tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/martin-scorsese-8684/articles
Martin Scorsese – The Conversation
2024-03-05T13:59:33Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223630
2024-03-05T13:59:33Z
2024-03-05T13:59:33Z
Scorsese’s gods of the streets: From ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ to ‘Silence,’ faith is rarely far off in his films
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578959/original/file-20240229-26-vvk7wh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C744%2C447&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Even in films where religion isn't front and center, Martin Scorsese's attention to ritual and devotion comes through. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Apple TV+</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A widely circulated still from the set of Martin Scorsese’s latest film, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5537002/">Killers of the Flower Moon</a>,” shows the director sitting in a church pew. Next to him is Lily Gladstone, who plays the role of Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman whose family is targeted as part of a broader conspiracy by white Americans to steal the tribe’s wealth, to the point of marrying and killing its members.</p>
<p>In the photograph, Scorsese appears to hold <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-rosary-why-a-set-of-beads-and-prayers-are-central-to-catholic-faith-192485">rosary beads</a>, a common devotional object for many Catholics. Mollie is Catholic, so the rosary makes sense as a prop. But as <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/religiousstudies/smith_anthony.php">a scholar</a> of <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700636150/the-look-of-catholics/">religion and film</a>, I’m struck by how it calls to mind the director’s own complex Catholicism and its imprint on his decades of filmmaking.</p>
<p>Scorsese stands in a long line of Catholic American filmmakers, stretching back to the 1930s and 1940s – one that includes Irish Americans <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/searcher">John Ford</a> and <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/julyweb-only/fof_mccarey.html">Leo McCarey</a>, and Italian immigrant <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/features/frank-capra-earned-his-wings-with-it-s-a-wonderful-life">Frank Capra</a>. At a time when Catholicism still seemed foreign to many Americans, those directors <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700636150/the-look-of-catholics/">helped normalize the faith</a>, making it seem like part of a shared American story. </p>
<p>Yet in his films, Scorsese has taken a much more personal approach to exploring Catholic faith and experience. He doesn’t feel the need to defend the religion or burnish its image. His movies are steeped in Catholic sensibilities, but embrace painful questions that often accompany belief: what it means to hold on to religious commitment in a world where God can seem absent.</p>
<h2>From altar boy to auteur</h2>
<p>Scorsese has often spoken of <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/filmmaker-martin-scorsese-talks-about-his-faith-upcoming-movie-silence?fbclid=IwAR1JWRy3irXQQlldezkIduAqJ3zH3iBUaU5qPh6Llr1v6ylXl1GnwlbyO48">his Catholic background</a>. Born in New York City’s Little Italy, he went to Catholic schools and served as an altar boy at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, which <a href="https://untappedcities.com/2014/04/03/monthofscorsese-nyc-film-locations-for-martin-scorsese-mean-streets/">appeared in his early masterpiece</a> “Mean Streets.” Scorsese even began seminary training, but he quickly realized the priesthood was not for him.</p>
<p>Yet the church proved influential. Scorsese has described St. Patrick’s as <a href="https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/martin-scorsese-s-trilogy-of-faith/">a spiritual alternative</a> to the violence in the streets around his neighborhood. A priest <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/filmmaker-martin-scorsese-talks-about-his-faith-upcoming-movie-silence?fbclid=IwAR1JWRy3irXQQlldezkIduAqJ3zH3iBUaU5qPh6Llr1v6ylXl1GnwlbyO48">introduced the young Scorsese</a> to classical music and books that widened his cultural horizons.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The view of a sanctuary with stained-glass windows, seen from above with a man playing the organ in the foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578968/original/file-20240229-16-2fnzga.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"></a>
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<span class="caption">Organist Jared Lamenzo performs at the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on June 21, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/organist-jared-lamenzo-perform-during-the-friends-of-the-news-photo/1151298772?adppopup=true">Kris Connor/Getty Images for NAMM</a></span>
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<p>A similar tension runs through many of his films: Catholic devotion, mystery and ritual interwoven with ruthless crime. Indeed, the struggle with faith amid brutality is a theme Scorsese returns to over and over, asking what religion might have to offer the world as it actually exists, with all its cruelties, greed and despair.</p>
<h2>Presence and absence</h2>
<p>That struggle can be described as one between “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674984592">presence” and “absence</a>,” to use the terms of <a href="https://history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/affiliated-faculty/robert-orsi.html">religious studies scholar Robert A. Orsi</a>. </p>
<p>Religious presence refers to all the ways people experience their gods’ existence in the world and in their lives. For Catholics, for example, the Eucharist is not just a symbol of Christ; the consecrated bread and wine in Communion actually <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-communion-matters-in-catholic-life-and-what-it-means-to-be-denied-the-eucharist-163560">become Jesus’ flesh and blood</a>, according to Catholic teaching.</p>
<p>Orsi describes religious absence, on the other hand, as the experience of doubt and spiritual struggle about a god not felt directly on Earth.</p>
<p>Both presence and absence shape Scorsese’s rendering of religion. God’s absence takes the form of violence and greed in his films. But some characters also carry their gods with them in the world. This is most dramatically seen in “Silence,” released in 2016, which was based on the novel by <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2023/04/25/shusaku-endo-245116">Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo</a>. </p>
<p>“Silence” is the story of two Jesuit missionaries who travel to 17th century Japan in search of their mentor, another Jesuit who is believed to have renounced the faith during a wave of violent persecutions. One of them, Father Rodrigues, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/10/silence-review-the-last-temptation-of-liam-neeson-in-scorseses-shattering-epic">profoundly questions his own faith</a> after witnessing the torture of Japanese Christians.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cuTjBL28l0U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Silence’ dramatically explores faith, doubt and suffering.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Why, he wonders, does God allow such suffering? Eventually he himself will renounce his faith in order to save the lives of those to whom he ministers.</p>
<p>The silence of God is the film’s major preoccupation, yet it is filled with devotional imagery. At <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOX8-c-_uVY">the climax of the film</a>, Rodrigues tramples on an image of Christ in order to end the torture of other Christians. But just at that moment, he experiences the presence of his God.</p>
<p>The very final scene depicts his burial, years after the film’s main events – a small crucifix clasped in his hand.</p>
<h2>Penance ‘in the streets’</h2>
<p>This preoccupation with Catholicism stretches back to Scorsese’s 1973 breakthrough film, “Mean Streets.” Harvey Keitel plays a young Italian American man, Charlie, who <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/5130/film/his-catholic-conscience">grapples with his faith</a> in the unforgiving world of New York’s Lower East Side. </p>
<p>Presence, as Orsi points out, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674984592">is often as much a burden</a> as a solace. Indeed, part of the emotional power in “Mean Streets” lies in Charlie’s own impatience toward Catholic practices and rules. He wants the freedom to be Catholic in his own way.</p>
<p>“You don’t make up for your sins in the church,” he insists <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdQ4_AzBxXg">in the opening voice-over</a>. “You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a man in a jacket and sunglasses leaning against a lamppost on a street with graffiti." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578972/original/file-20240229-24-ca054r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Martin Scorsese at the corner of Hester and Baxter streets in 1973, one of the locations he used in his New York film ‘Mean Streets.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/full-length-portrait-of-american-director-martin-scorsese-news-photo/3204086?adppopup=true">Jack Manning/New York Times Co./Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Over the years, Scorsese’s own ambitions have led him far beyond the streets of Little Italy. A number of his films have little to do with religion. Yet movies such as “Casino,” “The Aviator” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” elaborate the same basic question as “Mean Streets”: What is important in a world that so often feels dominated by absence, money and violence? Through a long career, Scorsese has framed both the sacred and profane as compelling but competing forces of human desire.</p>
<p>Shortly before the release of “Silence,” Scorsese <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/magazine/the-passion-of-martin-scorsese.html">visited St. Patrick’s</a> during an interview with The New York Times. “I never left,” he said. “In my mind, I am here every day.”</p>
<p>One might take him at his word. Even in his most recent movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2023/10/26/killers-flower-moon-osage-catholics-246377">a Catholic sensibility sneaks through in numerous ways</a>. Characters attend Mass at parish churches and bury their dead on consecrated Catholic ground. </p>
<p>Further, the film’s attention to Osage religious practices demonstrates Scorsese’s sensitivity to the power of ritual and devotion. The movie opens with the burial of a ceremonial pipe, highlighting how objects can assume sacred significance. As Mollie’s mother dies, she has a vision of the elders.</p>
<p>But the questions that haunt Scorsese hang over moments that hardly feel religious, too. </p>
<p>Toward the end of the film, when Mollie asks her duplicitous husband, Ernest, to come clean, his refusal to fully confess the harm he did to her and her family epitomizes the depths of his ethical emptiness. Her silence as she gets up and leaves, with an FBI agent standing quietly in the corner, offers a more powerful moral indictment than any legal sentence. The refusal to pay for one’s sins at home and in the streets has rarely looked so damning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223630/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Smith 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>
Though only a few of Scorsese’s films focus on religious stories, deeper questions about faith, doubt and living in a violent world tend to haunt his movies.
Anthony Smith, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/214929
2023-10-23T12:24:40Z
2023-10-23T12:24:40Z
For the Osage Nation, the betrayal of the murders depicted in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ still lingers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555069/original/file-20231020-17-onzwxg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C76%2C5520%2C3623&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An Osage man on the Arkansas River sometime between 1910 and 1918 – about a decade before the Osage Reign of Terror.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-an-osage-man-on-the-arkansas-river-between-news-photo/956086514?adppopup=true">Vince Dillion/Oklahoma Historical Society via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article contains plot spoilers of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”</em></p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code>The sheriff disguised her death as whiskey poisoning.
Because, when he carved her body up,
he saw the bullet hole in her skull.
Because, when she was murdered,
the leg clutchers bloomed.
But then froze under the weight of frost.
During Xtha-cka Zhi-ga Tze-the,
the Killer of the Flowers Moon.
</code></pre>
<p>The excerpt is from the poem “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/this-osage-writer-remembers-one-of-the-first-victims-of-infamous-reign-of-terror">Wi’-gi-e</a>,” or “Prayer,” which Osage author Elise Paschen wrote in 2009 to honor Anna Kyle Brown, who was thought to be the first victim of the Osage Reign of Terror.</p>
<p>Brown’s body was found at the bottom of a ravine near Fairfax, Oklahoma, in 1921, with the cause of death ruled as “whiskey poisoning.” In truth she’d been murdered for her share of the hereditary mineral rights that had made her wealthy. Years later, a widespread investigation would reveal that Brown clearly died by gun violence and her cause of death was a cover-up.</p>
<p>“Killers of the Flower Moon” refers to the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/this-osage-writer-remembers-one-of-the-first-victims-of-infamous-reign-of-terror">Osage lunar cycle during which late frosts will often kill young flowers</a>. It’s also the title of Martin Scorsese’s new film, which was adapted from <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/208562/killers-of-the-flower-moon-movie-tie-in-edition-by-david-grann/">the bestselling book</a> written by David Grann. </p>
<p>The film and book trace the true story of greed, brutality and government complicity in the assassination of wealthy Osage citizens.</p>
<p>Brown was one of many Osage people murdered for their money in 1920s Oklahoma. Accurate numbers of the victims are hard to come by, but Geoffrey Standing Bear, the Osage Nation’s current principal chief, estimates that at least <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/chief-geoffrey-standing-bear/">5% of the tribe were murdered</a>, or roughly 150 people.</p>
<p>In 1923, the Osage Nation asked the Bureau of Investigation – the predecessor to the FBI – to look into a string of mysterious deaths. After a long investigation, the bureau uncovered a massive conspiracy masterminded by white men like <a href="https://ualr.edu/sequoyah/thisday/hale-given-life-sentence-february-1-1929/">William King Hale</a>, <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OS005">Ernest Burkhart</a> and other non-Osage members in the community of Fairfax, Oklahoma, particularly those in positions of authority. By 1929, Hale, Burkhart and some of their co-conspirators had been tried and <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/osage-murders-case">sentenced to prison</a>. </p>
<p>But for the Osage, the story didn’t end there. Existing federal policies and persistent anti-Indigenous sentiment still left Osage people vulnerable to further violence and exploitation. </p>
<h2>Guardians in name only</h2>
<p><a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/english/toll-shannon.php">As a scholar of Indigenous literary and cultural studies</a>, I’ll often teach the political and social landscape of early Oklahoma.</p>
<p>When I tell my students at the University of Dayton about this spate of unchecked violence, someone inevitably asks how this was allowed to happen. </p>
<p>There is no one answer. But there is a central cause: laws that enabled settlers’ access to – and control over – Osage capital and, by extension, Osage lives.</p>
<p>In 1872, the Osage were forced from their homelands <a href="https://www.nps.gov/fosc/learn/historyculture/osage.htm">in Kansas and sent to Indian Territory</a>, a region that became the state of Oklahoma. Once resettled, the Osage Nation was compelled to negotiate with the federal government. Through the resulting <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807872901/colonial-entanglement/">Osage Allotment Act of 1906</a>, the Osage retained all rights to minerals found on the land, or subsurface rights.</p>
<p>There was also a legal policy known as “guardianship” that purported to protect Native American lands and investments. But it actually functioned as a way to give local courts in Oklahoma <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disturbing-history-of-how-conservatorships-were-used-to-exploit-swindle-native-americans-165140">jurisdiction over land, persons and property of Indian minors and incompetents</a>.</p>
<p>When oil drilling <a href="https://www.osagenation-nsn.gov/news-events/news/did-you-know">began in earnest in 1896</a> on Osage lands, the Osage became one of the richest communities on the planet, with many citizens receiving substantial annual payments. This money fueled resentment among the non-Indigenous public, and guardianship became a means for them to get their hands on it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Eight women and girls, young and old, pose for a group photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555068/original/file-20231020-21-fl0ylh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of Osage Nation pictured in Oklahoma in the early 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/postcard-features-a-photograph-of-a-group-of-unidentified-news-photo/1311286595?adppopup=true">William J Boag/Oklahoma Historical Society via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Affluent Osage citizens – who no longer fit <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807872901/colonial-entanglement/">the stereotype of the impoverished Indian</a> – were criticized for their spending habits. So <a href="https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2021/11/24/terror-on-the-osage-reservation/">in 1921, Congress passed a law</a> that required Osage people to prove themselves competent enough to manage their vast wealth, with competence often based on their percentage of Osage blood: The more one had, the more likely one would be declared incompetent. </p>
<p>Enter guardianship. Once deemed “incompetent,” an Osage citizen would have a guardian appointed to help manage their assets. It was also common for young Osage people to have a guardian appointed to them until they turned 21. Ultimately this law, as Grann explained in a 2023 interview with the Oklahoma Historical Society, “<a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/grann-david/">ushered in one of the largest state-and-federally-sanctioned criminal enterprises</a>.” Many guardians recklessly spent or embezzled their ward’s assets, while facing little or no consequences. </p>
<p>Increasingly, Osage people under guardianship began to die under mysterious circumstances, with their guardian set to inherit their share of oil royalties. Tax documents from that era reveal a number of white guardians with multiple Osage wards, <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/conner-joe-carol/">the majority of whom were dead within a few years</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Black and white photo of oil derricks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554845/original/file-20231019-27-7dgj12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once oil was discovered on Osage land, the tribe became wealthy overnight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/osage-hominy-ca-1918-1919-news-photo/1371405766?adppopup=true">HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>As Osage actor Yancy Red Corn pointed out, once the Bureau of Investigation closed the case, “<a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/red-corn-yancey/">the killings just kept going on</a>.” While the bureau’s focus was on the murders that took place in the Gray Horse community, many more cases went unsolved in <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/chief-geoffrey-standing-bear/">other Osage communities, including Pawhuska and Hominy</a>. Standing Bear describes walking through those local cemeteries <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/chief-geoffrey-standing-bear/">and noting how</a> many “young people whose grave markers show ‘deceased: 1920 … 1921 … 1919 … 1923 … 1925.‘”</p>
<p>Red Corn notes that his grandparents kept a close eye on their children, never knowing who they could trust, even after the murders had been exposed and prosecuted; many Osage left Oklahoma altogether, moving to states like <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/chief-geoffrey-standing-bear/">California and Texas to escape the violence</a>. </p>
<h2>Denial and disrespect</h2>
<p>Despite the truth of these murders being brought to light, anti-Indigenous sentiment still roiled in the area. The families of conspirators, survivors and those who continued to exploit guardianship laws had to coexist, at times with great tension. While Hale and Burkhart were both convicted and spent time in prison, they were eventually freed.</p>
<p>After Hale was paroled in 1947, some Fairfax inhabitants even welcomed him with open arms.</p>
<p>“The word went around town, 'Bill Hale is here,’” <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/conner-joe-carol/">recalled Dr. Joe Conner</a>, an Osage citizen who had lost relatives during the Reign of Terror. “And people gathered as if there was a parade.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OS005">Burkhart received a pardon</a> from Oklahoma Gov. Henry Bellmon in 1965, despite protests from the Osage. </p>
<p>To the Osage still living in the area, many of whom had endured the Reign of Terror, excusing the actions of men who masterminded so many deaths spoke volumes.</p>
<p>Years later, in the 1970s, an Osage teacher named Mary Jo Webb conducted her own painstaking research into the murders and created a small booklet detailing her findings. She donated the book to the Fairfax Library. <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/conner-joe-carol/">Within a week, it vanished</a>.</p>
<p>Most recently, <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/grann-david/">Grann mentioned</a> that while he was conducting research for his book, some of the descendants of guardians resisted being interviewed and attempted to dodge him. Dr. Carole Conner explains that it seems as though white community members would “<a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/conner-joe-carol/">rather just ignore the whole topic than have the feeling that they might be blamed</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman wearing a jean jacket and sunglasses gazes at gravestones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555066/original/file-20231020-23-cmjk8u.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">Margie Burkhart visits the cemetery where some of her murdered Osage ancestors are buried.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-granddaughter-of-mollie-burkhart-margie-burkhart-visits-news-photo/1721271931?adppopup=true">Chandan Khana/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Whether the film might create openings for new conversations, or new opportunities for reckoning in these communities, remains to be seen. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/this-osage-writer-remembers-one-of-the-first-victims-of-infamous-reign-of-terror">Paschen’s poem</a> concludes with the lines, “I will wade across the river of the blackfish, the otter, the beaver. / I will climb the bank where the willow never dies.” </p>
<p>I see this poem as both an act of remembrance and a call to action: It is up to the speaker – and perhaps the reader – to explore, rather than ignore, spaces of loss and injustice. </p>
<p>It is also a testament to the fact that the stories of the Osage people neither begin nor end with the events that will be portrayed in Scorsese’s film; <a href="https://voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/grann-david/">as one Osage citizen declared</a>, “We were victims of these crimes. We don’t live as victims.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon Toll 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>
Despite the perpetrators being tried and convicted, anti-Indigenous sentiment roiled the area for decades.
