It looks real because it is real

It is no mistake that, in WALL·E, trash looks real. The city-cum-junkyard in which WALL·E is marooned is full of texture, dust, and detail. The wasted city’s realness is meaningful¹: it is a vision of the future of the world outside of the movie, the real world.

Pixar’s realism is not used only to echo a timely, real-world fear, but also to argue that humans are responsible. The humans in old recordings of Earth are not computer-generated, but flesh-and-bone actors. Earth is ruined, and real humans ruined it.

Further, the damage is the result of familiar, even friendly forces. The mountains of garbage were not caused by some large, international conflict (Planet of the Apes), deadly virus (I Am Legend), or alien invasion (Independence Day), but by consumerism and apathy. There are no flashbacks to secret labs or mushroom clouds, but instead chirpy billboard advertisements; no glowing craters, but bras, tires, and other recognizable bits of trash.

In these ways, WALL·E uses realism and familiarity to tie its tale to the world outside the theatre. The unreal slickness of the Axiom and the goofy look of its inhabitants sets them apart from our experience. It is much more difficult to separate ourselves from the mountain of discarded boots and refrigerators, or the call to “abandon the planet” from a tired, wrinkled authority behind a White-House–like podium.²

From mothership to stewardship

As strong as its position on the dangers of pollution is, WALL·E fumbles its argument in the end. Though the realism of the first half says the danger is real and heedless consumerism a poison, the second half claims the solution is eagerness and care.

The film’s position seems to be what Rosemary Ruether calls the Protestant stewardship approach: “Nature must be regarded as an object, not as a subject. It is our possession, but we must possess it in a thrifty rather than a profligate way.” With care and hard work, the Earth can be saved. Nature and health are grand projects of conservation.

Hopeful though it is, this position often does not consider the historical and economic context in which damage and restoration occur. As Annalee Newitz notes, “everybody on Earth is dead except for those who could afford to take what is billed as ‘an executive class cruise’ on the BnL ship.”

This makes the film’s end seem not just naïve, but macabre. If unprepared humans (dreaming of “pizza plants”), galaxies and generations away from those familiar with Earth and the causes of its destruction, can repair the damage through good will and elbow grease, why did they not do so earlier?

Ultimately, as damning as WALL·E‘s opening setting may be, its philosophy is toothless. It reduces the environmental problem to one between Nature and Man (the only things mentioned in “Down to Earth”, the song that plays over the credits), discarding the economic dimension. Having shown the audience its own dire situation and condemned its destructive habits, the film tells it that everything can be okay, that we can have buildings and high technology and a green world so long as we plant enough seeds.

The large radio tower in the RKO logo which appears at the very beginning of King Kong is a curious thing. It is a piece of an old medium, radio, in a new one, film. The logo seems awkward, a sign of a time in which movies were “moving pictures,” only beginning to gain the legitimacy of radio and print, to develop a vocabulary.

There are a number of elements of new media that are left over from their earlier forms: the prompt to “insert coin(s)” in home console versions of arcade games, electronic documents broken into distinct pages, to be stored in file folders on a computer desktop.

You might say these are analogous to vestigial traits.¹ They are remainders of past forms, still present but made useless by gradual change. The RKO radio tower is to film as the grasp reflex is to newborn babies.

This analogy is misleading. The truth is that carryovers from older to newer media are not always dead weight. In many cases old media serve as a fulcrum on which to advance the goals of new media.

Tropes as bridges

Consider the spinning newspaper trope (first used in Citizen Kane—an RKO radio picture). Presenting a brief banner headline, a film communicates that an important event has occurred, shows that it has impact, that it is known publicly, and that some time (enough to publish the paper) has passed. Taking advantage of the audience’s understanding of how newspapers work, this technique manages to get across a great deal of information in an efficient manner.

In this understanding, the radio tower before a film isn’t without function, but is instead a bridge between the old and new. It is as the language used to describe internet media—email, web-site—something familiar to explain something unfamiliar.

The spinning newspaper remains effective despite the fading relevance of and familiarity with newspapers nowadays. Ditto the comedic record needle scratch²: how many viewers laugh at it, but don’t know where and how the sound is produced?

(Of course, things continue to change. These tropes are not going to be effective forever.)

Tropes as interference

Ideas from old media can be useful, but can also interfere with the new. Their effectiveness and convenience can limit media as well as they can leverage it.

