The Macintoshian Cinema of Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott’s new blockbuster Prometheus appeals to that would-be intellectual in all of us: sci-fi cineaste, astrologer, psychoanalyst, wide-eyed ontologist. At the same time it is almost hypnotically engaging, creating a spectacle so narcotic as to erase philosophical skepticism and historical perspective. Prometheus is brain candy for the viewer or critic whose favorite recent film is Avatar and who looks to Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven (2002) as the greatest and most accurate film about the 1950s (never mind Douglas Sirk). Scott lays on thick the most formulaic and typically appealing and genre elements: a sentimental narrative conveyed by strikingly hollow method acting; melodramatic plot twists closely modeled on the daytime soaps of the 1970s, and style of film editing -- shot-reverse shot – that seems contrived to feel artless (not to say mechanical). It’s as if Scott, the master of psychobiographical character arcs in his other films, most notably Thelma and Louise (1991), has decided here, in his first 3-D movie, to dispose of three-dimensional characters altogether.

Take the corny and melodramatic relationship between Elizabeth (Noomi Rapace) and her lover, Charlie, which moves too fast to allow any viewer identification, an apparently determined genre mark, underscored by the terse, boring dialogue, and stiff acting. And then there’s the whole gang of stock characters: the macho black commander, the grungey crew who just want to get paid, and the female ice queen bitch (the elderly Charlize Theron!), who despises the younger, sexier protagonist.

The protagonist (Rapace) is another Ridley Scott-designed dud, whose Buffy the Vampire Slayer kick-ass feminism (I can perform my own C-section and look hot all the way thru) is as clawing and routine as the film’s Freudian subtext: the quest for the mythical fatherland, mysteriously coded and impossible to find, wherein a large patriarchal head spews venomous goo, protected by vaginal aliens, encased in a large womb/turd looking spaceshit.

As many critics have noted, the only character that seems to escape Scott’s robotic puppeteering is the robot (Michael Fassbender); but even this irony is overstated and underwhelming.

Still, Promotheus is compelling, never mind the actors, the script, and the sophomoric philosophical ponderings (who/what created man?).What makes the film is the cinematographic emphasis on the relations between the actors and the space they inhabit, over and above the typical emphasis on the interpersonal drama of Hollywood film epitomized by the ”shot-countershot” formula.    

Particularly when viewed in IMAX, the wan shot-countershot repartee between the actors makes a stark contrast with the largeness of the spaces they inhabit—not merely the space of the spaceship (or the greenscreen that lies beneath) but also the space of the movie theater and, more important, the existential void of outer space. The drama becomes not he said / she said, alien score 1 / human score 2 but are they watching the space or is the space watching them?, are they watching us or are we watching them? Scott does a marvelous job of setting this up in the film’s first shot of the protagonist (Rapace)  brushing off the black dust of the cave wall and peering out at us. The more she dusts, the more of her face we see, the more we feel we are being watched. Other scenes have the actors surrounded by dark empty space (in the cave, magnified by the IMAX screen), in which, they fear they are being watched (by the audience?).

Scott’s earlier film Alien (1979) had none of this existential darkness but rather followed the classic structure of shot-counter shot. For instance, when Ash (Ian Holm) and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) fight we are given no three-dimensional invitation to their shared space, but instead watch a scene that has the same formal complexity of a soap opera: We see Ash speak and then we see Ripley speak, and so on and so forth.

Although Alien’s tagline “in space, no one can hear you scream” makes you imagine a cinematic horror vacui, the film does little to foster any sort of existential dread. The spaceship is so full of camaraderie, funny bit-characters, and soap opera intrigue that there is no time to feel the danger of the void outside the ship.

At the start, the crew emerges from their claustrophobic pods with a dancerly integrity. And just as the orchestral music begins to lull you in, we are interrupted by a frightening crash. But the crashes and interruptions only add to the overall coherence of the melody: just as the “unexpected” alien invasions are what concretize the film’s genre. They are the clues that tell you: this is a horror sci-fi film. And the coherence of the genre allows us to be distracted from any major fears of what lies inside and/or what lies within. Our alienating fears are contained, managed, and treated by the film’s reconcilability as a coherent genre film (an alien film: sci-fi and horror).

The fight scenes between aliens and humans also serve to remedy the fear the void might bring. We are distracted by the game of it all (Alien arrives a year after the popular arcade game Space Invaders). This game-frame (who will win?) then takes precedence over the ontological mystery that the tagline implies. And like with any computer game, the characters interact firmly behind a third wall, in a virtual space, so you can involve yourself without having to truly enter into the horror of their environment.

            In Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur argues that aliens do unto us what we do unto littler beings: when we torture/probe/investigate/belittle our animals and minorities; aliens do the same to us and we become the pets and freaks. This horrifying prospect requires a defensive reversal of the alien’s violence (do unto the alien what the alien does unto us) and this is precisely what we do by embedding the alien into a predictable genre narrative.

