The example of Picasso is not only relevant to artists. It is because he is an artist that we can observe his experience more easily. His ex¬ perience proves that success and honour, as offer¬ ed by bourgeois society, should no longer tempt anyone. It is no longer a question of refusing on principle, but of refusing for the sake of self-preservation. The time when the bourgeoisie could offer true privileges has passed. What they offer now is not worth having.

—John Berger

A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

TOOTSIE

Mixed messages

Deborah H. Holdstein

First, the good news. TOOTSIE is a wildly successful film at the box office. And it ap¬ pears that the film represents the consummate group effort: three directors, approximately twenty script rewrites (with such notables as Elaine May and the Barry Levinson/Valerie Curtin team), and Writers' Guild arbitration over who should get screen credit. TOOTSIE'S dialogue seems unrelentingly witty, snappy, and downright hilarious, with filmgoers and critics alike thrilled at Hollywood's "new feminism," its raised consciousness, its preoccupation with important social issues.

And that makes the news less good. Filmgoers love TOOTSIE. Mainstream critics love TOOTSIE. Inexplicably, however, these same critics gloss over or reject the film's implicit sexism and the mixed "feminist" message that undercuts it¬ self in deference to the system that produced the picture. It depicts women as weak, power¬ less, banal emotional blobs, saved only by a man's inspiring assertiveness in the guise of a soap-opera actress-heroine in designer blouses.

Dustin Hoffman plays two roles in TOOTSIE— Michael Dorsey, unemployed, temperamental actor, and the woman he "becomes" in order to land a job, Dorothy Michaels. He succeeds, getting the role of Emily Kimberly, hospital administrator on a successful soap. He begins to ignore girl¬ friend Sandy (Teri Garr) as the "Michael" that's really "behind Dorothy" begins to fall in love with his co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange). The inevitable complications ensue.

Critical response unintentionally illustrates both the film's misleading "virtues" and its implicating, patriarchal structure. Even the diction in the reviews themselves reveals conde¬ scension toward women vanquished only temporar¬ ily because "Tootsie" is really a man whose words are taken seriously:

Michael dresses up as a hopeful actress named Dorothy Michaels, who is a shy Southern belle until she opens her mouth. Out of that mouth comes the most assertive and appealing kind of feminism imaginable [emphasis added]. . . . Simply stated, the TOOTSIE thesis is you are what you wear. Simply by putting on a dress, Michael Dor¬ sey becomes more polite, less contentious, and more likely to defer to his superiors . . . women are so often trapped into sub¬ servience because, well, a dress is not a suit.l

being a woman or a man. It celebrates the in¬ herently "wonderful sensitivity" of Michael's "feminist" inclinations and the implication that it's the “woman inside the man" that has brought him around to egalitarian insight. Not really. The film itself continually undercuts any pseudo¬ feminist "statements" it tries to make through characterization, point of view, and the overall structure of the film. TOOTSIE'S message is loud and clear: only because of a man can a woman achieve any modicum of greatness or rise from the mire of self-doubt and psychological trauma. Only through a man will a mass-audience "feminist" message be taken seriously.

Michael/Dorothy's role as the sole voice for women's issues is further aggravated by the film's other women. As his suicidal -maniacal girlfriend Sandy, Teri Garr becomes, in Kael's sincere words, "the funniest neurotic dizzy on the screen. "5 Fine. Yet Sandy is unable to get an acting job; in fact, Michael beats her out for the Kimberly soap opera role. Michael runs lines with her before the audition and Sandy tells him that he does a woman better than she can! She can't even "get her rage back" for the audition unless he goes with her and "keeps her angry." Worse, Michael treats Sandy poorly, thoughtlessly victimizing hei — and even stealing her job!

notion that it takes a man in woman's clothing to articulate the needs of the women around him? That it takes a maij--perhaps radiating the strong assertiveness only he can "do so natural¬ ly"— to politicize and inspire the almost stere¬ otypical ly weak women around him to stand on their own two feet? And, most alarmingly, that it takes a man-as-wornan, speaking sincerely about "feminist" issues, to convince the sexists in the audience, as well?

The insult permeates the structure and content of the film, especially when one considers the initial information which types Hoffman's char¬ acter. Michael Dorsey is thirty-nine, only in¬ termittently employed as an actor but the finest of professionals. Dedicated to his acting stu¬ dents but picky and hellish for establishment theater folk to work with, Dorsey's characteri¬ zation as a man devoted to people and his craft unfolds during the opening credit-montage. As the center of a circle of students, he's looked upon as a respected mentor, a victim of the the¬ ater establishment, a wise veteran of acting "wars." And because he's difficult to work with, his agent calls him a "cult failure." No one will hire Michael Dorsey.

Therein lies the crucial economic reason just¬ ifying his audition in woman's clothing for the role of hospital administrator Emily Kimberly on the daytime drama, "Southwestern Hospital." Af¬ ter all, only dire straits will justify a cloth¬ ing sex change: Jule Andrews was starving to death in VICTOR/VICTORIA; Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Mas¬ sacre before they resorted to an all -girl band in SOME LIKE IT HOT, gangsters in pursuit. But lest we further dare to question Dorsey's heter¬ osexuality, the scene of his surprise birthday gathering has him trying to pick up every woman at the party. The lines? "Oh, yeah, you were in Dames at Sea — you've got a great voice. You know, I felt like there was an aura between us in the theater." This allegedly feminist film, then, must go to great lengths to assure its audience that the protagonist is "legitimate"— straight. Dorsey seems as much of a voyeur sex¬ ist as the men he'll rail about as Dorothy.

Critical commentary such as this underscores the essentially patriarchal structure of TOOTSIE (not to mention the attitudes of the critics reviewing it). Michael Dorsey is not really more polite when he becomes Dorothy— if any¬ thing, it's the "manliness" of this woman that many people admire while paradoxically condemn¬ ing her for her rather homely appearance.

When Michael/Dorothy goes to audition for the soap opera, s/he teaches the blatantly sexist director, Ron, a "feminist lesson": he wants a "broad caricature of a woman," he tells her, as "power is masculine and makes a woman ugly." First, Ron's caricature as "male chauvinist pig supreme" is so broadly drawn as to be uncon- structive in teaching us anything about how peo¬ ple shouldn't act— no one could ever see himself in Ron, a cartoon figure who defeats any preten¬ sions the film might have had to him as a "fem¬ inist bad example." Second, when Michael/Doro¬ thy calls Ron a "macho shithead" and yells "Shame on you!" for his stereotyped images of power, the patriarchy surfaces. Dorothy is "un¬ attractive." Dorothy is really a man. Obvious¬ ly, then, the so-called "feminist message" dis¬ solves into visual images that tell us the oppo¬ site: Dorothy is powerful in telling off Ron-- Dorothy is homely. And the other women in the film are beautiful, powerless, and weak-willed. Thus, TOOTSIE perpetuates these unfortunate sex¬ ist stereotypes, as well as the antiquated as¬ sumptions about any connection between a woman's physical appearance and her intelligence. Fi¬ nally, it must be remembered that the only per¬ son to successfully "call" Ron on his sexism is really a man. And, I fear, it's the only way many people in a representative audience would take such a "feminist" message seriously.

One critic acknowledges that "the movie also manages to make some lighthearted but well -aimed observations about sexism, "2 while Carrie Rickey of the Village Voice names it to her list of the top ten films of 1982.3 Pauline Kael celebrates the fact that "Michael is thinking out Dorothy while he's playing her— he's thinking out what a woman would do. "4 Is there no insult to the

Jessica Lange's Julie, the woman with whom Michael falls in love while pretending to be Dorothy, is also weak and unassertive. The com¬ plication, inevitably, occurs when Julie becomes "Dorothy's" best friend; the film seems to tell us that Julie's never had such a wonderful friendship with a "woman" before, as if being close, woman-to-woman, were unnatural. Manipu¬ lated by her director/boyfriend, Ron, Julie drinks too much. Only Dorothy's advice and sup¬ port and her improvised dialogue as ultrafemin¬ ist Emily Kimberly redeem Julie. And yet Lange's Julie is evidently supposed to be a "liberated" woman in the positive sense, but here again whatever liberation there is is thor¬ oughly undercut. A single mother in "real life," Julie plays, in her words, "the hospital slut" of the soap. Surely audience response connects the damning term "slut," given Julie's emotional insescurity and weakness, to her dis¬ organized existence, as the film subtly but un¬ mistakably implies a parallel between her TV role and her life. When Julie believes that Michael/Dorothy is a lesbian, she acknowledges her "stirring feelings," but we remind ourselves that Dorothy's "really a man"— Julie's "feel¬ ings," therefore, must be heterosixual and "nat-

Further, Michael justifies his role as a woman by creating a parallel between the plight of unemployed artists and women— "I've got a lot I can say to women." The film would have us be¬ lieve that it really doesn't take much to be a woman at all, that women lack enough individual¬ ity or identity as a group that a man can "do" her very well, without anyone noticing or ques¬ tioning.

In spite of this, TOOTSIE'S allegedly feminist intent appears to illustrate the problems of

Continued on page 32

JUMP CUT NO. 28

^UMPcUL

No. 28
Films
TOOTSIE (Sydney Pollack, 1982)	Deborah H. Holdstein	1
DINER (Barry Levinson, 1982)	Deborah H. Holdstein	3
POLTERGEIST (Steven Speilberg, 1982)	Douglas Kellner	5
REDS (Warren Beatty, 1981)	John Hess Chuck Kleinhans	6
THE VERDICT (Sydney Lumet, 1982)	Phyllis Deutsch	11
VICTOR/VICTORIA (Blake Edwards, 1982)	Mark Bernstein	11
E.T. (Steven Speilberg, 1982)	Phyllis Deutsch	12
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (Taylor Hackford, 1982)	Jon Lewis	13
CHARIOTS OF FIRE (Hugh Hudson, 1981)	Ed Carter	14
BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE KILLED (Laurent Heynemann, 1982)	Hal Peat	17
WHITE ZOMBIE (Victor Halperin, 1932)	Tony Williams	18
COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER (Michael Apted, 1980), HONEY SUCKLE ROSE (Jerry Schatzberg, 1981), and THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA (Ron Maxwell, 1981)	Mary Bufwack	21
Articles
The Mammy in Hollywood Film	Sybil DelGaudio	23
Saturday Afternoons	Marty Gliserman	25
Radical Film in Peru Today: An Interview with Pancho Adrienzen	Buzz Alexander	27
Film Reborn in Mozambique: An Interview with Pedro Pimente	Clyde Taylor	31
Liberation ... In Reverse	Lary Moten	32
Special Section: Alternative Cinema in the 80s
Introduction	Chuck Kleinhans	33
Independent Features at the Crossroads	Lynn Garafola	35
"We don't have films you can eat": Talking to the D.E.C. Films Collective	Margaret Cooper	37
WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS (Joan Harvey, 1981)	Doug Eisenstark	40
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE RIVETER (Connie Field, 1982)	Sue Davenport	42
SUSANA (Susana Blaustein, 1980)	Claudia Gorbman	43
The Films of Sharon Couzin	Gina Marchetti Carol Slingo	44
New U.S. Black Cinema	Clyde Taylor	46
Theory
Epic Cinema and Counter Cinema	Alan Lovell	49
Godard and Gorin's Left Politics, 1967-72	Julia Lesage	51
Counter Cinema— A Bibliography from JUMP CUT	Julia Lesage	53
Critical Dialogue
Sexual Politics	Cathy Schwichtenberg	58
Tap Dancing	John Fell	58
In Print
The Celluloid Closet y by Vito Russo	Martha Fleming	59
The Hollywood Social Problem Filmy by Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy	Jeremy Butler	62
Covering Islamy by Edward Said	Michael Selig	63
Reports
Government Censors Pick Best Short	Janine Verbinski	64
Puerto Rico's Super 8 Festival	Maria Christina Rodrigez Rodriguez 64
Latinos in Public Broadcasting: The 2% Formula	Jesus Salvador Trevino	65
Racism, History, and Mass Media	Mark I. Pinsky	66
Photography Jean Seberg and Information Control	Margia Kramer	68
The Last Word
Terry Santana	The Editors	72
1 SUBSCRIPTIONS Payment Must Be In US Dollars I B USA CANADA AND ABROAD JUMP CUT 1 1 Individuals 4 issues $6.00 Individuals 4 issues $8 00 PO BOX 865 1 1 Institutions 4 issues $9 00 Institutions 4 issues $1100 BERKELEY CA. 94701 1 1 _ ... _ _ ■ ■ 1 -J

NEWS AND NOTES

The Cinema Guild (a division of Document Associates) is now distributing the films made by the Pacific Street Films people, Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher. They have been producing socially conscious documentaries since 1969 For further information on the Pacific Street Films library contact Cinema Guild, 1697 Broadway, Room #802, New York, NY, 10019. (212) 246-5522.

The Oral History of the American Left (OHAL) at Tamiment Library, New York University, has received funding from the NEH to create an archive of inter¬ views made by independent filmmakers. For more information contact Jon Bloom or Dan Georgakas, OHAL, Tamiment Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY, 10012. (212) 598-7754.

Media Network and the Reproductive Rights National Network are looking for information on films, videotapes, and slideshows on reproductive rights and related topics. The two organizations are compiling a Guide to Media on Reproductive Rights for use in educational work and organizing. Those who know of media that should be included in the book, or who want more infor¬ mation, should contact Abigail Norman or Aimee Frank at Media Network, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY, 10011. (212) 620-0878.

Resources for Feminist Research in Canada is bringing out a special lesbian issue in May. It will include discussion articles, research, guides to lesbian organizations and international periodicals, book reviews, film, video, and slide show listings, and annotated bibliographies. This issue will be devoted to an examination of the lesbian experience in Canada and explores areas which have previously received little attention from researchers. Copies are $5.00 and can be ordered from RFR/DRF, Dept, of Sociology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor Street W, Toronto, Ontario, MSS 1V6, Canada.

The new 1983 editions of the Progressive Periodicals Director published, providing people with up-to-date information on some 500 progres¬ sive periodicals from across the USA. For more information contact Progressive Education, Box 120574, Nashville, TN, 37212.

"Alternatives to Hollywood" will be explored by the 1983 Ohio University Film Conference from October 19 to 22. The avant-garde, the New German Cinema, television and video will be examined as possible alternatives to Hollywood. For further information contact Annette Preuss, Conference co¬ ordinator, P.O. Box 388, Athens, OH, 45701.

CONTRIBUTORS

BUZZ ALEXANDER teaches courses on Vietnam and Latin American cinema at the University of Michigan. He recently wrote Film on the Left (Prince¬ ton, 1981)... MARK BERNSTEIN is a Yellow Springs, OH film critic. . .While teaching at Colgate, MARY BUFWACK is completing a book on the history of women in country music. . .JEREMY BUTLER teaches film at the University of Alabama. ..ED CARTER is a film critic living in New York. . .MARGARET COOPER has worked in film distribution and exhibition in the USA and Canada... Co-director of THE CHICAGO MATERNITY CENTER STORY, SUE DAVENPORT teaches history and women's studies at Northern Illinois University. . .SYBIL DEL- GAUDIO teaches film at the New School and at Brooklyn College. . .PHYLLIS DEUTSCH is a New York area film critic. . .JUMP CUT editor DOUG EISENSTARK teaches video at Global Village in New York... JOHN FELL teaches at San Francisco State and has written extensively on early film. . .MARTHA FLEMING lives and works in Montreal, writing for Aftcrimagey Parachutey and Fi<se...LYNN GARAFOLA has written on and worked in the arts in England and The USA... MARTY GLISERMAN teaches literature and film at Rutgers. . .CLAUDIA GORBMAN teaches film at Indiana University and has published articles on film music and sound.. JUMP CUT editor DEBORAH HOLDSTEIN teaches English, writing and film at Illinois Institute of Technology. . .DOUGLAS KELLNER has recently co-edited Passion and Rebellion y a new book on German Expres¬ sionism. . .MARGIA KRAMER is a New York artist... JON LEWIS teaches literature at Hobart and William Smith College. . .Freelance critic and teacher, ALAN LOVELL has covered the film scene in England and the USA for many years ...After completing her dissertation on punk and glitter subcultures,

GINA MARCHETTI is studying film in Paris... LARY MOTEN has worked with Haile Gerima on several films... HAL PEAT is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. . .MARK PINSKY is a well known journalist working the Southern beat... MARIA CHRISTINO RODRIGUEZ works on the Spanish-language newspaper Claridad. . XklWl SCHWICHTENBERG is a film grad student at the University of Iowa. . .MICHAEL SELIG is completing a dissertation at Northwestern Uni¬ versity. . .CAROL SLINGO wrote on 9 TO 5 in JUMP CUT No. 24/25 and is writ¬ ing a novel .. .CLYDE TAYLOR helped organize the African Film Society in San Francisco and now teaches at Tufts University... Filmmaker JESUS SAL¬ VADOR TREVINO has long worked at KCET in Los Angeles. . .Berkeley grad student JANINE VERBINSKI works with JUMP CUT in Berkeley. . .TONY WILLIAMS lives in Manchester, England and has recently co-authored Italian Western: The Opera of Violence,


CO-EDITORS John Hess, Chuck Kleinhans, Julia Lesage ASSOCIATE EDITORS Edith Becker, Peter Biskind, Julianne Burton, Michelle Citron, Nancy Edwards, Doug Eisenstark, JoAnn Elam, Jane Gaines, Kathy Geritz, Helene Langer, Ernie Larsen, Sherry Mi liner, Dana Pol an (Books), B. Ruby Rich, Kimberly Safford, Robert Stam, Peter Steven, Linda Vick, Tom Waugh, Judy Whitaker, Linda Williams, Doug Zwick ASSISTANT EDITORS Lisa DiCaprio, Gretchen Elsner-Sotnner, Debbie Holdstein, Ana Mohager, Susan Pollack TYPING Lyn Heffernon, Maryann Oshana, Linda Turner And thanks for helping to: Nicole Firenz, Rachel Kleinman, George Mitchell, Lary Moten, Janine Verbinski

JUMP CUT is published about four times a year by JUMP CUT Associates, a nonprofit organization. Unless otherwise noted, all contents (^ 1983 by JUMP CUT. Editorial offices: P.O.Box 865, Berkeley, CA, 94701 (business office) and 2620 N. Richmond, Chicago, IL, 60647. WRITERS please send ad¬ dressed stamped envelope for "Notice to Writers" before submission. Also please send two or three copies of reviews and articles. This will help us respond to you more quickly and prevent loss of manuscripts. JUMP CUT is a riiember of COSMEP; indexed in the International Index of Film Period- icalsy the Alternative Press Indexy and the Film Literature Index'y ab¬ stracted in Sociological Abstracts. Microfilm copies: University Micro¬ films International, Ann Arbor, MI, 48106. UK subscriptions by the Motion Picture Bookshop, National Film Theatre, South Bank, London, SEl 8XT. Overseas Trade Distribution: Full Time Distribution, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London, ECIR OAT. ISSN: 0146-5546. Printed in South San Francisco by Alonzo Printing. JUMP CUT, No. 28 published in April, 1983.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

DINER

The politics of nostalgia

—Deborah H. Holdstein

By now, we've all heard that DINER is the previously unsung (now, we can assume, sung) "sleeper" of this past film season. Heralded as "sensitive" and a "mix of nostalgia and autobiography" by Chicago film critic David Kerr (Chicago Reader^ 9 July 1982), DINER seems to fit neatly into a rather ambiguously-titled category: the "slice-of-life nostalgia piece," the re¬ cognizable plight of a group of young men growing up in the Baltimore of 1959. Critics nationally ecjjp Kerr's sentiment, as words such as "touch¬ ing" and references to Levinson's "thoughtful" story and direction appear in writings as diverse as Gene Siskel's (2 July 1982, Chicago Tribune) and Pauline Kael's (5 April 1982, New Yorker).

Yet as Proust discovered when he bit into the madeleine^ nostalgia and the things remembered often reveal more than one initially thought. Per¬ haps our popular critics have forgotten this, as in the case with DINER, a film whose strengths go far beyond those of a pleasant film on which writer/ director Barry Levinson has "imposed a light layer of thought and analysis" (Kerr, Reader).

On the one hand, the film troubles many viewers— women and men alike— who see it as an exclusive, wholly "male" film, celebrating the joys and trials of being a "good-young-boy" in a transitional, important stage. Indeed, women are in peripheral roles in DINER as they have been at the periphery of the patriarchy. Levinson merely duplicates or at best "mirrors" life-as-it-was in a characteristic U.S. film and literary genre, but, it is easily argued, these young men have a place in society--unlike the women in the film — which insures most of them a fairly good lot in life.

On the other hand, with the clarity of hindsight, I find certain social truths more readily revealed in older films and, occasionally, in films that purport to celebrate the painful -but-engaging "good old days." That is, even if Levinson did not intend to make a film offering an expressly . political commentary, DINER does reveal that the patriarchy victimizes even those who are the victimizers: men.

