Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete ...and a basket case... a princess...and a criminal...

Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

This voiceover, read in the beginning and the end of The Breakfast Club completely sums up the point of the film for me. It wasn't about whether these characters talked to each other after that Saturday or were even nice to each other. It was the fact that these characters had this experience as individuals. The tagline of the film also sums it up perfectly "they only met once. but it changed their lives forever." They all got to hear the perspectives of other kids in the school that they would probably never talk to if they weren't forced together in one room, but also they got some deep stuff out. The scene where they're all sitting on the floor, talking to each other is filmed as close-up shots when they get into the serious conversations. There isn't a wide shot until there's a lighter conversation. I think this is because internally some of the things they say need to come out for them as characters. It's a character driven film rather than a friendship driven film like I feel a lot of people expect it to be. 

However, since watching it multiple times since the first time watching the film while I was still in high school (and especially watching it recently) I do think the ending is especially problematic. Bender constantly picks on Claire the whole time but yet she ends up sneaking into the closet to kiss him. Brian writes the paper because Claire asks him to. Allison gets a makeover from Claire to get the guy. This is the biggest problem I have with the film since Allison is my favorite character. Labeled as "crazy" throughout the film when I thought she was just a strange outsider who wanted attention because her parents are extremely neglectful (shown in the opening scene). And then she is basically turned into an upper-class princess like Claire just with a makeover. In "Postfeminist Cliques? Class, Postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald-John Hughes Films", Bleach writes "But Allison’s individualism is coded as “crazy” in the world of the film; her acquisitiveness, run rampant, is kleptomania. And, as her makeover demonstrates, in the Reagan era, her differences are erased (and conveniently forgotten) by the workings of the upper class." I think it was obvious why there was so much ambivalence towards Claire from the others. She represented this upper-class Reagan era type girl talked about in the article. No matter how much they picked on her, in the end she still has the power. She still gets the nerd to write the paper, she transforms the middle-class girl into an upper-class girl like her to get the guy, and she kisses the criminal to make her parents mad. I think in the 80's there probably was this ambivalence towards the upper-class from the working class (and there still is somewhat) and the film also shows how much advantage the upper-class have over the lower classes.

On a lighter note,  I feel like this film has some of the best moments and most quotable scenes ever. Another reason that makes it so iconic. When the principle does the devil horns or the "eat my shorts" scene.... and the dancing and teenage angst...ah it's so great. I don't know how the article can question why it's still popular after all these years.

Desperately Seeking Madonna?

Desperately Seeking Susan was not my cup of tea. I thought it was tiresome and not funny, with the exception of Gary who was idiotic and one dimensional (aka stereotypical) which was the reason he was so funny. All the men were not too smart actually (which wasn't a downer for the film just something I noticed). Jim was just a sucker for Susan and Dez (which all I could really focus on when he was on the screen was his really amazing blue eyes) was a sucker for Roberta in many ways and didn't even realize when she was telling the truth because he was in such a daze of being with her. "I never know what you're gonna say next..." (I kind of feel like they tried to reverse the typical roles of male and females in relationships here) The main character, Roberta  annoyed me throughout the whole film. Why are you stalking Madonna aka Susan? That's just creepy to begin with. I did enjoy the fact that through the whole experience Roberta becomes her own person and gets away from Gary, and also how Susan and Roberta team up in the end. The ending sort of paid off for the annoying story line.

Something else that helped out the film was Madonna. My expectations on the film were also confused like some others in the class. I thought that she would be the starring role but she wasn't. I feel like if the film had focused on developing her character more it would have been better, but I realize that really wasn't the point of it. Madonna already was a huge superstar before the film was made so it wouldn't do anything to boost her career like Purple Rain did for Prince.

