89.7 KMSU FM "The Maverick" is currently holding its spring pledge drive. If you listen to Sounds of Cinema from this station, please consider making a financial contribution. You can make a pledge by calling 507-389-5678 or 1-800-456-7810. You can also make a pledge online at the the station's website.
If you listen to KMSU and enjoy its content, please help to ensure that the station stays on the air. In stressful and uncertain economic times we all have to take extra care in how we spend our money. But it is also important to remember that we demonstrate what we value by where and how we spend our money. Consider the value that KMSU's program has for the community. Many of the programs, especially those that are locally produced, provide an very important service to the listenership and to the Mankato area as a whole.
It's also important to remember that pledges are not just about money. Space and money are at a premium across higher education and in these times of strained budgets college radio stations have been sold to generate short term cash. When you make a pledge to KMSU you demonstrate that the station is valued by the community and that helps justify its continued existence.
On Sunday, April 29th, those listening to Sounds of Cinema from KMSU will hear a special pledge drive episode. Those listening from 89.5 KQAL FM in Winona will hear the regularly schedule program.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
PoliWood Reflection
On April 11th, Sounds of Cinema partnered with the Winona State University English Department, Political Science Department, and Mass Communication Department to present a public screening of the documentary PoliWood on the Winona State campus. Directed by Barry Levinson, PoliWood examines the overlap of politics and entertainment. The documentary follows members of the Creative Coalition, a non-partisan organization of entertainers, as they visit the Democratic and Republican national conventions during the 2008 presidential campaign. Along the way, the film explores how entertainment and celebrity culture have shaped contemporary politics and what that means for the future of democracy. As Levinson puts it in the film, the challenge for entertainers and politicians is to survive the media circus but not become a clown. For the rest of us, the question is how we distinguish between fantasy and reality when contemporary culture conspires to make them indistinguishable.
There is no question that politics and entertainment are intertwined. Jack Valenti, who was the founder of the Motion Picture Association of America, has been quoted as saying “Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA” because its participants are always onstage and always performing. Consider these examples, most of them from just the past few months:
PoliWood paints a dire picture of the culture that this trifecta has created. In the film’s finale Levinson concludes that “television . . . might be the most disastrous invention that ever happened in the history of mankind because it finally blurred the line between truth, reality, and mythology. . . . It might just be that ultimately the television is so powerful and so influential and so addictive that we can never find any truth.” That’s a severe claim to make and with anecdotes like the afore mentioned studies by Ohio State and Fairleigh Dickinson University it’s easy to agree with his perspective. But it is also important to remember that the link between politics and performance predates television. Marc Antony’s funeral speech as dramatized in the Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is as much a performance as any contemporary campaign speech. Today’s political commercials are no less propagandistic than the World War II films of Leni Riefenstahl and Frank Capra. And we should remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Life of Franklin Pierce, a “nonfiction” book whose popularity paved the way for Pierce’s successful presidential campaign (and his disastrous administration). To some extent, politics has always incorporated elements of performance art and it is naïve to ignore that fact. But it is also a fact that civilization has survived and even flourished despite political theater becoming more elaborate.
The important difference between these examples and contemporary life is the extent to which media and technology have become fused into our everyday experience. PoliWood spends quite a bit of time bemoaning the partisan divisions in the culture and blames the pundit class for sowing it as they role model endless conflict and hyperbole rather than a thoughtful and cordial exchange of ideas. That is a relevant point, but there is another aspect that Levinson hints at in his discussion about Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher but does not develop fully. As any documentary filmmaker can tell you, the presence of a camera impacts the way in which we behave. Successful politicians, like entertainers, are generally born performers with a pathological need to be the center of attention. In an environment in which the television camera, and for that matter the security camera, the cell phone camera, and the webcam, are so omnipresent, the politician is required to constantly be in-character. It’s no longer enough to bluster for a few minutes in front of a CSPAN camera like Antony on the steps of the Roman senate; the politician must maintain his or her tone or risk being labeled disingenuous. Just as Levinson compared Wurzelbacher to the title character of Meet John Doe, politicians may find themselves resembling Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., as the individual is coopted by the public image he or she has created for the media.
