The Reception Issue Regarding Hollywood Blockbusters

As far as the reception of Hollywood blockbusters is concerned, I believe that these movies are not simply products of the audience. No matter what is said about interpretation of the audience, a blockbuster has some fixed patterns and explicit ideologies encoded by the producers, which is essentially the white patriarchal capitalism. In this regard I believe that reception of an avant-garde movie and a conventionalized Hollywood movie is rather different by the audience.

First of all, a classical Hollywood movie’s objective is to be consumed by as many audiences as there can be. To achieve this goal, there are some certain standardization of style and structure applied by the producers:

1)      A classical Hollywood movie has an invisible style, because it contains no distinctive style which calls attention to it. In that way, the viewer stays emotionally trapped in a film’s story, and all aspects of mise-en-scene consistently help the audience remain in the domain of the film.

2)      All information about movie is explicit waiting to be taken by the audience without an effort.

3)      Stereotyping makes the reception easier. The stock characterization of a villain and a good guy draws upon pre-existing social and cultural stereotypes. In that way, the audience does not put much effort in distinguishing the good and the bad.

4)      All classical Hollywood movies have a beginning, middle and an ending.  A closure must tie up all of the story’s loose ends, which affirms that all problems are solved and the audience does not need to think about it further.

Regarding all of the traits of a classical movie, it can be said that they are not made for an interpretation but for consumption. In such movies, the audience just takes what s/he anticipates to take, no more no less. An interpretation of such movies would only draw attention to the same dominant ideologies since they are designed not to raise questions or explore social issues but to maintain the ideological status quo.

Thus, while interpreting a blockbuster movie, I do not think that there will be a clash between decoder and encoder since in such cases encoder tries to eliminate all the possible factors which can lead to misinterpretation of the film. Therefore, a Hollywood blockbuster has an apparent meaning in all social and cultural contexts as John Ellis states: “meaning in cinema is obvious: the average cinema film appears straightforward and can be understood immediately (with subtitles) by virtually everyone on the planet”. This is simply because they aim not to get the audience to participate in meaning making process but make them take always-already made meanings. In that way, the audience, who does not expect something more, will be satisfied with what they have seen.

To conclude, Hollywood blockbusters can give an idea about the historical context they are shot, they can highlight the dominant ideologies of the time, (which, in fact, have not been so diverse in America over the time) but the message they convey is unchallenging, meaning is evident in various contexts so you do not have to be a wise person to interpret and absorb it.

Merve Ersoy

Some notes on F for Fake

Let’s skip the intro for a while, i.e. the introduction part which I always hate, and begin with a sudden question: F FOR FAKE, what kind of film is it?

Since it is a multi-faced monument, it is not easy to put F FOR FAKE, Orson Welles’ 1974 dated magnum opus, under a definite category. So the question above which is easy to ask, but difficult answer seems inevitable to me. As a possible answer, in his book Orson Welles, Joseph McBridge says that it is a free-flowing and idiosyncratic essay film. For critic Stuart Byron, F FOR FAKE is grace-note metafilm (1996, p. 181).

May it be a documentary?  At a lunch with  Orson Welles in La Méditerranée Paris, Jonathan Rosenbaum asks a similar question. Probably with his cigar from which he just taken another puff is between his fingers, Welles replies, “No, not a documentary–a new kind of film” (2007, p. 289). Since it is consisted of different sequences and footages from different productions which were sophisticatedly re-edited and woven together, F FOR FAKE seems to deserve an adjective such as a new kind. “Girl-Watching” sequence in the beginning, footages from François Reichenbach’s BBC documentary on the famous and fabulous art forger Elmyr de Hory, EARTH vs. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956) and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast are some of these sequences and footages (McBridge, 1996, pp. 182-185).

Although “It isn’t even a film” for film historian Lotte Eisner, name of this new kind of film was also problematic. In 1972, when Orson Welles was working on it, it was called HOAX. One year later, now it was being called FAKE. Before the issue was settled film’s production company even announced that title of the film was QUESTION MARK. Finally Oja Kodar who was the assistant of Welles and co-writer of the film, suggested the name F FOR FAKE (Rosenbaum, 2007, p. 290).

Because of the fact that F FOR FAKE was co-directed by Welles & Reichenbach (recall that it was largely reedited documentary of Reichenbach), and co-written by Welles & Kodar and leading actors such as Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving, it took a while for the names issue to be settled. So wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum with such a quizzical fashion in Film Comment:

For the time being, I am content to call it THE NEW ORSON WELLES FILM, co-directed by Irving and de Hory, written by Jorge Luis Borges, and produced by Howard Hughes…. As Welles remarks about Chartres, the most important thing is that it exists (2007, p. 291).

