As we discussed on week two, back in 1941, when Sullivan's Travels was produced and exhibited theatrically, the economic effects of the Great Depression were still being felt, and we saw this reality reflected in the movie. At this point in our history, the U.S. had not yet entered World War II, although most of Europe had already taken arms. Britain desperately wanted the United States to join them in their fight against the Nazis, but Congress had passed a series of Neutrality Acts throughout the 1930s that prevented us from directly engaging with the Axis powers. In March of 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was passed, which allowed us to offer material support for the Allied cause without sending any troops to the battle fronts. This was still considered by many Americans to be another European conflict that should be handled by Europeans. Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, a majority of Americans had no interest in sending another generation of young men off to die in foreign combat.
Meanwhile, Charlie Chaplin (who was, of course, British) saw his homeland being bombed by the Germans and made his own plea for the U.S. to get involved, which took the form of a feature-length comedy film. The Great Dictator was released in 1940, and in this movie, Chaplin mercilessly satirizes fascism. He plays a character named Adenoid Hynkle, who is clearly meant to be a caricature of Adolph Hitler; he also plays a Jewish barber who gets mistaken for this dictator later in the film. At its core, this movie is Chaplin's best attempt to persuade American audiences to push their country to get involved in the war and help rid the world of this terrrible evil, a point that he illustrated through humor but then punctuated with straightforward rhetoric. Although there is very little that is funny about the climactic scene in this movie, it remains, in my opinion, one of the most powerful moments of any comedic film before or since... especially if you consider the historical context. Here, Chaplin, in his first ever speaking role, plays the barber who has been mistaken for Hynkle, who has just been asked to give a speech before a crowd of his rabid minions. For the last five minutes of the film, witness Charlie Chaplin, the most famous actor in the world, attempting to use his fame, power and wealth as leverage for attaining world peace. As a human being, I encourage you to watch it.
Most of the movie is intended to be humorous, but the points that it makes are clear: fascism preys on the worst characteristics of humanity and only bad things will come of it. By calling attention to the absurdity of a situation that maintained numerous parallels to what was in fact a very frightening reality, one could argue that Chaplin was able to take some of the power away from Hitler and his supporters through ridicule. At the very least, he was almost certainly able to bring this topic to the forefront of the national discourse. He was, after all, one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world at the time, so people listened to what he had to say, especially when he said it through his movies.
The term auteur gets thrown around a lot in film studies. It essentially means that the director (or some other prominent figure in the film's production) is the "author" of the movie. This is why a Tarantino movie looks like a Tarantino movie, why Tim Burton movies usually feature Johnny Depp with pale skin and a funny voice, and why M. Night Shyamalan movies tend to be terrible. Unfortunately, auteur theory typically fails to account for the hundreds of other people involved in a film's production, all of whom have contributed to its overall artistic vision. Film is, after all, a collaborative art form. If you don't believe me, just watch the end credits of any movie. It's a safe bet that all of those people worked very hard just to get that job in the first place. They are probably very good at what they do.
That said, Chaplin is one of the only canonical filmmakers that I think of as an auteur in the theoretical sense, but only because he was so closely involved in virtually every aspect of making his movies. Not only did he act in them, he also directed, produced and often shot them. Furthermore, Chaplin co-owned United Artists, which was the distribution company that released his films. He also composed the music in his movies and cast all of the roles; in many cases, he was responsible for hair, make-up and wardrobe as well. At this point in his career, he had enough clout in Hollywood that he could make the movies that he wanted to make. With these factors in mind, I think Chaplin presents an interesting window into the notion of filmmaker as singular artist.
In contemporary films, the idea of the director as author tends to be a bit more convoluted, and it is typically used either as a way of marketing a film (It's the new Judd Apatow movie!) or it is used to denote a certain style (It's a Judd Apatow movie, so it's about privileged white men who don't want to grow up!). In any case, regardless of where the underlying message in a film originates, it seems unlikely that any particular theme could appear in a movie without the director's knowledge. Whether the theme in a given film is meant to persuade or simply to speak the language of its intended audience is a matter for debate. In other words, we can't know if the theme of a movie is the filmmaker saying, "This is what you should think," or if the filmmaker is saying, "This is what you already think, so now we're on the same page," but we can safely assume that the director is aware of this particular element of the narrative, regardless of the motive behind it. We must also keep in mind that because there are so many people involved in the production of a movie, seldom are any decisions made by accident. If something appears in a movie, it almost always does so for a specific reason. It is there because someone chose to put it there.
