Characterizing the Patriarchal Apparatus

A visual essay by Alex Gladwin on how (500) Days of Summer deconstructs the patriarchal ideology of the cinematic apparatus by embodying it in the main character, Tom.

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Introduction

“This is not a love story.” — The Narrator in (500) Days of Summer

For a film marketed as a quirky romantic comedy starring, in terms of Hollywood, traditionally attractive leads like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the decision to close the opening narration with this line is a bold move.  (500) Days of Summer, though, makes many bold moves despite its initial appearance as a modern romantic comedy drenched in hip stylistics; in fact, the film uses this façade to communicate its place in the discourse of not only romantic comedies but the purposes and ideology underlying many love stories.  (500) Days of Summer is not a love story, but it is certainly a story about love stories, in particular in film, and more importantly the way they portray relationships between men and women.

Laura Mulvey argues in her landmark essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” that the patriarchal ideology propagated by the apparatus of cinema—or, the ways in which cinema purports to present reality while hiding its ideology (Hayward 25)— dictates the representation of women, depicting them as the “other” (833). Ideology creates a "system of representation" according to James Kavanagh, focused on showing men and women where they fit in society by preventing it as natural (310).  Cinema reflects ideology by masking it with its apparatus, creating an unnoticiable system of signification as a result of the masking processes like lighting and editing (Hayward 216).

While Mulvey argues that directors must work outside of traditional narratives and in the realm of the avant-garde to escape the cinematic language and its ideology (844), though, (500) Days of Summer applies avant-garde techniques such as a non-linear structure to a traditional story type in order to deconstruct the objectifying and normalizing portrayal of women in mainstream film.  Specifically, the male lead, Tom, is a characterization of the cinematic apparatus—as evidenced by the numerous ways in which the film clearly constructs the female lead, Summer, through Tom’s perspective—which allows the viewer to consider the way women are constructed in traditional film narratives by adding an extra layer between the viewer's consumption of the film and the subject matter; in effect, Tom's embodiment of the cinematic apparatus delineates the system of signs that the patriarchal ideology creates by portraying the construction of the system to the viewer.

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“The boundaries between major studio and independent filmmaking are beginning to blur. Between the Hollywood blockbuster and the low-budget indie feature there now lies a zone some critics have labeled ‘Indiewood.’” — Harry Ryan (41)

Fox’s independent subdivision, Fox Searchlight Pictures, backed (500) Days of Summer financially, situating the film in the in-between space of Indiewood.  Ryan points out that the resultant combination of destabilizing intentions and stylized aesthetics allow the film to have a broad and “niche” appeal (42).  The function of “naturalizing” in cinema—which Susan Hayward defines as “a process whereby social, cultural and historical constructions are shown to be evidently natural” (285)—reveals the extent to which (500) Days’ appeal to a mainstream audiences and subsequent destabilization that which they assume to be “natural.”  Indiewood presents a unique opportunity, then, and Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber’s script provides a base upon which the director, Marc Webb, builds; the three construct a character who embodies the naturalizing process of cinema and, in doing so, disrupt the cinematic apparatus and its patriarchal ideology by revealing the ways in which the male lead, Tom, actively constructs the female lead, Summer, through dishonest representations and subjective memories.

For a key example, consider the shot above; Tom, who has just had sex with Summer for the first time, looks into a car window; rather than seeing his own reflection, though, he sees Han Solo from Star Wars winking back at him.  Tom does not perceive reality, but rather a cultural symbol of cool and suave brought into language by another film.  This is a call to both mainstream cinema and popular opinion on representations of “cool,” but also a subversive indie technique that reveals how Tom confounds reality with his perception and thus calls attention to the way a film creates an unrealistic portrayal of reality due to the filtration through the main character’s perspective.  Tom’s perspective is the viewer’s perspective, and thus his ability to manipulate reality reveals to the viewer the role of cinema in manipulating reality. The technique has both popular appeal and indie sensibilities with its intertextual reference to a famous cinematic text, which is a major component of (500) Days that will be explored further.

