Cinema Book Reviews

2010-09-07T09:22:00.001-07:00

Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film. By Amy Herzog.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, January 2010. Paper: ISBN 978-0-8166-6088-9, $25. 296 pages.

Review by Albin Lohr-Jones, Independent Scholar

Given the growing volume of writings on Gilles Deleuze and film – now ubiquitous at Deleuze studies conferences and in interdisciplinary essay collections dedicated to his work – one might wonder whether or not his role as an innovator of film criticism is beginning to eclipse his legacy as a philosopher. At the heart of this emergent field, however, lies an inescapable contradiction. Reflecting on the impact of his Cinema I: The Movement-Image (1983), Deleuze acknowledged that his turn toward thinking about film was largely accidental, and then only as a means of addressing specific philosophical problems to which examination of linguistic signs prohibited access. In the nearly 27 years since the publication of this book, the distinction between “philosophical concept” – on which Deleuze’s writings constantly ruminate – and critical methodology has become increasing blurred. The philosophical is, in Deleuze’s view, incompatible with the creative (artistic) act. Yet, notwithstanding this purely accidental origin of what has emerged as a Deleuzian mode film analysis, the discipline has and continues to witness a precipitous growth.

Amy Herzog’s Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film may be one of the more daring of the newest additions to this growing literature. Taking as its focus cinematic examples which utilize film-musical devices – a diverse range of “camp” and other genre hybrids deploying what Herzog labels the “musical moment” – her book is markedly ambitious. Rather than restricting the Deleuzian framework from which she examines these films to the Bergsonian/Peircean concept-base outlined in the Cinema books, Herzog adopts a different strategy. Taking as its central concern the varying modalities of repetition which operate coextensively within the “musical moment” (“repetition” here understood in its range of qualifications defined in Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition ), Herzog effectively reorients (and recontextualizes) key concepts from the Cinema books and from Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s collaborative opus A Thousand Plateaus. In itself, synthesizing these texts and attempting to construe consistency between the concepts they invoke can be a problematic undertaking. Yet Herzog’s sound command of Deleuzian thought, coupled with a keen awareness of the difficulties inherent in trying to synthesize (or conflate) Deleuze’s various writings, sets the stage for the clear and well-delimited studies comprising the body of her book.

Herzog is quite accurate in the introduction to her book in advising her readers that this is not a “genre study” in the proper sense. The focus of her investigations, rather, is of a more philosophical nature: to interrogate and explore what she identifies as “a fluid and malleable expressive form” constituting the “musical moment.” Neither purely musical (in the proper sense) nor wholly-integral to the visual narrative of a film, the musical moment names a site of dislocation, of radical disparity between a filmic-work’s temporal flow (linear development) and the disruptive excesses of diegetic musical material. Thus the musical moment embodies an irresolvable tension: one born of complex and often partial negotiations of both conservative and radical ideologies. In her words, these “moments are marked by a tendency to restructure spatiotemporal coordinates, to reconfigure the boundaries and operations of the human body, and to forge new relations between organic and inorganic elements within the frame.” Herzog’s analyses, consequently, seek to elucidate various ways in which these parameters (and the hierarchical thought that informs our normative, “classical” expectations of them) are frustrated in these singular and temporally un-assimilable instances marking the disruption of narrative progress.

At just over 200 pages (plus its introduction and conclusion), perhaps the only ways in which this book’s ambitions are thwarted are in its brevity and in its choice of examples. One gets the sense that her line of development, the trajectory of her argument, is occasionally abbreviated; and that a longer treatment (even if only a few additional pages in each chapter) would afford her the opportunity to elaborate more upon her observations. An ideal reader of this book (someone at least casually familiar with Deleuze’s writings) will no doubt fill in the missing pieces, supplementing Herzog’s observations with knowledge of the conceptual background from which her reasoning emerges. Despite the eloquence of her introductory notes on Deleuze’s philosophy – one of the best that this reviewer has read – the uninitiated reader may be at a slight disadvantage. Her examples are, for the most part, extremely effective in their diversity and their relevance: Godard’s and Preminger’s Carmen films (Chapter 2); Jacques Demy (Chapter 3); and Esther Williams, Busby Berkeley and Tsai Ming-liang (Chapter 4). The first chapter – on the proto-music video formats of the 1940’s “Soundies” and 1960’s “Scopitones”– however, seems slightly out of place. By focusing on the technologies themselves rather than on individual works, Herzog’s objective here suggests a different type of study. And though her application of the Deleuzian notion of “fabulation,” fits nicely with her analysis, and – as is the case throughout the book – her research is first-rate; the musical moments discussed here are less concrete than those in the following chapters.

In summary, Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same represents advances on two fronts. First (and most immediately), in its simplicity and unadorned style, and through a varied choice of examples, Herzog makes a convincing argument in favor looking anew at how the key mechanisms of the film-musical style operate. But her book makes an important contribution in a more significant and purely theoretical direction. In advancing the notion of the musical moment – as clear and as useful in its conceptual import as the Deleuzian perspectives from which it derives its saliency – Herzog demonstrates the viability of philosophizing about cinematic signs in a way consistent with and complimentary to Deleuze’s philosophical pursuits. And, if one looks closely enough at the musical moment, as Herzog shows, one finds not merely a cinematic device, but rich – if ultimately inchoate – formation whose varying modulations provide a means of scrutinizing the technical, social and ideological resonances which configure them.

2010-07-29T12:41:00.001-07:00

Controversial Cinema: The Films that Outraged America. By Kendall R. Phillips.

Westport: Praeger Publishers, July 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0275994648, $44.95. 206 pages.

Review by Robert G. Weiner, Texas Tech University Library

Throughout the history of cinema, some films produced by major studios have caused controversy, outrage, discussion, and for some, a blot on the film industry. Kendall Phillips, a professor of Communication and Rhetoric at Syracuse University, has produced a study of the controversial films that have changed the popular culture landscape. Phillips is concerned with controversy within mainstream American cinema.

The book is divided into chapters, each of which details a particular aspect of cinema that transgress certain boundaries. These categories include general censorship of film, sex and gender issues, violence and crime, race and ethnicity, and religion. Phillips begins each chapter with a historical background related to the category and then usually discusses one particular film that outraged filmgoers, placing it within the historical context of film censorship.

For a mass communications professor, Phillips writes with the detail of a historian, telling the history behind the film’s controversies. He documents everything with a detailed eye. The first chapter goes back to the beginnings of cinema with the likes of the Lumiere brothers and how their film showed the arrival of a train, at a station, which caused riots and terrified audiences (thus beginning the long debate over the power of film to influence a person’s behavior and moral standing).

Sex has always been a hotbed of film censorship since the beginnings of film, the first onscreen “touching” in Edison’s 1890s films The Kiss, and the erotic dancing of Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance. Phillips documents the countless films that caused the ire of censors due to “sexual” content and the rise of the movie production code and ratings system.

One of the most controversial films in the history of mainstream cinema was Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs. Oddly, much of the controversy did not center on the film’s depiction of cannibalism (the ultimate taboo and transgression), but rather on the portrayal of the female and homosexual characters. At the 1992 Academy Awards ceremony there were several hundred protesters of the film’s perceived negative depiction of a stereotypical homicidal homosexual killer. Some protesters believed that Demme’s film helped set back positive strides for homosexuals and viewed the film as offensive (and homophobic). Many feminists also saw Jodi Foster’s character as submissive and anti-feminist (although there were those who argued the opposite as well).

Portrayals of violence in film have also been subject to censorship and discussion. From the 1930s gangster pictures to the 1950s juvenile delinquent films, there have been critics who saw these movies as glorifying violence for impressionable young minds. (Even real-life gangster Al Capone loathed gangster films and thought them to be a bad influence on society.) Phillips points out that what is most ironic about portrayals of violence is that violent war pictures are never seen as threatening when they reinforced societal norms.

One of the most controversial violent films in recent years was Oliver Stone’s 1994 number one film Natural Born Killers. (Although not really credited as an influence, Stone’s film has an uncanny similarity to James Landis 1963 serial killer classic The Sadist and the real life story of the late 1950s killing spree of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate.) The characters of Mickey and Mallory in Natural Born Killers are very similar to Starkweather and Fugate. Some critics saw Stone’s satire against media violence and destruction as actually glorifying it. Senator Bob Dole spoke out against the film during his 1996 unsuccessful bid for the Presidency. The irony is that Dole’s “critique did not, however extend to other contemporary violent films like … True Lies (and) Die Hard with a Vengeance,” both of which starred well-known Republicans (79). Apparently, Natural Born Killers did inspire some copycat killings from fans of the film, and some critics even argue that the Columbine Massacre was somehow inspired by this film.

A heated topic in the history of film is the portrayal of race when it shows Native Americans, African-Americans, and Asians etc., as marginalized characters. This is particularly true in the case of Native American portrayals in Westerns. Phillips discusses in detail how race has been showed on screen since the 1915 showing of Birth of a Nation and its horrible depictions of African-Americans to Within Our Gates, the 1920s African-American response to Birth of a Nation. It would have been interesting to know Phillips’s take on the racial depictions in 1954’s Salt of the Earth, which some consider a controversial film (due to its view of equality and female empowerment). Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing caused a great deal of comment in the press for its representation of race, but as Phillips points out, it “was a controversy that never came to fruition” (125).

The last section studies representations of religion in film and not surprisingly picks Mel Gibson’s 2004 Passion of the Christ as its focus. Gibson’s film caused controversy among those who viewed as an anti-Semitic diatribe or a splatter film for Christians. The film was a big success among many churches and many a sermon was preached based upon the film. The film opened a hornet’s nest of debate still discussed today.

Controversial Cinema: The Films That Outraged America is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history of transgression in film and how it relates to filmmaking today. Phillips writes in a crisp, readable style that shows his passion for the topic. This volume is suitable for as a textbook for both undergraduate and graduate courses in history, mass communications, rhetoric and writing, screenwriting, and the general study of film.

2010-07-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

History by Hollywood: The Use and Abuse of the American Past. 2^nd edition. By Robert Brent Toplin.

Chicago: University of Illinois Press, February 2010. Paper: ISBN 978-0-252-07689-3, $25. 280 pages.

Review by Greta Methot, Rhode Island School of Design

Sensitive to criticism that popular cinematic treatments tend to wreak havoc on historical accuracy, in History by Hollywood author Robert Brent Toplin sets out to determine “what happens to history when Hollywood’s moviemakers get their hands on it” (1). As a filmmaker, as well as professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Toplin is well suited to comment on both the film production process, from inception to promotion, and the political and social environs surrounding a movie’s release.

In his introduction, Toplin defends Hollywood filmmakers against charges that they intentionally and unconscionably mislead the public by distorting evidence and inventing facts in the interest of producing profitable entertainment. He concludes that, while these filmmakers are, of course, beholden to the profiteering values of their industry, they nonetheless maintain a genuine curiosity about the past and, more often than not, present history “responsibly.” Toplin goes on to confront specific criticisms frequently aimed at this film genre, in particular the partisanship of historical docudramas. He argues that dramatic films cannot arouse the emotional response of audiences without taking a stand. The conventions of dramatic storytelling require a designated hero and villain, thus the filmmaker must choose sides. Even documentary filmmakers, despite their greater claims to truth-telling, are often bound to narrative conventions which require subjective interpretation.

While Toplin asserts that we should be receptive to the possibility that educational value can be gleaned from historical docudrama, he does urge viewers toward adopting a critical lens. There is such a thing as too much artistic license and, ideally, one would learn to discriminate between “an admirably filmed presentation and a poor one” (17). Sound counsel to be sure, yet by what measure such judgment should be made and how to ensure this informed critical thinking among broad audiences remains unclear.

In the eight case studies that comprise the text, Toplin examines four primary approaches to the cinematic treatment of history: use and abuse of artistic license, the past as relevant to the present, contemporary controversies inspired by the past, and celebrating the “great person” in history. Toplin begins by acknowledging that filmmakers often rewrite history. This, he asserts, is the exercise of artistic license in the aid of communication and manifests in narrative techniques such as the merging of several historical figures into one character, compression of time, and reduction of many complex sociopolitical factors into single causation.

While Toplin maintains that the manipulation of facts in the interest of engaging audiences does not necessarily mean all historical authenticity is voided, he does take issue with the excessive creative license of his first two case studies. Toplin engages with JFK (1991) and Mississippi Burning (1988) and concludes that, while these films succeed in evoking the emotional drama of their subjects, the liberties they take with historical evidence are such that they cannot rightly be said to represent history. Toplin is much more satisfied with the historical accuracy of Norma Rae (1979) and All the President’s Men (1976), though he acknowledges that these films promote a “great person” theory of history problematic in that it emphasizes the impact of individuals and neglects the importance of collective action or social movements as agents of historical change.

In chapters on Sergeant York (1941), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Missing (1982), and Patton (1970), Toplin considers the ways in which cinematic representations of history can offer statements about present-day political and social concerns. Upon their release, these films ignited public debate over contemporary issues such as the social impact of violent media, American foreign policy, and US involvement in Vietnam. Ultimately, Toplin seems to forgive the historical liberties and romanticizing at work in these films given their power to incite debate. There are some drawbacks to the structure of History by Hollywood. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a single film, documenting the specifics of its production and recounting the debate surrounding its historical accuracy. In organizing this discussion into discrete case studies, Toplin neglects to present a clear sense of any evolution in the treatment of history in Hollywood film. One is left wondering how material developments in Hollywood—changes in the studio system, modifications to production codes, expanding commercial markets, etc.—might have impacted the films themselves. What’s more, though each analysis stands well on its own, connections between the films and between decades are left unexplored. Still, Toplin’s essays are generally quite engaging and offer considerable insight into the production process and reception of each film.

Finally, it should be noted that the press blurb for this second edition of History by Hollywood promises the text has been updated with “a fresh look” at recent films and television programming such as, Titanic (1997), Pearl Harbor (2001), The Patriot (2000), and John Adams (2008). In fact, the revised edition offers only the most cursory references to these titles (I found no mention at all of The Patriot) in a moderately revamped introduction. A brief look at the 2003 mini-series The Reagans and Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil (1999) replaces discussion of Quiz Show (1994); otherwise, the majority of the text remains unchanged. This is unfortunate as Toplin, a pioneer in the study of historical films, would no doubt mine rich material from these and other more recent works as he does with the films in the original 1996 edition. Nevertheless, History by Hollywood remains a worthwhile text in the field of historical film criticism.

2010-07-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

He Was Some Kind of Man: Masculinities in the B Western. By Roderick McGillis.

Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, May 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1-55458-059-0, $29.95. 222 pages.

Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara

Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, Larry "Buster" Crabbe – all were stars of the B western, that highly popular genre that dominated American screens from the earliest days of the talkies to the mid-1950s, when television took over. He Was Some Kind of Man is an affectionate tribute to these heroes, written by someone who spent his formative years taking them as role models. The book is sprinkled with autobiographical reminiscences – for example, an occasion in 1954 when the author was photographed as a nine-year-old in a family group with two toy pistols at his side: “What is clear [from the photograph] is how pleased I was with the gun, how proudly I wore the holster; and how engaged I was in performing the quick draw. I was, of course, emulating the cowboy heroes I saw in the movies” (61).

At the same time McGillis tries to account for this popularity by showing how the B western hero communicated a view of masculinity that seemed particularly appropriate for the time. He argues, for instance, that the cowboy code was very similar to that of the Boy Scouts: both stress the importance of duty to God and country, helping other people at all times, and individuals’ keeping themselves strong and healthy at all times. The western hero had to be strong and powerful and exhibit “no sissy stuff” (such as bursting into tears), yet at the same time understand the importance of collective action to stop the kind of male posturing that leads to mindless violence (43).

On the other hand, the western hero offered a vision of freedom – especially for young boys brought up in the confines of the urban environment. Many of the films were set in a consciously fictional, almost nostalgic world of the American West, a world where good invariably triumphed over evil and the hero lived to fight another day. Young boys recreated these fantasy worlds for themselves. For McGillis “the identification with the cowboy provided a complex cover and compensation for a troubled home life. To enter the world of the cowboy was to escape the anxiety of home” (58). His comparison between the world of the B Western and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is very apt here. The fact that B Westerns are basically fantasies is also important in looking at the way they deal with guns: “What the cowboy heroes […] offer is a clear-cut fantasy. Their guns, like their clothes […] remind us that they are the imaginary, impossible ideals that have life only in the world of play and pretend” (81).

Yet the screen representation of the western hero incorporated some ambiguous elements – especially in the way they dressed. McGillis shows how stars such as Rogers and Autry wore the kind of jeweled clothing never actually seen in the real West; rather, they made a kind of fashion statement, emphasizing their feminine as well as their masculine sides: “These are camp cowboys. The self-conscious assumption of a costume, the flaunting of the masquerade, signal immaturity. Camp is a guilty pleasure because it subverts the norms of straight living, and also because it keeps us loving childhood” (101). This is an important point: B Western heroes could never be accused of homosexuality. Rather they inhabited a childlike world in which adult distinctions between masculinity and femininity did not prevail. It was a world where women took little or no part, and where the hero cared more for his horse than anyone else: “the attractions of the cowboy and his horse appeal to our spectacular imagination, they are the imaginary” (128).

But McGillis also suggests that this image was a product of its time when white America reigned supreme and members of other cultures were either marginalized or othered. Mexicans or French Canadians were portrayed as sexually rapacious, while African-Americans were excluded altogether. It was only in films such as Harlem Rides the Range (1930), or Harlem on the Prairie (1937), intended specifically for African-American audiences, that more positive images could appear. However they seldom attracted mass attention, as they revealed the seamy truth lurking behind the façade of the white westerns: that the heroes were not always perfect in their treatment of other people (139).

The dominance of the white male in B Westerns also made sound commercial sense, as the studios marketed a range of products designed to help children relive their screen experiences. They included Hopalong Cassidy bicycles, crayon and stencil sets, tablecloths, wrapping paper, pocket knives, pins, comics, and of course guns and holsters (168). Many stars became successful business people in their own right, trading on their image to attract customers. Most of them have now passed on, but their lives and work are commemorated in museums: for example, the Roy Rogers/ Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri, or the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles. The image of the Western B hero lives on.

