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The Price of Delivery (The Brian Lehrer Show: Friday, 06 June 2008)-- WNYC

The Price of Delivery (The Brian Lehrer Show: Friday, 06 June 2008

Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker , co-directors of Take Out , talk about their film which chronicles a day in the life of an illegal immigrant struggling to pay off his smuggling debt.

Film Spotlights City Life Often Overlooked - NYTimes.com

June 5, 2008
Film Spotlights City Life Often Overlooked
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

The directors of "Take Out," a feature film about a Chinese deliveryman who must pay off his debt to immigrant-smugglers, do not claim that their movie is based on a true story. But it has more than a passing resemblance to a documentary, so much so that after a screening, one of the audience members asked where the man was now, and whether he was doing all right.

Globalization: Media in Africa

Hollywood studio system : a history / Douglas Gomery.

Gomery, Douglas. . Hollywood studio system : a history / Douglas Gomery. [New ed.]. 1844570649 (pbk.) series London : BFI, 2005.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U6 G585 2005
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U6 G585 2005

Douglas Gomery divides his book into three historical parts. The first is concerned with ‘The Rise of the Studio System 1915-30' and shows how these businesses were formed and consolidated - during this period the studios ranked thus:

Paramount
Loew's/MGM
Fox
Warner Bros
RKO and the Minors: Universal, Columbia and United Artists.

The second part goes on to cover ‘The Classic Studio Era 1931-51' when the studios were at their apogee producing hundreds of films every year before the threat of declining audiences (because of urbanisation and competition from TV etc). Although the ranking was virtually the same (except that Gomery couples Disney with its distributor RKO and to the minors, and he adds the B-film factories like Republic and Mongram [noted for churning out westerns and serials etc]), this period also saw the sorry demise of RKO- Radio, destroyed by the mismanagement and regrettable taste of the reclusive Howard Hughes who considered the studio to be his play toy.

The last section covers ‘The Modern Hollywood Studio System' and how the studios were taken over by big business including Rupert Murdoch (Twentieth Century Fox) and huge multi-media conglomerates such as Time Warner AOL (Warner Bros) - these businesses even embracing major TV networks. The ranking now being:

Universal
Paramount
Warners
Twentieth Century Fox
Disney
Columbia and Sony Pictures

There are also sections on the Hays Office and the Academy and unions and agents and a chapter on the rise of Lew Wasserman the Hollywood agent who took Universal into the major league of studios and reinvented the studio system.

Milestones (1975)- Movie - Review - The New York Times

Divorzio all'Italiana by cgholmia

The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook

This book presents a guide to the resource acquisition, legal, and financial necessities of producing an independent film. Every aspect of the planning and execution of the business side of filmmaking is discussed, including hypothetical situations based on the personal experience of the entertainment lawyers who co-authorized the book. The book introduces the roles of producer and lawyer, then outlines the film development process through deal making, financing, hiring, licensing and distribution.

As is pertains to my project, this book provides valuable insight into the warranted concern that filmmakers have had with the 21st century dispute over Internet distribution rights. In the case of Viacom v. Youtube, the exclusive rights per the 1976 Copyright Act for copyright owners to reproduce their works became the basis for allegations against YouTube for a count of direct copyright infringement. The authors of this book advise filmmakers to negotiate with distributors on the basis that they "cannon distribute on the Net until there is adequate 'border protection' to prevent access outside licensed territories" (132).

Erickson, Gunnar, Harris Tulchin, Mark Halloran, and J. Gunnar Erickson. The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook . New York: Schirmer Trade Books, 2005

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (2 Disk Special Edition): Commentary by Mike Nichols

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (2 Disk Special Edition): Commentary by Mike Nichols. Dir. Mike Nichols. Perf. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2006. The commentary track on the special edition DVD provides perhaps the most insightful perspective of the film as far as the on-set culture and interactions that occurred daily during the production of the film. Nichols gives a very in depth explanation of each scene, which includes filming techniques, lighting issues, relationships between actors and cameramen, as well as script censorship issues. For instance, Nichols explains how the studio forced them to change the explicative used by Martha as George opens the front door to greet the arriving guests. It was Nichols first feature film and was much different than the documentary style he was used to working with. It was very interesting to hear about the different challenges that the crew faced depending on the scene. Nichols also explains some of the back and forth battle that occurred between himself and the playwright Edward Albee as they attempted to adopt the Broadway play to the big screen. It is a valuable resource for examining the mindset of the filmmakers as they challenged the PCA in order to present the film as the artist intended.

Hollywood V. Hardcore: How the Struggle Over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry

Lewis, John. Hollywood V. Hardcore: How the Struggle Over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry. New York and London: New York UP, 2000. 135-191.

Chapter 4, titled Hollywood v. Soft Core, examines arguably the most influential year of film censorship to date. In this year, MPAA president Jack Valenti issued a press release to stating that a new production code/ move rating system would be put into place. The same system is still used today to rate films. The chapter does a good job of outlining the events of how this code came into place. The author explains how the "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" was denied by the PCA but began production anyway, anticipating that change was to come. It talks about the controversy over the language such as "screw" and "hump the hostess" were debated and the issues Valenti faced with content regulation. In the end of the meeting, Warner Brothers appealed the PCA's preliminary ruling to deny Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the film was released. Because of the films amazing success, it marked a point in history where the industry was beginning to understand that the Production Code was a dated system. The film was released with a warning stating "for adults only" and ranked third in the box office list in 1966 behind two other mature-themed pictures. This chapter is very useful and entertaining in its explanation of the pressures and challenges that Valenti faced when negotiating the new rating system. It offers a very in depth perspective and takes the reader on a film by film journey of the controversy.

Jack Valenti, Confidant of Presidents and Stars, Dies At 85

This article gives a fairly good description of the life of Jack Valenti, who arguably had more power over the motion picture industry than anyone who ever lived. Paragraphs 9 through 16 are particularly useful for formulating a perspective on the era in which Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was released. It explains how there was a compromise in which three out of four vulgarisms were cut. It also gives credit to the film Blowup for using Woolf's momentum to cause its own controversy with brief nudity and sexual themes. Fearing that censorship power might return to the individual states, Valenti acted,” I knew I had to move swiftly, and I did,” he later recalled. “I was determined to free the screen from anything like the Hays Code. But I also emphasized that freedom demanded responsibility.” Some interesting notes are the fact that the movie Gremlins inspired Valenti to add a PG-13 rating to the initial rating system. Also, the X rating was changed to NC-17. The author then touches on one of the downfalls of Valenti's rating system, "distributors have mostly spurned [NC-17 ratings] for commercial reasons, leaving many filmmakers to make wrenching cuts to adult-themed films in pursuit of an R rating." This explains some of the controversy over the rating system that still goes on today. The rest of the article continues to elaborate on his incredible life but is less valuable for examining film censorship.

The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters From the Hays Office, 1934 to 7968

Gardner, Gerald. The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters From the Hays Office, 1934 to 7968. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987. 198-200.This part of Chapter 17, Dramas From Broadway, offers a very informative look at the process of the PCA when reviewing the script of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It tells of the meeting between Jack L. Warner and chief censor Geoffrey Shurlock. After reading a copy of the play by Edward Albee the censor gave a list of all of the explicatives and phrases that would be considered unacceptable by the PCA, which the chapter lists completely. This is a great example of the strictness of the PCA and its discretion towards strong language and sexual themes. When the film was actually made, many of these phrases are omitted or altered. The chapter goes on to explain how the Warner Brother's film held faithful to the Albee play. It was denied by the PCA and was appealed to the MPAA board. The chapter then lists the reasons why the MPAA decided to release the film after all. The reasons were: The film was not designed to be prurient; Warner Brothers has taken the position that no person under eighteen will be admitted unless accompanied by a parent, and that the exemption does not mean that the floodgates are open for language or other material. This chapter is very useful for getting an inside look at the appeal process of the time and the drastic exceptions made on behalf of who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Private Censorship of Movies

This article covers the history of film censorship in the United States extensively. It begins by explaining the different factors that lead up the self-regulation of the motion picture industry. Then it goes over every detail of the MPAA rating system, fully explaining the G,M,R, and X ratings. The article takes a turn when Bates attacks the rating system for its unconstitutional implications. He argues that films should not be limited in content because that would violate the filmmakers' First Amendment rights. He then goes into detail the vast differences between government censorship and the MPAA system which "lacks procedural safeguards that would be required of a state classification scheme". He then proceeds to attack the MPAA for their claims of not being a censorship agency. Towards the end, Bates makes strong arguments for the implementation of state action concepts to MPAA film classification. He explains the governmental-function, government-enforced, and state-inaction theories as possible alternatives to the current problem. He also examines the theoretical scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. Bates overall perspectives are very insightful for delving into the controversy of the MPAA system and the solutions he offers are very interesting and intuitive. His words serve to challenge the MPAA and any other organization that has seemingly unlimited power over people with little to no government intervention.

Film review index.

Film review index. 0046-3809 series Monterey Park, Calif. : Audio-Visual associates, 1971-
Call#: Van Pelt Library--4 East--Temporary Location Annenberg PN1995 .F534

Film review annual.

