Section 2: Theoretical Approaches and Critical Debates

Chapter 7: Representation and ideology

Ideology and the film industry

Obviously films are products of the film industry that is set up to make profits within the capitalist marketplace. As such, films, particularly perhaps Hollywood films but also all other films that receive a cinema release, are locked into the current system of economics. This is made additionally clear to us when we consider all the associated merchandising that is produced alongside so many films and the ways in which these businesses have become increasingly linked to the video games industry. Although stars are now said to have more power and influence within the industry than they did in the past, because of their dependence on the media and the use to which their image is put to sell goods, they could be argued to be just as tied into promoting the capitalist ideology, or worldview, as they have ever been.

The power of stars

On the other hand, maybe you can think of films with a quite radical ideological outlook that have been ‘greenlit’ because of the ability of a particular star to get the project off the ground. Or is it the case that the only ‘power’ stars have is the power to make money both for themselves and for other people? Isn’t it the case that although from a range of potentially commercially viable projects they may be able to determine which gets ‘green-lit’, in the end, they do not have carte blanche to get any film they please with any messages and values they like up and running. From this perspective, their power, such as it is, depends on a status that is derived directly from their place within the media entertainments industry; if they lose (or choose to begin to abandon) the Midas-touch that has enabled them to become one of the chosen few A-list stars, then their options for their next film project immediately diminish. And the size and site of the ‘soap-box’ available to them from which they may occasionally back what they see as ‘worthy’ causes is a precise reflection of their value as a commercial asset.

Summary

A commercial film is the product of an industrial production process involving the use of a variety of technologies and human labour. The inter-related roles of industrial relations, markets, business agendas, and issues of profit and loss accounting, for example, are all therefore of relevance to an understanding of how we as an audience come to be presented with the films we are.

Chapter 8: Spectatorship and audience studies

Interrogating of the text

As a spectator, you must be continually asking questions of the films you are watching. In particular, you should be asking why the filmmakers have chosen to use certain sounds or images at particular points in their film. There are an array of possible choices regarding setting, costume, props, performance, camerawork, sound, and editing before the filmmakers. Your job is to question why particular choices have been made.

Ask yourself:

• What are the main subject areas?
• What are the main themes and ideas?
• Are there key messages and values underpinning the film?

Film titles and spectatorship

Films often give you plenty of clues as to what to be looking out for from the outset. If the film is made within a predominantly white society but focuses on an ethnic minority, as with My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) or My Son the Fanatic (Udayan Prasad, 1997), the film will inevitably be dealing with issues of race in some form or other. If you have a Hollywood film called Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991), there is a good chance it will have something to say about the female experience in Western society. If you have a film titled Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1993), it is likely to be addressing the American understanding of the United States as a freedom-loving democracy.

Messages and values

Films can be seen to embody certain messages that they are working to communicate to the audience. They can also be seen to be attempting to advance certain values while questioning others. Consider exactly how men and women, or different races, cultures, and creeds are represented in any particular film: do they comply with stereotypical role models, or defy the conventional and challenge social norms in some way? Consider exactly how ideas of democracy and freedom are represented?

Values and spectatorship

La Haine (Mathieu Kassowitz, 1995) was attacked as a film that had a message that was anti-police. Whether this was a true representation of the film’s position or not, would depend on how we understood the filmmakers to be using film construction techniques to emphasise certain perspectives over others. It would also depend on your own personal views on ‘the police’ and your background within any particular community. At its most obvious, if you were a police officer yourself, you might read La Haine and its messages differently from if you were a member of a minority ethnic group feeling itself under pressure from mainstream society.

My Beautiful Laundrette, in part, deals with homosexuality. If you are homophobic, you might well respond to this film in a different way to someone who was more prepared to be accepting of sexual difference. It also features characters who are right-wing members of the National Front, and clearly depending on your politics you could respond to the portrayal of these people in a whole range of ways. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) was heavily criticised for offering a sympathetic representation of a character who was essentially, in mainstream political terminology, an IRA terrorist. Fergus (Stephen Rea), the character in question, deals directly with the issue of the naming or labelling of those who are involved in such organisations when he describes himself as a ‘volunteer’. In contrast with soldiers in the British Army, he is not doing this as a job, he did not enlist and then by chance find himself in Northern Ireland; he volunteered because this was a cause in which he believed. Clearly, we might respond to this aspect of the film in a whole variety of ways that might largely depend on our cultural background. If we were to members of the Roman Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, we might respond very differently to people from a Protestant Loyalist background. However, just because we lived and had been brought up in one very particular community would not necessarily dictate that we would respond in the same way as others from ‘our’ community; we might have personal views over and beyond, or even at odds with, the more general ones of ‘our’ community.

Chapter 9: Authorship 

Auteur

The concept of the ‘auteur’ has been important in film studies since the late 1940s when French critics suggested there were certain directors who took such creative control over the films they were involved with as to leave their distinctive stamp on them. It was argued that this effectively made these directors the ‘author’ of the films. Critics accorded the special status of ‘auteur’ to directors such as Orson Welles and Jean Renoir because of the ‘signature’ marks to be found across the range of films they made. Directors such as these were seen as working at a higher level of creativity than those who were more workman-like and simply put scenes together without imbuing the results with anything of their own personal vision.

La camera-stylo

Alexandre Astruc suggested in an essay on la camera-stylo (the camera-pen) in 1948 that the auteur ‘writes with his camera as the writer writes with his pen’ (1967, 23).  The term was used more provocatively in an article by François Truffaut, ‘Une certaine tendance du cinéma français’, in the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma in 1954, in which he put forward the idea of the ‘politique des auteurs’. This amounted to an artistic stance on how filmmakers should approach filmmaking and formed the basis of what in the 1960s became ‘auteur theory’.

