I Spit on Your Grave (1978-2010)

THIS POST HAS MOVED TO ENDOFTHEGAME.NET

This essay examines the exploitation film I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and its recent remake (2010), and how both these films make strong comments about the culture which they were released in and the context which they were interpreted. The original film was visually enhanced and re-released on BluRay this year, and therefore, along with its remake stands as a contemporary text. The essay focuses on the cultural significance of the previously banned movie being remade for a modern audience, and the voyeuristic aspects of both films. The way the film represents meaning to the audience through sound and image will also be discussed, representation being defined as the ‘process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture… [involving] the use of language… signs and images which stand for or represent things’ (1997, p. 15). The aim of this essay is to shed light on the social and cultural significance of horror films, which are braver in their exploration of society’s taboos, and the reasons why society needs these films, as evidenced by the recent trend of their remakes. The essay also aims to explore the feminist qualities I Spit on Your Grave contain, for the purpose of this essay feminism can be defined as ‘the advocacy of equality for the sexes, in opposition to patriarchy and sexism’ (Macionis & Plummer, 2008, p. 883).

In the last decade swarms of horror films have risen from the ground in the form of remakes, these include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Amityville Horror (2005), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Halloween (2007), Friday the 13^th (2009), The Last House on the Left (2009), and most recently I Spit on Your Grave (2010). Lizardi (2010, p.114-115) offers two suggestions as to why these films are being remade, one is that remakes are ‘commercial products that repeat successful formulas in order to minimize risk and secure profits in the market place’, while the other reason is that horror remakes have the potential ‘to reveal something to us about our recurrent fears, anxieties and hopes for the future’. Becker (2006, p. 47) contends with this view by suggesting that horror films represent ‘society’s collective nightmare’, which contain repressed issues that must be confronted and resolved.  It is worth noting that the original versions of these horror remakes mostly stem from the period of slasher films made in the 1970s, an era which was known for the carefree hippie generation and the contrasting bloodshed of the Vietnam War. Considering that ‘films are best understood in relation to the periods in which they were produced and consumed’ (Lizardi, 2010, p. 115), it is necessary for me to explore the culture that the original slasher films were unleashed upon, culture being defined simply as ‘the beliefs, values, behaviour and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life’ (Macionis & Plummer 2008, p. 882). 

With the hippie revolution dissipating, and the war in Vietnam alive and well, the American culture was slowly descending towards ‘the sinister, the heavy, and the darkly forbidden’ (Becker, 2006, p. 48). During these times, the catchy pop songs of the early 60s had been cancelled out by the dark sounds of The Doors and Led Zeppelin, while the film industry turned to horror with films like Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). These films revealed ‘a shift in the worldview of the hippie counterculture, which had its considerable hopes in the possibility of significant progressive social change undercut by immense social traumas of the late 1960s and early 1970s’ (Becker, 2006, p. 43). In the opening scene of Wes Craven’s infamous Last House on the Left (1972) one of the two female protagonists before leaving to a Bloodlust concert, is given a necklace by her father, the camera zooms in as she puts it around her neck, revealing a silver peace symbol, a cultural icon of the hippie movement. The camera holds onto this image before fading into a fixed shot of a forest, showing the two girls frolicking towards the camera, while serene music plays softly in the background. This scene is later juxtaposed when the two girls are kidnapped; the terror on the girls’ faces are shown in extreme close ups during the scenes of their rape and torture. The progression of violence is eventually capped off by showing a close up of the intestines of one of the girls being pulled out of her body, throughout all these scenes the camera is static and the music is dark and synthesized. This strong contrasting imagery represented the death of the hippie movement, and is a consistent motif of the horror films of the 70s. It was the filmmakers way of getting to the 'guts' of their films message, which was that there was a war going on, and blood was being spilled. A reality that was swept under the rug in the ignorant bliss of the 60s hippie counterculture.

Last House on the Left, along with I Spit on Your Grave were banned in more countries than they were allowed, yet despite this they have both been recently remade. Wes Craven says of his film’s remake “I think it is a film for its times… it’s been a very chaotic eight years. Eight years of… warfare and reactions to 9/11… 9/11 perhaps was the ultimate home invasion… [It was] profoundly shocking to the American psyche. So I think that there is certainly a profound relevance to this film [in modern times]” (Lee, 2009, p. 1). Considering the original films were a direct response to the atrocities of the culture at the time, are these remakes also a response to the terrors of today’s society? Film scholar Stephen Prince suggests that ultra-violence in horror movies are used ‘to comment on the social violence of the era’ and therefore the films can be seen ‘as a form of social commentary’ (Becker, 2006, p. 56), while Sharrett (2009, p. 33) believes that these remakes are ‘a response to the atrocity that was the Bush era’.  

The original I Spit on Your Grave and its remake follow a simple three part narrative structure, known as the rape and revenge structure. Act I shows the female protagonist being raped by a group of men, Act II shows her recuperation, and Act III involves the female protagonist exacting violent revenge on each of her attackers. The biggest difference between the original film and its remake is the original focuses more on the total depravity of the rape scenes, while the remake instead focuses on the violent revenge. It seems that the anxieties of 9/11 and the war in Iraq, along with the ‘atrocities cued from Abu Ghraib and the Bush-era practice of… enhanced interrogation techniques’ has mirrored itself into the depiction of violence in today’s horror movies (Hamid, Lucia & Porton, 2009, p. 2). The hugely popular Saw (2004-present) and Hostel (2005-present) films have spawned a new sub-genre of horror called ‘torture porn’, which stems from their depiction of extremely graphic torture methods. I Spit on Your Grave’s (2010) revenge sequence employs the popular torture style of the Saw and Hostel films, with the female protagonist, Jennifer Hill, creating elaborate traps and torture devices to make the rapists suffer for their actions. One scene shows Jennifer taping one of the rapists to a tree, forcing his eyes open with fish hooks, pouring fish guts on his face and then leaving him there for the crows to peck his eyes. Another scene has Jennifer pulling one of her attackers’ teeth out with pliers; none of this occurs off screen.