Film review annual. series Englewood, NJ : J.S. Ozer, c1982-
Call#: Annenberg Library Reference Ann Ref PN1993.3 .F533

JSTOR: Cinema Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, (1990 ), pp. 20-41

Noriega, Chon. "Something's Missing Here!": Homosexuality and Film Reviews during the Production Code Era, 1934-1962. Cinema Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Autumn, 1990), pp. 20-41

Chon Noriega’s piece chronicles the depiction and reception of homosexuality in Hollywood using film reviews from major periodicals as source material. As the Production Code demanded that "Sex perversion or any inference of it is forbidden," the period of the 1930s and 1940s was characterized by films that had few if any allusions to the existence of homosexuality. Instead, as films were adapted from materials that featured homosexuality as a part of the narrative, the issue was substituted for other social problems. Noriega looks at the three such films in which homosexuality is recast, as the evils of gossip, alcoholism, and anti-semitism, respectively. Reviews at the time rarely mentioned the exchange, or if they did, praised the substitution as making the film better. From this “conspiracy of silence” came acknowledgment of homosexual themes and characters in the 1950s. As long as homosexual characters faced a character arc that was sufficiently tragic, and thus didactic, films were acceptable and homosexuality was no longer explicitly criticized in the reviews. Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing to the 1960s the dominant perception of homosexuality was no longer that it was criminal, but that it was a psychiatric disease that individuals could be pitied for being afflicted with, but could be cured of.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is often cited as one of the first films to depict a homosexual teenager, Plato, played by Sal Mineo. However, the film initially had more daring content. Upon submission to Joseph Breen’s office, the film was found to have latent homosexual themes that had to be re-edited. The article illuminates the attitudes towards homosexuality at the time of Rebel’s release and the perceived necessity of the changes.

Lost Hollywood / David Wallace.

Wallace, David. . Lost Hollywood / David Wallace. 1st ed. 0312261950 series New York : LA Weekly Book for St. Martin's Press, 2001.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.U65 W29 2001

In the chapter “Mr. Movies—Cecil B. Demille and Filmmaking in Hollywood’s Golden Age,” the author chronicles Cecil B. Demille’s professional and personal life in Hollywood from 1913 until his death in 1959. DeMille came to Hollywood in 1913 when he could no longer make money working for stage productions. Early on, DeMille revealed he was a stickler for detail. This proved successful, as the majority of the films he turned out were popular. As his career progressed, DeMille had a clear progression of styles, from sex comedies in the 1920s to overblown epics with seven figure budgets in the 1940s. Following his financial success (he made more in a week than most people made in a year), DeMille stayed true to stereotype—he bought a fancy car, a fancy house as well as a weekend home with a pool and the iron gates from the set of The King of Kongs.

The immediate connection to the film The Day of the Locust in this chapter is the mention of the film The Buccaneer starring Anthony Quinn. This is the film whose premiere immediately preceded the riot at the end of the film. However, as the chapter goes on to describe the productions and life of Cecil B. DeMille, more similarities to The Day of the Locust appear. The big budget epics that DeMille was known for directly coincide with the production that appears in the film. It seems almost arbitrary when Tod is asked, “What do you know about Waterloo?” and this fascination with epic historical recreations coincides with those that brought DeMille success. Even the autocratic style with which the director in the film shouts at the cast of the film matches the reported personality of DeMille. Further, DeMille’s excesses–a large, elaborate house with a pool as well as fancy cars and dress—directly tie to those of Claude Estee in the film. However, the chapter conveys a depth to DeMille’s life that clearly differentiates him from Estee. While Estee is a caricature designed to illustrate the alleged emptiness that pervades even the lives of the successful in Hollywood, DeMille lived a rich life that included interests and successes distinct from the film world.

Masters of light : conversations with contemporary cinematographers / Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato.

Schaefer, Dennis. . Masters of light : conversations with contemporary cinematographers / Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato. 0520051459 series Berkeley : University of California Press, 1984.
Call#: Van Pelt Library TR849.A1 S33 1984

In this interview, cinematographer Conrad Hall states The Day of the Locust was the closest he came to flawlessness in visual style. He discusses how the decision to shoot the film with a smooth rather than abrasive style ultimately benefitted the film. The flawlessness of the photography matches the flawlessness of the characters’ dreams and prevents the audience from seeing them as they really were. Also, to visually match the despair would have made the film to depressing and ultimately less successful at the box office. Hall also goes on to discuss the subject matter of the film and briefly compares the lure of Hollywood to the lure of a flame to the moth. Hall talks about the use of golden tones in the movie to match the Hollywood of the time, as well as soft light to gloss over the abrasiveness of reality.

This interview is interesting because Conrad Hall is removed from the textual adaptation of the film but is essential to its successful visual adaptation. Further, Hall belongs to the system that the film criticizes and is one of the lucky few to have made it in Hollywood. It is interesting to hear his insights into Hollywood culture and how even though he has succeeded, he has sympathy for the 90% that don’t make it. The visual metaphor of the moths to the flame serve as an important translation in the film as it contributes to the decision to shoot the film in predominantly golden tones. The discussion of the Day of the Locust is surrounded by a discussion of Fat City, another film Hall shot. Fat City uses a cinematographic style that matches the despair of the story, whereas Day of the Locust’s visual style clashes with its subject matter. However, the slick visual style of the latter meshes with the dreams of its characters, and contributes a layer of visual irony that makes the film more successful.

Violence: The Strong and the Weak'

‘Violence: The Strong and the Weak’ Devin McKinney Film Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 16-22 Published by: University of California Press Jstor, 9 Apr. 2008

Devin McKinney’s article makes a striking and brave point about the true shock value of violence in cinema, and asks what aspects fully take hold of the viewer’s internal emotional investments, and what methods are only hackneyed formulas used to merely keep what’s left of the viewer’s attention? He divides all scenes of violence into two kinds: the strong and the weak. The strong can leave the viewer physically sick, burdened with dread and plagued with nightmares; the delicacy of the miraculous human form will be reduced to “God’s garbage”. He writes that weak violence has no weight of consequence: a death will result in a moment’s pause before the plot, characters, and viewers all carry on to never think of that person again. Scenes of weak violence can claim no partiality from the viewer toward any side of any equation. They are incapable of keeping the audience from remaining neutral to all characters out of apathy. Momentary reflexes might make a viewer flinch, cringe, or shake his head, but those miniscule sensations are fleeting, only aroused by the garnish of special effects or pleasing cinematography. As McKinney puts it, the violence is used to lure the average movie-goer into the theatre, but bears no promise that there will be anything for him to take out with him.

A film like Natural Born Killers is a play on these two categories. As a satirical commentary of overblown violence in media productions, it makes an absolute mockery of what McKinney would consider weak violence, painting every stroke of his argument into an actual cinematic demonstration. Everything is exaggerated – far beyond the typical exaggerations of Hollywood blockbusters. Blood that can be seeing flying in every silly action film spurts with extra vivacity; grimaces of unadulterated barbarianism are upgraded into hellish, psychedelic snarls reminiscent of cartoons; the victims are just worthless props in the way of full-throttle heroes, rampaging across the country in drug-fuelled elation; the cinematic candy that McKinney describes as “campy” (the occasional lover’s montage, or tête-à-tête at twilight offered as a mixer for the weak violence from the director) turns to punk-rock marriages on highway bridges, and ethereal drunken dances beneath stars, on top of cars in random fields.

But ultimately, director Oliver Stone pulls off the impossible: his caricature of weak violence becomes so aggressive, so over-the-top and shameless in its soulless murders that the violence does become strong. It reminds the viewer that while he sits there watching fake violence on screen, somewhere there is real violence going on, and it is worse than those fake-blood spurts and cliché wooden shouts of pain that make up the average Hollywood production’s depiction of physical cruelty. Stone lets you enjoy the carefree spree of the killers like it’s just another movie, but he brings the reminder back again and again of the cold true world outside, with disturbing scenes of child abuse, attempted rape, fuming psychopathic looks, and mobs and mobs of born-to-kill inmates, destined to jail for the rest of their lives, desperate for a chance to tear the warden apart just one time.

Is TV violence all that bad for kids?

Is TV violence all that bad for kids? The Age (Melbourne, Australia), March 5, 2005 Saturday, INSIGHT; Opinion; Pg. 9, 816 words, HUGH MACKAY LexisNexis Academic 9 Apr. 2008

This article is a response to a report from The Weekend Australian that asserts a child’s witnessing of violence in media will result in higher levels of aggression. Writer Hugh Mackay refers to a 1960’s American child-psychology experiment which consisted of observing the different ways children would play with a particular object after they watched different videos, ones that either showed children playing peacefully with that toy or children punching and kicking it. The findings were that those who watched a violent video would treat the toy violently, and those who watched the peaceful video would treat the toy peacefully. Mackay makes sure to point out that although the children would emulate the behavior, it has been concluded that the effects are only short-term, and that all long-term personalities remain virtually unchanged. Furthermore, he declares that the search for variables which might shed light on a child’s increased or decreased susceptibility toward emulating violence in the media result only in negligible data that cannot give any indication of why a particular child would be acting more or less violent than any other one. Mackay’s overall point is that although these experiments may show children in the act of emulating violence on television, all large-scale national crime statistics show that the introduction of television into the societies of decades past resulted in severe drops in crime, and that the age-group which watches the least amount of television today commits the highest amount of violent crime. In short, what a child views in movies or videogames has far less positive or negative impact on his personality than the benefits of extensive human interaction, or the dangers of lazy, television-filled inactivity.

