Chapter two of Terry Christensen and Peter Haas’ book Projecting Politics, “The Making of a Message” explores how political messages can be most effectively projected through film production and techniques. The authors state the most common way films send political messages is through the screenplay, which entails the subject matter, characters and plotting. In political films, dialogue is of the utmost importance; more words are spoken and what is said is given greater weight. Dialogue is a precarious aspect of the film because if too much is said then the movie is deemed inactive and boring; if the political implications are too obvious, the effectiveness of the messages can be subverted; and if the film is too understated, the political messages might be overlooked. Therefore, the authors argue that political films are most effective when they allow audiences to infer their own conclusions, or at least let them think that they have.
     This notion is relevant to my thesis, as the political messages in Casablanca are not verbally broadcasted throughout the film; but rather, they are embedded in dialogue that is relevant to the narrative of the story. A perfect example of this is when Rick says, “Louis, this is a start of a beautiful friendship”- words that allow us to reach our own conclusions. We may interpret the words on a surface level, as simply reconciliation between friends within a story; or we may look beneath the surface and infer the political implications of the words – the start of a great friendship between an American and a Frenchmen to signify supporting an American alliance with European countries to fight against the Nazi regime.
     The authors also discuss movie conventions that can be used in a political film to minimize the risk of controversy. The most relevant to my thesis is personalization, when movies with a political subject matter focus on the personal drama of politically active characters, making them more acceptable and accessible to mass audiences. This is in direct accordance with my thesis, as it supports the notion that because Casablanca works so well as a character drama, it is such an effective form of propaganda.
     Another important element of the film that the chapter touches upon is the importance of casting. The casting of movie stars influences the effectives of the political messages on the public. “Stars are the creation of the public: political and psychological models who demonstrate some quality we admire" (33). This notion of the star system and the affect it has on viewers is pertinent to my thesis because it shows the profound capacity of the character Rick Blaine, and the actor Humphrey Bogart, to sway public opinion. The book states, “the so-called star system frequently cues the audience to political values transmitted by a movie" (33). Thus the casting of an actor who is renowned as an American icon, like Humphrey Bogart, reassures audiences that the movie they are seeing supports National (American) values and serves to enhance the legitimacy of the political messages being sent.

Citation: LaSalle, Mick. Complicated Women : Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood. Boston: Saint Martin's Griffin, 2001. 1-1.

 

This book talks about the negative impact that the production code had on the portrayal of women in cinema. The author describes a time before the code when women could enjoy being women without having to apologize for it. She describes that women were allowed to “have fun”, “take on lovers and have children out of wedlock”. The introduction explains that part of the reason the code was implemented was to stop women from enjoying these freedoms onscreen and put them back in their place, the kitchen.

 

This section relates heavily to the character of Rio, played by Jane Russell in The Outlaw. Before the code, there would have been little to no qualms about her showing as much skin and cleavage. However, due to the Hays code, which aimed at making movies more moral, her character was stifled. Some of the controversy over the questionable integrity of the film was partly due to the fact that Jane Russell was a female actress attempting to express her female sexuality in a time where it was not appreciated.      

 

Dancis begins with criticizing how old "plantation epics" misrepresents the African-American slaves during the time.  For example, "Gone with the Wind" and "The Birth of a Nation" give the audience the distorted perspective of many aspects of history, including slavery, the Civil War and the Reconstruction.  However, he argues, many films have been improving this chaotic misrepresentation and begun to accurately portray African-Americans in history.  For example, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is considered "an attempt by Hollywood to make it right, and it works. It is a landmark Hollywood film that vividly portrays racism in the 1930s."  Dancis lists numerous movies that have done a much better job of depicting African-Americans.

Dancis, Bruce. “A Sharper Focus on Black History: After a Flickering Start, Filmdom Has Gotten Better at Portraying the African American Experience.” The Sacramento Bee (2008). <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=2W62W61571901384&site=ehost-live>.

This article considers the implications of the Supreme Court's Grokster II ruling, which considered four internet file sharing technologies that were previously found by district courts to have been liable for copyright infringement. The technologies considered are Napster, Grokster, Morpheus and Aimster. The article outlines a Grokster II test used to identify infringing file sharing programs. The test relies heavily on whether the producer of the technology advertised intent to distribute copyrighted material. The four factors used to determine liability outlined by the author are whether: (1) defendants made express statements of intent to induce copyright infringement, (2) defendants advertised that they intended to replace a known source of infringement, (3) defendant attempted to filter or reduce infringing use and (4) defendants' business models used as evidence bolstering defendants unlawful intent. The author points to the fact that these factors, while universal in their use in determining the liability in the four aforementioned technologies, were used to produce inconsistent judgments regarding contributory infringement by the producers of the respective technologies. The concept of unpredictability in digital media copyright law stems from these inconsistencies in Grokster II.

