The Master: Art For Art's Sake?

Why was this movie made?
Usually, when I disagree with the mainstream critics, it's because I have found a gold mine they have overlooked; Paul Thomas Anderson's two-and-a-half-hour drama The Master has received fabulous reviews; I do understand the praise for the acting, however, it seems everything in the plot is meant as an exercise for the actors, and naught else. What point there is seems to never exceed that everyone has appetites and we can curb them a little, but not extinguish them. Okay,... in other words, The Master seems to be masterful only at contriving situations to rack up Oscar nominations.

The group is at the house of a follower and Dodd starts singing A Roving; during his song, Freddie, a sex addict, imagines all the women naked as Dodd dances around them. I mean, we can say that Freddie sees Dodd as a genuine man, but "sees through" the facade of the women making over him. The problem is, that interpretation is a real stretch because throughout Freddie is so obsessed with sex that it's just a pit stop in his mind for the audience to see how sexually focused Freddie is in every situation; there was little artistry in this film but a lot of ego.

When Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix) first meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Freddie has awakened from a drunken stupor and is taken in to meet Dodd who wears red pajamas (pictured below); Dodd informs Freddie that Freddie had been drinking all night then reveals that Dodd sampled the alcohol in Freddie's flask and drank the whole thing, then wants to know if Freddie can make more. Red is a strong color, and for a character to be wearing that when we first meet them and it means one of two things: either they are strong in their ability to love and they will love to death (red is the color of blood which is shed for the one we love) or they are a person of the appetites (love is the opposite of the appetites because love is given yet the appetites take). Since he emptied a flask of strong alcohol, we can assume Dodd is a man of the appetites and he doesn't disappoint us.

Dodd loves the drinks Freddie mixes, and drinks them up the way Freddie drinks up the questions Dodd asks him, especially about Freddie having sex with his Aunt Bertha. We see Freddie mixing the drinks and at least one time he includes paint thinner in the brew; why? It's a commentary on what drinking does to us all, it thins down the paint of the facade/mask we wear in society and reveals what is really there. I can go to a bar to find that out, thank you.

But this is the only real conflict of the narrative: even as Dodd's writing condemns the appetites, and he focuses his energy and "wisdom" on trying to save Freddie from Freddie's boozing and lust, Dodd gives into his own appetites. Each member of the Dodd family wants to ex-communicate Freddie from their midst because he brings out the worst in each of them, specifically, the lust and greed each thinks they are above: Lancaster Dodd, on the other hand, wants to keep Freddie because he thinks he can cure him (which is Dodd's ego appetite). By the end of the film, when Freddie engages in casual sex with an English girl, and repeats like a stumbling parrot questions Dodd asked of him, it appears that his time with "The Master" has changed him, but not significantly so.
And that's about it.

Am I being too hard?
No.
There is such a notion as Art For Art's Sake which posits that art is not bound to serve any purpose, it exists merely for the sake of being beautiful, bound in no way to serve politics, religion or any agenda but beauty (Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde strongly believed in this). I can adhere to this ideal completely, but it begs the question, "What is beauty?" and "How does one communicate beauty?" which beings us to the question of the role of the artist and issues of "quality." (I'm really sticking my foot in it today, aren't I?).

This brings us to another question: is it morally acceptable for a film maker to make a film based on their bet they can get an Oscar for it? On par with that could be a politician who changes or adopts a certain platform to get votes from a particular segment of society so they can hold office.

 This is a worthwhile discussion because there are times when we don't like certain films, various songs or other works of art, like painting and poetry, and it's just as important and personally fulfilling to be capable of articulating why you don't like something as why you do like it. An artist has a duty and a responsibility, regardless of their medium, to communicate with their audience. They have the exemplary calling in life to hold up a mirror to society and attempt to show us what we need to see but can't or won't; during the 2.5 hours I was watching The Master, I never felt Anderson acknowledged me as his audience, I never felt the actors considered me their audience, but were, rather, performing for other actors. In other words, I felt the whole film was phony, just like Freddie finally figures out that "The Master" is phony.

This is the best shot I can find of it, but Freddie has a tendency, throughout the whole film, to keep his hands placed on his hips. In terms of body language, it's meant to accentuate the penis and his male dominance over others in the situations in which he finds himself (it might also be a subliminal message that he is thinking of his sexual needs more than the situation he's in, which was antithetical to "The Cause" of the group) but Freddie can't dominate anyone, rather, everyone dominates him (which may be why he resorts to violence so often. Freddie also has incredibly small, hunched shoulders, revealing that he is unable to carry the basic burdens of life (everything "weighs down" on him). Freddie always talking out of the side of his mouth indicates that his appetites are crooked (the mouth is the primary location for the appetites).

Even if The Master is an exercise in Art For Art's Sake, it has failed to deliver anything of beauty or knowledge. Again, the characters seem more like hook lines for accolades than characters (Mrs. Dodd jerking her husband, Freddie making it with a sand woman on the beach, then jerking off or Elizabeth fondling his leg or a room of naked women... what am I supposed to say? Isn't that edgy? Wasn't that daring? Fearless performance! I won't say any of that about contrived circumstances for someone to show-off what they think is acting with no regard for their real audience). There is a tension in the narrative that is always there but just haunts instead of propelling events; if Anderson's point is so subtle that we can't discern it, he has failed to communicate with his audience.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Whore Houses & Soccer Stars: The Hurt Locker

Why do this now?
Besides my love of fabulous films, as 2010's Best Picture of the Year, The Hurt Locker is not only in the mind of a film maker like Ben Affleck, releasing his Argo Friday, but as well, in the minds of viewers during films such as Expendables 2, Taken 2 and potentially Skyfall; because The Hurt Locker is by far the most complete statement of the War on Terror, and what it has done to us as a country, and the brave soldiers fighting, we can't help but somehow mentally reference the film that visually gave us the the metaphor of the Middle East as a bomb, and the costs of disarming it. Whether we realize it or not, The Hurt Locker provided us with an education regarding the war we are fighting, who we are fighting, and how they are fighting us back, and--most of all--when we see real-life images of anti-American protests in the Middle East, we seek solace in knowledge, specifically that knowledge of the war  which has come to us through this film.

With the opening quote, "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug," the second half of the quote, "for war is a drug," is broken away and left lingering as its own statement on the screen for viewers' meditation (War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, 2002, Chris Hedges). Does this automatically make The Hurt Locker an anti-war film? No. There are too many elements of undecidability to make a definite statement, which means, more than most films, The Hurt Locker aptly mirrors what the audience all ready believes about war and solidifies, rather than converts, the viewers' perception about what war is (whether it's a drug or not).

