A2 Media Studies Research Investigation
Has the ‘Lovers on the Lam’ genre
evolved for contemporary audience gratification, or have directors encoded
formulaic conventions where “the Hollywood mind-set wins again,”[1] with reference to Badlands and In Time?
Langford stated that genre utilises
“family resemblances” [2]
whilst mediating “the relationship between the mythologies of popular culture
and social, political and economic contexts.”1
This formulaic approach to cinema consisting of conventions familiar to
predominantly passive and mainstream audience types was ostensibly constructed
in the 1930’s of the Hollywood Studio era.[3] Since the establishment of
this habitual system, however, these audiences have perhaps become naturalised
to the genre model, particularly within American filmography centred in the ‘Lovers
on the Lam’ genre. This sub-genre to the Road movie can manipulate preferred
audiences to “cheer on the couple in question, regardless of what they’ve done
and who they’re running from.”[4] Thus, to ensure that
audiences continue to gain the director’s preferred reading within our
contemporary world, it can be argued that producers are now encoding fresh
ideologies through striking modes of address via their use of technical codes
and narrative constructions. As the “new values”[5] of cinematic Modernism
dominates today’s society5, through the growth of complex
mise-en-scene and technology such as CGI, these technical codes are perhaps
creating a sense of Hyperrealism. Conversely, the genre’s advancement could be
a Post-modern mix of old and worn formulas and constructed codes yet may be
masked by a saturated and false verisimilitude.
In
Time, directed by Andrew Niccol in 2011[6], illustrates the face of today’s developed media’s Hyper-reality through its hybridity
with the futuristic Science-Fiction genre. Not only does this text consist of ‘Lovers
on the Lam’ conventions, but it also contrasts with the poetic and naturalistic
semiotics of its predecessor, Terrence Malick’s Badlands, released in 1973[7]. The backbone of my
investigation will involve a critical comparison of both texts using primary
and secondary research, opening with an analysis of how the identity of the
genre’s protagonists are constructed through the mise-en-scene and their
opposing placements within each narrative. In support of this, Vladimir Propp’s
theory on archetypes and narratives will help me to question if structures and
devices have become subverted within these texts over time, and both director’s
motives behind this. Additionally, I will delve into the genre’s typical
narrative themes and if they consistently reoccur in the genre, utilising the
socio-political theories of Hegemony and Marxism to demonstrate our social change.
Linking with my first aim of how characters are represented through the use of
technical codes, I will further explore the representations of gender and if objectification
is present in the narratives of the genre. I will explore if the evolution of
the genre has saw a decreased chauvinistic mode of address. To assist this
focus, I shall apply Feminist perspectives to compare the thoughts of each era,
significantly that of Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze, and her notable essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
Within
both In Time and Badlands, the narratives hinge upon two fugitive heterosexual
lovers with the motives of violently escaping the hierarchical system and
monotonous daily grind.1 In a review of the latter text, Roger Ebert
stated that this story focusing on hedonistic characters “has been told many
times,”[8] suggesting that each
narrative and their characters are echoed throughout the genre with a formulaic
tone. For example, the male protagonists in each text, Kit and Will, are flawed
figures and are represented in anti-heroic lights at the narrative’s
equilibrium. In the opening scene of Badlands,
Kit is introduced holding a dead dog in a mid-shot whilst working as a garbage
collector. The mise-en-scene’s dirt and grime has been encoded as an analogy of
the protagonist and his impurity as a killer. It also attaches an animalistic
characterisation whereby his flaw is his dehumanisation from society, despite
the audience acting as his murderous accomplice. Furthermore portrayed through
Malick’s use of pathetic fallacy, the dry and endless locations of the text are
symbolic of Kit’s moral depersonalisation; within the text’s falling action, a
distant train is the only object in the empty mise-en-scene of a barren desert
and cloudless sky, the train’s movement contrasting against the use of a static
extreme long shot. Holly’s voiceover comments “It was our first taste of
civilization in weeks,” emphasising the duo’s disconnection with humanity. Mirroring
this, Will is first presented to the audience of In Time from behind iron bars of his home’s window. Again, this encoded
mise-en-scene connotes that his flaw is being caged from the social norms,
similar to Kit’s isolated representation. A motif of broken mise-en-scene in
industrial locations runs throughout the text. For instance, within its rising
action, a smashed window looms behind the protagonist in an abandoned factory,
the yellow streetlamps acting as the only source of light to create a seedy
chiaroscuro effect. This motif illustrates how Will is a product of his
environment, the damaged mise-en-scene a metaphor for his damage as a Working class
character from the ghetto. Thus, the audience can decode that both characters
are anti-heroic through these allegorical technical codes.
