “she was promised to an executive.” He is comes near the end, as Jonathan looks foroffered a lucrative termination package if he the answers from the past and takes a trip
announces his retirement live on air. As Mr. to Geneva, Switzerland to visit the central
Bartholomew puts it, “The game was created computer system. Here, all the books andto demonstrate the futility of individual effort.” histories of the world are stored in a liquidIn this future, much like today, we are forced based computer system called “Zero.” Thisto perceive ourselves as cogs in the machine. scene echoes the current restricted access to
The women in the film best represent this loss information and is a precursor to the delicate
of individuality, as they are easily recast into cloud based operating systems that are quickly
people’s lives, and as Dyllun Vadher puts it in becoming a predominant method for storage.
his review, are seen as “decorative disposable “Zero” captures the fragility of our movement
pleasures.”7away from physical media and the expanding
Rollerball exhibits our most functional release of information. In fact, while at theutopia. Like the previous futures, the sets all central database, the operator presses a wrong
have a minimalist aesthetic yet the sense of button and wipes out every trace of the 13th
evil is more fully present in every scene, not century from the records. His only comment
just in the barbaric Roller Derby Hybrid that is “What a pity,” before musing that it was
the population salivate over. While the simple “just Dante and a few corrupt popes.” This
crowds feed their bloodlust, yearning for death references many key concepts from Orwell’sand injury in every game, the elite take part in 1984, namely that “The most effective way tolavish hedonistic parties where they indulge destroy people is to deny and obliterate their
their primal desires in a world without rules. own understanding of their history,” and thatIn one scene of the film, Jonathan attends a “he who controls the past controls the future,
fancy party for the corporation heads. There, and he who controls the present controls thehe witnesses the upper crust’s new favorite past.”
pastime as they get drunk and leave for the
H.G. Wells’ Things to Come (1936),
forest where they set fire to nature with a giant directed by William Cameron Menzies,
gun. It’s a scene that emulates the famous chronicles a hundred years of future history
book burning from Bradbury’s Fahrenheit from the 1940s onwards. With shocking

30prescience, Wells’ script predicts a Second future, the progress that humanity desires inWorld War beginning in 1940 — except this the film appears to be inevitable, no matter
war lasts for 30 years and plunges humanity what the negative aspects may be. Thus, theback to a new dark age. However, it is probable fatalism about the future of humanity and itsthat his prediction during the climate of the hindrance from the progression of technology
time was quite logical. When the film jumps can only be acknowledged and accepted as
to 2036, we see a burgeoning utopia on the necessary. However, unlike Bradbury, theprecipice of disaster, while a heated debate advancements seemed to excite Wells, who
brews on mankind’s progress into the future wrote in his novel The Time Machine that— centered on the first trip manned trip to “we should strive to welcome change andspace. A movement of Luddites form to stop challenges, because they are what help us
the technological progress, believing space grow.”travel will lead to our downfall. Encapsulating
While all these futures may be forgotten,
the efforts of science fiction to warn of the they are never irrelevant. Most of these ideas

31and themes are often recontextualized for
current audiences. Things to Come represents
the universal theme of these futures, thevery nature of progression and its many
consequences. While these dates have comeand gone, the ideas and questions will always
be relevant. At the end of the film, a speechencapsulates our hubris and the ambiguity ofour progression: “And when he has conquered
all the deeps of space and all the mysteries oftime — still he will be beginning.”

1. Bradbury, Ray. Bradbury Speaks: Too Soonfrom the Cave, Too Far from the Stars. New
York: William Morrow, 2005. Print.
2. Phipps, Keith. “In the Early 1970s, the Endof the World Didn’t Look so Far Away.” The
Dissolve. The Dissolve, 21 Aug. 2013. Web.
Feb. 2014.
3. Whoolley, Elena. “The Dead City: The
Decay of the Urban Organism.” Scope Journal
Online 23 (June 2012): n. pp. Web. Feb. 2014.
4. Phipps, Keith. “After Blowing Itself Up,
the Planet Of The Apes Series Charted New
Territory.” The Dissolve, 29 Jan. 2014. Web.
Feb. 2014.

32

5. Coates, Tom. “Conquest of the Planet of
the Apes (1972).” BBC, 10 Aug. 2001. Web.
Feb. 2014.
6. Phipps, Keith. “Watching as the world
winds down.” The Dissolve, 18 Sep. 2013. Web
7.
Vadher, Dyllun. “The Wonder ofRollerball - A Foreboding Forgotten Classic.”
WhatCulture, 13 Mar. 2013. Web.

THE AESTHETICIZED LIFE

Or, Confection, Commodification, andPrivilege in the Works of Wes Anderson
by Debra Bilodeau

Wesley Wales Anderson is a hipster
icon. At times a critical darling and an eyeroll inducer, it’s his work which first got me
excited about the craft of filmmaking, about
the idea of conceiving and creating a wholestory world. His films introduced me to the
auteur — filmmaker as author and executive
creative force — before I had any French
under my belt: something more specific thanjust a name like Spielberg or Lucas. Someone
whose films themselves are about the practiceof storytelling.
All of his films focus on a nostalgia, to somedegree, for the innocence of childhood and theprecociousness of adolescence — as typicallyshown in temporally ambiguous costuming(Margot Tenenbaum’s classic Lacoste-polowith-fur-coat, the preponderance of corduroy
and turtlenecks) and heavy rotation of classic
rock. As Anderson’s career has progressed, hisfilms have arguably become more and more
mediated and more and more steeped in theirown artificiality, in their construction of these
nostalgized worlds. Anderson’s body of work,in its geometrically composed shots, intensely
curated production design, film reference
pastiche and framing devices, is successful
insofar as the viewer takes pleasure in therecognition of his narratological technique. In
other words, being “in on it” — getting his
references — is half the fun.
The most iconic of Anderson’s hallmarks
is the overhead shot, whose many incarnations
can be seen in Vimeo user Kogonada’s lovely
compilation “Wes Anderson // From Above.”
A metaphor for Anderson’s filmmaking as awhole, it is a shot that simultaneously puts theviewer in the character’s perspective and takes
her out of it through the lack of perspectival
depth in the shadow box-like presentation of37

the onscreen objects. It places the viewer in the
God-like position of Creator looking down
upon the world, but retains the childlikenessof its simple composition.
In his excellent video essay series onAnderson, The Substance of Style, Matt
Zoller Seitz posits that the overhead shot
is an example of the influence of Martin
Scorsese, known for his use of the “God’s eye”
perspective in his films. Though on opposite
ends of the spectrum in subject matter,
Anderson, like Scorsese, relies on music, sixties
youth anthems in particular — they share alove for the Rolling Stones — to imbue hisfilms with the restless youthful energy his
meticulous style lacks. Much like Scorsese,
Anderson’s dramatic high points have become
inseparable from the soundtrack cuts which
they cue. Rushmore (1998), with songs from
British Invasion-associated acts The Rolling
Stones, The Who, John Lennon, Donovan,
and Faces, is a prime example of this.
Two songs from folk musician Cat Stevens— known today for his tongue-twistably singalong “Wild World” — feature prominently
in two key sequences of the film. When Max,
alone after his misadventures with Miss Cross
and Herman Blume, is flying a kite toward theend of the film, Stevens’s “The Wind” plays.
In addition to its elemental topic, the song’s
reflective tone hits many of the poignant
notes of the scene — the beginning lines “Ilisten to the wind / to the wind of my soul
/ Where I’ll end up well I think / only God
really knows” underscore Max’s individuality
and his uncertain future, while the song’s
resolving “I’ll never make the same mistake”
mirrors Max’s decision to right his past wrongs
by reuniting Herman and Miss Cross.
Anderson’s emphasis on soundtrack cites
another filmmaking influence — director Hal
Ashby, arguably most famous for 1971’s Harold
and Maude, which featured a soundtrackcomprised entirely of Cat Stevens songs.
Following a death-obsessed teen’s adventureswith a septuagenarian who teaches him how to

