Movable Type Fall 2015 - Edition 3.1 by MovableType UVA

Edition 3.1

Fall 2015

Undergraduate journal of

Media Studies research at the

University of Virginia

Sp a Mo ce ll Fo y r Be A rg mbi gu it y by

17 25

The Political Economy of Journalism

by Nick Gibiser

The Public Enemy:

the Serial Product and Agent

by Bethany Kattwinkel

Table of Contents

Lee Miller

by Meredith Wadsworth

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Not a Wonderful Life: Depicting the American Man, Dream, and Menace II Society

4 4 wi

e on

by Carly Spraggins

To me, “Made in the USA”

is a statement of pride

in our unique contradictions. We are a relatively young nation, yet we have a rich and complex history; we are a nation that is patriotic and united, but also one that is incredibly diverse, both culturally and ideologically. Exploring how the media affects these nuances is a fascinating

Eric Leimkuhler Executive Editor

and emotional experience. In my time at the University, I have had the privilege of examining media in the United States in several different storytelling contexts including the gangster film, the western film, literature of the South, and musical theatre history. These art forms have shaped our understanding of the American story, at

Bethany Kattwinkel Executive Editor

times endorsing the traditional narrative of the American dream but otherwise urging us to question its validity.

As media studies students we are often pressured to seek out ways to study media from all over the world.

We study abroad, we take classes on

Chinese cybersecurity, we study the newest trends in Bollywood, we watch European documentaries, we learn about British public broadcasting.

It is

important, however, to remember the importance of

Katelyn Saks Communications Coordinator

the rich media we have right in our backyard.

When we are talking about media that is “made in the USA,” we are talking about an enormous range of topics and issues. I think one of the most interesting areas of research right now is about advertisements produced in the U.S. and their impact on American character and society.

Alex Fillip Director of Social Media

meet the team The theme “Made in the USA” is important in

Jacqueline Justice Marketing and Layout

understanding the global context of US media, as all of American culture, tradition, and practices, especially in the context of media, are derived from other cultures’ practices. The study of US media allows for a closer look at the foreign influence on different aspects of media, from feature-length films to reporting on current events.

Peer Reviewers

All Executive Team members act as peer-reviewers and are joined by new peer-reviewers Georgia

Adam, Olivia Cannell, Jordan Fish, Camille Sides, and Victoria Tovig.

Christopher Ali Associate Professor Faculty Advisor

The student executive team would like to thank

our faculty advisor, Professor Ali, who who has

been an invaluable resource as we have worked to put the journal together this semester.

Made in the USA

You see it on your orange juice carton, or in the closing seconds of a Ford commercial. It is a point of pride to some, a warning sign to others, and a complex statement regardless of how it is construed. In this issue we explore media texts that reflect, challenge, embrace, and shape our uniquely American culture. Read on for fresh perspective.

A Space For Ambiguity

Revisionary Western Values in Meek’s Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt’s western film Meek’s Cutoff is a significant departure from the classic Western genre. Unlike the traditional Western landscape, which evokes certainty and reflects the Western hero’s confidence, the terrain in Meek’s Cutoff is unknown, and induces a pervasive doubt within characters. The film’s treatment of landscape also features a revision of the Western’s “code of values” that are typically embedded in the terrain, for the qualities that define white masculinity, or “what it means to be a man,” are upended by the film’s pivotal characters and the genre’s minorities— namely, the Indian and the woman.1 By challenging the assumptions of white, masculine “liberal ideology” that predominates the genre, the film destabilizes the very foundation of the classic Western.2 In doing so, the film introduces a new, “third” landscape that exposes the rich ambiguity that traditional Westerns too often conceal.3 The landscape in Meek’s Cutoff therefore represents far more than a physical vista—it maps out a mental uncertainty, as well. By introducing a “space of possibility,” the film embarks on a new terrain in which the elements of the genre’s paradoxical nature are left open to explore.4 In the opening scene of the film, the landscape already

By Molly Berg Class of 2015 English

presents itself as a revision of the Western. Thompkins describes how “the land revealed on the opening pages or in the opening shot a Western is a land defined by absence: of trees, of greenery...above all, absence of water.”5 Ironically, the opening shot of Meek’s Cutoff depicts all of the elements that the conventional West lacks: the land is not dry, arid desert, but rather a fertile river valley. In the beginning of the classic western, “as soon as the figures of the horsemen appear, or a wagon train, as soon as the line is broken even by a sage brush or cattle or mountains, the signs of life undo the sill perfection of objecthood.”6 The opening shot, however, establishes the characters already in the frame. Traditionally, “the harshness of the Western landscape is so rhetorically persuasive that an entire code of values is in place, rock solid, from the outset, without anyone’s ever saying a word.”7 Though there is virtually no dialogue in the opening scene, there is no code of austerity embedded in the land, because the land doesn’t appear “rock solid” or “harsh.”8 It is lush and bountiful, and the characters reap the benefits: the slowpaced montage features the washing of clothes and pots, filling water buckets, and feeding their bird. Thompkins’ essay portrays the classic desert landscape as one that “does not give of bird or bush,” but both bird and bush are depicted in the opening scene.9 Tall grasses reach the height of the characters themselves, and not only do the chirps from the birdcage pierce the air, but the caw of bird overhead echoes as well— an indication that life abounds. This revisionary landscape is perplexing and atypical of the Western’s opening scene, and displaces viewers’ ability to predict or understand what’s to come. There is no singular figure riding through the buttes of Monument Valley that emerges

as the definitive Western hero, but rather a group of anonymous travelers whose story is hard to envisage. The film’s opening scene is indicative of how Reichardt wants to tell their tale through a revisionary vista. The landscape in the classic Western poses as “a tabula rasa on which man can write, as if for the first time, the story he wants to live. That is why the first moment of Western movies is so full of promise.”10 Although the opening shot of Meek’s Cutoff demonstrates a kind of “tabula rasa,” it is anything but a symbol of hope—the tree features an etching of the word “LOST.” The first moment of the film is thus not “full of promise,” bur rather ambiguity and doubt. Indeed, even the word itself arouses uncertainty, for it is hard to discern if the characters are truly lost—they seem to move around the scene with purpose and direction. If nothing else, the inscription certainly articulates how viewers feel: lost and disoriented. This lack of understanding place and space in the opening scene links to Eliade’s portrayal of the significance of beginnings: “nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation—and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point.”11 By Eliade’s conjecture, the beginning of the film becomes problematic, for there is no sense of orientation or fixed point. The covered wagon is the only construction resembling an “axis mundi,” and yet it is not the “center” of the opening sequence—the river is.12 Although the film’s title shot of the rawhide informs viewers of the setting—Oregon, 1845—the opening scene still begs the question: where are they coming from, and where are they going? It is impossible to know, for as the travelers walk out of the frame, the camera remains on the river, obscuring any indication of what lies ahead. Landscape in Meek’s Cutoff continually

mitigates the role of the characters and emphasizes the role of the land. As the opening sequence shifts to the next scene, the shot of the river features a painstakingly slow dissolve into land as the two transitioning images superimpose each other. These overlapping shots depict the train of settlers—a mere speck in the distance—as they enter from the right of the frame. Slowly, carefully, and almost imperceptibly, the features of the land transform from lush riverbank to dry flatland. This naturalistic scene change not only evokes the vague changeability of nature, it also directs viewers’ focus to the landscape as a key figure. By maintaining the camera’s focus on the land itself, Reichardt creates the land as a central character, as “a personhood that lurks beneath the landscape’s surface.”13 Indeed, the characters themselves interact more with the land than they do with each other; some characters, like the Indian, demonstrate a closer relationship to the land than to humans. The film invites viewers to identify with nature, not just through camera choices but also through sound. With minimal dialogue and almost no musical soundtrack, the film is dominated by ambient sounds of nature. Regardless of element—rushing water, overpowering winds, or crackling of fire—the earth resounds as not only a character to watch, but also to listen to. Nature presents itself as a character who, like the classic Western hero, carries a dark uncertainty buried deep beneath what appears on the surface. The ambivalence of the land appears in a variety of forms: “at any particular moment, the landscape wears an individual face with distinguishing features.”14 One notable form of the landscape is in the film’s night scenes, in which the land is shapeless and inscrutable. Aside from the dim light of a lantern or fire, the night renders the characters

imperceptible in the dark space of the frame. The blackness also encourages viewers to listen closely to dialogue in order to make sense of the scene. For example, the first night scene of the film presents Emily and Solomon Tetherow discussing the ambiguous character of Stephen Meek. While the prior scene depicts a separation of male and female spheres—the men talk business while the women speculate from afar—the night scene brings the men and women together. Without the light of day, there is nothing to physically distinguish the characters’ mental boundaries between each other. These visually dark moments thus provide viewers with the most light into the characters’ world, for this space reveals the hidden uncertainties that otherwise go unsaid. Indeed, the exchange between Emily and Solomon is the first time viewers can access any character’s emotions or understand the purpose of their journey. Their subject of conversation is as dark and ambiguous as the night itself, for the couple cannot make out what kind of man Stephen Meek is or what his intentions truly are. It is here, fifteen minutes into the film and shrouded by night, that viewers learn of their wayward guide and how his two-week shortcut has turned into a five-week journey. Although the night scenes provide viewers with useful information, the characters themselves feel no closer to understanding; rather, it is yet another space in which their skepticism is manifested. In a noteworthy night scene later on in the film, Emily asks Solomon, “what do you see out there?” He responds, “Hard to say.”15 It is telling that Solomon’s doubt surfaces in the depths of the night. No one, not even the most levelheaded and hopeful man in the group, is free from the uncertainty embedded in the landscape. The terrain’s physical structure

emphasizes how the landscape exudes ambivalence and contradiction, qualities that the traditional Western landscape disregards. The land represents what Garber calls a “third,”which is defined as a “mode of articulation, a way of describing a space of possibility.”16 The land is, indeed, a space of possibility, for it ushers contemplation and dismisses certainty. The land’s physical vistas “function as a sign of overestimation—a mechanism of displacement from one blurred boundary to another.”17 Garber’s interest in the blurring of boundaries reflects Reichardt’s intent to dissolve the traditional Western’s sense of boundaries altogether. Limerick asserts, “the events of Western history represent, not a simple process of territorial expansion, but an array of efforts to wrap the concept of property around unwieldy objects.”18 The landscape in Meek’s Cutoff would certainly match Limerick’s description of an unwieldy object, for it is one that defies boundaries and ownership. The traditional Western notion of a grid is both invisible and futile. Limerick articulates how “Western history is a story structured by the drawing of lines and the marking of borders,” but there is no trace of such a structure in Meek’s Cutoff.19 The land’s indefinable boundaries are a product of its shape-shifting abilities. As such, the land engages in what Garber defines as a “category crisis.”20 Throughout the film, the land continually changes in setting; from river to desert, flatland to ridge, each new scene features an altered landscape. At times, the vision of the land defies what is actually there; for example, when Meek discovers water up ahead, the settlers rush forward in anticipation, only to discover that it is alkaline water and unfit for drinking. The image of water, initially seen as the ideal vision, subsequently becomes yet another

