Essay: The critical reception of Ursula K. Le Guin's "Left Hand of Darkness"

Whilst the literary history of science fiction (SF) has been marked primarily as a male domain, ‘women have been writing science fiction for as long as science fiction has been around’ (Larbalestier 2006:xviii). Indeed most commentators agree that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818), was the first genuine example of SF. Thus, it could be said that the genre of SF was inaugurated ‘with a woman’s critique of scientific or technological development within a patriarchal society’ (Mellor 1982:244). With the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, feminist SF emerged, which embraced ‘the political “sexual revolution”, uncovered the genre’s ingrained sexism, and challenged male supremacy through time and space’ (Jones 2009:485). In this essay I will be discussing the critical reception of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), one of the most read texts in the feminist SF canon, if not SF as a whole. In particular, I will be focusing on examples of the early criticism that arose, with particular attention on the supposed failures of Le Guin’s imagining of an androgynous society, and her widely criticised use of the male pronoun. 

The relationship between science fiction and feminism becomes apparent when you consider how both fields engage with discourses that repeatedly challenge ‘the stability of boundaries between categories and concepts’ (Seed 2005:n.p.). One of these concepts is gender. Feminist thinking which is inherently utopian, in seeking to eliminate discrimination on the basis of gender, ‘posits a gender-free alternative world that does not now exist but which is possible within historical time and space’ (Mellor 1982:243). In this way, feminist writers have turned to SF as a genre, which ‘provides the opportunity to test various hypotheses concerning societal organisation and ethical codes’ (Mellor 1982:244). As noted by Annas (1978:144; my emphasis) 

Implicit in science fiction literature is a non-ethnocentric and dialectical vision of society: non-ethnocentric in that a fundamental premise of the genre is that things-as-they-are should be questioned rather than merely accepted and described; dialectical in that alternate paradigms are played off against any given reality. Science fiction…is structurally suited to a role as revolutionary literature. 

According to Le Guin (1979:162), The Left Hand of Darkness, ‘is the record of my consciousness, the process of my thinking’. It is a ‘thought-experiment’ in the same way that Schrödingers’ cat was in quantum physics. She notes that ‘one of the essential functions of [SF]…is this kind of question-asking: reversals of an habitual way of thinking, metaphors for what our language has no words for as yet, experiments in imagination’ (Le Guin 1979:163). The radical and revolutionary thought-experiment Le Guin was interested in posing was a society in which gender is eliminated ‘to find out what was left. Whatever was left would be, presumably, simply human. It would define the area that is shared by men and women alike’ (Le Guin 1979:163). However, she notes that, ‘as an experiment, it was messy.’ Regardless of how messy it was, The Left Hand of Darkness has been immensely important ‘for people writing from a feminine perspective or looking for ways to question discourses of gender and sexuality’ (Pearson 2010:139).

The winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, The Left Hand of Darkness not only established Le Guin as a major science fiction writer, but it also drew significant critical attention to her work, and indeed ‘[m]ore academic work has been written about Le Guin than about any other SF writer, including H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley’ (Pearson 2010:136). In November 1977, the academic journal Science Fiction Studies, dedicated its entire issue to “The Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”. As a self-declared feminist, Le Guin has ‘influenced and inspired several generations of SF readers, writers, and critics…and is credited with being influential in showing that SF has literary merit’ (Pearson 2010:137). This has mostly been due to the attention that has been paid to her by critics outside SF. For example, in Robert Scholes’s essay, “The Good Witch of the West”, he asserted that Le Guin was ‘the best writer of speculative fabulation working in the country [at the time], and she deserve[d] a place among our major contemporary writers of fiction’ (cited in Bittner 1979:37).

In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin imagines the possibility of biological androgyny; that is, a single reproductive sex fused with male and female characteristics’ (Mellor 1982:251). Set on the imaginary planet of Gethen, also called Winter, Gethenians are biologically neuter. In the chapter, “The Question of Sex”, the female narrator, in providing an ethnographer’s field report, theorises and describes Gethenian sexual physiology. Thinking the alien race ‘an experiment’, we are told that ‘the sexual cycle averages 26 to 28 days’, for which ‘21 or 22 days the individual is somer, sexually inactive, latent.’ On about the 18^th day, the individual enters a period called kemmer. In this 6-day period of fertility,

the sexual impulse is tremendously strong…controlling the entire personality, subjecting all other drives to its imperative. When the individual finds a partner in kemmer, hormonal secretion is further stimulated…until in one partner either male or female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly, foreplay intensifies, and the partner, triggered by the change, takes on the other sexual role…Normal individuals have no predisposition to either sexual role in kemmer; they do not know whether they will be male or female (96-97).

In regards to childbirth, ‘the mother of several children may be the father of several more’ (97). It is in this way that Le Guin is able to write one of the greatest sentences in the history of literature: ‘The king was pregnant’ (106).

The narrator of the chapter then looks at the social consequences of this biological androgyny. Given that any Gethenian is liable to be

tied down to childbearing…no one is quite so thoroughly “tied down” here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be – psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally…Therefore, nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else (100).

On Gethen, ‘there is no unconsenting sex, no rape.’ There is ‘no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive’. In fact, there is ‘no tendency to dualism’ (101). Perhaps the most remarkable conclusion of this is ‘the elimination of war’. The narrator quotes an ancient source: “did they consider war to be a purely masculine displacement-activity, a vast Rape, and therefore in their experiment eliminate the masculinity that rapes and the femininity that is raped?” (102).

Critical reception of The Left Hand of Darkness has ‘displayed a tension of opposites appropriate to the novel’ (Spivack 1984:57). According to White (1999:47), when the novel first appeared, it did not garner completely favourable reviews.’ For example, Alexei Panshin, reviewing the book for Fantasy and Science Fiction, deemed it a ‘flat failure’, and was the first critic to object to Le Guin’s use of masculine pronouns when referring to the androgynes (cited in White 1999:47). The feminist scholar and science fiction writer, Joanna Russ, in her article, “The Image of Women in Science Fiction”, laments that whilst Le Guin was able to imagine how a people’s culture and institutions would be very different from ours, she fails in leaving out the family – ‘childrearing is left completely in the dark, although the human author herself is married and the mother of three children.’ Russ (1972:89-90) also criticises the use of the male protagonist, Genly Ai, a human anthropologist on Winter, and the fact that the Gethenian main character, Estraven, is represented primarily as masculine – ‘at least, “he” is masculine in gender, if not in sex.’ With regards to the use of the male pronoun, she concedes that due to ‘a deficiency in the English language…these people must be called “he” throughout’ (Russ 1972:90).

The controversy continued in 1971, when Australian science fiction magazine SF Commentary, published an article by Stanislaw Lem. In “Lost Opportunities”, Lem criticises the novel, noting that ‘[i]t carries an important message, but it does not develop the message.’ He notes, [a]lthough her anthropological understanding is very good, her psychological insight, on the other hand, is only sufficient and sometimes even insufficient’ (1971:22). Lem feels that the novel is ‘psychologically unsound because the Gethenians’ constant gender change should wreak havoc on relationships and personal identity’ (White 1999:47). He takes further umbrage at Le Guin’s failure to represent the Gethenians as anything other than wholly masculine – ‘because Karhider garments, manners of speech, mores and behaviour, are masculine. In the social realm, the male element has remained victorious over the female’ (Lem 1971:24).

In a later issue, Le Guin (1972:91; original emphasis) vigorously defends Lem’s challenges. She invites Lem, or anyone else, to ‘point out one passage or speech in which Estraven does or says something that only a man could or would say.’ Instead, she blames cultural conditioning, such that ‘we tend to insist that Estraven and the other Gethenians are men, because most of us are unwilling or unable to imagine women as scheming prime ministers, haulers of sledges across icy wastes, etc.’ As for Gethenian clothing, she notes that she modelled the garments on typical Eskimo attire (Le Guin 1972:92). In reply to the common argument over the use of the male pronoun, Le Guin (1972:91) acknowledges how the ‘use of the masculine pronoun influences the reader’s imagination’, but defends her use on the basis of the limitations of her medium, and not wanting to ‘deform English’. She even gives an example of the difficulty of deploying a neuter pronoun by re-writing a passage using se/sem/sen. It should be pointed out that the Australian SF author Greg Egan successfully used a neuter pronoun in the impressive post-human novel Diaspora (1988), where he used ve/vim/vis.

