The Classical Hollywood narrative has been the predominant form of cinematic storytelling in American film for around 90 years. This form of storytelling follows a particular structure which conforms to Tzvetan Todorov's theory of the 'equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium' story pattern, or the 'canonic pattern' as referred to by David Bordwell (1985: 157). Classical narrative structure is the most easily accessible and understandable form of storytelling, as according to several critics 'Classical narrative films operate upon the assumption that there is a truth to every story' (Lehman & Luhr, 2008: 40) and the mode's main aim is to move 'steadily towards a growing awareness of absolute truth.' (Bordwell, 1985: 159). As these quotes point out the story (or fabula) has a truth unknown to the audience, a question that needs to be answered. It is the function of the Classical Hollywood narrative's plot (or syuzhet) to deliver this absolute and unknown truth to the audience by the end of the film.
Bordwell outlines a set of characteristics and conventions of the Classical Hollywood narrative structure. These characteristics and conventions range from the analysis of character to the construction of style that appear in the typical Classical Hollywood narrative. Bordwell states that 'the most "specified" character is usually the protagonist, who becomes the principal causal agent, the target of any narrative restriction, and the chief object of audience identification' (Bordwell, 1985: 157). Therefore, it is through the protagonist that the story is able to be told and for the audience to experience the plot. This 'specified character' is usually a white male who, in the Classical Hollywood narrative structure, according to Bordwell, usually becomes involved in two or more plotlines within the syuzhet; one being a heterosexual romance and the other taking the form of a quest, goal or mission that needs to be fulfilled or achieved by the end of the film (Bordwell, 1985: 157). These plotlines usually intertwine or achieve a shared resolution at the climax of the film and the 'mission' based plot often features a deadline in which the protagonist has to resolve the problem by.
In terms of technique, Bordwell argues that although Classical narration is not equally invisible in every type of film or even throughout one film, it remains unselfconscious and covert when the plot adheres to chronological order and omits causally unimportant periods of time (Bordwell, 1985: 160). This unselfconsciousness, with the use of continuity editing to orientate the spectator as an invisible observer within the spatial and temporal axis of the syuzhet, creates the fabula world as 'an internally consistent construct into which the narration seems to step from the outside.' (Bordwell, 1985: 161) The implications of this mean that the spectator of a Classical Hollywood film is never lost within the world of the story and always at an understanding of where and when they are as well as what is happening and why.
A film that strongly conforms to the Classical Hollywood narrative structure and was made during the Classical Hollywood period is King Kong (1933). Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and starring Fay Wray as Ann Darrow, Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham and Bruce Cabot as Jack Driscoll. The film follows the story of a silent film director who sets sail on a boat for a mysterious island, with a ship’s crew and a blonde actress (Darrow) to capture (both on film and in chains) an exotic beast that can be exploited for capital gain. When they reach their destination the crew are met by the black natives of the island who are involved in some kind of tribal dance. The natives try to trade Denham and the crew six of their own women for Darrow, but the party decline and head back to the ship. During the night the natives climb aboard and kidnap Darrow as a sacrifice to Kong. The crew, including the captain of the ship and protagonist Jack Driscoll, set off on a rescue mission to find Darrow who has been taken by Kong. Driscoll eventually rescues Darrow, and the crew use sleeping gas to knock out Kong and transport the giant gorilla back to Manhattan. Once back in New York, Denham sets up a Broadway show to exhibit the beast, but Kong breaks free from his chains when he thinks Darrow is being hurt during the opening of the show. He then rampages through Manhattan before, once again, kidnapping Darrow and climbing the Empire State building, before being gunned down by fighter planes and falling to his death.
There have been many critical readings of King Kong's representations of gender and race. Some critics such as James Snead believe Kong to be a monstrous representation of black men's sexuality, particularly in regards to the ‘white woman’. Where as other critics, such as Thomas Wartenberg, believe the film to criticize Hollywood films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) for employing this stereotypically racist view that black males are sexual monsters who crave white women (Wartenberg, cited in Bernardi, 2001: 158). One thing that is clear within both of the conflicting arguments is that the critics agree that the monstrous gorilla, Kong, is a representation of black men.