Take, for example, film and video games. Video games often use letterboxed screens (once only seen when watching widescreen film on television screens) to denote sequences in which players are meant to watch the game as they would a film, rather than participate in it.

For the same reasons, letterboxed cutscenes are frustrating. They are a sign that the game is no longer an interactive experience, but a passive one; that the designers were not able or willing to look beyond their understanding of film.

The sequence in which Sephiroth kills Aeris works in the same way as does the twist in The Sixth Sense. It’s more film than game. Like radio on TV (which The Score seems to think is a good idea), it disregards core, distinguishing aspects of the newer medium to shoehorn in an older one.

The spinning paper trope does not make a newspaper of the film in the way Final Fantasy makes a film of a game. The spinning paper requires viewers to read only a headline, not an entire article. The trope makes use of the newspaper form without mimicking it. In this way, it is a successful borrowing.

Artful use of old media is possible. The video editor included with Grand Theft Auto IV, with which players replay and edit stunts they’ve performed in-game, is an example of how, as Steve Gaynor has said, “taking cinematic techniques and applying them to games that isn’t ‘let’s just put movies into games.’”

Just as old media can be useful, a reservoir of convention and time-tested mechanics, they can be distracting and limiting. The methods and tropes borrowed need to be questioned, sometimes tempered and adapted, sometimes discarded.

(If you’ve not already seen WALL·E, you may not want to continue reading this post: it may spoil certain surprises, and won’t make much sense.)

The two robots in Pixar’s WALL·E represent, roughly, two kinds of personal computers: the PC (in the old sense: a desktop computer running Windows or maybe, GNU/Linux) and the Apple Macintosh (running Mac OS).

EVE has a glossy white shell that resembles an iPod or MacBook. As Sancho has mentioned, EVE was designed in part by a designer at Apple. While the superficial similarities are easy to find, you can find others if you’re willing to stretch a little.

Much like an Apple computer, EVE looks elegant and packs more power than you’d first expect. EVE is quite dedicated at performing the task she is designed to do. She goes to an expensive maintenance area, all white walls and frosted glass, to be repaired by experts. It’s really obvious when EVE gets scratched or smudged, and it takes effort to keep her looking clean (MO, the cleaning bot).

WALL·E, the PC, is made of worn and noisy machine parts. He works with what’s laying around, upgrading his eyes and treads, as well as adding non-standard enhancements—a lunchbox. WALL·E is not easy to repair, his boot-up sequence is slow, and data recovery can be an suspenseful ordeal, as EVE discovers late in the film. He seems even to invite bugs to crawl around him.

While WALL·E is not as modern and shiny as EVE, he’s more flexible and the only one capable of playing video games.

Alright, perhaps I’ve stretched the analogy too far. Nonetheless, it does seem difficult to deny that there is some unusually tight cross-branding going on in WALL·E. There are a number of nods to Apple in the film, some more conspicuous—WALL·E watches movies on a video iPod—than others. (This may excuse one of the failings of my analogy: that WALL·E plays the Mac start-up sound when he has charged his solar battery.)

I don’t find this kind of product placement particularly cute. Yes, EVE is a more sympathetic and business-friendly spokesperson for Apple than the smug Mac dude, but it’s odd to see this kind of marketing in a movie that uses the ubiquity of a corporate brand as a sign of decadence and ruin.

I do choose to interpret the love between the two bots as a hopeful message for nerds and platform-zealots everywhere. Like EVE and WALL·E, Mac and PC users can learn to get along.

Update: Seems I’m not the first to see the PC/Mac parallels.

When I see There Will Be Blood, I feel like I’ve watched a fantastic film. P.T. Anderson’s film is so rich in so many ways. I embarrass myself with the strength and number of adjectives I use when describing it to friends. Yet there is a strange feeling that, as much as I’m keen to shout my love for There Will Be Blood from the rooftops, I’m wrong; that I’ll find it tapped and drained.

