Ecocinema, Media, and the Environment: May 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

Cape Town Affair: Right Wing Noir, South African Style

Cape Town Affair: Right Wing Noir, South African Style

In 1967, long-time Fox director, Robert D. Webb went to South Africa (for 20^th Century Fox International) to slavishly remake Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953), this time titled Cape Town Affair. Webb literally transports Pickup on South Street to its new setting, crediting Samuel Fuller and Harold Medford for a script nearly recreated word for word and for characters and interior sets nearly duplicated except for two changes: a change in two characters’ names, from Mo to Sam and from Tiger to Donkey and – most importantly—a move to late 1960s Cape Town, South Africa, that becomes concretized by a portrait of the late Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd on the walls of a police station and an intelligence agency’s office.

The film is a natural to remake in this setting, not as a recontextualization but as a complete transposition not only of dialogue but ideology for several reasons: 20^th Century Fox, Pick Up On South Street’s production company, produced the film for Killarney Studios, their South African subsidiary; the film in its original form reinforces anti-communist values, which, in South Africa, are equated with apartheid policies; and the film was produced and distributed to white-only audiences in South Africa who were growing more and more paranoid about communist-led Black insurrections, especially on South African borders. Unlike with most remakes, Webb and Fox did not recontextualize Pick Up On South Street when it remade it in 1967 because it did not need to change the film to fit its 1960s South African location.

In spite of the few changes to the screenplay, Cape Town Affair fits just as well in an updated setting as Pickupdid in 1953 New York. Such a good fit for a 50s Red scare film becomes possible in Cape Town Affair because of its South African setting and its foregrounding of the founder of the Afrikaner Republic, Hendrik Verwoerd, whose photograph prominently hangs in several of the Cape Town Police and Intelligence offices. For South Africans, Verwoerd’s portrait signifies the anti-Communist values espoused by Fuller’s screenplay, since Verwoerd’s Nationalist-led republic designed and constructed a program of Apartheid that was continuously threatened by communist-led resistance movements from its inception.

Verwoerd’s assassination just prior to the film's release enhances his role as a heroic representative of the Afrikaner republic, a republic that maintained freedom for its white citizens only by oppressing black Africans and the communist party members and organizations that would help them protest against their program of Apartheid. Late 1960s South Africa, then, provides a perfect environment in which to drop a 1950s American anti-communist film. It also may provide ammunition for claims that Samuel Fuller—or at least Twentieth Century Fox Films—promoted a right-wing agenda in Fuller's 1950s films and for 1960s 20^th Century Fox International films shot in South Africa.

Propaganda films like Cape Town Affair worked for their white South African audiences because they supported white independence and control of an African nation. When Skip and Sam talk in the tea house about giving up the microfilm, the power of that Afrikaner nationalist ideology becomes clear. Skip asks Sam, “are you waving the flag, too?” And Sam replies, “Even in our crummy business you gotta draw the line somewhere,” a line Sam draws with Joey to her death and that eventually Skip draws, even if mainly to gain Candy’s respect. The communist espionage ring is thwarted, since they don’t get away with the microfilm and whatever secrets it contains. But ultimately what the film reinforces is Apartheid and the White Afrikaner dominated South Africa it allows.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Mr. Magoo, Aladdin, and Interdependent visions of Nature and Culture

The same thematic and aesthetic philosophy underpinning UPA’s Gerald McBoing Boing guides 1001 Arabian Nights. Gerald McBoing Boing has clear connections to Mr. Magoo, the protagonist of 1001 Arabian Nights. According to Don Markstein’s Toonpedia, for example, when Mr. Magoo was included in Dell Comic Books, he shared most of the production space with Gerald McBoing Boing. Markstein explains that UPA introduced Mr. Magoo in Ragtime Bear, a theatrical release, “when, in 1948, Columbia Pictures decided to fold its in-house animation studio and hire the fledgling outfit instead.” Although Markstein asserts that there was no one creator for the Mr. Magoo character, he attributes the character to Millard Kaufman, the scriptwriter; John Hubley, the director; and Jim Backus, the actor who voiced Magoo until his death in 1989. According to Markstein, “Backus was encouraged to ad-lib in his depiction of the crotchety old coot, and to ham it up to his heart’s content. A great deal of the final product represents his off-the-cuff creativity.”

