A2 Film - URBAN STORIES - Power, Poverty and Conflict

FM4 - World Cinema

Urban Stories - Power, Poverty and Conflict

Core Texts:

‘La Haine’ (Kassovitz, 1995)

‘City of God’ (Meirelles, 2002)

‘Tsotsi’ (Hood, 2005)

‘Elite Squad’ (Padilha, 2007)

Recommended Films:

‘Amores Perros’ (Innaritu, 2000)

‘Battle of Agiers’

‘The Bicycle Thieves’

‘The Edukators’

‘The Lives of Others’

‘Strike’

What are 'Urban Stories'?

An urban story can be any film in which the city is a defining presence - in which characters' lives are defined within the urban environment.

The key themes that emerge in this environment are those of 'power', 'poverty' and 'conflict'

In the process of watching films we each bring our own ideologies, or ways of looking at the world.

In this way we each create our own understanding of any given film. When we watch the films under discussion here, La Haine or City of God we use our knowledge of the world and our way of seeing the world to help us to make sense of the array of images and sounds presented to us.

Our individual ideologies may for example position us as pro-police or anti-police, or somewhere in-between these poles, and this will have a barring on how we read La Haine.

Ideology: a person’s or a society’s set of belifes and values, or overall way of looking at the world

Any text has the potential to support our perception of the world or radically challenge it sometimes forcing us to totally alter our ideologies.

When we look at films such as City of God we have the added complication that these films may be set in cultures and social climates that are totally alien to us. However it is important to remember that this is really not that much different from the situation when we view a any new film.

In watching any film we will be attempting to bear on a set of circumstances that will to some extent be unfamiliar to us, and outside our experiences, such as:

• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Time period

To take two random examples, how can we understand the position of a woman involved in a domestic drama set in the United states immediately after the Second World War, or how can we understand the position of a man on a battlefield during that war?

We can only do these things through use of the following key strategies:

-We are able to identify similarities between our own direct experience of the world and any film character’s experience

-We are able to use our observations of other people’s experiences

-We are able to draw on our mediated experience of the world to help us to understand events presented to us within films

If we apply this to our examples:

-We know what it’s like to live in a domestic environment, anor we know fear and pain because we have experienced these things ourselves

-We have perhaps watched our parents living out their relationship within the home, or we have seen fear and pain being experienced by friends

-We have consumed media that have given us perspectives of one sort or another on women’s lives in post-war America or on the experience of being a soldier on a battlefield.

We can set out to improve our understanding of another social environment by deliberately researching the history, the politics and the culture of this initially alien society. However, in doing this we need to be aware that everything we read or watch in order to try to extend our knowledge and understanding will have been written or constructed from a particular ideological perspective and therefore needs to be watched or read in an active questioning way.

Equally we need to be aware that we ourselves will have been ‘constructed’, that our ideology is likely to have been passively absorbed from our social environment, and therefore our immediate, instinctive reading of any situation needs to be questioned and ‘unpacked’.

Culture and subculture

CULTURE: (1) The way in which forms of human activity and interaction are socially transmitted. (2) The way of life of a particular human community living at a spcific time and in a particular place.

The key identifying features of any culture are its customs, rituals and normal everyday practices. We could refer, for example to ‘the youth culture of the suburbs of Paris in the 1990s’ in relation to La Haine or to ‘gang culture in the slums of Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s’ in relation to City of God.

SUBCULTURE: Cultures subordinate to dominant culture.

COUNTERCULTURE: Cultures that are actively opposed to the dominant culture.

Subcultures have tended to be working class aand not to have articulated their politics, while counter cultures have tended to have a middle class base and have focused on explicit political and ideological resistance.

ACTIVITY:

Can either of these terms be used in relation to any cultural groups found within La Haine.

ACTIVITY

Power and Conflict

Relationships of power are found within any social structure in which there are differences between groups and/or struggles over material or cultural resources, in other words in every society.

In groups take a few minutes to discuss these questions:

In 'Totsi' who has power, and who is in a position of subordination to that power?

Is it economic power (the accumulation of wealth and ownership of corporations)?

Is t political power (the ability to govern and make laws)?

Ideological power (control over education and the mass media)?

Ask yourself these questions about Tsotsi:

- Where is it set?

- What evidence is there of a class system?

- What are the values of the characters. What is important to them?

- Why is Tsotsi a thug? What morals and values does he have?

