Chris's Disney Female Representation Project Video

Final Paper for Eng313: Almodovar and his Brain-Dead Trilogy

Romantic Comedy film has come a long way. While recently the genre itself might have taken a complete downturn in artistic integrity in America, Romantic Comedy/Melodrama has taken roots in other places and has through the films of the 1960s and 70s, the era of radical independent film making that questions and subverted the social, political and artistic conventions held at the time by society via Hollywood and/or those in authority (read censor), internationally, the genre has survived and continuing the legacy of the film makers of that great decade of sex, love and rock n'roll. An example of such a film maker is Pedro Almodovar, perhaps Spain's best director to achieve international acclaim and recognition since Luis Buneul. Almodovar has a notorious reputation as a writer/director who makes films and tells stories that subverts and shows alternative lifestyles of drug users, hippies, criminals, prostitutes, homosexuals, and transvestites all while questioning Spain's culture during one of repression and, till modern times, one of sexual liberation and political emancipation. Consequently, much of Almodovar's films deals with the subjectivity of women in society, their roles in a patriarchal dominant culture, while also questioning the logic of feminism, its theories and practice, of modern women in Spain, though the implications can be felt by any international viewer of his films.

While Almodovar's films can be analyzed using a myriad of interpretations and theories, such as Communist/Marxist, Feminism, Psychology, Deconstructionism, Existentialism, or Queer Theory to name a few, it really is near impossible to narrow it down to just one. However, a close reading of the text in the films seems to revolve around Almodovar's auterism and use of a fairy tale structure. Like other auteur filmmakers before him (Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman), Almodovar is not a filmmaker of style per se, but of content. His constant use of women as the protagonist, subject matter (melodramatic love stories that are either comedies of some nature), and thematic, that defines him as an auteur. His constant use of relationships, whether seriously or farcical, as a way to allow his audience to understand and empathize with his characters, but also to question the nature of traditional roles of women (as lovers, daughters, wives or mothers) and men ( fathers, lovers, brothers and husbands). Furthermore, he questions the concept of identity and sexuality held by society and shows how intertwining these ideas are detrimental or beneficial to the men and women, along with how it's present in either sex. The use of sexuality and its cultural definitions lends itself to Almodovar's style of storytelling, while under the guise of romantic comedy or modern melodrama, it is essentially modernization of classic fairy tales such as Snow White and Cinderella, but also a deconstruction of the patriarchal transgression structure inherent in the romantic comedies and melodramas genre, yet still conforming to the neo-traditional classical narrative structure.

In Marsha Kinder's article "Reinventing the Motherland", Kinder offers an analysis of Almodovar's work in which she dubs three of his films as the "Brain-Dead Trilogy". The article affirms Almodovar's auteurism, calling him an auteur in the Global Age, while demonstrating his originality in his mainly autobiographical films and the criteria that defines him as an auteur. The films that comprises the BDT are "La flor de mi secreto" (The Flower of My Secret) <1995>, "Todo sobre mi madre" (All About My Mother) <1999>, and "Hable con ella" (Talk to Her) <2002>, which could be said when looking in Almodovar's canon of films, could be attributed to other films such as "Law of Desire", "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", or "Tie me Up! Tie me Down!" the same attributes deign relevant to the comparison offered by Kinder. Nevertheless, these are the three main films that demonstrates the real use of the fairy tale structure, (not to mention his most critically acclaimed films winning him numerous awards), but also because it conforms itself into the definition of a Neo-Traditional RomCom as defined and analyzed by McDonald in his genre study book "Romantic Comedy". According to McDonald,

"These films…adopt a much more conservative and traditional ending…<It> stresses its return to the conventions of earlier comedies, ignoring the elements that made the radical comedies…they reference times when, it is assumed, romance was more straightforward." (p85-86)

