Genre Hybridization in Dreamgirls

            On the surface, 2006’s Dreamgirls seems less Baroque than other contemporary musicals, including Moulin Rouge and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Although it contains a fairly straightforward narrative, it uses the postmodern technique of hybridization to both mix the musical with the gangster film as well as blending the types of musicals themselves.

            The film’s narrative closely parallels the gangster film. It is a story about starting at the bottom and rising through the ranks. Instead of the crime underworld, however, this is about making it big in the music industry. Jamie Foxx’s character, Curtis, serves as a stand-in for the types of characters James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson were known for in the 1930’s. He is starts with nothing but his ambition and his ideology of breaking through the glass ceiling of the lily white pop charts. He faces an industry that uses shady tactics such as payola and flat out stealing material from the black music scene. He responds by beating them at their own game, also paying to have his music played on the radio.

            As he begins to rise through the ranks, he usurps Danny Glover’s role as manager to Eddie Murphy’s musician. This is very similar to a gangster having his immediate supervisor killed to help climb the ladder quicker. His rise to prominence is shown through a series of montages, much like in the gangster films of the past. This even includes the clichéd spinning newspaper, this time touting the success of his “Dreams” instead of a crime wave. The backdrop of the civil rights movement even gives the characters to fear being on the streets, much like the threat of drive-by shootings always loom on the gangster mind.

            Upon reaching the top, Curtis must do whatever it takes to stay there, including stealing Effie’s own music in much the same way his music had been stolen for American Bandstand. He takes illegal loans from Mafia backers, adding to the crime film allusions. Taking these measures to maintain his position turns corrupts him in much the same way a 1930’s gangster eventually goes from being an anti-hero to a straight antagonist. Once on top, there is nowhere to go but down, and Curtis faces the same downfall as the Scarfaces’ and Little Casesars’ of the gangster film as he is “ratted out” by Beyonce’s character. This breach of loyalty is another motif heavily borrowed from the gangster film.

            In addition to bringing elements of the crime genre into the musical, it also blends musical tropes. The film manages to be a backstage musical, cue for song, and integrated musical all at once. Its subjects are in showbiz and the story focuses on the behind the scenes of their rise to fame. It also has cue for song moments, such as Eddie Murphy’s character teaching the girls his music, which transitions into a musical number. In addition to the songs just being the character’s performing, they also serve as integrated sequences. The characters go in and out of song during fights, discussions, and celebrations that are not part of the Dream’s act. The most interesting use of the cue for song in the film is its use of one song to cue another, such as Effie’s “And I’m telling you…” which is cued by the previous song.

            By blending the “rags to riches” narrative of the gangster film into the musical and adding elements of all types of musicals, Dreamgirls manages to both feel fresh as well as having a familiarity that genre films thrive on.  The tried and true narrative keeps the differing approaches to musical numbers from being distracting in a way it might have otherwise.

Reception Theory and Pulp Fiction

            In defining reception theory in Literary Theory: an Introduction, Terry Eagleton writes, “The text itself is really no more than a series of ‘cues’ to the reader, invitations to construct a piece of language into meaning.” Reception theory gives power to the reader. They take what is implicitly written about setting, characters, and plot and use this context to form a richer “wholeness” to the text that can’t be found with merely the information made explicit within the text. A film like Pulp Fiction allows viewers to engage with the work in similar ways, while also exposing the limitations of the theory.

            Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction weaves four separate stories together, not only jumping back and forth between narratives, but also chronology. The film begins and ends with a couple attempting to hold up a restaurant, a scene that takes place chronologically in the middle of the rest of the action in the film. The highly stylized editing of the film forces the viewer to engage with the film and make connections in a way that contrasts with the more passive viewing allowed by a straight forward narrative.

            The film features two hit men, Jules and Vincent. They act as the “cues” to the viewer. Through their clothing and dialogue, the film clues in the audience as to where the story is within the whole. One of them is even killed at one point in the film, only to be seemingly resurrected a few scenes later. It is the job of the audience to make the connection that what they are now seeing is taking place before the scenes that preceded it. By returning to an earlier point in the film, the viewer is given more information about an earlier event. The knowledge of the characters eventual death adds an extra layer of poignancy to scene. Without this level of reception on the viewer’s part, the film is merely a collection of scenes with no apparent structure. A passive “reader” of the film would likely be confused; assuming they had seen a film in the middle of the editing process, not yet put together properly.

