What is Film Noir?

 James Naremore claims that it "has always been easier to recognize a film noir than to define the term." Naremore further states, "There is, in fact, no completely satisfactory way to organize the category; despite scores of books and essays that have been written about it, nobody is sure whether the films in question constitute a period, a genre, a cycle, a style, or simply a phenomenon." People's typical perception of film noir contains the following. The main characters are either anti-heroes wronged by the law or are working outside the law. To narrow down the main characters further, they would usually qualify as a hard-boiled, fedora -and trench coat-wearing detectives or wrongfully convicted men who wander into trouble at the wrong place, at the wrong time. The female characters are femme fatales, women who are cold, seductive, and selfish. In short, they are beautifully shallow monsters. The antagonists in film noirs are either corrupt officials or murderous criminals with little to no charm. Film noirs were ideally shot in black and white with heavy low-key lighting to create an ominous shadowy atmosphere, usually on empty foggy city streets, and in shabby apartments, smoky bars and diners. The question is, is it true that there are films that are considered noir that challenge people's ideas of the style? 

Looking into the more obscure side of the style, two films that fit the category yet challenge the general perception of it are The Great Flamarion (1945) and Fear in the Night (1947). The best way to start when analyzing the two films is the beginning. It is not uncommon for a film noir to tell a chronologic story, yet it is seen as a staple of the style for the film to present itself through flashbacks. Typically, what leads to this narrative is an opening designed to get audiences immediately hooked with an action, leaving them with questions of how the protagonist made it to where he is now. The Great Flamarion uses this traditional approach. The film opens in Mexico inside a theatre as the camera slowly approaches the stage, catching an end of a performance and the beginning of another. The camera halts at a medium shot of a clown performing, only to have the performance interrupted by a gunshot heard off-screen. During the chaos, glimpses of the suspected crook are revealed as he climbs the ladder in an overhead shot. His face appears as he is walking on the scaffold above the stage, looking wounded as he hides from the authorities. Shortly after the chaos, we discover a woman was murdered, and her husband is falsely arrested for the crime. While finding out this info, part of it is seen through the P.O.V. of the man hiding up in the scaffolding viewing the conversation from above. With everybody gone, except for the clown, the man hiding falls onto the stage, where he is then comforted by the actor. The clown recognizes him as the film's title character, The Great Flamarion. Flamarion reveals he was the one who murdered the actress and that she shot him in self-defense. With no hope for survival from his wounds, Flamarion confesses the reason for the murder before dying, leading to a flashback officially beginning the film's story. With film noirs, a murder usually happens on the dark city streets. While the murder does take place inside the theater, the painted backdrop behind him resembles a city street.

Despite the unconventional setting, everything in The Great Flamarion's opening scene plays out as a typical film-noir. Fear in the Night's opening is utterly different. The film itself does not look like a film noir, more so a low-budget combination of a Hitchcockian thriller with cheesy spooky visuals that William Castle would be proud to exhibit in his gimmicky horror films. The background for the opening credits has blurry kaleidoscope imagery as loud dramatic music plays with a title as dramatic as if we were watching a teaser trailer for a low-budget old horror film or the midnight spook shows (before they were even a thing). The first image that does appear looks just as spooky and hokey, with a woman's head floating toward the screen over melancholy narration that sounds strangely distant. What follows is a murder scene played out as intense with the same surreal kaleidoscope-like imagery as the title sequence, this time adding blurry ripples, mirrors, dramatic close-up shots, heavy low-key lighting, and an overhead shot of the character spinning into a vortex. Vivian Sobchack mentions "that back projection is to film-noir space what flashbacks are to film-noir time. Not merely a tacky effect of a low-budget production, back projection is an aesthetic element that well serves noir's philosophical worldview, transforming it not only into something literal and materially realized but also producing a subtle yet significant effect on the viewer's sensual comprehension of cinematic meaning." The same can be said about the low budget aesthetics of the sequence. It looks fake yet creates an image straight out of a nightmare. While the sequence looks other worldly, the inner monologuing and the imagery of a man murdering a woman ground this surreal sequence making it appear we are gazing into someone's haunting memory. 

The scene dissolves into an image of the protagonist Vince Grayson (played by a young DeForest Kelley) waking up in bed, believing it was all a dream hence the unusual imagery. Surprisingly, the character wakes up to find two thumbprints on his neck, a key, and a button from the nightmare. As in The Great Flamarion, there is a hook involving murder and a mystery that escalated quickly. Still, there are no flashbacks in the narrative, nor are the actual events supposedly happening. At least, that is not what the film wants audiences to think at first. The film is almost like an episode from The Twilight Zone, with a mystery that appears set in a supernatural realm. We, the audience, are wondering like the protagonist if what he envisioned was a dream or not. And if not, then how and why? It is not until the climax that it is made clear that everything that was shown in the film's opening did indeed happen. What audiences are witnessing is a flashback only shown from the delusions Vince was under, further creating a literal nightmare that is subtle with the meaning of what the viewer is seeing. In short, the film opens with a flashback without stating that it is one until the end. 

A popular trope in film noir that the two films do not have is a protagonist who is a tough detective working outside the law. What the two films do share, however, is a doomed protagonist. Fear in the Night, despite its horror-thriller-like concept, does involve a character in trouble with the law all throughout. However, Vince does not have trouble with the law directly. He did not cause an accidental death that he knows he is responsible for, like Al Roberts in Detour. Vince is unsure if what he dreamed was real or not, based on the places, people, and things he sees relating to the dream he has never encountered until that moment. And he does not keep his suspected crime a secret from the authorities either. On the contrary, he has a brother-in-law in the police force to whom he confesses his crimes, who of course, shrugs it off as nothing more than a nightmare. It is not often that a protagonist in film noir confesses to a crime they did not commit. 

Flamarion, character-wise, is the opposite of Vince. While Vince functions as the everyday social individual with a steady job, Flamarion is a successful antisocial showman with no likable qualities due to his arrogant and cold personality. The only thing he is devoted to is his work as a vaudeville marksman, spending many lonely hours in the dark perfecting his craft. He is so unlikable that without his mournful introduction any audience member could take him as a villain for his menacing appearance, brutish attitude, and a profession that can easily get him a job as a hitman. In fact, he does become a hitman at one point in the film by killing one of his stage actors during his act to make it seem like an accident. Usually, a protagonist committing murder would feel the guilt of some sort after or paranoia about the law finding out. But he does not show any of the two. He legally gets away with murder by convincing people it was an accident, and he thinks nothing of killing a man, not because he intended to be a cold-blooded murderer, it is because he was corrupted by something more dangerous than a gangster or thug: a femme fatale. 

The woman corrupting Flamarion is his beautiful assistant, Connie (Mary Beth Hughes), who works with her alcoholic husband, Al (Dan Duryea), during the act. Connie is a maneater- a woman who never settles down with one man. She will marry a man or date him for a while until she gets bored and goes for the next man, she finds attractive. Just abandoning a man for another is not always easy for her, especially in the bonds of holy matrimony; that's where Flamarion comes to play in her little plan. She has no love or physical attraction for him, nor is he the person she seeks to gold-dig from. Connie uses Flamarion so she can wed a bicyclist in the show Eddie (Stephen Barclay). As the femme fatales in noirs like to use and manipulate men to achieve selfish desires, Connie seduces Flamarion with more than just sex appeal. She plays into Flamarion's sentimental weaknesses by looking through his items to find out about his ex-wife, who has broken him. Mentioning her angers Flamarion, but Connie creates a false, helplessly innocent personality to give Flamarion hope for new true love and, in return, help her leave her abusive husband. By penetrating Flamarion's past and using a facade, he has contacted his sensitive side that he has hidden for so long and is on his knees to do anything she says. And like almost any seductive femme fatale, if it is not stealing or blackmail, it is murder she manipulates him to do. People like to remember criminals such as Vince Stone in The Big Heat, the Stranger in Stranger on the Third Floor, or Harry Lime in The Third Man as the typical main baddies in film noir. However, femme fatales often at times serve as the main villain as well. Notable examples include Vera in Detour, Kitty in Scarlet Street, and Ellen in (the debated color noir) Leave her to Heaven.

