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La Haine’s depiction of Paris as an antagonistic landscape

Synopsis:

Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995) depicts the rising tension between the youth of an underprivileged Parisian suburb called la cité des Muguets, and the French police. In doing so, it focuses on the day following a riot sparked by the brutalization of a youngster from la cité, by the police - and what turns out to be a turning point in Vinz, Said and Hubert’s lives. It is Vinz, the most enraged of the three, who finds the gun that was lost during the chaos, and swears to avenge his friend, were he not to wake up from his coma.

Analysis:

La cité des Muguets, designated as “la cité” throughout the film, could in fact be described as an antagonistic landscape for the three main characters. A personification of the space occurs through its naming, allowing it to slide into the role of an active character of the film. The different cinematic techniques used in the film then become a translation of the landscape’s actions, as it interacts with Vinz, Said and Hubert. In doing so, la cité’s role – and later Paris’ - in terms of the three main characters continuously shits from a space of malaise, to a setting for their shared struggle as they attempt to find their place within the space.Please watch the following clip from 8:40 to 9:20:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xan9q0_la-haine-partie-5-fr_shortfilms

This clip depicts the trio’s first encounter with Paris. By combining a zoom in and a dolly shot that increases the distance with the subjects, Paris here slowly becomes a backdrop, thus changing from an actual landscape to a setting. Indeed, the “argument” (Andrews, 5), or principal subject of the frame, clearly shifts from the capital to the narrative as Vinz replaces focus on their actions when he asks “So, what now?” Yet, in the evolution of the space’s role, focus remains on the characters as their actual belonging to the space is questioned and redefined by the space itself: it slowly rejects the characters when it compresses, not lending them the opportunity of making it a place for themselves.

Another way in which la cité can be read as an antagonistic landscape is through the cinematic translation of the characters’ here/there space, and in terms of what de Certeau calls their “spatial practices” (96). That here/there motion either points out to a movement (i.e. when the here/there space is actually that space and moment purposefully leading to a there, as the movement becomes the characters’ enunciation within the space while they get to a place), or a pause (i.e. the fusion of the characters’ feeling, experience and memory within the space). The difference is visually translated by the contrast between the film’s still shots within a moving space (e.g. in a car or in the train), and the handheld tracking shots within a contained space (e.g. la cité).

Little stillness occurs as we follow Vinz, Said and Hubert’s constant roaming in la cité. This motion thus accentuates their here/there space, as they struggle to find their actual place and belonging to the space. The little moments of pause that take place, both in terms of a suspended motion of the camera and of the subjects themselves within the space, mostly occur in wide open spaces that contrast with la cité’s rigid and linear architecture. The following clip illustrates this point – please watch from 2:26 to 4:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMXkbBIBjJY&feature=related

The three main characters’ use and enunciation within the space (97, de Certeau) therefore denotes of their belonging to the below structure, as they feel their way around la cité. The police somehow become a literal translation of the above structure, as they represent the order and structure, and the antithesis of the trio. With an emphasis placed on what is being felt, Vinz, Said and Hubert succeed in turning the space into place at few instances throughout the film; interestingly enough, as the following two stills demonstrate, the place is in fact marked by graffiti, thus literally investing emotion and meaning within the space, defying the above structure and forcefully making sense of it as a place (10, Cresswell).

The characters’ uneasiness within the space is also transmitted to the viewer through another cinematic feature. The fourth wall is recurrently broken throughout the film, thus re-questioning the space for the viewer, and somehow placing him/her within the narrative space. This takes place in the scene where the three characters intrude an art gallery in Paris and judge an art piece.

By doing so, they are in fact looking straight into the lens, indirectly questioning the film itself (i.e. it being the ‘art piece’), and our position as viewers. Indeed, we are placed within the space and as part of the space - and it is our place and sense of belonging to the space that is thus questioned by the protagonists.

The viewer’s understanding of the landscape is also dictated by another feature of the film: sound. The film’s soundtrack helps shift the function of the portrayed landscape from setting to actual landscape, as it juggles between diegetic sound and music. In the latter, it appears that the selected parts of the landscape are to be viewed from a voyeuristic standpoint, whereas the former places the narrative in the foreground. The following scene illustrates the shift from one function to the other:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js2_hBDi2LI

This shot starts with diegetic sounds, as we appropriately hear what corresponds to what we see. Yet, as Cut Killer starts mixing, the music itself takes over and the shots with shallow focus and within a constraining space are replaced with a wide aerial shot of la cité. Although a voyeuristic approach here becomes appropriate for the viewer, the distorting lens and movement of the camera break the romanticized vision of Paris he/she might be used to watching - and that a film such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie (2001) might epitomize.

Texts used:

La Haine (1995) Mathieu Kassovitz, 98 min.

Amelie (2001) Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 122 min.

Andrews, Malcolm. “Land into Landscape.” Landscape and Western Art. Oxford University Press, 1999. 1-24 (ch 1).

de Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City.” The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 91-110.

Cresswell, Tim. “Introduction: Defining Place.” Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1-16.

Travelogue as Internal/External Expression of Landscape | Ben Leventhal

The great American author Mark Twain once said that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Travel exposes one to new worlds, new peoples, and new places—and the optimistic hope is that when confronted with these things prejudices must fade away. This is the allure of travel—the excitement for being able to get exposed to new and fantastic landscapes. As with any cultural fascination it is only a matter of time before mass media is able to explore it and exploit it on a massive scale. Recently television travelogues have been gaining popularity and acclaim with shows such as “No Reservations,” with Anthony Bourdain, or “Bizarre Foods,” with Andrew Zimmern. Unfortunately with the explosion of new media that has gone to great lengths to expose the most distant and unique places possible, I fear there has been an exoticism imposed on these places, due to the voyeuristic nature of these programs. This exoticism reinforces the very colonialist and imperialist prejudices that travel should be working to combat. I will explore other forms of travel diaries which I think capitalize on the unique medium of a travelogue in order to express a combination of both voyeuristic and introspective perspectives that allow for the self-reflection of landscape that travel truly induces.

Travel is a luxury afforded by the upper class of the world system. In the modern world system, the upper class is almost synonymous with whiteness, or at the very least white-culture dominated nations. This fact adds a certain imperialist perspective to the travel done by the people of these states. Travel from this perspective has evolved in a way that people want to visit and observe foreign places as if they were a zoo full of strange things to behold, rather than to let the contents of that zoo affect them in a significant way. This exotic stereotype evolved from the white-male idea of “geisha women” from the far east, where women are not only “domesticated” but a “sex nymph [or] heart-of-gold prostitute,” (Prasso, 9). This allure is reflected in the “thousands of backpackers setting off from Europe, Australia, and elsewhere to experience the exotic, spiritual, and sensuous East,” (Prasso, 15). This is the cultural landscape that colors the geography of world travel, and as Lewis states, “elements of a cultural landscape make little cultural sense if they are studied outside of their geographical... context,” (Lewis, 24). The geographical axiom is the driving force behind the travelogue medium, and when combined with standard voyeuristic camera framing of travel shows, it emphasizes the implicit racist undertones in painting foreign places as strange or “other.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5mkYcQmVSA&feature=related

This example from Andrew Zimmern's television show “Bizarre Foods” is an example of how standard travelogue composition combines with an extreme form of Asian exoticism. The entire purpose of this travel show is to explore how weird and strange the food habits and cultural landscape of a non-white culture are, and ends up further emphasizing racial stereotypes of “other” in America. Travelogue offers up an unusual point-of-view, because it tries to mimic the way of “walking through” a place that de Certeau theorizes, yet ends up actually offering a point-of-view that separates the audience from that space: a view from above or a map of a place (de Certeau, 92). This is because, while Andrew Zimmern is indeed walking through the marketplace in the above video, he is an outsider. His point of view is not from within the group, but from above it looking down on their cultural landscape as exotic and bizarre. When one sees this sort of travelogue he or she is entertained, however they are discouraged from taking part in travel themselves. One takes this experience of landscape and uses it as their own, rather than wishing to take part in travel for themselves, thus nullifying the introspective growth that travel is meant to induce.

Travelogues are by nature voyeuristic, due to the fact that their purpose is to display something new and interesting to an audience that would not otherwise have access to it. However, this perspective, especially of an outsider coming in to explore an exotic location, is problematic for the aforementioned reasons. This point-of-view is not without challenge in the television travelogue medium. Anthony Bourdain runs another show called “No Reservations” which often falls into many of the same pitfalls as “Bizarre Foods,” however he attempts to combat this exoticism by using portions of his show to be introspective and focus on personal changes, not just exotic locales.

(please watch from 11:45 to the end) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiEtkvrYRjE

Here Anthony Bourdain is self-aware of the fallacy that the presence of a white-man with a video camera can cause in the experience of a place. He understands that travel is truly a “side view [in which people] see landscape as a space in which people act... or contemplate,” (Tuan, 90). It is in this contemplation of a landscape that a true travel narrative, which has the power to eliminate prejudice, emerges. One must first understand the fallacy of treating the landscape as simple landscape art to look at, then they are able to contemplate the meaning of interpersonal relations and growth that can occur through a person's travels through a landscape.

