Everyone desires to be prettier, skinnier, smarter, taller, shorter, richer, but usually something other than what they already are.  We all have desires to be this way or to be that way. But sometimes desires can be more. Desires are not always simple and sweet. They can be dark and deadly.  There are strong and powerful desires that are not content to just be, but they must become.

In life, dreams, wishes, and desires have the power to inundate and completely consume an individual. It sounds crazy; totally unreal.  Desires can’t consume.  However, by examining Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 fiction film Black Swan and Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man, one can see how untamed desires have the power to morph into a becoming…inundating and consuming.  As we look at Black Swan’s Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) and Grizzly Man’sTimothy Treadwell, one can see and indirectly experience, in a new and redefined way, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theory of becoming-animal. Continue Reading…

For many years African Americans have remained a fragmented presence in mainstream American film. In many cases, black people were either relegated to inferior roles, or not present at all in feature films. D.W. Griffith’s epic film The Birth of a Nation (1915) depicted African Americans as brutal, child-like, comical, senseless, and uncivilized. In his book, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks, Donald Bogle describes the magnitude of racist imagery and legacy created in Griffith’s epic film. Bogle states:

The Birth of a Nation, however, not only vividly re-created history, but revealed its director’s philosophical concept of the universe and his personal racial bigotry. For D.W. Griffith there was a moral order at work in the universe. If that order were ever thrown out of whack, he believed chaos would ensue. Griffith’s thesis was sound, relatively exciting, and even classic in a purely Shakespearean sense. But in articulating his thesis, Griffith seemed to be saying that things were in order when whites were in control and when the American Negro was kept in his place. In the end, Griffith’s “lofty” statement – and the film’s subject matter – transformed The Birth of a Nation into a hotly debated and bitterly cursed picture (10).

Although the African American image has drastically improved since The Birth of a Nation in American cinema, the relationship between Hollywood and Black Americans has remained estranged. Continue Reading…

In Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, the narrative framework is presented as a story within a story. We, as the reader, are “listening” to Captain Charles Marlow tell a story to his crewmates of a personal experience he previously encountered on his journey down the Congo River deep in the heart of the jungle. Conrad uses this story within a story to parallel both journeys he takes. We are observers on a journey where the crossroads of the past, present, and future collide. Not only does the narrative framework tell of the physical journey Marlow sets upon, but also the journey into his mind and soul as he travels deeper into the jungle. In the present, we are merely observers listening to Marlow recall his journey into the Congo. However, as an observer, we are brought back into Marlow’s past with him. As the reader, we are on the boat in the Congo experiencing this journey with and through Marlow. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness becomes a journey of the past and present through the mind, body and soul of Charles Marlow.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), the narrative parameters of focalization parallel Conrad’s novella. We as the viewer, are taken on a mission with Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) as he travels down the Nung River in Vietnam to find his target, Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Using Gerard Genette’s theory of focalization, one can see how Coppola is not just taking the viewer on this mission with Captain Willard, but he is taking the viewer on a journey deeper into a world of war and anarchy in a time frame where the lines of the past, the present, and the future begin to blur. By taking advantage of the uses of internal, external, and omniscient focalization, Coppola strategically puts the viewer right where he wants him. In a dark and Godless place, Coppola not only tests the soldiers on the screen, but the viewer in the theatre as well. Much like the narrative style Conrad utilizes to show a much deeper and darker journey with Captain Marlow, so, too, does Coppola manipulate the different types of focalization to expose the effects of war on the personal level as well as on a larger scale. Continue Reading…