The third act? When I first saw it, I enjoyed it. I went to see the film a second time largely to confirm that I did. I read reviews damning it, giving good reasons why it did not work with the rest of the film. I came in the second time with a long list of poor choices made by Anderson, of reasons why it crippled an otherwise outstanding masterwork. Daniel becomes a ridiculous caricature of himself. His way of dealing with his son and with Eli are not in keeping with who he was. The dialogue is full of holes; it feels like Anderson speaking through the characters. The film ends abruptly, unfairly. And so on. I had read up. I was set to take the final act apart.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. I fell into the movie, immersed until the credits. The consistency of character, the radical shift in visual and emotional tone—my awareness of these things dissolved. Whatever seemed a failure on paper, worked wonderfully on screen. I did not leave the theatre feeling cheated or confused. I left smiling. “That was one goddamn helluva show.”

But I’m still not as confident of the film’s greatness as I should be. Perhaps its shocking third act overwhelms me; a magnet spinning my critical compass. Perhaps it’s the way the film squirms around, making it difficult to fit it into some interpretive harness. Perhaps I feel guilty for having liked it so much more than every other film I’ve seen recently. Perhaps I lack enough confidence in my own tastes, or am too aware of how they change.

I don’t know what it is that makes me hesitate. As much as I have enjoyed There Will Be Blood, I have a nagging feeling that I may, after future viewings, come to regret thinking so highly of it. As Vern says (via Rumsey Taylor):

Anderson’s There Will Be Blood has the feeling of greatness. It has the smell of greatness, the texture of it. It flirts with greatness. I’m pretty sure it even left the club with greatness last night but there is no way yet for us to know if it got lucky with greatness. We can only catch up with it later and ask it. If it turns out later that it was only faking it I’ll have to admit it had me fooled.

And here are a few of them.

The choice of films is a bit strange. Few would argue with including Blade Runner, Akira, RoboCop, or Terminator. But Aliens and not Alien? The entire Mad Max trilogy (more punk-looking westerns than cyberpunk)? What about Brazil, Videodrome, Johnny Mnemonic, or Strange Days?

These oversights are further compounded by the fact that six of the nine films Holden examines were written and directed by the same people. The similarities between Aliens and the Terminator series are due more to the lack of variety in Cameron’s writing than cross-generic commonality; ditto George Miller’s Mad Max. Holden’s analyses may hold for the handful of movies he chose, but they are not a very representative group of films to generalize from.

Holden often resorts to illustrating his points with pieces of other, indisputably non-cyberpunk sources. While these are refreshing to watch (Cheers dubbed over in German), they cast some doubt on the applicability of his theories to cyberpunk film. You see much more of what he talks about in bits from Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, and old NES games than from clips of Aliens.

This could be due to the level and type of analysis that Holden decides to execute. While I’ve nothing against Northrop Frye’s theory of myths—indeed, from what I know, they appear to be very widely applicable and informative—they better serve higher-level conclusions. They classify a work according to repeating structures and themes from Christian (and pre-Christian) mythology. Holden applies these large, medieval structures (the great chain of being, the seven deadly sins, etc.), and the aptness and specificity of his conclusions are just as abstract and general. What Holden says of cyberpunk films could be said as well of many other films, and likely not of many films considered to be cyberpunk.

Nothing Holden presents is wrong, really: it’s broad. It doesn’t get at the roots of cyberpunk. You would argue for a more Marxist approach. Much closer to the causes of what makes cyberpunk distinct from other (sub)genres of film are the socio-political, historical, economic forces at the time of their creation.

Although Holden never really justifies his decision to consider films from the 1980′s, by doing so (consciously or not) he has limited himself to the short period in which cyberpunk could have been thought culturally relevant. Science-fiction had moved away from the shiny space-age of the 50′s and 60′s, and the desolate post-apocalyptic imaginations of the 70′s, bringing the technological future together with desperation and sadness and into the city. The social anxieties of that time are reflected clearly in cyberpunk works: the oil scare of the seventies, the transparently two-faced reign of Reagan, fear of the Japanese, microcomputers, larger corporations, pollution, punks, and phreaks.

By the time Hollywood released Strange Days and Demolition Man cyberpunk lost cultural and political currency; it was more of an aesthetic, set dressing. The world was different by the early 1990′s, with its push for optimistic multiculturalism, awareness of truly covert and cooptive methods of marketing, and the accessibility of personal computers. The most obvious sign of this shift in mindset is the late 90′s dot-com bubble: a time full of (entrepreneurial) optimism and hopeful futurism, when money flowed as quickly and voluminously as rhetoric. Technology was thought to be liberating, democratizing, a way of establishing a new and open way of things. In some ways The Matrix demonstrated this change: beginning with what seems a straight conflict between man and machine, but ending in a very blended world where technology and flesh live together, rather than struggle. This wasn’t a rainy tragedy, it was a collectivist dream of self-sufficiency, peace, and no ethnic (even biological) social divisions.

