Fame perceptions

I stumbled across this article online and found it really interesting. The article written about this experiment won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and is endlessly fascinating in its implications it suggests for our perceptions of fame, talent, and stardom. The original article was featured in the Washington Post, and this shortened version was taken from Ego Dialogues ( http://www.egodialogues.com/general/violinist-in-metro.php).

"A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?"

P2 Review

P2 (2007): A film by Franck Khalfoun

P2 is not quite as good as classic horror films like Night of the Living Dead or Suspiria, but it is far superior to many horror films as of late. Critics tore the film apart, many passing it off as just another schlocky and campy B-movie, worthy of nothing less than harsh words and box office failure. The film, however, displays a tremendous amount of promise in the first few scenes but begins to slowly and gradually lose that promise until around the 3/4 mark, when the audience is effectively exhausted and the film amounts to nothing more than just another horror film. Upcoming films should use P2 as a wobbly foundation upon which to rebuild the structure of modern horror.

Angela (Rachel Nichols) is stuck working late on Christmas Eve, her asshole boss making her redo reports over and over again in her large office inside a Manhattan skyscraper, her family nagging at her to get home as soon as possible so they can start dinner, and one of her co-workers sincerely apologizing for groping her at a recent Christmas party. She eventually gets out of her office and down to the parking garage to head to her family party, but...her car won't start. Sigh.

She begins to try and find more and more ways out of the parking garage - more likely than not her version of purgatory - and we slowly begin to sense that, failed attempt after failed attempt, something more sinister is at work here. Enter Thomas, the kindly parking garage attendant who helps Angela out and figures since she can't leave, why not have a quaint Christmas Eve dinner in the attendant's office? No, she says, she can't dissapoint her family. But maybe some other time. You see where this is going, I'm sure.

Thomas, of course, has been stalking Angela, and knows just about everything about her. He knocks her out, ties her up, and makes her eat that quaint dinner with him. Thomas, played with insane over-the-topness by Wes Bentley, has a Norman Bates-esque feel about him. He is seemingly gentle, kind, quite a good conversationalist, with boyish good looks and a naive innocence, but he's, well...just a little insane, is all.

And the cat-and-mouse game begins.

Although rather formulaic and predictable, the movie displays enormous potential for topical issues, in particular sexual harrasment. Unfortunately, P2 fails to say (or try to say) anything relevant about the glass ceiling, or sexual harassment, or anything about feminism in general. Such a shame that a technically-competent and, yes, even sometimes suspenseful film could waste its nearly two hours teasing us with social commentary but never quite reaching it. This film is not to be taken as 28 Weeks Later or the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead should be. P2 is a horror movie through and through, both on the surface and in the shallow subtexts, without socio-political commentary. The poorly-lit parking garage at night, a classic fear for women (and men for that matter), would have been a wonderful place to explore the troublesome state of women in the workplace.

The film is high on gore in individual scenes; the violence is well-contained into one horrifically gruesome death and a few shorter scenes of quick but bloody stabs, punches, etc. Thankfully, except for that gratuitous scene, the movie is quite low on sadism. Director Khalfoun manages to ramp up the creepy thanks to a few classic Christmas songs and keeps the claustrophobic feel throughout the film, lost in a maze of cars and identical-looking levels of the parking garage.

Also notable is P2's way of manipulating us to pity Thomas while simultaneously hoping for Angela's escape. Thomas outwardly admits he's lonely - he is a graveyard shift parking garage attendant, after all. We feel bad. He even says he would never want to hurt Angela, which seems to be true at first, but is quite untrue as we later learn. I, for one, genuinely believed Tom's promise, keeping in mind he never said anything about hurting those around her. This interesting pact is not to be seen later in the movie. Was it to make the film more of a horror film and the threat to Angela more real, or did he never really plan on keeping his promise in the first place? I'm not sure.

We understand Tom is lonely, but do people as seemingly kind and good-looking as him really have to go to this length to get a girl to have dinner with him?

Feels like it sometimes, doesn't it?

Auteurist analysis of Orson Welles

Auteurist analysis of Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane" by J.D. Santo

Citizen Kane (US, Orson Welles, 1941, 119’), although Welles’s first feature film, laid the ground for themes, techniques, and stylistic tendencies that would appear later in his career in more distinctively film noir works such as Touch of Evil and Lady from Shanghai. According to Andrew Sarris’s auteur theory, which is the most practical (in that we are not so much interested in change over time as Peter Wollen’s auteur theory is, but can instead begin to link similar themes, techniques, and stylistic tendencies by viewing just a few of the director’s works), a director’s worth as an auteur can be displayed through his technical competence, recurrent style, and interior meaning. (Here, I take recurring themes throughout Welles’s oeuvre to reflect his interior meaning). Welles’s “overfondness for the baroque,” as André Bazin so succinctly described it, along with deep focus/deep space compositions, elaborate choreography, and high-contrast lighting in Citizen Kane all compliment Welles’s examination of corruption, isolation, and the downfall of a powerful man. These themes and technical aspects are no doubt shared throughout Welles’s body of work, which leave a distinct “signature” on all of his films, thus making Citizen Kane a most important piece in Welles’s overall oeuvre as an auteur.

