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O N I NDEPENDENT F ILM

In document The Grotesque and/in/through Film (Page 41-45)

Clark’s and Korine’s films have been classified according a number of generic labels based on their modes of production. This includes but is not necessarily limited to: ‘indie flicks’, ‘Hollywood independents’, and ‘Indiewood’ films,96 to a more inventive

96 See: Geoff Andrew’s, Stranger Than Paradise: Maverick Film-Makers in Recent American Cinema

(New York and London: Prion Books, 1998); John Berra’s, Declarations of Independence: American Cinema and the Partiality of Independent Production (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books, 2008); David Bordwell’s, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2006); Jim Hillier’s, “Introduction” in the anthology in which he also edited (American Independent Cinema. London: BFI Publishing, 2002. ix-xviii); several of the essays in an anthology, Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); Chris Holmlund’s, Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream (New York and Oxford: Routledge, 2005) and the essays published in an anthology edited by Holmlund,

American Cinema of the1990s: Themes and Variations (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2008); Geoff King’s, American Independent Cinema (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2005),

Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood meets Independent Cinema (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co.

Ltd., 2002), and his New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (London and New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2002); a number of the essays in an anthology edited by Jon Lewis, The End Of Cinema As We Know It: American Film in the Nineties (New York and London: New York University Press, 2001); Greg Merritt’s, Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000); John Pierson’s, Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of

American Independent Cinema (New York: Miramax/Hyperion Books, 1997); Jeffrey Sconce’s, “Smart

Cinema” (Contemporary American Film. Eds. Linda Ruth Williams and Michael Hammond. Maidenhead and New York.: Open University Press, 2006. 429-31) and Linda Ruth Williams’ and Michael Hammond’s

classifications according to their motivations and visions as a loosely unified group of films, a quasi-movement, which includes: the ‘American Neo-Underground’,97 ‘Smart Cinema’,98 and ‘New Punk Cinema’.99 In the simplest terms, the films made by

Clark and Korine do belong to a category of filmmaking most commonly referred to as independent, or more specifically American independent film. The films that qualify for the independent classification are quite diverse in terms of a number of their qualities – modes of representation, industrial context, genres, narrative themes, and individual styles.

Contemporary independent American cinema is a mode of filmmaking that is often seen as challenging the perceived dominance and homogeneity of mainstream Hollywood films. However, the nature and degree of this challenge is contentious. Contemporary independent American cinema often embraces many of the dominant mainstream conventions of Hollywood, and similarly Hollywood has even come to embrace certain formal and stylistic trends and themes and content of independent filmmaking. Nevertheless, the “independent sector” of American film persists as a distinctive mode of filmmaking from the so-called mainstream of American cinema.100

As King aptly observes:

Independent cinema exists in the overlapping territory between Hollywood and a number of alternatives: the experimental ‘avant-garde’, the more accessible ‘art’ or ‘quality’ cinema, the politically engaged, the low-budget exploitation film and the more generally offbeat or eccentric.101

sectional “Introduction” to the part called the “1990s and Beyond” within the same anthologized collection (325-33).

97 See: Benjamin Halligan’s “What Is the Neo-Underground and What Isn’t: A First Consideration of

Harmony Korine” (Underground U.S.A.: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Canon. Eds. Xavier Mendik and Steven Jay Schneider. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2002. 150-60). This was reprinted in another anthology a few years after with a slightly altered title which is more retrospective in its entailment. See: Benjamin Halligan’s “What Was the Neo-Underground and What Wasn't: A First Reconsideration of Harmony Korine” (New Punk Cinema. Ed. Nicholas Rombes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. 180-92).

98 See: Jeffrey Sconce’s “Smart Cinema” (Contemporary American Film. Eds. Linda Ruth Williams and

Michael Hammond. Maidenhead and New York.: Open University Press, 2006. 429-31).

