Blue Velvet

This was originally written for my cinema class in college.

The academic analysis I am going to review for my midterm project is Subverting Eden: Ambiguity of Evil and the American Dream in Blue Velvet by Irena Makarushka. In her paper Irena Makarushka discusses how David Lynch breaks down the traditional illusions about American Dream and the ambiguity of the good and evil definitions in society. She supports her thesis with a lot of examples from the film. In addition, she shows parallelisms between David Lynch's style of questioning things in Blue Velvet and some concepts that are discussed by Nietzsche; like nihilism and postmodernism.

According to Irena Makarushka David Lynch subverts the idea of the Eden; the “American Dream” for Blue Velvet. She gives the opening scene as her most significant example for this. In the opening scene of Blue Velvet we see the traditional icons of the American Dream; a home securing fence, beautiful flowers, a smiling and waving fireman, a crossing guard that helps school kids on the street, etc. where the main colors are simple primary colors like red, blue and white. Then David Lynch tears this too perfect image of the town Lumberton, the town where the film takes place, by showing Jeffrey's dad having a heart attack. Following this event Jeffrey founds the mysterious ear on the floor which emphasizes the idea of “things are not always what they seem” (Makarushka, 31). With these disturbing events David Lynch starts to show us that the dream is not that simple and perfect. Colors get more complicated and darker and we see that the “American Dream” is tentative like Eden was tentative for Adam and Eve. There are so much more underneath the surface in reality but the people, like the people from Lumberton, tend to deny that reality and turn a blind eye to it. Irena Makarushka especially gives the examples of how Jeffrey's mom and aunt behave throughout the film for supporting this idea. Jeffrey wants to open his eyes and dive into places where he can get more knowledge about the world but this is going to cause him and Sandy to leave their illusionary Eden, “American Dream”.

Irena Makarushka also argues that in Blue Velvet David Lynch questions the ambiguity between good and evil, right and wrong, and shows that their definitions are not that simple as they exist in traditional sense. The film's narrative starts with characters that seem to represent those traditional simple definitions but then as we start to know them more the answer to what is good and what is evil gets complicated. Irena Makarushka says “The narrative, which follows the classical lines of a detective fiction, appears to be quite simple and straightforward. Jeffrey, the handsome and brave hero, with the help of his beautiful blond girlfriend, sets out to rescue the dark lady, Dorothy, from the clutches of the evil drug dealer, Frank. However, upon closer scrutiny, the story is far from simple.” (Makarushka, 33). Irena Makarushka gives Jeffrey's inner battle as an example for this. Jeffrey, who thinks himself as a good boy, realizes that he also has some evil in himself from his experiences in Dorothy's world. Both Jeffrey and Sandy think they are in this detective mission for good but especially Jeffrey sometimes finds himself in the position of a pervert after spending more time with Dorothy. According to Irena Makarushka, David Lynch supports as people start to experience things rather than just believing their simple illusionary surface they realize the ambiguity in traditional definitions. David Lynch does not show good and evil or right and wrong as opposites but instead he shows they exist together and this is especially emphasized in Jeffrey's inner struggle after he experiences Dorothy's and Frank's world. This is Jeffrey's loss of innocence and as Frank says in the film Jeffrey is like him.

In addition, Irena Makarushka informs us about how Nietzsche argues on some definitions that are related with David Lynch's narrative style in Blue Velvet. She gives the definitions of postmodernism of reaction, postmodernism of resistance, passive nihilism and active nihilism and she interprets them according to Nietzsche's arguments. She claims that David Lynch work in Blue Velvet uses postmodernism of resistance while questioning the traditional images that are represented by postmodernism of reaction and David Lynch also presents the ambiguity between passive nihilism, which can be thought as people wanting the illusionary comfort of the past and traditions, and active nihilism, which can be associated with people's resistance against the old fixed traditional beliefs.

I am not going to comment on how David Lynch's work in Blue Velvet can be explained with Nietzsche's ideas about postmodernism of resistance, postmodernism of reaction, passive nihilism and active nihilism because I do not have much knowledge about these terms. However, I agree with Irena Makarushka on her thesis about how David Lynch questions the “American Dream” and ambiguity between good and evil in Blue Velvet. When I tried to read the subtext of Blue Velvet for the first time what immediately came to my mind was “American Dream” is being torn down. Then after I have read about some symbolisms that were used in the film I realized that the film was also about Jeffrey's inner struggle while dealing with the concepts of good and evil.