A voyeuristic perspective can be done in a way that creates a very introspective narrative.

http://vimeo.com/2721992

This past clip displays a very voyeuristic point-of-view. Its construction is a first-person picture diary with which the author only interacts with in one frame near the end. However, the way in which the images are edited together creates an overwhelming sense that were are not supposed to look at any individual image, but at the entire collage as an experience. If one attempts to view individual images they will be frustrated by the fact that the diary moves on immediately. Much like Herzog's work, this work encourages the audience to let go and experience this travelogue as an experiential image (Prager, 92). It is in this way that while each individual photograph may be voyeuristic in composition, the work itself doesn't exoticisize its subjects. By creating a travelogue that is a look into the experience of travel itself, rather than a look at how strange and unusual an individual place may be, the audience can gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a traveler through a place.

If we are to understand travel in the reflexive sense that Mark Twain advocates, then a purely introspective travelogue is the most valuable. One that shows growth and change through the act of traveling can have the power to inspire its audience to travel, and thus inspire change. This is unlike a purely exoticisized voyeuristic form of travelogue which discourages true travel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ky6vgQfU24

This is a very personal sort of travel diary, in the vein of Mekas. I believe that this sort of reflexive travelogue has the ability to capture what travel is really about. It is less the spectacle of landscape art that dominates the majority of travel media, and more of an internal expression of change. While this clip of a journey through China does rely on the the simple spectacle of physical change, this physical growth of a beard is a reflection of the inner landscape changes that this traveler is experiencing.

Such work that has a point of view so heartily focused on the interior landscape of personal change, rather than external landscape, has the power to motivate others to travel as well. Unlike the majority of voyeuristic travelogues, which purport to experience travel for you and show you how to experience a place, a self-reflective travel diary only purports to show a single internal change. This creates a desire in the viewer to experience this sort of internal landscape shift for themselves. I believe that it is this internal shift that can lead to a more open mind, and the demolition of stereotypes which dominate mass media forms.

Sources:

Bourdain, Anthony. "No Reservations: Beirut." No Reservations. Travel Channel. 2006. Television.

De Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City." The Practice of Everyday Life 1 (1992): 91-110. Print.

Lewis, Pierce F. "Geographical Essays." The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (1979). Print.

The Longest Way. 20 Mar. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ky6vgQfU24>.

Prager, Brad. "Landscapes of the Mind; The Indifferent Earth in Werner Herzog's Films." Landscapes in Cinema (2010): 89-102. Print.

Prasso, Sheridan. The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. New York: Public Affairs, 2005. Print.

This Is Japan! Perf. Eric Testroete. 4 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. <http://vimeo.com/2721992>.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. "Thought and Landscape -- The Eye and the Mind's Eye." The Interpretation of Everyday Landscapes (1979). Print.

Zimmern, Andrew. "Bizarre Foods: Vietnam." Bizarre Foods. Travel Channel. 2009. Television.

Re: Travelogues by Ben Leventhal. -- Where the Hell Does Matt Fit?

I believe that your presentations illustrates an interesting point with the external travelogue being imperialistic and the internal one being personal and reflexive. As you mentioned, there is a grand difference between Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods,” where he eats rats for the shock-horror value for the audience, and “The Longest Way,” where the man takes a picture of himself throughout his year-long walk. Your argument caused me to wonder where the short videos "Where the Hell is Matt?" would fall in the spectrum. His videos show footage of Matt dancing around the world in different locations. This is the second video that he did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4&feature=relmfu As he dances around the world, it shows people different landscapes that would never be accessible to them. The uplifting musical score adds to a VIBE that celebrates the world's beauty. The song also connects the different landscapes and bonds them into one whole. As geographers Yi-Fu Tuan, Anne Buttimer, David Seamon, and Edward Relph believe, place was “a concept that expressed an attitude to the world that emphasized subjectivity and experience rather than the cool hard, logic of spatial science” (qtd. in Cresswell 2004, 20). Through the magic of editing, the different places are brought together into one large place. He creates a dance floor that we all inhabit. In the creating of this place, he includes the world in is adventure. As theorist Tim Cresswell noted, "place is amendable to discussions of things such as 'value' and 'belonging.'" (Cresswell 2004, 20). Even though the video jumps across thousands of miles in an instant, the camera does not move. If the camera moved around a lot or if Matt danced around and in and out of the frame, one could argue that the video would be creating a space, which is seen as "an open arena of action and movement" (Cresswell 2004, 20). Spaces are "amendable to the the abstraction of spatial science," but since Matt remains consistently dancing in place and the camera remains static, a place is formed. As Cresswell says, the creation of a place allows the viewer to "[become] involved" (Cresswell 2004, 20). Those watching the video forget about the distances between the different locations and can become lost in the vivid places before the eyes. After his video exploded in popularity on the web, Matt has been paid to dance around the world in other commercials, such as this one for Hotel.com Suite Escapes.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSSSkmItFHY&feature=player_embedded Matt appears around the globe in the different hotels that the site offers. The video displays the beauty of the world; however, these videos re-purpose the landscape as a tool to advertise products, colonizing it for his own use. However, Matt does not just dance for money, he stands against poverty. In 2007, Matt uploaded another video called "Why the Hell is Matt Standing?," where like the other videos, he appears in a variety of countries. He made this video to promote the Stand Against Poverty website. Watch him stand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIDHEiB_PDA&feature=relmfu I believe that the original videos stand on their own, but the back story behind some of these videos either salute or deny the touching global unity felt in the videos. Is Matt placing an imperialistic presence on the places he travels to for money? Or is a sense of world camaraderie still present?

The Wilderness Downtown.

Arcade Fire released their 2010 album, The Suburbs, with a clear theme obvious even from just the title of the album. The themes of most of the songs on the album revolve around suburban life and teenage themes. In an interview with NME, Arcade Fire discusses the motives behind the song, “We Used to Wait”. Arcade Fire’s lead singer and songwriter, Win Butler, says this song was inspired by love letters from a summer during his teenage years. He would wait days and weeks to receive these letters and they reminded him of his hometown and of simpler times.

These constant references to the suburbs and teenage life throughout the album come across as pure nostalgia. This is nostalgia for a time and a place from some of the most influential years of a person’s life. Arcade Fire looked to this time to tap into emotions that each person listening to their music can sympathize with. Everyone was a teenager and everyone can remember some things from their teenage years. A great part of what can trigger a memory or nostalgia about those years is location. Whether it is the house you grew up in or the high school you went to. These places, as defined by Cresswell, are full of memories. Individuals place certain ideas, events, meanings, and people alongside these locations and thus the landscape of the teenage years are created.

Arcade Fire then went a step further with their exploration of location as a place of nostalgia, especially with specific suburban themes. They released the music video for “We Used to Wait” right around the time that the browser, Chrome, was beginning to explore different uses of HTML5. Pairing up with Chrome Experiments and the creator of the video, Chris Milk, Arcade Fire created a music video that is unlike any other than has been released. Titled, “The Wilderness Downtown”, this video seeks to connect the viewer in a more personal way to the music than just relating and interpreting the lyrics themselves. Before the video starts, the viewer is asked to input the address of the home they grew up in or of their high school. After pressing search, the experience begins.

Multiple windows open up and interact with each other. The main theme in the video is a hooded teen running down dark streets of a suburban neighborhood. He is faceless so it could be anyone. Then Google Maps kicks in and begins to show images of the street you grew up in eventually closing in on your home address. There are also overhead shots of this hooded figure running through the street next to a window of a satellite shot of your hometown. In the middle, the viewer is asked to interact with the project and write a postcard to their past self who lived at that address. Finally at the end of the video there are multiple windows of the figure running and trees popping up next to him. This then goes over onto the satellite shot of the neighborhood associated with your address bringing the whole project to a close.

The Wilderness Downtown

Just as each viewer experienced his or her teen years differently from other viewers, each viewer will experience this video differently. Seeing certain places connects the viewer to different memories and different meanings of that location. This video does a good job to exploit Cresswell’s discussion of place as “spaces which people have made meaningful” (7). Arcade Fire successfully combines the nostalgia present in the song itself with the nostalgia present for the viewers in the meaning of their hometown. This brings to light a whole new way to connect viewers to media. When media is made more and more personal through different ways, such as this interactive project by Arcade Fire, the audience begins to connect their hometown and sense of nostalgia not only with that place, but also then with the music they are experiencing at the same time.

In the comments section of a post about this video on the music blog, Stereogum, it becomes clear that this strategy is not only effective in creating an amazing media experience that relates to the viewers, but that this sense of nostalgia can also be a great marketing tool. Some of the commenters wrote that after watching the video they continued to listen to the whole album and seek it out. Some people even said that they were not Arcade Fire fans at all but that they enjoyed watching this video and that it gave them chills. This brings a whole new topic into this discussion which is that continuing to try and connect on an even deeper level to audiences could in return help to form a stronger fan base and to bring more fans in. This video in particular succeeds at this because of its use of personalized nostalgia. This nostalgia wouldn’t have been possible without the use of place as a personalized and marked space full of memories and ideas.

