Some Days You Just Can't Get Rid of a Bomb: Bat-Extravaganza Part One

Full Disclosure: I love Batman. I love The Dark Knight Returns, I love The Killing Joke, I love A Serious House on Serious Earth, I love giant pennies, I love the fifth dimension. I love Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I love Adam West, I love Michael Gough, I love Michael Caine, I love Gary Oldman, I believe in Harvey Dent. I love Batman Begins, I ADORE The Dark Knight, and I have never, ever been as excited for a new film as I am about the release of The Dark Knight Rises tomorrow. To put it mildly: I fucking love Batman. Admit it, you love Batman too. Everyone does. Batman's easily the most bankable superhero, with The Dark Knight earning a staggering $1bn worldwide at the box office, the recent Arkham video games receiving widespread critical acclaim as well as commercial success, not to mention Bats' original comic form, in which he has remained in print for over seventy years. Batman is old enough to be your Grandad, and he's still cooler than anything at the cinema this month.  

With the new film about to be released, it might seem an obvious choice to do a retrospective on the previous Batman films, but, as I mentioned last time, that's already been done by better men than I. It goes without saying that Chris Nolan's about-to-be-completed Batman Trilogy is one of the most popular and successful film franchises of the last twenty years, and many remain fond of the idiosyncratic 1989 and 1992 Tim Burton films Batman and Batman Returns. The follow ups, the Joel Schumacher-directed Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, are widely regarded as two of the worst comic book movies ever made. When we think of the 'Batman' films, these are the seven that spring to mind, for better or worse. But there have actually been a total of eleven theatrical, feature-length Batman movies over the years, not including the numerous straight to video animated releases.*

This is not cool.

This is cool.

Over three very special Bat-posts, I want to discuss three of those theatrical films, beginning with the oft-derided-but-pop-culturally-brilliant 1966 Batman: The Movie. Secondly, we'll look at the 1993 Batman: Mask of the Phantasm: the only animated Batman feature to have been released in cinemas, and almost completely forgotten by mainstream audiences. This is a terrible shame, as it's amongst the very best of the Batman films. Following Mask of the Phantasm, I'll round off Bat-Extravaganza with a full review of The Dark Knight Rises. So without further bat-ado, here is:

Batman: The Movie

This may just be the finest magazine cover
I have ever seen, and testament to Batman's cultural impact.

Batman: The Movie is a masterpiece of camp, technicolour silliness. I find it bizarre that when people talk about the 'Batman films', this one is often left out, despite the huge pop-cultural impact it had as a TV show and, later, as a motion picture. Indeed, the litmus test of something being irreversibly ingrained into public consciousness is how often it has been parodied in The Simpsons. Parodying the 1960s iteration of Batman is something that The Simpsons has become particularly adept at. The reason for The Simpsons' multiple bat-parodies is that Batman: The Movie is awesome, and has affected our perception and expectations of comic-book movies more than you might think. The common reason cited for the failures of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin is that they became too camp, like the 1960s version of Batman. Unfortunately anyone who finds themselves repeating this popular but simplistic mantra are wrong, and as a result have missed the fundamental reasons that make those films terrible. I've got news for you, kids: it ain't the camp that makes Schumacher's bat-films crap. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are vacuous, commercial turds made only to sell toys to kids without a shred of heart or creativity. It's not because they're camp. In fact, Batman Forever is less camp than you remember. Admittedly, it did introduce the infamous nipples on the batsuit, was the first Batman film to feature Robin, and included the some of the hammiest villains ever in Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face and Jim Carrey's Riddler. But amongst all the seizure-inducing neon was a lot of Val Kilmer brooding away as Bruce Wayne, tension between Bruce and Dick Grayson and a (relatively) complex love interest in fetishistic psychiatrist Chase Meridian, played by Nicole Kidman. In fact, part of the reason Batman Forever fails is because of its identity crisis. It doesn't know if wants to be a fetish-psycho drama or silly toy advert for kids. These problems with tone don't trouble Batman and Robin: it's just a straight-up pile of dog shit. The writing is crap, the sets are cheap, sub-sy fy channel quality, the constant changing of Bruce and Dick's costumes (steady) is wearying and cynical, and the villains alternate between boring and annoying. But these problems are not because they are camp. It's because they're crap: Batman Forever and Batman and Robin both fail on the levels of camp entertainment and as kids flicks because they're shoddily made, cynical cash grabs with both eyes on the merchandise and none on the script.

Following the disaster of Batman and Robin there has been a tendency in popular discourse to use 'camp' and 'ironically crap' as synonyms, but we really need to cut that shit out, because it gives crap films a free ride on the back of irony, and levels unfair and unjustified criticism at good camp films. Want more evidence? Sam Raimi's first two Spiderman films are rightly regarded as high watermarks of their genre, but you can't get much camper than a man in a green Power Rangers on a flying skateboard, or a fellow with four metallic arms that talk to him and tell him to do bad things. For all its flaws, Spiderman 3** had a killer theme for Spidey's black suit: a brilliant composition in a minor key with everything thrown at it: horns, strings, percussion, woodwind and choral elements. It brilliantly underscores and gives personality to the black-suit sequences, and it's probably my favourite piece of music in the whole franchise (and that's high praise, given how great Danny Elfman's original theme is). But it's also camp as fuck. Listen to it:

Compare that to the Joker's theme in the 60s Batman and try to tell me they're not similar:

When the horns come in on the Spiderman theme they sound an awful lot like the Joker's theme, no? Not convinced? Try this one on for size:

Are you telling me the theme for Batman Forever's Two Face doesn't remind you of Spidey's black suit theme? No, of course you're not because it totally does. Primarily, character themes like these tell us something about who they represent, so with three very similar characters it's unsurprising that their music should resemble one another's. Of course, they're all comic-book movie villains, and two of them are Batman baddies at that. But more importantly, they're all a particular type of villain. You don't associate this kind of music with, for example, Darth Vader, or, tellingly, the Joker in Nolan's The Dark Knight, because those villains are not the same type of camp, dastardly foe found in Batman Forever, Spiderman 3, or indeed, Batman: The Movie. The Dark Knight's Joker is a terrifying, psychotic murderer, and we feel uneasy every time that he is on screen. In contrast, the Joker in Batman: The Movie is deliciously evil, gurning and cackling his way through absurd and comical devilish plans to undo the caped crusader. We revel in his pantomime wickedness, and his music reflects this. What is so absolutely great about the combination of panto-villain performance and music in Batman: The Movie is that its influence is still felt in modern superhero flicks. The reason that the dastardly-villain-music trope still works in something like Spiderman 3, where it's used not to identify a bad guy, but rather, to emphasise an emotional shift in the hero, is because it is already familiar to modern audiences as a trope of bad-guy-music. Using this musical trope alerts audiences to the emotional and narrative development in the scene. Spiderman 3's narrative is largely a disaster, but, here at least, the movie shines with an economy of characterisation and story telling. In the scene where the black-suited Spiderman fights the Sandman in the sewer, everything we need to know about the character, the narrative and the emotion of the scene is given to us in a few bars of music. Everything in that scene works because of a convention for which Batman: The Movie is largely responsible.

