Assignment 4: Psycho

1.Van Sant's Psycho is unusual because it is not trying to be better than Hitchcock's, it is simply a homage. Also, it does not hold the shock value that the original did in killing off the heroine in the first half.  It also copies Hitchcock's line-for-line and shot-for-shot. The "yawning fallacies" suggested by his approach are that it is such a literal remake it would not work with any creativity, but it is practically forgery or counterfeit.  Also, it raises the question how can a film be identical to its original, yet different.  Some logistical problems included all 1990s license plates, and the difficulty of finding a car with one large front seat to slide on, rather than two separate seats (with a center console, making sliding across difficult).

2. In Van Sant's Psycho, Marion is not killed in the shower, she is only spied on.  This is different Hitchcock's because the audience expects the shower scene murder, many people know about that without having seen the movie, so they are expecting it, which is why Van Sant snubs those expectations.

3. Naremore thought that Robert Forster's performance gave the psychiatrist more authority, that the Bates house looked too modernized, and that Van Sant ruined one of the "most famous dissolves in film history".  He uses the story of the royal cook to say that even if Van Sant made a film identical to Hitchcock's, it would not be good because it was not part of the contexts of the original, just like how the king's mulberry omelette wasn't as good because it did not have all the meaning that it did when the king was a child.

4. Rothman says that since the shots copy Hitchcock so closely, but are not HItchcock's, they don't work.  His authorship is so unique, and Hitchcockian shots cannot mean all the things that his do.  Leitch questions Rothman's assumptions that Hitchcock is an author and Van Sant is not, saying that he bases his arguments on five of Hitchcock's films, but undermines Van Sant saying that his shots aren't even gestures. Timothy Gould objects to Rothman, saying that Rothman has no authority to decide whether Hitchcock or Van Sant is an author.

5. Because he was the last author.  Psycho was terrifying for 1960s audiences, and Leitch says that if he showed his students this film back then, they would ask to leave because they were afraid.  Now, they say "is that it?" because it was so influential because of the shock of it, and then the shock sets new standards, so old films are not as scary anymore because scarier things have come after.

6. Because in assuming that everyone had seen Hitchcock's Psycho, he he could "regulate the interpretation of his homage because its classic status and the reactions of its original audience could be universally stipulated".  

7. He has an interest in "rendering the subjective experience of troubled, disaffected youths and young adults".  Other thematic concerns that he mentions are the idea of leaving home to escape controlling norms and ideals, and searching for intimate relationships. In relation to Psycho, it involves troubled youths, Marion leaving home to escape her troubles, and the use of inserted subjective shots (such as Arbogast's vision of falling down the stairs).

8. He uses subjective shots and voice-over narration to bond the audience to the protagonists' inner thoughts. He compares being murdered to an orgasm, a drug high, and a narcoleptic seizure, which are all moments in Van Sant's other films that contain similar subjective shots of visions.

9. How does Van Sant’s typical strategy of casting against expectation suggest new or different meanings in Van Sant’s Psycho? (Specifically the casting of Marion, Norman, and Lila?)

The casting of Marion was interesting because she is a woman living in a man's world, and is unfulfilled, and he chose to cast Anne Heche, who was known to be a lesbian. Norman was originally cast as Anthony Perkins who was suspected to be gay, and is portrayed as effeminate in Hitchcock's Psycho, and Van Sant cast against this expectation by choosing Vince Vaughn who is known for his heterosexuality.  He also included a scene where Bates masturbates while watching Marion enter the shower, which contrasts with Hitchcock's Bates who looks at her with no emotion.  This suggests that Bates kills her because she is indifferent to his heterosexual advances. Also, Julianne Moore's portrayal of Lila is that of a powerful, liberated woman who helps capture Bates, which contrasts to Hitchcock's meek, helpless Lila.

Assignment 3: My Own Private Idaho

1. The dialogues and characters are similar or parallel to those in Shakespeare's Henry IV, such as Bob Pigeon who is a parallel to Falstaff, Scott is equivalent to Shakespeare's Prince Hal, and Van Sant has modernized and placed Shakespaere's dialogue into Portland, with Scott's line to Bob about how he he would only look at clocks if they were lines of coke.

