Category: Film

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Today, I was supposed to post the first of my annual “top five” media lists for 2016. Instead, in the wake of the Golden Globes, I have decided it is more apt for me to first explain my unpopular opinion: why I found myself completely un-awed by the industry’s favorite film of 2016, La La Land. Not only has the film been raved about since it ran the festival circuit, but it swept the award ceremony on Sunday, racking the most wins (7) of any film historically at the Golden Globes. This in the same year that gave us incredible, moving films like Silence and Moonlight.

Simply put, I found the film self-indulgent. First, it is a classic narcissistic Hollywood film about itself and the larger world of showbiz, following in the footsteps of recent movies like Hail, Caesar!; Argo; The Artist; Knight of Cups; Birdman and a whole host of older films such as Singin’ in the Rain. To be clear, I don’t have a problem with films about Hollywood, and I thoroughly enjoy each of the movies on that list. What I do not appreciate, however, is when these types of films receive undue attention and award recognition because the folks in Hollywood love movies about their industry. (Please note I am not the only person saying this; here’s one article as an example.)

La La Land

Second, I felt like La La Land relied too heavily on the star status of its leads. I imagine someone in a boardroom suggesting, “Why don’t we give the audience two hours with America’s beloved and delightfully, charming performers Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone–what could go wrong?”  It is true they’re both top-notch actors, but the key to a truly successful film is not audience connection with celebrities. It’s audience connection with the characters. And I had an extremely hard time caring about either Stone or Gosling’s characters. In fact, I don’t even remember their characters’ names.

This leads to my third frustration, which was that I also didn’t care about either lead’s story. So Stone wants to be an actress. Gosling wants to own a jazz club and save jazz. Their dreams of grandeur and success are nothing radically new to the silver screen, and while both individuals mope about their lives, they drive nice cars, eat at fancy restaurants, go out with friends, and have enough work (though perhaps not exciting, certainly not unpleasant)) to pay their bills. And of course, spoiler alert, they both hit the jackpot and achieve their dreams. In my own relatively privileged life, I had quite a hard time identifying with either individual, and after 2016, a year where many people around the US and across the political spectrum asked for us to pay attention to their real and troubling daily struggles, this film felt trivial. Especially if I again compare it to films like Silence and Moonlight, whose characters faced some quite serious obstacles.

In summary, I found La La Land uninspiring and predictable. I had hoped that Damien Chazelle would do something unexpected and self-reflexive in his commentary on the industry, but nope, it was exactly as the trailer suggested. Two hours of escapism and voyeurism. 

With that being said, if there hadn’t been so much hype about the film, I would have likely found it to be a pleasant and forgettable film. I would have raised an eyebrow at the scenes of Gosling showing black people how to play jazz, and I would have rolled my eyes at much of the blatant nostalgia and sentimentality, and then I would have moved on. But, I can’t do that this time especially in light of its recent wins. My husband Josh made a really apt point. He commented: “Hollywood generated hype about yet another movie about Hollywood and that hype was then internalized and repeated through the popular conscience, creating a feedback loop of hype.” The hype replaces the object itself, leaving us with an aura of excitement rather than genuine critical appreciation for a masterful film.

Once again, I want to reiterate that I have no problem with fun movies about nothing, as long as we are able to acknowledge when a film is merely fun and about nothing–even if we wish it did more.

Them be fighting words, a peer told me on Letterboxd, so I will step back at this point, now that I haven’t held back on my opinions. I know many of you really loved this film, so I do genuinely want to hear why you enjoyed it and where it compares to other films from last year for you. I’ll also be releasing my top five films from 2016 soon, so you can get a sense of what I did really appreciate.

Featured image available on Pexels under CC0 license.

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Happy New Year!
I hope you are having a restful winter break. I have been reveling in all the free time to spend with family, read books of my own choice, catch up on some television shows, and play lots of games.

