Luke Marino

February 1, 2019
The Jazz Age

Upon our first screening of the jazz age shorts, I immediately realized that my entire life
I had taken a teleological approach to animation. I have always loved the jazz age and related
older animation, but I had fallen into the teleological trap of believing it to be developed solely
as a precursor to the modern, dismissing its right to be viewed independent of its cinematic
descendants. In particular, the jazz age shorts lived in the pre-code era which was much less
restricted than the present, and as a result they were able to explore themes of violence,
alcoholism, and the raunchiness of the jazz age to a fuller extent than modern animation. In
particular, Woos Whoopee (Sullivan, 1930) features Felix the Cat who drinks himself into a
hallucinogenic state, and Minnie the Moocher (Fleischer, 1932) features the execution of three
ghosts by the electric chair. As another function of the lack of animatic restriction of the period,
jazz age cartoons were able to fully explore alternate fantastical realities, and, as noted by
Eisenstein in On Disney create “a departure from one’s self.”2 Almost none of the shorts viewed
in the screening are set in recognizable places; nearly all occupy a fictitious landscape,
particularly Music Land (Jackson, 1935) which features warring, animated instruments that live
on islands.
This concept of an escape is highly representative of the jazz age as a whole, especially
when considering the historical context. World War I had just concluded, and the country as a
whole needed something of a decompression. This is where I realized my teleological mistake, in
that I had never thought of these cartoons as made for the jazz age audience, I never considered
that the audience to which they were projected was substantially different than a modern
gathering. Violence, sex, and alcohol were common themes of the jazz age, as F. Scott Fitzgerald
emphasizes in “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” and these cartoons take a populist approach and feed
these to their audiences1. In addition, the structure of jazz age cartoons is similar to jazz itself, in
that every character is awarded a solo. The cartoon as a whole is democratic, in that while there
may be a band master, such as the ghost walrus in Minnie the Moocher (Fleischer, 1932) the
supporting characters are separately featured, and they often come together at the end, such as
the end chase scene in Minnie the Moocher (Fleischer, 1932). Jazz in the jazz age was often
viewed as an escape in and of itself, so structuring animated shorts to mimic this art from
further promotes the narrative of jazz age cartoons representing escape. Watching The Princess
and the Frog and comparing it to older animation I was able to notice that the movie stayed true
to jazz themes in that each character was awarded a solo and they work democratically to escape
the swamp. Also, the theme of escape is represented, in that Tiana and Naveen are physically
morphed into frogs and Louie has a desire to play jazz like a human. However, while the movie
honors jazz themes, it was not designed for jazz age audiences, and it is devoid of the
raunchiness present in Woos Whoopee (Sullivan, 1930).
The concept of the plasmatic plays a key role in the establishment of these cartoons as
means of escape. One of the key affordances of animation, the plasmaticity of characters allows
them to take on shapes and forms at the outreaches of the wildest human imagination.
Oftentimes these forms are entirely grotesque, as evidenced by the faces of my fellow classmates
during the final chase scenes in Swing You Sinners! (Fleischer, 1930). Eisenstein comments on
the grand ability of animation to provide to the inanimate, marveling at the lifelike behavior of
the characters in Disney’s films, and that even animated animals “mock at the categories of
zoology” with their plasmatic behavior2. The setting, too, adopts these morphic abilities, most
notably at the conclusion of The Pink Phink (Freling, 1964), which ends with a pink sun rising
over a lawn of pink grass surrounding a pink house, all of which had been previously white. The
sheer imagination and creativity of these cartoons is highly reflective of the energy and vibrance
of the period in which they were born, and while they represent an escape from America in the
jazz age, I believe that they more closely represent an escape to the jazz that permeates them at
the deepest level.

One of the last few scenes from “Swing You Sinners!” picturing grotesque figures chasing the
main character

The fantastical “Land of Symphony” from “Music Land,” evidence of an “escape from one’s self”

Citations

1. "Scott Fitzgerald Echoes of the Jazz Age." Accessed January 31, 2019.
https://pdcrodas.webs.ull.es/anglo/ScottFitzgeraldEchoesOfTheJazzAge.pdf.