Andrew M. Gordon and Hernan Vera state that 'Hollywood movies are one of the main instruments for establishing the apartheid mind-set that leads people of all colors to automatically consider white to be superior. Hollywood spreads the fictions of whiteness around the world.' (2003: 1). Drawing from arguments based around the racist representations in King Kong, it is the aim of this essay to apply these ideas to David Bordwell's critical deconstruction of the Classical Hollywood narrative. In doing so, it will be possible to ascertain what criticisms can be made of the way Classical Hollywood cinema tells its stories, specifically in regards to representations of race.
To understand the implications of the representation of ‘the black man’ in King Kong, it is necessary to understand the roles of the ‘white male character’, particularly of those who demand audience identification. Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll are the white male protagonists of the film, both patriarchs in their own fields, Denham being a fearless movie director and Driscoll being the hardened captain of the ship. Bordwell describes Classical Hollywood narrative's protagonists as the centre of causality and those 'who attempt to achieve a goal' (Bordwell, 1985: 157). In the case of Denham and Driscoll, their respective goals are to capture and exhibit Kong and, when the need arises, to save Anne Darrow from the beast. Using the technique of identification with these characters it then also becomes the spectators wishes to see that Denham and Driscoll achieve these goals.
With character identification in place it is the opposing characters, those who wish to stop the protagonists from achieving their goals, who become demonised. In the case of King Kong, it is the primitive black natives of Kong's island who kidnap Darrow that are the subject of the audience's criticism, as well as Kong himself. This opposition of strong white patriarchs versus primitive black tribesman is the cause of critical concern. As James Snead writes, 'the visual design of the film itself encourages a strict separation and hierarchy of blacks and whites: the black "natives" receive the kind of cinematic marking of "jungle blacks" that we have seen elsewhere, and which films like King Kong and Tarzan, the Ape Man (made the year before) helped to canonize.' (Snead, 1995: 18-19). Wartenberg makes the same observation when he states that the savages are almost identical in the two films (Waternberg, 2001:168) but Snead acknowledges that the repetition of the representation of black people as primitive "jungle blacks" helped to standardize this view as a cinematic stereotype. Coupled with the notion that the black characters oppose the goals of the white protagonists, this could suggest that the construction of Classical Hollywood narrative structure could cause racial anxieties in the film's spectators.
The formation of white vs. black characters is a familiar concept in the Classical Hollywood narrative structure. The idea of binary opposites that cause conflict, such as black vs. white, good vs. evil, man vs. beast, are common concepts due to the primary function of the narrative's structure, which is to be as easy to understand as possible. The idea of ambiguity and subjectivity are foreign concepts to Classical Hollywood narrative and so it is easy to align an audience with culturally associated opposing ideologies. Lola Young believes that 'these meanings are tangled together and locked into a value-laden system of binary oppositions. In this system, black is a potent signifier of evil, of dirt, of that which is alien: whereas white signifies goodness, purity and that which is familiar, the norm.' (Young, 1996: 39) Young suggests that the cinematic representations of black and white, in colour as well as race, have taken on associative meanings that are "locked" into the cultural psyche. These associations, combined with the 'canonization' of the ‘black’ man in film as a primitive jungle dweller, have lead to what James Snead defines as 'Mythication.' (Snead, 1995: 4)
Snead states that 'mythication is the replacement of history with a surrogate ideology or elevation or demotion among a scale of human value. Mythication also implies identification, and requires a pool of spectators ready to accept and identify themselves with the film's tailor-made versions of reality.' (Snead, 1995: 4). This suggests major cultural implications for the perception and stereotyping of particular races, beyond the cinema screen. This idea is supported by Lola Young when she states that 'the fabric of racist ideologies, and the justification for slavery and the brutal economic exploitation of African and other peoples has woven from this multifaceted concoction of fear, ignorance, myth and fable' (Young, 1996: 41). The justification for slavery can be applied to King Kong in both the treatment of the natives of the island, who try and trade their own women, and in Kong himself, who for his kidnapping of Darrow, is 'justifiably' chained up and shipped back to Manhattan to be exploited for wealth.