roadblock in their path toward civilization. The land’s shifting features constantly challenge the settlers journey and threaten to dismantle the very ground they walk on. By resisting a definite category, the land does not only embody “crisis,” it also induces “crisis” in its occupants—they never know what to expect.21 The relationship between land and characters perpetuates the film’s tone of doubt and uncertainty. Traditional to the classic Western landscape, “distance, made palpable through exposure and infinitely prolonged by the absence of obstacles, offers unlimited room to move. The man can go, in any direction, as far as he can go. The possibilities are infinite.”22 This is not an accurate representation of traversing the land in Meek’s Cutoff. Although the film intricately portrays the overwhelming sense of distance and travel, it does not take up the optimistic tone of infinite possibility. Rather, the notion that man can go in any direction is the daunting realization that overwhelms these travelers. Additionally, the characters do not experience an “infinitely prolonged...absence of obstacles.” On the contrary, their journey routinely experiences obstacles, be it river or valley, that cut off characters’ access to what is on the other side. Views of the barren expanse of desert beget dips or ridges that obscure a clear trajectory, blocking and confining both character and viewer from “unlimited room to move.” The most notable example of this is when the settlers reach a sharp dip in the terrain and are forced to a halt. As they proceed warily, lowering the wagons with a rope and pulley system, Meek asserts to Emily, “you don’t know what’s over that hill. Could be water. Could be an army of heathens.”23 Not only are the land’s valleys treacherous—the steep grade destroys one of their wagons—but the hills prove equally dangerous in blocking knowledge of what is ahead. The terrain is unrelenting, confusing,

and limiting. The landscape’s entrapments thus induce a sense of confinement, which is further manifested through the film’s stylistic choices. The 4:3 aspect ratio departs from the classic wide angle, panoramic views of the landscape, and instead summons a boxed-in tension through a more squared perspective. The frame cuts off the audience’s view in the same way that the bonnet obstructs the women’s perspective; these strategies were implemented together, according to Reichardt, who claims that by “cutting out the peripheral, it does leave you with the idea that something could be there that you don’t know about.”24 The covered wagon creates the same effect; its vertical structure and narrowed opening perceives the landscape from a limited scope. A prominent moment of this is when Emily throws items off the wagon in order to lighten the load. The camera is inside the wagon with her and the hide cover encloses the frame. As Emily discards a sizable rocking chair, the shot remains on the back opening of the wagon, leaving viewers to watch this emblem of leisure and domesticity behind. As Solomon says, “it’s only weight now.”25 With the last inkling of civilization left in the dust, the film reinforces just how far removed they are from home. The restrictive cover of the wagon and the backward facing shot further reinforces the sense of physical limitations as the characters move deeper into the unknown. The film’s tension resides in the land’s powerful hold on the characters, revoking the characters’ agency and control. Thompkins describes how in the classic Western genre, “the desert flatters the human figure by making it seem dominant and unique, dark against light, vertical against horizontal, solid against plane, detail against blankness.”26 The landscape in Meek’s Cutoff obliterates any notion of human flattery. Human figures

are commonly portrayed as miniature and meager in comparison to the land’s enveloping magnitude. There is nothing overpowering or remarkable about the figures who roam the wilderness. Thompkins also describes the traditional Western landscape as a “territory to master,” but mastery in this film is nothing but a false construct of Meek’s ego.27 Thompkins writes, “Perhaps more than anything, nature gives the hero a sense of himself. For he is competent in this setting. He knows his horse will lead him to water, knows how to build a fire and where to camp.”28 If Meek is, to some extent, a vision of the Western hero, then his role does not fit with the classic hero’s relationship to the land. Although Meek wants to appear confident and determined leader, his fabricated self-assurance cannot fool anyone— perhaps not even himself. Meek’s Cutoff does not operate within a landscape that redefines man’s identity and highlight’s his control. In the conventional genre, “what isn’t there in the Western hasn’t disappeared by accident; it’s been deliberately jettisoned. The surface cleanness and simplicity of the landscape, the story line, and the characters derive from the genre’s will to sweep the board clear of encumbrances.”29 This desire to sweep the board clear of encumbrances is to oversimplify and distort the true experience of the West. In this way, the lack of “surface cleanness” in Meek’s Cutoff gets closer to an accurate portrayal of what settlers had to endure. The sparse language and lack of possessions is, as Thompkins points out, “deliberately jettisoned,” but it is a removal dictated by necessity rather than choice. Traveling light becomes the only mode of survival; simplicity is no accident, for there no other alternative. The rhetoric of the landscape ascribes a normative “code of values” in which a

quiet confidence pervades both land and hero “without anyone’s ever saying a word.”30 If silence is a factor that defines “what it means to be a man,” then Emily Tetherow might be the most masculine character of all.31 The importance of dialogue—or lack thereof—in Meek’s Cutoff should not go unnoticed, for the sound of silence often says more than the characters’ words do. The incongruity of the landscape is at the foundation of the settlers’ taciturnity; in the infrequent occasion that characters do talk, it constantly revolves around doubt. Nature, operating as a “third,” creates a realm of uncertainty and silence.32 Thompkins illustrates how “every word he [the Western hero] doesn’t say...is absent for a reason.”33 The silence in Meek’s Cutoff does not there for the “reason” of the hero’s quiet confidence, however. On the contrary, the lack of dialogue in the film reaffirms how the land cannot be properly understood with words. It is not a silence of austere conviction—it is a silence borne of inexpressibility. The land indicates that if language cannot resolve or reorient the settlers’ journey, then it’s best not to talk at all. The bombastic dialogue of Meek, in contrast, presents language as a device that defies and disorients characters from the ascetic truth of the land. His narcissistic stories and overbearing certitude articulate Meek as a character who deserves ample criticism. Emily demonstrates the significance of rhetoric in the film when she says of Meek, “I don’t blame him for not knowing. I blame him for saying he did.”34 Meek’s flaw, as Emily claims, is not his latent doubt—which everyone in the film feels—but rather his misuse of language. Lying about the knowledge of the land is a dangerous disservice, for in their conditions, mere words can concoct life or death situations. Silence thus is not just a code of the land; it’s a code of

survival. Perhaps the most enduring attribute in the Western landscape’s “code of values” is the presupposed superiority of the white male hero. Thompkins conveys how “this code and this hierarchy never appear to reflect the interests or beliefs of any particular group, or of human beings at all, but seem to have been dictated primordially by nature itself.”35 Nature is said to endow this inherent structure at the outset: “There is no need to say that men are superior to women, Anglos to Mexicans, white men to black; the scene has already said it.”36 This kind of binary code is one that Meek’s Cutoff, functioning as a third, seeks to undermine. Garber writes, “the third is that which questions binary thinking.”37 Naturally, the idea of the third is destabilizing for the western, a genre that is predicated on binary oppositions and clearly defined boundaries. The treatment of the Native American in Meek’s Cutoff offers a revised “code of values” in which the Indian emerges as dominating figure, not the cowboy. Traditional Western pictures suggest that “conquering the Indian symbolized and personified the conquest of the American difficulties, the surmounting of wilderness. To push back the Indian was to prove the worth of one’s own mission.”38 Ironically, the Native in Meek’s Cutoff is the figure leading their conquest. The settlers must rely on him in order to surmount the wilderness and live to tell the tale. Additionally, Indians were often perceived as savages who “invaded white boundaries,” but Reichardt’s film features a scene in which the men leave camp in order to track down the Indian, invading his boundaries. Indians were historically depicted as having a “primal rage,” but it is the “western hero,” Meek, who loses his temper and brutally beats the Native. Even when tormented, the Native

remains calm and passive, while Meek’s explosive and childish hostility proves the white man’s hypocrisy.39 The relationship between the Indian and the woman is a traditionally problematic one; the captivity myth generates the notion that Natives pose a threat to a white woman’s purity and safety. This particular lore is overturned in Meek’s Cutoff, for Emily and the Indian establish one of the stronger connections of all other characters in the film. In spite of a language barrier, Emily puts her faith in the Native and thereby inverts the power of the white male figure. In one of the more poignant moments of the film, Emily steps in to protect the Indian by threatening to shoot Meek. The power of this scene lies not only in the reversed roles of the white hero and savage other, but also in the fact that a woman controls the shots. Through scenes such as these, Meek’s Cutoff works to empower the commonly marginalized role of the woman in the Western genre. Although the film does not significantly depart from traditional depictions of women in the West, the telling of the story from a female perspective is nevertheless a notable revision in the male-dominated “code of values” that the landscape ascribes. These adjustments to the genre illustrate the power of the third in unraveling binary thinking, for it purports that assumptions of power have not, in fact, been “primordially dictated by nature itself.”40 To agree that the ascetic code of the landscape dictates that white men are superior would be to forget who wrote the code. White men, the writers of “liberal” history, established such values as a means to justify theirviolent actions and emulate the land’s aesthetic. The landscape cannot be reduced to a “code of values”—it’s too vast, too

ambiguous to be outlined in such definite terms. If Meek’s Cutoff is any indication, the landscape does not summon inherent qualities of the earth; rather, the land reflects whatever attitude and code of values characters bring with them. Fitting with the ambiguous narrative, the end of the film offers no conclusive ending—the story simply cuts off. The final scene leaves viewers eternally guessing at what the future holds for these settlers. Thompkins writes of the classic Western, “though it begins in anxious movement and passes through terror and pain, it continually ends in repose. A welcoming grove of aspens, a spring, and a patch of grass provide shelter and sustenance.”41 It would be difficult to claim that Meek’s Cutoff ends in redemptive “repose.” There is no “welcoming grove,” but there is, however, a sign of life—a tree. The sense of relief that this tree brings, however, remains dubious. At first glance, the scene evokes a sense of hope, as the young boy William is the first to reach the tree; the moment resonates to a scene at the start of the film when William reads a passage from Genesis on the tree of life and the Garden of Eden. Have they finally reached a semblance of Eden? The camera remains distanced with a long shot as the characters crowd around the tree, preventing a view of characters’ reactions and obscuring a detailed visual of the tree itself, which looks half alive, half dead. By Eliade’s discussion of sacred and profane space, a reading of this scene might suggest that the settlers have navigated profane space in order to find their sacred space, which ultimately comes to them in the shape of a tree. Eliade describes how the “center of the world” is marked by a “break-through from plane to plane” on three cosmic levels—”earth, heaven underworld.”42 Few natural creations are more symbolic of this “center” than a tree: a perfect representation of the

“universal pillar” of the earth, as its roots spread to the underworld and its branches reach up toward the heavens.43 Although the tree fits the symbolic description of an “axis mundi,” the shot of the tree itself is not even the highest “fixed point” in the frame. Situated in a valley, the land inclines and towers above the tree in the background.44 If this tree is supposed to be a sacred space, “the center of the world,” then the future does not look bright for the film’s travelers: what does it mean if the tree is half dead? If viewers are to read this tree as they did the fallen tree at the start of the film, then the tree becomes further complicated. Is it soon to be a fallen tree, one in which someone might etch “LOST” into once again, or is it a sign of replenishment and life? The characters cannot tell, either. William points out to his mother, “a tree can’t live without water,” an uplifting thought.45 Yet Millie’s anxious words suggest the opposite of hope: she says, “we can still go back, we can try for Columbia.”46 These disparate voices illustrate the confusion and uncertainty that permeates the scene, implicating viewers in this tension. Emily asserts, “we’re close,” and viewers want to believe her, but Thomas’ retort indicates a reasonable doubt: “well that’s just it. We’re close, but we don’t know what to.”47 Significantly, Meek’s input is one of submission, as he utters, “I’m at your command.”48 Meek’s response further complicates matters; is he finally admitting that they’re lost, or is he yielding to the leadership of Emily and the guidance of the Native? The final shots of the scene leave the fate of the characters open to interpretation, and create a space for viewers to contemplate their experience. The film’s last moments are revealing, ironically, through the enigmatic exchange and lack of dialogue between Emily and the Native. The shot-

reverse-shot of Emily peering through the branches of the trees offers little insight; her frozen expression is nuanced and vague, and the Native stands so far from the camera that his features are impossible to see. Reichardt’s camera technique thus intentionally renders the effect of their silent stares inconclusive. Viewers thus feel as uncertain as the characters themselves: both don’t know whether the tree signifies the conclusion of a journey or the start of a new one. The film’s final shot features a lasting image of the Native as he walks off into the distance, his figure blending into the landscape that envelops him. The shot offers little resolution for himself or the travelers he leaves behind, and instead leaves open ended the question of whether both parties will survive. Though the end is confusing, unsatisfying, and off-putting, it is perhaps the only way Meek’s Cutoff could end—in doubt. An ending too complete would ruin the complexity that the film has managed to create. The landscape and its embedded code of values is not only disoriented in Meek’s Cutoff—it is remapped entirely. The ambiguity of the film, manifested through the landscape, leaves open a rich uncertainty whereby viewer and character alike must navigate a “moral wilderness” of silence, space, and doubt.49 Limerick reminds us in her essay that “acknowledging the moral complexity of Western history” is not condemning the genre: “by questioning the Westerner’s traditional stance as innocent victim, we do not debunk Western history but enrich it.”50 The film is not one that denigrates the Western; rather, it is one that reveals the layers of complexity associated with the genre. By laying bare the paradox of Western American history, the film offers up a new, “third” portrayal of history—one that embraces possibility, contradiction, and uncertainty as a more intricate, honest, and compelling way to tell a story.

