Julia Leyda – Antenna

Enough Said? Beasts of the Southern Wild, SharkNado, and Extreme Weather

Julia Leyda — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 13:00:14 +0000

In this short post I’d like to juxtapose an unlikely pair of films in order to push harder at the taken-for-granted mythologies of extreme weather: reading acclaimed 2012 indie film Beasts of the Southern Wild ($1.8 million budget; 16-week shoot) alongside SyFy’s widely-discussed (if hardly acclaimed) July 11 SharkNado ($1 million budget; three-week shoot) produces a unique opportunity to (temporarily) disregard distinctions of taste that would assign them to separate categories, while also calling attention to unexamined assumptions about appropriate affective responses to the recycling of familiar generic clichés in these vastly different texts. Ironically, although the art-house aura of Beasts marks it out for a more educated audience, the consciously trashy SharkNado acknowledges climate change as a cause of extreme weather, couched in a preposterous B-movie context. Yet both movies foster affective responses that allow us to discount the extreme weather that provides their central crises, using the catastrophe as a proving ground for paternal love.

Though Beasts features offensive, retrograde race, gender, and class politics, it has elicited deferential online discussions that rarely voice any critique (although bell hooks and some bloggers call out its flaws). Perhaps its poetic sheen, with lots of lens flares and handheld jiggling, has inoculated the film from political analysis, despite the fact that it portrays poor, rural, African American people speaking minstrel-show English, with lines like “they be talkin’ in codes” explaining how the six-year-old protagonist can hear animals speak. Along with a few drunk, dirty, working-class whites, heroine Hushpuppy and her father Wink live in filth and disarray, yet the film proffers them as an idealized utopian community. Beasts trucks in the recirculation of all-too-familiar clichés about people of color and the working class: closer to nature (“we’s who the earth’s for,” Hushpuppy tells us), working roots and shooting gators (Louisiana—exotic!), fiercely loyal, and explosively violent. Wink’s open-handed slap knocks Hushpuppy to the ground, yet because he later expresses his love for her on his deathbed, many viewers forgive his abusiveness.

Hushpuppy narrates in voiceover the tumultuous period in her life when Wink falls ill and a hurricane floods their rural community, The Bathtub, outside the south Louisiana levees. But the post-Katrina context in Beasts is submerged in the miasma of magical realism, which mystifies the extreme weather events in the film. We see many Bathtub denizens evacuating before the storm, but Hushpuppy and drunk Wink hunker down to ride it out. The threat to the Bathtub is ascribed vaguely to climate change, as Hushpuppy’s teacher explains: “the fabric of the universe is coming unraveled” which means “the ice caps gonna melt, water’s gonna rise, and everything south of the levee is going under.” Waters rise, not due to any human causation, but a mystical rupture in the universe. Redeemed father Wink watches approvingly as Hushpuppy faces down prehistoric aurochs, loosed by the melting ice.

Given this mystification of climate change and environmental degradation through noble savage primitivism, the movie is astonishingly popular. The Beasts Facebook page has over 76,000 likes, with posts touting a live performance of the film’s score in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and wishing readers “Happy Earth Day from the Bathtub!” The movie has inspired a Twitter hashtag #BEASTit, mainly used as encouragement in sporting and racing events; its @BeastsTheMovie twitter handle has over 3600 followers. On the official Beasts website, we can read about its four Oscar nominations and see animations of review snippets: A.O. Scott’s “a blast of sheer, improbable joy,” Bryan Alexander’s “spellbinding,” and Manohla Dargis’s “hauntingly beautiful.” Along the sidebar scrolls a procession of tweets, mostly expressing fans’ hyperbolic praise: “this movie has inspired me and changed my life” says jessicamartinez.

Unlike Beasts, nobody sees SharkNado as life-changing. Likewise, it cannot be mistaken for an art film—it positions itself consciously in the tradition of B-movies, in a line of SyFy made-for-basic-cable schlockfests such as SharkTopus and Chupacabra vs. The Alamo. Special effects hearken back to Bride of the Monster’s Bela Lugosi wrestling a plastic octopus, the tornadoes are CGI, with scripting and acting to match—but SharkNado’s genius lies in catering to fans of B-movies (tagline: Enough said.) Such fans (and others, presumably) went online en masse via Twitter during the premiere broadcast, peaking at 5000 #SharkNado tweets per minute, which Twitter ranks among the biggest trend surges in its history. Although video on demand is touted as the wave of the future, the simultaneity of watching a show as it airs along with millions of other viewers remains a strong component of viewer pleasure.

I'm not so sure about the science in this movie you guys. #SharkNado

— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) July 12, 2013

Wil Wheaton’s (@wilw) popular tweet, “I’m not so sure about the science in this movie you guys. #SharkNado,” encapsulates the sarcastic, Mystery Science 3000 tone of the TweetNado. Unlike the storm in Beasts, which hazily alludes to Katrina, the extreme weather event in SharkNado is never credible. Nevertheless, it ably conforms to weather disaster movie conventions such as shots of bending palm trees and driving rain, and the reconstituted family unit at the end: hero-dad Fin gets back together with his ex-wife after rescuing her and their daughter along with lots of other people (although his ex’s husband is conveniently eaten). We even get the added pleasure of seeing the reporter eaten by a wind-propelled shark. Before she dies, we learn that sharks from the Gulf of Mexico have migrated into the unusually warm Pacific, where Hurricane David is now driving them up the California coast and “experts are saying global warming is the reason for this unprecedented event.”

SharkNado’s knowing nods to the pleasures of bad movies, as well as its many allusions to Jaws and other classics, suggest a target audience of savvy, sophisticated viewers, a group that may overlap with Beasts‘s demographic. But the affect SharkNado generates is less serious, less misty-eyed, and dedicated to the fun of hurling ridicule at a B-movie. With its spoofing tone, SharkNado produces a sharper, more critical mode of viewing than the art film, though it doesn’t pretend to Beasts’s intellectual depths. Both fantastical films employ extreme weather as a backdrop for adventure and heroism, including rejuvenating the father as the patriarch of the family; both the derision heaped on SharkNado and the precious sentimentality of Beasts operate to sideline any engagement with extreme weather beyond a staging ground for cliché.

Feet First

Julia Leyda — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:29:21 +0000

People who love New Orleans will tell you there is no place else like it. Even before Katrina, locals would often say it’s not really an American city; that culturally, it’s more Caribbean; that it’s a “third world” city. One of the things that this kind of exceptionalist rhetoric doesn’t allow for is that New Orleans has a lot in common with other American cities, like Baltimore. My friend Melva said this episode reminded her of The Wire–when I got to watch it later I could see why. Residents of large cities all over the US are afraid to testify, threatened by crooked cops, traumatized by violent crime, fleeced by profit-taking speculators, plagued by corrupt governments, sold short by failing school boards. In New Orleans after Katrina, disaster capitalism just speeds up the process and turns over more rocks, more quickly to reveal the vermin below.

“That’s New Orleans, too,” says Antoine as the cop cars speed past him, likely on their way to the scene of Harley’s murder. He means that the city is more than the drunk St. Patrick’s Day revelers walking past; he and Sonny are both answering the question posed in this episode’s title, “What is New Orleans?” Yet Antoine also echoes many of the show’s critics, who complain that the city is more than just the partying, food, music, and tourist sights that appear so often in its episodes. This episode, signaling the season’s stronger emphasis on crime and corruption, might appeal more to those demanding greater verisimilitude and less televisual tourism, to use Lynnell Thomas’s apt expression.

For many in New Orleans there comes a point when we have to answer a difficult question: is living here worth your life or that of your family? Where do you draw the line? What are you willing to risk, to possibly sacrifice, in order to live in such a magical place? Seeing what is still happening to Ladonna and probably more than one person we know in real life, we ask this question. I answered it back in the early 90s, when most people I knew had had a gun stuck in their face or worse. I was lucky in that I was willing and able to leave and make my life in other places once I chose to leave. But many people stay, believing that there is nowhere else they can live–because of their family ties, work, community, and/or a sense of cultural belonging. Like the Midcity homeowner who says, “When I leave this house, it’s going to be feet first.” In the reverse shot, we see not Hidalgo, who is talking to the gentleman, but his cousin the roofer, transfixed by the conversation. The slow zoom into his closeup emphasizes the emotional power of the man’s ferocious love of his home. A commitment, a conscious choice that this will be where I die, also characterizes Harley, who does indeed die in this episode in the gritty realism we have come to expect from George Pelecanos. If the show had seemed too touristic, this brutal episode offers a possible counter-balance to that.

On the other hand, for those seeking more verisimilitude, I give you the Davis character. So many criticisms of the show focus on what an ass the character of Davis McAlary is. Yet I have to say, Davis is an integral part of the “realism” of the show as well. To paraphrase from a comment thread on an earlier post, I think Davis’s character personifies the enduring and ever-adapting tradition of white supremacy in New Orleans, in this case the music scene. Davis sees his new label, funded by his eccentric Garden District aunt, as a vehicle for his overtly political music that he hopes will speak to the New Orleans public–perhaps the way Creighton Bernette’s YouTube rants gained a local following. A fool’s errand, as Sound of Treme blog points out. New Orleans music has always been “political” but not usually in overt ways; more often it takes the form of “feel good music” to express resistance indirectly.

