What Makes a Reel Man?

 

Martin Scorsese's 1980 sports biopic Raging Bull is a study of the Bronx prizefighter Jake LaMotta, who comes from a world which demands that men display hypermasculine behavior that rejects anything feminizing and glorifies violence. Jake, along with the other Italian-American males he surrounds himself, lives his life based around a masculine code emphasizing fierce loyalty to those close to him and the need to beat the competition both in and out of the ring. 

Although he excels as a fighter, Jake also takes his fair share of punches, and the camera indulgently lingers during shots of his battered face. Just because he gets hit, though, does not necessarily make him less masculine in our eyes. If anything, his resilience in the face of extreme pain proves his manliness. We can compare that to Janiro the "pretty boy", who pathetically falls to the floor after Jake beats him to a pulp.

The continual problem for the hypermasculine man, however, is emasculation. The men of Raging Bull attempt to fight off emasculation through their casual homophobic remarks and controlling attitudes towards women, but this doesn't suffice for Jake since he spends an inordinate amount of time obsessing over Vicky and the man or men he believes she had an affair with. In fact, it's the men he's fixated on. It could have been Salvy, one of the older men, his own brother, or even all of them. The men in this film have the outlook that women are their property and must be controlled, so a man who can't do that is not truly a man.

By the end of the film, we find an older, heavier Jake puffing on a cigar while prepping to go onstage at a nightclub. Even after all the mistakes he's made, from alienating his brother to selling the jewels from his championship belt in an attempt to pay his way out of trouble with the law, he reaffirms to himself that he is "the boss" while shadowboxing. Regardless of everything else that happens to him throughout the course of the story, Jake LaMotta is still the man, at least in his own mind.

Let's Dance (Without Making it Look like Dancing)

 

Something from Feuer's essay that really stuck out to me was the idea of non-choreography, meaning when dance numbers blur the lines between regular movement and dancing by including steps that mimic movements people actually do in day to day life (9). Pretty much all of the dance numbers in the 1952 Hollywood musical "Singin' in the Rain" incorporate non-choreography to some degree, but here I'll be focusing on "Moses Supposes," which features Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. 

Aside from the tap dance the guys do for the vocal coach, throughout the song they keep using various props in the room as part of their routine. From draping themselves in the curtains to piling everything they can find on top of the vocal coach at the end, Kelly and O'Connor continue to dance without making it look like what we would normally think of as dancing. In reality, each of these props was placed deliberately by the film crew so that the actors could incorporate them fluidly into the number and make us forget about the behind-the-scenes planning. The end result is a humorous scene, and much of the humor is owed to the non-choreography in addition to the use of props. 

I think the concept of non-choreography could even be extended beyond the musical number to a different sort of Hollywood scene: the fight sequence. Many of the elements I discussed above are found in a typical fight scene like choreographed movements that do not seem like typical dance steps but are rehearsed nonetheless and the use of carefully placed props in some of those movements. 

Taking a look at Tarantino's 2001 revenge flick "Kill Bill: Vol. 1", we can see these aspects of non-choreography in the brawl between Vernita Green and the Bride, which takes place in Vernita's own home. The two women hurl themselves over couches, shatter a glass mirror, and turn fireplace tools and other household items into weapons. Each of their movements looks organic as if they were actually engaged in a struggle for their lives using whatever was around them to defend themselves. Just in like "Singin' in the Rain", however, each of their actions was meticulously planned out and the objects they encounter in the room were put there specifically for the actors to use when the right moment came. 

In both of these films along with countless other Hollywood pictures, all movement is natural, whether it's walking or dancing or fighting. Concealing choreography under the guise of natural movement is one of the key ways in which Hollywood hides the work involved in making its movies and instead makes the audience focus on the action itself.

Who's running this blog anyway?

 A little bit about me

I'm Holly, a senior History and Spanish major writing from sunny Phoenix, AZ where I lived for the majority of my childhood.

Why I'm taking Film History II

One of my main historical interests concerns film, especially 21st century Hollywood, as history. When a film was created, by whom, and under what conditions directly influences its underlying messages. I'm particularly interested in representations of gender onscreen, so you can probably expect to hear quite a bit about that on this blog.

How I've been during the pandemic

I've been doing my best to keep myself occupied with fun little hobbies during my time in quarantine. Aside from hiking and daily handstands, I've also been playing a lot of music. I went to a performing arts high school where I learned cello and trombone in addition to some piano and choir. Until now I had never written my own music or sang for anyone else, but during this pandemic I've started writing songs that I would say fall into the power pop/pop rock genre. I'll be putting out an EP in late October or early November, and here's a link to my SoundCloud where you can listen to what I've done so far: https://soundcloud.com/gthirtyeight-670005780. Also, feel free to follow @g.thirtyeightmusic on Instagram to stay up to date on my music if that's your jam.