Ruminations on Zombies

Some time ago I was interviewed for an online magazine that no longer exists. I post the interview below. Following the interview, you will find a few notes on some books that deal with zombies. Have fun.

1.Why do you believe we have such a fascination with the living dead?

            - You ask a question that is not easy to answer briefly. If we look at zombies from a historical perspective, then we can see that the first zombie movies (Victor Halperin's WHITE ZOMBIE 1932, or perhaps the Golem movies in the 20s) were a function of exotica, related to Caribbean lore or Jewish lore, and a response to economic and natural disasters during the Depression. But the zombie did not really catch on the way other horror monsters did until the days of Civil Rights and student unrest in the 1960s. After 1968 we see an increase of zombie films until the flood gates opened about 10 years ago. The current spate of zombie films reflect current social fears: fears of the end of humanity brought on by disease or by mind control or by a rabid consumerism or by alien invasion (the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes so popular now). The zombie reflects end times. In short, the zombie is one aspect of a fin de siecle fatalism and even nihilism.

            From another perspective, the psychoanalytic, the zombie is the self or better yet, the unconscious. The unconscious released unleashes a wild and uncontrollable urge to pleasure and what more pleasure do we have than eating others, consuming those who would consume us. The zombie is a reminder of the Real, in Lacanian terms, the chaos that threatens to pull down order and clarity and security. The zombie is the wild side of the self, the self not seen when we look in the mirror unless we can look with unguarded eyes.

            Why are we fascinated with the living dead? The short answer might be: because the living dead allow us a safe glimpse into the abyss, into a post apocalyptic future, and into a reality we repress with all our might. Watching a zombie film allows for the safe return of the repressed.

2. Do you think said fascination has anything to do with consumer culture? What does the philosophy behind these creatures have to say about said culture?

            -well George Romero certainly made the connection between zombies and consumer culture. His DAWN OF THE DEAD - is that the one in the mall or supermarket? - draws a direct parallel between the consumer and the zombie. And capitalism works to zombify the consumer. Turn a little switch in the heads of all of us and we become mindless purchases of any and everything. Just look at those horrendously wild Boxing Day sales that occur every year. A few years ago people were trampled to death in a Wal-Mart sale in the U.S., if my memory serves me. The zombie "says" that consumer culture, that late capitalism, is mindless, controlling, rapacious, and death-dealing. The novel FEED by M.T. Anderson might be interesting here.

3. In recent years we've witnessed a 'romanticization' of many classic monster 'types''. However, zombies seem to have remained untouched by this. Why do you think this is? Do you think we may eventually witness a romanticization of zombies in the same way as others?

            Well the zombie by definition is a cannibal and cannibalism is a taboo in our society. Taboos such as incest or child sexual abuse or cannibalism are difficult to romanticize because to do so would sanction something our society has a deeply ingrained aversion to. The vampire is different partly because the vampire thinks, whereas the zombie does not appear to think. The zombie is pure instinct. Zombies are also not very attractive physically! Having said this, I note that the Canadian zombie film, FIDO, goes some way toward romanticizing the zombie. But to romanticize the zombie, at least as this film sees it, means to unzombify the zombie by external control. I might say the same about another zombie film, WARM BODIES (2013). Moe recently, the TV series Z NATION plays with the zombie in the character Murphy.

4. Do you think our obsession with the undead has post-apocalyptic connotations/connections with our obsession with the end of the world?

            -no doubt about it. Take a look at WORLD WAR Z (2013), in which the zombies not only signify the apocalyptic aspect, but also signify the 99%.

5. What, in your opinion, do zombies as a cultural icon have to tell us about our society? Ourselves?

            -have I not answered this above? One thing I left out: people appear to enjoy being grossed out. Getting down and dirty in a safe way, in a vicarious way, seems to satisfy some people. The zombie is pollution itself, that which we attempt to excise from our midst, but which has a stubborn way of resisting excision. This is why the zombie often appears as the "other," whether racially coded or not.

6. Killing the living dead has become a central objective in many modern video games(Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil are two of hte more prominent examples). Why do you believe this is?

            -well it is less shocking to kill a zombie than to kill a human being, is it not? The zombie in something like the Resident Evil films (and game, I guess) is cannon fodder. They serve no apparent social purpose and therefore are dispensable. 

7. Was George A. Romero responsible for 'zombie culture' as it appears today, or was there some predecessor to him?

            -a few important zombie films do predate Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but really I think we do have to credit Romero with raising the bar on zombie films. The influence of that 1968 film is huge and undeniable.

8. How do you feel our perception of the living dead has changed since their origin?

            -another big question. We have moved from magic to science. Early zombies (in the 30s and 40s films) were either created by magic, by voodoo, or by mesmerism. Nowadays bacteria or germs seem to be the favoured means of creating the zombie. In THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, as I recall, the zombie had something to do with outer space. Once I mention outer space, then the connection between the zombie in, say, Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and a far better film, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, becomes clear.

            Having come to this point, I might note the connection of the zombie with communism or the fear of communism.

9. There are many different 'types' of zombie: Dawn of the Dead's fast zombies, the classical slow-moving corpse, 28 Days Later's "Rage" zombies...Which do you feel is the most popular?

            -to be honest, I have no idea.

Thanks again for the interview;

Books:

Ralph, Brian. Daybreak. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2011.

Noteworthy for its point of view. The main character, the one-armed boy, speaks to the reader and the reader appears to act, shooting one character late in the book. Not many pictures of zombies, but they are always there, just beyond the door or just beyond the picture border or frame. The story is pessimistic in its post-apocalyptic gloom. This is a world where only a dog can be cheerful and only a dog can survive. (YA graphic novel)

Frisch, Aaron. Zombies. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 2013.

A rather grisly picture book for young readers.