Place can then become a tool to connect viewers more strongly to a product or image and I am curious to see where this idea will be taken further with media in the years to come. This particular video is widely successful and brought more fans and viewers to Arcade Fire. It also is a great example of how nostalgia and place can mean more to a person than blank emotions. While it can be powerful to share someone else's emotions as happens when just listening to a song, to combine personal emotions with general emotions allows fro a more sincere connection and enjoyment to media. It is hard to imagine another way to successfully reach a wide number of individuals in this personal of a manner, but based on this video, place is a good starting point where so many personal memories are found. Nostalgia as it relates to place is a powerful emotion.

Cresswell, Tim. “Introduction: Defining Place.” Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1-16.

Milk, Chris. The Wilderness Downtown. 2010. Google. 24 February 2012 <thewildernessdowntown.com/>.

NME. Arcade Fire's Win Butler reveals love letters inspired 'The Suburbs'. 29 July 2010. 25 February 2012 <www.nme.com/news/arcade-fire/52267>.

Suarez, Jessica. Arcade Fire - "We Used To Wait" Video. 30 August 2010. 25 February 2012 <stereogum.com/486932/arcade-fire-we-used-to-wait-video/news/>.

mermcg

I love Arcade Fire’s music but had never seen the “We Used to Wait” interactive music video. When I watched the hooded figure run through my hometown my eyes literally began to well up. This music video gave me the most powerful sense of nostalgia, and the lyric “Now our lives are changing fast”...

Exploring Natural Landscape in Princess Mononoke

Man VS Nature, Industry VS Environment. We see these oppositional forces portrayed in countless forms of cinema. The concept of man’s relationship to the natural landscape is not examined anywhere quite as it is in Princess Mononoke (1997). Director/animator Hayao Miyazaki carefully constructs a narrative and vision that portrays an alternate world and time but beckons the viewer to ask questions about universal, timeless concepts. The story takes place during the Muromachu Era in Japan, a time of transition as humans relied increasingly on developing industry. Miyazaki’s signature fantastical approach gives the landscape a new, symbolic meaning of life, while maintaining accurate visuals of the time period. In this world, Japanese mythological creatures, spirits, gods and demons roam the forests. The climax of the film is a battle between these supernatural creatures and the humans of Irontown. Irontown is translated form the word tatara that referred to industrious iron smelting towns in this era of Japan (“Hitachi Metals”). The ideologies behind towns like these can be compared to Roderick Nash’s exploration of the American perspectives of the American Frontier. “The forest wilderness was the most formidable barrier standing between him and success” (Nash, 2). Lady Eboshi, leader of Irontown, represents the need for human development and survival through colonizing and conquering the land. The main character, Ashitaka, represents the liaison between the natural world and the humans of Irontown. He has human sympathies but is avidly against the violence. He becomes a trusted ally of Princess Mononoke, a wolf-raised human, and sworn enemy to the humans who try to take her land.

Miyazaki’s breathtaking animation and intricate landscape design is an ode to Japanese mythology and culture. Much of the mystifying, peaceful beauty in the design of the landscape was inspired by real places such as the Japanese island Yakushima, which was inscribed on the World Heritage list (“Yakushima”). It is important to note that despite the comparisons that can be drawn between these early industrious Japanese and American colonial pioneers, Japanese mythology and culture developed historically in a unique way. In Flying Mountains and Walkers of Emptiness: Toward a Definition of Sacred Space in Japanese Religions, Allan Grapard explores how and why certain landscapes have taken on such a sacred and transcendent identity within ancient Japanese culture. In this period, “people lived in the plains, mountains were untouched obstacles. Mountains were seen as a space whose nature was other (not belonging to common categories of experience within the profane) (Grapard, 200)”. Regarding certain natural spaces and landscapes as sacred led to myths and fables depicting fantastical gods who created and interacted with the land. For example, Japanese mythology depicts Daidara-bocchi, a giant creature who created ponds and lakes with its footsteps, and had the ability to split mountain peaks (“Daidara-bocchi”). InPrincess Mononoke this creature is depicted as the Nightwalker, the nighttime form of the forest spirit. Irontown represents the beginnings of industry and exploitation of trees and land, now humans had the resources necessary to break through the barriers created by mountains.

Yakushima:

Princess Mononoke:

As Ashitaka explores the natural world we are treated to sumptuous and magical visions of forests, rivers and mountains. Miyazaki’s animation and attention to detail captures the intrinsic appreciation that humans have for aesthetically pleasing landscapes. In chapter 8 of her book Cinema and Landscape, Sue Harper describes how humans cognitively construct meaning from visually pleasing natural landscapes; “The sights and sounds of nature are what human beings use to construct an emotional ecology…humans beings construct systems of myth which enable them to discriminate between the pure and the impure, the sacred and profane (Harper, 149). The expert animation is also key in giving the land a sense of realism that helps us ground the fantastical elements in a world similar to ours. The breath-taking beauty ofMononoke culminates in the magical area where we see the godly forest spirit. A sense of peace and innocent purity is achieved through the intricate animation/score.

Nash comments on the appreciation and love for the aesthetic of the untouched wilderness and how this trend in thought grew and became a catalyst for wilderness preservations (Nash, 4). More applicably, he goes onto to describe the developing association of the natural landscape untouched by man as being an embodiment of god. Nash points out that transcendentalists assigned spiritual ideologies to nature which manifested over time (Nash, 4). InLand into Landscape, Malcom Andrews keenly describes the spiritually infused, inherent appreciation for the beauty of nature; “This predominantly sensuous delight, touched with aesthetic thrills, then gives way to a more reflective and complex response to the natural world, one preoccupies by the relations between man and nature, cultivation and the wild, and one that values landscape beauty as a moral and spiritual experience” (Andrews, 9). The themes of Princess Mononoke wouldn’t resonate with out our innate ability to react sensuously and wondrously to depictions of serene nature. As Ashitaka enters the forest spirit’s dwelling he meets hundreds of kadoma, mythological spirits who inhabit trees and appear when the forest is healthy. Ashitaka calls them good luck and they playfully lead him. These small white spirits have human and supernatural qualities. Their child-like bodies and curiously clicking heads make them seem innocent and harmless. The magic that Miyazaki infuses in this reality elucidates the spiritual nature of landscapes that we have learned about on different accounts in this class.

Other majestically conceived creatures like the kadoma roam Miyazaki’s lush landscape. The existence of gods and demons as the forest’s inhabitants prompts us to delve deeper into our preconceived notions about the relationship between civilization and the wild. To gain more access to resources, Lady Eboshi intends to kill the forest spirit with hopes that by doing so the humans would have greater accessibility to the resources in the forest. We first see the forest spirit in a sparkling, pristine swamp area that Ashitaka enters. Its surreal appearance is a unique visual manifestation of its existence in Japanese mythology. Its bizarre antlers and bright red, human-like face makes the viewer stare in awe, just as Ashitaka does when he first sees it. The forest spirit is a symbol of the natural cycle of life and death, its individual footsteps cause flowers and grass to sprout up from the ground but as its foot leaves they wither and die as quickly as they emerged. Its benevolent but all-powerful presence causes creatures and humans to stop in amazement. The forest spirit and the lush area it seems to reside in invokes the sensuous and aesthetic delights described by Andrews, the design is astonishing.

http://vimeo.com/25561471 1-40 seconds. Ignore title, couldn’t find this clip anywhere else online.

The forest spirit’s retaliation against Lady Eboshi at the end is a metaphor for the central conflict, as she attempts to shoot its head off, flowers and grassy natural life to start spurting out of her gun, making it nearly unusable. When its head is shot off, amorphous blobs explode out of it, creating the headless embodiment of the giant Nightwalker. Its plunder causes the forest to die, the symbolic kadoma are seen falling lifelessly through the air. By fighting for more ground, the humans almost destroyed natural life in its entirety.

The story line on its surface level may seem to facilitate an environmentalist and anti-industrious message. However, Miyazaki skillfully orients our sympathies around both sides. The people of Irontown aren’t portrayed as needlessly destroying the landscape; the iron they seek is essential for their livelihood and development. Lady Eboshi seems heartless and sadistic at times, but she is motivated by the need for human consumption of the land for survival (Shea). The cutting of trees infuriates the beasts in the forest, giving them blinding rage. The boars and apes have no sense of understanding, they consider the humans invaders and they will violently fight to the death to protect their home. Ashitaka becomes the resounding symbol of reconciliation although he never fully achieves it. He wishes that both sides could exist harmoniously but no one on either side can fully understand him. There are no heroes and villains, just the inevitable clashing of natural and human forces. The conclusion yields no winners or losers, Eboshi admits she was wrong in killing the forest spirit and Ashitaka assures Mononoke that the spirit’s death is just another kind of rebirth. Mononoke expresses her appreciation for Ashitaka but says she will always hate and fight against the humans. Neither side can come to consensus; Ashitaka develops into a mediator between the two forces, which is perhaps the position that Miyazaki wants the viewer to take. Similar to Werner Herzog (Lessons of Darkness), Miyazaki is focused on probing for questions and new ideologies rather than assigning guilt or prescribing a proper way of dealing with these issues. Princess Mononoketherefore embodies the questions, how can humans and the natural world co-exist peacefully, and is it possible? How can we reconcile the need for human consumption and the need to preserve natural beauty and life?

