Tag: movies

Art, Artists, Money, and Fans

October 22, 2018 / Kyle A. Massa

My favorite band is The Who. I love their energy, their live performances, and their unique blend of raucous energy and thoughtful storytelling. I also love Keith Moon’s drumming.

But if you read enough about Keith Moon, you’ll find he wasn’t always the nicest guy. He was a constant drunk who caused thousands of dollars of property damage throughout his life. His wild behavior even led to the accidental death of a friend, an act which would haunt him the rest of his life.

That’s not all. Pete Townshend and John Entwistle, the guitarist and bassist of the band, both regularly cheated on their wives, much like many musicians during that era.

So then. What if I like the art, yet don’t support the behavior of the artist? Is it still okay for me to listen to their music?

That’s the question we’ll address today. As fans and consumers of art, can we enjoy art without supporting the behavior of the artists who make it?

The Financial Aspect

Sticking with the rock music theme, AC/DC understood the value of money to artists. In fact, they immortalized it by taking the phrase “Money Talks” and turning it into a song. (Theirs is stylized as “Moneytalks,” but you get the idea.)

For artists, money does talk. It says, “I came from a fan who likes your work and wants you to make more.” Money is the best way to support the things you care about. Word of mouth is good, tweeting is fine, but the almighty dollar ensures artists make more art.

The Problem Grows

Art is never made in isolation. Even solitary authors have alpha and beta readers, editors, sometimes publishers or agents. And then there are films, which sometimes have thousands of people working on them. Have you ever sat through the credits for The Lord of the Rings trilogy? It’s like another movie in and of itself.

It takes a team to turn art into reality. Which expands the scope of the topic we’re examining. When we support art financially, we’re supporting not just one person, but many.

So what if the second unit director on the latest Marvel film is a psychopathic cannibal, ala Hannibal Lector? (I’m sure she or he is not, but bear with me here.) I’m guessing you don’t support cannibalism. Yet your opening night movie ticket supports the film that the second unit director made. So, in a way, you’re supporting a cannibal. (Again, I’m sure the second unit director for Captain Marvel or whatever doesn’t really eat people.) Now we see the conundrum. It’s not just one person you’ve got to worry about—it’s possibly thousands!

There’s No Simple Answer

There really isn’t. I’ve thought about this constantly, especially in regards to my favorite genre of music, classic rock. The more you read about male rock musicians of the 60s and 70s, the more you realize they were on the whole not very nice people. Many of them were drunks, adulterers, and misogynists. Not all, but many.

Now one might argue the solution is to only pay for art made by artists whose morals align with yours. And hey, that’s your prerogative. The thing is, you might miss out on some great work. Furthermore, we’ve seen this tactic backfire before.

Though it’s not quite a perfect comparison, take Lance Armstrong and his Livestrong Foundation as an example. When I was growing up, I saw those yellow bracelets every day. Yet in 2012 and onward, when Armstrong’s doping scandal went public, the bracelets vanished. People stopped their donations to the Livestrong Foundation, all because of its founder’s actions.

When we frame this example in the art/artist mold, we clearly see the problem. The art (in this case, cancer research) is clearly deserving of support. Yet it doesn’t get that support because people disapprove of the artist (who is in this case, Lance Armstrong).

Maybe the you-can’t-support-the-art-without-supporting-the-artist argument doesn’t always work. By the way, I’m working on a trademark for that name, since it rolls off the tongue so well.

Can Anyone Separate the Art from the Artist?

Based on the argument I’ve made, you might be wondering if you can ever appreciate art again. What if you really love a book but really detest its author?

I’m not in the business of telling people what they should and shouldn’t like or spend money on. The purpose of this article is not to dissuade you from any art. Rather, it’s just to explore a topic I and others have thought about at length.

Furthermore, I don’t mean to make it sound like all artists are jerks. Artists are just like anyone else—some are jerks, but the vast majority are good people you’d be happy to support.

Anyway, I believe the answer is both yes and no. It all depends on the fan.

That’s Us!

As a fan, we absolutely have the right to spend where we want to. If you choose not to listen to the music of The Who because Keith Moon was kinda nuts, it’s your right to do so. You can donate to Livestrong because you like what they do—never mind the association with Lance Armstrong.

I think this common axiom about art applies well: When you release it into the world, it’s no longer yours. If fans treat art this way, that might allow us to be more okay with artists who aren’t necessarily people we want to emulate. We can at least feel like the work is separate from the artist. For some fans, this might be an important skill to develop. Many artists are good people who we would probably be friends with if we met them. Some might not be. And if we can separate the artists from the art, we’ll have a much easier time being fans.

