Final version

An Analysis of Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

            Arguments about the whether or not film was an art predate the birth of cinema itself, since the debates of whether or not photography was an art were abound before 1890.  Upon the birth of cinema, the arguments about whether or not it was art began almost immediately.

However, one Modernist film theorist argued that the debate over whether or not film was art was ultimately a moot point.  This theorist was Walter Benjamin.  Benjamin was a cultural critic born in Berlin 1892.  Fleeing Germany when the Nazi’s took over, he lived in Paris for a number of years before attempting to escape to Spain when the Nazi’s took France.  He finally took his own life while trying to pass the border into Spain.  Within his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin argues that photography and film have forever changed the conception of art, and so old world arguments about whether or not they are forms of art are pointless as these new forms cannot be critiqued or conceived of in regards to how art once was.  Through the separation of art from theology, location, and point of origin, Benjamin argues that mechanically reproduced art has not only changed what art can be, but has changed the way that the world and society view art as well as changing the world and society themselves.  Though his argument is dated and suffers from a lack of forward thinking in terms of technological advancements now common, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is ultimately a convincing argument about the advancing of art from one stage to another, as well as its effect on society and politics.

            Benjamin’s essay takes place within seventeen separated sections: a preface, fifteen segmented arguments, and an epilogue.  Overall, Benjamin’s argument within the essay regards how the mediums of photography and film have affected society and politics.  He explains that Marx approached the theory of capitalistic production with a forward thinking method that outlined and assumed a future method of capitalism.  “The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, the ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.”[1] Benjamin’s thesis is that photography and film have become the mediums of revolution as they have democratized both culture and politics, doing away with the Fascist sense of “creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery” with other art forms.

            As Benjamin’s argument continues within the first few sections, he outlines how photography and art differ from previous art forms, and how these differences illustrate a progression in art.  Within the first section of the essay, Benjamin writes, “In principle a work of art has always been reproducible.  Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men.”[2] He then begins to outline the different forms that underscore the reproducibility of art, primarily in mechanical forms.  Founding and stamping lead to woodcuts, woodcuts led to engraving and etching before lithography appeared, and lithography finally leads to photography.  The form of photography, Benjamin argues, was a revolutionary invention that will begin to change the world both politically and culturally.  He states, “Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic process”[3].  Later, within the seventh segment of his essay, Benjamin will disagree with critics and pundits who have claimed that photography and film are not art forms.  Or, rather, he will describe how hollow he finds these claims.  “Earlier much futile though had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art.  The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised.”[4] Asking himself that very question, Benjamin explains within his essay that the invention of photography had indeed transformed the entire nature of art in three primary ways: it separated art from cult (or the ritual of theology), it did away with the physical uniqueness of the object, and it created a sense of distance between the photographed subject and the viewer.

            In theorizing the how photography and film have revolutionized the definition of art, Benjamin first outlines what characteristics and tropes older definitions of art had clung to.  In defining these outdated tropes, he refers to the “aura” of art.  In outdated thinking, artwork was defined by its uniqueness, or aura.  Art was art because it was unique, and did not exist in another space or temporality.  This, Benjamin postulates, was because artworks were initially created and utilized for cultic or religious ceremonies or places of worship. “It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from ritual function.” Idols were works of art created in order to worship.  Statues, carvings and engravings (and later paintings) were situated in temples and churches.  These artworks were deemed authentic because they did not exist outside of the ritual of cult or theology. This created an element of tradition that attached itself to the concept and definition of art.  Over time, art was moved away from the concept of theology, and the aura of art instead secularized itself, becoming during the Renaissance what Benjamin refers to as the “secularized cult of beauty.” What was once an object of worship due to its ties to cult and/or theology becomes an object of worship itself due to its authority as a piece of art within modern society.  Art became something to be displayed and worshipped in its own right.  Photography and film, meanwhile, revolutionized this aspect of art and demystified it.  The mechanical reproduction of a piece of art makes any questions of authenticity invalid.  As Benjamin states, “From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense.”[5] Mechanical reproduction of art, or as an artistic medium in itself, removes this ritualistic aura from the definition of art and places the newer artistic mediums of photography and film within the political.

