"Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?"

“Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?” asks Private Hudson in the film Aliens.

“No, Have you?” replies Private Vasquez.

Her retort seems like it would fit perfectly well into some sort of discussion disassembling gender definitions. Instead, the line is merely used to highlight Vasquez’s endangered femininity so that she becomes a scapegoat to liberate Ripley of homophobic scrutiny and to assure the film viewer -- with the additional narrative threads of romance between Hicks and Ripley, and Ripley’s motherly protection over Newt -- that the action heroine subscribes to heteronormativity.

In his essay “Gender and the Action Heroine: Hardbodies and the Point of No Return,” Jeffrey A. Brown makes the limitations of Sigourney Weaver’s action hero very clear when it comes to crossing the divide of conventional gender roles.  He says that “the development of the hardbody… heroine … indicates a growing acceptance of nontraditional roles for women and an awareness of the arbitrariness of gender traits” but that it does not go far enough to create a “legitimate role for women” because an action heroine like Ripley does not remove women from the “strict binary code” in which women can only be evaluated by the degree of their masculine traits. Brown continues to imply that roles like Ripley are not liberating as they are considered more like a “gender transvestite,” “cinematic cross-dressing,” and that “the action heroine is just a sheep in wolf’s clothing”; especially when compared to roles like Maggie in Point of No Return, which presents a true parody of conventional gender standards. As a biological woman, Maggie illustrates the plasticity of gender definitions through her exploitation of gender stereotypes depending on which suits her objective -- her stereotypical femininity with a mini-skirt appearance and her diminutive demeanor place an enemy off guard so that when she switches to stereotypically masculine aggression and gunplay, she decimates her enemy. I very much agree with Brown that the role of Maggie takes greater strides to expose the artificiality of gender definitions than action heroines like Ripley and Sarah Connor (of Terminator 2), who merely demonstrate that gender boundaries can be crossed. However, I do think that Aliens (and the franchise in general) has a few other objectives in mind when it seeks to "harden" the body of a woman because it is determined to show the capability, and often unstoppability, of maternal instinct.

Before I consider the material of maternal instinct, I want to point out the film’s treatment of women in general. While not as encompassing as Brown would have it, I do find Aliens to be more empowering for women than not. Vasquez may be a scapegoat, but she is also more than just a narrative tool, she is a positive representation of the “butch” or the “ballsy” military woman. The movie isn’t looking to demean her traits -- frankly, she is one of the more heroic characters. In fact, James Cameron is very much looking to emancipate women regardless of those who may think that his intentions don’t extend far beyond the surface level. He takes the damsel of The Terminator and makes her the stoic soldier in the sequel. He takes the “final girl” of Alien, and makes her the dominant matriarch in Aliens who can handle any matter of hardware. Hell, he’s got two women in the marines of Aliens and they’re treated with nonchalance given that the film was released in 1986. I know that women have been allowed volunteer opportunities within the military since the 70s, but it wasn’t until five years after the film, 1991, that 41,000 women were deployed in combat zones of the Persian Gulf war. The movie is well aware of changing times and it is impractical not to acknowledge the fact that, even though the action heroine does not shake gender definitions to their core, she has placated a very sexist industry that is usually only concerned with the objective use of women.

Of course, it is difficult to disband the heteronormativity of the film. The time of its production was rife with homophobia, and contrary to any of the creator’s intentions, there were and will continue to be box office numbers to meet. Let’s, for a moment, consider that the film is wary of a heteronormative agenda because it is preoccupied with its display of motherhood; that display is grounded through a heterosexual female because, while a contemporary argument might assert that caretakers can be of any sex or gender, the general 1987 audience is more familiar with the heteronormative choice. As an aside, and adopting the particular contemporary argument that I just mentioned, I tend to disagree with Brown’s assertion that T2 adheres to the same limitations as Aliens when it comes to removing gender boundaries. This opinion is definitely based on a postmodern perspective, but I think that since Arnold Schwarzenegger is such a cultural icon for stereotypical masculinity, the very notion of him playing the stereotypical feminine caretaker is evidence enough that gender definitions are illusory and made arbitrarily -- whereas Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton didn’t have the benefit of a famous background to dismantle gender boundaries and so they were compared by default to the discourse of previous action heroes.

