Colliding Worlds: the Disintegration of America in the Cinema of the Coen Brothers

Sjra pp: -- Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, U.K. // Journal of American Studies, (), , – © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 1 doi:./S 2 3 4 5 Colliding Worlds: The 6 7 Disintegration of America in the 8 9 Cinema of the Coen Brothers 10 11 THORSTEN CARSTENSEN 12 13 In the cinema of Joel and Ethan Coen, contemporary America is depicted as an incoherent space 14 in which traditional beliefs constantly collide with the new world order. Shaped by the erosion of commonly accepted values and the ubiquitous presence of the media and advertisements, this 15 hybrid America is a world of commerce, consumption, and economic plight. While its cities are 16 plagued by segregation, outbursts of casual violence undermine the myth of an unspoiled life in ’ 17 the countryside. Illustrating postmodern culture s preference for the periphery versus the center, the movies of the Coen brothers find a glimmer of morality remaining on the margin of society. 18 Unimposing and compassionate characters such as the pregnant small-town detective in Fargo 19 or the naive yet brilliant protagonist of The Hudsucker Proxy personify an idealistic, innocent 20 America that is about to be displaced by selfish greed. Focusing on Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and The Man Who Wasn’t There, my essay argues that the Coens’ visual playfulness, and 21 their tendency to mine various cinematic genres, serve to emphasize their scathing critique of 22 the American victory narrative. 23 24 In the cinema of Joel and Ethan Coen, contemporary America is depicted as 25 an incoherent space in which traditional beliefs constantly collide with the 26 new world order. Shaped by the erosion of commonly accepted values and 27 the ubiquitous presence of the media and advertisements, this hybrid 28 America is a world of commerce, consumption, and economic plight. While 29 its cities are plagued by segregation, outbursts of casual violence undermine 30 the myth of an unspoiled life in the countryside. Illustrating postmodern cul- 31 ture’s preference for the periphery versus the center, the movies of the Coen 32 brothers find a glimmer of morality remaining on the margin of society. 33 Unimposing and compassionate characters such as the pregnant small-town 34 detective in Fargo or the naive yet brilliant protagonist of The Hudsucker 35 Proxy seemingly evoke the memory of an idealistic, innocent America. 36 However, whereas the Hollywood blockbusters of the Reagan era often 37 glorified the myth of the western frontier and sought to reinforce a new 38 39 40 41 Department of World Languages and Cultures, Indiana University–Purdue University 42 Indianapolis. Email: [email protected]. ____________________________________________________ This is the author's manuscript of the article published in final edited form as: Carstensen, T. (2019). Colliding Worlds: The Disintegration of America in the Cinema of the Coen Brothers. Journal of American Studies, 53(2), 333–352. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875817001797 Thorsten Carstensen 43 national narrative of confidence after the trauma of Vietnam, the Coens 44 deconstruct the American success story by depicting a country that clearly 45 is – and always has been – on the brink of moral corruption. 46 In what follows, I will argue that the cinema of the Coen brothers presents 47 the viewer with a critical assessment of America’s late capitalist society. It does 48 so by posing questions of identity, authenticity, history, and ethics in a post- 49 modern context. The Coens’ rendering of contemporary America is reminis- 50 cent of Jean-François Lyotard’s view of postmodern society as a fragmented 51 world composed of disparate communities and language games, each with 52 its own set of values, ideologies, and behavioral codes. Designed to raise onto- 53 logical questions, films such as Barton Fink (), The Hudsucker Proxy 54 (), Fargo (), The Big Lebowski (), and The Man Who Wasn’t 55 There () stage collisions of conflicting worlds. Both a plot technique 56 and an ideological device, this juxtaposition of incommensurable realities is 57 particularly obvious in The Ladykillers (), which confronts the old-fash- 58 ioned virtues of the American South – charity, gospels, Sunday churchgoing – 59 with an eclectic world of junk and pop culture: “hippity-hop music,” football 60 games, men’s magazines, and, most notably, the rampant consumerism 61 embodied by casinos, strip malls, and television commercials. In The 62 Ladykillers, the apparent chasm between past and present lifestyles is under- 63 scored in a scene where the old lady Marva Munson travels from her well- 64 maintained house in the suburbs to the run-down buildings and neglected 65 urban spaces on the other end of town. 66 On the visual level, the Coen brothers invest a familiar world with strange- 67 ness, thus painting a flashy portrait of post- America that is simultan- 68 eously vividly realistic and grotesquely imaginative. Even