Readings:
Peter Biskind, Down and Dirty Pictures (excerpt)
Christine Vachon, "Risky Business" from A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood
Justin Wyatt, "Cinematic/Sexual Transgression: An Interview with Todd Haynes"
Question(s):
1. In his interview with Justin Wyatt, Todd Haynes discusses his approach to genre (the "type" of film being made), narrative (plot/story), and character identification (the relationship between the viewer and the characters on screen). Relate one of his comments back to your own experience watching Poison (your response can also include a mention of the clip from Superstar).
2. Both Peter Biskind and Christine Vachon discuss the way that Poison was received by various audiences. After seeing the film, what is your reaction to the controversy it created? Make specific reference to the Vachon article in your response.
21 comments:
1. In an interview with Justin Wyatt, Todd Haynes responded to the narrative with this statement: “I think the style of intercutting of disparate stories and that’s the fun and it’s funny at points. I don’t know what’s pleasurable about Poison, except something very sad, and that is only pleasurable because it’s hopefully truthful to people’s experiences.” I thought the method of intercutting disparate stories was actually very disturbing. It was difficult for me to ‘get into’ scenes when the narratives were being switched up, and were poles apart from another. Therefore, I had a difficult time identifying with a character, because once I finally started forming an identity with the character, the scene would change and I would lose recollection on the previous narrative (in order to focus on the next). Although Haynes says that there is pleasure to be found in Poison because it is truthful to experiences, I cannot say my experience with the film led me to connect to this point. Although it is truthful, I have been trained by classical Hollywood films to think otherwise. I am trained to think that a heterosexual breakup is a travesty and that sadness is found in that.
2. I think that it rightfully caused the controversy it did. Poison came out around the same time as Jim Jarmusch’s film, which was obviously quite different. Haynes took contextual risks with his film, and decided from the start to embrace that. Producer Christine Vachon knew this-that experimentation with aesthetic and narrative-was a market to be tapped into. In the Biskind article it is said that “people walked out in droves during a scene in which a couple of prisoners spit into the mouth of another.” I understand how this scene could cause controversy. I was shocked by it, and I’ve seen films that take the promiscuity a level beyond this. There was something that was so raw about this scene, I felt as uncomfortable watching this scene as I did during the scene involving anal sex. Perhaps this is what Haynes meant when he said Poison had a real kind of quality to it. However controversial I think Haynes' work may be, NEA Chairman Frohnmayer had a good point when he defended the NEA’s film grant to Wildmen, the head of the American A=Family Association. Frohnmayer saw that art like this must be confronted. (Also: if it is not exposed its subject and artists stand to be muted by society that is mulled by standard homogenous Hollywood narratives). The film was a conversation starter, and I find it humorous that most people that wanted to dispute the ‘pornographic scenes’ with Haynes had not even seen the film.
Jacob Feiring
I find Todd Hayne’s explanation about instilling an emotional response in the viewer very interesting. He says that (in reference to Poison) “For some people, it’s an intellectual game: it’s just, “Oh, the documentary and the horror one are funny, and the other one is serious all the way through. In some sense, it’s a very conventional, very mainstream, very Hollywood wish on my part that the film saddens you.”
I never quite thought of the desire to make viewers feel emotion as a Hollywood wish but rather an independent one. It’s funny to me because while watching Poison despite the fact that it is fairly old, I was thinking how interesting this film was, both within the narrative and visually and how it had quite an “independent” feel throughout the film because of its artful and cinematic choices. I suppose the idea of creating an emotional sequences in film is derived from a more dramatic Hollywood perspective, however, dating back to before the independent cinema was recognized as important.
After watching Poison I thought it was quite an interesting film that deserves much of the acclaim it received but at the same time understand why it created so much controversy. From a historical context, placing homosexual sex scenes in a film wasn’t that common and was bound to shock more than a few viewers during a time when homosexuality wasn’t as readily accepted as it is now. In addition, many of the scenes that created controversy also made me feel uncomfortable such as when the prisoners spat into the mouth of the young man. Vachon writes about how Poison was received and includes a review by Variety that says ‘“Homo’ scrutinizes an obsessive relationship between a hardened criminal and a new arrival in a 1940s French prison.’”