Mayberry, Jonathan. Rot & Ruin. New York, Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Nix speaking: “You see the fence as something keeping the zoms out. I don’t. I see it as the thing that pens us in. We’re trapped here. Trapped isn’t ‘alive.’ Trapped isn’t ‘safe.’ And it isn’t ‘free.’” (182)

Rob Sacchetto speaking: “We’re living next door to the apocalypse, kid. It’s right on the other side of that big fence. The Rot and Ruin is the real world. Our town isn’t anything more than the last bits of mankind’s dream, and we’re stuck here until we die off.” (137)

“ Meaning, intention, will . . . None of that was part of their makeup. There was no more malice there than in a lightning strike or bacteria on a rusted nail…

            Charlie, on the other hand, was something still to be feared. Charlie was far more dangerous than any single zombie on the planet because his malice was deliberate.” (284)

A zombie book about coming of age amid the devastation of post apocalyptic America. The Lost Girl proves not to be lost. She is a killer because she must survive in a place where no law, no justice, no morality exists. But she reads, and reading makes her okay. She is a bit like Michone from The Walking Dead. As for samurai Tom Imura, he is sensitive to zombies and therefore his killing is also okay because he kills bad guys who thrive on the amoral world of Rot and Ruin. He also brings closure to families who loved ones have “returned.”

Showalter, Gena. Alice in Zombieland. Don Mills, ON: Harlequin Teen, 2012.

A terrible book that has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll’s book, aside from the rip-off title.

Fischer, Rusty. Zombies Don’t Cry. Medallion Press, 2011.

Another rip-off title. The book gives us zombies that think and feel and carry on much as usual aside from doing battle with the Zerkers, a form of zombie that is savage, brutal, and downright mean and evil. Mostly, however, this book is interested in presenting teens and their hormones, their interest in hot guys and gals. This is high school hijinks, with a bit of wish fulfillment thrown in because the main characters get to decapitate a band of teacher Zerkers. All this really is tiresome and silly. The protagonist’s name is Maddy Swift, and ‘Swift’ may be a clue to the book’s satiric intentions. But if this is what goes for satire these days Swift, Pope and company must be rolling in their graves. The struggle is to find something new in the zombie genre and Rusty seems to think attaching zombies to chick narrative will do the trick.

Pictures and Preconceptions: Judging a Book by its Cover The Highwayman, illustrated by Charles Keeping