38

live, the film anticipates Anderson’s bittersweet
coming-of-age tales inflected by moments ofslapstick humor, with the soundtrack lending
a similar poignancy to the film’s most touching
moments.
With this layer of reference, however, it isdifficult to accept Anderson’s selection solely
as dramatic underscoring. Do the emotions
generate the music, or is it the other way
around? The preoccupation with curation
shown by his immaculately assembled
soundtracks and careful filmmaking citations
betrays an obsession with taste, withdiscrimination, the perfect musical selection
to go along with an emotional scene — and,as music supervisor Randall Poster revealed
to Rolling Stone, songs are sometimes chosen
before a script is even written.
This is a central feature of Anderson’s work,
the notion of media — and, by extension,
cultural — consumption. Anderson makes
films presuming a visually and culturally
literate audience, and it is those content withbeing “in” on Anderson’s style who mostenjoys them. The effete Texan’s oeuvre isparticularly important in a culture in whichknowing of something is more important
than one’s opinion on it, in which references
are more important than originality. Not quite
as fantastic as Middle-earth or Oz or Panem,
Anderson’s constructed worlds are all the more
deceptive for this.
Anderson’s films are more than artificial,
however; they are hyper-real. They inhabit
the space of simulacra in that his referent is
not some presupposed reality — the world
we live in — but the film canon itself. That
is to say, characters are based on film (andliterary, it could be argued) characters rather
than real people, his scripts and stories are
based on other stories rather than reality orobjective “truth.”1 This is, in the words of Jean
Baudrillard, “a question of substituting thesigns of the real for the real.”2 A question of
Cat Stevens’s wistful, melancholic music — a
cultural commodity — instead of the emotionitself.
Storytelling itself as an artifice is an
important, recurring theme in Anderson’s
body of work, highlighted by his highly
stylized narrative technique. For example,
the introductory sequence of Steve Zissou’s
research vessel the Belafonte in The Life
Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) tracks fromcompartment to compartment much like achild looks from room to room in a dollhouse.
Moonrise Kingdom (2012), with its yellowgreen filter, characters of early maturity, sense of
fresh adventure, and whimsically nonsensicaltitle, feels just like one of the vintage young
adult novels packed in Suzy’s suitcase. And, ofcourse, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) begins at
the top of a children’s storybook page. In boldencounter with the proprietor of a Brutalistically remodeled old Grand Hotel seventeen
years previous, who recounts 4) his exploits
with the hotel’s legendary concierge anothergeneration before.
The Matroyshka doll (as phrased by Slatefilm critic Dana Stevens) of a plot is madevisually concrete by way of the film’s different,
successively nesting, aspect ratios: 1.85:1
for 1985 to the present, the anamorphic
widescreen of 2.35:1 for the 1960s, and thefabled Academy ratio (1.37:1) made standard
in the year in which the bulk of the film’s
action takes place: 1932.3 As if to compensate
for the fact that the Nazis take power inGermany the next year, 1933, Grand Budapest
is especially ensconced in its own artifice,distanced from the real by way of an excess
of mediating devices: the nesting-doll frame
stories, the book-within-the-film, and its
chapter structure.
Grand Budapest’s play with the mediationof storytelling is less in the frame itself andmore in the focalization of the story, itsdialogue between history and fiction.Thoughinspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig, anAustrian Jew who fled from the Nazis andliterally could not bear to live in a world which
the Fascists had taken over (he took his own
life after fleeing to the Americas), Andersoncompletely fictionalizes this historical context,
red letters we see the word “PROLOGUE”; placing the hotel in the invented country
next to that, a small, hand-drawn illustration Zubrowka instead of Zweig’s native Austriaof the Tenenbaum siblings, and, under it all, and replacing the SS and Sig runes with Zigwhat is soon to be read by the velvety voice Zags and stylized Zs.
of narrator Alec Baldwin: “Royal Tenenbaum
Anderson has placed his particular veneerbought the house on Archer Avenue the winter of fiction over fact, but summons the sorrowsof his 35th year...”of bona fide history to his whim. There are still
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) amps echoes and shadows of a historical context: theup the artifice and the excesses in storytelling numerous “platz”es and “schloss”es, the namewhich have become Anderson’s trademark, of the pâtissier, Mendl is a common Jewish
presenting a story-within-a-story-within-a- name, the region in which the hotel is locatedstory (within another?), beginning with 1) a is Sudetenwaltz, an obvious reference to thecontemporary young woman paying homage contested Sudetenland of then-Czechoslovakia,
to an author’s bronze bust, 2) journeying back and, if one peruses the film’s website, thetwenty-five years to his introduction of 3) his Grand Budapest’s location corresponds to the“The effete Texan’s oeuvre
is particularly importantin a culture in whichknowing of somethingis more important than
one’s opinion on it...”39

Austrian Alps. Another layer of mediation, Anderson, evidenced by his use of symmetrical
though this time paratextual.
framing (see Kogonada’s latest supercut, Wes
Thankfully for Anderson, these “proto- Anderson // Centered), what David Bordwell
Nazis,” as many film critics have deigned calls the “planimetric”4 strategy of staging theto call them, at least decorate to match the plane of action parallel to the camera plane
place, with their zig-zagged Z runes the same “in a police lineup,”5 and the ever-present
delightful, confectionary pink as the Grand overhead shot. This and the geometricallyBudapest’s façade. The confection remains just arranged, shallow depth of the mise-en-scène
that. Even the Fascists are charming.
render the screen reminiscent of a shadow or
There is a fetishistic desire for completeness “jewel box” in which ornaments are carefullyin Robert Yeoman’s cinematography for selected and arranged for display. Objects,

40

commodities take center stage in the high- expositions, Anderson’s scripts as of late,angle framing and people are image-objects with their blend of narrative economy andin their equally careful arrangement across the completely imaginary on-the-spot witticisms
screen.
from the characters, are engineered to create
This commodification of nostalgia is all the punchiest, most pleasing succession
well and good for retro and/or temporally of events. The effect is quite like that of aambiguous Bildungsromans, but I have a child playing with dolls. For example, whenproblem with a film that injects a sense of M. Gustave is faced with a death squad inwholeness and visual harmony to a world that Grand Budapest, his extolling of the virtues ofis splitting apart, of placing a conflict that civilization is cut short by his too-well-timed,
destroyed lives into a jewel box. Anderson “Aw fuck it!”is precious-izing a world that was actually
The news of Agatha’s later death in the— literally and irrevocably — destroyed. film’s epilogue does pack a wallop. What F.
Destroyed by the threat that Anderson chooses Murray Abraham, who plays the older Zero,to embody in the featureless, innocuous has in spades is what the rest of the film lacks inperson of Edward Norton.
its handling of such serious issues — gravitas.
This is one of the most distancing aspects But there is little emotional investment inof the film: as featured so very prominently in the 1932 story itself, too little value for real
the trailer, the cast is comprised of a cavalcade tragedy, aside from the news of Gustave’sof celebrities. Media-savvy viewers are counted execution. A “cripple boy” becomes little more
upon to express their delight with “oh, that’s than a visual gag; we are shown a girl’s severed
Jeff Goldblum!” and “what a bald cap on head, but it’s not that of Agatha, Zero’s love
Harvey Keitel.” This is a universe in which interest, so are we supposed to laugh as theBrecht’s alienation is turned consumer, in timing suggests?
which the reification of the image of the movie
To be perfectly frank, the evocation ofstar is called upon to ironic effect, inspiring such a horrific catastrophe — which affectedaudience awareness of the constructed nature real human lives and continues to affectof the film story. We get a sense of “Bill Murray” politics in the region to this day — that sets
in his characters’ perennial existential fatigue off a confectionary nostalgia tale such as— but what is this but a cultural product, a this is highly unsettling. The vast majority
construction of a brand identity?
of Anderson’s viewers have never had toAnderson’s filmic technique is all about experience polio or war or poverty. They havepackaging, be it in the mediating nature not had to deal with the ramifications ofof his storytelling devices, the arranged-to- Fascism or the emotional trauma of being adisplay nature of his compositions, or the refugee.
intense attention to design (set, costume, and,In the words of Jonah Weiner, “Wesfamously, typography), or even in the Wes Anderson situates his art squarely in a world
Anderson-approved (by way of a sticker with of whiteness: privileged, bookish, prudish,his signature!) Criterion Collection special woebegone, tennis-playing, Kinks-scored,
edition DVDs of his films.6 But refugees, fusty. He’s wise enough to make fun of it here
Fascism, war, and death are not things to wrap and there, but in the end, there’s something
up in delightfully-folding Mendl’s pâtisserie enamored and uncritical about his attitude
boxes, or in candy-colored symmetrical, toward the gaffes, crises, prejudices, andstorybook framings.
insularities of those he portrays.”7 In short,
Parallel to the scopophilic harmony of his Anderson’s films are films of privilege.
framing and the completeness of his storybook
An assistant named Pagoda (played by41

Kumar Pallana, who played a similar role inthree of Anderson’s films) and pejoratives suchas “Coltrane” and “black buck” in reference toan African-American character are played off
for laughs. Three brothers (and their custommade Louis Vuitton luggage) embark upon aneocolonial spiritual journal in India. Even
Zero Moustafa, whose complex refugee pastis still humorously offset by his deference,
youthful goofiness, and drawn-on mustache,is part and parcel of this privilege.
Anderson’s films reflect and draw uponsome of the most insidious problems incontemporary popular culture. We approach
the world and each other through the lens ofmedia images meant to sell us things: clothes,music, a “lifestyle.” We present ourselves
as products, brands, editing our Facebook
profiles to maintain artificial images ofourselves. We put effort into making sure
we’re the most adroit consumers, be it in theoutfits that are a careful blend of the “vintage”
and the super-hip (but not too trendy asthat would be seen as trying too hard), theSpotify playlists assembled, Tumblr archives,and Facebook likes carefully selected todemonstrate maximum sophistication.
There is a lack of sincerity in expression;
when it is present, it is displayed in the affectof an Other, at once paradoxical and bitingly
critical of the fakeness of our curation culture:“real.” We enjoy Wes Anderson’s mustard
yellows, warm browns, and Pepto-Bismol
pinks because we want to see the world
through an Instagram filter.
Maybe I don’t “get it.” Maybe I don’t wantto anymore.