            Another aspect of art revolutionized by photography and film, according to Benjamin (and closely tied to the ritualistic aspect of previous art forms) was the physical and temporal uniqueness of art.  In or to see, appreciate, and consume art, society had to travel to these spaces where the works of art could be found.  Because the artwork must be traveled to, and especially in terms of the cultic or theological underpinnings of its creation and display, artwork held sway over us.  Art pieces had the authority, as they could only appear to us in one space and only within the time in which we were in that space. Photography, meanwhile, has done away with this aspect of art.  Old world definitions of a piece of art’s aura no longer make sense in a world in which the mechanical reproduction of art makes it possible for statues and paintings to be copied and seen around the globe.  Society no longer had to travel to consume art, as photography had democratized the process and brought art to the masses.  This created an element of tradition that attached itself to the concept and definition of art.

            This physical distance between the artwork at society meant that only the privileged classes would be able to travel and consume culture. Benjamin states, “The essentially distant object is the unapproachable one.”[6] In Benjamin’s essay, the distance created by older artistic mediums ultimately serves to disassociate the consumer, or the proletariat in the case of Benjamin’s essay, from reality.  Using the metaphor of a magician compared to a surgeon, Benjamin describes the difference between the painter (magician) and the cameraman (surgeon).  The magician, he claims, keeps a natural distance between himself and the sick person and keeps his authority by doing so.  Alternately, the surgeon actually penetrates the sick person’s body in an attempt to claim their authority.  “Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers…an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment.”[7] Both the physical distance and the metaphorical distance between the painting, sculpture, etc. and society creates a form of authority over society at large.  Meanwhile, photography and film have revolutionized this process by effectively penetrating further into society and brining culture to the masses.

            Benjamin utilizes the fifteen segments of his essay in order to underscore the increasingly politicized placement of photography and film (due to their processes of mechanical reproduction) as new artistic mediums.  However, whereas he espouses the remarkably democratizing elements of photography and film as revolutionary artistic mediums, he makes a further distinction within the epilogue to the essay.  It is within the epilogue that Benjamin describes how this thesis is ultimately useless within a society ruled by Fascism, as well as the reason why this thesis is ultimately rendered moot.  Whereas photography and film offer information to the proletariat within Marxist societies and democratization of culture within capitalistic or consumer societies, they merely render politics aesthetic within Fascist societies.  This is due to the fact that Fascist societies force the masses to their knees in violation.  When mechanically reproduced art offers aesthetics only to politics, this produces war.  Benjamin states that, “If the natural utilization of productive forces is impeded by the property system, the increase in technical devices, in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an unnatural utilization, and this is found in war.”[8] So though the progression of art from ritualistic and cultic idols to the mechanical reproduction of photography and film have indeed revolutionized society by democratizing information and culture, Benjamin finally argues that utilizing these processes by aestheticizing politics can ultimately lead to an inverse of this revolutionary aspect of the mediums.

            There are some points within Benjamin’s thesis that are ultimately unsatisfying, particularly in the context of our own modern society.  The single most questionable concept within Benjamin’s work is his conceptualization of distraction.  “The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention.  The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.” For Benjamin, distraction characterizes perception.  The perception of film is interrupted by editing, shot composition, framing, etc. and servers to counter the contemplation of “auralistic” art so that the viewer critically (though absent-mindedly) views it instead of worshipping it.  This is problematic in our contemporary society, however, as there is a broad spectrum of American cinema that is largely worshipped absent-mindedly instead of critiqued absent-mindedly.  The cult of the film director (as directors such as George Lucas and James Cameron are not without their own “cults”) and event films (such as the hollow and synthetic Avatar) certainly serve as distractions, but not distractions that ultimately bring any sort of perception to the world at large.  Contemporary Hollywood films serve largely as glossy, absent-minded distractions without critical or absent-minded critique.  This also elucidates another issue within Benjamin’s theory, and that has to do with his lack of prognostic accounting for the future.  Though he outlines Marx’s prognostic forecast for the future of capitalism within his preface, Benjamin offers no prognostic thoughts of his own outside of the immediate political climate of the time in which he wrote it.

