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THE
NEW FRAMEWORK The 1999 re-launch of this major film journal explores new directions in cinema, media and cultural studies. Issues will be primarily devoted to studies of single themes which will explore crossovers and connections in cinema and media. Our focus is to broaden debates in popular and independent movies and media. We aim to promote discussion and exchanges among academics and media practitioners from different intellectual traditions and national backgrounds. Issue 40 - Seventies Fever: Influences and Departures - focuses on the interface between 70s and 90s film and television culture and theory. Certain themes emerge from this issue's articles that represent the type of energy and outlook with which Framework is concerned. Following on from the eclectic and informative internationalism of the old Framework, the new Framework aims toward an intertextuality implicit in contemporary cultures. Our range explores and exposes cultural interchanges. Our agenda is to provide a platform for new developments in cinema and media from around the world. We begin this issue with a dossier on Manny Farber the influential film critic and artist whose work has been neglected for too long. The new edition of Farber's collection of film criticism, Negative Space (1998), gives us the opportunity to showcase Farber's work, material until recently out of print. Farber's reviews, interviews and artwork re-printed here display the concentrated, anarchic energy that is his trademark. The autobiographical painting 'Birthplace: Douglas Arizona' (reproduced on the front cover of this issue) is emblematic of Farber's ability to compress a great deal of information into a small amount of space. Looking at Farber's paintings is like travelling down a road you know, and yet can't quite place, a quality that extends to his writing as well. The film is familiar, but with Farber at the wheel it becomes uncharted territory ahead. As Noel King points out in his introduction to Farber's work, his writing is famous for that adventurousness particularised by a staccato style, and short sharp comments. In 1969, Donald Phelps criticised this speed in Farber's journalism, but the energy of Farber's writing is important, and in his 1972 Venice Film Festival review (co-written with his wife, Patricia Patterson) his style is an antidote to the pedestrian prose constituting much film reviewing today. Yet, many readers who come to Farber for the first time will be struck by how familiar his style of writing seems now. We come across attenuated versions of Farber's prose in the mainstream press, from pop music reviews, to newspaper columns on last night's TV. Farber's commitment to looking outside the mainframe mirrors Framework's own interest in popular and independent film and media. Farber wasn't caught up in the politics and theories of his day, a position, Adrian Martin mantains, that was to his credit. It was Farber's ability to avoid the obvious assumption that made him champion Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the 1972 Venice Film Festival because Der Handlerder der Vierjahrezeiten/Merchant of Four Seasons (Germany, 1972) offered a welcome respite to the swarm of Godardesque films that swept the festival that year - something that nearly drove Farber and Patterson screaming into the Grand Canal. Similarly, Framework aims not to be caught up in the politics and theories of the new millennium in reductive and conformist ways. Framework is part of new analyses that undermine dominant cultural claims. Barker and Brooks, in Knowing Audiences (1998) persuasively argue that 'folk theories' of film and media - such as the assumption that 'TV is bad for you', or that films like Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, US, 1994) make you violent - are untested, unreliable and 'preclude reasoned investigation'. Indeed, such folk theories not only act as a barrier to new research and ideas, but they also have serious political and social implications. In many ways Framework is a reaction against such 'folk theories'; we want to explore areas beyond these assumptions, giving light to the variety of perspectives and interpretations within the disciplines of film, media and cultural studies. It is our intention to create a truly international forum, one where practitioners and theorists can argue for new agendas. This repudiation of the easy point of view is the overall tone of this issue's articles. The politics and theories of the 70s have been eschewed in favour of focusing on the micro-politics of individual acts. For example, in their article about differing depictions of the penis in 70s and 90s films, Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt deliberately avoid the use of psychoanalysis because their argument is concerned with the sight of the penis rather than the concept of the phallus. Lehman and Hunt explore cultural and historical shifts and show how the changing representation of the penis in films such as Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (Australia, 1971), or Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (UK, 1992) reveal a deeper cultural changes. Continuing on the subject of masculinity, Leon Hunt's article charts the changes in Hong Kong action heroes, focusing specifically on the transformation from 70s icon Bruce Lee, to 90s action hero Jet Li. Despite a bad hair piece, Li is the only good thing in Lethal Weapon 4 (Richard Donner, US, 1998), and in the article Hunt reveals a longing for Li to fill the void that Bruce Lee left behind in the seventies, and