The Exploitation of the Pseudo-reality in Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole"

     John Dewey was very concerned with the state of our democracy in the early 20th century.  Our population has exploded and the country had expanded its geographic borders.  Not only that, but millions of immigrants with differing thoughts ideas and cultures were pouring into the country.  Gone were the days of the small tight knit community.  Gone were the days of the homogenized culture.  He knew that for democracy to exist we needed to create a unified community.  That community was created through the shared symbols of communication.  These images would help define a genuine shared interest that would lead to desire for a consequence, a result of action for change.  That desire would lead to an action and in that action community would be formed.  However, there is a problem, Walter Lippmann posits that people don’t naturally share the same symbols.  We all have a pseudo-reality, populated by images that we create to manage the size and complexity of our world.  Since our pseudo-realities are constructed individually, they are unique.  He says that all of us live in the same reality but think and feel in different ones.  When Dewey speaks of habits of thought being the obstacle to communication and thereby community, it is related to these images or pictures in our heads.  Lippman says that Democracy’s failures are due to a mismanagement or misunderstanding of the pictures in our heads.  Dewey says that the exploiters of sentiment are appealing to habitual thought processes.  Ultimately then, the means of communication (mechanisms) are the limited by our minds and the pseudo-environments in them, and exploited by those who wish to maintain the status quo or further their own ambitions.  Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole” demonstrates this quandary through its cynical portrayal of a newspaper man exploiting the pseudo-environment for personal gain.  

     When we are introduced to our protagonist, Chuck Tatum, we see him utilize shared symbols to manipulate the owner of the Albuquerque Sun-Times into hiring him.  In the various exchanges he has with the employees of the paper he indicates his ability to appeal to the intellectual habits of the public to create a consensus, or in reality a perceived consensus.  This is important as those abilities will be used to full effect as the plot unfolds.

     When Leo is discovered trapped in the cave, Tatum, is veritably salivating over the possibilities of personal gain, by exploiting this situation.  He looks for an angle.  This angle is a means of planting an image in the pseudo-environment that will be fleshed out lead to action based on that false image.  Important to that environment is that we populate it with heroes and demons.  There is little interest in making a cave a demon, so panders to superstition.  He angles the story with the legends of the vengeful spirits of the native tribes jealous of the poor Leo searching for pots.  The public have their villain, their demon, to ascribe the evil of the situation to. Then he sets up the heroes.  First and foremost is himself.  He establishes a relationship with Leo and with his family.  He does a few ostensibly helpful things e.g. calling authorities, arranging for the rescue crew.  He maintains that image by daily descending into the mine to talk with Leo.  These few acts appear heroic, sacrificing self for someone you hardly know, risking life to visit.  The people place the picture of Tatum in their pseudo-environment and finish their image of him with the holy qualities of heroship.  They come to worship him, but due to the picture in their head, and not the reality which is far from anything heroic.

     He sets up other heroes: the small-town sheriff doing what’s right for one of his own, the old contractor willing to drill all the way through the rock just to save one man, the suffering wife bravely waiting and praying for the one she loves.  Each of these presentations are placed  in the pseudo-environment and fleshed out with what ought to be according to each person.  They become the symbols that create the shared interest to join these brave souls in the effort to save Leo.  That shared interest leads to that desire to save which leads them to action.  The people come together and offer love and support (though also a deranged sort of curiosity). They act as Dewey says and that leads them to become a community.  That community shares the values and desires and efforts all due to that shared picture in their heads.

     The tragedy of the film is the tragedy of democracy.  When the public has its habits, its pseudo-environment, exploited for personal gain what can only lead to disappointment and disillusionment.  The heroes are, in reality, shadows.  the Sheriff is not selflessly serving his constituency, he is using this image for his reelection.  The contractor is not doing everything he can to save a man, he is doing publicity for his business.  The wife is not bravely suffering, she sees it as an opportunity to gain financially and escape.  And Tatum is no hero, his risk taking and pro bono service to the family is all calculated to benefit him financially.  Nevertheless, these shadows produce a very real and emotional response in the public.  They love them and come together and work together for this cause.  These false heroes are the symbols that they look to to unite them together.  But shadows cannot bind and the community founded on the pseudo-environment collapses, being a pseudo-community.  Instead of creating democracy it breaks down and we are left to mourn, not just the death of poor Leo, but the failure of true community in the face of the pictures in our heads.

Truth and Realism, a Popular Art

      Otto Brahm once said, “The device on the banner of the new art is one word: Truth.  And truth, truth in every aspect of life is what we too aim at and demand… the truth of the  independent spirit that does not need euphemisms, that does not want to conceal anything.  And which therefore knows only one adversary, its enemy to the death: the lie in every form.”  One of the confusions in understanding realism is the focus on form.  One hears “realism” and thinks of an aesthetic representation that is perfect in its rendering of the image of our world.  Yet realism has more to do with truth that real.  What is the motivation behind the art is verily what Otto Brahm said, that realism is truth in every aspect of life without euphemisms or concealing anything.  Art has in its nature a subjectivity which leads to contrivance.  Historically that contrivance has been used to conceal the true horror of the oppressed.  Brecht argues that to portray the truth, realism is to lay bare the causal network in society; the oppressive force.  So in order to portray that truth, the medium for representation requires objectivity.  Bazin argues that to best source of that objectivity is found in film.  The nature of the camera allows it to capture reality, in his opinion, without the interpolation of the author.  What we see is simply what is there.

      Hirokazu Koreeda’s film “Still Walking” provides an accurate example of the intent of these theorists (Brahm, Bazin, Brecht) that objectivity leads to truth which is the lodestar of realism.  Upon viewing the film one is taken by the stillness of the camera work.  Perhaps most notable is the lunch scene.  The shot is framed by the open door to the garden, with the camera placed in the garden looking into the house.  The camera remains stationary for the majority of the meal.  The characters enter and exit the scene without the camera following them.  We hear their voices after stepping out of the shot and then they enter again.  The dialogue and the action occur without any concern for where the camera is or where the focus is “supposed” to be.  

       The result of this is a semblance of objectivity.  As an audience we don’t have any help from the camera to tell us about positions of power or relationships or focus.  All things occurring within the frame are of equal importance.  Whether the daughter is talking to the father or the mother to the son, none is favored.  It appears that the scene happens and the camera has merely captured that moment in time.  We are left, as Brecht says, to then use that concrete to muse upon more abstract concepts.  The son and the father have a bad relationship.  The husband and the wife have a bad relationship.  The new wife of the son is uncomfortable in this situation.  So then those concrete visions lead us to make unfettered conclusions about the causal network in play here.