Returning from my tangent, Aliens is continuing the franchise’s main theme, the examination of motherhood. An argument could almost be made that there are elements of the film’s universe that seek to dismantle gender definitions, particularly the main novelty of the film: facehuggers impregnating humans without any discrimination towards their sex; but because these hosts, usually on the screen as male, give birth by way of their violent death the potential for blurring the role of gender is discredited -- the only motherly role that comes out unscathed is the biologically female Ripley. So again, we have to pursue the role of motherhood in Aliens under the assumption that it is only for heterosexual females.

I’m not going to go into great detail on the exhibition of motherhood in this movie as the symbolism is quite overt (the many affectionate gestures from Ripley to Newt, the battle between Newt-protecting Ripley and the egg-laying xenomorph Queen). If you’re looking for even more evidence, just look at what the theatrical version cut out:

0:08:29: Ripley is sitting on a bench and looking at a clearing. The camera slowly makes a curve and we see that it is only a projection on a video wall. Ripley powers it off with a remote control. Then Dr. Burke enters the room and the following dialogue takes place:

Burke: "Hi, sorry I'm late. I've been running behind all morning."

Ripley: "Is there any word about my daughter?"

Burke: "I do think we should worry about the hearing now, cos we don't have a lot of time now, okay? I read your deposition, and it's great. If you just stick to that, I think we'll be fine. A thing to remember is there are gonna be a lot of heavyweights in there. You got feds, Interstellar Commerce Commission, Colonial Administration, insurance company guys -"

Ripley: "Do you have any news about my daughter?"

Burke: "Well, we did come up with some information. Why don't we sit down? I was hoping to wait until after the inquest. Amanda Ripley-McClaren – married name, I guess – aged 66. And that was at the time of her death. Which was two years ago. I'm real sorry."

Burke gives her the picture of her daughter, an old woman can be seen. Ripley touches the photo.

Ripley: "Amy..."

Burke: "Um... she was cremated and interred at Westlake Repository, Little Chute, Wisconsin. No children. I checked."

Ripley: "I promised her... that I'd be home for her birthday. Her 11th birthday."

Ripley's voice gets weak and she starts crying pressing the picture of her dead daughter against her face.

Or:

1:28:54: Newt and Ripley talk a little longer.

Newt: "Did one of those things grow inside her?"

Ripley: "I don't know, Newt. That's the truth."

Newt: "Isn't that how babies come? I mean, people babies? They grow inside you."

Ripley: "No, that's very different."

Newt: "Did you ever have a baby?"

Ripley: "Yes, I did. I had a little girl."

Newt: "Where is she?"

Ripley: "She's gone."

Newt: "You mean dead."

The film goes to great lengths to describe Ripley’s need for the maternal role and her efficiency once she has obtained it -- the maternal instinct: the take-no-prisoners, leave-no-quarter resolve that Ripley dares the Queen not to cross, and makes good on her threat when she is defied. That is what I am more interested in. The nature of the display of maternal protection in the film and its overall importance. Its nature is akin to the berserker status that we discussed with Rambo. She has entered a state of “nothing left to lose” where her only concern is the well-being of Newt, whom she figuratively adopts as her own child.

Another scene from the Director’s Cut might be relevant:

1:31:24: The DC contains a dialogue extension about the alien-queen. While Hudson and Vasquez are talking in the DC the Theatrical version only shows them looking in silence.

Hudson: "Hey, maybe it's like an ant hive."

Vasquez: "Bees, man. Bees have hives."

Hudson: "You know what I mean. There's, like, one female that runs the whole show."

Bishop: "Yes, the queen."

Hudson: "Yes, the mama. She's badass, man. I mean, big."

Vasquez: "These things ain't ants, estúpido."

Hudson: "I know that."

Is the berserker status needed to illustrate that a mother has respectable opinions that demand attention, or that a matriarchal authority is just as effective as patriarchal leadership? I’d like to think that Ripley’s authority, and the efficiency of that control, is adequately explicit by the time she goes berserk; and that the berserk is merely the final declarative touch cementing the film’s expression of female equality, a touch that is considerate of its predominantly young, male demographic in that it uses the action-hero berserk as a signifier of the hero’s cause being one of nobility. This is an oversimplified and reductive view in which I’d welcome more thorough opinions, but maybe Aliens only does play the role of the intermediary. It is an early, though long past due, wake-up call for the audience to the existence of gender definitions so that subsequent movies like Point of No Return might eventually break those definitions. I’d say the film is still monumental to even the furthest causes of gender theorists who seek to elucidate people of gender’s imaginary substance. It may not have reached the finish line, but it provided something radical in a solidly patriarchal, eighties, American society.