For the sake of example, let's consider the Transformers movies. Though not comedies, most would agree that they are kind of ridiculous. These are big-budget summer blockbusters. Popcorn movies. Most people would say that they are not meant to be taken seriously. After all, each installment in the franchise is fundamentally just a two-and-a-half hour toy commercial with enough shiny things, Maxim models and computer-generated explosions to keep an audience distracted for the duration of the movie. But let's look a little deeper, shall we? Yes, as the advertising slogan claimed, perhaps there is more than meets the eye.
The first Transformers movie, released in 2007, is the story of alien invaders who come to the U.S. to use our machines against us... which is not unlike the rhetoric of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. and taking away American jobs. This was very much a part of the national discourse at the time of this film's production. In a similar respect, Michael Bay's second installment of the franchise, Revenge of the Fallen, is in many ways a critique of Obama's first term in office, particularly in terms of foreign policy. Under what is characterized as weak national leadership, the Autobots have to go in and save the day on our behalf, above any pretense of adhering to international law. When this film was being made, the idea of going to war with Iran because of their nuclear program was very much a part of the news cycle. In the third movie, Sentinel, the alien leader of the Autobots, turns out to be a traitor who wants to open a "space bridge," essentially opening our borders so that the Decepticons can take over. Where on earth does this bridge open, you ask? Downtown Chicago. Draw your own conclusions. It's also probably not a coincidence that the iconography of falling buildings in an American cityscape was used to evoke an emotional response from the audience throughout this sequence. As expensive as these movies are, that seemed pretty cheap. There is also a fourth installment in the franchise, but I couldn't watch the whole thing. I was starting to lose faith in humanity.
My point is that even the most seemingly innocuous movies can and often do have hidden agendas. And why wouldn't they? As we have seen in all of the films we have watched so far, comedies in particular often contain charged political commentary. Idiocracy engaged in the national discourse surrounding the "dumbing down" of America and Team America criticized U.S. foreign policy during the Bush II Presidency. In a similar respect, Modern Times served to spark conversation about industrialization and poverty, and The Yes Men directly engaged in the national debate about corporate ethics and active citizenship. Movies almost always have something more to say about their times than what might appear on the surface. Sometimes you just have to look a little deeper to find these things.
To take another example, I would argue that the 1950 movie Harvey is essentially pointing out the need for maintaining imagination and individuality amidst the suffocating conformity of McCarthy-era U.S. culture. If you've never seen it, you should. As I will discuss in more depth later in the semester, I also think that the astounding number of apocalyptic movies being made today, many of which are comedies, has to do with an unspoken anxiety that a lot of people have about declining standards of living and the waning influence of the United States in world affairs. These movies are not about the end of the world so much as they are about an anxiety about the end of the American Way.
As I hope you can see from these examples, movies can tell us a great deal about the historical moment from which they emerged. Furthermore, we can use box office figures to quantify the degree to which people aligned themselves with the ideologies represented in these films, whether consciously or otherwise. Although marketing certainly plays a factor, particularly in movies today, the number of people who pay to see a movie can tell us something about where their interests lie. With comedies, I think that knowing what they agreed to laugh at is of particular significance. Think about popular comedies you've seen recently. Why do you think they resonated like they did? Is there a particular cultural anxiety that was exploited for comedic effect?Keep these factors in mind as you are watching this week's movies. They are: Being There, Election and Wag the Dog. They are all movies about U.S. politics, and they all engage in the national discourse about this topic in the respective time periods in which they were produced and distributed. Once you have watched at least one of these films and read this week's blog posts for context, please answer the following question:
What parallels do you see between this film and the U.S. political landscape at the time of its production, and in what way did the filmmakers seem to be engaging in a broader discourse about the nature of American politics in that particular historical moment?
As always, there are no wrong answers as long as you do indeed answer the question, but you also have to put some thought, research and proofreading into it. The additional blog posts are meant to serve as starting points in your research, but I encourage you to dig deeper. Basically, I want you to tell me why you think that the film you chose to watch was made when it was, and what insights does this reveal about American culture and some of its views of our political system at that time? As with all screening questions, your response should be at least three hundred words, just because that is the minimum amount of writing you would need to do in order to fully answer the question. You should also include quotes from this week's reading: King, Chapter 3, first half (pg. 93-107).
The following students are exempt from writing responses to the screening question this week, as they are assigned blog posts:
Nicoletta Donofrio - Biography (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker)
Josh Likens - Biography (Keenen Ivory Wayans)
Ian Opaczewski - Biography (Edgar Wright)
Charles Rainbow - Review of Reviews (Hot Fuzz)
Caleb Richardson - Review of Reviews (Airplane!)
Brittany Schmidlin - Review of Reviews (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka)
All assignments are due at 6:00 pm on Sunday, February 14. Email me with any questions (at zsands@bgsu.edu). Enjoy this week's films.
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