Transcultural Screenwriting : Telling Stories for a Global World [1 ed.] 9781443893909, 9781527513297

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Transcultural Screenwriting

Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World Edited by

Carmen Sofia Brenes, Patrick Cattrysse and Margaret McVeigh

Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World Edited by Carmen Sofia Brenes, Patrick Cattrysse and Margaret McVeigh This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Carmen Sofia Brenes, Patrick Cattrysse, Margaret McVeigh and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5244-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5244-9



TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part 1: The Transcultural Lens Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8 Cultural Dimensions and an Intercultural Study of Screenwriting Patrick Cattrysse Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 28 Aristotle’s Notion of Poetic Verisimilitude and Transcultural Screenwriting Carmen Sofia Brenes Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 47 Screenwriting Sans Frontières: the Writing of the Transnational Film and the Key Factors Impacting on the Creation of Story in the Film Co-production Scenario Margaret McVeigh Part 2: Transcultural Case Studies Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 70 From Italian Neorealism to American Indie: Transcultural Heritage in Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008) Pablo Echart and María Noguera Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 86 In the Face of In-Betweenness. Transcultural & Generic Screenwriting in the German Gangster serial: Im Angesicht des Verbrechens/ In The Face of Crime Sarah Renger Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 109 Screenwriter’s Voice and National Identity in Big Hero 6 Rose Ferrell



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Table of Contents

Part 3: Transcultural Working Conditions Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 134 Transcultural Collaboration in Screenwriting: Jungle Pilots Case Study Rafael Leal Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 154 (Re)Making Murphy: The Development of a Transcultural Animated Feature Screenplay Shuchi Kothari Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 172 The Audio Description of Juliana: Transcultural Considerations in Retelling a Cinematic Story for Blind People Florencia Fascioli List of Contributors ................................................................................. 191



INTRODUCTION

Globalization and its imperatives have created new scenarios where storytellers, screenwriters and filmmakers collaborate with colleagues from other countries and cultures. As a consequence, international coproductions have become increasingly common. At the 2015 Academy Awards, there were an unparalleled number of coproductions nominated in award categories. These included: Deux Jours, une Nuit (Two Days, One Night; Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne) (Belgium, France, Italy); Matar a un Hombre (Alejandro Fernández Almendras) (Chile, France); and Turist (Ruben Östlund) (Sweden, France, Denmark). The international film co-production model provides a number of benefits. Co-productions are set up as a means to share production costs and to create stories that reach transnational audiences. They may foster longterm collaborative relationships between international creatives and allow filmmakers to draw upon a wider talent pool. International co-productions also aim to ensure the long-term viability of national film industries by developing wider distribution channels in multiple markets. However, when film crew members from different parts of the world come together to write and produce a movie, TV-series or other audiovisual product, they enter a multi-cultural environment that will condition the creative process. In addition, the stories that are aimed at wider audiences are likely to display corollary features that require screenwriters and scholars to adopt new methods of study. Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World aims to study those new working conditions and the multicultural stories that result from them. It focuses on how creatives working in a multi-cultural environment are confronted with multiple challenges: How to mesh cultural aesthetics and sensitivities? How to handle professional codes in a multicultural environment, including: how to manage authority and decision making, how to give or follow orders, or how to make things happen? And finally: How to write stories that reach wider multicultural audiences? In order to tackle these questions, Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World adopts the emerging lens of transcultural studies, focusing on screenwriting in a multicultural environment.

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Introduction

Since an international view on film and media studies is not new, a transcultural study of screenwriting does not intend to operate a tabula rasa. Rather, it aims to continue previous approaches and strengthen the bridges between them. Hence, a transcultural lens involves multiple disciplines including screenwriting studies, film and TV production studies, narrative studies, national and transnational cinema studies, intercultural communication studies, post-colonial studies, border theory, identity, ethnicity and gender studies, studies on Eurocentrism and Orientalism, and studies on cultural imperialism including its counterhegemonic responses. A transcultural lens thus offers a different perspective to multicultural screenwriting and it provides at once a number of new categories for analysis. Secondly, a transcultural lens offers a more flexible view on transcultural screenwriting. Whereas the screen studies notion of the transnational builds upon the national cinema concept of the nation state as a unit, the critical concept “transcultural” opens up new perspectives that complement the scope of transnational cinema studies. Even though the word “culture” has become an umbrella term, scholars generally agree that the term refers to values and beliefs that are shared by a group of people (vid. Cattrysse in this volume). The question is then: what values and beliefs are shared by which group of people? Different cultural units may share different sets of cultural values. These cultural units may be found both below and beyond the level of the nation state, or cut right through it. Examples are the Belgian Flemish and Walloons, the Basques in Spain and France, the Kurds in Irak, Iran, Turkey and Syria, and the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia. However abstract these notions may sound, they involve very concrete and everyday assumptions about how people live and work together. Hence, depending on the purpose of the research, one may zoom in to a “microscopic” level cultural group (for example the portrayal of the family on television), or zoom out to a “macroscopic” level group (for example the common versus different features of European, Asian, American or global media). Consequently, while we acknowledge that the nation state remains a formidable factor in theories that consider screen based media texts, we understand the “transcultural” label as the category that can unite a number of fields. Finally, as this reader will show, a transcultural lens offers a number of new categories to the study of screenwriting in a multicultural environment (for example, see below “cultural dimensions”, “habits”).

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The first part of the book presents three contributions examining how a transcultural approach may help to study global and local features or values in multicultural screenwriting processes and texts, and how it can complement previous studies such as transnational cinema studies, postcolonial studies, and the like. In “Cultural Dimensions and an Intercultural Study of Screenwriting”, Patrick Cattrysse explores if and how the concept of “cultural dimensions”, as developed in the field of intercultural communication studies, may be of use to screenwriters who work in a multicultural environment, and to a study of narratives from an intercultural perspective. “Cultural dimensions” represent mechanisms that describe and explain patterns of collective human behavior. They refer to how the members of an ingroup deal with each other, and with time and with space. To the extent that stories represent narrative behavior, this essay argues that cultural dimensions may help to design, describe and explain character and narratorial behavior as well. Carmen Sofia Brenes’ chapter, “Aristotle’s Notion of Poetic Verisimilitude and Transcultural Screenwriting”, proposes a more philosophical approach that considers the Aristotelian notion of “poetic verisimilitude” as a tool to write transcultural screenplays. Following Paul Ricoeur and Juan José García-Noblejas’ indications, the chapter presents the notion of “habitus” as a lens to study the analogy between the logic of human action and the logic of the plot. The concept of “habitus” is understood in the classical sense of “an acquired and relatively stable way of sensing, perceiving, acting and thinking” (Ricoeur 1968, 280). Subsequently, the author analyzes the US movie The Searchers (1956) and the Polish movie Ida (2013), in order to check if and how Aristotle’s “habitus” helps to study global features in the narrative. Margaret McVeigh’s contribution, “Screenwriting Sans Frontières: the Writing of the Transnational film and the Key Factors Impacting on the Creation of Story in the Film Co-production Scenario”, draws upon the field of transnational film and cultural studies in order to define and clarify concepts relevant to transcultural fields. The exploration of transnational co-production practices results in the proposal of key narrative elements that can be considered to analyse co-productions as transcultural expressions including story, theme, character, genre and setting. It also includes a discussion of the role of creative, social and industrial factors present in the co-production of transnational films.

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Introduction

Part two presents three case studies illustrating how a transcultural study of texts may tackle issues such as influence, adaptation, translation and other forms of intertextuality. Through the analysis of Wendy and Lucy (2008), Pablo Echart and María Noguera show the influence of Italian neorealism in American post 9/11 films. In their chapter “From Italian Neorealism to American Indie: Transcultural Heritage in Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008)”, these authors propose the notion of “family resemblances” as a way to study the presence of ethical and aesthetic similarities between Reichardt’s work and the Italian neorealism. They focus on the exploration of the elements of character and theme to investigate universal values and their transcultural transference from neorealist films to Wendy and Lucy. In the chapter, “Transcultural & Generic Screenwriting in the German Gangster series, In The Face of Crime (Im Angesicht des Verbrechens) (Germany, 2010)”, Sarah Renger demonstrates how cultural transfer is a multi-layered and multi-faceted process in her examination of this German TV series. She investigates the series as a cross-media, cross-generic, and multi-cultural adaptation of the American gangster film genre. She proposes that this involves working on medium specificity issues (cinema vs. television), hybrid genre features (for example, gangster vs. crime vs. fairy tale), narrative patterns (for example, epic vs. serial), and multicultural character design (for example, German vs. Russian culture). In “Screenwriter’s Voice and National Identity in Big Hero 6”, Rose Ferrell argues that screenwriters inscribe voice within their screenplays when writing, and that voice can be understood to carry a national inflection because the writing is informed by the writer’s personal identity, including national identity. To support this argument, the author proposes a framework which represents craft decisions and choices of content via which screenplays can be interrogated for voice. She then proceeds to apply the framework to Big Hero 6 (2014), and concludes that Big Hero 6's voice retains its American inflection despite paying lip service to Asian influences. This raises the question: under which conditions may a truly transcultural or transnational film be written, produced and distributed in today’s globalised market? Part Three finally focuses on the challenges screenwriters meet when either working in a multi-cultural environment and/or writing for a multicultural audience.

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In the chapter, “Transcultural Collaboration in Screenwriting: Jungle Pilots Case Study”, screenwriter Rafael Leal traces the journey of his screenwriting commission to create, develop and write the first three episodes of the Brazilian TV series Jungle Pilots. The series was produced by Giros Interativa in partnership with NBC/Universal in Brazil. Leal reflects on the changes that evolved during the writing of these scripts. Jungle Pilots represents a procedural drama featuring a multi-cultural cast of characters. Leal explores the way the team of Brazilian writers collaborated with the Los Angeles based American script consultant, Barry Schkolnick, in order to shape the scripts for transcultural audiences. In “(Re)Making Murphy: The Development of a Transcultural Animated Feature Screenplay”, Schuchi Kothari explores how, when writing the screenplay, she had to negotiate the demands of a transnational industry. The chapter offers an on-the-ground account of the research and development process of the script, including meetings with film producers, commissions, and delegates at animation festivals. Kothari reflects on how during the writing of Making Murphy she had to juggle storytelling traditions from five different nations (USA, UK, Japan, France, and Czech Republic), and to combine the respective cinematic styles of the Pixar and Ghibli studios. The chapter, “Audio Description of Juliana: Transcultural Considerations in Retelling a Cinematic Story for Blind People” by Florencia Fascioli Alvarez, describes the process of writing visual descriptions of an audio visual text for blind people. This unique type of translation must take into account concrete descriptions of what is happening visually on the screen and translate these into audio. The translation must also incorporate cultural and social nuances that may be part of the subtext of the script and screen action. In her account of the process to make Juliana, the first movie made accessible for the blind in Peru, Fascioli Alvarez traces the decisions the audio translators made via a comparative analysis of a number of different drafts of the audio description. Of particular note are the factors that the multicultural team involving technicians and writers from Uruguay and Peru had to address around transcultural aspects of the text. Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World offers new insights into screenwriting for the 21st Century to reach audiences across nations and cultures. The chapters in this book have been developed from the Screenwriting Research Network International Conference, Transnational Screenwriting: A Dialogue Between Scholars and Industry, which was held at the Universidad de los Andes-Santiago de Chile May, 07-09, 2015.

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Introduction

In conclusion, the case studies, reports on working conditions in multicultural environments and theoretical proposals will be relevant to screenwriters, screenwriting teachers and scholars alike. Screenwriters may learn first-hand from the experiences of other writers who have successfully worked in film, animation and television in the creation of characters and stories which draw from and speak to multiple cultural contexts. Teachers of screenwriting will gain insights into ways to think about preparing students for transcultural storytelling including writing collaboratively and thinking stories that will travel across cultural borders. Researchers are provided with relevant materials to study how screenwriters, filmmakers and producers work in multi-cultural settings, and how writers may write stories that connect to wider audiences.

PART 1: THE TRANSCULTURAL LENS

CHAPTER ONE CULTURAL DIMENSIONS AND AN INTERCULTURAL STUDY OF SCREENWRITING1 PATRICK CATTRYSSE

Introduction A cultural study of narratives is not new. Scholars have examined all sorts of cultural aspects of creating and consuming stories. There are studies on cultural imperialism and its counterhegemonic responses, opposing for example American commercial cinema to European art cinema, or distinguishing mainstream cinema from “alternative” cinema, or “first” from “second” and “third” cinema (Guneratne and Dissanayake 2003). 2 There are the studies on national, transnational or post-national cinemas, the numerous studies on migration, diasporas, and (post-)colonialism, studies on identity, ethnicity and gender, and studies also on Eurocentrism and Orientalism. In this chapter, I examine if and how the concept of “cultural dimension”, as developed in the fields of intercultural communication studies and cross-cultural psychology, could be useful to the practice and study of intercultural screenwriting and intercultural storytelling more in general. Since the concept “culture” has become an umbrella term, section one suggests first a working definition of the word. Section two explains the concept of “cultural dimension”. Section three discusses how cultural dimensions could offer an additional conceptual and operational tool to both intercultural screenwriting and a study of intercultural narratives. Section four finally draws some conclusions and points to some caveats that could trigger further research.

 1

This essay represents an updated version of a talk that was originally presented on September 10, 2010 at the third International Conference of the Screenwriting Research Network at the University of Copenhagen. 2 See, e.g., Ezra and Rowden (2006). See also the journal Transnational Cinemas, which started at Intellect Publishing in 2010.

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What is Culture? 3

There are many definitions of the word “culture” . Hence, any discourse on culture does well to suggest a working definition first. This section proposes one that is based on a number of characteristics scholars do agree on when discussing culture. A study of culture involves first and foremost values. Values are understood as principles that guide human thought, emotion and behavior. Values may be innate (e.g. fairness, justice) or learned (e.g. speak for yourself vs. speak only when spoken to). The former are universal and part of human nature; the latter vary locally and are deemed the makeup of culture (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005a, 4; Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 67-68). A clear conceptual distinction between nature and nurture does help the researcher to better understand the complex and dynamic interaction that obtains between the two. Learned values may be personal, or collective. However, scholars agree that culture deals with collectively shared values (see, e.g., Minkov and Hofstede 2014, 144). The next question is then: which group of people shares which values? Finally, culture is generally understood as both multifaceted and holistic (see, e.g., Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 67). In other words, culture consists of multiple components, but these components are interrelated and form a whole that is more than the sum of its interconnected parts. This whole constitutes the set of shared values that unites an ingroup, i.e. assists its members in identifying themselves as the members of a group that is distinct from other groups, i.e. so-called outgroups. As such, culture is ethnocentric (Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 68–69): it builds fences between cultural units and thus creates barriers for intercultural communication. Since people form ingroups on the basis of many parameters (e.g. language, age, education, profession, hobbies, sports, fashion, age, gender…), boundaries arise between ingroups and outgroups at many levels at the same time. This leads to what we call cultural diversity. Inter- or cross-cultural communication studies aims to examine both the similarities and dissimilarities between cultures, as well as the complex and dynamic interaction that obtains between them. It strives to gather knowledge about how to optimally manage human interactions in a multicultural environment. Hence, in conclusion, I hereafter understand the term “culture” to signify a set of learned values that collectively guide the thoughts, emotions and behavior of the members of an ad hoc ingroup.

 3

See, e.g., Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois (2015, 54).

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Chapter One

What are Cultural Dimensions? The concept of “cultural dimension” was developed in the field of intercultural communication studies. Textbooks generally refer to Geert Hofstede’s 1980 study Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values (see, e.g., Jandt 2007, 159; Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 104). However, Edward T. Hall uses the term “dimension” already in his 1966 The Hidden Dimension, and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1998) borrow their cultural dimensions from Talcott Parsons’ 1951 The Social System. Since then, studies on cultural dimensions, value orientations (see, e.g., Kluckhohn 1967) and cultural value theory (see, e.g., Schwartz 1994) have evolved into a substantial sub-field in intercultural communication studies and cross-cultural psychology. Generally speaking, cultural dimensions represent specific bi-polar scales of learned value orientations, which guide people’s thoughts, emotions and behavior collectively. For example they determine or explain how some people are more self-oriented or group oriented, how “open” or “closed” they are to strangers, how they assign status (or not) to each other, how they negotiate or make decisions, how they treat their superiors and their subordinates, their elder and their children, how they treat their men and women, how they reward or punish behavior. Cultural dimensions also concern the ways groups of people deal with time and interact with space. The notion of cultural dimension presupposes that all human societies must answer a limited number of universal problems, and that even though different cultures come up with different solutions, these solutions show value patterns that are also limited in number and universally known (Kluckhohn 1967). Hence, intercultural communication researchers present surveys, often formatted as forced-answer questions, to large sets of interviewees. They then aggregate their answers statistically according to common values, and build indexes to position groups of people on the continuum of a cultural dimension. Experts still debate about the exact number of cultural dimensions,–four (Hofstede 1980), five (Hofstede and Bond 1988), seven (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961), more or less (Maleki and De Jong 2014)?–, and they have proposed multiple names, which at times overlap (see below). Most scholars have studied cultural dimensions at the level of nation states (see, e.g., Hofstede 1980 and his followers), although other researchers have commented that the nation state may not always be the best unit to study

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and compare cultures (see, e.g., McSweeney 2002; Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 18; Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 104). However, following the working definition of “culture” mentioned above, all agree that 1. a study of cultural dimensions focuses on the dominant value dimensions of a society, and not of individuals, and 2., one should not confuse the two levels of analysis (see, e.g., Hofstede 2001, 15ff.; Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 82; Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 104). While individual responses may show wider variations on the cultural dimension scales, and according to some actually involve multiple dimensions (see, e.g., Bearden, Money, and Nevins 2006), aggregating large numbers of replies factors out these individual variations to reveal one-dimensional dominant features of collective behavior. Indeed, while each dimension represents a continuum of cultural responses, a culture’s preference for one orientation of a given dimension means that the opposite end of the continuum is less important to that culture (see, e.g., Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 82; Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 117). This has raised the question if and how aggregate-level values at the country level are suitable to describe and explain individual-level behavioral phenomena (Bearden, Money, and Nevins 2006, 195–96). I return to this question in section 4.

Cultural Dimensions and (the Study of) Intercultural Screenwriting Following the above, this section discusses two assumptions: 1. Since cultural dimensions apply to real life and work in a multinational and multicultural environment, they can help to study and improve the collaborative pre-production process of screenwriters and other crew members involved in international coproductions. 2. Since cultural dimensions describe patterns of social behavior, narrative texts that represent social behavior may be studied in terms of cultural dimensions as well. To illustrate this, I hereafter discuss briefly three cultural dimensions (sections 3.1.-3.3), and suggest that there is more (section 3.4).



Chapter One

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Universalism vs. Particularism The universalism-particularism divide can be summed up with two key terms: rule-oriented vs. person-oriented. Whereas the universalist stipulates that society must be ordered by laws that apply equally to everyone always, the particularist will say that interpersonal relationships prevail. Since all people are different and lead different lives, it is unfair to apply one law equally to all. Laws must adapt to people, and not the other way around. To illustrate this dilemma, Trompenaars and HampdenTurner (1998, 29ff.) describe a number of situations presented as tests to some 50.000 respondents from over 100 countries (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 1998, 252). Here is one such exercise. Imagine the following scene, which could actually figure in a screenplay or story (see below): You are riding in a car driven by a close friend. He hits a pedestrian. You know he was going at least 35 miles per hour in an area of the city where the maximum speed is 20 miles per hour. There are no witnesses. His lawyer says that if you testify under oath that he was only driving 20 miles per hour it may save him from serious consequences (Trompenaars and 4

Hampden-Turner 1998, 34) .

What do you do? Help your friend or stick to the law? Whoever decides to tell the truth in Court displays universalist behavior; s/he who decides to help the friend shows particularist behavior. In the perfect universalist society, relations between people are abstract, generic and task-oriented. One does not need to know the people one is going to work with personally. A CV and a portfolio will do. Business trips may be kept to a minimum, and small talk is redundant and to be avoided. Working agreements are cemented in a contract that stipulates all the foreseeable and unforeseeable contingencies; detailed penalty clauses follow in case one party decides not to follow up on the written agreement. In the universalist society, a reliable (read: professional) person is a person who sticks to the rules no matter what.



4 The test was designed by the Americans Stouffer, S.A. and Toby, J. (1951) ‘Role Conflict and Personality’, in American Journal of Sociology, LVI(5):395-406. This may explain the universalist bias in the very construction of the anecdote. Unfortunately, space limitations force me to leave aside the multiple side issues that make this example more complicated than it appears in this essay.

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Conversely, in the particularist society, working relations are only part of, and therefore dependent on a wider set of interpersonal relationships, which need to be established first. Particularist relationships are concrete, unique, and focus on who people are rather than on what they do. That is why they require time to develop. The time needed to invest in an interpersonal relationship builds trust and loyalty. Trust and loyalty replace the need for contracts,–oftentimes a handshake will do–, and make lawyers and judges redundant. If conflicts arise, they are settled amicably between the parties involved. If a contract is signed, it serves merely as a token of confidence. Whatever is printed on the paper remains subjected to the maintenance and improvement of the good relationship. If all is well, relationships last much longer than contracts. In practice, both kinds of judgment may overlap or reinforce each other. In a universalist society, the rule may be not to steal or not to lie, while in the particularist society, John would never steal from Peter, or lie to him, because that would endanger their friendship. However, in other circumstances, as in the car and the pedestrian scene, decisions may go separate or even opposite ways. Interestingly, Trompenaars and HampdenTurner (1998, 34) point out that, as the seriousness of the accident increases, the moral viewpoints grow further apart: the more serious the pedestrian’s injuries, the more likely the universalist is going to tell the truth in Court, while conversely, the particularist is more likely to help the friend. Particularists and universalists may thus still understand each other when the problem is not too serious, but when the stakes are high, both sides are likely to fall short of understanding, and to accuse each other of being corrupt, not to be trusted. Now how could the universalist-particularist divide be of use to intercultural screenwriting? As with all cultural dimensions, intercultural communication scholars have examined the universalist-particularist divide at the country level. Confronting some fifteen thousand interviewees from about fifty different countries with similar and more refined questionnaires, researchers have drawn a map of more particularist and more universalist regions. For example, with respect to “the car and the pedestrian anecdote”, Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner’s (1998, 35) graph shows that the Swiss respondents score the highest on the universalist scale, with 97% of the interviewees choosing to abide by the law and not help the friend. As a close second comes the US with 93% of the respondents betraying their friend and favoring the law. At the other end of the scale come the Venezuelan respondents: 68% preferred to protect the friend and ignore the law in Court. Consequently, screenwriters who plan to work abroad

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Chapter One

might do well to ask themselves in what camp–universalist or particularist–, they see themselves rather than not, and in what camp they esteem their working partners are going to fit. As stated above, the statistics do not imply that every single individual behaves either in a universalist or in a particularist way, but given the fact that these statistics suggest dominant values in certain regions, a (probably more universalist oriented) Swiss screenwriter who intends to work with (probably more particularist oriented) colleagues in Venezuela or Serbia, should not be surprised to meet with some universalist-particularist related issues. The universalist-particularist dimension may also function as a hermeneutic tool to perform an intercultural text analysis. For example, audience empathy represents a particularist type of relationship between a viewer and a character. To develop such a relationship, whether with a real person or a fictional character, requires time. Indeed, it takes time for a (real or fictional) stranger to become a friend. This fact has an immediate relevance for the storyteller who wants to develop audience empathy for the main character. With the exception of long-running TV-series and franchises, characters who appear for the first time in a story are strangers until the audience gets to know them better. A narrative may try to facilitate the development of viewer-character relationships or not, and be more or less successful vis-à-vis a real audience. This issue is related with the classic topic of writing exposition or backstory, and the low versus high context distinction, developed by Edward T. Hall (1976) (see below). In addition, the universalist-particularist divide may assist the analyst in recognizing specific generic features in particular scenes, sequences or stories. For example, in episode 4 from season 4 of the US sitcom Seinfeld, called The Ticket, Newman (Wayne Knight) urges his friend Kramer (Michael Richards) to help him beat a speeding ticket. The episode recalls Trompenaars’ and Hampden-Turner’s “the car and the pedestrian” anecdote: Newman argues that Kramer is his best friend, and that therefore Kramer must put their friendship before any consideration for the law. That is why Newman presses Kramer to lie in Court and provide Newman with an alibi. The narrative presents the whole situation as utterly ridiculous, –after all, it is a sitcom–, and it uses the universalistparticularist divide for comical relief. Since according to statistics, the US is a predominantly universalist country, it should not surprise that the joke is on the particularist. One finds a reversed perspective in the US-Mexican co-production Bella (2006), where this time, the narrative adopts a particularist bias. At some

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point, we see Nina (Tammy Blanchard) who, for the second time, arrives late at the restaurant, where she works. Thereupon, her employer, Manny (Manny Perez) fires her. Manny lectures her on the classical universalist values–if everyone acted like you do, he might just as well close the restaurant–. Manny is not interested in “personal excuses”, which make up Nina’s particular background situation: Nina has been late for work twice because she has been sick, and unlike what Manny suggests, she has not been sick because she was drunk but because she is pregnant. However, the father of the baby has left her, and Nina remains undecided whether to keep the baby or not. The rest of the movie is about how good interpersonal relationships solve all existential problems. Manny’s brother, Jose, who is the cook in the restaurant, leaves his work because he worries about Nina, and wants to help her. Since life comes before work, Jose and Nina spend the afternoon together. Jose looks up a friend who offers Nina a new job “for old times’ sake”, i.e. the friend hires Nina on account of her friendship with Jose, not because of some unknown’s impressive cv. In other words, she hires Nina for particularist reasons, not for universalist ones. Subsequently, Jose invites Nina at a warm and hearty Mexican lunch with his family at his parents’ house. They talk about their past and their future–is she going to keep the baby?–, and end the day at the beach. Finally, we learn that Jose will adopt Nina’s baby, and that after some years, Nina shall come to terms with her being a mom, and be able to take care of her daughter, Bella, too. To the extent that the script is biased in favor of particularism, it is also biased against universalism. Manny, who is a Mexican expat working in New York, is presented as a particularist who has a hard time struggling with his newly adopted universalist way of life. At one point, when Jose leaves the kitchen to help Nina, Manny fires his brother too. To the particularist viewer, this act is as laughable as Newman’s is when he forces Kramer to lie in court and provide him with an alibi. As Hofstede and Hofstede (2005a, 100) put it, in a particularist society, the workplace is like a family: “poor performance of an employee in this relationship is no reason for dismissal: one does not dismiss one’s child”, or brother in this case.

Individualism vs. Collectivism The individualist-collectivist dimension refers to the tension between a prime orientation to the self and a prime orientation to goals and objectives of the group one belongs to (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 1998, 51). In other words, it refers to the idea that generally speaking, individual interests prevail over collective interests, or the opposite is true. In an

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individualist society, people consider themselves primarily as independent individuals while in a collectivist society, they consider themselves primarily as the interdependent part of a group. In an individualist culture, personal goals are the end and group goals may be a means, while in a collectivist culture, the opposite is true. Since people form groups on the basis of many parameters (family, language, friends, education, profession, hobbies, region, nation, religion, politics, ideas…), there are many self-ingroup relations to consider. Like all cultural dimensions, the individualism-collectivism divide plays at once at the personal, the collective and the universal levels. Selfish and altruistic behaviors represent innate talents which are part of human nature. Imagine two kids are drowning in a pond. One is yours, the other is from another town. Who do you save first? Unlike the “car and the pedestrian”-question, this question is easy to answer, and the answer will be universally the same: humans will always favor their kin. However, while we all have family and friends, what friendship and family actually mean varies across cultures; it varies both at the collective and the personal level. Once again, the purpose of an intercultural study in terms of cultural dimensions consists in carving out the intermediate level between the idiosyncratic and the universal. Hence, while individuals may display both individualist and collectivist attitudes, intercultural communication scholars argue that bi-polar patterns appear at the societal level. Here too, most individualism-collectivism research has been done at the level of national culture. However, various scholars have suggested one study the individualism-collectivism dimension also at other group levels such as family, occupation, workplace, etc. For example, while individuals behave in a collectivist way at home with their family, they may be expected to behave in an individualist way at work, or not. Let’s see now how the individualism-collectivism dimension may be of use to intercultural screenwriting. Based on the country level individualism index, Hofstede and Hofstede (2005b, 78-79) produce a list of 74 countries and regions, where the US, Australia, Great Britain and Canada score as the four highest ranked countries on the individualism index, and therefore represent the four lowest ranked countries on collectivism. At the other end of the continuum, Guatemala, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela occupy the four highest ranked positions on collectivism, and therefore represent the four lowest ranked countries on individualism. Consequently, one could expect that a US screenwriter who plans to work in Guatemala or Ecuador is likely to meet with some individualism-collectivism challenges, and the same applies probably to

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the Venezuelan screenwriter who plans to work in say Canada. In addition, screenwriting represents a rather peculiar profession when considered in terms of individualism and collectivism, for on the one hand, (screen)writers are often seen as loners, and on the other hand, screenwriting remains part and parcel of a larger collective endeavor. Consequently, besides looking into the individualism-collectivism divide from a country level perspective, future research could also investigate the individualism-collectivism dimension from other group level perspectives. For example: Can one distinguish professional cultures (e.g. accepted notions of “good practice” in filmmaking or media production more in general, directing, screenwriting for feature film, TV or gaming, acting…) from national and other societal cultures? Can one distinguish a “screenwriter culture” (e.g. making art) from a “producer culture” (e.g. making money)? How are screenwriters in the US, Norway, Nigeria or South-Korea trained to work with the other members of the crew? How does the professional mental programming interact with other personal, collective (e.g. national) and universal value types? Can one distinguish various types of group dynamics with respect to screenwriting in a multicultural environment? Moreover, many of the questions I discuss hereafter, with respect to an intercultural study of narrative, may be instructive to the expat screenwriter as well. The individualism-collectivism dimension offers also various specific research questions that can launch an intercultural study of narratives. Here are some examples: -

Which groups are represented in this script and how much narration time is spent on them respectively? Groups to be considered are: family, friends, work, social life, men, women, ethnic groups, 5 races, the “gang”, social classes , generations, regions, religion, politics, ideology, ideas, etc.

-

How are self-ingroup relations represented? Is there one heroprotagonist who strives to distinguish her/himself from the group, and does the group accept this type of behavior? For example, is there one (anti)-hero protagonist who actively pursues her/his dramatic goal and takes all the credit or the blame, or are success and failure represented as a collective responsibility (cf. the

 5

See, e.g., Green, Deschamps, and Páez (2005, 323), who report that people from higher classes tend to be more individualist than people from lower classes.

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ensemble or multiple protagonist film)? Social acceptance, other’s opinions, group conformity, and loyalty to the group are more important in collectivist societies than in individualist societies. In an individualist society, children are raised to speak up for themselves and to stand on their own feet in the world. In a collectivist society, they are educated to avoid venting personal opinions that deviate from the group opinion. Individuals think of themselves rather as part of an ingroup that will provide them an identity and offer them protection against the hardships of life. -

Individualist cultures encourage the showing of happiness and discourage the sharing of sadness, while collectivist cultures do the opposite (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 94). Freedom in our (Western) perspective is an individual value, equality a social one (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 106); shame and honor cultures are collectivist, guilt culture is individualist (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 89–90). The individualism-collectivism divide is also commonly associated with direct or indirect ways of communicating (see, e.g., Jandt 2007, 162; Liu, Volþiþ, and Gallois 2015, 106; Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 86). For example, to say “no” to the request of a friend is confrontational. It may be acceptable in an individualist society, but in a collectivist environment it is embarrassing. Here, people will avoid this kind of confrontation and prefer a more roundabout reply like: “yes” as in “yes, I heard your request”.

Identifying narratorial or character behavior in terms of individualismcollectivism may be more obvious in some narratives than in others. Take for example the movie Outsourced (2006), whose main topic is intercultural communication. The film tells the story of an American salesman, Todd Anderson (Josh Hamilton), whose department has been outsourced. Consequently, Todd travels to India to train the people who are going to replace him. Since the movie’s first aim is to entertain a US (or Western) audience, it hardly scratches the surface of Indian culture. Overall, the narrative maintains a light tone and uses a few common clichés for comical relief: the “funny” English these Indian people speak as opposed to the “standard” “American” accent, the Holi festival of colors as the cultural counterpart for Halloween, etc. Occasionally, the American ways are mildly smiled at, but the “normal”, “default” world view is the Western (US) way, especially when following the obligatory love interest, in a rather uncharacteristic way, the tone becomes more serious and the topic of marriage is dealt with. In the American/Western view, marriage is

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a romantic agreement based on love between individuals. In a collectivist society, marriage represents rather a contract between families, and the role of love in it is significantly different. As a matter of fact, in collectivist societies, considerations other than love weigh heavily in marriage (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005b, 91). Yet in spite of the fact that research shows more marital satisfaction in arranged marriage than in love marriages in India, and more in Indian love marriage than in American marriages, the character Asha (Ayesha Dharker) is shown as victimized by the arranged marriage system - “my only holiday in Goa” -, and no understanding is shown for this “other” marriage system; not by the main character Todd, nor by the narrative as a whole. When the two characters walk together in public, they are not supposed to have an intimate conversation, or to hold hands, except if Asha is taking Todd’s hand to help him step down some stairs. Social control is omnipresent and presented in a threatening way. The narrative presents only negative aspects of collectivism; positive aspects such as protection, care, support, and solidarity are completely ignored in this picture. It would therefore be interesting to see an Indian screenwriter turn the (indigenous and foreign) tables, and write an acculturated adaptation of the US script.

The Specific-diffuse Dimension Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1998, 83ff.) explain the specificdiffuse divide using Kurt Lewin’s (1936) distinction between a G-type (e.g. Germany) and a U-type culture (e.g. the US). The G-type/U-type dimension refers to what cultures consider to be public or private, whether life spheres are cut up into neatly separated sub-sections (e.g. work, leisure time, family…) or not, and how accessible (or not) certain life spheres are to specific groups of people. G-type persons represent a life space that is predominantly private, diffuse, i.e. not divided into separate sections, and well closed off from outsiders. Conversely, U-type people represent a smaller private life sphere, and a larger public life space, which is cut up into various neatly separated sub-sections. Whereas each sub-section (e.g. family, leisure, work…) is easily accessible from the outside, the passage from one sub-section (say work) to another (say sports) is more difficult. A stereotypical example of a G-type person would be Herr Doktor Müller, who is not only called Doktor Müller at the university, but also at the butcher or at the local school. In a G-type society, his doctoral authority leaks over into all the sections of both his public and his private life spaces. Even his wife may be called Frau Doktor Müller. Conversely, the U-type CEO of a company may have authority at work, but when (s)he

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leaves the company, (s)he leaves her/his authority with it. At the tennis court, (s)he is just another player, and at the bakery just another client. Whereas it is much harder to enter both the public and private life spaces of the G-type, once in, you have access to all the life spaces pertaining to work, leisure, family, etc. The belief that you can separate work from pleasure, or politics from religion is thus a very “Western”, i.e. specific (as opposed to diffuse), idea. Once again, this cultural dimension may be helpful to both the traveling screenwriter and the intercultural scholar of narratives. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1998, 90) present a graph based on a survey of respondents from fifty two countries reacting to the following situation: Your boss asks you as a subordinate to help him paint his house in the week-end. What do you do? Answers depend on whether the respondents consider their boss to remain their boss outside work or not. Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland score the highest on the specific end of the scale, while China, Nepal and Burkina Faso score the highest on the diffuse end of the scale. However schematical, the G-type/U-type dimension allows users to describe and explain various types of intercultural misunderstandings, which I am sure, many a reader will recognize. Here are some examples. When a G-type person meets a U-type person for the first time, the latter may appear very open and accessible to the former. This is likely to happen because the U-type person gives easy access to an albeit limited portion of its larger public life space. U-types who just met someone are likely to start talking about subjects G-types would only talk about after knowing their interlocutor for a longer period of time. In addition, this openness may produce the wrong effect on the G-type person, who is not aware that this openness only applies to a limited portion of the public life space. After all, a G-type person is not used to the segregation of life spaces and may thus mistakenly conclude that now s/he has access to all sorts of mental or physical spaces, which would otherwise be closed off by privacy conventions. This is how a G-type person may become “intrusive” to the U-type beholder and find herself suddenly blocked off, because in fact, s/he was attempting to trespass on a different segregated sub-section. Conversely, the G-type is likely to appear cagey and mysterious in the eye of the U-type because of the larger sized private space and the protected access to that space. The point is that in a G-type society, initial entrance into the life spheres requires more time, but once accepted inside, the other person has access to (practically) all life spaces. There are no segregations separating one sub-section from the other. Another commonly known case

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of misunderstanding or miscommunication related to this cultural 6 dimension is called “losing face” . Again, a number of mishaps occur at the same time. Firstly, because the private space is larger in the G-type world than in the U-type world, it is easier for the U-type to offend the Gtype than vice versa. In other words, there are more chances that the Utype deals publicly with content the G-type considers to be private, and embarrassment follows. Moreover, because of the diffuse nature of the Gtype, as opposed to the more specific nature of the U-type, G-types consider persons, their actions and thoughts as one whole, while U-types separate people’s identity from their actions, or their specific ideas. Imagine the following situation: a U-type person Hans, from the Netherlands, discusses the concept of a bridge designed by a G-type person Giovanni, from Italy, and at some point, Hans calls one of Giovanni’s ideas “crazy”, whereupon Giovanni promptly leaves the room. What happened is that Giovanni did not interpret Hans’s remark as intended. Whereas Hans only referred to Giovanni’s idea about the bridge, Giovanni took the criticism personally and understood it to refer to his whole person. He interpreted Hans’s criticism as: “You are crazy”, and thereupon left the room. The expression “losing face” offers an appropriate metonymical denomination for actually pointing to the part as a whole. The person does not only lose her face, she loses the dignity of her whole person. As such, the G-type/U-type divide ties in with the particularist-universalist dimension: reference is made to the whole person as opposed to isolated tasks, rules or functions. The G-type/U-type distinction may also inspire writers to design character behavior. For example, the writers of the sitcom Seinfeld have made 7 frequent use of this cultural dimension divide for comical relief . In episode 10 from season 7, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Loretta’s doctor takes a lemonade out of Larry’s fridge without asking, and Larry calls him on it. The refrigerator figures literally in Trompenaars’ and Hampden-Turner’s (1998, 85) description of Lewin’s G-type/U-type divide. Another Gtype/U-type related scene occurs in season 7, episode 3, called The Maestro, where Elaine dates the conductor of an orchestra who insists everyone call him “Maestro”, also at the restaurant… The Maestro recalls



6 Hofstede and Hofstede (2005, 89) connect this feature with the collectivistindividualist divide: the social shame-culture as opposed to the individualist guiltculture. 7 I thank my Intercultural communication students at Emerson College for pointing me to these scenes.

