Blossoms & Blood

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University of Texas Press Page

Blossoms & Blood / 

Postmodern Media Culture 

and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson 

by Jason Sperb 

Forthcoming from University of Texas Press, Dec. 2013 

 From his film festival debut Hard Eight to ambitious studio epics Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s unique cinematic vision focuses on postmodern excess and media culture. In Blossoms & Blood, Jason Sperb studies the filmmaker’s evolving aesthetic and its historical context to argue that Anderson’s films create new, often ambivalent, narratives of American identity in a media-saturated world.

Blossoms & Blood explores Anderson’s films in relation to the aesthetic and economic shifts within the film industry and to America’s changing social and political sensibilities since the mid-1990s. Sperb provides an auteur study with important implications for film history, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. He charts major themes in Anderson’s work, such as stardom, self-reflexivity, and masculinity, and shows how they are indicative of trends in late twentieth-century American culture. One of the first books to focus on Anderson’s work, Blossoms & Blood reveals the development of an under-studied filmmaker attuned to the contradictions of a postmodern media culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction /

White Noise Media Culture

And the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson

Chapter 1

I Remembered Your Face /

Indie Cinema, Neo-Noir and

Narrative Ambiguity in Hard Eight (1996)

Chapter 2           

I Dreamed I was in a Hollywood Movie /

Stars, Hyperreal Sounds of the `70s

and Cinephiliac Pastiche in Boogie Nights (1997)

Chapter 3

If That Was In a Movie, I Wouldn’t Believe It /

Melodramatic Ambivalence, Hypermasculinity, and

the Autobiographical Impulse in Magnolia (1999)

Chapter 4

The Art-House Adam Sandler Movie /

Commodity Culture and the

Ethereal Ephemerality of Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Chapter 5

I Have a Competition in Me /

Political Allegory, Artistic Collaboration and

Narratives of Perfection in There Will Be Blood (2007)

Afterward

On The Master

Oscars & the Specter of Labor

the (permanently) unemployed

Rather than watch or blog about the Oscars themselves, I thought I would take a hour's worth of free time to blog briefly about the planned protest at the ceremony by below-the-line VFX and animation laborers, which I've been following the last couple of days. It seems that if the idea of production studies, or industry studies, is going to gain any meaningful traction in the academic world of media studies than it has to confront the issue of "labor" pretty directly and critically. There is increasingly a lot of good work done on the industry side of media studies--how texts are produced, for whom, and in what ways they circulate. Its important to foreground the economic side of what we study, since it is first and foremost a global business enterprise and less an artistic endeavor (though its more often the latter which first draws our critical eye). But the problem too often is that some of this scholarship is driven primarily by the need for: 1) insider access, and 2) some manner of mutually beneficial collaboration--or what the scholar, fan, etc., wants to imagine is mutually-beneficial. There's nothing wrong with either or these goals per se--in theory they seem to promote the kind of intellectual rigor and thoroughness which academia strives for, while also optimistically expanding the potential (mainstream) audience for our research.

But I wonder if, in the drive to accommodate the industry for purposes of research (ideally), an unspoken bargain is struck--namely, not to look too closely or too critically at the object of study. This means, for one, being complicit in a kind of general free labor crowd-sourcing--as both scholars of certain texts, and as passing fans of still other properties that we may may casually write about, and thus work to further promote their visibility. But, for another, I wonder if that also means to some degree overlooking the increasing exploitation of people who do work in the industry in the age of post-industrial, information-age, late capitalism (as in academics more interested in whose going to win tonight than in the protests in the streets--even though the latter is as important an object of study--particularly in industry studies--as the former).

Over the last several decades, technological innovation has more often than not negatively affected labor in the United States. Technology not only decreases the physical demand of individual laborers needed, but also generally drives down the cost and value of those who still find work. I don't need to tell newspaper reporters or auto factory workers this, but it seems a glaring blind spot in media studies--a structuring absence in the constant rush to write about the latest television shows, iPad or digital 3D spectacle. This is partially what I was trying to write about in the "virtual performance" essay, recently--using the notion of the "synthespian" (the virtual actor) as both an allegory for the slow but constant shift to post-human labor, and as a reflection on the persistence of the star system's--and the age-old "how'd they do that" spectacle's--ability to distract us--textually and paratextually--from the kind of radically problematic labor practices which will be (somewhat) exposed today in LA. Its also something that is a constant arch in my Disney (Pixar) classes--the evolution of animation labor practices since the 1930s closely reflects the devastating shift from a massive manual labor force needed in the industrial age to a much smaller, much more specialized workforce in the information age.

On Postmodernism, Industry and Leisure Culture

“When I was a boy, just about every summer we'd take a vacation. . . .

And you know, in 18 years . . . we never had fun.”

