Stu Presents, Genre Deconstruction In Film: A Crash Course! [Archive]

StuSmallz

11-26-2020, 05:24 PM

The concept of genre in film can be a comforting one, helping us to both prepare our expectations before we start a film, as well as to better process what we experience as we watch (so, say, we're not incredibly confused when characters suddenly stop talking and begin dancing and singing during a Musical). But, at the same time, it can also be extremely limiting, pressuring filmmakers to deliver certain clichés just because that's what the audience will expect from "that kind of movie", without attempting something more ambitious. However, that's where deconstructionist films come in, movies that take the conventions of popular, well-defined film genres, and rather than just reinforcing those conventions, instead choose to subvert them and flip them on their heads, stripping away the clichés Hollywood had built up over time in order to shine a harsh, interrogative light, and challenge our preconceived cinematic notions (and "deconstructing" them, in other words; for more background on this subject, download John G. Cawelti's essay on Generic Transformation In American Film here (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://filmgenre.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/generic-transformation.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjZ6ePE9J_tAhVCQzABH QagDNkQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw3jUBe06tluq86p4TyJgR 4w)).

And so, this project will be dedicated to exploring this topic, by featuring "case studies" of at least 10 films that represent deconstructions of their particular genres, with explanations of the larger genre's typical characteristics & historical backgrounds, how each individual film in question deconstructed those genres, and the larger overall impact they had on them, with the entries organized by release date (so the oldest ones go first) for simplicity's sake. At any rate, the basic idea's pretty self-explanatory stuff, and I think you guys have gotten the gist of it by now, so I'll go ahead and stop rambling with this introduction and get on with the show, so get ready for some deconstruction on the MatchCut, guys!

transmogrifier

11-26-2020, 09:47 PM

Looking forward to it!

Skitch

11-26-2020, 11:57 PM

Yep I'm in

Dukefrukem

11-27-2020, 01:44 AM

I'm obsessed with digging into sub genres sometimes so yes, this sounds very fun.

StuSmallz

11-27-2020, 02:36 AM

https://i.ibb.co/Gx22hj4/ap-18088051732478-wide-ddbceeba97880efbd8f7faa6add7b2 7583350955.jpg (https://ibb.co/r766WJR)

Genre: Science-Fiction

Background: While Sci-Fi movies have existed in the form of isolated releases as early as the 1900's, as far as being a major, stand-alone genre of film (and not, for example, a pre-film serial made with props recycled from other movies), it wasn't until the combination of the Roswell "incident" and the beginning of the Atomic Age, and the renewed interest in aliens/science that they brought with them, that Sci-Fi really coalesced as its own thing in the 50's, with such significant releases as The Day The Earth Stood Still, War Of The Worlds, and Forbidden Planet helping to define it at the time. However, while those films created an iconic aesthetic for the genre, it's also a fairly dated one in retrospect, one that practically scream "THIS MOVIE WAS MADE IN THE 1950'S" at us, as a number of common elements ultimately relegated Sci-Fi to mostly be perceived as a "B" genre by critics, with often hokey effects, pulpy tones that were remnants of the Flash Gordon era, and a grip on science that is laughably soft at times (my mind always goes back to the gag in the Mystery Science Theater Movie, where an alien in This Island Earth tells a character to grab a rail because it's been magnetized, to which Mike responds "And if your hands were made of metal, that would mean something!" (https://youtu.be/v71Epv4g6jY)). Anyway, following this rush of productions and the advent of the Space Race in the late part of the decade, an event which rendered these films' depictions of space travel even more inaccurate than they were already, the genre lay mostly dormant (at least as far as major Hollywood releases), that is, until the film in question here changed everything.

How 2001 deconstructed it: By taking the genre, stripping away all of the camp that had characterized it beforehand, and replacing it with a sense of class that it had rarely been gifted with before on the silver screen, right from its iconic, "Thus Spake Zarathustra"-scored opening shot, with its Classical soundtrack providing the perfect musical accompaniment to the grandiose interstellar ballets it portrays, which are captured with the most realistic special effects, the most meticulous production design, and as much pain-staking attention to scientific accuracy as possible, with the noise-less vacuum of space and agonizingly slow pace of the spacecraft combining to create a state of cinematic hypnosis within us, ensuring that, even though it was released just the year before Apollo 11 took mankind farther than it had ever been before, 2001's depiction of space, technology and its overall vision of the future still feels far, FAR ahead of its time, and not dated by even a little bit, even over 50 years later.

2001 further distinguishes itself from previous Sci-Fi films by forgoing the overly talky, exposition-heavy, wonder-sapping scripts that often characterized the genre beforehand, instead, choosing a far more visually-based, "show, don't tell" style of storytelling that lets us soak in its wondrous sights for ourselves and draw our own conclusions from them. This leads me to the most striking way that 2001 differed from old-school Sci-Fi, with its more cerebral take on the genre, which previously had a more action/adventure-oriented bend to it, as opposed to 2001's more thoughtful, contemplative mood, especially with its depiction of an alien species that, instead of a paranoid, Cold War-era portrayal as being unceasingly hostile to mankind in one way or another, the ones in 2001 instead seek to help us, in order for us to reach the next step in our evolution, even though we never actually see the aliens in the film, an absolutely brilliant decision, since not only does it convey how far beyond our comprehension they are, but it also keeps the film from having to visually conceptualize creatures that could never measure up to the feverish imagery our imaginations would naturally conjure up anyway (which, for the purposes of the film, beats a stuntman in a rubber suit any day).

Impact on the genre: 2001's transformation of Sci-Fi into a genre that even the critics could take seriously lead to a revitalization of it in the following decade, from Kubrick's own Clockwork Orange, to other classics like Close Encounters and Alien (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/alien/), all the way to such modern “prestige” works such as Arrival (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/arrival-2016/), and, even though it placed a far greater emphasis on the Fiction than the Science, one can't help but wonder if 20th Century Fox would've taken such a big gamble on making Star Wars if it hadn't been for 2001 helping to pave the way for it beforehand. At any rate, the sense of cinematic respect that 2001 earned for Sci-Fi still hasn't worn off of it, and even over half a century since the film's release, its lasting influence on the genre can still be felt even today, and will probably continue to be felt for as long as Sci-Fi exists, even all the way beyond the infinite.

StuSmallz

11-27-2020, 02:55 AM

Looking forward to it!Thanks trans (and skitch & Duke as well); I remember you saying something about not being a huge fan of 2001 (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/2001-a-space-odyssey/) somewhere, but hopefully you can at least enjoy what I wrote about it here anyway ;)

Skitch

11-27-2020, 02:56 AM

Are you guys making an interocitor?
No!

StuSmallz

11-27-2020, 03:18 AM

Are you guys making an interocitor?
No!"Cal..."

"I farted too."

BTW Skitch, what'd you think of my inaugural write-up?

Skitch

11-27-2020, 09:10 AM

Nailed it. Exactly how I feel about 2001, especially the analysis of the genre before and after it.

Irish

11-27-2020, 12:17 PM

Hoo boy. I don't wanna shit on your thread as you're just getting started (and I'm curious what else made your list), but it's odd to me that you're taking a sorta ahistorical view of both sci-fi as a genre and "2001" as a film.

You seem to have a certain amount of disdain for the raygun and spaceship era of "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers," writing off huge chunks of the genre's history, while ignoring early standouts like "From Earth to the Moon" and "Frankenstein."

Likewise, the viewpoint mid-century sci-fi was all "Forbidden Planet" and "This Island Earth" style movies, but didn't also include "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "The Fly," "The Thing from Another World," and "The Blob," all of which contain different point of views that aren't so easily reduced to "Cold War paranoia."

I kinda half agree with the premise that American sci-fi slowed in the 1960s, but it still feels weird to suggest the genre itself was moribund in a decade that saw the release of "Alphaville," "La Jetee," and "Je t'aime, Je t'aime."

But anyway: if you didn't find examples of good sci-fi during this decade, you weren't looking hard enough. You shoulda watched television. It's hard to suggest "2001" was some sort of major storytelling revelation when compared to "The Twilight Zone," "Star Trek," "The Prisoner," and "The Outer Limits." ("'2001' further distinguishes itself from previous Sci-Fi films by forgoing the overly talky, exposition-heavy, wonder-sapping scripts that often characterized the genre beforehand" ... uh, really?).

"2001" was a critically divisive film on its release, but boomer kids made it a success (like the "Titanic" of its day). It's interesting your write-up references the special effects mutiple times, and then goes on to reference other effects-driven movies, because that's where I think "2001's" real legacy lies. Pay top dollar, create triple-A visuals, and the audience will somehow materialize. It really doesn't matter what the story is (and "2001's" story is largely hokum).

PS: 1968 also saw the release of "Planet of the Apes," "Charly," and "Barbarella," so maybe the late 60s were not as moribund as you might think.

PPS & Re: deconstruction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTRKCXC0JFg)

Irish

11-27-2020, 12:39 PM

John G. Cawelti's essay on Generic Transformation In American Film here (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://filmgenre.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/generic-transformation.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjZ6ePE9J_tAhVCQzABH QagDNkQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw3jUBe06tluq86p4TyJgR 4w)).

This guy's essay is interesting, but holy God does he stack the intellectual deck --- noting differences between novel and film with "The Searchers" but ignoring those differences in "The Big Sleep," "Farewell, My Lovely," and "The Maltese Falcon" because acknowledging them would destroy the premise of his essay.

Skitch

11-27-2020, 01:59 PM

I dont think it was disdain for the camp. I appreciate those films as well. 2001 just made it feel real. And you're not wrong about scifi television but the thread title does say "film".

