tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/oscars-2015-14400/articles
Oscars 2015 – The Conversation
2015-05-20T05:07:49Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/40789
2015-05-20T05:07:49Z
2015-05-20T05:07:49Z
Oscar-nominated Timbuktu: right at the heart of the world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82218/original/image-20150519-30498-7boy0a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sissako’s eye is painterly, masterful.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abderrahmane Sissako/Curzon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A tracking shot of a gazelle running across the northern Mali desert. Shattering gunshots. A van of men is chasing the beast, concerned not to kill, but to exhaust and capture it. More gunshots: traditional wooden statues are blown to bits in the sand.</p>
<p>These armed marauders are jihadists arriving from Libya and other countries into Azawad, the region of Mali in which Abderrahmane Sissako’s new film Timbuktu is located. They don’t speak the local languages (particularly Tamasheq, a Tuareg dialect) and so use translators and a mixture of Arabic, Bambara, French and English in order to ensure that women wear gloves and socks, that men roll up their trouser legs, and to ban, <em>inter alia</em>, football, music, smoking, loitering in the streets and sitting on one’s doorstep. Woe betide anyone who breaks these arbitrarily-imposed laws; it’s lashes, stoning or a gunshot for them.</p>
<p>Except that these jihadists are hypocrites. They are unmoved by the peaceful protestations of a local imam. They love football (discussing the relative merits of Zidane and Messi), they dance to imaginary music at the house of Haitian madwoman Zabou and they illegally force local girls into marriage. Even they seem unconvinced, as one jihadist tries to explain on video how he gave up rap for holy war. Ringleader Abdelkrim (Abel Jafri) both smokes and courts Satima, wife of Kidane, without acknowledging the error of his ways.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82227/original/image-20150519-30533-1k1wri3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=315&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">The family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abderrahmane Sissako/Curzon</span></span>
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<p>Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) and Satima (Toulou Kiki) live on the outskirts of town with their daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed) and orphan Issan (Mehdi AG Mohamed). Theirs is a warm family life comprising tea, relaxation and music, although Issan works hard herding their eight cattle, especially one amusingly called GPS.</p>
<p>Until, that is, GPS wanders into the nets of lake fisherman Amadou (Omar Haidara), who angrily kills the cow with a spear. It would appear that technologies like GPS may well allow humans to know the cow’s position, but that does not help much in terms of stopping the cow from being… a cow.</p>
<p>The death of GPS results in Kidane confronting Amadou, a gun tucked away in his clothes. Their encounter leads to the destruction of Kidane’s family, and towards a tragic ending which suggests that Toya might be the jihadists’ gazelle prey.</p>
<h2>Abstraction</h2>
<p>While Timbuktu has a storyline, the film consists mainly of vignettes, which in their juxtaposition give the film an abstract feel. This abstraction is reinforced by Sissako’s painterly eye (shots of Kidane and his family in their tent), and by his cinematic sensibility (unlike a painting, no still image could convey the power of kids playing soccer with an imaginary football, or the unforgettable wide shot as Amadou and Kidane part ways at the lake).</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82230/original/image-20150519-30528-fssj95.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&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">Amadou and Kidane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abderrahmane Sissako/Curzon</span></span>
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<p>This abstract aspect is further reinforced by the fact that, unlike Sissako’s last film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814666/">Bamako</a>, which at least references real-world institutions such as the IMF in suggesting Mali and Africa’s contemporary situation, Timbuktu makes no concrete reference to real events. </p>
<p>Neither the recent <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-crisis-in-mali-a-historical-perspective-on-the-tuareg-people/5321407">Tuareg rebellion</a>, the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/01/20131139522812326.html">National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad</a>, the in-fighting with militant Islamist group <a href="http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/14/who-are-ansar-dine/">Ansar Dine</a>, the <a href="http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/movement-unity-and-jihad-west-africa-mujao">Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa</a>, nor the destruction of some of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9369271/Timbuktu-shrine-destruction-a-war-crime.html">Timbuktu’s historic shrines</a> and priceless library archives in 2012 are consciously nodded to.</p>
<p>Not mentioned in the film, and horribly under-reported in the (Western) media, this context might therefore remain unknown to (Western) audiences of Timbuktu. Sissako doesn’t even mention these events as inspiration for the film in the Cannes 2014 <a href="http://www.festival-cannes.com/assets/Image/Direct/3611fcae6d18d08f77be413483f86184.pdf">press kit</a>, instead citing the stoning of a couple for having had children out of wedlock in distant Aguelhok. The abstraction, therefore, is deliberate. But why?</p>
<p>As in Bamako, Sissako’s remarkable framing is reinforced by the colours of fabrics, adobe architecture, and the way in which space is striated by lines – phone lines over a courtyard in Bamako, shadows of bars over a prison yard in Timbuktu. Technology and the law abstract humans from each other (GPS creates conflict), imposing lines and borders – where, in reality, there are none.</p>
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<h2>Nature and the all too human</h2>
<p>But this abstraction is not divinely imposed. It is, rather, very human. In both Bamako and Timbuktu phones play a key role, here with Toya reaching up to heaven with her mobile in hope of an answer regarding Kidane’s fate. Heaven remains silent.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in various other shots, the folds of the dunes hide and reveal characters, the desert’s vast and unpredictable spread both reflecting and influencing the spread of militant fervour in the region. As the place becomes the playground of jihadists, we see that both the desert and fundamentalism swallow up the people of Timbuktu.</p>
<p>Sissako’s film is deceptively simple. Look a bit harder, though, and shots of a donkey crossing a penalty area or of heads emerging from bodies buried in the sand are complex: the people of Timbuktu are juxtaposed with both nature and a paradoxically inhuman/abstract but man-made law. Sissako focuses on the contradictions that entail when a human is caught in a place that is being used as an explosive, abstracted political football.</p>
<p>Legendary Malian musician Ali Farka Touré described Timbuktu as being “right at the heart of the world”. Touré is right, as Sissako makes a film set in the desert, and yet which is about both the world and the heart. He does this by presenting human characters who are abstracted them from their context (no mention of the Tuareg rebellion and so on), which in turn allows us to reflect upon the way in which political/politicised violence is itself a form of abstraction (humans see each other not as humans, but as insiders or outsiders of whatever particular cause they claim to fight for).</p>
<p>In contrast to the abstraction that is political/politicised violence, Sissako’s abstract, beautiful and humanist cinema tells us that wherever there is a human heart, then there is indeed the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40789/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Brown 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>
This astounding film focuses on the contradictions that ensue when a human is caught in a place being used as an explosive, abstracted political football.
William Brown, Senior Lecturer in Film, University of Roehampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37689
2015-02-23T06:58:30Z
2015-02-23T06:58:30Z
Oscars 2015: expert reaction
<p>This year’s edition of the Oscars have wrapped up, and featured a little bit of everything – from Birdman’s crowning moment and calls for equal pay for women (along with calls for calls home to loved ones!) to a Lady Gaga-Julie Andrews convergence and the sight of Neil Patrick Harris’ tighty-whities. </p>
<p>Our panel of academics have taken a moment to weigh in. Responding to the victories and defeats, while touching themes of race and Hollywood politics, many also point to what was missing from this year’s show. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Birdman Soars</h2>
<p><strong>Stephen Benedict Dyson, University of Connecticut</strong></p>
<p>Best Picture winner Birdman is a soaring piece of filmmaking, layered and meta to a dizzying degree. It also had the year’s best Audio/Visual gag, when Michael Keaton’s character walks past a busking drummer on the street who is hammering out the movie’s omnipresent score. Keaton casually tosses him a quarter, and continues through the movie accompanied by the same clattering beat long after the street musician has been left behind. The direction was too flashy for some tastes; I thought the movie had enough heart to see it through.</p>
<p>A few words for the lightly laureled Boyhood. This elegiac film took a long time to make. But for me, seeing 12 years pass in less than three hours drove home how short life is. And I couldn’t have been the only person whose sensibilities are so ruined by Hollywood tropes that I spent the whole movie waiting (happily, in vain) for the terrible turn of events that always accompanies these stories. The verisimilitude, then, was in both the on-screen aging of the actors and the portrayal of normal lives as accretions of quiet joys and draining defeats. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Twenty-something years later: Gen-X at the Oscars</h2>
<p><strong>Fabrizio Cilento, Messiah College</strong></p>
<p>They were the underachievers, self-centered and impractical. </p>
<p>Throughout the 1990s, indie filmmakers such as Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater gave voice to the overeducated (but often unemployed) sons of fractured families, paralyzed by social problems. An alternative cinema required alternative stars, and some of the early roles played by Julianne Moore, Patricia Arquette, Edward Norton, Ethan Hawke, Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo and Laura Dern captured the essence of the era’s anti-traditional bent. </p>
<p>When Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu started working within the US industry, he added his intercultural sensibility to the equation in films characterized by a narrative structure comprised of labyrinthine, overlapping paths.</p>
<p>However, there was a sense that Gen-X never flourished, condemned to eternally mourn the loss of River Phoenix, or to age bitterly, like in This is 40 or Greenberg.</p>
<p>Then Beck won at the Grammys, Father John Misty covered Nirvana and what remains of the Miramax-Sundance era had their moment at the Oscars. They were supposed to be having a midlife crisis – but instead they made an aesthetic out of an impending midlife crisis, and produced their most ambitious works. Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood are grounded in years of research, and focus on the themes of real time, image composition, and the heritage of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-New-Waves-Globalization/dp/0199858306">global new waves</a>.</p>
<p>In the words of Kurt Cobain: Here we are now, (keep) entertaining us.</p>
<hr>
<h2>White and winning…</h2>
<p><strong>Kellie Carter Jackson, Hunter College</strong></p>
<p>Neil Patrick Harris should not have corrected himself. This <em>was</em> Hollywood’s whitest night. And not only was this year white, but it was also heavily white male-centric – not surprising, given that 77% of the voting block are white males. So when Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs gave a speech about filmmaking and responsibility, it couldn’t have rung more false.</p>
<p>While congratulations are due to John Legend and Common winning best song, even their win felt predictable. (like, “You people are so soulful!”) </p>
<p>Consider this: what if Boyhood were about the story of Enrique, the Mexican laborer in the film played by Roland Ruiz. What if we saw a film about his growth into adulthood? Instead we watched a white American boy vandalize, drink alcohol, take drugs (without repercussions), complain about his entitlement to his father’s car – and then go off to college. </p>
<p>Booker T. Washington once said, “The study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to oppress the weak means little.” With voting patterns like this, the Academy may be paving its own irrelevance. </p>
<p>So much for responsibility.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Other worlds</h2>
<p><strong>Marissa J. Moorman, Indiana University, Bloomington</strong></p>
<p>Ida – Pawel Pawlikowski’s crisp, quiet drama – took home the Best Foreign Language Film award. The favorite going in, Ida is an arresting tale of a novitiate nun in 1960s Poland who learns of her Jewish ancestry. </p>
<p>It’s one of the few Oscar contenders that focuses on women’s stories (protagonist Ida and her aunt, Red Wanda). The acting is tight, the plot efficient and wrenching. Shot in black and white, with a keen sense of framing, the visual storytelling is as significant as the dialogue. It’s no surprise, then, that Ida also was nominated in the cinematography category, breaching national filmmaking borders with technical flair. </p>
<p>The Best Foreign Language Film category offers an alternative to the usual Hollywood formulas. It’s a chance to confound our common sense assumptions about how race, class, gender, religion and sexuality operate in everyday life. But we see too little of these films. It’s unfortunate, then, that we didn’t see more of Leviathan (Russia), Tangerines (Estonia), Timbuktu (Mauritania), or Wild Tales (Argentina) during this year’s Oscars. </p>
<p>All are important films (Timbuktu just won a Cesar, France’s Oscar), and with the rise of global filmmaking industries that rival Hollywood’s (like Bollywood in India and Nollywood in Nigeria), our shameful national narrowness (#bestandwhitest) shows what navel gazers we are: slow to look outside our borders for new ways to see and represent the world.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Middlebrow prestige culture: keeping things unreal</h2>
<p><strong>Catherine Liu, University of California, Irvine</strong></p>
<p>The Weinstein formula of marrying independent film with middlebrow prestige finally reached its apotheosis this year, but Weinstein’s The Imitation Game was outflanked by Grand Budapest Hotel and Birdman. </p>
<p>I was rooting for Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a film that explores and expands on the meaning of realism. Both Gone Girl and Boyhood dealt with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and address the anxieties of family finance and everyday life. Neither film dealt with race at all. </p>
<p>I blame Harvey Weinstein for the mediocrity and whitewashing of independent cinema, which is far behind network and cable television narratives in dealing with the complexities of gender and race. My son and I are watching ABC’s Fresh off the Boat. (Yes, Asian Americans exist!)</p>
<p>As a side note, Neil Patrick Harris’s emceeing was awful. The transition from Citizenfour’s winning best documentary to commercial break reminded me of <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/04/they-shoot-oscars-dont-they/">this brilliant takedown</a> of 2013 Oscars host Seth McFarlane by Jacobin Magazine’s Eileen Jones.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Indies to the rescue…again</h2>
<p><strong>Michael Green, Arizona State University</strong></p>
<p>The 87th Academy Awards affirmed that the gap between what the Oscars purport to stand for (great, bold, creative movies) and the kind of movies Hollywood actually makes (formulaic, special effects-infused blockbusters aimed at teenagers) is wider than ever.</p>
<p>For two decades, the Oscars have appropriated independent movies to fill the major categories, while Hollywood studio films have dominated the visual, sound effects and feature animation categories. Without independent cinema, Hollywood’s biggest awards show wouldn’t even exist. </p>
<p>The broadcast seemed defensive about this from the outset. Jack Black acknowledged Hollywood’s reliance on formula and bottom-line mentality in the opening song, but was quickly shooed off in favor of hokey nostalgia. Liam Neeson protested that Hollywood was more than a comic book factory, while another presenter lamented that the “Industry is becoming more digital every day.”</p>
<p>The President of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, gave a speech on responsibility and the need to protect the right to self–expression (clearly referring to Sony’s hacking last year). She mentioned that movies are for “challenging ideas” and presenting “alternative points of view.” But this is absolutely the last thing that Hollywood movies attempt – or want – to do. </p>
<p>How much longer can Hollywood pretend it makes the kind of movies it wants to honor? </p>
<hr>
<h2>What if Alice were Alan?</h2>
<p><strong>Michele Schreiber, Emory University</strong></p>
<p>If you hadn’t given much thought to how male-centric this year’s Oscars were, it probably became clear tonight when the introduction to every Best Picture nominee clip could have easily started with, “Our next nominated picture is about a boy/man who does X.” In fact, this sentence not only sums up the plot of most films made in Hollywood throughout its history, but also all but a handful of Best Picture winners. </p>
<p>We don’t label these films “men’s films.” They’re simply “great films.” However, when a film features a female protagonist, it often acquires a label that marks it as different. During the classical period it was called a “woman’s picture.” Now it’s a “chick flick.” These labels persist despite the fact that the content of these films is often no different from many films featuring male protagonists. </p>
<p>Would a film like Still Alice have been more acclaimed and garnered a Best Picture nomination if it were called Still Alan? Would it be a more “important” story if it was about a brilliant man whose mind is ravaged by Alzheimer’s? </p>
<p>The dismissal of women’s stories into some “other” category is evidence of a significant systemic problem. But it isn’t only Hollywood’s problem to solve. It also lies in the hands of moviegoers who continue to pigeonhole women in film in ways that they would deem unacceptable in their everyday lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37689/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 organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Indies to the rescue, the quiet power of foreign language films, Gen-X’s crowning moment. All – and more – are covered by our experts, who weigh in on this year’s Oscars.