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l e a Th tic my i no m l s o o P Ec of li a n r u Jo

By Nick Gibiser 4th Year Media Studies

be broken down into a basic framework of three major themes: decreasing newspaper revenue’s direct effect on the size and capabilities of major news outlets, attempts at reforming the institution of journalism in the face of increasing digitalization, and finally a dispersion of authority in regards to which pundits and outlets the viewing public trusts to report substantive, fair news. While each theme has played a distinct role in the ongoing journalism crisis, it is clear from this framework that the changing financial landscape of news consumption has become the common thread that ties the three together. Journalists and news providers must adapt to the needs of an evolving audience if they hope for a monetary infusion large enough to stem journalism’s recent decline. Decreasing newspaper revenues have played a major role in the developing crisis of journalism, as the days of daily newspaper consumption have been replaced instead by a growing trend towards online news readership. Much of the academic literature that focuses specifically on revenue streams and decreases of newspapers heavily evoke the concept of ‘the 21st century’ as a leap into the future, and a leap away from reliance on traditional sources of advertising and circulation income. Researchers who have specifically tackled this problem include Richard Schmalbeck in “Financing The American Newspaper in the TwentyFirst Century” and Loreto Corredoira and Sanjay Sood in their essay, “Meeting New Readers in the Transition To Digital Newspapers: Lessons From the Entertainment Industry.” Schmalbeck’s research cites the declining financial stability of the daily newspaper industry as the epicenter from which journalism’s decline in overall quality stems. After briefly discussing the inability of newspapers to adapt to 21st century

profit-making strategies, Schmalbeck focuses on seven ways that newspapers could fortify their financing structures, including tolerating operating losses as a form of altruism within the existing corporate structure, redefining daily newspaper operators as nonprofit corporations exempt from federal income tax, or having pre-existing charities run the daily newspapers either directly or through a taxable subsidiary corporation. He also suggests the re-classification of newspaper operators as low-profit liability companies that can retain tax-exempt status while accepting donations from both normal and charitable investors.1 Similarly, Corredoira and Sood point to “the rise of the Internet and the availability of information for free”2 as the major cause of declining newspaper revenues since 1940. Rather than focus on the re-definition of existing daily newspaper operators within the U.S.’s established tax codes as a means of saving revenue, Corredoira and Sood point towards the success and methods of online streaming services as a means of adapting daily newspapers to the needs of 21st century consumers. The two suggest the existence of a “distinct digital consumer segment for newspapers to target,”3 and that the salvation of the newspaper industry is contingent on marketing to this segment, which is composed, in part, of Netflix, Hulu Plus, and iTunes subscribers. News producers must also alter the means by which news itself is offered to consumers, by allowing consumers to control when/where they consume their news, homogeneity amongst digital news-providing platforms’ usability, and bundling of news products with other content.4 Corredoira and Sood’s analysis centers entirely around the assumption that

the future market for digital news mirrors those who subscribe to entertainment streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, and that this segment has, up to this point, been unexplored despite its potential to fortify the financing structure of daily newspapers. The theme of falling revenues—and the means to rectify the lack of profit within the newspaper industry—is apparent throughout the academic literature of journalism in the 21st century, as daily newspapers are viewed as the main source of critical analysis provided to a mass audience, especially through the provision of investigative journalism. There is a mass consensus that the inability of news providers to adapt to the digitalization of content, namely their difficulty in combating the increasing availability of free information, is the main culprit behind the financial hole newspaper owners find themselves in today. However, beliefs on how to reinvigorate newspaper revenue vary a great deal amongst academics, as the two examples above show. Scholars seem divided on how to stem the declineby either working within the existing tax structure or attempting to tap into the demand market for streaming music, television, and movies. Schmalbeck, in his overview of tax and corporate re-definition options available to news outlets, appears to underestimate the financial straits of the news industry. The Pew Research Center reports that newspaper print ad revenue has fallen every year since 2005, producing $16.4 billion worth of revenue in 2014, down from $46.7 billion in 2004.5 While any revenue savings measures will help, Schmalbeck’s tax options seem to be too small of a fix for a problem that has compounded greatly over the past decade. He insists we must “recognize that newspapers continue to have some ability to generate revenue,”6 but misses

the mark in his failure to address the true size of revenue losses for daily newspapers, and his lack of suggestions on how these papers can survive beyond incremental savings, and into the future of an increasingly digital world. Comparatively, Corredoira and Sood do a much better job of putting the future of daily newspapers into perspective, and explain how appealing to the same markets targeted by streaming services may hold the key to upholding journalism, even if traditional journalism has to move online. The two simply understand the need for newspapers to change to fit the digital paradigm. Pew reported in March 2014 that several native digital news organizations have been growing their staff, with several online news sites hiring editors and columnists from traditionally print companies; for example, New York Times assistant managing editor Jim Roberts was named chief content officer at Mashable in October of 2013.7 Corredoira and Sood recognize the growing importance of the “digital consumer segment” of the market, and do a good job of identifying ways in which that market has been consolidated into an audience of online streaming websites. However, it may be difficult for traditional newspaper sites to raise the usage of their online offerings in the face of direct competition from native online sources that have already attracted this market. Additionally, as long as native digital journalism sites like Mashable, Yahoo, Huffington Post, and others provide free news and begin to produce their own original stories, it will be difficult for organizations like the New York Times or The Washington Post to keep their online content behind a paywall. While Corredoira and Sood have established a solid foundation from which to build, identification of a potentially lucrative market segment and the monetization of that segment are two

very different challenges. Any attempts by print sources to improve their online sales will face stiff competition from native online digital news sources, but failure to do so will spell financial ruin for nondigitally conforming news outlets. The declining revenue involved in print newspapers has opened up analysis into the content of the journalism itself, and the several ways that profit losses have altered, and even worsened, news stories. Much of this analysis focuses on reforming journalistic content at its foundation—within the curriculum of journalism classes themselves. In their 2012 article, “Searching for the Core of Journalism Education: Program Directors Disagree on Curriculum Priorities,” Blom and Davenport acknowledge the impact of the “economic climate” and of “innovative technology” on the industry, but also note that “the principal tenet of journalism has remained the same—using good news judgment to give people the news and information they need to make good decisions to lead productive lives.”8 Throughout their essay, the two reflect upon curriculum suggestions offered to them by professors of journalism themselves, including the need for a wider liberal arts background to allow journalism students to further contextualize their stories within the broader “social, cultural, economic, and political worlds they inhabit.”9 Blom and Davenport also note that, in a survey of university journalism program directors, no consensus could be established on exactly which types of classes should be offered overall, but the majority agreed that greater attention should be paid to the topic of media ethics and law.10 Other scholars have echoed Blom and Davenport’s analysis. For example, Lizette Rabe, in “Arguing the case of the ‘Janus element’ in journalism education: Journalism history as essential

element in journalism curricula in developing democracies,” coins the phrase ‘Janus effect,’ which describes the need for journalism students to learn journalism history as a means of further interrogating modern events through lens refined in past experiences.11 This academic insight is fascinating in its assertion that small changes to the very foundation of journalistic learning may have an immense influence on rectifying what some have seen as a decline in news quality. The opposite side of media reform literature focuses on remedying professional news industry as a whole, a more macro approach when compared to the micro-focused remedy of journalism education. Robert McChesney has written extensively on the systematic failures of print journalism, and his book The Death and Life of American Journalism, co-authored with John Nichols, reestablishes the Internet as the main cause of newspapers’ struggles after asserting the reliance of original, investigative journalism on the print medium.12 The Internet has taken away classified advertising, taken away readership, and offered a “radically” lower means of production that makes it difficult to justify the continue production of print copy newspapers.13 Perhaps much more radical than his peers, McChesney argues in favor of socialist policymaking in the regulation of the media industry. He takes a hard stance in Blowing The Roof Off The Twenty-First Century against the capitalist structures that have guided U.S. media policy making to this point in history, and proposes instead several leftist solutions that would put the state “in the middle of the creation of media,”14 including ending the Internet Service Provider (ISP) “cartel,” breaking up corporate media monopolies, and, most importantly, treating journalism

as a public good.15 Adapting Milton Friedman’s description of ‘neighborhood effects’ to journalism, McChesney argues that everyone will benefit from an informed citizenry and informed institutions that monitor those in power, and so the U.S. government should heavily subsidize the free press system through a voucher system that allows Americans “over the age of 18 to direct $200 of government money annually to any nonprofit medium of his or her choice.16 The voucher system would fund a thriving, non-commercial news system powered by citizen choice rather than government puppetry. Media reform critique has taken on a plethora of definitions and methods, from the micro-level solutions of journalism school curriculum changes to the macro-level changes that would make government subsidies the major source of funding for a new, noncommercial news industry. These two drastically different approaches highlight both the many weaknesses of modern day journalism and also the true breadth of media reform scholarship, but while education reformists offer practical and direct solutions, academics like Robert McChesney intent on changing the news industry at a market level offer solutions that are perhaps too radical to be realistically implemented. A status quo within the news industry exists, as evidenced by the reticence, and ultimate difficulty, in adapting to digital technologies. Attempts to make journalism a public good would hit back against an industry with immensely lucrative historical roots. And while it is possible that newspapers could reach such dire financial straits that they back a shift to a non-profit, voucher system as suggested by McChesney, convincing Congress that

a previously privatized industry should now be granted taxpayer dollars will be incredibly difficult, as support will be, at best, split along part lines as Republicans will most likely advocate instead for freer market solutions. Michael McGrath also explores the already existing successes of nonprofit news in “Nonprofit News: The Future of American Journalism?” and points out that several sources like the Associated Press and ProPublica have found great success in producing strong investigative journalism within the nonprofit model.17 So while McChesney’s vision is certainly one that needs to be examined, and perhaps even implemented, it appears that a governmental intervention may be unnecessary if some news sources are already finding success as non-profits within the current, commercially-dominant system. So far, the connection between the weakening revenue streams of daily print newspapers and declining production of original journalism, especially investigative journalism, has been explored. However, the connection between this relationship and a declining trust in the news industry as a whole raises the question of who now holds authority in the U.S. media landscape. Many scholars argue that it now lies in the hands of citizens themselves, through citizen journalism. Mitchell Stephens, a Journalism professor at NYU, writes in a blog post that journalism is currently becoming less and less about ‘being there,’ because as recording technologies become more widespread, so too has the ability to witness newsworthy events. To Stephens, authority has slipped away from those who observe events, stating, “As journalism becomes less about collecting the who, what, and when, and more about explaining why and what’s next, geographical authority is increasingly less important than

