I had a difficult time choosing a single idea to address from this week's reading because there was so many interesting ideas and areas where the two schools of thought intersected. Ultimately I decided to go with a couple of Barry's points about what feminist critics do.

Barry stated that feminist critics "raise the question of whether men and women are 'essentially' different because of biology or are socially constructed as different". One of the feminist theories that I find most interesting is the idea that sex is a biological fact but that gender is performative and shaped by cultural norms, so that what we in America consider appropriate male or female behavior is shaped by our cultural expectations. Chosen is an action movie and action movies are designed to appeal to a male audience. Clive Owen is the stereotype of a male action star. He is tough, cool, and independent--clearly not swayed by any female influences. This is a genre made by men for men. Even in the few action films with a female lead the heroine is portrayed as being an exception to her gender. She is heroic because she acts like a man. Action films reaffirm the societal construct of male and female behaviors.

Of course Chosen is also a commercial and it's clearly trying to sell a product to a male audience by proclaiming this is what it means to be a man in a man's world. BMW is unconcerned about whether or not any women appear in the ad because in a patriarchal society media that highlights men and caters to men is the norm rather than the exception. The Bechdel Test is a simple rule used for judging female representation in media, the very existence of such a test makes a case for the limited presence that women have in media. Additionally, I would argue that societal misogyny makes it acceptable for women to like action movies-- see Timbre's example of female fans of the James Bond franchise-- while belittling any men who like media that is produced for a female demographic.

I was also interested in the idea that feminism criticism debates the idea of the death of the author and instead argues that "experience is central". I think that this has interesting applications for Chosen. Ang Lee is an Asian American male and in Chosen he's made a film that features Asians and men. This would seem to support the idea that experience is central in the creation of a text. Of course a look at his entire ouvre of work show's that he is capable of telling authentic stories about characters who are very much outside his personal experience but I do think it's interesting to question this idea of the role of experience in creating art. Is it possible for a white male to create a feminist film that accurately depicts female characters? Is it possible for a white film maker to create a story about African American characters? I'm not entirely sure that this was the point Barry was trying to make but I found the idea very interesting.

TIPRR 12

Of the chapter readings, I was most interested in this idea of écriture féminine: or the inherently female-oriented language. It was interesting that feminists saw male-oriented language as authoritative and controlling and felt the need to pit the female-oriented against it as rule-breaking and looser (the opposite rather than a complementary). I have to admit I had similar misgivings to Barry, “And if femininity is socially constructed then it must follow that it differs from one culture to another, so that such overarching generalizations about it are impossible.” It was not without some humor that I found myself laughing when the idea of a female-oriented language was analyzed by Kristeva who said essentially that female-oriented language is best shown in poetry because it kind of made the idea of prose a little out of reach of this language. But I did like reading Kristeva’s perspective on the same subject – I leave this subject alone for now because my analysis is long.

With my textual analysis, I have to give the following caveat: I intend to give this a classical Freudian analysis. Chosen is about the fears of homosexual encounters and the necessity of the woman in a male world. Now that I have said that you might be saying, “Huh?” I’ll try to explain.

In the beginning the main character pronounces his availability by the turning on of his lights as a boat comes to harbor. He has effectively introduced his willingness to receive and be alternately pursued. Following the docking of the boat he is introduced to the little box – a hollow object with a surprise inside – symbolic of female genitalia. He is quickly told as he goes to open it, “Wait. It’s for later.” This introduces a pause between the time of reception and the time of revealing the secrets within the woman. The car could be seen here having two meanings; first, the ambition of the main character, and second, the three (man, boy, and car) as male genitalia, thus expressing the latent manhood of the main character.

The boy is put into the backseat, where he is physically and metaphorically demonstrating that he is no longer in control of his life. As he and the boy– the boy being perhaps a symbol of the man’s own innocence – turn to leave, they see the lights of two cars turning on, thus revealing themselves and their intentions. From the passenger seats of both cars emerge unknown men. The symbol of three – the driver, the passenger and the car itself – reiterates the male genitalia. The initial interest is easily evaded as the BMW goes speeding past them only to run into yet another hiding car. What follows is a dance, symbolic of sexual intercourse, of the three cars but the dance is in the form of a chase, thus evoking a fear of homosexuality. The main character becomes trapped. There is penetration by the use of the rifle – a dangerously aggressive metaphor – and the main character’s escape by brute force.

There is a transition at this point in our story which follows by the acceptance of a home – a place where we should feel safe – and the introduction of a counterfeit monk (perhaps symbolizing our own religious faith and devotion). This monk receives the main character’s symbolic “innocence” (the child) and attempts to use a syringe (yet another symbolic form of sex) to inoculate the “innocence” with a pink/purple glowing material (purpose unknown but with obvious female connotations). The man returns (after seeing other monks tied up – three of them to be precise) and uses aggressive force to stop the kidnapper. Thus, the ordeal is completed, an important change symbolized in the main character’s life, he is finally able to go back to his car to find the box (the woman) sitting there, waiting for him. He finally opens the box (now that it is later) and finds a band-aid within – a symbol of healing. He is thereby healed on his ear – yet another possible symbol of being responsive and receptive – and finally conquers his own fears because of the woman. Of course, there is the Hulk image on the band-aid that perhaps could mean the woman holds something of innate manhood for the main character making him a “greater man” in the process. Also, it is not without irony, that the kidnapper wears cowboy boots, which leads to a future award-winning film by the director, “Brokeback Mountain,” that deals with issues of homosexuality – perhaps making this short film a dream of the director’s. In the end, the BMW commercial is a reiteration of the powerful machismo of heterosexual aggressiveness and the connection of the BMW to the sexual potency of the heterosexual male, but that potency is only applicable when he listens to women.

tiprr 12 Freudian Psychoanalytical Critique

The major goal of what psychoanalytical critics do is identify the conscious (or overt content) and unconscious (or covert) within the text.

