Cinema is a postcard of images, sounds and uncharted
space - signed by the director who reflects a specific story on its limited
canvas. If cinema is a messenger, then so is the cinematic city which bears
similar, if not identical resemblance to reality it portrays on-screen. But it
is also more than just a landscape or location which audiences have gathered to
explore. Film, after all, is a medium projecting not only its protagonist’s stories
and carefully embedded moral codes, it is also taking spectators places they
have / have not been before or might never be able to get to. From musical to
action, drama, comedy and sci-fi etc. cinema has trapped cinemagoers into the
web of emotions, beliefs and unexpected physical reactions. But even those who
fainted during the screening of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) in Cannes and later slammed it in the media
have voluntarily submitted themselves to such sadistic experience. The old saying
appears to be true: we go to cinema for
the experience while cinematic scenarios are scattered all around and
within us.
This paper will for that reason concentrate on two of
the most depicted American cities in the history of cinema- New York City and
Los Angeles within the context of Steve McQueen’s Shame(2011) and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011). Both directors share European origins and portray
America as a somewhat overcrowded and lonely place, encompassing French
theorist Jean Baudrillard’s vision which will also be briefly presented in the lengths of this
paper.
In his work, Jean Baudrillard has addressed America with equal fascination and critique. When
talking about its cinematic representation in relation to reality he suggests
that,
The city was here before the freeway system, no doubt,
but it now looks as though the metropolis has actually been built around this
arterial network. It is the same with American reality. It was there before the
screen was invented, but everything about the way it is today suggests it was
invented with the screen in mind, that it is the refraction of a giant screen (
in Davies 2003:218).
A simple shot of a yellow cab
stuck in Manhattan’s traffic says more than superimposed text announcing “New
York” against the city’s background, and in a way it also does both, indicates
the location and sets the tone. Similarly, the skyline of downtown Los Angeles
paints a different picture by day and night, and yet remains familiar through
its lengthy celluloid appeal. Cinematic images therefore work hand-in-hand with
reality, blurring the boundaries of the two in order to encompass the notion of
an American dream on the spectators. What has to be noted here, is that
consumption of postmodern images exposes those in front of the screen to an
instant bodily affect which has been intensified by 9/11 events. Erasure
of Twin Towers from New York’s landscape has permanently altered the way
spectators perceive the Big Apple. In other words, lack of the iconic image triggers
memories and evokes bodily responses to the extent that even Woody Allen’s
heartfelt dedication Manhattan (1979)
is nowadays viewed with sadness. In Mark Shiel’s view, however, ‘cinematic
representations of New York had long since degraded into dystopian projections
of that particular city as the purest distillation of urban nightmare
(2003:166-167)’. He sees industrialization and issues of race and class as
forces of fragmentation – affecting the city as much as the individual living
in it. With this in mind, McQueen’s film paints a picture of a darker,
impersonal NY where various aspects of sexuality are still commonly overlooked
by the society.
McQueen’s
Shame is primarily centred on Brandon
Sullivan, a thirty-something white New Yorker who’s seemingly effortless
belonging to the society is overshadowed by an unhealthy addiction to sex and
sister’s sudden intrusion in his carefully camouflaged life. This is indicated
in the opening sequence where he is firstly seen from a bird’s-eye-view lying
in his apartment. Half-covered in crumpled blue sheets Brandon’s protagonist
stares vacantly at the ceiling, ready to slide his hands back underneath the
covers. Ignoring Sissy’s repeated voice messages on the answering machine he
then leaves the impersonal apartment and encounters a young married woman on a
subway train, who arouses his senses yet again. Although Shame is, indeed, a character study of Brandon and his inner
struggle, its New York setting is an equally significant part of the narrative.