Irish

11-27-2020, 02:59 PM

Yeah, but let's not pretend "2001" existed in a vacuum. Clarke was a golden age sci-fi writer. The movie is based on a story from 1951. Its roots are in a form of pulp that Stu very clearly dismisses.

We also can't claim that "2001" was narratively subversive when it wasn't. People watched television and went to the movies every week. "2001" isn't a response to a standing work or a trend. It isn't a resurgence, either, because filmic sci-fi never went away.

To put it another way: 20th Century Fox spent around $5 million on "Planet of the Apes." NBC spent around $4.5 million per season of "Star Trek." So the Hollywood/ executive commitment to the genre was there all along. It just took a slightly different form.

On top of that, you'd be hard pressed to find any movie -- not just sci-fi movies -- but any movie that's more concisely and economically written than "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Thing from Another World." So the idea that sci-fi was laden with "overly talky, exposition-heavy, wonder-sapping scripts" just isn't true. Or, at least, it's no more true than for any other genre.

"Flash Gordon" etc is only campy in retrospect, I think. That aesthetic preferences have shifted towards "realism" doesn't make realism the ultimate expression. Ie, this is the movies. So called "realism" ain't no more valid than fantasy.

"2001's" staying power is in its visual effects. The film doesn't looked dated and that's no small thing. (They're also a standing rebuff to fans who complained when Lucas revised the "Star Wars" movies so many times).

baby doll

11-27-2020, 03:03 PM

I kinda half agree with the premise that American sci-fi slowed in the 1960s, but it still feels weird to suggest the genre itself was moribund in a decade that saw the release of "Alphaville," "La Jetee," and "Je t'aime, Je t'aime."Don't forget Seconds.

Dukefrukem

11-27-2020, 08:18 PM

I remember thinking 2001 paved the way for everything in the 70s and 80s. But that was very early into my movie watching years, no internet readily available and I had no idea about the other properties that preceded it. I somehow blamed Star Trek at getting a whiff at 2001 in pre-product for it to pan out the way it did.

I haven't watched 2001 in years, but I remember being completely deflated when I learned about things like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Fly and the Blob all were remakes from the 50s.

Skitch

11-27-2020, 08:36 PM

Irish you seem to read so much into posts that isnt there. I love ya man but he didnt say it existed in a vacuum or that it was narratively subversive. He said "rarely seen before", not never. He didnt say it was a resurgence. Did he even mention Invasion of the Body Snatchers? He picked a movie he thought of as a stepping stone. Sometimes that's just...it. sometimes it feels like you're trying to dissect something between the lines that they arent saying. I dont think it's odd to select 2001 as an achievement on science fiction cinema, hell, if anything, I could suggest it was too obvious! But i love the movie so i what do i know lol

Irish

11-27-2020, 10:15 PM

Skitch, what? I love ya man but your reading comprehension is so bad sometimes I wonder if you're skimming the thread.

Stu is using "deconstruction" in a colloquial sense, as a synonym for "subvert" or "transform," eg, when he employs constructions like: "How '2001' deconstructs [science fiction]."

When he begins a paragraph with "2001 further distinguishes itself from previous Sci-Fi films" he's calling attention to what he believes is notable about it. I'm saying those qualities of writing he claims for Kubrick's movie are not rare, in any sense, when several prominent counter examples leap to mind. (And, yes, this includes movies such as "Body Snatchers" and television shows like "Star Trek.")

He used the word "revitalize" to describe "2001's" impact on the genre: "2001's transformation of Sci-Fi into a genre that even the critics could take seriously lead to a revitalization of it in the following decade..." Revitalize, resurgence, potato, po-tah-to? Either way, Stu implies that, before "2001," the genre was in decline.

I don't think it's odd to pick "2001" either, except when you're describing it and its genre in the terms Stu employs. He looks at peaks (early cinema, the 1950s, the 1970s) and ignores the valleys. Then gives one peak credit for what happened in the valley.

It's sorta like if you interpreted horror movies as the sole province of Universal monsters and slasher movies, ignored the likes of Lewton, Hammer, and Bava, and mistook the genre for the z-grade productions pumped out by Republic Pictures and American International --- then claimed those shitty teen exploitation movies and Corman flicks meant the genre hit the skids until "The Exorcist" came along and revitalized it. I mean, there's sorta a viable read there but as stated it isn't a very good one.

transmogrifier

11-27-2020, 11:05 PM

Irish....I love ya man....

Skitch, what? I love ya man....

And I like you both as friends.

transmogrifier

11-27-2020, 11:12 PM

Anyway, I think 2001 is one of the most overrated movies ever made, even if the effects are pioneering. Outside of its undoubted technical attributes, a lot of it is just campy with a serious sheen (the ape prologue is just silly), though it did illustrate that once the film community rallies around a film and/or director, it can become very difficult to hold a conversation over their shortcomings without it quickly devolving into attacks on the cinematic literacy of those involved in the debate. But I've had this conversation about Kubrick on here before within the last couple of months, so I'll let this one go :) (I'm not familiar with the sci-fi of the time, so cannot speak to the claims over its genre deconstruction.)

baby doll

11-28-2020, 01:40 AM

Stu is using "deconstruction" in a colloquial sense, as a synonym for "subvert" or "transform," eg, when he employs constructions like: "How '2001' deconstructs [science fiction]."In which case "genre revisionism" would probably be a better word, although it still carries the unfortunate connotation that genre conventions are rigid, inviolable rules that all films in said genre must obey--and thus, for example, a western ending with the hero's defeat is automatically a profound critique of the genre.

Then again, maybe Stu is using "deconstruction" in the non-colloquial, Derridean sense of a critique of the logocentrism inherent in genre classifications, which do not refer to actual phenomena (the science fiction genre in itself) but are mere words which only gain meaning through their difference (différance) from other genres which are themselves no more real. (Il n'y a pas de hors-genre.)

Idioteque Stalker

11-28-2020, 02:10 AM

Then again, maybe Stu is using "deconstruction" in the non-colloquial, Derridean sense of a critique of the logocentrism inherent in genre classifications, which do not refer to actual phenomena (the science fiction genre in itself) but are mere words which only gain meaning through their difference (différance) from other genres which are themselves no more real. (Il n'y a pas de hors-genre.)

Stole the words right out of my mouth.

Irish

11-28-2020, 07:42 AM

In which case "genre revisionism" would probably be a better word, although it still carries the unfortunate connotation that genre conventions are rigid, inviolable rules that all films in said genre must obey--and thus, for example, a western ending with the hero's defeat is automatically a profound critique of the genre.

The linked essay uses 'transformation' to describe how "Chinatown" compares against classic hard-boiled detective stories, but then falls into the trap you describe.

Then again, maybe Stu is using "deconstruction" in the non-colloquial, Derridean sense of a critique of the logocentrism inherent in genre classifications, which do not refer to actual phenomena (the science fiction genre in itself) but are mere words which only gain meaning through their difference (différance) from other genres which are themselves no more real. (Il n'y a pas de hors-genre.)

This is clever, starting with Stu and ending with the slight twist of il n'y a pas de hors-genre. I laughed, but then felt sheepish for laughing. TBH, I'd kinda like to come across that kind of discussion in the wild, outside an academic context. But in ~20 odd years on the internet, I've only seen it once.

StuSmallz

11-28-2020, 07:56 AM

Hoo boy. I don't wanna shit on your thread as you're just getting started...

*proceeds to shit on my thread just as I'm getting started* ; ) But, all kidding aside, I feel a lot of your points are based off of misunderstandings of what I've written here, so just to bullet point my responses to try to end this as quickly as possible...

I have zero personal disdain for the 30's Sci-Fi serials; the reason why I didn't count them as constituting Sci-Fi as a major genre of film is because they weren't films, they were serials, and like the title said, this thread is about studying genre deconstruction in film. Same reason goes for why I didn't mention The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, The Outer Limits or Star Trek either (although I've always felt that Trek has more in common with 50's Sci-Fi films than the 2001-onward works in the genre, and that's before I even note how Roddenberry himself said the Sci-Fi films of the decade helped inspire him to create the show in the first place).
The reason why I didn't mention Frankenstein is because I consider it a Horror film with Sci-Fi elements, as opposed to being pure Sci-Fi, and I didn't mention From Earth To The Moon is because there was little reason for me to, seeing as how it's not only not one of the more iconic works of Sci-Fi from that decade, it's not even the most iconic Sci-Fi film from that year (so there's not much reason for me to mention that one instead of, say, It!, a film that actually had a measurable impact on the genre). Heck, it's not even the most iconic Verne adaptation from the 50's, which was a film that I already mentioned on the first place anyway. I'm not here to list every single Sci-Fi film ever made before 2001, because this is not a Wikipedia list (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_science_fiction_films ), it's a "crash course" . I'm here to sum up the history of a popular genre in a paragraph (or two, if needed), write a couple more about how the film in question deconstructed and impacted it, and then move onto the next entry. If you're looking for a more blow-by-blow history of the genre, you should go watch this guy's videos (https://youtu.be/IXzcuRzBekU) (and then come right back here afterward of course, heh).
Unless you're trying to take a fairly reductionist view, and boiling it down to be nothing more than substituting commies for invading aliens, it seems odd to me to say that The Day The Earth Stood Still doesn't deal with Cold War paranoia in its own way, seeing as how its plot was obviously inspired by the fear during the atomic age of World War III breaking out, and destroying the planet in the process (which, of course, is exactly what Klaatu threatens could happen in that film).
It would be weird to suggest that Sci-Fi was a dying genre everywhere in the 60's, which is why I specified that that was only true "as far as major Hollywood releases went", a premise that you just admitted you partially agree with; what exactly is the issue here?
Yes, really; not every 50's film in the genre was guilty of having overly talky, hand-holdy scripts, but I've noticed enough of them for it to feel like they were one of the elements that 2001 was reacting against with its lack of dialogue, and emphasis on visual storytelling. The best example of this is in Forbidden Planet, during the sequence where Dr. Morbius is giving Leslie Nielsen the guided tour of the remants of Krell civilization...