And what of the hero today? He has been consciously appropriated by military leaders such as Norman Schwarzkopf and politicians such as George W. Bush as a way of justifying foreign interventions. However, McGillis argues that this is a “one-dimensional” version of the image, designed to validate the cowboy virtues of aggression, enterprise, and expansion. It neglects the more human side, which had its parallels with the Boy Scout movement. And perhaps it is these qualities, rather than the aggressive aside, that renders the B Western hero enduringly attractive even in a pluricultural world. Skillfully combining cultural history, critical theory, and reminiscence, He Was Some Kind of a Man reminds us of just how powerful an influence the Poverty Row products of the mid-twentieth century had on American popular culture. I thoroughly recommend the book to all readers.

2010-04-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience.
By Jennifer M. Barker.

Berkeley: University of California Press, June 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0520258402, $60; paper: ISBN 978-0-520-25842-6, $24.95. 208 pages.

Review by Henrike Lehnguth, University of Maryland

With the The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience Jennifer Barker approaches what she calls “the sensual dimension of the cinematic experience.” Barker systematically follows her initial hunch that we not simply watch a film but are intimately entangled with it through our bodies. To her, viewing a film is, in other words, a fully embodied experience.

The Tactile Eye applies phenomenological insights to the cinematic realm. Barker draws heavily from the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to flesh out a relationship between the viewer and the cinema that neither relies solely on the notion of an ideal (objective) nor an empirical (subjective) spectator but collapses both into one. Her viewing position thus presumes an interdependent relationship between the viewer’s and the film’s bodies.

Barker guides us through these bodies chapter by chapter—from the skin, through the musculature, to the visceral. Her section on the skin addresses our haptic sense in relation to the texture and materiality of the film. She explores the contact zone between film and viewer, where we as viewers are not afforded a distant—penetrating or clinical—gaze but are pushed “too close to comfort” to the film’s surface. This proximity to what Barker calls the film’s skin, where we lack orientation and visual control over the film space, is unsettling and, ultimately, envelopes us emotionally in the film. We, as she points out, do not see a film with emotional distance but feel it.

Her section on the musculature explores our kinesthetic sense in relation to film space. Barker takes Linda Williams’s seminal essay “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess” as a point of departure to argue that our mimetic relationship to film far exceeds what Williams limits to particular film genres. According to Williams we mimic the premises of genres such as horror, pornography, and “weepies,” when we, respectively, tense up, are sexually excited, and saddened. Barker argues instead that we mimic films through kinesthetic engagement. Our musculature converges with the film so that we lose our sense of being in space. We are neither completely in the filmic space nor in our chairs in the cinema. Rather, we resemble the Warner Brother’s cartoon character Coyote, who seamlessly floats in mid-air until he becomes conscious of his impossible state and falls. We float similarly in the filmic space until our attention returns to the reality of our bodies in the movie theater.

Her final section focuses on the visceral quality of our relationship to the temporal qualities of film. Early cinematic technologies, such as the mutoscope, directly relied on the human spectator as a handler of the machine to produce the illusion of motion. The spectator could slow down and stop the machine to get a better peek. Experimental film like the Wallace and Gromit shorts leave human traces on the modeling material with every move Wallace and Gromit make. Barker here ultimately suggests that these cinematic experiences remind us of what it means to be a body in time—a body that moves, a body that is still, and a body that will never move again.

Overall, The Tactile Eye systematically complicates our relationship to film in what is, yet, only an emerging field of studies in affect and embodiment in film theory. She importantly expands the works of film scholars with similar research interests such as Vivian Sobchack and Laura Marks. Barker’s book is a jewel for all, who may long have shared her hunch that film theories like “suture” and a widespread interest in visual literacy may not give sufficient justice to the cinematic experience as an experience.

However, although Barker presumes that her theory of embodied cinematic experience be applicable to the film-spectator relationship-at-large, her book would benefit from specifically addressing this applicability issue. This question arises the more because of her somewhat eclectic selection of films. Individual works that she engages with include, for instance, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. as much as Soviet filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky’s Mirror, Annabelle Serpentine Dance from early cinema, and the more mainstream Toy Story by director John Lasseter. However, Barker approaches these films with different goals. She, for instance, discusses a scene from Sherlock, Jr. as a trope for our kinesthetic sense of being at two places at once--“here” in the movie theatre and “there” in the space of the film. In her inquiry into Carolee Schneemann’s Fuses she, in contrast, theorizes the film’s skin and the spectator’s entanglement with it. The film, as Barker suggests, provides a rich visual texture that our eyes gently explore at the surface. Her use of film for different purposes presents a challenge to readers and their understanding of the larger applicability of her otherwise engaging theory.

2009-11-29T15:32:00.000-08:00

Diasporas of Australian Cinema.

Edited by Catherine Simpson, Renata Murawska, and Anthony Lambert.

Fishponds, Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd., August 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1841501970, $40. 128 pages.

Review by Sarah Pinto, Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University

Australian cinema seems to be enjoying yet another renaissance in 2009. After several years of apparent darkness, during which critics and commentators lamented the state of both box office receipts and filmic quality, a number of films have arrived on screens to much local success, including Academy Award winner Adam Elliot’s claymation feature Mary and Max, which opened the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah, winner of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or (for best first feature). Of course, these (and others) have come in the wake of Baz Luhrmann’s epic Australia, which brought with it a great deal of local and international attention, good, bad, and otherwise. As many film historians will know, however, this year’s “renaissance” is one of several since the industry’s revival in the 1970s, and demonstrates, yet again, the degree to which local filmmaking attracts public anaylsis in Australia. Indeed, at times Australian films can seem swamped by the ongoing debates about the local industry that inevitably swirl around them. This analysis is certainly important, particularly given Australia’s limited funding opportunities and the heightened sense of local film’s importance to the nation’s identity and character. But I’m less convinced that this should be at the expense of closer examinations of the films themselves, not for verdicts on whether they constitute “good” or “bad” cinema, but for a consideration of their storytelling and engagements with the worlds of their release, Australian or otherwise.
This is precisely the project of Diasporas of Australian Cinema. Using diasporic hybridity as its central motif, this collection sets out to do two things: to address an absence of collected works on diaspora in cinema generally and national cinemas specifically; and to demonstrate the importance of “diasporic qualities” to Australian cinema (17). The collection begins with a theoretically-engaged Introduction where the editors provide two substantive arguments for the significance and importance of their diasporic approach, one historical, the other political: that ideas of a “transient, diasporic collective” are increasingly being attached to the Australian state (18); and that discussions of inclusive identities that allow for the possibility of multiplicity and “national cultural heterogeneity” (27) are particularly important at a time when calls for homogeneity have once again returned to prominence in Australia.
The collection itself is divided into three sections. The first, on theories, draws on and extends the discussions of the Introduction, with a particular focus on the specificities of diaspora in contemporary Australia. Both Catherine Simpson and Sonia Magdelena Tascón gesture, for example, towards the potential for contemporary Australian diasporic films to function as interventions against the increasing homogeneity of official conceptualisations of Australian identity at the turn of the twenty-first century, led particularly by the conservative federal government of former Prime Minister John Howard. In doing so, both pieces talk in some detail of the Howard Government’s deliberate move away from policies of multiculturalism that were so significant to Australian culture and identity in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the politics of multiculturalism more generally. These discussions point to what I think is one of the greatest strengths of this collection: the way in which it revisits, and perhaps re-opens, a conversation about multiculturalism, a conversation that has been largely closed down in recent times, and not just in Australia.
This discussion continues into the section on representations, particularly in Felicity Collins’ nuanced opening chapter. Collins considers the ways in which the “diasporic, multicultural or wogsploitation” comedy film engages with the conventional Anglo-Celtic Australian “national type” – the “ocker,” the “larrikin,” or the “decent Aussie bloke” (75). According to Collins, the wogboy, as an active agent in these films, manages to assimilate and appropriate, trumping the ockers that have traditionally dominated Australian comedies. More often, however, the chapters in this section – engaging with Italian, Greek, Russian, German, Turkish and Japanese diasporic representations – show cultural and ethnic “others” mobilised simply in support of the definition of a (contrasting) Australian national identity. I was particularly drawn to Antje Gnida and Catherine Simpson’s chapter on the depiction of Turkish and German enemies in Australian war films, which they argue have helped produce and reinforce “conservative myths of nationhood” around the figure of the Australian soldier (95). It is only in Ana Kokkinnos’ powerful Head On (1998) that “’other’ remains ‘other’” (121), as John Conomos’ chapter on Greek-Australian cinema argues. As the first section made clear, films have the potential to intervene, dispute, and disrupt; but they can also be implicated in the political needs of nation-states, even when they might appear engaged with diasporic, transnational, or multicultural critiques.

It’s not surprising, then, that this collection’s final section on film-makers brings with it a critique of diaspora, most particularly in the chapters by Susie Khamis and Ben Goldsmith and Brian Yecies. Both these chapters focus on film-makers whose films exceed notions of diaspora. Focussing on two participatory documentary films by Tom Zubrycki, Khamis considers the complexity of the Lebanese Muslim community depicted in Zubrycki’s films, a complexity she argues cannot be neatly explained by the term diaspora (147). Similarly, Goldsmith and Yecis’ discussions of Korean-Australian filmic collaborations, and especially the animated short film Birthday Boy (Sejong Park, 2004), consider film that are simultaneously diasporic, Australian, and transnational (168).

Taken together, these chapters reveal a vibrant and important diasporic cinematic tradition in Australia. The collection both engages with and critiques its central diasporic concept, which gives it a methodological and theoretical strength that extends beyond its national focus. And although the individual chapters could have engaged with each other more productively, Diasporas of Australian Cinema works cohesively as an edited collection. I was, however, left wondering about the usefulness of – or need for – an exclusively national framework in studies of diasporic cinema, particularly given the editors’ definition of Australian cinema as a “loose,” open category (17), which, for me, destabilized the cohesiveness of the book’s project. Nevertheless, reading this collection has reminded me of the importance of cinema to identity and culture, and sent me back to the films themselves, which is surely a good thing.

2009-10-30T12:56:00.001-07:00

Investigating Firefly and Serenity: Science Fiction on the Frontier.

Edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and Tanya R. Cochran.
London and New York: I.B. Tauris, October 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-1845116545, $22.50. 304 pages.

Review by Madeline Muntersbjorn, University of Toledo

“Yes. Yes, this a fertile land, and we will thrive” (Serenity 1.1). This line from the first episode of the short-lived television series Firefly (2002-2003) opens this review, as this anthology demonstrates the scope of scholarly discourse on both the television series and the movie Serenity (2005). When Wash, the pilot, speaks this line, he plays with plastic dinosaurs on a spaceship dashboard, saying much with few words. Joss Whedon, writer and director, does not play on a ship, but on a soundstage, feeding his lines to beautiful talent. Whedon’s space-western features nine outcasts and heroes just trying to keep flying on the edge of civilization. Carey Meyer designed the 10th character of the show, the Firefly class spaceship called Serenity; just as there are fourteen Firefly episodes, there’s only one Serenity film. Whedon and his gifted crew bring our fond ambitions and fraught anxieties to life in a post-apocalyptic future wherein alien planets are rendered suitable for human habitation by mining, farming, terra-forming and civil war. While much changes in the next 500 years, people are still human. Well, most of them are: some of them might be monsters! In any case, “Earth That Was” is just a history lesson for the kids, a creation myth of dubious relevance.

“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” The dinosaurs fight, misled by greed only to be swept aside, their fertile land destroyed by forces beyond their control. Who could have known, when the scene was first shot, of the FOX network betrayal that would cancel the series, loose ends of narrative thread waiting to be woven into the rest of the story? Could anyone have predicted that fan support, from DVD sales to online activism, would be so voluble and vociferous that Universal Studios would help Whedon produce the film? (Serenity: Those Left Behind, a Dark Horse comic published in 2006, bridges narrative gaps between the series and the movie.) The story behind the story calls for further inquiry into this science fiction on the frontier. Given the eclectic academic community that coalesced around Whedon’s most famous series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, complete with peer-reviewed journal, Slayage, this anthology is inevitable if not altogether sudden.

Wilcox and Cochran quote the pilot near the end of the beginning of their book and at the close of their introduction to the special issue of Slayage. For just as the show is one story in two formats, small screen and silver screen, their editorial project yielded two texts. The twenty-fifth issue of Slayage features five articles, while this installment in I. B. Tauris’ Investigating Cult TV series presents nineteen essays. Yet these contributions represent less than 17% of submissions received in response to the call for papers. The integrity of these collections is explained, in part, by the quantity of discussion these shows have inspired among educated viewers. The editors chose writers from diverse disciplines yet generated a coherent whole wherein lines of dialog, images, episodes, and characters are examined from several points of view: theology, ethnomusicology, aesthetics, anthropology, and gender studies, among others. Firefly and Serenity do not come to us ex nihilo. They descend from the Star Trek series, and the 1939 film Stage Coach, both of which were subject to subsequent remakes. These essays reveal meaningful connections between these direct ancestors as well as Plato’s Symposium, Shakespeare’s Tempest, Orwell’s Citizen Kane, and Sartre’s Nausea, to cite but a few more distant relations.

The word “reveal” is important. People like stories with pretty girls, scary monsters and explosions. Firefly and Serenity have gorgeous girls, terrifying monsters and awesome explosions—enough said? Yet the writers in this collection are not so much piling it on as peeling it back, exposing layers of meaning and depth. They challenge questionable elements of the show including legalized prostitution, racialized villainy, and summary execution. Since no one who reads this volume will have expertise in all of the disciplines, everyone will have to look something up. Perhaps future editions could follow the lead of Cricket magazine for children, wherein vocabulary is defined as marginalia. What would be lost in convenience at the press would be gained in accessibility. Reader effort is rewarded: The code-switching of the characters between English and Chinese is an abrogation of a monolingual form of discourse (Mandala 38). When “competing but co-existent status systems…arise when independent hierarchies from different cultures interact” tensions are bound to mount between high-class hookers and working-stiff cowboys (Aberdein 70). The inconclusive dichotomy between brute pragmatism and blind faith teaches the value of pluralistic approaches to humanity as, “Meaning is not in things…but between them, in the interplay, the connections, the empty space” (Erickson 179). Mayhem abounds but, “the film is able to dazzle its audience with a beautifully conceived and thrilling space battle…and to provide them with a more intimate struggle as the crew fights on the surface of the planet to reveal the truth” (Abbott 232).

The truth? Really? What role could such an old-school notion play in this postmodern post-mortem of a polysemic post-colonial pastiche? Why, the premise of the show is “nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things” (Whedon quoted on 168). Well, maybe the truth is not out there; it’s just a plot device, a cheap plastic toy that’s swept away when the complex danger of the real world bears down upon us. But perhaps, “Firefly is effective because it uses science fiction without losing sight of the human and embodied concerns that are unlikely to be swept away by technology, even if we become more scientifically advanced and cyborg as a species” (Bussolini 140). Maybe the truth is not something we assign to any one view but something relational that emerges from the intimate struggle between people “who trust each other, who do for each other and ain’t always lookin’ for the advantage” (“Our Mrs. Reynolds,” 1.6; quoted on 59). Neither the characters nor the critics see the same things—but that’s an asset, not a liability, for our ability to thrive may depend more on how we do for each other than whether we are right or come out ahead. To investigate Firefly and Serenity closely is to see many things in this fertile future myth of resonant relevance.

2009-10-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Devil You Dance With: Film Culture in the New South Africa.

Edited and with an introduction by Audrey Thomas McCluskey.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, March 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0252033865, $65. 240 pages.

Reviewed by Roberta Di Carmine, Western Illinois University

In The Devil You Dance With: Film Culture in the New South Africa, Audrey Thomas McCluskey interviews twenty-five artists who live and work in South Africa. The author’s choice to let filmmakers, producers, screenwriters, and actors from different generations and racial and ethnic background speaks to the hopes and struggles of creating a new culture. This provides the reader with an understanding of the complex reality of today’s post-apartheid era in South Africa.

In the interviews released to the author, there are two important critical observations that emerge: the filmmakers’ desire to tell stories that do not reflect a Western ideology but are meant to mirror the unique creative site of South Africa, and a willingness to forget what colonialism has left behind and find the next stage of what film culture represents in South Africa. These artists offer an insight into how today’s culture is formed through the political oppression and cultural annihilation endured because of colonialism. McCluskey’s compelling study introduces the reader to film culture in one of the most politically and culturally divided countries in Africa.

In an approach meant to discuss and better understand African cinema’s dilemma, the past two decades have seen an increasing scholarly interest in the subject. The works of Frank Ukadike, Manthia Diawara, Imruh Bakari, and Mbye Cham, for instance, have proven helpful in understanding the significant place that cinema has in Africa and the development of a consciousness in post-colonial black Africa. These scholars emphasize that a main task black African filmmakers deal with is the development of their own film language that also portrays the recovery of a culture appropriated for so long by colonialism. African filmmakers face ideological obstacles rooted in post-colonialism as well as problems with the production, distribution, and exhibition of their films. They also share the unfair competition represented by the domineering presence of Hollywood, and the urge to educate African audiences to accept representations that reflect their own realities. The need to better understand the ideological and artistic complexities behind film culture as cultural phenomenon in a continent as diverse as Africa is at the core of McCluskey’s study of South African film culture.

McCluskey adds a significant voice in the study of African cinema. Her analysis of current South African media fills a void in film studies by gathering the voices of those artists and peoples actively engaged in building a film culture in South Africa, a country which, after apartheid, had to recuperate traditions lost in political oppression and reinvent a new culture through films and television.

In the introduction to her book, the author offers an historical analysis of the general situation of African cinema, an important overview that gives the reader a better understanding of what cinema means in South Africa. The insularity of the country, the difficult process of recovering memories and identity after the apartheid, and the strong presence of European-descendant Afrikaners are some of the main issues discussed to suggest the presence of a film culture that is profoundly split.

Dividing the introduction into short sections and referring to the present state of cinema in South Africa as well as critical issues found in African cinema allows the reader to contextualize the past and current situations of film culture in South Africa and comprehend its uniqueness.

The diversity of the artists interviewed gives the reader the chance to learn about this film culture from a multiplicity of voices. Most of these artists share a common goal: the hope for a film culture that reflects and respects the diversity of the country. For instance, several artists highlight that much has been done in their own country since the end of apartheid, including the establishment of film schools and the presence of professional crew members trained in South Africa. However, they also raise important issues like gender inequality and the struggle to produce narratives that attract and entertain local audiences, both of which suggest a film culture still facing struggle.

