tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/david-lynch-12800/articles
David Lynch – The Conversation
2023-09-12T12:28:43Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210436
2023-09-12T12:28:43Z
2023-09-12T12:28:43Z
Why ‘Barbie’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’ made 2023 the dead girl summer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546713/original/file-20230906-15-7eas9t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2946%2C1666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In one sense, Barbie is already dead, cheerfully doomed to repeat the same pink day, devoid of food, conflict and sex.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nicole-morson-looks-at-a-barbie-of-swam-lake-doll-and-news-photo/2571814?adppopup=true">Chris Hondros/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ariel and Barbie have quite a bit in common: They’re both frozen in time, and they both yearn to live as humans do.</p>
<p>The fantastic seascapes and perfect dollhouses of “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5971474/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_the%2520little%2520merma">The Little Mermaid</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_3_q_barbie">Barbie</a>” might appear whimsical. But I see these settings – and the characters who inhabit them – as figurations of death. </p>
<p>In my forthcoming book, I consider the relationship between mermaids and Barbie dolls. In the case of the 2023 films, I couldn’t help but think about how Ariel and Barbie make the same ironic choice: to leave the stasis of their deathlike existence for a human life – which ends in death. </p>
<p>These dead girls offer insights about living. Embracing death’s inevitability brings some freedom, as well as access to truths about time and the natural world.</p>
<h2>‘I am dead yet I live’</h2>
<p>Ariel and Barbie are not your typical dead girls – at least in the literary sense.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/dead-girls-alice-bolin?variant=32217989677090">dead girl trope</a> goes back to <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/4/5/">Shakespeare’s Ophelia</a>, who drowns herself after being driven to madness by Hamlet’s erratic, abusive speech. But dead girls have long populated folktales about <a href="https://sites.pitt.edu/%7Edash/type0410.html#perrault">sleeping beauties</a> and <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/heritage_floor/kore">myths of goddesses traversing the underworld</a>. </p>
<p>Today, the trope is often found <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039545/">in noirish mysteries</a>. These narratives frequently prioritize the development of a male protagonist – a detective who grapples with his own mortality while solving a crime that regularly involves sexual violence.</p>
<p>David Lynch’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/">Twin Peaks</a>,” which first aired on ABC in 1990, wields this version of the trope. FBI agent Dale Cooper investigates the murder of Laura Palmer, a homecoming queen whose corpse is discovered wrapped in plastic. Though Laura Palmer has been victimized, she isn’t voiceless. She appears in flashbacks and has recorded her feelings and desires in diary entries.</p>
<p>In Showtime’s 2017 reboot, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4093826/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_twin%2520peaks%2520the%2520return">Twin Peaks: The Return</a>,” the afterlife version of Laura tells Cooper, “I am dead yet I live.” </p>
<p>Ariel and Barbie are their films’ protagonists, and they don’t die via murder. But they nevertheless actualize Laura’s words: Choosing flesh over immortality is to live and die, too.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A bouquet of withering pink flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546718/original/file-20230906-31-r0qj33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barbie and Ariel choose life – even as they know it will ultimately end in death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/wilted-flowers-royalty-free-image/685478293?phrase=pink+death&adppopup=true">Jonathan Knowles/Stone via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dreaming death in fish tails and pink</h2>
<p>“Do you guys ever think about death?” asks the character known as “Stereotypical Barbie,” played by Margot Robbie, a few scenes into the film. The irony is that Barbie is already dead, cheerfully doomed to repeat the same pink day, devoid of food, conflict and sex. </p>
<p>Barbie’s dreamworld is home to many iterations of its title character, including Mermaid Barbie. There are also a number of Kens. They are coupled, but they aren’t having sex. As Stereotypical Barbie declares, Barbies don’t have vaginas, and Kens don’t have penises. </p>
<p>Fish tails don’t typically feature vaginas either. The virginal Ariel is stuck in her fin, fathoms below.</p>
<p>Ariel and Barbie don’t get periods and can’t get pregnant. They’ll also never go through menopause.</p>
<p>In their films, the protagonists reject dollified existences and choose human life with its opportunities for sex and unavoidable death. Ariel leaves the ocean’s eternity for the prince’s land-world after she saves him. Barbie sacrifices physical perfection – her own and Ken’s – for the possibility of authentic intimacy and the spontaneity of an aging female body. The latter leads her to visit the gynecologist’s office at the film’s conclusion.</p>
<p>Hollywood films promise happily ever afters, but those weren’t the main draw for audiences of “The Little Mermaid” and “Barbie.” </p>
<p>I think that part of what drove theater attendance this summer was a subconscious attraction to the deathlike repetition of timeless dreamworlds, whether underwater or plastered in pink.</p>
<p>As dead girls, Ariel and Barbie are appealing vessels because, in them, time stops: You can’t be out of time when there is no time to begin with.</p>
<p>A water-bound mermaid and an ageless doll present a “timeout,” especially for girls and women pressured to achieve specific education and other life goals within certain time frames. Fish-tailed mermaids and Barbie dolls are free from ticking biological and career clocks – although they imagine or play at the things determined by those clocks, too. As a doll, Barbie gets to have any and all jobs, trading one for another whenever her player gets bored. She can be a doctor, an astronaut or even president of the United States.</p>
<p>Audiences might go to the movies to escape reality. Yet, Barbie and Ariel choose to enter reality, leaving their respective dreamworlds. Such outcomes make the films relevant to the summer of 2023: The dead girl can’t age, but her perpetual youth signals the future’s promises, even when there is no promise of a future.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The tail of a mermaid covered in sand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546716/original/file-20230906-23-2maja2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ariel chooses to leave behind her fish-tailed existence for life on Earth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/beautiful-pink-mermaids-tail-on-the-beach-mettams-royalty-free-image/954670096?phrase=mermaid+illustration+death&adppopup=true">Robbie Goodall/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>‘This sad, vanishing world’</h2>
<p>In her fish-tailed state, Ariel sings about wanting to know about fire and its causes, questions applicable to this summer’s reckoning with global warming. Humans have scorched the planet to fulfill a desire for, among other things, plastic – <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/barbie-and-the-american-dream">the very material that made Barbie possible</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4189155-summer-heat-breaks-records/">The unprecedented heat in the summer of 2023</a> demands that everybody listen to another ticking clock, the one counting down to environmental ruin.</p>
<p>Ariel and Barbie choose to live in the world their audiences inhabit, even though the characters are fully aware that humans are destructive and cause suffering.</p>
<p>“The Little Mermaid” is explicit about how humans hurt the ecosystem, a critique made by Black mermaids <a href="https://theconversation.com/disneys-black-mermaid-is-no-breakthrough-just-look-at-the-literary-subgenre-of-black-mermaid-fiction-194435">in older folk tales and recent literature inspired by them</a>. Ariel and Eric inevitably sail away, leaving her home under the sea and his coastal kingdom. The bittersweet ending suggests they, each equipped with knowledge of the other’s world, will carry insights about environmental harmony to other places.</p>
<p>“The Little Mermaid” and “Barbie,” I believe, reveal a truth found in many sacred stories. If you accept that you are dead already and that time is always passing away, you might gain the freedom to truly embrace the brief life you do have in what the Hindu deity Krishna <a href="https://web.english.upenn.edu/%7Ecavitch/pdf-library/Bhagavad_Gita_chs8-12.pdf">described as</a> “this sad, vanishing world.”</p>
<p>Or <a href="https://poemanalysis.com/william-butler-yeats/nineteen-hundred-and-nineteen/">as W.B. Yeats wrote</a>, “Man is in love and loves what vanishes, / What more is there to say?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Kapurch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
People might go to the movies to escape reality. Yet Barbie and Ariel choose to live in the world their audiences inhabit − and, in doing so, decide to die.