provide fans with a hero worth fighting for. In an age of digital, high speed editing the nature of martial arts movies has changed for good. Bruce Lee needed a slowed camera to catch his film's details (so the legend goes), but the opposite is the case for Jet Li, whose skill in martial arts is digitally enhanced. Hunt lovingly recalls the balletic movements of Lee in Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, US/HK, 1973), but he is also aware that new technologies can provide rich new developments in this action genre. This same interest in the inter-relations between cinema and new media underpins Michel Chion's article about sound and the impact of Dolby technology on aural aesthetics in film. Chion spoke at the recent 'School of Sound 1998', a conference devoted entirely to the theory and practice of sound. John Ellis reviews the School of Sound, concentrating on sound editor Walter Murch and his reworking of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (US, 1958). He suggests that we should pay more attention to aural aesthetics. This important point is emphasised when Ellis asks film theorists to reassess ways of understanding sound. Larry Sider, director of the School of Sound, and a sound editor himself, emphasises Chion's unusual take on sound and silence in cinema as a unique two way conduit between listener and movie. Chion's theory about the 'silence of the loud speakers' highlights a process where the audience listens to the film and the film listens to the audience. Chion uses the metaphor of an orchestra, silent and waiting, as a way for us to think about the impact of silence when used to dramatic effect in films such as Apocalypse Now (Coppola, US, 1979). Here the film is as much an aural spectator as we are, and when Chion refers to David Lynch's use of sound in his movies, the early scenes in Lost Highway (US, 1997) bring to mind an eerie silence, one that is at the same time muffled and yet amplified by the loudspeakers. Indeed, Lynch deliberately makes the film difficult to see - all those shadows and dark corridors - in order that we listen more closely to the film as it listens to us: an uncomfortable thought when one watches Lost Highway in the dark. Douglas Kellner also picks up on this feature of darkness and amplification in his discussion of the TV series The X-Files (Fox, 1992-). Kellner examines how seventies conspiracy thrillers such as Coppola's The Conversation (US, 1974) were a guiding influence on the series' creator Chris Carter. Just as Gene Hackman sits in the debris of his empty apartment listening to someone listening to him, so too does Special Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovney) listen and wait for the knock at the door. For Kellner, the comparison is deliberate, part of a cross-referencing that is characteristic of The X-Files. According to Kellner, the innovative style of The X-Files owes a great deal to the seventies, both in terms of politics and popular culture. However, this is not to say that The X-Files is a retro show, and Kellner argues that the series has something new to offer. He looks in detail at specific episodes which suggest a new approach to TV audiences: one which blurs the boundaries between seeing and believing. Hannah Davies argues that the BBC sells itself as the jewel in the crown of British television programming through its commitment to public service principles. Davies' article concentrates on the rivalry between the BBC and the commercial channel ITV and approaches to children's programming from the 1970s to the 1990s. It seems amazing now that UK TV companies did not capitalise on certain areas of children's programming until the 1970s. Davies points out the concept of 'childhood' on television has changed, with children now watching more adult programmes such as The X-Files, and adults watching old and new children's programmes. This gives programme makers something to puzzle over as they 'dumb down' adult shows and increase the adult content of children's programmes. Indeed, we do not see an uncut version of The X-Files in the UK because this programme is popular with teenage audiences. Good quality youth programmes are important, but what if they occur at the expense of adult entertainment? The new media agenda which Framework aims to establish, the questions this agenda provokes and attempts to answer, has current parallels in other dimensions of society. For example, the National Museum of Photography Film and Television in the UK has opened a new digital gallery, Wired Worlds, curated by Malcolm Ferris. He had to navigate his way through popular discourses concerning the danger of new technologies, in particular computer games, as he put together an innovative digital media exhibition. The NMFPT has expanded its remit to include new media, and commissioned artists, such as Jane Prophet, to explore contemporary issues of artificial life, and image production and surveillance in western culture (echoes of The Conversation twenty years ago). Ferris speaks of this role as a curator not as a passive one but rather as orchestrating the museum's desires to filter ideas and to be inventive in their approach to their audience. This kind of space within which contemporary ideas are debated is the space Framework inhabits. The articles in this issue illustrate Framework's commitment to encourage and stimulate new ideas. As a starting place, it is these same radical energies of the seventies that Framework wishes to continue in the journal's critical stance. Looking at crossovers and connections in cinema and media is one step in the right direction. |
