Film as Text

1. Film as Text Applying critical literacy to Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning Mississippi Burning

2. Functional Literacy with Film • How do filmmakers expect us to ‘read’ film? • By making sense of the story they tell through the various layers of its medium of communication…

3. Film depends on Narrative • It contains traditional elements like: • Setting – where and when a story occurs • Character – who have roles in the story • Plot – what happens in what order • Genre – conventions of a story type • Realism – devices to make a story believable • Parallelism – repetition for contrast or change • Argument – the point of view an author encourages an audience to have on their story

4. Narrative is shaped by Film’s Form • Creating and using a world through which meaning is produced by: • Montage – the juxtaposition of images in a scene’s sequence of shots • Time – manipulated by the shortened, lengthened or simultaneous presentation of events • Space – created by moving characters/objects in/out of frame and using camera angles, shot montages & sounds

5. And reshaped through Film's Language • A combination of codes and conventionsthat directly convey meaning: • Technical – codes of filmic construction • Framing (camera distance; lens choice; camera angle) • Shot duration; Choice of film stock; Lighting; Special effects • Symbolic – codes of presentation • Performance; Setting; Costumes; Colour / Lighting • Audio – sound codes • Music; Sound Effects; Dialogue • Written – titles; credits

6. But what is Critical Literacy? You taught me language, and my profit on't Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you For learning me your language! Caliban fromWilliam Shakespeare’s The Tempest If literacy is the ability to read and write using a wide range of communication to help us “know” and “learn”, “critical literacy” is the ability to look critically at how language influences and shapes what we know and how we learn.

7. The Power of Grammar: 101 • “Mummy, the milk was spilt on the table” • “Bombs were dropped on Bagdad” What do these two sentences not tell us? The use of passive syntax removes agency from a statement

8. “The Mokusatsu Tragedy” • On July 26, 1945, the United States, Great Britain and China issued the Potsdam Declaration. In terms more lenient than had been expected, the Allies called upon the Japanese government to proclaim unconditional surrender of its armed forces. In essence, the Allies were calling upon Japan to surrender and end WWII without further bloodshed. Two days later, President Suzuki of Japan met with the press and said that his cabinet was holding to a policy of Mokusatsu. The translator at the Domei News Agency translated his message and from the towers of Radio Tokyo the news flashed to the world that Japan had decided “to ignore” the Potsdam Ultimatum. • The result of this rejection is the well-known tragedy of the modern world at Hiroshima –Nagasaki. “The Mokusatsu Tragedy” from The Power of Words by Stuart Chase, 1953

9. “The Mokusatsu Tragedy” • There is strong evidence to suggest that the main cause was the misinterpretation of one word Mokusatsu. Mokusatsu has no exact counterpart in English and in fact is even ambiguous in Japanese. What President Suzuki meant by the use of this word was that he was withholding comment for the present time, the equivalent of a modern politician saying “no comment”. Unfortunately the official translator took the other meaning of the word “to ignore” which was taken by the Americans as the outright refusal to comply with the Potsdam Declaration. The fault lay as much with President Suzuki for choosing such an ambiguous word as it did with the translator. Mokusatsu has two characters in Japanese moku, which means silence, and satsu, which means to kill, literally to kill with silence. To Japanese this can mean either “to refrain from comment or to ignore” “The Mokusatsu Tragedy” from The Power of Words by Stuart Chase, 1953

10. The Power of (a) Symbol(ic code) This is also called a paradigm = progress

11. Critical ‘readings’ of Hollywood • A 2003 book Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness studies how white identity is imagined in Hollywood movies by white directors featuring white protagonists interacting with people of another colour. This collaboration by a sociologist and a film critic studies the way in which race relations are fictionalized and pictured in the movies… [arguing] that films are part of broader projects that lead us to ignore or deny the nature of the racial divide in which Americans live. Even as the images of racial and ethnic minorities change across the twentieth century, Hollywood keeps portraying the ideal white American self as good-looking, powerful, brave, cordial, kind, firm, and generous: a natural-born leader worthy of the loyalty of those of another colour.

12. Critical reading questions to ask • How does Mississippi Burning ask to be read? • What features of its story and film language (its narrative) encourage us to read it in particular ways? • What paradigms are used to frame its story? • What doesn’t Mississippi Burning tell us? • What gaps or silences does it leave out?

13. Genre Identify the paradigms that these genres use to make meaning • Crimethriller investigation • Mismatched Buddy flick • Western • Outsider cleans up isolated corrupt town • Romance • Handsome stranger saves unhappy wife

14. Argument • Civil Rights movement • What point of view does the film offer on this historical event? • How is it represented in the film? • What paradigms of race, gender and politics are used?

15. Parallelism – the repetition of situations or events to use contrast or change to tell the story Montage – the juxtaposition of images in a scene’s sequence of shots Narrative & Filmic Techniques Combined…

16. Critical Reading of a Key Sequence • Focus question:“How does Mississippi Burning argue that Civil Rights were achieved by lone white men acting as maverick heroes?” • The analysis of a key sequence should answer this by examining in detail how the narrative is shaped by the film’s language and form