Not all political anger is about showmanship. In one of PoliWood’s highlights, the mostly liberal members of the Creative Coalition sit down with conservative delegates at the Republican convention. Their interaction is civil but intense and several of the conservative speakers take the Hollywood figures to task for what they perceived as arrogant condescension. As actress Rachel Leigh Cook later reflects, the scolding was not intended to impress others; these people were genuinely angry because they felt marginalized and ignored. The protests of this scene are not really about the celebrities; these people are lashing out in frustration because they are immersed in political debate but they are also alienated from the institutions that are supposed to represent them. That this was filmed in mid-2008, well before the Tea Party and the Occupy movements, makes the footage a fascinating preview of future events. In the context of a discussion about politics and media, it reveals something that the infotainment establishment often misses: the way in which the voices of average people are drowned out by the rancor of political spectacle.
Philosophers from Plato onward have struggled to define what is true and come up with some way of understanding our sensations and experiences in a rational and intelligible way. In modern times we have access to more information than ever before. That deluge of information can be overwhelming, but this is the environment we live in today. As consumers and as participants in democracy it will be up to us to develop the habits and acumen to discern what is real from what are shadows on the wall.
Recommended Viewing:
There is no question that politics and entertainment are intertwined. Jack Valenti, who was the founder of the Motion Picture Association of America, has been quoted as saying “Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA” because its participants are always onstage and always performing. Consider these examples, most of them from just the past few months:
- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been endorsed by comedian Jeff Foxworthy, musician Ted Nugent, and reality TV personality Donald Trump.
- Actor George Clooney was arrested while demonstrating outside the Sudan Embassy in Washington D.C.
- Actor Mark Ruffalo has appeared in the press to discuss opposition to sand frack mining.
- Clint Eastwood appeared in a Chrysler television ad that was regarded by many as an endorsement of President Obama, at least on behalf of the car company.
- Actress Ann Hathaway was spotted at Occupy Wall Street rallies.
- Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert testified before Congress about immigration.
- A study from Ohio State University concluded that conservative viewers do not recognize the satire of The Colbert Report while another study from Fairleigh Dickinson University found that people who get their news from The Daily Show were better informed than viewers of Fox News.
- Joe Wurzelbacher, also known as Joe the Plummer, is now running for congress.
- HBO recently broadcast Game Change, a dramatization of the 2008 presidential campaign, and scenes from this film have been used by cable news commentators as though it were documentary footage.
- The Motion Picture Association of America, which is the major lobbying organization for Hollywood studios, is now headed by Christopher Dodd, the former senator from Connecticut.
PoliWood paints a dire picture of the culture that this trifecta has created. In the film’s finale Levinson concludes that “television . . . might be the most disastrous invention that ever happened in the history of mankind because it finally blurred the line between truth, reality, and mythology. . . . It might just be that ultimately the television is so powerful and so influential and so addictive that we can never find any truth.” That’s a severe claim to make and with anecdotes like the afore mentioned studies by Ohio State and Fairleigh Dickinson University it’s easy to agree with his perspective. But it is also important to remember that the link between politics and performance predates television. Marc Antony’s funeral speech as dramatized in the Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is as much a performance as any contemporary campaign speech. Today’s political commercials are no less propagandistic than the World War II films of Leni Riefenstahl and Frank Capra. And we should remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Life of Franklin Pierce, a “nonfiction” book whose popularity paved the way for Pierce’s successful presidential campaign (and his disastrous administration). To some extent, politics has always incorporated elements of performance art and it is naïve to ignore that fact. But it is also a fact that civilization has survived and even flourished despite political theater becoming more elaborate.