      Therein lies the truth.  The greatest truth that we can find is that which we discover within ourselves.  We watch this scene and view that concrete representation and then apply to ourselves, see in ourselves the similitude to that concrete.  We find that which is true in ourselves, where the oppression is in our own lives.  We see a causal network for our own misery and happiness.  That is truth.  That is real.

      Brecht believed that the truth belonged to the masses, that is why realism is a popular art.  What is common amongst the masses is family.  The family structure often has within it oppressive causal networks.  In watching Koreeda’s film we see an oppressive causal network playing out in front of the camera.  The family’s tension is our tension, their resentment is our resentment, their hegemonic family structure is ours.  Setting up that objective lens allows us to see into that truth that we all experience, that which is popular, that which is real.    

       It is worth noting however that this objectivity is a myth.  The objective lens is still a contrivance because it is place, focused, angled, and the image is framed.  A hand still chooses when to move, when to cut.  But this myth of objectivity still leads to that lodestar of the truth of the human condition, laying bare the causal network.   We see that, and in spite of the contrivance to make the subjective objective, we find truth, by making that objective subjective.  That subjective hand of the director reveals rather that hides the oppressive structures.  That illusionary objectivity opens the door to subjectivity in the audience and then the truth is found in ourselves.  That is popular realism.

Playing with Codes in 500 Days of Summer

        It is inevitable that the pendulum of film swings between art and commodity.  Film is an art form that is eventually codified to produce the maximum emotional effect, to make money by selling tickets.  It thereby becomes a commodity, something that can be reproduced easily and effectively to the same effect, making money.  This codifying of the art then is taught as a form of analysis and creation to young aspiring filmmakers who have been genuinely moved and inspired by the codified art/commodity.  They adapt the code and apply it in their own unique way.  That new way becomes successful and then becomes codified and the cycle continues.  Marc Webb’s 500 Days of Summer is exemplary of this.  It looks at the codes of the past and plays with them and creates a new approach to them.  In both the form and the content the film examines those codes and how they reach an audience and shape their perceptions.  These new perceptions become the new commodity.

       The protagonist, Tom, has a belief about true love that was influenced (wrongly, as the narrator explains) through his consumption of the film The Graduate.  Those whose schema includes that film immediately prepare themselves to consume the film on those terms.  The Graduate was a work of New Hollywood that took the codes of the IMR and played with them to create a new schema.  This film takes those codes that have been commodified and plays with them to make new codes.  As an audience we participate in this process by applying the elements of the film to the codes of The Graduate.  

      The Graduate has at its core a critique of the traditional love story.  The boy gets girl, he loses girl, and gets girl back through extraordinary means.  After breaking up the wedding and running off with the bride they board a bus, smile at each other, and settle into a blasé expression, indicating their recognition of the imperfection of the traditional romanic cinematic codes.  This play with the codes of the traditional hollywood, creates a new set.  It introduces cynicism into the schema.  

By the time 500 Days of Summer rolls around we play with both sets of codes.  Tom represents a more traditional view of love, due to his misreading, and Summer is the newer cynical view of love.  The shot of Tom watching The Graduate as a child is contrasted to the shot of Summer watching it before the breakup.  The sign of the child represents the innocent view of romance while Summer’s an adult, a sign of maturing views on relationships.  The contrast of these two views also represents a contrast of the codes established relating to romantic filmmaking.

       The film also includes some sign that ape the signs in The Graduate.  The obvious example is when Tom leaves Summer on the bed to go give himself a pep talk in the bathroom.  He exits the bathroom and we see a shot placed behind an apparently nude reclining Summer in which Tom is seen over her shoulder.  This is the beginning of their sexual relationship and is designed to hearken to a similar shot in The Graduate.  The irony here is that in that film the relationship he is beginning is a flawed and damaging one.  This is the same for Tom.  He is embarking on a flawed and damaging relationship based on his misunderstanding of that film which the shot imitates.  In that sense the audience knows that the relationship is doomed (even though they are shown that in previous scenes).

        By playing with the codes in 500 Days of Summer and relating them to commodified codes in The Graduate, Marc Webb is able to create a new set of codes for romantic comedy.  These codes are both cynical and idealistic.  We are able to then criticize and celebrate the imperfection of our perceptions of love and romance.  This pattern is being followed by other artists and soon will become the modus operandi of romantic comedy.  That set of codes will be the commodity to be sold and eventually copied and played with until a new set of codes emerge.  And round and round we go.

Spellboud by the Phallus: Media Representation of Psychological Theory

     There is a common occurrence since the advent of modern psychology.  Theories and practices gradually become accepted as fact by the general public.  In this process the ideas often become diluted and perverted.  Eventually the psychological community moves on and distances themselves from the now apostate public religion of psychology.  The public holds their dogma and it reveals itself by way of the media they produce.  Films like Ordinary People and Secret Window openly express the public religion and faith of psychology of the eras that produced them.  (As Dr. Kathryn Raily says in Twelve Monkeys, “Psychology is the religion of our day.”) One can therefore see  the value in viewing a film of a period as representative of the psychological dogma of the era. 
    Though Freud’s psychoanalysis had been practiced and accepted in the psychological community for decades, it had really gained ground in the public mind by the 1940’s.  It seemed that everyone was being psychoanalyzed and exposing their various complexes and neuroses.  Producer David O. Selznick was no different.  Having been through his own psychoanalysis he felt the need to really share what it could be about.  He teamed up with Alfred Hitchcock to produce Spellbound which one could deem a demented love note to the diluted and apostate psychoanalysis of the public mind.  By taking a critical eye to the representation of psychoanalysis in the film one can better understand what people believed about the subconscious mind and how important it was to their everyday lives.
    The film proper begins with a placard describing in extremely simplified and, honestly, thinly restrained jubilant terms.  It is very clear that the film is expressing the belief that psychoanalysis is an effective, and perhaps the most effective, means of solving emotional problems.  The truncated description in said placard and the expository language of our female protagonist as she is treating her patients indicates the quaint idea that the psychoses and neuroses are simply resolved through the miracle of psychoanalysis.
    The film makes use of many of the concepts of psychoanalysis, presenting them in clear and simplified terms.  Perhaps the most notorious aspect of this theory is the phallus and its importance in expressing repressed anxieties and desires (some would argue that the mommy issues of the Oedipal complex are more infamous).  Freud indicates that the fear of losing any significant body part indicates fear of castration.  Since this is such an arresting idea the film uses it to potent effect in several ways.  When our lovely protagonist,Constance, is introduced she smoking a cigarette in a long cigarette holder.  The very idea of a woman being the protagonist is shocking and then to have her manipulate the phallus shows that she is usurping the male role.  She resists overtures from men and is accused of being cold and scientific; male traits.  The other men are threatened by her position representing their fear of castration.
    When John Ballentyne arrives, in the persona of Dr. Edwards, he appears weak and unsure.  As the events of his psychosis are revealed Constance then takes the dominant role.  This is a symbolic castration of John as his power is taken by the women we saw manipulate the phallic cigarette. 
    Soon we are introduced to Constance’s “father”, her mentor who willingly and happily takes them in.  That night he has an episode and takes a straight razor, another phallus*, and enters the room where Constance is sleeping.  He looks at her in the bed and we are shown his tight grip on the razor.  The shot is both aggressive in preparing to use the phallus to regain his power from the castrator and protective tightly gripping the phallus to protect it from harm or removal.  The aggression is transferred to the “father”.  John descends the stairs with phallus still in hand and confronts the “father”.  We don’t see John’s face rather it cuts between shots of the “father” and the phallus/razor set at crotch level (very subtle, Mr. Hitchcock, very subtle).  The “father” then satiates John’s aggression with a glass of milk.  Milk representing the mother’s breast so he satiates the castration anxiety with the comfort of nursing at the mother’s breast.  He falls asleep, as an infant in that moment of perfect bliss.
    These representations of psychoanalysis are indicative of the kind of expectations of audiences in the 1940’s.  Their understanding of psychoanalysis was limited to the sensational aspects of the theory like phalluses and castration complexes.   Besides the inscrutable minutiae of real psychoanalysis doesn’t put butts in the seats, but phalluses certainly will.  Spellbound  has become then an interesting insight into the popularity of an idea and its representation in media and thereby the perpetuation of those ideas to our day.  So even now, our understanding of psychoanalysis is more molded by the truncated version in media rather than a careful study of the source text.  It will be interesting to see what current conceptions of psychology represented in the media will look like through the glass of time.

