Kate’s blog took a look at the big picture of gender relations when she brought up the fact that “male roles dominating female roles is on the rise…and I’m sure this has some impact in the future decisions [children] make.” I think this is true and a very valid point. Jennie, despite her maturity and intelligence, is still inferior to Eben in the general scheme of the film. It is his film, his story, his triumph. And, while Jennie covertly directs the course of the film to ensure that they end up together before her final realization of her own mortality, it is Eben who has the power to overtly control her actions–telling her where to sit, how to behave, what to do. In the end, Jennie’s method of control is too subtle to be noticed by a young audience, who will come away from the film having witnessed Jennie’s entrapment as a thing of beauty, not her growth into a strong woman. What kind of message does this send to that young audience? Love almost equalizes sexism but not quite? Keep trying, girls, you’ll almost get there? I don’t know much about the old-school Greek muses but I seem to remember thembeing the figures of power, with artists being allowed to paint them but not possessing the right. By the end of the film Eben seems to take Jennie for granted as a Muse even as he revels in having her as a soulmate. Some not-very-nice part of me is kind of glad that he lost her.

Finally, Que Onda? commented in a blog on the role of gender in films. He observed that “In our last class we noted that there are very few female-character-driven films. In fact there are very few films that strive to portray the broad-spectrum of roles that both genders play in relationships.” Especially given the nature of my meditations on Portrait of Jennie I would agree completely with this, especially with the first sentence. In fact, it got me thinking about how the film would have played out if the film had been Jennie’s story instead of Eben’s. Would the story have been less about art and more about time? Would Jennie have been portrayed in such a flattering, romantic light, or would she have come under attack for pursuing Eben and been labeled a tramp? Or would she have been considered a heroine, a goddess, for effortlessly rescuing Eben from the abyss of creative brokenness? It’s impossible to tell because the situation is almost impossible to imagine. As for the second sentence considering the lack of broad-spectrum roles given to both genders, I would agree as well. Especially in the 1930s and 1940s, a romantic film was notable and valued for its romance, whether it be comical or dreamlike. The burgeoning relationship between the male and female leads was the whole point, not the subtleties of their character. It is entirely unnecessary for the two leads to be depicted in beautiful, epic detail since really, the romance between them is all we care about. In fact, when all the roles played by the two are examined, it becomes much more difficult to focus on that romance; the audience begins to examine those roles instead of the romance, and the film falls apart…or becomes another genre. This is demonstrated in Portrait of Jennie with Eben and Jennie both possessing very simple roles to fulfill: Jennie as the Muse; Eben as the Artist; Jennie as the love; Eben as the lover. Jennie, poised on the brink of becoming a superwoman, dies before she can transcend these roles, leaving her character beautiful, lovely, and simple.

My favorite point made during Unit IV was made by Dr. C in class, and really has nothing to do with the dynamic-but-mostly-ignored character of Jennie. Why do we settle for just good relationships when we would never settle for just good art? Why do we hold art to a higher standard than we hold love? Why does one demand less perfection than the other?

I’m still thinking about that one.

In her essay, Haskell puts forth the idea that in 1940s cinema, when female characters were overly intelligent and ambitious but forced by society into stereotypical roles, they developed in one of two ways: either using their femininity to manipulate (labeled the superfemale) or joining the “boys” by developing masculine characteristics (labeled the superwoman). With Bette Davis on one end demonstrating the perfect superfemale and Katharine Hepburn on the other representing the perfect superwoman, Jennifer Jones (the actress who played Jennie) falls somewhere in the uncertain middle. Not possessing the strength herself to keep Jennie definitively a superfemale or a superwoman, Jones’ portrayal of Jennie results in the character shifting between the two over the course of the film. This actually results in her being a much more dynamic character than Eben, who comes to no great realizations and has no epiphanies over the course of the film; he in essence is overtaken by his own talent when his Muse, Jennie, enters his life. Jennie, on the other hand, ends the film a different person than when she began it. To say she matures from a girl to a woman is not enough: she matures from a superfemale to a superwoman, a much more difficult and noteworthy task.