though this self- 69 contained cosmos overlaps with the empirical world, it is in fact a blatantly 70 creative projection, drawing on a collective perception of reality that is 71 always predetermined by mediated images. Taken to its extreme, as it was in 72 their latest film, Hail, Caesar! (), the Coens’ obsession with borrowing 73 styles, settings, plots, and characters – their “self-destructive whirl of unhinged 74 pop scholarship,” to quote New Yorker critic David Denby – results in the 75 creation of a hyperreal cinematic theme park. Resisting the linear approach 76 to storytelling typical of traditional Hollywood, their aesthetic of excess, exem- 77 plified by a fascination with ornamentation and what James Naremore terms a 78 “fetishistic” gusto for small details that do little to propel the plot, calls 79 80 81 David Denby, “Killing Joke: The Coen Brothers’ Twists and Turns,” New Yorker, Feb. 82 . 83 James Naremore, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts, updated and expanded edn 84 (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), . Reviewers of their films have often Colliding Worlds 85 attention to the filmmaking process itself and opens the film to the audience’s 86 own imagination and interpretation. 87 In classical Hollywood cinema, the goal-driven modernist plot is usually 88 propelled by the desire to resolve any clash of order and disorder. By contrast, 89 the Coens’ exploration of America’s spatial, linguistic, and moral disintegra- 90 tion is rooted in a sensibility that suspends the laws of cause and effect and 91 sees the world as “both undetermined and undetermining.” Confronted 92 with the manifest “irregularity” of people’s behaviors and everyday events – 93 to quote The Ladykillers’ eloquent impostor, Professor G. H. Dorr – the 94 Coens’ protagonists seem to drift through a parallel universe of violence char- 95 acteristic of postmodern cinema. Their often comical failure to convey their 96 feelings and thoughts, as well as their involvement in schemes that are doomed 97 to implode, point to what R. Barton Palmer calls the Coens’ interest in “the 98 twin impossibilities of human experience: coming to any meaningful under- 99 standing of others and mastering a brute reality ruled by the principle of seem- 100 ingly diabolical mischance.” Lacking a reliable framework for their actions, 101 and prone to obsessive decision making, the Coens’ characters embark on 102 erratic journeys shaped by random encounters. Eventually they surrender to 103 forces beyond their control, realizing that, as the Stranger in The Big 104 Lebowski puts it, “sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes, well, the bear 105 eats you.” 106 107 108 NOSTALGIA AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM 109 The movies of Joel and Ethan Coen close the gap between high and low art 110 forms in the ways that they entertain and signify. The postmodern allure of 111 their cinema emanates from their incessant referencing and recycling of preex- 112 isting texts. In his essay “Reflections on The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco 113 argues, “The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the 114 past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, 115 must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently.” In the Coens’ cinema, 116 117 118 noted the Coens’ penchant for ornate elements. See, e.g., Todd McCarthy, “The Hudsucker 119 Proxy,” Variety, Jan. 120 Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London and New York: Routledge, ), . 121 For a short analysis of the “bleak and threatening world” that the characters in the Coens’ Blood 122 Simple () encounter see Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard, A World in Chaos: Social Crisis and the Rise of Postmodern Cinema (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, ), –. 123 R. Barton Palmer, Joel and Ethan Coen (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 124 ), . 125 Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose (London and New York: Harcourt, 126 ), . Thorsten Carstensen 127 history returns as resourceful eclecticism – as an “antiquarian pastiche” that 128 draws on, defamiliarizes, and transforms a multitude of sources in order to 129 produce a vague sense of the past, remaking “movies that were never made 130 in the first place.” The lyrics of the Four Tops’“It’s the Same Old Song,” 131 featured in their earliest film, Blood Simple (), aptly summarize the direc- 132 tors’ attitude toward cinematic history: “It’s the same old song, but with a 133 different meaning since you’ve been gone.” 134 The Coen brothers’ intricate play of intertextual codes and meanings is par- 135 ticularly striking in Miller’s Crossing, which is often charged with being little 136 more than a self-indulgent exercise in deconstructing the gangster genre. A film 137 on which the real world impinges “only by accident,” as Canby observes, 138 Miller’s Crossing exemplifies postmodern fascination with the hyperreal.

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