Fear in the Night reverses the typical film noir tropes in The Great Flamarion. The film has no femme fatale, or at the very least, one that does not meet any of the conventions. The female characters in the movie exist more as moral support or a victim than seductive villainesses or innocent heroines that attempt to take control of the situation (like Jane in Stranger on the Third Floor or Debby in The Big Heat). They are the Susan Vargas from Touch of Evil and Katie Bannion from The Big Heat of their time. The antagonist is not the typical criminal people would generally think of when contemplating film noir. The criminal, Mr. Belknap, is a hypnotist who rarely gets his hands dirty-not too different from the crime bosses or manipulative femme fatales who use their power or charms in order to persuade people to do their dirty work. In The Great Flamarion, the first time Flamarion starts developing some feelings for Connie is as he is doing routine target practice for his act. As Connie starts sweet-talking him, the reflective light from the pendulums Flamarion shoots move back and forth on the wall as the sound of ticking is played on the soundtrack. The image symbolizes Flamarion becoming hypnotized by Connie's beauty and claims about him. Fear in the Night uses hypnotism in a literal sense. No desires attract Vince, he is instead forced to do Belknap's bidding without free will. 

Paul Schrader states "Film noir is not a genre, as Raymond Durgnat has helpfully pointed out over the objections of Higham and Greenberg’s Hollywood in the Forties. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood." Both films partially follow the conventions of the film noir style. Both films have a startling and puzzling beginning, but each has a different narrative. Flamarion and Vince are doomed protagonists, except one commit murder to achieve a desire while the other is in an uncontrollable trance, willing to admit a crime. And both films either do not share a femme fatale character or a vicious criminal. As different as the two films are in so many ways, the film noir style can still be felt and seen, not just in character and story, but also in terms of atmosphere. The grim abstract imagery visually presents the viewers with a constant sense of danger. A slow pace to build up a sense of urgency. Music that can be mournful, intense, or deceptive to emphasize the environment and characters. The clothing style subtly emphasizes the characters' personalities as the backgrounds do. These technical elements, familiar dramatic character tropes, and a suspenseful story relating to crime create film noir. It is difficult to pinpoint what film qualifies as film noir or not (noir infuses other genres, including westerns, heist films, and melodrama), as it has been debated for an extended period. However, there is something that can be felt within its tone and visuals that cannot be felt or found in classic crime films like The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, and The Petrified Forest. If there is one thing for sure about the appeal of film noir it is the ominous transgressive escapism. As Corey K. Creekmur nicely put it. "Loving film noir is thus somewhat analogous to the doomed hero of a classic film noir such as Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) directing his passion to the dangerous but exciting femme fatale and away from the safe but dull nice girl: our attraction and our reason, or our passion and our morality, are pulled in opposite directions. Whether we identify with the flawed hero or the femme fatale (there’s little desire to identify with the good girl), we want to be bad. The love of film noir is similarly transgressive, if only in fantasy."

Do the Right Thing: The Most Unconventional and Honest Film About Racism

When the social problem films began in the late 40s, they shed light on the topic of racism while launching the careers of black actors (notably Sidney Poitier). However, as well-intended as the films were, they still refused to go all the way to show the brutality or complexity of racism to challenge white audiences. They were dramatic films but usually left audiences with a feel-good message at the end as if these films knew how to combat racism rather than leaving them to think about the issues. And they were not just a product of their time; they were still made throughout film history, where their formula usually stayed safe. There were still some notable films that defied the traditional storytelling narrative Hollywood would teach about racism. One of the essentials in that category is Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. 

Most films tackling issues of race would usually have a white director in charge of the picture rather than a person of color. Of course, just because a black person directs a film does not automatically mean the movie will be more authentic than a white director in charge. The film industry is primarily controlled by white men who still have the final say in the film's approval and can make changes if necessary. But when having a black director who is also the writer, producer, and founder of the production company (40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks) the film was made under, there is a more substantial chance that the raw authenticity is going to come through, which the film unquestionably delivers.

Spike Lee also stars as the film's protagonist Mookie, a young black man working at an Italian Pizzeria in a primarily black neighborhood in Brooklyn on the hottest summer day imaginable. Most films about racism typically had a white protagonist to connect to white audiences, but there were still a few films with black people as the focus such as "Shaft," or "No Way Out". While commendable, many of the black protagonists were a little too perfect. The typical black protagonists would suffer from racial prejudices but usually keep their cool, remain headstrong and come on top in the end, serving as an ideal a black person should be as opposed to a relatable character for black people to identify with. Mookie is not a perfect character. He is loyal to his job, but he always slacks off. He loves his girlfriend and kid but is not dependable as a father or lover. Mookie is not made to look as classy as Sidney Poitier, but he is not a one-dimensional stereotype of a man in poverty living in a poor neighborhood. He is portrayed as the everyman. A character striving to do well in life, figuring out where his loyalty lies. His boss Sal sees him like a son for his commitment, except he is still viewed as a black punk by Sal's son Pino. He disapproves of his black friends' stirring up trouble for their black skin, however, he cannot pretend he is not struggling because of his race. And as the film progresses, Mookie's anger because of his struggling loyalty to both sides continue to rise like the summer heat. Mookie's imperfections, vulnerability, and uncertainty make him a fascinating and relatable character who is more complex than most black protagonists in films about racism.

The film's racist white antagonist Sal is not portrayed as a one-dimensional savage racist like so many others in films. Sal is well-liked in the neighborhood for his place of business and cares for the customers. As Sal explains to his son Pino, he has a nostalgic spot for the people in the neighborhood because he watched them grow up on his food. Sal does not live in the area where his establishment is but is still willing to work a little past closing time to serve the latecomers a slice. Sal still has a bossy attitude and a heated temper, but usually when he catches his employees slacking off or when a customer is acting out of line, either when overusing the parmesan cheese or inappropriately blasting music. Sal seems like a nice guy who is just trying to run a business his way. For the character not acting like the racist antagonists usually depicted in media, a good half of moviegoers (typically white) do not see him as a racist. The actor portraying Sal, Danny Aiello did not think he was racist either. 

On the surface, his racism is not blatant, but it is still there. The central conflict of the film is Sal's refusal to add pictures of African Americans on his wall of fame after hearing a customer's complaint. Sal explains it is his establishment therefore he is free to put whatever he wants on the wall. And as an Italian proud of his heritage, he would instead fill the walls with famous Italians. The customer Buggin' Out retorts Sal's claim with the fact there are mostly black people in the neighborhood, and since they are the ones who fill Sal's pocket with cash, it would not hurt his business if he put some black people on the wall. If Sal did care about his customers, he would consider the option of including a few pictures of black people in his restaurant. Sal could easily purchase a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X together from Smiley on the street for a small fee. But a little later after his feud with Buggin’ Out he politely brushes Smiley off when granted the opportunity. During his feud with Buggin' Out, Sal starts acting violently and hostile towards him after hearing his reasons yet holds back. His refusal to do so is not because he does not want to hurt Buggin' Out but because he knows it will give his business a bad name. 

Sal's refusal to put pictures of black people up is not the only indication of his racism. When describing to his son Pino why he does not move his business, he refers to the community as "these people," indicating he does not see them as equal despite not sounding mean. To Sal, friends are people who put money in his pocket, but he never considers the community as his friends. He claims Mookie is like a son to him though never treats him like his sons because of his race. The only scene when Sal is fatherly towards his staff is with Pino, who, out of his two legitimate sons, is the one who is openly racist. It is not until the end of the film when Sal's racism is as direct as Pino's when Buggin' Out, and Radio Raheem confront him again. Sal, having enough of the two resorts to calling them racial slurs, lashes out in violence, and when Radio Raheem dies in the chaos, he shows no remorse. Sal is not a non-racist man who said and did the wrong things irrationally in the heat of passion because the film indicates multiple times that he is racist, just not directly as shown in other films. And Lee's portrayal of Sal as an ordinary man makes his racism more real. As Hollywood would like to make racists clear-cut villains, they tend to overlook that racism is not just from the extremist but could be from your friendly neighbor, vendor, or relative you know.