The important difference between these examples and contemporary life is the extent to which media and technology have become fused into our everyday experience. PoliWood spends quite a bit of time bemoaning the partisan divisions in the culture and blames the pundit class for sowing it as they role model endless conflict and hyperbole rather than a thoughtful and cordial exchange of ideas. That is a relevant point, but there is another aspect that Levinson hints at in his discussion about Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher but does not develop fully. As any documentary filmmaker can tell you, the presence of a camera impacts the way in which we behave. Successful politicians, like entertainers, are generally born performers with a pathological need to be the center of attention. In an environment in which the television camera, and for that matter the security camera, the cell phone camera, and the webcam, are so omnipresent, the politician is required to constantly be in-character. It’s no longer enough to bluster for a few minutes in front of a CSPAN camera like Antony on the steps of the Roman senate; the politician must maintain his or her tone or risk being labeled disingenuous. Just as Levinson compared Wurzelbacher to the title character of Meet John Doe, politicians may find themselves resembling Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., as the individual is coopted by the public image he or she has created for the media.
Not all political anger is about showmanship. In one of PoliWood’s highlights, the mostly liberal members of the Creative Coalition sit down with conservative delegates at the Republican convention. Their interaction is civil but intense and several of the conservative speakers take the Hollywood figures to task for what they perceived as arrogant condescension. As actress Rachel Leigh Cook later reflects, the scolding was not intended to impress others; these people were genuinely angry because they felt marginalized and ignored. The protests of this scene are not really about the celebrities; these people are lashing out in frustration because they are immersed in political debate but they are also alienated from the institutions that are supposed to represent them. That this was filmed in mid-2008, well before the Tea Party and the Occupy movements, makes the footage a fascinating preview of future events. In the context of a discussion about politics and media, it reveals something that the infotainment establishment often misses: the way in which the voices of average people are drowned out by the rancor of political spectacle.
Philosophers from Plato onward have struggled to define what is true and come up with some way of understanding our sensations and experiences in a rational and intelligible way. In modern times we have access to more information than ever before. That deluge of information can be overwhelming, but this is the environment we live in today. As consumers and as participants in democracy it will be up to us to develop the habits and acumen to discern what is real from what are shadows on the wall.
Recommended Viewing:
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
PoliWood Screening Today
Remember that PoliWood will be screened tonight at 7:00pm in the Science Lab Auditorium at Winona State University. The event is free and open to the public.
PoliWood is sponsored by Winona State University's English Department, Political Science Department, Mass Communication Department, and Sounds of Cinema.
PoliWood is sponsored by Winona State University's English Department, Political Science Department, Mass Communication Department, and Sounds of Cinema.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Happy April Fool's Day
Today is April Fool's Day. The Huffington Post features an article on pranks in film from pictures like Carrie, Mean Girls, and Dumb and Dumber.
If you're looking for something amusing to watch, you can always check out the 1986 slasher film April Fool's Day. At the time of its release the picture was reviled by both critics and horror fans and viewers are still split about whether the film (and particularly the ending) is a clever reversal or a cheap cop out. In the years since, April Fool's Day has developed a cult following and those viewers enjoy the film as the cinematic prank that it was intended to be. The film was remade in 2008 although the newer version is much more like Let's Scare Jessica to Death or Terror Train than the original April Fool's Day.
Here is the tune from April Fool's Day's end credits, performed by Jerry Whitman:
If you're looking for something amusing to watch, you can always check out the 1986 slasher film April Fool's Day. At the time of its release the picture was reviled by both critics and horror fans and viewers are still split about whether the film (and particularly the ending) is a clever reversal or a cheap cop out. In the years since, April Fool's Day has developed a cult following and those viewers enjoy the film as the cinematic prank that it was intended to be. The film was remade in 2008 although the newer version is much more like Let's Scare Jessica to Death or Terror Train than the original April Fool's Day.