A superfemale, states Haskell, is “exceedingly feminine and flirtatious, [and] is too ambitious and intelligent for the docile role society has decreed she play” (624) Trapped in stifling gender roles (usually those of wife and mother), the superfemale unleashes her energy on those around her, usually by manipulating men with her feminine wiles. “Romantically attractive, even magnetic, she is not sexual,” and therefore promises without delivering, so to speak, enticing those around her without ever actually giving up anything of herself (624). Used to manipulating as she is, “The superfemale is an actress by nature,” able to twist her own emotions for the sake of twisting other’s emotions even further (624). While she is nowhere near pure superfemale (Jennie is certainly no Scarlett O’Hara), she does contain certain aspects of the superfemale in her early encounters with Eben. The first few times they meet, of course, Jennie is only a child and hardly capable of anything other than childish joy at Eben’s presence (changing into infatuation as she grows a bit older). However, as she grows she begins to demonstrate qualities generally associated with the superfemale.

In fact, it may be stated that without Jennie’s superfemale qualities, there would be no portrait, no inspiration, and no movie. Without these qualities Jennie would simply be a child Eben met in the park and then never saw again. Even if Eben feels some thrill of recognization of the soulmate bond with Jennie like she clearly feels with him, he does not express or act on these feelings until late in the film. Jennie, on the other hand, actively pursues Eben, subtly at first but with increasing boldness. As she loses her childlike innocence, her superfemale qualities emerge, marking the point at which she becomes bold in her pursuit of Eben. In fact, her very pursuit itself is evidence of the superfemale within: in seeking not just a relationship but the eternal bond of a soulmate with Eben, Jennie is defying time itself. Too determined to remain in her own time without Eben, she repeatedly crosses over into his, even “hurrying” to accelerate the time until they can be together. Evading time itself to get what she wants? Scarlett certainly never had such ambition.

Other superfemale qualities reveal themselves as Jennie grows. The two most pronounced are manipulation and flirtation, which in Jennie’s case are often combined. Knowing that Eben’s initial attraction to her was as a Muse figure, she uses his fascination with her beauty to help him reach the same conclusion she already has: that they are soulmates, meant for each other. This behavior is most marked in the scene when Jennie visits Eben in his loft, during her first year of college at the convent. Now fully a young woman, she seems to have come to the understanding of the importance of her own appearance: she is dressed in her “Sunday dress” with her hair pulled back, and almost seems to be a young girl playing dress-up as a woman. Eben’s first reaction upon seeing her is just what a superfemale yearns for: “It can’t be you!” followed by “You’re beautiful!” Clearly bewitched by her, Eben begins to view Jennie with more than paternal and artistic love–he is attracted to her, but not in a sexual manner. It is also in this scene that Jennie becomes more bold in her hints for their future. By constantly reminding Eben that she is hurrying, by pointing out the rate at which she’s aging, by reminding him that one day soon they will “be together,” Jennie never lets either of them forget that their relationship is meant to be. However, in the aforementioned scene her hints become more obvious than stock phrases dropped in conversation. On the roof, she asks coyly, “Do you know what Emily wants to know? When you’re going to marry me.” Clearly this question comes from Jennie herself, but it is the first time she’s mentioned a mature, consenting-adult relationship as opposed to the very vague “be together always.” Clearly it also means something to her, for when Eben laughs tolerantly she seems hurt and reminds him that although it may seem ridiculous to him now, she will be old enough soon.

Thus by the time she visits Eben in his loft, Jennie has developed from a naive child to a mild but still noticeable superfemale, using her “feminine wiles” and her status as Eben’s Muse to manipulate him into her planned eventuality: their life together. Whether or not they are soulmates does not have an impact on what Jennie is doing. However, by her next visit, a tremendous change has begun to take place in her character: she begins to change from a superfemale to a superwoman.

Haskell defines a superwoman as a woman who “has a high degree of imagination or ambition” and “adapts male characteristics in order to enjoy male prerogatives” (624). A superwoman “pulls her own weight in a man’s world,” both aided and hindered by “her angular personality and acute, even abrasive intelligence” (624, 632). Once again, Jennie is too mild to qualify as a full superwoman–she’s not independent enough, just as she was not bitchy enough to qualify as a full superfemale. But in her last meeting with Eben, she shows the beginnings of a transition to superwoman that is never fully explored in the film, but might have revealed a stunningly beautiful and strong character from the shadow of a young, manipulative one.

