Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Anti-Pundit

Leave a reply

colbert(Image credit: The New York Times)

For someone so entrenched in politics, and more importantly, the media surrounding politics, it makes sense that Stephen Colbert’s favorite film is, in fact, Sidney Lumet’s Network.  (Read in his own words what he loves most about the film here).  At first glance, it could seem that his bombastic character from The Colbert Report might even be modeled from Howard Beale.  According to Colbert, this isn’t the case- as he remarks, “It’s not an influence for my show, because Beale is a hopeless character who ultimately does not succeed in what he wants to do, and is killed.”  But in satirizing modern television news and the pundits who inhabit the stations, Colbert’s past show takes after Network in its commentary and vision.

For other news commentators of our time, Howard Beale himself shines through in their programming.  In an interview, Glenn Beck actually said he personally identified with Howard Beale: of the “mad as hell” mantra, he said, “I think that’s the way people feel,” Mr. Beck said. “That’s the way I feel”.  His show includes segments such fiery segments as “Constitution under Attack” and “Economic Apocalypse,” and he “regularly bursts into tears”.  On whether he seems himself as a religious figure, akin to the holy church of Howard Beale, however, he declines.

When it was suggested in an interview that he sometimes sounds like a preacher, he responded, “No. You’ve never met a more flawed guy than me.” He added later: “I say on the air all time, ‘if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.’  (NY Times)

As we discussed in class, many of the segments on Howard Beale’s show feature themselves in the tropes of TV news today.  Stephen Colbert points out a few more: Vox Populi he sees most like CNN’s “iReport”, an opportunity for CNN viewers to be featured on the news by tagging “iReport” in their social media posts.  For Sybil the Soothsayer, he points to Bill O’Reilly’s “body language expert,” who supposedly analyzes the body language of important figures (often President Obama) to determine their secret internal and subconscious thoughts.

There is no doubt that Network accurately predicted many of the features of current television, especially in news programs.  Thankfully, we have the restoring order of such anti-pundits as Mr. Colbert to confront the mainstream.

 

 

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/stephen-colbert-on-network-great-film-or-the-greatest-film/

Kouchtown, Drunken 11-Year-Olds, and Governor Dunston

Leave a reply

103 Primetime Emmy Nominations and 16 wins. The 21st best-written television series of all time, according to the Writers’ Guild of America. One of the best series finales in the history of television. Yet 30 Rock struggled to attract viewers throughout its run.

I am dedicating this post to Tina Fey’s laudable wit and satire just as I dedicated my Jefferson Smith post to Amy Poehler’s. Watching The Network and discussing it on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but be reminded of 30 Rock and its ingenious way of poking fun at itself. It’s a show on NBC about making a show on NBC. Tina Fey is the lead writer for the show, and plays the lead writer of the show that’s on the show. Genius! And the show touches on every single topic we discussed on Wednesday: the news oligopoly, the obsession with ratings, the political horse race, and absurd TV programming.

One of the plot lines of 30 Rock, shown largely through the existential struggles of network executive Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin), is the acquisition of NBC from its previous owner, General Electric, by the “fictitious” cable company called Kabletown. (Ahem, Comcast; Fey is poking fun at the actual sale of NBC from GE to Comcast that happened during the show’s run.) To satirize the absurd corporate structures both before and after the sale of the network, Fey designates Jack to be both the head of the network and the head of the Microwave division under GE, losing the latter position after NBC is sold. Jack struggles with the loss of this position, and the loss of his abilities to “create” something, coming up with numerous ideas and schemes to prove himself to his new boss at Kabletown.

One of his first ideas is couches. Just like a cable company buying a network is vertical integration, Jack decides that a network selling couches would further the vertical integration. This crazy idea aside, Kouchtown fails because of shoddy “American engineering” that creates couches so uncomfortable, they are purchased by law enforcement as interrogation chairs. But the show succeeds in using an absurd idea to pass on an important message: our “free” media is being held in fewer and fewer hands.