Sharrett (2009, p. 32) states that the increasing budgets for these horror remakes allow the filmmakers ‘to pursue more extravagant ways of destroying the human body’ and that this glorification of violence and torture is a ‘symptom of the state of culture’ (Sharrett, 2009, p. 37). In the documentary on US torture methods, Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), George Bush makes the comment ‘one by one the terrorists are learning the value of American justice” (Gibney, 2007), this parallels the justice that the lead actress in I Spit on Your Grave enacts on her attackers, is this remake’s use of torture as justice a social comment on the torture tactics used by US soldiers to avenge the 9/11 attacks? Becker (2006, p. 48) asserts that due to the ‘1968 police brutality at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the inexorable bloodshed of the war in Vietnam, and the 1970 killings of students by the National Guard at Kent State, the government seemed to consider violence not only an acceptable but a desirable solution’, it is arguable that the same message is being made in modern times with the Iraq War, and therefore the remakes of the Vietnam era films are attempting to make a similar social commentary on the nature of violence. The question begs to be asked, is this social commentary necessary? Does it contribute to or glorify violence? Barrett’s (2006, p. 115) answer to this question is that ‘in reducing violence to nothing more than visual pop culture fodder… the very violence that is under the justification of the war on terror… becomes all the more acceptable’, this suggests that in watching these films, we as an audience are becoming desensitised to the very real violence that occurs off screen.

I Spit on Your Grave is ‘acclaimed or reviled, depending on your point of view, as the most powerful or repulsive rape revenge melodrama ever filmed’ Crowdus (2003, p. 32). It is indeed a film which has received both scathing criticism and passionate defence, depending on the context it is viewed in, context being the ‘time, place or mindset in which we consume media products’ (Williams, 2002, p. 1). Film critic Joe Bob Briggs believes that the film was ‘destroyed by critics, in particular by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’ (Crowdus, 2003, p. 32), Ebert called the film ‘an expression of the most diseased and perverted darker human natures’ while Siskel suggested the movie would encourage people to commit rape (Crowdus, 2003, p. 32). Ebert criticised I Spit on Your Grave as ‘a film without a shred of artistic distinction’ (Ebert, 1980, p. 1) because of the context in which he viewed it; he watched it under the impression that it was supposed to be a sleazy exploitation movie, and he viewed it in a theatre full of what he believed to be ‘vicarious sex criminals’ (Ebert, 1980, p. 1). The bulk of his review focuses on the audience, and this colours his judgement of the film; he states that ‘as a critic, I have never condemned the use of violence in films if I felt the filmmakers had an artistic reason for employing it. "I Spit on Your Grave" does not.’ (Ebert, 1980, p. 1). Ebert reviewed a similar rape and revenge film much later on in his career titled Irreversible (2002); both films share in common extended  sequences of brutal and unflinching rape, however, Ebert applauds Irreversible’s artistic merit due to its reverse chronological structure ‘which makes Irreversible a film that structurally argues against rape and violence’ (Ebert, 2003, p. 1). Lacey (2009, p. 30) suggests that ‘there can be no certainty that the individuals in the audience will read the text in the way it is intended’; which as you are about to discover, is the case with Ebert’s review.

Exactly what message was the filmmaker trying to make you may be wondering? ‘The director honestly thought he was making a feminist film, and an anti-rape film’ (Crowdus, 2003, p. 33), and he initially released it under the title ‘Day of the Woman’, until it was picked up by distributer Jerry Gross, who changed the title to ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ to increase sales. The director, Meir Zarchi states that ‘when they announced the title I Spit on Your Grave, I hated it and I still do’ (Fidler, 2009, p. 40). Zarchi explains in his commentary for the DVD that the film was born from a personal encounter with a rape victim in New York City in October 1974, who he described as ‘a young woman, around eighteen or nineteen, totally naked, a walking corpse covered in mud and blood. She was still in shock and struggled to talk through her broken jaw’ (Fidler, 2009, p. 50). Zarchi took her to the police station to report the crime, but received no help from the uninterested police officer; interestingly the remake includes a police officer as one of the rapists. As a result of this experience, the female victim in the movie cleans her own wounds after her repeated attacks, and then ‘embarks on a quest of vigilante vengeance, what Zarchi might have seen as the only solution to such injustice’ (Karminski, 2010, p. 6). In light of this context, the film can be seen as a misunderstood text, considering it was initially made to represent the reality and horror of rape and to make a bold feminist statement, as evidenced by the strength of the female character and her justice against her attackers in the final act of the movie. Despite this, the film has been heavily criticised for the enormous length of the rape scenes in the movie; however, Briggs asserts that this is due to exploitation cinema being more honest, direct and confrontational than mainstream cinema, which explains why the film presented the brutality of rape in its raw and unedited form. Briggs suggests that ‘Hollywood doesn’t have a problem with murder but they do have a problem with rape,’ (Fidler, 2009, p. 50) which is clearly evident in the remake’s shying away from the savageness of the rape act, and the intensifying of the ultraviolent revenge scenes. Dawson (2002, p. 1) asserts that the remake did this in good reason as ‘film and media don’t merely report on social reality but actively help to produce it. Thus films such as [I Spit on Your Grave] contribute towards the reproduction of a cultural milieu in which the reality of rape becomes conceivable’.

