Between Myth and Rhetoric

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Between Myth and Rhetoric

• Lévi-Strauss goes to Hollywood

Ass. Prof. Dario Martinelli - University of
Helsinki www.dariomartinelli.eu
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Lévi-Strauss and film studies

• Lévi-Strauss (and Propp) applied since the 1970s
  
• Narrativity semantic (culture) and syntactical
  (syntagms) schools
• Myth (binary oppositions)
• Applications predominantly on the Western genre

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Authors and their use of Lévi-Strauss (I)

• Greimas (1970 and 1971) although the binary
  oppositions may not in themselves be narrative,
  they are designed to account for the initial
  articulations of meaning within a semantic
  micro-universe

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Authors and their use of Lévi-Strauss (II)

• Jim Kitses (Horizons West, 1969) offers (despite
  being a post-modernist!!!) a number of structural
  oppositions, à la Lévi-Strauss, that characterise
  the Western genre as a semantic universe.

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Authors and their use of Lévi-Strauss (III)

• Will Wright (Sixguns and society, 1975) explicit
  comparison between mythic discourse and Western,
  which transmits a set of messages and values to
  society that reinforce, rather than challenge,
  social understanding.
• More structural oppositions offered.

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Authors and their use of Lévi-Strauss (IV)

• Within the syntactical school, Raymond Bellour
  (1979), maintans that also the formal level of
  the text (shots, frames, etc.) can be analyzed in
  terms of binary oppositions.
• Focus on Hitchcock, rather than Westerns.

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Main structural oppositions in the Western genre
(Wright)

• Wilderness/Civilization
• Inside society/Outside society
• Strong/Weak
• Good/Bad

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Can we go any further? (I)

• Kitses (1998) western has embraced the
  post-modern demithology and the end of master
  narratives. Is that true? Or is that always
  true?
• Is Western (and the few other cases studied)
  really the only genre to work as mythic
  discourse?

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Can we go any further? (II)

• What types of mythic discourses are exactly
  conveyed?
• Can we implement the models so far suggested?
• Most of all are there more structural
  oppositions?

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The mythic discourse (MD) in Hollywood Mainstream
Cinema (HMC)

• American history as classical-epic narrative
• Cultural logic of capitalism
• American dream
• Middle class values and goals
• Christian morality

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The historical context of HMC an ideal
environment for MD

• Crisis of subjects (but not financial)
• Remakes update of Hollywood past, or
  Americanization of foreign movies
• Sequels on the wave of the success, or even
  planned from the start
• Loans from recent or remote history, myths,
  novels, comics, TV shows, videogames...

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Updates and upgrades

• Demythologizing post-modernism (or a case of
  philosophical nemesis)
• A systematic (conscious or not) application of
  the American MD

• Effects on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic
  levels, and in the general narrative-thematic
  modality
• The original Hollywood aesthetic ideology a true
  classic

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Upgrade of the structural oppositions

• Individual/social (see also Bordwell)
• Outlaw/Inlaw or Morality/Legality (see also
  Casetti-Di Chio)
• Change/Closure (Bordwell)
• Simple-authentic/Complex-inauthentic
• Random-spiritual/Causal-rational

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Update of the structural oppositions

• Inside society/Outside society has reached in
  most cases a patriotic status (American vs. Non-
  Anti- Un-American)
• Strong/Weak is applicable also in the specific
  narrative structuralization of the movie
  (Casetti-Di Chio)
• Good/Bad has a strong iconographical
  characterization
• Wilderness/Civilization is possibly the very
  element where the post-modern demythology is
  applicable