*I admit that it is terrifying to condense the phallus with the means of castration.

Dialectical Tension in the Classroom

     In the classroom there is inherent tension.  This tension exists within the spheres of human knowledge and human relationship.  With knowledge there is the tension between the known and the unknown.  With relationship there is the tension between the teacher and the student.  These two spheres are interrelated and influence each other.  Traditionally it has been believed that these dialectics have been about one having power over the other, being more akin to binaries.  The teacher has power over the student.  He or she has the knowledge and disseminates that to willing (or unwilling) receptacles.  The teacher owns the known and the students live in the unknown.  This relationship is viewed as inherently oppressive.  However, the reality is that the known and the unknown have a dialectical tension instead of a binarily oppressive relationship.  If one equalizes the value of known and unknown then that tension creates a space for mutual creation.  Sartre speaks of a dialectical relationship between the reader and the writer. This is essentially the same as that which exists between the student and the teacher.  He argues that since writings only exist insofar as one engages with them (via projecting, conjecture, or foresight) and that engagement is inherently creative, then both the reader and the writer have mutually important roles. 
    What results is that a work of art becomes a classroom, but not the oppressive traditional class with its known/unknown binary, rather the class that exists in that free space of tension between the two.  In The Legend of Qiu Ju we see an exemplary use of that space.  Sartre declares that that space is created and maintained through generous silence.  The great works of Dostoyevsky and his ilk are great, Sartre maintains, precisely because they remain silent in their intent.  The author abandons ownership of the creation and generously remains mum, allowing that space of creation to be filled by the participator in the work (for they are not viewers nor consumers but co-creators).  The particular use of this principle in The Legend of Qiu Ju is what makes it remarkable.  There are two significant uses of cinematic reticence in the Film that posit this space as a place of readerly creation. 
    The first is the simple realism of the mise en scéne.  The majority of the actors were non-professional.  Many shots were taken without the “extras” knowing that they were being filmed which lent a sense of non-imposition in the creation and opens the space between reader and writer.  The imperative is weakened and the audience is freed.  In addition the camera is set at eye level, often in a voyeuristic position to allow the audience to feel that the action is free from imperative.  A voyeur does not impose upon his or her subject rather they watch and create a story about the individual upon whom they are casting they eye.  Therefore, using this technique the participators in the film are invited to create their own version of the story as the voyeur does about their subject.  In addition, the editing of the film contributes to this generous silence.  We do not see all that happens to Qiu Ju.  We are often placed in a scene in the middle of a moment.  We see Qiu Ju and her sister in the back of the motor-cart with their bicycle somewhere in the middle of their journey, but we do not see them get on and off.  While this moment is highly constructed, it makes the audience think that it is not because there is no tidy beginning and ending to the scene, a hallmark of “well-crafted” film.  That once again gives us freedom; it is a silence space to create along with the author.
    The second way silence is used is in the final shot of the film.  After a long, laborious journey through the bureaucracy of Chinese Jurisprudence Qiu Ju is ready to forgive the chief of her village (due to his saving of her baby and her own life).  On the cusp of celebration, she is informed that because her husband has a broken rib due to the altercation that started this whole kerfuffle the Chief is sentenced to jail-time.  Qiu Ju  runs to, what we assume, intervene.  She reaches a road hears the sirens.  The camera settles on her anxious expression and freezes.  It is never explained what that means.  The imperative is enough to tell us that it means something, but leaves space to us to fill.  This simple act leads to a multiplicity of creative efforts on the part of the participators in reading the film.  That moment leaves us free to create the significance and purpose of it much in the same way that Kubrick uses the silence of the last 15 minutes of 2001:a Space Odyssey or the Coens use that shot of Anton Chigur checking his boots after his confrontation with Llewllyn’s widow in No Country for Old Men.  We are given freedom in that space of tension between the known and the unknown.
    Be it Qiu Ju  or Space Odyssey or No Country, these films utilize this model of the writer/reader dialectic to inform the other dialectic of known/unknown.  Both of these dialectics can come into play in the classroom.  Sartre said that aesthetic imperative leads to the moral imperative, and these dialectics of art and film in particular demonstrate that dialectic of the classroom.  That space of tension between the balanced reader/ writer and known/unknown can be a place of democratic learning in the classroom.  By allowing for there to be a tension between what the teacher knows and what the student can create (the unknown) the oppressive nature of the classroom will be dissolved and freedom will take its place.  Teachers (writers) abdicate their position as the owners of knowledge and then allow their students (readers) to create what they will within the imperative structure of the class.  If the text is 2001: a Space Odyssey the purpose is not to read what Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke or the teacher intended (the imperative), it is, rather, to use the silence that Kubrick and Clarke allowed for in the film to create a space of tension between the known and the unknown and allow the student the freedom to create.  If it is The Legend of Qiu Ju, one is not to declare that the film is about satiating our despair with the pursuit of justice in a bureaucracy, but rather explore the silence in the film with the other participators and create together.  The great films are those that provide that opportunity, that in their aesthetic dialectical microcosm are generous enough to open that space of tension for a free mutual, and morally imperative,  creative experience in the classroom.
   