In 1984, five years after Alien, Scott directed a commercial for Apple Computer’s first Macintosh personal computer, in which blue-grey zombies follow the commands of a leader speaking on a large screen. But the dreary dystopia is broken up by a young sexy blonde woman who runs in with a large freedom-wielding hammer, bringing forth a new technology that would ensure that 1984 was nothing like George Orwell’s 1984. Instead of having a country ruled by all-seeing bureaucrats, we would be ruled by the neoliberal free self, each with his own personal computer.

Ironically, the freedom ushered in by the sexy blonde runner looks an awful lot like the dystopia she supposedly demolished. As the most liked YouTube comment on the commercial reads, “isn't it ironic that nowadays those mindless sheep are the apple fans?/ and they'd be watching Steve Jobs on that big screen talking about future products, while they're all in awe thinking ‘this man is a true visionary’/ Nowadays, there is no one to throw the hammer.” Indeed, the “ipod industrial complex” has taken over.

Can there be a Macintoshian cinema that takes into account this era’s conflicts: its simultaneous fear and desire for Steve Job’s whitewashed utopia of Apple products? Scott makes a good go at it by precisely mirroring Mac’s rhythm of output: invent a novel, eerie, uncanny, weird, futuristic product then let things quiet down as people get used to the product, then startle them with an even more bizarre product that outdoes the earlier ones. Likewise, in Prometheus: the twists come at just the right time, with just the right punch, to produce an enjoyable shock.

Scott’s products and Apple’s products are marvelously complex and full of alienating aliens; yet both come off as slick, with a Zen-like simplicity and perfection. And it is this perfection that takes the shock out of the shocks: turning an erratic disturbing multimedia invention into a streamlined, whitewashed toy. Everything in Mac is remixed so that it shares the same common denominator, the same software, the same neoliberal emphasis on self-expression (affirmative queerness), the same file type played off the same media players. And the Macintoshian film is remixed to create a monolithic shockless effect on its audience. And like a smooth Six Flags roller coaster ride, the effect is oddly impotent.

Linda Williams theorizes that conventional genres have a certain rhythmic formula: the surprise comes too soon in horror, too late in melodrama, and right on time in porn.  In Prometheus, the surprises of melodrama and horror are collapsed into the non-surprise of porn, since the frighteningly early surprises and the tragically late surprises become so predictable thatthey begin to arrive on time. And we are left with products (be they iPads or movies) that faintly try to signify melodrama and horror but are so stripped of surprise that they follow the straight tempo one finds in any standard-issue porn movie.

When all media content can be remixed on your laptop to fit the monolithic queeronormative hipster DIY vision of the iPod-industrial complex, a certain static deadness comes to our cultural products, as in the pastiche films of Todd Haynes and Guy Maddin, the pastiche pop music of Lady Gaga, the pastiche video-art of Ryan Trecartin, the hipster comedy of Lena Dunham, and the FaceBook-dictated activism of Occupy Wall Street, all of which, and in interesting ways, are self-consciously ambivalent about the problem.

 The signification of outer space in Prometheus could well be a continuation of this dystopian trend of monolithic monotony: out in the void lies the new Macinvention, the latest Promethean point, from which we can commodify our existence into a World Wide Identity.

Ultimately, the void might give way to a sexy blonde runner with a freedom-wielding hammer that will shatter the iPod-Industrial Complex into bits. But it is more likely that the runner is neither progressively Marxist nor complacently Macintoshian but rather, indeed, self-consciously ambivalent about her political relationship to the fashions of capitalism.

Note:

Linda Williams’ theory, originally published in Film Quarterly can be read online here. 

Patrick Harpur’s book Daimonic Reality can be found here.

For more on remixable media see Lev Manovich’s "Theory of Hybrid Media" can be read here.

Dark Shadows: two thumbs up

 

Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows (2012) reminds me that contained, stock plots and characters can be great. Allowing the proverbial “child in me” to see the wonderment of kitsch, as if it were the first time, and then rip it to shreds, calling its bluff, as if I never had before. 

This is the sort of family film that initiates the child into the the good, the bad, and the confusing of the world:  introducing its characters, themes, and situations in an overture that also sets the seeds for the child’s critical resistance.

This is the sort of family film that stands strong in the face of the hip, current, moment that we live in. Knowingly outdated, it gives its clichés over to audiences and critics (who have deemed it “dated,” “tiresome,” “tedious”) as a punching bag. But if we allow it to get under our skins, those same negative qualities become powerful testaments to the magic of mythic archetypes. Like the protagonist in a Caspar David Freidrich painting (the film makes many a reference to this painter), each time we view the moon, it is as if it is for the first time! Despite the scoffing cynics, who claim, “it’s only the moon.”

