Urban decay as spectacle in The Wire and The Shield, and the commodification of their decay
June 10, 2008
Urban Decay in the American city
Urban decay is a process of deterioration in cities, which is illustrated by higher levels of crime, depopulation, drug abuse, ghetto poverty, property abandonment and unemployment. Since the 1950s, many American cities have been in a persistent decline due to the intense deindustrialisation that has occurred, resulting in a suburban housing boom in which some cities lost as much as fifty percent of their population to the suburbs (Levine, 2000). This urban decline has been so large that Rusk (1996: 21) asserts that 34 American cities have reached a ‘critical point of no return’, past which they can only continue to deteriorate socially and economically. The depiction of urban decay in the cities of Baltimore and Los Angeles is the driving force behind the narrative structures of The Wire (Simon, 2002-2008 ) and The Shield (Ryan, 2002-) respectively.
Baltimore, pictured above, is a post-industrial city in which violent crime and drug abuse levels are among the highest in America (Levine, 2000) and The Wire charts urban decay through the failure of the cities institutions – the police, the schools, the ports, the politicians and the media. The Shield is set in the fictional Farmington district of Los Angeles, and depicts the city as a seething pit full of street gangs, drug dealers, murderers, paedophiles and rapists. I will aim to illustrate how both The Wire and The Shield engage in urban decay of their respective cities, and how both series use this urban decay of the American city as spectacle. I will also attempt to show how, through a depiction of urban decay, these shows employ notions of ‘sick’ culture. Firstly, however, a brief introduction of the two series and ideas of city space must be discussed to understand the sites of decay.
The Wire
The Wire, another in a long line of ‘edgy’ HBO dramas, chooses the city of Baltimore, Maryland as its setting. The first and second seasons, which will be the primary focus of this post, deal with the police wire tap investigations of the drug trade and the ports respectively. Narrative switches between the police and their targets, creating a complex vision of an entire society in decay.
Here are some recap clips of seasons one and two which provide adequate background to the show:
The Wire – Season One Recap
The Wire – Season Two Recap
The Shield
The Shield, in contrast, uses more traditional crime drama generic conventions, but subverts conventional cinematography techniques with its use of grainy looking 16mm film stock, lending the series a quasi-documentary aesthetic. It focuses almost solely on the struggles of the Farmington police department of Los Angeles, with a particular focus on the elite “Strike Team” unit and its leader Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) whose primary mandate is to deal with gang-related crime.
Vic Mackey and the season 6 Strike Team
Notions of city space in The Wire
The Wire sets up Baltimore as a gritty, urban milieu – a dangerous, unforgiving landscape. The city becomes a contested site or space between those in law enforcement and those people being investigated.
Lefebvre‘s important work Writings on Cities (1996) produces analyses of the city space that are critical in terms of thinking about notions of city in The Wire. His ideas on the implosion and explosion of the city are particularly noteworthy, considering they relate directly to The Wire‘s decaying Baltimore. He asserts that the modern city is fragmented and broken up into the periphery and the centre. The city’s suburbs and ghettos place on increased emphasis on the periphery as a site for the excluded, whilst the centrality of the city is continually reinforced by being the ‘centre of decision-making, of information, of authority and knowledge’ (Lefebvre, 1996: 206).
The Wire‘s low-rise apartment complex – centre for the drug trade in Season One
These peripheral ghettos produce a new generation of rebels and delinquents (Lefebvre, 1996) in The Wire through the drug trade of the low rise apartment area of West Baltimore in season one of the series. The police and the courts posit the city as centrality base for decision-making and authority in both seasons one and two of The Wire. The telephone wire taps that allow the police to listen to the conversations between those under investigation also establish the city as centre of information and knowledge.
Notions of city space in The Shield
The Shield‘s notions of the Los Angeles city space as likewise fragmented are seen as early as the “Pilot” episode’s final sequence (season 1: episode 1), in which Vic Mackey is positioned as guardian of social order. The montage sequence juxtaposes images Mackey’s Strike Team readying themselves to raid a drug dealer’s house, with images of other officers in the domestic space, performing domestic duties such as greeting their pets and feeding their babies. This juxtaposition, although seemingly simple in structure, serves the function of creating an opposition between the dangerous, public space and the safer, domestic space of the home. This opposition is highlighted by the character Officer Danni Sofa (Catherine Dent), who is preparing for a date. She removes a gun from her purse before leaving, but upon greeting the man at the door she reconsiders this decision and returns for the weapon, unable to leave the safe domestic sphere without sufficient protection from the outside, public space (Chopra-Gant, 2007).