Thneeds in the Metropolis: the Subsummation of Identity in King Vidor's The Crowd

    Epicurus once said, “The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you forced to be in a crowd.”  Being is a crowd is not easy.  Whether by choice or force the crowd levees an influence on the individual that many have marked detrimental.  The crowd has been documented by several modern philosophers, theorists, and historians.  Georg Simmell says in The Metropolis and Mental Life that “The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture and technique of life.”  In Mass Civilization and Minority Culture F. R. Leavis says that this “machine” of modernity , the metropolis of Simmell, eschews the finer things (where he would likely argue that we find our humanity) in the name of greater efficiency, better salesmanship, more mass production and standardization.  He states that this modern media machine has a greater effect on the mind than reasoned thought.  Neither of these are far from Marx.  He observes that any society must first satisfy the needs of its people.  Then, as they satisfy those needs, they are led to more needs separate from the original needs.  As those needs expand one must make more relations to meet those needs.  This expanding web of relations eventually becomes the metropolis of Simmell which produces the media machine of Leavis.  Ultimately, humans suffer at the hands of the crowd.  They attempt to make an identity unique from the crowd but are subsumed in the “needs” of consumption.  Their relations become based upon the desire to fulfill those “needs” (perhaps in homage to the Oncler, we should call them thneeds.)  It is in this conflict of the desire for uniqueness in the metropolis and the debasement of human relations based on thneeds that one can view The Crowd.
    King Vidor’s The Crowd portrays in remarkable fashion the power of the metropolis to subsume the individual in consumption.  The First example is in the portrayal of birth.  At the on-set, we witness the birth of our protagonist.  The location is a small town (Simmell calls this the rural, I will call it Smallville in contrast to Metropolis.)  The birth is attended in a upper bedroom by a Doctor a nurse and the father and mother.  The father’s presence is indicative of the life in Smallville.   The birth of a child is a intimate family affair based on love and hope for the future.  Immediately after birth the child is presented to the father who proudly proclaims his son’s uniqueness.  It is a time of joy and interconnectedness.
    This is contrasted later in the film to the birth of the protagonist’s first son.  Instead of being attended in their home by a small cohort of relations and professionals, the birth occurs in a veritable factory.  The father is kept out and the women are in a ward of hundreds, a crowd of mothers.  The natural occurrence of birth is replaced by the thneed of hospitalization which leads to the loss of individuality.  Birth is a product to be fabricated and purchased and the producers are alienated from their work.
    The next is seen in the death of the second child.  The family has won $500 and our protagonist has purchased happiness in the form of gifts for the children.  They call out the window for the children to come see the new toys.  The two dash across the street with the younger falling behind.  She is struck by a passing motorist.  The parents horrified by the events run to her side.  She is mortally wounded (there appears to be tire tracks across her midsection).  The following scene shows them waiting around her hoping for a miracle.  The father, clearly buried in guilt, tries to maintain the calm of the room for the benefit of the dying girl.  Suddenly, there is a ruckus outside and the father rushes out to calm the crowd.  Desperately he runs into a policeman, who, instead of showing empathy for the man, chastises him.  He tells him that the world can’t stop just because his kid is sick.  The crowd has spoken and the man returns to his home to see his daughter dead on the bed.  This almost seems a punishment for a parents  attempting to replace their relationship with their children with thneeds. 
    The final example of the film is the final scene.  After losing his job (and countless others) due to the guilt that he feels, our protagonist is left by his wife who is fed up with his dreams of uniqueness and his failure.  He has in an effort to save his family taken a job as a clown advertising for a restaurant.  He shows her tickets to a show and pleads with her to come with him, with their remaining son, for a celebration.  She concedes and they are shown in the auditorium laughing at the show with a packed house.  It is clear that they are reconciled and the camera pulls away and they disappear into the crowd of laughing people.  The final shot is a bird’s-eye of the audience with the music shifting dramatically to a minor chord indicating that this is no happy ending.  This shot represents the theme of the whole piece.  The metropolis destroys relationships and individuality.  The family wants to remain whole, but to due so they must participate in the thneed of mass entertainment and lose their individual consciousness to the crowd.
    The Crowd clearly illustrates the idea of the damage that urbanization and industrialization have perpetrated on our society and individuality.  As the people of metropolis succumb to the blasé and sever their ties with others they seek to slake their thirst for uniqueness in consumption of mass media and products of the machine.  But this uniqueness is a sham.  For in that very process of consumption, they are being consumed by the crowd.  They are left with our protagonist and his family laughing and eating and kissing, all self-medicating, as they disappear into that mass culture, the crowd.