Picture books marketed for children inevitably foreground the eye. Whether the artist and writer are the same person or whether they are not the same person hardly matters in terms of priority. The eyes have it. To put this another way, the pictures in these books always dominate. Obviously for the young child who may not yet read, the picture is the thing to capture her interest; but the adult too will gravitate to the visual image simply because this is more readily attractive than the printed word. The eyes have it. The first thing one sees is the book's cover, and the picture book cover is arguably far more deeply implicated in the rest of the text than are covers of other types of books. Jane Doonan notes that "Picture-book stories often begin on the cover" (52). This is true, but even when the narrative does not have its "beginning" on the cover, the cover contains narrative information. The covers of picture books are peritextual, but their very peritextuality is an aspect of their textuality in ways that are less intense in non picture books. My next point hardly depends on what I have just said, but I want to make a connection. The pictures in children's books introduce novice (even non) readers not only to visual codes, but also to visual styles. Picture books are a young child's first introduction to the fine arts (see Doonan 7), and the covers of these books set the style just as they introduce the content of what lies inside.
Picture books may be a "composite art,"1 but the attractions of colour, shape, and design draw us to the pictures. A cover illustration creates a preconception; in fact, in some instances the cover illustration gives us all we need to know in order for us to enter and understand the fictional world between the front and back cover. As an example of what I mean, I offer the cover of the OUP edition of Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman, illustrated by Charles Keeping (1981). Here the reader, young or older, prepares to enter a book that works through the expression of terror, a terror both emphasised and released through Keeping's expressionistic art. The narrative of ill-fated love takes on, through Keeping's visual imagination, a visceral quality; Carpenter and Prichard refer to the imaginative quality of this book as "morbid" (288). I'm not sure about morbidity, but certain it is that in The Highwayman as illustrated by Keeping story becomes emotion, and through this transformation of story Keeping challenges the whole notion of narrative as linear.
A glance at the cover will indicate how important the publisher thinks the pictures are. Note that the names of both author (Alfred Noyes) and illustrator (Charles Keeping) are visible, but that Keeping's name is in uppercase bold lettering, while Noyes's is in lower case. Note too that the cover picture occupies two thirds of the space and the title one third. And note also that the hoofs of the Highwayman's horse come below the line of sepia that crosses the sight line cutting off the picture from the title. In other words, the picture starts to invade the region of the cover devoted to the printing of the title. The point, I think, is that the illustrations here will overpower the poetry. I think they do.
A number of other things might also derive from this cover. The picture is in sepia--a sort of grey/brown shading with white. In other words, the picture does not use colour; it is closer to black and white than to colour.2 As Nodelman points out, "serious picture-book artists who choose to avoid colour in a medium noted for its use of colour often have similar special points to make" (67). It is worth asking what point Keeping might make here, what effect black and white, or at least the sepia tint, makes in this instance. The type of tint might remind us of old photographs, althought the style of the drawing is clearly not realistic or photographic. I'll come back to the style of the drawing in a moment, but first let's notice that black and white or variations of black and white are serious in tone; they do not, as Nodelman says, have "the frivolous intrusion of colour" (67). This is partly because we are used to seeing black and white pictures as aspects of a serious type of communication: documentaries, newspaper photographs, and the like (again see Nodelman 67-72). The great photographers--Man Ray, Ansel Adams, or Annie Leibowitz, for example--as often as not use black and white. Black and white, if nothing else, communicates age. This was not true at one time, but now in this era of constant and ubiquitous colour black and white seems to announce something that was made long ago. And also something portentous, something we should take seriously (I think of Spielberg's Schindler's List). Clearly, the content of this poem takes us into the long ago. Also we might think of the content as serious and black and white captures this. Note I say "serious" rather than "romantic." It is true that the story we will read is a romance laced with irony, a tragedy of separated lovers, but the colour of the illustrations begins to question the "romance" of this story. Romance, remember, suggests something idealized, removed from the real world we live in. These illustrations, despite their unrealistic style, remind us of the real world in all its earthiness. And here in this word "earthiness" we might find a reason for the tint of the illustrations: they are earth-toned. This is a very earthy book.
I'm getting closer to the style of the illustration, but first let's notice the pose of the horse and rider. The horse has two legs, one front and one back, raised in a position that reminds me of a certain type of elegant show horse. Note too the rise and fall of the tail. Here's a prancing horse in a very formal and controlled pose. Keeping's drawings are often full of movement, but not so here; this is a highly stylized representation of a horse. The rider too is stylized. He turns so that he faces us directly. We see the horse from the side, but we see the rider in full frontal position. He stares right at us from behind his mask. His outfit reminds us of a dandy, someone formal and studied, but the mask reminds us that he is an outlaw. So too does the gun. And that gun points directly at us. The picture reminds me of the famous final shot (literally) of Edwin S. Porter's film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), in which one of the outlaws who has robbed the train stands in medium close-up, facing the audience, holding his pistol at the camera. As we watch, he fires. When audiences first saw this, women fainted and strong men fled the cinema in fright. Anyhow, the point is that the gun and its position are uncomfortable reminders of the reality of robbery. The rider threatens us. The boldness of this figure staring directly at us is a challenge, and the romance of the Highwayman should not tempt us to overlook the menace he represents. This is, finally, no Stewart Granger in swashbuckling splendour.
Now the style. As I indicated, Keeping's drawings are representational, but not realistic. Take a look at the rider's right leg, for example. This leg looks more like a prosthetic leg than a real one. It is too thin and barely bends. Where is the knee? The foot appears wafer thin, and the spur protruding from the boot heel is a token spur only. Clearly, Keeping is not interested in "realism." If he were, then he would not let us see the line of the horse's left rear leg through the hoof of its right leg, or he would finish drawing the right front hoof. He is more interested in sketching in his figures than in providing the viewer with finished , hard-edged figures. Why? Well, one reason is that he wants to "express" the figure, to give expression to his figures. This means more than that he wants the reader to fill in the edges of the figures he draws. Keeping wants his figures to express more than their shapes; he wants them to express a feeling, an emotion. His line serves emotion more than visual correctness.
Rarely in this cover illustration does Keeping use a straight line (except perhaps in the line of shading that separates the white space at the bottom from the illustration itself or in some of the horse's tack); most of his lines are squiggly or curved or wavy or whatever, anything but straight and rigid. They express movement even within this very formal pose. The most obvious example of this are the lines on the horse's body. They curve and even splotch, but often they do not connect. Many lines attach to nothing. The effect here is to unnerve the viewer. We are comforted when what we see has definite form and shape, when lines connect to lines completing a design. Here lines disconnect and threaten to distort the image. Perhaps the best example of this in the book is the illustration of the Highwayman's sprawled body after the soldiers shoot him. Here lines and splotches move in all directions. His body splays out just as his blood flows without the containing body. The difference between the cover illustration and the one of the dead Highwayman occurs in composition, not style. Both illustrations have the same nervous energy, but the one on the cover has symmetry and balance, whereas the other one shatters balance. What I want to conclude is that the expressionistic style Keeping employs charges his illustrations with emotion, and this emotion is often brutal and unpleasant. This brutality and unpleasantness function to demystify the romantic poem.
Keeping is, for the most part, resolute in his desire to demystify. His soldiers are ugly both inside and out. They have bad teeth, bad skin, and bad habits. They are gross and unpleasant. They are associated with hardness--straight lines, mostly guns, are evident in the scenes in which they appear. The focus is, I think, on the helplessness and confined position of Bess, the landlord's daughter. Many of the illustrations look out from the inn onto the road and the trees and the moonlight. In other words, many of the pictures take Bess's point of view. The picture from inside the inn out along the moon-drenched road is so insistent that we see it six times before the death of the Highwayman, and in four of these pictures the turn of the road strikes me as distinctly reminiscent of a sickle. If I am right and we can see a sickle here, then the imminent arrival of death is clear. Indeed, this is the case whether we see the sickle or not.
We see this same landscape two other times, both without the framing device of the window, once at the beginning when the Highwayman first arrives and once at the end when he returns after death for his beloved Bess. In both pictures, the sickle-like aspect of the road is less clear. And of course the last scene reverses the light quality of the first as if we've gone to the negative of the picture. The negative effect is a move into the other life. These lovers can find fulfillment only in death. This talk of fulfillment might take us back to the cover, and it is worth reminding ourselves that picture books communicate everywhere from front cover to back cover. Anyway, on the back cover we see the two lovers in embrace, she inside the inn (as usual), and he outside. But the lines of the windowsill and clothing intersect to indicate that no barrier exists between the two lovers. They merge into one another. They did this earlier in the book--on the eighth page--when Bess's hair becomes one with the Highwayman's hair and face. But here the sense of inside and outside are strong. By the time we reach the back cover, this sense of separation is gone.
I have concentrated on Keeping as opposed to Noyes here, but I think this version of the story invites us to do so because Keeping's illustrations are so strong. Students with whom I have discussed this book often remark that the illustrations are too gory, too sensual, too gross, too scary. His figures are abnormal, some say. In short, few students have expressed any interest in the book, although some think the poem is good. Those who do find the book interesting, claim to find this book very powerful. What strikes me is the reaction from both those who like and those who dislike the book: it is invariably strong--even visceral. It seems impossible to be neutral or non-committal about this book.
What Keeping has done, it seems to me, is to take an essentially light-weight poem and transform it into an emotional revel. Take for example the picture which accompanies the words: "Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear/How Bess, the landlord's daughter,/The landlord's black-eyed daughter,/Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there." We see the Highwayman's face in full close-up, framed by two rugged and hard faces. The illustration focuses on eyes and mouth; we must contemplate eyes and mouth because of the use of black here. The eyes are demented. The mouth is a gaping agony. Drops of sweat on the nose express intensity of feeling. This is a moment of shattering horror, of the realization of what has happened. The madness of the Highwayman comes across forcefully. Aristotle's notion of art's cathartic effect strikes me as applicable here. Keeping's drawings express brutality and ugliness, but they do so in an aesthetic manner. These pictures ask us to respond both emotionally and intellectually. They turn powerful moments of drama into abstract shapes. The moments of death recorded here are moments when the body bereft of life becomes a shape, an object, an object that discomfits us by forcing us to gaze upon it. In some strange way, we become complicit in the deaths of these two people. Their deaths compel us to think of brute facts. The gaze, which we are told so often is a sign of power, here becomes, ironically, a sign of helplesness.
The spirit of this book is transgressive. We can see this right from the front cover where the tradition of court portraiture from at least the time of Van Dyck's portrait, Charles I on Horseback (c. 1637-8) stands on its head. What is regal, realistic, studied, and finished in Van Dyck, becomes in Keeping confrontational, artificial, parodic, and incomplete. We gaze at an illustrated man who returns our gaze so intently that we cower. What we understand from this book is that art can organize life, but it cannot protect us from it. Looking at Keeping's work estranges us by attracting our attention to primary things: love and death, black and white, negative and positive, ugliness and beauty, desire and fear. Some might find Keeping's interests in violence and brutishness "morbid," but I prefer to think his interests are more aesthetic than sucked sugar stick.