Blue Velvet: What Goes in One Ear, Decomposes the Other

Watching Blue Velvet was my first exposure to a David Lynch product though it was bound to happen sooner or later as he’s been lurking around my watchlist for a long while. Now that I finally have seen one, it’s needless to say that I’ve since bumped Twin Peaks closer to the front of the line on my Netflix queue.

Blue Velvet is just so deliciously postmodern. It carries the same referential and aesthetic tendencies as other postmodern works that challenge the reverence given to the master narratives of modernism, but unlike many of the other works that wave their postmodernity like a banner (which is still a perfectly viable decision -- think Repo Man), Blue Velvet chooses to wear the guise of authority and legitimacy (like its modernist predecessor) so that when the guise is all but transparent the film’s exploitation of the American Dream and its complication of the binary dichotomy of good and evil make an effect that is one of disconcert and sobriety.

This isn’t to say that the film’s commentary is overly hidden, and that only the wariest of watchers can discern the film’s true intentions because from the very beginning there is a clear sense of Blue Velvet’s artificiality. The scenes of a white-picket fenced suburb are too perfect to be true, and if they aren’t obvious enough, it isn’t long before these familiar touchstones of idealized comfort are distorted by Lynch’s use of texture through tactile sounds and visuals. The reason that the film can be misinterpreted as having genuine meaning, in a modernist sense, is that the film wants the viewer to have difficulty acknowledging the transparency and vulnerability of the American Dream. Only through strain in the act of relinquishment can the confusion of ambiguity, and the reality that there is no such thing as concrete morals, be made comprehendible -- or at least made existent to the viewer. This is why the film hangs on to its archetypes and its genres and its set designs -- distorted though they may be. It does not want to discredit the ideal values of the American Dream, the film just wants to make it apparent that it is misleading to pursue such unattainable values; and that even if they are acquired, there will be insufficient satisfaction as the human condition desires more complex features than ones that can be corralled into the categories of good and evil. Disclaimer: There is a chance, given the content of this film, that with that rationality I just euphemized the film’s kinky sex. So be it: it’s illustrative of inexplicable human desire.

Irena Makarushka’s “Subverting Eden: Ambiguity of Evil and the American Dream in Blue Velvet” details many of the functions of ambiguity within the film. She asserts that “Lynch presents an allegory whose images reflect a nostalgia for absolute values that is subverted by the ambiguity implicit in the experience of evil” (32), and I tend to agree. Even the title of the essay merits a reconsideration of the story of Adam and Eve, especially when one considers that America’s identity, and by extension the American Dream, was founded upon values that uphold the ones laid out by Christian belief. If American Exceptionalism maintains that America has the ideal virtuosity and that the country can be a sort of return to Paradise, then Blue Velvet, as the postmodernity that preys upon historical narratives like American Exceptionalism (or the American Dream as Makarushka asserts), is obligated to point out that there are many complexities to ascertain before one confines their self to traditions that project genuine and safe touchstones -- and, accordingly, the movie doesn’t hesitate for a moment to tackle these reliances on denominators of morality. It promotes an awareness of ambiguity that, given the chance, might suggest to a person who believes in American Exceptionalism that even their idealized identity can still have the trappings of the serpent’s deceit. If  a person’s opinion is “We had paradise once, why can’t we have it again?”  then it is worth noting that other similar questions can be raised: “Why would paradise, under reclamation, not have the ambiguity of evil in its gardens yet again? Was not the existence of dangerous fruit and a beguiling serpent evidence enough that “evil” had infiltrated -- no, had already existed within -- Eden’s borders?” In a certain manner, these are the type of questions that Blue Velvet inquires to disable obligatory comfort.

