Spectacle and Value in Classical Hollywood Cinema

Screen, 2007

The article aims to tease out an implicit, possibly even instinctive, assumption about why big-budget blockbuster storylines come up short compared to other kinds of culturally sanctioned narratives. Briefly, the assumption is that there is a distinct difference between stories that are simply a pretext for a series of isolated attractions and stories that are guided by some greater predefined purpose or guiding idea. If we look more closely at it, this presumption throws up some surprising and paradoxical findings. My hypothesis is that this line of reasoning has tended to seep into the debate about classical and postclassical Hollywood cinema. The article argues that we should not take this assumption for granted, and that it has confused the debate about historical changes in Hollywood films. However, by restating the opposition between blockbuster narratives and more prestigious story-types in different terms, we can study blockbuster cinema from a more productive perspective than has been the case so far.

An Interdisciplinary study on the Influence of Theatre and Theology in Cinema, 2024

Westerns build tension through stand-offs and duels, while Battleship Potemkin creates tension through the escalating conflict between the sailors and their oppressors, leading to moments of intense drama and emotional impact. While Battleship Potemkin and spaghetti Westerns differ greatly in their settings and political contexts, both genres depict a struggle between good and evil, with heroic figures standing up against manichaean oppressive forces. Beyond such representations, the hierarchy of tragedy resisted the attacks of affirmative action. It was Thomas De Quincey, with his short essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," who opened my understanding to the third ethical narrative: compassion for the wicked, the damned, and the criminals. The writings of Joseph Campbell reinforced my understanding of the ethical value of the myth. While the comic hero suffers mockery and ridicule without remedy because we understand they are inadequate, the mythical hero confronts such mockery and ridicule with hope, as they deeply understand that their societies are the inadequate ones. Socrates, Jesus, and Saint Joan are submissive mythical characters for reasons that highlight them as figures of peaceful resistance against injustice and oppression. Socrates accepted his fate with dignity and wisdom, despite the injustice of his condemnation. Accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and impiety, instead of fleeing or rebelling, he chose to defend his principles to the end. Socrates understood that his mission was to question and challenge the norms and beliefs of his society to seek truth and justice. His submission was not passive acceptance but a form of intellectual and moral resistance that inspired future generations. Jesus, for his part, confronted mockery and ridicule with hope and faith in his divine mission. Throughout his life, he preached a message of love, compassion, and justice in a society that often rejected and ridiculed him. Despite facing persecution, torture, and finally crucifixion, he accepted his fate with serenity, convinced that his sacrifice had a greater purpose. His submission to divine will and his willingness to suffer for humanity gained him universal recognition as The Messiah. Saint Joan of Arc is another example of a submissive mythical hero who faced mockery and persecution with courage and unwavering faith. Though a young peasant girl, she firmly believed that God had entrusted her with the mission of liberating France from English occupation during the Hundred Years' War. Despite the mockery, betrayal, and ultimately the trial and execution for heresy, Joan remained faithful to her vision and convictions. Her submission was not surrender but a demonstration of her commitment to her faith and country. Socrates, Jesus, and Saint Joan faced injustice, mockery, and ridicule not with violent rebellion but with dignified acceptance and unwavering commitment to their principles and missions. These heroes deeply understood that their societies were wrong, and through their submission and sacrifice, they sought to transform and redeem the world around them. Their hope and peaceful resistance make them eternal figures of inspiration and ethical example. Cinema is the crown of the arts, for it gathers them all, as Wagner once dreamed of. Any film is the result of 16,000 years of dramatic writing, so we, as filmmakers, stand on the shoulders of giants, as George Bernard Shaw used to say. In this book, I unmask the revengeful ethical discourse of many action films, but also of many so-called "auteur cinema" films that, under the populist facade of communism, socialism, progressivism, or any other "ism," seek to demonize "the other," now called "the middle reactionary class," in the same way that the Spanish Inquisition and the National Socialists demonized the Jews.