The transition from superfemale begins during Jennie and Eben’s last meeting, as Eben finishes Jennie’s portrait. As she sits for him, Jennie says something quite different from her usual lovestruck conversation. Instead of mentioning how they will “be together always” Jennie muses, “You know how you feel sad sometimes? About things that have never happened? Perhaps they’re the things that are going to happen to us. Perhaps we know it…and are just too afraid to admit it to ourselves.” In this moment, Jennie moves past her infatuation/love for Eben and transcends what she wants to ponder a deeper truth: that there is a limit to what a mere person can achieve, a limit to how far manipulation will get you. She admits that she is just as capable of being manipulated as she is capable of manipulating others–manipulated in this case by time itself. Also for the first time, Jennie admits that she is just as much a victim of time’s inconsistencies as Eben is: no matter how persuasively she plans their life together, time can sweep them apart just as easily as it brought them together, and she has no control over it, no warning but a vague sense of sadness. This moment of reflection is integral because in it Jennie accepts her own limits and, equally important, her fate as a victim of time. Thus she fulfills Haskell’s definition of the transition from superfemale to superwoman: “by taking life into her own hands, her own way.” However, to take her life into her hands, Jennie must let it go. Her transition to being a superwoman is reliant upon her realization that, in the end, her situation is beyond her control.

Unfortunately, in terms of Jennie’s transition, the film is incomplete. Her realization becomes a prediction, as she and Eben are swept apart from each other, both literally and figuratively. For the film, this is the end. However, for the character of Jennie, it was barely a beginning. Having succeeded in becoming a superwoman through acceptance of her situation, Jennie becomes free to love without manipulation, to engage in the equal-fulfillment relationship Haskell describes at the end of her essay. Unfortunately, the film ends with her still caught in the fledgling stage of superwoman-hood, demonstrating again that the focus of the film is not on her but on Eben, who not only survives the film but does it in full fulfillment of his artistic potential. Jennie never gets to fulfill her full potential; she is trapped in the role of Muse, and never receives the opportunity to understand her full identity outside of that role. Thus an already dynamic character is both ignored and repressed.

And the portrait of Jennie, beautiful but flat, becomes symbolic of her treatment as a character.

The other aspect of the film that differed drastically in the book and the movie was the role of Spinney, played eloquently by Ethel Barrymore in the film and pretty much nothing and nobody in the book. Whether it be the visual medium or the astounding talent of one of the famous Barrymores (love them love them love them, especially Lionel), the Spinney of the film is a much more dynamic character, who truly aids Eben in his art career in a way that the Book Spinney is said to…but whether through the style of the narrative or just a lack of character development never does as convincingly as in the movie. However, aside from the more dynamic character portrayal, Movie Spinney is also involved in something mildly…subtly…barely romantic with Eben, to the point that it can only be labeled mildly sexual tension and not a romance of any kind. Nevertheless, it is there (at least I thought it was). I don’t why this is…perhaps because for a good portion of the film, Jennie is too young to be a viable love interest for Eben, and without some kind of romantic aspect, the film is basically kind of boring. The romance doesn’t have to be an above-board obvious-to-the-dumbest viewer sort of thing, but the subtle tension helps propel the film until it reaches the point where Eben and Jennie can actually be together for the, oh, five seconds they are together until it all falls apart again.

So, basically Book contains a lot less romance overall than Movie, and I think suffers for it. Knowing where his relationship with Jennie was going, his callousness towards her makes him appear unfeeling, and the book ends up being more about his search for a muse than his relationship with Jennie as a person. Now, there’s nothing WRONG with this, but the main appeal of the movie for me was the way in which Jennie and Eben’s love transcended time, not the way in which Jennie managed to keep crossing over to sit while Eben painted her. Thus I think I prefer the move, for being more honest about relationships despite age lines, and focusing on love despite obstacles.

Okay, let’s calm down. I had a point earlier that I made very badly: that film does have a narrative responsibility (that perhaps is on the decline; I think an argument could be made for that but it’s not really the point) that excessive realism interferes with, and that excessive realism destroys the escapist experience that is why many people to go the theater to view films at all. However, this narrative responsibility-escapism connection is by no means the entire purpose of film. I realized after I made that statement that in doing so I neglected inherent artistic value. And I do believe in film as art. However, even THIS statement is hard to deal with, because calling film art is great, but what is art and why does film merit classification as it?

In a desperate and probably futile effort to come to some independent definition of what art is and what purpose art serves, I make this list.