 

I will be using Mulvey’s (2009, p. 309) interpretation of  ‘voyeurism’ as ‘the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film’, Mulvey (2009, p. 314) further breaks down this voyeuristic gaze into three parts, the camera, the audience, and the characters in the film, which I will examine in I Spit on Your Grave. The two above images of the men leering at the female protagonist in the film are examples of the ‘male gaze’, which is ‘the voyeuristic way men look at women’ (Merskin, 2006, p. 203). The image on the right is from the original, and utilises a low camera angle to represent the power of his masculinity and the submission of the woman, as the man is seen to be looking down at her while she is forced to look up at him. However, the camera angle cannot be defined as identifying with the male, as the entire film is shot from the perspective of the woman, and not her attackers. Hence why the camera angle shows what the woman is seeing, and not the male. Because of the original’s lack of a ‘male gaze’, the remake included one of the attackers filming the rape scenes with a video camera. In doing this, the screen occasionally shifts from the woman’s point of view, which is what the main cameras are filming, to the point of view of the attackers, which is what the handheld camera is filming. This adds an element of voyeurism which was missing in the first film. Towards the end of the remake, Jennifer turns the camera back onto her attackers and films them being tortured, therefore redirecting the male gaze back at them. The image at the top, from the original, depicts the woman confronting this male gaze in a powerful way. Apart from the inclusion of the hand held camera in the remake, both films identify only with the female victim. The camera favours her point of view throughout, and in the original the camera never leaves her, staying with her even after her brutal rape to watch her recovery, rather than shifting to see what the ‘bad guys’ are doing. The audience also doesn’t identify with the attackers, and cannot gaze at the woman voyeuristically as ‘there is nothing remotely sexual or titillating about the film, which emphasizes the brutality of the rape scenes’ (Crowdus, 2003, p. 32). The original film also had little dialogue and absolutely no music score except for the sound of the environment and its actors; it was portrayed as a very real depiction of rape in an almost documentary like style, all shown in one take. Both films dedicate the first 20 minutes to identifying the female character Jennifer Hill as ‘an independent woman, a professional woman, an artist who goes her own way’ (Crowdus, 2003, p. 33). There is a scene in the film where Jennifer, upon arriving at her cabin, takes her clothes off and skinny dips into the water. Joe Briggs argues that ‘if Meir Zarchi was making a sleaze film, told from the point of view of the leering male gaze, which is what he’s been accused of, what would he do here? He would show every bead of water on her breasts and have her do the backstroke. Instead what does he do? The longest of all long shots in the history of all long shots’ (Fidler, 2009, p. 47), in this scene, the camera doesn’t zoom in on Jennifer’s naked body, but instead veers off into the distance, perhaps to represent that somebody is watching her, the ‘male gaze’, however, the camera and the audience are completely detached from the point of view of the criminals and are therefore not allowed their voyeuristic sight.

The only obviously voyeuristic elements of both these films are found in the posters, which show the female body from behind, with her clothes ripped to reveal her buttocks. Merskin (2006, p. 209) suggests that in this context the viewer can gaze for as long as he likes, ‘permitted by the photos reassurance that the woman is unaware of his look’. These posters contend with Merskin’s (2006, p. 203) view that ‘female identity in advertising is almost exclusively defined in terms of female sexual identity’, which can be clearly seen in the images portrayal of the female victim as being sexy, even though she has just been brutalised. However, this is only evident in the film’s advertising, as it was marketed this way to increase sales, and considering that ‘sex had become the commodity used by advertisers competing for consumers’ attention’ (Merskin, 2006, p. 203), it is no surprise that this was exploited. In fact, there’s a good chance that the film wouldn’t have been popular enough for a remake if it wasn’t for the original’s provocative front cover, which it is known for. The fact that the remake decided to use an almost exact replica of the original’s poster suggests that ‘the use of sexual imagery in advertising… shows no signs of slowing’ (Merskin, 2006, p. 215). 

In conclusion, this exploration of the film I Spit on Your Grave and its remake aims to establish the cultural significance of the films initial release in the 70s along with its predecessor Last House on the Left, and its recent reimagining. It is clear that the film was created with the intention to open the viewer’s eyes to the reality of rape and violence against women, which is an undeniable shadow of human nature that exists and stalks society to this very day. The essay also sheds light on the various interpretations of the film, some of which have been lost in translation due to the context in which the film was advertised. The essay also explores the feminist qualities which the film possesses and how these were represented through the camera angles favouring the female’s point of view. I will end my essay with Joe Briggs opening line of his commentary for I Spit on Your Grave, ‘what we’re going to decide here is, is this the most disgusting movie ever made or is it the most feminist movie ever made?’ (Fidler, 2009, p. 38)

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Barrett, P., 2006, ‘White Thumbs, Black Bodies: Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Fantasies,  Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ , The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 95-119.

Becker, M., 2006, ‘A Point of Little Hope: Hippie Horror Films and the Politics of Ambivalence’, The Velvet Light Trap, Vol. 57, pp. 42-59.

Blastr 2009, Wes Craven on why Last House on the Left is a remake for our times, Blastr, 20 February, viewed 20 May 2011 <http://blastr.com/2009/02/wes-craven-on-why-last-house-on-the-left-is-a-remake-for-our-times.php> 

BluRayMedia 2011, ‘I Spit on Your Grave Remake Video Camera [image] in I Spit on Your Grave (2010) Screenshots, viewed 18 May 2011, < http://bluraymedia.ign.com/bluray/image/article/114/1147866/i-spit-on-your-grave-2010-20110204101524859_640w.jpg>

Craven, W 1972, Last House on the Left [DVD], Director W Craven, Hallmark Releasing Corp, United States

Crowdus, G., 2003, ‘Cult Films Commentary Tracks and Censorious Critics an Interview with John Bloom’, Black and White Photographs, Vol. 28, No. 32-34.