What essentially McDonald is arguing for is that contemporary RomComs have lost the sub-genre's radicalness, i.e. it no longer questions and subverts society's rules and norms of sexuality, identity and relationships, but panders to a fairy tale ideal of love. A great analysis of this aspect of modern RomCom is seen in McDonald's example of the film "Kate and Leopold" in comparison with "The Goodbye Girl", saying that "the audience is expected to get the reference to the older movies and realize the kind of romantic love she seeks is old-fashioned, but not impossible." However in the BDT, Kinder demonstrates that Almodovar's use of his own cross film narrative concept, when use in reference, defines him as an auteur, but also categorizing him as a Neo-Traditionalist, which he is. What makes Almodovar "radical" though is his ability to subvert the "references", (whether it is other films, plays, dance, literature, arts or music), i.e. fairy tale love/relationship, to the story subject and characters in his films. How he subverts the references he uses is often complex, interweaving it into the plot of his stories and his characters, yet it represent a key to the understanding of the themes of lives lived in modernity concerning the alienation and disenchantment of basically, if not modest by American standards, of the Consumerism and Capitalism that has pervaded Spanish society. Though Almodovar's film concern itself with Spanish culture and society, it reflects society from any class and nationality because of his ability as a writer and director to capture in his stories the bases of desire of humanity that which is the concept of family and the relationships wherein. Furthermore, Almodovar adds to this by transgressing the patriarchal structure in Latin, if not all traditional, society by displaying the various sexual identities inherent in contemporary society as a result of sexual, political and social upheavals of the 60s and 70s in Spain, from a despotic, conservative regime to one of democracy, even if it's only in a form that's only ideal in theory if not practice.

According to Kinder's article, the BDT represents a metaphorical representation of a woman in sleep, where brain dead can be a coma, drug induced sleep or a "living death"; a woman in a patriarchal society is repressed sexually, mentally and spiritually by men or society in general. This "brain dead" state of women (or men as different case may be), is reminiscent of traditional fairy tales like Snow White or Cinderella wherein the female protagonist is under a deep magical sleep and can only be awaken by a "prince". However it's not that simple. Almodovar uses various technique of this structure as bases for his plots, but subverts it by having his female characters transgress the traditional roles that society deign is the role women should play—the lover, the wife and or the mother. Almodovar depicts the dilemma of his female protagonist by putting their sexual female desire in conflict with their maternal desire, questioning whether the concepts of womanhood and motherhood are synonymous or are they even possible for a female identity free of maternal connotations.

In analysis of Almodovar's BDT, we will look at how each film represents the male and female sexuality, how the concept of maternity is constructed and how it relates to the character's identities. Also in analysis is how the fairy tale structure is used to signify the meaning in the stories, i.e. the themes that runs concordant in each three film. By doing so we will see how each film constructs the sexual identity of the characters, transgresses it and relate it to the traditional roles society constructs.

The idea and ramification of what "brain-dead" means in Almodovar's "The Flower of My Secret" (FMS) is first seen and really used, not as a plot device as in the other two film in the trilogy, but deceptively in the introduction of the film as a thematic device for understanding the core plot of the film. At the beginning of the film "the protagonist happens to see the end of an educational video <lectured by her best friend> that trains medical personnel how to councel loved ones of brain-dead patients. The video's goal is to get survivors to let go of the dead and donate their vital organs for life-giving transplants. Signaling a shift to a darker tone for his hyper-plotted melodramas both emotionally and visually, this painful opening inaugurate a new line of experimentation for Amodovar, introducing a new ways of mobilizing the body to represent social, political, and generic change." (p11, Kinder)

