Film Moments: Reading Cinema in Pieces

This entry is based upon a series of notes that were written for an event that marked the publication of a recent book, Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory. (A significant portion of the book has been made available as a free ‘sample’). The notes were co-written by Dr. James Walters (University of Birmingham).

One of the motivations for putting the book together was in order to join the concerns of academic film studies with the way cinemagoers talk about films. We were struck by how often, when people talk about films they’ve seen they say, ‘There’s this moment…’ Moments are touchstones for everyday conversations about film and they are often testing grounds for scholarly writing on the medium and on individual films as well. Within the academy, analysing moments closely is often characterised as the preserve of particular strands of film scholarship; in fact, a broader concentration on the ‘moment’ can question the territorialism of much contemporary film study while also contributing to long-standing arguments for the value of close ‘textual’ analysis. In what follows, we shall say more of the film moment as crucial to the way film is appreciated in contemporary film culture and indeed the way cinema itself was formed.

Early cinema as a cinema of moments.

In its earliest form, cinema was a collection moments. Technical restrictions meant that only short scenes, less than a minute in length, could be filmed and projected to audiences. These short moments sometimes had an unexpected effect on the audience

The Lumière brothers’ The arrival of the train at La Ciotat is one of the earliest surviving films, lasting only about 45 seconds and was first shown at the famous screening in the Grande Café, Paris, in December 1895. It is synonymous with one of cinema’s founding myths: audience members ran from the screen in fright at the sight of a training heading towards them. These accounts are highly contestable and the truth of audience reactions will never be fully known. However, the circulation of the myth is an acknowledgement of the immediacy of the film moment and the impact a moment can have on film audiences:  demonstrated most dramatically in an apparent fear of the approaching train. The myth also points to the interpretability and the ambiguity of the film moment: that it is not the same for everyone. Here, it may or may not result in fear – not even the most outlandish accounts suggested all the film’s viewers fled and, indeed, within a few years, it became a joke about a certain kind of naïve viewer, hicks or a ‘rubes’. (See Thomas Elsaesser’s essay is Film Moments for a far more in-depth discussion of the myth.) In any case, our reactions to moments can sometimes puzzle or surprise us. But they linger, stay with us, and demand further thought.

The new culture of ‘moments’

Technological limitations made the first films moments. Ironically, the availability of new technologies has made film culture again more ‘momentary’. As with the clips embedded into blogs such as this one, YouTube and similar video-sharing websites are enabling the preservation and open dissemination of film history, in a very particular way at least.  A few words typed into a search engine may make films and parts of films available that might otherwise be invisible. For example, in my entry for Film Moments, I wrote about a film that might be said to not exist: a Maurice Chevalier vehicle entitled Avec le Sourire/With a Smile (Tourneur, 1936)

It does not exist in the sense that it is the kind of film that hardly anyone ever writes or talks about (the kind of cinéma du samedi soir – ‘Saturday night cinema’ – ignored by most scholars of French film; it is a French musical, something often tacitly considered a contradiction in terms) but also in the simple fact that, like many, many films from cinema’s long history, it is very difficult to see. Unavailable on DVD, before video-sharing websites, you would have to have visited the French National Library or hunted down an obscure VHS copy in order to view it. Thus, perhaps more than a ‘moment’, this online clip is a ‘fragment’ of film history but a fragment that is now available to anyone likely to go looking for it.

The ‘playlist’ function of YouTube and similar sites enables one to receive a relatively structured presentation of film history (see this for example), though experts in film may be concerned at the partiality and unreflective nature of the choices. These playlists are, however, less in keeping with the user experience sites like YouTube seem to encourage ( ‘roving’?). A film moment on YouTube is instantly juxtaposed with as many others as your screen can hold, unmooring moments from their context, fragmenting the films from which they are extracted. (I’m aware that the presentation and consumption of ‘home videos’ is the major aspect of YouTube these points ignore.) Some types of film appear more suited to this process of disassembly than others. For example, horror film moments are particularly prominent amongst compilation clips on YouTube, reminding us that particular genres (action cinema, the musical?) are defined by the particular qualities of their moments as much as by their overarching structures.

