Experimental Film
Film form
Meaning and response
Context
Narrative
Auteur
Tarantino as an Auteur:
- Gratuitous and comic like violence
- Pop culture and intertextuality
- Soundtracks over scores
- Self-referential
- Recurring actors
- Cameos
- Verbose dialogue, non expositional, non literal, colloquial
- Film
- Post Modern - looks nice, not much beneath the surface
- Swearing
- racist terminology
- trunk shot
- atypical/contrapuntal music
- master of self promotion
Influenced by martial arts films of the 60's and 70's and westerns, (drunken master, quick zooms)
As well as intertextuality (e.g. through the filmic aesthetic), Tarantino also peppers his films with pop references bia extended dialogue sequences. These often have no relevance to the narrative, representing a break from traditional Hollywood expositional or literary dialogue.
The Reservoir Dogs 'Like a Virgin' sequences is an often cited example of this, primarily because it was the scene that announced him to the global film stage.
Also intertextuality between his own films with repeated use of certain actors
The risk with making pop culture references is that they'll become outdated in 20 years time, and alienate the audience who don't get the reference.
Tarantino has attracted controversy for racism, homophobia and misogyny (for the latter, both in the actual texts of his films, and the way in which actresses were treated on set (also involvement with Weinstein). He also had the 'big gay' and it has been rumoured that he had 'AS' - assburgers syndrome.
Spike Lee, in particular, takes issue with Tarantino's liberal use of the n-word.
Tarantino has stated in the past that, given the choice between shooting on digital and not making films at all, he would choose the latter.
"We are now in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles" - Fredric Jameson
Key Traits of Post-Modernism:
Ideas:
The long take is in complete opposition to montage. Andre Bazin recognised the importance of a long take in deep focus:
Meaning and response
Context
Narrative
Auteur
Tarantino as an Auteur:
- Gratuitous and comic like violence
- Pop culture and intertextuality
- Soundtracks over scores
- Self-referential
- Recurring actors
- Cameos
- Verbose dialogue, non expositional, non literal, colloquial
- Film
- Post Modern - looks nice, not much beneath the surface
- Swearing
- racist terminology
- trunk shot
- atypical/contrapuntal music
- master of self promotion
Influenced by martial arts films of the 60's and 70's and westerns, (drunken master, quick zooms)
As well as intertextuality (e.g. through the filmic aesthetic), Tarantino also peppers his films with pop references bia extended dialogue sequences. These often have no relevance to the narrative, representing a break from traditional Hollywood expositional or literary dialogue.
The Reservoir Dogs 'Like a Virgin' sequences is an often cited example of this, primarily because it was the scene that announced him to the global film stage.
Also intertextuality between his own films with repeated use of certain actors
The risk with making pop culture references is that they'll become outdated in 20 years time, and alienate the audience who don't get the reference.
Tarantino has attracted controversy for racism, homophobia and misogyny (for the latter, both in the actual texts of his films, and the way in which actresses were treated on set (also involvement with Weinstein). He also had the 'big gay' and it has been rumoured that he had 'AS' - assburgers syndrome.
Spike Lee, in particular, takes issue with Tarantino's liberal use of the n-word.
Tarantino has stated in the past that, given the choice between shooting on digital and not making films at all, he would choose the latter.
"We are now in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles" - Fredric Jameson
Key Traits of Post-Modernism:
Ideas:
- Distinction between high and low culture challenged
- rejection of Grand Narrative (Lyotard)
- meaning of signs no longer stable
- originality questioned (Baudrillard)
- self-reflectivity (aware of own artificiality)
Structure:
- intertextuality and bricolage (art recycles ideas giving them new purpose)
- eclecticism
- hybridity (generic conventions no longer fixed)
- non-linear/fragmented narratives rather than traditional formats
Aesthetic style
- pastiche (old styles reworked)
- parody (tongue-in-cheek humour)
- irony (playful challenge to seriousness of Modernism)
- camp and kitsch (celebration of naffness)
Characterization
- multiple and fractured identities
- traditional notion of good and bad blurred
Postmodernism in Pulp Fiction:
- surface meaning - little depth to it
- about the look of the film
- pastiche/hybrid genre
- death of narrative
- lack of concrete substance
- blurring of genre conventions, narrative, time periods (diner)
- cine-literate/intertextuality
- use of John Travolta rather self-referntial/self-reflective
- ability to cast in specific
- Ability to cast cast in specific roles - Travolta
- Tarantino obsession with martial arts and westerns
- Postmodern nature of consumerism
- Circuar narrative - nothing resolved
Fabula (Story, audience-led) - this is the entire story; the full sequence of events. This includes sequences that are not visibly, or aurally, represented on the screen (characters eating, sleeping and going to the toilet). Here the audience is active as it must make assumptions based on the information give; it must fill in the gaps. On occasion reconstructing the fabula (making sense of the omissions) can help us gain a greater understanding. It is the entire sequence of events with nothing taken out.