Theorised
by Vladimir Propp in Morphology of the
Folktale[9],
the false or anti-hero is an archetypal character which is repeated throughout
vast narratives, suggesting that this genre indeed utilises a pre-made
blueprint which producers can draw upon for audience gratification. However,
Propp stated that “the false hero or villain is exposed.” The researcher’s
ideology suggests that the genre’s narrative structure should close with the
anti-hero’s true unjust representation becoming exposed to the audience,
whereby they are punished by the establishment for their crimes. This can be
applied to Kit’s character in Malick’s work, because in the narrative’s dénouement,
the anti-hero surrenders to the police after a quick paced car chase. When
surrendering, Kit jumps onto his car and checks his pulse. Not only does his physical
movement imply the character’s self-awareness and how he could finally be in
touch with humanity, the low angle shot used also empowers him for restoring
his moral order. Holly’s narration provides exposition for the audience,
revealing that he was “sentenced to die in the electric chair,” and so
exemplifies the genre’s narrative blueprint. Earlier texts alike to Malick’s
work typically conform to this conventional dénouement of the violent lovers
becoming “exposed”. The 1967[10] Bonnie and Clyde closes with the protagonists being brutally shot
by the ranger, whilst there is a mirroring narrative dénouement in 1950’s[11] Gun Crazy. Within more modern ‘Lovers on the Lam’ texts, however, Propp’s
ideologies and the genre’s forerunning narrative structures are often
subverted. For instance, Will and Sylvia close Niccol’s 2011 narrative entering
another bank to rob, a two-shot used to reinforce that both escape the system
in harmony. The final scene of Oliver Stone’s 1994[12] Natural Born Killers consists of Mickey labelling a bigoted
television journalist as a “demon” before shooting him and escaping into the
woodlands, challenging the genre’s narrative mechanics as now, the protagonists
are punishing and “exposing” the establishment. Hence, it is suggested that
this genre has had to subvert audience expectations and reflect contemporary issues
such as Anti-capitalism to withhold the interest of mainstream audiences in an
era of Post-modern cinema. After all, Post-modern texts “mock contemporary
social formations and myths”[13] as self-reflective and
reflexive cinema.
Despite this evolution of narrative
structure, the narrative theme of protagonists being disillusioned by The
American Dream is predominantly represented throughout both classic and
contemporary examples of the genre. For example, at 01:05:10 in Badlands, the mise-en-scene of Kit
posing with a gun rested on his shoulders is an intertextual reference to
mirror James Dean’s gesticulation in Giant,
directed in 1956. This reflection, strengthened by Kit’s combed hair and denim
outfit, symbolises his desire to become famous, yet this is only within the
mise-en-scene and is therefore solely an aesthetic desire. Also, in a scene where Kit is talking to Holly’s father,
a gargantuan, vibrant and idyllic painting of a barn with farm animals is placed
within the mise-en-scene, which connotes The American Dream philosophy that “the
accumulation of material items can solve all problems.”[14] However, as the framing
places Kit infront of the painting’s unfinished missing piece as though he
strives to fit into this world of perfection with futility, the director
implies that this ideology is a man-made and fabricated construction which
would never be Kit’s reality. As Malick was commenting on the materialistic
false hope that was a product of The Great Depression in the 1950’s, where
“unemployment snowballed disastrously,”[15] he created a polysemic
text reflecting upon our social past.
Niccol,
subverting Malick’s commentary, produced a polysemic text warning twenty first
century audiences where this disillusionment may force us by being set in a
Dystopic future, mediating a common narrative theme of the Science-fiction
genre[16]. This theme is encoded
through a binary opposition between the representation of the Upper class and
Working class in a Hegemonic society. At the text’s equilibrium, when the
protagonist and workers are receiving their pay checks, or ‘time,’ there is a
reel of this lower class system waiting in line wearing colourless, grey
uniforms to connote their lack of identity, the colouring also similar to the
mise-en-scene of their mechanical and geometric location. Selecting the
representation of the Working class as being faceless and part of a machine to fuel
the bourgeois Upper classes, the text’s semiotics channels Gramsci’s theory on
Cultural Hegemony, creating a social commentary of rejecting “economism” and
“crude materialism, offering a humanist version of Marxism which focused on
human subjectivity.”[17] To reinforce the ideology
that genre should hold up a mirror to the developing sociological problems we
face, In Time’s subtext again
conforms to Post-modern theories, because if the director constructed beliefs
of the same struggles of Malick’s era, then even passive audiences could feel
dissatisfied with its repetitiveness. Subsequently, “Just when things start
feeling static and generic is when someone will come along and reinvent the
paradigm,”[18]
yet perhaps solely through hybridity and mixing equations.
This
reinvention of the genre can furthermore be recognised through the way in which
gender is represented in opposing lights. For example, it is suggestive that
women have gained a sense of empowerment within society since the 1970’s
through how the female roles in Badlands are
somewhat stripped of their identities by being dependent upon male characters.