McCluskey’s approach in her interviews ranges from practical questions about the difficulty of financing films or television programs to ideological ones about, for instance, the impact that American and European television has had in the past decades in South African youth culture. This results in an investigation of South African artists’ desires and hopes, as well as a testimony of the struggles in building their own culture while reflecting the spectatorship’s expectations, which often conflict with the filmmakers’ artistic beliefs and politics.

Regardless of the diverse experiences of these artists, one common element seems to emerge from these interviews. Film is an important tool because it lets people speak of different racial and linguistic groups, and ultimately helps people work out “who you are and who could be as human beings” (190). The strong belief in what cinema represents can also be found in several of these artists’ personal experiences. Although several of the people interviewed studied and worked in the United States, they all returned to South Africa. Their hope to build a culture combined with their willingness to make films that speak to the people still prevails over international and personal achievement.Film studies welcome such as significant work on today’s film culture in South Africa. By allowing the artists to talk about their personal experiences, the author effectively links the personal life with the public roles that artists have in building their own culture. In doing so, McCluskey succeeds in creating a dialogue among artists who envision a prosperous South African film culture. Their hope remains to find stories that entertain as well as educate audiences, and create a film culture that lets South Africans achieve national recognition and, most of all, appreciation.

2009-10-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective.

By Marguerite H. Rippy.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, April 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-0-8093-2912-0, $35. 248 pages.

Review by Chris Pallant, Bangor University, United Kingdom

Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective proves a useful addition to film scholarship, particularly in its dissection of the Wellesian star persona. Divided into four chapters, Rippy’s study details the unfinished Life of Christ, Heart of Darkness, and It’s All True RKO projects, while also spending time discussing Welles’s early radio work, his First Person Singular performances, and the completed Citizen Kane (1941).

Welles’s name commonly features in debates concerning the film auteur, yet Rippy argues that the maverick figure be reconceived as a “star director,” in order “to emphasise the director’s commercial connection to a work while avoiding the tendency to assign the director sole artistic authority” (3). Early in the study, Rippy illustrates how, in addition to being one of the first star directors, Welles, by revealing specific artistic constants, which RKO then publicized, anticipates many of the strategies of contemporary branding. The postmodern nature of the Welles brand is most visible in its malleability. Rippy writes: “The essence of the Welles creation tale is that he is a cosmopolitan genius. The specifics of the tale vary according to the audience (or potential consumer)” (23-24). Ultimately, the decentered nature of the Welles brand, which included a proclivity towards both commercial and commercially unpalatable ventures, led not only to the abandonment of projects such as Life of Christ, but also his break with RKO.

Later in the study, Rippy discusses the unfinished It’s All True, arguing that, because of its well documented incompletion, the project provides a rare insight into the politics of national identity and Hollywood commerce in the mid 1900s. Welles was, albeit unintentionally, central in orchestrating one of the most damaging exploitations of South America during this period. In a typically uncompromising attempt to fuse truth and fiction during the production of It’s All True, Welles sought to recreate a famous civil rights event, where four jangadeiros (impoverished Brazilian sea fishermen) sailed to Rio de Janeiro to meet President Vargas. As Rippy observes, while Welles’s decision to hire the four original jangadeiros would have undoubtedly have been part of a scheme to romanticize their plight, it “still held the potential to let poverty speak for itself, a revolutionary concept for mainstream Hollywood” (119). However, during an ocean shoot, the boat carrying the four capsized, resulting in the death of Manoel Olimpio Meira—known as Jacaré to the jangadeiros.

Welles has been the subject of much scholarly interest. The Films of Orson Welles, (Robert Garis, 2004), Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios (Clinton Heylin, 2005), and Discovering Orson Welles (Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2007), have recently added to earlier editions such as Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (Simon Callow, 1996) and This is Orson Welles (Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1998). The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years, 1934-1952 (Paul Heyer, 2005) and and It's all True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey (Catherine L. Benamou, 2007), partially anticipate Rippy’s study, yet neither offers such a consistently postmodern revision of the star director. In addition to demonstrating an awareness of current research, Rippy also makes good use of archival material. Ultimately, despite Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects suffering from some minor editorial lapses (resulting in occasional repetition), Rippy’s text provides a good starting point for those wishing to learn more about Welles’s unconventional early career.

Interestingly, Rippy discusses how recent projects, such as The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004), War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005), and The Daily Show (Comedy Central, 1996-present), reveal artistic and ideological debts to Welles’s work. There is room, perhaps, to extend this debate to include figures such as Sacha Baron Cohen, who, at times, also exhibits a strong inclination towards Wellesian “truthiness”—the negotiation of the line between news and entertainment. Rippy closes by identifying how contemporary media have provided viewers with the means to return to Welles’s unfinished texts, and, rather than seek ways to “complete” them, enjoy their hermeneutic freedom. Welles’s unfinished projects are, as Rippy concludes, ideally suited for “interactive presentation as a series of fragmentary texts, audio files, correspondence, photographs, interviews, blogs, storyboards, and media ephemera” (169).

2009-10-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

Screening Nostalgia: Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film.

By Christine Sprengler.

New York: Berghahn Books, January 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-1845455590, $60. 208 pages.

Review by Greta Methot, Rhode Island School of Design

In this ambitious first book, author Christine Sprengler takes as her focus a specific form of nostalgia: the cinematic “visual pastness” made up of props, costuming, and other material cues and signifiers employed to evoke past eras. This nostalgic mode is often criticized for seemingly replacing history with an inferior aesthetic stand-in, in other words, for “turning the 1950s into Fiftiesness” (2). Screening Nostalgia asks, does this most derided expression of nostalgia sever our connection to history as some scholars charge, or, does it offer critical potential? Sprengler wants to rescue this form by delving into the aesthetic materials of nostalgia to reveal their semiotic potential. Even when not intended to critical ends, the author maintains that the visual apparatus of nostalgia film can, “reveal something about our own historical consciousness and what we expect history to do for us” (90).

Sprengler’s detailed and absorbing history of nostalgia informs us that the term originated as a medical diagnosis applied to the physical manifestations of homesickness suffered by Swiss soldiers serving abroad during the seventeenth century. Over time, this geographic conception of nostalgia morphed into a kind of nationalism; to be nostalgic for one’s homeland equated to patriotism. Such an ideological shift meant nostalgia could be harnessed for political purposes. While a medical definition of nostalgia persisted into the twentieth century, the upheavals of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism saw nostalgia increasingly characterized as a temporal longing—a pining for simpler days, for an idyllic past—what Sprengler calls a “necessary coping mechanism with the capacity to make modernity inhabitable” (15).

By 1970, nostalgia had become an industry. Material goods, television, radio, and film all catered to a consumer base craving a taste of halcyon days bygone. At the same time, the politicization of nostalgia crested as the battle continued to rage between conservatives advocating for a return to “traditional values,” and social liberals seeking reform. This resulted in a stigma for nostalgia in that it came to be associated with a kind of propagandizing conservative agenda, particularly in the employ of Ronald Reagan’s political juggernaut. Chief among the disparagements leveled at nostalgia by academics and cultural critics was the concern that it commodified, falsified, or fetishized the past. Not until quite recently have scholars begun to argue, as Sprengler does, for the critical potential of nostalgia.

In chapter two, Sprengler investigates how the Fifties came to be the privileged object of American nostalgia for later eras. The proliferation of visual mass media during this period, particularly advertising and domestic television sitcoms, produced a canon of objects to signify the lauded values of the American Dream. Populuxe items such as the exaggerated styling of cars, fashions, and household appliances created a visual language evoking the economic values of the postwar years. As nostalgia for the Fifties gained ground in the 1970s, especially in films and television, these material objects were employed as visual shorthand for Fifties ideology. In what is an otherwise thorough and fascinating discussion, Sprengler neglects examination of the 1960s—a period when the defenders of the “traditional” values of the postwar years came into conflict with the social renegades of the various arms of the counterculture. Though the impact of this period has been considered thoughtfully elsewhere (see Daniel Marcus’ Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics, for example), some brief attention here would have been helpful to bridge the 50s-70s gap.

After defining the parameters of the nostalgia film genre and engaging briefly with its chief critics in chapter three, the remaining chapters examine specific aesthetic devices employed in several recent Hollywood films. First, Sprengler investigates 1950s automobile tail fins as a metonym for post-war consumerism in Frank Miller’s Sin City. The ostentatious, rocket-like design of the tail fin operates as an emblem of postwar technology, futurity, and prosperity. Sin City’s highly stylized, comic book-inspired vision of 50s noir and the corruption and crime evoked by that realm contrasts with the film’s fetishizing of the tail-finned car. Thus, Sprengler concludes, the film manages to offer oppositional views of the Fifties and provides a glimpse of the competing mythologies of that era.

The most engaging of Screening Nostalgia’s close readings provides compelling analysis of the use of costuming and color to suggest characters’ unexpressed desires and allegiances in Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven. Rather than reference the historical period overtly, Haynes’s film relies on sets, props, colors, and costumes to manifest the atmosphere established in the 1950s melodramas of filmmaker Douglas Sirk. Sprengler examines how the film strategically employs costume color and 50s fashion styles to convey the values of the era while simultaneously revealing the repressiveness and hypocrisy of those values.

Next, Sprengler takes on The Aviator’s use of what she terms a “technicolor aesthetic,” referring to that film’s digital recreation of mid-century film processes and palettes. Acknowledging that such films are frequently criticized for being overly indulgent in surface at the expense of substance, Sprengler attempts to recoup the historical value of Martin Scorsese’s film. While The Aviator may not faithfully reproduce Howard Hughes’s story, Sprengler finds that Scorsese’s painstaking replication of the look of two and three strip color film processing, “does important historical work” by informing audiences of the color film technologies of the 20s and 30s (149).

Finally, all the tools of visual pastness—props, costuming, black and white film— are put to work in The Good German in order to recreate the look and feel of a 1940s film. “Style is its alibi,” Sprengler asserts, and such a strategy allows director Steven Soderbergh to indirectly indict America for current geopolitical offenses while safely cloaked in the visual pastness of a nostalgia film (172).

Screening Nostalgia provides a cogent summary of the history of America’s love affair with nostalgia as well as offering useful examples of how to mobilize nostalgia in critically sophisticated ways. The text is engaging and accessible and should have wide appeal, particularly among scholars and students of film and American cultural history.

2009-10-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Hollywood’s Ancient Worlds.

By Jeffrey Richards.

New York, London: Continuum, September 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-1847250070, $29.95. 227 pages.

Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara

Hollywood’s Ancient Worlds chronicles the history of ancient epics, from the Victorian period to the present, beginning with melodramas in the British and American theater and culminating in recent cinematic examples of the genre such as Troy (2004) and 300 (2007).

It begins by showing how notions of the ancient world—more precisely expressed as Greek, Roman, or Biblical societies—achieved a peak of popularity during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the work of artists such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Gustave Doré. Sir Henry Irving even engaged Alma-Tadema as designer on productions such as Cymbeline (1896) and Coriolanus (1901). Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree enjoyed three of his greatest stage successes with Herod (1900), Ulysses (1902), and Nero (1906). Richards argues that such productions appealed to popular dramatic tastes: “Performance and visual imagery combined to create a popular memory of history, but one which looked to romance, myth and melodrama for inspiration rather than to academic research” (18). By 1916 this genre had all but died out, as audiences turned to the cinema rather than the theater. However, George Bernard Shaw did enjoy one of his greatest successes with the mythic adaptation of Pygmalion (1914).

Richards really gets into his stride once he begins to discuss cinematic reconstructions of the ancient world. Megalomaniac producers such as Cecil B. de Mille revived something of Victorian spectacle by portraying the life of Christ in King of Kings (1927): “It [the film] is certainly taking the story into a new dimension but it should not be overlooked that the film is securely based in the existing traditions of Christian music and Christian art” (38). In the era of the talkies, De Mille’s Cleopatra reflected 1930s values in its combination of art-deco design and luxuriant orientalism.

Richards divides his analysis of ancient epics of the 1950s and 1960s into three sections: the Roman Empire, the Bible, and Greece and Egypt. Many of the films discussed are very familiar—Quo Vadis (1951), Spartacus (1959), and Cleopatra (1963). However, Richards is nothing if not thorough in his research: lesser-known films such as The Prodigal (1953), Helen of Troy (1955), and The Story of Ruth (1960) are also included. Several themes emerge from his analysis: the majority of epics during this period made political statements about America during the McCarthy era, focusing in particular on issues of democracy and free speech. This was hardly surprising, as several screenplays were penned by blacklisted writers. Most ancient epics established an aural paradigm: the good guys were played by clean-cut white Americans (Robert Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Jeff Chandler), while their adversaries were invariably performed by Britons, whose cut-glass accents could well express sadistic intentions (think of Peter Ustinov’s Nero in Quo Vadis). Several films proved box-office bonanzas: Ben Hur (1959) almost single-handedly guaranteed MGM’s future as a producing studio. However, the critical reaction was not always so enthusiastic: Richards quotes several British reviewers whose choice of epithets was often depressingly predictable (“boring,” “three hours of vulgarity,” “atrocious,” “vast, loud [and] awful”). He argues that reviewers disliked the genre’s emphasis on excess; they preferred “documentary realism, literary quality and a middle-class improvement ethic” (54). I suggest there was a tangible anti-American tone to many British reviewers’ observations, almost as if they believed that ancient history had somehow been devalued once it had been given the Hollywood treatment. Not that the filmmakers themselves took much notice: De Mille freely admitted that his pictures had corn, and he was proud of it (112).

By the mid-1960s the fashion for the genre had passed, as audiences gradually became more specialized in their tastes, while the old studios (which had freely squandered millions of dollars on casting and sets) were gradually superseded by independent producers. Ancient epics remained in the doldrums until 2000, when Ridley Scott’s Gladiator cleaned up at the box-office and won a clutch of Oscars into the bargain. This film provoked a spate of imitations, including Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy (2004), which Richards identifies as a criticism of George W. Bush’s presidency, as it adopts a stance of opposition to aggressive, imperialistic wars (179).

The book ends rather abruptly with an analysis of the BBC/HBO miniseries Rome (2006-7), which combines politics and domestic drama with a liberal dose of sex in its infinite variety. I’d have welcomed some kind of conclusion, drawing together the various themes running throughout the book and offering some pointers as to how the genre might develop in the future (if it has a future, that is—Richards is particularly scathing about films like 300, which he calls “a comprehensive celebration of Fascist ideology” (184)). But perhaps Richards was constrained by the strict word-limit imposed on the volume, which he claims prevented him from discussing comic ancient epics such as Roman Scandals (1930), Carry on Cleo (1964), or Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). Hollywood’s Ancient Worlds is an entertaining book offering a comprehensive guide to a genre whose combination of “spectacle, action, conflict, inspiration and larger than life characters” proves irresistible to filmmakers and filmgoers alike (195).

2009-08-11T12:33:00.001-07:00

Mysterious Skin: Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema

Edited by Santiago Fouz-Hernández. New York: I.B. Tauris, May 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-1845118310, $32.50. 272 pages.

Review by Nathan G. Tipton, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis

Ever since Laura Mulvey famously declared, in her groundbreaking 1975 Screen article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” that in narrative film the woman is consistently represented as the passive object of the active male gaze, various critics have been quick to challenge the fixed male-female binarism inherent in Mulvey’s argument. Film theorists Richard Dyer, Corey Creekmur, Steve Neale, and Peter Lehman, for example, have demonstrated that masculinity cannot be equated uniformly with activity or dominance precisely because, in terms of cinema spectatorship, there are always multiple gazes in play including, importantly, males gazing at males and male bodies. However, the potential for the male body to become a “spectacle” for other men, even within the safe confines of simple curiosity ostensibly extant in the viewing mechanisms of heterosexual men, almost immediately provokes profound anxiety, repression and, oftentimes, outright homophobia. After all, the very act of males gazing at other males presents a constant threat to the secure, comfortable “norm” of masculinity.

In his edited collection Mysterious Skin: Male Bodies in Contemporary Cinema, Santiago Fouz-Hernández has gathered together a multinational array of contemporary film theorists who explore not only the complex mechanics of the male gaze, but also show how cinematic representations of the gazed-at male body communicate and engage with inbuilt national identity anxieties surrounding race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Although Fouz-Hernández notes that the collection makes “no claims to global coverage” (4), Mysterious Skin nonetheless has an impressive reach, with contributors presenting interpretations of male bodies that are variously (and literally) “put on display” in non-Westernized cinemas of Francophone Africa, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and India, as well as in films from Western countries such as Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, and Spain. This emphasis on the male body, along with Fouz-Hernández’s global disavowal, serves the collection well, as it effectively backgrounds the myriad cultural differences existing among these disparate countries in favor of emphasizing the more universalized “crisis of masculinity” and its attendant anxiety over the “looked at” male body.

Mysterious Skin is divided into three thematic sections: the body and ethnic/national identities; dissections/textures/close-ups (or what Fouz-Hernández eloquently calls “the body as cinematic canvas”); and sex/sexuality, which explores the vulnerability and versatility of gendered identities typically associated with masculinity. At first glance these groupings seem logical in terms of compartmentalizing the articles, but there is also considerable overlap that is perhaps unavoidable given the collection’s overarching (inter)national focus. For instance, Heidi Schlipphacke’s “Fragmented Bodies: Masculinity and Nation in Contemporary German Cinema,” which appears in the collection’s first section on national bodies/national identities, is concerned mainly with exploring contemporary German cinema’s linkage of masculinity to the formulation of a more average qua “normal” national identity. Schlipphacke explains that this “new normal” nationality was formulated as part of an overarching governmental mandate that sought to mitigate Germany’s tortured history, and especially its psychic connection to the fervent neoclassical nationalism and patriotism appropriated and perversely applied by the Nazis.

The author, however, dovetails from her discussion of this fundamentally redefined German normality (what Schlipphacke refers to as “Neue Unbefangenheit”/new unselfconsciousness) into a fascinating exploration of the almost schizophrenic fragmentation this normalization provoked among German males. As Schlipphacke notes, not only does this schizophrenic identity signify a psychic split between past and present conceptions of what it means to be German, but it also becomes the locus for a body undergoing literal fragmentation by way of dissection. This occurs particularly in the film Der freie Wille/The Free Will (2006) where Theo, the movie’s ostensible protagonist (ostensible because although he is a rapist, his overarching desire is simply to be normal), recognizes the futility of trying to reconcile his split selves and, ultimately, slits his wrists with a razor blade.

