Cheer up, Brits. You're going to India!

As a white, heterosexual, middle-class female, I’m rarely forced to consider my identities. Were I a member of an ethnic, sexual, age, economic, political, or religious minority group, things would likely be different; I would more frequently be made aware of my non-normative status in the world. Thus, when I am put in a situation that obliges me to look at myself from the outside, it can be somewhat jarring but virtually always illuminating.

Three cases in point: first, while recently eating soul food in an all-black establishment, I was forced to recognize my race; second, when my husband and I were jobless last year and both on Ohio unemployment, I was forced to recognize my (lowered) economic status; third, when I enrolled in a Baptist seminary about fifteen years ago and sat weekly in a classroom of 50 males, I was forced to recognize my gender.

And then Friday night, while waiting for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden) to begin, I was forced to recognize my age. A quick survey of the 150 people in the theater revealed that my husband and I were the only filmgoers there who were not Baby Boomers or a part of the G.I. Generation. This headcount isn’t surprising given that the average age of the film’s cast is probably 65. But, like the other instances above, the situation did make me pause and take note of my place in the world — and, moreover, the direction of life I’m headed.

But my realizations about getting older and anecdotes about self-identification are presumably not why you dialed up this blog post. Rather, I’m assuming you want to know whether or not The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is worth seeing and subsequently why I dig “old people movies.”

Regarding the former, sure, the film is worth seeing. It’s definitely not the greatest movie put onscreen, but it’s also not the worst. I’d give it a B-/C+. No worries, I tackle some of the positives and negatives below. Regarding the latter, there’s just something comforting about filmic stories that don’t deny the aging process and that don’t cater to the coveted 18-30 age demographic. And, as I explain below, usually characters with life experience = characters with baggage; and that often means more complicated stories.

So without further ado, some thoughts on The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and my admiration for movies starring people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s…

Bring Them To Me!

No lie. I could watch Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson act on a loop, all day long. Effortless. Utterly effortless.

Chill with the Themes

Unlike the (yes, I’m saying it) nearly perfect Shakespeare in Love (1998), also directed by John Madden, there were too many themes in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel — way too many things happening at once: musings on old age and longing for youth, culture clashes, shame, generation gaps, lessons about marriage, economic woes, questions about outsourcing.

To this end, in places, the plot seems scattered — a bit like Pirate Radio (Richard Curtis, 2009) and, I imagine, Gary Marshall’s dreadful-looking holiday movies that attempt to cram 45 cast members and parallel storylines into roughly 90 minutes (e.g., New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day). (See Richard Curtis’s Love Actually (2003) for a rom-com that gets the “large ensemble cast thing” and a primary theme [love] just about right. Hey, I said just about. Also, Firth!)

Chill, Dev Patel

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Dench and Wilkinson is Dev Patel, who plays Sonny, the young owner of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful. A lifelong dreamer, his character is supposed to be enthusiastic and virtually always upbeat. But Patel, who successfully reeled me into the gritty world of Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008), overacted his part here. His wide eyes, large gestures, and constant flitting about the screen made him appear more as a cartoon character than an optimistic hotel owner. And as my frequent readers know, if there’s one thing that annoys me in moving pictures, it’s overacting. Right, Jeremy Davies?

Have Wrinkles? Will Watch

It delights me to no end to see on a 30-foot screen real people, real faces, real bodies, real wrinkles. Real experience.

Old(er) People Gettin’ It On

Along these same lines, I cannot get enough of big- and small-screen stories centering on Baby Boomers and/or the generation ahead of them. Bonus points if the films involve romantic relationships:

• On Golden Pond, check.
• Something’s Gotta Give, check.
• The African Queen, hellz yeah.
• The Bridges of Madison County, check. (Also sex-say Eastwood.)
• Boston Legal, check.
• Terms of Endearment, check. (That’s right; I watch for MacLaine/Nicholson.)
• Harold and Maude, check. (Half of the couple fits the bill…)
• As Good As it Gets, check. (If only Hollywood would churn out more of this.)
• It’s Complicated, um…it had a moment or two.
• Space Cowboys, check. (Tommy Lee Jones is gettin’ it done.)
• Up, check. Such lovely sadness.
• Cocoon, nope. I don’t do sci-fi.

More often than not, filmmakers don’t do justice to characters in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. As this study points out and you’re likely aware by just existing, these age groups are severely underrepresented on the big and small screens. For example, older people make up about 3% of the television population but almost 15% of the real population. In cinema, the number increases slightly from 3% to 6%. Sadly, these numbers have apparently remained consistent for the past twenty-five years.

Moreover, when these age groups are represented, it’s often negatively, their characters functioning as the butts of jokes, billboards for health-related problems (helloooo, The Bucket List), or even embodiments of horror (Norma Desmond, anyone?). Apparently, one needs to travel to Germany to find more consistently positive representations of older adults in moving pictures (160-161).

As a result, when the industry does dish out moving images that defy or at least complicate the norm, I’m in. Ten times more appealing to me than Sweet Home Alabama (2002), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), or My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) is Something’s Gotta Give (2003) or On Golden Pond (1981). (NOTE: Y’all, I love Something’s Gotta Give so much I published an article on it; email me if you want the PDF. I also wrote this post on the film’s blatant use of self-reflexivity.)

I’m not saying that Henry Fonda’s Norman Thayer breaks “the old coot” stereotype and that Jack Nicholson’s Harry Sanborn goes against the conventional “aging lothario.” Further, I’m not denying that these representations aren’t problematic. Certainly, in ways, they are; it is Hollywood, after all. For example, as Sally Chivers points out in The Silvering Screen, in his last few roles – About Schmidt (2002), Something’s Gotta Give, and The Bucket List – Nicholson “plays characters who are presented as having limited choices due to the infirmities of their aging” e.g., respectively, his wife dies, he can’t keep up sexually with younger women, he has a terminal illness (137). As a result, his characters are always granted room to move, Chivers claims, “expanding definitions of masculinity so as to always adhere to them, and each does so at the expense of other characters expected to bear the sloughed off characteristics that threaten an aging man’s masculinity” (137).

That said, I also find that because of Fonda’s/Norman’s and Nicholson’s/Harry’s ages (approximately 75 and 60) and presumed life experience, their romantic (as well as platonic) onscreen relationships carry a certain weight that is missing from similar films. Yes, the same is true for Katharine Hepburn’s and Diane Keaton’s roles. In other words, the older characters possess baggage, a skepticism and pragmatism that, for example, Reese Witherspoon’s 26-year-old character, when dropped into a similar situation, does not and presumably cannot. Consequently, I find that romantic narratives centering on people aged 50 and above are automatically just more complicated and layered than those involving their younger counterparts; even Chivers’s criticism of Nicholson’s recent roles and his “expanding definitions of masculinity” somewhat speak to this.

So there you have it: why I enjoy “old people movies” and the romantic relationships therein. Now you know why I’ll be counting the days until the premiere of Hope Springs (2012), starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. Perhaps I’ll see you there…

So imposing! #Sarcasm

Currently dominating my Twitter feed are headlines like this: “The Avengers Has Biggest Opening Weekend Ever with $200 Million.” This (estimated) box-office count apparently bests Hollywood’s previous domestic opening-weekend record of $169.2 million held by last year’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II (David Yates, 2011). Moreover, if we tack on The Avengers’ overseas box-office take this weekend, $151.5 million, we’re looking at totals nearing $400 million.

But that’s not all. Since the movie opened internationally a week earlier, its (estimated) current global haul is around $640 million, which, as the New York Post reports, is more than Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008), Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010), Thor (Kenneth Branagh, 2011), and Captain America (Joe Johnston, 2011) took in during their entire runs.

Broadly, these numbers are supposed to be impressive, generating from me and other moviegoers a wow or daaaayum. And why shouldn’t they? Ultimately, it’s SIX-HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS over the course of ONE WEEK. (Sorry for yelling, but it’s IMPRESSIVE, right?!) The figures are potentially also supposed to make me excited for the movie’s director Joss Whedon, who has now apparently successfully crossed over from TV (e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, Angel) to the big screen. Finally, these numbers, floating up and down my Twitter and Facebook streams, are perhaps supposed to make me want to close this laptop, grab the car keys, and drive ten minutes to see The Avengers and then do the same with the other rehashed, fantasy-based, machismo-driven, action-based fare coming soon to a cineplex near me. For example,

• Battleship (May 18)
• Men in Black III (May 25)
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation (June 29)
• The Amazing Spiderman (July 3)
• The Dark Knight Rises (July 20)
• Total Recall (August 3)
• The Expendables II (August 17)

But instead, here’s what all this press about The Avengers‘ weekend-take actually makes me do:

Say “Meh”

While people are going on and on about these figures, they’re not totally unexpected, are they? After all, The Avengers is the first major summer megapic. It features A-list stars who’ve had some success in similar roles. It is directed by someone whose former projects, while garnering a sort of cult-following, are known for interesting characters and unique storytelling. It has a built-in audience (comic-book readers/fans). It’s been promoted widely (exhaustively?) for several weeks now. It’s received strong reviews from combined critics and viewers on Rotten Tomatoes and decent reviews from critics on MetaCritic. And like most megapics, The Avengers was given a saturated booking (i.e., it opened virtually everywhere in the U.S. this weekend, IMAX included).

Certainly other movies based on this formula have failed, but from what I’ve pieced together over the last few weeks, it seems that most critics, producers, Hollywood insiders, etc. expected this one to hit. Bigtime. So, let’s simmer down a little bit about this first-weekend box-office draw, shall we?

Cringe a L’il Bit

These figures also kinda make me cringe because if The Avengers does well — like “The Dark Knight well” — we can possibly expect more superhero mashups/installments in 2013, 2014, 2015, etc. Look at the video mash-up below; honestly, how much more of this can we take? One Twitter user sums up my feelings nicely: “The Avengers‘ smashing box office records is like the groundhog seeing its shadow — it’ll mean six more years of the same damn thing” (@railoftomorrow). This could be true, to an extent. Keep reading.

Question the Cycle’s (and Our Country’s) Status

Related to the above and perhaps most significantly, these initial box-office sums also makes me, like Andrew O’Hehir earlier this week, ask the question When will this genre cycle die, or at least subside?

As a film instructor, I’m well aware that Hollywood won’t be doing away with big-budget, high-concept, CGI-laden, action-adventure megapics any time soon. Hell, since Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) swam onto the scene, this has been the industry’s bread and butter. Gee thanks, Spielberg! (Kidding — I love me some Jaws.) As well, I understand that movie moguls won’t be backing away from any sequels, remakes, revisions, reimaginings, or reworkings in the near future. After all, such pictures are (supposedly) tried and true; they’ve succeeded in the past, so why shouldn’t they succeed now and in the future? To echo Matthew Vaughn, director of X-Men: First Class (2011), yay, way to latch on and run things into the ground, Hollywood!

Consequently, no, no one’s likely putting a proverbial nail in the megapic coffin anytime soon. But the superhero cycle? Could I at least keep my hammer and a box of nails nearby? You see, apart from Hollywood’s “tried-and-true” recipes, past/present box-office stats, foreign investors/partners, and major greed, there are actually other reasons genre cycles like this one wax and wane, surface and resurface — reasons founded within our culture, the zeitgest. Moving pictures, after all, aren’t created in a vacuum.