This article is worth factoring into the discussion of Natural Born Killer’s potential effect on inspiring three young couples to committing separate violent murders in Europe and America, all after their viewing (and in one case, repeated viewing) of the 1994 film. Although accusations were made that the filmmakers and producers were responsible, hardly evidence has been found to support them. Mackay also says that at the time of his writing the article in 2005, the violent crime rate in America had been in steady decline for the last 10 years – which would mean the trend began in 1995, one year after Natural Born Killers was released. If violence in the media could truly influence people to emulate the brutality on screen, Natural Born Killers would surely qualify for those results, considering the rare intensity of bloodshed that is present throughout the whole movie. And considering it grossed 11 million dollars in the first weekend, and over 50 million dollars to date, enough people have seen the movie that we can say if there was a slight rise in a person’s aggressive tendencies after watching the movie, no matter how slight, the accumulation across the country would certainly be noticeable.

Gender, Copycat Violence part II

The relevance of this article has to do with the controversy surrounding Natural Born Killers, over what impacts a film of such incredible violence (coupled with its themes of glorifying such acts) can – and has – and will – have on the societies of its viewers. Boyle draws on three specific cases of murderous love-duos that occured after the films release. Edmonson-Darras, Rey-Maupin, and Herbert-Paindavoine were all young couples tried for committing horrendous murders as pairs, and all three couples admitted to having been influenced by Natural Born Killers, further adding to the intense question of how acts of brutality we see in the media are linked to real-world violence.

What's Natural about Killing? Gender, Copycat Violence and Natural Born Killers

“What’s Natural about Killing? Gender, Copycat Violence and Natural Born Killers” By: Boyle, Karen. Journal of Gender Studies, Nov2001, Vol. 10 Issue 3, p311-321, 11p; DOI: 10.1080/09589230120086511; EBESCO, 9 Apr. 2008

Karen Boyle argues that Natural Born Killers leaves a dangerous impression on society, which places male violence as something more natural than female violence, and perhaps even something to be expected, while female violence is somehow a reversal of a girl’s original nature, to be drawn from or manipulated upon that female’s innately more submissive personality. She compares Mickey, the male half of the murderous love-duo, to Mallory, the female half, and concludes that the different treatment given to the characters has a drastic on the viewer, even if the viewer doesn’t realize. She points to Mickey’s depiction as an emblem of pure, glorified brutality, a hero for fellow convicts, a star on primetime television. Mickey’s calm exterior and understated personal background leaves the viewer with the understanding he’s been a man of sheer violence his whole life; and that for man, violence is somehow hereditary, and that for man, violence is ultimately nothing more or less than normal.

Boyle contrasts Natural Born Killer’s depiction of Mickey with that of Mallory: as a sex-object, a young girl who carries out violence on others only as revenge for the abuse she received from her father during her upbringing, and is brought “into” this world by its original inhabitant, the male, citing the image of Mickey riding to her house on horseback, after having escaped from jail, to rescue her and take her away – but not before showing her how to kill her parents in cold blood. She also points to interviews given by director Oliver Stone and actor Woody Harrelson, in which the two men emphasis Harrelson’s own family history, specifically his father’s murderous past, which she says is proof of the intentional perpetuation of the film’s prejudiced ideas, (or at least a complete admission of having those sentiments themselves, even if they didn’t recognize it).

The article furthermore proposes that other critics’ lack of commentary on this aspect of the film is an indication of just how easily its viewers are willing to accept it as true, and therefore the contrasting depictions of Mickey and Mallory are consequently that much more dangerous. Boyle argues that to paint the female-murderer as a more intriguing, fragile, or more special specimen than the male-murderer can only cast confusion and blindness on society’s ability to sentence its criminals with adequately balanced judgment, and these imposed attitudes will hamper the cause of studying the true motives behind the mass-murderer, which shouldn’t be thought of as automatically in every male psyche, or inherently lacking and foreign to the female psyche, but rather an equally potential outcome for any human mind.

Reenactment, Fantasy, and the Paranoia of History: Oliver Stone's Docudramas

Marita Sturken History and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 4, Theme Issue 36: Producing the Past: Making Histories Inside and Outside the Academy (Dec., 1997), pp. 64-79

In this article, Marita Sturken discusses Oliver Stone’s popularity and bad name as a filmmaker, but defends Oliver Stone against his critics who lividly denounce the director’s credibility as an American cinematic historian, and maker of the legitimate docudrama. Stone’s 1986 Platoon was greeted with total acclaim. Sturken attributes this to the fact that Stone personally served in Vietnam, and therefore the public perceived his portrayal of his experiences as not only credible but deserved. Sturken implies that the American public felt better about themselves after seeing his movie because of his cinematic storytelling skills, which were so convincing that the viewers felt they themselves were present in the war, and somehow vindicated from any guilt of being lucky enough to stay out of it. However, Stone’s 1991 JFK, along with his1995 Nixon, garnered unbelievable amounts of anger and resentment, first for their unpatriotic messages, and secondly for what was, by many, perceived as a total distortion of truthful American history.

The article discusses the relationship between memory vs. history, and how the camera can affect both sides of the equation. The camera is a mechanism of recording truth, and yet at the same time it is a way of expressing one’s own perception of truth before passing it on. In this way, one’s memory of history can become history itself. Sturken believes Stone has earned the privilege of narrating the truth of 20^th Century America for its future generations in any way he wants, calling him the country’s “cultural messenger,” one which his people deserve, because of the incredible aestheticism of his films, his artistic audacity and determination to voice his own opinions. This article should be considered when thinking about Natural Born Killers for many reasons. Firstly, Natural Born Killers is a piece about violence, and it should be remembered that the director was himself engulfed in an environment of devastating war, where horrific images (real ones) were around him at all times. That vastly important part of the director’s identity should not be forgotten.

Secondly, Sturken points out that Stone considers himself both a “cinematic-historian” and “just a storyteller.” The fact that Stone can see himself in such different ways at the same time sheds light on how he can create a very direct commentary about violence in the media without having to state specific opinions, or provide worthy morals to his story, or suggest solutions to society’s problems, or cite direct scientific or sociological sources to backup whatever he’s saying. The article focuses on Stone’s ability to manipulate images in order to retell things his own way. About JFK, Oliver Stone said, “I defend what I’m doing as something between entertainment and fact.” Natural Born Killers is just that, a cinematic masterpiece between commentary and entertainment. But, also, the subject of the commentary is that as well: the viewer finds himself focused on American primetime news, the sensationalized accounts written for the blood-thirsty news-watcher that lie somewhere between entertainment and fact.

Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War

Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo's "Female Detachment" Harry G. West Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 4, Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa, Part 2 (Oct., 2000), pp. 180-194 Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research

West’s article about Female Detachments fighting for Mozambique’s independence from Portuguese colonialism (a war that lasted from the late-70’s to the mid-90’s) sheds light on differing psychological states of those who lead lives of violence in situations as extreme as risking one’s own life to kill others.

West himself admits he had expected to hear or observe that the women and children who lived through these ages of dramatic social changes (which were results from the consequences of colonial conquest, anti-colonial insurgency and post independent governance) would be permanently scarred from the trauma of war. This was not the case. The Female Detachments he met were proud of their service, never claiming to have ever felt scarred or vulnerable. Among the male militias, the women were not quite equal to the male soldiers, but they reported feeling empowered by the men when they were given space to carry out their own attacks. The women also claimed it felt important to participate in the war rather than having to stay trapped in their homes carrying out agricultural work.

These observations have a lot of resemblances to Mallory’s character from Natural Born Killers. West attributes the Female Detachments’ mental strength in terms of rising above trauma and suffering to their ideology and beliefs, which relates to Mallory’s ability to carry out her actions under the shade of Mickey’s philosophical indifference to death and murder. Following that relationship, the organization which the Female Detachments fought for, FRELIMO, was a forceful and dangerous group which might have been viewed as the stronger counterpart of the two genders’ militias (if they were closer aligned). As West writes of the Female Detachments, “Respect for and fear of FRELIMO were inseparable … they had no option but to comply with their ‘requests.” And after completing training, their loyalty would always be tested by FRELIMO, who would compel them to certain dangerous missions. Although Mallory is happy to carry out her side of the murders, perhaps she is much more inclined to do when she sees how much it pleases Mickey. Another similarity between Mallory and the Female Detachments is drawn from West’s account of interviewing one of the soldiers with a tape recorder: he never needed to ask a second question, the interviewee was so relieved to be telling her whole story that she never stopped. The idea of telling one’s story, and to have one’s own life of danger and violence be the focus of an interview, is one of the central themes we see in Natural Born Killers.