Later we are introduced to the protagonist, Leo (Marisa Paredes), a writer of romantic fictions of the cheap, over the counter type found in supermarkets and airports. This clearly is a reference to the 80s RomCom adventure "Romancing the Stone", not just in the career and profession of fiction writer of both film's protagonist, but also their emotional turmoil and estranged relationship with men. Here "brain-dead" refers to Leo's existential mid-life crisis, she's in a marriage with a NATO military strategist officer that is indifferent to her, leaving her physically impotent, but more importantly leaving her in a form of "living-death", an existential ennui that makes her incapable of producing the cheap romances her publishers want, along with driving her to drinking and drugs. Like the fairy tales she writes, in which she uses the pen name Amanda Gris to "hide" her true identity, she seeks reconciliation with her husband on grounds that are more fantasy then reality because she believes in the construct of marriage as defined by a patriarchal society—that of the good wife. However, she is a modern independent woman, as seen in contrast with her sister and mother, who fights and bicker between each other, which represents differences in class and independence. Yet Leo is not a woman who gives in easily. Though fashionably lean, the love-starved Leo tries to find solace by accepting her friend's invitation to meet a newspaper editor, incidentally named Angel, and rejuvenate her creativity (writing) if not her sexual desires (her article is to be titled "Life and Pain" a reference to a popular Spanish song about love and abandonment). This however, proves to be only a short respite, for when after a confrontation with her absent husband, she learns that he is going to leave her (and later that it was for her best friend too), that she attempts suicide by an overdose on "pain-killers". Like in true fairy tale fashion, she is rescued from her suicidal nightmare and death-in-life condition, not by a prince (Angel), but by the voice of her mother on the answering machine. Later she accompanies her mother back to the "village", i.e. the Motherland where she is made healthy. In what Almodovar calls the "cradle of Female craft", FMS " shows how earlier images of Spain and its traditional resources can be regendered female and recuperated as vital organs that can be transplanted for the 21^st century." (p14, Kinder) Nevertheless, while the story might be expressing a embrace of womanhood and sorority, when Leo returns to Madrid, the city, she finds her new identity of a liberated woman -- figuratively as a mystical journey to the country, and literally her divorce and transfer of the Amanda Gris, along with the literary obligations absorbed by Angel, her new lover and "prince"—she reintegrate herself into Angel's life as a partner, not as a wife, but as a lover, enclosing the film in a very ambiguous conclusion that leaves the viewer wondering whether she is satisfied with it or not.

Where the idea of "brain-dead" and the transfer of "life-giving" organs are used as a metaphor in FMS for the theme of abandonment and existential ennui, in "All About My Mother" (AAMM) the concept of "brain-dead" becomes a 20-minute prologue that is crucial to the main plot that introduces the female protagonist Manuela (Cecilia Roth) who is a healthcare worker in charge of transporting valuable, precious organs to donors. Early in the film we see Manuela with her son Esteban, an aspiring writer, who is infatuated with Huma Rojo, an actress currently playing Blanche DuBois in Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Madrid. At this point in the film many of the references used intertextually to construct a paradigm that immerses the viewer of the interconnectivity between reality (the main plot) and fantasy ( "Streetcar" and the 1940s film "All About Eve" in which Esteban claims should be "Todo sobre Eve", and later in the film when Manuela is accused of being like Eve Harrington). In a sequence that is heart-breaking, we witness Esteban get killed by a car while trying to get Huma Rojo's autograph and Manuela, grievingly signing his organs away at the hospital. The irony here is most poignant being that like in the FMS training video scene, previously in Manuela's introduction, it was at a similar video conference that we see what Manuela does as part of her job.

Where in FMS, the protagonist journey is is an internal one; Manuela's journey constitutes an external one. In very touching voice narrations made by Esteban, we learn that Manuela's son's last wish was to find out who his father is and this starts her journey to Argentina, her Motherland. The rest of the story is Manuela's journey to find her lost husband, while encountering a spectrum of femininity, like Agrado the transvestite prostitute, a shamed nun with AID, and the actress Huma Rojo who is a depressed, suicidal lesbian. These four women form a bond of "otherness" each rejected and chastise for their action, behavior and or sexual identity by very traditional Catholic society.