intellectual authority.”18 There is more than one type of authority, in Stephen’s view, and professional journalists still have an upper hand over citizen journalists in their ability to digest and contextualize important events. Riaz and Pasha further explain how citizen journalists are given authority by their readership because they can appeal to more niche audiences. They say that, “many segments of society [are] unrepresented by the mainstream media,”19 but also that citizen journalists have initiated discussions from the local to the international level. Citizen journalists have an opportunity to speak for those who are not being already being spoken for, smaller market segments that are overlooked by the mainstream press, and perhaps have more authority than traditional press within these more specific readership groups. The question of authority and how it relates to citizen journalism is an important one, because those who view it as a viable alternative to traditional news sources like the daily newspaper will cut deeper into the traditional sources’ revenue losses. Blogs posted online are almost always free to the public, and can be created by anyone with Internet access. However, it remains to be seen if the allowance for a diversity of voices makes up for an increasingly apparent lack of investigative ability on the part of citizens. Because of newer recording technologies, especially the growing spread of cell phones throughout the world, almost anyone can become a citizen journalist simply by recording news worthy events. While the authors appear to accept this as one of citizen journalism’s valid definitions, it seems apparent that simply providing raw footage—and raw data—should be

interrogated for its use of the word ‘journalism.’ The loss of printed news publications has caused much concern for the future of original stories, stories that require technical skill to properly narrativize and contextualize. Pictures and videos are a vital part of news story telling, but it is important as well to understand why a certain event is being covered; the ramifications of a story being printed. While it is important, as Riaz and Pasha established, for citizen journalists to be able to speak to a more localized, and often centralized audience, which mass media publications have difficulty doing because of a wide degree of needs across the country. Ultimately, the best way to reaffirm the authority of traditional media sources may be to have citizen and professional journalists work together to provide for the news needs of marginalized voices while also providing the contextualization and technical skills necessary to understand the true extent of a news piece. In attempting to answer the question of who has authority in today’s media landscape, a newer source of news must be examined: comedic punditry and satire. Over the past two decades, shows like The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and the more recent Last Week Tonight With John Oliver have become a major source of news, especially among teens and young adults. In fact, as of 2012, 43% of The Colbert Report viewers and 39% of The Daily Show viewers were between the ages of 18 and 29. Over 75% of each show’s audience was under the age of 50.20 While comedic, each of these shows has been lauded for its news coverage and commentary, and each has won the Peabody Award for public service. They have had realworld impacts, perhaps most notably

in Stephen Colbert’s creation of (and subsequent expose on) a Super PAC and John Oliver’s segment on net neutrality, which caused the FCC’s website to crash after it received a deluge of public comments. While academic research into the journalistic proclivities of these shows is still a largely developing field of study, Hart and Hartelius have condemned the cynicism of The Daily Show as a cause of decreasing trust in the U.S. political system21 while Dannagal G. Young has found that viewers of political satire shows watch, in part, because they view them as an unbiased source of news.22 Ultimately, there is a lack of academic critique of satirical, “fake news” shows as journalistic entities. Just as in the citizen versus professional journalism debate, contextualization is a key responsibility of professional journalists. Comedic satire of the news has proven to be an unintimidating gateway into several complex political and economic topicsfrom the war in Iraq to Super PACs to government surveillance. This review of the political economy of journalism has focused on three main themes centered around the crisis that journalism is currently facing- traditional news sources such as daily, print newspapers have not been able to adapt to a burgeoning demand for digitalized news content forcing cuts to the size of newsrooms that have directly affected the quality of investigative journalism. The first theme of revenue sources examined literature that called for the use of tax breaks to aid the profits of daily newspapers as well as posited that a new market for online digital content can be found within the same market targeted by online streaming websites like Netflix, Hulu, and Pandora. Reforming the content of journalism itself was the second theme, and focused on a microlevel solution in a reform of journalism

education and a macro-level solution of re-classifying journalism as a public good supported by a governmental voucher system. Finally, the changing role of authority in the U.S. news system called for an analysis of citizen journalism and how it compared in trustworthiness and persuasion to professional journalism. Satirical news shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Last Week Tonight were also examined, as a large percentage of young adults view them as a primary source of news, and questions have been raised as to whether or not these shows are producing journalistic content. Overall, it appears that the most important factor in ensuring a strong, continued news industry in the U.S. is to re-stabilize the revenue of the daily newspapers, the main source of original journalism. They are imperative as sources of original news sources, which free online news websites often use as a basis for their own stories. Even if this can be accomplished, all newspapers must brace themselves for the inevitable re-location to a purely online model. Because it is unlikely that Congress will ever be able to enact such a wide scale reform as the provision of journalism as a full public good, more theoretical models must be established. Academics must be rational and realistic in their suggestions for saving the institution of journalism. Ultimately, they must work to reform journalism within the current market system of the U.S., rather than try and alter the market system itself. While this literature review is not exhaustive, it has become apparent that several important questions in the field of the political economy of journalism have gone unanswered. Much analysis has been done from the perspective of traditional daily newspapers trying to move online and

formulate a digital business model, but do native online sites like Mashable, Buzzfeed, and the Huffington Post have a leg up on them? A lot of focus is placed on the shift of companies Journalism is a pillar from traditional to digital, but what about a company like Mashable, of a functioning which is inherently digital and is now democracy, and it trying to provide more traditional, is imperative that investigative news stories? Additionally, scholars need to question just how complex, comprehensive malleable the capitalist overtones of investigative the U.S. economy are. What is the best way to reform journalism- through journalism be allowed changes to journalism itself, through to flourish. changes to the market system, or a combination of the two? Journalism is a pillar of a functioning democracy, and it is imperative that complex, comprehensive investigative journalism be allowed to flourish. Whether it occurs online or offline, the press must be able to check those with power, and traditional newspapers must discover how to adapt to the demands of a 21st century audience if the institution of journalism is to thrive in the digital age.

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By Bethany Kattwinkel Fourth Year, Media Studies

The Public Enemy:

The Serial Product and Agent

“

The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society...

“

- George Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life1

William A. Wellman’s 1931 film The Public Enemy starring James Cagney follows the life of Tommy Powers, a young man who becomes involved in gang activity at a young age. Throughout the film, Tommy struggles to express his individuality in the midst of the surrounding capitalist consumer culture which has produced a certain “serial” culture; in this culture, items are mass-produced and only distinguishable by number or sequence. The film emphasizes how Tommy grows up surrounded by this serial culture and is deeply affected by it. He becomes a victim of the process of serialization, and as time goes on, he eventually becomes the agent of this process. No matter what effort he exerts, as long as he is outside the home, he cannot escape the forces of the capitalist, serial culture around him. The Public Enemy begins with a foreword that states: “It is the ambition of the authors of ‘The Public Enemy’ to honestly depict an environment that exists today in certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal. While the story of ‘The Public Enemy’ is essentially a true story, all names and characters appearing herein, are purely fictional.”2 The film begins with a sequence of shots that portray a very specific

environment in which serial culture prevails. The first shot of the film is an extreme long shot which shows a busy city street filled with several sets of people walking in linear patterns across the street and identical-looking cars lining the sides of the road. In this beginning sequence, we also see large groups of people crossing the street together and then a long line of dark, visually indistinguishable automobiles following one another. We also see rows of similar-looking houses lining the streets. These shots demonstrate how Tommy Powers’ surroundings are homogenized. In shots of a train whistle and train tracks, we are also presented with a prominent symbol of the rise of industrial capitalism in the United States: the train. The train car is indistinguishable, at least on the outside, except by its number. In Lynne Kirby’ s 1997 book Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema, Kirby devotes a chapter entitled “Inventors and Hysterics: The Train in the Prehistory and Early History of Cinema” to explaining the anxiety in America surrounding the introduction of the train. Kirby notes that the train can assemble Americans as an “indistinct mass” of passengers.3 The first scene of The Public Enemy also highlights the prevalence of alcohol as a mass-produced, massconsumed object. In one shot, we see a row of six identical faucets with the hands of workers turning them and filling buckets with beer. We do not see the faces of these workers, merely their hands. In the following shot, we see horses pulling a cart stacked with identical barrels of beer. On one street corner, we see several bars, and the camera follows a man walking down the street carrying six buckets of beer. The Salvation Army band walks by carrying an American flag,

emphasizing the “American-ness” of this whole scene and the industrial society. In this environment, the individual can only become, as Simmel explains, “ a single cog as over against the vast overwhelming organization of things and forces which gradually take out of his hands everything connected with progress, spiritualty and value.”4 Modern society is the organization, and the serial culture it creates can take away valuable individual expression. Finally, we are introduced to our main characters, Tommy Powers and his best friend Matt Doyle, two young boys who emerge from a set of double doors with a sign over them reading “Family Entrance.” As soon as Tommy and Matt leave their home behind, they are thrown into the serial culture, and they drink the beer—they partake in the consumption of the mass culture surrounding them. The home seems to be the only space in the film not tainted by this inescapable serial culture. The Powers’ home has not been branded or homogenized into a mainstream American space. Perhaps this explains why throughout the film, Tommy continues to come back to his family at home. Tommy cannot always remain in the safety of his home, and when he meets the outside world, he is deeply affected by the forces of society around him. At a young age, Tommy first attempts to depart from the serial culture around him by choosing to work for Putty Nose, a local gangster. Tommy seems to seek an authentic, “qualitative” relationship with Putty Nose, but Putty Nose does not treat him the way he would like to be treated. Simmel states, “All emotional relationships between persons rest on their individuality, whereas intellectual relationships deal with persons as with numbers, that is, as with elements which, in themselves, are indifferent, but which are of interest only insofar as they offer

something objectively perceivable”5 Putty Nose abandons Tommy, leaving him to realize that Putty Nose did not really care about him beyond using him for a calculable monetary gain. This realization humiliates Tommy, eventually leading him to murder Putty Nose because of his rage.6 Tommy and Matt become the victims of Putty Nose’ s process of serialization: Putty Nose brainwashes them into serial clones of the gangster. When we first see Tommy and Matt approaching Putty Nose’s gang, the two boys seem like copies of each other, wearing the same outfit consisting of dark knickers, lightcolored shirts, and black newsboy hats— they are almost indistinguishable from the back. Tommy and Matt also move in similar ways, both looking behind their left shoulders for bystanders before opening the door. The film skips over six years of time and presents to us a second time the image of Tommy and Matt approaching the door to Putty Nose’s club. The boys are dressed identically again, though this time they are wearing longer pants. As David E. Ruth notes in his essay “Dressed to Kill: Consumption, Style, and the Gangster,” “along with business organization and violent criminality, stylish consumption defined the public enemy.”7 Style becomes very important to the gangster, and in this case, Tommy and Matt are taking on a specific style dictated by Putty Nose and his gang. In the next scene, Tommy and Matt participate in an attempt to rob a fur trading company. Tommy looks through a row of furs, which appear very similar, possibly serial items to the viewer. Then Tommy pulls the furs back to find a singular polar bear fur behind them. Tommy is startled and proceeds to shoot the fur. We can view this polar bear fur as the individual as it is not like all the others. Tommy does not know what

to do with this individual, so it startles him, and he attacks it with a gun, a serial implement of destruction. (Earlier, we see Putty Nose give Tommy and Matt guns as Christmas gifts, handing them to them in exactly the same manner.) Tommy does not know how to react to the individual, so he attacks it with the serial. Tommy seems to hope that his life of a crime will provide him with an escape from the serial culture surrounding him. However in reality, Tommy is not only continually affected by serialization, he eventually becomes the agent of serialization himself. Tommy’s crime is bootlegging—but not simply selling beer—his gang aims to force all of the beer sellers to buy their beer. At one point, Tommy says, “They buy our beer, or they don’t buy any beer.”8 Simmel explains that in modern society, “life is composed more and more of these impersonal cultural elements and existing goods and values which seek to suppress peculiar personal interests and incomparabilities.”9 Tommy’s beer is this sort of mass-produced cultural element. He is not concerned with the quality of the beer but the quantity being sold, and he has become so involved with the culture of serialization that he inflicts it on others. As Robert Warshow claims in his essay “ The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” “The gangster’s whole life is an effort to assert himself as an individual, to draw himself out of the crowd.”10 We see Tommy trying to express individuality; however, he is never able to truly do so because he cannot escape the realm of mass consumer culture. Ruth claims that “in The Public Enemy James Cagney’s rise in gangdom is clear when he switches from riding in a truck to a gleaming convertible that turns the heads of envious pedestrians.”11 At one point, Tommy remarks, “That ain’t no Ford!”

about his new car.12 Tommy is very proud of his nice new white car that is not a Ford, not the most common brand; however, in reality this item is a still an automobile, the single good most increasingly consumed by middleclass Americans between 1900 and 1929.13 Tommy is only striving to tailor his consuming experience to express his individuality.Ruth also points to the scene where Tommy is getting his clothes tailored to demonstrate this phenomenon.14 Ultimately, Tommy can slightly alter his consuming experience, but he cannot stop participating in mass consumerist culture. In many ways, Tommy Powers is “a product of his environment.” As hard as he may try, he cannot escape the serial culture that surrounds him. This begs the question: What can the individual suffering from the reign of serial culture do? How can the individual resist “being levelled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism”?15 The film’s final scene offers only a bleak, humiliating end for Tommy Powers when his dead body is returned to his front door mummified; Tommy is literally wrapped, packaged. His individuality had been taken away from him, and he has been transformed into merely another serial product, another dead gangster. The Public Enemy’s outlook on the American capitalist system is grim. It begs us to consider how our society might create this oppressive, consumerist serial culture; perhaps the system is more flawed than we might like to believe.