Dawson, L., 2002, ‘No defence for rape scenes’, Europe Intelligence Wire, October 26, 2002.

Ebert, R., 1980, I Spit on Your Grave Review, viewed 20 May 2011, <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19800716/REVIEWS/7160301/1023>.

Ebert, R., 2003, Irreversible Review, viewed 20 May 2011, <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030314/REVIEWS/303140303/102>.

Fidler, T., 2009, ‘Joe Bob Briggs and the Critical Commentary on I Spit on Your Grave’, Colloquy Text Theory Critique, Vol. 18, pp. 38-58.

Gibney, A 2007, Taxi to the Darkside [DVD], Director A Gibney, THINKFilm, United States.

Groening, M., 1995, The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season [DVD]. 20th Century Fox, United States.

Hall, S., 1997, ‘The Work of Representation’, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, Sage, London, pp. 15-64.

Hamid, R., Lucia, C., & Porton, R., 2009, ‘The Horror of it All’, Cineaste, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp.2.

HorrorTalk 2007, ‘I Spit on Your Grave – Male Gaze’ [image] in I Spit on Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman), viewed 19 May 2011, http://www.horrortalk.com/reviews/ISpitonyourGrave/ISOYG28.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghrn_ENnnlgoUJzVnKqEsaA9yGlPYSRTDgynA-d3wQ334jPCfO2hsbE-OOara2MkcWJgB0_XHKjFCHecD_0qjln2z_iigi_UdnH68FGoQLbT9E8_Jcqxpr5ZNrQgeJnVyjMBLyj1C2rP4S/s1600/i_spit_on_your_grave.jpg

Iliadis, D 2009, Last House on the Left [DVD], Director D Iliadis, Rogue Pictures, United States

Kaminski, M., 2010, ‘Is I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE Really a Misunderstood Feminist Film?’, viewed 19 May 2011, < http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/features/is-i-spit-on-your-grave-really-a-misunderstood-feminist-film.php >.

Lizardi, Ryan., 2010, ‘Re-Imagining’ Hegemony and Misogny in the Contemporary Slasher Remake, The Journal of popular film and television, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 113-121.

Macionis, J.J. & Plummer, K 2008, ‘Sociology: A Global Introduction’, 4th edition, Prentice-Hall, New York.

Merskin, D., 2006, ‘Where Are the Clothes? The Pornographic Gaze in Mainstream American Fashion Advertising’, Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing, ed. Reichert, T. & Lambiase, J., Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, Mahwah, pp. 199-217.

Monroe, S.R. 2010, I Spit on Your Grave [DVD], Director S.R. Monroe, Anchor Bay Entertainment, United States.

Mulvey, L., 2009, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Visual and Other Pleasures, 2^nd Edition, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, pp. 303-315

ObsessedWithFilm 2010, ‘Day of the Woman’ viewed 19 May 2011, <http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/wp-content/photos/Dayofthewoman.jpg>

ObsessedWithFilm 2010, ‘I Spit on Your Grave – Confronting the Male Gaze’ [image] in Is I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE Really a Misunderstood Feminist Film?, viewed 19 May 2011, <http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/i-spit-on-your-grave-obsessedwithfilm.jpg>

Sharrett, C., 2009, ‘The Problem of Saw: “Torture Porn” and the Conservatism of Contemporary Horror Films, Cineaste, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 32-37.

Stadler, J. & McWilliam, K., 2009, ‘Screen Narratives: Traditions and Trends’, Screen Media: Analysing Film and Television, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, pp. 155-182

TipTopTens 2011, ‘I Spit on Your Grave Remake Cover [image] in Top Ten Unrated Movies to Watch, viewed 18 May 2011, < http://www.tiptoptens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/I-SPIT-on-your-GRAVE-Unrate-Movie.jpg>

Williams, R., 2002, ‘Media Studies Glossary’, Royton & Crompton School, pp. 1-2.

Zarchi, M 1978, I Spit on Your Grave [DVD], Director M Zarchi, Cinemagic Pictures, United States.

Week 07: Looking

  THIS POST HAS A NEW HOME
  


This Week’s reading is an excerpt from Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish which explores the prison system and how it was born out of the security imposed upon the ‘plague-stricken town’ of the seventeenth century (Foucault, 1997, p.205). Foucault also introduces the reader to Bentham’s design of the Panopticon, which is a cylindrical wall of prison cells with a large tower at its centre. In this analysis of the week’s reading I will outline the basic points that Foucault is making and make some connections of my own drawing from media and literature sources, I will also add to Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon by drawing on its symbolic connotations and how they relate to the prison system, the individual and society as a whole. Word?

The reading begins with Foucault describing a typical scene of a seventeenth century town that has been contaminated with the plague. The writer vividly illustrates the process of security that is put in place to avoid further contamination, and in doing so sets up the reader to notice similarities between what is being described, and what we know of the modern day prison system through books, movies and crazies on the street. Foucault states that every town inhabitant must stay indoors while the front door is locked from the outside; ‘each individual is fixed in his place. And if he moves, he does so at the risk of his life, contagion or punishment… only the intendants, syndics and guards will move about the streets’. (Foucault, 1997, p. 195) This is very similar to what is done in prisons during ‘lights out’; all the prisoners are made to go back into their cell which is then locked, while only the guards and officials remain on the prison grounds to patrol. Foucault (1997, p. 196) continues by detailing the guards stationed in observation towers at each of the town gates, in the town hall and in every quarter to ensure that the town people are obedient and comply to the rules, and ‘also to observe all disorder, theft and extortion’, it is clearer than sky now that the prison was born out of this seventeenth century scene, which even has townspeople being summoned to their windows for the daily roll call. Prior to reading this weeks reading the word plague had always conjured up funny images of Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s (1975) ‘bring out your dead’ scene, but never images of a disciplined society reminiscent of a prison. Thanks a lot Foucault!