One of the most interesting aspects about Le Guin as a writer is that she is also a critic, and open to changing her mind. She says, ‘it is rather in the feminist mode to let one’s changes of mind, and the processes of change, stand as evidence – and perhaps to remind people that minds that don’t change are like clams that don’t open’ (Le Guin 1989:7). In response to her many critics who all brought her to task on her decision to use male pronouns, her unwillingness to allow Genly and Estraven to have sex, and the masculinity of her imagined world, she wrote two essays. In the first essay, “Is Gender Necessary?”, Le Guin (1979:163) identifies herself as a feminist, and explains the process by which she eliminated the Gethenians of gender to ‘find out what was left.’ The essay is mostly a defence of her decisions, including the use of the male pronoun, but she does admit that she might have been more clever in creating the Gethenians.

In the second essay, “Is Gender Necessary? Redux”, Le Guin (1989:15) notes that in the first essay, ‘I was feeling defensive, and resentful that critics of the book insisted upon talking only about its “gender problems”. She also changes her mind on the use of pronouns, noting the exclusionary effect of ‘the so-called generic pronoun he/him/his’, which ‘exclude[d] women from discourse’ (1989:15). Le Guin ultimately capitulates, accepting that ‘this is a real flaw in the book.’ She also gives in to the critics who noted that sexuality for Gethenians is necessarily heterosexual – ‘I quite unnecessarily locked the Gethenians into heterosexuality. It is a naively pragmatic view of sex that insists that sexual partners must be of the opposite sex!’ (Le Guin 1989:14). With regards to the male point of view, she notes that the book ‘allowed men a safe trip into androgyny and back, from a conventionally male viewpoint. But many women wanted it to go further, to dare more, to explore androgyny from a woman’s point of view as well as a man’s’ (Le Guin 1989:16).

In conclusion, this essay has provided a discussion on the critical reception of one of the most important and widely criticised texts in feminist SF, and SF in general. Examples were provided from critics who noted the limitations, gaps and problems in Le Guin’s imagining of a biologically androgynous society. Whilst many other examples could have been provided, the discussion has been limited to criticism situated around the early reception of the work. Understanding how The Left Hand of Darkness has been received critically also sheds light on how SF as a genre is received both within the genre, and outside it. Finally, as a canonical text, further enquiry into the history of the critical reception of the novel may also bring into question the processes of canonisation, and where SF stands in the literary firmament. 

References
Annas, P.J. (1978) “New Worlds, New Words: Androgyny in Feminist Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, 5 (2): 143-156.

Bittner, J.W. (1979) “A Survey of Le Guin Criticism” in J. De Bolt (ed.) Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyages to Inner Lands and to Outer Space. New York and London: Kennikat Press: 31-49.

Egan, G. (1988) Diaspora. London: Millenium.

Jones, G. (2009) “Feminist SF” in The Routledge Guide to Science Fiction. e-book, accessed 21 September 2011, .

Larbelestier, J. (ed) (2006) Daughters of the Earth: feminist science fiction in the twentieth century. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Le Guin, U.K. (1969) The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books.

Le Guin, U.K. (1972) “Re: Lost Opportunities”, SF Commentary, 26: 90-93.

Le Guin, U.K. (1979) “Is Gender Necessary?” in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons: 161-169.

Le Guin, U.K. (1989) “Is Gender Necessary? Redux” in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. New York: Grove Press: 7-16.

Lem, S. (1971) “Lost Opportunities”, SF Commentary, 24: 17-24.

Mellor, A.K. (1982) “On feminist utopias”, Women’s Studies, 9 (3): 241-262.

Pearson, W.G. (2010) “Ursula K[Roeber] Le Guin (1929-)” in M. Bould, A.M. Butler, A. Roberts and
S. Vint (eds.) Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction. London and New York: Routledge: 136-141.

Russ, J. (1972) “The Images of Women in Science Fiction” in S.K. Cornillon (ed.) Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press:79-94.

Seed, D. (ed.) (2005) “Introduction: Approaching Science Fiction” in A Companion to Science Fiction. e-book, accessed 21 September 2011, http://www.blackwellreference.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/subscriber/book?id=g9781405112185_9781405112185.

Spivack, C. (1984) Ursula K. Le Guin. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Various contributors (1977) “The Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin”, Science Fiction Studies, 2 (3).

White, D.R. (1999) Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics. Colombia: Camden House.

Essay: A critique of the morality of violent video games

What are the arguments that violent video games are immoral? Which arguments provide the strongest reasons for regulation? In recent times there has been a moral panic over violence in video games. Some media commentators have sought to link video game violence to the horrendous spate of school shootings which have become a sad reality in the USA and Europe. Whilst we should be concerned over the avid consumption of media which portrays violence and other immoral content, the arguments posed by such commentators tend to be overly emotive and simply based on rhetoric, rather than hard evidence of causation or real harm. This essay will discuss the questions first posed. This will be achieved by looking at the problem through the lens of three ethical approaches – consequentialist, deontological and virtue ethics. Ultimately, it will be shown that violent video games are immoral, not because of their effects, consequences, or failure of duty, but because of the impact they have on the virtue of the player.

The most vociferous argument from the moral panickers is that video games are immoral because exposure to so much simulated violence and death desensitises the player to violence and death; therefore, such exposure will make it easier to perpetrate real violence. It is within this context that violent video games are blamed by the media, or invoked in discussions about high school massacres (McCormick 2001, p. 277). To support this argument, empirical research which supposedly links violent video games and real world aggressive behaviour is raised in support of this position (Schulzke 2010, p. 127). The argument then follows that the distribution of these violent video games should be restricted through legislation (Sicart 2009, p. 3).

This is the most prevalent type of objection to violent video games, and comes from consequentialist moral reasoning. Such an approach is concerned with the way an ethical subject acts to produce the best consequences for all concerned. However, in taking the interests of others into account, a consequentialist must balance which consequences are considered and how much weight is applied to each. A utilitarian approach is often taken, which suggests the best course of action is that which maximises the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ (LaFollette 2002, p. 9). 

The act of playing computer games has many consequences, however, the moral implications of playing violent games is hard to determine (Reynolds 2002, p. 4). For example, whilst there are plenty of meta-studies of the literature which argue that simulated violence is harmful, there is also a significant amount of work on the contrary that shows bias among researchers critical of gaming (see Anderson and Dill 2000; Ferguson 2007). There may also be positive benefits which outweigh the potential harms of video games. These benefits include: entertainment value, increased dexterity and problem solving skills, economic advantages, and technological advancement (Schulzke 2010, p. 130; Reynolds 2002, p. 5). 

So, even if the empirical studies turned out to be true and there was a causal link between these games and violence, a consequentialist arguing for their immorality would have to prove that the costs outweigh the benefits. Furthermore, the cost of banning and/or censorship has to be considered as an imposition against free speech, which is essential to liberal democracy and carries a high priority as a right (Schulzke 2010, p. 135). If it is to be accepted that some games are banned (as some are in Australia), it follows that in order to be consistent, other media or activities which display similar or a greater amount of violence should also be restricted (Schulzke 2010:135; Fyfe 2011). This then, is the weakest of the moral positions that violent video games are immoral. 

The next argument comes from Kantian deontology, which is based on moral obligations to duties and rights, in which the rightness or wrongness of an act is judged according to its conformity with duty, and is to be considered removed from consequences (McCormick 2001, p. 282; LaFollette 2002, p. 10). From this perspective, the immorality of a violent video game should focus on how players act, with the morality of the act being determined by how others are treated within the game world (Schulzke 2010, p. 128). This approach starts with Kant’s (1996, p. 73, 80) second formulation of the categorical imperative which states:

1. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.
2. So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.