ONE MAN'S FAVOURITE FILM IS ANOTHER'S MOVIE OUTRAGE

ONE MAN'S FAVOURITE FILM IS ANOTHER’S MOVIE OUTRAGE
The Scotsman, December 29, 1999, Wednesday, Pg. 3, 478 words, Phil Miller

In this article Phil Miller gives a light overview of the differing climates of censorship across time and around the world, and refers to some of the more famous individual films that were censored, banned, cut or delayed in their time. In terms of religion, he notes how Britain outlawed the showing of the face of Christ in any film until 1940, and how Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, a religious comedy, was denounced and picketed by religious groups around the world when it first came out. Similarly, the lighthearted Dogma was condemned by the US Catholic Church as recently as 1999. He briefly mentions the Nazi and Soviet propaganda of the 1930’s, and banned horror films such as The Exorcist – noting how what was once a terrifying scene has, with time, become somewhat laughable.

In terms of violence, Miller mention Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saving Private Ryan, Natural Born Killers, Cronenberg’s Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. He compares western culture to that of the Gulf states, where sex is censored far more harshly than violence. It’s interesting to see the pattern in which almost everything that is censored at one time eventually, and sometimes immediately, becomes socially acceptable. Take Saving Private Ryan, for example. The dramatic opening sequence of the American troops landing on Omaha Beach is regarded by many as the greatest ever tribute to that significant day – but it potentially could have been censored for being too true to the actual events in its depiction of deaths and casualties.

It’s also not just the strictness of the censorship boards that change over time, but also the mentality of the filmmakers. Miller writes of Kubrick’s promptness at withdrawing A Clockwork Orange from circulation when rumors of a copycat-murderer came about. A few decades later, Oliver Stone did no such thing in similar circumstances, even after the news of a third young couple mutually participating in cold-blooded murder after watching Natural Born Killers.

Review of Oliver Stone's USA: Film, History and Controversy

Review of Oliver Stone’s USA: Film, History and Controversy by Robert Brent Toplin Paul Buhle, The Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 2, (Sep., 2001), pp. 747-748 Published by: Organization of American Historians Jstor 9 Apr., 2008

Paul Buhle reviews a collection of essays which cover various subjects to do with Stone’s vision and works, ranging from the charge that the nature of film will inevitably result in the over-simplifying, and therefore skewing, of large historical topics, such as the legacy of Nixon and the assassination of JFK. An exceedingly favorable review of Stone’s Vietnam trilogy comes alongside two dreadful reviews of two of his culture-oriented works, The Doors, and Natural Born Killers. His two presidential films JFK and Nixon are slammed by prominent authors as ridiculously inaccurate, and even quite juvenile. Buhle insinuates the essays go beyond discussing the works on their own and carry the focus over to Stone himself, to question and contemplate the quality, legitimacy and sanity of Oliver Stone’s directorial career canon.

Buhle merely comments on the nature of historical debate itself, sighing over cinema’s ability to out-persuade his meager, old-fashioned written texts, borne from a medium utterly unable to compete with the overwhelming portrayals of awing blockbusters like JFK and Platoon. He ends the review by graciously tipping his hat to Stone for his sturdy refusal to automatically accept common conceptions of recent American history simply because one might pressure him to do so. Buhle’s final point is more than valid: if there’s nothing to hide, why is such a huge chunk of government documentation completely lost?

The different opinions of Oliver Stone’s work apparently found in this book indicate the vast subject matter the director inevitably takes on at any given time. His movies are never about only a few characters, even when the cast is only a few people strong, such as in Talk Radio. The themes and dialogues always spill over the immediate mimetic confinements of the set and begin to address our culture as a whole, or our society as a whole, or our government as a whole. What’s particularly interesting is that Natural Born Killers received a terrible review in this book, which on the whole seems to give Stone credit where it’s due and assaults him where it’s not: Platoon is revered by all as a powerful, historically accurate, raw portrayal of a real war, while Nixon and JFK cause so much ire to those who oppose the conspiracies theories put forth in them especially because of how compelling the quality of the films are, as exciting, enticing feature-length blockbusters. But regardless of the looseness of the latter films’ historical accuracy, no one can argue that the one thing Stone understands better than pretty much everyone is cinema. And Natural Born Killers, despite being about all of media in America, and elsewhere, is a fundamentally a film about the roots, history and development of film, where all the evidence is available for anyone to see.

Film in the Classroom: Coping with

Foster, Harold M. “Film in the Classroom: Coping with ‘Teenpics.’” The English Journal, Vol. 76, No. 3. 1987, National Council of Teachers of

English. Pages 86-88. April 2008

<http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/818556?seq=3&Search=yes&term=%22animal+house%22&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D%2522Animal%2BHouse%2522%3Bgw%3Djtx%3Bprq%3D%2528Animal%2BHouse%2529%2BAND%2Bla%253A%2528eng%2529%3BSearch%3DSearch%3Bhp%3D25%3Bwc%3Don&item=14&ttl=485&returnArticleService=showArticle>.

The author thinks “teenpics” have ultimate control over a teenager’s mind. Many of them simplify teen stereotypes, such as in The Breakfast Club. The most important lesson Animal House left behind for the 1980s was “the grosser the better” (86). Foster has four goals for teachers to appropriately educate students about “teenpics.” He wants students to become “discriminating viewers,” to understand how films “influence and manipulate them,” to critique these films on an aesthetic level, and to altogether avoid the worst ones (86). However, even if films like Risky Business encourage immoral behavior, they have values and can stimulate the audience.
Foster seems to dislike teenpics with the most likely situations. He claims that The Breakfast Club oversimplifies real characters, when in fact it reflects a realistic situation. He despises the thought of teen audiences identifying with the characters in this film. However, he could be going in the wrong direction because teen audiences probably identify with more than one, sometimes with all of the characters. This is rather a good value. Animal House similarly oversimplifies its characters: the horny misogynist, sidekick, prudish nerd, mature girlfriend, hippie professor, preppy egotist, and the disgusting freak. However, college does not divide so easily. Stereotypes create amusing caricatures, but are spawned from eclectic personalities. Foster seems to feel superior to the young generations and negligent of the narrative art form. These stories do come from reality, (Animal House specifically from one of the writer’s experiences at Dartmouth, which would be even more shocking if accurately depicted). Foster oversimplifies the purpose of films. Animal House happens to have a great valuable lesson: do as much as you can in college; Foster is only critical of films that offer no lesson of the sort or an incredibly negative one. Yet, even pursuing his four goals, some of these films, including Animal House, are still good all around.

A Black Movie for White Audiences? / Clayton Riley

Riley, Clayton. "A Black Movie for White Audiences :A Black Critic's View of 'Shaft'. " New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 25 Jul 1971,D13. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004). ProQuest. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, PA. 9 Apr. 2008

In this article, a little over 2 months removed from his glowing review of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Clayton Riley laments the light bulb that inevitably flashed above the heads of Hollywood executives following Sweetback’s commercial success. This light bulb was the beginning of the genre known as blaxploitation. Riley begins earnestly with the line “amusement is a cheap high: being entertained means never having to face the truth.” In this article, he blasts the recently released Shaft, calling it a depiction of a false premise that has no bearing or purpose in the current realm of race relations in America. In other words, it is a giant step backwards. He is disgusted at the new “Hip Black Movie” that serves to deceive and set the Black race back while the White race watches and laughs in mockery. While he respects the director, Gordon Parks, he immediately decides that Shaft lacks both “style and substance.” Since the white private investigator was revealed in the 60s to be a “champion of nothing but his own petty interests”, Riley envisioned that the studios attempted to start over with a Black private dick, which apparently makes it OK. He realizes Shaft will be well received because it creates an image of black men as “noncompetitors” with the farcical, unrealistic depiction of John Shaft that makes white people laugh at the idea that he could be real. Sweetback, he said, on the other hand, resembles “a reality that is black…we may not want him to exist but he does”. White people don’t fear Shaft but they fear Sweetback, which makes this film so disgusting to him. Even more disgusting is that many black people bought the premise without question.

This is an interesting comparison between the two movies – one independently produced and the other produced by studio giant MGM. Melvin Van Peebles, the director of Sweetback, claims that John Shaft was originally a white character, changed to a black character after the success of his film. Inevitably, a character that is accepted by white society ended up on the screen, much to the chagrin of some of the black audience. This article is important in its distinction of Sweetback from the blaxploitation films that followed. Sweetback is NOT a blaxploitation film. However, the films that followed exploited its success and enraged black film critics everywhere, perpetuating a fantasy that had no place in the minds of black youth.

Blaxploitation: Funk Goes to the Movies / Dave Thompson

Thompson, Dave. "Blaxploitation: Funk Goes to the Movies." Funk. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2001. p. 207-213.

Note: this is an essay, not a chapter, from Dave Thompson's book Funk.