Lee Miller

ort dsw a th W

i red e M By Year s die u h t t S 4 dia Me

Elegant, well-mannered, proper, beautiful, faithful, nurturing, charming; these have been qualities expected of women throughout much of history, and even in this day in age. To a large extent, women are held up to particular standards of behavior, and in effort to live up to those standards, women become objectified, marginalized, and “conventional.”We are fortunate enough to live in an era where it is not unheard of for women to desire a life outside the conventional—to a degree— but this was not always the case. It is only recently that women have been so encouraged to stray from the societal norms of femininity, embrace their individualism, and make a name for themselves. But even with this enlightened appreciation of women, there seems to be a fine line between a woman’ s respectful, individual ambition and a scandalous defiance of gender norms. This line has continually blurred in the last decades, and especially since the

work of Lee Miller, a beautiful model, photographer, and rebel in her own right. While Miller possessed many of the aforementioned womanly qualities, it was her boldness, fearlessness, and unwavering confidence that had, contrarily, garnered her more critique than acclaim during her lifetime. A living, breathing paradox, Miller had an untamed elegance, a disguised vulnerability, a charming humor despite a past ridden with trauma, and was perhaps the only woman alive who could fluidly “swing from the Siegfried Line to the new hipline.”1 Miller was a woman in a man’ s world, made fashion relevant in war, and brought emotional perspective to the conventional genre of documentary photojournalism. Most importantly, and arguably most misinterpreted, was Miller’ s exceptional ability to capture beauty, both devastating and desired. In the mid 20th century, as inconceivable as it was for a woman to house an artistic genius, it was further incongruous for that woman to be a beautiful model, to take sorrowful, gruesome photographs, and to willingly place herself in such dangerous settings as the warfront and aftermath of Nazi liberation. A distant reading of Miller and her life story may frame her as unstable, abused, and vulnerable. But a deeper investigation into her life and her work, both the published and the unpublished, the fashion-focused and the personal, would reveal the true genius to her artistry, the strength behind her beauty, and the reason she is a role model to so many. Miller’ s upbringing was far from ordinary. “Lee, rather often, had forgotten how to behave well,” stated her son Antony Penrose in a documentary version of his biographic work, The Lives of Lee Miller. After expulsion from several schools in her hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY, she eventually graduated from an

all-girls Vassar prep school before convincing her parents to send her overseas to Paris. There, she spent much of her young adult life traveling and studying theatrics, stage, and costume design at L’ École Medgyes, and living the young, bohemian dream. Throughout this time, however, Miller would return home periodically, eventually remaining in New York for some time, having fallen ill to a disease she acquired from being sexually abused by a family friend at the age of seven. Her parents, in the hopes of aiding Lee in her mental recovery from her abuse, had sent their daughter on several visits to a psychiatrist who would “[encourage] the young girl to believe that sex was merely a physical act and not linked to love.”2 Additionally, her father, Theodore Miller, began taking a series of images of Miller, bare-bodied and exposed to the camera. Theodore was”fascinated by photography,” as it was “a means to record things he loved... particularly his daughter”;3 images of Lee overwhelmed their family albums. It is unclear whether this disturbingly close relationship with her father was something Lee appreciated, but “as a direct source of strength and a powerful mentor,” her complaisance to his obsessive acts prevailed.4 However, as her career unfolded as a muse and fashion model, it would appear that Lee had internalized the advice of her childhood psychiatrist, had learned to “[cope] with the situation by dissociating...herself from the use of her body,” and came to possess that “sense of detachment” and “attractive aloofness” so desirable in a fashion model.5 After the esteemed Condé Nast saved her life from a moving truck on the streets of Manhatten, her radiating beauty struck the magazine mogul, and she spent time modeling for the many branches of

Vogue. From her first appearance in the March 15th, 1927 illustrated cover, Miller graced the pages of the popular fashion publication with this very air of ease and comfort, “never appear[ing] self-conscious.”6 Even as she progressed to the other side of the camera, Miller’ s unrestrained relationship with her body and resulting independence continued to carry into her professional and personal life. Fond of the glamour and excitement that came with the life of a fashion model in Manhattan, Miller nonetheless yearned for her life in Paris, eager to be “swallowed up in the madness”7 of the romantic, bohemian city. She eventually found herself intrigued by the role of the photographer, and was determined to get behind the lens. Thus, in 1929, Miller departed for Europe yet again, “letters of introduction from Condé Nast to Man Ray and George Hoyningen-Huene,” chief photographer of French Vogue, in hand.8 In her admirable stubbornness, Miller managed to hunt down Man Ray, the popular Surrealist photographer, at a Parisian cafe, where she approached the artist and “boldly announced herself ” as his “new student.”9 Miller was born with a strong aesthetic eye and a knack for Surrealism, but beyond that, according to Antony, she had “that quirky way of looking at things, seeing behind the picture, the joke, the pun –it’ s all part of her lexicon.”10 Indeed, these qualities are present throughout her work from the frontline, but they are worth noting in her work for Vogue as well. As described in the afterward for Lee Miller in Fashion, Becky Conekin’ s recently published biographic collection of her work, the “subversive Surrealism, ironic juxtapositions, and humbling humanity”

that shines through her work are the qualities truly worthy of acclaim. While “Miller has been posthumously recuperated as an artist,” changing the field of photojournalism for good, “for a full assessment of her career, fashion is vital.”11 For those who knew Lee Miller solely as the woman who famously posed in Hitler’ s bathtub, the general reaction to her work during her lifetime was not one of praise; on the contrary, Miller was refuted for creating such harrowing, horrifying images from the war, and for placing them before the innocent eyes of Vogue’ s female readership. This sort of work, so far from the conventional feminine artistic musing, was not fit for a woman, especially a woman as beautiful and enchanting as Lee. As a result, Miller’s credibility was tainted, and her work was interpreted as unwomanly, ugly, and unpleasant for the eye. Nonetheless, as my research has taken me further and further into the depths of Miller’s work, spanning decades, oceans, and publications, I have come to the conclusion that there is an often-muted beauty in her images that captivates the viewer, preventing them from looking away. There is a scale of beauty existing throughout her photographs, from subtle to self-evident, varying from image to image, but nonetheless present. No other Surrealist came close to photojournalism,” nor did any other photojournalist come close to achieving Miller’s remarkable Surrealist content. Lee “saw the world through surrealist eyes,” noted Antony, and it is that aspect of her personality that created the “endearing and forcible quality” consistent in all of her images.12 Photographing that which was valued for fashion, that which was abject in war, and effectively bridging the gap

between the two, Miller had an incomparable style that no man could have taught. While Miller’s relationship with Man Ray had initially provided her with access to further inspirational, artistic figures of history, it was entirely on Miller’ s own accord that she forged and maintained those connections. Seeing beneath the surface of every experience to even greater opportunity, Miller grew her own artistic abilities and made a name for herself that cannot be linked to any one influence. In a profession with relatively few accomplished female predecessors, Miller sought to create her own lineage, and in doing so created her family. Nestled into the archive, among her travels and Vogue assignments, is a family album of sorts, revealing her heartfelt connections with all whom she met along the way. While she swiftly moved from lover to lover, country to country, Miller severed no ties and burned no bridges. Every relationship she made was built to last, which only further speaks to her character and appeal—an attractiveness that was more than skin deep. From her very first controversial move, out of view of the camera to behind the lens, Miller took it upon herself to create a revolution; beyond altering the face of fashion magazines and photojournalism, Miller refashioned the very perception of what it meant to be a woman in a changing society. “I keep saying to everyone, ‘I didn’ t waste a minute all my life’ – but I know myself, now, that if I had it over again, I’ d be even more free with my ideas, with my body and my affection.”13 A classic beauty with an indomitable sense of self, Miller possessed a passion to see the world in a way that no woman—or photographer—had done before. Her humble approach to her work—having tucked away some 60,000 negatives in the attic— only amplifies her fans’ desires to search and discover the stories behind the images for themselves; taking the archives online was the only way to sustain all of their attention and adoration.

It’s Not a Wonderful Life: Depicting the American Man, Dream, and Menace II Society

ironic at best, and improper at worst. However, the grandfather’s follow-up question as Caine leaves the home, “do you care whether you live or die?” is drawn directly from the crux of George Bailey’s dilemma in It’s a Wonderful Life. In both Menace II Society and It’s a Wonderful Life, the protagonists seek to answer this question through a process of reliving and reexamining their own trauma. For George, reliving his trauma - a world absent his life - makes him appreciate that life that much more. Alternatively for Caine, reliving his trauma compels him to begrudgingly accept that he is fated to die. Both films are efforts to answer the same question – do I have something to live for in America? Caine’s story is, at its core, the same as George’s, minus the privileges and assumptions of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant America. This absence and lack is the point at which the two tales of self-reflection diverge toward drastically different endings. Menace’s ending is unpleasant not only for its explicit language and gruesome violence, but also for its defiance of the norms of progress and justice. As a film about life in America, Menace II Society is jarring to the mainstream white viewing audience because, contrary to It’s a Wonderful Life, Menace actively defies the assumptions about mobility, belonging, and optimism that form the basis of an imagined American ideal. Traditionally described as the land of opportunity, America is portrayed with an expectation of social mobility, an expectation embedded in every narrative of how someone “made it”. How such mobility plays out is inherently tied up in the legacy of one’s family. For Caine in Menace II Society, the audience learns very quickly that violence, death, and the dark side of

In the Hughes Brothers’ 1993 film Menace II Society, after the protagonist Caine returns from the hospital for the first time he finds himself sitting with his grandparents on their sofa, watching Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. The film is concluding, as its protagonist George Bailey enjoys a jubilant reunion with his family, whom he has finally come to appreciate. Seemingly uncomfortable and anxious as his grandparents watch the film with smiles, Caine is relieved when the moment is interrupted by his best friend and frequent partner in crime, O-Dog. The two friends sit through a lecture from Caine’s grandfather before leaving the house, as he urges the boys to straighten up their acts and stay out of trouble.1 Often described as timeless, heartwarming, and beloved, the American classic It’s a Wonderful Life has taken on the role in cinema of standard bearer for a certain set of American ideals and assumed community values.2 In the context of Menace II Society, a film set nearly 50 years later, on the opposite side of the country, and with characters of different race, class, and disposition, the placement of It’s a Wonderful Life within a living room in South Central Los Angeles initially seems