Some of the overt content or conscious mind in the text, Chosen, is the coming together of two cultures, the dark calm mysterious hero vs. bad guys, the wisdom of the children, etc. These are elements and possible themes that the director, Ang Lee, wants the audience to leave the theatre or viewing considering.

Jacques Lacan’s theories are rooted in the work of Freud. Lacan helps us search to identify the covert or unconscious mind with the phrase “I am where I think not.”

We pay close attention to the unconscious because that is the meaning of the text. And we will understand this by the motives of the author and characters’ unconsciousness.

The unconscious mind of the text is the BMW itself. Although the vehicle is the sole purpose of the party funding the film, in my analysis of the text I find that the director is telling a story while using a car, not overtly telling the story of the BMW. The car is there because it must, but it does not tell the story. The hero, Driver, is saving the day and he never gives credence to the car as a hero or anything more than a device he controls. Driver uses the car to navigate around the bad guys, but the car is not even present when the day is really saved.

BMW wants their car and purpose to be covert, therefore, they hire a successful director to tell a story that will incorporate a vehicle, not tell the story of a BMW. The director is the author of the film and his story is not BMW specific, but the fact is that he did use the BMW.

Because the indestructible vehicle is the choice of the author and hero, then it will be my choice as well.

TIPRR 12-The One after Thanksgiving Break

WARNING: Too much turkey inhibits analytical abilities.



So...Psychoanalytic or Feminist Criticism, eh? While both address very interesting ideas, I think that for this week, I will focus on the feminist lens.

I think that the concept that I found to be the most intriguing in the reading is the idea that prose writing "is essentially a male instrument fashioned for male purposes" (121). With Virginia Woolf's statement "That is a man's sentence," it necessarily follows that there is a "woman's sentence." The ecriture feminine is obviously a realm of much conflict, but the idea that "men's writing" and "women's writing" differ seems kind of like a "duh" concept to me. It's in Kristeva's examination of the symbolic and the semiotic that some of those differences are made explicit.

So, how does all of this relate to Chosen? Well, after watching it again, all I have to say is this: apparently women don't need to buy cars. Or at least, they are not the target audience for this particular advertisement; there's not a single depiction of a woman in the film. In fact, one could argue that this particular brand of filmmaking is very NON-ecriture feminine; it screams "MANLY" in every way, from the male characters to the car chase to the cowboy boots that we have discussed extensively. There are guns, a (brief) fistfight, and most importantly, a rockin' vehicle, all things that appear extensively in films created by men, for men. Is this particular "language" accessible to females? Sure; all it takes is one glance into the theatre on opening night of the new Bond film to see that women can "get it" (though there could be some argument that the item that is the most accessible to women is Daniel Craig himself).

So, how about an ecriture feminine for film? Much like the elements discussed in the text, I would assume that they would include much more "poetic" filmmaking-longer shots with softer lighting, more romance, and less fighting. What would Chosen look like from this angle? I'm guessing it be more reminiscent of a Jane Austen adaptation rather than a Bond film.

Here's My Psycho Analysis

Okay everyone, I gave you at least a week to be the first to post, so no whining about how I said what you wanted to. Also, I hope that your respective Thanksgivings were very nice. I spent mine throwing up, which was just about as bad as it sounds.

Psychoanalysis is really interesting to me because I find myself simultaneously accepting and rejecting it. Lacanian psychoanalysis is of particular interest because it seems to me that without saying the words, he seems to support the idea of a "collective unconscious" in that the unconscious is tied to language, which is a shared and complete system shared by all people (or at least those who speak the language in question). So, there are systems at work that govern our own actions more than our conscious selves do, and that's crazy. I find it interesting that we can regard characters "as assemblages of signifiers clustering round a proper name" (108), which seems to relate directly to the ideas of metonymy and metaphor. So, while Lacanian psychoanalysis seems to disrupt or deconstruct many of our traditional notions of self-hood and consciousness, it still asserts that there is some meaning to be had in the world, and that reading texts correctly can uncover this meaning.

All this said, I thought for some reason that psychoanalytic criticism would somewhat easy. I started making a list of the things that the characters could possibly stand for:

The Hire: Western Culture
His Noble Steed: Products of capitalism
Mason Lee: Eastern Culture
Ignoble Steeds and associated drivers: Colonizers, perhaps? Oppressors? Power grabbers?
Wicked Monk of the East/West: Those who would exploit/expose their own culture for status among the Other.
The Box: The unconscious.