On YouTube and elsewhere new and exciting possibilities for exchange between ‘users’ of film have created a new culture of the ‘moment’ online. For example, each week, The Guardian Clip Joint sees the newspaper’s readers/the websites users compile scenes, sequences and moments around a particular theme and/or motif. Rather than an appreciation of the particular qualities of the individual moments themselves, this context tends to treat film moments ‘instrumentally’. For example, if one were to type ‘film moments’ into YouTube, one finds compilations of ‘inspirational moments’ from a variety of films. User comments attest that such moments might be called upon to serve a particular emotional/affective function. For example, in response to ‘Powerful Film Moments’, ‘joecrookes’ comments, ‘I love coming on here and watching this when life gets me down. It makes you want to go out there and get what you want out of life’. The instrumentality of this kind of film moment may be rather alien to traditional cinephilia (it perhaps bears a closer relation to the way people often ‘use’ music) but it can reveal things about films themselves. For example, the ‘Remember The Titans Inspirational Moments’ clips, a compilation of sequences from a film from 2000 about American football and racial segregation in the late 60s/early 70s, illustrates the way some films seem ready made for this process because they appear built almost consciously as an accumulation of moments. We might suggest that Remember the Titans represents a particular brand of ‘middlebrow’ filmmaking; an aesthetic built upon rousing moments of strongly underscored action and/or oration. (Lawrence Napper defines the middlebrow as a mode which seeks to transfer intact the meanings of traditional forms of representation – he cites realism, pictorialism and theatricality; we might add, more specifically, ‘oratory’ – across the process of adaptation into film.)

A climactic moment: Toy Story 3

Film Moments: Criticism, History, Theory does not deny the ‘instrumental’ value of moments. Indeed, the sub-title underlines a concern to reflect upon the various ways moments may be used by film scholars. However, in line with the trend that perhaps dominates that collection, let us shift now, away from talking about some films as arguably the sum of their rousing/affecting/exciting/spectacular moments, towards discussing a key claim we make for moments: that they encapsulate a film’s wider concerns, themes and systems.

This moment from Toy Story 3 (Unkrich 2010) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435761/] has gained notoriety for its emotional impact on followers of the Toy Story series. Recently, in a feature that further underlines the importance of the moment to the way people make sense of contemporary film culture, it was voted the second ‘most powerful cinematic moment’ of all time; the impact of the web on the way such things develop is suggested by this Facebook group entitled ‘The Incinerator Scene in Toy Story 3 Almost (or did) Make Me Cry’.

As a contained moment, it has a number of poignant motifs we will just begin to sketch: the contrasts in scale between the small band of toys and the gigantic furnace; the futile struggle against an inevitable demise; the looks of fear and trepidation, expertly animated by the Pixar team; the quiet resignation of each character as they accept their fate; the linking of hands and the closing of eyes that signals the shared anticipation of a grim death; the finality of events: the overriding sense that this is a real end we are watching.

The moment also represents a culmination of key themes such as friendship, solidarity, loyalty and bravery that have fundamentally characterised the Toy Story series. As the characters join together in the moment they also join the three films together, emphasising the bonds between friends that have been tested and have endured, to the end. The moment encapsulates fears of redundancy and neglect that have been played out in all the films and especially in this third instalment. The characters’ end is a dramatic realisation of those fears as they face being melted down like trash, lost and forgotten forever. The moment has an inherent poignancy but also a wider resonance as it draws together themes that extend across the Toy Story series and intensifies them. The characters are not faced with being replaced, lost, sold or neglected, as they have been before. They are facing obliteration. The motto ‘no toy gets left behind’ has seen them through crises in the past such as moving days or yard sales, but here it gains a new significance: no toy gets left behind, even in death.

Getting Distracted From The King’s Speech

I recently went to see The King’s Speech at the cinema. I did so for a number of reasons: Colin Firth is always a pleasure, obviously; the 1930s seem to be receiving more dramatic attention at the moment, what with the BBC’s Upstairs, Downstairs getting broadcast over Christmas; the film’s been gaining a lot of awards-related attention, especially for Firth’s performance (and having briefly stammered as a child myself, I was interested to see how he would rise to the particular challenges of this role); and what with it focusing on Britain at a time of some great upheaval for the nation and released at a time of some significant unrest, I thought it could well offer some interesting ideas about Britishness.

So these were the issues I was pondering as I was settling down with my assorted snacks, and the narrative was beginning to unfold. And then – I don’t remember exactly at what point – I register that Jennifer Ehle has been cast in the film, in a minor role (Myrtle Logue, the wife of the speech therapist treating the king’s stammer). That is Jennifer Ehle as in Lizzie Bennett from the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. In which she stars opposite Colin Firth. In what is quite possibly the most fondly remembered of all the fondly remembered costume dramas ever to have graced the telly.

I was very pleased with this turn of events; there should be much more of Jennifer Ehle on the screen. And I wasn’t terribly surprised either; certain intertextual links due to casting are only likely to be expected within a relatively small industry – indeed, the wonderful David Bamber, who played Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice (in what is one of the most enjoyable performances I have ever seen) also appears in The King’s Speech.