- What repreentations are there in the film?

What significant ideologicical messages does the director want to convey about:

- Gangs

- Wealth

- Matriarchy

- Police

- Education

- Are these positive or nagative?

Marxists suggest that with in the institutions of any society power is exerted on behalf of the ruling class. The institutions, perhaps schools or colleges, or the newspaper industry, promote the current dominant ideology. These shape our cultural experience, set the social and political agenda, and present us with representations and ways of seeing that support the status quo.

The construction of audience perception of reality is hidden in such a way that it seems normal or natural or ‘mythical’ (Barthes, 1972).

REPRESENTATION: the variety of ways in which individuals and groups are displayed to audiences within the media and other cultural texts.

Louis Althusser suggested that in any society there were organizations, such as the police, the courts and the army, that were able to use physical force as power over others. But there were also other institutions such as education and the media that were able to exert ideological control within all social organizations: within the family, within street gangs, within police, between friends. But relationships of power also exist between social groups: between youth groups and the police, between different street gangs, between rich and poor

Tsotsi

INTRODUCTION

Tsotsi is an extraordinary film by director Gavin Hood that manages to map some

of the huge contrasts in modern South Africa - its affluence and grinding poverty,

its haves and have-nots, its energy and optimism alongside the disease, addiction

and crime that blights so many lives. But as Hood has pointed out in interview,

Tsotsi’s story is far more than just a South African tale. There are, he says,

millions of Tsotsis growing up all over the world haunted by the damage inflicted

on them in childhood and acting out their resentments: the victims of chance but

also the inflictors of impulsive life-changing violence on others.

Hood’s film is an updated adaptation of a 1960s novella by eminent South African

playwright Athol Fugard, in which the protagonist’s first-person account gives the

reader insights into the Tsotsi’s origins and motivations. At a time when so many

in South Africa live in fear of random-seeming violence inflicted by so called ‘feral’

young people, this film is a compelling attempt to delve beneath the statistics of

modern-day crime – to put an unsentimental but human face on actions that

otherwise might seem utterly inexplicable and monstrous.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONTEXT

What do you know of South Africa? The official news is that it ranks among the

ten top tourist destinations in the world – and deservedly so. What draws people

to this country? In groups research and share discoveries of the beaches,

mountains and game reserves, the extraordinary natural beauty alongside

luxurious accommodation and fantastic cuisine that attracts tens of thousands of

visitors to the country each year.

With the collapse of the racist apartheid policies in the early 1990s and the

successful transfer from white minority to

TASK

• Over half the population lives below the poverty line – many on just a $1 a

day.

• A quarter of the population is unemployed.

• More than a fifth (21%) of the adult population is infected with HIV/Aids and

thousands of children grow up orphaned due to the premature deaths of

their parents.

• Despite a rapid house-building programme over the last decade it still has

many of its people living in shantytowns and squatter camps in shelters

constructed from scavenged scrap.

• Violent crime, though falling, still costs the lives of over 20,000 people a

year - and armed-robbery, car-jacking, rape and aggravated burglary are

the stuff of everyday anecdote.

Some or all of these are the painful legacies of 50 years of racism, discrimination

and neglect and also of the miseries in many other parts of Africa - that make

South Africa an economic magnet and its townships an incredible melting-pot of

nationalities and cultures.

Research these statements about South Africa and discuss which might be true. Suggest what some consequences of each problem might be.

Perhaps start by consulting these websites:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sf.html.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/southafrica/story/0,,1691481,00.html

http://www.southafrica.net/

What you need to show in an exam?

An appreciation of the messages and values contained within the chosen films.

An understadning of the relationship between form and content, possibly with a particular reference to distinctive stylistic features.

An understanding of contexts, especially time and place.

What does that mean?

The exam board want you to understand anddescribe the "messages" of the films you watch for this option.They what you to show with close textual analysis and reference to specific sceneshow idea and messages are placed in the films.How the films style and film language link into the meaning of the film.

YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO REFER TO 3 FILMS IN DETAIL

Exam Questions:To what extent do you think the films you have studied present either clear or ambiguous messages about the worlds they represent?orWhat is the importance of mise-en-scène and/or sound in creating meaning and generatingresponse in the films you have studied?

'Totsi' (Hood, 2005)

Elite Squad has been described as a right wing film that celebrates police violence.

Would you agree with this assertion?