Violence in Cinema Session 7 Fight Club

Action - Spectacle Spectacle vs. Economics   Spectacle vs. Economics ( the budget is the aesthetics, orientation toward global market)  The Body - physical perfection freezes the narrative in its tracks

High Concept This is related to “high concept” identified through the surface appearance of the films’ high tech visual style and production design which are self-conscious to the extent that the physical perfection freezes the narrative in its tracks  

Intensification of pleasure Intertextual references Openness to narrative distractions  affect for cash Self-referentiality  Images in action cinema are rootless and textureless designed to violently impress by inflating their spectacular qualities  international audience is the target audience of action films

First heroes - males Action - males related to: EMASCULATION *social *cultural *physical Action film - a response to emasculation  

Steve Neale   “Masculinity as Spectacle. Reflections on Men and Mainstream Cinema” Discussion of identification, looking and spectacle

IDENTIFICATION: There are different forms of identification:  - associated with narcissism – identification with male or female heroes - associated with dreams and phantasies – identification of self with the various positions that are involved in the fictional narration: those of hero and heroine, villain, bit-part player, active, passive character, etc.  

Male identification – with power, control, omnipotence and mastery (subversion of these in Priscilla) is related to the phantasy of the “more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego”  

LOOKING Male is the subject, woman the object of the erotic look.  How to define male as an erotic object? (Willemen, Rodowick)  The spectacle and drama tend to be structured around the look at the Male figure “exist” (walk, ride, fight, ‘do something’). These pleasures are founded upon a repressed homosexual voyeurism (Willemen 1981)  

Looking and spectacle   Voyeuristic – involves distance and performing a sadistic action This implies that male figures on the screen are subject to voyeuristic looking, especially when male struggle becomes pure spectacle and often turns into a fetishistic look

Fetishistic – builds up to the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself (Marlene Dietrich in Sternberg’s films) - in the case of male body, the look combines fetishism and voyeurism “to minimize and displace the eroticism they each tend to involve, to disavow any explicitly erotic look at the male body”  

MASCULINITY = ACTION = SPECTACLE  *heavy stylization *thrill machine *sensation before story *visceral sensations *visible impact on the body *body - a site of perfection and decay  

Hollywood cinema today – a thrill machine We observe a gradual change of modern Hollywood cinema into a thrill machine which offers sensation before story. So, the cause-effect narrative engine becomes subordinate to the spectacle. Seduction by spectacle, providing sensous and visceral pleasures, is now considered characteristic of contemporary films (some consider it an infantile characteristic)

Transgressions in Fight Club: - rapid editing of the fight sequences ( the last sequence, for instance) - lack of continuity editing in the final sequences - self-reflexive address to the camera - use of graphics - self-reflexive use of extended pans - self-reflexive use of “film noir” aesthetics - ironic voice-over

- Use of hand-held and stationary cameras - Use of filters - Use of freeze frames - Use of hand-held and stationary cameras - Use of filters A self-reflexive film full of improbabilities, both narrative and aesthetic. Films like these ones have to be analyzed in the context of their many narrative and stylistic Components.

Some examples The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah,) The Killer (John Woo,) Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino,) The Godfather Scarface The Getaway Full Metal Jacket Hard Boiled Taxi Driver

Bibliography Steve Neale. “Prologue: Masculinity as Spectacle.” Screening the Male. Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, eds. Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. 9-20. Jose Arroyo. “Introduction.” Action/Spectacle Cinema, ed. Jose Arroyo. London: BFI Publishing, 2000. vii-xiv