2.They represent the conventional(old) and the unconventional (young)Falstaff, and the link between the characters is established from the very beginning when Mike is wearing a shirt that says Bob on it. When I watched it, I actually thought Mike's name was Bob for the first couple scenes. Chimes at Midnight is significant because Van Sant comments on it in My Own Private Idaho, with the character Mike, and draws parallels and dissimilarities from it in this film. He reverses the role of Scott and Mike in the prank on Bob from what it was in Chimes.

3. It emphasizes the relationship of Scott and Mike as equals, as brothers.  The rejection of the Falstaff characters in this context makes Scott more heartless than Prince Hal is in the play, because it is not necessary for him to reject them, he does not need to erase them from his past like Hal does in the plays. 

4. He becomes a crueler character, one who throws away relationships and is fickle. He conforms to heterosexuality and the world of his father's politicians at the end, abandoning Mike and Bob, and the film remains centralized on them, forgetting Scott, because its focus is on the usually-forgotten Falstaffs.

Michael Newman, “Indie Culture: In Pursuit of the Authentic Autonomous Alternative”

5.He says that the "indie" movement "challenges the mainstream" and that in doing so, it creates another consumer audience for which it is produced.  He believes the tension is that indie cinema has created a group that is straying from the mainstream to be non-commercialized, but in doing so they create a commercialized product, just for a different, prosumer audience.

6. Independent was known to be contemptuous of the mainstream, purposely straying from it, believing that modesty is virtue, and low budgets can be an aesthetic choice.  Not only is it present in film, but also in music such as Green Day, with audiences that are constantly rejecting "sell outs" because they have given up artistic integrity for money or conformity. Independent filmmakers maintain credibility by keeping consistent with their indie style, even if they just so happen to become popular, but will lose it if they change to appease the masses.

7. There was a shift when TV commercials began using indie bands, but this was not seen as selling out, it was seen as getting good, interesting music out there since it could not air on major label-controlled MTV. It challenges the idea of mainstream being anti-indie.

8. He says that indie music creates its own audience of a certain type, usually urban, white, and male, who are given a group to join that is above the mainstream. The "imagined audience for indie culture is a cliche' of liberal elites".

9. The film stayed authentic by keeping in the scene that Universal did not like, therefore they did not distribute it. Solondz was disappointed by the box office sales though, and blamed it on Good Machine for not being an experienced distributor. But he still accepted the money that Universal gave him under the table, in case the film made money. This makes the artistic autonomy questionable because they still took money from the company that tried to change it, and then wouldn't distribute it because Solondz didn't do what Universal wanted him to do. 

10. He says that indie culture is not autonomous because there is no contradiction between "consumer capitalism and that of alternative cultural movements", and it depends on the maintream to be anti-mainstream. He also says that the mainstream culture has in a way "bought in" to the indie culture, making indie culture no less credible than mainstream culture because that culture's participants are the ones who ultimately decide what is and isn't credible, within the context of their culture.

Assignment 2

Sorry, I realized that I posted the homework for this blog on a blog for another class.

1."Independent" could mean exploitation aimed at a younger market, free of a studio budget, and avant-garde such as Stan Brakhage which was completely independent of finance and weren't meant for regular distribution. In the 1980s and 1990s, the video store opened, so more studios were trying to make more "independent" films because there was now a much wider market, so studios used films with non-stars such as Dirty Dancing and Nightmare on Elm Street to produce cheap movies.

2. There was a new market from cable and video rentals that high-end studios weren't exploiting yet, and various studios such as New Line, New World, and Goldwyn took advantage of this time. Hillier describes a "continuum" of independent films which make "very different products with very different origins and aspirations".

3. Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction "dismantled" the structure of independent distribution and production in the 1980s, and the term "major independent" was created. Miramax became associated with Disney for independent production.

4. Miramax was a division of Disney, and they produced Pulp Fiction which cost a lot of money because of the star cast, and was not really independent, at all, and this film opened up the door for them to distribute larger films as independents until "independent became dependent", because the studios liked having independents so they spent more money on them and had more control over them.

5. In 2001, he said that Van Sant was incorporating himself into the mainstream with Good Will Hunting and Psycho, but in 2003 he re-evaluated his assessment because he says that with Elephant and Gerry, he has returned to his American independent roots because they are slightly experimental in nature and have an independent nature.Kristin Thompson, “Modern Classicism”

6. "Post-classical" film argues that old Hollywood was on the decline by the early 1960s, and was replaced by "youthquake" films which have kept their style in the present, a style which incorporates auteurs, high violence and sexual content, and a star-studded cast and special effects to drive the plot line, rather than story, but she believes that stories in current Hollywood follow the same narrative structure as old Hollywood. She uses Jaws and Star Wars to support her argument because though they do have stars and special effects, they have strong story lines that are driven with a fast pace, just like old, or classical Hollywood narratives.