Now, in 2007, the mid-80′s harshness of technology and corporate rule is much less pronounced, as are the glowing benefits of the internet many were keen on in the 90′s. Technology in post-cyberpunk work is not alienating, feared, imposed, an entirely separate world. It is symbiotic and ubiquitous, full of web 2.0 rounded edges: iPhones, not eyephones. Anxieties over corporate and government power continue, but the clear sense of good and bad has been diffused. Gibson himself seems eager to turn the myth of cyberspace “inside out.” His two latest novels concern characters much less certain of where they stand, working with an insubstantial but powerful, moneyed corporation that lacks a guarded dark tower headquarters. The dangers of technology and capitalism are amorphous and enabling, not evil and enslaving.

The Cyberpunk Educator does skip across the surface of this more situational interpretation, dropping lines such as “the main purpose of minorities in 1980′s film is to be shot.” Indeed, in its incidental discussion of punk and irony, it comes closer to describing the cyberpunk mindset than with its talk of seasonal myths. Yet it’s limited by its self-imposed constraints to the rather dull conclusion that cyberpunk films are “tragedies with strong ironic content.” Holden’s is a fun documentary, especially for aficionados of sci-fi film, but it does a far better job of describing the framework of Frye’s interpretations than it does cyberpunk. It can be enjoyed it for what it is, but “Cyberpunk Educator” is a bit of a misnomer.

Red Cars could be said to be the published screenplay for an unrealized film, an art project, or just a fancy coffee-table book. In the introduction, Cronenberg calls the book “a fusion of script and image… its own mutation,” and it’s as concise a description as possible, vague as it may be. The book is a gestalt of photographs, text, paint, metal—all tangled in semiotic support; and however well it may sit on a coffee-table, it deserves (and rewards) much more active reading than would, say, an Ansel Adams collection.

Set in the early 1960′s, the story centres on American driver Phil Hill. He hopes to become the first American World Champion, but is convinced that his sponsor, Enzo Ferrari, is undermining him and truly favours another driver, the German von Trips. His struggles with Ferrari and competition with von Trips are complicated by Ferrari’s wife, Laura, worried by her sickly bastard son Dino, and Hill’s own self-hatred and frustration. The racing season is arduous for Hill, who wins a place in the Grand Prix in the penultimate race—after von Trips is killed in an accident. Ferrari, ostensibly in respect to von Trips’ death, decides not to participate, taking the opportunity from Hill to race in the Grand Prix.

Such a summary fails to convey the colour and richness of this setting (including the famed Ferrari 156 “Shark-nose” of the title, a miniature of which is included with the book) and psychological depth of Red Cars. These come to light when reading the script and the graphic elements of the book.

The book’s rich colour photographs are striking. (I’ve not read many screenplays, but am certain that it’s rare to see one so beautiful.) The subjects of these photographs vary from the descriptive (drivers, cars, and courses) to the more abstract and metaphorical (a beaten paperback copy of Being and Nothingness makes almost as many appearances as Phil Hill). These are presented artfully. The technical perfection of the “Shark-nose” is shown through clean engineering schematics, light grey on white; its sexual influence evidenced by a series of red, close-up Polaroids. Other elements are decayed and chaotic. Photographs are blurred and torn. Some pages are splashed with paint, blood, motor oil, and even baby food; others appear to have been chewed or rubbed over hot machinery (particularly those following von Trips’ death).

Not only the images are emotive: select portions of text are set in larger, stronger type, and arranged and coloured to attract attention. These are key moments of fear or understanding, as well as smaller details expressive of the emotional texture of the story. For example: when Dino describes the changes he’s made to the engine, the text swells and reddens with his excitement. Hill is impressed, but asks why it leaks oil. Dino sees that his bed is sticky with something, and as he realizes that his bed is filling with blood, the type turns grey with dread and leaps out of the column in fear.

We see that Hill’s foot is absolutely to the floor but his car can’t keep up with its sisters.