Last night on FB, I jokingly wrote that if I ever got around to writing a book on “Post-War American Leisure Culture,” I’d have to dedicate it to Clark W. Griswold. There is no “book” per se, and I suspect there never will be, not as articulated there. But that abstraction reflects a significant shift in my interests of late as both a teacher and a scholar, and yet one that may suggest my academic career is (finally?) coming full circle. And it’s about that time of year where I reflect in broad terms anyway on where my scholarly interests have been and where they seem to be headed. What do I mean by a postwar American leisure culture?

Next month, I start teaching my long-awaited course on images of Hawai’i here at IU (I just published a tentative syllabus here). It’s been a culmination both of a long-held desire to teach such a course, and of a long-proposed and slowly simmering research project on the topic. This is one which I’ve long envisioned as something of the methodological and thematic sequel to Disney’s Most Notorious Film—an industrial and audience historical narrative, charting the intersection of whiteness, nostalgia and leisure culture within the specific context of a prominently visible site of mid-20th Century populist American media. Only instead of Disney, we now have Hawai’i. Instead of Mickey and Brer Rabbit, we have Elvis and hula girls. Instead of Disneyland, we have Diamond Head.

In prepping for that class, I’ve finally had time to look more closely at Dean MacCannell’s seminal book, The Tourist (1976). It’s a bit too overtly theoretical for my own interests (not a criticism, mind you, simply a point that I’d frame some of the same historical questions differently); yet, I’ve been struck by not only its insightful look at the cultural function of US leisure and the rise of the tourism industry, but also the ways in which it seems to move beyond just my interest in Disney and Hawai'i and bring out from the shadows two additional key areas that I’ve been exploring in my other project at the moment (Haunted Nerves): labor and postmodernism. For MacCannell, leisure is not simply an escape from labor, but its doppelganger: a commodified spectacle by which the working classes can become detached from its value in the age of post-industrial capitalism:

Sightseeing at such attractions preserves still important values embodied in work-in-general, even as specific work processes and the working class itself are transcended by history. It is only by making a fetish of the work of others, by transforming it into an “amusement” (“do-it-yourself”), a spectacle (Grand Coulee), or an attraction (the guided tours of Ford Motor Company), that modern workers, on vacation, can apprehend work as part of a meaningful totality. (6) 

MacCannell sees this, meanwhile, as an inevitable outgrowth of the economic and cultural logic of late modernity, though it’s easy to see why—as others have noted and he later addressed—some read The Tourist as an early manifesto of postmodern theory—leisure culture commodified, spectacularized and de-historicized the spaces of modern production.

MacCannell is understandably resistant to the notion but doesn’t dismiss the postmodern outright “as a mere leisure of the theory class” (xvi). Rather, he seeks to ground his notion of postmodernism—like tourism—as a historical response to the modern, which further conceals the latter: “the need to be postmodern can thus be read as the same as the desire to be a tourist: both seek to empower modern culture and its conscience by neutralizing everything that might destroy it from within. Postmodernism and tourism are only the positive form of our collective inarticulateness in the face of the horrors of modernity”—i.e., as he notes, atomic bombs, concentration camps and so forth (xix).

I don’t disagree with this definition, but it seems short-sighted to not think more carefully about this particular response to the modern--as a historical moment of consumption onto itself--rather than hold onto a (so to speak) totalizing theory of mass culture—especially one which still seems rooted largely in an earlier period of capitalism, a pre-Society of the Spectacle intellectual moment. How does being an image culture irreversibly alter our relationship to the figurative and literal machines of modernity? And by “image” (or spectacle), I mean not only media screens but also the ways which—as he himself explores—physical spaces of leisure (theme parks, beaches, museums) are recognized first and foremost as images?

Perhaps it’s a generational issue—in the (very) old modern/postmodern debate, I’m repeatedly struck by the desire to hold onto an increasingly romanticized notion of a perfectly preserved modernity which subsequent appeals to the “postmodern” distorted rather than clarified. By “generational,” I mean someone thoroughly raised within (by?) a hypermediated tourist industry—if we follow his formulation, does the postmodern become a means to work our/my back from the “historyless void” (5)? (this is in part what I was trying awkwardly to articulate in a popular blog post from many years ago [the image at the top is from a mall in Honolulu, intellectual consistency FTW]—what does it mean to be raised on a steady buffet of movies/TV, parks and shopping malls in a postmodern age of post-60s late capitalism?).