While 30 Rock struggled with ratings, TGS, the fictional show on the show likewise struggled, and Fey wrote in increasingly absurd demographics to poke fun at TV’s obsession with ratings. Here are some of my favorites:

  1. Liz Lemon (Fey’s writer character) suggests that they will not be able to get the show done for Friday, to which Jack replies, “Well, that will really disappoint your key demographic of drunken 11-year-olds.”
  2. After introducing a new environmentalist mascot called Greenzo, Jack remarks, “Look how Greenzo’s testing! They love him in every demographic: colored people, broads, fairies, commies. Gosh, we gotta update these forms.”
  3. NBC’s new show about teenage boys on an island with hot moms, MILF Island has a new star called Deborah. Jack comments, “And Deborah is testing off the charts in the most profitable demographics: Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, white collar pervs and the obese.”

During the 2012 election, Fey also pokes fun at politicians and the people who impersonate them. She introduces a character called Governor Dunston, played by one of the cast members, Tracy Morgan, and then uses Morgan’s character, Tracey Jordan to satirize Dunston on TGS. Dunston is an absurd Republican politician and presidential candidate, promoting policies that terrify liberal Liz, while frequently humiliating himself in public. Because of Dunston and Jordan’s physical resemblance (they are played by the same actor), the Dunston skits put TGS’s ratings through the roof. However, the Dunston skits on TGS also increase the Republican Governor’s popularity, creating a moral dilemma for Liz: if she continues to write the skits, her show will get great ratings, but a foolish politician will get more votes for the presidential race; if she doesn’t write the skits, her show will suffer, but the candidate won’t benefit from the free media attention. The plot ingeniously pokes fun at Fey’s experience impersonating Sarah Palin, and eerily foreshadows the recent obsession of the media with Trump (it has helped their ratings, but has also helped Trump’s popularity).

All 7 beautiful seasons of 30 Rock are on Netflix and I encourage everyone to watch them. (I personally have binge-watched the show twice so far.) The pilot has received a lot of criticism, and the show takes a couple of episodes to find its comedic footing, but once you’re halfway through season 1, you can enjoy one of the best shows in TV history.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

  • “Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets.” -Tracy
  • “No, Tracy took advantage of my white guilt, which is supposed to be used only for good, like over-tipping and supporting Barack Obama.” -Liz
  • “The only thing I will be discussing with the House Subcommittee on Baseball, Quiz Shows, Terrorism, and Media is vertical integration.” -Jack
  • “Okay, in my defense, every April 22nd I honor Richard Nixon’s death by getting drunk and making some unpopular decisions.” -Jack
  • “Every Tina I know is a judgmental bitch.” -Liz
  • “Oh, no, The Peace Corp. Lawrence Peace’s corporation. We drilled for oil in gorilla habitats.”-Avery

Here are the articles I used to write this post (and they are both worth a read!):

How Tina Fey’s ’30 Rock’ Lasted Seven Seasons and Changed the Game for Female Comedy Creators

10 Episodes that Show how 30 Rock Tweaked the Sitcom Formula

Moderner Times

Leave a reply
2001 is a non-verbal experience; out of two hours and 19 minutes of film, there are only less than 40 minutes of dialogue. I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the sub-consciousness with an emotional and philosophic content. To convolute McLuhan, in 2001 the message is the medium. I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does; to ‘explain’ a Beethoven symphony would be to emasculate it by erecting an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation. – Stanley Kubrick
Where else have we seen such an aversion to “verbalized pigeonholing,” a resolution to remain silent in a fast-talking, fast-moving world?
tramp
Far removed from the bustling, chaotic world of a newly industrialized society, the universe of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey presents an elegant, civilized, and overwhelmingly quiet vision of the future.  Indeed, we hardly see any humans at all: only a few passing strangers frequent the halls of the space station, and the spaceships flying to the moon and beyond transport no more than five people at a time.  The largest congregation of people we see is in the lunar conference room, where a group of civilized adults calmly cooperates with protocol.
 But despite the outward decorum, elements of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times manifest themselves as poignantly as ever.
For example, eating – a strong motif in Modern Times – echoes throughout 2001. Eating in space is a purely mechanical process. Throughout the film, we see many characters eat, but their diet is restricted to blocks of unidentifiable edible matter (except in the last scene, where Dave elaborately dines, and the first scene, where primates eat plants and animals.  I won’t expand on these observations here.)  The scene in which Frank and Dave are introduced particularly reminded me of a scene in Modern Times, in which the factory boss considers a pitch to acquire a mechanical eating machine for his workers.