The film's thematic, like that in FMS of abandonment and solitude, AAMM forms an extension of those themes. Whereas Leo in FMS hides behind her false identity created by her profession (Amanda Gris) and that of being the perfect wife, Manuela is represented differently by Almodovar as being content as a mother and nurse, very feminine roles. She is only comfortable then being a mother or maternal in some aspect as the film proves by displaying her relationships to each of the three other women as nurse, mother and caretaker. In other words, Manuela is comfortable with womanhood as maternal, and the fairy tale structure becomes a journey to confront the wrongs or a series of trials that challenges her identity as a mother and woman. Here the play "Streetcar" is very poignant as a subliminal message to Manuela's past (she left her husband, like Stella, which she plays for one night in Argentina) and explains the many roles a woman must play, that of prostitute, mother and saint.

The end of the film though is critically denounced by many critics basically because Almodovar reestablishes the patriarchal structure by returning the women in his films to a role of maternity and submission. In an article by Barbara Zecchi titled "All About Mothers: Pronatalist Discourses in Contemporary Spanish Cinema", she states

"Almodovar rescues the female figure, but in doing so, he transforms her into a self-abnegated mother…at the end of the movie, by adopting Rosa's son (the nun), does Manuela recuperate her maternal identity, and becomes a sort of a mythical 'virgin' mother of a miracle child, who can save humanity, if not from original sin, from AIDs…The absence of the law of the Father is precisely the origin of the characters' problems, and only the return of and to the Father will lead to order."

Nevertheless, when Manuela finally finds her husband, now a transvestite prostitute called Lola, does Almodovar incorporate the idea that sexual mobility and identity is a matter of subjectivity; "the film demonstrates not only are all genders and sexualities cultural constructs, but the ability to love and identify across barriers of gender, sexuality, and class is a courageous leap of faith." (p17, Kinder) What Almodovar try to show is that womanhood is a matter of individual subjectivity and not necessary what is socially acceptable that makes her identity.

In what is perhaps his masterpiece up to date, "Talk to Her" (TH), is the most poetic and elegantly moving of his trilogy. TH transports the idea and concept of "brain-dead" and transplants it literally in a very fairy tale like story that is anything but simple. The story protagonists in this film are men, but the subject matter is still the construct of maternity, not in women, but symbolically in men in relation to their feminist identity. The transgression here in identity and sexuality, even though under the guise of the male gaze, is not necessary so because its one sided, but rather because it requires a complex logic of trans-subjectivity that fuses identification with desire and the formation of interesting sexual mobility or relationships.

The film opens with a brief introduction in which we are introduced to the two male protagonists, Marco and Benigno, watching "Café Muller", a dance performed by the troupe of world famous German choreographer Pina Bausch. Almodovar quickly engages the viewer by using close-ups of the blind female dancers dancing among wildly strewn furniture while a male dancer dressed in black helps move the many chairs and tables. "Taking over the introductory functions of the brain-dead video prologues from the earlier two films…this nonverbal performance prefigures the double brain-dead drama of the main plot." (p19, Kinder) In his earlier two films, Almodovar's concerns were with the state of women in modern society, but here he concentrates on the subjectivity of the sexual desires and identity of men. The story revolves around the two men and their respective love, Alicia, a ballet dancer, and Lydia, a female matador, both are in comas, and also the bond these two men build together and the tragedy that envelope both their lives.

While the title of the film might give the impression of the verbal expression as the definite form of communicating, this proves to be illusionary and Almodovar shows that the physical body can say as much if not more than words can ever tell. In other words the physical is grounded in reality, verbal expression is and sometimes contrary and a secondary form of expression. Marco is the masculine hero of the story, a travel journalist who's seen the world, but is attracted to pain and suffering, especially to the one thing he is unable to express—his emotions. On the other hand, Benigno, a male nurse and Alicia's caretaker, who finds himself unable to empathize with women on a physical sexual level, adapting the identity of the feminine male, i.e. homosexual, and is the primary advocate for words in the film a contrast with that of Marco. While the plot delineates in a series of flashbacks and forwards that tells the relationships of the characters, it also helps deconstruct the line between fantasy and reality by setting up the very crucial story/dream/film sequence, "The Shrinking Man", that acts as a buffer to the rape scene between Benigno and Alicia later in the climax, and by doing so it also allows the viewer to discover the plotlines as the characters do. The non-linear story telling creates an atmosphere of a dream like state, but also through the use of his cinematography and production design, Almodovar renders the dialogue to a secondary position allowing the audience to freely immerse them-selves in the movement of body.