42

1. Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Baudrillard:
On Simulation,” Introductory Guide to Critical
Theory, last modified Jan. 31, 2011, Purdue
University. 		
2. Ibid.
3. Haglund, David and Aisha Harris, “TheAspect Ratios of The Grand Budapest Hotel,”Slate, March 6, 2014.
4. Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson,
March 26, 2014, “The Grand Budapest Hotel:
Wes Anderson takes on the 4:3 Challenge,”
Observations on film art.
5. Ibid.
6. Perreault, Michael. “Notes on the Politics
of the Auteur: Stanley Kubrick, Wes Anderson,
and the Spectator” (Honors Thesis, Colby
College, 2013).
7. Weiner, Jonah. “Unbearable Whiteness,”
Slate, September 27, 2007.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OFSINGING AND DANCING
How Bollywood Films Have
Bridged the Binary Between
Tradition and Modernity
by Kianna Anvari

Tollywood, Kollywood, Sandalwood,
Mollywood, Jollywood, Ollywood, andPunjwood. These are only a few of the film
industries operating in the different regionsof India in over twenty languages. India isthe largest producer of films in the world —yielding over 800 films a year and contributing
to the staggering growth of the nation’s
economy. The hub of Indian film production is
now associated with the Hindi-language basedindustry centered out of Mumbai (Bombay),
known as Bollywood. Films produced out of
Bollywood are recognized for a key element
unlike any other. It is a component thatconnects Indians in the diasporic communities
and bridges a sense of nationalism worldwide.
It is an element argued to be a significant factor
in the merging of tradition and modernity inIndia. It is the spectacle of song and dance.

44

Though Bollywood has been thriving
throughout the 21st century, the industry
struggled for decades in order to gain
recognition from the Indian state because
film was not viewed as advantageous to thedevelopment of the country. Tejaswini Ganti,
associate professor of Anthropology at NYU,
explains that the state did not initially see
film as a vital entity for modernization andconsidered it a “vice.”1 Filmmakers in the
1990’s were thus encouraged by the state to
make family-friendly films, as opposed toprevious films depicting sex and violence,in order to receive funding from larger
institutions.2 This new investment was also
influenced by the desire to reimagine thenation and the audience. Additionally, thestate began to recognize the impact films could
have on education, especially considering
the high illiteracy rates of the nation.3 India

was finally identifying film as a pedagogicaltool in the nation’s modernization plan, andthe production of socially relevant films waslargely increased in order to uplift the masses.
Due to the changing relations between Hindi
cinema and the Indian state, films began toexemplify the morphing of tradition with new
globalization.4
Ganti points out that a film’s commercial
success in India depends on its level ofentertainment and the subsequent viewing
pleasure of the masses.5 Anjali Gera Roy
points out that one way Bollywood has beencatering to the masses is through the notorious
use of song and dance — which combinesclassical Indian tradition with “Western”
modernization. Musical numbers began tobe utilized as resources that valorize tradition
because they bring in many different Indiancultural and regional values into films. Roystates that not only does the use of song anddance act as a defining distinction of World

Cinema, but it also provides sentiments thatcannot be portrayed as strongly throughdialogue. Roy notes, “Rather than being
dismissed as fantastic interludes disrupting
the progress of the cinematic narrative,
songs and dances are now valorized as partof the cinematic grammar through which
the signification of meaning takes place in
Bollywood, creating a new aesthetic for Indiancinema.”6
Bollywood films are the only films in theworld that average about four to five musicalnumbers per film, and it is this elementthat marks the clear distinction between
Bollywood and Hollywood. To those who do
not understand Hindi, the musical numbers
tend to appear extravagant and unrealistic. It isonly when one learns the context of the songs
that the messages become clear. The songs are
the crucial element in Bollywood films because
they embody the core of Indian culturalvalues. They also cover a range of themes from45

gender roles, sexuality, family, love, friendshipand religion. The dance thus reflects the
lyrical themes, expressing the emotions andmeanings across all language barriers. It has
been said that music is central to the success ofa Bollywood film because it has the power tounify audiences despite linguistic, cultural, or
regional differences.7
Aditya Chopra’s award winning 1995
film, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ),
highlights the importance of preserving
tradition in the globalized world.8 This binaryof tradition and modernity is exhibited
through the diaspora of two Indian teens
whose families live in London. The female
lead, Simran (Kajol), has been arranged by her
strict father to marry a boy in his home regionof India since she was a child. But before sheweds she is given permission to explore Europe
with her friends, eventually meeting the malelead, Raj (Shah Rukh Khan), who is also
traveling. Although their personalities clash
at first, the two begin to develop a friendshipthat soon leads to deeper feelings for one

46

another. As the narrative progresses, we seethat although Simran is in love with Raj, she
still goes to India for her wedding because she
feels obligated to uphold the tradition in place
for her. However, her father allows her to bewith Raj in the end because he recognizes that
he is the man she truly loves. This proves thather father’s traditional values have begun tochange with the rise of modernization and thediaspora. Although he believes that upholding
tradition is important, he understands that
Simran grew up in a globalized world wheretraditions have often been challenged.
DDLJ fills the screen with multiple musicalnumbers, but one song in particular is notablefor its combination of tradition and modernity.
Before Simran and Raj meet, Simran expresses
fantasies about the man of her dreams. In thesong, “Mere Khwabon Mein,” for example,
Simran is dancing around in a bath towel
and singing happily about a man who comesto her in her dreams. She sings: “He comes
and teases me / Tell him to come face-to-facewith me sometime.” By dressing Simran inonly a towel, the film is suggesting a sense of
sexual freedom — arguably a modern concept.
Further, by repeating the words “face-to-face”
in the chorus, she is signifying the longing to
be kissed — a form of intimacy that is censoredin Bollywood films. The upbeat song is lacedwith vignettes of Raj who is being glorified for
his admirable skills, such as winning a car race,
running alongside a plane taking off, bowling astrike and picking up a girl on his motorcycle.
Toward the middle of the song Simran isshown singing the same words on a different
day, but this time to her mother. Motherdaughter relationships are known to hold astrong bond in Indian tradition; therefore,
the fact that Simran is sharing her desires iscommon. However, her mother’s recognitionof her yearning to fulfill these needs exemplifies
the modern concept of female sexual desire.
Toward the end of the song we see a sequence
where Simran is laying down in the rain,
wearing a short, white skirt and a blouse
revealing her midriff. She sings, “It is likesomeone has cast magic.” She starts dancing
and jumping around in the rain as the chorus
repeats. The attention devoted to Simran’s
sexual desires in this number is significant
because it highlights the merging of tradition
and modernity. “I am mad for you, he says /Then why does he stay hidden.”
Today, there are about four million
Indians living in the United States and about
ten million living outside of India.9 Ganti
points out the importance of this diaspora andsays, “The success of Hindi cinema outside ofIndia highlights the significance of the South
Asian diaspora as a market for the Bombay
film industry, and certain filmmakers have
explicitly articulated their desire to caterto diasporic audiences.”10 This desire for adiasporic appeal can be seen in certain films
revolving around the theme of diaspora itself.
Films like DDLJ demonstrate how Indians
living outside of India are still maintaining a
special connection to their homeland. Thus,
the diaspora has influenced the growth of themarket because these films act as a bridge for
Indians living outside of India — providing
a crucial link between diasporic communities
and the Indian nation and influencing a rise in
Indian nationalism.
The growing appreciation of Bollywood
films around the world has positively affected
the resurgence of nationalism throughout India.
Ravinder Kaur acknowledges this nationalism,
claiming, “The recent restoration of pride in“Musical numbers began
to be utilized as resourcesthat valorize tradition
because they bring inmany different Indiancultural and regional
values into films.”
the motherland is reflected in the renewed
patronage of Indian culture, particularly
Bollywood movies.”11 Kaur references Sudipta
Kaviraj, who points out that Bollywood films
have constant themes of nationalism, andessentially embody Nehruvian definitions ofnationalism and democracy. Kaur explainsthat nationalism is growing because filmplots are now highlighting Indian tradition,and illustrate how the young, “Westernized”
subjects “keep returning to roots located ina traditional-yet-modern India.”12Thus,even though India is becoming a modernizednation, Bollywood films emphasize theimportance that core traditional values haveon the markers of national identity.
Globalization has had a significant effecton the nation’s economy due to Hindi cinema’s
appeal to diasporic communities, as well aslarger audiences. Ashish Rajadhyaksha argues

