Filmscene: Star Trek

In the latest installation of Henry Stewart and I's discussions of the latest multiplex spectacles for The L Magazine we tackle J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. In it, we discover a film supremely concerned with origin stories and father figures, yet relatively devoid of mothers. It also approaches what we'd imagine an Obama-era blockbuster might look like, but really has more to do with Clinton- and Reagan-era politics. Still, its epic, entertaining and visually exquisite narrative of displacement, refugees, extermination and time travel is a welcome update for the tired Star Trek franchise. Read the whole discussion here.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Three

For one of the greatest filmmakers to have undertaken a primetime television show as early as 1955 testifies to Alfred Hitchcock’s prescience. Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran from 1955 to 1962 (first on CBS, then on NBC), presented weekly half-hour vignettes in a similar vein to Hitchcock’s feature length work. Familiar themes such as the crisis in white male identity, doubling, misogyny, the oppressive weight of life under modern conditions, racism and sexism, were treated extensively throughout the show’s run. The recently-released third season has no extra features but includes all 39 episodes, several of which are outstanding, while a few are throw-aways and most lie somewhere in-between. Only three episodes are directed by Hitchcock, two others – surprisingly – by Robert Altman. The season is full of other treats: actors Joseph Cotton, Vincent Price, Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia, George Peppard and William Shatner make appearances, and two episodes are written by Roald Dahl. Despite his absence behind the camera Hitchcock seems always present, addressing the audience at the beginning and end of each episode. These hilarious monologues are the most consistently entertaining part of the show, with Hitchcock reveling in stiff-upper-lip sarcasm – though often making explicit the misogynist and xenophobic tendencies that remain just below the surface in so much of his work.

As always with Hitchcock, the misogyny of this show isn’t wholeheartedly endorsed, but instead presented as casual and problematic. In many cases the violence perpetrated against female characters is a direct result of the dishonesty, insecurity and immaturity of the male characters. In the excellent episode “Silent Witness,” for example, a male professor kills the young female student with whom he’s had an affair after she demands that he leave his wife. Though the episode is told from the professor’s point of view, his exploitation of a gendered power dynamic is clearly presented as monstrous. The episode goes a step further by staging the murder in front of a 14-month-old baby girl: the title’s silent witness. As she develops the ability to speak, the professor turns his attention to keeping her quiet. Becoming an adult, the episode shows, means entering into a set of uneven power relations more often mapped onto sexual difference than any other category. Allowing the episode’s witness to overcome her silence means undoing this profound intertwining of gender and power.

Cultural and racial stereotypes are almost as all-pervasive as fragile gender relations in Hitchcock’s work, and this goes for Alfred Hitchcock Presents as well. Unfortunately, xenophobia is too often indulged without being reprimanded to let Hitchcock off the moral hook on this issue. In several episodes the show’s use of national stereotypes is parodic and self-deprecating. British condescension and disrespect towards all other nationalities is played for laughs when outmoded and silly social conventions are juxtaposed to the flexible lifestyles of Europeans and Americans. In other episodes, however, humor dealing in national and ethnic stereotypes gives way to overt racism. In an episode entitled “The Diplomatic Corpse,” a young American couple navigates a series of misadventures in Mexico. Racist stereotypes proliferate, frustrations over the locals’ “ten-hour lunch breaks” abound, and Hitchcock’s regular any-“other” actor Peter Lorre (actually Austrio-Hungarian) plays Mexican private investigator Tomas Salgado. Parody, in this episode, does not outdo racism.

With highly politicized topics bubbling to the surface of every episode, Alfred Hitchcock Presents may be more interesting to today’s hyper-media-literate audience than it was when it began in 1955. Like the most successful TV shows today, the aesthetics and generic conventions of Alfred Hitchcock Presents more closely resemble those of cinema than other TV shows of its time. That said, the dominant themes of each episode recall many of Hitchcock’s own films, and, likewise, have remained very relevant despite the long-outdated aesthetics of the show. Certainly, the third season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents is uneven from one episode to the next, but the most interesting far outweigh the boring and conventional.

A completely different review of the third season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents is in the October 17 issue of the New York Press, and can be found here.

The art of television commercials

The idea of paying money to sit in a movie theatre and watch commercials may seem odd. Most people would probably pay not to have to watch commercials before their feature presentation. However, we do often accuse commercials of being ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ so isn’t it possible that some might be so good as to merit appreciation in and of themselves? That’s the assumption behind the Cannes Advertisement Festival, an annual celebration of the best television commercials from around the world.

The Cannes Lions, the awards given to advertisers for outstanding television commercials, are distributed in the framework of the International Advertising Festival, which takes place for one week every June in Cannes. The festival is in its 53^rd year, and has been showing the best ads of each year to audiences world-wide since 1990.

The advertisements presented are for every variety of products and from every region of the world. Multi-national corporations like Nike, Sony, Volkswagen or Levis’ are rewarded consistently every year. Meanwhile, a rotating cast of smaller companies always appears, selling everything from poultry to plasma televisions.

Consumer goods are also not the only thing being pushed in these excellent advertisements. Touching segments come courtesy of UNESCO, funds for children with cancer and AIDS research groups. The Truth, an organization seeking to hold tobacco companies responsible for their customers’ illnesses with hard-hitting documentary-style commercials, is often rewarded as well. The government of Thailand, on the other hand, chose humour as a way of reaching its audience in a series of commercials demanding a greater effort towards energy conservation.

Indeed, throughout the screening, comedy is the most popular advertising technique. A number of companies harnessed the inherent humour of showing people in animal suits in order to push their products. The brand of candy Skittles, featured multiple times this year, were able to give their familiar tagline “taste the rainbow” new meaning by framing it in mundane, everyday situations and letting absurdity do the rest. The most abrasively comic series was produced to sell an energy drink. Surveying a serene scene in the countryside, viewers were lulled into relaxation until a vampire-like creature leapt to the front of the image, causing one to feel just as awake as if one had consumed the caffeinated drink.

However, comedies being the genre of choice, funny commercials tended to melt into one another, as advertisements generally do. Many of the most memorable segments ended up being those which were strikingly different. A Levis’ commercial adapting a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, set in the streets of present-day Los Angeles, will not be soon forgotten. Similarly, a series of very strange, uncomfortable and disturbing commercials for Olympus digital cameras shocked their way into viewer’s memories.

However, advertisements which demonstrated immense creativity provided the greatest support for considering television commercials an artistic medium, and were the best of this year’s winners. A wonderfully animated segment from France to raise AIDS awareness testified not only to technical expertise, but also vivid imagination and terrific artistic talent. A similarly colourful advertisement for Honda diesel engines was given this year’s top prize. Finally, a series of commercials for Adidas footwear proved exceptionally clever and creative, but also undeniably beautiful; a personal favourite.

However sceptical one might be at the prospect of watching several dozen television commercials in a row, the experience is extremely enjoyable, year after year without fail. It is also enlightening, as one becomes aware that all those things typically avoided while watching TV might actually be better than the program one is struggling to watch. In fact, the dense doses of comedy, touching drama, or arresting beauty one experiences in these commercials are more satisfying and enjoyable than most TV shows or feature films.

For a society that suffers from many symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder, the condensed format of the television commercial might be the most fitting medium for artistic expression.

Note: This article was published on 19 January 2006 in the McGill Daily, and a version of it can be found on that paper's website here.