Coming Short of the Glory of God: Melancholy Pleasure in Fritz Lang's Seigfreid

     Romanticism gets a bad rap.  So often in our language of today “romantic” is seen as pejorative, or at least silly.  To romanticize a topic is to idealize it in a naive way.  While these thoughts are not without merit, there is usefulness to be found in the theory of the Romantic era.  Both Poe and Shelley speak of poetry as having an inherently pleasurable aspect.  In fact, Shelley is positing pleasure as the new great good, replacing empiricism and religion.  The validity of a work is found in its ability to produce pleasure.  That pleasure is also uniquely defined by Shelley.  He says it “strengthens the  affections, enlarges the imagination, [and] adds spirit to sense.”  In other words pleasure improves upon all of our capacities, our creative abilities.  It can make us better people and thereby, societies.  It becomes more intriguing upon discovering that the pleasure of sorrow is desirable above pure pleasure.  Poe chimes in by saying that melancholy is the “legitimate” tone of a poem.  Shelley identifies this as “sorrow, terror, anguish, despair”, emotions that come from falling short of the highest good.  This is indeed akin to the katharsis that Aristotle speaks of (and since Shelley adores the Greeks poets that makes sense) that is the great end of poetry.*  Therefore, one can judge the value of a piece by determining its melancholy, the perverse pleasure of sorrow that it endows on its audience. 
    Fritz Lang, though long associated with the German Expressionist movement, taps into much of this ideology with his film Siegfried (1924).  The film is devised in such a way as to appeal to the audience’s desire to witness failure.  The film begins with the hero finishing a sword.  The sword represents perfection.  The wise old blacksmith (caveman?)  upon seeing the sword and testing its hone deems it a work of perfection.  Having achieved this, Siegfried is ready to begin his quest. 
    The sword is used to kill the dragon.  The blood of the dragon will provide invulnerability to whoever bathes in it.  The perfect tool is the doorway to the perfect body.  Siegfried bathes in the blood but a leaf falls on his back and blocks the galvanizing fluid from a single spot.  The hero then falls short of that perfection and we sense foreboding.  That event presages Siegfried’s doom. 
    He uses his strength and apparent invulnerability to accomplish a variety of superhuman taskd.  He succeeds at defeating the Dwarf king and taking his riches.  He is made a king of 12 vassals.  He helps the King defeat Broomhilde and secure their marriage.  He marries the Kings sister and all is well.  These events are calculated to assuage or fears regarding Siegfried’s one weakness.  He makes it through all of these life threatening situations and remains in tact.  We start to believe that he will achieve that perfection and yet the knowledge of that fault remains. 
    As the event leading up to his assassination are revealed we feel the darkness sink in.  We know of Broomhilde’s plot.  We feel the terror of inevitability.  And yet, we continue with Siegfried and company.  We know that doom is coming and we accept that, and perversely, want that.  We desire the death of our hero at the same time as we are afraid to witness it.
    When the death ultimately comes, and so innocently at that, we are not surprised.  Though we watch through parted fingers, we are satisfied that the failure has come to fruition.  That melancholy pleasure derived from the failure of our hero is compounded with the suicide of Broomhilde.  She got her revenge and that achieves nothing for her.  She kills herself upon realizing that she has nothing left to live for.  We applaud her death.  Had she lived we would have been disappointed.
    This perverse pleasure in sorrow is a valid tool for understanding Fritz Lang’s Siegfried (1924).  By setting pleasure as the highest goal and defining that pleasure by its twisted mirror, we can give value to the failure of the characters in the film.  The failure of the protagonist is a powerful tool of reflexivity.  We see in that failure our own.  As Shelley states, “Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles.”  We can identify our own Achilles Heel (or in this case Lindon Leaf Back) as we watch Siegfried die from his weakness.  We can feel pleasure in our weakness, or perhaps, as Paul states “glory in [our] infirmities.”  For in that empathy for the other, that recognition of that which lies in ourselves, can we find pleasure, or joy, or glory, in that which we can change.  Surely we all fall short of that highest good, but in that reflection of art, we can begin to reach up again.

* Ironically, if Shelley is setting pleasure up as the great Good of society, and we derive pleasure from the falling short of the greatest good, then falling short of pleasure is what gives us the greatest pleasure.

Practicing Delicacy via The Fountain

    “That is the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen!”
    “What makes it stupid?”
    “It sucks.”
    “You’re gonna have to explain yourself.”
    “Well, the ending.  It didn’t have anything to do with the rest of it.  I mean, what was the deal with the baby?”
    “Let’s go back and look at it.  Then maybe we can figure it out.”
    As a teacher of film I have had this or similar conversations with my students after viewing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The conversation represents what is at the core of David Hume’s Of the Standard of Taste.  We have our sentimental reaction to a piece of art.  Kant describes it as pleasure or displeasure.  This reaction however is subjective.  Hume argues that one can perceive the beauty of a piece, that beauty is inherent.  Those with sufficient reason and delicate sensibility will be able to properly critique a piece, while those ruffians and poseurs will use prejudice and sentiment to accept or reject it.  Many of my students have not the reason nor delicacy to perceive the beauty peppered in the milieu of 2001.   But all is not lost.  Hume gives hope in that the quality of delicacy can be learned, like any skill, through practice and exposure.  By exposing students to the “great works”, those that have the “uniform consent of nations and ages”, and modeling the discovery and analysis of those elements of beauty, the students can practice delicacy.  Hume implies three questions to identify in pursuit of that delicacy: Does it work toward its intended end? Do the parts mutually relate and correspond to that end?  Is the whole consistent and uniform?  By utilizing these questions I can train my students in their delicate sensibilities which will lead to more appropriate critique.
    Darren Aronofsky’s  The Fountain is an excellent opportunity to practice this delicacy.  While Hume encourages multiple viewings, one can determine the beauty of the film by posing those essential questions. 
    First, does it work toward its intended end?  To know this one must decide what that end is.  It does not seem initially clear what the end of the film is to be.  There are three stories introduced.  The Conquistador, The Scientist, and the Hairless Space Traveller.  Each story involves the character seeking after the cure to death.  The conquistador is looking for the tree of life, whose sap leads one on to immortality.  The Scientist is looking for a cure for brain cancer.  The Hairless Space Traveller is journeying to the Mayan home of death and rebirth.  This seems to indicate that the piece is intended to deal with the question of death and if death is an end that can be avoided.  In all three cases, death endures and the protagonist must accept the demise of either himself or his love.  All pieces work together to that end.
    Second, do the parts mutually relate and correspond to that end?  Each story is interconnected.  This is represented visually in one way by the characters being played by the same actors.  This indicates immediately that the characters of the three stories are interrelated.  All three stories involve a tree in a significant role.  The role varies however in its function.  In the Conquistador story the tree is supernatural and has properties that will preserve life and provide immortality.  This will save the queen from the threat of the inquisitor who brings death.  In the Scientist story the tree is the source of a bark that has medicinal properties that cure cancer which brings death.  The protagonist only wants the cure to save his wife.  The Hairless Space Traveler has a tree that he talks to and treats as a loved one.  He is traveling to save the tree’s life, while using the tree to preserve his own.  The stories have these parts that work together to clarify the end.  Each protagonist is a side of the same man.  Each tree is a side of the same idea; that the man is using his relationship to run from death.  While the man speaks of saving the tree, or the queen, or his wife, he still uses those things to preserve himself.  The Conquistador greedily drinks the sap.  The Scientist chooses his work to save his wife over spending time with her.  The Hairless Space Traveler eats the bark and laments the death of the tree in personal terms.  The pieces come together in the final sequence as we move between the stories and show the climaxes of each and the characters cross over the boundaries of the three stories.  All the pieces are mutually related.
    Finally, is the whole consistent and uniform?  The film maintains a similar tone throughout.  The melancholia and desperation of the three protagonists remains consistent throughout.  They follow the same character arc though different facets.  As noted before, they all three represent aspects of the same character.  This character is dealing with the imminent death of his love.  We see the hero, the memory, and the internal life of that man, played by the Conquistador, the Scientist, and the Hairless Space Traveller respectively.  These parts are consistent and correspond with the intent of the first question.  The intercutting of the climax helps bind the stories into one cohesive piece as the characters interplay with each other and point to that original intent.
    These questions help to tease out the beauty of a piece and one can appreciate the aesthetic qualities as they relate to a whole.  This approach will be useful in helping my students to access the films that they would more readily reject on the basis of prejudice or lack of experience in delicacy.  As they refine their taste, they will better appreciate the beauty of less ostensibly accessible texts like The Fountain,  and in doing so will then be able to access the complex ideologies that surround such texts.  They will be able to appreciate the unique perspectives of filmmakers like Aronofsky or Kubrick and apply those perspectives to their own schema.  It will make them more critical thinkers and help them down the path of inquiry to establish their own methodologies.  That is what matters most to me as a teacher and that is what motivates me to teach film at all.