Many facets of Davis‘ influential, urban sociology piece City of Quartz (1992) on the future state of Los Angeles as city can be witnessed in the politics of The Shield. Davis’ (1992: 228 ) idea of a ‘new class war…at the level of the built environment’ can be seen in The Shield, in the way that it deals with continually seeks to insulate the white middle-class from African-American and Latino gangs in spatial terms.
Urban Decay in The Wire
Urban decay in The Wire is established in the city’s peripheries, the slums and low income housing ‘projects’, but it is also seen in the city’s decaying, resource-starved police departments. The first season of the series positions the low rise housing complexes controlled by D’Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gillard Jr.), through persistent engagement with the various characters, as embodying the city’s moral and economic decay. I intend to argue that it is this moral and economic decay of the city that is used as spectacle in The Wire, and a driving narrative device. The dark and dirty world of the low income housing projects and the world of the slums are set up as the main sites of urban decay in the series, and through investigation of the characters inhabiting these areas we are able to come to a better understanding of this decay.
The low-rise apartment complex drug dealers of season one: Poot (Tray Chaney), Bodie (J.D Williams), D’Angelo (Larry Gillard Jr.) and Wallace (Michael B. Jordan)
Through the young character of Wallace, pictured above far right, (Michael B. Jordan) in the opening to “The Wire” (season 1: episode 6), the spectator sees the extent to which urban decay has taken away any semblance of normality, in the sense a nuclear American family, in these slum inner-city neighbourhoods. The episode begins the image of a dead body atop a car, at which point the camera tracks a wire into the bedroom of Wallace. He is seen to be waking up in his bed, then rising to feed countless numbers of small children that he appears to have taken under his wing. The decay takes on a very literal meaning in this sequence, with the house rotting away at the structural level, as well as the children sleeping on dirty mattresses on the floor and a near-empty fridge which seems to suggest that poverty is at a critical level. The sounds of decay in The Wire, which are heard very obviously here, seem to that of a dog barking monotonously, as well as a nearby police siren. It appears as though this entire sequence has been set up for the purposes of showing off the spectacle of urban decay that is engulfing the city, without any real sense of relating to the broader narrative focus of the episode. However, as Wallace leaves the house he finds the body of another ‘game-player’ whose death he inadvertently helped to arrange.
Whilst the finding of the body gives the sequence a broader narrative focus for the episode, it also adds to the spectacle of decay that has been set up in preceding images. Although Wallace is able to leave the decay of the house, he is unable to escape the decay of the city. This leads his character to question his involvement in ‘the game’, and he leaves the city for the countryside. Vitullo-Martin (2008 ) suggests that the slums of Baltimore are worse than even those of the 19th century, because the characters of The Wire do not see a way out, with many having not ever left the confines of the city. Wallace does foolishly return, suggesting that those do find a way out eventually come back, as if seduced by some seedy charm of the decaying city.
Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) left, and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), as leaders of the drug trade, live above the decay of the low-rises, but still involve themselves at the level of the city
Subsequent commodification of urban decay
The creators of The Wire claim to be presenting a realistic vision of a decaying Baltimore (Vitullo-Martin, 2008 ), which they do to some extent. I believe, however, that they are also presenting the spectacle of decay as commodity in a sick culture, turning this idea (urban decay of a city) into a consumable television program on the HBO network. Urban decay is commodified through representation of life in Baltimore, be it as a police officer, drug dealer or port worker. This commodification occurs through numerous ways (in much the same method that Dogtown Skaters of week 1) in the series:
1. The cool street, slang style of language used by the police and the drug dealers
2. The ‘urban’ music in the show, heard almost entirely amongst the diegesis
3. The attitudes of the drug dealers
4. The clothing of the characters in the drug trade
Although these things add a sense of authenticity to the complex diegetic world of the show, they are still commodified in their representation on the show. The series’ merchandising commodifies the show in a much more literal manner, offering viewers the opportunity to purchase a piece of the show, in the form of ‘hoodies’, t-shirts and coffee mugs, all viewable on the show’s ‘shop’ website.
Merchandise from The Wire – commodification of urban decay
Although the profits from one item claim to be donated to a Baltimore charity, it nevertheless provides the interesting example of the commodification of a city’s urban decay, in order to help save the very same city. Merchandising of The Wire may not be the responsibility of the show’s creators, most probably HBO’s domain, but these items add to the world of the show and give spectators another means of access to the series. The creator (David Simon), therefore, needs to be aware of these commodified forms in which his show is appearing.
