The Art of Two Faces
I’d like to place our focus on the film King Kong(1933). The composition of this film has two main elements that play a big part in what the spectators get out of this film. These two parts are the narrative and the illusion of the film’s reality. In the reading The Role of Spectacle and Excess, by Leger Grindon, Grindon calls this ability to immerse the audience fully into the ideas and physical settings of the film the Spectacle. He then goes on to describe the effects brought about by the technology used to create the film’s visual and acoustic settings as a producer of Excess. Grindon defines the two ideas of Spectacle and Excess in his essay.
He defined spectacle as this ability to immerse the audience into a film. What is meant by this is that the narrative, visuals, and sound effects are all performing well enough to make the viewer believe that they themselves are actually in the film being viewed. For example, a film may give you a first person view of an intense scene in which the actor is facing some sort of danger. The audience might flinch or duck as a plane dives down at them, or scream when a man pops out from behind the door to attack a character in a film. Even though these spectators are not in real danger they react as if they are because of the affect that the atmosphere, created by the director, has on the viewer. Grindon believed that this made the audience susceptible to subconsciously absorbing the ideas being conveyed by the creators of the film. If you control the film you control the audience.
Grindon’s essay then goes on to explain the idea of excess and its potential affects on the audience and the film, excess being this reach for reality within a film through the use of special effects, causing the audience to reawaken from the trance that is the spectacle. Through the over usage of the special effects in the film you then draw the attention of the viewers to just that, the special effects. This can then cause your audience to either miss the point you were trying to make through this whole new idea you created with your compensations, or the audience may shift their focus from your narrative to your creative process , because of it’s product’s bright presence throughout the film.
King Kong is a great film to call attention to, because in this particular project the special effects play a big role in the way a viewer interprets this film. The film covers the story of a famous film maker going on a journey to create the best film ever seen by man. He builds a crew and sets out on an adventure to a fantastical island, where he plans to shoot his masterpiece. He meets these African natives who worship this gigantic gorilla named Kong. He decides to bring Kong back to the city as an attraction, but Kong breaks free from his captors and causes problems in wanting of his love interest, the blonde lady. Eventually they kill Kong bringing an end to the film.
This film uses multiple special effects to bring to life Kong and his many adversaries, as well as the environment in which him, the natives, and the adventurers interact. Through the use of these effects on the film most of the attention is turned onto the Gorilla and the female actress. This completely changes the way one would view this film. Instead of focusing in on the predominantly caucasian male cast and their adventure, as would often be the focus in this time, we find ourselves looking at the creature and his interaction with the environments that he’s moving through throughout the movie. Kong and the main actress become the focus of the film and the main actors become but props for Kong as he interacts with his new found love interest. The majority of the movie becomes focused on Kong and the lead actress due to all the special effects used to make him, the main focus, exist. Instead of the idea of the white male taming the big, black, highly sexualized gorilla, who intentions are conveyed to obtain the fair skinned blonde woman as his own, you get this story of a highly worshipped and feared gorilla god who will fight to keep close the woman he has chosen to love. In fact he loves her so much that the film shows us he is willing to die for her.
Due to the use of these special effects to create a deeply convincing spectacle the director enhances the experience of the film to excess. This excess draws the attention to a completely different storyline that has the potential to change the idea of the roles that the individual character groups play in the film. In this way, trying to create the film’s captivating atmosphere through the use of special effects ironically creates a break in the illusionistic reality of the film allowing for reinterpretation from the viewers. It seems that the director uses this narrative as a way to create a film in a way that had never been done before. This idea turned his focus onto the creating of the film’s environment and off of the actual storyline of the film. So in this film’s case the special effects play a huge part in the way this film can be interpreted from beginning to end.
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