Dear students, please note that if you are blogging for Friday, comment on the previous post on God's Little Acre. We can keep extending and fostering that discussion.
To prepare for watching Sullivan's Travels in class, please read some background on the film here and here. Read up on the director Preston Sturges here.
I am loving this movie so far. It's way funnier and less sentimental than I expected. I especially like how self-aware the film seems to be.
ReplyDeleteI love that the driver (or butler?) calls Sullivan out for thinking he knows what the poor want and need, when really he's just projecting his own ideas onto people he's never even met. I think this is a nice contrast to God's Little Acre-- in GLA, we were confronted with our stereotypes of the poor as rustic, dirty, illogical, and sexually depraved; Sullivan's Travels shows us the opposite, but equally wrongheaded tendency-- to romanticize the poor. Both of these "texts" tell us not to make assumptions about things/people/groups that you don't understand. Sullivan thinks he's doing the poor a great service, but they don't want to go see a movie about poverty, because they're living in it. (I especially like when he asks the hobo what he thinks about the labor problem.)
I agree with Molly. This movie is hilarious. I can't help but laugh at Sullivan's attitude and his frustration with not being about to "find trouble." It seems like the only people who actually want to find trouble are those who've never had to experience it.
ReplyDeleteIt's extremely interesting to me that Sullivan wants to make a movie about the poor or the depressed. My grandmother has always told me that during the Depression, or basically any hardship out nation has had, people have flocked to the theaters as a way to forget. Movies tend to be an escape and Sullivan is stepping out on a limb with this new idea of his. I'm interested to see if the movie gets mad and whether and how people respond.
I completely agree with the comments so far. Also, I think the sense of irony that pervades the movie is really great - Sullivan wants to create a serious movie about hardship, but in the process he ends up IN a comedy about a privileged Hollywood director.
ReplyDeleteI think this movie is definitely critiquing the way the privileged treat the poor. Sullivan, so far, seems completely clueless about how the poor really think and act. Even when he is dressing up as a hobo, he is trying on different coats in the mirror to see which one looks "better." Also, he seems uncommitted to his own decision - he has no qualms about "borrowing" his own car when he needs it and going back to lounge by his fancy pool when it's convenient. I, too, am curious to see if he ever makes this movie about the downtrodden and how it turns out.
Laura, what you said about finding trouble reminds me of what Addie says about what words are for, and who needs them-- people who use words for love and fear and childbirth are the people who don't know what those things are.
ReplyDeleteI, too, am enjoying this film quite a bit. :)
ReplyDeleteI wanted to expand a little on the comment I made in class on Friday. I always think it's really interesting when films critique the rich, as film has historically been a very rich industry. Here, MGM (one of the "big two" of the era, I believe. . .) is making fun of rich people. Basically, they have presented the rich as snobby, foolish, ethnocentric -- they are the antagonists (at this point, at least). This is even illustrated in the chase that takes place early in the film -- Sullivan tries to escape the rich people, who foolishly try to follow him (servants and all). In the end, our "hero" wins out, and conquers the narrow-mindedness of the film producers. The producers are the "bad guys."
So what does it mean when the people who make the media portray themselves as bad guys? What kind of rhetoric (propaganda?) is this? Although this is something I've given a lot of thought to (Titanic, anyone?), I'm still not certain I have a good answer. I feel like it is an attempt of Hollywood to align themselves with the lower class (who have almost always been a huge consumer of mass produced entertainment). In this light, then, this type of film seems very capitalist to me. It is a film that attempts to persuade the "everyman" to continue to put their money into the entertainment industry -- after all, they understand "people like you."
Eh. I probably tried to put too big an idea into a small blog-comment box. :) When I first started reading into theories like that, though, I found them really mind-blowing, so I thought I'd pass along the ideas. So there they are. Cynical for sure -- but interesting, too!
Amanda
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ReplyDeleteI agree that this movie has been really interesting so far! I enjoyed the idea that this woman sees Sullivan going on this adventure of sorts and wants to be a part of it. She, who has been a small movie star and is probably used to a few luxuries, sees this simply as a way to get away for a little while. It's as if they take this as a mini-vacation. They'll simply get away from their rich, extravagant lifestyle for a few days, then after they've had enough pretending will return to make a movie. I'm sure in the rest of the movie they'll discover the poor life isn't as glamorous as they initially believed.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the point brought up Friday about people making a movie about making a movie. This fact gives us a look into what the movie business was more or less like at this time. They realize that most of the movies that have come out around this time are comedies, trying to get people's minds off their situation for a couple hours. I'm sure when they set off to make a movie about the these times they were unsure of how to go about it. This tactic seems like a good one thus far by showing both sides of the story.
Brittany Evans
At the movie's beginning, Sullivan is determined to create a film outside the ordinary, wishing to abandon his shallow comedies and address the realities of everyday life. The impression I got is that Sullivan is a representation of Sturges inner-self, wishing to capture the experiences of the downtrodden during the Depression. Sturges is a very bright man though, and he knows the very direct way Sullivan goes about it would never go over with the audiences of his day who are, as we have articulated, primarily seeking out an escape from their own reality. Sturges accomplishes Sullivan's (and his own) goal in clandestine fashion. We the audience laugh our way through Sullivan's difficulties trying to "know trouble," all the while Sturges is revealing to us that very reality.