Before we met up with my family in Switzerland, Josh and I had a chance to take a quick detour to Madrid, where two of our friends are living for the year. (Cami is doing her Master’s there at IE Business School.) The day we arrived also happened to be the day that the new Star Wars film, Rogue One, came out . . . so naturally the first order of business was to go see it. I have been particularly excited for Rogue One because Felicity Jones was cast as the lead. She has been one of my favorite actresses ever since I saw her in the indie film Like Crazy at Sundance several years ago. (She is also fantastic in The Theory of Everything, The Invisible Woman, and Breathe In).

Seeing Star Wars in Madrid in English, however, was easier said than done. Most movies in Spain are dubbed over in Spanish rather than being subtitled. To give you a sense of what that looks and sounds like, watch the Spanish language trailer for Rogue One:

Since my experience of foreign films is usually through English subtitles, I was quite intrigued by this practice–especially since the asynchrony between the original actress’ lips and the voice actress’ dub feels really distracting to me. Curious, I did some research and came upon this blog post entitled, “Subs or Dubs: Why some countries watch films dubbed (e.g. France, Spain, Italy) while others watch with subtitles“. He argues that the primary correlation with dubbing rather than subtitling is English proficiency, i.e. the Scandanavian countries and the Netherlands, which have high English proficiency, tend to prefer subtitles, while those with lower proficiency prefer dubbing. He also notes that dubbing is associated with countries that more consciously reject American culture. 

I came across similar answers on quite a few different blogs, but the conclusions felt too speculative so I dug a little deeper into the matter, focusing on the history of subtitling and dubbing in Western Europe. This is where things got very interesting. There is a long history, since the beginning of the 20th century, of each European country exploring the various options of how to distribute and present foreign-language films. Dubbing did not take off initially until various political regimes got involved. Miika Blinn, a German scholar, writes in his paper entitled “The Dubbing Standard: Its History and Efficiency Implications for Film Distributors in the German Film Market” that:

Nationalistic film policies and censorship encouraged the use of dubbing as a means to manipulate foreign films’ content and obtain favourable ratings by the Reichsfilmkammer: The “choice in favour of dubbing [was] influenced by nationalist considerations in many countries” (Dibbets, 1996). Nationalism perceives foreign-language films as offensive and threatening national identity and culture, which can be remedied by dubbing (Danan, 1991: 611-612). In 1929-1930 Mussolini prohibited all films with nonItalian dialogue tracks to foster Italian national unity; Franco pursued similar policies in Spain (Danan, 1991: 611).

These leaders consciously sought to minimize Hollywood and the English-language’s influence within each national culture, and, though political regimes have changed dramatically in Western Europe since then, because such practices were naturalized into standard cultural practice, they have remained habitual today. Of course, I am grossly simplifying the history of dubbing and subtitling, so if you find this subject fascinating, I encourage you to read more of Blinn’s essay and/or do some research of your own.

All that said, before we arrived in Spain, our friends had done reserved tickets at a theater that was supposedly screening an English language version. We arrived and quickly learned that was not the case. Thankfully they refunded our tickets, but it was back to the drawing board if we were to see Rogue One that evening. So we huddled over cafés con leche, armed with the cinema’s free wifi to develop Plan B. The trick to doing this in Spain is being able to read the code: VO, VOS, and VOSE. VO stands for versión original (original version), and it means that the film is being screened in its original language, whether that be English or French or Japanese. VOS and VOSE indicates subtítulos (subtitles). Those terms are usually synonymous, though the E explicitly designates the subtitles as being in Español. 

We managed to find a screening later in the evening that was VOSE, so we dashed over to procure seats. Once inside, we made another interesting discovery, confirmed by our friends, that one should never assume stadium seating in Spanish movie theaters. Our theater had a slight gradient, but I spent a good chunk of the film shifting back and forth in my seat to see the screen while the couple in front of me made out. 

Watching with Spanish subtitles was an interesting experience and ultimately, quite enjoyable. While my spoken Spanish is rusty, I’m fairly proficient reading the language, so I found myself using the subtitles to enhance my comprehension of the narrative. Even when lines were spoken quietly or out-of-sight of the camera, I knew what was being said–from the subtitles. And sometimes it was simply fascinating to juxtapose the Spanish interpretation of dialogue with that of the original English. 