However, as I finished this list, I realized that it was just starting to sound like the already hashed out Postcolonial or Liberal Humanist reading I've already done, with the exception of the last element. I also remembered that psychoanalysis (this time of the Freudian type, but what's a good analysis without some hybridization?) privileges "the individual 'psycho drama' above the 'social drama' of class conflict" (101). So, with that in mind, here's take two of my attempt at psychoanalysis, treating the whole thing as an attempt to understand and uncover one's essential selfhood:

The Hire: The individual, lacking in understanding of self
The Chosen: The Other, at peace with the interaction between his conscious and unconscious
The not-as-good-as-Clive Owen-drivers: Distractions that function as screen memories for the hire.
Evil Monk: Another individual, living in denial.
The box: The unconscious itself

So, at the beginning of the film, the boy gives the hire a box and tells him not to open it--it's for later. The desire to understand what is inside the box--and hence, the boy's motivation in giving it to Clive Own--is the mystery that subtly drives the entire narrative. As viewers, we forget that we care about the box, but once it's opened we realize that perhaps a desire to understand what was in the box is what drove the hire to act as he did in preserving the boy. All the distractions along the way function as screen memories, making us forget the box. Perhaps Clive Owen's adept driving is simply his way of transferring his tension with the mystery of the box into physical action.

The end of the film, the opening of the box, could represent pushing away all distraction and allowing the individual to uncover the unconscious thought that has shaped the whole narrative. A hulk bandaid. The use of the Hulk itself suggests the fragmentation of self, the duality of our identities. It is only in accepting and acknowledging his unconscious that Clive Owen becomes whole (after all, psychoanalysis of the Freudian nature was supposedly therapeutic...).

I feel at once insightful and stupid. Is this normal?

First, I apologize if anyone tries to load this on a slow internet connection. I'm using a lot of embedded clips to illustrate my points this week and I hope it won't inconvenience you.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this week's reading was how easily a critique of Chosen fit into the theory. Marxism is a criticism of the way that class, economics, and structures impact the art we create and here we have a commercial dressed up to look like a movie and isn't it marvelous how easily it fits into this model? Then I started trying to look at the movie through some of the more specific Marxist critical lenses and that's when it started getting really entertaining.

According to Barry one of the methods used in Marxist criticism is to "explain the nature of a whole literary genre in terms of the social period which 'produced' it. Commercials are a genre that are extremely representative of our modern consumerist and materialist culture. I would argue that Chosen is a commercial overtly presented as art and that most modern movies and television are just as intent on selling a product they are just more covert in their presentation. That Chosen is not unique because it blends art and commercialism but that it is unique for that overt way in which it does so.

Take a look at the following clips from some popular movies,


How many products were on display and being sold in that commercial film? Granted that's part of the joke there but what about this example?

In just that short clip there were plugs for ipods, apple computers, hewlett packard, pepto bismol, panasonic, x-box, and naturally lots of cars, porsche, hummers, GMC, even the t-shirt Shia LaBeuf is wearing is advertising The Strokes.

We live in the age of product placement.Advertisers aren't as interested with placing during commercial breaks because they know that we don't watch them, instead they want to find a way to advertise their product in the program itself. This clip from 30 Rock beautifully illustrates how money really is the bottom line.


I have many more thoughts on this topic but I'm going to save them for my presentation and I will leave you with this last clip from Neil Young. The video for "This Note's for You" was intended as a commentary on the commercialization of art. Initially banned by MTV because they worried that many of the ads and companies parodied in the video would sue the network of course in true MTV fashion they milked the controversy for all it was worth and then eventually rewarded it with a video of the year award. This Note's for You

TIPRR 11

Looking at Barry, one of the things that was especially interesting to me was his outline of how Marxism is interpreted. In other chapters, he had one or two variations on a theme, but with Marxism, it seemed like there were so many cooks in the kitchen it was almost entirely impossible to differentiate the head chef: Marx, Engels, Hegel, Eagleton, Belsey, Lenin, all those Russian Formalists, Althusser, etc. When I finished, I found it interesting that his section, “What Marxist critics do,” had to be separated into “methods” rather than generalized directions (as I interpret other chapters) because you can choose to make a division between the overt and the covert, or you could relate the context of the work to the social-class status of the author, or you could explain the whole literary genre in terms of the social period that produced it, or you can look at the social assumptions of the time it which it is consumed, and lastly, you can claim that literary forms are themselves are determined by political circumstance. Wow, the possibilities! Oh, and I should mention that there are varying degrees of each method that you can take (as explained in the Stop and Think section). Because of my own personality, I think that I end up in the Althusser realm in my philosophies (if I were to related myself as a Marxist) and like looking at those subtle views of how society works. To me it felt like he was one foot in Marxism (because there is a meaning) and one foot in postmodernism (because he likes looking beyond the “sign” to what is going on underneath).

Now, because of the variations on Marxism that exist, the matter that I had more than one choice to focus on was a little unnerving: How do I look at Chosen? Can’t really say for sure. I could look at the helplessness of the lower-class monk to the upper-class car driver (though I think it up to debate that the monks are particularly destitute because they had the funds to hire “the hire.”) I could also look at how Ang Lee was a recent addition to the A-list directors because of his most recent award-winning hit: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and the possible pretention that comes with an Asian director “proving” the spiritual superiority of Asian mysticism in the face of the BMW western world. On the other hand, this film is pre 9/11 and the Western power over the threat of subtle conspiracies was unquestioned at this point in time, perhaps never even looked at, thus heightening the superiority of the western social structure and the prominence of such iconic forms of “upper class” as having a BMW as a vehicle used in conjunction with a “transportation” job – we are so rich that even our menial jobs of transporting people are done in luxury cars. At the time (May 2001), Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun had been out for roughly 4 years (both released in 1997), the reality of Tibetan monk refugees was easily accepted and China’s involvement in Tibet and the need for westerners to intervene in their time of need was a topic of debate. In 2000 the Dalai Lama made the statements, “we need to develop more altruism and a sense of caring and responsibility for others in the minds of the younger generation” and “As long as there is no freedom in many parts of the world there can be no real peace and in a sense no real freedom for the rest of the world” – both the boy showing his superior altruism and the lack of peace and freedom explicit in the film reflect these statements that have direct political circumstance relations. But what “method” should I choose to elaborate on? It does make for a fun game, though.

TIPRR 11-The One with the Disclaimer

I know this has happened to us all, but I really should stop reading others' responses before I post my own. I'd like to at least pretend that I have original thoughts. So, as a result, I am going focus one element that interested me in the reading: Althusser's idea of interpellation.

According to Barry, interpellation, as defined by Althusser, is "The 'trick' whereby we are made to feel that we are choosing when really we have no choice" (158). Althusser goes on further to assert that capitalism "thrives on this trick" my making "us feel like free agents ('You van have any colour you like...') while actually imposing things upon us ('...as long as it's black')" (158).

As I read through this description and thought about it, while I may not agree that this is true 100% of the time, I found myself exploring various situations in which this is the case in our capitalistic society. Most of the instances I could think of were highly manipulative, but still, they were there.

One specific thought I had in relationship to this was, "That follows along with Heather's dating philosophy." My friend Heather, before she got married, had very specific opinions regarding male/female dating relationships. And while this really has nothing to do with "class systems" and Althusser may roll over in his grade when I make this comparison, here it goes... Heather believes (or did, anyways-I think marriage has changed a few things for her) that all relationships are initiated, directed, and controlled by the woman. According to her, if a girl wants to date, she has to get out there, find the boy, and then do everything she can to convince him to fall in love with her. While this is all fine and dandy, the trick is this: while doing all of this, the woman must make sure that the boy is convinced that every step was HIS idea, that he chose her initially, that he was the one to make the first move, that he decided that he couldn't live without her and that she had absolutely nothing to do with that process (other than being her attractive, adorable self, of course). The connection, I feel, is in the idea that the boy does believe he has a choice, but the girl has made it very difficult to choose anything but her. Interpellation on a personal level. Tricky, tricky.

Now on to Chosen. As Jeff and Erika mentioned, and as we've discussed in class, it's a commercial. Many would say that commercials in and of themselves are tools of capitalism; Althusser, himself, lists the media as an ideological structure that is sympathetic to the state and the political or economic status quo. But even if you don't go quite that far, commercials are designed to sell stuff. They promote a specific product, in this case BMW.

Now, looking at this specific commercial from a Marxist perspective, I would venture to say that the very design of this film is to "maintain the economic status quo." After all, BMW is known to be a car for the upper class, the wealthy, and the advertising of this product is done in such a way that its meaning is accessible to this upper-echelon of people.

For example, the entire structure of the commercial series designed around the hire is very "high-brow," taking various directors and having them create mini films centered on this one specific brand of automobile. What is created is supposedly "art" rather than "advertising." Classifying the films as "art" already begins to differentiate the audience (and therefore the buyers). After all, it is only when basic needs are met that one is able to be concerned with art at all, thereby eliminating the lower-class from the pool of potential viewers.

In addition, in Chosen, the subject matter itself is another indication that this advertisement is focused on a very specific "class" of people. Who has the time and means to know/learn about the Tibetan culture and people? Certainly not those who are slaving away 14 hours a day at minimum wage just to make ends meet. And then to make the connection between Ang Lee and the Hulk band-aid? It's as if there's a secret code that flows throughout this films that says "if you understand this, then you belong with us and are worthy of purchasing this car." Starting out at somewhere around $40,000, it is clear that this is not a car that can be purchased by the "lower class" of "hard-working folk," and this advertisement does everything in its power to reinforce that fact.

**Disclaimer: After reading this over again, I'm not even sure if I agree with myself here. Maybe I'm just not that Marxist. I'll let you know on Tuesday. **

In which two German products duke it out, and Marxism wins.

I once clinched a game of "Battle of the Sexes" for my team by knowing that BMW stands for Bavarian Motor Works, which just goes to show that knowing your economic bases really is good for something.

So I did more reading than was required (and as a result, Jeff, you may have to do more reading than is required when my post is longer than 500 words), and it helped me to see the way that base affects superstructure (that reading also refused to pin down one exact definition of a Marxist reading, which was less helpful). Barry states that "Marxism is a materialist philosophy: that is, it tries to explain things without assuming the existence of a world, or of forces, beyond the natural world around us, and the society we live in" (150). So, all the philosophy, religion, moral codes, etc. that we adopt are purely created by our material reality. In The Critical Experience (196-197),David Cowles explains this by relating this example: most societies accept that stealing another person's property is immoral (which we attribute to ethical or religious codes), but this is entirely based on our notions of personal property and ownership (a material reality). If our material reality was based more on shared ownership, the notion of stealing as wrong doesn't hold, because there's no such thing as stealing what you already own. Thus, the superstructure (don't steal) is entirely shaped by the base (property ownership).

So, taking Marxism way down to its basic roots, I would like to try to locate the base of the film, and see how it affects and creates the superstructure.

Jeff fairly easily addressed the base: this is a commercial. The basic, material reality of this film is that it was created to sell a car. Any notions of aesthetic beauty, interesting stories, or universal themes are all foregrounded by this reality. We create assumptions about the characters based on their own material realities (Good car = good guy. Bad car = bad guy).

It could also be argued that within the story, even the characters shape their moral systems entirely based upon their economic motivations. Clive Own is the hire. Not the volunteer, not the friend, the hire. Any desire he has to help this boy--any loyalty he feels for him, any desire to protect him--is based entirely on the material reality that he will be paid. It is highly likely that the men with the materially (in case you're keeping track, I have used the word "material" in its various forms nine times so far) inferior cars are also putting their cars and their lives on the line for a similar reason, and it is not a stretch to say that had the price been different, Clive Owen may well have been the one trying to shoot the boy, not save him.

It is both interesting and difficult to view texts this way, because I feel like they start to fall apart. If everything is a construct of economic realities, is there such a thing as authentic art? Where does personality (not to mention spirituality) fit into such a model? Am I programmed to value higher-level thinking because of my cushy middle-class upbringing? Am I programmed to like certain films based on their material success? I'm not saying that I find anything morally questionable about paying artists for their work, but viewing any artifact through a strict Marxist lens tends to reduce it to mere product, valuable for sustaining the current material system.

tiprr 11

Some things appear to be innocent, like kittens, but they are not. See the world for what it is.

Chosen is a commercial, not just for a car, but for a class system that BMW wants to perpetuate for their financial benefit. The car industry itself seeks to devalue the skilled worker by putting him or her on an assembly line to perform a repetitive task that neither requires nor generates any workable skill. A worker cannot leave the assembly line because they have no knowledge of building a car, but only of their assigned repetitive task.

Why does our main character drive a BMW? It must be a nice car. He is a skilled driver that is in the business of saving lives and can be trusted with precious cargo. His car must be able to do what he needs it to do. His counterparts are in the business of stealing and destroying. Their cars are inferior. Their many cars cannot catch and stop his one car, even when surrounded. Why would they drive these inferior vehicles? They cannot afford a nice car and even if they found the money, they can’t have it. This is what drove them to this life of crime and decadence.

The upper class, a restrictive class of one man, drives a clean and undamaged BMW to save the goodness from being made filthy by the many in the lower socioeconomic situation of rusted and damaged cars.

Ang Lee owns the product (Chosen) that the lower class has made. The hundreds of thousands of others who work on his films are mentioned, but not valued. This film is to perpetuate his capitalist agenda (see Hulk band aid).

Genre? It’s a commercial. Focus on selling you something you don't need or want.

Our goal is not to merely understand this world, but change it. We will be in classrooms where we can guide our students to do so as well. We (you, me, and our students) can obtain our goal of the classless society.

As I read through the section on postcolonial theory, I kept thinking about a discussion we had in my class last month while studying the events leading up to the American Revolutionary War. We were discussing the reasons for colonialism and empire building and the idea of mercantilism. Mercantilism is the idea that colonies exist to serve the Mother Country; more specifically that they provide raw materials that the Mother Country can turn into manufactured goods. These goods are then sold back to the colonies at a high price. I couldn't help thinking that Orientalism and Othering are examples of a sort of cultural mercantilism in which the invading empire selects certain raw materials from a native culture to exploit and use them in manufacturing their own products. Using "Chosen" as an example, we have Ang Lee-- a Chinese native and China is very much the "Colonizer" in Tibet-- taking Tibetan customs and religion and using them to manufacture a commercial for a German car company.

"Chosen" relies on a variety of Asian stereotypes in its execution. The strong but silent monks, the child prophet, the sense of the exotic and inexplicable, even the stereotypical double agent who's been corrupted by Western culture--he's wearing shoes inside and not just any shoes, cowboy boots! To be fair, the film also deals in Western stereotypes of the strong but silent action hero variety who steps in to save the day. Lee may well be attempting to demonstrate his cultural polyvalency by highlighting elements from two disparate cultures but is relying on cultural stereotyping really a celebration or recognition of the ways in which the colonizer and the colonized impact one another?

Looking at the three stages of postcolonial literature--adopt, adapt, and adept-- I would argue that Chosen fits within the adopt phase of postcolonial theory. The film follows the codes of Western advertising while also employing a very traditional Western narrative structure, the Tibetan representations seem to be there to add a sort of exoticism to embellish the whole thing. Even the music is mostly Western sounding with the exception of a few parts where it sounds like they are using a traditional Asian instrument to add a sense of the mysterious other.

Of course to take this all in a completely different direction, it could be that Ang Lee is just an adept postmodern artist who is employing a subtle form of parody to poke at Western stereotypes of Asian culture. Perhaps he sees humor in the combination of high brow artistic film directors being asked to use their craft for that most low brow of purposes--commercial advertising.

TIPRR 10

What interests me in our reading (and the Key Points therein) is the completely profound perplexity that gave me a headache as I read both criticisms going, “Um, okay.” I have to admit, the one quote that most caught me was Barry’s definite feelings about postmodernism when he says, “If this second aspect of the postmodern condition, this loss of the real, is accepted as a fact, then it is hard to see a ground for literary theory to occupy, since all methods of literary interpretation – Marxist, feminist, structuralist, and so on – depend upon the making of a distinction between surface and depth, between what is seen in the text and some underlying meaning.” Can we say Eeyore? As Sharon put it in class last week, the idea of what we are doing is a “theory game” and postmodernism feels almost like the killjoy to that game. Nobody likes a party-pooper but I have to admit (as Timbre describes) Baudrillard’s propositions are fascinating to me, maybe in part because I do not totally get them. On another personal note, postcolonial literature, particularly, is some of my favorite literature for the fluidity of identity, but V.S. Naipaul’s Half a Life was infuriating for its downward spiraling pessimism.