It does several things well, and one of those things is inversion: whereas the big star usually survives the film and takes the lead as the hero, both "big stars" of the film, Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce, have only one scene and die in that scene, shifting the binary scales to the "unknown actors" and giving them the stage. It is possible, as numerous other interpretations of the film, that one can see that as a statement of international politics, i.e., the big players, such as the US and Great Britain, are going to have "regulated roles" in the future of global politics, while leaders heretofore unknown will take the center stage and save the day. Again, another liberal, anti-American way to view the opening scene with Staff Sergeant Thompson (Guy Pearce) is that the American Army sends out a wagon with disarming explosives and the wheel falls off, suggesting that the entire Army is a "flat tire." If you are a liberal, that is something you would pick up on as a reason for being against the war, you despise the military and the broken wagon symbolizes the "broken vehicle" of war and American power; on the other hand, if you are like me, and believe in the honor and dignity of our soldiers, and the incalculable sacrifices they (and their families) make for the safety of the country and the world, you might see a brave soldier going to do his duty regardless of the risk involved to protect innocent people in the path of the explosion because he is man enough to do it.

When we first meet William James (Jeremy Renner) he plays loud rock music and even though the musical genres are different, it reminded me of Lt. Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) playing Ride Of the Valkyries after a napalm strike in Apocalypse Now. This, along with Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) calling James "red-neck trailer trash," can be taken as a visual image on Teddy Roosevelt era foreign policy and America becoming a super-power on the world stage. The argument is, the American military is only as good as its soldiers, and liberals can easily see James being their poster child for doing away with the military, while conservatives, such as myself, can site the expertise in James' fulfilling his duty fearlessly and his relationship with little Beckham as typical of military personnel and why they, as individuals and representatives of America, make such an important difference wherever they are called to serve.

As usual, a mature female symbolizes the motherland, America, and James' complex relationship with his wife/ex-wife reflects Bigelow's view of the military and the homeland it protects. Her coldness and indifference to his experiences in war can be taken as an example of how we should act towards the mission of the War on Terror, but it can be a chilling lesson of what not to do and how not to act. Why does James seem to say he loves disarming bombs more than his wife/ex-wife and son? Well, if you were in a "relationship" with her, would you be fulfilled? There is really no other way to describe it but her "interior poverty" of love and nurturing lacking to aid James' healing from his war wounds perpetuating his emotional and psychological damage, so, for the sake of his sanity, it's easier to be in a war that is exterior to you, than to be stuck in a war inside you from which you can't escape. Its not that James doesn't love her and his son, but the "home front" is a losing battle for him and to survive, he needs to be able to have a shot at overcoming his battles.

While we experience intense and thrilling sequences of James disarming bombs and "saving the day," it's the bombs he can't disarm that liberals see as indicative of flaws embedded within American foreign policy: for example, when Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) gets shot in the leg and has to go "to the hurt locker," (off duty due to injury), Eldridge "explodes" at James for his reckless need for an adrenaline rush which liberals would certainly seize upon as using war as a drug which brings only harm and damage to all. On the other hand, we can see Eldridge as a soldier psychologically troubled by the demands of combat and his "explosion" at James is really the anger and guilt transference within himself onto a scapegoat.

The other bomb James can't disarm is the vest of the forced suicide bomber: "There are too many bombs, there are too many wires!" Given the man has four children, we can look at him symbolically as being an elder or "founding father" of the country who has been forced into this role of suicide bomber with re-enforced steel locking him into the vest, and that vest symbolizes the bombs waiting to go off throughout the Middle East they themselves are responsible for (including religious powder kegs). Seeing this imagery, understanding this Gordian Knot, do we leave the powder kegs unattended, as liberals would have it, or do we make the best attempts we can at disarming it? Because of your politics and your morals, you all ready have your opinion formulated when you watch this scene, but the scene "arms you" with the reasons you believe what you believe.

The box of things that almost killed him could be a sign of why James went into bomb disarmament: everything else in his life was exploding (like his relationship with his girlfriend/wife/ex-wife) so he transfers the emotional and psychological bombs in his life to the real bombs he learned how to disarm because that provides a sense of control on the battlefield he doesn't have in his inter-personal relationships.

What is most likable about James (besides his incredible confidence level when it comes to disarming the bombs) is his interactions with the young boy who wants to be called Beckham. This creates an interesting situation because, whether or not he actually wants to grow up to be a professional soccer player, he has identified himself with that role, creating a dual identity for himself so that, when James mis-identifies the dead boy with the body bomb as Beckham, it reveals James' own inner-psychology and what he thinks of the situation in the War. The boy with the body bomb doesn't look anything like Beckham, but just as Eldridge does some psychological transference later in the film, James does it now: he mistakens the boy with the body bomb for Beckham because he sees Beckham "exploding" as he gets older. Whether it's some personal defect in the boy, or the situation the boy is in where he is growing up is not clear but it doesn't have to be. It could also be James' fatalism that, since he has bonded with the boy and his personal relationships haven't worked out, Beckham--like everyone else in his life--is going to "explode" on him and that is why James actually explodes on Beckham later to pre-empt "losing" Beckham's friendship twice (the first time being with the young boy with the body bomb).

Technically, "the hurt locker" is a term used to describe when someone has been put on the injured list and is out of active duty; we could easily identify all kinds of "hurt lockers" in the film. We know Eldridge is, technically, but is Sanborn, as we see him in his pain after Thompson's death? How often do we see James experiencing pain in the film? Is the whole country of Afghanistan in "the hurt locker?" What about all of America? Locating the hurt locker(s) in the film, and who belongs there or who has ended up there, and what was the cause?

Another important point about Beckham is the relationship to personal fulfillment and the realization of the American Dream for everyone. David Beckham typifies a person who has skill and talent, works hard and achieves--not only success--but also the personal enjoyment of doing what one does best. This is another way in which Beckham is a dual personality since he works harder at selling cheap, pirated DVDs instead of playing soccer. The Hurt Locker seems to offer the viewer a choice: either we can see Beckham as a future filled with potential and promise, or he's going to rip us off.

More revealing than possibly any other moment of the film is when James goes on his solo mission to find out what happened to Beckham (after mis-identifying him) and ends up at the house of Dr. Nabil; when James returns to base, he tells a soldier he was at a whore house. Does James lie about where , was? No, I don't think so. Psychologically, when Dr. Nabil realizes he is there, Nabil is kind and welcoming then his wife comes out and starts getting hysterical; in terms of policy, we can see this as being an accurate depiction of how some countries in the Middle East seem to be welcoming us one minute, and then getting wild and protesting the next. The question is, how exactly does James see the country prostituting itself? By pretending to like us when it really wants us to get out, or by really wanting us there to help maintain order but it prostitutes itself to hysteria and irrationality? 