Shannon Toll, Associate Professor of Indigenous Literatures, University of Dayton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210283
2023-10-16T19:04:58Z
2023-10-16T19:04:58Z
In Killers of the Flower Moon, true crime reveals the paradoxes of the past
<p>Martin Scorsese’s latest film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5537002/">Killers of the Flower Moon</a> is based on a 2017 <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Killers-of-the-Flower-Moon/David-Grann/9780857209030">book of the same name</a> by David Grann that chronicled a true story of Osage Indians being systematically murdered in the 1920s. </p>
<p>Fifty years earlier, the Osage had been driven from their ancestral lands in Kansas to a reservation in Oklahoma deemed by the Department of Indian Affairs to be “rocky, sterile, and unfit for cultivation”. It was then found to contain huge reserves of oil. </p>
<p>This oil brought enormous riches to the Osage people, who legally enjoyed “headrights” to land that could not be bought, only inherited. But it also led to a gruesome tale of white entrepreneurs marrying into the Osage clan to murder their relatives and make off with the family wealth.</p>
<h2>New Journalism</h2>
<p>Grann currently works as a staff writer for the New Yorker. His bestselling book was based around the principles of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Journalism">New Journalism</a>, which developed as a popular literary genre during the 1960s in the hands of writers such as Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion. </p>
<p>The most successful longer works in this format, such as Capote’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/in-cold-blood-9780241956830">In Cold Blood</a> (1966) and Norman Mailer’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-executioners-song-9780099688600">The Executioner’s Song</a> (1979), dramatise factual events to explore the complexities of American life. They typically eschew the more closeted dimensions of experimental fiction to engage openly with the public world. </p>
<p>Wolfe, who did a PhD in American Studies at Yale prior to his career as a writer, wrote several literary manifestos pointing explicitly to 19th-century realists, such as Dickens and Balzac, to support his claim that a capacity for “reporting” was more valuable to a creative writer than abstract “theory”. </p>
<p>Though Grann’s writing does not quite have the verve of Wolfe or Mailer, Killers of the Flower Moon gains much of its power from a similar sense of authenticity. His fastidiousness about historical records compels the reader to recognise the narrative’s factual rather than fictional basis. </p>
<p>The third and final section of the book, titled “The Reporter”, boasts an epigraph from William Faulkner’s novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absalom,_Absalom!">Absalom, Absalom!</a> (1936). And like Quentin Compson – Faulkner’s narrator – Grann portrays himself sorting through historical archives and oral testimonies of surviving witnesses in an attempt to reconstitute the past. </p>
<p>Killers of the Flower Moon is a captivating detective story, with all the usual twists and turns, but in this case the apparently unbelievable twists turn out to be true. </p>
<h2>The mythology of West</h2>
<p>Killers of the Flower Moon not only describes institutional racism and violence against Native American tribes, but the growth of law enforcement agencies in the United States between the two world wars. </p>
<p>One of Grann’s key themes is how J. Edgar Hoover used the Osage murder investigations to highlight the limitations of local police forces, so as to justify the establishment of the FBI on more centralised, scientific principles. The book’s subtitle – “Oil, Money, Murder, and the Birth of the FBI” – underlines its interest in the origins of Hoover’s agency, which was officially founded in 1935. </p>
<p>During the investigation, the Bureau of Investigation – the precursor to the FBI – regarded a rancher named <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/osage-murders-case">William Hale</a> as the “lone mastermind” of the killings. Grann’s conclusion, working from an impressive variety of sources, is that the focus on Hale was misplaced and the murder of Osage people during the 1920s and early 1930s was actually much more widespread. </p>
<p>He quotes an Osage tribe member as saying the white community considered murdering an Indian as merely akin to “cruelty to animals”. Indeed, one of the convicted criminals in 1924 justified his nefarious deeds on the grounds that “white people in Oklahoma thought no more of killing an Indian than they did in 1724”. </p>
<p>Grann’s wider perspective allows him to generalise his theme of racism. He suggests that such illegal forms of brutality were always embedded at the heart of the mythology of the American West. He quotes a Tulsa Tribune report on the trial of Hage and his accomplice John Ramsay, which described them simply as “two old-time cowboys”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/david-granns-the-wager-a-drama-of-murder-insurrection-escape-and-an-empire-at-sea-206758">David Grann's The Wager: a drama of murder, insurrection, escape and an empire at sea</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>An unsettling aspect of Grann’s book is its suggestion that the entire American system of commercial wealth and appropriation of territory was implicitly based on such gangsterism. Hale justified his activities by saying they were just a “business proposition”. Calling himself “the Reverend”, he presented himself in the venerable tradition of American pioneers who helped to forge God’s chosen nation out of the wilderness.</p>
<p>The chameleonic character of Hale accords with the theme of ambiguity, which is a central concern of Killers of the Flower Moon. Grann acknowledges the procedural inequity of implicating Herb Bert, a long-deceased guardian of one of the Osage women, simply on circumstantial evidence: “I was conscious of the unfairness of accusing a man of hideous crimes when he could not answer questions or defend himself.” </p>
<p>Grann admits finally that, in his role as investigative journalist, he “had lost the illusion that I would find some Rosetta stone that would unlock the secrets of the past.” In this sense, the ambivalence surrounding Hale – the question of whether he was a staunch pioneer, a clinical murderer, or both – is recapitulated in the book’s formal ambivalence, whereby Grann portrays the truth as impossible to pin down.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548748/original/file-20230918-17-ai5ae0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>This narrative complexity has interesting repercussions for the debates around the question of “truth-telling” in the fraught conditions of contemporary Australia. Grann’s point is that truth-telling is always an intertextual rather than a positive concept. Records can be corrected and hidden facts brought to light, but no final truth is ultimately available. </p>
<p>Grann’s book is valuable not just for the history it recounts and the obscure murder mysteries from the past that it illuminates, but for what it suggests about racial politics in contemporary America – and, by extension, Australia. He shows how the upstanding citizens of Oklahoma were perturbed by the newfound prosperity of the Osage Indians, a wealth they had come to assume was the birthright of their white community, and he describes how these ethnic frictions have continued into the present day. </p>
<p>In a recent interview, Grann remarked that his favourite genre of fiction is the detective novel. One of the heroes in Killers of the Flower Moon is Tom White, a fearless investigator from Texas, who is sent by J. Edgar Hoover into Oklahoma to organise undercover operations and expose the conspiracies in this tight-knit community. </p>
<p>White subsequently left Hoover’s organisation to work in Kansas as a prison governor on a higher salary, but in the late 1950s he attempted to commercialise the fleeting fame he had gained from the widely publicised murder investigations. He asked Osage novelist Fred Grove to assist him in writing a historical account. White’s memoir was rejected by publishers, but many years later it did morph into a fictionalised version by Grove entitled <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Years_of_Fear.html?id=sCsp4GjImqEC&redir_esc=y">The Years of Fear</a> (2002). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/oklahoma-is-and-always-has-been-native-land-142546">Oklahoma is – and always has been – Native land</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>New light</h2>
<p>Tom White plays a minor part in Scorsese’s film. The director remarked in a recent interview with <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/05/martin-scorsese-interview-killers-of-the-flower-moon-leonardo-dicaprio-robert-de-niro-1235359006/">Deadline</a> that he was more interested in exploring the story’s “mystery” than reproducing “a police procedural”. </p>
<p>Reports of the movie’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May suggest it pays less attention to the bureaucratic reforms that led to the establishment of the FBI than Grann’s book. Scorsese focuses instead on the characters of William Hale, played by Robert de Niro, and Hale’s nephew Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who was the husband of an Osage woman named Mollie. He casts the two men as charismatic villains with one foot in the old Wild West. </p>
<p>Scorsese is a truly great director who has previously represented enclosed ethnic communities (mainly Italian Americans), as well as the expansive mythologies of capitalist America. He has explored capitalism’s dangerous proximity to criminal activity in films such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/">The Aviator</a> (2004), starring DiCaprio as Howard Hughes. Scorsese would thus appear to be just the kind of cinematic artist to take on this complex subject and avoid reductive stereotypes or one-dimensional perspectives. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548747/original/file-20230918-25-t4hzyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">David Grann.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.goodreads.com/photo/author/1431785.David_Grann">Goodreads</a></span>
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<p>Grann’s book sets its criminal activity in a wide social context. Its fascination lies in the scrupulous detail it brings to the story. Its depth of archival research shines new light on a distressing but not entirely anomalous episode in the recent American past. </p>
<p>Grann gestures explicitly towards some of the grand narratives of American literature, citing Don DeLillo on conspiracy theories and Faulkner on the opacities and bitterness of the Old South. But his particular expertise lies in more traditional journalistic virtues: punctiliousness, fine detail, and a precise sense of time and place. His version of events, while slow and meticulous at times, reconstructs an important event that probably seems even more significant now than it did 100 years ago. </p>
<p>The rise of interest in Indigenous rights across the globe, along with increasing scepticism about the racial assumptions of settler colonial authority, has changed the framework in which the Osage story can be understood. In an intelligently self-reflexive manner, Killers of the Flower Moon also interrogates the paradoxes of the past, the multiple ways in which it relates to the present, and vice versa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Giles 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>
David Grann’s account of a sensational murder investigation, the basis for Martin Scorsese’s latest film, delves into the mythologies of the old Wild West
Paul Giles, Professor of English, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU, Australian Catholic University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/211638
2023-09-12T14:48:12Z
2023-09-12T14:48:12Z
1973: a golden year for film that rewrote the rules of cinema
<p>Martin Scorsese’s <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/mean-streets-pauline-kael/">Mean Streets</a> burst on to cinema screens 50 years ago, a cacophony of soundtrack, film styles, religion and violence which firmly established the young filmmaker as cut from a different kind of cloth. </p>
<p>Like every screen pioneer before him – from early film illusionist <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/georges-melies-autobiography">Georges Méliès</a> to the 1950s’ <a href="https://nofilmschool.com/what-is-the-french-new-wave">French New Wave</a> filmmakers – Scorsese was testing out a range of cinematic possibilities.</p>
<p>In the opening minutes, a studio set with blue lighting (denoting night time) perfectly creates the atmosphere for the modest apartment of small-time gangster Charlie (Harvey Keitel).</p>
<p>There’s intimate <a href="https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/page/super-8-history">Super8</a> old home movie footage, but also scenes of the real <a href="https://sangennaronyc.org">San Gennaro festival</a> in New York’s Little Italy. Is this a documentary? A seedy bar bathed in red (which would become Scorsese’s signature colour) tells a different story.</p>
<p>We’re certainly not in Kansas any more: gone are the stable camera, smooth editing and well-defined characters of <a href="https://mubi.com/en/lists/classical-hollywood">classical “old” Hollywood</a>. We’re offered an arm as we join Dorothy on the yellow brick road in <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/the-wizard-of-oz-thrs-1939-review-1235002943/">The Wizard of Oz</a> (1939), but there’s no map or trusty chaperone in Charlie’s ‘hood.</p>
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<h2>New Hollywood</h2>
<p>Mean Streets perfectly captures the audaciousness of <a href="https://www.newwavefilm.com/international/new-hollywood.shtml">New Hollywood</a>, a collective of (mostly) young, (mostly) male, (mostly) bearded filmmakers on a mission to rewrite cinema’s rulebook from the late 1960s. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/martin-scorsese">Scorsese</a> and contemporaries (including <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-robert-altman">Robert Altman</a>, <a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2021/great-directors/lucas-george/">George Lucas</a> and <a href="https://amblin.com/steven-spielberg/">Steven Spielberg</a>) were as much in love with classical Hollywood as they were reacting against it. They’d grown up with it, after all, and were fans of the old westerns of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/john-ford-an-american-director-185322/">John Ford</a> and comedies of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jan/15/howard-hawks-films-david-bromwich">Howard Hawks</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/dec/18/frank-capra-bfi-season-review">Frank Capra</a>.</p>
<p>But this new generation were film school graduates. Like the cinema-literate French New Wave before them, they saw themselves as film artists, with something new and personal to say.</p>
<p>Scorsese’s own vision, then, immortalised in this noisy 1973 film, was of America’s “mean streets” and the conflicted anti-heroes trying to navigate them. The Vietnam War was weighing on society’s conscience, and male psychological turmoil darkened cinema screens. </p>
<p>Fellow New Hollywood filmmaker <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/17/robert-altmans-20-best-films-ranked">Altman’s</a> career was defined by anti-heroes, and, more broadly, defying Hollywood conventions. His 1971 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/1999/dec/23/artsfeatures1">McCabe and Mrs Miller</a> had reconfigured the classical western. Now 1973’s <a href="https://cinephiliabeyond.org/long-goodbye-robert-altman-leigh-bracketts-unique-fascinating-take-chandler-film-noir/">The Long Goodbye</a> took the conventions of the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/one-great-film-noir-every-year-1940-59">noir film</a> and turned them, and the genre’s wisecracking hero (epitomised in Bogart’s famous private eye), on its head. </p>
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<p>Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould) is a rubbish private eye: he’s duped by the <a href="https://www.filmsite.org/femmesfatales.html">femme fatale</a>, and there’s a sense that something’s always beyond his grasp (this we get from Altman’s trademark drifting camerawork). A strong sense of moral code was part of the classical Hollywood noirs. No spoilers, but there’s little sense in this 1973 re-envisioning that Marlowe is morally justified in the actions he carries out. </p>
<p>With these criminal settings and alienated anti-heroes, it’s easy to sum up 1973 as a year of hard-hitting, often violent, box office fare. Highest-grossing film <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/market/1973/top-grossing-movies">The Exorcist</a>, directed by another New Hollywood alumnus, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Friedkin">William Friedkin</a>, spun onto screens and sparked controversy – both for positioning a priest as a child abuser, and for (supposedly) inducing “<a href="https://www.bbfc.co.uk/education/case-studies/exorcist">fainting, vomiting and heart attacks in cinemas</a>”. </p>
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<p>It’s not the urban mean streets but the wild open Badlands of South Dakota where <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Terrence-Malick">Terrence Malick’s</a> impulsive killing spree plays out in his celebrated <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-badlands-1973">film</a>. And then there’s the shocking aftermath of a gang rape in <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/biography-sidney-lumet/7810/">Sydney Lumet’s</a> <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/serpico-review/">Serpico</a>, another neo-noir/generic twist of a film centring on the tale of a good cop (Al Pacino) resisting the bad cops.</p>
<p>With Vietnam lingering, the filmmakers of 1973 weren’t just reflecting more violence; they were interested in how cinema, as a very distinctive art form, could explore violence. A new <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/594087/index.html">film ratings system</a> had given them greater freedom (more explicit content could be now shown, albeit to a particular age group). And a growing youth audience were hungry for these new – sometimes graphic, but often subversive – cinematic stories.</p>
<h2>That’s entertainment</h2>
<p>But 1973 was also the year of Woody Allen’s sci-fi romp, <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sleeper-1973">Sleeper</a>, Peter Bogdanovich’s Oscar-winning father and daughter grifter comedy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/sep/12/courtney-hunt-paper-moon-ryan-tatum-oneal">Paper Moon</a>, Oscar-winning gambling caper <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nAIb_J9T5M">The Sting</a> and the latest in the Bond franchise, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTzsm9-XWQo">Live and Let Die</a> with Roger Moore. New Hollywood filmmakers, and the industry more broadly, have always made works of “entertainment”. But audiences want choice: <a href="https://ew.com/movies/barbieheimer-everything-to-know/">Barbenheimer</a>, anyone? </p>
<p>The third highest-grossing film of 1973 was George Lucas’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/11/american-graffiti-george-lucas-50-years">American Graffiti</a>. It’s a semi-autobiographical homage to the director’s own teenage years, and its wallpaper of rock'n’roll hits reminds us just how important music is in our lives growing up. But the burger joint date nights and high school dances aren’t forever: a blunt epilogue tells us one of the kids is killed in Vietnam. </p>
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<p>Like Mean Streets, Lucas’s film is a bold cinematic experiment: musical lyrics are quirkily placed, and even the same songs can sound radically different: crisp and clear, like on a home stereo; hollow, in a vast school hall; muffled and scratchy, on the radio. (Critics have called this “<a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-sonic-triumph-of-american-graffiti/">worldising</a>”). Altman was also experimenting freely in The Long Goodbye: listen to how the same title song replays in a variety of different genres and styles. </p>
<p>Fast-forward five decades, and contemporary filmmakers like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Fincher">David Fincher</a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/barbie-greta-gerwig-interview-margot-robbie-ryan-gosling-superhero-movie-1234769344/">Greta Gerwig</a> and <a href="https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/christopher-nolan">Christopher Nolan</a> continue to rewrite cinema’s rulebook. Who says films need to be linear? Do characters really need to be good or bad? Why do camera and sound have to be tied into the action? </p>
<p>Beards might be optional 50 years on, but that mission to test the boundaries of the big screen is not.</p>
<hr>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Harbidge 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>
From Mean Streets to The Exorcist and Badlands, 1973 was a year that showcased the audacious talent in Hollywood that was experimenting with darker themes and new film techniques.