In Chosen, my attempt at postmodern criticism might include looking at the pastiche use of motifs between action film and transcendentalist film. For instance, the definite action film car chase is concerning a boy who apparently has some great meaning to the Tibetan culture as it is manifest here with a kind of mystification as the boy can “predict” the future when giving the band-aid box at the beginning and its opening at the end. Ultimately, the film creates association between something greater than the car because of the car, due in part to the connection of the prescient boy. Also, there is the allusion to ballet and dance in the chase, first because of the music and then because of the obviousness to the movements portrayed – there is no movement that does not look particularly purposeful – the whole of the exercise becoming almost comical as cars (who are trying to block and stop the movement of the BMW) try not to actually run into one another in jerky stops and starts, including the BMW.

Furthermore, we are dealing with a combination of symbolic codes from action films that have no apparent grounding in reality but, instead, are merely symbols for symbol-sake. Who is the Hire? Where does he come from and how does one gain a contract with him? Where would a Tibetan monk come into contact with something of an “underworld” character? They are merely symbols. These are followed closely by the clear, almost totally ambiguous characters of the “chasers” who are mostly kept in silhouette or only flashes of faces (i.e. – two cars with men standing outside them, the doors propped open, the headlights’ synchronized turning on at a particular moment when the Hire would notice them). These characters only pose as would-be antagonists and have no particular connection either to the Hire nor his passenger; it is never explicit who they are there for because it could easily be to kill the Hire for his past work as it is to kill his passenger for the unknown purpose he contains. This leads to the idea that the boy-monk has no particular purpose except to be transported and the Hire has no other purpose than to do the transporting.

The film itself, by its very nature, is postmodern in the intertextuality of its creation: a car commercial, in the midst of an action film, produced for the internet, with a reference to the director’s upcoming Hulk film.

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Since Erika wrote on postcolonialism and Timbre wrote on postmodernism and I agree in principle with what they both wrote, I am going to write about kittens.

This kitten is cute.

Chosen and postmodernism

So, I can see some reflexivity with the *wink* *wink* to the audience with the Hulk band aid and perhaps a bit of blurring the lines of genre with the classic western film, but I don’t see the text of Chosen as either a postmodern text or having significant postmodern elements.

I agree with Timbre and Baudrillard’s assessment of Chosen (very nice post by the way) in terms of hyperreality and the “how blurry is your reality” quiz. But is this an assessment of how postmodern your text is? Has anyone thought of a text that isn’t one of the 4 signs? Is a 1, not very postmodern?

I don’t see this theory as being similar to the other theories. Structuralism and Marxism (for example) are clear ways of looking at anything. I can look at any text with a structuralist or poststructuralist view because I can always study the context of the text or the text itself (theoretically).

To be postmodern, the text must include postmodern elements. I can look and may find postmodern elements in most texts, but it might not be there. There may be no postmodern elements. It must (according to Barry) do the stuff listed on page 79, right? Therefore the text, not my theoretic viewpoint determines, whether or not it is postmodern.

In literary terms Chosen isn’t fragmented with a discontinuous narrative, but on the contrary is a very straightforward narrative. The architectural idea of the text believing in “excess, in gaudiness, and in ‘bad taste’ mixtures of qualities” just doesn’t seem to fit our piece in tone or concept.

Even if I thought the piece was gaudy or in bad taste, what would make it postmodern is if those things were done with the intent of them being so. Right? All of the examples in the Barry text are of the creator being postmodern, and the theorist discovering this, not deciding it.

I am very aware that my post is annoying and am prepared for the next post-person to angrily prove me wrong, but you have to admit, that is a cute kitty.

TIPRR 10

I remember when I was first introduced to literary theory at the ripe old age of 18, postcolonialism was emphasized so little that I honestly don't remember even studying it at all. However, when I took a class from Gloria Cronin 7 years later, postcolionalism had come so much to the forefront that it was the lens through which we examined all of the literature we studied. I've often wondered WHY this was the case, and it wasn't until reading Barry this week that I came to appreciate that this lens is a relatively new one in the repertoire of literary theory. I certainly think it's a good addition to the toolbox, and the philosophy of the theory interests me greatly. However, after reading Erika's post, I can simply say "Yeah," and leave it at that. So, I'm going to focus on postmodernism-something that's much less comfortable for me.

In the reading on postmodernism, I really appreciated the background on modernism and the attempt to clarify the differences between the two theories. As I read, one of the concepts that intrigued me was this postmodernist idea of the "loss of the real." Maybe it's because of my own personal experiences with losing tough of reality, but this really seemed like a plausible concept. The existence "hyperreality" where the lines between the real and imagined have been obscured? Just ask any 18-year-old-boy abut his relationship with his girlfriend, and I bet he'll be able to tell you a thing or two about not being able to live up to a "hyperreality"-- said girlfriend's "chick flick fantasies."

In relationship to this, Barry also discusses Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulations" and how signs have lost their "fullness," the state at which they are a "surface indication of an underlying depth or reality" (84). There are a series of steps in the "emptying" process, according to Baudrillard, as discussed by Barry, and it is within these steps that that I have examined Chosen this week.


According to Baudrillard, the steps in the creation of hyperreality through the loss of the real are as follows:
Step 1-The sign represents a basic reality.
Step 2-The sign misrepresents or distorts the reality behind it.
Step 3-The sign disguises the fact that there is no corresponding reality underneath.
Step 4-The sign bears no relation to any reality at all.

