Tom & Suri Cruise (Click to ENLARGE)

Tom Cruise on Campus (Click to ENLARGE)

Home Listening Due 26 April 2009

Home Listening
Due SUNDAY 26 April 2009

View the interview with Tom Cruise (go here) and answer the following questions:

1. How many emails did the station receive after Tom Cruise's previous interview on the show?
2. In one word, when Cruise says he looks back, how does he describe that interview?
3. In one word, how does Cruise describe the subject matter discussed on the previous interview?
4. In one word, how does Cruise describe how that interview came across as (seemed like)?
5. In one word, how does Cruise he could have handled the previous interview on the show?
6. Cruise says that when he made that interview he was at the end of what kind of tour?
7. What did Cruise say he learned because of that last interview?
8. What milestone does the interviewer mention in Cruise's life?
9. What does Cruise say he is here for?
10. What does the interviewer say Cruise doesn't want to talk about anymore?
11. How many years has Cruise been in Scientology?
12. What does Cruise say he never did before?
13. What does the interviewer say is one of the challenges of making a movie like Valkyrie?
14. What game did Cruise play as a child in his backyard?
15. How many years since Cruise's last interview on the show?

---

TomKat (click to ENLARGE)

Pair Work for Week of 29 April 2008 (Fixes some typos)

Pair Work for the week of 29 April 2008

---

FOR THE WEEK of 29 April 2008, prepare pair work based on the TomKat newscast that has been assigned for home listening. Your conversation should include as much of the vocabulary in the broadcast (below) as possible. Note: the discussion need not focus on Cruise and Holmes but celebrity gossip in general. Here are some model phrases and sentences you might use based on that vocabulary:

---

ridiculous
    "It's ridiculous that people gossip so much about celebrities."

predicting
    "We spend too much time predicting which couples will break up, who will get divorced, or who will be the next celebrity in rehab." (*rehab=short for "rehabilitation," also the title of a recent hit by Amy Winehouse.)

celebrated
    "The media celebrated their wedding."

tabloid magazine
    "You can't believe what you read in the tabloids."

obsession
    "We have an obsession with famous people, which can be unhealthy."

syndicated radio
    "Syndicated radio programs spend too much time on celebrity gossip."
    "'Peanuts' is a syndicated cartoon published in our English language newspaper in Taiwan."
    "It's a syndicated program that can be seen at 5 p.m. in Taiwan and at 9 a.m. in Japan."
    "He's a syndicated columnist and his columns appear in two hundred newspapers around the world."

cult
    "Some call Tom Cruise's religion a cult. Here in Taiwan we have our cults too, such as. . . . "

guys
    "I disagree with you guys" (once used only for men, "guys" is now used for women too).

cover story
    "I bought the new issue of Elle with a cover story on Paris Hilton!"

pronouncing
    "The media is always pronouncing the end of a celebrity's marriage."

sinister
    "The press always sees something sinister in everything a movie star does."

puts us off
    "I think happiness in famous people puts us off. We enjoy it when powerful people fail."

Scientology
    "Can you tell me something about Scientology? What kind of religion is it?"

miserable
    "When famous people feel miserable it makes some people happy."

like a robot
    "She's doped up all the time and talks like a robot." ("doped up"=on drugs.)

plays into the fears we have
    "Celebrity gossip plays into the fears we have about failure."

they were done
    "I thought they were done as a couple when she caught him cheating but they got back together again."

doomed to fail
    "Some couples are so mismatched they're doomed to fail."

over the top
    (=exaggerated) "His behavior was so over the top, his fans always suspected him of being on drugs."

suspicious
    "Fans get suspicious if their idol goes out on a date even once."

mystique
    "Despite her drug problems, Amy Winehouse has a mystique about her."

doom and gloom
    "We love to read juicy gossip in the doom and gloom fanzines."
("Fanzine" is a blend word, like "brunch," made up of "breakfast" and "lunch." "Fanzine" combines "fan" and "magazine" into one word.)