Returning to the hollowness of nostalgia, Makarushka goes on to say that the film “can be described as a visual narrative allegory told in the language of familiar icons that no longer effectively evoke the meanings traditionally associated with them.” I believe that Lynch accomplishes this appropriation of nostalgic touchstones through the seemingly textured elements of his film’s construction -- namely, through sound and vision. An idyllic watering of the garden is perturbed by repressed water pressure in the faucet and further stifled in the neck of the hose as if to parallel the neck-grabbing that the man does when he has a stroke. There is a lingering atmosphere of cheer, especially in the sound, that contradicts the visuals on the screen to make one uncomfortable with something that may have been initially peaceful. And the film doesn’t let up, it decides to corner those who might think that the rare stroke while gardening is just a forgettable fluke in a truthfully perfect society; the film does this by turning to the dog, who seems to consider the taste of the water spout more frugal than the friendship American Dreamers were promised from man’s best friend. Truly, there is more constancy to be found beneath the perfect lawn, the unsettling clicks of beetles that lurk as a mystery never all that far from, perhaps even coexisting with, tranquil life.

There are so many other examples of confluence between tradition and illusion that Lynch depicts in this film that it would be impossible to include them all. A few of these examples that I found noteworthy included the uses of diegetic sound, the perversion of the film noir genre, and the heavily book-ended style of the narrative frame.

Lynch’s use of diegetic sound (sound whose source is identifiable within the storyspace of the frame) shares a similar function to that of the aforementioned camerawork that had established discomfort because, in Blue Velvet, the diegetic sound is seemingly commandeered as non-diegetic sound (mood music, voice-over narration, added sound effects -- sounds without the frame or storyspace). This is paradoxical because once non-diegetic is revealed within the storyspace then it immediately becomes diegetic, but I’m comparing it in this way to illustrate how palpable the sound and visuals feel. The tones of scenes are set by the film’s varied sound design. Sometimes the proximity of recording seems rather intimate, like the sound is zoomed in on the cottonmouth in the actors’ voices, or there is ruffling of clothes and textures that are not usually heard on screen. Sometimes the sound of the next scene, like a car passing by, begins while the frame is still within the current scene, say in a living room; and similarly, the current scenes sound might linger into the next scenes frame. More frequently, we get purely aesthetic clips to preface the consecutive scene, like the candle flame blowing in the wind to make us rather unstable. And my favorite, the ironic uses of sound which can be observed in the scene where Jeffrey and Sandy are sharing a heartfelt moment while hymnal music plays, a church in the background. The hymnal music might be comforting non-diegetic sound to set the mood, or it might just be diegetic sound emanating from the nearby church and merely giving the scene ironic levity. The answer is certainly the latter, but regardless it exemplifies the immense degree in which Lynch layers the ambiguity within this film, even in its technical construction.

Regarding the perversion of the film noir genre with Blue Velvet, it may be more appropriate to say that the movie merely reveals an element of perversion that has always been inherent to the hugely American genre. On the very surface, all signs point to the classic film noir setup. You’ve got good-guy detective (good-guy emphasized to indicate that this highly debatable) pulled into a seedy world during his investigation of a jazzy femme fatale. You’ve got low key lighting ratios, and German Expressionist shadows, and suspect currents that blow in the wind, and an alluring but unknown beauty -- the formula is all there. So why are viewers still left unsettled even though they’re watching a tried-and-true American genre. Maybe because the film calls the inadequate comparison of good and evil like it is as it is quintessentially summarized by one of Sandy’s lines to Jeffrey: “I don’t know if you're a detective or a pervert.” There is no difference between detective and pervert when they share the same muddled ground of voyeurism. Makarushka makes a few great points about this obscurity. On one hand, she fleshes out the notion that being good and doing good aren’t always congruent. She says, undermining the American Dream yet again, “American religious self-understanding is continually challenged by the tension between spirituality and materialism, status quo and change, intolerance and liberalism.” Similarly, Jeffrey’s intentions to examine Dorothy more thoroughly might be “good” by his own definition, but his experience is more ambivalent and to the viewer it is self-indulgent. Additionally, Makarushka asserts that “Participation in the process of narrative construction provides the viewer with a sense of complicity in Lynch’s decomposition of the ideals of the American Dream.” The viewer is just as complicit in Jeffrey’s voyeurism.