The film Bad Boys (1983), a movie sadly swept under the rug due to Martin Lawrence and Will Smith’s movie of the same title, revolves around the actions of Sean Penn’s character Mick O’Brien, a boy who gets sent to a juvenile detention center for committing a crime: I will use this movie to make some comparisons with Foucault’s text. The movie contains all of the elements that are present in Foucault’s (1997, p. 196) description of the ‘system of permanent registration’, the juvenile detention center has the lights out, the daily roll calls, the guards on patrol and keeping watch in the observation post, solitary confinement and also as Foucault (1997, p. 197) describes ‘the process of purifying the houses one by one’ which takes the form of regular room inspections, in which the cells are purified of any contraband such as drugs and weapons. If the plague riddled town is a ‘compact model of the disciplinary system’ (Foucualt, 1997, p. 197) then the juvenile detention center serves as a small scale model. Foucault (1997, p. 198) makes a point that the plague gave rise to this model, while the leper, or plague infected person gave rise to the ‘great confinement’, which in modern times is referred to as solitary confinement. The idea of exiling the leper to solitary confinement stems from the fear that he might infect other townspeople, in the case of modern day prisons solitary confinement has a similar agenda; to make sure that the often violent nature of the individual in question is not at risk of tainting the minds of the other reforming criminals. 

An obvious example of such treatment in modern media would be the film Silence of the Lambs (1991) which depicts the dangerous and fictional cannibal Dr Hannibal Lector completely isolated in a glass room, in which he can be observed safely and kept at a considerable distance from any other people. Dr Hannibal was ‘cut off from all human contact’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 198) and treated as a plague-victim; a monster plagued by insanity. Due to the severity of his disease his cell was the only one in the prison to be made of glass, this process of ‘individualisation to mark exclusion’ as described by Foucault (1997, p. 198) was used frequently by disciplinary power from the beginning of the nineteenth century in prisons and asylums. Binary division was also regularly exercised, which is the branding of a patient or prisoner as either being sane or insane, dangerous or harmless etc. In the film Dr Hannibal lector, an ex-psychiatrist, seems perfectly sane in the way he talks and presents himself when compared to some of the other prisoners, however he is labelled as insane due to his violent behaviour, is it right then to label someone based on their behaviour? After all meaning is all relative, the character Rachel Solando in Martin Scorcese’s Shutter Island (2010) emphasises the branding predicament when she says ‘once you’re declared insane, then anything you do is called part of that insanity, reasonable protests are denial. Valid fears, paranoia’.

Now it’s time to dissect the meat of the reading, which is Bentham’s Panopticon which was an architectural design implemented in prisons, essentially the Panopticon was a large central tower which was surrounded by a circular wall of prison cells, the tower was structured and positioned in such a way that the prisoners could not see observer inside the tower, but he could see them. This all seeing eye of the Panopticon had the power to ‘induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’ (Foucault, 1997. P. 201), its power was derived from its duality of being visible and at the same time unverifiable. The prisoner could always see the tower, and even in the darkness could see its tall outline, however the prisoner would never know if he was actually being looked at, but the presence of the tower made him always assume that he was. Technically a guard didn’t even have to be inside the tower, because the towers purpose was ultimately not to watch, but to make the prisoners watch themselves. The fortress like prisons of the past were no longer necessary in the light of the Panopticon, which sought to replace the old ‘houses of security’ with a ‘house of certainty’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 202). This should be considered a good thing considering it eliminates the need for ‘ruined prisons, littered with mechanisms of torture’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 205) which I had the chance to witness in SE Asia, the infamous S21 prison in Cambodia which was a high school transformed into a torture factory by Pol Pot during the Khmer Rouge’s reign or power, and the Bang Kwang prison in Thailand, nicknamed Big Tiger due to its fierce and violent reputation.

Foucault (1997, p. 207) states that anyone can come in any exercise surveillance control in the Panopticon tower if they wish, to observe the process of observation, any member of the public can come into the prison and see how the whole thing is run. In the film Bad Boys (1983), Sean Penn’s character is taken to a ‘major league’ prison in an effort to scare him into not causing any more trouble in the juvenile detention center, the prison just so happens to be a Panopticon set up and as the camera pans around the circular room, never losing its fix on the central tower, you can sense the powerful presence of the Panopticon as all the prisoners are fixing their gaze upon it. Foucault (1997, p. 207) argues that due to the fact that any member of society can observe the disciplinary mechanism, there is no risk ‘that the increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny’. I somewhat disagree with this assertion, as it doesn’t matter who you have in the tower, whether it be a guard, a school boy, or nobody at all, the power of the ‘panoptic machine’ still exists. Sure it may be comforting to know that the machine is ‘democratically controlled’ but to what extent is it really? The ‘panoptic schema’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 206) is an archetype of observation that has existed as long as religion. The eye that observes all our behaviour and judges it, but which we cannot see ourselves, is a common trait of the many omniscient Gods of religion. People cannot see God, yet they still sense his presence and carefully watch and moderate their actions and thoughts out of fear of being punished by him or her, in this life or the next. This eye of God has been replaced by the eye of law which ensures that people follow laws and act as though a cop is lurking behind every tree and street corner, despite the fact that they are often not. One can’t help but draw comparisons between the Panopticon structure of the prison and the panoptic symbol of law present in society. One also can’t help but relate all this to George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) which depicts a dystopian panoptic society run by Big Brother, the all seeing eye which watches every move and thought, which results in people supressing their thoughts and carefully watching their actions as they are always under the spotlight. 

