Heathers in 2014

Heathers is a time machine. Pop it in and you are transported into a time where guns in school were not hot button issues and teen suicide did not make the news every other week. There wasn't a 24 hour coverage and back story of some kid who shot up his school and there were way more movies to watch. When watching Heathers, I think that everyone's gut reaction is "how were they able to do that?" and "Why aren't there movies like this anymore." The answer is simply... time.

Why haven't we put another school movie on the big screen since Columbine? Why can't we talk about 9/11 without the tagline "never forget?" My theory is that it has to do with the news. We all have a desire to watch these kind of movies and acts. Some strange voyeurism into the face of death that we cannot understand ourselves. In the 80's these were things of fantasy. We were able to make jokes, develop story, and create an interesting connection with main characters that film can lend us. After these events unfolded into reality, the story was switched from fiction movies to news stories. Everyone wants to watch the real thing opposed to the representation, so why watch a movie when you can turn on the news and see surveillance camera footage of Columbine, or a detailed backstory of the Virginia Tech killer.

Whenever one of these tragedies happens, I can just hear the producers at the news agencies jumping for joy because now they have 24 hour coverage of guaranteed ratings boost. They go through detailed history of the killer as well as diagrams, animations, reinterpretations or the actual acts, as well as tons and tons of interviews of people who were there or who maybe lent the killer a pencil one time in 3rd grade.

Heathers is a perfect example of something that hasn't been done in a long time. Making a joke, or rather a satire, out of a very serious issue and putting it in the main stream. The reading suggests that there are some TV shows that try to tackle the same issues that Heathers did but end up feeling like a "Hallmark card factory" and for good reason. None of these TV shows try to make a statement but are just like the news. Knowing that these are hot button issues, they get free advertisement from every blog on the web for their courage to portray bullying as it is. When really all it is is some thin plot wrapped in a happy bow.

One movie that I thought of when thinking about the absence of school shooting movies is The Dirties. This is a movie that follows a kid as he plans a school shooting in order to kill his bullies. He even plans on wearing a shirt that says "We are only here for the bad guys." This does something different because it shows very little of the school shooting. Its all about the preparation this kid goes through and his mindset and how he rationalizes it. This was a very indie movie and although it got very good reviews, it did not get very much exposure. Currently it is on Netflix.

I think Heathers is a great movie and that it tackled some issues that in the 80's were edgy and now they are seemingly off limits. I think we need to go back to an era where we respect art and treat it as such so that we can see creatives tackle issues that are looked down upon. I really want to see a school shooting movie told by Tarantino. Once we take away the need for the details in the news, we can start to deconstruct the events as a whole through fiction.

Hollwood Shuffle

Hollywood shuffle was a very enjoyable movie. The representation of the entertainment industry through the eyes of a minority was both believable and very funny. Although, this humor didn't come alone. It came with a carefully planned message that was just as much for white audiences as it was for blacks.

I think the problems that the main character faces are very real, not only in the 80s when this film was made, but even today. The theme of the movie, I thought, was that your morals trump your dreams. That sometimes your dreams do not seem so important in the grand scheme of things.

The reading focused on an authentic black experience and if the films we watch are portraying it. In my opinion, the answer is no. I think all races, excluding whites succumb to stereotypes that direct audience subconsciously to believe them.

The whole movie reminded me of something that actor Kumail Nanjiani said. In the popular podcast, Harmontow, he is regularly a guest. One episode he talks about his hardships when going to casting calls and being able to not fall into easy stereotypes that Pakistani actors fall into. He recalls stories of going into an audition that his agent wants him to do and getting there and realizing he is sitting with a bunch of minorities auditioning for a role of a wise cracking cab driver. He has no quams with that role per set but when the casting agents tell him to any more "Indian" he then walls out. He said that by perpetuating these stereotypes  on TV and film or its not helping the major problem. Once he stands down, he says that there are a thousand other actors ready to take his place and act however they want them to. He admits that this had set him back in the industry And it made it very difficult to get a job but he says that it is very worth it because his morals were not hindered. It seems to work out for him though because he has a leading role in the hit TV show Silicon Valley.