This is a bit of a stretch, however, I think it is something to consider: the bomb suits Thompson and James wear, and how they move in them, resembles--to me--the Apollo astronauts moon suits when they first landed on the lunar surface, winning the Cold War era's Space Race. Is this a legitimate interpretation? Given technological dominance propelling America ahead of other countries during that historical period, and the global leadership position we have taken because of technological superiority in innovation, yes, we can say that we have a duty--as international leaders--to "diffuse the bombs" of regional instability the best we can for the safety of the world. Liberals, on the other hand, can scoff and claim that we are no longer that country and, even if we were, we would have no right making such an ethnocentric boast and "assume" we are best to lead the world; what egomaniacs, they would think.

 In conclusion, we can't conclude: the film challenges us on every level, and while I have only scratched the surface, I hope it will help you in your engagement with the film and foreign policy. Currently, President Obama has accused Romney of wanting a "chest-pounding" and "sabre rattling" foreign policy
in relation to the attacks on the US Consulate in Libya. Since James can stand-in for that kind of American machismo, The Hurt Locker could be a timely lesson for all of us regarding the direction we think foreign policy should take and why. War can be a drug, but war can also be medicinal and teach us  what we have done in the past and why we have done what we have done and make us into better Americans and better people.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Saw Looper

I saw Looper.
It's just discouraging--and it is meant to be--when Hollywood continually depicts you as a drug addict, slut, criminal, greedy, soul-less murderer because you don't want the government to control your life. It's the same styled thesis as The Hunger Games with the same time travel--but inverted-- as we saw in Men In Black III. Like all the other pro-Obama, pro-socialist films, all it does is hack away at how terrible capitalism and capitalists (like myself) are without being able to offer any substantial advantage to socialism except that it's not capitalism. But, I promised you a break, and I will keep to that, and will get the The Hurt Locker up next, but I wanted to let you know about Looper in case you were thinking about going to see it and wanted to know (I will be getting a complete post up asap).

Without Baggage: Erasure & Identity In The Cold Light Of Day

The tagline, "Be careful who you trust," fits the film and its purpose quite well: we have trusted our allies and we need to continue trusting them, but the film makes the point in the generation gap between Will and his father Martin that with a new generation of Americans, the old alliances aren't necessarily going to hold, unless the new generation goes to war itself. As the villain Jean Carrack (Sigourney Weaver), we have a government official more concerned about personal profit than the ideals of helping our global friends and, seeing the type of person Carrack is, Will slowly starts to make the right decision. Please remember this seemingly innocent discussion on Will not having a change of clothes with him (he does have clothes on the boat from last time and that's important) because it figures into our discussion on erasure.

I'm am impressed with this film, politically and aesthetically.
You are probably saying that you have no interest in this film: it only scored a 6% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it did terrible in the theaters, so why am I even bothering to post on it when, as you all know, I am seriously behind as it is? The film takes an outside approach to the current political and economic troubles plaguing America right now to draw our attention away from ourselves and towards the greater world stage, and it does so very convincingly. Further, it has artistic moments of visual vocabulary expansion that is well worth our time to discuss.

Although the trailer sets up the family reunion on the boat as a happy occasion, that's far from the truth of the narrative: Martin (Bruce Willis) and Will (Henry Cavill) are at absolute odds with each other, so much so that Will even refers to his father as "Godzilla." While Will has agreed to meet his family in Spain for sailing, he doesn't want to be there. Let's start at the very beginning because that is where director Mabrouk El Mechri starts with Will.

Will arriving with Martin at the family boat after a disagreeable car ride from the airport and without his luggage. Before we see his face, we discover that Will's luggage never left San Francisco. Why? There are a number of ways to understand it, all valid and all displaying facets of a character who becomes very deep by the end of the film. One way is to ask, What else has been left in San Francisco? The famous Tony Bennett song from 1954 goes, "I left my heart in San Francisco," and that is a viable understanding not only because of the fame of the song, but because it's apparent as the scenes with his family in the boat go on, that Will, too, left his heart, his business and his attention span in San Francisco along with his change of clothes. Another angle is Will is ready for the upcoming adventure because "he doesn't have any baggage," in other words, after the failure of his company, besides saving what remains of his family, Will has nothing to lose. Still another way--among many other still possible understandings--is that Will has to "put on the new man," and he can't do that if he has an identity to which he clings

When we first meet Will we don't meet him. Director El Mechri takes his time to let us see Will's back, the bars of the service desk crossing out the features of his face and the sunglasses blocking his eyes, the windows of his soul (a similar device is used in the opening sequence of The Words with Dennis Quaid's Clayton Hammond not being shown as he gathers up some objects and we don't see his face). It's during this visual commentary that we learn his baggage never left San Francisco and, in conjunction with the physical lack of identity El Mechri makes in these imperative first seconds of the film, we are shown volumes of the philosophy of identity and metaphysics.

Will and his mother talk about Martin. The film supplies us with the standard symbols were used to:  a mature woman symbolizing the motherland (America) and a man of mature age symbolizing the founding fathers (and, in this case, Martin symbolizes the "fathers of American foreign policy" after the lessons of World War II--Will calls him "Godzilla," and we'll discuss this below) so Martin dying actually is not a bad thing in the film, he must die in order for the next generation (Will) to learn the lesson itself of why that which was done, was done for the greatest good and should continue to be done. Yes, we discussed this in Taken 2 and we will continue the same dialogue in Expendables 2 but it's my estimation that The Cold Light Of Day does it best and most thoroughly.

At this point, we don't even know his name, we just see the back of his head and what El Mechri wants to draw our attention to is that which he is not showing us. In theory, when a philosopher wants to let his/her reader know that a word is "necessary but inadequate" for what the writer desires to communicate, such as "being," they will write "being" and then draw a line through the word leaving "being" legible yet in a state "under erasure," or sous rature. Physically speaking, this is exactly what El Mechri does with Will's character, placing his physical features "under erasure," because Will is necessary as a hero and a future founding father but at of the start of the film he is wholly inadequate, and discovering his inadequacies and how he is converted into an adequate hero is the job of the viewer.

Why are they on a sail boat? It symbolizes the "ship of state," and Zahir's men coming aboard, putting a gun to Martin's head and kidnapping his family (minus Will who is not "on board" with Martin because he "jumped ship," and these are political connotations) is possibly how Will's generation thinks of Israel, not much more than terrorists (Zahir works for Mossad, Israeli Intelligence) and how the current US political administration has painted our long-time ally in its siding with the Arab states instead of our friend (please see Israeli lawmaker states that President Obama has not been a friend to Israel). While Will thinks Zahir is the threat to his family, and he's willing to trust Carrack or at least the police, as events escalate, he realizes that isn't enough and his family is actually safe only with Zahir as well as the world (the terrible things that will happen to global stability if Carrack succeeds in selling the briefcase, symbolic of the selling of Israel to the Arabs).