Notes
1. "Composite art" is a term coined, I think, by Jean Hagstrum in a book on William Blake. Hagstrum speaks of the "living unity" of Blake's words and pictures, in which one aspect of the form picks up what the other lacks. See Hagstrum 10-20.

2. In fact, at least one description of the book speaks of Keeping's "powerful black-and-white illustrations." See Watkins and Sutherland 318.

Works Cited
Carpenter, Humphrey and Mari Prichard. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1984.
Doonan, Jane. Looking at Pictures in Picture Books. Stroud, Glos.: Thimble Press, 1993.
Hagstrum, Jean. William Blake Poet and Painter: An Introduction to the Illuminated Verse. Chicago & London: University of Chicago P, 1978 (1964).
Nodelman, Perry. Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children's Picture Books. Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Noyes, Alfred. The Highwayman. Illus. Charles Keeping. Oxford: OUP, 1981.
Watkins, Tony and Zena Sutherland. "Contemporary Children's Literature," in Children's Literature: An Illustrated History, ed. by Peter Hunt. Oxford and New York: OUP, 1995. 289-319.

Film theory& Johnny Guitar

 What is theory?

1.    “thinking with the information we have at hand to think with.”

2.    “an act of bricolage.”

3.    “an end to innocence.”

4.    theoria – contemplation, spectacle, mental conception

5.    theoria comes from Greek and is connected with theater and seeing (thea)

6.    “Self consciousness about what we are doing.”

(All of the above derive from my essay, “Looking in the Mirror: Pedagogy, Theory, and Children’s Literature,” Teaching Children’s Fiction, ed. Charles Butler. London: Palgrave, 2006. 85-105.)

What is film theory?

1.    thinking about film with the information we have at hand to think about film with. A sort of bricolage.

2.    an end to innocent viewing.

3.    self-consciousness in our viewing of film.

4.    conceptualizing the activity we call ‘watching movies.”

5.    asking how film works as an artistic medium

6.    asking how film works as a social medium

7.    asking what is film?

8.    approaching film from a particular methodological position.

9.    being aware of the ideological implications of method. For example, formalist readings tend to be conservative; this is why the formalists had a difficult time in Soviet Russia. The Soviet government wanted socialist realism and its attendant themes.

Methods of Approach:

Here is a sample list: formalist; structuralist/semiotic; historical; generic; Marxist; psychoanalytic; mythic/archetypal; gender (includes feminist, masculinist, and queer approaches) and so on.

-each of these is complicated in the sense that each one – gender studies, for example – may focus on 1) the style of film-making, 2) the content of a film, 3) the presentation or construction of gender positions in a film, 4) the reception of a film, 5) the connection of a film with history.

-as the last of the list above should indicate, methodological or theoretical approaches are seldom pure. For example, a feminist approach to a film may at the same time be Marxist in focus, leading to what we see termed a “Marxist/Feminist” approach.

-as my locution, “methodological or theoretical,” should indicate, theory and practice are more often than not connected. Theory simply “guides” or organizes critical practice.

Pure Cinema/Impure Cinema

-pure cinema:

a.    The idea that cinema is hermetic in the sense that it has its own parameters as an art and does not pilfer from the other arts.

b.    The idea that cinema is an art complete and whole, without fissure or alienation. (Bazin)

c.    The idea that film criticism constitutes a discourse unpolluted by anything outside film itself.

-impure cinema

a.    The idea that cinema inevitably and necessarily pilfers from the other arts.

b.    The idea that cinema must draw attention to itself as a medium and therefore break the illusion of ‘realism.’

c.    The idea that film criticism is an interdisciplinary discourse.

Johnny Guitar and Film theory

Pure Cinema: film as self-contained

-this approach may be either formalist or ‘realist’

-focus on the film’s shape, and perhaps its structures, and certainly its genre.

-shape: linear moving from lone rider on a horse, to a saloon and gambling emporium in the desert, to a rustler’s roost, and ending with two figures in embrace. The classic fairy tale plot: boy rides up and “saves” girl – only with a twist.

-structures: binaries include male/female, outside/inside, Europe/America, desert/town, black/white, lawmen/outlaws, fire/water, primary colour/pale colour, past/future.

         Characters in the film have a connection with the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The elements indicate that this is an “elemental” film.

Vienna: earth

Emma: fire

Johnny: air

Dancing: water

Vienna and Emma: earth and fire

Emma and Dancing: earth

Dancing and Johnny: air

Johnny and Vienna: earth and water

Posse: dust and death

Gang: dust and death

Turkey: earth

         The first and last in this list, Vienna and Turkey, make a couple, mother and child. Vienna in her white dress cradles the wounded Turkey in her arms in imitation of a Pieta.