"The Shrinking Man" sequence acts as a device that further emasculate the logic of the film, it being an imaginary story of a silent film told to Alicia by Benigno that is touching and evocative of his feelings for her that transpose the crime of rape considered done by others in the film. Through some "magical" way Alicia is brought back from her "brain-dead" state by Benigno's act, whether it be a physical one or a psychological one is imperative to the tale because it reinforces the use of the fairy tale structure like the kiss that awakens the princess. Furthermore, it reinforces Almodovar's theme of rejecting patriarchal institutions and because it is a silent film, also the simplicity in its honesty of physical coupling. "The film suggests that the relationship between any two individuals (such as Benigno and Marco) can potentially have erotic dimensions, even if they are not explicitly developed on screen." (p22, Kinder)

As written in the Film's press book:

"Talk to Her is a story about…silence as eloquence of the body, about how a film told in words can…install itself in the lives of the person telling it and the person leistening…about the joy of narration and about words as a weapon against solitude, disease, death and madness."

Bibliography

1. "All About Mothers: Pronatalist Discourses in Contemporary Spanish Cinema", Zecchi, Barbara. College Literature, 32.1, Winter 2005, pp. 146-164 (Article)
   
2. "Reinventing the Motherland: Almodóvar's Brain-Dead Trilogy", Marsha Kinder
   Film Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Dec. 1, 2004), pp. 9-25
   
3. "Romantic Comedy", McDonald, J. Tamar.
   

   
   

   All films directed by Pedro Almodovar
   

   1. "All About My Mother" (1999)
      
   2. "The Flower of My Secret" (1995)
      
   3. "Talk to Her" (2002)
      

Elaine, Cary and Emmi 3 Women: Taboo Relationships in 3 films--Response Paper

What makes "The Graduate" (d. Mike Nichols), a radical romance, is not necessary in its tale, for essentially it is a rehash of the 50's Sex Comedy of a man's attempt to get the girl and the girl holding out for marriage. No, what makes the film radical is its satirical nature, mainly its take on the socially deem worthy ideals of marriage and relationships. The depiction of an affair between a quirky, young man, Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), and a much older attractive woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who later falls in love with the daughter, Elaine (Kathrine Ross). Much of the comedy derives from the situations Ben inadvertently falls into while trying to leave the mother for the daughter, what is needed to be concentrated upon is the consequences of pursuing such a relationship.
In each of the film chosen, the two main characters in the relationships face hardships and discrimination that is still a prominent and relevant discourse into today's society as seen in gay, generational age or inter-racial marriages. Each case involves the judgment of others that harks back to Foucault's argument of assumed and upheld credible arguments against certain relationships, though not completely perverse in nature, is still seen as taboo even in today's much more liberal political sex relationships.




Kay Scott: Personally, I've never subscribed to that old Egyptian custom.
Cary Scott: What Egyptian custom?
Kay Scott: Of walling up the widow alive in the funeral chambers of her dead husband along with his other possessions. The theory being that she was a possession too. She was supposed to journey into dead with him. The community saw to it. Of course it doesn't happen anymore.
Cary Scott: Doesn't it?

In Foucault's "The history of sexuality", he states that besides the opinions of the popular masses, there are three major codes governing sexuality, "canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law", which is all centered on the matrimonial relations. He says further, "the marriage relation was the most intense focus of constraints...It was under constant surveillance; if it was found to be lacking, it had to come forward and plead its case before a witness." While Foucault was more interested in analyzing the discrimination of dogmatic doctrines of society that limited and restrained more abnormal relationships, it also applies to any other form of intimate relationships that happens to fall outside the norm of a man and a woman, be it age, inter-personal relationships, race and religion.