The reason Will "jumps ship" and leaves the boat (is thereby absent when his family is taken hostage) is because, symbolically, there is a disagreement over what the "ship of state" is and the best way to steer it. Martin gives Will command of the ship, but as the narrative relates, Will's business is bankrupt; while he's on the phone discovering that he can't recover his lost business (symbolically, a part of his "lost luggage" [and I apologize for this part, I am not familiar with ships so I know I am mis-using terminology!]) the ship's mast he should be watching instead of texting/talking comes around and nearly knocks out Dara, Will's brother's girlfriend that he saves at the last second, but she gets a cut on her head. Martin gets so angry, he throws Will's phone into the ocean. This is what we can call "the heart" of the film.

Why is this an important shot of Will? After he's left the "ship of state" it shows that he's "all washed up" yet his shirt and shoes in the bag means something has been saved, preserved. This would be a good time to discuss "the call," and why phones are so symbolically important in films. Everyone has a destiny, a purpose in life, and most of our lives are spent preparing ourselves to "answer the call" to duty we are meant to fulfill; if one hasn't prepared themselves to fulfill their destiny, their destiny still calls, but they are inadequate to do what must be done. This conflict is a favorite device in horror films, such as Scream, Night Of the Living Dead and Invasion Of the Body Snatchers (the original and the re-make). In The Cold Light Of Day, Will constantly being on his phone means he is willing to answer the call, but he's answering the wrong call (this is the case with Kim Mills in Taken 2) and Martin demonstrates this to him by throwing Will's phone "overboard." Importantly, it will be his father's phone, after Martin is murdered, that Will takes up as his own because he realizes his father's calling is also his calling (discussed below).

Will, like many Americans today, is more concerned with the economy (his lost business) than the larger "business" of steering a proper course for the government (international affairs, why they are on the ocean) and the future of America (Dara, as a young female can symbolize a possible future for the country) is at danger because no one is watching the way "the winds are blowing" jeopardizing the health and safety of the future (Dara being hit by the ship's beam). Martin throwing away Will's phone is his way of re-directing Will's attention to what is really important, because ultimately, each viewer in the audience (regardless of age) is meant to be identified with Will because all of us have been tending to the business of the economy rather than international affairs. So what does Martin's "call" in life mean to us and why should we pick it up as our own?
The clue is "Godzilla."

It would be easy to get upset with Martin for having a "second family," but we have to remember that American democracy has many children, not just us, and we are responsible for our political siblings just as we are for those of our own family.

I know, I know, you're saying, "Not Godzilla again!"  But just as Godzilla is imperative to understanding The Amazing Spider Man, so it's imperative to understanding The Cold Light Of Day. Steven Spielberg's Jaws was a metaphor for what the Japanese did to America during World War II and American justification for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (please see Jaws & the Cleansing Of America). While the monster shark Jaws symbolizes American fears of the Japanese suicide submarines, for the Japanese, the giant lizard Godzilla symbolized the US and the destruction ravaged upon them by us dropping two atomic bombs; as I explain in post on Jaws, the Japanese started seeking out the help of Godzilla to save them from other monsters who started attacking them, specifically Mothra and Rodan (symbolic of the fast-paced growth of socialism/communism in Asia) so, while the Japanese were upset with us for what we did, they recognized the US as being a "better monster" than the other enemies they had (please see Decay Rate Algorithm & Cross Species Genetics: The Amazing Spider Man for more on this topic). So, when Will refers to his father Martin as "Godzilla," this is what he's talking about!

Carrack later reminds Will of how, when he was little, he got a scar across his palm making her a martini; why does she bring it up? Psychologically, it's meant to establish a bond of trust between them, they know each other and are on the same side; it really serves as a kind of prophecy: drinking the martini is like her selling the briefcase, she is expecting to get something, but both times, Will gets in the way of what she wants and frustrates her designs.

Martin, as a symbol of the "founding fathers" of post-World War II foreign policy, knows that the American economy is not the most important thing in the world, (and this is easier to write, given the  terrible events that have rocked the US in the Middle East the last month) rather, the Middle East peace and stability is the most important because the global stability depends upon it (please see US Officials Didn't link Libya attack with video like the president and secretary of state). We might be reluctant to be the "Godzilla of the Middle East," The Cold Light Of Day tells us, yet the consequences of not enforcing peace is far worse for America and the world if we don't. This is the call Martin is anxious for Will to pick up and answer, to give himself to because it's the important call and it's not by accident that call is tied to a briefcase.

While FABRIK is the name of a nightclub, it's a great play on words, because the "fabric" of Will's soul because, just as Zahir has to decide to believe Will, Will has to decide to believe Zahir and this is the moment that changes everything, and, above all, changes Will.

When an important briefcase appears in a film, it's hard not to link it to the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. We don't find out what is in the briefcase in The Cold Light Of Day, but neither does Will, he has to join the CIA for that. What is important, among many other things, is that an exchange has taken place, instead of being concerned with his personal lost luggage at the start of the film, by the end, he has risked his life countless times to not only stop the corrupt Carrack from selling out Israel, but saved the case itself and it's this shifting of priorities from the personal (his lost business) well-being to the larger, world stage (helping Israel) that converts Will into the hero and becomes the vehicle for him overcoming his inadequacies at the start. In other words, what was erased at the start of the film, is filled out by the end and it is nothing short of his individuation and person-hood.

In the start of the film, it's almost comical and awkward how lacking in physical skill Will is for an action hero, but this, too is intentional, because at the end of the film, Will has accomplished his will, stopping Carrack. In art, especially action films, the hero has "unlimited free will" (as in Will himself) so if Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) wants to slide down a concrete wall without the horizontal velocity crushing him, he can do it, because his physical strength exists in proportion to his inner-strength and virtue as a hero (the stronger the hero's virtue is the greater his strength and stamina, the weaker a hero's/character's virtue, the weaker their strength and will power (please refer to All Points Of Convergence: The Bourne Legacy for more). We saw this in Casino Royale with James Bond (Daniel Craig) at the start of the film being awkward, clumsy and slower than the villain he chased, but by the end, his allegiance to justice and a cause greater than himself has strengthened him to overcome danger threatening him and those he has vowed to protect (please see James Bond: Beyond Boundaries for more). This is the same case with Will in The Cold Light Of Day, the more he dedicates himself to saving his family and doing what is right on the international scale, the stronger Will's will becomes and the more he realizes himself and his potential hence.