Again, earlier this week, columnist Andrew O’Hehir posed the question Will superhero movies never end? To which I respond: they will likely end, at least in part, when our culture no longer “requires” them. As my film students and I discussed in class just this week, the output of superhero movies has nearly doubled (from the 1990s) since 9/11, a time when our country and the world at large was vulnerable, confused about its identity, and arguably lacking in leadership (the Bush administration). To the rescue: movies that offer (among other things) stability, certainty, and leaders who (usually) can successfully understand and fight enemies. [Related: "How Hollywood Was Changed by 9/11," and "Where Would Superheroes Be Without 9/11?" as well as academic essays like "American Exceptionalism, Visual Effects, and the Post-9/11 Cinematic Superhero Boom" and "How America Learned to Stop Worrying and Cynically ENJOY! The Post-9/11 Superhero Zeitgeist."]

We’ve, of course, seen similar cultural influences with the rise and fall of other genres, subgenres, and genre cycles. Two examples: film noir (1941-58), itself a response to shifts in postwar traditional gender roles, McCarthyism, and the influx of existentialist thought; and “gangsta films” (i.e., 1990s coming-of-age pictures like Boyz n the Hood and New Jack City set in volatile black neighborhoods), cinematic reactions to real-life violence/riots and the crack epidemic in the U.S.

So back to The Avengers’ $200 million opening weekend…

Obviously, these numbers don’t impress me much; rather, they just make me wonder, as I do at the beginning of virtually every recent summer season, how long this superhero cycle will last. (No worries, comic-book film fans; I wonder the same about the bromance, that other current Hollywood mainstay.) Maybe it will die down when the economy straightens out and we don’t need “saving”? When our troops are removed from the Middle East? When the country’s global reputation has been mended? When our disparate and hard-headed branches of government are able to work together? Geez, if the latter is a requirement, then Iron Man, the Green Lantern, and all 356 reincarnations of Spiderman are going to be with us for a freakin’ long, long time.

On Thursday, to accompany our lecture on sound and sound design, my Style and Storytelling in Cinema class watched Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Since I know you’ll ask: yes, I was beside myself. Yes, I was tapping my feet during “Moses Supposes.” Yes, I was swooning while Cyd Charisse slid down my man’s leg during the “Broadway Melody” number (I even tweeted about it as she slithered…). And, yes, my students liked it — at least they seemed to; we’ll discuss the film in depth next Tuesday, so I’ll find out more then.

Great Scott! You know you wanna order one.

So that the husband’s Back to the Future t-shirt wouldn’t feel so alone, I (finally) ordered a Stormtrooper-in-the-Rain tee. You can see it below all Instagram’d up and hanging from the Singin’ in the Rain poster that currently adorns my office. (Get your own musical stormtrooper at RedBubble.com!)

Normally, this little blue t-shirt wouldn’t pose a problem for me as I’d pair it with a blazer or cardigan and some jeans. But right now, I’m knee-deep in something called Skirt-a-Thon 2012, wherein female academics from all over the country and the UK (hey, Faye!) wear skirts for the entire month of April (well, M-F) and subsequently post their skirting activities online.

Why are people doing this, you ask? Honestly, I dunno. Some of the participants from the South are partial to “the breeze” a skirt allows. Some of them claim the skirt is more comfortable than a pair of jeans or slacks (hogwash!). And some maintain that they just feel more confident before a classroom when they’re “all dressed up.” All I know is that these PhDs (and almost-PhDs) love them some skirts.

Moreover, I hear some of you asking, why in the world is Kelli Marshall, a person who probably hasn’t stepped into a dress/skirt since she married 13 years ago, participating in a skirt-a-thon? Good question, and one that Kelli Marshall is still trying to answer. Maybe she’s doing it to feel a part of the club? An excuse to buy new clothes? Peer pressure?

Whatever the true reason (it’s the peer pressure and loads of it), I am doing it — at least on the days I teach. No worries, y’all; on MWF, it’s all jeans, all the time.

This isn't the blog post you're looking for.

But back to my new stormtrooper shirt…

For expert skirt-a-thoners, like 99% of those with whom I’m participating, pairing this little fella with a skirt is no problem. After all, they’ve a gaggle to choose from; one ‘thoner even counted 27 in her closet. My skirt/dress count before all this business commenced: two. So for novice participants, the task is more difficult — and especially challenging for one who doesn’t want to wear or even OWN a pair of tights. (It’s still in the 40s up here, folks, and those subway platforms aren’t heated.)

After some consultation and nearly an hour of trying on clothes the night before (WTF is wrong with me?!), I finally decided on pairing my little white, plastic Gene Kelly with a black cardigan, a short black skirt, black tights (ugh, ugh, ugh), and Mary Jane’s. In my mind, this looked terrible, moronic even. But dammit: I was wearing the shirt, and I’ll do so again the next time I teach Singin’ in the Rain. To my fellow skirt-a-thoners, however, my outfit “seriously worked,” and they couldn’t figure out “what I was all worried about.”

Ah, there it is. The reason I’m participating in Skirt-a-Thon 2012: a sweet dose of daily affirmation, even if my fellow participants might be lying to me, just a little bit.

Earlier today, I posed this question to my colleagues on Twitter and as usual, within seconds, received several responses. Those, I’ll get to in a moment. In the meantime, let’s think about this question and some of the potential reasons I tweeted it.

First, aside from the obvious — wanting to know if other academics were encountering similar situations in their lecture halls — perhaps I’d been dealing with “disruptive” students in my own classes (yes, I have, increasingly for the past five years). Second, maybe I was inadvertently hoping my colleagues would explain or at least hypothesize the cause of this growing behavior in higher ed. Third, perchance unconsciously I was wanting my fellow profs to stand in solidarity with me and agree that a student who rises from her desk during a lecture to walk the length of the classroom, throw away a water bottle, and then return to her seat is “disruptive.”

Admittedly, all of these things were in my mind when I took to The Twitter Machine earlier today. For example, just yesterday, I spoke with a couple of students about this very issue. Last week, I did the same after another class. The week before, I had to make a blanket statement about “remaining in your seat for the duration of the class unless there’s an emergency.” Moreover, on every one of my syllabi now lies the following blurb:

Please be courteous. If students continually engage in conversation while others are talking or during film screenings, they will be asked to move and/or leave. Additionally, unless there is an emergency, students should not leave the classroom after they have entered. Finally, please take care of all “bathroom matters” before class, after class, or during a break.

You see, the last time I was free of the “roaming student” was 2008. Back then, I had no such addenda on my syllabi, I made no general statements to the class about potty breaks, and I rarely (if ever) had to speak one-on-one with a student about his wandering around. But over the last five years, this has changed. Dramatically. So as I do with most things that irk or excite or intrigue me, I ask questions, I research, and then I write. (For more testaments to this pattern, see my posts on soul food, Jeremy Davies’ scenery chewing, movie palaces in Ohio, and Gene Kelly in the twenty-first century.)

Those Darn Millennials!

• Because they’ve been raised in a drive-through culture with little conception of delayed gratification, they lack focus and have short attention spans.
• Because of all the visual media and electronics in their grasp, they are easily bored and have a desire to “multi-task” and thus do not pay full attention. (According to some, the misleading term multi-tasking should be renamed switch-tasking, and it should be emphasized that “most people cannot learn effectively while they are doing this.”)
• Because their childhoods were filled with ubiquitous praise and lenient teachers who were forced to “teach to the test” and dish out extra credit (for fear of losing jobs, retention, etc.), this generation has an entitlement mentality.
• Because of their constant interactions on social media, they have respect/boundary issues in face-to-face situations.
• Finally, more students with disabilities, learning and otherwise, are in the college classroom than ever before. (Teaching Millennials Chart)

Whoa. So how do today’s professors deal with such issues? Well, some apparently bolt for the entire day if they see just one student texting during a lecture while others resign from their posts after a confrontational student storms out of the classroom. But those are extreme cases, of course.

I would think that most professors implement (or at least attempt to implement) progressive discipline techniques like the ones I’ve attempted above and these, offered up by my husband, a student conduct officer in higher ed: 1) a general word of caution directed to class, 2) talk with student privately after class, 3) warn that continued behavior may result in disciplinary referral, 4) instruct student to leave the class, and 5) in serious situations, adjourn class for the day or call the police. This is the way I assumed the majority of my Twitter colleagues, both new and seasoned instructors, would respond. But no. Not so much.

Those Darn Professors!

Like Casablanca‘s delightful Captain Renault, I’m (mostly) shocked, shocked at my colleagues’ responses to my question above, which ranged from “[Roaming students] are less egregious than students doing things like spilling entire cups of coffee and then not cleaning up the mess” to “I’m of opinion that it’s college. They can do what they want.” Other reactions:

• “In large classes, I don’t care if they wander out for a break or a soda. As long as they don’t slam the door! THAT annoys me.”
• “Depends on context for me: w/ 50+ students in big lecture halls, it’s the norm. But w/ 20+ in seminars, students stay put.”
• “Getting a soda, I let go if they need it to stay awake.”
• “[The] biggest problem is bathroom and phone breaks. Trash disposal or getting drink not norm.”
• “This is the norm.”
• “Normal disruption. But they rarely come back except from bathroom trips.”
• “It’s the norm, but still disruptive.”
• “Unfortunately a norm. But if it happens too frequently, I will say something.”

Only one professor responded in this manner, which aligns with my (apparently hard-ass?) mentality: “[It's] rude and disruptive. I mean, be a grownup and hold on to your trash/plan ahead for your refreshment needs. COME ON.”

Preach, girl. Preach.

I love you, Twitter colleagues, and I value our daily (and sometimes hourly) conversations. But I’m gonna respectfully have to disagree with some of you here and maintain, as I did later in the day via Twitter, that your unwillingness to curb such behavior is only perpetuating and encouraging it — and that sucks for those of us, teachers and students, whose classroom experience is disrupted by students who walk about randomly and/or enter and exit on a whim. That’s right: according to at least one study, many students wish their professors would take stronger actions to reinforce behavioral guidelines in the classroom. And it’s evidently not just the roaming student who is bothersome to her classmates. The clicking from computers is also “distracting,” says a IUP student; “it disrupts the whole class.” (A no-computer policy? That’s just crazy talk, right?)

This suggests, then, that we ought to remove at least some of the blame we’ve placed on the Millennial generation and its “cultural baggage” (i.e., social media, short attention spans, sense of entitlement) and apply it to those professors who are indifferent to or, more likely perhaps, ill-equipped to handle this problem. After all, roaming students shouldn’t be the norm; it’s unfair to the instructor, but more importantly, it’s unfair to the other students in their seats who are ready and willing to learn.

Gene Kelly in the Twenty-First Century

Even though Gene Kelly has been dead fifteen years and his most admired films are six decades old, his presence in the twenty-first century is alive and well.