Lesley Harbidge, Head of Film & TV, University of South Wales
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144738
2020-09-08T20:08:23Z
2020-09-08T20:08:23Z
GoodFellas at 30: Scorsese’s massively influential, virtuoso gangster film
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356192/original/file-20200903-20-sz3lf0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C29%2C1142%2C667&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>It’s hard to imagine that Martin Scorsese’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/">GoodFellas</a> is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodfellas">30 years old</a>. A massive influence on contemporary filmmakers ranging from Quentin Tarantino and Fernando Morales to David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson, it remains one of the peaks of Hollywood genre filmmaking.</p>
<p>GoodFellas is a movie defined by an extraordinary, almost anthropological attention to experiential and procedural detail, a stylistic virtuosity that ranges across freeze-frames, majestic subjective tracking shots, overlapping and sometimes improvised dialogue, propulsive editing, dual voice-overs, a breathless pop-rock soundtrack, and an insider’s knowledge of the life of organised crime.</p>
<p>Documenting the 25-year story arc of a foot soldier on the fringes of the Mob, the film is both brilliantly designed and executed and a bravura mash-up of tones, styles and sensibilities, influenced by movies such as Truffaut’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055032/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Jules et Jim</a>.</p>
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<p>As an example, who can forget the wonderfully staged scene between Henry (Ray Liotta), Jimmy (Robert De Niro), Tommy (Joe Pesci) and his mother (played by Catherine Scorsese, the director’s own mother) as the boys drop in on their way to completing the murder of a “made man” they have bundled up into the boot of their car?</p>
<p>Despite the palpable tension — and this is not a movie for those suffering from any kind of anxiety disorder — this scene is remarkable for its equally humorous, affectionate, conversational and even sweet-natured tone, as well as the wonderful physicality of the performances.</p>
<p>Even when we hear Tommy mischievously ask his mother if he can borrow a large carving knife, the spell is never completely broken. As in GoodFellas’ greatest disciple, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Sopranos</a>, we are hitching a ride with these characters until the very end, living each moment with them.</p>
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<h2>A highly ritualised world</h2>
<p>This overwhelming feeling for the material realities and pleasures of the film’s chosen, often garish, milieu helps draw us into a largely masculine, chauvinist world defined by easy corruption, hair-trigger violence, moral ambivalence and imperiousness. </p>
<p>GoodFellas builds up a minutely rendered environment we both observe and are deceptively drawn into. As in many Scorsese films, we latch onto the story of an outsider inculcated into a highly ritualised, semiotic world. Unlike that found in many other period films, this world appears truly lived in with, as Scorsese suggests, every frame “packed with motion and detail”. </p>
<p>In the process, a sense of abundance is communicated that is often overwhelming. Although key collaborators such as editor Thelma Schoonmaker and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus have often and rightly been singled out for their contributions, the production design by Kristi Zea truly brings this “cloistered” and insular world to life.</p>
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<span class="caption">Joe Pesci and Katherine Wallach in Goodfellas. The just-right domestic interiors are richly suggestive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span>
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<p>For example, the tacky, expensive but just-right domestic interiors are richly suggestive and immersive. From the moment the film opens mid-story — the harsh red taillights under-lighting Henry’s face as he proclaims, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster” — we’re well and truly hooked.</p>
<h2>Jump Into the Fire: music and performance</h2>
<p>Scorsese’s movies are often difficult to pin down and describe. They regularly take their lead from a snatch of music, the riff from a particular song, or the rapid-fire transition from one track to another. This use of music feeds into their angular, sometimes abrupt, almost jazz-like rhythms and tones.</p>
<p>For example, the extraordinary, manic, cocaine-fuelled final day of Karen (Lorraine Bracco) and Michael’s freedom in the last stages of the film is scored by a head-spinning, needle-jumping combination of tracks by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfjNpgZ4C5Q">Harry Nilsson</a>, Muddy Waters, The Rolling Stones, and many others.</p>
<p>Although the use of the compilation soundtrack has become a cliché, Scorsese’s choice of particular tracks and musical moments still seems remarkably fresh (Donovan’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMYGzwUTK4">Atlantis</a>, anyone?).</p>
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<p>The use of Derek and the Dominos’ keening, soaring “coda” from “Layla” to score the carefully arranged images of corpses discovered in the aftermath of Jimmy’s killing spree still takes your breath away. </p>
<p>It is also the close connection forged between music and performance that makes it difficult to imagine a particular moment, gesture or action scored by a different track. </p>
<p>Although one of the truly seminal gangster films, in its fusion of character, action and sound GoodFellas could almost qualify as a musical.</p>
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<h2>An uneasy love letter</h2>
<p>GoodFellas sits somewhere near the mid-point of Scorsese’s career and was a significant return to peak form after his more disparate work of the 1980s. The movie ushers in a period of extraordinary productivity in the first half of the 1990s that takes in such key works as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106226/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Age of Innocence</a>, his documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112120/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies</a>, and GoodFellas’ “evil twin”, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Casino</a>.</p>
<p>In many ways, GoodFellas is an uneasy love letter to the gangster film replete with characteristic references to much-cherished earlier influences such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031867/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Roaring Twenties</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Goodfellas is an uneasy love letter to the gangster film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros</span></span>
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<p>Following a conventional rise and fall narrative arc, and based on the nonfiction source Wise Guy by screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, it is, perhaps, the defining work of Scorsese’s career. But it is also dangerously seductive. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Casino</a> revisits many of the same tropes and features some of the same actors, but its abundance of information is exhausting, and the world of crime just isn’t much fun anymore. </p>
<p>When Pesci’s Tommy appears one final time to shoot straight at the camera in GoodFellas, scored by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MedC8kTa9XY">Sid Vicious’ version of My Way</a>, you know where you’d rather be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144738/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Danks 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>
Dangerously seductive, Goodfellas is perhaps the defining work of Martin Scorsese’s career.
Adrian Danks, Associate professor in Cinema and Media Studies, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131075
2020-02-07T15:13:01Z
2020-02-07T15:13:01Z
Oscars 2020: Academy Awards struggling to become progressive in a changing world
<p>As the great and good of the movie world get ready to step out on the Oscars red carpet, old Hollywood glamour – and old Hollywood values – remain central to the night. The <a href="https://oscar.go.com/">Academy Awards</a> presentation is one of the most prestigious events in the film industry. And while the awards are the focus of limited academic research, they offer insight into Hollywood trends and the issues faced by the American film industry.</p>
<p>By assessing the Oscars’ current status, we can clearly see tension arising between the old guard of Hollywood and the newer values and practices of the industry. Debates around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-get-to-the-bottom-of-hollywoods-diversity-problem-73309">diversity of nominees</a> – both in terms of gender and race – come at a time when the way that we interact with film is changing.</p>
<p>Online streaming services are offering easy access to movies. And although some streaming firms’ films have been recognised by the Academy Awards, movies are only eligible for nomination if they have had a theatrical release alongside their online debut.</p>
<p>In 2019, <a href="https://theconversation.com/roma-mexican-film-industry-blooms-with-oscar-nominations-a-century-after-its-origins-in-the-chihuahua-desert-110207">Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma</a> became the first Netflix film to be nominated for best picture. In 2020, an even more extensive slate of Netflix movies have been nominated for a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/13/21063451/oscar-nominations-2020-academy-awards-joker-netflix-actors-movies">total of 24 awards</a>, including The Irishman (four including best actor, best picture and best director), The Two Popes (best actor, best supporting actor and best adapted screenplay) and Marriage Story (six including acting, directing and screenplay).</p>
<p>But despite Netflix’s seeming <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2020/01/netflix-dominates-oscar-nominations-for-the-first-time-beating-studios-1202202813/#!">dominance of this year’s Oscars</a>, the relationship between streaming services and the Academy has not been without controversy. Martin Scorsese <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/02/martin-scorsese-the-irishman-dont-watch-on-phone-netflix">has begged people</a> not to watch The Irishman on a phone screen. This seems odd coming from a director who is clearly benefiting from a service that offers its subscribers the ability to watch films anytime, anywhere. </p>
<p>In 2019 Steven Spielberg spoke in favour of the Academy only celebrating films that have <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/awards/steven-spielberg-oscars-netflix-1203155528/">had a theatrical release</a> and one of the <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/rules-eligibility">prize’s key rules</a> is that a film must have a “qualifying theatrical run of at least seven consecutive days, during which period screenings must occur at least three times daily”. </p>
<p>At least one of these screenings <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/rules-eligibility">must be</a> between 6pm and 10pm in the evening and the theatrical run must be for “paid admission in a commercial motion picture theatre in Los Angeles County”. This is a potentially prohibitive rule for smaller-scale or streaming service-only productions. It also underlines the old-fashioned idea of LA being the one and only home of movies.</p>
<h2>New tensions, old values</h2>
<p>The Academy’s difficulty in keeping up with the times is also evident in the regular rows over diversity. Claims of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2016/feb/12/racism-sexism-ageism-homophobia-four-theatres-of-oscar-conflict">sexism and racism</a>, as well as ageism and homophobia, are frequently levelled at the Academy Awards. In <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html">2012, a study by the LA Times</a> found that 94% of Oscar voters were white and 77% were male.</p>
<p>The Academy has attempted to improve these figures in recent years, breaking its own cap of 5,000 members in order to diversify its voters. A recent report revealed that the Academy had issued more than 900 invitations for extra voters as part of <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/new-academy-members-2018-revealed-1123069">a diversity initiative in 2018</a>. Nearly half (49%) of those invited were female and 38% were people of colour. Beyond that, however, the make-up of the Academy’s membership remains opaque.</p>
<p>Despite the push to improve the diversity of the Academy, the lack of women nominated for best director has become <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/news/oscars-female-director-shutout-hollywood-reacts-1203465116/">a tiresome norm</a> for the Oscars – and 2020 is no exception. Likewise best actor and supporting actor nominees are all white, as are best supporting actress. In the best director category, only the presence of Bong Joon Ho for Korean movie Parasite mitigates against the once again deserved hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, while Cynthia Erivo is the lone woman of colour vying for best actress.</p>
<p>Such biases are exacerbated by the regulations regarding theatrical release. Streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime offer opportunities to women and filmmakers of colour that are not available in the mainstream but these films tend to be overlooked at awards ceremonies. </p>
<p>For example, Lynne Ramsay’s 2017 film You Were Never Really Here, a film distributed by Amazon, was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/26/you-were-never-really-here-review-joaquin-phoenix-lynne-ramsay-cannes-2017">hailed by critics</a> but failed to receive a single nomination for the 2018 Oscars. Meanwhile directors such as Scorsese – whose names can justify the brief theatrical release required by the rules and who bring “prestige” (not to mention lots of viewers) to these services – tend to overshadow the less well-known names. </p>
<h2>I’ll catch it on Twitter</h2>
<p>Perhaps as a result of this, there’s been a <a href="https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/oscars-ratings-2019-1203144417/">downturn in interest in the Oscars broadcast</a> in recent years. The 2018 and 2019 Academy Awards achieved the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/253743/academy-awards--number-of-viewers/">lowest ratings</a> ever for the ceremony. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314190/original/file-20200207-27538-1kigxuh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oscars broadcast ratings 2000 to 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Statista 2020</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Critics believe the Oscars have become <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-predictable-are-the-oscars-more-than-you-might-think-73191">increasingly predictable</a> in terms of who wins awards. The <a href="https://www.looper.com/112576/people-stopped-watching-oscars/">long speeches and problematic hosts</a> have also become offputting for viewers. Seth McFarlane’s sexist performance of We Saw Your Boobs at the 2013 ceremony was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2013/feb/25/seth-macfarlane-oscars-opening-boob">widely criticised as distasteful</a> and, in 2019, the awards ceremony was without a host after <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46479017">Kevin Hart stepped down</a> following controversy around his homophobic humour and offensive tweets.</p>
<p>The broadcast is also struggling to adapt to changing viewing practices of both the ceremony and the films it highlights. While ratings for the televised ceremony fall, key events or scandals (remember when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/01/warren-beatty-oscars-president-should-publicly-clarify-best-picture-fiasco">announced the wrong winner</a> of best picture in 2017) are becoming the key talking points in the hours after the ceremony and tend to be consumed as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/24/a-brief-history-of-the-oscars-in-viral-moments-they-want-you-to-forget">clips via social media or YouTube</a>. </p>
<p>These viral Oscars “snippets” – <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/oscars-2019-most-viral-moments-memes-tweets">and their evident popularity</a> – suggest that today’s audiences are less interested in the prolonged celebration of traditional Hollywood and are more likely to want to pick and choose what aspects they engage with. So, if the way in which we interact with film is changing, can the Academy keep up?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131075/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Despite the efforts to expand the Academy, women and people of colour are once again conspicuous by their absence this year.