By Carly Spraggins Class of 2015 Media Studies & Government

capitalism are in his bloodline. While his father worked the odd jobs of a man at the bottom of the American economic totem pole, his principal labor was selling drugs, some of which Caine’s mother was addicted to. Though the audience is never introduced to O-Dog’s parents, the shopkeeper’s statement to him at the beginning of the film that “I feel sorry for your mother” serves to illuminate a nuanced divide in family dynamics. The shopkeeper’s statement articulates the assumption of the majority culture that by virtue of their relationship, a mother should be proud of her child. In this case, it is likely accurate to presume that O-Dog may not be too proud of his mother either, if she is even a part of his life. As such, he rationally resents the imposition of traditional nuclear family structure expectations on a familial dynamic they cannot possibly

understand. Caine describes his own parents as entertaining others in their home often, with a crowd of people who either just got out of jail or who were about to go to jail. In this way, this group of people passed down their own assumptions about Caine’s future and in his words, “turned him onto trouble.” By contrast, George Bailey has a predetermined role in the economy, passed down from his father via the family company. The eponymously named company automatically gives him economic and social capital in their community as a product of name recognition, not of any work he did himself. In the cases of both men, their prospects for economic and social mobility

cannot be separated from that of their family. Further, the disparities inherent in their quests for mobility make direct comparisons of the two flawed, as this quest is “a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead.”3 Menace II Society also presents a number of visually compelling structures and scenes with different characters, across different generations, as a symbol of the inability to escape one’s family’s mistakes, even on a small scale. The repeated imagery of shootings or threatened shootings in close proximity over kitchen tables and toddlers drinking alcohol on the front stoop alludes to the film’s broader exploration of how, if gangsters are able to take advantage of some shred of mobility, they might go about getting out of the life their family passed down to them. In an equally powerful image at the end of the film, Anthony, the young son of Caine’s friend and romantic interest Ronnie, is thrown from his Big Wheel tricycle, as Caine protects him from the bullets of a drive-by shooting. The broken tricycle on the sidewalk provides a visual cue that Caine’s death is the destruction of Anthony’s way out – if Anthony was going to learn to be better than his imprisoned father, he would have learned it from Caine. As with most texts, most of “the initial contact between the film and its audience is an agreed conception of human life: that man is a being with the possibility of success or failure.”4 If such a conception is in fact agreed upon, the added implication of the ever-progressing modern metropolis is such that “labor conflict, unemployment, poverty, urban blight [should have]

ceased to exist.”5 Such seems to be the case in the idealized town of Bedford Falls, New York, where the characters of It’s a Wonderful Life, despite occasional, unpredicted financial panic, all appear to have very negligible disparities in economic wealth. This combination can be taken so far as to suggest that in this ideal urban setting, mobility should be a non-issue because there should be no desire to leave. However, the reality is that such progressive metropolis’ can never come to full, realistic fruition and the litany of aforementioned social and economic ills exist, to varying degrees, in every community. With the accompanying cultural symptoms of modernization and industrialization, the “heightened perceptions of geographic mobility, ethnic divisions, and class-segregated neighborhoods weakened the notion of elite social stewardship.”6 This supposed death of the last remnants of the lingering white man’s burden has been maintained in contemporary political promotions of personal responsibility for one’s own forward progress. In other words, individuals are permitted to be socially and economically mobile, but no one is going to help them along the way. When George Bailey insinuated that their company be sympathetic to individualized needs and circumstances, the miserly Mr. Potter replies, “What does that get us? A discontented lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class,” in effect personifying the conservative, individualistic ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ ideology. Many early gangster films showed how the gangster’s extravagant consumption blurred class distinctions and hinted at increased socioeconomic mobility. In the same way, the conspicuous lack of cultural markers

speech with “whatever you decide to do…” as though to fool herself into thinking their courses are not already set. This blurred understanding of mobility and inevitability is confusing even to the characters most immersed in the debate– Caine: I’m not going to end up like he did [Pernell, with a life sentence in jail]. Ronnie: Oh really?! While Ronnie appears to have the most consistent faith and investment in Caine’s ability to better himself, this challenge to Caine’s own suggestion of mobility suggests that she doubts how far he will really be able to get from his origins. Though It’s a Wonderful Life seldom directly addresses its effort to consider and rearticulate American identity, it makes strong use of setting and theme to create an environment where sense of belonging is a worthy American expectation. As a film set during Christmas, its markers encompass both the consumer culture and ambiguous but ubiquitous Christian dogma that often serve as a proxy for national identity. Without verbally declaring their own patriotism, the men and women of It’s a Wonderful Life express a loyalty to the place and space they inhabit. They have a sense of belonging, a sense that, “for everyone else, there is at least the theoretical possibility of another world – in that happier American culture, which the gangster denies.”10 While their acceptance of the ‘happier American culture’ is not explicit, Caine’s denial of it most certainly is. Upon Ronnie’s suggestion that the two move with her son Anthony to Atlanta where she has found a new job, Caine snaps, “Ain’t nothing going to change in Atlanta. I’m still going to be black. You act like Atlanta ain’t America.” George’s brother Harry in

and consumption within Menace II Society serves as an indicator of their total lack of economic mobility; they cannot even use popular culture to fake being outside their class.7 As protagonists, George and Caine have different hurdles when it comes to mobility – George has the means, both financially and in his superfluous knowledge of travel reference points, but is held back by personal obligations. Caine has no obligations, but is held back by lack of means and institutional barriers. Menace II Society makes clear its point of view that society is the real culprit in holding Caine back. In the traditional gangster film, where the gangster’s aspirations and personal choices are the origin of his criminality, “we gain the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.”8 But there is nothing satisfying about Caine’s death. A great deal of this dissatisfaction is entrenched in the fact that the audience is not seeing the process of finding the ending to either film – it is clear in both films how they will end and our confidence as viewers in the inevitability of these respective endings further engrains the division between our imagined America and the realities of American life. For the gangster, wherever we find him, “he has already made his choice or the choice has already been made for him, it doesn’t matter which: we are not permitted to ask whether at some point he could have chosen to be something else than what he is.”9 Yet at the same time, there is a force with which the dominant, white power structures of America are selfassured by assuming that there always is a choice, even when they cannot identify it. As Caine is graduating from high school, his teacher leads off a closing

It’s a Wonderful Life embodies the closest direct expression of patriotism in either film, as a war hero. And yet he ends the film calling George “the richest man in town.” This is more reasonable within the Christmas context, as it is consistent with the religious implication that faithful people will be rewarded. In a more disheartening expression of this same religious ideology, Caine’s religious grandparents seem to be the only characters within Menace II Society that are unwaveringly confident in the value of the protestant work ethic, despite the fact that they are are still resigned to live in the projects. Caine is, and is destined to be, perpetually tortured by “the fantasy of selfsufficiency”11 because unlike George, Caine does not have a community to fall back on when he falters. The contrasting pictures of American belonging in the two films are also heavily tied to the landscapes themselves. The validation of George’s panic is that his physical landscape would change if he were not a part of it. His personal identity is so absorbed into the identity of the place that its name changes in his absence, from Bedford Falls and Bailey Farms to Pottersville. Across the country, Menace II Society features a version of the Los Angeles landscape without any distinctive markers. Despite the context of the Watts riots, its landscapes are isolated and portrayed in a way that would suggest that is had no broader political significance. The city is isolated not only from the nation, but from its own population as “the evacuation of young black males from the public sphere has proceeded on every front.”12 In the middle of the film, a large group of young black men disperses quickly when the cops come. When a man lives in the projects, he does not really belong anywhere. Further, the men maintain a

“steady loyalty to ghetto realism – the appearance of being totally determined by one’s social environment.”13 Despite seeming to reject religion, O-Dog makes an intriguing early assertion that no one, from themselves to God, really wants them to be where they are, as he tells Caine’s grandfather, “Sir, I don’t think God really thinks too much about us, or he wouldn’t put us here. I mean look where we stay at. It’s all fucked up…It’s messed up around here.” When they are able to maintain a presence in their community, the men of Menace II Society become a part of “the unseen population of the metropolis.”14 Especially as black men, they have an anonymity unlike George Bailey, who is distinctly recognized everywhere he goes. Caine and O-Dog’s experiences illuminate both the benefits and dangers of the centrifugal tendency towards invisibility. When Harold is shot dead, O-Dog screams, “That man is dead! Fuck that! That man is dead!” as he rushes their group to the hospital with Caine, leaving Harold to die, nameless in the street. George addresses this sense of anonymity of the masses with the antagonist of It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter, when he tells him “those people are human beings. But to you they’re cattle.” Speaking in a way that is remarkably direct to Caine’s community, he continues on to say “this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” There has always been an anonymity to being poor. The change across the 20th century was the slow burn that caused people to face the fact that there has also always been an anonymity to being black. Despite how sad it makes him, George Bailey’s reliving of his life is important because he sees that the community would be drastically different without him. The angel Clarence cheerfully remarks, “each

man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t alive it leaves an awful hole doesn’t it?” But the loss of Caine does not leave a hole and his world is not drastically different without him. He’s a widget in a system that throws away black lives like garbage. For society at large, Caine and his friends will never belong because they are burdens, not assets. In their constant effort to have needs fulfilled, they act as children at times. There is an ever-present and continuous realization among them, “as every child soon notices, however important he is – however beautiful or loved or clever – he is also nothing special. There is always a point of view – that will forever haunt him – from which he is of no interest.”15 This realization is translated very clearly to the audience. Caine displays a unique mixture of adult and childlike behaviors. With Ronnie, Caine straddles the line between kid brother and lover, just as with her son, Anthony, it is unclear whether Caine is more big brother or father figure, playing children’s videogames with a handgun on the end table. George and his friends display a related-childlike tendency to insist upon being the center of attention. Their greeting of one another, a childlike waving of hands accompanied by nonsensical noises, physically garners public attention for themselves. Yet while for Caine his childlike behaviors are barriers and markers of immaturity, George is praised for them. The angels in the beginning of the film admire George because “he’s got the faith of a child.” Though he remained a child in many ways, Caine was never afforded the opportunity to adopt such an innocent faith. While the anonymity created by his race and class give him little opportunity for upward mobility and

belonging, the pursuit of this belonging is even more treacherous to Caine when he is noticed by society. As expressed by the white gaze on the 1992 Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, it is assumed that “if they cease hitting him, he will release his violence and now is being justifiably restrained.”16 In the same way, the police of Menace II Society take on the assumption that if they stop watching the black community, it will