In thinking about how Barry distinguishes between the steps and about the paintings used to illustrate each category, I find that Chosen, as a text, falls most into the second step, with spill-over into the first and third at times. Here's why...

In the beginning, we see an artistic shot image of the dock, the boat, and the ice being broken up by the boat as the boat pulls in to the dock and the Tibetan man and child meet Clive Owen. The beauty of the image itself is a distortion of the reality behind it, because this is an romanticized representation of a dock at night. In addition, there would be more than two passengers simply standing on the deck-others are needed to "park" a boat safely, especially if there were ice on the water.

Then there's the car chase. This is where I feel that the sign does represent a basic reality, thereby falling into step 1, because there is in fact a BMW out there that looks and handles like this car. However, slipping back into step 2, the way in which the car chase is presented. One versus three, light versus dark, and then add the abilities of stunt drivers, the talents of cameramen, and the music...Bam you've now got a very inaccurate representation of what you, as a driver of the BMW, would ever be able to do. Plus, this car chase is highly romanticized in the favor of BMW in general (and why wouldn't it be-it's their commercial). After all, the car is shown in beautiful lighting, it doesn't get dirty, and the bullets seem to just bounce off leaving no holes. The one exception to this, the one bullet that does break through, is due solely to the fact that they are trapped, which is quickly remedied by ramming the other car out of the way, and even after ramming the other car, as Clive Owen drives away, the tail end doesn't seem to have been damaged. THAT is a romanticized version of the car. Does the car exist? Yes, but is it this incredible? Probably not. And that is why this text falls into Baudrillard's second step on the way to the loss of the real.

There is so much more to this "romanticization/misrepresentation" of reality within this text--neon pink poison and the ability to take out another man with one poorly-placed punch? However, I think I'll leave the rest of this discussion for class because I'm interested to hear what you guys think. Sorry about the length, yet again.

TIPRR 10 - My bandaids have Charlie Brown on them. Seriously.

This post is laden with parentheticals. Sorry.

So here's the interesting thing about Postcolonialism and Postmodernism: they function both as ways of looking at a text and also as qualities that the texts themselves can possess. This sounds easy in a sentence, but I'm finding it a little difficult to negotiate in practice because I can't decide which angle to take. So...that's that.

Looking at Chosen through a Postcolonialist lens is interesting because it keeps challenging me on my own assumptions. A goal of postcolonialist criticism is to show Western literature's "general inability to empathize across boundaries of cultural and ethnic difference." This film seems to portray racial relations much like films we've seen in the past (if they even enter a film at all...): the good white man comes in to save the small Asian boy. Much like The Cheat that we saw at the beginning of the year in film history, the bad guy is the greedy, somewhat culturally assimilated Asian. Ultimately, the good Tibetan monks have to rely on the strong white man, who desecrates their spiritual artifacts in the process (Wikipedia tells me that you spin the wheel in part to receive good karma. Can you get good karma when you set the wheel spinning with someone else's unconscious head? Maybe it purifies the bad karma brought by violence and general Clive Owen-ery?) Furthermore, it's a German car that these films are glorifying. The German car and the white man save the day. This seems problematic.

But then I remember that the filmmaker is, himself, Asian. Not Tibetan, but probably more sensitive to Tibetan culture than, say, Michael Bay (I tried to come up with a director I hated more but...nope.). What do I do with that? What do I do with the fact that Ang Lee has strongly situated himself as both an Asian AND American filmmaker (Eat Drink Man Woman and The Hulk? Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Sense and Sensibility?), as both an action director and a drama director? Is Ang Lee merely adopting Western traditions, is he adapting them to suit his needs, or is he so adept at them that he can do anything, and trying to do a Postcolonialist criticism isn't really even necessary?

Perhaps Ang Lee's film (and filmic work as a whole) is just one large celebration of what Barry calls "cultural polyvalency"--the ability to belong to multiple cultures at the same time (as I remember from science, valence electrons are electrons that can flit about and help to complete the outer electron ring when elements are trying to bond (not to be confused with valance electrons, which are window coverings for a child interested in science)). The story in Chosen can be see to represent a partnership between Eastern and Western cultures, because although Clive Owen is the savior, he's not the chosen--that title belongs to the boy, Ang Lee's son whose actual name is Mason (further evidence of Ang's willingness to simultaneously include both cultures even in his personal life). The whole goal of the film is to help the boy, and rather than colonizing the story, Clive Owen merely comes in, stays a while, and then leaves. Ang Lee is a multicultural, multigenre-al filmmaker, easily tackling both Asian and American cinema, action and Jane Austen (he should just direct a Kung-Fu adaptation of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and get it over with), and is probably loved by Postcolonialist critics because of this.

TIPPR 9

I was interested in exploring the structuralist outlook that Claude Levi-Strauss applied when looking at the interpretation of myths. Levi-Strauss looked at how an individual tale or parole fit into the whole cycle or langue. In this case I’m looking at Chosen as the parole within the langue of the whole “The Hire” series.

With “The Hire” BMW set out to exploit the codes from numerous film genres to create a unique ad campaign. They selected a wide variety of directors and allowed them to do pretty much whatever they wanted as long as they used Clive Owen as the driver and featured a BMW in the film. The result was a series of films that ostensibly feature the same character in a variety of situations. It’s an interesting way of creating a narrative around what is essentially an avatar for BMW, because although the driver character maintains some similarities from film to film there are also some differences depending on the needs of that particular film.