The essay begins talking about the recent 2000 re-release of Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson and how the accompanying score had changed from Isaac Hayes’ iconic funk soundtrack to the “urban dance” of R. Kelly, Outkast, and Too $hort. However, back in the early 1970s, the media created narrow stereotypical genres for anything outside the mainstream musical scene and thus, blaxploitation wasn’t just a film movement but a music movement and way of life as well. It originated outside the Hollywood system, where most black actors and directors felt relegated to before the blaxploitation boom. Although blaxploitation was categorized under the B-movie moniker, its connection to the large counterculture of dissatisfied, young, black people gave it a larger impact than your typical B-movie films (i.e. horror, etc.). The “A movies” featured black stars. However, they didn’t address the black audience. Blaxploitation arose out of black society’s need to be represented on screen.

Thomson introduces Melvin Van Peebles and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song as the answer to that problem. After detailing the production and financial troubles encountered by Van Peebles, he goes into the distribution of the film. However, because only two theaters played it on the opening weekend and nobody would advertise or review it, it was ignored by the media. Additionally, there was no publicity money left over from production, so Van Peebles had to use the "dynamite" soundtrack (recorded by then-unknown Earth Wind & Fire) in order to create awareness for his film. This was the first time that a soundtrack was used to market a film – something that is quite common now. The blaxploitation films that came after would follow suit, each with its own funky soundtrack – Shaft had Isaac Hayes, Superfly had Curtis Mayfield. The essay then describes summarizes the plot of several blaxploitation movies (since it is, after all, in a book about music).

This is relevant because it transformed the way many films are advertised. Instead of going through the traditional avenues of trailers and critical reviews, Van Peebles used funk, the music of the streets at that time, to get the message out that a corresponding movie that was just as funky was playing. With the success of the album, more distributors decided to show the film and eventually, it became the highest grossing independent film ever (at that point). Thus, the distribution and advertisement of this film serves as a reminder to the mainstream of culture's power to create an underground success based solely on word of mouth and music.

Feminism and film / edited by E. Ann Kaplan.

Kaplan, E. Ann. "Is the Gaze Male?" Feminism in Film. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. Oxford/New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 119-138.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1995.9.W6 F448 2000

Kaplan examines the feminist discourse on the idea of the fetishism of the female form in her article “ Is the Gaze Male?” She finds that while Hollywood would contend that females are able to exist on their own as women, female characters are often approached as enigmas that need to be figured out and thus placed and understood within the context of a patriarchal system. Kaplan cites Laura Mulvey who argues that the fetishism of female film characters exists through three different types of looks. The first look occurs when the woman is filmed, many times by a male director. The look, according to Mulvey, is inherently voyeuristic regardless of the gender of the director but nonetheless serves to eroticize the female form. The second look, which usually occurs within the narrative of the film, depicts women as objects subject to men’s gazes. The third look occurs when the audience takes on the position of both the voyeur of the first look and the character within the narrative of the second look who gazes upon the female. Kaplan goes onto explain that the fetishism of females relates the psychoanalytical issue of fear of castration present in men. By objectifying the female, both the men within the film and the men watching the film are able neutralize the threatening nature of the female that Freud argues plagues the subconscious of all men.

The idea of reducing the threat of a woman through fetishism exists both within the narrative of Spellbound and through the techniques that Hitchcock employed while making the film. The men that surround Dr. Peterson at Green Manors continually remind her of her position as an attractive unmarried female while diminishing the importance of her strengths as a doctor. In the scene when Dr. Peterson returns from her walk with Dr. Edwardes, the men at the doctors’ table look her up and down and repeatedly comment on her appearance. Hitchcock also contributes to the idea of diminishing Dr. Peterson’s strength through his extensive use of still close-ups which forced actress Ingrid Bergman to remain extremely still and limit her movement throughout a large portion of the film. However, it is interesting to note that the gaze is at times reversed and that the male, not the female, is at the receiving end of an objectifying look. In Spellbound this idea is played out through the repeated use of lingering shots of Dr. Edwardes from the female perspective of Dr. Peterson.

New Jack City Review / Roger Ebert

Ebert, Roger. "New Jack City". Chicago Sun-Times Online and RogerEbert.com. 1 May 1991. .

This Roger Ebert review of Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City (1991) shows how far black urban cinema has come in the 20 years since his father Melvin’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). In contrast to the heroic drug dealers of the early blaxploitation era (i.e. Priest in Superfly), Ebert acknowledges that Wesley Snipes’ character of Nino, a ruthless head of a cocaine business, does not lead the seductive lifestyle of his cinematic drug dealing predecessors. He calls the film a “character study of a bad man running an evil business…written and directed with concern – apparently after a lot of research and inside information.” The urgency in this movie reflects that of Sweetback’s energetic frenzy, albeit with a different message and different consequences. Like his father, Mario does not play it safe, “taking chances to give his film an authentic and gritty feel.” Ultimately, Ebert summarizes the film as a “painful but true portrait of the impact of drugs on this segment of the black community.” He says the excitement of portraying a drug dealer on screen makes it difficult to make an antidrug movie, but this movie pulls it off.

This review is very important to understand the timeline, context, and ultimate consequences of Hollywood’s blaxploitation movement, started by the independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. The Hollywood films that followed, like 1971's Superfly and Shaft, portrayed a black urban fantasy. In the case of Superfly, it is a heroic cocaine dealer who ends up using his “ghetto smarts” to outsmart “the Man” while confiding his despair in accepting that the only way for him to “make it” is to sell coke. As his partner says, “it’s the hand ‘the Man’ dealt us.” In the case of Shaft, there is the idea of an in-your-face sexual, cocky, hip black private detective that is embraced by white culture as the new black "answer." Comical to white viewers but dangerously desireable to black viewers. Both films – and the blaxploitation genre in general – exploit the black fantasy that with the “ghetto smarts” and current culture of drug dealing and other criminal activity at their disposal, they can outsmart and ultimately defeat “the Man.” Sweetback helped create and perpetuate this myth with a black folk hero that kills two cops who were beating up a young Black Panther that eventually emerges victorious when he escapes to Mexico. Are we supposed to cheer? The exploitation of this black fantasy – blaxploitation – has created this myth that ultimately holds down black urban culture. When violence against authority and drug dealing are glorified with a sense of pride, the actual impact on the community takes a back seat to the fantasy of the ghetto revolution. Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City ironically shows the damage on the black community from his father’s ghetto lifestyle glorification. It shows how the liberating feeling of making a blaxploitation film paradoxically imprisoned millions of urban youths in a fantasy that has no bearing or practical use in the real world.

Media Violence: Is There a Case for Causality?

"Media Violence: Is There a Case for Causality?" The American behavioral scientist [0002-7642] 51.8 (2008). 1061-.

Ratings History: How it All Began / Jack Valenti

Valenti, Jack. "Ratings History: How it All Began". Motion Picture Association of America Online. <http://www.mpaa.org/Ratings_HowItAllBegan.asp>.

This article, written by former president of the MPAA Jack Valenti, details how the MPAA film rating system was conceived. He describes the turbulent national scene in 1966 – women’s rights, civil rights, youth protests, and “crumbling of social traditions.” Since he realized that a “new kind of American movie” was being made by filmmakers with a much more open course of dialogue between the filmmaker and the viewer, filmmakers felt they were subject to fewer restraints and restrictions, simply exercising the will of the people. The Hays Code had been continually challenged through loopholes over the years and the emerging counter-culture seemed determined to throw it out altogether. He describes one instance where MGM tried to market the first major studio picture with nudity, which was denied by the PCA of California. The Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that states could constitutionally prevent children from seeing films but not adults. Filmmakers were becoming more brazen and thus, bad language and controversial images were becoming more common. Ultimately, the rating system had to be created in 1968 to take the place of the now-defunct Hays Code.

This is relevant to Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song because of the way it was marketed, rated, and ultimately distributed. The film received an X rating “by an all-whyte jury” (according to the film’s opening credits), which went along with the pornographic pretence director Melvin Van Peebles created during production in order to avoid trouble on the set of his controversial film. The rating system was still in its infancy in 1971 when the film was released and thus, many changes in the system were still being implemented. In 1970, the minimum age of admission to R-rated movies was raised from 15 to 16 while X-rated films remained at 17. The audience limitations set by this new system made it even harder for Van Peebles to get exhibitors to play his racy, independent film at first. Of course, the rampant success of the film changed all that, but the historical cinematic context in which Sweetback was released made its initial opening and distribution much tougher. Now, filmmaker's consider it a curse if their film receives the NC-17 rating (replacement for X), since very few papers advertise NC-17-rated films. Sweetback was the shining example of this and this article helps show the impact of the initial X-rating. The film’s rating has since been changed to R.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: A Guerilla Filmmaking Manifesto / Melvin Van Peebles

Van Peebles, Melvin. "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." Outlaw Bible of American Literature / Ed. Kaufman, Alan, Ed. Ortenberg, Neil, Ed. Rosset, Barney.1560255501 series New York : Thunder's Mouth Press, c2004. pp. 286-289.

Call#: Van Pelt Library PS659 .O98 2004

This article describes the aspirations and challenges faced by writer/director Melvin Van Peebles in making his controversial independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. He declares his main desire for the film was to “get the Man’s foot out of [his] ass…and out of all our black asses” – in fact he originally titled the film How to Get the Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass. With that idea in mind, he made a list of requirements necessary to get his message across effectively, keeping in mind his limitations (both economic and social).