99 See: the anthology edited by Nicholas Rombes’ titled New Punk Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 2005). Especially see: Jay McRoy’s “Italian Neo-realist Influences” (39-55) and Benjamin Halligan’s “What Was the Neo-Underground and What Wasn't: A First Reconsideration of Harmony Korine (180-92).

100 Op. Cit., American Independent Cinema 1. 101 Ibid., 2-3.

The filmmakers and films that comprise the spine of my thesis operate somewhere between the mainstream of conventional narrative cinema and more avant-garde or underground film practices.102 The implementation of an elevated sense of verisimilitude or realism as well as more “complex, stylized, expressive, showy or self- conscious” audiovisual strategies is a departure from formal mainstream conventions of narrative cinema. Moreover, they tend to provide “visions of society” or perspectives in society that are not regularly found in the mainstream of popular narrative cinema.103 Since the 1990s, the ‘independent’ film moniker has come to

transcend or bypass its status as a mode of filmmaking, in which certain films following particular formal and stylistic strategies and content are classified as ‘indie films, or ‘indie flicks, in genre terms.

The criteria for defining a film as ‘independent’ tend to rely on three distinctive, yet interrelated contexts, according to Geoff King: industrial, aesthetic, and social/cultural/political. King points out that:

Strategies vary, at each level. Some films customarily designated as ‘independent’ operate at a distance from the mainstream in all three respects: they are produced in an ultra-low budget world a million miles from that of the Hollywood blockbuster; they adopt formal strategies that disrupt or abandon the smoothly flowing conventions associated with the mainstream Hollywood style; and they offer challenging perspectives on social issues…Others exist in a closer, sometimes symbiotic relationship with the Hollywood behemoth, offering a distinctive touch within more conventional frameworks, in between are many shades of difference.104

While the industrial context seems to be a prevailing characteristic, some films classified as independent are designated as such more so because of their aesthetics, content, or explicit political or ideological motivations. Indeed this does open up a range of problems and issues regarding what do and do not constitute an independent film. The degree to which a film adheres to the various dynamics of King’s typologies of ‘independence’ provides a barometer that ranges from what he seems to

102 Ibid., 10. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid., 2.

be describing as an ‘über-indie film’ to an ‘indie film lite’.

One historian deals with this discrepancy resolutely. Greg Merritt insists that a film should be considered independent based solely on one factor, and that is, if a film is financed and produced autonomous from a studio , regardless of that studio’s size and wealth.105 As King points out, films that are made by smaller studios still operated within the studio system in that they are provided assurances of distribution by more major studios, which according to Merritt do not constitute independence, but is instead what he would call the grey area of the ‘semi-indie’.106 Merritt’s hardline on the industrial context of a film’s production is important but such a rigid classification dismisses the way in which independent film resonates aesthetically, culturally and artistically.

Indeed, the films that are of principal focus of this thesis would qualify under Merritt’s category of ‘semi-indie’ as all the films at the center of this thesis are produced, coproduced, or distributed by a major studio. However, like King, I use the notion ‘independent’ to refer to American films that are produced on the margins of the mainstream, films that operate in the grey area that has come to be referred to as ‘Hollywood independents’ or ‘Indiewood’ films.107 These films are produced and financed independently from the big budgets of the larger studios. Some of them are made by independent studios that are subsidiaries of larger major studios, whereas others are completely independent yet rely on the influence and distributional power of the major studios in order to ensure that they receive theatrical release. Clark’s and Korine’s films are widely recognized as independent films within the broader cultural context of their consumption and reception. The various aesthetic strategies diverge from the majority of mainstream commercial cinema. The content is challenging; and they do provide what could be considered an alternative vision of the world, even if only based on the prevailing attitude, mood, and feeling that the films convey in contrast to the vast majority of commercial mainstream cinema.

105 Op. Cit., Merritt xi-xv. 106 Ibid., xii-xiii.

In document The Grotesque and/in/through Film (Page 41-45)