SJD-A2-MEDIASTUDIES: Film Industry - Whiplash

Past exam question:
To what extent are the key representations in your three main texts stereotypical?

Key terms:

Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.
Hegemonic masculinity is defined as the current configuration of practice that legitimizes men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of women, and other marginalized ways of being a man.
False consciousness: (especially in Marxist theory) a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of their social or economic situation.
Superstructure: refers to the institutions that are shaped by the economic base and legitimate it e.g. religion; education; political system; media
Proletariat: those who work the means of production and provide services
Bourgeoisie: those who own or control the means of production or services – the middle classes.
The media is crucial in the function of maintaining the power held by the ruling elite through: indoctrinating people into accepting their roles, leading to a false consciousness; and in generating money for the owners of media institutions
Post colonialism
The British Empire once spanned half the globe through militaristic dominance. Whilst colonial territories eventually declared independence leading to a significant decrease in British influence, postcolonial theorists contend that the effects of colonialism have not been extinguished as evidenced by English being widely spoken across countries which were once imperial territories. They argue the most evident sign of cultural imperialism is the area of cinema, which typically depicts Eastern culture as being inferior to Western.

Understanding the concept of representation must go beyond a simple discussion of positive and negative stereotypes. We also need to consider:

All media texts are constructed and so are the representations within.
This gives an illusion of reality which some audiences accept as the truth and some audiences reject.

How are ideas and values communicated in the text?

The aim of the producers is to communicate their ideology to the audience and we need to ask how the audience will decode these messages and respond to them in different ways.

Starter:
White boards
- List characteristics of Andrew's Father and consider what he represents.
Justify your observations with examples from the film.

Andrew's Father:
There is a symbolic meaning behind the father's character, that represents comfort and mediocrity.
That is why he is not allowed to watch the show from backstage, or inside the theatre, but to catch only a glimpse of what is actually going on from a shameful place where doors are slightly opened for him to witness from the shadows.
On the one hand, this movie shows the difference from having a comfortable and pathetically happy and perfect life, and on the other, the sacrifice required to reach perfection (for a short while). The first way of life ends up being healthier for living on a less stressful environment, while the other is surrounded by trauma, sadness, depression, but ends up making a person outstanding.

The real question the movie actually presents to the audience is: All that sacrifice to obtain perfection, is it worth it for you or not? PS. The director of the movie once said that, for his obsession, he expected Andrew to commit suicide before reaching the age of 40.

Representation - Gender

‘Men act and women appear’ (John Berger, 1972, ‘Ways of Seeing)

Gender is a social construction composed of masculinity and femininity, which in turn consist of core traits

Masculinity -Hegemonic masculinity emphasises the superiority of ‘manly’ men over less ‘manly’ men. Historically, representations are subject to more hegemonic cultural stereotypes that reflect changes in society -

Hollywood represents the ultimate aspirational male central protagonist to audiences who seek to escape from reality into exaggerated, non-realistic representations -

80s action films portrayed aggressive, hegemonically determined hyper real action heroes played by physically dominant actors e.g. Arnold Schwarzenneger in science fiction film ‘Predator’

-Men are not unattractive in the film. The body aesthetic dominates in terms of the ‘gaze’ unlike other media forms whereby masculine dominance is associated with status and role in contrast to physicality.

Andrew is not hegemonically determined in that he has a slim bodily aesthetic and cries yet is encoded with ambition; intelligence; and quick wits.

Representation - Age
Representations of age can influence how audiences respond to a character or real-life person in a media text.When media texts represent people, they can be categorised according to age, however it is easy to fall into stereotypical caricatures of lazy teenagers or grumpy old people.

Young people
Young people are often represented negatively in media texts, which can cause controversy and stimulate debate.When young people appear in positive representations in newspapers, it is often because they have done something out of the ordinary, such as an heroic act or an impressive sporting achievement.
This is reflected in their clothes, the way they speak and the language they use. Positive representations of young people in the media are much less frequent because positive representations are not as dramatic or entertaining.

Older people
Representations of older people tend to focus on things like deafness, grumpiness and not being as able as they once were. This creates a stereotype of old age
The process of growing old is not always represented positively by the media with many adverts for anti-ageing products representing ageing as something to be challenged or if possible reversed.