         And what of semiosis? What to make of the film’s clear signs: the rock wall in Vienna’s place, the window between kitchen and saloon, the chandelier, the bridge, the river and waterfall, the blasting, the railroad, the familial hints, Vienna’s clothes, the wind and dust, the fire, the underground mine. Even the colour of the rock and the dirt carries meaning.

-genre: obviously this film is a “horse-opera.” It has the obvious western conventions: cowboy on horseback, saloon, shootouts, outlaws and good guys, contrast between east and west, tension between feminine and masculine elements, the hanging, and the hideout. We can read the film as fitting into the western myth or not fitting in, as the case may be. We might also see how the film stretches genre; it contains elements of the gothic and the noir.

-history of film and film genre: if we locate Johnny Guitar in the history of popular cinema in America, then we will most likely see that it participates in a redefining of the western genre in the post war period. After 1945, we begin to see a turn in the western to what we might call psychological themes. Westerns such as Pursued, Duel in the Sun, Rawhide, and Colorado Territory show the influence of the cinema noir style and themes; they also show a new emphasis on raw emotion and the psychological states of the characters. This psychic aspect is manifest in the many high angle and low angle shots, shots reminiscent of noir style. What we might think of as “adult” themes enter the western. Johnny Guitar reflects this new maturity in its themes of obsession and addiction. The characters in this film are obsessive (Emma, Vienna, Johnny are the ones I am thinking of here). Passion is front and center in this film. Rather than the straight-ahead shoot-em-up we might expect from a western, we have in Johnny Guitar a more cerebral action. Much of what happens takes place inside the saloon or the hideout. The familiar western emphasis on landscape is muted in favour of inside. The focus on inside is a metonymy for the psychic (and psychotic) emphasis in the film. Characters caught by forces that seem as inevitable as fate (the wind outside Vienna’s blows inexorably) are a feature of cinema noir, as is the inclusion of the fatal woman motif. Turkey and Dancing both die, and they are trapped like so many noir characters. And yet the film is transitional, a western that bends the genre almost to breaking. The rather camp style indicates the turn in 50s films to the outrageous, the stylish, the unusual. Film is trying to capture an audience that is finding TV an easy lure.

Inpure Cinema: cinema as pilfering medium

-an awareness of film’s various possibilities as a social form of expression. It exists within the world, not hermetically sealed.

-an understanding that film has implications beyond the closed space of the film diegesis.

-gender approach: here is a tangled tale, as it were. Is this film about normal heterosexual relationships or does it explore non-traditional sexual behaviour. Take Emma, for example. How do we explain her style, her plaything (the gun), and her hysterical reaction to Vienna? Does she protest too much?

         And what of Vienna? Does she revert at the end to the dutiful domestic woman ready to cook for her man? Or does she remain strong, and does Johnny remain her lapdog? (She tells him to “sit down” while she cooks the eggs – a master feeding her pet.)

-individual vs collective: in this case a sort of red individual set opposite a sort of fascistic collective. In other words, we can read the film from an ideological perspective. Take, for example, Emma’s speech to the posse just before they go to Vienna’s place. Among other things, Emma says that if they (she and her fellow members of the local elite – the big ranchers like McIver) are not vigilant and keep out people like Vienna, then many people she refers to as “dirt farmers, squatters” will come in to their area. In other words, she hates the thought of the great unwashed or the proletariat invading her property. She is for property rights (private property) and keeping it at all costs. Vienna, on the other hand, wants to make money, but she wants to do so by opening her place to any and all who come to her place. She is open to change, as opposed to Emma and McIver who are resistant to change.

-psychoanalytic exploration: here is a film rich in psychic drama. Take Johnny, for example. He is a guy who has ostensibly traded his gun for a guitar. What does this mean? Well, he has a history of out-of-control violence based on his love of the gun. He likes to shoot. But he has repressed this desire to shoot, and covered it with another phallic object, the guitar. He wants to make music, not mayhem (love rather than war). The gun and the guitar are both fetish objects. That is, they both are defenses against fear – the fear of lost manhood. But the guitar cannot cut it; the guitar is not an adequate substitute for the gun (or the phallus). To satisfy his woman, Johnny will have to set aside the guitar and resume his affair with the gun. As for Vienna, how do we understand her desire? She is a woman in a man’s world, and she plays like a man. She too has a gun. How are we to understand her relationship with Emma from a psychoanalytic perspective? First, we might notice that Vienna and Emma both wear guns, and they both dress in black, although their black clothes are quite different. They are both powerful women, women who function successfully in a male world by acting as efficiently and ruthlessly as males. Both these women are on the edge of normalcy in terms of gender; in fact, they teeter into abnormalcy. They desire that which they cannot have; they must either die (Emma) or return to normalcy (Vienna cooking for her man near the end of the film). Vienna must face her doppleganger and eradicate her. From this perspective, the film is about deviance and enforced normalcy. For psychic health, male and female should take their proper place in gender negotiations.

         We might also read the film as an exploration of desire. What is it that all the characters desire? Money, land, power, independence, love, that which has been lost and that which is supposed to cover over a lack. Take Emma for example. She is the most hysterical character in the film. Why? Well because she is the most confused in her desire. She loves the Dancing Kid, but she hates him. She hates Vienna, but perhaps her very hate hides an attraction (note how they wear either the same colours or opposite colours – green and black). She has lots of money (she and her brother run the bank), but she fears losing her position. She kills or tries to kill the very things she loves. Her problem is a confused identity. She desires conflicting things – what Lacan might call the Real and the Imaginary, and yet she is stuck in the Symbolic.

Real = that amorphous and chaotic brine from which we come.

Imaginary = our Ideal-I, our fascinating “other.”

Symbolic=the law of the Father, the world of language and social activity.

For Emma, her little gun is the object that represents her desire. Through the gun she hopes to achieve the stability she desires, but of course the gun can only disappoint in its destructive rather than constructive significance.

history: placing this film in its time – 1954 – and noting its director’s background, we can easily see how the film relates to the HUAC investigations, the Hollywood 10, and the whole context of post war panic over the “red menace.” From this perspective, the film is not so much a western, as it is an allegory of America in the post war period.