All in all getting to experience the latest iteration of the Star Wars world outside of the U.S. was quite a treat. Seeing the excited faces in the packed theaters and hearing the cheers and laughs of the audience was a great reminder of the special way in which the Star Wars franchise has appealed to people around the world in such a fundamental way. And indeed, the recent Star Wars films have also consciously embraced more diverse casts, inviting a greater global audience to identify with the films’ characters. I have been concerned though that the financial factor involved in maintaining such a franchise will ultimately result in the dilution of narrative. For now, we seem to still be in good hands. And we only have another year before we get to follow up with the next one.

The featured image is courtesy of Pexels, made available for use through a CC0 license.

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How do you think about language?
Do you view it as collections of words that represent “things”?
Do you view it as a tool that we use to communicate with one another? 

Those are common ways to think about language, especially when we find ourselves learning new ones. There are long lists of vocabulary and strange verb conjugation rules . . . all leading to hours of tedious memorization. Perhaps that’s your memory of language classes from high school, and now that Spanish or French (or Afrikaans and isiXhosa if you’re South African like me) is merely a distant, vague shadow in your brain.

If that is how you were taught to think about language, however, then you are missing out. Language is more than simply a tool or set of words. Language is something that humans use to actually construct our world. Here I am going to briefly turn to a Swiss linguist from the late 19th and early 20th century who revolutionized how scholars think about language–Ferdinand de Saussure. In the “Arbitrary Social Values and the Linguistic Sign”, he writes:

Psychologically our thought–apart from its expression in words–is only a shapeless and indistinct mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language. (166)

Frederic Jameson helps us understand the philosophical shift that de Saussure makes: “The movement of Saussure’s thought may perhaps be articulated as follows: language is not an object, not a substance, but rather a value: thus language is a perception of identity” (“The Linguistic Model” in The Prison-house of Language, 35). Language is dynamic and operates, along with our thought, to shape how we view and comprehend the world around us. Language, you could say, is a reflection of our perception.

This understanding of language is central to the plot of the recently released film Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. After twelve strange vessels from space appear across the globe, hovering in Earth’s skies, the world’s top linguists are employed by governments to try to communicate with the alien beings who command these ships. The goal: find out if the aliens come in peace or animosity. Amy Adams plays Dr. Louise Banks, one of those linguists who is hired by the US government along with Jeremy Renner as Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist.

Together Louise and Ian make contact with two of the visitors and struggle to comprehend the nature and mechanics of the new language, along with linguists across the world who are also trying to make progress using different techniques. Simultaneously, military leadership and government officials impatiently await answers while they must manage the fears and anxieties of national publics who have no idea what is going on and want the aliens annihilated.

The film is about the tension between expectations and reality, and how our expectations can color how we use and think about language, which in turn shapes reality. In other words, if we are not careful, what we expect will be what we get–not because it was inevitable but because we believed it into existence. While the stakes are much higher in the context of this film, the narrative challenges the ways in which we the audience also participate daily within similar frameworks. The most direct example would be the ways in which we perceive outsiders to our communities, whether local or national. For example, fear of illegal immigrants affects our language, such as calling Japanese-Americans the derogatory term “Japs” during WWII, which in turn builds a culture that circulates fear while simultaneously dehumanizing the object of our fear.

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and mathematician wrote aptly about this topic. First he noted,

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”

In addition, he said, 

“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”

Of course, fear can also play a significant role in protecting us, but the danger is when fear becomes our trigger instinct. Before we accept the truths that our fear suggests, we should step back and challenge the framework of the world where that fear exists. And we should analyze the language that may be fueling the fear. 

This is precisely the situation in which the world finds itself in the movie Arrival, and Dr. Banks, a linguist, finds herself responsible for de-escalating potential world (or inter-galactic?) war. If you have not already, I encourage you to go see the film Arrival over break because the thoughts I have raised will become more clear in relation to the plot of the movie. If you do, I urge you to reflect on these ideas about the role that language plays in our society. As we head into Christmas break and spend significant time with families and friends, take the time to reflect on your conversations and your thoughts and how they, individually and collectively, are shaping our world of today. 

This week’s featured image is by Antonio Literrio, made available for use by a CC 3.0 License.

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