Deeper meaning in Popular Films (Unboxed Con Air spoilers)

Cafe Society
21

Wendell, I have to come in on even’s side on this one. New York City was seen as an ungovernable hellhole by most of the country throughout the 1970s. (Remember the famous headline: “Ford to NYC: Drop Dead”?) The race riots of the late '60s was probably the immediate trigger (though, as you note, the flight to the suburbs had been going on for over a decade at that point), and helped make a lot of big, older cities (particularly in the Northeast and Old Northwest) seem dark and unpleasant to the mass of Americans (who, as you noted, were primarily suburban at that time). The events of the '70s didn’t make those cities seem any more pleasant or homey to middle America, and, as always, New York is the quintessential American city.

You seem to be yelling at even for not adequately citing something, but the point that Americans were “afraid of the big cities” (and New York in particular) in the '70s and '80s is not controversial. And the fact that movies reflected that view is also not generally in dispute. For other, somewhat similar, views, look at the early films of Martin Scorcese (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver) and such films by others as Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. Escape from New York was a bit later, but it was a work of a younger filmmaker, and was also the time’s equivalent of the big-budget popcorn movie (which we would expect to follow such trends a few years later, rather than breaking new ground).

even’s analysis of the revolt against the suburbs is harder to cite, but there certainly has been a similar backlash, in many intellectual areas. Witness the growth of the many planned communities (such as Disney’s famous Celebration), which have been specifically designed to have smaller lot sizes and mixed light-industrial/retail/residential development, exactly to counter what have been perceived as the weaknesses of the traditional suburban model.

He might not be citing specific moments from those movies to buttress those arguments, but those are more structural concerns to begin with – the choice of why New York or LA to begin with. The other answer to that question, of course, is that they are the two most famous, and immediately identifiable, American cities – and that they do seem to stand in opposition to each other. No one’s going to be excited about Escape from Des Moines.

I also submit that you’re trying to say to even “only a really really smart guy, who knows a whole vast host of things such as myself can possibly hope to make any value judgments about anything.” I don’t think that’s at all justified by even thoughful, nuanced, full-of-specifics OP in this thread. Someone’s grandma might need to learn how to suck eggs here, but I don’t believe it’s even’s.

22

In the other thread,you popped in to say that everything in a movie is there for a reason and I answered that that sure was right, but it didn’t mean that there was a purpose.

As you apply your film school and movie making as authority here, I’m gonna use age.

You see, I went through the same phase 20 years ago, when I took a film class. And while I didn’t make a film, I got to be a “asst. key grip” in a couple of productions, which mostly entailed driving the van with equipment and supervising a steady flow of fresh coffee. But my, did we students look for meaning in everything. We saw all the greats, which are supposed to educate us. It was the semiotic of film, mis-en-scene, auteur, POV, scriptswriter vs. producers, gender perspective, the whole nine yards.

I couldn’t go to the movies without checking my watch for the inevitable plot twist around 25 minutes.

Finally, it became like the auditors in Terry Pratchett novells, who grind up paintings, looking for beauty.

So I made an effort to see things for what they are, instead of trying to deconstruct them. Most filmmakers aren’t that smart and it’s a process of collaboration. I prefer to go with Occam’s razor and follow the money in most cases. To think that there are hidden meanings and agendas is saying that too many people are involved in the conspiracy.

Sometimes the allegory is plain in sight, not trying to be half seen. If it’s not, I suspect that all the bruhaha that ensues is just film students who have od’d on their own intelectual debates late at night over red wine, intoxicated at how smart they are at deconstructing.

So, most of the time, a movie is just a movie. It’s a scriptwriter or director who has a story to tell. And most of the time, the whole story can be summed up in a single sentence. Many times, there isn’t even that much. A movie is a vehicle for a star and the marketing department, written by a commite and squeezed dry by focud groups at test screenings.

So even if everything on the screen is there for a reason, the microphone boom in the upper right hand corner isn’t there for a purpose, John Malkovich isn’t playing Cyrus for any deeper reason than cashing a pay check, so he can continue living comfortably in France and the militant black guy is just the way he is because of lazy writing, at worst perpeptuating a stereotype, but probably not as part of a plan to indoctrinate the masses.

I tend to prefer good tv nowadays. With shows like Bab5 and Buffy, the writers/producers have much more time to flesh out the characters and work on the back story. I find that character driven works tend to be more interesting than plot driven, and when a movie is plot driven, it almost always lack in character development. There simply isn’t time to do more than sketch outlines of characters, which then, by default, become shallow sterotypes.