If I examine the name-issue in more detail, although I cannot say that all of them are intended, it is not difficult to find interesting and thought provoking connotations related with the names.

Take HOAX for example. THE HOAX is the name of the film directed by Lasse Hallström and is a section from Clifford Irving’s life, who was the author of the biography of Elmyr de Hory and fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. By the way if you have not watched THE HOAX yet, do watch it, because watching F FOR FAKE again, after watching THE HOAX becomes more enjoyable and significant.

As you can easily recall FAKE was the another alternative title for the film. It was also the name of the biography of Elmyr de Hory, written by Clifford Irving in 1969. It was Fake! that was made Elmyr de Hory was a famous and followed by Reichenbach’s BBC documentary about Elmyr and Welles’ F FOR FAKE.

Like one of its old names suggested, F FOR FAKE contains hoaxes which are quite interesting. For example, towards the end of “Girl-Watching” sequence in the beginning of the film, she is not Oja Kodar, but her sister Nina Kodar who is approaching to us in the frontal long shots (Rosenbaum, 2007, p. 293). Although in 07:47 of the film, Welles says that “Her name is Oja,” she is not Oja, but Nina – I think.

If I am not wrong, I realized that in the 07:25 of the film, bracelets of Kodar that were on her right wrist before are seen on her left wrist.

Title sequence of F FOR FAKE also contains o hoax, i.e. in 05:19 of the film, “practioners” is written instead of “practitioners” (Rosenbaum, 2007, p. 292).

One final note about film is that there is a nine-minute trailer of F FOR FAKE which was released three years later film’s production. This trailer contains excerpts that was not shown in the film and nude figure studies of Oja Kodar, which was especially filmed for the trailer. A four-minute excerpt from that trailer can be watched via YouTube. The trailer is as striking as the film itself. So it is also strongly recommended.

References

McBridge, J. (1996). Orson Welles. Da Capo Press.

Rosenbaum, J. (2007). Discovering Orson Welles. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

M. Kemal İz

In the mood for Reception: Back to the films themselves!

Here are the some comments of audiences for Mirror (1975) from Andrei Tarkovsky’s own book, Sculpting in Time:

A woman civil engineer wrote from Leningrad: ‘I saw your film, Mirror. I sat through to the end, despite the fact that after the first half hour I developed a severe headache as a result of my genuine efforts to analyze it, or just to have some idea of what was going on, of some connection between the characters and events and memories. . . .We poor cinema-goers see films that are good, bad, very bad, ordinary or highly original. But any of these one can understand, and be delighted or bored as the case may be; but this one?! . . .’ (p.8)

And another engineer, this time from Sverdlovsk, was unable to contain his deep antipathy: ‘How vulgar, what trash! Ugh, how revolting! Anyhow, I think your film’s a blank shot. It certainly didn’t reach the audience, which is all that matters. . (p.8)

A woman wrote from Gorky: ‘Thank you for Mirror. My childhood was like that. . . . Only how did you know about it? ‘There was that wind, and the thunderstorm . . . “Galka, put the cat out,” cried my Grandmother. . . . It was dark in the room . . . And the paraffin lamp went out, too, and the feeling of waiting for my mother to come back filled my entire soul . . . And how beautifully your film shows the awakening of a child’s consciousness, of this thought! . . . And Lord, how true . . . we really don’t know our mothers’ faces. And how simple . . . You know, in that dark cinema, looking at a piece of canvas lit up by your talent, I felt for the first time in my life that I was not alone . . .’ (p.10)

A worker in a Leningrad factory, an evening class student, wrote: ‘My reason for writing is Mirror, a film I can’t even talk about because I am living it. ‘It’s a great virtue to be able to listen and understand . . . That is, after all, a first principle of human relationships: the capacity to understand and forgive people their unintentional faults, their natural failures. If two people have been able to experience the something even once, they will be able to understand each other. Even if one lived in the era of the mammoth and the other in the age of electricity. And God grant that people may understand and experience only common, humane impulses—their own and those of others.’ (p.10)

A working woman from Novosibirsk wrote: ‘I’ve seen your film four times in the last week. And I didn’t go simply to sec it, but in order to spend just a few hours living a real life with real artists and real people. . . . Everything that torments me, everything I don’t have and that I long for, that makes me indignant, or sick, or suffocates me, everything that gives me a feeling of light and warmth, and by which I live, and everything that destroys me—it’s all there in your film, I see it as if in a mirror. For the first time ever a film has become something real for me, and that’s why I go to see it, I want to get right inside it, so that I can really be alive.‘ (p.12)