47

that globalization has contributed to India’s
growing economy because of Bollywood’s
widespread appreciation. He explains that in
the early 2000s people all over the world wereenticed by the new hype of Bollywood and its
ability to “spin their screen fantasies.” Thus,
Rajadhyaksha explains that globalization
helped Bollywood develop the resources forcreating an unprecedented style of cinema
in India.13 Rini Bhattacharya Mehta also
acknowledges globalization’s influence on
Bollywood films, and that “…the availabilityof Bollywood fare in Europe and the USA via
satellite channels, and the renewed prevalenceof Bollywood in the popular cultural imaginaryof the Indian diaspora continue to sustain themost successful industry that ever existed inIndia.”14
The spectacle of song and dance has not
only differentiated Bollywood from all otherfilm industries, but it has also allowed for amorphing of tradition and modernity inthe diverse nation-state of India. As a result,Indians around the world have developed astronger sense of nationhood and pride in their
homeland. Bollywood has utilized filmmaking
not only as a medium of entertainment, butalso as an outlet for reaching wider audiences
to foster a sense of an Indian unity.
This article was inspired by the teachings of Dr.
Annapurna Pandey, in her Anthropology course
at UCSC: “India and Indian Diaspora throughFilms.”
1. Tejaswini, Ganti. Producing Bollywood:
Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry,(Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 45.
2. Ibid., 31.
3. Ibid., 57.
4. Monika, Mehta. Once Upon a Time in48

Bollywood: The Global Swing in Hindi Cinema,
Ed. Gurbir Jolly, Zenia Wadhwani, andDeborah Barretto, (Toronto: Coach House
Printing, 2007), 29.
5. Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 284.
6. Anjali G. Roy. “Is Everybody Saying ‘Shava
Shava’ to Bollywood Bhangra?” Bollywood andGlobalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation,
and Diaspora, Ed. Rini Bhattacharya Mehta
and Rajeshwari V. Pandharipande, (London:
Anthem Press, 2010), 36.
7. Dr. Annapurna Pandey, interview withauthor, January 31, 2014.
8. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, directed byAditya Chopra, (1995; Yash Raj Films).
9. Dr. Annapurna Pandey.
10. Ganti, Producing Bollywood, 11.
11. Ravinder, Kaur. Once Upon a Time in
Bollywood: The Global Swing in Hindi Cinema,
Ed. Gurbir Jolly, Zenia Wadhwani, andDeborah Barretto, (Toronto: Coach House
Printing, 2007), 101.
12. Ibid., 101.
13. Ashish, Rajadhyaksha. Indian Cinema in
the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to theEmergency, (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2009), 70.
14. Rini B. Mehta, “Bollywood, Nation,
Globalization: An Incomplete Introduction,”
Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular
Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora, Ed. Rini
Bhattacharya Mehta and Rajeshwari V.
Pandharipande, (London: Anthem Press,
2010), 13.

THE COLOR OF CONTROVERSYBlue is the Warmest Color’s
Forgotten Love Storyby Michelle Woo

This past year’s 2013 Cannes Film Festival
Palme d’Or winner generated quite a stir in
the indie film world, receiving a multitude
of positive and negative reviews. Directed by
French auteur Abdellatif Kechiche, Blue isthe Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adèle - Chapitres
1 & 2, 2013) follows the ups and downs ofa love affair between two lesbians, Adèle
and Emma. Regardless of sexual orientation,
the unfortunate end to their love affair isan emotional experience that any audience
member can relate to. However, what seemed
to capture the audience’s attention were theperformances by the two female leads. It
generated conversations centered on thecontroversial reactions toward the film’s explicit
lesbian sex scenes. In response, Kechiche said
he “wanted it to be a love story. [His] job asa director is not to make a statement abouthomosexuality but about these two charactersand their profound love story.”1 However,many critics lashed out at Kechiche’s “artistic”
approach to portraying lesbian sex, describing
the scenes as pornographic as opposed toan artistic expression. Controversial issues,
such as the portrayal of realism of lesbian
relationships and what constitutes “real”
lesbian sex, surround Kechiche’s film Blue isthe Warmest Color.
The film focuses on a naïve, blue-collar
high school student, named Adèle (Adèle
Exarchopoulos) as she explores her sexuality.
She begins searching for that missing something,or possibly someone, in her life. Her earlyboyfriend fails to satisfy her emotionally andphysically, and she expresses her frustration byfinding comfort in eating her stash of candy
bars in a very obnoxious, childish way. The

51

first half of the film emphasizes the immaturityof Adèle, as the viewer witnesses her sloppy
eating habits and her messy bun when she
goes to school. Even her facial expressions andinnocent gaze give insight to her emotions andthoughts as she struggles through her teenage
years. Adèle’s life begins to change following
a serendipitous moment where she passes
by a beautiful, blue-haired stranger, locking
eyes with her. That look exchanged between
Emma (Léa Seydoux) and Adèle symbolizes
love at first sight, demonstrating the intense
chemistry these characters possess. Adèle later
sexually fantasizes about Emma, an older andfree-spirited art student, which leads her toquestion her own sexuality. One night, Adèle
decides to go to a lesbian bar with a friend,
finally encountering this beautiful stranger
with blue hair. Even though audiences
witness Adèle experiencing her first same-sex
relationship, the story ultimately focuses on
the emotional roller-coaster of being in love,rather than on their sexuality.
The film is based on the graphic novel,
Le bleu est une couleur chaude by Julie Maroh,
who has voiced her frustrations with the film.
As a writer, she understands that Kechiche’svision of the film and her own may contradict
each other, but from a lesbian’s perspective,
she states unhappily:“It appears to me that this was missing on
set: lesbians … this is all that brings to mymind: a brutal and surgical display, exuberant
and cold, of so called lesbian sex, which
turned into porn, and made me feel very ill
at ease. Especially when, in the middle of themovie theatre, everyone was giggling. The
heteronormative laughed because they don’t
understand it and find the scene ridiculous.
The gay and queer people laughed because it’s
not convincing at all and found it ridiculous.
And among the only people we didn’t hear
giggling were the potential guys too busy
feasting their eyes on an incarnation of theirfantasies on screen.”2
Maroh’s displeased attitude is also

52

expressed on her personal blog where shecomments on the absence of lesbians in
the film. Simply because there were no
lesbian actresses does not mean the film
was missing lesbians. These two women are
doing exactly what they are supposed to be
doing: acting. Other films have contained
heterosexual actresses performing homosexual
characters, and yet, they still gave a convincing
performance despite their sexuality.
In the film The Kids are Alright (2010), thetwo actresses, Annette Benning and Julianne
Moore, were praised for their performances asa married lesbian couple raising a family withtwo children. Because the film focuses on theirunconventional family structure, the audiencecan overlook the fact that they are two straightactresses. As long as they can perform theirrole convincingly, the sexuality that an actor
or actress identifies with does not appear to be
an issue. Society tends to forget that it is theactor’s goal to accurately portray a character
unlike themselves. Convincing the audiencethat they are one with the character and notjust an actor pretending in front of the camera
verifies the actor’s ability to act, which has
nothing to do with their sexuality.
Like Blue is the Warmest Color, the film
Saving Face (2004) contains similar complex
themes surrounding a lesbian relationship. The
main character, Wil, is a Chinese American
lesbian surgeon whose family emigrated
from China and continues to hold onto theirtraditional values. Already, there is a cultural
clash between the main character and the restof her family. Her family is in denial that she
is a lesbian, and Wil struggles to balance her
secret love life with Vivian and her family
issues, dealing with her pregnant motherand stubborn, traditional grandfather. Boththe actresses identify as being straight, again
proving that films do not need lesbian actresses
to portray lesbian characters convincingly.
However, the representations of lesbian
characters differ depending on the director
and how they see lesbian relationships.