Katie Kapurch, Associate Professor of English, Texas State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195437
2022-12-02T02:26:46Z
2022-12-02T02:26:46Z
The ‘greatest film of all time’: Chantal Akerman’s win shows a generational shift is taking place among critics and filmmakers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498568/original/file-20221201-6380-swpnv5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C4%2C1588%2C893&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073198/">Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles</a> – Chantal Akerman’s 1975 hypnotic study of a mother performing domestic chores in microscopic detail – has just been crowned the “greatest film of all time” in Sight and Sound’s prestigious poll.</p>
<p>It is only the fourth film to have topped the list since polling began, and the first directed by a woman.</p>
<p>The full list of 100 films was <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time">published today</a>, with the top ten:</p>
<ol>
<li>Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)</li>
<li>Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)</li>
<li>Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)</li>
<li>Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)</li>
<li>In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)</li>
<li>2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)</li>
<li>Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)</li>
<li>Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)</li>
<li>Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)</li>
<li>Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)</li>
</ol>
<p>If you are looking for a crash-course in film history, this is not a bad place to start.</p>
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<h2>How did we get here?</h2>
<p>Once a decade since 1952, the British Film Institute’s magazine <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound">Sight and Sound</a> has polled filmmakers, critics, curators and programmers from around the world, asking them to name their ten best films ever made.</p>
<p>In the film world, this is the list that counts. </p>
<p>It is collated by the industry itself, its rankings are a barometer of changing movie-going tastes, and the ten year wait between each announcement cements its reputation. </p>
<p>Polling began in June this year and everyone is sworn to secrecy. Mike Williams, the editor of Sight and Sound, <a href="https://www.thestrandmagazine.com/single-post/2020/01/14/in-conversation-with-mike-williams-editor-in-chief-of-sight-sound">has spoken</a> about the magazine’s “credibility, authority, and an international reputation that’s second to none”.</p>
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<p>The first winner in 1952 was Vittorio de Sica’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Thieves">Bicycle Thieves</a> (1948), the masterpiece of Italian neorealism. In the five polls from 1962 to 2002, the winner remained the same: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_Kane">Citizen Kane</a>, Orson Welles’ 1941 debut. </p>
<p>Kane’s status as the “greatest” was consistently reinforced by directors and critics who admired Welles’ authorial single-mindedness, his chutzpah and his daring dismantling of Hollywood’s rules about storytelling and visual composition.</p>
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<p>Citizen Kane was finally dethroned in 2012 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertigo_(film)">Vertigo</a>, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 twisted tale of obsession and betrayal. </p>
<p>Vertigo’s gradual rise up the list (it first appeared in 1982, and finished only 34 votes behind Kane in 2002) reflected cinema’s ongoing recognition of Hitchcock as an artist. As the critic Roger Ebert <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-few-calm-words-about-the-list">wrote</a> at the time, “The king is dead. Long live the king.”</p>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock's Vertigo</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As a film historian, it is fascinating to track the performances of some of cinema’s most beloved and esteemed films. </p>
<p>Casablanca (1942), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939) and It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) – for some, the apex of Hollywood’s expertise – have never made it anywhere near the top of the list. </p>
<p>The poll’s reluctance to embrace popular genres like musicals, comedies and westerns is reflected in the fact that only Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The General (1926) and The Searchers (1956) have ever appeared in the top ten.</p>
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<p>But Hollywood has never dominated the list. To Sight and Sound’s credit, this is a global poll, with voices, opinions and perspectives canvassed from across the world cinema ecosystem. In 2012, a total of 2,045 different films received at least one mention. </p>
<p>The list is always eclectic and international. The Rules of the Game (1939, France) has appeared in every poll until this year, along with the likes of Tokyo Story (1953, Japan), L’Avventura (1960, Italy) and Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Russia).</p>
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<h2>So what does the new poll tell us?</h2>
<p>In 2022, there are more contributors than ever before – 1,600 industry insiders, up from 846 back in 2012. </p>
<p>Apart from the new winner, this broader church has not shifted the results in any meaningful way. Vertigo, Citizen Kane and Tokyo Story are still ranked two, three and four.</p>
<p>But a generational shift is taking place. New critics have emerged over the past decade and this is reflected in their choices: the masterpieces by Wong Kar-Wai, Kubrick and Lynch have all moved up in the rankings.</p>
<p>The new poll has also skewed towards “newer” films for the first time. In 2012, there were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sight_%26_Sound_Greatest_Films_of_All_Time_2012">no films</a> on the list made in the preceding decade. This year’s list includes Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Moonlight (2016), Parasite (2019) and Get Out (2017), alongside other relatively new additions The Gleaners and I (2000), Spirited Away (2001) and Tropical Malady (2004).</p>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/get-out-why-racism-really-is-terrifying-74870">Get Out: why racism really is terrifying</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>What is even more exciting is a direct challenge to what might be seen as the film industry’s herd mentality. </p>
<p>For years, the same films have been reconfirmed as the only ones worth talking about. The 2022 poll smashes open this echo chamber, recognising not just Akerman, but also Claire Denis, whose majestic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Travail">Beau Travail</a> (1999) makes its first appearance at number seven and Agnès Varda’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055852/">Cléo from 5 to 7</a> (1962) at 14. </p>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/agnes-varda-a-pioneering-artist-who-saw-the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary-115437">Agnès Varda, a pioneering artist who saw the extraordinary in the ordinary</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Francophone female directors, it seems, are currently at the vanguard of great cinema. </p>
<p>But what will happen in 2032? Will Jeanne Dielman stand the test of time? Is there a film that hasn’t been made yet that will make an appearance in the top ten? Unlikely, given that there is usually at least a 20-year lag between a film’s release and its appearance on the list. </p>
<p>With this year’s list, we learned it takes time for a film to enter the critical consciousness and to reveal its stylistic intricacies or narrative pleasures. </p>
<p>We have just been reminded that the classics will always appear on polls and lists because, well, they are classic. They display craft, precision, elegance and emotional depth. <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/05/entertainment/movies-what-makes-a-classic/index.html">They resonate down the decades</a>, and they are the films that many of us – from world-famous directors to armchair critics – turn to again and again.</p>
<p>In the meantime, go and watch Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and see what all the fuss is about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben McCann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Every decade, the British Film Institute releases their 100 greatest films of all time. Here’s who made the cut.
Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188232
2022-08-09T20:04:42Z
2022-08-09T20:04:42Z
Never made, destroyed, in a locked safe for 100 years: with Batgirl cancelled, here are 5 other films we will never get to see
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477970/original/file-20220808-68796-yu6m7w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C5%2C1978%2C1308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Batgirl has become the latest film to be added to a growing list of movies we will never get to see. The US$90 million film had been shot and largely edited, but now the whole thing will be consigned to the cutting room floor.</p>
<p>Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav <a href="https://variety.com/2022/film/news/batgirl-david-zaslav-warner-bros-discovery-1235333681/">stated</a> the decision to cancel the film was due to a redirection of the company strategic vision – a discouraging, but often used corporate rationale when Hollywood studios believe they will make a better financial return on a film by <a href="https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/06/how-hollywood-studios-manage-to-officially-lose-money-on-movies-that-make-a-billion-dollars/">writing it off</a> as a loss instead of releasing it .</p>
<p>Batgirl isn’t the first film to be scrapped in the history of the movie business. </p>
<p>Infamous examples include Terry Gilliam’s <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/terry-gilliam-on-set-man-who-killed-don-quixote-adaptation-jonathan-pryce-adam-driver">The Man Who Killed Don Quixote</a> and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s plan for a <a href="https://www.openculture.com/2016/10/14-hour-epic-film-dune-that-alejandro-jodorowsky-never-made.html">14-hour version of Dune</a>. </p>
<p>Here are five other films that didn’t make it onto our screens … at least not yet.</p>
<h2>1. Superman Lives</h2>
<p>Starring Nicholas Cage as the “man of steel”, Superman Lives also met its untimely end at Warner Brothers. </p>
<p>Kevin Smith (of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/">Clerks</a> fame) was commissioned to rewrite a Superman script in the mid-90s. </p>
<p>It seemed to be doomed from the beginning with producer Jon Peters <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/the-big-screen-superman-reboots-that-almost-happened/">reportedly suggesting</a> this Superman shouldn’t fly or wear his famous suit. Smith then got ousted from the project once Tim Burton signed on to direct, with Burton insisting on making his own version of the story. </p>
<p>Three drafts later and with a budget that had almost doubled to around <a href="https://www.looper.com/11884/superman-lives-never-made/">US$200 million</a> the studio put the film on hold. </p>
<p>Both Burton and Cage eventually pulled out of the project, although <a href="https://comicbook.com/dc/news/nic-cage-says-superman-lives-best-superman-movies/">Cage stated</a> this Superman film would have been the best one ever. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nicolas-cage-is-the-most-fascinating-and-exciting-actor-working-today-181483">Nicolas Cage is the most fascinating and exciting actor working today</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Revenge of the Jedi</h2>
<p>Imagine if Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi opened with a family of Ewoks sitting silently in a retro lounge room, or a scene where Jabba the Hutt and Bib Fortuna merge bodies in a grotesque sarlacc pit accident. </p>
<p>This is what could have been if Revenge of the Jedi were made. </p>
<p>Both David Lynch and David Cronenberg were listed as potential directors for the third instalment of George Lucas’ saga. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.benningtonreview.org/adam-golaski">Some accounts</a> of the story suggest Lynch turned it down to do Dune, while Cronenberg cited his <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2458516/that-time-david-cronenberg-turned-down-directing-star-wars-return-of-the-jedi">youthful arrogance</a> and lack of interest in doing other people’s material. </p>
<p>Richard Marquand went on to direct the retitled film, so we are left to wonder what surreal nightmare it could have been.</p>
<h2>3. Uncle Tom’s Fairy Tales</h2>
<p>This 1968 film, directed by then film student Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World) and starring Richard Pryor, told the story of a wealthy white man abducted and put on trial by the Black Panthers for all the racial crimes that occurred throughout US history. </p>
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<p>With the film near complete, Pryor and his then wife, Shelley Bonus, got into a heated argument where she reportedly accused him of being more interested in the film than in her. Pryor responded by <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a25720/richard-pryor-furious-cool-excerpt-1113/">destroying</a> the only negative of the film . </p>
<p>Fragments of the film remained, which Spheeris screened at a 2005 retrospective tribute to Pryor. The fragments became the <a href="https://shadowandact.com/uncle-toms-fairy-tales-the-secret-never-released-richard-pryor-movie">subject of a lawsuit</a> filed by Pryor’s seventh wife, Jennifer Lee, arguing Spheeris and Pryor’s daughter had together stolen the negative. </p>
<p>As of 2021, the lawsuit was <a href="https://www.filmink.com.au/unsung-auteurs-penelope-spheeris/">still pending</a>.</p>
<h2>4. Who Killed Bambi?</h2>
<p>Named after their song Who Killed Bambi?, the Sex Pistols were the subject of a feature film set for release in 1978. Written by Roger Ebert and directed by Russ Meyer, the film was to be a vehicle for the Pistols to break through into the US market. </p>
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<p>Fox Studios <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/sex-pistols-versus-soft-porn-king-killed-bambi-movie-dead-arrival/">shut down production</a> after the first day of shooting, with executives and Fox shareholder, Princess Grace of Monaco, concerned about making another Meyer sexploitation film. There were also issues with a lack of funding and infighting between the band, filmmakers and band manager, Malcolm McLaren. </p>
<p>The film was no more, but the screenplay can still be found <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/who-killed-bambi-a-screenplay">on Ebert’s website</a>. </p>
<h2>5. 100 Years</h2>
<p>Robert Rodriguez’s 100 Years makes the list for a different reason. Intriguingly, the film has a planned release date of 2115 – 100 years after its completion. </p>
<p>Perhaps not so intriguingly the film <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2016/05/john-malkovich-robert-rodriguezs-film-100-years-will-be-displayed-at-cannes-before-2115-release-291273/">is said</a> to have been “inspired by the century of careful craftsmanship it takes to create each decanter of Louis XIII Cognac” – making it seem more like a marketing gimmick than an experiment in exhibition. </p>
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<p>The only copy of the physical film was displayed in a custom made safe at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, due to open automatically on November 18 2115. </p>
<p>Written by and starring John Malkovich, the film imagines Earth in 100 years. Secrecy surrounds further details on the film’s story and whether the filmmakers’ have predicted an authentic vision of the future. </p>
<p>We can safely assume cognac will make a cameo, but most of us will never know. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-birthday-batman-sizing-up-the-caped-crusader-at-75-25602">Holy birthday, Batman! Sizing up the Caped Crusader at 75</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sian Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
After shooting and editing mostly completed on the US$90 million film, Batgirl joins a not-so-exclusive list of never-seen movies.