            Eagleton addresses this in his writing on reception theory, using it as an example of the theory’s limitations. A viewer who is not confused by Pulp Fiction’s radical structure is assumed to already have the capacity to view a film in this manner and therefore is not truly challenged by it. The film is not doing its job, which according to Wolfgang Iser is to question our belief in what literature (or in this case, cinema) is. All that has really happened was that a viewer saw another film, albeit a film that requires more work on the part of the audience.

            This limitation to reception theory is illustrated by the way Pulp Fiction was hailed as an instant classic upon release. The way the film called attention to editing was lauded immediately, an exercise in style over substance that would have surely appealed to the Russian Formalists of the early twentieth century. The instant acceptance into the canon of film history showed that critics were not having their critical assumptions properly challenged, a supposed tenant of the reception theory. A film that calls into question these beliefs is much more likely to be panned initially, only to be recognized for its revolutionary qualities as time catches up to it.

            Reception theory allows for a reader to have more fun with a text through its interactive nature, especially for an imaginative brain. Its failure to transform prior assumptions on the part of the reader doing all the work, however, does proves to be its largest contradiction.

Film Noir Conventions in Chinatown

            Although devoid of the historical context of the first wave of Film Noirs from the 1940s and 50s, Chinatown manages to retain key story elements and some of its signature style and adapts them for the 1970s. The film’s self-aware nature as well as its unique use of the water imagery and McGuffin device serve as a call back to the heyday of Noir, without actually being a part of it.

            Whereas the original cycle of Noir films were produced before “Noir” was even a part of the film lexicon, Chinatown is very aware of itself as a noir. The film opens with a vintage Paramount logo and fades into opening credits with an art deco font. The very first scene has Detective Gittes calling attention to his new venetian blinds. The biggest nod to Noir, however, is the casting of John Huston as Noah Cross. Huston began his career by directing The Maltese Falcon, a definitive noir that also features a tough detective protagonist. “The film draws one aspect of its power from the way… Huston makes Cross an attractive figure, mobilizing our sympathetic response to the pioneer archetype before they reveal to us Evelyn and Noah's past. Partly this is an effect of the wry humor and tough-minded realism of the language Towne writes for the character, as when he pleads guilty to being "respectable" by growling "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough"(Shetley 1092). This line is ironic because noirs were once seen as “B” pictures, but now the casting of Huston pays homage to the film’s inspiration while also giving it legitimacy and respectability as a noir itself.

            Chinatown also uses recurring motifs of Noir in interesting ways. The first is the film’s use of water. In past Noirs, water is an integral component of the films. It seemed to complement the hopelessness of the world that the films took place in. Just like William Holden floating dead in a swimming pool in Sunset Boulevard or Orson Welles being pursued through the underground waterways of Vienna in The Third Man, Chinatown prominently features water. Rather than used strictly as symbolism, it is the driving motivation of the characters and the key to solving Gittes’ investigation. Using the control of the water system as the scheme of the antagonist is very fitting for the 1970s when trust in government entities was extremely low. “Over and above the noir tendencies of Polanski’s film, therefore, it is the expansion of Simi Valley, the control of the LAPD, zoning, immigrant segregation and ghettoization that bind together the historical and the cinematic. From Mulholland, Eaton and Otis, on through …Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Tom Bradley, Richard Riordan and Arnold Schwarzenegger: these are the people … that waited in the wings to copy the modus operandi of the elite incorporated into Chinatown; those that became its successors and future torchbearers” (Scott 23). The film is looking into the past to explain the present state of power in the U.S., California especially.

            The McGuffin is given a new spin in Chinatown also. Instead of an arbitrary object like treasure or clothing setting up the plot, it is a human, Hollis Mulwray. Gittes is hired to investigate Hollis, but by the first half hour of the film, Hollis is killed and mostly forgotten as the plot moves on to the waterworks conspiracy and Gittes relationship with Evelyn. The lowering of a human into a role traditionally filled by an object could also be read as an attack on the establishment of the 1970s and the way young soldiers were used during the Vietnam War. Like Mulwray, Vietnam era soldiers were viewed by some in power as insignificant in the grand scheme of gaining power. “Chinatown was no longer movie folklore, or cultural narrative, but historical re-enactment. In the words of Michael Eaton, Chinatown was “not just a place in the past where no one knew what was going on […] but, much more dynamically, a metaphorical site still mentally present,” (Scott 20). The film seems to be looking to how Hollywood dealt with WWII as a way to work through the horrors of Vietnam. “Chinatown’s conclusion is generally taken to be the filmic equivalent of an existential shriek of despair” (Novak 269). With no real life answers to contemporary culture, Polanski deals with it through film, again finding no answers.