James Snead attributes ‘mythication’ to a much larger scheme of semiotic value, in which he argues that both the moral justification and the validity of the representation itself, go undetected by the viewer. This he claims is due to the spectator's pleasure being in the recognizing and ranking of the coded images rather than the understanding of the moral and cultural ambiguities they imply (Snead, 1995: 4). This suggests that whilst the structural aim of the Classical Hollywood narrative is to be as easily understood as possible, there is also a subversion of this in King Kong, which allows the connotations and semiotics of certain imagery to remain undetected. The priority of the Classical narrative spectator will be the construction of the story world which centres itself around causality rather than the interpretation of imagery. As stated by Bordwell, 'the priority of causality within an integral fabula world commits Classical narration to unambiguous presentation' (Bordwell, 1985: 162). Therefore the spectator will be sutured into a position of the understanding of objective plotlines and causally motivated actions but the subjective position of reading the semiotics of ideologically driven imagery, such as the representation of Kong as "black rapist" and the natives as "jungle savages", may go unnoticed to the untrained eye.
The implications of spectators of King Kong not interpreting the representations of race as an incorrect manifestation of cultural misunderstanding could have a vast ideological impact. The repetition of imagery throughout different films, as explored earlier, helps to canonize a representation, which then becomes myth. But, it is the undetected consumption of these representations that allow them to be processed as fact in the subconscious psyche of the spectator. Bordwell states that 'the viewer concentrates on constructing the fabula, not on asking why the narration is presenting the fabula in this particular way – a question more typical of art-cinema narration' (1985: 161-162). This confirms that it is the very construction of the Classical Hollywood narrative that allows these representations to go undetected, whereas another mode of storytelling such as art-cinema narration may allow the spectator to subjectively deconstruct the images they are being shown.
The findings of this essay suggests that there are certainly criticisms that can be made of the way Classical Hollywood cinema tells its stories. At the level of the text this essay has outlined that the Classical Hollywood narrative employs a goal-orientated protagonist who, under the requirements of the narrative and causality, must have opposing characters who try to stop the protagonists from achieving their goals. In the case of King Kong it is the black characters, and representations thereof, that are demonised by the narratives need for clearly opposing characters. The Classical Hollywood narrative's aim to be as unambiguous and as easy to understand as possible also means that the narrative employs binary oppositions, which causes the polarization of races. This may cause white to be associated with goodness, heroism and superiority and for black to be associated with evil and inferiority. The repetition of these roles in different films can also canonize and cause the ‘mythication’ of a race, which spectators may regard as a realistic representation. These misrepresentations of race can go undetected due to the spectator of a Classical Hollywood narrative film concentrating on the construction of the story world instead of deconstructing the images and representations that they are being shown.
On a cultural level it could be argued that the mythication of race in the Classical Hollywood narrative is a form of brainwashing which causes the forcible indoctrination of a new set of attitudes and beliefs on the uknowing spectators of the film. The Classical narrative does not allow for subjectivity or ambiguity and therefor only communicates the beliefs and ideologies of the dominant group that creates the films on to a much larger group or culture of people. The ideological impact is vast as Gordon and Vera highlight when they write:
'Most of these narratives deal with the way whites feel, think, and act. But also, in the United States and worldwide, generations who may have never seen Native Americans, blacks, Latinos, or Asians can effortlessly acquire the prejudices of the dominant group through the images presented in film. As these films extol the white self, they diminish the selves of people of color, who also internalize the representations on the screen.' (Gordon & Vera, 2003: 16).
So, through the form of the Classical narrative these ideologies can be communicated across generations and on a universal scale, allowing them to be adopted and for further mythication to be presented and racial misrepresentations to be exacerbated.