Sian Mitchell, Lecturer, Film, Television and Animation, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181483
2022-04-22T05:49:14Z
2022-04-22T05:49:14Z
Nicolas Cage is the most fascinating and exciting actor working today
<p>In Nicolas Cage’s latest film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Cage plays a character called … Nick Cage. This meta-commentary on fame and celebrity, wrapped around a thriller plot, is full of Cage-inspired “Easter eggs” and knowing nods to the audience. </p>
<p>Once again, Cage reminds us that he might just be the most interesting and exciting actor working in mainstream cinema today.</p>
<p>As a Cage super-fan, I’ve always been struck by his prodigious work ethic (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000115/">over 100 films</a>, many shot back-to-back or concurrently); his appeal to venerated auteurs like David Lynch, Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese; his eclectic, quirky choices that bamboozle us; and his approach to stardom. </p>
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<p>Take three other actors of a similar age: Cage is not Tom Cruise, whose precision-engineered career allows no risks to be taken. Nor is he Jim Carrey, whose early career blazed brightly and then faded away. Nor is he George Clooney, who has traded stardom for activism and advocacy. </p>
<p>Cage’s take on stardom is different: a chance to reinvent himself with each role, to try something new, to push barriers and surprise jaded viewers.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-easy-going-everyman-with-vulnerability-beneath-the-bravado-the-best-performances-of-bruce-willis-180502">An easy-going everyman, with vulnerability beneath the bravado: the best performances of Bruce Willis</a>
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<h2>From character actor to action to schlock</h2>
<p>Early in his career, Cage established himself as an off-beat character actor renowned for his eccentric vocal delivery, his commitment to <a href="https://theconversation.com/hollywood-has-got-method-acting-all-wrong-heres-what-the-process-is-really-about-172568">the Method</a> and his ability to effortlessly pivot between genres. </p>
<p>In quick succession, he made Peggy Sue Got Married (1986, directed by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola), Raising Arizona (1987), Moonstruck (1987) and Vampire’s Kiss (1988). None of these films are alike. </p>
<p>Co-stars were both baffled and bewildered. Some admired his verve that pushed performance <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/6/13/18663380/nicolas-cage-vampires-kiss-breakout-performance-30-years">to the limits</a>. Others were <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2018/08/kathleen-turner-in-conversation.html">dismayed</a> at his peculiar decisions and what they saw as a “look-at-me” descent into excess and histrionics.</p>
<p>By 1996, with an Oscar win for Leaving Las Vegas (1995) as an alcoholic screenwriter seeking redemption, Cage had announced himself as a star.</p>
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<p>Cage shortly became a fully-fledged 90s action hero, with roles in The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997) and Face/Off (1997). </p>
<p>Watched back now, those performances seem to foreshadow Cage’s descent into self-parody, but at the time it was refreshing to see Cage play roles usually reserved for Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. </p>
<p>He was a nerdy everyman, with a lithe, fluid body. His nerdiness and ad-libbing was a refreshing antidote to the muscular action stars. </p>
<p>For sure, there were missteps along the way as he navigated his new-found status: the tabloid press had a field day reporting on his <a href="https://financebuzz.com/finance-nicolas-cage-buying-spree">lavish spending</a>. But in an era of changing modes of film distribution, audience fragmentation and the existential <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/death-of-movie-star-era_n_5df2b7bae4b0ca713e5b7710">demise of the film star</a>, his presence felt both reassuring and addictive. </p>
<p>We looked forward to what he would do next. </p>
<p>But the wheels soon fell off. Cage drifted into generic video-on-demand schlock, such as Rage (2014) and The Runner (2015).</p>
<p>He has <a href="https://variety.com/2022/film/news/nicolas-cage-vod-films-best-acting-1235234458/">vigorously defended</a> this work, but the suspicion remains he was motivated by commerce not art. </p>
<p>At the same time, the internet, and in particular meme and gif culture, began to work alongside Cage’s career, both undermining and reinforcing his peculiar brand of stardom. </p>
<p>Fan edits, memes and YouTube mashups eventually became a source of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/19/nicolas-cage-rage-internet-meme-mandy">great frustration</a> for Cage as he struggled to reassure fans and critics alike he was a serious performer.</p>
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<p>But this was not always backed up by his career choices or his own pronouncements on his craft. Sean Penn, his contemporary and early rival, disparagingly called him a “performer”. Cage referred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/31/call-me-a-thespian-not-an-actor-says-nicolas-cage">to himself</a> as a thespian, a troubadour entertaining the mob. </p>
<p>Most intriguing, he defined his heightened acting style as “<a href="https://filmschoolrejects.com/nouveau-shamanic-the-enigmatic-style-of-nicolas-cage/">nouveau shamanism</a>”: a singular blend of trancelike “being” and pure Kabuki “playacting”. </p>
<p>For some, Cage’s ideas gloriously pointed to the new direction film acting was headed: brave, gonzo, idiosyncratic. For others, it cemented his status as a self-promoting charlatan. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hollywood-has-got-method-acting-all-wrong-heres-what-the-process-is-really-about-172568">Hollywood has got method acting all wrong, here's what the process is really about</a>
</strong>
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<hr>
<h2>His finest performances</h2>
<p>So it comes as a great relief that the last five years or so have heralded a remarkable return to form for Cage. </p>
<p>His career was revitalised in 2018 with a quite extraordinary performance as the grieving lover turned avenging angel in Mandy. There is a scene from that film which distils Cage’s career into 60 magnificent seconds. </p>
<p>Sat alone in a garishly lit bathroom, he chugs a bottle of vodka, moans and mumbles and screams with grief. The “Cage Rage”, as it has become known, is there in full technicolour detail.</p>
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<p>He followed that up with two memorably strange films: Colour Out Of Space (2019) and Willy’s Wonderland (2020). </p>
<p>The first is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraftian_horror">Lovecraftian</a> tale of meteors, glowing goo and hostile alpacas. In the latter, he plays the silent janitor of a demonically possessed funhouse. </p>
<p>Cage attacks both roles with typical insouciance and stoic resignation. </p>
<p>But best of all is Pig (2021). Here, Cage plays a grieving chef who has retreated to the Oregon wilderness with only a truffle-hunting pig for company. When the pig is kidnapped, Cage re-enters the world, intent on finding his only true companion. </p>
<p>Gone is the Elvis coolness of Wild At Heart (1990), the physical dexterity of National Treasure (2004) and the childlike blankness of City of Angels (1998). In Pig, Cage is bloated and bearded, wracked by grief and remorse. </p>
<p>It is one of his finest performances.</p>
<p>The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent once more showcases Cage’s skills. He remains an intense, immersive actor whose career blends kitsch and Method commitment and who realises that stardom – and what it means to be a movie star – has changed. </p>
<p>As he once <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2021/12/nicolas-cage-defends-his-acting-style-1234688243/">famously said</a>: “You tell me where the top is, and I’ll tell you whether or not I’m over it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben McCann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Nicolas Cage has been in over 100 productions. In his most recent films, he is showing some of the finest acting of his career.
Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144664
2020-08-19T20:14:47Z
2020-08-19T20:14:47Z
10 years on, Inception remains Christopher Nolan’s most complex and intellectual film
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353512/original/file-20200818-14-1yd1myr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1191%2C668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten years on from its release, and hitting cinemas <a href="https://www.hoyts.com.au/movies/inception-10-year-anniversary">again</a>, Christopher Nolan’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/">Inception</a> still puzzles and intrigues.</p>
<p>It is one of those films in which you discover something new each time you watch it. Or, more likely, it makes you reinterpret what you thought you already knew. </p>
<p>Nolan’s oeuvre builds complex paradoxes of time, space and dimension. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144">Memento</a> (2000) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/">Insomnia</a> (2002) deal with the order of time; <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/">The Prestige</a> (2006) deals with the illusion of space; <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/">Interstellar</a> (2014) moves through multi-dimensions. </p>
<p>Inception goes one step further, exploring the manipulation and distortion of all three states. It is a narrative set in the subconscious.</p>
<p>Nolan’s other films are set within a real world framework. It is uniquely Inception that moves into the unreal dream dimension. As in Stanley Kubrick’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> (1968) and David Lynch’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/">Eraserhead</a> (1977) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924">Mulholland Drive</a> (2001), Nolan explores not a singular subconscious world but billions of worlds interconnected.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-matrix-20-years-on-how-a-sci-fi-film-tackled-big-philosophical-questions-114007">The Matrix 20 years on: how a sci-fi film tackled big philosophical questions</a>
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<p>It takes an astute viewer to realise what world you are in (are you in the real or unreal, are you in the mind of this character or that one?) throughout the film.</p>
<h2>The complex subconscious</h2>
<p>Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a professional thief, stealing information directly from his targets’ subconscious minds. As a payment for implanting ideas into someone else’s subconscious, he can have his own criminal history erased. </p>
<p>At the beginning of the film, Cobb says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know how to search your mind and find your secrets. I know the tricks, and I can teach them to your subconscious so that even when you’re asleep, your guard is never down. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This could well be Nolan’s secret to the film.</p>
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<p>Everything you see is a trick. Inception plays constantly with reality and the dream state. Nolan drops visual clues throughout the film, forcing the viewer to become a cinematic investigator to unravel his message. </p>
<p>It seems even Nolan realises how difficult it is to understand the film’s universe and narrative. He constantly resorts to large blocks of exposition to explain what we have seen, or what is happening – or going to happen.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-know-youre-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation-60704">How do you know you're not living in a computer simulation?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With any other film you’d think this was a big mistake, but in Inception this exposition is a necessary road map to deciphering the mysteries of its increasingly complicated subconscious world. </p>
<p>Even Nolan himself can lose track on this road map, <a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/11/pl_inception_nolan/">as he told Wired</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Movie still, a group of people look out over a city bending in on itself." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353517/original/file-20200819-14-1n1gtu5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Every time you watch Inception you will come away with a different understanding of the story Nolan is trying to tell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>(Un)realities</h2>
<p>Perhaps the greatest trick of all in this film is that by its end you question if you have even been in any true reality (at least in terms of the cinematic world it depicts) – or did we just leap from one subconscious mind to the other? </p>
<p>It’s still a point of discussion among fans. The <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Inception/">Inception subreddit</a> gets daily questions about how to unpack the film. New theories about the different realities are constantly being put forward.</p>
<p>But don’t let Nolan’s complex storytelling or technical wizardry blind you. In all of his films, family is the main motivator for each of the central characters. Family drives the story forward.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-interstellar-and-real-physics-33270">On Interstellar and 'real physics'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Both Memento and The Prestige have obsessive compulsive main characters who are driven to avenge their dead wives. In Interstellar, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is brought back from the brink by his daughter. In Inception, Cobb becomes separated from his children because of his criminality and it is his love for them that motivates the entire story.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Movie still, Mal and Cobb on a beach." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353518/original/file-20200819-14-juf9nu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the centre of all of Nolan’s movies is a story of love.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Without these familial foundations, Nolan’s films would be smart but they would have no soul. Each of the main protagonists is well aware of what is motivating their redemptive actions. The ends justify the means – murder, mayhem, misery - as long as the end is love.</p>
<h2>Playing with paradoxes</h2>
<p>Inception is by far Nolan’s most complex film and arguably his most intellectual, with its questions of where does the real world end and the subconscious begin? </p>
<p>It is also visually stunning, with a whole street exploding or a hallway spinning 360 degrees, making the characters appear to defy gravity. These are not computer graphics, but effects <a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/07/inception-visual-effects/">created live</a> on set.</p>
<p>While all of Nolan’s films end very neatly and satisfactorily, Inception’s is highly ambiguous. The spinning top at the beginning of the film, which represents the dream world, still spins at the end. Does that mean the whole film has taken place in the subconscious and nothing we have seen is real?</p>
<p>Inception’s re-release comes just two weeks before Nolan’s new film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6723592/">Tenet</a>, hits cinemas after delays due to COVID-19. Tenet appears to be another mind trip where time, space and dimensional paradoxes are a large part of the narrative. </p>
<p>Watching Inception will attune your skills of observation and interpretation and prepare you for Tenet. But, as with any Nolan film, don’t take anything at face value. </p>
<p>As Cobb would say: Nolan knows the tricks.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Inception is in select cinemas from today</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daryl Sparkes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the lead-up to Nolan’s new film Tenet, Inception is being re-released in cinemas. Even after ten years, the movie still holds surprises..
Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124963
2019-10-25T18:17:33Z
2019-10-25T18:17:33Z
David Lynch’s chillingly prescient vision of modern America
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298588/original/file-20191024-170499-sdpzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey Beaumont in David Lynch's cult classic film 'Blue Velvet.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/blue-velvet-jeffrey-closet.jpg">De Laurentiis Entertainment Group</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“There’s a sort of evil out there,” says Sheriff Truman in an episode of David Lynch’s iconic TV series, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/">Twin Peaks</a>.” </p>
<p>That line gets to the heart of Lynch’s work, which reflects the dark, ominous, often bizarre underbelly of American culture – one increasingly out of the shadows today. </p>
<p>As someone who teaches <a href="http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/filmnoir.html">film noir</a>, I often think about the ways American cinema serves as a mirror to society. </p>
<p>David Lynch is a master at this, so I was pleased to learn that he received an <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/david-lynch-honorary-oscar-award-843961/">Academy Award for his lifetime service to film</a> on Oct. 27. </p>
<p>Many of Lynch’s films, like 1986’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/">Blue Velvet</a>” and 1997’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Lost Highway</a>,” can be unsparing and graphic, with imagery that’s been described as <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blue-velvet-1986">extreme</a> and “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/lost-highway-2-249731/">all chaos</a>” upon their release.</p>
<p>But beyond these bewildering effects, Lynch was onto something. </p>
<p>His images of corruption, violence and toxic masculinity ring all too familiar in America today. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298769/original/file-20191025-173579-118lvts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Lynch in a 1990 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-United-States-PE-/08be2625fbe6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Take “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/">Blue Velvet</a>.” The film focuses on a naive college student, Jeffrey Beaumont, whose idyllic life in a suburb filled with white picket fences is turned inside out when he finds a human ear on the side of a road. This grisly discovery pulls him into the orbit of a violent criminal, Frank Booth, and an alluring lounge singer named Dorothy Vallens, whom Booth sadistically torments while holding her child and husband – whose ear, it turns out, was the one Beaumont had found – hostage. </p>
<p>Beaumont nonetheless finds himself perversely attracted to Vallens and descends deeper into the shadowy world lurking beneath his hometown – a world of smoke-filled bars and drug dens frequented by Booth and an array of freakish characters including pimps, addicts and a corrupt cop.</p>
<p>Booth’s haunting line, “Now it’s dark,” serves as an appropriate refrain. </p>
<p>The corruption, perversion and violence shown in “Blue Velvet” are indeed extreme. But the acts Booth perpetrates also recall the stories of sexual abuse that have emerged from organizations like the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/us/catholic-bishops-abuse.html">Catholic Church</a> and at universities such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline">Penn State</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-hit-michigan-state-hit-record-4-5-million-fine-n1050096">Michigan State</a>. </p>
<p>As more and more of these crimes come to light, they become less an anomaly and more a warning of something deeply ingrained in our culture. </p>
<p>These evils are sensational and appalling, and there’s an impulse to perceive them as existing outside of our realities, by people who aren’t like us. What “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet” do so effectively is tell viewers that those other worlds where venality and cruelty reside can be found just around the corner, in places that we might see but tend to ignore. </p>
<p>And then there are the uncanny and eerie worlds depicted in “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive,” whose characters seem to live in parallel realities governed by good and evil.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116922/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Lost Highway</a>” begins with a man named Fred Madison being convicted of killing his wife. He claims, however, to have no memory of the crime. Exploring the theme of alternate worlds, Lynch then thrusts Madison into an illusory realm inhabited by killers, drug dealers and pornographers by merging his identity into that of another character named Pete Dayton. In doing so, Lynch combines the worlds of “normality” and corruption into one.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, artists like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R682M3ZEyk">Marilyn Manson</a>, who has a minor role in the final chaotic scenes of “Lost Highway,” also confronted audiences with imagery of decadence, corruption and social decay. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/25/weekinreview/the-nation-the-stresses-of-youth-the-strains-of-its-music.html">The backlash</a> Manson and his peers received was fierce.</p>
<p>But these dark themes have since been personified in rich and powerful men like <a href="https://pagesix.com/2016/12/04/the-downfall-of-lindsay-lohans-nightlife-mogul-ex-boyfriend/">Vikram Chatwal</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-betrayal-of-bill-cosby-eric-schneiderman-and-other-influential-men-is-deeper-than-you-think-96247">Bill Cosby</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeffrey-epsteins-arrest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-human-trafficking-is-the-worlds-fastest-growing-crime-120225">Jeffrey Epstein</a>, who, for years, skated along the surface of high society while their perversions were hidden from the public.</p>
<p>In his 2001 film, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/">Mulholland Drive</a>,” Lynch turns his attention to Hollywood and the rot that seems baked into its very nature.</p>
<p>A wide-eyed and innocent aspiring actress named Betty Elms arrives in Los Angeles with visions of stardom. Her struggle to achieve success – one that ends in depression and death – is certainly tragic. But it’s also not very surprising given that she was trying to make it in a corrupt system that all too often bestows its rewards on the undeserving or those who are willing to compromise their morals. </p>
<p>As with so many others who go to Hollywood with big dreams only to find that fame is beyond their reach, Elms is unprepared for an industry so consumed with exploitation and corruption. Her fate mimics that of the women who, desperate for stardom, ended up falling into the trap set by <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41594672">Harvey Weinstein</a>.</p>
<p>So it seems fitting that as David Lynch receives his Academy Award, America continues to hurtle towards an ever darker future. Perhaps it’s one foretold by a present in which <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/146937/sexual-harassment-shapes-politics-washington">politicians can turn a deaf ear to acts of sexual assault</a>, while tolerating the vilification of victims – <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-lawyer-nothing-can-be-done-if-president-shoots-someone-on-fifth-avenue">or even brag that they can get away with murder</a>. </p>
<p>Lynch’s body of work implies that the cruelty of such people isn’t really what we should fear most. It is, instead, those who laugh, cheer or simply turn away – responses that enable and empower such behaviors, while giving them an acceptable place in the world. </p>
<p>When they were first released, Lynch’s films may well have appeared as funhouse mirror reflections of society. </p>
<p>Not so anymore.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124963/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Billy J. Stratton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The famous director is receiving an honorary Oscar, and the timing couldn’t be more appropriate.