Most obvious example on the subversion of “American Dream” is the opening scene of Blue Velvet as Irena Makarushka also mentions. For me those images at the beginning were so disturbingly perfect that I was happy when I saw they were interrupted by Jeffrey's father's hearth attack. Then David Lynch dives his camera to the ground where he makes us see lots of bugs under the beautiful green grass. This emphasizes the idea of things are not what they seem like on the surface. You have to start to look beneath the surface to wake up from the dream and face the reality; and the reality may contain non-pleasant things, like bugs. After that, Jeffrey finds the ear and things get more and more complicated for the simple “American Dream”.

David Lynch also plays with the simple traditional definitions of the concepts good and evil or right and wrong. Questioning the ambiguity between good and evil becomes the maturation process for our protagonist Jeffrey. He realizes he is not just a good boy-next-door but he can also experience evil in himself. For example, in the scene where he first refuses Dorothy's sick request but then does what she wants, which is hitting her, David Lynch places a roaring sound in the background which can be thought as the sound that represents evil. Then we hear a similar sound when Frank is shot by Jeffrey and it is like David Lynch wants to make us hear the moaning of the devil at that moment when he is shot. In traditional definitions Frank is already an evil and he is also aware of that. Therefore, hearing that kind of a sound when Frank is shot is normal for us. However, David Lynch show us under the perfect handsome-good-boy image of Jeffrey we can also hear that evil sound because once Jeffrey starts to experience things rather than believing the illusions of the society we see that he can do some evil, too. Therefore, good and evil are hand-in-hand in every person no matter what they believe about themselves.

To sum up, I agree with Irena Makarushka's thesis in her paper Subverting Eden: Ambiguity of Evil and the American Dream in Blue Velvet. David Lynch subverts the idea of the “American Dream” and shows the ambiguity between good and evil in his film Blue Velvet. He tries to show us what are behind the curtains and makes us realize that they are not as simple and perfect as some people blindly believe them to be. Therefore, although Blue Velvet is not an entertaining film to watch; it leaves you with a lot of important questions to think about which I think what makes this film or any other David Lynch film great.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This was originally written for my cinema class in college.

The victims of the Tobe Hooper's 1974 made horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are five young hippies with their mini-van, horoscope book and humanistic behaviors. This is not just a coincidence for this horror film, because while victimizing the hippies the film focuses on hippie culture as a threat to the middle-class American society traditional values and hippie culture's relationship with the country life and working class.

American horror films are considered to focus on the fears of the conservative middle-class American society. Therefore, the victimization of the people who belong to the hippie culture in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is significant. Hippies are thought as a threat to the traditional values in the conservative capitalist American society. Their lifestyle and the values they support are challenging for the conservative minds of any society. They are against any kind of violence, especially wars, so they acted against most of the actions that USA took in its foreign politics, like the Vietnam War, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tells its story in a post-Vietnam American society. In this society hippies were the problematic kids of the society that had become known with their movements against the Vietnam War, hence against the USA government which the American middle-class, with its traditional values, put their trust on. Hippies also believe in free bonds in sexual relationships which is a very big controversy for the American middle-class conservative people. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre we see this representation of the sexuality in hippie culture especially through the female characters of the film. Overall, the film's victimization of the young hippies can be thought as legitimate for someone that believe in traditional American middle-class values because hippies are bad kids that do not behave appropriate and create problems in their secure capitalist society.

In his film Tobe Hooper presents a contradictory perspective about hippie culture's relationship with the country life and working class. Another important aspect of the hippie culture is that their denial of the capitalist lifestyle. They criticize the capitalist values of the American society, which glorifies mass consumption in an unnatural city life, and put emphasis on natural and simple ways of living like a working class country person. On the other hand, hippies generally do live in a city but not in country areas and they are not from the working class. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this contradiction about the hippie culture is presented successfully. We learn that the Leatherface and his family had been workers in the slaughter house that had been owned by Sally and Franklyn's family; so our victims, who belong to the middle-class society and are hippies coming from a city life, travel to a country area, which they are going to meet working class people, for their vacation. However, throughout the film we see that they are aliens to the country. They do not know how to live in a country area; they have several difficulties on their vacation like finding gas and being disturbed by the insane hitchhiker who belongs to the working class. In the end, they even become the victims of the country because they are defeated by the working class people, Leatherface and his family. Therefore, the film over-emphasizes that those hippies do not belong to the country and have no association with how the working class people live.