However, something similar between the two artists is that they definitely knew how to sell themselves. Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and others from the 80's knew how to create an image and get people talking about them. The created archetypes for themselves. Prince and Michael Jackson complicated the way people see gender roles. Madonna complicated the way people think of women. She complicated the stereotypical aspects of women that can be seen in films... the whore, the virgin, the dumb blonde, etc. She confused and excited people with her image and made money from it. In the article by Jane Miller, she states how Madonna tapped into America's obsession with Christian mythology as well. Madonna used and wore crosses as a fashion accessory, something that had never really been done before her. Or, how about the "Like A Prayer" music video? Not only is it deliberately filled with burning crosses and other religious imagery but it deals with racial issues. A black man getting arrested for a white man's crime and an African-American Jesus? I'm sure the Moral Majority was up in arms due to this one. But the mass of people were loving it. "Like A Prayer" was number one on the Billboard 200 list for over a month. Madonna was obviously cashing out on the way she used these images and images of herself to make people uncomfortable and to make them talk about her. I'd say that she was probably the queen of post-modernism, taking so many other images, people, and things and creating her own image (which is uncomfortable to watch in some ways) while selling it.

This leads to the question of  was Madonna (and other starts from the past and today) doing any good or are/were we just buying into this brand she was trying to sell to us? In my opinion, I think that it's both. Madonna was bringing up issues of religion, race, feminism back in the days when people weren't talking about these types of things. This is a lot like Lady Gaga now. She's selling you this image of herself but she's also bringing up issues dealing with gay equality. They both bring these subject matters up into the mainstream so even if we are buying into these ideas and images of what they are, they're still bringing up important issues that should be talked about. It's a double edged sword. 

Purple Rain

Purple Rain is a very interesting film to me. It's not good  in the traditional sense. There is nearly any real storyline to it, the characters are underdeveloped, and the acting is... eh, okay. But no one can deny that it was successful in what it was trying to do, and that was to promote Prince as an artist. When the song "When Doves Cry" started playing during the film I just remember thinking "what a classic!" I don't think there are too many people that I know of who haven't heard that song at least once or haven't at least heard of Prince and his image (another element they were trying to push in the film). Prince also won an Oscar for the score of the film. In the article, it also mentions how the film grossed over $100 million. Not too shabby for a film that was only made for $7.5 million.

I think that the fact that this film and others like it in the 80's (Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, Top Gun, etc) were so successful in pushing the music through a film is because people were looking for a visual component intertwined into the music they listened to, synergy as the article calls it. I mean, although there were "music clips" before this time, the 80s were when the trend of the music video really took off. In 1981, the television network MTV first broadcast and played "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. Music fans in the 80s obviously wanted something new, something visual, not even something that necessarily made sense to them but just excited them. So, in that aspect Purple Rain is brilliant. It's one long music video showcasing Prince's talents, image, etc. with there being a sort of story tied into it to keep the audience watching.

This idea of a visual component juxtaposed with the musical element in the 80s is also extremely present in another artist from around this time and that's Michael Jackson. His 14 minute long video for "Thriller", amazing! Basically all early 80's MJ songs/videos are incredible and I think relating them to Purple Rain is interesting. The video that we watched in class "Billie Jean" and the film were pretty similar to me in a few ways. They both had this gritty/raw quality to them. The article refers to Purple Rain as a home movie and I kind of get that same feel from some of Michael Jackson's music videos (a good example is "Beat It"). I think that they also both show how including some sort of story element can keep an audience interested in their music, which is really what the music videos/film is trying to promote.

Moving on to a completely different note the similarities between the two of these artists also fuse into their image. Prince and Michael Jackson were both a little bit androgynous. There were both feminine and masculine elements to them. This is pretty interesting to also look back at some of the other characters in 80s films we've seen. For example, in Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger really isn't androgynous but he doesn't have these incredibly masculine qualities that can be seen in some of the well known villains and action heroes today. Even in Rambo: First Blood the main character breaks down and shows a different side to himself. One that wouldn't be considered "masculine" in today's stereotypical society. This rise of interweaving both feminine and masculine qualities in characters in movies and the images of certain musical stars in the 80s is another compelling thing to me but I'm not sure where it's stemming from. There's this fear of AIDS, considered for awhile to be seen as the "gay disease" and the rise of the moral majority during this decade. Is it maybe a rebellion against that?  