Although Chinatown does not adhere to the traditional black and white, city at night settings of the original Noirs, It uses specific aspects of the genre and style such as casting, water, the McGuffin to reflect a new set of fears and anxieties that Americans faced in the 1970s due to Vietnam, Watergate, and the general cynicism that had set in by 1973. This functions in much the same way that the original Noir cycle reflected the social concerns of the post WWII years.

Works Cited

Novak, Philip. "The Chinatown Syndrome." Wayne State University Press 49.3 (2007): 255-69.

            Web. 4 Dec. 2014.

Scott, Ian S. "'Either You Bring the Water to L.A. or You Bring L.A. to the Water': Politics,

Perceptions and The Pursuit of History in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.” European Journal of American Studies 2.2 (2007): 20-23. Web. 4 Dec. 2014

Shetley, Vernon L. "Incest and Capital in Chinatown." MLN 114.5 (1999): 1092-109. Web. 7

            Dec. 2014.

Violent Masculinity in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Movies, particularly the western genre, use aggressive violence as a qualifier of masculinity. It is essential for the western hero to resort to killing as a way to prove their “true grit”. Those who resist taking up arms are almost always branded as “yellow-bellied”. Operating in this most masculine of genres, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid attempts to re-evaluate the necessity of violence in defining masculinity. The film achieves this through the reluctance of its title characters to embrace violence, its subversion of the western generic conventions, and by director Sam Peckinpah addressing his own reputation as a violent filmmaker.

            Although both Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid are both violent characters in the film, there is a sense of reluctance from both of them. Pat comes to town and warns Billy of his orders to drive him out. Billy accepts the news peacefully because they share a friendship that dates back to the “good old days”. During his initial raid on Billy, Pat arrests Billy instead of shooting him when he has the chance. Pat’s ability to kill Billy is questioned by several characters in the film including the men who hired him to do so. It is also Pat’s masculinity that is being called into question. This reflects “the struggle to define, prescribe, and sanctify masculinity as the site where violent power is exercised with a skill that embodies beauty and socially constructive results” (Dowell 8). Pat is called upon to prove his manhood while also making the world a safer place by killing.

            Pat’s reluctance gives way to violence when he does ultimately kill Billy. He doesn’t want to kill his old friend, but does so because he feels he must live up to what it means to be a man. Garrett instantly gains a place in history and respect as a real man, but the event changes him forever. “Garrett, after killing Billy, shoots his own reflection in the mirror…signifies not only Garrett’s self-disgust, but also his realization that he [is] dead inside” (Winkler 525). Similarly, the film ends this way not because it feels it is the justified ending, but because the film must live up to the conventions of the western.

            Onscreen violence is an essential convention of the western. The violence “can be seen as an especially telling manifestation of the struggles of popular cinema to balance the forces changing society and those controlling it” (Slocum 649). Because the western is inherently political and uniquely American, Violence is used in allegorical ways to represent the means that men has sought out their own identity as men as well as their national identity as Americans. Within the genre, Violence was accepted and expected during the classical and refined phase. As a baroque period western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid begins to question those assumptions in a way that later films such as Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven would take even further.

            In addition to challenging the expectations of the genre, Sam Peckinpah is also addressing his own reputation of masculinity. One of his most well-known film, The Wild Bunch, embraces the violent nature of the genre freely and even pushes it to extremes. It ends in an extremely graphic shoot out that reinforces the masculinity of the protagonists. This theme is also addressed in some of Peckinpah’s non westerns, notably Straw Dogs where the pacifist protagonist must give up his non-violent ideology and violently deal with his situation. In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Peckinpah appears to use violence primarily because it is expected of him. He shoots the violence in slow motion as a way to “convey the horrors of the era to viewers inured by media to the real violence in society” (Slocum 659). The bloodshed in Pat Garrett is extreme because society has built up a tolerance to it, not because it is a marker of masculinity.

