The night he came back

It is a well-established fact within many mass-media circles that broadcast media, in specifics of film and television, goes through certain fads or phases regarding what is “fashionable” to produce. For example, the media’s current love affair with vampires - what with Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries being big hits both in the US and worldwide; though you could argue that vampires have always been a big thing with films such as The Lost Boys, of the 1980s, and later in the 1990s with Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And, another fad that has been emerging as of late, namely the zombie/post apocalyptic mindset that some films have had; with remakes of George A Romero’s original “dawn of the [x]” trilogy, Zombieland, the 28 days series and The Walking Dead all being hits.

And now, the latest fad to hit our screens: fairytales. There are several television series’ that are focusing on fairytales, such as Grimm and Once Upon A Time - but with a darker twist, possiby as a signifier of our times. These shows all take the popular fairytales that we know and love and give them a darker side, a more morbid take on what would otherwise be a sickly sweet genre. Of course, the exception to this would be Mirror Mirror, though as that is a family-orientated film I would not expect them to make everything about doom-and-gloom, even if many fairytales are indeed rooted in blood. 

Even pre-existing media texts such as True Blood are adapting to the fairytale fad that has hit our screens, by introducing fairies and fairy-godmothers to the equation. Although that was bad and should never have been done, it was bad in the books and is even worse on screen.

Similarly, in the genre of the darker fairy tale comes Snow White and the Huntsmen which also appeals to previous fans of the Twilight genre by having Kristen Stewart as the main role; creating major star power. 

However, back in 2005, amidst the beginnings of a vampire-crush and somewhat in the middle of a post-apocalyptic affair, a film was released. A film by an already established, and thoroughly touted, director by the name of Terry Gilliam. A director well known for his quirks, producing a film concerning the re-imagining of a fairytale (or rather the writers) in a dark way. The story telling the tale of travelling conmen, the aforementioned brothers who come across a real fairytale threat, in the form of an evil queen obsessed with her own beauty - it was a dark take on a genre previously Disney-fied and made sugary-sweet.

However, it did badly in the box office; critics didn’t enjoy it, and though it was praised for its visual effects it was slated for pretty much everything else, despite being, in my opinion, a decently entertaining film. Could it be because it was released far too early?

The film in question was released in 2005, when people were more interested in their impending doom; films like I, Robot; 28 Weeks Later and The Day After Tomorrow were being released, all films concerning threats to humanity. Could the film have bombed so badly because they weren’t interested in fairytales at this time?

If it were to be released again, now, I am actually of the opinion that it would do better than it did previously- as a film it certainly seems no worse than Snow White and the Huntsmen, and would be definitely much better than Mirror Mirror (Of which I am scathing). Did Terry Gilliam make the wrong film at the wrong time, and is Brothers Grimm actually a decent film, slated because it was not released at the right time?

It is certainly one of the reasons why the film could have done badly; it did, after all, have star power, in the form of Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, even a well-known director in the form of Gilliam, famous for his Monty Python days. It is curious, then, that it did so badly, especially considering these factors. It is, indeed, an interesting insight into just how badly films can be effected if they are released at the wrong time.

I am seperating this into bits because otherwise it would be one huge wall of text.

Alien was the first hybrid film of it’s time – a melding of sci-fi and horror, to create a genre that was previously unheard of amongst the film community. Similarly, The Thing, by John Carpenter, followed in the footsteps of Ridley Scott’s Alien to further take the sci-fi horror genre to new heights. Saw was an independent horror film directed by James Wan, generally seen to be the first film in the genre that has since become known as “torture porn”.

All of these films have recurring elements, and I shall be investigating the intertextuality amongst these films, namely how each film and director takes elements from other films, genres, and directoral styles to influence and adapt and influence their own media.

