Stuck Between Two Different Parts of the World: Kung Fu Hustle

This film was my first Kung Fu Cinema. Unless you would really Call Rush Hour 1 and 2, Kung Fu Cinema…I guess so. I always heard about Bruce Lee and I definitely know Jackie Chan, and now here are some new names for me. I was leery about watching this film, with the mentality in mind that it may be cheesy, but I was actually wrong. I really enjoyed this film! It was one of my favorites in this class this semester. It had comedy, drama, romance, action…basically it was a blockbuster. However, it was not a predictable blockbuster that can be really annoying. I believe that I enjoyed this movie so much is because of the familiar plots and aesthetics it has evoked. 

Dumas believes Kung Fu Hustle “detaches “kung fu from many of its associations with main land politics in an attempt to appeal to a more progressive, cosmopolitan generation that the one before” (Dumas). We clearly see Western style/plot: the “ten-gallon” hat, shoot-offs, music, “city-life.” Fulfilled 21^st century action cinema: “high budget, stylish, and action-packed” (Dumas). Mixed with that is the genre Wuxia Pian—new and wildly popular literary genre characterized by fantastic depictions of local space of the past, superhuman feats, and dramatic/dangerous romantic liaisons. It is large and in charge! Though being a blockbuster, it links to Hong Kong identity. It represents China in the present and past, and kung fu heroism. However, all of this connects to Western ideologies. We all, especially me, link between Chinese martial arts and popular entertainment. This film reminded me of The Matrix, Rush Hour, some John Wayne westerns, and probably a bunch more! When I think of Chinese films, I think of martial arts…nothing else. That is what probably most of Western culture thinks. Foreign films cater to what we preconceived, and they show exactly that and more. Dumas explains this well in the reading:

“Though this merging of Eastern and Western spaces and aesthetics might be viewed, to some extent, as a reflection of Hong Kong’s own unique experience as a “third” nation, the unnaturalness of Chow’s synthesis of prevalent conceptualizations of China and America’s past seems haphazardly composed not in any sincere attempt to explore Chinese or Hong Kong identity, but rather in order to appeal to some preconceived notion of the national sentiment and sensibilities of potential viewers worldwide” (Dumas).

Now after filtering that through our brains…what do you think? Should films, whether Western or foreign, should cater to the audience not from their country to their preconceived notions, and their ideologies? Or should they stick to their roots?

Driving through Dreams: Mulholland Drive

This movie is crazy…but crazy good! I have never watched a David Lynch movie, and I am kind of glad this one was the first one. I knew that Lynch’s auteur style is more on the non-mainstream style, and I definitely saw that. I had to go into a surrealist mindset to sort of understand this film. This film is very “dream-like” and not everything I watch I will fully understand. This may be frustrating for some of the audience members, but it is not really for me. It wasn’t until the reading; I sort of understood/explored the possible meanings behind this film. 

I really feel that this film takes the perspective of the dreamer being Hollywood. Dreams are “learned habits of the mind” that usually “fail to support our needs, but often loom as frightening adversaries in our struggle to cope” (Nochimson). This dream we see reveals a sad, horrific, confusing, grotesque results, such as Betty/Diane’s suicide (Nochimson). Usually the Hollywood we see isn’t always happy ending.  This dream seems mechanical, a “mass-market machine that feeds on genuine, not imaginary, creative impulses and turns them into waste products” (Nochimson). Life and death. Lynch also plays on those usual Hollywood stereotypes, but then twists them to the unordinary, not seen personas. Hence the artificial acting (at first). We root for Betty and her success, but as soon as she has everything, she loses everything in one moment. A missed opportunity of meeting with Adam, the famous Hollywood director, which later results to a “butterfly effect”. It was from the moment on that things started going downhill. 