            That said, however, Benjamin’s argument is ultimately incredibly convincing.  In explaining how photography and film have effectively revolutionized the world’s conception of art, he explicitly states that old world definitions of art are no longer useful.  He very clearly outlines his reasoning by drawing upon the history of artistic creation by reasoning how these mediums disconnected art from the cultic or theological ritual, by separating art from location, and by closing the distance created by auralistic art forms.  His argument is further strengthened by illustrating (though briefly) how mechanical reproduction emerged as a form of evolution, and how previous art forms or movements (such as Dadaism) were also greeted with questions about the veracity of their conceptualizations of art.  Though Benjamin’s writing may seem distracted (ironically) and unfocused, his argument is definitely sound and reinforced by a number of evidential convincing arguments.

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[1] Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Film Theory and Criticism edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). P. 666.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid, 667.

[4] Ibid, P. 673.

[5] Ibid, P. 671.

[6] Ibid, P. 670.

[7] Ibid, P. 678.

[8] Ibid, P. 684.

The "old days"

Sometimes I really miss "filmmaking." I've been thinking about borrowing the camera and seeing what I can do with it now that I'm ten years older than this...

Will Thornton Finds Love from evilprimate on Vimeo.

Two random thoughts...

1.) I've read today that Quentin Tarantino is writing a script for a spaghetti western.  I honestly can't remember the last time I was this excited for a movie.  Probably when I read that Herzog and Lynch were working on  a project together (which I think My Son My Son What Have You Done was supposed to be).

All of Tarantino's films have dealt with tropes popularized by westerns, and particularly the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Reservoir Dogs

Pulp Fiction

Tarantino's films have always had a bit of a western flavor to them...whether they've been dealt with robbers, gangsters, assassins, martial artists, or Nazi killing American soldiers.  His films are replete with western themes and tropes of anti-heroes and gun play.

As an American Indian, I have a problematic relationship with the American western...which I'm sure you can read more about in my previous post.  However, I'm sure that a Tarantino directed, Sergio Leone influenced western will be an amazing experience.  And one that I'm quite frankly very excited about the possibility of.  I cant wait to see how that turns out.

2.) For the last few weeks in my Film Historiography course, we've been watching silent films.  Basically, we've been going over Gunning's theory of the Cinema of Attractions, as well as some of the early narrative-based silent films.  However, we kicked off this course a month ago by watching Chaplin's film Modern Times.

Now, before I get started here, I feel that I should defend myself.  I like Chaplin.  I like Chaplin.  Seriously.  However...

REALLY?  Chaplin?  I mean, of the three silent clowns...I just think he's the most overestimated and the least interesting.  Well, wait...that's not necessarily true.  I don't want to say he's not as interesting as Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd.  I just don't enjoy him as much.  I find him a little overly didactic (preachy, even), sanctimonious, and vaguely insincere.  As for his films...yes I realize that he was incredibly important to film history and form, and I'd never take that away from him.  Do I find him as inventive or sincere as Keaton, or as funny as Lloyd?  Nope.

Take for instance, Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr.  Fast forward this to about 0:56 in.

Now that's a far more inventive use of the film form and the ironies of editing than anything done within a single frame of Chaplin's work.

Also, Keaton and Lloyd were just funnier and more exciting to watch.










I guess when it comes down to it, I just don't like Chaplin's use of repeated and prolonged jokes.  Or maybe I just root for the underdog?  Anyhow, I just find watching Chaplin in my courses to be incredibly boring and non-imaginative at this point.  If you're going to watch Chaplin, try Monsieur Verdoux.  It's by far his most interesting film.

Still really preachy, though.

An extremely rough draft...

The Revolution Will Be Filmed: American Indian Response to the Colonizer’s Rhetoric

When speaking of an American Indian revolution, one must understand that it cannot occur in the same fashion or form that the French, Russian, or Haitian Revolutions took place in. The armed taking of Alcatraz, the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington D.C., and the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee in North Dakota highlight both a rising political consciousness within American Indian communities as well as a rising consciousness of Indian presence within American society at large. However, as evidenced by the outcome of these armed entanglements between the United States government and the American Indian during the 1970s proved, the American Indian was simply far too outnumbered to reclaim their lands in the fashion in which it was taken from them. Instead, American Indian artists began reclaiming their cultural heritage via the arts by responding to the written and visual forms of rhetoric utilized by colonizing forces in claiming the land as their own, as well as offering a counter narrative to the decades of inauthentic and problematic portrayals of the Indian in film since the early days of cinema. Within the last thirty to forty years, a growing number of American Indian filmmakers have artistically responded to the rhetoric of colonizers and their Eurocentric descendants, effectively reclaiming land and historical presence from the colonizer working under the concept of Manifest Destiny.