Then, the film reaches the moment when King George VI visits his speech therapist at home, and comedy ensues from the unexpected presence of a monarch in the Logues’ living room. And I find myself gripped, unable to think anything other than: Are Ehle and Firth about to actually share some screen time?  There is a moment of slight tension in the film, about whether or not the king will step through a door and encounter Myrtle Logue, and I can’t not read this through the lens of my long-standing relationship with Pride and Prejudice. Is the film here addressing the coming together of Firth/Darcy and Ehle/Lizzie? But then the moment when the two do meet face to face is presented as though of no special significance. What to make of it all?

So, puzzling over this, I then decided to ask someone who worked on the film – as you do. I got in touch with Will Emsworth, one of our ex-students and now Development Producer at Bedlam Productions, the company that made The King’s Speech. Will, who had done research for the film, finding transcripts and recordings, tells me it was unlikely that there had been an explicit intention to draw on the intertextual link between the two actors in question. Will thinks that more attention had been paid to the particular casting of Derek Jacobi, famous stutterer in I, Claudius, who in The King’s Speech plays a character who prides himself on being eloquent and vocal. That is a very good point that I can’t believe I didn’t think of myself when watching the film. Never mind.

I’m still mulling over the experience of watching the film, of getting both drawn into the film and somehow removed from it at the same time. I still think there is something there, in this moment as Firth and Ehle are about to meet, but how much of this is located within the film and/or my reading of it, well, that is one of those questions forever coming into matters of textual meaning and interpretation that I’m glad I don’t need to resolve.

I will certainly re-watch the film to see whether this intertextual distraction is going to arise again, or whether, now that I know how the scene plays out, it will be a different viewing experience for me. Will also tells me that Colin Firth and Derek Jacobi  both drew inspiration from the same man, a charismatic stutterer who worked as a grip on separate projects that they had previously worked on. That’s most certainly the kind of fascinating nugget of information that makes me extra glad to have been distracted from The King’s Speech.

What are the chances of that happening?

While watching Eric Rohmer’s Le Rayon vert (1986) with my daughter, I explained to her that the performances were largely improvised and that the film incorporated chance occurrences from the shoot.  ”So”, she asked me, ” how come the ladies’ clothes keep slipping off their shoulders?”

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ECREA 2010 (Hamburg, Germany): A Conference Report

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 3rd ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association) conference, a huge event bringing over 1,000 participants to the beautiful Hanseatic city of Hamburg.  From 12-15 November, scholars from a range of disciplinary and national homes discussed their research under the overarching focus of ‘transcultural communication – intercultural comparisons.’

I then had the added pleasure of writing a report on this conference for Critical Studies in Television. You can read the report here, in which I reflect on the conceptual idea of ‘the universal,’ which I saw emerging from a range of papers and discussions – interestingly enough, especially from those papers and discussions exploring issues of (trans)national specificity and the significance of particular national, socio-cultural and/or institutional contexts.

You will notice that the report makes no mention of the many delicious pastries I ate while in Hamburg, but that is a pleasure that defies written discourse. If you’ve eaten a freshly baked Teilchen before, you’ll understand.

Posh Girls and Essex Boys: Seven Days and The Only Way Is Essex

Two UK documentary series come to a close this week, with Channel 4′s bombastically hyped Seven Days shuffling quietly off – presumably to the scrap heap – in its Tues 11pm slot whilst ITV2′s ‘true-life soap’ The Only Way is Essex is repeated all over its prime time schedule, chronicled on twitter and chattered about by Radio 1 DJs  and my students alike.  Both series chronicle ‘real life’ in different regions of South East England (following the UK docusoap tradition), both are arguably (whilst the former may deny it) influenced by MTV’s scripted-reality series The Hills and its glamorous transmedia presence.  Both are filmed very close to transmission. Both aim to construct interactive relationships with their audience and their participants are reflexive about their status as documentary subjects (but rarely interact with the camera, if at all).  But one is lighting up Heat magazine whilst the other is a flop at a time when Channel 4 is grasping for a reality hit in the reality of a post-Big Brother world.

There are multiple ways to come at the two shows, and I’m only touching on a few here.  Both can be seen as key players in their respective channel’s brand. Seven Days – handsomely filmed, with its ‘innovative’ interactive Chatnav feature allowing viewers to interact with and ‘influence’ its cast and its representations of a diverse (to a degree) ‘slice of life’ of London Borough of Notting Hill  - is tailor made for Channel 4′s status as purveyor of quality, innovative and edgy product.  Whilst the young, shiny, fake tanned (nailed, haired, boobed), slightly dumb partiers and wannabe footballers wives of The Only Way is Essex seem to be precision engineered for ITV2 and its Katie Price and Fearne Cotton-inspired aspirational, yet attainable (and at times plastic) glamour.