scenarios
    "There are two scenarios for him: either he's arrested for drugs or he dies of an overdose."

secretive
    "Some Hollywood stars are very secretive about their romances."

let many people inside
    "Some celebrities don't let too many people inside their private lives."

live with it
    "He made a public mistake and now he's got to live with it." "There's a lot of bad press about him, but he can live with it." (Note the phrase is used in two different ways: positive and negative.)

deal with it
    "He knows how to deal with the media."

allegations
    "There have been many allegations about his affairs with married women."

bug him
    "He doesn't let the bad publicity bug him."

take it lying down
    "She's not about to take the libel lying down. Her lawyer just filed a libel suit against the magazine."

theory
    "One theory is he married her just for the publicity."

buying the relationship
    "Many of his fans aren't buying the relationship with that actress. They think it's just a show to prove he's a manly lover."

psychological terms
    "In psychological terms, he has a narcissistic personality disorder, so he can never be satisfied with just one woman."

fabulous lives
    "The fabulous lives of the rich and famous fascinate many people."

where it's at
    "People are trying to figure out where he's at."

portrayed
    "She's portrayed in the press as a gold digger."

a little bit negative
    "The press was only a little bit negative about the wedding reception."

shoddy lives
    "People who live dull or shoddy lives worship the rich and famous."

opened up
    "She opened up a little and started discussing her divorce."

anxiety
    "Her anxiety over her weight caused her to take drugs."

speculating
    "His fans are speculating when Michael Jackson will release another album."

casting aspersions
    "The magazine cast aspersions against the actor, saying he was temperamental and caused delays during filming of the movie."

took a toll
    "The drugs and gossip took a toll on her life and she died young."

identify with
    "Fans identify with their idols so much some try to kill themselves if their idol killed himself."

overly self-aware
    "She's not overly self-aware of her behavior."

add something into the mix
    "The new baby added something into the mix of their marriage."

toxic
    "Sometimes constant intimacy can be toxic."

creeping into the relationship
    "There's a sense of boredom creeping into their relationship."

emulate
    "He wanted to emulate his idol and he died young."

too controlling
    "Fans think he's too controlling of her life."

we personalize it
    "Fans tend to personalize each public fact about an idol's life."

ecstatic
    "She should be ecstatic since she just won the Oscar."

something going on
    "There must be something going on between them, since they've been seen together for nearly two weeks."

---

---

Home Listening Quiz, due 29 April 2008

TOMKAT

Click on the slideshow above, view the video, then answer the following questions:

---

    1. What is every tabloid magazine predicting?
    2. How long have they been married?
    3. According to the psychologist, what puts people off about Tom Cruise?
    4. What according to Ken Baker has everyone been saying ever since Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got together?
    5. According to Ken Baker, does Tom Cruise pay attention to this gossip?
    6. What is Tom Cruise's religion?
    7. What according to Ken Baker, what do Tom and Kate have to do in order to live and survive?
    8. What according to Ryan Phillippe damaged his relationship and marriage to Reese Witherspoon?
    9. Why, according to Ken Baker, do celebrity couples change their lives?
    10. Why so much speculation about Katie Holmes' happiness according to the psychologist?
    11. How, according to the psychologist, should Kate Holmes feel because she's married to an amazing movie star?

