Urban stories

Power, Poverty and Conflict

Exam Approach

Power, Poverty and Conflict Common Issues/themes/messages:A culture dominated by a more powerful ideology.

A portrait of a culture in a particular place at crucial time of development.

An inability for sustained romantic alliances due to social conditions and upbringing.

Urban stories

A feeling of social or cultural insignificance.

A descent into violence, drug use, crime, alcoholism or lethargy.

Conflicts arising as a result of social and/or cultural environments.

Societies lacking in identity due to Western Globalisation

Urban stories

Different Environments/Times

‘La Haine’ ‘Projects’ on the outskirts of Paris for ethnic

minority groups, who were ‘assimilated’ into French society, with no opportunity for work or progression as they were promised.

‘City Of God’ The poor and lower working class minorities

living in Rio de Janeiro are treated as an underclass. With limited prospects the young males drift in to a life a crime due to limited prospects in the ‘favelas’.

Urban stories

Urban Environment • The favelas act as a place for the gangs to plan and start a war• Favelas act as a place for the gangs to be ‘safe’ and ‘wanted’ in terms of being with others.• The ‘City of God’ is an urban city, as a lot of crime and corruption such as the wars against the gangs and the regular looting and shooting crimes.• Many look beyond the favela to find a better life e.g. Rocket wants to get away from drugs and crime, Angelica and Benny want to start a farm.• The favela is about gaining control and power.

Power

• The film is about gaining power in the favela and doing well in the business of drugs.

• Lil Ze/Dice is obsessed with power, anyone that faces him either die or end up working for him.

• Violence breeds more violence.

• Lil Ze/Dice is behind the motel heist, he is also shown to be a psychopath.• Goose takes Lil Dice’s money, Lil Dice ends up killing Goose “Oh Goose I’ve got something for you”.

• Lil Dice sees a voodoo shames guy, he gives Lil Dice a new name and a mullet/necklace, he is now Lil Ze. “If you wear this when having sex you will die”.

• Power is the single thing that corrupts society.

• The police have less power than Lil Ze as they are corrupt.

• The drug gang lack little responsibility, their main priority is selling drugs and not getting caught.

• What this film does offer is some perspective into the socialized power of peer groups, but what is thinly explained is why Rocket yearns for something more than fitting into criminal enterprises.

Poverty

• The conditions of the poor are presented as unable to be altered except by an individual getting out of the slums and leaving everyone else there.

• There are few choices, slim chances and narrow and vicious minds present in the film, this contributes to the poverty.

• Not just guns and little resources they have contribute to poverty, but the fact that there is little social behaviour.

• The conditions of life are shown to be disturbing and corrupt.

• Everybody has a need to belong somewhere.

• Poverty is shown in a negative way through the narrative and technical features of the film.

• The film employs three different tones for each decade, the 60s has a gold tint, the 70s there is a blue tint, in order the show the sinister side of the city, as well as to reflect the poor living conditions in the favelas

• The narrative shows the issue of poverty due to where the characters live and how they behave. It shows both the roots and the effects of poverty as the story begins in the 1960s before the events in the 70s and 80s. The earlier events are shot with bright colours with a very open environment which can suggest freedom, whereas 2 decades later, the city descends into poverty which is visualised in much darker tones and colours as the characters become more violent and turn to crime and drugs.

• Due to the amount of poverty, many have resorted to crime to get by in life.

Conflict• Conflict invades every minute of the film.• Characters and random people die everywhere.• The whole film in a way is about one massive war that has begun since the 1970s.• The moment when the children make Lil Ze angry, he shoots two of the ‘runts’ in their feet. (no choice)• The conflict between the police and the gangs.• The conflict between honesty and dishonesty. • The conflict between the values of the women – who want their men to settle down and lead a ‘normal’ life.

Question

What is the importance of mise en scene and / or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the films you have studied?

Highlight the key words so that you are able to use them in your answer to the question. This will make sure that you are sticking to the question asked and not moving off on a descriptive trail

What is the importance of mise-en-scene and / or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the films you have studied?

Highlight the key words so that you are able to use them in your answer to the question. This will make sure that you are sticking to the question asked and not moving off on a descriptive trail

What is the importance of mise en scene and / or sound in creating meaning and generating response in the films you have studied?

Re word the title of the question into a quick sentence of intent to get you focussed on the essay that you will write

Re word the title of the question into a quick sentence of intent to get you focussed on the essay that you will write

Sound and mise-en-scene are used to great affect in many of the films that have been studied. They are often used to complement the narrative generating further emotional response and meaning.

Note down some points that you will raise when answering this question

You should spend about 5 minutes doing this

Note down some points that you will raise when answering this question

You should spend about 5 minutes doing this

• Music (Diegetic/Non-diegetic)• Sound effects (Edited to the cuts)• Dialogue (Key phrases/repeated

messages)• Mise-en-scene contrasts• Mise-en-scene messages

What issues could you include?

