Abogenrief

In Bringing Out the Dead, Nicolas Cage plays Frank, a graveyard shift EMT technician in New York City in the early 1990s. In classic Scorsese style, the themes of masculinity, subcultural underground interaction, and fast paced film editing combine to form the frenetic basis of Frank's neo-noir lifestyle. The film is dark, urban, and also blackly comic, relying on strong masculine characters to provide energy and humor.

Overall, Bringing Out the Dead appears to be heavily influenced by film noir. Frank, the protagonist, is at the end of his rope in a rather solitary and stressful job and he often finds escape from the ghosts of his failures through alcohol. Patricia Arquette plays Mary, the femme fatale character and woman in distress Frank seeks to save. The film is uber-urban, set mainly in the nighttime ghettos and hustling districts of New York City, and the major events center around various city dwellers. Frank's adventures in life saving are highlighted by the colorful characters of City life, including prostitutes, drug addicts, homeless persons, insane persons, goth-punk death rockers and the ubiquitous 'Mr. O.,' the smelliest destitute to plague Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Hospital. Frank is led by Mary into the narcotic underworld, and meets the proprietor of 'The Oasis,' a charismatic dealer with a passion for tropical fish and silk robes.

Many of the lighting techniques also serve to emphasize the urbanality of the surroundings, often combining music and fast paced editing. The darkness of the City night is contrasted with the searing halogen of the hospital, and the sunlight that creeps through the window at dawn mocks Frank's insomnia. Indeed, the movie ends at dawn, with Frank nodding off to sleep. This is very similar to the traditional horror movie ending at dawn when the nighttime monsters are relegated to their nocturnal lairs. Editing techniques are feverish and accelerate in pace as the movie progresses and Frank's hysteria mounts. Many of these sequences involve a montage of the flashing ambulance lights, 360-degree camera rotation, blurred traffic lights and shots of the crazed driver behind the wheel. My personal favorite scene is when Frank is going to answer a call, and the montage is set to R.E.M.'s What's the Frequency Kenneth.

Overall, most of the main characters are the male ambulance drivers/EMTs. These characters, Frank, Tom, Marcus and Larry, exude a kind of unquestioned masculinity, which they prove through various means such as violence, excessive flirting, and alcohol consumption. Tom is a violent, hair trigger macho who enjoys pummeling transients and minorities. Marcus is a smooth talking black man who chain smokes stogies and praises Jesus. Larry is an overweight everyman, wanting to start his own paramedic business. Frank is a Marlboro smoking altruistic cowboy with a drinking problem and insomnia. At some point, most of the characters engage in drinking (liquor) while on duty or at least in the ambulance. The characters names are also quite masculine, especially in contrast to Noel, a man who is a drug addict of ethnic descent that is never arguably fully a man.

Inherently, Scorsese's New York City is an urban jungle that will break any man who is not strong or tough enough.

While many audiences have been shocked, appalled, titillated and confused by the vulgarity of John Waters' Pink Flamingos, I argue here that the film portrays the campy banality of the carnal while discreetly displaying the interaction between social classes and its relation to the profane. It has been said that horror and pornography are inextricably linked in the realm of the carnal; the provocation of physical bodily reactions sets them apart from their more cerebral counterparts though not necessarily through mutual exclusion. As Carol Clover has dubbed the "body" genres, horror and pornography fuse to form the union of Pink Flamingos. The plot of the film pits Mr. and Mrs. Marvel, an enterprising bourgeoisie couple of questionable taste and sexuality, against Divine, a female drag queen and veteran of Waters' films, who lives in a pink trailer with her family and a herd of lawn ornaments. In the film, the Marvels are attempting to 'out-filth' Divine at her own game, arguably what Waters is trying to do with the film itself in the context of middle-aged middle-classed whiteamerican heterosexual patriarchal ideology inherent in the male-dominated/based financially privileged bias of the film industry.

