Hollywood, Software and the User Gaze

Welcome back to the University of Glasgow’s American Studies blog. For the ninth instalment in our 2014-2015 seminar series, the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies invited Dr. Zara Dinnen for an engaging lecture, ‘Hollywood, Software and the User Gaze’. Dr. Zinnen is a lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Birmingham and presented this talk as part of the book she’s currently working on, American Culture & the Digital Every Day (working title).

Dr. Dinnen is exploring the way the digital, especially computer code, is represented on screen in film and television, and how we, as viewers, watch and are being made to watch this. She initiated her subject matter by showing two clips – a scene from Die Hard 4 and the trailer of upcoming film Blackhat, in which we hear and read lines such as “security infrastructure under compromise”, “hacking defence network”, and “our systems interconnected”.

The U.S.’s preoccupation with vulnerable security and dissident actions in the digital sphere has become quite apparent in film and television in recent years, and mainstream media too has developed a fascination with these topics, apparent from the coverage of Anonymous’ hacktivism or the Aaron Swartz case. There is however much about the digital sphere and its concepts that the mainstream media consumer is unaware of, and Dr. Dinnen’s talk focused on how this can be problematic when computer code and other digital technologies are represented and translated on screen. She considers the image of code as shown in fiction film or television, and how through its impenetrability for the unknowledgeable viewer, it is resistant to narrative. Within this context, Dr. Dinnen introduced the idea of user vs. expert – the users being the passive audience who let complex images of code and computation be translated by whichever mediating human character on screen (often the hacker or computer geek), and the experts being the small group who do not need this mediation.

Because of the passivity forced upon the user group, Dr. Dinnen emphasises the need to question how we are looking at these images and how we are being made to look at them. Relating to Die Hard 4, she aligns the viewing audience with action hero John McLane, who equally feels alienated and unknowing about the code appearing on screen when he is with his hacker sidekicks. Both McLane and the audience need and automatically expect whatever the code signifies to be translated to them.  In the trailer for Blackhat, with a release date 8 years later than Die Hard 4, it appears that the on-screen roles have slightly changed. The hero and hacker are now the same character – Chris ‘Thor’ Hemsworth – and so the protagonist becomes both the character we aim to relate to but also the one who has to be our mediator, thereby also increasing the presence and importance of the ‘expert’.

Dr. Zinnen also focused on the animated ways digital technologies are represented on screen, for example the now-familiar manner in which the ‘camera’ guides the user on a rollercoaster through imagined connections and wires, or animated 3D visualisations of technology, as often unrealistically portrayed in series such as CSI. Again, as audience we become passive, being made to accept the representations of the digital because we are unknowledgeable. This was illustrated once more with the trailer of Blackhat, which uses live action and animation to create an image of the digital technologies in the film, and with the 2011 art video by Faith Holland, RIP Geo Cities, which is a montage of several of these ‘rollercoaster’ animations taken from the last decades of Hollywood cinema. After showing RIP Geo Cities, Dr. Zinnen argued that the reason these images are alienating is because of the absence of bodies and monitors that we as viewers tend to expect and need to translate information for us. By cutting the mediator out of her video, Holland has taken away the human aspect, the person who is on screen staring at a screen and relaying digital information.

Quoting Dr. Stephanie Ricker Schulte, who stated that “we need to understand how culture has influenced our ideas about the digital world”, Dr. Zinnen then argued that her focus on this topic comes from her consideration that it is important for us to understand the technologies we use on a day-to-day basis.

Ricker Schulte further questioned why we tend to consider and contextualise digital culture a part of American culture, while digital culture plays a global role, and through its very nature this raises legal and ethical conflicts. This was illustrated with a recent case in which Microsoft argued that it could withhold data from American courts because its server was located in Ireland. However, Dr. Zinnen did emphasise that for her own research, she is approaching this topic in the context of American Studies, via a focus on Hollywood.

In her development of the concept of the ‘user gaze’, Dr. Zinnen referenced the influential ideas Laura Mulvey explored about the male gaze in cinema. ‘The user’ is defined as being someone who uses a personal computer as a means rather than an end, someone who is passive and asks ‘silly questions’, who doesn’t solve or explore issues in-depth. The user is unknowledgeable. The user might not be able to see the difference between authentic and inauthentic code when shown in a film, while an expert will be able to tell. Mulvey stated that it is built into the spectacle itself how we look at the spectacle. Regarding the user gaze and the digital on screen, Dr. Zinnen argued that the user (is being made to) glaze(s) over representations of computation, since to the mainstream viewer they are incomprehensible, thus leaving them with no other ways to look at them.   

Dr. Zinnen illustrated her ideas further by showing a clip out of Netflix series House of Cards. Season 2 of the series contains a hacker subplot in which the government uses a previously detained hacker’s services against his will. U.K. experts advised on the creation of this storyline. The series’ way of representing this topic is pedagogical; it is helping educate the U.S. public about the hypocrisy in criminalising hackers. Meanwhile, it also creates a ‘usergate’ through the inauthenticity of the hacker plot.

In a talk which provoked thoughts about viewers’ acceptance of representations of the digital on screen and the assumption that we will get accurate information relayed to us, ‘Source Code in TV and Films’, a blog which claims ‘expert spectatorship’, was an interesting addition to the lecture. The blog points out flaws in the accuracies of representations of the digital in film and television. Its contributors are clearly profiling themselves as not the normal ‘user’, they are not passive in receiving this information on screen, they have the privilege of being an expert. Through this position, experts are acting ‘for’ the users, to make us aware that we do not just have to accept being made to watch a certain way.

Dr. Zinnen’s talk was engaging and provoking in the sense that it makes us consider what we accept as authentic on screen and how our gaze is controlled. These are not new concepts in film theory, but they are fresh and fascinating applied to this relatively new topic of the digital and representations of the digital in film and television. The lecture also made us question whether it is problematic that users (the majority of the audience) do not have more awareness about the technologies they use every day, and are in essence unknowledgeable about. This issue is emphasised through the user gaze and its passivity.

In an interesting Q&A session, Dr. Zinnen commented on questions about (amongst others) representations of the digital in fiction literature and the idea of a ‘satirical user gaze’. Considering the continuous developments in both screen media and digital technologies, it will be interesting to see how her research will develop and expand, and what its relevancy will be in the future.

Sanne Jehoul 

Trouble or Transcendence? Health, Illness and American Culture in the 1970s

On Thursday 27^th February the Centre for American Studies was pleased to welcome Professor Martin Halliwell (University of Leicester) to the department's 2013-2014 seminar series.  In his excellent seminar paper, Trouble or Transcendence? Health, Illness and American Culture in the 1970s, he discussed the rise of psychiatric treatment’s move from state regulation to deinstitutionalised facilities in the 1970s, and the repercussions this had for cultural treatments of mental illness in the era.  

Professor Halliwell began his introduction by discussing the shift of large-state medical facilities to private ones in the post-revolutionary 1970s, which challenged the homogeneity of medical thought at the time.  This expansion of the medical discourse beyond the conventional constraints of the state brought a number of positive qualities with it, especially for minorities in the United States and their access to medical treatment.  Furthermore, this multiplicity of medical dialogues was echoed in the culture of the period.  In the previous decade the criticism of institutionalisation found in works such as Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and Allen Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish (1961) continued into the literature of the post-revolutionary 1970s.  However, the latter period developed its own critiques of institutionalised medicine into one that additionally praised certain forms of mental illness.  Rather than seeing mental illness necessarily as an impediment, some contemporary writers viewed it as bestowing heightened, superhuman qualities to the individual.  Professor Halliwell exemplified this with his analysis of Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (1977).  The main character Deborah, a sixteen-year old girl suffering from schizophrenia, finds surcease from the cruelties of the world by retreating into the imaginary world of her mind, a world expressed by Deborah as simply “Yr”.  The vibrant but cruel inner world found in depictions of the mentally afflicted, Halliwell noted, became a pervasive one within this period, a view that he argued indicated a romantic strain in cultural examinations of mental illness.  His subsequent discussion of the paintings of schizophrenic Martin Ramirez reinforced this narrative, with his paintings depicting the freedom found in mental illness. (both of Ramirez’ paintings displayed in Professor Halliwell’s paper can be found here and here)  The use of the word “extraordinary” in particular by writers such as Greenberg became more and more prevalent, and quickly became tied to this specific medical narrative reinforcing the view of mental illness as an innately positive and redemptive quality.

At this point Professor Halliwell noted the resonance of 1960s social messages within this medical discourse.  With a strong emphasis on freedom, expression and psychological exploration within the social dialogues of the 1960s, he argued that the infusion of these same emphases within medical thought was an attempt to reunite the social ideologies of the counterculture within the post-revolutionary 1970s.  However, the social, political and economic contexts of the 1970s did not readily absorb these ideologies, resulting in the high ideals of the 1960s clashing with the hard realities of the 1970s.  This fusing of social and medical messages of the 1960s and 1970s was exemplified in his examination of Martin Scorcese’s production Taxi Driver (1976) and Percy Walker’s text Love in the Ruins (1974).  Professor Halliwell argued that the main characters of both productions, Scorcese’s Travis Bickle and Walker’s Dr. Tom More, are idealists with a distorted vision.  Whilst both characters recognise something is wrong, whether it’s Bickle’s disenchantment with political life in Taxi-Driver or More’s troubles with the spiritual emptiness of American life in Love in the Ruins, they are unable to express these concerns coherently.  This.as Halliwell noted became a hallmark of 1970s medical culture, where many Americans found themselves fraught with undiagnosed anxieties.  Bickle and More are, as Professor Halliwell noted, victims of an age of fracture, caught in a period of social malaise with no hope for a suitable diagnosis.

Professor Halliwell succeeded this analysis of social and medical incoherencies with a review of literary works that depicted the strong narcissistic tendency of 1970s American culture.  His reference to Tom Wolfe’s description of the period as the Third Great Awakening reinforced the strange moulding of religion and therapy inherent in 1970s medicine.  However, in a period dominated by feverish self-analysis and self-enlightenment, there were criticisms of the narcissistic tendencies this religious and therapeutic concoction created in American culture, for example Tom Wolfe’s essay The Me Decade (1977) and Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (1979).  As Professor Halliwell afterwards commented, this sense of spiritual dissatisfaction was even criticised by President Jimmy Carter.  In what came to be known as his “malaise” speech presented on July 15^th 1979, Carter noted the crisis of confidence evident in American life, and criticised the self-indulgence and consumption of the age.  Don DeLillo’s Americana (1971) was subsequently discussed and the strong narcissistic qualities of the protagonist David Bell, a character he noted shares a strong literary lineage with Chuck Paluhniuk’s character Tyler Durden in Fight Club (1996).  Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was given as a further example.  Halliwell argued that the fictional characters of DeLillo and Pirsig’s texts are not referenced as examples of characters who necessarily find spiritual salvation, but rather they depict the frenetic but typically fruitless self-analysis of the 1970s.  In a comment he made earlier in his paper, he noted that spiritual inwardness was treated as abhorrent in an age where everything was laid out by individuals but never effectively analysed, once again demonstrating the inherent incoherencies of the decade between social, cultural, political and medical realms.  

Professor Halliwell concluded with an analysis of multiple-personality disorder diagnoses in the 1970s, or what writers in the period had previously referred to as psychic splitting.  He introduced the dilemma of how an age of fracture is affected when those fractures multiply.  Citing Flora Rheta Schreiber’s Sybil (1973), an account of the first ever case of multiple personality disorder ever psychoanalysed, he noted how this account raises the question of selective recall in the patient, and how if the patient is in full control of the account, and there is a chance of them embellishing details, this has profound ramifications for literary narratives dealing with mental illness.  This dilemma as Professor Halliwell commented presents the battle between fantasy and reality in the culture of the 1970s, and one that can be seen in his previously cited literary and cinematic examples.  

In the question and answer session after Professor Halliwell’s presentation, he raised an interesting discussion of how the bicentennial celebrations of American independence in 1976 were celebrated amidst the medical and social turbulence of the period.  He noted that there was an increased interest in national health in the celebrations, and one that was inherently linked to the national spirit, an emphasis that reflected the increasing dominance of medicine within American culture. However, like much of Professor Halliwell’s presentation, this emphasis on the strong national health of the United States was in sharp contrast to the experience of Vietnam veterans, who argued that there wasn’t enough support for them once they returned home.  This national disassociation between political rhetoric and the actualities of 1970s American life reinforced the various contrasts in Professor Halliwell’s intriguing, engaging and compelling discussion of 1970s culture and its representations of health and mental illness.