Billy J. Stratton, Professor of American Literature and Culture; Native American Studies, University of Denver
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107909
2019-04-10T14:03:39Z
2019-04-10T14:03:39Z
Making sense of the world: a walk down Jubilee Street with Nick Cave
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268112/original/file-20190408-2935-1svw4ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian rock musician Nick Cave.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laurent Gillieron/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The world’s a mess. How do thoughtful people make sense of it all? In this series we’ve asked a number of our authors to suggest a book, philosopher, work of art – or anything else, for that matter – that will help to make sense of it all.</em> </p>
<p>There was a time when I thought I had pretty good concentration. That time is gone. Sucked into a vortex of addictive news checking, Twitter feeding, I keep on updating, streaming, screaming, plugged into yet more “news from nowhere”. Angry old white men, angry young white men, forests up in flames, towns dragged down in mud, turtles wrapped up in plastic. I need an “out”. </p>
<p>Flying around Europe for work (EU funded, so yes, Brexit kills me) I find myself playing the same song over and over again. It’s my way not of “making sense” of what seems mostly to be nonsense, but of finding an outlet – one that creates its own different, poetic world.</p>
<p>Every time the plane takes off I play “Jubilee Street”, a song by Australian rock musician <a href="https://www.nickcave.com/">Nick Cave</a> – over and over again.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds performing ‘Jubilee Street’ in concert. WARNING: Some language may offend sensitive listeners.</span></figcaption>
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<p>And it’s not only my takeoff soundtrack. I play it when I need to be somewhere else, where not making sense has its own beauty and internally coherent narrative. I need to hear a Nick Cave story and out of all of them, from all his time in music, “Jubilee Street” is the “magic one”.</p>
<p>I have been listening, on and off, to Cave ever since he screamed “Hands up Who wants to Die” on “Sonny’s Burning” with his band <a href="http://www.thebirthdayparty.com.au/">The Birthday Party</a> in 1983. I 5fell out of love with him for some time but there he was, always making music. There were side projects with singers <a href="https://www.kylie.com/">Kylie Minogue</a> and <a href="http://pjharvey.net/">PJ Harvey</a>, there was the band <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/grinderman">Grinderman</a>, his porn alter ego, and there were film scores.</p>
<p>All the time, along with Warren Ellis, his close musical collaborator, multi-instrumentalist, friend and fiendish violinist, he has been concocting stories about love, death, violence and sex. No one sounds like him. No bands plough his furrow. His world is indebted to the Western, the Gothic, to the <a href="http://www.grandguignol.com/history.htm">Grand Guignol</a> (The Theatre of the Great Puppet).</p>
<p>His music is the sonic equivalent of <a href="https://www.davidlynch.com/">David Lynch’s</a> films Wild at Heart or Blue Velvet, like German film director Werner Herzog’s <a href="https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/01/10/werner-herzogs-nosferatu-the-vampire-forty-years-later">Nosferatu the Vampyre</a>. It sounds odd to say that it functions as an escape, but Cave’s world has always been the same, existing in a parallel space to the “real” world.</p>
<h2>Love and loss</h2>
<p><a href="https://genius.com/Nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds-jubilee-street-lyrics">“Jubilee Street”</a> is, like a lot of Cave’s work, a tale of love and loss. It recalls a woman called “Bee” who lives on the titular street making “ends meet”. She has a “little black book” wherein the protagonist finds his name written, “on every page”. </p>
<p>Bee is a working girl. Beyond that, the narrative becomes surreal and Cave starts to spin his web. Images that are not possible in this world become imaginable within his; if you suspend disbelief, you travel with him as he sings this song. </p>
<p>He carries strange things on chains and leashes, pushes impossible objects up hills, for some reason “the Russians” move into Bee’s place when it closes down, and all the while the song builds and builds to its climax where Cave sings about transforming, about flying. He marvels:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Look at me now! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What he might have turned into, who knows? He laments how he is “out of place and time”, and “over the hill” and out of his mind. This confession of insanity and ageing, the feeling that he doesn’t belong, that he is out of kilter with the world. It’s one that makes no sense to him since Bee left – it is one that is confusing but tantalising, kaleidoscopic in its imagery. It’s the tale of a lost man who somehow finds beauty in his predicament. And this is why I guess it makes sense now.</p>
<p>The track comes from the 2013 album <a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17618-push-the-sky-away/">Push The Sky Away</a> and was recorded in the South of France, where a children’s choir sang the backing vocals. Its hook, 18 notes that emerge early on in the song, is played on violin and echoes later in the children’s voices. </p>
<p>It is showcased at the end of the trailer for the film <a href="http://www.iainandjane.com/work/film-tv/20000-days-on-earth/">“20 000 days on this Earth”</a> by Ian Forsyth and Jane Pollard, which depicts Cave in a gold lamé
shirt performing at Sydney Opera House in 2014, arms out, crucifixial, shamanic. And so he acts out, in song and on stage, this ability to transform, to change, to become the butterfly, to soar into beauty. </p>
<h2>Compelling cinematic images</h2>
<p>Cave has experienced <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/the-love-and-terror-of-nick-cave">family tragedy</a>, losing one of his twin sons at 15. He has courted political and peer disapproval by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/dec/11/nick-cave-cultural-boycott-israel-brian-eno">performing in Israel</a>. But his life and political decisions are not what draws me to him – far from it. It’s his work, his conjured up worlds, that create compelling cinematic images I want to visit again and again. </p>
<p>Try <a href="https://www.songfacts.com/facts/nick-cave-the-bad-seeds/stagger-lee">“Stagger Lee”</a> and you will be transported to a mid-century, mid-Western town where the outlaws rule. Listen to <a href="https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858521629/">“Nature Boy”</a> and you will marvel at a relationship where the guy dresses up in a deep-sea diving suit for erotic charge. Listen to <a href="https://www.nickcave.com/lyrics/nick-cave-bad-seeds/boatmans-call/arms/">“Into my Arms”</a> for a love song, <a href="https://variety.com/2018/music/news/nick-cave-song-peaky-blinders-red-right-hand-1202692550/">“Red Right Hand”</a> for a murderer’s confession, or <a href="https://www.nickcave.com/lyrics/nick-cave-bad-seeds/let-love/loverman/">“Loverman”</a> for some deranged sex. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nick-cave-dreams-of-miley-cyrus-in-higgs-boson-blues-75557/">“Higgs Bosun Blues”</a> sees Cave “driving down to Geneva”, boasts a cast of pop star Miley Cyrus and bluesman Robert Johnson, and includes an edict to bury him with his yellow, patent leather shoes should he die. But first, try “Jubilee Street” because of its creeping, haunting beauty. Cave finds poetry in the darkness. That’s why I keep listening to him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107909/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Gardner receives funding from Erasmus+ </span></em></p>
Rock artist Nick Cave finds poetry in the darkness - his song “Jubilee Street” is an example.