Claire Jenkins, Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Leicester
Stevie Marsden, Research Associate, CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126393
2019-11-26T14:06:06Z
2019-11-26T14:06:06Z
Jimmy Hoffa disappeared – and then his legacy took on a life of its own
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303034/original/file-20191121-112971-10pgrgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C22%2C2950%2C2002&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jimmy Hoffa waves to delegates at the opening of the 1957 Teamsters Union convention in Miami Beach, Florida.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hoffa-Search-Chronology/06e32ce7f7a240c794d79fd531a52778/7/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters Union, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/01/archives/hoffa-is-reported-missing-police-find-his-car.html">disappeared</a>.</p>
<p>He’d gone to a restaurant in suburban Detroit apparently expecting to meet a couple of mafia figures whom he had known for decades. He’d hoped to win their support for his bid to return to the union’s presidency. A few customers remembered seeing him in the restaurant parking lot before 3 p.m. </p>
<p>Sometime after that he vanished without a trace.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Desperate_Bargain.html?id=O27hAAAAMAAJ">FBI has long assumed</a> that Hoffa was the victim of a mob hit. But despite a decades-long investigation, no one has ever been charged with his murder. His body has never been found.</p>
<p>Yet even though his physical remains are missing, Hoffa lives on in our collective cultural consciousness.</p>
<p>Martin Scorsese’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Irishman</a>” is only the latest film to offer a fictionalized version of Hoffa’s story. Before that there was Sylvester Stallone’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077531/?ref_=nv_sr_8?ref_=nv_sr_8">F.I.S.T.</a>” (1978), Danny DeVito’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104427/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Hoffa</a>” (1992) and the made-for-TV movie “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085252/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">Blood Feud</a>” (1983).</p>
<p>He’s been the subject of countless true crime books, most famously Charles Brandt’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qPF0PgAACAAJ&dq=i+heard+you+paint+houses&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDo47HnP7lAhUlwVkKHRPiBloQ6AEwAnoECAAQAg">I Heard You Paint Houses</a>.” He inspired <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701151/trivia">an episode</a> of “The Simpsons.” And he crops up in tabloids such as the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=a-4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=hoffa+living+in+argentina&source=bl&ots=UVkTmWJrpl&sig=ACfU3U1-NuSbBYkxOkPZ3qLIsSXAuHgNZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7heG05IDmAhWmxFkKHR0WAlgQ6AEwCXoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=hoffa%20living%20in%20argentina&f=false">Weekly World News</a>, which claimed to have found him living in Argentina, hiding from the vengeful Kennedys.</p>
<p>Ever since I started researching and writing on <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Corruption_and_Reform_in_the_Teamsters_U.html?id=LkVKPwAACAAJ">the history of the Teamsters</a>, people have asked me where I think Hoffa’s body is located. His story, I’ve learned, is the one aspect of labor history with which nearly every American is familiar. </p>
<p>Hoffa’s disappearance transformed him from a controversial union leader into a mythic figure. Over time, I’ve come to realize that Hoffa’s resonance in our culture has important political implications for the labor movement today. </p>
<h2>The rise and fall of the ‘Teamsters Teamster’</h2>
<p>Hoffa became a household name in the late 1950s, when Robert F. Kennedy, then serving as chief counsel for the <a href="https://themobmuseum.org/blog/robert-f-kennedys-crusade-mob-part-2/">Senate Rackets Committee</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rSNQceRJ_0">publicly grilled him</a> about his mob ties.</p>
<p>While other witnesses avoided answering questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment rights, Hoffa, the newly elected leader of the nation’s largest and most powerful union, adopted a defiant stance. He never denied having connections with organized crime figures; instead, he claimed these were the kinds of people he sometimes had to work with as he strengthened and grew his union in the face of employer opposition. He angrily dismissed any allegations of corruption and touted the gains his union had won for its membership. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303574/original/file-20191125-74593-y19pjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, left, listens to testimony during the Senate Rackets Committee’s hearings on allegations of corruption in the union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Dist-of-Columbi-/fa8c98afbae5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/8/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/17824432/struggle-get-hoffa">verbal sparring</a> between Kennedy and Hoffa became the most memorable part of the hearings. </p>
<p>To the benefit of big business, it turned Hoffa into a menacing symbol of labor racketeering.</p>
<p>But to his union members, it only enhanced his standing. They were already thrilled by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1958/11/09/archives/why-they-cheer-for-hoffa-the-boss-of-the-teamsters-has-emerged-from.html?searchResultPosition=1">contracts Hoffa had negotiated</a> that included better pay and working conditions. Now his members hailed him as their embattled champion and wore <a href="https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1960ca-hoffa-the-teamsters-teamster-campaign">buttons proclaiming</a>, “Hoffa, the Teamsters Teamster.” </p>
<p>His membership stayed loyal even as Hoffa became the target of a series of prosecution efforts. </p>
<p>After becoming attorney general in 1961, Kennedy created a unit within the Department of Justice whose attorneys referred to themselves as the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1995/01/14/walter-sheridan-dies/2137398d-9a73-4423-9cf7-8da24eef860b/">Get Hoffa Squad</a>.” Their directive was to target Hoffa and his closest associates. The squad’s efforts culminated in convictions against Hoffa in 1964 <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Out_of_the_Jungle.html?id=a69CD1IRlpYC&source=kp_book_description">for jury tampering and defrauding the union’s pension fund</a>. Despite that setback, Hoffa’s hold on the Teamsters’ presidency remained firm even after he entered federal prison in 1967. </p>
<p>When he finally did leave office, Hoffa did so voluntarily. He resigned in 1971 as <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-04-08-0104080311-story.html">part of a deal to win executive clemency</a> from the Nixon administration. There was one condition written into the president’s grant of clemency: He couldn’t run for a position in the union until 1980.</p>
<p>Once free, Hoffa claimed that his ban from union office was illegitimate and began planning to run for the Teamsters presidency. However, he faced resistance not from the government but from organized crime figures, who had found it easier to work with Hoffa’s successor, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/07/obituaries/frank-fitzsimmons-of-teamsters-dies.html">Frank Fitzsimmons</a>. </p>
<p>Hoffa’s meeting at the restaurant on July 30, 1975, was part of his efforts to allay that opposition. </p>
<p>Clearly, things didn’t go as planned. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Teamsters/sLCNAn8ZjKIC?hl=en">Some theorize</a> that the mafia had him killed in order to ensure that he would not run against Fitzsimmons in the Teamsters’ upcoming 1976 union election. </p>
<p>But after no arrests and multiple fruitless excavations to try to locate his body, Hoffa’s case remains, to this day, unresolved.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303041/original/file-20191121-112967-b17v0i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this June 2013 photograph, Robert Foley of the FBI’s Detroit division announces that the FBI had come up empty after an excavation, based on a tip, to uncover Hoffa’s remains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hoffa-Search/0df29dfe203b41dea62bb74cd03b8f83/284/0">AP Photo/Carlos Osorio</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From man to myth</h2>
<p>In Andrew Lawler’s history of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=uK6ZDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=andrew%20lawler%20lost%20colony%20roanoke&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">he writes</a>, “To die is tragic, but to go missing is to become a legend, a mystery.” </p>
<p>Stories are supposed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. But when people go missing and are never found, Lawler explains, they’ll endure as subjects of endless fascination. It allows their legacies to be re-written, over and over. </p>
<p>These new interpretations, Lawler observes, “can reveal something fresh about who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.”</p>
<p>The myth of Hoffa lives on, even though almost five decades have passed since that afternoon in July 1975. </p>
<p>What shapes has it taken?</p>
<p>To some, he stands for an idealized image of the working class – a man who’d known hard, manual labor and worked tirelessly to achieve his success. But even after rising to his leadership post, Hoffa lived simply and eschewed pretense.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/307597398?accountid=13158&pq-origsite=summon">Washington Post article from 1992</a> put it, “He wore white socks, and liked his beef cooked medium well… He snored at the opera.” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, his feud with the Kennedys pitted a populist “tough guy off the loading docks” against “the professional class, the governing class, the educated experts.” The Washington Post piece ties Hoffa’s story to that of another working-class icon. “Watching Hoffa go up against Bobby Kennedy was like watching John Henry go up against a steam hammer – it was only a matter of time before he lost.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303035/original/file-20191121-112981-ejxin7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man walks over rubble in Jersey City, N.J., one of the locations where authorities searched for the body of missing former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Hoffa-Search/2132e839ae064fdabda70fd83630395e/63/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Hoffa’s myth can also serve as a morality tale. The <a href="https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/212889901?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:summon&accountid=13158">New Republic</a>, for instance, described how Danny DeVito’s 1992 film reworks Hoffa’s life into the story of an “embattled champion of the working class” who makes “a Faustian pact with the underworld.” </p>
<p>In the movie, Hoffa’s Teamsters are caught in hopeless picket line battles with mob goons who the anti-union employers have hired. In order to get those goons to switch sides, Hoffa makes a bargain with mafia leaders. But the mafia ultimately has Hoffa killed when he tries to defy their control, becoming the victim of his own unbridled ambition. </p>
<p>Finally, the underworld’s mysterious role in Hoffa’s death keeps his story compelling for Americans who have a fascination with conspiracy theories. It supports the idea of an invisible cabal that secretly runs everything, and which can make even a famous labor leader disappear without a trace. </p>
<p>Hoffa’s story is often intertwined with <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-withering-public-trust-in-government-be-traced-back-to-the-jfk-assassination-87719">theories about the Kennedy assassination</a> that attribute the president’s murder to an organized crime conspiracy. Both Hoffa and Kennedy’s murders, in these accounts, highlight the underworld’s apparently unlimited power to protect its interests, with tentacles that extend into the government and law enforcement.</p>
<h2>Did Hoffa taint the labor movement?</h2>
<p>Over two decades after he went missing, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-17-op-23341-story.html">a 1997 article in The Los Angeles Times</a> noted that “No union in America conjures up more negative images than the Teamsters.”</p>
<p>This matters, because for most Americans who lack first-hand knowledge about organized labor, Hoffa is the only labor leader’s name they recognize. And as communications scholar <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780875461854/through-jaundiced-eyes/">William Puette</a> has noted, “the Teamsters’ notoriety is such that for many people in this country the Teamsters Union is the labor movement.” </p>
<p>A union widely perceived as mobbed up – with a labor leader notorious for his Mafia ties – has come, in the minds of some Americans, to represent the entire labor movement. That perception, in turn, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-_b_913311">bolsters arguments against legislative reforms</a> that would facilitate union organizing efforts.</p>
<p>The other themes in Hoffa’s myth have similar negative implications for labor. He represents <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/3/8/11177770/white-working-class-nostalgia-john-wayne">a nostalgic, white, male identity</a> that once existed in a seemingly lost world of manual work. That myth also implies that the unions that emerged in those olden times are no longer necessary.</p>
<p>This depiction doesn’t match reality. Today’s working class is <a href="https://www.demos.org/research/understanding-working-class">diverse</a> and employed in a broad spectrum of hard manual labor. Whether you’re working as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/nyregion/home-health-aide.html">home health aide</a> or <a href="https://qz.com/1556194/the-gig-economy-is-quietly-undermining-a-century-of-worker-protections/">in the gig economy</a>, the need for union protection remains quite real. </p>
<p>But for those working-class Americans who see their society controlled by a hidden cabal of powerful, corrupt forces – like the puppet masters who supposedly had JFK and Hoffa killed – <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-so-many-working-class-americans-feel-politics-is-pointless-121232">labor activism can appear quixotic</a>. </p>
<p>For these reasons, the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa continues to haunt the labor movement today.</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/126393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Scott Witwer 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>
Hoffa’s ghost continues to haunt the labor movement.