Here’s some proof:

From my montage, you noticed that in the past four years, the deceased song-and-dance man has starred in Family Guy, a Funny or Die sketch, and at least three advertisements (two for Volkswagen alone). In addition, several television shows and music artists have recently paid homage to Gene Kelly and Singin’ in the Rain. Furthermore, you saw that vidders regularly post their Kelly-featured wares online while at the same time, other fans spend their spare time unearthing the star’s television appearances, interviews, and Diet Coke commercials for communal viewing on YouTube and the like—videos which, significantly, have been watched and shared thousands of times.

If you’re already Gene Kellyed-out at this point, the rest of this presentation is going to be brutal. That was just a sampling of the moving images I’ve access to. Now, let’s look briefly at Kelly’s presence in the world of festivals, radio, and social media.

Because this year is Gene Kelly’s centenary, cinemas in London, Glasgow, and Baltimore are honoring the star’s contributions to the film musical with week-long Gene Kelly festivals, featuring digitally remastered or 35mm prints of his most popular works. Incidentally, the Glasgow Film Festival included a “Gene Kelly Ceilidh” after its screening of Brigadoon, a Gaelic dance which, according to one of my friends in attendance, was simultaneously endearing and hilarious. [He's written more on the ceilidh here.] Furthermore, the 2012 Turner Classic Film Festival, taking place in Los Angeles in two weeks, is hosting “the world premiere of the 60th anniversary restoration of Singin’ in the Rain.” Last year, the TCM festival opened with a restoration of An American in Paris and guest-speaker Leslie Caron (below). Also for Gene Kelly’s centennial, programs like BBC Radio 2 have compiled and aired a documentary Dancing in the Rain: Gene Kelly, which features Dancing with the Stars’ Len Goodman, Glee‘s Matthew Morrison, Kelly’s eldest daughter, and (oddly) me, talking about the star’s contributions to dance and cinema.

Would've given my left arm to have attended...

Finally, over the past decade, with the influx of social media, several Gene Kelly-related fansites, tumblelogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and message boards have appeared online, the majority of which continue to be extremely active. What’s more, fan-generated artwork and fiction, often erotically positioning Gene Kelly alongside his male and female costars, are on the rise. In my spare time, even I (along with several contributors) maintain Gene Kelly Fans as well as its extension on Twitter, a site that publishes not only news, videos, images, and brief commentary devoted to the entertainer, but also original, scholarly analyses on the star, his persona, family, and place in pop culture. There have been days when the site has received over 4,000 hits, and the Twitter account has over 1,000 followers.

Why Gene Kelly? Why Now?

So what is going on here? Why in the hell is Gene Kelly’s fandom so pronounced in the twenty-first century? Why are his star image, screen characters, dance moves, and even body parts being appropriated, remixed, and fetishized in the media and online at this time?

We owe some of this to Turner Classic Movies and Netflix, both of which feature virtually all of Kelly’s films, those he directed and those in which he starred; this is how many fans tell me they discovered him. We can also thank our country’s current obsession with parody, satire, and the ironic, making something nerdy cool again. We’ve seen this already via the Family Guy clip and the Funny or Die sketch. Here are a couple of t-shirts that work similarly, sending up and mixing familiar images from pop culture, in this case Star Wars, A Clockwork Orange, and Singin’ in the Rain. Even late last year, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart invoked Gene Kelly in a bit on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (video below). But aside from TCM, Netflix, and the prevalence of parody, there are at least three other key reasons the song-and-dance man is currently enjoying a revival.

You know you wanna order one.

I. The Broken Economy

First, the obvious. Gene Kelly is flourishing in this decade because of the broken economy. A recent UK headline reads, “As in the 1930s, tough economic times means more musicals on the screen.” Indeed, while not nearly as prominent as superhero films or bromance comedies—also clear reflections of our unstable and anxiety-ridden times—musicals as well as musical- and dance-themed TV shows have obviously surged in popular culture over the past few years.[1] For example, So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with Stars, Britain’s Got Talent, America’s Got Talent, and Glee have each referenced, paid homage to, and/or adapted Kelly and his dance style, thereby bringing his name back into the public sphere. Take this exchange from Glee, for instance.

Kurt: Team up with me for the duet competition. […] I am your best bet at winning.

Sam: Aren’t duets supposed to be between, like, a girl and a guy?

Kurt: Well, Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor would protest. [Confused look from Sam.] “Make ‘Em Laugh?” [sic]

Sam: Sorry.

Kurt: Singin’ in the Rain? 1952? [pause] Nothing. Okay, maybe you are straight.

And even though it features minimal dance numbers and no music, the Oscar-winning, quasi-silent film The Artist clearly pays homage to the classical star system, Singin’ in the Rain, and Gene Kelly’s style, mannerisms, and Cheshire-cat smile, all of which Jean Dujardin cites routinely in interviews as inspiration for his role. What’s more, even those oblivious to Dujardin’s talk-show and red-carpet interviews have attempted to locate in him their affection for Gene Kelly. The same goes for Glee‘s Darren Criss, whom fans frequently pair next to Kelly in collages like these. [2]

II. His Complicated Star Image

A second reason Gene Kelly is enjoying renewed success at the moment: his complicated star image, which appeals to a variety of vocal viewers. Gene Kelly, as Steven Cohan succinctly puts it, is simultaneously effeminate and manly. The sailor suits that draw attention to his body, frequent homosocial pairings onscreen, and performances in campy films like The Pirate position Kelly as “the erotic spectacle of a male dancer,” to quote Cohan again. (True, dude does wear Daisy Dukes and [click it!] pole-dances on a candy cane.) In his book Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, Alexander Doty seconds this notion when he lists Kelly first in his hypothetical “gay beefcake musical history”; after all, recalls Doty, “Gene’s ass was always on display in carefully tailored pants” (10). This also explains why gay fans frequently post tweets like these.

At the same time, however, for many straight women and straight men, Gene Kelly’s star text exhibits traditional heterosexual masculinity. He is athletic; his figure is muscular, solid, and agile. Moreover, his characters (and Kelly himself) wear conventional mannish garb: sweaters, blazers, t-shirts, khakis, hats, suits, and loafers. Additionally, his screen characters (as well as he personally) always get the girl. Finally, Kelly’s onscreen romantic dances with Cyd Charisse and Leslie Caron, for example, exude intense (hetero)sexuality. Consequently, it’s also no surprise that straight men tweet the following:

Likewise, straight female fans tweet…

Most recently, straight white and black women have been circulating this 15-second segment from The Pirate in which Kelly outwardly defies the censorship board and cops a feel onscreen. Because the Hays Office apparently missed this boob graze as well as the tongue-slippage, fans have interpreted this part of the film as well as Kelly as rebellious, uncompromising, daring—again, descriptors of conventional American masculinity.

III. Modern Technology

But certainly the most significant reason Gene Kelly (as well as other classical male stars like Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, and Paul Newman) is thriving in the twenty-first century is modern technology, which fuels our present “remix culture” along with the fan labor and social media that inhabit it. Unlike the ’80s and ’90s in which pastiche reigned supreme, the twenty-first century, according to Lev Manovich, features remixes, fusions, collages, and mash-ups—systematic reworkings or rearrangings of sources, producing a new admiration for an older text.

Much of the footage in my earlier video montage illustrates this “remix culture,” most memorably perhaps, Stewie’s dancing with Gene Kelly, the storm-trooper tee, and Glee‘s mash-up of the songs “Umbrella” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” The same goes for the thousands of Gene Kelly-related memes, collages, artwork, fan fiction, and tweets shared hourly on social media. A few examples:

There are internet memes reminiscent of LOLcats and the like: see, for instance, “hipster Gene,” “haters-gonna-hate Gene,” and “Vanilla Gene,” the latter of which features Kelly surrounded by lyrics of a (rather vulgar) rap song by alternative hip-hop group Odd Future. (Here’s a “hipster Judy” for Garland fans…). Other memes include animated gifs, collages, and an ongoing “Reasons We Love Gene Kelly” to which anyone can submit via Tumblr.

Hipster Gene

"Haters Gonna Hate" Gene

Vanilla Gene

There is also quite a bit of Gene Kelly-inspired artwork disseminated across social networks, most of which, like these, is cute, silly, clever, and/or charming (e.g., homemade t-shirts, paperdolls, posters).

Other fanart, however, is more evocative. Inspired by Calvin Klein’s black-and-white ad campaign and promotional shots from The Pirate (1948), the drawings below “ship” Kelly and his frequent musical co-star Judy Garland. Further, as the next image attests, some fans have even created the name Jugenea, borrowing from other celebrity supercouples like Brangelina and TomKat.

Likewise, fan fiction features the two stars, some which claim that Kelly and Garland “fornidanced” (when talented people “dance and fuck at the same time”) and thereby conceived Liza Minnelli. Still, other writings fit into the genre of “het” fan fiction, much more graphic and erotic in nature. Finally, I’ve also been directed to pieces of Singin’ in the Rain fan fiction that place Gene Kelly’s Don Lockwood, Donald O’Connor’s Cosmo Brown, and Debbie Reynolds’s Kathy Selden in a ménage à trois.

Last, there’s is the constant objectification and fetishization of Kelly’s body parts: his legs, arms, and chest. But the commentary that exists daily on his ass alone—yes, daily—is, like the subject itself, a sight to behold. Devoted solely to Kelly’s backside, for example: an entire Tumblr, Facebook page, animated gifs, Twitter hashtag, and website galleries. [For more on this aspect of Gene Kelly fandom and the "het" fan fiction discussed above, see my post "Putting the Ass in Assets: The Objectification of Gene Kelly (and Other Men) on Social Media."]

What Does All of This Gene Kelly Fandom Mean?

According to Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and Lee Harrington in their anthology Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, one reason scholars study fandom is “to explore some of key mechanisms through which we interact with the mediated world at the heart of our social, political, and cultural realities and identities.” Indeed, fans’ readings, tastes, and practices are tied to wider social, political, and cultural structures. So what does an analysis of Gene Kelly fandom in the twenty-first century tell us?

• First, people have an intense interest to return to the past, to a supposedly simpler time, a more glamorous star system, a unit of Hollywood that churned out quality products like An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain—again all understandable in this era of 9/11, Katrina, wars, and poor fiscal management.
• Second, in an age of reality TV, YouTube “stars,” and blue CGI characters, people are longing for real talent, triple-threats, so to speak (daily, someone tweets “Where are the Gene Kellys today?”).
• Third, people have grown weary of the manchildren as well as the misogynistic and hypermasculine figures currently infiltrating pop culture; they crave a more complicated representation of masculinity, it seems.
• Last, from the ongoing objectification of Gene Kelly, we learn that while much of the entertainment and news media still reinforce a conventional male perspective (e.g., women function as objects, victims, and arm-candy), social media, which in many instances is currently dominated by women, may promote a modern female perspective and a female gaze.

When asked about making film musicals, Gene Kelly once said, “You are commenting on the human condition no matter what you do. A musical may be light and frivolous, but by its very nature, it makes some kind of social comment.” Indeed. The musical did then, and it does now. And so does Gene Kelly, in ways he probably never imagined.

NOTES:

[1] Moreover, in the last few years of course, we’ve seen the financial success of Moulin Rouge, Mamma Mia! Hairspray, High School Musical, Footloose, and Step-Up 3D, which partly explains why currently crammed into the Hollywood pipeline are film versions/remakes of Les Miserables, Rock of Ages, Sparkle, Annie, Dirty Dancing, Jersey Boys, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Star Is Born, Spring Awakening, and at least a dozen others.