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Herr Doktor Müller mentioned above. In episode 16 from season 6, called The Kiss Hello, Jerry and George are walking down the street when they meet Elaine and her friend Wendy (Wendie Malick), who is a physical therapist. George asks Wendy for treatment for a sore arm. Later, Elaine scolds him for asking Wendy questions about her work outside her office. Finally, I mention episode 18 from season 3, called “The Boyfriend (2)”. After having been out one time with Jerry, Keith Hernandez calls Jerry and asks him to help him move some furniture. Jerry does not feel right about this since “he hardly knows the guy”. His face reads “Indecent Proposal” all over as he explains to Elaine that “this is a big step in a male relationship,… the biggest”. The sequence illustrates at once the specific nature of Jerry’s relationships: Keith Hernandez,–the Hispanic name suggests a G-type person?–, tried to cross a sub-section in Jerry’s specifically arranged life spaces: from going out in a public place into Keith’s apartment. All these scenes have in common that they not only poke fun using the specific-diffuse dimension, but that they ridicule behavior that sits at the diffuse end of the scale. Since the US scores high on the specific scale, that is probably the safest choice to make.

Other Cultural Dimensions As stated above, intercultural communication scholars have suggested several more cultural dimensions, some of which I can only briefly mention here. All refer to patterns of collective human behavior that have been studied at a societal (mostly country) level. It follows that they all suggest useful applications both at the level of screenwriters working in a multi-cultural environment, and at the level of an intercultural study of narrative. For example, Edward T. Hall’s (1976) distinction between high and low context cultures points to societies where a lot of previous knowledge is necessary before one can function in that society, as opposed to societies where little or no previous knowledge is needed. Besides the obvious relevance for people working abroad, the dimension suggests narrative-related questions with respect to the treatment of exposition or backstory: how much backstory is needed before the viewer can follow the narrative, and how does the narrator deal with it? Another cultural dimension is called the “Power Distance Index” (Hofstede 2001, 79). It measures to what degree a society tolerates unequally distributed power. The power distance index deals with questions such as how authority is coded in a production team, how a boss deals with her/his employees, how parents deal with their children, etc. The achievement versus ascription based status draws from the work of the American anthropologist Ralph

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Linton (see, e.g., Parsons 1951, 42) and refers to societies where people are valued for what they do versus for who they are. For example, the classical screenwriter’s rule that a protagonist must actively pursue her or his dramatic goal suggests achievement based status. The masculinity vs. femininity divide concerns what the concepts mean in a society and the division of roles between men and women in a society (see, e.g., Hofstede 2001, 279ff.). An obvious link emerges here with the existing gender studies. Cultural dimensions also deal with how people manage time and space. For example Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s (1998, 123ff.) discuss past, present and future oriented societies, what it means “to be on time” in one culture as opposed to another, and how this relates to the organization of work and life in general. Once again, applications for expat screenwriters as well as an intercultural study of narrative are obvious. Finally, with respect to the human interaction with space, I mention the distinction between inner and outer directed societies, which is based on Rotter’s (1966) distinction between the internal and external locus of control. This dimension points to societies where people are convinced that they control their environment as opposed to those societies where people are convinced that whatever happens in the world is beyond their control and that therefore, they must adapt to the world to the best of their abilities. Once more, the active or re-active protagonist springs to mind.

Conclusions It is impossible to fully discuss the possibilities and ramifications of crosscultural screenwriting in terms of cultural dimensions within one essay. Yet even a succinct presentation of the subject suggests that the cultural dimensions as studied in intercultural communication studies open up some promising new avenues for research. As indicated above, cultural dimensions could assist research into cross-cultural screenwriting as a professional practice: how standardized are professional procedures within and across countries and cultures? For example, (how) are screenwriters trained to work with the other members of the crew? The director, the producer, the DOP, the actors, colleague writers…? How do the aforementioned cultural dimensions observed at the country level intervene with various professional and other societal motivational value types when screenwriters work in a multi-national or multi-cultural environment? Needless to say, to understand the cultural features that enhance or inhibit cross-cultural screenwriting represents only half of the solution. The next step will consist in learning how to manage the

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observed cultural boundaries. New lines of research appear also regarding an intercultural study of narratives, even though some prior caveats are in order (see above). Since cultural dimensions refer to societal (mostly national) patterns, critics have pointed to potential problems when applying them to the study of individual behavior. These problems concern both the explanatory and predictive power of cultural dimensions at the level of individual behavior. Indeed, whereas cultural dimensions may emerge as one-dimensional, bipolar scales when applied to large numbers, i.e. at the societal level, individuals may display unpredictable behavior that combines the extremes of multiple cultural dimensions. Consequently, one should not a priori assume that the cultural dimensions expressed in one particular narrative would automatically coincide with the dominant values of its country of production or the region that it represents. Narratives that have involved a multi-national or multi-cultural production could be particularly interesting in this line of research. Screenwriters and storytellers more in general with an eye for marketing have been known to adapt their narratives to more dominant cultural models and Western market conditions, irrespective of their own cultural background. However cultural dimensions do allow researchers to recognize individual behavior or specific situations as tokens pertaining to or actualizing one or more types of value orientation. The film and TV examples discussed above suggest that, at times, one can ex post facto interpret a singular occurrence of narratorial and character behavior as the specific ad hoc actualization of an intermediate position on one or more bi-polar cultural dimensions. For example, when watching Bella (2006), the universalism-particularism divide allows one to recognize Manny’s behavior as universalist, Jose’s as particularist, and Nina’s life as being threatened first by universalism and then being saved by particularism. Another difference between a study of cultural dimensions at country level and a study of narratives in terms of cultural dimensions concerns the object of study: whereas the intercultural communication scholars study the interpretation (by thousands of subjects) of behavior represented in problem-scenarios, the (one!) narrative analyst studies the behavior represented in one narrative. A more equivalent analytical situation would require a study of the interpretation of thousands of real viewers interpreting behavior represented in (a sequence in) a narrative. This raises the question if and how one can compare research results across narrative analysts, or even replicate analyses. Even though this problem is not proper to a study of narratives in terms of cultural dimensions,–it

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characterizes all hermeneutic studies in art criticism, which involve qualifying labels that vary across critics–, that does not mean that it would not be interesting to design analytical tools that enable us to compare research results and replicate studies in a more efficient way. Once past the caveats, it is clear that an intercultural study of narratives in terms of cultural dimensions has yet to start. The expertise developed already in narrative studies could be helpful as well. Since cultural dimensions apply to human behavior, a cultural dimensions study of narratives could start with looking into various levels of narrative behavior. The above focused mostly on character behavior. In Cattrysse (2016), I take a closer look at an intercultural study of narratorial behavior. When considering narration as communication, narratologists discuss multiple participants (real authors, implied authors, narrators, narratees, 8 implied audiences, and real audiences) . One may thus expect narratorial behavior to be multi-layered. Whereas one type of questions may target the relationships between the cultural dimensions expressed in a text and those common in the culture of production (see above), another set of questions could enquire about the relationships that obtain between the textual cultural dimensions and those shared by a real audience. For example, research suggests that audiences (generally) empathize with characters who behave in ways that agree with their own moral thoughts 9 and beliefs . Would this imply that a narrative that conveys a particularist point of view, as opposed to a universalist one, has more chances to establish empathy with a particularist audience rather than a universalist one? If so, the cultural dimensions observed in singular sequences and narratives would not have the predictive power of the country level cultural dimensions observed in intercultural communication studies, but 10 the reconstruction of a textual endoxa in terms of cultural dimensions could justify expectations with respect to the chances of a particular audience,–to be specified in terms of cultural dimensions–, experiencing

 8

See, e.g., Chatman (1978, 146ff.); Rimmon-Khenan (1983, 86); Bordwell (1985, 62); Phelan (2005); Bordwell (2008, 121ff.); 9 See e.g. de Waal (2009, 221); Grodal (2009, 19); Cattrysse (2010, 92ff.); Morton (2011, 318). But see Keen (2007, 169), who contends that empathy is possible even when the character and the reader differ from each other in all sorts of practical and obvious ways. 10 The ‘endoxa’ is a Greek term suggested by Aristotle to refer to the dominant opinions, norms and values shared by a group of people in a specific time-space context.

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empathy or not on the basis of its sharing (or not) specific patterned value orientations. This line of research could represent yet another new avenue for future intercultural narrative studies.

References Bearden, William O., Bruce R. Money, and Jennifer L. Nevins. 2006. ‘Multidimensional versus Unidimensional Measures in Assessing National Culture Values: The Hofstede VSM 94 Example’. Journal of Business Research 59: 195–203. Bordwell, David. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. London, New York: Routledge. —. 2008. Poetics of Cinema. London: Routledge. Cattrysse, Patrick. 2010. ‘The Protagonist’s Dramatic Goals, Wants and Needs’. Journal of Screenwriting 1 (1): 83–97. —. 2016. ‘Cultural Dimensions and an Intercultural Study of Narratorial Behavior’. The Journal of Internationalization and Localization 3 (2): 113–32. Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. London: Cornell University Press. de Waal, Frans. 2009. The Age of Empathy. Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. New York: Harmony Books. Grodal, Torben. 2009. Embodied Visions. Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guneratne, Anthony R., and Wimal Dissanayake. 2003. Rethinking Third Cinema. 1 edition. New York: Routledge. Hall, Edward T. 1976. Beyond Culture. New York: Anchor Books Editions. Hofstede, Geert. 2001. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations across Nations (2nd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hofstede, Geert, and Gert Jan Hofstede. 2005a. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. —. 2005b. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Jandt, Fred E. 2007. An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Identities in a Global Community. London: Sage Publications. Keen, Suzanne. 2007. Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kluckhohn, Clyde K. 1967. ‘Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action: An Exploration in Definition and Classification’. In Toward a General Theory of Action, 388–433. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewin, Kurt. 1936. ‘Some Social-Psychological Differences Between the United States and Germany’. Journal of Personality 4 (4): 265–93. Liu, Shuang, Zala Volþiþ, and Cindy Gallois. 2015. Introducing Intercultural Communication. Global Cultures and Contexts. 2nd Edition. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. McSweeney, Brendan. 2002. ‘Hofstede’s Model of National Cultural Differences and Their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith - a Failure of Analysis’. Human Relations 55 (1): 89–118. Minkov, Michael, and Geert Hofstede. 2014. ‘Clustering of 316 European Regions on Measures of Values: Do Europe’s Countries Have National Cultures?’ Cross-Cultural Research 48 (2): 144–76. Morton, Adam. 2011. ‘Empathy for the Devil’. In Empathy. Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, 318–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press. Phelan, James. 2005. Living to Tell about It: A Rhetoric of Ethics and Character Narration. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. New Accents. London, New York: Methuen Publishing Ltd. Rotter, Julian B. 1966. ‘Generalized Expectations for Internal versus External Control of Reinforcement’. Psychological Monograph 609: 1–28. Schwartz, Sholom. 1994. ‘Beyond Individualism/Collectivism: New Cultural Dimensions of Values’. In Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method, and Applications, 85–119. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Trompenaars, Fons, and Charles Hampden-Turner. 1998. Riding the Waves of Culture. Understanding Cultural Diversity in Global Business. 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.

CHAPTER TWO ARISTOTLE’S NOTION OF POETIC VERISIMILITUDE AND TRANSCULTURAL SCREENWRITING1 CARMEN SOFIA BRENES

This chapter investigates the specific value of Aristotle’s formulation of the concept of verisimilitude in the process of writing and re-writing screenplays that may appeal to multicultural audiences. In particular, it explores poetic verisimilitude in its relation to the Aristotelian notion of habitus2. According to Aristotle, the story has a mythos that shapes the tragedy as a kathólou (Poetics, 1451b 63), that is, it provides rapid and essential unity (Lausberg 1966, 1:452) through the articulation of the elements in the story (characters, dialogue, music, mise-en-scène, etc.). Following García-Noblejas and Ricoeur, my hypothesis is that this articulation has the quality of poetical verisimilitude when the arrangement of the story elements is perceived as analogous to the structure of human action when the action is the result of habitus, that is, of the habitual dispositions of the subject that performs it (García-Noblejas 1982 and Ricoeur 1986). The notion of habitus can be contextualized in the distinction between “innate values” and “learned values” mentioned by Cattrysse in the first Chapter of this book. The former are “universal and part of human nature (e.g. fairness, justice)”, while “learned values” are those which “vary 1 This chapter has been funded by Universidad de los Andes (Chile), Fondo para la Ayuda a la Investigación, FAI. 2 I do not use the notion in the sense of P. Bourdieu (2005). The usefulness of his interpretation of the concept should be the object of another study. 3 I follow the standard numbering procedure to quote Aristotle’s works (Bekker numbering). Thus, Poetics, 1451b 6 refers to line 6, second column (b), page 1451 of Bekker’s edition.

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locally and are deemed the makeup of culture (e.g. speak for yourself vs. speak only when spoken to)” (Cfr. also Liu, Volcic, and Gallois 2010). The habitus are part of the innate values. The analogy between habitus and the story is better understood if we recall that Aristotle proposes that “reversal and recognition should arise from the intrinsic structure of the plot (mythos), so that what results follows by either necessity or verisimilitude” (Poetics, 1452a 20, in Halliwell 1987). According to Dorothea Frede, these two features–necessity and verisimilitude–are related to the peculiar “necessity” that characterizes human action: “The demand for a natural coherence of the parts of tragedy and the exclusion of chance is the demand of a natural coherence within the [human] actions” (Frede 1992). Summarizing Aristotle’s discussion of the interplay between character and action, Frede argues that “any decision is determined by the agent’s inner moral dispositions. Once a person has acquired his/her character, the disposition to choose a certain kind of mean between two extremes will be fixed”. Frede enables us to understand in a better way that “verisimilitude and necessity” in Aristotle’s Poetics imply a kind of action rooted in this “fixed attitude” or habitual disposition (habitus). An example may help to clarify the relevance of this approach for transcultural screenwriting. Let us focus on the case of wrath. In Rhetoric, Aristotle states that wrath is “an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without justification towards what concerns oneself or towards what concerns one’s friends” (Rhetoric 1378 a). The effects and manifestations of wrath may change from one culture to another, but according to Aristotle, who conceives of emotions as rooted in human nature, wrath is essentially part of a human being when confronted by a specific situation in which these conditions obtain. The double dimension of human habits, which are common to all human beings and different in their cultural manifestations, allows us to investigate the concept of habitus as a relevant tool to write and re-write transcultural screenplays. This chapter argues that poetic verisimilitude understood as the correlation between the plot and human actions, helps to give the characters coherence–something that is particularly relevant once the writer gets to the end of the first draft. In addition, it allows fine-tuning the resolution of the plot so that not only does it come as a surprise to the viewer, but it is

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also the logical outcome of the events narrated throughout the story. Lastly, it helps the writer find the internal unity of the story and thus, gain an insight into the theme being explored, which is related to the particular articulation of human actions suggested by the story. This chapter is divided into four parts. In the first part, there is an overview of how different screenwriting manuals understand verisimilitude, followed by a presentation of this concept in Aristotle’s Poetics in dialogue with the views of contemporary authors such as Tzvetan Todorov (1966) and Juan José García-Noblejas (1982). The second part studies the existing analogy between the configuration of the story and human action, with reference to a specific type of habitus, specifically, the social habitus or radical trends of sociability, which emerge in the subject when he enters into a relationship with others. This approach is interesting when we consider that the fictional worlds are constructed in line with the relations established between the characters. Aristotle talked about some of these habitus in the Nicomachean Ethics. Later on Thomas of Aquinas reworked them when he studied the habit of justice (Aquinas 2012, II–II, qq. 101-119). I shall follow the modern enunciation of social habits proposed by Polo (1991). By way of illustration, the third part studies the plot of the American Western The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) and the Polish drama Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013) in the light of the radical trends of sociability. As can be seen, this is an application of the hypothesis to reception theory. This change in viewpoint is possible because, according to Aristotle, the tenets of Poetics are applicable both to the creators and the spectators of dramas (Fossheim 2003, 84). This point of view helps to understand that the story resides not only in the written text but also in some of the dramaturgical elements that appear in the accomplished movie such as cinematography, soundtrack, editing or acting (Koivumäki 2016). Finally, the fourth part presents the conclusions of this study.

Approaches to Verisimilitude In Screenwriting Manuals In screenwriting manuals, verisimilitude is usually understood as the set of features that are incorporated into a story to make it become credible to the viewer. This characteristic demands that the fictional characters should act

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according to what might be expected of them given their traits. In this sense, Eugene Vale recommends that the screenwriter should probe into the psychology of the characters (1998). Verisimilitude is also understood as coherence with the target genre. Thus, Guy Gallo suggests that the screenwriter should define the genre s/he intends to work in before starting on the first draft (2012). A third way of understanding verisimilitude, very similar to the previous one, has to do with the importance of abiding by the internal laws of the worlds in which the characters move, as suggested by Xander Bennett (2011). Ultimately, other screenwriting manuals may at times use other terms such as coherence (Lee 2001), plausibility (Howard and Mabley 1993, Schellhardt 2008) or logic (McKee 1999). Christina Kallas and Linda Cowgill understand verisimilitude in relation to what they call “emotional structure” (Kallas 2010, 5, 15, 24), or “emotional pattern” (Cowgill 2008, 12). Kallas, for example, argues that the integrity of a story depends mainly on the fact that they should have an “emotional center”, which is “the heart and soul of the screenplay” (2010, 19). Writing a good story, says Kallas citing Seger consists in finding “the organic form the story needs” (Kallas 2010, 20). Kallas’ approach, much related to Carl Jung’s theories and the collective unconscious from which archetypes derive, refers to the existence of universals in men and women, regardless of time and place (see also Vogler 2007). As already mentioned, this study suggests that the habitus are part of such universals. Kallas also cites Gustav Freytag (1900) when she argues that in a good drama the changes in the characters and the plot “should seem plausible and logical at all times to the audience, even if they are surprised by unexpected turns in the plot” (2010, 19). This is why verisimilitude becomes visible by studying the transformation arcs of the characters and the resolutions of the plots, and therefore this shall be the procedure used for the analysis of the movies The Searchers and Ida.

Verisimilitude in Aristotle’s Poetics In Poetics, Aristotle uses the concept of verisimilitude in a way that differs from that of Rhetoric. In Rhetoric, verisimilitude is a tool meant to persuade. The orator, says Mark Chinca, is interested “in persuading an audience of a particular thing (which in fact may not be true) on a particular occasion” (1993, 87). Rhetorical verisimilitude provides an image of reality, which is the exclusive product of cultural conventions,

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the orator’s discourse and its effects on the audience. In contrast, in Poetics the concept of verisimilitude is associated with the notions of “universality, philosophical truth, and exemplarity” (Chinca 1993, 87, cf. also Frede 1992, 209). Thus, for Aristotle, “poetry is representation, which, following the principle of verisimilitude (to eikos), is able to transcend the particular (ta kath’ ekaston) and attain universally valid meanings (ta katholou). It is this universality that sets poetry apart from and above history (Poetics, 1451b)” (Chinca 1993, 87). This distinction is important because, as explained by Chinca, poetic verisimilitude is not bound to real time and space. García-Noblejas, following Eugene E. Ryan (1984), differentiates between persuasion and conviction in the following terms: persuasion is intended to elicit a given action by the addressee of the utterance, whereas conviction “is similarly oriented to making an action take place, albeit first exerting a direct influence on attitudes and systems of values, modifying or reinforcing them, so that from these, the addressees act freely in one way or another” (García-Noblejas 1998, 94). The inclusion of freedom at the receiving end of the message makes it possible to distinguish between a work with a rhetorical purpose, which imposes a type of response, and a poetic work, which proposes a vision, but remains open to the specific response of the viewer, thus initiating a dialogue between “two liberties, that of the text in movement across time, and that of the receiver” (Steiner 2010, 83), which is not possible to predict or measure. The dialogue established between work and viewer refers to the way in which the film depicts human life and the response that this representation evokes in the viewer’s personal way of understanding life. Having made these differences, the idea now is to arrive at a better understanding of the relationship between poetic verisimilitude and human action. In his Introduction to Poetics, Tzvetan Todorov holds that there are three basic interpretations of how verisimilitude has been understood. The first one refers to the “rules of the genre: for a work to be said to have verisimilitude, it must conform to these rules” (1981, 18). The second, more akin to the rhetorical tradition, understands that a work has verisimilitude when there is a relation “between discourse and what readers believe is true” (1981, 19). This second interpretation points to verisimilitude as something belonging in the realm of public opinion. The third stream of interpretation is what Todorov calls “the hypothesis of a generally literary thematics” (1981, 20). According to this view, literary

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works do not present themselves as “an open and disorderly series but as a structured set” (1981, 20). This structuring does not come from other works (as would be the case of the genre criterion) or from public opinion (i.e. from what the readers or spectators understand as true), but is the result of the relationship between the work and an organization external to literature which, in the words of Todorov, could be “the cycles of nature, or the structure of the human psyche, etc.” (1981, 20). It is interesting to note that this is not the only occasion in which Todorov points to a possible resolution for literary immanence (Todorov 1966 and García-Noblejas 1982, 58). Recently, Todorov has openly argued that the referent of literature is not only intertextual, but that its aim “is representing human existence” (2009, 95)4.

The Analogy between the Structure of the Story and the Structure of Human Life If we understand that verisimilitude refers to the existing relation between the structure of the poetic work and the structure of human life, it is pertinent to formulate this relation in terms of some of the approaches to the structure of the human psyche. Here, following García-Noblejas (1996), I would like to mention one, originating in classical anthropology: the radical trends of sociability5. As has been said, the first to address this issue was Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV. We will use Polo’s enunciation (1991), because this author notes that these tendencies are natural and therefore have a prejuridical character. The radical trends of sociability are: pietas, observantia, honor, obedientia, gratitudo, vindicatio, veritas, affabilitas, liberalitas. Piety (pietas) is the trend that moves us to venerate the origin of being, existence, and living. It includes the notion of God (in the sense of the 4

This third interpretation is shared by writers and scholars such as Flannery O’Connor (1970), Alasdair MacIntyre (2007), Wayne Booth (1983), Paul Ricoeur (1983), George Steiner (2010), Hannah Arendt (1993) and Fernando Inciarte (2004). 5 I might also have used part of the studies by psychologists P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen, which speak of seven primary emotions (2003), or those by J. A. Marina, about feelings (1999). I have chosen not to do so to keep the discourse at the philosophical level of Aristotle’s Poetics.

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Other, the Origin), our parents and our country. Dryden defines pietas as “the whole Duty of Man towards the Gods; towards his Country, and towards his Relations” (In Garrison 2010 Introduction). Observance (observantia) is the trend that moves us to respect legitimately constituted power. This is where communities come into the picture: the family, civil and religious communities etc. There is a difference in observance in the case of someone who holds legitimate power and in that of someone who exerts power for the exclusive sake of domination. Honor is the trend to venerate those who know: Kant speaks of a trend based on esteem. Obedience is the trend to respect a given norm, which is understood to be legitimate, and arises from the inclination to seek social harmony. In our contemporary culture, obedience is manifested as respect for what is politically correct. Gratitude is the trend that drives us to pay for whatever good may have been bestowed on us. Revenge (vindicatio) moves us to make someone pay for the evil received. It is a trend that often gets out of hand and is no longer fair (Polo 1991, 140). Veracity is the inclination to show oneself as one really is. Its opposite is mendacity, hypocrisy, simulation, etc. Affability is the trend to give what one is. This trend encompasses all forms of friendship and love. For Scheler, gentleness is the foundation of society. And finally, liberality, is the inclination to give what one has. Marcel Mauss believes that the ultimate foundation of social life is the natural trend to give (2002). Its opposites are avarice and squander. According to García-Noblejas, the nine radical trends of sociability can be understood as the DNA of stories (1996, 246–248). When the writer is engaged in rewriting the plot, these categories can be of use to adjust the characterization of the characters and the articulation of conflicts and resolutions (Brenes 2011). This is the approach developed, for example, by Russin and Downs in Screenplay: Writing the Picture (Russin and Downs 2003), and Iglesias in Writing for Emotional Impact (Iglesias 2011). When the author is looking for the internal coherence of the story or verisimilitude, these same categories, can shed light on the core thematic issue (Landau 2013), the so called “emotional center” (Kallas 2010, 19) of the story, or it’s “tonal consistency” (Dancyger and Rush 2007).

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The Peculiar Structuring of Life in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida (2013) Assumptions of the Analysis García-Noblejas understands the first reading or “first navigation” as the moment when the viewer enters the possible world hand in hand with the characters, and tends to identify with the protagonist. “It is an analytical navigation” (García-Noblejas 2004, 52), in which the viewer follows the plot. The second reading or “navigation” begins with the end of the story and the end of the film. This reading is not analytic but synthetic, and the viewer no longer identifies with the protagonist, but seeks identification with the dramatic and narrative “action”, that is, with the human action that the story represents. “With this ‘second navigation’ we (as people freely projected according to an ultimate reason) assess how well we fit into ‘the whole’ of that possible world, which is actually over, but may not have come to a clear end yet” (García-Noblejas 2004, 53). GarcíaNoblejas’ fit has to do with how every viewer matches the attitudes and value systems that the story as a whole proposes and his own understanding of the world and of the sense of his personal life (Weltanschauung). Todorov also understands this reading as the relation between the world suggested by the textíthe “world of the text” in the words of Paul Ricoeur (2008, 87)íand the reader’s worldview. “The purpose of literature is to represent human existence, but mankind also includes the author and his reader” (Todorov 2009, 95). This double level or reading applies to transcultural stories. The first reading involves an analysis that is closer to the structures of text and therefore, is of a technical nature, while the second reading refers to the relationship that can be established between the work as a whole and every single reader, who may be located in a different cultural context. If a story makes sense to readers from different cultures, it is because there is a common denominator between work and viewer. As mentioned before, this study proposes that the common point of encounter is that of habitus. In a play or film, the presence of habitus provides unity to the plot. In the spectator, habitus is present in their personal way of being and understanding of the world. Thus, the encounter between work and viewer is established in terms of a dialogue related to features which are inherent to human life (cf García-Noblejas 1982 and Steiner 2010).

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As previously noted, the poetic work does not impose a given vision or values. Instead, it resorts to a set of narrative rhetorical techniques to display a world that gets its coherence from some features of human action represented under the shape of habitus. A fictional world will be plausible to a given spectator if s/he can somehow recognize her or himself in that logic and engage in a dialogue with it, to either accept or reject that way of representing human action, or modify it, depending on her or his own experience. The spectator’s response may involve confrontation, suspicion or rejection, according to Ricoeur, due to the distance of “appropriation” existing between the poetic text and the spectator (1991, 42). The following section shall analyze John Ford’s film The Searchers and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, with a focus on the radical trends of sociability, especially, pietas.

The Emotional Center of The Searchers (1956) Before moving onto the analysis of The Searchers, a brief reminder of the plot may be necessary6. The story opens in Texas in 1868, two years after the end of the Civil War. Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a Confederate soldier of the South returns unexpectedly to the house of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy), who has married Martha (Dorothy Jordan). They have four children: Lucy (18), Debbie (11 or 12), Ben (7 or 8), and their adopted son Martin (a young adult aged 18 or so, who has Cherokee blood and was rescued by Ethan when he was abandoned as a baby). In the first sequence, we see Ethan’s arrival, which hints at the previous relationship between him and Martha. It is interesting to observe the way in which the characters are presented in the first sequence (every gesture and word makes future sense), the framing of the shots (for example, the importance of the porch, the interior-exterior relationship), the narrative dimension of the music that accompanies the actions, the relations between characters, etc. The most repeated line in the dialogue is “Welcome home, Ethan”. The first four minutes of the film already foreshadow the central issues around which the story will revolve. The morning after the arrival of Ethan, some local men come to ask for 6

The Searchers, directed by John Ford, is an adaptation written by Frank S. Nugent, of the novel of the same name written by Alan Le May. The plot is based on a true story: Indians kidnapped Cynthia Ann Parker in 1836 and her uncle, James Parker, sought her for eight years (Frankel 2013).

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help because some Comanche groups, led by Scar (Henry Brandon), have been attacking their ranches and cattle. Ethan goes after the Indians with them. However, the attacks have been a ploy to force them to leave their homes. While Ethan and the other men are away, Comanche Indians go to the Edwards’ house. They kill Aaron, Martha and little Ben, and kidnap Lucy and Debbie. This is the beginning of the long adventure in which Ethan and Martin (“the searchers”) try to rescue the girls. Lucy is murdered at some point, while Debbie becomes one of Scar’s women. Eventually, after seven years, Ethan and Martin find Scar. By the third act, they confront the Comanches and Martin kills Scar. Ethan finds Scar’s dead body and scalps him. This violent gesture and the chasing of Debbie contrasts with the tenderness with which he hugs her and softly says: “Let’s go home, Debbie”. This is the climax of the story. From then on, we head towards the denouement, which closes the main and secondary plots. Debbie returns home and Martin joins the daughter of the Jorgensen family –friends of theirs that welcome them back–while Mose Harper smiles his approval from his rocking chair. Ethan however, does not go into the house. After taking a look at everyone, now that peace has been restored, he turns his back and leaves, to the accompaniment of the sound track: A man will search his heart and soul Go searchin’ way out there His peace of mind he knows he’ll find But where, oh Lord, Lord where? Ride away, ride away, ride away

Once we understand the plot, the “second navigation” consists in revisiting the text to “check what personal reality lies in that fiction” (GarcíaNoblejas 2004, 54). This time, the referent of fiction is not related to the world in which the characters live but to the viewer’s personal life, or what we have called here, his own internal structure, to use Todorov’s term. According to García-Noblejas (2004, 53) this reading or “navigation” appears as a possibility once the spectator is halfway through the story. Before the resolution, in addition to following the adventures individually lived by the characters, the viewer is capable of apprehending the emotional center of the story and the articulation of the radical trends of

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sociability that account for the diegetic actions. In the case of The Searchers, the events escalate when Martin summarizes in a letter the five years of wandering in search of Debbie, which Laurie reads. The story presents the encounter of Ethan and Scar in the Comanche camp and Debbie’s reappearance as Scar’s wife. In the light of Ethan’s attempt to kill the girl, Martin changes: from being a child who does not know how to confront Ethan about what he thinks is unfair, he becomes a young man who is capable of opposing him when he sees he is about to commit an injustice. Debbie also changes, and from not forgiving Martin for not having come for her sooner, she agrees to return home with him. Finally, Ethan himself changes, and instead of killing Debbie, he unexpectedly hugs her and takes her back home. This game between the expected and the unexpected is the key to the ending of the story. In The Searchers, the end is configured from the features that were already present in the characterization of the characters and the transformation arc they experience throughout the whole story. In a first approach, these features are associated with the characters, as if they were persons; at the same time the spectator (and first of all, the writer, usually when in the rewriting phase) can find a relation between those same features but this time underpinned by the story as a unit or its “emotional center”. This leap from the particular (kath’ ekaston) to the universal (katholou) goes hand in hand with the change or development of the habitus that governs the world of fiction between the beginning and end of the action. This change results from the trends of sociability that are brought into play: from a world pervaded by impiety, revenge, anger and selfishness, we move to one where pity, forgiveness, compassion and the ability to give of oneself prevail. One meaning of The Searchers could be –and this is my personal interpretation of the aspects of human action that the film shows in its dramatic unity– the conjunction of these traits (pity, forgiveness, compassion, giving of oneself), which are made explicit in the phrases “Welcome home, Ethan”, “Let’s go home, Debbie”, and, by omission, in the last image of the film, in which a solitary, but less individualistic Ethan than at the beginning, turns back and goes away, leaving in us, the viewers an “improved” awareness of what being rootless entails. As can be seen, this plot combines several cultural aspects, such as the

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identification of the desert as the American cowboy’s own habitat, or aspects of racism typical of a particular type of sensitivity. Yet, at the same time it contains universal aspects such as pity, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, which can make the film be apprehended and appreciated by spectators from different cultures, so much so that it is considered a “classic” all over the world (Sarkar 2009, 35).

The Emotional Center of Ida Now, let us briefly address the film Ida, (2013), of the Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski. The plot is simple. Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a girl who has lived in a convent since she was a child. When she is around twenty years old, before taking her vows, she travels to meet Aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), her only relative. There she discovers that she is Jewish and that her parents were killed. She also gets to know about her aunt’s eventful life and meets a young man who plays in a jazz band. Her aunt commits suicide and Ida wants to experience something of what Wanda lived. After spending one night with the young man, she realizes that he has nothing to offer her in the future. Thus, she gets up from bed and dresses back into her nun habit. In the first act, the plot is driven by obedientia and pietas. The Mother Superior orders Ida to go to meet her aunt and she complies. After this, all the actions revolve around the true origin of the protagonist: she gets to know her parents through photographs and asks if she had siblings. Wanda answers sharply: “You are an only child”. The aunt looks tense and rises to change the music. We later learn that the child that appears in one of the photos was her son. Ida’s decision to visit her parents’ graves marks the beginning of the second act, which externally, turns the film into a road movie and internally, into a coming-of-age story. During the first half of the second act, without resigning her condition as a nun, Ida falls in with her aunt’s plans. In view of the difficulties to find the man who knew her parents and knows how they died, Wanda gets impatient. The story seems to have reached a dead end. However, at that moment, Ida’s personality emerges and she firmly gives an order to her aunt: “Come”. Now it is Ida that gives the orders and Wanda that obeys. For the first time we see this firm attitude in her. It is the midpoint. From this point on, the drama not only focuses on Ida in search of her roots, but also on Wanda, as she remembers her son, killed when he was a child. In the scene in which Wanda acknowledges her guilt, Ida acts with a

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strength not seen in her before: without speaking, she embraces Wanda and comforts her when she cries, then she tucks her in and watches over her sleep. This same relationship of authority over the aunt is shown when they go to see the place where Ida’s parents and Wanda’s son are buried. In the long shot that opens the sequence, the man guiding them walks in front and Ida walking with determination follows close. However, Wanda lags behind. On reaching the middle of the frame, Ida stops and waits for Wanda. This shows the change in the protagonist not only through the dialogue, but also through the way of shooting the action. This is what we meant when we said that the story is not only in the screenplay but also in the dramaturgy or dramatic representation. The dramatic moment of the encounter with their dead is accompanied by non-diegetic music. It is one of the few times that this takes place. In most of the film, the music comes from a diegetic source. Here we can see how music, like all the rest of the elements of the story, is at the service of the habitus that gives unity and thematic meaning to the movie: pietas. Ida and Wanda retrieve the respective remains of their parents and son and bury them in the family grave. Once this act of piety7 is done, Wanda takes Ida back to the convent. From this moment on, events move fast: Ida talks to the statue of Christ that we saw at the beginning of the film. She confesses she is “not ready” to take her vows and asks for forgiveness. Meanwhile, Wanda is living her last moments before killing herself by jumping off a window. Ida returns to her aunt’s apartment and gives in to the temptation of living Wanda’s life: she starts wearing her clothes, smoking her cigarettes and drinking her liquor. She finds the sax player and spends the night with him. In the final dialogue, Ida finds no satisfactory answer to the question of their future. The young musician can only offer her a dog, getting married, having children, buying a house and “the usual bore, life”.

7

As we know from Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, burying the dead is a very old manifestation of the habit of piety. In view of Creonte’s prohibition to bury Polynices, Antigone’s brother, she claims: “It was not Zeus who made that proclamation to me; nor was it Justice, who resides in the same house with the gods below the earth, who put in place for men such laws as yours. Nor did I think your proclamation so strong that you, a mortal, could overrule the laws of the gods, that are unwritten and unfailing. For these laws live not now or yesterday but always, and no one knows how long ago they appeared. And therefore I did not intend to pay the penalty among the gods for being frightened of the will of a man”. (Sophocles 2003, 73)

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It is of interest to pause at the moment of the character’s final recognition.8 This takes place in the last two sequences, which are the ones that mark the resolution of the story. Once Ida decides to return to the convent (although this is not explicitly shown on screen, we can infer it from the fact that she is wearing her nun’s habit), the shooting mode changes. Up to this point, the film has been shot with a static camera. In the last sequence, in which we see Ida resolutely walking towards the convent, for the first time the camera man uses a handheld camera. The second shot is particularly long. Roughly about the middle of the segment, the music that will accompany the final credits starts to play. It is Bach’s cantata “Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesus Christ” (I call to You, Lord Jesus Christ), whose words continue as follows: I beg You, hear my cries, Grant me mercy at this time, Do not let me despair.

Pawlikowski, who also co-authored the screenplay, highlights the soundtrack as a means to tell the story he wanted: “I would only put in bits of music that really had some kind of a charge” (in Lucca 2014). Although he does not explain why he used Bach’s cantata, it is clear that it is a prayer begging for help. It may be the help that Ida needs to do what she believes to be God’s will. Pawlikowski also sees a dramatic meaning, related to the sense of the story when he decides to change the shooting mode of the final sequence. “Only the last two shots in the film are moving shots. The penultimate one is a tracking shot íthe only tracking shot in the filmí and the last one is a handheld shot, which has something to do with the character’s new energy” (in Bloom 2014). These two changes are no longer strictly part of the story: Ida, the character, is not aware of them. However, they are a part of the narrative that reaches the viewers. And the film calls for a bigger than usual effort from them by asking them to infer the end of the story and what it means to them. Looking at the characters and their arc, the viewer of any culture can 8

“Recognition, as the very name shows, is a change from ignorance to knowledge” (Poetics, 1452a, 29-31).

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understand that Ida has opted for living her life as a nun rather than a possible life with the young man. On a more holistic or general approach, viewers from different cultures may interpret these actions differently. Some may understand that she is acting out of fear of an uncertain future; while others, perhaps closer to the Catholic faith, may assume that she has chosen something more transcending. In any case, in this second approach there is an element common to every culture, which is the surprise involved in seeing the dramatic and condensed representation (as a kathólou), of the awareness or recognition of who one is and what one wants to do in the future. This “anagnorisis”, as Aristotle calls this insight, is marked by a hopeful ending (as implied by the soundtrack of the film) and a movement towards home (pietas), which appears desirable and preferable to staying away. We believe that it is in these two features that narrative may produce meaning that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries and crosses cultural contexts. As has been seen, in both, The Searchers and Ida, there are elements in the plot, which are specific to a culture. At the same time, there are others, such as pietas, which have resonances in worlds as diverse as the American West and post-war Poland.