We have a greater family than just our immediate family, and when one family is threatened--like Zahir's that was blown up by a market-place suicide bomber--all our families are threatened. Sometimes we take the best care of ourselves when we actually put ourselves to the side, and worry about someone else. (If you missed The Cold Light Of Day in theaters, it will be out on disc between December-January).
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Justice Or Revenge? Taken 2 & American Paranoia

Let's face it: money matters.
No one expected this huge haul for a sequel, and while some critics have placed the success at Liam Neeson's door, the sequel to Taken has raked in twice what the original did and has set an opening record for an action film during the September-October cinema season; we have to ask why? Given the film has received only a 19% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences have graded the film at an average of a B+  (I would give it a B), then what was driving people to see this sequel? Would the film done as well if there had not been the Libyan attacks on the US Consulate and worldwide Islamic protests against America? We can only speculate, but given the inconsistencies between the film's critical reception and how much money it's pulled in, world events are certainly re-coloring the message of the film in a context (probably) never intended.
Which brings us to a genuine problem.

I actually didn't intend for Taken 2 to start the breathing break from our capitalist and socialist break I promised but it fits in nicely with The Cold Light Of Day. I didn't see the original Taken from 2007, but that was a totally different world then compared to today (here is a synopsis of the plot if you haven't seen it). It's important to note that Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and his wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) are separated and their daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is allowed to go to Paris where she is kidnapped and sold into sex slavery before she's saved by her father. Mills kills the man who sold her, and it is the father of that man, Murad, who comes to take his revenge on Mills in Taken 2.

If people were going to see Taken 2 as a result of world wide Muslim anti-America protests, can we interpret the film within this context, or do we have to ignore what has happened in the world (which the film makers obviously could not have guessed would happen) and take the film at face value? It is my experience that the best art is always prophetic, that is, artists (in this case, film makers) are able to articulate internal conflicts and tensions within culture and make an educated guess on where that would lead, and in the case of Taken 2, the guess was right on; in other words, while the film makers could not have known precisely "how," "what," "when" and "where," they knew the "why" and encoded that into the film; catharsis, especially after real-world tragic events, will always be a purpose of art, and I believe the public trauma of the death of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and his being sodomized, as well as the deaths of those American military personnel protecting him and the US Consulate, the attacks on the Consulate on the anniversary of 9/11, then being betrayed by our President and Secretary of State who apologized for us, is what drove so many out to see this film and re-order a chaotic world in terms we are familiar with; did the film accomplish this?

Ben Affleck's Argo opens this week, centered upon similar events, the 1979 Iran hostage crisis during the administration of Democrat President Jimmy Carter. The film, based on the actual caper of the CIA, involved disguising the six escaped Americans as a Canadian film crew to smuggle them out of Iran. I expect great things of Mr. Affleck artistically, as he has fully dedicated himself to advancing the craftsmanship of films on every level, and I have full confidence of the quality of the film; however, knowing Mr. Affleck's liberalism, I expect an interpretation of the film to be along the lines of  Hollywood following President Obama's "lead from behind policy," and for Affleck--not to be showing the situation of radical Islamic anti-American hatred and possible solutions--rather, that America should pull out of the Middle East altogether because we are the bad guys and no amount of good intentions on our part can do anything to help the world, rather like The Hurt Locker, which is an anti-war film on one level only (when liberals start talking, they drop all kinds of important values to the wayside, they just can't help it, and end up contradicting themselves terribly). On the other hand, the newest James Bond film Skyfall, opening November 9, also contains an embedded reference to Istanbul (which is where Taken 2 primarily takes place) in that is where M has Bond assassinated. That will be interesting.

Let's begin with an old, American cinematic tradition involving the law of the Constitution and the actual practice of Americans today: the separation of the father and mother of the future of the country. In other words, film makers have usually employed the status of separation/divorce between spouses to illustrate how the country--the motherland, symbolized by a woman of mature age--to be separated from the law of the Constitution--the founding fathers as symbolized by a male of mature age--and usually a hard worker but misunderstood by his estranged family, but he usually proves himself still the hero in the end; the re-unification of the husband and wife means the stabilization of the American identity between its past and present, equalizing a hopeful future for the country (this was especially popular in John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara films, such as Big Jake and McClintock). This same formula structures the situation between Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) and Lenore/Lenny (Famke Janssen) with their daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and the formula hasn't changed.

The very end of the film, when all has been saved, and Lenore (not wearing her wedding ring to estranged second husband Stuart) happily sits with Bryan's arm around her in an LA ice cream parlor with Kim across from them; it might look innocent, but it's perhaps the second most serious political statement of the film. Of all the places they could go to eat in LA they chose a "newly opened" at the end of the pier 1950s styled ice cream parlor; why? As long-time readers should recognize, the 1950s were that Super-Power time in American history when we came into our own as an international leader in global politics, specifically against socialism/communism. Bryan Mills, being an older male and a symbol of the "founding fathers" in the film, not only invokes the history of American's founding and our ideals as a democratic republic, but, as well, the strength and leadership we have always shown internationally which, because the family is gathered and reunited in this atmosphere, includes the upholding of America staying a super-power.

What Taken 2 really focuses on is the difference between "justice" and "revenge." To Murad, the father of the man Mills killed in Taken, slowly and painfully killing Mills, his ex-wife and daughter is justice; to Mills, that man he killed had kidnapped and sold his daughter, and countless other girls, into sex slavery, so killing him was justice while Murad, who doesn't care about what his son did, only wants revenge. On the larger scale--and I think Taken 2, as well as Argo, Skyfall and The Hurt Locker beg for this--we have to examine the eye-for-an-eye retaliation between the jihad launched against the US on 9/11 and the declared War on Terror resulting, and the resulting suicide bombings and killings and protests resulting from that. This is where the film's most important political message comes into play, and it deliberately sets it up so we are sure not to miss it.