The Biggest Christmas Tree on the Block; or Season’s Greetings

         First, you must know this about my father: he liked things big. The bigger, the better. For him, the value of an object was directly related to its size. He drank his beer from quart bottles; he drove the largest car the finance company would allow him to buy; he made sure we had in our living room a couch on which six people could comfortably sit.  Above the couch hung a huge gilt-framed mirror that was big enough to reflect nearly your whole height when you stood across the room from it. He not only brought home the first television on our block, but he also brought home what remained the largest television on our block for several years.  The screen was not large by today's standards--21 inches--but the cabinet would still fill many a modest living room.  It was a large wooden affair with hinged doors that closed over the screen when viewing was over to allow the television to disguise itself as an old-fashioned large china cabinet or sideboard.  Needless to say, these doors were seldom shut.  Whereas most people we knew placed an antenna, called rabbit ears, on top of their TV’s to receive any signal available, my father was not satisfied with such a paltry and ugly antenna. He mounted a grand outdoor antenna on the roof of the house; it resembled a hulking hydro tower. Inside the house, a small control box rested discreetly on a windowsill.  This box had a dial you turned in order to change the position of the antenna on the roof. This was supposed to improve the TV reception.

      And so we had a room fit for a crowd. Six people, however, rarely sat on our magnificent couch at any one time. My father would stretch his large frame on it and watch the large television until he fell asleep and the very round and very large pattern (which reminded me of the old Chicago Black Hawks' emblem) that indicated the only TV station we had was finished broadcasting for the night had shone dimly through the 21 inches of what we referred to as “snow” for several hours. The TV reception was not great, but at least the TV with its magnificent cabinet impressively occupied much space.

         Now if you have a large television and a large couch in your living room, you undoubtedly would wish to have a large coffee table to set off the whole decor.  Not only did my father purchase a grand coffee table, but he made sure it was formidably heavy.  Our coffee table was four feet long, with a removable marble top.  Yes, marble.  My father never tired of having guests, indeed anyone who happened by--the egg man, the milk man, the bread man, the Fuller Brush man, the transient asking for a handout—to try to lift the monster coffee table. He exhorted everyone to lift the coffee table to see just how heavy it was.  Its weight apparently testified to its worth. My father even brought people—friends and strangers alike--home to try their luck with the prodigious table.  I have a sneaking suspicion that lifting this table long into the nights kept my father in some semblance of physical fitness.

         One of my father's most cherished fantasies was to own a motel, and I have little doubt that his desire was as much for a home with more bedrooms than anyone else he knew had, than it was to make money without having to work for it. His fantasy had him sitting in the office, his feet stretched out on a desk, signing in guests, and taking in money to fill cardboard boxes big enough to hold that fine coffee table he so prized. What did not occur to him was that my mother would be the person cleaning those many rooms and doing the heavy laundry from so many beds. His vision was of the life of Riley, with money just floating into those large boxes. He would spend the days conversing with guests and accepting bundles of cash provided by those same guests. His days would benefit from the comforts of a soft chair and all that money could provide. His nights would slide by in pleasant dreams in which money actually did grow on trees.

         So you have the idea: my father always thought big. It should be no surprise, then, that when December rolled around he always wanted the largest Christmas tree on the block.  Not satisfied with the puny trees available from the Boy Scouts or from the Orange Young Britons, he decided one year to drive into the country and cut down his own tree, the biggest one he could find. He wanted a majestic fir fit for a once and future motel owner. I went along because my father harboured a hope that I would learn all the manly skills, including the chopping of trees, but truth to tell I was young and as puny as the Boy Scout trees my father scorned.

Consequently, my father asked Mr. Wobble from the house in back of us to go with us.  We would take two vehicles and cut down two trees, one for the Wobbles and one for us, but the real reason Mr. Wobble came along was that my father knew he would need as much lifting power as he could find to haul his handsome giant of a tree out of the woods and onto the roof of his car, a 1954 Ford Crestline. I suspect he had visions of giant redwoods as he imagined the wondrous tree in our front room. This would be a tree to complement the couch, the coffee table, and the television. This would be a tree to impress the many visitors who came to try their hands at lifting that awesome marble-topped coffee table. This would be a tree worthy of appearing in the pages of the local newspaper, The Record News. This would be a tree people would remember for years to come.

         We drove south on the Lombardy road for about ten miles, then turned into a side road and drove another three or four miles until the bush became thick on both sides of the road.  We stopped, got out of the cars, took an axe from each trunk, and climbed the split rail fence that separated the woods from the roadside ditch. We had galoshes on, of course, but none of us was prepared for the depth of snow that greeted us on the other side of the fence.  My legs disappeared.  My father and Mr. Wobble sank up to their calves.  They had a difficult time trudging through the snow, but I had an impossible time.  I saw them moving into the trees, and in my horror I shrieked.  I had visions of being left behind to fall prey to some savage beast. Snow was beginning to fall in fat fluffy flakes, and the track of my dragged body would quickly disappear. The two men stopped.  Turned.  And they began to laugh at the puny one wriggling up to his waist in snow.  Their laughter only made me feel worse than I felt when I saw them receding from me. They returned and hauled me out of the snow and onto my father's shoulders.  On we trudged into the depths of the forest looking for the perfect tree.  Before we cut the Wobble's tree, we had to find the McGillicuddy tree, the magnificent pine that would fill our living room with its grandeur, towering over the huge couch, TV, and coffee table. Placed correctly, it might also find itself reflected in the huge mirror giving our room two giant trees instead of one.