1, 2 Freddy's coming for you....

”The whore, she's corrupted, she dies first. The athlete. The scholar. The fool. All suffer and die at the hands of whatever horror they have raised, leaving the last to live or die, as fate decides. The virgin." - The Director (Sigourney Weaver)

 After watching The Cabin in the Woods this quote is all I can think about while watching typical slasher films anymore. It sums up (with minor differences in character tropes) almost every classic slasher movie around, including The Nightmare on Elm Street. We start in a suburban location with "The Whore" in this film, Tina, who has been having nightmares of a man with knives for fingers (it's apparently not that weird at all that her boyfriend had seen the same man in his sleep as well). Tina later has sex with her boyfriend, "The Fool" trope in my opinion. She dies first of course in a brutal way (no matter how corny it is it's still brutal) in her underwear. The next to go is her boyfriend, another supporting character who is not really useful to the story and I hate to say it but neither is Johnny Depp's character. The only really important character is Nancy, the Final girl or "The Virgin" who faces off with the deformed monster, Freddy, at the end.

The Final girl is important in these slasher films because the audience (male and female) are rooting for her. We see her lose her friends and struggle with dealing with the monster. She gets character development. She's doesn't have sex and is usually very smart and strong (emotionally and sometimes physically). In the article, John Carpenter is quoted as saying that the Final girl and the killer share a link, which is sexual repression. Nancy doesn't have sex in the film and Freddy is continuously taunting her and using sexual violence to do so (maybe this is his way of getting the repression out?). The knife hand in the bath tub is a really creepy scene and it's frightening because you're thinking what if that happened to me? And I don't mean what if  Freddy Krueger actually existed and did that. I mean that Nancy is in a vulnerable state, naked, in the bath usually a place where you're exposed and helpless. And this is probably why the shower scene in Psycho also gives off that same creepy feeling. It would be a terrible way to die.

However, this is from a female's point of view of watching the film. I love horror movies. I've watched plenty and I've been beginning  to wonder what the male audience feel while watching scenes like that. Being in the killers (the man's) point of view or perspective in that certain scene but also knowing the character development and sympathizing with the victim (always the woman)  do they identify with the killer or do the identify with the victim?

But anyway, back to the sexual repression of Nancy and Freddy, one of the links between them. Carpenter goes on to say that the repression of the Final girl comes out when she eventually kills the monster. Since this is a class about the 1980's I was thinking about how this could relate to what was happening during the time this film came out and I kept relating in back to the fact that the 80's were when AIDS was first discovered in the US. People were finding out that sex could actually kill you. The 80's also showed a rise in conservatism due to Reagan being president and the founding of the "Moral Majority". So, in Nightmare On Elm Street. the girl who has sex is the one who dies first along with her boyfriend and Glen who wanted to have sex with Nancy. Nancy, the character who doesn't have sex stays alive throughout the film and gets her sexual repression out by killing Freddy who taunts Nancy in sexual ways. Thinking of the film in terms of what's happening in the 80's, Freddy is AIDS and is killing teenagers who have sex. The girl who doesn't have sex lives and confronts "AIDs" and tries to kill it while getting her sexual repression out but in the end, is still trapped by it. A true nightmare.

Am I crazy for thinking of this analysis? Who knows. But in the end the Nightmare on Elm Street. is still a classic horror film and a good, fun, cheesy one!  

Blade Runner

This is the first time I've ever watched Blade Runner in full. I do remember specific scenes from it like when Pris grabs Deckard around the neck with her legs and Roy going after Deckard and howling at him. I think that when I was younger and tried to watch this film I must've been like "this is way too weird for me" and zoned most of it out. However, while watching the film during class I was still sort of having that same feeling. The film is a bit slow and hard to understand when you first watch it. You are left with so many questions and not enough answers. I think that the voiceover that was brought up in the reading could've helped with the confusion a little bit but I'm not sure. After the discussion we had in class the movie made much more sense to me and I could see the many deeper themes within.

