Deconstructing Genre

Many of the blogs this week take the opportunity to dissect the concept of genre, using the genre-busting Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and Roman Polankski’s Chinatown. Most of us have accepted the critique of genre as an exclusive and strictly defined category of analysis. Films like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which borrow heavily from multiple genres and make fun of them, help us see the difficulty in adopting a restrictive idea of genre.

MarylandDevil (Stephen), puts Chinatown into the film noir context by placing it in a specific period of film history. As Stephen points out, Chinatown was not subject to the Hays code, as the classic period of film noir was. Chinatown could show on-screen things that would not have been possible in the original era. This fact made me think of the remake of the Big Sleep (I learned about this remake when I accidentally checked it out when looking for the Bogart version). The remake makes more explicit some of the issues in the original film. Cawelti points out the significance of temporal issues in his essay “Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent Films.” Wynn explains Cawelti’s description of the genre life-cycle, moving through a period of self-awareness which Chinatown represents. Polanski is very aware of the conventions of film noir, and is thus able to turn transform them while still mimicking the core of the style. Jack Nicholson’s character tries to engage in the witty banter of the old Bogart, but fails to pull it off. Unlike Kiss Kiss, Polanski is not satirizing film noir, he is merely exploring its limitations. Stephen asks if Chinatown is more a tribute than a satire - I’d place it closer to tribute, since Polanski gives us his own vision of the old.

I found Sarah’s use of art history terminology very useful in thinking about genre. The idea of a “movement” better captures the reality of film noir. As Sarah points out, movements are often built in reaction to movements of the past. This helps to explain the neo-noir (Chinatown?) and the neo-neo-noir (L.A. Confidential?) as building on an older movement that was still based in a specific time and place. Sarah mentions that movements are “more or less self-defined by a specific group of similarly interested artists.” We know that film noir as a term was invented by french film critics deprived of American cinema during WWII. As an external imposition of a unifying idea, can film noir still be considered a movement if no such break in continuity was visible to the artists themselves?

From the post-viewing discussion, it seems that most of our film class enjoyed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. But as we discovered afterwards, classifying the film in a specific category is impossible. Katrina and Wynn point out how Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a deconstruction of the concept of genre itself. The film does it in part by taking conventions to the extreme. The voice-over narration is a convention of film noir. This perspective can be subjective at times, as we saw in Out of the Past. Kiss Kiss takes this to the next level, by having Harry admit to mistakes in narration, going back and fixing the story.
Wynn focuses on the character of “Gay” Perry. Perry is a competent private detective, as demonstrated by the escape in the end. However, he represents a direct attack on the hard-boiled heterosexual male that usually occupies the role - as Wynn puts it: the film “demythologizes the traditional heterosexual potency” of the detective.

Though a comedy, the fighting in the movie itself was traditional fare. We know that the film was aware of this, but the obligatory shooting sequences were still depicted just as they are in many contemporary films. This tells us something about how we enjoy these sequences in other movies, movies that are not so tongue-in-cheek. Very few changes have to be made to make the violent scenes funny; they are not even intrinsically humorous, but we are looking at them critically because the movie has put us in that frame of mind over the last hour.

Wynn mentions that the film makes as very aware that we are watching a sendup of the genre. I’m wondering if there is a category to place the film in. In my mind, I put Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang with other “genre parodies,” like Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Tropic Thunder, and Blazing Saddles. I always enjoy these kinds of movies, especially if I’m a fan of the genres they are making fun of. The absurd action sequences in Hot Fuzz, and the black sheriff in Blazing Saddles makes little sense if you aren’t familiar with action movies or Westerns. Kevin mentions how we knew that the banner was going to be used by Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in Rush Hour 3. We predict it, and get to see it happen. To me, thats what makes these movies so entertaining. Not all of these conventions are satisfying though. Kevin refers to a great scene in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, where even the narrator comments on the implausibility of all the good guys surviving the shoot out. I just finished watching L.A. Confidential, and was disappointed to see a major character appear at the end with a cast on his arm, after what I thought was a good death scene. The film is a 90s noir, so I can’t even be sure if this is done tongue-in-cheek or not.