Disasters at the Movies

Susan Sontag’s “Imagination of Disaster”

• Essay taken from Sontag’s 1966 book Against Interpretation

• First book of essays by Sontage about the arts and contemporary culture.

• Book includes original and provocative discussions of Sartre, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thinking

SF Films and Disaster• Model Scenarios of this genre of

SF film illustrate plot formulas • How do we identify these

formulas?• Why does the film industry use

generic formulas?• How do audiences respond to

these formulas?• Why is the “when” of a film

important? 1968 - 2001• http://www.youtube.com/watc

h?v=iVo7O349BFk• http://www.youtube.com/watc

h?v=I1lZ3un-kcg

Sontag’s Models

1) Arrival of the thing2) Confirmation3) Experts and military4) Destruction / We are all

doomed5) The ultimate

weapon/We are all saved

Them! 1954 Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2PLls02gOU

Sontag’s Models (Cont.)• Something is awry in the

ultra-normal, middle-class world of the protagonist

• No one believes the protagonist

• General helplessness• Either the hero battles alone

or a complex technology is deployed by competent authorities elsewhere

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-jzblCbsuA

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZZvtQtdbzM

• “In the films it is by means of images and sounds, not words that have to be translated by the imagination, that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself” (Sontag, 212)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUAtoGaqnIo

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkriid1YxHY

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBrAh3OyYnI&feature=related

• “Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster” (Sontag, 213)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4rHz7ENhtY

The Aesthetics of Destruction

• Colour• Wide Screen• Film technologies like

Cinemascope, Cinerama• 3-D Movies• http://www.youtube.co

m/watch?v=doYLaLYhCtk

• The science fiction films of the 1950s draw on the techniques and plot devices of other genres of film

• They also draw from other resources in popular culture, such as comic books and movie serials

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5jfCb6-2RA

• It releases one from normal obligations

• Extreme moral simplification providing an outlet for cruel or amoral feelings

• Invite a dispassionate view of destruction and violence, a technological view

• Disaster movies act out anxieties regarding science and technology

• Notions of the proper use of science and the improper use of science

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJ-BzXAN1c

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsRnQQpklPM

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdv4QA-O1bg

• Acting out mass trauma in the post-nuclear world

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnZ6Ktjynh0

• “[S]cience fiction films reflect powerful anxieties about the condition of the individual psyche” (Sontag, 220)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqQ8Y9Sjp7o&feature=related

• “[T]he imagery of disaster in science fiction is above all the emblem of an inadequate response.”

• “For one job that fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably humdrum and to distract us from terrors – real or anticipated – by an escape into exotic dangerous situations which have last minute happy endings....”

• “... But another of the things that fantasy can do is to normalize what is psychologically unbearable, thereby inuring us to it.” (Sontag, 224-225)

• The Day After, 1984 – Made-for-TV movie

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2H1E02iMHg

Steven Keane, Periodizing Disaster Movies

• Disaster movies have identifiable historical cycles

• Genres come and go in waves

• Films appeal to us because of audience identification, narrative pleasure.

• Disaster movies are spectacles

• Disaster movie cycles can be read ideologically, meaning that the films are “acutely reflective of social, cultural, and political developments.” (Keane, 4)

• Disaster movies cycles can be read in terms of the film industry, which produces carbon-copies of successful films – the formulaic

Main Historical Disaster Cycles:

• 1910-1930s• Reflecting anxieties of

the time... Surviving the Depression

• Entertainments• San Francisco, 1936• http://www.youtube.co

m/watch?v=VAoNDihnfbc

1950s-1970s• Context of the Cold War• Cuban missile crisis, 1962• The spectacle of alien

invasion standing in for the fear of Communist invasion

• Simplifying and glossing over the concerns of a time

• Theme of hubris• http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=bzHLUBP0qiI&feature=fvst

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gXY3kuDvSU

A New Disaster Cycle? Late 1990s-present

• The case of the new zombie

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpuNE1cX03c

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1-jFLlHLPw

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-lmF5DAssU

Film AnalysisFrom The Dartmouth Writing Program

• Who made the film?• Find out who directed the film, and what other films this director made. If you've seen

some of these other films, you'll have a better understanding of the themes and genres that the director is interested in.

• What is the production history and/or context of the film?• See if you can find out anything about the conditions under which the film was made.

In what historical period was it made? Does it reflect the cultural, social, political, and economic issues that were present at the time it was made and released?

• What can you learn from the film's genre?• Before you see the film, think a bit about the norms and limitations of its genre. When

you view the film, you can then consider how these limitations are obeyed or stretched.

• Does the film reflect an interesting cultural phenomenon? • Sometimes a professor will ask you to watch certain films because she wants you to

examine a cultural theme or issue. What is this issue?

Tips from the Dartmouth Writing Program

• Don't simply summarize the film.• Your professors have seen the film; you don't need to recount the plot to

them. They are looking for analysis, not summary. However, you should begin your paper with a brief summary that situates the film, its plot and characters, for your reader.

• Don't simply summarize the use of camera angles or editing techniques.• You've annotated shot sequences in order to find something to say about

them. Don't simply transcribe your annotation and call it a paper. Particular scenes from a film provide support for your analysis of it. Be sure to include this support.

• Don't limit yourself to a discussion of plot and characters.• Some students come to film criticism trying to employ the techniques

they've used to analyze novels in their English classes. They focus on analyzing the characters, themes, and plot.

Writing an Ideological Film Analysis• Ideological Papers• Even films that are made to entertain promote some set of beliefs.

Sometimes these beliefs are clearly political, even propagandistic: Eisenstein's Potempkin, for example, is a glorification of Soviet values. Other films are not overtly political, but they still promote certain values: Mary Poppins, for example, argues for the idea that fathers need to take a more active interest in their families.

• It's important to remember, when watching a film, that even films whose purpose it is to entertain may be promoting or even manipulating our feelings about a certain set of values. Independence Day, for example, is entertaining, in part, because it plays on our feelings of American superiority and "never say die." An analysis of the film benefits from a consideration of these values, and how they are presented in the film.

Using the Vocabulary

• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/humanities/film.shtml

• Many of these questions are taken or adapted from Timothy Corrigan's A Short Guide to Writing About Film

• BACKGROUND• Who is the writer of the film? Has the

screenplay been adapted from another work?• Who is the director?• When was the film made?

• STRUCTURE / FORM• What does the title mean in relation to the film as a whole?• Why does the film start in the way that it does?• Are there any motifs (scenes, images) of dialogue which are repeated? What purpose

do they serve?• What three or four sequences are most important in the film? Why?• Is sound used in any vivid ways either to enhance the film? How does the film use

color or light/dark to suggest tone and mood in different scenes?• Are there any striking uses of perspective (seeing through a character's eyes, camera

angle, etc.)?How does this relate to the meaning of the scene?• What specific scene constitutes the film's climax? How does this scene resolve the

central issue of the film?• Does the film leave any disunities (loose ends) at the end? If so, what does it suggest?• How does this film relate to other films in the genre? Does it follow the same

conventions?

• THEME• How does this film relate to the issues and

questions evoked by your topic?• Does the film present a clear point-of-view on

your topic? How?• Are there any aspects of theme which are left

ambiguous at the end? Why?