For example, the director of Saving Face, Chicago Tribune and Windy City Times, believe
Alice Wu, identifies as a Chinese American “The scenes were shot like porn but they didn’t
lesbian, thus her depiction of lesbian seem designed to turn you on. I was more
relationships is different from Abdellatif turned on by all the stuff leading up to their
Kechiche, a straight white male from first sex scene — their first encounter in theFrance. Through the art of filmmaking, each lesbian bar was incredibly hot.”3 For some, thedirector expresses a different idea of a lesbian build-up is enough to portray their intense
relationship, which varies based on their passion for each other. It’s no surprise that
culture, age, gender, and sexuality. One should these characters are having sex, but American
understand that theses characters are not meant audiences always seem shocked when theto be iconic figures of the lesbian community. act of sex is portrayed on screen. Since theInstead, the audience should see them as being production code era, conservative Americans
complex characters that anyone, not just consider sex as a taboo topic. Both actresses
lesbians, can relate to on a personal level. Both were of legal age during the filming process,directors, despite their sexual orientation and and gave their consent to do these scenes
differences in culture, constructed their own with Kechiche before filming began. The film
artistic approach around their ideas of what a was given an NC-17 rating, warning viewers
credible, homosexual relationship and lesbian that the film contained explicit sex scenes.
sex looks like.
However, the sex scenes in no way suggest theSeven minutes of explicit sex between film is pornographic. The scenes were put into
two gorgeous women may make a few people the context of the story, resulting in a deeper
blush and squirm in their seats uncomfortably. meaning for the characters and the audiences
But, members of the audience should ask — its sole purpose is not arousal. Althoughwhere that line between art and pornography it makes some people feel uncomfortable toexists. Was it really necessary to include sex watch others have sex on screen, for Kechiche,
scenes, let alone a seven-minute one? Some it was an artistic approach to his work.
critics, like Richard Knight Jr. from the
To some film critics, Blue contains more53

than just a seven-minute sex scene. Well- the film and altering the spectator’s experience.
renowned film critic B. Ruby Rich explains Manohla Dargis, a critic for The New York
female sexuality on screen and how Americans Times, has a point of view that differs fromshould move past the prudish mindset of Rich — she found several glaring problems
sex being taboo. She explains, “Directors are in Blue. Dargis took issue with the artistic
famously sadistic toward their actresses … representation that Kechiche envisioned in his
Film is a medium which expertly hides its own film with the two actresses, accusing him ofprocess. You never know what went on on a patriarchal anxiety demonstrated through hisfilm set unless someone chooses to talk, and aesthetic choices and poor cinematography,
they usually don’t. These actresses are young. according to Dargis. She notes, “as the camera
I think they didn’t realize what sex means hovers over [Adèle’s] open mouth and splayedoutside France for instance.”4 Mostly giving body, even when she sleeps with her derriere
positive reviews about Blue, Rich applauds the prettily framed, the movie feels far more about
film for being an authentic lesbian love story. Mr. Kechiche’s desires than anything else.”5
Shots that emphasize the curves of the bodyand extreme close-ups of Exarchopoulos’s facemake the audience question whether Adèle isthe pawn of objectivity. These two heterosexual
actresses may have felt objectified due to thefact that the director is a straight heterosexual
male who made strenuous demands during
the production of the sex scenes. Close-up
shots of Adèle’s face and body provide moreof a subjective point of view because theaudience is able to interpret Adèle’s feelingsand emotions on a more intimate level.
However, some aspects of the film had Throughout Blue, the audience witnesses thesome loose ends that were left hanging. The emotions and identifies with Adèle, solidifying
unresolved issue between Adèle’s parents and a sense of subjectivity. Nonetheless, there istheir disapproval of homosexual relationships still some sort of gaze present in the film, mostis a huge issue that was either missed or not clearly articulated by the shots that focus onaddressed in the film. Yet adding more conflict Adèle’s body.
between Adèle and her judgmental parents
Since the director is male, the issue ofwould have made Blue more of a lesbian film, the male gaze has been a topic of discussion.
as opposed to a love story. The audience would Feminist theorist Laura Mulvey analyzes
take away a completely different message, for the male gaze in her essay “Visual Pleasure
they would see more struggles with her parents’ and Narrative Cinema” (1975), describing
disapproval as well as her peers’ condemnation the representation of women in films. Is theat school. There are already hints that her male gaze assumed only because the director
family and friends already disapprove of is a heterosexual male? If a lesbian were toAdèle’s homosexual relationship early in the direct this film, would it still be consideredfilm by the way her parents assume Emma has a male gaze, and how different would thesea boyfriend and the confrontation between scenes look? There are questions to ask when
Adèle and her classmates at school. Any more thinking about the male gaze vis-à-vis nontension would take away from the relationship heterosexual relationships.
as a whole, while also changing the focus of
The idea of the male gaze is influenced“Instead, the audienceshould see them as being
complex charactersthat anyone, not justlesbians, can relate to ona personal level.”54

by the actress’ accusations concerning the
behavior of Kechiche during production,
especially during the approximately ten daysof filming the lesbian sex scenes. Kechiche
is known for his intense shooting days andhis attention to detail. Seydoux commentsthat her nude scenes made her feel like aprostitute.6 In an interview with the twoactresses, they expressed their feelings about
the production of the film. Seydoux states,“The thing is, in France, it’s not like in theStates. The director has all the power. When
you’re an actor on a film in France and you
sign the contract, you have to give yourself,
and in a way you’re trapped.”7 Exarchopoulos
comments, “He warned us that we had totrust him — blind trust — and give a lotof ourselves. He was making a movie aboutpassion, so he wanted to have sex scenes, but
without choreography — more like special sex
scenes. He told us he didn’t want to hide thecharacter’s sexuality because it’s an importantpart of every relationship. So he asked me if
I was ready to make it, and I said, ‘Yeah, ofcourse!’ because I’m young and pretty new tocinema.”The end product of Blue is a beautiful
and convincing tale about two lesbian lovers,
played remarkably well by the two leadactresses. The film’s goal was not to turn theaudience members on during the passionate
scenes, but instead for them to recognize andunderstand that characters cannot represent
an entire community. Characters containcomplex personalities just like the average
human being, and it’s hard to say whether or
not the portrayal of a certain type of characteris accurate or inaccurate. Every director takes
different approaches to illustrate their own
artistic vision and portrayal of different groupsof people based on their own experiences andideas. The same goes for audience members.
Spectators’ own experiences also affect the way
they analyze a film, as they construct their own
ideas and personal reflections. That is the true
beauty of film. Each individual approaches

an artwork with a different mindset, thereby
conceiving of different viewpoints oncontroversial stylistic approaches.
Despite the controversies, one cannot
deny that Blue is the Warmest Coloremotionally drains the viewers by following a
six-year long relationship between two lovers.
Anyone can relate to this beautiful love story
about falling in and out of love, and the film
contains captivating performances that are
unforgettable. In the end, the film is simply astory about falling in and out of love.
1. Mark Olsen “WORLD CINEMA; Love
Story Draws Fervor Off-Screen; it’s beena Stormy Turn of Events for ‘Blue is theWarmest Color’ Director Abdellatif Kechicheand His Stars.” Los Angeles Times, Oct 27 2013.
ProQuest. Web. 28 Jan. 2014 .
2. Julie Maroh. “Les coeurs exacerbés.” Lescoeurs exacerbs RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr.
2014.
3. Richard Knight Jr. “A Conversation about‘Blue is the Warmest Color’.” Windy City
Times: 31. Nov 06 2013. ProQuest. Web. 1
Feb. 2014 .
4. Bilal Qureshi. “For ‘Blue,’ The Palme D’Or
Was Only The Beginning.” NPR. NPR, n.d.
Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
5. Nico Lang. “A Lesbian Movie Without
Lesbians: The Problem With Blue Is theWarmest Color.” The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 31 Oct. 2013. Web.
27 Apr. 2014.
6. Marlow Stern. “The Stars of ‘Blue Is theWarmest Color’ on the Riveting Lesbian Love
Story.” The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast,
n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
7. Ibid.

55

THE SERIOUSLY ABSURD

The Dialogue Between Existentialism andJewish Comedy in A Serious Man
by Jessie Janssen“Something is very wrong.” This is thelamentable manifestation of Larry Gopnik’s
life in A Serious Man, a film by Joel and Ethan
Coen that examines what occurs to a man
when everything in his life quickly goes awry.
In what is suggested to be a modern retellingof the Book of Job, we see one man lose gripon his wife, children, career, and perhaps evensanity. However, as the film wears on, theviewer is made aware that this isn’t a tragedy
at all, but rather a comedy, or something
inhabiting the small overlap between the two.