Lastly, one more thing I wanted to touch on was the framing of the entire film within and without the decomposing ear and the healthy pink one. Concerning the decomposing ear and relating to the connection between values of religion and values of the American Dream, Makarushka asserts, “Insofar as Lynch focuses the unfolding narrative in Blue Velvet on the decomposing ear, the viewer is invited to consider whether God can still be heard” (34). While this is valid evidence for supporting the vulnerability of the American Dream as the authority of God is a critical component to such values and a decomposing ear goes a long way in subverting such values, I found the ears to also have had a less religious function, though one that is equally murky. I think that the narrative frames itself within these ears for two reasons. One, the more simple of the two: it provides such a neat bookendedness (you like that word?) to the film, especially with the palindromic recycling of opening and closing scenes. This is a reassertion of the film’s postmodernity because its adherence to such rigid narrative structure and traditional circularity is so obvious and deliberate that it just becomes ridiculously satirical of such structure. Two: the ears provide an illustration. Before the camera zooms in on the decomposing ear, the scenes are idyllic and fantastical, and after the camera zooms out of Jeffrey’s healthy ear, the scenes resume this sense of fantasy. But the bulk of the movie is figuratively contained within the two ears, perhaps in the mind. While the viewers are between the ears, the camera is now taking us into the unbridled depths of the human mind -- here, the ambiguity runs rampant. On the surface, the ears hear the delineations of moral codes and defined values, but deep inside a mind fights against the rules that are heard. Inside, there are repressions like the water in the faucet and in the knotted hose, there is disillusionment of the kind when spurned by not-so-faithful dogs, and there is curiosity that lurks beneath perfectly trimmed lawns or behind the blinds of a closet -- a kind of curiosity that is nebulous, and often disquieting like the clicks of a beetle.

The Breakfast Club: The Club to Join, 30 Years Later

I may be in the minority but I’ve never really been a big fan of The Breakfast Club, but only since our class discussion on Thursday have I begun to understand why -- largely, the film appears to strike an offensive against the wealthy and against class-distinction; and yet the acquisition of, and intermingling within, the upper class is the ultimate reward for these students. At first I thought this hypocrisy was antithetical, but since reading Anthony C. Bleach’s “Postfeminist Cliques? Class, Postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald- John Hughes Films” I’m convinced there is a deliberately neo-conservative promotion, particularly a rebranding of feminine “liberation.” According to Bleach this new stigmatization, possible in a post-feminist society, can be observed by popular culture hijacking the tenets of feminism and warping them from the notion of empowerment to the qualities of self-indulgence and narcissism.

This allows for vehicles like Hughes’ movies to reformat feminism in a way “that sanctions ‘individualist, acquisitive, and transformative’ values and behaviors, as well as in the way that it ‘participates in the ideological and economic normalization of new patterns of exclusion and demographic propriety in the United States.” In other words, The Breakfast Club claims that women, and more accurately the individual, achieve empowerment through consumption and individualism. Additionally, while I realize that there needs to be some sort of denominator to rely on, the fact that feminist tenets (“liberation, agency, and desire”) can be so easily categorized, discerned, and manipulated seems to be indicative of post-feminist discourse itself.

However, my gripes are confined to The Breakfast Club (because I haven’t seen Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink) and not with John Hughes as a writer/director. This is primarily because of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is easily one of my all time favorites and definitely the one movie that I compel myself to watch every time it’s on television if I happen to glimpse a scene while channel-surfing. I’m sure that Ferris finds itself in some of the same post-feminist, neo-conservative, white-suburbian ruts  that the reading delineates in some of Hughes’ other movies, but I’m usually more focused on the dynamic between Ferris and Cameron (my favorite Hughes’ character) anyways.

Now that I’ve given my obligatory Ferris plug, back to The Breakfast Club; or more interestingly (this time around), the essay. I found myself in agreement with this reading for nearly its entire length -- the exception being a few alternative ideas that stuck me (mostly with that ambiguous ending) which I’ll get to shortly. I thought this essay was one of the most fascinating readings that we’ve looked at yet because it provides a comprehensive summary and analysis of the Reagan-era eighties entirely. It also demonstrates how the eighties have informed today’s society, right along with films like The Breakfast Club (look at the massive following that the film still has thirty years later). It details supply-side Reaganomics and its principles: “growth is good, the entrepreneur is a ‘hero,’ ‘fair government’ is limited government because individuals” can make everyone benefit from their financial gain and because “individuals ‘almost always can solve problems better than government can,’ [as] ‘competition… breeds creativity’.” Furthermore, Bleach goes on to say that these policies have eclipsed economics and permeated “ideological, social, and technological” mindsets for Americans. The impoverished man as a “leech” on society is a part of contemporary discourse, spawned by these early 80s mentalities.