So while DINER is an overtly entertaining, pleasant, and— yes— "sensi¬ tive" film, my reading may permit it to be an important one. DINER does remind us not only of those simple, black-and-white days of 1959 (huge, oversized picture tubes, GE COLLEGE BOWL, blissfully raw rock 'n roll), but also of the fact that even the films we call "entertainment" can be essen¬ tially political— even without the director/writer's deliberate intention, and often in spite of it.

DINER vividly etches the lives of young men (and very few women) with a cross-section of the U.S., white. Eastern population. It unintentionally but vividly illustrates that the patriarchal status quo also stifles men. Within the first sequence, DINER sets up numerous parallel oppositions which it sustains throughout: people versus society, men versus women, men versus men, the media versus daily reality, and men's fantasy-women versus the women men marry. For each of these pairs, Levinson reveals, if uninten¬ tionally, the hypocrisy within us all, within the myths that sustain young men through their young adulthood while threatening their very existence, their sense of themselves.

The film makes striking parallels between popular culture and the media and their integration within one's sense of self. The characters' "machis¬ mo," their preoccupations with the media, their bets about "making it" with certain women, aren't as much the villainy of traditional sexism as frantic signs of their knowing no other way to be in the world.

Thus, Boogie uses the automobile and the movies as a forum for his sexual conquests. Although the film presents him as a more tender version of the "macho mystique," part of his image includes his specifically noting his "conquests." Eddie, the football expert, will get married because "it's time, you know, and she's not a ball -breaker. If she was a ball -breaker, then, well, man, no way'." Bal 1 -breaking or its equivalent seems fine when it comes from the man's direction, however. Out of his own insecurity,

Eddie designs for his fiancee a fabulously difficult "ball -breaking foot¬ ball qui^." If she scores lower than a 65, he'll call the wedding off.

Most viewers perhaps rightly view DINER as a slice of the oppressive life, an ultimately celebratory view of men in their traumatic years. But to see the film only as this, in my view, doesn't acknowledge the injustices We all suffer within the same, oppressive system. DINER may be erroneously conceived as mere apolitical nostalgia by audience and critic alike; the film's structure and deceptively simple technical style belie the suffering and trials that go along with being a man or woman in the capitalist world, as well as realizing an unarticulated but desperately obvious need for a coi.iprehensive male and female release from a constricting status quo.

I propose an expansion of the term "political film," since many film critics propogate a restrictive, assumptive definition, implying that if a film is not expressly "political," i.e., dealing in a "political theme," then its content cannot be political at all. (In my view, this would parallel the view of women we see in most films, implying to the woman in the audience that she cannot be other than a peripheral figure in a man's world.) Occasionally, good, politically instructive and uplifting messages can come in small, rather delightful, witty packages— even those, like DINER, which seem apolitical or at best a standard-bearer for the patri¬ archy.

In a Sunday edition of the New York Times (18 July 1982), critic Robert Sklar discusses the fate of the "political film," using terms that restrict the genre to films that handle "hot issues":

If you have a message, ran the old Hollywood maxim, send it by Western Union. Movies aren't meant to be about the real world. ' Forget elec¬ tions and politicians, strikes and working conditions, race and class antagonisms, dictators and foreign wars. People go to movies to es¬ cape all that.

But as many filmgoers realize, people don't escape "all that," especially when we view much of what we see on the screen (eliminating, of course, science fiction, fantasy, costume drama, etc.) to be representational and "real" mirrors of the way we are or should be in the world. The politics are subliminal, built into such things as characterization, social class, and the entire narrative.

Sklar does his movie-going public a disservice by limiting his defini¬ tion of "political films" to those treating expressly "political subjects" such as war in PATHS OF GLORY, Vietnam in COMING HOME, injustice and pover¬ ty in THE grapes OF WRATH, and political satire vs. nuclear destruction in DR. STRANGELOVE. The political film cannot merely be a genre which speci¬ fically treats "social problems." The political film can encompass all film, particularly those which, innocuously hidden behind Hollywood or popu¬ lar sanctions, seem least political. What is more "political" than the

relationship between women and the world? Of human beings trying to find a place in a society that defies them to do it?

My reading of DINER comes out of this contention: the Hollywood genre film implies political and social content through its allegedly simplistic structures, characters, and plots. Behind these lie assumptions about class, the patriarchy, and our places within these. If Aristotle was correct in believing that art teaches by holding up a mirror to the reali¬ ties of our society, then, I believe, DINER has several lessons for us.

To my mind, DINER'S political dimension is evident from the opening se¬ quence. In fact, the lack of a dominant contrast within a crowded, messy, mise-en-scene may confuse viewers: we're not sure where we're supposed to be looking. What seems to be Levinson's lack of technique reinforces one of the movie's significant qualities: the "everyperson" within each human being, as well as the uniqueness of those on the screen and those in the audience. The sequence emphasizes that whatever the soon- to-be-determined main characters have to go through is something identifiable to each person at the crowded sock-hop and to each person in the audience. In effect, Levinson begins the film against the grain of cinematic status quo: this will not be a film of fantasy or "stars," and our heroes will not be notable in the traditional sense of the word. In this first scene, they blend in with the crowded scenery — they're just people.

Consequently, the opening content, apparently hampered by muffled dia¬ logue and a seeming lack of visual center, may become somewhat lost. Visu¬ ally, in the background we see some of the men, who will later emerge as protagonists, talking excitedly, while couples in 1959-vintage finery jit¬ terbug in the fore-and middle-ground. Only after a first cut do we realize that Boogie (a representative of the upwardly-mobile working class, who goes to law school to impress women) has learned that Fenwick (who has a rather meager stipend from the family trust fund and represents "old money") has gotten drunk again and is wandering in the dance hall basement, break¬ ing windows with his fist "for a smile." Fenwick has just sold his date for five dollars to another young man (out of insecurity, we later learn).

His action is described so that it seems incidental to the scene, but it reflects and foreshadows much of the film. The male characters treat women as buyable and sellable. All this isn't condoned by the director, but it parallels the possession-consciousness of the 1950s: "having" represented status, whether having a record collection or a wife.

The most important narrative information here seems to be that Boogie hopes to break out of the working class through law school, and that Boogie and Fenwick pair in an exemplary illustration of male bonding: we begin to understand that Boogie and the others are Fenwick's super-egos, bailing the insecure youth out of his drunken pranks. And it is in this early scene that young men's architectural metaphor for collective bonding is first announced: "See you later at the diner."

The diner itself stands as the major fantasy metaphor of the film. It becomes a sort of "ivory tower" in which the men are protected. The wait¬ resses do the men's bidding (and usually are the only women there), circu¬ lating on a first-name basis within the male arena. The diner houses most of Boogie's confrontations with the loan shark; but since he's later bailed out of his debt by a friend of his late father, he never has to "do battle." The diner creates a playworld for verbal machismo. And the playland con¬ trasts with home. Food, nurturing, love, are commodities always available at the diner, always on credit of need be, with few, if any, questions asked.

Media and the sports are constant topics of conversation, and relations with women become either occasions for male competition and/or male bondingi or they become secondary in importance to male concerns with media and sports. Ue see this in the way Eddie expresses his fear of change and women. As he says to Billy, his best man at his wedding, "If you talk, you always got the guys at the diner— you don't need a girl to talk." Eddie asks Billy to reaffirm the impossible— that things will always stay the same and never change. He wants men to be able to stay the same, "exclu¬ sive," leaving women outside the circle. Indirectly, Eddie seems to be pleading for a way out of the same expectations he's been raised with, for a solution to his poor preparation for interacting with another human being, a woman. Each of the men, in his own way, clings to the familiar male clique he's become so comfortable with. The male characters do not just exhibit a typical fear of change; rather, they seem to constantly express a wish for a way out— that is, to have the night-long conversations with men at the diner. The men at the diner illustrate the products of a society that hasn't prepared them— or allowed them— to cope.

Shrevie (the married one) works in a television sales shop. There, June Allyson appears in mid-fifties splendor in a televised film crying, "Oh,

I'm never getting married, neverl" Shrevie's employment fits him well: his identity is especially tied to popular culture, rock 'n roll. He tells Eddie that he and his wife Beth never have more than a five-minute conversa¬ tion, but that with the guys "he can talk all night."

Shrevie uses his specialized knowledge as a weapon with which to victim¬ ize Beth; he arranges his records in a complicated, alphabetical -chronologi¬ cal fashion. Since Beth doesn't have his zeal for music nor his obsessive

knowledge of dates, flip sides, and artists, she does not carefully rear¬ range the discs she's played. The couple's argument about this not only humiliates her but also delineates the non-existent foundations of many traditional marriages— marriage is just something to do, allowing the man to have and possess a wife. Shrevie and Beth's fight masks the real issues of their relationship. Women are to be closed out of the man's world.

Could she share his love of music even if she knew all the trivia? As Shrevie says:

Before you get married, all there is is talk about the wedding— the plans, you know, and sex talk. You know, when can we DO it? Are your parents going to be out so we can DO it? Where can we DO it? Then, after you get married, she's there all the time; when you wake up in the morning, she's there. When you come home from work, she's there... There's no more sex talk. Nothing else to talk about. ...But it's really good, you know, it's ok, it's goodi

While Beth and Shrevie's marriage is apparently reconciled at the film's end, Levinson vividly depicts their marraige as one in role only. DINER presents men in their early twenties who apparently have been so discouraged from truly interacting with other human beings, women, that Shrevie finds his only true marriage with his buddies at the diner.

Beth, on the other hand, doesn't even "feel pretty anymore." She softly says, "I don't even know who I am." Her acceptance by and success with men seem to have rested entirely on her looks— this seems to have been the sole reason for her marriage. When she feels "shut out" from the man's world and loses her entire self-esteem, she uses "femininity" as the way to survive. She's not been allowed to develop any interests, as have the men. As a prisoner of society's "decorative" expectations, she hasn't considered de¬ veloping the rest of herself, either. And the men's obsessive preoccupa¬ tion with popular culture, as in Shrevie's case, these pseudo-scholarly defenses against human— male and female— involvement and interaction, have affected the women cruelly.

family and society culminates in this manger sequence. Here, the inscrut¬ able, carved faces of the "wise men" look mutely on in a series of quick, mediimi-close cuts. And we also see Fenwick's growing dependence on alco¬ hol. After this escapade, Fenwick is more than just ignored and scorned by his father and older brother. They insist that he spend the night in jail rather than be bailed out, like his friends, because "it would be good for him, teach him responsibility." His plea for attention is completely mis¬ understood, as are his abilities.

Fenwick's talents are seen only in his private life. His shining moment comes as he watches and talks back to a broadcast of the old TV series, GE COLLEGE BOWL. With bright, intelligent eyes and quick, sharp responses, Fenwick gets the answers— tough questions, too— before the "nerds" from Cornell or Byrn Mawr can even think to ring their answer-buzzers. His hand¬ some face in medium close-up is shot at slightly high angle, the strength of his intellectuality perhaps dwarfed technically to illustrate his vulner¬ ability, his victimization, the hopelessness of his plight within a society that perceives him as a bum for rejecting the family business.

In fact, Fenwick's loyalty to his friends is so great— another trait un¬ appreciated by his family— that he tells Boogie that he will visit his bro¬ ther to ask for a loan to help Boogie out of his financial crisis. This is significant, for Fenwick hates his brother— and with good reason. The next sequence, then, heightens our vision of Fenwick's entrapment. He meets his brother Howard on Howard's front lawn because Howard won't let him inside; he's a "bad example." Howard scornfully tells Fenwick: "If you had a job, you would have the money to help your friend out yourself! I'm going to ask father to lower your stipend!" And in direct, contrapuntal insult to the scene we've just witnessed— which revealed Fenwick's vast store of knowledge, his sharp, quick abilities and kindness towards his friends— Howard bites, "Have you ever even read a book?" And in technical contrast, Fenwick here is pushed off to the left side of the screen, while the taller, more formid¬ able Howard dominates the right. Even when Fenwick backs his brother up against a tree, trying in vain to convince him of the importance of his mis- s1on("I hate you, Howard, I despise you, but I'm here. Doesn't that say something? I'm here anyway"), here Fenwick appears in the image very much "below" Howard, his powerlessness emphasized by an over-the-shoulder shot from near Howard's point of view, taken at high angle.

The high angle enforces the viewer's sense of Fenwick's vulnerability, entrapment, and victimization within the system that rightly "should" be his. We witness the paralysis that befalls young men who are not encour¬ aged to develop their own strengths, especially if they diverge from the interests of the "family business" or society at large. They are damned for being themselves, so that Fenwick's private use of television is fine for showing off— it doesn't talk back, judge, condemn, or force Fenwick to display his talents publicly, to risk anything. Unfortunately, he tries to get attention by public displays of "bad behavior." Since apparently he's never been praised for being "good" in any way, much less in his own way, "badness" is all that's ever worked as an attention-getter. One surprising result of looking at DINER as a political film stems from seeing men become the other eventual victims of their own patriarchal system.

In another instance where the media serves as metaphor, Billy, a college student from out of town who will be Eddie's best man, wants to marry Bar¬ bara, a television producer. In this instance, the media helps foreshadow an early manifestation of feminism. Barbara, although pregnant in pre¬ liberation America, rightly fears that she'll jeopardize her budding career as a television producer, and refuses to marry Billy. As the couple is ar¬ guing, their particular, rather poignant situation parallels the TV soap operas that beam from monitors at Barbara's studio: the dialogue of the characters on TV could well be theirs. The soap operas reflect real life, and vice-versa, we are to believe.

Boogie decides to use the discouraged, neglected Beth to replace a girl¬ friend who had gotten the flu. One night, unbeknownst to either woman. Boogie had bet a good deal of money that he'd "ball" the first girl friend, and that several of his cronies would hide in a closet to watch. Beth ap¬ pears satisfied and no longer angry when' Boogie later confesses that he in¬ deed "respects her" and couldn't have gone through with it. However, Beth wraps her entire view of herself on whether or not Boogie means what he said: that prior to her marriage, she had really been a "hot number," "really good." This sequence reveals the sadness of both characters' plight: Boogie's need to be a cool, slick "operator" to reinforce his sense of maleness, and Beth's need to remain the perfect, desirable decora¬ tion even though she's married, a "drudge." Our relief at what appears to be Boogie's moral decision clouds when we realize how sad it is that the characters' means toward self-worth is as narrowly defined as it is. Un¬ fortunately, Beth and Boogie are— like the others— the perfect products of their society. That society provided them an ironic "nurturing incapacity,' which made them prisoners within their prescribed roles. DINER depicts the final conversation between Beth and Boogie with a simple, eye-level two- shot, both characters leaning against Boogie's car. This mise-en-scene technically underscores the sad "equality" of their role-imprisonment.

Another fantasy-reality dichotomy is at play within the Shrevie-Beth- Boogie connection in DINER. Beth must wear a blond wig during the scene with Boogie in which she's his "substitute date" so that the other fellows will think she's the "hot number," Carol. Masquerade becomes even more crucial now that Boogie's really out with his best friend's wife. In fact. Boogie doesn't know that Beth's husband Shrevie had joined Fenwick (hiding in the apartment closet) to witness the sexual conquest.

Shrevie observes Beth and Boogie from an upper window as they arrive, not recognizing the woman he's married to, the woman who for inexplicable reasons is not good enough for him. He comments, "Wow, there's Carol. Oh, God, she's beautiful." Of course, in the dark he doesn't really see her at all. But the fantasy perception of beauty triumphs as always— what we ima¬ gine our gods or goddesses to be, they are. Predictably here she's blonde, tall, perfect, wasp— or as the men in DINER call their most desirable type, "death."

Beth seems to be the everywoman who ever felt left out by her man. Her place seems several steps physically and psychologically behind the joking, secret-sharing "guys," begging for clarification like the youngest child who isn't old enough to share in her older siblings' most wonderful games: •'Well, who's that?" or "Who's that you're talking about?" Women aren't male enough, "regular" enough to know things right off. And of course, she never goes to the diner.

Levinson reveals, however, that women aren't the only ones who are vic¬ timized. Fenwick of the meager trust fund provides a striking, poignant, tragic example. Interestingly, the film shows his plight at its extreme by having him interact with popular culture images— another media parallel.

Fenwick's need for attention is so great that he arranges his own arrest while drunkenly ruining the manger scene decorations in front of a local church on Christmas day. He, in fact, removes his clothes and ccxnfortably ensconces himself in the cradle of the child Jesus. He then fights against his friends who try to get him into the car before the police arrive. Later he breathes an audible sigh of relief as his mission, an arrest, is accomp¬ li shed--and he sets off for a night in jail.

Fenwick obviously craves attention from his friends in a rather unique, often destructive sort of way, and one might wonder if it was the only way he could get any attention as a child. The film implies that he has suf¬ fered his insecurities at the hands of his older, tight-lipped brother, the forbidding Howard, as well as his father. The obvious symbolism of Fen- Wick-infant's need for attention and his victimization by his immed.iate

JUMP CUT NO. 28

POLTERGEIST

Suburban ideology

-- Douglas Kellner

Steven Spielberg is emerging as the dominant ideologue of affluent middle class America. In JAWS (1975), Spielberg depicts th*e transforma¬ tion of Chief Brody from an antiheroic everyman, incapable of either stemming the economic and political corruption on the island or eliminat¬ ing the shark, to a middle-class hero-redeemer who single-handedly destroys the shark and re¬ stores order to the community.! Brody thus be¬ comes the first of Spielberg's middle class heroes. Whereas the novel Jaws showed the sexu¬ al and class antagonisms between Brody and his wife, the film projects their closeness and love, presenting one of Spielberg's first ideal¬ izations of the middle-class family.

Although CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) shows the Richard Dreyfuss character torn away from his family and allegorically depicts the family's being torn apart by events and forces outside of its control, POLTERGEIST and E.T. elaborate idealized views of the family and the suburban middle class. Spielberg seems the most effective cinematic chronicler of affluent middle-class life-style, joys, and fears in con¬ temporary US society. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, POL¬ TERGEIST, and E.T. affectionately depict the commodity comforts offered by a consumer so¬ ciety. POLTERGEIST and E.T. show the rising affluence in the split-level suburban tract houses with their ever more advanced electronic media, toys, appliances, and gadgets. Spielberg celebrates this lifestyle and can be seen as film's dominant spokesperson for middle-class values and social roles.

Most interesting in Spielberg's recent films is his symbolic projection of contemporary US insecurities and fears. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS alle¬ gorically presents fears of losing one's family, job, and home, and it contains a scarcely dis¬ guised yearning for salvation through extra¬ terrestrial forces, for deliverance from contem¬ porary problems--a theme also present in E.T. but more pronounced in the novel ization than in the film. In its depiction of UFOs and aliens, the film reverses the 1950s alien-invasion films' codes, which depicted aliens as monstrous threats to the existing order.. CLOSE ENCOUN¬ TERS, POLTERGEIST, and E.T. contain the fantasy that somehow beneficient forces will alleviate threats to our security and well-being.

Ideologically, Spielberg's films traverse a contradictory field that in different films, or even in different scenes within a given film, celebrate and legitimate middle-class United States' institutions and lifestyles or yearn for spiritual transcendence or both. E.T. mobilized its alien figure to highlight the commodities and joys of suburban family 1 ife--without, in¬ terestingly enough, the figure of the Law of the Father. The film depicts an alliance between the middle class and transcendent alien forces. God may no longer be on our side, but the aliens seem to be. The film reassures the middle class about their values and lifestyle and offers fan¬ tasies of reassurance that alien forces or the Other will be friendly and nonthreatening.

POLTERGEIST, on the other hand, symbolically probes both universal and specifically contem¬ porary US fears. It presents the shadow-side of suburban life in the form of an allegorical nightmare and also an utopian vision of the fam¬ ily pulling together and pulling through in the face of adversity and eventually triumphing over demonic forces. By articulating US fears and showing them conquered, the film defuses the nightmare quality of life in the US horror show. By depicting with affection its resi¬ dents, houses, goods, toys, and electronics, it presents advertisements for a US way of life which defines happiness in terms of middle-class lifestyle and consumption. Spielberg's films thus stand as clever ideological fables and do not just offer the pure fantasy entertainment which his defenders celebrate. His films are carefully constructed ideology machines, planned in detail with elaborate storyboard models, carefully crafted scripts, and cunningly calcu¬ lated special effects. Although he may or may not be a class-conscious ideologue, Spielberg's effectiveness as a purveyor of ideology derives from his identification with the affluent middle class and its way of life, which he appealingly reproduces.