This tension between the stale and the fresh, the boring and the sublime, finds its mirror in the plot:

Back in the late 1700s, Depp’s character Barnabus, a small town prince, does not return the  affection of the witch Angelique, so she kills his girlfriend, turns Barn' into a vampire, and has him buried alive by a mob. He's dug out in the 1970s, brought into a world that is humorously foreign to him. He is startled by new technology, new fashion, and new politics (particularly female rights). And everyone else is equally startled by his archaic ways: gothic, exaggerated, Dandyish, old-fashioned but also sexy and stylish.

The Burtonian irony comes from the fact that the 70s itself, with its lava lamps, happenings, and beehive hairdos, seems dated and ludicrous. Everything of the past is morphed into parody through Burton’s eyes. But by now we’re used to Burton’s nostalgic visions. In fact, one feels the film deserves its bad reviews “Burton is merely relying on the same-old formula.”

The film has become the very nostalgic trash Burton seeks to make relevant for the contemporary masses. In fact, it is even lower in mainstream fashionable relevance than the source material it rips from (Dark Shadows: TV soap opera, 1966-1971).

Now it is Burton that needs revamping, redemption, and relevance-boosting. He'll have to outshine his rivals and convince the very young that he is at least relevant enough to be the subject of a parodic homage.

Likewise, in order to redeem himself, Depp’s character, Barnabus must humiliate his only living contemporary, Angelique, the bitch/witch who cursed him (by exposing her to be so contained and old that her skins cracks and crumbles when punched: revealing a hollow interior)...and then sink his teeth into the flesh of a young girl, herself a genius (struck by haunting “visions” created from figments of Barnabus’ own past).  Barnabus does precisely what Burton must do: hypnotize the young into taking cultish interest in his dated style.
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Depp’s characters have long figured as a stand-in for Burton.  Starting with the sexy teen outsider Edward Scissorhands, a grandiose fantasy of Burton’s life as an eccentric artist growing up in the suburbs. When Burton was chained to Disney during the production of Alice in Wonderland; the Mad Hatter (played by Depp) was held prisoner in the Red Queen’s palace, which looked uncannily similar to the Disney Castle.

 

These freakish caricatures that Depp has portrayed have always annoyed me for retaining cuteness despite representing Burton’s twisted fantasies of self-loathing:  the emoting emo outsider (Edward, 1990), the Wacko Jacko pedo (Wonka, 2005), the schizophrenic artist (Mad Hatter, 2010), and the psychopathically vengeful barber (Todd) are all turned into heartthrobs, whose quirks (many of which resemble stereotypical gay mannerisms) just make them more endearing and sexy. And in Dark Shadows, disgustingly, this weird teen hearthrob has grown up...but his love interest has remained a teenager.

I guess I've been bitten because I suddenly wish to grant Burton and Depp the redemption they've never needed from me, give my youth over to the worship of their cult, and herald them as masters of contemporary cinema.

"It's Like I'm Losing My Voice" The Bernadette Peters Saga

For Bernadette Peters’s true (i.e. gay) fans, her 1997 Carnegie Hall concert, Sondheim Etc., is her highest achievement. The theme of afflicted homosexual men haunted the concert, which was both an adoring tribute to the openly homosexual/neurotic composer Stephen Sondheim and a benefit for the AIDS charity “Gay Men’s Health Crisis.” Songs, such as Being Alive and Unexpected Song, were pulled out of their original heteronormative contexts and turned into aestheticized accounts of torturous passion and human precariousness/vulnerability.

Yet most remain ignorant of Bernadette’s full depth, thinking of her only as the sarcastic cupie doll of Mack and Mabel, Song and Dance, The Jerk, and Sunday in the Park with George. Hell, she even played Dainty June in her tiny-tot days! And, let’s not forget, she was also a sex symbol of the mainstream: in the 80’s she posed for Playboy, dated Steve Martin, and hosted SNL. Her first LP featured a winkingly innocent version of Sondheim’s “Broadway Baby,” and a Vargas pin-up portrait of Peters adorned the cover.

And while she has recently become more a sex symbol of the Broadway homo than the average straight guy, her 1999 performance of rough but cutely idiotic Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun proved she had not strayed much from her early pin-up doll roots.

Then suddenly, in all-too abrupt change of gears, here’s Rose! In the 2003 revival of Gypsy, Peters was chastised for being too cute to play Mama Rose. She fell back on her old tricks and played Rose as though she were equal parts Dainty June. Her voice seemed to crack under the pressure, she got “sick” and bombed the Tony award performance and lost the Tony to Hairspray’s Marissa Janet Winoker. And on top of this upset, the butch Patti Lupone won the award for the same part only a year after.