Surprisingly, while Buggin' Out and Radio Raheem have some valid points against Sal's establishment, they are not exactly innocent; they are both self-righteous troublemakers. It is not the first time Sal and Buggin' Out met each other. Buggin' Out has been to Sal's pizzeria three times a day and always does something intentionally to stir Sal up. Radio Raheem walks around the neighborhood, blasting his stereo and harassing people who are not black with his music. Raheem also has little patience for Koreans' lack of English speaking, having no issues insulting them. Of course, Buggin' Out and Radio Raheem are not the only black characters who are racist. The three elderly black men sitting around the neighborhood corner hate the Koreans in their community too. And to complicate the racial matters further, the black characters are disliked by another oppressed minority the Latinos. Lee does not cater to conventional themes or formulas when diving into racism; he investigates multiple layers of the subject to explore its complexity. 

If there is one thing Spike Lee makes clear about racism in his film, racism is not all about the individual. Hollywood tends to have a narrative where racism exists from the individuals who make it a big problem, when racism is more systemic and nowhere is that made clear than in the film's climax. Once the police intervene during the fight at Sal's Pizzeria, they only worsen matters. The fight is broken up at the expense of murder by one of the officers, who chokes Radio Raheem to death with a nightstick. Raheem's death was far from any accident as the officer refused to listen to the pleas from the civilians and fellow officers. Before this scene, the police officers who patrol the neighborhood hardly do a thing when there is trouble, and when everything is at peace, they cruise around glaring at the black inhabitants looking for an excuse to bust them. Those scenes are small, but they establish the neighborhood is under corrupt white police authority, just as non-black folks own the successful businesses in the area.

Systemic racism is why Mookie throws a garbage can into his boss' window to start the destruction of Sal's Pizzeria. Sal's racist colors are fully revealed, and the police murder a defenseless man in front of the pizzeria. From seeing everybody go at each other in the neighborhood all day in the burning heat and seeing Sal and the police get away with their crimes while his friends take all the blame, Mookie has had enough of the injustices. Mookie does the right thing, and Sal's place is in ashes, which should end the film either with a celebration or with Sal reforming after seeing the error of his ways, but the film does not end happily. Mookie did the right thing at the expense of losing his job. Sal's business is destroyed, but he will receive insurance money to start over. The riot did not end racism in the neighborhood as long as systemic racism still exists to keep everyone divided.

 In the article Remote Control: How Mass Media Delegitimize Rioting as Social Protest, it is suggested when commenting on the L.A. riots for Rodney King (two years after the film was released) "rioting as a legitimate form of social protest continues to be delegitimized by mainstream media." The response that Spike Lee's film received supports that claim.  Before letting the film roll the end credits, Lee uses a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and an excerpt from Malcolm X asking the viewers when we should use love or violence "to fight the power." Lee informs the viewers that racism is not a thing of the past and that it is our time to decide what method we should use to fight it after seeing what Mookie did, leaving white audiences uneasy with its message. White audiences were scared that the film would promote riots and violence when ironically, the violence was not caused by this film or even happened when it came out. The violence and rioting came from the injustices a few years after the film was made from the police brutality that Rodney King suffered. 

When white audiences usually want to see a film about racism, they want reassurance that they are not racist, that times are better, and expect answers about how to end it, which usually means "love thy neighbor." Spike Lee does not have the answers to end racism, nor is he concerned with creating characters who are viciously racist and morally perfect to distinguish the good from the bad. Lee's film is less about the individuals and more about the complexities of bigotry and systemic racism. Lee's goal is to create a movie to entertain and challenge viewers to start a discussion and debate on the topic. The Academy did not take too kindly to the film's unconventional narrative, message, and controversy, consequently nominating and giving the Oscar for Best Picture Driving Miss Daisy, a film that follows Hollywood guidelines. And to this very day, this overused and safe narrative still wins that award through the movie Green Book in 2018, proving nothing has changed. These are not necessarily badly made films, nor should films celebrating acceptance and love for others in an injustice society be not seen as unimportant. But it is not the only way to combat or teach about racism. It is a more significant and more complicated problem than audiences think and does not deserve to be sanitized or presented as a simplistic matter. We still have an incredibly long way to go with difficult choices, and we need more films like Do the Right Thing representing the matter, which means making white audiences as uncomfortable as the black audiences watching the movie.

Why is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre so Scary?

For this Halloween, I would like to look into a milestone slasher film...

Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is not only one of my favorite slasher films of all time and one of my all-time favorite horror films in general, but it is one of the few horror films that manages to frighten me. As a huge horror fanatic who loves watching dark, scary, grotesque, and monstrous imagery, I hardly ever get scared by horror films. I can see how the film achieves its scares effectively; but I am more impressed with how it is executed rather than finding myself frightened or repulsed. As a kid in Middle School, I heard about the film's fearsome reputation from critics, horror enthusiasts, and family and friends, as well as the appeal of the villain Leatherface in pop culture among slasher villains like Jason and Freddy (who I was first introduced to in a Roger Corman parody horror film Transylvania Twist (1989)). All this information and praise made me curious to see how the film lived up to its popularity. 

At the time, my dad purchased a copy of the movie as a Christmas present but mistakenly gave me its 2003 remake. Like other horror films I saw then, I was excitedly entertained by the film's villains, atmosphere, and excessive use of gore instead of being scared. Honestly, in retrospect, I do not think the remake is as bad as critics made it out to be. It is not as good as the original, but it is creative with the kills; Leatherface is highly more intimidating than he was in any of the sequels, and is supported by a strong cast, especially R Lee Ermey as a crazed killer sheriff whose performance alone is enough to make the film worth seeing. When I finally saw the original nineteen seventy-four classic in my mid-twenties, I was so creeped out, shocked, disgusted, and uncomfortable watching it (as the film intended); by the time, the movie was over, I felt relieved to escape the madness as if I were suffering with the film's protagonist. And the crazy part is the film has less blood than the remake had. During a recent rewatch with the film still having the same effect, I wanted to dig deep into how the film achieves its scares and how it came to be. 

From the silent era to the late nineteen-forties, horror films mainly focused on the supernatural, like vampires or werewolves, or stories of mad scientists that were typically period pieces or existed in a fantasy world in faraway lands. The scares in the movies relied on monster make-up, a quiet foreboding atmosphere often resembling nightmares, the monster and the characters' psychology, and (for the time) shocking scenes of people getting killed, often by strangulation or happening off-screen with the aftermath shown. By the fifties, known as the Atomic Age for horror films, audiences were less interested in horror stories taking place in the past and more so in Sci-Fi horror due to the tensions of the Cold War with the fear of the widespread of communism and the destruction from the atom bomb. Sci-fi films about alien invasions and giant monsters destroying the city would be an allegory for people's fears at the time.

As people went to the theaters to watch death and destruction caused by Sci-Fi creatures, a sick maniac would casually walk among the streets of Plainfield, Wisconsin, known as Ed Gein. Gein grew up in a strict Christian household with his alcoholic father, older brother, and domineering mother. Gein's mother read from bible testaments while preaching hatred, especially towards women, viewing them as disgusting and unholy creatures. Despite the abuse Gein's mom would bestow upon him, he would never stop trying to please her with all his best efforts, even if it were never good enough for her. After his mom's passing, Gein, alone and lost without her, would seal off her room and keep the house the same when she was alive and talk to her. Unsatisfied with his actions to keep his mom's spirit alive, Gein would go to the cemetery, digging up graves of middle-aged women and bringing them home. Gein would use the bodies he snatched by using their bones to make furniture and trinkets, make clothes and masks out of their skin (one designed to resemble a woman so he could become his mom), and eat their organs. Gein's madness drove him to murder two women, a bartender named Mary Hogan and hardware store owner Bernice Worden. In 1958 shortly after the murder of Worden, Gein was arrested. 