After giving comments of different audiences or recipients and how they see or read the Mirror, it can be continued by introducing briefly cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky in order to understand from which perspective they should read his movies. As a Russian director, Tarkovsky’s cinema is, by his own words: “In all my pictures the theme of roots was great importance: links with family house, childhood, country, Earth…”

When Tarkovsky talks about his movies, he points out that the aesthetically pressure of visual is more important than to know meaning of the film. Thus, he uses different colors to show transition from fantasy to real or emphasizing dreams. The colors are the unit of the meanings and he uses Technicolor and sepia to tell different level of reality. For instance, in Stalker (1979), the real life is shot in chrome; dreams, desired places and events in real time are colored. Also, he refuses symbolism and metaphors in his movies but audiences try to give different meanings that what they see as you read above. Actually, he mentions that he just reflects his own outlook to the world: “I never create allegories. I create my own world. That world does not signify anything unusual. It just exists, it has no other meaning. I think symbol and allegory rob the artist”.

For him, when someone talks about a book or remembers his memories, a bottle of milk can throw down at the same time but it is just a bottle of milk since these things happens in real life, too. In other words, that a bottle of milk does not signify anything. Also, when it is asked what the coins (e.g. Sacrifice) or what the black dog symbolizes (e.g. Stalker), he says that he doesn’t know but they are same things as what they are in dreams or real life. It means that he does not add any special meaning to images that he created.

Although he does not assign special meaning to his movies, it can be inferred from his sayings, Tarkovsky wants audiences read same meaning from his movies but how is it possible?

In reality, it is not simple as Tarkovsky’s expressions since the audiences cannot be alienated from the film, itself. Thus, this issue, namely, the meaning of the film or how to read a film is the controversial topic for the ones who are interested in film analysis or film interpretation since it has different aspects and it is made by “audience”. As an audience, you can criticize or analyze a movie from different perspectives. Whether or not every audience can be a film analyzer or critic of every movie that s/he watches and whether only selective audiences having academic background analyze a movie from some perspectives are really controversial issues.

However, now, I’d like to speculate one of that perspectives focusing on phenomenological film criticism, namely, interest of Stanley Cavell. According to Cavell, the audiences must let the films themselves teach them how to look at them and how to think about them (1981). As you see, it is contrary to what Tarkovsky expects since there is no “how to look” issue in his films; they are already reality itself (i.e. not appearances). On the contrary, the other controversial issue arises that if there is an auteur cinema like Tarkovsky’s one, i.e. the eye of director and his pen and if the director makes all film as his outlook to the life itself, without knowing his “life philosophy” how can an audience interpret the film, can the meaning that the audience took from it be the same as he’d like to give? If we leave the film teach us how to think about it, don’t we miss out opinions or thoughts of creator of this art?

Thus, all issue is about how you regard as the movie, you can say that the audiences create the meaning by being in relation with the film. Since the audiences come to scene, there can be different meanings based on audiences’ socio-cultural background and also their “life philosophy”.

By taking Cavell’s saying further, I also think that once a work of art is created, the recipient of it becomes the owner of that work; at least, in the context of the film, integration of audiences to the film creates the meaning and it means that there is no meaning-in-itself in the film-in-itself even the director – especially auteur one, as Tarkovsky, expects that audiences take the same meaning like the case of his Mirror. In other words, what if the film does not want to say that what the audience takes or reads from it? Yes, the question is this: Is there really meaning-in-itself in the film? The questions can go further and bring us to bigger issue that mentioned above: There is a work of art but to whom does it belong? In the case of cinema art, if the audience interprets the film and takes whatever meaning s/he attributes to film, then doesn’t the film belongs to that audience?

Or contrary to that, if the critics of audiences contradict with opinions of director or scriptwriter, can the critics of audiences be “true” for the meaning of the film in the context of film itself?

In this respect, it is plausible to consider combining phenomenological critic with pragmatism: while considering meaning in the film, can I say that the meaning in the film is determined by what I’ll do with the meaning? As a matter of fact, yes I can say. As an audience, I do not loot the film, I engage with it and then I interpret it. According to William James, the pragmatist philosopher, “Ideas … become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience” (1907: 34) so thus I’m in a relation with a film, I take the meaning and my relation with film makes the meaning true for me. It is all about my conscious experience with the film itself. No director, no scriptwriter, there are only me and the moving images.

References:

Tarkovsky, Andrei, Sculpting in Time, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair, 1987

King, Noel, “Hermeneutics, Reception Aesthetic, and Film Interpretation”, in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, 212-23.

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