 By using a Hollywood formula and applying “indie” techniques—a unique opportunity afforded by the film’s status in the “Indiewood” production process—(500) Days invites the viewer to consider the unnatural system of signs attached to women in romantic films.  Many critics miss this point, including Sight & Sound’s Kate Stables, who argues that the movie’s postmodern appropriation of cultural symbols acts as a “shorthand for soulmating,” and that Summer is “reduced to a cute, kooky enigma” (64), failing to realize that these are not flaws in the film but rather essential pieces of its message.  The director and writers clearly uses these ideas to create a subversive piece of cinema, and the excessive intertextuality and deliberately stylized narrative delivery—namely the non-linear structure and manipulative misè-en-scene—lead to a lack of major characterization for Summer and create a unified effect that recognizes and then dismantles the system of signs present in popular narrative cinema, allowing for Mulvey’s aims of working outside of the patriarchal apparatus despite not abandoning the system entirely.

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"Crucially, [Ferdinand de] Saussure argues that in verbal language the connection between signifier and signified is virtually always arbitrary; that is, while a sign is a unity of signifier and signified, there is no natural connection between the two.” — Phillip Rosen (4)

The connection between words and what they represent is arbitrary, and so the meanings attached to concepts and terms reveals the way speakers of a language perceive the world.  If the connection between the signifier and signified is “arbitrary,” then meaning can be attached to concepts, people, or objects in such a way that appears natural but is not actually inherent.  Roland Barthes highlights the difference specifically between language and speech, the former being the institution and “system of values” constructed by shared signs, and the latter, the way individuals use language to communicate thoughts and ideas (14-15).  (500) Days of Summer recognizes the language underlying popular cinema, with particular regard to romance stories, and further recognizes how “speech” as seen in various movies has confounded and influenced the language of cinema.  Mainstream cinema has become an apparatus obscuring its patriarchal ideology because it attaches signified concepts to the signifier of “woman,” including notions of the woman as object and subservient to man.

Intertextuality brings a lot of popular media into the discourse of the film, and Ryan Hall recognizes that the “tendency of the contemporary cinema to recycle and use culture,” i.e. the constant references, allusions, and homages to previous texts, allows (500) Days to illuminate the “core themes” (43).  Intertextuality grants the film a postmodern aesthetic, and a key focus is indeed the removal of signifiers from what they supposedly signify, disrupting the “natural” connections that do not exist.  More importantly, the intertextuality is often in reference to Tom, revealing how he himself constructs systems of signification, thus embodying the cinematic apparatus.

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“There is no outside-text.” — Jacques Derrida (158)

Of the intertextual references, the most predominant ones are to other films, including The Graduate, Persona, The Seventh Seal, and Star Wars.  (500) Days of Summer is in conversation with cinema and reinterprets—or has Tom misinterpret—other films in order to tell the viewer that the sign system making up the language in (500) Days is meant to be that of cinema itself.  Thus, (500) Days is both its own world and inseparable from the real world and all other texts, creating a conversation with cultural items, one that both defines and obscures the extent to which the film can be considered as self-contained.  More importantly, though, this reflects Derrida’s belief that texts define people’s perception of the world (Jones).  The lack of an outside-text means that the viewer cannot perceive the world as separate and removed from it; the two are intertwined. 

(500) Days is aware that cinema shapes people’s interpretations of the world and makes that explicit in Tom, who often goes to the movies and thus shows how cultural texts obscure an actual understanding of the world.  The Narrator of the film, who provides back-story on Tom and Summer, says that a major event in Tom’s emotional development centers on “a total misreading of the movie The Graduate.” At the end of that film, the two main characters have just run away together after a series of exciting romantic escapades, but the elimination of obstacles leaves them with a sense of apprehension, as the look on their faces reflects a non-optimistic attitude of, “Now what?”  Tom, however, only sees a happy ending, and this bolsters his belief that he will not be happy until he finds his soul mate.  Tom’s beliefs and perception of reality are defined by cinema, even if he misinterprets it, and his interaction with filmic texts make him a reflection of the patriarchal language of cinema.

While the interactions make him reflect the apparatus, his ability to manipulate not only the world of the film but also the worlds of other films reveals his embodiment of the apparatus.  Tom’s becomes so intertwined with cinema that he can place himself into other movies and alter the context.  In one scene, Tom imagines himself in scenes from Persona and The Seventh Seal, but they are changed by his perception of the scenes.  In his remodeling The Seventh Seal, he plays Cupid in chess rather than Death, and loses, changing the original text to reflect his personal crisis and mindset.  Tom reshapes the text, and the intertextuality reveals that Tom is at once a part of cinema and molded by it, thus revealing his character to be a construct, reflection, and representation of dominant cinematic ideology.