food eating times

We see Frank and Dave silently eating their food, as a prerecorded BBC interview plays to introduce the astronauts, their situation, and Hal.  Why would Kubrick decide to add this silent secondary level of perspective?  Is it simply a convenient expository tool, or something else?

Chaplin used a similar gimmick in the feeding-machine scene.  Instead of having the accompanying salesmen pitch the machine to the boss, a prerecorded voice lists its attributes while the men silently gesture.  Perhaps in this style, Frank, Dave, and Hal lose some aspect of their humanity- instead, they become advanced tools in pursuit of a larger mission.  In some regard, what difference do they bear to their sleeping crew mates, who exist solely as a collection of pulsing lines on a screen?

life functions

 

I found many other aspects of 2001 which mimic (or sometimes distort) the silent film drama of Chaplin.  In Chaplin’s acting, facial expressions are critical to his universality, and offer some of the most compelling and emotional aspects of his art.  This would seem to directly contradict the stone-faced, sharp demeanor of the astronauts and dignitaries of 2001.

normal dave

But what we see at the end of the film is an unapologetic outpouring of intensity and emotion, told only through facial expressions.

scream dave

And ironically, the only character who cannot emote via facial movements (Hal) evokes a visceral response from the audience through primarily visual means.  The sinister red light that represents Hal is unsettling at best and horrifying at worst.  Despite offering no real reason for concern when we initially meet Hal (and indeed, he speaks in a perfectly friendly manner), there is a certain difficulty in trusting a voice embodied by a menacing, unblinking red eye.

hal

Though Modern Times and 2001: A Space Odyssey came out over thirty years apart, the legacy and artistry of silent film continues to live on- even in a genre as modern and futuristic as science fiction.  It’s unclear if Chaplin ever saw 2001 (he died about ten years after the film came out), but we can be sure that his sentiments from the end of The Great Dictator still apply:

 We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. – Charlie Chaplin

2001 a space odysseys famous match-cut 'bone to spaceship' - Imgur

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Tw-Vi/2001-A-Space-Odyssey.html

Rear Window and Space

Leave a reply

The cinematography in Rear Window was great, and showed restraint in never giving a perspective too far removed from Jeff’s apartment and often obscuring action. This movie is all about spaces, and we are largely within Jeff’s space throughout the film. The long opening shot establishes two main spaces; there is the outside world in the courtyard where everyone else lives in their own apartment, and there is the space behind Jeff, his own apartment with his furniture, photography, and people he knows. The former space is external composed of others outside his life while the latter is internal, comprised of his own thoughts, personality, and experiences. These two spaces are separated by the window.

The framing of each shot emphasizes the separation of these spaces.

We don’t simply peer into any apartment. Most of the shot is the outside wall, which separates what we are supposed to see and what we are not. Having the action take place in only 25% of the screen makes the apartments feel very closed in from our perspective. This composition accentuates the privacy of the apartment space and makes the audience conscious that it is violating that person’s privacy.