Screen, 2014

A revised and expanded version of this essay appears in Elegy for Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

1993

The archeologlst, the nostalgia buff and the academic type 0 ne is almost forced to start off with the queslion •Why should a journal that et out to reach a high theoretical and historical level devote a monographic issue to classical cinema?• This would eem to be a rather passe ubject , with no modern raison d 'etre whatsoever, or if it doe indeed have any, this is limited to the humble level of a new and tardy di covery, a recent re toration, a homage of some forgouen director, operat0r, decorat0r o r scriptwriter whom we intend to save from oblivion , going again t the tide. In other word , it looks pedantic and, above all , unnece sary to dig up a field which, it would appe:tr, was given it funeral rites everaJ decades ago. But then, this i food for thought. We can no longer affirm that cla ical cinema i in a tage of crisi , or even that it i dead. We find our elve in cead in a paradoxical sicuation with regard to the cla sic t0ry; that of its death , with it being impos Ible to revive, since it no longer matters to any one. There is no longer anyone mourning its lo s. And this situation, If we really think abou t it, is omething radically new, ince it differ from what occurred in the ixties-the year , that bore witne s to the decline of cla ical cinema. Under the auspices of European avant garde and experimentalism, classical cinema was all the livelier when it was of u e as a landmark, to be left destittne or to perpetuate its effects, already stripped o f the slightest functionality. The situation today is quite another. The crisis of legitimation of metastorics of which philosophy has been talking about for almost cwo decades now is tied to the disappearance o f the ho rizon of classic ci nema , especially that o f the classical cinema as produced by the Ho ll ywood factory. This, then, is a primary consideration that is well worth a few pages: the function of the llo lly woodtype stor y in the universe, not that of the cinematograph, of its evolution and history, something comfortable to a greater or lesser degree, but rath er that of the storie that pad out our existence. In other words, not only the syntactic and semantic function of the story, but also the pragmatic Ide. evenhele s, it is a paradoxical condition of our postmodernity that nothing disappears, but that everything live on, or better still, lives t0gether with its opposites, even when dres ed up in the ma k of arcasm. For thi rea on the products of that kind of cla ic cinematography, so di tant from the ruling trends in cinema, become thoroughly embedded in our society of treati es in pite of it all , and are allowed a place in which to live there. Be ide , there I a second experience of che clas ical film , whether on che fringe or not , at time when audiovisual dynamics are off along ocher paths. We co uld affirm that the cla ic Hollywood narration and its consequences have found everal different havens in which to dry dock its body. each of which appears to be re ervcd for a different use. The fir t of chc c i , without a hadow of doubt, television, through specialized channels and as omething cust0mary at hours chat are off peak or at least noc prime time. It goes without s:iying thac thi p ractice contradictS the essential elements of the

Teaching the Early Modern Period, 2011

While research on the history of drama as a branch of literature can be conducted largely through texts, the history of spectacle relies on images of all kinds — sketches for sets and costumes, playhouse blueprints, frontispieces, paintings and engravings, and so on — which must necessarily be used in any course that covers more than literary analysis. Unfortunately, a teacher whose background does not specifically include theatre and stagecraft history may find locating and selecting such documents challenging; interpreting them in a manner that is both accurate and appealing may prove near impossible. Therefore, recreations of stage shows featured in motion pictures offer an enticing, ready-made alternative to primary visual resources, because they help students gain an immediate, vivid sense of what spectacular events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looked and sounded like. However, relying on cinema for sources raises its own problems, which may not be immediately apparent. This paper lays out a number of principles and guidelines that an instructor can follow in deciding which films are appropriate, and how they could best be exploited in teaching. For purposes of coherence and brevity, I will limit myself exclusively to the French domain, with the understanding that the principles discussed here would apply to other national traditions as well, with adjustments according to the current status of a particular dramatic corpus in its native setting. In order to avoid excessive abstraction, I discuss specific titles (24 in all) that prove most useful — or that raise serious problems.

Telos, 1990

Screen, 2004