Out West

This is the blog post for the week of January 28. The blog post for last week precedes this one, and is dated thus.

This weekend, as I pondered through a second viewing of Industrial Light and Magic's Rango, I realized just how much this outwardly so-so picture manages to lovingly homage its western roots.

A Western takes place between the end of the Civil War and the 1890's, when the frontier closed. Westerns actually originated in literature well before the War, when the "frontier" was east of the Missouri River. One of the earliest films in the genre (or of any genre for that matter), was The Great Train Robbery of 1903. Train Robberies are a staple of the Western Genre (and one of the only elements Rango doesn't homage or parody). During the 50's and 60's Western TV Shows and Comics exploded, and from Bonanza to Gunsmoke to Jonah Hex they still remain in semi-public conscience. It was a time of bank robbers and wanted posters, cattle drives and posses. Gunslingers faced off at high noon, and unsavory characters walked bow-legged into saloons.

But when you think of a Western (even though few do anymore) you probably think of the genre's little amigo, the Spaghetti Western. Called so because of their Italian studio origin, Spaghetti Westerns were often filmed on location in Spain (Where the cacti were more stereotypical). They were often distillations and deconstructions (breakdowns) of regular Westerns, but managed to outshine their inspirations. Sergio Leone directed the Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), source of some of Wild West cinema's most seminal scenes (like that song that always plays when a gunfight happens), and helped make Clint Eastwood (The Man With No Name) the household name he is today.

Noir

This is the blog for the week of January 21.

So, before we started reading Crime and Punishment, I mistook it for a member of the Film Noir genre. Popularized in the 40's, noir is the typical "crime drama" style, before crime dramas inundated the prime-time TV scene. Noir typically featured your private gumshoe, your street hustler with a heart of gold, and other hard-boiled smooth-talker types. The words "dame" and "doll" are thrown around a lot.

In visual media, Noir is striking based on its light and dark contrasts. Shadows are long and often partially obtrusive to faces (known as chiaroscuro), and light will be used sparingly, often for dramatic effect (horizontal blinds are a staple). Dutch angles and other atmospheric positions are fair game. Authentic noir is shot in black and white of course, given the era.

Cynical, fast-talking, and never far from his cigarette, the protagonist will often be less then wholesome, but never genuinely evil. His outlook on the city he lives in (and it's always a city) is, as a rule, bleak and defeatist, often disillusioned by an event from his past.

Venerated printed examples include The Maltese Falcon and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Those two books were adapted into movies, the latter of which starred Humphrey Bogart, famous for Casablanca, another Noir Film.

You Read a Post About the Second Person...

Before I begin, let me follow up on last week by breifly discussing Huck Finn. Twain writes in a pseudo-present tense, as while it's clear that Huck is speaking about previous events, he uses phrasing like "He says," or "I am." It's supposed to be like listening to someone tell a story, or like one of those "A guy walks into a bar" jokes. I hadn't considered this kind of implement of present tense last week; it gets my approval.

Now, today we discuss an even more narrowly implemented style: second person. To put it concretely, The second person is a story in which you are a participant, and which is told from your perspective by a limited narrator. This technique is almost exclusively relegated to the text based or "Chose your own" media. Interactivity is almost a necessity, as dictating a reader's actions to them is essentially a less efficient form of third person limited.

Brian writes about writing in the present tense

This month I am writing about some of the less commonly utilized narrative mode. This week; my least favorite method: Present Tense. I am trying to remember one book I once read that was written entirely in this tense. Basically, the writer plans his narrative, then writes the characters as though they were currently acting them. One tends to get odd, unnatural feeling sentences like "John plans the surprise party," or '"Hey, stop that!" Jane cries.' This is a rarely used tactic, as it doesn't offer as much flexibility in story telling.

**Editor's Note: An adendum to this post has been written into next weeks post.