This dream we are watching is created by a culture industry, Hollywood, which has a lot of power and control. It is filled with life and death, defeat and hope…we see all of that in various films, especially the classic ones (Nochimson).  There are lots of illusion, and void within this dream-like film, especially when Betty and Rita go to Club Silencio. We hear the band, the singing, but there is nothing there. The film ends with Club Silencio, with a woman saying “Silencio” (which means silence in Spanish). This phrase resonates on the audience, hence the long black screen before the credits…”full of signs of both empty illusion and fullness of possibility” (Nochimson). I agree with the reading, this brings a questionable future not for the characters, but for Hollywood/popular culture (Nochimson). But also for us. Possibilities can come out of this dark void, but also death.   

The Deepened Roots of Daughters of the Dust

Daughters of the Dust at first caught me off guard. I was annoyed that most of the movie, I did not understood what any of the women and men were saying. Without knowing what the characters were saying, I did not know the plot. Yes, I understood that these women were going to the Americas, learning about the modern times, and having conflicts with new ideas such as religion…that was basically it. It wasn’t until I read the reading that I began to understand the context of the narrative, and the reasoning behind this film. This is a film about family, and passes the Bechdel Test: 1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it, 2. Who talk to each other, 3. About something besides a man. 

In addition, this film is not the ordinary mainstream film, it breaks a lot of barriers. First, it has “intentionally broken with mainstream filmmaking approaches that too often reduce the complexities of black life to homogenized, ready-made film commodities...” (Everett). Second, “Her goal was to tell a story as an African griot would, with an unfolding, like women’s weaving” (Everett). Third, it is not plot driven, but “heavily influenced by foreign films…” (Everett). Fourth (and fifth), she experimented with film speeds and speculative fiction. This film isn’t supposed to be easy for the audience to watch, because it is not the norm…especially if the audience member is white. Dash desires to “rewrite cinematic images of black women and break completely with traditional film stereotypes” (Everett). We are watching these women through a different lens, not an urban setting with gangs, poverty, etc. or a civil war/slavery in America context. We are like the character Trula. Dash says, “Trula was the vehicle used to represent the audience. This is why she does not speak. She is like the audience—she does not understand the dialect [nor] the religion” (Everett). We don’t understand this film because it breaks away from the usual film portrayal of African Americans. 

Daughters of the Dust is a “more accurate representation of African disaporic cultural traditions”, filled with Gullah dialect which “reflects the dislocated Africans’ retention of remnants of their language” (which we have to really listen while watching), and the influence of African American jazz/blues on the visual aesthetic (Everett). What we see and experience in this film is ancestry/roots. Dash describes this film as “a film that was like a heirloom itself… I wanted to create these tableaux images like frescos in your mind…” (Everett).  I hope the next time I watch a film like this, I do not get frustrated at the abnormality, but embrace it, because Dash really reveals a whole new outlook on African American women.

A Stream-of-Consciousness Blog about Do the Right Thing

After watching parts and pieces of this film and reading “A Theater of Interruptions”, there were many small thoughts involving this film, Do the Right Thing, which sparked my interest. So this blog may seem very “stream-of-consciousness”…so bear with me.

Do the Right Thing has a lot of juxtaposing ideas jumbled up in a hot and tense atmosphere (literally and metaphorically). Radio Raheem blasts Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” on his boombox and wears two four-fingered rings that say “love” and “hate”. Also, Smiley has pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. –quotes from both of these figures end the movie. The idea of whether or not to act in love or in hate is one of the main turmoil’s in this film. Tolerance can be seen in some of the characters, but most of the characters at the end of the film result to acts of hate and violence. Not only in this fictionalized world have we seen this conflict, but also in our reality. Should we love everyone, and not act out in violence, even those who hate our race, gender, sexual orientation, etc? Or defend ourselves with violence? 

