3-D Revolution Productions - formerly known as Sledgeham Film
by Alexander Lentjes
Story telling in general and filmic expression in specific
have traditionally been used as a means of society to discuss its taboos. Ever
since the Christian church put a dogma over sexual expression, this has become
the most popular taboo to discuss.
Taboo spawns metaphor, and the metaphor lies at the
core of culture. This means that lifting taboos runs at a risk of eliminating
function and power of culture. Since film has become an important player in
the communication of culture, the development of the filmic display of sex and
violence has induced quite some change in modern society.
More importantly to film itself, the present level of
display of sexual and violent imagery is steering this whole institute of film
as bringer of culture into an uncertain direction.
Film is on a ramming course with itself.
Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein as an embodiment of identity
crisis. The first horror icon paves the way for a search of harmony between
inner and outer self. What is the monster of Frankenstein? Roaming the Earth,
he is aware of his freak outward appearance through the blind rage people display
when they meet him, and though being highly intelligent, he must flee the inhabited
world, a tortured soul, holding Dr. Frankenstein responsible for his mischief
and making it his sole purpose to make his creator pay.
This dark psychological premise connected with the 20ties
avant-garde cinema, where German expressionism tried to display the twisted
nature of human psyche in filmic language.
This was also the moment when Eisenstein discovered
the possibilities of montage.
Now Hollywood was searching for a cheap thrillride,
and the American directors noticed the honestly terrified response of the audience
to the expressionistic imagery of the European cinema. So they took the subject
manner – freaks, monsters – and fitted them into easily digestible versions
of the mythological success formula ‘monster is evil, monster abducts pretty
girl, hero kills monster and gets pretty girl’. Out goes the reason for telling
that story in the first place; discussing the human psyche on a common level.
The World Wars influenced the look upon human behavior
and its ability to behave like a monster itself. After the repeat of these horrors
in World War II, trust in human ability to control its darker side had vanished.
The human itself can now function as a monster.
This then gave birth to Film Noir with its dark characters and
circular plot – where resolving the problems means returning to the old, poor
situation. These heroes live off the night, in a blurred area of crime and justice,
resolving the problems that surface in the story with getting rid of them all
together. Because there is still a tendency of ‘justice as a motivator for action’,
the pretty girl does get arrested or killed, but she does display impure behavior
– being a seducing femme fatale.
This display of human monstrosity vanishes when the cold war
swings into action. Now, the enemy is an unseen foe, told to have monstrous
destructive capability, ready to invade at any moment. Hollywood chooses to
display the Cold War threat as an impending alien invasion. Laser beams represent
the incomprehensible destructive force of the nuclear bomb, and the flying sauces
bringing this destruction connects with the rave over modern technology that
enables the delivery of this nuclear bomb.
The post 60ties generation is the generation of film makers who grew up with
the 50ties cold war craze in film and television culture. They did not just
want to remake these stories, to give their ideas added visual richness of color
film and special effects; they read these movies in their darkest sense and
translated them as such.
Also, there is a certain kind of revenge for the blunt
and open use of sex in the 60ties movies, condemning a lack sexual self control,
both story and director wise.
A fine balance is found in sex & violence, spawning
a very useable model for these themes in mainstream, large audience movies.
In short, the rules of engagement come down to a Roman
purity. A boy or girl is not to have sex before marriage; and if they do, a
boogieman arrives and kills them in a ritual way. The same fate comes to boys
and girls who abuse alcohol, don’t abide to the law and disrespect elderly.
Only the ‘pure’ adolescents get to live and transport the monster back to where
he came from – usually shooting, burning, or mashing the monster to pieces.
This rule was applied so rigorously that the audience
came to enjoy movie going as a repetitious joy small children tend to display
when they want to read a book or a see movie over and over again. Quite clearly,
the repetition is a result of the box office success, and vise versa.
Being a pure boogieman, the slasher monsters do move
away from being the embodiment of dark human psyche.
These monsters carry names like ‘Michael Myers’ in ‘Halloween’,
‘Freddy’ in ‘Nightmare on Elmstreet’ and ‘Jason Voorhees’ in ‘Friday the 13th’.
Michael Myers, for example, starts killing ‘sinful’
young females after having seen his mother have sex. This motivation perhaps
does connect more with reality in terms of motivation for mass murderers, but
the supernatural factor of invincibility makes this premise into a mirror for
audience sexual and violent lust. Especially since Michael Myers is never shown
on screen, if just through a P.O.V., where his breath is as audible as our own
– mainly because he wears a mask.
A mask is worn by Leatherface in ‘The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre’ as well, as it is done by Jason Voorhees in ‘Friday the 13th’.
Freddy of ‘Nightmare on Elmstreet’ wears a hat and a glove with knifes attached
to it. Putting on their marking prop transforms these superhuman creatures into
killing machines. But this putting on could also be seen as a metaphoric inverse
action of removing civilization, or applying it if this monster is seen as a
puritan judge.
The movie industry thrived through the solid base of
the established code of conduct. Now, more screen time could be spent slashing
people and showing monsters, more variations and combinations could be made
with the code’s constructing elements. The code enforced the semiotic power
of the movies, for everybody knew what to expect.
Clive Barker dares to delve in deeper with Hellraiser’s Pinhead.