Conclusions Let us recapitulate the main ideas of this study. In Poetics, verisimilitude is understood in terms of the internal configuration of the story. In this respect, it is in line with many screenwriting manuals. However, there is more. Poetic verisimilitude refers to the object represented, to human action. In the words of García-Noblejas citing Lausberg, what the poet imitates (mimesis) in a condensed manner, is “human and extra-human reality” (García-Noblejas 1982, 218). Poetic verisimilitude is the feature that generates a point of encounter between the work and the viewer. In its internal dimension, poetic verisimilitude makes it possible to recognize the character and its twist by the end of the plot. In its external dimension, poetic verisimilitude is related to the ability of the work as a whole to show the arc of an attitude (habitus) through all the existing audiovisual resources, to make it possible for the viewer to frame a hypothesis about the vital action represented. In other words, while the viewer watches the plot with attention, and

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particularly when it reaches the end, s/he makes an assumption about the work as a sort of “kathólou representation” of a vital action that has its counterpart in their personal life. That contact between work and viewer results in a dialogue that can at times surprise the viewer. Thus, we can say that this type of recognition, which is the recognition of human actions, implies a greater knowledge (or a deeper knowledge) of the freedom to act well or ill and its consequences. However, this moral assessment is not something imposed by the film, but suggested through the credible articulation of human actions in the plot. To sum up, from the viewpoint of screenwriters, an increase in poetic verisimilitude can help them fine-tune the characters’ transformation arcs because this requires looking for causality relations in their actions. It can also be of help to make a decision about the end of the story as writers have to state explicitly íat least to themselvesí the consequences that their characters’ actions will have, in terms of what the story understands by happiness or unhappiness. As for active viewers, poetic verisimilitudeíunderstood in terms of the emotional coherence of the charactersí will enable them to make a hypothesis about the human actions represented by the story. And it is with this condensation of action, that viewers engage in a dialogue that can go through friendly or combative stages, depending on the consistency of the work and their own degree of awareness. Thus, Aristotle’s notion of verisimilitude, understood as an analogy between the structure of the story and the structure of human life, sheds light on the writing and rewriting of a script. If, as we have seen with pietas, some habitus are universal, verisimilitude maybe can also shed light on the difficult process of creating transcultural stories.

References Aquinas, Thomas. 2012. Summa Theologiae. Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute. Arendt, Hannah. 1993. La condición humana. Barcelona: Paidós. Aristóteles. 2005. Arte poética. Arte retórica. Translated by José Goya y Muniain and Francisco de P. Samaranch. México: Porrúa. Bennett, Xander. 2011. Screenwriting Tips, You Hack: 150 Practical Pointers for Becoming a Better Screenwriter. Oxford: Focal Press. Bloom, Livia. 2014. “Courage of Conviction: A Conversation with Ida Director Pawel Pawlikowski”. Filmmaker Magazine. May 5.

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http://filmmakermagazine.com/85840-ida/ (Accessed: 3 June 2016). Booth, Wayne C. 1983. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. “Postface to Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Artchitecture and Scholasticism”. In The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory, by Bruce Holsinger, 221–42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brenes, Carmen Sofia. 2011. “The Practical Value of Theory: Teaching Aristotle’s Poetics to Screenwriters”. Communication and Society XXIV (1): 101–118. Cattrysse, Patrick. 2017. “Cultural Dimensions and an Intercultural Study of Screenwriting”, 8-27. In Transcultural Screenwriting. Telling Stories for a Global World, edited by Carmen Sofia Brenes, Patrick Cattrysse, and Margaret McVeigh. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Chinca, Mark. 1993. History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s Tristan. London: MHRA. Cowgill, Linda J. 2008. The Art of Plotting: How to Add Emotion, Excitement, and Depth to Your Writing. New York: Back Stage Books. Ekman, Paul, and Wallace V Friesen. 2003. Unmasking the Face. Cambridge, MA: Malor Books. Fossheim, Hallvard. 2003. “Mimesis in Aristotle’s Ethics”. In Making Sense of Aristotle. Essays in Poetics, edited by Øivind Andersen and Jon Haarberg, 73–86. London: Duckworth. Frankel, Glenn. 2013. The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend. New York: Bloomsbury. Frede, Dorothea. 1992. “Necessity, Chance, and ‘What Happens for the Most Part’ in Aristotle’s Poetics”. In Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, 197–219. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gallo, Guy. 2012. The Screenwriter’s Compass: Character as True North. Boston: Focal Press. García-Noblejas, Juan José. 1982. Poética del texto audiovisual. Introducción al discurso narrativo de la imagen. Pamplona: Eunsa. —. 1996. Comunicación y mundos posibles. Pamplona: Eunsa. —. 1998. Medios de conspiración social. Pamplona: Eunsa. —. 2004. “Resquicios de trascendencia en el cine. ‘Pactos de lectura’ y ‘segundas navegaciones’ en las películas”. In Poetica & Cristianesimo, edited by Rafael Jiménez Cataño and Juan José García-Noblejas, 2970. Roma: Edusc. Garrison, James D. 2010. Pietas from Vergil to Dryden. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press.

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Halliwell, Stephen. 1987. The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentry. London: Duckworth. Howard, David, and Edward Mabley. 1993. The Tools of Screenwriting: A Writer’s Guide to the Craft and Elements of a Screenplay. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Ida. 2013. Wr: Pawlikowski, Pawel and Lenkiewicz, Rebecca. Dir: Pawlikowski. Opus Film, Phoenix Film Investments. Iglesias, Karl. 2011. Writing for Emotional Impactࣟ: Advanced Dramatic Techniques to Attract, Engage, and Fascinate the Reader from Beginning to End. Livermore, California: WingSpan Press. Inciarte, Fernando. 2004. Imágenes, palabras, signos. Sobre arte y filosofía. Pamplona: Eunsa. Kallas, Christina. 2010. Creative Screenwriting: Understanding Emotional Structure. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Koivumäki, Marja-Riitta. 2016. Dramaturgical Approach in Cinema. Elements of Poetic Dramaturgy in A. Tarkovsky’s Films. Helsinki: Aalto University Publication Series. Lausberg, Heinrich. 1966. Manual de retórica literaria. Vol. 1. Madrid: Gredos. Lee, Lance. 2001. A Poetics for Screenwriters. Austin: University of Texas Press. Liu, Shuang, Zala Volcic, and Cindy Gallois. 2010. Introducing Intercultural Communication: Global Cultures and Contexts. London: Sage. Lucca, Violet. 2014. “Interview: Pawel Pawlikowski”. Film Comment. April 29. http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-pawelpawlikowski/ (Accessed: 3 June 2016). MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition. 3rd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Marina, José Antonio, and Marisa López Penas. 1999. Diccionario de los sentimientos. Barcelona: Anagrama. Mauss, Marcel. 2002. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London and New York: Routledge. McKee, Robert. 1999. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. London: Methuen. O’Connor, Flannery. 1970. Mystery and Manners. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Polo, Leonardo. 1991. Quién es el hombre. Madrid: Rialp. Ricoeur, Paul. 1983. Temps et Récit I. Paris: Seuil. —. 1986. Du texte à l’action. Essais d’herméneutique II. Paris: Seuil. —. 1991. “Autocomprensión e historia”. In Paul Ricoeur. Los caminos de

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la interpretación, edited by Tomás Calvo Martínez and Remedios Avila Crespo, 26-42. Barcelona: Anthropos. —. 2008. Hermenéutica y acción. De la hermenéutica del texto a la hermenéutica de la acción. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Russin, Robin U., and William Missouri Downs. 2003. Screenplay: Writing the Picture. Beverly Hills, CA: Silman-James Press. Ryan, Eugene E. 1984. Aristotle’s Theory of Rhetorical Argumentation. Montréal: Bellarmin. Sarkar, Bhaskar. 2009. “Tracking ‘Global Media’ in the Outposts of Globalization”. In World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, edited by Nataša Durovicová and Kathleen E. Newman, 34–58. New York and London: Routledge. Schellhardt, Laura. 2008. Screenwriting For Dummies®. Hoboken, N.J: For Dummies. Sophocles. 2003. Antigone. Translated by Reginald Gibbons and Gibbons Segal. Kindle Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. Steiner, George. 2010. Real Presences. London: Faber and Faber. The Searchers. (1956). Wr: Nugent, Frank S. Dir: Ford, John. Warner Bros and C.V. Whitney Pictures. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1966. “Les Catégories du Récit Littéraire”. Communications 8 (1): 125–51. doi:10.3406/comm.1966.1120. —. 1981. Introduction to Poetics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. —. 2009. La literatura en peligro. Translated by Noemí Sobregués. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores. Vale, Eugene. 1998. Vale’s Technique of Screen and Television Writing. Rev Sub. Boston: Focal Press. Vogler, Christopher. 1998. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Studio City CA: Michael Wiese Productions.

CHAPTER THREE SCREENWRITING SANS FRONTIÈRES: THE WRITING OF THE TRANSNATIONAL FILM AND THE KEY FACTORS IMPACTING ON THE CREATION OF STORY IN THE FILM CO-PRODUCTION SCENARIO MARGARET MCVEIGH

Telling Stories across Cultures and Film Co-productions A film co-production is a production between a number of international partners and its aim, as a recent Screen Australia report notes, is to “provide a means to produce content of a quality and scale to compete in the international marketplace” (2012, 3). The benefits of a co-production include shared production costs, wider distribution channels in multiple markets, the ability to draw upon a wider talent pool, and the potential to form long-term international creative collaborations. These international creative collaborations in a film co-production are the focus of this chapter. In particular, it considers issues that may arise when screenwriters from different cultures collaborate to write transnational screenplays that aim to connect with global audiences. The chapter draws upon theory from a number of arenas, including studies of the impact of culture on business and management; screenwriting craft theory; transnational film theory; and pedagogical theories of internationalisation. It concludes with the study of two Australian-Asian film co-productions.

Culture, Creation and Co-production But first, what is culture and how may we consider how different cultural origins and perspectives shape what we create? Film theorists such as Lina

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Khatib (2012) have considered questions of how the culture of origin shapes the filmic stories we tell; researchers such as Halle (2010) have considered the narrative scenarios of films produced in the European Union in the context of global art cinema and the film industry; and researchers Hoskins, McFadyen, Finn, and Jackel (1997) have considered the impact of culture on collaboration in film co-productions. However, there is little research on the collaborative process of writing a script for a film co-production. In Riding the Waves of Culture, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner provide Hofstede's useful definition of culture as “the means by which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about attitudes towards life. Culture is the fabric of meaning which human beings use to interpret their experience and guide their action” (quoted in Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 1998, 24). Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner scrutinise how cultural differences impact the processes of business and management and provide a conception of culture that may be applied to collaborative screenwriting wherein it is conceived of as having a number of layers, like an onion. The outer layer of culture comprises the explicit products that are observable in reality; for example, “language, food, buildings, houses, monuments, agriculture, shrines, markets, fashions and art”, which are “symbolic of a deeper level of culture” (1998, 21). According to Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, these explicit layers of culture reflect deeper cultural layers which can be seen as the norms and values of individual groups. Norms are encoded in laws and informal forms of control, “What is right and wrong”, and values are related to the ideals regarding what is “good and bad” shared by the group (1998, 22). These component layers, Trompenaars and HampdenTurner assert, develop the shared meanings that comprise the core of a culture and cause groups to “interpret things in particular ways, but are also open to change if more effective ‘solutions’ to problems of survival are desired by the group” (1998, 27). They also assert that “all cultures are similar in the dilemmas they confront, yet different in the solutions they find” (1998, 27), and while the authors recognise that all people within a culture do not “have identical sets of artifacts, norms, values and assumptions”, they note that “cultures can be distinguished from each other by the differences in shared meanings they expect and attribute to their environment” (1998, 24). If one is to extend Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s conception of culture as it impacts the stories and processes of screenwriting in a coproduction, one may investigate the influential factors of culture on two

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levels. The first is in terms of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s “outer layer”, which considers factors such as tradition and art, which are influential in shaping the form of a filmic story; and the second is in terms of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s “inner layer”, which considers how individuals belonging to a certain culture act, based on shared norms and values, and how this influences their processes in screenwriting collaborations. Also of use to the study of screenwriting for a global world, are the craftbased elements of the production of a cinematic story and how these elements are created to reach and “connect” with audiences across cultures. We must be mindful that a cinematic story is an exchange between peoples—whether they come from Asia, Europe, or Australia. It must address universal themes that people from all parts of the globe may relate to (Dancyger 2001, 218). If films are to reach international audiences, their forms and stories need to be comprehensible across languages and cultures. To use a term from transnational film theory, they must tell a “transcultural” story—one that reaches across borders and “connects” with cultures around the globe, for film, in its “transcultural properties, may have a particular capacity to represent continuities across apparently radically dissimilar global settings” (MacDougall 1998, 261).

The Search for the Transnational Story: Transnational Film Theory and Finding the Global in the Local Transnational film theories are useful in an examination of filmic storytelling as they investigate the continuities between the local and the “global” and they enable us “to better understand the changing ways in which the contemporary world is being imagined by an increasing number of filmmakers” (Ezra and Rowden in Yeates, McVeigh, and Van Hemert 2011, 82). In particular, they focus on what “connects” peoples from across the globe rather than what divides them. Two main themes underpin transnational film theories: globalisation and intercultural competence. Globalisation is “those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society, a global society” (Leask 2008, 10). Recent transnational theories of film highlight perspectives that are useful to frame research into the telling of stories for a global market. In particular, they lead to the interrogation of key terms used in the area. According to Gesche and Makeham, the focus of intercultural studies is on aspects of difference and it seeks to “understand,

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respect and accept the “other”. Terms such as “international”, “multicultural”, “intercultural” and “crosscultural”, tend to assume that one’s own cultural orientations remain unchanged, whereas the study of “transculturality” relates to “commonalities and connections, without intending to homogenise cultures or establish monocultures” (Gesche and Makeham 2008, 243). Applying such an understanding to film aligns with the notion of intercultural competency as theorised in the pedagogies of internationalisation, where intercultural competencies are the key indicators of the “internationalised” student and include: “the attributes of openness, the recognition of difference and diversity, the ability to access intercultural performance, effective participation collaboration across cultures and identifying cultural differences” (Yeates et al. 2011, 76-77). Contemporary transnational or transcultural film theorists have tended to focus on both the “micro” and “macro” dimensions of the field, investigating the forces that link films, filmmakers, audiences, and film industries across nations and borders in transnational films. They “are not so concerned about the ‘national’ lurking within the term ‘transnational’, they further define transnational cinema itself as that which ‘transcends the national as autonomous cultural particularity while respecting it as a powerful symbolic force’” (Ezra and Rowden in Yeates et al., 80). In order to translate these film theory ideas into scriptwriting terminology—i.e., “to find the global in the local”—the “micro” may be read as the local and the “macro” as the universal. This leads to the key storytelling conceit of finding the universal in the local. In other words, a story that may appear to be inherently local in its location, characters and storyline may have universal meanings that can be understood by peoples from around the world. But finding universality and maintaining the local is both a blessing and a challenge. While a film may tell a local story, the scriptwriter must be mindful of creating universal themes that connect to international audiences. In the search for how to find the universal in the local and to tell transnational stories, the long and deep tradition of relevant cinema theories—including National Cinema, World Cinema, and Transnational Cinema—provides a useful start to canvas the story scenarios and themes that have characterised different cinemas from around the world. It provides a rich and diverse body of academic research, which traces the types of stories that have been categorised as being “particular” to a certain country. In the National Cinema context, films and film stories are defined both by country of origin and by factors including cultural and

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critical discourses (Higson 1989; Crofts 2000). In the critical/historical context of postcolonialism, film stories are defined by how they address the legacy of colonisation as it has affected the culture of the colonised and cultural diasporas (Burton-Carvajal 2000). In the auteur model of Second Cinema, national cinemas and their filmic stories are marketed and discussed by way of the work of an auteur; for example, France and Jean Luc Godard or Spain and Pedro Almodovar. These stories are considered via their unique auteurist traits and themes that are representative of a certain type of National Cinema (Stam 2000). In Third Cinema Theory, the revolutionary voice and aesthetics of Third Cinema are the most important aspects of the filmic story, as conceptualised in the cinemas of South America and Latin American countries such as Cuba (Solanas and Getino [1969] 1983; Stam 2000; Dissanayake 2000). By contrast, the emerging fields of transculturalism and transnationalism (Ezra and Rowden 2006; Yeates et al. 2011) are less concerned about film stories being representative of a particular country but rather representative of issues and themes that may be regarded as transnational. As Yeates et al. contend, the legacy of the national cinema’s theory of international cinema has impacted storytelling by creating a: [d]isregard for local specificity, particularly in the theorising by First Cinema film critics, (which) led not only to a homogenisation of Third Cinema as a whole, but also to preconceived ideas about the expected content of such films. Recognition of a need for a fluid definition of Third Cinema theory feeds into more contemporary debates that argue for a shift toward a more heterogeneous identification of individual filmmakers, under the rubric of transnational cinema. Thus, transnational cinema theory directs the focus away from clearly delineated national cinemas toward a more expansive system of cinema, in which locally specific stories can cross national borders, and distinct national cinemas become increasingly hard to grasp and define (2011, 80-81).

If one is mindful of the development of Transnational Cinema theory and applies it to screenwriting theory, the question becomes: “How do screenwriters write stories that are both locally specific, yet can travel across international borders?” In screenwriting theory, little has been written about the process of screenwriting for a global world. In his chapter “The Search for the Global Tale” in Global Scriptwriting, Ken Dancyger suggests that filmmakers should choose universal themes as subject matter. He posits that “there are basic universal elements that transcend national boundaries: relationships, the individual in society, the influence of politics on the individual, and the

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family” (Dancyger 2001, 218). For example, Dancyger notes that Clara Law’s This Floating Life (1997), a fish-out-of-water story about a Hong Kong Chinese family who come to live in Australia as migrants, the universal story element is the family as being “a source of strength” (Dancyger 2001, 221). So how does a screenwriter know what story scenarios in co-productions have been successful in crossing borders given that a story may be specific to a particular landscape and culture? How can the screenwriter interrogate Dancyger’s basic universal elements of storytelling? To consider how these elements of story have been utilised in co-productions, the long history of film co-productions in the European Union will be briefly outlined below.

Co-productions and Transnational Storytelling: Cross-cultural Narrative Scenarios in European Union Co-productions The challenge of telling universal stories as well as making sure that cultural sensitivities are addressed has been a part of filmmaking in the European Union (EU) since 1989. The nature and form of film production in Europe has been transformed by the MEDIA Program of the EU and the Eurimages Program of the Council of Europe, which have focussed on funding co-productions to support “works which reflect the multiple facets of a European society whose common roots are evidence of a single culture” (Halle 2010, 304). Randall Halle’s identification of a number of story scenarios that have emerged out of the EU’s co-production history is useful to a discussion of narrative co-production scenarios in an Asia Pacific context, which will be considered as case studies in the next section of this chapter. Halle’s narrative scenarios are categorised under four broad headings and may also be discussed via the script elements of landscape, setting, character, and theme. The first narrative scenario relates to European co-productions developed as a means of addressing the imperatives of the co-production agreement. These productions rely upon English as the main language, the star power of the actors, a location choice, or a transcultural “universality” represented by an actor, such as Charlotte Gainsborg (British-French) who plays the title role in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (Zeffirelli 1996). They often result in bland stories that exhibit a “cultural mishmash” of ideas, and are termed “Europuddings”, which work against the interests of a

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successful transnational scenario (Halle 2010, 307–8). The second story scenario is one that employs a transnational narrative but with an underlying strategy of cultural essentialism in a story about cultural contact. These scenarios provide a means of cultures connecting by providing the opportunity for different cultures to be represented in the persona of the lead character in a particular genre—for example, romance, thriller, adventure, epic, road movie, coming-of-age, or travelogue. Halle suggests that these risk the representatives of the culture becoming stereotyped, while the narrative seeks to directly represent a quasi-national situation, such as in a holiday scenario where characters often represent national stereotypes (Halle 2010, 307–8). For example, the narrative scenario of The Spanish Apartment (Klapisch 2001) includes a nerdish French student who finds himself sharing a Spanish apartment with six other students, with unfolding cross-cultural consequences. The third narrative scenario is a more character-based film, whereby the key character who may or may not be living in their home culture unveils their “universality” through the course of the film. According to Halle, this quasi-national approach situates a key character, represented as a transnational, quasi-disguised as a national product. For example, while Breaking the Waves (1996) exhibits the ethnic national correspondence between the actor and the character they are playing—for example, the English lead actress Emily Watson plays the role of Scottish protagonist Bess McNeill, and the Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård plays her Swedish husband—it is not a film about cultural contact as such (Halle 2010, 307– 8). Halle’s final category conceives of narrative scenario as overtly cultural or social commentary on the culture of focus. He considers it overtly Orientalist in its approach. Halle posits that the Euromed program dynamic of Orientalism supports the production of stories about other people and places, Halle suggests, “the funding source wants to hear”. For example, Journey to the Sun (Ustaoglu 1999) considers the very real plight of violent suppression of the Kurdish population in Turkey in the 1980s and speaks to the international audience regarding this oppression. However, Halle postulates that under this condition of filmmaking, whenever there is an intercultural distance and dialogue configured in the films, it generally takes place as a bridge of communication between two essentially different cultures (Halle 2010, 316).

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Therefore, Halle warns that co-production funding comes at a price and often creates the dynamics of “Orientalism”—dynamics that may be considered and avoided in an evolved transnational film co-production scenario (Halle 2010, 317). Given the lessons of the EU that “the transcultural film evidences the vicissitudes of its funding through its production decisions [and] may wind up outweighing the particulars of the script and its cultural setting” (Halle 2010, 307), how could screenwriters contemplate writing a story that will work across cultures in the Asian context?

Transcultural Storytelling and the Cross-cultural Story: Australia and Asia Co-productions are particularly important for the survival of the Australian film industry and have been increasing with Asia neighbours such as China where the market is expanding rapidly, with the “theatrical box office doubling nearly every two years” (Walsh 2012, 304). Australian film co-productions commenced in 1986 and since then, over 132 coproductions have been made, with the longest-running agreements being between France, UK, and Canada and the most recent being between China (2006), Singapore (2007), South Africa (2010) (Screen Australia 2012, 13) and Korea (2014). But while Australia is viewed as an important partner by countries such as China, South Korea and Malaysia, there are challenges as well as benefits in working with partners across cultures (Dalton 2012). Recognising the importance of the script in the coproduction scenario, Screen Australia notes “the patterns of Australia’s coproduction activity with partner countries are affected by several factors, including the availability of suitable stories and partner producers” (Screen Australia 2012, 13). If we are to consider the narrative scenarios of official Australian co-productions with Asia, the most popular scenario involves “narratives of cultural contact between citizens or countries”. To avoid the pitfalls described in the “Europudding” situation (Halle 2010), a focus in script development on universal storytelling themes is an essential factor of the story. While not official co-productions, the films The Waiting City (McCarthy 2010) and Wish You Were Here (Darcy-Smith 2012) are both about Australians who gain universal insights when they travel to another country and culture. The Waiting City is a relationship drama (Dancyger’s relationship universal story trope) involving a young Australian couple

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who are polar opposites in character—she is a successful lawyer and he a laid-back musician—who go to Kolkata to adopt an Indian baby. During the long and unsuccessful waiting period reflective of the pace and philosophy of Indian life, they rediscover the importance of their relationship. Wish You Were Here is a mystery film about a holiday gone wrong. Two Australian couples, a husband and wife and her sister and boyfriend, holiday in Cambodia and return to Australia amidst deadly circumstances, which cause the tragic unravelling of their lives and reveal to them the true value of family relationships—again a universal family story trope identified by Dancyger (2001, 218).

Transcultural Screenwriting: Case Studies Elements of the Transnational Story: Story, Concept, and Culture The following sections of this chapter consider case studies of two Australian-Asian co-productions in light of the theories of transnational storytelling and the narrative scenarios of European co-productions examined above. They will be discussed at two levels; firstly, in terms of the key elements of storytelling, including character, story, genre, theme and setting; and secondly, in terms of the processes of collaboration during the script development process, with findings reflected upon via the lens of internationalisation. The first case study examines in some detail the initial stages of an unofficial Australian-Korean co-production and canvasses some of the issues that might arise when writing a script from two very different cultural standpoints. It investigates the writing of a screenplay by emerging Australian screenwriters for a feature to be directed by emerging Korean directors. During this study, the proposed co-production included the writing of two different scripts by two different writers. Initially, collaborators met and pitched ideas to each other, with the first script selected being a fairly well-developed concept. For the purposes of this study, this script is given the working title Story A, and was written by Writer One, an Australian. This script was put on hold during this study and a second first-draft script was developed for a different story. Also for the purposes of this study, it is given the working title Story B, and was written by Writer Two, also Australian. The collaborative script development process involved a loop of brainstorming, writing, and feedback with writers, directors and producers from both Korea and Australia. In the case of the second script, the pitching and drafting

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process was supervised by an international script editor. For both scripts, the Australian writers wrote iterations of the script that were sent to the Korean directors for script notes. The process was facilitated by two translators; initially, a Korean translator who spoke English and Korean, and then a Korean translator who spoke both languages but was also a filmmaker. While Australia and Korea are global partners on a number of levels, with the Australia Korea Free Trade Agreement enacted on 12 December 2014 (Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2014) and with it Annex B: The Australia Korea Co-Production Agreement (Screen Australia 2014), there have been no official co-productions to date and both countries are quite different in terms of geography, history, native language, and culture. The second case study is offered as a contrast and considers the official Australia-China feature film co-production 33 Postcards (2011) written, directed, and produced by Chinese-Australian Pauline Chan. It is the second film to be completed under the 2008 Australia-China CoProduction Treaty. 33 Postcards tells the story of an Australian criminal, Dean, played by star Australian actor Guy Pearce, who sponsors and sends postcards to a sixteen-year-old Chinese orphan, Mei Mei. When Mei Mei makes her way to Australia to see her sponsor, she discovers that he is in jail serving time for manslaughter. It is a story of human redemption and the building of relationships and family. When Mei Mei inadvertently becomes involved with a criminal gang, Dean risks everything to rescue her and becomes, in her eyes, the father she has always dreamed of.

Story and Theme The script for the Australia-Korea unofficial co-production Story A was an Australian story set in the outback during the time when the country was being charted by European explorers. The genesis of this script contained a cross-cultural group of characters—the expedition crew are from Germany, Russia, Ireland, and Korea—which Halle has suggested in European co-productions as one way of satisfying co-production requirements but it may also pose problems. As Peng and Keane note in co-productions with China, Placing characters from different cultural hemispheres in the narrative is fraught with challenges. What producers like to call “co-development” inevitably entails compromise and simplification of cultural meanings.

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Problems arise when putting Western characters in Chinese narratives. The scriptwriters have to come up with a story that is realistic, and this often entails narratives such as Westerners looking for lost treasures amongst buried ruins, which whilst appealing to non-Chinese audiences, is unlikely to garner great excitement among Chinese domestic audiences (Peng and Keane 2015).

However, this fledgling co-production still brought together two very different cultures who wanted to tell a story together. Writer One pitched the universal theme of Story A, which appealed to both collaborators: The theme of human desire is universal. The universal themes and the idea of exploring a new land really were attractive to all three countries ... the main focus of human desire and how far one is willing to go to succeed in their desires, that’s such a fundamental universal theme that it’s been able to translate through the script (Writer One, interview with the author, 15 April 2015).

On the other hand, Pauline Chan’s successful collaboration 33 Postcards recognised and embraced cultural difference while addressing the universal theme of family. Chan set out to make a film that was “many voiced”, seeking a balance between its Australian and Chinese elements. Chan commenced with a very strong premise: The film has been inspired by real life stories. They provided the shape of the key characters, whose paths were interwoven to explore the main themes of family connections, self-redemption and growth. Through telling their stories, I wanted to show that hopes and dreams can possibly become a reality... By Mei Mei turning up and shattering the illusion, both their dreams, and ultimately their lives, are turned upside down. Through their two worlds colliding, I wanted to emphasize the vast cultural and personal disconnection experienced by the two key characters (Chan 2012).

Genre, Character, and Story Structure The role of genre as a means for stories to travel across borders globally is of narrative and cultural significance (Walsh 2012). For example, Dancyger aligns certain national cinemas with certain genres. He suggests that “in order to speak to and reach their national audiences, national cinemas have favoured particular genres” (Dancyger 2001, 197). While Dancyger’s Global Scriptwriting explores the overall story or genre of specific case studies, he does not set out to discuss transnational narrative scenarios beyond stating that certain countries may be broadly categorised by a “national model” (Dancyger 2001, 126). For example, Dancyger

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aligns the US with Western and gangster films, which explore national mythologies, and Germany with melodrama and science fiction/horror, which explore the contemporary and the past, respectively (Dancyger 2001, 197). Dancyger’s argument is that storytelling tropes and genres can be understood by all nations: for example, that melodrama is recognisable by all as a fundamental element of storytelling; that docudrama’s political undertones and hyper drama’s moralistic undertones can be understood by all; and that experimental film is primarily visual and therefore transcends language (Dancyger 2001, 197–98). In the case studies under discussion in this chapter, genre played an important role as the impetus for the stories. In Story A, the epic genre suited an exploration of the travails of a group of men exploring an unknown continent. But story structure was a challenge. While Writer One was not necessarily wedded to the classic three-act or indeed four-act structure, the Korean collaborators wanted an episodic story structure, which Writer One termed “seven chapters”. In addition, the Australian producers were looking for a character arc for the main characters, whereas the Korean partners were wanting to focus on episodic events (Writer One, interview with the author, 15 April 2015). While the epic genre and an episodic structure became the agreed story structure for Story A, when this script was placed on hold, a second writer was attached and used a different genre as the starting point for Story B: “Genre” is another thing. When I was brought into the project at the last minute, it was well known that I was a horror writer. This was the first time I knew everyone was not on the same page. Nobody wanted to make a horror film ... I thought this could be a great fit, especially for our budget. But everyone else wanted to make a drama. I ended up writing a tragic comedy (Writer Two, e-mail to the author, 12 December 2015).

There was also a misalignment of expectations on the role of character and story on both sides, particularly the role of the hero in the “Hero’s Journey” story structure: I set out to make a traditional ‘Hero’s Journey’ structure... This was a big issue with the Koreans who don’t get this style of hero. They only understand ‘event’ based story structure... They could not get their heads around the fact that my story was full of huge events that shape the character based on his reactions to them. I wanted the character to have an arc. They were not interested in the character changing at all... They thought this was cliched. ‘In real life people don’t change’, was their response (Writer Two, e-mail to the author, 12 December 2015).

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By contrast, the script for 33 Postcards developed organically, with a focus on character development and theme. The script for 33 Postcards did not begin as a story tailored to the needs of both Chinese and Australian audiences. When director and then writer Chan first read the script Mei Mei, it was the story of a Vietnamese girl who had been abandoned at an orphanage (Edmond 2005 quoted in Dillon 2012, 95). But during the script development process, the Australia-China co-production treaty was signed and coincided with Chan’s desire to explore and develop deeper layers of character and theme (Chan in Dillon 2012, 95).

Landscape and Metaphor Landscape is integral to the telling of a story, whether it be as a setting, metaphor or even as a character. There has been considerable discussion regarding the role of landscape in filmic storytelling. In his seminal text Landscape and Film, film theorist Martin Lefebvre outlines the debate regarding landscape in film as narrative backdrop versus landscape as an aesthetic and metaphorical component of the “profilmic event” where it “establishes the condition of its emergence as an aesthetic object” (Lefebvre 2006, 23). In the Australian context, Turner observes: “Inverted in season, in mood and meaning, the Australian landscape as mirror to the soul reflects the grotesque and the desolate rather than the beautiful and the tranquil” (Turner 1993 quoted in Rueschmann 2005, 3). Landscape and an understanding of how landscape may shape character and story were among the key factors that were heavily negotiated in the first story of the Australia-Korea co-production. Australia and Korea are quite different. Australia is the lowest, flattest and oldest continental landmass on the Earth, with a diverse topography ranging from snowcapped mountains to huge deserts and tropical and temperate forests. Writer One was quite cognisant of how different the Korean landscape was and how this impacted Korean and Australian thoughts about the script. He notes: Look at South Korea and how it’s laid out. In South Korea, there are a lot of mountains and rivers and cities are designed around it... so it’s like a staircase designed around the environment. That type of knowledge and being at one with the environment is very similar to Aboriginal culture where they were one and lived with the land... so there have been similarities to the cultural views which have been good to explore but the other thing too is when our Korean partners get here and see how flat it is. It’s very different (Writer One, interview with the author, 15 April 2015).

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Communication and Cultural Sensitivities Communications between and about cultural sensitivities and requirements are essential elements that must be considered both in the script itself and in the collaborative practice of screenwriting across cultures. One of the key factors that must be addressed from the outset in the development of the script is the official guidelines of government censorship or the “unofficial” guidelines of what is culturally appropriate. For example, while co-productions with China afford access to a burgeoning Chinese market, Chinese media regulations and censorship impact the events of the story and what is written, to be seen or heard: “Films portraying hardcore sex, rape, prostitution or nudity are forbidden. The use of obscene or sexually explicit dialogue and soundtrack music in domestic films is forbidden too, even though this style of content is often allowed in foreign screenings” (Yecies 2009, 4). Therefore, censorship approval must be gained at script development stage and again at editing stage. In China, censorship guidelines are clearly set out. However, while those working in cross-cultural collaborations might be aware of censorship regulations, there are often unseen factors which neither collaborator is aware of. For example, Writer One found there was an impasse in addressing indigenous Australian sensibilities which forbid the depiction of images of deceased persons: The other major difficulty we have on the project is that we are writing about Australian Aborigines... you have to be true to the people and where they were (historically) and an example of this is one of the Korean directors wants to have an Aboriginal burial ceremony but we can’t really do that because Aboriginal culture doesn’t really allow it to be captured on film, it’s not right to do that for that culture and we have had to spend a lot of time to find ways around this... it’s just... three different worlds coming together on this one script (Writer One, interview with the author, 15 April 2015).

Screenwriting and Collaboration Getting the characters, story, genre, universal elements and respect for cultural traditions in the story right is only one part of the writing process in a co-production. Writing the story in collaboration with other key creatives from the partner country is the other.

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Such collaboration may be considered using the lens of the pedagogical theory of “internationalisation”, which addresses the education of the future globally competent citizen. Hunter, White, and Godbey (2006) define the globally competent citizen as one who demonstrates “Having an open mind while actively seeking to understand cultural norms and expectations of others, leveraging this gained knowledge to interact, communicate and work effectively outside one’s environment” (Hunter et al. 2006, 276–77). Hunter et al. posit the Global Competence Model as a framework for considering global and intercultural competence. At the personal level, it includes attributes of openness, the recognition of others/differences, diversity, non-judgemental reactions; at the knowledge level, it includes globalisation and world history; and at the outcomes level, it includes the ability to access intercultural performance, effective participation, both socially and in business globally, collaboration across cultures and identifying cultural differences to compete globally (Hunter et al. 2006, 278). In the co-productions under consideration, the writers and directors had limited actual exposure to each others’ cultures prior to the collaboration. Leask notes that one of the key requirements for successful intercultural collaboration requires an “Understanding of how the languages and cultures of others influence their thoughts, values, actions and feelings” (Leask 2008, 19). In this case study, both scriptwriters worked assiduously as potentially globally competent citizens to understand the culture with which they would be collaborating to prepare themselves for the collaboration. Writer One read widely on the core beliefs of the directors: “In the case of South Korea their cultural heritage is complex, I had to understand Buddhism and beliefs before I could understand where the director was coming from” (Writer One, interview with the author, 15 April 2015). Writer Two prepared himself by immersing himself in Korean screen culture and business dealings: First of all I went out and watched a whole bunch of Korean films. I wanted to get an idea of the kind of ‘general’ filmmaking. I then spent weeks studying Korean culture. I read many articles and watched heaps of videos. I also targeted information about how Koreans function in other countries. I studied all of their social customs. I studied anything that helped the fish-out-of-water style of film we were trying to make (Writer Two, e-mail to the author, 12 December 2015).

While preparation held both writers in good stead for the pitching of their ideas and procedural aspects of collaboration, it did not prepare them for the impact that culturally specific factors, including negotiation and

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decision making, the building of trust, and leadership, can play on the envisioning of the script across cultures. The situation that both English and non-Korean-speaking writers found themselves in may be discussed in terms of cultural differences and the negotiation of these. The effects of cultural difference on the development of stories told in co-produced films and TV programs have been studied in the Canadian film industry by Hoskins, McFadyen and Finn (1998) in Canadian, Australian, and Japanese co-production scenarios and in the context of cultural distance. According to Hoskins et al. (1998, 524), cultural distance can be examined by the following dimensions: power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and Confucian dynamism with long-term (patience) as opposed to short-term orientation. However, Hoskins et al. (1998) also found that the key determinants of success for a co-production are shared goals and situations where the coproduction partners demonstrated little cultural difference; for example, English as the common language as opposed to great cultural difference. They also found that where there was a great cultural distance as indicated by the lack of a common language, cultural differences could severely impede the co-production process. Overall, Hoskins et al. (1997) found that differences during co-productions between Canada and Europe could be overlooked if the creative output was judged to be successful (Hoskins et al. 1997, 129). So in the final analysis, how did each writer involved in the AustraliaKorea co-production case study find their cross-cultural experience? Writer Two expresses it thus: The main thing I learned is that it is very difficult to write for a coproduction. The clashing of cultures. The language difficulties. The back and forth of a power struggle is way too distracting. But this was my situation (E-mail to the author, 12 December 2015).

Writer One’s overall learning was as follows: The main thing I learned is to make sure you work with people that are on the same level. People who stand for the same things you do, and want to say the same things (Interview with the author, 15 April 2015).

It would seem that the writing of the script in the Australian-Korean case study was significantly impacted by cultural differences even though the collaborators demonstrated quite high intercultural insight when reflecting on the collaboration. The lack of a common working language was a major

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factor in misunderstandings while writing the script. In contrast, the telling of a transnational story where cultural differences are minimised can make the screenwriting journey easier. In the writing and production of 33 Postcards, cultural difference was not a factor in determining the outcome of the story. The film is somewhat unique as a Chinese Australia co-production in part due to the multicultural heritage of the writer/director, Pauline Chan—who, of Chinese descent, was born in Hong Kong and studied in the United States before moving to Australia in 1980, and can speak both English and Mandarin (Dillon 2012, 95). It may be that Chan can straddle the cultures of China and Australia based on personal and professional experience, and that some may say her journey in making this film was easier that it would be for most. But perhaps this is beside the point. In the making of the film, Chan encapsulates the unique vision of any filmmaker who seeks to make a story across cultures and to tell a universal story: For me, the making of this film has been a personal journey on many levels—not least the wonderful opportunity to work in my mother tongue, the Chinese language, but also to collaborate with the most talented cast and crew from East and West... Like Randall’s gift for Mei Mei in the film, I fantasize about living in a spiritual space where cultural and physical boundaries do not exist... 33 Postcards looks at two social misfits whose lives come together despite their different cultures, ages and circumstances. Peeling away the layers of their differences, I hope to explore the similarity of what lies in the depth of the human heart (Chan 2012).

The making of 33 Postcards is an excellent example of a successful cultural exchange between two countries because ultimately Chan made the movie she wanted to make. However, its marketing serves as an illustration of the importance of paying attention to the cultural sensitivities and sensibilities of the target country. As Dillon notes, 33 Postcards was advertised in China as a co-production with Australia in an attempt to make it stand out from the 500 plus feature films it produces every year. The ‘exotic’ Australian locations were also a part of the marketing strategy (even if the film did not seek to showcase touristbrochure Australia). The international cast was also a draw—in particular Guy Pearce, whose Hollywood career gives him some recognition in China. It is the story of Pearce’s character, Dean Randall, that the Chinese distributors and producers latched onto. This is in direct contrast to how the film was pitched in Australia—around the story of Mei Mei, the

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The comments of filmmakers at the Telling Stories Together in the Asia Pacific: Screen Industry Forum, Asian Australian Co-production Forum, held at the Brisbane Asian Pacific Film Festival in 2015, reflected the need for any film project to have a strong leader at the helm of a cohesive team. It was considered a key factor in the success of the Australia-Asia coproductions discussed—whether they be any combination of writer, director or producer. Chan’s comments echo this point; Dillon notes that she: Remains convinced that such co-productions “can be done” as long as the right team of people—among them ‘strong and very independent’ producers... is in place… “What I found is that people are fine bridging or forming a cultural and creative bridge with the right team of people. It means finding the right solutions and the right connections to bridge the gap” (Dillon 2012, 95).

