Where do you even begin with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? This film was a lot. Quentin Tarantino only produces masterpieces and this film was no different. The cast was full of A-listers. Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie star in this film about a washed out television star trying to achieve fame with his stunt double during the late 60s in Los Angeles. This film was the perfect close to the semester because it shows the change in the film industry, which is a lot of what we have learned throughout the course. As the semester progressed we got to see the changes of film story-lines, quality, production, directors, and so much more. And then Tarantino shows it so well in this film, giving it his own perspective. The film really speaks for itself, especially with its top 10 films of 2019 ranking by the American Film Institute.

One of the many readings this week was “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” by Priscilla Page. Page wrote that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is “a film about the interplay between fantasy and reality, memory, mythology, masculinity, violence. It’s about fiction and film as redemptive, transformative, and just, and pop culture as a force that brings people together. It’s make-believe, and it’s memoir. Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s second draft of history.” Page’s description corresponds well with what this film is. She uses the right words to show the magnificence that is Tarantino’s film. DiCaprio’s vocal range is impressive, and the drastic difference between his voice in this film and any other was an interesting artistic choice. His back and forth with Brad Pitt is amusing and almost comical that Pitt is his stunt double when they don’t look that much alike, other than maybe their hair color. And lastly, Robbie. Margot Robbie plays the role of Sharon Tate, a wonderful actress, whose life was cute too short because of Charles Manson. Robbie’s role is controversial, but Tarantino didn’t want her role as a murder victim only commemorating the murder, but rather the amazing actress she was. There’s a scene where Robbie watches a film with the real Sharon Tate and the emotions she displays strikes home over the up and coming actress. Robbie commemorates Tate and represents everything she had to go through before she was suddenly taken from the cinematic world. Tarantino took great care for all three of these actors and actress to represent the reality of what it was like in the film industry, while making the story his own. Rather than conforming to modern day ideals he showed the truth of what it was like, even though it earned harsh words like misogyny and disrespectful. It was the truth and that in itself shows how far everything has come since the 60s.

Post modernism is very important. This week we had two videos on it. Nostalgia is the biggest part of post modernism. Throughout the decades nostalgia has been used to evoke emotional responses to the mass audiences, whether it be a Coca-Cola commercial or the newest cinematic reboot. Nostalgia is the most used and effective method in post modern media.

While watching the Frederic Jameson video, they referenced Andrew Butler in their discussion about post modernism. Andrew Butler states: “There is a breakdown in any meaningful connection between words and images” post modern art has “an eclectic range of allusions or a bewildering collection of fragments of different voices.” Post modernism is related to late capitalism. Late capitalism focuses on style over substance, surface over depth. This creates this unstable, fragmented reality that is artificial. All of which is very true. Society now is so focused on appearance and what the eyes can see, that it fails to recognize the beauty and meaning in the things it can’t see, or is considered outside the norm. There is little to no substance in this mindset.

At the start of the semester I took my very first film course. I was introduced to the class with one very specific objective and description. “Cult Movies is a broad but vivid special topics seminar designed to produce rigorous analysis and critique of the cult film phenomenon. Together, we’ll investigate their modes of production, distribution, and exhibition. We’ll also focus on their reception, their fans and various reading strategies. This course also examines the question of “taste” as it relates to culture.” Even with this I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this class. My idea of cult didn’t even come close to what it really meant. I knew I was in for a whirlwind of discoveries and experiences the moment Maniac came on the screen.

Audio plays a massive role in cinema, whether its the overlay of dialogue from a separate recording or the soundtrack of the film. A really good soundtrack can salvage some relatively bad acting or bad writing. Exploring and examining soundtracks and other audio effect methods were my favorite aspect to learn about when we learned about what goes into a film. The hardest thing to learn was by far camp. It is complex and covers several different aspects of cult. Camp is both when something is trying to be camp and when it isn’t.

My favorite film this semester was by far Matinee directed by Joe Dante. A close second would have to be The Warriors directed by Walter Hill. Both of these films started off as something I didn’t think I was going to like and I ended up loving them. They’re both really entertaining and keep you engaged, so I would highly recommend them.

My least favorite film this semester has to be John Waters’s Pink Flamingos. It wasn’t a bad film, it just was not for me. The amount of disgusting scenes in it were just too much for me. I can sit here and watch gore all day long and still have an appetite, but could not eat my dinner after this film, it was, insane.

The semester introduced me to not only new films, but so much I didn’t know about film making. It’s hard to focus on just one thing, because everything was new for me. I honestly had no idea what to expect or what a cult movie even was and it was an amazing experience that I would recommend to everyone.