In establishing the American Indian as the Other, European colonizers and settlers have a very long history of classifying and debasing the American Indian in an attempt to subjugate them. This tendency in the European settlement and colonization of America can be traced as far back as Columbus. “’So tractable, so peacable are these people,’ Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain, ‘that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation…and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners and decorous and praiseworthy.’”[1] Though Columbus indeed compliments the manners of the Taino, he also refers to them as tractable, later claiming that they should be “made to work, sow and do all that is necessary to adopt our ways.”[2] David Spurr has written that, “the classification of indigenous peoples according to their relative complexity of social organization becomes more systematic and articulated as it directly serves the interests of colonial administration.”[3] By classifying the Taino as peaceful and tractable peoples, they are portrayed as unlikely to rise in rebellion and fit for colonization and slavery. Hundreds of years later, debasement along the western frontier in the new country known as the United States of America served to further distance the colonizer from the American Indian Other and facilitate the concept of Manifest Destiny, in which it was God’s will for the Ango-Saxon races to spread across the face of America. At this point in history, the words “decorous” and “praiseworthy” stopped being used in reference to American Indians, and rhetoric such as Philip Sheridan’s statement, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead” became the normative. Spurr has also stated that, “when notions such as ‘civilization’ and ‘reason’ are in danger of being called into question, their definition, as well as their identification with a particular people, is established by pointing to their supposed opposites, to what can be designated as ‘savagery’ or ‘madness.’”[4] American Indian stereotypes were created out of forms of debasement that took hold during this era. These stereotypes and tropes regarding the savage Indian were in face created by the concept of Manifest Destiny. If it is God’s will for the Anglo-Saxon race to spread across the American landscape, then surely any obstacle to this colonization must be evil, uncivilized, and savage. Hence, the savage Indian stereotype was created out the very real resistance performed by western American Indian tribes in the face of colonization.

The birth of the cinema provided a dynamic new way to reinforce the nature of the Indian as Other to new generations of European descendants. Berger has claimed that, “When we see a landscape, we see ourselves in it. If we ‘saw’ the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history.”[5] While the early days of cinema are indeed replete with images of the American Indian as obstacles to the Manifest Destiny of the white race in America (examples such as Griffith’s The Battle of Elderbush Gulch and William F. Cody’s The Indian Wars come to mind), it is really the genre of the American western which illustrates Berger’s argument so well. As a form of American myth building, no other genre is as powerful as the western in terms of placing the Eurocentric colonizer within American landscape as owner while also classifying and debasing the American Indian as Other. John Ford’s film Stagecoach is an excellent example of the visual rhetoric utilized by European descendants in classifying and debasing American Indian while simultaneously romanticizing American colonization and settlement…placing the white man as owner and caretaker of the land. As a group of settlers travel via stagecoach from Arizona to New Mexico (eastbound, interestingly), they are told “You’re all going to be scalped and massacred by that old butcher, Geronimo.” When the Indians do finally appear and begin to chase the stagecoach, Ringo (John Wayne) proves his courage by killing the Indians and saving the coach. “This is all made easier by inept Apaches, who seem incapable of hitting anything except by accident, while every shot fired by a white man not only kills the Indian but knocks his horse to the ground.”[6] These visual metaphors work to reinforce the concepts of classification and debasement. The Indians are classified as less than the white man due to their inability to shoot, and the white man is superior due to not only his superior aim, but also the power of his weapons (strong enough to knock over horses when the Indian riding one is hit by a white man’s bullet). Additionally, they are further debased as their spiritual and political leader Geronimo is referred to as a “butcher.” This newer medium of film, however, also privileges the white race in that these colonizers are shown as the historical owners of the land within the context of American history. The Indian has been vilified and/or removed within/from the historical record via the filmic image popularized by the American western.