Most importantly in this search, as Chan admits, one must have the right script when one sets out to make a cross-cultural co-production: “China is unique like France is unique. There is the script challenge—to meet cultural sensitivities” (Dillon 2012, 95).

Transcultural Screenwriting for a Cinema without Borders Overall, there is little written in the field of transcultural screenwriting from the writer’s perspective. This chapter has surveyed the narrative scenarios involving landscape and setting, characters and genre, and story structure that have been used in co-productions in Europe and in the Australian-Asian case study co-productions considered. While the stories may be universal, the insights of the writers discussed in these case studies are only the start of research into co-production collaborations and transcultural screenwriting. However, as writers, producers and directors at the Telling Stories Together in the Asia Pacific: 2015 forum unanimously agreed, one of the

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key factors of a successful collaboration in a co-production is trust. Gesche and Makeham (2008) underline this point, and quote Flechsig in noting that collaborators across cultures should be aware of and acknowledge difference as part of the process of working together to a common end, while accepting that the higher purpose of “successful communication” involves the embracing of concepts like truth and politeness to achieve common goals (Flechsig quoted in Gesche and Makeham 2008, 243). As Writer One notes, the acknowledgement and acceptance of intercultural difference as it contributes to the screen story is part of the process of connecting via transcultural screenwriting: It’s been hard to let go because I didn’t know who they were... but getting to know them and understand them, understanding they like the same films, they use the same references, it builds up trust... (Interview with the author, 15 April 2015).

In conclusion, while it is useful to reflect that the process of connecting across cultures is showcased in the collaborative writing of a transnational film, it must be remembered that a transnational film scenario is one that goes beyond the simple scenarios of Western characters in exotic Eastern locations, beyond the appreciation of the unique culture of the exotic “other”, and beyond trying to link two cultures by relationships between representative character types (McVeigh and van Eyken 2012). A transnational film is one where emotions and then attitudes are potentially shifted (Gesche and Makeham 2008), one where characters and viewers truly cross borders and connect (Yeates et al. 2011). It is a powerful vehicle that promotes the development of “transcultural values” and global competencies (Yeates et al. 2011).

References 33 Postcards. 2009. Wr: Martin Edmond, Philip Dalkin, Pauline Chan, Dir: Pauline Chan, Australia, China, 97 mins. Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 2014. “Australia Korea Free Trade Agreement”. Accessed 12 January 2016. http://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/kafta/pages/korea-australiafta.aspx. Australian Government. 2012. Australia in the Asian Century. http://asiancentury.dpmc.gov.au/. Accessed 30 June 2013. Breaking the Waves. 1996. Wr: Peter Asmussen & Lars Von Trier, Dir: Lars Von Trier, Denmark, 158 mins. Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival (BAPFF). 2015. Telling Stories

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Together in the Asia Pacific: Screen Industry Forum. State Library of Queensland, Brisbane. 25 November. http://brisbaneasiapacificfilmfestival.com/2015-program/. Burton-Carvajal, Julieanne. 2000. “South American Cinema”. In Hill and Church Gibson, World Cinema 194-210. Chan, Pauline. 2012. Director’s Notes. Accessed 22 November. http://33postcardsthemovie.com. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. 1996. Wr: Charlotte Bronte (Novel), Hugh Whitemore, Dir: Franco Zephirelli, France, Italy, UK, USA, 112 mins. Crofts, Stephen. 2000. “Concepts of National Cinema”. In Hill and Church Gibson, World Cinema, 1-10. Dalton, Kim. 2012. “Local TV Must Connect with Asia on Production Projects, Says ABC Head”. The Australian, 29 November. Dancyger, Ken. 2001. Global Scriptwriting Boston: Focal Press. Dillon, Jo. 2012. “Letter to a Neighbour: Pauline Chan on Crossing Cultural Lines through Film”. Metro no. 173 Winter, 94-96. Dissanayake, Wimal. 2000. “Issues in World Cinema”. In Hill and Church Gibson, World Cinema, 143-50. Ezra, Elizabeth, and Terry Rowden, eds. 2006. Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Gesche, Astrid H., and Paul Makeham. 2008. “Creating Conditions for Intercultural and International Learning and Teaching”. In Hellstén and Reid, Researching International Pedagogies, 241–53. Halle, Randall. 2010. “Offering Tales They Want to Hear: Transnational European Film Funding as Neo-Orientalism”. In Global Art Cinema, edited by Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, 303-319.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hellstén, Meeri, and Anna Reid, eds. 2008. Researching International Pedagogies. Dordrecht: Springer. Higson, Andrew. 1989. “The Concept of National Cinema”. Screen 30 (4): 36-46. Hill, John, and Pamela Church Gibson, eds. 2000. World Cinema: Critical Approaches. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hoskins, Colin, Stuart McFadyen, and Adam Finn. 1998. “The Effect of Cultural Differences on the International Co-Production of Television Programs and Feature Films”. Canadian Journal of Communication 23 (4): 523-38. Hoskins, Colin, Stuart McFadyen, Adam Finn, and Anne Jackel. 1997. “Evidence on the Performance of Canada/Europe Co-Productions in Television and Film”. Journal of Cultural Economics 21 (2): 129–38. Hunter, Bill, George P. White, and Galen C. Godbey. 2006. “What Does It

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Mean to be Globally Competent?”. Journal of Studies in International Education 10 (3): 267-85. Journey to the Sun. 1999. Wr: Yesim Ustaoglu, Dir: Yesim Ustaoglu, Turkey, 104 mins. Khatib, Lina, ed. 2012. Storytelling in World Cinemas Vol 1. London and New York: Wallflower Press. Leask, Betty. 2006. “Internationalisation, Globalisation and Curriculum Innovation”. In Hellstén and Reid, Researching International Pedagogies, 9-26. Lefebvre, Martin, ed. 2006. Landscape and Film. New York: Routledge. MacDougall, David. 1998. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press. McVeigh, Margaret, and Herman van Eyken. 2012. “Cinema Sans Frontières”. ASEF culture360 (website), 30 November. http://film.culture360.org/magazine/cinema-sans-frontiers/. Peng, Weiying, and Michael Keane. 2014. “Co-Producing with China: What’s in It for Australia?” Creative Transformations Asia (blog). Posted in May. Accessed 5 January. http://www.creativetransformations.asia/2014/05/co-producing-withchina-whats-in-it-for-australia/. Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. 2000. “Indian Cinema”. In Hill and Church Gibson, World Cinema, 151–56. Rueschmann, Eva. 2005. “Out of Place: Reading (Post) Colonial Landscapes as Gothic Space in Jane Campion’s films”. Post Script 24 (2-3): 1-9. Screen Australia, 2012. Friends with Benefits: A Report on Australia’s International Co-production Program. Accessed 12 August 2013. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/f243d30d-b24b-4a25a525-d582c16dc47e/Rpt_CoPro_2012.pdf. —. 2013. Common Ground: Opportunities for Australian Screen Partnerships in Asia. Accessed 12 December 2015. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/3374b628-c79d-471790fa-71e0c836cd37/Common-ground-report.pdf?ext=.pdf. —. 2014. “Co-Production Program: Partner Countries, Korea”. Accessed 26 July 2016. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/co-productions/ partner_countries/korea.aspx. Solanas, Fernando, and Octavio Getino. (1969) 1983. “Towards a Third Cinema”. In Twenty Five Years of the New Latin Cinema, edited by M. Chanan. London: British Film Institute Publishing. Spanish Apartment. 2001. Wr: Cedric Klapisch, Dir: Cedric Klapisch, France, Spain, 122 mins.

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Stam, Robert. 2000. Film Theory: An Introduction. London and New York: Blackwell. Syke, Lloyd Bradford. 2011. “Hear Moving Stories From Asian Neighbours”. Crikey (website), 7 February. Accessed 6 September 2012. http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/02/07/daily-proposition-hearmoving-stories-from-asian-australians/. The Waiting City. 2010. Wr: Claire McCarthy, Dir: Claire McCarthy, Australia 138 mins. Trompenaars, Fons, and Charles Hampden-Turner. 1998. Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Global Business. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Walsh, Mike. 2012. “At the Edge of Asia: The Prospects for AustraliaChina Film Co-Production”. Studies in Australasian Cinema 6 (3): 301-316. Wish You Were Here. 2012. Wr: Kieran Darcy Smith, Felicity Price, Dir: Kieran Darcy Smith, Australia, 93 mins. Yeates, Helen, Margaret McVeigh, and Tess Van Hemert. 2011. “From Ethnocentrism to Transculturalism: A Globalised Pedagogical Journey”. Cultural Studies Review 17 (2): 71-99. https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/2008/2 484. Yecies, Brian M. 2009. “What the Boomerang Misses: Pursuing International Film Co-Production Treaties and Strategies”. In Global Korea: Old and New, Proceedings of the Korean Studies Association of Australasia, edited by D. Parkl, 83-91. Sydney: The Korean Studies Association.

PART 2: TRANSCULTURAL CASE STUDIES

CHAPTER FOUR FROM ITALIAN NEOREALISM TO AMERICAN INDIE: TRANSCULTURAL HERITAGE IN KELLY REICHARDT’S WENDY AND LUCY (2008) PABLO ECHART AND MARÍA NOGUERA

Introduction: Neorealism, a Living Touchstone From very early on, the neorealist movement proved adept at crossing national borders. As Chárraga and Vera Soriano averred, in the aftermath of Cesare Zavattini’s visit to Mexico in the early 1950s a range of national cinema industries–in particular, those based in the most deprived countries–realized the extraordinary potential afforded by an approach to filmmaking that refused to falsify reality and insisted on “simplicity and sensitivity of expression” (Chárraga and Vera Soriano 2006, 130). Sixty years later, the influence of the neorealist movement may still be traced in the work of a number of filmmakers and in a range of filmmaking traditions. Given this view, the purpose of this chapter is to explore the various ways in which Wendy and Lucy (2008) may be said to share a family resemblance in ethical and aesthetic terms with the foundational filmography of neorealism. This family resemblance, a cinematic trace element as a specific form of cultural transfer, was first highlighted by The New York Times film critic A. O. Scott: his essay “Neo-Neo Realism” (2009a) describes it as an emblematic feature of a certain current in recent independent cinema in the US. Scott argued that as neorealism had endeavored to do in the impoverished Italy of its time, neo-neorealism spurns the escapism prevalent in mainstream American cinema so as to face head on the “dismaying and confusing real world”. The neo-neorealists set out to make cinema that takes a realistic view of a

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broken society, still struggling in the wake of 9/11, plunged into an economic, social and even existential crisis, caused in the first instance by the terrorist attacks and intensified thereafter by the financial crash, which in turn had such a marked effect on unemployment among young people. Scott’s line of argument prompted Hall to draw a distinction between the “smart cinema” produced by such filmmakers as Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach and Spike Jonze, and the “Neo-Neorealism” of Debra Granik, Courtney Hunt and Kelly Reichardt. Whereas the former wear ironic distance and a cool sensibility as badges of their cinematic identity, the latter (all female filmmakers in the sample cited here) evince a more explicitly critical political intent which, in the case of Reichardt in particular, echoes the social-realist tradition of Italian neorealism (Hall 2014, 15-16). In a similar vein, Lima Quintanhila has characterized Wendy and Lucy as the portrait of a deeply disturbed society in constant flux, a throwback to the climate of fatalism in the post-war period from which the social principles of Italian neorealism arose (Lima Quintanhila 2014, 149). In no sense need this transcultural dialogue imply that Reichardt’s film is a pastiche, a deliberate imitation of the key features of the pioneering neorealist films1. The kind of intertextual linking outlined by Scott seems more apt: a specific “process of appropriation and modification” by means of which the borrowings set in a new text “are not acts of imitation or homage but rather attempts to absorb and extend what other filmmakers have done”. Wendy and Lucy articulates the voice of its own maker, the vision of Kelly Reichardt. As does the work of Tarantino, Scorsese, Coppola and Woody Allen (Ezra and Rowden 2006, 2), her filmmaking acknowledges the influence of cinema made in different cultural, geographical and historical contexts–that is, it embraces the hybridity that defines transnational cinema as such. Kelly Reichardt herself has noted the significant bearing that neorealism had on the development of her film, although it was not the only cinematic influence. In an interview with Gus Van Sant (2008, 78), she referred to the ways in which concern for individuals who are no longer regarded as being of use to society and the limits on social solidarity recall the 1

The most notable films of De Sica and Zavattini set the standard of reference for much of the analysis carried out here. At the same time, however, in certain stylistic terms, Wendy and Lucy differs significantly from them: for instance, Reichardt does not overlay extradiegetic, melodramatic music or punctuate her movie with crowd scenes.

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neorealist school of thought. A. O. Scott raises these issues in his second article (2009 b, 2-3)2, where the thread common to neorealism and “neoneorealism” is neatly summarized as “a cinematic ethic”. Like the great neorealist films of the past, Wendy and Lucy endeavors to identify with people experiencing problems and, as a result, appeals to values such as solidarity and compassion in a radically individualistic social context. The family resemblance across films referred to above takes shape in this view of the human heart, in the universal acknowledgement of these values. Like the main characters in the emblematically neorealist films made by the director Vittorio De Sica and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini between 1946 and 1952, that is Sciuscià (Shoeshine, 1946), Ladri di biciclette (The Bicycle Thief, 1948) and Umberto D (1952)3, Wendy and Lucy centers on a person (young Wendy) marginalized in spite of herself, whose life enacts the serious financial and social problems experienced by her fellow countrymen, leading to a radical sense of disenchantment and a painful feeling of emotional vulnerability. Although the focus of analysis here is the textual dimension of the film, along with related aspects of the narrative, the neorealist scope of Wendy and Lucy also encompasses other elements of the movie’s production design including a limited budget ($300,000), a cast that features both professional and non-professional actors, and the choice of a subdued, naturalistic visual aesthetic shot in un-dressed locations. The textual analysis carried out below underscores the apparently unintentional intertextual links between Wendy and Lucy and emblematic neorealist films, especially the masterpieces produced by De Sica and Zavattini cited above. The primary focus of inquiry refers to two screenwriting practices: character development and thematic exploration. These elements capture and express the universal values that make possible the transcultural transference from neorealist films to Wendy and Lucy. Furthermore, the formal composition of this neo-neorealist film, which will be addressed at the end, will reinforce this family resemblance. 2

Scott’s purpose in this second article was to respond to the sharp criticism to which had been subjected by Richard Brody (2009), a film critic at The New Yorker, who felt that Scott had overlooked the rich vein of realism in the history of American cinema; and, to a lesser extent, by David Bordwell (2009), who in his blog also called Scott’s essay into question on the grounds that the term “neorealism” may be rendered less meaningful by its removal to historical contexts other than its own. 3 Hence, for instance, Miracolo in Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1951), whose tone is markedly altered because of its narrative appeal to fantasy, is not addressed here.

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Barboni, or Homeless, in America The plot structure of Wendy and Lucy is straightforward: with her faithful canine companion Lucy, Wendy is driving across America to get to Alaska and find a job in a fish factory there. In small-town Oregon, however, her old Honda breaks down, a repair for which Wendy cannot afford to pay. There is a further twist of fate when Wendy is caught shoplifting a can of dog food in the supermarket: Lucy is taken from her and, following a trip to the police station, Wendy sets out to find her dog again. This brief outline discloses a clear similarity between Wendy and Lucy and Umberto D. The main characters in both films–Wendy and the old man, Umberto–are very attached to their dogs, Lucy and Flike; at the end of the day, their pets are the only beings with which they share their lives. Indeed, Reichardt’s movie underscores the harmony of the shared routines of one woman and her dog: playing, sleeping and eating. Were it not for their companion animals (companions, as it turns out, in the truest sense), the loneliness of Umberto and Wendy would be absolute: there is no sign that Umberto has a family, and although Wendy has a sister and brotherin-law, they choose–as do Umberto’s old acquaintances–to ignore her plight and problems. The characters respond to the indifference they face in the hostile world in which they live and move by investing wholeheartedly in their relationship with their dogs, Lucy and Flike, making them the object of their generosity, care and concern. Wendy lives up to the etymological meaning of her name: “true friend”. Reichardt’s film highlights how Wendy’s anthropomorphizes her dog in a variety of ways; only with Lucy does Wendy show herself to be less introverted and more open and warm (Murphy 2011, 169). As the scene in which they say goodbye discloses, the bond between Wendy and her dog is richer and deeper in feeling than any relationship Wendy has with another human being. Lucy is her only family, as Flike is the only family that old Umberto knows. As was the case in Shoeshine, the plot of the movie is a narrative of ruin (Smith 2014, 34): the unwinding of the only meaningful affective relationship–of companionship, of friendship–in a person’s life, the bedrock of their existence. The loneliness of Umberto and Wendy is bound up with the impossibility of finding a home of their own. By the time of the film, Umberto has lived in a boarding house for many years; and nothing is known of Wendy’s

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living circumstances before the time of the film’s setting4. The plot twists in De Sica and Zavattini’s film turn on the drastic measures Umberto must take to pay his debts to his landlady, thus avoiding eviction from his room and a vagrant life of reliance on charity. Similarly scrupulous financial accounting is kept in Reichardt’s film too, as Wendy notes down every one of the outlays she makes. Such close monitoring of money comprises a kind of personal goal for Wendy: she cannot afford to run out of cash before she gets to Alaska, a remote place where she can set down roots, make a new life for herself, a twenty-first century pioneer trekking North rather than to the warmer climes of California, the “promised land” of times and pioneers past. The eponymous character in Umberto D is likewise in search of a home for Flike, when he is put out on the side of the road. In contrast to his fellow countrymen, Umberto’s attitude is disinterested: he works for the animal’s welfare, to ensure that it has the food and care it needs to live. Nevertheless, his search proves fruitless: the only new potential owners that he finds for Flike are willing to take the dog only in exchange for money, and the life awaiting the animal in their care would be one of indifference, neglect and cruelty. Wendy, on the other hand, is not planning to let Lucy go. She knows that Lucy is hers, that their bond is mutually loyal, that no one could care for and love the dog as she herself does. But from the time she is stranded in Oregon onwards, Wendy’s steps are dogged by a darker fate, as was the journey of Antoine Doinel in Les Quatre Cents Coups (400 Blows, 1959), and earlier still, the life of Pasquale, the young central character in Shoeshine5. The milder episodes she experiences–including her search for Lucy at the municipal pound, which mirrors Umberto’s visit to a dog shelter–are overshadowed by the darker circumstances of her personal situation, and sow the seed for the bleak discovery she makes when she finally tracks down her pet. Rescued by others, Wendy sees that Lucy now has what she needs: a home–a space of care and protection; a sense of 4

The film is based on the story Train Choir by Jon Raymond, Reichardt’s regular screenwriting partner, as he is on Wendy and Lucy. The reason for her leaving home is given in the story: Wendy lost her house to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, a further symbol of the travails afflicting present-day America. Moreover, the story also explains that she is travelling to Alaska for work and so that she can have a house with a small garden to call her own (Murphy 2011: 169). 5 There is not enough space in the present work to address the many modes of communication that may traced in these film narratives.

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wellbeing that Wendy can neither provide her with nor deny her. As generous as Umberto before her, Wendy makes her sorrowful sacrifice, a heartbreaking act of love: she gives up the only thing she has. Separated by a fence, the mirror nature of their link is made clear: who will care for Wendy now, who will welcome her, who will give her a home? (Smith 2014, 34). Paradoxical though it may seem, the fence keeps Lucy safe from the hostile outside world in which Wendy remains “trapped” (Murphy 2011, 167), a world in which she is doomed to be a stray dog, a creature left to its own devices. The final frames of the film are especially striking in this regard. Echoing iconic scenes of hobos riding the rails in the Great Depression (Murphy 2011, 166), Wendy is shown climbing into a train to continue her journey alone: her isolation and the lack of any shelter seem absolute. No longer does the train, a recurring motif on the movie’s soundtrack, symbolize a journey to a better future, a commonplace in pioneer narratives; rather, the whistle of the train sounds a shrill note of anguish in Wendy’s plight6. Wendy’s direct gaze into the camera in the final frame enacts an unmediated appeal for the audience’s commitment to the uncertain future from which Wendy herself is excluded. Like Umberto, a former civil servant, Wendy is trapped in a downward spiral of social decline and seems doomed to become barboni, homeless. A subtle omen of her own fate, Wendy’s encounter at the start of the story with a disheveled group of young people on their way back from Alaska is no coincidence: one of them–Will Oldham, the only professional actor in the cast7–recounts how the promise of work had come to nothing there. Like the depiction of the main characters in the neorealist films of De Sica and Zavattini, Reichardt’s film also reflects a determination to acknowledge the dignity of an individual fated to live life on the margins of society. The film encompasses an appeal to the audience to overcome their prejudices with regard to the socially marginalized, to reassess their status as people, as well as the causes of their social exclusion. As was the case with Pasquale and Umberto, and with Antonio Ricci in the The Bicycle Thief, the audience’s empathy for Wendy is inversely proportional 6

It is difficult not to recall Umberto D again at this juncture: the narrative climax sees the desperate old man standing on the railway track in the path of an oncoming train. 7 In Old Joy (2006), Reichardt’s previous film, Oldham is a character who experiences downward social mobility: stripped of home and any real affection, a life of vagrancy seems to await.

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to the indifference and cruelty with which they are treated by almost everyone they encounter on their way. Not only is such empathy prompted by Wendy’s virtues as a character in the care she takes of Lucy; but Wendy also proves to be a person who could never be accused of failing to do everything in her power to build an honorable future. Like her neorealist forebears, Wendy faces the difficulties that come her way with strength, determination and resilience. Indeed, she is so refined as to avoid causing others to feel pity for her and to hide her moments of weakness from them. Thus, the conclusion that Sam Littman reaches is also relevant in this regard: “Wendy and Lucy is much the film that Bresson would have made today. A concise, eloquent, and unflinching depiction of noble suffering” (Littman 2014, 6). Wendy is an ordinary girl fallen on hard times. Her androgynous appearance suggests that her personal drama might be interpreted as that of any young person, irrespective of their sex. In the spirit of neorealism, the film spends screen time on apparently banal narrative sequences such as her morning wash in the gas station restroom. In his commendable book on De Sica’s work, Henry Agel held that the image of Umberto dressed in a suit was more scandalous for society than the portrait of rags-and-tatters down-and-outs (Agel 1957, 137). This observation may be extrapolated to Wendy, whose ethnic and sexual identity disrupt the stereotypes generally associated with homelessness–dishevelment, dirt, alcoholism, vagrancy (Hall 2014, 96)–and may force the audience to question their prejudices in relation to the homeless. Viewers may well identify with one of the young people passing the car in which Wendy is sleeping, who says that such a situation should be illegal. In a similar way, and in light of Anita Harris’s argument, Hall defines Wendy as an “at-risk girl”–in other words, someone “who may have professional aspirations but lacks the support structure to achieve those goals” (Hall 2014, 103). Wendy’s life is vilified in a society where the prevailing ideology sees success and failure as prerogatives of the individual alone (her choices, efforts and ambitions), and in which the limitations and injustices due to society are overlooked or ignored (Hall 2014, 103-104).

Solidarity as a Thematic Pattern Henri Agel noted that as early as Shoeshine “an overwhelming societal indifference to the suffering of the individual” (Agel 1957, 75) emerged as an underlying theme in neorealism. Similarly, with regard to The Bicycle Thief he referred to the “murky morality of the many in relation to the

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misfortunes of the few” (Agel 1957, 91), and in a section on Miracolo in Milano he recalled De Sica's observation regarding his “ethics of fragility”: “The true meaning of my movies comprises an exploration of human solidarity, the struggle against selfishness and indifference” (Agel 1957, 123). Indifference and solidarity comprise an opposite pair that frames the thematic core of Wendy and Lucy, as averred by the following quotation from the press-book for the film: “WENDY AND LUCY addresses issues of sympathy and generosity at the edges of American life, revealing the limits and depths of people’s duty to each other in tough times”. As in The Bicycle Thief, the narrative structure of the plot of Reichardt’s film is a search for things that may seem of little significance: a bicycle in De Sica’s movie; a dog and a broken-down car in Wendy and Lucy. In both stories, the fate of the main character rests on an apparently insignificant situation, which takes on unexpected importance in a context of financial shortage and instability: without a bicycle, without a car, these individuals cannot engage in economic activity and, as a result, are likely to sink below the poverty line. In both movies the main characters break the law, prompted by a lack of money or a sense of desperation: Wendy steals a tin of dog food for Lucy from a supermarket; and Antonio Ricci steals a bicycle that may enable him to regain his job and livelihood. Wendy’s minor breach of the law marks a key moment in her fate: she spirals down into a ruin that is as slight in its signs as it is devastating in its effects. Sparked by a small personal mistake, this spiral of ruin is fueled and amplified by the legal and financial systems of a society that has lost any sense of charity. In De Sica and Zavattini’s most emblematic films, the lack of empathy or solidarity with the drama of other people’s lives, especially the suffering of the less fortunate, is often highlighted in the portrayal of characters who represent institutions responsible for administering social welfare. Shoeshine depicts the devastating effects of an inhuman, unjust system of “codes and sanctions” (Agel 1957, 74). The hardship experienced by Pasquale and Giuseppe in Shoeshine likewise stems from a misdemeanor which to all intents and purposes they were forced to commit; their prized childhood friendship is undermined by uncompromising law-court bureaucrats (Aguilar and Cobrerizo 2015, 152). At best, the latter seem indifferent to the fate of the two boys; at worst, they deliberately manipulate the situation to poison the boys’ relationship. The characterization of other institutions of social order (the police) and charity (the Church) is also ambiguous, although the overall view is one of

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disillusionment: the opening scene of Umberto D, when the police act without reserve to disperse a harmless crowd of retired people protesting for their rights is relevant in this regard; as is the indifference of the pious believers in the face of Antonio Ricci’s anguished desperation to find the man who has stolen his bicycle. Although the main characters generally encounter a lack of empathy from those around them, leading to despairing and tragic outcomes, De Sica and Zavattini do occasionally allow their ordinary heroes to enjoy the solidarity of others. In Shoeshine, for instance, while acknowledging the cruelty the boys in the correctional facility may inflict on one another, the film also leaves space for situations in which they look out for one another (sharing food, preventing food from being stolen from someone who is sick, raising the roof together when the guards beat up one of the boys). In The Bicycle Thief, Antonio Ricci is joined in his search by a group of friends who run a rubbish truck; and although the incident as a whole is humiliating, the owner of the bicycle Ricci steals forgives him for his desperate measure. Old Umberto, perhaps the most forsaken of all these characters, finds some slight support from another person browbeaten by the prevailing social order: Maria, the maid, whom Umberto likewise advises and aids. Both have “a sense of their neighbor”, which enables each to escape for a while from their individual misfortune (Agel 1957, 139). Wendy and Lucy evinces a similarly careful orchestration of the cast of characters in relation to Wendy’s fate. A general distinction may be made between those who remain indifferent to her situation and those who play some (albeit small) part in how her life may turn out. The former includes the police officer who does not think twice about hauling Wendy off to the station, thus separating her from Lucy, and whose incompetence ensures that her release from custody is delayed; the car mechanic, a representative of the middle class, who thoughtlessly gambles his money away, in stark contrast to Wendy’s pitiful penny-pinching; and, above all, the shop assistant in the supermarket who shows Wendy no mercy when she catches her shoplifting–her insistence on the enforcement of the rules is inhumane, legalistic and relentless, disregarding the particular personal circumstances at play, and effectively spinning Wendy into a spiral of downward social mobility. Those who show some degree of solidarity with Wendy are people from a lower, if not marginalized, social class. The down-and-out who collects cans to make a little money is one such character: he promises to let

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Wendy know if he hears anything about Lucy. Especially noteworthy in this regard is Wally, the shopping center car-park attendant who becomes Wendy’s mainstay during her time in Oregon. Although he can do nothing to untwist the fate awaiting her, he does what little he can in a number of ways. He is generous about lending her his telephone several times; and he also gives Wendy a few dollars, without telling his partner who would surely disapprove. In psychological terms, Wally tries to inspire some hope in Wendy following the loss of Lucy, just as Antonio Ricci’s poor friends try to do in The Bicycle Thief. Wally’s story about how he too once lost a dog is likewise significant. Like the characters in De Sica and Zavattini’s films who seek out fortunetellers in search of unlikely hope, prompted by their desperation or a need for some kind of consolation, Wendy asks Wally to tell her how his story ended, which shows her own need to imagine a happy ending to her own crisis situation. Moreover, although Wally’s role as a car-park attendant is similar to that of the supermarket shop assistant–to ensure that the rules are obeyed–his attitude to his work is radically different: when Wendy parks in the wrong space and she cannot get the engine started to move it, Wally is patient and helps her to do so. Wally, whose name rhymes with Wendy, is a kind of guardian angel; he personifies the value of solidarity, and reflects the need for those at the bottom of the social pyramid to care for one another. Whereas neorealism repeatedly depicted children as victims at the hands of adult characters–see Shoeshine, Germania, anno zero (Germany Year Zero, 1948) and Bellissima (1952) for representative examples–Wendy and Lucy presents the cold cruelty of the young shop assistant who insists on calling the police, despite the more tolerant silence of his superior. If this incident is read in conjunction with the scene in which other young people make derogatory remarks when they see Wendy sleeping in her car, the film seems to come to a pessimistic conclusion as regards the ability of younger people to understand or empathize with the suffering of others. Given the general scenario, any sign of solidarity is a kind of an oasis in a social wasteland stripped of charity. Wendy’s experience mirrors Ricci’s, when he sees that, in a time of personal misfortune, “his peers are not willing to give him what he needs: their understanding, which would normally translate into more or less immediate help” (Agel 1957, 92). And with the exception of Wally, her fate is like that of Umberto, too: “a detailed portrait of a man [a young woman], alone, friendless, without understanding or hope, overcome by his [her] circumstances, who seeks out [without saying so] the solidarity of others to no avail, and who struggles on in an effort to retain his [her] dignity” (Aguilar and Cabrerizo

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2015, 180). The story of Wendy and Lucy, like those of The Bicycle Thief and Umberto D, is the narrative of a person and a nation, where shortage of money opens an unbridgeable divide between individual and community, leading to social exclusion for the individual. Ricci is one of many Italians reduced to pawning their linen for a small amount of ready money that may prevent them from sliding into absolute poverty. Umberto represents the many retired people whose economic rights are trampled upon and who, beset by debt, are marginalized by society. Wendy is one of many young people who are likewise strapped for cash, for whom the promises of the American Dream (a good job, a home of one’s own) are unattainable. One of the conversations between Wendy and Wally is an explicit critique of liberal capitalism, which sets up walls that the poor cannot scale, thus preventing their progress and development (Hall 2014, 110). In this context, when solidarity is shown in dribs and drabs, the stray image of a disabled man driving down an empty street is especially evocative; as is the social rootlessness of military veterans, some of whom, become homeless madmen, strike terror into Wendy’s heart when she is sleeping out in the forest; and the way in which characters tend to appear alone–or with one other person at most–in the frame. Likewise, it is noteworthy that the only individuals who have formed a group are the glue-sniffing punks Wendy comes across on her first night in the forest, the space to which those marginalized by a materialist society retreat (Van Sant 2008, 77).

Aesthetic Parallels Just as neorealist cinema set out to “rediscover the real Italy” (Quintana 1997, 28), Wendy and Lucy was inspired by a parallel purpose to reflect the reality of present-day America. As noted above, this moral commitment involves centering the narrative on the specific story of ordinary people (Quintana 1997, 77), giving voice to those who are normally sidelined or silenced (in society and in mainstream cinema), and addressing the difficulties experienced in everyday living that have shaped the lives of so many defenseless anti-heroes (Quintana 1997, 100). The fact that “the melodramatic matrix narrates why man suffers” (Wagstaff 2007, 64) explains why in establishing its own audience neorealism found melodrama to be a natural framework for cinematic representation. Wendy and Lucy follows the framework underlying

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melodramatic storytelling, which is rooted in the individual’s hopeless desire to reenter a paradise from which he or she has been expelled, an expulsion that has caused individualism, loneliness, insecurity, vulnerability and barrenness (Wagstaff 2007, 63). At the same time, the features and functions of melodrama enable the audience to engage with the characters at an emotional level, as the viewing experience of Reichardt’s movie also attests: an understanding of Wendy’s suffering prompts compassion and subverts, by contrast, any cold, impatient or annoyed response to her attenuated social situation (Nochinson 2009, 116). It is a process of knowledge and understanding of the individual which leads to a reserved and respectful sense of identification on the viewer’s part that is not motivated by any sense of poignancy. To reflect the real, lived experience of its characters, neorealist cinema set aside the traditional narrative structure based on a tight sequence of causal events, the framework of classic filmmaking, and turned to a closer analysis of the situation. Quintana (1997, 38) uses the term “constructed fictions” to denote neorealism’s trust in the notion that every fiction may mask a documentary reality. To disclose the underlying truth, Zavattini argued for a primary endeavor to “reduce the story to its most elementary, simple, and, I would rather say, banal form” (Zavattini 2000, 54). Wendy and Lucy follows this minimalist approach to storytelling, counting on the potential for sentiment and spectacle to emerge from the many echoes and aftershocks caused by a close exploration of a situation, as Zavattini averred (Zavattini 2000, 52). This approach to cinematic understanding respects the role of the audience, the active participation of the viewer in filling in any gaps in the story. Such is clearly the case in two moments of the movie: the concealment of the reasons why Wendy has embarked on this journey, and the film’s open ending which does not resolve whether Wendy and Lucy are reunited in the future. A key feature of the neorealist “aesthetics of rejection” is structural minimalism in storytelling (Quintana 1997, 78), which roots narrative authenticity in small, basic elements, running the risk at times of presenting a mise-en-scène that has been described as fetishizing ugliness. The purpose, as Rossellini likewise aimed, is to establish objectivity by telling a story in the most literal terms, stripped of any extraneous detail, as plainly as possible (Noguera 2013, 28). Wendy and Lucy enacts this “aesthetics of poverty” in its stylized depiction of the interior life of its main character, by refusing to romanticize or falsify the spaces in which the plot unfolds, and by respecting the temporal dimension of everyday routine, which includes the drift of empty time–that is, different aspects of

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an “aesthetic of contiguity” (Monterde 2003, 50) which aims to reduce the mediation of reality in so far as that is possible (Wagstaff 2007, 78).

Conclusions In stark contrast to the epic grandiloquence of Fascist-era filmmaking, the declared purpose of neorealism was to portray the real Italy. Eschewing any and all complacency, the neorealist movement exposed the social ills afflicting the country, giving voice and dignity to individuals who boldly endeavored to escape the marginalized and disparaged lives to which they had been consigned. The brilliant films made by De Sica and Zavattini may be viewed as depicting the tragic misfortunes of ordinary people who struggle in vain to return to a social order from which they have been expelled. Sixty years later, foreshadowing the awful social impact of the burgeoning financial crisis, Wendy and Lucy blazed the trail for a series of indie movies (American in both cultural and production terms) that explore the “ugly America” of the present day, the broken promises of the American Dream. Reichardt’s film reflects the legacy of its cinematic forebears in its commitment to the historical present and the structural framework of social exclusion. Then, as now, a critical analysis of the film in political or social terms rests on close observation of the difficult day-to-day existence of an individual character, the depiction of a personal drama, towards which no audience, no matter its cultural frame, may remain indifferent. Like the neorealist films of Rossellini, and De Sica and Zavattini, Wendy and Lucy is rooted in a moral position: a compassionate gaze at those who suffer wrongs and injustice (Noguera 2013, 25). Thus, the main feature of Wendy and Lucy’s family resemblance to earlier works of neorealism resides in Kelly Reichardt’s humane concern. In conjunction with her co-screenwriter Jon Raymond, Reichardt set out to overcome stereotypes and prejudices, and foster a sense of identification between the audience and their marginalized fellow man. Like Umberto, Wendy is radically alone, a solitude that is reflected in her inability to own her own home and, in the same way, in her being stripped of her one truly affective relationship. Then as now, too, an appeal to human solidarity lies beneath the film’s surface pessimism. In short, Wendy and Lucy echoes the cinematic ambitions of the most renowned neorealist filmmaker: “Most of Zavattini’s work has the moral agenda of awakening people to the actualities of the world around them, to the connection of human being to

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human being” (Curle and Sneyder 2000, 50). Reichardt’s film recognizes the moral value of film as a form of knowledge: people must first meet and get to know each other if they are to care for one another (Casetti 1994, 36-37). The humanism permeating these films is in tune with the primary function that Todorov, following Richard Rorty, attributes to literature, and which is likewise applicable to cinematic narrative: to enable the reader/viewer to transcend egotism (the illusion of self-sufficiency) and learn other ways of being a person (Todorov 2007, 27); or, in Kant’s words, “to think by putting oneself in the position of any other human” (Todorov 2007, 2728); and as the Bulgarian intellectual adds: “To think and to feel while adopting the point of view of others, real people or literary [film] characters, this unique way of tending toward universality, permits us to achieve our calling” (Todorov 2007, 28). Moreover, unlike more abstract types of knowledge, cinema (like literature) deals with human experience through unique stories that facilitate their communication over time and space (Todorov 2007, 25-26), that is, beyond the cultural framework from which they emerge. Thus, we may conclude that the particular idiosyncrasies of these narrative languages, and the encounter with otherness they enact in their best forms, are what enable transcultural permeability. Needless to say, in relation to film, such potential depends first and foremost on the screenwriting process. As noted at the start of the chapter, neorealist cinema was soon assimilated by other national cinemas outside Italy. The recent Wendy and Lucy, an emblematic example of one of the current trends in American indie filmmaking, continues to demonstrate the value of neorealism’s legacy, enhanced by remarkable affinities at a number of levels: historical (postwar Italy and pre-financial crisis USA), aesthetic (the “aesthetics of rejection”), and relating to character design and development, most of whom experience common conflicts of a social (lack of solidarity, marginalization and isolation) and psychological kind (the suffering of those who have lost everything), as has been set out in this contribution. Reichardt’s film evinces the neo-neorealist continuity that ultimately proves the validity of a cinema willing to retake reality.