Essex follows the ITV2 observational soap format seen in its celeb-docs Katie and Peter, What Katie Did Next and Peter Andre: The Next Chapter. After losing Price and her valuable brand to Living TV the programme’s success is obviously leading to sighs of relief from execs.  Yet it also draws on the MTV scripted-reality approach; branded as ‘Essex’s answer to The Hills‘ the programme features a non-famous cast (though kickboxing club promoter Mark Wright is best-friend of tabloid staple and Jade Goody widower Jack Tweed) whose real lives are chronicled by cameras, yet whose scenes may be ‘created for entertainment purposes’.

This British TV disclaimer (following famous cases of ‘faked’ footage in late ’90s docs) that is familiar to viewers from airings of constructed-reality US imports The Simple Life and The Hills is foregrounded and celebrated at the start of Essex: “whilst the tans you see might be fake the people are all real although some of what they do has been set up purely for your entertainment”. The show almost revels in the stilted performances of the cast as they go about their daily lives and discuss in detail their romantic entanglements.  Their limited ‘acting’ ability serves the edge of cheeky camp that informs the show’s glitz and glamour – off-set (or maybe compounded) by the instant-cult of Mark’s ‘salt-of-the-earth’ Nanny Pat and her sausage plait. Essex embraces inauthenticity and tackiness like its namesake county. It’s The Hills yet with the cast of Jersey Shore, as wannabe glamour girl/WAG Amy is much closer to Snooki than Lauren Conrad!  The programme’s observational style, combined with its use of expositional conversation and constructed scenes to replace talking-head interviews or any address to camera, follows The Hills model.  Yet compared to that show’s strenuous efforts to excise any acknowledgement of its stars’ lives as It girls and tabloid darlings, Essex‘s cast acknowledge they are being watched and refer to their status as docusoap subjects (and whether it’ll land them a footballer or a record deal – both Essex and Seven Days feature music groups looking for a break).  This edge of transparency plays off the programme’s campness in a way that feeds into ITV2′s brand of down to earth glamour.

A friend noted that the programme was a touch dull watched alone and it was better watched with friends.  ITV2 seeks to build discussion-based group viewing into the programme, reflecting the virtual watercooler of twitter used for live watch-alongs (Masterchef is much funnier with a Grace Dent and Sue Perkins commentary).  Pop-ups during episodes constantly guide audiences to the website for chats and extra content.  It even uses pop-up QR codes for viewers to scan with their smart phones (which I’ve only seen used in magazines before) to unlock extra content on the website, which also hosts the conventional virtual spaces of livechats, facebook and twitter.

Seven Days similarly sought to draw together the interactive virtual space and the televisual one. Shot in observational style, yet dominated by the careful composition and lighting common to The Hills it was positioned as Channel 4′s successor to Big Brother, commissioned as a short run, potentially to be extended all year round. Heavily hyped, it claimed to represent the class and racial diversity of London’s Notting Hill, with a cast ranging from leggy posh It-girls taking on modeling jobs to a hard-working and socially conscious Muslim student, the first of his working-class family to go to university.  The programme’s ‘hook’ was its interactive element, drawing on an audience accustomed to exerting their influence (or the illusion of influence) in evicting Big Brother housemates, it was structured to draw on social media to bring together audience and subjects.

The Chatnav feature on Channel4′s website, along with twitter, allowed the audience to interact with the cast (and to see who was the most talked about by size of their picture). Each episode encouraged feedback and was shot the week before transmission to allow for audiences to see the effects of their interaction.  Its opening and closing asked the audience ‘They want to know what you think about their lives.  Go online now and tell them’.  The cast discussed being participants on camera (though like Essex, never to camera), talking about the audience response, questions they had asked or suggestions audiences had made.  It was a reality tv show, with people talking about being on a reality tv show and talking about people talking about them being on a reality tv show.  It was proved a reality vortex and the programme promptly got sucked into the observational documentary paradox and became less about its subjects real lives and the ‘diversity’ of life in Notting Hill than its casts’ experience of being on a reality show.  Cast members connected with each other through twitter and their interactions turned the mirrors of reality ever inwards instead of out into the wider society the programme claimed to reflect.

As the series progressed it also became less about the diversity of Notting Hill, as despite complaints over the poshness of the neighbourhood chosen and Channel 4′s protestations of diversity, middle and lower upper-class characters, like womanizer Ben, his long suffering mother and property developer Malcolm moved to centre stage alongside It-girls Samantha and Laura. Conscientious and politicised student Moktar was sidelined (though I like to think he realised his first year university studies were more important!) whilst the sole working class characters remaining were Javan and his friends, who were offered work by Malcolm at the suggestion of viewers.   The presence of these lads made me realise how few representations of non-criminal, afro-caribbean young men talking to each other we have on British screens, outside of the news and token solo casting in teen dramas. However Moktar seems to have been replaced by obnoxious posh-boy Boris, his family and their palatial house, reducing diversity even further.