I think that Hollywood Shuffle was trying to point this out to not only black actors, but the audience that would be watching them. By pointing it out in a major movie, it is making a statement while also poking fun at these ridiculous stereotypes that we have been force fed for years.

Like Kumail said, we can't get past these problems in the industry unless everyone is willing to tackle them head on... And that is a stretch. I think we are far from a point where current audiences, upcoming actors, and studio executives are willing to put away long standing traditions of profit to work together fire a common good. Until that, we will continue to get black thugs, Mexican drug lords, and Pakistani cab drivers.

Just another Vietnam movie?

A rule about writing and art is to write what you know. Your memories and experience turns into passion and accuracy without trying to hard. You can see in the movie Platoon that Oliver Stone had strong memories of Vietnam, for which he served. The whole movie feels like just that, a memory.

War movies, to me, are almost always the same. Good vs. evil, show some fighting, show the barracks, troubled soldiers, career soldiers etc.. Platoon different though. Platoon did not follow character arcs, good vs evil, or even general plot direction. The film is jarring, disorganized and puts you right into the action. The shots are composed where you almost never see the enemy directly and the soldiers are just as confused as you. Things happen in no particular order and fight scenes are drawn out and unnerving.

I think this is what makes Platoon great. As the reading mentions, many Vietnam movies tried to make an accurate war movie about Vietnam but failed with cliches, excessive plots that are hard to follow and borderline propaganda. Stone's memory of Vietnam is vivid and true. The film directly portrays the feeling of war. How war is random, unexciting at moments, and overall extremely scary. The other movies that preceded it tried to have a semblance of a plot and tried to spin the war into something it wasn't.

I generally don't like war movies. I think that is is very hard to sell the idea of war into a cohesive film. Platoon is the exception. Because of Stone's experience, Platoon was scary realistic and is a great reminder of the terrible Vietnam war.

Male and Female Character Arcs

It is hard to look deeply into notions of gender inside movies that are trying to do something different. To me, putting a gun in the hand of a woman, or making a man realize his more sensitive side is not groundbreaking by any means, nor can that be the only redeeming thing about the character. Gender stereotypes have fallen into this black and white area where you are one or the other and by showing sides of the other peeking through the cracks makes you conform.

Strong female leads often fall into the same problem that people had with one dimensional characters like the manic pixie dream girl. Putting a gun into the hand is not the only way to make someone strong. We can have a movie about a weak woman, who has no self confidence, but by making her a real person and picking the battles that we want to see her win, that can make her tough.

I agree with Butler from the reading as he says "Gender does not prescribe our performance; rather, it is performance that ascribes our gender." I think that the gender of the character makes an insanely huge difference in terms of what happens to them, in terms of character arc not so much. Movies do not happen in a vacuum and we take our notions of the outside world with us when watching a movie. That being so, I think that humans at heart all feel the same and have potential to handle obstacles in similar ways. Stereotypes have formed due to social pressures and the circumstantial issues.

I think that Riply falls into a cool category with strong female characters where a lot of the narrative takes place with her trying to be a mother to Newt, yet in the end she still has the standoff. The only problem I had with the movie is that it didnt push either narrative strong enough to necessitate a strong character arc. In her "male" character arc she starts off as a strong model of killing where she has one job, to go in and exterminate yet something has to lighten her up. They teased this with the standoff with the queen where she was going to quell her rampage to spare the young, yet in the end it was all for not. She never had a "female" character arc because she was never passive enough to change into a confident lady. She had a motherly affection for Newt but I don't think it changed her because it was there from the beginning and was there till the end and only affected how she was trying to save her.

The reading talks about how strong female characters become male in they eyes of the press when they pick up guns and kick ass. I think this is very true and I think that the public believe that too. Too many movies are about females following female character arcs and males following male character arcs. When they change, of course we are going to see that subconsciously. This argument is not about what the film did and how the film portrays women and men, it is how the public does. We have black and white characteristics of gender which leaves very little room for growth.

All in all, it was a good movie. The tone and atmosphere of  the alien franchise is really what sells me. Not the fact that a girl shot a gun. I think if this movie wanted to take gender to the next level they would have explored a true genderless being, the android.