[2] Related to the broken economy is an increase in multigenerational living. In 2008, “some 49 million Americans, or 16% of the total U.S. population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation” (AARP study, 2008). Many younger Gene Kelly fans have credited/thanked their grandparents for introducing them to the star.

Addendum: Compiled by my friend/colleague Noel Kirkpatrick, here are some notes on our entire film musicals panel and some of the questions audience members asked.

The month of March has been horribly busy. Unfortunately, most of April won’t fare much better.

For starters, I’ve begun a new job, teaching media and cinema studies courses at DePaul University. Yay! With said new job, however, comes the creation of syllabi, which — although it’s not digging ditches — is an inordinate amount of work and a sucker of time, especially for someone who’s transitioning from the semester to the quarter system. [For those interested, my Spring 2012 classes/syllabi: Style and Storytelling in Cinema and Cinema History, 1975-Present.]

Second, this month my lovely colleague Gaby Malcolm and I completed our anthology, Locating Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century, which will hopefully be available to you fine folks sometime later this year.

Third, I signed on to write a column for In Media Res‘ week on “Religious Representations in TV.” While the piece is short, it still requires thought, organization, and much digging around the Interwebz. Also, I’m a slow writer. Ultimately, I came up with this: “Louie‘s ‘God’ As Cathartic Television,” which considers the online community’s response to Louie‘s funny, disturbing, poignant, and powerful episode “God.”

Fourth, I attended the 2012 SCMS Conference in Boston from March 21-25. There, I presented “Gene Kelly in the Twenty-First Century,” which — with the video montage and slideshow I created to accompany it — took me nearly three weeks to put together.

In Boston, I also spent two days visiting Gene Kelly’s Archives at Boston University. (I know! Right?!?!) While I didn’t find anything earth-shattering, I thoroughly enjoyed sifting through fragile scrapbooks from 1929 (tiny high-school Gene!), original reviews from Hedda Hopper, yellowed telegraphs from Arthur Freed, memos with MGM letterhead, and Gene’s copious notes on Invitation to the Dance (1956). Dude was smart, people. SO unbelievably freakin’ smart. I’ll try to write more later about this experience and my findings.

Fifth, due in April are two more publications: one on Seinfeld and another on the use of student-created video essays in the film history classroom. And then there’s still, you know, the teaching…

In other words, it’s been a very busy few weeks. That said, I hope you’ll absolve me of my sin and go in peace to check out my work on Gene Kelly’s presence in the twenty-first century, which I’ll post shortly. (It begins with a cool video montage!) As always, your feedback on the matter is welcome!

That I will never be interested in The Wire and, therefore, will be labeled a total loser by every media studies person on Twitter.

That I’ll never find a full-time job.

Of flying.

That I will not make the major deadlines I have coming up in the next five weeks: compiling a conference presentation on Gene Kelly, two syllabi, an encyclopedia entry on Seinfeld, a column on FX’s Louie, and an essay on the use of video essays in the film classroom.

That I’ll never be able to rid my body of these pesky 10 pounds.

That either cell phone radiation or Diet Pepsi is going to be the death of me.

Of Indian food.

That all this scholarship I’ve been doing — over the past three years in particular — still won’t land me a job in this dismal market.

That I don’t walk my dogs enough.

To think about how the rest of the world currently views America.

That I’ll never fully understand at least 68% of classical film theory.

Of pantyhose.

That I won’t make the correct train connection on my first day of the spring semester. New school. New mode of transportation.

That I don’t drink enough water.

Of the dentist — and those shots and that drill and the numbness and hatred that follow.

That it’s going to take years to build up our savings account to what it was before my husband and I were unemployed for over a year.

(As well as mesmerized) by Boyd Crowder’s hair. Justified, y’all. Justified.

Of (most) overhead lighting. Lamps only, please.

That Hollywood will make superhero movies until the day I die. And then 25 years after that.

Of these circles under my eyes, growing darker every day.

Lucille Bremer hiding something in Yolanda and the Thief?

Vincente Minnelli’s emphasis on visual effects and props sometimes led him to neglect the essential — namely the actor before the camera. The bathroom scene [in Yolanda and the Thief, 1945] was a case in point. Kay Thompson visited the set to watch the shooting, and recalls, “Lucille [Bremer] was in her elaborate bathtub, filled with soap bubbles and water, liquid soap and perfume. On the marble ledge of the tub was a telephone. It would ring, Lucille would pick up the receiver and say, “Hello,” and that gargoyle had to show through the arch of her arm. Vince [Minnelli] was riding the boom and had a man stationed underneath. “We can’t see the gargoyle, Mr. Minnelli.” Vince would come down and rehearse and rehearse. Meanwhile, here’s Lucille sitting in the bubble water, on a vibrator. [...]

Minnelli recalls the incident. “Arthur Freed and I did have an enormous fight, because Lucille seemed to pass out or become weak or something. It was nonsense, because I had the water warm — body temperature — and it was just a case of nerves.” Minnelli cannot remember anything about gargoyles, telephones, soap bubbles, or a vibrator. (167)

– Hugh Fordin, MGM’s Greatest Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit

Why not have a drink, you two?

If someone asks me How do you go about [creating that joke or nailing that scene]? I find it very difficult to talk about — because doing so takes away all the joy. It’s pulling that curtain back. The viewer really doesn’t want to know what went into it. That’s why I don’t like DVD commentaries. I hate those and I hate doing them because, to me, it’s taking away the magic of it all.

[Feigning a commentary] “I was so sick when I was shooting this scene, and, you know, I really had to pee. So you can see that in my face, right?”

I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to know Meryl Streep had to pee during that scene [...] and that she was brilliant because “she just really had to pee.” So, no, I’m not a big fan of these commentaries; it’s just too much information.

– Steve Carell (with David Steinberg) on Inside Comedy

It was Chicago’s Best‘s spot on MacArthur’s restaurant that made the husband take note, literally. More specifically, it was images of catfish: glimmering, golden, southern-fried filets. You see, anytime the man eyeballs “real catfish” north of the Mason Dixon — i.e., cornbread batter, flour, salt, red pepper (NO COD BATTER!) — he’s there. So unsurprisingly, within thirty minutes we were there, waiting in line at MacArthur’s, ordering fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, green beans, cornbread, and banana pudding.

As we took our seats in a corner booth and began to dig in (OMG, the food is good, soooo good), we realized we were the only two white folks in the relatively large and densely packed place. The serving staff, cashiers, busboys, and patrons were all black. So as I shoved forkfuls of mac and cheese into my mouth, my mind wandered. First, I was curious if similar experiences were documented on the hilariously on-the-mark blog Stuff White People Like. They are kinda in the post “Being the Only White Person Around.”

Second, I thought back to an assignment from Sociology 101, a course I took nearly 20 years ago. The task: put yourself into a situation you normally wouldn’t be in. A couple of examples for the white students in the class: attend an all-black church or ride the city bus (virtually no white folks rely on public transportation in this small southern town). Via this assignment, we were supposed to be learning about social mores and how quickly they can be disrupted. For the life of me, I cannot recall what I chose to do for this assignment, but I know I didn’t ride the city bus or temporarily swap my all-white church for an all-black one. The homework prompt did, however, apparently stay with me.

Third, while looking around MacArthur’s and realizing my whiteness, I contemplated the term soul food and wondered why it’s aligned primarily with African Americans; after all, the (white) Mississippi-born husband and I grew up eating most of the same dishes. I speculated that the association originated from plantation times, but I didn’t have a solid answer. So when we returned home, I researched. Here’s what I found.

Even though it wasn’t labeled such until the 1960s, much of what our culture now considers soul food — e.g., fried chicken, biscuits, gravy, pork chops, chitlins, grits, turnip greens, lard — derives from American slavery (and before). According to various sources, chief among them Frederick Douglass Opie’s exhaustive history Hogs and Hominy, American slaves received their owners’ leftovers for nutrition, the parts of livestock deemed un-edible for white folks, e.g., pig’s feet, oxtail, chitlins (pig intestines). As a result, the farmhands had to make do with what they were given (for the record, gumbo and jambalaya, a hodgepodge of whatever is on hand, were invented similarly). What about food like collard greens, okra, turnip greens, yams, and black-eyed peas? These apparently came into play because slaves grew weary of their daily diet of pork and corn(bread). Wanting more options, they began to grow their own vegetables/weeds, which they’d ultimately cook for themselves and their owners.

It makes sense, then, that “soul food” is linked primarily to African Americans. But why do white folks like the husband and me grow up eating the same? Just because we live(d) in the South, where many descendents of slaves still abide and deep-frying anything reigns supreme? According to Joseph Holloway’s “African Crops and Slave Cuisine,” slaves began to merge African and European culinary cultures when they introduced their native African cooking in “the Big House” (i.e., slaves were brought inside to cook for the white families). In fact, blacks may have introduced to white people the art (?) of deep fat frying, a technique common in Africa as a means of preserving chicken and beef. Further, Holloway speculates that roasting pigs, beef, chickens, and lambs on an open spit with a pan of sauce on the side for dipping meat — both African customs, mind you — may have been the origins of southern barbecue.

Geez, white Americans will poach anything, won’t they? Land, jazz, British TV shows, yoga, Italian film techniques, movie stars, and apparently African cuisine. However, we did not and cannot procure the term soul food, itself representative of “the ingenuity and skill of black cooks able to form a distinctive cuisine despite limited means.”

Addendum: After reading this post, my colleague Kristen Warner sent me the following “Soul Food” video from Comedy Central’s sketch show Key & Peele “to complicate my piece further.” Great. That’s what I need, Kristen: complications! According to Kristen, the sketch suggests that “at some point, black folks don’t even know what authenticity means — and that it all becomes a competition.” Feel free to discuss below…

We showed you how to kiss...and be dragged upstairs for some domestic rape!

This year’s Oscars ad campaign, “Celebrate the Movies in All of Us,” was devised by Academy Award co-producers, Brian Grazer and Don Mischer, and Tom Sherak, the reigning president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The 84 black-and-white ads (yes, 84!) are currently plastered all over digital billboards in Los Angeles and Times Square as well as on YouTube and Oscar.com to remind audiences, per Grazer, that with the popularity of video-on-demand, satellite and cable TV, etc., they shouldn’t forget “the communal experience of shared laughter and emotion that people experience in a theater.”

Sure, that’s fine. I agree with Mr. Grazer here since I much prefer screening films in a darkened theater (with stadium seating) than on my six-year-old couch at home. But as I tweeted last week, something about this campaign bugs me: namely, it’s not the Oscars that showed us how to do these things; it’s the filmmakers, cinematographers, screenwriters, costume and set designers, actors, sound technicians, etc., many of whom (at one time at least) functioned quite independently from The Academy. Moreover, as some of my colleagues have pointed out on various social media, some of the ads’ captions are just downright idiotic. Perhaps the worst offender is this one on Star Wars:

We showed you how to be a family...by cutting off our son's arm!

Now before you get all Oh, no, she didn’t on me, I’m fully aware that motion pictures and the Academy Awards are not mutually exclusive and, moreover, that the latter depends on the former for its existence. But it doesn’t necessarily work the other way around as the ad campaign implies. Take the spot below with Gene Kelly: “We showed you how to sing…” Well, no you didn’t. Since the Academy is an “honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures,” it did not show us how to sing. Yes, Academy, some of your now-6,000 members demonstrated how to sing in the rain, kiss sexily, and (ugh) love their families, but many of them did this before they associated with your ass. You see, membership in the AMPAS is by invitation or the result of an Oscar nomination. And in some cases, one can have a friend write a letter on one’s behalf: “Mr. Sherak, in case you missed it, Channing Tatum was totally awesome in The Vow (2012). Please reserve him a place in our fine organization. Cordially, Martin Scorsese.”

Oscars, you did no such thing.

Before I get worked up even more, let me give you a quick history of the Academy Awards, so you can see where I’m coming from… (Or if you don’t wanna read the next couple of paragraphs, see this Animatic Press cartoon, which effectively sums up what I’m recounting.)

AMPAS/Oscars 101

In the late 1920s, MGM bigwig Louis B. Mayer got all antsy when studio construction unions began forming in Hollywood. You see, with these guilds came expensive labor agreements, which were proving cost-prohibitive for the film studio. In short, dude wasn’t making a profit because he was shucking out all his money to unions. Also, dude was evidently pissed off because he wanted MGM set designers to build his Santa Monica beach house [pic] and now, because of such contracts, his “outside project” would be tres expensive. As a result, Mayer and a couple of buddies created the AMPAS. In effect, this organization would hopefully stave off any more unionization efforts in Hollywood. Shortly after this meeting, Mayer convened with thirty-six actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers in a fancy-pants hotel and told them that if they signed on as “Academy members,” working conditions would improve and they’d be a part of an elite organization. Not wanting to miss out on such an opportunity, the Hollywood folks — including new president Douglas Fairbanks and the only female, Mary Pickford — signed on.

We showed you how to recycle Pocahontas!

The doling out of Awards, which we now celebrate with gusto, were actually an afterthought of this newly organized union. Again, while many industry folk committed to the AMPAS, they were seeing few events planned to legitimize them or showcase Hollywood’s talent. Enter the first awards ceremony in 1929, honoring films released from August 1, 1927 through July 31, 1928. In the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 250 well-dressed people dined on fish and chicken while Douglas Fairbanks made a speech and divvied out golden statues to his colleagues. The event was apparently a rather quiet one, virtually free of the media.

So we know that a nervous/pissed Louis B. Mayer initially created the AMPAS to curb union formations in Hollywood and to exert more control over his chattel, I mean, employees. But what about the awards ceremony? Was it established for an underhanded purpose as well? No, surely not in Hollywoodland! Well, yeah, it was. In Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, Scott Eyman quotes a rather smug-sounding Mayer on the Oscars:

I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them. [...] If I got them cups and awards they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Award was created.

Ah, Hollywood, you never fail me with your stories.

Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Oscar!

The Problem(s) with This Campaign

Speaking of stories, let’s get back to the Academy’s 2012 ad campaign and all those narratives it has supposedly conveyed to us over the years. Again, what bothers me here are not so much the (dumb) captions but that the organization claims and promotes these works/performances as its own, as if it had a legitimate hand in making The Shining or Avatar or Do the Right Thing. This discrepancy should be especially obvious in the case of Spike Lee, who although he just tweeted otherwise (yes, HE TWEETED ME) surely can’t be too impressed with the poster below that claims not he but the Oscars “showed audiences how to make a change.”

It’s no secret that Lee, an Academy member, occasionally throws harsh words at mainstream Hollywood and the AMPAS. For example, in 1998 he called out the Academy for its lack of black nominations and failure to recruit more diverse members. In 2004, he admitted to voting for the annual awards “with a grain of salt,” further explaining that it can be downright “paralyzing” to give “an organization power to validate your work of art.” To him, both Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing were “bigger than the awards.” Finally, even as recently as 2011, Lee took on the Academy again, claiming they just do not matter:

In 1989, Do the Right Thing was not even nominated. What film won best picture in 1989? Driving Miss Mother F*cking Daisy! That’s why [Oscars] don’t matter. Because 20 years later, who’s watching Driving Miss Daisy? [...] There are many times in history where the best work does not get awarded. And I’m not even talking about my own work. So that’s why [the Oscars] don’t matter.

So when I see the shot below of Mookie in his Dodgers jersey or above of Gene Kelly on a lamppost positioned alongside such silly captions and that gold Oscar statuette, I can only shake my head because I see that this campaign — accurately labeled as “desperate, embarrassingly self-aggrandizing, rushed, and uninspired” by some perceptive readers over at Slash Film — is merely echoing reasons the AMPAS and the Academy Awards were formed in the first place: fear and frugality, but moreover, an attempt to maintain relevancy and control.

Do the right thing, Academy, do the right thing. Fix these stupid ads.

NOTE: My beef here is not with the AMPAS or the Oscars as a whole. After all, the organization’s devotion to research and film preservation as well as its outreach is outstanding and arguably unparalleled. This ad campaign, on the other hand, not so much. And, yes, I will be watching (as well as live-tweeting) the 2012 Oscars as I’ve done since I was about 10 years old. Join me and a bunch of other snarky academics/film-fans at @kellimarshall if you want.

Finally, Overthinking It offers its take on this Oscar campaign. Here’s a taste…

Any of you have the balls?

The main reason why most film and TV musicals are backstagers is simple: it provides a ready-made excuse for people to sing. Just like a movie such as 42nd Street, Smash is a musical where most of the original songs (by the Hairspray team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) are performed either as part of the show within a show, or as fantasy sequences where the characters imagine themselves performing. “I always think of backstage musicals as musicals for people who don’t have the balls to make a musical,” says classic film historian Scott Eyman (author of Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille).

– excerpt from MacClean‘s on NBC’s Smash

Postscript: If backstage musicals are “for people who don’t have the balls to make a musical,” then those folks in the Freed Unit (as well as my man, Gene Kelly) were packin’. (Also, here’s me on NBC’s Smash.)

]]> http://www.kellimarshall.net/film/backstage-musicals/feed/ 0 http://www.kellimarshall.net/film/rip-kelly/ http://www.kellimarshall.net/film/rip-kelly/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:54 +0000 Kelli http://www.kellimarshall.net/?p=17785

Sixteen years ago today, the world lost one of Hollywood’s greatest entertainers, dancers, choreographers, innovators, cinematographers, and genuine stars. What follows is a brief tribute to Gene Kelly including an explanation of his death and the industry’s response(s) thereafter.

In July 1994, Gene Kelly suffered the first of two strokes. Although doctors at UCLA’s Medical Center labeled it “mild,” the stroke kept him in the hospital for nearly seven weeks. Kelly suffered another, much smaller stroke in Feburary 1995. “He was neurologically stable, aware, and conversational,” the Associated Press reported the following day. But sadly, Gene would never fully recover from this one. He died in his sleep on Friday, February 2, 1996.

While Gene Kelly’s death is sad in itself — in that such an energetic man/body was overtaken by such a debilitating condition — it is also fraught with controversy, at least according to Kelly’s first wife, Betsy Blair. For example, in the epilogue of her memoir (about which I’ve written at length here), Blair recalls that a few hours after Gene died, his third wife, Patricia Ward Kelly, phoned Kelly’s children (Bridget, Tim, and Kerry) to discourage them from traveling to Los Angeles; after all, at this point, there was nothing they could do. But the children insisted and flew to California to pay their respects to their father and to visit their childhood home on Rodeo Drive once more.

As Blair tells it, Kelly’s adult children arrived to a somber house, “no friends, no food, no tears, and no embraces. They were given a tour of the flowers from famous people as if they were strangers” (6-7). Moreover, since Kelly’s widow had Gene’s body cremated that morning (apparently a rather fast turnaround), the children never got to say goodbye. From Blair: “Kerry later told me they all felt as if ‘she threw him away — as if he were garbage to be incinerated and thrown away. There aren’t even any ashes’” (6-7). I do not know Patricia Ward Kelly’s side of this story.

But let’s move on to a (somewhat) happier note. Many tributes were put together during the days and week following Gene Kelly’s death. For instance, People published this lengthy photo-heavy tribute [PDF] and The New York Times, this one, which applauded all of the “inventive techniques that enabled Gene Kelly to create unusual and imaginative dance routines.” Similarly, The Independent remembered the many hats Gene wore: “As director and choreographer, dancer and singer, acrobat and actor, Gene Kelly was one of the most vital and indispensable figures in the history of the American film musical.” Finally, Time honored Kelly with their column, “White Socks and Loafers.” Here’s my favorite excerpt as well as the “I Got Rhythm” number that’s mentioned:

For all the effort he and directors like Vincente Minnelli put into balletomanic spectaculars like the 20 minutes that conclude An American in Paris, it is the sweet simple things like “I Got Rhythm” — just Kelly, some cute kids, a cobblestone street on Montmartre, a catchy little Gershwin tune — that lived most affectingly in memory. But this, too, is true: we could not have had the one without the other. Together the complexity of his ambitions and the underlying innocence of his spirit constitute the inextricable weave of this dear man’s singularity.

As well, news stations all over the globe marked Kelly’s death with tributes. Embedded below is one from Headline News as well as another from The 68th Annual Academy Awards, featuring tap-dancer Savion Glover. Finally, on the night of his death, the lights of Broadway were dimmed in his honor. Rest in peace, Eugene Curran Kelly.

* This column was originally written for Gene Kelly Fans: The Basics (a good starter series if you want to learn more about the entertainer). And if your day needs even more Gene (and whose doesn’t?), I’ve plenty more posts on him here.

According to the pamphlet and our tour guide, the Clarke House (right) is “the oldest surviving domestic structure in Chicago” (fancy way of saying “oldest house around these here parts”). Built in 1836 before Chicago was even a city, the Clarke House belonged to Henry and Caroline Clarke and their six or seven children (the reading material says they had six; the tour guide claims seven). The supposedly middle-class home is Greek Revival (does that three-story structure look middle-class to you?), a style popular with young American families from 1820 to 1860. So far, so good; the family fares well on trapping, hunting, and selling dairy products. But in 1849, a cholera epidemic hit Chicago, killing 678 people including poor ol’ Henry Clarke.

By 1872, the Clarke children were in charge of the property, which they ultimately sold to a Mr. John Chrimes, who hired folks to pick up the house and move it down the road away from the noise of the now-booming city. The Clarke House would change hands twice more: in 1941, when the Chrimes family sold it to the St. Paul Church of God in Christ, and in 1977, when the City of Chicago purchased it.

It’s this last move that is especially interesting, for in order to reposition the house where the Clarkes initially erected it (and where it sits now), the city had to lift it over the “L” tracks, which did not exist when the house was moved in the late 1800s. Parts of the roof were dismantled, and the house was picked up, transported to the “L,” and slowly jacked up 27 feet until it stood slightly above the tracks. At 12:01 AM on December 4, 1977, all train service halted, and the Clarke House was pushed over the “L.” There was a slight problem though: the equipment that would lower the house on the other side froze (December in the Midwest, y’all!). As a result, for two weeks the house sat alongside the subway.

