Department of English and American Studies 2013
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools Bc. Tereza Mannová The Proposition and Dead Man: Two Revisionist Westerns from Two Continents Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. 2013 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank doc. Tomáš Pospíšil for his support, insightful comments and valuable advice. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Theories of Genre 3. The Evolution of the Western 4. Film Analysis 4.1. Dead Man 4.2. The Proposition 4.3. Violence 4.3.1. Violence in the Western Genre Films 4.3.2. Violence in Dead Man and The Proposition 4.4. Violence and Masculinity 4.5. Loneliness as a Condition for Metaphysical Quest 4.6. Violence and Poetics 4.7. Cinematography 4.8. Music 5. Conclusion Bibliography 1. Introduction “The Western was born one day under the skies of New Jersey at a time when robbers deprived of their picturesque prey, the stage-coach, launched themselves into train robbery in accordance with one of the most solid traditions of the trade” (Rieupeyrout 116). The Western genre originated and grew from the real life experience of American people living in the frontier and during the twentieth century went through the periods of high popularity, being the most popular Hollywood genre, followed by the periods of decline. Nowadays, many film critics consider the Western to be a dead genre. They explain the end of once so popular genre, the American genre par excellence, by various reasons. The truth is that as much as the Western dominated film studios and film theatres in the first half of the 20th century and then in the 1960's and 70s, it is now an outsider, a marginal genre. Yet the author of this essay believes that it is premature to speak about the death of the genre as the Western film survives in sort of a hibernation state, waking up from time to time to offer the audience the best bits and pieces of its potential. This essay attempts to demonstrate that even though the Western genre has lost its supreme position within the cinema, it is still a potent field where films of high quality and value may arise. To support this argument, two films that are deeply rooted in the tradition of the Western genre are going to be analysed, namely Dead Man (1996) directed by Jim Jarmusch and The Proposition (2006) directed by John Hillcoat. These two films were chosen for various reasons. Dead Man was shot in the 90s, thus being a representative of the the end of the 20th century cinema, whereas The Proposition represents here the 21st century. Concerning the origin of both films, these films are not typical representatives of the Western genre, as Dead Man was 1 directed by an independent director and The Proposition was directed in Australia. Both these films are usually considered to be revisionist Westerns, even though a few critics suggest that they are not actually westerns at all. Moreover, some of the critics blamed both the films for being too violent and showing too much death and despair. And last but not least, there were voices among critics mentioning the resemblance between these two films. Thus this essay aims to look closer at all the aspects listed in the previous paragraph to make clear if these films can be labelled as revisionist westerns and compare to what extent they correspond and in what aspects they differ. Special attention will be paid particularly to the depiction of violence and its role in the development of the narrative. The element of violence will be observed and put in the context of Mitchell's theory of masculinity that is one of the decisive elements for origin of violence. The main characters whose lives are imbued with violence will be identified as lonely drifters who undergo their transformation thanks to the harsh and dangerous landscape and the condition of loneliness. In the second part of the essay, the symbiosis of violence with poetics will be under the scope of the analysis with reference to literature, music and visual art. The introductory part of the essay will offer a brief discussion of the theory of the genre and then the overview of the development of the Western genre will be provided with respect to provide some information of its conventions and clichés. 2 2. Theories of genre The term genre is used very frequently in this essay, therefore it is necessary to look closer at the meaning of the term and its history within the area of film criticism. The word is of French origin and comprises two meanings, “type” and “kind” (Neale 7). The first person who categorised literature according to its “type” or “kind” was Aristotle, who in his Poetics tried to divide poetry (understand literature) into separate groups or categories. Aristotle's categories were again resurrected in the Renaissance, and during time were developed into a rigid system of more and more categories with “its own proper tone, form and subject matter” (Buscombe 12). Thanks to the rigidity and “rather mechanical and dictatorial approach” these categories were gradually abandoned particularly by romantics, and were again revived in late 1930s by Chicago-based school of criticism known as the neo-Aristotelians. They started to pay attention to “the influence on the artist of already existing forms and conventions” (13). The neo-Aristotelians' approach was a reaction against the New Criticism which claimed that “a work of literature exists by itself,” so when analysing literature they refused “any external reality, whether contemporary or historical” (13). Thus neo-Aristotelians tried to rescue “literature from such self-imposed isolation” building upon the Aristotle's attempt to categorise literature. As a result they resurrected the theory of genres (13). As far as the field of film studies is concerned, the genre theory entered the world of film criticism in the 1960s as an alternative to auteurism. The reason why some of the critics began to look for another critical approaches was that auteurism was not able to help those critics who tried to identify institutional conventions and take into account the audience of Hollywood cinema. Tom Ryall, for example, argues that: “The auteur theory, though important and valuable during the 1950s and 1960s 3 for drawing attention to the importance of the American cinema, nevertheless tended to treat popular art as if it were 'high art'”(qtd.in Neale 9-10). Against the auterism mostly oriented on the person of the auteur and the film itself, Ryall puts a concept of “a triangle composed of artist/film/audience”(10). He argues that genres “may be defined as patterns/forms/styles/structures which transcend individual films, and which supervise both their construction by the film-maker, and their reading by an audience” (10). As is obvious from the above, throughout history, there have been large discussions on the topic of a genre and up till now various critics and scholars have tried to question especially traditional definitions of a genre. Thus the word genre is still a term with a very vague meaning. These discussions have taken place not only among film critics, but also literary critics and even speech-oriented linguists such as Pratt, Hirsch and Derrida. There are different perspectives on studying film genres that draw on different critical approaches. One of them is a formalist or structuralist approach that focuses especially on semantic and syntactic components of the film. An important proponent of this approach is for example Rick Altman who draws on the structuralist or formalist perspective, particularly on the work of Tzvetan Todorov and French semiotics. They distinguish between semantic and syntactic approaches to the genre claiming that “we can as a whole distinguish between generic definitions that depend on a list of common traits” and the ways these traits are structured and put together within a text. (Altman 31) That is to say, semantic approach “stresses the genres building blocks,” the semantic parts of the film such as settings, roles, imagery, plot, themes and value assumptions, whereas the syntactic approach 4 examines how these building blocks are structured, thus privileging “the structure into which they are arranged” (31). In the 1970s another important critics tried to unveil the nature of the genre as such, for example Edward Buscombe and Colin McArthur, who intended to “demonstrate the active role played by genre conventions in shaping the form and the meaning of individual Hollywood films” (Neale 23). Buscombe chooses the genre of the Western to demonstrate how certain images and conventions “define and embody” the situation or action “through images that are familiar,” and also through the images “that are strange” (qtd. in Neale 11). Buscombe builds upon the concepts of 'inner' and 'outer' forms of genres established by Warren and Wellek in their collaborative work Theory of Literature (1948). For them, the inner form of the genre was characterised by specific metre or structure, whereas the outer form was demonstrated by attitude, tone, and purpose. On the basis of the outer form of the genre Buscombe uses the term “visual conventions” that fits well into the very influential concept of iconography. (Neale 1999) The term iconography comes together with the term iconology from the work of Erwin Panofsky and in the field of film criticism was popularised by Lawrence Alloway. It was the concept of iconography in particular that Alloway applied within his theory of genres and cycles.