To Play or To Die

I found this film to be a commentary on homosexuality in a heterosexual society. The struggles, confusion and passion of the protagonist were the driving feature of the film and were clearly reflected through his environment. Despite this, I am not a fan of the film. I found it to be confusing and almost frustrating. It was a struggle to watch the protagonist constantly put himself on the line only to be ridiculed, beaten, and remain alone. Perhaps this is the Hollywood-side-influence, but I prefer a happy ending. Unlike Bugcrush, I found that the artistic shots and angles were limited (I only really enjoyed the initial gymnast scene) and the lighting to be somewhat bland. Perhaps this is due to the cultural differences, and perhaps I feel this way about the film because I am missing a cultural reference or preference. All in all, I found the film to be mediocre.

Bugcrush

Bugcrush was released in 2006 and was on the Official Selection of various film festivals (winning one prize) for obvious reasons. Although it is only roughly 40(ish) minutes long, director Carter Smith covers an array of social discourses in full force. Smith began his career in fashion photography and had his breakthrough with a series of gritty, documentary-style portraits of teen like in the Midwest. His artistic sense plays out within Bugcrush from the actors, to the scenery, to the lighting and so on. All in all it is very stylistically pleasing.

Basically, the film is based on "the story of Ben, a small-town loner, whose fascination with Grant, a dangerously seductive new kid, leads him into something much more sinister than he could ever have imagined." I do not want to give anything away, but Carter tackles the issues of homosexuality, drugs, rape, social pressures and hypermasculinity within the film to such an extent that you are left dumbfounded.

Let the Right One In

"Let the Right One In" was very interesting. One thing that was incredibly well done is the juxtaposition between murder and nature. Each time Eli feeds, or her caretaker murders, the next scene begins with a clear, serene, winters day. It as almost as if it is a new beginning and what Eli has done has been forgiven. Another use of juxtaposition is within Eli herself. In one character, she is a young, "defenseless" child, in another she is a fierce, vampire who is able to carry her own. It is hard to describe how to feel about Eli because she is a lonely child, but she is also s murderer and is often covered in blood...not exactly appealing and innocent.

This loss of innocence is a loss of purity. She is no longer the virginal, childlike character her appearance expresses, which makes it bizarre to see her interact with Oskar (Oskar is the innocent, introverted, helpless child). In turn, when Eli climbs into bed (naked) with Oskar it is very disconcerting because their relationship is almost pedophilia-esque because they are on two completely different psychological and maturity levels.

Hostel

To be honest, I am not one for gore. I do not enjoy this entire genre of "Torture Porn" and I find it very disconcerting. However, when watching the film, I found myself more engrossed with disgust regarding the graphics instead of the message. In this case, the subject of teen commodification is taken into a literal context.

No longer are teens the consumers of corporate products, they are what is to be consumed. After watching this film, I did not find the article we were given very relevant to my perspective. Instead, I found that the film was similar To Naomi Klein's article "Alternate Everything..." in which she states that the individual space is slowly dissolving. In Hostel, the identity, freedom and opinions of the individual are irrelevant, unnecessary and a commodity, bought and sold by rich masochistic people. In this case, these people (the buyers) represent large corporations, while the enslaved represent the individual.

On a completely separate train of thought, I was surprised to find who the survivor was. The one teenage male who demonstrated remorse, restriction, and concern was the second one to die, meanwhile, the one who drinks, uses drugs, has sex without any remorse is the one who survives. The complete opposite of the final girl...strange!

Battle Royale: Us-versus-Them=Me-vesus-You

Battle Royale is an example of teachers’ desire for traditionally attained authority gone haywire. The government decides that sticking disobedient students (and a crazed volunteer) on an island to kill each other will force them to learn to respect the elders. At what point did the government look at this and say, "Yes, this will fix everything!”

Instead of asking questions such as "why are they lashing out" or "what can we do to change this" the movie demonstrates the typical societal scapegoat of the teenager. Everything and anything can be blamed on the teen and therefore they should be punished.

What I found very interesting was the absence of parental/authority figures that are not harnessing weaponry. The parents/authorities do not desire any sort of compromise with the children and instead create an inescapable domination/control of their lives. The youths' resistance at the beginning of the film clearly proves to be futile, and instead of negotiating, they are forced to conform to the dictators’ rules. This represents a fear of adulthood and of conformity...no choices (adulthood) or death.

Buffy

"You're not, by any chance, betraying your secret identity just to impress, um, cute boys, are you?" -- Giles

Dialogue in Buffy is obviously related to Wilcox when she states "it is directly related to symbolic social monsters". These symbolic monsters represent adulthood, and Buffy, her mother, and Giles interact in a role-reversed manner which demonstrates the illusion of adolescence. However, never having watched Buffy before, I did not realize the teenager/parent relationship is directly related through their interactions.