Another thing is that movies are a very emotional media. If I have to analyze a movie to figure out if it was to my liking or not, then it’s just failing. A good movie should hit me in the gut, bypassing the brain. The way to do that for me is to have characters which I care about. If they aren’t there, then it’s gonna be a waste of my time.

I know I’m comming across as condescending and if I look back at myself when I was in film school, I’d blow myself off as a stuffy old fart. The good thing about getting older, though, is gaining perspective. I didn’t grow up to be a film maker, but a journalist, and I’ve been watching movies professionally and semi professionally for over 20 years now as an on and off reviewer.
And when I look back at that young punk in film school who sneers at me, I just shrug and think: “You’ll grow up.”

23

Here’s what I think Sven is trying to do, and I think it’s a good thing: his analysis tries to articulate the presuppositions which must be bought in order for a person to find the movie coherent and/or entertaining.

He’s not trying to say “this is what the people who made the movie are trying to tell us.” He’s saying “here is what we must assume about the world we live in in order to find the movie meaningful.”

Something like that.

Does that sound right Sven?

-FrL

24

(Above, by “meaningful”, I don’t mean “deep.” I just mean “coherent as a story” or something like that.)

-FrL

25

Frylock, sven has boobs. :wally

26

Yeah, well, so do I.

27

Sorry, I thought “Sven” was a guy’s name… My mistake…

-FrL-

28

I don’t think anyone actually expressed that opinion. People did not agree with (or did not feel there was sufficient support for) spoke-'s claims about Brad Bird’s intent; that doesn’t mean they think Bird did not have any particular intent when making the film.

*How can you know that what you think you see “shining through” is an accurate reflection of the filmmaker’s worldview? As the lawyers know, it ain’t easy to prove intent. People misunderstand each other’s meanings all the time, even in media much clearer and more direct than fictional feature films.

I do agree that some casual filmgoers make the mistake of thinking that movies are more like real life than they are, and that things happen in movies for no reason. They don’t attribute any significance to things like character names, the color of the costumes, or the hero’s three-line conversation with a shop clerk, because in real life these things usually aren’t important to us. But in a movie these things happen for a reason. Someone made a decision to include them.

However, as The Gaspode says, there can be reasons that don’t reflect any purpose – or at least not any purpose beyond “That will look good” or “That will fit the budget”. Or there may be reasons of purely personal significance that no outsider could guess, like naming a character after a relative or old friend.

This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with deconstructing films, even if they are just “pop fluff”. It doesn’t mean that seeing meaning in places where perhaps none was intended is foolish. What is foolish is claiming to be able to read people’s minds just by watching a movie they made.

29

The question isn’t really “What is the filmmaker saying” but rather “What does the film say?” IMO anyway.

-FrL-

30

It would have taken me five paragraphs to say that half as effectively.

31

G.B.H. Hornswoggler writes:

> I also submit that you’re trying to say to even “only a really really smart guy,
> who knows a whole vast host of things such as myself can possibly hope to
> make any value judgments about anything.”

I said no such thing. I don’t remotely claim to be able to make the kind of film criticism that even sven is trying to do. Furthermore, what she is doing is not making value judgments. If what she was doing was merely noticing things in the film and then declaring whether the film was artistically good or bad, I would have nothing to say about her methods. What she is doing though is making objective statements, not value judgments, which can be checked against established facts. What she is trying to do is amateur sociology. She’s trying to make big generalizations about American society while only looking at a few movies. This is an unfortunately common practice, but it’s not a sound way to investigate American society and it’s not a relevant way to criticize a film.

Furthermore, look at these two sentences from her post:

> But in the last twenty years, the suburbs with their big-box stores and
> increasing sprawl have become the new face of facelessness. Our cities are
> becoming depopulated and full of vacant lots and empty buidlings.

She hasn’t checked her facts here. The height of the depopulation of the cities didn’t happen during the last twenty years. The height of cities emptying out and becoming shabby in their downtowns was thirty years ago. In the last twenty years, there has actually been an upgrading of the city centers and a movement of more well-off residents into them.

It’s not that there isn’t sort of, kind of, some validity to the statements that she maeks in her analyses of films. I can sort of, kind of, see the contrast she makes between Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. You know, that’s what we do here on the SDMB - we ask for cites for statements that people make. You can’t just say that her contrast between the two films is just a value judgment and thus needs no citation. She’s making some objective statements that can be checked out.

> For other, somewhat similar, views, look at the early films of Martin Scorcese
> (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver) and such films by others as Serpico and Dog Day
> Afternoon. Escape from New York was a bit later, but it was a work of a younger
> filmmaker

Martin Scorsese is only a little more than five years older than John Carpenter. It’s not as though they were a different generation.