This to much me in many ways sums up why Poison is still well known in independent cinema. A film that creates controversy is bound to be examined and watched in theatres and this film obviously caused reviewers to write reviews that piqued audience's interests. Vachon also explains that it created so much controversy because everyone had an opinion on the film whether it was the conservative’s complaints of “explicitness” or the liberals commentary on how it left to much to the imagination. Controversy is always good for art and I not only agree that this film should be well known but I also feel that controversy was justified because of the historical context and the topic that appealed to a broad audience.
1. Todd Haynes describes his style of both Superstar and Poison of having the element of fun and play. In regards to Poison, Haynes states "I think the style is the intercutting of disparate stories and that's fun and it is funny at points." In this sense, I thought that while watching the film, I did have a very enjoyable time. I thought that the use of three stories being worked out at the same time was interesting, and it was fun to try to make connections between one story to the other throughout the entirety of the film. Also along the lines of the style of fun, Haynes' use of Barbie dolls to represent the Carpenter family is a little absurd, and obviously cannot be taken that seriously, his style just plays off as a director having fun and making light of the situation. He states that "I learned that people will identify at the drop of a hat at almost anything." He was basically experimenting with Superstar to see if people could become emotionally attached to Barbie does.
2. It is interesting to see how people respond to homosexuality in this country. This film more than anything brought out uncomfortable feelings for many individuals, especially in a time where AIDS was relatively new to the United States. Haynes is quoted as saying, "A lot of gay people wanted to be accepted and treated like everybody else, but AIDS was making that impossible." At this time, homosexuality became such a taboo in American culture, surprising given that this was the same country in 1970s in which plenty of people experimented with drugs and bisexuality. Roger Ebert's reaction to meeting Todd Haynes sums up everything quite beautifully. When Todd Haynes told him that he was the guy that directed Poison, Roger Ebert literally snatched his hand back from Todd. This was the mindset of millions of Americans at the time of early 1990s.
1. In his interview with Justin Wyatt, Todd Haynes discusses his approach to genre (the "type" of film being made), narrative (plot/story), and character identification (the relationship between the viewer and the characters on screen). Relate one of his comments back to your own experience watching Poison (your response can also include a mention of the clip from Superstar).
In the interview between Justin Wyatt and Todd Haynes, Haynes describes that he is indeed looking for an emotional response from his audience. In how we relate with the characters on the screen, Haynes comments, "I think what makes Poison really work for some people is that it gets under your skin and makes you feel something..." (Haynes, 6). I feel Haynes succeeded in doing just that, at least with me he has. A few examples, would be when he does close-ups on the doctor with the spots on his diseased face. And when it would start to oooze; I had to turn my face away. Another example is the scene when the group of young guys at the prison put the kid in the corner and start to spit on him. It lands on is face and in his mouth. That scene was the most disturbing for me. I felt bad for the characters in these scenes. And in a way I did relate with them, by feeling sad for them. Haynes did a great job by connecting the audience in some way with the characters.
2. Both Peter Biskind and Christine Vachon discuss the way that Poison was received by various audiences. After seeing the film, what is your reaction to the controversy it created? Make specific reference to the Vachon article in your response.
I can't say that I am not surprised at the controversy it created. The film is very in your face and surfaces issues that people sometime don't want to discuss. In the late 80s and early 90s, AIDS was a hue issue and especially among the gay community. For this film to come out during that time; it really gave them a voice. But the scenes with the with the one guy, raping the other and the boys spitting in another boys mouth created controversy with the media because people normally didn't see that. In Christine Vachon's article, she explains that people got out in droves when the spitting scene came up on the screen. I feel they have had to expect that people on the conservative side were going to lash out at them. Just like Reverend Wildmom did by writing congress about the horrible and distasteful (in his eyes) movie that was about to hit America. But like it has been said, I feel the bad press on the film ultimately helped their movie be known to the U.S. - Bryan Pechacek
Haynes mention that the structure of Poison is no different from a Hollywood structure of boy meets girl and then boy loses girl, but he only switches it around and used boy meets boy, but it’s hard for society to accept it because that’s not what we’re used to. I agree because all the problems and issues are similar to what we would see in theatres, except the content makes viewing a little hard because we’re so used to identifying with a heterosexual relationship. The Jail sequence was so serious and intensity in love conflict and betrayal that I’m glad Haynes experiment with multiple sequences within the whole story to give us a little breather.