Film has increasingly become the form used by American Indians in offering a counter narrative to the rhetoric utilized by colonizing and settling forces. American Indian filmmakers have utilized the written and visual rhetorical tropes of the colonizer in a number of interesting ways. Perhaps the most important and single most apparent, however, is the utilization of the characteristics and tropes of the road film. If the colonizer appropriates the land through the placement of the Eurocentric presence within the context of the landscape historically, then no other genre of film counters these images and tropes as well as the road film does. Though the general format of the road movie can differ greatly from film to film, and from one culture of origin to another culture, the genre has a specific set of conventions that make it immediately identifiable as a road movie. “The genre of the road movie explores the ‘borders’ (the status quo conventions) of American society. Often from a culturally critical perspective, the road movie asks, What does it mean to exceed the boundaries, to transgress the limits, of American society?”[7] In order to answer this question, the American road movie focuses on the journey of the individual or the couple (and occasionally the collective) while on the road and traveling through American landscapes and communities. Since 1987, three films stand out in their use of the road film genre in telling an American Indian story, two of which were written and directed by American Indian filmmakers. These films are Powwow Highway, Smoke Signals, and the recent (as yet unreleased film) Barking Water. Each of these films employs the genre conventions of the road movie, however, they also operate within the genre in a way specific to the American Indian filmmaker offering a counter narrative to the rhetoric of the colonizer and the colonizer’s gaze. Each of these films portrays a duo of American Indian traversing through the American landscape, and are replete with landscape shots in a film telling uniquely American Indian stories. By placing the modern American Indian within the landscape of modern America, these filmmakers are in essence not only reclaiming a filmic history in which their race has been vilified and then forgotten, but is also making a visual claim to the land by having their characters intimately tied to it.

These films also call into question the written and spoken rhetoric of the European colonizer by making either the statement itself ridiculous or by calling into question the character of those who have made or have been part of the colonizer’s rhetoric. Instead of the uncivilized “bucher” that simply halts the development of the west…an obstacle to the Manifest Destiny of European settlers…the Indians within these three films are modern, intelligent, and civilized. This alteration of the normative portrayal of the American Indian in cinema effectively flips Spurr’s conception of debasement. Since the Indian is portrayed as a member of civilized society, the European descendant within society suddenly becomes barbaric. While not every white character is vilified within these films, this liars, cheats, racsists, and the ignorant white characters that illustrate the centuries old tenements of colonial rhetoric are vilified. The two cowboys who steal Thomas and Victor’s seats in Smoke Signals, the racist car dealer and stereo salesman in Powwow Highway, and the ignorant (but ultimately friendly) farmer in Barking Water all stand in comparison to the praiseworthy and decorous manners of the American Indian characters

While many revolutions have indeed been televised, the American Indian revolution has been quietly filmed and is making itself heard and known through the works of American Indian filmmakers and actors. Centuries of colonial rhetoric went by without response. Armed conflicts during the 60s and 70s went nowhere quickly, as the descendants of the colonizer mediated them. However, this filmic response to the colonizer’s rhetoric is the most interesting, and possibly the most solid and sustainable revolution that could be hoped for. This theory deserves much more intense focus and research; however, I do believe that a sustained study of American Indian cinema provides enough response to the colonizers rhetoric and gaze to be defined as revolution.

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[1] Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Henry Holt and Company LLC, 2000). P. 1.

[2] Ibid

[3] Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993). P. 68.

[4] Ibid. P. 76.

[5] Berger, John. Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1977). P. 11.

[6] Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). P. 54.

[7] Laderman, David. Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). P. 2.

Okay, so yeah...I'm trying this again.

It's been some time...I'm trying this again.

I've been inspired by my good friend Katie. Katie, along with her friend Andrea, has created a blog called Trailer Made. Katie and Andrea will be posting trailers (new and old, popular and obscure) while running commentaries on them. I look forward to following it, and you should do the same. Check it out!

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So, one of the things that I love the most about the cinema is the way that connections can be made between two different films. The French New Wave directors were famous for citing American films and filmmakers like Ford, Hitchcock (not an American, but worked within the American studio system), and Minnelli. I love seeing when an older film is cited, but I love even more when the connection seems so tenuous that at first it takes me a moment to realize, "Hey! I've seen this..."

Case in point:

So, Night of the Hunter is one of my desert island films. Or time capsule films. However you would rank your movies (since I don't believe in favorites), Night of the Hunter is up there for me. It's a chilling movie. However, it's also incredibly unique. It fits no formula that I was familiar with before seeing it, and is an absolutely beautiful film that calls upon a expressionistic style.