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References Agel, Henry, trans.1957. Vittorio De Sica. Madrid: Rialp. Aguilar, Santiago and Felipe Cabrerizo. 2015. Vittorio De Sica. Madrid: Cátedra. Bellíssima. 1952. Wr: Zavattini, Cesare & Cecchi D’Amico, Suso et al. Dir: Visconti. CEI-Incom. Bordwell, David. 2009. “Getting real.” Observations on film art, May 3. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2009/05/03/getting-real/ Brody, Richard. 2009. “About “Neo-Neo Realism”.” The New Yorker, March 19. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/aboutneo-neo-realism Casetti, Francesco, trans. 1994. Teorías del cine. Madrid: Cátedra. Chárraga, Tarsicio and Elvia Vera Soriano. 2006. “La presencia del neorrealismo en América Latina: Cesare Zavattini en México”. Quaderni del CSCI: Rivisti Annuale di Cinema Italiano 2: 129-140. Curle, Howard and Stephen Sneyder (eds.). 2000. Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. Ezra, Elizabeth and Terry Rowden. 2006. Transnational Cinema. The Film Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Germania, anno zero. 1948. Wr: Rossellini, Roberto & Amidei, Sergio et al. Dir: Rossellini. Tevere Film, SAFDI, UGC, DEFA. Hall, Dawn E. 2014. “American Independent Female Filmmakers: Kelly Reichardt in focus.” Ph.D. diss., Middle Tennessee State University. Ladri di biciclette. 1948. Wr: Zavattini, Cesare et.al. Dir: De Sica. Produzioni De Sica. Les Quatre Cents Coups. 1959. Wr: Truffaut, François & Moussy, Marcel. Dir: Truffaut. Les Films du Carrosse, Sédif Productions. Lima Quintanhila, Tiago. 2011. “Neo-realismo Americano em Wendy and Lucy, de Kelly Reichardt (e Jon Raymond).” Devires–Cinema e Humanidades 11. 1: 126-153. Littman, Sam. 2014. “Kelly Reichardt.” Senses of Cinema. Issue 71. Accesed May 24, 2016. http://sensesofcinema.com/2014/greatdirectors/kelly-reichardt/ Miracolo a Milano. 1951. Wr: Zavattini, Cesare & De Sica, Vittorio et al. Dir: De Sica. Produzioni De Sica, ENIC. Monterde, Enrique. 2003. “Bases estéticas para la definición del Neorrealismo”. Biblioteca Virtual Universal. Accesed May 23, 2016. http://www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/88653.pdf Murphy, J.J. 2010. “A similar sense of time.” In Analysing the Screenplay,

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edited by Jill Nelmes, 158-174. London and New York: Routledge. Nochinson, Marta P. 2009. “New York Film Festival 2008. Part II: Of Now, Passion, and the “We”.” Film-Philosophy 13. 1: 112-123. Noguera, María. 2013. “Aportaciones de Roberto Rossellini al discurso crítico sobre el neorrealismo italiano.” Observatorio Journal 7: 019033. Quintana, Àngel. 1997. El cine italiano, 1942-1961: del neorrealismo a la modernidad. Barcelona: Paidós. Sciuscià. 1946. Wr: Zavattini, Cesare & Amidei, Sergio et al. Dir: De Sica. Societa Cooperativa Alfa Cinematografica. Scott, A. O. 2009. “Neo-Neo Realism.” The New York Times Magazine, March 17. Accesed May 24, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22neorealismt.html?pagewanted=all Scott, A. O. 2009. “Scott Responds to New Yorker Blog on the Value and Definition of Neo-Realism.” Carpetbagger: The Hollywood Blog of The New York Times, March 23. Accesed May 24, 2016. http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/ao-scott-respondsto-a-new-yorker-blogger-about-the-value-and-definition-of-neorealism/?_r=0 Smith, James K. A. 2014. Who’s Afraid of Relativism? Community, Contingency, and Creaturehood. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic. Todorov, Tzvetan. 2007. “What is Literature For.” New Literary History, 38. 1: 13-32. Umberto D. 1952. Wr: Zavattini, Cesare. Dir: De Sica. Rizzoli Film, Produzione Films Vittorio De Sica, Amato Film. Van Sant, Gus. 2008. “Kelly Reichardt.” Bomb, 105: 76-81. Wagstaff, Christopher. 2007. Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Wendy and Lucy. 2008. Wr: Reichardt, Kelly & Jon Raymond. Dir: Reichardt. Film Science, Glass Eye Pix, Field Guide Films and Washington Square Films. Wendy and Lucy. Press Notes. New York: Oscilloscope Laboratories. Zavattini, Cesare. 2000. “Some ideas on the Cinema.” In Vittorio De Sica: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Howard Curle and Stephen Sneyder, 50-61. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. Originally published in Italian as a recorded interview in La revista de cinema italiano, vol. 2, 1952.

CHAPTER FIVE IN THE FACE OF IN-BETWEENNESS TRANSCULTURAL & GENERIC SCREENWRITING IN THE GERMAN GANGSTER SERIAL IM ANGESICHT DES VERBRECHENS (IN THE FACE OF CRIME) SARAH RENGER

Introduction Media convergence is emerging as one of the most important cultural transformations of our age (Jenkins 2006)–such as smart television, second screen usage, Video-on-Demand, or cross-media-marketing strategies of movies and television shows. Thus, different media are appropriate to different forms of storytelling: Each medium has particular affinities for certain themes and certain types of plot: you cannot tell the same type of story on the stage and in writing, during conversation and in thousand-page novel, in a two-hour movie and in a TV serial that runs for many years (Ryan 2004, 356).

So, if media have different storytelling patterns, genre analyses should therefore consider the particular attributes of the medium. In terms of genre theory, Mittell (2001) posits that film genre theory cannot be adapted for television genre theory. Film and television narrative do not lend themselves to the same types of analysis, because they vary from each other, for example in narration, perspective, temporality, and viewer comprehension as well as plot structure, and viewer engagement. A useful tool, therefore, to identify a medium’s unique property is to compare it to another form by analysing the distinctive way of telling stories (Mittell 2007). Mittell’s (2001, 3) main thesis is that genres are “cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry,

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audience, and cultural practices as well”. Tudor (2012) also emphasises the genre’s interplay between culture, audience, films, and filmmakers. The crucial factor distinguishing a genre, he argues, is not just the characteristics inherent in the films themselves, but also the particular culture, in which a genre operates. There is no basis for assuming that a particular genre will be conceived in the same way in every culture (Tudor 2012), so genre screenwriting should therefore differ regarding the national context. Against this background the relevant question is: what do the aforementioned narrative and genre theories mean in terms of the gangster genre? The gangster genre, as a very cinematic genre (Creeber 2002) through its symbolic use of images, has a strong connection to cultural images because, according to Altman (1999), genre films maintain a strong relation to the culture that produce them as well as being the temporal reflection of transhistorical values. What is then the ability of the cinematic gangster genre to tell a story on the television screen? How is the transition from the American gangster film to a German gangster television series achieved? How do the narrative modes differ between the cinema and television screen? This chapter is about the recreation of the American gangster film genre on a serial television screen through transcultural and generic screenwriting by using the example of the German serial1 Im Angesicht des Verbrechens (In the Face of Crime)2 (Germany, 2010). In the Face of Crime is a great example for screenwriting appropriate for different screens and that has the possibility to reach a global audience. The aim of the article is to reveal narrative patterns and dominant cultural storylines of the American gangster genre in German (quality) television. The study also interrogates the cultural transfer from a screenwriting perspective through examining besides the texts dramatic structure, reviews, interviews with the screenwriter, the director and broadcaster as well as audience ratings. The different fictional narrative strategies and patterns are examined using qualitative textual content analysis in a comparative way with the aim to describe and interpret the characteristics and functions of the series’ text in order to “obtain a sense of the ways in which, in particular cultures at particular times, people make sense of the world around them” (McKee 2003, 1). In this regard, the television text can be 1

A serial is a single story broken into episodes, meanwhile in a series each episode tells a different story with closed narration. 2 For the sake of the text’s legibility, only the English title has been used.

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contextualized by way of its position in the creative and industry milieu. The study focusses on four main realms: genre, medium, narrative, and culture, which all reveal a state of in-betweenness of In the Face of Crime insofar as they operate within dichotomies, caused by the series’ screenwriting and storytelling: in between-genres: reality versus fiction, in-between-media: screenplay versus teleplay, in-between-narrative: epic versus serial screenwriting, and in-between-culture: German culture versus Russian culture. This study argues that through this state of inbetweenness the reinvention of the American gangster film on the German television screen is possible.

In the Face of Crime: Production Background In the Face of Crime is a German television serial (ten one-hour episodes) about the Russian mafia in Berlin. There are two main plots: the first one is about two mafia gangs fighting for their prevalence in illegal cigarette trade and human trafficking. Two Berlin policemen, Marek, Jewish and Russian origin, and Sven from the former east part of Berlin, investigate in this Russian mafia milieu. Marek is caught between his job as a policeman, searching the murderer of his brother Grischa (ten years ago, as a child, Marek witnessed the murder of Grischa by the Russian mafia), and his sister Stella, married with one of the Russian mafia bosses, Mischa, against whom Marek investigates. The second plot tells the story of Jelena and Swetlana–two Ukrainians, who were decoyed to Berlin by promising a better life, and end up in prostitution. These two plotlines are interwoven through the love story between Marek and Jelena. The series was written by Rolf Basedow and directed by Dominik Graf. Since the mid-1980s, Basedow and Graf have collaborated several times. Both of them are well-known for some episodes of the German crime series Tatort (Crime scene) (1970-) as well as for some television films such as Hotte im Paradies (Hotte in Paradise) (Germany 2002)3. Based on their research for the television drama Hotte in Paradise, the project of In the Face of Crime was developed (Graf and Sievert 2010). Graf is one of few German directors, who has worked since his professional beginning in film as well as in the television industry with a focus on police shows. In April and May 2010, the serial was first broadcasted by the German-

3

Hotte in Paradise is about the rise and fall of the pimp called Hotte.

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French broadcaster ARTE and further in October and November 2010 by the German public broadcaster ARD. In November 2010, the DVD as well as the book Im Angesicht des Verbrechens: Fernseharbeit am Beispiel einer Serie (In the Face of Crime: television production by using the example of a serial)4 was released. In the Face of Crime won several awards–amongst others the German Television Award for Best MiniSeries, the Grimme Award for Best Fiction, and Dominik Graf won the Bavarian Television Award for Best Director. Rarely has a German series received so much critical attention (Groh 2010), and this one achieved high acclaim. In the Face of Crime was seen as a German answer to American quality television series (Keil 2010), and was held in comparison to cinema with the conclusion that television can be the better cinema (Buss 2010). One reason may be the specific television serial’s storytelling that is more similar to cinematic storytelling conventions, both aesthetically and narratively. In this context, it is not surprising that the television serial’s first release was on a cinema screen during the Berlin International Film Festival Berlinale in February 2010. The serial was screened in two four-hour-blocks. The audience and critics were very excited about this German quality television genre serial, because it represented the return of genre storytelling on both screens– cinema and television. However, In the Face of Crime is a typical gangster story in a classical sense due to its play with reality and fiction and different genres, which will be discussed in the next paragraphs.

In-Between-Genres: Reality vs. Fiction Semiotically, genres–“kind” or “class” in French, indicating a distinctive type of text–are a “shared code between the producers and interpreters of texts included within it” (Chandler 1997, 5). From the producer’s perspective, genres are useful, because they can rely on reader’s knowledge and expectations about what works within a genre. A genre is the product of a text- and audience-based negotiation activated by the viewer’s expectations (Creeber 2001; Chandler 1997; Fowler, 1989). In addition, a “genre is dependent on intertextuality, it cannot be an inherent textual component”5 (Mittell 2001, 6). So, by definition, genres are not original. Especially in television programmes there exist no generic purity 4

The book is a behind-the-scenes-project-record and contains interviews of the director and the production team and footage. 5 In terms of the importance of the semiotic notion of intertextuality see also Wales (1989), Thwaites et al. (1994), Barthes (1975).

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(Abercrombie 1996; Allen 1989; Feuer 1992). Against this background, the transformation of a genre story from cinema to television screen would therefore cause genre hybridisation between the two media. In particular, quality television series “take their cue from famous genres defined since the beginning of film” (Dreher 2010, 48). The German mafia television serial In the Face of Crime is no exception here with its roots in the American gangster film genre. The gangster film is the American genre par excellence. According to Coppola, for example, the gangster trilogy about the myth of honour, The Godfather I-III (USA, 1972, 1974, 1990) was always a metaphor: Michael as America (Leitch 2002). The Godfather begins with: “I believe in America” (The Godfather I) as starting point for the destruction of the American dream of freedom and bravery (Kiefer 2006). This very American genre tends to generate discussions of Hollywood’s mythmaking and glorification by symbolising the American way of career and success (Grob et al. 2011). The gangster heroes were living the audience’s dream of economic power–a desire that is strongly related to the American culture. The gangster genre is–like the Western–an American story about the country and myth through portraying men of honour (Grob et al. 2011). The gangster embodies the American mind of these men, who reject the modern way of life. Gangster films are developed around the sinister actions of criminals or gangsters, who operate outside the law. The gangster’s way of life is accompanied by violence–only through murdering do they come to power. In this regard, the gangster is an individual achiever, who pursues his aims consequently. However, gangsters are not only rough, unscrupulous, and fearsome, but at the same time they are portrayed as ordinary people with their family life and struggles, an inherent defining paradox in terms of the gangsters. So, more than any other film genre, the gangster genre is the home of the conflict between good and evil (Mitchell 2012, 258). One of the gangster film’s feature is this ambivalence, such as the contradiction between gang and family. Leitch (2002, 15) relates this paradox to crime films in general and calls it the heart of all crime films: Crime “films are about the continual breakdown and reestablishment of the borders among criminals, crime solvers, and victims.” One reason for why crime films fascinate is because of the ways in which the gangsters test the limits of their moral categories and rules. The most important rule of the gangster film is that crime does not pay (Leitch 2002, 107). Furthermore, the crime in a gangster film is always metaphorical; according to Leitch (2002, 103f.), it is a metaphor for social unrest:

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Although it could well be argued that every crime film is a critique of the society crime disrupts, the gangster film is especially concerned with the social order its gang mimics or parodies. This concern begins with the gangster film’s obsession with rules. Some rules are so fundamental that they are virtually universal in gangster films. >…@ In short, the gang is constituted as the supreme social authority that demands unquestioning.

So, the gang represents in some way the society in the classical ‘Mob-era’. The American television serial The Sopranos (USA, 1999-2007) is a continuation of the classical ‘Mob-era’ by representing the ‘post-Mob-era’ through a genre hybrid. In the following, this paper argues that In the Face of Crime is a German continuation of The Sopranos. The American television serial The Sopranos includes the gangster film genres–with a lot of intertextual references to The Godfather I-III, and Goodfellas (USA, 1990)–and televisual melodrama. Creeber (2002) argues that the self reflexive ‘renovation’ of the gangster genre in The Sopranos functions as a nostalgic retrospection by referencing its own generic history. In addition, The Sopranos is often associated with the advent of American quality TV as a characteristic of the post-Network-era. Due to filmic narration–such as shot-reverse shot, or playing with temporality, for example slow motion, time jumps, non-linear narration, cross-cutting–The Sopranos represents not only the continuation of the classical ‘Mob-era’, but also symbolises complex television storytelling through televisual storytelling patterns such as music6, repetition through dialogues, stereotypical family conflicts, or familiar indoor-settings (Diederichsen 2012). In particular, the therapy sessions function as televisual storytelling insofar, as they symbolise repeating experiences like a narrative recap through dialogue– recapping dialogues are very typical for daily soaps. The merit of The Sopranos is the transformation of the gangster film in serial storytelling through referencing the American culture, and gangster mythology. Dr. Melfi and her family, for example, talk about mafia films as “classic American cinema” (The Sopranos, S1E8), or, in the pilot, when Tony talks in therapy about his struggles of feeling depressed: “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was an American. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings” (The Sopranos, S1E1). While Tony incorporates the antagonism between his ideal–the strong and silent American guy like Gary Cooper–and his real life as a depressed mafia boss talking about his problems in therapy, the main protagonist of In the 6

The music in The Sopranos is akin to a music video: The title sequence, for example, is staged as a music video with a pivotal and recognizable popsong.

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Face of Crime, Mischa, symbolises the strong and silent guy. This is the first continuation of the The Sopranos’ narrative in In the Face of Crime. The second one represents the demythologisation of the mafia: The Sopranos-mobs mourn the ‘Golden Age of the Mob’, which is gone (The Sopranos, S1E2). Tony complains, for example, that nowadays, there are “no values” (The Sopranos, S1E1). By comparing the mafia-business with the ‘garbage-business’, Tony Soprano demythologises the mafia. Accordingly, neither The Sopranos nor In the Face of Crime tell the story of the rise of the gangster and his coming to power–as a main feature of the gangster film–which represents the main distinction between the cinematic and the televisual gangster. On the contrary, In the Face of Crime tells the story of the fall of the gangster, and does not glorify them. This rejection of glorification is due to the research of screenwriter Rolf Basedow: because of the screenplay of Hotte in Paradise, Basedow had connections to the Russian mafia milieu in Berlin. Basedow’s aim was to understand the whole mafia world with its structures, crime codex, and business. In an interview, he mentions, that the gangster world is an alternative world, and he wanted to portray it in a realistic way, similar to reality (Graf and Sievert 2010, 223). In addition, the television medium is a more ‘realistic’ medium in its manner to tell stories that are more connected to the audience’s lives. The weekly and daily format of television series structures the audience’s life in terms of time of reception, furthermore the time narrated in the series’ diegesis is similar to the time in daily life of the audience (Mikos 1994). Fiske (2011, 21) emphasises that television “presents itself as an unmediated picture of external reality”. In The Sopranos, for example, the family drama is relocated within the mafia milieu, as a consequence the serial presents typical family drama problems such as the teenagers are grounded, kid’s problems at school, or the difficulties of taking care of the grandmother. By this realistic presentation of the gangsters in In the Face of Crime and The Sopranos and through portraying their everyday life hassles, the television gangster genre incorporates no mythmaking in contrast to the gangster film. Although In the Face of Crime and The Sopranos have the aforementioned similarities, they differ from each other in terms of genre mix. Meanwhile in The Sopranos the gangster genre is dominant and mixed with family drama, In the Face of Crime involves different genres: crime film, film noir, family drama, fairy tale, and police show. Furthermore, the German serial plays more with a mix of reality and fiction–as a feature of the

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police show (Rose 1985)–than its American counterpart. Meanwhile the American gangster genre portrays the reality as a hyperpole–such as the gangster boss is going to therapy (The Sopranos), or the aestheticisation of crime and clichés in The Godfather–In the Face of Crime shows the cruel reality of crime in a concrete and well-known environment, the tourist metropolis Berlin. At the same time, the series begins as a fairy tale: the young Ukrainian woman Jelena, one of the main characters, is swimming in a lake while she is telling us through voiceover her family’s tradition of finding the perfect man: “Grandmother said, Lenotschka, child, you will see the man you love under water. That’s what happened to her, to Mom, and it would happen to me, too” (In the Face of Crime, E1). Suddenly, he appears under water: her perfect man. During this scene mystical, floating music reveals a melange of emotion of tragedy and hope. The repletion of music functions as the leitmotif of the whole series, which is associated with the series’ arc: searching for happiness. According to Newman (2006, 23), the arc is one of three television storytelling levels, the macro level, and a character-driven form: “Arc is to character as plot is to story. Put slightly differently, arc is plot stated in terms of character. An arc is a character’s journey from A through B, C, and D to E.” In In the Face of Crime the arc is not dedicated to one character’s journey, instead it represents the series’ issue and meaningful whole. Through presenting the arc in the exposition, the series enters into a contract with the audience by giving formal unity as an instruction of reception. In addition, the series’ arc explores the multiperspectivity inherent in the exposition. The first scene connects the different plotlines of the two main characters, as can be discovered through the cut to the next scene. An abrupt establishing shot introduces the metropolis Berlin: a typical Berlin sight, the ‘Fernsehturm’, then the camera moves quickly to the ‘Plattenbau’7 followed by an edit to a man’s face in close-up–it is the man of Jelena’s dream under water: the policeman Marek. Marek presents himself through voiceover: “Back then, I only dealt with petty criminals. That was before I switched to organized crime. We were going to enforce an arrest warrant. That was our livelihood.” (In the Face of Crime, E1). Marek speaks about the future in the past tense, which represents the structure of the series with different timeframes. Therefore, it is obvious that Marek has to face the crime: he will investigate within organised crime, the mafia. Both described scenes symbolise on the one hand the different genres that are inherent in the series, on the other hand they illustrate the variety of fiction and reality 7

‘Plattenbau’ means prefabricated concrete buildings, and is a typical building from the former eastern part of Berlin (GDR).

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that are still separate. The cut via the face of Marek functions as a link between the two scenes. The whole plot about Jelena as a fairy tale is increased by an intertextual reference of the modern fairy tale Pretty Woman (USA, 1990), as one feature of complex genre narration: in the fifth episode (In the Face of Crime, E5), after a shopping tour, Jelena and Heinrich Lenz have oysters for lunch in a fancy restaurant–a dish Jelena is not accustomed to, comparable to the snails in Pretty Woman. In Pretty Woman the shopping scene is the main scene–also demonstrated by the title song–because it uncovers Vivian’s change from a prostitute to a pretty upper class woman. Jelena is not a princess, meanwhile Vivien is such one; the unconscionable businessman Heinrich Lenz does illegal business, while Edward Lewis, in Pretty Woman, in fact makes legal business but he acquires more and more moral concerns. By referencing this American romantic film comedy, Graf creates a realistic version of the tale about the search for happiness and love. Through the fictionalization of reality and genre mix, In the Face of Crime offers a German televisual alternative to the American gangster genre.

In-Between-Media: Screenplay vs. Teleplay Due to the different successes of the German gangster story, one might ask, what caused on the one hand the success on the cinema screen and DVD sales and on the other hand the disappointing ratings on the television screen8. The following paragraphs demonstrate that this is not only because of the different target groups, the reason is, rather, the serial’s storytelling that was unusual for German television series at that time. According to the head of programing of the German broadcaster ARD, Volker Herres, the German audience was accustomed neither to complex television storytelling and original languages9 on the television screen, nor to the horizontal art of storytelling afforded by longer series. Horizontal narration, according to Lang (2011), implies plotlines, which continue for

8

Despite the positive reviews, the audience ratings on ARD were disappointing: The first five episodes achieved 8.1 per cent market share, which is under the broadcaster’s minimum of 10 per cent and therefore the series was declared as unsuccesful (Niemeier 2010; Förster 2013). 9 Russian is not dubbed, but subtitled.

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several episodes, such as the private life of the detective10. Meanwhile vertical narration defines repetitive structures of each series’ episode such as solving a crime in each episode. A feature of complex auteur-series, Lang (2011) states, is domination by horizontal narration, which distinguishes them from traditional series with a dominant vertical narration. In this regard, the timeslot on ARD–the one of reruns of Crime Scene with vertical narration–was one reason for the unsuccessful ratings because the audience did not get what they presumably expected to see during that timeslot (Wirth 2010). Fröhlich’s (2013) study on reasons for the lack of German quality television series reveals related findings insofar that Germany does not have such serial storytelling tradition as in America, the United Kingdom or France: the German audience is not used to serials–a single story is broken into episodes–but more used to series– with each episode telling a different story with closed narration, like the German crime fiction Crime Scene. Ralf Husmann, German producer of Stromberg (Stromberg) (Germany, 2004-2012)11, argues that the German audience does not prefer ongoing storylines without closure such as daily soaps. In contrast to commercial American serial television and its primary model of daytime soap opera since the 1940s (Mittell 2009), Germany established the soap opera 50 years later in the 1990s and stands for superficial entertainment (Förster 2013). However, German quality television serials with horizontal narration has recently made an appearance on German television screens, for example Blochin (Blochin) (Germany, 2015), Deutschland 83 (Germany 83) (Germany, 2015), Morgen hör ich auf (Tomorrow I’ll stop) (Germany, 2016), or Die Stadt und die Macht (The City and the Power) (Germany, 2016). The ratings and the precipitate series’ finale provoked a discussion about, how German quality television–in analogy to American quality television– is (even) possible (Hahn 2013). In this discourse, it is important to point out the different significance of ratings and audiences in America and Germany: HBO–that coined quality television by finding a lucrative dedicated audience (Mittell 2009)–“has a very small audience of subscribers, much smaller than the equivalent audience for network quality drama, they happen to be the very upscale demographic willing to pay extra for more specialised and more highbrow fare” (Feuer 2007, 147). While public broadcasters in Germany–such as ARD–have the aim of reaching mass audience (Förster 2014). Furthermore, it is important to 10

In Luther, for example, the storyline about the relationship with Alice–a suspect from the first episode–is an ongoing plotline over all the three seasons. 11 Stromberg is the German adaptation of The Office (UK, 2001-2003).

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differ between the American and the German way of television production. In comparison to the American model of production, the concept of the writer’s room–a concept that has been adapted by the Scandinavian professionals as well (Redvall 2013)–In the Face of Crime was written by one single author and directed by one single director. Against this background, the serial is more similar to the concept of ‘auteur-cinema’ and, as a consequence, the serial’s screenwriting is more akin to film, which explains the success at the Berlinale, but not on DVD. Kumpf’s (2013) study on series’ reception, for example, reveals that the medium or screen is crucial for the reception of a series’ text, because the reception becomes a characteristic of cultural and social distinction. The study focuses on intellectuals, Kumpf terms them ‘Intellies’12, who say that they are not watching television, but consuming US-American series online via streaming or on DVDs. By positioning themselves as ‘quality viewers’, they isolate themselves from recipients of traditional television programmes through the choice of medium (Kumpf 2013, 347). In this regard, television does not have the same quality potential as DVDs. The difference between television and DVDs is that DVDs promote close reading of isolated texts (Hill 2007). DVD works to select and isolate out texts from television’s flow and the institution of television. Furthermore, Hill (2007) compares the DVD with written texts and argues that they are less akin to oral culture, which is striking because–as reported by Graf (Graf and Sievert 2010)–In the Face of Crime is in fact not a serial in a classical sense, but more comparable to a big novel that is fragmented into ten parts. DVD releases have worked to intensify fans’ and audiences’ para-social sense of connection with television producers or auteurs. Hill (2007, 53) terms it ‘mediatised watching-with’ through the extras on the DVD such as the DVD commentary, the function of which is to cement the position of producers of a show–the audience co-watching or parawatching with the media professionals. In this regard, DVD consumption is more similar to watching the serial at the film festival Berlinale: the serial’s text can be watched as a whole–comparable to binge viewing, the excessive viewing of a series, one episode after another (Richter 2013; Diederichsen 2010). In addition, the audience is really co-watching with the serials’ professionals during the festival screening and has the 12 The term ‘Intellies’ combines the following characteristics of academic recipients of US-American television series in Germany: intellectual aspiration for television series; reception of television series that are considered as intellectual; reception of intelligent telly, short for television; reception of fancy television series.

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opportunity to connect with the professionals by asking questions after the screening. Therefore, it is not astonishing that both the festival reaction and DVD release were a success in comparison to the television ratings, because the serial’s screenwriting is more suitable for film and DVD reception, rather than linear television programming. As already mentioned, the ‘serial’s structure is more akin to a feature film than to serial crime storytelling (Graf and Sievert 2010). This is because the serial represents an epic with an on-going story in ten parts that are not characteristic serial episodes, due to the episode’s transitions: the story continues at the same point where it has ended in the previous episode, meanwhile all episodes have a constantly recurring element, the serial’s theme music. Typically, television series, especially American quality series, have a balance between episodic closure and serial deferment: “Unlike movies, television acts have strongly punctuated endings, often with a clearly focused question, sometimes with a cliffhanger, typically with a fade to black and a cut to a commercial” (Newman 2006, 21). In this context, In the Face of Crime varies from serial television storytelling, because the whole story is divided in ten parts with a final narrative closure. Ellis (1992) clarifies that closure and finality is not a central feature of television narration. Film text, in contrast, aims for a final coherent totalising vision, which sets everything back into order (Ellis 1992). In the Face of Crime involves, therefore, rather a reception situation in a cinema than a televisual reception situation, because the series creates suspense within the story that is told, and not through the episodic structure with a cliffhanger. In consequence of the lack of cliffhangers, In the Face of Crime generates suspense by the end of an episode giving a preview of the following episode in a split screen13 during the credits of the series’ episode. These previews are similar to film trailers and in the meantime they are common in German soap operas. Besides these previews in form of teasers, Graf’s series provides accessibility by summarising the former story in ‘previously on’–a typical element of television series. According to Newman (2006), television storytelling is aimed for maximizing accessibility. However, the narrative structure of In the Face of Crime is aimed to watch from the beginning to the end, because of the lack of recapping within the serial’s diegesis. Recaps conduce a quick cognitive access in the story with all the relevant 13

The split screen is one main aesthetic element among others in order to display the multi-plot structure. In particular, during scenes of police observation, the split screen is used to demonstrate the different perspectives with the aim of gaining an overview and not to lose the orientation throughout the different perspectives.

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plotlines in order to get attuned emotionally in the upcoming series’ story (Landbeck 2002). Recapping is a ubiquitous feature of television in all genres. Television assumes that we don’t watch everything and can always use a bit of reminding when it comes to the most important things to know. In serialized narratives recapping is especially important because of the large quantity of data about the story world that forms the background of any new developments (Newman 2006, 18).

Each beat14, Newman (2006) argues, usually reminds the audience about some old bits before offering the new bit, for example through the use of dialogues. Against this background, the scenes in Graf’s serial do not contain a mix of new information and old information, which is a result of the epic storytelling. Ironically, the whole serial finishes with Marek’s sentence: “There is a time for everything” (In the Face of Crime, E10), which can be seen as a metaphor for the epic storytelling. In the Face of Crime is, therefore, a narrative hybrid format between a serial and an epic (film).

In-Between-Narrative: Epic vs. Serial Screenwriting As already argued, In the Face of Crime is comparable to a novel divided in ten parts. This intermedial relation is not unusual for television as Creeber (2001, 3) argues: Television “has adapted formats and forms from different sources since its inception. Radio, film, written fiction, theatre, journalism, music and other art and media forms have all played an important part in television and its history”. It can be argued that In the Face of Crime has its roots in literature because the series pursues narrative patterns of an epic. Traditionally an epic is a genre of poetry, in which the story has a theme of grandeur and heroism. Aristotle (1448 a 18-23) differs between epic poetry, tragedy, and comedy as general conception modes of imitation. A main feature of epic poetry is its length: epic action 14

Newman (2006, 16) defines beats as follows: “The way the story is unfolded bit by bit encourages viewers to take an interest in it, and as the unfolding progresses the storyteller seeks to intensify this interest. Thus television’s most basic aesthetic and economic goals overlap: engaging the viewer’s attention. This begins on the micro level, the smallest node of narrative. On this level of storytelling most television narratives look quite similar. Situation comedies, and serial dramas all organize their stories into rather short segments, often less than two minutes in length. Viewers might call these scenes, but writers call them ‘beats,’ and they are television’s most basic storytelling unit.”

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has no limits of time. In this sense, epic poetry has a special capacity for enlarging its dimensions, so that many events can be presented simultaneously. In his essay, Bakhtin (1981) compares the novel to epic poetry. He argues, that the epic is a completed genre with an absolute past: The epic as a genre in its own right may, for our purposes, be characterized by three constitutive features: (1) a national epic past–in Goethe’s and Schiller’s terminology the ‘absolute past’–serves as the subject for the epic; (2) national tradition (not personal experience and the free thought that grows out of it) serves as the source for the epic; (3) an absolute epic distance separates the epic world from contemporary reality, that is, from the time in which the singer (the author and his audience) lives (Bakhtin 1981, 48).

The epic’s radical degree of completeness concerns not only content but also meaning and values; it cannot be re-evaluated, re-thought or changed. The epic past is irretrievable and idealized, and it is valorized in a way that makes it appear hierarchically superior to the present. As a consequence, the epic world has its own special rules, and own peculiar context (Bakhtin 1981), which is similar to the gangster genre with their closed world and gang rules. Epic storytelling focuses on journeys of lofty heroes, or a mythic heroic figure and it is covering a long span of time (Santas 2008). In In the Face of Crime, the epic past is told as a future memory by valorising the past of a beginning through Marek’s voiceover narration in the described exposition. The past manifests as a memory by building boundaries, which block it off from the present. The epic world is constructed in the zone of an absolute distanced image; by this “epic distance” (Bakhtin 1981, 49), the serial demands for narrative closure. Epic storytelling appears on the television screen, thanks to the advent of American quality television series. However, in Germany epic storytelling is not (yet) that common for serial narration. The epic storytelling in In the Face of Crime is remarkable. Certainly, this is due to the gangster genre. The narrative structure of the gangster film implies epic storytelling with a main plot about the gangster and his gang and fewer subplots. Graf takes his time to describe in detail the milieu of the gangsters, for example a birthday party in the restaurant ‘Odessa’, which is fifteen minutes long and starts in the second episode and continues in the third episode (In the Face of Crime, E2, E3). With the aid of this epic storytelling, Graf is able to show details of the life of the serial’s characters, so that the audience get access to a world that would be normally out of reach. However, In the Face of Crime contrasts to the gangster film plot structure by incorporating a multi-plot structure, which is established in the serial’s

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exposition. The serial contains in total six plot lines15 that are developed parallel. All these plotlines are interwoven and demonstrate the narrative complexity16 of the serial. Already the exposition establishes two narrators, Jelena and Marek, through the voiceover narration as a form of statements: Both of them have to face the crime, and both of them tell their own story. The voiceover narration announces some future events. Genette (1994) terms this temporal narrative order ‘repetitive prolepsis’ that functions as a short allusion of future events with the effect that the audience is more concentrated on how and when it will happen rather than what will happen. So, the serial deals with different temporalities, or– speaking with Mittell–the awareness of the audience is more on the frame of the window than inside the window. Against this background, In the Face of Crime is a German example of complex storytelling by varying from the gangster genre because of the multi-plot structure. The serial uses the epic structure in order to tell an episodic story with a multi-plot structure, so that the different storylines can be presented. The serial multiplot structure helps to display the serial’s theme of different cultures and migration, which will be discussed in the next paragraphs.

15 First, the story of Marek as a member of the Latvian Jewish family and his search for the murder of his brother Grischa. Secondly, the story of Marek and Sven as representative of the police and part of the LKA (LKA stands for Landeskriminalamt, which means State Office of Criminal Investigation) and their investigations within the Russian mafia. Thirdly, the story of Mischa’s mafia gang and the strugglings with his opponent Andrej and his gang. Fourthly, the plotline of the private perspective of the Russian mafia symbolised by Stella, the wife of Mischa and sister of Marek. Fifthly, Jelena’s plotline tells the story of trafficking in human beings and prostitution. Sixthly, there is a plotline about a corrupt police couple. 16 According to Mittell (2013), there are differences between cinematic and televisual narration–one of them is narrative complexity. For Mittell, narrative complexity is not only about the window to a realistic storyworld, but rather to look at the window’s frame in terms of how the story is told. Mittell understands narrative complexity as a self-reflexive engagement with the formal conventions of television. Mittell terms this new viewing practice mode ‘forensic fandom’ to intensify viewer engagement, which is focused on both diegetic pleasures and formal awareness. The viewers are engaged more actively in comprehending the story–such as decoding cues and narrative gaps, or making decisions about when to watch. Complex television series initiate the desire to be both actively committed to the story and successfully surprised through storytelling manipulations.

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In-Between-Culture: German Culture vs. Russian Culture In the Face of Crime varies from typical German television crime shows such as Crime Scene, or Soko (Special Unit) (Germany, 1978) that mainly focus on social topics–for example mobbing, divorce, patchwork families– or actual political themes in Germany for example ‘Stuttgart 21’17 or running amok. However, In the Face of Crime discusses social issues as migration and cultural identities. The exposition establishes a main theme of the series–migration–which enables the narrative multi-plot structure of the series by intersecting with different cultures, represented by the different dialects (Berlin accent) and languages (German, Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian). The Russian Mafia embodies the delineation of culture and therefore homogeneity by living in a parallel culture and society with their own rules, which is due to the genre–they represent a fictional ‘gangster-genre-world’. Furthermore, gangsters are diasporic immigrants: A diasporic migrant is one that not only identifies him/herself as a member of the home nation, but s/he is also strongly committed to that community, while living as a passive citizen in a different country. Diasporic immigrants live with their soul at home and their body abroad. Their emotional life is connected to the origin country that is their ‘home’ and they are merely refugees in the new society (Bradatan, Popan and Melton 2010, 174f.).

Regarding diasporic migrants and their in-between-identities, there is a difference between the immigrant culture in America and Europe, especially in Germany. America is a country of immigrants, which means that America is a nation “where many different cultures weave into a multicultural thread rather than into a melting pot. Immigrants should be left to bring their own, specific contribution to the American life, and their perspectives needed to be incorporated into a new American culture” (Bradatan, Popan and Melton 2010, 170). In the American serial Sopranos, for example, the topic of migration is not thematised as a problem of identity, in contrast to In the Face of Crime. Migrants “are no longer uprooted individuals forced to adapt to a new culture and society; they are able to maintain strong connections to their homeland, while living in the new country” (Bradatan, Popan and Melton 2010, 171). In this sense, migrants stay in contact with their networks of friends and family back home by navigating between two worlds. The American gangsters–such as 17

Stuttgart 21 is a protest-movement against the construction of a mega-project of the railway station in Stuttgart, Germany.

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Tony Soprano, Henry Hill in Goodfellas, or the Corleones in The Godfather–are Americans with Italian origin. They eat traditional spaghetti, while drinking coke. Tony Soprano, for example, appreciates the American values by thinking about American society and living the American dream, while such characters stay Italians, more precisely ItaloAmericans. In contrast, the gangsters in In the Face of Crime are foreigners, they live alongside the German society as Russians, who just came to Germany. They speak Russian with a few German words, drink vodka and eat Russian ice-cream. The Russian gangsters in Germany have not the aim of becoming German; on the contrary, being German is proscribed and strongly rejected. Meanwhile, the American gangsters have their code of honor and the mafia is a business, the gangsters in In the Face of Crime would stop at nothing by acting ruthless and decadent without a codex and human dignity. The Russian gangsters are lawless, described as the ‘bad’ criminals, less as the mythical American gangsters, who are tolerated in the American society. In consequence, the serial needs the ‘goods’ as an antipole. The German serial includes a clear border between good and evil, which is not that strict in the American gangster genre. One reason for that is the serial’s perspective of Marek as a policeman, therefore the serial gives only from outside insight in the mafia milieu. Another reason is the genre mix, especially the influences of crime series, a genre with a clear distinction between good and evil. As a result of the plurality of national identifications and the answer to the question ‘who am I?’, in terms of belonging to a certain national group, is the problem of identity (Bradatan, Popan and Melton 2010, 176). In the German serial Marek struggles with the juxtaposition of seemingly clearly delineated cultures, because he is German, Jewish, and Russian, even employed by the German police–a circumstance he is often judged for by his family. His origin, the position as a policeman, meanwhile his brotherin-law is the Russian mafia boss whom Marek is investigating, culminate in the eighth episode. Marek’s problem of cultural affiliation reaches its climax through Stella’s blame for betraying his Russian identity. The police have planned to raid the restaurant ‘Odessa’ from Stella and Mischa. While Marek and Sven are waiting in their car for the final go, Marek is calling Stella, inside the restaurant. Sven recognises that something is wrong with Marek, but Marek says, that he just does not want to talk. During the raid Marek has to control the passport of his own sister. Stella starts to cry and says in Russian: “Lovely, searched by my own brother! How does that make you feel?” Marek answers in Russian: “Horrible, of course. I just found out about the raid, or I wouldn’t be here. The bag, please.” Stella answers in German: “Want me to strip? You want

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to humiliate me even more?” Marek says in German: “I’m just doing my job. It’s almost over.” Stella says in German: “What happened to you? You don’t eat Kosher. You don’t have Jewish friends. You speak Russian, but you’re not a Russian. You’re only a German.” She continues in Russian: “Do the police know you’re Jewish?” and then in German: “You don’t trust anyone. That’s what it’s come to. You live between two worlds. You don’t belong in either of them.” (In the Face of Crime, E8). Here, Stella points out the problem of identity of Marek by positioning him in between two different cultures. In the final episode, Marek finds the murderer of his brother and suspect of the Mafia crime, he does not kill him, even he was able to shoot him in a self-defence situation. Stella calls and asks him, “Why didn’t you kill him?”; Marek answers, “I made a decision. I’m a police officer.” (In the Face of Crime, E10). Marek has finally decided. In the Face of Crime describes hybrid cultures as inbetween-spaces, where everybody has to decide, on which side–good or evil–she or he belongs. .