The reason that the same musical trope doesn't work in something like Batman Forever isn't because of the camp: it's partly because the tone in that film is all over the place -  moreso even than Spiderman 3. Check out Tommy Lee Jones' performance and you'll see it's far more over the top than anything Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith or Frank Gorshin did in Batman: The Movie. More importantly, it feels out of place for a film that otherwise seems to want to explore some (relatively) interesting psychological themes. In contrast, everything in the 60s version is camp and silly, and so the silly villains and music themes work in context. It's the same reason that the scripts for Spiderman 1 and 2 work well despite being, at times, extremely overwrought and on the nose: it's all to do with tonal consistency. Where Batman Forever is all over the place, the utter silliness of Batman: The Movie is nothing if not consistent.

The plot of Batman: The Movie finds Batman up against four of his infamous rogues gallery, in which the Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman have a weird ray-gun thing they use to dehydrate the members of the council of the United World (a transparent  parallel of the UN) into dust. This, apparently, is the best way of kidnapping the council and thereby taking over the world. The fearsome foursome are hiding out in a submarine, which is inconspicuously disguised as a giant penguin, complete with yellow rubber flippers. The villains spend most of the film alternating between skipping around gurning at each other, blowing up sea creatures and sending Batman and Robin riddles, generally in the form of rockets that can write in the sky. In one of the film's most hilarious scenes, Batman finally realises that the woman he has fallen in love with (over the course of a single evening, mind), 'Miss Kitka' (Kitka, geddit?), is really Catwoman. In a moment of paralysing grief, he stares bong-eyed into the middle distance as distant music plays, before he gathers himself, burying his grief and declaring, 'It's just one of those things in the life of every crimefighter. It means nothing. Snap on the batcuffs'.

Holy heartbreak, Batman! Adam West gives it his all in the film's most emotionally charged moment.

One can only assume this is the expression Bruce Wayne exhibited when as a boy his parents were brutally gunned down in Crime Alley. Batman's boyish vulnerability is juxtaposed with the silliness of, well, everything. Adam West plays the scene absolutely straight, with the whole thing coming together as a wonderfully crafted piece of comedy. This scene, I think, encapsulates precisely why Batman: The Movie works so beautifully. Absolutely everything in the film is daft, silly and funny, from Batman's painted-on eyebrows, to Cesar Romero's joker moustache, the brilliantly ridiculous punning riddles, and of course, this magnificent sequence:

If these things don't bring joy to your bat-heart, then I really think you need to wipe that dull, grey scowl off your face and get a fucking clue. Batman: The Movie is a wonderful, hilarious, thrilling pleasure, and I mean that without irony. Let me be clear: 1966 Batman is not a so-bad-it's-good-movie: it's a brilliant movie. It's just a different kind of brilliant than Burton's gothic aesthetics or Nolan's existentialist grumbling. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are hideous, cynical, heartless cash grabs, made as a marketing ploy to sell toys, and it's utterly unfair to lump Batman: The Movie in with them. Even on a technical level, Batman: The Movie is far superior: the cinematography is sharp and bright. The whole film is colourful and snappy, brilliantly evoking its 1960s era. For those who complain that this is the Batman that destroyed the character's grim and gritty origins in favour of camp pop art, I direct you to 1) pull your heads out of whatever orifices they are inserted, and 2) check out the sci-fi-centric Batman comics of the 1950s, which at times make Batman: The Movie look like an episode of The Wire. If you still cry foul, the episode entitled Legends of The Dark Mite, from the deceptively smart animated show Batman: The Brave and The Bold, should succinctly point out your embarrassing error in judgement.

Every scene in Batman: The Movie involving the villains is full of over-the-top Dutch angles, and as we already know the score is fantastic. The performances are uniformly brilliant: by turns intentionally hammy, dastardly and heroic. In contrast, the Schumacher Batman era is characterised by obnoxious, neon-infused  visuals that add nothing to either the art-deco gothic architecture of Burton's films or the technicolour spectacle of the 60s version. The performances, particularly from the villains, are terrible. Jim Carrey, for example, clearly draws inspiration from Frank Gorshin's 60s version of the Riddler, but while Carrey aims for camp and funny all he hits is irritating in that distinctive mid-90s Mask / Ace Ventura / Dumb and Dumber flavour of grating. Where the sets of Batman: The Movie are full of sight gags, colour and iconic design, Schumacher's sets are crammed with ugly neo-gothic vomit and an overabundance of glow-in-the-dark paint and blacklights. Adam West's Batman inhabits a world of bright colour schemes and composition; a visual style that complement the narrative content. The aesthetics in Schumacher's films are the visual equivalent of a migraine: bright lights flashing at you that serve only as a nauseating visual distraction from the confused and incoherent narrative.  

Although the plot of Batman: The Movie is really a by-line to get the dynamic duo into a series of scraps with the Penguin, Joker, Catwoman and Riddler, the pacing of the film is great, bouncing from exposition to action with a quick and engaging sense of rhythm. The script is hilarious, full of preposterous, alliterative declarations, which are a marvel to listen to. The absurdist 1980 film Airplane! is often credited with cramming more gags into its running time than any other film, but consider that almost every line in Batman's script is written with perfect comic precision. It's really difficult to beat corkers like 'Kindly activate the remote control Penguin magnet', 'Batman, we're helpless in this monstrous invisible grip', and my personal favourite, 'Gosh Batman, the nobility of that almost-human porpoise [...] it was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours'. These three whizzbangers are all delivered in the space of four mere minutes. The scene that immediately follows has Batman ring up the navy to bollock Admiral Fangschliester(!) for selling a 'pre-atomic' submarine to a certain 'P. N. Gywnne'. It begins, as every scene should, with the line 'Hello, Batman speaking', as the Admiral and his perky assistant are interrupted playing a game of tiddlywinks. In just ten seconds they've made a visual gag with the tiddlywinks and gotten in another cracking line from Batman, before concluding the scene with another of Riddler's baffling, nonsensical riddles written in the sky by a missile, 'from that submarine, no doubt', as Batman cunningly deduces. Not a single moment or line is wasted in the effort to keep the story ticking along and the jokes flowing. You might not notice it, but the economy of the whole thing is brilliant, and it really shows up Schumacher's Bat-entries for the flabby, shoddy productions that they are. More to the point, where Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are remembered largely for the fact they buried the Batman film franchise for almost a decade, Batman: The Movie, along with the TV series, remains an iconic piece of pop culture. Nicholas Cage did a great impersonation of Adam West's performance in his role as Big Daddy in  Matthew Vaughn's 2010 superhero spoof Kick-Ass, and even Nolan's Batman series has been influenced by the 60s iteration. Despite Heath Ledger's terrifying take on The Joker in The Dark Knight, there is undoubtedly a touch of Cesar Romero's mania in Ledger's rendition of the Joker's iconic laugh, and check out Anne Hathaway's Catwoman costume and compare it to the 60s version:

Julie Newmar looking very slinky
in a still from the 60s TV series. 

Anne Hathaway in The Dark 
Knight Rises. Look familiar?

In short, everyone remembers the swinging, technicolour Batman, immortalised by Adam West's brilliant performance, terrific theme tune and score, memorable, manic villains, and iconic set designs and art direction. Pointing out that Batman: The Movie is hammy and camp is as redundant as pointing out that Batman Begins is dark. Just because something is camp doesn't mean it isn't good, and Batman: The Movie is a fantastic, unique and blisteringly entertaining addition to the cinematic Bat-canon. Long may it be remain so!

Next time at Magnificent Tramp:
In the next post, which will be appearing in the next few days, I'll be looking at another of the 'forgotten' Batman films, the 1993 animated feature Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, followed closely by a review of Batman's latest derring-do in The Dark Knight Rises.