---

Star Images (Tom Cruise) (with personal underscore)

Tom Cruise Stays Hot in Hollywood
By SANDY COHEN

---

LOS ANGELES - He can hop on couches, denounce psychiatry and pooh-pooh postpartum depression — and his supernova Hollywood heat doesn't cool a whit.
    Tom Cruise has been box-office gold since his first starring role in 1983's "Risky Business." His 23rd starring vehicle, "Mission: Impossible III," opening next week, is a lock to add to that luster.
    Cruise isn't just a major movie star. He's mastered the elusive art of staying hot in Hollywood.
    It's a difficult achievement.
    Stars have to stay in the public eye, experts say, but not to the point of overexposure. They have to choose unexpected roles, but not so unexpected that they alienate fans. They need to reveal parts of their off-screen personality, but not so much (at least in most cases) that they seem freakish or out of touch.
    "It's easy to become an overnight star today," says veteran talent manager Bernie Brillstein. "The toughest thing is keeping stardom."
    Those who should know don't agree about how to do that. Some say positive publicity is key, others say it's all about picking the right flicks. Some say talent matters, others insist it's all about marketing.
    "Talent and role choice are most important," says Peter Bart, editor of Variety, the Hollywood trade paper. "You can have tremendous publicity, but if you make one lousy movie after another, you're not going to get your price."
    And an actor's salary, he says, "is more important than sex."
    Sometimes, though, an actor agreeing to a lesser salary can be an excellent move toward enduring stardom.
    Though Cruise is known for his big-budget action flicks, his role in 1999's "Magnolia" was perfect for showing off his acting chops, says Anne Thompson, deputy film editor for the trade paper The Hollywood Reporter.
    "It's not about the money or the marquee," she says. "It's about stretching and showing what he can do. He's keeping his eye on both things, and all the good, successful actors do that."
    George Clooney is another performer who amplified his star power with a combination of roles in movies large and small, Thompson says.
    "He recognizes that the big payday is less important than creating and doing work that will stand the test of time," she says. "He has to do the big commercial films like `Oceans Eleven,' but he certainly came out ahead with smaller films that were really very risky to make."
    But veering too far from what fans want can backfire, says John Wilson, founder of the Golden Raspberry Awards, which recognize the worst in film each year.
"They have to find that very narrow space where the public knows what to expect but they're not bored that you keep meeting their expectations," he says. "It's hard to stay true to what made you a star and not just wear it out."
    Wanting more than his usual turned Jamie Foxx from a comedian and comic actor into a superstar. Playing Ray Charles in 2004's "Ray" earned him an Oscar and rocketed him to the A-list, notes pop culture professor Todd Boyd of the University of Southern California.
    "A lot of it is luck," Boyd says. "You need to play the right role at the right time."
    Stars also need to "work the media" for staying power, says publicist Michael Sands. Hollywood is fickle, he says, and popularity ups and downs are reflected in salary levels.
    Regular appearances in entertainment magazines are a must, Sands says, and stars fare best when they share parts of their personal lives.
    "The public likes to be involved in the celebrity's life, even if it's just from a glossy vantage point," he says.
    Establishing an emotional connection with fans is critical to lasting popularity, says Henry Schafer, executive vice president of Marketing Evaluations, Inc., which has compiled its Q-scores familiarity ratings of performers, personalities and brand names for more than 40 years.
    Fans will forgive all kinds of transgressions, such as drug addiction or infidelity, so long as stars are willing to admit their foibles, he says.
    "You can be an icon and at the same time be touchy-feely," Schafer says. "Those are the people who stay on the top and those are the ones who are consistently liked."
    For example, even though Cruise may be a "polarizing personality," Schafer says, sharing his thoughts on television and in magazines helps create "an emotional response that people want to feel."
    Industry analyst James Ulmer disagrees. Too many episodes of personal weirdness (or couch-hopping) can take the shine off a star, he says.
    "(Cruise) has some vulnerability because of his compromised behavior on the TV screen," Ulmer says. "That kind of thing wears against his gold-plated image."
    Some experts say overexposure is a sure career-killer.
    "It's possible to be so in the public's face that they just want you to go away," Wilson adds.
    "Great talent used to be the currency," says longtime publicist Michael Levine. "Today it's great PR."
    That's the problem, says Brillstein.
    Today's paparazzi targets "are not stars, they're celebrities," he says. "Stars are people who stay around and who are serious about their work. You stay a star by being a star."
    Cruise's longtime producing partner, Paula Wagner, says the actor's endurance comes from his work ethic and all-consuming passion for the job.
    "He's devoted to his work. He's totally professional and loves what he does," she says. "I'm proud to say he's the top movie star in the world."