Here I want to examine POLTERGEIST for what it shows about contemporary US society and Spiel¬ berg's ideological strategems.2 The film at¬ tempts to manipulate its audience through care¬ fully planned, carefully paced jolts, special effects, frightening scenes, sentimental depic¬ tions of a loving family, and the assuring pres¬ ence of technology, professionals, and spiritual powers. I shall first focus on POLTERGEIST'S storyline and themes and ideology. Then I shall reflect on Spielberg's ideological problematic and his use of the occult.

with corpses which return to life and destroy their house. The film uses the conventions of the horror-occult film, currently the most popu¬ lar Hollywood genre, to explore suburban middle- class psychic and social landscape. The family unit contains a father, Steve Freeling, his wife, Diane, a teenage daughter, Dana, who is more connected to her friends than to her fami¬ ly, a young boy, Robbie, and little Carole Anne, who is about five and the first to make contact with the poltergeists. The Freelings live in one of the first houses built in phase one of a housing project called Cuesta Vista. The father is a successful real estate salesperson who has sold 42 percent of the housing units in the area--which his boss tells him represents over $70 million worth of property.

The opening scenes depict the Freeling fami¬ ly's environment and show close, loving rela¬ tions between mother and father, parents and children. The film's power derives from its portraying the family's pulling together in the face of forces trying to tear it apart. Such positive images of the family have become in¬ creasingly rare in Hollywood, which instead in recent years has celebrated the couple or the single (usually male) parent or has ironically and satirically dissected family life and mar¬ riage (e.g. Robert Altman, Woody Allen). POL¬ TERGEIST thus offers solace that the family stands as a viable institution, even in the con¬ text of contemporary troubles. It is one of the few "blockbuster" films that explicitly and un¬ abashedly offer apologetics for the family.

The Freeling family idyll soon becomes inter¬ rupted by the poltergeists' presence. At first, they appear only to little Carole Anne through the medium of the television set. The polter¬ geists soon begin, however, more actively inter¬ vening. They shake the house, turn on appli¬ ances, bend and play with kitchen utensils, and make chairs slide across the floor. These scenes, I believe, celebrate middle-class com¬ modity icons, showing the consumer society's bounty. During the night, the poltergeists be¬ come more menacing. In the midst of a thunder¬ storm, branches of a giant tree take Robbie out of the bedroom window; his parents desperately retrieve him from the forces of raging nature.

At this point, little Carole Anne disappears and the family is thrown into panic.

The father then goes to Stanford and summons a group of parapsychologists to come investigate the phenomena. They in turn call in a diminu¬ tive woman spiritualist who tells the family how to deal with the poltergeists and how to get their daughter back. With the spiritualist's guidance, the mother enters the spirit world to retrieve her daughter, revealing the depth of her love and concern for the child. The mother emerges as the moral center of the film— and of the family. In Diane Freeling, POLTERGEIST pre¬ sents a positive image of the New Mother, who is able to smoke dope, be sexy and modern, and yet also be a loved wife and nurturing mother. In response to the women's movement's critique of "women's place," Spielberg and company answer with the image of a mother who assumes her tra¬ ditional role while she enjoys suburban afflu¬ ence. The film thus cleverly supports tradi¬ tional roles and institutions while it presents symbolic threats to the existing order.

As the film proceeds, it shows the house and its objects being progressively demolished. At first, objects fly arqund and are broken and

shattered; eventually the whole house is totally destroyed. These scenes play on fears of losing one's home in this era of rising unemployment, inflation, and economic hard times. The film evokes the horror of watching loved objects smashed, of seeing the tokens of the middle class systematically disintegrate. Finally the film offers a fable about the family's walking away from the ruins of suburban afflunce with the comforting assurance that the evil spirits have been vanquished, that the family is still intact, and that all will be well.

The "explanation" for the series of polter¬ geist disturbances is that the real estate de¬ velopment company, for which the father works, had built the housing project over a graveyard after removing the headstones but not removing the corpses. In the film's occultist text, the spirits of the dead wander about in a purga¬ torial spiritual dimension, unable to leave pur¬ gatory for the white light of bliss and appar¬ ently angered by their burial ground's desecra¬ tion. After the corpses apocalyptically destroy the house over that burial ground, Steve yells at his boss, "You moved the cemetery! But you left the bodies, didn't you! You son-of-a- bitch, you left the bodies and only moved the headstones!"

Such a plot device highlights a critical theme in Spielberg's films and allows us to define more precisely the specificity of his ideologi¬ cal problematic. Clearly the villain is the greedy real estate developer who neglected to rebury the corpses to save time and money. Sim¬ ilarly, the villain of JAWS is the corrupt busi¬ ness-political establishment which puts economic interests over people's safety and well-being. Spielberg does not defend the capitalist class or the economic and political elite. His repre¬ sentations of the state and political establish¬ ment tend to be critical. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was initially intended to be a UFO Watergate-style cover-up, with the state's suppressing informa¬ tion about UFOs. This theme gets displaced in the film, but the state authorities still appear a bit menacing and sinister in the look of the film. Likewise, E.T. tends to present the adult world and especially state authorities from a low camera angle, the perspective of E.T. and the children. Consequently, state authori¬ ties usually appear threatening and sinister, even at the end when it appears that they are trying to save E.T.

Spielberg thus champions the middle-class ideologue but not the economic or political es¬ tablishment. His strategies thus reveal a cri¬ sis of ideology in the United States, where its most powerful and effective ideologues working ^in the cinematic cultural industries cannot or will not concoct ideological fables to legi¬ timate the economic political order. Legit¬ imating these domains was precisely the ideo¬ logical achievement of many films in Old Holly¬ wood. But Capital and the State no longer have many successful ideological champions in Holly¬ wood, although they may have in network televi¬ sion, albeit with contradictions and question¬ able success.

SPIELBERG'S OCCULTISM

A CUNNING IDEOLOGICAL FABLE FOR OUR TIME

POLTERGEIST depicts the trials of the Freeling family confronted with poltergeists which haunt their house and spirit away their daughter and

Spielberg's most popular recent films, from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to POLTERGEIST, participate in the resurgence of the occult which has occurred in both Hollywood films and US society since the end of the 1960s. When individuals perceive

that they do not have control over their lives, they become attracted to occultism. During eras of socioeconomic crisis when people have diffi¬ culty coping with social reality, the occult seems to help explain incomprehensible events, with the aid of religious or spiritualist myth¬ ologies. Many recent occult films have served as vehicles for blatantly reactionary religious ideologies {e.g., THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN), whereas other filmmakers like George Romero, Wes Craven, and Larry Cohen have used the occult to present critical visions of American society. 3 In contrast, Spielberg's use of the occult is neither systematically conservative-reactionary nor critical-subversive but is marked by ambi¬ guities which characterize his ideological prob¬ lematic as a whole.

On one hand, Spielberg uses the occult to pre¬ sent rational contemporary fears: losing one's home, seeing one's family torn apart, fear of disease and bodily disintegration. For in¬ stance, in one of the most frightening scenes in POLTERGEIST, a young Stanford scientist goes to the kitchen and takes a steak out of the re¬ frigerator. We see the piece of meat undergo a cancerlike metastasis, spewing out bizarre growths and organs before our eyes. The fright¬ ened scientist goes into the bathroom and washes his face and then looks into the mirror and sees his face mutate into rotting flesh. Although this hallucination disappears, he leaves the house and does not return. The scene is truly frightening as it evokes fears of cancerous growth and bodily disintegration.

Un the other hand, Spielberg's occultism serves as a vehicle to promote sentimental ir¬ rationalism. In his recent films, he constructs a spiritualist metaphysics out of representa¬ tions of beneficent aliens, extrasensory per¬ ception, spirits, poltergeists, and magic 0*e., the children flying in E.T.). Fantasy and sci¬ ence fiction offer, of course, legitimate areas for film to explore, but the ubiquity of the occult in Spielberg's recent films provides an irrational world view that feeds the already rampant irrationalism in US society (i.e., re¬ ligious revivalism, cults, "new age" spiritual¬ ism, etc.). Moreover, his occultist fables de¬ flect people's legitimate fears onto irrational forces and create the false impression that de¬

liverance will come from spiritual or extrater¬ restrial forces. Whereas a critical hermeneutic might find interesting symbolic projections of middle-class fears that relate to real socio¬ economic crisis, most of the audience probably experiences these symbolic projections as de¬ flections of their real fears, escape from con¬ temporary US monsters. As the films promote irrationalism and occultism, they cover over, rather than reveal, the origins, nature, and impact of the US nightmare on people's lives.

Yet the weakest part of POLTERGEIST comes from the didactic occultism enunciated by the diminu¬ tive woman spiritualist, Tangina, who comes to help rescue Carole Anne and cleanse the house of the poltergeists. In two long, talky passages, she delineates the phenomenology of the spirit world and explains the source of Carole Anne's problems and the poltergeist disturbances. The viewer sees throughout the film manifestations of the spirit world and is thus led to believe in the existence of spirits and an afterlife. Here Spielberg recycles old religious-spiritual¬ ist ideologies to reassure the audience about its deepest fears (i.e., descent into death, non-being, total nothingness) and provides a set of metaphysical representations useful for tra¬ ditional religious ideologies.

Spielberg provides reassuring fantasies that soothe fears concerning disintegration in this life (i.e., the family, the American dream, etc.) and in an afterlife. One of the tasks of cinematic ideology is to enunciate fears and then to soothe them. Spielberg magnificently accomplishes this in his fables of reassurance. While the contemporary United States is wracked with deep doubts and fears concerning its socio¬ economic, political, and cultural system, Spiel¬ berg plays on these fears, finds (perhaps uncon¬ sciously) cinematic representations for them, and offers fantasies of reassurance. His ideol¬ ogy machines are popular precisely because of their effectiveness in enunciating and defusing such contemporary fears. Much more interesting¬ ly than the mindless, reactionary drivel con¬ cocted by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg has become the dominant ideologue of the middle class, but now that he has become wealthy and powerful, it will he interesting to see if he

JUMP CUT NO. 28

moves on to become an ideologue for the econ¬ omic-political establishment. In the meantime, it is as ideological fables that Spielberg's films should be interpreted and criticized.

lOn the transformation of Brody to hero-redeem¬ er, see the discussion in John Lawrence and Robert Jewett, The American Monomyth (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977). On the class problematics of JAWS, see Fredric Jameson, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture," Social Text 1 (Winter 1979). See also the following articles and Critical Dialogue in JUMP CUT on JAWS: Peter Biskind, "Between the Teeth" (No. 9, October-December 1975); Dan Rubey, "The Jaws in the Mirror" (No. 10/11, June 1976); Robert Wilson, "JAWS as Submarine Movie" (No. 15, July 1970). JAWS and Spiel¬ berg's other films will be discussed in more detail in the forthcoming book Politics and Ideology in contemporary American Film by Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan. This arti¬ cle is indebted to work done with Ryan on the ideologies of contemporary film.

2pOLTERGEIST is directed by Tobe Hooper while Spielberg is credited as producer and one of the writers. Spielberg claims that the story idea was his. The film concludes with, "A Steven Spielberg Film." Alleged tensions arose between Hooper and Spielberg, and there is debate over whose film it really is— as if a collective enterprise "belonged" to one per¬ son. In fact, the film offers an amalgam of the cinematic styles and philosophies of Hoop¬ er and Spielberg. The film exhibits Hooper's flair for the suspenseful, odd, and horrific and Spielberg's affection for the middle- class, fuzzy-minded occultism, and nose for the market. In any case, there are enough Spiel - bergian elements in it to justify analysis of the film in terms of Spielberg's ideological problematic.

30n the problematics and ideological contradic¬ tions in contemporary horror films, see the studies collected in Andrew Britton, Richard Kippe, Tony Williams, and Robin Wood, American Sightmare: Essays on the Horror Film (Toron¬ to: Festival of Festivals Publication, 1979) and the studies in Kellner-Ryan (forthcoming).

REDS ON REDS

—John Hess and Chuck Kleinhans

We often find ourselves intrigued with the variety of reviews of some popular films, and we have a special interest in the divergent range of left reviews. If nothing else, a comparison of Movement press response to REDS shows that radical critics have provided no single radical analysis of the film, but rather an extreme diversity. REDS offered a provocative example for investigation. Because it dealt with the left, had a good box office, and received the critical attention of New York critics. Directors Guild, and Academy Awards, the left press ran many reviews and letters.

In an article in Working Papers on the left press' reception of REDS, Linda Bamber accounts for the large, intense critical response by referring to "the scarcity of cultural self-images available to intellectual leftists, who are by definition outsiders to the dominant culture." Because of our thirst for dynamic self-images within the dominant culture, we respond, she says, to "Beatty's obviously sincere attempt to contribute to a cultural mythology of the left..."

We couldn't resist collecting reviews of the film once we found out that Ronald Reagan liked it (though he wished for a happy ending, according to the New York Times) and that the Communist Party, USA, editorially praised REDS and urged its supporters to see the film. In the film's own spirit, we have decided to present our own set of "witnesses." By way of compari¬ son, we included a sprinkling of comments from the dominant press to show some recurrent similarities and differences in the way critics interpreted and evaluated REDS. For example, while everyone saw REDS as a love story mixed with political events which were meant to stir the audience, people reacted differently to its being that kind of romantic-political mixture.

ROMANCE

I'm a romantic. I believe in moments when life shivers with a wild intensity. I believe that Moscow snow just has to be whiter than starlight and that there's something exquisite and chilling about red flags billowing above all that white. I believe art and joy, rebel¬ liousness and pathos are resources as valuable as labor and capital _

I loved the movie REDS. It inspired just the enthusiasm and caring that emerges from the best writing of Bryant and Reed.... The lives of Louise Bryant and John Reed are inspiring to me; their conmitment and courage were of mythic dimensions. We need legends from our radical past, people to serve as models from whose failures and victories we can learn. I hope artists and writers will continue to weave tales from that history, for it is a story rich in drama and romance.

— Jack Manno, Peace Newsletter, publication of the broad-based Syracuse Peace Council

It is first of all a romance— staple of all themes— an^ the years of political turmoil in which the story unfolds are meant to cast the romance into epic proportions. Otherwise, everything is ordinary: two people run after a Meaning in a chaotic world, going through the tensions that a couple who have definite ideas about what they should be [going] through, and trying to resolve the conflict between the demands of private life and the demands of the world. In the end, love triumphs and brings its poignancy. Tragedy comes in the shape of death. Are we summarizing REDS or Seagal's [sic] LOVE STORY? No matter, plot-wise, there is not that much difference.

--N.R., Modem Times,

bulletin of the Hawaii Union of Socialists

[Beatty's] gone and made a maoie, a very long and satisfying romance wherein Reed's devotion to godless communism provides the most exotic

of backgrounds for an old-fashioned love story that few moviegoers will have any difficulty recognizing or embracing. .. .Beatty had the intuition to see beyond the politics, to realize, first of all, how a patina of distance and romance would safely neutralize Reed's beliefs until he seems no more threatening than a Rotarian....

--Kenneth Turan, California, a glossy regional magazine

Jack has his ideals; she has him. When, near the end, the two meet up for the last time in a train station in Moscow, REDS allows us to dis¬ cover— and feel— what is ultimately more important.

—Lawrence O'Toole, MacLean’s, the Canadian newsweekly

The picture glorifies Reed, and the picture prevails, the motion pic¬ ture, Romance, Hollywood, True Love, True Confessions. . .she's sorry now that she left him.

--Barbara Hal pern Martineau, Broadside, a Canadian feminist newspaper

This is a fascinating, extraordinary film for two reasons: first, for its beauty and political content; second, who really is this movie star Warren Beatty, and why did he make this daring, courageous pro-revolu¬ tionary film?

—Lester Cole, People's World, the West Coast Cpmmunist Party newspaper (Cole was one of the jailed and blacklisted Hollywood Ten)

Hollywood playboy Warren Beatty sees something of himself in John Reed: the unfulfilled artist. But Beatty lacks spine, sees women as transit¬ ory warm flesh, and thus tries to make the primary thing in John Reed's

life his love with Louise Bryant _ Thus we get an otherwise hackneyed

love story which would be simply trite without the backdrop of radical¬ ism and revolution.

—A San Diego comrade, Challenge/Desafio, newspaper of the Progressive Labor Party, an Old Left sect

To some extent there is an element of romance involved. When I read Vivian Gornick's Romance of American Corrmmim, for instance, I think of how people really wanted to devote their lives, passionately to a cause and get involved with it. Somehow the image that Beatty creates is some of what hooked me into politics. A lot of that sort of poli¬ tical life in the sixties involved both personal and political grati¬ fication. So the fact that Beatty decided to try to sell the left to the American people, and do it by figuring out what ft was that had hooked him onto it, was a good decision;... A great deal of it has to do with comradeship, adventure, and so on. That is certainly a lot of the appeal of it for me— that you give your life to it; and history Is not under your control .

—Kate Ellis, in a transcribed discussion with others in Socialist Review, the reform socialist journal

HISTORY AND IMAGE

Most of the left discussion of REDS concerned the film's^ portrayal of history, often comparing REDS with DR. ZHIVAGO. No one discussed the nature of historical drama or compared the film to other dramatic historical left

y. •

films such as BATTLE OF ALGIERS or 1900, or socialist films such as OCTOBER or LUCIA.

who hated millionaires. I notice, here at the end of the credits, a wonderful line that reads:

Politically perhaps the most significant thing about REDS is that it presents a powerful refutation of the anticommunist propaganda myth that the Russian revolution was a coup perpetrated behind the backs of the Russian people by a handful of Bolshevik plotters. REDS offers marvelous street scenes of Petrograd during the days when the Bolshe¬ viks won political power--the ten days that shook the world. We see the indispensible ingredient of authentic revolution— the masses of people intervening decisively in the historical process.

—Harry Ring, The Militant, newspaper of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party

At first, as we encounter soldiers and peasants standing at railroad stations, we get a sense of the pregnancy of the revolution. The Rus¬ sian masses' yearning for peace has become a material force, and only the Bolsheviks have translated it into a political program. This motion soon climaxes in organized insurrection and undoubtedly all but the most politically stony-hearted will find themselves thrilling to the scenes when a martial rendering of the Internationale orchestrates a mass workers' demonstration through the streets of Petrograd, cul¬ minating in the storming of the Winter Palace. For one magic moment, we are all revolutionaries!

--Irwin Silber, Line of March,

Marxist-Leninist journal

...the anti-capitalist, pro-Communist poison--cleverly dispensed by talented professionals, working with a fast-moving, literate script- drips off the silver screen. "Property is Theft, prod aims a note pinned to the front door of the protagonist's apartment in Greenwich Village. .. .The overthrow of the moderate Kerensky Government in Moscow by the Bolsheviks in October 1918... was apparently a spontaneous revolt of the masses, rather than a Communist conspiracy.

— Robert M. Bleiberg, Barrone, the right-wing business newspaper

The political discussions about socialism, communism and anarchism, which were clearly the questions of the day, are handled cynically, basically divorced from the class struggle. One exception is when Reed was in Petrograd: at a mass meeting on what sort of support could be expected from the international working class for the revolu¬ tion, Reed spoke for the U.S. workers, saying that they were looking to the Russian masses for the example to seize power from the capital¬ ists.

--A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

John Reed would have loved that.

—Roger Ebert, Sun-Times, the daily Chicago newspaper

When REDS got an R rating, Beatty appealed that decision, arguing that, despite the strong language, his movie reclaimed an era of American history that every schoolchild should see. The movie was subsequently given a PG, and as exhibitors left the appeals hearing, they approached Beatty individually and said they were proud to be showing the picture.

—David Thompson, California

Beatty is clearly fascinated by the tension in Reed between the artist- rebel and the revolutionary who decides for the disciplined vanguard party against his temperament. .. .REDS is something of an anti-ZHIVAGO whose hero resolves his conflict between private and public life with an ever deepening political commitment. Thus many reviewers like the movie despite its political background. We like REDS because of it.

— Pat Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard, newspaper of the left-Trotskyist Spartacist League

I'd like to speculate that possibly the film's deepest sympathy lies in the revolt against the bourgeoisie, not as a political revolt, but as a bohemian one. .. .Beatty had been obsessed with Reed's story for fif¬ teen years, and it can't be for the revolutionary politics. It has to be for the nature of the man, Reed, the nature of that kind of roman¬ ticism, the nature of that notion of individuality, that spontaneity.

—Leonard Quart, Socialist Review

And even if the movie takes care to say that revolution would not work in America, there has never been a major motion picture that makes a communist so attractive.

--Thompson, California

...It's not clear from the narrative that anything has been .worthwhile ^ It is rather as though, if the revolution fails, all has, indeed, been lost.

— E. Ann Kaplan, Socialist Review

...The plot turns into a winsome case of revolution-as-aphrodisiac as Reed and Bryant, working as (what else but) comrades, discover they're still sweet on each other. One scene is especially memorable: after Reed makes a rousing speech to a hall full of burly workers, his audi¬ ence, as burly folk are wont to do, rush forward and overwhelm him with hearty congratulations. Reed suddenly looks' up and favors Bryant with the most pleasingly self-deprecating of shrugs. It's pure movie corn, a page from a Harlequin'novel for intellectuals, but it is as irresist¬ ible to us as it is to her.