Gein was not silent about his crimes or reasons after he was caught, making him a top headliner at the time. His story inspired author Robert Bloch to write a novel about a killer obsessed with his deceased mother called Psycho, which would later be adapted into a film famously directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Amusingly Hitchcock had a gimmick where he would have theaters not let people in if they came late to the show so that people would not question what happened to the film's main character and marketable star, Janet Leigh. Although Hitchcock's no stranger to creating breathtaking suspense and stellar camerawork, the film's controversy with the censors, the infamous shower scene, the ear-screeching score, and the twist ending made it one of the most popular films of its time. Regarding slasher films, Psycho is not the first, nor the only, slasher film to come out that year as Peeping Tom (1960) came out a few months prior in the U.K. before receiving a release in the U.S. in 1962. But the film was still a popular game changer.

Though sixties horror would continue to produce psychological thrillers and supernatural horror films, George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), would have as big of an impact on the genre and filmmaking as Psycho did. Romero's zombie horror classic was an independent production shot on a low budget with a cast of unknown actors. While critics did not heavily praise the film as it is now, it was popular at Grindhouse theaters and Drive-Ins. Audiences found the film frightening for its unique portrayal of zombies, use of gore, and unhappy ending. But the most significant fears came from the fact that the film was not set in a past or fictional environment, but the zombies were attacking people in a typical American household, making the threat feel close to home, just like in Psycho. Although Romero reportedly had no political underlining when creating the film, with the news media's focus on the violence during the Civil Rights Protests and the war in Vietnam, people could not help but see a parallel to the real-life horrors they were witnessing at the time, whether it was zombie's causing unwanted destruction to property, or heavily armed soldier-like men mistaking civilians for zombies.

1969 to 1970 marked the transition of the loss of optimism held by the flower power youth in the sixties. The infamous Hippie cult, the Manson family, led by Charles Manson, committed a series of murders. The Altamont Free Concert, which was supposed to recapture the positive mark Woodstock left, became a place of death and rioting. Young protesters were killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. And the war in Vietnam was only getting worse as the days went by. Night of the Living Dead's low-budget and unconventional creativity with horror that gained screams and popularity while showing a dysfunctional America inspired other independent filmmakers to make exploitation horror films showing the faults of the American dream. The monsters in these films were less about zombies and creatures and more about vicious criminals who would hunt or trap their prey in a secluded location. 

One of the famous films of that kind in the early seventies was The Last House on the Left (1972), which helped boost the careers of the film's director Wes Craven and producer, Sean. S. Cunningham. Like Night of the Living Dead, the film did not receive a strong reception from critics (except from Roger Ebert). Still, Grindhouse theater audiences were horrified by the film's documentary-like presentation of watching two young women from the hippie generation getting brutally raped and killed by vicious criminals in the woods. And underneath its tasteless violence was showing audiences the literal death of the hippie generation while satirically poking fun at the unreliable role of police authority, where it is up to the civilians to fend for themselves against the killers in their own home.

Independent filmmaker of the time, Tobe Hooper from Austin, Texas, was hardly receiving attention with his experimental film Eggshells (1969) and TV documentary Peter, Paul, and Mary: The Song is Love (1971). Noticing the popularity of horror exploitation films at the time, Hooper wanted to make a marketable product reflecting the popularity of the time. Hooper was already a fan of horror, particularly horror films made by the British film production company Hammer, which specialized in doing remakes of classic horror films like Dracula and Frankenstein in the late fifties with color, sex appeal, and lots of blood, spawning numerous sequels that would lead to the mid-seventies. Hooper would also hear the stories about Ed Gein from his Wisconsin relatives when he was younger, which stayed with him. Hooper even feared leaving the city limits of his own home due to the unknown dangers in the desert. His passion, fears, and the popularity of independent horror films at the time became his source of inspiration and drive to create the classic horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. 

The posters for the film would promote it as a feature based on actual events by claiming, "What Happened is true. Now the motion picture, that's just as real." and that the film captures "America's most bizarre and brutal crimes!" The film also contains a prologue with an opening scroll and a narrator telling the audience the film "is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths," like The Last House on the Left's prologue. Of course, this is far from the truth, aside from the killers being loosely based on Ed Gein. Regardless of the film's fiction, the film overall carries a grainy raw look with occasional scenes and moments that appear like a documentary (like the photos of corpses taken at the beginning, or a victim finding a living room with furniture made from dead body parts), to make it seem like the events happening were real. The film hardly ever feels like it is playing on traditional horror gimmicks to win audiences over, therefore coming across as a picture with a horrific cautionary tale to tell. 

One of the grounded elements is the depiction of the teenage victims. Usually, in horror films, they are too over the top through their acting, typically playing one-dimensional stereotypical role, while exploiting their looks for sex appeal before their death. With the cast in this film, the characters feel less like stereotypes and more like regular down-to-earth teens. The only character who comes close to the cartoony teenage stereotypes is Franklin (Paul A. Partain) due to his weird personality and moments of comedy. But at the same time, he never goes too over the top to the point where he feels like a forced comic relief. I cannot say the teenagers as characters are intriguing but are at the very least believable and relatable to feel for their torment. And while nudity and sex are always welcomed in a horror film of its nature, it is surprising that the film does not resort to it, knowing a pointless sex scene would be unsubtly winking to audience members who want to be aroused. 

The exclusion of sex is as shocking as the film's lack of gore. With a title as gruesome sounding as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the film is not showered with as much gore as one would think. The film only uses it when needed, like when someone gets cut, the blood during a chainsaw kill splattering on Leatherface, or when the final victim is covered in blood. One would think that scenes like this would be enough, but the shots usually do not linger too long on the bloody wounds nor show a ton of blood spilling. When I think back to the film, I think less about chainsaw murders and more about murders with the sledgehammer. Sure, Leatherface runs around with the chainsaw, but there is only one murder involving the film's title weapon. There is one scene where Leatherface is slicing up a dead body, but nothing is shown, no blood or shots showing the chainsaw penetrating through the body. 

The film shows enough graphic imagery, but its terrors leave more to the imagination rather than showing the gruesome detail of the kills. For instance, a character is taken away and placed on a large, rusty meat hook. A shot of her skin is about to make contact with the hook until the scene cuts to a low-angle medium shot of her hanging with a dead body on a table before her. Despite not seeing her bleed, the screams of pain and the sound of the chainsaw cutting up her boyfriend's dead body sound brutal, and her reactions and movements indicate the sight she is seeing, and the pain she is feeling is worse than it looks. Another example is the death of the first victim. The kill is shot from a long distance and happens for only a few seconds, but the surprise of Leatherface and the grotesque sound of the hammer pounding the man's skull is more sickening than seeing it up close or seeing blood spill all over the place. Blood is shown on the dead body, but it is not so much the blood that is scary, but how the body is involuntarily shaking and banging hard on the floor, with the scene ending with Leatherface bringing the body into his kitchen and violently shutting a slide steel door loudly. The film shows very little but enough to make audiences disgusted, strongly backed up by its realistic atmosphere, little details, and sound design. 

