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character or if not exactly created, "popularized it."
Not quite.
Alienation and general disgust with the human condition pretty much was universal after the two World Wars and then when the Korean and Vietnam conflicts came along.
You probably didn't live in the US during the sixties but the assassinations tore a fabric in the national psyche.
I wouldn't characterize the films of Antonioni, Fassbinder, Herzog, etc. exactly as portraying heroic protagonists, would you?
How about your own country's production?
Tarkovsky: optimistic? Heroic?
Follow Ups:
de Sade, Gargantua and Pantagruel, de Rochefoucault, Bosch, Breugel, and so on. Deviant imagery has been associated for aeons with images of evil, hell, and so on...The first anti-hero has sometimes been described as the figure of Kaoru in the 1000-year-old Tale of Genji. Not exactly a deviant, but perhaps a bit of a neurotic!
eb
It was not the existance of such characters, it is their prolifiration.Ah, and BTW... I also consider the crap like the Rain Man and the Beautiful Mind fall in the same category.
I don't know where you get your "ideas" from. I hope you're not proliferating.
I think you forgot that my own contry is the US? But I shall forgive you that small transgression...By normal I do not mean perfectly mentally balanced people... for instance Bergman heroes are normal to me, their problems and issues are not something I would not expect to ever meet in my life.
I mean all that Jason, Kruger, or whatever else shit is out there. I mean the Dumb and Dumber and Friday the 13th. Ted Bundy and the Monster babe. The Aliens and the Thing.
"I mean all that Jason, Kruger, or whatever else shit is out there."
As opposed to the good old days of Wolfman, Frankenstien and Dracula.
" I mean the Dumb and Dumber and Friday the 13th. Ted Bundy and the Monster babe. The Aliens and the Thing."
As opposed to Abbot and Costello meets the Wolfman, Freaks, The Day the Earth Stood still and The Thing (the first one)
Hmmmmmmmmmm
Well, some are fictional characters, such as Freddie, Jason. Some are not, such as Aileen Wournos (Monster babe) and Ted Bundy. Freddie and Jason films are purely made for entertainment, and not to provide information on the human condition, as lived by some people. I'll admit that I have never, what I consider wasted my time, with those films.On the other hand, Monster was not made to entertain. It was made to provide some theory as to how someone went from point A, seemingly normal, to point B, a depraved killer. You may meet an Aileen or a Ted in your life. For all we disagree, I hope you do not (or, at least until I am ready to upgrade my pre-amp.)
These films were made to generate debate as to how the subject got to what they became. Was it society? Themselves? Inherent? The only questions I can imagine asking in the Freddie and Jason films is whether the chick got naked before they hacked her. But those two groups of films do not belong in the same basket.
I do not recall recently viewing any foreign films (other than some films from the Far east) that attempt to provide any commentary or explanation on modern society. Which is a shame, because Europe has its fair share of issues.
is the lack of analysis: the director eschews the causal and concentrates on the condition itself.
Many directors use extremely limited dialogue, action, and cutting to produce seamless, existential works.
Hollywood endlessly repeats the "this is why this guy's so messed up" storytelling mantra whereas Asian directors (I am of course speaking in the broadest terms) either play off of that audience history or for intellectual reasons feel it interferes with "reality."
When I wrote those comments, I was specifically thinking of the film "Shower." A wonderful Chinese film about a man who operates a bath house with his mentally handicapped son, whose successful business son has come from the big city to visit. During the visit, the bath house is being demolished to make way for a mall, or some such modern construction.On the surface, the film would appear to be about the relationship between the father and his sons. And it is. But to the careful observer, there is also a current of social commentary running through the film. To wit: Chinese society, in its zeal to modernize, is pushing out age old rituals, such as the antiquated bath house. In China, the bath house is much like the old fashioned barbershop use to be here - a place for gathering, meeting friends, etc.
I suspect that these commentaries in the Far East, such as China, must be more subtle because of the control which the state has on critical comments about it. European filmmakers presumably face no such State limitations. Rather, their own retisence is self-imposed.
There are undoubtedly more examples. But I do think it accurate that European films are surprisingly lacking in any social commentary, and seem to be rather aloof in that respect. The real question is why.
I guess I should make an exception for Lars Von Trier, whose films I generally admire. He has made social commentary about America, a country he has never visited. Though he does not use his biting analysis for either his adopted, or home country, which probably deserve a little.
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