Syuzhet (Plot, writer/director-led) - This i the information and organization of material which is presented on the screen (the sequence of frames chosen by the director). The information given cannot be changed as all viewers are privy to the same facts. However, in a suspense the director may have reconstructed the sequence of events, leaving the audience unaware that the character may have gained information unrevealed to us. This specific selection of events is especially useful in crime stories as the audience can be manipulated and led to incorrect assumptions to increase the suspense.
Syuzhet for Pulp Fiction:
go kill kahuna, take man in car, hsoot man, whoops, wolf time, day diner with holdup, marcellus bar, gold watch dream and butch fight and taking mia out, fixing the fight and drug overdose scene. Next Day: retrieve watch and kill vincent, get abducted and have accident with rape and dat, come back with bike and drive off into the sunset.
The divide between the normal and the pathological isn't just blurred, it's obsolete.
Wolf scene: The thieves' impossible skill works as an ironic counterpoint to their disdain for the bourgeois workaday grind.
Hypermascultinity - despite most male characters having a female counterpart, the films are really more about relations between men and men
Formalism:
The theory held by a Russian literary group that technique and form are both means to and the goal of artistic creation.
Bolshevik revolution -> filmmakers flee Russia and take film stock, while theres also import ban on celluloid -> filmmakers forced to experiment by recycliing and editing footage from exisiting film stock, and realise the power editing held as a manipulative device
Montage coming from japanese form of writing of combining two words/images to create a third meaning. from this the kuleshov effect was born.
Eisenstein believed that not just the conflict between to images, but the following conflicts should be considered:
The divide between the normal and the pathological isn't just blurred, it's obsolete.
Wolf scene: The thieves' impossible skill works as an ironic counterpoint to their disdain for the bourgeois workaday grind.
Hypermascultinity - despite most male characters having a female counterpart, the films are really more about relations between men and men
Formalism:
The theory held by a Russian literary group that technique and form are both means to and the goal of artistic creation.
Bolshevik revolution -> filmmakers flee Russia and take film stock, while theres also import ban on celluloid -> filmmakers forced to experiment by recycliing and editing footage from exisiting film stock, and realise the power editing held as a manipulative device
Montage coming from japanese form of writing of combining two words/images to create a third meaning. from this the kuleshov effect was born.
Eisenstein believed that not just the conflict between to images, but the following conflicts should be considered:
- conflict between planes
- conflict between volumes
- spatial conflict
- conflict in lighting
- conflict in tempo
- conflict in matter and shot (spatial distortion using camera angle)
- conflict between matter and spatiality (optical distortion using the lens)
- conflict between an event and its temporality (slowing and speeding time)
The long take is in complete opposition to montage. Andre Bazin recognised the importance of a long take in deep focus:
- deep focus is similar to how we see the world and so is more realist
- Long take invites active spectatorship as we have to decipher information rather than the director guiding the audience
- montage rules out ambiguity as the spectator is shown important images. Depth of focus reintroduces ambiguity.
The director can easily manipulate an audience as the information presented in the syuzhet may be purposfuly misleading.
Vincent and mia scene:
How do we respond to character and situation in the first part, and cinematic shock in the second part?
How we make meaning and obtain pleasure from the details of a film as we engage both intellectually and affectivley in the act of spectatorship.
How we make meaning and obtain pleasure from the details of a film as we engage both intellectually and affectivley in the act of spectatorship.
By this point, Vincent is established as, while being a ruthless hitman, also a pretty ordinary, appealing, even slighlty vulnerbale man, and the audience can therefore take interest. Being John Travolta may also colours our sympathies.
Expectations of Mia prior to seeing her based on the gangster genre - a femme fatale. We are already place and come to terms with a character we have yet to meet, or know vaguely.
The spectator processes a range of information in the mise-en-scene, soundtrack, dialogue and performances. The information is controlled by the filmmaker, and so the spectator is in a dependent situation. It is this because of this limited access to information that the spectator becomes active.
In the 22 shots before they leave the house, we do not see Mia's full face - our curiousity is sparked and she is playing with us in the same way as with Vincent. She is also in control being the boss' wife, having camera and sound technology and with Vincent being too high to be assertive. She equally takes control of our alignment, all key POVs are of her. Allegience however is with Vincent due to prior character building and star persona, as well as him being the object of the camera's look. Allegience with Mia is only being formed based off behaviour and voice.
