Abstract: Rarely does such a consistent and self-contained collection of representational material offer itself unto analysis like the short-lived hood film cycle of the early 1990s.  Rarer still, is the foundational structure of such a symbolic collection completely overlooked by its critics. Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton 1991) and Menace II Society (Allen and Albert Hughes 1993) are the hood film cycle’s most renowned and successful films, as well as its most representative. Spike Lee’s classic Do the Right Thing (1989) can be seen as the hood film’s precursor, while Clockers (1995) marks its end by self-consciously examining the genre’s conventions. Over twenty similarly themed films were released between 1991 and 1995 all united, for the most part, by largely African-American creative talent, contemporary urban settings, a strong intermedial connection to youth rap/hip hop culture, and a thematic focus on inner-city social and political issues such as poverty, crime, racism, drugs and violence. All critical considerations of these films in terms of genre and classification miss its fundamental core: the melodramatic mode, centered around the experience of being “another victim of the ghetto.”

In Bourdieuian terms, mapping this cycle of films and their hitherto undiscovered melodrama will also reveal that the hood film cycle not only embodies and expresses a particular class habitus – “the internalized form of class condition and of the conditioning it entails” (1984: 101) – but (melo)dramatizes the very production of this habitus, particularly with its primary focus on coming-of-age story lines and a youth audience. The realization of such a melodramatic habitus will unfold in two parts: mapping the melodramatic mode onto a previously unconsidered genre – the hood film cycle of the early 1990s, the melo-ghetto – and then analyzing the significance of what amounts to be the melodrama of the map.  Plotting the melodramatic mode onto such a disparate and seemingly incompatible genre such as the hood film should explicate the geography of the melodramatic mode, showcasing its fundamental characteristics and concerns. Witnessing its application in such a violent and ‘masculine’ genre as the hood film should also prove the versatility of the melodramatic mode. Following this structuralist task, this new melodramatic incarnation will be explored in terms of its evolution of the melodramatic mode, demonstrating the ways in which melodrama is continuously reinvented and redefined. With the hood film, a key shift occurs: the home – a crucial concern in melodrama – becomes the hood, and it requires abandonment.  Intimately connected to this disfigured sense of space is another, often overlooked concern of melodrama: the melos. Music in the hood film, and intermediality more generally, is of central importance in mediating the spatial and temporal logic of the hood. With the hood film, melodrama is put in service of a far more serious concern than its traditional domestic or soap-opera utilization: the socio-political crisis in the African-American urban community.

Book Description: Since the 1990s, popular culture the world over has frequently looked to the ’hood for inspiration, whether in music, film, or television. Habitus of the Hood explores the myriad ways in which the hood has been conceived—both within the lived experiences of its residents and in the many mediated representations found in popular culture. Using a variety of methodologies including autoethnography, textual studies, and critical discourse analysis, contributors analyze and connect these various conceptions.

Abstract: Nearly all of Steven Soderbergh’s work can be seen to exhibit a large degree of intertextual and intermedial reworking: from remakes that function more as remixes (The Underneath, Solaris, Ocean’s Eleven) and adaptations that bear little resemblance to their source material (King of the Hill, Kafka, Traffic) to borrowed characters (Jackie Brown’s Ray Nicolette in Out of Sight) and borrowed films (Poor Cow in The Limey).  His ‘experimental’ fare makes this penchant for intertextuality explicit with the recurring motif of a a ‘film-within-a-film’ function (sex, lies and videotape, Schizopolis, Full Frontal), while Bubble’s day-and-date release strategy in theatre, on television, and on DVD can be seen as a sort of ‘industrial intermediality.’  With The Good German, Soderbergh employs his intertextual preoccupation in the service of re-investigating a dark page in American history.  While the technical grandiosity of the film – 1940s-era equipment, including black-and-white cinematography, fixed lenses, rear-projection, swipe cuts, 4:3 ratio, and archival footage – was largely written-off by critics as an empty pastiche of film noir style, a closer inspection reveals that this retrograde stylistic practice – this blend of history – is an integral component of the film’s political and philosophical resonance.

 For Soderbergh, investigating history requires investigating how we record history, what we designate as reference points, and what mediums stand in our way.  In order to ‘correct’ history – in this case, the American postwar employment of scientists that should have been tried for war crimes, as well as larger themes of collective guilt, hypocrisy, and moral compromise – Soderbergh requires us to revisit and revise not just the past, but the mediated past.  The Good German is a labyrinthine mix of history, both political and cinematic; it ‘blends’ an array of intertextual and intermedial sources into an uneasy and unsettling fusion.  Rather than simply re-telling history – even a forgotten or suppressed history – The Good German engages with history and its inherent mediation in a dialogic relationship; by confronting us with a brazen intertextual history, The Good German remains a sober reminder that there is a heavy price for unquestioned mediation.