Some might view this film as a depressing
mediation that categorically chronicles
a frustrating and exhausting series ofoccurrences, but in the world of the Coen
Brothers we are encouraged to laugh at the
inexplicable misfortunes of the protagonist in
this dark comedy rife with Jewish humor. The
absurdity and irony of Larry’s misfortunes are
a commentary on the pointlessness of life, andprovide an ongoing discourse on existentialism
in the text.
Though Jewish humor and existentialism

57

may seem mutually exclusive, I find it
commendable that the Coen Brothers
have found a way to mine the “existential
discomfort and insecurity” of Jewish comedy
in a way that bridges the gap between these
two themes in the film and puts them intoa smart and entertaining dialogue with one
another.1

providing an influence for the brothers. In
his short works, such as The Metamorphosis
and The Trial, we see similar themes ofpointlessness and feel similar emotions ofaggravation and frustration, and eventually
can laugh at the characters’, and our own,cluelessness. The Coens’ work is Kafkaesquein many ways; they do not provide readily
available explanations for many of their
Humor Through Absurdity
decisions within the film, including why theseawful events are happening, the coincidences
In the scene when Larry is speaking to that seem to hold a deeper meaning, and the
Dick the relentless record salesman on the bleeding over of Larry’s dream state into his
phone, he states, “I haven’t done anything!” consciousness. The modernist tendencies that
This becomes the mantra for the film, an these artists share is an acknowledged form
embodiment of Larry’s helpless situation. of dark comedy, and the correlation that the
Although Larry has not changed his behavior authors are Jewish seems to suggest a trend in
as far as the viewer can tell, suddenly his wife their collective sense of what is amusing, andis leaving him for a condescending widower what creates a captivating story.
named Sy Ableman, his kids are doing drugs
This surreal, modernist form of storytellingand financing their habit from his billfold, his can be classified as existential, which perfectlybrother won’t leave, his student is bribing him fits into the trend of pointlessness, absurdity,
and endangering his progress toward receiving
tenure, and his goyische neighbor is endlessly
terrifying. In one conversation with his
disgruntled student, Larry says, “Actions always
have consequences!” Yet if that is true, then
Larry should have done some atrocious deed
to warrant all the negative juju coming his way
throughout the film. All of this consequently
left me, the viewer, contemplating: bad things
happen, and there is nothing to be done about
it. It is in the control of the Coen Brothers,
however, and when asked in an interview how and why we laugh at what cannot be controlled.
they developed the narrative, Ethan Coen A Los Angeles Times review of the film statesstated: “He has this problem. How do we “…the more the man of the title suffers themake it worse? That is the way we think about torments of Job, the more he tries to deal with
it as we’re writing it.”2 Sadistic? I think yes, but the unknowability of the usual willfully absurd
and decidedly hostile Coen universe, the morealso very comical.
The absurdity and triviality of each we’re encouraged to wonder if this isn’t justinteraction and each event is worsened by the tiniest bit funny. And the more real thethe fact that Larry and the audience cannot pain becomes, the more, in a quintessentially
understand exactly what is happening, why it Jewish way, laughter becomes our only serious
is happening, or how to stop it. Franz Kafka option.”3
could be credited as the author who ignited
previous masterful works on uncertainty,“There’s a story, there’s aguy. He visits three rabbis.
Then it can either be afable, or it can be someBorscht Belt joke. In themovie, it’s kind of both.”58

Uncertainty and Existentialism Unpacked
Hand in hand with the themes of absurdity,
pointlessness, irony and existentialism is thepresence of uncertainty within the film andthe viewing experience. Andrew O’Hehir, of
Salon, suggests that “the fable might just be
about the disordered, random operationsof fate, and the futile human struggle tounderstand them.”4 Larry is uncertain not
only about the awful, seemingly arbitrary
events he begins to experience, but also about
his own morality and integrity, and the viewer
is proposed these ethical questions as well.
Larry looks to religion to guide him, but thework of existential philosophers like Sartre,
Camus, and Kierkegaard suggests this is just ameans of disguising the uncertainty we all face.
By evading the responsibility over our own
lives through religion, we are abandoning any
confrontation with the absurdity that is thisworld, as shown in the film. What Larry (inthe stead of every human) must do, but can’t,
is to take accountability for what he sees as
moral or ethical and react to it as a man, andnot necessarily a “serious” Jewish man.
Jewish Question
Historically, the Jewish way to solve
problems is through intellect or scholarly
endeavors, and when they simply cannot be
solved through reason, one goes to see therabbi. Larry Gopnik does just that; in fact,
he tries to see three rabbis. He looks to his
Judaism to save him, to provide answers, but
he is failed by his religion repeatedly throughthe condescension, unavailability, and puzzlingstories of each respective rabbi. According toEthan Coen, “There’s a story, there’s a guy. He
visits three rabbis. Then it can either be a fable,or it can be some Borscht Belt joke. In themovie, it’s kind of both.” Joel echoes, “Yeah,
it’s both. We were just talking about that,
actually, how ‘A guy goes to see three rabbis’ iseither the beginning of a joke or the spine of afolktale, you know what I mean?”5This presents the Jewish questions in
the film: can we look to Judaism to save us?
Is it even meant to save us? According to
my interpretation of the Coen Brothers andexistentialism, Judaism is important, but
it isn’t there to save us; rather it is a tool ofdenial that provides the illusion of comfort
in a disturbingly ironic world. As viewers, wehave two choices: to see the Coen Brothers’
message as bleak and self-hating, or to see thefilm for what it is — a hilarious satire of thecomplete reliance on religion. I prefer to thinkthat the brothers wish for us to see each ofthese situations within their film, to yield tothe fact that it can easily be both, and to realizethat the overlap between farcical comedy and
the Jewish narrative is often overlapping.
Inauthentic Relationships
While watching the film, it becomesapparent that there is a lack of authentic
relationships among the array of characters,
a missing piece that is simultaneously
aggravating and amusing. This furthers thepresence of existentialist overtones due to atenet of the philosophical movement: thatgenuinely authentic relationships are one ofthe only remedies to an absurd world where
the individual faces the burden of creating
meaning for themselves. This theme subtly
plays out in humorous ways through eachinteraction between characters. The flatnessof each individual’s personality gives them analmost inhuman quality that allows them toact in ways that show a lack of conscience, anda lack of respect or caring for Larry or his wellbeing. Larry’s wife denies her husband this sortof compassion when she unceremoniously asks
for a divorce, having already lined up her next
husband: Sy Ableman. Her disregard for his
feelings, and moreover her following actions(including asking him to move out), give her
a cartoonish quality that makes it easier for an59

audience to laugh at her utter disrespect and of the film, A Serious Man is, in the end, anemotionlessness. Like his wife, Larry’s son example of film form; therefore meaningand daughter also seem not to care one way can also be derived from the visual aesthetics
or another about their father’s well being in of the film. The mise-en-scène of the film,
any sense, and continuously ask him for favors representing the 1960’s Midwest suburbs
to better their own existence. The selfishness in an unconventionally depressing manner,
apparent in almost every character in the film features hot lighting in scenes of the Gopnik’s
is ludicrously exaggerated, providing a means backyard, as well as austere darkness in thefor humor to flourish.
hotel room at the Jolly Roger Motel. Both
This comedy of exaggeration is paramount are uncomfortable, mirroring the discomfort
in one of the more central relationships in the of the events occurring at these places. Thesefilm — the relationship between Larry and awkward situations are further represented
Sy Ableman. Sy as a character is slow talking through examples of the canted angle during
and calm, in sharp contrast to the skittish such scenes as Larry getting high with Mrs.
and anxiety-ridden Larry. His unwavering Samsky, Danny’s bar mitzvah scene, and duringserenity produces irony, as he is the one who the story of Dr. Sussman’s fretfulness overcauses the most anxiety in the title character. the goy’s teeth. These scenes all prominently
His manner of speech in itself is grating, but convey feelings of unease and anxiety, partiallythe condescending content especially breeds signaled through this camera angle, which
humor. Sy is extremely frustrating to the viewer further illuminates the overarching theme ofin the sense that he completely disregards the aforementioned “existential discomfort
the fact that he is a homewrecker, instead and insecurity” that seems to breed exceptional
succeeding in turning the tables on Larry and Jewish comedy.
manipulating the situation to seem as if it is
The Stepfordian characteristics of thecompletely normal. He therefore maintains Gopnik’s neighborhood also exacerbate thishis “mensch” status in the community (one mood. The flatness of the plane, the uniformity
who is an all around good person). It is also of each house and yard, and the uninterrupted
humorous that Larry is put into positions flow of this suburban expanse seems to convey awhere he is forced to thank the patronizing vision of a neighborhood that is flawless, almost
Sy, who is the catalyst for the ruination of his eerily perfect. The immaculate mise-en-scène
home life. It seems that no one else sees the of the setting breeds a tension that matches
nonsensical nature of this, and all the audience the strain in Larry’s life — an example of thewould like to see is for Larry to finally stand technical aspects of the filmmaking working
up for himself. The word that comes to mind with the narrative and the ineffectuality of its
when watching the film and seeing Larry façade. As an unassimilated Jew living in thiscontinuously hit by demoralizing situations neighborhood, the Coens make sure to nod
is, in its most literal form, “ridiculous.” We to Jewish literary history. The Coens provide
as viewers can still laugh, mainly because we an inside joke for viewers who are part ofhave ceased to make an effort to find things in “the tribe” when they make sure to include acommon with the characters, as one might in prolonged sequence of Larry fiddling with thetraditional narratives.
cable wires on his roof. The hidden meaning
here is a reference to Sholem Aleichem’s famed
Film Form
Jewish tale Fiddler on the Roof, about a poor
schlemiel reminiscent of Larry himself. By
Though much meaning can be found in aligning Larry with a character like Tevye theall of these thematic and narrative aspects Dairyman from Fiddler on the Roof, they are60cementing the notion that Larry is meant to be of absurdity, flat relationships, and various
a comic figure, and the means for making this questions of religious Judaism, as well as anconnection nods to the absurdity of Larry’s life. assailing of images that all hold their own
puzzling meanings. In the end, all of these
Conclusion
facets add up to the irrefutable presence ofexistential philosophies in the text. Both inOn the surface, A Serious Man may present this film and in life, we can never truly knowa series of coinciding events that snowball what is happening or why. What we can dotoward a cringe-worthy ending. But, when however, is let ourselves laugh about it.
further scrutinized, it can be deciphered that
there is in fact a larger commentary at work,
both on the human and philosophical level.
As the viewer experiences Larry’s misfortunes,
they are exposed to Kafkaesque situations