Urban decay in The Shield
The Shield‘s urban decay is seen through the representation of gang life and also through depicting the moral decay of police officers, in particular Vic Mackey. The Strike Team’s mandate is to deal with any gang related activity in the dangerous milieu of Los Angeles, and from early on in the series we see that Mackey’s team act as landlords to the drug trade. They allow, for a price, the selling of drugs in particular areas on the assurance that no violence will occur. This ambiguous representation of Mackey and his team is part of an overall depiction of urban decay in the series, one that sees decay spreading right through the city and its institutions much like The Wire. The urban decay represented in The Shield allows for the greater spectacle of Vic Mackey’s fascistic police methods to take place.
The Shield focuses primarily on Latino gangs, the Byz-Lats and the Los-Mags as well as African-American gangs such as the One-Niners. The critical fourth season of the series places an increased emphasis on gang life and membership and the police attempt to curb gang related crimes by seizing property of offenders with affiliations to the One-Niners and other Farmington gangs. This season also sees the drug trade shift from that of crack cocaine to tar heroin, a significant shift in the market which allows dealers to assume more control, for longer over the ‘dope fiends’. All of this makes the site of urban decay a much more complicated place, with tensions building between police, drug dealers and innocent citizens. Mackey’s use of force in adding to the spectacle of decay will be discussed, because of it’s importance to The Shield’s notions of decay.
Mackey detains a young child: his use of force as spectacle adds to the urban decay
Mackey’s use of force as spectacle in the decay of downtown Los Angeles is seen throughout the series and many examples are offered in each episode. The season 4 episode “Grave” offers one of the most brutal displays of force, all in the name of finding a boy who has become addicted to crack cocaine. The Strike team pulls up beside a drug dealer, who they think can help them find the boy. The dealer throws a glass bottle at the window and rides off on a bicycle, at which point the Strike Team’s car then side-swipes the dealer after a short chase, throwing him from the bike, with Mackey exclaiming, ‘this is why you should always wear a helmet’. These excessive, over-the-top displays of Vic’s manliness suggest that masculinity is in some sort of crisis. The series depicts a masculinity that is so overproduced that its artificiality becomes evident (King, 2002) to the viewer. The Strike team finds the dealer inside a supermarket, attempting to conceal packets of cocaine by swallowing them. Mackey’s squirts an entire bottle of mustard down his throat, to induce vomit and reveal the cocaine packets. This aggressive style of policing becomes a part of the urban decay of the city; over-enthusiastic police are seen as thugs by citizens and are consequently distrusted. Mackey’s force, in particular, is given privilege by the narrative; it is pervasive and seen as necessary spectacle to overcome the immense urban decay of Los Angeles’ Farmington.
Commodification of The Shield through merchandising
The Shield presents urban decay as commodification through the Fox subsidiary cable network FX’s merchandising of the show, including a PlayStation video game in which players are instructed to take on the character in the Strike Team and fight the world of drugs and crime.
Commodification of decay: The Shield (PlayStation 2) video game, in which players can control Mackey and other members of the Strike Team in a decaying Los Angeles environment.
The video game encourages players to ‘raid crack dens and criminal hideouts while taking down the notorious Byz-Lat and One-Niner gangbangers’ (Aspryr Media, 2007). The decaying urban environment of Los Angeles has been commodified in the form of this game; with consumers able to purchase the experience of living amongst and policing the decay, all the while doing this in a very detached manner.
As is the case with The Wire, through the merchandising of these types of series that present urban decay as a central and constant theme, the idea becomes commodified – repackaged and sold off in the form of video games (above,) soundtracks (pictured right), t-shirts and other apparel. The merchandising of television shows is a necessary way for the networks to make money from these series, but at the same time this commodification aids in, I believe, diluting the ‘message’ or theme of urban decay that the show is attempting to convey.
In writing (typing?) this blog post I have attempted to highlight how urban decay in presented in The Wire and The Shield as spectacle, and how notions of urban decay have been commodified by the two series. The Wire positions its decay of city as spectacle through displaying sequences, which, although they may have narrative significance in a specific moment, depict extreme poverty, drug dealing, and violent crimes for the primary purpose of an overall vision of a decaying city, through five series of television. The Shield sees actions of police officers as part of the urban decay spectacle, inadvertently adding it to whilst trying to decrease it through excessive use of force. Both series are commodified within the realms of merchandising, which weakens their power to convey an overall theme of urban decay by repackaging their ideas in the form of video games, urban-themed soundtracks and clothing that replicates that presented in each of the series.