Michael Green, Film and Media Studies Senior Lecturer, Arizona State University
Catherine Liu, Professor of Film & Media Studies, University of California, Irvine
Fabrizio Cilento, Assistant Professor of Film & Digital Media, Messiah College
Kellie Carter Jackson, Assistant Professor of History, Hunter College
Marissa J. Moorman, Associate Professor of History, Indiana University
Michele Schreiber, Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies, Emory University
Stephen Benedict Dyson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37786
2015-02-20T11:36:02Z
2015-02-20T11:36:02Z
Music teacher sentenced to 11 years in prison as abuse film Whiplash prepares for Oscars
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72482/original/image-20150219-28209-cj06r3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bullying in music education is pervasive, but often more insidious than this.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sony</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Philip Pickett, a very prominent conductor in the early music world, has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-31550251">jailed for 11 years</a> for sexually attacking two pupils and a young woman. He carried out the assaults in sound-proofed practise rooms in the 1970s and 1980s. </p>
<p>Abuse in music education is an issue that also currently features in a very different sphere – the Oscars race. Whiplash, nominated for Best Picture at this year’s awards, is is set in the fictional New York Schaffer Conservatory, the setting of which is undoubtedly based upon the Juilliard School (and where the classroom scene is shot). We follow a student jazz drummer, Andrew Neiman, as he is driven to the edge by tyrannical teacher Terence Fletcher. </p>
<p>Despite relying on two-dimensional characterisation and implausible scenarios, the film makes some very pertinent points about bullying and the pervasive power games that conservatoires promote.</p>
<h2>Recent cases</h2>
<p>Abuse of students by teachers is a real problem in music education. The Venezuelan massive music education project El Sistema, once hailed as a social program, has since been described as “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/11/geoff-baker-el-sistema-model-of-tyranny">a model of tyranny</a>”. In March 2013 Michael Brewer, a former music teacher at Chetham’s school of music was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/26/chelthams-teacher-michael-brewer-jailed">jailed for 6 years</a> after abusing a student who took her own life during the trial; a further teacher at the school (my own conducting teacher there) was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/01/chethams-music-teacher-nicholas-smith-jailed-sexual-assault">jailed for 8 months in September 2014</a> after admitting to sexually assaulting a student when she was a child. </p>
<p>Various other cases involving teachers from the school await trial at the time of writing. A series of women have come forward to <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/sex-scandal-five-uk-music-schools-implicated-exclusive">attest to their abuse</a> at the hands of former Director of Music at the Yehudi Menuhin School, the late Marcel Gazelle, while many men came forward too with horrifying stories about the late Alan Doggett, the major conductor for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and former music director at Colet Court School, following investigations by <a href="https://ianpace.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/updated-alan-doggett-first-conductor-of-joseph-and-jesus-christ-superstar-and-the-paedophile-information-exchange/">myself</a> and <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article4043679.ece">The Times</a>. </p>
<p>I have been involved in as a campaigner and researcher on the subject of abuse in music education for several years. I have chronicled many cases coming to light both <a href="https://ianpace.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/reported-cases-of-abuse-in-musical-education-1990-2012-and-issues-for-a-public-inquiry/">before</a> and <a href="https://ianpace.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/the-trial-of-michael-and-kay-brewer-and-the-death-of-frances-andrade-and-the-aftermath-2013/">after</a> the Michael Brewer trial. I am aware of many other allegations, sometimes against very prominent musicians, throughout UK music education but also in the US, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Russia and elsewhere. </p>
<p>What I have seen, overwhelmingly, from having gone through an elite musical training, working as a professional musician, and also from a large amount of information disclosed privately to me, is a systematic pattern of domination, cruelty, dehumanisation, bullying and emotional manipulation from unscrupulous musicians in positions of unchecked power, of which sexual abuse is one of several manifestations.</p>
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<h2>Pure fiction?</h2>
<p>Compare Whiplash. Terence Fletcher is very much a cartoon villain. He physically assaults and publicly humiliates his students, and fires off homophobic and anti-semitic insults like an unintentional parody of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000582/">Joe Pesci</a> in a Martin Scorsese film, or anything scripted by David Mamet. </p>
<p>All of which he justifies (at least outwardly) by the old lie that he is pushing students to get the best results. Any individual acting in such a blatant manner in a US or UK conservatory today would almost certainly face severe disciplinary action very quickly (in Russia or China it might be a different matter).</p>
<p>Few could deny that Fletcher is a vicious bully. The fact that he is a jazz rather than classical teacher, and as such less bound by conventions of bourgeois respectability, may make him superficially more plausible, but I have found that bullying musicians are often more subtle and insidious.</p>
<p>A more devastatingly incisive rendition – the most realistic rendition of the culture of the conservatory I have yet seen on film – is Isabelle Huppert’s portrayal of the monstrous Erika in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254686/">The Piano Teacher</a>. Erika is a bitter and twisted woman utterly unfit for teaching. She uses the language and rhetoric of musical discernment and sophistication to undermine the confidence and sense of self of those she resents and envies. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mjROGqRTMzQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Despite being somewhat caricature-like, the nature of Fletcher’s power is portrayed with insight. Although his methods might be exaggerated, such abuse of power does regularly occur and the film should not be dismissed as entirely fictional.</p>
<h2>Classical conservatoires</h2>
<p>It is important to note that the conservatory environment portrayed here belongs historically to classical musicians. While jazz has occasionally been taught in such institutions ever since the first course in Frankfurt in 1928, it has remained marginal until quite recently. Juilliard, for example, first offered jazz courses in 2001 and few big names in jazz – such as Charlie Parker or Buddy Rich, both mentioned in the film – had this type of musical education. </p>
<p>Conservatories are still strongly weighted towards classical music, and a large amount of bullying is found in this field, though it is often less obvious than that of Fletcher. Fewer volleying barrages of insults. Instead, I have found that frequently students’ inferiority is insinuated through assertions about their perceived emotional maturity or even level of sexual prowess, on the basis of their playing. </p>
<p>Some use personality stereotypes, based on just a few tawdry attributes, to demean and humiliate the student and flaunt their own power. In earlier times these might be overtly based upon the student’s ethnicity or social background; the difference now is simply that this is implicit rather than clearly stated. </p>
<p>Whiplash’s Fletcher knows just how vulnerable and desperate fledgling musicians are. He exploits this situation. Relationships, friendships or other trappings of a normal life disappear under the weight of naked ambition; other humans matter only to the extent they can further one’s career. The pressure to act in such a manner is very real in advanced musical education. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72483/original/image-20150219-28194-qfgjz5.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">Budding musician.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sony</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Those who lose out</h2>
<p>The rather hollow “victory” achieved at the end of the film by Neiman (in a <em>tour de force</em> of filming as well as playing) could be argued to have legitimised Fletcher’s treatment of him. But the lasting message is not optimistic.</p>
<p>We find out that a former student, Sean Casey, likely hanged himself in response to his treatment by Fletcher. This is far more striking than some of the other implausible and melodramatic plot devices. But Casey was successful, at least in the terms set out here, having found a place playing in Marsalis’s museum-piece concerts. </p>
<p>More important, and ignored in most portrayals of musical education, is the fate of those who do not find success. These people have sacrificed everything else in their lives. Institutions teach significantly more students than could ever find available work. And so alongside the rosters of starry names brandished in conservatories’ publicity material, their legacy is equally to be found in the other alumni who are left bereft and disillusioned. </p>
<p>I know of many cases, some involving those I knew at school or college, in which the legacy of such study has been chronic depression, difficulties with relationships, drink and drug abuse. This is often prompted by the terror and paranoia engendered by repeated psychological, physical or sexual abuse, as well as the cripplingly low self-esteem that can result. </p>
<p>For those of us lucky few who have been able to devote our professional lives to music, many factors beyond supposed talent or natural selection are involved, often beyond one’s personal control.</p>
<p>This throws light on the real inadequacies of both the teachers and the institutional culture. Better results, both personal and musical, could be achieved by a teaching culture founded upon co-operation and mutual support rather than aggressive competition. The learning needs of students must be prioritised above the reputations of teachers. Educational breadth is needed to enable students to flourish as whole people, not just performing machines. </p>
<p>But this will only happen when the musical professions take real steps to reform a brutalising and dehumanising range of practices and attitudes, the justifications for which are no more convincing than those of Fletcher.</p>
<p>At the star-studded Academy Awards, remember that the essence of what is portrayed in Whiplash is very real and has profound effects upon many young musicians.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Pace received an AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship from 2003 to 2006 in conjunction with the University of Southampton.</span></em></p>
Aspects of Whiplash are implausible – but it does reflect the real and insidious bullying culture that exists in music education.
Ian Pace, Head of Performance and Lecturer in Music, City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37613
2015-02-20T11:05:31Z
2015-02-20T11:05:31Z
At its core, American Sniper is about white fear
<p>Liberal writers have been lining up for the last month and a half to decry American Sniper along comfortable and predictable ideological lines. “Macho Sludge” was the title of an <a href="http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-macho-sludge-peddled-american-sniper-really-cowardice">Alternet piece</a> by David Masciotra. Chris Hedges <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/killing_ragheads_for_jesus_20150125">called it</a> “a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity.” Meanwhile, comedian Bill Maher <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/01/24/pkg-orig-maher-american-sniper-psychopath-patriot-chris-kyle.cnn">characterized it</a> as a film “about a psychopath patriot.” </p>
<p>For certain, the film makes a hero out of a killer – Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, who was responsible for more deaths than any other sniper in US history. It romanticizes his desire to protect fellow soldiers in the US war in Iraq. Perhaps worst of all, it trades on longstanding Western stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, ranging from inscrutable to untrustworthy to profoundly sadistic. </p>
<p>But straight propaganda rarely makes for compelling entertainment, so the enormous popularity of American Sniper (hauling in a mind-boggling US$306.5 million domestically so far) suggests that it has resonated far beyond the hardcore group of ultraconservatives these reviewers would expect to embrace the film.</p>
<p>Far from being a film that simply trumpets the superiority of American values and military might, American Sniper depicts white, male vulnerability, along with the tragic costs of war – at least, for Americans. </p>
<h2>Eastwood’s ambiguity</h2>
<p>Ambiguity over violence and its purposes – both at the societal and individual level – is a common theme in the films of American Sniper’s director and producer Clint Eastwood. Indeed, Eastwood has said that American Sniper was meant to criticize war. As he put it, antiwar films are most powerful when they show “…what [war] does to the family and the people who have to go back into civilian life like Chris Kyle did.” </p>
<p>There are two Eastwoods in the popular imagination. On the one hand, there’s the apostle of violence in the Dirty Harry movies and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns; on the other, there’s the man who laments violence in films such as Unforgiven and Gran Torino. </p>
<p>But as American Sniper demonstrates, those two archetypes are not so different. Eastwood does here what he’s done repeatedly in his career: he resolves his hero’s ambivalence, psychic pain and sense of structural powerlessness through masculine honor, sacrifice and vulnerability (often played out on a highly racialized landscape).</p>
<p>Eastwood hit on this formula in one of the first films he directed, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Josey Wales is a poor farmer in the Missouri Territory who, after his home is attacked by Union soldiers, sees no choice but to take up arms and become a Confederate guerrilla. Similarly, in American Sniper, after Chris Kyle watches the World Trade Center collapse, he feels as though he must go to war. In doing so, both prove to be unusually good – if reluctant – marksmen and killers even as, in both films, the argument for war remains ambivalent. </p>
<p>Their challenge, ultimately, is to work out a way of living peacefully in the absence of war. As Josey says to a Comanche warrior, “Dyin’ ain’t so hard for men like us…it’s living that’s hard.”</p>
<h2>Anti-government politics appeal to left and right</h2>
<p>The Outlaw Josey Wales <a href="http://www.amazon.com/From-New-Deal-Right-Conservatism/dp/0300151233">contained anti-government sentiments</a> that appealed to Americans on both the left and the right. Coming on the heels of the Vietnam War and Watergate, the film reflected popular disillusionment with both. </p>
<p>When promoting the film, Eastwood often referenced Vietnam and Watergate, alluding to the profound distrust that Americans were starting to feel towards the federal government. But he didn’t simply appear as an opponent of the war and the Nixon administration. Eastwood was openly, angrily anti-government – in a way that not only blamed elected leaders, but also derided impoverished recipients of government assistance. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Clint-Eastwood-Biography-Richard-Schickel/dp/0679749918">As he told one audience</a>, “Today we live in a welfare-oriented society, and people expect more from Big Daddy Government, more from Big Daddy Charity. That philosophy never got you anywhere. I worked for every crust of bread I ever ate.” </p>
<p>It was the state and people of color who ultimately violated the Confederate Josey Wales and his family, even though he makes common cause with a Cherokee against imperial expansion of the US state. It is political ambivalence that made The Outlaw Josey Wales popular with a broad public, not unlike American Sniper.</p>
<h2>White fear and violence interconnected</h2>
<p>In the beginning of American Sniper, Chris Kyle’s father tells him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to think that evil doesn’t exist in the world. If there were ever dark on their doorsteps, they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep. Then you have predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They’re wolves. Then there are those who are blessed with the gift of aggression with an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheep dog.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Eastwood’s rendering of Chris Kyle, Kyle’s need to be a killer of almost superhuman proportions makes him not sociopathic, but rather the sheepdog: someone who operates in a state of constant, anxious alertness against inevitable attack. With this characterization, Chris Kyle’s violence is justified in advance. Perched up on a rooftop, his rifle cocked, he offers protection from the chaotic aggression of people of color (just as the real-life Kyle <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/30/the-complicated-but-unveriable-legacy-of-chris-kyle-the-deadliest-sniper-in-american-history/">told stories</a> about picking off looters from the roof of the Superdome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina).</p>
<p>In Clint Eastwood's Sudden Impact (1983), Dirty Harry Callahan, a white police officer pointing his gun at the head of a black criminal who is holding a white woman hostage at knifepoint. Referring to this scene, political theorist <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/american-prophecy">George Shulman</a> has argued that this demonic love triangle between women, blacks and the state fueled the rage of white men who opposed welfare, affirmative action and the ERA in Reagan-era America.</p>
<p>From Sudden Impact, to American Sniper, to the recent cases of police who have killed unarmed African Americans, we can see this logic of white fear and vulnerability at play. Think of Ferguson police officer <a href="https://thewpsa.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/fear-and-fantasy-in-ferguson/">Darren Wilson</a>, who shot an unarmed Michael Brown twelve times. </p>
<p>“The only way I can describe it,” Wilson testified, “[is] it looks like a demon…it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, American Sniper dispenses with conventional political ideology to portray the raw, emotional core of white vulnerability – and its connection to bloodshed in the face of triple insecurities of race, gender and empire in an unstable political era. </p>
<p>But unlike Dirty Harry or Josey Wales, Chris Kyle evinces a woundedness – and, ultimately, a kind of powerlessness – that does not re-establish white male superiority. </p>
<p>After all, Kyle dies – and at the hands of another veteran, no less.</p>
<p>The long, final scene of the film presents actual footage from Chris Kyle’s funeral procession along Texas’s Interstate 35. Showing thousands of mourners on overpasses (accompanied by a beautiful, melancholy trumpet piece), it asks us to bear witness to the death of a hero. We are not asked to question or challenge the war that made him a killer, or that made him the victim of another American veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Rather we mourn the sheepdog, the emotionally wounded martyr. </p>
<p>In his <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/LAWRENCE/lawrence.html">Studies in Classic American Literature</a>, DH Lawrence wrote that “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” James Baldwin, <a href="http://www.cwsworkshop.org/pdfs/CARC/Family_Herstories/2_On_Being_White.PDF">offering deeper insight on the vulnerable core of this soul</a>, held that that the monstrous violence visited by white Americans on the world is due to their having opted for safety over life. </p>
<p>American Sniper’s Chris Kyle – the sheepdog, the last line of defense – serves as an exclamation point to Baldwin’s keen insight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I sit on the Executive Council of United Academics, the University of Oregon faculty union. I am also a vice president at large for American Federation of Teachers - Oregon.</span></em></p>
Many are decrying the film as merely conservative propaganda. But American Sniper – as with many of Eastwood’s films – has a more nuanced approach that addresses modern anxieties.
Joseph Lowndes, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37248
2015-02-18T15:32:21Z
2015-02-18T15:32:21Z
Oscars’ snub to world cinema promotes a very outdated worldview
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72366/original/image-20150218-20810-1hmq1hs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wild Tales.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Curzon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Four minutes into the 1994 Oscars, host <a href="http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/view/10.1057/9780230223189">Whoopi Goldberg declared</a>: “Tonight we gather to honour Hollywood’s best, which is also the world’s best”. The directors of the five films nominated for the Best Foreign Language category, including Taiwanese Ang Lee and the eventual winner from Spain Fernando Trueba, must have felt like getting their coats.</p>
<p>The award for Best Foreign Language Film is awarded for “excellence in World Cinema”. It has been a regular feature of the annual ceremony since 1956. For some observers, the category lends the Oscars an art-house kudos not generally delivered by the mainstream films that grace the main awards categories, with nods to Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and more recently Pedro Almodóvar. It offers a chance for foreign filmmakers to compete for international fame and fortune without having to go head-to-head with Hollywood.</p>
<p>For others – the majority I suspect – the category doesn’t matter a damn. After all, hardly anything beyond the four main categories of Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor and Actress, makes the headlines. </p>
<h2>Life is Biutiful</h2>
<p>The good news for critics of the category is that ever since Roberto Benigni’s eight nominations and four Oscar wins for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/">Life is Beautiful</a> in 1998, foreign films have been nominated regularly in other categories. </p>
<p>Ang Lee was nominated for ten and won four for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190332/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</a> in 2000, Guillermo del Toro’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Pan’s Labyrinth</a> won three in 2007 (but remarkably not the Best Foreign Film gong), and along the way films as diverse as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110877/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Il Postino</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1164999/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Biutiful</a> have picked up nominations in the high-profile categories of Best Picture and Best Actor. </p>
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<p>The Best Director award has been won by foreign filmmakers for the past three years in a row. Many tip Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu to continue the trend with a win this year for <a href="https://theconversation.com/birdman-and-the-intoxicating-alchemy-of-cinema-35275">Birdman</a>. In 2011, French film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Artist</a> became the first foreign film to win the Best Picture Oscar.</p>
<p>Might those borders between Hollywood and “foreign” finally be disappearing?</p>
<h2>World cinema in the ghetto</h2>
<p>The Anglocentric nature of the awards has always been an object of criticism. By privileging English-language production, the Oscars promote an incredibly old-fashioned worldview in which UK, Australian and Irish films, for example, are not “foreign”.</p>
<p>It’s a preposterous notion, proposed, lest we forget, by a private enterprise whose function it is to promote American movies (the Motion Picture Association of America), but we all play along. A whopping <a href="http://variety.com/2014/film/news/oscars-record-83-films-submitted-for-foreign-language-prize-1201326138/">83 countries</a> played along this year and submitted entries for the competition.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Portuguese_submissions_for_the_Academy_Award_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film">Portugal</a> currently holds the record of the most submissions without an Oscar nomination (31) – hardly a fair indication of the quality of production there in the 21st century, if we are to believe that Oscar lists are a meaningful reflection of the state of film-making beyond the English-speaking world. No films from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Korean_submissions_for_the_Academy_Award_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film">South Korea</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_submissions_for_the_Academy_Award_for_Best_Foreign_Language_Film">Egypt</a> have ever been nominated. No films by the celebrated Iranian film-maker, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0452102/">Abbas Kiarostami</a>.</p>
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<p>The idiosyncrasies of selection committees have a part to play in this, and sometimes restrictions imposed by national governments on what film should represent the nation (consider, for example, China’s refusal to submit the controversial <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852400/">A Touch of Sin</a> in 2013). </p>
<p>And given the nature of world cinema marketing, the Oscars’ deadline for a film premiering in its country of origin isn’t the only imperative producers have in mind: the film festival calendar is already extremely demanding for producers who wish to use festivals to build viewer and reviewer momentum. </p>
<p>A foreign language Oscar win is a bonus, but it’s hardly essential, as the success of the Oscar-less <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/">City of God</a> showed in 2003.</p>
<h2>Whose film is it anyway?</h2>
<p>The Best Foreign Language Film is awarded to countries. This insistence in celebrating the national in foreign filmmakers’ work goes against the trend of transnational film making. Look at this year’s nominees: Andrey Zvyagintsev’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802154/">Leviathan</a> (Russia) is the only film in the current shortlist not to be an international co-production. <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-unique-exploration-of-polands-unspoken-unspeakable-history-ida-is-spectacular-32301">Ida</a> is a four-way co-production (with Denmark, France, UK) representing Poland. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2991224/">Tangerines</a> had producers in Estonia and Georgia, but Estonia gets the credit if it wins.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>As an Austrian filmmaker who often shoots outside his country of origin, in co-production and regularly in French, Michael Haneke finds his films being claimed by multiple territories come awards season. This explains how the French-language, France-based, French-titled <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602620/awards?ref_=tt_awd">Amour</a> won for Austria in 2013.</p>
<p>And take <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065234/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Z</a>, the 1969 French language tale of political corruption in 1960s Greece. Greek director Costa-Gavras, then based in Paris, was unable to convince any big French producer to take the project on. That it ended up representing Algeria at the Academy Awards is down to chance (one of his co-producers had contacts there). When it went on to achieve Oscar victory and international box-office success, those same French producers must have been kicking themselves. </p>
<p>Z was the first win for an African nation. If Abderrahmane Sissako wins this year for Mauritania with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3409392/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Timbuktu</a>, it will be only the fourth African win in a category still dominated by the large European production centres of France, Italy, Spain and Germany. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72370/original/image-20150218-20784-13oh61o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Curzon.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Argentina is the sole flag bearer for the vast and at times brilliant Latin American film production: a win this year for Damian Szifron’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3011894/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Wild Tales</a> will make it the nation’s third Oscar Foreign Language Film success. </p>
<p>Given the presence of foreign personnel in Hollywood from very early on in Tinseltown’s history, the number of Oscars to be awarded over the years to foreign and foreign-born filmmakers, technicians and so on is pitiful. While the number of foreigners picking up gongs may have increased in the 21st century, none of the relatively few (seven, in fact) foreign and foreign-born filmmakers to have won the Best Director gong has done so with a foreign-language film. </p>
<p>So 21 years later Whoopi Goldberg’s words still resonate. If you’re a foreign filmmaker seeking Oscar success and you want to get your movies seen, you’d best consider a move to Hollywood. It’s the centre of the world, after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Dennison 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>
Four minutes into the 1994 Oscars, host Whoopi Goldberg declared: “Tonight we gather to honour Hollywood’s best, which is also the world’s best”. The directors of the five films nominated for the Best…
Stephanie Dennison, Reader in Brazilian Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36029
2015-02-17T14:13:05Z
2015-02-17T14:13:05Z
Why are we so surprised at the Oscars’ lack of diversity?