The Thorwalds’ apartment is even more interesting because Lars’s space is separated from Emma’s. The rooms they are currently in during this shot are the rooms that identify them most, that they spend most time in. The walls are even different colors to hint at their lack of cohesion. The apartments are not only physical places that people live in, but also represent their internal state. Using a room that a character lives in to mirror their own mental state is a common technique in filmmaking (e.g. Barton Fink), and it is done pretty effectively here. The brick wall that separates the two spaces is also used strategically to obscure important action in the future to enhance the suspense. Hitchcock shows himself to be a rather resourceful filmmaker here.

The visuals are only one aspect that define spaces in this movie though. Different sounds become identified with different spaces as well throughout the film. From Miss Torso’s apartment we hear the music that she dances to while from the Songwriter’s apartment we hear the progression of his composition. And we hear a scream at night that we desperately try to identify to a space.

The same way we do not get shots from inside an apartment, we do not get sound from it either. As Dr. Jordan discussed in class, all of the sound in this movie is diegetic, and further it is only what can be heard from the space of Jeff’s apartment. So during the climax of the film instead of hearing a dramatic soundtrack to elevate the suspense, we hear jazz from the Songwriter’s apartment, which is very dissonant with the action of Lisa being attacked by Thorwald. This sound, like the framing, accentuates the privacy of the apartments we are peering into. The fact that we cannot hear what goes on in other people’s spaces demonstrates that we should not be seeing what goes on in them either.

Daddy Issues

Leave a reply

Capra’s film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, has many interesting components that are still relevant in film today. One of these components is the role of the absent father. That is, the idea that the symbolic father, for example a father who has passed away or a father who just plain packed his bags and left, is more powerful than the living father. In both Saunders and Smiths lives, we are given the image of the absent father. I asked myself “why?” What’s the deal with the fatherless movies and how many other films have this same component?

Well, I did some research and discovered some surprising things about Disney and Pixar films in particular. One of my favorite Disney movies, aside from The Little Mermaid, is Toy Story. I never really thought about it, but in all three Toy Story movies, Andy’s father is never mentioned. I looked into this phenomenon. The conspirators say that Andy’s dad was a ‘deadbeat’ and they pick up a few subtle hints to prove this theory. This assumption explains why Andy is so attached to Woody and Buzz Lightyear. The absent father can be replaced though cowboy toys and astronaut toys, especially for a boy Andy’s age.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-negroni/the-truth-about-andys-dad_b_5405864.html

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 12.04.23 AM

Alice does not have a father in Alice in Wonderland. She is inundated with ‘mad’ thoughts and curious ideas. We, as an audience, know that her father was supportive of her thinking creatively and being inquisitive about almost everything. He acts as her driving inspiration and ‘image of hope’ throughout her nightmare. It seemed as if he was her guiding light through the whole thing, and even though he had passed away, she knew that he would be supporting her and her inspired, curious thoughts. This heroic image that is given in Alice in Wonderland is just one way the absent father is powerful. As we find out the father in the film is deceased, a heroic symbol of hope is birthed.

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 12.03.50 AM

UP is another example of a fathers absence. I believe that in this movie, the absence of a father in Russell’s life is the driving force of his ambitious personality and drive to do good in the world. For those of you who are not familiar with the movie, Carl is the ‘grandpa’ whose wife Ellie passed away. When Carl and Russell meet, the audience is convinced that it is destiny. When the two go on an adventure to Paradise Falls, we can see that Carl is filling the hole in Russell’s life that his father left when he left him. An absent father can also build other relationships in a sense that the role of the father can be filled by other characters, such as Carl, to build the story.

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 12.03.14 AM

So, there might not be a concrete answer on “why?”. Why is the absent father such a common occurrence in film and television? Like in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Disney and Pixar utilize the absent father to add to the story. Whether it be a vision of a hero, an inspiration, a drive to do better, or just a way to make a new friend, in film, the absent father is more powerful than the present father.

To read more about the ‘disappeared dad’ and why in film, “Deceased Parents are the Best”, check out these two articles on tvtropes!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisappearedDad
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeceasedParentsAreTheBest