Presentation Evaluation

I went in the Pan's Labyrinth group on Wednesday 5/11. I think it went pretty well. I talked about the historical setting, which I think went okay. I was really nervous, so I went kind of fast on somethings and I hope everyone could keep up. The main point I wanted to get across was why Del Toro made the film in this time period and what he was trying to comment on. Firstly, it was his anti-fascist movie, I illustrated that when I talked about how the Pale Man and the giant Toad represented fascist in Spain and across the globe. The next thing I think he was trying to comment on were the wars in the Middle East. Even though he is a Latin American director, he lives in the United States, so he would be very familiar with our involvement in the Middle East.

I also put together the entire powerpoint and brought the DVD to show clips from. Other than that, I just generally helped my group members with anything they might need.

Our group, for the most part, worked really well together. We all communicated through emails and kept each other updated. With one exception, I think everyone took the project seriously and I really appreciated that.

All in all I think we did a pretty good job. It was an interesting film to dissect and a good wrap for the class.

Rough Draft

Okay, I wrote this as a very rough draft just to get my thoughts out there. I had this idea before the Wizard of Oz group presented, but I think I brought some new ideas to the topic, so I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes.

Wizard of Oz: Text vs. Film

            When L. Frank Baum set out to write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he sought to make an enjoyable American fairy tale, but instead he created an American classic. Both novel and 1939 film were great successes, still to this day past down generation to generation. With the film being the more popular medium, I seek, by not condemning or commending the film, to examine the discrepancies from the novel.  For example, why does the film seek to change the character makeup of Dorothy? Why is the Wicked Witch of the West the main antagonist? And why does the film seek to inject morals and life lessons that the original text lacks?

            There is no doubt that Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, is a cherished American icon. She represents a strong female lead to young girls across the world, but one cannot help thinking about her counterpart in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the novel, Dorothy could be called a proactive character, while her filmic counterpart is a much weaker opponent. For instance, in the film Dorothy cries many more times than in the novel. The novelized Dorothy cries about two times in the text and can be forgiven since one has to remember she is just a child far away from home. The film Dorothy is much older and instead looks to crying as a problem solver. The novel version seeks to actually solve problems. Instead of giving up and pouting she asks her friends for help. If not slightly annoying, her film version appears weak and too meek for such foreign terrain. In the novel when the Wicked Witch of the West is melted, Dorothy is the culprit, but not entirely by accident as in the film. In the novel she is upset at the Wicked Witch for attempting to steal her shoes and throws the water on her. Given, she did not know exactly what would happen, she had inkling. She knew that the Wicked Witch did not like water, therefore proactively solving a problem, but she did not know it would melt her therefore her childhood innocence is still intact. In the film the Witch lights her friend Scarecrow on fire, she must grab a bucket of water in order to save him. Some drips on the Witch and she starts to melt. Only when put in a certain instance does Dorothy reluctantly react, and not entirely of her own free will, therefore her naivety and innocence tricks her into acting.

            In the novel, the Wicked Witch of the West is a chapter long character. She is mentioned earlier, but never takes form until over half way into the novel. She appears in one chapter and then killed off. In the film she appears throughout as the main antagonist. She constantly stalks Dorothy and her friends and then of course there is the final showdown. 1939 marks the start of World War II and Hitler came into international consciousness. Although America would not get involved until 1941, Hitler had struck a frightening cord. The Wicked Witch of the West could very much represent this fear therefore directly affecting the expansion of her character. Not only did she watch Dorothy from far away, plotting and planning her attack, she had a large winged-monkey army of drones, no doubt representing the Nazi military. She was also said to be all powerful and to have enslaved a whole race of people, the Winkies. Maybe I could be stretching and maybe, as films do require, she served as a strong, lead antagonist just for stories sake, but looking at the Wizard of Oz in a World War II standpoint, it could be plausible. With Dorothy as a representation of America and her friends as the allies, she seeks to overthrow the Wicked Witch of the West and set the whole world of Oz free. Could it be a parallel of a fear that America was feeling at the time? Or is it just a strange coincidence?

            Lastly, when L Frank Baum set out to make The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he sought to make a fairy tale and nothing more. Having written in the original introduction about children enjoying fairy tales and the morals going in the proverbial ear and out the other, he sought to make an enjoyable novel for children without a moral to the story. The film slaps the viewer over the head with heavy handed morals and life lessons. This could be because of the time period the film was set in. Dorothy has to repeat the phrase “There’s no place like home” while tapping her ruby slippers in the film, when in the book she only says the line one time when she describes her desire to go back to Kansas. In the ending of the film she says that if she desires anymore adventure she will look no further than her own back yard. The novel ends with Dorothy feeling no regret about the adventure, just a relief that she is safe and not costing her aunt and uncle any money. The whole film seems to have a moral of a young girls place in life. Almost shouting the dictum to young girls that fun is okay for the movies, but do not have too much fun, you still have to return to your domestic duties. Of course it could also be read that the dictum is just a heartfelt lesson that home is where the heart is, but one is left wondering if the same could be said if the story was written about a male child.

            Alas many of the discrepancies from novel to film could be attributed to the time period. 1939 was a time before the civil rights movement, before the second wave women’s movement and during the time of great economic disparity. Audiences at this time most likely craved innocent fun for the family and wanted a movie that preached to them that even though Kansas (America) seemed like a bleak place and there was a growing international threat, that home and happiness is really where the heart is and they too shall overcome.

How Children are Portrayed in Litertature and Film

Although literature and film have made great strides in the way it represents diverse populations, it still has only come so far.

In the novels we’ve read for this class and the accompanying films we’ve watched, children are represented in very much the same way, with one exception. The stand out novel would be Peter Pan. In the novel the children are referred to as “heartless” and downright selfish for their adventure to Neverland. Their adventure is put into context by the adult narrator instead of understood. The narrator tells us of the hardships the children left their poor, loving parents with. Their disappearance has caused their father to live his life, regardless of any social stigma it may carry, in a dog kennel. The mother stays up sleepless nights to wait for the children to return and her heart remains broken while she waits. All the while the children are having a merry time off in Neverland, not losing any sleep over whether their parents are okay at all. In essence the narrator comments on the most important part of childhood, but the rarely mentioned part, the selfishness of it.

In many novels, the parent’s feelings are either discarded as mean or not mentioned at all. In Alice, do her parents worry? We wouldn’t know, nobody mentions it. In fact, in the Tim Burton film, she is downright rude to the man that purposes to her. Given, it was the right thing for her not to marry him, she had no right to just run out on him, he was probably just as forced into the situation as she was (if I remember correctly, I last saw the film a couple of weeks ago).

Many novels and films seek to romanticize childhood and portray children as innocent angels. In Peter Pan, the children kill, yes, actually murder pirates; in fact, it is the most convincing reason the boys go to Neverland with Peter. Of course none of this is shown in the film version we watched for class. Why? Are children just too corruptible?  Can children’s minds simply read this information, but if shown on screen would it be too much? That is a different issue entirely, so I will get back on point.

Novels, down to how the children cry when far away from home like Alice or Oz don’t give children enough credit. Immediately after entering these strange portals, the children immediately want to find a way home. In Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they do stay a while after their mission is done, but it seems they always end up at home and are happy about it. Is this re-enforcing that children should never wander far from home? Or that they should only let imaginations run so far? Are these books about imagination and magical worlds just anti-imagination books parading around in disguise?

I would have to answer a resounding yes. In all the books, including Peter Pan, the happy ending is the children ending up at home. They right whatever wrong they must in the other world, but must return home never to return to the magical world again (with some exceptions). If any of these children’s lives were really that bad, why would they want to return? In Oz Dorothy was an orphan and lived a harsh life in the plains of Kansas. I would rather stay in Oz, she and the scarecrow do joke about this in the novel, but that is all it is, a joke. She is conscientious child that doesn’t want her aunt and uncle to have to go into mourning because it would cost them too much money, but other than that, why does she miss her old life? Why is she miserable when she is in the Emerald City? As a child, I’d probably have to be drug out of there. The only film that represents a pro imagination stance is Pan’s Labyrinth. Ofelia has a reasonable pull to stay with her mother and unborn brother, but has a reasonable pull to disappear into her magical world as well. When her mother is gone, she logically wants to retreat into her other world, in which she eventually does. That makes sense, that film treats her as a person with logic, emotion and complexity.  Why do other films not treat children this way?