<p>With the Academy Awards ceremony just around the corner, it’s worth reflecting on some of the criticism triggered by the Oscar nominations and fuelled by the recent BAFTA awards. There was only one thing more predictable than the overwhelmingly white, male, able-bodied “face” of this year’s Oscar nominations: the well-rehearsed outcries at the marginalisation of anyone who isn’t a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/oscars/oscar-nominations-2015-academy-criticised-for-allwhite-nominees-in-acting-categories-9980457.html">white dude</a>. </p>
<p>What <em>was</em> perhaps surprising is that the list of contenders shows even less diversity than in previous years. It’s just the second time in almost two decades that every single acting nominee is white. </p>
<p>The Best Picture category is made up of films <a href="https://theconversation.com/oscar-nominations-2015-its-still-a-mans-world-35941">about white men, that are directed by white men</a>. The only exception is Ava DuVernay’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-dangerous-to-draw-parallels-between-selma-and-today-37235">Selma</a>. </p>
<p>It’s safe to say that stories by white men, about white men, is what the Oscars are all about. Not too surprising, really, considering that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/15/oscarssowhite-mocks-awards-show-inequality">94% of Academy voters are white and 77% are male</a>. </p>
<p>Concerns have also been raised around the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/13/eddie-redmayne-golden-globe-stephen-hawking-disabled-actors-characters">treatment of disability within mainstream awards culture</a>. These voices have grown louder since Eddie Redmayne scooped the BAFTA best actor prize for his “genuinely visceral” performance as Stephen Hawking/of motor neurone disease in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne is now considered one of the likely winners of the best acting Oscar. </p>
<p>The occasional comparisons between able-bodied actors “cripping up” and white actors “blacking up” ignore the very different historical complexities of both forms of discrimination – but they nonetheless point to wider concerns around self-representation. The issue here is not only about which identity groups are represented on screen (women, ethnic/racial minorities). It is also about who they are represented by – and this is an issue crucially linked to questions of employment in the film industry, both in front and behind the camera. </p>
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<h2>Simply the best?</h2>
<p>In an equally predictable manner, these often well-argued critiques are frequently dismissed – mostly by assertions that the list of nominees was not the result of white, male, able-bodied bias but simply an acknowledgement of the “best” films, directors and actors. This is an all-too familiar trope that ignores the deep-rooted structural inequalities within the film industry, not to mentioned the wider socio-cultural and political context. </p>
<p>I’m certainly not suggesting that this year’s Oscar contenders are not good films, directors and actors, or that they don’t deserve recognition. The Oscars are, after all, an occasion for the white, male-dominated Hollywood film industry to engage in a self-congratulatory celebration of its outputs. To ignore this is just as short-sighted as ignoring the institutional, political and historical contexts in which the Awards take place. </p>
<p>However, I also don’t think that we, as (feminist, queer, anti-racist) critics, should just dismiss the Oscars and what they stand for on the basis of their obnoxiously normative predictability. Resignation or dismissal are too easy a way out. Mainstream cinema does matter to many people, for very different reasons. </p>
<h2>Some historical context</h2>
<p>The Oscars have a long history of marginalising women, racial and ethnic minorities and people with disability (to name just a few identity groups). </p>
<p>As recently as 2002, Halle Berry became the very first, and so far the only, woman of colour to win a Best Actress Oscar in the 85-year history of the Academy Awards. She won it for her performance in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285742/">Monster’s Ball</a>. Men of colour have fared marginally better, receiving <a href="http://bitchmagazine.org/post/its-no-surprise-that-the-oscars-snubbed-selma">9%</a> of Best Actor Oscars.</p>
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<p>Black actors and actresses have gained marginally more visibility and earning power in recent years. Jennifer Hudson, Mo’Nique, Octavia Spence and Lupita Nyong’o have all received supporting actress accolades, and Chiwetel Eijofor (<a href="https://theconversation.com/oscar-winning-12-years-a-slave-is-an-artistic-and-educational-triumph-23932">12 Years a Slave</a>, 2013) and Viola Davis (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/">The Help</a>, 2012) best actor/actress nominations. </p>
<p>However, it is worth keeping in mind the small range of roles that tend to be available and, importantly, rewarded. The white Hollywood elite seems relatively comfortable celebrating non-white actors and actresses playing slaves, maids, drug addicts, musicians, athletes, crazy African kings or pirates. </p>
<p>No black director, male or female, has ever won a best directing Oscar – although Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, 2014), Lee Daniels (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0929632/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Precious</a>, 2009) and John Singleton (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101507/">Boyz n the Hood</a>, 1991) have received nominations. No woman of colour has ever been amongst the nominees.</p>
<p>The Oscars also have an astounding history of rewarding able-bodied actors for playing disabled roles. If Eddie Redmayne returns with a best actor Oscar next week, he will join an illustrious list of able-bodied actors (all white and male, it goes without saying) rewarded for their “outstanding” performances of disability, including Dustin Hoffman (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Rain Man</a>, 1988), Daniel Day-Lewis (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097937/">My Left Foot</a>, 1989) and Tom Hanks (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109830/">Forrest Gump</a>, 1994). If not, he will join an equally illustrious list of actors nominated for acting Oscars for “cripping up”.</p>
<h2>Surprise and anger</h2>
<p>The white, male norm at the Oscars, and Hollywood cinema more generally, has deep-seated cultural, political and economic roots. Unfortunately, this norm appears to be in the process of becoming more, rather than less, securely established. Films by white men, about white men, are given awards by white men. History tells us that we should probably be used to that by now. </p>
<p>But the lack of diversity of this year’s Academy Award nominations seems to have struck a particular chord.</p>
<p>This might be because the film industry has recently come under increased pressure to sort out its structural inequalities and racist and sexist hierarchies. These were spectacularly exposed when a significant gender-pay gap was revealed through emails leaked in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-sony-was-a-righteous-deed-but-not-us-says-north-korea-35211">Sony Pictures hack</a>.</p>
<p>It might also be because we have seen that things can be done differently. The overwhelmingly <a href="http://variety.com/2014/artisans/production/transparent-creates-trans-positive-environment-behind-the-scenes-1201317634/">positive reactions</a> (including from within the trans community) to the TV series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3502262/">Transparent</a>, for instance, are largely ascribed to the involvement of trans people not only on screen, but in the production process more generally.</p>
<p><a href="http://deadline.com/2014/12/selma-bradford-young-black-cinematography-1201338543/">Similar arguments</a> about the importance of diversity in the production process have been made about Selma. Obviously, this is not to say that only black or trans people can, or should, create representations of black or trans identities. But what it does suggest is that a greater a variety of perspectives tends to lead to more diverse and, dare I say, “authentic” depictions, that speak to a wider range of audiences and experiences.</p>
<p>Or it might be because Ava DuVernay was expected to become the first woman of colour to be nominated for a Best Directing award for her stunning civil rights drama, Selma. Her exclusion was widely perceived as a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/25/oscars-2015-they-should-have-been-contenders">snub</a>. </p>
<p>Perhaps, it is also because the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in August 2014, and the following heightening of racial tensions in the US, provided a heartbreaking reminder of a deep-seated structural and institutional racism. In this context, yet another self-congratulatory celebration of the achievements and struggles of the white male hero as conceived of by white male directors seems just too cynical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katharina Lindner 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 the Academy Awards ceremony just around the corner, it’s worth reflecting on some of the criticism triggered by the Oscar nominations and fuelled by the recent BAFTA awards. There was only one thing…
Katharina Lindner, Lecturer in Film and Media, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37443
2015-02-11T15:40:35Z
2015-02-11T15:40:35Z
We must make sure some good comes out of Selma’s award snub
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71747/original/image-20150211-25714-dbg6ov.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colman Domingo, director Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo at the Berlin film festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jens Kalaene/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2015 Golden Globe nominations for Selma (Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director) seemed to signal that the film’s chances were high for being on all the nomination lists for the rest of the awards season. DuVernay’s nomination made her the first black woman to have been nominated for directing, a fact widely described as history making in itself and a potential precursor to further firsts. </p>
<p>But most of the other major awards (the Baftas, the Directors’ Guild of America, the Screen Actors’ Guild and the Producers’ Guild) then didn’t nominate Selma – for anything. The film did get a best picture nomination for the Oscars, but nothing for its director or its lead actor. </p>
<p>Consequently the usual awards season conversation has been altered by the snub to DuVernay, Oyelowo and the film itself and the way it has highlighted the lack of gender and racial diversity in the awards. </p>
<h2>Excuses, excuses</h2>
<p>The guilds’ lack of nominations <a href="http://variety.com/2015/film/news/selmas-guild-rebuff-can-studios-afford-to-skip-screeners-1201403996/">has been explained by some</a> by the industry as a result of Paramount not sending screening DVDs to their members in time. Awards season is a large marketing machine, and the studios play their roles by sending out screeners and campaigning for their films in the trade press. </p>
<p>Though paid less attention to by the public, the guild awards are peer group awards – directors voting for directors and actors voting for actors. They are often better predictors of the Oscars than the Golden Globes, whose 93 voters are members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The voting members for the Baftas are 6,500 industry professionals from the UK and around the world. Its director <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/31/bafta-not-elitist-racist-selma-snub-amanda-berry">has also said</a> that Selma came too late. </p>
<p>Screener excuse or not, the snub cannot be batted away so easily. Wider criticism has been about that fact that most of the films recognised by the main awards have white male leads. Boyhood, Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, American Sniper, Whiplash… The obvious similarity amongst all these films is that they all feature white men at their centre. Selma’s inclusion in the Oscars Best Picture list, then, does stands out.</p>
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<h2>White middle-aged men</h2>
<p>As has been widely noted, the Academy’s membership is <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/academy/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-20120219-story.html#page=1">94% white, 76% men, and has an average age of 63</a>. Membership is for life. In what some are describing as the whitest Oscars in nearly 20 years, the nominees reflect the make up of the voting members. </p>
<p>A response from insiders to the accusation that DuVernay and Oyelowo were snubbed has been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/15/opinion/seymour-selma-oscars-race/">to point to 2014’s nomination for 12 Years a Slave</a> director Steve McQueen and the film’s Best Picture win. But since the early 1990s the Academy’s recognition of women and people of colour has been sporadic at best. Only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director, with only one win for Kathryn Bigelow, and only three black men have been nominated for Best Director – none have won. Each nomination is often hailed as evidence of progress, only for that progress to take two steps back in the following years.</p>
<p>And of course, the nearly all-white and absolutely all-male Best Picture nominees this year not only reflect the demographics of the voters but also those of the industry. In the last few years, a <a href="http://www.bunchecenter.ucla.edu/index.php/2014/02/new-2014-hollywood-diversity-report-making-sense-of-the-disconnect/">growing body of research</a> has shown that women and people of colour are vastly underrepresented both on screen and behind the camera. </p>
<p>And so the fact that Selma has been left out of key awards lists, whatever the reason, matters in this context. The various film awards, though often not a reflection of what is popular, are arbiters of cultural value. They are the expression of industry professionals’ and professional critics’ views on what counts as artistic excellence and success. </p>
<p>But the films and film-makers they celebrate all look so very much the same and so very much like the voters themselves. Selma’s nominations at the Globes and its Oscar nomination are no more a sign of progress and change than the previous nominations for women and black directors were. </p>
<p>Selma may not receive many mainstream industry awards, but its lack of nominations has become a symbol of the homogeneity and lack of diversity in the film industry. And the critical conversation that this has provoked may matter more than an award win for change in the long run.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shelley Cobb receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK.</span></em></p>
The 2015 Golden Globe nominations for Selma (Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director) seemed to signal that the film’s chances were high for being on all the nomination lists for the rest of the awards…
Shelley Cobb, Lecturer in English and Film, University of Southampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37082
2015-02-09T12:37:33Z
2015-02-09T12:37:33Z
An antidote to the ‘true story’ – why Boyhood’s Bafta success is deserved
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71450/original/image-20150209-24679-spcd04.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ellar Coltrane grew up whilst Boyhood was filmed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has beaten off the competition to scoop the Best Picture Award at this year’s Baftas. Filmed in sections over 12 years, Boyhood is in some ways the ultimate cinematic take on reality. It tells the story of a fictional family, but draws on the lived experience of Linklater and the actors. </p>
<p>And it was a risky venture, given that the younger stars might have chosen to opt out during their teenage years. At one point, Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter, asked to be killed off, at another she was keen for filming to restart because <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/07/11/boyhood_movie_explained_how_they_made_it_whose_boyhood_inspired_it_and_more.html">she wanted an iPhone</a>. In the end, both stayed and the film is a triumph. However, this was not a confessional “true story” but followed its own logic over time – which gives the film its artistic integrity.</p>
<p>Reality has inspired most of this year’s top movies. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-theory-of-everything-is-inspiring-despite-a-hackneyed-treatment-of-hawkings-work-35348">The Theory of Everything</a>, the British biopic based on the life of Stephen Hawking, was awarded four Baftas and <a href="https://theconversation.com/imitation-game-will-finally-bring-alan-turing-the-fame-he-so-rightly-deserves-34324">The Imitation Game</a>, the story of Alan Turing and the Enigma code, was nominated in nine categories (but missed out on any wins). Both are tipped for Oscar success. Of the eight films that have been Oscar nominated for best film, five are either biographical or autobiographical. In the best actor category four of the five nominees are playing a real person.</p>
<p>This isn’t new: factual stories are a staple of cinema. One of the earliest films ever made, produced in Australia in 1906, was based on reality – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000574/">The Story of the Kelly Gang</a>. Meanwhile the biopic has been popular in various incarnations since the 1930s. But there does seem to be an increasing trend for “true stories” in Hollywood. Three fact-based movies were nominated in 2013 when CIA thriller Argo won best picture Oscar and six in 2014 when 12 Years a Slave triumphed.</p>
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<h2>Digital narcissism</h2>
<p>So why is this? One theory is that Facebook and Twitter play a part – users see their own lives as a visual narrative, constantly posting picture of their holiday destinations, cute cats, restaurant meals and (inevitably) sharing <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/mar/13/selfie-social-media-love-digital-narcassism">smiling selfies</a>.</p>
<p>If you see yourself as the star of your own movie, it’s gratifying to see “real people” doing the same thing on the big screen. News and global gossip is the life blood of social media. Many studios are hiring consultants specialising in “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/business/media/hollywood-tracks-social-media-chatter-to-target-hit-films.html">social listening</a>” to help publicise their movies, using algorithms to analyse activity on social media.</p>
<p>Equally, true stories breed controversy which can go viral on Facebook and Twitter – a gift to film publicists. The recent complaints about inaccuracies or distortions in films such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/americas-tragic-journey-from-selma-to-american-sniper-37071">American Sniper</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-dangerous-to-draw-parallels-between-selma-and-today-37235">Selma</a> and <a href="http://time.com/3632635/the-true-story-behind-big-eyes/">Big Eyes</a> are fuelling the media frenzy that help Oscar winners pull the crowds. </p>
<p>The dispute between Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, played by Channing Tatum in <a href="https://theconversation.com/haunting-examination-of-class-in-america-foxcatcher-warns-of-the-problems-of-privilege-36095">Foxcatcher</a>, and director Bennett Miller is a case in point. <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/foxcatcher-subject-mark-schultz-lashes-760842">Schultz has strongly criticised Miller</a> after reading reviews which assumed the film showed he had a sexual relationship with John du Pont, a relationship which never happened.</p>
<p>So perhaps such deviations suggest that audiences hungry for fact-based stories are being short changed. What is the value of the “true story” if the narrative parts company with the source reality? New Yorker reviewer Christian Caryl, for example, <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/">thinks</a> that the portrayal of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game stereotypes him as the nerd-as-genius and ignores both his complexity and the collaborative nature of the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park.</p>
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<h2>Ethics of the true story</h2>
<p>Fact-based films have their literary equivalent – creative non-fiction. And it’s a genre that operates within clear rules. As writer <a href="https://www.creativenonfiction.org/what-is-creative-nonfiction">Lee Gutkind puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Creative’ doesn’t mean inventing what didn’t happen, reporting and describing what wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean that the writer has a licence to lie. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it seems that this code of ethics doesn’t apply to films.</p>
<p>If the facts are too constraining, then why not dream up an original idea? It’s not just about escapist fantasy either: invention can reveal more than re-engineered facts. <a href="http://www.walkerart.org/magazine/1999/minnesota-declaration-truth-and-fact-in-docum">Werner Herzog once stated</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylisation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The desire for the actual, lived narrative is understandable – yet there can be profound truth in fiction. Pawel Pawlikowski’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-unique-exploration-of-polands-unspoken-unspeakable-history-ida-is-spectacular-32301">Ida</a> has been nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film and took the best foreign film BAFTA this year. This is the fictional story of a Polish novice nun in the 1960s who discovers that she is Jewish. It has a real historical context, but its reach is much wider. Pawlikowski said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wanted to make the film very specific and very concrete, and at the same time universal and poetic … Audiences in Brazil, Spain or Finland respond to it because it transcends the time and the place where it is set.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A made-up story can carry more weight than re-cooked “reality”. So strong is the air of authenticity and verisimilitude in Linklater’s mesmerising Boyhood that it’s like looking at childhood, adolescence and the passing of time with an emotional magnifying glass. Linklater tells an invented story freed from biographical “fact”, yet he uses the cinematic form to illuminate the changes in family life in a way that would be impossible in any other medium. It’s no biopic – but it tells us something true.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37082/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally O'Reilly 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>
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has beaten off the competition to scoop the Best Picture Award at this year’s Baftas. Filmed in sections over 12 years, Boyhood is in some ways the ultimate cinematic take on…
Sally O'Reilly, Lecturer in Creative Writing, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37235
2015-02-05T17:33:49Z
2015-02-05T17:33:49Z
It’s dangerous to draw parallels between Selma and today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71205/original/image-20150205-28594-13fqems.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An outstanding performance from David Oyelowo.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atsushi Nishijima © 2014 Paramount Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In an early scene in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/">Selma</a>, a sunlit stairwell is the backdrop for several floral-clad girls chatting happily about the hair styles of Coretta Scott King. This gorgeous vision then explodes before our eyes, and with it comes the realisation that this is September 15, 1963, and we’re at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. </p>
<p>This is the moment when four young girls were murdered by a white supremacist terror campaign bent on halting the progress of the civil rights movement. For anyone who feared that the involvement of Oprah Winfrey in this film might mean an overdose of nostalgia, this explosion forecasts something quite different.</p>
<p>Ava DuVernay’s Selma marks the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the legislation that put an end to the racist barriers that stopped black citizens from voting in the south. In turn this paved the way for some measures of black political power. Events in Selma made this happen.</p>
<h2>Then and now</h2>