Film’s director avoids outlining contemporary icons of the city’s landscape,
such as Statue of Liberty or The Empire State building, yet the spectators see
New York’s milieu as constantly present in Brandon’s world. It is, as noted by
Adam Woodward in “Little White Lies:
Shame Issue”, a mundane urban tapestry of cheerless streets, synthetic
light and sterilised interior spaces. This is New York City, specifically
Manhattan, imagined by McQueen as a sleepless cosmopolitan bordello ready to
cater for any vice, however illicit or insatiable (2012:6). Sex is a commodity
Brandon occasionally pays for yet genuine attention is not for sale. He offers
his prostitutes to have a drink – they swiftly decline since time is money
everywhere, be it the financial district or the streets. Simple human contact
thus becomes an unavailable commodity, almost a privilege which Brandon hangs
onto by taking a subway and observing fellow passengers. In Cinematic Urbanism, author Nezar AlSayyad points out, that ‘when the New York City
subway opened in 1904, the New York Times declared, that ‘in modern city life,
distance is measured in time’ (2006:22). At the present time though it seems to
be one of the few places where people of different race, class, sexuality,
political and cultural views come together voluntarily – even if for a single
stop only.
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Brandon’s lifestyle indicates his
belonging to an upper middle class and therefore suggests that subway is a
chosen (and not economically necessitated) way of getting around for him. At home, however, high-density living draws
attention to other imperfections of Brandon’s world. He walks around without a
sense of purpose, trying to guard the apartment which is the only thing he owns
and controls in the city. Director McQueen talks about his own experience with
high-rise apartments in relation to Shame:
It’s almost like funnel; you’re standing at the small end and there’s a
whole world out there but you’re very far away from it. It’s like cinema screen
in your house, but it isolates you. There’s always this sense that you are one
in a million, you have no significance (in Woodward, 2012:26-28).
The film thus paints a strong visual
picture of the city that never sleeps through Brandon’s perspective – through
experiences of a lone individual amongst millions of its other inhabitants,
pointing out not only one’s alienation in the ‘melting pot’ of New York, but
also the level of ignorance such society projects on others. Jean Baudrillard
notices this trait in his book America
when prompting a question:
Why do people live
in New York? There is no relationship between them [...]. A magical sensation
of contiguity and attraction for an artificial centrality. This is what makes
it a self-attracting universe, which there is no reason to leave. There is no
human reason to be here, except for the sheer ecstasy of being crowded together
(1988:15).
But in spite of Brandon’s alienation
and excessive use of viridian blues and sandy yellows in Shame’s composition, even such melancholic projection of New York
City appeals to celluloid. Sissy’s emotional interpretation of Frank Sinatra’s
“New York New York” (filmed as a long close-up sequence) enhances the overall
mood through its familiar lyrics:
“If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere, It's
up to you, New York, New York”, also hinting at the events that might have shaped
troubled siblings, but are never revealed in the context. Here, the cinematic affect produced via images
and sounds plays with spectators own knowledge and experiences, offering either
identification or
complete rejection of the image. Regardless, images possess an ability to
interpellate to the extent that spectator’s body ultimately surrenders under
their visual pressure.
In Cinematic Body, Steven Shaviro explains this by examining cinematic
images as events that unfold on both sides of the screen, thus bringing in
Foucault’s views on such occurrence:
An event is neither substance, nor
accident, nor quality, nor process; events are not corporeal. And yet, an event
is certainly not immaterial; it takes effect, becomes effect, always on the
level of materiality... (1993:24).
Even though Brandon’s persona might
be fictional, his story isn’t. Artlessly, its projection on celluloid confirms the
inevitable existence of numerous closeted addictions and, as argued by Baudrillard,
reveals cinema’s constant presence in the city through its continuous
performance of films and scenarios (in Davies, 2003:219). And while Shame is an intrusion into Brandon
Sullivan’s New York – with its skyscraper buildings, their cold corporate
offices, daily commutes and closeted problems – audiences have voluntarily
submitted themselves to being a part of it until the end credits appear to
signify release from cinema’s masochistic imprisonment.