My answer would have to be because children’s novels and films seek to not only teach children a moral lesson, but to enforce gender stereotypes. In Peter Pan, Wendy goes to Neverland, not on the promise of adventure like her brothers, but because of mermaids and motherhood. In Alice, she attempts to escape school and in Oz she accidently ends up in a magical place. Each return to realize they never should have gone in the first place, their home is all they need (in the 1939 Wizard of Oz film, not the novel).  With new films on the rise such as Kick Ass (which was first a comic) and Hanna, they seek to change the young female stereotype. In Kick Ass, Hit Girl is a young assassin with no moral qualms with killing. Hanna (although I have not seen the film, only the trailers) it seems follows that same archetype, not only that, but a line in the trailer explicitly says, “Well sometimes children are bad people too” just hits my point home. These two films subvert the typical child/female depiction and seek to give greater complexity to these characters. Instead of portraying children as innocent beings with a deep desire to stay at home, these films seek to push the boundaries of portraying children. They are shown not only as adventurists, but morally questionable and pushing the envelope is what creating film and literature is all about.

Alice vs. Alice

When comparing Svankmajer's 1988 Alice to the 1951 Disney film Alice in Wonderland it is hard to draw any comparisons. For one, Alice is live action/stop motion while the Disney version is complete animation. Secondly, Alice is based only on Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Disney version combines elements of Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Thirdly, in Disney's version the protagonist actually imagines or travels to another world, while in Alice she merely wanders around her home. And although they both revolve around the same story these two couldn't be anymore different.

Svankmajer's cult classic is dark, twisted and horror like. For one, the mood is darkened by the color scheme he shoots with. There are no vibrant colors and if there is movement, it is robotic stop-motion. The protagonist herself is so unemotional and so zombie like it is unnerving. When I think of a child's imagination I think, while given a little off beat, happy, colorful, and hyper. She is nothing of the sort, which inherently is not a bad thing, it is just a strange thing. In her world the animals sentenced by the red queen to get their heads lopped off, do in fact get their heads cut off...with scissors. At the end she even considers cutting off the white rabbits head herself. While being faithful to the book, the film  brings to life the darker side of the novel and the darker side of childhood. I suppose not every child has thoughts of flowers, bunnies and cute, cuddly creatures.

While Disney's film would have you think otherwise. Children's heads are filled with flowers, bunnies, and vibrant colors. Alice, a hopelessly lost child, wearing an innocent blue dress, white stockings and a bow in her hair is a victim of her own imagination, not the evil mastermind behind it. She is an unwilling protagonist that just wants to return home. Some of the characters she meets are mean, but always in a friendly sort of way and they are all lost just as much as she. Plastering the screen with vibrant colors, quick movement and even faster editing, Wonderland comes to life as a labyrinth of amusement. Taking from both books, Alice must go deeper into her imagination to bring herself home. Taking more a stance on womens' rights, the Disney film seeks to give young girls imagination, but not to get them too lost in any ideas, after all they must return home like good girls in time for tea.

Alas, both films, although different, are in perfect complement of each other. One stands for the darker side of the imagination, the other stands for the bright, less horrifying side of imagination. Both drawing from the same source material and each giving it their own twist, none is wrong, they just brighten or darken depending on the mood they're trying to convey. 

Jackie Brown

Adapted from the novel Rum Punch written by Elmore Leonard, Jackie Brown is as much a character driven piece as the novel. Although a few things were changed (the location, the title and the race of the main character) Tarantino sought to construct his film “…as if you were having your friends over, it’s a hangout movie”. If your friends happen to be criminals and a bail bondsman. 

I should probably start off introducing the characters for those who have not seen the film. The protagonist is Jackie Brown, she's a down and out flight attendant who traffics money for a gun dealer Ordell. Max Cherry is a middle aged bail bondsman who ends up helping Jackie get her hands on enough of Ordell's money to escape her life of crime.