61

Special thanks to Bruce Thompson and his
exceptional Modern Jewish Comedy course.

News. N.p., 30 Sept. 2009. Web.
3. Turan, Kenneth. “’A Serious Man’” Los
Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 02 Oct. 2009.
Web.

1. Weiss, Anthony. “The End of Jewish Humor.”
The Jewish Daily Forward. The Forward 4. O’Hehir, Andrew. “Goys, God, Dentistry
Association, 3 June 2009. Web.
and “A Serious Man”.” Salon. Salon MediaGroup, 1 Oct. 2009. Web.
2. Beaks, Mr. “Mr. Beaks Interviews Joel And
Ethan Coen For A Serious Man.” Ain’t It Cool 5. Ibid.

62

SUSPENDED IN SLACKERDOM
Reflections on Ennui, Generational
Anxiety, and the Fragile Unknown
by Jon Vorpe

Arizona, Epiphany
One summer two years ago, I foundmyself floating around the endless backroadsof Arizona, visiting my girlfriend’s family. The
Arizona heat stuck to my skin and gave meheadaches, and I was confined to the passenger
seat as we drove around the San Tan Valley.
From this vantage, all I saw were vast stretchesof tract homes, chain restaurants, shopping
centers, big sale signs, pristine gas stations,
empty plots of land, piles of dirt, gravel, dust —a world of empty landscapes and suburbanite
geographies.
On one of these bright and disorienting
afternoons, I spent hours in the back of a wellstocked Barnes & Noble, browsing the many
Criterion Collection titles. It was there I foundKicking and Screaming, Noah Baumbach’s mid-

90s debut film. The plot summary on the backof the package made reference to a word I had
never heard of — ennui.
Perhaps it was my fascination withthe 1990s, perhaps it was my own desire toconnect with a group of intellectual idlers,perhaps I just secretly wished I could make aliving by wandering the back roads of a humid
Arizona summer with nothing much to do.
Whatever the reason, the film’s articulationof listlessness unlocked a world of emotions I
could only have imagined prior to viewing it.
I came to realize that there are others whose
greatest desire in this world is to drift throughit, uncommitted to the traditional markers ofAmerican life — a job, a family, a professional
career — and more concerned with remaining
perpetually between days.
Kicking and Screaming opened the doors

65

for my own desire to occupy this non-space; it disrupted household units laid the shoddy
introduced me to the “slacker film.”
groundwork for a generation of young
The genre of the “slacker film” emerged individuals burdened with feeling lessin the early 1990s with Richard Linklater’s significant — financially, intellectually,
watershed film Slacker (1991), which also personally — than the generations thatushered in — along with Steven Soderbergh’s had come before them. In many ways, theseminal debut sex, lies, and videotape (1989) — slacker film acted as one articulation of Gen.
a new form of American independent cinema. X’ers fears. The flourishing of the genre is a
Preoccupied with extended scenes of dialogue, testament to the fact that young people of themostly static or slow-moving camera work, early 1990s wanted a confirmation that they
and a meandering set of interactions between weren’t alone in experiencing this generational
characters, the slacker films of the early 90s listlessness.
were a pivotal revisioning of the typical art
While there are several films that fall into
house film.
the category of the slacker genre — including
After Slacker became a major success — Metropolitan (1990), Dazed and Confusedmade for only $23,000 and raking in over $1 (1993), Reality Bites (1994), Empire Records
million, as well as scoring a nomination for (1995), Mallrats (1995), SubUrbia (1996),
the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance — several and The Big Lebowski (1998), to name justfilmmakers liberated by Linklater’s plotless a few — my relationship with slackerdom
vignettes began to make similarly-minded is most clearly articulated by three films:
movies, all of which chose to center on aimless Slacker (1991), Clerks (1994), and Kicking
characters with nothing much to do.
and Screaming (1995). In tracing the various
At the core of the slacker film is an permutations of the slacker ethos between andoverwhelming sense of ennui, no doubt across these three films, the subtle anxieties ofinfluenced by the overarching anxieties this generation of losers become manifested.
of Generation X. Following the financial
successes of the Baby Boomer cohort, Gen Transcendent Wandering
X’ers found themselves in a state of intense
frustration over the dominating security ofRichard Linklater’s groundbreaking
their parents and older relatives. As Maxim debut Slacker navigates the subtle terrains ofFurek notes, “A Gallup Poll ... reported that aimlessness in his distanced yet affectionate
about 75 percent of Americans feared that portrayal of Austin, Texas and its suburbanite
their personal financial situation would wanderers. The film follows a different
become worse by the year 2000. Another 64 character or set of characters for small vignettes
percent believed that it would be harder for — usually not more than a few minutes — as
young people, including college graduates, to they purposelessly travel from taxi cab tofind adequate employment.”1
bookstore to coffee shop to theater, slowly
In addition to these statistics, a report traversing the sidewalks of the city. When one
conducted by generational theorists William conversation begins to die down, another one
Strauss and Neil Howe and compiled in faintly strolls into frame, and a new vignette
Theory and Generation X revealed that “a begins.
Generation X child of the 1980s faced twice
These many eccentric forms of conversation
the risk of parental divorce as a child of the typically have to do with conspiracy theories,
mid-1960s and three times the risk of a child sex, video equipment, music, and of course,of the 1950s.”2Madonna’s pap smear. What unifies theseThus, both economic anxieties and strange yet insightful comments is that these66

slackers are all obsessed with making anythingsound more intellectually stimulating. Indeed,at the core of these ordinary interactions is
the subtle recognition that an enlightening
conversation is more important than earninga living.
As one disgruntled slacker muses, “All that[earning a living] does is fill the bellies of thepigs who exploit us.” Rather than pursue work,a job, a nuclear family — traditional markers
of an American adulthood — these aimlesswanderers prefer the pursuit of spontaneousconversation. As a means of combating
the anxieties of living in a capitalist society
and the accompanying pressures to “growup and find a job,” these Gen. X’ers findsolace in the unencumbered permutationsof improvised interaction. Thus, the pursuitof quasi-intellectual conversation is a central
preoccupation of many slacker films. Reflectingsome of the French New Wave’s energy, andthe general bohemian countercultural vibe of
the l960s, these films contain characters who
sway toward confab over silence, dialogue overaction.
For me, much of Slacker’s bohemiantendencies reflect my own counterculturalbent. I learn the most when I indulge myself
in a nomadic lifestyle — travelling the backroads of my own private Arizona searching foran alternative to this American life. Instead of
facing the looming possibilities of finding ajob, or conforming to capitalist expectations,
I would prefer to fill my days with a journeysimilar to those in Linklater’s vignettes. Hischaracters drift in and out of his camera,coming and going with the ebb and flow of
their own intuition, following the voicesin their heads, chasing after the last rays ofafternoon.
There’s something mildly magical in
discovering moments of timelessness. In an