Ridley Scott, prior to Alien, had only directed one film - The Duellists, which was not well received by many critics – leading him on to release Alien, spurred by the thought that high profile, big budget films with lots of special effects were the way to go in cinema, taking cues from films such as Star Wars. The Duellists was well received at Cannes, however on its initial release many thought that it was terrible. In later years, however, it has been seen as a classic, with a style that is reminiscent of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.
Scott himself, through his dynamic use of lighting, camera angles, innovative production and design has influenced contemporary directors who cite him as a huge inspiration. He also has several specific ideas that are a recurring theme throughout his works; strong female characters; family conflict and an emphasis on cityscapes to name but a few. Features that he included in Alien included the use of sound for atmosphere, sweeping camera “shots” of the ship and the absence of music to create more tension.

The writer of Alien, Dan O’Bannon, had previously worked on the black comedy Dark Star, with director John Carpenter and as such, Alien included several thematic elements that were strikingly similar to Dark Star, due to O’Bannon’s discontent with how Dark Star turned out, later saying he thought that Dark Star should have been more a horror than a comedy. How that could have been achieved with a monstrous alien beach ball is yet to be discovered.
The use of an alien monster would be an obvious one to point out, though far from the xenomorph in Alien being a giant beach ball, O’Bannon took the idea of an alien to a new and terrifying level, inspired by the work of HR Giger, an artist who later worked on Alien. In a time when space travel was becoming something that could be achieved, where many of the previous films did not include aliens which were threatening (bar Quatermass, War of the Worlds and Who Goes There?), Alien explored the prospect of there being terror in space. Even the tag line “In Space No-one Can Hear You Scream” was very suggestive of the dangers of the unknown.
Both films also include secluded members, who are segregated to one particular area [namely the space ship] for an entire film, bringing to mind ideas of claustrophobia and boredom amongst the characters. Scott also included his landmark strong female character, Ripley, who has since become both a feminist icon and a cinematic one and may have inspired Carpenter’s heroine in Halloween, Laurie.
The Alien scriptwriter even borrowed ideas from his older, unfinished works, and the premise of Alien was based on an old script in which gremlins infiltrate a B-17 bomber, causing it to break down.
During the writing of Alien, O’Bannon borrowed many elements from other sci-fi and horror stories, saying, rather humorously “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!” And, with irony that can only be seen in hindsight, one of his main influences was “The Thing From Another World” which would later be remade by John Carpenter as “The Thing”. O’Bannon liked the idea of an unknown terror stalking people through a claustrophobic and imprisoning environment, and so used it in his script. Forbidden Planet also influenced his writing, especially the concept that landing on an unknown planet was very dangerous indeed. Pitching it as “Jaws in space”, O’Bannon found a director in Scott, and so Alien came into being. However, if not for the success of Star Wars, Alien would never have been made – it was only with the current obsessions with space, space travel, and science fiction in general that Alien was made.

Many scenes in Alien also drew influence from other films, such as Vampire Planet, in which a giant skeleton is found, which was a main influence for the Nostromo crew finding an alien in their craft, during the “space jockey” scene, in which an alien is found strapped to a chair. The designing in Alien also drew inspiration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and one of the main artistic directors on set, HR Giger, drew inspiration from one of his paintings – Necronom IV. Giger then worked on much of the set’s design, drawing inspiration from his own work and the work of numerous other artists.

Casting and design in the film was taken with a view akin to Star Wars – that the pristine “sci fi” environments previously shown in film should be avoided at all cost, and so a more “grimy” and ethereal look was necessary. Many of the set designers had also worked on Star Wars.

Alien itself has been noted to contain many thematic elements similar to other films, as previously mentioned – such as The Thing From Another World, in which an unseen alien antagonist stalks and kills members of a secluded crew in Anatartica; and It! The Terror From Beyond Space, in which an alien kills members of a crew returning to Earth. It also shares many aspects of other films in the 70s – a strong female protagonist, such as in Halloween and a big “monster” bent on killing everyone, such as Jaws being good examples. Many critics have also pointed out the similarities between Alien and several short stories, such as The Black Destroyer, in which an alien hunts down crew members and kills them, and Discord in Scarlet, where aliens inseminate humans and eat their way out once hatched. Alien also inspired many films, spurning many “rip-offs” such as Inseminoid and Xtro, and the film has since been referenced in popular culture many times. 