Foucault (1997, p. 204) mentions that the ‘Panopticon may even provide an apparatus for serving its own mechanisms’, in saying this he means it in the literal sense that you can use it to observe or spy on all the employees as well as the prisoners, but I am going to swim away from these shallow waters and into the deep end by taking his words symbolically. Foucault believes the ‘Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power. Thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it gains an efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men’s behaviour’, the Panopticon serves as a microscope in which man can be put under and observed, but on the flip side one can use it to observe himself, but I’m not talking in the sense of careful observation of one’s own behaviour to avoid punishment, but in the observation of the mind. Vipassana, which literally means insight, is India’s oldest meditation technique which was discovered by Gautama Siddhartha Buddha more than 2500 years ago. The technique is referred to as ‘the art of living’ and involves self-transformation through self-observation, breaking down impurities of thought to leave the meditator liberated from negative feelings such as hatred and anger. By engaging in Vipassana meditation the subject takes advantage of the panoptic power of the mind to carefully scan and observe and eventually untie the knots of tension that are within us. The body and mind is a perfect metaphor for the Panopticon, our body is the tower while our mind is the unseen observer inside, which we can never physically see but always observes ourselves and others around us. Through Vipassana meditation one can enter the tower and focus its energy on alleviating fear rather than creating it. You are probably wondering what any of this has to do with the topic of prison. I agree, which is why I’m going to use this opportunity to link this point to a documentary titled Doing Time, Doing Vipassana (1997). The documentary is based in India’s largest prison, Tihar Jail outside of New Delhi, which contains 10,000 prisoners, 9,000 of which are still awaiting their trial, the narrator comments that ‘a pickpocket may find himself waiting 6 years to receive a 1 year sentence’. This prison was the birthplace of one of the most radical experiments to be conducted in a prison environment, the replacement of standard practices of discipline with Vipassana meditation in an effort to reform the imprisoned individual. ‘We are all prisoners undergoing a life sentence, imprisoned by our own minds… hostages of our anger, fear, desire’ (Doing Time, Doing Vipassana, 1997), in an effort to help the prisoners come to terms with their negative feelings and actually commit a positive change within themselves, the prison implemented the 10 day Vipassana course, in which prisoners would not be allowed to talk for the entire duration, and would meditate for 10 hours a day.  Vipassana teacher Ram Singh asserts that the prisoners ‘will not live in jail all through their lives, they will come out in the society, and if they are not reformed they will commit more crimes’, this is why it is essential to do something radical to help reform the prisoner and keep him out of jail, but not as radical as the Ludovico technique portrayed in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) which brainwashes the prisoner into not committing any crime.

The 10 day Vipassana course accommodated 1000 prisoners, which is the largest group meditation ever conducted, and after the course the Inspector General Kiran Bedi states that the course ‘actually changed people, it made [the] prisoners weep, it made them cry, they had realised what life could actually be, they had looked within, and within themselves they had seen the feeling of revenge, they had seen anger… and they wept, they wanted to be different’. Prisoners who previously denied they had done anything wrong, and assumed that they hadn’t hurt society, but rather society had hurt them, could now see and acknowledge the damage they had done, and ‘that realisation was the greatest magic’. You might be thinking, sure that’s all well and good for India, but what about the western prison? Valid point, another documentary was filmed later titled Dhamma Brothers (2007) documented the reproduction of the Vipassana course in Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama, which produced very similar results, the course was described as being like ‘a prisoner going into lockup, but in a good way’ and was actually based on a stricter schedule than the one the prisoners were used to. In a way Vipassana meditation contains all the methods of discipline that are outlined in Foucault’s book, after all meditating 10 hours a day for 10 days with absolutely no talking is one of the most disciplined activities one can partake in, it is also a form of solitary confinement in the sense that even if you are surrounded by others, the entire time you are enclosed within yourself, exploring your own mind. And finally Vipassana serves as a Panopticon of the prisoner’s mind, could meditation be the future for prisons and the disciplinary system? One would hope that introspection will eventually replace surveillance in the Panopticon of the future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Ariel, E & Menahemi, A 1997, Doing Time Doing Vipassana [DVD], Director E Ariel & A Menahemi, Karuna Films, India.

Demme, J 1991, Silence of the Lambs [DVD], Director J Demme, Orion Pictures, United States.

Foucault, M., 1977, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan, Penguin, London, pp. 195-228.

Gilliam, T & Jones, T 1975, Monty Python and the Holy Grail [DVD], Director T Gilliam & T Jones, EMI Films, United Kingdom.

Kubrick, S 1971, A Clockwork Orange [DVD], Director S Kubrick, Warner Bros., United States.

Orwell, G 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Secker and Warburg, London.

Phillips, J, Kukura, A & Marie-Stein, A 2007, The Dhamma Brothers [DVD], Director J Phillips, A Kukura & A Marie-Stein, Northern Light Productions, United States.

Rosenthal, R 1983, Bad Boys [DVD], Director R Rosenthal, Universal Pictures, United States.

Scorcese, M 2010, Shutter Island [DVD], Director M Scorcese, Paramount Pictures, United States.