https://youtu.be/HHXfMjp2zqI

...and he literally doing nothing but talk about every piece of technology as he demonstrates them, explaining to us exactly what they are and what they do. And the video I posted is just part of that overall sequence, which legitimately lasts for a full 15 minutes in the actual film (I know because I timed the scene when I rewatched that movie for this thread). I can only imagine how much more wonder that sequence would've held for us if Nielsen had instead stumbled upon the remains by accident, without Morbius, and got to explore and figure everything out for himself. Anyway, while it's the most egregious example of choosing telling over showing in 50's Sci-Fi films I can think of, it certainly isn't the only one.
'68 obviously saw a number of other Sci-Fi releases (although Charly wasn't one of them, because again, film with Sci-Fi elements does not automatically equal Sci-Fi film), but none of them have had the same sort of impact that 2001 has, and with the exception of Apes, none of them had seen any sort of release date earlier than 2001, plus 2001 went into production before any of them, so it's not hard to imagine that the green-lighting of the other '68 Sci-Fi's were at least partially inspired by the news of Kubrick's film beginning shooting, as studios are often wont to do.
For the purposes of this thread, "deconstruction" when it comes to film genre is the process of stripping away the conventions that genres build up over time, in the process revealing previously hidden truths about the genre in question, which 2001 achieves by forgoing giving us any clear morals or easy answers about what exactly is going on with its story, as, unlike a lot of earlier Sci-Fi, it's completely honest about the fact that space, the future, and the universe as a whole are mysterious places/concepts that we'll never know all the answers to as a species, although none of that should discourage us from exploring all of them to the fullest.

StuSmallz

11-28-2020, 08:22 AM

Yeah, but let's not pretend "2001" existed in a vacuum. Clarke was a golden age sci-fi writer. The movie is based on a story from 1951. Its roots are in a form of pulp that Stu very clearly dismisses.There was no dismissal of old-school Sci-Fi literature in that write-up (it'd be news to me if there was, considering the fact that I grew up reading Asimov, and still love him to this day); again, the write-up was about Science-Fiction as a genre of film, and not as a collective media organism, since we're currently posting on a board for film discussion. Stop trying to invent agendas in my words that were never there.

StuSmallz

11-28-2020, 08:35 AM

Irish

11-28-2020, 12:39 PM

It would be weird to suggest that Sci-Fi was a dying genre everywhere in the 60's, which is why I specified that that was only true "as far as major Hollywood releases went", a premise that you just admitted you partially agree with; what exactly is the issue here?

My issue is: How many qualifiers does your premise need to hold up? Is that premise any good if it requires you to limit your viewpoint to a very specific year, decade, or medium? I realize this is a movie discussion board (that also curiously includes forums for television, music, and literature) but discussions about film, any film, removed from context and history makes less and less sense to me.

Other points, in random order:

- I'm all for a crash course, but why did you elide ~30 years of history? That's the part I choke on, and why I read your initial post as a dismissal. The first movie you mention by name was made in 1951, and from there you very quickly point out that movies from that era feel dated. Not long after, you're leaping to the conclusions about "2001."

- "Frankenstein" is definitely sci-fi. The story is founded on science, and you couldn't tell the same story without it. Its themes around human bigotry and fear repeat in my recent examples: They're visible in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) and the Star Trek's "Devil in the Dark" (1967), among others. There's a reason why people have lately taken to calling Shelley the "Mother of Science Fiction (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/696519/pdf#:~:text=Mary%20Wollstonecr aft%20Shelley%20is%20widely,th is%20is%20a%20formidable%20tit le.)," after all. (And here (https://www.quora.com/How-is-Mary-Shelleys-Frankenstein-a-science-fiction-novel) is a pretty good riff on why the novel is not only science fiction, but hard science fiction.)

- What you ascribe to "Forbidden Planet" can either be attributed to a different narrative style or plain ol' bad writing. Neither is unique to science fiction. For one, awkward exposition dumps are a lasting quality, it seems (cf two very recent examples in "Arrival" and "Annihilation"). But anyway, that there are immediate and obvious counter examples from the same era sorta negates your point about "2001's" narrative juice.

- The influence of the Cold War is evident in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and "Thing from Another World," but the way each of them interprets that paranoia is markedly different. I didn't say anything about how one "doesn't deal with Cold War paranoia in its own way."

- Those "Flash Gordon" serials starred film actors and debuted in theaters. They're essentially shorts, written and edited to fill space in a commercial market. How are they not movies? Does "La Jetee" not qualify because it's 28 minutes long and employs still photography? When Quentin Tarantino took "The Hateful 8," cut it up into 4 pieces, and dropped it on Netflix as a form of mini-series, did it cease to be a movie?

- "Charly" is also science fiction because it requires a scientific backing to tell its story. Remove that, and the meaning changes.

... revealing previously hidden truths about the genre in question, which 2001 achieves by forgoing giving us any clear morals or easy answers about what exactly is going on with its story...

Ambiguity isn't a virtue, eg: that the Space Baby can't be explained to anyone's satisfaction makes the image less meaningful, not more.

...unlike a lot of earlier Sci-Fi, it's completely honest about the fact that space, the future, and the universe as a whole are mysterious places/concepts that we'll never know all the answers to as a species, although none of that should discourage us from exploring all of them to the fullest.

Oh, sure. It's sorta like "2001" tells us space is the final frontier. That humans have a need --- a mission, if you will -- to seek out new life and new civilizations. That we must boldly go where no one has gone before....

Irish

11-28-2020, 12:55 PM

There was no dismissal of old-school Sci-Fi literature in that write-up (it'd be news to me if there was, considering the fact that I grew up reading Asimov, and still love him to this day); again, the write-up was about Science-Fiction as a genre of film, and not as a collective media organism, since we're currently posting on a board for film discussion. Stop trying to invent agendas in my words that were never there.

https://i.imgur.com/GnYrUlw.jpg

^ Poster for the first "Flash Gordon" serial in 1936.

https://i.imgur.com/1AjCjtK.jpg

^ Magazine issue where Clarke's "The Sentinel" first appeared in 1951, and later formed the basis for Kubrick's movie.

My point was: These things are more alike than they are different. How do you write off one without also writing off the other?

StuSmallz

12-03-2020, 04:06 AM

My issue is: How many qualifiers does your premise need to hold up? Is that premise any good if it requires you to limit your viewpoint to a very specific year, decade, or medium? I realize this is a movie discussion board (that also curiously includes forums for television, music, and literature) but discussions about film, any film, removed from context and history makes less and less sense to me.
Other points, in random order:

- I'm all for a crash course, but why did you elide ~30 years of history? That's the part I choke on, and why I read your initial post as a dismissal. The first movie you mention by name was made in 1951, and from there you very quickly point out that movies from that era feel dated. Not long after, you're leaping to the conclusions about "2001."

- "Frankenstein" is definitely sci-fi. The story is founded on science, and you couldn't tell the same story without it. Its themes around human bigotry and fear repeat in my recent examples: They're visible in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) and the Star Trek's "Devil in the Dark" (1967), among others. There's a reason why people have lately taken to calling Shelley the "Mother of Science Fiction," after all. (And here is a pretty good riff on why the novel is not only science fiction, but hard science fiction.)

- What you ascribe to "Forbidden Planet" can either be attributed to a different narrative style or plain ol' bad writing. Neither is unique to science fiction. For one, awkward exposition dumps are a lasting quality, it seems (cf two very recent examples in "Arrival" and "Annihilation"). But anyway, that there are immediate and obvious counter examples from the same era sorta negates your point about "2001's" narrative juice.

- The influence of the Cold War is evident in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and "Thing from Another World," but the way each of them interprets that paranoia is markedly different. I didn't say anything about how one "doesn't deal with Cold War paranoia in its own way."

- Those "Flash Gordon" serials starred film actors and debuted in theaters. They're essentially shorts, written and edited to fill space in a commercial market. How are they not movies? Does "La Jetee" not qualify because it's 28 minutes long and employs still photography? When Quentin Tarantino took "The Hateful 8," cut it up into 4 pieces, and dropped it on Netflix as a form of mini-series, did it cease to be a movie?

Ambiguity isn't a virtue, eg: that the Space Baby can't be explained to anyone's satisfaction makes the image less meaningful, not more.

Oh, sure. It's sorta like "2001" tells us space is the final frontier. That humans have a need --- a mission, if you will -- to seek out new life and new civilizations. That we must boldly go where no one has gone before....That depends on the larger context that both the qualifiers and the main premise itself are surrounded by; in this case, both of them are legitimate, because this project focuses on singlular case studies of genre deconstructions in film, which only needs the relevant historical background of the specific films/aspects of the genre that the case study is deconstructing, and attempting to write a more all-encompassing history of Sci-Fi (or any other genre) here would only serve to render these write-ups as unnecessarily bloated, and would distract from the main goal of the project. It's the reason why I "elided" the handful of Sci-Fi films that existed before the 50's (which is a question you already answered yourself in that post anyway, by acknowledging that this is "a crash course"), because those were the films that defined the genre at that time, and why I focused on the dated aspects of them, even though there are 50's Sci-Fi films that I personally enjoy, because that's what Kubrick was primarily deconstructing with 2001 (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/2001-a-space-odyssey/) (as opposed to something like Metropolis).