In some ways, both Davis and Creighton bear the burden of representing the white male New Orleanian in all his flawed and self-obsessed glory. We were supposed to be horrified by the scene a couple weeks back when Davis urges his new front man Lil Calliope to listen to Woody Guthrie and The Clash. (Why didn’t the show’s writers have him suggest some black activist music like Marvin Gaye or Nina Simone? Because it’s Davis. He’s a self-involved white boy.) This week, he visually and verbally dominates Lil Calliope during their WWOZ guest appearance. In that scene, the tradition of white appropriation and exploitation of black talent lives on. But when Lil Calliope’s new song, “The Truth,” a non-political dance cut that Davis has no claim to, becomes a local hit, Davis responds with disbelief, disappointment, petulance, and then a smidgen of (stoned) generosity, saying to Annie, “I’m happy for him.” His ability to recognize how childish he sounds and to laugh at himself shows that even this character, who is the target of some stupendously venomous comments on the Times-Picayune’s Treme blog, is developing in baby steps this season. Davis’s character is another necessary element for some kind of narrative truth, “The Truth” that he doesn’t want to hear, a representation of the (sometimes ugly) reality of the city in fictionalized form. Moreover, what is truly impressive in this storyline this week: Davis’s attempts to use Calliope’s talent to put over his own new venture may or may not work, but Calliope has circumvented Davis entirely and made his own name. The glee of watching the opening scene at ‘OZ when he hands the DJ his other CD over Davis’s head is priceless!

The “truth” of Treme’s New Orleans is at its best a heady cocktail of tourist delights, urban decay, trauma and corruption, and glimmers of progress as the city struggles to adjust to the new normal.

Throw the Baby Out the Window

Julia Leyda — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:00:14 +0000

Like the Mardi Gras episode last season, and many episodes of Treme, cross-cutting among the ensemble cast restricts the depth of development for any single story thread, and means that every minute counts. Sometimes an episode’s widely divergent storylines don’t sit well with all viewers–particularly clear in the mixed reception of the way Ladonna’s assault was intercut with more superficial events in the threads of Delmond and Antoine in “On Your Way Down.” Although I disagree with Salon‘s Matt Zoller Seitz about that episode, and wholeheartedly applaud raynola‘s rebuttal at Back of Town, I understand why many feel that the editing and discordant tones of the various threads didn’t suit that episode’s trauma. Critics and commenters have been debating this aesthetic choice for a while, but I think it works here.

This episode skitters among the cast, giving us just enough, showing what Mardi Gras 2007 means for each character. The rapid-fire montage sketches each character just enough so that we see what she or he is up to, piquing our interest, and then moves on to the next. Enough backstory exists so that each snippet plugs into our previous knowledge of, and emotional connection to, the characters. We can be happy to see Del marching with his father, whose blue-tarp-topped Gentilly house is still gutted down to the studs but takes pride of place on Del’s patch for his suit. Many viewers are even sympathizing with Nelson, Davis, and Sonny, all mighty unpopular so far. Annie’s Cajun Mardi Gras, the weakest thread this week, felt too long with little development payoff and almost ethnographic, pandering to the desire for the exotic (and Cajun Mardi Gras is exotic, even for most New Orleanians). I find myself, as I often did last season, wondering what is going on with Jacques, the sweet sous-chef. The ultra-brief glimpses of Ladonna, ensconced in her comfy beige Baton Rouge sofa with her bucket-sized whiskey glass was all it took: I couldn’t get her out of my mind through the rest of the episode. She replaces Creighton as the embodiment of the city’s struggles this season.

Toni’s thread stands out in particular as reaching for the heights of Sirkian maternal melodrama and I mean that in a good way. She continues to allow the shards of her relationship with her daughter to lacerate her. Toni’s suffering stems from her grief over Creighton and from her guilt-ridden, masochistic embrace of Sofia’s (understandable) hostility. Sofia’s fragility and her resilience are vying for control over her story–at this point it’s neck and neck. Melissa Leo’s and Khandi Alexander’s faces express pain that won’t be healed soon or easily, or possibly ever. The damage in the Bernette and Williams families is under the surface, but it is festering. Even the fact that both women are middle-class and probably can pay for psychiatric care doesn’t mean they will have access to it in the health care wasteland of post-Katrina New Orleans.

But this carnival episode, like last year’s, also reminds me of the potential of every Mardi Gras to provide a transcendent collective experience. The heavily cross-cut montage creates a unity across the different stories to create a collective sense. While it’s true that everyone’s Mardi Gras experience is colored by his or her own emotional state at the time, as my dear friend Jolie says, there is also a group vibe. I risk repeating a cliche here because it is true: the value of carnival in my experience is the feeling that the whole city is transported together in a whimsical state of joie de vivre, the group high that engulfs the rich and poor, black and white, Uptown, Downtown, and back of town, the “family” fun and the more “adult” possibilities. The touristic elements of the show, as previous posts have pointed out, sometimes involve too many name-checks, too much striving to “get it right”–which, don’t get me wrong, is a welcome change from the travesties of the past. But this episode shows the heart of Mardi Gras without being corny, as virgotex argues in the Back of Town blog. For all their immaturity, Davis and Antoine each do the right thing. The sense of community that can come from carnival won’t erase the trouble in your heart, as the magical Cajun might say. But it can bring out the fellow-feeling in people and foster fleeting utopian moments. There is a sense of disaster averted–fears of violence prove unwarranted, as we see Colson’s character work “to protect and serve” at Muses and finally his coiled-spring tension easing at midnight on Mardi Gras. The cooperative spirit–that even the police (at their best) convey–is what I love about the line in the song “Carnival Time” that invites the listener to join in: “if you put a nickel well now, I put a dime / We can get together and drink us some wine.”