We're Not Here To Start No Trouble, We're Just Here To Do The Hollywood Shuffle!! (Also never trust someone who still wears Jheri Curl)

This was a pretty funny film, but with most of the early "breaking out" films from African American writers and directors, there is a huge lesson meant to be learned, and being African-American myself, I saw a lot of the subtext that was aimed at me. A lot of the jokes, things said, and even situations I find myself familiar with. Maybe it’s supposed to be stereotypical so I can relate to it, or something like that. Anyway, the way that African-American actors and actresses were portrayed when in films was something that I was not really portrayed as anything positive. I’m not sure if I subconsciously shut this out, or if I was just clueless the entire time. But the thing with this movie is that the situation Robert Townsend is in is a stereotypical one.

He’s a 22-25 year old black male living with his mother, grandmother, and younger brother(with no father). He works a dead end job at a tiny hotdog stand where the people he works with give him no confidence of ever leaving. (Quick side note, that’s really how it is back home. If people aren’t for you, they’re against you. It’s sad, but it’s true. They’ll tell you to your face that you won’t amount to anything, and when you do, they’ll say that they’ve always believed in you. This movie’s subtext is amazing!) He has dreams of being an actor, but he is tired of having his skills eclipsed by the movie industry only wanting him to play silly and stereotypical roles. This reminds me a lot of the “rap, sell crack or play basketball” way that I have heard a lot about. I’m sure you the reader have heard of the only way a black man “making it” in life being to partake in one of these 3 things. It’s supposedly because the thoughts of our subconscious are skewed because this is the image of black men we see on TV. I see where this can be true, but not always. It’s not something that is forced on young black children, but it is definitely something that they see a lot, and can understand from a young age.

The section of the reading that particularly stuck out to me was the part that talked about self directed stereotypes, because that’s what I wanted to talk about in my response to this film. He mentions “I’m Gon’ Git You Sucka” too, which is another Keenan Ivory Wayans film that’s pretty hilarious, but there’s a lot going on with the subtext. “But what interests me most about these two films is their use of a similar rhetorical strategy: self-directed stereotypes. In a larger project, I ultimately want to consider the use of self-directed stereotypes by other groups, so I am now keen to learn what the different uses of this strategy mean when generated in two such similar films. In this instance, the differences in the deployment of the rhetorical strategy of self-directed stereotypes seem to have more to do with issues of class than of race, especially in terms of the audiences addressed by each film, and that must in turn affect the substance of a black film aesthetic.” I think that Townsend and Wayans understand that the African-American community needs to advance in terms of self respect, but these 2 do it by making us laugh at ourselves. They do it by showing us what the rest of the acting world expects of us. It works pretty well.

Platoon (Made me pretty sad)

This film was messed up. This film messed me up. Seriously. I was so mad watching it because I felt like I could have changed something, but there was nothing I could do. This is what the director intended, and I was blinded by it until we had a discussion. Charlie Sheen’s character is simply the viewing glass in which we are fixed too. We have no choice in the matter, and on top of that, we can barely do anything. Throughout the movie, Sheen goes from an all American middle class college dropout to a hardened war veteran who is really unsure if all of the events of the war was worth it. Those are the feeling I felt too. I wasn’t alive during this war, and I’m not too sure as to why it was started, but I just know that all of these people didn’t have to die for it. The viewer is the soldier that’s just there. You’re not really sure why you are there, and you discontinued a previous obligation for it, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re there with the gun in your hand.

During the movie, I felt myself getting angrier and angrier about everything that was going on, especially the village scene. After the village scene, I had that cold empty feeling you get after drinking a cold cup of water on a hot summer day. Where you can feel the cold moving slowly through your body. Maybe I wasn’t as mad anymore. Maybe I just had to accept what was happening. But this is what is was supposed to do. Too much in the movies that are produced about war do I find myself being sceptical about the actual situation. It just seems that they are made to be very farfetched. I haven’t seen Rambo II yet, but we’ve talked about it a lot in class. From what I heard, they pre package Rambo and throw him back into Vietnam? and have him go on a rampage and find his kidnapped friends. While these are things that actually happen, I’m sure it’s blown waaaaaaaay out of proportion.

The reading for this film was a very interesting one, and it had some comparisons to films that precede Platoon that deal with the same subject matter. It also reminded me that Oliver Stone, the director of this film, is a Vietnam War Veteran. He has been through all of this, and this is his exact vision of what happened in the war. Platoon was originally supposed to be Stone’s autobiography, but eventually got adapted into a screenplay which ended up on the big screen. I think that even though it’s not very direct, it’s still an autobiography. With slight dramatization, he showed the atrocities of war as they are meant to be shown. It was a really rough watch, but I enjoyed it. I learned a lot about the war.