<p>In the age of president Barack Obama, it’s hardly surprising that DuVernay’s cast were keen to pay their respects to the fact that, as Obama himself so often put it during his 2008 election campaign, they were “standing on the shoulders” of civil rights “giants”. As David Oyelowo, who offers a breathtaking performance as Martin Luther King, <a href="http://www.kushfilms.com/selma-find-out-more-about-the-production/">asks</a>: “How can we serve this incredible community who put their lives on the line for the privileges we now enjoy?” Yet the film does not fall into the trap of sanctifying the movement and its leaders. Neither does it suggest that these privileges are a done deal.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71211/original/image-20150205-28573-g35ped.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">Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atsushi Nishijima © 2014 Paramount Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oyelowo’s King, though often inspiring and inspired, is also often visibly crushed by the burden of leadership. Doubts and indecision reveal a man as much tortured by issues of tactics as he was grounded by his much more well-known philosophy of non-violence.</p>
<p>Selma doesn’t spare us King’s personal flaws either: his infidelities as a husband are subtly elicited by a wife whose intelligence and composure often seem to more than match his own. Indeed, the film weaves a dense set of relationships around the figure of King to highlight the fact that behind the highly visible male leaders of the movement – often unhelpfully deified by civil rights memory – were vast numbers of ordinary heroes, many of whom were women.</p>
<p>King’s relationship with president Lyndon Johnson is one of the most remarkable aspects of this film. Selma decisively debunks the view, <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/civilrights/?_r=0">most notably articulated by Hillary Clinton in 2008</a>, that it took a president to get the civil rights legislation passed. DuVernay’s film shows that, like Lincoln 100 years before him, Johnson was a reluctant agent of change, forced to respond to his times.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71208/original/image-20150205-28605-4wjrha.png?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atsushi Nishijima © 2014 Paramount Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tom Wilkinson’s convincing portrait of the president registers a deep frustration with King’s determination and impatience: as he finally tells Alabama governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) “just let the niggers vote”. This scene is immediately followed by his televised speech to Congress which announced the Voting Rights Act: “There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is only an American problem … We shall overcome.”</p>
<h2>Selma or Ferguson?</h2>
<p>All this echoes with the profoundly contradictory position Obama finds himself in 50 years later. Obama’s tendency to conflate his signature “Yes We Can” with the “We Shall Overcome” of the 1960s civil rights movement in the early days of his election campaign encouraged a comparison to King; but his subsequent entry into the White House places him closer to the legacy of Johnson. Obama also presides over unpopular wars abroad while facing his own version of civil unrest at home. <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/12/24/selma_a_riveting_timely_civil_rights_drama_brings_martin_luther_kings_struggle_back_to_life/">Many have noted</a> that this film, appearing in the wake of recent events in Ferguson, is extraordinarily timely. The song “Glory”, which accompanies the closing credits of Selma, makes these parallels between Selma and Ferguson explicit.</p>
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<p>This gesture to the present hardly rings false: the film’s depiction of police on horseback violently dispersing demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge recalls images of state-sponsored terrorism from slavery to the present. And yet there is a danger in drawing this comparison. Ferguson is not Selma, and the latter should not be established as the model for the former.</p>
<p>Though this is not the explicit message of the film, Winfrey herself has not been able to resist the temptation to suggest as much. While promoting Selma, she expressed a mixture of admiration and frustration with the Ferguson protests:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What I’m looking for is some kind of leadership to come out of this to say, ‘This is what we want. This is what has to change, and these are the steps that we need to take to make these changes, and this is what we’re willing to do to get it’.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71206/original/image-20150205-28605-1cz327c.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">Demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atsushi Nishijima © 2014 Paramount Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This condescending remark reveals the problem with drawing parallels between then and now. Figures like Oprah Winfrey and Jesse Jackson who have tried to reimagine Ferguson in the shape of older civil rights struggles overlook the fact that the young grassroots activists in Ferguson and across the United States are responding to a fundamentally different political situation.</p>
<p>The vicious, outspoken racism dramatised in Selma is largely absent from a society that has elected a black president and imagines itself to be “colour blind”. The systemic racism that stalks the contemporary US speaks through racialised inequalities and a federal government that is retreating from the business of state welfare as it ramps up its penal functions. Deep and widespread poverty and disinvestment that particularly afflicts black communities will not be solved by legislation like the Voting Rights Act. These problems require a new kind of politics.</p>
<p>Selma is deeply compelling but not entirely satisfying: this, one feels, is one of many patches in a much longer story yet to be told. The figure of Martin Luther King has hardly exhausted his cinematic possibilities. But the film has sent out a powerful message from the past: not a nostalgic yearning for particular models of civil rights leadership, but a call to reject the stranglehold the US government has on King’s legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Hartnell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In an early scene in Selma, a sunlit stairwell is the backdrop for several floral-clad girls chatting happily about the hair styles of Coretta Scott King. This gorgeous vision then explodes before our…
Anna Hartnell, Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, Birkbeck, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36163
2015-02-04T12:59:15Z
2015-02-04T12:59:15Z
Lost in the haze – could Inherent Vice be too loyal to Pynchon’s spaced-out novel?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71066/original/image-20150204-28578-4uikdx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The hippies last supper.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The staggering amount of information in the world can be overwhelming. This is partly why genres such as detective fiction are so popular – they resonate with the human desire to control and order the unknown. But this impulse has pitfalls, and the cinematic adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s detective novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/inherent-vice-how-to-adapt-a-difficult-book-for-the-screen-36096">Inherent Vice</a> reveals these with aplomb.</p>
<p>Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie is the first adaptation of a Pynchon novel by a major film studio. Set in Southern California during the Manson Family trial in 1970, the film follows the escapades of private detective Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix). Doc is a pot-smoking hippie who paradoxically combines the carefree attitude of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski with the typical anxiousness of Pynchon’s earlier protagonists (think of <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/v-at-l-pynchons-first-novel-turns-fifty">V.</a>’s Herbert Stencil, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-lot49.html">The Crying of Lot 49</a>’s Oedipa Maas, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-rainbow.html">Gravity’s Rainbow</a>’s Tyrone Slothrop). </p>
<p>Doc is employed by his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), to uncover a conspiracy targeting her billionaire boyfriend, Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). However, getting from point A to point B proves to be impossible without encountering a mind-boggling amount of information and sub-plots along the way.</p>
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<p>Anderson’s adaption is impressively loyal to its source material. The film does a superb job of capturing Pynchon’s paranoid tone throughout its convoluted and disjointed narrative. Anderson’s decision to use the character Sortilège (Joanna Newsom) as a narrator also allows for Pynchon’s unique voice to further enhance the film’s unconventional tone.</p>
<p>The seemingly endless number of characters also reinforces the complex, interconnected network of a Pynchon novel. Notable cameos include the reclusive author himself as well as retired adult film actress Michelle “Belladonna” Sinclair as Clancy Charlock. Pynchon fans may recognise Sinclair’s role as paying homage to one of Pynchon’s most controversial female characters: the masochist and retired adult film actress Margherita Erdmann from Gravity’s Rainbow. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.vice.com/read/inherent-vice-was-the-thomas-pynchon-book-i-could-make-into-a-movie">Anderson claims</a> that these devices force the viewer to get “completely tangled up in the many loose ends and overwhelming information”. But although it is a faithful adaptation, with many nods to its predecessor, such an approach risks alienating mainstream audiences who may not be as open to embracing its eccentric incoherence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71069/original/image-20150204-28618-1pasjx2.png?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">Paranoid?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Order and paranoia</h2>
<p>So what’s all this frantic confusion and paranoia even trying to accomplish? Primarily, it is aimed at systems of control. Pynchon’s protagonists are culturally, politically, and spiritually disenfranchised within these systems. And their attempts to subvert them often only enhance their own powerlessness. </p>
<p>Control is imposed by many forms of bureaucratic power within Inherent Vice. These include gentrifying real estate developers, the Los Angeles Police Department led by Doc’s long-time nemesis Bigfoot Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), the mysterious Golden Fang syndicate, and Nixonian right-wing groups such as Vigilant California. </p>
<p>Their opposition are those on the fringe of such systems, a variety of Manhattan Beach-type denizens: irreverent surfer bums, strung-out jazz musicians, starry-eyed prostitutes and, of course, hippies. </p>
<p>But Pynchon was wary of the counterculture’s “resistance to power”. Entering the 1970s, the vestiges of the once formidable countercultural movement were now being freely exploited by the system in the form of global capitalism and straight-laced conservatism. </p>
<p>Doc’s role as a perpetually stoned detective offers a possible solution for combating the impulse to control and order. He is incapable of separating legitimate connections from his own “paranoid hippie monologue”. This helps prevent him from fully adopting or resisting a cohesive meaning at any single moment. So in a way, the confusion that audiences will inevitably encounter mimics Doc’s perpetual state of stoned incoherence. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71068/original/image-20150204-28598-1zoo40.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The haze.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Appraising the haze</h2>
<p>Towards the end of the film Sortilège explains the meaning of the titular phrase “inherent vice”. It is a term in an “insurance policy [that] is anything that you can’t avoid. Eggs break, chocolate melts, glass shatters”.</p>
<p>The film suggests that inherent vice refers to the inevitable defects within human relationships. But an inherent vice is also present in detective fiction’s quest for meaning and narrative stability. </p>
<p>As the film closes with Doc driving off into the fog, he ponders the merit of actively seeking out answers or meaning. The novel suggests that he could also wait “for the fog to burn away, and for something else this time, somehow, to be there instead”. </p>
<p>Anderson leaves the audience in a similar dilemma. Placed within the heady brain fog of a marijuana-like stupor, viewers must make a decision. They can either choose to impose their own meaning on Inherent Vice or, like the dying counterculture, embrace the film’s cerebral haze and go along for its “far-out” ride.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36163/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Tucker 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 staggering amount of information in the world can be overwhelming. This is partly why genres such as detective fiction are so popular – they resonate with the human desire to control and order the…
William Tucker, PhD student in English Literature, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37071
2015-02-03T06:04:34Z
2015-02-03T06:04:34Z
America’s tragic journey from Selma to American Sniper
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70831/original/image-20150202-13045-10ssx2x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">To die for?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two films about recent American history feature in the Oscars run up this year. There’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-movie-selma-made-mlk-human-again-35990">Selma</a>, a heroic retelling of the civil rights movement. And then <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/">American Sniper</a>, about US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, one of the most lethal snipers in American history. </p>
<p>American Sniper has <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2935504/American-Sniper-continues-box-office-reign-record-breaking-31-9-takings-Super-Bowl-weekend.html">broken multiple box office records</a> and is the most lucrative war movie ever – a film that some consider to be offensive conservative propaganda for an unnecessary and costly war. </p>
<p>The two movies represent the supposed best and worst of America. The hard-won triumph of the nation’s progress towards a free liberal-democratic society versus the mindless jingoism of its most dangerous imperialism.</p>
<p>Pretty different topics, but looking closer, these films share a deeper bond: the willingness of individuals to sacrifice their life for a higher cause. Remarkable in a society and age that appears obsessed with self-interest and individualism, these are films that extol the value of joining a collective movement for achieving social change.</p>
<p>This common theme masks a tragic difference. Comparing the experiences of civil rights protesters and Iraqi veterans, a sadder historical truth emerges from the screen. It is striking how much contemporary politics has dangerously distorted the moral impulse to do good for quite immoral ends.</p>
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<h2>A moral difference</h2>
<p>Selma has been <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/selma/">lauded for its realistic and moving portrayal</a> of a key event in the struggle to ensure black voting. Critics have praised it for showing with chilling force <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/arts/in-selma-king-is-just-one-of-the-heroes.html?_r=0">the violence and fraught politics</a> that those in the movement had to endure and overcome to attain so a monumental victory.</p>
<p>The only criticism in fact has come from those who contend that then president, Lyndon B Johnson, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/arts/in-selma-king-is-just-one-of-the-heroes.html?_r=0">is unfairly portrayed</a> for his role in bringing about this historic moment. These allegations have <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/selma-fair-l-b-j">largely been debunked</a> as at best over-reaction and <a href="http://grantland.com/features/selma-oscars-academy-awards-historical-accuracy-controversy/">at worst a reactionary smear</a> with quite racist overtones. The justice of this civil rights cause is, unsurprisingly, uncontroversial – the debate is largely over who should be celebrated for its achievement.</p>
<p>The critiques of American Sniper run much deeper. Firstly, there’s the widespread <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/real-american-snipers-5-alleged-lies.html">questioning of its historical accuracy</a>. This questioning extends to the protagonist – the late Chris Kyle – as the book in which the film is based on seems to contain a number of unverifiable stories, one of which recently resulted <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/29/jury-awards-ventura-1-8-in-defamation-case-against-deceased-american-sniper-chris-kyles-estate/">in a million dollar settlement</a> against his estate for libel.</p>
<p>The film has also been decried for celebrating an Iraqi war that in the view of many was ill-advised and possibly criminal. Its heroic depiction of the Navy Seal sniper is disparaged for being a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/01/26/american_snipers_biggest_lie_clint_eastwood_has_a_delusional_fox_news_problem/">repeat of the misplaced “us-versus-them”</a> morality that initially popularly legitimised this invasion. The film has inspired a <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/american-sniper-causes-drastic-increase-in-hate-speech-says-american-arab-anti-discrimination-committee/">sharp rise in hate speech</a> against Muslims. <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121?page=2">One prominent critic</a> charged:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=224&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=224&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=224&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70833/original/image-20150202-13708-n2ea7z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bradley Cooper in American Sniper.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>To die for?</h2>
<p>But these simplistic dismissals of American Sniper miss its underlying complexity. It is a subtle and at times profound film about the ways idealism can be simultaneously noble and pathological. For this reason, any “black or white” analysis of its ethics, politics or cinematic quality would be unjust.</p>
<p>Like Selma, it is much more than a personalised retelling of recent US history. Both films are fictionalised depictions of the difficult decisions and sacrifices that come with dedicating your life to a moral cause.</p>
<p>Selma reveals civil right luminaries as not just heroes but real people, confronting hard choices about how to balance their obligations to those they love and the higher ideals they have sworn themselves to serve. American Sniper, similarly, shows in touching and often sad detail the toll that going to Iraq, killing “terrorists” and protecting one’s country can have on a person’s family and mental health.</p>
<p>Even more telling, the protagonists of both movies have their coming murders hanging over them. Putting aside the contrasting the moralities of these crusades, these films ask audiences to personally consider how much they would be willing to give up to create a better world.</p>
<h2>A (dangerously) inspiring message</h2>
<p>In their own ways and for their own times, both films celebrate the ability of individuals to be a potential force for social good. They are, in this respect, antidotes to the pervasive political and social cynicism that seemingly marks this era.</p>
<p>In the case of Martin Luther King this needs no explanation. He and his fellow organisers led a decade-long movement for racial equality that still inspires and remains resonant up to the present. In American Sniper, Kyle joins the military after watching the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa. These events are shown as giving his life genuine moral purpose and direction. <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/is-american-sniper-historically-accurate-how-the-film-strays-from-reality-to-patriotic-mythmaking/">While its depiction may have been fictionalised</a>, a deeper truth shines through. The chance to fight terrorism was for Kyle a chance to fill the emptiness of his existence with something nobler.</p>
<figure>
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<p>It is in this common sense of inspiration that the true tragedy of American Sniper, and with it our own times, becomes so clear. Both Selma and American Sniper touch on the desire for individuals to be part of “something greater than ourselves”. But the worth of the moral causes they are committed to are far from comparable.</p>
<p>Ironically, in an age where individualism reigns supreme, many individuals see themselves as powerless to transform their lives and society. Underpinning the popularity of self-help books and “consumer ethics” is a profound sense of personal disempowerment.</p>
<p>But the characters in Selma and American Sniper show that personal empowerment may still be possible and that one person in a movement with many can affect the course of history. What makes the former so beautiful and the latter so ultimately sad is how the good intentions of both lead in such profoundly opposite directions.</p>
<p>Society needs to be very aware and careful of which moral causes we promote and to what ends, because noble desires are manipulated for geopolitical games involving the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. And so those who criticise American Sniper should also recognise that its proponents are not simply defending the War on Terror or American righteousness. On some level they are clinging to the spirit of Selma, refusing to surrender to cynicism – instead holding to the belief that within all of us lives the possibility to contribute to the achievement of justice.</p>
<p>The true offence of American Sniper is that it reflects, whether knowingly or not, how the moral calling for racial justice in the 20th century has morphed into the empty but fatal gesture of the War on Terror in the 21st century – it has been a tragic road from Selma to American Sniper.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37071/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bloom 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>
Two films about recent American history feature in the Oscars run up this year. There’s Selma, a heroic retelling of the civil rights movement. And then American Sniper, about US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle…
Peter Bloom, Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Department of People and Organisation, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36740
2015-02-02T11:15:11Z
2015-02-02T11:15:11Z
Don’t be fooled by all the ‘indie’ nominations – Oscars are still dominated by the big players
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70494/original/image-20150129-22302-cxat3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stronger than ever.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">bannosuke/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In January 2004, the third instalment of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/?ref_=fn_al_tt_5">The Lord of the Rings</a> received 11 Academy Award nominations. From the outset, it was the clear favourite in the Oscars race. Behind it, there was an assortment of studio films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327056/">Mystic River</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329575/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Seabiscuit</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Master and Commander</a> (all of which were nominated for the coveted Best Picture Award alongside The Return of the King). </p>
<p>There were also many smaller, “indie” films. Made with relatively small budgets by independent companies and studio specialty divisions, films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311648/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Pieces of April</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298845/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">In America</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315733/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">21 Grams</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340855/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Monster</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0328538/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Thirteen</a> represented a crop of dramatic features that dealt with difficult, unconventional and often controversial material that was not deemed suitable for the “think big” Hollywood studios.</p>