         After some time appraising trees, measuring them with the eye from top to bottom, looking for perfection in both height and symmetry, we came upon a giant among pines, a stately tree fit for a town square, a tree that might fittingly take its place on Parliament Hill in Ottawa or even in front of the White House.  We simply gazed up at it in admiration.  Then my father sent out the call to action.  "Let's fell this one, Ernie," he said to Mr. Wobble.  Warning me to stand back, the two men flung their axes over their shoulders to begin the deed.  With a mighty swing, my father brought his axe down toward the tree.  Instead of the hearty "thud" I expected to hear, I heard a slight "ping" as the axe head flew yards away and into the snow.  This flying of the axe head was a familiar occurrence; my father never got the hang of fixing the axe head to the handle firmly. A few loud and blistery words came my way from my father, whose face registered fury, the fury of the hunter who has found his prey only to be cheated of it at the last second.  The axe head had entered the snow cleanly, but where it entered was not where it came to rest, and it took several minutes of frantic snow flailing to find the thing.  Once the axe was, at least temporarily, repaired, the two men began again, chopping with all the zeal of seasoned lumberjacks.  This was manly work, work for the hardened woodsman, work that would earn a good glug from a handy bottle. They chopped and chopped, chips flying like snowflakes, until their axes came together in a clang and a curse.  The two men stopped and stared at each other, my father with a malignant look on his face. I thought my father was about to brain Mr. Wobble, when a terrific crack rent the air.  The great tree began to list and then to fall slowly and gracefully to the ground.  The three of us quickly moved away as the tree came down between Mr. Wobble and me and my father. It landed softly in the thick snow and lay there like Mr. French in his white satin-lined coffin, with the stillness of eternity. The deed was done.

         It didn't take long for the two men to find and bring down a smaller tree for the Wobble household.  This tree was so small that Mr. Wobble carried it over his shoulder back to the trunk of his car. It stuck out about a foot or so and Mr. Wobble tied the lid of the trunk to keep the tree from jumping out on the drive home. I could sense my father’s disdain. My father's tree could not be carried over anyone's shoulder, and certainly would not fit in anyone’s trunk.  It was too big even for the box of a good-sized pick-up truck. He and I just stood admiring this fallen forest monument while we waited for Mr. Wobble to return. By the time he got back, my father had had a few nips from the flask that he carried in a large pocket. He then shared it with Mr. Wobble. They both needed fortification before lifting the heavy load, my father said. Once fortified, they hauled the large tree with great huffs and puffs back to the split rail fence. The next trick was to get the tree over the fence and to do this they needed more fortification. Once fortified, they got the tree up and onto the fence and then rolled it until it slid to the ground on the road side of the fence, in the ditch. The tree was now only a few feet from the car, but in a depression that would make it difficult to haul up and onto the car.

       Now, my father prided himself on being prepared for anything, and he had brought several stout ropes with which he planned to lash the tree to the roof of our 1954 Ford hardtop.  The two men tied ropes to the tree and my father began pushing and shoving the thing up the bank toward the car while Mr. Wobble pulled on the ropes from above. I stood to the side and shivered in the cold. Grunting, cursing, and straining every muscle, my father and Mr. Wobble managed to get the tree beside the car and then stand it up. The next step was to hoist it onto the roof of the car.  This they did with more grunting and cursing. The tree was situated crossways on the roof until they swiveled it round like a compass needle. They positioned the tree so that the its pointy top hung down over the windshield effectively making two panes where there once had been one. Yes, my father had prepared the roof by covering it with an old blanket; he certainly did not wish to scratch the paint on his big car, the most glamorous car on the block.

         Much of the tree hung over the front of the car and over the trunk of the car, leaving little space for seeing out either the windshield or the rear window. The tree balanced precariously along the middle of the roof with its wide branches hanging over each side, effectively disturbing the view from the side windows. Since the car had only two doors, my father’s next bright idea was to place a rope around the tree near the back of the roof and bring it underneath the car so that the car became a huge wrapped Christmas present with the great tree on top serving as a decorative bow. Then he and I got in the car and Mr. Wobble circled a rope over the front of the tree and around the car itself, bringing the long rope up on either side of the car where he tied each end to a door handle.  My father and I were inside peering out through the small spaces left to see through. Once we got home, Mr. Wobble would untie the front rope and release us from the car. In the mean time, my father and I would be prisoners beneath the glory that was our Christmas tree. The tree lay like a great carcass on top of our big Ford V8. I could tell that my father was excited to get his prize home so that everyone could see it as he drove slowly down the block.

         Mr. Wobble's car was ahead of my father's when we began the return journey. The plan had been that we would be the first to leave for home so that if we had difficulty Mr. Wobble would be able to help. But the best-laid plans often go awry and Mr. Wobble quickly headed for his car and drove off before my father had a chance to lower the flask that he held victoriously to his mouth.  My father and I squinted through the branches that flecked the front windshield and watched Mr. Wobble pass out of sight. My father cursed and started the car. We had to go very slowly with the great tree creaking and shifting on the roof above us.  By the time we reached the Lombardy road, the tree had shifted noticeably because the blanket slid easily on the smooth roof.  The pointy top of the tree had shifted to the left making it even more difficult for my father to see the road. He had to lean way over to the right or else crane his neck out the half-lowered window. My father drove with care and I sat mute in anticipation of more of those familiar words. I continued to shiver with the cold. Turning into the main road, we confronted a huge truck that loomed upon us on the wrong side of the road.  My father lunged forward with his foot on the gas; the car lurched; the great tree began to slide backwards; my father crushed the brake with his right foot; the tree swung forward and several of its great branches moved down onto the hood effectively covering the windshield and my father's view.  Before he could recover from having gunned the engine, we bumped, slid, and jostled to a stop in the deep ditch beside the road.  The car had stalled. The huge truck disappeared into the distance. I heard those words.  I heard even more of them when my father tried to open his door only to find that Mr. Wobble had fixed the ropes well enough to stay around the car, even though they had not kept the tree immobile.  Neither of us could open our doors.