At the same time, I think I am drawn to MacCannell’s work in no small measure because he is (knowingly or otherwise) holding onto that historical moment in critical thought where the modern/postmodern seem in tension with one another. And I suspect that’s also why I keep coming back as well to Robert Venturi, Denise Brown and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas—another seminal text of early postmodern thought. Although it is mainly regarded as a crucial contribution to theories of postmodern architecture, it is also I would argue a key text in the analysis of leisure culture—not only because of Vegas itself and its populist function within postwar consumption and tourism in general, but also in the insightful ways in which it suggests the emergence of a highway culture and Route 66 mentality radically changed the ways in which we perceive physical space. And I would also reclaim its value in postmodern theory for the sense in which it is about acknowledging and carefully examining, rather than dismissing, the value of a populist US consumer culture.

I suppose that’s why for the last couple of years I’ve returned to the idea of postmodernism in general when “positioning” myself as a scholar. To put it simply, I think, even after years of searching around, I still find postmodernism as the most meaningful way to articulate my own wide range of concerns regarding populist American media since WWII. When I first started graduate school, I was fascinated by postmodern theory—but in all the trendy ways that I suspect MacCannell is resistant to it: that it is too often used as a self-fulfilling means to talk about textual self-reflexivity and the surface lies of popular culture, rather than as a meaningful reflection on what it might mean to talk about representation in the age of late capitalism. This led to my very first publication, by the way, a valid but rather simplistic postmodern “reading” of Ghost World (2001).

During this period, I was captivated by Learning from Las Vegas, by Baudrillard’s America, by Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality (in other words, a lot of the foundational theoretical texts in part on US roadside culture which are now experiencing a renaissance in my discovery [return?] to thinking a bit more carefully about postwar leisure culture). For a number of reasons, it was something that I gradually left behind by the time I finished my PhD.

But at some point in the last couple of years, I’ve come to the realization that so many of my interests focus on—especially—the question of nostalgia. Although I’m as quick to laments its reservations as anyone, I still find that my definition of the term is drawn heavily from the work of Fredric Jameson in Postmodernism. Although others have provided insightful critiques of his definition of nostalgia (from Linda Hutcheon on), to me the valid concern centers more on how we might articulate personal or individual responses to representations of nostalgia, and less on this broader, collective notion of nostalgia in popular culture that Jameson aptly identified in Postmodernism (this is where I find Svetlana Boym’s remarkable The Future of Nostalgia invaluable).

Nostalgia, meanwhile, is often rightly associated with whiteness, and though I’ve never quite figured out how to define the former, I see them as inseparable within the context of US populist culture. Of course, I am still a white, middle-class suburban kid. Of course, postmodernism is a position of privilege—a meaningful position, and thus one whose assumptions and paradoxical visibility demands unpacking. “Whiteness” forces me to always be critically self-reflexive in a deconstructive way that postmodernism for its own sake (ironically) never could; but it also allows me to begin to create a dialectical (racial) history beyond the surfaces of nostalgia, which is what I was attempting to do in the Disney book, on my last contribution to the second cinephilia collection on Be Kind Rewind, and in an often overlooked piece on nostalgic representations of Detroit’s history—“Islands of Detroit” (and wherein questions of labor, or of the touristic spectacle of such, also returns).

Postmodernism saw nostalgia as inseparable from history—or historical consciousness—and this may again be where the generational question reappears. Raised on postmodern populist history (i.e., nostalgia), I’m not so comfortable dismissing it as a fallacy (i.e., the certainly suspect claims to the “end of history” per se). To me, the surfaces of a postmodernist nostalgia art (not to mention the ambivalent attitudes to my own personal experiences with nostalgia) tend to be the starting point, not the end, to thinking about “history”—however one chooses to define that.

And this speaks to my other interest in Postmodernism—the idea that “defining” history is rooted in understanding the cultural logic of late capitalism, which in turn brings me back to questions of labor and industry. Thus, my methodological interests tend to be in production histories and reception studies which might create a kind of dialectical materialist history that is dependent upon, but not reducible to, the surfaces of postmodern media culture.

And I suppose it’s this tangled populist knot—postmodernism, nostalgia, leisure, whiteness, labor, visuality, historical consciousness—which I’m currently trying to unpack across a number of different projects. 

And that’s what I see is the tragic populist figure of Clark W. Griswold.

CMCL-420: Race, Leisure and Hawaii in American Media (SP13)