— Turan, California

REDS tries to demonstrate that Reed's romantic attachment to the revo¬ lution has distorted his sense of reality. The point is established in a scene at a workers' rally. Tension is in the air. The revolu¬ tion is imminent. The debate over whether or not to seize power is raging. Enthusiasm for the revolutionary moment is building up in the crowd when Reed is suddenly propelled to the platform. The "American comrade" is asked to speak. Reed responds with a passionate— but to a contemporary audience, completely absurd--pronouncement that the work¬ ers in the U.S. are themselves chomping at the bit of revolution and are ready to join their Russian brothers as soon as the signal is sent from Petrograd. The crowd thunders its approval. By itself the inci¬ dent can be explained as an excess of the movement. But in the context of the film— and ih view of all that follows— it subtly establishes that Reed's political judgments are not to be trusted. After all, love is blind, and we do not think less of the lover for this universal weakness. To underscore the film's view that Reed's attachment to the revolution is composed more of romance than perceptiveness, the inci¬ dent culminates in the sexual reunion of Reed and Bryant, likewise tumultuously orchestrated by the Internationale.

— Silber, Line of March

...(Beatty] still found enough artistic detachment to make his Reed into a flawed, fascinating enigma instead of a boring archetypal hero. I liked this movie. I felt a real fondness for it. It is quite a subject to spring on the capitalist Hollywood movie system, and maybe only Beatty could have raised $35 million to make a movie about a man

.1 ■ W , ■ . V

■< . , ‘ . ■« V

SIGNIFYING ABSENCES

While any collection of excerpts may trivialize the arguments, as we found reviews of REDS with distinctly different opinions and compared them, we realized that although in some cases the reviewers' politics obviously correlated with their interpretation, in fact the two did not always mesh. Perhaps we could have more systematically found such correlations by compar¬ ing the publication's political line and its reviews (maybe starting with the two largest left newspapers not dealt with here--the independent radical Gwardfan and the social democrat In These Times). As we continued collect¬ ing reviews, we found distinct differences in what people picked up on in the film, what they thought worked or didn't work, and what they thought the film left out.

The movie never succeeds in convincing us that the feuds between the American socialist parties were much more than personality conflicts and ego-bruisings, so audiences can hardly be expected to care which faction is "the" American party of the left.

--Ebert, Sun-Times

...The film deals with subject matter virtually unknown to the U.S. public. The viewing audience is exposed to ideas about party-build¬ ing, Comintern strategy, the conflict between anarchism and Bolshev¬ ism, and the movement in the United States against World War I... Back in the U.S., Reed becomes a full-time activist in the Socialist Party. This is one of the most interesting parts of the film. The left-wing of the party splits off,...

--M.V., Modem Times

For members of the audience not informed about the events, it must be particularly difficult to comprehend the condensed and sometimes sim¬ plistic depiction of the split in the Socialist Party, and the two communist parties that emerged from the split. This is so even though the film stays quite close to what actually happened.

—Ring, The Militant

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Limits, Frontiers, Boundaries

Teaching Institute June 8-Julv 8 1983

Conference

July 8-Julv 1 2 1983

The Uhit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, in conjunction with a number of other campus Units, invites faculty members, graduate students, and postdoctoral students to spend five weeks in an ambitious, broadly international reconsideration of Marxist cultural theory All ' coyrses offered during the Teaching Institute have been approveci for full Graduate credit Weekends will be devoted to special colioquia, including Marxism and feminism, and politics and cinema, as well as* regular panels on Marxism and pedagogy. Inexpensive accommoda tions will be available on campus Local resources include the fourth largest university library in the world For further infor¬ mation, including complete course descriptions, registration forms, and information about possible fellowships call 217 333 2S81 or write

Institute for Culture and Si June 29- July 8 1983

Late and Postmodernist

with Trotsky against the U.S.S.R

New Jersey Comrade, Challenge

But the film is more than superficial— at the critical junctures it makes the wrong political choices. Incredibly, we hardly see a single capitalist during the whole movie, and the real horrors of capitalism —the wars, the racist lynchings, the poverty, the cultural and moral bankruptcy— are never vividly exposed. In contrast, the main villains of REDS turn out to be the reds themselves.

Eric Michael son and Mark Rosenbaum, Unity

Paper of the U.S. League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L)

One weakness of the film REDS is the near absence of the working class except for a few brief scenes. Without them there is little under¬ standing of the essential motivation of Reed's life. Reed and Louise Bryant did not go to Russia just because it was a "good story."

--Chuck Idelson and Michael Stephens, People's Wovld

...I would like to reflect what I think should be the obligation and requirements of film reviewing, for a working class newspaper and an unusually large working class conscious audience. Does its overall reality, despite its weaknesses, provide a humanism in its presenta¬ tion, convey some semblance of the class struggle? Does the producer serve the interests of peace and justice? It is necessary to see REDS in the light of the artistic honesty of Warren Beatty and whether he sincerely and truthfully produced a work of art. That this artistic endeavor comes at a time. when nuclear war and anti-Soviet, anti¬ social ist, anti -Communist hysteria is being peddled by all the media, lifts his work into the realm of art. Because it portrays the life of a Communist, John Reed; uses real live Communists as "witnesses"; debunks 64 years of anti-Sovietism and captures the fervor of the most exquisite moment of history;makes a hero out of a Communist, and does this all with originality, imagery and beauty, this is art.

-»-Jerry Atinsky, People's World

The political arguments, though condensed, are powerful, as Beatty has his hero answer the best arguments of his opponents.

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

...Reed's role in U.S. communist politics reveals nothing so much as the inconsequential squabbling characteristic of the left, its total irrelevancy to U.S. life, and its complete dependence on Moscow.

— Silber, Line of March

The film showed Reed's group as the dominant left-wing group in the Socialist Party. In fact it was a small minority within the left wing of the SP. Had his group waited one more day and met with the major¬ ity left-wing memebrs of the SP at the founding convention of the CP, no such split would have occurred. None of the facts clutter the film. The Comintern is accurately shown directing both parties to suspend any differences and merge.

— David E. Massette, People's World

During this we see him in a discussion with Emma Goldman, the anarch- ist-to-the-end, a refugee, hating Moscow and the Revolution. Patient¬ ly (and beautifully played by '^eatty) he explains simply what she cannot accept, about struggle and growth.

— Cole, People's World

Reed never told Goldman to stick with the failing revolution. "Other¬ wise what does your whole life mean?"--these words are taken, signifi¬ cantly, from the closing speech of the renegade Boshevik Nikolai Bukarin, explaining at his 1938 trial his confession that he conspired

LOUISE BRYANT

After REDS it presumably will be impossible for leftists to dismiss Bry¬ ant as simply a nameless "girlfriend" (as Lee Baxandall did in a 1968 art¬ icle). But if Bryant gets inserted back into history by way of a movie, this has raised a number of questions about the historical woman (Was her writing inferior? Was she flaky, as Emma Goldman claimed?) as well as about Diane Keaton's star image ("Annie Hall joins the revolution"), and the character's narrative function as a woman who sacrifices herself for a man.

...At the same time there is a constant "distracting" from the politi¬ cal issues through the focus on Louise. For instance, in the scene in Louise's studio, shortly after she and Reed have met, Reed's political ideas are garbled in order to rush us through to the question of whe¬ ther or not they will go to bed. I was really interested in what Reed had to say, but obviously, from the way the scene was cut, one was not meant to hear. The whole scene is geared toward the sexual relation¬ ship. Again, in the important scene where Reed and his group are try¬ ing to take their legitimate seats in the Socialist Party Convention, the camera keeps cutting to Louise's emotional reactions, pulling us constantly back to her personal feelings and away from the politics*.

The first time I saw REDS I was excited by the scene where, as Reed quarrels with the leader of another leftist splinter group, there is a recurrent close up of Louise Bryant looking shocked, and she soon leaves the meeting. In the next scene she tells Reed how idiotic it is for two small groups, neither of them representative of the Ameri¬ can working class, to fight in this way;"that Reed's best talents are as a writer, not as an organizer, that he should stay home and write, not go to Russia again to claim recognition for his group. Her argu¬ ment is compelling, and I was delighted to see the emphasis given her by the film. I was puzzled when the film proceeded to set up Reed as a hero in the face of all comers. Seeing REDS again, I realized how much of a set-up it is. In the argument scene, Bryant/Keaton is dressed in a housecoat. She's disheveled, almost hysterical, begging Reed not to go, playing the role of possessive, irrational wife she has played before. Read/Beatty is immaculate in suit and white shirt, composed, determined, unwavering in his obsession.

— Martineau, Broadside

Louise Bryant didn't need Jack Reed to inform her of free sex. She had been doing it, unabashedly in public, since she was a sophomore at the University of Oregon.

—Laura Cottingham, Soho Sews, the NYC hip newsweekly

There is something unpleasant about the characterization of a liberated woman as, first of all, being sexually free. One may ask why, whenever one talks about liberation in relation to men, it is immediately equat¬ ed with political or economic freedom whereas whenever the subject is raised in connection with women, the expected reply is: "I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed."

— N.R., Modern Times

Some people have criticized the portrayal of Bryant because historical¬ ly she handled the whole issue of monogamy and sexual freedom with a great deal more aplomb than is presented in the movie. I myself find it very hard to identify with the idea of having multiple relation¬ ships and simply moving on from one to the next without any difficulty. Many women would have difficulty in relation to that kind of character.

— Ellis, Socialist Review

...his wife Louise Bryant, a self-indulgent petite-bourgeoise who is con¬ stantly ridiculing Reed and trying to hold him back.... He is shown en¬ grossed in his personal troubles with his wife, reminiscing about the past, while the streets are filled with red soldiers and workers, jubi¬ lantly defending the revolution.

UNIT FOR CRITICISM AND INTERPRETIVE THEORY

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Perry Andenon. Naw Left Review

Anglo-American Marxism and Historical Theory History 490

Lawrence Grossbarg. IKinois Marxist Theories of Popular Culture Speech Communication 495

Peter Haidu. IHinois Semiotics and Marxism French 490

Stuart Hall. Open Um^rsity (EnglandJ Cultural Studies Communications 490

Fradric Jameeon. IMe

Modes of Production and the Spatial Text

English 361

Julia Leeage. Jump Cut

The Ideology of Domestic Space in Film

English 3^

Wolf-Dieter Narr. Free Unh^rsity IBerKn)

A. Balden Fields. Hfinoa

Developments in French end German Marxism

Political Science 392

Petroyit Zagreb (Mtgoslevie)

Richard Schacht. imnois Marxist Philosophy Philosophy 345

Geyatri Chakravorly Spivak. lexet The Production of Colonial Discourse A Marxist-Femimst Reading English 481

Language and Representation

Modernity and Revolution

Power and Desire

Class and Marginality

Text. Structure, and Function

Power and Oppression

Culture and Social Institutions

Knowledge and Ideology

The f’olitical Ecorximy of Culture

Popular Culture and the Avant-Garde

Perry Anderson Stanley Aronowitz Jacques Attak Etienne Bakbar MichMe Barrett John Berger John Bradman James Carey Jean Franco Simon Frith Maurice Godeker Stuart HaH Dick Hebdige Fradric Jameson Emeeto Ladau Henri Lafabvre Juka Lesags Cokn MacCabe Fernando Reyes Matta Amtand MatMart Chantal Mouffe Wolf-Dietar Narr G^ Petrovi6 Michael Ryan

Gayatri Chakrayorty Spivak Cornel West Paul Wikis

•choel of HumanMaa wfiwwxy wf imnois at Urbane Champalgw MS South WMfM Steaet Urbana. MbtotoSIMI USA

Important: AH ooursoa haws baan approved for fuH graduate credit. Students takino ooureaa for credit must compiata a program of raadiogs bakara the aummar eaaaion bagina. Facuity mambar are invitad to audit ooureaa. Contact the Unit for Criticiam and Intarprativa Theory for reading Hats and further informirtion.

A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

Lawrence Groaabarg Jefferson Hendrickt Satya Mohanty Cary Nelson WMtam Ptatsr pfenning committae

Cok^ of Commurtications Cokega of Liberal Arts and Scianoas EAKabonel Theory Georgs A. Mikar Committsa Humanitias Public Events Committae Intsrnational Programs and Sarvioae Jump Cut

Mew PoMicel Science Reaaarch Board School of Humanhiaa Soci§f Ikjct

Woman's Rsaouroas and Sarvioat and ak dapartmanti sponsoring couresa

It seems that in order to be independent, she has to be kind of querul¬ ous and she has to say the usual feminist thing, "You're not giving me support for what I'm trying to do." But that plugs into something that's around in American culture already. Similarly there's that whole thing with the cooking where he's spilling things all over the place; he's the kind of guy who's read "The Politics of Housework" and is giving it a try, so to speak.

--Ellis, Soaialiat’Review

The University of Illinois Press will be publishing a collection of essays growing out of ^ Teaching Institute and Conference ,

Beatty as Reed and Keaton as Bryant seem like spoiled adolescents play¬ ing with avant-garde radicalism rather than committed revolutionaries. The sexual politics are also troubling. They speak of free love, but the audience laughs at their naivite and doesn't believe they mean it. With good reason: Beatty/Reed and Keaton/Bryant speak of non-monogamy but fight over jealousies and lovers... not honestly trying to under¬ stand how they feel and why it is so difficult to be non-monogamous. . . .

"M. May, Modem Times

Each is the other's cross to bear, without which neither would want to live. REDS suggests that the mystery of love resides in its inherent masochism.

— O'Toole, MaaLean'a

[Lovers for awhile] in the late seventies, Diane Keaton and Beatty... drifted apart during the making of REDS as Beatty lost sight of every¬ thing except the film (Reed and Bryant's marriage is constantly jeo¬ pardized by his passionate involvement with the radical cause).

— Thompson, California

Early in his sickness I asked him to promise me that he would rest before going home since it only meant going to prison. I felt prison would be too much for him. I remember he looked at me in a strange way and said, "My dear little Honey, I would do anything I could for you, but don't ask me to be a coward." I had not meant it so. I felt so hurt that I burst into tears and said he could go and I would go with him anywhere by the next train, to any death, or any suffering.

He smiled so happily then.

--Louise Bryant, letter to Max Eastman

The appellation "Red", long a term of abuse for anyone suspected of harbouring critical views about the status quo, has a different sense for me than its usual meaning of Left with a capital L, Ladies-make- the-coffee-and-men-make-politics sort of slant. In the movie REDS, there's a scene where producer-director-star Warren Beatty, .. .heads for the toilet in a crowded jail cell filled with other activists and more "common" out-laws. Beatty's face expresses pain and bewilderment; an old geezer looks over his^ shoulder; we see a closeup of the toilet bowl; then the old geezer says, "This one even pisses red." Laughter. Meaning: in his tireless crusade for justice, John Reed is about to lose a kidney. But he will persevere, in spite of government persecu¬ tion, dissension in the left, and desertion by his wife because of his infidelity. I am reminded of a T-shirt I've coveted on other women.

It has a beautiful batik design of red on purple, and lettering which says: "I am Woman; I can bleed for days and not die." When Louise Bryant, Reed's colleague, lover, wife, is trekking through Finland on skis trying to find Reed and get him out of prison (an episode almost entirely fictionalized by the film and milked for its romantic inter¬ est), I wondered what she did when she got her period. The film didn't enlighten me.

— Martineau, Broadside

THE WITNESSES

American Film identified all the interviewees, but after everyone had a chance to guess.

For the best part of two years, he and his cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro (1900 and APOCALYPSE NOW) collected the memories of other veterans of the period--so many of them dead before the movie opened. Thirty- two witnesses appear in the picture, but Beatty filmed many more— some interviews as long as two hours. This material is a docu¬ mentary treasure that any archive would envy.

Thompson, California

.. ."witnesses". . .who were contemporaries of Reed and Bryant, reminisce about them, often vaguely. .. .These old, wrinkled, "real" people are like ghosts recalled from the past, speaking with authority about the texture of their times, their voice-overs become a narrative device, keeping the complex story lucid throughout. They can't tell us much about Reed and Bryant, other than "they were a couple," so it is left to Beatty to imaginatively create their private world.

—O'Toole, MacLean’s

But whether or not by design— nothing in this crafted, crafty film hap¬ pens by accident— the men and women speaking are never identified (and, toward the end, become mere voice-overs). The result is deliberately confusing, not to say obfuscatory, and it succeeds in putting some good people in a very poor light. Hamilton Fish apparently spent a lifetime fighting Reds without ever learning how to produce the word "Communist," while the oldsters— who in their salad days and long afterward were well worth listening to— come off as doddering and un¬ sure.

— Bel i berg, Barron's

...These witnesses. . .are so uniformly captivating that Beatty's deci¬ sion not to identify them while they are on screen is terribly frus¬ trating. Despite this their presence serves a double purpose: they pique our interest by grounding the film in an engaging historical reality, and, more cleverly, because their recollections are often sketchy they point up the tenuousness and uncertainty of history, in effect excusing Beatty in advance for the minor liberties he has taken with the facts.

--Turan, California

They are narrators, and vocally in close-ups, as they remember the times being shown visually, they comment. A fascinating technique to facilitate the movement of time, and personal remembrances....

— Cole, People's World

...Beatty's shrewd and artistically brilliant use of a "chorus" of aged real-life "witnesses" also acts to lend distance from the poli¬ tical present. The various speakers are contradictory. .. .The overall effect is to fix the events in a distant, dimly if at all remembered past.

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

Beatty also uses the brilliant device of interrupting his story with interviews with real "witnesses," still alive today. ...The effect, as in a Brecht play, is to prevent the audience from getting too involved in the film as fantasy--reminding them this is the story of real people.

—Michael son and Rosenbaum, Unity

figures who lived in the period, and knew the people; I thought it was effective in countering some of the distortions in the film. We realize that "truth" is hard to come by.

— Kaplan, Socialist Review

ZINOVIEV

Perhaps the most symptomatic element of the REDS reviews was the critics' repeated return to the question: Who was Zinoviev?

In Moscow Reed comes into direct conflict with the leader of the Comin¬ tern, Zinoviev, a rigid authoritarian, who gives orders, and will not brook interference. (Zinoviev was purged from the Party 15 years later. )

— Cole, People's World

Are the major characters in the movie Bill Haywood, communists and socialists? No. They are: .. .Grigory Zinoviev, a Bolshevik who op¬ posed the party's decision to begin armed insurrection (Lenin called him a scab for that), who in 1925 organized the Trotskyist "New Oppo¬ sition" and was expelled from the party in 1934 (Zinoviev is played by the well-known Polish anti -communist writer Jerzy Kozinski, a lover of U.S. imperialism);....

—A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

It is with the figure of Zinoviev, sharply insisting on the party's monopoly on truth, that Beatty does make some concessions to anti¬ communist stereotype. Yet as Reed's desire to return home by the holidays is portrayed in the film, in the midst of the Russian Civil War, we do not find Zinoviev's sharp and angry objections to this powerful propagandist's taking off to be out of line.

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

Zinoviev was a leading member of the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International., In the 1930s he and many others were framed up by Stalin and executed as "Nazi agents." In one scene, Zinoviev argues with Reed, who wants to return home, assertedly because of a personal commitment he made to Louise Bryant. Zinoviev argues, in a seemingly heartless way, that Reed is urgently needed in Moscow for the import¬ ant political work he is doing. While the actor who plays Zinoviev delivers the lines in a harsh, alienating way, what Zinoviev is por¬ trayed as telling Reed is not unreasonable. You can always return to your personal responsibilities, Zinoviev says, but never to this moment in history.

— Ring, The Militant

The characterization of Soviet Comnunist Zinoviev as a Marxist Darth Vader, giving ominous speeches to John Reed about how he must choose between his family and revolution, only serves to frighten the audi¬ ence. In fact, all successful revolutions have built on people's love of their families and their willingness to make sacrifices precisely to make a better world for their children.

—Michael son and Rosenbaum, Unity

My identification is always with the Reed character, of course, as opposed to Zinoviev. Zinoviev and Radek seem to be relatively accu¬ rate portraits. They were ultimately killed by Stalin in an interest¬ ing historical twist; those great bureaucrats were ultimately murdered as Trotskyist and Bukhari nite oppositions.

— Quart, Socialist Review

Zinoviev becomes the film's cynical example of a party leader: oppor¬ tunist, unfeeling, manipulating and dogmatic— the Hollywood-capitalist image of a good communist. The historical fact is that Zinoviev was a renegade: when he translated Reed's speech to the Oriental Congress, he changed the original words "class war" to "jihad"— holy war. That was the traitor's political idea, not the idea of the Third Interna¬ tional. Reed attacked Zinoviev for his treachery, though the film portrayal of this is primarily individualistic— don't change anything that I write— not political.