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The musical sequence in (500) Days of Summer also reflects how Tom’s perception—influenced and defend by other movies—shapes the viewer’s interpretation of the story.  After his and Summer’s first sexual encounter, Tom walks down the street as “You Make My Dreams” by Hall Oates plays seemingly non-diegetically.  However, he begins to dance in beat to the song, again reflecting how he is at once a character in the film and a representation of the cinematic apparatus, as the soundtrack is at once non-diegetic and a part of the reality that he shapes in the film. As seen in the first shot above, several fountains shoot off euphemistically as Tom walks past.   Tom is in the foreground but the massive fountains that overwhelm the frame are clearly in focus, and the fact that a municipal construct explodes in tandem with his mood reveals the extent to which Tom’s perspective dictates what the viewer sees.  After Tom walks past the fountains, he dances and random passers-by join in as a choreographed dance sequence ensues.  Tom takes a baseball bat and pretends to hit a home-run—an obvious reference to “scoring” and going through all the “bases,” which are common terms used in reference to sexual intercourse—which makes the others, who are now dancers in his musical number, pick him up and cheer. 

The heavily stylized sequence shows that Tom does not perceive what might be called “the real world,” but rather a reality of film history wherein spontaneous dance sequences are normal.  Whereas Patricia White speculates that musicals turn narrative signs into clear fictional constructs and thus exist outside of ideology (120), (500) Days utilizes that transformation to reveal the ideological impacts of a male-dominated narrative. As a representative of what the cinematic apparatus constructs as normal, Tom finds no issue with strangers dancing with him in celebration of his sexual victory, despite the fact that the audience realizes how unrealistic this scene is.  The viewer is meant to consider how Tom’s perspective is not at all natural, even if it seems so to him, and so we consider the ways that films and their naturalizing tools alter our perception of the real world.

Lest the sequence be deemed representative of stage musicals more so than movies, the end of this sequence makes it explicitly filmic.  In the second shot above, an animated bird flies down onto Tom’s shoulder; the fantasy quality of the sequence is brought to nearly parodic levels, as the cartoon bird is entirely natural to Tom despite being far removed from what is an otherwise non-animated film.  The bird’s presence and blue coloring—a color always associated with Summer—reveals Tom’s rule over what the viewer perceives as realit.  Even the other dancers in the background wear predominantly blue colors, emphasizing the association of Tom’s bended perception to Summer.  The fact that Tom’s biggest association with Summer appears to be the colors she wears also bespeaks his surface-level understanding of her, which is a direct result of his function as a cinematic apparatus: he sees the surface, but nothing underneath it, because he actively avoids granting Summer the status of a complex human being.

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Tom clearly reflects a culture with a perception of reality rooted in cinema, but his function as the actual cinematic apparatus in (500) Days of Summer is made even more clear by his conflation with the Narrator and the ways in which his perspective—which dominates the film, as evidenced by the dance sequence and will be made even more clear when examining the narrative techniques of the film—reflect functions of the apparatus as defined by Feminist theorists like Laura Mulvey.  The same sequence of images is shown twice in two different contexts and have been combined into the one video above: at first, as seen in the first 19 seconds of the clip, when Tom and Summer’s relationship is going well, and again, as seen in remainder of the clip, when it is dissolving. 

The first time, Tom narrates over the extreme close ups of various parts of Summer’s body, which are well-lit and shown in full detail, and he claims that he loves every little part about her: “I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love this heart shaped birthmark she has on her neck. I love the way she sometimes licks her lips before she talks.  I love the sound of her laugh. I love the way she looks when she’s sleeping.”  The shots in this light are intimate and full of love.  The second time, however, the same sequence is shown with less positive descriptors: “I hate her crooked teeth. I hate her 1960s haircut. I hate her knobby knees.  And I hate her cockroach shaped splotch on her neck.  I hate the way she smacks her lips before she talks. And I hate the way she sounds when she laughs.”  Here, the shots seem grotesquely detailed and revealing of negative qualities, as the narration dictates the way the viewer interprets the images.