I respect that you feel Frankenstein and Charly are Sci-Fi, but what genre(s) any movie falls into is always a subjective matter, and I don't feel that either of them are predominantly Sci-Fi films on the whole, so I couldn't include them in the historical background section (it's like how I feel Face/Off (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/face-off/)is predominantly an Action movie, even though it contains certain elements that are undeniably Sci-Fi).

Awkward/unnecessary exposition isn't a flaw that's exclusive to Sci-Fi (and I never said it was), but it's one that is particularly detrimental to that particular genre, since it tends to benefit from inspiring a sense of wonder within us inone way or another, and over-explaining things saps that quality. And, if Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is one of your counter-examples of a 50's Sci-Fi that wasn't burdened with exposition, than it's one that just serves to prove my point, as, while a short film, literally half of it (at least half) consists of nothing but people speculating, researching, or expositing information through dialogue (sometimes redundantly so), unraveling the mystery of what's going on in Santa Mira to us detail-by-detail, and it's impossible for me to name any recent Sci-Fi, Arrival (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/arrival-2016/), Annhilation (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/annihilation/), or otherwise, that held my hand anywhere near as much as Body Snatchers did. And all of that's without me even factoring in the overbearing musical cues, the introductory framing device, and the periodic, super-unnecessary voice-overs from Dr. Bennell, all of which have the cinematic effect of grabbing our feet (in addition to our hands) and dragging us through the film, which was otherwise pretty good (although obviously, it would've been better if those aspects had been toned down).

But regardless of what form that paranoia pops up in those films, it's still there, which is another way that 2001 distinguished itself from those films, since the echo of Cold War tensions is an aspect that Kubrick specifically choose to deemphasize in the final film.

No, because The Hateful Eight was still originally produced as a feature film, regardless of how the ADD-aiding execs at Netflix have it chopped up (and as opposed to the Flash Gordon serials, whose relevant influence on the genre I already acknowledged in my original write-up anyway, and again, I hold zero "disdain" for them personally).

Star Trek isn't comparable to 2001 in its portrayal of space exploration, because there's very little mystery, if any at all, in the average episode of that show (and certainly not in "The Devil In The Dark"), and whether or not the ambiguity of 2001 benefits it is another matter of personal opinion; I happen to feel that it does, and if you browse the opinions of other fans of the film, you'll find that a lot of them feel the same way.

Morris Schæffer

12-03-2020, 06:37 AM

Looks like you opened something up Stu. Hang in there! :)

StuSmallz

12-03-2020, 06:45 AM

Looks like you opened something up Stu. Hang in there! :)Thanks! And yeah, me and my projects are like a mother bear with her cubs; don't mess with my babies, people!

StuSmallz

12-24-2020, 03:57 AM

Skitch

12-24-2020, 09:26 AM

Good point.

bac0n

12-24-2020, 05:52 PM

Good point indeed. Forbidden Planet seemed to go out of its way to reassert judeo-christian dogma. I'm surprised Dr. Morbius didn't celebrate the Eucharist after he introduced his daughter.

One of my favorites of the sci-fi genre, altho it lands in the late 70s, is Black Hole, which had a huge throwback vibe to it. It also is heavy in the religious assertions, I'm sure as an homage to its 50s sci-fi forebears, and quite possibly as a counterpoint to 2001.

Morris Schæffer

12-24-2020, 09:53 PM

Black hole is not without cheesiness, but neither is it devoid of Majestic sights. MVP is John Barry. What a score.

baby doll

12-25-2020, 12:23 AM

Also, another common aspect of 50's Sci-Fi that 2001 subverted (that I didn't have space to mention in my original write-up) is how they tended to go out of their way to explicitly reaffirm familiar, traditional notions of religious faith, which you can see in the paraphrased quotes below...

"He has the power of life and death?
No. That power is reserved to the Almighty Spirit." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/quotes/qt0487664)

"Humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046534/quotes/qt0340667)

"About a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. It will remind us that we are, after all, not God." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/quotes/qt0320793)

...as if they were afraid they would scare their audiences on some level with the futuristic settings/technology they depicted, and wanted to say "Hey! We may be aliens/living in the future, but we still believe in God the same as you, okay?", which is a stark contrast to the way that 2001 not only never mentions the concepts of God or faith, but also basically elevates some sort of mysterious alien intelligence to being on the same level as God (right down to being invisible), before basically doing the exact same thing to man himself at the end, wouldn't you say?I guess the question I have is: What counts as "subversion"? After all, even a highly conventional genre film will be marginally different from other similar films, and highly original films like Kubrick's will still obey more conventions than they revise or reject: e.g., 2001 largely, if not entirely, obeys norms of continuity editing.

Moreover, in revising or rejecting one set of norms, filmmakers often draw upon other sets of norms which supply their own conventions. Probably the most important difference between 2001 and earlier Hollywood science fiction movies is its combination certain generic staples of science fiction (space travel, artificial intelligence, aliens) with the narrative conventions of postwar European art cinema (episodic plotting, narrative ellipses, thematic ambiguity). To use the terms of the Russian formalists, the art movie conventions are the film's dominant, subordinating and deforming the conventions of Hollywood science fiction movies. In other words, it seems to me that the film's originality results more from its dynamic synthesis of multiple diverse traditions rather than its having a straightforwardly antagonistic relationship with any single tradition. Indeed, merely "subverting" genre conventions (i.e., not doing the expected thing for the sake of not doing what's expected) requires no more originality or artistry than blindly obeying them.

bac0n

12-25-2020, 02:42 AM

Black hole is not without cheesiness, but neither is it devoid of Majestic sights. MVP is John Barry. What a score.

No shit, man. Pure brilliance. I just love how he plays on the dread and pure helplessness in the face of such an impossible force as is the black hole.

And Robert Forster - a rare genre example of a rational, charismatic, resolute space captain, who does everything right.

I love this movie.

Skitch

12-25-2020, 10:45 AM

Morris Schæffer

12-25-2020, 03:46 PM

I adore The Black Hole. Any mention of it in any capacity and that score immediately starts screaming through my head. As a kid I didnt realize it was Disneys rush answer to Star Wars, to me it was just another sci-fi movie. It's on my list of grails that the second it hits bluray it's a preorder. The only way to get it mildly HD is purchase digital like Vudu.

Also that ending is FUCKED up, and I love it.

It is on Blu-ray since circa August 2019:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Black-Hole-Blu-ray/43569/#Review

But it's Disney so not super easy to come by and not cheap when you do. Video Quality ain't tops but bests dvd obviously.

Skitch

12-25-2020, 04:44 PM

It is on Blu-ray since circa August 2019:

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Black-Hole-Blu-ray/43569/#Review

But it's Disney so not super easy to come by and not cheap when you do. Video Quality ain't tops but bests dvd obviously.

what the hell

megladon8

12-25-2020, 07:41 PM

I bought the DVD earlier this year as I couldn't find the bluray for a price I was willing to pay.

DVD was just fine.

transmogrifier

12-26-2020, 12:10 AM

Fine, I guess I will be the voice of reason: The Black Hole is really bad.

You're welcome. Merry Christmas!

:)

Yxklyx

12-29-2020, 04:24 AM

Fine, I guess I will be the voice of reason: The Black Hole is really bad.

You're welcome. Merry Christmas!

:)

Schell overacting again? This thread has piqued my interest a little.

bac0n

01-01-2021, 12:53 AM

Hahaha of course. He chews up scenery like Mothra eating drapes.

StuSmallz

02-11-2021, 05:34 AM

Moreover, in revising or rejecting one set of norms, filmmakers often draw upon other sets of norms which supply their own conventions. Probably the most important difference between 2001 and earlier Hollywood science fiction movies is its combination certain generic staples of science fiction (space travel, artificial intelligence, aliens) with the narrative conventions of postwar European art cinema (episodic plotting, narrative ellipses, thematic ambiguity). To use the terms of the Russian formalists, the art movie conventions are the film's dominant, subordinating and deforming the conventions of Hollywood science fiction movies. In other words, it seems to me that the film's originality results more from its dynamic synthesis of multiple diverse traditions rather than its having a straightforwardly antagonistic relationship with any single tradition. Indeed, merely "subverting" genre conventions (i.e., not doing the expected thing for the sake of not doing what's expected) requires no more originality or artistry than blindly obeying them.It doesn't need to be an either/or dilemma though, as there's reason to believe that Kubrick was both inspired by the stylistic tendencies of the arthouse scene in its own right, while also seeking to direct that inspiration in part to deconstruct traditional Hollywood Sci-Fi at the same time. At any rate, you're right that blind subversion of typical genre elements needs no more effort than just repeating them, but that's not what Kubrick was doing with 2001 (IMO), and I'd also say that, in general, it tends to be harder to successfully uproot the typical "rules" of a genre than to follow them, even when you're talking about a good "genre film". For example, if you were to take 2001's particular approach to its plot, and attempted to reverse-engineer it so that it fit in line with the more hand-holdy Sci-Fi that Hollywood tended to put out beforehand, the alternative is so obvious that it practically writes itself; just keep everything else exactly the same, right down to the

cryptic prologue, creepy choir moanings, and the 10-minute laser light show, but just have some kind of alien show up in the bedroom near the end to spell out everything for Dave (and us), and say something to the effect of "We've been guiding your race through your evolution for millennia, we left the Monolith behind on the Moon to lead you to us, and now it's time to take your next step forward as a species, blahblahblahexpostion". Such an ending surely would've confused a lot less people, and lead to much less divided responses upon the film's original release, sure, but it also would've ruined the overall effect that the film was going for, and surely would've kept the film from having the kind of mystique and cultural staying power that it still holds. But, on the other hand, if you try to do the same thing to something like Forbidden Planet, in order for it to have the same kind of narrative ambiguity that 2001 has, conveying the same basic plot without any of the characters explicitly explaining to us what happened to the settlers who died, the absence of the Krell race, or the deadly situation that their leftover technology has created on the planet? Such a change suddenly becomes far more difficult to envision, and is a good demonstration of just how challenging a task Kubrick choose with the way he told 2001's tale, in refusing to explain so many significant elements, but leaving us just enough hints for us to ponder them for ourselves (while still leaving room for interpretation), which makes his ultimate success in doing so all the more impressive to me.