It is clear that real violence against another human violates the first statement. However, given the fictional nature of violent video games, the player is not committing violence against another human; rather it is violence against a representation of a human (or alien, animal, etc) character. Therefore, violent video games do not violate the first statement (Waddington 2007, p. 124). In the second statement, a player could be said to be violating this maxim if they were to behave with bad sportsmanship in a game against another player. This is because the player gives their personal interest priority over that of an opponent and treats them poorly in the interest of gratification (Schulzke 2010, p. 128). 

In focusing on respect for others, the deontologist could argue that as the game encourages using others to progress through the game, it encourages the player to treat others as mere means to an end (Gotterbarn 2010, p. 375). In destroying an avatar, the act is immoral only when there is an intention to actually harm someone (Schulzke 2010, p. 129). Where the deontologist does have an argument, is that there is clear justification for regulation based on the duty of governments to protect its citizens from harm. It is the responsibility of governments to protect minors from harm and inform consumers through suitable systems of content classification (Reynolds 2002, p. 7-8). Here we have John Stuart Mill’s famous harm principle – ‘[t]hat the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’ (Mill 1971, p. 15; my emphasis).

The final ethical position is also the oldest and takes its cue from Aristotle, who defined ethics as ‘a practical science, as a practice of virtues oriented towards the achievement of a better life’ (cited in Sicart 2005, p. 15). This position is best explained by McCormick (2001, p. 284) who provides the example of holo-rape and holo-murder, in which a simulation allows a player to commit these heinous and grossly immoral acts in a virtual environment. He notes that there is something wrong with the activity without having to look outside for consequences or breaches of duty – ‘there is something wrong with the act solely with respect to the person who commits it’ (McCormick 2001, p. 285).

Returning to Aristotle, the question of a player’s character is ‘more fundamental and important than a person’s obedience to rules or conduct’ and exceeds the ‘implications of an act for other people’ (McCormick 2001, p. 285). Therefore, the virtue ethicist can provide a reasonable account for our strong moral intuition that games which involve extreme immorality such as holo-rape and holo-murder, and by extension, violent video games, are immoral. In participating in these ‘simulations of excessive, indulgent, and wrongful acts, we are cultivating the wrong sort of character’ (McCormick 2001, p. 285). In other words, the virtue of the player is eroded, and they are distanced from the chance to achieve eudaimonia – a deep and fulfilled happiness through the capacity to reason; that is, to be human (McCormick 2001, p. 285). 

However, whilst the virtue ethics approach provides the better insight into the immorality of violent video games, it can’t answer for their regulation. Simply being immoral is not reason enough to justify legislation for censorship or outright banning. To ban or restrict any type of media based on purely supposed immoral grounds is paternalistic and a form of legal moralism. In other words, it is the interference of the state with another person against their will, with the defence that they are being protected against harm; that is, ‘the idea that certain ways of acting are morally wrong or degraded and may be prohibited’ (Dworkin 2010).

In conclusion, this essay has sought to answer the questions first posed: What are the arguments that violent video games are immoral? Which arguments provide the strongest reasons for regulation? This was achieved by looking at the problem through the ethical approaches of consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. It was found that the consequentialist position provides little support for regulation and is the weakest argument from a moral standpoint. The deontological response, whilst it struggled in condemning the immorality of violent video games, actually provides the strongest reason for regulation due to the duty of governments to inform consumers and protect minors from harm. Finally, the virtue ethics approach provided the strongest approach to understanding why such games could be considered immoral, but failed to provide an argument for regulation. 

References

Anderson, CA and Dill, KE 2000, ‘Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in the laboratory and in life’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 78, no. 4, pp: 772-790.

Dworkin, G 2010, ‘Paternalism’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 edition), viewed 17 May 2011, .

Ferguson, C 2007, ‘Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: a meta-analytic review’, Aggression and Violent Behaviour, vol. 12, no. 1, pp: 470-482.

Fyfe, M 2011, ‘Video games reform rebuffed over violent fears’, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 2, viewed 17 May 2011, .

Gotterbarn, D 2010, ‘The ethics of video games: mayhem, death, and the training of the next generation’, Information Systems Frontiers, vol. 12, pp. 369-377.

Kant, I 1996, ‘Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals’, in Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary Gregor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 42-108.

LaFollette, H 2002, ‘Theorizing about ethics’, in H LaFollette (ed.), Ethics in Practice: An Anthology (2^nd edition), Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge, pp. 3-11.

McCormick, M 2001, ‘Is it wrong to play violent video games?’, Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 3, pp. 277-287.

Mill, JS 1971, On liberty, representative government, the subjection of women: three essays. Penguin Books, London.

Reynolds, R 2002, Playing a “good” game: a philosophical approach to understanding the morality of games, International Game Developers Association, viewed 15 May 2011, .

Schulzke, M 2010, ‘Defending the morality of violent video games’, Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 12, pp. 127-138.

Sicart, M 2005, ‘Game, player, ethics: a virtue ethics approach to computer games’, International Review of Information Ethics, vol. 4, pp. 13-18.

Sicart, M 2009, The ethics of computer games, MIT Press, Cambridge and London.

Waddington, DI 2007, ‘Locating the wrongness in ultra-violent video games’, Ethics and Information 
Technology, vol. 9, pp. 121-128.

In search of an aetiology of evil - The Pandora Myth

Around the time I first started this blog I wrote a short piece regarding my desire to write on the Pandora and Eve myths, and how these narratives have worked to structure patriarchal views about women. At that time I was too busy to see the project through, but have now been fortunate to return to the idea as a serious research project for my Myth and Meaning in Ancient Worlds unit.

I thought I'd share my work in progress with you. Here is the first part of my essay. I will next move into a close reading of Genesis 1 and 3, and then return to look at how both these myths have worked to keep women subjected under patriarchy.

Essay (WIP)

The notion of an origin holds an important and powerful force in the human psyche. Such narratives can function to provide an explanation for where we have come from, where we currently are, and where we will be in the future. In particular, creation myths provide valuable ‘insights into a society’s ethos, its root beliefs, and provide the basis for many of its customs and even its legal system.’ This essay will seek to discuss the origin of evil. This will be achieved through an aetiological investigation and comparative analysis of two myths which describe the creation of the first woman: the Greek myth of Pandora and the Judeo-Christian myth of Eve. In examining these myths from a feminist perspective, it will be shown that blaming woman for the origin of evil is a patriarchal construction, which has had a negative and pervasive influence on Western society – in particular, on misogynist attitudes towards women, and their subjection and abjection as ‘second class creatures’.

Written towards the end of the eighth century, Hesiod chronicles the myth of Pandora across two poems, the first in the Theogony, and the second in Works and Days. In the Theogony, Hesiod characterises Pandora as a ‘beautiful evil’ – a ‘hopeless trap, deadly to men’. In another translation, she is a ‘lovely curse’, personified as ‘sheer guile, not to be withstood by men.’ Ordered by Zeus as a punishment for Prometheus’ trick of the sacrifice and subsequent theft of fire, Pandora is fashioned out of the earth in the ‘image of a girl’ and ‘a modest virgin’ by the craftsman of the gods, Hephaistos. She is then dressed by Athena in bridal ‘robes of silver’, with ‘a veil, and ‘a lovely wreath of blossoms’, and a ‘crown of gold’. Thus adorned, she is ‘an evil’ sent upon men as ‘a price…to pay for fire’. And ‘from her comes all the race of womankind, the deadly female race and tribe of wives who live with mortal men and bring them harm’.

Not only is Pandora the first woman, but she is also the first bride, and it is in marriage that the source of a second evil is to be found. Hesiod tells us that

if a man avoids marriage and the troubles women bring and never takes a wife, at last he comes to a miserable old age, and does not have anyone who will care for the old man. He has enough to live on, while he lives, but when he dies, his distant relatives divide his property.

The picture is also bleak for the man who marries a ‘good wife, suited to his taste’; this man gets ‘good and evil mixed’, and ‘lives all his life with never-ending pain inside his heart’.

The narrative of Pandora’s creation is repeated in Works and Days but this time with a more misogynist tone. It is also here that the full nature of the significance of her evil is revealed. In payment for the theft of fire she is ‘another gift to men, an evil thing for their delight, and all will love this ruin in their hearts.’ In the lines which document her creation, she is once again crafted by Hephaistos. This time she is given ‘a voice’ and ‘a face like an immortal goddess’, and the shape of a ‘lovely figure of a virgin girl.’ Athena teaches her to weave, and Aphrodite pours ‘charm upon her head, and painful, strong desire, and body-shattering cares. Hermes is ordered to give her ‘sly manners and the morals of a bitch’ and in her chest put ‘lies and persuasive words and cunning ways.’ It is in this passage that she is given her name Pandora – ‘all the gifts’ – and declared the ‘ruin of mankind’.

Thus adorned, ‘the deep and total trap was now complete’ and she is sent as a bride to Epimetheus who, although previously warned by his brother Prometheus (foresight) ‘to take no gift from Zeus’, in fulfilment of his name (hindsight), ‘he took the gift, and understood, too late.’ This is because Pandora ‘opened up the cask, and scattered pains and evils among men’, with only ‘hope’ remaining. We are also told that prior to the creation of Pandora, mankind lived ‘apart from sorrow and from painful work’ and were ‘free from disease’. Thus, not only do we have an aetiology of evil, but we also have the source of the human condition – that is, ‘bringing death and evil into the world along with laborious toil of human existence.’

Essay: Fuhgeddaboudit! The Sopranos - a genre and audience analysis of the best TV drama ever!

The popularity of Home Box Office’s (HBO) award-winning serial The Sopranos (1999-2007), continues well beyond the finale of what is often cited as the ‘the best TV drama of all time’ (Nelson 2007:29). The show has also been credited with changing the way that television is being made, contributing to what some have called ‘the HBO effect’ (Leverette et al 2008:1; Keeton 2002:131). Clearly drawing on generic antecedents from the mobster movie genre, the show is also a family melodrama and owes its lineage to earlier television conventions from which it has borrowed, ultimately transforming and transgressing the expectations of the gangster genre (Nelson 2007:36; Keeton 2002:131; Leverette 2008:125-126). In this essay I will discuss the show with regards to genre, and the way that genre necessarily constructs a particular audience. This will be achieved by looking at the show from three perspectives: industry, audience and text, which are not mutually exclusive, but operate together and provide a suitable basis for textual analysis in television studies.

The term genre is a French word meaning ‘type’ or ‘kind’, which was first invoked in literary studies, and then later applied to film analysis (Neale 2000:1; Turner 1993:85). Whereas the literary use is concerned with the categorisation of fiction by subjective categories with little regard for industry and audiences, genre study in film and television, due to the nature of the material conditions in which it operates, must examine the relationship between industry, audiences, and texts (Schatz 1981:15-16). Genres are also defined as ‘a particular set of conventions, features and norms’, which are ‘a fundamental aspect of the way texts of all kinds are understood’ (Neale 2008:3). They also bring with them a ‘horizon of expectations’ for the viewer, and construct a ‘generic audience’, one that is sufficiently literate and familiar with a genre’s conventions, and who participate ‘in a fully genre-based viewing’ (Jauss cited in Neale 2008:3; Altman cited in Neale 2008:3).

Neale (1990:49) also notes how genres operate through the process of ‘intertextual relay’, which he describes as

the systems and forms of publicity, marketing and reviewing that each media institution possesses – plays a key role not only in generating expectations, but also in providing labels and names for its genres and thus a basis for grouping films, television programmes, or other works and texts together.

This can be seen in the way that critical, industrial and other discourses surrounding The Sopranos are presented in terms of ‘quality television’, and ‘original programming’ – what I call meta-genres, or generic signifiers which represent, not just a particular period in television production, or institutional programming policy and market strategy, but also issues surrounding authorship, aesthetics and audiences (Santo 2008:19-42; McCabe and Akass 2008:83-92).

Since going on the air in 1972 as one of the first nonterrestrial cable networks (and becoming one of the first to broadcast via satellite in 1975), HBO has continually striven to redefine television, and has gained a reputation for offering high quality original programming (Leverette et al 2008:1). Indeed, HBO has come to be regarded as a premier site of what has come to be called ‘quality television’, which according to Thompson (1996) is defined in contrast to the earlier broadcast period of ‘least objectionable programming’ (LOP). This was ‘the strategy in the network era of making bland programmes which would build and sustain audiences not by directly attracting them but by offending the fewest’ (Nelson 2006:62). As Thompson (1996:13) has pointed out ‘[q]uality TV is best defined by what it is not. It is not “regular” TV’.

This very point is inscribed in the HBO tagline: “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO” (Nelson 2006:62). A clever marketing strategy, and as HBO relies on viewer subscriptions, a key marker of difference which helps the organisation separate itself from commercial stations, and, consequently, take chances (Leverette 2008:15). This risk-taking can be seen in HBO’s policy of ‘original programming’, which it instituted, staking its groundbreaking reputation on ‘notions of “quality” based on branding, cost, and innovation as it sought to find a place for itself in the overcrowded television marketplace’ (Leverette 2008:16). However, whilst HBO may define itself as “Not Television”, most of the content appearing on HBO ‘draws upon existing television forms, narratives, aesthetics, themes, and economic and institutional practices in order to articulate [its] difference’ (Santo 2008:24).

HBO has also ‘relied upon various regulatory and economic differences between pay and regular television to add variation to its programming strategies, but very rarely produces anything non-televisual’ (Santo 2008:24). In this regard, HBO holds two considerable advantages over its network competitors. Firstly, its shows are not subject to the same censorship regulations as broadcasting. This is due to the outcome of its court battle with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Court of Appeals’ declaration that cable, due to being purchased rather than ‘freely distributed’ like radio and broadcast television, was ‘more akin to newspaper publishing, which is offered protection under the First Amendment’ (Strover in Santo 2008:25). This means that HBO is able to ‘incorporate nudity, violence, and vulgarity in ways the networks [can’t]’. Importantly, this gives HBO a competitive advantage whereby it can appeal to audiences as a site for content they can get nowhere else (Jaramillo 2002:65). However, I would suggest that in recent years, due to the ‘HBO effect’, groundbreaking shows can be found on competing cable networks such as Showtime (Weeds, Dexter) and AMC (Mad Men, Breaking Bad), and on commercial networks such as ABC (Lost, Desperate Housewives) and Fox (24).

Secondly, due to being subscription-based, HBO does not to have to ‘tailor the content of its programming (as the networks do) in order to appease merchandisers seeking inoffensive material appealing to the greatest common denominator’ (Santo 2008:27). But there is also a considerable textual advantage too. By not having to incorporate commercial breaks, HBO programs can be written, such that they ‘build steadily towards a climax through multiple examinations of a particular theme from myriad perspectives’ (Santo 2008:28). I would also say, that by deploying a serial narrative structure, characters can be better psychologised, ultimately lending a greater degree of realism to their representation.

These factors work to target a niche audience – ‘an elite…intellectual audience with high expectations, willing to pay a premium price for the subscription service’ (McCabe and Akass 2008:91). This means that HBO can demonstrate a greater respect for its audience, and according to Jaramillo (2002:66), it ‘implies that [HBO’s] consumers can handle graphic language, sex and violence in a more thoughtful and productive way than broadcast viewers.’ Santo (2008:33) adds further that this sort of exclusivity offered at HBO, ‘supposedly grants paying viewers membership in a distinct community that clearly ranks above the riffraff who watch the standard broadcast and cable stations.’ From a creative perspective, David Chase, the creator/writer/director of The Sopranos, notes that his authorial latitude is granted in terms of the audience: “We all have the freedom to let the audience figure out what’s going on rather than telling them what’s going on” (cited in Lavery 2006:5). In this way, the show rewards ‘active viewing’, in which the viewer ‘has to dig for links and meanings beyond what’s spelled out on the surface and is often left with mysteries’ (Yacowar 2002:12).

The Sopranos, then, can be classified as ‘quality TV’, which according to Thompson (1996:15) ‘creates a new genre by mixing old ones…tends to be literary and writer-based [and]…is self-conscious’. In this regard, The Sopranos has created a new genre – let’s call it an existentialist gangster drama – by mixing the mobster film genre with television family melodrama. For example, the show takes the conventional gangster as protagonist, but mixes with it with a family melodrama storyline. One of the early taglines for the show was ‘Family. Redefined’. By combining these two genres, the show is able to expand on the various constructions of family – crime family, work family, private family (Jaromillo 2002:68; Nelson 2007:36).

Nelson (2007:36) points out that as a family melodrama, ‘the strong women in…Tony’s life [feature] fully, partly in relation to him, but also in their own right.’ For example, Carmela (Edie Falco) Tony’s wife, holds the family together and takes the major responsibility for bringing up their children, Meadow (Jamie Lyn Sigler) and Anthony Junior (Robert Iler). This is evident in the pilot episode, in which Carmela is making preparations for Anthony’s birthday, and later, due to catching Meadow climbing out her window, has to discipline and ground her, temporarily upsetting the order of their mother-daughter relationship. These family dimensions ‘afford intercutting of action-adventure sequences and scenes of gang conflict and violence, typical of a mobster movie, with domestic locations and issues (Nelson 2007:37). And according to McCabe and Akass, in The Sopranos, ‘the gangster genre collides with the [family melodrama] in a series in which the mobster finds himself in unfamiliar generic territory characterised by mundane chores and domestic worries’ (cited in Nelson 2007:37).

This notion of being in unfamiliar generic territory also extends to the audience. According to Keeton (2002:132), ‘[w]hen viewers tuned into the premiere episode of The Sopranos in 1999, most expected a conventional gangster narrative, but what they saw did not match their expectations.’ The opening shot after the credits frames a nervous, angst-ridden middle-aged male half hidden by a statue of a naked woman. Yacowar (2002:16) suggests that this shot ‘expresses the anxiety of a man insecure in his manhood’. Looking at Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) body language he is clearly uncomfortable in his environment, suggesting to the audience he is on unfamiliar turf (Keeton 2002:132). When he finally goes into psychiatrist Dr Melfi’s (Lorraine Bracco) office, the camera cuts between them as they study each other, moving from longer to closer shots. Melfi then breaks the silence.

In the exchange between the two characters that follows, it is established that Tony has had a panic attack, and that due to ‘the line of work [he is] in’ it is ‘impossible [for him] to talk to a psychiatrist’. In this opening scene, we have a new meaning being circulated for the audience, which has been created through frustrating the conventions of melodrama. In other words, the conventions of the gangster genre prohibit Tony from speaking to a psychiatrist because what he does is illegal. And as those audience members who are literate in the gangster genre would know, he is bound by the code of silence – omerta.

This scene also establishes the tone of Tony’s intense feelings of anomie and alienation, which permeates most of the series, and can be read at a wider cultural level, of reflecting postmodern concerns of a loss of meaning in the midst of unprecedented potential for affluence (Keeton 2002:133). For example, in the scene, Tony recounts his state of mind the day of his first panic attack: “The morning of the day I got sick, I’ve been thinking. It’s good to get in on the ground floor. I came in too late for that. I know. But lately I’m getting the feeling I came in at the end, that the best is over.” Melfi replies: “Many Americans, I think, feel that way.” Tony continues: “I think of my father. He never retired. He never reached the heights like me. But in a lot of ways he had it better. He had his standards, his people, his pride, not like me. What have we got?”

So even before the first guy is ‘whacked’, this initial exchange ‘suggests how far the show has moved from its traditional gangster roots of the working class ethnic underdog forced into a life of crime by the closed hierarchy of capitalist society’ (Keeton 2002:133). This scene serves another purpose in that it creates sympathy for Tony as he works through the traumatic revelations of his childhood abuse, which are later discussed with Melfi. In representing Tony as a gangster with working class roots, it further encourages empathy because he ‘romanticises the time when a working-class man with minimal job skills could enter the workforce and support a family’ (Keeton 2002:142). This also invokes a moral ambiguity for the audience, as it encourages empathy towards ‘a thug whom we watch committing heinous acts’ (Holden in Yacowar 2002:17).

The show wears its proud gangster generic heritage through the self-conscious intertextual references to The Godfather (1972-1990) trilogy of films and Goodfellas (1990). This works to also encourage a degree of authenticity, which stems in part from the ways in which these references are used by the audience – or those who are familiar – to locate the fictional world of the series (Johnson 2007:17). For example, in the pilot, there is a scene in which Tony ranks Goodfellas against The Godfather trilogy. In episode two, “46 Long”, Silvio (Steve van Zandt) quotes Michael Corleone’s famous line from The Godfather: Part III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.”

Other instances of referencing can be found in the casting decisions. For example, Dominic Chianese who plays Corrado ‘Junior’ Soprano, appeared in The Godfather II, and several other cast members are Scorcese alumni from Goodfellas. Indeed, Michael Imperioli who plays Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos, and who also appeared in Goodfellas, is able to reprise the fate of his character in that film. In episode eight, “The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti”, he shoots a bakery clerk in the foot, clearly referencing the scene in Goodfellas in which Joe Pesci’s character shoots his character in the foot.

However, in my opinion the most important reference comes at the end of the show’s final ever episode, “Made in America”. Its significant because, whilst the ambiguous and non-closed ending can be read without the reference, it allows a rewarding reading to those literate in the genre. In the final scene, the family are getting settled around the table at a diner, and a man that has been sitting at the counter with a jacket that says ‘members only’, walks into the toilet. Just as Meadow enters the diner, there is a sudden cut to black, and that’s the end of The Sopranos, and if read as the end of consciousness of the show’s protagonist – the end of Tony Soprano. What this reading implies, is that the man walked out of the toilet armed with a gun and shot Tony – another Godfather reference. I would argue that the ‘members only’ jacket is a self-conscious wink to that part of the audience – the privileged ‘members’ – who have the literacy to figure this out.

Finally, the show is literary and writer-based, and due to its serial format is able to develop characters into complex beings, providing ‘a slice of life as textured, nuanced, and involving as a Charles Dickens novel’ (Yacowar 2002:13). Indeed, Schulman (2010:27) praises the show asking ‘has there ever been an existentialist social novel quite like The Sopranos?’ The pedigree of the writing can be seen in episode fifty-two, “Whitecaps”, in which Tony calls off the hit against Carmine Lupertazzi (Tony Lip), telling Carmine’s underboss Johnny ‘Sack’ (Vince Curatola) that it would ‘create chaos in the organisation and be bad for business’. To which Johnny replies, incensed that he can’t bear to go to work tomorrow, take orders again ‘like it never fucking happened?!...Creeps in this petty place!’ To the astute observer, this is a clever reference to Macbeth, and ties the scene to one of Shakespeare’s ‘great proto-existentialist moments, the speech Macbeth makes after he can only greet news of his wife’s death with indifference’ (Schulman 2010:38).

In conclusion, the above discussion has provided an analysis of genre by considering the way in which genre constructs a particular audience. In considering the ideas surrounding notions such as ‘quality TV’ and ‘original programming’, The Sopranos can be situated in a discourse which also explains the positioning of its audience. Examples were provided from various episodes which demonstrated the hybrid generic nature of the show, intertextual references to its mob gangster roots, and the degree of its literary qualities. Finally, it can be said that through transforming and transgressing the conventions of the gangster and family melodrama, The Sopranos has not just remade the rules and expectations of the mob narrative, but through the ‘HBO effect’, has been responsible for transforming audience expectations of television at large.

References

Jaramillo, D.L. (2002) “The Family Racket: AOL Time Warner, HBO, The Sopranos, and the Construction of a Quality Brand”. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 26 (1): 59-75.

Johnson, C. (2007) “Tele-Branding in TVIII”. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5 (1): 5-24.

Keeton, P. (2002) “The Sopranos and Genre Transformation: Ideological Negotiation in the Gangster Film”. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 10 (2): 131-148.

Lavery, D. (2006) “Introduction: Can this Be the End of Tony Soprano?” in D. Lavery (ed) Reading the Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO. London: I.B. Tauris: 1-14.

Leverette, B. (2008) “Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge: 123-151.

Leverette, B., Ott, B.L., and Buckely, C.L. (2008) “Introduction” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge 1-10.

McCabe, J. and Akass, K. (2008) “It’s not TV, it’s HBO’s original programming: Producing quality TV” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge: 83-94.

Neale, S. (1999) “Questions of Genre”. Screen, 31 (1): 45-66.

Neale, S. (2000) Genre and Hollywood. London and New York: Routledge.

Neale, S. (2008) “Studying Genre” in G. Creeber (ed) The Television Genre Book (2nd edition). London: Palgrave Macmillan: 3-5.

Nelson, R. (2006) “Quality Television: The Sopranos is the best television drama ever…in my humble opinion”. Critical Studies in Television, 1 (1): 58-71.

Nelson, R. (2007) “HBO Premium”. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 5 (1): 25-40.

Santo, A. (2008) “Para-television and discourses of distinction: The culture of production at HBO” in M. Leverette, B.L. Ott, and C.L. Buckley (eds) It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-television Era. London and New York: Routledge: 19-45.

Schatz, T. (1981) Hollywood Genres. New York: Random House.

Schulman, A. (2010) “The Sopranos: An American Existentialism?”. Cambridge Quarterly, 39 (1): 23-38.

Thompson, R.J. (1996) Television’s Second Age: from Hill Street Blues to ER. New York: Continuum.

Turner, G. (1988) Film as Social Practice (2nd edition). London and New York: Routledge.

Yacowar, M. (2002) The Sopranos on the Couch. London and New York: Continuum.

Filmography

The Godfather, dir. F.F. Coppola, 1972.

The Godfather II, dir. F.F. Coppola, 1974.

The Godfather III, dir. F.F. Coppola, 1990.

Goodfellas, dir. M. Scorcese, 1990.

The Sopranos, created by D. Chase, 1999-2007.

“The Sopranos” (pilot), airdate January 10, 1999, dir. D. Chase.

“46 Long”, airdate January 17, 1999, dir. D. Attias.

“The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti”, airdate February 28, dir. T. Van Patten.

“Whitecaps”, airdate December 8, 2002, dir. J. Patterson.

“Made in America” (final), airdate June 10, 2007, dir. D. Chase.

Essay: Keeping woman in her proper place - An ideological analysis of two films: Double Indemnity and Basic Instinct

Hollywood and the institution of film in general is one of the most pervasive cultural mediums for the dissemination of meaning throughout society. Despite the presence of women directors and other film professionals, however, the industry remains dominated by males, and as the producers of representation in general, and of women in particular, men control how women are positioned in the social order. Simone de Beauvoir (1989:143) makes this point in The Second Sex, arguing that ‘[r]epresentation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.’ The aim of this essay will be to demonstrate the recuperative nature of Hollywood cinema, which seeks to keep woman in her place. This will be achieved by looking at the figure of the femme fatale and how it functions as a disruptive power, which reveals the hegemony of patriarchal society concealed in the text.

The films Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944) and Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992) will be analysed with particular focus on the respective central female characters: Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) – two of the most infamous femme fatales in film history; and patterns of recuperation evident in the text. Ultimately, in examining the social conditions in which each film was produced, it will be shown that the femme fatale operates as a cultural barometer of the contemporaneous concerns of male anxiety and paranoia over the independence of women.

A femme fatale is an attractive and seductive woman, especially one who ultimately brings disaster to a man who becomes involved with her; and in French, the term translates literally to ‘disastrous woman’ (OED). Her history and evolution in cinema can be traced all the way from the ‘vamp’ in the original Italian and French silent films, to the ‘spider woman and seductress’ of the 1940s and 1950s noir era, to the more contemporary figuration of a dangerously independent career woman (Boozer 1999:20; Cook and Bernink 1999:187; Tasker 1998:121). Janey Place (cited in Hayward 2006:151), suggests that ‘[t]hese women are symbols of “unnatural” phallic power: toting guns and cigarette holders like the best of the men.’ Tasker (1998:117) notes further that the femme fatale is both ‘an archetype which suggests an equation between female sexuality, death and danger’ and a ‘textual space within which women function as the…centre of the narrative’.

In Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema, the feminist film theorist Annette Kuhn (1994:32) suggests that an analysis of ‘woman’ as an organising structure in films and the way in which a ‘woman-structure’ activates narratives, can be used to reveal wider concerns of the ‘position of women in the society which produces the narrative.’ In this regard, any recurrent structures of enigma resolution in the classic Hollywood narrative model of order/disorder/order-restored can reveal the dominant ideology residing in the text and reflect power structures at large in society (Haywood 2006:109; Humm 1997:12). For example, Harlovich (cited in Kuhn 1994:34) notes that narrative closure is always dependent on the resolution of enigmas centring on heterosexual courtship. Kuhn (1994:34) adds further that this resolution often takes the form of recuperation, whereby a transgressive female may be ‘restored to the family by falling in love…by getting married, or otherwise accepting a “normative” female role’; and any who refuse to return to the social order are punished by ‘exclusion, outlawing, or even death.’ Therefore, structurally and thematically, it can be said that the classic Hollywood narrative attempts to recuperate woman to a ‘proper place’ (Kuhn 1994:34).

However, in the process of being recuperated the femme fatale must be investigated and exposed by the law of patriarchy and found guilty before she can be restored to her ‘proper place’ or punished by death (Hayward 2006:151). This notion of guilt and punishment becomes clearer when the femme fatale is examined from a psychoanalytic perspective. Laura Mulvey (2009:22) in her influential essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema argues that ‘the female figure [in cinema] poses a [deep] problem.’ In the psychic paradigm of the Oedipus complex, woman connotes lack; that is, lack of a penis, which implies a threat of castration to the male (Mulvey 2009:22). The male unconscious, and by extension Hollywood cinema, solves this threat in one of two ways: via the narrative structure of recuperation as noted above, or through fetishism (Mulvey 2009:22; Smelik 1998:11).

In the case of fetishism, the threat of castration is negated by the substitution of a fetish object; that is, ‘turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous’, thereby denying sexual difference (Mulvey 2009:22). This is achieved in Hollywood cinema ‘[b]y a fragmentation of her body and an over-investment in parts of the body (breasts, legs, etc)’ (Hayward 2006:288). The scene in Double Indemnity where Walter Neff (Fred McMurray) first meets Phyllis is a clear example of fetishistic fascination. As she begins to come down the stairs, we see a close-up of her legs and golden anklet, before we see her entire body; she is a piecemeal and fragmented woman made of moments and parts (Johnston 1998:92; Bronfen 2004:108; Dick 1980:48).

According to Johnston (1998:90), the title sequence of the film sets it under the ‘mark of castration’. The silhouette of a male figure in a hat and overcoat looms towards the camera on crutches. In the next sequence we see Neff, injured and bleeding, enter the offices of his insurance company and begin his ‘confession’ to Keyes (Edward G. Robinson). Johnston (1998:90-91) suggests that Neff’s confession to Keyes establishes him in the patriarchal order as representative of the Law – the symbolic father; and ‘[i]n the all-male universe of the insurance business, women are seen as untrustworthy’. For example, Keyes comments that women “should be investigated”, before any relationship is undertaken. Women, then, represent the possibility of social excess – “they drink from the bottle” – which the insurance business (patriarchy) seeks to contain (Johnston 1998:91).

Throughout the narrative both Neff and Keyes investigate Phyllis to reveal her ‘guilty secret’. Firstly, in the scene where Neff returns to the house the day after their first meeting, Phyllis complains about the boredom of her married life and asks about taking out accident insurance on her husband’s life. Neff interrogates her asking why she married her husband, and after she daringly asks how the policy could be taken out without her husband’s knowledge, tells her she “can’t get away with it”. Her guilt is confirmed in the love scene at Neff’s apartment when she reveals she wants her husband dead (Johnston 1998:93-94). For Keyes, however, because Phyllis is a woman, she is automatically guilty, and it’s his job as both claims manager and representative of patriarchal Law to relentlessly investigate the insurance claim and expose her guilt (Dick 1980:49). Finally, in the death scene, her duplicity is made emphatically clear for the audience when she says she “is rotten to the heart” and confesses that she never loved Neff (Johnston 1998:97).

In Basic Instinct, the investigation of the woman is situated within a legal discourse; in fact, all the women in the film come under scrutiny by the law (Sherwin 2008:175). Catherine Tramell is clearly coded as a femme fatale through her aggressive sexuality and criminality, not to mention her cigarette smoking. She is the suspect in a sex crime: the brutal murder of her former lover who was stabbed to death with an icepick during sex. Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) is the detective assigned to investigate her, and despite his initial belief that she is guilty, starts an affair with her (Sherwin 2008:176). During the investigation Tramell is called in for questioning, and in the infamous “crotch shot” scene asserts her power by fleetingly exposing her vagina to the male interrogators; and she further embarrasses them by ‘openly discussing her sexuality in terms that they would only have expected from men’ (Deleyto 1997:35). Her threat as a castrating woman is therefore reinforced visually by her revealing her ‘lack’, or as Gus (George Dzundza) crudely puts it, her “magna-cum-laude pussy”.

Remarkably, all the killings that take place in the film are motivated by rage specifically directed at men. For example, in investigating Roxy (Leilani Sarelle) and Hazel (Dorothy Malone), it is revealed that they both killed their families. The manner in which Roxy did it with “Daddy’s razor”, situates her symbolically as a castrating figure; and in Hazel’s case, using the knife she received as a “wedding present” connects her rage to marriage. Even Tramell has killed her parents, although Curran is unable to prove it (Sherwin 2008:177). Elizabeth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn) also comes under investigation as Curran tries to unravel the enigma surrounding the truth over her obsession with Tramell after they had a one-night-stand in college.

A pattern of guilt/innocence oscillates in the narrative between Tramell and Garner, and Curran eventually comes to believe Tramell’s version of the events – that Garner staged the initial murder to frame her. Whilst Garner’s guilt is never confirmed, she is killed by Curran after Gus is killed in her vicinity (Sherwin 2008:176). The film’s denouement deviates from the traditional recuperation/punishment structure in the traditional femme fatale film (Sherwin 2008:177). The ending neither establishes Tramell’s innocence (after all the evidence piled up against her), nor punishes her for her guilt. This ambiguity is demonstrated in the final scene, which refuses narrative closure. The film teases the spectator that Tramell may be reaching for something to kill Curran with during sex, but she turns towards him, kisses him passionately and they launch into a final round of love-making. The camera then tracks down the side of the bed towards where she was reaching and fades out signalling the end of the film. However, an unexpected fade-in reveals the camera still tracking to rest finally on an icepick under the bed. In a remarkable twist, the audience is left wondering if Garner was really the killer, and that Tramell may actually be a psychopathic killer (Deleyto 1997:25). The significance of this will be discussed shortly.

The narrative attempt of recuperating the guilty female object may not always be successful, and in the particular case of the femme fatale, it actually reveals the hegemonic work of recuperation obfuscated in the text (Hayward 2006:151). This can be seen in terms of the ideological contradiction she poses by being a strong, active and sexually expressive female vis-a-vis her domestic and passive sisters (Hayward 2006:151). Therefore, she must be recuperated or punished if the dominant ideology is to be maintained. This becomes clearer when we examine the patriarchal motivations for containment by looking at the socio-historical conditions in which the two films were produced.

In the case of Double Indemnity, the role of the femme fatale ‘emerged in the wake of World War II when gender roles were disrupted as soldiers returned from war to discover that their women had replaced them in the workplace’ (Rowe and Lindsey 2003:176). The returning veterans assumed they could ‘retake command of the family home front’, but to do so a defensive and repressive attitude against independent women had to be taken (Boozer 1999:21). Additionally, Mary Ann Doanne (cited in Bronfen 2004:115) suggests further that the femme fatale was a symptom of patriarchal anxiety about feminism. The femme fatale, then, was evoked against ambitious women, and in her role as catalyst for criminal behaviour in men, blame was directed at women’s sexuality, furthering ‘calls for her sexual repression and restriction to the household’ (Boozer 1999:21).

This can clearly be seen in Double Indemnity, whereby the unhappily married Phyllis, seduces and becomes sexually involved with Neff, and convinces him to set up a phoney insurance claim and kill her husband, so that they (or perhaps just she) can collect the payout and be together. Not only is Phyllis a deadly seductress who ‘threatens the moral and legal codes of marriage’, but she jeopardises ‘the economic codes of society at large’; and it is in ‘her longing for financial independence by way of sexual initiative that makes her so threatening to traditional phallocentric authority’ (Boozer 1999:21).
In the 1990s, the femme fatale’s desire for economic independence generally took the form of ‘careerist excess’. In this regard these seductresses were now portrayed as ‘sociopathic in their single-minded determination to dominate their chosen field’ (Boozer 1999:29). This behaviour is consistent with the ‘ethically corrupted marketplace competition and sexual exhibitionism’ which marks this period of post-modern and post-feminist sexual consumerism (Boozer 1999:29; Andrews 2006:60). However, compared to her traditional counterpart, the contemporary femme fatale’s ‘sexually tainted avarice is more deviant and perverse as a focus for blame’ (Boozer 1999:29).

The male anxiety that is clearly of concern in Basic Instinct, can also be situated in a socio-historical context; that is, the product of the successive rearrangements in gender relationships brought about by several waves of feminism and gay liberation movements, especially since the sixties (Deleyto 1997:32). Furthermore, as a bisexual (or perhaps a lesbian who faked her heterosexual desire), Tramell represents the ultimate threat of the independent woman to patriarchy. She manifests the real male fear that he might be expendable (Hoberman in Deleyto 1997:25). As Luce Irigaray notes, ‘male sexuality has traditionally been defined monolithically, in relation to the penis, but female sexuality…is plural’ (cited in Sherwin 2008:177; original emphasis). Therefore, the female as ‘polysexual’ suggests that men and heterosexual intercourse are not necessary to fulfil female desire; man is dependent on an other for sexual satisfaction, while woman is autoerotic and therefore needs no one (Irigaray in Sherwin 2008:177). Returning to the ambiguous ending of Basic Instinct, the significance of the final scene becomes clearer. By not punishing her with death, incarceration or recuperation into a patriarchal zone of containment, the film ultimately suggests that the threat of the ‘autoerotic woman’ is ever present.

In conclusion, it has been shown how the recuperative nature of Hollywood cinema seeks to keep woman in her place in the interests of maintaining the hegemony of patriarchy. This was achieved by demonstrating how a woman-structure informs Hollywood cinema through the pattern of investigation of the guilty object, with the ultimately aim of recuperation or punishment. As a contradictory figure, the femme fatale was demonstrated as a disruptive power which reveals the dominant ideology in the text. Examples were provided from Double Indemnity and Basic Instinct, and when considered in their socio-historical contexts, the femme fatale can be seen a cultural indicator of contemporaneous concerns of male anxiety and the paranoia over the independence of women.

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Deleyto, C. (1997) “The Margins of Pleasure: Female Monstrosity and Male Paranoia in Basic Instinct”. Film Criticism, 21: 20-42.

Dick, B. F. (1980) Billy Wilder. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Hayward, S. (2006) Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (3rd edition). London and New York: Routledge.

Humm, M. (1997) Feminism and Film. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Johnston, C. (1998) “Double Indemnity” in Kaplan, E. A. (ed) Women in Film Noir. London: BFI Publishing: 89-98.

Kuhn, A. (1994) Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (2nd edition). London and New York: Verso.

Mulvey, L. (2009) Visual and Other Pleasures (2nd edition). Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED). http://www.dictionary.oed.com. (accessed 16 April 2010)

Rowe, A. C. and Lindsey, S. (2003) “Reckoning Loyalties: White Femininity as Crisis”. Feminist Media Studies, 3 (2): 173-191.

Sherwin, M. (2008) “Deconstructing the Male: Masochism, Female Spectatorship, and the Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence and Basic Instinct”. Journal of Film and Television, 35 (4): 174-182.

Smelik, A. (1998) And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Tasker, Y. (1998) Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. London and New York: Routledge.

Filmography
 
Basic Instinct, dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1992.
Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder, 1944.