In conclusion, in his 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper chooses hippies as the victims of his horror film. They are great as a victim choice for a horror film because they have clashing values with the traditional, conservative, capitalist American middle-class society. In addition, Tobe Hooper shows a conflicting issue about the hippie culture that actually has its roots from the cities and middle-class people but supporting a natural country-like lifestyle and working class which according to his representation they do not belong at all.

Cabaret

This was originally written for my cinema class in college.

In classical Hollywood musicals life is usually portrayed as beautiful and worth living. Things are colorful and light. Love is in the air for everyone to experience it and you have a happy ending no matter what you have experienced in between. On the other hand, in classical Hollywood war films there is a life completely different from the ones in bright, optimistic Hollywood musicals. One's purpose in life seems so meaningless in a Hollywood war film because no matter what one plans to do with her/his life there are very strong external factors that interfere with people's lives during war. Love leaves its place to violence. Bright colors become dark and life turns into death. However, in 1972 film Cabaret which was directed by Bob Fosse the musical is used for portraying war. The film is colorful but the colors are dark and the songs performed in the cabaret are supposed to be lively, funny and entertaining but instead; they are disturbing because of the editing.

We see lots of different colors in the film Cabaret; especially, during the cabaret scenes but they are usually dark tones of those colors and low-key lightning is used. This separates this musical film from other musicals where we see lots of bright colors. This also reflects that this movie is not like other optimistic musicals. It is going to be dark and portray a pessimistic world view like in a war film. The main characters in the movie seem like they are all trapped in their little world no matter what kinds of dreams they have for their future. Especially, the character Sally has her big dream of becoming a famous actress but no matter what she says neither we nor she believe that she is really going to be a famous, successful actress in her future. The film's dark atmosphere does not let us see this kind of a bright future for any of the film's characters, because under the surface Nazis are getting more and more powerful, and there is going to be a war. There is not going to be a bright future for anyone because of this war.

Since it is a musical the film also has lots of songs. The songs are actually fun to listen and with all the dancing in the cabaret they are supposed to be entertaining. However, they are far from entertainment because of the editing of the movie. The songs are about and go parallel with the events that are happening outside of the cabaret. While they are performed usually the scenes from the external world are put in between and those scenes are generally from the most terrible events of the film; like when a communist is beaten severely by the Nazis and Jewish Natalia's dog is killed brutally. This makes the song performances pretty disturbing rather than fun. They emphasize the terrible events of the film rather than giving us happy moments like a classical Hollywood musical supposed to do. Instead the film does what a classical war film supposed to do; alarming about the coming war and its disastrous dark world.

To sum up, in his 1972 film Cabaret Bob Fosse does something pretty interesting and combines a musical film, which is supposed to be optimistic according to the classical Hollywood musical films, with a war film, which is supposed to show a pessimistic world according to the classical Hollywood war films, that gives us a dark musical film as a result of this unlikely combination. There is not a direct representation of war but its darkness, violence and far from ideal world is indirectly emphasized everywhere throughout the musical and its songs. And I think, this gives Cabaret a very important and special place among the other Hollywood musicals and war films.

Blood Simple

This was originally written for my cinema class in college.