Here is the tune from April Fool's Day's end credits, performed by Jerry Whitman:
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Spring Film Screening Announcement
The Winona State University English Department, Mass Communication Department, Political Science Department, and Sounds of Cinema are sponsoring a public screening of the documentary PoliWood on April 11th, 2012. The event will be held at 7:00pm in the Science Lab Auditorium on the Winona State University campus. The screening is free and open to the public. A panel discussion featuring Winona State faculty will follow.
Directed by Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, Good Morning, Vietnam, You Don't Know Jack), PoliWood examines the overlap of politics, entertainment, and celebrity. Shot during the 2008 presidential campaign, the documentary follows members of the Creative Coalition, a non-partisan organization of entertainers, as they visit the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Along the way, the film explores the ways in which entertainment and celebrity culture have shaped contemporary politics and what that means for the future of democracy.
See this page for more information about the film and subscribe and share the Facebook event page.
Directed by Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, Good Morning, Vietnam, You Don't Know Jack), PoliWood examines the overlap of politics, entertainment, and celebrity. Shot during the 2008 presidential campaign, the documentary follows members of the Creative Coalition, a non-partisan organization of entertainers, as they visit the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Along the way, the film explores the ways in which entertainment and celebrity culture have shaped contemporary politics and what that means for the future of democracy.
See this page for more information about the film and subscribe and share the Facebook event page.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Racism, Fandom, and 'The Hunger Games'
The website Jezebel features two pieces about race and the new film The Hunger Games. The first covers Twitter reactions from some fans of the book who are disappointed to find that some of their favorite characters were played by actors of color. The second piece goes into the descriptions of the characters in Suzanne Collins' books, pointing out that the author had in fact described a number of characters as being non-white. The writers at Jezebel take time to ridicule the overt racism of these Twitter posts (as they should) but that is easy to rebuke. What are more interesting and important to learn from the posts are what these viewers expected to see and what their reactions tell us.
First, pay attention to the phrasing of a comment like “why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie” [sic] and the use of hash tags like “sticktothebookDUDE.” It’s clear from the reporting in the second Jezebel piece that Rue is dark skinned in the book, so the tweets are wrong about that. But let’s assume for a moment that the character was white or that Collins had not specified her skin tone or ethnicity. Should casting a performer of color matter? The Marvel comic book character Nick Fury was portrayed as white in the comics but he is played by African American actor Samuel L. Jackson in recent Marvel pictures including 2012’s The Avengers. Based on Jackson’s performance and the way these films have dealt with the character, the ethnicity of the actor playing Fury seems irrelevant to the character’s story. And the same is true of Rue; there is nothing about her ethnicity that makes it a defining element of her character, at least as she is portrayed in the film.
That shouldn’t be taken to mean race does not matter in the movies. Clearly race (and social context) matters for the plot and characters of a film like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? or the 2005 remake Guess Who? And race plainly mattered to the Twitter users who were bothered that certain characters of The Hunger Games were portrayed by minority actors. But there is a distinction to be made between race mattering to the story and race mattering to the audience. The fact that some of The Hunger Games readers were surprised and upset to see an African American actress in the role exposes some underlying attitudes.
As Frederick Gooding discussed in my recent interview with him, audiences, and especially white viewers, have been conditioned to assume that characters are white as a default. This is especially true of characters in heroic roles. That assumption was upset by the presence of African American actress Amandla Stenberg as Rue. The image on the screen departed from the mental image these viewers had upon reading the book and race was clearly such an issue for them that, to paraphrase a few tweets, it ruined the picture for them or kept the viewer from feeling empathy for the character. The fierce reaction to the presence of an African American actress betrays the extent to which this conditioning has taken hold.
What the Twitter reaction also reveals is a fundamental difference between reading a book and watching a film. What we have here are readers who were clearly invested in the book and yet either did not pick up on the descriptions in Collins’ book or ignored them. Literature allows for that in a way that cinema does not; readers are able to imagine characters and locations and modify a book’s descriptions to fulfill the fantasy in our mind’s eye. This is why books are almost always described as better than a movie adaptation. In this case, readers were able to ignore uncomfortable or challenging racial depictions in a book by filtering them out, so much so that their memory of the book does not resemble what the author actually wrote.