What can a Batman spin-off from a kids' cartoon possibly offer a modern adult audience? Can Christopher Nolan's new film hope to live up to the Elevated Expectations of the Maleficent Magnificent Tramp? Find out in the next exciting instalment of the Tramp's Bat-Extravaganza, same Bat-Blog, same Bat-Time!

* The complete canon of Batman films released in cinemas, if you're interested, is thus: Batman (1943), and Batman and Robin (1949) - these two were released in cinemas as fifteen-part serials; Batman: The Movie (1966); Batman (1989); Batman Returns (1992); Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993); Batman Forever (1995); Batman and Robin (1997); Batman Begins (2005); The Dark Knight (2008); The Dark Knight Rises (2012). If you're still interested, there have also been loads of animated films and crossovers with Superman and other characters from the DC comics. The non-theatrical films and shorts featuring only Batman are Batman and Mr Freeze: Subzero (1998); Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000); Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003); The Batman versus Dracula (2005); Batman: Gotham Knight (2008); Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010); Batman: Year One (2011). 

** I promise that one day I'll stop bringing up Spiderman 3 in every single article I post. It's just that's it's so rich as an example of a film that potentially had so much going for it, yet went so utterly wrong. Spiderman 3 is a fascinating disaster because it tries until its sticky little gives heart out, but still fails at almost every turn.

Spiderman Returns: In Defence of Reboots

The Amazing Spiderman is out on Tuesday, and while it continues to receive mainly good reviews, currently scoring 79 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, a central problem that many have had leading up to its release is its similarity to Sam Raimi's 2002 take on the origin of Spidey. Reboots have become a regular fixture of blockbuster season, with Mark Webb's new Spiderman next month, followed quickly by Christopher's Nolan's concluding chapter of his Batman reboot (which is sure to be rebooted itself within the next few years), before a new version of Total Recall is released in August. 2009 saw a re-worked version of Star Trek, which with some time-travelling trickery managed to tick the boxes of sequel, prequel and reboot, ensuring big bucks at the box office. Next year we'll get to watch Zack Snyder butcher Superman in The Man of Steel, Supes' second reboot in six years after Bryan Singer's underrated Superman Returns, and there are rumours of a Green Lantern reboot following last year's disappointing effort. 

With Zack Snyder at the helm,
can the new Superman possibly be any good?

As The Amazing Spiderman  demonstrates, reboots are often greeted with wearied groans and accusations of creative laziness and inertia. In many instances, this is true: do we really need another Spidey origin tale so soon after Raimi's version? Why do we need to see Superman fight Zod after he already beat him in 1980's superb Superman II? However, I argue that many reboots are full of new ideas, or at least improve upon old ones. Possibly the best example of this is the film that in many ways is responsible for the term reboot: Batman Begins. Batman Begins is a reboot rather than a remake, in the sense that it tells Batman's origin story without replicating the plot in Tim Burton's 1989 version. Of course, those films share unavoidable story beats, like the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, and recurrent themes like fear, obsession and trauma. But their stylistic approaches and overall narratives are wildly different. The same can be said about JJ Abram's Star Trek reboot, which is successful for the singular reason that it distances itself so greatly from the rest of the franchise. Abram's approach really did mean that this was not your father's Trek. Rather than stifling creativity, Abram's and Nolan's films were two of the most original and exciting blockbusters of the last ten years, precisely because they were reboots. Moreover, who would complain at the 2008 reboot of The Incredible Hulk? Flawed, yes, but a vast improvement on Ang Lee's tedious 2003 attempt at bringing the Hulk to the big screen. In this instance, the reboot serves as a pseudo-sequel, clearly set in a different continuity, but continuing and expanding upon Bruce Banner's story, rather than simply repeating it. 

Without a reboot, this horrifying spectacle would have been the last Batman film.

What I find particularly interesting about the main objections to reboots is that they are the same as those levelled at remakes, which despite their similarities, are very different beasts. By definition, a remake attempts to tell the same story over again, either with minor or major modifications. In contrast, reboots often (though not always) try to tell new stories using characters and scenarios that already exist in the popular consciousness. Comic books have been at this sort of thing for decades, so it's no surprise that it's comic book adaptations that are the franchises being rebooted seemingly ad infinitum. I think a lot of the disapprobation levelled at reboots stems from a confusion over reboots and remakes: there continue to be plenty of rushed, badly thought out remakes that are for some reason labelled as reboots. Last year's Conan the Barbarian is one example, as is the above mentioned Total Recall. Neither of these are really reboots because they are essentially telling the same stories as their originals. Clearly, rebooted franchises are just as susceptible to poor writing, generic direction and stunt casting as any other type of blockbuster, but if reboots are poor it's not because they're reboots: it's because they're crap, just like loads of other crap films that weren't reboots. With tripe like Battleship or Transformers: Dark of the Moon clogging up multiplex screens, it can often feel as if creativity in Hollywood has ground to a halt, but this is not the result or fault of the modern reboot. In fact, reboots frequently offer opportunities to inject vitality into otherwise moribund franchises: we only need to look as far as Star Trek, not to mention the brilliant Bond reboot, Casino Royale, to see the staggeringly positive effects they can have on film series. If we abandon reboots, we have to abandon Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Star Trek, the best bond since Sean Connery, and while we're at it, the best parts of The Avengers. At their best, reboots do what remakes can't by offering new stories and perspectives on familiar concepts. In one respect, reboots conceptually function as an ideal cinema, by making the familiar unfamiliar. Of course, reboots don't necessarily always attain that level of originality, but to level accusations of creative narcolepsy at a film simply because it's a reboot misses the creative potential of reboots altogether. When Spiderman opens on Tuesday, if it fails (and fail it might), it won't be because it's a reboot. If anything, it's got that in its favour.

Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys: The Magnificent Tramp Returns!

Well, it's been almost three whole months since I last updated, but here I am, with about a dozen things I want to talk about. And when I say a dozen, I mean two. Can you guess what they are? Well, one of them is a science fiction film full of Freudian psycho-sexual imagery, and the other one's about Alien. This one will be a clearing away of some of the things I've wanted to post about since April but haven't got around to. It won't be one hundred per cent cohesive, but that's okay because it will all be one hundred per cent fascinating:

1) Prometheus

Prometheus: I GET IT RIDLEY

I suppose this is the big one (and by one, I mean disappointment, and by big, I mean baffling). Everything relevant about Ridley Scott's latest has already been said at this point, particularly here, here, and especially here, so I'm not going to waste time repeating the same observations. Suffice it to say, as it's a Ridley Scott sci fi film it looks gorgeous, but the plot doesn't make a lick of sense, the characters are too numerous and for the most part terribly written and developed, the ending was stupid, and the score was generic, out of place and boring. There has been debate over whether Prometheus' incoherence is the fault of Scott or with the film's writer, Damon Lindelof, but I think they're equally culpable, and many of Scott and Lindelof's recurring problems with narrative coherence and focus surface in this film. To the film's apologists: I really couldn't care less about your lists of  classical and religious references that the film makes. Yes, everyone knows who Prometheus was. Yes, we've heard Ridley say that Jesus was a space jockey (seriously, check it out). I don't care. References to other texts without context or internal logic are meaningless. Grafting cultural imagery on to a film which is fundamentally broken (and boy, is Prometheus broken) will not fix its problems, nor will it imbue the film with any Deep Meaning if there's no meaning in the first place. References only work to enhance meaning in texts, not to add it where it is otherwise missing, and any sense of internal logic or cohesive sub-text is sorely lacking in Prometheus. And to the feeble defence that the sequel will answer all the unanswered questions I say simply this: that's too late for me - I go to the cinema to see a complete film, not an extended trailer for a sequel that may never arrive anyway. Even if it does, will it explain why nobody seems to care when people die? Or that Shaw violently cuts out a horrible squid-monster baby? Or why Charlize couldn't run left? Or a bazillion other crazy behaviours the 'characters' of Prometheus exhibit? No, no it won't so please just admit that it was all a big disappointment and get on with your lives.