The appearance of Boris, together with new mum and ‘smug married’ Cassie’s tales of the abuse she received on twitter in response to a question she asked the audience, made me consider what the pleasures of Seven Days were for its ultimately small audience. Rather than a wide-ranging representation of the classes and races living cheek by jowl in the neighbourhood, what it ultimately became about was the British public’s pleasure in the laughing at of the troubles and idiocy of posh people. Class schadenfreude – it’s the British sport.

The failure of Seven Days in the face of the success of The Only Way is Essex has made me think about what we Brits really want from our docusoaps.  We don’t really want to interact with them, we want to sit on twitter and in our living rooms, laughing and judging.  The Only Way is Essex lets us sit back and constructs its drama, whilst offering a nudge and a wink at its own reality, as fake as its nails.

This post was inspired by Grace Dent’s TV OD. She is much funnier.

Flow 2010

I was lucky enough to get to fly to Austin, Texas for the 2010 Flow conference and after praising it to my colleagues on my return I thought I would share my experience.

Focusing on television and new media and hosted by the graduate students and faculty of the Radio-Film-Television department of the University of Texas at Austin the event is aligned with the online critical forum based there, Flow TV.  This was unlike any conference i’d been to before, as it is based on conversation and debate. Rather than the conventional panel of 20 minute papers, short responses are invited to a roundtable’s position question. At the roundtable, respondents present their position then the floor is opened for questions and discussions.

This resulted in much stimulating and lively discussion, by panellists and the audience, from grad students to established scholars. In both the panel I participated in (‘“Featuring Music From”: Song, Sound, and Remix’) and those I attended, I found myself thinking more deeply about issues I had only loosely considered, or forcing myself to look more closely at my own responses to programmes and issues. There was also a throughline of pedagogy, with participants often framing discussions by talking about their teaching (ah, the eternal question of how do you teach serialised drama), which I found invaluable and enlightening.

I attended roundtables on topics from representation to serial narratives (these had two sessions each and their issues permeated many other panels), from historical issues of reality tv to new media and post feminism. With topics stretching from deconstructing discourses of ‘quality tv’ (ever the scare quotes), to the hidden class issues of female lifestyle blogging to the representational politics of discourses surrounding Jersey Shore and back again.

It was a treat to get to indulge my television and new media nerdery amongst fellow academics, meet some lovely people and hear of the perceptive work being developed by what was a relatively young crowd. It made me excited for the future of the discipline in a moment of such flux. And all those hours spent following the US television industry closely in recent years bore fruit for me – though I wonder how easy to follow some of the conference discussions would be to someone who hadn’t.

I often felt jealous of clashing panels (as ever at conferences) when I heard about debates afterwards. However, this was the first conference I had attended that had a twitter backchannel. I’d previously been a bit concerned over this being a funnel for the usual conference snark, but found the audience members interacting with twitter on a raft of ipads, laptops and smartphones gave discussion in the room and on the interwebs an added dimension. And it gives all of us a ready-made archive to surf through to catch up on what was missed and for those not attending to follow along.  Though it can perhaps construct a digital divide. And it must be disconcerting for those of us who are easily paranoid to look up from a panel to see people with their heads in twitter rather than directed at you! Conference tweeting is for the multitaskers amongst us, I think and i’m not sure i’ll ever get there – taking legible notes is hard enough!

I’m already planning for Flow 2012 and will be doing my best to corral a British invasion!

Anatomy of a Scene: The Cry of the Owl

The Cry of the Owl (2009) is an excellent and unjustly neglected film. The first issue of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism includes a close analysis which aims to make this case and to open a critical debate around the film. This is a companion post, initiating an occasional strand within Screens and stages entitled Anatomy of a Scene, in which moments from films, programmes or performances receive detailed attention.

In Patricia Highsmith’s novel (1962), from which the film is adapted, Nickie, the ex-wife of the central character Robert Forester, is unremittingly awful. Writer / director Jamie Thraves described the character as written as being ‘really over the top, really screechy’, in a Q&A at the Raindance Film Festival. At the same time, she is too central to the story to be simply excised in an adaptation. A small scene in the later stages of the film, which does not have a direct equivalent in the book, indicates some of the film’s solutions to this problem.

Jenny (Julia Stiles), has travelled from her small town to the city to visit Nickie (Caroline Dhavernas); Jenny is involved with Robert (Paddy Considine), who is under suspicion in the disappearance of Jenny’s former boyfriend. After introducing themselves warily, and with amused hostility in Nickie’s case, the conversation turns rapidly to Robert.