• Violence• Realism • Lack of opportunities• Poverty• A descent into drug use• Unable to escape (trapped)• Power & Control (or lack of it) • Westernisation? (Social/Cultural)

‘City of God’

What issues could you include?

• Racism & Exclusion• Realism • Discrimination• (In)Equality• Liberty/Rebellion• Fraternity (Brotherhood)• Class (Political – Assimilation?)• Westernisation (Social/Cultural)

‘La Haine’

Write your answer...

• Go through each point and cross them off as you go• Give an example or two for each point and possibly one

which is the exception to the rule• Try to refer to specific scenes / quotations from the films • Do not tell the stories or describe the films in too much

detail• Explain how your examples prove your points and

answer the question (using words from the question)• Ensure that you are sticking to the correct time limit

Approach to analysis/discussion

Develop your knowledge of Urban Stories through research into the social

environments of each text.

Focus upon the key themes & issues raised within this type of World Cinema.

Give technical aspects that re-enforce the central issues specific detailed attention.

Urban stories

La Haine

Main Themes to look at…

• B&W Cinematography• Underbelly of Paris (Banlieue’s)• Youth Issues• 3 Characters

B&W Cinematography

- Documentary Style - Link to Opening of Film

- Bleached & Stark

- Plain - Nothingness

- No ‘Light’

- Represents the lives of the Youth

- Represents how France want the Banlieue’s to be

To look at these…

• Underbelly of Paris (Banlieue’s)• Youth Issues

We need to look at the context…

Social, historical and political ContextsThe projects or, les banlieues:

- Banlieues are satellite ‘new towns’ (for which read housing estates for the poor) up to twenty miles out of Paris that almost seem designed to keep the poor out of the middle-class centre of the city

- The ‘new town’ in which La Haine was filmed had at the time an official population of 10,000 made up of sixty different nationalities or ethnicities

- These are stereotyped in the media as places of urban deprivation crime and drug use.

The French Empire and Imperialism...

France was a major colonial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and South-East Asia.

- The struggle for independence was particularly bitter in some countries such as Algeria SAID! (which gained independence in 1962) and Vietnam (where the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954).

- Some Colonies, like Martinique, remain and are able to send representatives to the French Assembly. Other former colonies, like Senegal, remain closely linked to France and French culture.

- French Policy towards non – white ethnic groups has always been on of ‘assimilation’ with people being expected to take on French cultural norms and values. Many Algerians, Moroccans Tunisians, in particular, who went to France to work during the 1960s, have to a greater or lesser extent resisted this policy.

- Maintaining the purity of the French language both at home and abroad was given a much higher priority than the British gave to upholding the English usage in their colonies

- Verlan, or ‘backslang’, began around Paris in the 1980s, among second generation ethnic minority young people who saw themselves as positioned between their parents’ culture and French culture.

Racism

Immigration was limited by the French government during the economic crisis of the early 1970s.

- Facsist far-right groups (as in many other European countries during the period) have consistently blamed unemployment on immigrants.

- In the 1980s the National Front began to win some local elections and even parliamentary seats, especially in South and Southwest France.- Those Who administered Vichy France during the Second World War collaborated in sending French Jews to the concentration camps

- Kassovitz father (who himself fled Hungary in 1956) was the son of a concentration camp survivor.

The Police and Racism

There are two main police groups in the film: the neighborhood plain clothes police (apparent good guys!) and the riot police

- Racism (as in the UK) has been seen to be a particular problem in the police force.

- There were over 300 deaths in police custody or from police action from 1980 to 1995 when the film was made.

Each of the film’s characters comes from one of the three groups most visible as outsiders in today’s France.

The three men all share the same environment and experience the same events but bring different perspectives to bear on their common situation.

The Characters…

Hubert

Hubert, a young African, is a small-time hashish dealer whose boxing gym was destroyed in the vandalism of the riots. He seems to be the most rational of the three friends, but now that his life’s work has been taken away from him, he will do anything to escape his neighborhood.

Hubert is more of an observer, calming the other two when passions rise. He seems older and more sensitive to people and events and acts as the peacemaker.

Said

Saïd, an Arab, seems unwilling to acknowledge the problems of his surroundings except by expressing amazement or incomprehension of them.

Said is again, like Vinz, quick to respond, but appears to be less motivated by hate and more by what he sees as self-respect. His aggression is less damaging and at times, more humorous.

Vinz

Vinz is a Jewish youth who finds a gun that was lost by a police officer during the riots. He is the angriest of the three and does not hesitate to offer violence as a means of releasing his bitterness.

Vinz is the character who is central to most of the action and comes across as the stereotypical ‘angry young man’. He rarely stops to think about what he is doing or saying, and ploughs straight in, often inflaming and infuriating the situation, with disastrous consequences.

