In case you don't want to read TFA, my original essay said essentially this: Cloverfield failed in my eyes as a postmodern film because it turned its back on too many conventions without making appropriate adjustments to its structure to allow for the movie to stand on its own. Had the movie been direct to Avant Garde, I wouldn't have minded, but since Cloverfield was a major mass marketed hype machine, the movie failed to be truly accessible to the masses. Because it isn't accessible to the masses, Cloverfield is a prime reason why folks shy away from attempting to view/consume postmodern/experimental works. Cloverfield's broken structure leaves the audience feeling gypped, nauseous, and saying, "now what?" Any piece of art/literature/film/etc that invokes such feeling on a large scale is somehow failing. And in today's content-starved culture, I feel it's a travesty for people to give a movie like this good scores when they say things like, "I didn't understand it, but it was awesome."
So that's the gist of what I said earlier. Before I start, I want to establish a few things that I hold to be true for modern film:
- All big production films are mass marketed, meaning that they are written, produced and directed to be accessible to the largest demographic possible for their genre.
- Movie-goers spend a lot of money at the theater (~$30 for 90 minutes entertainment anymore these days), and thus expect to be entertained.
- No one likes to be made to feel dumb, especially when they're paying to be entertained.
A large part of BlueNight's refutation revolves around classic identifiers of modernism vs. postmodernism, wheras Modernism = enlightenment/immersion and postmodernism = denial of enlightenment/metafictive form. In this binary system of identification, Cloverfield is indeed postmodern. There is no big reveal, and since the movie is a movie of a movie archived by the DOD, we are removed wholly from the actual experience. However, simply being postmodern doesn't make it good. Here's why it's not good:
Metafictive nature:
Metafiction is a tricky bird to play with. If done incorrectly it will entail frustration, anger, etc from your audience. The reason behind this is this: metafiction forces the audience into a state of instability and unfamiliarity. By far, realist/modernist experiences dominate our mental processes, so when you are forced to reckon with the notion that you are watching a film of a film, your mind has to do extra work to keep all the balls in the air (granted, you could ignore the metafictive nature and receive the work as a mondernist experience, but that would be denying the full effect of the piece). Furthermore, metafiction breaks the ontological wall between reality and fiction, or in this case, reality and the movie. In Cloverfield, we are shown the exterior framing of the DOD stamps, which tell us that we are about to see footage relating to an event that has already happened. Since this event happens in a clone of real-world NYC, our minds kick into overdrive to create a parallel ontological sphere where our real world NYC can become destroyed by said monster. This framing is further reiterated throughout the movie by the cuts to "best day ever" and the obviously amateur filming strategy. In a modernist world, we would be able to accept this as "Truth" and get on with the story, but since this is very obviously a postmodern metafictive construction, we also have to entertain ontological questions in addition to the modernist's epistemological questioning. And my big question regarding the ontology of Cloverfield is "Why." Why am I viewing DOD footage of a monster attack on this ontic sphere NYC? I've been placed in this position metafictively, but the metafictive nature of the movie doesn't resolve itself. Cloverfield opened the door to this ontology, but it doesn't give me, Joe audience, any Idea of what to do with it.
Let me give an example from literature to demonstrate. In John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse," from very early on you have an authorial intrusion setting up the metafictional status of the story. The first intrusion, "A single straight underline is the manuscript mark for italic type, which in turn is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention." (Lost in the Funhouse p.72). At first glance, the reader is lost to the metafictional importance of this and several other authorial intrusions. All metafiction will cause initial confusion; it's an inherent danger of the form. The pay off comes when the metafiction resolves itself.
Here's another way to put it. Have you ever read a novel that was going along just fine, and then in the last 2 pages, one of the characters says, "and so that's why I wrote this book." Such a statement immediately throws the entire book into a metafictive state. We're reading a book written by a character within the book, but we didn't know this until the end. Usually when I encounter this, I end up walking away angry because the metafictive nature of the book was tacked on as an after effect. One that might make someone untrained in postmodern there say, "ooh a twist" but at the same time, this is something that is a grievous failure from the perspective of application and structure, because at this point, you've now made me say, "Why have I read this entire novel you wrote, without knowing you were writing it?" This is further problematized if the character-author wrote about him/herself in third person. Why?
In "Lost in the Funhouse," Barth slowly reveals to us that Ambrose, the story's protagonist is also the story's author. And in this slow, controlled reveal, we see that the writing of the story mirrors the structure and form of being lost in a funhouse, where funhouse becomes an allegory to both writing and life.
In Cloverfield, we've been given the same sort of "ooh a twist" kind of metafiction. Yes, it's framed by the DOD, but the DOD framing and the amateur filmmaking don't actively contribute to the structure of the movie. I'm not talking enlightenment, I'm talking structure. Structurally, Ambrose's authorial intrusions had to be there. I'm not entirely positive that any of the postmodern elements in Cloverfield had to exist. And my lack of confidence is brought on by all of the ontological questions left unanswered. Assuming that Joe Audience didn't partake in the alternative reality game, the movie offers very little content wise, but at the same time, it offers a lot of promise: Take this hyperreal NYC, add a monster, memories/fear from 9/11, and film it like Joe average would film an incident like this. Also take the DOD and slap some pre/post graphics to set up how this footage is relevant. Now, we've established this ontology. The failure here is that we have nothing to do with the ontology except to take it as it is delivered to us. By nature of the metafictive content, we are removed from the action, and we are also placed subjectively into a single experience of the attack. However, our viewpoint is objective because it comes from a camera's lens. Therefore, defying postmodernism, we are given "Truth" of what happened to that particular group. By referencing this "Truth" solely (i.e. we don't get anything else from the DOD but this amateur film), we are forced out of our ontological experience and back into an epistemological/modernist experience where we are immersed (save for the brief moments of "the best day ever") in the event.
I think it's pretty easy to see how things have "broken" in a postmodern structural sense here. If the movie were to retain it's subjective postmodern stance, it has to offer more subjectivity; we have to see others' struggles in the wake of disaster. Or, if that isn't available to us, we need to see Why this particular video is more important than all of the other experiences contained within the Cloverfield disaster. Why is this the most important event? Why is this the defining moment of the Cloverfield attack? What can we learn from it? What can we do with it in the future? All of these questions should have some sort of inkling to resolution for the ontic sphere of Cloverfield's NYC to be stable. Without these answers, we can't truly believe in the hyperreal representation of Cloverfield, and thus our connection to the world deteriorates.
BlueNight also challenged my interpretation on Cloverfield's dramatic structure. He contends that the movie follows Campbell's Mythic Hero Journey instead of Freytag's triangle of dramatic structure. While the story's protagonist does follow the pattern of the Mythic Hero, such a pattern is contained by the simpler Freytag triangle. Freytag's triangle has existed in drama since its birth with the Greeks, and is the de facto standard for dramatic interpretation. And the Mythic Hero cycle is just a more complex revision of the triangle (you still have exposition, rising action, climax and denouement in the cycle). But in truth, Cloverfield doesn't really prescribe to either form fully. It can't. The metafictive nature of the movie, denies a fully immersive plot arc focusing upon the protagonist (you'd have to throw out the DOD framing if you want to use the mythic hero). Since the movie opens with the DOD framing, we are forced to start our plot arc there. Because of the metafictive nature of the movie and its multiple temporal shifts, you really end up with three pieces on their own freytag triangles:
1. Framing elements: DOD stuff (largely unresolved)
2. The "best day ever" flashback arc
3. The primary action of Cloverfield
Each arc runs independently from the other, and this is where Cloverfield deviates from the structural norm. As we watch the movie, we constantly switch between each arc as they appear. Fortunately, we aren't too burdened by these arcs, as they all progress linearly, but at the same time, each arc is separate enough that there is a healthy amount of distance between them. While arcs 2 and 3 work in a pretty traditional flashback manner, filling in character details to aid the viewer with the present, the DOD arc remains problematic. It tells us only that we're about to watch a video of the incident. Once the video finishes, this arc closes without any further mention, rising action, or resolution. In essence, it is a dead arc, and combined with its metafictive failures, we're forced back to reality as the credits roll without any real notion of what to do with what we've seen.
I guess that's the overall difference, in my opinion, between modernism and postmodernism. In modernism/realism, you receive an experience and you walk away content with that experience. With postmodernism, you are forced to question the nature of an experience, and enlightenment comes out of successful questioning/analysis/interaction with the ontology before you. I can't satisfy my questions towards Cloverfield based upon the information given to me, and to me, that's a sign of postmodern failure. And furthermore, as an avid supporter of postmodern/experimental forms, I think it's a particularly spectacular failure because of the sheer amount of marketing hype that went into the movie. Think about The Matrix (just the first one). It had a giant pile of philosophy packed into it, and it was really hyped up. The result? A global hit with several philosophical endeavors stemming from it, as well as a universal sense of postmodern satisfaction/enlightenment.
With Cloverfield, most of the movie audience boo'd the ending. That's a disconnect. A failure. People didn't agree with some element of the movie. Granted, most of the people were likely looking for a modernist explanation/defeat of the monster, but I don't think such an explanation was ever necessary. All we really needed was proper structuring and usage of postmodern style. I think the movie would have gone over a lot better had the makers just gone a little farther in establishing good postmodern form, rather than sloppy "we're going to look so smart for invoking metafiction and nontraditional storytelling" elements.
BlueNight, I do agree that Cloverfield is postmodern, but I fail to see how it succeeds in entertaining the largest demographic audience possible. I don't really see it succeeding on a small demographic. I think it succeeded largely because mass marketing told us that it was an awesome movie, and anymore these days we listen to what we're told instead of making our own decisions--a point very accurately brought up by Susane's comment: "People want soo badly for something new and exciting that they are willing to accept CRAP just because it is different. I want good different.....not the crap."
And now that I've written a book, what's everyone else have to say on the matter?
4 comments:
I think part of the disagreement between Drew and bluenight's take on Cloverfield is bluenight's confusion of postmodernism versus tragedy.
"It becomes clear the beast is not a foe like the xenomorphs in Aliens or the killers in Scream, to be understood and defeated. The beast is a force of nature, like the Titanic sinking, or the global ice storms in Day After Tomorrow...Victory Over Evil is Modern (think World War II); Survival Of The Inevitable is postmodern (think Vietnam)."
The argument here is that Cloverfield is a postmodern success because A)it it's not about good and evil but an amoral natural disaster, and B) the movie has a fatalistic outlook. By these standards The Iliad is a postmodern work of literature. Neither story, The Iliad or Cloverfield, is about good or evil, but about a series of events which, once they were set in motion, couldn't be stopped.
That isn't postmodern--it's tragic.
Also, although the movie contains a hero's journey, his demise and acceptance of fate doesn't make the protagonist of Cloverfield a postmodern hero, but a tragic one.
"It works on the level of a postmodern story...the heros die at the end; we never learn anything about the monster except 'it's big and horrible', WHICH IS ALL A PERSON TRYING TO ESCAPE WOULD NEED TO KNOW."
Here again to say the movie is postmodern is a confusion of terms. The movie may have a subjective viewpoint, but that doesn't make it necessarily postmodern--it just means the POV is limited. Faulkner played with time and subjective viewpoint, but his work wasn't postmodern--it's the definition of modern.
Since Drew's argument is that the movie fails as a postmodern work, the only grounds for argument is the meta-fictional framing, as it's the only thing that truly makes this film postmodern.
I see what you mean, Drew, and I largely agree.
(I also get your point, Rod, in that tragedy is not new. It sells poorly, and thus it is so rare in modern cinema to see a true tragedy [everyone dies] that it feels new all over again. True postmodernity is about breaking free from a framework, whether linguistic, social, or ontological. If the socially standardized cinematic theme is happy endings, a classic tragedy breaks that framework. Thus it is postmodern in framing devices and classically tragic in its plot.)
The film obviously did not appeal to mass audiences, given the box office totals and the split loved-it hated-it responses I've seen online. I think it's disgust with the tragedy at the end and the slow start at the beginning. It was marketed as a monster movie, but instead it was a tragic disaster movie in every way that counts. Thus my point that it is not Blair Witch meets Godzilla, but rather Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets Titanic.
I am a sci-fi fan, enjoying classics such as Asimov and Heinlein. I also enjoy The Matrix, Lost, Heroes, Jericho, and that lost wonder Daybreak. I had a lot of fun watching Groundhog Day and The Last Action Hero. I am drawn to postmodern and metafictive stories. I also listen to 70's progressive rock groups such as Rush, Kansas, and Yes. I am the type of person for whom Cloverfield was created.
I can see how accurately you've outlined the reasons for many other people disliking it.
As far as the Triangle goes: reviewing your initial essay and my responses, I guess I shouldn't object to the Triangle itself, but rather to your interpretation of the movie as it relates to the Triangle, and the mythic structure in general.
You stated that Cloverfield's BC segment was too steep, followed by a CD segment that went in the wrong direction. I disagree with this interpretation, using the Campbellian structure with what was provided in the film.
Rescuing the Girl is the secondary arc, the Inner Conflict, and Getting Out Alive is the primary plot arc, the External Conflict. In this context, rescuing the girl was the boon at the end of the Night Journey, which was the inverted Descent Into Hell to retrieve the Most Valuable Thing. The monster had yet to be slain, and the Final Arena had not yet been reached. (Compare with the Bear Fight in The Golden Compass.) Thus, the helicopter crash was still part of BC. Hud's death was point C, and everything was downhill from there, the CD slope.
In my opinion, this was not made clear enough, and is likely the source of the fouling of the story in the eyes of many. However, the clues were there from the beginning.
The DOD info-tag at the start made quite clear that Central Park would be destroyed by the end of the film, and thus almost certainly establishing Central Park as the Final Arena. Indeed it was so. The couple started overlooking Central Park, alone together, and ended IN Central Park, alone together.
I don't like your description of the film's structure as "broken," since it was perfectly clear to me; however, I can see why you see it this way, and by extension, why a lot of people either left early or decided not to go at all. (But I think this will be my last post in this thread, regardless; and thank you for this opportunity to respond once more.)
Subjectivity is not defined by emotive importance, it is defined by limitations on ready sources of objectivity. As such, I disagree with your desire for "others' struggles in the wake of disaster". The greater the number of subjective views, the closer we get to objectivity, and that's not what this film is about. This film is about one story out of many; interchangeable people, like everything else in this society.
The subjective may even encompass Truth in a modernist sense, as long as it is from a subjective viewpoint. The single camera is as subjective as it gets, especially when the audience is put into the role of the cameraman. We never get inside the head of the other characters, but when Hud falls, we fall; when Hud dies, we die. (Possibly the most cathartic moment in the film, paralleling and finalizing the helicopter crash, and sealing our doom.)
As far as why this particular film was considered important by the DOD, I take my answers solely from the film itself, and not from the metafictive ARG. At the very end of the film, just before the tape runs out, as they ride above the Earth at Coney Island, something splashes down in the ocean in the distance. True, I didn't see it the first time, but a lot of people did, and it's hard to miss the second time around.
I immediately realized (when I read of it online) that splashdown may have been the sole reason the government retained this footage. The government couldn't care less about Rob and Hud et all; when was the last time you saw more than 1.5 seconds of the Zapruder film? Yet the government retains its entirety. (This interpretation also gives the DOD arc its reason to exist.)
As such, it seals these six people forever in a glass bubble: their fates and the monster's permanently intertwined, as surely as the passengers and the terrorists and the towers. Their story is over, even if THE story isn't.
On the other hand, Hud did get some nice close-up footage of the parasites that dropped off, of the beast's facial structure (and possible weak points), and of how little it was damaged by the bombs that exploded directly on it. In addition, they are pretty much the only able-bodied civilians left on the island by the film's end.
On the other, other hand, it could be another postmodern twist: this film is one of a hundred thousand taken that day, and is no more special than any other. Interchangeable films from interchangeable people. The ennui is palpable.
Finally, the dramatic structure:
The downhill slide to point D of the triangle starts with the escape from the apartment complex. Then comes the helicopter crash, followed quickly by Hud's death, and the abrupt scene change to the hiding under the bridge. Doom is certain, in that horror film sort of way. As the sirens blare, we realize the island is soon to be very toasty. The characters make their peace with death. Everything crystallizes in that one long moment moment; then follows the Best Day's end, the splashdown, and the closing credits.
To quote Rod's blog: "There is a powerful and practical value to inducing a transpersonal state. The initiate is forced into a moment of crisis which, if they are able to overcome, leaves them open to previously unknown truths and possibilities. Confrontation of fear forces us to shed old values, leaving us open to new ones."
I'd say the audience largely failed the initiation.
Bit of a tangent, but it is a shame that tragedy is so scarce in contemporary cinema. I'm thinking of examples like 28 Days Later, which originally was concieved of as a tragedy, but that was changed by the studio in post-production.
I finally found the words I was looking for; they were spoken by Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead. Cloverfield is a New Idea; a barebones framing device that sparks the imagination; a streamlined storytelling technique in which very little is said and very much is shown. The audience that walked out is precisely the audience the filmmakers didn't care about. The audience that stayed is the audience that cared about the story.
As we move into the postmodern era, the old tribal roles come back into vogue; The Leader, The Shaman, The Storyteller, The Healer. On a metafictive level, Cloverfield DEPENDS on our being aware, constantly and throughout the movie, that we ARE watching a movie.
In fact, by using this framing technique, the creators of the film would be dishonest to include cliches and triangles and structure in the traditional sense. The framing device sets up an implicit contract between The Storyteller and us The Listeners, that We're In This Until The End Together.
A failed attempt at viral marketing was the only thing that could bring down The Beast.
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