Michael Powell's Peeping Tom contains an even more trenchant critique of the close up. In this text the close up is an act of murder and the 'director' is a psychopath. Not even Sunset Boulevard is as scathing.
Posted with LifeCast
Showing posts with label Crime Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime Fiction. Show all posts
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Leading the Team
Hegemony is a representational strategy of power; it involves the uses of representations to control people (to manufacture the consent of the ruled to the rule of the rulers) and a fine set of examples of such controlling representations can be found in four current crime fiction TV shows.
The basic model of representational hegemony is that all social groups bar the elite are presented as unfit to lead or rule in one way or another. This is based on the elites power over the mechanisms of representation and of their prevention of of self representation by all other social groups. The elite are the only group with the social power necessary to make representations of and for society - the quotidian representations that normal people construct during interpersonal interaction are of insufficient durability and lack mechanisms for dissemination into the wider society.
In the past these extensive and widely distributed social representations have been far more direct and obvious. The stereotype of women as hysterical and therefore emotionally unfit to participate in rule was one such hegemonic representation. It was one part of a wider network of representations of women as subordinate (indeed as property) that denied women participation in the governance of their society and control of themselves. Racist representations that aimed to divide and terrorise were extremely common in all europeanised societies and are still a part of contemporary media discourse. This fostering of fear was and is intended to cut both ways. The racist representation terrorises the 'other' group by inflicting symbolic violence on them and by showing how close to physical violence they are. It also creates an ogre - the monstrous 'other' - with which the 'norm' group can be frightened.
Contemporary social representations are much less direct and overt and it is to one set of these hegemonic representations in crime fiction TV that we now turn. In Waking the Dead, CSI and its siblings CSI:Miami and CSI:NY, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, and NCIS (a study in hegemony and interpellation in it own right & a borderline case as its teams is not as identity diverse as the other example texts) we find the same pattern of representation regarding leadership.
Although the team who constitute the central character group in the show are identity diverse - mixtures of genders and ethnicities on the whole as sexuality is carefully ignored - in each case the leader is the early or actually middle age white male; Boyd in Waking the Dead, Grissom in CSI, H & Mac in the other CSIs, Jack Malone in Without a Trace, and Gibbs in NCIS. In each case the legitimate authority of the white middle aged leader is repeatedly stressed and the subaltern status of all the other personnel on the team is reinforced. The hegemonic utility of this representational system (that is how this set of representations bolster the rule of the elite) lies in the clear delineation of leaders and led and the legitimacy of this division and the insistence that certain groups will all ways be found amongst the led.
In Missing Persons the first story of the current series of Waking the Dead - first broadcast in two parts 14th & 15th April 08 - the principle criminal protagonists were two tough, violent and very resourceful women one of whom was set upon a course of extreme violence until such point as she was faced down by the ever authoritative Boyd. The confrontation between Boyd and the former active service INLA member was a straightforward depiction of the triumph of his legitimate and rational authority over her rage and violence. That is to say it was a straightforward demonstration of who ought to be allowed to lead society and who ought to be controlled by society.
It is worth noting that this leadership representation is not limited to crime fiction the bricolage (see also here) of Sherlock Holmes that is House works on exactly the same basis and reinforces exactly the same representation of society. Finally part of the joy of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes is in the fashion in which they subvert this representational system. Gene Hunt may well be the leader of the team but his leadership is not unquestionably legitimate and his authority is always suspect. Not least because he may well be a figment of the imagination.
The basic model of representational hegemony is that all social groups bar the elite are presented as unfit to lead or rule in one way or another. This is based on the elites power over the mechanisms of representation and of their prevention of of self representation by all other social groups. The elite are the only group with the social power necessary to make representations of and for society - the quotidian representations that normal people construct during interpersonal interaction are of insufficient durability and lack mechanisms for dissemination into the wider society.
In the past these extensive and widely distributed social representations have been far more direct and obvious. The stereotype of women as hysterical and therefore emotionally unfit to participate in rule was one such hegemonic representation. It was one part of a wider network of representations of women as subordinate (indeed as property) that denied women participation in the governance of their society and control of themselves. Racist representations that aimed to divide and terrorise were extremely common in all europeanised societies and are still a part of contemporary media discourse. This fostering of fear was and is intended to cut both ways. The racist representation terrorises the 'other' group by inflicting symbolic violence on them and by showing how close to physical violence they are. It also creates an ogre - the monstrous 'other' - with which the 'norm' group can be frightened.
Contemporary social representations are much less direct and overt and it is to one set of these hegemonic representations in crime fiction TV that we now turn. In Waking the Dead, CSI and its siblings CSI:Miami and CSI:NY, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, and NCIS (a study in hegemony and interpellation in it own right & a borderline case as its teams is not as identity diverse as the other example texts) we find the same pattern of representation regarding leadership.
Although the team who constitute the central character group in the show are identity diverse - mixtures of genders and ethnicities on the whole as sexuality is carefully ignored - in each case the leader is the early or actually middle age white male; Boyd in Waking the Dead, Grissom in CSI, H & Mac in the other CSIs, Jack Malone in Without a Trace, and Gibbs in NCIS. In each case the legitimate authority of the white middle aged leader is repeatedly stressed and the subaltern status of all the other personnel on the team is reinforced. The hegemonic utility of this representational system (that is how this set of representations bolster the rule of the elite) lies in the clear delineation of leaders and led and the legitimacy of this division and the insistence that certain groups will all ways be found amongst the led.