StuSmallz

03-11-2021, 06:07 AM

Chinatown (1974)

https://i.ibb.co/L6kLkb3/chinatown-1.jpg (https://ibb.co/y5fwfGr)

Genre: Noir

Historical Background: Despite a number of spiritual predecessors having been released in previous decades, what we now know as classical-era Noir truly began peaking in the 1940’s, as filmmakers worldwide synthesized the cinematic influence of German Expressionism with the lurid content of vintage pulp literature, churning out tales driven by seedy crimes, casually cynical moods, and black-and-white cinematography drenched in shadows as dark as the souls of the films themselves. And, while the genre’s classic era is generally considered to have ended with the 50’s, its rich legacy lived on in the Neo period afterward, particularly in Hollywood during the 70’s, as a number of significant productions brought renewed attention to the genre, by both tributing the films of the genre's heyday, while also updating it for the cinematic sensibilities of the time, which leads us to the film in question here.

How Chinatown Deconstructed It: By maintaining an essentially perfect balance between subverting the elements that defined classical Noir, while also serving as a genuinely affectionate love letter to the genre at the same time, through the multi-layered central mystery, courtesy of Robert Towne’s brilliant, clockwork-precise screenplay, an obvious call-back to the relatively Byzantine plots of many old-school Noirs. But, instead of just being surface-level busywork (ala The Long Goodbye), Chinatown’s intricate, conspiratorial plot is just as compelling and well-written as the best Classical Noirs, never becoming convoluted or confusing just for the sake of being so, but rather, slowly, steadily unravelling its mystery step by tantalizing step, maintaining a very well-justified confidence in its storytelling all the way until the (very) bitter end.

However, as far as its characters go, Chinatown takes the two most iconic archetypes of Classical Noir and seems to establish textbook examples of both with its male & female leads, before turning both of them completely and utterly around on their heads by the end. With Evelyn Mulwray, the combination of her initially cold demeanor and our genre expectations cleverly manipulate us into assuming that’s just another iteration of the treacherous, deceitful femme fatale at first, but a number of shocking story turns reveal that not only is she entirely innocent of the wrongdoing she’s suspected of, rendering her a highly sympathetic figure in the process, but also makes her the biggest victim in the entire film to boot, taking an extremely familiar stock character and breathing all-new life into her, as she slowly forms a romance that's unusually affectionate and genuine by the typical standards of the genre, although it ultimately proves to be a doomed one in the end.

And with Jake Gittes, we get a protagonist who first appears to be a vintage hard-boiled private eye, the wisecracking type who never truly loses his cool no matter how much hot water he’s in, before utterly putting him through an emotional wringer, often humiliating him in various manners along the way, the kind we never saw done to Bogart back in the day, whether it be him excitedly telling a dirty, racist (and not particularly funny) joke while he's ignorant of the presence of a female client behind him, having the antagonist repeatedly mispronounce his last name, or getting his nose sliced up by a petty, two-bit hood at one point, forcing him to to wear a comically over-sized bandage as a result. Besides that, the detail of him specializing in petty adultery investigations is an early hint that he's in way over his head trying to uncover Noah Cross's scheme, as, even though he does eventually unravel that central conspiracy that drives Chinatown’s story (after getting fooled multiple times, and making a number of false assumptions along the way), he’s ultimately completely powerless to either stop it or to save Evelyn, with his hard-boiled exterior finally cracking for good at the end.

Finally, Chinatown updates Film Noir by utilizing a contemporary cast and crew of New Hollywood (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/list/new-hollywood-a-crash-course-in-progress/detail/)-era icons (along with the nice homage of casting one of the directors that popularized the genre in the first place), by dragging the genre out of the high-contrast, black-and-white shadows of old and into the harsh light of modern color film (despite the film’s 30’s period setting), and by shaking off the shackles of the Hays Code, which kept Classical Noirs from ever getting too lurid with their content, either by forbidding even just the mention of such acts as incest (which Chinatown very much does), or by preventing the bad guys from ever truly “getting away with it”, preserving the naive overall message Classical Hollywood sent that, no matter what, you could always count on the baddies getting some sort of comeuppance in the end. Not so much with Chinatown; here, even though Jake has finally figured out the incestuous billionaire’s greedy scheme, it’s all for naught, as he holds the local police in his massive pockets, leaving Jake completely helpless to either put a stop to the resource-hoarding conspiracy, or even just to save the life of the woman he loves, a Watergate-era message that holds even greater resonance in a post-Trump America, as all an emotionally-devastated Jake can do at the end is walk away, to the haunting trumpet of one of Neo-Noir’s greatest works.

StuSmallz

03-15-2021, 06:57 AM

Die Hard
(McTiernan, '88)

https://i.ibb.co/TLdDV66/Die-Hard-Welcome-to-the-party-pal.jpg (https://ibb.co/GTNfKyy)

Genre: Action

Background: While physical action has been an element of cinema all the way back to the silent era, whether you’re talking about certain daredevil comedians of the time, or such trigger-happy genres as War films or “yippee-ki-yay” Westerns (see what I did there?), I still agree with Tom Breihan (https://www.avclub.com/c/a-history-of-violence?startIndex=40) that the Action film didn’t really become a genre of its own until the 1960’s, when films like The Dirty Dozen, Bullitt, & The Wild Bunch provided the kind of over-the-top, intense stuntwork that helped to firmly establish the style. From there, the genre added a layer of urban grit throughout the 70’s, before the 80’s took it to brand-new heights of overkill (literally), perfect for the decade of excess, with their abundance of ‘roided-out biceps, gratuitous, machine gun-driven carnage, and unstoppable one man (or woman) armies. However, while the 80’s Action movie was basically a genre unto itself, and that era as a whole has proved to be the style’s golden age in retrospect, it still needed to be brought back down to Earth eventually, so it’s only fitting that, as the end of that decade approached, we would receive a movie that did just that, in the form of Die Hard, a movie that would basically redefine the genre as we knew it.

You see, while director John McTiernan had his big breakthrough the previous year with fellow Action classic Predator, a movie that already engaged in a certain amount of genre deconstruction itself, with a bit of a critique of American imperialism in Central America, and a certain famous scene of “impotent” gunfire destroying the jungle (and absolutely nothing else, as you can see here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=891&v=InyKZ0F-fVU&feature=youtu.be)), the first act of that film still engaged in the sort of one-liner spewing, balls (and knives) to the wall Arnie action that arguably made him the most iconic Action star all time, and, even though Schwarzenegger finally faces a physical challenge with the arrival of the titular creature later, he still manages to defeat it single-handedly after the Predator had already wiped out the squad of badasses that Arnold began the film with, which, in a manner, made him seem look like even more of an unstoppable force onscreen than he was already, if that's possible.

How Die Hard Deconstructed It: Not so much with Die Hard, which goes all-in with its deconstruction of the 80’s Action film, whether it be contrasting its main character with Rambo, having one character mock another’s comparison of the situation to the Vietnam War, or by name-dropping the aforementioned Schwarzenegger as well, which is ironic, since him and Stallone were both originally approached to star, which almost certainly would’ve resulted in a much more typical final product (like Rambo III or Red Heat, which both disappointed at the box office this same year).

Thankfully, Die Hard ended up not being anything but a typical 80’s actioner, right from the ground floor (no pun intended) with its setting, which is a single skyscraper over the course of one night, a decision that not only adds a ton of claustrophobia and tension inbetween the literally explosive action, but showed a creative discipline on the part of the filmmakers, and functions as the first hint that this film is looking to strip away the excesses that the genre had accumulated over the course of the 80’s. And, while Die Hard isn’t the first significant single-location Action film (hello, Assault On Precinct 13), it still popularized the concept more than any other film, to the point that “Die Hard On A X” (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DieHardOnAnX) is its own TV Tropes page, and without McTiernan’s film, we almost certainly wouldn’t have The Rocks, Air Force Ones, or the Speeds of the world to enjoy (I also like the fact that there are so many copycats of this film now, some critics have absent-mindedly described a few of them as being “Die Hard in a skyscraper”; ha!)

Besides that, Die Hard further deconstructs the genre with its main character, portrayed in a career-defining role by Bruce Willis, who, believe it or not, was actually a highly unlikely choice at the time, despite his current status as an Action star (which is the most due to this film, heh), since he was only known as a comedic TV actor then, due to his role on Moonlighting, and his gig as a spokesman for Seagram’s Wine Coolers (I kid you not (https://youtu.be/hktPfjVEfDU)). In fact, the latter job actually netted the rising star a bigger payday than he received for Die Hard itself, and would explain the reports of audiences literally laughing when they saw him in the first trailers for the film, a response that actually lead Fox’s marketing department to de-emphasize his role in subsequent promotional material.