The scene above is one that stands out in a film full of stand out scenes. Robert Mitchum (who I had thought was overly campy when I saw the film for the first time) is amazing in his intensity. If you watch him...you can see the cold blooded killer lying in wait under the guise of a priest. What's even scarier about his character...and you can see it in the video...is that he feels absolutely justified and sanctimonious in his actions. He's going to try to kill those kids, and he feels that he's justified.

Now...

Amazing, right? Updated. Do the Right Thing was released in the summer of 1989. That's thirty-four years after Night of the Hunter. I love the inclusion of the "story of left hand - right hand" here. It takes on an entirely new meaning within Spike Lee's film. What Mitchum had made chilling through his lack of sincerity of belief in the story is suddenly made poignant by Bill Nunn here. What was unsettling is suddenly hopeful...even though Radio Raheem will be killed and Do the Right Thing ends leaving the audience in a moral or ethical quandary (kind of), there's nothing insincere about Bill Nunn's performance.

Anyhow, I just love these moments when cinema cites cinema, and is able to utilize such a similar piece of dialogue in two separate yet connected ways.

Friday the 13th

Well, I don't quite know how to start this review.  If I just come out and say that Friday the 13th is a bad movie, I'm sure you'll instantly roll your eyes and sigh to yourself while thinking "yeah, Eddie...duh." However, no matter how much I try to tell you that the movie is utterly worthless and put together by people who just don't seem to give a damn, you'll never understand the sheer boredom that I felt at about 12:45am when I realized that I still had an hour to go.

Friday the 13th fails on just about every level.  The storyline sucks, the acting is wooden, the effects are questionable,  the photography is grainy and shaky, and finally the direction is just plain terrible.  

This remake starts out directly at the end of the first Friday the 13th.  It's 1980, and Mrs. Voorhees has been killing teenagers who she feels are responsible for her son Jason's death.  In the first few seconds of the remake, we see just how much she's lost her head (...sorry...).  The film picks up in present day when a few campers are traipsing around Crystal Lake looking for a huge patch of marijuana.  Unfortunately, they run afoul of Jason, and the twenty minute sequence is about the only decent part of the movie.

Soon enough, we're introduced to a new group of twenty-somethings.  We instantly identify with Jenna (Danielle Panabaker), if only because she's the only character given any amount of screen time.  Yes, there were other campers with her, but they're obviously red shirts meant for the slaughter.  I didn't even realize that there were three females in this group until close to the end of the film.  Jenna runs across Clay (Jared Padalecki) who is searching for his sister, who looks suspiciously like one of the campers from the beginning.  

Well, you can pretty much guess where it goes from there.  The campers get to their enormous cabin (I can't really call them campers...I guess partiers is a more appropriate term) and Jason begins to pick them off one by one while Clay searches for his sister and Jenna falls for Clay.

The movie has a host of problems.  It definitely suffers from Stupid Character Syndrome, where the movie's characters do the dumbest thing possible because it serves the script and allows for another kill scene.  I couldn't tell one character from the other, and after about twenty minutes, I didn't care.  For instance, I didn't know until the film was almost over that Jenna had TWO female friends with her.  I couldn't tell because they weren't characters.  They were nameless women who existed to flash their bare breasts and then get a machete through the head.

"Hey!  Hey, you!  Have you seen an arrow?  No?  Huh.  Strange.  Hey!  Come closer!  No, but for real, come over to the dock!  I want to tell you something!

I've mentioned that the effects are questionable.  They're all boring.  I've never seen a slasher movie with so little blood.  Listen, I'm not a very violent person, but the Friday the 13th series is kind of known and appreciated for it's violent and inventive kill scenes.  They're not the goriest movies, but they show quite a bit of blood.  I really expected them to ramp up that aspect, and was both relieved and a little disappointed when I noticed the lack of blood or gore in the movie.  What gore is in the movie...well, it's more minimal than most movies of this sort. 

The camera work is another huge problem with the film.  I understand that shaky cam is becoming more and more prevalent, but it seems that no one can really do it right yet.  It's certainly not done well here.  The camera shakes so much that I half expected Jason Bourne to crash through the window and save the day.  Horror is such a visceral genre (film itself being visceral as well) that I can't imagine what they were thinking when they shot this movie.

"Hey!  Let's not let our audience know what's going on and who's dead!"