To say that it is a "distanciation" device would be to give it too grand a name, but there's a way in which you are made aware that you're watching a construction, because here are these historical

— A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

The whole Baku Conference is falsified. The racist portrayal of the babel of voices is taken from The Lost Revolutionary by Richard O'Connor and Dale Walker (O'Connor wrote the "Bat Masterson" TV series of 20 years ago, which made a hero of a homicidal pimp), who got it in turn from Robert Dunn, a U.S. government spy who never got nearer the conference than Constantinople and didn't write until 1959. Zinoviev's speech (which called for, among other things, a "holy war against rob¬ bers and oppressors") is cynically portrayed as a translation of Reed's; in fact, Reed's own speech was about American workers' exploi¬ tation. Reed never told Zinoviev "Don't rewrite what I writel"; this is put in to balance the similar scene at the beginning of the film with Grant Hovey, editor of the bourgeois Metropolitan magazine.

—A New Jersey Comrade, Challenge

The scene is a racist slander, trying to build up pro-war hysteria against Arabs and Iranians. .. .The movie. . .slanders Zinoviev. Zinoviev and Reed actually put Toward the same line at the Congress: workers and peasants in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East should reject alli¬ ances with the local bosses and should fight for socialist soviets on the Russian model. This was a very advanced line, which the Communist International later retreated from (at Lenin's insistence). I think that in this case they were to the left of Lenin and they had a better line.... We shouldn't be so quick to assume that the communist movement in the past was infected by bad ideas like nationalism. The problem was Beatty's lies, not Zinoviev's.

— A Reader, Challenge

REDS is accurate in pointing out the demagogic aspects of the Baku Congress of Peoples of the East in 1920. Zinoviev did indeed call for an Islamic "jihad" (holy war). This call for religious holy war was an aberration of Communist International (Comintern) policy toward the colonial regions. Surely Beatty was reflecting on Khomeini's Iran as many reformist organizations hailed Khomeini's mullah "jihad" in part on the authority of the Baku Congress. But Reed was right -

— Kincaid, Worker's Vanguard

There is even less basis in fact for the scene in which Reed angrily assails Zinoviev for making a change in translation of Reed's speech at the Baku conference. . .Actually Reed, along with numerous others of the invited speakers, never got to make his speech at Baku. He did give a very brief greeting, but his speech was simply included in the official proceedings of the conference. Neither his greetings nor his speech. . .include the phrase "class war" or "holy war."

— Ring, The Militant

When Reed discovers what has occurred, he engages Zinoviev in a shout¬ ing match— a replay actually of an earlier scene in which a bourgeois editor has altered Reed's copy without permission. While Zinoviev ridicules Reed's "individualism" and justifies the change on the grounds of political expediency, Reed argues that dissent is the essence of revolution. Taken as a unity— as indeed they must be— the two scenes register REDS' essential message: revolution is the struggle against authority in general and there is little distinction Between the tyranny of capitalist wealth and the autocracy of commun¬ ist power. In fact, if anything, the latter is more absolute and, therefore, more*oppressive. The communists are such cynical manipu¬ lators, in fact, that they will readily abandon their own well-known atheism and play into religious sentiments in seeking immediate ad¬ vantages.

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It protects itself from going overboard politically; it finally ends with a level of disenchantment with the revolution. It does ask ques¬ tions about political commitment yet it does not put down political commitment, because Reed is an extremely attractive figure. It asks a number of questions about the nature of political cormitment — the self¬ destructive quality, the level of betrayal which Goldman brings out, that is the betrayal of one's ideals when revolution takes form— ques¬ tions to me that are real.

—Quart, Socialist Review

LEFT FILM ANALYSIS

Based on our sampling it seems accurate to say that most left film dis¬ cussion leaves a lot to be desired. By and large it falls into the familiar pattern of claiming a single universal meaning for the film which the critic has discovered through superior political and cinematic acumen. By virtue of embracing Scientific Socialism, the critic has a pipeline to Truth. The critic declares an interpretation and "proves" it through a variety of non- analytical, rhetorical devices. For example, the reviewers introduce con¬ tradictory aspects of Warren Beatty's star image to butress whatever argu¬ ment is at hand: dissolute playboy or Hollywood left-liberal.

Such a strategy leaves little room for difference, for diverging views, for contradiction. It tends to leave a lot of room for inflating the cri¬ tic's ego, for shooting from the hip, and for collapsing personal response into political analysis: I liked it, therefore it's politically correct, or vice versa. Such dogmatism from the reviewer tends to provoke an equal¬ ly dogmatic response from the readers (This reviewer is full of shiti) or else humiliation (Gee, I didn't see that-, I guess I'm really stupid). An alternative to slug-it-out dogmatism, Barbara Halpern Martineau's review, asserts a feminist norm to interrogate the film's patriarchal form and content. In the larger context of patriarchal film critical discourse, such a strategy becomes sly, witty and subversive.

As editors we face the same problems in considering reviews for JUMP CUT. Because the dominant forms of journalistic reviewing are built on assump¬ tions of imminent meaning and the critic as privileged perceiver, we often find left film reviewers repeating the same pattern. Yet, we'd argue, that's just not enough for an adequate Marxist analysis, for it misses an essential prior question: What is the nature and effect of cinema as an institution? As long as left film reviewers assume that it's more import¬ ant to have the correct line on Zinoviev than to understand how a film functions in reproducing ideology, left cultural politics will be funda¬ mentally reactionary and mystifying— a mirror of the right wing's cultural critiques.

A great piece of Communist propaganda, with a cast of thousands, brought to your neighborhood screen by Paramount Pictures a "Gulf + Western company."

— Blieberg, Barron's

The movie is directed primarily towards intellectuals and students who would be attracted to revolution in this period of developing war and fascism. The similarities of the present period and the time in which Reed developed his communist consciousness are great and the ruling class is out to create cynicism among this section of the population.

—A Detroit Comrade, Challenge

While few left film critics veered so far into conspiracy theories, most saw REDS as propagating a simple message. It was rare to find anyone trying to discuss the film's diverse appeal.

It has, as it were, something for everyone: A Revolution for the Left, disillusionment for the Right, continued idealism for the romantic and for the emotional, a love that spans continents and oceans.

— N.R., Modem Times

We think a review should be a site of investigation, a way to provoke thought and educate readers about the world and culture around them. But the left discussions of REDS showed virtually no interest in or awareness of such basic questions as these: How did the general audience, unschooled in left debates, relate to the film? How did REDS function as entertain¬ ment? How do the star images of Keaton and Beatty affect viewers' percep¬ tion of the film? What does the film convey about history and the nature of personal and political change, and how does it use images to do so? How does the film use its romanticism and dramataization of events and people?

The left seems to have little awareness of the contradictory forces at work in a major Hollywood film— the influence of finance and the market, the force of genre and narrative, the collective production process, and divergent audience responses. Yet without more complete and sophisticated analyses, critics can offer only fundamentally idiosyncratic and subjective judgments. The left does not settle for that in essays on economics, the state, and labor unions. How much longer will it accept subjective impres¬ sions as the basis for evaluating Hollywood? m

■'Ittrfnfi

JUMP CUT NO. 28

THE VERDICT

Guilty as charged

—Phyllis Deutsch

There's a lot wrong with THE VERDICT, the lat¬ est Paul Newman vehicle that (according to many critics) assures him an academy award next spring. The movie concerns a malpractice case: two eminent physicians at the well -respected St. Catherine's Hospital in Boston have apparently incorrectly administered anaesthetic to a preg¬ nant woman whose brain died as a result— leaving her a vegetable. St. Catherine's is a Catholic hospital, and the archdiocese wants the incident hushed up. The victim's sister applies to Frank Galvin (Newman), a hard-drinking, ambulance¬ chasing attorney, to take the case. Galvin is also an ex-liberal who lost his faith after being jailed unfairly on a jury-tampering charge. Frank the Faithless senses a shot at redemption and decides, against the wishes of his clients, to try the case in court rather than accept a fat insurance payoff from the de¬ fendant.

Galvin is a fine zealot but a lousy lawyer.

His best witness is paid off by the defendants; he forgets to tell his clients that he's decided to take their case to court; he lies continually in his single-minded quest for truth; he's inept at jury selection; he alienates potential wit¬ nesses by screaming at them and disbelieves the ones he manages to obtain. Abrasive and insen¬ sitive, Galvin treats everyone with contempt except his good-guy sidekick, Mickey (Jack War¬ den). He's not a lawyer— or a man— anyone could like, much less trust, but he's the holiday sea¬ son hero. What's going on?

Clearly, the white-knight-against-the-system formula retains its mass appeal. But it's a strain to keep the formula intact in this film because the hero is, in turn, brash, self-serv¬ ing, and childish (Galvin is given to tantrums when things don't go his way). To make their myth work, director Sidney Lumet and scriptwrit¬ er David Mamet have a foolproof plan: they play their dubious Christ off against a cast of char¬ acters considerably worse than he is. In a world that stinks from top to bottom, Galvin comes off smelling like a rose.

At the top, the ruling class fares miserably. The doctors, lawyers, and priests couldn't be sleazier. Milo O'Shea as a corrupt judge is usually eating something drippy (fried eggs, thick soup); James Mason as the defendant attor¬ ney Conccannon oozes condescension, never loses his cool, and is served tea by a black man.

Both O'Shea and Mason have foreign accents; in fact, all major players in the film have ac¬ cents. Except Newman, of course, who therefore . comes across as the only real American in the crowd. Indeed, it seems he is the only real man in Boston: his upper-crust opposition is femin¬ ized by accent, appearance, and mannerism. This is especially evident in the depiction of men of the cloth: a couple of altar boys look like fresh-faced young girls. But Galvin, gravel voiced and abrupt, is a man for all seasons.

The film goes still further in its struggle to keep the white knight on his charger. While Galvin beats the upper class by dint of greater virility, he gets the dispossessed— blacks, working-class people, women— on the strength of his own considerable credentials. He's white, good looking, well educated, male. He's not

rich anymore but he sure used to be. This lit¬ tle twist signals the hypocrisy at the movie's core. The film's attitude toward the people it purports to help is a queasy mixture of contempt and misapprehension. In THE VERDICT, the good guys are just as awful as the bad guys.

There is one black person in the film: a doc¬ tor who has come to testify for Galvin. When Conccannon hears that Galvin's only witness is a black man, he snickers and tells assorted syco¬ phants to "get a black attorney to sit at our table." But the side of right is just as wrong: Mickey refers to the black man as a "witch doc¬ tor" because, it seems, he got his degree at a women's college and works on staff there. Cal¬ vin concurs and sets out to find a more "cred¬ ible" witness. To make matters worse, the script saddles the black doctor with an addi¬ tional liability: he has testified at twenty- seven negligence trials. At best, then, the black doctor is a well-meaning but dubious wit¬ ness; at worst, he's out to make a buck like everyone else.

The working-class characters don't shine ei¬ ther, although the really fine acting in these roles gives the film its few moments of authen¬ ticity. Kevin, the brother-in-law of the vic¬ tim, is being transferred to Arizona by his com¬ pany and hired Galvin simply to mediate the set¬ tlement payoff. When he learns that Galvin turned down the money in favor of a trial, he's furious. It's an interesting scene: Kevin's rage, his punching Galvin, who, penitent, apolo¬ gizes for "not informing" Kevin of the change and promises him he'll win the case. Kevin is shot in close-up here and looks ominously large. (In fact, Newman is frequently dwarfed by build¬ ings and characters . . . clearly, all the world is out to get him!) Kevin's plaid lumber jacket and heavy shoes are clumsy beside Gal¬ vin's well-tailored suit, and the working man's rage is terrifying compared to Galvin's self- control. Kevin becomes a materialistic brute, incapable of understanding Galvin's quixotic quest for justice. This despite the fact that he and his wife have spent two years at the co¬ matose woman's bedside, shedding real tears, waiting for her to awaken. The insurance payoff was their only way out of an interminable night¬ mare.

Women also get theirs. Galvin has a girl¬ friend, Laura (Charlotte Rampling), whom he picks up at a bar after delivering some profun¬ dities. ("The weak," he explains, "need some¬ body to protect them.") Laura says little, broods a lot, and sleeps with Galvin. She is so thin that she's a good advertisement for Ameri¬ ca's soaring anorexia rate. Late in the film we learn that she is a spy for the other side.

When Galvin discovers her betrayal, he punches her (hard) in the mouth. "Let him alone," she says, obviously feeling she got what she de¬ served. In fact, she was going to confess to Galvin before the KO and tries to talk to him several times after that. But he has decided he will never speak to her again. In the last shot of Laura, she lies on her bed, awash in tears and liquor, a phone receiver at her breast. Galvin, on the receiving end of the call, watches the ringing phone and looks very vindi¬ cated. Apparently, real men not only hit women these days, they also don't accept apologies.

As Laura's decline suggests, when women aren't tempting and betraying men, they are absolutely helpless. Laura is not going to pull herself together and punch Galvin back. In fact, semi- comatose on the bed, she recalls Debra Ann Kay, the negligence victim who will spend the rest of her life curled up in a fetal position. Gal¬ vin's all Debra Ann had in the way of defense, and this is what he said of her:

. . . that poor girl put her trust in the hands of two men who took her life . . . and the people who should care for her— her doctors, you and me— have been bought off to look the other way . . .

We are all each other's keepers, but the pater¬ nalistic blitz in thir line, and in the film, keeps us all safely in our places. The "weak" don't need the Galvins of this world to fight for them; they can fight for themselves and should be encouraged to do so, every minute of every day. Fairy tales, even inconsistent ones like this, are bad for everybody.

Says Mickey to Galvin of the other side, "How do you think they wound up with all that money? From doing good?" Meanwhile, Lumet and company are laughing all the way to the bank. _

VICTOR/ VICTORIA

Poppins in drag”

It’s "Mary

—Mark Bernstein

Early in VICTOR/VICTORIA, the recently (and widely) hailed "sophisticated" comedy, Robert Preston, playing the part of a gay nightclub entertainer in 1930s Paris, puts his stuffed sinuses to bed with the languishing line, "There's nothing more inconvenient than an old queen with a head cold." The audience cracks up.

As Toddy, Preston is the operative character in the movie's plot; he takes in Victoria (Julie Andrews), an unemployed singer, convincing her that he can make her a star by passing her off as a male female impersonator. This he does, much to the distress of a visiting nightclub operator (James Garner), who is attracted to the singer until she reveals herself as a him, at which point he recoils in panic.

The laugh mentioned above comes on the word "queen." It's the laugh that second-rate black comics got ten years ago with lines like, "no man, not 'bad,' bad," or that second-rate white comics got ten years before that by lacing their language with drug references. It's a "knowing"

laugh, one that says, "Oh, we know what that means. We're not square. We're cool."

But, as ever, there's more here than meets the ear. In short, VICTOR/VICTORIA may be the single most meretricious major American comedy ever to receive such totally unmerited praise.

First, the minor problems.

The acting. Julie Andrews can't, never could, and wanders through the movie projecting not so much an intriguing androgyny as the continuing impression of being 'Mary Poppins' in drag. Her sexuality isn't ambivalent, it's nondescript. James Garner, on the other hand, is one of those actors (Dick van Dyke, Alan Alda) who has devel¬ oped an engaging television persona (Maverick/ Rockford/Polaroid), only to have it fall apart when transferred to the big screen. For all his shoulders, he simply isn't big enough for movie¬ making.

The plot. Garner, of course, redeems himself. After establishing through the adolescent expe¬ dient of sneaking into Victoria's bathroom to watch her undress (yes, folks, it's as sophis¬

ticated as all that) that Victoria is indeed a she, he decides to woo him/her anyway. What a liberal guy. Well, almost. He does tell Vic¬ toria it bothers him to be seen dating a "man." She responds that she has to dress as a man in order to work. Crap. Why doesn't it occur to either of them that as Garner's character as the biggest nightclub owner in Chicago, she can have all the work she wants anytime they have the common sense to leave Paris? Besides, Victoria says, dressing as a man gives her a freedom she's never before known. Crap II. That free¬ dom consists of having to pitch her voice down in every conversation that takes place out of her bedroom and of having to hide from half the waiters in Paris (who saw her before she con¬ verted). The couple's real problem— i.e., that he likes boxing wi-ile she prefers opera (or, alternately, that they're both morons), is never addressed; it simply gets dropped in the happy ending.

The language. I doubt that 1930s Parisian homosexuals referred to themselves or their world as "gay," as in "Gay Paree," get it? (In¬ deed, that joke seems to be the only reason for the Paris setting of the film, which projects an

atmosphere vaguely reminiscent of Scranton).

Nor is authenticity aided when the gangster bodyguard speaks of his "anxiety attacks" or when Jim and Julie make intense lovers' small talk about what they can "relate to," exchanging pious liberalisms on the subject of sex role that sound like the most mendacious maunderings of a Psychology Today writer's meandering mind.

If the movie did not go beyond this, it could be written off as simply another cranked-out Hollywood comedy, Blake Edwards variety; the formula being, "Co-star two people so well known that it doesn't matter they can't act, or that the script is ludicrous or that the director can't direct. Rake in the bucks. Repeat as necessary".

The reason it can't be written off— and the reason, face it, folks, that it was instead hailed— is that it "deals" with homosexuality, and it is here that the film's deep dishonesty lies.

Every film attempts to establish a dynamic with its audience, asks us to perceive charac¬ ters and situations in certain ways, even if it's no more than to cheer for the good guys and boo the bad guys. When a film fails to do this, we say, with some disappointment, "I didn't get into it."

The dynamic of VICTOR/VICTORIA revolves around several deeply ingrained attitudes toward sexu¬ ality: briefly, the cultural messages that tell men to divorce themselves from any aspect of their psyche/self /character that might be termed "feminine" and tell women to divorce themselves from aspects that might be considered "mascu¬ line." Overachievers that they are, men gener¬ ally do a better job of this psychic castration. Indeed, one can make a case that the dominant value in the sexual consciousness of American males is the fear of being perceived by other men as having homosexual tendencies.

But rather than taking a liberated attitude toward homosexuality, the film's dynamic invites us to project our homophobia onto the charac¬ ters, laugh at them, evade our fears, and then congratulate ourselves for our broadmindedness.

For example, the Garner character takes 'Victor' dancing at a club where all the other couples are male. He is discomforted, and we find it hi lar ious--how can he be so 'uncool'? It's a ridiculing kind of laughter, directed at the kind of "man's man" who may even have made us feel less than adequate. So in one moment, we get revenge, evasion, and self-congratulation.

There was a time when, if a filmmaker was "liberal" and needed a plot device that could spout wisdom at appropriate intervals, the char¬ acter created may have been an old black man, unlettered, arthritic, but "wise in the ways of the world." Well, fashions change, even if forms don't, and this season's officially desig¬ nated cute minority in Hollywood is homosexuals.

This is worse than patronizing. Because, fifty years ago, what old black men or homosexu¬ al entertainers could have told us about was survival, retaining in severely circumscribed circumstances a certain trace of dignity. Sur¬ vival may be prerequisite to wisdom but is hard¬ ly its substitute. By giving such characters "wisdom," however, we evade our own social guilt. It's like: "Sure, guys, we dumped all over you, but don't you see, you got wisdom in consequence. Frankly, I think you ought to thank us. I mean, where in hell would Jesus be today if there hadn't been somebody around to nail him up? You're not going to thank us?

Well picky, picky, picky."

Homophobia is a cultural value strongly fringed with violence, and Blake Edwards is clever enough to give that violence some vicari¬ ous outlet. Twice Julie Andrews punches out the character who, as Toddy's original homosexual lover, is established as the "bad guy" homosexu¬ al, our crimping stereotype. The audience cheers. Late in the film, Victoria decides to reveal herself as a woman to Garner's former moll (a character drawn with utter contempt for women); she drags the latter into a bedroom and starts aggressively to undress. The latter fears, not unnaturally given the way the scene is played, that she's about to be raped. The audience cracks up. In short, he's a "bad guy" homosexual— punch him out, watch him cower!

She's a dumb stereotypic blond— rape her.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

VICTOR/VICTORIA is a truly nasty-minded movie, dealing entirely with cardboard cutout charac¬ ters: the Wise Minority Group Member (Toddy), the Plot Device (Victoria), the Hung-Up Stud, the Closet Queen Bodyguard, and the Dumb Over¬ ripe Blond.