The novel was originally set in Florida, as many of Elmore Leonard's novels are. Tarantino changed the location to Los Angeles, California for no other reason than he knew the area and wanted to make an LA movie. The change was a welcomed one as far as I'm concerned, as I'm a native LA girl. The only thing this change affected was that a minor character was cut from the script, as he was very regionally specific. 

The title change was also a very welcomed change for me because this story is about Jackie, not Max as the novel is. It was interesting to watch the film again after reading the novel and notice the change in narrative. The book is about Max Cherry, but the film is very much Jackie's story. Which leads me to my next point, Jackie's race. 

In the novel Jackie is white, Tarantino changes her to an African American woman. It was a great change because Pam Grier just nails that role. Although, in my opinion, race changes how a character can experience the world, it doesn't change much from novel to film because they both focus on Jackie as a middle aged woman. They both comment on how tough the world can be when a woman is past her "prime". 

As far as what was omitted from the novel, there were only a few minor events. As I said before a minor character was left out because he was too regionally specific, but probably for irrelevancy as well. This character happens to be a leader of a white supremacist gang in which happens to be in the middle of a protest at the beginning of the novel. Tarantino most likely takes these out because it just doesn't have anything to do with the story he is trying to tell. His film is largely apolitical, perhaps because he is more interested in his characters and telling their story. Elmore Leonard seems like he enjoys setting the political tide of the region, which could be another reason why white supremacists are not found in the film, because that stuff isn't readily very overt in modern Los Angeles. 

Telling the story of two middle aged individuals can be tough. Our society sees past twenty five as past your prime, but the film and novel do an excellent job telling Jackie and Max's story in an exciting, engaging way. Especially for a film, it is hard to take unglamorous characters and construct a critically and audience acclaimed movie. As a student screenwriter, I am taught to construct characters as universal as possible, but give them superhuman, supremely unique traits to give them that "hollywood hero" type persona. Jackie Brown presents a film without those frills, making it inadvertently supremely unique. It is a great film because of it's approach to telling a story of two middle aged people in the most basic way possible, admittedly their link to the criminal underworld may seem a little other worldly, it may not be my life or your life, but there are millions of people in the world that are in the business of crime. And if you can't appreciate the complexity of life past twenty five then you're missing out.

Never Let Me Go Review

Never Let Me Go, is a 2010 under seen and underrated film directed by Mark Romanek based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro. The film deals with a group of children raised in an alternate, future reality in which sets of children are designed strictly as organ donors. Specifically the film follows three donor children who are quarantined at a boarding school until they are adults and can start to undergo their required painful surgeries. Those who live to see three surgeries are considered lucky. The film is a coming of age journey cut short and although highly depressing, it is a good watch.

Armond White's review of the film, which one can find through this link, is a combined review of Never Let Me Go and Easy A (you can ignore the Easy A parts). Although he likes this particular director he hates the film. He blames the film's shortcomings on the source material, saying the book was so devoid of any historical/social connection he has no interest in the story or characters. Adapting the novel, in the first place, was his problem. In fact, the only scene he does appreciate in the film was not in the book. He blames the author for inept characters, having no personality, therefore no place in society. Although the film takes place in a very historical time period, these donor children seem to find no place in it. The 1960s and 1970s was a time of rebellion and these children never even question why their bodies are treated like medical school dummies. Therefore who cares about them or their fate?

This is where I disagree. First, the book as does the film, takes place in the alternate reality. Therefore how do we, as the viewer, know that the radicalism of the 60's and the 70's even still exist. The viewer sees very little of the outside world, so for all we know, the world is still stuck in the conservatism of the 1950s. Secondly, I feel the book and the film both comment on something much bigger. The children are secluded in a boarding school and know nothing other than the life that was taught to them. How would they know anything of rebellion? Or why would anyone of them necessarily have much of a personality, something which is acquired through interaction with the outside world? I disagree that they have no personality anyway, but that is a whole different digression. The story is commenting on what it is to be human, as many clone/test tube baby stories do. Could we ever live in a world in which we treated human life as meaningless? Could humanity ever get so cold? But it also comments on something even bigger than that, encapsulated in the last line of the film (in which Armond hates). Everything ends and it's up to us to determine how we deal with that.