David Scott Witwer, Professor of American Studies, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126559
2019-11-21T13:58:54Z
2019-11-21T13:58:54Z
When de-aging De Niro and Pacino, ‘Irishman’ animators tried to avoid pitfalls of the past
<p>If you thought 76-year-old Robert De Niro and 79-year-old Al Pacino were done starring in blockbuster gangster films, think again.</p>
<p>Both assume lead roles in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” which chronicles the life of hitman Frank Sheeran and labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa over several decades. </p>
<p>Different actors weren’t cast to play the younger versions of Sheeran and Hoffa. Instead, Scorsese and his production team utilized “de-aging” technology to make De Niro and Pacino appear younger.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zbPKbT2B7bE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Moshe Mahler talks about animators’ struggle to avoid the uncanny valley.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To de-age actors, a visual effects team creates a computer-generated, younger version of an actor’s face and then replaces the actor’s real face with the synthetic, animated version. </p>
<p>Human beings are actually quite good at picking up on even the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2017.05.011">smallest of details of the human face</a>. For this reason, we had several project lines devoted to advancing these types of digital human technologies at <a href="https://www.disneyresearch.com/">Disney Research</a>, where I spent nearly a decade of my career.</p>
<p>Animators need to avoid what’s called “the uncanny valley” – a pitfall in realistic, computer-generated animation that animators have been struggling to overcome for decades.</p>
<h2>Into the uncanny valley</h2>
<p>In 2010, I was a contributing author to a paper titled “<a href="http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/MMM/">The Saliency of Anomalies in Animated Human Characters</a>.” </p>
<p>In the paper, we found that audiences are much more sensitive to distortions in computer-generated faces, even when larger, seemingly more obvious distortions are present on the body. In other words, there’s more room for error when creating computer-generated bodies and a much smaller margin for error when creating computer-generated faces. </p>
<p>This brings us to the uncanny valley. The term refers to the uncomfortable feeling viewers might experience when they see computer-generated faces that “aren’t quite right.” </p>
<p><a href="https://web.ics.purdue.edu/%7Edrkelly/MoriTheUncannyValley1970.pdf">The term was coined in 1970</a> by robotics professor Masahiro Mori. Mori hypothesized that as a humanoid becomes more lifelike, an audience’s “familiarity” toward it increases until a point where the humanoid is almost lifelike, but not perfectly lifelike. At this point, subtle imperfections lead to responses of repulsion or rejection. </p>
<p>The term “uncanny valley” comes from visualizing this idea on two axes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302719/original/file-20191120-467-1lgxomc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hypothesized graph for the uncanny valley, redrawn from Masahiro Mori’s 1970 article on the subject.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/MoriTheUncannyValley1970.pdf">J. Hodgins et al.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The x-axis describes “human likeness” or realism, while the y-axis describes “familiarity,” empathy or emotional engagement. The steep falloff in the graph represents the uncanny valley – the point at which people recoil and feel less empathy. The effect is stronger if the humanoid is moving. </p>
<h2>Animating appealing people</h2>
<p>While the hypothesis originated in the robotics community, the concept of the uncanny valley gained popularity in the animation industry. For animators, the word “appeal” may be the closest relative we have to Mori’s familiarity.</p>
<p>Appeal is one of the 12 basic principles of animation that animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston outline in their book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2x0RAQAAMAAJ&q=the+illusion+of+life&dq=the+illusion+of+life&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiD49-2pu3lAhWQdd8KHUx9DuEQ6AEwAHoECAUQAg">The Illusion of Life</a>.”</p>
<p>In animation, appeal has to do with the character’s magnetism – whether he or she is beautiful, cuddly and kind, or ugly, disgusting and mean. Animated human characters, like <a href="https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/455187/elsa-frozen.jpg">Elsa</a> in “Frozen,” tend to be stylized in a way that caricature human features, which allows us to caricature their motion as well. </p>
<p>Two computer-animated films from 2004, “The Polar Express” and “The Incredibles,” highlight this quandary. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317705/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Incredibles</a>” was the first Pixar film that starred actual human beings instead of toys, bugs, fish or monsters. But the animation team didn’t try to make them look like real humans: They had larger eyes, soft, rounded silhouettes and simplified features. These types of design decisions work toward the “magnetism” of a character that most audiences ultimately find appealing. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338348/">The Polar Express</a>,” on the other hand, used performance capture technology so Tom Hanks could play five lifelike characters, including the 9-year-old protagonist. </p>
<p>Mapping a 50-year-old’s facial movements onto a 9-year-old boy’s face ended up creating a whole host of problems. For example, how should a moment where Hanks is bursting with excitement be transferred to a 9-year-old’s face? In order to use performance capture data to transplant an actor’s expressions onto an animated character, animators need to do what’s called “motion retargeting.” Because this was new territory for animators – and due to the technological limitations of the time – the nuanced facial expressions that make Hanks a talented actor were lost. </p>
<p>In retrospect, this is a fairly extreme example of de-aging – and one that didn’t sit well with most viewers. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve_fMwJ1GJY">The animated boy</a> seemed “off,” with audiences and critics <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-polar-express-253058/">disturbed</a> by what Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers described as the film’s “spooky” and “lifeless” animation.</p>
<h2>Adapting to the technology</h2>
<p>Not all trips into the uncanny valley end up fruitless. Animators can learn from experience.</p>
<p>For example, in 1988, Pixar released the short film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096273/">Tin Toy</a>,” in which an animated baby torments a group of toys. At the time, Pixar hadn’t developed the technology needed to depict appealing humanoid characters. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096273/mediaviewer/rm3826469376">The baby</a> almost evokes <a href="https://hips.hearstapps.com/digitalspyuk.cdnds.net/18/38/1537686437-chucky-doll.jpg">Chuckie</a> from the horror film “Child’s Play.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302725/original/file-20191120-515-1ylx4xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The baby in Pixar’s ‘Tin Toy’ is unsettling, to say the least.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixar-planet.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/billy-personnage-tin-toy-04.jpg">Pixar</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film’s shiny plastic and metal toys, on the other hand, worked well within the constraints of the era’s computer animation technology. This is largely why the ensuing “Toy Story” franchise ended up featuring toys, not humans, as the protagonists.</p>
<p>It also helps to apply performance capture technology on computer-generated characters who aren’t fully human. That’s what James Cameron did in his 2009 blockbuster, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Avatar</a>.”</p>
<p>The film’s Na’vi species are humanlike but remain an alien species. They’re blue. They have large, radiant eyes. The bridge of their nose is wide and stiff, while the tip of their nose is catlike. </p>
<p>Importantly, however, the animated characters of the film still look somewhat like the actors who played them. <a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hXej4xfDfhM/maxresdefault.jpg">Sigourney Weaver’s avatar</a> looks very much like Sigourney Weaver, which helps avoid the “retargeting” problem that occurred in “Polar Express.” Audiences don’t expect the alien race to look or move exactly like humans. </p>
<h2>Surmounting the valley</h2>
<p>While the technology continues to improve, recreating realistic human faces remains one of the most difficult tasks for animators. </p>
<p>A strong example of de-aging technology can be seen in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1856101/">Blade Runner: 2049</a>.” The shot of a de-aged Sean Young is a stunning technical feat, but the scene also doesn’t ask too much of the computer-generated performance. In fact, the computer-generated version of Young only says a couple of sentences. Most of all, the use of the technology actually serves the story. The moment is designed to be eerie; audiences are supposed to be unsettled.</p>
<p>Because “The Irishman” is based on a real story, with realistic characters with realistic faces, audiences are much more sensitive to the use of de-aging technologies. </p>
<p>My guess is that some viewers won’t notice the technology, some will marvel at it and others will find it distracting. I usually fall into the latter two categories. It is incredibly distracting to me despite the impressive quality of the de-aging. </p>
<p>I often teach my students that when working with new technology, just because we can, that doesn’t always mean we should. </p>
<p>Interestingly, De Niro won his first Academy Award for his portrayal of a young Vito Corleone in “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071562/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">The Godfather: Part II</a>,” while Marlon Brando played the older Vito Corleone.</p>
<p>If Francis Ford Coppola had today’s technology and could have simply “de-aged” Brando, would he have done so? And how would that have changed one of the most memorable gangster films of all time?</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/126559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Moshe Mahler is also the owner of BIG eMotion Technologies.
The "The Saliency of Anomalies in Animated Human Characters" was supported in part by Disney Research, the Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and
Technology (IRCSET), and NSF CCF-0811450.</span></em></p>
For decades, animators have attempted to recreate realistic human faces without entering what’s called the ‘uncanny valley.’
Moshe Mahler, Special Faculty, Carnegie Mellon University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126598
2019-11-08T03:19:55Z
2019-11-08T03:19:55Z
Pass the popcorn - Scorsese cinema boycott will shape the future of movies
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300807/original/file-20191108-10973-fmk0gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C8%2C1461%2C980&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When a filmmaker as big as Scorsese needs Netflix for funding, what does it mean for the little guys? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/mediaindex?ref_=tt_mv_sm">IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cinema has always been a medium in crisis. After the so-called golden age of Hollywood came television: why go to the movies when you can sit in the comfort of your home, watching recycled movies in letterbox format? Yet cinemas adapted and survived. </p>
<p>This week, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/07/why-martin-scorseses-the-irishman-wont-be-coming-to-a-cinema-near-you">major cinema chains</a> said they would not run Martin Scorsese’s upcoming film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/">The Irishman</a> because Netflix - who partially funded production and own distribution rights - were restricting its theatre run to four weeks before it hit small screens. </p>
<p>The news signals a looming threat to cinema as we know it. </p>
<h2>Big screen blues</h2>
<p>Television made movies a commodity audiences could consume on their own terms. Yet cinema survived. In fact, it became a global mass cultural medium in the late 1970s and in the <a href="https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/very-short-history-of-cinema/">multiplexes</a> of the 1980s. </p>
<p>Even the turbulent digital turn that brought cinema to a second crisis point in the early 2000s was navigated by the major Hollywood studios with the rebirth of the blockbuster in pristine form: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">Avatar</a> (2009) in stereoscopic 3-D, the high-tech Marvel <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/07/marvels-blockbuster-machine">cinematic universe</a>.</p>
<p>This is all to say that cinema, for the time being, is alive and well. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300809/original/file-20191108-10940-bz6uzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Director Martin Scorsese with Al Pacino and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on set.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/mediaviewer/rm4239362305">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But shrinking diversity in cinema offerings - Scorsese is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/05/martin-scorsese-superhero-marvel-movies-debate-sadness">no Marvel fan</a> - has forced even big name directors to seek funding from alternative sources. This is especially necessary when their movie <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/business/media/netflix-scorsese-the-irishman.html">costs US$159 million</a> (A$230 million) to make. Enter television streaming giant Netflix. </p>
<h2>Are you talking to me?</h2>
<p>The Irishman, Scorsese’s eagerly anticipated gangster epic, opened this week in a number of independent <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-irishman-australian-cinemas-2019-11">Australian cinemas</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WHXxVmeGQUc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Irishman tells the story of war veteran Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) who worked as a hitman alongside Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scorsese is perhaps America’s greatest living auteur, the director of films including <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Taxi Driver</a> (1976), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081398/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Raging Bull</a> (1980), <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Goodfellas</a> (1990), and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Casino</a> (1995). </p>
<p>But what makes The Irishman unlike any other Scorsese film is that it is being distributed by Netflix. After its short theatre run it will be distributed to our homes, where it will do its major business.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300814/original/file-20191108-10901-1rlrim5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Director Steven Spielberg (pictured with Scorsese at the Golden Globes) has argued Netflix films shouldn’t be considered Oscar-worthy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000217/mediaviewer/rm1939574272">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In February, the tension between Netflix and theatrical distributors escalated with the nomination of Alfonso Cuarón’s Netflix-distributed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6155172/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Roma</a> for a Best Picture Oscar. Director Steven Spielberg subsequently <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/03/steven-spielbergs-netflix-fears/556550/">declared</a> a Netflix film might “deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar”.</p>
<p>A Netflix production – whether David Fincher’s monumental longform series, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5290382/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Mindhunter</a>, or Scorsese’s The Irishman – was television and therefore not cinema.</p>
<h2>Goodfellas or bad guys?</h2>
<p>Netflix represents a very real threat to theatrically screened cinema and its distribution apparatus, which is why several large cinema chains in the US (and, indeed, Australia) are boycotting The Irishman.</p>
<p>While Netflix has consistently produced high quality content either through internal production or by acquiring and distributing titles, its assimilation of an auteur picture – a Scorsese gangster epic, no less - signals an aggressive move into the once sacrosanct domain of cinema entertainment.</p>
<p>One wonders: if Scorsese capitulates to the economic strictures of the contemporary studio system, what will independent filmmakers do? How will low budget features be funded in an era in which Netflix colonises the large and small-scale productions alike?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SshqfhmmtSE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Scorsese has directed many of the greatest characters of modern cinema.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Netflix is not cinema, but neither is it television. Directors such as Spielberg struggle to understand that the new media entertainment regime is far removed from the projection (theatre) or broadcast (television) media environment of a predigital era.</p>
<p>Instead of declaring a Netflix production unworthy of an Oscar, we could invert this measure: perhaps it is the Oscar that is increasingly outmoded as an artistic and cultural mark of value.</p>
<h2>‘The End’, roll credits</h2>
<p>The digital economic currents that carry Netflix intuitively seek expansion into proximate markets, and cinema is a natural fit. Netflix’s move into cinema distribution – with Scorsese at the helm – is therefore a smart negotiation. Even if Scorsese is an unwilling participant, it sets a clear precedent.</p>
<p>It seems unlikely that cinema will end in any formal sense, at least within the next few decades. </p>
<p>But a Netflix-distributed Scorsese film gives us cause to lament the ailing cinema experience. Christopher Nolan’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1">Dunkirk</a> (2017) exemplified cinema’s ability to assault us with big screen images and jolt our bodies with a powerful soundscape. Only a grand technological scale can provide this kind of visceral experience.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300812/original/file-20191108-10919-1mxsb8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Can films on television ever pack the same punch as a cinema experience? Above, a still from The Irishman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302006/mediaviewer/rm1689228033">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, like Scorsese, I’m tired of Marvel. I’m tired of the rigidity of formulaic narrative and image structures intrinsic to the contemporary studio system. I’m disappointed at Hollywood’s capitulation to an instrumental economic model. Could a studio have produced The Irishman? They had a chance, and they <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/theater-chief-blasts-netflix-over-handling-of-martin-scorseses-irishman-its-a-disgrace-1203390726/">turned it down</a>. </p>
<p>Hollywood - and media entertainment structures more generally - will need to find a way for the big and small screen distributors to get along in order to keep the dynasty alive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs 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>
With big theatre chains refusing to show Martin Scorsese’s new big budget mob movie, the future of cinema is looking a little dimmer.
Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125771
2019-10-24T13:41:46Z
2019-10-24T13:41:46Z
Martin Scorsese says superhero movies are ‘not cinema’: two experts debate
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298519/original/file-20191024-170475-9zkfcb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2044%2C1076&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jeremy Renner and Robert Downey Jr in Avengers: Endgame.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">©Marvel Studios 2019</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Ken Loach have all recently expressed scorn at the growing dominance of superhero movies in the commercial cinema, with Scorsese saying that the Marvel film universe is “not cinema”. We asked two academics: an expert in cinema and an expert in comics to debate the question.</em></p>
<p><strong>Julian Lawrence: senior lecturer in comics and graphic novels, Teesside University</strong></p>
<p>Marvel movies aren’t cinema. So what are they? Martin Scorsese <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2482391/martin-scorsese-clarifies-controversial-comments-about-marvel-movies">recently labelled them</a> “<a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/news/martin-scorsese-marvel-theme-parks-1203360075/">theme parks</a>” but I suggest they function primarily as commercials. I agree with British filmmaker <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/ken-loach-marvel-superhero-films-boring-and-nothing-to-do-with-art-of-cinema-11841486">Ken Loach’s comment</a> that Marvel movies are “a commodity which will make a profit for a big corporation – they’re a cynical exercise”. </p>
<p>Fellow film great Francis Ford Coppola <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/21/francis-ford-coppola-scorsese-was-being-kind-marvel-movies-are-despicable">agrees with them both</a> – except he doesn’t think they went far enough, labelling superhero films “despicable”. </p>
<p>They are not the first to take aim at superhero movies. In 2014, director/screenwriter <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/film/birdman-director-alejandro-gonz-lez-i-rritu-c-868003">Alejandro G. Iñárritu</a> (Birdman) condemned superhero blockbusters saying “… they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right-wing … Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”</p>
<p>He could be on to something about the right-wing propaganda aspect. Superhero movies tend to set up situations where the world is in grave danger – and sell superheroes as the solution. The message here is that might makes right and that the end always justifies the means: a classic fascist trope. You can see why someone like Loach might not like this narrative trend. His stark new film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysjwg-MnZao">Sorry We Missed You</a>, makes it clear there are no superheroes to save us, just ordinary people in real situations living lives of quiet desperation.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bread-and-circuses">bread and circus</a> commodities, Marvel movies also function as self-advertisements – not just for the countless prequels and sequels, but also for merchandising, which is the real cash cow. Licensing revenue for toys, games, clothing, even breakfast cereal far <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/superhero-earns-13-billion-a-748281">eclipses box office receipts</a>. </p>
<p>Selling a commodity as art has become so normalised that we consumers gladly invest our money and time to collectively participate. I <a href="https://time.com/3630878/binge-watch-tv-shows/">invested a great deal of time</a> watching the TV series Mad Men, only to discover in the final episode that it was a <a href="https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/mad-men-finale-coca-cola-hilltop-ad-1201499510/">seven-year-long Coke commercial</a>. Since then, I’ve refused to spend any more of my life on episodic television and had to laugh when I read abut the inadvertent <a href="https://fortune.com/2019/05/06/game-of-thrones-starbucks-cup-advertising/">Starbucks product placement</a> in the final series of Game of Thrones.</p>
<h2>The ninth and seventh arts</h2>
<p>Franco-Belgian scholars <a href="https://www.tempslibre.ch/actualites/la-classification-des-10-arts-que-personne-ne-connait-vraiment-146">classify cinema</a> as the “seventh art”, with comics being the ninth. But if we are to distinguish cinema from a murky mash-up of all media, then some protocols are needed. First, how about a moratorium on custom-made scenes that pander to international audiences? Iron Man 3 was <a href="https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429">cut for the Chinese market</a> by upping the screen time for a minor character and adding foreign product placement that are not included in the original version. This is not done for art’s sake, but to generate increased revenue.</p>