Sharon Willis describes Spike Lee has “always provoked discord” (Willis). He has! Especially being in an artistic position of “representing the communities from which [he has] come [from]” (Willis). The audience, like with other directors such as Hitchcock and Woody Allen, are not sure the role the director plays as a director and as a character in his film. Lee in most of his films “circulates his own image…whose roles from film to film vary dramatically” and this disturbs the “on-screen and off-screen realities” (Willis). This film disturbs this reality even more because Lee also casts his own sister as a character. Breaking the fourth wall and having the director in the film makes the audience aware that the film is fictional, but also makes the “directedness” of being addressed more personal/involved with the film. We see this in the scene when the characters are “sharing some thoughts on ethnicity”. The camera zooms in close; the characters are looking directly at the camera, and they share their thoughts to the audience not the other characters. These “soliloquies” that “interrupt dramatic action and verbal exchange” through a series of vignettes makes this film seem not part of the Hollywood conventions of cinema (Willis). I really enjoy that!

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Mess around with different lenses (such as the fish-eye), personify the camera, montage editing, break the fourth wall…have fun! Be creative! It is not like I oppose the some conventional Hollywood films, but I give and extra “kudos!” to the directors who mess around and go away from the usual. Hitchcock, Lee, and Allen are all defined auteurs; it is because of their unconventionality. I just wish more of the popular films today didn’t always follow the conventions and changed it up a bit (not the same song and dance)…well maybe that is why there are called “mainstream”.     

Argento's Alluring Ambience

Argento has no interest in realism whatsoever; Suspiria is self-consciously stylized, and artificial. Suspiria is about intense color as much as it is about anything. Maitland McDonagh describes Argento’s colors as “aggressively unnatural, perhaps like stained glass—saturated yellow and deep cobalt blue—perhaps artificially limpid, glittering plane turquoise and green. And always red, rich and clear” (McDonagh). Argento’s phantasmagoria goes for the exact opposite of the usual vivid and colorful film, disrupting every inch of the way and graphically visualizing the bodily violence and dismemberment, like a Grimm fairytale...it is not “kool-aidesque”. 

This film is based around gothic spaces, childhood fantasies of something horrific “out there” in the dark come true, such as a room may be inexplicably full of sharp wire coils, a bat may suddenly attack, and maggots may drop from the ceiling into your hair as if to suggest a state of rotting within the house. There are themes of instability and disorientation within the lusciousness and beauty of Argento's destabilized world. Throughout the film we are held captive(well I really was) by every image—whether the drive from the airport, a walk up or down the gilded school staircase, or a subjective traveling shot through the red corridor of the dance school. The audience experiences these aesthetically beautiful images more than the narrative itself. McDonagh explains such criticisms: “Even allowing for the degree to which narrative is made deliberately subordinate to  mise-en-scene, it must be conceded that Argento can be a sloppy writer” (McDonagh). Each room of the school is highly ornamental, as are the film's other gothic locales, such as the irises by Madame Blanc's desk, and the geometric stained glass windows. Many frames have a painterly composition, with characters positioned in doorways or mirror frames that set them apart graphically from other characters. Indeed, spatial aesthetics connects to story when the key to the narrative mystery turns out to be a reference to design and color, such as the iris. 

The various murder scenes functions in two crucial ways: thematically and stylistic. This early double-murder sequence is typical for the film, in that our attention is drawn to graphics, such as the squares of the grid Pat is stabbed against. Here and everywhere in the set decorations we see these shapes, especially the first murder. In this first murder, the geometric orders of angles with the random formlessness of bloodstains resemble nothing more than an expressionist painter's messy, colorful pallet. 

Even through Argento creates a beautiful environment surrounding these brutal murders, he “murders and main and splatters blood with abstract abandon” in a “hedonist” way (McDonagh). This creation may be a reason why this film is a favorite with many people, particularly women…we are all enthralled with the mise-en-scene. In the words of McDonagh: “The imagery is bizarre, almost surreal…” (McDonagh). Personally, I dislike slasher films especially scenes of brutal murder/gore involving a woman. Why would we watch and enjoy voyeuristically viewing something like that? Now that can be a never-ending debate that may never be answered. All I know is that “the world of Dario Argento is one of twisted logic, rhapsodic violence, [and] stylized excess…” (McDonagh).

"This is no dream! This is really happening!"

