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Trailer and Its Place in a Wider Cinematic Culture

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Trailer and Its Place in a Wider Cinematic Culture This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. The Art of Anticipation: The Artistic Status of the Film Trailer and its Place in a Wider Cinematic Culture Daniel Hesford PhD Film Studies The University of Edinburgh 2013 The Art of Anticipation: The Artistic Status of the Hollywood Film Trailer and its Place Within a Wider Cinematic Culture Abstract: Close association with, and proximity to, a culture of commercialism means film trailers are often overlooked in academic analyses of cinema. Trailers are, for many audiences, simply adverts: disposable, consumable and not 'worthy' of the critical attention paid to the their feature-length antecedents. Yet trailers' undeniable impact on spectators generates a spectrum of reactions which contradicts the often dismissive and negative reception with which they are met. Trailers receive intense popular and critical scrutiny and are constantly compared to the films they represent. Despite negative associations with commercialism and advertising culture, trailers are archived, exhibited and produced and discussed in contexts very similar to film and seem to share more than just a receptive connection. This thesis explores the artistic qualities of the trailer and examines its position as part of a wider cinematic culture. I will demonstrate the trailer's artistic status by arguing for a re- definition of the field of film studies and examining the trailer through a number existing theoretical discourses, including auteur-theory and Deleuze's ideas for the Movement and Time Image. My study will focus on Hollywood film trailers from a number of eras and cover an extensive body of case studies. Each era will be used demonstrate that trailers are artistic texts and members of a cinematic - as opposed to advertisement - culture. The first era focuses on the trailers of Alfred Hitchcock, which exhibit the early signs of innovation and artistic expression in a format still viewed overwhelmingly as an advertising context. Hitchcock himself intervenes in his trailers as an auteur - producing memorable and undeniably cinematic film texts. Hitchcock’s trailers are spaces in which Deleuzean film theory is eminently visible and the trailers discussed offer the opportunity for greater understanding of Gilles Deleuze’s work. Following Hitchcock, the ‘blockbuster’ era covers high-budget, highly commercial films from the seventies and eighties. Blockbuster trailers see strong codification of convention and style - and a re-presentation of the affect as a unit of commercial and artistic value. Martine Beugnet’s Cinema of Sensation is embodied in this group, in examples which fuse the artistic and commercial aspects of trailer identity. The final chapter examines the ‘postmodern’ trailer. In this era, the trailer moves beyond its commercial origins to the point they are often no longer applicable. Examples include 'spoof' trailers with no feature film antecedent and no detectable commercial intent. Postmodern trailers, I will argue, can be pure artistic expressions - and even work in reverse, generating commercial interest after the original instance of artistic exhibition. Declaration of Original Work I agree to the following statement: (a) that the thesis has been composed by the candidate, and (b) either that the work is the candidate's own, or, if the candidate has been a member of a research group, that the candidate has made a substantial contribution to the work, such contribution being clearly indicated, and (c) that the work has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification except as specified. Signed: Daniel Hesford Date: Acknowledgements I would like to express my very great appreciation to those who have helped me through this long process. To my parents who supported me at every step, to my supervisor, Dr Kriss Ravetto, who offered seemingly-limitless patience and time - and to the many others who assisted me, including Dr Martine Beugnet, Dr Keith Johnston, Dr Jonathan Murray, Dr Pasquale Iannone and Dr Annette Davison, who provided generous assistance, reassurance and knowledge whenever I needed it. Note on the trailers included in this study The trailers in this study are, at the time of writing, available online on the video site Youtube. In all instances, I have included a URL address for the examples cited, and have attempted to link to the highest-quality versions of those trailers. Due to the open-source nature of online video and the profligacy of commercial and user-generated content on the internet, it is possible that several different versions of these trailers exist - featuring varying degrees of quality, length and content. It also may be the case that legal and copyright issues prompt the removal of certain video files. i Contents: Acknowledgements i Note on the trailers included in this study i Introduction: The Film Trailer's Capacity for Artistic Expression 1 • A History of Trailer Analysis 3 • Reclaiming the Cinematic 9 • What is a Trailer? 