Citations:

“About Tartara.” Hitachi Metals. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2012. <http://www.hitachi-metals.co.jp/e/tatara/nnp0101.htm>.

Andrews, Malcom. “Land Into Landscape.” n. page. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <https://courses.northwestern.edu/bbcswebdav/courses/2012WI_RTVF_398-0_SEC20/Andrews, Land into Landscape.pdf>.

“Daidara-bocchi.” The Obakemono Project. Web. 27 Feb 2012. <http://www.obakemono.com/obake/daidarabocchi/>

Grapard, Allan. In Flying Mountains and Walkers of Emptiness: Toward a Definition of Sacred Space in Japanese Religions. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/1062158>

Harper, Sue. Cinema and Landscape. Web. <https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=1dd9c42a85&view=att&th=135a2c9b450e38e1&attid=0.4&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-63zD9bJX373k8e6xgAeK8&sadet=1330327005548&sads=AYejZv9yymCUBj0EdMkYxkHKP_Q&sadssc=1>.

Nash, Roderick. “The American Wilderness in Historical Perspective.” Forest History Society 2-4. Web. 27 Feb 2012.

Paskell, Kelly. “Theme: the Kami in Japanese Landscape.” Japanese Landscapes. N.p., n. d. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://japaneselandscape.wordpress.com

Shea, J. “Analysis: Princess Mononoke.” Exploring Believability. N.p., n. d. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://exploringbelievability.blogspot.com/2012/01/analysis-princess-mononoke.html>.

“Yakushima.” World Heritage. Print. <http://www.jal.com/world/en/guidetojapan/world_heritage/yakushima/description/>.

Re: Exploring Natural Landscape in Princess Mononoke

Animation is an excellent medium for delving into the supernatural and creating such a catered landscape that can often be unified with the characters. Princess Mononoke is such a great choice for an analysis of this kind of landscape. I love Hayao Miyazaki and am tempted to talk about some of his other films, such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, or Spirited Away. I have a feeling you've given them some thought though, and so I want to instead link the themes in Princess Mononoke to this anime series I picked up a while ago - Mushishi. Mushishi centers around supernatural creatures called Mushi. Mushi are the most simple and purest form of life. They are invisible to most people, but the main character Ginko is one of the few in the world who can engage with them. Ginko is a Mushi master (Mushi-shi) who travels in search for further knowledge and experience with the Mushi.

Here is a scattered preview of the series:

Much like Ashitaka acts as the mediator in between the human and spirit forces, Ginko works between Mushi and people to create stable, peaceful relations. Ginko is also a nomad and outsider, who travels to a different space - and thus landscape - every episode. Once becoming trusted and welcome and turning these spaces into more of a place for himself and the audience, he leaves to go on another adventure. Both media texts appear to be rooted in the Shinto spiritual faith. "Kami" is a common Shinto term which is Japanese for "spirit," and Kami are often associated with natural or abstract forces. Furthermore, both are rooted in an older time in Japanese history. Taking into consideration culture and time as a landscape, the natural Japan-centered landscapes of the film and anime coincide frequently. I like how you note that "Miyazaki is focused on probing for questions and new ideologies rather than assigning guilt or prescribing a proper way of dealing with these issues," as I feel that Mushishi also transcends judgement and instead presents a holistic view on human tendencies, spiritual beings, and their interconnected moralities. If you want to watch more of Princess Mononoke's type of man vs nature dichotomy as well as aesthetically stunning animation, I recommend checking out the anime series (subbed version). It's not one of my favorites, but it ranks high on many anime viewers and critics' lists.

-Alejandro Ovalle

Works Cited

Princess Mononoke. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli, 1997.

Urushibara, Yuki. Mushishi. Dir. Hiroshi Nagahama. Prod. Artland. Oct. 2005. Television.

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris is, at the heart of it, a story about a man and his city. At the superficial level, Midnight in Paris masquerades as many things – a love story, a story of disenchantment, or a story of self-discovery. However, at the heart, I believe the viewer finds a story about a man who creates for himself a city, and falls in love with what he has found.

In DeCerteau’s Walking in the City, he mentions the rhetoric of the city – how a walker creates the city by choosing and opening different possibilities. He explains, “the network of these moving, intersecting writings compose and manifold story that has neither author nor spectator" (DeCerteau, 93). In DeCerteau’s opinion, pedestrians read the city but more importantly create a city that has a different subjective meaning. Owen Wilson’s character, Gil, stands out from his fiancée and her family because he is so eager to walk. Inez, Gil’s fiancée, finds his obsession to be annoying and childish. Gil, after exploring a furniture store, begs Inez to walk back home in the rain but Inez simply responds with frustration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x87vmArwLCQ&feature=youtu.be

As a result, Inez and her family remain oblivious to the city, while Gil, in his solo walks about Paris, creates a ‘city rhetoric’ of his own. Inez watches the city as a voyeur. She doesn’t allow herself past the superficial; she is content to think of the city as a map of streets and buildings. Gil becomes to know and understand the city intimately, even throughout its different time periods. As DeCerteau puts it, “and if on the one hand he actualizes only a few of the possibilities fixed by the constructed order (he goes only here and not there), on the other he increases the number of possibilities (for example, by creating shortcuts and detours) and prohibtions…” (DeCerteau, 98). Gil is presented with infinite possibilities, and by choosing to go here and not there, he creates a dialogue that cannot be explained simply on a map. Gil’s journey is even more impossible to map because he jumps in time, however these jumps seem to simply be another possibility in the rhetoric of the city, a city that speaks in four dimensions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwuqNUC3VPw

In a way, Paris becomes the externalization of Gil’s inner dilemma, his uncertainty about his fiancée, his job, and his future. Gil is stuck in his life’s here-there, DeCerteau’s idea of transit. Accordingly, Gil spends most of the film walking, stuck in the here-there of Paris. Even as the time period changes, Gil is in transit, from his time to their time, looking for the ‘there’ in his journey. Adriana calls Gil interesting in a lost way - In his wandering, he hopes to change space into place.

In this clip, Gil also mentions that nothing, not a painting, not a sculpture, not even a symphony can complete with the complex beauty of a city. Perhaps he hits DeCerteau's ideals right on the head - a city is an art form all and of itself. Each person, each "walker" creates a city of their own, something no map or birds-eye-view could ever capture. All these pedestrians create place, and no one form will ever be able to capture a city in its entirety. Even Midnight in Paris is an exploration of one man's making of place out of space. We see Gil's personal city, but each walker builds a city of their own. His memories and his experiences form an identity for himself as well as the city, creating his place out of space.

Sources

Cresswell, Tim. "Introduction: Defining Place." Place: A Short Introduction. 1-16. Print.

De Certeau, Michael. "Spatial Practices." Walking in the City. 91-110. Print.

Midnight in Paris. Dir. Woody Allen. Perf. Owen Wilson. 2011.

RE: Midnight in Paris

Response to Midnight in Paris

I like your comparison between DeCerteau’s “Walking in the City” and Midnight in Paris. It is a fitting example of an artist’s intense longing for expression that he creates an entire world apart from time simply by walking every night. The film truly depicts an extreme case of DeCerteau’s argument in that he not only creates possibilities in movement through space but infinite possibilities as he moves through time. You bring up the pint that Owen Wilson’s character was not limited by the city like pedestrians in DeCerteau’s analysis. Since he has influence of time, he could travel to before or after the city. He can even influence the plans of the city rather than the city limiting his “expression” of walking. You can use this to further argue that this collapses DeCerteau’s distinction between the above and the below. By controlling time, Wilson’s character has control of both map and movement. The dimension of time is more powerful than the above or below because it brings with it the power of expression, like walking the streets, and the power of observation, like viewing from above. You can argue that the artists in the film have the ultimate power to create because of their transcendental nature.

Color Correction and its effect on Cinematic Landscape: Starting with O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), ending with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011)

A brief introduction to Midnight in Paris:

Gil Pender, a romantic daydreamer and novice author, visits Paris with his insufferable fiancée, Inez, and her conservative parents. While in the “city of love,” Gil slowly isolates himself from his fiancée and begins to take midnight strolls around his beloved Paris. In a fantastical turn of events, he is picked up at midnight by an old-fashioned car and taken back to Paris in the 1920’s, an era Gil idolizes as the “Golden Age” of Paris. He meets Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, among others. He falls for Pablo Picasso’s alluring mistress, Adriana, and eventually realizes that he and Inez are not meant for each other. Adriana and Gil are picked up by another mysterious car and brought even further back in time to the 1890’s, the Belle Epoque era, which Adriana feels is actually the Golden Age of Paris. However, when Gil and Adriana ask the Belle Epoque Parisians what they believe to be Paris’ most idyllic era, they answer with “the Renaissance.” Gil begins to see that everyone mistakenly believes the past to be better than the present, instead of enjoying the present as it is. He returns to the 21st century, breaks off his engagement with Inez, and decides to stay in Paris.