Someone put some pants on that house!

All it's been through, that house deserves a two-week rest. Right there.

Gaudiness galore!

Visitors aren’t allowed to take pictures inside the house, so I snagged these from other websites. In the main living area is a double parlor with some ugly faux marble fireplaces (here’s your middle class). On the left side of the parlor, “gentlemen-callers would wait for the Clarke daughters and talk about sea shells.” Paaaar-tay! Next is a photo of a huge floral medallion. Decorative and functional, this thing covers the dirt and grime emitted by gas lighting. Better to repaint a 3-foot medallion than the entire ceiling, they thought. Finally, a piano also sits in the left side of the parlor. Maybe one of those fellas-in-waiting could play a jaunty tune before all of the seashell-talk kicked off…

The third level of the Clarke House featured at least 3 bedrooms, one of which displayed a child’s rope bed similar to the one at right. A mattress filled with goose feathers would likely be placed across the top. Then, an adult would tighten the ropes below so the bed wouldn’t sag. This is apparently where the phrase “Sleep tight” comes from.

As we walked around, we also learned that this bedroom level is the only one on which the family dropped their formal names (Mr. Clarke, Mrs. Clarke, Mother, Father) and called each other by their given names. “Sleep tight, John Boy!”

None of the furnishings in the Clarke House is original, which kinda sucks. A butter churn rests against a basement wall because the Clarkes “certainly would’ve churned their own butter.” The same goes for the candles, chamber pots, and paintings of Benjamin Franklin: none of these things belonged to the families; they’re placed there simply because that’s what other folks in the time period would’ve had. To be fair, some of the carpets and wallpaper have been recreated to match the original prints, so at least there’s that. But again, unlike other historical homes/buildings I’ve visited recently and in the past (e.g., Rutherford B. Hayes’s home, The Motown Museum, Louis Armstrong’s house, the Valentine Theater, Graceland), I didn’t feel a sense of the place as it would’ve been when either the Clarke or Chrimes families lived there. Oh well, since the structure did survive two fires, three moves, and two weeks hanging out on the “L” tracks, I guess I’ll give it a pass.

Check it out, and then go clear out your DVR.

]]> http://www.kellimarshall.net/film/31-days-oscar/feed/ 0 http://www.kellimarshall.net/film/unimpressive-cgi/ http://www.kellimarshall.net/film/unimpressive-cgi/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:00:19 +0000 Kelli http://www.kellimarshall.net/?p=17646

Don't fall, little fella.

The opening pre-title-card sequence in Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011) takes us through all the mechanisms of all the clocks in the colossal train station that Hugo, the boy who lives, orphaned, inside the clocks, maintains daily.  It twists and winds its way through in a way that I know that camera actually couldn’t, so I know I’m not watching an actual set and scene presented on celluloid but a CGI construction.  This is thoroughly unimpressive to me.  The more elaborate CGI shots get (this one was reminiscent of the pathways taken by the winding camera that opens Fight Club), the less impressed I am by them.

It’s like this: When I’m watching Broadway Danny Rose (1984), and Danny and Tina and Lou are walking along the hallway towards the camera as they discuss Lou’s career and just before they get to the camera, Lou announces he’s leaving Danny for another agent and Danny freezes right in front of the camera, that hits me hard.  It’s a great, emotional moment that hits the audience in the chest as squarely as it hits Danny.  Later, looking back on it, you can be impressed by how perfectly they timed their conversation with their approach and savor the fact that it was all about a vision that director and cinematographer had about how the scene would play out and look and then, by God, they rehearsed it, prepped it and did it.

With Hugo, CGI animators were given a frame presentation of how and where the “camera” (the monitor screen on the computer designing the scene) would be and began to busily draw and render and create the scene.   And the scene is quite elaborate, which is why, conversely, it is unimpressive. That walk in Broadway Danny Rose, that’s impressive!  It’s simple, not complicated.  It’s not a Rube Goldberg construction designed to wow us beyond belief but an elegant play between actors and camera that performs its task so beautifully and, seemingly, effortlessly, that we cannot help but be moved.  By contrast, at the end of the opening sequence in Hugo, when they finally get to him looking out the glass from behind the clockface and show the title, I thought, “Thank god that’s over.”

– Greg Ferrara, “Five Years, Five Pet Peeves, Five Reasons to Go On“

You set Gene Kelly Fans. What has the response to the site been?

You’ve put an immense amount of work into Gene Kelly Fans and met many people connected to Kelly in the course of your research. Any favourite stories you care to share?
First, thanks, but I don’t feel I’ve put “an immense amount of work into the site.” It always, always takes second-chair to my class preparation, teaching, and researching, so it doesn’t consistently get updated. Favorite stories? Hmm, here are three:

• On Twitter I met a former delivery guy who brought a basket of fruit to Gene Kelly while he was filming That’s Entertainment II (1976).
• Another woman contacted me via email to say she was on a TV special with Gene in the 1960s called Children’s Letters to God (1969); we’re hoping she writes a post for the site.
• But perhaps the most memorable contact is a guy from Los Angeles who wrote to me because he purchased one of Gene Kelly’s vests from an MGM wardrobe sale in the early ‘70s. Sewn into the back of the vest was an MGM tag with Kelly’s name and a six-digit number. None of us could figure out what film it was from, but it was almost definitely a vest that was paired with a tux. Ultimately, the owner contacted someone at Profiles in History, a Hollywood memorabilia dealer, who matched the production number to Singin’ in the Rain (1952). It was the vest Kelly wore under a black tux in the scene in which Jean Hagen’s character gets hit in the face with a pie (below).

When talking to people connected with Gene Kelly, did you discover anything surprising? Anything that changed your view or cemented your opinion of him?
Not really anything surprising. I have learned that even at age 80, Kelly still maintained his star persona of that all-American, proletariat performer: he wore a hat, khakis, and loafters; he disliked wearing tuxes and attending large events; he would rather be dining on hot dogs and beer than lobster and wine (he hated vegetables, particularly asparagus); and had a keen understanding of and love for children. These are all things we would’ve seen in his films, interviews, and in fan magazines.

Can you separate your enjoyment as a fan from your academic perception of his films?
I can, but sometimes it’s difficult. Separating the two was especially hard for me earlier this year as I was constructing an essay on two Volkswagen commercials that feature Gene Kelly. In one ad (found here), Kelly and Donald O’Connor dance in the backseat of a Volkswagen Jetta (right); in the other (found here), Kelly’s face is digitally “pasted” onto the bodies of three different break-dancers so that he’s “performing” steps and gestures that he did not while he was alive. In short, I do care for the ads. I think they’re unethical and poorly done. And as a fan, they make me unhappy with those who own the rights to his image. But I had to put aside these visceral reactions and explain, as an academic, why the commercials are problematic and why they didn’t work for many viewers out there (I was definitely not the only one who disliked them). Ultimately, I realized that while the two spots might succeed within the world of advertising awards and in the eyes of some viewers, they disappoint as homages to Gene Kelly and the classical film musical because they draw attention to their own artifice, something neither Kelly nor the genre would presume to do.

These are the final interview questions that didn’t make it into the BBC Radio 2 documentary on Gene Kelly. All of the previous questions/posts may be found here.

Gene Kelly’s appearance: the rug verses the scar. Why cover one and not the other?

You’ve written fairly extensively about Singin’ in the Rain (1952), but there’s one shot in particularly that you love, can you tell us what it is? And why does it affect you every time?
Yeah, sure. Oddly, it’s a random shot, not part of a musical number and not all that remarkable. It falls about 70 minutes into Singin in the Rain, after the title number. Debbie Reynolds’s character is dubbing the song “Would You?” for Lina Lamont, Donald O’Connor’s character is conducting a full orchestra. Kelly’s character, Don Lockwood, watches the performance. He leans his upper body against a baby grand piano and stares adoringly at Reynolds’s Kathy Selden. Although the shot lasts only 3 seconds or so, the lighting is lovely against Kelly’s olive complexion and the use of shallow focus separates him from the orchestra in the background. And as I write on my blog, “At this point, I don’t think of Kelly’s hairpiece or that less-than-sexy jacket he’s sporting. It’s just me and Gene, with the latter looking affectionately at ME in the manner he’s looking at Kathy.”

Sure, it sounds ridiculous — and sometimes I cannot believe I have an entire essay in the public sphere — devoted to this one shot from the film, but it’s what viewers do with stars and star images: we project our desires/interests onto them; we allow them to act out aspects of life that are important to us. This is why there are tons of people currently devoting Tumblrs, Facebook pages, and Twitter statuses to Ryan Gosling, the male star of the moment (try Feminist Ryan Gosling on Tumblr if you haven’t already). It just so happens that my interest, strangely enough, lies in the qualities of a song-and-dance man who’s been dead for 15 years.

What’s your favourite Gene Kelly number?
Probably the “Broadway Melody number” from Singin’ in the Rain, specifically that section in which Cyd Charisse wears the sequined green flapper dress. I’ve a colleague who cannot stand “Broadway Melody” because, as he says every time we discuss it, the number completely stops the narrative momentum. I cannot disagree with that statement as the number is barely integrated into the film, like by 3 sentences. But I find that all that vivid color, the way Cyd Charisse’s femme fatale character toys with Kelly’s, the force with which he eventually pulls her to him, and all the sexiness that follows supersede the integration issue. For me anyway.

Musicals have changed since Gene Kelly’s day; it’s hard to think of Gene in Rocky Horror stilettos, for example. Could a Gene Kelly musical be successful today?
Ah, but I’d love to see that, Gene doing the Time Warp! Could one be released successfully today? No, I don’t think so; they’re too chaste. Well, they appear too chaste to the casual viewer even though some of the routines are highly erotic. I think, for instance, of Kelly and Cyd Charisse in “Broadway Melody” and the last section of the American in Paris (1951) ballet with all that phallic smoke shooting into the air and the way Kelly and Leslie Caron drape themselves all over each other and those unsuspecting statues. In other words, several of these dances symbolize foreplay and sex. When Hollywood’s censorship guidelines, which had banned any and all displays of sex, began to unravel in the late 1950s, films no longer needed to disguise the act in dance numbers — or by showing an erect tower like in Casablanca or a train entering a tunnel like in Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. They could show explicit representations. Well, if one convention of the dual-focus film musical — as Gene Kelly knew it anyway — was to disguise heterosexual unions within song-and-dance routines, then what’s left?

These are four more interview questions that didn’t make it into the BBC Radio 2 documentary on Gene Kelly. Previous questions/posts may be found here.

What place do song-and-dance men (like Gene Kelly) hold in cinema history?

Around 1932, Busby Berkeley and his showgirl-kaleidoscopes came onto the scene to wow audiences, and shortly thereafter, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were paired in their first musical, Flying Down to Rio (1933). Then, in the 1940s, the Freed unit — under the guidance of MGM producer Arthur Freed (far right) — exploded with musical stars like Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Donald O’Connor, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse, Frank Sinatra, Jane Powell, Lena Horne, etc.

But such triple threats don’t hold that much of a place in current cinema. In fact, that is one of the biggest complaints I see from musical fans on social sites like Twitter and Tumblr: “Where are the Gene Kellys and Fred Astaires nowadays?,” they ask. And “Why can’t Hollywood come up with anyone like Gene Kelly?”