2. Eisenstein, Sergei, Alan Y. Upchurch, and Jay Leyda. On Disney. London: Seagull Books,
2017.
 Luke Marino
March 11, 2019
Magic and the Cinema of Attractions

In reading Gunning’s excerpt, I could not help but marvel at how teleology has shaped
much of my understanding of media history. Since our previous discussions of the teleological, I
have refrained from making quick judgments or conclusions about older film and animation, but
I had not considered that narratives did not necessarily permeate film from its earliest days. In
discussing the cinema of attractions, I found that I was able to draw connections to several
contemporary films, such as the Fast and the Furious franchise, as well as other special effects
blockbusters and “kidult” films. These films are aimed more at amusement and spectacle than
narrative storytelling, and while many were named in class, one that struck me as I left the room
was Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987), which is a parody of the Star Wars franchise.
The cinema of attractions is largely predicated on several cinematic elements. First, the
plot can be either nonexistent or trivial, but most would argue that is a minor component of the
film. Also, there is a heavy emphasis on visual effects, almost as if the film itself were an
exhibitionist showcase of the effects, and the plot was merely a vessel by which to display them.
Furthermore, the audience is directly addressed by the characters or actors, contrary to the
conventional narrative film2.
One film which Gunning identifies to contain most of these elements is The Great Train
Robbery (Porter, 1903). The film includes a closeup shot of a bandit “shooting” the audience at
the conclusion of the film as well as elements of superimposition. These, in addition to closeup,
provide impressive visual effects. In his 1959 book Classics of the Silent Screen, Joe Franklin
writes, “Porter was primarily a technician, and the film has extremely able effects –
superimposition, stop motion, and so on, as well as far more imaginative camerawork than was
common at that date1.”
Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987) is similar in that much of the filming of Spaceballs (Brooks,
1987) was done using a green screen, which was a relatively new technology at the time. In
addition, it is akin to The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903) in that both feature a breaking of
the fourth wall. In Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987), the character Dark Helmet attempts to watch the
movie Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987), which is actually the footage of the movie until that point. This
leads to an infinite loop of Dark Helmet staring into the audience while the image the audience
sees is on a screen behind him, which infinitely loops inside itself with identical screens. To
create more visual effects, during the scene in which Dark Helmet and his army attempt to
remove the clean air from planet Druidia in order to revitalize their home world, an enormous
robotic man with a vacuum appears. Furthermore, in the scene in which Dark Helmet’s ship
accelerates to “ludicrous speed,” the surrounding starry background changes to plaid as a
parody of Star Wars’s hyperspace jump.
Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987) also employs slapstick comedy extensively, which Gunning
considers to be part of the comedic spectacle of the cinema of attractions. For example, in the
scene in which Dark Helmet’s ship jumps to “ludicrous speed,” he attempts to decelerate too
quickly, causing him to fly across the ship’s bridge into an electrical panel, breaking his glasses
and covering him in cartoonish soot. This bears extensive resemblance to animated slapstick
cartoons, in which an antagonist is often accidentally burned or electrocuted, covering them in
soot or ash. These cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, in addition to many
Disney cartoons, carry a simple plot but captivate the audience through slapstick comedy and
various animated effects.
 Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987) features new advancements in film technology and visual
effects, akin to The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903) as well as the breaking of the fourth
wall, which is present in both films. Moreover, it employs the slapstick comedy and simple plot
of an animated cartoon. These features, when paired with the parodic narrative, present the film
as attempting to amuse rather than tell a story, identifying it as an example of the cinema of
attractions.