Welles’s “overfondness for the baroque” and exotic visuals permeates through all of his films, Citizen Kane firstly and therefore most importantly. The most obvious example in this sense is Kane’s extravagant mansion, Xanadu. Packed with statues, artwork, and lavish furniture, Xanadu’s elaborate mise-en-scéne provides a contrast to Welles’s recurring theme of isolation. (Because the theme of isolation is so closely related to the theme of downfall, I will use the two nearly interchangeably). Kane’s attempt to buy affection, particularly that of his second wife, Susan Kane, ends up driving those closest to him further away. Kane insists that the couple has everything they could ever need or want in their palace; Susan, however, is most dissatisfied with her situation (“49,000 acres of nothing but scenery and statues,” as she describes it) and causes Kane to descend into the most reclusive depths of isolation by leaving him. Kane is now a man who has everything in the world and yet nothing of value, isolated in the very palace that he believed would win him much affection and praise. Welles’s extravagance of mise-en-scéne, along with his fondness for sensational stories, is also contrasted with the realism that is provided through Welles’s use of long takes and deep focus.

Welles displays his tendency to use deep focus/deep space composition to compliment his themes in one scene early on in Citizen Kane, notable in the fact that we can learn just as much from the images on the screen as we can from the dialogue. As Mary Kane and Kane’s father are inside their home signing the document to turn their son, Charles Foster Kane, over to Walter Thatcher, young Charles is playing outside in the snow. In the foreground to the right of the window is Mary Kane, in the midground to the right of the window is Walter Thatcher, in the background to the left of the window is Kane’s father, and in the extreme background through the window we can see Charles, in complete focus, playing in the snow. This feat (presenting the entire frame in sharp focus) is not easily achieved, as it requires not just the technical competence of a good director but the technical mastery of a great one; deep focus is achieved only through the perfect amount of lighting. The choreography and placement of the actors in the scene is key, reinforcing the fact that Charles is literally “coming between” between the adult characters while also reflecting the coldness of the Kanes’ marriage and displaying Charles’s isolation by his parents.

Welles uses low-key, high-contrast lighting and chiaroscuro to compliment his diegesis as well. The chiaroscuro provides a contrast, as Welles often uses, between the moral and the immoral, the right and the wrong, the “clean” and the “dirty.” Borrowing a technique from German Expressionist films, Welles tends to use lighting and shadows that distorts or hides the faces of the immoral or “dirty.” When the morality of a character in Welles’s film is ambiguous, as it so often is, the lighting in the scene often depends on its context. For example, there is a scene just after Susan Kane’s regrettable performance in the opera house where Kane is completing a drunken Jedediah’s scathing review of Susan’s amateurish singing. Kane is in the foreground, shadows on his face, partially outside of the frame, while Jedediah is completely within the frame, well-lit. Welles viewed Jedediah’s honesty and subjective opinion in his review of Susan’s performance as noble attributes, even though Jedediah likely knew the consequences of his candor.

Welles would continue to use low-key lighting, deep focus/deep space compositions, choreography and extravagant mise-en-scéne to accentuate his most-favored themes of isolation, corruption, and the downfall of a powerful figure in his subsequent films, particularly in Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil. Welles is most successful as an auteur in that he manages to rather loosely connect all of his films with one another not just through film technique but also through several recurring themes, displaying a marvelous technical competence along the way. It is most difficult to precisely define an auteur, but perhaps Sarris’s most simplified theory, which adheres most faithfully to François Truffaut’s original vision of the theory, is correct. Truffaut’s “politique des auteurs,” the basis of auteur theory, contends that a true auteur’s work must display consistencies in themes and style, leaving a distinct “signature” on each of his/her films. Welles most certainly leaves his signature on his films, filling them with the sensational, the extravagant, the powerful, and the corrupt using film technique that is inarguably his own.