I want to move this on to a point about fandom. The racial component of the Twitter posts tends of obfuscate other issues but there is another aspect to this and that is the outrage at changes initiated by screenwriters in adapting The Hunger Games from the page to the screen. I think this presents considerable problems for filmmakers and directly impacts the films we get in the local theater.
We are living in a time in which studios are under pressure to make big blockbuster films from established franchises as opposed to creative risks on smaller, original pictures. These blockbuster films are often adapted from properties that have a considerable fan base; that fan base guarantees a built-in audience, which is the reason the projects are green-lit in the first place. At the same time, fans have considerable influence on the products being made and studios and filmmakers actively court the fans in their marketing strategies.
This leads to a situation in which filmmakers are creatively restrained. Adaptations of books, comics, and toy lines are expected to follow the established texts or mythology to the letter and any deviation is hyperbolically compared to a sexual assault on the fan’s childhood. But many great films adapted from novels took tremendous liberties from their source material. Psycho, The Godfather, The Shining, and Jaws were adapted from bestselling novels but omitted or changed critical elements of the books in order for the filmmakers to produce their own vision. If these films were made today, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Steven Spielberg would be inundated with hate mail accusing them of ruining the book and studios would likely step in and stop them from making those changes in the first place.
There is a connection between fan-boy outrage and the racial comments on Twitter. Many authors do not specify the race of the characters in their books and screenplays unless it matters to the story. And because audiences are conditioned to think of characters as white unless otherwise specified, Hollywood is disposed to cast white actors to keep adaptations as close as possible to the fan’s conception of the characters and stories. This perpetuates, as Gooding puts it, a cycle of blamelessness in which Hollywood studios continue to provide default-white characters, which audiences consume and have their assumptions reinforced, and thereby incentive studios to continue providing the same ethnically homogenous casts.
But this cycle does not just apply to racial representation. It applies to the kinds of stories that are told and the way films are made. That’s why the marquee at the local theater is filled with prequels, sequels, remakes, and reboots and the rare “original” feature is indistinguishable from every other Hollywood tent pole release. A case in point would be the recent release of John Carter, a film in which every character and set piece vaguely recalls other pictures. But Hollywood is just giving us what they think we want and filmmakers are kept from exercising their creativity by studio executives who fear the wrath of fans.
The real shame isn’t just that large segments of the population aren’t represented in motion pictures; it’s that filmmakers are prevented from thinking about old or established narratives in new terms or providing the audience with challenging or creative pictures. It’s texts that shake us up—and to an extent The Hunger Games does—that have a chance at really breaking through the cycle of malaise.
First, pay attention to the phrasing of a comment like “why does rue have to be black not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie” [sic] and the use of hash tags like “sticktothebookDUDE.” It’s clear from the reporting in the second Jezebel piece that Rue is dark skinned in the book, so the tweets are wrong about that. But let’s assume for a moment that the character was white or that Collins had not specified her skin tone or ethnicity. Should casting a performer of color matter? The Marvel comic book character Nick Fury was portrayed as white in the comics but he is played by African American actor Samuel L. Jackson in recent Marvel pictures including 2012’s The Avengers. Based on Jackson’s performance and the way these films have dealt with the character, the ethnicity of the actor playing Fury seems irrelevant to the character’s story. And the same is true of Rue; there is nothing about her ethnicity that makes it a defining element of her character, at least as she is portrayed in the film.
That shouldn’t be taken to mean race does not matter in the movies. Clearly race (and social context) matters for the plot and characters of a film like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? or the 2005 remake Guess Who? And race plainly mattered to the Twitter users who were bothered that certain characters of The Hunger Games were portrayed by minority actors. But there is a distinction to be made between race mattering to the story and race mattering to the audience. The fact that some of The Hunger Games readers were surprised and upset to see an African American actress in the role exposes some underlying attitudes.