There seems to be a pattern emerging amongst times of economic strife, or hard times in general, and various ways in which media reflects the times and attitudes of the peoples - and tries to raise morals and belief in the relevant country. One example of this would be the creation of comic books back in the 1930s - comics such as Superman [1938], Batman [1939], and Captain America [1941] were created partially to entertain the masses, but also to raise moral in America, as a bit of an ego-boost for the population who were quickly losing faith in their government due to the great depression. I will be exploring the various forms in which these comics morphed from a pulp-comic aimed at children, to something very much adult, then on to cinema and how these impacted, and reflected upon, the times. 

The 1930s was a time of great economic strife - America, in the midst of the great depression, a time of massive economical downturn where many people were living in slums and there was little faith in America, it’s powers over the populace and it’s ability to recover from the economic downturn, there needed to be a way to subconsciously boost the morals of the population, and make them believe once more in what has come to be known as the “America fuck yeah!” mentality. As a direct by-product of this, several well known comic book characters were created to boost morals, entertain and distract the masses. These comics all had several features in common with one another and I will begin to explore how these comics came about.

From the period in the 1930s, beginning with Superman, to late into the 1950s, this time was known as the “Golden Age Of Comic Books” due to the prevalence of many comics - Wonder Woman, Captain America, Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel being the main comics, all featuring similar “America, fuck yeah” mentalities, even if their character was not in fact American. Many comic book themes reflected the times, in many respects, with the first issue of Captain America containing a controversial panel in which the aforementioned captain punches Hitler. Yes, he punches Hitler.  
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Other themes included nuclear war, in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but focused more on the good that nuclear radiation may be capable of; in it’s creation of “superheroes”. Many heroes also fought two big fears: communism, and the war in Korea (an idea later turned on its head by Alan Moore in Watchmen). One thing that these superheroes all held in common was that they were based in America, all upheld strong American morals and values, and were wholesome, family friendly, intended to cement belief in the American government and values rather than to state an opposing political mentality, as many comic book characters were later created to do. 

Captain America was an average man, till a serum transformed him into a super-soldier, created by the government to fight in wars, described as physically perfect, with an indestructable shield and his trademark red white and blue uniform. He was created as a patriotic figure, to instill awe and create a role model who was wholesome and good. 

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Like many of his counterparts, he is tall, well-built, muscular, well-mannered, strong, polite, and most importantly he didn’t argue back with his leaders, essentially a dog on a leash instilling the view that conformity and obedience, and respect for the government was the way to America’s success. (This idea is later turned on it’s head during the modern comic movement that started in the 80s.)

Similarly, Superman and Captain Marvel were tall, muscular, and relatively complacent to the views of their “superiors”, instilling in people an idea that they would get what they wanted if they were to trust in the government - Captain America’s act of punching Hitler could have been seen as a metaphor for beating the great depression, the war, and a way to impress upon the people the need to trust and listen to their government.

Superman; another hero, is sent to America after his own planet is destroyed, he is adopted by an American family as Clark Kent, instilled with a strong moral compass - a strong sense of what is right and wrong, and more importantly, as a proud citizen of America who would stop at nothing to protect the country he loved. However, there was one hero who was more popular than Superman - Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel was portrayed as an average-Joe citizen who meets a wizard, and is given the power to transform whenever he says the magic word, which just so happens to be: Shazam. His nickname was “The World’s Mightiest Mortal” and he was featured in one of the first films based around superheroes; “The Adventures of Captain Marvel”. 

Batman is another average Joe - Bruce Wayne, who is a millionaire orphan [how convenient], who grows tired of the increasing crime rates in his city. Driven by money, pride for his city and with a slightly personal vendetta, he started out camp but later grew very dark with the advent of Killing Joke, Arkham Asylum and Year One. 

And Wonder Woman was one of the first female superheroes ever created, hailed as a feminist superhero, who wanted equality for women, the character was a goddess (an idea later used for Storm in X-Men), who came to America. She was created in WWII.

All of these comics have several key themes that are recurrent through the majority, if not all, of the comics.