Suddenly, I’ve realized that I’ve participated in this same mindset, that I have marginalized feminism’s previous accomplishments and discarded them as being self-indulgent because I think that there are greater societal concerns. Occasionally when I hear someone focus only on something's effect on women where there are so many other aspects that are relevant to human nature as a whole, I might think "oh boy, more feminist extremism." But that thought process just makes me part of the system! This essay was revelatory by describing this adherence as consistent with postfeminism and I'm contributing myself to an individualistic society, and whether that is ideal or not, I didn’t even realize it (which is the frightening consequence).

Given how declarative of social status The Breakfast Club is by the opening scene alone (as detailed by the essay and discussed by all of us in class); seeing as though there are explicit measures against the upper class as Molly Ringwald’s character, the wealthiest of the detention attendants, comes under frequent assault; and because the movie does quite blatantly demonstrate, in contradictory fashion (following the film’s attack on the wealthy), that upper-class is the desired goal of the masses, it’s pretty safe to conclude that the movie champions this individualistic and acquisitive society that the essay lays out. Now I’m left wondering where Hughes’ role in this construction seems to lie (and it might be worth examining Hughes’ background to find it). It’s obvious that he is undermining his offensive against the upper-class by the end of his films, but is he obviously supporting Reagan-era policy or making that portrayal so obvious that he is satirizing it? Or does it not matter because regardless of the filmmaker’s intentions the movie speaks for itself? This last option is probably the case because even if he were satirizing this individualistic value, he is not doing it explicitly enough as his film condones the behavior rather than condemns it.

It’s fun -- and frightening -- to think that Hughes might just be more concerned with the romance than the social constructs that he has crafted. There is (though small) the chance that he’s just using class distinction as a pliable and relatable landscape to tell his story as class disparity is an age-old reservoir for conflict. He may just be trying to say that romance, especially of the happily-ever-after kind, transcends class differences, that it can bond them or circumvent them, and that it is blissfully unaware of the social constraints that it implores like individualism and acquisition. However, the basket-case must be made to look like a princess to achieve romance, and from a post-feminist perspective, “Claire’s feminism is ‘taken into account,’ only to demonstrate its totalizing force: ... all… march to the beat of her drum.”

Bleacher’s assertion that everyone marches to Claire’s beat brings me to my last point, an alternative idea of mine that I mentioned early, and more of a question for blog discussion than a thought-out commentary on what I’ve previously discussed. Did anyone else find Bender to lead the beat of this “march” through the entire film? He is harsh, he is sardonic, and at times supposedly apathetic, but I also found him to have a penchant for mentorship. Instead of a criminal, he plays more of a brotherly, perhaps even fatherly role, training these other detention inmates to see through his own “lower-class” perspective, and consequently see that being “upper class” isn’t the end goal of everything. This would have large ramifications for Bleacher’s essay: instead of him ascending to Molly’s ranks, the romantic kiss they share at the end is a token of his own success, having brought her down to his level to witness the fruitlessness of her consumerism. That said, this is still highly individualistic -- just at the other end of the spectrum.

Eagerly Accommodating Susan

Coming into Desperately Seeking Susan right off of Purple Rain, I, like a few others who have not seen Desperately Seeking Susan, had expected the film to be Madonna’s take on the Artist’s journey (shaped after her own life and complete with her own concert scenes) in the same manner as Prince’s film. I was delighted to find that I was wrong. This movie was funny, conventional, and entertaining in a way that was free of guilty pleasure.

An argument could be made that Desperately Seeking Susan does provide Madonna’s representation of the Artist archetype, but the film isn’t really interested in developing that narrative. She is not out to hone her craft (though perhaps she has just mastered it) nor is she looking to resolve any creative issues, and her closest proximity to the Artist’s character arc is only her tendency to trailblaze new styles. Jane Miller’s article “Madonna” offers a more accurate archetypal description of the pop star as the Black Madonna. I found this article to be a bit disjointed (a very solid analysis but not exactly cohesive as it seemed to condense a few too many things with insufficient connection) but the article did raise several interesting observations, chief among them the role of archetypes and the creative playground that they foster for the viewer. Miller elaborates, quoting Henri Matisse, that the Black Madonna gives "an enclosed area of very reduced proportions ... solely by the play of colors and lines, the dimensions of infinity." Miller asserts that Madonna, faithful to her namesake, maintains this definition of the Black Madonna archetype and then she connects its function to certain qualities of poetry. Miller describes certain poetry as being highly interpretive for each individual but typically having an emotional direction that is nearly universal. In this way Madonna's persona can can be interpreted by individuals differently, but she is simultaneously forwarding a universal cause, in this case the tenets of third-wave feminism. Miller argues, “Eventually, subliminally, the culture, I believe, feels the effects of these poetic goings-on: a logo, or sign, for example, which the audience slips behind or sees through to get to another layer or message.”