Week 05: Mediating

 THIS POST NOW HAS A NEW HOME:

This week’s reading by Geoff King, titled '"Just Like a Movie"?: 9/11 and Hollywoood Spectacle’ examines the events of September 11 through a Hollywood perspective by comparing the attack on the World Trade Center to action movies such as Independence Day (1996) and The Matrix (1999). In doing this King (2005, p.47) argues that ‘there are some overlaps between ‘real’ images … and fictional images, specifically those from a kind of Hollywood cinema.’ King goes to great lengths to establish the similarities between the 9/11 attacks and Hollywood action movies, using words such as ‘fireball’, ‘huge dust cloud’, ‘impact’, and ‘collapse’ to colour the falling of the twin towers which he often refers to as ‘scenes’ and ‘images’. By using this language to describe the events of 9/11 King helps to establish his comparison between the reality of the attacks and the unreality of ‘Hollywood fantasy’ (King, 2005, p. 47), but his evidence to support this idea is not very concrete, rather he coaches the reader into assuming his viewpoint by making statements such as ‘It did not take long for a villain, Osama Bin Laden, to be suggested… to create some kind of narrative context for the events’, the writer deliberately phrases Osama Bin Laden as a villain to make the events of reality seem like the construct of fiction, as though the 9/11 attacks were merely a scene from a Hollywood movie script. Just in case the reader hadn’t made this connection King (2005, p. 51) finishes off by saying ‘again, [this is] something that would be expected in a movie’ (King, 2005, p. 51).

King attempts to explain the differences between the real news footage of the September 11 attacks and Hollywood movies by suggesting that real news footage is usually accompanied by interviews and commentary which help to distinguish it from fiction, he then doubts what he just wrote by saying ‘these are not absolute guarantors of authenticity, given that such devices are sometimes used in fictional works, precisely because of their power to evoke an impression of the real’ (King, 2005, p. 49). King (2005, p. 50) further suggests that ‘shaky camerawork, dodgy focus or awkward zooms… signify that events have not been staged’, however this is also not always the case. The notorious exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust (1980) directed by Ruggero Deodato uses these very camera techniques to tell the story of a missing group of documentary filmmakers who set out the film primitive cannibal tribes of the Amazon. The movie begins with an American anthropologist who finds the footage that the filmmakers had left behind in their trail; the rest of the movie takes place in a screening room where the anthropologist views the footage to discover the fate of the filmmakers. The footage utilises very amateur film techniques and due to this and its graphic content, viewers of the movie had a hard time distinguishing it from reality, shortly after its release the director was charged for making a snuff film and had to prove in court that the film was a work of fiction and not reality. While this example might not be very useful in the context given that it is not a Hollywood movie, it’s popularity did spawn a very famous Hollywood film called The Blair Witch Project (1999) which utilised the same amateur camera technique and narrative structure.

This brings up an important question which King (2005, p. 47) briefly touches on when he mentions the ‘blurring of boundaries between the world of reality and that of media spectacle’, that is how do we distinguish fiction from reality? When we watch television where do we draw the line and say this is real and this is not? David Cronenberg’s film Videodrome (1983) explores this question and in doing so blurs the line significantly, the film follows Max, the president of a smut television channel who’s in search of something raw and cutting edge which will ‘break through’ and attract a larger audience. He stumbles upon a pirate leak of a snuff television broadcast, but he assumes it’s just ‘incredibly realistic’ and is eager to get it on his show, the rest of the movie shatters the audiences concept of what is real and what isn’t through Max’s obsession with the snuff show which takes his hold on reality. A character in the movie Prof. Brian Oblivion delivers a quote which sums up the movie’s message quite well, ‘the television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye… therefore whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality, and reality is less than television’ (Videodrome, 1983). This suggests that what we view on television may as well be reality, which explains why people are generally fascinated by watching grotesque and fantastical things on the big screen, because these are things that they can enjoy safely without having to actually experience it. Therefore television becomes ‘a harmless outlet for [our] fantasises and frustrations’ (Videodrome, 1983), this directly links up with King’s (2005, p. 48) point that Hollywood films ‘offer enjoyable fantasies of destruction: enjoyable precisely because they can be safely indulged in the arena of fantasy’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Cronenberg, D 1983, Videodrome [DVD], Director D Cronenberg, Universal Studios, Canada.

Deodato, R 1980, Cannibal Holocaust [DVD], Director R Deodato, Grindhouse Releasing, Italy.

King, G., 2005, '"Just Like a Movie?: 9/11 and Holywood Spectacle' The Spectacle of the Real: From Holywood to Reality TV and Beyond, ed. Geoff King, Intellect Books, Bristol, pp. 47-57.

Week 03: Reading

 THIS POST CAN NOW BE FOUND HERE

This week’s reading by Stadler & McWilliam, titled Screen Narratives: Traditions and Trends, dissects the patterns and structures of film, television and game narratives. Stadler & McWilliam take the reader on a journey through the history of screen narrative, from the traditional three-act narrative to the fragmented and multi-strand narratives that have become increasingly popular since Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). Stadler & McWilliam differentiate between the terms plot and story, which are often confused as meaning the same thing, and they also introduce the structuralism technique for analysing narratives, using the movie Natural Born Killers (1994) as an example. The authors then compare film narrative with television narrative and finish off by exploring the narrative found in video games.

Stadler & McWilliam (2009, p. 156) suggest that movies such as Crash (2004), Babel (2006) and Pulp Fiction (1994) indicate that screen narratives are ‘becoming more complex, adventurous and experimental’, compared to the classical narration style which typically follow a three-act structure (beginning, middle and end), fragmented narratives are often ‘broken up into jumbled segments featuring an array of characters in different places or non-sequential timelines’ (Stadler & McWilliam, 2009, p. 157). I’ll draw from the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) to illustrate this style of narrative structure. The movie begins with Jim Carrey’s character Joel Barish waking up in his bed, he then skips work and catches the train to Montauk. Upon arriving he sits on the beach and opens his diary only to notice pages missing that he doesn’t remember ripping out, ‘it appears this is my first entry in two years’ he thinks to himself. Later he meets a girl with blue hair called Clementine and they appear to hit it off.