Second 8-week - Spring 2013

Lectures:
TR 4:00pm-6:00pm Ballantine 322

Screenings:
W 7:15pm-10:15pm Lindley 102

Carries CASE Intensive Writing (IW) requirement

Course Description:
Even before statehood in 1959, Hawai’i retained a powerful place in mainland American media. Some of the earliest travelogues contain the staged actuality footage of hula dancers and surfers from this seemingly distant tropical paradise. From classic Hollywood musicals such as Waikiki Wedding (1937) to recent episodes of Modern Family (2010), Hawai'i is often presented to American audiences as a utopic site of leisure far removed from the concerns of everyday life back in the continental United States. Yet the powerful lure of this imagery also speaks back to complicated historical contexts regarding the role of the US military in the Pacific, the post-war emergence of a middle-class American tourist culture, and anxieties over racial tensions on the islands and back in the mainland. In other words, US media representations of Hawai’i are hardly ahistorical images of paradise, but fascinating texts which reveal insights into the past of a certain American populism during the 20^th and now 21^st Centuries. This course will examine a range of Hawai’i-related texts, from The Descendants (2011) to WWII nostalgia films such as In Harm’s Way (1965), from TV shows such as both versions of Hawaii Five-O (1968, 2010), to the multimedia presence of Elvis Presley in the 1960s and 1970s, and from non-theatrical films on US statehood to the surfer documentaries of Bruce Brown. As this is a media history course, the bulk of the semester will be focused on exploring how representations of Hawai’i have shifted over the years, with particular attention to the mid-20^th Century, while also thinking about how industrial, cultural and aesthetic contexts have shaped those representations and their reception. Readings will be drawn from the work of Jane Desmond, Dean MacCannell, Beth Bailey, David Farber, Judy Rohrer, Gavan Dawes and Francesco Adinolfi, among others. As this course is designed to satisfy the CASE Intensive Writing requirement, the final grade will be assessed based on heavily on written student work: a response paper, a research proposal, and two separate drafts of an argumentative research essay, as well as participation.
Textbooks:
Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (University of Chicago Press, 1999)
Additional readings posted to Oncourse

Assignments
Response Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
Research Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15%
First Draft, Research Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
Second Draft, Research Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25%
Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20%

*Please note that neglecting to complete any of these assignments will result in an automatic failure for the course. 

Grading Criteria - Generally speaking, the process of evaluating your writing will be based on the following: 1) clarity, strength and originality of argument (thesis statement); 2) avoiding summaries and evaluative arguments; 3) effective incorporation of outside sources; 4) credibility and thoroughness of research (when applicable); 5) convincing, specific details; and, 6) general writing style, which includes tone, organization, word choice, sentence structure, proofreading and so forth. 

Assignment Descriptions 

Response Paper (5-7pp.) – due Friday, March 22^nd – “Hawai’i” isn’t just a generic tropical paradise that tourists discovered one day—its rise to prominence as a highly constructed and mediated site of leisure has specific implications for 20^th Century American ideas about the emergence of a tourist culture, middle-class life, representations of gender and the negotiation of racial identities.

*Drawing on the work of either Jane Desmond or Dean MacCannell on the histories and theories of tourism and leisure culture, compare and contrast two of the following representations of Hawaiian tourism: Waikiki Wedding (1937), The Brady Bunch (1972), and/or Cougar Town (2011). Additionally, you’ll want to incorporate two outside scholarly sources, which you should take the first library day to find.

To help brainstorm, consider the following questions: according to the class reading of your choice, what does it mean to discuss theories and/or histories of leisure/tourism in general? Drawing from these ideas, how then would you define the “typical” Hawaiian vacation as mediated through film, TV, music, and so forth, and how do these texts “model” that touristic experience for mainland audiences? What’s the (urban, rural, historical) vision of Hawai’i displayed? What’s included and, perhaps more importantly, what might be left out? How do questions of class, gender and/or race come into play? Does their historical context (i.e., when they were released) matter? Does the medium matter (film vs. TV)? In what ways do they affirm or deviate from the theories put forth in the readings, and why? For a thesis statement, focus on what’s at stake in using Hawai'i as the means to the visual construction of a specific leisure culture in these texts, and vice versa, and why its significant—think about questions of US/island history, media history, Hawaiian identity, race, gender, labor, and so forth. The primary function of the response paper is to receive feedback from me on your writing early in the term, as well as to familiarize you with my assessment habits. 

Research Proposal (1p., plus Bibliography) – due Friday, March 29^th – This is a one-page, typed, description of your proposed research topic. You are welcome to write on any aspect of Hawaii’s role in American culture and media—not just on topics raised in lecture or in readings. The proposal should include: a relatively detailed description of the topic itself; your tentative thesis statement; and an outline of the paper. Additionally, you will want to include a Bibliography of at least five sources (in the correct citation format: MLA, APA, etc.) that you have tentatively consulted in order to shape your proposal. All topics must be approved by me in advance—changing the topic and turning in a finished draft on that subject without consulting me in advance will result in failure for the class. 

First Draft, Research Essay (10-12 pp., 3 sources) – due Friday, April 12^th – The first draft of the research essay must be a polished, complete version of your project—the subject is developed, an argument is made, sources are consulted and explicitly cited, and the writing is polished. I will provide feedback on not only the form and content of the essay, but suggestions for where to expand (and perhaps trim) in the second and final draft. 