Conclusions In addressing the transition from the American gangster film genre to a German gangster television serial from a screenwriting perspective, the study focused on four main realms: genre, medium, narrative, and culture. Against the background of media convergence–that enabled transmedia storytelling and hybrid cultures–and transcultural media environments, genre, medium, narrative, and culture are interrelated. In the Face of Crime represents the German return of genre stories on both screens, cinema and television. The serial’s generic transformation constitutes a cultural serial television narrative, a German example for complex storytelling, which varies from German serial storytelling to date. Through the serial’s genre mix and the in-between of fiction and reality the serial demonstrate differences in screenwriting to the gangster film and offers a televisual alternative to the gangster film. By the realistic presentation of the gangsters in the German serial through portraying their everyday life hassles, the television gangster genre is not in the business of mythmaking–in contrast to the American gangster film. In the Face of Crime is a great example for transcultural identities living in a transcultural metropolis–Berlin with constantly-changing, in-between identities–by taking several positions in-between: in-between-culture (German culture vs. Russian culture), in-between-narrative (epic vs. serial screenwriting), in-between-genres (reality vs. fiction), and in-between-

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media (screenplay vs. teleplay). In particular, through this positioning of ‘in-between’, the reinvention of the American gangster film on the German television screen is possible. The challenge of in-betweenness is embodied by Marek and his problem of identity. Instead of the fictional American dream of economic power, In the Face of Crime symbolises the ‘Berlin dream’ of pluralisation of identities and transculturality by surpassing media, genre, narrative, and cultural borders.

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-und-keiner-schaut-zu,10810590,10754100.html (Accessed: 03 August 2015).

CHAPTER SIX VOICE AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN BIG HERO 6 ROSE FERRELL

Introduction This chapter argues that screenwriters inscribe voice within their screenplays when writing, and that this occurs through the choices they make which form the screenplay text. The chapter begins by defining voice, and suggests that voice can be understood to carry a national inflection because the writing is informed by the writer’s personal identity including national identity. I propose a framework which represents craft decisions and choices of content through which screenplays can be interrogated for voice. Having laid these foundations, I proceed to extend the question of voice to the Disney-Pixar children’s animation film Big Hero 6 (2014) on the basis that filmmakers too, can add to the voice as they make choices related to realising the screenplay text on film. In the case of an original screenplay by a single author, I argue that the voice can be described as the “screenwriter’s voice”. In the case of a multi-authored work, I suggest that voice needs to be understood as the “voice of the screenplay”. In applying the same rubric to a film, I understand the voice to be collectively devised in all cases, and therefore use the term the “voice of the film”. The chapter applies the framework model to Big Hero 6 (2014) in order to examine it for voice and national inflection. In summary, I argue that Big Hero 6’s voice retains its American inflection despite paying lip service to Asian influences. I therefore question the conditions under which a truly transcultural or transnational film can be written, produced and distributed in a globalised market as it exists at present.

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Voice and its National Inflection in Screenwriting In his Glossary of Literary Terms (1993) Meyer Howard Abrams defines voice as the “pervasive authorial presence [of a] determinate intelligence and moral sensibility” (Abrams 1993, 156) which originates with the writer/s. The chapter proposes that this sense of an authorial presence is inscribed in screenwriting through the choices a screenwriter makes (McKee 1999, 9) and that these choices originate in and are related to the totality of the writer’s “personhood”. I describe personhood as the writer’s individuality as it has been shaped by personality as well as all the conditions and experiences of the writer’s life (familial, social, political, cultural, national). That the conditions of a writer’s life include many aspects which relate to their nation of birth and/or upbringing leads to a foundational assumption of this chapter: that national identity—by which I mean the experience of “belonging to a community, being steeped in its traditions, its rituals and its characteristic modes of discourse” (Higson 2006, 16)—remains central to individual identity, even in a global world (Edensor 2002, vi). It follows that to the extent that ethnic, national and cultural identity informs the choices the screenwriter makes, the voice can carry a national inflection which can be evidenced through ethnic, cultural, linguistic and other references and assumptions within the screenplay’s text, as well as through its more complex ideas and concerns. Arguing for national inflection points to the socialising nature of the nation in teaching values, attitudes and expectations, and assigning meaning. The nation state is used as the defining term because of its hegemonic power to also direct social organisation through administration and governance (Edensor 2002, 20). While ethnicity, language and culture have strong influence, it is the nation state which “fixes” the conditions of life for its subjects and therefore teaches not only through ideas, but through lived experience which cements attitudes, expectations and meaning. In the case of screenwriter’s voice, I argue that the term “national inflection” can be understood as a shorthand term for all the influences which stem from the writer’s origins and situatedness within a social world, from family and religious groups, to ethnic, language, cultural, national and regional groups, all of which exert different tensions which take unique form in an individual subject. In applying these ideas to filmmakers, I propose that all that has been stated above remains true, though the voice is a collective voice in which many minds and processes have blended their ideas to form the unifying vision and voice of the film which signifies an authorial presence.

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A Framework for Screenwriter’s Voice Jeff Rush and Ken Dancyger (1995, 2002, 2007), and then Jeff Rush and Cynthia Baughman (1997) have previously developed the concepts of dramatic voice and narrative voice to describe voice in screenwriting and filmmaking. They differentiate between a story which seems to “tell itself” (dramatic voice) and a story which evidences the voice of the screenwriter/s or filmmakers through more obvious interventions in the way the story is told (narrative voice) (Dancyger and Rush 2007; Rush and Baughman 1997). The framework presented here incorporates both of these in a more holistic way by considering all as elements which make up the text, and it more deliberately acknowledges the screenwriter/s as the source of these, particularly when the framework is applied to an original and single-authored screenplay. The framework recognises the components of screenwriting both as concepts and ideas, and cues to physical elements which will appear in the film. Because of the close association between the screenplay and its film, and given that the screenplay is the “blueprint” (Maras, 2009; Price, 2010; Sternberg, 1997) and the first iteration of a film, I argue that the majority of the components which make up voice are decided at the scripting stages. Voice in screenwriting is read through the accretion of cues embedded within the text which create the sense of a unified and coherent sensibility which created the text, and which readers can discern. As in any textual criticism, observations of this sensibility, while they may be wellfounded, are inherently personal judgements of the critic/analyst. Observations made about the voice are always valid, though perhaps only for the person who perceives them. In describing voice, we are not describing a concrete thing, thus discerning and describing voice is a process of indexing tendencies rather than calculating empirical truths. Figure Ch-1 (below) shows the framework, which has been developed to guide identification of the screenwriter’s choices and offers a way of organising, structuring and reporting on observations about a text’s voice. The framework embraces formal craft choices and fine-grained personal choices of content which are made at the screenwriting stage, and these craft areas define the type of story and how it is told. I claim that the framework model can work equally well when applied to a film, though the voice cannot be claimed by a single filmmaker in the collective endeavour which is filmmaking. In this chapter the framework is tested on Disney-Pixar’s animation film, Big Hero 6 (2014), which is a transnational film intended for cross-cultural audiences.

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Figure Ch-1 Framework for Screenwriter’s Voice - Choices within Screenwriting Craft © Copyright 2015 Rose Ferrell Rosie Glow Pictures

Under “type of screenplay” the writer/s choose the craft components of genre, structure, storyworld, characters and major themes. Under “how the story is told” the writer/s choose the language used, and the types of images and sounds which express the story and its meaning. All choices of language, images and sound have implications for tone, mood, and content which feed back into “what story is told” and “how it is told”. Thus the framework embraces the screenplay as a verbal text which describes a visual and aural world through a unique screenplay. Rather than a personal presence, voice in this context refers to the cohering aesthetic which unifies the screenwork, and which is the result of focused intelligence and sensibility, whether singly or collectively created. The overlapping arrows on the left hand side of the figure are intended to indicate that formal craft skills and personal ideas are both present in all areas of screenwriting, though the influence these exert varies. To viewers of any film, the choices around “formal craft” are more easily associated with the director because they are seen as “filmmaking” choices, and because directors are generally afforded the highest profile. However, these are most often choices the screenwriter makes prior to any

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involvement by producers or a director. It is also the screenwriter’s/s’ responsibility to ensure that all ideas included perform a dramatic function which is logical and coherent in the context of the story. The more idiosyncratic choices of language, imagery, and sound cues are also the writer’s choices in the first instance, though the filmmakers concretise these in production. These elements can reflect the taste, preferences or knowledge of the writer, though they are chosen primarily for their function within the drama as a whole. With regard to visual images, it is often argued that a screenwriter has little power over choosing which images appear on the screen. However, Dancyger and Rush have written extensively about the ways in which screenwriters can use language to specify point of view; camera angles; shot sizes; framing of people, objects and actions; beat, pace and rhythm within the text (Dancyger and Rush 2002, 164-184). It is always the prerogative of directors, cinematographers and other technicians to ignore these. However describing the master scene screenplay as a “blueprint” (Maras 2009; Price 2010; Sternberg 1997) suggests the way that the screenplay is a plan for a film, whose powerful and persuasive descriptions form the framework and affective content of the film. Claudia Sternberg refers to the screenwriter as the “hidden director” because of the way that the screenplay reflects the “technical possibilities as well as the narrative and dramatic qualities” of the film (Sternberg 1997, p.2). Horne likens screenwriting to imagistic poetry of the twentieth century to show how verbal descriptions which call images to mind form a large part of the repertoire of screenwriters (Horne 1992). With regard to sound, I argue that dialogue, music and sound effects have a strong and immediate effect on the tone and mood of a scene or story, and these form an important component of the aesthetic whole. While not all screenwriters write diegetic and non-diegetic sound cues, incidental or background sounds, or choices of music into their screenplays, I argue that when these elements are present within the writing they strongly suggest an intended mood. Sound, and particularly music can also be used effectively to signify ethnicity and nationality through vocal style, lyrics, instrumentation, and musical genres, as well as through specific widelyrecognised pieces of music. For this reason, I include both sound and mood as distinct elements within the framework, which can add to the reader’s sense of the aesthetic whole created through the presence of an authorial voice.

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In addressing the area of content, I suggest that there are five specific types which can be interrogated for voice. These are: the moral and emotional content including attitudes and values; the philosophical/ideological frame of the story; ideas, creativity and imagination displayed; craft competency; and sense of humour displayed. These five areas point to the ways in which readers begin to glimpse the writer/s behind the text as they become aware of being affected by the text either in positive or negative ways. Dividing content under these specific areas focuses the observations made to aid in the discernment of screenwriter’s voice. The moral and emotional content in a screenplay includes the values and attitudes which are evident in the storyworld: how the characters behave; and what behaviour is considered normal or reasonable. Lesley Goodman notes how readers can become highly protective of the characters they have grown to love, and states that readers judge writers based on their treatment of characters (Goodman 2010, 168). Booth argues that readers can become bonded with writers whose personality they believe they know from the voice they have inferred through reading a text (Booth 2005, 76). The idea of a philosophical or ideological frame suggests the way that storytellers use patterns from life circumstances or from other stories as the basis for new stories. This helps readers to quickly become oriented to new characters and situations. Arguably, one of the most common examples of an ideological frame is the storyworld of many Hollywood films which are set in a fictional United States of America. I draw attention to these ideological frames because of the ways in which they naturalise subjects, objects and ways of being including their audiences, and “normalise” behaviour and events which can be highly questionable. Because these are only “fictional” they tend to escape interrogation, and yet we respond to the fictional in the same way as to the real in cognitive terms, and all experience offers patterns for behaviour which can become naturalised within the actual collective social world. The philosophical and/or ideological frame of a story need not be described in an “academic” way, neither does it need to be understood in a sophisticated way. Many successful screenplays are based on folk stories and fairytales, which are set in worlds we are familiar with, and which carry with them morals and understandings which are taken for granted as shared. To frame a story in this way is an ideological or philosophical choice, though it is perhaps, foremost, a practical one. It makes the writer’s job easier. Some of the writer’s choices, such as that of genre, are inherently philosophical/ideological in the way that they draw on

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formulaic patterns which are founded on value-systems which are presumed to be widely accepted, understood and shared. In this way, genre is ideology in action. Genres are popular because of the patterns of emotional experience and pleasure they deliver (Batty and Waldeback 2008, 83). Recognising the philosophical or ideological basis of a story through its storyworld or genre can be important because it alerts the reader to the cultural or national origins of voice and embedded values which may be associated with these. Voice and national inflection can also be inscribed through the ideas and imagination displayed; through craft competency; and through the sense of humour present. These types of content often trigger emotional responses (admiration, respect, pleasure or negative feelings which nevertheless excite the senses) which impress readers and lead to the sense of an authorial presence. Peter Elbow argues that “written words may be silent semiotic signs, but when humans read (and write), they usually infer a person behind the words and build themselves a relationship of some sort with that person” (Elbow 2007, 180). I argue that the voice of a screenplay inheres in the screenplay’s text, rather than in a fixed “voice” within the writer/s, and that writers create different voices for different screenplays. Of course, the purpose of a film is to tell an affective story which emotionally engages an audience. The scaffolding – genre, structure, characters etc. – enables and supports choices of language, image and sound which produce the affect through tone, mood and content. Therefore the framework in craft is equally integral to the sense of coherence created through an expressive screenwriter’s voice.

National Inflection in Voice While the above speaks more generally of writer’s voice, there are some specific ways in which national inflection in voice can be discerned. I outline these here. Arguably, readers of a text respond to a story on a conceptual-perceptual level of thinking and feeling, where responses are predicated on the reader’s ability to use their minds to imagine and feel other worlds, other situations, other beings (Luce-Kapler et al. 2011, 163). Craig Batty and Zara Waldeback emphasise two strands of story—the emotional and physical stories (Batty and Waldeback 2008, 30). In cases where readers experience a strong reaction to the story or are taken by surprise in some

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way, they can also use their minds to imagine the writer / creator/s (Elbow 2007, 168), and this is an important way that voice is called to the reader’s attention. Murray Smith argues for a “structure of sympathy” (Smith 1995, 5-6) where responses to drama are indexed through “alignment” with, “allegiance” to, and “recognition” of characters. The concept of recognition is a key to discerning national inflection, based on the reader/viewer’s prior knowledge of a nation or a culture. Amongst other things, the framework focuses attention on signifiers which situate the story within a three dimensional world: a world which can be recognisable through its sights and sounds; its everyday objects, practices, and organisational structures; and a world which can be recognisable through its human characteristics – the language, behaviours and customs of the people, and the relationships and social hierarchies these reveal. It is precisely these elements of “life as lived” which carry the sense of the national within screenwriter’s voice, particularly when specific elements are taken for granted or naturalised in the screenplay’s world. Tim Edensor (2002) argues that “local, homely, and habitual experiences interweave with the stately and the ceremonial to create affective, cognitive, and practical links to the nation” (cited in Whitaker 2005, 587). Everything that appears or is suggested by any text involving people, place, events and objects, as well as gestures, behaviours and actions can act to signify nation. More than this, content can include the ideas and meaning of the story; things such as themes, values, beliefs and messages which the story embodies, promotes or negates. It is through these ideas that a coherent and unifying intelligence and sensibility behind the writing is suggested, and it is this presence of the screenwriter/s and filmmakers which can be felt through the voice of the text. This leads to a further point regarding national inflection within screenwriting. That is, many signifiers can be present within a single scene, some of which may signify different national or cultural groups. An astute reader will unconsciously sort these, to decide how to locate the characters and story, and even the writer (Goodman 2010, 168). A character who eats sushi but speaks with an American accent will not necessarily be thought of as either Japanese or American if they happen to be a flight attendant on a Qatar airlines flight. It may, in the end, be the novel in Arabic script this flight attendant reads, which finally fixes her cultural grouping in the reader’s mind. This alone however, will not fix her nationality. In the case of language particularly, the use of a standard language will not identify nation in the same way that the use of an accent, slang or dialect does, because accents, slang and dialect situate the story

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and characters more precisely. This points to the complexity amongst signifiers of nation which readers and viewers are adept at deciphering. It also illustrates the hierarchy of signifiers possible within any single scene or moment in a screen text in which some cues will be more powerful at signifying or “fixing” nationality or cultural group than others. The screenwriter’s national context may be discernible to others where a worldview which is specific and shared is signified in the screenplay’s text. Alternatively, it may be obvious based on its fundamental difference to the reader/viewer’s own worldview. Ironically, it can often be true that the worldview of the screenwriter and their national inflection is more obvious to others than it is to the screenwriter themselves, because of the “taken-for-grantedness” of our own attitudes, habits and practices. On the same basis, readers may feel that there is no national inflection when it so accurately fits their own taken-for-granted worldview, in the same way that we tend to think of our own way of speaking as being un-accented. National inflection is sensed through a process of recognition where the reader/viewer is familiar with notions around a specific culture or nationality and through these, experiences recognition of cultural-national signifiers. While many elements can signify a specific culture, it is the accretion of cues, and the relative strength at “fixing” identity of some of these, which will lead the reader to associate the writer with a specific linguistic-cultural-national context which is represented by elements within the text. This is not to say that there is a linear relationship between national content within a screenplay and a national inflection which can be identified in screenwriter’s voice. Any screenwriter may write a script around events which happen in any nation, and yet their screenwriter’s voice will be inflected with their own complex identity, which includes but is not completely defined by their national heritage.

Transnational Film Ezra and Rowden define transnationality as “the global forces that link people or institutions across nations”, and transnational films, as those “whose aesthetic and narrative dynamics, and even the modes of emotional identification they elicit, reflect an increasingly interconnected world-system” (Ezra and Rowden 2006, 1). However, they note that transnationalism requires the “permeability of national borders [which is] determined by local and global political and economic conditions” (Ezra and Rowden 2006, 5). Thus, transnational movements require cooperative

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and focused intent on the part of powerful agencies in order to be achieved. Vanderschelden notes that transnational film blends elements of local, national, international and post-national signification (Vanderschelden 2007, 38). However, with this blending can come a minimisation of difference between nations and people, and the erasure of distinctiveness amongst cultures, which theorist Francis L.F. Lee, describes as “deculturation” (Lee 2008, 133). Crane (2014), Scott (2002), and Su (2011) each note the potentially homogenizing effect arising from the global domination by the American film industry (Crane 2014, 365), while Wasser (1995) argues that American films have also ceased to reflect their own communities or national audience in a profound way (cited in Crane 2014, 375).

The Production Context in Big Hero 6 I argue that every piece of writing, including every screenplay, has a voice, though some voices may be less skilled and others are less obvious. Voice used in this sense is not intended to imply mastery, but instead points to characteristics of style, grammar, expression and content which are argued to come from the personhood of the writer, whether the writing is skilled or not. As stated previously, here the question of voice is extended to the film, and the framework is tested through its application to Big Hero 6. The voice in this case can be understood as the “voice of the film”, and it originates not in a single creator, but in a collective process in which scripting takes place through verbal and visual means. However I argue that whether singular or collective, the concept voice is still pertinent while voice retains its function of unifying the text to create an aesthetic whole. In the following I apply the framework to interrogate the film Big Hero 6 (2014), which I argue is a transnational film through its use of blended American and Japanese elements within the drama, and in its marketing and distribution strategies (described later). I hope to ascertain the extent to which national or cultural perspectives are embedded within Big Hero 6 to illuminate the question of national inflection in voice, particularly in this transnational film. Before doing this however, it is necessary to clarify some points regarding voice and the industrial practices through which an animation screen story comes to fruition. Industry publications which published articles on Big Hero 6 typically credited the directors, Don Hall and Chris Williams (Garratt 2014a, 2014b;

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Konow 2014; Krupa 2013). Of the 34 articles I consulted only one included a screenplay credit to Robert L. Baird, Daniel Gerson and Jordan Roberts, noting that the screenplay was based on a short comic series by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle, devised in 1998 (Debruge 2014, para 15). In a more extensive article in the Harvard Review, Executive at Disney, Ed Catmull explains that script development at Pixar Animation is carried out by small “incubation teams”, which “typically consist of a director, a writer, some artists, and some storyboard people” (Catmull 2008, para 26), who think, write and draw to produce the story in segments (2008, para 17). Catmull states that A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing. [In the case of animation production,] the director and the other creative leaders of a production do not come up with all the ideas on their own; rather, every single member of the 200- to 250person production group makes suggestions (Catmull 2008, para 6).

This process is very different to the way that a screenwriter who is writing an original screen story from their own imagination works. And yet in both cases the creator/s amass ideas, sift them, imagine the story through sounds and images in the mind and choose those that support the story the creator/s wish to tell. In each case, the term voice can apply. Don Hall describes the process of writing an animation film as a “symbiotic relationship between the writers and the storyboard artists” (cited in Konow 2014, para 11). The process is chaotic. “We’re all in the room batting around ideas” (Hall, cited in Konow 2014, para 11). However, scripts are written, then the movie is storyboarded, these are filmed and presented as story reels, and are watched by all. The team then talks about what worked and what didn’t work. Hall states: “This happens about seven or eight times over the course of a movie’s life” (cited in Konow 2014, para 11). The important thing to understand about this process, is that it isn’t a freefor-all. Catmull states that “the creative vision propelling each movie comes from one or two people” (Catmull 2008, para 25), and the leaders sort through the mass of ideas to find those that fit the coherent whole and support the story (Catmull 2008, para 6). These last statements support my argument that voice performs a cohering and unifying function, and that a single voice can come out of a collective process when ideas are shared. This supports my claim that the framework for screenwriter’s voice can also be used to answer the question of voice in a film, though for

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correctness it is necessary to call the voice a different name (the voice of the film) when it is created collectively. Having outlined these points, I will now turn to Big Hero 6, to argue that its voice has a clear national inflection, while also being a transnational film largely aimed at crosscultural audiences.

Screenwriter’s Voice and National Inflection in Big Hero 6 Big Hero 6 is a big budget Disney-Pixar animated feature film released in 2014 (IMDb 2015). The film is notable for the way it very clearly targets an Asian market through its release strategy and elements within the miseen-scene. I propose that from the outset the film was intended as a transnational film, because of the greater earning potential of films which are distributed globally (Scott 2002, Davis 2006). Historically in the United States, the largest film earnings have been gained from within the domestic U.S. market (Davis 2006, 75). However, with aggressive U.S. trade policies and marketing (Scott 2002, 958), international earnings have steadily grown in comparison to U.S. domestic earnings (Davis 2006, 75). Throughout most of the 20th century, films were distributed in the U.S. domestic market before being released overseas. However, since the 1980s, the time lapse between release dates into domestic and international markets has been shrinking (Davis 2006, 75). Since 2000, earnings from international markets returned to the eight major Hollywood studios that dominate global theatrical distribution and exhibition of U.S. (and other) films, have been greater than those from the U.S. domestic market (Davis 2006, 75; Crane 2014, 368). In response, the “majors” have tended to shrink the time between these release dates in order to recoup their production budgets and go into profit much more quickly (Davis 2006, 75). In the case of Big Hero 6 however, these timeframes have not only shrunk, but have been reversed (Garratt 2014a, para 2). In an unusual act, Disney premiered Big Hero 6 at the Tokyo International Film Festival in October 2014 (Garratt 2014a, para 3). The film had its 3D world premiere in Abu Dhabi (Garratt 2014a, para 2) and was released in markets throughout Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East before its theatrical opening in the United States (IMDb 2015). Taken with the obviously Asian iconography within the film, this release strategy can be thought to be courting cross-cultural, particularly Asian, audiences.

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Big Hero 6’s producers describe the film as combining western and eastern cultures, based on Japan and California (Krupa 2013, para 3). This cultural blending is obvious in the Japanese and Asian imagery of the film, which appears side by side with the American. I argue that Disney has used this strategy to bring its target audiences in Asia into an “us” category when viewing the film, and that this has been adopted as a way of harnessing national inflection to the filmmakers’ benefit. As stated, the framework shows that the major formal choices which inform the voice of the film are genre, structure, characters, storyworld and themes. I will discuss these in this order. Big Hero 6 is a superhero genre film, a genre which, like many others, has been developed primarily by Hollywood, and which Peter Coogan argues, is central to an American self-identity (Coogan 2002, 8-9). The genre has been realised in Big Hero 6 through the gritty urban setting, the brooding sense of evil (which is toned down for a Disney market), the locations of abandoned port and industrial complexes, and of course, a supervillain to oppose. These features of the superhero genre are augmented with Japanese Manga-style design touches, and other images which connote “Japan” and “Asia”. The structure of Big Hero 6 is conventional, meaning that the story unfolds in line with audience expectations at every beat (the structure serves as the narrative agent (Dancyger and Rush 2007, 36). The movie develops along a recognisable superhero “origin” movie trajectory, and in this it departs from the expectations of other Disney animations (Konow 2014, para 3). In seeking a story which could be presented to audiences in Asia as also theirs, Big Hero 6 was an obvious choice amongst the several ideas Disney could have developed from its cache of Marvel storylines and characters, purchased by Disney in 2009 (Garratt 2014b, para 2). The original comic strip was set in a Japanese storyworld and though Disney have moved the story’s location to “San Fransokyo”–clearly conjoining Tokyo with San Francisco—the opening image of the Golden Gate bridge with Shinto temple roof corners on its major supports shows this visually. Immediately we are shown a city in which Japanese written scripts (kanji, hiragana and katakana) and the English alphabet are both used on signage. Throughout the film many icons of Japanese or Asian culture appear, from plants, decorations and food items (cherry blossoms, a shrine, sushi) through to transport systems (bicycles, elevated monorail)—supporting Edensor’s claims for “everyday” items as strong signifiers of national identity (Edensor 2002, 17). In this way the storyworld seems to embrace an

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identity that is both Asian and American. Interestingly, the faces of the major characters and others within crowd scenes also suggest an ethnic diversity which is absent from Disney films generally. Many of Big Hero 6’s characters’ names also signify Japan and Asianness: Hiro Hamada, Tadashi Hamada, Yama, Wasabi, GoGo Tomago, Honey Lemon, and Mr Krei. The names Hiro (“Hero”) and Mr Krei (Cray) conveniently sound both Japanese and English at the same time – a boon for Disney. The characters are also drawn according to a “golden mean”, giving a blended Anglo-ethnic look which is intended to appeal to crosscultural audiences. Thus, the characters also signify nation, and confirm the transcultural intentions of the film’s producers. The film develops themes of friendship and compassion, grief and loss, which can be argued to be “universal” to human experience, an argument developed by Carmen Sofia Brenes (2017) through reference to the nine “radical trends of sociability” in her chapter on Verisimilitude included here. Hiro, the main character, is 14 years old, and is the youngest member of the superhero team, and its driving force. He has lost both his parents, and early in the film his elder brother Tadashi is also killed. The robot Baymax, is of no age, though he has an innocence and visual appeal as if he were a younger sibling to Hiro. He is a major secondary character and functions as a “healthcare companion” robot to Hiro, whom he sees as depressed and hurting due to grief. The language used in Big Hero 6 is American English, and the characters have American accents, with few exceptions. As described above, the images include many signifiers of Japanese or Asian iconography, though set in an American city resembling San Francisco. The soundtrack does not feature music or sound effects which are recognisably Japanese or from Asia in their vocality, lyrics, rhythms, instrumentation or musical foundations (e.g. pentatonic). The main song is an English-language rock song. Dancyger and Rush associate filmic tone strongly with the way a viewer interprets meaning when viewing a film (Dancyger and Rush 2007, 310). For them, tone can be described using the continuum of reality to fantasy; and also across the mood spectrum of light to dark or heavy. Under these terms the tone of Big Hero 6 is fantastical; and though there are moments of lightness, the film tends towards a dark or heavier mood, due largely to the early death of Hiro’s brother, and to the visual qualities of the film noir/superhero look as Hiro vacillates between excitement, grief and

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bewilderment, determination and light-hearted moments of child-like play. These moments highlight that Hiro is, after all, a child who has lost his family, and is himself, lost. Baymax functions well as a foil to Hiro, to reinject laughter or innocence into the film when needed. The last area to discuss is content. As described earlier, content includes moral and emotional content and values; philosophical / ideological frame; ideas, imagination and creativity displayed; craft competency; and sense of humour. Amongst my observations of moral and emotional content and values is the strong teenage point of view and the almost complete absence of any moderating factor to this. Hiro is an orphan who is cared for by his aunt. No family unit is represented as central and very few adults are shown both in Hiro’s life, and in that of the other university-age superhero characters. This is explained in story terms because Hiro is an orphan. It is also a motif in the superhero genre, where heroes must leave “normal” life behind to become superheroes. The story represents gender relations which are relatively stereotypical. Hiro’s kind, loving mother-figure (Aunt Cassie) fulfils traditional roles: mother, cook and waitress, and always has time to indulge Hiro despite being a small business owner. Tadashi’s female university friends, Honey Lemon and GoGo Girl are allowed expanded roles compared to Aunt Cassie’s traditional, maternal one, though they are portrayed stereotypically as the air-head blonde, and the tom-boy respectively despite the fact that we know they are intelligent and individual. The male characters, Wasabe, Fred (and Baymax) are drawn with greater individuality and distinctiveness, and against stereotype. Wasabi is a “neatness” freak; Fred looks and behaves as a “regular Joe” but is revealed to be the son of millionaires. Baymax too, is a robot with a compassionate heart. As a boy, Hiro is headstrong, stubborn and undisciplined, and these behaviours are explained and excused through circumstances: he is a teenager; he is in grief; he has no father figure to keep his behaviour in check. Nevertheless, these somewhat negative traits are shown to be admirable when they result in the rescue of Professor Callaghan’s daughter from cyberspace. Linda Aronson notes that this type of American hero is derived from a “Pilgrim’s Progress” model in which a heroic Christian hero, who stands for all (non-conformist, Protestant) humanity, undergoes ordeals to achieve his goal (Aronson 2000, 30). Such a hero is epitomised in the form of the cowboy, and is often described positively as “nonconformist” and “individual”, though Ryan Malphurs notes that his “moral

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righteousness makes him believe he is … above the law” (Malphurs 2008, 188). Aronson and Christopher Vogler both note that this type of hero is not shared across all cultures (Aronson 2000, 30; Vogler 2007, xix-xxii). Peter Coogan argues that the superhero genre and hero, like the Western genre and hero, originated in the United States and “expresses aspects of the American identity” (Coogan 2002, 4-5). Values shown positively through the story include education–Hiro chooses a scholarship over money–and compassion. As a central secondary character, Baymax demonstrates compassion and caring for Hiro and offers a strong example of moral behaviour and kindness. The lesson Hiro learns through the story is that he can’t achieve what he wants to achieve alone. However, as in many animated and serial drama formats, Hiro’s behaviour does not seem to alter significantly after this moment of realisation, and therefore this message remains weak. With regard to philosophical and/or ideological frame, Big Hero 6 uses the template of late capitalism in America. The social infrastructure of police, gaols, law and order, education, ambulance services, and so on are present in the world, and may be familiar to viewers from westernised cities the world over. While many of these services are now “international” and use the same or similar colours and formations across many different nations, I argue that when considering these in light of the hierarchical range amongst all cues, they confirm the American-ness of the worldview. The strongest signifiers present are the language (American English), images (the Golden Gate Bridge and harbour, the skyline, uniforms of police, colour of ambulances, etc.) and sounds (people’s accents, and the rock song). Arguably many of the values and expectations reflect an American set of expectations (Hiro’s interest to make money; the freedom and independence of the young adults, etc.). A feature of the world is the powerful, ever-present and enabling technology. The characters become superheroes through this technology. The way of life also seems American through its portrayal of access to and availability of this technology, and the way this suggests wealth and excess. Big Hero 6 deals with this question through a sleight of hand: as a single mother and small business woman with two surrogate sons, Aunt Cassie is portrayed as a “common person” who is less wealthy–Hiro and his brother Tadashi share a bedroom. Nevertheless, Hiro also has a huge garage filled with expensive, cutting edge computer technology. Though the world is drawn with a certain gritty realism, we are never shown the poor or homeless. This may also be a factor related to transnationalism.

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Amy Ransom notes in the case of Bollywood films which aspire to transnational markets, that discourses about values and national identity are being replaced with “glitzy images of excess capital and excessive consumption” in the film industry which was traditionally known for its political and social comment (Ransom 2014, 35). The imagination, creativity and ideas within a work can add surprise or freshness to the writing. In Big Hero 6 these moments include a scene in which the rooky superheroes first storm the evil villain’s stronghold, come to terms with their weapons through a series of mishaps, and experience fear and not knowing what to do. These scenes show a glimpse of the characters as fallible young adults, who are somewhat out of their depth. The story breaks out of the conventions of superheroism and delivers a freshness in these moments. Baymax the robot is also used effectively: as a foil to Hiro’s bravado; as a substitute child / archetypal “innocent”; and in the moments of humour when he is turned into a steel-clad karate master. The floating wind turbines in the sky are visually appealing, and unexpected, providing a quiet moment in which an emotional story beat can be played. Craft competency is evidenced in the multiple functions of Baymax the robot described above. However, in the third act, the revelation that it is Professor Callaghan, Abigail’s father, and not the entrepreneur Mr Krei, who is the evil villain behind the kabuki mask confuses the story without significantly adding anything, and therefore weakens the sense of competency. What comes across as a double climax–surviving Callaghan’s attack only to face further danger by rescuing Callaghan’s daughter–de-focuses the ending. The stakes do not rise for Hiro leading up to these two events, and their resolution has no clear pay-off for Hiro. Though Hiro is shown to have learnt his lesson regarding the need for team work during the confrontation with Professor Callaghan, he continues on alone when he goes into an alternative reality to rescue Abigail. While this fulfills Vogler’s “hero’s journey” structural template, in which the hero must undergo a fourth test which signifies a “death and rebirth” moment (Vogler 2007, 17) before returning to the everyday world, it extends the story beyond the moment when the dramatic question (“Will Hiro learn to be a team player?”) is resolved. Ideally, a single climax could have answered this dramatic question and the lingering one, “Will Hiro abandon revenge and accept his brother’s death” (which is at issue in the second rescue).

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Regarding sense of humour, Baymax was used to good effect and the humour spanned cartoonic visual gags, some language quips and jokes. Much of this humour sprang from the core idea of Baymax as a big balloon, or through Baymax as an Innocent. Good value was derived from Baymax losing power due to low batteries, where his behaviour turned into that of a drunk. In describing the voice of the film generally, I argue that Big Hero 6 successfully encodes a teenage view of an uncertain world within a fantasy boy’s own technological adventure, using the frame of the superhero genre –a frame which is nationally-inflected as American (Coogan 2002). The story was generally driven by the strong point of view which remained fixed on Hiro. The filmmakers told the story almost entirely in dramatic mode in which the structure serves as the narrative agent, thereby “effacing the narrator” (Dancyger and Rush 2007, 37). In these forms of storytelling, the voice of the screenplay is generally harder for viewers to discern because the story unfolds without seeming to be mediated through a writer’s or filmmaker’s/s’ voice. With regard to national inflection, I argue that Big Hero 6 presents an American worldview and national inflection, despite its inclusion of signifiers of “Japan” and “Asian-ness” which operate generally as window-dressing to an American story. I argue this based on the setting as a mythical San Francisco; the language and accents being American English; the aggressive and active nature of the protagonist as an American idea of “hero”; the philosophical/ideological frame and values (capitalist, individualist, aggressive and active, superhero genre, access to wealth and technology, social relations–e.g. maternal role, selfmanagement of teenagers). A further factor which convinced me of the American inflection was that not only Hiro, but the other teenagers were portrayed as willing to wield weapons to take the law into their own hands, and that this was seen as a reasonable solution to Hiro’s grief. This reflects an American hero based on the twin mythologies of the western cowboy (Malphurs 2008, 188) and the superhero (Coogan 2002, 8-9; 2003), but may also be deeply ingrained within an American worldview through the “right to bear arms” clause in the second amendment in the American Constitution (1787, 18). Other taken-for-granted elements within the worldview which signify an American inflection include that higher education is available through scholarship for anyone who is clever enough; that being put in the “lock-up” (gaol) has no consequences; and that teenagers are (and should be) free to direct their own lives; and have open access to the latest technologies. While the above could be said to be

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the case in other nations too, these add to other major components of the voice to create an accretion of cues which support the conclusion that the worldview is American, rather than contradicting it. This summary does not speak to any personal character of screenwriter’s voice for several reasons. As a genre film, there is arguably less opportunity to imbue the film with more personal touches of character and world. The impersonality written into the film is also a result of its effaced narration through the dramatic mode of telling, and the processes of collective writing which point to the film’s studio production circumstances. Studio films in general tend not to be personal films so much as spectacles, meaning that personal voice is not necessarily what the producers sought in the writing and production of Big Hero 6.