<p>The backlash to Loach, Scorsese and Coppola is not surprising, since <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinematic-Universe#tab=technical">almost everyone in Hollywood</a> (and beyond) is in on this game. For instance, Marvel movies accounted for 48.2% of Samuel L. Jackson’s <a href="https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/04/28/samuel-l-jackson-films-13-billion-dollar-box-office-gross-worldw/">entire career box office take</a>, and a whopping <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Marvel-Cinematic-Universe#tab=acting">82.6% of Robert Downey Jr’s</a>. Over in the DC Extended Universe in 2017, feminist icon Wonder Woman earned millions for her investors, which included oil tycoons <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/conservative-koch-brothers-are-secret-investors-wonder-woman-1027376">Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch</a> and Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, <a href="https://variety.com/2019/politics/news/mnuchn-ratpac-dune-jackie-speier-1203125377/">Steve Mnuchin</a>.</p>
<p>It isn’t the genre that is the problem, it’s that mainstream superhero movies are created primarily to sell more mainstream superhero movies. The claim that Disney/Marvel innovated “narratives that are dispersed across its extended network of movies” is more evidence for their being capitalist commodities rather than cinema. Dispersing narratives across a network is a marketing ploy used by Marvel and DC for decades (known as <a href="https://www.marvel.com/comics/events_crossovers">crossovers</a>) to boost sales of failing titles– readers are lured into buying issues of comics they don’t normally follow in order to continue reading a storyline or get closure. The films are essentially doing the same thing.</p>
<p>The best superhero film I’ve seen all year is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2v3_jHrvBQ">Woman at War</a> by <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/news/woman-at-war-director-benedikt-erlingsson-blasts-film-industrys-carbon-farting-crisis-in-karlovy-vary/5140851.article">Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson</a>. It tells the story of one woman’s battle against planetary annihilation. Go see it if you get the chance.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1187156751843356672"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Neil Archer: senior lecturer in film studies, Keele University</strong></p>
<p>For the record, I’m ambivalent about much of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU) – yet I was still struck by <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2481615/martin-scorsese-has-some-blunt-thoughts-on-marvel-movies-and-james-gunn-is-sad-about-it">what Scorsese had to say</a> about Marvel movies being more theme park than cinema. </p>
<p>That Scorsese should take this line, in some respects, is apt. <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/interview-peter-biskind-revisits-easy-riders-raging-bulls">Peter Biskind’s 1998 book</a>, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, evokes Scorsese as one of the great filmmakers of the “New Hollywood”, the decade or so from 1968 when it seemed that film-literate, adventurous directors and writers would re-imagine Hollywood.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298521/original/file-20191024-170458-17ob0ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: Endgame.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©Marvel Studios 2019</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The end of this period, in Biskind’s view, was down to the infantilism of films such as Jaws and Star Wars. These were films which were often viewed more as amusement-park rides than cinematic art – what Robin Wood critically dismissed as the childish, commercially-driven “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lM-rx7S2ijoC&pg=PA350&lpg=PA350&dq=robin+wood+spielberg+lucas+syndrome&source=bl&ots=7EcDUK5f7c&sig=ACfU3U0RIq_THBU4qFm0caG9sGG9yl2x5w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6ht3m4LTlAhVAShUIHYOlA7AQ6AEwB3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=robin%20wood%20spielberg%20lucas%20syndrome&f=false">Spielberg-Lucas syndrome</a>” dominating mainstream film.</p>
<p>But if you want to look at the economical, expressive storytelling possibilities of film, just watch Spielberg’s Jaws, or even better, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLiRnvppAaM">Close Encounters of the Third Kind</a>. Don’t take my word for it – <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/martin-scorsese-jj-abrams-christopher-nolan-pay-tribute-steven-spielberg/">Scorsese, ironically, said so himself</a> in a 2018 interview with Empire magazine, describing Spielberg as “a pioneer of visual storytelling … reinventing our art form with each new picture”. </p>
<p>Since he so strongly supports Spielberg, sometimes associated with the demise of grown-up cinema, it’s surprising that Scorsese should come out against the most current examples of popular film.</p>
<p>So what’s the problem with Marvel? As I <a href="https://filmkeele.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/hooray-for-hollywood/">explored in a recent book</a>, the MCU’s most significant contribution to modern cinema – like it or not – has been to rethink the idea of the “standalone feature”, favouring narratives that are dispersed across an extended network of movies. From one perspective, the superhero franchises have simply expanded “classical” narrative form across a series of films.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298522/original/file-20191024-170489-18vkz6g.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">Comic book hero: Zade Rosenthal as Iron Man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2012 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2012 Marvel.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Has this been at the expense, in Scorsese’s terms, of the “<a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2481615/martin-scorsese-has-some-blunt-thoughts-on-marvel-movies-and-james-gunn-is-sad-about-it">emotional, psychological experience</a>” and the emphasis on “human beings” that is his preferred view of cinema? Well, Hulk is not Hamlet – and nor is Iron Man, despite the absurdly regal send off that character gets at the end of Avengers: Endgame. </p>
<p>But for all its self-congratulation, <a href="https://youtu.be/ooAsQ7Z5d2A">Endgame</a> still offers much of the experience Scorsese demands – and which he might recognise. There are meditations on loss, on family, as well as debates on responsibility and moral choice, reflections on time and the impact of life decisions. And while we’re at it, were there many more films made in 2018 as refreshing, and politically engaging, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-i-marvelled-at-black-panthers-reimagining-of-africa-91703">Black Panther</a>?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-i-marvelled-at-black-panthers-reimagining-of-africa-91703">How I marvelled at Black Panther’s reimagining of Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Corporate enterprise</h2>
<p>But isn’t Loach right about Marvel being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/22/superhero-films-are-cynical-exercise-to-make-profits-for-corporations-ken-loach">a corporate enterprise</a>, designed to take our money? Of course he is – these are Hollywood movies after all (I believe Scorsese makes these too). Do we then disqualify every major studio production in history as an advert for itself?</p>
<p>But the bigger issue here is that, because they are linked to broader practices of commercialisation, the films themselves are – mistakenly – deemed guilty by association. The political critique of the films also reduces the sizeable audience to an undifferentiated, uncritical mass. Loach, like most critics of the films – who also admit to not watching them – doesn’t seem to credit Marvel’s viewers with any discernment or intelligence. But marketing and merchandising - as plenty of Disney flops have shown - can’t alone guarantee audience devotion.</p>
<p>Indeed, as <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814743485/media-franchising/">media scholar Derek Johnson reminded us</a>, within “corporate” Hollywood, filmmaking and merchandising divisions are often separate – even in conflict with each other. The skill of Marvel’s filmmakers, in fact, has been both to create and sustain an audience that wants to follow its characters over ten years and more. This is an achievement in narrative – not in flogging toys or pillowcases.</p>
<p>To be clear: I get why people don’t like Marvel. But why can’t filmmaking like theirs, and like Loach’s, coexist? As <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xPGPXu2MokkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tom+shone+blockbuster&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTtrb_8a_lAhWCThUIHUnvAPkQ6AEIKDAA#v=snippet&q=biskind&f=false">Tom Shone wittily asks</a> in his book Blockbuster, the demonising of modern movies tends to be all one-way traffic. Film connoisseurs tear into Star Wars for failing to be The Godfather, but nobody rips up Coppola’s family saga for missing a few space battles. Why need cinema be just one thing? Why not both? Isn’t cinema, in the end, something for everyone?</p>
<p>The elephant in this particular room, I suspect, is neither art, nor commercialism. And probably not “right-wing neoliberal propaganda” either. It’s exhibition. For the likes of Scorsese, the popularity and distribution muscle behind such films make it harder both to make and screen non-franchise or lower-budget movies. And he has a point. </p>
<p>But while there is clearly an imbalance problem within the contemporary cinema landscape, that doesn’t mean the films themselves are “not cinema”. Maybe they are just the cinema you’d rather not see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Martin Scorsese believes superhero movies are ‘not cinema’. What do the experts think?
Julian Lawrence, Senior Lecturer in Comics and Graphic Novels, Teesside University
Neil Archer, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70879
2017-01-05T11:48:51Z
2017-01-05T11:48:51Z
Scorsese’s Silence is admirably faithful to the original Japanese novel
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151747/original/image-20170104-18665-1ytuory.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The blogosphere has been awash this month with <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silence_2016/">reviews</a> of Martin Scorsese’s latest movie, Silence. The work represents a powerful reworking of the novel of the same name by the Japanese novelist, Endō Shūsaku and I, for one, shall never forget one of my first meetings with Endō.</p>
<p>It was towards the end of 1994. Following weeks of speculation that this was somehow Japan’s year to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – with Endō and Ōe Kenzaburō, his contemporary on the literary scene, as the overwhelming favourites – the announcement had just been made that the award had gone to Ōe. I had had a few dealings with Endō during the course of my attempts to translate two of his lesser known novels, but I could not help but be impressed by the typical good grace with which he took the decision. And, given the fact that he had also recently been confronted with a terminal medical diagnosis, our conversation soon turned to discussion of what might loosely be termed his “literary legacy”.</p>
<p>Endō had only recently published his final novel, Deep River (1993), at the time of our conversation – and this latest work had yet to garner the reviews that would ultimately place it on a pedestal with his early novel, <a href="http://www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0696-coles">Silence</a> (1966). He had also just come from a meeting with the director Martin Scorsese – and was happy to confirm that, in light of the author’s well-documented disapproval of Masahiro Shinoda’s earlier movie version of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067755/">Silence</a> (1971), Scorsese had agreed to create a new version of the novel for the screen. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151748/original/image-20170104-18641-beuz3y.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">Martin Scorsese and Andrew Garfield on set.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Trampling the cross</h2>
<p>More specifically, Endō was at pains to explain his displeasure with the way in which Shinoda had rendered the all-important <em>fumie</em> (crucifix) scene. This is the scene in which the protagonist Rodrigues, a Jesuit priest who slipped into Japan in the 1630s in open defiance of the prohibition on all preaching of the Christian gospel, is ultimately confronted with the order to step on a crucifix as an outward act of renunciation of his faith. He must do so not only to save his own life, but also those of the poor Japanese peasants who are being threatened with ongoing torture until their priest apostatises.</p>
<p>To Shinoda, Rodrigues’s decision to trample the crucifix represented a relatively straightforward act of apostasy – he saw Rodrigues as ultimately cracking under psychological pressure and renouncing all that his life to date had stood for. Shinoda chose to make this point by ending his movie with a portrayal of Rodrigues, the “fallen priest”, apparently living on following his renunciation of holy orders by taking the Japanese wife who is offered to him by the authorities as reward for his act of cooperation.</p>
<p>It is not difficult to see where such readings are coming from. The crucifix scene does indeed portray Rodrigues as terrified at the realisation that refusing to renounce his faith will lead to the murder of the Japanese peasants he had converted (even though, he is reliably informed, they have long since renounced the faith) and disturbed at the seeming absence of any kind of divine response to his desperate prayers. So when God appears to break his silence with the simple command that Rodrigues “trample!” on the crucifix that has been placed before him, the words on the page do seem to sanction an act of heresy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151746/original/image-20170104-18653-olfc25.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">Crucifix dawn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Faith and doubt</h2>
<p>But such a reading fails to do justice to the message between the lines. Endō was, after all, writing literature not theology. And, like Dostoevsky, Mauriac and so many other artists who have struggled to give voice to issues of faith in a literary work, he writes about doubt too, and hints that his protagonist is possessed of a more profound, more personal faith following his outward show of apostasy than before. Why else would Endō make a point of concluding this crucifix scene with a cock crowing – with all its overt resonance with the biblical account of Peter denying Christ three times, before going on to recognise the resurrected Christ and move into deeper relationship with him? </p>
<p>More significantly, Endō chooses to end his work not with the crucifix section (as it is all too often portrayed), but with a focus clearly on Rodrigues assailed with doubts, but agreeing to hear the confession – in his capacity as “the last priest in the land” – of his erstwhile betrayer, Kichijirō. The book ends some 30 years later, where we see Rodrigues, now renamed as Okada Sanemon, still deprived of his freedom by the authorities and still being forced to write formal documents renouncing his faith.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151750/original/image-20170104-29222-1v6ogwa.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">Silence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scorsese has gone to considerable lengths to ensure that his movie does justice to the deep theological questions explored by Endō in the text. Far from committing a straightforward act of “heresy”, Scorsese’s Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) embodies the terrifying struggle between faith and doubt, a struggle with which Endō himself was familiar, and which arguably lies at the very heart of what it means to be human. </p>
<p>Endō’s Rodrigues can perhaps be described as one seeking to be faithful, seeking to make sense of life and faith in a complex and shifting world. My feeling is that, in seeking to capture this, Scorsese too has been faithful – to the text and to the deep questions within it. Suffice it to say that I can picture Endō looking down on Scorsese with a deep sense of gratitude for a job well done.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was edited on January 11 to remove a reference to Pope Paul VI denouncing Endō’s novel at a sermon in Nagasaki cathedral. This cannot be verified.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70879/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Williams 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 film is a powerful reworking of the novel by Japanese novelist Endō Shūsaku.
Mark Williams, Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66824
2016-11-28T19:16:34Z
2016-11-28T19:16:34Z
Scorsese’s Silence and the Catholic connection to the atomic bomb
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147667/original/image-20161127-32008-xh96ga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shin'ya Tsukamoto (right) and Andrew Garfield in Silence (2016).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Cappa Defina Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today, Martin Scorsese’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490215/">Silence</a> will have its premiere <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/25/martin-scorsese-silence-premiere-vatican-jesuit-missionaries-japan?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">at the Vatican</a>, where it will be screened to hundreds of Roman Catholic priests. The famed director’s first foray into East Asia links to familiar themes of Catholic guilt and redemption, as he portrays the brutal 17th century persecution of Jesuit missionaries and their converts in Japan. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IqrgxZLd_gE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-scorseses-silence-premiere-at-vatican-950002">Scorsese’s film</a>, which will open here in January, is an adaptation of Japanese author Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25200.Silence">Silence</a>. It tells the story of two Portuguese Jesuit priests (Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield) who travel to Japan at a time when Christianity was banned to find their mentor (Liam Neeson) and support the local converts. The pair are imprisoned and tortured. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141545/original/image-20161013-16246-s0pfss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pieta ‘fumi-e’ image, from Nagasaki 1923.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library Australia all rights reserved</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The characters of the priests Cristóvão Ferreira and Sebastian Rodrigues were based on Portuguese and Italian Jesuits found in the historical record. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence_(novel)">Endo’s novel</a> (沈黙)describes the hostile environment that leads to the missionary priests’ relinquishment of faith. They were forced to place their feet on <em>fumi-e</em> (踏み絵) – religious images – to demonstrate that they had given up all faith. Rodrigues (played by Garfield in the film), believes he hears Jesus’ voice telling him to apostatise by stepping on the fumi-e.</p>
<p>The remaining Christians went underground. The persecution continued until the ban against Christians was removed in 1873. But the indigenous Japanese who returned to Catholicism in the 1870s after 250 years of “hidden Christianity” remembered their long period of “betrayal”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147666/original/image-20161127-32008-p87kah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting of the ruin of Urakami Cathedral drawn by Nagai Takashi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">author provided by permission of Nagai Tokusaburo, director of the Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most descendants of the native Christians lived in Nagasaki during World War II. On the 9th August, 1945, when the United States dropped the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l5jI4iO4-g">A-bomb on Urakami</a>, a northern suburb of Nagasaki, 8500 of the 12000-strong Catholic Christian community were amongst the dead. The bomb was meant to target Nagasaki city, but because the Americans were low on fuel and clouds opened above the northern suburbs, the eventual Ground Zero happened in Urakami. Its cathedral – the biggest Catholic church in Asia at the time – was only 500 metres from Ground Zero. </p>
<p>Nagasaki Catholics remember the A-bomb in particular ways, as I show in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UrakamiNagasaki1945/">my research</a> on memory in Nagasaki. My work has involved interviewing nine Catholic survivors of the atomic bombing, as well as three other non-Catholic survivors, and members of the Urakami community.</p>
<p>The Catholic interviewees explained that their grandparents had been exiled to other regions of Japan in the 1860s and 1870s due to their return to Catholicism after 250 years of “hidden Christianity”. </p>
<p>One interviewee, Matsuo Sachiko, explained that her grandmother was a double survivor, having first survived the Christian exile (referred to as the 4th exile) imposed by the government in 1867-73 and then later, the 1945 atomic bombing. She says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yes… my grandmother was one of the Urakami Fourth Exile survivors and at that time there were still some of those survivors who were alive… these people still believed, everyone was able to stick at it and get through… Within their testimony, they didn’t talk about their pain.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147664/original/image-20161127-32031-5su7t0.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">Matsuo Sachiko pictured in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Orphaned Ozaki Tōmei adopted a new name after the bombing, as a novice at a Polish monastery in Nagasaki. Normally Japanese monks would adopt the name of a Western saint, but he selected a Japanese saint, Ozaki Tōmei, who is a child martyr of 1597 from Nagasaki. </p>
<p>Ozaki remembered his mother telling him that the 26 martyrs of 1597 were marched directly past his childhood home in the middle of winter on the way to their execution. The child martyr Ozaki had been separated from his mother and was marched to Nagasaki from Kyoto. Along the way, he was able to write a letter to his mother, in which he reflected on the “transience of the world”. </p>
<p>My informant Ozaki linked his own experience to <a href="http://www.26martyrs.com">this boy of 1597</a>, writing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The experience of the atomic bombing was exactly like that. Everything in the world is breakable and vanishes. As far as the atom bomb went, there was nothing to be known of reality which was not destroyed. <em>Koware-iku sonzai ni tayotte wa naranai.</em> We cannot depend on a life so fragile. Nonetheless, after that, staring at reality, what I saw was the indestructible God’s existence. The Lord God who holds all created things, the source of love and life is the God I know. This is also the source of faith. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147662/original/image-20161127-32046-1ewuar0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brother Ozaki Tomei.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the destruction around him and the tragic loss of his mother, Ozaki, orphaned monk and survivor of the atomic bombing, held on to the faith of his ancestors.</p>
<p>His resilience might be considered one fruit of the missionaries whose ambivalent lives are depicted by Scorsese in Silence. Ozaki turned 88 this year and continues to write prolifically on his <a href="http://tomaozaki.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/blog-post_9.html">blog</a>. </p>
<p>Silence was originally controversial amongst Christians in Japan for the perceived faithlessness of its priest protagonists. Nevertheless, Scorsese’s film version – which has taken 27 years to make – is eagerly awaited in Nagasaki, where the descendants of the hidden Christians still continue to be a practising community of faith.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147668/original/image-20161127-32063-5cg0va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adam Driver in Silence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cappa Defina Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 26 Martyrs’ Museum, just down the road from the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, frequently posts <a href="https://www.facebook.com/26martyrs/?hc_ref=PAGES_TIMELINE&fref=nf">updates</a> on the progress and making of the movie on its blog. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, another interviewee, Matsuzono (a pseudonym) told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Soon Martin Scorsese will release the movie, so the things we locals talk about will spread around the world…</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwyn McClelland is currently completing his PhD dissertation at Monash University on the basis of oral history interviews conducted amongst Catholic survivors of the atomic bombing. He was the beneficiary of a Japan Study Grant from the National Library of Australia in 2015. </span></em></p>
Martin Scorsese’s new film Silence will be shown to an audience of priests at the Vatican today. It tells the story of persecuted Christians in 17th century Japan - an event still remembered by Nagasaki’s Catholic community.