• All of the characters, with the exception of Wonder Woman (though she did have an alter-ego) are portrayed as “average-Joes” who work hard, have 9-5 jobs and are relatively normal. The audience for their comics? Children, for the most part, so in a time of economic strife, of course they would want to impress upon one the importance of contributing to society and working, doing a service for the peoples - instilling a sense of hard-work and patriotism into their audience. 
  The average Joe aspect additionally made it easier for the audience to empathise and therefore understand the characters more often.
• All the characters were created during the wartime, and the majority of them have fought in wars at some point or another - be it punching Hitler or utilising their powers to help win a metaphorical - or real- war. This helped to instill a view that the American government was capable of anything, and would stop at no lengths - be it using a super-serum or advanced technology, to create the perfect soldier. This idea was turned on it’s head by the rather negative portrayal of radiation, super-soldiers and special serums in later comics - Red Hood/Joker in Batman, Morbius in Spiderman and various incarnations of the mutants in X-Men.

The art style in all of these comics was also very similar, partially due to the primitive printing styles and techniques available to publishers back then, but also to make it more accessible for many people, they made the art as simple as possible, but also colourful. 
 
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Interestingly, they are all white, young, attractive. None of them are, say, red-headed or blonde (which was, at the time of conception, probably associated with Nazi Germany). They are all tall, strong, physically adept, brown haired and blue eyed - completely average. They could be you! This was an ideal that was instilled in many - they could be great if they persevered and worked hard, just like their favourite super hero.

These comics acted as a moral boost for the popuation of America in a time of darkness and worry for many. Interestingly, however, at the next major downturn - during the 1970s and 1980s, why then did comics take such a dark turn and become adult? Was it because the audiences themselves had grown up, or were times genuinely much darker, leading to the audiences demanding much darker and extreme characters?

A short note.
Whilst watching Everything Is A Remix part two, I think it was, I noticed one thing.
The guy narrating/writing/whatevering mentioned a series of films. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly; For A Few Dollars More; Youimbo and Seven Samurai, in reference to how Kill Bill took ideas from both of these films. [I would also like to point out that Tarantino grew up on these films so many of the inclusions of sections of these films, however obvious or heavily hinted, are actually homages to the original films. He’s a major film nerd - I watched a documentary with him in on Ozsploitation in respects to American Grindhouse, he openly said that he paid homage to some of his favourite films by including aspects of them in his body of work. I personally think that if he is paying homage it is fine - a tribute, so to speak. He’s a big nerd, he likes to pay homage. Fair enough.]

If I am not very much mistaken however, the narrator/writer/whatever actually forgot to mention one thing which I would have thought to be very key to the whole “Everything is a Remix” ideal.

Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Seven Samurai were written in the 1940s and are regarded as classics if you are a member of my family - but few seem to have heard of them. However, the plot of Seven Samurai is strikingly similar to that of a certain Leone film. And a Disney film too - oh, and The Magnificent Seven. In fact Western films are often bastardisations of plots of other films - another fact  he forgot to mention. Westerns are one of my favourite genres but the plots are never original, they are always taken from other films. Borrowed, so to speak.

Seven Samurai - Takes place during the time of the Warring States in Japan, tells the tale of a town who’s crops/general food are being taken in by a gang of bandits. They hire seven ronin [or Samurai] to protect their town - but the samurai are pretty terrible themselves, taking advantage of the town. Of course they win in the end.
The Magnificent Seven - borrows heavily from Seven Samurai. Of course in the opening credits it admits this - “a fictional tale of a group of seven American gunmen who are hired to protect a small agricultural village in Mexico from a group of marauding Mexican bandits.” Source
A Bug’s Life - A bunch of Grasshoppers steal the ant’s harvest every summer. One ant decides to bring in a bunch of “warriors” unaware that they are really circus performers who don’t know what they are talking about.
Sounds familiar?
It was directly taken from Seven Samurai.
A Fistful of Dollars - The first in the Dollar trilogy [followed by For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly] these films are arguably more well known that Kurosawa’s own works, which is a shame as these films, although very good, directly rip off the works of Kurosawa. In specifics - Yojjimbo.

However, Yojimbo also took many characteristics from other westerns. So although Yojimbo is a very good film both stylistically and thematically even it is unoriginal.