I'm not certain how this is a remake since it deviates pretty wildly from any Friday film that I've seen.  As a matter of fact, this could have been called Friday the 13th 11: Return to Crystal Lake, and it would have fit in perfectly with the rest of the films.  I suppose what makes this film different is that Jason has strung lights, alarms and traps throughout the woods of Crystal Lake.  Oh, and he's an excellent athlete, as his childhood trophies show us.  Also, he has a bit of a "creepy serial killer keeping the girl in the basement" thing going on.  

Finally...it's not scary.  It's absolutely not scary.  Listen, I bite my fingernails.  It's a disgusting habit that I'm trying to break.  The more nervous I am, the more pain my fingers will be in the next day.  Well, when I wake up tomorrow I'm going to feel just dandy...because there's nothing scary, stressful, or exciting about this movie.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's missing the gravitas that Kevin Bacon brought to the original.

Friday the 13th is about as boring a movie as you can imagine...which is just about the most damning thing that I can say about it.  A horror movie shouldn't bore you.  I can't say that I recommend the movie to anyone.  I wouldn't even recommend that horror fans go to see it.  Instead of seeing this movie in a theater tomorrow...just turn on the television.  I'm sure that at least one (if not several) of the original series will be on cable t.v. tonight (I'm looking at you, USA Network).  It's a safer bet, and you won't spend any money.

Perhaps Jason X will be on.

Goin' to Heaven on a Mule

I'm really fascinated by racial representation in film.  This is probably due to the fact that I'm an American Indian who has constantly been somewhat irked by the representation of my race in the industry that I love so much.

I'm currently taking a course called Multi-Cultural Perspectives in Cinema: The Musical. Recently we watched a film in class called Wonder Bar (1934).  Wonder Bar was directed by Lloyd Bacon, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, and starred Al Jolson.

The film details the events that take place one night at the titular Wonder Bar.  The bar is filled with people from a dozen different backgrounds, ethnicity, and races (though, importantly, there are no black people at the bar).  Two drunk American businessmen are trying to cheat on their uptight wives, while the wives are trying to cheat on their drunk husbands.  A Frenchmen who has lost all of his money is blowing the remainder of his money away as he plans on committing suicide that night.  The Spanish dancer Inez is in love with her gigolo dance partner, who is planning on running away with another married woman that night...if he can sell her stolen merchandise.  All the while, the proprietor of Wonder Bar...Al Wonder (Al Jolson)...runs the show, poking and teasing at the French, Chinese, Russian and homosexual employees and patrons.

Oh yeah!  Keep in mind that it's a musical.  A comedic musical.  Why...here's  sample of a musical number from the film...

Now, it's a bit manipulative for me to show this to you without you having seen the film and understanding the context.  As I've explained, just about every race and ethnicity in the film gets poked at.  As indefensible as it may seem, it IS possible to view this as a satire of common cliches and representations of African Americans.  I'd even make the argument that...if that is indeed what is going on here...it's no different from The Chapelle Show or South Park.  

However, it's seriously the most extreme version of the "ribbing" races, ethnicity and sexualities receive in this film.  Viewing the film this way is also problematic because of how large a success the film was.  You can certainly feel the influence of Wonder Bar in the following video.

I suspect that Warner Bros. was simply trying to capitalize on the success of Wonder Bar with this cartoon.  The problem is that an entire generation of children watched this cartoon on a movie screen.  It's very troubling when you consider what attitudes this cartoon reinforces. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of racism is the utter thoughtlessness, which is perfectly captured in this cartoon.

See how problematic it is to view Wonder Bar as satire?  If you've seen the entirety of the Al Jolson black face scene in Wonder Bar you can tell how much it influenced this cartoon. However, there's nothing satirical in this cartoon.  This cartoon is replete with the attitude of simply not caring what the black community thought of it.  Even if you believe this to be satire and not blatantly racist (which I will disagree with you on), satire of racial relations coming from the race in the majority with all of the power seems completely insincere.  

The fact that it's based on the popularity of Wonder Bar brings that film to a questionable standing as well.  I still haven't decided whether or not I believe this film to be satire.  It is, however, a fascinating case for a study of racial relations in cinema.

They're fascinating to watch, and I'd love to hear what anyone else thought of them.  Though, remember that the scene by itself is taken out of context when not watched with the entire film (which is impossible to find).  I defy you, however, to not realize just how influential the cinema can be.