Using the basic story of a black man getting “the Man’s” foot out of his ass, Van Peebles listed “givens” in order to prevent himself from writing something he wouldn’t be able to shoot. These givens include: no copping out (a victorious film for the black man), high production value (must look as good as white independent films and thus must be in color), wall-to-wall action and entertainment (to prevent boredom and create a commercial power base so “the Man” might actually fund him if it seemed profitable), half the crew must be third world people, tight security (due to the controversy he was causing), and a flexible script to deal with the unknown variables such as caliber of actors/crew.

With this list of givens, Van Peebles describes his advantages over the major Hollywood studios in this subject matter and the possibilities he could utilize. He understood the black pulse but by seizing it, he might hurt the black cause as well. Since he realized that the more action he had, the more the mainstream audience would let him get away with, he decided to pack “enough action for three movies”, overuse screen effects, and create musical montages as space-filler. Thus, through his economic and social constraints, Van Peebles describes the process in developing Sweetback’s characteristics, characteristics that would become the standard in Hollywood’s blaxploitation wave that followed.

This article is very interesting and valuable in that it describes not only the pre-production process of the film but how those factors and considerations created the style that Hollywood would eventually emulate in their blaxploitation wave - as seen in films such as Shaft and Superfly later that year. As many directors often dream about working outside the confines and restrictions of their studio heads, this shows how one might approach such a project and the precautions one might take. It is a great example of the full auteur process in a manner that deals with a subject matter and goal not necessarily acceptable to all people.

Tavis Smiley Interviews Melvin and Mario Van Peebles / PBS Online Transcript

Smiley, Tavis. "Melvin Van Peebles". Tavis Smiley. PBS. 27 May 2004. .

After some bantering where Melvin reveals he is actually “Sir Melvin” (“brother from the south side of Chicago has been knighted”), Tavis Smiley begins the interview with Melvin Van Peebles and his son Mario. Tavis asks Mario what it was like growing up in the shadow of his father, who responds saying that Melvin “never though being successful would make him forget his blackness…who he is.” They discuss Melvin growing up in an institution/industry where he is “mad at the system but not mad at the people.” Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was therefore an indictment of the system but not necessarily everyone who functions within that system. Melvin acknowledges that all the film unions were all-white and he sought to make a film that utilizes people of all races in spite of the singular racial perspective portrayed in Sweetback. Next they talk about Mario’s film New Jack City (1991) and Mario confides that since the studio heads are all white, it’s tough to pitch a movie with complex non-white characters. More often than not, studio heads use black characters in simple way (i.e. comic relief or subservience). Thus, most of the Van Peebles’ films are done by racially mixed crews and funded by black producers. They move on to Mario losing his virginity on screen in Sweetback’s beginning at 13 years old, which Mario says was a great experience (he kept asking for retakes). The conversation continues about the paternal link between Melvin, Mario, and now Mario’s kids in his recent biopic of his father, Baadasssss (2003). After discussing how they make due with limited resources and time (Sweetback was shot in 19 days “without technology), they finish by talking about how to promote a controversial movie nobody wants to advertise.

This interview was very interesting to read because it shed light not only on some of the feelings behind the controversial production of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, but also illustrated the father-son relationship between Melvin and Mario Van Peebles. Sweetback is a film that is meant to affect the younger generation, instilling them with a sense of pride and refusal to tolerate intolerance. As this interview demonstrates, Melvin instilled his son with a sense of purpose and duty, not only to his family and race, but to under-privileged, under-utilized film crews as well. Although the character of Sweetback ultimately becomes a loner, it was the production of that film that brought people together in order to challenge society and the Hollywood system with new, provocative images and stories. As Melvin said, it was the system, not the people, that needed to be directly confronted.

The 25 Most Important Films on Race: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) / Richard Corliss

Corliss, Richard. "The 25 Most Important Films on Race: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)." Time Magazine Online. 04 Feb. 2008. . New York: 2008.

In a listing about the 25 most important films on race, Richard Corliss arrives at Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. This time, over 35 years after its release, its context and place in film history is no clearer now than in 1971. While the Black Panthers used it as a mandatory recruiting video (a la the KKK with Birth of a Nation), Ebony Magazine denounced it. The wide range of responses and reactions seemed to be all on one extreme side of the spectrum or the other. However, Corliss acknowledges three matters that are undebateable: nothing had been seen like it before in a commercial theater, it "instantly shifted the dominant tone of black films from liberal to anarchist, from uplifting message movies to fables of ghetto smarts and stickin' it to the man," and it was an "out-of-nowhere hit," creating the new genre of blaxploitation. Corliss explains why Van Peebles himself was the anti-Sidney Poitier, a black hero that was too threatening and sexual to be allowed on screen. Van Peebles didn't care what whites felt about his film and that liberated him in a way that no Hollywood studio film had ever been liberated. The film even used child pornography (with Van Peebles' son Mario having sex with an adult woman) and because of all these factors, Corliss concludes it is impossible to analyze without some sort of bias.

This article is important and relevant because it finally places Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song into its several historical contexts without needing to provide clarity over which context is "right". Corliss understands the polarization of views this film has caused, as evidenced in the opening paragraph: "Libaration or exploitation? Radical politics or violent nihilism? Mature sexuality or child pornography? Modernist narrative or incoherent narrative? Trailblazer or piece of crap?" All of those views are right in a way, because when reviewing a film, the subjective experience is all that matters. You can never be wrong about an opinion on a film, so long as you have some piece of evidence to back up your claims. With an abrasive, in-your-face movie like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, it seems that everybody was caught off guard and gave their instinctual reaction. In a cinematic climate where critical reviews and trailers create expectations that almost predetermine a filmgoers' reaction to an extent, the release of this film, outside the traditional Hollywood avenues, created a genuine experience for a variety of viewers. As one might expect, the reaction was just as varied.

Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks : An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films / Donald Bogle.

Bogle, Donald. "Chapter 8: The 1970s Bucks and a Black Movie Boom." Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. Ed. 4. New York: Continuum, 2001. 231-241.

Chapter 8. The 1970s Bucks and a Black Movie Boom (p. 231-266; 231-241 relevant to film)

Film critic and NYU/Penn professor Donald Bogle (whom Spike Lee refers to as the top historian of African American film) segues from a chapter about the rise of black militants into the cinematic expression of that popular African American attitude. He recreates the setting of the early 1970s (Vietnam protests, youth movement, Black Nationalism), yet complains that the old same stereotypes “dressed in new garb to look modern, hip, provocative, and politically ‘relevant’” keep appearing.

The early 1970s marked the “age of the buck”, started by white filmmakers until it is fully explored without Hollywood hindrance by Melvin Van Peebles, the “black movie director and folk hero”, and his film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. After a short Melvin Van Peebles biography, he summarizes the plot of Sweetback, stressing the point that Sweetback does indeed escape the pursuit of the law, meeting “violence with violence in order to triumph over the corrupt white establishment.” This appeals not only to the black audience but to an emerging, revolutionary young white audience as well. The character of Sweetback answers the black public’s call for a serious, sexually assertive black protagonist. After years of asexual characters such as Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, often relegated to subservience and/or comic relief rather than assert themselves against the establishment, Sweetback actually stands up to “the Man”.

The reception of this movie, as Bogle notes, was mixed in spite of the overwhelming commercial success. The older black generation saw it as a “daydream of triumph” while the young militants saw it as a call to revolution. Since Van Peebles made the film under the pretense of pornography, he had pretty much free reign during production and only really felt the wrath of the white establishment during distribution and eventually, public backlash. However, Bogle notes that even though this film seemed revolutionary, at the heart was the same old brutal black buck, f*cking his way out of situations with black and white women and frequently resorting to violence as a means of escape and triumph. His separation even from white counter-culturists like the Hells’ Angels in the film heeded Black Nationalist calls for separatism, striking an urban chord with its depiction of the ghetto. Bogle confides, however, that although the ghetto pimp is glamorized as the protagonist, the film “fails to explain the social conditions that made the pimp such an important figure.” Ultimately, he decides that the film is more of a social documentary than a traditional motion picture, displaying a snapshot of that tense period in race relations, ultimately formulized later that year by Hollywood's Shaft and Superfly into a more film-like structure.

Bogle is accurate in his description of the film's reception and relevance. Although he acknowledges the historical significance of the film, he also notes that it is widely misinterpreted and received over a broad spectrum of opinions. The use of the stereotypical brutal black buck as the protagonist in Sweetback undermines the film's "revolutionary" categorization, but through the overuse of action and "film school aesthetics" applied in the editing room, a profitable genre was born.