The central theme of Blade Runner is the question of humanity. Who is a replicant and who is actually human? A psychological test has to be taken to discover this. The test has a number of questions focusing on empathy, being it the sign of one's humanity. The replicants in the film are shown as being much more empathetic than the actual humans, especially those who are on the streets. They are cold and impersonal to each other, not even seeming to care that a woman is getting shot at right in the middle of the streets (even if she is just a replicant how would they know?) This is juxtaposed with the replicants who obviously care about each other and have actual emotions. Pris dies in such a dramatic and emotional way and Roy is upset to find her dead. Roy is the character who has the most emotions throughout the whole film but yet he is the one who is supposed to be the robot. In comparison, the supposed "hero" of the film is Deckard and he has almost no emotions. He treats Rachael as if she's an object during the "love" scene. Basically, by the end the audience is questioning whether Deckard is a real human or a replicant. I think that this is what Ridley Scott is getting at. What makes someone a real human? And, will this be our future? Will we be totally null of emotions and empathy for other people and animals? Will there be no nature left in the world? These are questions brought up while watching the film.

I also thought that Blade Runner was very cinematic and a visually stunning film. In "Building Blade Runner",  Klein writes  that "When (Blade Runner) came out in 1982, many critics called it the success of style over substance, or style over story. But the hum of that Vangelis score against the skyline of L.A. in 2019, as the film opens, continues to leave a strange impact on artists and filmmakers." This impact can be seen so much in movies and art now a days. While watching the film the one thing I kept thinking is how familiar the dystopian like city and panoramic shots looked to me and then it came to me. It looks like Nolan verse Gotham city. The color schemes and atmospheric smoke and lighting are directly paralleled in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. 

 Not only that but the actor who plays Roy was also in Batman Begins. I think that this was more than just a coincidence and that Nolan was acknowledging the influence of Blade Runner on his films.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

To me, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is one of those classic films that can be seen over and over again and you can find something that you never noticed about it before in previous watching's. This was definitely certain while I was watching it in class. One of the first new things that I noticed was the amount of smoke and fog that is found in the film. In fact, while watching one of the first scenes with the kids sitting around the table I noticed what looked like cigarette smoke billowing around them which made it seem like the setting was a bar filled with adults rather than a bunch of kids sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons.

This was surprising to me because before I had always thought of E.T. as a kids film about a boy who befriended and shared feelings with an alien and it was as simple as that. After re-watching the movie I think that it has much deeper issues impacted into it including the breakdown of the American family. This cultural anxiety is implicated in the film so much. The running theme of there being no father around in the family, as he's "in Mexico with Sally" and the mother being so distressed by this she doesn't even notice that her kids are housing an alien in their room is huge.  Not only that, but all adults (except Mary) in the first half of the film are only shown as mysterious silhouettes or (even more mysterious) shown from the waist down.

This is most prominent for the character of Keys (ha keys, I see what you did there Spielberg). He is not only completely mysterious to the viewer in the beginning of the film but also in a way he is really scary and creepy. Then, his face is actually revealed near the middle/end of the movie and (to me) he is STILL scary and creepy. I never trusted him when he was talking to Elliot about how E.T. had "came to him too." He was about as trustworthy as Elliot's actual father in my mind.

There were some other things brought up in Tomasulo's essay "The Gospel according to Spielberg in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" about the film that I also had never noticed before. I am not very religious and was quite skeptical about how E.T. related to it before reading the essay but now that I have, I do see a lot of the Christian imagery being used in the film including E.T. being almost Jesus like and being resurrected and such. The Christian imagery that was brought up that interested me the most though, was the E.T. movie poster basically replicating Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel artwork depicting God creating Adam. The images really parallel each other. 

Overall, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is still an amazing film and will always be a classic no matter how many religious or other comparisons there are and I loved finding new things about it.