Fish Stories and Poesy: Delighting in the Poetic in Lies, Myths, and Tall Tales

          “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”  This homily has been attributed to any number of writers, thinkers, and folk heroes.  One need only look so far as that one relative who is always making a scene at parties to see it in practice.  The struggle is when that person is one that you love and the story is about you.  While at my father’s wedding reception he spoke with a young man about an experience, within earshot of me, that he purported that I had had as a missionary in Peru.  He stated that at one point after arriving in a small hamlet the campesinos came in and helped themselves to my clothes and supplies, leaving me with nothing.  The young man was aghast.  He could hardly believe his ears and yet here was my father  and here was I.  There was one problem: it never happened.  Not to me. Not to anyone I knew.  Nor had I ever heard that story until my father told it.  This, however, is the truth.  My experience was hard.  The people were poor.  And I felt sorry for them.  That’s it.  So in that sense, the story was “true” albeit not factual.
      Stories of this type exist as part of the mythology of our culture.  Within the LDS and more specifically LDS BYU culture myths exist that are true though perhaps not factual.  For example, Steve Martin the actor is not nor ever has been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Yet the story persists.  It has become elaborate in its details.  He was seen on Jay Leno wearing a CTR ring.  A friend of mine claimed to have seen him talk about his conversion on David Letterman.  My own brother claimed to have had a companion whose brother baptized him.  None of these claims are factual, but they support a common belief.  They indicate that the gospel is a powerful force and can change the life of anyone, even a dirty old sinner like Steve Martin.  Stories of this type can start with a grain of fact.  It is entirely possible that a man in California by the name of Steve Martin was baptized in the early 90’s.  But the story assumes more details to support the truth it claims.  Gradually, the story becomes more epic and the characters are transported from real life to the mythic world of heroes.  The myth is still true (The gospel can change anyone.) Though now the facts have been replaced with the shinier model, poetry.  This is not unlike the Tragedy of the past.  The Trojan war was real.  The truth is that war is hell and women suffer.  Though the events of Euripides Trojan Women likely did not happen, it is true to the ideas that it presents.  Or while it is likely that Henry in Shakespeare’s Henry V never said “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!  For he who sheds his blood with me this day shall be my brother.”, what is true is that war equalizes us all as we face that same specter, death.  Tragedy or the epic poem or even a story about a man running from God and being eaten by a fish are repositories of truth, though the trappings may be fantastical.  In fact, that’s the whole point.
    Sir Phillip Sydney in his Defense of Poesy speaks of the delight of poetry.  Poetry’s ability to take noble ideas of truth and God and encase them in the beauty of metaphor, is what brings this delight.  Delight, though pleasurable, can also be ennobling and beatifying.  This is why poetry in this broad sense is also the language of the gospel.  One can be delighted in the beauty of the metaphor of the 23rd Psalm and enlightened by the truth it contains.  Truth and poetry go hand in hand, while facts do not.
    In Tim Burton’s Big Fish, Edward Bloom is a man of stories.  He tells stories of varying degrees of factuality, but all contain truth.  As Ed Bloom speaks with Josephine of his dream of the crow, the camera pulls close to his face.  The music becomes foreboding.  And Josephine is enthralled.  In the end, it’s just a joke.  She laughs, delighted with him.  The story has little to no bearing in fact, but the truth of the darkness of the adult world  is still present and the characters and audience can delight in the intersection of the craft of two storytellers (Ed Bloom and Tim Burton) with that truth.  This is the crux of the argument of the film.  That these poetic stories are more important than the facts.  Real life has incidents that do not matter to truth.  Poetry carefully crafts the formalistic element to express that truth, regardless of the facts.  As Edward says to Will regarding his (Will’s) writing “It has all of the facts and none of the flavor.”
    This is evident in the visual text of the film as well.  Burton chooses to intensify and broaden the color palate in the visualization of Edward’s stories.  Everything is bigger, brighter, more grotesque, and more beautiful than real life.  The acting is more gregarious.  All the shots are more “perfect” than those in the real world.  Case in point, as Edward tells of giving the Daffodils to Sandra, we see warm light on her face as she awakes.  She walks to the window and camera hangs over her shoulder and she draws back the curtain and we see a field of pure yellow with Edward standing on the right third.  This image would be virtually impossible to replicate in real life, yet we revel in it’s beauty.  And it expresses the truth: that Edward Bloom loved her enough to do anything for her, and that Tim Burton believes that these stories matter.
    The delight of Poetry comes from its ability to wrap the truth in beauty.  In doing so it is more palatable and memorable.  We will more readily accept truth in the delightful dressing of poetic text, visual or verbal.  Perhaps this is why the myths of our LDS culture endure.  We delight the perfect coincidences and LDS specific language.  We are enlightened by the truth and entertained by flavor. The facts matter not when a good story draws us in.  This is not a lie, it is poetry as Sydney and Aristotle and so many others defined and when we share stories in this way, we are in good company.

