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.