Another contribution to the film's success with terror is how the tension is built, backed by the slow pacing and the actors portraying the cannibalistic family. With the film's opening scroll and nauseating imagery of dead bodies shown in the film's first few scenes to set up the film's documentary-like style, the scene when the teenagers pick up a hitchhiker (Ed Neal) is the first scene to show the film's skills when creating tension perfectly. When looking at the hitchhiker's odd behaviors, large beauty mark that looks like dried blood and hearing him expressing joy in killing animals in the slaughterhouse, there is instantly a feeling of unease. Obviously, this guy is going to harm one of the teens in the group, but it is never certain when he will since his actions are always unpredictable. One moment he has a picture of dead animals from the slaughterhouse, then he looks at Franklin's knife and cuts himself with it. He does not use the knife on Franklin but returns it to him and shows the blade he carries, which is a straight- edge razor. Yet, he does not use it and puts it back. No score is played during the encounter with the hitchhiker to build tension; instead, the sound of country music on the radio makes the meeting more uncomfortable for the how its pleasant, upbeat music contrasts with a happily crazed man who feels dangerous. And the tightly confined space of the van with no place to run, with characters who are uncomfortable yet too fascinated by this man's mysterious nature to kick him out, places the viewer in the same position. By the time this man does strike, the attention is on him burning a photo he took of them with his camera, creating a sense of absence for him to assault them at the moment since this man does one crazy thing at a time, making the sudden attack effective. But for me, the scariest moment in the sequence is how he smears the blood on his hand on the van to mark them after getting kicked out. The teenagers have driven away from him, but the blood-stained markings on the van keep a sense of unease with the feeling that this will not be the last we see of him. 

The film's most traumatic scene does not involve any killing; it is when Sally is dragged to join the family of killers for dinner. Throughout the scene, the viewer feels as trapped as Sally is. The scene uses various shots, including titled angles, overhead shots, close-ups, and long shots, creating a disjointed feel matching the insane performances of the actors. The sadistic family yelling and arguing and the screams from Sally barely have a moment of silence, as the close-ups of the characters' threats or suffering feel excreting close, increasing the anxiety present. Like the hitchhiker's in the introduction, the suspense and terror come from the unpredictability of the actions. We see the family constantly abuse, harass, and poke Sally like they would treat an animal from the slaughterhouse, increasing the tension and repulsion. Still, these characters reveal something stranger about themselves. Apparently, this family has a grandpa who was mistaken for a random corpse in an earlier scene. It would be creepy enough for the family to bring a corpse to the dinner table but expected since the house and dining room are decorated with dead bodies and even have an old dead corpse in one of the rooms. But it turns out the grandpa is not dead despite his corpse-like appearance, but is barely alive to speak and move, which has brought him back to infancy. He does not even have the strength to eat tender meat; he has to suckle on the blood from Sally's freshly cut finger like a baby breastfeeding from their mother's milk. Leatherface also changes his wardrobe and face masks in the scene more than once. Before the scene, Leatherface wears a male facemask and a meat apron. In the dinner scene, he wears an old lady's face while dressed in feminine clothing when preparing the meal, and at the dinner table, he wears a younger lady's face with terrible make-up and a traditional southern dinner jacket. In concept, this scene should be funny for how bizarre these characters are, and Tobe Hooper intended to give the film some dark comedy, which he would exploit in the sequel. However, the unpredictability of the family's actions, the dirty and gritty atmosphere, camera work, strong acting, and slow pacing make the scene one of the scariest scenes ever shown on film. 

A secret ingredient to the feeling of pain, suffering, and discomfort in the film was that the actors were suffering. Given the film's low-budget production, despite Hooper's best efforts to keep his actors safe and healthy, many things went wrong during the shooting. Some of the blood shown on Marilyn Burns was from actual injuries she had during the production; this was due to her accidentally cutting herself on the branches when running. Even after using a stunt double to jump out the window, Burns injured herself when shooting the insert shot of falling on the ground. The dirty cloth placed in her mouth to gag her in the dinner scene was an actual dirty cloth found on the floor. When watching the film, the brutal heat and humidity of the summer are felt, and in reality, that becomes a significant problem in filming. Hooper used real bones from dead animals he received from a veterinary to decorate Leatherface's house. Unfortunately, since there was no air conditioning, and the windows had to be closed and blocked to create the illusion of nighttime, the heat combined with the studio lights would rise to over one hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit, making the bones and food smell so bad that it caused the actors to vomit continuously. The heat and sickness from the smell were so foul that Ed Neal thought making the film was much worse than his service in Vietnam. And this is only a few of the actual horrors when making the film. No film should ever be worth getting hurt over, but the fact that the cast and crew fought through it for a movie that they were expecting not to be the classic it became, while insane, is something to commend and a feeling that does come through in the final film. 

Though modern audiences may find the film tamed and even silly, the film nonetheless was not only one of the most disturbing pieces of film for its time, but still holds up as a frightening movie. If a person goes into the film expecting buckets of gore, the person is better off watching the remake. But in terms of realism, giving more by showing less, building suspense, and having surprises at every turn, this film exceeds. And overtime filmmakers like Sam Raimi, Brian De Palma, and Quentin Taratino (to name a few) would incorporate ideas and elements from the movie in their work. The film was a pain to make, but in the end, it became one of the most popular horror exploitation films of all time proving a masterpiece can be made with so little, just like the film’s predecessors Night of the Living Dead, and The Last House on the Left.

Signaling Batman and “Calling Dick Tracy”: Noir in Comic Book Movies

When a person thinks of comic book movies, the typical image associated with the genre is that of superheroes fighting against supervillains in urban cities or other worlds either colorfully bright or intensely dark. While superheroes give comic book films their identity, some movies in the genre use styles and character archetypes that are remarkably reminiscent of classic film noirs. Some films are classic crime detective stories like Dick Tracy, while others involve anti-heroes and vigilantes taking the law into their own hands, like Batman. The type of noir found in these comic-book movies is Noir lite. James Naremore defines the style as "high production values, and straightforward comic-book heroic are mingled with over-the-top performances, double-entendre dialogue, dystopian satire, and a good deal of directorial self- consciousness." As over-the-top and otherworldly as these films appear, what sort of relations do they have with the noir style, and how does noir fit well within the comic book film genre? 

Although there is no one answer to the question of how films qualify as noirs, there are distinct features in the category's aesthetics and mise en scène that are more heavily emphasized than usual. In multiple Batman films, Gotham City usually has heavy shadows and low-key lighting to create a city full of danger, corruption, and poverty, making it a character itself. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films give the city a realistic and modern approach as if it were an episode of Law & Order just with a superhero. In terms of live-action Batman films, the ones that come closer to the noir style are Tim Burton’s films, especially the first film Batman. 

Gotham City feasts upon the noir style. In daylight, the city looks cold and gloomy from its faded colors, the shimmer of light, and streets covered in filth. At night, the city is practically consumed by darkness, smog, and shadows, where the light source comes from worn-out neon-lit signs, streetlights, car lights, and cryptically lit buildings lacking any color. The dark slum city makes for a perfect environment for Batman to blend into the shadows and for his rival, the Joker, to stand out among the crowd for his bright and festive appearance (sometimes aided by music sung by Prince). In the earlier scenes of the film, many criminals and corrupt officials wear trench coats and fedora hats when dealing in alleyways or fighting against the police in a smoke-polluted factory. What further gives Gotham City its unique noir flair is its German Expressionism influence. Some of the greatest film noirs were directed by German filmmakers, including Fritz Lang, who brought their expressionistic style to western audiences through crime films. Gotham has similar visual designs to the film Scarlett Street. However, it also has a futuristic gothic look like Metropolis (1927) with multiple factories and unusually designed buildings tightly close together with sharp edges. Tim Burton would play with the expressionist style for Gotham City more in Batman Returns (1992), only to have it look like a nightmare resembling The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), rather than having the classic visual noir edge from the earlier film. 