A highly informational clip showing the first use of full digital color grading in the Cohen brother’s film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pla_pd1uatg

Analysis of clip and relationship to Midnight in Paris (2011):

Before digital color correction, film stock would be sent to a post-production laboratory to undergo chemical processes, which would then generate the desired final look onto the film. Roger Deakins, the director of photography for O Brother Where Art Thou?, explains that this photochemical process was limiting because only the three primary colors could be used: blue, green, and red. Deakin calls the process “hit and miss” because it can often drift to colors that were not intended. The archaic laboratory processes were unsuccessful at achieving the “dust-bowl era” look the Cohen brothers and Deakin wanted, so they brought O Brother Where Art Thou? to Cinesite, a digital coloring company. On the computer they could change and fix certain shots or items in shots, then easily record the corrected images back out to film.

The Cohen brothers and Deakin envisioned the film as looking “dry and dusty,” but had shot the film during the Mississippi summer, a luscious green time of year for the state. Deakin explains in the clip that had he done the process of color correcting chemically, it would have involved numerous other steps like flashing the negatives, using sepia filters, and doing multiple runs through chemicals. If you go to 5:39 on the clip above, you can see the before (lush and green) and after (golden yellow) of one image, and the drastic effect the filmmakers were hoping to make for this movie – made extremely easier through a few clicks of the mouse rather than hard hand-labor with chemical treatments.

O Brother Where Art Thou? truly changed post-production and the effect editors and colorists can have on the look of a film. Deakin rightly states that as people become more familiar with digital color grading, laboratory processes will be a thing of the past. Digital color correction will open up new methods of filmmaking that were not available before this technology. Directors now shoot film rather flat, grabbing as much detail in the image as possible so that in post-production the editor has as much information to change and alter as possible. Later in the clip, Randy Starr, VP of Business Development at Cinecite, says,

Color became a character, it washes over the audience as you view it. As a character it lets you feel the period of time. It lets you feel the heat and the sweat on their body. That is something the filmmaker could not capture on the camera, and could only use digital technology to let them capture.

In O Brother Where Art Thou? you can see a drastic difference between what was originally shot on the film, and what is found in the digitally corrected version. Green is replaced by gold, the yellow is overly saturated, and there is almost no blue to speak of. The landscape has been completely re-mastered to look like dry and barren Mississippi during the Great Depression. Since 2000, color correction in films has become the norm, oftentimes being a primary indicator of exactly the genre and time period the film fits in. The color grading locates us to where the story takes place and engages us in the themes and palettes commonly associated with those spaces.

Now to Midnight in Paris! Praised as one of Woody Allen’s best recent films, it begins in contemporary Paris but quickly transports its main character to Paris in the 1920’s – through the powers of color correction. Paris in 2011 is overly bright and the colors are extremely saturated. In the opening sequence alone, which is full of images of Parisian boulevards and gardens, you notice how vibrant the greens and yellows are. This introduces us to a modern, vivid, and warm Paris.

(Gil, Inez, and Paul and his wife peruse around French historical monuments. The blue in the sky is almost lost, while the greens, yellows, and browns dominate the shot.)

(Inez’s conservative parents discuss the Tea Party. Again, green from the flowers pop, while the entire restaurant oozes yellow. Also, funny dialogue J)

The palette of the modern Parisian landscape is almost limited to yellow, gold, brown, and off-black (not even a true black). This color grading is a bold choice from director Woody Allen, who states in one interview with The Examiner, “I want warm pictures….I like the colors to be autumnal: yellow, beige, brown, tan, and gold.” He believes characters look the best when the color is intensely warm, as opposed to being under harsh blue and white lights. This color grading has an immediate effect on skin tone, and throughout Midnight in Paris we never see a character with a “correct” skin color – they instead look orange and “like tomatoes” as Sven Nykvist, one of Allen’s colorists, once said.

(This leaning towards orange as skin tone color is a new trend in color correction – a trend that many are upset over. Films are using orange and its complementary color teal to make the actors pop off the screen, until almost every person looks like a tanned Guido from the Jersey Shore (their words, not mine!). They are creating unrealistic images, and perceptive movie-goers are not happy with the colorists’ “laziness.” Found at: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html)

In his article “Sunshine and Shadow,” Ford defines the cities cast in Film Noir movies as “having an uneasy ambience” with “tense, malevolent light” that is crucial to the mood of the stories (p 120). Dark, isolating cities reflect the main character’s internal confusion and despair. In Midnight in Paris, the lighting in Modern day Paris works exactly the same, except the opposite. Gil is an optimistic and romantic kind of guy, so the lighting of contemporary Paris is brighter and reflects his hopeful and boyish nature. Furthermore, Gil is a wanderer – a pedestrian in Paris – happy to walk the streets in the rain and soak in the city-scape. De Certau, in his article “Walking in the City,” considers walking through an urban system to be a kind of speech act with the city itself (p 97). Throughout the movie, Gil does seem to have a kind of dialogue with the streets and bars of Paris as he is transported through time.

The 1920’s scenes, though exactly the same city, feel like an entirely different landscape – one of nostalgia and the past. Sure, the colors are still warm, but there is more deep red and brown. They are darkened like a faded photograph. By changing the color palette ever so slightly, Allen has transported Gil and the audience into a different era of Paris.

In this picture, Gil is talking to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – two lively icons of the Roaring Twenties. The Fitzgerald’s clothing, and that of all the other Parisians in the 1920’s, has less variety of colors and is our first clue that we are not in modern Paris. The bar they are in has been color corrected to look darker than any shot we are have seen thus far, and the lighting is made to be a bit softer. Allen has created an entirely new cultural era simply by changing a few colors, and the audience gladly follows the fantastical adventure.

In the same article, “Sunshine and Shadow,” Ford writes “that the role of cities in film gradually changed over time from serving as mere background scenery to acting as the equivalent of major characters” (p 119). This could not be more correct than in the case of Midnight in Paris. In this time-travelling film, the city can and should be able to change its appearance in a matter of seconds, as the changing color of the landscape reflects the era Gil is occupying. The city has opened its doors to Gil so that he can meet his literary idols, but also learn a valuable lesson. Interestingly, when other characters attempt to time-travel like Gil, they are foiled. First, the car to the past does not appear for Inez, presumably because she is a non-believer. And the snooping detective sent to follow Gil is trapped in 1400’s Paris. It seems that Paris has decided only Gil can safely tread the waters of time travel. In this way, the city-scape of Paris has become a character, alive and transforming.

(Please excuse the grainy quality of this picture. It was taken with my iPhone, and I was sitting very far away from the screen in the Norris McCormick auditorium…so this picture might actually also be illegal.)

This is the Belle Epoque era, as dreamed of by Adriana but now fully realized through Midnight in Paris’ magic. It is many shades darker than the 1920’s Parisian landscape, with almost no natural light. Everything has a muddy yellow and brown tinge, giving it a very old and far-away feeling. Many details of the room are lost in the shadows. Using color correction, Allen has constructed a landscape that he believes is the aesthetic of that time period. He has taken the “raw material” – the film – and corrected it to create the landscape that will orient the spectator to the 1890’s. As Andrews believes, “the landscape is what the viewer has…modified in accordance with certain conventional ideas” (p 4). I am told to imagine this is what a cabaret hall would look and feel like, simply from the dinghy lighting and deep reds and blacks Allen associates with the time.

Color correction is essential to Midnight in Paris because otherwise, Paris would look practically the same in every era, except for the clothing style. Color correction also makes the city of Paris a character that Gil adores and learns from as he roams the streets. We are not overwhelmed by the color correction as we are in some films today, but the subtle differences in color do help divide the city-scape into its appropriate time period.

Works Cited:

Andrews, Malcolm. “Land into Landscape.” Landscape and Western Art. Oxford University Press, 1999. 1-24 (ch 1).

de Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City.” The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 91-110.

Ford, Larry. “Sunshine and Shadow: Lighting and Color in the Depiction of Cities on Film,” Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle: A Geography of Film. Eds. Stuart C. Aitken and Leo Zonn. Lanham Maryland and London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1994. 119-136 (chapter 6).

Hay, Carla. “Woody Allen Talks about romance and time travel in ‘Midnight in Paris,” Posted May 20, 2011. Found at: http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/celebrity-q-a-in-national/woody-allen-talks-about-romance-and-time-travel-midnight-paris.

Midnight in Paris (2011) Woody Allen, 94 min

Miro, Todd. “Teal and Orange - Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness,” Posted March 14, 2010. Found at: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html

O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) Joel and Ethan Cohen, 106 min.