10 • Case Studies: Hitchcock, Blockbusters and the Post-Modern 21 Chapter 1 Hitchcock in the Trailer: Meaning and Rhetoric in Alfred Hitchcock's Film Trailers 27 • Rope 36 • Psycho 47 • Vertigo 53 • Frenzy 63 • Conclusion: Recalibrating the Auteur 68 Chapter 2 Blockbuster Trailers: The Good, the Bad and the Affect 70 • What is a Blockbuster? 71 • Why the Blockbuster? 74 • Jaws 79 • Star Wars 107 • Alien 125 • Rambo: First Blood Part 2 137 • Conclusion: The Art of the Advert 153 ii Chapter 3 Neo-Commercialism: The Trailer and the Post-Modern 154 • A New Way to Sell 158 • New Kinds of Narrative, New Kinds of Text 164 • Lucky Star 176 • 'Cine-adverts': The Trailer in other Media 187 • Homemade Trailers: The 'Spoof' and 'Fan' Trailer 197 • Machete: A Post-Modern Film Trailer 208 • Conclusion: The Trailer Eats Itself 219 Conclusion In the Age of the Trailer 221 • Is the Trailer Cinema? 222 • The Image Repurposed 225 • An Ending and a Beginning 231 Bibliography 248 Filmography 254 Online Trailer References 257 iii Introduction: The Film Trailer’s Capacity for Artistic Expression All of us, I think, love trailers, with their promises of pleasures yet to come, their tantalising glimpses of new works by favourite auteurs. And yet the assumption remains that a trailer is something ephemeral, to be disposed of once the primary text - the actual film - becomes available.1 Brad Stevens, In Praise of Trailers Film trailers are easily dismissed as consumable, disposable supplements to larger and artistically legitimate film texts. Their ephemeral status reinforces the notion that the trailer disappears, by necessity, to make way for the antecedent, future film text it advertises. Commercialism frames the trailer and, after a century of formative evolution, has come to define its presence in a cultural space which continues to differentiate between 'art': the feature film, and 'advert': a product sold on behalf of a studio. The ubiquity of film advertising creates a public discourse which is on-going and all- encompassing: toy lines, videogames, fast-food gimmicks and promotional packaging constantly manipulate receivers and situate the trailer within a discourse of cynicism and commerce which seems a far remove from the artistic aspirations of the cinema. The film trailer's cinematic identity - or artistic worth - is lost in the sheer volume of commercial rhetoric that facilitates and surrounds it. In this study, I intend to demonstrate that the trailer is more than just an advert. The ephemerality of the advertising format means critical or academic scrutiny is often fleeting and dismissive of the value of the advert-text - but the film trailer defies this preconception. The trailer-text endures in ways which other adverts do not, often exhibiting artistic and cinematic characteristics which go beyond the disposable. Furthermore, the trailer's place in a wider culture has only recently begun to be properly explored and defined. My aim is to demonstrate both the artistic qualities of the trailer and its position in a wider cinematic sub- culture. Following Charles Acland, who calls for the expansion of the boundaries of what constitutes film studies, I will argue that we can no longer rely on film as a medium to define 1 (Stevens, 2007: par. 2) 1 the borders of the discipline, and must now consider trailers - and what critics define as the 'paratext' - to complete our understanding of cinema's place in visual culture: It can be asserted that the problem with film studies has been film, that is, the use of a medium in order to designate the boundaries of a discipline. Such a designation assumes a certain stability in what is actually a mutable technological apparatus. A problem ensues when it is apparent that film is not film anymore.2 I will also look at spectatorship and the 'practice' of film-going in a modern context, addressing the altered contexts of reception, interpretation and exhibition that accompany the trailer - primarily its unnerving proximity to the commercial. Jonathan Gray points out that we need to consider both 'screen' and 'off-screen' studies in order to understand the 'wealth of other entities that saturate the media, and that construct film and television'3.
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