Critical Film Analysis

In this essay I shall be looking at the movie Blue Velvet (David Lynch – 1986) to which I shall be applying an analysis of voyeurism and feminism and how it features throughout the theme of this filmic text. I will also be looking at the movie Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper – 1969) and identifying why this film is classified as an alternative film.

In the opening sequence of Blue Velvet the vision of the audience is blocked by a curtain. Soon after the audience are looking at a white picket fence and in front some roses. The curtain and the fence represent a barrier which makes the viewer intrigued to what is behind, therefore setting up the audience to become voyeurs themselves.

What makes the audience, also known as the spectator, more intrigued is after the shots of the waving fireman passing on the fire truck and the lollipop lady helping the children across the road, a housewife watching TV and lots more shots of white picket fences we see a man collapse in the garden while watering the plants the camera passes over him and goes under the surface of the grass and we are faced with grotesque bugs battling one another. This is a representation that we have gone underneath the surface of the picturesque and beautiful town and that we are now in the dark underbelly of the peaceful idyllic suburbia or as Paul Martinovic writes; “beneath the gleaming enamel of an American smile is rotting gums and bad breath”. This creates a binary opposition as the spectator is given a representation of a friendly tranquil town which shields its dark and twisted sinister truth.

The story is about Jeffrey Beaumont who returns back to his home town from college and finds a severed ear in a field near to his home. The result of this is Jeffrey finds himself trying to investigate the criminal world while at the same time being torn between the affections of two women.  In Jeffrey’s endeavours he sees events play out and at times directly involved with this dangerous but exciting environment during his tribulations to reveal the truth. Jeffrey becomes the voyeur and he wants to see what is going on so he can investigate

The boundaries and barriers used to hide the vision of the spectatorship sets up the desire for the audience to look. The boundaries and barriers are used to hide the vision of the spectatorship so the audience can’t see. This sets up a forbidden pleasure and therefore creating the morbid urge and desire to look. This becomes evident in the scene where Jeffery hides in the cupboard after breaking in to Dorothy’s apartment and witnesses the bizarre sexual relationship between Dorothy and Frank.

During this scene it intercuts between the camera, representing the spectatorships eyes, watching Frank abuse, belittle and rape Dorothy to Jeffrey looking through the slats of the cupboard door. Jeffrey has become voyeuristic as he watches this attack and so too does the spectatorship as this makes the audience wanting to know what is going on between Frank and Dorothy but at the same time wanting to know how Jeffrey is reacting to what he is witnessing.

According to feminist psychoanalytic film theorist Laura Mulvey, the relationships between Jeffrey, Frank and Dorothy represent a metaphorical Oedipal family. The Oedipus Complex refers to a 5^th-Century mythical character called Oedipus who unwittingly kills his father and then marries his mother. Psychoanalytic theory suggests the term Oedipus Complex denotes that emotions and ideas, kept in the unconscious mind, a child’s desire to sexually possess the parent of the opposite sex, i.e. males attracted to their mothers.

Laura Mulvey claims Franks violence is symbolic of different types of domestic abuse within families and the control he has over Dorothy is representative of the hold an abusive husband has over his wife.

Gaye Tuchman, another feminist theorist claims that women are sexually annihilated and that the roles that they represent within media are submissive, repressive and that the media distort the audience’s conceptualization of women. In Dorothy’s case this seems to be true as she is under the brutal control of Frank, and when she discovers Jeffrey in her cupboard she initiates the sexual relationship requesting him to hit her.

It is apparent that women are often featured regressively in filmic texts to appear to make the men more dominant, when actually we are being exposed to the weaknesses of men. This makes the appeal of the audience to become more voyeuristic and therefore able to enjoy films such as Blue Velvet.

Alternative movies are described as such as they often do not follow the convention of classic Hollywood movies, from raising finances for the project to its screening in the cinema. Taking the film Easy Rider for example, it’s alternative from the very beginning in such that the funds raised for the project would not have come from a studio but instead independently sourced from private investors by the producer of the film. 

Easy Rider is a film about finding your freedom from a conformist and corrupt America. In the year this film was made there were two assassinations, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Viet-Nam war and the build up to Nixon’s election as well as the Woodstock Festival, and is a reflection of the collapse of the idealistic 1960s. Young audiences of during this era watched this film to reflect their hopes of a more liberal lifestyle while at the same time fearing the American establishment. American film critic, Vincent Canby, wrote: “Easy Rider was not a great film, but an accurate if overstated dramatization of the fears of many people, especially young people, who were shocked to realize that perhaps there were flaws in the system.”

The story, which uses conventional cinematography, is told in a traditional linear, goal-centred narrative. There is closure too, but neither what the characters, nor certainly what the spectatorship expect! What is unusual, therefore making this narrative alternative, are several mini-narratives by the use of popular music as Wyatt and Bill ride through and across the American landscape. In conventional cinema they story would rely on the actors to deliver a believable portrayal of their characters to reflect their feelings and emotions but the producers of Easy Rider have used popular music to do just that for several scenes.

The story is a counter-culture, anti-establishment tale. In an early scene, Wyatt takes off his watch and throws it to the ground. This is a symbolic and literal statement that he has found his freedom and is also a rejection of the constraints living in a conventional society. This is alternative in the sense that many Hollywood films try to subliminally enforce social conventions throughout its narrative as to not upset the status-quo.

The mise-en-scene of Easy Rider is often of landscapes and roads as the rider go on their journey which connotes they are experiencing their freedom and their lives are in front of them. There are times when they are either in places to sleep, such as in the woods or in the Pueblo Indian graveyard, when they are in prison or at the commune or at the Mexican families home when they repair a flat tyre when they soon have to leave as they get restless in some way or another and have to leave. This connotes that they do not wish to follow the “conventions” of these lifestyles and move on to try and find they ideal lifestyle.  

The editing in the most part follows convention, but there is an alternative use of editing as we see a flash forward of Wyatt’s motorcycle burning next to the roadside. This is the final shot of the movie. The two riders, with two prostitutes they have accompanying them, take some LSD and start hallucinating. The quick paced editing and the disjointed, distorted and bizarre sequence of shots mirrors their trip of painful memories and sounds. This gives the spectatorship the feeling that they too are tripping and get the sense of the emotive experience that the quartet are having.

The use of sound in Easy Rider is alternative as music features heavily in the movie. For most conventional movies the music accompanies the scene but in Easy Rider the shots accompany the music as if they are a series of music videos.  Using music this way creates the emotive behavior and experiences of the two riders. Because music is such a powerful medium to express feeling and emotion the audience are able to connect with the two characters because the thought provoking music puts the audience in place of the two riders. The audience is able to get a sense of escapism and feel as if they are on this road-trip to an alternative lifestyle away from the time constraining conventional way of life.

To conclude with a theory it is thought that Easy Rider has connotations to the State of Nature theory that describes that there must have been a time without government and that we must question the how legitimate government must be from its starting position. It is thought that there are no rights in the state of nature, only freedoms. It is Rousseau’s adaptation of the theory that Easy Rider is associated with. His adaptation of the theory believes that socialised people were taken out of society from where they were raised. He argues that people were not good or bad and that they do have good morals but modern society is blamed for “blemishing their purity”.