THINGS THAT ARE ART FOR THE PURPOSE OF FINDING SIMILARITIES AND COMING TO A MORE COMPLETE DEFINITION

– paintings, both classical and modern (in fact, the more surreal a painting, the more I tend to admire it as art).
– literature
– films (however films are tricky because while I believe that every film requires artistic talent, I don’t believe that every completed film qualifies as Art. Does that make sense?)
– sculpture
– music
– calligraphy
– photography
– poetry
– architecture
– ?????

I know that there are many more things that qualify as art; it’s just surprisingly hard to sit down and think of them all at once. So, what do these things have in common? They’re beautiful (but so is a person). They require an artist (is this a duh statement or something significant? I can’t tell). They provoke thought (but yes, Dr. C., so does a blueprint). They are unnecessary–in other words, the world would still function if all the art on the fact of the planet disappeared. Then again, your brother’s collection of Star Wars figures is unnecessary and that’s not art. They are the result of an intangible inspiration becoming tangible through human intervention. They contain symbolism, or can be given symbolism through interpretation. So what do we have? Art is: an intangible inspiration put in concrete form by an artist for the purpose of communicating some universal truth and stimulating audience thought. Does that work? Oh, it’s tremendously flawed and I’m sure the definition about communicating something about life through something lifelike is about a trillion times better, but that’s the definition I’m working with for now. If I spent all day defining art I would forget about film entirely, and that is the point.

So. Film. According to my definition, film is definitely art, perhaps even more so than a Da Vinci or Monet, because the experience is so much more evocative. However, not ALL film is art, as I stated before when I said that film can be artistic without being Art. Men in Black? Not Art. But then again, Sweet Valley High books aren’t Art either. Garfield comics, not Art. That picture of Paris Hilton picking her nose? Not Art. Yet all of these are in categories that are CAPABLE of producing Art.

So here we have two aspects of film: a narrative responsibility to help the audience escape from reality and tell a good story, and an inherent artistic value. The problem I’m finding is that the two kind of…clash. Helping the audience escape into the world of film ensures they won’t think about the universal truth the artist is trying to communicate. There will be no thought provoked. There will be a total lack of thought.

Wait. Where have I gone with this? I’m even more confused than when I started. And I’m supposing that these are the sole purposes of film, which I know they’re not–just adding any more would make my head explode.

What’s the answer?

I mean, I think film definitely has responsibilities. For me, those responsibilities are primarily narrative: film for me is a storytelling medium, with the director responsible for telling the story in the most evocative and smooth way possible (for this reason I can’t agree with the realists simply on the basis that Paris factory workers, and even films like The Bicylce Thief don’t exactly have the best storyline going for them. They are boring). Now, also simply in my opinion, this narrative responsibility is supposed to give the audience an experience they can’t get at home–thus the reason that movies entirely of security camera footage pretty much wouldn’t cut it in this or any other film industry. Ultra-realism, besides being impossible to fully achieve, removes the magic of the movies. Oddly enough, the other side of the spectrum does the same thing. In a film where reality is blurred to the degree that technology convinces us that what we’re seeing is real when it fact it’s not, I think that also harms the magic of the film, because we forget that it is in fact a film.

Maybe this is incredibly naive of me, but I don’t think film has to do anything or be anything other than what it is. Actors only have to act, directors only have to direct, the camera only has to take it all in, the scriptwriter only has to produce a script. If everyone does these things right, you have a beautiful film, a good film, maybe even a great film. Shouldn’t that be good enough?

Also I have a tip for classmates who don’t share Dr. C’s affinity for perfect lights and sound (sometimes you just have to watch the movie, even if it does suck). There’s a website at http://tv-links.co.uk/index.do/4 that has a pretty good list of movies, especially foreign ones and old movies, that might work for some of the films we’re watching in class. It has Yojimbo I know for sure–couldn’t find Little Women, but anyway. Good for if you need to watch a movie over or are bored. Just thought I’d share.