Moreover, in both scenes Tom clearly evokes the male gaze as he fetishizes Summer’s body parts.  Feminist theorists like Claire Johnston, Laura Mulvey, and Linda Myles reveal the extent to which cinematography, shot construction, and lighting reflected male ideology by constructing the woman as a figure and object (Hayward 138); here, we clearly see the ways in which the mise-en-scène can objectify the woman’s body in film, as Tom breaks Summer down into physical traits.  Tom’s perspective reflects the Feminist critique of the apparatus.  The effect is a critique of the language of cinema, as there is revealed to be no natural connection between the signifying images and what they signify; the patriarchal apparatus can attach whatever meaning desired to the images in through its speech (parole), and so the viewer can deconstruct the ways in which the patriarchal apparatus presents ideology. 

The characterization of this ideology in Tom allows the viewer to see how it is constructed with cinematic techniques.  The film cleverly sidesteps the constraints of psychoanalysis—a major underpinning of Mulvey’s approach—that Barbara Creed discusses: namely, that the construction of an “ideal spectator” obscures the theoretical approach’s own subjectivity (Creed 87).  However, since the “ideal spectator” and the interpretation put forth by the apparatus are embodied in Tom, the film’s focus is the influence of subjectivity, and thus does not fall into this trap because it is decidedly subjective.  The intertextuality that (500) Days demonstrates with other films and Tom’s ability to place himself in them, as seen with The Seventh Seal, reveal that he functions as the apparatus, which allows us to deconstruct the construction that Tom embodies. 

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Tom’s ability to transform the viewer’s perception of Summer through narration reflects the role of the (500) Days of Summer’s Narrator, who is an extra-diegetic character.  Still, despite not existing within the film’s universe, he is clearly a reflection of Tom, which follows from the fact that Tom is able to bend the reality of the film to his perception due to his function as a characterization of the cinematic apparatus and its patriarchal ideology.  Tom often acts as a narrator, which reveals the relationship, but the Narrator’s monologue at the end of the film reveals his lack of objectivity: as Tom considers walking away from a kind, attractive, and relatable young woman without asking her out on a date as a result of his experiences with Summer, the Narrator says that “Tom had finally learned: there are no miracles.  There’s no such thing as fate. Nothing is meant to be.  He knew.  He was sure of it now.”  He says, “Tom was—“ but is interrupted by Tom turning around and asking the woman out to coffee.  “He was pretty sure,” the Narrator adds uncertainly.  The wavering narration clearly reflects Tom’s inner monologue, in which he attempts to think that there is no such thing as fate because of his experiences with Summer and fails.  Thus, the Narrator’s perspective is attached to Tom through this scene and the fact that Tom also acts as Narrator, which interestingly affects the interpretation of two key scenes that involve the disruption of the primary narrative.

First, consider the first shot above, which takes place during the credits and shows home videos of Tom and Summer.  They are filmed in what is a “realistic” style with no narration, portraying the characters’ pasts without commentary or influence from Tom’s grip on the film’s perspective.  However, when the Narrator discusses Summer’s past after the credits, the style is nearly antithetical to a home video.  The sequence is shot in black and white and—with its use of dramatic zooms and Leave It to Beaver style sets like an ice cream stand—portrays Summer’s back-story cinematically but not realistically.  As seen in the second shot above, the Narrator’s descriptions are visualized in the shot, reducing Summer to physical qualities measured numerically.  If Tom is conflated with the Narrator, then his attempt to construct a back-story for her shows that he does not understand her in terms of what she tells him.  He creates a story about her, and again Tom’s control over the story dictates what information—and what kind of information, namely surface-level or fabricated—is revealed to the audience.  He defines the story and the characters in it; while Summer’s past can be summed up as, “She’s pretty and men treat her well because she’s attractive,” Tom’s is characterized by, “He’s emotional and complex; his past has pushed him to believe in true love.”  The Narrator reflects Tom’s perspective and is thus further evidence that Tom is the apparatus and blinds us to the reality lurking within the story.  The reference to other styles of film further portrays (500) Days’ conversation with the history of cinema, which dovetails with the construction of Summer through Tom’s lens.

