1 Queen Mary, University of London Space and the Contemporary
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1 Queen Mary, University of London Space and the Contemporary Hollywood Action Sequence Nick Jones Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2013 2 Declaration I confirm that this is my own work and the use of all materials from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged. Nick Jones 3 Abstract This thesis investigates the manner in which the action sequences of contemporary Hollywood cinema reflect and constitute ways of imagining space. The thesis proposes that these sequences are highly spatialised presentations of bodily interaction with the world, and as such manifest cultural anxieties regarding the relationship between the individual and the built environment, and work to assure their viewers of the capacity of the human form to survive the disorienting spaces of contemporary architecture, globalisation and technology. In order to demonstrate this, the aesthetic and formal properties of action sequences are read alongside critical work exploring how space shapes social life, including influential texts by Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, Fredric Jameson and others. These readings reveal that both action sequences and critical spatial theory are similarly attentive to the difficulties, contradictions and possibilities of built space. A range of action sequences from Hollywood films of the last fifteen years, including sequences from Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, The International, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum, Jumper, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Sucker Punch, Inception, Swordfish, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, TRON: Legacy, Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Afterlife and Dredd 3D are analysed for how they depict space and spatial agency. Rather than concentrating upon the narratives of these films, the chapters of the thesis deal in turn with the ways in which action sequences express contemporary developments within the built environment; the consequences of globalisation; the impact of these spatial changes upon mental life; the challenges to bodily engagement raised by digital technology and cyberspace; and the modifications to representing space on film prompted by stereoscopic exhibition. Examinations of these sequences are used to build a model of the action sequence that suggests spatial appropriation and ideas around place-creation are crucial elements of the form. Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 The Action Film and the Action Sequence 10 The Spatial Turn 19 Notes on Methodology 28 Chapter Outline 32 Chapter 1: Iconic Space 37 True Lies – The Bonaventure Hotel 39 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – The Burj Khalifa 43 The International – The Guggenheim New York 54 Chapter Conclusion 59 Chapter 2: Global Space 63 Space in Critical Theory 64 The Bourne Trilogy – A Networked Geography of Threat 70 Jumper – A Touristic Geography of Sites 81 Chapter Conclusion 90 Chapter 3: Finding Place 92 Casino Royale – Creative Spatial Intervention 94 Place in Critical Theory 100 Quantum of Solace – Regional Resistance 106 Chapter Conclusion 116 Chapter 4: Action Paraspaces 119 Spaces for Action 121 Sucker Punch – Dissociative Space 125 Inception – Consumerist Paraspaces 135 Chapter Conclusion 146 5 Chapter 5: Digital Space 148 Digital Effects in Critical Theory 150 Swordfish and The Matrix Trilogy – Totalised Space 154 TRON: Legacy – Embodied Cyberspace 164 Chapter Conclusion 174 Chapter 6: 3-D Space 176 3-D Critical Theory 178 The Resident Evil Franchise – 3-D Space and Film Style 185 Dredd 3D – Immersive Space 195 Chapter Conclusion 201 Conclusion 205 Thesis Review 208 Visuality, Tactility and Sensorial Address 211 Concluding Remarks 220 Bibliography 224 DVD Featurettes 238 Filmography 238 6 Acknowledgements This thesis was supported by a Queen Mary Studentship award. It could not have been written without the unfailing support of my supervisors, Guy Westwell and Alasdair King. Guy’s attention to detail and frank assessments provided invaluable grounding for me; I thank him for always being available, and for believing in the project when it was little more than just a gut feeling. Alasdair’s generous comments helped provide a clear overview towards the end of the process without which the thesis would have suffered, and I am very grateful to him for this. I would also like the thank everyone else in the Department of Film at Queen Mary, in particular Sue Harris, Libby Saxton and Janet Harbord, whose time and encouragement will always be appreciated. My fellow PhD students also deserve warm thanks for their infectious energy and commitment: that especially means you Maren, Charlie, Jo, Hollie and Adrian. I am grateful to the staff at King’s College London for setting me on this path, and to Steve Snart, with whom I shared countless conversations about the merits, pleasures and workings of popular cinema. I am particularly indebted to Ben