In Missing Persons the first story of the current series of Waking the Dead - first broadcast in two parts 14th & 15th April 08 - the principle criminal protagonists were two tough, violent and very resourceful women one of whom was set upon a course of extreme violence until such point as she was faced down by the ever authoritative Boyd. The confrontation between Boyd and the former active service INLA member was a straightforward depiction of the triumph of his legitimate and rational authority over her rage and violence. That is to say it was a straightforward demonstration of who ought to be allowed to lead society and who ought to be controlled by society.
It is worth noting that this leadership representation is not limited to crime fiction the bricolage (see also here) of Sherlock Holmes that is House works on exactly the same basis and reinforces exactly the same representation of society. Finally part of the joy of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes is in the fashion in which they subvert this representational system. Gene Hunt may well be the leader of the team but his leadership is not unquestionably legitimate and his authority is always suspect. Not least because he may well be a figment of the imagination.
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Elementary my dear Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni
The BBC/HBO adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency was able to let its sumptuous location filming do a great deal of the work establishing the text as realistic that is so important for crime fiction. HBO of course are renowned for their use of location filming - The Sopranos and The Wire both make very effective use of the locals they are set in to establish them as realistic as have many other important HBO products - and the BBC does from time to time make very great use of on location filming when the discourse of realism of the text requires it. However, a well written and well directed 105 minute superior TV movie filmed entirely on location in Botswana must have been budget stretching. This lavish location filming has set the realism bar very high and it will be interesting to see if the 13 part series that is to follow can maintain that standard.
The screen-writing by Richard Curtis and direction by Anthony Minghella gave the text a rather lovely narrative naturalism that suited the piece very well. Minghella was all ways a natural story teller and his background as a writer informed his direction as his work is not very filmic rather it uses naturalistic mise-en-scene to make it seem as though the story tells itself. The highly filmic styles of Scorsese, Tarantino, Spike Lee et al that are based on showing you that you are watching a film - consider the brilliant filmic surface Scorsese constructs as a metaphor for glamour in Goodfellas - do not always lend themselves to easy telling of a tale.
The text also displays an normalising representational strategy in regard of Africa. Gaborone is in this text no more or less exotic than, the similarly populous, Brighton (and indeed far less 'other' than East Grinstead). Indeed the version of Baltimore to be found in The Wire seems more alien and other than Mma Ramotswe's Gaborone. This normalising representation is rather refreshing and the presentation of the characters was as naturalistic as the telling of the story and both were essential to the strong realism of the text.
Mma Ramotswe join a short and honourable list of TV detectives (such as the observational savants Robert Goran, from Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Jonathan Creek) whose magical powers of observation have been inherited from Sherlock Holmes himself. This prodigious perceptive power is even more an index of the presence of Holmes than the Pipe & Deer Stalker Hat that Sidney Paget conjured. This power of observation, that was Holmes foremost talent, is most obviously pointed to at the beginning of A Scandal In Bohemia from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes where Holmes gently chides Watson for not having noted that there are seventeen steps up the stairs of 221b to their room. In The No1 Ladies Detective Agency Mma Ramotswe puts the same talent on display during her first meeting with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and at the same time shows us her utter suitability for the task of detection.
The screen-writing by Richard Curtis and direction by Anthony Minghella gave the text a rather lovely narrative naturalism that suited the piece very well. Minghella was all ways a natural story teller and his background as a writer informed his direction as his work is not very filmic rather it uses naturalistic mise-en-scene to make it seem as though the story tells itself. The highly filmic styles of Scorsese, Tarantino, Spike Lee et al that are based on showing you that you are watching a film - consider the brilliant filmic surface Scorsese constructs as a metaphor for glamour in Goodfellas - do not always lend themselves to easy telling of a tale.
The text also displays an normalising representational strategy in regard of Africa. Gaborone is in this text no more or less exotic than, the similarly populous, Brighton (and indeed far less 'other' than East Grinstead). Indeed the version of Baltimore to be found in The Wire seems more alien and other than Mma Ramotswe's Gaborone. This normalising representation is rather refreshing and the presentation of the characters was as naturalistic as the telling of the story and both were essential to the strong realism of the text.
Mma Ramotswe join a short and honourable list of TV detectives (such as the observational savants Robert Goran, from Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Jonathan Creek) whose magical powers of observation have been inherited from Sherlock Holmes himself. This prodigious perceptive power is even more an index of the presence of Holmes than the Pipe & Deer Stalker Hat that Sidney Paget conjured. This power of observation, that was Holmes foremost talent, is most obviously pointed to at the beginning of A Scandal In Bohemia from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes where Holmes gently chides Watson for not having noted that there are seventeen steps up the stairs of 221b to their room. In The No1 Ladies Detective Agency Mma Ramotswe puts the same talent on display during her first meeting with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and at the same time shows us her utter suitability for the task of detection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)