2) Batman!

Joel Schumacher:
The bane of Batman's life, geddit?!

And by get on with your lives I mean career with reckless abandon into a new swirl of excitement and anticipation over the other most-hyped film of the year, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. I initially wanted to do a retrospective on all the theatrical Batman movies leading up to TDKR release, but since MovieBob has reached into my mind and nicked my wholly original and not predictable at all idea, I'll just do this little paragraph instead, and maybe something in a couple of weeks on some of the lesser-known / celebrated Bat-flicks. If Nolan pulls this one off, he'll be the first director to have ever made a good superhero / comic book threequel. Spiderman; Superman; er, Batman: all have stumbled at the third block, despite their strong first and second outings. Sure, Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class means that we now have three good X-Men films, and despite a mixed reception I've always liked Bryan Singer's problematic but interesting Superman Returns which acts as a sort of alternative Superman III but with less Richard Pryor. But no one has yet managed to make three consecutive, quality superhero films based on the same character and the same universe. There are multiple reasons for this, but the major one is the studios changing a good director for a shit one in the third instalment. This happened with Superman III (Richard Donner to Richard Lester), the 90s Batman Forever (Tim Burton to Joel Schumacher), and X-Men: The Last Stand (Bryan Singer to Brett Fucking Ratner). I call this phenomenon the Third Movie Dick Move, or TMDM for short. Interestingly, Warner Bros. seems to have pre-empted the TMDM by giving the director's chair in their new Superman: Man of Steel franchise to the Boy Who Never Grew Up, Zack Snyder, whilst relegating old man Chris Nolan to Producer.

My emo sense is tingling: A silly fringe doth not a conflicted hero make

Spiderman 3, although retaining Sam Raimi as director, repeated the other faux pas of the comic book prequel: cramming. What is especially frustrating about Spiderman 3 is that there is a good movie in there somewhere, but it is clogged up with unfunny humour, adolescent whining (admittedly a hallmark of the franchise as a whole), pointless romantic sub-plots, wasted villains and a baffling soap-opera amnesia gimmick that disable the most interesting and well-developed character in the whole fucking franchise for almost the entire running time. And it's these sorts of problems that I worry about for next month's release, The Dark Knight Rises, particularly with regard to the glut of characters. Not only do we have the returning players of Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Lucius Fox, Commissioner Gordon and new villain Bane, but also rookie cop John Blake, Catwoman and Marion Cotillard. Cotillard is listed as playing a character named Miranda Tate, but is widely rumoured to have really been cast as Batman's long-time love interest / antagonist Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Batman Begins' R'as, who was played by Liam Neeson in that film, and who, by the way, is also rumoured to return in TDKR. Phew. So that's a roster of nine, if not ten, major characters, on top of an extensive supporting cast. Admittedly, Nolan is very good with ensemble pieces; his last effort Inception, did a superb job of juggling a large central cast, and his ability to cast actors for the right roles is one his major strengths. Still, those niggling fears of an overstuffed script linger at the back of my mind, and I worry that Cotillard's (not to mention Neeson's) presence in particular may just tip the scales a little too much.

It's unrealistic to expect TDKR to repeat the magic of 2008's The Dark Knight. That film was one of the best action films since Raiders of the Last Ark, one of the best crime films since Heat, and without question the best comic book film ever made. The problem is escalation: Batman Begins gave us a great origin tale; The Dark Knight came back with a great villain in Heath Ledger's monumental Joker. The one mistake that the third film must avoid is to attempt that escalation. Rather, while keeping up the excitement, it absolutely needs to retain the examinations character that underpin, and beautifully conclude, both BB and TDK. The Dark Knight Rises can't possibly hope to replicate the exhilarating success of its predecessor, but if we're lucky it might, just might, be able to follow it with a full and satisfying conclusion. Here's hoping.

April Fools! Camera Obscura: Weird Films from Famous Directors

An uncharacteristically tame still from Capra's Controversy.

I haven't updated in a few weeks, but never fear, as today I've got a special treat for y'all. As you might know, on Thursdays I usually recommend an unusual double bill to watch, but as I've not updated in a while I though I'd do an especially unusual double bill for this week's main post, with two films that are barely known at all. The first is by the legendary director Frank Capra, whose almost completely forgotten Thirteen Nights in Farvardin was made in 1922 but banned before release. The plot follows the adventures of a young woman traveller in the Middle East, and her sexual encounters with (embarassingly stereotyped) Persian men. Each night, Dolores, the central character, is visited by an increasing number of men who seduce her with presents, such as marigold gloves, which were in short supply in the 1920s following a yellow rubber shortage. Indeed, adjusted for inflation, in 1920 just one pair of mid-market marigolds could cost as much as the equivalent of a plane ticket in today's money. The film was banned before release, and all copies were thought lost until 2005, when a restoration team were shocked to find a Capra film which involved hardcore pornography, bondage and one particularly explicit scene with a snake charmer. Dubbed 'Capra's Controversy' by the New York Times, it's thought that after the censorious furore that followed completion of the film, and a stern telling off from long-time friend and collaborator James Stewart, Capra turned his back on erotica for good. It's quite astonishing to see a pornographic film from the director of It's a Wonderful Life and It Happened One Night, and at 4 hours and 17 minutes long, it's an especially lengthy trip into silent erotica.

The second film is a low budget, 1976 arthouse production from Richard Curtis, the writer-director responsible for the TV series Blackadder and the films Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually. This early project was entitled Happy in Paris, but unlike his more recent work, Happy in Paris was an experimental film that explored the effects of psyschotropic drugs on the mind. Positioning himself as a maverick against the studio system, Curtis insisted that his entire cast and crew took LSD throughout the shoot, so as to accurately capture on film the experience of taking acid. Other bizarre requests included that all publicity for the film should be in Danish, and that only egg mayonnaise sandwiches were to be served for lunch, but that crew members were to supply their own bread. The star, French actor Jacques Lauren, said of working with Curtis:

"He is an eggomaniac. And that's not just my accent: the only thing he loves more than himself is eggs. I believe in this project, but Richard's a screwball. Yesterday, he wouldn't shoot until he inspected all of our fingernails for 'contaminants'. Then afterwards he kept blinking very quickly and timing his blinks with a stopwatch. We were there until four in the morning".

Happy in Paris' poster. To keep with the esoteric tone of the film, Curtis insisted that no promotional material should contain the film's name.

Set not in Paris, but rather in Japan, it's about a French ex-pat who finds himself in post-war Japan, and who slowly becomes embroiled in a sub-culture of drug-fuelled karaoke binges and massive scalectrix competitions, with an impressive 43-minute climactic toy-car race, filmed in black and white and with no dialogue or score. Both films are fascinating, if bizarre and confusing experiments, but also I think, both present examples of a fascination with the exotic, that if we look, bear out in the rest of their works. Ironically, despite their rarity in physical form, Thirteen Nights in Farvardin and Happy in Paris are in the public domain and are currently available on Youtube. Check them out for a couple of unusual slices of cinema history.