32

Hey, Wendall, I’m sorry if I stepped on your pet subject here- but it really is an issue you ought to bring up with Daniel Lazare author of America’s Undeclared War, the book whose name I was finally able to dig up and properly cite. I was giving an example of an analysis of a movie, not showcasing my still-formative knowledge of urban planning. I should have put up that cite in the first place, and I apologize.

As far as filmmaker’s intention vs. other factors…I think it’s a bit of both.

Film is a language that is forming in front of our eyes. When they made the first film, they were just showing off the neat technology. The filmed a train because they didn’t have any better ideas. It took a while for them to figure out the seemingly obvious fact that you could use film to tell stories. The idea that you could cut between two seperate locations and have them percieved as one had to actually be discovered, by Lev Kulishov, a Soviet filmmaker who did a lot of experimentation to try to figure out how to use this new medium for the Soviet Union’s purposes most effectively. This sort of thing is still going on today. Twenty years ago, jump cuts were fairly rare and tended to jar the viewer out of the story. Now we are used to them and can “read” a jump cut just as well as anything else.

Characters and stereotypes are part of this language as well…as are genres, plot lines, moods, lighting schemes, pacing…everything. Old things die out or go underground (say, the Tragic Mullatto) and new ones arise (say, the Magical Black Man). The best filmmakers use this language to convey something. But even when filmmakers are just throwing around undeveloped characters in well-trod ground, there is something to be gleaned from why it’s those undeveloped characters on that well-trod ground. It may be something about the filmmaker, the times, the audience, the economic conditions surrounding the production (the ways that the economics of the studio system affected what films were made is facinating)…

For example, every person who begins film school does one of two things. They try to make a “walking film” where a person (usually a guy) walks down the street calmly while all this crazy stuff happens around him. Or they try to make a movie that begins in a dark room with a ringing alarm. I’m not sure why these are the primary film student urges, but I think somewhere along the line “ringing alarm” became shorthand for “beginnning of movie” and “guy walking down street” became shorthand for “just the kind of crazy ironic deep film I want to make!”. Young filmmakers beging by wanting to tell their stories in the cinematic shorthand they’ve been immersed in when they were kids. Hopefully they learn to look past these obvious firm impulses and figure out how to use the cinematic language more like Nabokov than a ninth grader writing about what she did last summer.

Most people that get to the point of directing commericial releases are pretty well versed in this. They may use shorthand, but they are using it for a reason. This reason may be that it appeals to their audience, but that just opens up questions- what is appealing to the audience and why? What is so satisfying about the down-home working-stiff action hero?

Thats what we ought to be using our heads and our critical thinking skills to figure out, rather than sticking our fingers in our ears and going “la la la pop culture means nothing”.

33

Probably just that more people can relate to a protagonist who’s a working class hero, than a Paris Hilton.

34

I wouldn’t say the filmmaker’s intent is irrelevant, but you’re right. We’re not watching the filmmaker’s intent, we’re watching the movie!

I haven’t noticed anyone here doing that. Just because people disagree with your interpretation of a film or think that it does not truly reflect the writer/director’s intent doesn’t mean they think pop culture is meaningless.

35

I have enjoyed reading this thread, (all in one go) and will now join in.

I can agree with much of what has been written by many dopers, especially Sven as a moment of screen time in a movie like Con Air has to be justified. However…
I would like to skew the discussion slightly.

Even Sven talks about meaning, ie that nothing appears in movies without it having meaning ascribed; psychotherapists look at everything in this way and it is my belief that this world view is very seductive; that the search for meaning is a search for power but that the contrary is true. That the acceptance of not knowing is emancipating. Or as William Hurt’s character in ‘The Big Chill’ says ‘sometimes you have to let art flow over you’ (This is only funny if you know the trashy movie on TV he’s referring to).

Now, on the issue that everything means something, and that meaning can be ascribed to those things, I’d like (with the greatest of respect and in the purpose of illustrating my point that it’s possible to lose the wood for the trees) to point out some spelling mistakes in Even Sven’s OP.

Sven repeatedely mis-spells guard as ‘gaurd’ (Jeez that was hard to do!) What might this mean? A mistrust of authority? An antipathy to the state? A uniform fetish that prohibits thinking? A subconcious connection to ‘gourd’, as being a recepticle or vehicle? Dunno.

Sven spells ‘vulnerable’ (in reference to the female ‘gourd’) as ‘venerable’ a word that is used to signify wisdom. What might this mean?

And what about ‘soilder’?

All of these things mean something!

