Rabaté, Jean-Michel. " Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism between Hysterical and Paranoid Modernism." Journal of Modern Literature 25.3-4 (2002):58-74.

Rabaté examines the role of surrealism in the spread of Freudian ideas. The author approaches this topic by first looking at the historical context from which the discourse emerged. While other surrealists and Freudians had become friends and collaborators, Freud and Breton had a long history of animosity between them. Unable to become friendly because of constant bickering over who deserved credit for various ideas in art and psychology, the surrealist and Freudian fields were forced to keep their distance. Breton and his followers eventually embraced the idea of hysteria and exalted the idea of guided paranoia. However, in the wake of issues within the surrealist camp as well as the events occurring in society, the majority of surrealists eventually embraced the idea of “paranoid modernism.”  Rabaté concludes the article by arguing the by embracing the idea of modernism, the surrealists, who had at one time been the enemies of Freud, were able to both take on and in turn take over many of Freud’s ideas.

The idea that the surrealist dream sequence created by Dali, which is shown in Spellbound, could be understood perfectly well by the application of Freudian principles would have been completely absurd to both Freudians and surrealists. But interestingly enough, and perhaps because of the commercial takeover of the intellectual ideas of Freud and Surrealism, the surrealist sequence appears to make complete sense to the Freudians analyzing John Ballantine within the context of the film. By creating this peaceful co-existence of ideas within the film, Spellbound itself becomes a vehicle for the dissemination not only of independent surrealist and Freudian principles, but for the idea that both ideologies are able to co-exist and ultimately act as one ideology.

On Adorno (67-8): expressive communication supressed in late capitalist society. Stravinsky, Debussy antisymphonic technique stops or spatializes time through stasis/repetition, fragmented forms of motivic development. visualization encourages externalization, listening encourages internalization. "Voided of interiority and exhausted by exterior style, the work lost its potential for transcendence, the potential that would preserve a gap for listeners to listen beyond the surface." Work recapitulates culture in which produced and shapes listeners accordingly as catatonic, infantile, frigid, unfree subject w/o will. Adorno thinks Melisande is such a subject.

"'Symphonism' had come to connote operatic excess and imbalance between the work's interior and exterior." (69) Pelleas sound as "presymphonic, declamatory and prosaic expression" (70).

Debussy wanted to leave music to work alongside words as commentary and extension (69), discrete element in opera (70).

Voice brings out interior, heard through flatness of picture, note, word. For symbolists to be musical implies move toward abstraction
(71).

Critic of Materlink's play likens it to magic lantern show "The beings that we see onstage look like shadows. They live, speak, and move in the atmosphere of artifice; they are the creatures of a dream." Description similar to Wagner's own of Bayreuth: "In the perfect drama - the full shapes of a dream-vision, or the other world, are projected before us in a life-like way as if by the magic lantern. It is a ghostly seeing in which all the figures of all times and places become distinct before our eyes. Music is the lamp of this lantern....music should be able to inspire the sight so that we see the music in shapes." (72) Hid orchestra, mechanical means by which images and sounds produced, but never singer-actors.

Symphonic (Wagner) vs. dramatic (Debussy) voice as true musicality of modern music-drama.

"A modernist masterpiece shows the fracture for what it is by exposing the illusion of a false synthesis." (78) Goehr says Pelleas first masterpiece of this kind.

Steven Watts argues a positive view of Disney’s importance in American history, although acknowledges the difficulty of understanding his impact on modern American culture. Many critics believe that Disney’s commercial success and popularity mean that his films cannot have cultural significance. In addition, the strong contradictory opinions of Disney make it difficult to simply look at his impact in order to gain understanding rather than to criticize or admire his work. Watts looks at Walt Disney as an artist of sentimental modernist films and as a promoter of American ideals, qualities that are evident in Disney’s rendering of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

America’s original perception of Disney was of a serious artist, inspired by both modernist art and sentimental realism. These two often contradictory influences show in his work. He blurred the line of reality and imagination by creating worlds where animals could talk, plants were animated, and household objects felt emotion. In Snow White, the forest through which the banished girl flees has trees which try to grab and trip her, but nearby, kind animals prepare to comfort her. In addition, he incorporated dreams often in his work. Walt Disney encouraged naturalism to a degree unheard of in animation and cartoons. He insisted that his animators take evening art classes and he invented the multiplane camera, which created the illusion of depth in Snow White and his other animated feature films.

Disney also used his films to imbue hope and to promote certain virtues to his audience during the depression. His films in the 1930’s remind Americans that they will overcome the hard times through vigor and virtue. Two Disney films in the ‘30s stand out in particular for encouraging the persistence and courage of underdogs. Three Little Pigs (1933) features the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” while the dwarves in Snow White (1937) merrily sing “Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go.” Snow White, too, exhibits a hard-working demeanor both in her house and the dwarves’. Disney claims that “wisdom and courage is enough to defeat big, bad wolves of every description, and send them slinking away.” Through his films, he encouraged self-reliance, a quality that he had exhibited since his youth.

Norris, Margot. “Modernism and Vietnam: Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.”  MFS Modern Fiction Studies 44:3 (1998): 730 - 766

            Margot Norris fully examines and reviews Coppola’s extraordinary film in this article.  She attempts to voice Francis Ford Coppola’s critique on the Vietnam War not only through the dialogue inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but also through the undermining themes and images of the film itself.  Even though most people contend that Apocalypse Now is a loose interpretation of Heart of Darkness, Norris claims that some of the seemingly random and meaningless scenes in Apocalypse Now actually mirror themes and passages from Conrad’s novella.  She dives deep into the psychedelic and dark imagery of Apocalypse Now and analyzes not only the changes made by Coppola and screenwriter John Milius, but also the true meaning of scenes and images that can be directly traced to Heart of Darkness.

            One of the main differences Norris finds between the source novella Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now can be found in the character changes and the implications meant by these changes. The change in setting also stands as one of the most glaring differences.  Norris contends that changing Marlow (a company man) to Willard (a military man), the accountant (a flamboyant ridiculous symbol of colonialism) to Lt. Colonel Kilgore (a ridiculous man of carnage), and the setting of colonial Africa to war torn Vietnam and Cambodia was meant by Coppola to comment mainly on the darkness and evils of man’s violence, exemplified by the Vietnam War.