Films that Everyone Loves but I Hate

Taste is an amorphous, subjective thing, and often separate from the recognition of quality. My favourite film, for example, is Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future, but I'm well aware that it's far from the best film ever made, or even that I've seen. I think you can argue that The Godfather, The Maltese Falcon and The Seventh Seal are objectively 'better' films, but they simply don't conjure in me that magic combination of excitement, nostalgia and wonder that Back to the Future does. That said, Back to the Future is a fine, fine film and if you don't like it you probably need to seriously rethink your life. Films have different meanings for different people, and though I've never bothered with it myself, I understand that The Rocky Horror Picture is a huge cultural touchstone for many people, as is Dirty Dancing, or for others, The Lost Boys, which though I like very much, doesn't strike the same chord with me as it does with many people. However, in the last ten years or so, there have been a few films released that not only utterly disappointed, bored, or angered me, but also, baffled me with their phenomenal popularity. It's not enough that the following films irritate me on their own merit: their incessant and inexplicable popularity exacerbates my already considerable irritation. What's worse is that my dislike of these films is overwhelmingly in the minority, garlanded as they are with major awards, box office success, audience adoration, and critics clamouring to heap praise on them. I have carried around this irritation for years, and now its time to get rid of all that bile, once and for all. What follows are a few examples of popular films that I hate. Enjoy!

1) Pirates of the Caribbean

Following the double disaster of the third and fourth films in this interminable franchise, most people seem to have woken up to the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean is shit. In 2003, when the snappily-titled Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was released, everybody just couldn't wait to say how wonderful, and fun Johnny Depp the film was. Of course, PotC came out when everyone was for some reason obsessed with Depp, but his mugging here just underscores the fact that Depp had long since become a parody of himself, giving a predictably 'wacky' performance as the 'hilarious' Captain Jack Sparrow. PotC was supposed to be a fun, swashbuckling adventure in the tradition of Indiana Jones, but for me, it was just another forgettable action film with boring, staid fight scenes and special effects, a flat, cliched script, and dull characters. And that's before we even consider this charisma vacuum:

Orlando Bloom practising his trademark vacant expression 

Mercifully, Orblando's career seems to have faded back into the ocean of grey from which it emerged, but the boring memories linger on. The mere sight of his cloudy eyes triggers an uncontrollable chemical reaction in my stomach that makes me want to smash the little squirt's squashed-up face in. Here is an actor, so devoid of any discernible personality, talent or ability that he is capable of physically sucking the fun out of any scenario. This guy has starred in movies about pirates, dragons and mythological epic battles and still Bloom can never be found doing anything remotely interesting. Not that that matters in Pirates of the Caribbean, because nothing remotely interesting happens in any of the films anyway.

(500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Being a Shithead Hipster Summer is one of the more offensively vacuous little turds to have recently passed through the guts of Hollywood. Focussed-grouped and market-driven away from any real wit or insight it was packaged as not only as a romantic comedy for guys (switching the stereotyped genders of the cookie-cutter leads around), but also as one that's really honest about relationships (by following the romcom formula to the letter until the end when He doesn't get Her after all). (500) Days of Boredom tricks audiences into thinking they're seeing something original by having the male lead go all gooey over 'wacky' go-to MPDG Zooey Deschanel, a pernicious force of manufactured kook that is about as intriguing and stimulating as a box of all bran with googly eyes glued on to it. Unfortunately for the terrific actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days of Slow Dying stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The writers show that his 'character' is creative and sensitive because he's into The Smiths, and he, like, wants to be an architect, or something. The whole film is like an Ipod advert: it's all very shiny, and wants you to think it's all new and touchy-feely and individual, but really it's the same old commercial vomit they've been serving you for years, except now it's got hand drawn titles and massive earphones. If you want an honest, sincere romcom, just watch High Fidelity instead, it does more or less the same thing except with a bit of class and heart, unlike this vapid garbage.

Zooey Deschanel

A box of All Bran with
googly eyes glued on it

3) Gran Torino

I wanted to like Gran Torino. I really did. Clint Eastwood is one of my favourite actors, he's a great director, and the prospect that this film would probably be the last one in which he acted was simply tantalising. It's a shame, then, that what we got was an overly-simplistic fable about a crotchety old racist who learns to love through an unlikely friendship with a Hmong youth who lives next door. Eastwood's character, Walt Kowalski teaches Thao the value of manual labour and resisting peer pressure, while Thao teaches Kowalski the power of inter-racial fwiendship. Eastwood hams it up as Kowalski, grumbling and growling his way through a performance that is best described as self-parodic, and while the central premise isn't completely without merit, stories of the friendship between a grumpy bastard and a cocky kid have already been done about eight bazillion times.

An example of the subtlety of Clint's performance in Gran Torino.

To be fair to old Clint, he's got a damn fine track record, and he's responsible for some of the best films of his generation, so I'm almost willing to let this one slide. Almost.What I dislike most about Gran Torino is that the film's message seems to be that out-and-out prejudice is wrong, but casual racist language is fine. Hey, it's just banter, it's what working class stiffs do, right? For example, in one particularly cringeworthy scene, the Polish Kowalski exchanges insults with his Jewish barber, before explaining to Thao that it's ok, because they're both immigrants, just like Thao (oh, the IRONY!). Later, in front of Kowalski, Thao is encouraged to verbally abuse the foreman of a building site in order to win his respect, cos hey, this gook's just one of the guys like the rest of us!  Thanks Clint, all these complex urban racial / generational / immigrant / economic tensions could be solved by a bit of simple manly banter. Why didn't I think of it before? Thank you Clint, thank you.

4) Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings can fuck right off. I am fucking sick to death of Frodo and his stupid concerned little face, Gandalf's declarative speechifying and Sean Astin's irritating little lickspittle histrionics. My problem with Lord of the Rings is twofold: primarily the series' intolerable self importance: every overlong scene, every meaningful glare, every overwrought bar of the score that is so utterly satisfied with its grandness, its power, its unquestionable gift to the cinematic art, is profoundly irritating. Secondly, it's the squawking fans of the franchise that seem to rise up like some army of the nasal every time that you so much as hint that you don't have the comically tautological extended editions on repeat in your DVD player. If you're an especially rabid fan, you're probably already foaming at the mouth, confused and enraged that I should dare to desecrate the holiest of holies. You may even be blindly thrashing around your darkened bedroom recklessly knocking over your Warhammer figurines and tearing your World of Warcraft posters off the wall, as panic-stricken, you scrabble  through mountains of tattered copies of  Advanced Dungeons and Dragons manuals and H.P. Lovecraft novels in a futile attempt to make sense of this heresy. The Star Wars prequels that you've got hidden in that compartment at the back of your wardrobe are beginning to shake and moan eerily. Even now, across the land, mountains of tarot cards are being knocked over in blind fury, autographed boxsets of Deep Space Nine are being rent asunder by dozens of gnashing, halitosed teeth. Xbox controllers are smashed, dreamcatchers ripped from their hangings, dousing crystals shattered into plastic shards, and burning incense extinguished by an unstoppable wall of shrill bleating. All because most people have failed to realise that Lord of the Rings is claptrap.

This is honestly the first image that came up when I googled 'Lord of the Rings fanboy'.