Gwyn McClelland, Oral historian and associate, Japanese history, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/61683
2016-06-27T16:29:37Z
2016-06-27T16:29:37Z
Jagger and Scorsese have a flop on their hands with Vinyl – here’s why
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128265/original/image-20160627-28373-1leo12v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sky</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Plans for a second season of Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger’s TV series, Vinyl, have been <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/vinyl-cancel-hbo-bobby-cannavale-season-2-scrapped-1201801263/">scrapped by American broadcaster, HBO</a> due to poor viewing audiences. To those who had watched season one, this was anything but surprising. Despite the show’s clear pedigree – nobody could deny the creative credentials and insider knowledge of its producers – and the enormous financial investment, HBO clearly neglected to identify and understand its core market. </p>
<p>The story is based on the heady days of the drug-fuelled rock culture of America’s 1970s record industry. The plot revolves around the exploits of the central character, record label president Richie Finestra, who through a moral maze of soul searching, engages with any and all tactics, legal and illegal, moral and immoral, financially sound and unsound, to save his company without destroying his friends and colleagues along the way. The tragedies that ensue are the cornerstone of each episode’s storyline. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b5wbEaqMjKU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Those who may have lived through that era, who are now in their 50s and 60s, mostly reference the past through a nostalgic and rose-tinted view, which included hippy ethics and a move towards peace and love, rather than the insider’s reality of the cut, thrust, abuse and violence of the music industry. In this, HBO appears to have misunderstood the 50-plus demographic – which could have been a key audience for this sort of nostalgia-based entertainment. And <a href="http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/vinyl-season-one-ratings/">ratings show a steady decline</a> in viewers under 50. </p>
<p>There have been other attempts to dramatise the violence and drug culture of the music business. Owen Harrison’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/12/kill-your-friends-review-nicholas-hoult-is-a-poor-mans-patrick-bateman-in-a-tiresome-comedy">2015 adaptation of Kill Your Friends</a>, an exposé of the British pop scene from a business prospective, was well written and directed but also lacked public appeal and did not realise its expectations, even with a theatrical release. The film includes violent elements along with the obligatory sex and drugs that Hollywood naively expects will draw in audiences. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jwz8NiWg_o0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps we are now bored with the overexposure of these elements of entertainment and have become ambivalent to the shock tactics used within the genre – as is evidenced in the fantasy television series Game of Thrones where excessive sex and violence including rape and bloody decapitation scenes are the norm. However, what Game of Thrones has that Vinyl does not is the hero/heroine vs villain dynamic. Vinyl doesn’t provide this – we only seem to get the villains. Maybe the music itself has to stand for the hero of the story – certainly Finestra does not have enough audience empathy factor to fulfil the role.</p>
<h2>Background noise</h2>
<p>But what is more relevant is the association and reverence we hold for the music of our youth. Most of us learned the lessons of life and love accompanied by music of our era and hold it in much regard. This music is the bedrock of our lives and, to shatter the illusions of our own life is to attack the fundamental cultural associations of our development. Of course, those fans of the Rolling Stones know of the history, misdemeanours and wild antics of the group, but it is their music that provides the soundtrack to their fan’s youth and not Mick Jagger’s love life or Keith Richards’ exploits with narcotics. </p>
<p>We love our heroes, our rock and pop stars – but mostly, we love our music. This is best illustrated by the often proprietary language we use when referring to music. You can hear music referred to as substantive part of cultural ownership as in: “She always takes her music with her” or, “He enjoys his music.” This demonstrates the bond that we have with music and the attachment or ownership that we impose on it. We don’t want to denigrate the value of music through depictions of murder, sex, drugs and greed. </p>
<p>The commodification of music is necessary for its survival as an industry, but the true value for us is cultural and not its associations with business and the exploitation of markets. When you ask most people in the business side of the industry how they got involved you invariably get the response: “because of the music”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128272/original/image-20160627-8002-1278md0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Showbiz royalty, but their creation has not proven popular.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Televisione Streaming</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So the further separation of music in Vinyl into a business context creates even greater audience alienation – and it is this that HBO has ignored. It may be of academic interest to know how the music industry changed and grew during that period and the personalities, managers, record company moguls and their excesses but this has never been of great interest to the public at large. The lengthy memoir from record company executive Clive Davis, former head of Columbia Records in the 1960s, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/the-soundtrack-of-my-life-by-clive-davis.html?_r=0">The Soundtrack of My Life</a> was not a bestseller for exactly that reason – its appeal was limited to those whose focus is on the business side of music, rather than the music itself. </p>
<p>Vinyl’ problem is that it demeans and devalues the music which it ought to celebrate as an intrinsic part of the cultural history of pop. Each generation has its music identifier and will look back to the influences that shaped that music. This programme destroys that bond and the artistic and musical values and turns them into depraved and debauched conduits for sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.</p>
<p>Ultimately what HBO has done here is lose the music and from a social prospective, music is representative of youth culture, not business. HBO has missed the point. It is only right that they have pulled plans for a second series.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61683/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Lightman is affiliated with UK Music and sits on the Copyright advisory committee.</span></em></p>
This big budget series about the rock business failed to connect with its market.
Richard Lightman, Lecturer in Popular Music, University of Kent
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60170
2016-05-31T05:21:04Z
2016-05-31T05:21:04Z
VIDEO: The five greatest Scorsese scenes – episode #5 Goodfellas
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124410/original/image-20160529-879-1l4xg38.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from Goodfellas, 1990</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the best living film directors. As a major retrospective of his work opens at ACMI, film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Scorsese scenes.</p>
<p>In episode five, Isaacs analyses two related but very different scenes: the famous Copacabana <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steadicam">Steadicam</a> tracking shot from Goodfellas (1990) and the digital tracking shot from the opening scene in Hugo (2011).</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/168566945" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Goodfellas, 1990.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60170/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs 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>
Bruce Isaacs analyses two related but very different scenes: the famous Copacabana tracking shot from Goodfellas (1990) and the opening scene in Hugo (2011).
Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59988
2016-05-30T04:29:43Z
2016-05-30T04:29:43Z
VIDEO: The five greatest Scorsese scenes – episode #4 Raging Bull
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123915/original/image-20160525-25226-1f8usmq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from Raging Bull, 1980</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the best living film directors. As a major retrospective of his work opens at ACMI, film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Scorsese scenes.</p>
<p>In episode four, Isaacs analyses an intense and emotionally charged scene from Raging Bull, 1980.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/168269192" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Raging Bull, 1980.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>View episode one: <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-the-five-greatest-scorsese-scenes-episode-1-59816">Who’s That Knocking At My Door?</a></p>
<p>View episode two: <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-the-five-greatest-scorsese-scenes-episode-2-59960">Mean Streets</a></p>
<p>View episode three: <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-the-five-greatest-scorsese-scenes-episode-3-taxi-driver-59985">Taxi Driver</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs 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>
Bruce Isaacs looks at an intense and emotionally charged scene from the 1980 classic, Raging Bull.
Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59985
2016-05-27T05:14:48Z
2016-05-27T05:14:48Z
VIDEO: The five greatest Scorsese scenes – episode #3 Taxi Driver
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123913/original/image-20160525-25222-6m0wms.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film, Taxi Driver.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from Taxi Driver, 1976</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the best living film directors. As a major retrospective of his work opens at ACMI, film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Scorsese scenes.</p>
<p>In episode three, Isaacs looks at Taxi Driver, and the iconic “You talkin’ to me?” scene.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/168270437" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Taxi Driver, 1976.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>View episode one: <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-the-five-greatest-scorsese-scenes-episode-1-59816">Who’s That Knocking At My Door?</a></p>
<p>View episode two: <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-the-five-greatest-scorsese-scenes-episode-2-59960">Mean Streets</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs 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>
Bruce Isaacs analyses the iconic ‘You talkin’ to me’ scene from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59960
2016-05-26T03:43:14Z
2016-05-26T03:43:14Z
VIDEO: The five greatest Scorsese scenes – episode #2 Mean Streets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123853/original/image-20160524-25231-1b5a20y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mean Streets, released in 1973, is considered Martin Scorsese's early masterpiece.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from Mean Streets, 1973</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the best living film directors. As a major retrospective of his work opens at ACMI, film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Scorsese scenes.</p>
<p>In episode two, Isaacs looks at the opening credit sequence from Mean Streets, 1973.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cB_QOX3zfzE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mean Streets.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>View episode one: <a href="https://theconversation.com/video-the-five-greatest-scorsese-scenes-episode-1-59816">Who’s That Knocking At My Door?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59960/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs 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>
Film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Martin Scorsese scenes. In episode two, Isaacs looks at the opening credit sequence from the iconic 1973 film Mean Streets.
Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59816
2016-05-25T01:06:19Z
2016-05-25T01:06:19Z
VIDEO: The five greatest Scorsese scenes – episode #1
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123495/original/image-20160523-9554-1xr3gyz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harvey Keitel as J.R. in Martin Scorsese's first film Who's That Knocking at My Door?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the best living film directors. As a major retrospective of his work opens at <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/scorsese?gclid=CKLOz_Ht88wCFYKVvAodjmUMDg">ACMI</a>, film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Scorsese scenes. </p>
<p>Today, in episode one, Isaacs looks at the director’s first film, Who’s That Knocking At My Door? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wCpgpfRAh4Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs 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>
Film scholar Bruce Isaacs dissects five classic Scorsese scenes, beginning with the celebrated director’s first film, Who’s That Knocking At My Door?
Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59231
2016-05-19T19:37:45Z
2016-05-19T19:37:45Z
Friday essay: It Felt Like a Kiss – movies, popular music and Martin Scorsese
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123117/original/image-20160519-13490-1ywua3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese on the set of Taxi Driver in 1976.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sikelia Productions, New York</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music and movies are umbilically entwined in the films of Martin Scorsese. It’s almost impossible to think of his cinema without the propulsive accompaniment of a track by The Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, a Neapolitan street singer or any number of other smaller and even obscure doo-wop, Latino, Brill Building and r'n'b wonders of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s. </p>
<p>Although Scorsese has memorably employed the services of great film composers like Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein on iconic movies such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Taxi Driver</a> (1976) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106226/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Age of Innocence</a> (1993), it is the music of his adolescence and early adulthood that dominates the dense, highly subjective, hyper-masculine and combative worlds of many of his best and most fondly remembered films.</p>
<p>Most of the music documentaries he has made – such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077838/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Last Waltz</a> (1978), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367555/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">No Direction Home: Bob Dylan</a> (2005) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893382/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Shine a Light</a> (2008) – equally expose these formative tastes. </p>
<p>This is personal and reflects Scorsese’s upbringing in the crowded neighbourhood of Little Italy with its melting pot of sounds leeching across spaces and situations. Some of the numbers in his protean first feature, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063803/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3">Who’s That Knocking at My Door</a> (1969), were even supplied from the filmmaker’s own collection. The signature music of Scorsese’s films comes to us with his “fingerprints” all over it.</p>
<p>This fascination with the everyday history, materiality and atmosphere of popular music – the way it seeps into and scores the world around us – gives Scorsese’s films a musicological dimension that rhymes with his obsession with film history.</p>
<p>Although his use of popular music appears more organic or sociological than Quentin Tarantino’s, it still has the sense of the archivist-collector about it.</p>
<p>When the Melbourne Cinémathèque sought Scorsese’s permission to screen his documentary <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Italianamerican</a> (1974) in the early 1990s, all he asked for in return was that we send him a complete CD edition of Bob Dylan’s [Masterpieces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpieces_(Bob_Dylan_album) (then only available in Australia) to add to his collection. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123119/original/image-20160519-13490-dwjked.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bob Dylan: Scorsese is a fan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Townsend/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Scorsese is deeply attuned to specific, mostly urban forms of popular music from the mid-20th century, he has also found his inspiration in the groundbreaking found soundtracks of Kenneth Anger’s homo-erotic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058555/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Scorpio Rising</a> (1964) and Stanley Kubrick’s classical-modernist <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=nv_sr_1">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> (1968), as well as his experience as a cameraman and editor on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066580/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Woodstock</a> (1970). The latter, he has said, was a life-changing event that made him shift from slacks to jeans.</p>
<p>The music in Scorsese’s earlier features sits alongside the pioneering compilation scores of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061722/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Graduate</a> (1967) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064276/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Easy Rider</a> (1969), but his work represents a less nostalgic (in comparison to, say, Woody Allen) and temporally shallow notion of the musical “past”. </p>
<p>This is a lesson well learned by Scorsese acolytes such as Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. The golden rule in Scorsese’s films is that the music must have been released by the time a particular scene is set – but it should also reflect the depth of music history.</p>
<h2>How Scorsese uses music in film</h2>
<p>Scorsese often conceives a sequence or moment with a particular song in mind.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123121/original/image-20160519-22283-186oxim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ajc/flickr</span></span>
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<p>For example, a key motivation for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163988/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bringing Out the Dead</a> (1999) was the opportunity to use Van Morrison’s fetid, churning T. B. Sheets as a leitmotif. This song weaves around intense and strung-out tracks by REM, Johnny Thunders and The Clash, a reminder perhaps that an earlier vision of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217505/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gangs of New York</a> (2002) prominently featured the British group (a Scorsese favourite).</p>
<p>Scorsese also plays music on his movie sets to get at the rhythm and feeling of a specific moment. </p>
<p>The coda of Derek & the Dominos’ Layla was played on the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/?ref_=nv_sr_1">GoodFellas</a> (1990) set from the first day of shooting and lyrically scores the sequence of the bodies being uncovered. It also intimates the excess and decadence that will be the gangsters’ ultimate downfall. </p>
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<p>The necessary inspiration of popular music is also playfully referenced in the frantic, epic expressionist strokes of Nick Nolte’s painter working to the blisteringly loud strains of Procol Harum and Bob Dylan and The Band in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097965/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Life Lessons</a> (1989).</p>
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<p>Although this use of popular music reflects the director’s own tastes, upbringing and fondness for counterpoint, it is also deeply enmeshed in the worlds and subjectivities of his characters. </p>
<p>The downbeat at the opening of The Ronettes’ Be My Baby ushers in the immersive world of Scorsese’s breakthrough feature, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070379/">Mean Streets</a>, entreating us to experience and even share the excitement, danger and periodic abandon of a group of small-time, would-be gangsters who then light up the screen.</p>
<p>As critic Ian Penman has argued, the music does not seem to operate as a soundtrack in the traditional sense, but appears</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to be released into the air by breaking glasses or moving bodies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is sound as much as it is music. </p>
<p>When we see Robert De Niro’s Johnny Boy sashay into a bar in slow motion to the intricately timed and edited adrenaline rush of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, we cannot really determine where the music is coming from: is it the heightened sound of the jukebox (a fixation of the director’s cinema) or from somewhere inside of Johnny Boy himself?</p>
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<p>Mean Streets, like such later masterworks as GoodFellas and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Casino</a> (1995), has something of the jerky propulsiveness and programmed randomness of the jukebox. The music also drops in and out, rises and falls, in a way that reflects and galvanises the cramped bar interiors that are Scorsese’s abiding milieu. Its use of music feels programmed and even curated but also organic and intuitive.</p>
<h2>Chelsea Morning</h2>
<p>There is a wonderful sequence in one of Scorsese’s most underrated films, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">After Hours</a> (1985), which features the lead character retreating to the apartment of a beehive-haired and go go booted cocktail waitress played by Teri Garr. Unworldly Paul (Griffin Dunne) has become lost down the rabbit-hole of late night Soho and is trying to find a way to get home to the safety of his mid-town apartment.</p>
<p>As he unburdens himself of the nightmare of his evening, Garr’s ’60s-revivalist sympathetically changes records from the initially peppy pop confection of The Monkees’ Last Train to Clarksville (he has just missed his train) to the introspective wistfulness of Joni Mitchell’s more geographically apt Chelsea Morning. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123126/original/image-20160519-22302-wgz0yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Joni Mitchell playing with Joan Baez, circa 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">RVI864/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This moment is remarkable in Scorsese’s work, as it is one of few where characters consciously recognise and respond to the music. </p>
<p>It also provides a critique of Scorsese’s own practice and how he locates songs that illustrate an emotion, a situation or work in counterpoint to the onscreen action.</p>
<p>This scene shows us – in a very unselfconscious fashion – the mechanics of Scorsese’s use of popular music and the way it can shift the tone and atmosphere, create a narrative arc and embed itself into the lives of its characters.</p>
<p>The use of Chelsea Morning is also one of the few times that Scorsese draws upon the early ’70s singer-songwriter tradition. Another occurs in the pivotal moment in Taxi Driver where De Niro’s profoundly solipsistic Travis Bickle watches forlornly, lost as he takes in couples slow dancing around a pair of empty shoes on American Bandstand scored by Jackson Browne’s mournful Late for the Sky (or is this only in Travis’s head?)</p>
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<p>In some ways, this moment seems all the more powerful due to its isolation and incongruity – Travis has earlier misread the lyrics of Kris Kristofferson’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlGZ93XcmhI">The Pilgrim, Chapter 33</a> – illustrating he has no understanding of or affinity for popular music. </p>
<p>Scorsese’s characters often seem to take music with them, but Paul and Travis are so out of place they cannot imbibe the music around them other than, in the latter case, through the isolating darkness of Herrmann’s ominous score.</p>
<p>After Hours features a bracingly eclectic soundtrack that reflects the gear-shifting nightmare and occasional respite of Paul’s downtown odyssey. For example, after leaving a nightclub, he returns only a short time later to find it has miraculously transformed from hosting a hedonistic, crowded and threatening “Mohawk” theme night, scored by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnb3UlH2zE">Bad Brains’ Pay to Cum</a>, to an abandoned space with a singular middle-aged customer and a jukebox sympathetically playing Peggy Lee’s Is That all There is?</p>
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<p>(Once again an unusual choice consciously selected by the uncharacteristically self-aware protagonist). </p>
<p>By using a soundtrack less beholden to his own tastes, Scorsese is able to stretch out.</p>
<h2>The Italian-American gangster trilogy</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, it is the three films that make up Scorsese’s Italian-American gangster trilogy – Mean Streets, GoodFellas and Casino – that best illustrate the full potential of his use of “found” popular music to score and populate his films.</p>
<p>These movies can also be described as essentially musicals. It is important to note that music is not a constant presence in these movies, even though that may be the lasting impression we are left with. </p>
<p>Music is pointedly dropped out or even abandoned at particular moments – such as during the final section of GoodFellas where the gangster’s world comes tumbling down. All that is left is the memory of Joe Pesci firing into the camera and the final ragged, debased strains of Sid Vicious singing My Way.</p>
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<p>Both GoodFellas and Casino use music to chart the rise and fall of their characters and the rarefied enclaves they occupy. </p>
<p>In Casino this is signified by the shift from the gaming table friendly Italian-American-derived songs of Louis Prima and Dean Martin to the pointed use of Devo’s truly frustrated version of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1o">(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction</a>, B. B. King’s The Thrill is Gone and The Animals’ The House of the Rising Sun to plot the changing demographics and economies of Las Vegas.</p>
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<p>In many ways, Casino represents something of an endpoint for Scorsese. The energy of Mean Streets and GoodFellas is depleted by the manically expansive “found” song soundtrack, the blunt violence and the forensic detail dedicated to mapping Las Vegas and the failed relationships between Ace, Ginger and Nicky.</p>
<p>The operatic, tragic dimensions of this demise are signposted by bookending Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Georges Delerue’s melancholy cues from Jean-Luc Godard’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057345/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Contempt</a> (1963). Where do you go after that?</p>
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<p>Over the last 20 years, Scorsese’s work has only ever intermittently matched the multiple highpoints of his earlier career. Films such as Gangs of New York, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/find?ref_=nv_sr_fn&q=The+Departed&s=all">The Departed</a> (2006) and his return to form, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Wolf of Wall Street</a> (2013), do feature further intriguing examples of the use of popular music – and expand the director’s reach in terms of ethnicity – but don’t really develop this aspect or create truly memorable combinations of image and sound. </p>
<h2>The documentaries and Vinyl</h2>
<p>During this time, Scorsese’s major contributions to the nexus between popular music and cinema and television have been his somewhat conventional compilation documentaries and concert films and the recent HBO drama series, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3186130/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Vinyl</a>, co-created by Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter. </p>
<p>Although Scorsese’s documentary on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1113829/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">George Harrison: Living in the Material World</a> is commendable, and The Rolling Stones’ concert film Shine a Light provides a shared portrait of resilience, easily the best of these documentaries is No Direction Home: Bob Dylan.</p>
<p>An archivist’s project the filmmaker took on as compiler and editor, it features some stunning audio-visual combinations as it explores Dylan’s explosive and mercurial early career. </p>
<p>But it is with Vinyl that Scorsese’s concerns and abiding preoccupations come full circle.</p>
<p>The first episode, the only one directed by Scorsese so far, takes him back to the early 1970s and the drug-fuelled, propulsive and heightened impressionism of his earlier work. </p>
<p>The soundtrack features an eclectic array of period specific tracks including Mott the Hoople’s All the Way to Memphis – used 40 years earlier in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). </p>
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<p>It is only during the staging of the collapse of the downtown Mercer Arts Center – anachronistically, while the New York Dolls are playing Personality Crisis – that the episode comes to imaginative life. You can almost imagine De Niro’s Johnny Boy waiting for the building to fall.</p>
<p><em>ACMI’s Scorsese exhibition will run from 26 May to 18 September. Dr Adrian Danks will appear at the event Scorsese in Focus on
Friday 27 May at ACMI, alongside Dr Mark Nicholls, Dr Bruce Isaacs, and critic Rebecca Harkins-Cross.</em></p>
<p><em>David Stratton will present a program of <a href="http://www.sff.org.au/2016-film-guide/essential-scorsese-selected-by-david-stratton/">10 essential Scorsese classics</a> at the Sydney Film Festival from 11-19 June.</em></p>
<p><em>ACMI will host a special screening of the <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/live-events/talks-performances/vinyl/">Vinyl pilot</a> on May 31.
It will also screen <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/film/seasons-and-screenings/scorsese-friday-night-cinema/the-band-the-last-waltz-neil-young-bob-dylan-scorsese/">The Last Waltz</a>
and <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/film/seasons-and-screenings/scorsese-friday-night-cinema/shine-a-light-martin-scorsese-rolling-stones-documentary/">Shine a Light</a> in August and September.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59231/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Danks 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>
From ‘Mean Streets’ to ‘Vinyl’, from The Ronettes to The Clash, music has long been a muse to film director Martin Scorsese. He plays it on set, conceives sequences with certain songs in mind and uses it to chart his characters’ changing fortunes.
Adrian Danks, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22219
2014-01-23T06:34:03Z
2014-01-23T06:34:03Z
The Wolf of Wall Street is a howling disappointment
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39757/original/wfxmpw4m-1390456563.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C1994%2C1323&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sometimes too much is just too much. Martin Scorsese's latest film is swamped by its excesses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paramount Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Wolf of Wall Street</a> is Martin Scorsese’s Scarface – and that isn’t meant as a compliment. </p>
<p>I watched <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086250/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Brian De Palma’s 1983 film</a> again recently. I had been looking forward to it: the Blu-ray edition on the nice TV with the surround sound. I had only seen it once before, and on pokier equipment. </p>
<p>I couldn’t wait to fully experience De Palma’s festival of 1980s excess, to wallow in the mire of bacchanalian indulgence that is Tony Montana’s cocaine-fuelled rise from Cuban-refugee-camp underpass-dwelling-street-thug, to international-drug-king-pin-mansion-dwelling street thug.</p>
<p>On re-watching, Scarface turned out to be a hollow disappointment for the same reasons The Wolf of Wall Street is. It turns out too much is actually more than enough – and excess quickly becomes wearing and depleting. </p>
<p>Yet characters finding <em>joie de vivre</em> in all the wrong places, with hedonistic content matched by formal amplitude on the director’s part, isn’t an inherently problematic approach to filmmaking. Far from it! See the films of Fellini, Almodóvar and Pasolini for some prime examples (there’s something in the water on the Mediterranean).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39754/original/q2ycbxxj-1390454926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Di Caprio at the 2014 Golden Globes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Paul Buck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What most certainly is a problem is the way we are positioned in relation to the snorting, fornicating and otherwise un-PC behaviour of those wild and crazy guys in The Wolf of Wall Street. This film wants to be both a stinging indictment of late-capitalist excess, and to have a little fun with dwarf-tossing, hookers and <a href="http://www.drugs.com/quaaludes.html">quaaludes</a> while we’re at it. </p>
<p>“But can’t we have both?” No Marty, I’m afraid we can’t.</p>
<p>What makes the film queasy viewing is that it’s Marty, and so it can’t be dismissed entirely. Not because of some auteurist deference to Scorsese’s place in The Pantheon of Directors, but because he is, for all of his foibles, a master filmmaker. The man is just brimming with cinema. All of film history and its accrued technique are at his disposal, and he uses it liberally. </p>
<p>Thrillingly. When he’s on message, it’s really something. </p>
<p>There’s a scene early in the film when <a href="http://jordanbelfort.com/?utm_expid=69902236-1.3gPnRYtCTVe8KU4XObm7UQ.0&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com.au%2F">Jordan Belfort</a>, the stockbroker and lead character played by Leonardo DiCaprio, addresses the trading floor of his fledgling brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont. By this point we’ve seen the young Belfort’s scruples, both financial and moral, tutored away by his first boss (Matthew McConaughey in a similar part to the one he played in Steven Soderbergh’s excellent 2012 film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1915581/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Magic Mike</a>)</p>
<p>And we’ve seen him humbled by the crash of ‘87, reduced to selling penny stocks out of a Long Island strip mall. These under-regulated, high profit margin stocks are the swampy ground upon which Belfort builds an empire. In this scene his vision finally crystallises.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Like Scarface … and not in a good way.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Belfort announces that everyone has worked very hard at making (dirty) money that week, and so it’s time for some end-of-week shenanigans. Belfort himself has put up US$10,000 for one of the secretaries to shave her head. She’s agreeable, as she wants the money for a breast enlargement: “she’s already got C-cups, but she wants D-cups,” proclaims Belfort-as-carnival-barker. </p>
<p>The crowd goes nuts. </p>
<p>This kind of striving for the unnecessary extra cream is what they’re all about. The woman’s head is shaved, roughly, haphazardly. At this point Scorsese adds further layers. Into the room marches a male brass band in boxers and Y-fronts, then some lingerie-clad strippers … or are they prostitutes? Women are whores or whinging wives in this film.</p>
<p>The US$10,000 is thrust upon the shavee by hands eager to be occupied elsewhere. She was just a warm-up act, and she rises and walks gingerly through the room, her head a careless mess of patches and remnant strands. </p>
<p>A wide shot: shiny gold tickertape fills the air, the sound of the raucous room fades out — replaced by dark, eerie music — the motion slows and the lights cut in and out, and we hang there a moment contemplating the grim tableau. It’s a concise, artful distillation of a culture corrupted by capital.</p>
<p>There are one or two other moments in the film that work this way, but they are neutralised by the slack, bloated, ugly, pointless passages that run between them. Tedious sex-capades on luxury cars, yachts and planes; trying-to-do-shit-while-high jinks; and some particularly bald gay and disabled slurs. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/39753/original/nwv6rj4t-1390454707.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Wall Steet player turned novelist Jordan Belfort, author of The Wolf of Wall Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julian Smith/AAP image</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scorsese and screenwriter Terrance Winter might well protest that this is just Belfort’s subjectivity at play – the screenplay is based on the felon’s memoir, after all. This is Belfort’s story and this is how he sees and treats women. But there’s such a clear distinction between Scorsese’s authorial voice in the “indictment” passages (few and far between) when compared to the “hey let’s have some crazy fun with these fun crazy guys” (the bulk of the picture) that the satire defence can safely be struck off.</p>
<p>Scorsese is doing what Belfort did: slapping a veneer of respectability on some junk and peddling it to a public who might not be savvy enough to know the difference. It worked, too. He got my money, and I’m old enough to know better. Might Jordan Belfort posters replace Tony Montana posters on the bedrooms of undergraduate boys? There’s every chance.</p>
<p>For me, the valuable thing about The Wolf of Wall Street is how it made me feel about some of the other “Oscars Season” films. Unlike many of my contemporaries, Spike Jonze’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Her</a> left me completely cold. I was amazed that a vision of the future that was so unambitious could be so utterly unconvincing, and found the central characters and their “relationships” pathetic (the bad kind of pathetic). </p>
<p>But you know what? At least it wasn’t poisonous, retrograde, macho bullshit. Its homeopathic innocuousness doesn’t bother me any more since a real black hat swaggered in to town.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I thoroughly enjoyed David O. Russell’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/?ref_=nv_sr_1">American Hustle</a>, and thought it had some transcendent moments. I’m thinking of Amy Adams and Christian Bale’s embrace in the spinning rack at the drycleaners as they fall for each other, and an unhinged Jennifer Lawrence cleaning the house angrily while belting out Wings’ Live and Let Die. </p>
<p>But a niggling voice held me back from gushing about it. The voice was my own, and it said: “sure it was good, and Russell can whiz a camera around, but he’s just the poor man’s Scorsese”. Now I wonder whether it isn’t the other way round. </p>
<p>Maybe my next viewing of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Goodfellas</a> will feel like a Scarface re-run.</p>
<p><br>
See <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/oscars-2014">further Oscars 2014 coverage</a> on The Conversation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw Walmsley-Evans 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 Wolf of Wall Street is Martin Scorsese’s Scarface – and that isn’t meant as a compliment. I watched Brian De Palma’s 1983 film again recently. I had been looking forward to it: the Blu-ray edition…
Huw Walmsley-Evans, Lecturer in Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.