And we’re back for another blog post, with a new film, and a new set of readings. This week we watched Sid and Nancy, the 1986 drama directed by Alex Cox. Before I even go on about the film I want to introduce the most important fact I actually missed until it was pointed out. Sid Vicious is played by Gary Oldman, or rather as I know him, Sirius Black. I grew up living and breathing the Harry Potter franchise: novels, movies, fan-based content. There were no limits. I was severely disappointed in myself when I didn’t even recognize him. There is an 18 year gap between his portrayal of Sid Vicious and Sirius Black, so there is a lot of growth and age, but to learn that fact shocked me to my core, more so than the drug film readings.

This weeks film was a lot darker than I was expecting. I really didn’t know what to expect. Before this cult films course I had never even heard of this film, perhaps because of its heavy drug use and drug influence. Growing up in a sheltered world the entire concept of this film would have been a no-go in my household. A lot of these films we watch are very different to me, but I am very grateful for this new experience and all of the films are so drastically different it’s like I am being driven at high speed through all of the culture I have been missing out on.

This week we read the chapter on”Cult Cinema and Drugs.” I was actually very surprised at how deeply effected cinema was by drug consumption and portrayal. I knew it held a role in the history of just about everything, but I had no idea how much or why until this week. “Drugs have also played a crucial role in many sociological accounts of deviance and subcultures. In various, often youthful, sub-cultural groupings, different drugs have often played important roles as agents of altered conscious-ness that can erect barriers between “us” and “them” (i.e.“straight,” conventional society)” (165). Drugs are the newest way we have learned to differentiate between the “mainstream” society and the “outskirt” society. Most of this film follows the destruction of heroin addicts and ultimately ends in the deaths of both characters, something tragic albeit predictable. Based on how I was raised I took this film as a warning of “don’t do drugs kids,” a very common phrase now. In a completely different society this is a tragic love story that doesn’t actually end horribly, because they’re together in this “after” world. With how significant the role of drugs play in the plot and in society it really made me question the ending. I was happy they ended up “together again” rather than it just being a harsh ending, but does this “happily ever after” take away from an important message on heroine addiction? It was hard to tell. The type of drug they chose for the film is also super important. The fact it was heroine instead of marijuana changes so much. The severe drug choice made me sit back and think, even if that wasn’t the ultimate goal of the film.

And finally, this week we had two amazing film presentations. This week we got to enjoy La Haine and Fight Club. I have not seen the first film, something I plan to change, but the second is one of my all time favorites. I won’t go on, as we both know the most important rule of Fight Club, is we don’t talk about Fight Club.

This week we watched Detroit Rock City, the 1999 teen comedy. This 95 minute film was directed by Adam Rifkin and grossed $4,217,115 out of its $34,000,000 budget. Wow. The journey of these four boys, Hawk, Lex, Trip, and Jam, is a little crazy. Albeit there were a few issues with continuity, but if you suspend your belief a bit you still manage to follow the film just fine. The boys have to see KISS, there was no real option there. However, the things they have to do to see the band are crazy, yet I was laughing the whole time. It was really hard to take them seriously. The film was overall pretty funny, feigning on the idea of being a bit much. I really enjoyed watching each of their journeys, even Jam’s overbearing mother, come together in this long story-line to go see a KISS concert.

This week I got to present one of our readings. My reading was “Classical Hollywood Cults,” by Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton. This ten page reading was really interesting and worked really well to tie in major themes of classic Hollywood cults. The major themes that made up the classical Hollywood cults were nostalgia, gaiety, intertextuality, forms of labor, and violence.

Nostalgia is a sense of yearning for a better time, or home. Nostalgia also became the yearning for that initial impression of a film left after the “first time” exposure of a film. This “first time” nostalgia sets classical Hollywood cult viewers apart from the other cultists. You can never get a first take on something again, but it’s so much more than that. This first time is also really important to the “true” capture of the film, focusing on originality and reality. In the mid-1950s nostalgia stops having an impact on the present and from then on only relates to the definite past. This sense of nostalgia is reinforced by what they called time travel, essentially interrupted by flashbacks or songs and it is sometimes over-cluttered with the past, to the point where the story cannot progress functionally. This is really important. Nostalgia is a key factor in almost all of the other parts that make up a classic Hollywood cult.