          My father suggested that I climb out my window and then undo the rope. I tried, but the car had tilted enough that my side of the car leaned against a large snow bank making it difficult if not impossible for me to get out. My father thought I was just being silly. “Don’t be a sissy,” he scoffed. If I was not going to get out my side, then he said I could climb over him and get out his window. But when he tried to role his window the rest of the way down, it stuck. As hard as he tried, he could not get the window to roll down. We would have to wait until someone came along. I began to whimper. I imagined the two of us frozen stiff and white by the time anyone found us. I wanted to go home. My father just glowered and tipped his flask skyward.

         After what seemed hours of sitting there and yelling frantically to each passing car, I got the bright idea of climbing out my window and digging through the snow bank.  I was small and could easily make my way out into the winter cold.  The snow bank was deep, but the car window was near the top of the bank and digging through would not be terribly difficult. Once outside the car, I could, I hoped, undo the rope and release my father.  I accomplished the deed without too much difficulty, but once I had untied the offending rope the tree slid farther off the side of the car until it came to rest between the edge of the roof and the snow bank out of which I had recently climbed.  My father knew that the two of us could not get the tree back into place and then get the car back onto the road.  I could hear him cursing my worse than boyish limbs, and cursing Ernie Wobble for abandoning us to the elements.  And the elements responded with an increased snowfall that came up quickly.

      As we stood there shivering in the December wind and snow, a pick-up truck stopped and its driver, a Mr. Tenant who just happened to be the father of Winston, a class-mate of mine who was even punier than I, offered to give us a hand.  Mr. Tenant owned a farm nearby, and he offered to go and get his tractor so he could pull the car from the ditch. My father thanked him by proffering him a slug from the flask. The two of them shared the flask and then Mr. Tenant got back in his pick-up and drove into the gathering dusk. Nighttime comes early in December. By the time Mr. Tenant returned with his tractor, darkness had long surrounded us. We were cold and miserable, and my father was feeling the effects of the contents of his flask that was now empty. Once the men had connected the tractor and car with a large chain, it was not long before the car was back on the road. Next Mr. Tenant placed the chain around the tree and hauled it up to the edge of the road, leaving a branch or two behind and ruining its once splendid symmetry. From there, the two men wrestled it onto the roof of the car. Then they secured the tree to the roof, only this time Mr. Tenant tied the ropes in such a fashion that we were not imprisoned in the car. He had a rope passing round the tree and down over the hood to the bumper. He added a second rope at the back where it attached to each side of the rear bumper. The tree seemed firmly in place.

        Before we could leave, my father had to thank Mr. Tenant.  So the two of them had a few snorts from the bottle my father had secreted in the trunk.  By the time we waved good-bye to Mr. Tenant, my father was somewhat higher in spirits than he had been a short while since. In less than an hour after Mr. Tenant had rescued us the tree was in place on the car roof, and we were headed home. We drove carefully toward town, my father humming Christmas music all the way.  At the edge of town, however, my father's high spirits took a dip when we passed Mr. Wobble heading the other way.  I can only guess that he had begun to wonder where we were and fearing something was wrong, he was on his way to find us.  Beside him in the front seat was my mother who probably feared that her son and husband had perished in the winter cold. My father honked, gesticulated, and hollered several familiar phrases, but Mr. Wobble was too intent on the road ahead of his vehicle to give us any notice.  How he could not see a car with an enormous Christmas tree tied to the roof is beyond me. We drove on home.

      When we got there we had to wait until Mr. Wobble and my mother returned so my father could have help getting the tree into the house. I offered to help, but my father indicated that this was not a good idea. He just waved me away. And so while we waited, my father turned to that bottle he had shared with Mr. Tenant. By the time Mr. Wobble and my mother returned it was past my bedtime, but I wanted to see this tree in our house. The two men wrestled the majestic pine up our front steps and onto the porch. Then it went through the front door, but it was too large to go from the hallway into the living room. They had to take the tree all the way past the living room door and through the dining room to the kitchen door. Then they could go through the dining room and through the large roller doors that separated dining room and living room. Once in the living room, they tried to stand the tree up, my mother ready with the bucket we used to hold the Christmas tree from year to year. The bucket, however, proved useless. The tree was too tall for the room. Undaunted, my father insisted that he and Mr. Wobble push until the top of the tree fit tightly to the living room ceiling. We had no need for the bucket because the tree fit snuggly from ceiling to floor. Nothing was going to dislodge that perfect Christmas tree.

       The next day, we began to decorate the tree, but the few decorations we had were just enough for one of those modest trees from the Boy Scours or the Orange Young Britons and so this tree of trees looked sadly bereft of bulbs and lights and tinsel and bells and candy canes and other Christmas tree decorations. My father threw several cotton wool balls onto the tree to try to fill out the decoration, but the attempt was futile. The tree also had a couple of empty spots where the branches we left back in the ditch had once lived. Its beautiful symmetry now looked truly fearful. The tree looked as if the elves had purloined most of its decorations and a couple of its branches. And the top of the tree, being squashed against the ceiling, would not take the familiar Christmas angel that in previous years had adorned the top of our trees. My father just said that the few decorations accented the size of the tree, and made it that much more impressive. The few lights we had winked wanly from a few of the great branches, reminding me of the lights from a lonely buoy out on the water near my uncle’s cottage.

       In any case, we had the largest Christmas tree on the block. This was the important thing for my father. We had the biggest Christmas tree on the block, and we had this tree well after there was no competition. That tree graced our living room long after all the other trees on the block had gone to Christmas tree heaven. That tree stayed put until the beginning of February when my mother put her foot down and insisted that the tree be removed. The dining room floor and the living room carpet were littered with pine needles. And so my father called on Mr. Wobble once again, and the two of them worked for quite some time until they managed to dislodge that tree along with some plaster from the ceiling, take it out to the kitchen doorway, then down the hall and out the front door, leaving a trail of pine needles behind. The tree then stayed on the front lawn for another couple of weeks before it disappeared. I never did know who took it away. But the tree did not leave us without a reminder of its majestic presence in our house. For years after, in fact until I left that house for good, the ceiling of our living room had a blemish in the corner nearest the outer wall of the dining room, and the floor below was marked with a sticky circle of pine sap that my mother could never completely remove.