The Western has its roots from America as a genre and an American Western film is a place to reflect the American identity. With this definition of the Western film, it is normal to expect from the Westerns getting the role of identifying the current problems of American society, because problems about being an American at the contemporary time period is quite related with the American identity. In the film Blood Simple (1984), which was written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen brothers successfully emphasize several contemporary problematic issues of the American society of 1980s; especially individualism, lack of communication, money and violence.
In the opening scene of Blood Simple we hear Private Detective Visser narrating about individualism in Texas. He gives the example of Russia and actually compares the roles given to people in terms of their relationship with the other people in the society by communism in Soviet Union, in theory, and by capitalism in USA. In 1984 the Cold War between SU and USA was still going on and this comparison shows a glimpse of this contemporary problem for the American society. However, the comparison is mainly about individualism and being on your own in Texas but this can be extended to the American society since Western is about American identity although the films mostly take place in Texas. Everybody is on their own throughout the film and we can see this in the struggles of the four main characters; Ray, Abby, Marty and Visser. Visser is very greedy and tries to clean up his own mess on his own. Marty is pretty selfish and he just wants Abby for himself. He cannot accept the fact that his wife can be another man's woman which is a way of thinking in terms of private property, but in this case it is very disturbing because the property is Abby, a human being. Abby and Ray are relatively innocent in the movie because especially Ray does what he does for the woman he loves. However, in his struggle he is all alone. He has to survive alone and he cannot manage to do it in the end. In Abby's case she is the only one survives at the end of the film. In Westerns the person who manages to survive at the end of the film is usually the hero but the hero should also rescue other people with him/her; that's why we call him/her a hero. However, in this film Abby only manages to save herself. She does it on her own with nobody's help and she helps nobody for their survival.
The lack of communication is another problem which is portrayed in the film; especially between Abby and Ray. Ray tries to bury Marty because he thinks Abby shot her and after he buries Marty he goes to Abby. They both sense there is a misunderstanding about the events but none of them tells one another what he or she actually thinks right that moment and did the day before to clear things out. Because of this lack of conversation between the two, Abby will think that Ray killed Marty, Ray will die and at the end of the film although Abby manages to survive on her own she is going to have no idea about what really happened.
Money is also a very important issue for the American society. We see this in the relationship between Marty and Visser. Marty has the money and he has the luxury to spend it on stupid things. Visser is a private detective and his main interest in his job is money. Marty decides to spend his money on killing Abby and Ray. Since he has the money he can make people do anything he wants with it. At least, this is how his mind works. Luckily there are people like Visser that can do anything for money, like killing people. This aspect of the film shows us that in the contemporary society some people can make other people do anything with their money, and some people can do anything for money. This is a very controversial issue considering both Marty's and Visser's deaths just because of a large amount of money.
The Coen brothers do not afraid of showing violence throughout the film and they portray it so successfully that it emphasizes how meaningless people do it today. Ray buries Marty alive because he wants her girlfriend not to be caught. Abby thinks about killing her husband at the beginning of the film because she cannot bare his personality. Marty wants to kill both Abby and Ray since Abby cheated on him and Visser accepts Marty's offer for killing Abby and Ray for money and kills Marty instead for his money.
To sum up, since the Western is purely American and achieved the role of representing American identity it is normal to portray contemporary problems of American society through Westerns and the Coen brothers do this very successfully and sometimes very disturbingly in their film Blood Simple by mainly focusing on concepts like individualism, lack of communication, money and violence.

Paris, Texas

This was originally written for my cinema class in college.

Classical Hollywood films are economic and use as minimal stylistic detail as possible in a scene to establish the meaning it really wants to give to the audience. Every detail should have a purpose and play an efficient role in terms of achieving the intended meaning in the scene. The opening scene of the Wim Wenders' film Paris, Texas is a good example for this way of capturing the intended meaning. It creates a mise-en-scène with as little detail as possible but tells us a lot about the movie's main character Travis Henderson. In that mise-en-scène; the appearance of Travis and the idea of a man wandering on his own in a huge landscape shot establish the main character and give a good direction to the audience for the rest of the film.

The appearance of Travis is pretty wrecked in the opening mise-en-scène. His clothes are very dirty. His beard and hair are long and untidy. His eyes look so sad and tired. This look of Travis symbolizes that our main character is also wrecked at the beginning of the film. We, as audience, get the feeling that he has not changed his clothes, got a chance to shave his beard and hair and got a good night sleep for a long time; meaning that he has not been to a proper place or a place he can call home for a long time. He has currently no one to take care of him and does not seem aware of his wrecked situation. With all these interpretations, he gives the impression of a man that has been an outcast for a long time and lost in time, space and his own being.

There are many extreme long shots in the opening mise-en-scène that shows Travis as a man wandering on his own in a huge land. Travis seems so little and the world around him seems so huge that this exaggerates his unimportance for this world. Also, there is almost nothing around him in the landscape which shows his loss of the people that once were around him. He almost lost everything and is not aware of his own state and we start to wonder what circumstances brought him to this state. This is a direction that tells us there is a mystery to be solved and the film is going to be an odyssey both for Travis and us that has to be taken to solve that mystery. Travis is going to be like a typical bildungsroman character and try to solve his conflicts with his own life and the world around him since he is now an apprentice to life and his mission is to master it. We are going to try to learn and understand what events caused Travis to end up in this empty land alone as a lost being.