It is evident that the representation of black people as "jungle blacks" exists even today in Classical Narrative films as recent as Avatar (2009). The Na'vi, a race of blue jungle dwelling primitives, are all played by black actors and are the opposing force of the white military group who want to take a rare mineral from the Na'vi's planet. However, there is an argument to be made about whether or not the films racial representations are positive or not as the jungle blacks are the heroes of the film and it is the white people who are demonised. It is clear however that the Classical Hollywood narrative will always require the demonisation of a group of people to communicate the 'absolute and unknown truth' of the story.
Bordwell outlines a set of characteristics and conventions of the Classical Hollywood narrative structure. These characteristics and conventions range from the analysis of character to the construction of style that appear in the typical Classical Hollywood narrative. Bordwell states that 'the most "specified" character is usually the protagonist, who becomes the principal causal agent, the target of any narrative restriction, and the chief object of audience identification' (Bordwell, 1985: 157). Therefore, it is through the protagonist that the story is able to be told and for the audience to experience the plot. This 'specified character' is usually a white male who, in the Classical Hollywood narrative structure, according to Bordwell, usually becomes involved in two or more plotlines within the syuzhet; one being a heterosexual romance and the other taking the form of a quest, goal or mission that needs to be fulfilled or achieved by the end of the film (Bordwell, 1985: 157). These plotlines usually intertwine or achieve a shared resolution at the climax of the film and the 'mission' based plot often features a deadline in which the protagonist has to resolve the problem by.
In terms of technique, Bordwell argues that although Classical narration is not equally invisible in every type of film or even throughout one film, it remains unselfconscious and covert when the plot adheres to chronological order and omits causally unimportant periods of time (Bordwell, 1985: 160). This unselfconsciousness, with the use of continuity editing to orientate the spectator as an invisible observer within the spatial and temporal axis of the syuzhet, creates the fabula world as 'an internally consistent construct into which the narration seems to step from the outside.' (Bordwell, 1985: 161) The implications of this mean that the spectator of a Classical Hollywood film is never lost within the world of the story and always at an understanding of where and when they are as well as what is happening and why.
A film that strongly conforms to the Classical Hollywood narrative structure and was made during the Classical Hollywood period is King Kong (1933). Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and starring Fay Wray as Ann Darrow, Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham and Bruce Cabot as Jack Driscoll. The film follows the story of a silent film director who sets sail on a boat for a mysterious island, with a ship’s crew and a blonde actress (Darrow) to capture (both on film and in chains) an exotic beast that can be exploited for capital gain. When they reach their destination the crew are met by the black natives of the island who are involved in some kind of tribal dance. The natives try to trade Denham and the crew six of their own women for Darrow, but the party decline and head back to the ship. During the night the natives climb aboard and kidnap Darrow as a sacrifice to Kong. The crew, including the captain of the ship and protagonist Jack Driscoll, set off on a rescue mission to find Darrow who has been taken by Kong. Driscoll eventually rescues Darrow, and the crew use sleeping gas to knock out Kong and transport the giant gorilla back to Manhattan. Once back in New York, Denham sets up a Broadway show to exhibit the beast, but Kong breaks free from his chains when he thinks Darrow is being hurt during the opening of the show. He then rampages through Manhattan before, once again, kidnapping Darrow and climbing the Empire State building, before being gunned down by fighter planes and falling to his death.
There have been many critical readings of King Kong's representations of gender and race. Some critics such as James Snead believe Kong to be a monstrous representation of black men's sexuality, particularly in regards to the ‘white woman’. Where as other critics, such as Thomas Wartenberg, believe the film to criticize Hollywood films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) for employing this stereotypically racist view that black males are sexual monsters who crave white women (Wartenberg, cited in Bernardi, 2001: 158). One thing that is clear within both of the conflicting arguments is that the critics agree that the monstrous gorilla, Kong, is a representation of black men.
Andrew M. Gordon and Hernan Vera state that 'Hollywood movies are one of the main instruments for establishing the apartheid mind-set that leads people of all colors to automatically consider white to be superior. Hollywood spreads the fictions of whiteness around the world.' (2003: 1). Drawing from arguments based around the racist representations in King Kong, it is the aim of this essay to apply these ideas to David Bordwell's critical deconstruction of the Classical Hollywood narrative. In doing so, it will be possible to ascertain what criticisms can be made of the way Classical Hollywood cinema tells its stories, specifically in regards to representations of race.