So for all the Who fans out there, keep on loving Keith Moon’s drumming. I know I will.

Kyle A. Massa is a speculative fiction author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction.

Why There Should Be More Movies That Don’t Make Sense

November 2, 2015 / Kyle A. Massa

After I finished watching Alejandro G. Innaritu’s Birdman for the first time, my initial reaction was this: “I would need to watch that ten more times to really get it.”

I mean, let’s run through this for a second. The film is about Riggan Thomson, a guy who may or may not be schizophrenic and who (spoiler alert) seems to literally fly away from his problems at the end of the film. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll remember the scene where Riggan runs through Time Square in his tighty whities. And then there’s the fistfight with Ed Norton, fresh out of a tanning booth.

I mean, really…what the hell does any of this mean?

I don’t know. But that’s what I like about it.

I’ve seen enough transparent movies, and I bet you have, too–that is to say, movies that viewers can fully grasp in one sitting. To be fair, I love movies like that. I saw Jurassic World this summer and loved it. It’s not especially deep and you won’t gain much from watching it a second time (except maybe enjoying the dinosaur showdown at the end a little more), but it’s a fun movie.

And I think that’s fine. A movie shouldn’t set out to confuse its audience. However, I think more movies should challenge the audience. And that’s exactly what Birdman does.

Birdman is a story that you can’t consume in just one sitting. It’s a film that rewards careful viewers. It’s a story that offers something new every time you consume it. Still, Birdman is probably not to sort of movie you’re going to go see with your buddies on a Saturday night in July. Weird stories are not easy to get on the first go around.

Hollywood knows this, and I think that’s why you don’t see weird films nearly often enough. They know what kind of story sells, and it more or less goes like this: Main Character begins in a world of order. Disorder causes a problem that only Main Character can fix. For the next sixty minutes or so, Main Character tries and fails to fix her/his problem. Finally, Main Character faces the problem in the climax and either succeeds or fails in the attempt (usually succeeds).

It’s a simplified version, sure, but it’s a story humans have loved ever since stories have been told. Just ask Joseph Campbell.

It’s a good formula, and one that’s been proven to work. But formulas are for math and science. They’re dangerous when used in art.

Art shouldn’t be formulaic. Art should be spontaneous, unpredictable, and, it shouldn’t always make immediate sense. Because isn’t the whole point of art to make you think, to make you look at the world a different way? Nothing makes us think quite like something totally strange and totally unlike what we’ve seen before.

Or a guy who caws like a bird.

The Babadook and the Power of Fantasy

June 23, 2015 / Kyle A. Massa

The Babadook is not your average horror film.

There’s no gratuitous violence. There aren’t any jump-out scares. No blood. And–thank god–there are no dumb teenagers.

The Babadook is the story of Amelia Vannick (played by Essie Davis), a widow who lives alone with her troubled son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Amelia’s husband died on the same day her son was born, and neither of them have been quite right since. One night, Amelia finds a creepy book in her son’s room called Mister Babadook. The horror begins when the creature from the book stalks the family.

It might not sound all that scary from my description, but, trust me, The Babadook will frighten even the most experienced horror junkies. So what does this film do so well?

In a word: juxtaposition.

The Babadook pairs reality with fantasy, depression with home invasion, and suppression with the supernatural. Despite the poster and the synopsis, this film is as much about loss as it is about a monster.

Take writer/director Jennifer Kent’s interpretation of her own film, for instance: “Now, I’m not saying we all want to go and kill our kids, but a lot of women struggle. And it is a very taboo subject, to say that motherhood is anything but a perfect experience for women.”

It certainly isn’t for our main character, Amelia. Her husband died, she works at a job where she’s surrounded by death (a nursing home), and her son Samuel builds homemade weapons in the basement like a troubled little MacGyver. We can tell right from the beginning that the stress wears on her–and that much of her frustration is directed at Samuel.

As the film progresses and the Babadook invades the home, we see Amelia’s aggression heighten. The Babadook, in this case, represents Amelia’s suppressed anger; it’s no coincidence that it chooses to possess her and not her son. You’ve probably seen the moment from the trailer when Samuel shouts over and over, “Don’t let it in!” But his mother lets the Babadook–her anger–take full control, and that’s when things get even worse.

That is the power of fantasy. The Babadook is the personification of Amelia’s negative emotion, and a good one at that; if suppressed anger had a corporeal form, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too pretty. Amelia sees the Babadook everywhere–in her home, at the police station, in her neighbor’s home. Here, writer/director Jennifer Kent gives us an important clue through the use of fantasy: Amelia can’t escape her negative emotions, no matter where she goes.