Nickie maintains that she doesn’t hate Robert, but that she has come to realise that ‘some people are poison for you in this life. It’s not always clear who they are, but, when you find out who it is, you have to cut them out.’ On the pause before the words ‘when you find out who it is’, the film cuts from a shot of Nickie speaking to one of Jenny listening. The camera tracks right and slowly in to Jenny’s head and shoulders as she listens intently, mouth defensive, brow slightly creased, eyes fixed beyond the camera in the direction of Nickie, the shot concluding with a moment’s stillness in the silence after Nickie has finished speaking.

Both Julia Stiles’ performance and the camera movement — Alex Clayton has pointed out that this kind of edging in to a character, coupled with a mediative offscreen gaze, is a familiar convention for indicating a character in serious reflection — suggest that these words find fertile ground in Jenny’s heart, receptive as we know her to be to notions of fate and predetermination, and understandably unnerved by recent events. [1]

However, rather than finish here — withdrawing from the scene with the emphasis on the impact of these ideas on Jenny — the film cuts back to Nickie. She reaches deliberately for her drink, dropping her gaze as she does so, before looking briefly back toward Jenny. She then looks away, an upward glance playing quickly across her features, perhaps a smirk concealed behind her glass, before looking swiftly but sharply in the direction of Jenny once again, as she presses her lips together in a half smile. She puts the glass back on the table, looks away, and the sequence ends.

This extra shot, beyond the obvious requirements of the scene, balances our sense of the impact of Nickie’s words on Jenny with another opportunity to observe Nickie herself. These glances and expressions — almost playful, certainly wry — contrast with her deadpan reflection on the hard-won life lesson of a moment before. Her expressions are much more like the openly mischievous glances of earlier in the scene, though now they involve an attempt to veil her amusement. But they also — the last look in particular — suggest that Nickie is interested to see what effect her words are having, and is not experienced or confident enough to be sure without stealing a glance.

This makes it possible to apprehend Nickie’s lack of sincerity in relation to the sentiments she has voiced, presenting her nuisance-making in ways which suggest naivety and childishness, and indicating that she is not entirely comfortable in the role she has cast herself. (Her discomfort is also registered in the way she pulls the cardigan around her vest top on sitting down.) Just as importantly, the extra shot invites us to reflect sceptically on Jenny’s susceptibility to portentous rhetoric; rather than take Jenny’s emotional response as a conclusion, a more complex view is provided as Jenny’s feelings are counterpointed by a perspective which ask us to question whether she should be so credible. The film is clear-eyed here, inviting us to consider the exchange with a sharper perception than seems available to either Jenny or Nickie themselves.

There are also some observations to be made about how the wider scene presents Nickie in terms of setting. The flat aspires to modern urban chic, full of clean lines and bold decorative glassware, indicating a very different environment to the one in which Jenny choses to live. We might also notice the paintings on the wall, as Jenny does, dominated by the repeated motif, in different colours, of a rainbow as if drawn by a child, and the stack of further variations on this theme leaning against the wall behind Jenny as she comes in. This helps to provide a further context for Nickie, though one that has to be gleaned from these details: aspiring painter, whose optimistic imagery hasn’t been matched by success. Together with the humour and vivacity that Dhavernas brings to the part, these are ways in which the film develops Nickie beyond her characterisation in the novel, and beyond the immediate associations we have of the city woman, or femme fatale. Such perspectives allow Nickie to join a range of characters in the film who struggle to live up to fantasies and meretricious images, of others and of themselves, and who suffer in the attempt.

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[1] I was struck by hearing this point in Clayton’s witty and incisive paper on performance in Team America delivered at Acting Out, the symposium on screen performance held at Reading in March 2009, a version of which appears as his chapter in the eagerly anticipated Brown and Walters (eds) Film Moments (BFI, 2010).

Eastenders, Underscore and Julia’s Theme

As a long time Eastenders viewer I’m slightly obsessed by the rare (but on the increase) appearances of ‘Julia’s Theme’, what I like to call the ‘piano lead-in’.  This soft, modulated version of the Eastenders theme, appearing as underscore whilst an episode concludes in a significantly sad moment or that rare happy ending, replacing its iconic doof-doofs.  Its use signals a narrative closure rather than the ongoing cliff-hanger of the doof-doofs; The conclusion of Frank’s funeral, Dot accepting Jim’s marriage proposal on the Millenium Eye (the first time I noticed it), Stacey talking to her newborn baby.