The piece of this article that will be most useful for my paper is the section that follows where the author tests the four factors from Grokster II on three new technologies. The technologies discussed here include TiVo ToGo, MyTunes Redux and Limewire. Each technology produces ambiguous judgments using this four factor test since TiVo ToGo can not be assumed to have an underlying infringing use, and MyTunes Redux and Limewire do not operate for profit and it is also ambiguous whether any of these products advertisements can be shown to induce users to infringe copyright. This will serve as evidence in my paper that the current system by which courts evaluate potential copyright infringers is not effective for many technologies currently available that bear striking similarities upon which action has been taken. I suspect that in the future many new technologies will arise whose purpose is, in fact, to replace those that have been shut down by the recording industry-precisely one of the reasons Grokster, itself was found guilty. These developments suggest, as does evidence in my other sources, that the recording industry and the courts will have to work more closely with users of peer to peer file sharing networks and internet service providers to either devise new methods of preventing illegal file sharing or establish a new system by which digital music is made available.

WP3BudgetsandOrgModels1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

By Sabrina Pape and Barbara Jones for Vassar/CLIR symposium

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.

2. Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Rashomon and Other Stories. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1952. P17-31 ’In a Grove’ In a Grove is a short story which is about a chapter length by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who also wrote ‘Rashomon’ which first appeared in the January 1922 edition of the Japanese literature monthly Shincho. The story consists of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder; eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity’s ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.              Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for the film, ‘Rashomon’ despite of its name from Akutagawa’s another short story. This provided the symbolic background atmosphere and went into the depths of the human heart as if with a surgeon’s scalpel, laying bare its dark complexities and bizarre twists. These strange impulses of the human heart were expressed through the use of an elaborately fashioned play of light and shadow. The setting was moved to a large forest in the film showing people wandering in to a wider wilderness. Also the script from this story ‘In a Grove portrays human beings who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It shows how human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves.

This is a news article that focuses on the so-called benefits of being born into a rung of the existing caste system in India, the Brahmin caste in particular. The article illustrates the emphasis placed on caste in rural India and compares the lifestyle one might live based on whether they are from a village or a metropolitan city such as Chennai. Focusing on a young Brahmin who was extremely privileged in his village faces reversal of fortune as he makes his way to Chennai. A law was passed in the state of Tamil Nadu where as of 1950, 70% of government jobs became reserved for people from a lower caste. Given this situation, due to the fact that he is from a high casts, he has been turned down form jobs in the city and is living a frugal life earning under $100 a month; an amount that doesn't even pay his rent thereby causing him to sleep in the classroom where he is an English teacher.

Apu's father in the movie is faced with a similar situation, whereby he is living an impoverished life. A man, who is greatly respected by fellow villagers due to the fact that he is educated and wishes to be a poet, is given no respect when he travels to the city in search of a job to earn a living to feed his family. In the movie Harihar Ray wishes to be a writer because he is born into a family of writers, because he belongs to the Brahmin caste. But, given the lack of jobs in the village itself, he wonders to a nearby city where he is ill-treated, firstly because he is looked upon as a villager, and secondly is unable to get jobs that ‘villagers' would get because they are all reserved for ‘villagers' from a lower caste. Given that this movie was made in 1958, it goes to show that people all over India suffered from such problems post independence as well. And although the movie is set in Bengal and not in Tamil Nadu, Brahmin's around the country seemed to live lives similar to the ones articulated by Satyajit Ray in this film, as well as ones written about by Bellman in the newspaper article.

JSTOR: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 19, No. 1, (1984 ), pp. 171-187

Brighton, Sussex, England : Harvester Press Microform Publications, 1985.
GUIDE: Reference Folder #282, available from the Center for Research Libraries through Interlibrary Loan.
DESCRIPTION: The Center has received microfilm for the following parts: part 1: Arundel-Cotton Nero; part 2: Cotton Otho-Cotton Roll; part 3: Egerton-Lansdowne; part 4: Royal-Add. Roll.
Available from the Center for Research Libraries through Interlibrary Loan.

This article looks at the progression of big time college sports such as football and basketball into a market.  It explores the growth of athletics and movement toward equality between men's and women's sports.  The article also discusses the affects on education from a growing sports market.