Seitz, Dan. “5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same,” Posted August 5, 2010. Found at: http://www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trend-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html

Painting with Pixels (O Brother Where Art Thou?) Uploaded by BullaBoy, 2010. Found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plaapd1uatg

Images from: http://happyotter666.blogspot.com/2012/02/midnight-in-paris-2011.html

(For some blatant color correcting by film genre, go to: http://www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html)

Re: Color Correction in Midnight in Paris

I like your use of landscape as it relates to both time and color in this post. While watching "Midnight in Paris" the first time around, I had not noticed those dramatic changes of color between the time periods, but once you pointed it out, it's hard to ignore. When we think back to movies that are trying to evoke nostalgia of the past, this almost sepia tone film stock is used. Yet, Allen chooses to use this tone in the present day. The blander sepia tone causes the setting (or landscape) to feel distant and it removes the viewer a bit from the action of this time period. This was an interesting choice for the present day because it is where Gil also feels distant. When the film gets into those richer colors that you mention in the scenes that take place in the past, the color quality takes on traits that are more similar to film's conventional use of color in the present. The skin tones seem saturated and natural unlike that orange color you refer to that is in the present day scenes. You do a good job here of connecting these colors to Gil's state of mind at the time, and I agree with you that the different color tones help to establish a clear separation between the present and the past and Gil's feelings towards each. This film does a good job to set up films in the future to use a somewhat subtle color correction to establish differences in emotions. What I mean by this, is there are plenty of films, like "Amelie", which use obvious color correction to clearly change the tone of the film, however, "Midnight in Paris" does this in a more understated way.

Re: Midnight in Paris

Minnie,

I liked all the connections you made with DeCerteau and how you emphasized that Gil, throughout the movie, turned space into place by creating his own identity within the city. I have yet to see this movie but it seems interesting. It seems like Gil is the ultimate pedestrian! He sees the city from one level, the below level, as opposed to seeing things from above.

You had mentioned that Gil has been presented with infinite possibilities and by having the option to choose what direction he goes in creates a dialogue that can not be explained on a map. This comparison is interesting to me because if Gil has options as to what direction to take or can make detours and so forth then why is this person looked at as middle or lower class? This question is not related to Midnight in Paris, but just a general question. When you think of being above the city and looking at it as an itinerary, you automatically think of higher class citizens as opposed to below citizens who see the city as a map and are actually walking through the streets as low, middle class citizens. What sort of seems contradicting and what could potentially be argued is, for instance, if Gil is making detours and being able to chose what direction to take, wouldn't that give him more freedom than say Inez, who seems to be observing the city from above and only has one outlook on the city as opposed to many outlooks? Just a though :-)

Before the Quake: the collapse of culture in Robert Altman's Short Cuts

Synopsis: Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993) is an adaptation of nine different Raymond Carver short stories. Like its source material, the film deals in everyday happenings verging on the mundane, showcasing an ensemble of well-developed characters struggling to go about their daily lives. Altman's adaptation weaves the stories together, tweaking them into a coherent whole; the characters' concrete lives are related only tangentially, but they are strung together thematically and unified by their location. Relationship problems, questions about art, and class issues are all explored.

[Please watch from 00:01 to 03:05]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB_hOcebvCE&feature=share

It's rare to see a film made that is truly about Los Angeles. Plenty of movies are set there, but few address them. Since the early days of film, it's effectively been the default location utilized (second, perhaps, to New York, though in name only), so it's natural to see it overlooked. The films that do choose to comment on the City of Angels typically do so in ways that are trite, or rendered so: the self-referential in-jokes of Apatow's Knocked Up and Funny People and the weighty, collapsing melodramas of Crash and Magnolia are useful points of reference. If there is closeness to the city, it's the kind of closeness that creates an ironic distance.

Short Cuts examines the lives of its people with a kind of level humility. They are people who could be anywhere but happen to be in L.A. Likely American immigrants, they're far from the charicatured stoners or the outlandish starlets that populate most films set in Los Angeles. There's some truth, perhaps, in those bigger-than-life characters, but the reality of those pieces of Los Angeles is so close to the history of film that it's difficult to explore without irony or metacomment, forces which disrupt genuine feeling. Altman's film, however, dodges these pitfalls, striving to explore a place in a distinctly humanist way, by attempting to understand the people who live in it.

Tim Cresswell defines place as "a way of understanding." Distinct from space, which has a strictly physical, removed geometric/abstract quality to it, as well as from landscape, which "the viewer is outside of" (Cresswell 8, 10). Space is removed with the distance required to address an abstract idea, "landscape" by the externality required for an "intensely visual" experience. However, "places," Cresswell, claims, are "very much things to be inside of. (10)"

In fact, the film seems to eschew shots of the landscape of LA. The cinematography opts for medium-long shots at most, spotlighting at almost all times small moments between characters. The opening credits sequence of the film alternates between a view from "above," from the sky, the perspective of a fleet of airplanes (the "voyeur" perspective). Then there is the view from the side, that of a "walker," a participant in the city as a place, through which we meet the film's massive cast (de Certeau 92-93). Michel de Certeau writes of the latter perspective, "must one finally fall back into the dark space where the crowds move back and forth.... themselves unable to see down below?" It's a painful fall, an "Icarian" one, he claims, but ultimately the ground-view is the one that wins out (De Certeau 93).The victory of the ground-level view is a kind of mission statement for the film.

It is also worth noting that though we enter the film on the wings of airplanes, as outsiders, they are dropping pesticides that are rumored to be toxic. Though not important as a plot-point, this is the first hint, subdued throughout the film, of the antagonistic landscape the characters inhabit.

Since the latter wins out and the majority of the film occurs indoors (often by windows and open doorways, highlighting this contrast), the characters reveal themselves constantly, enacting place in the claustrophobic environments of their houses, cars, jobs. In one of the film's weaker moments, a character comments upon this. "I hate L.A," she says from the safety of her couch. "All they do is snort coke and talk." Being inside the city, she attempts to generalize, to establish distance, and to render the city a landscape. It's a limited observation, though one of the most self-aware moments of any character in the film. Most of the characters are oblivious, exposing themselves constantly through their intereractions with one another, each of them baring their souls in some way by the end of the film. Spousal abuse, feelings of inadequacy, domestic disputes, and reluctant proclamations of love all rise to the surface as the film goes on, creating an emotional, personal landscape, a place that could not feel more fully, if unhappily, lived-in. When one character late in the film asks "why does naked make it art?," we as viewers already have the answer.

It's a kind of focus on this, the everyday, the "talk" (as in most Altman films), that makes the film's Los Angeles a lived-in place. Few truly dramatic actions are taken, and there's very little travel. What little movement occurs is mostly unseen or in some way isolated, the characters alone in cars or pacing, anxious and frustrated, about their empty houses. The only real walking that occurs is interrupted by the city's traffic, as a boy is hit by a car. Truly, the identity-affirming "pedestrian speech acts," the chance for a "spatial acting-out of the place" is denied all the characters (de Certeau 97-98). If walking is a chance to affirm identity, no one is allowed it in the film's Los Angeles. No characters are allowed the opportunity to create their own paths, and they are forced to succumb to the often-isolating rhythms embedded in the place they inhabit. Though Los Angeles remains apparently inactive throughout most of the film, spotlighted only at beginning and end, the actors on its stage nevertheless lack power over it.

A type of desperation for movement is evident, however. One group of characters is determined for much of the film to go on a fishing trip. So determined are the characters to assert themselves against their environment that when they find a dead girl, apparently the victim of a violent crime, near their fishing hole, they neglect for the duration of the weekend to report in. It may be that they wish for "subjugation of wilderness" to fill the same role for them that it did for the pioneers, that of "a source of pride." Nash's words about early America are also applicable to its citizens: "for a young country [or man], self-conscious about its achievements and anxious to justify independence with success, the conquest of wilderness bolstered the national ego" (Nash 42). When left with no other sources of pride, the men in Short Cuts who leave the city to venture into the wilderness are actually a step ahead of the other characters. Though clearly desperate (as indicated by the girl they leave), they seem in some way cognizant of their discontent in Los Angeles, and they seek the only wilderness they can find as an escape from it. Even so, it's a temporary reprieve, and a false one; there's nothing west of Los Angeles but sea, no wilderness left for them to really conquer. Los Angeles is the last place for them westward, and if they fail to be happy there, a fishing trip, a temporary salve, isn't going to much help them.

Aside from the camping trip, the only exception to the film's seething, claustrophobic interiority are the sequences that open and close it. Each time, though, any romance is undermined. The first time, the planes are dropping pesticide; the second (the fishing trip, the characters never leave the campground. The characters on the trip, too, are rigidly compartmentalized by the composition throughout it, isolated either from the landscape and forced into close quarters with one another (see above).

The final sequence of the film is where the city reveals itself. The landscape finally acts, lashing out with an earthquake. It's so aggressive that it covers up a murder, displaying itself as cruel and antagonistic despite its seeming inaction before. The characters' many sins and conflicts seem to be facilitated or caused by the city in the end. Their oblivious movements, their self-destructive acts throughout the film before the final shot, their vast reservoir of conflicts may not be their own doing so much as a symptom of a sick place. It's a lived-in place, though, that they helped create, and the final pan over it, over what, at the film's nighttime beginning was a pleasant view, becomes a brutal confrontation. The toxicity hinted at in the city before has now become visible, hanging over the city as a cloud, and the state of the city, the damage it has done to the characters' lives, is innate, irrevocable, and impossible to escape.

--George Elkind, 2/29/2012

--------------------Works Cited----------------------

Altman, Robert, dir. Short Cuts. Writ. Raymond Carver, and Frank Barhydt. Fine Line Features, 2004. DVD.