Lynch's sexual world

Blue Velvet opens in the American dream, a suburban paradise. White picket fences and roses line every street and the fireman with the dalmatian is always waving at us. What Lynch then does is bring us into the underworld of this paradise, showing us that not only good exists in out world, but evil as well.

Because of the motif that Lynch sets up from the beginning, the evil can be seen as a pack of bugs, squirming underneath the dirt, unmoved by the world above. We often do not see these bugs and they do not see us. They are separate worlds, above and below. And this is how everyone prefers it, even the detective in the beginning is smiling and cheerful as Jeffrey shows him the human ear he found. Nobody wants to see these bugs, besides, what good is the American dream if it is shattered by imperfection. What Lynch then shows us is this imperfection, or the American nightmare.

Jeffrey has a duality about him. He has his foot in both the doors of the American dream and the American nightmare. The nature of the events in the nightmare world are very sexual. Frank is dealing with sexual tendencies that involve Dorothy and Dorothy, longing for any intimacy outside of an abusive one, finds it harder to disconnect the two. We see this in the sex scene between Dorothy and Jeffrey where we see Jeffrey first start to take steps into this dark world of the unknown.

I think it is very important to realize the sexual aspect of the nightmare side of the American dream. Jeffrey, although not a virgin per se, he is entering a new world where events take on different sexual meanings. When sex is first introduced to people, it is very intimidating and has a dreamlike quality, both beautiful and unsettling. We see Jeffrey navigating this world both confused and intrigued and some things do draw him in for more. We see that when he succumbs and hits Dorothy during sex. Although, Dorothy does not represent the evil, she represents a victim of this evil that has trapped her.

I am not saying that this movie is about sex. I don't think that is what Lynch is trying to say. I think that Lynch uses sex and the unknown qualities about it as a metaphor for the dreamlike presence the entire movie has. And it works, the movie is very realistic, yet surreal quality about it. By presenting sex as a metaphor it lets the audience relate because it is something that almost everyone in their lives experiences. He opens up the movie to a surreal experience showing the pure evil lying just underneath the paradise.

Jeffrey returns from this world as a hero, a robin, as seen with the robin near the end with the bug in it's mouth. At first glance it looks like good has won. Looking closer we see that the robin is fake. The good is fake, the bug is still alive. Maybe one evil person is gone but did it create another? Is Jeffrey willing to live in this fake paradise or does the evil draw him underground? I think it is genius to wrap this movie up with an ambiguous ending under the mask of a happy ending. It is fitting for a movie about the evil hiding underneath a fake paradise.

Chicks cannot hold their smoke, dat's what it is.

Ahh yes, The Breakfast Club has spurred much debate in our household on whether it is "good" or not. Realizing that art is 100% subjective we agreed to disagree but I still hold that The Breakfast Club is an influential movie and it has reason to be.

From a story telling standpoint, The Breakfast Club is perfect. It hits everything it sets out to do, without overtelling, or being something its not. The characters start as completely opposite from each other and the direction of the plot is developing and exploring the interaction between them, which the movie makes no effort to hide. There could have been some crisis, like the principle is in danger and they all have to work together to save him. No, the film has them sit in a room and talk. You may say it is boring, but to me, the exploration of these characters is compelling.

One of the main concern I felt was the inaccurate representation of a true teen, as they were all stereotypes. I think stereotypes are insanely bad scriptwriting... if they are left alone. If the point of the character was to introduce a stereotype (a zone of comfort in Campbell's story) and then break that mold, then it is intentional and should be looked at as such. In the second act, they act less and less like they did from beginning, hell they all sat around and smoked together.

I think that The Breakfast Club takes one of the oldest, easiest, and the most effective stories and by throwing in high school students, Hughes makes is so we can all relate. We have seen this story many times, a bunch of misfits and/or different classes are put in a situation where they are forced to spend time with each other. This time spent starts off difficult but usually ends in mutual respect for each other, as they have found out that they are not really that different, they just deal with problems in different ways. We have seen it in war movies, police enforcement movies, and tons of TV shows including Freaks and Geeks, the Inbetweeners, and most importantly Community... but i'll get to that. In Campbell's 12 steps, each of their character arcs start off in a place of comfort. For most this is the easiest ways to deal with the problems that become the point of the arc. In The Breakfast Club's case they fell into stereotypes to deal with their problems.