The view from the ship once Dark Helmet and his ship “go to plaid” in Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987)

Dark Helmet watches the movie which he is currently producing, breaking the fourth
wall and creating an infinite loop behind him

Works Cited

1. Franklin, Joe. Classics of the Silent Screen. Citadel Press, 1959.

2. Gunning, Tom. "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-
Garde." Wide Angle, 4th ser., 8, no. 3 (1986).

3. Spaceballs (Brooks, 1987)

4. The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)

 Luke Marino
March 29, 2019
Cyberpunk

In reading the excerpt from Sterling’s Mirrorshades, I recalled a film I had viewed some
years prior, Real Steel (Levy, 2011). The film is set in the United States in the year 2020, and
depicts a world in which the sport of boxing is entirely conducted by humanoid robots
controlled by operators. The plot follows a fallen robot boxing champion, Charlie Kenton, who
loses his robot and his ex-girlfriend, also the mother of his child, in the opening minutes. He and
his son, Max Kenton, find a robot boxer (Atom) in a junkyard and modify it to compete, and go
on to nearly win a world championship. The film shares many semantic and syntactic elements
with the cyberpunk genre, and I believe that Real Steel (Levy, 2011) fits squarely into that
category as a result.
One of the most dominant syntactical elements of the cyberpunk genre is the integration
of high technology with low culture. This is seen in the novel Neuromancer, in which a Henry
Dorsett Case, a drug addicted, disabled hacker, is physically modified so that his body is no
longer able to metabolize certain drugs. In addition, he finds himself involved in a plot to create
a super-AI, which is the most advanced technology feasible at the timei. Similarly, throughout
the futuristic world in which Charlie and Max live, high technology is frequently in the hands of
lower status characters. For example, Charlie and Max find Atom, a sophisticated robot boxer,
lying in a junkyard, where anyone patrolling the junkyard could have found him. Also, many of
the owners of the robots Atom fights throughout the film resemble a stereotypical punk
character. One sports a mohawk, and another wears an eyepatch. The arenas, especially early in
the film before Atom begins fighting world champions, are often just fenced off plots of land
outdoors rather than pristine, modern boxing arenas. All of these semantics combine to
represent the integration of high technology with low culture, which is perhaps most obvious in
the premise of the film: modern, futuristic robots competing in the violent, aggressive sport of
boxing.
Due to the way in which the sport of robot boxing is conducted in the film, the robots are
built to resemble humans in their overall shape and structure. They are provided with simple
electronic faces and possess four limbs and a body in similar proportions to a human. As a direct
consequence of this, their locomotion is quite humanlike. While they cannot think or act on their
own, these structural similarities humanize them, and create the illusion that the robots are
sentient to a degree. Atom, the robot owned and operated by Charlie and Max, even has the
ability to “shadow” a user, so that its movements are extremely natural and fluid. As the robots
Atom fights become progressively more advanced, they are able to perform more complex
fighting movements, such as jumping and taunting, and they appear more independent from
their operators. This suggests that in the world of the film, the robots are slowly developing a
form of artificial intelligence, which is one of the principal syntactic elements of the cyberpunk
genre.
This recognition of the robots as near independent beings becomes especially apparent
at the climax of the film, in which Atom nearly defeats the reigning world champion, Zeus. After
stunning the crowd by avoiding immediate defeat and even knocking Zeus to the ground, Max
proclaims to the crowd that Atom is “the people’s champion,” rather than Charlie, who
controlled Atom to its near victory. This is also the climax of the narrative arc of an outcast
rising to prominence, which is a common theme in cyberpunk films and novels. Charlie, a
dejected, negligent father outcast from robot boxing, rises to fame and reestablishes himself as a
prominent figure in the sport. The syntactic and semantic similarities between Real Steel (Levy,
2011) and other cyberpunk works such as Neuromancer squarely place the film within the
cyberpunk genre as a classic example of the integration of technology and punk counterculture.

i
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. London: Gollancz, 1984.

Atom landing a punch on Zeus, the world champion, showcasing the humanoid form and
locomotion of the robots.

Ambush, Charlie’s robot before Atom, during a fight in the opening minutes of the film. This
image showcases the outdoor arenas often used in the fights, and the low culture crowd that
comes to watch the sport.