Big Hero 6 as Transnational Film Having suggested that the national inflection within the voice of Big Hero 6 is American, it is only left to me to comment on Big Hero 6’s impact as a transnational film. The screenplay’s voice definitely acknowledges a cosmopolitan world of varied ethnicity and cultural derivations, through its depiction of the characters including background crowds; in the images and design components of the storyworld; and through the small elements of Japanese and Asian culture signified within the mise-en-scene. It also includes what might be considered universal human values and experiences–compassion, grief and loss, and the importance of family and friends. Therefore Big Hero 6 represents a world in which Japanese, Asian, and other audiences may feel acknowledged or accepted. And yet I argue that as a transnational film Big Hero 6 barely moves out of its own cultural/national comfort zone in order to truly engage with audiences whose life circumstances may be vastly different, and whose cultures operate differently with regard to the cultural dimensions spoken of in Patrick Cattrysse’s essay in this volume (Cattrysse 2017). Its essential message, is “you can be one of us, too”, rather than a more welcoming “look what we can create together”. Crane states that of the four “Superproducer” nations: India; the USA; China and Japan (the four countries who produced over 400 films in 2009) (2014, 369), only the USA has the great dual advantages of English as its native tongue, and already well-established distribution systems globally. These systems have operated for such a significant period of time that Scott notes that American cinematic idioms are “more or less naturalized”

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in non-US markets, adding to the advantage the US enjoys (Scott 2002, 971). The unassailable position of dominance the major U.S. studios have gained in distribution and exhibition of theatrical films worldwide suggests that they will continue to dominate theatrical exhibition globally for several years to come (Scott 2002, 971). Scott argues that “since culture is always about identity, ideology and power, as much as it is about prots and cash ow, the current situation poses predicaments that call for some more imaginative framework of supra-national regulation” (Scott 2002, 971). This raises the question of whether there is truly any possibility for transnational or transcultural films which have other national inflections, while films such as Big Hero 6 continue to perform so well for their transnational corporations whose influence is so entrenched. While interrogation of other projects arising out of co-production treaties between other nations is outside the bounds of this chapter, such studies would deepen our understanding of national inflection in screenwriting and in films as it relates to market share and critical and popular reception internationally. In closing, I have argued that the voice of a screenwriter arises from their personhood. This necessarily includes cultural and national characteristics and patterns of thinking, behaviour, language and so on as these inform the text, and these can give the voice a national inflection. In their turn, each reader / viewer experiences voice based on their own personhood, and are alert to cues of voice and national inflection based on their own recognition of culture or nationality. The sense of the voice is formed through an accretion of cues, therefore, voice remains the reader’s perception, and is based on indexing tendencies which can be evidenced by the text. The concept of national inflection at its most potent enables excavation of the ideas and values of the storyworld, which allows readers to glimpse small aspects of the worldview which supports and drives the story. In these terms, national inflection positions the story within an ideological frame which is naturalised, and includes moral and ethical values inherent in the storyworld and the story as it unfolds. National inflection may be read through the signifiers within the text which reference specific language, behaviours, practices, design elements and symbolic cues which point to a national or cultural group. However, it is the meaning assigned to these signifiers within the story which is most important when judging whether the screenplay’s voice has a national inflection which promotes a naturalised national worldview. In the case presented here, I argue that the national inflection of the film’s voice in Big Hero 6 is American because

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of the predominance of ideas which point to an American worldview, realised through language, images and sound. While much may be revealed through questioning the deeper aspects of the story in these terms, insights gained are necessarily nested within a tangle of competing layers of local, national, cultural and regional signification, which create a hierarchy of cues. Readers must use their own judgement to tease out meaning as seems most logical according to their own frames of reference (which will also be ethnically-, culturally- and nationally-situated). This argument for voice in general, and national inflection in voice has been based on a framework which has been developed as a tool to parse screenwriter’s voice towards describing individual voices. Its use here on a film has proven practical, leading to a description of the voice of the film. Testing on a variety of screenplays and films will illuminate the framework’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing it to be further refined and improved as an analytical tool.

References 1787. The Constitution of the United States. edited by Washington D.C. National Archives and Records Administration. Bedford, Massachusetts: Applewood Books. Abrams, M. H. 1993. A glossary of literary terms. 6th ed. Fort Worth, Tex: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Aronson, Linda. 2000. Scriptwriting Updated. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Batty, Craig, and Zara Waldeback. 2008. Writing for the Screen: Creative and critical approaches. Basingstoke: Palgrave-MacMillan. Brenes, Carmen Sofia. 2017. “Aristotle's Notion of Poetic Verisimilitude and Transcultural Screenwriting”. In Transcultural Screenwriting. Telling Stories for a Global World, 28-46. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Big Hero 6. 2015. Wr: Baird, Robert L., Daniel Gerson, & Jordan Roberts. Based on a comic series by Duncan Rouleau & Steven T. Seagle. Dir: Hall, Don. & Chris Williams. (DVD). Disney (Australia). Booth, Wayne, C. 2005. “Resurrection of the Implied Author: Why Bother?”. In A Companion to Narrative theory, edited by Peter Rabinowitz and James Phelan, 75-88. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

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Cattrysse, Patrick. 2017. “Cultural Dimensions and an Intercultural Study of Screenwriting”. In Transcultural Screenwriting. Telling Stories for a Global World, 8-27. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Catmull, Ed. 2008. “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity”. Harvard Business Review (September 2008), https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixarfosters-collective-creativity. Coogan, Peter. 2003. “The Secret Origin of the Superhero: The origin and evolution of the superhero genre in America”. In American Film Studies. ProQuest: Michigan State University. Crane, Diana. 2014. “Cultural globalization and the dominance of the American film industry: cultural policies, national film industries, and transnational film”. International Journal of Cultural Policy no. 20 (4):365 - 382. DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2013.832233. Dancyger, Ken, and Jeff Rush. 1995. Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing beyond the rules. 2nd ed. Boston: Focal Press. —. 2002. Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully breaking the rules. 3rd ed. Woburn: Focal Press. —. 2007. Alternative Scriptwriting: Successfully breaking the rules. 4th ed. Burlington, MA, USA: Focal Press. Davis, Robert E. 2006. “The Instantaneous Worldwide Release: Coming soon to Everyone, Everywhere”. In Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, edited by E; Rowden Ezra, T., 73-80. Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge. Debruge, Peter. 2014. “Film Review: Big Hero 6 Disney’s toon division takes a little-known Marvel comic and reinvents it from the ground up, building a superhero buddy movie around a lovable robot called Baymax”. Variety.com. October 23, 2014. http://variety.com/2014/film/festivals/film-review-big-hero-6-21201337195. Accessed December 1, 2015. Edensor, Tim. 2002. National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford, UK: Berg. Elbow, Peter. 2007. “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries”. College English no. 70 (2):168-88. Ezra, Elizabeth, and Terry Rowden. 2006. “General Introduction”. In Transnational Cinema: the Film Reader, edited by E; Rowden Ezra, T., 1-12. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Garratt, Rob. 2014a. “Triumphant close to ADFF 2014 to come from Big Hero 6”. The National (Arab Emirates). E-pub date: October 29, 2015. http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/abu-dhabi-filmfestival/triumphant-close-to-adff-2014-to-come-from-big-hero-6.

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Garratt, Rob. 2014b. “Big Hero 6: ‘It’s a Disney animated film with Marvel DNA’”. The National (Arab Emirates). Thursday, December 3, 2015 | Safar 21, 1437. http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/film/bighero-6-its-a-disney-animated-film-with-marvel-dna. Goodman, Lesley. 2010. “Rebellious Identification, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Arabella”. NARRATIVE no. 18 (No. 2 (May 2010)):163-187. Higson, Andrew. 2006. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”. In Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, edited by E; Rowden Ezra, T., 15-25. Abingdon: Routledge. Horne, William. 1992. “See shooting script: reflections on the ontology of the screenplay”. Literature Film Quarterly. Vol 20 (1):48-54. IMDb. 2015. Big Hero 6 (2014) Release Information 2015 [cited 3rd Dec 2015]. Available from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2245084/releaseinfo. Konow, David 2014. Subverting Expectations in Big Hero 6: A Family Film with Emotional Depth. Creativescreenwriting.com. http://creativescreenwriting.com/subverting-expectations-in-big-hero6-a-family-film-with-emotional-depth/. Krupa, Daniel. 2013. Disney Animation Announces First Marvel Movie, Big Hero 6. IGN, http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/05/09/disneyanimation-announces-first-marvel-movie-big-hero-6. Lee, Francis L.F. 2008. “Hollywood movies in East Asia examining cultural discount and performance predictability at the box office”. Asian Journal of Communication no. 18 (2):117-136. doi: 10.1080/01292980802021855. Luce-Kapler, Rebecca, Susan Catlin, Dennis Sumara, and Philomene Kocher. 2011. “Voicing Consciousness: The Mind in Writing”. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education no. 18 (2):161172. doi: 10.1080/1358684X.2011.575249. Malphurs, Ryan. 2008. “The Media’s Frontier Construction of President George W. Bush”. The Journal of American Culture no. 31:2:185 - 201. Maras, Steven. 2009. Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice.London: Wallflower Press. McKee, Robert. 1999. Story: Substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting. London: Methuen. Price, Steven. 2010. The Screenplay: authorship, theory and criticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ransom, Amy J. 2014. “Bollywood Goes to the Stadium: Gender, National Identity, and Sport Film in Hindi”. Journal of Film and Video no. 66 (4 Winter 2014): 34-49

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Rush, Jeff, and Cynthia Baughman. 1997. “Language as narrative voice: The poetics of the highly inflected screenplay”. Journal of Film and Video no. 49 (Fall 1997) (3): 28-37. Scott, Allen. J. 2002. “A new map of Hollywood: the production and distribution of American motion pictures”. Regional Studies no. 36 (9): 957-975. Smith, Murray. 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema. Oxford U.K.: Clarendon Press. Sternberg, Claudia. 1997. Written for the Screen: the American motion picture screenplay as text. Edited by Lothar Honnighausen and Christoph Irmscher, Transatlantic Perspectives: a series of interdisciplinary North American studies. Tubingen, Germany: Stauffenburg-Verlag. Su, Wendy. 2011. “Resisting cultural imperialism, or welcoming cultural globalization? China’s extensive debate on Hollywood cinema from 1994 to 2007”. Asian Journal of Communication. Vol 21 (2): 186-201. DOI: 10.1080/01292986.2010.539301. Vanderschelden, Isabelle. 2007. “Strategies for a ‘Transnational’/French Popular Cinema”. Modern & Contemporary France. Vol 15 (1): 37-50. DOI: 10.1080/09639480601115276. Vogler, Christopher. 2007. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd Edition ed. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions. Original edition, 1998. Whitaker, Robin. 2005. “Questions of National Identity”. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power no. 12 (4):585-606. DOI: 10.1080/10702890500332758.

PART 3: TRANSCULTURAL WORKING CONDITIONS

CHAPTER SEVEN TRANSCULTURAL COLLABORATION IN SCREENWRITING: JUNGLE PILOTS A CASE STUDY RAFAEL LEAL

Introduction Jungle Pilots is a TV series produced by Giros Interativa, in association with NBC/Universal in Brazil, which I was commissioned as screenwriter to create, develop and, so far, write the first three episodes of the series. This encompassed almost everything –from storylines to characters, and my creative decisions shaped the story we were telling. In other words, this study is the story of how Jungle Pilots was created with the objective of reaching global audiences. The study analyses the relationship between Brazilian writers in Rio de Janeiro and the American script consultant in Los Angeles, and the decisions they made while working together to write scripts responding to international quality standards, so as to come up with a more exportable and transculturally viable product. Since Jungle Pilots had a higher budget than the average contemporary TV series in Brazil due to the cost of aviation scenes, Amazonian locations and special effects, the creative process had to consider, since its inception, the need to be appealing to other markets, especially in Latin America. This study also discusses the scriptwriting processes involved in translating elements such as themes and characters from surrounding countries, embedding them into the narrative in order to reach transnational audiences. This research uses the reflective practice methodology, the process of continuous theoretical reflection about one’s work while it is being performed. David Schön, the writer of The Reflective Practitioner, defines reflective practice as the capacity of “converting the knowing-in-action

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into knowledge-in-action” (Schön 1983, 59), as part of a process of continuous learning, which is strictly related to artistic practice. Gloria Ferreira, editor of Escritos de Artistas (2006)–a collection of artist’s writings from the sixties and seventies–notes that since the 1960s, “theoretical reflection has become a new instrument, interdependent on the genesis of the work, which introduces a new complexity into artistic production, art criticism, theory and history”. For her, when artists enter the domain of criticism, this is less related to taste judgments than to an attitude of testimony, dialogue and theoretical thought (Ferreira 2006, 10). The process of reflective practice in screenwriting is justified, in the case of writers, by the very fact that because of their writing, they have privileged access to the creative process, which in every case is unique and includes the acknowledgement of the creative options which are either included or discarded–an important consideration, particularly when a writer has to make decisions about what he will include or discard in his story for a transcultural market. In the Writers Room, where all story elements are created and assembled, writers have the chance, more than any other creator, to reflect on the creative process. Such was the case of the scripts for the Jungle Pilots first three episodes and “Production Bible”–a document containing the series concept, character profiles and synopses for the entire season. As its name subtly reveals, the TV series is about the pilots of the small airplanes that fly over the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon. The endless forest in the heart of South America covers over 5.5 million square kilometers–more than half of this area is in Brazil–and stretches over nine countries. It is the land of Native Brazilian tribes, miners, immigrants, farmers, missionaries, landowners, adventurers, military, smugglers, guerrillas, biopirates, labyrinths of rivers, confluences and creeks surrounding towns, villages and riverside settings. Distances are endless and some places can only be reached by airplane. Its few roads are damaged by the heavy rain and can’t handle transportation. River trips may take days. Therefore, small planes serve as a mean of accessing farms, villages, tribes, legal and illegal mining sites or any other remote place where there is an airstrip. The series Jungle Pilots shows the Amazon through the eyes of the pilots who fly over it. Jungle Pilots actually brings to the screen the 21st century Amazon, vibrant and real–an area which is home to 25 million people and contributes one third of Brazil’s GDP. It is a place where huge investments

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in infrastructure and mining are being made nowadays, with thriving agriculture and cattle-raising enterprises, and also an expanding urban middle class–much at the cost of the rainforest itself.

Background Giros Interativa is an 18-year-old production company established in Rio de Janeiro, led by its founder, the documentarist Belisario Franca. With an impressive track-record of series and documentaries made for television and cinema distribution, Belisario is expected to be the director of Jungle Pilots. He directed the documentary feature Eternal Amazon (2014), whose production involved months of shooting and extensive travelling in the Amazon area in single-engine planes–the only aircraft capable of reaching some communities within the forest. Back in Rio, Belisario pitched Jungle Pilots to Paulo Barata, CEO of NBC/Universal in Brazil, arousing his interest. At this time, there was no more than a title and a vague logline: “a series about the pilots who fly over the Amazon–the jungle pilots”. A draft was then created internally at Giros, but it had been fully discarded when I joined the project. The NBC/Universal slogan is “100% Character”, which in itself is more than a briefing. Among the series airing on the Universal Channel in Brazil, are Law & Order: SVU (1999), Elementary (2012), The Good Wife (2009) and House (2004)–all of them procedurals, and largely characterbased. Thus, I had a clear idea of the kind of series the network expected Jungle Pilots to be, and the producers agreed with me. Belisario had already hired journalist Ismael Machado as our Amazon consultant. Ismael used to be a special reporter for Diário do Pará, one of the main newspapers in Northern Brazil. He had received countless journalism prizes for his featured articles, most of them about the contemporary Amazon, and had worked with Belisario during the shooting of Eternal Amazon (2014). In addition to Ismael, I pointed out the need for a script consultant, especially, someone with strong international procedural experience. I suggested the name of Barry Schkolnick, writer and producer of The Good Wife (2009), Law & Order (1990) and LA Law (1996), among many others. I’d had previous experience of working with Barry as a consultant when we did 60 Gone, a TV series written by Marton Olympio and myself, picked up by Globosat to be worked with international consultants.

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Globosat is the cable operator belonging to Grupo Globo, the biggest media conglomerate in Brazil, and joint owner with NBC of Universal Channel in Brazil.

The Amazon in Person(s) In May 2014, after the development green light, Belisario and I flew to Belém, where we met our consultant Ismael, who served as guide on a tenday visit to Belém and Southeastern Pará. The field trip aimed at researching not only characters, stories, and locations, but also sounds, food, expressions, conflicts–a search for “Amazonness”, something hard to explain but impossible to avoid in a series about the Amazon. Belém is the capital of the state of Pará–the second largest of all 26 Brazilian states, nine of which are covered by the Amazon. Just for the sake of comparison, Pará itself is twice as large as France and four times larger than Germany. Located by the mouth of Guamá River, Belém serves as the gateway to the Amazon, since the only other metropolis in the forest–Manaus–is located far away in the jungle. The producers had already decided that Belém should be the main location of Jungle Pilots, as it provides a production structure on account of its closeness to some of the key locations for the series, such as deforesting sites, livestock farms, gold and iron mining camps –not to mention the urban environment, which differs enormously from that of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the cities depicted more often in Brazilian TV series. During our stay in Belém, we visited several places in the city and talked to a large number of people working in aviation-related activities, including the owner of a private flying school and pilots working at the Brigadeiro Protásio Airport. This is a smaller airport in Belém, used mainly by private planes. It was formerly called Julio Cesar airport–many still call it so–named after Júlio Cesar Ribeiro de Souza, the Aviation pioneer of the Amazon. I borrowed his name for a character, although I didn’t know at the time who this character would be. Our last days in Belém were devoted to meetings with local businessmen, public attorneys and journalists in order to get to understand the environmental, political, social and economic issues in contemporary Amazon. One of the businessmen we met was very impressive. He was a very rich contractor whose family has been in the lumber business–legal and illegal–for three generations, as well as in gold mining and civil

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construction. We nicknamed him “Termite”, and I created a character– Donato–a businessman pretty much like him. From Belém, Belisario flew back to Rio, while Ismael and I hit the road toward Southeastern Pará, a place known for its abundance of mineral ores, as well as its violent land-motivated conflicts. We settled in Marabá, a city located in the confluence of two large rivers–Tocantins and Itacaiúnas–and traveled around. I had three main research goals in this region–guerrilla warfare, the landless workers and mining. Between 1967 and 1974, Southeastern Pará was the site of an armed movement fighting against the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1989), which was eliminated through military intervention. Among many reports of human rights violations, the remains of many Araguaia Guerrilla fighters still have to be located. Due to the interest in the National Truth Commission–created to investigate those violations during the military dictatorship–this was a contemporary subject I wanted to address in some way in Jungle Pilots. It was also an opportunity to link some characters’ past to Operation Condor, a secret cooperation agreement between military dictatorships in Latin America to eliminate domestic opponents. (McSherry 2002, 38) In 1996, 19 members of MST1 were murdered by the Pará Military Police. They were part of a demonstration calling for government action in the region, and had no guns. This event became known as the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre. Land-motivated conflicts still happen daily in the Amazon, and this series could not ignore them. We paid our respects at the memorial and moved on to Serra Pelada. Starting in 1979, the discovery of gold in the region of Serra Pelada attracted thousands of miners to Southeastern Pará. In 1982, there were more than 100,000 men digging the mine manually–many found gold, some found fortunes–and extracting an alleged 40 tons of gold in four years (Waszkis 1993, 193). Gold mining attracted not only miners to Pará, but also cooks, prostitutes, airplanes, liquor stores and so on, some thirty years ago. Talking to people in Curionópolis, the city created besides the gold mine, I heard stories about the pilots–the “mining pilots”, who can land on very precarious airstrips, or fly under very difficult conditions–and 1

MST the Landless Workers Movement, one of the largest social movements in Latin America, present in 24 out of 26 Brazilian states, with a membership of 350,000 families. (MST 2016)

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the money they made at that time. I knew that this kind of character would suit in a perfect way the atmosphere of adventure I wanted Jungle Pilots to have. Not very far from there, we went to Parauapebas–a rich city, with fancy stores and shopping centers, in stark contrast with the neighbouring cities. Parauapebas is located at the foot of the Carajás Mountains, which happens to be the largest iron ore mine in the world, explored by Vale, a Brazilian multinational which is among the largest mining companies in the world (Vale 2016). Therefore, Parauapebas is home to a large number of engineers and their families, who work and live there. The producers wanted me to see the usage and effects of intensive capital in the Amazon. On our way back to Marabá, we made a stop at the Palmares Settlement, where Ismael was supposed to interview the local school Headmaster for a newspaper. This is a model settlement created in the wake of the Eldorado dos Carajás and less than 20 years later, Palmares looked like a neighborhood, not much different from others in Parauapebas. But MST still coordinated the settlement and ran a model school (which was the object of the visit), teaching not only Portuguese and Math, but also Civil Rights and traditional techniques of farming and land management. Back in Marabá, Ismael took me to a barbecue with members of Funai–the National Foundation for Native Brazilians–where I heard some very interesting stories about different indigenous nations and the different ways of dealing with them. This helped especially in two aspects: first, to improve my perception of Native Brazilians as a heterogeneous denomination, which includes groups that are very different from one another in every possible aspect; secondly, I heard a great story there, about a chief’s solemn inauguration, which served as direct inspiration for an episode set in a tribe. Within a couple of hundred miles from Belém, we managed to find a very culturally diverse set of characters–landless workers, native Brazilians, miners, engineers, landowners, guerilla members–a combination that only exists there, and thus, by contrast, is expected to raise the interest of global audiences, with the “contemporary exotic” as the backdrop to universal conflicts.

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The First Version Back home. Based on what I had seen and heard, and taking the briefing into account, I came up with a 10-page first version of the Production Bible. The briefing had asked for a character-based, procedural drama, with a strong adventure, action component, intended to reach the global market, in particular, other Latin American countries. Additionally, I had to keep the series name–I could only make it plural: Jungle Pilots–and a character named Juan, as the actor that would play that part was already signed. In other words, the producers wanted an action procedural drama, with universal conflicts set up in a very Brazilian environment. Therefore, I created two protagonists, who together had earned a lot of money during the Serra Pelada mining days and partnered up in an Air Taxi company. They have realized that transporting gold from the mining sites can be more profitable than digging for it. These two pilots, Maciel and Julio César, are both seasoned pilots, past their sixties, with contrasting personalities. Maciel still flies, and is considered to be a very skilled pilot –a “mining pilot”, as they call them there. With many girlfriends all over the state, Maciel accounts for the aviation aspects of their business, while Julio Cesar takes care of the commercial and administrative aspects. Julio Cesar quit flying after his daughter was born, and never remarried after his wife left him. In sequence, I created three other pilots–going “by the book”–to be the Jungle Pilots crew. Juan, a pilot with anger management issues and a lovely family; Núbia, who provides a great plot just by being a woman that has to prove herself in a very sexist environment; and Gustavo, the new guy, a recently graduated pilot on his first day at Jungle Pilots–a character that would give me the opportunity to present this new world to the audience through his eyes. The troublemaker Larissa, Julio Cesar’s daughter, and Miguel, a recovering alcoholic aircraft mechanic from Argentina, completed the main group of characters. Lack of self-control, sexism, inexperience and wavering trust issues, alcoholism and juvenile misbehavior–traits to be explored in this set of characters–are global themes giving rise to conflicts found in almost every Western society, and therefore able to generate empathy despite of the unusual scenario for those dramas.

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Furthermore, making Miguel an Argentinian was an opportunity to introduce some Spanish accent into the series, by involving characters from Brazil’s neighbor countries. It is important to note that the Amazon reaches nine countries, and Brazil is the only one among them whose language is not Spanish. I chose Argentina for Miguel because it is the Latin American country that has the closest relationship–and rivalry–with Brazil. It was thought at the time, regardless of the casting issue that Juan– ultimately a Brazilian character, despite the Spanish-sounding name–could also be from Colombia. Other characters created in this first version were Donato the “Termite”, a lumber businessman who was a Jungle Pilots frequent flyer; Wilson Masuda, the owner of the rival Air Taxi company, who, in a very aggressive manner, wants to buy the Jungle Pilots’ hangar; federal policemen, Anac–the Brazilian National Aviation Agency–agents, etc. All of them disappeared during the screenwriting process; none of them have returned to date. I did not want to come up with a season-long plot because I really wanted to create a procedural series. This kind of narrative is not very traditional in Brazilian television, which is known worldwide for its telenovelas, but since TV regulations changed in Brazil, in 2011, more opportunities for procedural narratives have been created. According to researcher Silvia Borelli, telenovelas have been the main fiction product in Brazilian television for the last five decades and have consolidated “a narrative pattern considered dissonant, both to classical and standard models and to popular traditions” (Borelli 2001). This narrative model undergoes “significant changes with the introduction of new themes and with the dialogue between the melodrama and other ‘territories’ of fictionality” (Borelli 2001), notedly contemporary international series. In these terms, having an American consultant was a key strategy to reach a language that global audiences feel at ease with. In August 2014, the writers gathered together for the first time in the Writers Room, at the headquarters of Giros. I had appointed Marton Olympio as senior writer, and the producers appointed Amanda Baião, Manuela Cantuária and Juliana de Oliveira, who were members of Giros regular staff of writers. Our first activity was an Internet video call to Barry Schkolnick, the script consultant based in Los Angeles. He had read the English translation of the first version, and could offer us not only his expertise in TV writing but also a transcultural point of view for our work in progress. In this call, there were two main notes.

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His first note was about the age of the protagonists: he thought that they were far too old for an adventure series. In his experience, the action adventures of two guys in their sixties are difficult to sell in North American television, and I had no reason to doubt it would be different in Brazil or elsewhere in the world. His second note was about the need for some strong event deflagrating the narrative–in Barry’s words, something “to kick the series into gear”. This means that something important should happen when we start following those characters in this universe–something that shakes down their world and gives us the opportunity to show how the characters react during a crisis. Luckily, these two notes could be addressed with the same solution.

The Second Version For five weeks, the writers assembled daily to discuss what would happen in the series and came up with the synopses for 13 episodes and detailed outlines for three episodes. In our first week, we watched some pilots, such as Third Watch (1999), The Closer (2005), NCIS (2003), The Shield (2002) and NYPD Blue (1993), as a warm up with successful characterbased procedural series, followed by a seemingly unobjective discussion about the universe and characters of Jungle Pilots. It is at this stage that writers develop some intimacy with the creative material and cast ideas, helping the leading writer to choose which way to go. At some point in the process, we noted that Maciel and Julio César shared the same dramatic function, and we considered merging them into one character. The question “what if we killed one of our characters in a plane crash at the very beginning of the series?” was worth going into. It would be a strong enough event to set the series in motion. After some discussion–and some reluctance on my part–we decided Maciel was our best shot. Actually, Maciel was the most interesting character I created in the first version: expert pilot, aging heartthrob, lots of secrets, and lots of possible conflicts. In fact, the first version had almost been “the adventures of Maciel”. Yet, Maciel’s death was also an opportunity to reposition Julio Cesar–now the company’s sole owner–as supporting character, thus bringing the real jungle pilots Juan, Núbia and Gustavo to protagonism. It took some detachment on my part, but this looked like the best idea we had on the table. So, we decided to make him die in the first sequence of the pilot, when his plane crashes in a place that is not where he said he was.

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But then a question was raised: “Would it be possible (desirable, effective) to have three protagonists?” Third Watch (1999) had proved it was possible, showing three groups of characters, with two or three characters each–but having the same mission: firefighters, paramedics and policemen sharing the same shift in New York City. But then again, in the Amazon, pilots almost never fly together. Considering this, what would be the narrative impact if the characters would seldom be together in the same flight or mission? According to Pamela Douglas, in terms of structure, for decades in American networks, the classic procedural series has been divided into four acts, usually with A, B and C stories (Douglas 2011, 84). Most of the series used as a reference for Jungle Pilots followed this common structure, upon which we decided to build our storytelling. With this decision, our objective was to ensure the telling of very Brazilian stories in an understandable format that is consumed worldwide. So, we decided to take the risk and divided the stories into A, B and C stories distributed between the three protagonists and starting with the A story. Gustavo, as the new guy, was allocated the first episode –the A story. Through his eyes the spectator would meet the Jungle Pilots’ world and characters. Núbia had the second episode and Juan the third. This generated the Protagonism Board – a table distributing A, B and C stories among the characters, and ultimately deciding who is the protagonist in each episode. Table 1: Protagonism Board Episodes 1-6 Char./Episode

1

2

3

4

5

6

Juan

B

C

A

B

C

A

Núbia

C

A

C

A

B

B

Gustavo

A

B

B

C

A

C

We could only fill in the B and C stories when we produced another board, too complex to be reproduced here, called the Season Board, where we break down what happens to every character in each episode, relating it to each episode’s theme. The making of the Season Board also provided an opportunity to distribute among each of the 13 episodes the main themes I had listed during my research: mining in Serra Pelada, Vale’s intensive

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iron mining in Parauapebas, land-motivated conflicts, relationship between the government and Native Brazilian tribes, to recall but a few. In this process, we focused on universal themes, discarding–at least for the time being–stories that would be difficult to understand abroad or that needed extensive explanation in order to make any sense to broader audiences. In terms of the season structure, we decided to write pilot-like scripts for the first three episodes–which meant to introduce again and again the whole world and characters in them. At the same time, we decided to make a sudden change in the characters’ lives–another one, a few episodes after Maciel’s death–in the middle of the season. In fact, I had been warned by the producers about the possibility of the network ordering us to compress a six-episode first season. In this case, having a major narrative turn in episode six would work as a powerful cliffhanger for a new six-episode Season Two, if needed. In episode six, Gustavo’s plane is kidnapped while transporting money, Núbia finds out she is pregnant–and the father can only be Maciel–and Juan is approached by Maciel’s former cronies, who want to resume their smuggling partnership. We also established major turns for Episode 13, the finale for Seasons One or Two. When we presented Barry with the result of our work, he showed himself pleased about our willingness to introduce deep changes in our ideas– given that many writers are attached to the characters they have created. Maciel’s death was an unexpected and a very powerful beginning for the series. But it also raised some questions such as “what really happened to him?” and “if he was an expert pilot, what explains his sudden crash?” Barry said that in the United States, there would be a rigorous investigation in a case like that, as happens in every airplane accident. In Brazil, the number of accidents exceed by far the human and material resources to investigate them, and most accident inquiries end up with a report blaming the weather, combined with human error and structural failure. I wanted to avoid making this inevitable investigation one of the plots of the series–bureaucratic plots seem Kafkaesque in Brazil–but Barry was convinced I should give the spectators an answer about what caused Maciel’s death. On the other hand, as a direct consequence of it, I wouldn’t be able to dodge the process of getting-to-know Maciel after his death, a serial component which does in fact enrich the Jungle Pilots narrative, rather than weaken its procedural aspects. Once we addressed Barry’s notes, we were ready to start work on the detailed outlines for episodes one to three.

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Screenwriting It is inaccurate to divide creation, which is a fluid process, into describable steps, because this splitting–for didactic purposes–considers time progressively, ignoring that the creative process is recursive rather than linear, full of random and unusual connections. In other words, although, at the beginning of the fourth week, we had the synopses for the 13 episodes and had mapped out all the major events happening to all the characters in those episodes, many things might–and did–change when we started to actually write the episodes. It is important to emphasize that “actual writing” is the moment when, for the first time, we create images. It is part of the nature of a script to be a written text conjuring images, to be understood as images, and eventually produced audiovisually. Although this discussion exceeds by large the scope of this study, it is particularly important when we consider that from that moment on, we could only convey all information–contextual and dramatic–through sound and image, avoiding expository dialogue as much as possible. In fact, images preserve their meaning better than words when they travel, bypassing the language barrier instead of having to sort it out via translation. Thus, we started outlining the first three episodes. As Douglas points out, there are different names for this step, such as “step outline”, “beat sheet” or “treatment”, with slight variations in the formats adopted by different audiovisual cultures. In this study, I follow her lead and what I call “outline” is a sequential breakdown of every scene of the script, into its presentation order, with a brief description of its content and conflict (Douglas 2011, 163-164). We had only two weeks left in the Writers Room, which meant three days for each episode outline. There wasn’t enough time to pursue in greater depth thoughts and ideas for each scene, suggest dialogue or gags. Although outlining itself is an excellent opportunity to ensure a working structure and assemble the episode together, we would be getting most of our consultant’s notes on delivery of full scripts. At the end of those two weeks, we had created teasers, A, B and C stories for all three episodes and had set up every major beat in each story. Thus, we were ready to start writing the scripts–back to the solitary part of the creative process. As leading writer, I took over the writing of episode one, and Marton chose episode three. Episode two was assigned to Amanda and Manuela, as cowriters. When each draft was completed, all the writers and consultants

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shared their feedback notes in order to contribute to the creation of a new improved draft. Writers consider the pilot to be the most difficult episode of the series, as it should contain the idea for an infinite and complex world and characters in a limited number of pages, scenes and words. In the words of screenwriter William Rabkin, “it doesn’t matter how brilliant your series concept is, it doesn’t matter how stark your conflicts or how original your characters. If your pilot story isn’t designed and built to show them off, no one will ever know” (Rabkin 2011, 75). Thus, we had to incorporate all the strategic information into the pilot (as well as into episodes two and three), because their appeal would determine the fate of the international career of the series. Episode one centers on Maciel’s death, the A story, in which Gustavo is flying Julio Cesar to retrieve Maciel’s body, and his missing gold teeth. In the B story Juan, who is uninformed about Maciel’s accident, is flying a polio vaccination technician to several small Amazonia villages. Finally, the C story is about Núbia, who immerses herself in work, to avoid thinking about Maciel. The first draft started with easy-going Maciel making a smooth landing in very adverse conditions. This done, he calls Julio Cesar and lies about being about to depart from Cayenne, in the French Guyana, while we see clearly he is in Tracuá, which is not even close to the flight path to Cayenne. Then he departs and a few moments later his aircraft crashes. After the opening credits, Julio Cesar receives the news of Maciel’s death and rushes there to retrieve the body. As he no longer flies, he takes Gustavo as his pilot. When they get to their destination, Julio Cesar finds out that Maciel’s gold teeth are missing, and decides to get them back too. Juan has not been informed about Maciel’s crash and unknowingly flies to some villages, delivering polio vaccines to riverside children. His passenger, the vaccination technician, hates his job and mistreats the kids. Juan, who is short-tempered, confronts him, physically, enforcing their previous agenda. Gustavo’s lack of protagonism was identified as the core problem of this first draft. According to Pamela Douglas, audiences root for the series if they care whether the characters succeed (Douglas 2011, 168). Barry suggested I should make the character’s life tougher, requiring him to be smart in order to succeed. In addition, he noted that both Gustavo and Juan were fighting out of the conflict, instead of outsmarting their opponent. I addressed this note giving Gustavo a more active role in the episode events in the second draft. After Julio Cesar failed to retrieve Maciel’s teeth,

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Gustavo decides to disobey his new boss and rescues him –as well as the teeth. Juan’s plot also underwent a change. He pretends to have poisoned the technician with mercury to get him to do his job. However, this plot was completely abandoned in the third draft. Barry also expressed his concern about Juan’s anger issues, given that any audience would find it hard to like a character who often bursts into rage, and he is the protagonist of one third of the episodes. According to him, Juan should be more likeable. Therefore, Juan was rewritten as more self-controlled– much more than in his younger days–and, having a military past, organized, rather than anarchical. Also, I gave Juan a loving family–his mother and two sons. There was a discussion about whether putting or not Juan’s kid in a wheelchair, which could have made Juan angrier about the interruption of the polio vaccination. In the end, I chose to scrap that idea and stress Juan’s nobility rather than his self-interest. Showing explicitly Juan’s middle class domestic life was an opportunity to explore feeding the audience’s curiosity about how people like them live their everyday lives in other parts of the world–which, after all, is not quite so different. Núbia, who has had a long-lasting secret affair with Maciel, takes on all available flights–including flying a French couple on their honeymoon, to avoid thinking about her personal life. She eventually cries in public, a feminine trait she did not want to show in her masculine world. She plays a small part in this episode, but her conflict echoes the struggle against sexism and for gender equality–both of them contemporary and global issues. Gustavo was on his way to protagonism, but this was not enough, because the episode still centered around Julio Cesar. Therefore, in the third draft I brought in a major change in the episode’s point of view. The first scene after the teaser illustrates it perfectly: whereas in the first draft Julio Cesar answered the phone and received the news of Maciel’s death, in the third draft, Gustavo is waiting at the reception desk of the Jungle Pilots office, when Julio Cesar screams and throws an airplane paperweight through the glass door. From the third draft on, the spectator sees the story through Gustavo’s eyes, who is now the actual protagonist and the character who saves the day. Viewers find out what is going on at the same time as Gustavo slowly gathers together piece by piece of the puzzle. This is particularly important to minimize the need for any prior knowledge of the Amazon rainforest or aviation, as the audience will have the opportunity to glean information about both along with Gustavo. Barry’s last–and most discussed–note had to do with Maciel’s death. For Barry, an investigation was inescapable, and would have important

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consequences for the characters. I was not interested in a plot covering many episodes–Jungle Pilots was meant to be a procedural–a “case of the week”-type of narrative–in which nothing (or little) remains to be solved in the following episodes. Since they can be watched in any order, traditionally procedural series have a broader international market. Thus, rather than ask “what killed Maciel?”, my plan was to ask “who is Maciel after all?” In fact, Maciel is the key to understanding all the central characters in a better way. At the end of episode one, Julio Cesar finds a photograph of Maciel and Núbia, dated two years before, on what appears to be a romantic vacation. This is the first of many unsuspected things he will learn about his deceased partner. Barry also felt that all the characters reacted too passively about Maciel’s death. Although Maciel’s oft-repeated motto was that “good pilots don’t crash”, according to Barry, Julio Cesar shouldn’t repeat it in a resigned way, and accept a fate every pilot knows may happen. Draft after draft, I reinforced the signs of suffering in all the characters, but passivity was definitely addressed in the third draft. In the very first episode, all three protagonists must reveal their “universal trait”, their particular behavior which is expected to appeal to audiences worldwide, as part of the human condition. Therefore, following Marton’s suggestion, I made all three protagonists meet in Tracuá, for different reasons. Gustavo is already there, in an awkward relationship with Julio Cesar; as for Juan, as soon as he’s notified about Maciel’s accident, he makes a sudden turn and flies to the site of the crash, despite the protests of the vaccination technician; and as for Núbia, who gets no answer from Gustavo and Julio Cesar, she no longer controls her anxiety and flies there to help as she can. In the fourth act climax, all three airplanes–with the entire Jungle Pilots family–depart safe and sound from Tracuá, with the sun setting over the forest. At this point, we hired Commander Gustavo Albrecht, a very seasoned pilot with a vast experience in mining sites in the Amazon, as our consultant for aviation subjects, especially the language of aeronautics. I wanted everything to sound real and provide as much verisimilitude as possible. The snag was that technical language might lessen the tension of the script. It is important to note the hybrid nature of a script, as it is at the same time a technical document, which can serve as guide–guión, in Spanish–for the production of an audiovisual product, as well as a piece of literature, whose reading is intended to produce mental images. In this case, the script was also meant to be a selling piece, not only restricted to technical language but also aimed at hooking the national and international network executives and talent interested in the series. So, I kept the

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aeronautical language only in the pilots’ speech and adopted, whenever possible, a fluid language to reproduce the tension and tone of the scene. Having said this, a fourth–and final–draft was produced considering Albrecht’s notes, which included improved aeronautical dialogue. Meanwhile, Marton delivered episode three, which centers on Juan flying a famous DJ to a riverside setting, where he was supposed to play his music. However, local bandits abduct Juan, the DJ and his equipment because they want the DJ to play elsewhere; the B story in this episode is Gustavo flying a rich farmer and his hot wife to his farms, while attempting to escape her excess of attention; and the C story is about Núbia being interviewed by the Flight Accident Investigation Commission. In connection with the A story, Jiboia, the leader of a gang of bandits called “river rats”, tries to hire this famous DJ to play at his daughter Maiana’s Sweet Sixteen party, but the DJ refuses. In a fit of wrath, Jiboia kidnaps him, as well as equipment, crew… and pilot, and takes everyone to his village by the riverside in the middle of the jungle. At this point, Ismael alerted us that our “river rats” were not exactly like real life “river rats”. Actually, they are small time crooks, who steal boats, motors, some money, but do not engage in great cargo robberies, with heavy weapons, as we depicted them. Perhaps our rendering might sound exaggerated to audiences familiar with river transportation in the Amazon basin. However, we decided to take poetic license to raise the stakes involving these characters, making them more appealing to audiences unfamiliar with the subject. In turn, Barry emphasized the chance we had to get to know more about Juan and his points of view: “what is his opinion, for example, of the DJ”? The same applied to Gustavo, who was flying from ranch to ranch with his passengers. “How does Gustavo react when approached by the farmer’s wife”? In a sudden turn, the farmer explicitly says that his liberal wife wants Gustavo –and that he’d better cooperate. Gustavo’s story is a metaphor for being a boy in a man’s world, which mirrors exactly the transition Gustavo himself is undergoing, in a new job in a new city. This episode is also related to a new moment in Brazilian history, with the economic ascent of the lower working class, whose increased purchasing power was the motor of economic growth as of 2003, symbolized by Maiana and her material dreams.