            Peckinpah further defies the expectations of the genre by having Pat Garrett kill Billy the Kid by sneaking up on him after Billy has made love to his girlfriend. Most westerns end with an exciting shoot-out in which the hero has a fair chance. Here, the ending feels anti-climactic. By having the antagonist use his gun to win out over a protagonist who has just had sex, the film suggests that violent tendencies aren’t preferable to being loving or passive. Even though they aren’t preferable, they still win out. This confusing and genre defying ending is an example of how “violence grew more and more prevalent in cinema and society alike, while efforts to make sense of it remained disjointed” (Slocum 660).

            Like Destry in Destry Rides Again, The lead characters of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid can’t escape the violent nature of the western genre that is used as the definition of manhood. Because society is so violent, the western heroes and villains are obligated to conform to these masculine expectations in order to act as a reflection of said society. No matter how reluctant the characters, genre, and director seem to be of violence, they can’t help but succumbing to it.

Works Cited

Dowell, Pat. “The Mythology of the Western: Hollywood Perspectives on Race and Gender in

            the Nineties.” Cineaste 21.1/2 (1995): 6-10. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Dir. Sam Peckinpah. 1973. 2005. DVD-ROM.

Slocum, J David. "Film Violence and the Institutionalization of the Cinema." The New School

            Stable 67.3 (2000): 649-81.JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Winkler, Martin M. "Classical Mythology and the Western Film." Comparative Literature

            Studies 22.4 (1985): 516-40.JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. 

The Trouble with the Truth

                                                      

                   2011’s The Trouble with the Truth, directed by Jim Hemphill, is a modest film about a divorced couple reuniting over dinner following their daughter’s announcement that she is engaged. Robert (John Shea) is a lifelong jazz musician who is still struggling through life well into middle age. His ex-wife, Emily (Lea Thompson), lives a more financially stable life as a recently successful writer. The couple spend the dinner simultaneously attempting to find closure to their relationship while also exploring the possible of reconnecting romantically.

                The film’s strength comes from the combination of casting and screenplay. Shea is one of those actors whose face you swear you have seen in everything, but you can’t quite place where. Here, Shea plays Robert with charisma that makes up for his lack of appropriate social skills. He is blunt and a bit disconnected, which probably led to the dissolution of his marriage and continues to cause friction with his daughter. The genius of Shea’s line readings help to dull the edges of his straightforwardness and gives Robert a warmth despite these flaws.

                Thompson’s Emily seems to be the only person in the world who gets Robert. She gives a grounded, honest performance. It is relieving to see Thompson in a role that isn’t simply trying to cash in on her former work or winking at the audience in the way many actors of her age and stature are given. The chemistry between Shea and Thompson is spectacular. They play off each other in a way that clearly communicates that these characters have spent a significant portion of their lives together. There is also a fun cameo from Danielle Harris as their daughter. Harris doesn’t have a fully fleshed out of a character as the two leads, but it is refreshing seeing her in a film that doesn’t involve blood and gore.

                The film’s screenplay, also written by Hemphill, is delightful. The dialogue is rich and layered without falling into the traps of being overtly self-aware in the way so many other “talky” films are. The few references in the script, ranging from C.S. Lewis to Mork and Mindy, aren’t what can be considered hip. They are, however, true to the characters ages and interests. The screenplay flows throughout and holds the audiences interest. This is a triumph for a film with no traditional plotting, instead serving as an intimate character study.

                The formal elements of the film are not flashy, but are appropriate to the material. The lighting gives off a bit of a golden glow, enhancing the feeling of nostalgia and sense of ease that are felt by the two characters. The camera is mostly static, but due to the framing of the actors, it doesn’t feel amateurish. A constantly moving camera in this film would only give a feeling of car sickness. The film is entirely shot in interiors. This is probably due to budgetary reasons, but serves as a nice parallel to the way the characters, particular Emily, seems to be stuck in her head, unable to express herself with anyone other than Robert.

                The film is not inherently cinematic. The story could work equally as a play or novel. Film, however, is the primary mode of storytelling in today’s society. People rarely go to the theatre and a book only has a chance of being culturally important if it is written for an eighth grader. It is refreshing to see a film that is mature and features characters of this age and intelligence front and center. Robert laments in the film that the movies have become nothing but “Giant robots and talking Chihuahuas”. Hopefully, Hemphill continues to make intimate and engaging films like this one that doesn’t need millions of dollars or green screens and gives actors such as Thompson and Shea rich parts that match their talent.

                The Trouble with the Truth is available now on DVD as well as on Amazon Instant and ITunes.