Here's Johnny!!!

I've found it really difficult to write much about the Structuralism: Binary Opposition lecture. I found some of it quite interesting but I don't think it's a very effective way of analysing a film, scene or character, at least not as effective as denotation, connotation, myth. However, I've had a go, looking at Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

The two binary opposites I identified in the film are;                  love - hate
                                                                                               reality - imagination
It is the fact that both of these thing blur together which makes the film so terrifying.

When the film starts, Jack appears to be a family man who loves his wife and child, although as his sanity slips away he begins to hate both of them more and more. At first he shows this just with contempt and annoyance, but this quickly transforms to murdurous rage. This makes the audience extremely uncomfortable, more so probably than during a different type of horror film, as a father/husband figure is supposed to be someone the family can trust and who loves them. This monster is much more frightening than say a vampire, with whom there is no emotional connection.

The blurring of reality and imagination is both interesting and alarming to the audience, as it makes the film totally unpredictable. Jack seems to be imagining many things - a party full of people in 1920s dress, conversations with the bar man and with the waiter, the waiter convincing him that he needs to kill his family... However, after his wife locks him in the food-store cupboard, it is the "imaginary" waiter who releases him. This could have been a figment of his imagination too - he could have made his own escape in reality - but there is no sign that this may have happened.

Another example is the old lady in the bathtub - it wasn't just Jack who saw her - his son, Danny, saw her too, and he even came away with bruises from her. We know that Danny can "shine", which is why he can see her, but niether the audience nor Danny realised that these images of people which he can see were capable of harming him.

Molly Chambers' gonna change your mind

I have heard that the brain cannot invent something totally new and original, it can only take previously seen ideas and make them it’s own.

I found it interesting to look at conscious and unconscious intertextuality.  I guess conscious intertextuality either wants you to notice it, or wants to re-invent the thing it’s referring to as its’ own e.g. song covers, some film re-makes, or music samples such as the sample of Enya’s Boadicea used by the Fugees in the song Ready or Not (The Fugees were so successful in making this there own that a lot of people seem to think it is).

In the way of films and Television I think it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether the link is conscious or unconscious.  Obviously some text is simply paying homage to another e.g. in Black Adder II when Black Adder falls in love with Bob, a eunuch, who later turns out to be a girl. This is very reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in which Olivia falls in love with a eunuch, who also later turns out to be a girl.  However sometimes it’s not so obvious, such as I’ve always thought that The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett was based on Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte. There are so many similarities in the stories and in the atmosphere of both stories, and this may have been an unconscious influence on Frances Hodgeson Burnett or perhaps one author paying homage to another.

Something I looked up that I found really interesting was the phrase “Molly’s chamber”.  The Kings of Leon used a version of the phrase a couple of years back in their song Molly Chambers, but it is most commonly known from Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey in the Jar:

“Being drunk and weary I went to Molly’s chamber

Takin my Molly with me and I never knew the danger”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrguJziuq9s

However, in the traditional Irish folk song (or at least all the versions of it I could find) Molly’s chamber is not mentioned, in fact in many versions the name is Jenny not Molly:

“I went into my chamber, all for to take a slumber,
I dreamt of gold and jewels and for sure it was no wonder.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIlDymYg1WM

I think Thin Lizzy inserted the phrase as an erotic reference taken from Molly’s chamber pot, from James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1909), in which there is a Freud-like erotic pleasure found.

Intertextuality is especially present in, and I think essential to, Character Creation.  Linking in with last weeks lecture on semiotics, the image of a character (in particular a created character) is very symbolic and conveys many things to the viewer.  For instance, Hellboy –he’s big, red and has ram’s horns and a tail – he’s basically the standard image of the devil.  His character is obviously not entirely original, if it were then the viewer would not understand his character as they should.  When making my own characters/models I always look for inspiration before even making any sketches – I don’t see it as lazy or copying, but I think intertextuality is an essential part of creating anything;

“Life imitates art”