Second Draft, Research Essay (15+ pp., 2 new outside sources in addition to original 3 from first draft) – due Wednesday, May 1^st – The final draft of your essay will be an expansion of the first draft—not simply a quick revision for sentence-level issues. This will require doing additional research (two new sources) and generating additional content based on gaps in the first draft, as well as addressing any other issues that appeared in the first version. While some papers may require more extensive revision than others, you will not be allowed to completely start over on a new topic for the second draft.
8-Week Schedule
Spring 2013 

3/5- Course introductions; Hawai’i & 30s Leisure Culture; Clips: early travelogues, Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), Hawaii Calls (1938), Honolulu (1939)
3/6 - Screening: Waikiki Wedding (1937)
3/7 – Library Day (I will be at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago); Read: Desmond, “Cultural Bodies” & “Tourism & the Commodification of Culture”; work on introductions, library research, and 1^st response papers

 3/12-3/14 - No Class - Spring Break 

3/19 - Beach Boys and Surfing; Clips: Diamond Head (1963), Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), The Brady Bunch (1972); reading: Desmond, “Surfers & Beach Boys”; bring sources and rough drafts of introductions to class
3/20 - Screening: Cougar Town (2011) and The Brady Bunch (1972)
3/21 - Leisure Culture; research tips; clip: Modern Family (2010); reading: MacCannell, “The Structure of Cultural Experiences,” “Cultural Productions . . .” & “The Work Experience”
Response Paper due via email – Friday, March 22^nd 

3/26 – Pearl Harbor; workshop introductions & thesis statements; clips: In the Navy (1941), Dec. 7^th (1943), From Here to Eternity (1953); reading: Bailey & Farber, “Wartime Hawaii and American Identity”
3/27 - Screening: In Harm’s Way (1965)
3/28 - War Nostalgia, John Wayne; clips: South Pacific (1958); Big Jim McClain (1952); Donovan’s Reef (1993); Hawaii Five-O (2010); reading: Bailey & Farber, “Strangers in a Strange Land” Research Proposals due via email – Friday, March 29^th 

4/2 – Tiki Kitsch; clips: Disneyland After Dark (1961), A Very Brady Sequel (1997); reading: Aldinolfi, “The Tiki Hour” and Desmond, “Let’s Luau”
4/3 – Screening: Endless Summer (1966)
4/4 – Baby Boomer Culture; clips: Slippery When Wet (1958); reading: Ormrod, “Endless Summer” & Desmond, “Advertising, Racializing and Performing Hawai’i on Site” 

4/9 - Statehood and early TV; Clips: Burns and Allen Show (1950), I Love Lucy (1954), Jack Benny Program (1963); reading: Dawes, “Now We are All Haoles”
4/10 – Screening: Blue Hawaii (1961)                        
4/11 – Elvis; clips: Girls, Girls, Girls (1963), Paradise Hawaiian Style (1966), Live from Aloha (1972); reading: Feeney, “Elvis Movies” 
First Complete Draft of Research Essay due via email – Friday, April 12^th 

4/16 –Network TV; workshop essays; Clips: Magnum, PI (1980); Hawaii Five-O (1968); Readings: Rampell, “Hawaii Five-O,” and Desmond, “Up to the Present”
4/17 - Screening: Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)
4/18 –Library day and one-on-one writing conferences

4/23 - Hawaiian History; bring found research to class; clips: Hawaii (1966), The Hawaiians (1970); reading: Dawes, “Missionaries and Merchants, 1820-1839”
4/24 - Screening: The Descendants (2011)
4/25 – (Post)modern Hawaii; clip: South Park (2012); Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2010), North (1994); reading: Rohrer, “Haoles Go Home”

Second and Final Revised Draft of Research Essay due by Wednesday, May 1^st 

Any and all missing work must be turned in by Friday, May 3^rd

Blossoms & Blood update

I finished proofreading copy-edits on the manuscript and mailed it off this morning. Seems symbolically appropriate to finish the year by putting that project behind me (not really, of course; I'll probably spend the summer proofreading layout pages and doing indexing, but close enough--I'm really over it).

In honor, I thought I'd post one of my all-time favorite fan videos--a mash-up of Punch Drunk Love with Radiohead's "No Surprises" (two of my greatest joys in life). This is something I had really wanted to write about in the book once upon a time, but for whatever reason it never fit. Now, I suppose I'll just be content to set it aside, part of the deep affection I have for this movie which will continue to remain mine alone (as in, not part of the "research" per se).



And there is something in there, on more than one level, about the coming year, I hope. Happy New Year.

Star Trek post over at Antenna

I haven't posted much lately, but since the traffic is pretty minimal, I suppose its not a big deal. Anyway, I have a post up on the mutually contemptuous relationship between Trek fans and JJ in anticipation of next year's Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) over at UW-Madison's media blog, Antenna. I wrote it awhile ago and would have posted it here but thought it might fit over there, where I haven't contributed as much as I would have liked in the last year.