One of the coolest parts of the film is the use of montage. Not the kind of montage you see in a romantic comedy–I’m talking Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of film montage. Basically, the idea is that if you constantly show two images together in sequence, you can give both images a new, greater meaning. For example, if you show an image of a crying baby followed by an image of the grim reaper, you’ve given greater meaning to both images: you’re indicating that that baby might die, or you’re showing the passage of life, from the cradle to the grave.

Montage is a type of juxtaposition, and Kent uses it extensively with the Babadook and Amelia’s depression. We often see images of Amelia and the Babadook mirrored–Amelia holds a steak knife and the Babadook has knifelike fingers, for instance. Eventually, the real image and the fantastical one combine, and both transcend their original meaning: they represent a mother’s wish to kill her son.

The ending, to me, is the most intriguing part of the whole film. Amelia confronts the Babadook, and in doing so, she confronts the anger she feels toward her son and the depression she feels regarding her husband’s death. But, interestingly enough, that doesn’t actually kill the creature. The Babadook lives in the basement, chained up and weakened, but still alive. Amelia goes down to feed it, and the film ends.

What does this mean? Well, it’s certainly not the sort of happy ending we might expect. If we look back to classic works of horror, we see the recurring use of the subterranean to represent the subconscious (Lovecraft and Poe use this form of symbolism a fair bit). When you see people going down into the earth, it’s as if they’re traveling to a suppressed, secret part of the psyche.

Amelia’s basement serves the same role–she hides her negative emotions down in her subconscious mind, where they can’t hurt her or her son any more. For a while, at least…

You don’t need violence and blood to be frightening, and I think The Babadook proves that beyond a doubt. In this age of senseless violence and gratuitous gore, I was very happy to find a film that focuses on psychology rather than shock value. Writer/director Jennifer Kent uses fantasy to frighten us in a way that reality never could.

So if you decide to watch, I suggest doing it on a weekend. You probably won’t be getting any sleep.

Like creepy stories? You might enjoy horror story “Sightings.” It’s about a reporter tracking an angelic creature that brings with it a mysterious plague.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

December 29, 2012 / Kyle A. Massa

I just saw The Hobbit a couple of nights ago, and my first thought upon leaving the theatre was…what was wrong with that?

I’ve heard mostly bad things about this new installment, and I’m not entirely sure why. Criticisms range from slow pacing to tonal incongruence with the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Radagast the Brown (he’s already getting Jar-Jar Binks comparisons). I suppose I’d agree with the pacing argument, but only at the end of the film. Otherwise, I’d say that it was excellent. Not as great as the original trilogy, of course, but still pretty damn good in its own right.

Firstly, the effects were astounding. I know special effects don’t make a movie but…wow. They were just jaw dropping. No, literally. When the new and improved Gollum came on screen, my jaw actually dropped. I used to say that Avatar was the pinnacle of CGI. No longer. Right from the opening prologue scene, I was blown away.

I thought the film had a typically good script from the trio of Jackson, Phillipa Boyens, and Fran Walsh. Guillermo Del Toro even got a credit, which was nice to see. They did a good job weaving in some of the threads from The Silmarilion, and also expanding on other scenes. Some cameos by Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, and Christopher Lee were nice additions as well.

Another thing I liked were the homages to the original trilogy, both in the script and visually. For example, the shot where Frodo slips in the Prancing Pony and the ring falls onto his finger is copied exactly in The Hobbit, only this time with Bilbo instead of Frodo. Also, Azog comments on the dwarves smelling of fear. A similar remark is made by the orc Gothmog in Return of the King. A lot of franchises reference themselves, Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, but I found this to be a much more subtle and much more enjoyable way to do it.

Martin Freeman and Ian McKellan certainly stood out as Bilbo and Gandalf, respectively. Freeman brought the same energy to the role that Ian Holm had, plus an extra ounce of neurotic humor for good measure. And of course, Ian McKellan just was Gandalf. Great performances there.

As I alluded to at the beginning, the end of the film really dragged for me. Without spoiling anything for those who haven’t seen it, there was a lengthy, exciting action sequence that seemed like the logical climax and ending of this first installment. But in the words of Gandalf and Thorin, the party comes “out of the frying pan and into the fire,” immediately engaging in another skirmish. Faithful to the book, yes, but on film I thought it became anti-climactic. And not only that, there were still about fifteen minutes left at that point. Could’ve been much more exciting if they’d just ended it a tad sooner.

…

Overall, I thought that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was too harshly judged by critics and audiences alike. Sure, there were some problems with the tempo, but nothing so heinous that the film was ruined.

Rating: 8.5/10