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is a Gothic spectacle deep with controversy. There is “violence, deceit, and misappropriation of a woman’s body by people she trusts…” (Valerius). Most importantly, there are the concerns about abortion. During the 1960’s, women (not just the feminists) argued for “repeal of abortion laws on the grounds of a woman’s right of self-determination” (Valerius). This film by Roman Polanski helps build mainstream public support for abortion reform through the expression of a literary and cinematic convention of horror. Rosemary’s Baby revolves around witchcraft, the idea of the un-dead (seen in Stoker’s Dracula), and Immaculate Conception/demonic pregnancy.

Many thoughts and questions come to mind to the audience. The audience views a frightening situation of Rosemary’s body being violated, then dealing with the pangs of pregnancy, to the birth of a monster. Polanski places the audience amidst Rosemary’s mind and perspective, to bond the audience to her. For example, when Rosemary looks at her sick reflection in a shop window or when she is running away from the doctor and her husband trying to escape. This subjective camera makes things very personal. We are invited to identify with her and to provoke our fear on her behalf (Valerius). Rosemary is violated physically and even in her privacy. She becomes entrapped, and the audience cannot help her even though we are feeling the same feelings, especially when she is between reality and a dream-like state. When being raped, she finally comes out of a dream-like state and realizes that it was not a dream: “This is no dream! This is really happening!” (Rosemary’s Baby). The camera angles during this experience alternate which “produce the effect of shifts in perspective” (Valerius). Rosemary protests and acknowledges the distinction between reality and fantasy and delivers this protest into the camera and makes a direct address to the audience. This implicates the audience as voyeurs, warns the audience that the situation is not fantasy, and seeks the audience as witness of her rape/potential allies (Valerius). Unfortunately, she later fails to differentiate her experience as real. 

 The audience is scared for Rosemary and wants her to escape from such patriarchal dominance and deception. Everything happening to her is not right! So if this is not right, then this brings back to the question and idea of abortion. Is that right? Should that be legal? That is really the backbone of this film—the historical context of the current events of the 1960’s. This issue is still argued over today, and I do not think there will ever be a clear answer.

The Strong Struggling Sarah Connor

Sarah Connor. Now she is not the ordinary societal woman and mother. Well, she was at first until Reese came amidst her life in the 1980’s. Over the years, she has transformed herself from the mousy, timid woman seen at the beginning of the first movie into a muscled, ferocious warrior, trying to let humanity know about the upcoming apocalypse. We at first see her in the confines of a mental institution, doing chin-ups. She is determined to escape and destroy Skynet before they complete their most powerful creation, a cyborg. From watching scenes of being tazed, tied-down to the bed, abused by the guards, and nightmares of children on swings being destroyed by a blast—the audience feels sympathy for her.  However, her fixation on the disaster, and also her obsessive desire to keep John safe has made her a little mentally unstable and very violent, which is only aggravated by her fear and hatred of the T-800.

Her anger drives her…which helps but really hurts her. Even when she is escaping from the hospital, she encounters the T-800. Fear ultimately overtakes her, but later anger. She does not believe that this particular terminator is benevolent, no matter how many times her son pleads with her. The past events have really influenced her view of the machines—she thinks they are just plain evil. The audience can feel and view her frustration  with the ignorance of society, her distrust with the T-800, fear of the T-1000, anger with the difficulties of destroying Skynet, and the worry of protecting her son, John. That is a lot of weight to carry for one person. I feel this film focuses on Sarah more than anyone else. Yes, Arnold with a giant gun, and the “Hasta la vista baby!” is cool, and the CGU effects as well, however, most of the shots in the film focus on Sarah Connor. Her character is crucial in the series (and later John Connor). She had to deal with the terminators coming back time and time again most of her life. Plus, taking care of John! She embodies the ultimate empowered woman. Feminists must love her. She is wearing the “pants” (literally and metaphorically) and knows how to shoot a gun (well, various ones that are also huge). Optimistically, after all the struggle, anger, and finally destroying everything from Skynet that will connect to the future destruction (fingers crossed!), she can sit back and relax. Or maybe not.