Like Bond, I enjoy keeping my rabid Trek fandom to myself (meaning, as a scholar, I'm generally not interested in researching, or publishing, on it). The occasional blog rant is about the extent of my discursive production on those topics.

But that said, a lot of the ideas that come up in the Antenna piece are drawn from my current project on nostalgia and digital cinema. In particular, the ways in which fandom is not only mainstream but also thoroughly commodified by the industry today as another form of cheap (free?) labor on behalf of the studios. In fact, this is partly what I'm planning to present at SCMS in March--the difference is I don't talk about Trek (though the franchise comes up peripherally throughout Haunted Nerves). The proposed chapter on this topic instead focuses on the Disney corporation and the revival of the TRON franchise.

So, that's one of my projects for the break, along with finishing revisions on another piece from Haunted Nerves regarding the new "nostalgia film" in the digital age (focusing on The Artist and especially Hugo). I'm really proud of that one, and as I was revising it in the last week I realized it shifted from just being one chapter from the manuscript to really articulating the heart of what Haunted Nerves will encompass: nostalgia, digital cinema, postmodernism and industry studies. That project is coming into focus nicely, and my hope will be to begin book proposals next fall.

Speaking of books, Disney's Most Notorious Film is now out. There's a FB page up for it (hint, hint), and a review due from Slate any day now (fingers crossed). Also, my other big research task is finishing up proofreading the copy edits on the PT Anderson book, which I've put off for far too long.

Skyfall

There are at least two different movies awkwardly coexisting in the new Bond film, Skyfall. There is the one we’ve been sold by the previews—a generally quite solid and thoughtful revenge drama involving the triangle of Bond (Daniel Craig), M (Judi Dench), and Silva (Javier Bardem). However, there’s also the one that hides—in the shadows (one of the film’s dominant motifs)—and really doesn’t spring itself until the very end. What follows may be vaguely spoiler-ish, but I’ll try to avoid specificity as much as possible so as not to ruin the film’s two big (intertwining) plot twists at the end. About halfway through, I saw most of it coming, but honestly it never crossed my mind before then.

What we have here in the end is basically, almost literally, another reboot. Has Hollywood gotten so obsessed with rebooting franchises constantly that we now have a film series in James Bond which can boast two reboots in the last three (generally quite successful) movies? And I suppose that’s what is eating at me about this film, which for the most part is indeed I think one of the best Bond films ever made (though I could name several—including Casino Royale—which were better). 

The ending of the movie is ruined for me, despite (or maybe because of) its aggressively blatant nostalgia, because its feels too high-concept for its own good—attempting to start over, again, because that’s all movie franchises seem to know how to do anymore, instead of building off what’s already there. Skyfall says in the end “we’ll take Craig (even though he’s already starting to look too old to play Bond much longer), and strip the rest.”

Let me take a step back—I generally like where the film arrives at in the end, at least its potential looking forward. This is partially because I love the casting choices. But I don’t like how it gets there, or even the need to go there at all. Its feels like a lame gimmick when it finally arrives, and the wonderful story up to that point (including an absolutely stunning development that I can guarantee you has never happened in a Bond film before) goes from being an engaged meditation on the power of being haunted by the past, of guilt and (lost) redemption, to just feeling like a ruse that gets us where the franchise wanted to be all along.

Along those lines, I’m also disappointed that they’ve apparently scrapped the narrative arch of the Quantum organization that was nicely building across both Casino and Quantum. Although I didn’t like the second one overall, I appreciated the fact that for the first time since the 1960s the Bond films were actually attempting to tell a detailed, elaborate story across several films, rather than having each one be completely self-contained (other than some returning characters). I hope Quantum’s critical failure wasn’t the impetus for the filmmakers to scrape a nicely building story line in favor of starting over. Also, on that note, I’m really annoyed that Felix (Jeffrey Wright) wasn’t brought back. His friendship with Bond has really been a highlight of the Craig films. And makes this one feel a bit emptier, to be honest.

So what did I like? The story is very good, despite the usual lame Bond clichés that abound (i.e., Bond sleeps with woman/woman dies in the next scene). Skyfall could work as a character drama without the Bond baggage—hence, I suspect, the “two movies” I mentioned above. Although Judi Dench has been given meatier parts as M in the past (The World is Not Enough immediately comes to mind), here she really does make the most of it. There’s an obvious motif established early in the film, but it doesn’t ultimately refer to the person we first think it does. Her relationship with Bond is genuinely complicated, in no small measure because of the nice parallel Silva offers to their situation.