Indeed, the motif of fragmentation appears in various physical and/or psychical permutations throughout Mysterious Skin, thus providing a further commonality binding together the collection’s chapters. An outstanding example of this fragmentation occurring on both mental and bodily levels is highlighted in Aparna Sharma’s “The Square Circle: Problematising the National Masculine Body in Indian Cinema.” Sharma discusses the Indian film Daayara/The Square Circle (1996) by focusing on unpacking the shifting identities undergone by the film’s unnamed transvestite protagonist. What makes this chapter so successful is Sharma’s application of Judith Butler’s notion of performativity as it relates to what Sharma calls the transvestite’s “prerogative for migration” (94). This migration is multi-faceted, as the transvestite—who is portrayed as a rural, nomadic figure wandering from village to village—not only crosses and re-crosses gender lines but also traverses class, religious, socio-historic, and regional boundaries. Sharma ultimately views the transvestite figure as a representative critique of India’s carefully constructed, if entirely imagined, traditional value system that overtly emphasizes heterosexuality (which is, by definition, indicative of modernity, technological/industrial mobility, and national superiority). Thus the transvestite, through “his” muddying of socio-sexual conventions and national norms, effectively confronts and de-legitimates the hegemonic frameworks set up to police and regulate any and all boundary crossings.

These affective, transgressive border crossings, both physical and psychical, are foregrounded in varying degrees in all the entries in Mysterious Skin, but some chapters succeed better than others at conveying how these crossings are deployed cinematically. D. Cuong O’Neill’s exploration of homosexual cruising in Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s film Bu san/Goodbye, Dragon Inn, for example, is strangely complex and disjointed. This is perhaps partly due to the disconnectedness inherent in the film Bu san, which utilizes a film-within-a-film approach in order to combine a cinematic homage to the martial arts genre (in this case, the martial arts classic Long men ke zhan/Dragon Gate Inn) with the concept of the “moving body” exemplified by the homosexual men who cruise the dilapidated theatre in which the film is being screened. Yet throughout his chapter, O’Neill never seems to be sure how or where to focus his discussion until he arrives, late in the entry, at what appears to be the argumentative crux. O’Neill notes that the moving bodies displayed both on-screen (in Dragon Gate Inn) and “on screen” (the men cruising the theatre) represent “a contested terrain of competing identities” and “a world shaped by another form of mobility… where sexuality becomes not a type of identity but a type of loss of identity” (203-204).

While O’Neill’s cogent observation occurs within the context of an otherwise cumbersome chapter, it nevertheless neatly encapsulates the larger theoretical ethos that informs the collection and makes Mysterious Skin a continual delight. Fouz-Hernández and his coterie of international film theorists have provided an important, fascinating, and welcome addition to studies of masculinity, gender, and extra-Hollywood cinema. Despite its limitations—including some overly complicated and heavily theoretical entries—Mysterious Skin ultimately proves successful at not only showcasing the various permutations of gazed-at male bodies deployed in contemporary films, but also exploring how these incarnations provoke and promote negotiations over how these bodies define or defy international conceptions of masculinity.

2009-08-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hollywood Bloodshed: Violence in 1980s American Cinema

By James Kendrick. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, March 2009. Paper: ISBN 978-0809328888, $35.00. 272 pages.

Review by Sarah Boslaugh

The most important thing James Kendrick does in his new book Hollywood Bloodshed: Violence in 1980s American Cinema is to bring some much-needed clarity to the discussion of violence in movies. As Kendrick argues (with ample supporting evidence), violence in film is nothing new: The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (Edison Co., 1894) used stop-motion substitution to present a quite convincing beheading of the title character, and the most celebrated single shot in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 The Great Train Robbery is the one in which actor Justus D. Barnes appears to fire directly at the audience.

Kendrick argues that “violence” means so many different things to so many different people that without further clarification it’s useless to discuss it, and that reactions to violence often rest more on how violence is used in a particular film rather than the specific acts portrayed on screen. Even the Production Code did not prohibit the portrayal of specified violent acts or content (as it did with sexuality), but specified that they “must be treated within the careful limits of good taste.” This was the regulation that gave us on-screen violence without pain and suffering by requiring directors to developed a screen language which indicated violent acts (such as shooting someone) without showing the consequences of those acts.

Most film historians agree that American cinema changed radically in the period from the late 1960s through the most of the 1970s. Several factors played a role, including the collapse of the Production Code, the failure of several big-budget films leading to increased interest in marketing to a youth audience, and the emergence of the Film School generation of directors, who learned filmmaking in universities rather than as apprentices in the studio system. One major change in the films of this period was a marked increased in portrayals of graphic violence (violence whose consequences are actually portrayed on the screen): the most famous example may be the death of Bonnie and Clyde in Arthur Penn’s film of the same name. However, Kendrick and many other critics believe that the violence in this and similar films was not gratuitous but part of a larger social critique heavily influenced by graphic television and newspaper depictions of the consequences of real violence in the Vietnam War.

In contrast, the 1980s are usually interpreted as a period in which the radical innovations and social criticism of the previous decade went into retreat and the self-satisfaction and prosperity of the Reagan years were mirrored on film screens across America. Kendrick does not disagree, but notes that screen violence did not disappear during this period: rather it was repackaged in order to support the new ethos of the time. He illustrates his point with a case study of Red Dawn, directed by John Milius in 1984. Red Dawn began as a dark, anti-war script written by Kevin Reynolds in the late 1970s which had thematic similarities to William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. By the time the film went into production in 1983, it had become a conservative fantasy dressed up as an action movie which celebrates violence while glorifying a band of teenage vigilantes heroically fighting off Communist invaders (Red Dawn was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for containing more acts of violence than any other Hollywood film).

The teenage heroes could be considered a collective example of a type of hero often featured in the action films of the 1980s: characters who use violence to triumph over a simplified, demonized enemy and who are neither limited by self-doubt nor restrained by any considerations beyond winning. The enemy could be terrorists (Die Hard), drug runners (Beverly Hills Cop; Lethal Weapon), Vietnamese (First Blood), Soviets (Top Gun) or unnamed guerrilla fighters (Predator) because all that mattered was that the hero triumph over them. Critical and social outcry over the violence in these films was muted, often non-existent, a response which could be reasonably interpreted as: violence which reinforces dominant social values is good and should be celebrated, while violence which challenges them is bad and should be prohibited or denounced.

After setting up his historical argument, Kendrick devotes chapters to analyzing how violence was used in 1980s action films, Vietnam films, horror films, and children’s films. The latter chapter includes a fascinating discussion of how the PG-13 rating came into existence and what it implies about the whole system of rating movies in terms of their content and suitability for different age groups. The book concludes with a discussion of how screen violence was used and interpreted in films of the 1990s, followed by extensive end notes, a 13-page reference list and a detailed index.

Hollywood Bloodshed is an exemplar of modern film criticism which integrates the careful analysis and theoretical knowledge expected of academics with the sense of immediacy and well-crafted writing required in popular writing. This is a book about movies and the experience of watching them, not a book about what other critics and theorists have said. Perhaps not surprisingly, the author has a foot in both worlds: Kendrick earned his PhD from Indiana University and is a professor at Baylor, but he’s also been a film critic for Q Network since 1998. The film studies world needs more writing of this type, and I hope there’s a scholar out there who can bring a similar perspective to examine another great hot-button issue, the portrayal of sex and sexuality in the movies.

2009-08-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

Red, White, and Spooked: The Supernatural in American Culture

By M. Keith Booker. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, December 2008. Cloth: ISBN 0-313-35774-9, $49.95. 232 pages.

Review by Tamar Gablinger, Humboldt Universität Insititut für Sozialwissenschaften, Germany

In his book, Red, White, and Spooked: The Supernatural In American Culture, M. Keith Booker provides the reader with a review of conspicuous (and less conspicuous) elements of the supernatural in contemporary American popular culture. Through this review, Booker hopes to demonstrate how “the evident fascination with the supernatural in American popular culture arises largely from an attempt to satisfy utopian longings that result from the lack of genuinely supernatural elements in day-to-day American life” (x). Booker, a professor of English at the University of Arkansas who specializes in Science Fiction, has already written several books that have added to our understanding of American culture and its visual representations. With Red, White, and Spooked, Booker has undertaken quite a task, first of all because of the prominence of the supernatural in so many contemporary (and historical) works of popular culture; and also because of the rigorous effort to link between these supernatural elements and his thesis.

Red, White, and Spooked certainly accomplishes those purposes. Booker has limited himself to representations of the supernatural in film and television from the early 1990s onward, such as Lost, Heroes, or Pushing Daisies, alongside more “veteran” examples, recent “role models” to the whole genre - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files. He attempts to uncover the underlying link between takes of the supernatural and political and social agendas.

Despite this concentration in the contemporary, Booker does not neglect a much-needed review of the place of this current fascination with the supernatural in the wider context of the supernatural in popular culture altogether. Booker divided his work into three parts: a historical analysis of the “longing for adventure” in American culture; a discussion of the place of the supernatural heroes and anti-heroes in American popular culture; and an analysis of the link between belief in the apocalypse, the modern conspiracy narrative, and the supernatural. The first part of the book also mentions non-American depictions of the supernatural, namely the Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings books and films. Harry Potter's quintessential Britishness is contrasted with the classical American high-school tales, but unfortunately, Booker makes no reference to the popular “tweenie” Twilight series, which could serve as the perfect example for Booker's argument at this point. Booker, however, discusses in several passages of the book, the place of the high-school and teenage years in general in tales of the supernatural, from Buffy to the X-Men. Critical analysis indeed suggests (92) that corporations create works such as Buffy or Charmed to fill what seems like a spiritual void in contemporary teens' lives.

In such a wide academic work, a reader might always find some aspects less explored, and Booker's comprehensive study is not an exception. Booker, for example, neglects the flourishing religious popular culture and the representations of the aforementioned “secular” supernatural elements in it, especially the highly popular Left Behind series, which includes books for adults and teens, films, graphic novels, and even a video game depicting the apocalypse. Similarly, no reference is being made to the link between the supernatural in popular culture and the foundations of several American religious groups, most strikingly Scientology. The link between the “religious” and the “secular” supernatural might be the next realm that should be explored in a further study about the supernatural in American popular culture, especially given Booker's hypotheses about the role of the supernatural as a compensator for the lack of magic in a country awash with the rationalized religion that is the capitalist, Protestant ethic.

Nevertheless, Booker succeeds in demonstrating how the mythology of the supernatural relates to several important contemporary political and social questions, such as prejudices against homosexuals, free choice, exploitation of workers, environmental destruction, and the development of nuclear energy or weapons. Booker, however, is fully aware that “the corporate entities that produce popular culture are not likely to introduce products that are intentionally subversive” (175-76). Some of the works analyzed by Booker provide, nonetheless, the challenge to the prevailing system that could be used as entry points for critical discussion and change.

2009-07-16T15:11:00.001-07:00

The 9 Emotions of Indian Cinema Hoardings

By V. Geetha, Sirish Rao, and M.P. Dhakshna. Chennai: Tara Publishing, February 2009. Hardcover: ISBN 978-8186211274, $35. 96 pages.

Review by Rupa Pillai, University of Oregon

According to the Natyashastra, the authoritative text on Indian performance and aesthetics, a successful performance arouses an emotional response in the audience. Utilizing conventions discussed in this ancient text, most Indian art, from theater and dance to music and literature, has focused on eliciting this emotional response, known as rasa. The theory of rasa identifies nine key emotions or Navarasa that art may evoke in the audience. These emotions, which are universal and accessible to any culture, enable every individual to decipher and appreciate the aesthetics of an unfamiliar performance. Influenced by this theory, V. Geetha and Sirish Rao attempt their own performance in their new book The 9 Emotions of Indian Cinema Hoardings. Guided by the nine emotions, they use this theory as a conceptual framework to explore the art, development and correlating socio-political context of Indian cinema billboards, known as hoardings. This disappearing tradition is a complex art “where representation has as much to do with pleasure as with context and meaning” (77). In collaboration with a team of hoarding artists led by M.P. Dhakshna, the authors aspire to introduce this art form to a larger audience while honoring a tradition that is threatened by the emergence of new technology. The subsequent book comprised of two parts, visual depictions of the emotions and a collection of short essays, is a visually-striking endeavor that captures the essence of the art form while inspiring further investigation.

Hoarding art, which has existed in the cityscapes of South India since the 1940s, “is an expression of a public aesthetic that is deployed, both to advertise and persuade a sale as well as to provoke and sustain visual attention and pleasure” (86). Confined by the space of a billboard, artists rely on the nine emotions to engage the public. Without the aid of text, the public responds to the images and colors of these hoardings to construe the plot and tone of a film. In the first section of this book, the authors emulate this experience. Without a detailed introduction to hand-painted hoardings, the reader must work through a series of paintings that evoke each of the nine emotions. With just an excerpt from the Natyashastra that defines the emotion and select lyrics from film songs to enhance the rasa response, readers are transformed into individuals who might stumble upon the hoarding on the streets of Chennai. Readers are able to familiarize themselves with the art form and the system of symbols that represent the emotions. With this section, the authors move beyond the confines of the text to create a performance that demonstrates the tenets put forth by the Natyashastra and its validity to hoardings.

Following this exposure to the vivid images and brilliant colors that characterize the art form, readers enter the second section, which formally introduces the practice of hoarding through a series of four essays. In the first essay the authors continues to explore the nine emotions by briefly discussing each emotion’s “characteristic visual resonance and identifiable genealogy” (76) that creates a public language through which the artist and audience communicate. Additional, the theory of rasa is further explained by clarifying the difference between real world emotions and aesthetic rasa that is conveyed through art. The transformation of the emotion to rasa is a process consisting of “conventions and tropes, traditions of rendering and performance, as well as historical and contingent influences which frame and direct the process” (74). The second essay discusses the process of creating a hand-painted hoarding and issues of public engagement; it also provides a short chronicle of the art form’s evolution in connection to the development of Tamil cinema. The creation of a hoarding relies on the talent of a team of artists and carpenters. Aided by little more than a few film stills and a summary of the plot, these artists create paintings to capture the public’s imagination and “to bring [them] to the movies” (82). The reader will immediately respect the ingenious methods these artists use to create these enormous paintings. Additionally, this admiration will grow with the inclusion of quotes from hoarding artists that introduce the artists’ perspective on the process and the decline of the art form. The third essay examines the composition and additional elements that characterize hoarding art, and describes earlier types of art that influenced this unique style. The final essay introduces the socio-cultural elements affecting the audience’s gaze of the hoarding, particularly the changing conception of sexuality and the idea of darshan.

While the authors have succeeded in creating a book that engages the reader in an unconventional and memorable manner, the major criticism of this text is the dissipating importance of the nine emotions to this project. The nine emotions that the title suggests will drive the analysis of this subject dissipate in the final essays. Additionally, in an effort to simplify the theory of rasa, the authors present a convoluted account that may confuse the target audience, namely, readers unacquainted with Indian aesthetics. Further, the text lacks a formal conclusion that could have possibly resolved these issues. However, the book is still a sound piece of scholarship that accomplishes its task of introducing Indian aesthetic theory and Tamil hoardings. I did find myself craving to learn more about the artists’ perspective and how new technology is rapidly altering and endangering the art form, but I believe this book has succeeded in its ultimate goal: inspiring the reader to further inquiry.

2009-06-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television

Edited by Leslie J. Reagan, Nancy Tomes, and Paula A. Treichler. Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, reprinted December 2008. Paper: ISBN
978-1580463065, $34.95. 343 pages.

Review by Cara Kinzelman, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Medicine’s Moving Pictures is an interdisciplinary compilation of essays concerned with the relationship between medicine, mass media, and American culture. The American public embarked on a century-long love affair with media representations of medicine and its practices as early as 1905, when the first movie theater opened its doors in the United States. Over the next twenty years, over one thousand medical films were produced for mainstream consumption and quickly became one of the most popular box office genres. As the century progressed, the American appetite for medical-themed media expanded to include educational films, documentaries, and television series.

It is fair to suggest that a large percentage of Americans experience medicine through its portrayals in the media. Popular understandings of diseased conditions and perceptions of health-care providers are formed and reshaped by media representations. The manner in which health issues are depicted in the media and their impact on the viewing audience offers important glimpses into the evolution of disease-awareness programs, the changing cultural authority of the medical profession, and public-health controversies. The ability of media to contextualize the socio-cultural development of modern American medicine is staggering, yet it is an avenue of exploration previously ignored by scholars. Medicine’s Moving Pictures is simultaneously an attempt to illustrate the value of this scholarship and a plea for other scholars to engage in similar work.

The book is arranged in three sections. The first and shortest section is concerned with the emergence of medicine as a media genre. Martin Pernick focuses on an assortment of popular and educational films from the 1910s and 1920s to demonstrate that from their inception health films “sought not just to illustrate, but to shape history” by commenting on the causes (and blame) for disease contraction and the limits of professional power, and by categorizing disease into two classes: fit for public discussion, and banned for reasons of aesthetic censorship (for example, venereal disease and eugenics). These early categorizations helped to create new conventions regarding venue, audience, and topics that would remain unchallenged and unaltered until the 1960s.

The second section considers the duality of medicine’s role in the media to at once entertain and inform an audience. Paula Treichler presents an interesting commentary on the role of the soap opera General Hospital in transforming the perception of HIV/AIDS from a disease exclusive to the gay male to an equal opportunity disease with far-reaching effects in a small community, through the guise of an ill-fated love affair. Lisa Cartwright offers a similar methodological approach in her analysis of deafness and the 1952 film Mandy.

The final section explores the nature of accuracy in medical-themed media by exploring the veracity of popular representations of physicians and medical research. Vanessa Northington Gamble offers a compelling essay on the dissonance between the immediate post-World War Two Hollywood representation of black physicians and the reality of their roles and positions within the (still largely white) medical profession. Black physicians were presented as either passive or passing characters. Indeed, their representation is more accurately a depiction of how whites viewed African Americans than an accurate dramatization of their professional lives, which increasingly centered on agitating for professional equality and desegregating sites of medical training and healing. In a related essay, Naomi Rogers highlights the negotiations between the reality of Sister Kenny’s fight against polio and RKO Studio’s construction of her story that attempted to place Kenny more firmly within accepted gender and medical norms for their 1946 biopic. The essays in this section demonstrate well that accuracy in medical-themed media is a fluid term meant to imply either accuracy of popular perception or accuracy regarding the event, person, or technique portrayed, but seldom both.