In Holly’s lifeless voiceover, she quotes “I sensed that my destiny now lay
with Kit, for better or for worse,” implicit that her future is reliant upon
the success of this male role, whereby she lacks an independent urge as though
she cannot strive without him. This dialogue also contains a marital semantic
field in which she vows to remain under Kit’s control, reinforcing her
one-dimensional identity of domestication. In the sixties, only slightly before
the release of Malick’s work, “wives bore the full load of housekeeping and
child care, spending an average on 55 hours a week on domestic chores.”[19] The director, therefore,
utilises the dominant representation of women in the society of his time
through Holly, her domestication, in addition, suggested through his
camerawork. In a wide angle shot, the foreground displays Kit catching fish,
whilst Holly is lounging, blurred in the background in a pink dress. With the
pink mise-en-scene symbolic of her femininity and fabricated gender role, the
blur suggests that she lacks importance, focus, and is hollowly waiting for the
man to return from his work. Thus, the world’s Patriarchal control is encoded
in the early pieces of the genre, “a political-social system that insists that
males are inherently dominating,” “through various forms of psychological
terrorism and violence.”[20]
Patriarchy
is similarly presented within the subtext of In Time. In a mid-shot of Sylvia and her father, the audience can
spectate the characters from an outside perspective with a sense of social
omniscience. The father grabs her arm, quoting “Do as I say and go with the
guards,” his imperative and authoritative tone symbolic of the domination of
the bourgeois white male, who quite literally grab hold of both working classes
and women with power hunger. Although this gender based socio-economic status
is in control from a political perspective, Niccol sociologically portrays how
females are breaking free from this structure, by Sylvia exiting her father’s
grasp and quoting “If we can’t stop one man from killing us, then we should
kill ourselves” with independence and self-reliance. Contrasting against
Holly’s subservience, Sylvia further represents women as symbols of power by
saving Will’s life and shooting the antagonist. In deep focus, the framing
portrays Will seated on the pavement in the background, his low status
reflective of his lack of power in confliction with Sylvia’s, who’s head
dominates the foreground. By incorporating an over-the-shoulder shot, the
audience can spectate the action from a new female perspective whilst decoding
her sense of control in this scene, Niccol reversing the stereotypical male
heroic archetype of the genre into an active female countertype. Thus, in
comparison to the ancestral text, the rise of equality between the genders and
women exposing their identities mirrors the progression of humanity and how our
society is fluid “in an always expanding network,”[21] therefore directors may
be reflecting current social dynamics to refresh the genre’s formula. Ridley
Scott’s Thelma & Louise released
in 1991[22] also subverts the
original representations of the genre and the past’s prejudiced ideologies
through an alternative representation of women, with two female protagonists constructed
as analogies of strength. Cantwell argues that young women will “enjoy watching
the representation of rape,” in Scott’s text, and preferred readers “will enjoy
vicariously and playfully destroying symbols
of men’s sexual and social power.”[23]
As
the genre has developed, female liberation could slowly be evolving alongside
the integration of Feminism into multiplex cinema. Conversely, many disagree
with this perception as “Women comprise only 16% of all writers, directors,
producers, cinematographers and editors,”[24] showing that a true
reflection of female identity is being under represented within contemporary
media and the genre. This ideology is supported through how the majority of Niccol’s
narrative females perhaps use their sexuality in order to gain power. For
instance, in a scene set within a bar, the camera focuses on two women leaning
into a male in a suit, his selected clothing connoting his wealth and success.
The mise-en-scene of the women’s clothes, however, is provocative due to one wearing
a tight red dress revealing her cleavage, and the other in a see-through top. These
visual codes contrastingly connote eroticism, and conform to Laura Mulvey’s
theory of ‘The Male Gaze,’ explored within her Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema. One segment of this ideology
centralises around how the camera takes on a male perspective which audiences
are forced to see through, whereby “The determined male gaze projects its
fantasy on the female figure, which is styled accordingly.”[25] This objectification and
scopophilia in Niccol’s work is enhanced not only by the mise-en-scene, but
also by the way in which the camera lingers upon these two sexualised females
in a slow pan, the woman “frequently the object of the voyeuristic or
fetishistic gaze in the cinema.”[26] In consequence, this
Post-modern text doesn’t fully select imitations of contemporary humanity’s
gender fluidity and equality, as “Women make up 51% of the US,"19 yet remain to be represented in the genre
as depersonalised in a Patriarchal world. Therefore, although contemporary
examples mask this dominant representation with a verisimilitude liberation,
the dehumanisation of women is present within both narratives through their
chauvinistic mode of address.