In “Chosen” he is a strong but silent good guy who saves little boys and is a clear white hat, good guy. In “The Follow” he could have stepped straight out of film noir detective film, he is morally ambiguous although in the end he ultimately does the right thing. In “Star” he is suddenly humorously crass and addressing the camera directly. We know nothing about his character beyond his accent and his ability to drive very, very well. Where is he from? Who does he work for? Each film shows him in very different locales; sometimes he appears to be working with the police, sometimes he is clearly operating outside the law. We don’t even know his name, because all that is important is his role as the driver. This is of course a brilliant advertising technique because it allows the audience to project themselves into the role.

At the same time these films also allow the directors to sell themselves. Each film is a clear reflection of its director. “Chosen” references Ang Lee’s other films, particularly “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “The Hulk”. The other films are equally reflective of their creator’s ouvres. So to bring this back to structuralism, “Chosen” is best understood when looking at it as a piece of the larger ad campaign. With each film contributing a different perspective of what is a BMW driver to appeal to the largest possible audience as well as using each film to sell the other works of the directors involved with the project.

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“This is the typical structuralist process of moving from particular to the general, placing the individual work within a wider structural context.”

“In the structuralist approach to literature there is a constant movement away from the interpretation of the individual literary work and a parallel drive towards understanding the larger, abstract structures which contain them.”

Must the structure be abstract?

I listened to Ang Lee’s commentary on the film and he actually tells us where to start.

“I think Tibetan symbolism is a good place to look into the piece”

He says this just as the faux monk hits his head on the Tibetan prayer wheel or mani wheel (pictured at the end of Jason Hagey’s response).

“And, ah, yeah, there are a lot of little things in there people can dig into, I think (laughter). But I hope the film is like a maze.”

Take the following with a grain of google image search salt. When Clive Owen looks in the window at the tied up monk, he is looking between the legs of a statue. The camera moves and reveals the statue and lingers on the details. The Dakini, a female Buddhist deity, is the helper of those in pursuit of spiritual well being and enlightenment. As she poses in an enticing stance, she dances overtop two human figures symbolizing her presence and her position as a goddess. This deity is shown wearing a necklace made of skulls and drinking from a skull, signifying the demise of ignorance and unawareness of man. After seeing the monks and being unaware of this statue, Owens reenters the house and saves the boy.

The Tibetan symbols are interesting, but looking at the larger structure often removes some meaning of this film for me because the larger structure is a commercial. That is the context of the creation of this film. BMW hired Lee to make a short film using their product. Lee includes a highly choreographed driving “fight” scene with the cars on the dock. The previous film Lee directed (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) was a box office success and has many highly choreographed fight scenes which leads me to believe that is why he was hired. Plus, the next film Lee directed is Hulk, which leads me to believe that the band-aid at the end is a pitch to see his next film.

At one point in the film Owen reverses his BMW into another car violently pushing the other car out of the way for a heroic escape. The next time we see the back of the BMW it’s in pristine condition because this is a commercial.

TIPRR 9

A key point of the reading that intrigues me (and I would say that is a direct reflection of my typical preference to do the opposite) is in the deconstructionist digging deep into the world of exposing contradictions and paradoxes of a particular text. I think I tend to be a structuralism-minded individual (if I had to choose between these two modes of thinking) and I look for parallels and “bigger picture” thinking (which is why my analysis of the film will take a structuralism stance). I have to say, however, because of this intriguing factor regarding deconstructionism I am completely interested in learning to think more in this modality. I like that it is a “philosophical” perspective and I’m especially fond of its “multiplicities of meaning” because I am not so much a scientist (or linguist in this case) and I love to look at things from multiple perspectives more so than say, “This is the way it really is” because of a “univocal” reading. The reading made me wonder about myself and my tendency to like the harmony, the unity and coherence of something rather than pointing out the “flaws” of textual disunity. I believe, though, that it is perhaps best to start with structuralism in order to better ground the deconstructionism.

Attempting to look at the film, “Chosen,” from a structuralism perspective (because I am not even sure if I am doing this right), I would say we are looking at a film that is built on the nuances of dichotomies. First of all, we have the relationship of boat and automobile as the sea and the road come together on a dock. In turn, we have a vehicular ballet as the cars chase after the BMW as it zips about the dock’s quarters. The music itself is oddly dichotomous between the introduction of Asian culture (the “Chosen” himself) and a very Western musical genre (I don’t typically expect to hear classical music when an Asian character is the focal point). In the second half of the storyline, the fake monk is dressed in traditional Tibetan monk garb except the extreme clash of cowboy boots. When Clive Owen clobbers the fake monk, the violent action is accompanied by the spinning of the traditional prayer wheel, which is meant to bring purification and power in Tibetan Buddhist religion. Ultimately, the symbol of the Hulk (also a violent being) used as a band-aid for a minor flesh wound brings together the whole of the text – this is especially true as the box is at the beginning of the film and finally its contents revealed at the end of it, thus creating a bookend effect to the narrative. The end result is one where the violent nature of the West is the way to accomplish the Eastern nonviolent ends; the two are balancing of one another, neither existing without the other. If not for the Eastern insurgence of the “Chosen” character, there would not have been the violence. If not for the typical Western violence of Clive Owen knocking unconscious the confederate, there would not have been the resulting peace. Cyclically, the two need each other and balance one another. I could perhaps become post-structuralism here and begin to discuss how this all is equally a subversion of itself, but I will leave that for our discussion in class.