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genre, narrative, and libido
Since I'm almost broke, I've been spending a lot of time renting 2-for-1 movies at the Blockbuster. This post will contain mild spoilers for two of those films: Adaptation and Pumpkin.
So. Each of those films make interesting use of genre. In particular, each of them, in their closing acts especially, adhere to the conventions of a particular genre (the thriller and the romantic comedy, respectively), even though doing so makes a hash of the narrative setup of the early acts.
Of the two, Adaptation does this more decisively (although I think they both do it quite deliberately). Screenwriting and its relationship to genre are clearly central concerns of Adaptation, and once it begins its descent into genre it makes an overt break away from anything resembling reality. In Pumpkin, on the other hand, this break is not so clean: the filmmakers allow Christina Ricci's character a final doubting glance backwards, which disrupts the artifice of Pumpkin's final moments.
In any case, I'm interested in what genre represents for the makers of these two films. For Charlie Kaufmann, Adaptation's screenwriter, genre seems to function as a kind of tyranny (a point driven home by the film's resident tyrant, scriptwriting expert Robert McKee). Kaufmann seems to be saying that genre erases the human connection that Kaufmann (and Orlean) yearn for in the film's earlier reels, a connection that seems to derive from the "messiness" of other human beings, the pull we feel towards another's fundamental unknowability. The film's ultimate point is that genre erases this messiness and unknowability in favor of an easy digestibility.
In Pumpkin, genre seems to function more as a kind of social coding (perhaps also a form of tyranny). Pumpkin has an intense interest in spaces that are heavily socially patterned (the Greek formal, the double date, the big tennis meet, etc.). The introduction of a mentally retarded individual (Pumpkin himself) into these spaces introduces unpredictability into the pattern, a result of both Pumpkin's unpredictable behavior and the unpredictable reactions of the "normals." But, interestingly, this pattern of disruption is itself disrupted by the filmmakers' refusal to violate the genre codes that determine the film's outcome: the film ends "happily" despite our wish, indeed the social demand to see the romance end in disaster. The ultimate meaning of this gesture is unclear, but it is undeniably provocative.
Some of this summer's action movies have also made me think about genre expectations in a less happy way, in particular Matrix : Reloaded and The Hulk. Both of these films, particularly in their early reels, eschew the standard action movie formula in favor of long sequences of convoluted, dramatically flat setup. Does The Hulk really need four dream sequences before the first time we get to see Banner transform?
To a degree, I'm sympathetic. Both Matrix : Reloaded and The Hulk suffer from an interesting narrative problem, namely: if your main character is (for all intents and purposes) impervious to harm, what do you do to make up for losing the dramatic tension that comes from seeing a character in jeopardy? Even the Superman films have Kryptonite.
Matrix : Reloaded particularly fails to come up with a workable answer to the dramatic tension problem: that's why its action sequences so frequently feel meaningless. The Hulk comes closer by occasionally letting libido drive its narrative: the Hulk may not be facing any perceptible danger when he's fighting Army helicopters, but we in the audience long to see those helicopters get smashed, and the interval between their appearance and their eventual destruction we feel something that functions as a kind of narrative tension. To my mind, these moments, deployed all too infrequently, are the most successful moments in the entire film.
Could a feature-length film be structured entirely around libidinal narrative? Perhaps the Survival Research Labs videos come closest, appealing to nothing more than our desire to see heavy equipment unleash various forms of destruction. I'd rather watch the Pitching Machine launch 2"x4"s at 200 mph than watch Neo effortlessly repulse 100 Agent Smiths any day. |
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
2:12 PM
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