Tasked with beginning a scholarly conversation, Medicine’s Moving Pictures offers a rich overview of the promise of such scholarship for highlighting the intricate relationship between popular culture, media, and medicine in the twentieth century and beyond. The essays are a prelude to what will surely become a burgeoning and exciting field of work in upcoming years.

2009-06-25T12:09:00.001-07:00

The Hidden Art of Hollywood: In Defense of the Studio Era Film

By John Fawell. Westport, CT: Praeger, November 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0313356926, $49.95. 240 pages.
Reviewed by Robert E. Meyer, DePaul University

In reading The Hidden Art of Hollywood: In Defense of the Studio Era Film, one quickly realizes that author John Fawell has faced the challenge frequently confronted by those who teach classic American film to today’s undergraduates: how can these products of the age of web-surfing, text-messaging, and (most recently) tweeting, be guided toward an appreciation of the great films made not just before they (the students) were born, but in many cases, before their parents were born? It isn’t easy, but Fawell has some valuable ideas which he shares in this volume.

The value of a book of this type usually lies in the author’s reading of individual scenes--and even entire films--that can help unappreciative viewers to look beyond the distracting superficialities (black-and-white film, unconvincing special effects, etc.) likely to trigger an almost knee-jerk condemnation, or at best dismissal, to see the exquisite filmmaking achievements to which they might otherwise be blind. The trick, of course, is to couch these readings in accessible terms, framing them in ways that the astute but uninitiated can share, despite their inclinations to the contrary. Toward this end, when Fawell provides specific explications of particular scenes, he frequently reveals a convincing power of interpretive observation. For instance, in discussing Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, Fawell explains how Chaplin avoids excessive sentimentality by preparing the viewers for the emotionally charged moment when the Tramp and the Kid are separated. As an example, Fawell points to the scene in which the Kid makes pancakes for the Tramp who “play[s] the role of the paterfamilias . . . making sure they bow their heads in prayer before they eat” (120). Fawell reports that, for his students, Chaplin succeeds in the heart-rending separation scene that occurs later in the film because he has done “the hard work of carefully building a relationship” (120).

Of course, a book on this topic will almost inevitably gravitate toward the usual suspects, the darlings of auteur criticism whose films are often taken more seriously than other Hollywood fare. Hitchcock, Ford, and Howard Hawks all receive more than their share of attention, but this is not to say that Fawell’s commentary is too cliché. His explication of a repeated pattern in Hitchcock’s Vertigo is very good, illustrating as it does the simple technique of editing with reaction shots used to prompt audiences to “start racing [their] minds, trying to figure out what he [protagonist Scottie Ferguson] has figured out” (58). Another example is Fawell’s discussion of the surgery scene in My Darling Clementine when Ford “buries the action of the operation deep in the saloon and shoots it from afar” emphasizing that “life [is] going on quite indifferently in proximity to the operation” (59) which, of course, is a very deadly affair. Fawell’s section on “silent filmmaking,” by which he means segments that have little or no dialogue, also has some valuable nuggets. It is in this context that Fawell discusses the ending to The Searchers, emphasizing the lighting and positioning of the actors, in addition to the oft-mentioned visual framing that is this sequence’s most famous element.

One of Fawell’s best sections is his chapter on character actors. His description of Donald Meek, who played Peacock, the mild-mannered whiskey drummer in Ford’s Stagecoach, submitting to the ministrations of a drunk Doc Boone (played by Thomas Mitchell), as displaying “the infinite patience of a dog that is being dressed up by children” (152) is the sort of analogy that makes reading film analysis a pleasure.

However, some of Fawell’s most interesting observations are those most likely to fall on deaf ears among today’s younger viewers. When he points out that “action can make a film more boring” (80), or claims that “the mistake the modern viewer makes is” to see “film as something that is successful only in proportion to how realistic it is” (95), those of us who agree may be inclined to applaud his honesty while remaining fearful that convincing anyone raised on a steady diet of action films with dazzling special effects is a difficult task.

Fawell occasionally drifts into a vagueness that smacks of subjectivity and, even in its most articulate form, is unconvincing. When he says that Gary Cooper “was unable to find bad lighting or to strike an angle that did not reveal a perfectly distinct mixture of elegance and sturdy reliability” (130), readers may be convinced only of Fawell’s enthusiastic approval of Gary Cooper, rather than of the point being made. Furthermore, Fawell uses empty descriptors, sometimes labeling visual compositions as “lovely” and referring to directors’ “trademark” shots. In fact, repetition, not only of words and phrases but of ideas, is a weakness of Fawell’s style. After making the point about realism, Fawell repeats it in almost the same words two pages later. And Fawell’s advice for instructors, again on the subject of realism, is well taken, but not particularly innovative: it’s important to prepare students for what they will see and to try to get them to question their own preconceived notions.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that this book contains far too many typographical errors. Moreover, Fawell occasionally makes errors of fact regarding the films he mentions, on more than one occasion confusing the names of characters in the films he is analyzing with characters from other films by the same director (or other characters played by the same actor). Overall, however, Fawell’s analyses of these films offer readers a wealth of insights that may prove useful to teachers who find themselves obliged to defend the “Studio Era Film.”

2009-05-28T11:55:00.001-07:00

Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker

By John H. Foote

Westport, CT: Praeger, January 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0313352478, $39.95. 224 pages.

Review by Douglas C. Macleod, State University of New York, Albany

“Million Dollar Baby won the Academy Award. That was nice, that was great. But you don’t dwell on it. An awful lot of good pictures haven’t won Academy Awards, so it doesn’t have much bearing. Letters from Iwo Jima was nominated for an Academy Award. We didn’t win it, but that picture was still as good as I could do it. Did it deserve it less than some other picture? No, not really. But there are other aspects that come into it. In the end, you’ve just got to be happy with what you’ve done. There you are.”--Clint Eastwood, Esquire Magazine, 2009

If there is one thing that we could gather from the above statement, it is that Clint Eastwood cares a great deal about the business, and doesn’t care a great deal about the business. What do I mean by that? Without a doubt, Eastwood loves to make movies. Being a successful 80-year-old filmmaker and actor where teeny-boppers like Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, and the cast of Twilight seem to dominate America’s big and small screens, he continues to win over audiences and critics alike. With films like Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, and (one of his greatest masterpieces) Gran Torino under his belt, he gives the sense that his love for movie-making runs deeper than any ocean or any canyon (no exaggeration). However, one gets the sense that he does not care much for the business of making movies. He likes accolades, but if he does not get them, so what? He likes the success, but if one of his films does not make money, big deal. If he wins an award, great; if not, well, it will not stop him. All he cares about is entertainment, and if he provides it well enough and quick enough, then that is just fine by him.

Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker is organized quite sensibly, into sections on the 1970s, the 80s, the 90s, and the 2000s. Each of the films Eastwood has directed is covered, with a great deal of production information, quotations from his respective casts, and critical responses, usually presented in that order. Foote’s book is filled with great tidbits of information: for example, Gene Hackman refused the role of Little Bill at first, in Unforgiven, because he did not want to be involved with anything too violent at the time (93); Sean Penn read the script for Mystic River, heard that Eastwood was directing it, and said simply, “I’m in” (146); and Eastwood got so annoyed by Kevin Costner’s child-like, spoiled-brat behavior on the set of A Perfect World that he decided to film Costner’s body-double and later tell Costner that he (Eastwood) was not there to “jerk off” (103). All of this makes Foote’s text easy and entertaining to read. It is not bogged down with high theory or postmodernist language; the book is simply stated, efficient, and edifying. In fact, one can argue that in that way, the book is very much like Clint’s filmmaking process. Throughout the text, it is repeated that Clint never likes to film for too long, never likes to film too many takes, never goes over-budget, and never likes to complicate things; Foote’s book avoids these problems, as well.

Like most books, Foote’s work does lose some footing along the way. One such issue worth mentioning is that the constant talk about other actors’ and actresses’ careers sometimes overwhelms the text, and takes away from the thesis at hand. For example, in his section on Bird, Foote takes a great deal of time talking about Forest Whitaker, who is certainly a fantastic actor, and worthy of accolades for his amazing performance as Charlie Parker; but, is it necessary to get into his performances in The Crying Game, Phenomenon, (the brilliant) Ghost Dog, and (of all films) Phone Booth? Details like these move the reader away from the focus of the book—Clint Eastwood—and what he accomplished.

Foote, though, does generally focus his analysis on Eastwood’s work, more so at the end of his text where Eastwood’s movies become more and more socially and cinematically significant. In the 1970s and 80s he made films because they were interesting or fascinating to him story-wise or script-wise. Now, it seems like he chooses his films with more precision, with a better understanding of how society works and how humanity plays an important, and sometimes dangerous, role in it. Eastwood’s films are now more about morality and ethics and social injustice--think of the mercy killing of Frankie in Million Dollar Baby, the murder of Dave by one of his best friend’s, Jimmy Markhum, in Mystic River, the harsh language and stereotyping of Gran Torino, and the lack of caring from the police department in Changeling. In essence, what Eastwood evolved into was not only a great and resourceful filmmaker, but also an important part of the American fabric, trying to come to grips with violence, death, pity, compassion, the human condition with all its follies and foibles. Eastwood is a proficient director with a firm understanding of what to do behind the camera, but he is also a fine director with a firm understanding of cultural, spiritual, emotional, and physical differences of humans throughout the world; in other words, he understands individualism in a world that tries to conform at all costs.

John H. Foote certainly knows his stuff; his thoughts on the films are usually dead on, and his research is impeccable. He is a good writer with a good sense as to who his audience is. Because of that, Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker is easy-going and a fast read. One might like to see a little more substance about Eastwood’s thoughts on life, using the films as a way to back those claims up; even though Eastwood affects not to philosophize much, after watching his films one tends to believe that he does.

2009-05-28T11:49:00.001-07:00

Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges

By Glenn A. Lovell

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, December 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0299228309, $60; paper: ISBN 978-0299228347, $26.95.

Review by Laurence Raw, Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey

By the time John Sturges died in 1992, he had largely dropped out of the public gaze, in spite of films such as Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and The Great Escape (1963). In one of his obituaries, Variety described him as “one of the last of Hollywood’s old-time action directors,” while People damned him with faint praise as someone who helped “many tough guy actors” to become stars (295). Although Sturges’s style of filmmaking has since come back into vogue, thanks to Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbusters and the chic thrillers of Quentin Tarantino, Sturges himself remains a shadowy figure. His colleague John Carpenter described him as “the most underrated filmmaker of the postwar era” (296).

Glenn A. Lovell’s meticulously researched biography, drawing on extensive interviews with Sturges and members of his family, goes a long way toward restoring the director’s reputation. Adopting a chronological approach, it begins by focusing on his early life in Illinois and California. Sturges majored in science and did a little stage-management on the side before joining RKO as an assistant art director in 1932. He quickly acquired a reputation as a problem-solver, which secured rapid promotion to set-designer on The Garden of Allah (1936), with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer. From there Sturges moved on to an apprenticeship in RKO’s editing department, working his way up to full editor. His later films for the studio included Gunga Din (1939) and They Knew What They Wanted (1940). By the time Sturges joined the army in 1942, he had acquired sufficient confidence to make his own films: “I knew I didn’t have literary merit, and I’d never been a deal maker or hustler. But I understood cutting. And if you know how to cut pictures, you know how to make ‘em” (24).

Sturges’s wartime experiences brought him into contact with William Wyler; the two collaborated on the war documentary Thunderbolt, recording the Allies’ triumphant arrival in Rome. His directorial debut came in 1946 with Columbia’s The Man Who Dared; and thereafter he made several undistinguished thrillers while acquiring a reputation for enthusiasm and gentility. The actress Terri Moore described him as “British” in attitude: “eloquent, a real gentleman” (39).

Although he was uncomfortable directing actors (several of them complained of his apparent lack of interest in them), Sturges was an exceptionally gifted technician. Bad Day at Black Rock was an experiment in montage, focusing on “reacting, not acting” (113-14); Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) flamboyantly celebrated the west with “stampeding horses, a burning wagon, and thunderous shotgun blasts as Wyatt Earp [Burt Lancaster] and his brothers dive for cover” (152). The Magnificent Seven bombed on its New York opening, but gradually became “required viewing for adrenalin junkies [….] [on account of] Sturges’ near seamless fusion of music, location photography, more liberal-than-usual language and bloodletting” (215).

However Lovell is not blind to Sturges’s faults, arguing with some justification that the director’s new-found freedom as an independent from the early 1960s onwards proved a mixed blessing. While producing classics such as The Great Escape, Sturges passed on Patton, Earthquake, and Papillon, opting instead to make turkeys such as The Hallelujah Trail (1965). While this film contained excellent camerawork, it was released at a time when “edgy adult fare” such as Schlesinger’s Darling was in vogue. Producer Walter Mirisch described Hallelujah Trail’s box-office performance thus: “I guess we learned that Western fans don’t like fables” (255).

Despite his reputation, Sturges failed to adjust to changing cinematic tastes. His last works such as McQ (1973) received a lukewarm reception, with John Wayne proving far too old for an action hero. After the British-made The Eagle Has Landed (1976) bombed, Sturges retired from filmmaking: while new projects were proposed, they failed to materialize owing to lack of funds. Sturges’s son Michael believed that no one wanted to work with a director who “beat World War II to death [….] Dad was trying to tell war stories without waking up to the fact that the new war movies […] were about the tragedy of war, the screw-up of war” (292).

Escape Artist is a consistently entertaining account of the lifetime of a cinematic craftsperson that refused to compromise his standards, even if that meant going over budget. While remaining unfailingly courteous, this sometimes made him appear remote – particularly for actors or other creative personnel who sought advice from him. This aspect of his character renders him a difficult subject for biographers – despite Lovell’s enthusiasm, I never felt I understood what drove Sturges to make the kind of films he did. Perhaps this was deliberate: Lovell himself claims that Sturges was never a great director, but rather a yarn-spinner with at least three seminal films to his credit. To suggest otherwise “would do him a disservice and raise false expectations” (6).

2009-05-28T10:55:00.001-07:00

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: The Relationship between Text and Film

By R. Barton Palmer

London: Methuen Drama, December 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0713679113, $19.95. 224 pages

Review by Laurence Raw, Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey

If ever there was a book telling us everything we possibly wanted to know about Harper Lee’s classic – both book and film versions – it is this one. Exhaustively researched and written in a clear, accessible style, Palmer situates the novel in its context of production, and then explains why it has proved so enduringly popular since it first appeared in 1960. He describes it as “an indirect assault on the insufferable intolerance of Jim Crowism [….] [The novel] challenges, even if it does not overturn, conventional understandings of stable identity” (107).

Palmer subsequently discusses how Robert Mulligan’s 1962 film version departs significantly from the book. With Gregory Peck as the star, this was bound to happen: the character Atticus Finch was transformed into “[a] fair-minded Southerner” who, with the help of “fair-minded Northerners” would help to provide solutions to racial conflict (197). Lee does not say anything about Northerners influencing Southerners; nor does she even conceive of the South as a “social problem” seeking remedies from outside. However, the film version was rewritten to accommodate Peck’s sensibilities as a white liberal trying to cope with a fast-changing world. Despite such changes, Palmer argues, the film does not have an “adversarial relationship with the novel”; rather, it “has been generally understood as more a faithful homage [to Lee’s work] than a critique” (233).

Why should To Kill a Mockingbird have become so important in American literary and cinematic culture? Palmer suggests that Lee not only attacks Jim Crowism but also challenges the stereotype of a benighted and savage South. Frustrated by the close nature of Southern society, she tries to open it up, not only critiquing its racist assumptions, but showing its more positive sides too – for example, the belief in the family. Lee had a love-hate relationship with her culture; she wrote Mockingbird not in the small Alabama town where she grew up, but in New York City, where she moved to pursue her writing career. Only then did she acquire sufficient physical and emotional distance to recount a fictionalized version of her life (63). Palmer suggests that she not only depicts her childhood in an authentic manner, but also has a lot to say about the adult world of racial politics. This is what makes the novel so important for readers and teachers, many of whom identify Mockingbird as an essential part of their students’ moral education. Ex-President George W. Bush recognized Lee’s achievement by awarding her the Presidental Medal of Freedom in 2007.

In his account of the making of the film, Palmer shows how director Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula conceived it as a small-scale work, focusing in particular on personal relations and social customs. Peck agreed to be involved in the project as he believed that it would contribute to his reputation as a serious screen actor. He liked the part of Atticus, seeing in the character a reflection of his courage and desire to empathize with others (163). Palmer analyzes the screenplay in detail, showing how it evolved through various drafts, incorporating changes recommended by the star as well as the Catholic Legion of Decency (which still exercised considerable powers of censorship in the early 1960s). He shows how Peck was dissatisfied with early drafts of the script that did not present Finch in a sufficiently favorable light. After extensive rewrites, however, Peck’s concerns were allayed, and filming proceeded smoothly with very few technical hitches. When the film opened in late 1962, it was commended by Variety as “a major film achievement,” which vindicated Peck’s commitment to the project. Since then its reputation has increased with successive rereleases: Palmer notes that no one has ever tried to remake it, except for one misbegotten effort in 1997 which never achieved a general release.

To spend over two hundred pages discussing one book and one adaptation might seem like overkill. Far from it: Palmer not only offers new insight into how a classic film was constructed, but shows how adaptations can connect meaningfully and deeply to their sources. I recommend the book as an inspiring read not only for film buffs but for anyone reading or teaching the novel, regardless of educational level.

2009-04-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film

By Barry Curtis. London: Reaktion Books, October 2008. U.S. Release: Feb. 2009. Distributed in U.S. by University of Chicago Press. Paperback. ISBN: 978-1-86189-389-5, $16.00. 256 pages.

Review by Kevin M. Flanagan, North Carolina State University, Raleigh

A perennial trope in horror and suspense cinema, the “haunted house” is a perfectly ambivalent figure through which to assess mankind’s fears. Sometimes the source and subject of a film’s terror—as in such diverse offerings as The Amityville Horror (1979) and Monster House (2006)—other times peripheral, as one part in a differently figured ambiance of dread (as with Buffalo Bill’s lair in The Silence of the Lambs [1991]), the haunted house has been present during most moments of cinematic history and has been articulated by many cultures throughout the world.