Poison was controversial because it broke the norm of what a gay film should be at that time which was empathy for the gay community. People feared homosexual due to the scare of aids, and Haynes wanted to create a film that challenged the guilt put on gay people and their experiments. In the Doctor sequence, its very clear what the message is being said. Although it isn’t very controversial, Haynes still makes a point on how society reacts to people with aids. Badgering them and want them to show their faces at the same time not really willing to help.
1.) In the Todd Haynes interview, when asked about the reasons to experiment with questions of identification to characters in film, Haynes responds, “It’s a horrible mirroring of the need to affirm who we are through stories and make ourselves big and huge on the screen” (Wyatt 5). This attitude towards the audience needing to identify with a central character in a film is evident in Poison. When watching this film, just when I was beginning to be able to identify with a character, the narrative switches. This happened countless times, and then that’s when I began to sense that Haynes is more of an experimental film director than he is a narrative director. This attitude is even more evident in Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Hayes experimented with the need to identify with a character in a film by having all of the characters be played by Barbie and Ken dolls. Even then, the audience is still able to have empathy for Karen when she dies.
2.) After reading the articles and watching the film, I am not surprised by the reaction and controversy it created. During this time when the film was made, topics dealing with homosexuality were very taboo. Not only that, but the film didn’t even fit under what was considered gay film at that time. Fortunately a lot of this controversy made more people go out and see it. Especially when Haynes went out on various talk shows to clear some of the air surrounding the film. What I found very interesting was that many of the people that were against the film, and argued with Haynes never even saw that film. “The joke was that neither of these two had actually seen the film, which Todd pointed out, so that made the debates comedic” (Vachon 54).
1. In the interview with Haynes, he says "I think what makes Poison really work for some people is that it gets under your skin and makes you feel something. . .usually something very sad or disturbed." When reading this, i immediately thought of my own reaction. There was something about this film that just made me feel...gross. AND/or uncomfortable. I believe it was the age of the film or the quality that came off especially creepy to me, either of which wouldnt really have been part of Haynes' initial conscious decision making, but nevertheless, if it's disturbed or saddened he wanted the viewer to feel, then he has succeeded with me.
2. I guess the responses to this film seemed appropriate. It seems like there's always some kind of conservative, religious freak activist or preacher like Donald Wildmon who damns the nation for supporting anything considered blasphemous such a homosexuality. I liked that Vachon and Haynes used this sort of negative attention to their advantage. Some critics liked it however. Frankly, I, like many, was a bit put off by this film agreeing with the statement "wanting to be bathed in clorox," but i dunno that i would go as far as to give it or Haynes so much credit for it's disturbia, as one NEA aid called Haynes the "fellinni of felatio." I was a bit surprised when reading Biskind and Vachon's articles, as i have been with the last few films, that the responses to these films are so great. It seems like the 80's and 90's are a period pretty late in the game for audiences to be surprised by sexual or homosexual content what with the kinds of artistry to come out of the 60's and 70's especially.
I thought it was interesting how Haynes talked about the use of genres in terms of using them to in order to capitalize on language and style the viewer would already relate to, as he puts it, "using common knowledge to talk about them to talk about other things." I am pleased, looking back, at the way the film seamlessly traversed between the different genres and styles. It was disarming at first, but as soon as I realized what was going on (three separate stories, three separate styles) I practically ceased to notice the transitions. Haynes used my familiarity with the genre to convey moods and backstories of sorts without any need for exposition...an example would be the scientist in horror...I only need to see a small bit of it and understood basic relationships between him and the other scientists, community, etc...