Fletcher:
Fletcher believes - that people have to be pushed, and so the ends justify the means - but, in the end, it's still only a logical, but unproven, theory and that's the rub; Fletcher thinks he has the answer, but his absolute belie f doesn't make it so. Fletcher considers himself instrumental to his students' development, and while that may be so, he's certainly been proven as instrumental to his students' destruction, and his methods and their extremes can't be proven as effective or necessary in any objective way. I think it is true, however, that Andrew may well have more respect for Fletcher and his aims/approach, flawed as their pursuit may be, than the respect Andrew has for his father at this point in his life.

Andrew:
Crisis of Masculinity - Males doubt their identity due to:
physical labour jobs being in short supply
the lengthening of education and increase in equal rights, resulting in females asserting their independence
Andrew is penalised for crying, though verbal reprimands are a facet to Fletcher’s character.
Andrew starts to push people away like his family and girlfriend just to fight for his place in Fletchers band.
Andrew going back out on stage to prove something to Fletcher, his father, or himself is certainly one theory, and probably a contributing factor in the decision.
What it ignores is that he was playing to an audience of his peers who "don't forget". If he hadn't gone back out, his whole career would've been over. He has to prove to everyone that doesn't know him that he's not as incompetent as he was made to look, and it has to be on his terms so that Fletcher can't continue to humiliate him.

Andrew makes it clear that he is not proving to Fletcher that he is great, nor looking for approval by his attitude at the ending. Andrew took charge of the entire band and told Fletcher to wait for his queue which can be seen as Andrew realizing his true greatness.

Fletcher may have helped him on the way, but the scene in the bar where Fletcher reveals true greats never quit, allowed Andrew to look within himself and bring out his true greatness that he had all along.
Andrew's walk offstage is one whereby he endures the most suffering of any part of the movie.
He does get hit by a car in earlier scenes, but he pushes through that- and it has barely as much of an emotional toll on him as the journey towards his father, through the coldly lit background.
However he rejects his father, this symbol of comfort, and somewhat failure, and returns to the orange lit drum-kit for one great finale.

This is his redemption. He isn't proving himself to Fletcher, or the audience- in fact he isn't proving himself at all. Rather he is ascending above the realms of Fletcher's tuition, shown when he hits the crash symbol in Fletcher's furious face, into something of true greatness- all he ever wanted from the outset of the film.
This is accompanied by the warm orange lighting- once again, similar to the image of the phoenix rising in flame- and the use of the drum roll in Andrew 's solo, to show that he, himself, is in charge of this militaristic authority that music haunted him with prior. (see the opening scene o f the film and the horror film tropes used within).
The film makes it deliberately unclear as to whether Andrew has Fletcher's approval at the end of the film. This is done to prove that it doesn't even matter.
If Chazelle wanted to show approval he wouldn't have picked such a close shot- he would've had a close up, or a mid shot of Fletcher smiling.
But he didn't. And this is suggestive that approval (shown with the dad also) is not the key to success, but rather pain and suffering, and continual pain and suffering at tha t (as shown with the sweat on his brow, and the blood on Andrews fingers throughout his solo to be the best Also, the last scene of the film is not supposed to be realistic it's supposed to make you feel something.
Maybe it was all in his head the ultimate wish fulfillment fantasy scenario.

Women
Whiplash can be said to have a male protagonist and a male villain.
Perhaps it also pretends that women barely exist in the world at all?

In fact, we see only one female musician playing an instrument at Schaffer, a girl who sits first chair in the woodwind section in a jazz performance class that Fletcher visits to conduct an impromptu mass audition. When it's her turn to perform a brief exercise for evaluation, Fletcher says something to the effect of, “Let's see if you're in first chair just because you're cute.” And after she plays a few notes, he cuts her off and says, “Yep.”

The female character who gets the most lines and screen time is Andrew's love interest, Nicole (Melissa Benoist), who, after a promising start, is completely marginalised.

Nicole is a college student and a concession-stand cashier at a movie theatre Andrew frequents, and after an awkward first date where he judges her for not having a solid career plan yet, he pulls the plug on the budding romance, insisting they would eventually come to resent each other – because a girl like her (or maybe just any girl?) couldn't possibly appreciate what it takes to become the best at what you do. Andrew rightly comes off as a self-important chump in their breakup scene, and Nicole presumably gets some kind of vindication when she later rejects his misguided attempt to reconcile – but this vindication comes in the form of having a new boyfriend.