References
Aspyr Media 2007, The Shield, accessed on 1 June 2008 from http://www.aspyr.com/product/story/64
Chopra-Gant, M 2007, ‘The Law of the Father, the Law of the Land: Power, Gender and Race in The Shield’, Journal of American Studies, vol. 41, issue 3, pp 659-673.
Davis, M 1992, City of Quartz, Vintage Books, New York.
Lefebvre, H 1996, Writings on Cities, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
Levine, M.C 2000, ‘A Third World City in the First World: Social Exclusion, Racial Inequality, and Sustainable Development in Baltimore’, in M Polese & R Stren (eds.), Social Sustainabilty of Cities: Diversity and the Management of Change, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp 123-156.
King, G 2002, Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the age of the blockbuster, I.B Tauris, London.
Rusk, D 1996, Baltimore Unbound, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Vitullo-Martin, J 2008, Urban Decay, accessed on 29 May 2008 from http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj_urban_decay.htm
Teleography
The Wire (HBO, Simon 2002-2008 )
The Shield (FX, Ryan, 2002-)
Useful links:
The Wire – All 5 Seasons – on watchtvsitcoms.
More urban decay – Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1989)
May 27, 2008
A stunning piece of filmmaking from an incredibly underrated filmmaker, which originally screened on the BBC in 1989. Alan Clarke’s work can be extremely powerful, and this film is no exception.
From wikipedia:
Elephant is a 1989 short film directed by Alan Clarke. The film is set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The film’s title comes from Bernard MacLaverty’s description of the Troubles as “the elephant in our living room” – a reference to the collective denial of the underlying social problems of Northern Ireland. MacLaverty is a Northern Irish author and wrote the screenplay for Elephant. Produced by BBC Northern Ireland, it first screened on BBC2 in 1989. The film was first conceived by Danny Boyle, who was working as a producer for BBC Northern Ireland at the time.
The film, which contains very little dialogue, depicts eighteen murders and is partly based on actual events drawn from police reports at the time. It is shot in 16mm steadicam and features a series of tracking shots, a technique the director used regularly. The grainy 16mm film, together with the lack of dialogue, plot, narrative and music give the film a cold, observational documentary feel. Nothing is learnt about any of the gunmen or victims. Each of the murders are carried out calmly and casually, in one scene the gunman is seen to drive away slowly, even stopping to give way for traffic. The victims are shown for several seconds in a static shot of the body.
As with several of Clarke’s film, Elephant received high praise and attracted controversy. After watching the film Clarke’s contemporary David Leland wrote
“I remember lying in bed, watching it, thinking, ‘Stop, Alan, you can’t keep doing this.’ And the cumulative effect is that you say, ‘It’s got to stop. The killing has got to stop.’ Instinctively, without an intellectual process, it becomes a gut reaction.”
The film is a clear influence on Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant, based on the Columbine High School Massacre. Van Sant’s film borrowed not only Clarke’s title, but also closely mirrors his minimalist style.
Elephant (1989) PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
Urban Decay – Life in Baltimore, Maryland
May 26, 2008
Relevant to my final essay topic on urban decay as spectacle in The Wire and The Shield, I found these photos of urban life in Baltimore to be fascinating.
The genesis of the American medical drama and
Nip/Tuck and the spectacle of the real.
The genesis of the medical drama in American television provides an interesting landscape of transformation. Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, these early shows were very conscious of not upsetting the image of doctor as infallible hero. This tradition continued for some time into the 1970s and early 1980s until a change occurred in the genre, in which subsequent shows increasingly depicted the fallible nature of these doctors’ humanity. Nip/Tuck (Murphy, 2003-present), perhaps the most thematically intriguing of the current medical dramas, is discussed in some detail, in regards to its treatment of the surgery scene and notions of perfection. Firstly, however, the earlier shows that have set up the generic conventions and forms will be discussed.
The early narrative form of the medical drama was relatively simple and these shows always sought to reinforce the image of the physician. Shows such as Ben Casey (1961-1966) and Dr. Kildare (1961-1966) were typically set in a hospital, featured a young male physician, his mentor, as well as patients, nurses and other doctors. These physicians were the kings of the hospital – and each episode primarily centred on one patient’s combination of physical and emotional or social problems.