The interesting thing to me is the part about Donald Wildmon and the AFA. It seems to me that I don't hear about people traipsing before congress with with issues about content in art as often as in the late 80's early 90's. That doesn't mean that these people aren't out there... but it does indicate a change in the way their arguments are viewed by the rest of the people. Films like this paved the way for that change to happen...or else maybe the offended realized the downside of increasing publicity for art like this.
1. In the interview with Wyatt, Todd Haynes discusses how both “Superstar” and “Poison” take the conventions of normal Hollywood genre and deconstructs them, first by poking fun and making the audience laugh, and then later creating a serious emotional response. As someone who has seen all of “Superstar”, I can completely relate to Haynes’s relationship between cinematic emotion and style. I went into the film thinking how ridiculous the dolls were, and by the end I was depressed by the “star story.” In “Poison,” I laughed at the idea of a boy flying out the window in the documentary segment and I laughed at the over-the-top acting of the 1950s horror/science fiction segment. However, at the end of the film, I had an emotional response (whether disgusted or sympathetic) to all three stories.
2. I can definitely see why the film, “Poison,” was so controversial when it premiered in 1991. It was offbeat, which was common with homosexual films, and the images on the screen were new and challenged the standards of a conventional film audience. Actually I can still see controversy in the film, even by today’s standards. In Christine Vachon’s reading, she wondered if a film like “Poison” could really be so startling if it was shown in modern times. In my opinion, this film is still controversial, not so much as a homosexual film, but as a grotesque film. Its still offbeat because it still disturbs the audience. Vachon and Biskind both emphasized that the AIDS crisis and homosexual ignorance were the main reasons for all of Poison’s enemies almost 20 years ago. But “Poison” would still have enemies today due to its disgusting images and gritty feel that still makes people want to “bathe in Clorox.” However, as Christine Vachon wrote in her article, in order for a film to have any power or success, it has to have enemies.
--Anne Snyder
After watching the film, Poison, I came away from it really confused. It seemed that the stories had nothing to do with each other. After going to Wikipedia, I found this to be true.
1. The quote I chose to relate to was this: “I think what makes Poison really work for some people is that it gets under your skin and makes you feel something. . .usually something very sad or disturbed.” After watching the film I found myself thinking that Poison was the most random and weirdest movie I had ever seen. I didn’t also like the fact that the film would suddenly jump from color and one story to black and white and then would suddenly jump back; it just mad me more confused.
2. I think that the film, Poison, brought out some very angry feeling in the mainstream United States. It explored the gay community and at the time many people were not comfortable with that especially with AIDS all over the news.
1. After reading the one of the most interesting things I read was a quote from Haynes. “The film is the result of AIDS and also a result of Genet.” While I don’t know what Genet is I do however know what AIDS is. It really made me wonder reflecting on the movie how it came out of AIDS. I know that AIDS is a huge part of the gay community as also stated by Haynes but I don’t see how it came directly from AIDS.
2. In the Vachon article it mainly talked about in the beginning how every movie that Haynes had made so far had made enemies. I think that the controversy really stirred up everything and really made some people offended or uncomfortable. “Looking back, the biggest gift POISON gave me was enemies. How do you get relevant and noticed in the film industry?” this is a really good point. He did stir up a large controversy but it also got him noticed. It got him on the map as a director. In this case controversy was good. If you look closely there is always something good in something bad.
ANTHONY Traxler RADLOFF
In Todd Haynes' interview with Justin Wyatt, he states that poison is "only pleasurable because it's hopefully truthfull to peoples experiences". I didn't find this to be true at all. I could not relate to any of the characters, or plot elements. I thought the three stories were very disconnected from eachother and very tough to keep my interest for more than a couple of minutes. I was really surprised that a film like this could win at sundance, especially when it seemed like inde films came so far with Sex, lies, and videotape.
I thought It was funny how either people thought Poison was the greatest and most history changing fim ever, or it was horrible and disturbing. I the Vachon article it talks about how Samuel Lipman said that Poison was "on the side of death, and all great art was on the side of life". I agree with Lipman. The movie didn't seem like a movie at all, just some collections of random stories. The only story that seemed to have any structure or plot at all was Horror. The scientest is shown throughout the film transforming from this nice scientest to a horrible murderer. I believe that had it not been for the controversey surrounding Todd Haynes being gay and the Homo story, Poison would not had gotten as much press and praise as it did.
