The Destruction of Identity in Vertigo, The Tenant, & Mulholland Drive
The rudimentary form of narrative storytelling lends itself towards application to
an individual subject’s life story due to the correspondence of a narrative’s finite bounds
and the subject’s mortality. Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), The Tenant (dir.
Roman Polanski, 1976), and Mulholland Drive (dir. David Lynch, 2001) are consistent
with this idea because their narratives follow an individual human subject from an
anecdotally significant beginning to their death. I will argue that the anthropomorphized
narrative compels the subject’s suicide through the misrecognition of personal identity.
This occurrence brings about the themes of narrative significance, subject motivation,
identity, recognition, and mortality.
The specificities of basic narrative method include the Aristotelian triumvirate
form—consisting of beginning, middle, and end—and a fundamental progression in
time. These requisites belie the potentially infinite scope of narrative and set a primitive
restriction to the most fundamental linguistic practice. Once the boundaries of narrative
have been recognized, a formal equation and basic concepts can be established in its
name. The semiotic codification of these concepts is so great, in fact, that many
narrative structures and concepts translate into multiple mediums. James Brooks
elaborates on this in Reading for the Plot.
Narrative in fact seems to hold a special place among literary forms—as
something more than a conventional “genre”—because of its potential for
summary and retransmission: the fact that we can still recognize the
“story” even when its medium has been considerably changed. (Brooks 4)
This recognition...
... middle of paper ...
...dentities constitutes a narrative detour, and necessitates the subjects’ suicides in
the three films.
Sources Cited
Barthes, Roland. S/Z: An Essay. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974.
Blow-Up. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. Perf. David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave.
1966. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2004.
Brooks, Peter. Freud’s Master Plot. New York: Harvard University Press, 1984. pp 90-
112.
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot. New York: Harvard University Press, 1984. pp 3-36.
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: W. W. Norton Company,
Inc., 1961. pp 1-78.
Mulholland Drive. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Naomi Watts, Laura Harring. 2001. DVD.
Universal, 2002.
The Tenant. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Roman Polanski, Isabelle Adjani. 1976. DVD.
Paramount, 2002.
Vertigo. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Perf. James Stewart, Kim Novak. 1958. DVD. Universal,
1999.
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Acrophobia, the extreme or irrational fear of heights. In the film Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock, one of the main characters Scottie is a retired police officer with a terrible fear of heights; this fear causes him to quit his job as a police officer. A little later in the film, Scotty is seen with Midge, his ex-fiancé, where they talk about an old college friend, Gavin Elster. Elster wishes to meet with Scottie in hopes that he will follow his wife, Madeleine, which seems authentic and sincere. Madeleine has been showing some “odd” behavior, Elster believes this may be attributed to a supernatural possession of some kind. This intrigued Scottie. Elster tells Scottie to meet him and his wife the following night for dinner, but he is not actually
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
... shadow of his narration suggests the significant influence of Joe’s bias on the manner in which the film is portrayed. The writer claims to represent the voice of empiricism, promising to deliver “the facts…(and) the whole truth” before the story gets “all distorted and blown out of proportion”, but his personality overlays the narration and his supposedly impartial retelling of the series of events contains opinions, editorials, and literary references all too reminiscent of a Hollywood drama. Joe Gillis, being a writer of fiction with an intense personal investment in the story he is telling, cannot be expected to adhere to scientific impartiality. Instead, he illustrates an essential tenet of storytelling and Hollywood mystique, the subjective nature of facts when coupled with human interpretation. Joe Gillis shows how a road can be more than a strip of asphalt.
Identity is primarily described primarily as what makes a person who they are. While it is seen as an individual asset, one’s identity can be shaped and persuaded not only by life experiences, but by society as well. Bryan Stevenson speaks on several controversial issues and proclaims certain societal problems and the typical behaviors noticed in response to them. How one approaches the issues that are spoken about may expose their true identity. Stevenson argues that how one reacts to racial inequality within the criminal justice system may regulate their identity. In addition to that, how dealing with the nation’s history may force a growth on one’s identity, eventually bringing peace and acceptance to the nation. Lastly, how one views the
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I will begin my essay by looking closely at the narrative of Sunset Boulevard to see where and how the film represents the Hollywood Studio System. At the beginning of the film the audience is introduced to Joe Gillis, a script writer who is struggling to pay his rent as he in unable to sell his scripts to the ‘majors’ of Hollywood. The film follows Joe to ‘Paramount Pictures’ one of the major studios in Hollywood, which the film pays a large self reference to as the producers of Sunset Boulevard as well as representing the studio system.
Throughout world society, racism in others has caused them to become “blind” or ignorant. Racism has been around since anyone can remember. In racism in America, the struggle of African Americans seems to stand out the most. In Ralph Ellison’s, The Invisible Man, the narrator struggles to find his own identity despite of what he accomplishes throughout the book because he’s a black man living in a racist American society.
“The scariest thing about distance is you don’t know if they’ll miss you or forget about you” (Nicholas Sparks). Perry Patetic in her passage, argues that though distancing oneself has its advantages, it also has its disadvantages, such as this society’s lack of close, familiar relationships. The author supports his argument by first describing how our “fast-moving society” is furnished with different types of carriages and how easy it is for the commonality to relocate and forsake one’s antiquity. He continues by presenting the consequences of long distance relationships. The author’s purpose is to inform mankind that even though disassociation from one’s relations has its benefits, it also has its hindrances in order to enlighten the people
How does one truly know oneself? Can anyone? The question of the “self” is fascinating, has pondered the minds of many philosophers over the centuries, and consequently has taken drastic change by the social conditions of the modern and postmodern world. Two centuries ago, this question was fairly easy to answer. Today, however, identity seems to no longer be a given, leaving this question unanswered. This sense of rootlessness is a byproduct of changing social conditions, which ultimately caused the shift from the stable view of self to the instable and disjointed postmodern view of self. By taking a closer look at Descartes’ modernist view of self compared to that of Nietzsche and Rorty’s postmodernist view, one will recognize the social conditions that have caused the shift from modern to post-modern philosophical thinking and how post-modernism has convoluted the efforts to find one’s identity. My intention is to explain how Christians are uniquely situated to provide answers that fragmented postmodernists are seeking by examining the forces in today’s social conditions that are foiling the efforts to find their identity.
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.