---

Film Summary: STARS

Film Curriculum Review

---

"Stars as a Cinematic Phenomenon," by John Ellis: Stars clue us to a narrative. Say "John Wayne" and we pretty much know the film we'll be seeing. Brando in the fifties evoked a definite narrative image: rebellious, moody, inarticulate, with character and plot to match. This of course would have been more true in the studio system (the years when the studio controlled the star more closely).
    Yet who is Brando or Tom Cruise? (The present tense is okay here, because Brando means "Brando": the always-present star in recirculated films.) In fact, as some writers prefer to write of auteurs, "Hawks" or "Hitchcock," instead of Hawks or Hitchcock, stars should always be in quotes like that, because the star is never a real person but always a circulated image of a person.
    That "circulation" has two forms for John Ellis: primary circulation is in the movies. Secondary or subsidiary circulation of that image occurs everywhere else: news outlets, fan magazines (fanzines), etc.
    (Elton John's song, "Benny and the Jets" [from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road] has a nice line of a fan speaking: "You know I read it in a magazine," where both John's vocal and melody stress the fan's enthusiastic or credulous reception of that news.)
    At the same time, the star is ordinary and exraordinary. By this Ellis means the star is both present and absent to the fan.
    Compare with an ordinary person who is desirable: we can never see the girl/boy next door up close, at least not at risk of arrest. For example, we cannot observe the girl/boy's face too closely or in even more intimate acts (walking casually in a slip around her house at midnight; shaving bare-chested in the morning). But we can do this with a star; in fact it's done all the time, in movie theatres (and now in front of computer screens) all over the world.
    At the same time the cinema poses a paradox: the star is both in front of us, yet obviously absent (in the way, for example, that a theatre star is not). Still, the very absence of the star makes that star even more present to our fantasies: we can do whatever we wish with the star. This is more true for "fanatics" (note the origin of the word, in "fan"), who see the same movie again and again, allowing every movement of the star to be controlled by the fan's fantasy.
    Yet a star is a star image, not a person. There is no Tom Cruise; only "Tom Cruise." And that star is "a balancing act" between the subsidary star image and the needs of the movie, which, then, both "completes" the star (as walking/talking person), yet never fully shows who the star is: because the star disappears in a character no less than the character disappears in the star. Whatever we know of Scarlett O'Hara is only what Vivien Leigh shows us on the screen; yet "Vivien Leigh" can only reveal herself within the limits of that character.
    In that sense, the "authorship" of the star is similar to the "authorship" of the film director: it's an invisible authorship, because always limted by the narrative/role. That's why, in movie theory, the word "auteur" was invented. "Auteur" means "author" in French; but when used in film critcisim it has a slightly different meaning, or at least significance: true, it still means "author"; but now it means "invisible" author: an author who is somehow there, whose identity can be found ("deciphered"), but only as traces, as clues: for example, tracking camera movments, mise-en-scene, pace of a scene, overlapping dialogue, slow dissolves, angled shots, emphasis on women rather than men, subject or theme of film, etc.
    In the same way, the star can be traced, but only through the gestures of the character, the dialogue of a script, the exigencies (needs) of a plot, etc. So a star "feeds back into future performances."
    The star is both "ordinary" and "extraordinary" in the sense that the star does things the average person does not or cannot (the star has more money, more powerful relationships, travels all over the world, marries multiple times, etc.) yet listens to the same CD as the average person (this is advertised in publicity or interviews), bobbles babies (Britney Spears), or tours famous sites (Madonna in Israel).
    The star and star image are similar in the sense that they both share what Ellis calls the photo effect. The photo effect is the effect of being both present and absent at the same time, as previously discussed. Brad Pitt is obviously in front of the viewer yet is also not there (now, as I write, he's in Africa).
    The "impossibility" of the movie image (no less than the star image) is based on "this is was," which also relates to other impossible fantasies (impossible in the sense of unable to be realized). The movie image is happening now, but only because it was filmed before.