I think that the fact Biskind stated in his article that when Rodger Ebert met Haynes and was told that he directed Poison, Ebert "snatched his hand back" really displays how the film was recieved by the mainstream.
In the interview article i can see and understand the point that Haynes says of the film community not getting or fully embracing a boy boy love story. For me though the film was all about the nontraditional love story, like the love a boy has for his mother, or the love people have for people despite there physical appearance. What made this strange or 'queer' was just the fact that these three story that stylistically and narratively were told in drastically different ways and this caused some mild confusion during the transitions and would make it for the average viewer to get an interest.
2. The second article was really interesting as a study of independent film. Even though Poison was really wasn't fully liked by the critics more people saw it and the film had a very strong staying power at the theater compared to todays films that lose over half its audience a week after the first weekend. And that does mean to an extent that an audience was enjoying this film, and overall the film was really good just because it was such a unique and different way to tell a story.
1. Haynes remarks about emotional response, "I think what makes Poison really work for some people is that it get under your skin and makes you feel something... usually something very sad or disturbed." I had both a sad and disturbed reaction to the film. The most disturbed part of the film for me and I'm sure most people was the spit in the mouth scene. It seems to me like scenes in the film of that nature pull at the audience intentionally to feel something. Yet I also felt sadness through his use of identification in the "Horror" section of Poison. You become attached and sympathetic towards Dr. Graves and it evokes that sadness when the woman he loves and himself die at the end. Haynes also comments on his use of homosexuality in his film, "...there is an attempt to link homosexuality with other forms that society is threatened by...". I felt Haynes succeeds at this attempt with Dr. Graves transformation. He takes the notion of peoples prejudice against homosexuals and flips it inside out to represent in another form, which in the case of the film is a form of leprosy.
2. Vachon refers to the publicity Poison received, commenting that the negative publicity seemed to give the film the best publicity. Which makes sense considering the ruckus the content of the film stirred up. It seems audiences heard about this film, Poison, and heard all these stories about its risky content and wanted to see what it was all about. And that curiosity that moviegoers possess was what made movie lines to see Poison wrap around the corner. Of course after people saw what all the ruckus was about there was a wide variety of reactions, but that was to be expected.
Cory Gorman
After watching the movie, Poison, and even during it, I was so confused as to what was going on with the different stories in the film. I kept trying to figure out if they were related to one another but found out after reading the interview article they in fact weren’t. From the interview this quote, “I think what makes Poison really work for some people is that it gets under your skin and makes you feel something…usually something very sad or disturbed.” Watching the movie did disturb me a little, from both the leprosy and gross scenes from that, to all the weird scenes from the movie Homo, for example when they’re all spitting on the kid at the end.
It seems after this film had stirred up a whole bunch of anger and controversy due to AIDS being a huge deal at this time along with the more mainstreaming of the gay community, Haynes seemed to want all of this to happen. “Enemies can be your best asset.” All the enemies he had made and controversy that was brewed helped to get him a name in the independent film community.
1.) In his interview, Todd Haynes blatantly said that he hated narrative and character identification, but he felt like he had to use them in order to make films. Now, I did not see his films as I was gone last week. However, judging from the readings, this is exactly what he plays around with when making his films. In "Superstar," Haynes uses Barbie dolls instead of actors. He does this just to mix up the idea of character identification. He believes that if he gives the dolls the right traits, an audience will relate to them, no matter how absurd that seems. In his approach to narrative, he seems to do a lot of playing with the formula as well. In the interview he says that he does a great deal of intercutting and does not always have straight narrative all the way through. He basically plays around with these two things to make a film that is all his own. He hates the conventions of classical narrative and character identification, so he doesn't use them how people are used to. It is as simple as that.