Something I found really interesting was the discuss on types of labor. Basically, the kinds of labor or perceptions of labor are prone to attract fan devotion through their imperfect fit within, and challenges to, the system. The labor of stars with cult reputations of the classical era are drenched with the impression that they stand for a “truer” kind of “professionalism, sophistication, glamor, or charisma from a time when such qualities were said to be of a more pure constellation” (187). Their focus on the category of labor, that was deemed to have the most cult appeal, is that of a child actor as it combines the innocence and purity associated with the child and the mental and physical endangerment of their well-being by Hollywood. This debate on innocence and purity versus the perverse adult world of Hollywood don’t coincide, which is what makes child actors such a big deal. They are opposites, yet the same all at once, which could describe classical Hollywood cults in a nutshell because they are mainstream and marginal, and center and periphery at the same time, both of which contradict the other.

If there was only one other thing you can take away from the reading I’d pick the impact of television on the classic Hollywood cults. From the 1960s onwards, and particularly through the 1970s and 1980s, television gradually replaced the repertory theater. Television became the main form of family entertainment, and it also became the medium classical Hollywood cults migrated to. Seasonal television re-runs, and occasional theatrical re-releases, add to the already nostalgic-heavy long-term receptions of classical Hollywood cults. The consequence of this development has been a gradual disappearance of classical Hollywood cults from the studies of cult cinema. . “Peary’s first volume of Cult Movies (1981) lists 41 classical Hollywood films, out of a total of 100. In his subsequent collections that ratio declined drastically” (193). This narrowing of the perspective also affects how some of the themes of classical Hollywood cults highlighted, such as gaiety, or nostalgia, are remembered. “The danger exists that classical Hollywood cults will soon be cast out of considerations of cult cinema altogether. Before long the current nostalgia within classical Hollywood cults may soon be replaced by a longing for classical Hollywood cults” (193).

I feel uptight on a Saturday night
Nine o’ clock, the radio’s the only light
I hear my song and it pulls me through
Comes on strong, tells me what I got to do
I got to

Get up
Everybody’s gonna move their feet
Get down
Everybody’s gonna leave their seat
You gotta lose your mind in Detroit Rock City

This week’s film was Dazed and Confused written and directed by Robert Linklater. This 1993 film starred Jason London, Matthew McConaughey, and Wiley Wiggins. These adventures of high schoolers on the last day of school in 1976 are crazy. From hazing freshman, to parties, to knocking down mailboxes, and to “stealing” beer. This intense coming of age story follows rowdy teenagers in a Texas town. We watch as the seniors phase out and the incoming freshman are initiated in. The entire thing feels like a sorority/fraternity house initiation, which is kinda cool and makes me really glad I never joined one.

Watching some of these older films really makes me question fashion of the decade. I watch different patterns and styles dance across the screen and I compare them to today’s fashion. The drastic difference and similarities in just wardrobes is phenomenal. If you compare that to the change in ideals and society’s rules you see the progression of our culture and some changes are better than others. In everything going on today with the pandemic raging though our country it was nice to watch a group of teenagers with no cares in the world. I was even a little jealous. But all in all, their journey, albeit not the one I expected to see, was an interesting one.

Now, my favorite part of this film. The soundtrack. Just a few examples of the amazing hits they played in this film are “School’s Out,” “Low Rider,” and “Sweet Emotion.” There are very few films I have been able to witness that had such a great variety of songs that I grew up listening to and loved. I’ve also played all of them on Guitar Hero on a loop, just as an example of how embedded these songs are into my life. I could go on for hours about “Slow Ride” by Foghat and “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan, but I will save you all from more appraisal on Jeff Charbonneau, Eeda Kitto, Art Ford, and Harry Garfield’s work in the music department for this film.

This week we had a great selection of readings. The one I am going to talk about is by Donna de Ville. Her piece, “Cultivating the Cult Experience at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema,” shows the essence beyond just a simple cinematic screening. She brings in the audience participation and exhibitionism that the Alamo portrays in several different ways. This “full immersion” that the Alamo Drafthouse tries to do, and succeeds in doing is amazing. Everything from the retro gimmicks of a drive in theater to some great food make the Alamo successful. However, the part that really stuck out to me was the owners involvement. They work so hard to make the Alamo Drafthouse a unique and amazing experience to bring people coming back for more. The Alamo gives a variety of cult followings a place to call home, keeping its doors open to just about anyone. “in the case of the Alamo, a contingent of fans embrace an exhibition site and viewing experiences counter to, and even in resistance against, popular mainstream culture.” In every way the Alamo exhibits its own little world. They don’t conform it to what’s most popular, and they don’t let the world dictate how they run their cinema and that in itself is worthy of praise.

This week we had the pleasure of watching Suspiria. Suspiria is a 1977 film directed by Dario Argento. This artistic horror film exemplifies a lot of art decor, lighting changes, and very ornate set designs. Although the film has a lot of strange scenes it’s interesting to watch. However, the biggest let down is we don’t know who the killer “animal” is by the end! We get glowing eyes and hairy arms of some mysterious being that isn’t totally human or animal, but we never quite find out what or who he is. This plays heavily into the supernatural aesthetic of the film that also involves magic, witches, and unexplained phenomenons.

