Showing posts with label Joan Crawford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joan Crawford. Show all posts
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Friday, July 24, 2009
Genreland
What does a genre look like? Can it be mapped? Like a map of Disneyland with Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland? Noirland. Westernland. Screwball-land.
Then the Main Street of Weaternland would be Monument Valley
John Ford’s Monument Valley represented every state, every habitat. Just as recognizable and enclosed is the space that defines Nicholas Ray’s “western”, Johnny Guitar, with similar craggy rock monuments marking its territory. 
The same red rock that defines the borders of the valley that sets the stage for the outdoor action also lines the walls of Vienna’s saloon.
There is absolutely no real in Johnny Guitar. It succeeds in a taut unreality.
As Baudrillard defines in his essay “Simulacra and Simulations” about Disneyland, etc.: “A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models.”
Johnny Guitar is obsessed with mapping itself, with defining its own borders.
In the above map of the area near Sedona, AZ where Johnny Guitar was filmed, #5 marks Vienna's Saloon, and #3 marks the waterfall that all the characters must past through to get to the bandits' hideout, to travel from one kind of western to another.
Then the Main Street of Weaternland would be Monument Valley
John Ford’s Monument Valley represented every state, every habitat. Just as recognizable and enclosed is the space that defines Nicholas Ray’s “western”, Johnny Guitar, with similar craggy rock monuments marking its territory. 
The same red rock that defines the borders of the valley that sets the stage for the outdoor action also lines the walls of Vienna’s saloon.
There is absolutely no real in Johnny Guitar. It succeeds in a taut unreality.
As Baudrillard defines in his essay “Simulacra and Simulations” about Disneyland, etc.: “A hyperreal henceforth sheltered from the imaginary, and from any distinction between the real and imaginary, leaving room only for the orbital recurrence of models.”
Johnny Guitar is obsessed with mapping itself, with defining its own borders.
In the above map of the area near Sedona, AZ where Johnny Guitar was filmed, #5 marks Vienna's Saloon, and #3 marks the waterfall that all the characters must past through to get to the bandits' hideout, to travel from one kind of western to another.
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