Sunday 28 January 2007
Sunday
I am fitfully flexing my movie muscles for the onslaught of this coming week - five films in five days. I'm still not sure if I can do it, but I will try. I've warmed myself up with three movies this weekend, but instead of reviewing them I'm going to talk about bullying in the American media. What do I mean? Well, I mean the television series Friends and films such as The Faculty. My problem is that whilst such productions such as these at first seem to embrace 'difference', they in fact only end up repressing them. It's something that occurs throughout American cinema as the lone believer in some thing or other is at first ostracised and then believed. The geek or loser is proud of his difference, and hates everyone else, and we as the audience are encouraged to hate them too. But by the end of the film this character is believed and loved by everyone. Even Napoleon Dynamite ends in this way, quite disappointingly. It seems all they really wanted was for everyone to like them, and to be accepted. Only in very rare examples, such as the excellent Brick, does the main solitary character not become popular at the end. In Friends outsiders are simply not allowed in to the group of six. Anyone else's minute weaknesses are exploited and ridiculed. Intermarrying is the only real way for them to be happy, because they hate everything outside of themselves. As a viewer you are made to feel part of the group, but the experience for anyone outside of this must be horrific. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it.
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2 comments:
Perhaps you are, but...
The essential problem for a lot of these kind of movies is that the writer feels like the main character needs to change for there to be a story. This of course is usually true. A change in the main character and the arc of that occurring are the staples of most storymaking. However in these cases this inevitably leads to a situation where the main character starts off weird and then becomes more normal and then the group accept them "for who they are". But that isn't who they are, they have adapted to the groups perceived ideas of normality. There's something essentially conformist about American cinema that's not quite willing to allow the weirdness to survive. Even Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball ends up just being Steve by the end - quite sad.
If I have to watch another film where the geeky girl who is basically an incredibly attractive movie actress who has simply got her hair up and is wearing glasses (maybe even is wearing braces) and who the man won't look at until she suddenly shakes out her hair and removes her glasses (I don't know what she does with her braces) and then suddenly the man falls in love with her I'll throw something at the screen!
Why does the geek have to change each time? The guy should learn he's being an idiot for not looking beyond the superficial surely.
Perhaps the Farrely brothers are the only ones that get it right? I haven't seen Shallow Hal, but I guess it deals with this properly. The guy here is seeing the beauty within. But what happens at the end? Who can say.
Yes, I think a change is like fruit - a staple diet for any story line that wants to live healthfully. However, I believe it can come before the film starts, during, or after it's finished. The latter is the genius of a film like Manhattan where only as the movie is ending is Isaac (?) thinking about change.
That doesn't, as you say, mean people have to conform, which they normally do in American cinema. Steve the Pirate is a great example. Films like Spider-man are almost as bad. Everyone dislikes his civilian persona, but he feels justified because everyone loves his superhero self.
In a way, every American loser film is about the revolution: the minority overwhelms the majority. But the problem is that it then becomes the majority that it hated in the first place.
I have seen Shallow Hal, but I can't quite remember what the ending is. I think he does come to love her for what she is, but I remember not being very satisfied with this. I think they do undermine it somehow. Not sure.
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