    The present-absent reality of the image relates to three other absent-present realities, which Ellis mentions.
    One is the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan's "mirror phase," supposedly occurring between six and eighteen months. In this period the child sees itself in a mirror and sees a perfect unity it lacks (the child has limited command over its body).
    This idealized unity is imaginary but at the same time becomes the basis of the Ego (I); in this sense, the "I" is present but absent. This is the basis for later acts of identification, such as with movie stars, who become mirrors of ourselves: ideal selves.
    Another related present-absent occurs in voyeurism (sexual delight in secretly looking at someone). The voyeur, because unseen by the person looked at, is present and absent to the person at the same time. The similarity of this to the movie-goer is obvious.
    Finally, fetishism is the denial of an absence by a presence. What is absent (according to Freud) is the male organ in the woman: the woman lacks what the male has. This threatens the male with losing it too. In denial, the male substitutes the missing organ with an ideal replacement: usually an idealized (therefore exaggerated) part of the woman's body, which then replaces the missing part: long shapely legs; rounded derriere; big bosom.
    In fact, fashion plays on these fetishistic fears, with each era exaggerating, through clothes, some other part of a woman's body to replace the feared missing part: thus the miniskirt (legs), low-cut gown (bosom), tight jeans (derriere), high heels (legs and foot), or accessories (long earrings, feathered hats, necklaces). Thus in movies, jewels can represent either the present male organ or the absent female organ (speaking from the point of view of the male).
    (There are related issues I will ignore, such as whether women view movies in the same way as men.)
    The star image is thus an idealized image, a product of imaginary needs. The mirror phase starts a cycle of imaginary unity with others. Castration fears (the missing organ in the woman) make the viewer "stop" the plot to focus on the stationary image, which replaces the missing organ. Voyeurism allows the viewer to enjoy an absent image as if present. This occurs in two ways.
    First the photo effect shows a presence of an absent star.
    Second, the star exceeds the fictional character: we catch the star unawares, as it were: we see glimpses of Cary Grant apart from the role as Professor Huxley (based on "Cary Grant" through primary and subsidiary images: magazines, previous movies, etc.).
    For example, we smile when we see him squint, a typical act of his, or when we hear his emphatic almost Cockney speech pattern: "Go-a-way!"
    But the character is both similar yet different to the star image. This "tease" (almost like a striptease, where the stripper conceals and reveals at the time time) is part of the viewer's voyeuristic pleasure in seeing the star.
    The perverse voyeur takes the same sort of pleasure in secretly watching, say, a woman undress: because the undressing is both private yet seen: the undresser is caught unawares.
    Because the star image is stabilized in the fiction story (Cary Grant can only be "Cary Grant" up to a certain point, because he must also be a character, such as Professor Huxley), there is an element of catharsis in motion picture viewing: the star easing identification and allowing the viewer to easily participate in the action the star is in too. Thus not only does the character exceed the star image, but the experience of watching a movie exceeds the experience of identification with the star. To a degree, we are brought outside ourselves in spite of ourselves.    
    Voyeurism compels us to view the star; fetishism isolates the star (closeups, the star's wiggle, vocal style, etc.), but the mirror phase completes the star fiction, in the sense that the viewer will follow all the actions of the idealized image and identify with them no less than the child enjoys all the movements reflected in the mirror, as a sign of its power.
    This star fiction (the movie character) can happen in three ways. If the star image is simple, it can exactly reproduce it (the Austin Powers films); it can be to one side of the star image (Elvis Presley sings but also boxes in Kid Galahad) or it can contradict the star image. Hawks and Hitchcock did this with Cary Grant's suave urbane image: Hawks emphasizing Grant being controlled by the woman instead of controlling the woman and Hitchcock showing the potentially evil (instead of romantic) designs behind that control (Suspicion, Notorious).