Buffy and her mother are on completely different pages. Her mother tries to be encouraging, but is blatantly representative of a naive, helpless child. For example, Buffy switches schools because she had burned down the school and her mother does not seem to mind even though she had to find a new job, house, and school for her child. She simply blames it on her daughter falling in with the wrong crowd. Her mother is clearly in denial. Meanwhile, Buffy (the teenager) represents the responsible, brave, adult-like figure. She is the one who battles to save their existence, and always seems to end up doing the right/moral/responsible thing. This role-reversed relationship, as Wilcox states, creates a symbolic need to bridge the generational gap between parents and teenagers.

One adult character that does bridge the generation gap is Giles because he is claimed to be the "ideal parent". However, I do not believe that he bridges the gap because he is representative of the ideal parent, but because he is the only adult (in the episodes we have watched) who comprehends the Vampire situation. As an adult he fails because he insecure, awkward, and is almost like a teenage boy trapped in a grown mans body. He mumbles, is easily flustered, and does not know how to speak to women...not exactly the best role model in the category of confidence. This failure to understand the importance of a confident male figure renders him useless in multiple situations. If Giles did not know about Vampires, the Harvest, or other mythical creatures, he would be the same, naive, helpless child that is Buffy's mother.

River's Edge-The Misrepresentation of Metal

Heavy metal is quite easily the most misrepresented musical genre. When thinking of heavy metal the generic associations that come to mind are sex, drugs, long hair, devil worship, people dressed in black leather/jeans and cutoff shirts, violence and motorcycles. When typing "Heavy Metal" into google images, the following pictures are on the first page.

The film "River's Edge" (1986), was directed by Tim Hunter based on the 1981 rape/murder of Marcy Conrad by Anthony Jacque in Milpitas, California. Instead of focusing on the plot (which is incredibly disturbing) I am choosing to focus on the use of heavy metal as a representation of rebellion. Budd Carr, the music supervisor for the film, chose to focus on a heavy bass and guitar soundtrack filled with heavy metal for specific reasons. Here are just a few general assumptions made in relation to heavy metal and River's Edge:

1. Themes: Heavy metal themes are generally dark, they confront wider issues (in relation to Clare Connors concept of the youth in crisis/dangerous youth cycle), death, sex, etc. Each of these themes can be found within the film and become identified with this specific genre.

2. Physical gestures: The concept of headbanging and the corna (devil horns) gestures are in relation to the rhythm of the music. It becomes trance like and represents the desensitization of teens by heavy metal music.

However, heavy metal is not meant to represent devil worship, desensitization or violence, it is meant to represent rebellion. The term was first used in 1968 by the Canadian band Steppenwolf in the song "Born to be wild" when they refer to "heavy metal thunder". This song is based on the concept of living life to the fullest and fulfilling the self. The basic idea of the self instead of the collective is one of the key concepts of rebellion. For example, in "Rebel without a cause" James Dean is a rebel until he gives up his individual ideals for the ideals of a "couple". Nevertheless, Carr uses heavy metal to represent the influence of peers based on musical preference and the culture it creates. Heavy metal results in drugs, sex, violence, death, mischief and the destruction of society. It is film scores like this that give the media a negative association to musical genres.

Heathers

Heathers - Mean Girls meets Girl Interrupted.

Ingredients:

3 popular bitchy girls (with varying degrees of dominance...hey make it easier and call them all the same name)

1 popular yet less bitchy girl (be sure to make her name different to prevent confusion)

1 sociopath male outcast (add a sob story to ensure a sympathetic taste)

5-10 handfuls of sex, violence and guns

3 tbs of suicide

Mix and enjoy!

Branding
Branding within Heathers is clearly identifiable. Jocks are found only in their letter jackets (with the exceptions of attending funerals and fornicating), nerds are dressed in collared shirts, hiked-up pants, their glasses attached to strings, spewing out milk at the sight of popularity, the delinquent is dressed in black, carries a gun, rides a motorcycle, sits in the back corner of the cafeteria, and the popular girls are dressed in various colours of identical outfits. The queen bee is clearly identified through a red hair tie representing a metaphorical crown.

Social Acceptability
Not only is the film creating an almost humorous tone of teen suicide with reference to the hit song "Teen suicide, don't do it" but it also demonstrates a disgusting view of "heteronormativity". Apparently, a girl is supposed to stand idly by while her friend is being raped, or is 'ruining everything' if she won't put out for an obvious creep (who looks like he is a forty-year-old-virgin who has failed high school multiple times), or gives in to male urges despite her own reservations. The one female character that stands up for herself sleeps with a sociopath and becomes so desensitized to death and violence that she lights a cigarette off of a dynamited corpse. This is...normal?

Relationships
The relationship between Veronica and her parents represents the idea of 'The Grooves'. Her parents represent the straight and narrow/ career and materialist groove. Initially, Veronica was veering slightly off the groove by not wanting popularity, and she eventually drove right off when she met JD. JD represents the groove of teenage narcissism, believing that his life is already over and meaningless. By the end of the film, Veronica is able to find a happy medium between these two grooves, thus allowing her to be the representation of a 'Meta-Code'.

(I just thought this picture was hilarious)