Despite the hero dressing up as a bat with gadgets, and the villain in clown makeup, most of the film’s environments are similar to the classic noir style. The plot and characters in Dick Tracy meet the standard noir tropes, but the overall look for the film is more unconventional than Burton's noir imagery in Batman. The film takes place in an urban city, has heavy shadows and creatively odd angles establishing an uncomforting environment, and most characters are dressed in classic tough-guy attire. Yet, as familiar as it all appears, the use of bright heavy comic book colors and designs strangely compliments the noir imagery. Sometimes the formation of light reflected within the city, or inside a building would cast shadows that looked like a painting in classic noirs. In Dick Tracy, there are literal distinguished matte paintings in plenty of scenes further highlighting the city as a weirdly unpredictable place of danger and dread. Film noirs notably had unconvincing rear projector effects (even for the time) for people driving in cars, while Dick Tracy goes "cheaper" by having a single-colored background with no sign of civilization. When buildings appear through a window, it would have the city painted in one color, looking like a painting on a wall or a cardboard cutout as opposed to appearing realistic. 

The strangest part of the film's visual design is how the distinctly odd-looking characters phase no one. The gangsters Tracy fights all look like people from an old carnival freak show. Hardly any of them look like the common crooks that would appear in film noirs, for having a giant head with a tiny face, a flat-shaped head, a wrinkly old face resembling Freddy Kreuger's, huge lips and chins, and so on. What is even stranger about the characters’ appearance are the wardrobe colors. The gangsters wear clothing as big and bright as a suit the Joker would wear, while Dick Tracy wears a bright yellow coat and hat when he should be wearing darker clothing when sneaking around. No character acknowledges anyone's appearance unless they have no face, viewing it as the norm. As bizarre as Tracy's world appears and as unconvincing as the effects look, they contribute to a unique style unlike other comic book films and film noirs. Film noirs like Detour looked fake yet had an excessive style resembling a person's haunted memories with a grounded story. As many like to think back to classic black-and-white film noirs, there were a few exceptions shot in color, such as Leave Her to Heaven, for example. Dick Tracy is a combination of the styles for those films just made to look like a comic book with a conventional crime story in an exaggerated world that mostly plays itself as seriously as other film noirs. 

The character of Dick Tracy is the typical detective who goes after the criminal underworld, with corrupted superiors holding him back. Tracy's personality is as hardboiled as that of a character like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, who is rough and tough when facing criminals. But Tracy's actions are more in common with Leonard Diamond in The Big Combo. Both are protagonists with similar goals and a determination to place a powerful crime boss behind bars and each eventually finds interest in his rival's lover despite already having a girlfriend. In both films, each character has the criminals in his clutches a few times (before the climax), while at other times, he is at the mercy of his foe. Tracy, at one point, gets framed for murder by a mysterious antagonist leading to his arrest, like the victim and protagonist in the noir thriller Stranger on the Third Floor. Part of what makes Dick Tracy clever and yet unappreciated by audiences, is how the character and storyline are a homage to many noir tropes, just set within a comic book world capturing the film noir style. The movie is familiar in many ways, except hardly anything about it feels fresh and new outside of its visual appeal. 

Tracy is a conventional by the number's noir protagonist, while Batman is subtler. It is not to say people were unaware of Batman's detective skills or that no dark comics starring the caped crusader came out before or during the release of Burton's Batman film. However, before the Burton film, Batman was portrayed as a campy superhero in film and television media. In the 89 movie, Batman looks as intimidating as a noir protagonist if they were to dress up like a bat. Like Tracy and Diamond, Batman is obsessed with cracking down on the Joker's criminal organization, except he is portrayed as more than just a heroic protagonist who wants to clean the streets from crime. 

Batman is the superhero equivalent of characters like Frank Bigelow in D.O.A. and Dave Bannion from The Big Heat, protagonists who are tormented or doomed souls fueled by revenge after losing something or someone important to them at the hands of criminals. Batman witnesses his parents murdered by a criminal as a small boy, traumatizing him to eventually become a vigilante, much as Sergeant Bannion goes rogue after a criminal kills his wife. Bigelow is a doomed protagonist who is slowly dying when seeking vengeance, whereas Batman mentally feels dead on the inside. Without the mask, Batman lives a public life as a wealthy millionaire, throwing parties and doing business with other Gotham officials. While active, he is quiet, hardly socializes, and usually keeps to himself in his giant dark mansion with his butler Alfred. His public figure Bruce Wayne is his mask, Batman is who he really is when no one else is around, or a costume in which to hide while intimidating other criminals. And unlike many versions of Batman that follow (unless it was a lazy loophole), this version of the character has the urge to kill, an ideology that is sacrilegious for die-hard fans, but in this version is not out of place due to how he isolates himself and dresses as a bat to take out his trauma by hurting and traumatizing other criminals. At the start of the film's third act, Batman's revenge is further provoked when he finds out the Joker is the person who killed his parents. And even after killing the Joker, Batman is unsatisfied. He keeps himself distant from social gatherings in Gotham and fights more criminals because his mental state and skills have led him to a position where he is the only one to bring justice to Gotham efficiently. 

Catwoman is one of the few familiar noir elements in the sequel, making her the film's femme fatale. Elizabeth Cowie, in her article Film Noir and Women, believes "women may also fall victim to their involvement with the underworld, in an equivalent to the male criminal 'tough guy' thriller, using their beauty of course, but also and necessarily their intellectual talents for deceit." Before becoming Catwoman, Selina, like many femme fatales, including Susan from The Big Combo and Debbie in The Big Heat, was never directly involved in her boss' schemes. When stepping out of line, these characters would get either slapped in the face or brutally maimed by a hot pot of coffee. Unlike the others, Selina had no idea that her boss had a criminal plot, and after finding out, she gets pushed out the window, surviving the fall only to find herself psychologically damaged. Debby would seek revenge on her ex-boyfriend for the pain and scarring (physically and emotionally) he had brought to her. Catwoman would eventually do the same to her boss for similar reasons after constantly fighting against Batman, who gets in her way. Catwoman uses her beauty to let Batman's guard down before hitting or stabbing him with her claws. Catwoman would use sex appeal when encountering her boss under her Selina Kyle alter-ego, attracting him emotionally while using her wits to make up a story of having amnesia so that she can still walk around in public without the costume. Without using her attractive appearance, Catwoman convinces the Penguin that killing Batman will not be as efficient as framing him as a criminal, a popular noir trope, except it hardly goes anywhere after the police chase him shortly after he is framed. 

A more traditional femme fatale, with some similarities to Catwoman, is the singer at the Club Ritz Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy. Breathless becomes a lover to the notorious Big Boy Caprice. Aware of Big Boy's criminal status and living off his benefits, at the cost of getting stripped as an individual now seen as an item he owns and will hit to put her in her place. Breathless finds attraction towards the only man who is openly willing to put Big Boy away, Dick Tracy, and seduces him every chance she gets for him to abandon the woman he dates. Tracy finds interest in Breathless but cannot leave the woman he loves. Sometimes her flirtation gets Tracy to kiss her, but when using her body does not work, she uses Tracy's obsession with catching Big Boy to lure him closer. Breathless achieves it by leading Tracy to an important meeting and refusing to testify against Big Boy unless Tracy commits to her instead of just protecting her. 

In the end, Breathless is revealed to have an alter-ego as a gangster with no face credited as the Blank. Under her Blank disguise she goes after Big Boy Caprice, coming across as vengeful as Debby and Catwoman are against their abuser. But Breathless also plays an antagonistic role like Vera in Detour and Ellen in Leave Her to Heaven. In Detour, the doomed protagonist, Al, gets blackmailed by Vera over an accidental death he caused, while Tracy gets framed for murder at the hands of Breathless. Both women have different methods of turning against the main character; however, what makes them similar is that they are willing to turn them into the police if neither of them gets what they desire. Breathless is as hungry for Tracy's love, and affection as Ellen was for Richard, with the twisted mindset that if she cannot have him, nobody will, therefore taking great lengths to achieve it. 