     As in the auteur theory, the star phenomenon is above all empirically understood: it can only be studied and presented in terms of real data: a close analysis of film plots and characters, archival data (fanzines, interviews, movie reviews, promotion, publicity), and a comparison with other stars alike or nearly alike to the star (how is Monroe different from Mansfield, Kim Novak or Doris Day, or Cary Grant different from Charles Boyer or Ray Milland?).
    Andrew Sarris makes the same point about the auteur theory ("What is a bad director but a director who has made many bad films?"). Sarris has three standards for judging an auteur:
    First, technical competence. By this he means "the ability to put a film together with some clarity and coherence."
    Second, the auteur must have a cinematic personality, the way, say, one can recognize a play by Shakespeare or a novel by Hemingway. Sarris makes the point that Hollywood directors have an advantage the studio system required them to direct assigned projects assigned; so they needed to express themselves through means apart from the script: camera placement, editing, mise-en-scene, musical scoring, etc. European directors, because they were more independent, or at least not dominated by a powerful studio, could direct the screenplays they wished or wrote themselves, thus relying more on literary aspects than on purely cinematic aspects.
    Third is what Sarris calls interior meaning. This means a "tension between a director's personality and his material."
    Pauline Kael questions the auteur theory on several levels.
    First, she points out that technical competence is no measure of a work. In fact, many unknown singers or composers have greater technical competence than successful artists. Consider the Broadway composer. His technique is far below that of an educated academic musician; yet nobody listens to the works of the universities, while the Broadway musical has proved to be timeless (the tunes from My Fair Lady have echoed down the generations, while academic compositions are unheard).
    Kael attacks Sarris's second category by showing that usually the inferior films of a director show more personality than the best, because the director is relying on old tricks (we call this self-parody). She also gives the analogy of the smell of a skunk which is stronger than the smell of a rose, but that doesn't mean the smell of the skunk is better.
    Kael also observes a contradiction in Sarris's theory; because when a director like John Huston does show a personality, Sarris finds an excuse and gives credit to the actors instead: "If these are actors' movies, then what on earth is a director's movie?"
    She also contrasts the way that Hawks, an auteur hero, is treated, because credit is given to him as a director, not to his actors (in the films cited, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall).
    As for Sarris's third circle, "inner meaning," Kael points out a paradox: formerly the success of a work of art depended on seeing a unity of form and content; but in the auteur theory success is seen as a tension between form and content, a lack of fit between material and direction, through which "inner meaning" emerges.
    For this reason, auteur critics are suspicious of writer-directors such as John Huston and prefer those who only direct. For Kael, this goes against common sense.
    Yet often both writers speak at cross-purposes. Sarris's point is that usually the writer-director will place more emphasis on words rather than images. Also, Sarris does not mean, as Kael suggests, that the auteur is "uninvolved" in the direction, only that the director is involved in other issues besides the dialogue or story (the subtext, for example).
    In fact, the autuer theory can be praised and blamed. It focused interest on the director at a time when most viewers identified films by stars, plots, genres, or studios. But nobody buys a "Sony" CD or a hip-hop CD. They buy a specific artist: Eminem, for example.
    That's what the autuer theory tried to do. Most books are edited by publishing companies; but few readers identify books by the publisher, but by the author.
    The auteur theory also created a model for a disciplined viewing of a film, discriminating between the story and the way the story is filmed. In the same way, art connoiseurs discriminate between one painting of the Crucifixion and another. In the same way, Rembrandt's painting of The Prodigal Son is superior to a calendar pictorialization of the same New Testament parable.
