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.
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