By James Nixon

PGR at the University of Glasgow

The Centre for American Studies 2013-2014 seminar series will continue with Dr. Joanna Cohen (Queen Mary University): Creating the Consuming Interest: how tariff debates shaped the American consumer, 1828-1865.  This will be held on Wednesday 12^th March in Room 208, 2 University Gardens at 5.15pm.  All very welcome!

In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967) and Racial Politics in Post-Civil Rights Act Hollywood

On Wednesday 12^th February the Centre for American Studies was pleased to welcome Dr. Eithne Quinn (University of Manchester) to the department's 2013-2014 seminar series.  In what was an illuminating and engaging discussion, Dr. Quinn examined the role of Hollywood in late-1960s racial relations in her lecture “In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967) and Racial Politics in Post-Civil Rights Act Hollywood.”

 

Diverting from typical scholarship on the film that focused on the relationship between the characters of Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) and police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), and the provincial setting of Sparta, Mississippi, Dr. Quinn’s lecture examined post-Civil Rights Act Hollywood in the context of the production and release of Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night. (1967)  Moving from the film’s role within contemporary discussions of a post-racial America to a post-racial Hollywood, Quinn deftly undermined the Hollywood projections the film arguably portrayed on the racial politics of the late 1960s, projections which typically contrasted the provincial, unenlightened and racially divided South with the progressive liberalism of the North and West Coast.  However, as Quinn argues, the post-racial discourses portrayed by Hollywood productions contrasted startlingly with the racial discrimination in the mechanisms of the industry.  It is through this examination of Hollywood’s internal mechanisms that Dr. Quinn argued that the film says more about racial attitudes in the North and West Coast than it does about the South.   Hollywood’s contrast between ideology and industry, exposition and actuality, framed the centre of Quinn’s lecture.

Dr. Quinn’s moved on to a discussion of ideas of the post-racial within the culture of Hollywood’s late-1960s productions.  She noted the rise of Sidney Poitier in 1960s Hollywood, particularly after his performance as the African-American homicide detective Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night.  Becoming not just one of the most prominent actors of the period, Dr. Quinn also notes that he became the most bankable African-American actor in American cinema, a title only relinquished to Will Smith in the noughties.  Poitier’s success in In the Heat of the Night, Dr. Quinn comments, exemplifies Hollywood’s imposition of racial discrimination solely within the isolated southern states, rather than within a wider national context, marking it as a product that avoids the complexities of racial attitudes for a narrative of northern self-congratulation.  

The film’s portrayal of an enlightened North against a racially divisive and backwards-thinking South was very much at odds with the reality of race relations in the late-1960s.  Most noticeably, Quinn reminds us that it was within this period of time that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was moving his campaign north to protest against northern racial discrimination, noticeably found in the squalid living conditions of poor black urban neighbourhoods and a lack of integration in education and employment.   These projects however, were not readily accepted by many northerners.  Although Quinn does take time to note the amount of northern white Americans who recognised and sympathised with this discrimination, many were not ready to accept it was an issue outside of the south.   Furthermore, as Dr. Quinn argued, even those who were earnest about solving the racial issues in the north could be characterised as being more condescending than helpful towards African-American activism, with many involving themselves in the issue with a sometimes paternalistic and unrealistic understanding of the complexities involved in the issue.  This social and cultural dissonance in the north towards issues of racial discrimination, either through patronising attitudes towards African-American activism, an indirectly racist promotion of a colour-blind, laissez-faire ideology held by many white Americans, and productions that reinforced these attitudes such as In the Heat of the Night, were encapsulated in what Stephen Steinberg deemed “the liberal retreat from race”, a phrase Dr. Quinn quoted in this segment.[1]

Dr. Quinn’s went on to examine the battle between ideology and industry in late-1960s Hollywood’s race relations.  The progressive rhetoric of Hollywood’s film productions framed in films such as In the Heat of the Night was much at odds with the racial discrimination inherent in the industry.  She made the point that in the wake of the Civil Rights Act enactment in 1965, Hollywood was particularly slow in responding to the legislation, and refused to accept black employees in the majority of its departments.  This contrast was prevalent in racially-conscious productions such as In the Heat of the Night, where behind the scenes few black workers worked on the film.  Additionally, Dr. Quinn interestingly discussed the development of the early drafts of the film that originally included certain elements of institutionalised racism in the north.  Those elements in the script that questioned northern racial discrimination were taken out.  Lines originally intended for Poitier’s character Virgil Tibbs were removed by director Norman Jewison on the grounds that they were too alienating to Northern audiences, and distracted from the focus on the relationship between the two main characters.  Dr. Quinn noted at this point how the commercial pressures of a large budget film has a tendency to create conservative cinema, and it is likely that it was these pressures in particular that instigated Jewison to remove the lines in exchange for a softer, more northern-friendly final draft.  Additionally, she discussed Sidney Poitier’s position within Hollywood and its contentious race relations, and how top Hollywood executives hindered racial integration within the industry by promoting Poitier as an example of their progressiveness.  She argued that Hollywood’s emphasis on the mere appearance of progressiveness through the promotion of a black bourgeoisie was a definably northern liberal approach to issues of race in the late-1960s.

In the final section of the lecture, Dr. Quinn examined the character of Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), and how Tibbs was promoted as an example of racial exception within the backdrop of the late-1960s.  Although Poitier’s performance as Virgil Tibbs, the embodiment of northern racial enlightenment, served to promote Hollywood’s own progressive stance on race, this perspective clashed constantly with Poitier’s own experiences.  She noted that though Poitier was normally very reserved about making comments about race, he did acknowledge his own difficulties working within Hollywood, especially at a time when he was the only prominent African-American star in a racially discriminatory industry.  Dr. Quinn provided an example of the difficulties he encountered during the production of In the Heat of the Night when he found himself becoming irritated at his co-star Rod Steiger- renowned for constantly staying in character as southern chief Bill Gillespie between takes- making numerous racist remarks during production.   Dr. Quinn pointed to the fact that the lack of support the film received from the local black population during production further illustrated this racial disconnect.  Her successive inclusion of Poitier’s comments on Hollywood’s racially-discriminatory hierarchy was very enlightening.  Commenting that it was white northern Americans who organised every facet of the Hollywood industry, from writing, casting, production and directing, Poitier regarded it as inevitable that issues of race were softened and misunderstood in cinematic productions.   Dr. Quinn went on to argue that it was this paradox between Hollywood’s ideology and its practise that enhanced Poitier’s performance as Tibbs, with the raw anger conveyed in his performance borne out of his own racial isolation within Hollywood.  She concluded that this illustrates the irony of Hollywood’s promotion of a post-racial ideology, where it used Poitier’s position as a prominent African-American actor to placate any demands to revise its own racial practises.  

Dr. Quinn’s lecture on racial politics in post-Civil Rights Act Hollywood was highly-engaging, moving through social, political and cinematic contexts with ease.  Her talk also made for a powerful revision of traditional treatments, not just of Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night, but of Hollywood’s own treatment of race issues in the midst of a heated era.  Rather than simply being a film that exposes the racial prejudices of Mississippi, she demonstrated how it could very easily be turned on Hollywood, and in doing so, expose the limitations of northern liberalism in its treatment of race.  In doing so Dr. Quinn’s lecture illustrated how the complexities of race issues developed within the northern context of the late-1960s, but also highlighted its continued significance, and the diligence needed in monitoring our own forms of complicity with it in the present day.

By James Nixon

PGR at the University of Glasgow

The Centre’s seminar series continues with Prof. Martin Halliwell (University of Leicester): “Trouble or Transcendence? Health, Illness and American Culture in the 1970s.” This will be held on Thursday 27^th February 2014 in Room 202, 4 University Gardens, at 5:15pm. All very welcome!

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[1] Steinberg, Stephen, The Liberal Retreat From Race, New Politics, vol. 5, no.1 (new series), whole no. 17.  Web. Last accessed on February 13^th.  http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue17/steinb17.htm