Although the film flips the bird to standard notions of socially hegemonic class-based values, it remains trapped in its own flaxen net of privilege. Waters attempts to criticize and ridicule mainstream society through the over-the-top frequency of lewd and licentious situations but loses viewers in a sort of stimulation-apathy akin to being in a porn store for too long. The film comes off less as a critique of societal values and taboos than a self-indulgent stab at the avant-garde through smut, and this manifests itself in the failure of the Marvels to truly be the monarchs of filth. I argue that the failure of the Marvels to usurp Divine's title of filthiest person alive results from their social position relative to Divine and her kin. Divine's class is coded through her living situation (a trailer with no address), dress, hair, makeup, friends, eating habits, speech and incestuous relationship with her son, Crackers. These aspects are conspicuously low-class and conspicuously American. This is also well evidenced by a scene in which Divine struts down the park stairs, the veritable epitome of all that is not encompassed by the standard ideology of American principles, flanked by the old red-white and blue in the background. Indeed, it is surprising when we learn that the film is set on the East Coast and not in a southern backwater. On the other hand, the Marvels enjoy the luxury of an address (3900), conservative clothing, 'refined' dialect, lucrative businesses, servants and (arguably) mutual repression of their 'true' sexualities (she the bookish lesbian, he the flamboyant gay man) cloaked in the guise of holy matrimony. Ultimately, the bottom line here is that the Marvels are hindered in their aspirations to filth through their relative privilege. The Marvels can 'pass' in the everyday world, unlike Divine, and thus they can never achieve true 'filthiness' that those of lower socioeconomic status are forced to afford. When 'filth' is defined by the hegemony of white capitalist patriarchal upper-class heterosexual values, their aspirations to it are inherently negated. Thus, the Marvels never had any chance of taking the title from Divine because they are not fully able to transcend these boundaries.

Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding reflects the marriage of Indian tradition with modernization and globalization, which is represented in the film through the language, scenery, clothing, and music. These themes show that tradition and modernity are not mutually exclusive, and that indeed you cannot separate one from the other. Monsoon Wedding reflects the increasing westernization of Indian culture while at the same time stressing the vital importance of Indian tradition. Throughout the film, the characters use a mix of Hindi and English, often code switching within sentences. A good example of this is the scene where the women are trying on outfits for the wedding and the teenage girl says, "The blushing virgin look [in Hindi] really suits me [in English]." The Australian relative is another good example of the infusion of cultures. For example, when he is asked what he is doing by his uncle, he responds: "Just Chillin," to the disgust of his uncle. In the movie, the family lives in a relatively modern looking home, and they drive modern cars, but the fact that they are living in a third world metropolis is rendered by scenes depicting the bustling city of New Delhi. In addition, the reality of their geographical location is manifested through the black out scene in which the father quips "That's the problem with Delhi!" and they have to use a backup generator with a manual crank in order to get the lights back on. There is a wide array of clothing styles throughout the film that reflect the fusing of cultures and the retaining of tradition. Traditional Indian outfits were donned for the wedding ceremonies while more casual and westernized clothes were worn for everyday activities. Overall, the younger family members tended to wear more westernized clothing, while the parents and grandparents wore more traditional outfits. The exception to this, however, is Alice the maid who wore traditional Indian clothing. This is representative of the link between upward mobility and higher social status and the consumption of westernized goods.

Alice is an interesting character because she is portrayed as a shy, meek, and simple girl who is rather old-fashioned. This is evidenced in the scene where she is talking to the wedding coordinator, and he exclaims that she has a white name. When he tells her his name, which is Indian and quite long, he says that he shortened it to just two initials. Alice responds that his Indian name is a lovely one. Throughout the film, the music presents us with the modern and traditional aspects of Indian culture. During wedding ceremonies, traditional songs were played and sung, while pop music was often played by the younger family members at other times. The music was one of the most involving parts of the wedding ceremonies, and this was evidenced by the women's singing at the henna painting ritual. At the end of the film, the teenage girl does a dance to Indian pop music, and symbolically (and arguably physically) pulls her Australian love interest into her culture. Monsoon Wedding shows us that traditional Indian culture is not relegated to the past but alive and thriving in a new interpretation. The language, scenery, clothing and music all serve to render the message of the colorful infusion taking place in Indian society.