That off-the-cuff creativity contributed to Magoo’s success as a bumbling virtually blind character, but, according to Barrier, “what made Magoo more pitiable was the way his nearsightedness magnified his personality” (521). As John Hubley explains, “A great deal in the original character, the strength of him, was the fact that he was so damn bull-headed. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see very well; even if he had been able to see, he still would have made dumb mistakes, ‘cause he was such a bull-headed opinionated old guy” (quoted in Barrier 521).

Such a focus on blindness as a personality trait highlights both narrative and aesthetic elements that link Magoo with Gerald McBoing Boing. Wells asserts that Magoo’s character’s “whole agenda is concerned with perceived reality” (Animation and America 66), an agenda produced by the 1950s context in which he and UPA were placed. That same agenda drives Gerald McBoing Boing, a character with another sense distortion that builds his personality. As David Fisher explains in 1953, “Mr. Magoo represents for us the man who would be responsible and serious in a world that seems insane; he is a creation of the 1950s, the age of anxiety; his situation reflects our own” (quoted in Wells Animation and America 66). Note also that both Magoo and Gerald are people, not animals, the most prominent characters in Disney, MGM, and WB cartoons.

Magoo’s character was connected to its modernist context in philosophical and aesthetic ways, as well. As Wells suggests, Magoo’s “shortsightedness and irritability” were more an “inability to see” that required “a philosophical approach to perception, and to the possibilities of syn-aesthetic cinema, and ways of ‘post-styling’ the reality of both the real world and the Disneyesque orthodoxy” (Animation and America67). John Hubley embraced this aesthetic. In an interview, Hubley explained the central premise of his work as “an image that plays dramatically (a visual metaphor) and will develop into a scene” (quoted in Wells Animation and America 67). According to Wells, this image “aspires to the work of modernists like Picasso, Dufy, and Matisse, while also embracing the freedom of jazz idioms” (Animation and America 67).

Although Hubley did not direct 1001 Arabian Nights, his imprint remained embedded on Mr. Magoo’s character and contributed to its view of nature and a technology-driven culture as not only interdependent but indelibly connected. In fact, in 1001 Arabian Nights technology plays a vital role in building not only the stylized aesthetic, but also in driving a narrative in which Magoo’s bumbling character assists his hapless son only because technology intercedes.

1001 Arabian Nights became UPA’s first animated feature because financial support wasn’t available for their original idea, producing Don Quixote with Magoo as Quixote. According to Jules Engel, one UPA’s principle players, “We had Aldous Huxley in to write a script for that. He did about a thirty-page skeleton script, but the bank wouldn’t buy it. They had never heard of Don Quixote, but they had heard of Arabian Nights, so we got money for Arabian Nights (quoted in Maltin 335). Because Pete Burness left the studio, UPA hired Jack Kinney, a Disney veteran, to direct and his brother Dick to write the story. Robert Dranko supervised the production design (Maltin 335). Although critics found fault with the film’s narrative and the relevance of Magoo’s character, most, like Maltin, agree that it “boasted sophisticated design and color” (335). Hal Erickson agrees and notes that “Many of the character designs seen in Arabian Nights were reused on UPA’s weekly 1964 TV series The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo.”

For us, that sophisticated design and color augments a narrative in which the technology of a genie in his bottle, a flying carpet, and a magic flame supersede bumbling and incompetent human and nonhuman nature. Yet technology does not serve as a tool for destruction in 1001 Arabian Nights. Instead, it serves to preserve and protect humans and their natural world and illustrates the interconnected interdependence between culture and the nature of humanity, and a technologically-driven aesthetic demonstrates the interconnectedness between technology and human nature throughout the film.