Reworking the gaze in Pedro Almodovar's "Volver"

I wrote this for my film studies class last quarter:

Reworking Mulvey's "gaze" in Pedro Almodovar's Volver by J.D. Santo

Laura Mulvey’s concern with the depiction of women in unchallenged, mainstream film is becoming more and more pertinent as misogynistic films in the “torture-porn” genre such as Hostel: Part II (US, Eli Roth, 2007, 94’) and seemingly innocent “buddy comedies” like Superbad (US, Greg Mottola, 2007, 114’) continue to treat women as sexual objects to be ogled and manipulated. These exploitative films are cementing Mulvey’s belief that women fulfill the viewer’s desire for scopophilic gazing and voyeuristic fetishes. Volver (Spain, Pedro Almodóvar, 2006, 121’), however, is able to deftly and beautifully portray an emotional and feminine community of women intent on supporting, loving, and helping one another while simultaneously celebrating their very womanhood, their unabashed sexuality. By using precise shots and juxtaposition within the frame, structuring the viewer’s gaze so that he/she feels uncomfortable in alignment with the male gaze (and therefore comfortable with main female protagonist Raimunda’s gaze), creating misogynistic male characters, and refusing to allow Raimunda to abandon her sexuality, Almodóvar creates in Volver a film that celebrates the fierce sexuality and femininity of Raimunda. Volver challenges the dominant patriarchal order and allows women to transcend the female-dominated role of spectacle in cinema, and could thusly be considered to be a member of what Mulvey describes as the “alternative cinema,” a group of films which challenge the basic assumptions of the mainstream film.

Almodóvar’s precise attention to his visual representation of female sexuality is key in Volver. Most notable is a series of disjointed scenes concerning the murder of Raimunda’s husband Paco by their daughter Paula (who is also Raimunda’s sister, due to her father raping her). Firstly, a high-angle shot from directly above displays Raimunda’s cleavage on the right side of the frame and her outstretched arms cleaning various dishes on the left side of the frame; lastly, she cleans a large kitchen knife. In a later shot, Paula has murdered Paco because he attempted to rape her. In order to protect Paula from prosecution, Raimunda uses a mop and paper towels (tools typically associated with domestic housewives) to clean up the blood. The payoff shot occurs in the subsequent scene which utilizes the same high-angle shot from earlier; this time the knife is soiled with blood of Raimunda’s husband instead of food.

This series of shots inextricably links the female as being not just a symbol of power but also a very real threat of castration – an “anxiety” (p. 718), as Mulvey describes, that men try to escape either through fetishistic scopophilia or voyeurism/sadism. The scene most importantly structures the viewer’s gaze to look directly down Raimunda’s shirt to her breasts. This would be considered “one part of a fragmented body” which gives “the quality of a cut-out or icon” (p. 716), yet the shot cements Raimunda’s status as an empowered female (and domestic housewife) by juxtaposing a symbol of sexuality in Raimunda’s breasts with the image of the bloody knife.

Two of three males given crucial roles (not to be mistaken with leading roles) in the film – Paco and Raimunda’s husband – are sexual perverts. Although the gaze throughout the film is structured almost entirely according to Raimunda (a gaze where the viewer feels comfortable because of her loving, compassionate nature and devotion to family), Volver’s gaze is structured with Paco’s voyeuristic point-of-view twice in the film, both times providing discomfort in “gazing” with a chauvinist. The viewer is first aligned with Paco’s gaze as Paula sits next to him with her legs spread while Paco (and therefore the viewer) stares at the outline of her vagina clearly visible through her tights. The subsequent alignment of the gaze shows Paula topless in her room with her door slightly cracked while Paco stands in the hallway peeking in. Both times, even though the gaze is aligned with a male character, the viewer is made sexually uncomfortable because they understand that this voyeuristic gazing is morally wrong.

Almodóvar seems to play with Mulvey’s notion that individualistic women in film typically become the “property” of the men by the end of the film and therefore lose their “outward glamorous characteristics, generalized sexuality, [and] show-girl connotations” (p. 718). The appearance of the boyish, attractive, charming male filmmaker who pays Raimunda to cook dinner for his crew causes the viewer to infer that a romantic relationship will be pursued, which would diminish the threat of castration in Raimunda and allow a man to possess her (and therefore allow the viewer to “indirectly possess her too”) (p. 718). Ironically, however, Raimunda seems almost inconvenienced by the filmmaker. (In one scene in particular, Raimunda is on the phone with her sister Sole discussing their recently-deceased aunt’s funeral and is approached by the filmmaker. During their conversation, she smiles and flirts to appease him but rolls her eyes and sighs after he leaves. Raimunda is clearly not concerned with romantic pursuits and instead puts her family issues first and foremost).

Mulvey encourages an alternative cinema to develop as a counterpoint to dominant Hollywood cinema where woman stands “in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other…still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” Volver is not politically or aesthetically avant-garde in the traditional sense (i.e., it does not demand or even suggest a revolution in the depiction of women in the cinema), but it certainly constructs Raimunda as a woman who is at once strong-willed and beautiful without fear of expressing her femininity or fierce sexuality. Therefore the film should most certainly be considered one which reacts against the “obsessions and assumptions” (p. 713) of mainstream film by depicting Raimunda as strong and sexualized while depicting men as unimportant at best, sexual deviants at worst.