Generally speaking, Silva is truly a great villain—not perfect, but one of the best Bond villains to be sure. His role in the film is repeatedly counter-intuitive to what we expect a Bond villain to be, and I really appreciated that. I can see why Bardem signed on to the script. This isn’t just a scene-chewing paycheck part in a high-profile film. Silva gives Bardem a lot to work with, and the actor dominates every scene without ever feeling like he’s hamming it up. That said, though, I’m slightly disturbed by the fact that two of the last three villains (along with LeChiffre in Casino) express pretty blatant homoerotic feelings towards Craig’s Bond, although this time Bond has a bit more fun with it.

As to other new actors: unsurprisingly, Ralph Fiennes’ character, Mallory, is not who we might first think him to be. I say “unsurprisingly” because they wouldn’t cast such a respected star in what would amount to little more than a glorified cameo as an arbitrary bureaucrat. But, I’ll confess he didn’t turn out to be what I had assumed from the previews. Likewise, Naomi Harris as Eve. I like her casting by the end, but again the plot twist to get there is kind of annoying dumb. Which early rumors about her were true? They all were.

Finally, a note about nostalgia: as I blogged last summer, it was pretty obvious that this is by far the most blatantly nostalgic Bond film—establishing a dominant theme throughout about the relationship between innovation and nostalgia. That is, the often repeated idea that change and upheaval brings a desire to return to the past. The general appeal of Bond films is always intensely nostalgic, of course, but I don’t ever recall one which so explicitly interrogated the idea in the story (certain parts of OHMSS come to mind, but I think that was limited to trying to maintain continuity between Connery and Lazenby). 

But the theme doesn’t seem consistently realized here, and actually makes the ending that much more frustrating. Skyfall often wants to embrace the past fairly explicitly, as a way to keep Bond and M relevant in a changing technological and political world. But it also seems contemptuous of the past; its so determined to cut ties with everything by the end of the film, that the nostalgia which increasingly motivates Bond’s actions over the course of the film--in ways broad and subtle--feels jarringly undefined, even contradictory.

Disney's Star Wars

The news just broke that Disney has paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm, the production company that is responsible for the Indiana Jones franchise and, of course, Red Tails. Buried somewhere in there is news that an obscure relic of the New Hollywood, something called Star Wars (1977), was also thrown in to sweeten the deal.

Kidding aside, I'm pretty stunned--primarily that Lucas would sell something he's spent his whole life working to have such tight control over. And, as a Disney scholar, I'm increasingly intrigued by Bob Iger's aggressive moves lately to buy out at any cost potentially competing (masculine) entertainment brand names (Pixar and Marvel, for example). From a studio standpoint, this is shaping up to be the most interesting period in the history of the company since Katzenberg bolted in the mid-1990s.

This also strikes me as a continuation of Disney's attempt to commodify `80s nostalgia in the age of transmedia storytelling--the heart of modern fandom. This is the same impulse which led to the otherwise inexplicable TRON: Legacy a couple of years ago. I haven't quite put my finger on it just yet (though this is partially what I'm trying to do with my current project, Haunted Nerves), but Disney's obsession with owning Star Wars seems to be more about the past--or repackaging the past--as it does about the future of either brand name.

Ironically, I spent much of today prepping tomorrow's lecture on Disney's convoluted relationship to the science-fiction genre in Star Wars' wake--namely, The Black Hole (1979), and TRON (1982). Its a little known fact that Disney passed on Star Wars in the early 1970s when Lucas first approached them with the idea. A proud, card-carrying member of the Baby Boomer/Davy Crockett generation, Lucas understood the value of Disney's ability to both promote a brand name and to exploit ancillary merchandising markets to maximum effect. So, they made sense for Star Wars.

But, precisely because Disney understood the value of those revenue streams (i.e., toys), and the value of absolute control over their intellectual property, they weren't willing to do a "partnership" with some upstart filmmaker. So, by the end of the 1970s, Disney found itself playing catch-up just like everyone else in the industry. In a sense the news today is the culmination of Disney's many attempts to atone for that mistake over the last four decades.

Somewhere, 20th Century Fox has got to be pissed.

Some thoughts while waiting for the Sky(to)fall

The new Bond film did record business overseas this weekend. The movie doesn’t arrive to the US for another two weeks, and I’m beginning to feel the anticipation—which has been otherwise surprisingly light. Luckily, I have neither the time nor much of a connection to the internet these days, so I’ve not been too worried about spoilers, but still I’m becoming increasingly anxious.

In the last couple of months, I’ve seen a ton of traffic to the blog, despite my own (usual) inactivity this time of year. Most of it, unsurprisingly, has been to this old, long popular piece, a few thoughts about what it meant at the end of Quantum of Solace (2008), the previous Bond film, when James Bond told M (Judi Dench) she was right about Vesper—a reference that only makes sense if one’s seen Casino Royale—the first Daniel Craig Bond film. Even then, I’m not sure it does make sense, though, since the exchange seemed to me to be a rare gap in Casino Royale—Vesper didn’t “save” Bond. The Quantum organization spared his life because he knew the password to access the money from the high-stake poker game. Perhaps it just speaks to the limitations of M’s knowledge.