Moral evaluations are based off moral criteria of the diegetic world rather than non-diegetic.
Shot reverse shot of conversation (suturing), but rather than involving spectator passivity, processing the visual and verbal information is very active, in part because the dialogue displays complex forces being put into play. We form alliegances because of our participation
Interest is created through dramatic irony (we know both are on drugs) and also being restricted of key information
Sudden shift from comedic tone in bathroom to close up of Mia's dying face
Responses to the scene:
- concern for Mia that she recovers and for Vincent that he does not suffer the consequences if she doesn't
- Amusement at the mix of black comedy and farce
- distaste for Mia and Vincent due to their behaviour and values they represent
- disorientation at the mix of black comedy and farce, and subsequnet outrage
- irritation at Tarantino's pseudointellectual mix of intensity with comedy
Suggestions that the preferred response would be to regard the film as black comedy (the way Mia is unceremoniously dropped on the grass, "that was fucking trippy"), and oppositional would be to find this world of drug abuse disturbing.
The inexperienced spectator may not be able to engage with fictional characters in such a playful, imaginative way as Pulp requires.
It is only possible to take pleasure in all of its elements if the spectator is able to empathise, imagine the situation, yet still recognise its fictional nature.
The central function of spectatorship is imagining. This can be split into central imagining (I imagine) and acentral imagining (I imagine that). Most of time we operate though acentral imagining, in contrast to the classical film theory of being at one with the camera and thus operating through central imagining. Spectatorship really is a combination of the two.
In this scene, there are two instances which draw attention to the film as a textual construct rather than disguise it as a film so that we may suspend our disbelief. The square animation - an admission of the film as a textual construct (postmodern), so that we may take pleasure in a certain complicity with the filmmaker. The dance scene - the spectator is confronted with a fine distinction between John Travolta's star identity in saturday night fever and his role here, acknlowedging the star myth
Vincent and Mia microfeatures:
Sound:
Cool music (surf rock) plays while he injects heroin - romanticises it. The close ups, slow mo's of flowing liquid and lighter make it look cool, he acts cool (shown with closeup).
Dissolve - adds to dreamlike feel
Hyperreal injection sound
Screen projection - pay homage to noir
Star persona now doing heroin.
Stumbles down the path, what with being high. Wanders around aimlessly in the household
Mia voiceover - quite corny, like her character.
Medium long shots of vincent allow us to see his entire body language to show how HIGHHH he is rn. Also makes him seem small.
Responses to Mia as an enigma
Lots of african figurines (wallace), and other art pieces making the house seem lavish and stylish - glamourises THUGGGGG LIFE
Son of a preacher man - stays in the background as a mood piece
Breaking down and fetishisation of female body, starts with lips. Shot is also phallic. Could also read it as restricting info about her, giving her power as we want to know something about her she isn't telling us - she has power especially over drugged Vincent.
Nostalgic to use star persona
High angle of Vincent looking at painting - emasculating
Fades back in when they do drugs
Fetishisation of paraphinalia of drug use especially cocaine.
In this scene, there are two instances which draw attention to the film as a textual construct rather than disguise it as a film so that we may suspend our disbelief. The square animation - an admission of the film as a textual construct (postmodern), so that we may take pleasure in a certain complicity with the filmmaker. The dance scene - the spectator is confronted with a fine distinction between John Travolta's star identity in saturday night fever and his role here, acknlowedging the star myth
Vincent and Mia microfeatures:
Sound:
Cool music (surf rock) plays while he injects heroin - romanticises it. The close ups, slow mo's of flowing liquid and lighter make it look cool, he acts cool (shown with closeup).
Dissolve - adds to dreamlike feel
Hyperreal injection sound
Screen projection - pay homage to noir
Star persona now doing heroin.
Stumbles down the path, what with being high. Wanders around aimlessly in the household
Mia voiceover - quite corny, like her character.
Medium long shots of vincent allow us to see his entire body language to show how HIGHHH he is rn. Also makes him seem small.
Responses to Mia as an enigma
Lots of african figurines (wallace), and other art pieces making the house seem lavish and stylish - glamourises THUGGGGG LIFE
Son of a preacher man - stays in the background as a mood piece
Breaking down and fetishisation of female body, starts with lips. Shot is also phallic. Could also read it as restricting info about her, giving her power as we want to know something about her she isn't telling us - she has power especially over drugged Vincent.
Nostalgic to use star persona
High angle of Vincent looking at painting - emasculating
Fades back in when they do drugs
Fetishisation of paraphinalia of drug use especially cocaine.
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