The disorders suffered by these show’s patients tended to be acute rather than chronic, which allowed the narrative to progress toward a climactic scene, usually a surgery which involved the curing of the patient or very rarely, their death. Ben Casey (Vince Edwards) and Dr. Kildare (Richard Chamberlain) were the ideal physicians in that they consistently saved lives with relative ease, fixed broken marriages and families and gave patients a stronger will to live (Strauman & Goodier, 2008). The generic trope that started with these two important shows is that of the mentor role guiding the young, but inexperienced, physician. It is an important trope in the medical drama and has been used widely in the genre since these two shows.
Dr. Kildare (1961-1966)
While this simple formula held sway for many years (excluding shows such as St. Elsewhere (Brand & Falsey, 1982-1989) which emphasised grittier, decaying hospitals), a considerable shift occurred in the 1990s in portrayal of doctors on television, as well as in the medical drama as a genre. This change began with shows such as ER (Crichton, 1994-present) and Chicago Hope (Kelley, 1994-2000). These newer shows attempted to demonstrate a higher degree of realism and complexity in their portrayal of doctors and hospitals, and opposed this idealistic view of the physician seen in earlier medical dramas. They used moral dilemmas where the doctor characters were shown to be racist, misguided, unsure, or uncaring toward one another (Strauman & Goodier, 2008), repeatedly highlighting the fallible nature of these medical practitioners. These doctors were, however, still positioned to the spectator as acting in the best interests of their patients, and in doing so these newer medical dramas retained some of the aspects of the ideal physician seen in earlier shows.
Currently, three shows – Grey’s Anatomy (Rhimes, 2005-present), House (Shore, 2004-present) and Nip/Tuck – offer three perspectives on this broad genre, using narrative forms and generic conventions that differ from one another. Grey’s Anatomy tends to focus on the relationships between the doctors as the driving force behind the narrative, as well as displaying 2 or 3 extraordinary cases that help the doctors to learn lessons that parallel their personal lives. In its intense focus on the relationships between the fictional surgical interns at the Seattle Grace Hospital, Grey’s Anatomy becomes the most soap-opera of the current shows. House, provides a largely different take on the medical drama than that of Grey’s Anatomy, is a mystery show set in a hospital where the disease acts as villain and House acts as investigator and hero (Strauman & Goodier, 2008). Though a flawed a human condition is presented in the character of Dr House (Hugh Laurie), wherein he is seen popping prescription pills throughout most episodes, he is still reinforced as a positive medical figure through his case solving ability. Nip/Tuck presents the most flawed and ambiguous vision of the doctor yet encountered in the medical drama – perhaps appropriate for the world of plastic surgery that our two “heroes” inhabit.
First surgery scene from “Pilot” episode – a facelift for a paedophile wanted by the mafia
Nip/Tuck is, as the show’s creator Ryan Murphy (2003) describes, ‘a show about skin on every level – skin in plastic surgery, skin in sexuality’. The show is, though, also about going beyond skin, and looking at flesh and the insides of the human body, both metaphorically and literally. The flesh of the human body is privileged through spectacularly over-the-top (in regards to visuals and sometimes the nature of the procedure) surgery sequences, in which cosmetic surgery is rendered an unnecessary invasion into the body. Indeed, the boundary between reconstructive and cosmetic surgery is consistently negotiated, with the latter depicted as a narcissistic practice (Tait, 2007), through which ‘people externalise the hatred they feel about themselves’ (Sean (Dylan Walsh), season 1: episode 1).
The surgical scenes in Nip/Tuck offer what Tait (2007: 128) calls the ‘spectacle of the real’. While other medical dramas such as those in ER and Grey’s Anatomy have shown surgery to be a relatively non-invasive process, Nip/Tuck‘s gory sequences function to focus attention and reiterate the “truth” of that which is being witnessed (Tait, 2007). The strong emphasis on photorealism have led viewers to question the constructed nature of the scenes, indeed many excruciating hours is spent making the prosthetics. This intense focus on gruesome, realistic parts of the surgeries in Nip/Tuck challenges the viewer to watch the rupturing of skin and flesh, and to watch the intervention of healthy bodies (although sometimes they are disfigured) in the name of fixing internal problems (self-esteem issues) with an external solution. As ruptured skin and flesh fills the screen, the ‘viewing engagement becomes of a different order’ (Tait, 2007: 128).