The audience would assume at this stage that the movie is running in a sequential order that is characteristic of the classical narration style, but this idea is shot down fairly suddenly. Joel is seen parked outside his girlfriend’s house when a man walks up to his car and asks him what he’s doing there, the scene then jumps to Joel driving in the night, crying over what we expect to be the eventual breakup of his new relationship. We eventually discover that he was crying because his girlfriend had her memory of their relationship completely erased, out of sadness and rage he goes to the clinic that erased her memory and asks them to do the same for him. Joel is asleep for the rest of the movie while scientists on computers attempt to erase his past relationship, the narrative then shifts from memory to memory of the good and bad times that they had together. Eventually he wakes up and has completely forgotten about Clementine, and the audience soon discovers that the sequence of events that then follow lead to the events of the beginning of the movie.

Rather than showing the story in a chronological order the fragmented style of narrative instead chooses to scatter the scenes onto the floor, forcing the audience to put the pieces together themselves. The film showcases a circular structure, which suggests that ‘the problems of the narrative are not solvable, but are part of an inevitable, ongoing cycle’ (Stradler & McWilliam, 2009, p. 161.) The movie begins with Joel meeting a girl for assumedly the first time, but by the end we realise that they had already met before, however the question of how many times they’ve met prior is never clear. It is apparent that they will continue to meet, fall in love, erase each other from their memories and then repeat the cycle over and over again.  Stadler & McWilliam (2009, p. 160) also differentiate between the meaning of plot and story; story is ‘a chronological sequence of cause and effect that the audience actively infers from the raw material of the plot’, while the plot is the way the story unfolds on the screen. In the case of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) the story is basically boy meets girl, they fall in love, they fall out of love and have their memories of each other erased, boy meets girl again and the cycle continues. But the plot of the movie is not shown in that order, rather it is revealed to us through the clever use of flashbacks (analepsis) and scene fragmentation (anachrony).

Stadler & McWilliam (2009, p.161) introduce to the reader a style of narrative analysis called structuralism, which rather than focusing on the structure of a story it instead draws attention to its semiotics (signs) and the underlying myths that are present: myths being ‘stories that encode and naturalise the belief structures of a society’. Joseph Campbell was an American mythologist and writer who spent the majority of his life examining the myths of many cultures which are present in nearly all texts, from religion to fairy tales. George Lucas was inspired by Campbell’s novel ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell, 1949) and turned that inspiration into the classic Star Wars trilogy. In an interview Campbell states ‘George Lucas was using standard mythological figures: the old man as the advisor [which represents] the Japanese sword master… he gives [Luke] not only a physical instrument (lightsaber) but a psychological commitment and a psychological centre (the force)’ and the character Han Solo ‘who begins as a mercenary and ends up as a hero… the adventure evoked the qualities of the character that he hadn’t known he possessed’ (The Power of Myth, 1988). Obi Wan playing the part of the Japanese sword master taking on a student, and teaching him to feel rather than fight is a common theme evident in a lot of texts, some examples include ‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior’ (Millman, 1980) and ‘The Karate Kid’ (1984). Stadler & McWilliam (2009, p.165) state that ‘structuralism itself is based on the assumption that there are patterns shared by all narratives, and a pool of universal stories or myths common to all cultures’, Star Wars is loaded with mythical undertones and classical hero/villain archetypes that are shared by most narratives, and this could be a reason for its huge success as a larger audience can relate to and understand its characters. 

Stadler & McWilliam (2009, p. 172) also go into detail about the narrative style of television, which in contrast to film is ‘ongoing and character driven’ and rarely has a well-defined goal or resolution, due to its drawn out and interrupted structure, rather than having a linear form, television has a serial form which revolves around its audience tuning into the show at a particular time once a week to pick up where the show left off. ‘Television content also tends to be intertextual… incorporating references to other television shows’ often. (Stadler & McWilliam, 2009, p. 173), this is the most obvious in the television cartoon ‘The Simpsons’ which makes numerous subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, movie references in each episode. For example one episode has Lisa conduct an experiment on Bart designed to compare his intelligence to her pet hamster. In one of the experiments she leaves a tray of muffins on his desk, wired up to electric nodes. Each time he touches the muffins he gets an electric shock, but despite the shock he keeps attempting to pick up the muffins, the hamster however learns his lesson after one shock and cowers in the corner. Later on in the episode, Marge asks Bart to get the muffins from the table, which are placed next to each other and have cherries on the top, he reaches up towards them with extended hands and then collapses on the floor, which is a very subtle reference to a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (1971). 

The writers conclude their article by discussing the narratives found in video games, I could go on and on about this topic but I feel I have written too much already so I will also conclude. In conclusion, the writings of Stadler & McWilliam explore the varieties of narrative structures found in nearly every text and also introduce to the reader the tools necessary to analyse and interpret these narrative structures. It is clear that the traditional three-act narrative is evolving rapidly to meet the expectations of an audience which is ‘becoming more sophisticated’ (Stadler & McWilliam, 2009, p.156.) P.S If you haven't seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind then I apologise for spoiling the ending, but to be fair this week's reading ruined the ending of Snakes on a Plane for me!

 BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Avildsen, J G 1984, The Karate Kid [DVD], Director J G Avildsen, Columbia Pictures, United States

Campbell, J., 1988, ‘The Power of Myth, Episode 1: The Hero’s Adventure’, PBS.

Gondry, M 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [DVD], Director M Gondry, Focus Features, United States

Kubrick, S 1971, Clockwork Orange [DVD], Director S Kubrick, Warner Bros, United States

Millman, D 1980, ‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives’, H J Kramer, California.

Stadler, J & McWilliam, K., 2009, ‘Screen Narratives: Traditions and Trends’ Screen Media: Analysing Film and Television, Allen & Unqin, Crows Nest, pp.155-182.