Instead of going to lunch with mom and dad, Kim gets the idea of her recently singled mother going to lunch with dad alone and herself staying by the pool to relax. As Mills and Lenny go to lunch, Mills realizes he's being followed and calls Kim who doesn't answer her phone (another important example of not answering "the call" in life, our destiny and what we are supposed to do). She's wearing a red bikini (pictured above) and we have to ask, is that merely Hollywood sexuality coming through, or is there a meaning? I like to think there is a meaning, especially when we contrast what Kim wears with the pale pink (one could call the color "nude") of Lenny's tank top beneath her sweater. As a symbol of America today, Lenny's faded tank top over her breasts denotes a weariness/inability to nurture anymore (which is what a woman's breasts symbolize artistically, the nurturing potential she has) possibly because she's so busy taking care of her own problems. On the other hand, seeing the flashbacks of trauma Kim experiences when she hears her father tell her they are going to be taken, we could say Kim's ability to nurture--as a symbol of the future America--is filled with anger over what has happened to her and she's buried that anger beneath her depression (the blue shirt and jean shorts). This makes sense when we examine her will power, i.e., her feet, because she wears only flip flops, flimsy things, and because they are slipped on and off easily, so is her will for doing or not doing things (like not really caring if she passes her driving test in the beginning of the film, then starting out being angry at her dad for tracking her, but then not being mad, wanting to take music lessons, then skipping them to be with Jamie). She almost immediately "changes" when she takes an active part in helping in the rescue of her mom and dad: she gets the gun and two grenades then escapes the hotel by going through the maids' locker room, where she tries a locker that is locked, but then finds one opened and takes the clothes therein and puts them on. It's always psychologically/spiritually significant  when a door, window, or whatever is locked when a character tries to get it opened the first time and can't (what it means is context specific) but, in the case of Kim, it's safe to say that whatever her first reaction was, in terms of what she thought  she needed from within herself  to meet the challenge of helping her parents, wasn't the right instinct; symbolically, the clothes she puts on fulfiills what she needs to be in order to fulfill this call of her destiny (see next caption below).

As the murder spree ends, only Murad is left alive and Mills tells him, "If I kill you, your other sons will come and seek revenge." Murad answers that they will. Mills tells him that he will take Murad's word that the blood feud is over between them, and drop his gun and walk away, because he's tired, if Murad vows he will leave him and his family alone. Murad agrees. Mills drops the gun and turns his back. Murad picks up the gun and fires it at Mills' but it's out of bullets. Mills drops the last bullet and puts his hand over Murad's face, pushing him into a spike sticking out of the wall and impales him, Murad dying with his eyes open. This is the film's thesis and what it wants to communicate to us.

I think this scene was actually cut from the film, however, it displays what they are wearing well. Kim's jacket is nearly identical to her father's shirt color (over Mills' gray T-shirt, which, because of his regrets for not being there for Lenny and Kim more, causing Lenny to leave him as they discuss when he realizes they are being followed, probably means "penance" for him, that saving his family from this danger is to make up for not having done more earlier). Kim's jacket, however, is in a military style, with the collar and shoulders, so she's taking what she needs to do and her role as an act of war, she is actively helping instead of passively being rescued or saved (or just waiting). The blue and white shirt means her depression has been changed into wisdom because of what she has learned (depression and wisdom are often linked because it is through the misfortunes and sadness of life that we gain greater knowledge of ourselves and others) while the white means her purity has been saved (the redness of her wrath, the red bikini top, has been washed clean). The similarity of the colors of her jacket and her father's shirt shows how they are united in helping each other and knowing what must be done. Kim also wears white tennis shoes, meaning she has a more active will and she is "tied" to following through with what she must do (the shoelaces instead of just slip-on flip-flops). Hair symbolizes our thoughts and Kim's hair being tied back means she has disciplined her thoughts mostly (she keeps her cool and follows directions) but the stray hairs means she hast "lost control" and gets upset (which we see happen when she's driving the taxi). Lenny wears a shade of purple either meaning suffering or pertaining to royalty; as the matriarch of the family, she is the queen, but she also suffers; more on this below).

It's not going to matter, Taken 2 tells us graphically in this scene, if we leave the Middle East or not because they will continue the violence at whatever cost, so we might as well defend ourselves. To politicians and foreign policy makers in America, this is a radical statement, so much so that they will probably miss it. But that's not the only golden nugget in plain sight in this scene: instead of using the gun to kill Murad, Mills uses his bare hands. The gun can be taken as a sign of technological superiority (remember, for example, in Iron Man, the insurgents needs for better weapons) and Mills doesn't utilize his military advantage, rather, it's his natural strength overcoming Murad and that's a philosophical statement: the man defending his home and hearth is stronger than the man seeking a blood payment (revenge) and holding to that ideal makes us stronger in our efforts at defending ourselves than those attacking us and they will only end up losing face as a result (Mills' grip on Murad's face). The spike? That can easily be interpreted as any number of things, but my take is that, since it sticks out of the wall, and the wall is part of the house (symbolic of the soul), Murad's own being has killed him, i.e., his instinct to shoot Mills in the back is what impales Murad and his whole family.

As the film progresses, Kim has to take to the roof tops in order to locate where her father is. We saw a similar chase scene on dilapidated rooftops in The Bourne Legacy (in the Philippines). In both cases, Americans run on top of third world houses; why? The house symbolizes the soul, so being on-top is a sign of getting "on top of the subject," or being "on top of things" in terms of knowledge and understanding, the kind of perspective you and I attempt to gain when we engage art and film; the films putting their characters on top is an invitation to us, the viewers, to join them on top and take a bird's eye view of what is happening and see the bigger picture the film presents.

At the start of the film, Murad intends to take Mills, Lenny and Kim but Kim is not with them and manages to escape. As part of his revenge, Murad has a small slit cut in Lenny's throat, then has her chained and hung upside-down so her blood will drain to her head and she will die. It's because this is exactly what has happened to America (the motherland Lenny symbolizes) as a result of the 9/11 attacks that this image of Lenny's blood slowly draining out of her is so powerful, the most powerful image of the film. Take the slit on her neck to be the bombing of the World Trade Center (the financial "artery" of America) and you can see how the money spent on the War on Terror, the lives of brave American men and women lost fighting the war, fears of another attack, the paralysis to American air travel (Lenny being chained illustrates how tedious it is to fly now, we're chained) and that we were attacked at all shows how "upside-down" the country has been turned as a result.

This was a well-staged device: please note the "stick" object Mills fights with in this scene, which he took from one of his assailants; towards the end, when Kim has dropped the gun down to her father and tries escaping the man pursuing her, she comes to a dead end and, taking a piece of rebar from a pile of bricks (like the weapon her father uses in the scene pictured above) drops it because she doesn't have his skills to defend herself. Don't get upset with me for this, but one way of understanding the nightmare of the Cold War is that it trained and prepared agents like Mills to handle the War on Terror and resulting attacks whereas Kim and her generation don't have those skills or the guts required to keep America strong and a global leader (again, we'll see this in Expendables 2).