To understand the implications of the representation of ‘the black man’ in King Kong, it is necessary to understand the roles of the ‘white male character’, particularly of those who demand audience identification. Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll are the white male protagonists of the film, both patriarchs in their own fields, Denham being a fearless movie director and Driscoll being the hardened captain of the ship. Bordwell describes Classical Hollywood narrative's protagonists as the centre of causality and those 'who attempt to achieve a goal' (Bordwell, 1985: 157). In the case of Denham and Driscoll, their respective goals are to capture and exhibit Kong and, when the need arises, to save Anne Darrow from the beast. Using the technique of identification with these characters it then also becomes the spectators wishes to see that Denham and Driscoll achieve these goals.
With character identification in place it is the opposing characters, those who wish to stop the protagonists from achieving their goals, who become demonised. In the case of King Kong, it is the primitive black natives of Kong's island who kidnap Darrow that are the subject of the audience's criticism, as well as Kong himself. This opposition of strong white patriarchs versus primitive black tribesman is the cause of critical concern. As James Snead writes, 'the visual design of the film itself encourages a strict separation and hierarchy of blacks and whites: the black "natives" receive the kind of cinematic marking of "jungle blacks" that we have seen elsewhere, and which films like King Kong and Tarzan, the Ape Man (made the year before) helped to canonize.' (Snead, 1995: 18-19). Wartenberg makes the same observation when he states that the savages are almost identical in the two films (Waternberg, 2001:168) but Snead acknowledges that the repetition of the representation of black people as primitive "jungle blacks" helped to standardize this view as a cinematic stereotype. Coupled with the notion that the black characters oppose the goals of the white protagonists, this could suggest that the construction of Classical Hollywood narrative structure could cause racial anxieties in the film's spectators.
The formation of white vs. black characters is a familiar concept in the Classical Hollywood narrative structure. The idea of binary opposites that cause conflict, such as black vs. white, good vs. evil, man vs. beast, are common concepts due to the primary function of the narrative's structure, which is to be as easy to understand as possible. The idea of ambiguity and subjectivity are foreign concepts to Classical Hollywood narrative and so it is easy to align an audience with culturally associated opposing ideologies. Lola Young believes that 'these meanings are tangled together and locked into a value-laden system of binary oppositions. In this system, black is a potent signifier of evil, of dirt, of that which is alien: whereas white signifies goodness, purity and that which is familiar, the norm.' (Young, 1996: 39) Young suggests that the cinematic representations of black and white, in colour as well as race, have taken on associative meanings that are "locked" into the cultural psyche. These associations, combined with the 'canonization' of the ‘black’ man in film as a primitive jungle dweller, have lead to what James Snead defines as 'Mythication.' (Snead, 1995: 4)
Snead states that 'mythication is the replacement of history with a surrogate ideology or elevation or demotion among a scale of human value. Mythication also implies identification, and requires a pool of spectators ready to accept and identify themselves with the film's tailor-made versions of reality.' (Snead, 1995: 4). This suggests major cultural implications for the perception and stereotyping of particular races, beyond the cinema screen. This idea is supported by Lola Young when she states that 'the fabric of racist ideologies, and the justification for slavery and the brutal economic exploitation of African and other peoples has woven from this multifaceted concoction of fear, ignorance, myth and fable' (Young, 1996: 41). The justification for slavery can be applied to King Kong in both the treatment of the natives of the island, who try and trade their own women, and in Kong himself, who for his kidnapping of Darrow, is 'justifiably' chained up and shipped back to Manhattan to be exploited for wealth.