<p>These films received numerous nominations, though not in the Best Picture category. There was only one “indie” film, Sofia Coppola’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Lost in Translation</a>, that received a Best Picture nomination. On the night of the awards, The Lord of the Rings easily beat all its opponents. It won an Oscar in every single category it was nominated, demonstrating its complete dominance that year. </p>
<h2>Year of the Hobbit?</h2>
<p>This year’s Oscar nominations could have told a similar story. This year we’ve had the third and final instalment of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2310332/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies</a>, another Middle Earth-based, special effects-laden, blockbuster trilogy made by The Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson. And there has also been a mixture of studio pictures such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2267998/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Gone Girl</a> (Fox), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1872194/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Judge</a> (Warner Bros.), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180411/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Into the Woods</a> (Disney) and of several “small” movies supported by the studios’ speciality film divisions or independent film distributors, including <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065073/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Boyhood</a> (IFC Films), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2562232/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Birdman</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2278388/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Grand Budapest Hotel</a> (Fox Searchlight), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Imitation Game</a> (The Weinstein Company), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2980516/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Theory of Everything</a> (Focus Features) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582802/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Whiplash</a> (Sony Pictures Classics).</p>
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</figure>
<p>But the outcome was somewhat different this year. The last instalment of The Hobbit was snubbed at the Best Picture category and was also left out of every other category except for a technical one (Sound Editing). Instead, it was the “indie” films, alongside two relatively low-budget, and therefore unconventional, studio pictures that were nominated in the Best Picture category. These are <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Selma</a> (Paramount), a story about Martin Luther King, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/">American Sniper</a> (Warner Bros.), a film that examines America’s war in Iraq and its aftermath through the story of a Navy SEAL, directed by veteran filmmaker Clint Eastwood.</p>
<p>A lot of people with an interest in the American film industry have interpreted this result as a big victory for the “independents”. <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/01/15/whiplash-the-3-million-indie-film-thats-now-an-oscar-nominated-best-picture/">The Wall Street Journal</a> gets excited about Whiplash, “The $3 million indie film that’s now an Oscar-nominated Best Picture”. <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_27325375/oscars-2015-birdman-grand-budapest-hotel-american-sniper">Mercury News</a> called it a “great year for indie films”. The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/entertainment-arts-30736046">BBC reports</a> Theory of Everything producer calling the list “very interesting, very varied, very different and quite indie”. The Detroit News didn’t beat around the bush, saying: “Indie films dominate nominations at Academy Awards.”</p>
<p>So is this an indication that even the film industry itself (the members of which determine the Academy Awards nominations through their vote) is getting tired of the huge influx of comic book-based blockbuster and franchise films that have been dominating the theatrical box office over the past 25 years or so?</p>
<h2>Times are not a changin’</h2>
<p>Sadly, I doubt this. The recent history of the Oscars has seen numerous examples of “indie” years. In 1986 <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089424/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Kiss of the Spider Woman</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090203/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Trip to Bountiful</a> were nominated for many awards and won two. In 1990 <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098724/">Sex, Lies, and Videotape</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097937/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">My Left Foot</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097499/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Henry V</a> received numerous nominations and some high profile awards. And in 1997, “independent” films received a record 44 Academy Award nominations, four of which were nominated for the coveted Best Picture (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116209/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The English Patient</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116282/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Fargo</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117589/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Secrets and Lies</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117631/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Shine</a>). </p>
<p>Such declarations of independence have lent themselves to many triumphant headlines. But the reality is that Hollywood has always managed to assert itself. From the 1990s onwards, an increasing number of those small “independent” films started to be financed, produced and distributed by companies that belong to the same entertainment conglomerates as the major studios. They tightly control cinema on a global scale. And as the years passed these companies made increasingly large budgets and marketing resources available even for “small” films.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>From the list of this year’s nominated films, only The Imitation Game can lay some legitimate claim to the label “independent”. It’s distributed by The Weinstein Company, a production-distribution outfit with no corporate relationship to the studios and their entertainment conglomerate parent companies. The rest of the nominated “small” films represent companies that are subsidiaries of these entertainment conglomerates. Fox Searchlight is part of News Corporation, Focus Features part of Comcast, Sony Pictures Classics part of Sony. Even IFC Films – which stands for Independent Film Channel Films – is part of AMC Networks, a large media conglomerate with stakes in a number of film and television ventures. </p>
<p>In this respect, this year’s Oscars don’t suggest a shift in the Academy’s tastes. Instead, they demonstrate that the Hollywood majors are ever trying to copy and assimilate the independent film sector through an increasingly extensive use of their vast resources.</p>
<p>We seem to have a deep desire for the underdogs to win, to conquer Hollywood. But despite appearances, the underdogs are not in fact underdogs at all, but very much part of Hollywood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36740/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yannis Tzioumakis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In January 2004, the third instalment of The Lord of the Rings received 11 Academy Award nominations. From the outset, it was the clear favourite in the Oscars race. Behind it, there was an assortment…
Yannis Tzioumakis, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36774
2015-01-29T04:07:28Z
2015-01-29T04:07:28Z
Is it a Birdman? Is it a play? It’s super meta-textuality!
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70251/original/image-20150128-22317-zurmip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Recognition is a super-human process that requires sacrifice .... and a bit of flying. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atsushi Nishijima/Twentieth Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What do Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Simpsons, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2562232/">Birdman</a> have in common?</p>
<p>All three utilise the concept of meta-theatre. The concept of meta-theatre, or meta-text, in its crudest definition, denotes an additional layer of meaning that is added onto a text. </p>
<p>In the context of the stage, a performance-within-a-play is an example of a meta-text. William Shakespeare utilises meta-theatre in several of his plays, including The Tempest, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet. </p>
<p>Meta-theatre can also be used as a form of parody or satire. In The Simpsons, the parody of classic Tom and Jerry cartoons, the cartoon-within-a-cartoon (The Itchy and Scratchy Show) is used to parallel the plots of certain episodes. </p>
<p>Birdman, as with Hamlet and The Simpsons, is a gripping dark comedy that is also centred on the concept of meta-theatre. In <a href="http://themoviebox.net/5674">an interview</a> regarding his role in Birdman, Michael Keaton notes that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The film has so many levels. Then the levels have levels. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Levels of Birdman</h2>
<p>The film’s most basic “level” is its core plot of a washed-out action star trying to make a comeback via the stage. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uJfLoE6hanc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Birdman (2014).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Birdman is a bold statement about contemporary stage, screen and celebrity culture, ambitiously crafted in the semblance of a single take. At the heart of Iñárritu’s narrative is Keaton’s character Riggan’s efforts to direct and star in a play-within-a-movie, an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11438.What_We_Talk_About_When_We_Talk_About_Love">What We Talk About When We Talk About Love</a>. </p>
<p>But the layers of meta-textuality in Iñárritu’s film serve as a red herring, a distraction from the text’s astonishingly simple yet alluring narrative of an individual’s struggle for recognition. </p>
<p>The first notable layer of meta-textuality is the obvious parallel between Michael Keaton’s role as Bruce Wayne/ Batman in Tim Burton’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096895/">Batman</a> franchise, and his role as Riggan Thomson/ Birdman. It is thus tempting to read the film as a meta-commentary on Michael Keaton as a former A-list Hollywood star. </p>
<p>At the height of the Tim Burton Batman film franchise in the 90s, it was Keaton who walked away. He <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-keaton-takes-wing-in-birdman/3/">reportedly</a> turned down a role in Batman Forever because he felt it was “awful”, even though he was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112462/trivia">rumoured</a> to have been offered US$15 million to play the role. </p>
<p>In Birdman, Keaton’s character refused to star in a planned third sequel to the fictional Birdman franchise. The parallels between Keaton/ Riggan and Batman/ Birdman are also tapped into by Fox Searchlight as part of a marketing strategy.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Marketing for Birdman.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Beyond Keaton?</h2>
<p>But despite this reel/ real life parallel, Keaton’s co-star Edward Norton <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITRCJExnr3Q#t=148">points out</a> the comparison between Birdman and Batman is superficial:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It [the film] is really of a person coming unhinged and coming to grips with the fact that everything that’s gone wrong in his life is may in fact have to do with his own ego and not what other people have done to him and that’s, that’s a very much more nuanced, you know, character study than I think just this kind of glib comparison people are making to the role.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Birdman, audiences are prompted to look at Keaton alongside the character of Riggan, but Norton tells us to look beyond this. Ironically, a scene from the film reads as a reference of sorts to Norton’s iconic role in David Fincher’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/">Fight Club</a> (1999), a film that also interrogates themes of identity in crisis.</p>
<p>Whether this reference is deliberate or not is up to the audience to decide. </p>
<p>Keaton, like Norton, is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-birdman-generates-rave-reviews-oscar-buzz-for-keaton-2014-10?IR=T">quick to downplay</a> trite parallels between real life and screen character. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In terms of the parallels, I’ve never related less to a character than Riggan but I did understand him on a lot of levels because he was so visceral and true and heartbreakingly human.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Keaton’s remarks here point to the core of the film. </p>
<p>And yes, what stands out in Iñárritu’s characterisation of Riggan is his humanity. He is an anti-hero and an everyman who elicits our sympathy because his actions strike us as real. He is a father, a colleague, a co-investor, an ex-husband, an actor, a lover, a neurotic, and an alcoholic. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70252/original/image-20150128-22299-towvkh.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>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael Keaton and Alejandro G. Iñárritu on set.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Atsushi Nishijima/Twentieth Century Fox</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Iñárritu’s meta-theatre reveals the complex duality of Riggan’s relationship with his collaborators. His assistant is his daughter. His emotional attorney is his old friend. His rival doubles up as his leading star. These relationships create an emotional canvas on which Riggan is painted as more human than superhuman. </p>
<h2>Carver’s contribution</h2>
<p>Through the film’s play-within-a-movie, Riggan’s frustrations and frailties are laid bare for the audience. A host of meta-textual layers connect Riggan and the character he plays in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. </p>
<p>Carver’s short story features four friends sharing stories with each other, one of which revolves around a failed suicide. This is referenced via Riggan’s multiple suicide attempts.</p>
<p>And, of course, Iñárritu’s film is a symbolic meta-textual reference to the superhero narrative itself. </p>
<p>As a result of one of his suicide attempts, Riggan is forced to don a mask, a situation that is foreshadowed by shots of Phantom of the Opera signs on Broadway. </p>
<p>This leads to the culmination of a narrative of refusal, redemption and transcendence, one that is epitomised by the last shot of the film. Riggan’s daughter looks out of the hospital window, stares at the ground – and then looks up at the skies. For a moment, it seems that Riggan, at least to his daughter, has become Birdman. </p>
<p>And here, under all the layers, lies the heart of Iñárritu’s story: that everyone struggles for recognition, a super-human process that is hard and that requires sacrifice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Yeo 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>
What do Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Simpsons, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film Birdman have in common? All three utilise the concept of meta-theatre. The concept of meta-theatre, or meta-text, in its crudest…
Colin Yeo, PHD Candidate, English and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36757
2015-01-28T19:23:39Z
2015-01-28T19:23:39Z
Still Alice, and the advocacy for Alzheimer’s in fiction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70247/original/image-20150128-22322-fst1dy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julianne Moore's star turn in Still Alice provides a lesson in understanding neurodegenerative diseases.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Icon Film</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Still Alice – starring Julianne Moore – tells the story of Alice Howland, a linguistics professor diagnosed with a form of early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Moore has already netted a Golden Globe and is clear favourite for a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar next month. </p>
<p>The novel on which the film is based is one of a clutch of debuts in recent years to explore forms of neurodegenerative disease. So what role does fiction play in our understanding, and acceptance, of dementia?</p>
<p>Still Alice is a close adaptation of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2153405.Still_Alice?from_search=true">Lisa Genova’s debut novel</a>. A Harvard trained neuroscientist, Genova initially self-published Still Alice in 2007 after <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28selfpub.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=business">failing to pique the interest</a> of agents and publishers. But within two years word-of-mouth sales led to republication and New York Times bestseller status. </p>
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<p>The film has received wide praise, although <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/still-alice-alzheimers-julianne-moore">some critics have grumbled</a> over the heavy-handed tragic irony. An early scene features Alice forgetting the word “lexicon” during a lecture, an implication that arguably “perpetuates the notion that dementia is more tragic when it affects the intellectual”. </p>
<p>Others suggest the film may be overly “<a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150123-still-alice-truly-oscar-worthy">pristine</a>” and “<a href="http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2015/01/22/still-alices-julianne-moore-is-exceptional-as-woman-with-alzheimers-review.html">shies away from taking risks</a>”, while also not being plausibly representative of the typical experience of dementia in choosing to focus on an “<a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/01/14/still_alice_julianne_moores_brilliant_if_bogus_oscar_vehicle/">almost perfect … privileged family</a>”. </p>
<p>However the novel and film steer clear of subtlety, and for good reasons. The narrative is infused with an earnest urgency in looking to advocate for those living with dementia – and the Alzheimer’s Association is <a href="https://mybrain.alz.org/still-alice.asp">most certainly on board</a>. </p>
<p>Typical popular accounts of neurodegenerative disease focus overwhelmingly on the latter stages, along with the burdens placed on families and carers. </p>
<p>Of course these are incredibly important issues that rightly deserve wide coverage and public discussion; to suggest otherwise would be abhorrent. But advocates have <a href="http://www.alz.org/i-have-alz/overcoming-stigma.asp">noted</a> that this popular focus – well-intentioned though it may be – may inadvertently colour our understandings and subsequent interactions with those in early to mid stages of disease progression. </p>
<p>This can tragically and needlessly impose stigmas that hasten alienation and loss of social engagement. </p>
<p>Genova has stated in a post-script to a later edition of the book that her overarching purpose was to provide an unsentimental presentation of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease but also to complement this with an ideal diagnosis and support process. Genova aimed to demonstrate by way of fiction that there is much more we can do as a collective to help those living with dementia.</p>
<p>The film, especially, stresses that societal attitude to those living with dementia needs adjustment. Alice states soon after her symptoms become pronounced: “I wish I had cancer … then I wouldn’t feel so ashamed.” Later the film’s call-to-arms is a speech given by Alice to a gathering of the Alzheimer’s Association where she rails against perceptions of being “incapable, ridiculous, comic”.</p>
<p>The call for more dementia-friendly communities has been a significant focus of recent advocacy campaigns. Though research into clinical interventions continues, breakthroughs remain elusive while rates of prevalence are<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19595937"> set to grow</a> rapidly across the globe.</p>
<p>Advocacy groups have sought to make communities more amenable to those living with dementia, in part through awareness campaigns like this powerful one from Alzheimer’s Australia:</p>
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<p>If Still Alice is a quite direct take on living with dementia, Fiona McFarlane’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17332361-the-night-guest">The Night Guest</a> (2013) and Emma Healey’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18635113-elizabeth-is-missing?from_search=true">Elizabeth is Missing</a> (2014) are two stunning examples of richly rendered explorations of dementia.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70248/original/image-20150128-22322-8gpavo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&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="attribution"><span class="source">Penguin Books Australia</span></span>
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<p>Promotional buzz around those two novels has played up their twists on genre: Elizabeth is Missing as mystery and The Night Guest as psychological thriller. Understandably this may raise concerns regarding the potential for exploiting serious conditions to enliven matters of less import. </p>
<p>Fiction-as-advocacy can be counterproductive if sensitive and complex issues are not addressed with due care but are instead used as convenient plot devices.</p>
<p>Fortunately this is not the case in either novel as the broad genre forms are deployed cautiously in the service of thoughtfully illuminating the subjectivity of dementia. Like Still Alice, these two novels adopt a point of view rooted almost exclusively to the person living with dementia, a perspective relatively rare in such accounts, fictional or otherwise.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Viking</span></span>
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<p>Both books have a sometimes light humour, albeit carefully directed. This humour is often found where mutual good intentions go comically awry, such as when Healey’s protagonist Maud attempts to place a classifieds advertisement in order to help find her “missing” friend Elizabeth, whom the receptionist initially assumes is a cat. </p>
<p>This comic relief comes through in witnessing both characters striving to do the right thing and exhibiting patience and kindness despite mutual confusion. </p>
<p>Matthew Thomas’ <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17830123-we-are-not-ourselves?from_search=true">We Are Not Ourselves</a> (2014) adopts a more conventional route in (mostly) taking the perspective of the primary caregiver (Eileen) rather than the character living with dementia (Ed). It is by far the most harrowing of the novels mentioned here, following the progression of Ed’s disease in its entirety. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon & Schuster</span></span>
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<p>Thomas’ approach is one of unsparing sincerity, and in contrast to Still Alice glosses over nothing. Several scenes are devastating, particularly those that explore the intimate aspects of married life while living with dementia. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, like the aforementioned works, Thomas wants to emphasise the affective capacities that are retained. Ed’s scenes with his son are life-affirming in their urgency to communicate deep-feeling. </p>
<p>All these debuts are remarkably different, all are critically acclaimed. For those looking for a shorter but no less compelling entry into fiction that explores dementia one place to start is with <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/21/the-bear-came-over-the-mountain-2">Alice Munro’s short story</a> The Bear Came Over the Mountain. </p>
<p>While we hope for clinical breakthroughs, thoughtful and considered fiction can serve as one (of many) forms of advocacy to help those living with dementia.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Still Alice is released in Australian cinemas today.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Wade 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>