Lastly, the driving test.
I will be discussing this "generation gap" again in Expendables 2: whereas Expendables 2 sees the younger generation as not having the heart to continue America as a superpower, Taken 2 demonstrates Kim can do it, she just needs the "drive" characteristic of previous generations. She has failed her driving test twice, and Mills is trying to help her so she can pass; when they drive together in the start, he warns her about going too fast and being careful not to hit other cars; when they are trying to escape with their lives in Istanbul, he has to tell her "Faster! Go through it!" and wreck the car or anything necessary to save their lives. There is a difference, in other words, when she let's her emotions "drive her" (when she's upset that dad found her with her boyfriend) and the "drive" she needs to save herself (the future of America), her father (the founding father) and her mother (the motherland), and the film employed this technique quite well.

In conclusion, we have to ask if elements of the film--even just the basic premise--was a primary draw for American audiences given recent world events because it had such an unexpected big opening weekend; I think it did (nothing against Liam Neeson, but The Grey, starring him made just under $20 million its opening weekend, and Taken only scored $24 million, so this huge $50 million haul had to come from somewhere). If there had not been attacks on the American Consulate and international protests against America in the last month, I doubt Taken 2 would have done much better than The Grey; that's not to undermine its artistic genius, however, because--as I pointed out above--it wisely contains many prophetic elements revealing insight into current global tensions that have erupted and do not appear to be solved, or even, solvable. It reveals how deeply troubling the attacks have been to Americans and that our leaders have to do something to assure us that it won't happen again, we are safe and justice will be served and seeking justice is not the same as seeking revenge.
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner

Worm Cakes & Scream Cheese: Hotel Transylvania

Essentially, it's Moonrise Kingdom with different costumes.
Genndy Taratkovsky's Hotel Transylvania follows the line of pro-socialist films we have been seeing for months now and follows the same manner as well with a critique of capitalism to turn people away from it, while failing to glorify socialism, and show how the same drawbacks inherent in capitalism are "solved" by socialism. How does it establish itself as being against capitalism? There are plenty of clues and they are the same ones which have continuously showed up in other films, but I would like to start with that feature which would draw a viewer such as myself to the film: the collection of old horror film monsters.

Why is "fire bad" in the film? Fire not only destroys, and purges, but it''s also the sign of a mob! The monsters are afraid of fires because capitalists are afraid of French & October styled Revolutions overthrowing them and killing the upper-class, like the one in The Dark Knight Rises.The absence of fire in the hotel means the monsters and upper-class who can afford to take vacations in today's terrible economy are safe from being killed/punished. Because Dracula risks being burned to death by the sun in the end of the film, Hotel Transylvania suggests that a mob isn't needed to overthrow the upper-class, they will be purged naturally (the burning of the sun).

Both Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie (opening this weekend) know that the "old monsters" have always been culture's catharsis for labeling, identifying and overcoming our fears, like the Boris Karloff classic from 1932, The Mummy, which I have identified as being about the Great Depression (please see The Curse and the Mummy for more). In those films, however, the "monsters" were usually symbols of abnormal sexuality (as in Nosferatu, please see  The Undead: Nosferatu on World War I and homosexuality in the trenches) or other social taboos film makers wanted to keep taboo such as promiscuity (Dracula has often been the primary threat against woman's sexual purity; please see both For the Dead Travel Fast: Dracula and False Light: Interview With the Vampire); now, with a film such as Hotel Transylvania, it's the general population, which is still capitalist, that has become the "taboo faction" of society with socialists inverting the ideas of "normal" and "abnormal."

Dracula with his teenage daughter Mavis who wants to see the world. The film makes us think capitalists are the ones who habitually create "false worlds" to deceive others, but forget how the Soviet Union, North Korea and China have all deceived the world in the past by creating false impressions of prosperity and freedom that did not exist.

Just as (both book and film versions of) Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter establishes itself as being pro-socialist by making all the vampires business owners and wealthy, Hotel Transylvania makes the vampire Count Dracula a business owner and developer of the luxury resort for monsters (and he's a "count," which Frankenstein refers to him mockingly as being "His Lordship," a point of class structure we shouldn't overlook). The point at which Hotel Transylvania negatively illustrates business ownership is two-fold: first, Dracula has to take care of all his guests--so the work itself is drudgery--and, secondly, a legitimate point, Dracula's running of the business tends to come between he and his time with Mavis (and no one would argue that this happens). Before we move onto the other characteristics the film depicts amongst capitalists, and why capitalists, such as myself, are monsters, we should look at the "hero" who depicts socialism and the better standards of living for which the film argues.

Dracula is shown to be a bad employer on numerous levels (a device utilized in Arbitrage, as well) but the film intentionally displays Dracula's superiority complex by his categorizing everyone as either a guest of the hotel--his customer--or his employee, and it's as an employee that Dracula disguises Jonathan, thereby putting Jonathan beneath him economically and socially, although the film reverses that by everyone liking Jonathan and getting upset with Dracula, to the point that, the famous climax of old horror films when the townspeople would mob and go to "get the monster," in Hotel Transylvania, the monsters mob together to go "get Jonathan" and bring him back to Mavis.

How do we know that Jonathan is a "hero of socialism?"
The film erects a series of diametrical oppositions, such as "good and bad," "black and white," "freedom and imprisonment," "fun and boring," "human and human eater," etc., and guess who comes out on the "positive side" of those oppositions each time (The Dark Knight Rises does the same thing, but demonstrating the positives of capitalism, instead)? While Jonathan is the only human with any real involvement in the story, he's also the one who "livens" up the Hotel and brings fun to the entertainment that makes everyone like him (instead of liking Dracula, the owner, so Jonathan is a better "business owner" than the business owner, even). Jonathan's primary identification as a "socialist" however, comes from his limited possessions (he has only a back pack and no known job) and his staying in youth hostels throughout his wide travels (as well as being a vegetarian, more on that below). 

Mavis, Dracula's daughter, symbolizes the future of America, like all young females in narratives, but in Hotel Transylvania, the film makes it clear that the "future of America" is being falsely led: on her 118th birthday, she wants to go meet humans for the first time and Dracula has given her permission because he has built a false village not far away "peopled" with his zombies in disguise. They mock an attack against Mavis for being a vampire and she returns home heart-broken. She falls for Jonathan, thinking he's a cousin of Frankenstein, even as Dracula tries to get Jonathan out of the hotel so she won't "fall for his kind," which Frankenstein tells him is "racist." A vampire making a statement that his vampire daughter and a human can't be together romantically suggests a post-Twilight world wherein there is no moral values separating humans from their greatest enemy, the vampires (and a reference is even made to Twilight in the film). Even though the statement is made by a monster, Frankenstein, it shows the influence Jonathan has over the monsters. No, if you were about to ask, there is no discussion on how Jonathan will be "converted over" to becoming a vampire to live forever with Mavis, or what Mavis will do when Jonathan dies and she's still alive; yes, it's important, because it demonstrates how adverse to reality socialists are in their arguments for their side; we also saw this in Ice Age 4 with the mammoths having possum in them (how did a possum mate with a mammoth? They don't care, neither do they care about a mammoth mating with a ground hog, and this "unnatural" mating shows up in Hotel Transylvania as well).

