First of all, I thought Julie\/Jules does us all a service by digging beneath the surface of the narrative. I think films lend themselves to a type of pleasurable consumption, maybe because we watch them rather than read them. It’s like a critical switch is turned off. Of course, that could just be me. But I was trying to make this point when I said of Memento<\/u> that it was soooo cooool. The ‘visual pleasure’ of a film is sometimes irresistible. The first time I watched Donnie Darko<\/u>, the same thing happened. I thought it was pretty far out; radical, even (in its true 80s usage rather than its political meaning). Actually, the problem I’m having might be best articulated through the dual meanings of that word, ‘radical.’ It feels like the film is too ‘totally radical’ and not politically radical enough.<\/p>\n
I’ll use the Sparkle Motion scene as an example. As a festival of light and sound, it was just so inviting — quite a radical spectacle. The audience members, including the teachers and judges, start clapping in unison, bobbing their heads, and generally becoming swept up by the whole thing. But then comes the eerie disruption of that performance; with a sweeping rumble, the picture cuts to Donnie in Jim Cunningham’s house, the dancers slip into slow motion, and shots of the delirious audience are interspersed with images of the burning mansion. The viewer is positioned to scorn the dance spectacle and all its hypocrisy. That is, the talent show audience roars in appreciation at the sexualization of pre-pubescent girls while Donnie burns down the Cunningham’s “kiddie porn dungeon.” Case closed. The film effectively criticizes a dangerous cultural trend.<\/p>\n
But the viewer’s dissociation from the spectacle threatens to open up its own spectacle. The narrative doesn’t hang together in a sustained critique. In some ways, the film seems to enact the spectacle rather than disrupt it. The pleasure of Donnie Darko<\/u> isn’t in the spectacle so much as a spectacle that ironicizes the original spectacle. One way it does this is to service the (adolescent male?) viewer’s fantasies. From “Sit next to the boy you think is the cutest” (female attraction); to “He asked me to forcibly insert the Life Line exercise card into my anus!” (telling off authority); to the fact that the entire fate of several characters hinges on Donnie (megalomania). His actions can right the universe. But strangely, it’s not his actions that actually ‘right the universe’; it’s his death. In fact, the entire movie, from his escape of death to his actual death, is essentially an aberration, a not-real, a fantasy. And it pulls in the viewer. It disturbs us, but we’re not quite sure how. And, without being able to define the difference, we aestheticize the unsettling experience. Off-kilter narratives merely titillate a different pleasure center. But is it radical<\/u>? At one point, Gretchen asks, “And what if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?” But all they come up with for ‘something better’ are images. Which prompts one to ask, are the images that make up Donnie Darko<\/u> paradoxically these better images?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First of all, I thought Julie\/Jules does us all a service by digging beneath the surface of the narrative. I think films lend themselves to a type of pleasurable consumption, maybe because we watch them rather than read them. It’s like a critical switch is turned off. Of course, that could just be me. But I … Continue reading Spectacles on spectacles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}