There are certain scenes which have the power to enthral, provoke, and delight—our cover captures one such titillating tableau. But what gives such a scene the ability to stand apart, to take on a life of its own? What is it about Robert De Niro’s “Are you talking to me?” scene that has such lasting cultural resonance? How does Gene Kelly dancing in the rain embody an entire ethos of escapism?

Continue reading the Editor’s Note

Each essay in this issue focuses on a single scene, and an embedded video clip of the scene under analysis is included.  Brenda Austin-Smith looks at Alice in the Cities, Murray Pomerance considers Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and Elena del Río includes her own short film in the Forward to the issue: What a Scene Can Do,  Other essays look at the Snuff Coda, Eastern Promises, That 70s Sequence, the Post-Mortem Western, and Joy Division and the Televised Performance Scene.

I was the web and layout editor once again, as well as a member of the editorial board.

Abstract: The Museum is a theoretical model that aims to render a media-saturated world in which our media have become saturated with media. Corporate conglomeration of the cultural industries has transformed the production and circulation of art; the Museum captures the inter-related complexities of this development in which the notion of a singular text breaks down in the wake of synergistic proliferation. Conceiving of this ‘new society’ requires new conceptions: a model (the Museum), a language (polytextuality), a discipline (cultural economy), and a product (the textwork). Section I establishes the ‘Geography of the Museum’, starting with its chief architect, André Malraux, who designs the neo-aesthetic foundation of the ‘Imaginary Museum’ (Chapter Three). The post-structural blueprints are then drawn up by Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva, giving the Museum its polytextual essence (Chapter Four). The Museum is then physically erected by the conglomerated cultural industries, transforming the Imaginary Museum into a material consumer experience (Chapter Five). Section II turns to the ‘Display of the Museum’, cataloguing the different ways in which art manifests itself within the Museum. By way of Roland Barthes, the textwork is theorized, a dialogical designation for the type of networked cultural output that now dominates popular culture (Chapter Seven). Case studies of particularly illuminating textworks are then presented, illustrating the polytextual content of the Museum in a multitude of intersecting forms and mediums. A decisively polytextual museum exhibition, “KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art”, as well as two films – Children of Men and V for Vendetta – are seen as literal embodiments of the Museum (Chapter Eight). The next textwork is concerned with intermedial structure, and focuses on the Wu-Tang Clan’s interpolation of certain cinematic genres, as well as other mediums (Chapter Nine). The final textwork is General Electric, the world’s largest conglomerate. Transformers and 30 Rock, two very different GE products, both explicitly exhibit corporate synergy through polytextuality (Chapter Ten). Over-arching cultural shifts are demonstrated by the Museum: access over ownership, circulation over distribution, dialogue over delivery, digital social text over authorship, and multiple over singular.

…in this, our 5th anniversary issue, we set out to navigate the murky and uncharted depths of ‘alternative cinema’. But carving out an epistemology of this amorphous cinema is no small endeavour-and what do we mean by ‘alternative cinema’ anyway? On the one hand, it is always evolving, always repositioning itself outside mainstream modes of representation: once the mainstream appropriates elements of alternative style, new configurations naturally spring up in response. At the same time, it has no singular mandate, no fixed ideological underpinnings, and is beholden to no specific national cinema or film movement.

Continue reading the Editor’s Note

Steffen Hantke on Hitler as Actor, Jerry White on From Ingushetia to the Finland Station, William Beard’s interview with Guy Maddin, and more, including Holocaust Exploitation, Post-Soviet Freakonomics, and Cinematic Prosthesis.

I was the web and layout editor, as well as a member of the editorial board.

Abstract: The sellebrity auteur injects the consideration of commerce and celebrity into conventional theories of film authorship, highlighting the political economic factors in a film’s creation and the struggle between art and commerce that this process involves, as well as the director’s brand identity and celebrity cachet as it is exploited both by the director and the industry.  Spike Lee and his production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, are emblematic of the way contemporary Hollywood filmmakers must be heavily involved in the business-end of film production in order to retain artistic control.  His skill at managing the Spike Lee brand name has resulted in his transformation into a valuable commodity.  From his ability to incessantly create controversy to his numerous and various commercial enterprises, Lee has exploited his celebrity in order to continue his prolific cinematic output.

• Fight the Power!: The Spike Lee Reader has won the National Communication Association African American Communication and Culture Division’s 2009 Outstanding Book award.

Much has been made in recent years of the death of genre, or at least its gradual weakening. Post-genre is the buzzword. Pointing out “Hollywood’s propensity for generic hybridity and overlap in his discussion of the action adventure film, Steve Neale makes the case that cinematic genres have started to move massively away from single distinct genres since the 1980s and ’90s (71) and toward a new polygeneric narrative that seems to transcend all inherited boundaries. This means that, by implication, there must have been an earlier period in which genres used to be, at least relatively speaking, distinct. In the Editor’s Note to a recent issue of Cinephile, Andrew deWaard suggests to read the sense of “perpetual aftermath” that dominates contemporary conceptions of genre not as a sign of its imminent demise but as an invitation for reconceptualization:

We can’t really leave genre behind anymore than we can abandon modernism or industry or structuralism – we’ve just mutated it to the point that it somehow feels new or different. Maybe we should start thinking ‘post’ as less of a temporal marker and more like computational logic. Let’s think of it as an upgrade: Genre 2.0, based on the same fundamental hardware, but with such forward-thinking software that it hardly warrants comparison. (2)

Tom LeClair’s approach to, and use of, genre in the Passing trilogy falls squarely into this model of what one might call “post-genre” for literary fiction. The hardware, as deWaard calls it, is still there, even though the software has been upgraded – to call it “forward-thinking” feels right as well. Readers are supposed to recognize the machinations of genre at work; the writing is intertextual enough, though never obtrusively so, to evoke the history of literary and cinematic adventure. The polygenericity of the trilogy, articulated as a series of shifts from one genre to another, does not undermine the validity of each single genre; instead, it follows an experimental logic. In his exploration of adventure, LeClair “tries out” genres; his moving on to the next is never a dismissal of the previous one. He is not out to abolish genres; does not exploit, consume, or use them up.

Hantke goes on to note that LeClair does not engage in satire, irony or pastiche — typical markers of postmodern genre play — before concluding his essay:

If the Passing trilogy is never patronizing or dismissive of adventure, it is an expression of LeClair’s generosity as a writer, as well as of the skill with which he sustains the tone in all three novels. But, more importantly, it is an expression of his recognition that adventure, as deWaard points out, is an enduring trope in Western culture. If it is simply not an option just to “leave it behind,” then to criticize it makes most sense if the critique is constructive. Adventure may be maligned as politically untenable, as escapism for the immature or uneducated; its hyperbolic pace and near-mythical iconography may seem absurd in a world of bourgeois security and moderation. But then, time and again, the reports of adventure’s imminent death have been greatly exaggerated. It deserves to be taken seriously because there is a place for adventure even in a culture that tells itself that there isn’t. What this place might be, Tom LeClair’s trilogy helps us to understand and imagine.

When I wrote that Editor’s Note, I was only really considering cinematic genre, so I appreciate Hantke applying my thoughts to literary genre as well.  After all, the use of polygeneric narrative can be seen as something of a journey, the author taking the reader on a metatextual ride through a history of iconography, myth and archetype; adventure is a fitting study for this brave new generic world.

Abstract: In October of 2007, Radiohead self-released their latest album, In Rainbows, bypassing the corporate record industry and its major label dominance, allowing fans to download the album in mp3 format for whatever price each consumer felt appropriate.  When one logged on to InRainbows.com to download the album, instead of a price at the checkout basket, there was a box to fill-in with a question mark beside it.  Clicking on the question mark prompted a message: “It’s Up To You.”  Clicking again refreshed the screen: “No Really, It’s Up To You.”  This choice included zero dollars, if one was so inclined.  A highly publicized event, the press was quick to comment that this was the first major album whose price was determined by the consumer, but might it be the first major commodity whose price is determined by the consumer?  This ‘pay-what-you-want’ experiment, then, was not just about the changing nature of a music industry in crisis, but of late capitalism itself, of our conceptions of commodity value, labour, and intellectual property in the digital age.  If we accept Jacques Attali’s thesis that music is prophetic, and that every major social rupture has been preceded by a mutation in the codes, audition and economy of music, then what is our current system of music telling us about our future?  By putting the onus of value on the consumer, Radiohead allowed the public to vote for an alternative vision of society by way of, increasingly and unfortunately, the only method available: the consumer dollar.  The shifting terrain of popular culture and the entertainment market, especially the music industry and its forthcoming ‘celestial jukebox,’ is analyzed from the perspective of Radiohead’s symbolic act, with an eye toward the digital revolution’s role in music’s long history of social upheaval.

Genre may be an easy or convenient starting point for analysis and interpretation, but how much does it really matter anymore? Maybe the core film genres have just been around too long; they’ve been maimed and manipulated to such a degree that they no longer resemble their ‘original’ self in any substantial way… We can’t really leave genre behind anymore than we can abandon modernism or industry or structuralism – we’ve just mutated it to the point that it somehow feels new or different. Maybe we should start thinking ‘post’ as less of a temporal marker and more like computational logic. Let’s think of it as an upgrade: Genre 2.0, based on the same fundamental hardware, but with such forward-thinking software that it hardly warrants comparison.

Continue reading Editor’s Note

The issue starts with Susan Ingram’s Cosmotrash: A New Genre for a New Europe, followed by a look at so-called ‘torture porn’ in Gorno: Violence, Shock and Comedy.  Barry Keith Grant was generous enough to share an excerpt from his forthcoming book Shadows of a Doubt: The Fallacy of the Crisis of Masculinity, while other essays consider Irreversible, A Cinema of Cruelty, Cinema from Attractions, The Wire, and The HBO-ification of Genre.  My own essay is also included, entitled The Geography of Melodrama, The Melodrama of Geography: The ’Hood Film’s Spatial Pathos.