Cresswell, Tim. "Introduction: Defining place." Place: A Short Introduction. MALDEN, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1-16.

de Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City." The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 91-110.

Nash, Roderick Frazier. "A Wilderness Condition." Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001 [1967]. 23-43 (ch 2).

Re: Short Cuts

(Sam Cohen) This analysis of Short Cuts (1993) reminded me of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). Also set in a default location, New York City, Taxi Driver doesn’t glamorize nor dismiss the importance of the city's landscape. Travis Bickle is a taxi driver who is changed over the course of the film by his interaction with the “antagonistic” landscape. Similar to the characters in Short Cuts, we see Travis attempt to establish generalizations, and distance from the city that he despises more and more. This is mostly done in isolation, in his run down, claustrophobic apartment, and he develops more mental isolation as he drives his taxi around, disgusted at the sights and people that inhabit New York. As he struggles against the landscape, it becomes an even more personal and emotional self-image, one that could not possibly be happily lived in. He is completely enveloped by place, creating a similar ironic divide between him and the city. You point out that visual movement tends to be hindered, that characters can never get a full chance to have an identity affirming spatial acting out of place, as described by de Certeau. Travis struggles against the landscape, his desperately wants to affirm his identity by spatially acting out the place. His loathe of his environment becomes his identity; he resorts to intense physical training so he can use violence to force the landscape to be affected by him. Convinced of his hatred for the “scum” that inhabits the landscape around him, he performs the most extreme actions to assert himself against his environment. New York, like L.A. in Short Cuts, reveals itself to Travis over the course of the film, and when he lashes out, the city is ready to retaliate and end him. Travis entered a fight impossible to escape, the city became a trap that acted against him the more he acted against it. The “place” of New York City is more tangible in Taxi Driver then other location films which simply use it as a backdrop.

Aliens and Artificial Landscape - Max Baird (Spoiler Alert)

James Cameron took the reins of the Alien franchise from Ridley Scott in 1986 to create Aliens. Cameron's film returns to the barren world on which Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) encountered an alien freighter carrying thousands of eggs containing parasitic organisms. In the first film, one of Ripley's crewmates, Kane (John Hurt), is attacked by a parasite, which lays eggs in his chest and dies. When he comes to, Kane feels fine until he convulses at the dinner table, the result of a creature that has been gestating in his chest bursting out, killing him. The creature grows to an enormous size, stalking the remaining crew throughout the ship, killing them one by one, until Ripley manages to destroy the ship and blow the alien out an airlock.

The second film opens with a salvage team picking up Ripley's escape pod, where she has been cryogenically frozen and drifting through space for 57 years. She is taken to the headquarters of the company she works for, where she learns that the planet her crew had encountered the aliens on has now been terraformed and colonized. When the colony of over 150 goes dark, the company takes a second look at her story, which they had previously dismissed, and send her in with the Colonial Marines as an adviser to the operation. The marines land and find the colony deserted, holes burned in the floors and ceilings from the aliens' acidic blood, scars and signs of battle throughout the prefabricated, bleak colony.

The marines make their way to the colony's central nuclear reactor, where the colonists' transponders indicate them to be. The harsh, grey metal edges of the colony interior have been replaced with slimy, green organic material that one of the marines describes as "secreted resin." They find a live colonist, who soon suffers the same fate as Kane in the first film, and the aliens are drawn to the noise of the event, surrounding and attacking the marines.

As the marines fall back, they retreat to the more angled, grey interiors of the colony, far from the organic slime and greens of the alien hive. Even outside of their hive, the aliens are still able to maneuver through the tight ducts and tunnels of the human colony to attack the marines in ways they would not think to be prepared for. The aliens here represent a perverted form of nature, the animalistic creatures slowly taking back the manufactured interiors of the human colony by using its very structure and design against the marines.

When the marines first land, their technological abilities are flaunted. In the words of Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) "Independently targeting particle beam phalanx. Vwap! Fry half a city with this puppy. We got tactical smart missiles, phase-plasma pulse rifles, RPGs, we got sonic electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks..." The very colony that they are traveling to defend is a large terraforming machine; a piece of technology that creates a breathable atmosphere to make a planet habitable. They set up shop in the control room of the colony, an area resembling a science lab. Computer banks and screens, a series of stasis tubes containing specimens of the alien parasite, all signs of invasive technology that contrast to the barren exteriors of the planet LV-426.

Once the marines find the missing colonists' transponders, they realize that they are broadcasting from a tight group right under one of the primary heat exchangers for the colony's reactor. The marines, whose weapons fire explosive tipped rounds from their weapons, are forced to surrender their ammunition and search the bowels of the reactor complex with flamethrowers and shotguns, severely hampering their technological advantage as the scenery begins to change to a steamy, humid, organic green of the alien hive. The aliens have specifically chosen a location that maximizes their advantage in the defense of their hive and the collection of potential hosts.

As the team descends into the facility, the walls' lines become much more rounded and naturalistic, the aliens' "secreted resin" has begun to retake the manufactured metal of the tunnels and walkways. They have repurposed the complex to act as their fortress and breeding ground, where the queen lays her eggs and unfortunate humans are dragged in as victims of the parasites.

Once the marines are attacked, the aliens start to emerge from the walls of the walkways. The resin they have secreted onto the walls creates nooks in which the aliens can hide and wait for intruders, blending into the surrounding slimy resin that heavily resembles their skin. The aliens wait in ambush as the marines begin to fall back, picking off stragglers and either killing them or dragging them away to become hosts. In a way, the landscape becomes so hostile to the marines that it starts physically attacking them. The aliens emerge from the landscape to attack the marines and disappear back into it as quickly as they came. According to the marines' dialogue, the aliens are indiscernible from the landscape on their infrared scanners.

In the image above, the slimy tentacle looking things in the bottom right of the screen capture is an alien. Private Drake (Mark Rolston) has expended the ammunition for his smart gun and has been covering the retreat of his fellow marines with a flamethrower. He lags behind as the team boards their APC and is attacked by the cleverly concealed alien.

Near the end of the film, the surviving members of the marine team, Ripley, and Newt (Carrie Henn), a young girl who survived the alien takeover of the colony, are forced to make a last stand in the control center of the colony. After thinning the hordes of aliens with remote sentry turrets, the aliens must find another way into the control center that bypasses the marines' defenses. Hudson holds a motion tracker, which reads movement on the inside of the pressure doors the marines relied on to keep the aliens at bay. When the tracker reads movement inside the room, Hicks pushes up a ceiling panel to see this:

The aliens managed to find their way into the ducts above the control center to drop down and ambush the marines. Instead of repurposing human structures to suit their own needs, the aliens found a way to turn the very structures the humans had built in order to better kill them. The aliens successfully ambush the marines, cornering Vasquez and Gorman (William Hope) in a ventilation duct, dragging Hudson through the floor panels to his demise, and abducting Newt.

By utilizing human structures as a framework for their battle against the interlopers, the aliens represent a perverse form of nature fighting back against the technology and manufactured landscapes of the human colony. By placing the terraforming generator on the planet and attempting to change its very atmosphere to adapt it to human needs, the colonists present a large enough affront to the natural balance of the planet to warrant an intervention by the non-indigenous aliens. As the hive spreads, it brings with it the organic, disgustingly natural aesthetic that resembles something truly alien, but with a basis in artificial human constructs. The aliens use human technology, such as the reactor and the electrical or ventilation ducts, to their advantage as they spread their hive and wage war on the interlopers.

Sources:

Cresswell, Tim. “Introduction: Defining Place.” Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1-16.

Lefebvre, Martin. “Between Setting and Landscape in the Cinema.” Landscape and Film. Ed. Martin Lefebvre. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. 19-60 (chapter 2).

Cresswell, Tim. “The Genealogy of Place.” Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 17-70.

Diehl, Carol. “The Toxic Sublime,” Art in America 94.2 (February 2006). 118-123. Web.

Meinig, D. W., ed. “The Beholding Eye – Ten Versions of the Same Scene.” The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes. New York: Oxford UP, 1979. 33-50

Aliens (1986) James Cameron, 137 min.

Atonement

Synopsis

Atonement follows the story of Cecelia Tallis and Robbie Turner as they struggle to reunite after years of separation caused by the false testimony of Briony Tallis. The film begins in the Tallis’ summer estate where Robbie Turner is the caretaker. He and Cecelia Tallis begin to fall in love however Briony, an imaginative little girl, believes Robbie to have assaulted her cousin Lola. Robbie is sent to prison where, four years later, he is given to option to stay locked behind bars or fight in the World War. Though the couple reunites at the end, it turns out that the entire story was Briony’s fabrication. It is revealed that Robbie died in war and Cecelia died during the London Bombings. Briony wrote a false ending in her novel in order to give Cecelia and Robbie that happiness they deserved in order to atone for what she did.