Despite
In Time’s Marxist critique against
Darwinian Capitalism, the dominant Hollywood mind-set is capitalist, whereby
“on screen, business must be bad so that, off screen, business can be good.”[27] Due to this contemporary
“profit-obsessed industry,”27 the ‘Lovers on the Lam’ genre remains
to repeatedly encode recurring narrative themes and anti-heroic archetypes in
order to secure success as the formula is tried and tested. However, to prevent
the audience’s boredom and gratify the mainstream’s escapist desires, hybridity
masks these pre-made and worn conventions and catalyses the genre’s growth. Hybridity
is a Post-modern sensibility,[28] “sceptical about the
continuing validity of traditional assumptions about the stability and fixity
of human nature.”2 Thus, as society is developing, so is the genre, perhaps
demonstrating why directors are constructing a reflection of the significant political
sociology of their time into their technical codes. From Patriarchy and The
American Dream in Malick’s text to Cultural Hegemony and Marxism of Niccol’s
text, audiences of each era are familiar with the opposing social commentaries.
This notion, conversely, isn’t always conscious of modern audiences and how we
are also changing, which could explain why the independent representation of
women has remained to be warped and corrupt since the seventies and before.
After all, “simulacra, rather than mirroring reality, prepackage reality into
formulaic and restrictive simulation models that attempt to control our lives.”[29]
Word count: 2442
Bibliography
2011,
In Time
1973,
Badlands
1967,
Bonnie and Clyde
1950,
Gun Crazy
1994, Natural Born Killers
1991, Thelma & Louise
2011,
Rich Hall’s Continental Drifters
Langford,
Barry, 2005, Film Genre: Hollywood and
Beyond
Grant,
Barry Keith, 2007, Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology
http://www.runninginheals.co.uk
Kovács, András Bálint, 2007, Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema,
1950-1980
Ebert,
Roger, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-badlands-1973, 2011
Propp, Vladimir, 1928, Morphology of the Folktale
Propp, Vladimir, 1928, Morphology of the Folktale
Denzin,
Norman, 1991, Images of Postmodern
Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema
The Evolution of the American Dream,
http://www.123helpme.com/evolution-of-the-american-dream-preview.asp?id=197143
http://www.westga.edu/~hgoodson/The%20Great%20Depression.htm
Chandler,
Daniel, http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism10.html
Bransford,
Nathan, http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2013/08/storytelling-is-getting-formulaic-this.html,
2013
https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women#_edn1
Hooks,
Bell, Understanding Patriarchy
Hassan,
Robert, 2004, Media, Politics and the
Network Society
Projanksy,
Sarah, 2001, Watching Rape: Film and
Television in Postfeminist Culture
2011, Miss Representation
Mulvey,
Laura, 1975, Visual Pleasures and
Narrative Cinema
Ann
Doane, Mary, 1997, Writing on the Body:
Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory
Goulimari,
Pelagia, 2014, Literary Criticism and
Theory: From Plato to Postcolonialism
Cohen,
Robin & Toninato, Paola, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/pastprojects/cscs/creolizationconcepts/hybridity/
Milner,
Andrew, 2012, http://theconversation.com/science-fiction-and-dystopia-whats-the-connection-8586
Groen,
Rick, 2010, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/why-hollywood-hates-capitalism/article4329976/
[1] 2011, Rich Hall’s Continental Drifters
[2] Langford, Barry,
2005, Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond
[3] Grant, Barry Keith, 2007, Film
Genre: From Iconography to Ideology
[4] http://www.runninginheals.co.uk
[6] 2011, In Time
[8] Ebert, Roger, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-badlands-1973,
2011
[9] Propp, Vladimir,
1928, Morphology of the Folktale
[10] 1967, Bonnie and Clyde
[11] 1950, Gun Crazy
[14] The Evolution of the American Dream,
http://www.123helpme.com/evolution-of-the-american-dream-preview.asp?id=197143
[15]
http://www.westga.edu/~hgoodson/The%20Great%20Depression.htm
[16] Milner, Andrew,
2012, http://theconversation.com/science-fiction-and-dystopia-whats-the-connection-8586
[17] Chandler, Daniel,
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism10.html
[18] Bransford, Nathan,
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2013/08/storytelling-is-getting-formulaic-this.html,
2013
[19]
https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women#_edn1
[21] Hassan, Robert,
2004, Media, Politics and the Network
Society
[22] 1991, Thelma & Louise
[24] 2011, Miss Representation
[27] Groen, Rick, 2010,
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/why-hollywood-hates-capitalism/article4329976/
[28]
Cohen, Robin & Toninato, Paola,
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/research/pastprojects/cscs/creolizationconcepts/hybridity/
[29] Goulimari,
Pelagia, 2014, Literary Criticism and
Theory: From Plato to Postcolonialism
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