“Survival becomes a burden because one knows what pain to expect.” release its criminality and thus are being justifiably surveilled. Before O-Dog kills him, the shopkeeper says, “I don’t want any trouble. Just get out,” to express an expectation that physical closeness to the black man is, in effect, physical closeness to imminent violence. Ironically, in this case it is the shopkeeper’s expression of this expectation that causes it to come to fruition. However, the notion that “violence is the imminent action of the black body.”17 is not unique to the character of the shopkeeper – “America has always viewed its black population as a kind of sleeper cell – either criminals in fact, or criminals in waiting.”18 By virtue of their blackness, Caine and O-Dog, regardless of their personal behavior, are restricted from assimilating into the accepted, lawful class of American citizens. Both the history of American crime and crime-based cinema traditionally assumed that “as the gangster rose in crime and in society, he came into his

own as a consumer and usually shed the obvious markers of his ethnicity.”19 The obvious problem with this assertion in the case of contemporary black gangs is that their ethnicity is considered a marker of their criminality, and vice versa. Despite the widespread culturally recognition of many black gangs, like LA’s infamous Bloods and Crips, there is no purge of their criminality, class, or blackness for their respective members. Instead, “his activity becomes a kind of pure criminality”20 and his public existence in blackness is understood as a public admission of guilt. This contrast to the oft-repeated white American ideal of innocence until proven guilty is further exemplified as the police in It’s a Wonderful Life calmly follow George to the abandoned home to reason with him, despite his continuous erratic behavior. The inequality of social roles both within and between the films mirrors this inequality of roles in the justice system. O-Dog, in particular, will never belong to the society around him because he has taken on the role that was given to him by white society, as that of a guest. Across industries, “of course, white culture has always compelled black males to be performative in public, usually as entertainers or as athletes.”21 O-Dog’s obsession with the surveillance tape as his gateway to success and personal glory emphasizes the degree to which he has taken on the role of a sideshow beast to be watched with equal amounts awe and disgust. But just as O-Dog is compelled to take on the role the dominant structure gives him, so too is the audience – “in order to grasp the true nature of space, the observer must project himself through it.”22 As such, a further source of the white mainstream audience discomfort with Menace II Society is that that audience, projecting

themselves through the world of the film, may see themselves fitting into the role of the oppressor, the superior dictator of positions. The ease with which the gangsters in Menace II Society accept the ascribed role is, importantly, just as much a product of the emptiness of their lifestyle as it is their external social pressures. It is hard to imagine a space in which anyone would truly belong, if they lacked any purpose for being there. Outside of the aforementioned performative role, violence against one another is the main activity through which the men of Menace II Society find purpose and relative productivity, for if “rage renders us helpless, revenge gives us something to do. It organizes our disarray.”23 In this construction, “success is defined… simply as the unlimited possibility of aggression.”24 Ultimately, Menace II Society makes its greatest challenge to the assumption of a desire for belonging by makings its characters’ central motivation a desire to flee. George certainly expresses a desire to flee Bedford Falls and, in a way, has sorrow over his inability to do so. However, this desire is differentiated in that George’s plans to flee always come with an underlying understanding that he would return eventually, whether from a summer abroad, college or his honeymoon. Caine’s desire to flee is expressed as much more final and absolute. Though wrought with interpersonal dilemma and debate, Caine is in the process of fleeing Los Angeles when he meets his particularly untimely end. It seems to be no coincidence that Anthony’s clothes change from a LA Lakers t-shirt in the middle of the film to an unexplainable Detroit Pistons hat in the final scene, expressing an ‘anywhere but here’ attitude that so many adopt as a coping mechanism.

Finally, the most all-encompassing assumption of American life that Menace II Society defies is optimism, and the belief in the inherent good of the system and life itself. At its core, “America, as a social and political organization, is committed to a cheerful view of life.”25 No media text is better at encapsulating and propagating this disposition than It’s a Wonderful Life. As the angels discuss George Bailey in the beginning of the film, one asks “is he sick?” The other replies, “No, worse, he’s discouraged,” as though to be discouraged is an ailment and misalignment in itself. Caine rejects this assumption when Ronnie visits him in the hospital for the second time– Ronnie: Why don’t you smile for a change? Caine: I ain’t got shit to smile about. Ronnie: You alive ain’t you? Caine: Yeah. And who says that’s good? In its editing, the opening footage of the Watts Riots, and Caine’s suggestion that the riots opened the doors for drugs into the city, the film serves to signify the point at which the optimism left the city. Even in the face of this absence, Ronnie and Caine continue to have intermingled but conflicting views on what role the notions of optimism and gratitude should play in their lives. While Caine suggests that he should be dead by now, and thus, is not optimistic about the future, Ronnie replies that “you need to be glad that you graduated from high school and that you’re alive at 18,” because relative to the rest of their community, that is something to be thankful for. In many ways, it is the familiarity of their suffering that makes it so difficult for Caine to discern the ambiguities of his experience. Once sadness and loss

became routine, they lose their ability to upset the young, disenfranchised black man and incite emotion, because “we wouldn’t think of anything as a tragedy if we did not have a deeply ingrained sense of order already there to be affronted.”26 The glimmer of attention he pays to his trauma occurs when Caine goes to jail and says “I don’t care what any of them said, it’s no place I could get used to.” George Bailey, whose routine is to expect that his good character can fix all things, shows his first outburst of anger in the board room up against Mr. Potter, in a moment where he faces the institutional constraints and restrictive power dynamics that are the heart of Caine’s existence. In this moment, he exposes “not merely my loss of control – that so-much-wished-for-transgression – but far more shamefully I expose my furtive utopianism, my horrifying, passionate ideal of, and for, myself.”27 The combined lack of optimism and presence of understated, recurring trauma become “not simply an effect of destruction but also, fundamentally, an enigma of survival.”28 Survival becomes a burden because one knows what pain to expect. The most common coping mechanism of Menace II Society is to “evoke an affectless masculinity, conceived under siege, and resonating with a long history of presenting a neutral face as a mask of inscrutability to the white gaze.”29 O-Dog is described by Caine as “America’s Nightmare. Young, Black, and didn’t give a fuck.” Specifically, the constant condemnation of “not giving a fuck” presupposes that one should inherently be grateful to be alive. As the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life describes it, everyone should be grateful for their life, and do everything possible to avoid “giving away God’s greatest gift,” despite the fact that in Caine’s

world, it is very easy to understand why living would be viewed as punishment, not a gift. It is only in embracing the harsh reality of the black male life that the teacher, Mr. Butler, is able to get Caine to consider the possibility of a reason to live. Mr. Butler tells Caine, “Being a black man in America isn’t easy. The hunt is on. And you’re the prey.” Not only are Caine and his friends not supported by American institutions, they often suffer at the hands of them, like when the police beat them and then dropped them off in an enemy neighborhood, setting them back and putting them in greater danger. This experience is far different than George Bailey’s. He gets a ride home from the cops of Bedford Falls. Caine appreciates Mr. Butler’s honest look at reality, when he considers that “Purnell taught me how to survive on the streets. But Mr. Butler was talking about surviving for good.” Caine struggles with this because he is forced to make finer distinctions about what it means to live well, as “survival becomes, for the human being, paradoxically, an endless testimony to the impossibility of living.”30 Unfortunately, this struggle makes the progress of Menace II Society feel frustratingly but realistically cyclical, because it is in revenge that they express their “belief that losses can be made good (revenge as savage optimistic mourning).”31 The practicality of this belief is displayed in the interesting way in which what starts as a revenge killing of Caine’s cousin’s murderers is quickly processed and translated into a learning experience, a skill to be applied to future survival, as Caine lies in bed lamenting that all he took from the murder was the knowledge that he could do it again if he needed to. In the same way,

expressions of their human needs as a poor, underserved minority community are translated into expressions of rage. This is most dynamically captured when O-Dog’s friend calls the white man out on the fact that he is scared to come through the projects at night but he is not scared to ask the black man for a favor. He is angrily calling attention to the historical legacy of the white man’s use of the black man as a means to an end, tools meant to accomplish and survive, but not thrive. In the corollary, it is a luxury of their race and lifestyle that the community of Bedford Falls can conclude the film It’s a Wonderful Life with a rendition of the hymn ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, a triumphant song that declares “God and Sinners reconciled.” In stark contrast, the conclusion of Menace II Society leaves all of its dilemmas, questions, and sinners completely unreconciled. In the idealism of It’s a Wonderful Life, this hymn might as well be a national anthem. The utopian nationalistic sentiment is extended with the closing image of a ringing and uncracked liberty bell. The text on the liberty bell, “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” is taken from Leviticus and is a further symbol of Protestant religious theology absorbed into American patriotic rhetoric. The image of the uncracked liberty bell is symbolic of the movie’s version of the American ideal – pure, untarnished ideology, without any gaps in equality, opportunity, and self-worth. In the opposite of optimism, “in rage we make our presence felt, if only to ourselves…a hope that we can redress the searing humiliation of being ignored when we are in need of something.”32 If one follows this, they must also face the politically inconvenient idea that the black men of America’s projects and

ghettos would be less angry and violent if only their basic human needs were met. Yet even in the face of relatively clear-cut, if certainly oversimplified solutions to major problems, “euphoria spreads over our culture like the broad smile of an idiot.”33 Even ‘sad’ movies, like It’s a Wonderful Life, use the pain of their characters as an impetus to inspire even grader optimism and hope. In his idyllic reunion with his family, even the pain of his bleeding lip is used as evidence of his revelry in the trials and tribulations of living. The privilege and presumptuous attitude of the majority serve as blinders to the harsh realities of a history of oppression. Clarence, George’s angel, is insistent and antsy, pestering “don’t you see? You really had a wonderful life.” Perhaps the problem is not that George did not see, but rather that he had seen too much to buy into the delusion of American prosperity any longer. Yet they continue, as “those of us who are white have a remarkable capacity for delusions.”34 Because despite their extreme removal and distance from the reality of what they purport to represent, the magnetic, optimistic, but empty force of these representations remain. The idea that It’s a Wonderful Life and Menace II Society share a significant portion of their DNA, while shocking at the outset, is in line with the history and evolution of self-reflective narratives on the meaning of American life. In fact, It’s a Wonderful Life’s premise of the protagonist looking on at a community that he has gone missing from borrows directly from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” a book that is central to George’s relationship with the angel Clarence throughout the film. As this lineage follows, Tom Sawyer is a boyhood hero, George Bailey is a ‘common man’ hero, and Caine is left

to be simply tragic. In the course of his narrative, Caine “progresses by inalterable paths to the point where the gangster lies dead and the principle has been modified: there is really only one possibility – failure. The final meaning of the city is anonymity and death.”35 It is not so much the death that is tragic. Absent mobility, belonging, and optimism, the heartbreak of Caine’s death is its inevitability. In the face of it, he remembers that his grandfather asked him if he cared whether he lived or die – “yeah I do care. Now its too late.” In the world he was born into, it was always too late. Generations of American audiences have loved the idealized world of It’s a Wonderful Life because “people are more difficult, and more satisfying to love than ideals. And our ideals create the illusion that we can stop time, that something is permanent even if we are falling short.”36 Whether one loves or disdains them, the inconsistent and conflicted men of Menace II Society fill a world that lives up to its tagline; This is the truth. This is What’s Real. Where Menace II Society defies, confronts, and betrays, It’s a Wonderful Life comforts, protects, and narrows. But the question is not which world we would prefer to live in, but rather which world we will live in in the future – “perhaps the central question is whether the city will continue to serve as a unifying core…or whether it will be utterly fragmented.”37 In this conception, the ‘city’ is America. If it cannot unify us, will we not all be destined to slowly but surely lose our upward mobility, sense of belonging, optimism, and ultimately, our will to live?

Q& 44

Movable Type sat down with fourth year Alex Jones to discuss her soon-to-be released film, Flight of the Finch.