Abigail Gardner, Reader in Music and Media, University of Gloucestershire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108098
2018-12-03T14:16:00Z
2018-12-03T14:16:00Z
Wizard of Oz: why this extraordinary movie has been so influential
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248436/original/file-20181203-194938-1i0a65g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1370%2C961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 1939 Warner Home Video.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Film director Joel Coen – one half of the famed Coen Brothers – <a href="https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/screenwriting-lessons-the-wizard-of-oz-a4014deac990?gi=62e931b340b1">once quipped</a> that “every movie ever made is an attempt to remake The Wizard of Oz” – and while, strictly speaking, there’s a bit of artistic licence in this statement, it seems that the tale of Dorothy’s adventure on the Yellow Brick Road can reasonably lay clam to being the most influential movie of all time. </p>
<p>At least, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/11/the-wizard-of-oz-influential-film-study">that’s the finding</a> of researchers in Turin, Italy, who took a database of 47,000 films and cross-referenced them to determine which film has had the greatest influence on the industry, based on the number of times it has been referenced in other films. The winner was the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz.</p>
<p>Some members of the popular press seem surprised by this fact; but they really shouldn’t be. Indeed, the research – which was published in <a href="https://appliednetsci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1007/s41109-018-0105-0">Applied Network Science</a> – only seems to have looked for direct references to the film. But if you also took account of films that were influenced by The Wizard of Oz without directly referencing it, there would hundreds, if not thousands more titles to add to the list. </p>
<p>The Coen Brothers are not the only big names to pay homage to the Wizard of Oz (their films are full of sly references). Derek Jarman, who is about as far away from the Hollywood archetype as you can get, also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/mar/02/art">called it his favourite film</a>. For Joel Coen, the film’s brilliance probably lies in its elegant narrative structure – whereas for Jarman it has a lot to do with its design. But this is a testament to how good the film really is. Film is a highly collaborative art form and the contributions made by every department to this film – photography, set, costume, music, editing and cast – is immaculate. Indeed, to watch The Wizard of Oz is to watch the Hollywood studio machine working at the very peak of its efficiency.</p>
<h2>Dreams and reality</h2>
<p>As far as I am concerned, The Wizard of Oz has exerted the most profound influence on filmmakers around the world who refuse to see the cinema as a realist medium, but rather view it as the art form that comes closest to our dreams. In The Wizard of Oz, reality – as represented by Kansas – is literally colourless. What’s worse, it’s not the beautiful black and white one might expect from a Hollywood film of the period. Instead it’s doubly drab sepia. </p>
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<p>But once we enter the Land of Oz we are plunged into a world of vivid <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/technicolor-at-100/385039/">Technicolor</a> and extraordinary painted sets that make no attempt to hide their artifice. Even the cloyingly sentimental return to Kansas in the final few minutes cannot hide the true message: the imagination is far more interesting that reality can ever be. </p>
<p>In this celebration of the dream life, The Wizard of Oz is a truly surrealist work.</p>
<h2>Road movie tradition</h2>
<p>It should come as no surprise then that one of the finest riffs on the film comes from the doyen of American surrealist filmmakers, David Lynch. His 1991 Palm d’Or winner, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/19/movies/film-view-today-s-yellow-brick-road-leads-straight-to-hell.html">Wild at Heart</a>, belongs to the great American tradition of the road movie, a genre which Lynch (quite rightly) <a href="http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/intcbc.html">traces back</a> to The Wizard of Oz.</p>
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<p>But Lynch does not simply acknowledge the debt; rather he takes the plot of Barry Gifford’s short, spare and <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/12/01/still-weird-on-top/">ultimately realist novel</a> and litters it with references to the 1939 film. In Wild at Heart, characters say things like “too bad he can’t just visit that old Wizard of Oz and get some advice”, or “seems we sort of broke down on the yellow brick road”, without a hint of irony. They also have visions of the Wicked Witch of the West and get life lessons from Glenda the Good Witch. </p>
<p>There is more to these allusions than a mere doffing of the cap, however. The references to The Wizard of Oz serve as a reminder of how America has changed. Almost all of Lynch’s protagonists are innocents who find themselves in a strange and often perilous world – just like Dorothy. But while Dorothy is able to maintain her innocence, Sailor and Lula, the central couple in Wild at Heart, fail to do so in world that’s “wild at heart and weird on top”.</p>
<h2>Heaven and hell</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most extraordinary nod to The Wizard of Oz comes from closer to home. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/08/matter-life-death-review-re-release-powell-pressburger-david-niven-fighter-pilot">A Matter of Life and Death</a> was a fantasy film written, produced and directed by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1946. Commissioned during the final months of World War II to help mend the strained relationship between the British and their American allies, the film is set in two realms: Earth and heaven (which may or may not be a figment of a the imagination of a bomber pilot with brain trauma).</p>
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</figure>
<p>Following the lead of The Wizard of Oz, Powell and Pressburger decided to distinguish between these two realms by shooting one in Technicolor and the other in monochrome (essentially black and white produced by undyed Technicolor film). The real stroke of genius, however, was to invert the early film’s pattern and to present the real world in colour and the imaginary one in monochrome. </p>
<p>Filmmakers, audiences and critics alike have generally accepted the paradox that the real world may be in colour, but on film black and white is more realistic – so by showing heaven in monochrome, Powell and Pressburger seem to be telling us that our imagination is more real than the real world. </p>
<p>Such a bold and subversive gesture would have been unthinkable, however, had the The Wizard of Oz not come before and showed filmmakers the imaginative possibilities of the medium.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Hoyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 1939 classic has influenced more films than any other film before or since.
Brian Hoyle, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77500
2017-05-22T10:21:27Z
2017-05-22T10:21:27Z
The fashion of Twin Peaks: why David Lynch’s TV show is back in style
<p>Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s iconic TV series, is returning to our screens after it went missing for almost three decades. First broadcast in 1990, the show became a cult classic and is celebrated by fans and TV scholars alike. One of the reasons for this is its extraordinary use of costume. The original series’ strikingly distinctive style anticipated the way we dress now, making its revival especially timely. </p>
<p>The show’s original costume designer was Patricia Norris, who won an Emmy for her work on the pilot episode. Sara Markowitz took over for the series’ two-season run and adapted Norris’s ideas in new directions. Norris and Markowitz combined classic Americana (1950s-style leather jackets, plaid workwear, cheerleader uniforms) with the often tonally jarring looks of the late 1980s (oversized, patterned knits and scrunchies). The look they created was simultaneously timeless, indicating the universality of American small-town life, and highly specific, conveying the distinctiveness of David Lynch’s vision. Twin Peaks’ style is both very recognisable and intensely strange, mapping on to coordinates of what we think we know, yet at the same time upsetting them. </p>
<h2>Clues are everywhere</h2>
<p>Part of the cult appeal of Twin Peaks is in the way it encourages its viewers to look for clues and to participate in the detective process, which gives rise to endless speculation. It is the original watercooler television. Clothes are no exception to this process. Why does the character of Audrey Horne change from sensible black and white saddle shoes to red kitten heels when she gets to school? The obvious answer is out of adolescent rebellion. However, the repeated close-ups on the shoes throughout the pilot episode draw attention to them and encourage the viewer to speculate on their meaning. </p>
<p>Their black, white and red colour scheme prefigures the zigzag floors and red curtains of the infamous red room sequence, in which detective Dale Cooper dreams that the murdered Laura Palmer tells him the name of her killer. Later in the series, a one-armed shoe salesman plays a significant role, while Bobby and Shelly find a tape of Laura’s therapy sessions hidden in Shelly’s husband Leo’s shoe. In Twin Peaks, material objects take on inflated significance. Everything and nothing is a clue. </p>
<p>The costumes in Twin Peaks have clear roles in American popular culture: the rebel, the cheerleader, the prom queen, the FBI agent or the eccentric hippy. Many of the characters overtly wear uniform, from police and waitress uniforms to school sportswear. But in a sense all the characters wear uniform: they all have a recognisable “look” that helps to define their role within the community. Even the nondescript plaid fishing gear worn by Pete Martell signifies his lack of an identifiable role. </p>
<p>There is often something slightly off about the costumes. Nadine Hurley accessorises her cheerleader uniform with an eye-patch. Recognisable archetypes should reassure us – the biker, the trucker, the waitress – but they ultimately disconcert. And the costumes that have been most influential on contemporary fashion are the more odd, such as the mysterious Log Lady, whose frumpy layered tweeds and oversized glasses are pure Prada. </p>
<p>Since the show’s original broadcast, fans have continued to obsess over the looks of their favourite characters, with Audrey Horne a particular favourite for her stylish sweater-skirt combos. Online magazine The Cut published <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/10/ranking-of-all-117-sweaters-seen-on-twin-peaks.html">a slideshow</a> ranking 118 sweaters that appeared in the show, with Audrey inevitably taking the number one spot. Audrey’s style was instantly iconic, with actor Sherilyn Fenn becoming the stand-out star. But where it once seemed classic, it now looks fashionable, embodying the vintage trend of the 2000s. </p>
<p>Other characters whose looks appeared frumpy and even comic at the time, such as girl-next-door Donna or receptionist Lucy, now look spectacularly on trend. The chunky patterned knits worn by Lucy, Sheriff Truman and many other characters on the show anticipate the fad for “hygge”, the Danish term meaning a sense of cosiness and well being. Similarly, Donna’s calf-length skirts and cardigans anticipate the recent revival of the “midi-skirt”. </p>
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</figure>
<p>It is no surprise, then, that designers and advertisers have repeatedly mined Twin Peaks for inspiration. <a href="https://vimeo.com/76825432">H&M’s 2012 advertising campaign</a> featuring Lana del Rey in a variety of Lynchian scenarios was particularly notable. Elle magazine has twice published Twin Peaks themed fashion shoots, in its <a href="http://welcometotwinpeaks.com/inspiration/elle-magazine-twin-peaks/">August 2012 American edition</a> and <a href="https://models.com/work/elle-sweden-twin-peaks/192273">September 2013 Swedish edition</a>. Meanwhile the grunge revival of 2013 resulted in some distinctly Twin Peaks-inspired collections, such as Hedi Slimane’s <a href="http://www.vogue.co.uk/shows/autumn-winter-2013-ready-to-wear/saint-laurent/collection/">A/W show for St Laurent</a>, which featured plaid shirts, cardigans and black lace cocktail dresses. </p>
<p>We have grown into the world of Twin Peaks, it seems, and its style now suits us. “That gum you like is going to come back in style”, the Man From Another Place tells Agent Cooper in the Red Room – the line that Lynch used on <a href="https://twitter.com/david__lynch/status/518060411690569730?lang=en">Twitter</a> to announce the show’s return. Sure enough, Twin Peaks has come round again, with a fresh range of costumes to inspire us, although probably leaving us little closer to solving one of television’s most enduring and unsettling mysteries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Spooner is the co-editor with Jeffrey Weinstock of Return to Twin Peaks: New Approaches to Materiality, Thoery and Genre on Television, published by Palgrave.</span></em></p>
The fashion of Twin Peaks looked to the past and predicted the future.