Woodiwiss, whose approach towards film at times could not be more different to mine, but who has taught me to pay attention to things I would otherwise never have noticed. My mother and brother have supported me tirelessly, trusting that I knew what I was doing even when this was in doubt, and I could not have done this without them. It was thanks to my father that I never drifted away from the study of cinema, and thanks to him and our countless trips to the video store that it began in the first place. I’m sure he’s smiling right now, and this work is dedicated to him. Finally, I would like to thank my dance partner, production designer and little bear for keeping me sane. 7 Introduction In 1967 Michel Foucault suggested that while the ‘great obsession of the nineteenth century’ was history, ‘with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis and cycle’, the late twentieth century will ‘be above all the epoch of space’, in which simultaneity, juxtaposition, and dispersal will be the crucial determinants of cultural life. According to Foucault, the experience of the world at this time ‘is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein’.1 Fredric Jameson and David Harvey extend this idea, describing what they term ‘postmodernity’ – contemporary globalised cultural and economic configurations – as being in part defined by a synchronic experience of multiple times and spaces.2 Tracking the rise of dominant, though frequently hidden or disguised, operations of spatial practice, production and control, the work of Henri Lefebvre provides vital groundwork for any study focusing on the spaces and places of lived experience in the twentieth century, doing more than most to stimulate critical awareness of how space is produced.3 Michel de Certeau’s work on the intersection of personal experience and spatial restriction has also proved influential.4 More recently, Doreen Massey’s work has consistently called for an alternative mode of spatial thinking to overcome the problems she and these other writers identify in prevailing arrangements.5 This heightened attention to space, whereby the tools and language of geographical analysis are used to understand how space influences and is influenced by the actions of individuals, and the underlying critical condition that the critical discourse seeks to describe – the shift to an ‘epoch of space’ – has come to be called the ‘spatial turn’. It will be the argument of this thesis that these discourses related to the spatial turn can illuminate our understanding of the action sequences of contemporary Hollywood 1 Michel Foucault, ’Of Other Spaces’, Jay Miskowiec (trans.), Diacritics, 16.1 (Spring 1986), pp. 22–27 (p. 22). Written as the basis for a lecture in 1967, this text was published in French in 1984 and in translation in the journal Diacritics in 1986. Throughout the thesis dates referred to in these references will be to the edition of the text that is being used (translated or otherwise), not the original date of publication (information which can be found in the bibliography at the end of the thesis). 2 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 154; David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, Mass., & Oxford: Blackwells, 1994), pp. 264–265. 3 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith (trans.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991b). 4 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Steven Rendall (trans.) (Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1988). 5 Doreen Massey, For Space (London: SAGE, 2005). 8 cinema. Using the work of Lefebvre, de Certeau and others, the forthcoming analyses will reveal the inherent emphasis placed upon space in action sequences, such sequences depicting space as an obstacle to be overcome, controlled or destroyed, but above all survived. The prominence of spatial concerns will be demonstrated through a series of case studies that each focus in turn upon different aspects of contemporary space and the way action sequences represent these aspects, representations that will be shown to have important corollaries in critical spatial theory. For instance, and crucially, Lefebvre’s ideas around abstract space and de Certeau’s concept of tactical spatial appropriation are both highly pertinent to any understanding of the workings of action sequences, these and other ideas around the restrictions and possibilities of space finding expression in the intense spatial engagement of these sequences. This is not to claim that the filmmakers involved are consciously drawing on this critical work; rather, both the theory and the films are responding to developments in the built environment as well as broader cultural perceptions of it. Key questions this thesis seeks to address, then, include the extent to which action sequences mobilise ideas around the habitability of space through their visual representation of physical activity within it; how these mobilisations can articulate particular aspects of contemporary space; and why these ideas find the expressions that they do within such a popular form.