• The only instance I can think of where a man in a film is raped, is Deliverance. Even then the film’s scene is fleeting and you see nothing. In many other films you see plenty. Especially if the subject is female.
• In Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” the female violence and suffering is concentrated upon moreso than it is in the male instances. Especially brutal is the way that females are subjected to psychological trauma, more than the men. Men are killed quickly, their female partners come across their bodies and then the screaming is concentrated upon. And the other suffering.
• In a recent film called “Creep”, set in the London underground, a mad hobo (which is also pretty exploitative in many respects, but let’s not go into that). Is compelled to kill women. He is an ex abortion doctor and in one scene (which I did not watch because I felt thoroughly disgusted and sickened by what I had seen) he stabs a woman in her vagina, with a huge machete and it is insinuated that she is being raped. With a knife. It is seen; the camera cuts back so you can see him thrusting his arm into her open legs. His whole arm. Is this level of violence neccessary? I think not, I really felt sick when I watched it, and walked out of the room, turned the film off and refused to watch the rest.
• In The Killer Inside Me, the beating of the woman in the film is focused upon greatly, to grotesque levels. It was thoroughly horrible.
• In “Splice” the penultimate scene features Dren, now a man, raping the main female role. You see this scene, he seems to punishing her for trying to get rid of him/her. The rape scene in this film tries to justify itself by saying “She was trying to get rid of Dren, she was asking for it”.
• These are all negative portrayals of females in media, especially in terms of sexual violence and violence in general. Rarely do you find these levels of violence or sexual violence in any form of media when men are the recipients. 

Though I have to go now I am actually going to write examples of good female characters who do not let people get the better of them, this is a complex and multi-sided argument.

Because really JK chooses those people for a reason. Because his show isn’t there to help them it’s there to make the rest of us laugh. It’s another form of “classism” or whatever you want to call it. Middle-class presenter writing up a format for a show where he will get people on who are deliberately sought out because they look a certain way or are “stupid”, just so everyone else can laugh at them.

He promises them jobs and rehab and all sorts if they’ll go on the show and play up for the audiences, on purpose. His idea of a job is a 2 week slot in McDonalds and his idea of rehab is one session. These are temporary, very temporary, jobs. They are not substantial and they do not offer a long term solution.

So essentially he bribes them into acting in that way, he asks them to dumb-down and play up on purpose. So the rest of us can laugh at how stupid those working class people are.

Here are some articles, and this is the article that I got most of this information from.

This is an article from the Producer on how Jeremy Kyle is done.

This is a satirical look at Jeremy Kyle. I don’t like him.

[A picture of The Manchester Guardian’s First Centenary]

“Comment is free, but facts are sacred… The voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard.”

The Guardian are a broad-sheet newspaper, originally known as “The Manchester Guardian” and was founded in 1821. The Newspaper swiftly grew in size from a small-town paper into a fully-fledged company. It also has a large web presence and is reputedly one of the top read newspapers online.

The Guardian is well known as being a liberal newspaper who frequently write articles that are not generally written for other newspapers. It was founded by John Edward Taylor in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre.

There are several well-known columnists who write for The Guardian including Charlie Brooker and Tim Dowling, but those are for more of the satirical/ supplement based articles. It is released every weekend and throughout the week in the Guardian Weekly and G2 supplements with every issue of the Weekly Guardian although these articles tend to be more for entertainment purposes than that of educational. The Weekend Guardian has a variety of articles and supplements, including:

• The Guardian Weekend, which is a magazine supplement which features interviews with celebrities, comedic articles, recipes and advice on life. It also includes fashion shoots and extracts from up-and-coming books.

• Guardian Family, including articles to do with family (generally inspirational stories) and an advice column on dealing with family issues as well as interviews with popular folk on their families and a column about a divorcee coping with the break up.

• Guardian Review, which reviews the latest books and interviews popular authors.

• Guardian Money which offers help with jobs, money problems and helps teach it’s readers about how to save a lot of money.

• There is also the Guide which has information about the weeks television shows and upcoming film releases, and sections dedicated to interviewing writers and musicians.