67era where we are increasingly tapped in to of the scenes involve lengthy discussions
the Internet, email, social media, and other about banal events, the plot meanders, andcyberspaces that enforce a sense of “nowness,” the production quality is fairly low-budget
it’s interesting to notice how counter-intuitive — Clerks is more concerned with articulatingmuch of this urgency feels to me. When I have the dissatisfaction of being a Gen. X’er withto consider how immediate my experiences are, a shitty job. The film asks: Why do theseor when I become bogged down in “managing” clerks not pursue a better career path? Why do
my time, I’m really just destroying the fragile they feel the need to put up with these dullarchitecture of my own search for timelessness. occupations?
Slacker pinpoints a central sentiment
Author Gary S. Marshall, in his bookin this struggle: the melancholic wandering Theory and Generation X, suggests thatthat accompanies slackerdom is a means of Generation X’ers were plagued with feelings ofaccessing a briefly transcendent moment, a insecurity, especially when it came to following
temporal vortex. In those fragile moments of a professional career. He writes, “the idea ofdrifting, I uncover a connection with my own a career ladder was met with great skepticism
interiority, unburdened by lunch meetings, by all Generation Xers — even students whoserushed trips to the grocery store, phone calls education and training was in an area of highto make, and all those other responsibilities of demand in the labor market. Much of theprofessional grown-ups. There, in the margins, Generation X literature again suggests thein the absences of time, I find myself freed.
seemingly narrow range of possibilities in the
lives of Generation X students.”3
Welcome to the Working Week
As children of the massively successful
Baby Boomers, these educated, intelligent,
Unlike the slackers of Slacker, writer and sharp and skilled Gen. X’ers nonetheless felt
director Kevin Smith’s lead characters in his the overwhelming weight of insufficiency, as
influential black-and-white debut Clerks though there was some predetermined fate
(1993) are confined by the pressures of work, that would prevent them from achieving their
not play. Clerks centers around the events of professional dreams. Skeptical of finding and
one day at a convenience store, and the two holding onto such vocations, these slackers fell
humdrum heroes behind the counter, Dante back on their stable yet boring jobs as clerks,
Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves baristas, video store workers, and the like.
(Jeff Anderson). With its focus on occupying
While the main conflict in Clerks revolves
an entirely jejune job, Clerks is a tale about the around Dante’s and Randal’s relationship, thecollective indifference of Gen. X’ers toward a film never offers a viable alternative to being alife of labor.
clerk. While there is a brief implication near
Clerking, and having to serve an endless the end of the film that Dante may attempt
supply of demanding customers, causes these to find direction in his life, he still remains
two to articulate their generational anxieties employed in the dead-end job he hates, asin polar opposite ways: Dante consistently does Randal. And both of them continue
reminds everyone that he’s “not even supposed clerking in the 2006 sequel Clerks 2, anotherto be here today” — having been called into confirmation that some fate has forced themwork at the last minute to cover for his boss to remain perpetually behind the convenience— while Randal exhibits a flippant approach store counter. Thus, while clearly a depiction
to his customers, oftentimes mocking them for of the excessive ennui that accompanies menial
their stupid video selections.
occupations like clerking, Smith provides no
While similar in form to Slacker — most light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, he68suggests that these Gen. X’ers must continue
to put up with the endless annoyances of amindless workplace routine.
Clerks articulates one central anxiety thatpersists today with the millennials. Many of myfriends and peers continue to feel the pressures
to find a job and “make it” as successful
American individuals. Yet, oftentimes in theprocess of defining these career ambitions,
myself and others are forced to work at jobs
that are, to put it lightly, uninspiring.
Talking with others in my cohort, I noticethat they too are uncertain of what comesnext. Many of them have no idea what sortof work they want to do. Some of them do,but don’t know how. All of them are scared,
worried about the “seemingly narrow rangeof possibilities” that may actually exist for us.
In essence, the anxieties of Clerks continue tomatter to the millennials — perhaps, in thefragile time that follows college, regardlessof cohort, we all struggle to understand our“place” in the world.
In the meantime, while we attempt todetermine what it is we truly want to do, I
bet you’ll find us begrudgingly serving you alukewarm latte at your nearest coffee shop. Or
scoffing at your request to special order yournew favorite poetry book. Or perhaps simply
telling you that “I’m not even supposed to behere today.”as it gets: they all reference various authors,philosophers, and theorists, carry a markedly
ostentatious tone of voice, cleverly demeaneach other at every opportunity they have,and construct elaborately blithe personas, as
though nothing in this postgraduate worldis worth their valuable time. Behind themany snooty quips and calm façades of thesebourgeois idlers, however, exists a suppressed
anxiety around growing up and leaving the
comfortable intellectual communities ofcollege.

“Behind the many snooty
quips and calm façades
of these bourgeois
idlers, however, exists
a suppressed anxiety
around growing up andleaving the comfortable
intellectual communities
of college.”

The film opens with the devastating news
that Jane (Olivia d’Abo) has decided to travel
abroad to Prague, leaving lead character andboyfriend
Grover (Josh Hamilton) in a state
Slacking Toward Bethlehemof shock and frustration. As the film proceeds,
Privileged by the generous financial various flashbacks deepen the relationship thatassistance of their wealthy Baby Boomer developed between these quick-witted slackers
parents, the recent college graduates of Kicking during their senior year. In many ways, theand Screaming (1995) have no need to find main tension throughout the film surrounds
a job or make a living. This cadre of recent whether or not Grover will overcome thecollege grads float around their sleepy college omnipresent malaise of Generation X in order
town, doing mostly nothing while trying to to leave his sleepy college town and reunite
extend the many intellectual conversations with Jane overseas.
As noted prior, one of the major markers ofthat permeated the last four years of their lives.
On its surface, the characters of Kicking a Gen. X’er was the high likelihood that he/sheand Screaming are as archetypal a reflection would be a child of divorced parents. Grover’sof the intelligent yet removed Gen. X slackers parents divorce shortly after he graduates69

college, leaving him even more disillusioned
with love. When his father (Elliott Gould)
visits town, rather than engage in a deeper
conversation about how he’s coping with theseparation, both parties humor each otherwith superficial chit-chat. Again, rather thantackle the pressing anxieties of his generation,
Grover falls back on the monotonous as ameans of skirting his own personal insecurities
concerning romance and marriage.
After doing nothing for most of the film,
Grover makes his decision: he wants to fly to
Prague, he wants to be reunited with Jane. He
rushes into the airport, hurries to the frontof the line, and gives an impassioned speech
about why he needs to make the next flightto Prague, only to realize he left his passport
at home. The flight attendant, attempting toconsole him, suggests, “You could always go
tomorrow.”
Even after this slacker decides he wants tomake a change, to actively resist the melancholyof his generation, to pursue a romantic life
despite disillusionment, to do something
instead of mope around all day and engage inmeaningless quibbles with his friends — somesmall detail prevents his happiness. Fate, or
fatalism, prevails, and this Gen. X’er finds
himself just as he was when the film began:
without his lover, without direction, defeated.
Last Call
As I look back on the summer I discovered
Kicking and Screaming and the “slacker film,” I
now know these films have helped me realize
one of the truest parts of myself. Like Grover,I know there’s some part of me that wants tomove on, to chase after my own imagined Jane,to fly to Prague and satisfy some craving to
act on my desires. Yet, some great inexplicableweight persists. Perhaps it’s fear of being a
failure, perhaps it’s fear of making little money,
perhaps it’s my own struggles with self-esteem
or sense of worth, perhaps it’s because I’m
a part of a generation that is just as anxious

70

about the future.
Suspended, I look forward at an unclear
horizon. How many lazy summers do I have
left, if any? College ends, my friends disperse,
and all those backroads of Arizona, that big
empty expanse — floating between days,
quietly content with the unknown — fades
into my memory.
Maybe slackerdom is just an imagined
nostalgia for people we used to be, for times we
had the freedom to aimlessly search for someintangible sense of direction, for the fragileintervals between childhood and what comes
after…
As Grover sums the struggle up, as only aslacker truly could:“Despite my intense efforts to do nothing,
things happen anyway.”

1. Maxim Furek. The Death Proclamation ofGeneration X: A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy of Goth,
Grunge and Heroin (Bloomington: iUniverse,
2008), 11.
2. Gary S. Marshall. “Theory and Generation
X,” Journal of Public Administration Research
and Theory 3 (1997): 399.
3. Marshall, “Generation X,” 400.

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