Still Alice – starring Julianne Moore – tells the story of Alice Howland, a linguistics professor diagnosed with a form of early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Moore has already netted a Golden Globe and is…
Matthew Wade, PhD Student in Sociology, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36421
2015-01-28T19:23:32Z
2015-01-28T19:23:32Z
Still Alice: a rare look at how dementia steals memories from millions
<p>For many of us, memories are our most precious possessions; they makes us the people we are. Consider how you would feel then if your memories were stripped from you, as they are from people diagnosed with dementia. This is exactly what happens to the central character of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/">Still Alice</a>, a film opening today nationally.</p>
<p>Directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer, the film is based on the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2153405.Still_Alice">eponymous novel by Lisa Genova</a>. Julianne Moore has been tipped to win the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Alice Howland, a distinguished linguistics professor at Columbia University.</p>
<p>Still Alice captures the emotional upheaval that results from a diagnosis of dementia and provides a compelling insight into the world of people living with the condition. </p>
<h2>The shock of diagnosis</h2>
<p>When the film opens, Alice Howland appears to have it all. At 50 years of age, she is the picture of elegance and good health, exercising frequently, cooking elaborate meals and maintaining a world-class academic career as well as a happy family life.</p>
<p>But it quickly becomes clear that Alice’s memory is failing. Fleeting moments of disorientation and confusion begin to punctuate her life. Wondering if she has a brain tumour, Alice consults a neurologist only to find she is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>Current estimates suggest approximately 7.7 million new cases of dementia are diagnosed worldwide each year. The disease typically evokes images of the frail elderly, but younger-onset dementia, which is what affects Alice, strikes people under the age of 65. </p>
<p>Estimates suggest younger-onset dementia affects <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2947856/">approximately 54 in every 100,000 people</a> aged between 30 and 65 across the population. There are now even calls for care facilities to adapt so they can cater for these often physically healthy people. </p>
<p>The diagnosis of dementia affects Alice and her family in profound and different ways. The implications of Alice’s condition dawn on her husband as he begins to comprehend the care she will need. Her children move from shock to sadness and, ultimately, fear as they grapple with the decision to undergo genetic testing for Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
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<p>A fifth of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1236/">younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease</a> is familial, meaning there is a genetic cause for the condition. Currently, we have genetic tests for three causative genes – presenilin 1 and 2 and amyloid precursor protein (APP). If someone has one of these genetic mutations, they will usually show clinical signs of dementia before the age of 65 years, and have a 50% risk of passing the gene on to their children. </p>
<h2>A rare glimpse</h2>
<p>Alzheimer’s disease was first described and named in the early 1900s; its causative proteins (amyloid and tau) were described in the 1980s. There’s no cure for the disease, but there are a few treatments that slow disease progression. And diagnosis is often met with stigma and embarrassment. </p>
<p>The film provides a glimpse of the daily struggles of people living with younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In a poignant scene, Alice says she wishes she had been diagnosed with cancer, as there would be less stigma and more support for her and her family. </p>
<p>Until recently, most research (and funding) was focused on medical conditions, such as cancer, which cause many deaths. But with the growing awareness of our ageing population, research money is now targeting Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.</p>
<p>The idea of suicide is also raised as Alice plans to end her life when she can no longer answer basic questions about herself. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12145457">Research shows</a> that suicide attempts are not uncommon among people with Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>Alice remains eloquent and insightful throughout her struggles, most notably when she delivers a powerful speech at the Alzheimer’s Association carers’ meeting. The scene is particularly moving as the thoughts, feelings and wishes of individuals living with dementia are rarely articulated in this manner. It is a powerful reminder that people with dementia still retain hopes, dreams and wishes for the future. </p>
<p>Still Alice is a poignant window on the world of the millions of people living with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s an important reminder for society as a whole of our responsibility to plan for and manage this rapidly growing condition.</p>
<p>For those of us working in the field of dementia research, the film is a sobering reminder of why we entered this speciality area, and serves as powerful motivation in our quest for an eventual cure.</p>
<p><em>Still Alice opens in Australian cinemas nationally on January 29.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Muireann Irish receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is a previous grant recipient from Alzheimer's Australia. She is an Associate Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebekah Ahmed receives funding from the Royal Australian College of Physicians and MND Research Australia.</span></em></p>
For many of us, memories are our most precious possessions; they makes us the people we are. Consider how you would feel then if your memories were stripped from you, as they are from people diagnosed…
Muireann Irish, Senior Research Officer, Neuroscience Research Australia
Rebekah Ahmed, Consultant neurologist & PhD student, Neuroscience Research Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36156
2015-01-21T06:13:57Z
2015-01-21T06:13:57Z
Whiplash is a horror film – so jazz critics should stop worrying
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69523/original/image-20150120-24445-1r9u0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Blood, sweat and tears.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sony Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid Golden Globe recognition and Oscar buzz, Damien Chazelle’s film about a young jazz student and his abusive teacher is pulling in viewers who would normally run screaming from the words “drum solo”. The exhilaration of the last ten minutes, a performance of Duke Ellington’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLBSLxo5LE">Caravan</a>, has encouraged a new audience to investigate the jazz pantheon.</p>
<p>Despite this, there is a growing feeling in the jazz world that Whiplash is hurting the music. It’s been variously criticised <a href="http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/drummer-peter-erskine-on-whiplash-film.html">for being joyless</a>, for <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies">getting the music and its history wrong</a> and for <a href="http://thebluemoment.com/2015/01/19/the-trouble-with-whiplash/">eliding the contribution of black jazz players</a>. Some writers have been using “melodrama” as a dirty word.</p>
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<span class="caption">Melissa Benoist and Miles Teller.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sony</span></span>
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<p>But these criticisms miss something that the general public instinctively understand. Whiplash is not solely concerned with jazz. It is as much a study of alienation and abuse. And so its inheritance is not from jazz history – but from a sub-genre of expressionistic films about obsession and losing one’s humanity. Powell and Pressburger’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040725/">The Red Shoes</a> and Martin Scorsese’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081398/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Raging Bull</a> are the real antecedents of Whiplash.</p>
<p>In popular culture, jazz has usually been characterised by emphasis on the physicality of its performers. The heroes of the bebop era were immortalised by the chiaroscuro photography of <a href="http://life.time.com/culture/photos-of-jazz-legends-duke-ellington-billie-holiday-dizzy-and-more/#3">Gjon Mili</a> and <a href="http://hermanleonard.com/">Herman Leonard</a>. But unlike previous jazz films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090557/">‘Round Midnight</a> (1986) or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094747/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Bird</a> (1988), Whiplash largely avoids the modernist compositions of jazz photographers, which romanticise the creative process.</p>
<p>In contrast, young student Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) is framed in confined surroundings, his movements dictated by the hands of the tyrannical conductor, Terence Fletcher (J K Simmons). The camera is entranced by Simmons’s large flat hands, circling them as they count in the band, cutting to them each time he halts the music with an angry fist. Neiman and Fletcher, pupil and master, become orbiting bodies, their relationship visualised in single shots that whip-pan between them.</p>
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<p>Whiplash is also unusual for a film featuring jazz in that it does not glorify improvisation. Indeed, improvisation is irrelevant. For the young musicians of Shaffer Conservatory, success is a matter of fighting dirty in order to gain acceptance. Conforming to Fletcher’s demands is the devil’s bargain that may lead to a gig with the Lincoln Centre Orchestra.</p>
<p>A common trope of the musician biopic is the suggestion that talent is inherent. But in Whiplash, achievement is the result of agonising work, an incremental and painstaking mastery of discipline. I can’t bring to mind another film with as many shots of musical notation. Neiman’s success – if we can call it that – is pictured in visceral terms, in lingering close-ups of bodily fluids: blood, sweat and a single tear.</p>
<p>Traditionally in jazz films, the conductor or bandleader has represented commercial forces that restrain creativity. Simmons’s performance inverts this convention by making Terence Fletcher monstrous, a seething whipcord of hatred and humiliation. </p>
<p>The film delights in offering us glimpses into Fletcher’s interiority, only to snatch them away. Neiman unexpectedly finds Fletcher sitting in at a jazz club. Those large hands – so devastating when pointing, slapping, balling into a fist – tenderly pick out a piano solo. We are fooled for a moment into thinking that we have seen the “real” Fletcher. And then those big reptilian eyes slide over the room until they find Neiman.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69540/original/image-20150120-24450-t9xap5.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">Individual hard graft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sony</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies">critique of the film</a>, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody suggests that it exposes its fraudulent jazz credentials by exalting (white) drummer Buddy Rich and by getting a Charlie Parker anecdote wrong. </p>
<p>Brody overlooks the film’s commentary on the role of myth and anecdote in jazz and the way that each generation appropriates these myths to their own end. Fletcher has even crafted his own fable of genius around a deceased former student of his, Sean Casey. Similarly, Fletcher’s unrelenting deluge of homophobic and racist insults, not to mention his casual sexism, vocalise a set of anxieties which have structured the Hollywood jazz film since its inception.</p>
<p>So Whiplash is not principally concerned with the dynamics of a jazz ensemble, or of connection with an audience. It is about the agony of the individual. At a family dinner, Neiman mocks the idea of team sports or of even having friends. Characters constantly wear earphones, isolated in their musical obsession. The film is bathed in a sickly orange-yellow, unsettling and unhinged. There is a consistent interest in textures seen in lingering close-up – the tension of a drumskin; the smoothness of a cymbal; the veins, scars and pores of our protagonists.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1841939712/tt2582802?ref_=ttmd_md_pv#">film poster</a> for Whiplash recalls <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/may/08/saul-bass-title-sequence-ten-best">Saul Bass’s work</a> for Hitchcock and this is entirely appropriate. Audiences know what jazz critics do not – that this is a horror film. Look at the fire in Fletcher’s eyes during Neiman’s final solo and the expressionistic flickering of lights as the camera crash-zooms. This is the moment when one psychopath creates his successor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicolas Pillai 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>
Amid Golden Globe recognition and Oscar buzz, Damien Chazelle’s film about a young jazz student and his abusive teacher is pulling in viewers who would normally run screaming from the words “drum solo…
Nicolas Pillai, Researcher in Jazz and Visual Culture, Birmingham City University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36370
2015-01-16T15:26:14Z
2015-01-16T15:26:14Z
The Imitation Game gets gay life in 40s and 50s Britain spot on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69241/original/image-20150116-5158-1xpc6ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In fear of draconian laws.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">STUDIOCANAL</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/imitation-game-will-finally-bring-alan-turing-the-fame-he-so-rightly-deserves-34324">The Imitation Game</a> has scooped up eight <a href="https://theconversation.com/oscar-nominations-2015-its-still-a-mans-world-35941">Oscar nominations</a> this year, including the coveted Best Picture. Since its release in autumn 2014 the film has attracted widespread positive critical appraisal and commercial success.</p>
<p>Its story of British mathematical genius <a href="https://theconversation.com/alan-turings-legacy-is-even-bigger-than-we-realise-34735">Alan Turing</a> who broke the German Enigma codes in World War II is now widely known. Equally well-known, at least in Britain, is the fact that Turing was gay, a homosexual, to use the terminology of the day, and that he reputedly committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41 after receiving hormone therapy as a result of a conviction in 1952 for gross indecency. He was posthumously pardoned for his “offence” – in 2013.</p>
<p>The film has also attracted <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346828/Film-WW2-codebreaker-Alan-Turing-attacked-biographer-exaggerating-love-affair-woman-gay-says-Keira-Knightley-glamorous.html">criticism in some quarters</a> for underplaying Turing’s homosexuality, and foregrounding a (non-sexual) relationship with fellow mathematician, Joan Clarke, played by British actress Keira Knightley. But besides such personal details, the film’s more general portrayal of homosexual life in the 1940s and 1950s does stand up to critical scrutiny.</p>
<h2>Wartime liaisons</h2>
<p>Blackout during wartime afforded opportunities for homosexual liaisons that many wouldn’t have experienced before. Men could find each other under the cover of complete darkness and, no doubt, because the authorities had more pressing matters to hand.</p>
<p>However, homosexuality remained illegal under the hated <a href="http://www.lgbthistoryuk.org/wiki/index.php?title=Criminal_Law_Amendment_Act_1885">“Labouchère” amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1885</a>, which outlawed “gross indecency” between men. This was the law that sent Oscar Wilde to jail for two years of hard labour – and which was used to prosecute Turing. It was widely regarded as a blackmailer’s charter. And so although the scene in which Turing is blackmailed by the Russian spy John Cairncross may not be historically correct, it is certainly a good reflection on the times. In this sense the film captures the perpetual threat that homosexual men had to live with.</p>
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<p>The war years may have been relatively kind to homosexual men but prosecutions for sexual crimes increased in the period immediately after the war, reaching a peak in 1961. Police tactics were often rebarbative and generated genuine fear. The police pursuit of Turing in The Imitation Game provides an insight into the importance the police gave to prosecuting homosexual “crimes”. </p>
<p>Men often went to great lengths to cover their tracks. A groundbreaking study by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/apr/27/michael-schofield">Michael Schofield</a>, published in 1960, revealed the diversity of homosexual lives in the period and the myriad ways they negotiated through the undeniable difficulties they often faced. In his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GRA6AgAAQBAJ">autobiography</a>, London journalist Peter Wildeblood, who was another high profile victim of homophobic laws and police tactics, claimed it was necessary for him to watch every word he spoke, every gesture that he made. Turing’s sexual discreetness in The Imitation Game is an accurate representation of how most homosexual men had to behave.</p>
<h2>Tolerance, conviction</h2>
<p>There has been a growing appreciation <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Queer_1950s.html?id=Xh9lpzUPa9IC&redir_esc=y">in queer academia</a> that there was often tolerance and acceptance of men leading homosexual lives at a domestic level, not just from immediate families and local communities, but also from landlords and landladies. There was widespread public disquiet at these draconian laws. Sympathy for another famous victim caught up in a police sting saw actor <a href="http://www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/history/sirjohngielgud.htm">John Gielgud</a> receive a standing ovation when he returned to the stage in Liverpool after his conviction for gross indecency in 1953 secured lurid headlines in the newspapers.</p>
<p>But while there may have been a certain degree of tolerance toward homosexuality, especially for those men who lived “respectable” and quiet lives, criminal proceedings remained a real threat for many. Patrick Higgins’s review of court cases in <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Heterosexual_Dictatorship.html?id=BDcbAAAAYAAJ">Heterosexual Dictatorships</a> (1996) shows that homosexual lives continued to be led across the breadth of the country throughout the 1950s, albeit in the shadow of the law, and involved men from all walks of life. For example, the court records show a case from Rotherham, Yorkshire, where 17 unskilled and semi-skilled men pleaded guilty to 41 charges of homosexual acts. In the same year in Barnsley, 12 men confessed to homosexual acts. Prosecution was widespread. </p>
<p>Despite, or rather because of the occasional high-profile trial and the number of less famous prosecutions, homosexuality was largely pushed into the dark recesses of society. Paradoxically, its very invisibility acted as a cloak for those seeking liaisons with other men. In practice no-one suspected other people of being homosexual. Again, the presumption that Turing could not possibly be gay comes across in the film if only as a minor sub-plot, but it strikes a true chord.</p>
<p>The Imitation Game may play fast and loose with a great deal of historical accuracy, as films are entitled to do. But the artistic portrayal speaks to a greater truth. In the light of what we know about homosexual life at the time, The Imitation Game mostly gets it right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Harvey 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 Imitation Game has scooped up eight Oscar nominations this year, including the coveted Best Picture. Since its release in autumn 2014 the film has attracted widespread positive critical appraisal and…
Andy Harvey, Researcher, Birkbeck, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35941
2015-01-15T18:25:04Z
2015-01-15T18:25:04Z
Oscar nominations 2015: it’s still a man’s world
<p>This year’s <a href="http://oscar.go.com/nominees">Oscar nominations</a> quickly prompted ire from all quarters. This isn’t unusual, the awards are an easy target. “Everything is awful”, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/oscars/11348225/Oscars-2015-Lego-Movie-snubbed-for-Best-Animated-Feature.html">moans the Telegraph</a>: “The Lego Movie, the most successful and critically acclaimed animation of 2014, has inexplicably missed out.” </p>
<p>But more important fish are frying. The media’s main point of criticism has been the Academy’s nomination of only white actors in the four main acting categories, with David Oyelowo in favourite Martin Luther King biopic <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-movie-selma-made-mlk-human-again-35990">Selma</a> noticeably snubbed. In 2011 the 20 nominated actors were also entirely white, but before that you have to look back to 1998 to find another entirely white group of nominated actors. </p>
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</figure>
<p>This criticism is clearly deserved. But the problems don’t stop here. Hollywood has also snubbed women. This year, the nominated films are all about the penis. </p>
<p>Most of the nominated films are fantastic. They deserve to be lauded, many are beautiful, thoughtful – but when taken as a group, women simply don’t figure.</p>
<p>Take the best picture nominees. We’ve got films about learning how to become a man (<a href="https://theconversation.com/linklater-puts-the-hood-in-boyhood-at-the-sydney-film-festival-27980">Boyhood</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-whip-the-lash-and-the-blood-sweat-and-semen-of-jazz-34386">Whiplash</a>). There’s the film about the moral minefield of trying to be a good man (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/">American Sniper</a>). Then the one about trying to get back to the man you could have been (<a href="https://theconversation.com/birdman-and-the-intoxicating-alchemy-of-cinema-35275">Birdman</a>), the crazy antics men get up to (<a href="https://theconversation.com/wes-anderson-is-one-of-cinemas-great-auteurs-discuss-25198">The Grand Budapest Hotel</a>) and the one about being a male genius whilst trying to hide the fact you like other men (<a href="https://theconversation.com/imitation-game-will-finally-bring-alan-turing-the-fame-he-so-rightly-deserves-34324">The Imitation Game</a>). And lest we forget, those celebrations of some other great men in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-theory-of-everything-is-inspiring-despite-a-hackneyed-treatment-of-hawkings-work-35348">The Theory of Everything</a> and Selma. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69162/original/image-20150115-5165-1778ye.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">Tortured genius.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Studiocanal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All the nominated directors – including the foreign ones and the ones working in animation – are men. All the writers – original and adapted – are men. All the cinematographers are men. All of the composers are men. All of the sound editors are men. Five out of the six nominated editors are men.</p>
<p>There is one documentary directed by a woman (<a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-the-scenes-at-the-start-of-the-snowden-era-citizenfour-is-crucial-viewing-33345">Citizenfour</a>), but it’s about a man. There is also a documentary about a woman (<a href="https://theconversation.com/desiring-the-author-finding-vivian-maier-at-the-melbourne-festival-33298">Finding Vivian Maier</a>), but it is directed by two men. What’s more, this film is really about a woman who was too afraid to show their work or come out as an artist in their lifetime – perhaps in part because she didn’t have a penis (and therefore trying to become an artist was a bit fruitless; still, at least a man is there to rehabilitate her now).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69163/original/image-20150115-5182-2rg4of.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">Wild…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fox UK</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, there are some women nominated in the categories reserved for them. But let’s take a look at the roles they were nominated for. Among the Best Actress nominees, one is a murderous maven (Rosamund Pike in <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-gone-girl-tells-us-about-american-degrowth-32697">Gone Girl</a>), one has early onset Alzheimer’s (Julianne Moore in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/">Still Alice</a>), one is an antisocial loner (Reese Wetherspoon in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2305051/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Wild</a>), one a woman rejected by many of the men she works with since they’d prefer a bonus to her having a job (Marion Cotillard in <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-days-one-night-working-hard-for-the-dardennes-brothers-30043">Two Days, One Night</a>), and one is the foil to a genius whose <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-theory-of-everything-is-inspiring-despite-a-hackneyed-treatment-of-hawkings-work-35348">own doctorate and motherhood duties play second fiddle</a> to a man who ends up dumping her for a woman who’ll manually stimulate his genitals while looking at Penthouse magazine (Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything).</p>