What Makes Sweetback Run? / Clayton Riley

Riley, Clayton. "What Makes Sweetback Run?." New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 9 May 1971,D11. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004). ProQuest. University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, PA. 9 Apr. 2008

Clayton Riley marvels at Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song several weeks after its release, “hailing” it as a “terrifying vision” and an “outrage designed to blow minds” in its depiction of a “very basic Black America, unadorned by faith, and seething with an eternal violence.” He both loves and hates the “precise stereotypical blacks and whites” depicted in such an extravagant way that a comparison to reality reminds him of the even more chilling truth of racial tensions in America. Although Riley says Black America is “unadorned by faith”, Sweetback’s run from the law almost represents a religious pilgrimage. Sweetback, the “phallic knight,” threatens White America with his sexuality and violence (seemingly his only sense of purpose) while threatening Black America by glorifying the ghetto pimp. As this outlaw hero, Sweetback reminds Riley of Charlie Parker, who had such an impact on people, regardless of race, but whose character flaws (heroin addiction) doomed those who followed in his footsteps (they thought heroin was the key to his briliiance). As people damned the genius of Parker, Riley argues they will of Van Peebles, until hindsight can create a more objective analysis of his work. Unlike another NY Times article on this film, this one raves about the new editing techniques and nonstop action, likening the “desperate level of energy” to that of the Black public.

This is a very interesting analysis, especially given the fact that it came so soon after the film was released. Riley is in tune with the angry, young Black Nationalists that this film caters to and describes exactly which chords it hits and why. However, the bias of this article is quite evident. Riley seems so excited to be reviewing a film made by a black filmmaker that he has trouble criticizing even the most insignificant of fallacies. His enthusiasm is evident of that of the black populace immediately after the film’s release, and although that enthusiasm will dissipate in the coming years, this article serves as a good barometer to measure the initial impact of Sweetback on the commercial public and film industry.

Morris, Chris. "Warner Finds Superior Source for 'Citizen Kane' DVD Set."

Morris, Chris. “Warner Finds Superior Source for ‘Citizen Kane’ DVD Set.” Billboard 11 August 2001. 10 April 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=4958025&site=ehost-live>.

Chris Morris writes this article in August 2001, just as the popularity of the relatively new home video format DVD was starting to gain popularity. Movie titles were released incrementally in this new all-digital format.

Morris writes that the popularity of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane has created a high demand for the film to be released to the new DVD video format. Warner Home had been working on a 60th anniversary release and it was planned for the 25 of September in that same year. This new release was widely expected to be visually and sonically ungraded from the previous releases to home video. Morris writes that Warner, in their attempts to rerelease Citizen Kane, had originally not been able to find a suitable quality source film. RKO’s original camera negatives had been burned in a 1980 vault fire and as a result had also hampered past efforts a restoration. The 1991 VHS release had featured the copy owned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, however this print had dirt and scratches on it, among other defects. Morris reports, however, that after patient and careful searching, Warner had found a new nitrate fine-grain print in a European archive and that this copy has offered better picture quality and served as an improved audio source. The improved audio quality is very important because the original score had a very high dynamic range. He also reports that the new DVD release would include an interview with Roger Ebert, a 1941 newsreel about the film’s premiere, and the documentary film of the Hearst-Welles conflict, The Battle Over Citizen Kane.

One might think that just like a personal computer user, large Hollywood movie studios would have countless backup copies of their master reels. This seems not to be the case. A fire at a single film vault destroyed RKO’s only master copy. Orson Welles was the recipient of the actual production negatives and his copy was also lost in a fiery accident in the 1970s. By re-mastering and fully digitizing the remaining high quality prints, the data can be stored in numerous locations very inexpensively and very safely. As we learned in class, nitrate has a propensity to catch on fire and is very dangerous in that respect. We also learned in class that Hollywood is usually very slow to adopt new media formats. DVD hit store shelves in mid-1997 yet this movie was released in late 2001, almost 4 years later. The studios might have an excuse in this case – the long and lucky search for a suitable master copy.

True Demon Bound By No Rules: AN INTRODUCTION TO CHARACTER AND VENGEANCE IN THE LONE WOLF AND CUB FILMS.

McKenzie, Andrew. "True Demon Bound by No Rules: AN INTRODUCTION TO CHARACTER AND VENGEANCE IN THE LONE WOLF AND CUB FILMS." Metro 148 (2006): 112-115. EBSCO. University of Pennsylvania. 10 Apr. 2008.

Andrew McKenzie’s essay, “A True Demon Bound by No Rules: An Introduction to Character and Vengeance in the Lone Wolf and Cub Films,” places the Lone Wolf and Cub series within the larger context of the Tokugawa Era (1600-1865), the Bushido (“the way of the warrior”), and the films’ reception.

Critics condemn the Lone Wolf and Cub series, arguing that the film’s masterless protagonist, Itto Ogami, is a caricature of the Tokugawa samurai. These critics allude to the meager and powerless existence of the historical ronin (masterless samurai). But McKenzie argues that Ogami’s unique freedom emphasizes the presence of feudal Japanese conventions. Without the existence of these customs, Ogami would not have a force against which to rebel. According to McKenzie, the primary targets of Ogami’s rebellion are the Bushido and the Eastern conception of fate. Ogami first violates Bushido code when he refuses an order from his superior to commit seppuku. McKenzie also cites Ogami’s disregard for his sword as a subversion of Bushido. In Bushido the sword is akin to the “soul of the samurai,” and its wielder should guard it at all costs. In his unorthodoxy however, Ogami hurls it like spear. Finally, McKenzie posits that “Belief in predestination or fate in Eastern culture is standard; Ogami however, simply refuses it” (McKenzie, 114).

The essay establishes Shogun Assassin’s (1980) historical relevance through Lone Wolf and Cub. Shogun Assassin, a reedited version of the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films, contains the same tropes of abandonment and rebellion against feudal convention. The films challenge the conventions and the authority of the Tokugawa era with their gruesome fight sequences. Because of the overt violence, McKenzie argues that critics incorrectly ignore the social and cultural implications of the film, and immediately assign it to the exploitation genre.

Reframing Japanese cinema : authorship, genre, history / edited by Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser.

. Reframing Japanese cinema : authorship, genre, history / edited by Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser. 0253341086 series Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1992.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.J3 R44 1992
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.J3 R44 1992
Call#: Van Pelt Library--4 East--Temporary Location Annenberg PN1993.5.J3 R44 1992
Call#: Van Pelt Library--4 East--Temporary Location Annenberg PN1993.5.J3 R44 1992

David Desser's essay, "Towards a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film," outlines the sub-genres of samurai film, describes their properties, and examines their cultural implications. The first of Desser's sub-genres is the "nostalgic samurai drama." The chief characteristic of the grouping is what Desser calls "mono no aware." The term refers to a "feeling of sweet sadness, or an almost inexpressible sensation of life's mortality, which is pleasantly painful" (Desser, 148). Characters in these films are generally "powerless yet proud samurai," condemned by the society that created them. However, he does not rebel against the system, instead he "takes the path of righteousness out of a sense of obligation" (Desser, 149). Next, Desser discusses the "anti-feudal drama." The anti-feudal drama, a reaction to America's post-war presence in Japan, tracked its hero from a position of prominence to his ruin. In these films, self-hatred replaces mono no aware. The anti-feudal drama is also more violent than the nostalgic samurai drama, as the protagonist must rage against the flawed conventions of society. Finally, Desser analyzes the "sword film," or chambara. While the author admits that critics generally apply the term chambara as a pejorative, he believes the sword film to be the "most interesting and revealing of all the sub-genres within samurai film" (Desser, 155). The Western viewer's inability to appreciate chambara stems from the movement’s extreme aesthetization of violence, specifically, gores. Sword films use violence as a kind of nihilism. Furthermore, the genre subverts Bushido (“the way of the warrior”) through the meaninglessness of death.

Through Desser’s essay, we can classify Shogun Assassin (1980) within the larger context of the samurai film. The film most fits the conventions of the chambara. Its slow motion decapitations, spurting blood, and high body count all work to undermine the established order. Desser’s assertion that the film’s movement provides both an agenda and an aesthetic, denotes artistry unfound in the exploitation film.

New history of Japanese cinema : a century of narrative film / Isolde Standish.

Standish, Isolde. . New history of Japanese cinema : a century of narrative film / Isolde Standish. 0826417094 (alk. paper) series New York : Continuum, 2005.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1993.5.J3 S72 2005

The chapter, "Speed and Movement in Chambara: Stylistic Conventions," from Isolde Standish's book, A New History of Japanese Cinema, examines the use and function of speed in its application to the human body and filming technique. Standish argues that Japanese film uses speed as a "mimetic response to the mechanical ordering of temporality" (Standish, 97). In contrast to Western directors, who frequently used the convention to reflect mechanized industry's effect on the human timetable, Japanese films glorify the process through "spectacle and display" (Standish, 97). Standish grounds her polemic with examples from Japanese theater and early Japanese cinema.
The section attributes Japanese cinema's emphasis on speed to two sources: reactionary sentiment to a rigidly stratified society and the shinkokugeki theater movement. Standish ascribes chambara's (sword-play film) appeal to its visceral effects. The physical freedom of the chambara's characters "provided subjective moments of corporeal intensity and fantasy" (Standish, 99). Images of movement fascinated young Japanese men, who felt constricted by society. The shinkokugeki theater movement of the early 1920s introduced the display of realistic sword fighting scenes on stage. The new style was much more exciting than the detached, suggestive style of kubuki theater. Japanese filmmakers combined real sword fights with filming techniques like long tracking shots and crosscuts over different parallel lines of action to accentuate on screen movement.