All of which amuses and aggrieves me in equal measure because I honestly do not understand these films' astonishing popularity. I think the word 'pretentious' is over-used, but I also think the word 'wank' is probably quite underused so I'm going to compromise and call Lord of the Rings pretentious wank. I only ever made it about half way through the first half of the first book, and then gave up because I noticed a moth doing something more interesting. As a matter of fact, a moth doing nothing would be about as compelling as any given moment in Lord of The Rings because nothing ever happens in it. By the way, running across hilltops every other scene to bombastic music doesn't count, nor does stopping to have something to eat, and nor does the obligatory and entirely predictable third-act battle rendered on such a ludicrously grand scale that's impossible to actually care about anything other than the spectacle. There is basically no emotional development in Lord of the Rings. Oh, Frodo feels out of place when he gets back to Hobbitville after his boring adventure? Well, I'm glad you took nine hours to develop that, because I don't think I quite would have understood the existential ramifications of the human capacity to outgrow one's origins without nine hours of wandering around moping beforehand. The only character that is remotely interesting is Gollum, and even he's mostly rubbish.

Don't even get me started on the notion that Lord of the Rings is any kind of serious, important cinema. No. Now, under normal circumstances I'm prepared to accept the significance of any old trash, given its social and cultural context. Even the risible Twilight, as searingly atrocious as it is, is still important as a cultural phenomenon. And so it is with Lord of the Rings. Yes, you can bang on all you like about its incredible popularity, and its profound influence of fantasy literature and related media. In fact, do bang on about that, I'm sure it would make for a really interesting analysis of contemporary fantasy sub-cultures. But don't, for Christ's sake, try to tell me that LotR is anything other than exceptionally well made exploitation cinema. Yeah, I'm aware that I said it's exceptionally well made. Only a fool would deny that Jackson's adaptations are extremely technically proficient, but that doesn't mean that they're either enjoyable or meaningful as narratives. Look, before you choke on your tongue again: I like trash. I like films with titles like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and House of Dracula, but I'm not about to argue that they're an authentic exploration of the human condition. And don't give me any of that crap about Tolkien 'creating a whole new world' or inventing new languages. Star Trek did that for decades, and the more that series became obsessed over inconsequential minutiae and pseudo-philosophy, the worse it became. Brevity is the soul of wit, and Tolkien would have been better served developing recognisable, fully dimensional characters instead of figuring out how to render Elvish verbs in the perfect tense, or the difference between an ogre and a troll. Who honestly cares about this stuff? How does it make the story more compelling, or meaningful, or exciting? It's all just fluff, spun to fill the gaps left by a boring story and largely uninteresting characters. 

I told you he was rubbish.

Ironically, Jackson was a perfect director for this material precisely because he's an exploitation director: his early films Braindead and Bad Taste deliver exactly what you'd expect, and his last major film was a very good, if bloated and sentimental, remake of one of cinema's greatest exploitation movies of all time, King Kong. Lord of the Rings is an exploitation film with a huge budget, and that's it, regardless of what the legions of fanboys say. And you know what? For those of you that enjoy this particular brand of schlock, I say fill your boots! I like shite too, so enjoy, if that's how you get your kicks. For the more vocal fans, I don't want to be rude, but please, will you just shut up about how great Lord of the Rings is? There are so, so many more insightful, exciting and better-written films out there that it truly boils my piss when I hear for the ten thousandth time that Lord of the Rings is someone's favourite film. How is that even possible? Have they not seen any other films? Just watch Harry Potter instead. It's miles better.

The Bechdel Test Part 2: Romantic Comedies

Okay, so it was Oscar night on Sunday, so you may wondering what I thought of the outcome. The Artist pretty much deserved to win Best Picture, Score, Actor (though Gary Oldman was equally deserving for his turn in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), and Director, but I remain irked that Nicholas Winding Refn's fantastic Drive didn't get even a nod in any major categories. Scorsese's Hugo earned its five wins, especially cinematography and set design. Sacha Baron Cohen's stunt was predictable but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was funny. I couldn't give two fucks about The Help, I haven't seen Midnight in Paris, and Meryl Streep's win was as inevitable as it was pointless. So that's that for another year. Incidentally, you should check out this video from Anita Sarkeesian  for some really interesting points about women filmmakers and the Oscars.

Also, beware, as this post's a long one, so you might want to put on a pot of coffee.

Anyway, in my last post, we had a look at the Bechdel Test and how women are grossly under-represented in films. This time, I want to focus the discussion by examining a few films that are aimed specifically at, and are about, women. As I mentioned before, 'women's films' are often referred to as 'chick flicks', which is a deceptively problematic term. If we take 'chick flick' simply to mean a film that appeals in particular to women, then we have an incredibly broad raft of different types of films. Romantic comedies tend to be the dominant chick flicks, but often melodramas such as John Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe are seen as chick flicks, as are musicals, and films about 'women's issues', such as the recent The Help, which was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Chick flicks tend to focus on characterisation, relationships and emotional conflict and resolution, as opposed to action, violence, or the other preserves of 'male cinema'. But even this definition incorporates films as diverse as Gone With The Wind, Now Voyager, and Maid in Manhattan. The core concept of the chick flick is that it appeals exclusively to women. It's very interesting, then, that 'chick flick' is broadly a pejorative term, used to denote frothy, inferior films that lack the artistic gravitas of a 'male' film. On this second point, I think the damage to women's films is twofold: 'chick flick' diminishes the value of women's cinema by framing it as an inferior 'other' to male films. Furthermore, it makes it too easy to criticise unsatisfactory tosh aimed at women by giving it a label rather than actively engaging with it and asking what in particular is so unsatisfying and toshy. 

To paraphrase Chris Rock, I hate chick flicks, but I love women's films.  We need to start making and watching good women's films, and relegate chick flicks to the past, both by being more demanding of women's cinema, and not using the term 'chick flick' as a vague, insubstantive pejorative. For the next section of this post I'll be briefly discussing three romantic comedies. Originally, I wanted to discuss a broader range of films, but  for now I'll leave it at the rom coms and return to the rest in a future post.

It's no surprise that romantic comedies are as successful, or ubiquitous, as they are. They're cheap and quick to make, and a guaranteed formula means even critically panned dross like Bride Wars tends to make a respectable return for their studios. It's partially through the slavish adherence to the familiar romcom plot formula, as well as the identikit marketing of almost every example of the genre (evidence of which is here, here and here) that mean that rom coms are generally regarded as inferior, which is a shame because there are good examples of romantic comedy, some of which are, admittedly, responsible for the model on which so much other crap is based. What follows is a summary of a few notable examples of romantic comedies that, for better or worse, exemplify the genre in some way, and whether they pass the Bechdel Test.

1) Pillow Talk

Frothy but fun: Pillow Talk

Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk comes from the tail-end of Hollywood's so-called Golden Age in 1959, and while not the first romantic comedy, is certainly partially responsible for the modern rom com formula. The plot begins with Jan Morrow, played by Doris Day, being tormented by Brad Allen, her womanising neighbour who keeps tying up their shared phone line with his string of girlfriends. Initially they hate each other (can we see where this is going?), before Brad sees Jan and realises she looks and dances like Doris Day. He therefore instantly decides he wants to sleep with her, but knowing she'll reject him once she finds out who he is, he adopts a fake Texan persona called 'Rex Stetson' and gets her to fall in love with him. However his jealous friend, also in love with Jan, brings the whole deck of cards crashing down, which of course, results in the brief end-of second act conflict, before Jan gets over the fact that was duped and decides she really is in love with Brad and marries him. Despite the formulaic plot, Day and Rock Hudson, who plays Brad, inject their roles with wit and humour, and while the film is undoubtedly unenlightened about women (and in one unintentionally ironic scene, homosexuality), it feels very modern. For example, Jan is a single, independent woman with a job and an apartment, and although she does end up with Brad in the end, the film doesn't portray her as the kind of unlucky-in-love loser that more recent, supposedly more progressive films have done.