Gene Kelly’s masculine style — can you sum it up? Did it exist before? Does it exist today?
Most fans and scholars sum up his style as athletic, which is a word Kelly would most certainly approve of (see, for example, Dancing: A Man’s Game). I’ve also read words like masculine, self-confident, energetic, and eternally cocky to describe his style. But Kelly himself describes it as “hybrid” and says that he’s “borrowed from modern dance, classical, tap, and jitterbug.” Similarly, those trained in the art describe his style as “jazz dance” or “full-bodied,” mimicking techniques of African American dancers like the Nicholas brothers for example (above), dancing with a loose torso, lowered center of gravity, strong hoofing style, and a weighted use of the floor (Janice LaPointe-Crump).

However they’re described, Gene Kelly’s numbers, while traditionally masculine, also stand out from others’. Specifically, Kelly is not generally remembered for his dances with women — rather, he dances frequently with

• other men (“Moses Supposes,” “On the Town”)
• children (An American in Paris)
• himself (just pick a film…)
• animated mice (Anchors Aweigh)
• inanimate objects (Thousands Cheer)

One film musical scholar labels Kelly’s atypical onscreen activity “showing off” or “clowning” as opposed to the more characteristic “love-making,” i.e., when heterosexual partners like Astaire/Rogers for example, use musical numbers to symbolize a sexual activity (Rick Altman).

Talk about some of the ground-breaking routines. Did they change how people’s view of dance in the movies?
Well, Kelly’s “alter-ego number” from Cover Girl (1944), embedded below, definitely changed the view of MGM bigwig, Louis B. Mayer.

In the early ‘40s, MGM loaned out Kelly to Columbia Pictures for Cover Girl, co-starring Rita Hayworth. It was for this film that he and his partner, Stanley Donen, created the “alter-ego” number in which Kelly’s character fights and then dances with himself onscreen (two Gene Kellys dancing onscreen simultaneously, no CGI!). Although he’d done five movies prior, Cover Girl made him a star. After this, MGM began to bank on Kelly (as well as Donen), and he was never loaned out again, which is sad when you think about how good he would have been in the film versions of Guys and Dolls (Goldwyn Pictures) and Pal Joey (Columbia), the latter of which is the Broadway play that initially earned Kelly a ticket to Hollywood.

Another ground-breaking routine is from Anchors Aweigh (1945) in which Kelly’s character, a sailor, dances with Jerry the Mouse (he wanted Mickey Mouse, but Walt Disney wouldn’t agree). This is the first film musical to mix animation and live-action. Kelly repeated this technique in his experimental dance film, Invitation to the Dance (1956) in which he dances alongside animated sailors and wraps himself up in a giant animated cobra.

Kelly’s third ground-breaking achievement is the opening of On the Town (1949), the first musical number to be shot on-location. The plot: three sailors are on a day of shore leave in New York City; they want to embark on some fun and romance before their 24 hours are up. Kelly apparently fought Louis B. Mayer tooth and nail for the on-location shoot as the studio mogul did not want to send the cast and crew to from Los Angeles to NYC. Eventually, however, Mayer gave in and granted everyone involved five days in the city. Reportedly, after he ran the cut of the NYC numbers, the film’s producer, Arthur Freed, remarked to Kelly, “they were the greatest and most inspiring works I have seen since I have been making moving pictures.” Enough said.

These are three more interview questions that didn’t make it into the BBC Radio 2 documentary on Gene Kelly. Previous questions/posts may be found here.

I did. I was in the second year of my PhD program, studying Shakespeare actually, and on a whim signed up for a class on the American film musical. In my mind, this course was strictly an Arts elective, not something I thought I’d pursue later in life. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always loved musicals; I grew up watching The Sound of Music (1965), Annie (1982), Grease (1978), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), even that musical version of Popeye (1980) with Robin Williams. I just never thought they’d be something I could earn a living studying.

The first film our class watched that semester was Singin’ in the Rain (1952). The instructor wanted to screen it for us at the onset since she’d refer to it several times over the next few months. At that point I was hooked. Fortunately, more Gene Kelly films were on the syllabus: we also watched The Pirate (1948), On the Town (1949) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955).

Do you teach your students about Gene Kelly’s work?
Much to some of their chagrin, yes. Unfortunately, the way my recent classes have been set up — screenings and lectures are combined in one three-hour block of time — we haven’t had much time to discuss Gene Kelly outside of his performance in Singin in the Rain. I do, however, post related videos and links on Twitter and Facebook for those who want more info. And I’m happy to report that I’ve even “converted” a few students, some of whom purchased three or four Gene Kelly movies on DVD after our lecture on the film musical.

How do you rate Gene Kelly as an actor (compared to his dancing)?
I’ll admit that in many scenes he’s a ham. I’ll never forget reading an essay in my PhD program that described his smile as a “Cheshire-cat grin,” an obvious jibe at his exaggerated feature. Kelly also widens his eyes too much on occasion, and sometimes he gesticulates as though he’s onstage rather than onscreen.

But other times, his acting can be subtle. I think of the end of Summer Stock (1950) when Gene’s character has been eavesdropping on Judy Garland’s as she sings “Friendly Star.” He sits in a rocking chair, completely motionless with all of his features relaxed, convincingly playing someone who’s been rejected in love.

If you haven’t figured it out already, these are three more of my interview questions that didn’t make it into the BBC Radio 2 documentary on Gene Kelly. The entire series may be found here.

Is Gene Kelly still a prominent figure in American film?

If you mean within the study of film history, definitely. In fact, in some of my classes, I find it hard to discuss cinema of the ‘40s and ‘50s without referencing Gene Kelly and his creative partner, Stanley Donen, not to mention their many contributions to cinematic dance. For example, rather than creating a number purely for visual spectacle as Busby Berkeley did with his geometric patterns made up of women’s bodies (something Gene found “unacceptable”), he and Donen choreographed dances with three specific purposes in mind. Let me explain by using the title number from Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

First, they choreographed dances to fit the frame and movements of the camera. For example, when Kelly/Lockwood closes his umbrella, not caring if he gets wet, the camera closes in on him. The same thing happens when he sings “Come on with the rain / I’ve a smile on my face.” He opens his arms wide, inviting both the rain and the camera (right). But most noticeably, toward the end of the number, when the music climaxes and Kelly/Lockwood twirls faster in the rain with wide steps, the camera simultaneously cranes wider and upward, fusing both camera and dance.

A second goal for Kelly and Donen as they created dance numbers was to advance the film’s narrative and characters in everyday situations. For instance, “Singin’ in the Rain” takes place after Gene’s character walks Debbie Reynolds’s character to her door; they’ve just come up with the idea to turn their failing talking picture into a successful musical. One dance scholar notes the entire time Kelly splashes about, Reynolds’s character is “always in our imagination [because] the dance sets a vision for how Kathy and Don will shape their lives coequally” (Janice LaPointe-Crump). In other words, the number expounds upon the situation that happens directly before and after it, making it an integral part of the film’s narrative structure.

And finally, a third objective of Kelly’s and Donen’s was to convey emotion through their dances. Most obviously, this number conveys the sheer joy of a new-found love and the excitement that creativity offers. Likewise, earlier in the film “Moses Supposes” exudes a sense of energy while the number “Good Morning” relays a sense of community. (I’ve further explained this concept noted by Richard Dyer in my essay on musical numbers that fall at the closing credits of recent films.)

Is Gene Kelly still prominent today? Well, he’s definitely still admired and referenced even though he’s been dead for 15 years. For instance, he’s mentioned regularly on shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance? as well as occasionally on Glee. As well, in the past four years alone, he’s starred in Family Guy, a sketch on the website Funny or Die, and at least three television commercials. Moreover, The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, Britain’s Got Talent, Usher (right), Jaime Cullum, and Mint Royale recently paid homage to him and Singin’ in the Rain. And regarding the mark of Kelly and Donen, we need only look to the camerawork on Dancing with the Stars, which becomes part of the choreography. And perhaps most obvious, your station is compiling this program, so, yeah, I’d say he’s still important.

At the time of the interview I lived in Toledo, OH, so after much preparation and a little hand-wringing, I drove to WGTE, the local PBS affiliate and where I’d recorded this spot on Twitter in the Classroom a couple of years earlier. I was to interview over the phone with Elizabeth Ann Duffy, a lovely BBC Content Assistant based in Scotland. With the sound check in place and a few notes in hand, we were off and running. The two of us talked for an hour about Gene Kelly as well as his appearance, style of dance, acting skills, and ground-breaking routines. Among other things, we also covered how and when I first learned of the star, whether I incorporated his work in the classroom, if I could separate my enjoyment as a fan from my academic perspective, and why he’s still a prominent figure in American film.

As is often the case with interviews, very little actually makes it into the final product. That’s what happened here. My part in the hour-long broadcast came near the end and lasted about four minutes. So what to do with all the rest of the material, Duffy’s thoughtful questions and my six pages of notes? While my other recorded responses may be used for a subsequent documentary on Kelly, I’m hard-pressed to believe that all of them will, so I thought I’d put some of the information here, spread out over a few posts. Let’s begin with the section actually featured in the program.

Eight months later, I finally have the book in my hands. Lane is correct: it is a “swell read” with plenty of maps, never-before-seen photographs, and loads of information on the ins and outs of running a movie studio during its glory days. It’s a treasure trove for classical film lovers, and as one of my colleagues on Twitter confided, “I wish I could shrink and jump into the pages.” Consequently, I’d like to share a few tidbits from M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot here for two reasons: 1) for my own amusement and record; 2) to encourage classical Hollywood film fans to buy the book when they get a chance. (NOTE: All of this pertains to MGM’s Lot One; I haven’t made it to the sections on Lots Two and Three yet.)

• Along with Edgar Selwyn, Samuel Goldfish purchased the studio facilities in 1918. The studio would be an anagram of the two men’s last names: Goldwyn Pictures, a name Goldfish would ultimately adopt as his own, i.e., Samuel Goldwyn (17).
• Goldwyn’s six magnificent glass stages (for shooting silent pictures) would be demolished and then replaced by 30 concrete ones (for filming “talkies”).
• Irving Thalberg, Mayer’s supervisor of production, proposed to Norma Shearer “by displaying trays of engagement rings and asking her to pick one” (28). Not too shabby.
• Some of MGM’s Lot One structures (the East Gate, Scoring Stage, Little Red Schoolhouse) may be seen in Anchors Aweigh (1945), a Gene Kelly musical which I suppose I need to rewatch promptly (38, 67).
• The Dressing Room Building was called “the bordello” because it contained “open verandahs running along the front in which actors traversed in their dressing gowns to and from the bathrooms.” At least that’s how Myrna Loy remembers it (72).
• Jane Powell recalls her on-set schooling as “merely adequate” since the teacher “didn’t do much teaching” (77).
• Betty Danko, Margaret Hamilton‘s stunt double for The Wizard of Oz (1939), was injured on the third take of the “surrender Dorothy” skywriting sequence when her broomstick (i.e., a smoking pipe) exploded (85). Yikes!
• The Saucer Tank, a 5,250-square-foot iron bowl for shooting water sequences (think Esther Williams and Jaws), lasted on the lot until 2003, when it was replaced by a Coke machine (88). Sigh.
• MGM transported stars around the lots in limousines (96).
• Soundstage 6 was the tallest at 80 feet high; it’s the one with the 15-ton “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer” on the top (image below). Stage 6 is also where the first recorded fatality at MGM occurred; sadly, an electrician plummeted to his death when a lighting platform support broke loose (102-04).