When it comes to
modernity, New York and Los Angeles both embody the essence of industrialized, urban
space on not only their geographic East and West coasts, but also on camera.
Yet the affect of a particular city is not to be underestimated and anyone who
has ever been to either would agree. The difference is masterfully highlighted
in the opening narration of Paul Haggis’s Crash
(2004):
It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you
know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you.
We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that
we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.
Likewise,
protagonists in Shame and Winding
Refn’s Drive are caught up in the
milieu they inhabit and are thus somewhat forced to seek this ‘touch’ while
playing by the rules of the city. Those, however, differ due to individual
architectural design of the city and it is hence worth looking at neon-lit Drive and its Los Angeles setting
closer.
Drive comes from a Danish
filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn who’s own relationship with Hollywood has leaped
between the contradictory extremes of acceptance and rejection, and thus makes
his latest return to LA setting rather surprising. Moreover, the winner of Cannes
Best Director award 2011 can not drive himself, having failed his driving test
numerous times.
Drive can therefore be seen as a manifest to his own fears as much as a
critique of the cinematic clichés of the Hollywood system obsessed with CGI and
3D. Contradictory to the title, there are no Vin Diezel-like characters to
perform Cirque du Soleil worthy moves on a freeway while the engines roar and
occasional blood spills. Instead, Drive focuses on a sole, unnamed
flaneur whose safe heaven appears to be behind the wheel, whose home is the
freeway itself. This concept constructs most of the cinematic space as camera
silently observes Driver from every angle within the vehicle- consequently projecting
events from character’s point of view and inviting audiences to not only see,
but also feel the city the way he does.
The film opens with a phone
conversation confirming the heist for which Driver is to provide getaway while
its location is established with a quick focus on the window overlooking LA. As
the heist happens, cinematically familiar American urban space confirms its
significance within the narrative. Having eavesdropped on the police frequency
and followed radio broadcast of the latest basketball game, Driver’s Chevy (described
as the most popular car in California) passes city’s iconic Staples Centre,
enters its parking lot and blends with the crowd. Tension of the scene is
unleashed on audiences who are taken along for a ride with a complete stranger
whereas his status as a hero or a villain is yet to be confirmed. In film viewing, as
pointed out by Steven Shaviro, there is pleasure and more than pleasure: a
rising scale of seduction, delirium, fascination, and utter absorption in the
image (1993:9). Driver thus becomes a mystery audiences are challenged to
decode via limited content of the image - which in Drive’s case also bares short
dialogues paired with mood setting 80s pop rhythms. It is not to say that the
picture is incomplete, it is rather that those watching are compelled to work
with its every element in order to satisfy their rising curiosity. Driver’s own
statement in the previously mentioned opening sequence describes the city as
much as it describes him:
“If I drive for you, you get your money. You tell me where we
start, where we're going, where we're going afterwards. I give you five minutes
when we get there. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours. No
matter what. Anything a minute on either side of that and you're on your own. I
don't sit in while you're running it down. I don't carry a gun. I drive”.
It is subway and freeway that connect fragmented spaces of NY
and LA, affecting the way millions of people ‘crash into each other’. Per
contra, such circumstance is prearranged by the city as an existential code for
its inhabitants, no matter how wealthy or deprived. In an urban city, people are
required to move around the industrial network and do so as quickly as possible.
As noted earlier in relation to Shame,
this is where the sense of alienation tends to emerge despite the overwhelming
number of individuals passing each other in haste. Both films acknowledge this
“alone-in-the-big-city” phenomenon when placing Brandon and Driver in the
centre of a faceless crowd – occasional by-passers who have little effect on
one another and the milieu.
It has to be said that New York and Los Angeles are at the centre
of the world, even if we find the idea somehow both exciting and disenchanting.