The doof-doofs are arguably the most iconic element of Eastenders – a dramatic drum motif that plays over the held reaction shot that concludes each episode, the pause after a dramatic revelation -“You ain’t my mother” “Yes I am” (from 0:57 below). When I tasked students to create a scene from the soap for a critical practice exercise, all chose a scene that lead into this sonic moment (although all learnt that the soap’s actors need a degree of skill to realistically hold such a lengthy reaction shot!). Leading into the end credits and the ringing pub-piano-style theme, the drum motif supports each episode’s cliffhanger in the programme’s only moment of non-diegetic sound.

This motif recalls the ‘dun-dun-daaa’; that dramatic reaction musical motif stretching way back to stage melodrama that we all use now to parodically react to a dramatic cliff-hanger (I used it regularly whilst watching early Heroes episodes with friends).  Used together with the staged wait of soap’s cliff-hanger reaction shot, whose tight televisual close-up that acts as a form of punctuation, it forms a bumper between narrative and credits.  The doofs (like a faltering heartbeat) signal this moment as dramatically significant, the pause leaving a residue of emotional intensity[1] that remains over the credits and draws the audience back for the next episode. It is the pause before a moment of dramatic action, the consequences of which we tune in to see.

But the doof-doofs are tied into the dramatic reveal, the impact of a reaction or the dramatic action of which the audience are the only witness (the latter figuring the doof-doofs as the audience’s own reaction).  These are built for soap’s melodrama, its moments of shock, the never-ending dramatic momentum of the continual serial.  So what happens with moments of contemplative sorrow or the elusive soap opera happy ending?  Those moments of pleasure, of quiet delicate emotion, that bring tears (happy or sad) and narrative closure.

These don’t lend themselves to the dramatic pause and sonic break-in of the doof-doof and often are composed of lengthy shots rather than the usual quick reaction cuts.  This is where the piano lead-in comes in – played softly underneath action and dialogue, rather than over the wordless reaction shot like the doof-doofs.  Unlike the US soap’s composed score and the increasing use of non-diegetic popular music in Hollyoaks (drawing from US teen TV), Eastenders offers only diegetic music, sourced from pub or café stereos. Occasionally this bridges the diegetic gap, when a recent sourced rendition of “My Way” cheekily underscored Peggy’s speech about reclaiming her pub (Eastenders’ version of Scarlett O’Hara’s “As god as my witness”), but the soap does not use composed underscore.

As a result, the piano lead-in is marked as significant – both as rare underscore, and as replacement for the iconic doof-doofs.  Compared to the doof-doofs’ drums of abrupt dramatic rupture, the piano lead-in’s soft modulation of the end credit’s theme smoothes the movement between narrative and credits, its melodic modulation resolving as it flows into the recognisable credits theme.  Therefore we don’t have a dramatic pause, rather a slower reflective build, as the melody begins quietly underneath action, rising in volume (like the audiences swelling heart or rising tears) until it finally resolves into the credit theme.

Experienced viewers will immediately recognise its rare appearance as marking an emotive and positive moment (often referred to in fan circles as a character ‘getting’ the Julia Theme). The unaccustomed appearance of an underscore’s soft melody takes away the threat of the doof-doofs’ dramatic pause, allowing them to relax into the pleasures of the cathartic emotional moment. And maybe a little tear as Stacey – after enduring a emotionally wrecked year – is finally alone with her new baby.  Scared of what lies ahead, bonding with her child and embracing motherhood (soap’s ultimate female identity) as she and we are gifted a rare moment of peace.  Compared to the short rupture of the drum motif, the piano melody pauses on and elongates this final moment, its length and scarcity signalling it as special within the ever-onwards march of the soap opera narrative.

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[1] Feuer, Jane 1994 ‘Melodrama, Serial Form, and Television Today’ in Television: The Critical View 5^th ed. Horace Newcombe (ed), New York: Oxford University Press, 551-562 : 557

‘Salt’, Jolie, and a dubious trailer edit

Salt, which will open across the UK on 18 August, stars Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who may or may not be a Russian spy out to kill the US President. The film, which debuted in the US on 23 July, has already garnered attention because Jolie’s character was originally written as male.

Despite her previous action roles (the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films, Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted), this casting ‘gender switch’ divided opinions about whether Jolie convinces in the film’s scenes of physical action. While several reviewers felt she did (see Chang, Honeycutt, Ebert, Turan), Todd McCarthy argues that the film ‘glosses over how a lone woman, no matter how lethal a weapon, can repeatedly take out a dozen or more armed men.’ Given that such a question could be asked of any action film featuring a male action hero, this illustrates perfectly the gender double standard that still seems to persist in this area.