However, while the film's pre-release hype suffered from its lack of an established Action star (and the actor who played “Karl” would’ve made for a much more archetypal action star), I don’t think anyone can picture Die Hard without Willis playing John McClane, as his nervous, smart-alec persona makes him perfect to play the schlub-y, blue-collar, fish-out-of-water everyman, the one who becomes an action hero not by casually volunteering for a suicide mission in a non-descript jungle somewhere in the developing world, but by accidentally ending up in the right place at the right time (although I’m sure he would argue the opposite), as he's visiting his wife’s officeplace Christmas party in the middle of Los Angeles while a team of heavily-armed mercenaries are coincidentally taking over the building at the same time, threatening the lives of everyone inside in the process, and forcing him into action.

To Be Continued...

StuSmallz

03-17-2021, 07:00 AM

Die Hard, Part 2

But even then, John doesn’t try to take matters entirely into his own hands, as he tries to pawn his task off on the local authorities multiple times, just like any normal human being would do in his place, before the realization that the LAPD isn’t up to it forces him to rise to the occasion, and he only does so out of great reluctance anyway, because he literally has no other choice in order to survive. And of course, doing so isn’t easy, not by a long shot, as he gets shot, beaten to a dirty, bloody pulp, and has his feet cut to absolute shreds by shards of glass, due to him losing his shoes while trying a ritual a fellow plane passenger suggested to him due to his fear of flying (ironic, considering that he mocked another character for giving "a shit" about broken glass earlier; turnabout is fair play, baby!).

Of course, all of this remains believable because of Willis’s comparatively scrawny physique (which is featured prominently in the film through his increasingly filthy tanktop), and not only is John physically vulnerable throughout, but emotionally as well, as, even without comparing him to other action icons of the time, he still seems like an extremely authentic, unsure human being, one with genuinely relatable personal problems, especially with his marriage, as he unnecessarily starts an argument with his estranged wife for reverting back to her maiden name, before he beats himself up for doing so (verbally beats up, that is; the physical beatings won't start until later). He’s a guy who’s “good at his job, but bad at his life”, and an action hero who isn't really trying to be a hero, in other words.

Of course, his multiple near-death experiences over the course of the night lead him to reflect on how much he doesn’t want to lose Holly, she being “the best thing that ever happened” to him, making his mission not just one to save her physically, but their entire relationship, which makes for a stark contrast to the moment in First Blood Part II where Rambo abruptly falls in love with an unnecessary love interest, takes about a minute to mourn her death when she suddenly (but inevitably, of course) gets gunned down, and lays total waste to an entire camp’s worth of enemy soldiers in retaliation.

Besides that, John’s background as an off-duty police officer make his eventual antics in the film more plausible, and, even though it may or may not be totally believable for a 1988 beat cop to smoothly handle a sub-machine gun as McClane does, it’s still more believable than Ripley suddenly turning into “Rambolina” after 5 minutes of dry-fire training with a pulse rifle in the otherwise excellent Aliens (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/aliens/). Of course, that isn’t to imply that McClane displays absolutely no 80’s Action-isms here, as he finds time to pop off plenty of badass one-liners, but most of them are either feel like a psychological smoke screen put up for the benefit of an in-film audience ("Yippie-kay yay, motherfucker") or a coping mechanism for John to deal with the tremendous stress of the situation ("Welcome to the party, pal!"), and even his climatic one (“Happy trails, Hans”) is still undercut by his premature celebration of what would’ve been the main baddie’s coup-de-grace in most other Action movies, which, of course, proves to not be the case here.

Finally, Die Hard deconstructs the Action movie through the action itself, which I feel achieves pretty much the perfect balance between providing the excitement we demand from the genre, while also remaining believable enough to maintain a solid grounding in the real world, as none of the crazy stuff John does in the movie feels like it was put in because the filmmakers thought it would "look cool", but because he genuinely had no other option in that scenario; he had to climb his way down the ventilation shaft because that was the only way he could escape, he had to throw the C4 down the elevator shaft because that was the only thing he could do to stop Gruber's men from blowing up the SWAT vehicle, and he had to do the improvised bungee jump because that was the only way he could get away from the FBI chopper gunning for him, as well as the roof that was fixing to blow (and even then, he's plead-praying to God not to let him die, genuinely fearing for his life like, y'know, someone from the real world would).

Besides that, John also only takes on about a dozen baddies throughout the course of the entire film, which is about half the number of guys the typical 80’s action hero would’ve gunned down with ease in a single shootout (and that’s not even considering the fact that he never takes out Theo the technician, and he only knocks out another guy towards the end because he’s honest-to-God running low on ammo!). But, this reduction in forces allows the crack team of mercenaries (or "common thieves", if you ask Holly) more breathing room to develop and showcase their own individual identities and personalities, and keeps them from devolving into just another wave of faceless baddies, and, even facing these relatively paltry numbers, John still spends much of the film on the defense, frantically improvising solutions throughout, retreating as though their automatic weapons actually have a chance of hitting him (that was sarcasm, for the record).

And, while it’s this realism that the series lost touch with as it became increasingly bloated with new entries, more and more resembling the kind of Action film that Die Hard was reacting against in the first place (as you can see here) (https://youtu.be/1PVZ2ajOnKg), the original still helped bring the genre back down to Earth again, creating a market for future everyman Action stars with the Keanus and Nic Cages of the world, setting a new(-ish) template for imitators to follow, and still towers like Nakatomi Plaza over the genre to this day; yippie-kay-yay motherf uckers! Oh, and “paper or plastic, you sonofa-“

https://youtu.be/JG7eTJUwPDE

Skitch

03-17-2021, 08:51 AM

Good write up

StuSmallz

03-18-2021, 02:22 AM

Good write upThanks, Skitch! I didn't realize how much DH deconstructed 80's Action movies until I really studied it, but, considering how good a job McTiernan and company did with the film otherwise (like smartly changing the politically-motivated terrorists from the book into "common thieves" in order to lighten the mood), I like to think that, once leading men like Schwarzenegger & Stallone were out of the running to play McClane, and Willis was in, they really leaned into the deconstructionist elements as a result, since his natural screen presence was so different from the typical "man of action" at the time, you know?

Skitch

03-18-2021, 02:32 AM

StuSmallz

03-18-2021, 04:44 AM

Spot on, I agree. I think it's why it (hur) blew up.

I dont know if I'd call it a deconstruction, but there is also the mention of Vietnam, a common action movie theme at the time.

Just like fuckin Saigon!
I was in junior high, dickhead

Do you have any idea how many direct to video gung ho Merica vietnam movies from 80s I've found since I started collecting VHS? Its crazyWhile there are more explicitly deconstructionist films I'll be tackling in this project (such as my next entry...) Die Hard isn't too far off either, due to the Rambo, Schwarzenegger, and Vietnam reference you just mentioned, in addition to all the other points I listed in my write-up. Plus, you have to consider the deconstructionist tendencies of McTiernan's work both before and after it, and, while Die Hard may not feel like an obvious deconstruction since it still functions as a serious example of the genre it's deconstructing, rather than say, a satire of it, I still feel it's a deconstruction nonetheless (plus, it's a good thing that it's not a parody anyway, if the results of The Last Action Hero are anything to go on). It's just one of those things that you feel instinctively, that you don't need the director to show up onscreen in order to confirm to you personally, you know? :D At any rate, a fun fact I found out about Rambo II wannabes is, James Cameron's original screenplay was floating around Hollywood for so long, they were ripping it off before it had even come out!: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_in_Action_(film)#Produ ction

megladon8

03-18-2021, 07:33 AM

StuSmallz

03-19-2021, 04:59 AM

I loved reading your Die Hard write-ups, Stu.

How do you think action movies today would have been different if they had ended up casting Arnie or Sly as John McClane? I think (and you do, too, based on your writing) that Willis as McClane changed action movies forever.

Also, the fight between him and Karl remains one of my favorite fight scenes of all time. It still feels brutal, and like they're really beating the shit out of each other.Aw, thanks meg! As for your question, there's obviously no way for anyone to know exactly how the genre would've evolved with Schwarzenegger, Stallone or any other more "typical" 80's action star as McClane, but if I had to speculate myself, I'd say that the film probably wouldn't have been as good without Willis (because who can picture anyone else as McClane?), so we obviously would've gotten less "Die Hard on/in a ___" wannabes in the subsequent decades. Besides that, I think the market for everyman action heroes wouldn't have gotten as big in the 90's and beyond in a result, so we may not have seen the rise of actors like Keanu, Matt Damon, and Tom Hardy in becoming action stars as a result. Again, there's no way of knowing how things would've been different for the genre, but Die Hard is obviously one of the most influential Action movies of all time, so there's no denying that something would've changed without Willis in it, IMO.

StuSmallz

03-22-2021, 03:42 AM

Unforgiven (Eastwood, '92)

https://i.ibb.co/PhLgH2H/unforgiven.jpg (https://ibb.co/2t9d4z4)

Genre: Western

Background: Generally popular from the early days of modern narrative film, the Classical Western tended to offer audiences a sanitized vision of the Old West, one that had a fairly black-&-white moral dichotomy between the hero and the "bad guys", as the central men of action fought with various outlaw elements or hordes of "savage Indians" (glossing over the genocide that was committed against them in the process), and where, despite the genre's reliance on using shootouts to settle the landscape's conflicts, there usually wasn't much moral reckoning with the justifiability of that violence on the part of the "good guys", even in films that built up to such reckonings for their entire runtimes (like The Searchers), and the bloodshed was still often portrayed as just a tragic necessity at the worst. Because of that, it seemed like a genre that was stuck in the past (partly because it literally was), which is why it needed the shot in the arm that the sub-genre of the Revisionist Western gave it, particularly during the 60's with the popularization of the Spaghetti Western, when West met East(wood), which resulted us a far grittier, more morally ambiguous vision of genre than Hollywood tended to present. This continued into the 70's, the decade in which the screenplay for the film in question here was written, before the aforementioned leading man was finally ready to make it, during something of a revival of the genre in the 90's, as one of the greatest icons of the Western returned to the genre one final time, not to send it a cinematic love letter, but to bury the myths of the genre once and for all.