<p>Compare this to the Best Actor nominees. We have a hero (Bradley Cooper in American Sniper), two geniuses (Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game; Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything), a harmless madman who ends up being hailed as a genius (Michael Keaton in Birdman), and a bonkers rich recluse who eventually kills someone because his mum is a bitch (Steve Carell in <a href="https://theconversation.com/haunting-examination-of-class-in-america-foxcatcher-warns-of-the-problems-of-privilege-36095">Foxcatcher</a>).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ys-mbHXyWX4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The supporting actresses are nominated mainly in roles that support men (Keira Knightley in The Imitation Game, Emma Stone in Birdman, Patricia Arquette in Boyhood). Then there’s Meryl Streep – as a witch (<a href="https://theconversation.com/before-you-go-into-the-woods-remember-that-fairy-tales-have-always-been-dark-places-36069">Into the Woods</a>). Only Laura Dern in Wild, playing Reese Witherspoon’s mother, manages to evade being the crutch that most women are expected to be. </p>
<p>I saw Boyhood and thought that Patricia Arquette was the best thing in it. I came out thinking that instead of Boyhood the film should be called Motherhood (or at the very least, Texas). But no – it got named after the penis and the women were overlooked once again.</p>
<p>Clearly, Hollywood needs some severe dressing down for the lack of racial diversity. But this is equally true, and scarily camouflaged, in the case of women. The nominations this year highlight the Oscars as system of self-congratulation, one that refuses to break away from hailing white men as heroes and geniuses and branding women as wild, crazy and dangerous. Worryingly, James Brown still seems to have hit the nail on the head – according to Hollywood, it’s a more of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBLNYuKLYD0">a man’s world</a> than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Brown 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>
This year’s Oscar nominations quickly prompted ire from all quarters. This isn’t unusual, the awards are an easy target. “Everything is awful”, moans the Telegraph: “The Lego Movie, the most successful…
William Brown, Senior Lecturer in Film, University of Roehampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36095
2015-01-14T12:48:10Z
2015-01-14T12:48:10Z
Haunting examination of class in America – Foxcatcher warns of the problems of privilege
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69001/original/image-20150114-3891-hcpeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not so feelgood. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Entertainment One</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Warning: this article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Oscar nominations loom, and Bennett Miller’s quiet masterpiece Foxcatcher deserves recognition. The film is a genuine “state of the nation” story, something that in recent years is all too rare. A haunting explanation of the American class system, the film asks pertinent questions about power, privilege and masculinity.</p>
<p>Set in the 80s and 90s, the film is inspired by the true story of the millionaire aristocrat John du Pont (Steve Carell) and his sponsorship of a wrestling programme he calls “Team Foxcatcher”. Du Pont recruits downtrodden Olympic gold medallist Mark Shultz (Channing Tatum), who begins the film shyly sharing his story of determination and aspiration with a group of disengaged schoolchildren in exchange for US$20. Du Pont tells Mark that America has failed to honour his achievements, that he wants to invest in him and others like him. He sells the young wrestler a compelling vision of nationhood through athleticism – a vision familiar to the typical American sports drama.</p>
<p>But Foxcatcher is far from typical – instead, it is a tightly woven collection of long, pregnant silences and static frames, punctuated by moments of frenzied rupture and crisis. Its minimal aesthetic draws together foundational themes of the American Dream; as sport, family, ambition, nationhood are rendered with poetic restraint – and their relevance today questioned. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69002/original/image-20150114-3865-1chcefm.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">The downtrodden athlete.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Entertainment One</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one of the film’s many lyrical moments, Mark puts his possessions in his car and sets out on the long journey to du Pont’s lavish estate. He is embarking on what he perceives to be a new brighter future for his life, his sport and his nation. The landscape that unfolds before him is wholesome and idealised: lush fields, bathed in autumnal hues; a flag flying; a large working farm. The sequence feels simultaneously like a dream and an elegy. </p>
<p>But as he arrives at the du Pont estate the landscape changes. The virtuous “blue collar” aesthetic is gone, replaced by a static, claustrophobic stillness. The first meeting between Mark and his benefactor is shot at a distance, with the younger man almost overwhelmed by du Pont’s possessions and the imposing architecture of the unfamiliar and conspicuously aristocratic space. The self-styled “Golden Eagle” (as du Pont is called, he says) has begun the slow consumption of his innocent prey. </p>
<p>In interviews about the film, director Bennett Miller has been reticent to endorse such allegorical readings, but he has acknowledged a little of the film’s symbolic potential. It is a study of three fatherless men, du Pont, Mark and his older brother Dave, a wrestling coach and fellow Olympic gold medallist. For Miller, America is also something of a fatherless child. He told <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wwn6n">Radio 4</a> that those without fathers believe that “anything is possible” while possessing an “underlying anxiety that does not go away”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69003/original/image-20150114-3856-1itu1mj.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">Sparring father figures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Entertainment One</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Du Pont’s unbridled power, his sense of entitlement and his unerring belief in his deeply misguided worldview is all encompassing, as is his tragic paranoia. His acquisition of male athletes is bound up in what appears to be a philosophy of manifest destiny and contrasts with Dave’s almost <a href="http://www.veritesport.org/?page=bookreviewbytitle&byt=j&brid=283">Corinthian commitment to sport for sport’s sake</a>. For both father figures, sport is a way of ordering the world, yet their worlds are so very different. </p>
<p>Dave is a family man, his roots are fixed. He values notions of place, community, solidarity: when we see him coach his wrestlers he does so in ways which are indistinguishable from how he plays with his children or tenderly touches someone on the shoulder to provide comfort or show empathy. Du Pont’s cold, sinister paternalism on the other hand is an intrinsic part of his aristocratic isolation. His way of understanding his and the nation’s place in the world is articulated through the instinctive proprietorial domination of his athletes. Mark is the child torn between these two fathers, these two versions of America. </p>
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</figure>
<p>Sport then is the battleground for this conflict of ideologies, this contest between radically opposed ways of imagining the nation, two ways of being. In one of the film’s early scenes Dave and Mark spar. We see them touching each other’s faces and bodies in close up. To the uninitiated this looks like an unspoken affirmation of Mark and Dave’s brotherhood and we are unsure if they are wrestling or embracing – sport here is about emotional intimacy as well as competition. Later, du Pont performs in his role as “coach” at “Foxcatcher Gym”. He pathetically demonstrates a “hold” on a reluctant young wrestler who lies face down on the floor submissively. We watch with the wrestlers, pitying their paymaster while afraid to challenge his tyranny.</p>
<p>The film’s tragic conclusion brings these tensions to the boil. As Dave lies dead in the snow, gunned down by a coldly crazed du Pont, the sports narrative as a national story of determination and underdog victory is thwarted. In its place lies a hollow and shocking jolt forward to something all together more prescient: unchecked privilege wins out against values of labour, fairness and hard work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36095/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Forrest 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>
Warning: this article contains spoilers. The Oscar nominations loom, and Bennett Miller’s quiet masterpiece Foxcatcher deserves recognition. The film is a genuine “state of the nation” story, something…
David Forrest, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35990
2015-01-09T11:08:47Z
2015-01-09T11:08:47Z
How the movie Selma made MLK human again
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68525/original/image-20150108-23810-4293as.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The movie Selma takes King – best known to Americans as an orator – and turns him into an organizer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USMC-09611.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been almost 60 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. became a household name during the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and some may find it astonishing that, until the recent release of Selma, he’s never been portrayed as the centerpiece of a major Hollywood movie. It makes more sense, however, when one examines his place among the small canon of African Americans in American history, which includes Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, and Rosa Parks. </p>
<p>In historical narratives, these figures often fill straightforward roles: Tubman is the brave conductor of the Underground Railroad; Carver is the humble inventor and innovator of the Jim Crow years; Parks is the indefatigable seamstress who refused to give up her seat on the bus; and King is the martyred saint who ended discrimination. When King has appeared in films, it’s been as a bit player, a character used almost as a physical marker, like the Sphinx or the Washington Monument or a Model T. His presence means gravitas, heroism, and the deliverance of his people – an American Moses.</p>
<p>This African American canon can be seen as condescendingly compensatory, a minimum nod to the contributions of African Americans to American life. It renders King static in the past, a saint in amber. He has a monument in Washington D.C., he has a national holiday, and he even sells products (King’s image is used by brands like Apple, McDonalds, and Nike). So while King is part of the American pantheon, his actual contributions, his crucial and complex role in the most important social movement in American history, are often lost. The film Selma takes important steps towards rectifying that historical deficiency.</p>
<p>What is especially remarkable about this film is how it takes someone who is best known to Americans as an orator and turns him into an organizer, someone who could lead a march across a bridge to confront a howling mob and brutal policemen, but also march into the Oval Office to confront a hesitant President Johnson. The lack of emphasis on his rhetorical skills is surely due to the limits placed on the filmmaker and her team by a King estate (which possesses the copyright for his famous public speeches). But this is also a storytelling choice, an effort to remind viewers that King’s voice was only one of his tools. There was his vision, his ferocity, his strategic and tactical organizing skills, and his willingness to sacrifice. Then there was his stubbornness, his marital failings, his uncertainty. There was a human being behind the Olympian voice.</p>
<p>In the end, this movie may do what Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln accomplished: breathe complexity into the portrayal of a historical icon, and show that someone who is larger than life was once actually alive. It does not diminish the old-fashioned idea that history is about “great men;” rather, it places emphasis on the idea that greatness must start with an understanding of the man. Or woman. The very making of this film is a small victory that can be credited to Dr. King’s work. Director Ava DuVernay, a relatively inexperienced African-American female filmmaker, is not only reassessing an important chapter in the nation’s history; she’s also breaking through Hollywood’s glass ceiling of race and gender.</p>
<p>The timing of this movie is remarkable, and it is sure to add to the national conversation on race. The problem is that there’s not much of a conversation taking place – instead, it’s more like a series of monologues. Films like the superb 12 Years A Slave reaped awards and provided a harrowing and humane vision of slavery. The Butler added a unique perspective of someone who was painfully aware of how history was passing before his eyes (think of it as the anti-Forrest Gump). But did these films shape how Americans see the present? It is quite possible for someone to watch Selma and be moved by its depth and humanity, for someone to reflect more deeply on the heroic struggle of the Civil Rights Movement, and for someone to be glad that the “bad old days” are over. Selma will not open hearts and minds that are not already open. Then again, no film can do that.</p>
<p>If seen and understood in the right context, this film helps our understanding of history. But there’s the unfortunate chance that it will <em>only</em> add depth and nuance to an American icon – and accomplish nothing more. It will surely join the canon of “history movies” that are shown in classrooms across the nation. But will the connections to the present be actively made? Will we recognize that “the fierce urgency of now” are not just words from the past (or a potential marketing slogan for cellular service), but an exhortation to apply King’s lessons to our present? </p>
<p>Consider the following question: what would Martin Luther King be doing if he were alive today? The Selma of 1965 no longer exists. But the Selma, or Ferguson, or Staten Island, or Cleveland of 2015 shows that history isn’t finished.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x6t7vVTxaic?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Will Selma add to the national conversation about race?</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Baick 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>
It’s been almost 60 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. became a household name during the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and some may find it astonishing that, until the recent release of Selma, he’s…
John Baick, Professor of History, Western New England University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35275
2015-01-05T14:47:57Z
2015-01-05T14:47:57Z
Birdman and the intoxicating alchemy of cinema
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68180/original/image-20150105-13843-ygm9q6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Michael Keaton in Birdman.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">20th Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Birdman is awash with in-jokes, but laugh and then forget about them. And forget about the fact that Birdman is a backstage comedy set in a crappy 800-seat theatre in New York. Because this is really a film about cinema – and a searingly insightful one.</p>
<p>Plaudits will – from within the crucible of self-congratulation that is Hollywood – rightly go to Michael Keaton, although they could equally go to any of the other players in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s piece: Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Amy Ryan, Lindsay Duncan – maybe even Zach Galifianakis. But the star of this film, alongside New York and the witty script, is director Iñárritu and most of all, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera.</p>
<p>Birdman is comprised, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1191111/">Enter The Void</a>-style, of multiple shots that are made to seem as though we have before us a single, unbroken, 119-minute take. Iñárritu might well invite us to contemplate the relationship between theatre and cinema – and the lingering belief that treading the boards will legitimise an actor known otherwise for schlockbusters. But as we wander in and out of the St James theatre on West 44th Street, what really comes through is how cinema can trump theatre through its central device: movement. Not movement of the players on to and off of the screen, but movement of the camera itself.</p>
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</figure>
<h2>Birdman or Batman?</h2>
<p>Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, an actor best known for his roles in the Birdman superhero films (nice casting of Keaton here, who didn’t see much success after Batman Returns in 1992). Now he is risking his whole career to produce a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. He has an actress partner (Riseborough), a rehab daughter (Stone) and a best-friend producer (Galifianakis) all involved in the production, together with Broadway wannabe Lesley (Watts) and established stage star Mike Shiner (Norton). </p>
<p>We see rehearsals and previews, all leading up to an opening night that can be made or broken by critic Tabitha Dickinson (Duncan). Riggan also has around him two ghosts from his past: ex-wife Sylvia (Ryan), who haunts him like Marjorie haunts Mel in Carver’s title story; and, more particularly, the voice and sometimes body of Birdman himself (Benjamin Kanes).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68189/original/image-20150105-13860-1jtuxtw.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">The doubling would do Borges proud.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">20th Century Fox</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film is somewhat ostentatiously called BiRDMAN. Highlighting “Bi” in this way tells us a lot. We are all plural (“bi”). We all have voices in our heads asking us questions, telling us what to do. The fact that Michael Keaton is actually Michael Douglas’s stage name in itself is weirdly appropriate then, too – the kind of doubling that would suit Jorge Luis Borges, whose Labyrinths Mike Shiner reads on his sunbed. </p>
<p>And so this voice, this alter-ego Birdman, tells Riggan how being a superhero movie star validates him above all these theatre fucks, while chastising him for his vanity. The inner voice also visually breaks out on to the screen as Riggan flips into fantasy sequences, meteors crashing to earth, battles breaking out and he flies around NYC, Spidey-style.</p>
<h2>The screen is all</h2>
<p>Birdman speaks of cinema’s capacity not just to move, but to move between fantasy and reality as if they were the same thing. Cinema’s power over society also comes through: theatre might well add gravitas and credibility to a performer, but these days no one at all is anything unless mediated by the screen, whether that be at the movies or on Twitter. The fear of being irrelevant has now become the fear of fading from our screens. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68191/original/image-20150105-13839-1735m0p.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">Daughter/personal assistant Emma Stone, fresh out of rehab.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">20th Century Fox</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Riggan asks his daughter to buy him some flowers, demanding alchemillas. A self-conscious nod to the alchemy that is cinema – which, at its best, makes something that is clearly not live seem so. You don’t script these references or get your camera to move the way that Iñárritu and Lubezki’s does without meticulous preparation. And yet the film plays out as if live – a single, unbroken sequence that moves through time in a way that defies the capabilities of the human body. Only when intoxicated can we miss a day and resurface as if no time had passed – but Birdman does precisely that on several occasions. And perhaps cinema is indeed a form of intoxication: joyful, mind-altering and pregnant with the risk of dependency.</p>
<p>In presenting us a continuous shot, the film performs the cinematic alchemical trick of showing that our fantasies are continuous with our reality, even if, like Riggan, we are but shadows full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Brown 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>
Birdman is awash with in-jokes, but laugh and then forget about them. And forget about the fact that Birdman is a backstage comedy set in a crappy 800-seat theatre in New York. Because this is really a…
William Brown, Senior Lecturer in Film, University of Roehampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35348
2014-12-27T09:52:00Z
2014-12-27T09:52:00Z
The Theory of Everything is inspiring, despite a hackneyed treatment of Hawking’s work
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67382/original/image-20141216-14160-hd49ik.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The story of two people who fall in love.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Theory of Everything is a film about two people who meet at university and fall in love. But what makes it remarkable is that one of them is Professor Stephen Hawking and that when he and Jane Wilde get married, they do so in the knowledge that Hawking is suffering from a terrible and debilitating disease and is unlikely to live for much more than two years. </p>
<p>Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Hawking is perfect – we could almost be watching the man himself. So much so, that when Hawking himself saw the film for the first time he posted on Facebook: “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=733286033425163&set=vb.710234179063682&type=2&theater">At times, I thought he was me.</a>”</p>
<p>At the beginning of the film, before Hawking’s diagnosis of motor neurone disease, Redmayne plays Hawking as a slightly awkward young man. He’s unsure of what to do with his hands and is a little stooped – although this seems to be more a preemptive apology for clumsiness than it is the early onset of his symptoms. As the disease takes hold he begins walking with sticks, then using a wheelchair and eventually becomes the professor now well-recognised for his speech synthesiser. Throughout the movie the depiction of Hawking remains believable and tasteful. Hawking is shown to be brave, determined, charming and witty in the face of his illness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67494/original/image-20141217-31052-mn0jjy.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">A great performance from Felicity Jones, but we could have known more about Wilde.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Likewise, Felicity Jones is wonderful as Hawking’s wife. As the film is based on Jane Wilde Hawking’s book, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wIM4SQAACAAJ&dq=Travelling+to+Infinity:+My+Life+with+Stephen&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2XSRVPuWL8LuUM6EhPgI&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA">Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen</a>, one does wonder whether her character might have been less flattering had it been written by someone else. That said, no blows are softened as she is shown becoming steadily bitter and resentful of the relationship she entered into once believing that it would be so brief. Hawking is not always helpful. His tendency to put a brave face on their problems sometimes blinds him to how much his wife is struggling to cope. </p>