James Snead attributes ‘mythication’ to a much larger scheme of semiotic value, in which he argues that both the moral justification and the validity of the representation itself, go undetected by the viewer. This he claims is due to the spectator's pleasure being in the recognizing and ranking of the coded images rather than the understanding of the moral and cultural ambiguities they imply (Snead, 1995: 4). This suggests that whilst the structural aim of the Classical Hollywood narrative is to be as easily understood as possible, there is also a subversion of this in King Kong, which allows the connotations and semiotics of certain imagery to remain undetected. The priority of the Classical narrative spectator will be the construction of the story world which centres itself around causality rather than the interpretation of imagery. As stated by Bordwell, 'the priority of causality within an integral fabula world commits Classical narration to unambiguous presentation' (Bordwell, 1985: 162). Therefore the spectator will be sutured into a position of the understanding of objective plotlines and causally motivated actions but the subjective position of reading the semiotics of ideologically driven imagery, such as the representation of Kong as "black rapist" and the natives as "jungle savages", may go unnoticed to the untrained eye.
The implications of spectators of King Kong not interpreting the representations of race as an incorrect manifestation of cultural misunderstanding could have a vast ideological impact. The repetition of imagery throughout different films, as explored earlier, helps to canonize a representation, which then becomes myth. But, it is the undetected consumption of these representations that allow them to be processed as fact in the subconscious psyche of the spectator. Bordwell states that 'the viewer concentrates on constructing the fabula, not on asking why the narration is presenting the fabula in this particular way – a question more typical of art-cinema narration' (1985: 161-162). This confirms that it is the very construction of the Classical Hollywood narrative that allows these representations to go undetected, whereas another mode of storytelling such as art-cinema narration may allow the spectator to subjectively deconstruct the images they are being shown.
The findings of this essay suggests that there are certainly criticisms that can be made of the way Classical Hollywood cinema tells its stories. At the level of the text this essay has outlined that the Classical Hollywood narrative employs a goal-orientated protagonist who, under the requirements of the narrative and causality, must have opposing characters who try to stop the protagonists from achieving their goals. In the case of King Kong it is the black characters, and representations thereof, that are demonised by the narratives need for clearly opposing characters. The Classical Hollywood narrative's aim to be as unambiguous and as easy to understand as possible also means that the narrative employs binary oppositions, which causes the polarization of races. This may cause white to be associated with goodness, heroism and superiority and for black to be associated with evil and inferiority. The repetition of these roles in different films can also canonize and cause the ‘mythication’ of a race, which spectators may regard as a realistic representation. These misrepresentations of race can go undetected due to the spectator of a Classical Hollywood narrative film concentrating on the construction of the story world instead of deconstructing the images and representations that they are being shown.
On a cultural level it could be argued that the mythication of race in the Classical Hollywood narrative is a form of brainwashing which causes the forcible indoctrination of a new set of attitudes and beliefs on the uknowing spectators of the film. The Classical narrative does not allow for subjectivity or ambiguity and therefor only communicates the beliefs and ideologies of the dominant group that creates the films on to a much larger group or culture of people. The ideological impact is vast as Gordon and Vera highlight when they write:
'Most of these narratives deal with the way whites feel, think, and act. But also, in the United States and worldwide, generations who may have never seen Native Americans, blacks, Latinos, or Asians can effortlessly acquire the prejudices of the dominant group through the images presented in film. As these films extol the white self, they diminish the selves of people of color, who also internalize the representations on the screen.' (Gordon & Vera, 2003: 16).
So, through the form of the Classical narrative these ideologies can be communicated across generations and on a universal scale, allowing them to be adopted and for further mythication to be presented and racial misrepresentations to be exacerbated.
It is evident that the representation of black people as "jungle blacks" exists even today in Classical Narrative films as recent as Avatar (2009). The Na'vi, a race of blue jungle dwelling primitives, are all played by black actors and are the opposing force of the white military group who want to take a rare mineral from the Na'vi's planet. However, there is an argument to be made about whether or not the films racial representations are positive or not as the jungle blacks are the heroes of the film and it is the white people who are demonised. It is clear however that the Classical Hollywood narrative will always require the demonisation of a group of people to communicate the 'absolute and unknown truth' of the story.