As Frederick Gooding discussed in my recent interview with him, audiences, and especially white viewers, have been conditioned to assume that characters are white as a default. This is especially true of characters in heroic roles. That assumption was upset by the presence of African American actress Amandla Stenberg as Rue. The image on the screen departed from the mental image these viewers had upon reading the book and race was clearly such an issue for them that, to paraphrase a few tweets, it ruined the picture for them or kept the viewer from feeling empathy for the character. The fierce reaction to the presence of an African American actress betrays the extent to which this conditioning has taken hold.
What the Twitter reaction also reveals is a fundamental difference between reading a book and watching a film. What we have here are readers who were clearly invested in the book and yet either did not pick up on the descriptions in Collins’ book or ignored them. Literature allows for that in a way that cinema does not; readers are able to imagine characters and locations and modify a book’s descriptions to fulfill the fantasy in our mind’s eye. This is why books are almost always described as better than a movie adaptation. In this case, readers were able to ignore uncomfortable or challenging racial depictions in a book by filtering them out, so much so that their memory of the book does not resemble what the author actually wrote.
I want to move this on to a point about fandom. The racial component of the Twitter posts tends of obfuscate other issues but there is another aspect to this and that is the outrage at changes initiated by screenwriters in adapting The Hunger Games from the page to the screen. I think this presents considerable problems for filmmakers and directly impacts the films we get in the local theater.
We are living in a time in which studios are under pressure to make big blockbuster films from established franchises as opposed to creative risks on smaller, original pictures. These blockbuster films are often adapted from properties that have a considerable fan base; that fan base guarantees a built-in audience, which is the reason the projects are green-lit in the first place. At the same time, fans have considerable influence on the products being made and studios and filmmakers actively court the fans in their marketing strategies.
This leads to a situation in which filmmakers are creatively restrained. Adaptations of books, comics, and toy lines are expected to follow the established texts or mythology to the letter and any deviation is hyperbolically compared to a sexual assault on the fan’s childhood. But many great films adapted from novels took tremendous liberties from their source material. Psycho, The Godfather, The Shining, and Jaws were adapted from bestselling novels but omitted or changed critical elements of the books in order for the filmmakers to produce their own vision. If these films were made today, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Steven Spielberg would be inundated with hate mail accusing them of ruining the book and studios would likely step in and stop them from making those changes in the first place.
There is a connection between fan-boy outrage and the racial comments on Twitter. Many authors do not specify the race of the characters in their books and screenplays unless it matters to the story. And because audiences are conditioned to think of characters as white unless otherwise specified, Hollywood is disposed to cast white actors to keep adaptations as close as possible to the fan’s conception of the characters and stories. This perpetuates, as Gooding puts it, a cycle of blamelessness in which Hollywood studios continue to provide default-white characters, which audiences consume and have their assumptions reinforced, and thereby incentive studios to continue providing the same ethnically homogenous casts.
But this cycle does not just apply to racial representation. It applies to the kinds of stories that are told and the way films are made. That’s why the marquee at the local theater is filled with prequels, sequels, remakes, and reboots and the rare “original” feature is indistinguishable from every other Hollywood tent pole release. A case in point would be the recent release of John Carter, a film in which every character and set piece vaguely recalls other pictures. But Hollywood is just giving us what they think we want and filmmakers are kept from exercising their creativity by studio executives who fear the wrath of fans.
The real shame isn’t just that large segments of the population aren’t represented in motion pictures; it’s that filmmakers are prevented from thinking about old or established narratives in new terms or providing the audience with challenging or creative pictures. It’s texts that shake us up—and to an extent The Hunger Games does—that have a chance at really breaking through the cycle of malaise.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Frederick Gooding Interview Available
The interview with Frederick Gooding featured on today's show is now available for download on the Features page of the website.
For more information about Gooding's work, visit The Minority Reporter.
For more information about Gooding's work, visit The Minority Reporter.
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