In my case, my jumping in has 14 levels of meaning; level 1 of which is crap british telly and level 2 is good australian wine. Why didn’t I capitalize the A in Australian? This must mean something.

I am told in the course of this thread that Sven has boobies, I took this to be a reference to the spelling mistakes and not an assumption of gender; what does it mean that I did that?

BTW, I haven’t read the Incredibles thread as I havent seen the movie.

With much love,

MiM

36

Nifty suits? Are you being facetious or obtuse? If fast editing and sly plot twists are all you need to be slick, then I suppose you would classify Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels and Killing Zoe as slick. I would not. I tend to consider slick the opposite of gritty.

As an example of the difference using two films by David Fincher starring Brad Pitt, where Se7en is slick, Fight Club is gritty. Put another way, if Fight Club is slick, then what is Ocean’s Eleven? Teflon?

Are you assuming that is how many people interpreted it, or have you known or read about people who actually did? Because this sounds like conjecture to me.

I take it you haven’t seen Kalifornia yet. You should check it out.

Those must be those same guys who want to start their own Fight Clubs.

I disagree almost entirely with your deconstruction of Fight Club. But that’s the beauty of deconstruction; being opinions, everybody can come up with whatever one works for them.

37

That’s kind of funny–I would have said Se7en was gritty and Fight Club was slick.

!?!

We must be using different dictionaries… :smack: :stuck_out_tongue:

-FrL-

38

imagery is the strongest mark of the feature film. so if you’re going to critique the feature film in writing, you must first be a master of the language in which you critique it. this is because in order to convey the meaning of images, your words must be precise. in addition, prior to your critique, being a master of the language is critical so that when you watch the film you interpret it accurately. the language of film allows us to grasp subtleties, and it is in subtleties that we find meaning. language also gives us the ability to parse films for clues, and in stringing together clues we find meaning as well.

really there are two languages, english and filmic, which you have to be well versed in before you endeavor to make empirical statements about a related product.

the lack of understanding of the plot (of ConAir) in addition to the preponderance of spelling and grammatical errors in your hypothesis on deeper meaning in popular films lets me know that YOU HAVE NO RIGHT to claim an understanding of deeper meaning in popular films. given you have no grasp of the English, or filmic, language i must let you know that you are out of your element. stop now.

ie, in ConAir (big missed clue) Poe isn’t the average joe you say he is, he’s a decorated war hero back from the Persian Gulf who “does” take time in jail to better himself. perhaps he didn’t read Yeats (which you misspelled, but i assume you were referring to the poet), he might’ve read Douglas Hyde instead (another Irish poet in case you’re not up on your literary references).

your analysis was so heavy-handed, far-fetched and sophomoric that i took the time to send it to my friend Scott Rosenberg for a laugh. in case that was another literary reference you missed, Scott Rosenberg wrote ConAir.

what i took away from your analysis was something like: A SIMPLE RETURN TO FAMILY VALUES WOULD KEEP THE IMPRISONED MILITANT BLACKS, AND THE EVERYMAN MEN WHO CAN’T STOP HIMSELF FROM RAPING WOMEN, FROM BREAKING OUT OF PRISON. AND IT WOULD KEEP WOMEN IN THE HOME WHERE THEY BELONG SINCE THEY ARE ONLY SUITED TO THE ROLE OF SUPPORTIVE WIFE SINCE THEIR VAGINAS MAKE THEM VULNERABLE TO RAPE. nonsense.

below i have capitalized all of your spelling and grammatical errors. you may want to copy and re-post this so you don’t look so foolish in your initial presentation, if you even want to keep this posted after realizing how foolish you look.
Con Air is about as dumb as a movie gets, but it has a lot to say about America. It is at it’s core a Les Miserables story- a story of a totally and COMPLTELY RIGHTOUS man wrongly IMPRISIONED. The main character, Cameron Poe is obviously meant to be a pure hero- someone to consider WHOLY good. He is a fairly simple man, speaking in a slow drawl, devoted to his family- especially to protecting his woman, and a bit of a redneck (his choice of bars isn’t that classy). He is a perfect spokesman for the anti-intellectual movement that was just starting up around that time, and really came into fruition with the election of George W. Bush. Even his name implies he is “Poor”- a simple honest WORKING MAN. By CHOOSEING this kind of hero- as opposed to say a guy that spends his time in jail reading YEATES or an upstanding lawyer in jail for tweaking some finances- the filmmaker is saying something about the ideal American male.

Even the style of film says something. Con Air is ultra-slick. No gritty realism here. When the plane crashes in to a casino, the slot machine hits a triple seven jackpot. We are supposed to take this story as an over-the-top fairy tale, not as a slice-of-life film. Thus the characters are broad, but ARCHITYPICAL.