The only character with a trace of dignity is Toddy, who comes across as a trouper. That dig¬ nity is destroyed in the film's final scene, where he manfully fills in for Victoria in the drag act. What we see is this big, hairy, fat man, stumbling around the stage trying to look female, only he can’t, he's laughing so hard (at what?), and the nightclub audience, even though it's the kind of performance that would turn embarrassing once the initial shock value wore off (why is this man doing this to himself?), they're practically in tears they think it's so funny, and Jim and Julie, well, they're seated down front, sharing the amusement, looking so heterosexual ly triumphant that I half expected them to organize a cookout right in the middle of the nightclub, then maybe duck out to a PTA meeting.

The liberal line on GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? was that, well, maybe it wasn't a very good movie, but it was still a major break¬ through. It "dealt" with racism, and now we would see blacks in serious film roles. To which the only possible response is: name one.

Name one major American movie of the past five years that featured a black actor or actress in a serious role. Well, hey, fella, what do you want; after a while we just got bored with them, you know.

Yes, I do. Which is to say that mainstream American comedies simply don't "deal"— they in¬ stead find brave new worlds to exploit and pre¬ viously ignored ideas to trivialize. The line on VICTOR/VICTORIA is that it's a needed step toward liberation. Sorry, sports fan. I'm not buying. What's needed is not this truly mali¬ cious piece of celluloid. What's needed— now, always and ever— is occasional honesty, un¬ feigned tenderness, and all but amazing grace.

E.T

The ultimate patriarch

—Phyllis Deutsch

Steven Spielberg's film E.T. is this year's biggest money-maker. T-shirts and posters all over the country celebrate the space creature, and Neil Diamond has written a song using E.T.'s memorable "phone home" as its theme. Reviews of the movie are mostly positive, and reviewers generally cite the film's make-believe ambiance and happy ending as causes for its enormous suc¬ cess. In doing so, they— and most of the Ameri¬ can public— have overlooked the sexist backbone of Spielberg's superficially engaging fairytale.

The film's sexism is explicit in the sexual stereotyping of its characters. E.T. is male- identified, even though the creature has no gen¬ itals. It is continuously referred to as "he." The first link between E.T. and Elliot is a baseball tossed back and forth: what better sym¬ bol of male bonding exists? Elliot, of course, is a little boy, his brother is a big boy, and all the children in the movie who have adven¬ tures (tinkering with telecommunications de¬ vices, fooling cops, riding flying bicycles) are boys. Elliot's sister is spunky and bright {she

at least asks whether E.T. is a boy or girl), but she dresses up the creature, brings him flowers, and stays close to mama. Gerdie also teaches E.T. to talk, but this deed (which makes the rest of the film possible) is seen as far less important that the physical machinations of the boys.

Elliot's mother, another sexist creation, rep¬ resents Spielberg's traditional view of the nu¬ clear family as a sex-segregated enterprise.

Mary has moments of humor and animation, but she most of spends most of her time hassling over concerns of everyday life. She worries about her job, her shopping, cleaning up, cooking, and taking care of the kids. She's so intent on arranging the groceries that she disregards Gerdie' s attempts to introduce her to E.T., who stands just a few feet away. Later, in a Hallo¬ ween costume, Mary is cute and sexy (she's dressed as some kind of catlike animal) and as giddy as ever. While photographing her three children, she fails to realize that the one in the middle has a funny voice and a flat head. Like the buffoon in a comic opera, poor Mary constantly misses the obvious.

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Obviously her husband's departure exacerbates Mary's confusion. He has left the family and taken his mistress to Mexico. But Spielberg so steadily emphasizes Mary's inadequacy by carica¬ turing her as a frazzled housewife that the fa¬ ther seems to play a negligible role in the fa¬ milial disaster. Following the disappearance of Elliot, a policemen grills Mary trying to find out if anything has happened in the family that might have caused her son to run away. Mary tearfully replies that her husband has gone and that "it hasn't been easy on the children." Clearly, she's the one at fault: she's at home and not doing a proper job raising the kids. Meanwhile, daddy is home free in Latin America. In the viewer's mind, daddy's departure is sub¬ liminal ly excusable: would you want to live with such an unstable woman?

The children's complete idolization of their missing father is another nail in Mary's coffin. Mike and Elliot yearn for dad ("remember how he used to take us to the ballgames?") but are not angry with him. Surely children respond to a parent's departure more complexly than this.

But when Mike and Gerdie tease Elliot about his goblin stories, he pouts and says, "Daddy would understand.” He implies that momny would not.

In fact, Mary does grab the kids and run like hell when she first sees E.T. turning grey on her bathroom floor. This act, which strikes me as eminently sensible, immediately casts her with the other "bad" adults in the film. When she finally comes around at the end, there are intimations that it has something to do with that nice male scientist who watches over her with great sympathy. Mary gets a man, but it's unlikely she'll work any less hard, for in Spielberg's universe men don't do dishes. In this film particularly, they serve two tnytholog- ical functions, both of which are embodied in the characterization of E.T.

E.T. is first of all an orphan, completely helpless being on an unknown planet. Left alone, childlike E.T. will surely get into trou¬ ble (remember his drunken stumbling around the house) or perhaps die. Casting E.T. as a little (male) child in need of help enables the direc¬ tor to cast his audience as mothers . . . Eter¬ nal Mothers willing to give unconditional love to a completely dependent creature. While ex¬ ternal mothers are generally women, Spielberg continues his sexist motif by denying Mary that role; instead, Elliot plays Eternal Mother to E.T.'s Eternal Infant. And Elliot's treatment of E.T. neatly damns the motherhood ir\yth by revealing its destructive underside. Elliot is extremely territorial and speaks of E.T. as his special possession and pet. The boy expends a great deal of love on the creature, but he also controls him. Elliot's love— and Elliot's con¬ trol-make in unnecessary for E.T. to ever learn

JUMP CUT NO. 28

more than garbled English. Why grow up If mama is always there? Spielberg shows the motherhood myth— embodied in Elliot and E.T.'s relationship as a symbiotic power game in which both parties play impossible roles. Mother suffers eternally from unrequited martyrdom and child suffers eternally from stunted growth; Spielberg may cart out the Eternal Mother to tug at our heart strings, but he quickly dissects her and puts her to rest.

shame is that there is much in these mythologies worth preserving: the enqihasis on love, benevo¬ lence, and trust; the belief that wonder still exists, as do miracles; the implication that there are meeting grounds for strangers of all kinds. Spielberg could be a true visionary but is hampered by his passion for mythologies that separate human beings according to sex and per¬ petuate unequal power (and hence, love) rela¬ tions among them. E.T. as characterized is a "he" who will always be taken care of by some loving mother because of his obvious vulnerabil¬ ity but who, at the same time, maintains the whip of control by dint of greater wisdom.

Movies like this are not a balm in our impos¬ sible times; they simply make matters worse by repeating the crimes that got us here in the first place. We should all stop believing in fairies until someone makes a film in which lit¬ tle girls have adventures on bicycles, too. m

and comes back to life. Is this King Arthur, Christ, maybe even God Himself? Yes, says Spielberg, and we all cry some more, blinded by the power of a different myth, one that moves from father to king to God with sweeping gran¬ deur and leaves a lot of troubled women in its wake. In the film, as in life, the ambiguous Eternal Mother cannot compete with the purity, serenity, and wisdom of the Eternal Father, who gracefully casts a spell and quietly resolves all. Never mind that underneath is a whimpering boy-child, incapable of growing up. Never mind that underneath is Elliot's real father, who skips town when the going gets rough.

Spielberg knows his stuff, no doubt about that. Reviewers have praised the film's inven¬ tiveness and originality, but it's a hoax. The movie moves so fast, the images are so dramatic, and the sound track is so loud that we miss the sexist fireworks on display. What's really a

But Spielberg gives the Eternal Father re¬ sounding applause. When E.T. is not a clinging infant, making mothers of us all, he is the flipside of the fantasy: the ultimate patriarch who has come to mend the fractured family and restore order in the kingdom. Although Spiel¬ berg portrays E.t. as a comic drunk in the first part of the film, in the end he inspires rever¬ ence and awe. After all, he is a creature of profound intelligence and wisdom. He even dies

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

Male bonding and self abuse

"fighting machine," a fraternity of sorts. Also the discipline shapes rather well-defined "indi¬ viduals" who are not only tenacious (in their ability to survive and succeed) but also quite willing to accept (paradoxically) that incred¬ ible sublimation of selfhood for the good of the male group. In AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, the genre's theme “comnon good” seems paradoxically to coincide perfectly with the phenomenon of male stardom.

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN deals with the pro¬ cess of male bonding--machismo as self-abuse and tenacity. As the hero graduates from officers' training, he seemingly can corrupt society "on the outside," as the result. This film is not just another "armed services" picture; it is a timely social discourse, which not only cele¬ brates an/the elite male group but* clearly iden¬ tifies the working-class woman as the enemy.

It all starts off with a dead mother (suicide we find out— and not even the decency to provide a note for her son) and a reluctant "adoption" of the son by the estranged, seafaring husand/- father (Robert Loggia). This aging sailor "keeps" young Filipino women to clean, cook, screw, and parade around the apartment half- naked. The son, maybe twelve or so, is initi¬ ated into this sailor's world and his own flight from feeling," a mythos identified by Christ¬ opher Lasch in the culture of narcissism which is patently antifeminist. The son, Mayo, who will be the film's hero, and the audience remem¬ ber these scenes throughout the film, especially as they relate to the film's presence/interfer¬ ence/treatment of women. Mayo's "flight from feeling is purged only at film's end. There it happens through another, more significant male¬ bonding ritual --graduation from pimp's son to future leader.

But beginning at the beginning— in the Philip¬ pines (done in yellow filter), Mayo, as a young teen, refuses to go to a "shitty" boarding school in the United States. He irrationally decides to "stick it out" with his fat, abusive, alcoholic father in "P.I." (the Philippine Islands--in the film we hear much of armed forces argot, language revealing the services' reductive bent).

In P.I., we have the first street-fight scene, with Mayo still a young teen (and not yet played by Richard Gere), duped and beaten by martial- arts expert Filipino youth gangs. Not only do they thrash him and bloody his nose (which be¬ comes a signfiicant male-bonding experience, on either side of the blow), they seem to impart some of their mystical (judo) knowledge. In the film judo will become a major male-bonding ele¬ ment in the officers' training school, and we wait almost all film for the duel between Mayo and his antagonistic superior, Foley. Such fighting "knowledge"/ability separates "the men from the boys," as in Mayo's street fight in which he bloodies a young tough's nose and in Foley's humiliation of the company patsy on the judo mat during training. It is, then, seen as positive not only that Mayo endured P.I. as a boy but also that he got himself thrashed and bloodied— and even better that he had that "knowledge" imparted to him so early on in life. His arrival at officers' training predicates this clear-cut knowledge of a mystical male rite (judo) and Mayo's presence of mind to carry it with him as if it were hair on his gonads or on his upper lip. In Mayo's moment of greatest despair, he and Foley (finally) fight it out, both exhibiting judo expertise. It is Mayo's ability to externalize (through the mythos of judo/combat)2 this social hurt that enables him to find the "strength" to hang in there, despite yet another (figurative and literal) kick in the balls.

But this "positive male" social agenda con¬ tains much pent-up aggression. That aggression is externalized in abusing booze (a fluctuating signifier of machismo) and women. As in so many "army" films, women here remain at the periphery of concerns and action. (I was reminded often in this movie of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, which depicted the same, I think unwitting, alliance between machismo and self-destruction). For Mayo, booze is secodary, as if its abuse/use were without real importance. But since his father had whored around all his life (which mysteriously "appears" on navy records Foley has read) and his mother killed herself (for which Mayo clearly blames himself), women become the real object(s) of his scorn and blame and exter¬ nalized rage.

The film sets up this system of externalized rage, etc.; the audience is clearly set up to at least understand and most likely to sympathize/ identify with Mayo's formation before the en¬ trance of the two primary female characters— Paula and Lynette— at the "camp social." Also the audience had earlier heard Foley's apocry¬ phal warning regarding entrapment through preg¬ nancy— a possibility/theme which is presented to the spectator as a ruthless and economically motivated female weapon. These women are fur¬ ther denigrated because they work in a factory— and when they change outfits in the car so that they can garner invitations to the social, the film suggests that a cerain degree of subterfuge is already going on (in retrospect, there seems little reason why this should be the case).

Still, the women "enter" this male-bonding nar¬ rative only after such elements introduce them.

In a way, their presence in the film seems im¬ portant only in terms of the men they screw and how this "act" affects the stability of the male group.

Their very existence threatens the male group. That, more than entrapment, must have been what Foley feared— he himself seems to have no "sex¬ ual identity" (like all good D.I.'s he has iden¬ tified himself only in terms of the male group). But the rest of the unit has no such limitation, and Foley's tacit permission for them to learn the hard way leads to a series of real chal¬ lenges to the future officers' bonds.

Paula and Lynette are formally introduced to Mayo and the Okie, Sid. This scene provides the groundwork for the way in which the spectator is instructed to treat the women for the rest of the film. Lynette (the one "with the incredible set of ta-tas") is the first choice, and she goes with Sid, who isn't the viewer's number one choice; clearly Sid isn't as leary of women as Mayo (and we) are. Paula, who simply has small¬ er ta-tas, sort of goes with Mayo, after she retreats behind her flashier blonde friend; her identification with Mayo elevates her in the film's overall character hierarchy.

Subsequently, their (Mayo's and Paula's) clev¬ er banter separates Paula and Lynette even fur- thei — Lynette, from the start, consists as a character of little more than body. But at the same time, Paula's association with Mayo also subordinates her--she's secondary to the male star and probably too sincere to dupe him (after all he's seen/been through so far). Such is not the case with Lynette. This character shows a real narrative impatience and an inclination toward centrality in the social discourse at hand— from the very start she surfaces as the "townie working-class girl" capable of being what Foley warned against. Mayo himself was such an armed forces love-child (another reason why he should know better), and a further, seri-

quest via identification' like Gere.

•to be like Mayo/to be

Physical perfection follows upon the camarad¬ erie of the gym and the athletic field. The material step of body building signifies adopt¬ ing the ideal of "team." As he proceeds through officers' training, Mayo employs his physical prowess as part of a kind of star presence in terms of the unit and his mystical adversary relationship with Foley, who, for all his super¬ ficial animosity, respects Mayo for the very tools both men identify as prized possessions. (Mayo had hustled his classmates with various scams to make money.) That Mayo's corrupt ion3 (as a capitalist, which, I suppose, is anti¬ macho) irks Foley so seems to relate to the two antagonists' equality on another level— Foley would want to go into battle (which he predicts, offhandedly, could happen in the next few years) with a physical specimen like Mayo. This is precisely why Mayo's lack of moral integriy and honor irritates him so.

Foley's abuse of Mayo leads to a second rite of passage. Again we see Mayo's will to endure punishment as an integral part of how he identi' fies himself, once and for all, as a man and as a member of an elite male group. After Mayo is caught breaking the honor code, Foley tries to get Mayo to D.O.R. (quit) but "no dice." So Foley forces Mayo to endure physical abuse but to no avail. Finally Foley decides to reject Mayo anyway, but the male bond is reactivated when Mayo cries. What he shouts through these tears simply identifies his need for the group- that Mayo has nowhere else to go, that this is his only chance to be better than his father.

Each of the many Foley-Mayo collisions, in relation to the ethic proposed in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, reflects how the group gets formed, how the individual male achieves positive self- image only in terms of this "team." AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN is like the generic "artty pic¬ ture" (that it's the navy is not the point here). In it we have the wop, the chicano, the black (broke and married), the woman candidate (wanting to be a man and eventually respected as one), the losers, the Okie, and the bad-ass drill sergeant (certainly arti\y pictures do lit¬ tle to veil the social significance of this genre convention). And from this diverse group, discipline and male-bonding rituals (fights, uniforms, drinking, etc.) lead to a working

The film depicts endurance and tenacity as male-positive traits in a cold world which seems to demand these qualities of its men (though few can answer this calling). Following this, the film emphasizes physical fitness as yet another positive male character trait. Such fitness seems an integral part of Richard Gere's (Mayo's) star image. As evidenced in his hang¬ ing upside down from the parallel bar in AMERI¬ CAN GIGOLO, Gere's fitness becomes part of his signification as a male sex symbol. In this film, that Mayo's tenacity carries over into such a material concern (for body, muscles, physique, etc.) suggests as well that the male audience member is invited to embark on the same relentless, physical-tangible, male-bonding

r - 1

JUMP CUT NO.

Finally, we should place this film in two oth¬ er eighties' genres. First, it's one of those ratings-system hybrids: the "R" film which had to be cut and recut to avoid an "X" rating.

Along with the remake of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, for example, viewers are pulled in by trying to figure out what was cut and trying to figure out how the film would look had these scenes been left in. Of course, POSTMAN prints complete with the excised footage are said to be shown in private screening rooms all over Holly¬ wood— and I suppose the same will/can be said regarding AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. But nei¬ ther film is particularly risque, and the "re¬ lentless passion" promised in the advertising hardly appears in either film. Misleading as it is, the advertising signifies the studio's ina¬ bility to identify these films' "genre." By mythologizing lost footage, the film gains the allure not only of a "dirty R" film but also as part of a new genre of Hollywood sexual vanguard films which defy "the code" to such an extent that a third party "had to" step in before the film's release to the general public.

Also important here, and I've mentioned this before, this film updates the "army" picture genre. I've seen the film on several occasions in economically depressed upstate New York.

There the myths of male bonding and armed ser¬ vice life appear viable and timely; they exalt an alternative, positive, and attractive course of action for the viewer. But in this very "act" the film positions (again and again) male versus female. Women structurally obstruct and threaten the male group, its solidarity, and its ways of transcending everyday mining town/mi 11 town existence. A dangerous social agenda is served by this film. It depicts problems in our culture while seeming to depict an alternative.

friend and former member of the fraternity. It represents yet another cross Mayo must bear— and as the audience is manipulated to sympathize with Mayo here, it leads to his second denial of Paula. He rejects her not only because she is a townie factory worker "like Lynette" but also because she is a woman and thus the enemy to the group and to the stasis of a world in which he has been "OK."

ous bond becomes established between him and Paula when she reveals herself to be one as well. But this male-female bond threatens "the company" and Mayo's new identity in terms of this group. The real tenderness established with a woman serves as Mayo's excuse to coldly drop Paula without so much as a note or a phone call.

Again, as part of this macho ethos, Foley's cold exterior serves to identify him as one with "insight." Thus his prophecy regarding the local girls comes to pass, with Sid as the "vic¬ tim." But the film does not let this challenge the male group. Sid (identified as Mayo's best friend— in that he knows that the star "is good," mystically, early on) rejects parental/ societal pressure to be an officer and quits the elite male company. But how can he deny the tenacity and strength of the male bond (and de¬ cide to be a J C Penney floor manager rather than a jet pilot). To go to Lynette is not the romantic move it at first seems to be but rather an identifier of Sid's faulty reasoning. He had a romantic illusion of marrying Lynette and re¬ turning to Oklahoma (which turns him into the Ralph Bellamy of this movie— no one would want to marry him and move to Oklahoma). She quells that offer by conveniently having her period and rather coldly refusing Sid's ring. He is left with an alternative prefigured by the categori¬ cal ethics of the film: suicide. Sid's death is played out over a long duration, clearly a ritu¬ al of sorts, and is left on Lynette's hands— in fact, she is blamed for it even before Mayo and Paula discover Mayo's buddy hanging there in the shower. This rather jarring scene is capped by Mayo's embrace of and soliloguy over his dead

^Grafted somewhat artificially here from Peter Wollen's assessment of Howard Hawks's oeuvre in Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), p. 82.

On this level, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN hates women. The male bonding is shown as "good" not only as part of the American way but also as self-protection. The bonds of matri¬ mony, which threaten "the company," become an¬ other test to deny tenaciously--yet, in the end, Mayo does go to the factory and sweep Paula off her feet (literally). This ending isolates the couple (from all the other loveless couples). Mayo tenaciously overcame the effects of his mother, his father, and his best friend and could grow to see Paula in a different light from women in general, especially women as rep¬ resented by Lynette. But how we read Paula's "being saved" is highly problematic. She still stands to gain a great deal economically/social¬ ly, and in a way social ascendence is Mayo's gift to her. He gets it as part of the superior position in the decision-making apparatus which the navy grants him as he graduates from the ordeals of officers' training. Paula's role is to complete Mayo's rite of passage. These rites let him have the right to acquire the most "at¬ tractive" female character. That woman then serves to verify the very social position the male group has provided him (and through associ¬ ation, her) with.

2Note that this external ization (mythologiza¬ tion) is primarily or uniquely male. See Jerome S. Bruner, "Myth and Identity," in Myth and Myth Making^ edited by Henry A. Murray (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 276-87; and Phyllis Chesler, "Patient and Patriarch: Women in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship," in Women in Sexist Society ^ edited by Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1971), pp. 362-92.