How Unforgiven Deconstructs It:

By embracing moral ambiguity and the demythologization of the Old West as its central themes, since Unforgiven scrutinizes the kind of consistent violence that defined the Western as a genre; this makes its choice of leading man all the more perfect, since, although his roles in the Dollars trilogy were career-defining performances which came in films that were certainly darker than the typical traditional Western, Leone's movies still often portrayed its quick draw duels (a element that Unforgiven lacks entirely) as exciting, or even "fun" to watch, with no lingering emotional effects left on The Man With No Name in their aftermath.

On the other hand, Unforgiven begins decades after that film, and most other Westerns, for that matter, would've ended, with the kind of protagonist most of them would've had as "the baddie" (mirrored by an antagonist who would've been the good guy in a traditional Western to boot), as Will Munny is no badass gunslinger, but a weary old man struggling to run his pig farm, one who nearly dies from a "mere" fever (instead of a bullet) at one point, who's forgotten how to shoot, and who expresses severe emotional torture, both by the memories of the late wife who tried (possibly in vain) to mend his ways, as well as by the tremendous spiritual toll that killing men, women, and children takes upon someone, making Munny feel like he could be an older version of Blondie, one who's grown tired of the killing that helped him prevail over his foes in the past. However, this doesn't mean he's left that violence behind him for good, as, despite his continual protests that he's not the way he used to be, he's still the one to spill the blood when both the older and younger generations of outlaws prove they aren't up to it, as it's Munny who pulls the trigger when his old partner loses the stomach for such bloodshed, as well as when the unjustifiably braggadocious "Schofield Kid" immediately loses the knack he claimed to have for killing as soon as he actually shoots a man for the first time.

In this way, there are no real good or bad guys in the film, as the "villain" of the film, Little Bill, is a man of the law, one who tries to achieve a good end (preserving the peace of his town) through brutal means, and, coming in the year of the Rodney King riots, he transcended the film's historical setting in order to reflect contemporary outrage over modern police brutality (in more ways than one, since Hackman reportedly based his performance off of then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates). Unforgiven is also about as explicitly deconstructionist as anything else I'll cover in this project, as demonstrated through the sub-plot of English Bob, a gunslinger who builds his legend by feeding wildly inaccurate "eyewitness" accounts of his own exploits to W.W. Beauchamp, a writer of the type of cheap, sensationalistic dime novels that established the romanticized cultural image of the West in the first place. However, when Bill takes the two men into custody (after first unnecessarily beating Bob to an utter pulp, that is), he destroys those myths entirely, informing Beauchamp that Bob didn't shoot a fellow gunslinger (and his six henchmen, as a book portrays it) for "insulting the honor" of a beautiful woman, but as a petty, spur-of-the-moment revenge for the other man placing his reportedly massive manhood (which was the real reason for his nickname "Two Gun") in a French lady that Bob had an eye for, although Bill repeatedly emphasizes the point that he missed his first few shots because of how drunk at the time.

And throughout the entirety of Unforgiven, it refuses to come to any sort of moral conclusion about its characters, retaining its ambiguity in that regard all the way to the end; was the prostitutes' vendetta against the cowboy justified at all, in light of the light punishment he recieved for his mutilation? Was there any validity in Bill's tactics, considering the relatively wild, rough landscape he was trying to tame? And what kind of a man was Munny; was he still the same bloodthirsty outlaw he seemed to be in his youth, or was he an old man genuinely trying (albeit momentarily failing) to move on from his violent ways? Like the bookending text says, there was nothing on Claudia's grave to explain to her mother why she had married "a known thief and murderer", just like there's nothing in Unforgiven to give us an answer about Munny, or anyone else in the film; that's what it's so great, and makes it feel like a "Western to end all Westerns", so to speak.

And, even after obtaining his revenge at the end, there's little satisfaction to be had for Munny, as, while at least The Wild Bunch got to go out in one final, spectacular blaze of glory in their film, Munny is instead faced with the spiritual emptiness of such vengeance, going on to linger in life with a career in dry goods in San Francisco, a fate hardly benefitting a legend of the Old West, although the film itself has avoided such a mediocre fate, instead, winning a richly-deserved Oscar for Best Picture, becoming a cinematic legend in its own right, and one of the greatest examples of the very genre that it deconstructed, once and for all.

Dukefrukem

03-22-2021, 12:48 PM

Thanks, Skitch! I didn't realize how much DH deconstructed 80's Action movies until I really studied it, but, considering how good a job McTiernan and company did with the film otherwise (like smartly changing the politically-motivated terrorists from the book into "common thieves" in order to lighten the mood), I like to think that, once leading men like Schwarzenegger & Stallone were out of the running to play McClane, and Willis was in, they really leaned into the deconstructionist elements as a result, since his natural screen presence was so different from the typical "man of action" at the time, you know?

This was really apparent to me after a recent rewatch of the franchise with my wife. If the first film came out today, it definitely wouldn't be highly praised and probably not a blip on anyone's radar. It's getting past the buddy cop era AND the indestructible one man army era. Throw some schmo in an action film and that's die hard. This is why number 4 and 5 are so bad. They creators totally lost sight of what made die hard, die hard.

Skitch

03-22-2021, 06:28 PM

While there are more explicitly deconstructionist films I'll be tackling in this project (such as my next entry...)
I was referring to my comment, not your write up. :)

StuSmallz

03-23-2021, 07:04 AM

This was really apparent to me after a recent rewatch of the franchise with my wife. If the first film came out today, it definitely wouldn't be highly praised and probably not a blip on anyone's radar. It's getting past the buddy cop era AND the indestructible one man army era. Throw some schmo in an action film and that's die hard. This is why number 4 and 5 are so bad. They creators totally lost sight of what made die hard, die hard.Oh yeah; over time, the Die Hard series really became increasingly "Flanderized", and more and more like the kind of excessive, ridiculously over-the-top Action movies that the original film was deconstructing in the first place, either being more generic sequels like Die Harder, more ridiculous like Vengeance, or both, as in the case of Live Free Or Die Hard. Plus, they lost a lot of the personality that the original had, to the point that, by the fourth film, it's become such a generic Action movie that the only thing that distinguishes itself as a Die Hard is McClane's presence in it (which didn't add much anyway), and by the time John's surviving a fall down a 15 story building with nary a scratch and fighting to stop the theft of nuclear weapons in Russia in A Good Day, it might as well be a fucking Bond movie.
I was referring to my comment, not your write up. Okay; while I have no idea personally of the filmmakers included the line about "Saigon" in the movie as an intentional jab at the obsession a lot of 80's Action-ers had with that conflict, I like to think that's the way they meant it, since it makes for such a good companion piece to Gruber mocking McClane with the comparison to "Rambo", you know?

StuSmallz

03-25-2021, 04:49 AM

Got another two-parter for this one...

Batman Returns (Burton, '92)

https://i.ibb.co/CsGvpH8/Screen-Shot-2019-04-05-at-12-06-14-PM.png (https://ibb.co/7NmVx1C)

Genre: Christmas movies

Background: Becoming popular post-World War II, the Christmas film became a relatively small, though still fairly reliable Hollywood staple in the following decades, reflecting the "peace on Earth, good will towards men" spirit of the holiday, and generally functioning in a family-friendly style, seeking to warm people's hearts during the final few months of the calendar year (while also using it as an excuse to squeez some money out of moviegoers' pockets at the same time). And, while most of the truly iconic Christmas-related media of the 60's came in the form of various TV specials during that decade, the 1970's and (especially) the 80's saw a number of films across various genres use the holiday's setting as an ironic contrast to their more subversive content, whether they be Horror (Gremlins), Comedy (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), and Action (with the aforementioned Die Hard), as these films put a new, darker spin on the Christmas film, with Tim Burton's Batman Returns serving as a continuation (and maybe even the climax?) of that trend upon its release in the early 90's.

How Batman Returns Deconstructs It: By both absolutely drenching itself in seasonal references and traditional Yuletide imagery, from the various Christmas trees, lights, and the omnipresent snow that covers Gotham City like a soft white blanket throughout, while at the same time finding ways to utterly turn those elements on their heads, and twist them into the darkest directions at every possible turn. I mean, the very first line in the film is literally "Merry Christmas", wished towards a husband & wife as they rush to chuck their disfigured monstrosity of an offspring (The Penguin) into a dark, dank sewer! It's an act that sets the tone perfectly for the ironic intersection of Christmas cheer and Burton-y darkness that the film will continue to operate at throughout, as gangs of killer clowns pop out of giant presents to terrorize ordinary citizens, a man is blackmailed by being "gifted" a stocking that has a former co-worker's severed hand stuffed inside, and Gotham's equivalent of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree gets lit when a woman gets pushed off a skyscraper (and to her death) onto the button that turns it on, in full view of an already demoralized public.