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The other cultural references within (500) Days of Summer, including bands such the Smiths, musicians such as Ringo Starr, and television shows such as Knight Rider, do serve as the shorthand for romantic attachment hat Kate Stables accuses the film of propagating.  However, the shorthand is not for the story, but rather for Tom, and the confusion is understandable considering Tom’s representation of cinema’s narrative tendencies.  Tom believes that Summer is a snob as soon as his friend, McKenzie repeats some hearsay about her being cold to a co-worker—which itself is problematic, as her lack of interest in small talk apparently makes her an “uppity superskank” to McKenzie—and generalizes that, “pretty girls think they can treat people like crap and get away with it.”  Summer does not abide the exact parameters of the males’ expectations, and is thus a bad person.  She is only seen in a long shot here, as she is viewed afar from Tom and McKenzie, the object of their baseless construction of her character.

  The next day, however, she recognizes the song he’s listening to—“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by the Smiths—and he appears to immediately fall in love with her.  Here, she shares a medium shot with Tom, as seen in the second shot above; because she is in his proximity, she shares the frame with him as a subject, which makes her comment about liking the Smiths feel intimate and significant to Tom.  However, Tom’s sister, Rachel, tells him the error in the basis of his romantic feelings toward her in shared cultural interests: “Just cause some cute girl likes the same bizzaro crap you do…that doesn’t make her your soul mate.”  Rachel attempts to destabilize the shorthand of shared interests as romantic compatibility, but Tom’s ideology cannot bend to her insightful advice.  The signifier of shared interests signifies compatibility, and that relationship cannot be disrupted for Tom because it cannot be easily disrupted in cinema as a whole.

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Now that Tom’s function as the cinematic apparatus reflecting patriarchal ideology has been established, the important aspect of (500) Days of Summer to consider is the narrative techniques that both reflect Tom’s control over the way the viewer interprets the story and how they reveals the connection between signifiers and the signified are delineated.  The most immediately noticeable example is the nonlinear story, which reflects that the film is a function of Tom’s memory: the scenes come in order of the way Tom remembers his relationship, starting in general with the formulation and happiest moments, but also drawing the connections to unhappy memories from later on.  Again the structure and content of the film reveal the ways in which the viewer sees only Tom’s perspective, as his control over the perception of time reveals his grip on the story itself.  This reflects the editing aspect of the cinematic apparatus, which defines the story in terms of the male perspective even when the story’s crux is a woman, and thus reflects patriarchal ideology. While the relationship of the structure to Tom’s memory is implicit, Rachel also makes it explicit by telling Tom to reconsider the relationship in order to see the negative qualities, and suddenly glimpses of memories that appear happy are revealed to be aspects of unhappy memories—e.g. when Tom holding up a Ringo record, he yields a smile from Summer, but it is only one of complacency to humor his attempts to relate to her.

The technique often deceives the viewer, shortening scenes in order to obscure their actual content.  In regard to the shot above, in which Summer’s hand—on which rests a wedding ring—lies on top of Tom’s, the viewer realizes the deception of the editing.  A shortened version of this scene, which the viewer knows occurs at the end of the 500 days but does not know the context that will later be revealed through dialogue, appears at the very start of the film.  This would appear to indicate that Tom and Summer get married; however, by the end of the film, we learn that Summer has married someone else, and this is merely meant to comfort Tom.  The fragmented telling of the story purposefully deceives the viewer in order to show how Tom’s recollection of the story does not tell the whole story, and the truth only comes to light when he decides to reveal it. The role of editing in constructs the viewer’s perception of reality, and the explicit deception allows the viewer to consider the effect of editing on the narrative and its status as a piece of the cinematic construct that obscures actual meaning.  A wedding ring and two peoples’ hands touching do not signify marriage between them, and these scenes delineate the language that cinema uses.

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“Eternal Sunshine and (500) Days work against this trend by making their female characters the ones whose desires and actions further the plot while men take reactionary roles, particularly when considering the directions of their relationships.” — Brenna Claire Williams (44)

The non-linear construction of the narrative indicates Tom’s ability to control how the story is revealed, and the implications further reveal the problematic construction of women as seen through Tom.  While Brenna Claire Williams correctly pinpoints the driving factor of (500) Days of Summer to be Summer’s desire, she errs in her claims that this dismantles the power of the male apparatus, as she attaches too much significance to the opening sequence wherein Tom and Summer are both shown as children in home movies (46).  The purpose of this scene as existing outside of Tom’s almost uniform grip on the narrative has been discussed, and instead the construction of the narrative around Summer reveals the fact that Tom constructs her with signifiers and fails to understand her as she really is.