That’s all for now. Some links for “further reading” follow the photos below.

Further Reading

• A preview of the book (pdf) and some excerpts/images from Santa Monica Press’s page.
• The official site for the book.
• Interview with one of the authors.

Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963)

There are several reasons readers should familiarize themselves with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (also known as “The Negro Is Your Brother”). First and most significantly, it was written during “a critical turning point in the struggle for African American civil rights” and is, therefore, generally considered “the most important written document of the modern civil rights movement and a classic text on civil disobedience” (Milestone Documents). But the letter is also a brilliant example of the art of persuasion as it masterfully analyzes its dual audience: the eight clergymen who reacted to King’s nonviolent activities, and King’s fellow demonstrators. And like all well-crafted persuasive writing, it employs all the rhetorical methods of appeal — the appeal to reason, character, emotion, and style (Aims of Argument 116-140).

I’ll address briefly here how a portion of King’s letter appeals to his audience via style, or those choices a writer makes at the level of words, phrases, and sentences. Take this passage, for example.

We have waited for more that 340 years for our constitutional and Godgiven rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored” when your first name becomes “Nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

First, along with creating in the readers a sense of outrage, King’s concrete examples, personal experiences, metaphors/similes, sharp contrasts/comparsions, and sentence rhythm paint a picture; they appeal to sight. For example, the jailed preacher contrasts the phrase jetlike speed, which with Africa was overcoming colonialism, with the phrase horse-and-buggy pace, the unfortunate rate at which America was attempting to do the same. See also stinging darts of segregation, clouds of inferiority, little mental sky, and the other phrases in blue above.

Second, even when read silently, King’s words here also possess sound, a variation of sentence length, a use of rhythmic patterns, and repetition for emphasis. Regarding the latter, see his use of the phrase when you. Through the repetition of these two words (marked in red above), the writer “piles up examples of racial discrimination” that he and the black community have experienced, driving home his point about the need for racial equality. King also makes use of parallelism in this portion of the letter, employing similar words phrases to reiterate a point: lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim (green above).

Finally, King’s fondness for alliteration is also evident here when he describes the police’s horrific actions: “curse, kick, and kill” (pink above). As the authors of Aims of Argument point out, the repetition of this hard K sound, “especially in words of one syllable, suggest the violence of the acts themselves.” So the the next time you read a piece of Martin Luther King Jr.’s writings — be it his “I Have a Dream” or “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” — I hope you’ll notice the clergyman’s/activist’s/rhetorician’s appeal to style (as well as his art of persuasion) alongside his many other monumental accomplishments for this country.

Further Reading

• Why the MLK Memorial Matters
• The Day MLK Died (images from Life magazine)
• How MLK Might’ve Used Social Media

While I’ve little affection for the movie Liar Liar (Tom Shadyac, 1997), I’ve always been tickled by its outtakes, particularly the one above, which derives from an exchange between the characters of Jim Carrey and Swoosie Kurtz. In the final cut, the two lawyers are at each others’ throats before a judge breaks them up. Carrey’s character begins:

Fletcher: Weight, 105. Yeah, in your bra!
Dana: Your Honor, I object!
Fletcher: You would!
Dana: BASTARD!
Fletcher: HAG!
Judge Stevens: QUIET! Overruled!

In the blooper, Kurtz replaces the word bastard with overactor, a decision that prompts huge laughs not only from Carrey, but also the unseen crew. And why should it not? Jim Carrey does overact, and everyone knows this. However, for the most part, his roles require it; see for example, In Living Color, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. In other words, Carrey’s “scenery chewing” and “camera mugging” and “hamming it up” are intentional, and within the diegesis of the film, such exaggeration (normally) works. The same arguably goes for the following performances.

Intentional Overacting

• John Huston in Chinatown (1974)
  
• Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979)
  
• Tom Hulce in Amadeus (1984)
• Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future (1984)
• Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987)
• Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused (1993)
  
• Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, and co. in the Harry Potter films (2001-11)
• Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
  
• Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
• Dean Norris in Breaking Bad (2008– )
  
• Carrie Preston in The Good Wife (2009– )

Each of these performances is relatively big, broad, and memorable — in a good way. For example, Tom Hulce’s giggly and over-the-top Mozart is a perfect foil to F. Murray Abraham’s gloomy and jealous Salieri. Incidentally, I haven’t seen Amadeus in probably 15 years, but I can still hear Hulce’s giddy laughter in my mind. Similarly, Dean Norris’s braggadocio plays well against Bryan Cranston’s more timid — to the public at least — Walter White. There are some screen performances, however, in which the overacting is unintentional and, therefore, unconvincing, embarrassing, and/or just downright grating.

Unintentional Overacting

• Mickey Rooney in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)
  
• Gene Kelly in Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949) and Viva Knievel! (1971) (yeah, I said it…)
• Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980)
  
• Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest (1981)
  
• Jack Nicholson in Witches of Eastwick (1987)
  
• Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon (1987)
  
• Renee Zellwegger in Cold Mountain (2003)
  
• Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood (2007) (Thanks, Jen!)
• Christian Bale in The Fighter (2010)
  
• Nicholas Cage and Al Pacino in virtually anything after 1992 (thanks, Noel!)

Ugh. In many of these films, I cannot wait for the actor/character to exit the frame. I must admit, however, that I’ve an affection for Dunaway’s Joan Crawford, and I debated putting her in this list. Nonetheless, I won’t show A Midsummer Night’s Dream in its entirety to my Shakespeare in Film students because of Rooney’s overplayed performance as Puck. The same goes for Duvall in The Shining. While I can tolerate Nicholson’s “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny” and all of the rest of his crazy antics, I find it much harder to sit through Duvall’s whining, screaming, and wide-eyed emoting. I much prefer her alongside Robin Williams in Popeye (1980). What, you’ve never seen it? Get thyself to Netflix stat.

There are also huge performances that theoretically fit in both categories. For example, I’m having a helluva time trying to place these folks/characterizations:

Straddling the Fence

• Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men (1992)
• Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (1992)
• Kenneth Branagh in Hamlet (1996)
• Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire (1996)
  
• John Malkovich in Con Air (1997) and In the Line of Fire (1993)

For the most part, these performances work for me, but I can see why they would not for other viewers. Sure, Branagh hams it up a bit too much in certain soliloquies and when he’s speaking to his mother (Julie Christie) and/or yelling at Ophelia (Kate Winslet), but much of the time his Hamlet is effective, daring even. I could watch his “To be or not to be” on a loop. Those mirrors! That dagger! That blonde mane! The same goes for Pacino in Scent of a Woman. Yes, in recent years Pacino has become a parody of himself and, as such, has been crowned king of the Overacting Hall of Fame, so I can see why some viewers would label his Lt. Colonel Frank Slade as “unintentional” scenery-chewing. But I find that all his hoo-hah’ing and barking in Scent of a Woman convincingly round out his blind, disgruntled, lonely, and emasculated veteran.

One recent screen performance, however, most certainly does not work for me, and although some of my colleagues respectfully disagree, I place it firmly in the “unintentional overacting” category: Jeremy Davies’ portrayal of Dickie Bennett in Justified.

Please, Raylan, Take Out Dickie Bennet

Friday night, the husband and I finished season 2 of FX’s western-inspired drama, Justified, this in preparation for season 3, which premieres tomorrow night (set your DVRs!). Overall, I enjoyed the season, especially Raylan Givens’s funeral duds (sweet Jesus, see below), Margo Martindale’s (award-winning) turn as volatile matriarch Mags Bennett, and Boyd Crowder’s crazy-ass hairdo (also below). Ohhhh yeah, I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for Boyd Crowder, his hair, his white teeth, and his love of language. But I cannot say that I enjoyed Davies’ guest spot on the show.

First, I’ve no problem with some of Davies’ contributions to the headstrong character: the limp, the trucker hat, the greasy beard/mustache, and the backwoods Kentucky accent. All of these things are credible. It’s his exaggerated gestures and all the flailing about that burden the performance for me (and one or two of my colleagues at least). As such, it’s easy for me to echo the Daily Beast‘s review of Christian Bale’s overhyped Dickie Eklund when I speak of Davies’ performance, which is “too distracting to be infused with emotional truth.” (Some spoilers ahead…maybe?)

I’ve been able to access online only a handful of scenes in which Davies’s Dickie Bennet is featured, virtually none of which testifies strongly to my issue with his performance. Consequently, I’m aware this argument might be difficult to uphold for those who’ve not seen the show. Still, the third scene featured in this compilation, in which Dickie has tied Raylan to a tree, hints at it some of the character’s excessive jumping around, pointing, and gesturing that I define as overacting. At least the following two scenes fare better.

In this first clip, Dickie (along with one of his ruffians) breaks into the house of Helen (Raylan’s aunt/stepmother) and Arlo (Raylan’s father). Again, there’s just a taste here of my problem with Davies’s performance overall. Specifically, check out the five seconds in which Dickie invites Helen into the kitchen, “Why dontcha just put down the piece (?) there and come on in; come on, make us some eggs or somethin, whaddya say?” His roundabout way of finger pointing, all that head-tilting, and eye-squinting are just too extreme for such an intimate scene.

In the second clip, Raylan holds Dickie at gunpoint. Obviously fearing for his life, Dickie responds to the US marshal unintelligibly throughout. WTF are you saying, Davies?? Note: the scene is pared down significantly here, so the character’s garbled dialogue isn’t nearly as annoying as it is when drawn out over 4-5 minutes. I understand that most people would be incomprehensible with a gun pointed at their head, myself included, so to some viewers, this individual performance may come across as realistic, justified even (ah, see what I did there?). However, when considered in the context of the entire season (this was episode 10 of 12), the indiscernible dialogue seems way overblown — and downright irritating.

This commenter understands where I’m coming from:

“I don’t like Jeremy Davies’ performances of the last few years not because he’s overacting and extravagant, but because they’re ugly performances — full of nervous tics and affectations that just look bad. Realism barely enters into it — it’s just a matter of him making it impossible for the audience to find any pleasure in his movements.”

Yes, full of tics and affections but lacking reality or pleasure, an analysis that nicely echoes theorist Siegfried Kracauer’s thoughts on the matter. In his book Theory of Film, Kracauer explains that when film critics call out an actor for overacting his/her part, “they wish to express the feeling that his/her acting is somehow, too purposeful, that it lacks the fringe of indeterminacy or indefiniteness which is characteristic of photography” (95). That’s it exactly; many of Davies’s performances in Justified are “too purposeful”: too much fidgeting, too many tics, and too distinct. And that is why I totally align with this viewer as well, who wonders about the gun-pointing scene above, “How Raylan kept from blasting a hole in Dickie Bennett’s (Jeremy Davies) head in the woods, I will never know.” Me neither, sir. Me neither.