However, my chosen subject of blog tonight (this evening?) relates to our discussion of book versus film, and how the strengths and weaknesses of each affect their overall storytelling capabilities. In particular, how the ability of a book to manipulate description, both in terms of how long it lasts in the overall narrative, and how it contributes to the reader’s mental image of the story progressing, compares to a film’s technique of using a single visual shot that takes a split second and leaves nothing to the imagination. Now, from here proceeds a complicated Annie train of thought. Try to follow along…

From that beginning, I meditated on the ability of the author of a book to vary the amount of description in a book (the amount of anything, actually) while a shot in a film, leaving nothing to the imagination, makes it hard for a director to control what an audience sees (I’m not talking about a director’s ability to control composition of scene, here, but actually what the audience sees: for instance, it’s hard to disguise the fact that a character is wearing a blue dress if a character is, in fact, wearing a blue dress). This thought then led me to consider the overall stylistic power of the author of a book, and the overall power of the author to be stylistic. Most of the books I read these days are contemporary novels with a memorable style and voice (Everything Is Illuminated is a great example). Authors like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, stand out not only because they are telling a great story but because the way in which they tell it is unique.

From here I jumped to the equivalent of this in the world of film. The question of authorship has always been a murky one for filmmakers. Is the author of a film the scriptwriter? The producer? The director? Is there no single author for a film, and what does this say about the world of film? And how does the dubious authorship of a film reflect upon that film’s style? These questions led me to consider the several stand-out directors that can truly be considered authors of their films: Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas…directors whose films are instantly recognizable. From this I make the shaky conclusion that style in filmmaking is a much more rare event than it is in literature.

Oh, and I looked up Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography. Totally brilliant.

So, the awesomeness of George Cukor. Firstly, a list of his films that I feel licensed to comment upon, being as I’ve seen them: A Bill of Divorcement, Dinner at Eight, Little Women, Camille, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star is Born, Pat and Mike, My Fair Lady. Also, unfortunately for him, Cukor was slated to direct and then kicked off both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz (1939 could not have been a good year for him), both after effecting important changes in the films. I’ve read that without his input Dorothy would have had long blond hair, an image that gives me horrified shivers every time I think about it.

Anyway, the reason that I love Cukor, and not just because he makes films in a variety of genres (melodrama, screwball comedy, romantic comedy, suspense, musical), is because how he handled what could have been a very great detriment to his career. Being homosexual in Golden Age Hollywood wasn’t a career-killer (plenty of people were) but it was something that had to be handled delicately and could never be put right out in the open for what it was. George Cukor was perhaps one of the most overtly homosexual characters I’ve read about, who was nonetheless tactful about it. Instead of forming an identity as a “gay director,” he became widely known as a “woman’s director.” Generally, all his films starred strong leading women (he had a special friendship with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, directing at least seven films with Hepburn and several with the pair of them). This reputation was reportedly the reason for his being removed from Gone With the Wind, where leading man Clark Gable was uncomfortable with his closeness with the female cast members. Still, I admire Cukor greatly because he carved a niche out for himself where he could make films with sensibilities that he understood and admired himself, and became greatly successful because of this. And while he was put in a category by the industry and the media, it was a category based on the type of films he made, not on a characteristic that he possessed personally. Thus Cukor was free to make films in a variety of genres, and in doing so produced any number of classic films.

In between twitching spastically, though, I enjoyed a lot of the points made in the articles we read. Especially I enjoyed the contrast between genre film and the notion of film as high art, and mutual exclusivity that seemed to exist between the two. A genre film, due to the preconceived notions involved in the concept of a genre (both in terms of syntactic and semantic elements), is prohibited by convention from ascending to the realm of high art, due to the fact that a genre film does not possess the originality or depth of a high art film. Disregarding completely the thorny issue of what makes high art and if directors indeed should or do aspire to it in filmmaking, I find the very existence of the genre film to be interesting. Critics and theorists can complain about the inferiority of the genre film when compared to the high art film, but the genre film entered existence, gained popularity, and will continue to enjoy patronage while high art films languish in rare art house theatres without the praise of critics because it is mandated by the audience. As discussed in the first essay, the different genres of film came into existence because of an expressed audience preference for certain cinematic elements. The more of a film the audience demanded, the more films in that genre were made, the more that genre grew, the more established it became, the more of an audience it developed. Thus the genre system, however shallow or commercial it may be viewed as, is in reality a self-perpetuating one, a cycle in which audience and film feed on each other.

The high art film, in contrast, does not share the same relationship with its audience. Instead of being tied intimately with the audience in the manner of the genre film, the high art film stands away and apart from its audience. The audience is free to approach the film, stand, admire, and walk away enlightened, but this will not help in the creation of more high art films or increase their success. The high art film holds its value aloof from measurement in terms of commercial success, and thus will always exist apart from the audience. I personally would argue that art is art, with or without someone there to see it.