The Utility of Polysemous Text in Beasts of the Southern Wild

     There has been a debate in the world of representation for ages: Is art for teaching of for enjoyment?  Should it lift us to a higher plane or dull the pain of days?  Is it essentially useful or enjoyable?  St. Augustine said, “There are things to be enjoyed and there are things to be used.”  A film is a thing and its purpose falls into one of these two categories.  When a film has as its goal teaching an ideal or moral it then falls in the realm of useful.  Signs are useful.  They signify something else to teach us something about that sign.  Films are a collection of signs and as Augustine says, “Things are learnt by signs.”  The Beasts of the Southern Wild full of signs.  It is also intended to teach, through its polysemous text, a lesson.  This it does by literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical means.  Literal is that the sign in the film represents something in real life, a thing.  Allegorical is a sign that represents something other than itself that exists.  Moral is that the sign is signifying a lesson of behavior, what one aught to do.  Anagogical signs represent the mysterious or metaphysical, the big picture outside of our world of signs.  It is clear that the authors of Beasts of the Southern Wild are using signs to teach a Truth.  By analyzing the literal, allegorical, moral, or anagogical signs in Beasts of the Southern Wild one can access the useful nature of the text and understand the Truth that the author is trying to express.
    The protagonist is Hushpuppy who “lives with her father in the Bathtub.”  This is the first sign.  The literal is what we see.  The Bathtub is a place in Louisiana that is populated by painfully impoverished families that are cut off from the outside world geographically.  The images are of filth, trash, dilapidated homes, and poorly clothed scrawny human beings.  All we can gather from this in a literal sense is that this means to represent those things that actually exist in our world.
    The allegorical approach can reveal that the Bathtub is a microcosm of the highly impoverished anywhere.  The separation created by the levee over which we can see the bastions of industry represents the metaphorical separation between the very poor and the industrialized capitalist world.  The Bathtubbers did not build the levee.  It was placed there by the others indicating that that separation is desired and maintained by the haves. 
    As a moral sign, the Bathtub, with its levee of separation represent a responsibility on the part of the haves.  They ought to remove that separation and yet not try to rescue those in the Bathtub.  They need to be freed but not condescended to.  Interestingly, the Bathtubbers are the ones who break the levee perhaps referencing the proposition of Freire that the oppressors have not the power to liberate the oppressed.
    The Bathtub is also a place of innocence.  The adults and children have the same level of engagement with the earth and themselves.  In this sense it is a Garden of Eden.  (If one considers that in psychoanalytic theory things can be represented by their opposite.)  The people live separated from the cares of the modern world.  Also, children take baths, adults shower.  When one bathes, one does so without the cumbrance of clothing, as Adam and Eve were in the garden.  Young children bathe together without shame or concern, as Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed.  So, the Bathtub becomes the anagogic sign of that state in God’s eternal scheme.  That state that is ultimately temporary and must be abandoned to progress into a higher state.
    The next sign is the Auruch.  Which in the literal is a large beast that is freed from arctic ice and comes to eat Hushpuppy.  Auruchs actually existed and eventually went extinct in the 1600s.  It can be assumed that they are a figment of Hushpuppies imagination.
    The allegorical significance of the sign is that they signify the fears of Hushpuppy as she does not acknowledge her father’s imminent death.  Hushpuppy strikes her father in the chest after he slaps her.  He collapses to the ground and she sees strange markings on his chest which she determines to be a sign of illness.  Shortly after, the Auruchs are shown breaking free of the ice and coming toward the Bathtub.  Until this moment, Hushpuppy was frozen in a state of eternal childhood, no fear, death was not a reality.  After seeing the sign of her father’s mortality, the reality of death is released and begins the convergence to confrontation.  When Hushpuppy finally is face to face with her fear, she accepts them as “kind of friends” showing her progression into adulthood.
    The Moral sense of the Auruchs is the necessity of all to face their fear.  Every person will come to a point in their life when they have to choose to face teh reality of death or remain is a state of arrested development.  Hushpuppy has to choose to make peace with her father or allow herself to be consumed.  This is a choice all must make.
    Anagogically, the Auruchs are the introduction of death into the world after the rebellion of Adam and Eve.  Hushpuppy is given the fruit of knowledge as she rebels against her father and strikes him.  That bite of fruit introduces the necessary element of death into the holy pageant that ultimately leads all mankind to God.
    An additional sign, is the journey to Elysian Fields.  Literally, the girls swim out into the ocean are picked up by boat and taken to a brothel.  There they are loved and cared for by the women there and Hushpuppy speaks with a waitress who holds her.  This is only the second time that that has happened to her.
    As an allegory, it represents the drive that all people for love and affection.  When in times of trial or struggle, people seek comfort and solace in others.  People can at times receive guidance from others with more experience.
    Morally the need for all to seek divine guidance for the strength to face fears and trials.  Hushpuppy is fed, held, and advised by a waitress as sign of the power of God feed, heal, and advise those who seek him out.  Those willing to put forth the effort to find that healing and comfort will be strengthened sufficiently to face death in the face and bring comfort to others.  Hushpuppy is empowered by her experience to stare death in the face and bring healing food to her father.
    In greek myth Elysium was a place of rest and corresponds in many ways with the christian heaven.   The brothel is an anagogic sign of heaven, though less as a place of rest, than as a recourse.  If Hushpuppy is Eve having brought death into the world, she must recur to heaven and thereby bring back redemption.  In this way she is also a figure of Christ, returning from heaven to take back the sting of death, bringing the food of life to her father so that they can be reconciled.
    By analyzing the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical one can determine the useful end of the signs utilized by the authors to teach Truth.  The polysemous nature of text allows for these different types of metaphor.  However many in our post-modern world don’t find one Truth in this text, as Roger Ebert said, “You can make "Beasts of the Southern Wild" into an allegory of anything you want. It is far too detailed and specific to fit easily into general terms.” (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beasts-of-the-southern-wild-2012).  Even so, it is valuable to use the Medieval approach to suss out possible good for the audience.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is a rich text with a multiplicity of meanings, and that’s good.  The truth found there will inevitably lead to the greatest good.