Standish's chapter enumerates the different tropes of the chambara. Using her criteria, one can evaluate the effect of Shogun Assassin's (1980) use of speed, movement, and editing. Ogami Itto's fencing skills seem inhuman: his blade often moves too fast for the eye to see. Furthermore, Shogun Assassin uses crosscuts in every fight scene. The shots, which shift between Ogami and his opponents, maintain focus on all characters involved without sacrificing tension. Finally, Shogun Assassin culminates with a tachimawari, or a "climactic sword-fight scene" (Standish, 98). Standish claims that the tachimawari is the hallmark of the chambara film, as it features the most pace and movement.

Natural Born Killers Annotated Bibliography

"When Films 'Quote' Films They Create a New Mythology" by Roger Copeland

    Copeland starts off by saying that when filmmakers grew up as film-watchers they don’t create films about the “real world,” but a world “mediated” through other films. He claims that George Lucas’s Star Wars “makes so many references to earlier films and styles that it could just as easily – and perhaps more accurately – been called ‘Genre Wars.’” Many young directors from this era (the mid-seventies) such as Lucas and Scorsese create films out of nostalgia for Hollywood’s past.   He says that the first filmmakers to make films that dealt with reality as much as they did with old films were French new wave filmmakers such as Truffaut and Godard. He says it is no mistake that these great filmmakers were well versed in the history of cinema and spent their early careers as film critics. Copeland calls the films by Scorsese and Lucas the “Americanizing of the New Wave sensibility.”
    Allen according to Copeland is “not as cinematically knowledgeable” as his counterparts from the era. However, he discusses all of the points from Allen’s films in which he references other great films of the past. He discusses the references to Bergman, Eisenstein and Bogart in his various films from the seventies. The references in films to other films trickle down into our daily lives, which creates a world where not all of our actions are necessarily original. In some ways, many of us emulate our favorite characters in films; it’s not just great directors copying other directors, but people copying their favorite characters. Past artwork has become the foundation for which new artists can build. These ideas being recycled through film and our daily lives creates a new mythology.
    Woody Allen draws from the ideas of past works to mold them into his films. Love and Death is no exception. It builds upon ideas of past filmmakers and intertwines them into parody. Even though many of the ideas and scenes in the film seem ridiculous, it takes an intelligent viewer to read beyond the laughs and into the past artists that shaped them.

"What is Film Humor?" Harry Schein

    Schein wants to make sure that the reader understands that his article is not speaking of “the humor typified by physiological reflexes such as smiling or the gleam in the eye. This article deals only with the kind of humor that releases laughter.”(24) The film humor genre may have begun with the Lumiere Brothers film about the gardener. It has evolved away from its sadistic beginnings, but much of the humor that is still present involves maliciousness. Schein claims that humor depends on the audaciousness of the humorist and how much a person can identify with the victim. “Humor’s first rule is that the humorist may lose neither his tempo nor his temper.”(27) One area of humor in film that Schein discusses is the parody. He says that “to parody a film in a film presents enormous possibilities.”(31) In contrast, he says that to parody a novel in a film is very difficult and can leave the viewer in “a blind alley.”(31)
   Schein analyzes the qualities of humor and tactics used by such film humorists as Tati, Chaplin and the Marx brothers. Of all of their styles he seems to enjoy Tati’s the most. Schein comments that the film’s humor works with predominantly visual material that seems to be purely intellectual at the same time. Every sequence in the movies also contains many formal associations. Tati combines these factors with “a casual nonchalance that is master proof of a humorist.”(32)
   Harry Schein would have liked the humor in Love and Death for a variety of reasons. The film does not simply make the viewer smile to himself, but it contains many moments of hilarity that force the viewer into convulsions of laughter. Allen’s film never loses its tempo and provides many situations in which the viewer is able to relate to Boris as a victim. Tati’s style of comedy is emulated by Love and Death. The film at its base contains the visuals of Tolstoy’s Russia and uses this as a springboard for intellectual conversation and humor. These factors combined with the references and associations that Allen makes to many other works yield what would be “master proof” to Schein that the film is a great work of humor.

"The Aesthetics of Parody" G.D. Kiremidjian

    According to Kiremidjian a parody must have three basic characteristics of structure and behavior. First, a parody must originate from the original in its form and content and focus on the duality between the two. Second, it must raise the question as to how the original relates with the parody. The viewer must be forced to think about how the aesthetics of one relate to the other and whether or not the viewer receives something from the new version. The third point is that in the Aristotelian sense parody is not really art. (It imitates another work, not real life.) This is problematic for the author, who arrives at the idea that parody imitates art, which in turn reveals something about the original piece. He exclaims that parody does indeed become an art form in its ability to examine the original piece and exploits it for the purpose of self-exploration and curiosity.
   Once Kiremidjian establishes that parody is indeed an art form that can be benefited from he examines what makes for a good parody. He states that an artist “must grasp the essentials of the style of a given author or a school of authors, and then proceed to concoct an outlandish episode which is expressed in that style.”(235) Parody must then act as a critique of some sort of the original work. This can only be done effectively, if the artist has a strong grasp of the original work(s) and has a purpose for creating the parody.
   Following the philosophical logic of Kiremidjian, Allen’s Love and Death indeed qualifies as art and as a parody. The film manages to provide the viewer with the impression that Allen has a strong grasp for every facet of the works he is parodying. The references to a multitude of works are clear. His critique of these works emanate a sense of purpose with humor that is clearly outlandish in its content.

The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies by Gerald Mast

    This book attempts to chronicle film comedy from the silent era all the way through the end of the 1970s(when the book was published.) The work covers the first crude attempts at humor by Edison and Lumiere through Allen’s Annie Hall. Mast analyzes the different structures, techniques and values that have transformed cinematic comedy over time. He discusses the evolution of these techniques and how they appear and reappear in various pieces throughout silent and more modern film.
   Mast claims that while some film comics like Mel Brooks simply move from one parody to the next, Allen has transformed his comedic style from the purely parodic to a more personal, psychological and emotional film style. Allen’s films are more “French than American” in that they are “very conscious of themselves as conceptions for the film medium.”(313) According to Mast, Allen’s films are a mix between the “anarchic clown tradition” of the American style and the “ironic tradition”(313) of the French. Allen balances the line between “intellectual awareness, psychological astuteness” and the bizarre gag and parody. Mast argues that each of the main characters in Allen’s films, are essentially all the same because they display those same features no matter what situation they are thrown into.
   Recurring themes in Allen’s films include, neuroticism, sexual desire and self-discovery. Each of these themes get examined from a serious tone, but in films such as Love and Death, these serious ideas become the butt of many jokes. Mast continues to say that these topics continually develop in Allen’s later films as the director continues to explore himself. The psychoanalysis that Allen undertakes and his new understanding of himself provides for more humorous and profound ideas in his later films.

Music that makes a man a killer Bernard Herrmann's film scores spoke as loudly as any dialogue, says Mark Monahan

Monahan, Mark. "Music that makes a man a killer Bernard Herrmann's film scores spoke as loudly as any dialogue, says Mark Monahan." The Daily Telegraph 1 July 2006. 8 April 2008.

Mark Monahan writes about Mr. Bernard Herrmann’s musical career spanning from Citizen Kane in 1941 through Taxi Driver in 1976. Monahan asserts that creating music for motion pictures is an incredibly arduous task and that the people responsible for it are extraordinarily talented. He feels that cinema would be unimaginable if not for the fantastic and wild feelings created by film scores. Monahan writes that he considers Bernard Herrmann to be one of the leading film composers of the last 100 years. Herrmann, a Russian born immigrant attended NYU to study music and made his Broadway debut at the young age of 20. He began composing for CBS radio shows and this put him into contact with Orson Welles. Welles took Herrmann on for the film Citizen Kane, and thereby launched the composer’s long and successful scoring career. After Kane, Herrmann teamed with Hitchcock and was responsible for the musical scores of all the great Hitchcock films through the end of the 1960s. Monahan has much respect for Herrmann’s talent. He writes that, “Rather than merely setting the scene or complementing the action (though they do both magnificently), [Herrmann’s scores] virtually are the action, brilliantly elucidating the characters' gnarled inner lives.” He says that the opening scene of Citizen Kane (the ascending of Xanadu’s fence) is given “a sense of dread, regret and death of the soul…” Herrmann’s most famous musical passage is the shrieking violins of the Psycho’s shower scene. In his later career he works for French and American New Wave filmmakers.

The musical score to any film is one of the most psychologically defining aspects of the experience. The music, much like lighting, sets a mood. Before the audience even knows what will happen on screen, they can get a sense of what might happen just based on the musical foreshadowing. Herrmann brilliantly uses his musical score to set the mood and tone in Citizen Kane. In happy scenes such as those with the young Kane attending parties in his honor, the music is light and we think nothing of it. In more dramatic scenes such as the initial scene of Xanadu, the newsreel scenes, and the final scene of the film with the revelation of Rosebud, the music obviously takes a more dramatic and serious tone.