Rather than merely point out uses of the haunted house figure throughout film history, Barry Curtis’s Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film synthesizes a variety of technological, thematic, and literary sources in tracing the continued popularity of the old, dark house to audiences, critics, and filmmakers. Eschewing an over-reliance on the haunted spaces of Gothic literary tradition—Curtis gives them their due, but the temptation would be to chart an easy transition from horrific literature to film—Dark Places instead draws extensively on studies in architecture and critical theory.

The book’s chapters are organized around a cluster of ideas, or of convergent traditions which have been consistently articulated by numerous films. In Chapter 1 (“The Haunted House”), Curtis explores the iconographic and spatial dimensions that have characterized the haunted space. Though Curtis reminds that “all houses are haunted” by historical events and their relationship with their residents, he succinctly ventures that these places all posit a kind of showdown between inhabitant and the house itself, usually over a loss, “something excessive and unresolved in the past that requires an intervention in the present” (34). Curtis locates the main thrust of the haunted house film as residing in Victorian notions of material possession (accumulated goods, to which Freud would attribute overvaluation and cathexis) and in notions of fantastic interiority, which is amplified by the Gothic tradition, though actually rooted in the moral and practical function of the single family home (40-44). These ideas—along with the theoretical prospects of Gaston Bachelard and Walter Benjamin—play out against The Haunted Mansion (2003), Rose Red (2002) and Dead of Night (1945). This variety of examples analyzed (dare one say, the uncanny selection) is a real strength of this book.

Chapter 2 (“Gothic and the Uncanny”) provides a slightly different historical foundation, one which traces the Gothic’s simultaneous interest in the mysteries of the occult with the reasoned path of science and technological mastery. Curtis explains one of the impulses behind early horror cinema (notably F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu [1922]) as being its reliance on “a full range of technical devices,” including the superimposition of images, stop-motion photography, and the use of ornate studio sets, at once a celebration of the rational and technological and the wildly imaginative. This is placed within the larger context of visual haunting, from the fifteenth-century magic lantern (“the earliest images in printed books and in the slides used in magic lanterns featured skeletons and images of the afterlife”) to nineteenth-century dioramas and panoramas (90, 94). In short, early cinema audiences were already familiar with illustionistic terror and in supposed communication with the dead (96-97). The issues brought up in these cultural formations and their attendant technologies continue through the history of haunted house cinema, yet are morphed by emergent concerns, such as with the digital ghosts in The Net (1995) and Pulse (2001) and Fear Dot Com (2002). Again, the range of examples is impressive, but belies what could be seen as the central fault of Dark Places. In his minute attention to the widest variety of thematic and theoretical issues associated with the haunted house in film, Curtis treats historically important films such as Citizen Kane (1941) with the same reverence as such exploitative and trashy fare as Thir13en Ghosts (2001). This is not an inherently bad thing, but it is debatable whether the book should focus on the best instances of the haunted house or with the widest range of examples. Curtis opts for variety, but some of the films could use a more sustained and linear examination.

The third chapter (“Film – ‘A Fragile Semblance’”) further connects cinema technology itself to ghosts and haunting, showing (for example) that the fixity of the photographic image is often a preoccupying theme of haunted house films, such as with the final image of Jack Torrance in Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) (125-126). Chapter 4 (“Unreal Estate”) combines many of the issues from the previous chapters, and highlights the accumulated importance of Curtis’s wide-ranging arguments from previous sections. Dark Places is fairly unconventional in approach and is rather circular in its presentation of its arguments. The chapters do not present straightforward theses or direct teleological sections, but rather expose nuance and connections to sometimes unlikely precedents.

Dark Places is a valuable work for film scholars focused on the horror genre or otherwise. In considering the widest possible legacy for the haunted house on screen—and by bringing theoretical and multi-disciplinary sophistication to bear on such an unlikely topic—Curtis has fashioned a noteworthy exploration of one of cinema’s unsung icons.

2009-04-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Screening a Lynching: the Leo Frank Case on Film and Television

By Matthew H. Bernstein. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, February 2009. Cloth: ISBN 978-0820327525, $69.95; paper: ISBN 978-0820332390, $24.95. 400 pages.

Review by Nathan G. Tipton, University of Memphis

The very concept of lynching provokes in most people a profound sense of discomfort combined with an almost morbid fascination, a dualism that becomes further problematized when the visual elements of lynchings are brought to the fore. Matthew Bernstein’s book Screening a Lynching: the Leo Frank Case on Film and Television confronts this dualism through a thorough, cogent review of the visual and historical record surrounding the especially troublesome lynching of Leo Frank. Taking his cue from historian Hayden White and film history scholar Dudley Andrew, Bernstein explains that filmmakers advance interpretations of historical events not merely to tell a tale, but also to show how and why historical events unfolded as they did. In fact, while Screening a Lynching often reads more as a history book than a film criticism text, the sensational events and unanswered questions surrounding the Leo Frank/Mary Phagan case provide Bernstein with fitting examples for how and why filmmakers consider it irresistible material for dramatic, narrative films.

Indeed, the Leo Frank case has all the trappings of a perfectly rendered murder mystery. On the night following Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1913, Frank, a Jewish pencil factory supervisor in Atlanta, Georgia, was accused of strangling 13-year-old factory worker Mary Phagan. Frank, who was originally from Brooklyn, New York, endured a merciless “rush to convict” by overzealous Fulton County police and a rapacious Atlanta press corps that branded him, among other things, a greedy Yankee carpetbagger and a sexual pervert who allegedly molested and murdered Phagan after she, widely portrayed as an innocent flower of Southern girlhood, resisted Frank’s advances. Frank’s legal fate was ultimately sealed—in an ironic twist given the trial’s Southern setting and prevailing racial conventions—by the perjured testimony of black factory janitor Jim Conley, and Frank received a death sentence. However, this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in July 1915 by Georgia governor John M. Slaton, who, on reviewing details of the case, decided that grounds for reasonable doubt existed as to Frank’s guilt. An incensed public reacted swiftly, and the ensuing backlash effectively ended Slaton’s political career while setting in motion events that would ultimately lead to Frank’s grisly death on August 16, 1915. Frank was abducted from his prison cell at Milledgeville State Prison by twenty-five “Knights of Mary Phagan” who drove him to Marietta, Georgia (Mary Phagan’s birthplace) and lynched him.

Bernstein usefully deploys these historical details as a contextual jumping-off point for his discussions of four filmic treatments of the Frank-Phagan saga. These treatments include two feature films, Oscar Micheaux’s Murder in Harlem (1936) and Mervyn LeRoy’s They Won’t Forget (1937), and two television programs, the NBC documentary Profiles in Courage: John B. Slaton and the 1988 NBC miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan. With each chapter, Bernstein shows how each filmmaker wrestled with, and often flouted, the historical record surrounding the infamous case.

For the most part, Bernstein’s filmic discussions generally shine. His explications of the two television shows, for example, show how television producers valued the foregrounding of historical accuracy and verisimilitude over portraying the more sensationalized aspects of the case. Bernstein’s filmic interpretations, however, clearly comprise the strongest critical portions of the book, with his reading of the 1937 “Hollywood Message Movie” They Won’t Forget providing a narrative center to the text. The chapter on They Won’t Forget explores how noted filmmaker Mervyn LeRoy chose to adapt and transform a historical atrocity into what Bernstein calls “a morally acceptable, sellable narrative” for the screen (62). This section is particularly compelling due in large part to Bernstein’s exploration of the arduous, almost torturous, process LeRoy and his writers underwent in order to bring They Won’t Forget to fruition. Bernstein notes that even before film production began, Joseph Breen and the Production Code Administration (PCA) unambiguously declared that the film could not be made at all because the script violated so many provisions of the Production Code, including police brutality, excessive drinking, and the suggestion of mob violence and a lynching.

Breen’s objections seem utterly absurd given that They Won’t Forget was clearly influenced by the Frank-Phagan case. However, Bernstein wisely defers commenting on the PCA’s actions in favor of conveying LeRoy’s dogged conviction to tell the story as accurately as possible while also conforming to, and working within, the PCA’s strict guidelines. This conviction is brilliantly illustrated by how LeRoy ingeniously, if indirectly, depicted the lynching of “Robert Hale” (the cinematic stand-in for Leo Frank) through the use of a mailbag which is snatched up by an oncoming train. Bernstein explains that the mailbag symbolically and imagistically represented a lynching, providing a metonymic displacement of screen violence that was both imaginative and shrewd, while also falling well within the PCA Code’s bounds of good taste.

While Bernstein’s incisive reading of They Won’t Forget is quite successful, his discussion of Oscar Micheaux’s Murder in Harlem (1936), is the book’s weakest chapter. Although Murder in Harlem was released only one year before They Won’t Forget, Micheaux’s film is marred by conflicting storylines that haphazardly incorporate elements of the Frank case, poor cinematography, and uniformly bad acting. Murder in Harlem also curiously, if conspicuously, avoids any mention of lynching, unlike the other three films discussed by Bernstein. From an historical standpoint, the inclusion of Murder in Harlem is understandable given Micheaux’s position as an innovative early black filmmaker working in an overwhelming white industry. Nevertheless, Murder in Harlem provides at best a mere tangential connection to the Frank case, making it a problematic entry into an otherwise illuminating compendium of film studies. As well, it seems almost ironic that of the four films included in Screening a Lynching, Micheaux’s film is the only one still in circulation. Thus, while Bernstein offers a wonderfully instructive text on a historically vexing and fascinating case, Screening a Lynching is difficult to fully appreciate without having access to the films that are discussed within its pages.

2009-04-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology

J. P. Telotte. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, June 2008. Cloth: ISBN 9780252033278, $60.00; paper: ISBN 9780252075407, $20.00. 232 pages.

Review by A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Southern Polytechnic State University, Georgia

Complex machines are rarely evident in the imagined worlds of Walt Disney films. Disney productions are more likely to be set in the past than the present, more likely to take place in the countryside than in the city, and more likely to have the look and feel of the backward-looking Old World rather than the forward-looking New World. From early feature-film triumphs like Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942) through The Jungle Book (1967; the last Disney film supervised by Walt himself) through the renaissance that produced Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994), Disney’s feature films have lacked strong technological elements. Other Disney projects—the Mickey Mouse Club, made-for-television films like Davy Crockett, theatrical shorts like the True-Life Adventures, and most sections of the theme parks—reinforce the idea that Disney’s vision is rooted in a non-technological, or at least minimally technological, world. At the Magic Kingdom theme parks, the artificial past of Fantasyland, Frontierland and Main Street USA overshadow Tomorrowland, and the high-tech pavilions at the front of EPCOT are balanced by the traditionalist national displays at the rear.

Disney’s elaborate simulations of idealized low-tech worlds are facilitated, however, by sophisticated technologies deployed behind the camera and behind the scenes. Disney has been at the forefront of innovations in sound, in photography, in robotics, in computer animation, and in the use of new media such as broadcast television, cable television, and the worldwide web. It is that story—the story of the Disney’s fascination with and astute deployment of technology—that J. P. Telotte sets out to tell in The Mouse Machine.

The structure of the book is one of essentially self-contained chapters, loosely but coherently harnessed together in the service of the argument that Disney has consistently exploited cutting-edge technology in crafting and marketing its entertainments. The first three chapters convincingly show that the studio was, from its inception, an “early adopter” of new technologies like synchronized sound (in early Mickey Mouse shorts), stereophonic surround sound (in Fantasia), three-strip Technicolor film (in cartoon shorts in the Silly Symphonies series, and later Snow White), and the multi-plane camera, which permitted the illusion of depth in animated movies. Three subsequent chapters treat Disney’s adoption of Cinemascope in the 1950s and its early involvement with television and theme parks. Each of these chapters is a mosaic of business history, film analysis, and exploration of the uses of technology in the business of filmmaking, with discussions of the history of animation added for context. The final substantive chapter explores Disney’s acquisition of pioneering computer-animation company Pixar in the late 1990s. It is a testament to the power of Telotte’s argument that, upon reaching that final chapter, the reader is prepared to see the Pixar deal not as a radical break with Disney traditions but as a natural extension of them.

At 189 pages, plus notes and a comprehensive bibliography, this is a slender volume with a single, clearly defined purpose of advancing its thesis. Readers who come to it expecting an exhaustively detailed narrative will likely leave disappointed. Telotte’s discussion of how technology is depicted in Disney productions is limited to in-depth analyses of a few projects: notably the “Man in Space” trilogy of episodes (1955-57) from the Disneyland television series, and the feature films 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), The Black Hole (1979), and Tron (1982). There is little or nothing (for example) about the long string of techno-comedies that began with The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), little about Victory Through Air Power (1943) or Our Friend the Atom (1957), and little about Disney’s ongoing commentary on the automobile (carried on in shorts such as “Motormania” [1948], features such as The Love Bug [1968], and quasi-documentaries such as Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? [1970]). There is also relatively little about specific uses of technology within the theme parks: the evolution of Disney’s trademark animatronic figures, the extent to which thrill rides like the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain led or lagged behind contemporary rollercoaster design, and the role of the parks as demonstration venues for “futuristic” technologies like the Monorail, People Mover, and House of Tomorrow.

The idea of Walt Disney Studios as a technological pioneer is not wholly new. Disney’s early use of Technicolor and development of the multi-plane camera have been noted, and lauded, by film historians before. Disney biographers such as Stephen Watts and Neal Gabler have traced the studio’s enthusiastic colonization of new media, and other Disney scholars have analyzed the theme parks’ use of technology to create illusion. What is new—and important—in The Mouse Machine is Telotte’s meticulously developed picture of Walt Disney Studios as a consistently innovative organization: a serial early adopter of cutting edge technologies. Argument-driven and written in dense, complex academic prose, it’s not the kind of Disney book one would read for fun. It demands close attention rather than casual skimming, but it will also reward such attention—not only from Disney specialists, but from all scholars interested in the history of technological innovation in the entertainment business.

2009-02-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television and Politics

By Gordon B. Arnold. Westport, CT: Praeger, September 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0275994624, $44.95. 189 pages.

Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey

This book considers how notions of conspiracy theory have remained ever-present in American popular culture since the Cold War. Partly this is due to events – the anticommunist witch-hunts of the 50s, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11 – but the ideas have also been widely disseminated through film and television. Arnold combines political and historical narrative with analyses of several films including Suddenly (1954), Advise and Consent (1962), Chinatown (1974) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) to show how conspiracies shape some events, hide others, and ultimately dictate the course of American history since the 1940s. The first chapter – “Conspiracy Theory in the American Imagination” – argues that the theory explains “the reality of the modern world” for many people (2). Many people suspect that major institutions pay little or no heed to the individual, preferring instead to feather their own nests and seek governmental assistance if they run into trouble. This arguably caused the recent financial crisis both in America and elsewhere. Arnold contends that this belief gained currency at the end of World War II, as “Americans exhibited a new apprehension about [the power of] the Soviet Union,” and the destructive potential of the atomic bomb (13). This gave rise to the so-called “Domino Theory” which held that “if many nations succumbed to communist rule, in the not-too-distant future the United States would be surrounded by an angry sea of malicious communist countries” (17-18). Arnold continues by examining some of the films produced at that time, including Red Menace and Conspirator (both 1949), as well as Suddenly, Lewis Allen’s 1954 melodrama starring Frank Sinatra about a foiled attempt to assassinate the president. The chapter concludes with an analysis of late 50s conspiracy films including North By Northwest (1959). Arnold’s choice of films is certainly eclectic: certain overtly anticommunist works such as High Noon (1952) have been ignored, while attention could have also been given to Roman and/or Biblical epics of the period, such as Quo Vadis (1951) and Spartacus (1959), that feature an all-American hero battling against the conspiratorial forces threatening to overwhelm him. This omission highlights one of the book’s major flaws: Arnold does not offer a working definition of conspiracy theory – what it includes and omits, and whether our understanding of the term has changed over time. For example, I do not subscribe to the idea that recent fears of a so-called “Middle East plot” are in any way similar to those expressed during the McCarthy era. A glance at the ways in which both events have been reported in the media can confirm this. Nonetheless, if one treats the book as a selective account of the ways in which specific films deal with the idea of conspiracy, then there is much to recommend it. I liked Arnold’s comparison between the original Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Dr. No (also 1962). The earlier film follows Suddenly in showing how a brainwashed ex-prisoner of war (Laurence Harvey) is involved in a plot to assassinate a politician. The entire conspiracy is attributed to the communists, “an enemy that can deceive and control the people” (52). While Dr. No deals with similar themes, its tone “is not cynical. . . the problems [posed by the communists] can and will be solved and. . . potentially destructive technologies can be harnessed for the greater good” (57). Likewise, Arnold draws a suggestive link between Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (also 1974) as responses to the Watergate crisis. Coppola reflects “the growing sense of alienation that Americans came to feel in the wake of a divisive and sometimes violent decade” (94). Pakula returns to the theme of assassination and how the finger of suspicion can be pointed at anyone, particularly if they dare to question the system (96). Arnold subsequently shows how Chinatown, ostensibly a 1970s film noir, shows how “unknowing people can be manipulated and become involved in conspiratorial schemes they know nothing about” (99). In a concluding paragraph to the book, Arnold suggests that while the conspiracy theory metaphor continues to influence American life, it is no longer shocking to suggest that “complex forces . . . influence and shape the world” (172). This, he believes, is due to the frequency with which the metaphor has been used in the media, which has denuded it of significance. The book left me feeling much the same: while analyses of individual films are often interesting, the lack of an overall theoretical framework left me wondering why conspiracy theory should have remained so fundamental to American popular culture in the past six decades.

2009-02-12T19:39:00.001-08:00

The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody and the Battle over Borat

By Robert A. Saunders. London: Lexington, September 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0739123362, $39.95. 183 pages.