The separation of Tom’s perception of Summer and reality is visualized literally in the scene where Tom attends Summer’s rooftop party. On the left side of the screen, which is the same side that Tom’s home videos occupies in the opening credits sequence, Tom’s expectations of the party play out, with the word “Expectations” placed on the bottom of the screen; on the right, the same side of Summer’s home videos in the opening credits, the actuality of the party occurs, overlaid with the word “Reality.” Up to this point in the film, much of the story has been shown through Tom’s lens, and Tom has undoubtedly based his perception of Summer around his expectations.

In this scene, though, reality literally pushes his expectations out of the frame—and thus out of his mind—as seen in the short sequence of shots above; Summer has tricked him into attending her engagement party, and her deception accomplishes her goal of shattering Tom’s illusion about their relationship. Tom’s mental state dominates the film, and the shot construction reflects it; the only way for Summer to disrupt the lens through which he wishes to view her is to trick him. As a result, he exits the party and the world turns into a drawing—which is his perception of it, reflecting his architectural skills—and then becomes erased. His construction of the world, embodied by his reduction of it to his architecture drawings, is then erased, as seen in the second sequence of shots above. His expectations are destroyed, and so too is his perception of reality. As a representative of dominant male ideology in cinema, the realization that women exist as more than his construction literally erases his representation of the world.

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The superstructure of (500) Days of Summer is not the only representation of Tom’s construction of the narrative, however; just as the cinematic apparatus captures the various aspects of a film including the editing, cinematography, and mise-en-scène, so too does Tom’s function as that apparatus, and his memory’s influence on the mise-en-scène reflects this.  When Tom sees Summer again for the first time in months on a train ride to a co-worker’s wedding, she asks if he would like to get coffee.  He reluctantly agrees, and the conversation appears to go well; as seen in the first image above, the two share the frame in a medium shot and are obscured by shadows but bathed in the warm colors of the setting sun.  Tom clearly finds this memory pleasant, and so the soft lighting reflects his positive memory.  His perception of the event dictates its construction.

Sometimes, this control of the shot allows Tom to actively preclude a complex representation of Summer.  In a scene where the two share intimate thoughts about dreams, Summer begins to talk about an important dream and memory; however, instead of allowing us to listen to the dream, the Narrator—who has been discussed previously as related to if not interchangeable with Tom—tells us that this was cherished information.  As we hear this monologue, which drowns out Summer’s words, the shot depicts Summer out of focus in the foreground—reflecting the de-prioritization of her despite the fact that she is talking and thus rightfully at the forefront—while Tom, in-focus, stares at her in the background.  Tom privileges his own listening over Summer’s actual words and personality, which precludes any representation of her besides an object in his perception.  He clearly reflects the patriarchal ideology of the cinematic apparatus by refusing to grant her depth as a character.  The demand of more complex representations of women by Feminist theorists, such as Molly Haskell and Marjorie Rosen (White 118), comes from the purposefully flat depiction seen in the kind of cinema reflected by Tom.  Tom reflects the language of cinema because, to him, the fact that he listens intently is more important than actually absorbing the context of Summer’s monologue.  His listening signifies understanding to him, and the narration’s obfuscation of Summer’s words shows that Tom privileges his reaction to Summer’s story more than the story itself.

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Tom’s control over the mise-en-scène extends to scenes in (500) Days of Summer besides those featuring only him and Summer.  When Tom talks to his boss at his job, where he writes for a greeting card company, the boss sits in mid-frame, surrounded by signifiers of a businessman such as books, pens, and trophies.  Tom, however, is surrounded by images of Cupid, who—in cinematic shorthand and thus to Tom—signifies romantic love.  The Cupids are detached from their mythological origins, revealing their existence as pure signifiers of love and thus Tom’s similarly shallow understanding of romantic love as more of an image and signifier than actual concept.

Tom’s position as a greeting card writer doubles his characterization as obsessed with signifiers detached from context, as he writes trite messages like, “I love us” for cards.  In one scene, he sits with numerous intent co-workers and says one word, “Merry,” which yields cheers from everyone around him.  Further, his interest in creating constructs mixed with his profession of writing disassociated emotional messages reveals his purpose as one who builds up people and stories based on his desires, which are reflective of patriarchal ideology.  At one point, in self-loathing, he claims that things with Summer won’t work out based solely on a conversation in which she said her weekend was “good” in a way that implied, to him, that she had slept with another man.  He attaches significance to this word without cause, and claims that maybe things could have worked out “in a world where good things happen to me.”  His friend informs him, sarcastically, that said world is “not really where we live,” reflecting Tom’s inability to perceive reality as it is because of his obsession with fitting Summer into his reality, and thus the world propagated by the ideology of the cinematic apparatus.

