What is a cult film anyways? : The Student Memorandum - Part Two

Warning: The content of these posts contain sections of a student dissertation; expect high language - low humor and  general confusion. Still, its also a good excuse to talk about films I like...

so hell -- why not?

Auterism is a French term first phrased by the likes of Bazin and Truffaut in the French movie journal Cahiers du Cinema, which established the idea of film being the vision of one author. They developed a canon of auters in Cahiers du Cinema in the 50’s and 60’s, which were almost exclusively directors, such as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. 

These were American and European directors that were seen as being able to stamp a personal style on a film through their use of mise-en-scene, theoretically moving it away from the established Hollywood Studio’s industrialised production line system. However, as the theory has developed, the author can also be the literary author, the writer such as Paul Shrader in film, or Lynda La Plante in Television. The other possible individual that can make or break a production is an actor.

An actor often carries sets of meanings or expectations from other films he has been in, like for example Arnold Shwarznegger carries his action man image from films like Terminator (1984) to Twins (1988). One is a cult movie, one isn’t – this highlights that being involved in a cult movie, doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be involved in several. However, like genre, audiences have expectations, this time applied to the work of certain individuals. For example when we go to see a Scorsese movie we expect to see a hard-bitten stylish movie about the criminal underbelly of an American city. However, he also did the Age of Innocence (1993), a restrained but passionate period melodrama, certainly a departure, but this typecasting often works in the favour of the individual.

I will be looking at directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Scorcese, to see what contributions they have made to cinematic history, what put them above the other directors of the time. I will also look at writer directors such as George Lucas. These people, are less contested as to holding the authorial vision to their films, but arguably are not the true authors as film production is a collective process. Cinematographers, set designers and so on, all contribute to the look of the piece, even though the writer directors devise the worlds, or indeed universes that their stories take place in. 

Finally I will look at the actor as Auter, and the actors who seemed to define the films they were in and rose into the cultural conscience, such as Humphrey Bogart, Michael Caine and Bruce Lee. By looking at and comparing these individuals, and the films they have been involved in, I hope to understand what they have contributed to the cult films they had been in, and in some cases, how they have been elevated into cult figures themselves.

In the third chapter I will be looking at audience theory in regards to the definition of a cult film. Ultimately it is the relationship the text has with its audience that determines its status as a cult film. A cult film, it can be argued, is merely a popular one. I want to explore however how the audience receives the text and more importantly how they interact with the text, which appears to be a hallmark of cult film. I will analyse fan theory with several case studies, including fans that interact through creating their own societies or fan clubs. 

Central organisations, for example fan clubs and conventions are most common amongst cult television programming such as Dr Who. Less rigid examples would include the people who dress up like the characters of the film when going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), for example. 

The representation of cult texts in the media will also be explored, such as fans who go into national journalism or journalists who proclaim every other low budget film released to being a “cult film”. In this chapter I’m also going to question the amount of power, if any, fans have over the texts they are dedicated to… specifically using new technologies like the Internet. I will be referring to specific case studies, such as the phenomenal success of The Blair Witch Project and the extra-ordinary build-up and anticipation to the new Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace. Cult television web pages often provide a forum for fan discussion, often hosted by the subjects’ ‘official’ home pages. BBC online even has it’s own Cult TV home page, which features links to the programmes it sees as cult programming (although only those currently being screened on the BBC!). I will also be looking at Harry Knowles’s “Ain’t it Cool” web-site, where it appears a fan of movies has seemingly managed to bring Hollywood down to it’s knees. To take audience interaction to even more extreme examples, I will also be looking at cults derived from cult texts. Cases such as moves from Science fiction writing to religion, as with Scientology and the distressing case of the Heavens Gate tragedy.

By going through these theories, and applying them to specific cases and texts that are acknowledged as being cult texts, I hope to get a clearer a picture of what Cult fiction truly is.

In retrospect:

Admittedly, now we are in the realm of looking at a LOT of movies, but then that was part of the appeal on me doing this particular essay. There are a lot of films that I don't cover, in fact to try and have a definitive exhaustive list  of case studies may have been this essay's undoing. However, gentle reader, remember we are still in the realm of studentship (circa the turn of the the 21st century) so bear this in mind as the series progresses.

There are a lot of sites out there that have tried to the same thing though (which is encouraging) so for further reading (or another point of view) check out sites like  Cult Movie Research.com, i just found it and its interesting to see another take on the subject!