In addition to my first post on the New Aesthetic, I would like to add Borenstein’s definition to the list and to provide a few examples that I find to be particularly interesting.
Greg Borenstein, in “What It’s like to be a 21st Century Thing,” [1] argues that the “New Aesthetic is not simply an aesthetic fetish of the texture of the images, but an inquiry into the objects that make them. It’s an attempt to imagine the inner lives of the native objects of the 21st Century and to visualise how they imagine us.”
In relation to how machines imagine us, I came across some cool videos while researching that offer an insight into this alternative perception of reality through the lens of technology.
For Borenstein, the New Aesthetician’s goal is to amplify “the particular frequency of ‘black noise’ these New Things emit.” Tim Arnall attempts to achieve this, as can be seen from the videos below.
Edit:
Having said that, when watching the video of how a robot sees us, I can’t help but question: “What is new about this?” and “Where have I seen this before (many years ago)?”. Viewing how a robot views us actually reminded me of two of my favourite films: Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Predator (1987). As the release dates of these films show, this concept of machine-perception of reality has already been seen and is perhaps rather outdated.
Maybe Damien Walter is correct after all in saying there is nothing new about the New Aesthetic other than the fact that the technological tools we use have become deeply embedded in our daily lives.
Clarence Brown’s film Intruder in the Dust is a fantastic rendition of William Faulkner’s novel of the same title. Juano Hernandez delivers a powerful performance as Lucas Beauchamp. In my opinion, I think the film’s spotlight is centered on Lucas instead of Chick from Hernandez’s stand alone performance. This is a significant difference from the novel because in the film the world we perceive is not mediated through Chick’s dominating, narratorial consciousness. From novel to film, the focal emphasis has shifted from a white to a black racial perspective.
Chick Mallison is played by Claude Jarman Jr. Even though Jarman is a young actor and his acting skills may not have developed fully at the time, his performance of Chick is weak. At times it appears as though he is uncertain if he is on the correct filming set, which is a harsh criticism but honest nonetheless. What adds insult to injury is the outperforming of a white character by a black character. Hernandez’s Puerto Rican ethnicity, however, makes this a little less hard to swallow for the white audience. If he was an African American actor residing in the US then public reactions to the film-especially in the South because Southerns were apprehensive about having a film about lynching made on location-may have taken a turn for the worst. This is one of the many hints in the film of the race relations in the then current sociopolitical context of the American South.
Another example of the race relations that leaks through in the adaptation from novel to film is evident from Elzie Emanuel’s performance of Aleck Sander. In the novel, Faulkner depicts Aleck Sander as possessing practical intelligence, which is apparent from his closeness to nature, his ability to improvise when there is only one shovel present by using a plank of wood to dig with in the graveyard scene, his handling of the horse, Highboy, his ability to spot a mule coming towards them in the dark of night, and his knowledge of the presence of quicksand. Faulkner juxtaposes Aleck with Chick who posses intellectual intelligence. However, both characters compliment each other because the intelligence that one lacks is supplemented by the other. In this sense, they may be interpreted as alter-egos of each.
On the other hand, in the film, Elzie Emanuel was forced to perform Aleck Sander in the stereotypical manner of the comic, coon figure with bulging, bug eyes and dialogue that implies his dim-wittedness. Aleck’s give-and-take relationship with Chick in the novel becomes a give-and-give relationship in the film because of his subservient role as Chick’s black servant. This is apparent in the graveyard scene where Chick calls the shots and Aleck does what he is told in a passive, servile manner. Brown establishes the postion of Aleck’s social status in relation to Chick in the flashback sequence at the start of the film that recalls Chick’s African-American cultural experience at Lucas’s house after in fell into the creek. In this scene, Chick attempts to transform Lucas’s moral deed into a financial deed that is fulfilled by a monetary transaction when he offers Lucas money. Lucas refuses to subvert the decency of his hospitality by refusing to accept Chick’s money. Chick fails to realise the lesson-some deeds cannot be paid for- Lucas is trying to teach him. Chick retaliates by attempting to exercise his power over Lucas from his position in the racial hierarchy of the white hegemonic society of the South. Chick does this by dropping the coins he has offered Lucas. There is a close-up of Chick’s white hand as he drops the coins on the floor. The camera follows the trajectory of one of the rolling coins with a close up of it, which conveys the dramatic intensity of the moment. Lucas responds by demanding Aleck Sander to pick up the coins and to return them to Chick. It is in this shot, when Aleck is in a state of genuflection-a position of deep respect for a superior-that Chick’s superior status over Aleck becomes visually solidified in our memory.
The significance of the recurrent motif of hands in the film also reinforces Chick’s relationship to Aleck, which in many ways is a microcosmic depiction of America’s race relations. The close-up shot of Aleck’s black hand positioned above Chick’s as he places the money in to Chick’s hand suggests his aforementioned servile role and Aleck’s give-and-give relationship with Chick, but it may also be interpreted as suggesting the economy of slavery and black subjugation. The rise and development of the South may be attributed to slavery. Slave plantations were a capitalist enterprise, which were highly profitable. Owning slaves in the South was an advantageous strategy because slaves were used as field hands to pick cotton, the staple crop of the South and while cotton was not being harvested they were used to grow corn, which further supplemented their wealth. Therefore, the act of a black character putting money in the hand of a white character is reminiscent of the Antebellum South when slavery generated money.
In a similar vein, the hand motif is also indicative of Chick’s relationship to Lucas. In the second jail scene when Chick returns to Lucas’s cell to talk to Lucas alone, there is a close-up shot of Lucas’s black and Chick’s white hands clutching either side of the cell door. The rapid cross-cutting of the camera angles from inside and outside of the cell obscures one’s ability to differentiate between either one. This camera work implies the disintegration of the divisions between captivity and freedom and guilty and innocence. Therefore, despite being outside the cell, Lucas is imprisoned also because he is in a psychological prison constructed and imposed on him by the racist society he lives in.
Also the camera only displays certain parts of Lucas and Chick which implies that they can only see and understand each other to a certain extent. The cell door that divides them and disrupts their comprehension of each other could be interpreted as a physical representation of the social mores and codes preventing proper race relations.
Furthermore, Lucas’s prison does not only serve the purpose of incapacitation for societal protection. Instead, the prison cell protects him from societal retribution by means of lynching. This inversion of the main method of criminal punishment and justice suggests the perversion of justice in this society as innocent people are imprisoned to protect them from the guilty people who are free to orchestrate a lynch mob outside. Critics contend that the deflation of justice is conveyed at the start of the film from the flat tire of the sheriff’s car. This is evident in the film from the shot of Crawford Gowrie standing under the tree with a lit match in hand after Chick, Stevens and the Sheriff arrive at the prison. The cut to the inside of the prison establishes a juxtaposition between both. It is also apparent when the lynch mob has gathered outside the prison and Crawford approaches with a Jerry can of petrol in hand.
The stand-off scene between Crawford and Miss Habersham is wrath with a high level of dramatic intensity as the preceding camera shots focused on the Jerry can in Crawford’s hand and the trail of petroleum spilling from it as he approached the prison entrance. This trail of petrol that leads back to its source-the petrol pump-may be interpreted as the consequences of Crawford’s actions. In order to intimidate Miss Habersham, Crawford splashes petroleum at her feet, and strikes a match-a recurring action, which is visible in practically every shot of him in the film. The camera focuses on Crawford as he holds the lighting match in hand. If he ignites the petrol that would burn the prison and Miss Habersham then his actions would backfire on him, and the fire he ignited would burn back to its source, causing an uncontrollable chain reaction of events that would culminate in his own death by lynching for committing the unforgivable act of unlawfully killing an innocent, white woman. However, the fire of the match, which may be interpreted as Crawford’s masculinity or his source of power is extinguished by Miss Habersham.
Consequently, the climax of the film also differs significantly from the novel. The novel culminates with Crawford’s suicide, which has been interpreted by critics as an evasion of the law. The film, on the other hand, attempts to emphasize that justice prevails while the sub-text of the film suggests otherwise, as evident from the aforementioned, second jail scene. The filming of Crawford Gowrie in the backseat of the Sheriff’s car-the same position of Lucas Beauchamp at the start of the film- demonstrates not only the cyclical structure of the film, but also the cyclicality of the history of America’s race relations as society realizes that those who were thought to be innocent are guilty and vice versa.
The history of the representation of Irish-Americans in American cinema demonstrates a trajectory curve that mirrors their gradual assimilation (which American cinema partly contributed to) into American society. Contemporary depictions of Irish-Americans have come a long way from the stereotypical images of aggressive, alcoholic, working-class ‘Micks’, ‘Paddys’ or ‘Boy-Os’ of early American cinema, which were short-lived because of the influx of a new wave of immigrants into America who were deemed to be less ‘white’ than the Irish. As a result, the Irish were repositioned further up on the ‘white’ spectrum and were utilized as an exemplification of assimilation. Benshoff and Griffin observe that “the Irish were regarded as an ethnicity and a nationality, whereas they had previously been considered a race” (59).
In the 1930s, however, a few gangster films portrayed Irish-Americans in an anti-Irish light by depicting Irish-American criminality and their involvement in organized crime. This negative image was counter-balanced in some films by the inclusion of the image of the Irish-American law abiding citizen. Both these images are evident in The Public Enemy, with Tom Power’s policeman father and patriotic brother, and in The Departed with Costigan and Dignam who are the most law abiding despite their few deviations. This cop-criminal image of Irish ethnicity is also present in films like Gone Baby Gone(2007) and the most recent film, The Town(2010).
William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed(2007) are two examples of the way Irish ethnicity is represented simultaneously as both positive and negative on screen. As typical of the gangster genre, there is an abundance of violence in both films, which also demonstrate an interconnectivity between ethnicity and violence.
James Cagney wanted to transcend the stereotypical representations of the Irish-American by relocating that figure from the social stratum of the ghetto to the bourgeoise classes, which he achieves in ‘G’-Men (Smith qtd. in Barton 5). Cagney’s most memorable persona is that of the quasi-psychotic and unpredictably explosive gangster in The Public Enemy and White Heat.
Kevin Rockett claims that the success of The Public Enemy (1931) did for the Irish what Little Caesar(1930) did for the Italians (29). However, it also developed Cagney’s stardom with his performance of Tom Powers, the Prohibition era Chicago gangster. Despite the fact that following the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 Italian gangsters dominated Chicago’s underworld, there is an abundance of Irish ethnic references in the film. This comes across most powerfully from the importance of the matriarchy, familial loyalty and kinship in the Irish family system.
This is clearly established with the juxtaposition between Tom’s criminality and his brother Mike’s patriotism and abidance of the law. Tom disrupts family unity by engaging in criminality and disputing with his brother, Mike, over it. Rockett contends that the disruption of familial unity is solidified by the deliverance of Tom’s dead body to his mother, at the apogee of the film (29).
However, there is also an attempt at transcending ethnic identity in The Public Enemy. The suit is synonymous with the gangster image. In this film, like the majority of other gangster films, there is a scene where Tom goes to a tailor to get fitted for a suit. This scene conveys a numer of significant transformations. Tom’s acquisition of a suit, a symbol of wealth and civility, suggests he has ascended the social ladder from working-class irish immigrant, but he falsely attains this status by criminal means. Tom attempts to masquerade his authentic working-class, Irish identity by dressing in a suit, which could be interpreted as a denial of his Irish ethnic identity in order to pass as an upper-class American citizen. As can be seen from the film, his attempts at passing is a failure, which culminates in his death.
On the other hand, The Public Enemy‘s fixation with the mother figure is the opposite in The Departed. Colin Sullivan and Billy Costigan are limbo characters who are fixated with finding a father figure and satisfying their, what James Herzog calls in his book of the same title, ‘Father hunger’ (6). Sullivan’s and Costigan’s purgatorial status is also implied from the title of the film, which is taken from a Catholic prayer for the souls in purgatory. Their liminal status is a result of their ambiguous professions. Both Sullivan and Costigan switch between the identities of a cop and criminal. However, their liminality is also a result of their hyphenated, ethnic identities because they are both Irish and American, but neither fully one or the other. To fully achieve one identity is to deny the other because both cannot simultaneously coexist.
Sullivan is desparte to evade his Irish ethnic identity so that he can pass as a fully assimilated citizen of American society. This is suggested by his exclusion of photographs-visual signifiers of the history of his Irish ethnic identity-from his new, 7th floor apartment that is architecturally aligned with the golden globe of the State House. The position of Sullivan’s apartment in the structural stratification of the building symbolises his position in the social stratification of American society. He has risen from the Southie projects of his childhood upbringing to a position that overlooks society, which is also reflected by his profession in the Massachusetts State Police because as a detective his duty is to overlook society. Colin attempts to achieve complete severance from his ethnic roots in South Boston by cutting the last remaining sinew connecting him to it. Sullivan kills Costello-who is appropriately wearing a T-Shirt with ‘Irish’ written on it- to terminate his Irish ethnic past, but total eradication is only possible with his own death. The close up shot of the rat in line with the State house on the ledge of Sullivan’s apartment balcony suggests that a rat has simultaneously infiltrated the hierarchical social strata of American society and its law enforcement system.
In terms of a post-9/11 context, The Departed‘s reference to the absence of an appropriate father figure could be read not only psychologically, but also in political terms as suggesting the absence of an appropriate leader in the American patriarchy. During the aftermath of 9/11, George Bush was overly preoccupied with establishing ‘us-and-them’ binary oppositions in order to vindicate his ‘War on Terrorism’ and his attempt to take economic control of the rich oil resources of the Middle East.
The Departed‘s reference to the absence of a patriarchal figure in society, the ambiguity concerning patriotic loyalty, the blurring of the lines between good and evil, as suggested by the opposition of cop and criminal, could be perceived as a critical commentary on the post-9/11 historical context.
Consequently, both The Public Enemy and The Departed are prime examples of how Irish-American ethnicity is represented on screen in a positive and negative light by juxtaposing the Irish-American criminals against the Irish-American law-abiders and enforcers, which is another way for America to exemplifying the good and bad immigrant that has been portrayed since early American cinema in films like The Black Hand(1906).
Works Cited & Consulted
Barton, Ruth. ed. “Introduction.” Screening Irish-America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television Dublin: Irish Academic P, 2009. 1-14. Print.
Benshoff, Harry M. and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2004. Print.
Herzog, James. Father Hunger: Explorations with Adults and Children. New Jersey: Analytic P, 2001. Print.
Rockett, Kevin. “The Irish Migrant and Film.” Screening Irish-America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television Dublin: Irish Academic P, 2009. 17-44. Print.
“The longer we captivate someone and make them think about what they are seeing, the better chance we have of them understanding what it is we’re trying to say with the photography.” (Nighswander qtd. in Horton 223)
Figure 1: Kidnapping scene. The Black Hand (1906). 2011.
Early American films, photography and immigration from the Progressive era were the topics of discussion in today’s class. One of the silent films from what is known as the “primitive era” or “early cinema period” we examined is The Black Hand (1906). It is classed as the first gangster film and this is apparent from its titular connotations. The signing of the appellation “Black Hand” to a letter is associated with the Italian mafia’s means of communicating the significance of a threat, which will only conclude with death if requests are not fulfilled. The threat anxiety gangsters inflicted on society is symptomatic of a national xenophobia concerning the then-present mistrust of foreigners in the US. America’s treatment of white European immigrants in comparison to the treatment of blacks and Native Americans is a topic I am interested in because it exposes the racial inequalities of America’s race relations.
The film also differentiates between America’s perception of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigrant by juxtaposing the non-assimilated, gang affiliated criminal with the hard-working, partially assimilated, butcher.
The moral bifurcation of immigrants is also evident from Jacob Riis’s photography. Riis was one of the first photojournalists of America who later became known as “the great Emancipator of the slums” (qtd. in Quirke 561). Photography was the most important propagandist tool of the Progressive era because it could be utilised to reinforce social ideologies.
Figure 2: Jacob Riis’s “Bandits’ Roost” (1888). Web. 2011
The title of this photograph is “Bandit’s Roost” (1888) (see figure 2) which is the name of an alleyway in Manhattan’s Five Points neighbourhood, which is also the setting of the Scorsese’s film, Gangs of New York (2002).
The criminality of the immigrants is conveyed through their body language, the light and dark contrasts of the background and the weaponry in the foreground of the photograph. Riis is particularly interested in the concept of illumination, which conveys connotations of revelation and religion. His photography is illuminating their situation, while the photographic usage of light and its absence suggests the divine intervention he intends from social reformation.
There is also a sense of community apparent from the tight knit, proximity of the immigrants’ residency, which is sustained by the loyalty-at-all-costs ethos cementing their social unity. Martin Scorsese’s films emphasize the importance of group morality and intergroup loyalty in his microcosmic depiction of the mafia ethos.
Consequently, early American film and photography capture the social issues concerning immigrants, occupying America’s social consciousness.
Works Cited
Horton, Brian. Associated Press Guide to Photojournalism. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001. Print.
Quirke, Carol. “Picturing the Poor: Jacob Riis Reform Photography.” Reviews in American History 36.4 (2008): 557-565. Project Muse. Web. 05 Oct. 2010.
Paul O'Shea 