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Tom’s interest and skill in architecture—a form rooted in construction—is unrealized professionally, which further reveals his position as the molder and builder of the narrative.  He can construct buildings but never see those constructions enacted into reality, which reflects the way he builds his own memories separate from reality.  The cinematography in (500) Days of Summer is tight and meticulous in its selection of color because it reflects Tom’s memories, and he has a clear sense of construction due to his architectural skills. 

This aspect of Tom is key to understanding his process of constructing women.  When Tom brings Summer to his favorite spot in the city, he claims that the view is beautiful, but that the buildings and parking lots obscure that fact.  He sees a different reality, one that captures the beauty, and to show Summer his perception of reality, he draws it on his arm.  He draws the images he perceives onto her arm, and she thus becomes the canvas for his ideas.

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All of the purposefully manipulative techniques and references serve to illuminate Tom’s role in the telling of the story, but the result is what defines the utility of the film: Summer is a flat character, one whom we know little about, because Tom’s function as the cinematic apparatus precludes an actual understanding of her. As previously discussed, Rachel points out Tom’s fixation on shared cultural interests rather than romantic compatibility, but he ignores her. In fact, Tom ignores women’s advice in general so that they do not disrupt his perception of reality. When he goes on a date after his breakup with Summer, he continues to tell the girl, Alison, about how awful Summer was to him. After she gets fed up with the discussion, she points out that Summer never cheated on or took advantage of him, and further Summer explicitly told Tom that she did not want “anything serious.” Rather than listen, however, Tom brings Alison to a karaoke bar, which is where Tom and Summer first spent time together outside of the work office. He cannot accept the truth and instead tries to relive past pleasures, but Alison is unimpressed and leaves. Tom is stuck in his own mindset, and the input of women about how he can better interact with other women is not something he will consider. The cinematic apparatus resists input that goes against its ideology and instead focuses on the past, because it cannot be disrupted.

Tom’s refusal to listen to women allows the viewer to consider his narcissism and selfishness in handling his relationship with Summer. She tells him early on that she does not want anything serious and does not believe in love; the former, he accepts and the latter, agrees to disagree on. However, when they have a fight later after Summer claims they are “just friends,” he petulantly argues that friends do not “hold hands in Ikea” and have “shower sex.” To Tom, the act of holding hands—which his memory portrays, as seen in the shot above, by centering the hand-holding in a medium shot to emphasize its importance to him—signifies a romantic relationship. He claims that they are “a couple, goddamit,” and storms out. To him, these signifiers lead to another signifier: “couple,” which to him signifies “romance,” which signifies “true love,” which leads to an endless path of signifiers that he has constructed and cannot see past as a result of his ideology. Derrida’s notion of the infinite process that constructs meaning (Quigley 5), which reflects cinema’s use of signifiers for concepts such as “woman,” reveals Tom’s process of signification.  Later, when she chooses to dance with him despite being engaged, he questions her intent; "I wanted to," she responds, revealing that her system of signification differs from him.  To Summer, dancing is dancing, but to Tom, it represents romantic love and leads once more into his infinite process of signification that subjugates Summer into his language, the language of cinema. By characterizing the cinematic apparatus, the viewer can delineate the process in order to see its flaws, and Tom’s inability to accept Summer’s system of signification reveals his firm placement in an ideology.

The nature of Tom's ideological construction is similarly revealed to the audience when Summer describes her past relationships to him.  She mentions an ex named Charlie, and the shot focuses on a photograph of a band, with Tom assuming that Charlie is the frontman.  Summer then adds, "She was nice," and the shot focuses on the woman in the background of the photo.  The choice to place the actual Charlie outside of the shot's center reflects Tom's normalizing view of sexuality: he assumes that Summer must be straight until he is told otherwise. Moreover, the woman is on the fringes of image, which reflects Tom's mindset. Patriarchal ideology creates binaries and normalizes its belief system about sexuality, including a heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy; because the shot is only of the picture, and the picture focuses on Charlie only once Tom learns who she is in that picture, we understand that the camera acts in tandem with Tom's mindset, and we have further evidence that he represents the normalizing mindset of patriarchal ideology in film.  Bisexuality is, to Tom, an exception, only to be noted when explicitly stated, because it is not what he would assume to be "normal," which is a word he defines based on the ideology he represents.