The kids problems is a big part of the movie and sure you can say that they are in high school, just write it off, forget about it. I can't take that seriously because the development in high school is the biggest part of figuring out who you want to be and how you want to be towards other people. You can see these kids struggling with that too, with Allison being ignored at home and spending the entire movie both alienating herself while simultaneously begging for attention. These kids need some guidance and they sure won't get it from the principle. They get it by realizing that other kids are having the same situations and it is what you make of it and how you deal with these that makes you a good person or not. Maybe you don't want to watch a movie about individualism and expression in hardship, fine, go watch The Rock lift weights and Schwarzenegger blow shit up but don't say it's a better movie.

The ending of the movie is left ambiguous and that is ok, it is intentional, and some of the best movies have ambiguous endings. We see most of them come together in some of the deepest ways, only for it to be fleeting, or not, we don't know. The endgame, to me, is not the point of the movie. Does Bender and Claire get together? Who cares, we know they have changed in some way and now they do what is best, disband and reflect (Campbell's 12th step). If the movie was about them getting together and will they or won't they is teased throughout the whole movie sure maybe we need an answer, but for all of these kids, the ambiguity is what makes them relatable, because they have a lot more life ahead of them and a lot more decisions to make.

Comparing The Breakfast Club to Community is where I get most of my opinion from. The pilot episode of Community draws heavily on the story that Breakfast Club shares, totally opposite people discovering how they can connect with each other. This works so well in television because it is an extremely flexible format with also has a great deal of emotional weight to it. In Community they all start off as basic stereotypes, but if you look at them now, in the 5th season, they all hold some of that same person they were but they had a chance to grow. The thing I love about Community is that it knows the show is about the characters and it gives them a chance to change. The characters aren't the butt of some science joke that is explained by the person put in the show solely to explain science jokes. This is why Community is better than Breakfast Club, in my opinion. Because it simply has more time. 

In short, Breakfast Club is a good movie. Not because it is so famous by all those teenagers, or that it put some famous things into pop culture, but because it knew what it wanted to do with the characters and performed that in a compelling way. 

Sincerely, 

The people who like The Breakfast Club club

Prince stays in the past

The importance of synergy has never been overlooked. I think it not only helps in the promotion of the material or person, but it also gives the product more units to sell. Prince had not only a movie but an album to double his profits. Sure it cost a lot more but in the long run I think it truly makes a difference.

Movies like Purple Rain hold a special place in history. I do not think that they can fully be appreciated without first realizing the culture where it came from e.g. it's hard to enjoy the Michael Jackson video game not knowing anything about Michael Jackson. This is why Purple Rain was different for me, and probably a lot of other students.

I do not know much about Prince. I know maybe one or two singles and I saw him perform at the Super Bowl. Ok... big deal he changed his name to a symbol, pretty awesome move, his songs are kinda catchy... I guess. Prince, as a person, doesn't resonate with me much. Maybe because his style has become outdated or overused by now and he has become more of an icon rather than a current artist. His impact on the music industry, and the media industry in fact is something that I feel thrives more than his fame.

Synergy and the marketing in Big Picture Hollywood is something that is happening in extreme proportions right now. Just last night I saw The Lego Movie, fantastic movie to say the least, but if you look at that as a current model of synergy, then it is doing way more than releasing a single and album and then making a movie. Legos were a building block toy, they now have video games, comics, mobile games, TV shows, music, and now a movie in Hollywood. They are a brand that has permeated almost every medium that is possible to release media on.

I think a brand like Lego is fairly easy to market though, it is a fairly simple idea. Bands on the other hand may have a hard time finding success in movie, let alone video games and anything else. KISS attempted to do it with a fairly successful comic book run and a less successful TV show. Another one that comes to mind is Rock n Roll High School which featured many artists including The Ramones.