The complete suspension of narrative in Nip/Tuck’s surgical scenes is another point of departure from traditional medical dramas, which use surgeries to drive the narrative forward or as an episode’s climax. Instead Nip/Tuck’s surgical scenes primarily function to display the aesthetic spectacle of gore, flesh, blood, skin, cutting and slicing. These things are given privilege by Murphy’s camera in this first surgery scene (season 1: episode 1), wherein a paedophile mobster (Geoffrey Rivas) who has raped his mob boss’s daughter receives a facelift so at to hide from the world. The face of the patient is torn up on screen and the way images are put together highlights the blood and flesh of the surgical body. The musical track that accompanies surgeries in Nip/Tuck, in this instance The Rolling Stones – Paint It Black, often act as ironic counterpoint to the images on screen. Here it also adds a percussive rhythm to the brutality of the facelift. Murphy’s primary aim is to depict an assault on the body; a violation and intrusion of the normal. Indeed, in his research for the show, creator Ryan Murphy (2003) was told by plastic surgeons that the impact of a facelift is akin to that of “going through the windshield of a car at 70 miles per hour”, and he takes this approach with the initial surgery – the world of Nip/Tuck shows surgeries to be a brutal deconstruction (and reconstruction) of the body in the name of perfection.
Christian shows Kimber what the ‘perfect 10’ really looks like
Perfection is the commodity that this industry thrives on, or more specifically, the striving for perfection because one can never fully attain it. The doctors continually sell the opportunity to reach external perfection through a nip and a tuck with their scalpels, and the characters often realise their internal ugliness which is not so easily fixed. The scene from the pilot (episode 1:season 1) in which Kimber (Kelly Carlson) is told what the “perfect 10” really looks like, sets up the sort of satirising that the show will continue with in subsequent episodes. Through his outlining of a number of unnecessary surgeries for model Kimber, Dr. Troy (Julian McMahon) engenders a sort shame and humiliation in Kimber, who eventually has the surgeries he viciously outlines. Over the course of the show’s 5 seasons, Kimber’s character tells a cautionary tale of the excesses of surgical culture (Tait, 2007) – she becomes a cocaine and ice addict (in separate seasons), a porn star, a scientologist and is hunted by the Carver character, whose mantra “beauty is a curse on the world – it keeps us from seeing who the real monsters are” could act as a haunting epitaph for Kimber.
While offering an extreme take on the medical drama (and a significant formal departure in terms of the surgery scene), Nip/Tuck continues the thematic tradition of imagining the medical practitioner as fallible human being, prone to the most human errors – particularly in their morally void personal lives. As a satire on the deeply superficial world in which we live and on the commodity of perfection, it is ambivalent in that it allows the dramatic to overcome the political issues that it briefly engages in.
References
Goodier, B.C., Strauman, E. (2008). ‘Not Your Grandmother’s Doctor Show: A Review of Grey’s Anatomy, House and Nip/Tuck’, Journal of Medicine and Humanties, 29: 127-131.
Murphy, R. (2003). ‘Giving Drama a Face Lift’ on Nip/Tuck: The Complete First Season [DVD]. USA: Warner Bros. Television.
Tait, S. (2007). ‘Television And The Domestication Of Cosmetic Surgery’, Feminist Media Studies, 7:2, 119 — 135.
The semi-Independent and the mainstream: There Will Be Blood (2007) vs. Cloverfield (2008)
May 7, 2008
Paul Thomas Anderson’s first 4 feature films:
All produced using PTA’s own production company, Ghoulardi Films.
But all films distributed by major studios (except Hard Eight), much like Spike Lee.
There Will Be Blood acts a significant point of departure for PTA, in terms of the kind of films he has made previously. Stylistically, though, it is still in much the same vein as these other films.
There Will Be Blood: oil derrick explosion scene
Cloverfield Viral Marketing Campaign
Cloverfield teaser trailer: view here
What does it tell us about the film?
What does it not tell us about the film?
More Viral Marketing for Cloverfield:
Here are the links to the 6 main character’s pages:
Marlena – http://www.myspace.com/marlenadiamond
Lily – http://www.myspace.com/lily_ford
Hud – http://www.myspace.com/hudsonplatt
Rob – http://www.myspace.com/robbyhawkins
Jason – http://www.myspace.com/jj_hawkins
Beth – http://www.myspace.com/beth_mcintyre
Slusho website: (one of the characters in the trailer is wearing a Slusho t-shirt)
There Will Be Blood‘s cheap, award season marketing at critics (semi-indepedent films aren’t above this kind of marketing if it helps)
aweekendmurmur 