In Douglas Sirk's classic film "All That Heaven Allows" (1955), a widow, Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), lonely and abandoned falls in love with a much younger man, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson). In beautifully shot scenes the two lovers plan to marry, but is met with opposition from Cary's greedy children and other family members. Straining their relationship to its break, the couple pulls through and stays together, but not before learning much about society's prejudice and discrimination against their affair.
While the treatment of the affair and the sexual content is done with hesitant sensibility and sentimentality, the film's essential view on love and abandonment is reverberated in later Romantic films.

"Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes
It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids"

Mrs. Robinson in a way represents Kinsey's "double standard" and the hypocrisy inherent in it. According to McDonald's sex comedy context on the three key events that lead to a more open sexual discourse in popular culture, Kinsey's report showed that women wanted the same sexual promiscuity and freedom that men had. As seen in the clip, after the dinner party, Mrs. Robinson suggests her husband's infidelity as she blatantly tries to seduce Ben. Later when she finds out at the hotel of Ben's virginity and inexperience, she smirks and grins like a cat with a mouse in its paw. However, her attitude changes when Ben questions her motives and or starts talking about her daughter, Elaine. To Mrs. Robinson, the relationship is just a interesting minor relationship, an example in the power dynamics of relationship and proving a woman can also have the same sexual hold her husband can. This goes back to the concept of the "double standard" and as McDonald explains, "this was an unwritten law implying that men were supposed to have pre-marital sexual experiences [and in marriage too] and women were not."




Furthermore, following the genre, it is not the sexually active mother, but the chaste and "good" daughter that steals Ben. Here, the hypocrisy in this odd situation is revealed between the sheets--to Mrs.Robinson, Ben is unworthy, because of his relationship with her, to be with her daughter. Now that's irony. Nevertheless, Ben's persistence and guile wins the girl ("It's too late, Elaine" yells the mother, retort "Not for me" says the daughter), as the genre would have it, but here Nichol's directorial brilliance shows the ambiguity of such impetuous actions, no happy ending here, the "newly weds " future is just as dark and foreboding as when Ben started out in the beginning of the film.





Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (German: Angst essen Seele auf) is a 1974 West German film written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder based loosely upon Sirk's "All that Heaven Allows". The film is the story of Emmi (Brigitte Mira), a 60 year old German cleaner who meets and falls in love with a black Muslim, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). After marriage, the couple faces ugly prejudice, discrimination and ridicule from practically everyone they know and associate with; the most horrible scenes involves Emmi's own children. A strange romantic tale, though not American, it acts as a possibility of the many issues of discourse in cultural similarities here in the state and most likely anywhere of modern society.
Hailed as Rainer's best film, it bravely tackles issues the two mentioned American films wouldn't or couldn't dare touch, (if not all at once), of race, religion, class and age in relation to "nice" societies view of a matrimonial relationship. "Ali" is a film to be experienced because it challenges the core values of a society, on a theoretical level and political social also.




These films for their time challenged the status quo in looking at familial relationships as a representation of society as a whole while pushing the boundaries, if not sexually, at least in respect of issues that were taboo for society. The idea and concept of the double standard, is shown actively in regard to the women it portrays, but also in the attitudes still held by the social political views still held of a standard, "norm" relationship and family. As seen in other films of later decades like "Guess whose coming to Dinner", "The Ice Storm" (d. Ang Lee) or "Far From Heaven" (d. Todd Haynes), these issues are still present into today's society and held in taboo.

Sexual Fantasies: A kind of Radical Romance

If RomCom is the fantasy of the beginning and early struggle of a relationship, then what is a core text for the inbetween of a relationship? If looked at historically, the genre of RomCom can be looked at as a fine line between the human need to be love (emotionally) and sex (physically), with the well being, a good or bad relationship, of the partners (psychology) within a comic framework. In the chapter on sex comedy, MacDonald states "I think there has always been a strand within romantic comedy where much of the pleasure and energy of the film is derived from the couple's efforts to resist being a couple, to deny their fitness for each other and the inevitability of their union." I would like to add that it is also vice versa, the couple's desire to be a couple and the comedy that derives from their attempt to stay as one. Recent films like "Knocked Up" and "Meet the Parents" and its sequel "Meet the Fockners", is essentially a reversal of the sex comedy genre, emphasis on unity of the partners through sex. Sex or the physical manifestation of their love, is only viable when both partners are honest about their needs and emotions or come upon the revelation of their need for one another as a result of it.