ReplyDeleteI love this movie! I has made me want to watch olden day movies all the time. One thing i love is how Sullivan started going on the adventure to know what it was like to be poor, but ended up always going back to las vagas or hollywood. He would end up being hungry and go have a 5 star dinner with his work businessmen. However, ironically, when he was done trying to be poor and handing out money to poor people, he actually became poor because of his assaulting a man. Sullivan actually ended up getting what he desired: to know what it was like to live with barely no rights and no money.
ReplyDeleteI want to explore a bit more the idea of entertainment, particularly comedy, as a means of escapism, which we talked about today in class. The cinema provided an affordable means of escaping reality for a couple of hours. It was innocent pleasure, especially when compared to other means of escape that we read about in God’s Little Acre. I particularly loved the scene in the movie when Sullivan is watching Pluto with his fellow prisoners. This is when he learns the value of comedy. At the end of the film he says, “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have?” Laughter is an emotional release. Pluto running around making a fool of himself serves as a sort of catharsis for Sullivan and the other prisoners. It also brings them together. Dr. Hinrichsen pointed out how shared laughter is a means of creating solidarity. We’ve probably all experienced that feeling in a movie theater when everyone is laughing together. Sharing that experience makes the viewing more enjoyable than watching the movie at home alone. So comedy is not just entertainment. It’s a means of escape, an emotional release, and a unifying experience. I think most people (like Sullivan at the beginning of the moive) tend to downplay the importance of comedy as just purely a means of entertainment and a less significant means of entertainment than more serious forms. So, I like how this movie challenged that assumption.
ReplyDeleteI like the way we get to see so many different genres in this film, like Dr. Hinrichsen explained in class today. Something seemed odd to me as we watched the film, and I think the constant shifting of genre emphasis is what was throwing me off. Now that I understand it, I appreciate the genre differences between episodes... I still think it is a little disconcerting, but that could be part of the point. It has to throw you off balance in order to get your attention.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad everybody liked this movie as much as I did. I think it's interesting how Sullivan's attitude changed during the last part of the movie, when he gets robbed by the homeless man and thrown on a train.
ReplyDeleteIt spoke a lot about how those in Hollywood seem to want to empathize with the suffering, but when it really comes down to it, they want no part of it. If Sullivan had truly wanted to learn what it was like to be a "tramp", he would have embraced this experience. Instead, he was terrified and told people over and over, "I'm a director! I'm not supposed to be here!". When he had his entourage following him, though, he wanted to give off the exact opposite impression. I thought it was a really intriguing commentary about people saying they want to help, but not wanting to put the effort into helping.
On a side note, I thought the "Mister's" foreman was wonderful. He was so hilarious.
This movie was great. I think it can split into two sections: The first two-thirds, up until the section where Sullivan is in the 'chain gang' and they watch the Disney movie in the church, and the last part afterwards.
ReplyDeleteThe first section I am referring to is the part of the movie where the message is clear. The director and producers are trying to make this movie about the hardships and suffering of the poor in America. It is comical how they go about this, obviously making a mockery of the rich and elite. As the movie progresses and Sully is no longer even trying to pretend to be poor, he becomes poor (thanks to temporary amnesia) and actually has to live a hard life until he learns that comedy is the only thing that keeps the less fortunate happy. So it seems that when he's not even trying, he learns the most about society and himself. Of course after he learns this 'lesson' he is rescued from this hard life. I find it ironic that when he is trying to learn about the poor, he can't. And when he isn't trying, he does.
I really enjoyed the last 10 minutes of the movie. I had food poisoning on Monday so I was not there for the bulk of the movie. I liked that in class it was easy to focus and actually pick up what was going on in the film.
ReplyDeleteI understood that idea that when the character in turn says he killed himself to make his movie famus, he had realized at the point something inside of him could not go on and make this film how it needed to be made. I really enjoyed all of the themes throughout the movie too!
-Landry
There was one particular line in this movie that I think represents Sullivan's character as a genuine man who is unable to truly gain any definite understanding of the poor and working class citizens of his era. Before he and the girl get off the train, he says, to paraphrase, "Us ordinary people know nothing of suffering." The mere fact that he feels his position in society is "ordinary" leads me to wonder how hard he was actually working to understand the positions of those in society who were less fortunate than him. It was not until the last few scenes of the movie that I was able to sympathize with his character because I felt like he was treating the act of being a tramp as some kind of novelty. Clearly, his "ordinary" is quite different from that of the majority of America's population at this time. Though he may have felt that he was being genuine in his wanting to experience this side of life, a means of escape back to his life was always readily available. Even in the last few scenes he was able to find a way to escape the realities of a poor man.
ReplyDeleteOne last thing that I found interesting was the racial dynamic that was present in the church scene. We touched a little on the dynamics of power in class, but one thing I think deserves further exploration is the irony in that scene. Along with the daily burdens the poor whites had to face, the poor African-American community faced the added burden of racial discrimination. So, it was interesting to me that Sturges not only explored power dynamics in this scene, but racial dynamics as well. Just as Sullivan's power had been subverted, so too had the white prisoner's power. In the south, where the white man's word was the final word, this particular African-American community held a certain power over the white prisoners. It was a great scene, rich in symbolism that I think was an important inclusion in the movie.