3At first I found Mayo's "honors violation" rather insignificnt and silly, but after check¬ ing into this with officer trainees I've been led to understand that this type of behavior and attitude is altogether serious (given the rules 3t officers' training "school"). Officer trainee Richard Hegmann told me stories about D.O.R's precipitated by "smiling" when leading a platoon and lying about the number of pull- ups a candidate performed. I

CHARIOTS OF FIRE

Traditional values/false history

Ed Carter

BRITAIN

This true story soars beyond sports to embrace some of the deepest and most powerful drives in all human beings.^

In its promotion of essentially Victoran values and its resolute fo¬ cus on the past, CHARIOTS OF FIRE strikes me as the most reactionary film I've seen in some time. 2

CHARIOTS OF FIRE opened in Britain in April 1981. Immediately the press divided over its merits. David Robinson of the London Times said:

CHARIOTS OF FIRE is in most respects the kind of picture for which we have been looking in British cinema, in vain, for many years. . . .

It is proudly and uncompromisingly British in theme and temperament, with no debilitating concessions to chimeric notions of "internation¬ al" style. 7

Robinson makes no mention of anti-Semitism, instead concentrating on "unin¬ hibited Britishness." So begins the acceptance of CHARIOTS 's veneer.

Jo Imeson, in the bfi Monthly Film Bulletin, recognized the film's manip¬ ulations:

These two statements introduce us to the two sides of CHARIOTS OF FIRE. First, the popular notion that it comes as a breath of fresh air to the cinema: a film celebrating the lost values of sportsmanship, dedication to ideals, personal inspiration, and. courage. Even before winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, it was a critical and popular smash. By March 1982, it had grossed $6 million, twenty-two weeks after its American re¬ lease. 3 It received the First Annual American Critics Prize at Cannes, 4 was voted most popular at the Toronto Film Festival, and received two standing ovations at the New York Film Festival. 5 Most critics either called it a masterpiece or at least praised the film's joyfulness and excitement. But some reviewers saw CHARIOTS differently, as a poorly made, manipulative, and reactionary work. In both Britain and the United States, critics for mainstream and conservative journals and newspapers invariably approved of the film, and liberal or left-wing reviewers condemned its chauvinism and championing of aristocratic values.

If we analyze CHARIOTS beyond all the dramatic trappings, we can under¬ stand what the film actually has to say about athletics, British aristoc¬ racy, anti-Semitism, religion, and nationalism. "A true story," claim the script, press material, and film, but nearly every incident or relationship between the characters is a falsification of historical reality. But even if one ignores the historical "inaccuracies," the film does not actually proclaim the values that audiences believe it does. The two main charac¬ ters' supposed revolt against the establishment and CHARIOTS 's promotion of sportsmanship and Olympic ideals are all but facades for the film's real loves--competition, elitism, and aristocratic national and religious tradi¬ tions. The audience can both love and condemn reactionary values; they may dislike the oppressive, class-ridden society of 1920 England and still rev¬ el in it, just as the film does. On many levels, CHARIOTS skillfully cre¬ ates this double pleasure for the viewer. As Stuart Bryon said in village Voice, this is "a film whose subtext contradicts its text."® By covering its multilayered, highly reactionary messages with an audience-satisfying disguise, CHARIOTS has managed to become an innocent, critically acclaimed, taken-for-granted hit.

Puttnam has already demonstrated his skill at . . . producing films which strike a neglected chord in the public imagination. The chord being plucked is the reassurance of traditional values at a time of national crisis, the contorting sense that inner strength will win through. 8

Puttnam could not have picked a better time to validate the British way. With three million unemployed for the first time since the depression, riots in the streets, and British power and prestige dwindling away, CHARI¬ OTS was just what the British needed to make them feel good about them¬ selves again. And with an arch-conservative prime minister and a royal wedding over the summer, the atmosphere proved ripe for nationalism. Putt- man proclaimed a revival of the moribund British film industry in his Acad¬ emy Award acceptance speech; he finished with, "The British are coming back!'" Imeson also pointed out the duality of the film's approach.

This is a delicately worked through instance of having our cake and eating it, too. These rebels against the system must . . . become its finest adornments. ^

So from the outset, the lines of critical opinion were drawn, but Imeson' s view was overshadowed as CHARIOTS began to travel around the world.

THE UNITED STATES

CHARIOTS was voted most popular at Toronto, played at Telluride, and be-

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Always wanted to know about GAY/ LESBIAN criticism?

Here’s your chance to find out.

Double Issue, No. 25-25

Special Se'ction on Lesbians and Film

"Introduction — Lesbian Film Criticism and Feminist Film Criticism"

— Edith Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage, B. Ruby Rich "Filmography of Lesbian Works" — Andrea Weiss

"Lesbian Vampires" — Bonnie Zimmerman

"Lesbians in 'Nice' Hollywood Films" — Claudette Charbonneau and Lucy Miner "The Films of Barbara Hammer" — Jacqueline Zita,

"WOMEN I LOVE and DOUBLE STRENGTH (Barbara Hammer, 1976 and 1978)

— Andrea Weiss

"The Films of Jan Oxenberg" — Michelle Citron

"Hollywood Transformed — Interviews with Lesbian Viewers" — Judy Whitaker "CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette, 1974)

— Julia Lesage iiiMPrUT

"MAEDCHEN IN UNIFORM (Leontine Sagan, 1931) — B. Ruby Rich

Editorials on Gay Liberation and on the Male Editors' relation to Berkeley CA 94701

Lesbian Feminism

No. 16 — Special Section on Gay Men and Film "Introduction" — Chuck Kleinhans "Films by Gays for Gays" -- Thomas Waugh "Homosexuality and Film Noir" — Richard Dyer "Fassbinder's FOX AND HIS FRIENDS" — Bob Cant "Foxed: A Reply to Cant" — Andrew Britton "Bertolucci's Gay Images: Leqving the Dance" — Will Aitken "Gays and Straights, Film and the Left: A Dialogue"

— Tom Waugh and Chuck Kleinhans "Gay Liberation Editorial" — JUMP CUT staff

$7.50 value for $5

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

came the first British entry ever to open the New York Film Festival. It won no awards at New York but gained instant notoriety through a massive advertising campaign and word of mouth. As in England, the American press split on their judgment of CHARIOTS. Typical of the new "minority" opinion (almost the same number of reviews praised as damned the film, but the most widespread and influential newspapers praised it, so that critical impres¬ sion became dominant) was Carrie Rickey's voice review.

In the film Abrahams undergoes an intense training that consumes all his time; he does so out of a fierce personal drive. In the 1920s, however, running was still considered a lower-class sport and athletics were not taken as seriously as they are today. Two or three days' training a week was considered excessive, and Harold barely did that much.

Abrahams was a chap who didn't take his training as seriously as the group from beyond the Atlantic. He had his glass of ale when he wan¬ ted it, and smoked a cigar with evident enjoyment while fitting him¬ self for whatever competition he might find at Colombes (the Olympic stadium at Paris. )15

You leave CHARIOTS hyped up and humming "Jerusalem," party to Eng¬ land's colonial willfulness. Little wonder it's the opening night selection (in New York): CHARIOTS OF FIRE salutes the condescension and noblesse oblige of the dress shirts in the audience. 10

At the opposite end of the political spectrum, John Simon not only praised the film (with characteristic reluctance) but pointed out (unknow¬ ingly) its dangerously seductive nature.

[CHARIOTS shows] a vanished England that yet seems accessible to liv¬ ing memory, a graciousness that extends even to harbor masters and sleeping car attendants, a sense of the social fabric without rips or snags— except for a bit of religious intolerance and closed shop snobbery which in retrospect seem almost anodyne. H

American conservatives and liberals alike were ready for such a film. For ten years PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" had been importing British series that glorified the patrician classes, most recently (and most popularly, perhaps second only to "Upstairs, Downstairs") "Brideshead Revisited," which incidently took place in the early twenties, just like CHARIOTS. De¬ spite its aristocratic pricetag of $100 a seat, "Nicholas Nickleby" still won over New York in a coincidental run on Broadway. Even Gilbert and Sul¬ livan, Harold Abrahams's passion, had its smash revival on Broadway with "Pirates of Ponzance." Americans have always felt culturally inferior to the British but loved the culture all the same. And the general conserva¬ tive turn, with Thatcher's equivalent in the White House and the Moral Ma¬ jority on the loose, created a climate as ripe for CHARIOTS as the one in the UK.

CHARIOTS is exactly what a lot of Americans want from an "art house" film right now. Pleasant moments with pleasant people. No violence, no sex, at least not the dangerous kind. No danger. No fear. 12

THE FILM

"A true story," says the film, but only the main story has any truth to it. After discovering the extent to which so many details have been distorted, one ends up wondering if any of the film is true. CHARIOTS 's opening and closing scenes consist of a very Anglican mass for the funeral of Harold Abrahams, whom we have known only as a Jew in the main body of the film.

In the confusion, one wonders if somehow Abrahams's celebrity status in England was so great that he received complete acceptance in the establish¬ ment, and Anglicans hold mass for him— or perhaps the film is somehow anti- Semitic by denying Abrahams his burial rights as a Jew. Historically, nei¬ ther is true: he converted to Catholicism in 1934 (ten years after the Par¬ is Olympics) and spent nearly all his adult life as a Christian. 13 Not only does this clarify the funeral but questions his battle against anti- Semitism. In fact, Abrahams was "hardly as concerned with anti-Semitism as the film indicates."!^

And while it looks as if Abrahams is going to his first Games, he had gone to Antwerp in 1920. In the 100-meter race in which the film has one of its four climaxes, we see Abrahams's determination and confidence at its peak. But in reality, Abrahams claimed, "I did not think I had any chance of a gold medal, nor did anyone else. I really never gave it a thought." Therefore, half of the film's story is a fabrication, done only to make this man an admirable character and create a dramatic narrative that would enthrall the audience. After all, who would identify with someone who smoked and drank up until the hour of the big race and had no idea he would win? And by extension, all the glory of Britain would receive the same

taint.

The details concerning Lord Lindsey demanded two alterations. First, we see him and Abrahms run the "track" around Cambridge yard, and Harold breaks the six-hundred-year-old record. The real Lord Lindsey (actually Lord Burghley) ran the race alone, and he broke the record. He refused to see the film because of this "revision. "17 And he did not place second in the 110 hurdles at Paris, 18 which in CHARIOTS enables him to step out of his place in the 400 meters to allow Liddel to participate.

As for Liddel, he did not need to be pressured into changing his mind about not running in the 100-meter heats on Sunday, and then be graciously offered a place in the 400. CHARIOTS gives us a heartbroken Liddel as he boards the ship for France, just having learned that the 100-meter heats are to be run on a Sunday. The Olympic schedules actually came out far in advance of the team's departure for France, so he already knew; he merely decided to enter the 400 meters instead, and no such meeting with the Prince of Wales took place. 19 And Jennie Liddel did not staunchly opposfiQ her brother's running, as in the film, but wholeheartedly supported him.*^ Apparently she did not find this change offensive and deigned to see the film.

CHARIOT'S Paris Olympics certainly seems rather calm compared to the ca¬ lamity that actually took place. International tensions created a disas¬ trous competition, and foreign teams were booed by French fans. In the film, a little booing seems to be directed toward the British, and the Americans are well respected; the reverse actually happened. 21 But it only adds to Abrahams's and Liddel' s underdog status.

In "revising" history, Puttnam, Welland, and Hudson have created a mythi¬ cal rather than historical film. None of the characters seems truly real¬ istic— more an idealization or archetype. The care with detail and atmos¬ phere simultaneously lends historical authenticity and, since this time is really light years away from our own, gives CHARIOTS a legendary feel.

The most significant change in CHARIOTS is the depiction of anti-Semi¬ tism. Abrahams feels he must defeat the forces of prejudice that he senses

closing in around him. Although we see no actual discrimination and only a modicum of verbal disparagement, Abrahams's speeches make us believe that 19205 Britain was rife with anti-Semitism. Although even the most tolerant society has individuals who do express their prejudice, in no way was Eng¬ land the place that Abrahams describes. With its society based on democ¬ racy, "English national culture absorbed foreign elements without suffering from an identity crisis. "22 in 1917, Parliament issued the Balfour Declar¬ ation, which stated that the British government would work toward estab¬ lishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 23 Although anti-Semitism rose af¬ ter the Russian Revolution, its "manifestation . . . ceased during the ear¬ ly '20's."24 Even a small outburst during this time was "not considered serious enough to require new strategy for the defense of Jewish rights. "25 And anti-Semitism always "had little ostentatious elitist support. "26 in short.

The 1920's were a relatively quiet period for Anglo-Jewry, marked mainly by the shifting population from the older centers, and the spreading of Jews into a wider variety of occupations. 27

Both of Abrahams's brothers preceded him at Cambridge, and Dr. {later Sir) Adolphe Abrahams was Master of Operations for the 1912 British Olympic team. 28 So although the few remarks made by the Cambridge dons and others about Abrahams's heritage could occur in any country at any time, they rep¬ resent what Harold believes to be a widespread phenomenon. Any time a film distorts history this way, even if it does not claim to be a true story (but especially if it does), dangerous precedents are set. CHARIOTS OF FIRE is not a documentary and does not have to treat its material as such, and its distortions of history will hardly cause riots in the streets. But its reactionary depiction of the beauty of colonial Britain's elite gets quite a lot of its support from the film's assurance of truthfulness, ‘thus giving it authenticity and so more power.

Although CHARIOTS overstates its depiction of British anti-Semitism, it still manages to totally understate the significance of anti-Semitism as a malignant social phenomenon. If we assume for the moment that CHARIOTS shows the state of anti-Semitism accurately (as the audience must), then it gives the hazardously false picture that anti-Semitism does not really amount to much and that one can overcome it relatively easy.

The movie instructs us that any barriers of class (race) prejudice and pounds of sterling silver will crumble like paper mache if you only have the gumption to follow your inner voices and remain true to yourself .29

Abrahams' great wealth ensures him a privileged position in English society. There is no suggestion that he has had to struggle against prejudice to gain admission to Cambridge, or that he is in any way snubbed by his peers. Nor does his status as a Jew seem to interfere with his selection for the British Olympic team. In fact, the only anti-Semitism we witness is the wry condescension of a couple of ag¬ ing dons. 30

We see no barriers to admission to the school, to clubs, or to athletics.

No one says anything to Abrahams's face. The only truly vicious line comes from a wounded war veteran who helps Abrahams and Montague with their bags at the train station. After the two students have gone off in their taxi, he says, "That's why we fought this war, Harry, so Jew-boys like that can get a decent education. "31 Welland significantly puts the worst anti-Semi¬ tism onto a disabled working-class veteran while the upper-class slurs are more secretive and genteel. This seclusion of anti-Semitism has the unin¬ tentional (?) effect of making Abrams seem the arrogant, defensive snob that the dons say he is. Many reviewers got this impression:

(He is] an English Jew with a chip on his shoulder. 32

Harold is a fanatic. 33

[Abrahains] is slightly paranoid. 34

Abrahams is arrogant and defensive. 35

If these reviewers thought this of Abrahams, the audience must have fol¬ lowed suit. With the stereotype already having a long history (as evi¬ denced by Gielgud's "as they invariably are" [defensive]), we need no more portrayals of Jews imagining discrimination. When real Jews then complain about real prejudice, non-Jews begin to wonder.

CHARIOTS also makes Jewishness funny. Though audiences disapprove of the dons' patronizing attitude, Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson make them so over¬ ly pompous and silly that people chuckle at their ugly lines. When Abra¬ hams first meets Sybil over dinner, he says he will have "the same" when Sybil orders "the regular." However, Sybil had no idea of Harold's Jewish¬ ness when ordering. By the time dinner comes, he has devulged his heri- ' tage, so the arrival of pigs' knuckles gets a big laugh, from the couple and from the audience. Abrahams is determined to fight the prejudice he has encountered but still finds it within himself to be amused by his cul¬ tural "peculiarities." CHARIOTS gives us the most innocuous vision of ra¬ cial and religous intolerance. Filmic representations of bigotry should unnerve us and make us want to eliminate it. We see no reason to think that anti-Semitism does any real harm, that Jews can take it all in stride if necessary and, if they want to, can overcome it by proving themselves better than non- Jews.

Finally, Abrahams is really more English than Jewish, more accepted and

JUMP CUT NO. 28

successful than many of his peers. A nondiegetic rendition of "He Is an Englishman" accompanies the end of his speech complaining about the halls of Cambridge being closed to Jews, and when the scene cuts to the play in which the song is being sung, none other than Abrahams leads the singing.

CHARIOTS fools the audience by making it think that it celebrates virtues that do not seem to exist anymore. In actuality, these virtues never ex¬ isted the way CHARIOTS proclaims. Celebration of sportsmanship and the "Olympic ideal" appear most often in reviews (and in people's minds, no doubt) as the foremost meanings of the film. Liddel and Abrahams do not run for money or glory or national pride, so they think, but for "the sport" and for reasons they value above sport. Upon closer look, though, we see that they actually perform as fanatically as any modern athlete; "It is clear that for both, winning matters much more than how they play the game. "36 In a Scotland-versus-France track meet, one of the French (!) runners trips Liddel, but Liddel thrills the crowd (in the stadium and the theater) with a miraculous come-from-behind victory that leaves him visibly exhausted.

This winning-at-all -costs attitude in no way resembles that of modern athletes, who value their bodies enough not to destroy them for victory.

When Abrahams loses his only race with Liddel, he falls into a melancholic state and nearly decides to quit running; he had never lost before, and the pain of losing proves too much for his ego. Although modern athletes re¬ ceive salaries that nearly everyone thinks excessive, runners and Olympic athletes are technically amateur and still risk expulsion for accepting under-the-table money. But in the 1920s only those who could afford it competed. A kid from Harlem or the East End could never have become an Olympic athlete in 1924.

CHARIOTS is a reactionary enterprise stirring up the audience's basest, most knee-jerk nationalism (the Olympic processional re¬ duced me to rooting for the Yanks . . . and brought Riefenstahl 's OLYMPIA too close for comfort). 37

In so many ways, Puttnam, Welland, and Hudson manage to make us believe that they attack the very things the film glorifies. On the surface, Lid¬ del and Abrahams revolt against the establishment, but they exemplify its traditions and values above anyone in the film. In fact, Liddel is too conservative even for the aristocracy; he believes in God above country, a much more archaic allegiance. And however much Abrahams complains, he still loves Gilbert and Sullivan and desires more than anything to become part of the system he supposedly despises. The film also embraces the ar¬ istocracy it purports to criticize. With voyeuristic camera movements and point-of-view editing, we feel as if we live in the 1920s London. Every scene is lushly decorated, from the (Academy Award-winning) costumes to the ubiquitous champagne. An outrageous pan/track through the Cambridge club recruitment event nearly has us drooling on the surroundings, and if we do not already feel we are there, we wish we were. The low, golden lighting on all interior scenes bathes the characters and appointments in a rich glow. When Lord Lindsey sets up a series of hurdles, each with a full champagne glass on it, the audience gasps when he spills a drop or two.

And genteel, proper servants of every description serve the main players, including porters, waiters, chauffers, and butlers. And each one complete¬ ly humbles himself to those he serves.

In every way CHARIOTS allows the audience to have it both ways: they can guiltlessly adore the reactionary ways of colonial Britain, yet still feel morally superior to its excesses. Andrew Sarris noted this phenomenon in the scene in which the Olympic committee tries to get Liddel to change his mind. This scene has the most "frogs" per minute of any in the film.

The audience gets a double dose of amusement, first by sharing his (Olympic commissioner) francophobic nastiness, and then by watching him get his while it (the audience) escapes unscathed. 38

The audience can participate in anti-French, pro-upper class, anti-Semitic, and even anti-American attitudes and still not feel shameful about it be¬ cause the filmmakers expiate any possible guilt by momentarily punishing each of these prejudices. CHARIOTS thus provides lots of remorseless ani¬ mosity.

The final, subtlest, and most effective reactionary idea that CHARIOTS peddles is fundamentalist religion.

The problem is that Charleson portrays the character so appealingly that one can easily fail to see in this fundamentalist preacher/mis¬ sionary a 1920's precursor of the Moral Majoritarian. We all tend to admire people of principle, but I suspect there is more than a little conservative calculation in the promotion of such a hero for contem¬ porary audiences. 39

Liddel believes that God comes before all else and reads the Bible literal¬ ly. Although sober and quiet about his faith, he still enforces his be¬ liefs onto others, and in a hypocritical way. On the way home from church Eric's friend complains that the kingom of God is not a democracy but run by a tyrant; Liddel replies that no one forces you to be believe in God, but he immediately does the opposite. He stops a young boy playing foot¬ ball and calmly but firmly tells him he should have been in church and that he must be there next Sunday.