I think that because music and performing music is such an abstract form of artistic expression it limits the accessibility of the movie to the general public. Sure everyone could have loved Prince when he was big, but would they love taking an hour and a half vacation into his mind... probably not. This is where Purple Rain lacks not only in the 80's, but now, because we are so far from the culture of Prince, this movie fails to resonate with me.

P.S. Wanna see a music movie by a band that surprisingly holds up? Tommy by The Who is excellent.

The Internet Anxiety

War Games has never been one of my favorites, hell I kind of down right dislike it. The dialogue is forced, every character is two dimensional, and events happen simply because the plot demanded it. But other than that, I am glad it is in this class because it reflects the social anxiety of the 80's concerning the internet. This is increasingly important, because the power and the mystique of the internet is still around today.

The article explains that when War Games was released it created a flurry of news articles and reports on if it could actually happen. So much so that it forced Congress to impose legislative acts regarding the internet. NORAD even had to come out and make a statement informing the public that a system of checks and balances are in place that present a "War Games Scenario."

To a filmmaker, this is the highest praise, starting a discussion about the themes in your movie that actually effect real world issues. The fact that a simple movie about government hacking can cause such a riot shows the publics anxiety about this unknown internet at the time. The internet was fairly new, for the public at least, and we did not know about it's true power. War Games showed the tip of the iceberg of what hackers really can do.

The older general in the movie represented the older generation. He was not embracing of the computer's power and wanted everything to be done the old fashioned way, with human involvement making the decisions, which is how it is always done at NORAD. Lightman and the tech guy at NORAD represented the newer generation. The tech guy showed that computers can take care of human error, and to some extent they can but the internet was in such a premature state that it would be irresponsible to base a system around that. Lightman showed the power of the internet in the hands of the teenager who knows exactly what they wanted to do.

The internet was a huge social anxiety, and I think it still is. The article describes it as a "hacker mystique" and I think that that is a completely accurate term. The fact that hackers have access to bank accounts, plane tickets, school grades, and government database, they can control the world. And when you control all of those, you do not want to be their enemy. The situation in War Games may not be completely possible with how NORAD is set up but it is still probable. And even then, hackers can find many other ways to control the outcome of something.

Today we still have that hacker mystique about us. 4chan with the click of a mouse can take down massive credit card company sites or find the address of any single person in the world. Get on their bad side and you will be in a world of hurt. Because of this, pushes have been trying to be made to get rid of the so called net neutrality, the fact that every piece of information on the internet should be treated the same and therefore the users should not be charged or discriminated based on what content they access. This of course flies in the face of 4chan and they backers of this act have been put on blast, so to speak, on the internet. I'm not sure how much the public fears the internet today, seeing as how it is ingrained into almost every aspect of our lives. I think the people that back acts like SOPA and similar ones are just like the General and fear net neutrality or they are using it as levereage to grab a profit with internet providers.

I am a strong supporter of net neutrality and I think that all information should be free. I understand that many social anxieties come from this debate and that social anxieties have been around since the birth of the internet, and I think they will always be here.

Considering the future: Blade Runner and Her.

The future has always been interpreted in vastly different ways, as it should. Everyone's idea of the future should be different, this is what lets everyone's ideas combine to create the future that we will one day inhabit. From Blade Runner to Back to the Future 2, the future can take radically different forms depending on one person's vision. The reading suggested that the future that Blade Runner took place in is something that we should strive for but I have to disagree, saying that the future from the new movie Her is the one we should be striving for.

In Blade Runner, future LA is a mix between Hong Kong, present day LA, and present day NYC. The mixture of all races, classes, and social statures is very prominent and is shown in the opening street scene. The reading brings up a good quote on how this is like present day LA with the "artificially controlled political chaos." Although I feel that most city planning is centered around this idea, it is mostly shown in Blade Runner how Harrison Ford is pushed and squeezes into a small booth to eat a dinner off the street. The city in Blade Runner feels like NYC because it is built upward. The opening show shows the vastness of the city, much like present day LA, but instead of it being fairly flat, the buildings are much much taller, spitting fire into the sky. The Asian influence is very present also with the all of the billboards and Asian residents.