Anyway, a lot of people get to the end of Quantum of Solace and don’t know what to make of Bond’s final, cryptic line—which is less mysterious and intriguing than it first sounds. And when they get to that moment, a lot of them then seem to end up at my blog—though I’m not sure if I really clear it up for them, because I think it’s a mess to begin with (and, really, that last line is one of many reasons why Quantum of Solace is just not a very good film). Anyway, I’ve chalked the uptick in traffic to the notion that a lot of people have been revisiting the 2008 film lately in preparation for Skyfall, even though by all accounts there is little, if any, continuity between the two movies (Quantum’s sole redemption, to me, was that it at least attempted to be a direct sequel to events in Casino Royale).

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Something I never really mentioned here before, I think, was that my essay on Casino Royale was actually published a couple of years ago in Christoph Lindner’s collection from Wallflower, Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale. No surprise given the publisher, I never received a copy myself, but I did once track down one through interlibrary loan when I taught at Northwestern. Its a solid collection overall, edited by one of the good guys in the profession. My contribution wasn’t as good as I remembered, though I usually tend to feel that way once something of mine is actually published. The idea, I always feel, is better than the reality. But it’s not too bad, if anyone wants take the time to track down a copy—the writing style feels surprisingly rushed and bloated, a relic from my more indulgent, autobiographical days. But the content is still solid, accurately reflecting some of the narratological reasons for why I was so taken in by a movie I still feel is possibly one of the 3 greatest Bond films ever made.

Last summer, I re-watched Casino Royale for the first time in probably three years and I was amazed at how well it held up. I don’t think there’s a major false note in the whole thing. I really don’t. It’s a true action epic. Anyone who thinks it’s too long doesn’t really understand what’s at stake—for Bond’s development and for the narrative (and doesn’t understand the original book to which it’s oddly faithful despite being completely different). Or they are trying to fit Bond’s origin story into a blockbuster formula that doesn’t really work. It was just as good as I remembered, and it felt surprisingly fresh too. It’s a reminder not to overdo one’s favorite films. Once every several years really allows one to savor it with fresh eyes.

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Speaking of “greatest Bond films”: some of the hype for Skyfall has bordered on obnoxious. While I’m glad to read that it’s a major improvement on Quantum of Solace—though that’s not hard to do—I don’t believe a single soul who argues that it’s the greatest Bond film ever, and there have been several anxious to make that careless claim. The main downside to having some of my personal favorite franchises revitalized in recent years (Bond, Star Trek) is that a lot of so-called experts who claim to know the franchises so well have come of the woodwork. But really they are just general movie buffs whose first loyalty is to the shining allure of the “New”—and the perpetual insistence that newer equals better. 

“Dark Knight is the greatest superhero movie ever because . . . Christopher Nolan!  Because . . . Christian Bale!  Because . . .  IMAX!  Because . . . I don’t really remember any of the other ones that well.”

“Star Trek is the awesomest Trek movie ever because . . .  J.J.!  Because . . . BIG budgets and special effects!  Because . . . everyone is so much younger and sexier than the old cast.  Because . . . they cram so many non-sequitors into two hours that I don’t have to think about anything!  Because they take everything I didn’t care for in the originals—like character development, intelligent pacing, deep philosophical themes, and basic story logic—and ditched it all for great CGI and beautiful people.”

I don’t hate the Nolan Batman movies or JJ’s version of Star Trek so much as I loathe how historically ignorant the indiscriminate hype around them is routinely is.

I'm probably not the first to notice that the fanboys have become the new Hedda Hoppers.

Anyone who says Skyfall is the greatest Bond movie ever is not a real Bond fan, just someone who has caught a few of them on Spike TV the last few years and is easily distracted by whatever new toy comes along. I know Skyfall’s not that good without even watching it. Nothing would please me more than for that to be true--for it to be the best Bond ever. But a real Bond fan who knows the franchise in and out would know how extremely unlikely that possibility is—that a true masterpiece in the franchise only comes along once every 15-20 years. And the media's uncritical obsession with so often proclaiming how great new high-profile franchise films always are makes me that much more skeptical.

And what is troubling is how the raised expectations may end up ruining the experience for me. Just writing this, I know the hype now has robbed something from me as a fan. For various reasons, I knew Quantum wasn’t going to be very good before I walked into it, and so I wasn’t as disappointed as I might have been. I don’t need another Casino Royale. I only want to have mixed feelings about Skyfall because I don’t want to be let down. That cast is hype enough.