2.) Once again, not seeing the film makes it difficult to respond to MY reception of the film. However, I can now focus on solely the articles' responses. In Vachon's article, it states that when the film "Poison" first opened, the lines were halfway around the block at some theaters. Because of how controversial it was in other screenings, people who were offended by the idea of a gay film went to see it. It is strange that films so popular with the underground (i.e. Brokeback Mountain) can be so incredibly controversial with everyone else. I realize that there is some homosexuality in "Poison." However, from what I have read, the entire film does NOT involve homosexuality. Why this has to be labeled as a "gay" film to us perplexes me. "Go Fish" is a gay film. Should one controversial scene shape our perception of an entire film? I don't personally believe in homosexuality. I believe it is wrong. But so is having sex with random people that you don't love. So is killing people. So is lying. And all of these seem to be okay themes for films that everyone agrees with. What is the difference? Why is one thing so much more accepted in film than another?
In his interview with Justin Wyatt, Todd Haynes comments on how his film Poison works for some because it is "able to get under peoples skin and make them feel something, usually something sad and disturbing" and for others it is more of an "intellectual game". I feel his first observation of his film was dead on. The entire time I was watching Poison, I had this sad, sick feeling. I felt as if these three characters lived as if they had nothing to lose, but in the end two of them, the doctor and the prisoner, lost what really mattered to them.
I can understand how in the early nineties, this film created such an uproar, particularly with the religious right. I can also understand the supportive non-support the film received from places such as MOMA. Vachon tells about winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance but still only have a distribution deal that would open them up to six screens. All of this is regrettably understandable given the time in which the film was released.
Poison seems to follow the horror and documentary genres of films. Haynes, however, says that he did not make these parts to be neither horror nor documentary, but rather to simply reference them. I thought that the Hero story related a lot to documentary but was atypical. For example, when the mother is explaining how Richie found her with Jose the gardener, the scene has two different shots put together into one, which is very atypical of a normal documentary. The ‘Horror’ film I thought was very similar to old horror films and I thought that seemed like it followed the basic horror film plots rather than just referencing them. As far as character relation goes, Haynes states that people can feel and relate to anything and Superstar was sort of an experiment to see if people would relate to it just as much as they would to human actors. I didn’t see much of the film, but I think that it’s true that people can relate to anything, and that Barbies can be just as touching when moving and talking and feeling as humans.
The articles talk about how much controversy Poison caused, specifically the scene in ‘Homo’ when the two male inmates have anal sex. I personally found this scene to be very disturbing, not because it was between two men, but rather the forcefulness it involve and how aggressive and unloving it looked. I think that sex should be performed only when people are in love, and not just for physical pleasure, which is how I viewed that scene. I don’t feel that the film deserved the controversy it received. The reason why the film became so controversial was because it had received a grant from the NEA and people believe that those grants should be put towards positive and generally acceptable films. Personally, I can relate to a quote from the Vachon article where someone from Conrgress that said the film was “more boredom than Sodom.”
Todd Haynes discusses his approach to genre, narrative, and character identification. The genre (type) of film that was made was a film that had three stories being told at one time all of which had a different style and plot. Haynes wanted to catch your attention by having multiple stories that would disturb you. Haynes mentions that he wanted to get under your skin and wanted you to feel something. He definitely did that with me. I was thinking about the disgusting face of the mad scientist for days after watching the movie. The plot and stories were all very different, therefore the characters were all different. The story that took place in the prison made you feel sad for the characters. You wanted everything to work out for the main character in the story. But after every section of the story it just got worse for him. I felt like I knew his character even though my life is so much different than his. In the story with the young boy that killed his father, I was very confused because I did not know where the story was going. But I connected with his character as well, because he was different and was picked on. When we grow we all go through a time when we do not fit in and get picked on. This film made me feel disgusted, sad, and connected all in one hour.
In Todd Haynes movie “Poisen” there were big reactions to the controversy that was created by this film. After I watched the film I was very uncomfortable about the Prison story. Just because of the explicit scenes in this story. I felt bad for watching the intimacy between the two main characters. The acting was so heartfelt that I felt that it was real. This caused a lot of controversy when the film was first released because of the AIDS epidemic. Many conservatives believed that homosexuality should not be put in films. But Hayes did what he wanted to accomplish with this film. He wanted to disturb his audience, pave the way for more gay films and filmmakers, and to make a statement.
It says that ross posted the last entry but it is: Antonina Centinario
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