Bechdel Test: Fail. Jan talks to her housekeeper, who also serves as her 'wise friend' character, but they only ever really talk about Brad Allen's annoying phone habits.

2) Down With Love

Pillow Talk has become so archetypal of the genre that it was semi-remade the 2003 film Down With Love, directed by Peyton Reed. It borrows the basic plot and character beats of Pillow Talk to tell its story of Barbara Novak who, while promoting her new pseudo-feminist book, falls for the womanising Catcher Block. Down With Love tries to gets away with repeating the catalogue of rom com cliches by setting itself in the golden era of romantic comedies, and by overtly mirroring the style and structure of of films like Pillow Talk. It's a self-aware rom com, one that refers to and pokes fun at formula while itself adhering to it. Even the post-modern twist at the end doesn't really change the direction of the movie, and so the two leads end up together against all sense of odds or social ethics, proving once again that even crazy feminist go-getters just want to be loved.



Red text on a white background strikes again

What is frustrating about this film, apart from the overdone production design and score, which insist on incessantly reminding you that YOU'RE IN A 60s COMEDY!, is that its setting provided a great opportunity to satirise and deconstruct the cliches of rom coms. In parts it clearly wants to: in one scene, for example, the 'friend' character, played by Frasier's David Hyde Pierce, refers to Catcher's apartment switcheroo caper as being straight from a film, and to Catcher and Barbara as 'the leads'. The final twist reveals that it was Barbara who was fooling Catcher all along, which consciously and directly subverts the dynamic it borrows from Pillow Talk. But alas, all this clever meta-commentary ultimately signifies nothing, as 'the leads' end up together just as surely as supporting characters always pair off with each other, just so everyone gets at least one shag. Barbara fools Catcher because she fell in love with him as his former secretary, before reinventing herself a glamorous writer. She even wrote her feminist book just to attract Catcher's attention, 'cos that's like, you know, all chicks really want. Apparently, the only arc that Barbara goes through is to do dye her hair red at the end, as some sort of contrived compromise between being a sexy blonde and a frumpy, secretarial brunette.

Bechdel Test: Pass. Barbara and her friend character talk about promoting her book. Which is about love, and indirectly, men, because apparently even when women aren't talking about men, they are really.

3) When Harry Met Sally

Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal: Perfect casting

If Pillow Talk exemplifies the genre in the 1950s and 60s, then Rob Reiner's 1989 When Harry Met Sally is undoubtedly the archetypal modern romantic comedy; the yardstick by which all other boy-meets-girl stories are judged. I think When Harry Met Sally is the best example of a rom com that adheres almost completely to formula, yet manages to transcend those limitations and become a good film in its own right. What makes Reiner's film so successful is the combination of snappy, funny writing, well-written, properly developed and likable characters, and a romantic sincerity sorely lacking in many more recent rom coms. The leads are perfectly cast - Sally is initially fussy and slightly annoying (ironically Meg Ryan has never been less so), whereas Billy Crystal plays Harry at first as cocksure, faux-wise beyond his years and even a little chauvinist, propositioning Sally just hours after he's left his girlfriend to go to New York. What is great about these characters is that they don't sacrifice their unlikable traits for the sake of the audience. Rather, we gradually get to know and understand their idiosyncrasies, watching them develop over the course of years. In a lesser film, Harry's climactic dash to tell Sally he loves her would be trite and cynical, but it works here because we're genuinely invested in the characters: they're right for each other because they're written well, not because the movie has to end with them getting together. What I like in particular about When Harry Met Sally is both leads are given equal screen time, and both are developed equally well. Despite the plot being a fairly formulaic romantic comedy, it would be especially unfair to call When Harry Met Sally a chick flick because it's about two people falling in love: it's categorically not about a woman's search for a man, which despite all its cleverness, is basically what Down With Love, and many other inferior romantic comedies, are about.

Bechdel Test: Fail. I think in this instance you can forgive the failure as all any of the four named characters do, male and female, is talk about the opposite sex. If you're selective, can reverse-apply the Bechdel Test to men in films, and find that many male characters only talk about women. However, as Anita Sarkeesian has already pointed out, there is not a problem with male representation in films, but there is with female representation. Many great films fail the bechdel test and many bad ones pass it, but the point is that it is still extremely useful as a gauge for the culture of gender bias in cinema.

I'm aware that I've missed an entire raft of films that would have been useful in this discussion; Bridesmaids is a particular interesting example of a typical 'guy film' - in this case the gross-out sex comedy - being reappropriated by a majority female cast and for a female audience. I'll save my thoughts on Bridesmaids for another post, but I'll say here that although I welcome films like Bridesmaids, and I applaud its attempt to represent women as just as funny and oafish as men, I do think that it largely fails at doing so, and fails at avoiding the cliches of the conventional rom com. Similarly, romantic comedies have experienced a similar reappropriation for male audiences, with examples including the fantastic High Fidelity, the iconic Annie Hall, the silly but amusing Knocked Up, and the overrated (500) Days of Summer. Also, and I'm saving these films for later as well, I think there are some great films with strong female leads and casts that don't fit into the rom com genre, including Alien, Thelma and Louise (both directed by Ridley Scott and both of which pass the Bechdel Test), and Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.

Good effort but can we try it without the pink and the puppies next time?

I've suggested that women are under-representend both in films and as film-makers, and I think part of the problem is that women are cast in the same roles over and over again - as the wife, the girlfriend, or as the single woman who wants to become a wife or girlfriend. What can we do to change this? Supporting films that cast women in less conventional and more prominent roles would be a good, such as in Clint Eastwood's teriffic Changeling, or indeed Bridesmaids, even though I personally think it's overrated. Still though, babysteps. Secondly, in order to combat the lack of prominence of female filmmakers, I suggest two new categories for the Oscars (and other major film awards): Best Male Director and Best Female Director. We have male and female categories for the Best Actor awards, so why not for directors? It would force the major awards ceremonies to at least acknowledge the existence of female directors, which apparently at the moment they don't do at all, and it would bring greater prominence not only to specific female directors such as Kathryn Bigelow (the only woman to have ever won a Best Director Oscar or BAFTA), but also to women filmmakers in general. Women are clearly marginalised in front of and behind the camera, and it is incredibly detrimental to cinema. When any group is given excessive prominence over another, we all lose out because we miss the potential for new ideas, images and stories. The absence of women in films is gross and bizarre, and on a purely financial level it's stupid. The fact is women's films make money: Bridesmaids grossed almost $288 million worldwide, on a relatively small budget of $32.5 million, and Steven Soderbergh's 2000 Erin Brockovich made $256 million on a budget of $52 million. Making quality films for and about women isn't just about feminism or art - it makes financial sense too, and it's about time the film industry woke up to this and cleaned up its act.

The BAFTAs, the Oscars, and the Bechdel Test: Part 1

This week, I'll mainly be talking about the Bechdel Test, which is a method of determining how present female characters are in a film. It's something that I've wanted to discuss for a while, as I think the lack of women characters in films is a real problem in cinema. There's a lot of ground to cover, so we're going to do a two-parter, to be followed up in a fortnight. 