It is no surprise that a comic book film differs from the classic noir style, but as evidenced in Tim Burton's Batman films, and Dick Tracy, noir elements can still clash with the genre. Gotham City resembles noir visually, where Batman and The Joker are what give the film its comic book feel. The visuals in Dick Tracy look like an old-fashioned comic book, but it also has a story and characters that are purely forties and fifties noir, just with make-up and costumes as exaggerated as the backgrounds. The doomed vengeful noir protagonist is reflected through Batman, while Dick Tracy is a hardboiled authority figure achieving justice. And the female characters that attract the protagonists are seductive, cunning, and determined to get what they want, like many other great femme fatales. The difference is that one dresses up as a cat, and the other wears a faceless mask which is revealed to be the femme fatale in the twist, making everything come full circle to Breathless' character. Batman and Dick Tracy, while not the first, were the steppingstones for film noir in comic-book movies. Dick Tracy, while mostly forgotten, was praised by critics for having a unique visual style blending comic book and noir appearing fake yet beautifully stylized at the same time. Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez would adapt Sin City similarly to Dick Tracy by having a phony but visually appealing comic book environment in a crime-driven city. The notable differences are that Sin City is harsher in tone and only uses bright colors when needed in a mostly black-and-white film. The popularity and style of Burton's Batman not only revealed a darker film version of the character that intrigued audiences far more, but the nineties animated series, and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, would incorporate film noir elements as well. Even the recent Batman film pays tribute to the noir style, further proving that film noir is still relevant if not shown often in comic book cinema today.

Coonskin and Bamboozled: Clever Racial Satires, or Tasteless Offensive Madness?

Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin and Spike Lee's Bamboozled were heavy-hitting satirical films about racism that received mixed reactions among audiences and critics when they came out. Over time both films have gained a cult following for their political relevance presented through their themes and off-the walls violent, and offensive racist imagery. However, while many articles, video essays, and books highlight films making a statement about racism through comedy, whether it is a parody like Blazing Saddles or a drama with dark humor like Do the Right Thing, Coonskin and Bamboozled do not receive the same attention. Why should they deserve more attention, and what do they share outside of their divided reception?

By looking at the promotional material before seeing the films, Bakshi and Lee make it clear they are not wearing any kid gloves when satirizing racist material. Whether it is the image of a cartoon bunny in Blackface pointing a gun, or people in Blackface, there is no doubt that the material in either film will be hard to watch. A big part of what both films satirize is the racial stereotypes carried through the film and television media. However, each film criticizes Black racial stereotypes through different genres of entertainment. 

As an animator previously releasing insane adult-rated cartoons such as Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic, it is only natural that Bakshi mocks the stereotypes of African Americans in cartoons and comics in his latest animated film. All the Black racist stereotypes appear on the screen without any form of subtly, including the coon, the mammy, the Tom, the pimp, the loudmouth preacher, and the slave. Many of these caricatures have big lips, clothes either too baggy or flashy and speak in an exaggerated dialect of how white audiences think how they talk.

The trio of main characters, while designed as racially insensitive as the supporting characters, are not human; they are animals referred to as Brother Rabbit, Preacher Fox, and Brother Bear. This choice is to poke fun at Disney's controversial film Song of the South. The film has received praise for its seamless blend of live-action and animation, hit song Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah, and having the first Black man receiving an Oscar (even if it was an honorary award). However, what caused the film to become a massive blemish in Disney's filmography is more than its racial stereotypes when translating the African American folk tales of Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er to the screen. Most of the film is told from the point of view of a wealthy white kid staying on a plantation as he hears the stories of Br'er Rabbit from a former slave Uncle Remus. The film disconnects itself from any politics relating to slavery, painting the south as a paradise where the rich white people relaxed in big mansions while the Black people worked and lived in small shacks. The refusal to acknowledge essential politics when the film is set topped with its racial stereotypes created outrage, eventually causing Disney to pull it from circulation for home media releases. Bakshi satirizes the controversial film through a modern setting in Harlem by not only presenting the stereotypes of the past and present but does not tiptoe around the politics involving the suffering of Black people like in the Disney film. Bakshi also does highlight the harmful stereotypes of Italians, gay people, rednecks, and (for one moment) Jews, but the focus of racial satire in animation remains on African Americans. 

Spike Lee does address the racist depictions of Black people in cartoons at the end of Bamboozled and with some bits of computer-generated imagery throughout the movie, but his film focuses on the people physically performing in front of the camera as racial stereotypes of Black folk. The apparent target getting satirized is the concept of Blackface, and while the film would have white people in Blackface, the primary entertainers in Blackface for most of the film are not white. The actors in Blackface are African Americans, which to modern white audiences may sound odd. However, the reality is that some Black actors during old Hollywood, and minstrel shows (most notably Bert Williams) were required to darken up their skin for not appearing dark enough. Lee's primary goal of using Blackface is to comment on the demeaning roles Black entertainers would play throughout history to make white audiences laugh, in Blackface or not, and its relevance in modern media. 

The opening prologue to Coonskin functions similarly to Spike Lee's overall themes of racial satire in his film. With little word of warning or build-up, the first image has two Black caricatures hanging on the street, making jokes and one moving as exaggerated as actors would on minstrel shows. Just as Spike Lee achieves satire in his themes of media's racial stereotyping through African America actors, Coonskin uses Black actors to voice the animated minstrel like-characters. The designs for these two black men are tasteless, but the dialogue and performances are not played out for white audiences to laugh at them. Both characters directly curse at the viewer and joke about the statistics (at the time) of white people committing suicide at the Golden Gate bridge and how only two were Black, and "one of them was pushed." The scene is concise, but it makes itself clear that the film is not designed to comfort any audience watching it. The opening credits sequence follows with live-action footage of Scatman Crothers passionately singing and scatting a song that sounds as upbeat as Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah but lyrically is not cheerful. Crothers sings about the racial slurs Black people have been called, how they have been oppressed, and their stereotypical roles in American white society as servers or entertainers. 

The lyric "Watch me dance," is Crothers' response when labeled under the infamous N-word, foreshadowing the actions the tap dancer Manray would have with audiences referring to him through the racial slur in Bamboozled. Unlike how Coonskin immediately gets to its repulsive imagery, Bamboozled builds to it slowly. Before getting a job working in a modern minstrel show, Manray and his manager Womack were homeless. Their only way to receive cash to eat was by dancing on the street through their tips. The opportunity to make plenty of money by performing for wider audiences seemed like a dream come true. It is not until Manray and Womack realize that their fame would come with a high price after discovering the minstrel concept of the show they are signing up for. The two would not just wear Blackface to appear darker but play dimwitted lazy slaves working on a watermelon patch under the names of Mantan and Sleep n' Eat (named after black entertainers Mantan Moreland and Willie Best). Both characters' situation reflects how many other Black actors were suffering in showbiz. With the entertainment industry primarily run by bigoted white men, Black people did not receive as many opportunities. They were typically only allowed to play buffoons, savages, or servants. If a Black entertainer did not want to play any of those roles, they would have little to no work; it was either get paid to play into the black stereotypes or go broke and hungry. Hence why stars like Bert Willaims, Mantan Moreland, Willie Best, and notably Hattie MacDaniel had to play the roles, they were given. 

Coonskin's way of telling a story is more out of the ordinary. At first, the film takes a familiar approach by having the movie start in live action after the prologue to launching into animation when the prisoner Randy hears a tale from his cellmate Pappy as they wait to make their escape. The transitions from live action to animation mirror the narrative structure from Song of the South, with Pappy serving as the foul-mouthed Uncle Remus, except most of the film is in animation. In contrast, the Disney film is presented in live action with four animated segments. The animated story in Coonskin has a clear beginning, middle, and end. However, it takes plenty of detours in the plot by creating a series of vignettes showing Black people living in America. Some of the vignettes in the film would focus on the poverty of Black people living in the slums or digging through trash cans.

Most of the shorts that take a break from the plot feature a character called Miss America, a tall, beautiful white prostitute dressed in red, white, and blue. Miss America's character represents the long and continuing history of oppression of the abuse African Americans have suffered in the U.S.A., as most of the shorts have her seduce Black men and abuse them. One short involves a Black man in rags singing and dancing to her as she sits down holding a guitar. To get rid of the man for good, Miss America casually calls for help claiming she is being raped, causing a noose to materialize and hang him despite committing no crime. While he hangs, Miss America sits down, playing guitar as gracefully as a hippie folk singer acting as if nothing happened. The only time Miss America ever shows support for African Americans is for selfish gain, which occurs whenever she meets the film's main characters. When Brother Bear becomes a champion boxer, she congratulates him for practically making a career out of beating up Black people to entertain typically white people. 