Wings of Desire, is in a way, Wim Wenders' tribute to Berlin. He attempts to create something beautiful and different out of the city, while at the same time addressing its mottled past. The film focuses on the walls that separate us all, such as age, geographic location, openness of mind and, in the case of his angels, spiritual and physical planes. At the same time, the original German name for the film translates as 'The Sky Over Berlin,' and this portrays the shared conflicts and also physical space that unite everyone in the city. In addition, I argue in this analysis that the film also deals with the outcomes of facing or denying your fears and the past. In many ways the film depicts Berlin as a very haunted place. Both people and angels are haunted by the specters of events past, and this is brought to life by Wenders' use of found footage. The angels, like the history of the city, are perceptible yet imperceptible in their omnipresence. Both carry with them a great sadness and primordial memory while at the same time delighting in the reality of human experience and life. The angels are the consciousness and the conscience of the city, bearing witness and moving around on both sides of the wall, as humans are unable to do. What Wenders considers to be the "one perennial question" in the film is that of 'how to live?' How to live, how to die, or in the case of the angels, whether or not to live a mortal life. In the film, the dialogue talks about the splitting of Germany into "so many individual states," and in this postwar city people become as a state unto themselves: isolated yet created by the existence of so many others. Perhaps this is why Wenders calls Berlin the 'city of conjurers' and follows a female trapeze artist and a film director. Perhaps the focus on these characters symbolizes the inherent conflict of Berlin as to whether or not history should try to be examined, explained or recreated, or ignored and downplayed for the time being through the escape of spectacle and entertainment. In the remainder of this analysis, I will examine the characters of the trapeze artist and the director with examples supporting these premises. In the character of the trapeze artist, we see a large desire to feel love for others (which she voices), and also the fear that she will no longer be able to perform with the circus (a wall keeping her from her dreams). At the same time, she continues to perform and party with friends to take her mind off of this. In one scene, the circus is performing for a group of children, and there are so many things happening that it is difficult to tell whom to watch. Everyone performing looks a bit lost and each tries to direct the children's attention. The trapeze artist herself represents the precariousness of refusing to deal with inner demons, and in many scenes she looks ready to fall willingly to her demise. On the other hand, the filmmaker represents the ability to live life to the fullest and face past demons head-on. He is filming a movie about World War II, yet he chooses to focus on life's pleasures rather than sorrows. He encourages the angels to come down to earth even though he cannot explicitly see them. He encourages them to face and to leave their sorrows and uncertainties in order to celebrate in the richness of human life. He encourages the angels to take charge of their destinies instead of remaining passive bystanders to the sorrows of time. Wings of Desire focuses on what separates and unites everyone and also on the precariousness of denial or apathy in the face of tragedy.

It Happened One Night is a decidedly 'Capraesque' film that employs uplifting but stereotypical themes, which correlate with much of the prevalent conservative ideology in the United States during the 1930s. The film, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert is undeniably charming but displays glaringly conventional views about class and gender relations in particular. Implementation of diegetic sound helps to advance rather than hinder the film by allowing for the portrayal of class status through accent and manner of speech. Colbert's Ellie represents the epitome of high breeding with her disaffected and skeptical drawl and careful enunciation. Peter's unrefined, blue collar accent and colorful slang help to mark him as having a lower socioeconomic status in contrast to Ellie, someone for the average American moviegoer to identify with. Another voice worthy of note was that of the only black man in the movie, a vendor selling food to the travelers at a bus stop, hollering in a stereotypically southern black accent, a holdover from plantation days. This character was clearly on the bottom rung of the social ladder in the scene, in a racially stereotypical presentation. While Wllie defied traditional norms by running away from her father to join her new husband, she was quickly 'rescued' and swept up by Peter. In this world, men appear to own or at least to make the decisions for Ellie, and she can't seem to help but falling head over heels for the first two she meets outside of her sheltered life. In several scenes, newspaper headlines are superimposed with Ellie's picture, one even reading "Ellen Andrews Escapes Father." This presents a rather disturbing image of Ellie being held captive by her father, and the legitimacy with which this is viewed by the public is akin to that of an escaped convict. Indeed, one of the only ways the sylph-like Ellie fought back against male oppression was through the use of 'hunger strikes' and, arguably, smoking cigarettes. I do not need to restate the implications of women wielding their power through food restriction, smoking, and sex (e.g. the hitchhiking scene), all of which convened during the 1920s, setting the scene for generations of women to come. One of the major recurring themes of the film was the 'walls of Jericho' that existed literally (through a rope and blanket) and metaphorically (through the lack of sexual contact) between Ellie an Peter. This 'wall' enforced the metaphor of a woman's body as a fort to be stormed, the first conqueror reaping the spoils. Indeed, even though Ellie was technically married, it was made quite clear that she was still a virgin, and thus the opportunity to marry Peter was still a viable one.