‘Ma 6-T Cracker’

‘Comme Un Aimant’

Music• The music that is used in the films has been well chosen to have a great impact

on the meaning and response within the films, linking in to the social and historical context as well as informing the audience about the characters

• La Haine plays no non diegetic music within the film at all as it would affect the stark realism of the film. There is often music within the film though but it is presented by people playing music or switching on tapes. An example of this is when a DJ turn his speakers to the crown and mixes a Hip Hop song, KRS One Sound of the Police, with a traditional French song, Je ne Regret Rien, by Edith Piaf. The contrasting music illustrates the conflicting influence on the characters culture and identity. Within Chunking Express, the diegetic but almost dreamlike repetition of California Dreaming by the Mammas and Pappas by Faye illustrates her longing for America as well as the invasion of American ideologies and all round influences onto the East and the people within it.

• The characters often turn away from their own culture to identity another often American one, however, this is illustrative of a post modern situation where people are not identifying with a true and particular identity but the one which is presented to us through the media and popular culture that has sprung out of it, illustrated in Vinz’s poster of American icons, his repetition of the phrase from the film Taxi Driver as well as Faye’s obsession with a song that is representative of hippy ideals that have been taken over a capitalistic and materialistic culture.

Sound effects• Sound effects are continually used to generate meaning and response in the films

that have been studied, these are varied in nature but all point to underlying messages and values as well as the historical and social context in which the films have been found.

• The sound of the clock ticking is one sound effect that is actually added to the realism of La Haine. This is only found within the scene transitions where we see the time of day of the film. This film is set on one day within a Parisian estate demonstrating the lives and activities of those people within it. The ticking ties in with a central metaphor of someone falling from a building and expecting bad things ahead as well as having the connotations of a bomb that is about to go off, which is the feeling of those people who live on the estate. At the beginning of City of God we hear a knife being sharpened which separates the sound of people drinking, dancing and laughing. This is illustrative of the mixture of danger within the celebrative place that Brazil is with its carnivals and tropical weather. Noise of drums and rattling often accompanies

• As you can see sound is used in a number of different ways throughout the films studied in order to provoke a whole range of meanings and responses

Dialogue• The dialogue spoken within the films clearly is very important for the meaning

and response of an audience, without it films would often be rendered meaningless. However, there are times when a phrase of dialogue can help to cast meaning over the entire films and sum up a directors intentions within the film whether it the central messages of the essence of a character.

• “Hatred breeds hatred”, is a line stated by Hubert in La Haine when he is debating with Vinz in a Parisian toilet, he says this as Vinz wants revenge for the shooting of a friend. Hubert illustrates a central point behind the films of a continuing conflict that has been created in Paris and can be done anywhere when two sides are fighting each other. You will not win by fighting hurting 1 of 1000 men, you will only cause the others to want to hurt you. Rockets line of, “we were a long way from the picture postcard image of Rio de Janeiro”, illustrates a point of the film which is to highlight a true representation of a country and its difficulties..

• Dialogue then is very important in creating meaning and response but also in summarising the message and intentions of a film

Mise-en-scene – in contrast• Continuing the above statement of contrasts, this is also illustrated in the mise

en scene to be found within a film.• In La Haine the contrast of the city of Paris and the suburbs or banlieues is quite

clear, not only in the streets and attitudes of the police but also in the living conditions of the habitants. Vinzs house where he shares a bedroom with his sister can be seen in great contrast to the huge flat that Asterix is living in. In terms of time representing the same place there is a clear contrast in the presentation of the sixties and seventies of Rio and the slums. The film City of God, begins with optimism presented in the wide open spaces and the light colours as families are moving in to the favella to begin their lives together. This is then replaced ten years on by grey metallic colours and corrugated iron as the film shows how the area has deteriorated when more people arrived and little left.

• Under greater examination we can see the truth in a lot of these cases when looking at the countries through Google earth. The contrasts are literally a stones throw away

Mise-en-scene and Messages• As well as realism the mise en scene within the films often convey to us with

messages and values subtly weaved in to the film.• A scene in La Haine where the characters are sat in a park seeing the day out and

are approached by journalists illustrates how a lot of Paris and the world view its underclass. The scene is representative of a zoo with high walls where the characters sit around unoccupied and visitors come and look over the fence at them. One of the central characters even refers to this when he states that they are not in a safari park. The bedrooms of Vinz and Hubert also show to us the characters that they are through the posters on the walls. Hubert’s room contains a focus on his African heritage and black role models such as Mohammid Ali; Vinz on the other hand shows his rejection of his parents values, his distaste with laws of the society and his need to gain another identity of his own: Bruce Lee, American wrestlers, Cypress Hill.

• Mise-en-scene then can contain messages and values and portray the country in which it is set along with the individual characters of the film.

Urban stories

Power, Poverty and Conflict