Using the iconization of the 80ties society as a powerful
tool, the monsters of Clive Barker tell of the pleasure of torture, a clear
step back to the taboo origin of the fictional monster.
Pinhead lives in a parallel universe, a world that can
be stepped into from the normal world. This makes Pinhead a dark part of our
psyche, a forbidden and tugged away desire for demonic behavior. Barker then
instates devices like a magic puzzlebox, a mirror or a mask as a gateway to
this dark self.
These demons cannot be killed, instead, the gateway
can only be closed. This is a temporary solution, though.
True, the slasher monsters like Freddy and Jason return
just as easily, but only after the promise of never returning again. Barker
clearly states that the closing of the gates of hell is always a temporary action,
waiting to be reversed. In this model, the dark part of human psyche cannot
be killed.
In a more broad audience way, Ridley Scott converts
this story into ‘Alien’, where the classic ‘hero must kill monster’ premise
is twisted by making the hero female, forced into battling the Alien when ‘the
corporation’ puts them together in one spaceship, a situation neither hero nor
monster wants. The real question that applies here is: who is hunting who, and
in effect, who is the monster.
It is also clear that neither human nor Alien dies in
the end. They are just separated for a while.
Vampires also rise in the 80ties. These monsters are converted
humans – and they like it. It is likely that the original story of Count Dracula
tells of a gay man who infects men he ‘bites’, turning them into monsters themselves,
looking to ‘bite’ more men. Blood does play a big role in the vampire story
– pointing towards venereal disease. A gay boogieman.
The vampire is presented as a sexy creature, seducing
its victims for their blood and conversion. No monstrous attack or abduction
here. This is the monster at its popular best. ‘Vampire’ featuring Grace Jones,
‘Lost Boys’ with Kiefer Sutherland, ‘Fright Night’, all display young, seductive
vampires who live in a nightly city world that is as ominous as Film Noir displayed.
The loveable monster is back on the street, but this time there’s an independent
hero to kill it – and get the abducted girl.
But this poses an interesting question about the reception
of the vampire and the sinner killing monster in the naughties (2000-2010).
When actions that were considered sinful before the 90ties are now seen as virtues,
mainly through the literal use of sex as a sales pitch by advertising. Where
does this place a creature that kills these people? Certainly, when the audience
looked through the eyes of Michael Myers when he killed sinning girls, it enjoyed
his killing of them.
The Hollywood solution comes in returning to brainless monsters.
The dinosaur and prehistoric monster kin reign supreme once again: ‘Anaconda’,
‘Godzilla’ (Hollywood version: Godzilla destroying New York without motivation)
‘Lake Placid’ .Then there’s killers like death itself in ‘Final Destination’,
where Death has a design, and that’s it, and when this design does not come
true, Death stalks its intended victims.
And a movie like ‘Blade’ solves this problem quite vigorously
by making a special vampire -Blade, the daywalker- kill the normal vampires.
This is a new generation of vampires, and they provide the motivation for Blade
to kill them: they kill the old breed of vampires, walk in daylight, too, by
wearing sunscreen, and try to kill Blade himself so they can awaken the vampire
god who is then to rid the earth of humans. So these vampires break with the
vampire code, hence giving Blade a reason to kill them. The reason why Blade
does not bite humans for blood is that he takes special drugs that give him
the required proteins.
Wes Craven recognizes this paradox and tells of the
‘horror rules’ in ‘Scream’, where young people who have sex before marriage,
young people who consume large amounts or alcohol and drugs, and people who
just lack a sense of commitment get killed – as is done in the very film. This
gives the pre-naughties motivation a ground to operate, because the movie proclaims
itself to be a historic, if fictional, document.
Human versions of these instinctive killers are Nouvelle
Violence anti-heroes: Quentin Tarantino does not care about the tradition
of narrative and motivation, and lets the protagonists of his movie just kill
everything en everybody when it pleases them.
‘C’est arrive pręt de chez vous’, ‘8MM’, ‘American Psycho’, and other
films on actual mass murderers let this murderer state: “I just do it because
I like it”, indirectly blaming society for this behavior.
So Hollywood is maneuvering itself into a position where the
evolution of the monster story comes to a halt. It has to take a step back to
the primal monster story in order to incorporate the (homo)sexual, alcoholic,
and masochistic behavior that is now accepted in mainstream culture and Hollywood
narrative trend.
Like the 80ties directors who grew up with the 50ties
cold war movies, the new generation of filmmakers has been enjoying the sexual
expressiveness of the 60ties and 70ties cinema, taking this a base for a new
wave of sexually charged imagery.
The studios jump in, for they see big box office success, but don’t realize
that it’s due to a flourishing economy and not a flourishing semiotic culture
that the audience shows up in large numbers.
But what of the successful formula of the established code?
It is merely used a backdrop for commercial and music video like pictures. Since
the youngest audience is flooded by the same sort of imagery on television,
it accepts the new style. But at the cost of turning the most powerful tool
of the metaphor into a filmic equivalent of a circus sideshow.
A return to the vaudeville beginnings of film, and perhaps
it’s a charming fact that 100 years of cinema put us back at square one. It
doesn’t leave much imagining what could happen to film next, though.