Food plays a big role in the film, from pancakes filled with live, wriggling worms, to Jonathan himself becoming food for the monsters, and this is one of the (now) typical attacks on capitalism we have seen consistently brought up. The gross food order Frankenstein makes is meant to show that "we are what we eat," and for those eating such disgusting food, we must ourselves be disgusting to want it; Jonathan, on the other hand, orders the vegetarian meal, demonstrating that he is "natural" and "healthy," and for those who want to go the natural route in life, they should also go the socialist route. Dracula, being a blood-sucking vampire, of course symbolizes an employer who "sucks the blood" out of his employees.

The Wolf Man, Wayne, and his wife Wanda, are a sore point of contention with me on this film. Werewolves have had three prominent appearances in films as of late: Underworld: Awakening, Dark Shadows and The Cabin In the Woods. Typically, a werewolf symbolized a man unable/unwilling to control his sexual appetite, thereby reducing himself to an animal (please see The Bright Autumn Moon: The Wolf Man).  The plethora of bratty children Wayne and Wanda have, as well as her being pregnant again, testifies to Wayne's breeding habits; the terror the children wreck is a message for birth control, possibly even pro-abortion. At one point, Wayne is red-eyed and still awake with his pups all around him in bed, sleeping soundly, and he can't get to sleep. This negative image of not just paternity, but of children in general lays out a pro-socialist/Obamacare agenda of the government implementing birth control amongst Catholics who generally favor large families (myself included).

As the owner of a large, upscale hotel, Dracula has the staff needed to run the place: shrunken heads on all the doors constantly saying, "Do not disturb," witches on broom sticks as "housekeeping," zombies as the bus boys and bell hops, as well as knights who act as middle-management (pictured below). After an incident in the hotel, Dracula gets angry with the knight and yells at him, "What do I pay you for?" and takes off; the knight takes the moment to mention, "He doesn't pay me!" and that is intentionally planted in the narrative to create discord between employees and employers and to make people think, "The government would be a much better employer than my current employer!"

An additional facet to the knights acting as middle-management is that it makes capitalism look ancient and silly, whereas, in Resident Evil, we will see, this is actually an advantage. It was the disadvantages of feudalism and the changing work force which gave rise to the open-markets and competition leading to capitalism; Hotel Transylvania thinks this long history is silly and automatically means the American economic model needs to be updated.

We've discussed "vehicles" as symbols of economic stimulation and a great contrast is made between the two in the film. One of the opening shots is of a hearse with the license pate "Undead" which is the shuttle service for the hotel while Jonathan pulls out a green foot-scooter from his back pack, aptly articulating the difference between the two economic models of capitalism and socialism: the hearse, while the car of the dead (because socialists want us to think capitalism is dead) is driving fast and confident through the wild terrain; Jonathan''s portable little scooter is self-operated (the newest green energy) and is promoted as the "it" and exciting thing to have! We saw a similar situation in Madagascar 3, when the bear (symbolic of Russia) tottered around on a tiny tricycle, then exchanged it for a roaring motorcycle, recalling how the Soviet Union went from the inefficient communist system to the fast-paced world of market capitalism. 

Gremlin with Jonathan's scooter. Not only is this a great way to contrast the personal possessions between Dracula and Jonathan, but their lifestyles as well. Dracula has a castle and a successful hotel that serves the needs of his guests; Jonathan has nothing but what is in his backpack and no home, no job, he just "rolls with it." At one point, desperate to get rid of Jonathan, Dracula takes him through a secret entrance and then can't remember the tunnel to take them outside, the castle is so big, mocking the abundant wealth Dracula has. The film also makes it look like anyone can live like Jonathan, and that induces Mavis to go with him but who is going to pay for it? Whose tax dollars will sustain this kind of lifestyle, China's? The ignorance of who pays for the socialist lifestyle--like Jonathan's free-roaming--is a ploy to make people vote for a socialist government because what they think they will personally get out of it.

We recently saw contact lenses being used in The House At the End of the Street and they are used in Hotel Transylvania (funny, the things that film makers pick up on to use?). In Hotel Transylvania, Dracula looks into Jonathan's eyes to erase his memory of what he had seen, but, due to Jonathan's plastic contact lenses, Dracula is unable to. Because the eyes are the window of the soul, Jonathan's plastic covering over his eyes demonstrates how materialism covers over the soul in a socialist government; well, you might ask, if that's what it really means, and the film makers are pro-socialism, why on earth would they put something that negative and condemning in the film? Because they don't believe there is a soul! Everything is material to a socialist, evidenced by the plastic lenses of the contacts, and if you can't shake a stick at it, then, for a socialist, it doesn't exist. Jonathan tries to get the lenses out of his eye with his finger, sending Dracula into a fit of disgust because even the great enemy of humanity knows people have a soul and Dracula can't bear to see Jonathan doing that to his eye! (Please refer to For the Dead Travel Fast: Dracula for more).

Jonathan, not believing he's seeing  a real, walking skeleton, sticks his hand inside its rib cage and another skeleton comes along and says, "Get your hand out of my wife!" (and Jonathan sees her showering later). This is actually an argument we saw with Magic Mike and the "sharing" of a wife because in matrimony, your spouse belongs to you; socialism makes fun of a spouse being personal property of the other (mainly because of feminists) but it also drives home for capitalists the license of sharing in a socialist government and the total break down of morality.

Last but not least, is the role art plays in the film.
Mavis asks Jonathan if he's ever been endangered of being eaten and he says no, except once at a Slipknot concert, a guy was going to eat him; what does that mean? Slipknot has been surrounded by controversies, but, most importantly, they would be considered a product of capitalism because they have been so commercially successfully, introducing the art in capitalism or socialism argument once more. By linking up a controversial, heavy-metal band with being eaten, introduces a lousy moral argument into the fray, namely, that capitalism produces "human eating" art, like the vampire employer/business owners and that such art doesn't exist in socialism. Well, that's partly true, because art doesn't exist in socialism, it's controlled by the government so it's all propaganda. 

You are probably sick of all the capitalist and socialist interpretations as of late (although, really, it's not my fault, it's what all the films are discussing!) but we will take a short break: I am seeing Taken 2 tonight (which has scored $50 million this opening weekend) and getting that up, but then I will be posting on Paranorman and The Cold Light Of Day, both of which will take us away from the socialist/capitalist dialogue for at least a breather!
Eat Your Art Out,
The Fine Art Diner