Of course, even coming in the wake of the darker X-Mas films of the previous decade, many were still shocked by these juxtapositions of seasonal setting with the violent, even perverted content of Returns, the kind of content that definitely pushed the limits of the PG-13 rating at the time. Still, it's not really a surprise considering the man who directed Returns, since, similar to Shane Black, Tim Burton had obviously made a career motif out of making non-"traditional" Christmas films, whether they be Edward Scissorhands just prior to Returns, or The Nightmare Before Christmas just after (although contrary to popular belief, he only produced that one; give Henry Selick his credit, people!). Anyway, while the gothic auteur being granted full creative control after facing significant interference while making '89 (hello, Prince soundtrack!) resulted in an even darker effort here, you can't give all the credit (or blame, depending on who you ask) for Returns' nightmare-ish take on the Christmas film to just Burton alone, as its screenwriter, Daniel Waters, had already proven particularly apt at genre deconstruction with his screenplay for Heathers just a few years earlier, which absolutely savaged the 80's "Brat Pack" film, so it's no surprise to note his attachment to BR as a result.

Anyway, Returns also deconstructs the Christmas film by being set during a season that's defined by togetherness, even though the film itself is very much driven by the loneliness of its main characters, whether it be The Penguin's vendetta against the "respectable" bourgeoisie of Gotham City, as a symbolic revenge against his own, upper-class parents for casting him out of their mansion all those Christmases ago, or the way that Bruce really can't function as a normal human being outside of his batty persona, or the doomed, star-crossed romance he tries (and fails) to cultivate with Selina Kyle, a fellow lonely, tortured soul who, like Bruce, deals with a life-shattering trauma by creating a costumed alter ego, a similarity that is both the reason why the two are so drawn to each other outside of those personas, but also why it ultimately isn't meant to be for them, due to the diametrically-opposed goals they have they're actually inhabiting those alter egos.

StuSmallz

03-26-2021, 07:43 AM

Batman Returns, Part Two

This also contributes to the undercurrent of seasonal affective disorder running throughout Returns, an undercurrent that's made explicit when Bruce asks Selina if she has the "holiday blues" (a question she responds to with a jittery, unconvincing shake of her head), with the festive decorations, happy Christmas tunes, and cheerful masses of people masking the individuals within those crowds who are feeling anything but jolly. This is seen when the characters are on their own, like when Bruce is shown sitting all alone in his study, doing nothing but brooding, having basically shut down as a human being until the Batsignal shines through the window, and temporarily gives him a reason to come to life, or when Selina returns to her pathetic pink apartment, which holds nothing but a single pet cat (one that doesn't even live there full-time, apparently), a non-existent husband she verbally longs for, and answering machine messages from her mother nagging her to come home for Christmas instead of languishing in Gotham as a "lowly secretary", an off-screen boyfriend who breaks up with her via phone, and a preemptive reminder from herself that she has to trudge all the way back through the snow because she forgot something back at the office, during the last season where anyone wants to work overtime.

It's a movie that begins with Bruce on his own, his dual identity having driven Vickie Vale away at some point after '89, and ends with two main characters dead, one of them falling victim to his own lust for revenge, with the other being killed by someone else's desire for vengeance, one that she embraced after cruely rejecting the aforementioned Bruce, leaving him in the same exact place he was at the start; all alone, with his dream of living "happily ever after" with the love of his life having been abruptly snatched from him after it briefly (but oh so tantilizingly) held such futile hope for him. In this way, Returns goes noticeably farther than something like DIe Hard in subverting our traditional expections of a Christmas movie, as, for all its carnage, at least McTiernan's film still has a happy ending once it's over.

Besides that, the religious connotations of the Penguin's sub-plot must also be noted, with his Moses-style origin story, unveiling to public prominence a conspicuous "thirty three years later" (just like, let's say, a certain Biblical figure), and his final scheme of indiscriminately slaughtering all of the first born sons of Gotham drawing a further connection to the nominally Christian holiday the film features, the one that's become increasingly hijacked by a grotesque capitalism that cynically exploits the season for maximum profit, the kind that the film intently focuses on instead of just brushing by. This leads into the other big villain of the film, the Trump-ish real estate mogul Max Schreck, a man who's literally described as a robber baron at one point, as a man who represents that force of greed, as he seeks to literally steal power from Gotham with his fradulent "power plant", to cause utter chaos in the streets to further his own political goals, and is repeatedly shown to be willing to murder (or at least attempt to, as witnessed in one rather noteworthy example) anyone who could possibly get in his way, even if that person is his own late wife, as implied in a particularly chilling line at one point.

He's the avatar of the kind of capitalism that seeks to profit as much as possible off of a holiday that was inititally created to celebrate the birth of a man who would go on to rail against such greed at multiple times in his life, like Catwoman when she destroys a department store in a sort of "overturning the money changing tables" moment. It's the same system that would later lead to stores promoting the disgusting, occasionally even deadly Black Friday shopping sprees of the 21st century, with a riot just outside of Schreck's titular department store in the film sort of accidentally foreshadowing such feeding frenzies, with the broad grin of the Cheshire Cat-like mascot on the windows serving to mask the greed of the man behind it in a manner Micky Mouse himself would be proud of.

As a result, it's not hard to imagine these anti-capitalist overtones, the film's aggressively anti-mainstream sensibilities, and overall glum take on the holiday resulting in the film making less money at the box office than its predecessor. Turns out, if you make a Christmas movie that ends up making people feel bad, they won't want to see it that much; who know? But regardless of its reduced success, and the somewhat divisive response in inspired, but more compelling effort than its predecessor, one that's refreshing in its admission that Christmastime isn't always a happy time for everyone, especially not if you're a grown man dressed up like a bat.

Skitch

03-26-2021, 12:02 PM

Hmm. I never thought about it in that manner. Good points.

Dukefrukem

03-26-2021, 12:25 PM

There's something about the cold and slick feel off both those films that stayed with me forever. I love snowy dark cold films. The thing, 30 days of night, the grey, the colony, hateful eight.

StuSmallz

03-30-2021, 08:12 AM

Hmm. I never thought about it in that manner. Good points.Thanks! And yeah, part of the fun of this project is about more than just discussing the more obvious examples of genre deconstruction (although they still provide plenty of content as well), but digging a lil' bit deeper to discover the ones that might have flown under the rader over the years, you know?
There's something about the cold and slick feel off both those films that stayed with me forever. I love snowy dark cold films. The thing, 30 days of night, the grey, the colony, hateful eight.I assume by both films, you mean '89 & Returns (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/batman-returns/)? Because I'm actually not a big fan of '89, but I've always enjoyed BR to a certain extent, partially due to that cold, wintery vibe you mention in it. I mean, the scene where the camera's zooming through the snowy, abandoned zoo while this tune plays is just pure, vintage Burton:

https://youtu.be/ge7RWZ-8S6o

StuSmallz

04-05-2021, 03:33 AM

https://i.ibb.co/y0hphgM/cabaret-1200-1200-675-675-crop-000000-1.jpg (https://ibb.co/qB0C0m4)

Deconstructed Genre: Musical

Historical Background: The Musical was born as a natural way to demonstrate the defining technological development in cinema of the early 20th century, that being the introduction of sound (obviously), before helping to showcase the rise of color film later, which is a bit ironic since, as the medium grew closer to reality on a sensory level, the fundamental nature of Musicals meant that they often functioned as an escape from that reality in one way or another, offering audiences brief respites from the back-to-back hardships of The Great Depression and World War II, before joining forces with the Historical Epic, another spectacle-heavy genre, to become one of the most dominant styles of film throughout most of the 50's and 60's. However, by the end of the latter decade, the good ol' days of the genre were coming to an end, as a string of financial failures such as Doctor Dolittle, Paint Your Wagon, and Hello Dolly! combined with the cinematic revolution of the New Hollywood movement to make the genre seem hopelessly dated, and it seemed as though the Musical was on its way to the grave, not only in the traditional style that Hollywood was known for, but in any other way, shape, or form for that matter.

How Cabaret Deconstructed It: However, through the direction of Bob Fosse (because who better to deconstruct a genre than someone who helped define it in the first place?) Cabaret helped adapt the genre to the more cynical, disillusioned spirit of American film in the 70's, primarily by taking the defining trait of the Musical (that being the music, of course), and forgoing the accompaniment of any grand, invisible orchestras, instead, choosing to go with an entirely diegetic score, provided by the comparatively small, meager band of the KitKat Club, which in turn provides an on-screen justification for the song-and-dance numbers, instead of having its characters interrupting their spoken dialogue to randomly break out into pre-written tunes, which, while not inherently a negative trait of Musicals, still required a certain suspension of disbelief on our part, a suspension that Cabaret forgoes. Besides that distinction, while previous Musicals often displayed fairly elaborate scenery as a way of showcasing the greater possibilities of film when compared to the genre's stage roots, every single musical number in Cabaret (with the exception of the notorious "Tomorrow Belongs To Me") takes place on an actual stage, no color-drenched sets or on-location shoots on majestic hilltops in sight, with many of the scenes outside the Club taking place in humble, dingy apartments, adding a layer of urban grit, and further helping to keep the film as close to real life as possible

Finally, Cabaret distinguishes itself from previous Musicals through its overall tone, which contrasts the generally upbeat, feel-good spirit that characterized the genre in favor of a colder, harsher reality, as the central romance ultimately ends in heartbreak, and the film takes advantage of the abolishment of the Hays Code to include more mature content, including a bisexual protagonist, an abortion featured as a significant plot point, and an overall brutally honest look at the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Germany during the early 30's (including a scene where a Jewish woman's dog is killed and dumped on her doorstep by a bunch of goons). And, while Michael York is fortunate enough to leave Germany before the "stuff" really hits the fan, instead of focusing on his escape in order to strike a triumphant note at the end (as The Sound Of Music did with the von Trapp family less than a decade prior), Cabaret instead concludes with a mirror-distorted shot of the KitKat Club's audience being dominated by swastika-wearing Nazi punks, which serves as a cold splash of water on us as viewers, and a reminder that things are about to get much, MUCH worse for the people left behind.