A modernist aesthetic connects with a modernist worldview in both the Sultan’s and the Wazir’s settings. The red, hot pink, and orange background sets off the midnight blue of the Wazir and his secret passage and chambers when he prepares to meet the Princess. The red-robed Sultan and pink and blue clad princess contrast with this dark Wazir. This modernist aesthetic continues into settings that foreground Aladdin and Jasminde’s infatuation. Ultimately it is supernatural technology that connects Aladdin and Jasminde: a magic lamp, a flying carpet, and a bumbling Mr. Magoo.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

T-Shirt Travels and Environmental Justice

Shantha Bloemen’s T-Shirt Travels explores recycled clothing as another aspect of the clothing industry. Although recycling t-shirts seems like a positive environmental step to take and a safe alternative to expanding landfills, T-Shirt Travels reveals some of the negative economic, social, and environmental consequences of clothing recycling as it documents an African study of the history of a t-shirt as viewed by a volunteer working in a Zambian village. Where did all these clothes come from? According to the film, in the U.S., t-shirts and other clothing go to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and other charities where 95% of them are not unpacked. Instead, they are sold to distributors, who, once free trade opened, ship them to Africa where sellers buy bales at 10-15 cents to the pound and take them to factories. The largest export from the U.S. is used clothing.

This process explains why there are no new clothes in Zambia. In 1991, when the country’s markets were opened to free trade, clothes began arriving in Zambia by the container load, so local clothing factories went out of business. Zambia was colonized by companies that forced locals to work on colonial plantations and mines, driving citizens to famine. These colonizers built economies outside the African continent, so Zambia did not gain any of the financial benefits from the exploitation of their valuable commodities. Every American t-shirt has become a metaphor for Africa’s dilemma: Who will be left to make good on the debt? According to T-Shirt Travels, globalization has exacerbated disparities between rich and poor and encouraged economic and environmental injustices that may destroy a country and its people, the film asserts.

Most would agree that fashion is fun, and “fast fashion,” clothing available at such a low price that consumers may see it as “disposable,” has become the norm, especially for young women. As Luz Claudio explains, fueled by fashion magazines, “disposable couture appears in shopping mall after shopping mall in America and Europe at prices that make purchase tempting and disposal painless.” With clothing production and disposal, however, come environmental costs, “with each step of the clothing life cycle generating potential environmental and occupational hazards” (Claudio). Polyester, a widely used petroleum fiber, requires intensive energy and crude oil amounts during the manufacturing process, in which “emissions including volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride” and wastewater that includes volatile monomers, solvents, and other by-products are emitted.

Cotton production is “one of the most water- and pesticide-dependent crops” (Claudio). During the cotton fabric manufacturing process, “effluent may contain a number of toxics” which flow into stagnant ponds. Not surprisingly, “The EPA, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, considers many textile manufacturing facilities to be hazardous waste generators” (Claudio). The globalization of the clothing industry and the rise in consumption associated with it has also increased the amount of clothing disposed as waste. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, “Americans throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year,” translating to four percent of municipal solid waste in 2007.

Environmental justice seeks to address these dire conditions in the clothing industry. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, educational level, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws. Environmental justice seeks to ensure that minority and low-income communities have access to public information relating to human health and environmental planning, regulations and enforcement.” The Ohio Environmental Council explains this definition further, asserting, “Environmental justice ensures that no population, especially the elderly and children, are forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the negative human health and environmental impacts of pollution or other environmental hazard.”

This broad definition breaks down into three categories of environmental equity issues. As Robert D. Bullard explains in his discussion of “Waste and Racism,” these categories include the following areas: 1. Procedural Inequity, which addresses “the extent that governing rules, regulations, and evaluation criteria are applied uniformly”; 2. Geographical Inequity, which focuses on where factories and waste disposal facilities are placed, suggesting that some areas receive direct benefits, such as jobs and tax revenues, while others, such as waste disposal, are sent elsewhere; and 3. Social Inequity, which highlights how and where noxious facilities are located sometimes mirrors racial and class bias, so that low-income areas become “sacrifice zones.”

These categories serve as the basis for the UN Draft Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, which states

(1) Human rights, an ecologically sound environment, sustainable development and peace are interdependent and indivisible.

(2) All persons have the right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment. The right and other human rights, including civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, are universal, interdependent and indivisible.

(3) All persons shall be free from any form of discrimination in regard to actions and decisions that affect the environment. (Cifuentes and Frumkin 1-2)