Monthly Archives: September 2008

Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark

Uri Margolin claims, “Characters are abstract in the sense that they do not exist in real space and time, an are more like concepts in this regard.  Consequently, they are not open to direct perception by us, and can be known only through the textual descriptions or inferences based on those descriptions” (68).  This fundamental assumption about the nature of character simply does not translate to the subject of film, where there is an ACTUAL PERSON representing the character, giving him or her a physical reality—and, in some cases, contributing extra-textual elements to the narrative’s character development.

Leslie (http://sites.middlebury.edu/stonebrakernarrative) aptly points to the way in which actors can have a sort of trademark character type (often developed by one “hit” character, as with Matthew Perry as Chandler on Friends) in her discussion of Margolin’s assertion that characters must have an identity that is singularly distinct from other coexisting individuals.  Surely that is one way an actor contributes to their role, but equally significant in our culture of tabloid gossip is the actor’s “real” life or celebrity personality.  This can be good or bad, perhaps most frequently detrimental to a film’s efforts to define a character, but not always. 

In Iron Man, the character of Tony Stark has some significant biographical similarities to the star, Robert Downey, Jr., which Jon Favreau uses to expedite the exposition and add a darker side to the character’s back-story.  After Stark’s military escort in the middle east comes under attack, we flash back to an award ceremony in Las Vegas and get a glimpse of Tony’s party-boy lifestyle—he gambles instead of accepting his award, has a one-night stand with an attractive young reporter, turns his jet into a dance club, etc.  All of these things are relatively harmless (definitely PG-13), but the audience brings to the film their knowledge of Downey’s personal tabloid past—drugs, arrests, attempts at rehab—which adds a darker edge to the picture of pre-attack Tony.  This type of person was probably doing more than just drinking, but the film doesn’t need to show it for us to get the idea.  Downey’s public personal history, namely how he seems to have kicked the drugs and now capitalizes on his talents as an actor (long referred to as one of the best of his generation by various critics), makes Tony’s decision to live a more meaningful life as Iron Man all the more poignant. 

Story and Plot in Simple Men

I found it fascinating that the plot of Simple Men omitted most of the interesting story events that framed its dramatic conflict–the father escaping from prison, Bill’s big romance, the execution of Bill’s robbery, Dennis dropping out of/leaving school, etc.  Instead we get a couple of guys wandering around talking about these big events while undergoing the comparatively uninteresting search for their father.  That’s not to say there is necessarily a lack of plot events, but they are decidedly, forcefully low-key.  By omitting the larger framing events, the film seems to be emphasizing its own tagline, “there’s no such thing as adventure and romance, only trouble and desire.”

The Artful Disclosure of Story

          Abbott’s third description of plot notes that it serves the story by highlighting or expanding upon certain events or details, thus departing from the strictly chronological order of the story.  Abbot further describes this as “the artful disclosure of story”.  Literature and film are equally engaged with this notion of plot, but in different ways, as different art forms.  Mittell points to visual and temporal aspects of this difference.  Visually, a novel can vividly describe the appearance of some part of the story world in great detail, perhaps over the course of multiple pages, while film can only present the constructed story world.  A close up of a particularly relevant item, maybe cut with important reaction shots, could highlight the element, but the camera cannot generally provide the same level of insight or emotional texture that a written paragraph may.  On the other hand, a novel could not possibly (without boring the reader to tears) describe the entirety of the story world in as much detail as a film necessarily presents, since a film production must construct a complete physical setting for the action to occupy.

          The difference in visual detail as depicted in film and television as opposed to literature relates to the differences in story-time vs. discourse-time vs. narration-time in the different forms.  Story-time is consistent across media, but film is limited in terms of its discourse-time and fixed in terms of its narration-time.  A split second event may take pages (and minutes of reading) in a novel and include different perspectives and characters’ reactions and such, but there is comparatively little a film can do other than simply show the event.  However carefully chosen the angle, focus, or scope of the shot, the duration of a physical event remains unchanged.  Editing can slow down action by inter-cutting it with other action, jump cutting, or even slowing down the film itself, but an audience can only tolerate so much of that kind of thing before losing interest if it doesn’t convey something beyond the action itself.  The idea of the camera as an ideally placed, invisible observer—consistent with the self-effacing nature of classical Hollywood style—captures these temporal restrictions, but underestimates the impact of film technique in telling the story.  Bakhtin argues that even in the most “realistic” novels, the most apparently objective, the narrator’s language interacts with the story discourse.  The same is true for film.  The telling of a movie tends to be more naturalistic, especially temporally in comparison to literature, but it is quite inaccurate to assume a neutral or objective camera.