Review by Perin Emine Gurel, Yale University

The humorous has always been political. However, the increase in the world’s “complex connectivity” via new media technologies and the rise of relatively “horizontal” communication methods like the Internet have made political satire even more intense, volatile, and decidedly transnational. Take the Danish Mohammed cartoons: they are not worse than most things Europeans have written and drawn about the “Mohammedans” in the Middle Ages, yet they have certainly proven more dangerous in this age of speedy transnational communication. The YouTube war that broke out between Greek and Turkish youths over a couple of amateurish Greek videos mocking Turkey’s apotheosized founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is another case in point. So is Kazakhstan’s struggle against and eventual resignation to Borat, a fictional “Kazakh” television journalist played by the award-winning British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Studies of the political satire Baron Cohen unleashes through his ethnic personae (Ali G, Bruno, and Borat), therefore, require a decidedly transnational and multidisciplinary approach, making this media phenomenon a scholarly gold mine as well as a landmine. Robert A. Saunders, an assistant professor of history and politics at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, navigates this complex topic with grace. The result is The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen: Politics, Parody and the Battle over Borat, a smart, informative, and crisply-written little book that may leave the reader wanting a bit more. A political scientist and scholar of national identity, Saunders sets out to provide a summary analysis of the sources and effects of Baron Cohen’s ethnic pantomime in a world of globalization and multiculturalism. Identity politics and the construction of national identities are two political phenomena Saunders is particularly interested in, and they function well as anchors to the book, the former dominating Part I and the latter Part II. The first chapter, the only one specifically on Sacha Baron Cohen, focuses mainly on the comedian’s Jewish background and connects it to a tradition of ethnic humor and satire. Baron Cohen’s interest in the history of the Civil Rights movement and interracial activism as an undergraduate at Cambridge also influences Saunders’s contextualization of his comedy. In this chapter, Saunders argues that Baron Cohen’s outrageous anti-Semitism continues the Jewish tradition of counter-aggression, that is, “a moral response to the aggression of others.” Saunders, however, is skeptical of pundits who argue that Sacha Baron Cohen’s life story as a progressive, well-educated British Jew justifies and fully explains his deeply offensive personae. As Saunders himself notes, the characters’ boisterous misogyny and the troubling lack of critical response to it, to cite one example, cannot be explained away so easily. The second chapter historicizes the rise of Ali G, the ethnically-ambiguous, vapid, wannabe persona that first brought Sacha Baron Cohen to fame in Great Britain and, eventually, earned him a cult following in the United States. This chapter is rather short on analysis, and reads a bit like exceptionally astute journalism; the third chapter, “Personae Comicae: The Postmodern Politics behind Alic G, Borat, and Bruno,” however, provides the balance with a strong dose of political and cultural analysis. Here Saunders adeptly connects identity politics to national identity crises by tracing the contemporary debate on multiculturalism and Britishness in England and “the myths of racial tolerance” in the United States (74). Saunders’s main thesis also emerges most fully in this chapter, as the author connects Baron Cohen’s irreverent and anarchic performances as Ali, Borat, and Bruno to “the postmodern politics of today’s globalized society,” “blurred lines between information and entertainment,” and the oft-maligned de-politicization of Western youth. Utilizing the works of poststructuralist theorists such as Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Gilroy, Saunders argues that “[e]ach of Baron Cohen’s three characters represents a critique of identity politics in the postmodern West,” exploiting their “unclassifiable” foreignness, they spark both “proteophobia” and “proteophilia” (64-65). Ali G showcases the crisis of multiculturalism in England; Bruno, the flamboyantly gay fashionista with a Nazi fetish, generates chaos by assuming everyone is queer (and/or into the aesthetics of the Third Reich). Borat evokes ambiguous and politically revealing reactions simply by being “a chimera of Islamo-Arab foreignness with a colorful Soviet gloss” (72). The second part of the book, “The Battle over Borat,” throws the spotlight on the complex mechanisms of nationalism and state branding under globalization. Saunders, who wrote his dissertation on Kazakh national identity, is fully in his element here, which he demonstrates with a tight and detailed summary of “Kazakhstan’s history, culture, and evolving national identity” in twelve pages. He connects the state’s frenzied reaction to the humiliating Borat persona to the fragility of post-Soviet Kazakhstani national identity and the necessity of marketing the country’s global brand in a postmodern world fueled by images and sound bites. Kazakhstan’s responses to “Boratistan” shift from baffled to astute, as head-in-the-sand silence is replaced by sporadic and angry statements by high-ranking officials, the blocking of the site Borat.kz, and finally, as Saunders puts it, “buying into brand Borat” (113). In this section, Saunders reveals a respectful empathy for the country’s people, finding Baron Cohen’s use of Kazakhstan to expand his own fame “indefensible,” and his choice of this relatively powerless state cowardly (126). He seems relieved that Kazakh officials have finally reversed the game and now use Borat’s coolness to put their country on the map. However sympathetic he may be to his field, Saunders does not flinch from criticizing the country’s still authoritarian political culture at the end of the chapter. The section’s mixture of erudition, emotion, and conscientiousness is laudable. In the preface, Robert Saunders admits that he tried to talk himself out of writing this neat little book. Most readers will be glad he failed. Part unofficial intellectual biography, part primer on Kazakh nationalism, but mainly an accessible analysis of “identity politics” and nationalism in an era of fast-spreading infotainment, The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen is a valuable political history of what its author calls a “global minstrel show” (165). Other readers, however, may wish he had failed more “spectacularly” by talking himself into writing more of the book. Saunders does not read too closely into Baron Cohen’s rhetoric and leaves much of the “cultural” analysis to the eminent scholars he cites. There is, for example, no close analysis of the various languages of the personae; Saunders acknowledges and contextualizes Ali G’s multicultural urbanese, Borat’s fake Kazakh, and Bruno’s lisping Deutschlish, without really looking into how these new paroles work. Language performance is clearly a vital aspect not only of globalization and the new media but also of satire and humor in general. In the case of Borat, for example, the superficial humor depends heavily on the character’s misuse of various English prepositions (e.g. U S and A), making the way for stinging political jokes, as when Borat tells a whole arena of Rodeo fans that he supports America’s “War of Terror.” The many sides of the Sacha Baron Cohen phenomenon necessarily call for the tools of many disciplines. Folklorists have long analyzed ethnic jokes under the category Blason populaire; Americanists have extensively explored racial minstrelsy; linguists have written on code-switching and foreign language performance; sociologists have dissected the interpersonal functions of humor. It is not fair to ask a political historian to apply folklore, humor studies, and linguistic analysis to his work, and Saunders does cite experts in all these fields often enough. However, some readers may feel tempted to draw a few supplementary maps of Boratistan after they read The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen. And that is good. To misquote Ali G, “dis be cultural studies.”

2009-02-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, The Religious Right, and the Culture Wars

By Thomas R. Lindlof. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, July 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-8131-2517-6, $32.50. 408 pages.

Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey

This book recounts the stormy passage from page to screen of Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Nikos Kazantakis’s The Passion of the Christ. Originally published in America in 1960, the book attracted a hail of criticism, as city councils and other pressure groups tried to ban it from local libraries on account of its allegedly blasphemous content. Nonetheless, the novel was optioned by the director Sidney Lumet; when he failed to obtain studio backing, Martin Scorsese took up the idea. He acquired the rights to the book in 1977 and commissioned a screenplay from Paul Schrader. Originally, the film was to be made by Paramount, but following objections from a variety of Christian groups, the project was shelved indefinitely in 1983, despite the fact that Scorsese had begun filming in Israel. Four years later, Universal agreed to produce the film; this was partly due to Scorsese’s box-office potential, which had rapidly increased following the success of The Color of Money (1986), and partly due to some astute wheeling and dealing by Universal’s chairman Tom Pollock. Filming recommenced in Morocco with a cast including Willem Dafoe and Barbara Hershey. However, the reaction to the project from the Christian Right was much the same as before: even before filming had been completed, Universal executives were asked to abandon the project, while talk-radio stations denounced the studio for daring to green-light a film that might (note the word “might”) “have a deleterious effect on the millions of movie-goers looking for the truth about Christ” (166). Lindlof chronicles in exhaustive detail the ways in which Universal circumvented such criticism by engaging a Christian executive to put a positive slant on the film, and when this strategy failed, to devise an astute marketing campaign for the film’s American release. It was premiered in safe venues in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and subsequently distributed to nine more markets with only two – Houston and Austin – in the South. The film broke box-office records in some theatres, even though many of them were picketed by protesters. Last Temptation encountered even more extreme responses elsewhere: in October 1988, the Cinéma Saint-Michel in Paris, where the film played on two screens, was burned to the ground. In Greece the film was banned altogether. As time passed, however, so reactions to Last Temptation became less and less extreme. In 2000 the American cable network Bravo announced four showings during the Easter season; no protests or telephone calls were registered. Lindlof’s book concludes with an analysis of other religious films released after Last Temptation, and concludes that The Passion of the Christ (2004) and The Da Vinci Code (2006) both “appealed to a vast audience of believers” (313). Last Temptation is a seminal film, as it helped reshape attitudes towards religion in Hollywood: filmmakers took more note of the feelings of Christians of all denominations, while faith-based groups adopted a more conciliatory tone towards the studios. At a deeper level, however, Hollywood Under Siege tells us a lot about the conflicts dominating American society in the late 1980s. Although the protests centered on the film’s allegedly blasphemous content, they also served as a pretext for anti-Semitism. Lew Wasserman, then the president of MCA (Universal’s parent company) became the subject of a series of violent demonstrations accusing him of endangering Israel and ridiculing a religion in which he did not grow up (188). Although many Christian leaders protested, the playing of the Jewish card evoked feelings in the media community ranging from “shock to anger to embarrassment, regret and sadness” (192). The violence of the protests also demonstrated the climate of fear still dominating American society at that time: people believed that Last Temptation was a potentially subversive text. One Presbyterian pastor observed that “all fictional treatments of Jesus are pale imitations of the Sacred Word.” They could be dangerous, especially for “all the millions of impressionable young people who . . . may have inadequate Christian education to be able to divide truth from fantasy” (195). Last Temptation provided a battleground for the so-called “culture wars” that emerged during the Reagan presidency. People were either for or against the film; sitting on the fence was considered moral weakness. Lindlof has marshaled a variety of evidence from books and newspapers, as well as extensive interviews with over eighty executives, directors, critics, journalists, and others intimately involved with the film and its release. Sometimes the book reads more like a novel than a work of film history, particularly when the author quotes verbatim an interviewee’s reconstruction of important conversations that took place thirty years ago. Nonetheless, Hollywood Under Siege is valuable as a record of a specific yet seminal event in American film history, showing just how difficult the process of bringing a controversial text to the screen can be.

2009-02-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Communication

By Daniel Herwitz. New York: Columbia University Press, October 2008. Cloth: ISBN: 978-0-231-14540-4, $24.50. 157 pages.

Review by Erik M. Walker, Quincy College, Plymouth, Massachusetts

Ultimately, can one ever truly define the star icon? In an insightful book that blends philosophy with an attempt to dissect both popular culture and the consumers of popular culture, Daniel Herwitz explores the creation and evolution of the star icon. In his preface, Herwitz sets his tone and establishes his purpose by asking, “What is it about film and television culture, the star system, and consumer society that have made the star icon what she is”? The book then sets out to investigate the phenomenon of star icon, all the while redefining it and posing even more questions. The first chapter uses Diana’s funeral—and then looks back at the events of her life—to weave together a definition of celebrity that is “increasingly a media effect combined with public appetite” (18). Herwitz nicely explores the role of physiognomy in the making of the star, and discusses how “through the lens of a camera her physiognomy became the grounds for her sincerity” and Diana was elevated to film star power (8). Herwitz discusses the icons of his childhood, stating simply, “I am trying in this book to understand the icons I loved before I was old enough to grasp the force of this attraction” (25), and uses Andy Warhol’s “universe of the cult icon: a beautiful, cruel universe” (31) to point out the difference between art icons and celebrity icons. While art or music icons have sustainability and are archived in museums or concert halls, star icons are a product of their immediate time. Herwitz has clear insight into the irony that the star icon is both powerful and powerless, noting, “the icon figure is powerless before our gaze, but we, we are also powerless in our awe before it/her” (39). Much of the middle of the book is devoted to film and television. Herwitz suggests that America has no equivalent icon to Diana (or any Royal) because “American is too much in love with commoners” (43). Thus, film and television create American star icons, and Herwitz sets out to define an “aura” and how aesthetics contribute to that aura and, therefore, the star icon. Herwitz suggests the star icon system depends on a specific formula of “film aura, limited public access, and controlled removal from the public” to feed the public’s increased desire for news. The two chapters of the book devoted purely to film study are a must-read, with Herwitz showing that through film, stars are born, and describing how films converge around and spy upon the star icon. In these chapters, it is clear that the author is both fan and critic of film and popular culture. In a chapter on television, Herwitz studies talk shows and the television serial and investigates how television creates and maintains stars, although he notes that the medium tends to reduce stars to “celebrity product” (102). Unlike film’s ability to create stars by using publicity but then removing them from the public eye, thus increasing interest in the star, television attempts to make stars familiar and gives the audience the impression that it is seeing these stars up close and personal. The chapter is particularly insightful when discussing film’s accurate portrayal of television in The Truman Show. While audiences watch television series expecting resolution, the resolution usually fails to completely come, and Herwitz expertly analyzes the ending of the television show The Sopranos by studying audience expectations. Although an audience expects resolution, Herwitz suggests that the seeming lack of ending in the finale of The Sopranos is “perhaps the most honest ending television can invent” because it is one “that understands that, with the series, all endings are unreal” (114). The chapter is one of the more insightful and interesting ones in the book, and yet it seems disconnected from the mission of the book. While the chapter does discuss television aura, much of the discussion of The Truman Show and The Sopranos fails to connect to the focus on the star icon. Who is the “star” of these shows and what do these shows us about the star icon? The answer seems absent. In Chapter 2, Herwitz asserts that “this is not a ‘Diana’ book” (23). Structurally, the problem is the book is a Diana book. Three of the nine chapters of the book concentrate entirely on Diana, and she is used as an example in several others. And when focused on Diana, the book is wonderfully focused and sophisticated. The author keenly acknowledges the star icon as a figure in the spotlight but not desiring to be; the star icon’s success and failure are both equally cheered by the public until the public is ready to move on to its next star. But when the book diverts from the examples of Diana or the Hollywood stars of the past, the author seems more content to simply explore and pose questions without answering the book’s thesis. While the television program The Sopranos and some modern film actors are mentioned, the book desperately sets out to be culturally relevant today—yet uses examples (Diana, Jackie O, and Grace Kelly) that are firmly rooted in the past. With the ways the media is changing (new media is not even discussed), it’s hard not to see this book more as a history than as a contemporary study of the star icon. Marilyn Monroe and Elvis grace the pages, but there is not a single mention of Madonna or Britney Spears. Near the end of the work, the author admits, “But here I am still stunned by the icon, still overwhelmed by her aesthetic power” (143). Readers of The Star As Icon will feel the same: The book will make you think—then rethink—about how our society treats and mistreats the star. The book is fascinating and addictive, and much like the very star icons Herwitz is writing about, you will find yourself unable to look away from this philosophical and scholarly text.

2009-02-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

True West: An Illustrated Guide to the Heyday of the Western

By Michael Barson. Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, November 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0-87595-379-2, $29.95. 178 pages.

Review by Laurence Raw, Baskent University, Ankara, Turkey

This is a true aficionado’s book—the product of an author who grew up in New England but developed a liking for the West as represented on television and in the movie theatre. Barson recalls how he experienced firsthand the craze for Davy Crockett that swept America during the mid-1950s; like millions of other American kids, he bought one of Crockett’s coonskin caps. Other role models included Rowdy Yates (Rawhide), Sugarfoot, and Mark McCain (The Riflemen). As he grew up, Barson realized that while the West as portrayed on television might differ significantly from the “real” West--Texas, Colorado, California—it provided a means for him to reflect on “the sources of our native pluck and resilience. They [television Westerns] were part of the […] process by which Americans define—and revise, and define again—a national self-image” (21).

True West tells the story of the West as represented in films, television series, pulp fiction, music, comic books, and other souvenirs. It begins in the 1920s, when stars such as William S. Hart and Tom Mix produced a steady stream of silent films for admiring audiences; by 1929 Mix had made nearly 330 films. In the era of the talkies A-list stars such as John Wayne made classics like Stagecoach, while William Boyd, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers turned out a steady stream of B pictures. Barson demonstrates just how powerful a hold these stars exerted on the American public, with their images being reproduced on sheet music, paperback books, posters, and other goods. I especially liked the advertisement produced under Boyd’s name offering his young fans the chance to “win a Hoppy [Hopalong Cassidy] bike, or cowboy outfit, or shootin’ irons, absolutely free” (22).

In the early 1950s the vogue for B-pictures subsided with the growth of television. Both Autry and Rogers responded by creating their own series: The Gene Autry Show debuted on CBS in July 1950, with The Roy Rogers Show following a year later. Both ran until the middle of the decade, when the aging stars hung up their spurs and lived on their royalties.

Barson offers a personal choice of one hundred favorite Western films ranging from Stagecoach (1939) to comedies such as The Paleface (1940) and Oklahoma! (1955), but excludes modern Westerns such as Blazing Saddles (1974) and more recently The Assassination of Jesse James (2007). The author concentrates instead on the television series that dominated the screens during the 1950s and 1960s—Wyatt Earp, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and Bonanza. He argues quite rightly that the genre lost its popularity during the 80s, but expresses the hope that contemporary miniseries such as Comanche Moon (2007) might signal a revival of interest: “[I]t [is] possible to capture the epic scope of the best Western films even on television, given a good script, top-shelf acting, and quality directing” (109).

The book’s concluding chapters cover classics of Western literature, music, and comic books. Featured authors range from pulp-fiction specialists such as Elmer Kelton and James Warren Bellah, to modern authors such as Cormac McCarthy. The songsters include Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, and Johnny Cash. Barson’s fondness for Western themes is obvious; he even provides the lyrics to the theme from Rawhide, described as “three minutes of two-fisted gumption” (134). The song has affected legions of filmmakers; it provides the basis for one of the most memorable sequences in The Blues Brothers (1980), where the eponymous heroes perform it (repeatedly) in front of an audience of rowdy hillbillies.

True West might not be a very scholarly work, but it provides an entertaining read. The beautifully reproduced color plates give an idea of the sheer range of artistic talent than went into producing posters, comic books, and other ephemera. If nothing else, this should render the book appealing to anyone interested in Westerns and their influence over twentieth-century American popular culture.