Most of the time, however, Liddel keeps his devotion private, and we ad¬ mire him for it. His sermons, both public (to miners who have come to see him race) and clerical (on the day of the 100-meter heats), do not contain any fire and brimstone. His personality and attitude make for a very pleasant, sympathetic symbol of ardent religosity that audiences can be¬ lieve in. Liddel' s faith goes further even than modern so-called Moral Majoritarians; it is one of the heinous aspects of British imperialisms: the proselytizing of nonwhites in the colonies. And Liddel 's mission is extracolonial: China. Jerry Falwells' plan does not include spreading the gospel to the Third World. Sarris went so far as to compare Liddel to an¬ other modern religious fundamentalist:

My first thought was. Ayatollah, anyone? Do we really need any more people in this world who do not want to do anything interesting on the Sabbath?40

So even though Liddel is far more conservative even than the aristocrats of his day, we admire him for his devotion to principle and his charming smile. ,

CHARIOTS OF FIRE has already become a piece of American culture, to be quoted from as a modern classic. A current Budweiser commercial imitates the now-famous beach running sequence, complete with horse (instead of men) splashing in the surf and mock-Vangelis synthesized music. The commercial makers knew that CHARIOTS has become so popular and so acceptable that pi¬ rating from it would be a sure-fire advertising gimmick. Even now, many people consider this film a truly inspirational masterpiece or at least a harmlessly entertaining piece of fluff. In the future, the voices of the few insightful reviewers and a fraction of the public who saw the film's true meaning will be forgotten, and they have already begun to shrink under the weight of the film's popular and critical successes. Like Abrahams and Liddel, CHARIOTS OF FIRE will become a legend, and the reactionary elements will be even harder to point out.

Ijack Kroll, "Ten seconds to Eternity," ifeiraweek, 28 September 1981, p. 69.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

^Michael H. Seitz, "Thatcher in the Theatre," progressives, December 1981, p. 54.

^Variety, 3 March 1982, p. 9.

^Rolling Stone, 1 October 1981, p. 72.

^Greg Kilday, los Angeles Herald Examiner, 6 October 1981, p. 93.

^Stuart Byron, village voice, 21 October 1981, p. 50.

^David Robinson, London Times, 3 April 1981.

8jo Imeson, bfi Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1981, p. 90.

^Imeson, p. 90.

lOCarrie Rickey, "A Raging, Seething, Europhiliac, Socially Conscious, Carefully Orchestrated, Two-Headed Babe," village voice, 23 September 1981, p. 43.

lljohn Simon, national Review, 13 November 1981, p. 1360. l^stephen Schiff, Boston Phoenix, 20 October 1981, p. 4. l^Murray Frymer, san Jose Mercury, 30 October 1981, p. 45.

^^Peopie, 19 December 1981, p. 94.

ISjohn Kieran, The story of the Olympic Games (New York: J. J. Lippencott, 1936), p. 151.

16Melvyn Watman, a History of British Athletics (London: Robert Hale,

1968), p. 28.

^ ^People , p . 94 .

^^oiympic Games Handbook (Toronto: Pangurian Press, 1975), p. 53.

ISPress material, courtesy Museum of Modern Art Film Study Center.

20ibid.

^^Literacy Digest, 2 August 1924, p. 49.

22Gisela L. Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England, 1918-1939 (New

York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), p. 175.

23v. D. Vipman, Social History of the jews in England, 1850-1950 (London: Watts and Co., 1954), p. 306.

^^Lebzelter, p. 29.

25lbid., p. 139.

26lbid., p. 173.

27vipnian, p. 310.

28Alan Brien, London Times, 5 April 1981, p. 42-C.

29stephen Harvey, "Grown-Up Hour," inquiry, October 1981, p. 36.

30sertz, p. 55.

3lAfter the viewing, I still thought he was just saying "blokes [not Jew- boys] like that." Only when I read the script did I know his real words. Certainly the causual listener, on first viewing, cannot hear the differ¬ ence. But even this line is reactionary. This veteran says, without the least irony in his voice, that his sacrifices have all been made to help put an upper-class man through Cambridge. Abrahams was called up too late to do any fighting, so he is doubly privileged.

^^Variety, 2 April 1981, p. 18.

33simon, p. 1360.

3^David Brudnoy, Boston Herald American, 23 October 1981, p. Bl.

35constance Gorfinkle, Boston Patriot-Ledger , 23 October 1981, p. 19.

36Seth Cagin, Soho weekly News, 29 September 1981, p. 41.

37Rickey, p. 43.

38Andrew Sarris, "Chariots of Mixed Feelings," village voice, 7 October 1981, p. 51.

39seitz, p. 54.

40sarris, p. 52. ■

BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE KILLED

State terrorism

—Hal W. Peat

IL FAUT TUER BIRGITT HAAS (BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE KILLED) is a dark, unflinchingly hard look at one of the most troubling phenomena of the in¬ ternational political scene: the growing use by many governments, whether "democratic" or "au¬ thoritarian," of sophisticated, illicit, and frequently violent counterterrorist methods. Director Laurent Heynemann distinguishes his film from the usual tales of the print and visu¬ al media by a highly personalized examination of the characters and motivations of the people in one rather minor affair, the kind which inevit¬ ably appears as another distorted and sensation¬ alized story in the newspapers or on television. In this sense, Heynemann's effort here gives us a prelude, a revelation of faces, facts, contra¬ dictions, and events leading up to the headlines and cliches which insidiously bury the truth.

The film's premise is simple. Various Europe¬ an intelligence and counterterrorist organiza¬ tions have decided it is time to "eliminate" and "close the case on" one German revolutionary, Birgitt Haas. But Haas has been inactive and in hiding for some time; in fact,- the authorities have simply continued to use her name and iden¬ tity in their versions of recent confrontations with underground groups. Having built her "ter¬ rorist" stature to monstrous proportions by blaming her for masterminding these incidents, they are now ready to score a major "victory" for law and order by having her killed. This operation is left to the planning of Athanase (Philippe Noiret), head of a clandestine French antiterrorist unit. Athanase's strategy is to use an innocent and unwitting citizen, Charles Bauman (Jean Rochefort), a man otherwise totally unconnected with the matter, as a pawn to lure Haas into a situation where she will become the apparent victim of a "crime of passion." A double of Bauman will actually kill her and be observed leaving the scene; then Bauman, and not the authorities, will be accused of the deed. Bauman, after all, is separated from his wife and adrift in his life while Haas, in the male viewpoint of Athanase's group, is a woman whose liberated sexuality can only be understood as a promiscuous sensuality they can easily exploit in order to eliminate her.

Much like Claude Chabrol's NADA, in which the state does not hesitate to sacrifice one of its own members when expedient to do so and in which the mythic dimensions of the terrorist must be upheld and enhanced to justify the state's own illegal violence, the mechanics of counterter¬ rorism in BIRGITT HAAS are shown to be used with even more tert ifying expertise by the employees of the state than by their revolutionary oppo¬ nents. As in Chabrol's film, we ultimately find that the tactics of terrpr become their own trap for whomever employs them, for whatever reason.

Thus it is that, in several starkly ironic scenes, Birgitt listens in amazed disbelief to

radio reports of terrorist operations attributed to her leadership. It is as though, having once assumed the public identity of "terrorist" by using revolutonary violence, the identity has gone on to grow an existence of its own. At the opening of the film, she faces the unreality of a self which has been cleverly taken over and fostered by the state for its own ends. Basic¬ ally an intellectual and until now a quick-wit¬ ted survivor, she understands, at this point, the necessity of no longer surviving— of surren¬ dering or dying in order to silence the weapon her foes have created.

While they are practiced manipulators of events, Athanase and his seoond-in-command, Richard Colonna (Bernard LeCoq) discover their cleverness cannot always control events. Things begin to run awry when Colonna himself, charac¬

terized by his superior as "cold, mean, and am¬ bitious," receives conmand of the mission to kill Haas. Athanase soon learns that Colonna has made the fatal error of mixing personal and professional convenience; the lover of Bauman's estranged wife, he uses the Haas assignment to frame the man. But Athanase cannot change pawns: Bauman is already on his way to Germany for the job the unemployment department has just "found" for him. Athanase allows the plan to proceed to the point of the chance meeting be¬ tween Birgitt and Bauman. On the surface, events now seem to go according to plan, but another miscalculation contributes to the fail¬ ure of the scheme. Birgitt Haas feels genuine emotion for Bauman; she is not the uncontrolled nymphomaniac her enemies have assumed her to be. Haas kills Colonna after Bauman interrupts his double about to kill Haas in her hotel room.

But Colonna's death also proves convenient for Athanase and the authorities: it rectifies his initial mistake. Athanase, the more “humane" yet sinister member of the state apparatus, re¬ mains to tie up the loose ends.

Athanase is an interesting study of a kind of shadow-world version of the corporate man. As portrayed by Philippe Noiret, so often the amia¬ ble, agreeable man of the French cinema, the character of Athanase has a resonance we might not expect in a man whose career is built on the literal destruction of whomever the state de¬ crees. Noiret projects something between the world weariness of a Graham Greene exile and the hopeless obedience of a Kafka civil servant. "Shoulo I get out now?" he wonders aloud to his wife one night in bed. "After this job," she replies, unperturbed. Of course, it will always go on being after the next "job." Heynemann never permits us to become so caught up in this complexity of characterization, however, that we lose critical insight into the meaning of Atha¬ nase' s actions. Athanase fully represents a bourgeois political culture able to comfortably (for the most part) rationalize its resort to illicit activities against not only its declared enemies but also its own citizenry.

In a wider sense, Heynemann reveals the decep¬ tiveness and danger of roles and role playing-- whether intentional, unconscious, or unwilling- in a politically bankrupt society. Athanase eagerly acts out the role of friendly acquain¬ tance and confidante to Bauman; it placates a part of his conscience to treat his chosen pup¬ pet in the most civilized fashion. Colonna, in turn, willingly acts as unappreciated henchman to Athanase one more time so he can be rid of his lover's husband. Bauman stubbornly refuses

to acknowledge the fact that his wife has left him forever and finally transforms his manipu¬ lated situation by deciding to remain near Haas while she awaits sentencing. But in between, Bauman's larger manipulation by the state ma¬ chinery makes him as much a victim as Haas. The very routine and precise way in which the coun¬ terterror group carries this out, in fact, points him out as only one among many such vic¬ tims.

Birgitt Haas herself, nevertheless, faces the most terrible of role situations. The other fictive being the state accuses of bombings and hijackings now overshadows her actual movements and choices. It has been as useful to the au¬ thorities that she should live as that she now should die. Realizing this, she opts to end the game as quickly as possible by running no far¬ ther. The extraordinary acts she hears attrib¬ uted to herself and her lack of meaningful sup¬ port from her former comrades underscore her present isolation. Everything conforms beauti¬ fully to the design of those who hold her within a narrowing circle. Even her private, sensual self has been probed and examined (if inaccur¬ ately) by Athanase' s squad, who neatly insert one of their number among her lovers. The de¬ ceit both Haas and Bauman undergo becomes the true terror of this tale in the viewer's eyes. Heynemann has put the intrusiveness of the cam¬ era eye to stunning use by creating a composite picture of a hunter, Ms bait, and his prey. In this sense, the film's narrative structure, while employing some classic Hollywood thriller codes, manages to work all its elements at a level that engages us in a more participative and troublesome manner than the passive, purely entertaining stance most thrillers usually al¬ low.

JUMP CUT NO. 28

The covert activities of the state, as demon¬ strated by Athanase and his employees, are symp¬ tomatic of an organism which not only attacks its foes by any means possible while maintaining a facade of legitimacy and normalcy but is also paranoid to the point of turning in upon itself in distrust and fear. Athanase and Colonna thus cannot ever really trust one another. Moreover, the visible branches of law enforcement do not want too close an association with Athanase's type or to know the sordid details of his ac¬ tions on their behalf. (In this respect, their attitude isn't so different from that shown dur¬ ing the Watergate cover-up when the presidential office contrived to put itself at one remove from the mischief of its own "operatives.")

Perhaps the ultimate surprise of BIRGITT HAAS is that Athanase and his assistants, for all their omniscient power, fail miserably in their mission. Because of a final accident of mistim¬ ing, Bauman interrupts the planned murder of Haas. The secret agents must withdraw and Haas forces the German police to arrest her— the one thing they wanted to avoid.

Bauman reacts with dignified outrage to the revelation of his own manipulation. The most natural exit from the situation for him is one which Athnase has not counted on: he refuses to return home, even at gunpoint. In the face of such unexpected defiance, Athanase relinquishes his erstwhile pawn. Insofar as it makes clear to us the ioward motives and events leading to one more headline, one more quickly forgotten chapter in the twilight world of "state" versus "terrorism," BIRGITT HAAS is an unnerving look into that closed file we cannot so easily for¬ get— or want to forget. H

WHITE ZOMBIE

HAITIAN HORROR

--Tony Williams

According to certain critics it is impossible to produce films made with¬ in capitalist institutions which criticize imperialist practices. T.W. Adorno believes that the culture industry always inculcates ideas of order so as to maintain the status quo.1 Judith Hess develops this idea. Genre movies are popular, she says, because they temporarily relieve fears a- roused by recognizing social and political conflicts. Although they ad¬ dress those conflicts, the various genres attempt to resolve conflicts in simple and reactionary ways. Hess notes three genre characteristics:

First, these films (e.g.. Westerns, Horror and Sci-Fi) never deal directly with present social and political problems; second, all of them are set in the non-present. Westerns and horror films take place in the past— science fiction films, by definition, take place in a future time. . .Third, the society in which the action takes place is very simple and does not function as a dramatic force in the film--it exists as a backdrop against which the few actors work out the central problem the film presents. 2

Horror films, according to Hess, attempt to resolve disparities between two contradictory ways of problem solving; rationality VS faith, an irra¬ tional commitment to certain traditional beliefs.-^ I find Hess' approach too dogmatic. Many examples from past and later genre movies refute it. Fifties sci-fi movies such as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THIS ISLAND EARTH, THEM! and TARANTULA were clearly located within their contemporary era. Consciously or unconsciously, they attempted to address themselves to the ideological cur¬ rents of their time. Rescreenings of the sixties TV series THE OUTER LIMITS reveal contemporary issues of sexism and cold-war paranoia now explicit from a later perspective. The seventies saw an American Renaissance of "horror" movies, many of which offered subversive attacks on the family and capitalist institutions.^ Yet what we see as explicit in that seventies genre was already implicit in earlier works of the thirties and forties.^ Genre movies can be riddled with irresolvable tensions and ambiguities which can split the facade under which the films are produced.

Contradictory elements can enter a narrative to subvert the dominant con¬ cepts the film attempts to project. Certain mechanisms are common to the horror genre as well as other films. In his article, "The Anatomy of a Pro¬ letarian Film: Warner's MARKED WOMAN," Charles W. Eckert refers to the Freudian ideas of condensation and displacement to explain the existence in a film of tensions which can not be consciously resolved. Attempts are made at fantasy resolutions. But they are not always successful. Condensation fuses a number of discrete elements or ideas into a single symbol. Dis¬ placement attempts to resolve the dilemma at another level. Thus the way

genre films deal with social tensions can be "both the result of conscious censorship and a myth-like transposition of the conflict into new terms.

THE WHITE ZOMBIE (1932)

WHITE ZOMBIE was made in 1932, a year which saw not only the worst period of the Depression but the greatest production of thirties horror films. The film was directed by Victor Halperin, produced by an independent studio and released by United Artists. Bela Lugosi appeared once more as the symbol of a decadent Europe; onto that figure American isolationist fears were projected and often realized (most notably in DRACULA). According to Carlos Clarens in his book on horror films, contemwrary reviewers found WHITE ZOMBIE "childish, old-fashioned and melodramatic."' It was soon forgotten.

An enigma, the films seems to be the only distinctive movie Victor Halperin directed, with a screenplay by Garnett Weston from his original story, inspired by the 1929 publication. The Magia Island by William B. Seabrook, an investi¬ gation of contemporary voodoo practices in Haiti. Clarens believes that it was not the topicality of Seabrook' s chronicles but the fantasy elements that gave its concept resonance. Clarens concludes.

Whatever period feeling WHITE ZOMBIE possessed at the time of its release has been erased by the intervening third of a century, making the images more faded, the period more remote, and the picture itself more completely mysterious. 8

However, WHITE ZOMBIE has a contemporary relevance. It addresses itself to a concrete case of U.S. imperialism and is implicitly grounded in a disguised critique based on the devices of condensation and displacement, as described by Charles Eckert. The film's only enigma is whether its critique is conscious or unconscious.

Superficially, the plot reveals nothing remarkable. New Yorker Madeline arrives in Haiti to marry her fiance Neil, a bank employee in Port-au-Prince.

On board she met wealthy plantation owner, Charles Beaumont, who now insists the ceremony be held on his estate. At the film's opening Madeline and Neil witness a voodoo burial service at a crossroads, which location will prevent the body from being dug out and used for zombie purposes. Further along they encounter Legendre with his zombie entourage.

After the couple's arrival at Beaumont's mansion, Beaumont goes to meet Legendre at the latter's mill, worked by zombie slaves. Hopelessly in love with Madeline, Beaumont enlists Legendre's aid. During the wedding banquet, Legendre turns Madeline into a living zombie. Later Legendre, Beaumont and the zombie bodyguard steal her body from Beaumont's mausoleum to become

rCAMEHCCr

PRAXIS

Praxis #6: Art and Ideology (Part 2)

Michel Pecheux, Language, Ideology and Discourse Analysis; An Overview!

Douglas Kellner, Television, Mythology and Ritual Nicos Hadjinicolaou, On the Ideology of Avant-Gardism

Kenneth Coutts-Smith, Posthourgeois Ideology and Visual Culture

Marc Zimmerman, Francois Perus and Latin American Modernism: The Interventions of Althusser

Fred Lonidier, "The Health and Safety Game" (Visual Feature]

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JUMP CUT NO. 28

Beaumont's mindless slave in Legendre's Castle of the Living Dead. Legendre then begins the same process with Beaumont.

Discovering Madeline's empty tomb, Neil enlists the aid of Dr. Bruner, a missionary, to go to Legendre's Castle, where they finally win the contest of wills. Legendre's zombie bodyguard perishes while the semi-alive Beaumont kills Legendre, falling to a joint death upon the rocks beneath the Castle walls. Freed from the contaminating forces of the Old World, Madeline revives. The American couple are reunited, free to return to the "innocent" America they left.

WHITE ZOMBIE seems to operate on a fantasy level. Its opening scenes artic¬ ulate the film's manifest level: generic conflict between white American rationality and native superstition. The first image is a long shot of a Negro funeral party. Small titles "White" appear on the frame's top half.

Then, below, single drumbeats accompany the appearance of each individual letter of the larger title "Zombie." A Negro funeral chant begins. Neil and Madeline appear inside a coach. Dissolve from a long shot of the coach to a close up of Legendre's threatening eyes. Encountering Legendre at the road¬ side, the Negro coachman attempts to ask directions before he departs in terror at the sight of Legendre's zombie bodyguard. Legendre's black hat and cloak and his eyes have unmistakable Satanic associations. Thrust into a strange environment of superstitious burial party, stereotyped frightened Negro coach¬ man, Satanic villain and zombies, Madeline feels sexually threatened by Legendre, who has taken her scarf (later to be used for her transformation).

Much of this is similar to Universal horror themes of the thirties.

But now the foreign environment is not Frankenstein's castle but Haiti.

In 1932 it was no fantastic past environment but a Caribbean island under American occupation.

HAITIAN HISTORY AND WHITE ZOMBIE

Haiti was under American occupation from 1915-34. Although freed from French colonial domination in early nineteenth century by Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti experienced many problems both internally and externally. Internally, color and class problems dividing the well-educated mullattos from impoverished blacks originated from that period of early occupation. Externally, Haiti tempted not only European powers seeking to infiltrate the Western Hemisphere but also the U.S.'s newly emerging imperialist ambitions. Once U.S. won its own West, its accompanying historical, territorial policies began to extend into the Caribbean. Official U.S. isolationist foreign policies were seen as relevant to Europe only and did not apply to the Western Hemisphere.

Despite Woodrow Wilson's claims to repudiate Theodore Roosevelt's inter¬ pretation of the Monroe Doctrine, Wilson's administration had more in¬ stances of intervention than the previous two. By 1915 U.S. diplomats saw Haiti as ripe for invasion.

Haiti was then in political turmoil, nothing new; the opposing faction had executed the incumbent President along with his most feared admini¬ strator, the chief executioner. German businessmen resident in Haiti did not form such numbers as to justify U.S. claims of large scale espionage, and though a clause in Haiti's Constitution forbade foreigners to own land, some Germans had married Haitian citizens to bypass it. In 1915, the U.S. made a pretence for involvement to restore national order in the face of disturbing internal conditions.

On September 3rd, 1915, the invading U.S. Marines proclaimed martial law. In 1916 a formal treaty legalized the occupation; in it Wilson set