After her Gypsy flop, she suffered the loss of her dear husband, investment adviser, Michael Wittenberg, to a disastrous helicopter accident in 2005. Hesitant to return to the Broadway stage, Peters began touring again only in 2009, a marvelous solo concert that culminated in a benefit for her beloved Broadway Barks charity. She delivered her best performance since Sondheim Etc. giving a biting performance of “Nothing Like A Dame,” which showed her able to satirize the bombshell pin-up doll image she had once perfected and deliver an effortlessly wild, real, and gut wrenching Mama Rose. She could truly connect to the lyrics, most likely due to her Gypsy flop, “Why did I do it? What did it get me?”

She also used the occasion to debut a couple Sondheim songs that she had never performed before that could speak to her new sadness, opening wounds that would replace the trademarked scabs of years gone by. Her rendition of In Buddy’s Eyes and Losing my Mind basically incited a Follies revival on the spot. Peters opened up to life’s tragedies and left us mesmerized, touched, and in tears.


None of this magic was lost in 2009’s revival of a Little Night Music, in which she replaced the wooden Catherine Zeta Jones and wowed critics and theatergoers alike with her sumptuously perfect rendition of “Send in the Clowns.” She was able to graciously transition into maturity and abandon her usual campy, overwrought, Cupie-doll antics that had practically become a kind of self-parody. We glimpsed Bernadette at the close of Gypsy: exhausted, jaded, and disenchanted with the role she had been playing, “losing my timing this late in my career.” Her new quasi-operatic Soprano high notes replaced her usual tortured belting. And night after night she gave an altogether fresh performance.

She also brought this newfound gracefulness to the 2010 Sondheim PBS birthday concert, in which she and Mandy Patinkin reunited (26 years later) to sing the outstanding climax of Sunday in the Park with George that had been the early high-points of their artistic careers. The two returned to the trance that had been the original Broadway run and wrapped us in the glorious tension between the present and the past.

Their youth and their maturity were prolonged until. at maximal intensity. they looked at each other in the eyes: “and the color of your hair and the way you catch the light.” It became a fact; Sondheim and Peters always belong together!
Later, in the concert, she delivered a new version of “Not A Day Goes By,” in which her usual flitting, pushing, hysterics were diminished in favor of a self-reflective and honest version of the song.


Transformed into shtick, this newfound maturity backfired in the 2011 revival of Follies. While most of the legendary actors (notably Jani Maxwell, Elaine Page, Rob Raines, and Danny Burstein) hammed it up with campy excess and self-deprecating humor, leading the audience to fits of laughter; Bernadette Peters played Sally with a clawingly annoying sincerity that almost parodies an artiste in her ‘late period,’ supposedly above the sarcastic cuteness, campy sexiness, show-stopping belting, and extreme emotionality that previously characterized her. And this was absolutely fitting for the part of Sally Plummer—a former showgirl, who had lost the charms of her youth.

We grow accustomed to disliking this character and laughing at her patheticness. But our laughs feel just plain wrong when some of the jabs at Sally seem to be making fun of Peters. Not that we have not laughed at her before! YouTube parodies of Bernadette tally up high viewers, since her bizarrely affected Queens accent, elevated status as Sondheim/gay icon par excellence, and cupey doll looks make her an easy target.

But somewhere towards the end of the show, after we have grown to hate Bernadette/Sally, she takes center stage for “Losing My Mind,” and we are forced to come to terms with this laughing stock that was once a marvel of the theater. The slow orchestration and her inability to vocally belt as she used to, gives the song a stilted paralysis: “not going left, not going right.”
Before the last section of the song, Bernadette seems to realize that she is frozen, that she is cornered into her grief and her loneliness. She then jerks out bits of hysteria that bare only superficial resemblance to the tears she might have cried singing the song in an earlier era.
Bernadette’s older/wiser, but also contained/mediocre rendition of this Sondheim classic, confirms that her famous belting has been amputated by the gods, leaving her merely a false soprano register that fails to compare with the likes of Barbara Cook, whose rendition of Sally in Follies in Concert puts Bernadette to utter shame.

We want Bernadette to ham it up and deliver with desperate excess but the fact is she does not have to work as hard as she used to. The un-loved, un-attractive, and un-famous character comes naturally to her. She no longer has to act in order to achieve pathos; she has become pathos.
In a way Bernadette still hams it up with passive-aggressive desperation: only now, she “belts out” a triumphant, tour-de-force display of anti-climactic, self-composed mediocrity. She is as shticky as ever, only now the shtick is a concerted lack of shtick.

And if she comes off as a boring, narcissistic, past-her-prime, pretentious actress, let us not forget that above all else, this performance is a labor of love for Stephen Sondheim, the generous father-figure who has spoiled her with archetypically rich songs and characters that have begun to outshine Peters, leaving her to makes entrances again and again … until, alas, as Sondheim wrote in “Send in the Clowns,” “no one [is] there.”

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