Essay: The Influence of Miles Davis on the History of Jazz

The history of jazz encompasses a multifaceted mosaic of places, performers and progressions of style. While it is not possible to isolate a singular point of reference for its beginning, there are a number of individuals who stand out and loom large as leading figures. One such luminary is Miles Davis, trumpet player, band leader, musical innovator, and in the words of fellow musician Chico Hamilton, “jazz’s only superstar” (Kart 2004:201). This essay will discuss the influence Miles Davis had on the development of jazz by looking at his involvement at critical junctures in its evolution. In particular, it will focus on the stylistic innovations he brought to jazz, as well as looking at the importance he played in the development of bop, cool, modal and fusion jazz. Furthermore, he will be discussed in relation to how his contribution has been received by music critics and historians.

Davis emerged on the scene of New York in 1944 at the same time a revolution in jazz was underway (Merod 2001:72). Bop (the shorter version of ‘bebop’ or ‘rebop’) was a revolt against the big bands, commercialism, racial injustice, and the restrictive harmonic framework of the jazz that was in style at the time (Kingman 1990:385). In this period he played a significant role in the revolution, not as a pioneer or founding father, but rather as a participant, and worked with such notable figures as Thelonious Monk, Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and it was here that he ‘learned bop’s arcane language by imitation, informal tutelage, and constant jamming alongside players whose mastery was superior to his own’ (Merod 2001:72-74).

It was during this time of working with the Parker quintet that Davis perfected his approach to difficult melodic lines and rhythms which were played at breakneck speed (Merod 2001:72). However, at first Davis could not play high, loud or fast, and as he was young and still developing the strength of his lip muscles, he felt more comfortable playing with a light sound (Tanner et al 2001:219). This gave his playing an extraordinary emotional power infusing the sound with stark dramatic explorations of personal inwardness. And it was from this brooding and lyrical intensity that Davis’s trumpet persona emerged; and with it his own language – a heartbreaking plangent poetry of the soul, from which you could hear yourself think (Merod 2001:73; McConnell 1991:617).

In 1948, Davis collaborated with composer and arranger Gil Evans and the Claude Thornhill band who were working with ‘layered harmonic voicings’, and had introduced the french horn and tuba, and played them as ‘melodic rather than…rhythm instrument[s]’ (Merod 2001:86; Sales 1992:163). Dissatisfied at the increasingly virtuoso instrumentalism of bop at the time, the band was a confederation of sympathetic musicians who had been meeting in Evans’s apartment to rehearse and exchange new ideas (Sales 1992:163). Davis took an active leadership and secured a gig for the nine-piece, but most importantly, he secured a contract with Capitol Records.

The twelve sides they recorded between 1949-1950 were collected together for the eventual 1954 album Birth of the Cool, which launched the ‘cool’ sound and pointed the way for the sound of the 1950s (Tanner et al 2001:220). It is interesting to note one cut in particular from the album “Boplicity”, which can be seen as marking the transition from bop to cool. Kingman (1990:388) suggests that while the tempo has been slowed down, it still exhibits particular bop characteristics: the light style of drumming; the importance of the bass in keeping the beat; and that quintessential trademark of bop – the unison playing at the beginning of the piece.

Ironically, having fathered the ‘birth of cool’, Davis was among the first to turn away from it with the recording in 1954 of Walkin’, a twelve-bar blues whose straight-ahead funkiness loomed in contrast to the cerebral restraint of cool (Sales 1992:171). Known as ‘hard bop’, it came at a time when cool was being disdained as ‘white man’s music’, and was embraced as a welcome return to ‘soul’ and represented a return to the roots of jazz, especially its roots in black gospel music (Kingman 1990:389).

It was during this time that Davis emerged as the dominant influence in jazz on a number of levels:

as a trumpet stylist, as a best-selling recording star who broadened the audience for authentic jazz, as a leader with an uncanny gift for launching important new trends, and for introducing innovative musicians who were to help shape the future course of jazz (Sales 1992:176).

Importantly, Davis had also begun to develop the playing style that characterises much of his later work, borrowing the softer tone from his cool era, and slowing down the melodic activity. His phrasing also became fragmented leaving space for the rhythm section, from which he set himself apart by playing scale-oriented, rather than chord-oriented long notes. By 1958, he had freed himself further with the use of modal scales and slower moving harmonies. For example, ‘rather than weave a melody through complex bop or funk harmonies, he suspended his melodies based on early modes, above the harmony’ (Tanner et al 2001:223).

This can be seen in the Milestones recording with standard chord changes being abandoned, instead adopting a series of scales as the framework for improvising. This technique is called ‘modal’ and it had a ‘profound impact on the future of jazz’ (Sales 1992:178). It should also be noted that Davis did not invent modal jazz but popularised it (Sales 1992:180). The work that best exemplifies the sound is Kind of Blue, which was recorded in 1959 and went on to become the highest selling jazz album of all time with over four million copies sold, and is considered his magnus opus (Tanner et al 2001:224). The album is so significant that in 2009, the US House of Representatives voted 409-0, to pass a resolution honouring the album and declaring jazz to be a national treasure (ABC 2009).

Between 1969 and 1975, Davis went through the most productive phase of his career. While this ‘fusion’ period is marked by further experimentation and innovation, the direction he took is the most controversial (Svorinich 2001:91). In the face of the ascendancy of rock and roll, Davis began introducing electronics and a rock aesthetic. He added electric keyboards and a wah-wah effect pedal for his trumpet, and took on musicians with rock experience into his band (Svorinich 2001:100).

Always perceptive to what was in the air, Davis was aware that the use of a rock beat would hold the attention of his audience, regardless of how abstract some of the solos were. He was also evolving his studio technique, and started to adopt the rock method of recording large amounts of material and then editing it on tape and creating albums (Shipton 2001:858). This can be seen on the recordings In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew both recorded in 1969 (Milkowski 2003:29). However, critics were divided with some condemning that his foray into fusion was just a cynical attempt to grab a piece of the rock action. Regardless of whether they were right or not, the fact that the fusion movement remains very much alive today is testimony to the influence he exerted on the next generation (Sales 1991:202).

Through each of his stylistic incarnations, Davis was supported by a cohort of capable musicians, who went on to develop their own styles and forge their own places in the history of jazz. Among these were John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Keith Jarrett, and Tony Williams. Aside from his legendary trumpet playing, his legacy derives, in part, from his ability to assemble the right musicians at the right time, and from his leadership ability to provoke and extract the best results to augment his own. He insisted that his musicians ‘play beyond themselves, that they reach for more than they know how to execute’ (Merod 2001:80).

There is no doubt that music critics and historians revere Davis as one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz, and indeed, American music (McConnell 2001:616). Whether it is his ability to sense new directions, assimilate their attributes, and popularise the new style, he was certainly a maverick amongst musicians (Tanner et al 2001:225). His genius was centred on an ability to construct and manipulate improvisational probabilities, selecting and combining compositions, players, musical styles and other performance parameters (Smith 1995:41).

However, Walser (1993:343) points out that jazz critics and historians have never known how to explain the power and appeal of his playing, and notes that there has been a critical blindness to his actual trumpet playing. In this regard he specifically argues that Davis was ‘infamous for missing more notes than any other major trumpet player.’ But perhaps it was this raggedness and raw primal nature of his playing that characterised his personal style, which was conducive to his very intimate expression. This ‘flawed technique’ supported ‘a glimpse he often gave us of the raw emotional world emanating from his music’ (Tanner et al 2001:225).

The above discussion has provided an outline of the influence Miles Davis had on the development of jazz. In particular, his involvement was charted through the stylistic innovations he brought to jazz and the importance he played in the development of bop, cool, modal and fusion jazz. Ultimately, music critics and jazz historians have been unanimous in their agreement that Miles Davis has been one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz, pointing to his musical ability, his sense for change, and gift for bringing together talented musicians who would go on to become trendsetters in their own right. Finally, the legacy of Davis lives on through the way he still speaks to us through his music – through the intimacy of his horn he communicates to us directly, personally and immediately with whispered messages from another universe.

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Kart, L. (2004) Jazz in Search of Itself. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Kingman, D. (1990) American Music: A Panorama (2nd edition). New York: Schirmer Books.

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Walser, R. (1993) “Out of Notes: Signification, Interpretation, and the Problem of Miles Davis”. The Musical Quarterly, 77 (2): 343-365.