For a film to pass the so-called Bechdel Test it must have two named female characters, they must talk to each other, and they need to talk to each other about something other than a man. The test originates from a comic strip published by Alison Bechdel in 1985, from a comic called Dykes to Look Out For. Here's the strip for your viewing pleasure:

The original Bechdel Test

Sounds simple, right? Surely many films pass a test in which the only criteria is that women talk to each other? Nope. Ah, I hear you say, most of those that don't pass must be dumb action movies aimed at adolescent men, what do you expect? Surely more sophisticated films, or even films that are supposedly aimed at and about women (more on this next time), would naturally pass the Bechdel Test? Sadly not, dear reader. I consider myself a reasonably enlightened man, with a relatively diverse taste in films. I like Westerns, film noir, animation, spy thrillers, dramas, indie, and even I'm partial to a good romantic comedy. But out of the first 200 films in my collection how many do you think pass the test? 100? 50? Not even close. It's 8. A paltry 8 of the first 200 films I own have two women characters that talk to each other about something other than a man. And it's not as if those two hundred films are all 80s Arnie-fests, either. Amongst others, the genres this sample covers include gangster flicks, documentaries, monster movies,  science fiction, political thrillers, comedy, romance, and children's films, all ranging from the early 1930s all the way up to 2010. With the exception of silent films and blaxploitation, I don't think there could be much more diversity in terms of genre, style and period, and yet ninety six per cent (ninety six per cent!) of those films do not involve conversations between women that don't involve men. Think about that for a second. I don't think my DVD collection is particularly unusual, either: go and check your own film collection and see how many of your films pass the test. How many was it? Did any of them pass at all? This is a problem endemic within the film industry and it seems to pervade through almost every genre,  from small indies to massive summer blockbusters, from the earliest films to the latest Oscar nominees. The fact is, women just aren't present in films, either in front of or behind the camera. Out of the four hundred and fifty or so films I have on DVD, only two (TWO!) have been directed by women, namely Kathryn Bigelow's 2009 The Hurt Locker, and Sofia Coppola's 2003 Lost in Translation, and guess what: neither of those even pass the Bechdel Test.

Awards Season

Speaking of the Oscars, in the eighty two years the Academy awards have been running, only one woman has ever won best director, which was Bigelow for her superlative The Hurt Locker in 2009. At this year's Oscars, there are no female nominees for best director, and of the twenty one producers nominated for best film, only four are women. Last night's BAFTA ceremony painted a similar picture: best film and best director were given to The Artist, directed by Michael Hazanavicius and produced by Thomas Langmann, and the outstanding debut award went to Paddy Considine for Tyrannosaur. Incidentally, neither of these pass the Bechdel Test, either. Similarly, Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have ever won a BAFTA for best director, and one of only two women to have ever been nominated for one, the other being Copolla for Lost in Translation. I think these figures speak for themselves: the British and American film industries have always and continue to be run by men, for the entertainment for men. Even the few women film makers that achieve success in the industry tend to make films about men and for a largely male audience. 

Witness the apocalypse

More to the point, it shows that the Bechdel Test isn't about quality. The Artist, Tyrannosaur and The Hurt Locker are all terrific films, as are many of the other BAFTA and Oscar-nominated films that don't pass the Test. What the Bechdel Test shows, however, is that even great films, made by talented, enlightened, modern film-makers, some of whom are even women, still struggle to represent half of the human race. And I don't even mean represent them well, I just mean represent them at all. Thankfully I haven't seen the Sex and the City films, but if we applied the Bechdel Test to the TV show, even though it's a vacuous wasteland of revolting characters, obnoxious writing, and cynical world views, it would still pass because the horrible characters talk occasionally about other things than men, like the virtuous pursuits of shopping and being over-privileged whiny little shits. The Bechdel Test is not an indicator of quality but it is an indicator of a gross and bizarre misrepresentation in cinema. Surely we can't leave the Sex and the Cities of this world to fill the gap of representation left by otherwise quality films? Why does the film industry continue to be dominated so overwhelmingly by men? I'm not entirely sure, but it's a problem that can be dated well before the advent of Hollywood. 

The Madwoman in the Attic

Historically, literature has been dominated by male writers writing about male characters, with female characters defined strictly in relation to their male counterparts. Even major novels by women, whose main characters are female, tended to focus on who their heroine would marry, and both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, written by Charlotte and Emily Bronte respectively, were originally published under the names of male pseudonyms. Ironically, when the novel as a form was developed it the eighteenth century, it was perceived as a somewhat crude and intellectually vapid degeneration of literature, and was therefore associated with femininity. There are two aspects here that modern films share with literature that I want to pick up on. The first is the way women are typically portrayed in film, and the second is the difference between 'guy' films and 'chick flicks', which I'll be discussing next time. In 1979 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar published a seminal essay on the portrayal of women in nineteenth-century fiction, entitled The Madwoman in the Attic. Their essay argued that women in Victorian literature are typically represented eihter as either pure, virginal and innocent, or dangerous, monstrous and exotic. It's a dichotomy that is best exemplified by Jane Eyre's own madwoman Bertha, who is directly contrasted with the innocent Jane, and whose husband Rochester has hidden in his attic. 

Beautiful and deadly: Veronica Lake as the
archetype we've all seen a thousand times

Any of this sound familiar? Well, it should do, because it's a model for femininity that Hollywood continues to frequently use to represent women. You can often see this dichotomy in film noirs such as Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep, where the only two women, who invariably never interact with each other, are the erotic, dangerous femme fatale, and the bookish assistant / victim character. The James Bond franchise continues to trade on this very formula, with 2008's Quantum of Solace's female characters still filling the roles of either 'early love interest-cum-victim', and 'dangerous female lead-cum-love interest', that typify the Bond girls of every decade since the 1960s. For other recent examples, see Christopher Nolan's 2010 Inception, whose Mal, played by Marion Cotillard, is the archetypal femme fatale. Mal is particularly interesting because all we ever see of her is the version in Cobb's imagination. She is a meta-character, quite literally a concept and not a real person. In the publicity for the film, she is labelled as 'The Shade', alluding both to her non-reality, and to her conceptual femme fatale forbears. Mal is essentially a self-conscious reflection on female characters in film. Nolan alludes to the femme fatale trope, but he doesn't really deconstruct it either, and instead reverts to the demon / angel female dichotomy by contrasting Mal with the only other named female character, Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, who is herself defined only in relation to Cobb's struggle banish Mal from his subconscious and return home. I think this is a real problem for a lot of films, because while men are typically cast in a variety of interesting roles, women too frequently end up playing the same tired, cliched and boring parts that are rooted in anachronistic conceptions of gender. Literature in the twentieth century underwent a wake-up call, and there have been many works that have attempted not only to present better, more developed female characters and female-centric stories, but also to co-opt classic literature into modern gender discourse, as in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, which acts as a parallel to Jane Eyre, telling the story of the 'mad' Bertha Mason. I think it's about time that something similar happened in cinema, as too often women continue to be marginalised and written as boring archetypes instead of real people. It's bad for cinema, it's lazy on the part of screenwriters and directors, it's cowardly on the part of studios not to distribute films that aren't squarely aimed at young men, and it's fucking boring for the rest of us to have sit through another bloody sub-plot about a 'hooker with a heart of gold'.

Films with Julia Roberts are always boring and stupid

Next time, I'll be wrapping up our little discussion with a look at the so-called chick flicks, and arguing that they're even worse than 'men's films' at representing women, and I'll also be taking a few pot shots at recent poisonous pseudo-feminist horseshit like Sucker Punch. Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion!