apocalypse now

Apocalypse Now is a film I believe that is perfect for showing war time anxieties. Much like the Cold War the Vietnam war also mad people feel scared and crazy. People became very insecure and were always looking behind their backs for the next attack which is what the general feeling of war should and does feel like in the first place. I believe the theme of this film gives of the vibe of kill or be killed especially for martin sheen's character. He is always on alert and feels he has to complete his mission to feel safe. There is also a god-like feeling in this film. These tribe people look up to their leader as a god, they protect him and die for him but when he is killed the only consensus is that sheen to must be god if he can kill theirs. The sense of sacrifice in this film is overwhelming. The tribes people sacrifice a cow and sheen sacrifices the dying girl to get on with his mission. It is almost as if the message is that without sacrifice there is no moving forward, which is true throughout life in general people must always pick and choose and sacrifice for the greater good.

Blue Velvet

Blue velvet... where to start, this was an interesting movie to say the least. I found the characters of the film to blend in the most peculiar ways. Jeffery and Frank although completely different on the outside one may never know just how similar they really were. Frank was a mad sadistic man whom would harm a person and never think twice about it, he was far from pure or innocent and that one could tell just by looking at him. Jeffery on the other hand seemed like the cookie cutter all american boy next door type, and for the most part her was. Except, deep down he wasn't so innocent. He himself would hit Dorothy and sleep with her with pleasure. Although you can tell deep down he feels bad about it, but even so he did like it making him a little far from innocent as well. The two female characters in the film were very similar to each other in ways that they were completely devoted to the men in their lives. They both loved jeffery and would do anything that he asked even if they didn't want to.

The colors in this film was also something for the viewers to marvel at. Aside from them being very washed out and desaturated there was a pop of color everywhere. With bright red cars, men in yellow suits and of course blue lights they would cover dorothy as if she were a work of art. I find that aspect to very interesting. Whenever Dorothy was shown she was either wearing blue, around blue or had some sort of blue light on her which i believe contrast with the premise of the film quite well. The color blue has a very cold and sad feeling, "i feel blue" which is how dorothy is shown feeling throughout the film for obvious reasons. The film looked like a painting of chaos. It wasn't the perfect pretty little pictures of people and landscapes it seemed to be the ever changing crazy world that we live in and I appreciate that aspect of the film quite well.

all the presidents men disscusion

The underlying tone of paranoia in this film I think has gone a long with everything we have been talking about this semester. Paranoia was a common term in the 50's and 60's everyone everywhere was feeling... for everything, from the red scare to your next door neighbor painting his mailbox black, everything and anything spooked people. The difference about 70's paranoia then 50's and 60's was i feel the difference between fear of attack and devastation from another country to the fear of our own government for being secretive and hiding things from us and scandal. The scene in the film which I find to be the most interesting and the scene that clearly shows the tone of paranoia would have to be the scene when the two men meet at the parking lot in the complete dark. This scene pours out with paranoia because you can not see there faces, and it has a very heightened tone like at any minute someone is going to drive up and abduct them and we will never see them again! As a film student I not only feel the paranoia in this scene but I can see it as well because this is exactly the type of setting any director would use to convey paranoia or any time of danger. In my observation the media today deals with possibly high-level scandals by making it THE news to watch.  It is all we hear or read about everywhere, completely becoming the attention holder of everyone just hanging on ever word until the scandal has been brought out in the open and we have moved on to the next big story. The difference between us now than as before in terms of how the media works is the sense that now we are used to scandal and being corrupted that it takes something huge for the media to even get our attention and to actually get our attention it's almost as if they must beat the story to death. The media is only interested in what their audience is interested in so they will keep digging and keep looking for the next big story always because that is really the only thing that gets the attention of the public. 

Cleopatra Jones

Well first off the characters throughout this film seem larger than life in the sense that they do not seem to live by any social standard but instead following their own code in what seems to be a whole other universe from our own. Especially the females and especially Cleo whom seems almost heroic. She wears over the top clothing, drives a flashy car and lives an extravagant lifestyle by her own set of rules that seem to over throw even the authorities at times, meanwhile never forgetting the life she came from. "Mommy," played by Shelly Winters is also a strong female that seems to live the same type of way as Cleopatra. She is a strong female dominating in a male dominated world. Really, how many times will we ever see in real life or fiction a female character the pin head of a major drug trafficking operation? Never, is the answer; because it is usually wealthy men. 


The power of feminism reins free throughout the entire film. If the protagonist in this film had been male unlike Cleo he would have been torn and tattered by the films ending. Cleopatra however never had a hair out of place or a wrinkle in site, which is entirely to strange considering Cleo seems far too exotic and feminine to be carrying a gun and man handling gangster after gangster. When first seeing Cleo one would think she was an outstanding women who had a husband and three little children running around, which how women are largely viewed, you would never think of her packing a gun. Nor, would we believe that a short, plump women with bad wigs would run an entire thug empire, again man handling her own goons and killing people because historically that was always a "mans part."