<p>Given that this is at its heart a love story, a biopic about the couple, it is surprising how little of Wilde is in it. We see her as wife, mother and carer and we discover that she likes singing, but she functions largely as a way of telling the audience about Hawking. Her own PhD (in romance languages) is only briefly mentioned at the very beginning of the film and we don’t hear about it again. We know nothing of what she worked on during her time as a graduate student or of what she did later. This is a shame – she’s clearly an intelligent academic in her own right and to ignore this sells her short.</p>
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</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Hawking’s specialist subject – time – is repeated over and over. It is referred to in every other conversation. Either about how Hawking works on time, or how little time he has to live, or how he has lived an awfully long time given his condition, or how lucky (or unlucky) they are to have had so much time together as a couple, or that he is writing a book called The Brief History of Time. </p>
<p>And it doesn’t stop here. This is laboured even further with two visual devices. One is a series of home-movie-style montages which pepper the main story to indicate time passing between the various major stages of the couple’s life together. The other is Hawking’s tendency to “zone out” when he has an idea which gives the impression of time slowing down for him while it continues at its usual pace for everyone else. Neither technique is ineffective but it is perhaps a touch patronising of an audience who should really have no trouble keeping up given how regularly they are reminded of Hawking’s research topic.</p>
<p>And just to make certain this point is really hammered home, the film finishes by rewinding all those montages, and here we are at the beginning. Time! What’s it like, eh?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67496/original/image-20141217-31018-1k35zqa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Winding back the clock…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this, the science itself isn’t really touched upon. Perhaps this is deliberate – theoretical cosmology is something of an acquired taste and there certainly isn’t enough time to teach it thoroughly during a two-hour film. However, the few attempts at explaining the basics are a little half-hearted, with multiple scenes where characters are gathered around tables using drinks or dinner as a teaching tool. Aside from being a classic example of telling where showing might have been better the explanations scarcely scratch the surface.</p>
<p>All that aside this is still a very enjoyable film. It was tasteful and engaging and just beautiful visually. It’s the kind of film I want to go see and that I want to tell all my friends to go see, not only because it’s quite a good love story, but because it’s about Stephen Hawking. </p>
<p>I like to see scientists celebrated in films, books and television dramas and that is exactly what happens here. The science itself might be skimmed over but his remarkable achievements and the conditions under which he has been able to realise them are made very clear. This elevates the movie above your standard romance and to something that is – at times – simply inspiring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35348/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Becky Douglas 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 Theory of Everything is a film about two people who meet at university and fall in love. But what makes it remarkable is that one of them is Professor Stephen Hawking and that when he and Jane Wilde…
Becky Douglas, PhD Student in Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/34324
2014-11-19T12:52:17Z
2014-11-19T12:52:17Z
Imitation Game will finally bring Alan Turing the fame he so rightly deserves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64721/original/d23k3c3k-1416240733.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benedict Cumberbatch brings to life Turing’s amazing mental engagement with his machine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">STUDIOCANAL</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Movies about mathematicians are rare, the problem being that the real action is all in the head. At first sight, maths doesn’t quite have the cinematic potential of a car chase or a romantic love story. </p>
<p>But The Imitation Game has approached it head on. The remarkable thing about the story it tells is that it is not just about the maths, that scarily incomprehensible abstraction. It is a story so bizarre and intensely moving, you’d have trouble inventing it.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64728/original/7pg5sk3m-1416241525.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alan Turing, aged 16.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1936 a 24-year-old mathematician called <a href="https://theconversation.com/imitation-game-brings-to-life-the-real-alan-turing-pioneer-of-the-computer-age-32517">Alan Turing</a> wrote a paper on computable numbers. This paper contained something we now call “the Universal Turing Machine”. When working at Bletchley Park in World War II, the machine that Turing designed to crack the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma code: the Turing-Welchman <a href="http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/bombe/">Bombe</a>, was a primitive prototype of the machine he imagined, and of the modern computer. It was not yet “universal”, but it helped the Bletchley Park heroes – almost 10,000 of them – shorten World War II by at least two years. </p>
<p>This is the story at the centre of The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It’s a film that might finally be making Turing the household name he should be. </p>
<h2>Imitation</h2>
<p>Director Morten Tyldum set himself a hard task. There’s the double hurdle of accurately portraying somebody’s life, as well as making some sense of the mathematics at the heart of the film; to make it understandable, as well as doing it justice. </p>
<p>It is the scriptwriter Graham Moore who made the director’s task doable. A degree of creative license is essential when making a film that is at once a biopic, an exploration of a key moment of history – and also has complex maths and computing at its heart. And so unsurprisingly, The Imitation Game is already being computed quite differently by individual movie goers and critics. </p>
<p>You might expect me, as a mathematician and Turing champion, to be its harshest critic. But actually it was Turing’s mathematics that helped me understand and appreciate what the film makers are doing. Turing’s mathematics splits information into increasing levels of complexity. This is mirrored in the case of the film where some historical details are added or changed to help us, the viewers, have more insight into the real story.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64856/original/b8xd65js-1416320250.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">Benedict Cumberbatch and Matthew Goode.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">STUDIOCANAL</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So for me, the beauty of the thing is that this kind of imitation is at the root of Graham Moore’s fantastic script. It is present both in Turing’s scientific focus and in his life as a gay man on “the autistic spectrum” – the latter nicely described by Morten Tyldum as “thinking different”. For living and working mathematicians, it is the “neuro-typicals” who are “different”. </p>
<p>This is beautifully shown in a moving scene in which Turing gives his team some apples after having been advised by Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) that they are more likely to help him in his plan if they like him. This is just part of Alan’s personal imitation game.</p>
<p>This and more makes the film fabulously engrossing, a wonderful creative imitation of the world of Turing that we have left behind us. The brilliant creative team – director, score composer, and some wonderful actors – have astutely accepted that Turing’s mentality has to be at the very centre of the film. The result is a youthful and creative engagement with the Turing story. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64726/original/gzgkjctg-1416241350.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">Allen Leech as Soviet spy, John Cairncross.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">STUDIOCANAL</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What didn’t happen</h2>
<p>There is a need for boldness when dramatising the hidden inner reality of Turing’s amazing mental engagement with the machine and its meaning. To achieve this, the film imports various figures and elements into the story that don’t quite fit the history. Soviet spy John Cairncross is teleported from a quite different hut into Turing’s decrypting team at Bletchley Park, for example, something Turing historian Andrew Hodges has questioned publicly. </p>
<p>To me this made good sense. Using this dramatic device our appreciation of the sheer complexity, pain, and incomputability of the imitation game – and its necessity in wartime Europe – is enriched. Another example is the seeming arrogance and socially abrasiveness of Turing in some scenes; this time dramatically reflecting the undoubted isolating role of originality of thinking and mathematical rationality.</p>
<p>Did Alan ever give his team apples after being advised on the usefulness of being liked? Of course not, but it’s a beautiful and truthful moment in the film. Our amusement is affectionate and – as Graham Moore will have intended – complex. Did Alan ever have a replica of the Bletchley Park Bombe in his final years in the house in Wilmslow, obsessed with the mysteries of the machine called Christopher? Obviously not. But he was busy probing other mysteries (something called morphogenesis), and was sad and isolated. And so that scene is a small but dramatically potent adjustment, one of the most poignant and complex moments of this moving and thought-provoking film. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64723/original/9fztg8yc-1416241178.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">Keira Knightley as Turing’s colleague and fiancee, Joan Clarke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">STUDIOCANAL</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was not until a second viewing that I was fully adjusted to these shifts and additions. I just knew too much. I started out wanting an enormous amount of detail – like that present in the Andrew Hodges’s biography, the inspiration for the film. And I wanted detail explained of the wide spectrum of scientific areas Turing brought his genius to. </p>
<p>But what eventually took hold, powerfully, was the depiction of a very real Turing – and an inner experience of his fundamental thinking on the mathematics, an admirable achievement. </p>
<p>I guess this is not a film for all experts. It’s aimed at the many people who until now have known little or nothing of Turing and his unique contribution to our modern world. The directing and acting – especially from Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley – is outstanding. And the resulting learning experience is potentially universal. It’s impossible to tell what will emerge from this cinematic playing out of such a poignantly adventurous Imitation Game.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34324/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>S. Barry Cooper 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>
Movies about mathematicians are rare, the problem being that the real action is all in the head. At first sight, maths doesn’t quite have the cinematic potential of a car chase or a romantic love story…
S. Barry Cooper, Professor of Mathematics, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/34327
2014-11-18T06:10:22Z
2014-11-18T06:10:22Z
Interstellar is a dangerous fantasy of US colonialism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64749/original/xgp3wytx-1416250723.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new America?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/interstellar-gives-a-spectacular-view-of-hard-science-33991">Interstellar</a> has been praised for its attempt to make the “hard science” of astrophysics both accessible and exciting to a popular audience. Through cutting-edge special effects, it takes audiences on a journey through space and time. It does so by drawing on groundbreaking scientific theories involving relativity, wormholes, black holes and the power of gravity. </p>
<p>These cinematic efforts are especially timely in light of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/rosetta">recent Rosetta mission</a>. In the depths of a news cycle filled with economic insecurity and the threat of an Ebola outbreak, the landing has captivated the world, offering a welcome vision of scientific progress and the power of human innovation. </p>
<p>Regardless of what one may think of it as a film, Interstellar, then, should be commended for making heroes out of scientist and engineers. It shows a new generation of film goers the possibilities that scientific discoveries, rather than mystical superpowers, have for leading us beyond our present reality. Yet, despite being directed by British-American director Christopher Nolan, behind this science fiction also lies a dangerous fantasy of US colonialism.</p>
<h2>The US saves humanity</h2>
<p>The film is set in the near future, on an earth close to being uninhabitable for humans. In order to produce the necessary food to feed the remaining population, most people have turned to farming. A theme that runs throughout the movie is the dangers of turning away from scientific exploration even in times of great social and economic insecurity – when it may seem irrelevant or politically unfeasible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64754/original/wpttp7tt-1416252242.png?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">Corn’s all that’s left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film presents an impassioned and optimistic vision for humanity to never stop “reaching out to the stars”. As the central character (played by Matthew Mcconaughey) says in an early scene: “humans may have been born on this planet, but we were never meant to die here”. </p>
<p>But despite its seemingly universalist sentiments, the future that Interstellar portrays is ultimately quite parochial and arguably jingoistic. The US does not just lead the mission into space to find a new home; it is the sole country that is involved. While they claim they are trying to save humanity, this appears to mean only those survivors living within America. All its crew members and scientists are American and there is barely any mention of the rest of the world. </p>
<p>The conclusion of the movie reinforces this US-centric viewpoint. After travelling through previously unexplored galaxies and physical dimensions, the protagonist awakens in an American space station. He looks out the window and sees children playing baseball, the country’s quintessential pastime. Everyone speaks English and there is not even a hint that any non-Americans are on board. </p>
<p>The final image is an even starker reminder of the limited nationalist lens used by the filmmakers. It pans overhead to reveal a new human colony next to an American flag.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64752/original/9wvz3j8b-1416251650.png?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">McConaughey and Hathaway on their mission to save humanity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A dangerous American dream</h2>
<p>The film clearly reinforces ideas of American exceptionalism. America alone has the intelligence and courage to survive. The future, as far as humanity is concerned, belongs solely to the US and its citizens.</p>
<p>And the film links this exceptionalism to traditional notions of divine providence. The plot centres on the discovery of a wormhole that a higher intelligence has placed near Saturn so that humans may go forth to find new planets to populate and avoid extinction. Sure, this mysterious “they” ends up being an evolved humanity from the future, but this is more troubling. More than having God bless the US over all other nations, in the 21st century higher beings are actually Americans from the future, leading their compatriots to their privileged fate.</p>
<p>America felt that it had a special right and mission to colonise the whole of what is now the intercontinental USA. In the contemporary period, it has used its moral superiority and divinely given exceptionalism to justify military interventions across the world, from Afghanistan to Iraq. While Interstellar is by no means militaristic, it nevertheless maintains that it is the special and exclusive right of Americans to colonise the galaxy. </p>
<h2>Science fiction or Hollywood fantasy?</h2>
<p>Interstellar is meant to be science fiction. For many it is the rebirth of the genre, following in the hallowed footsteps of such classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. Whether utopian or dystopian, science fiction presents individuals with a view of the future that allows them to re-imagine their contemporary reality. At its best, it signals the potential for new forms of consciousness and society.</p>
<p>The patriotism driving Interstellar reveals that in spite of its use of science, it is at heart a fantasy film. It is not so much challenging the present as strengthening traditional and dangerous American values in a future setting. It takes humans to new galaxies, yet leaves them there living and thinking in the same destructive ways. It seems that while Hollywood can readily dream of a future of intergalactic travel, it cannot imagine a world beyond American exceptionalism and the age old desire for national conquest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bloom 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>
Interstellar has been praised for its attempt to make the “hard science” of astrophysics both accessible and exciting to a popular audience. Through cutting-edge special effects, it takes audiences on…
Peter Bloom, Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Department of People and Organisation, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/33345
2014-10-24T05:39:01Z
2014-10-24T05:39:01Z
Behind the scenes at the start of the Snowden era – Citizenfour is crucial viewing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62650/original/xr6wnc8c-1414074063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Up close and personal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artificial Eye</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Laura Poitras’s much-anticipated <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> is now on general release. A documentary about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the film provides an admirable summary of the issues raised by the beginnings of what might be called the “<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175909/tomgram%3A_laura_poitras_and_tom_engelhardt%2C_the_snowden_reboot/#more">Snowden era</a>,” when the extraordinary revelations of mass surveillance were brought to light. </p>
<p>The film covers the period from Snowden’s initial approach to Poitras in February 2013 to an interview with him in his Moscow exile in May 2014. Poitras provides us with a fly-on-the-wall perspective throughout crucial and tense moments, giving insight into not only the motivations, but also the concerns and fears that surround the leaks and their publication. </p>
<p>We get to know a whistleblower who is articulate and considered in his dealings, and to understand the significant personal risks he took in coming forward. Sitting in a hotel room in Hong Kong with Poitras and journalists Glenn Greenwald and (later) Ewen MacAskill, he calmly explains the pervasive system of mass surveillance that he discovered through his work with the NSA, as well as his justifications for exposing it. </p>
<h2>A new era</h2>
<p>Snowden expresses a deep-felt disillusionment with what he views to be excessive powers of the intelligence agencies following 9/11, and a particular disappointment with president Obama, who he sees as extending rather than curtailing these powers. Snowden is therefore motivated not by hostility towards state power or intelligence agencies per se, but rather by the excessive powers of these agencies in relation to citizens. </p>
<p>Snowden notes a reversal in the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in terms of their ability to hold power to account. This invites one of the most important questions of the film: what, then, are the perceived necessary powers that secret services and intelligence agencies should hold in a contemporary democratic society? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DksIFG3Skb4">Elsewhere</a> Snowden has framed this debate by particularly criticising the move from targeted to mass surveillance. Earlier limits to state power, such as the requirement of a warrant in order to collect data on specific individuals, have been given up to collect all data by everyone at any time.</p>
<p>Yet the film also demonstrates that even a system of “targeted” surveillance is open for abuse: it ends with <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/11/second-leaker-in-us-intelligence-says-glenn-greenwald">a new whistleblower coming forward</a>, revealing that 1.2m people are on the NSA watch-list. With the ability to “target” such vast numbers of people, definitions of “targets” can easily and simply become political tools for maintaining social control. And they’re made even more dangerous by pertaining to some pretence at accountability. </p>
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<h2>Risk and fear</h2>
<p>Citizenfour also tells the story of the risks and challenges that whistleblowers and journalists face in today’s swiftly mutating news environment. The Snowden leaks are exemplary of these contemporary times. Greenwald, in the biggest scoop of his career, brought in the expertise of MacAskill and the editorial team at The Guardian in the lead-up to the publications of the leaks. At the same time, new forms of journalist organisations such as Wikileaks facilitated Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong and his exile in Moscow, and technological activists like Jacob Appelbaum contributed and provided context for several of the leaked publications. </p>
<p>Surrounding the Snowden leaks, therefore, we find a connected network of old, new, radical and traditional media actors: the documentary maker (Poitras), the whistleblower (Snowden), the “advocacy” journalist (Glenn Greenwald), the “traditional” editors (Ewen MacAskill and Alan Rusbridger), and the “hacktivists” (Wikileaks and Jacob Appelbaum) working in conjunction – a vivid example of what media scholar Yochai Benkler has called a “<a href="http://benkler.org/Benkler_Wikileaks_current.pdf">networked fourth estate</a>”. </p>
<p>This is a film that highlights how this networked fourth estate circulates around and intersects with a state that, in the face of damaging revelations, will take extreme measures to try and suppress this information reaching the public. </p>
<p>In fact, this film holds particular significance for a UK audience. Snowden, in his first meeting with MacAskill, casually mentions that the levels of mass surveillance carried out in the UK through the GCHQ programme Tempora are far broader than those by the NSA. And it features the extraordinary footage of staff at the Guardian being forced to destroy computers and files on request of the UK government. Rarely has the question of press freedom today been more graphically illustrated. </p>
<p>This is not to mention that neither Poitras nor Greenwald could be present at the premiere of the film in London following advice by their lawyers that the British Terrorism Act puts them at risk of arrest for their reporting. Both attended the premiere of the film in New York a week earlier. </p>
<p>Although the Snowden leaks continue to play out with a focus on the US, all this stresses some very troubling questions about the UK – not only about the activities of our state agencies, but also the freedoms in place for our press to report on them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lina Dencik receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for the project 'Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society: UK State-Media-Citizen relations after the Snowden leaks.'</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arne Hintz receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council for the project 'Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society: UK State-Media-Citizen relations after the Snowden leaks'.</span></em></p>
Laura Poitras’s much-anticipated Citizenfour is now on general release. A documentary about the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the film provides an admirable summary of the issues raised by the beginnings…
Lina Dencik, Lecturer, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Arne Hintz, Lecturer in Media, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.