Catherine Spooner, Reader in Literature and Culture, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39240
2015-04-14T04:53:44Z
2015-04-14T04:53:44Z
Meeting a god: the diverse career of David Lynch on show at GOMA
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77452/original/image-20150409-15240-1w0qgmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">David Lynch: Between Two Worlds is a major event for Brisbane. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Lynch's Emily Screaming. 2008. GOMA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Meeting a god is a forbidding prospect. For such a meeting, you need to be circumspect. You need to maintain a degree of elegance in the face of utter star-strike. And you need to be prepared to be surprised in all manner of ways. Not least by the fact that the deity in question, rather than being a firebreathing diva, might turn out to be generous and memorably warm.</p>
<p>Filmmaker and artist David Lynch has occupied a place in my Pantheon of Creators since I first saw Blue Velvet as a keen 16-year-old. He has continued to astonish, exhilarate and confront me in the intervening 20-plus years. At <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/davidlynch?refer=homepageFEATURElynch">Between Two Worlds</a>, the remarkable retrospective of Lynch’s work currently on show at Brisbane’s <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/">Gallery of Modern Art</a>, I came tantalisingly close to meeting one of my idols. I only got to ask him one question in the end, but it was worth the wait.</p>
<p>1991 was perhaps the point at which Lynch’s star rose to its public peak. Twin Peaks was enjoying staggering worldwide popularity and Lynch had won the film world’s most coveted award, the <a href="http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/about/palmeHistory.html">Palme d’Or</a>, for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100935/">Wild at Heart</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bWr4JvAWF20?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Blue Velvet (1986) trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a filmmaker, painter, photographer, sculptor, writer, campaigner, and – most surprisingly, perhaps – musician, Lynch has since carved a unique niche in the art world as the most idiosyncratic and renowned artistic talent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vor65mNB8Uk">ever to have filmed a cigarette commercial</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/davidlynch?refer=homepageFEATURElynch">Between Two Worlds</a> comprises an extensive selection of the artist’s painting, photography and lithographs, accompanied by an intriguing collection of lesser-known drawings, sketches and sculptures. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77451/original/image-20150409-15228-1rj2xl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Lynch’s Boy Lights Fire, 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GOMA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Evening screenings of Lynch’s films at the GOMA are being complemented by <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/cinematheque/current/david_lynch_between_two_worlds">documentaries</a> about the artist, <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/davidlynch/specialevents">musical performances</a> inspired by his work, and a series of <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/davidlynch/public_programs">lectures and discussions</a> set to illuminate what’s adorning the walls and screens (there’s even a Twin Peaks quiz night). </p>
<p>This is a comprehensive series of events indeed, featuring contributions from scholars and devotees, fellow artists and art historians. It is a major exhibition by any gallery’s standards and a significant moment for the city of Brisbane – many of whose walls, walkways and bus-stops are adorned with images from the exhibition. </p>
<p>Fanboys and girls will be delighted by all of this, of course, but there’s far more going on in the GOMA events than just the display of a series of works created by a cultural icon. </p>
<p>Curator <a href="http://blog.qag.qld.gov.au/author/jose-da-silva/">José da Silva’s</a> work with this exhibition finds perhaps its greatest triumph in its powerful explanation of the connections between all of the elements of Lynch’s artistic output. </p>
<p>It is in poring over the exhibition that we see the way in which tiny, elaborate sketches on match books and napkins inform the designs for the larger paintings, and the ways in which the paintings bleed into and out of the works for the cinema. </p>
<p>The importance of sound in Lynch’s oeuvre is also reinforced by a comprehensive collection of film scores and other musical works. Here, too, one sees a complexly inter-related series of compositions and collaborations that form a substantial element of the artist’s output. </p>
<p>There is a unity of vision on display here that confirms Lynch as indeed a major artist. His work maintains a series of thematic fascinations and stylistic trademarks that render it strikingly coherent, despite its oft-discussed “strangeness” and its frequent centralising of the abstract.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77449/original/image-20150409-15250-1ycjsqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Lynch’s Man Waking from Dream, 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GOMA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The notion of abstraction has indeed characterised the long discussion surrounding the works of this influential man. A notable element of Lynch’s address to his own work is his consistent refusal to be pinned down to any comfortable – or even consistent – notion of “meaning”. </p>
<p>There are numerous recorded examples of interviewers presenting the artist with “interpretations” of his work, only to – usually very politely – have these interpretations contradicted or juxtaposed with Lynch’s own alluringly ambiguous descriptions of process and intention. </p>
<p>During my yearned-for chance to pose a question to Lynch, I learned what it was like to have one’s carefully-composed proposition refuted. </p>
<p>I have long held that there are lucid connections between the profound affect Lynch’s works evoke in the viewer and the experience of dream. I asked him whether his work represented a way for him to share his dreams with an audience; the answer was no – though the gentle rebuttal was followed by a fascinating rumination on ideas of dream-logic, discontinuities, and the very sources of ideas, many of which Lynch claims to find through a kind of waking dreaming. </p>
<p>The response to my question was thus more intriguing than I had anticipated, even though it began with negation.</p>
<p>David Lynch remains, in every way, the genuine artefact: attentive and serious in response to questions, warm and generous in a brief meeting, and dedicated to an ongoing and expansive body of works. </p>
<p>Da Silva’s beautifully curated exhibition serves to reinforce these notions in the most memorable of ways.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art is hosting the exhibition David Lynch: Between Two Worlds until June 7. Details <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/davidlynch?refer=homepageFEATURElynch">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39240/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Prescott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art is hosting the exhibition, David Lynch: Between Two Worlds, until June 7. It’s an opportunity to explore the connections between all the elements of Lynch’s artistic output.
Nick Prescott, Lecturer, School of Humanities and Creative Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/38972
2015-03-27T01:41:40Z
2015-03-27T01:41:40Z
Not all graffiti is vandalism – let’s rethink the public space debate
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76070/original/image-20150326-12300-bhgpr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If we don't collectively protect our public spaces, we will lose them.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">zoomar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this month, at the opening of an exhibition dedicated to his work at Brisbane’s GOMA, David Lynch <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/mar/13/graffiti-ugly-stupid-threatening-ruining-world-david-lynch">got stuck into</a> street art, calling it “ugly, stupid, and threatening”. Apparently, shooting movies can be very difficult when the building you want to film is covered in graffiti and you don’t want it to be. </p>
<p>Is there a distinction between art and vandalism? This is the question that always seems to rise up when graffiti becomes a topic of conversation, as it has after Lynch’s outburst. This is, however, not just important for those of us who want to know the answers to obscure questions such as, “what is art?” It affects everyone. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76076/original/image-20150326-12287-1jxgqvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">mikkelz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why? Because graffiti exists in our public spaces, our communities and our streets. </p>
<p>Let’s for a minute put aside the fact that an artist such as David Lynch, known for pushing the envelope in terms of what art is and can be, is criticising one type of art on the grounds that it is inconvenient to the kind of art that he prefers to undertake. </p>
<p>There is something more important to discuss here. The opinion that street art is vandalism (that is, not art) is widely held. Many people despise graffiti – but we are more than happy to line our public spaces with something much more offensive: advertising. That’s the bigger story here, the use and abuse of public space.</p>
<p>At heart, I think this is why people don’t like graffiti. We see it as someone trying to take control of a part of our public space. The problem is, our public spaces are being sold out from under us anyway. If we don’t collectively protect our public spaces, we will lose them. </p>
<h2>Two types of graffiti</h2>
<p>I would like to make a bold distinction here. </p>
<p>I want to draw out the difference between two kinds of graffiti: street art and vandalism. </p>
<p>We need something to be able to differentiate between Banksy and the kids who draw neon dicks on the back of a bus shelter. They are different, and the difference lies in their intention. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76072/original/image-20150326-12284-1grrvvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">macwagen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tagging, the practice of writing your name or handle in prominent or impressive positions, is akin to a dog marking its territory; it’s a pissing contest. It is also an act of ownership. Genuine street art does not aim at ownership, but at capturing and sharing a concept. Street art adds to public discourse by putting something out into the world; it is the start of a conversation. </p>
<p>The ownership of a space that is ingrained in vandalism is not present in street art. In fact, street art has a way of opening up spaces as public. Street art has a way of inviting participation, something that too few public spaces are even capable of.</p>
<h2>Marketing vandals</h2>
<p>If vandalism is abhorrent because it attempts to own public space, then advertising is vandalism. </p>
<p>The billboards that line our streets, the banner ads on buses, the pop-ups on websites, the ads on our TVs and radios, buy and sell our public spaces. What longer lasting sex? A tasty beverage? To be young, beautiful, carefree, cutting edge, and happy? For only $24.95 (plus postage)! </p>
<p>Advertising privatises our public spaces. Ads are placed out in the public strategically. They are built to coerce, and manipulate. They affect us, whether we want them to or not. But this is not reciprocated. </p>
<p>We cannot in turn change or alter ads, nor can we communicate with the company who is doing the selling. If street art is the beginning of a conversation, advertising is the end. Stop talking, stop thinking – and buy these shoes! </p>
<h2>Ads v graffiti</h2>
<p>We are affronted by ads. They tell us we are not enough. Not good enough, not pretty enough, not wealthy enough. </p>
<p>At its worst, graffiti is mildly insulting and can be aesthetically immature. But at its best, it can be the opening of a communal space: a commentary, a conversation, a concept captured in an image on a wall. Genuine street art aims at this ideal. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76073/original/image-20150326-12265-1o495q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Street art by Ghostpatrol in Brisbane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Cunningham</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At its best, advertising is an effective way of informing the public about products and services. At worst, advertising is a coercive, manipulative form of psychological warfare designed to trick us into buying crap we don’t need with money we don’t have. </p>
<p>What surprises me is that the people who find vandalism in the form of tagging and neon dicks highly offensive have no problem with the uncensored use of our public spaces for the purposes of selling stuff. </p>
<h2>What art can do</h2>
<p>If art is capable of anything in this world, it is cutting through the dross of everyday existence. Art holds up a mirror to the world so that we can see the absurdity of it. It shows us who we really are, both good and bad, as a community. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76075/original/image-20150326-12265-14d57f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Whitfield</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Street art has an amazing ability to do this because it exists in our real and everyday world, not vacuum-sealed and shuffled away in a privileged private space. Its very public nature that makes street art unique, powerful, and amazing.</p>
<p>If we as a community can recognise the value in street art, we can begin to address it as a legitimate expression. When we value street art as art, we can engage with it as a community and help to grow it into something beautiful. </p>
<p>When street art has value, our neon dicks stop being a petty and adolescent attempt at ownership, and become mere vandalism. When we value our public spaces as places where the we can share experiences, we will start to see the violence that is advertising as clearly as the dick on the back of a bus shelter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Graffiti exists in our public spaces, our communities, and our streets – and it has many detractors. Why, though, don’t we spend more time worry about the impact of advertising on public space?