    At the same time, the auteur theory presents problems. It's based on an Expressionist theory of art, rooted in the Romantic idea of the artist as creator. But movies are a group effort: there are many artists involved, not just one. To be fair to Sarris, he never claimed to limit "auteurs" only to directors: the Marx Brothers were auteurs, or a comic actor like W. C. Fields. And we also enjoy stars as auteurs: Cary Grant put his signature (his identity) on all of his films. There is some justification in referring to films as Tom Cruise films or Julia Roberts movies.
    But in the final analysis, according to the auteur theory, the director's personality should be most visible. But do people see directors or do they see movies?
    Moreover, apparently the worst movie by an auteur is of more interest than the best by an inferior director: presumably Hitchcock's Stage Fright (not his worst, but not quite successful either) is of more interest than Fred Zinnemann's The Nun's Story. And as Kael points out, Sarris never says whether, because he saw a similarity between one Raoul Walsh film and another, that that increased the value of the film or whether that enjoyment of "detection" is a value in itself. If we hear Elvis Presley repeat a grunt we heard in another record, does that mean we enjoy the record for that reason? In fact, the opposite standard seems to apply in music: the music critic tends to want to hear something new, an advance on the previous CD, rather than a repetition of old motifs, lyrics, melody hooks, arrangements, etc.
    Another issue Kael raises is whether auteur critics could really identify the movies of their auteurs if not aware who directed the film; or is it the other way around: only after knowing that a movie is by (say) Hawks or Ford, will they look for interesting moments in the film or judge it of value?
    Still, as Peter Wollen points out, in the selection from Signs and Meaning in the Cinema ("The Auteur Theory"), one of the benefits of the auteur theory is to reveal a greater number of films worthy of study.
    The reasons that the Auteur Theory started in France was
    1) because of the backlog of American movies due to World War II (allowing more of them to be seen together, thus exposing patterns among them: film noir  was discovered in this way), and
    2) because of the educated classes' involvement with the cine-club movments in France.
    Auteur critics, as Sarris points out too, divide directors into metteurs-en-scene and auteurs. Despite Wollen unnecessarily using Latinisms, all he's saying is that the metteur-en-scene already knows what he will say (since he's directing an  approved script) and simply adds interesting mise-en-scene to the script (direction of actors, set design, etc.). The auteur discovers the theme after the completion of the entire film; since the auteur, like Hawks, discovers his art in the doing of it.
    A lot of Bringing Up Baby, for example, could not possibly have been preplanned but could only have emerged during the performance of the actors under the judgment of the director: without the actors' invention, the auteur would have nothing; but unless the auteur could recognize what he wanted and could use what he saw it being done between actors, the actors would be without any focus at all.
    The same is true of other elements of cinema, such as camera movement, lighting, or editing. Others contribute, but the auteur is aware of the whole that he or she wants and has a conception of in mind.
    This is what we called "heuristics": discovery. Singers do the same thing (at least great singers): Elvis recorded "Hound Dog" about 30 times, until he got the performance he heard in his head.
    Wollen's essay then reviews the motifs and patterns of Hawks' films, such as the contrast between the adventure and comedy films; the tensions between men and women; the group relationships among men; and the need for risk itself. But these are only auteur motifs, which do not exhaust the issue of style, such as pacing of scenes and spoken dialogue, camera movement or lack of it, camera angle (Hawks prefer eye-level shots), etc.
    Wollen concludes by pointing out that other issues still need to be addressed by scholars: comparing one director with another or the influence of one film artist (say a cinematographer) on a director; an adequate way to analyze a "graded" rather than a coded art (such as acting, which is difficult to capture in analysis). Auteur motifs, on the other hand, are easily "coded" in terms of oppositions: guilt/innocent, young/old, women/men, country/city, adult/child, and countless others.
    "The Mummy's Pool" covers some issues of the horror genre and its relation to the audience. Unfortunately, the first paragraph throws words around ("displacement," "reflexivity," "catharsis," etc.). These words have meaning, but the writer (the author of our textbook) says nothing about the meaning they have for him, so they're useless.