It’s hard to make a prison movie without addressing the PREVELENCE of African Americans in prison. Con Air does this with two contrasting characters- a “good” character that gone in some trouble and is on his way out, and a “bad” character that is a black militant. The movie once again puts people in one of two CATAGORIES- “nice guys” who deserve to be treated well and animal-like criminals that need to be caged up. It is interesting that the militant is the latter. It obliquely implies that the Black people in jail are largely Blacks that have removed themselves from American society and if they’d just give that up so many of them wouldn’t be in jail. It implies that the Black underclass is a result of choice, as opposed to societal factors, and that Black identity is harmful and leads to trouble. Once again, it was a choice for that character to specifically be a Black militant. Interestingly, the “good” Black character’s name is “Baby-O”, which recalls the diminutive names often betowed on Blacks like “Boy” (of course there are plenty of Black people that go by “Baby”, but the point is that the filmmaker chose “Baby” and not any number of other Black nicknames). Con Air is implying that the good Black is the tamed Black.

The female prison GAURD is a good contrast to the devoted wife. The female prison GAURD thinks she has what it takes to handle these prisoners. At first she seems to be doing okay, but when confronted with a rapist, she ends up in a bad spot. In other words, women can be tough, but their ability to be raped ultimately makes them too venerable for jobs like this. IT’S SIGNIFIGANT that she is threatened by the rapist, as opposed to any number of other violent people that would want to cause her trouble. It says that women are in unique danger. They are not suited for roles like policewoman or SOILDER because they have that vagina. Just like the fears that female SOILDERS will harm the military because the men will be so interested in protecting them that they won’t be able to do their duties, the prison GAURD needs saving and distracts Poe from the real business he ought to be doing. It strengthens the perception that women are always in danger of being raped when they are in non-traditional roles or alone in the presence of many males. It strengthens the idea that some men just can’t keep themselves from raping any woman they come across.

Note that the wife (who never ends up in danger like the prison GAURD) stays faithful to the husband and always seen taking care of her child and out of the action- in fact, she never does anything of her own will- throughout the movie she is shuttled around by male characters and left to wait patiently. As the counterpart of the ideal male, we have to assume she is the ideal female. She doesn’t go running off on her own to save her husband or anything like that (remember, her husband is in jail for doing something active and violent to protect her…this movie isn’t squeamish about protecting people with violence…but it shows that is for men to do, not women). She does what she is told, nurtures her kid, stays chaste, and waits patiently.

And who knows what the scene with the child killer is about. There has to be some reason something that bizarre and uncomfortable is in that movie. Is it about redemption? Is it a look in the mind of pure evil? Is it a fantasy? The setting- an empty pool, a dirty child, broken toys- seems to MIRRIOR the DEPREVEITY in his head. But THATS all the sense I can make out of this scene. It is interesting THE THIS character is the one that has the “smartest” lines (although the nearly equally evil “Cyrus the Virus” is INTELLEGENT in that evil MASTERMAND way). He spends his time musing on PHILISOPHICAL subjects. And yet he is the worst character of the bunch- as opposed to SIMPLE MINDED God-fearing Poe. Anti-intellectualism again? Making intellectualism look like A PATHOLOGY?

The prison world is pretty interesting in Con Air. Prison is shown as very slick and high tech. Lots of sleek metal. And yet it can’t contain the prisoners (all of which seem just as crazy as criminal- an interesting though in itself) who use raw firepower and their brilliant depraved minds to overtake it. Brutality wins out. I don’t think all this slickness is about prison. It’s about the modern world, the underlying violence we sense beneath it, and how it can all be saved by a return to simple family values.

39

That’s an homonymous Scott Rosenberg. Your friend has been taking advantage of you in letting you think he was a bigshot in Hollywood all those years, so you would buy him drinks and stuff.

I was wondering though if you’d be interested in the “Straight Dope Super Spell-Check Program” where Dopers volunteer to scan and correct every spelling error they can find in the millions of forgotten and never again read threads the board can boast about. Take that ignorance.

40
  1. You resurrected a post that is seven years old.
  2. The views of the writer of a film (or any literary work) considering the interpretation of that work is not considered authoritative by most people who think seriously about the criticism of literary works. Writers are typically as “in-the-dark” as their audience when it comes to interpretation.
  3. You’re probably not friends with Scott Rosenberg.
  4. I really hope you’re not, yourself, Scott Rosenberg. (Not that I think this is likely.)
  5. Your post was bizarrely hostile.