Though I agree with the parallels that Miller draws between poetry and the power of Madonna's dark femininity, and while I know that religious signifiers are imperative to Madonna’s subversive routine, I disagree with Miller's decision to pursue her description of Madonna with a detailed, rather religious, background of the Black Madonna and the statue “visited by thousands of pilgrims.” I don’t think that religious reverence towards the pop star is inaccurate because many do idolize her, I just find it too emblematic and harmful towards Madonna’s intentions. Yes, in reality, Madonna fills the role of the mother figure, or the caretaker, or the religious endower of exploratory opportunities, but I think her intentions are more in line with her role as Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan. The film is interested in grounding such a lofty icon to an average person’s playing field. Madonna, especially as a secondary character in the movie, is not a figure for the viewer to model themselves afterwards or to religiously follow but an excerpt of a way of life in which the viewer may choose to join and coexist -- more sisterly than motherly.

The film also answers Miller's one qualm and qualification about poetic justice, that often its "irony [is] used to excuse life rather than reveal it.” This I think is where the film picks up the heavy-lifting. Madonna herself may not be able to reveal third-wave feminism entirely because she is such an icon that her popularity will just excuse it.  The viewer’s revelation needs to come from consensus and open-appreciation. Enter: Desperately Seeking Susan, the vehicle for third-wave feminism. As I previously mentioned, Madonna plays a role that is more subdued than her typical performance. Her style remains the same, but she is relegated to being a second-string character, instead serving as more of a tool for the character Roberta to convert and develop into a woman enjoying her freedoms associated with third-wave feminism -- like materialism or freedoms of sexuality. Since the film displays such an icon among the mundane, or perhaps since "Susan's" style is made to appear as the more alluring and more necessary behavior, there is the sense that Madonna's behavior is perfectly fine as the norm.

This is made all the more apparent by the men's positive reception to the appearance and behavior that Susan demonstrates in the film. Jim desperately seeks it across the nation and is well accustomed to Madonna's feminism. Dez never bats an eye at Roberta's replication of Susan, and he's glad to be gone with his ex-girlfriend who looks masculine in a second-wave feminist manner. Gary, as a conservative stereotype in a ready position to combat any change to the traditional housewife, hardly fights Roberta's transformation; in fact, he (short-sightedly) seems bored with Roberta's adherence to tradition, he is intrigued and subservient to Susan's attitude, and he is already engaged in an affair -- he, and thus even the conservative types (for argument's sake, the supposed average), is ready for change. Actually, affairs in general are treated with nonchalance and little consequence within this movie, providing further evidence that the "average" and the "norm" should have fewer issues with sexual freedom on all fronts.

Overall, this film spends very little time on presenting two conflicting views which might offer choice for the viewer. It travels a potentially more effective route by taking Madonna's style for granted, or for necessity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Revolution!

And so, with a mere introduction from Purple Rain, the revolution of product licensing began.

Okay, so maybe it didn’t begin with Purple Rain as it was probably a pretty common business procedure by the time of the film’s release, but the film definitely epitomized the full potential of synergetic partnerships that so many other pairings of film and album have since sought --and usually failed -- to replicate. As R. Serge Denisoff and George Plasketes detail in their article, “Synergy in 1980s Films and Music,” synergy is more a myth too stubborn to die than a formula for success with its seemingly lottery-like qualities. They assert that “the multitude of failures had been overshadowed by synergy successes in the corporate consciousness such as Top Gun and Dirty Dancing” and a number of other films that they support with an exhaustive list of synergies that succeeded and of others that crumbled.

Even thirty years after Purple Rain, licensed products are still as common when big films are released. Soundtracks and video games and companion-novels and t-shirts and toys and too many other products to list are things that we know all too well in a world of consumerism, predicated by successful spin-offs like Purple Rain (which is essentially a spin-off as it came out a month or more afterwards and the album was undoubtedly the partnership’s greater agenda). Then again, perhaps Purple Rain isn’t the best example to compare to today’s brand licensing, as the dominance of music in this process is something that is intrinsic to the “eighties.” Soundtracks today seem like more of an afterthought. With the exception of an occasional Bond flick, we hardly have any movies with catchy themes songs any longer (what’s up with that anyway?). But I’m getting off track.