2009-02-11T13:04:00.000-08:00

Why We Fought: America’s Wars in Film and History

Edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, July 2008. Cloth: ISBN 9780813124933, $75.00; paper: ISBN 9780813191911, $40.00. 624 pages.

Review by David R. Buck, Thiel College

Many scholars have a hard time accepting film as a legitimate method of depicting history, given its relatively recent development as a vehicle for representing events. While cinema has existed for only a short time in comparison to other art forms, such as literature, music, dance, or painting, film plays an increasingly important role in the study of history. In many cases, people “know” their history from what they see, which is especially true in the genre of war films. Why We Fought: America’s Wars in Film and History, edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, attempts to give their audience insight into the various roles that film plays in influencing, reflecting, and interpreting American war experiences (1). This massive undertaking began from the 2005 conference “War in Film and History.”

Rollins and O’Connor’s finished product is a great resource. It is chronologically organized, and uses a variety of mediums and types of analysis. Furthermore, it can be used by many historical scholars. It appeals to scholars who already have an understanding of how one can use film as a medium for historical analysis. At the same time, it encourages historians to integrate film into their repertoire of historical documents. Additionally, Why We Fought is a solid resource for those who want to integrate historical film into the classroom.

Why We Fought is divided into four major periods. “The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Revolution, Conquest, and Union” covers the most history, stretching from the American Revolution to end of the Civil War. This section examines films on the American Revolution with a chapter that focuses on Drums Along the Mohawk and The Patriot (John E. O’Connor). Then comes a chapter that focuses on the Alamo films (Frank Thompson), followed by a chapter that concentrates on the Mexican-American War (James Yates). Finally, this section ends with chapters that examine Ken Burns’s Civil War miniseries (Gary E. Edgerton) and Cold Mountain (Robert M. Myers), respectively. While this first period captures many aspects of American history through war films, it does not provide coverage of war films about late-nineteenth-century American imperialism.

“The Twentieth Century: Total War” does an admirable job of exploring the World Wars and the inter-war years. Several chapters deal with World War I and the reactions to it. In the first of these chapters, Michael T. Isenberg argues that The Big Parade illustrates the rise in isolationism during the post-war years. Next, James Latham examines how the film industry promoted the theme of war during the World War I era. In the last chapter on the Great War era, David Imhoof examines the reaction of the citizens in Göttinger, Germany to the films Westfront 1918 and All Quiet on the Western Front. Moving from examining the war years, John Whiteclay Chambers II explores how Hollywood shifted gears and supported isolationism and non-intervention during the majority of the 1930s. Cynthia Miller continues the march to the Second World War by examining how Hitler, Beast of Berlin helped signal a shift away from isolationism. Ian S. Scott investigates the role that propaganda played, after the entrance of the United States into World War II, through Why We Fight and Projections of America. Frank J. Wetta and Martin A. Novelli consider the plight of the returning veterans as portrayed in The Best Years of Our Lives. Focusing on the war period itself, J. E. Jones examines how From Here to Eternity brought the history of the war to the American public. Finally, this second period ends with a look at D-day, as Robert Brent Toplin reflects on how during the 1960s (The Longest Day) and the 1990s (Saving Private Ryan), films portrayed historical events while making comments on contemporary issues.

“Cold War and Insurgency: The Paradox of Limited Wars” covers the Cold War and the Vietnam War. The first chapter in this section deals with how Berlin is used in film to represent the divide between the West and East in the Cold War (Thomas W. Maulucci). In the only chapter to focus on gender roles, Patricia Neal’s character in The Day the Earth Stood Still represents a contrast to the normal portrayal of women during the 1940s and 1950s (Susan A. George). Shifting to the Vietnam War, the focus becomes the problematic nature of the bias inherent in productions about the war and how films about this war reflected American opinions (Peter C. Rollins). In the following chapter, Platoon illustrates the life of the soldier in the Vietnam War (Lawrence W. Lichty and Raymond L. Carroll). The final chapter shows how the two versions of The Quiet American are impacted by the difference of almost fifty years between the productions (William S. Bushnell).

“The Twenty-first Century: Terrorism and Asymmetrical Conflicts” reviews the most recent American conflicts. John Shelton Lawrence and John G. McGarrahan focus on how Black Hawk Down as a film, along with Pentagon support, helped defend the perception of the armed forces, following the model established by Lawrence Suid. Moving into the twenty-first century, Jeffery Chown explores how the accessibility of film/video has altered the war film, evaluating a variety of films from the war in Iraq. Stacy Takacs examines Jessica Lynch’s myth-like portrayal, and finally, James Kendrick examines how the events of 9/11 have been depicted on both the big and small screens.The primary strength of Why We Fought lies in its wide scope. Its second strength is that Rollins and O’Connor do not restrict the type of film, including feature productions, documentaries made for cinematic release, and productions made exclusively for television. By having this wide variety of film types, this collection provides an appropriately complete illustration of how war has been depicted and its role in understanding American history.

Why We Fought also provides breadth in the types of analysis that the individual chapters provide. Some chapters focused on the films themselves and how they depicted the subject matter. Other chapters place the films and the film industry into the context of the period in which the productions occurred. Rollins and O’Connor make sure that the chapter’s authors are committed to taking a “film and history” approach. This means that evaluations about a war film need to: (1) place the film in its historical context; (2) be aware that the film is a vehicle for propaganda; (3) keep in mind that the film’s sponsorship and/or censors impact its message; (4) that war films are their own genre; and (5) caution must be used when studying films (25). The articles included in this collection add significantly to the study of film and history by taking into account these concerns.

Another strength of Why We Fought is the filmography and bibliography provided by John Shelton Lawrence. Lawrence lists (in chronological order by production date) every film cited in the work, plus many other major war films. Further, he breaks this list down into historical eras. Also, he provides sources for more comprehensive filmographies, as well as printed resources for each of the historical eras. His bibliography is a solid addition to the book. Following the same historical-era breakdown as the filmography, Lawrence provides both a list for general works and those that have a film focus. These additions only strengthen an already excellent resource work.
[See an additional review of this book below.]

2009-02-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

Why We Fought: America's Wars in Film and History

Edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, July 2008. Cloth: ISBN 9780813124933, $75.00; paper: ISBN 9780813191911, $40.00. 624 pages.

Review by Ron Briley, reprinted by permission of History News Network at http://hnn.us/

War has played a significant role in shaping the American experience since the nation declared its independence from the British Empire and commenced upon a policy of territorial expansion. Accordingly, the drama of warfare emerged as a staple genre of the Hollywood film industry during the early twentieth century. America’s wars, as captured in both documentary and feature films, is the subject of an intriguing volume edited by film scholars Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, who established the academic journal Film & History. The collected essays were selected from presentations delivered at the 2005 conference “War in Film & History.” Editors Rollins and O’Connor assert that the twenty-three essays contained in Why We Fought explore “how motion pictures have influenced, reflected, and interpreted the American experience of war” (xv). Employing what the editors term the film and history approach, Why We Fought analyzes American war films as a genre reflecting the historical context in which they were made. The editors acknowledge, however, that the war film must be approached cautiously as the genre is often subject to censorship or supports government propaganda goals.

Thus, films should be perceived as historical artifacts, deserving the same critical analysis scholars apply toward more traditional archival sources. This historical approach tends to assure that the essays are relatively free from the jargon of cultural studies and are accessible to the general reader. And as one might expect from this emphasis upon historical context, the essays are arranged chronologically, ranging from the Revolutionary War to the invasion of Iraq. There are, however, some important gaps in this survey of American war films. Missing are motion pictures dealing with the Indian Wars of the American West (albeit, Rollins and O’Connor have tackled this issue in a previous volume dealing with the American West), and the Korean War remains the forgotten war.

The importance which the volume places on historical context is evident in the volume’s lead essay on the Revolutionary War films Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Patriot (2000). O’Connor argues that producer Darryl Zanuck, anticipating a wartime alliance with Great Britain, portrayed American Loyalists rather than the British as the primary villains in Drums Along the Mohawk, while Mel Gibson’s character Benjamin Martin in The Patriot was driven more by personal vengeance than political principle. Filmmakers have also drawn upon the dramatic siege of the Alamo. Serving as a consultant for director John Lee Hancock’s The Alamo (2004), Frank Thompson asserts that Hollywood’s most recent depiction of the battle best illuminates the complex realities of the Texas Revolution. The Mexican-American War has failed to gain the attention of feature filmmakers, but James Yates insists that the 1998 Dallas, Texas KERA-TV production The U. S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) successfully interrogates Manifest Destiny readings of American conquest. The Mexican-American War was eclipsed in the popular imagination by the Civil War. While older generations were influenced by such feature films as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone With the Wind (1939), Gary Edgerton observes that Ken Burns’s television history of the Civil War (1990) provided a theme of unity during a period of multiculturalism. Nevertheless, Robert M. Myers insists that Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain and its 2003 cinematic adaptation demonstrate the continuing influence of the South’s “lost cause” in American culture.

The global conflicts of World Wars I and II have received considerable attention from filmmakers, and Why We Fought devotes nine chapters to these struggles. Michael T. Isenberg argues the popularity of King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925) suggests that the antiwar disillusionment and isolationism of the 1920s was perhaps overstated. James Latham also maintains studios promoting films to local exhibitors during the 1920s emphasized weaponry and nationalistic themes. On the other hand, John Whiteclay Chambers II asserts that during the early 1930s, Hollywood was a vehicle for isolationist sentiments. Yet, as David Imhoof argues in his study of local film audiences in Gottingen, Germany, an antiwar film such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) did not always fare well with film goers. By the late 1930s, many Hollywood filmmakers were beginning to advocate interventionism, and Cynthia J. Miller provides a fascinating case study of film propaganda in the low budget production, Hitler, Beast of Berlin (1939).

While the wartime series Why We Fight directed by Frank Capra is well known, Ian S. Scott makes a contribution by emphasizing Capra collaborator Robert Ruskin’s Projection of America series, which provided a quiet affirmation of American everyday life. Frank J. Wetta and Martin A Novelli insist that films such as The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) provided positive models of postwar integration for veterans despite the reservations expressed by writers such as Paul Fussell. A more critical interpretation of the war is offered by J. E. Smyth who argues that the James Jones novel From Here to Eternity and its film version by director Fred Zinneman represent the protest of the working-class soldier against the military establishment. In the final piece on World War II, film historian Robert Toplin concludes that films such as The Longest Day (1962) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) demonstrate that the Normandy invasion may be used to shed light upon the contemporary concerns of filmmakers.

The third major section of Why We Fought deals with the Cold War and Vietnam conflict. Thomas W. Maulucci insists that essential to understanding the Cold War is how filmmakers, in both documentaries and features, have employed the city of Berlin as a symbol of the global power struggle between the Soviet Union and United States. In one of the few essays in the collection to focus upon gender issues, Susan A. George highlights the courageous role played by Patricia Neal as Helen Benson in Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), advocating peaceful co-existence.

The conventional academic wisdom on the Vietnam War is challenged by Peter Rollins in his essay arguing that the thirteen-episode WGBH series Vietnam: A Television History (1983) was marred by errors and misperceptions regarding the conflict. In a somewhat similar vein, Lawrence W. Lichty and Raymond L. Carroll suggest that Oliver Stone’s interpretation of Vietnam in Platoon (1986) was overly influenced by the director’s reading of domestic cultural politics during the 1970s. On the other hand, William S. Bushnell argues that the 1988 production of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American was tarnished by anti-communist propaganda, while the 2002 film adaptation by Phillip Noyce better conveys the nuances of Greene’s writing.

The final section of the volume deals with the contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan along with images of terrorism. And the general drift of these pieces is more critical of American policy than the essays on Vietnam. John Shelton Lawrence and John G. McGarrahan maintain that despite Defense Department cooperation with filmmakers, the rushed release of Black Hawk Down (2001) did little to alter a negative image of the American military still influenced by the Vietnam War. The rise of modern media in the hands of soldiers in Iraq leads Jeffrey Chown to suggest that the line between feature and documentary war footage is increasingly blurred. Stacy Takacs is also critical of how the military attempted to manipulate the “captivity narrative” of Jessica Lynch in order to foster support for the Iraq invasion. On the other hand, James Kendrick argues that feature films such as Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (2006) and Paul Greengrass’s United 93 (2006) offer traditional heroic war narratives.

These outstanding essays provide proof of the war film genre’s lasting legacy in American history and cinema. John Shelton Lawrence also augments the text with a useful filmography and bibliography. But as the pieces in this fine collection attest, the American war film might expand its focus to provide greater insight into the war experience of women, under-represented ethnic and racial groups in an increasingly diverse America, and “enemy” soldiers and civilians. Indeed, the United States often seems to be a nation made of war, and filmmakers and scholars focusing upon war appear to have ample material for further films and scholarship.
[See an additional review of this book above.]

2008-10-13T20:00:00.001-07:00

Unfriendly Witnesses: Gender, Theatre, and Film in the McCarthy Era. By Milly S. Barranger. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, June 2008. Paper: ISBN 978-0809328765, $37.50. 224 pages.
Review by Robert Weiner, Texas Tech University

The Hollywood Blacklist, which was in effect from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s, has been well documented in books like Time of the Toad, The Inquisition in Hollywood, and Fear on Trial. It has been the subject of documentaries like Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist (1998) and Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist (1987). Also the stories of the Hollywood Ten, actors, playwrights, and directors like Lee J. Cobb, James Garfield, Edward G. Robinson, Eli Kazan, Arthur Miller, and Clifford Odets and their experiences with HUAC have been well documented. What has not been well documented is how the Blacklist affected some women who had a connection to movies, television, and the theatre. With Unfriendly Witnesses, Milly S. Barranger has attempted to rectify this oversight. In this book, which is part of the Southern Illinois University Press Series Theatre in the Americas, Barranger, a professor of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina, presents case studies of seven prominent women, and places them within the larger context of the “Red Scare.” These women are Judy Holliday, Anne Revere, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Margaret Webster, Mady Christians, and Kim Hunter.The movie and television industry used publications like Red Channels, Counterattack, and Aware to gauge who was un-American or a Communist and therefore unemployable. The names of the above seven women appeared in these publications as possible Communists. Judy Holiday, who starred on Broadway and went on to star in such noteworthy films as Adam’s Rib (1949), had “nine offenses” in Red Channels. She was called before HUAC to testify, and was subsequently dropped by CBS and ABC, even though she was not a Communist and had no real party ties. She played her role before the committee as she would any acting job, and showed that a strong woman could get through it. Her career was not appreciably affected; she continued to act on television, and became one the performers to prevail over the Blacklist. However, Mady Christians (I Remember Mama, 1948) was not so lucky. There is speculation that the stress caused just by being investigated as a Communist contributed to her cerebral hemorrhage before she even had a chance to testify before the committee.Anne Revere (A Place in the Sun, 1951) was being watched as early as 1943, and her performance as an “unfriendly witness” before HUAC makes her story one of the more colorful ones. She continued to work in theatre, acting in Arthur Miller’s parable of the times, The Crucible. Interestingly, by the time it ended its investigation, the FBI almost seemed to be afraid of her. When Revere won a Tony for her performance in the play Toys in the Attic, the FBI stopped its surveillance.The most interesting chapter covers the writers Lillian Hellman (Children’s Hour) and Dorothy Parker (A Star is Born/Nothing’s Sacred). Parker was a diehard activist who worked to help the poor and disenfranchised. Hellman, on the other hand, was involved with the noted Marxist writer Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon). She even admitted that at one time she had flirted with Communism. Parker ended up an alcoholic, and never really recovered from the shock of being investigated. However, Hellman continued to fight for the causes in which she believed, wrote her memoires (An Unfinished Woman), and was an iconoclast till her death in 1984.Margaret Webster was a stage director and daughter of actress Dame May Whittey. She is noteworthy for being the first to employ an African-American actor in the title role of Othello, on Broadway (1944). She was deemed guilty by being associated with folks like Paul Robeson, Jose Ferrer, and Uta Hagan. Her innocent choices during and before the war years came back to haunt her. Kim Hunter (The Seventh Victim, 1943) was known for her film and Broadway role of Stella Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. At the hearings, she claimed that she had nothing but disdain for Communism. However, during her early career she had associated with groups like Americans for Democratic Action, and had signed petitions for the World Peace Conference. Of all those profiled by Barranger, Kim Hunter seems to be the one who came out most unscathed. Although she did not have any offers for work in 1954, in 1955 and 1956 she was back appearing on network television, and her career lasted for 43 years.It is well known that those who worked solely in theater/Broadway were not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny that hindered employment in movies and television. However, Barranger points out that there was a kind of “Graylist” which seemed to make it difficult, but not impossible, for some to get good paying jobs in New York theater and other places.The author presents these women, with the exception of Mady Christians, as “survivors.” They were up against terrible odds and lived through their trials. The author ends this study with a warning that similar situations could happen in our post 9/11 society. She cites the Patriot Act and possible government surveillance of those deemed unpatriotic as potential dangers. She equates the condemnation of the Dixie Chicks’ “anti-American” remarks by some radio stations to blacklisting, and compares the few CD burnings by conservative organizations to a modern-day book-burning.Unfriendly Witnesses documents a formerly untold story that needs to be told and read. It is well written and well documented, and it could be used in American History, Women’s Studies, Theater History, or Film History courses. This book is written in a way that allows students, academics, and the general public to find something of interest. By quoting from actual testimonies, it also provides a unique insight into these brave women. In the appendices Barranger has a timeline for women on the left, 1919-1976, which helps the historical context. Excerpts from Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television 1950 is also provided for context. Barranger’s bibliography is extensive. This book is recommended for both public and academic libraries.

2008-08-18T18:45:00.001-07:00

from University Press of Kentucky

Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars

by Thomas R. Lindlof

under review by Lauwrence Raw, Baskent University, Istanbul

2008-08-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

from University Press of Kentucky

Why We Fought: America's Wars in Film and History

by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor

under review by David Buck, Thiel College, Pennsylvania

2008-08-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

from Texas A&M University Press

True West: An Illustrated Guide to the Heyday of the Western

by Michael Barson

under review by Lauwrence Raw, Baskent University, Istanbul

2008-08-18T18:37:00.001-07:00

from Praeger Publishers

Controversial Cinema: The Films That Outraged America

by Kendall R. Phillips

under review by Robert Weiner, University of North Texas