The idea of having a film depicting racism in an urban setting using scenes that can stand on their own is a method of storytelling Spike Lee would use for Do the Right Thing and even Bamboozled. During the show's televised premiere, the film's plot breaks for a few commercial parodies. One of the commercials satirizes the Tommy Hilfiger clothes brand. The last name Hilfiger now has the use of the N-word attached to Hil, as the white CEO himself, Timmi, surrounded by gangsta rappers and dancing Black women, promotes hood clothing to "keep it real." Timmi shows no restraint in using the N-word when promoting his clothing for his claims of coming from the hood. Timmi is not subtle about addressing poor people to buy his clothes to add his "multibillion-dollar corporation" for making it sound hip "to be broke" and "stay in the ghetto." The concept of the satire speaks for itself of how white-owned clothing brands tend to manipulate young African Americans to spend money on clothing that they claim to represent their culture. 

The commercial sequence is just as on the nose as the film's closing montage of clips showing how African Americans have been depicted throughout the media in various horrific ways. What makes it shockingly effective is the juxtaposition of calm music playing as the sequence shows one offensive image after another, reminding the viewer how this imagery was (and still is) seen by white audiences as inoffensive entertainment. The scene challenges the white viewer after the film's events to see if this imagery is still harmless to them. Even without seeing the film, the montage works just as effectively on its own by testing the viewer without them acknowledging it. 

Most of the film's vignettes are the minstrel show scenes. Outside of the scenes with the actors performing in Blackface, the film is shot on a mini digital camera giving the picture a low-quality look, as if the audience is watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary. The documentary-like look serves as a way for Lee to say these characters may not be real, but what is happening behind the scenes in the entertainment industry towards Black actors is not as far-fetched as you think. Some scenes are deliberately intended to appear in inferior quality, like the commercials. But the scenes with Manray and Womack performing in Blackface in front of a television audience are in high-depth cinematic quality. The difference in quality is to make it feel like the audience is watching an episode from the show, as each scene would have the characters tell jokes, sing, dance, and occasionally go on misadventures. Spike Lee makes it clear throughout the film how distasteful Blackface is through the characters' conversations and reactions to the imagery yet allows these scenes to drag. There are a few reasons why these scenes go on longer than they should. The clearest one is watching the two performers suffer as they smile on the outside yet are tortured inside for selling any dignity they had for money and fame. Another reason is to allow the film to present racial stereotypes to a modern generation to show how shocking and offensive they can be years later yet still be widely accepted by white audiences. The third and most intriguing reason is to study how minstrel shows have lasted so long. Dehumanizing African Americans was the essential draw for white audiences to confirm that what they see is how Black people are, but they were not viewed as cheap gimmicky entertainment. Actual talent was involved when creating and performing the minstrel shows. These were not just actors in Blackface that just stood there and told jokes; these were people that moved like cartoon characters (before the medium was invented) and could actually sing and dance, which Spike Lee captures. At one point, Lee briefly shows the demanding work that goes into the choreography in one scene. The downside is that all that effort is towards an art form at the expense of demeaning an entire race. 

The vignettes in Coonskin are short compared to Bamboozled. The scenes that Ralph Bakshi usually drags out are the death scenes. The antagonistic Black characters die quickly on-screen, whereas the white people running Harlem who oppress the community suffer greatly. One of them is the corrupt, crooked police officer Managan, who not only heavily despises African Americans but is a homophobe as well. A character who extorts money from criminals rather than arresting them, waves his gun around to scare away the Black residents of Harlem and violently abuses anyone Black or gay for the slightest thing they do. Rather than Brother Rabbit just drugging him and killing him while intoxicated, a stereotypical gay man takes advantage of him. Then Brother Rabbit has Managan painted in Blackface, throws him in a dress, and tossed outside the back of the club, where the police violently shoot him down. What is an extreme and abnormal way for a character to go is still an appropriate fitting demise in the film's animated realm. He dies resembling the people he hates in their unflattering depiction in entertainment and suffers the cruelest form of police brutality as countless loads of ammunition are unloaded on him, even after his dead body collapses. 

Police authority towards African Americans is criticized a few times in Bamboozled, at the very beginning when evicting homeless Black people staying in an abandoned apartment for the sake of it or arresting the only non-Black member after killing a gang of violent underground rappers called the Mau Mau's. However, the antagonistic authority figure is not a police officer but one of the heads of the TV studio, Thomas Dunwitty. Though Dunwitty is not as subtle as one of Spike Lee's famous antagonists, Sal from Do the Right Thing, his character is just as fascinating. Like the Tommy Hilfiger commercial satire, because Dunwitty grew up with African Americans and married a Black woman, he arrogantly thinks he is allowed to judge what is qualified as good entertainment representing people of color. Despite hiring a Black man, Pierre Delacroix, who understands what Black audiences want, Dunwitty rejects his show pitches that give a dignified portrayal of African Americans, believing he is only white-washing Black culture. But when Dunwitty is offered to produce a minstrel show, he excitingly greenlights it, thinking it is satire. In actuality, the show reinforces racial stereotypes rather than saying or implying anything negative about them in a comedic way. Of course, when saying the N-word in front of an uncomfortable Delacroix who calls him out on it but carries on, it is clear he does not care about people's feelings. Not because his racism is from pure hatred, but because he egotistically feels he has the right to speak for African Americans and talk in Black English Vernacular due to his background and his love for Black culture. Unlike Sal, who surrounds his business with pictures of Italians, Dumwitty surrounds himself with African art and photographs of Black celebrities. In Dunwitty's mind, he does not think he is racist, but his ego, actions, and lack of empathy toward African Americans prove otherwise. 

Both films unpack many racial topics in their unique way. Bakshi made an adult version of Song of the South that addresses the politics rather than ignoring it, while Lee gave a behind-the-scenes look at television and minstrel shows from the point of view of the Black people working the medium. For each film's direct approach of criticizing racial stereotypes and systemic racism through its unpleasant imagery made audiences more uncomfortable than laughing. Critics complained how Lee's attempt to make fun of Blackface was not funny, whereas people protested Coonskin before it was released for what it shows than says. But it was not the far from subtle racial imagery alone that made audiences split about these films.

Each film has a low-quality presentation. Coonskin's animation is rough and crude, hardly ever blending seamlessly with live action as Song of the South successfully did. When knowing that a famous filmmaker like Spike Lee, who has made popular, appealing cinematic films like Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, is now directing a movie that looks like an independent film he would make before his fame is underwhelming. The message in each film is present, but their execution is all over the map, ranging from in-your-face to subtle, derailing from the plot to show skits, and violence that appear randomly. When tackling so many different complex issues so quickly and strangely it is easy to get lost and confused by what the films are saying. 

These films are not for everybody for how offensive, cheap, violent, unconventional, and convoluted they are; however, all these reasons are a part of what makes them fascinating. There is a keen sense that the filmmakers made them out of passion for mocking and addressing racism in an uncomfortable way than most studios would. Whether a person is laughing or horrified by the films' mockery of stereotypes and politics, or both, the filmmakers have succeeded with what they are trying to accomplish. Neither film is polished, adding to the grittiness of what is still happening in society despite how obscene and over-the-top they appear. Both films unpack more than the average filmgoer would expect, and it is easy to miss many of their points and see certain bits as pointlessly random. Still, the various scenes and messages lead to more things to appreciate, acknowledge, and analyze upon rewatch value (if one has the stomach to see either one again), leading to a conversation about what the films are saying about racism in America, which is part of the goal that both filmmakers intend.