    The writer then compares seeing a movie to dreaming and shows how the conditions of film viewing are similar to the conditions of sleep: darkened room, etc.
    In the same way, every dreamed film is different, since no two viewers will respond to (say) The Mummy or The Godfather in the same way: one will dream fantasies of power, the other dream fantasies of disgust; one identifies with the hero(ine), the other with the victim, etc.
    The horror film, for Kawin, "both presents and masks the desire to fulfill and be punished for certain conventionally unacceptable impulses." These may be unconscous. For example, we wish to kill our fathers, like the Wolfman does. So we dream it (awake) in the movie and resolve our conflicts that way.  
    Kawin's language at times is terrible, using monstrous phrases for simple ideas: "diagnostic eruptions for repressive societies, and as exorcistic or transcendent pagan rituals for supposedly post-pagan cultures."
    All this means is that society prevents certain behaviors (and, for Freud, even thoughts), which movies allow in a safe way.
    (By "post-pagan" Kawin means that we still live in the primitive past despite our supposedly more enlightened religous ideas.)
    How many wish they could mow down their enemies or those who abused their siblings?
   Well, in The Godfather you can do that, just by paying a few dollars for the privilege. Then, when the movie is over, you leave the movie theatre and you can be a good citizen again. The movie has actually helped you release your emotions.
    In this sense, a movie is the meeting place for personal, social, and mythic issues: personal, as mentioned, since personal feelings are negotiated or worked through/out; social, since these are social problems too; mythic because they exist across cultures and across times, such as the suffering of the hero, or the return of the dead, or the Good Mother, all images embodied in Christianity for example.
    In more garbled language (do editors work on these essays?), Kawin refers to the "conscious/official and an unconscious/repressed dualism, whose dialectic finds expression in the act of masking."
    All this means is that the private self is hidden from the social world/public, which means that expression of these private feelings are disguised in movies too. For example, many men might take delight in the torture of a beautiful woman; no movie would cater to such tastes, but can do so in the more benign form, say, of a Mummy or King Kong attacking a beautiful woman.
    This is why genres are in many ways more profound than more "serious" movies (such as those based on famous novels, for example).
    Then, in more readable language, Kawin contrasts the genres of Science-Fiction and Horror by showing that, regarding the Unknown (ET or a monster), in SF acceptance is common, whereas in Horror, repression is common.
    By analogy with dreaming, the dream units should be integrated into the personality. So Freud would analyze the parts of a dream, awaken the dreamer to new knowledge by showing that the monster was really the dreamer's father, and thus the dreamer would be stronger.
    But in fact usually the Horror genre encourages repression: the Monster is killed at the end and denied. This is shown in The Wolf Man.
    But in The Mummy we can see that the Monster is confronted, then integrated with the heroine: "it was not enough for Helen simply to reject Imhotep, [but] she had to integrate her Helen and her Anckesenamon aspects in order to come into her full power." In a good sentence, Kawin writes: "In this sense horror films are valuable and cathartic [purging of mental poisons], for they may offer the possibility of participating in the acting-out of an unacknowledged wish or fear in a context of resolution rather than of repression." Since the viewer identifies with the heroine, she enjoys the same catharsis, or release of emotions.
    In the same way, it's only when you mentally accept the fact that you hate your mother or father or sibling that you can start to love that person again. As Freud said, neurosis is caused not by a past trauma (bad event) but by the repression or denial of it.
    So horror films to some degree enable a catharsis of our fears. We face them in the monster plot (and the monster himself) and come out, into the light of day, stronger people.     Genre films allow resolutions of contradictions that are otherwise difficult to resolve. But in horror films, these contradictions (and the emotions tied to them) are not even conscious but are made so, at least to some degree, in the viewing itself. Thus we are purged, as in Greek tragedy, where the death of the hero in some odd way calms us: we have seen the worst and are better for it.

---