7. An easy-to-follow chain of cause and effect, every action, character, and emotion is motivated and justified by another part of the film, consistent characters with consistent goals and desires, and a chain of questions.

8. The setup (initial situation is established), the complicating action(takes the action in a new direction), the development(the protagonist's struggle toward his or her goals), and the climax(action shifts toward the final resolution). They help her provide a more nuanced analysis of Terminator 2 because she balances out the imbalanced three-act structure set up by Syd Field, and she marks important events, such as the dialogue between John and The Terminator.

9. Attempt to break down the structure of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues according to Thompson's model.
Setup: Sissy is with doctor, and we see her hitchhiking.
Complicating Action: Sissy struggles with her virginity and need to stay on the move, ends up at the Ranch.
Development: Sissy falls in love with Jellybean, the cowgirls take hold of the farm.
Climax: Jellybean is shot.

Assignment 1

1. The Discipline of D.E. and Mala Noche have many similar aspects.  Most obviously, both are in black and white. Both use low key lighting and include close ups of various household objects, such as the pot of boiling water in Mala Noche and the spilt milk in Discipline of D.E.  Also, which may be caused by the time these were made, characters in them wear clothing with similar patterns. In contrast, Discipline of D.E. has voice over narration, whereas Mala Noche does not.  Also, Mala Noche uses a few canted angles, and Discipline of D.E. does not.  

2. Mala Noche's narrative structure is basically classical Hollywood style, but with a twist.  It does contain two lines of action, like most Hollywood films, which would be a heterosexual love story and some other type of action.  Mala Noche's main plot is about the main character's sexual desire for Johnny, with the second line of action being his relationship to Papas progressing.  Homosexuality is virtually never seen in classical Hollywood.  This film also keeps continuous time like most Hollywood narratives.  

3.  By choosing a particular style or method of doing things, and doing it repetitively and consistently in all of your work, you are recognized a unique and individual author.  Those that stray far from what is considered the average are especially unique and stylized, because they are distinguishable from all other artists.

4. 1. Creation of alter egos: The author creates a character that speaks for the author, or places a minority character in the lead role to convey his or her feelings about the issue at hand.

2. Silence: When the minority figure cannot fight anymore, his silence acts as speech.

3. Repetition: This is a tool used for parody, and mimicry marks rebellion and resistance to the norm.

4. Recombination: Authors rewrite well-known formulas to give a different slant on the already-in-place standards.

5. Inversion: Acknowledging how a particular subject is generally addressed, and then reacting to it in the way that is opposite from the norm.

6. Accentuation: Accenting a certain symbol to try to control or comment on its customary meaning.

5. Staiger says that critics think Van Sant modernizes Shakespeare, and uses allusions to comment on the ever-present homosexual undertones of Shakespeare's work.  Van Sant said that he uses these allusions to create episodes, linking together the story as a whole.  Staiger says that Van Sant's comments explain his use of intertextual references as "glue" to link his stories together.

6. Van Sant uses intertextual references to show common things with an ironic tone, with the "strangeness of referencing... that queers the situation in unexpected ways" (Straiger).  With his post-gay stance, he reminds his audience that he is not gay first, there are many other aspects about himself and his films, not just homosexuality.  So he uses intertextual references to push his idea that yes, his characters may be gay, but what's most important about them is such and such.

7. Staiger argues that ironical repetition is Van Sant's foundational authorial tactic because all of his films are similar to and resemble other films.  The greatest argument for this is Finding Forrester, which is practically a remake of his film Good Will Hunting, and he did a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. He also alludes to his other films within his films.

8. In Hitchcock's Psycho, he casted Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, who was highly suspected of being gay, whereas Van Sant casted Vince Vaughn, who is known to be heterosexual, and emphasizes his heterosexuality in the film, which goes against expectations.  Also, he used Anne Heche, who is known to be a lesbian, and makes her the object of desire to Vince Vaughn, which is ironic because we know she has no interest in him, or his gender.