Tropes & commonplaces; Greek filmic topoi
Observed at the Short Film Festival of Drama 2009
by Maria Technosux
Observed at the Short Film Festival of Drama 2009
by Maria Technosux
for Γίνεται στη Δράμα... blog
Some people call them cliches and stereotypes and make an effort to avoid them, some scholars call them tropes and commonplaces and argue that cinematic genius can be only expressed by offering a fresh new interpretation of them, thus endlessly updating them. These are the ones I observed at the Short Film Festival of Drama 2009.
Arguing couples: I'm going to sound like bell hooks but please, somebody, make a film where a Greek couples is communicating instead of arguing. I recall an essay I read a while back where bell hooks was praising a film-maker for depicting a black couple who were solving their argument on screen through communication instead of mutual hostility. Apparently Greek couples and black couples have something in common: they are either depicted in the midst of Jungle Fever, love and lust, or they depicted in the midst of a screamfest. Apparently there is no middle grown. Gawd forbid you would see a Greek couple working co-jointly to solve a problem together. Filmmakers, it's your job to fantasize and depict and alternative to the Arguing Couple.
The city and the country side: Greek films either take place in the Big City, invariably Athens, or in the mountainous country side. Which is funny because the city of Drama where the Short Film Festival is held is the kind of place that is both urban and country at the same time.
The *summer* beach: Films shot in the summer sometimes avoid both the country and the city and find their way to the beach. Apparently no one has considered filming a Greek beach in the autumn or, Gawd forbid, in the winter. This is very bizarre to me because the Dutch coast is just amazing in late December. This year I was on a Greek Cyclades island in the middle of a rainstorm. There has to be a Greek film maker out there who can capture that instead of producing yet another postcard image.
The car: This is the staple of the American film. Greek films, both urban and country, feature cars, but you will be hard pressed to find a Greek film where the car visualizes freedom of movement. The Greek car is just another dwelling space. No Greek film character is liberated inside their car. Greek characters drive cars to home, to work and back. No one is liberated. In fact, the use of cars in Greek films is so mundane and functional, you will never catch a Greek film-couple having sex in a car! There is the occasional car-accident, but do not expect a Greek "Crash". There is a profound Greek squeamishness about visually depicting the blood and guts of a car accident, despite the high incidence of them in this country. No Greek wants to think of their car as a potential killing machine.
The beautiful stranger: Of all the topoi this is the most intriguing to me personally, so I will digress on this one. Greek films aren't as political as I expected (or hoped) they would be, but I believe that the trope of the beautiful stranger best reveals the utopian longings of Greek film-makers in a country that is in a state of arrested development, politically and economically ("growth without development" as in the scholarly jargon). The Beautiful Stranger is the new, somewhat exocentric person who appears out of the blue and throws the protagonist's life into disarray. Both male and female filmmakers, young and old, new ones and old experienced ones, will depict male and female characters, young ones and old ones, who are hoping to meet the Beautiful Stranger. This hope is of religious origin. The Beautiful Stranger is a secular version of God's angel descending from above to intervene in human affairs. (See Pasolini's Teorama). The trope of the Greek Beautiful Stranger retains some of its religious unpredictability and arbitrariness, in that very rare if ever do Greek characters themselves go actively looking for the Beautiful Stranger. Greek utopian longings are revealed to be, well, kinda lazy longings. Greek characters expect the Beautiful Stranger to come to them instead. Shit just happens, and so does the Beautiful Stranger. Greeks are too preoccupied with the daily grind (or too lazy, or uninspired) to seek them out themselves. Anyone worthy of meeting a Beautiful Stranger will be sure to meet him/her, for the Beautiful Stranger will come to them. I wonder what would happen if a Greek character went looking for the Beautiful Stranger. The short film Effervescent (Nikoleta Leousi and Petros Gkikas) deserves a mention here, for here the Beautiful Stranger is a house!
Men will be men and women will be women: This trope is related to the Arguing Couples (see above). Very rarely will Greek film-makers use their films as an opportunity to disrupt gender roles and especially gender expectations. I am not talking about casting a Greek sissy - sissies abound in the Greek media. I mean that men and women are cast rather stereotypically. I am not talking about a Greek "Bruno". I am talking about a Greek Thelma and Louise. I was particularly disappointed at the unwillingness of female Greek filmmakers in that regard. Not a single woman uses her film to give her character more than Greek society gives women in general. No one uses her film to offer a vision of liberation that goes beyond meeting the Beautiful Stranger, a variant of the prince on the white horse (he'd better not be KKK or the local version thereof, the Greek-fascist Golden Dawn), which is itself a version of The (hopefully benevolent and not overtly argumentative) Father Figure. Ladies, your female characters can be anything you want them to be. Free your minds on screen. Why not exploit the freedom offered by the screen to show us Greek women we have never seen before? I guess this explains the overall lack of Greek science fiction films *sigh*). I think that the reason why I was so intrigued by a Greek thriller like The Conveyor (Dimitris Yiamloglou) - despite the pathetically stupid pathetically stereotypical homeless prostitute scenes - more than by any of the other fiction films. Because in the Conveyor, for once, a male character is depicted as vulnerable and scared. The patricide scene is a rather unimaginative way of resolving the fear and vulnerability of the male character (wasn't that what the The Dog did too?). And besides, in Greece this too is a literally *ancient* trope (Zeus fighting Kronos). But the fact that the Father Figure returns to haunt by means of the main character's psycho-pathological projectionism (he envisions the Father who killed his mother in every older man he sees) undoes any of the resolve that the earlier patricide scene produced. Despite having asserted himself by killing the Father Figure, the main character is never freed from the foreboding presence of the Father. Greece is a patriarchy, and the Father Figure is everywhere. In Greece, an extreme transgression of gender expectations, like patricide, requires an extreme genre like the thriller.