Discuss the project you’re working on the general premise, how you came up with the idea, what motivated you to follow through with the production of it, what resources you used to make it happen. I’m an Interdisciplinary Studies Distinguished Major (in technical terms), which (in basic terms) really means that I designed a curriculum around three departments instead of one, and I was given the opportunity to do a project and a thesis that articulates the importance of my interdisciplinary studies. My areas of concentration are Arts Administration, English (Creative Writing), and Media Studies (Film Studies). Second year, when I declared in October, I proposed that I would make a film, and that is what I’m now doing. I wrote the short story that I adapted into the screenplay in the spring of my second year and I’ve been working on it ever since. In short, Flight of the Finch is about a tumultuous relationship. On the surface, it’s about a man who kills his girlfriend. It would be twisted of me to say that the story keeps me motivated. Really, I think I’m still motivated because it’s fun and this is what I want to do. My favorite kind of movie is the psychological thriller and a number of my influences work in that genre (ie. Alfred Hitchcock). I’m really interested in the creation of threedimensional villains and in films where the protagonist is also, unlikable, villanous, and/or the antagonist. Overall, Flight of the Finch is an exercise in character development and psychology as well as an experiment in time and storytelling using less-conventional filmic techniques to tell a story that explores dichotomies of good and evil through meshing the genres of romance and thriller. The intention is to focus on creating feeling and emotion through physical behaviors, movement

and camera angles, finding new ways to explore feeling. It’s up to perception and interpretation to understand the significance of memory. This concept will be reflected in the narrative structure. The story of the relationship is told through flashbacks of specific moments. These moments and memories are another way to explore the main character’s humanity and his psychology, as both good an evil. We’ve had to be resourceful. The budget is under $6,000, but it’s been hard to raise the funds. We did a successful indiegogo last spring. I’ve received funding help from the Leadership Department in McIntire (as I’m also a Leadership Minor). I’m a recipient of the University Award for Excellence in the Arts, and I’ve also received grant funding from UVA Arts and from College Council. I received a lot of assistance and resources from my mentor at Amoeba Films as well. We lost a day’s worth of footage to a faulty hard drive. This added an additional day to shooting, cost an additional $300 and elongated the shooting timeframe from 1.5 weeks - 3 weeks. It was incredibly stressful and put a dent in the budget, but it allowed us to take the time to reallocate and reevaluate and I think we are in a better position to more forward now. What phase is your film in right now? Who do you intend its audience to be/ where will it be shown? The film is in post-production now (finally!), which means I will start editing as soon as the Virginia Film Festival is over. I would like to have a screening somewhere on Grounds or in Charlottesville to involved the university community even more in the project, but I also hope that it gets submitted (and accepted) to festivals, so I hope the

audience is wider than Charlottesville. What has been the most challenging part of making this film come to life? I’m a producer, not a director, I’ve learned the hard way. I’m passionate about the creative producing process--facilitating bringing a story to life and sharing it with others. What really stresses me out is making sure I get every single shot and making sure I get every single shot right. I was the director and the cinematographer on this project, and I feel I’m weaker in those areas. The duration and the challenges we faced weighed down on me, but I’m really proud of what we created and I’m really proud of how the team banded together. How have your studies of films influenced your own production? What films would you say have been influential to you?

work as an assistant or in a mail room... Maybe one day. Regardless of the entry level job, I want to be in film. What has been the most inspiring part of your project (maybe another film that was influential, a professor, a peer that has already completed similar goals)? My team inspires. I couldn’t do this without them, I would be useless. They’re all from different areas of the university, but they all bring so much to the table. Their commitment to this project blows me away. Working with them and seeing how much they care about what I created, and now we are creating, is the most fulfilling part of this project. What do you see as the role of short films in the larger scheme of media? Do you think their value lies in entertainment or educating people or something else?

I’ve taken a number of fiction writing workshops at UVA. The short story that was adapted into my screenplay came out of one of those classes. I took a class on the films of Hitchcock and Sirk that has profoundly influenced my work in so many ways. Some influential films for this project in particular were: Psycho, American Psycho, American Beauty, Fight Club, Memento, Blue Valentine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Primal Fear, and Gone Girl. Where do you see yourself after graduation? Are you looking to pursue film production/directing as a career path? All I want is to immediately get a job as a Creative Director at an independent film production company that develops interesting and provocative stories, not

I see short films the same way I see feature films -- the possibilities are endless. I think film is an exceptional medium because it communicates in a way that anyone can understand, through storytelling. I think anyone and everyone could utilize film for their own agenda, to tell their own story. For me, I want to make people feel. I think the ability to create emotion is powerful and exciting. I think there’s value in any role, be it education, entertainment, arthouse, or anything else. People like to draw distinctions between art and entertainment like it’s black and white. I don’t think they necessarily have to be all that separate.

A Space for Ambiguity 1

Thompkins, Jane P. “ Landscape,” “Death,” in West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. (New York: Oxford UP, 1992), 73. 2 Rogin, Michael Paul. “ Liberal Society and the Indian Question.” Ronald Reagan, The Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology, (Berkeley: University of California, 1998), 135. 3 Garber, Marjorie. “Clothes Encounters of the Third Kind,” inVested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 7-15. 4 Ibid., 11. 5 Thompkins, 71. 6 Ibid., 77. 7 Ibid., 74. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Eliade, Mircea. “Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred,” in The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), 22. 12 Ibid., 35, 21. 13 Thompkins, 79. 14 Ibid., 78. 15 Meek’s Cutoff. Dir. Kelly Reichardt. Perf. Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano. USA: Oscilloscope Pictures, 2011. Film. 16 Garber, 11. 17 Ibid., 16. 18 Limerick, Patricia Nelson. “ Empire of Innocence,” in The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. (New York: Norton, 1987), 71. 19 Ibid., 55. 20 Garber, 10. 21 Ibid., 10. 22 Thompkins, 75. 23 Meek’s Cutoff. 24 Gross, Terry. “ Going West: The Making Of ‘Meek’s Cutoff ’” NPR. NPR, 14 Apr. 2011. Accessed 10 Dec. 2014. 25 Meek’s Cutoff. 26 Thompkins, 74. 27 Ibid., 75. 28 Ibid., 81. 29 Ibid., 39. 30 Ibid., 73. 31 Ibid. 32 Garber, 11.

Thompkins, 39. Meek’s Cutoff. 35 Thompkins, 73. 36 Ibid. 37 Garber, 11. 38 Rogin, 173. 39 Ibid., 137. 40 Thompkins, 73. 41 Ibid., 81. 42 Eliade, 36. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 37. 45 Meek’s Cutoff. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Limerick, 54. 50 Ibid. 34

The Political Economy of Journalism 1

Schmalbeck, Richard. “Financing the American Newspaper in the Twenty-First Century,” Vermont Law Review 35, no. 1 (2010): 251-271, accessed April 29, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 2 Corredoira, Loreto and Sanjay Sood, DzMeeting New Readers in the Transition to Digital Newspapers: Lessons from the Entertainment Industry,dzEl Profesional de la Información 24, no. 2 (2015): 139, accessed April 29, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 3 Ibid., 141. 4 Ibid., 145. 5 Barthel, Michael.DzNewspapers: Fact Sheet,dz Pew Research Center, last modified April, 2015. 6 Schmalbeck, Richard. DzFinancing the American Newspaper in the Twenty-First Century, dzVermont Law Review 35, no. 1 (2010): 251, accessed April 29, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 7 Jurkowitz, Mark. DzThe Growth in Digital Reporting: What it Means for Journalism and News Consumers,dzPew Research Center, last modified March 26, 2014. 8 Blom, Robin and Lucinda D. Davenport, DzSearching for the Core Journalism Education: Program Directors Disagree on Curriculum Priorities,dzJournalism & Mass

resources Communication Educator 67, no. 1 (2010): 71, accessed April 30, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 9 Ibid., 74. 10 Ibid., 79. 11 Rabe, Lizette, DzArguing the case of the ‘Janus element’ in journalism education: Journalism history as essential element in journalism curricula in developing democracies,dzInternational Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 10, no. 2 (2010): 203-211, accessed April 28, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 12 McChesney, Robert and John Nichols, The Death and Life of American Journalism (Philadelphia: Nation Books, 2010). 13 Ibid., 27-28. 14 McChesney, Robert, DzA Sharp LEFT TURN for the Media Reform Movement,dzSocial Policy 45, no. 1 (2015): 41, accessed April 28, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 15 Ibid., 44-46. 16 Ibid., 48. 17 McGrath, Michael. DzNonprofit News: The Future of American Journalism?,dzNational Civic Review 103, no. 3 (2014): 36, accessed April 30, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 18 Stephens, Mitchell, DzJournalistic Authority – Reconsidered,dz Beyond News, New York University, April 10, 2012. 19 Riaz, Saqib and Saadia Anwar Pasha, DzRole of Citizen Journalism in Strengthening Society,dz FWU Journal of Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2011): 92, accessed April 30, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 20 DzSection 4: Demographics and Political Views of News Audiences,dzPew Research Center, last modified September 27, 2012. 21 Hart, Roderick P. and Johanna E. Hartelius, DzThe Political Sins of Jon Stewart,dz Critical Studies in Media Communication 24, no. 3 (2007): 263-272, accessed April 28, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 22 Young, Dannagal G., DzLearning, Laughter, or Enlightenment? Viewing and Avoidance Motivations Behind The Daily Show and The Colbert Report,dz Journal of Broadcasting &

Electronic Media 57, no. 2 (2013): 153-169, accessed April 28, 2015, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost

The Public Enemy: The Serial Product and Agent 1

Simmel, Georg. The Metropolis and Mental Life. 1903, 11. 2 The Public Enemy. Directed by William A. Wellman. Warner Bros, 1931. Film. 3 Kirby, Lynne. Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997, 34. 4 Simmel, 18. 5 Simmel, 12. 6 Phillips, Adam. Just Rage,126. 7 Ruth, David E. Dressed to Kill: Consumption, Style, and the Gangster. Inventing the Public Enemy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, 63. 8 The Public Enemy. 9 Simmel, 19. 10 Warshow, Robert. The Gangster as Tragic Hero.The Immediate Experience; Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962, 133. 11 Ruth, 67. 12 The Public Enemy. 13 Ruth, 64. 14 Ruth, 69. 15 Simmel, 11.

Lee Miller 1

Conekin, Becky. Lee Miller in Fashion. New York: Monacelli Press, 2013, 173. 2 Ibid., 24. 3 Penrose, Antony, prod. The Lives of Lee Miller. Directed by Robin Lough. Penrose Film Productions. 4 Conekin, 26. 5 Ibid., 55, 33. 6 Ibid., 32. 7 Penrose. 8 Conekin, 35. 9 Ibid., 38. 10 Williams, Holly. The unseen Lee Miller:

Lost Images of the Supermodel-turned-war Photographer go on Show. The Independent. 11 Conekin, 15. 12 Penrose. 13 Morrison, Blake. Lee Miller: war, peace, and pythons.The Guardian. Last modified April 22, 2013.

It’s Not a Wonderful Life: Depicting the American Man, Dream, and Menace II Society 1

It’s a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. Perf. James Stewart and Donna Reed. Liberty Films, 1946. DVD. 2 Menace II Society. By Tyger Williams. Dir. Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes. Perf. Tyrin Turner, Jada Pinkett Smith, Larenz Tate, and Charles S. Dutton. New Line Cinema, 1993. DVD. 3 Nicholas Kristof. “When Whites Just Don’t Get It.” The New York Times 15 Nov. 2014 4 Robert Warshaw. “The Gangster as Tragic Hero.” Review. Parisian Review 1948: pg 132. 5 Dimendberg, Edward. Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2004. Print. Pg. 191. 6 Ruth, David E. “Dressed to Kill: Consumption, Style, and the Gangster.” Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918-1934. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1996. N. pg 64. 7 Ibid. 8 Warshow, Robert. “The Gangster as Tragic Hero.” Review. Parisian Review 1948: n. pag. 9 Ibid, 31. 10 Ibid, 131. 11 Phillips, Adam. “Just Rage.” The Beast in the Nursery: On Curiosity and Other Appetites. New York: Random House, 1997. N. pg 130. 12 Ross, Andrew. “The Gangsta and the Diva.” Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994. N. pg. 162 13 Ibid. 165. 14 Dimendburg, “Film Noir,” 170. 15 Phillips, “Just Rage,” 128. 16 Butler, Judith. “Endangered/Endangering:

Schematic Racism and White Paranoia.” Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising. New York: Routledge, 1993. N. pg 16. 17 Ibid, 18. 18 Coates, Ta-nehisi. “The Old Jim Crow.” The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Ruth, “Dress to Kill,” 73. 20 Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” 131. 21 Butler, “Endangered/Endangering” 16. 22 Dimendburg, “Film Noir,” 189. 23 Phillips, “Just Rage,” 122. 24 Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” 132. 25 Ibid, 127. 26 Phillips, “Just Rage,” 121. 27 Ibid. 28 Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. 29 Ross, “The Gangsta and the Diva,” 161. 30 Caruth, “Unclaimed Experience,” 62. 31 Phillips, “Just Rage,” 126. 32 Ibid, 128. 33 Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” 128. 34 Kristof, “When Whites Don’t Get It.” 35 Warshow “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” 132. 36 Phillips, “Just Rage,” 125. 37 Dimendburg, “Film Noir,” 193.

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