A real good example of this psychological well being of a relationship in a dichotomy of emotional and physical equilibrium is demonstrated in "When Harry Met Sally" (Meg Ryan's best romcom for me). In the film two best friends of opposite sex enlivens their relationship to that of couple status and the fear of loss in mutual respect and likability. Harry (Billy Crystal) states early in the story the film's essential question: "Can a man and a woman stay friends, without being lovers?" and the humor of the film derives from Harry's observation that men, when in the company of the opposite sex, can only think of Sex and not much else. Sally disproves this in the famous diner scene ("I'll have what she's having") and in the rest of the film with her talks/gossips with her female friends, showing that women are just as obsessed with sex as their counterpart. Sex to the film's characters, looks like it just complicates matters, but as a result can also deepen it and make it more enriching.

McDonald's definition of the Sex Comedy that "with women wanting sex after, and men before or without, marriage" might have applied to the mid 50s cinema of the RomCom, and like I'm sure McDonald will illustrate in following chapters, that the genre has evolved with the times and views of popular culture of the ideals and ideas of relationships, but the unity and or coming together of differing individuals is what keeps suckering us in.

English313 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Project

When editing a film, part of the fun is being able to take some inconsequential or unrelated media and creating something, perhaps, with a semblance of order and meaning. That or spend an abhorrent amount of time playing around with clips trying to achieve that goal. Nevertheless, what I've assembled is at the bottom.



The idea my group wanted to touch upon was the image of "caged" cats, a phrase used by the irresistible (well in Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal a definite YES!) Maggie "the cat" from Tennessee Williams "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", a play about a dysfunctional Southern Louisiana family, the character's personal problems of greed, avarice and indifference, ruins their rather rich and lofty life.
The "Cats" in this case refers to the women in the play, of how they struggle and manage to maintain a semblance of the "good, normal", i.e. happy, family. At its core of course is love--love given and taken, but as usual, denied to them, hence the hot tin roof, a metaphor for the discomfort and torture people go through, or put themselves through, to achieve what they think they need.
I hope that this compilation of edited film from "American Beauty", "Brokeback Mountain" and "War of the Roses", which was the discussed and chosen films for the presentation, shed some light, directly or indirectly, upon the theme of disenchantment in the individual in today's society, a society that cherishes and seduces individuals with a puritanical idea of the nuclear family and measures success of it by materialistic yardstick of shoes, new cars, big white-picket fence houses and bubblegum music of technological conviences. Popular Culture ain't it great?
Just so You know, I am not a terribly great editor. Its not that I have no knowledge of it, I just lack the technical know how to accomplish the flashy in-your-face, fly by in 5sec montages most people of today are used to. However, I did pick out the scenes carefully, with what my group has decided to discuss in relation to the text for the class, but more importantly the theme of the isolation and alienation. I tried to show the precieved life, the one of disillusions and disgust or dispair in the characters to one of empowerment and purpose--from exisentential "nauesea" to the inrevocable fight (i.e. violence) for salvation. Notice in "American Beauty", the patheticness of the Kevin Spacey character's life, how he "might as well be dead already", the closed and tightness of Heath Ledger's character, his indicision and fear, not just for himself but from other's opinions (kind of like Brick's), to the entrapment of the wifehood in the Roses's family. The question that's asked in all these films is whether the characters irrevocably dragged themselves in or were they led there, but then by whom? Thier lover, wife, husband, family, society? Those questions are answered seperately in each film. Nevertheless, each film is rich in its myraid of visual imagery of "caged" animals, animals subjagated to closed tight spaces, like a framed picture, or sheeps being herded or a tight exquiste porcelean Japanese statue of a naked, open woman.