Shattering the Golden Calf: "The Searchers" and Aristotle's Grand Narrative

    “Tragedy is a representation of a serious, complete action [...] accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotions.”  This phrase, lifted from Aristotle’s rather dense text, the crux of representation for thousands of years.  The intent of his work is somewhat difficult to suss out and has been the source of some heated discussion over the years.  If we approach his work as a textbook of creation, we see that our works should focus on plot, action that is probable and necessary, and result in the catharsis of emotion. (The significance of which is also a subject of debate.)    Such an approach is severely limiting to artists today and often scorned and repudiated.    That being said, his work is based in the fundamental belief that there is a right way to do things.  Tragedy that does not follow this way should be rejected or at the very least looked down upon.
    We can look at his codifying of the tragedy.  It’s parts consist in: plot, character, reason, diction, song, spectacle.  He explains each part in detail and reveals a very reasonable explanation of what works and what doesn’t.  He establishes the god of theatre as emotional response.  All of these aspects must bow at the altar of catharsis.  By defining a goal and determining the best means for achieving that goal, he sets a standard.  This Discourse over ages has created a hegemony within the theatrical world (and by association film and television).  While students may not study The Poetics explicitly, the doctrine of plot above all and empathetic engagement have continued to be a part of the art of representation.
    The western is a form of representation which has its own Discourse connected with that of Aristotle.  Within the western a codified construct is designed to elicit a strong emotional response.  We have stock characters with their ethnic and economic associations.  White settlers are “good” and native injuns are “bad.  The structure is simple and follows a direct chronological path from exposition to resolution.  There are a series of reversals and recognitions , both necessary and probable, of increasing magnitude until a climax is reached.  We feel pity for the plight of the poor white settlers at the hands of evil conspiring injuns and terror for the protagonist as he reaches his crises.  All of this fits nicely within the prescriptive methodology of Aristotle.
    Additionally, and perhaps more interestingly, it represents the continuation of the fundamental assumption of right that is implicit in Aristotle’s work.  Aristotle believed that there is a right and a wrong to theatre, a grand narrative, and that is reflected in the traditional western.  Not only are the characters polarized to a center and an other, but the aping of the the tropes of the western by each successive director indicates the hegemonic Discourse.  That grand narrative of theatre exists only because of that belief in a right or wrong.
    John Ford’s The Searchers pays homage to that narrative while questioning it’s Discourse.  The most obvious example is the decentering of the protagonist.  John Wayne’s character is presented to us as a good, one to be emulated.  But as the film progresses, his character begins to exhibit behavior that one associates with the other.  He adopts the comanche beliefs enough to desecrate a corpse and ultimately scalps the Chief.  Ultimately he is willing to kill his niece for becoming “infected” by the comanche culture.  (She refers to the comanche as “her people”.) This being the case the film does not go so far as to flip the binary.  The comanche are not necessarily portrayed as good and certainly are not placed at the center of the plot.  This ambiguity of good and evil brings into question fundamental beliefs as to what is good and bad and more importantly, who is good and bad.
    Though Aristotle places the primary importance on plot, the film instead questions the morality of a character indicating a subversion of that very notion.  Both the antagonist and the protagonist do similarly things feel similar hatred, so what they do is difficult to distinguish in its morality.  The audience is left then to focus on character, on who not what. It is clear that John Ford wanted audiences to face the ambiguous morality within an individual, doing so places primacy on the character over plot, which challenges the Discourse of both the western and Aristotle himself.  The fact that doing so actually increases the empathetic response in the audience and thereby the catharsis shows that there is not a right or wrong in representation.  One can still bow to the god of theatre without following the code.  The final shot of the film is indicative of this.  The family brings their “adulterated” daughter with melding of white and comanche tradition back into their home through the door and the protagonist remains outside with his and our notions of right and wrong, good and bad, or center and other.  The narrative of Aristotle’s Poetics and the American western is thereby subverted and we must then wrestle with our own narrative and decide what to leave outside the door.

Online Response #1 Bill, Ted, and Intro to Theory

The Commodity of Identity and Expectation
    The reality of viewing versus the myth of expectation is a conflict often battled in the darkened movie-houses that dot our planet.  When presented with a set of possibilities the mind instantly begins anticipating results based on past experience.  For example, we hear a sound and we pass through potential causes of that sound from the least likely to the most.  Upon settling on the most likely, we determine a plan of action.  If identified as benign, we may well ignore said sound, but if our possibilities are defined by less likely, yet more frightening cause then we venture.  Between the moment of decision and the final viewing there is anticipation, anxiety, and perhaps outright terror.  When the source of sound is viewed it either meets, exceeds, or fails our expectations we respond elated, deflated, or perhaps relieved.  This pattern repeats itself often and is the basis of our reactions to viewing media.  We are introduced to a film via commercial, or trailer, or word-of-mouth.  We begin to anticipate the possibilities based on past experience.  Who’s the director?  Who penned the play?  What genre does it fit?  What’s the rating?  Has it been reviewed and by whom?  These bits of information help us to anticipate what  we will see on the screen.  Our expectation is set.  We drive to the theatre watch the film and begin the process of matching the film to our expectation. When the final credits roll we finalize and walk out satisfied or disappointed.  This is all nothing new.  However, the reality of expectation is that audiences prefer their expectations over reality.
    In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, we are introduced to two high school slackers who represent not any real person, rather an expectation for what teenagers who are in garage bands in southern California are supposed to be.  Had they been subtle and grounded in the reality of a pair of high school slackers, we, as an audience, would likely have found them less relatable.  The concept of the high school slacker becomes codified into a specific set of traits that represent the audience’s expectations.  This is done to the end that audiences will not be disappointed, rather gratified that their expectation was met and perhaps return or encourage others to participate in the enduring of the teen myth.  The motivations become, therefore, monetary.  The teenage slacker is dehumanized and commodified.  Packaged to sell.  The reality is no longer what is being represented, but the representation itself.  The representation has value since it can be bought and sold and the real-life slacker has lost his identity to the copy of himself.   To be human is to be represented.  Those not represented are not human.  As the representation becomes more typified and commodified , it bears less and less relation to the reality and the original slacker is left with a choice: remain true and face oblivion of identity or relinquish control and adopt the traits of the representation thereby meeting expectations and falling into a false reality.  They are, essentially left “To be, or not to be”.  And if left with the two undesirable choices of being in oblivion of reality, or the oblivion of its commodified vision some may choose to not be at all, the oblivion of death.
    Granted, it may be hyperbolic to imply that expectations regarding a teen comedy from 1989 will result in suicide, but there is the very real danger of lost identity.  When one’s identity is co-opted and bastardized by a corporate entity to meet the expectations of an audience, one can not help but feel the inferiority of their reality when compared with their peers.  This becomes more apparent in the representation on Genghis Khan.  Kahn is portrayed in his home-time as dirty, hungry, and sexist.  The women surrounding him are scantily clad (in a 1980’s PG-13 sense) and serve the purpose of looking pretty and giving food to their lord.  The clothes are jagged and dangerous looking and there is virtually no spoken language beyond grunts and moans. There is honestly little difference between Khan and the neanderthals of 10,000 BC.  This  presentation of Khan is, like the slacker teen, a specified type designed to meet audience expectations.  He is a version of the western view of the Mongol: a Barbarian in every negative sense of that word.  True Mongols bear very little resemblance to that image that is sold on the screen, but they, along with most of east-asian or southeast asian descent, are dehumanized by its portrayal and must choose to become commodities themselves or be discarded with the refuse of reality.  Their history is bastardized.  Their roots are twisted and they are left without a laudable foundation.  They float, for they cannot claim the wretched past portrayed on the screen, and without those roots must establish an new identity or adopt a different pre-packaged corporate perspective.  This loss of roots is perhaps more tragic than the slacker teen’s loss of age specific identity.  Identity in the western world is forged through choices and consumption, while much of the rest of the world founds their identity on family and tradition.  The commodification of Ghengis Khan represent a form of colonization of Mongolian genealogy, infiltrating their history with monetary goals.  If one’s cultural history can be bought, repackaged, and sold, what is left of one’s self?
    The battle of expectation vs. viewing experience has its casualties and they are not just our emotional state upon leaving the theater.  The efforts of corporate media to make identity a commodity to meet our expectations is resulting in an identity conundrum of those commodified, not to mention the dehumanizing effect it has on those in the audience who are mere dollar signs in seats for the corporations.  It becomes imperative to educate the public on the realities of representation and the corporatization of identity.  Only thereby, can the expectations of an audience be grounded in reality, and true identity be regained and preserved.