I guess what I’m trying to say here, or at least tangentially work my way toward (there, I did it again), is that there is a collaborative objective to Purple Rain (film/album) other than its synergetic business goal. Denisoff and Plasketes make it clear that there is no knowing if a partnership is going to be successful, and they imply that synergy is a foolish practice if you can’t afford to bank your resources on a risky venture. So what makes a film like Purple Rain actually succeed? I have no idea. Smarter business-minds than I, have tried and failed to figure it out. But I think it has something to do with a unanimous effort between the two mediums towards a purpose that is not money-related. The film and the music must appease two very different audiences, or at least extrapolate the preferences of one audience on to their less favorable medium. By this I mean that Purple Rain captures the sensations experienced at a live concert, perhaps euphoria, and transcribes it onto a feature film so that both products make a unified, aesthetically hedonistic experience.

I probably just defined music videos, so let me point out that Purple Rain seems unique in that it anthropomorphizes emotion. Prince, and his many sexualized scenes and movements, do not merely appear erotic, they seem to be eroticism incarnate. Similarly, the atmosphere of the film is very sensory. It is sticky and intangible and incomprehensible. These are sensations that are stirred and experienced in real concerts, and so the concert scenes are prolonged so that they feel familiar. The other parts of this film, the “plot” scenes, are quite melodramatic as they are representations of emotion in its purest element too. We get humor and frustration and eroticism and sadness, and they are experienced, not discerned. These scenes could just as easily have had their sound and words revoked while Prince’s music played over their visualization (like a music video), and we still would have anticipated the same emotions. That’s why Prince’s irrational switches from sexual tenderness to misogyny is present in the film: not because he’s here to promote or condemn his actions but because emotions are murky experiences with no clear explanation.

Because this representation of emotion seems like an intended goal of the film, I tend to disagree with Purple Rain exemplifying postmodernity because I think that it blends other elements of traditional intent. It is obviously postmodern in some manners as the observation that I made in the last paragraph was aesthetically focused, and as we discussed at length with Blade Runner, that is a famous quality of postmodernity. Additionally, it’s historical background is postmodern in many ways. The film can hardly be scrutinized formally as it partnered with an album to tell it story, and it does portray a character that blurs The Kid and Prince, and viewers are never not aware of these connection. The fact that two different mediums are working together to tell one story -- the fact that they’re “synergizing” -- is, in and of itself, conceptually postmodern.

But I don’t think the movie is as deliberately artificial as some make it out to be; and I don’t find it to be contrarian with passionate and emotional, technically-sound music (attributes that are applied to non-postmodern music). Purple Rain also has the sincerity that videos like “Video Killed the Radio Star” lack. As for its technicality, just look at the scene in which Prince finds his father’s music -- technical, quantifiable music -- and melds it into his own work. If the movie had been interested in showing that all produced music was just spontaneous sparks of inspiration it would have just ended the matter with the line from The Kid’s father when his son asks him where his piano piece had originated from (something like “It’s all up here” as he points to his head or heart). But that isn’t the case. Sheets of music spill from a knocked shelf when The Kid wrecks the basement in a frustrated flurry and that is narrative assertion that seems relatively traditional.

Okay, so my argument still sounds like its detailing postmodernity and I’m just contradicting myself because my description of the movie’s postmodern elements outweigh the ones that I countered with. Perhaps the frequent Devil’s Advocate in me is just trying to be adversarial because, let’s face it, this movie is too aesthetically focused to be anything but postmodern. I suppose what I’m trying to say, then, is that this movie/album is a different form of postmodernity than we have discussed. And really, its rather crude of me to confine postmodernity to one definition anyway; the condition prides itself on not being clear-cut in the first place. Purple Rain just doesn’t have the ostensible aimlessness or the irony that many other postmodern pieces that I’ve examined have had. The construction and presentation of the film are postmodern, but its purposefulness seems rather traditional.

While the film and the album surely teamed up and synergized for financial gain -- and because brand licensing leads to cool, androgynous Prince action figures -- I think that it is the extra degree of intended passion and sensory objective that unified the two mediums to make this project so much more successful than others.