Some people call them cliches and stereotypes and make an effort to avoid them, some scholars call them tropes and commonplaces and argue that cinematic genius can be only expressed by offering a fresh new interpretation of them, thus endlessly updating them. These are the ones I observed at the Short Film Festival of Drama 2009.
Arguing couples: I'm going to sound like bell hooks but please, somebody, make a film where a Greek couples is communicating instead of arguing. I recall an essay I read a while back where bell hooks was praising a film-maker for depicting a black couple who were solving their argument on screen through communication instead of mutual hostility. Apparently Greek couples and black couples have something in common: they are either depicted in the midst of Jungle Fever, love and lust, or they depicted in the midst of a screamfest. Apparently there is no middle grown. Gawd forbid you would see a Greek couple working co-jointly to solve a problem together. Filmmakers, it's your job to fantasize and depict and alternative to the Arguing Couple.
The city and the country side: Greek films either take place in the Big City, invariably Athens, or in the mountainous country side. Which is funny because the city of Drama where the Short Film Festival is held is the kind of place that is both urban and country at the same time.
The *summer* beach: Films shot in the summer sometimes avoid both the country and the city and find their way to the beach. Apparently no one has considered filming a Greek beach in the autumn or, Gawd forbid, in the winter. This is very bizarre to me because the Dutch coast is just amazing in late December. This year I was on a Greek Cyclades island in the middle of a rainstorm. There has to be a Greek film maker out there who can capture that instead of producing yet another postcard image.
The car: This is the staple of the American film. Greek films, both urban and country, feature cars, but you will be hard pressed to find a Greek film where the car visualizes freedom of movement. The Greek car is just another dwelling space. No Greek film character is liberated inside their car. Greek characters drive cars to home, to work and back. No one is liberated. In fact, the use of cars in Greek films is so mundane and functional, you will never catch a Greek film-couple having sex in a car! There is the occasional car-accident, but do not expect a Greek "Crash". There is a profound Greek squeamishness about visually depicting the blood and guts of a car accident, despite the high incidence of them in this country. No Greek wants to think of their car as a potential killing machine.
The beautiful stranger: Of all the topoi this is the most intriguing to me personally, so I will digress on this one. Greek films aren't as political as I expected (or hoped) they would be, but I believe that the trope of the beautiful stranger best reveals the utopian longings of Greek film-makers in a country that is in a state of arrested development, politically and economically ("growth without development" as in the scholarly jargon). The Beautiful Stranger is the new, somewhat exocentric person who appears out of the blue and throws the protagonist's life into disarray. Both male and female filmmakers, young and old, new ones and old experienced ones, will depict male and female characters, young ones and old ones, who are hoping to meet the Beautiful Stranger. This hope is of religious origin. The Beautiful Stranger is a secular version of God's angel descending from above to intervene in human affairs. (See Pasolini's Teorama). The trope of the Greek Beautiful Stranger retains some of its religious unpredictability and arbitrariness, in that very rare if ever do Greek characters themselves go actively looking for the Beautiful Stranger. Greek utopian longings are revealed to be, well, kinda lazy longings. Greek characters expect the Beautiful Stranger to come to them instead. Shit just happens, and so does the Beautiful Stranger. Greeks are too preoccupied with the daily grind (or too lazy, or uninspired) to seek them out themselves. Anyone worthy of meeting a Beautiful Stranger will be sure to meet him/her, for the Beautiful Stranger will come to them. I wonder what would happen if a Greek character went looking for the Beautiful Stranger. The short film Effervescent (Nikoleta Leousi and Petros Gkikas) deserves a mention here, for here the Beautiful Stranger is a house!
Men will be men and women will be women: This trope is related to the Arguing Couples (see above). Very rarely will Greek film-makers use their films as an opportunity to disrupt gender roles and especially gender expectations. I am not talking about casting a Greek sissy - sissies abound in the Greek media. I mean that men and women are cast rather stereotypically. I am not talking about a Greek "Bruno". I am talking about a Greek Thelma and Louise. I was particularly disappointed at the unwillingness of female Greek filmmakers in that regard. Not a single woman uses her film to give her character more than Greek society gives women in general. No one uses her film to offer a vision of liberation that goes beyond meeting the Beautiful Stranger, a variant of the prince on the white horse (he'd better not be KKK or the local version thereof, the Greek-fascist Golden Dawn), which is itself a version of The (hopefully benevolent and not overtly argumentative) Father Figure. Ladies, your female characters can be anything you want them to be. Free your minds on screen. Why not exploit the freedom offered by the screen to show us Greek women we have never seen before? I guess this explains the overall lack of Greek science fiction films *sigh*). I think that the reason why I was so intrigued by a Greek thriller like The Conveyor (Dimitris Yiamloglou) - despite the pathetically stupid pathetically stereotypical homeless prostitute scenes - more than by any of the other fiction films. Because in the Conveyor, for once, a male character is depicted as vulnerable and scared. The patricide scene is a rather unimaginative way of resolving the fear and vulnerability of the male character (wasn't that what the The Dog did too?). And besides, in Greece this too is a literally *ancient* trope (Zeus fighting Kronos). But the fact that the Father Figure returns to haunt by means of the main character's psycho-pathological projectionism (he envisions the Father who killed his mother in every older man he sees) undoes any of the resolve that the earlier patricide scene produced. Despite having asserted himself by killing the Father Figure, the main character is never freed from the foreboding presence of the Father. Greece is a patriarchy, and the Father Figure is everywhere. In Greece, an extreme transgression of gender expectations, like patricide, requires an extreme genre like the thriller.
(continued)
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