Through the use of a unique, identifiable style, certain directors working within Hollywood, such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Sam Fuller, were said to have left their mark on a body of work. Despite the strictures of the Hollywood system of production, directors such as these were see as having been able to give a distinctive signature to their work. The concept was subsequently extended to include the idea that certain stars, studios, or production teams working together over a period of time, could be said to achieve the same sense of there being a distinctive unity of theme and style attaching to their work.

Authorship and commercial cinema

Stephen Neale (1980, 9) suggested the concept of an ‘auteur’ was inappropriate in relation to commercial cinema because the working conditions within the mainstream industry did not allow the necessary control over the final product. Certainly, one danger with an approach along the lines of the ‘auteur theory’ is that we are pushed towards assuming the film is simply a way for us to observe the workings of the director’s mind. The film that we see in the cinema should be understood as the product of much more than this. To begin with, there is clearly a range of different people involved in constructing a film. Centrally, the process might be said to involve the producer, scriptwriter, cinematographer, and leading actors in addition to the director. However, any examination of film production will also reveal the involvement of a host of other workers, and in addition make it clear that this is not only an aesthetic collaboration but also an industrial process. The extent to which collaboration is allowed to occur will, of course, vary from film to film, as will the numbers of people involved in the process and the industrialisation of that process.

References

Astruc, A. 1967 [1948]. ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo’. In P. Graham, The New Wave. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Neale, S. 1980. Genre. London: BFI.

Chapter 10: Historical, social, and cultural contexts 

In a contextual approach, films are seen as holding a mirror to society, representing particular groups, places, and ideas. Historical, social, and cultural contexts relate to the social setting – the values, laws, norms, religions, education etc. of a particular society at a particular time – and are crucial to the understanding of any film.

Contexts and This is England

The following activity focuses on the British film, This is England, but you could use this approach to developing a contextual study of any film.

This is England (Shane Meadows, 2007) is made in 2007, but set in 1983. We need to consider both periods in order to understand the film’s:

• representations,
• messages and values.

And then, we need to consider how watching the film in 2019 might further affect our response? The film contains explicitly political subject matter – it explores the effect of right-wing ideologies in England in the 1980s. As a result, coming to terms with the nature of politics in Britain in the three time periods mentioned here is crucial to our understanding of the film. 

In order to develop an understanding of this film in context, you would need to research the following key areas:

• Thatcherism,
• The Falklands War, 
• nationalism as a political structure,
• the Brixton riots.

Thatcherism

Margaret Thatcher was a conservative prime minister (1979–1990). Thatcherism refers to the political policies of this prime minister – policies that changed many aspects of British life.

Thatcher was elected during a period of economic and industrial decline that had characterised the 1970s. Thatcherism represents a belief in free markets with little state intervention (that is, keeping government involvement to a minimum). Rather than planning and regulating business and people’s lives, the government’s job is to get out of the way.

The state should be restricted to regulating the bare essentials: defence of the country and the currency. Everything else should be left to individuals, to exercise their own choices and take responsibility for their own lives. This was a very controversial approach: one that was revolutionary, and even seen as dangerous to many politicians.

Thatcher was also a divisive figure in the country – provoking very strong support but also hatred. After her death in 2013, the song ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ reached number 2 in the charts (another track, ‘I’m in Love with Margaret Thatcher’, reached number 35).

The key characteristic of Thatcherism was the privatisation of state-owned industries, including British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, and electricity companies, putting them back into private hands. There was a huge sale to tenants of council housing. The government also abandoned its commitment to full employment, stating this was the responsibility of employers and employees.

One example of her impact on society was the inclusion of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. The controversial clause stated that a local authority shall not ‘promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.’ It was repealed in 2003.
(Adapted from ‘What is Thatcherism?’, BBC News, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22079683)

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology based on the belief of the superiority of one’s own country in comparison to any other. In nationalism, a single nation’s needs are prioritised over all others. Nationalists reject global or multinational organisations, as they see that form of cooperation as weakening the control of the individual nation.

Nationalism is based on a shared attribute – belonging to one nation – and this often becomes a very narrow definition, excluding people of different ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds. Fascist dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler used nationalism in order to rule their countries.

Nationalism is considered to be different to patriotism, which is a pride in and celebration of one’s country, but doesn’t argue that it is naturally superior.

The Falklands War

Taking place over ten weeks in May–June 1982, the ‘war’ started when Argentina (then under the rule of a military dictatorship) invaded the islands, which were a British colony (although Argentina had always claimed sovereignty, arguing the British had taken them illegally in the nineteenth century). In response, the Thatcher government sent a naval force to attack and reclaim the islands.

The actions of the government were controversial – particularly the sinking of the Argentinian navy ship the Belgrano when it was heading away from the islands. There were many casualties of this short war with 650 Argentine and 253 British deaths. In the UK, there was widespread support for the war, but also some unease at the militaristic response and levels of jingoism in parts of the media which cast Argentina and its people as an enemy.

At the start of the war, Thatcher and her Conservative government were extremely unpopular but the war was a turning point in boosting her popularity and it is often seen as one of the main reasons for her next election victory.

Brixton Riots

Three days of riots took place in Brixton, South London in April 1981 – with rioting also taking place in other towns and cities across the UK. The catalyst for the riots in Brixton was accusations of police brutality against a black teenager, however, a mixture of high unemployment, social deprivation, racial tensions, and poor relations with police had been building over a long time. The inquiry into the riots found that there was ‘no doubt racial disadvantage was a fact of current British life’ and the findings led to the end of the ‘Sus’ law, which allowed police to arrest anyone they thought might be going to commit a crime – a law which was seen to disproportionately target young black males.