Alienss: Newt's Revenge

Before I start, I have a question. Was Ripley really frozen for 50 something years? It was said in the dream, but I don’t know if she was dreaming of reality, or if her dream just wanted to tell her an abstract number to make her and the viewer more scared. I’m not even sure if someone can sleep for that long and look the same without suffering any sever muscle degradation. Also, her cat doesn’t appear to age either. Technology is incredible! I really have no clue. It’s the future.

Enough of this, let’s move on to my actual thoughts on the film, shall we?

This film was probably the film that ended with the most speculation out of all of the films we’ve watched this semester. I say this because the ending was such a weird one. It was what I guess you could call a double ending. The viewer thinks everything is all good, but something completely left happens, and it leaves the viewer in a state of shock, much like it did for me. All throughout the movie, the viewer expects to see a head on fight between a xenomorph, and Ripley. Her being the only survivor of the original trip, and waking up night after night with nightmares is only proof that she needs extreme closure to come to terms with the events of her previous trip. When it finally happens, she’s in a giant badass mech-suit and takes it on head to head. THAT is how you do it! There’s a lesson hidden here. If you wanna come to terms with something, you gotta fight it head on.

Another thing with this film was the discussion the class had about the Xenomorph mother and Ripley having an unseen discussion when Ripley and Newt stumble upon the hive. The class came to a general consensus that Ripley noticed that these were the children of something, and they just want to live their lives. it may mean that a few of her friends and family will get killed, but she can only retreat at this point because she does not want to harm them anymore. In the Xenomorph mother’s mind, she is thinking that she does not want any altercation to happen because it could put her offspring in danger. Her maternal instinct kicks in pretty heavy. She even calls back two grunts who were ready to take Ripley and Newt out at a seconds notice. I think this is exactly what happens. The eye contact (Do xenomorphs have eyes??) The body language. The 2 mother figures did not want to harm each other. They both had young to watch over. When Ripley snapped, I think that she believed she was living in her nightmare, and this was the only way to wake up. Her nightmares must have been her being in the xenomorph hive a lot.

As for the reading, I can agree with a lot of the point made. I believe that Ripley was akin to a female Rambo, but waaaaaaay better. Instead of fighting against idiot cops and hunters, she was fighting giant space aliens with whip like tails and acid for blood. The fact that she actively goes into the bowels of the plant on her own shows that she’s tough too. The fact that she is acting on maternal instinct enhances this too. Not only is she acting by instinct, she is doing it better than any guy in the movie could have. Except for the one guy that survived, the other men seemed really incompetent and just plain stupid. Especially the “game over” guy. Ripley shows that anyone can do what they were assigned, and even do it better than expected. I came across this quote in the passage, and I believe it really encompasses the way I feel about what happened. “For Mulvey, the sexual difference demarcated by the active/passive split marks the cinematic gaze as a

masculine look that objectifies women as spectacles to be looked at. This masculine gaze of the camera forces female viewers to adopt either a narcissistic over identification with women on the screen or a masochistic male point of view. But the modern action heroine is far from passive. She fights, she shoots, she kills, she solves the mysteries, and she rescues herself and others from dangerous situations.” Pretty much, Ripley takes all of the bs that happens against women, rips it apart, and sets new ground rules for the way women are meant to be portrayed.

I don't even like beer, Frank! (Blue Velvet)

Blue Velvet was such an interesting film, and I have to say I enjoyed it more than most films this semester. That’s not even a diss, I really liked all of these movies, but David Lynch is such a strange director. From the beginning of a David Lynch film, you can see him messing with you. The opening credits usually try to throw the viewer off and give them the wrong feel for the movie, so that when all the bad things start to happen, the viewer is forced to rethink that they previously thought about the film.

(I’m gonna ramble a bit about Lynch) The psycho-sexual cinematography and situations that he shows are always so weird, but I end up loving them. Well, not the situations in specific, but the way they are shown. When it comes to comfort, I think Lynch expects us to leave the film in a shaken manner. I mean, when Seth and I left, we jammed about how weird the movie was, but I couldn’t shake the fact that this is how David Lynch makes movies. He’s an auteur. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines auteur as, “an artist (as a musician or writer) whose style and practice are distinctive” and looking at Lynch’s work, he is most definitely a distinctive director.In one of my other classes, Film Theory and Criticism, we watched a David Lynch film by the name of  Mulholland Drive, and that movie is even worse when it comes to the psycho-sexual and mind numbing images. This is Lynch’s style though, and this is what makes him an excellent film maker to apply the auteur label to.

I don’t even really think about the main character when I think of this movie. I don’t even remember his name, but I do remember that he was a strange and oddly American man, and this is what the reading talks about, or at least, what I’m getting from the reading. Jeffrey (Looked it up) finding the ear ruined his drive to become a regular citizen in America, and took him away from his school path. Do they even mention school again in the movie? Was he supposed to be on a slight break? Not sure, please explain when you comment. Maybe this is a post modern approach to the classic american dream. Lynch might be saying that no one can really follow this dream, because something will get in the way. Maybe, Frank was living the post modern american dream. Who knows?