Hill pulls into the pits, jumps out of the car and starts screaming at the mechanics. Tavoni is there. He watches in horror but doesn’t interfere.

Hill (screaming): I told you to change the engine! And you didn’t, did you. You know how I can tell? Because this engine is going to break any minute now, this engine’s valve springs have been overstressed because of the gearing change we made and they won’t last the race, and that’s why I can’t keep up with von Trips and Ginther.

At this moment Enzo Ferrari himself looms up from behind the pit wall. He wears a hat but his jacket is off revealing thick suspenders and rolled-up sleeves. Hill still does not see him.

Ferrari (angrily, to Hill): Are you certain that the problem is the valve springs?

Hill turns to face Ferrari. Despite his own very real anger and his certainty that he is right, he is immediately intimidated by this equally angry father-figure.

Ferrari: Are you certain that the problem is not really with your right foot?

Ferrari makes an exaggerated foot-pushing-on-the-gas gesture which is also a bit like a man stepping on a disgusting bug.

The script was written nearly a decade ago, but faced a variety of difficulties in being produced, not least of which were the objections of the Ferrari family and Phil Hill. Cronenberg claims that his screenplay doesn’t deal with anything not already known publicly (such as Ferrari’s bastard son, or Hill’s nervous habit of vomiting before big races), but it seems to be little comfort to the prideful family and retired race star.

The book, interesting in itself, is more so because it’s the only official piece of Red Cars, the film. To imagine the visceral experiences afforded by the text and still images brought to life with motion and sound is exciting, but at the same time disappointing. How much more thrilling would it have been to to feel the sound of the cars, of the crowd; to see beds fill with blood, engine parts churn, and faces flush with anger and success? It deserves to be made as a film.

There is a website for Red Cars that seems hastily made (“Thi site requires Flash Player 7” [sic]). There’s mention of it in the introduction, but I think it of small value and unfair to the book it’s attached to. Regardless, it’s the only easily accessible preview of the book. As much as I could recommend the book (if only to flip through for a glimpse of the photos and design), it can be difficult to find a copy: they’re in limited print, only one thousand.

Update: Santeramo was sent this entry by an acquaintance of his sometime in December. He recognized it as mine and, kind-heart that he is, gave me a copy of the book (#217).

Perhaps I was growing out of it, or perhaps I was put-off by the later Batman movies, but my enthusiasm for things Batman dwindled in the mid-nineties. It resurfaced only recently, when a friend shared a few of his comics with me. I didn’t find the Hush series of Batman particularly good, but it did make me curious to read some other comics that are: Gotham By Gaslight, Batman: Year One and Two, Arkham Asylum, and, of course, The Dark Knight Returns. With the help of Les Daniel’s Batman: The Complete History (which I read cover-to-cover in a single afternoon) and the web, I was able to quickly immerse myself in Batman again.

I’ve come to realize that Batman is many things to many people (master detective, allegorical vampire, caped crusader, gay icon, money-making franchise undeserving of respect) but, as stated in Jay Pinkerton’s latest article, his appeal comes most strongly from one thing.

Batman isn’t a great character because of the camp value.
Batman isn’t a great character because he’s dark and gritty.
Batman is a great character because he’s batshit-bat-fucking-crazy.

Jay’s not the first to notice this: it’s been a theme in the ongoing Batman comics since the end of the Silver Age. Certainly, the gritty noir of Dark Knight and Tim Burton’s Batman is cool, but it’s incomplete without Bruce Wayne’s creepiness and tortured history. Batman’s mental instability, as well as that of his enemies, is what makes the myth so interesting. Superman, the Flash, and the Green Arrow (despite having a run of twenty-or-so well written books a few years ago) are all shallow do-gooders. They’ve all the appeal and moral flexibility of dedicated boy scouts. Batman, on the other hand, is nebulous and troubled, sometimes as twisted as the villains he fights. He’s a control freak who deals with his childhood trauma by beating the crap out of people at night. He’s a great character to watch, not so much because you want to be him, but because he’s so screwed-up.

I can’t be sure of just how much of my interest has been warped by time, introspection, and talk of the upcoming Batman Begins. Whatever worries I have about the purity of my interest disappear when I watch Batman Returns, and I can’t deny that I’m eager to see Begins. Here’s hoping that it can live up to both my fan-boy expectations and childhood memories.