Setting is one of the most important parts of the film. The darker scenes are accompanied with dark locations, shadows and sharp structures, while the calm and safe meetings are in open and bright spaces. This is done on purpose. They want the audience to really see the difference. Everything from where Daniel was murdered to the dance academy is adorned with darkness, or sharp structures. It creates a jarring effect when Suzy goes to meet the psychiatrist out in the open in broad daylight. Setting is very important to the narrative, even if a few things are cliche. Who can resist a dark and stormy night?

The display of colors and light effects are jaw-dropping. I’ve never quite seen anything like it. It is so distinct and articulate that there are not enough words to describe the vast array of emotions it evokes in the audience. Pairing the visual with the audio only hits harder. The music playing in the background of every scene tells you how to feel, whether it is chanting or an intense choral music. These sinister lullabies are creepy, albeit one of the creepiest parts of the film.

This week we had several readings. One of the biggest things that stuck out to me is that Suspiria is a “horror” film. It is listed as a “cinematic giallo” which is Italian for a mystery film. I was never actually scared during the film, so I would agree with mystery over horror. If anything the film was more creepy and strange than scary. There was a lot of murder, but even when the arm shot through the window to kill the first girl I wasn’t scared. If anything the scene intrigued me more.

In our reading “Doing Violence on Film” by Andrew Cooper we see an in-depth insight into the mystic part of the film. “The witches’ invisible power thus carries out their will.” This invisible power was hard to pick out at first. Until Suzy looks into witches herself, seeking out the psychiatrist and talking to an occult specialist the phenomenon doesn’t make much sense. Once the thread we are missing is put into play everything starts to fall into place. The fact the dancing academy is run by witches, powering a “Black Queen” is fun and an interesting plot twist. I am upset that poor dog became a casualty of the magic, being used like an instrument as if he were the same level as the attic of barbed wire. And lastly I still want to know what that mysterious creature was that killed the girl from the dance academy.

This week, our first online week, has been an interesting one to say the least. The film we watched, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, is insane. I am going to focus heavily on the film because there is so much to unpack with it. The only thing we no for sure is that we know nothing. The surreal setting and shooting of this film creates an alluring hallucination that captivates the audience in confusion and intrigue. Although we have no idea what is going on as we follow Valerie in her rite of passage from maidenhood to womanhood. The acid trip of a dream we have to witness to get her to womanhood is very hard to sum up in just a few words. It is such an amazing artistic film, but if you aren’t focused the whole time you have no idea how you got to where you are. (Sometimes even if you are paying attention you have to rewind and try again.)

This thirteen-year-old girl lives an interesting yet messed up life. So much of her life revolves around familial relationships, that are warped and improper. Society would frown upon how supposed siblings and parents act. The fine line between how taboo the relationships are and aren’t is the fact we have no idea if anyone is actually related or who they say they are. This strange trail of events is hard to comprehend, but in the article “HORROR Transgression, transformation and titillation Jaromil Jireš’s Valerie a týden divů” by Tanya Krzywinska, the desire and sexual attraction between apparent family members.

“In accordance with Freud’s central notion that fantasy is subject to the distortions of the primary process, the Oedipal connection becomes diffuse here, subject to disavowal. It is never clear that Valerie’s brother is indeed her brother, for example, or that the vampire-priest-constable is her father. They are both objects of Valerie’s desire (as she is the object of their desire), yet to keep such a pretty game in play, these potential sexual relationships are invoked only to be deferred. That all the central characters in Valerie’s world do not have definitive, stable identities locates that world as subjective artifice. Valerie imagines a range of scenarios in which her family members are endowed with magical powers,their status inflated to fairytale proportions, all along the lines of Freud’s family romance.”

Valerie has to experience and understand what her body is doing, how it is changing. The unclear Oedipus complex happening in this film is hard to shame. Because everything goes back and forth on if anyone is actually related it is hard to completely classify as taboo. At most we can call it “icky” because society’s rules are borderline being crossed, but we don’t know for sure. Not knowing for sure is how this film skates by, which was done deliberately, not only in this film, but in the novel it was based from.

The surreal imagery of this film is beautiful. The harsh shifts between scenes, the nature, the over focus on white, flowers, and fruit is at the forefront of the film. Most of the imagery pertains to purity and Adam and Eve. These over-focused images and hidden messages only add to the illusion that we know what’s going on in this film.