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Tom’s ideological system in (500) Days of Summer is disrupted at the end of the party sequence—albeit only temporarily—and his worldview is shattered as a result.  Once a phenomenal greeting card writer, he now cannot abide the profession.  When a coworker discusses photographs of her cat as a potential line of cards, she claims that they show inspirational ideas like, “Go for it!”  Tom notes, however, that if the cat in the picture were to jump, he would die, and instead these cards are suicidal and propagate a lie to the people who buy them.  The floating signifiers hold no meaning, and much like the audience sees the issues with Tom’s systems of meaning, Tom now sees the problem with the system in the greeting card company.   He quits and begins to search for jobs as an architect, hoping to create real constructs out of the ones he previously only imagined.

During his job hunt, Tom again visits his favorite park and bumps into a now wedded Summer, who he has not seen since her engagement party.  He is distraught that his ideology about love is apparently false, but Summer—who would have agreed with him a year and a half ago—claims that he’s not wrong, as she now has found love.  Because no insight into Summer’s character is provided, and Tom never truly understood her in the first place, he simply sees a woman who disagreed with him and now has fallen into his ideology.  She validates his previous beliefs, and in doing so re-stabilizes his beliefs; Tom’s function as the cinematic apparatus has hegemonized opposing viewpoints in his perspective, and so the validation of his ideology leads to the end scene, where he asks out another woman whose name is revealed to be Autumn.  The counter—which has shown what day of the 500 in Tom’s relationship with Summer the current scene took place on—resets at “1” and the picture turns to Autumn, as seen in the shot above.  Tom’s system of signification has reset and he will repeat the process of naturalizing the world into his viewpoint.

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Conclusion

Tom controls the narrative in (500) Days of Summer and reflects the history of patriarchal ideology in cinema, thus functioning as the cinematic apparatus.  The way that he constructs Summer reveals the nature of this apparatus to the audience, and in doing so shows the ways in which film constructs women through a male-centered lens in a way that dehumanizes and fetishizes women.  Laura Mulvey’s argument about mainstream narrative cinema’s focus on male desire is embodied in Tom, but rather than presenting an entirely experimental film to deconstruct this concept, the narrative refocuses the importance on female desire to disrupt the systems of signification created in the language of cinema.  (500) Days of Summer occupies a unique narrative space by combining mainstream style with independent and non-realist techniques to deconstruct and illuminate prominent cultural texts, and thus reveals the function of the apparatus in a way that reveals narrative cinema’s complacency in patriarchal ideology.

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Works Cited

– (500) Days of Summer. Dir. Marc Webb. Screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Perf. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Fox Searchlight, 2009. DVD.

– Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968. Print.

– Creed, Barbara. “Film and Psychoanalysis.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 77-90. Print.

– Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Corrected ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. Print.

– Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.

– Jones, Roger. “Post Structuralism.” Philosopher.org.uk. Roger Jones, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

– Kavanagh, James H. “Ideology.” Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentriccia. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. 306-320.

– Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 833-44. Print.

– Quigley, Timothy R. “Structuralism and Poststructuralism: Background Summary and Analysis.” TimothyQuigley.net. Timothy Quigley, 22 Mar. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. <http://timothyquigley.net/vcs/structuralism.pdf>.

– Rosen, Philip. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. Print.

– Ryan, Harry. “This Is Not a Love Story: (500) Days Of Summer (USA, 2009, Dir. Marc Webb).” Film Matters 2.3 (2011): 41-45. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.

– Stables, Kate. “(500) Days of Summer.” Sight & Sound 19.9 (2009): 64. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

– White, Patricia. “Feminism and Film.” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Eds. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 117-120. Print

– Williams, Brenna Claire. “Mainstream Mulvey: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and (500) Days of Summer as Alternatives to the Feminist Avant-Garde.” Film Matters 3.4 (2012): 43-49. Film & Television Literature Index. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.