A Different View

The ending of the film is a complete surprise but because of the way it does end, the landscape of Atonement serves the audience twice. There is the initial frame which plays through once, and then there is the post-knowledge frame which changes the way in which the film is thought of. The initial viewing of Atonement is a perception of truth. The audience watches time unfold, and they take in the story and the land. The setting and landscape has not been artificially placed for them to see. They are simply seeing it as it was. However, at the end of Atonement the audience is let in on the actual truth. Briony admits that what the audience has experienced is not only a story retold, but a fabrication of her imagination. That is the point in which the story, and everything in it including land, is transformed. The post-knowledge frame functions differently as the audience begins to understand that they were not in fact experiencing reality, but a theatrical retelling of Briony’s point of view. Everything previously watched had been framed and intentionally placed by the author.

Tuan mentions that an immature mind is not able to conceive the full meaning of a landscape. He uses school children as an example. The more they mature, the more they are able to look at photographs and talk about how the settings within them function rather than just point out what they see. Briony understands this of her readers. They are mature and would be able to see too much if she had made her intentions known. She attempts to give us an immature mind so that we may follow the course of her life and her guilt as she did. Part one of the film breaks up time into pieces, and we see everything from different perspectives, but the story does not tie together. She shows us a bit of every setting. We see Briony move fast in and out of the wooded areas of the estate. We get to see Cecilia in her beautiful room prepare for Robbie. We accidentally get a peek at the sex scene in the library. Everything in part one is broken into pieces just like the mind of thirteen year old Briony.

This is evident from the beginning of the film. The first piece of landscape the audience gets to see is not even real. It is a replica doll house of the Tallis estate. Immediately we are told that we are being presented with a fabricated version of reality. It isn’t until a bit later that the entire mansion is shown for the audience to see. There are suggestions in the beginning that the story is a fabrication. As the film progresses, the audience begins to discover the truth that Briony initially withholds. Like Tuan suggests, it is a way for Briony to maintain power and control of entire situation, so that in the end we reach the same conclusion to her logic, that Cecelia and Robbie deserved a happy ending in her book even though they didn’t get one in real life.

The initial frame of part one shows us pieces of landscapes that don’t have full meaning until a second viewing, or a post-knowledge frame. Briony is constantly walking through the house, the estate, and coming across different people. We also get to see pieces of the places everyone else inhabits. We see Robbie and his mother at the Turner house. We also see his mother in the kitchen. We get to see Mrs. Tallis in her bedroom and later in the dining room. We get to see the winding road to the estate, and large yard adorned with a fountain behind the mansion. Meinig mentions that every piece of landscape has different meaning depending on how it is looked at. The estate of part one in Atonement initially presents itself through a lens of nature and wealth. The land Briony moves in and out of, and the setting in which the audience sees Robbie’s and Cecelia’s love begin to bloom are romanticized. The scenes carry beauty in the form of nature or grand architecture. The wooded area reflects Briony traveling through her world of imagination. The mansion on the estate shows the meeting of the wealthy with the humble just like Robbie, the caretaker, falling in love with Cecelia, the wealthy young lady.

It isn’t until the audience is reaching the end of the film, and stepping more and more into the inside of Briony’s mind that the audience’s perspective is able to mature. Suddenly the beginning, if watched again will be viewed differently. As Meinig mentions that different people view the landscapes differently, the matured mind of the audience can see the land as ideology rather than romanticized nature, wealth, or simple aesthetic. Briony has allowed the mind of the audience to mature fully. Tuan mentions landscape can be made to strongly emphasize the outside and the inside in order to demonstrate power. Briony does this to the audience as she lets us into her thoughts. We understand her reason and her story completely, and we have a new view of the previous occurrences.

The audience can go back to the beginning, pay close attention to the setting, and think differently about the post-knowledge frame. The large mansion is no longer a source of beauty but of judgment. It is large, sits on a hill, and tries to overpower the land. The wooded areas that served a Briony’s playground become an entrapment of hostility. It is within the setting of Briony’s fanciful state that bad situations arise. The sense of misery starts to become a stench in the setting that used to be, to the audience’s immature mind, a beautiful idealized place.

Part one of Atonement is the beginning of Briony’s retelling of her story, however the audience is unaware until the end. This allows for the audience to undergo the transformation Briony went through as she grew from an immature and fanciful girl to a regretful adult. Because of her temporary withholding of truth, the audience gets two different experiences from the film. In the initial frame, the opening scene is beautiful, but the post-knowledge frame becomes a different angle of the same view. Like Briony, though she felt at the time that she was right, the audience can only look back at her memories with regret and guilt.

Re: Atonement (Derrick Liu response)

Though I’ve never seen Atonement in its entirety, I found your analysis of the film to be quite profound. I liked all the connections you made, especially to Tuan and how “an immature mind is [unable] to conceive the full meaning of its landscape”. Due to your detailed analysis and wonderful descriptions, I decided to take the pleasure of viewing the opening myself and see what connections I could make. Indeed, I discovered that the landscape of Atonement does serve the audience twice. Without any prior knowledge, we enter the frame with an immature mind and simply view the landscape as it is. The mansion sits upon a lush, green hill; the maids begin preparing a grand dinner; Briony finishes writing a play. It seems that the family is perfectly well-off, both financially and socially. Everyone is happy. However, once we realize the truth, things get very interesting. Though, at the very beginning, Briony does try to entrap us in her idealized world, director Joe Wright inputs subtle traces which signal to us that what we’re seeing is fabricated, not real. It is here where I would like to slightly expand upon your analysis, and I believe that Hopkins’ + Peirce's notion of semiotics will serve us well.

The cinematic landscape, according to Hopkins, is not “limited to the world represented on the screen, but [also includes] the meanings constructed through” the screen (Hopkins, 50). That is, the film includes more than just what we see or hear. It incorporates signs, preconceived ideas and cinematic techniques to develop the production of a higher notion. In Hopkins’ case, it is cultural systems. In our case, it is dispelling belief. By carefully paying attention to the details in the frame, we are able to loosen ourselves from Briony’s grasp and move away from the story that she wants us to hear. We know we’re part of an illusion. Thus, by focusing on and interpreting the subtle signs Wright throws at us, we are able to dispel Briony’s story and evolve, according to Tuan, into a more mature mind.

Before we advance any further, let me just clarify Charles Peirce's three categories of semiotics through the following table:

Sign Type Signified By Process Examples

ICON Resemblance Can see Photos, statues

INDEX Causal connection Can synthesize Smoke --> fire

SYMBOL Social Convention Must learn Words, rituals

So what are these signs and what do they tell us? Well, let’s first explore the initial shot of the film.

I think you really hit the nail on this one. You mentioned that the replica doll house of Tallis estate immediately tell us “that we are being presented with a fabricated version of reality.” I very much agree with this statement. In fact, I believe that this is the image which first introduces us to Briony’s world, and it is with this shot that we first step into her imagination.

The doll house is an index which gives us notions of childhood and innocence. We see not just the residence itself, but also flowers in the background, and eventually animal dolls lined up in front. Obviously, we are looking at objects belonging to youth, and hence, make this connection.

However, once we combine the visual with sound, we are presented with something slightly different. Before the images appear, we hear the diegetic sounds of a typewriter and faint bird chirps. As the sound continues, we follow a long tracking shot, starting from the doll house, onto the ground, and through a line of animal dolls. The dolls, lined up (mostly) from big to small, also act as an index, telling us that Briony is revisiting her past. (Briony is now 77 so the gradual transition from the large dog to the miniscule horse must tell us that she is starting from her present and moving back into her past.) Furthermore, the simplicity of the audio acts as an index indicating to us that she is writing in solitude, and likely reminiscing on her past (since indices of youth are shown throughout).

Thus, once we add the form of sounds with the content of visuals, we conclude that Briony must be attempting to recall her childhood (before she has to live with her guilt). The sounds of typing in peaceful solitude mixed with the images of youth produces an idea of longing for childhood (i.e. lost innocence).

This next shot hints to us that what we’re revisiting (Briony’s childhood) may likely be untrue. The frame uses high-key lighting and overwhelming hues of white, screaming to us Briony’s innocence. The windows are entirely covered in bright sunlight while the bed sheets, the dress, and even the room itself seem to be practically white. The image is very beautiful, showcasing childhood innocence, but seems to be unrealistic. Instead of representing an actual event in the past, it seems to be a figment of an artist’s imagination. Though we can’t reach any substantial conclusions, our suspicion of Briony’s tale rises with this recollection.

Lastly, I would like to point out the scene of Briony walking through the estate. You mentioned here that “we get to see pieces of the places everyone else inhabits.” However, these are only brief images, and we only get to see parts of the house. The secrets are not revealed. The image above hints to us that Briony may not be telling us everything. Shadows crawl across the floor, and, aside from Briony, much of the mansion is dark and monotone. She is the only bright object, so we focus on her, and thus, her story.

*****************

I think it is amazing how the audience can interpret this beginning in two completely different ways. To me, it seems like a double entendre, since your understanding depends heavily upon your knowledge of Briony's past. Overall, I think you made a very thoughtful argument, and with further scrutiny, we could probably find even more "flaws" in Briony's story.

Sources:

Hopkins, Jeff. "Mapping of Cinematic Places: Icons, Ideology, and the Power of (Mis)representation." Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle: A Geography of Film. Stuart C. Aitken and Leo Zonn, eds. Lanham Maryland and London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1994. 47-68 (ch3).

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