The reading commends this future for it's mixing of cultures and shopping mall streets, but I don't necessarily think this is a comfortable life. I for one would not want to live there. Maybe it was all the rain, but the city looked very dark, depressed, and polluted by all the factories. I think a much more comfortable, and more realistic future, is the one presented in the new movie Her.

Her takes place in near future LA and draws influence from both present day LA and Shanghai. Future LA is not presented in a high tech way with floating cars, gadgets that solve everything, and a radically different city design. Her just simply shows a realistic future with just some minor differences. The city is more spread out. Unlike Blade Runner, there are an abundance of parks and flat areas that the main characters go to. that doesn't mean that there aren't any huge buildings. Many buildings from Shanghai were added into the city's skyline. The air looked clean also and everything had a slick look but not in a super futuristic way, it still felt comfortable.

I think that with the future, we also bring about new technology and new ideas to fix the problems were are faced with. The future may look bleak now, with problems that seem like there is no solution to but I have hope for the future and my hope is that we will all realize what has to be done. I don't think anyone would pick to live in Blade Runner LA over Her LA and I think that it is this that will save the future.

Blade Runner made choices about the future to further the story and I do not doubt the instances of these at all. A Blade Runner future could happen, there is no doubting that. But idealizing it like the reading does, picking out the small good that comes out of a future that is mostly destructive is counterintuitive to wishing for a future that includes the best of both movies. I have hope for the near future, I just hope it isn't filled with weird androids that look a little like David Bowie... hmm or do I.

AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY GOD CREATED REESES PIECES

The world is filled with stories. Everything we consume is a basic story. From the history class we attend, to the television we watch when we get home. And there is no doubt that stories need to have structure. A beginning and an end, inciting events, etc. Even seemingly plotless movies like Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers still retains at least some basic structure. By realizing how stories are told and why some stories are more popular than others, parallels can be drawn. Joseph Campbell picked up on this and wrote The Hero's Journey, and showed everyone that all stories are more or less the same.

Now, by saying that they are the same I am not saying that they are the same movie over and over again, although that happens from time to time cough Transformers cough. These are basic structure models that movies, and all stories are woven with and a good film takes this structure and makes something unique. There are some exceptions though, because there are good movies that do not follow this structure, some that come to mind are the Mobius Strip-esque movies that Charlie Kaufman writes. Now that we understand that most stories may be similar, we get into E.T. and the Christ Story.

Now Frank Tomasulo makes some good points in this article The Gospel according to Speilberg in E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and I don't always disagree with him. Although I do find that some of his points are a bit of a stretch when saying that E.T. is expressly unique in mirroring the Christ story. Yes, it is a story of separation, trials of initiation, and return, but so is Superman and Harry Potter. The Christ story follows the same structure as The Hero's Journey and by comparing certain story elements that match up seems moot because they both follow the same structure.

I think it is a stretch when Tomasulo calls E.T.'s death a "high-tech crucifixion. Come on, what does that even mean?! In reality it was never fully shown what was killing E.T. but it was implied that it was because our earth could not sustain his life, plus all he ate was candy and that can't be good for you. Again, Tomasulo says there is even an "empty tomb" scene in both narratives. This is just a basic reveal and is not specific to the Christ story. Just because something was there and when someone looked it wasn't there does not mean that their intention was to reference the empty tomb in the Christ story.

Although E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial does hit some of the same plot points as the Christ story, their journey is in fact very different. Jesus was very much a leader in his life and people who followed him blindly did what he said. In E.T., if Elliot was not there E.T. surely would have died and even then he was only seen by few as "godly."

I'm not refuting the fact that there are many parallels between the two narratives. The white clothed, glowing heart image of E.T. is hard to argue. I think that Tomasulo argument was weak because E.T. is not specific enough to the Christ story and he was trying to find parallels that were not there between the two narratives to support his argument. It would have been much more cohesive to read an article about how they both mirrored Joseph Campbell's, The Hero's Journey and showed how they are both similar to that. 

Also, if we are going to worship an alien... it might was well be ALF.