However, I do feel that every time a woman plays a strong female lead the character is almost always made out to be super hero-like, in the sense that she almost seems unreal and could never possibly be a real life woman ever. Because we all know that if anyone was to get into a fight they would never come out of it looking and smelling like a rose. Unless were you know - SuperMAN, BatMAN or ... Cleopatra Jones. Think about it, if the character was not made out to be superhuman she would seem to be a weak little girl whom got beat down repeatedly to only catch a lucky break in the end - i.e every horror movie known to man kind. 


This film without a doubt uses feminism to a tee in the sense that for any real life women to be able to kick the massive but that Cleopatra did she would not only have to look great doing it but she would have to posses some sort of unnatural ability to do so. 

Manchurian Candidate

Is the art of brainwashing a vice that could actually occur? Is it truly possible to train a human being to execute a plan and take lives in a very precise manner as to not get caught or even remember the act of doing from only viewing the queen of diamonds in a deck of 52 playing cards? A question that is both believable and quite interesting to me. I believe that if started young enough a person can be trained to do or live any way the puppeteer chooses for them. While watching this film I couldn't help but notice the similaritaries between it and Angelina Jolie's film Salt. Salt was a film compossed with the idea that the Russian government from birth would give children american identities and sculpt them into perfectly trained sleeper assains. These children would live, eat and play this lifestyle until they were old enough to be transfered to American to start fulling their jobs. They were even taught english at birth so that they would have perfect american accents.

I feel Mrs. Iselin was the perfect person to train Shaw. She was a very strong and cold character that would fill Shaw's head with the material necessary to carry out the goals of the Russian government. She fills the momism role to a tee and is perfect example of a corrupt and controlling. And Shaw having the sense to protect his mother this monster is a great example of the demonology term we read throughout the reading. Having made this film at around the time when JFK was assassinated I believe played out the idea of McCarthyism and Communism. Shaw and his stepfather we both puppets of Mrs. Iselin and the Russian government much like McCarthy and Lee Harvey Oswald were to the vices of their own government in the sense that was we see and hear makes us do.

I personal found this movie to be very interesting. I liked the fact that in the end Iselin and Shaw were killed and Manchurian Global was forced out of the shaddows and all was well. I believe that this bringing an end to Manchurian and the film gave the viewer the sense that out country is strong and we always find out the truth and we will never let the threat of communism bring us down.

Fear of the abnormal

Throughout the Cold War fear was at an all time high all across the country spreading from family to family and town to city causes what I like to think of as a fear epidemic creating controversy everywhere. Fear of the abnormal; communists, any non-caucasian race, homosexuality and feminism were all but normal in the caucasian male dominated normalcy of America. The perfect American family: father, mother, son, daughter, and dog all heterosexual living a middle class life with a white picket fence surrounding their perfectly unblemished lives was the only way to live in the 50's and everyone on the outside looking in were the greatest causes of anxieties. The film Invasions of The Body Snatchers and the readings of Katrina Mann touch base on these very anxieties of the 50's in their own theatrical ways.

The film is based on a small non-existent town of Santa Mira, California which appears to be a normal middle class working suburban society in the 50's. However what we begin to uncover as the film unfolds is that this town is anything but normal. The women of this film seem to be a bit more "frisky" then they really probably would have been during this time and the residents of Santa Mira are having their bodies taken over by an alien form that seem to resemble their original selves in every way right down to their very memories. What was the message that Don Siegel was trying to portray throughout this film? I believe he was trying to show his audience that what we view as normal may just be an act, do we really ever know anybody or their true intentions?   Look at the Rosenbergs; two communist spies that lived in America and led completely normal lives until they were found to be frauds sending shock through their community that really had no idea who they were. This is what I believe Siegel was saying - We could be best friends with a Commie and never know until it may be to late. It worked for the alien attackers in Santa Mira, they seemed real and normal and no one expected a thing.

Katrina Manns message was a bit more realistic that Siegel's. She based her readings upon real instances not a syfy drama. Mann talks about the abnormal taking over the suburban dream by discussing the feminist societies that were beginning to bloom threatening the ideals of the betty crocker stay at home housewife and white superior society when the African American's move into the neighborhood. Mann really touches on the delicate subjects in a real light showing how easy it was to cause anxiety and uproar amongst an ignorant population. Homosexuality, Feminism, Racism, and Espionage caused a ridiculous amount of uproar and fear throughout the 50's causing people everywhere to act out and do heartbreaking things like lynchings and public executions to the most innocent of people and films like the Invasion of The Body Snatchers only added more to the fear epidemic.