“Valerie jolts along with the logic of a hallucination, its more conventional vampire plot intercut with odd visions and heightened by a soundtrack of choral chants and disembodied dialogue. Sometimes these dislocations bring us intimately close to Valerie herself, from various appealing angles, and on a second or third viewing you see how these shots often punctuate moments of conflict, as if Valerie’s inner equanimity were guiding the course of events.” (Prikryl)

This weird twist on Adam and Eve with a dash of vampires is a truly questionable. This mythical world that Valerie lives in is hard to follow. The biggest problem is we don’t know if its reality, or a dream. The film is centered around Valerie in her bed sleeping, or her returning to it, an underlying idea that its all a fantasy in her head that her body has rampaged because of the adolescent hormones blooming inside her.

Coming of age stories are a huge hit, especially among the younger generations. This taboo version of one addresses many of the darker themes and desires that weren’t allowed to be addressed. However, in the late 1960s, the code that restricted what was taboo and could come on the screen was finally squashed out. Anything and everything was allowed, it was an open and taboo free future. Moral standards could be lowered and had no real guidelines, so when people filled the theater to watch near incest it was allowed, perhaps not Kosher, but it was no longer against cinematic codes. The film itself was a must see. Although the language barrier may be an issue the subtitles help a lot. The confusing ride is worth it in every way. This film requires more than one screening, as there is so much to unpack, notice, and experience.

This week we watched the classic cult film The Warriors, a 1979 film directed by Walter Hill. The Warriors was based on the novel by Sol Yurick. This amazing film is a must watch. The congregation of gangs in the park, all lead by Cyrus, is a cacophony of noise and mania. Cyrus presented a gang utopia, where everyone ruled New York City, and claimed it from the cops, something progressive yet terrifying to some. This results in him being shot by Luther, the Warlord of the Rogues, played by David Patrick Kelly. In an interesting twist Luther claims the gang, the Warriors, killed Cyrus, starting the massive hunt for the nine representatives that came to the rally. The Warriors’s Warlord, Cleon, played by Dorsey Wright, is killed immediately, leaving only eight members to make it home to Coney Island. The wild ride of watching the gang escape the 100,000s of gang soldiers in a desolate New York City atmosphere isn’t what you would expect. The action and comedy keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering what curve ball is about to come around the corner. It is not surprising that this film has gained such a following, to the point where a video game was developed.

While studying this film we also studied fandoms, as they are a very large part of cult culture. It is important to understand the many layers of fandom and its impact on not only the economy, but on cult culture. One of our readings was “The Cultural Economy of Fandom” by John Fiske. Fiske claims there are three main characteristics of Fandom and they are: discrimination and distinction, productivity and participation, and capital accumulation.

Discrimination and Distinction: Discrimination is the lines clearly drawn to decide what is fandom and what is not. Fan discrimination has two affinities the socially relevant pop culture and “aesthetic discrimination of the dominant” (448). The key difference is that the subordinate has to be for something, making it functional. The aesthetic discrimination talks about hierarchical power and categorizing things, such as canonization, deciding between who and what is canon and what should be excluded. Nothing that doesn’t make the mark gets let in. Its a cut throat nature, yet also very inclusive. It becomes its own community.

Productivity and Participation: The three types of productivity are semiotic, textual, and enunciative. “Fan productivity is not limited to the production of new texts.” It includes the original texts construction, pop culture performance, and the commercial narrative. (451) Without the fans participation and their own production of content in regards to their fandom the stars and work would be lost. Stars owe their stardom to their fans. This productive nature for the fandoms only further the fame and fortune of the culture.

“Semiotic productivity is characteristic of popular culture as a whole rather than a fan culture specifically. […] An enunciation is the use of a semiotic system (typically, but not exclusively, verbal language) which is specific to its speaker and its social and temporal context. […] Fans produce and circulate among themselves texts which are often crafted with production values as high as any in official culture. [Textual production is when] fan texts are not produced for profit, they do not need to be mass-marketed, so unlike official culture, fan culture makes no attempt to circulate its texts outside its own community. They are ‘narrowcast,’ not broadcast, texts.” (450)

Capital Accumulation: In fan culture they accumulate knowledge, collections, and cultural and economic capital. As fandoms are a widespread network system that shares and collects data, whether it be canon information, new discoveries, or memorabilia. This wide range of people and ideas makes this capital accumulation endless. By having a massive fandom it brings in a massive amount of money. Producing something people love and thrive on will accumulate massive amounts of money for stars and those who produce it. There is a mass market in fandoms and making money will always be a major motivator in society. Any time corporations and companies can make the big dollar they will.