We are a desperately long way behind the stupidity and the mutational
character, the naive extravagance and the social, racial, moral, morphological,
and architectural eccentricity of their society (Baudrillard, 1988:22)
In its core, American landscape, especially the metropolis,
is largely a product of the 20th century, lacking the prehistoric
appeal encountered in Europe, Africa and Asia; its culture immersed in
consumerism and discourse of an all-American dream. Nonetheless, Baudrillard
agrees that the whole country is cinematic; – it is by no means perfect, but
simply charming. Adding
to the criticism, AlSayyad calls Los Angeles a superficial place that is ‘less
serene than gray-green New York’. Thus, the roles of light and dark are
‘expanded’, exaggerated, and ‘reversed’ (2006:184). LA depicted in Drive articulates around this statement
with its overall noir-ish tone – the game of shadows and unknown dangers those
might reveal, gangs, crime, dishonesty and urban nightlife. On the contrary,
it’s also an urban fairytale where an urge to change the milieu occurs because of
a woman in danger. Driver has Chevy in
place of a white horse, appearing to be more of a hero than a character when
compared with Brandon. In fact, Driver’s entire
relationship with the city is built on four wheels. As noted by Baudrillard,
only immigrants from the Third World are allowed to walk. It is, in a sense,
their privilege (in Davies 2003:220). There, car is no longer a symbol of wealth,
it’s a must-have without which one’s relationship with the metropolis falls
apart.
In Shame,
Brandon uses New York’s urban setting to blend with such crowd in hopes that
his inner affliction would become less apparent as a result. Spectators are subjected
to long takes, such as his midnight run through Manhattan’s nocturnal streets,
thus adding the real-time-voyeurism feel to Brandon’s odyssey. In the final
subway sequence, he spots the same woman he had come across in the beginning,
he gets closer and suddenly film’s ending credits start to roll. Audiences are
left rather betrayed by such open-ended finale, willing to jump on the moving train
if only to satisfy their curiosity. In the end, cinema prevails as it teases,
fascinates and then discharges of spectators – leaving them begging for more.
Summing up, AlSayyad’s view on this boundary-blurring relationship
has to be considered: he turns to Paul Virilio when pointing out, that
The screen and the lens become new models through
which the city is experienced and policed, leading to a ‘revision of point of
view and a radical mutation of our perception of the world (2006:147)’.
All in all, protagonists discussed in the length of this paper are
encountered in the middle of their journey, beginning of which is untold and
destination – unknown. Their true colours show when shadows fall over the city
they inhabit. In case of Drive, it is
film’s neon-noir feel that depicts the City of Angels, while Shame’s composition reveals New York’s
raunchiest corners behind the wall of sterile offices and impersonal public
space. Both therefore create a new perspective of the world in a short period
of film’s running time. Having voyeuristically followed Brandon’s and Driver’s
demons, one should be able to leave his/her cinema seat feeling either relief
or sadness brought by the end of this cinematic relationship. And while cinematic images are there to alter
our perception of the world, film as a whole has the power to affect audiences,
both bodily and emotionally. This affect produced by pictures, sounds and
special effects, because of the rich experiential potency embedded in film
medium, plays around the relationship between the image and the reality of
the representation. Cinema, after all, holds a mirror over the world which does
not feel very cinematic at times.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography:
Baudrillard, Jean. (1988) America, London: Verso.
Davies, Jude (2003)
“Against the Los Angeles Symbolic: Unpacking the Racialized Discourse of the
Automobile in 1980s and 1990s Cinema”, in Shiel, Mark & Fitzmaurice, Tony (eds.) Screening the City, London: Verso
Shaviro,
Steven (1993) The Cinematic Body,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Woodward,
Adam (2012) “Chapter in which we Review Shame”.
Little White Lies. Issue 39, London:
The Church of London
Woodward,
Adam (2012) “Heavyweight”. Little White
Lies. Issue 39, London: The Church of London
Filmography:
Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004, USA / Germany)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011, USA)
Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011, UK)
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