Kenneth Turan suggests that this double standard is partly what animates our interest in the action sequences: ‘It is the contrast between what cultural conditioning in general and Hollywood movies in particular tell us about women’s roles and what Jolie can in fact accomplish that holds our interest’. For Turan, it is specifically Jolie’s body that ‘makes all the difference in a part that would be completely standard if a man played it.’ But in what way? As far back as the Tomb Raider films Jolie has displayed what I would call an expansive physicality that runs counter to normative conceptions of feminine comportment and behaviour. If dominant social norms encourage women to ‘take up as little space as possible’ (see Hartley in Braziel and LeBesco 2001: 61), Jolie chooses instead to adopt expansive poses and gestures, positioning and asserting her body in ways that declare her mastery over her body and the spaces of action. Looking at the action sequences in her previous films, it seems to me that Jolie has found a way to embody what Richard Dyer calls the ‘deeper, underlying pattern of feeling [in action sequences], to do with freedom of movement, confidence in the body, engagement with the material world, that is coded as male (and straight and white, too) but to which all humans need access’ (1994 in Arroyo 2000: 18).

The elephant in the room is Jolie’s equally emphatic function as erotic object. In all her films Jolie is depicted within the terms of heteronormative sexualized display, her feminine attributes (hair, costume, body) persistently eroticised. I haven’t seen Salt yet, but the trailer makes this function abundantly clear in a particularly dubious audio-visual juxtaposition one minute forty-five seconds in. A police car spirals off a bridge, crashing into parked taxis below.

Salt (Jolie) mid car crash

A medium close-up inside the vehicle shows Salt’s body thrown back by the force of impact: her head falls back, her mouth open as car bodywork crunches on the soundtrack (trailer still 1 above). A surveillance shot of Salt’s bare midriff, accompanied by a man’s lustful exhale, is but a split second transition to a close-up of Salt in the throes of passion, letting out a gasp as she throws her head back, her mouth open (trailer still 2 below). The edit suggests Salt’s body responds in the same way to the impact of action as she does to the ‘impact’ of sex.

... and in a somewhat different context

Action and sex: this moment from the trailer neatly encapsulates Jolie’s – and the film’s – dual marketability for prospective viewers. At the same time, it displays a depressingly familiar form of reassurance persistently evident in recent female-fronted action films – erotic spectacle as ‘compensation’ to the heterosexual male spectator for having to bear witness to the female action hero’s potent physicality. In a world where feminist cultural commentators are regularly accused of sense of humour failure and Sucker Punch is just around the corner, the Salt trailer seems further evidence that we feminist action fans are doomed to forever enjoy female onscreen physical agency with a side order of caveats.

State of Play: the UK Film Council

Today, the Coalition government announced that the UK Film Council, as well as the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is to be axed, as part of a series of cuts introduced in order to deal with the recession. If you are not familiar with it, or would appreciate a reminder, the UK Film Council, in its own words, ‘is the Government backed lead agency for film in the UK ensuring that the economic, cultural and educational aspects of film are effectively represented at home and abroad.’ Set up in 2000, the Council aims to develop and promote the British film industry via a number of processes, including – importantly – the direct funding of feature films and short films. But all that is set to change now. (I should add that culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that funding for film-making will continue to be provided, but no proper plans as to how to distribute available money seem to be in place as yet.)

What galls me about this is not just the fact that, as the Council’s chief executive John Woodward has confirmed, the decision was made without any consultation with the Council. Not just that the decision has been taken without any proper planning in place, by the looks of it. Not just that it shows a deeply regretful short-term thinking that fails to value the importance of our cultural heritage. (I won’t even begin to talk about the various areas of spending that won’t, but should, be cut, otherwise this is going to turn into a political rant.)

What really galls me is the lack of recognition for the economic value of the film industry that such a decision implies. As the UK Film Council’s website points out, the ‘core UK film industry now contributes approximately £4.3 billion per year to the UK economy – up by 50% since 2000, when the UK Film Council was created.’ For the same reason, the term ‘Mickey Mouse degree’ (grrrr!) – readily applied to any degree that studies the culture/entertainment media – vexes me so greatly. The film and television industries make a significant contribution to the economic development of the country, one that is worth recognizing, and the study of which deserves to be taken seriously.

The British film industry needs, and deserves, proper planning, organization and funding. I hope that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will think very carefully about how to proceed once the Council is no more. In a previous blog post, I discussed the issue of unpaid work experience, which the creative industries have come to rely on, and the decision today is not allaying my fears for the future development of said industries.

As a lover of film and teacher of many promising film-makers, when I look at the films that the Council has supported, which in recent years have included Noel Clarke’s Adulthood (BAFTA Rising Star), Andrew Williams’s London to Brighton and Shane Meadows’s This is England (BAFTA Best British Film), I am particularly concerned how the decision is going to affect the nurturing of emerging talent.

I am signing the online petition Save the UK Film Council. And I am deeply concerned about the future of public service broadcasting and the BBC.