Liam Miller, Researcher in the Philosophy of Play, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/32624
2014-10-09T19:06:05Z
2014-10-09T19:06:05Z
I’ll see you again in 25 years: the return to Twin Peaks
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61241/original/9b6bfr8p-1412830456.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How will the new Twin Peaks stack up against its stylish and nightmarish cable brethren?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mc1984/292500164/in/photolist-rR97h-9VRiWG-q86w1-c2GngS-dx9VME-dx4sV6-dx4sXK-c2GmxW-c2Gn1U-c2Gna5-c3mHgE-c3Ycg1-c3mHHY-c2GqmQ-aMhS7T-c2Gm3G-c3mKdy-bZp5Lm-c2GqfC-4bKhts-8MyCpu-c4uccd-56tcBr-c4udWf-c4udpW-c4udE3-c4udvs-c4udAE-c3YcW5-c4uecA-c4ucSd-dx9Vef-c4ue1f-dx4sg4-dx4t26-dx9Vgq-c3mGSW-c3Ydm1-dx4tXP-c4uffw-c4ueU7-9rgETZ-8MyAQ9-8MvzoX-8MALEM-8MvyGa-8MvwGZ-c2Hcp1-c3YbF1-c3mJcQ">☠mc 1984☠ GENGHIS KHAN LAURA2</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the penultimate episode of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098936/">Twin Peaks</a> (1990-1991), “I’ll see you again in 25 years” were the words <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL57-9171pk">spoken backwards</a> by Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) to FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), the detective who had spent more than a season investigating her death. </p>
<p>Following Laura’s promise to Cooper she assumes the frozen pose of a statue before disappearing entirely from view. For those who had watched Twin Peaks during its initial run, this was nothing new. Unexplained actions, surreal figures and constant non-sequiturs had appeared throughout but they remained no less eerily transfixing.</p>
<p>Laura’s promise, within the context of the show, occurs inside the Black Lodge. This is a liminal zone that exists between the small town that the series is named after, its surrounding Douglas fir forests and that which lies “beyond”, a metaphysical crossing-point between life and death, good and evil. </p>
<p>It is visualised as a room of zigzagged floors, black couches, white statues and gently swaying red curtained walls wherein time is fluid and speech is spoken backwards. Long before Rust Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) intoned about time being a flat circle in <a href="https://theconversation.com/true-detective-lassos-the-yellow-king-in-hollywood-south-24113">True Detective</a> (2014), Twin Peaks abounded in existential enigmas. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BL57-9171pk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘I’ll see you again in 25 years’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the Black Lodge, bodies appear and disappear; time loops; lights flicker and wrenching screams fill the air. Like the experience of watching Twin Peaks in general, the Black Lodge scenes are so aesthetically singular, so highly stylised, and at times so frankly terrifying that it is hard to imagine how David Lynch and Mark Frost’s co-creation was greenlit by and aired on prime time US network television. </p>
<p>At a time in which network rather than cable TV programming held clout, Twin Peaks was, initially at least, commercially and critically successful, garnering 14 Emmys and some of the highest ratings that ABC had netted in years.</p>
<p>Looking back, Twin Peaks had no shortage of ardent supporters and fans.</p>
<p>Its riddling, quixotic sensibility spread out far beyond the textual confines of the show and into a range of concurrent popular culture forms. In The Simpsons, for instance, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0_eTYwKoBE">Homer is seen</a> laughingly watching a mock Twin Peaks episode before exclaiming: “I have absolutely no idea what is going on.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1235&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1235&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/61240/original/9zqrdbnb-1412830228.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1235&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keir Hardie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was a Saturday Night Live parody, cross-media spin-offs (<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119427.The_Secret_Diary_of_Laura_Palmer">The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer</a>, penned by Lynch’s daughter Jennifer Lynch, or <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/495822.The_Autobiography_of_F_B_I_Special_Agent_Dale_Cooper">The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes</a>), coffee ads as well as endless magazine covers with the cast. </p>
<p>Furthermore, as media fandom scholars such as Henry Jenkins <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=m6mjuWXrqb8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA51&dq=Henry+Jenkins,+%27%22Do+You+Enjoy+Making+the+Rest+of+Us+Feel+Stupid%22:1995&ots=0HAtJQNajk&sig=zFMYL0_TQEId3fNNMHBcGtwZRxM#v=onepage&q=Henry%20Jenkins%2C%20'%22Do%20You%20Enjoy%20Making%20the%20Rest%20of%20Us%20Feel%20Stupid%22%3A1995&f=false">have observed</a>, Twin Peaks was one of the first shows to launch nascent forms of TV/internet fandom. Its first audiences took to online bulletin boards and forums, together with VCR recordings and fanzines to collectively try and make sense of a deliberately obtuse show. </p>
<p>When the network placed the show on hiatus after the first season, the fans passionately rallied around the show imploring the network to “Give Peaks A Chance”.</p>
<p>What went wrong? Arguably, the downfall of Twin Peaks actually had very little to do with the quality of the show or with Lynch/Frost. Sure, there were plot lines we could all have lived without. For myself, that involved anything to do with the town mill or the seemingly endless and ill-fated Windom Earle storyline that dominated the end of season 2.</p>
<p>The real “problem” with Twin Peaks was that it simply did not cohere with the conventions, demands and audience expectations of network TV during the early 90s. When audiences dropped off because the question of who killed Laura Palmer still had not been answered, ABC responded by changing programming days and times and then cancelling the show. </p>
<p>Lynch himself (unlike the more TV-schooled Frost) has made no secret of the fact he never wanted to reveal who killed Laura. He would have preferred, instead, to leave that question unanswered so that it might generate still further enigmas. When network pressures forced the show to reveal Laura’s killer, Twin Peaks provided an answer while defiantly opening up other existential questions. The Black Lodge, aliens, doppelgängers. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_BOB">Killer BOB</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nNHsA4WIFvc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The return …</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The real legacy of Twin Peaks is not who killed Laura or any of the other narrative mysteries that followed. It is how this show managed to be (and still is, upon reviewing) so powerfully and affectively mysterious. From the oneiric opening credits on, you felt like its seemingly innocuous, small town, beige carpeted reality could, at any moment, give way to an entirely different, unnerving world. </p>
<p>The click of a record player, BOB steadily crawling over the lounge room couch, the movement of the ceiling fan, the sway of a traffic light or that low humming drone that resonated throughout. The use of images and sounds in Twin Peaks become the stuff and substance of nightmares. </p>
<p>To date, I can only think of one TV show that even comes close to achieving that kind of surrealist atmospherics whereby one reality subtly and seamlessly enfolds into another – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2243973/">Hannibal</a> (2013-).</p>
<p>This week it was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNHsA4WIFvc">announced</a> that Twin Peaks is set to return for a third season on Showtime in 2016 – 25 years after Laura promised she would see Cooper again. Purported to be a direct continuation of where the last season left off only set in the present day, there has already been much anticipation, speculation and hesitation. </p>
<p>Social media is rife with different generations of Twin Peaks fans trading those old but familiar quotes (“it’s happening again”; “that gum you like is going to come back in style”), demanding to be the new Log Lady, and wondering whether or not we will know Cooper’s fate. </p>
<p>With Lynch/Frost at the helm once more and Lynch set to direct all of the nine slated episodes, questions abound. How will the new Twin Peaks stack up against its slick, stylish and nightmarish cable brethren? Will it be as disturbing, as hilariously funny and as wildly multi-generic as the original? There is some time yet before any of those questions can be answered. </p>
<p>Let us hope that the contemporary age of “quality TV” and “narrative complexity”, particularly on cable, will finally give Lynch/Frost room enough to play.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saige Walton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the penultimate episode of Twin Peaks (1990-1991), “I’ll see you again in 25 years” were the words spoken backwards by Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) to FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), the…
Saige Walton, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.