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Barry suggested making Maiana more humane and complex, improving her personality as a character. This was also an opportunity to explore a different point view and to give the audience someone to become attached to. The increased engagement Barry asked for, for example, might be generated by the question “what does she feel about her father’s criminal activities?” Also, as she was so important in Juan’s story, Barry added she should appear earlier. Juan eventually saves her life during a plot to kill Jiboia–who defends himself with the help of Juan and kills his aggressors. Ultimately, Barry felt uncomfortable about Jiboia going unpunished, despite being a thief and a cruel murderer. I attributed Barry’s unease to a cultural difference, as Brazilians–not only in fiction–are unfortunately used to seeing villains going unpunished in real life. However Núbia’s deposition to the Flight Accident Investigation Commission, regardless of being a small portion of the story, was an opportunity to reveal what was in fact going on through the investigator. Accordingly, Barry suggested giving this investigator a point of view. In general–and this goes for all three scripts–Barry noted that every character should have something to hide from the others, and do something smart to hide it. In other words, this involved improving the subtext –implicit meanings revealing each character’s underlying personality. Finally, episode two centers on Núbia’s flight from a countryside jail to Belém, transporting a prisoner–a hit-man who killed a local rural workers’ union leader–to testify against his contractors in a plea bargain; The B story is about Gustavo trying to fly Miguel, the aircraft mechanic who hates flying, so that he can repair Núbia’s airplane; and the C story revolves around Juan avoiding not only the Flight Accident Investigation Commission but also flying an extremely overweight passenger, and follows Larissa on her first day. When Amanda and Manuela, the two talented young writers, delivered a first version of episode two, I realized it was not ready to be sent for translation and consultancy. The characters’ tone and voices were different from those of scripts one and three, and above all, the episode was slow, without enough tension. Most of the problems of Script Two were structural, which means we had not solved–or even noticed–them during the outlining process. As my contract–as well as Marton’s–was coming to an end, there was no time to reassemble in the Writers Room, so I had to make a difficult decision. Running out of time, we needed to address the problems with a more assertive solution. Therefore, Marton and I took over the episode, got back to the outline and rebuilt the script in a new

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version, entirely from scratch, using the same tone of the other scripts and creating more intense action sequences, which reaffirmed the transcultural aspects of the script required by Barry. In the first version, Núbia’s aircraft is shot down in the teaser; in the first act, when she manages to land safely, she and the prisoner are threatened and flee from the village during the second and third act; and, in the fourth act, they finally depart after Miguel repairs the engine. The second version, on the other hand, starts with Núbia waiting for the prisoner before departure. In the first act, the aircraft is attacked on the ground by several hit-men, who are trying to eliminate the prisoner. Amidst intense shooting and explosions, Núbia manages to make the prisoner board the plane, and they fly away. In the second act, the aircraft, hit by bullets during departure, has to make an emergency landing in a field close to a settlement–on purpose, very different from the settlement I visited, as we have no intention of criminalizing or vilifying the social movements. There, they receive threats because the prisoner had killed a rural leader, and the settlers decide to put him on trial there and then. In the third act they flee, while Miguel–completely drunk, the only way he can board a plane and fly–finds, or rather repairs, a fuel hose that can replace the damaged one in Núbia’s aircraft. In the fourth act Núbia, Gustavo, Miguel and the prisoner set off. As we had more time to discuss the script, were more familiar with the characters and their universe, and had learnt from the mistakes of the first version, the notes on episode two were much less intense than the previous ones. The first thing Barry said, about the thrilling opening sequence, was: “Sounds like Homeland”. Being compared to a very successful action series, one I myself have enjoyed watching since its first season was a sort of compliment to us. What is more, Homeland (2011) is the American version of the Israeli series HaTufim (2010), whose remake rights have been sold to many countries including Brazil–a huge transcultural success. In his notes, Barry pointed that if an airplane carrying a prisoner was shot down in the United States, in a matter of minutes this would be all over the news, with helicopters and anchors going live to inform the nation about the breaking news. This is not so in Brazil, especially in the middle of the Amazon. Barry asked how would the characters in Jungle Pilots headquarters react, or why they would not call the police. Instead of rewriting their (lack of) reaction, we addressed this note by creating a scene in which Núbia calls headquarters saying that her plane needs

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repairing, and that everything is OK, raising no alarms. Discretion was her option in the case of this character, as she was feeling underestimated by her boss and needed to prove herself–a challenge faced by women all around the world. In December 2014, three final drafts were delivered to the producers, as well as a full production bible.

Conclusions At the end of the creative process, we had a visit from network executives, Belisario and other producers. When Belisario first read the episode 13 synopsis, he said it would be difficult to shoot in a real Native Brazilian tribe, because it was expensive and cumbersome, and that we should consider creating another story for that specific episode. We argued that Native Brazilians were an integral part of the promise made by the Jungle Pilots premise. Moments later, the first thing the network executive had asked was: “Will there be any episodes in a tribe?” In 2010, there were some 69 tribes that had no contact with the outside world living in the Amazon (Funai 2010), one of the few places in the world where this phenomenon occurs, which, through empathy or contrast, arouses the interest of global audiences. I do not hesitate to say that the network executives really liked what they heard. We had great feedback, particularly about the characters’ complexity. The participation of a consultant like Barry, more than an honor for us writers, gave legitimacy to the scripts, attesting to their quality–especially because it means that someone who is internationally acclaimed for his writing had not only read the scripts, but actually influenced their creative process. More than that, it acted as a deterrent for imaginative outlandish creative requests–as almost nobody feels comfortable asking for changes in such a thoroughly developed piece of work. As I finish writing this study, Jungle Pilots is being financed and waiting for a three-episode order which will round off the first season. This study–in the shape of a testimony–is an opportunity to investigate the transcultural challenges we faced during our creative process and how we writers tackled them, addressing in a creative way the issues that emerged from the effort of reaching a transcultural audience, by exploring the fascination evoked by the Amazon in audiences from all over the world.

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References Borelli, Silvia Helena Simões. 2001. Telenovelas brasileiras: balanços e perspectivas. São Paulo em Perspectiva, 15(3): 29-36. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S010288392001000300005 Retrieved March 12th 2016. Douglas, Pamela. 2011. Writing the TV Drama series. Los Angeles: Michael Wiese Productions. Ferreira, Gloria; Cotrim, Cecília. (eds.). 2006. Escritos de artistas, Anos 60/70. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. Funai, Fundação Nacional do Índio. 2010. Indios no Brasil: quem são. http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/indios-no-brasil/quem-sao. Retrieved March 12th 2016. McSherry, J. Patrice. 2002. Tracking the Origins of a State Terror Network: Operation Condor. Latin American Perspectives, 29:36–60. MST, Movimento dos Sem-Terra. Quem somos. http://www.mst.org.br/quem-somos/ Retrieved March 12th 2016. Rabkin, William. 2011. Writing the Pilot. Los Angeles: Moon&Sun&Whisky. Schon, David A. 1983. The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Vale. 2016. Vale Fact Sheet. http://www.vale.com/PT/investors/company/factsheet/Documents/factsheet4Q15i.pdf. Retrieved March 1st 2016. Waszkis, Helmut. 1993. Mining in the Americas: stories and history. Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing.

CHAPTER EIGHT (RE)MAKING MURPHY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANSCULTURAL ANIMATED FEATURE SCREENPLAY1 SHUCHI KOTHARI

Unhappy with her school, her mother, her stepfather and herself, 12-yearold American Murphy Meyer believes the root of her problems stems from being born into the wrong body in the wrong country. She wants desperately to shed her (Pixar-style) valley girl body and become an animé girl like her favourite Miyazaki heroines whose looks and qualities Murphy desires. Convinced that an animé body will solve all her problems, Murphy makes travel plans. This bildungsroman takes Murphy on a misguided journey through London, Prague, Paris, and finally Tokyo. In each city, she’s animated in a local style but in the end she realises that whoever she becomes on the outside, she’s still Murphy inside, and that is enough cause for celebration. (Initial Synopsis for animated feature film Making Murphy, April 2013)

This chapter reflects on the research and creative development process that informed my transcultural screenplay Making Murphy. To situate Murphy in a transnational context, I draw upon academic writing about national styles of animation, their generic conventions, narrative structures and the characteristics of their female protagonists. The creative decisions about 1

I would like to thank: In New Zealand, the Faculty of Arts Research Development Fund at the University of Auckland; Lucy Stonex, my research assistant; Chris Payne, Head of International Relations at the New Zealand Film Commission; Glen Real, Producer at Yukfoo Animation, and my partner/reader Nabeel Zuberi. In Japan, Yuri Kinugawa, Eriko Kobayashi and Daniel Lyttleton gave their time and local knowledge generously as essential guides and experts. Creative research is always collaborative even when the final screenplay may bear just one name.

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the screenplay are born out of my own storytelling impulses, influenced by the works of other animation filmmakers, collaborations with my Japanese script consultant, and film market imperatives that have become clear after meetings with producers, funding bodies and delegates at animation festivals. These forces have shaped my understanding of how such a screenplay negotiates the demands of a transnational industry. Like my protagonist Murphy, my screenplay has undergone many transformations as I learned more about her on a transcultural journey of research and writing. Given the paucity of fully developed female protagonists in mainstream English-language children’s animation features (Pixar had none until Brave in 2012), I began to develop a story about the transformative journey of a young girl. This was a definite risk since the big box-office successes in US animation have mostly featured male heroes, be they humans, anthropomorphized animals or objects such as cars. This was not my only departure from mainstream narrative tropes. Most American animation films such as Ratatouille, Shrek, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo and Kung Fu Panda dwell upon the father-son relationship in which the son seeks the approval of the father or a father figure, or the son breaks away from his father’s expectations to forge a path of his own (Birthisel 2014, 346). I decided that Making Murphy would be about daughters and their fathers. Not wishing to replicate the heteronormative patriarchal universe in which these father-son stories unfold, I complicated the fatherdaughter relationship by making Murphy the daughter of three “fathers”: Jiro, a gay Japanese man who raised her till the age of six; Mario her stepfather who took over her care from six onwards; and an unnamed absentee biological father that we never meet in the story. This fragmentation and reorientation of the patriarchal nuclear family allowed me to challenge notions of nature and nurture, and also bring Murphy closer to the reality of many American girls her age for whom mom-dad, dog and a picket fence is not a reality. But more concretely, Making Murphy emerged from my growing concern about the prevalent discourses in “make-over shows” on television. They not only want you to redesign your home (Grand Design), or redecorate a cake (Cupcake Wars); every other TV show invites us to make ourselves anew; often with plastic surgeons (Dr 90210), style gurus (What Not to Wear) and personal trainers (The Biggest Loser) who with a nip and a tuck and discarding half our wardrobe and calories seem to assure us that we’re all potential Elisa Doolittles, just one incision shy of passing off as a lady at the derby. I wanted to tell a different story to a young audience. We can

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go blonde, we can wear miracle bras, we can go on crazy diets, want the body we don’t have, want the hair we can’t get, but ultimately what endures is our intelligence, compassion, and a finely calibrated internal moral compass. I wished to convey this in the most visually spectacular manner possible, never denying the audience the visceral pleasure in Murphy’s transformations, but always alerting them to their constructedness. In an age of extreme makeovers, Making Murphy would send out an emphatic message to youngsters that instead of fixating on physical appearances, a successful makeover transforms you from the inside. In early 2013, I travelled to Sydney to seek advice from the acclaimed screenwriter John Collee (Happy Feet, 2006). At this time my story spanned five nations and five styles of animation. One of the first things he asked me was “why animation?” This was a reasonable question since animation films take longer to make and usually require a considerably larger budget than live-action films. The decisive factor for me is that animation allows a self-conscious construction of gender because the body constantly undergoes change. As Jessica Birthisel states, “Though the producers of live action films have significant leeway with the styling of their actors, animators literally construct their characters from scratch, determining the shape of each eye, the curve of each body part, the exact tint of each piece of exposed skin” (Birthisel 2014, 338). Peter Wells also writes that an animated body is “always subject to redetermination and reconstruction” and that “body formations carry with them particular agendas about identity.” He suggests that when Tom’s body (in the TV cat-and-mouse series Tom & Jerry) transforms into a set of bowling pins, or becomes a water fountain, or morphs into a string of paper dolls, he is temporarily rendered as an object, “genderless and without identity” (Wells 1998, 213). Unlike Tom’s fleeting genderlessness, recent mainstream US animation films tend to fix the gender of their characters. Pixar has given us “girl cars” lacking in agency and batting their heavily eye-lashed headlights. Yet, animation technologies have the potential to destabilize our notions of gender and identity. If Miyazaki created Spirited Away (2001) in part due to his dissatisfaction with the entertainment offered to adolescent girls in contemporary Japan, Making Murphy grew from my dissatisfaction with the glaring lack of female protagonists in Pixar’s oeuvre and the limited range of subject positions offered by Disney’s princesses (Solomon 2002, 34). I created a character with an androgynous name, and through Murphy’s constant reconstruction, I aimed to lay bare the artifice of gender and redress some

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of the stereotypes that have historically haunted girl characters of first and second generation Disney princesses in American films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). I wanted to challenge the narrowly defined secondary positions afforded to girl characters in Pixar’s Toy Story trilogy (1995, 1999, 2005), Finding Nemo (2003), Cars 1 and 2 (2006, 2011) among others. I’m a long-standing admirer of Hayao Miyazaki’s work and when Englishlanguage animation left me wanting, I consistently sought refuge in Spirited Away, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), My Neighbour Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) and Princess Mononoke (1997) among others. My American friends would go out of their way to share these films with their daughters because of the role models they offered young girls. In my efforts to bring Miyazaki’s range of girl characters and characteristics into American animation, I imbued American Murphy with the desire to become an anime girl. I translated my own fandom into her love for Miyazaki’s films. It was the search for this anime body that took Murphy across the globe. The first iteration of Making Murphy brought together five different animation styles from five nations (USA, UK, Japan, France and the Czech Republic). The first step was to familiarize myself with these animation traditions beyond my experience as a cinephile. Supported by Research and Study Leave and a Faculty of Arts research grant from the University of Auckland, I began extensive archival and location research in Los Angeles, London, Paris and Prague. In New Zealand I was told that such an ambitious project would need the backing of a big studio, most likely in the United States. The first thing I learnt during my visit to California from a Pixar employee (who wishes to remain anonymous) was that Pixar never solicits work from outside the studio and would not be interested in a project that wasn’t entirely in its house style, since Pixar’s brand was synonymous with realistic 3D computer animation. Also the technology to achieve other animation styles was not available at Pixar, which meant working with other studios, an unrealistic proposition given how the studio operates. This Pixar employee did rather generously say that my concept was unique and as an animation fan, he would love to see a film like the one I was proposing. He recommended that the project would be better served by an independent animation production company, more likely in Europe. I only fully grasped his parting advice when I attended the International Animation Festival in Annecy a few months later.

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Before travelling to France in 2013, I spent a week at the National Film Archive in Prague viewing films by Jiri Trnka, Jiri Bartra, and most importantly, discussing puppet animation with Michaela Mertova, the film historian who heads the animation department in the archive. Mertova lamented the dwindling of local animation production. She told me that lack of state and private funding had led many animators to seek jobs overseas, particularly in the United States. Two animators had moved to New Zealand to work with Weta Workshop. Mertova was enthusiastic about Making Murphy and suggested an international co-production that would enable each country to animate 20 minutes of the story in its national style. As I began drawing a list of themes and motifs in Czech animation, it became clear that Murphy’s adventures in Prague would have to be imbued with the satire or whimsical sentimentality characteristic of Czech animation. Even the surreal and often nightmarish works of Jan Švankmajer are imbued with humour. Though the mode of expression through puppets is highly stylized, “real” emotions are explored by focusing on what Jiri Trinka describes as “small moments” of “rivers, bird-songs, joys and sorrows of little children” which are the avenues through which Czech artists look for reality (Polt 1964, 31-32). Influenced by this perspective, I developed a storyline in Prague that took Murphy into the Jewish Quarter. This seemed logical since in this version of the treatment Murphy Meyer was Jewish. Among the paintings drawn by children in the Terezin concentration camps in the museum there, she finds a sketch that bears the same name as her great grandfather. Murphy’s adventure into the world of these animated paintings puts her own misery in relief. During my research I had observed that Czech animation often hit a note of optimism even though it exposed children to more “horrors” than its American counterpart. For example, Pixar’s Toy Story (1995) and Jiri Bartra’s Toys In the Attic (2009) deal with similar themes, but the latter was reviewed by Peter Debruge in the US as “sinister” and “too intense for younger kids” (Debruge 2009, 34). During our conversation Mertova pointed out that this film was extremely popular with Czech children who were accustomed to dark humour in fables and films. While there is an expectation that films must cross national boundaries to maximize box-office takings, there remains a “non-translatable” element to specific cinema contexts. In my ambition to bring five different animation styles together, I hadn’t fully appreciated the local and cultural discrepancies that would be difficult to harness into one transcultural narrative. The complexities of not only transcultural aesthetics, but

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transcultural flows of labour and capital in the animation industry became even more apparent when I travelled to France. In Paris, the press was abuzz with the soon to be released sequel Despicable Me 2. Despicable Me (2010) had been the most commercially successful French animation feature, entirely animated by Independent Paris-based Mac Guff studio, though the film was produced by US-based Illumination Entertainment, with an exclusive financial and distribution partnership with Universal Pictures. In 2011 Universal Pictures bought Mac Guff Studio’s animation arm for Illuminations and formed Illumination Mac Guff (Fleming Jr 2011). While this meant French animators would have more consistent work on large American projects, some attendees at the Annecy Film Festival expressed their concern that subsequent work would lose the Frenchness of Despicable Me and become more American. Despicable Me 2 and The Minions (2015) seem to bear out this view though one could argue that the 3D animation style of Despicable Me was already a departure from French 2D animation, and reminiscent of its US cousins that many people including my students and friends have mistaken it for a Pixar movie. For the Paris section of Making Murphy, I was interested in animation that carried a recognizable local and national stamp in its storytelling. According to Richard Neupart, even French experimentation with digital technologies still references historical tropes in animation, such as “replicating flickering light effects, cycled gestures, and simple overlaps to mimic cutouts,” rather than moving fully to the hyperrealism of 3D” (Neupart 2011, 163). Neupart acknowledges that some French animators have been influenced by US-style “bright clean animation,” but they retain a focus on long established French and European themes and tastes such as the use of “distorted humans,” “highbrow satire” and a more “contemplative form of storytelling” (Neupart 2011, 165). For example, The Triplets of Belville (2003) draws on traditions of art, comic books, film, music and dance to create a world of grotesque proportionality, allegorical figures and abstract whimsy that critiques the tyranny of progress and industrialisation. The film’s editing style allows us to linger on detours in the narrative, instead of advancing the central storyline at a breakneck pace. For Making Murphy, two aspects of French animation seemed noteworthy. One was the minimal use of dialogue, and the other was distortion of human figures to visualize and externalize interiority. I developed a story line that would finally unite Murphy with her American biological father

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in Paris. But instead of being the hero she had imagined, he turns out to be a mean-spirited drunk who shows no remorse for abandoning her. I rather liked this angle as it aided my nurture-over-nature argument. Later, a potential US producer warned me that I would lose my audience (American children) if the father were portrayed as a wastrel. According to him, ushering Murphy into a bar where he sells her shoes to buy himself a drink was too adult-themed for a young audience. I wasn’t making a film for 6 year olds so I didn’t see how this would be a problem. In my defence, I mentioned Studio Ghibli’s Downtown Story (1981) in which young schoolgirl Chei is forced to manage her father Tetsu’s restaurant while he gambles and drinks away the profits in a yakuza house. He is ill-tempered and doesn’t care about the impact of his actions, but his failed parenting leads Chei to be resourceful and self-sufficient. I wanted a similar learning curve for Murphy whose internal transformation had to be more dramatic and significant than the external one. I brought this issue up with renowned animation expert and film festival judge Nancy Denny-Phelps during our meeting in Brussels in 2013. She said that, “European animation is more comfortable exposing children to life’s tragedies and disappointments, alongside its magic and wonder as two sides of the same coin” (personal interview with author). Her belief that children need not be sheltered from knowing the duality of sadness and joy finally found a stateside echo in 2015 when Pixar released Inside Out. Excited by the “visual feast” that my concept promised, Phelps suggested that I strengthen Murphy’s emotional quest so that she was not lost behind her different animated avatars. With support from the New Zealand Film Commission, I was invited as a delegate to MIFA (Marché International du Film d'Animation d'Annecy), the market section of the Annecy film festival in June 2015. MIFA provided an opportunity to attend screenings of new films, to access its archive, and to understand the breadth of international animation distribution, production and services. The mobile flows of “outsourcing” animation were sharply visible as creators sought to generate their own intellectual property and market their services at MIFA. For example, animation studios in Thailand and Norway work on animation projects from the UK, USA and Europe. During an informal meeting, I pitched the concept of Making Murphy to Emma Scott from the Irish Film Board. As someone who had been involved in two major international coproductions, Scott said that the combination of different animation worlds was my project’s unique selling point, if its emotions could be as powerful as its visual impact.

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One of the key tasks of research for my story was to identify features within specific styles of animation that highlighted embodiment; for example, the lumpiness of claymation vs. the slick contours of Pixar style animation. At the British Film Institute archive in London I researched the claymation of Aardman Studios and Nick Park in particular, whose work I had followed since Creature Comforts (1989). Despite stop motion’s limited range of movement, Aardman’s plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit had a big fan base since the shorts Grand Day Out (1989) and Wrong Trousers (1993). The feature Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit (2005) garnered critical acclaim but its “parochial Britishness” had limited its takings at the American box office (Osmond 2010, 220). Aardmaan’s feature Chicken Run (2000) stands out for its strong female characters, both the protagonist hen Ginger and the villainous farmer’s wife Mrs. Tweedy. While I was in London I had arranged to meet Michael Rose who had produced Chicken Run, Curse of the Were Rabbit, and the Academy Award winning film Chico & Rita (2010). He advised that I needed to alter my vision for Making Murphy. Even though combining five different animation styles into one film enthralled every animator or animation buff to whom I’d pitched the project, Rose insisted that my story worked best between the USA and Japan, simply focusing on two animation styles – the 3D computer animation style associated with Pixar and the hand-drawn 2D style associated with Japanese anime. Ordinary moviegoers would recognize these styles, and the two cultures were different enough to draw interesting contrasts and still maintain audience focus. He stressed that I had a commercially viable project that I was sacrificing for one that would no doubt thrill the Annecy audience but ultimately only remain within the film festival circuit. I was very grateful for his radical suggestion but if I took it on board, I’d have to minimally discard 70 per cent of my scenes and start over. Back in New Zealand I was torn between Rose’s advice and the positive feedback I’d received from those who encouraged the uniqueness of my transcultural/transnational project with five styles of animation. Due to global flows of labour, there were many Australia and New Zealand-based animators from different parts of the world, steeped in stop motion puppetry, 2D cell animation, Claymation and 3D CGI. I scoped out the possibility in which such animators at Weta Workshop in Wellington might be able to render their national styles. I was acutely aware that even if I stuck to my original vision, the country in which the entire third act was based was the one I had never visited before.

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In April 2014, I travelled to Tokyo for the first time, and guided by friends and colleagues, I was able to experience some of the same wonder that my central character feels when she finally lands in Tokyo. The first place I visited was the Studio Ghibli museum. Standing in the room that displays the desks of its animators was profoundly moving. On the walls were hand painted renditions of forests, trees, leaves, blades of grass and insects. On the desks were reference albums of photographs of Swiss and Swedish houses, Parisian streets, aerial views of European cities and Japanese homes from the Edo period. Ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts, and a half-eaten pie betrayed the long hours spent by animators who draw by hand. There were many pages of concept drawings, image boards, storyboards, watercolour impressions of locations, characters, moments and props from various Ghibli films: creative labour that exemplified extensive research, commitment to detail, and an idiosyncratic combination of photographic realism and impressionism. As I leafed through drawers of artwork, I could see how Miyazaki’s work constantly alludes to western texts. Though inspired by animism in Shinto myths, Nausicaa owes her name to Homer’s The Odyssey. The story carries traces of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea fantasy novels. According to Montesserat Rifa-Valls, Nausicaa “flies over landscapes with resonances of The Little Prince; Laputa, the floating island from Castle in the Sky (1986), is inspired by Gulliver’s Travels; Spirited Away (2001) is his version of Alice in Wonderland; and Ponyo works as a counter-narrative to the Disney version of The Little Mermaid” (Rifa-Valls 2011, 90). Helen McCarthy draws parallels between the Catbus in My Neighbour Totoro and Aslan in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia novels (McCarthy 1999, 121). Lucy Wright argues that the key to Miyazaki’s work lies in his knack of transformation and transfusion. He transforms and reinvigorates the tenets of Shinto and also elements of Japanese myth such as goblins and gods. He juxtaposes these with American science fiction writers (e.g. Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse), Russian filmmakers (like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia), and Greek myths (e.g. Homer’s Odysseus). His films do not rework specific stories rather he draws from these sources to create a hybrid Japanese “modern myth” that is accessible (in different ways) to post-industrialised audiences all over the world (Wright 2015, paragraph 39). For me this visit to Tokyo wasn’t a reconnaissance mission to nail the locations for my third act, but more of an opportunity to observe everyday life, find out more about local myths and stories, experience Otaku culture, and get a sense of the rhythms and rituals that lend an ordinary

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authenticity to stories set in distinct places. As noted by Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc, “part of the joy in watching Studio Ghibli films is their ‘Japaneseness’ even in films set ostensibly in a European context” (Odell and Le Blanc 2015, 33). But this Japaneseness is not simply a representation of an idealized real world, but rather as Napier writes, “an uncanny evocation of a protean world of imagination that is both familiar and unfamiliar to the viewer, a world of simulations, possible states, and possible identities” (Napier 2006, 293). Local details enhance a sense of realism even when the terrain of a Ghibli film is otherworldly or fantastical. I took extensive notes and photographs at the Daruma temple in Kawagoe, cat cafés in Shinjuku, Pachinko parlours in Nakano Broadway, and the leafy residential neighbourhoods of Meguro where electric wires crisscross under the sky. I visited the Meji Jingu shrine to learn about native plants in the evergreen forest, and the Imado Jinga shrine where the maneki-neko (the lucky cat or the beckoning cat) is known to have originated. I traveled to Kamakura to take photographs of the Kotoku-In monastery but was not allowed to enter the all-male space. I took lessons in Japanese calligraphy to learn how to write “Murphy” in Kanji, because in my story it was the one final test Murphy had to undertake to keep her new anime body. Even at the risk of seemingly taking Japan 101, I devoured ramen and soba, became more accomplished at origami, learned how principles of wabi-sabi apply to ikebana, how Japan’s nano technologies have roots in bonsai, about manga’s relationship to war, historical stories about shoguns and ninjas, craftsmanship in shibori and ikat textiles, notions of cute/kawaii, Harajuku girls and Shibuya boys. This brief but intense cultural immersion was interspersed with library research at the University of Tokyo, Surigami Animation Museum and the sixth floor of Shinjuku’s famous Kinokuniya bookstore that offers English-language Japanese books and a vast collection of Manga. From a story perspective, I came away with a richer, more textured sense of how my third act would unfold. On the flight from Narita airport to Auckland, Rose’s words resonated: “the whole film should take place between the USA and Japan.” In August 2014, I met Glen Real and Alan Dickson, directors of the New Zealand based animation company Yukfoo Animation Studio to discuss Making Murphy. I have known them since I was executive producer of their critically acclaimed animated short film Preferably Blue (2011), and later as script consultant on their New Zealand Film Commission funded animated feature Shirley and the Hungary Bear that is currently in production. Glen and Alan had always appreciated the uniqueness of my idea of bringing together five animation styles in one feature. But they

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could also see the merit in Michael Rose’s suggestion to rein in the project across only two countries. They sent my synopsis along with both possible alternatives to Piers Nightingale (Highpoint Films, UK) and Jill MacNab (Vendetta Films, NZ) for a brief appraisal. Though these producers said that the world of the film was “wonderfully imaginative” and “fantastic,” they also cautioned us against the art-house aspect of its circulation. Glen, Alan, and I thought hard about the market for animation (which is dominated by a few big studios), the duration animated projects take from script to release, our potential international partners, and our own personal ambitions for the project. In January 2015, we came to the decision that the entire story would take place between the USA and Japan. For me this meant returning to the drawing board with what I thought was a usable first act (up to the point Murphy leaves LA to set out on her adventure), an irrelevant second act that was set in London, Prague and Paris, and a mostly useable third act set in Japan. The new version would have Murphy leave LA after a short first act and then she would spend the second and third acts (approximately 80 minutes) in Japan. The country that I knew least about--except through watching Ghibli films and one immersive visit--was where most of the story would take place. I returned to Japan in April 2015 to secure my second act. Once I pared back the story to the USA and Japan, my focus became two different styles of animation, two different modes of storytelling, two cultural codes and two competing ideologies. Both Pixar and Studio Ghibli have loyal fans around the world. And though some fans cross over, their styles are very different. In 2012 when Pixar was about to release Cars 2 and Studio Ghibli, Arietty, London’s Timeout published a short but telling piece “Studio Ghibli Versus Pixar: an animated debate” in which film critics Tom Huddleston and David Jenkins duke it out over their respective preferences for Pixar and Ghibli. Huddleston defends Pixar’s supremacy over Ghibli by pointing out that Ghibli’s visuals lack the dynamism and life-like movement of Pixar. According to him, this limitation restricts the range of emotions in Ghibli films, which are only able to offer “alarm, sympathy and sadness” as possibilities. He makes a case for Pixar’s emotional edge over Ghibli through examples such as Buzz Lightyear’s identity crisis (Toy Story), Carl’s loneliness (Up) and Wall-E’s romantic desperation (Wall-E). David Jenkins’ rebuttal makes a case for Studio Ghibli’s supremacy. He refers to Pixar’s “Stepford Wives” eeriness where “each frame feels as if passed under the nose of a corporate jackal with his eye firmly locked on a lunchbox market.” Jenkins criticizes Pixar’s style for its on-the-nose lack of subtlety compared with the more textured,

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layered films of Ghibli (Huddleston and Jenkins 2015). What disappointed me about this debate was that neither mentioned the fundamental difference – that Cars 2 has secondary and stereotypical roles for “girl cars” whereas Arietty has a girl protagonist who is compassionate, resourceful and courageous. Though Pixar is more famous and commercially successful than Ghibli, its limited representations of girls compared with Ghibli’s astounding breadth of female characters is the most significant difference between these two global brands. Since 80 of the 90 minutes of my film had been relocated to Japan, I wanted to strengthen the Japaneseness of my western story. I wanted to explore and understand the girl (shojo) protagonists, aesthetics and leitmotifs in Miyazaki/Ghibli films so that I could adapt these ideas to Making Murphy, and also subtly reference some of these films for loyal fans. I remembered reading one of Nick Park’s interviews where he speaks of intertextuality as one of the great pleasures for animation audiences (Zahed 2005, 15). However, even those who had really appreciated my earlier concept advised me to ensure that Murphy’s character was more important than the audience’s animation cinephilia. Other than Disney’s Frozen and Pixar’s Brave and Inside Out, one is hard pressed to find a film from a major US studio that offers unconventional options for girl characters. Disney’s princesses are almost always in need of validation from a husband or father. In The Little Mermaid (1989), Ariel literally gives up her voice to follow Prince Eric, the (hu)man with whom she has fallen in love. As Bridget Whelan states, “Princehood remains linked with notions of power, freedom, and exploration, as exemplified by Disney heroes like Aladdin, Simba, and Tarzan, whereas princesshood is now rigidly bound to concepts like dutifulness, self-sacrifice, and desire for and subservience to males—all character traits shared by both first and second wave Disney princesses” (Whelan 2012, 26). I perhaps expect more from Pixar than from Disney as the former studio has built its brand on the basis of innovation. To be fair, Pixar has laid to rest the passive princesses of first and second generation Disney films. But the positions it offers female characters (human and anthropomorphized non-humans) are still for the most part stereotypical. Iris Sheppard has observed that both Bo Peep and Mrs Potato Head stay at home instead of joining Buzz’s rescue mission to search for Woody in Toy Story 2 (1999). In the same film, Jessie’s fate rests on Woody: “if he leaves her she’ll return to the storage.” The two female fish characters in Finding Nemo “behave stupidly,” and are the butt of many jokes. One hardly has any screen time, and the other, Nemo’s nurturing mother Dory “provides comic relief.” In

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Monster’s Inc., Mike’s girlfriend Celia is “possessive and abusive.” And Princess in A Bug’s Life is bullied by male grasshoppers and “ultimately rescued by a male ant,” even though she comes from a matriarchal anthill (Sheppard 2013, 174). In contrast to the limited trajectories for Pixar and Disney’s animated females, Rifa-Valls reminds us of the wide variety of girls’ activities in Miyazaki’s films. She notes the multiple subjective positions available for women/girls who defend causes, have jobs, govern micro-territories and social communities. Kushana is the warrior princess of the kingdom of Tolmekia (Nausicaa); women forge iron as commanded by Eboshi, who takes on San, the wolf-girl (Princess Mononoke, 1997); Sheeta becomes a traveller and applies spells passed on to her by her caregiver while Dola is a pirate-mother (Castle in the Sky); they build an airplane designed by the young girl Fio Piccolo, in a story where there is also a female singer (Porco Rosso 1992); Kiki learns to be a witch and earn her living as a messenger (Kiki’s Delivery Service, 1989); they manage a bathhouse (Spirited Away), they are hat-makers like Sophie (Howl’s Moving Castle 2004); and they work in an old people’s home, like Lisa (Ponyo). In these stories, work and power relations generate exchange, fairness, and opportunity -- far from the difficulties, and impossibilities and alienations of post-Fordian capitalism (Rifa-Valls 2011, 93). In her analysis of girl characters in Miyazaki’s films, Susan Napier emphasizes their independence, courage and resourcefulness (Napier 2005, 154-155). These are qualities that Murphy needs to acquire by performing certain tasks before she can earn her Anime body. When watching My Neighbour Totoro (1988) a film about two young sisters (Satsuki and Mei) who draw upon their imagination to cope with the anxiety of losing their mother who is ill in a hospital far away, I was surprised by the ease with which Satsuki (only 10) performs chores, runs errands, and takes on tasks both in and outside the house. In Japan, children are taught to run errands for their families from a very young age. The long-running television show Hajimete no Otsukai (My First Errand) features children as young as three years old being sent out alone to the local greengrocer or neighbourhood bakery by their parents (Hoy 2015). Respect for domestic and other labour teaches responsibility and humility as “common sense” in Japan and is a recurring trait in Miyazaki’s girl characters. Another Miyazaki character who influences Murphy is Spirited Away’s Chihiro, who transforms from an impatient, self-entitled and nervy child to a respectful courageous girl who draws on her own resources to venture into and out of the spirit world to recover her parents. As a nod to

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its popularity as the highest grossing anime film in Japan, I had Murphy befriend a 10-year-old girl enslaved in servitude to perform a similar act of recovery in the final act of my film. The visual aspect of the screenplay would bring together Pixar and Studio Ghibli styles of animation. But their respective narrative modes might prove harder to integrate. For instance, Pixar is known for its strong male protagonists that drive forward vacuum-tight fast paced narratives within a clear moral universe, whereas Ghibli (especially Miyazaki’s films) films are contemplative and slower in pace with protagonists that possess a pensive or uncertain quality. Napier argues that the aesthetic appeal of Miyazaki’s beautiful and ethereal imagery offers us an “Other world” and “softens the didactic elements” in his text/voice (Napier 2005, 153). Pixar holds the most exalted position in the animation world for mastering movement. James Clarke writes that Pixar films often possess an “energetic rhythm moving with ease from moments of humour to moments of jeopardy and tension often combining both” (Clarke 2013, 963). In contrast, Miyazaki’s animated works have many silent moments devoid of action. According to Tze-Yu Hu, the camera pans “over still or almost motionless drawings”, inviting the audience to “linger” over the details of the mise-en-scène, which are so captivating that the audience does not notice the limited movement (Hu 2010, 121). I would argue that the audience does notice the limited movement in the frame, but does not find it a limitation since the stillness captures the scene’s emotion. Making Murphy would have to celebrate both aesthetics. In the second act, until the time Murphy gets the body of an anime girl, she is the only 3D CGI character in a 2D world. So for instance, the movements of Murphy’s mouth can accurately lipsync with her dialogue, whereas Yukiko, her friend, the mountain god is a 2D character and therefore only capable of “fish-mouthing” dialogue. Miyazaki often deals with such situations by creating off-camera dialogue or voiceovers. During my second visit to Japan, I traveled to Kyoto during the season of sakura blooms, experienced the speed of the shinkansen (bullet train) and explored the countryside. Miyazaki’s stories are set in historical or postmodern futuristic Japan, never in contemporary Japan. This led me to question how Murphy’s visit to contemporary Tokyo would fit within the Ghibli worldview. Through Yukfoo’s business contact at Dwarf, a Japanese animation Studio represented in New Zealand and Australia by Yukfoo, I was introduced to Mr. Kato and Ms. Yuka Yamada, two writers for one of Japan’s most popular television anime series Yokai Watch for TYO productions. Yuka agreed to come on board as script consultant. I

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returned to Tokyo in November 2015 to work with her on the new storyline with the help of translator Nikki Kininmonth. Before arriving in Tokyo, I sent Yuka the new treatment in which the whole story took place between USA and Japan. I outlined some of the aspects of the story that were problematic and for which I had no immediate solutions. Like the structure of some popular video games in which the gamer has to succeed at various threatening and inhospitable levels to unlock or progress to the next more dangerous level, I had Murphy complete various tasks to be able to qualify for the body of a Japanese anime girl and be “made over” into her anime avatar. While this litany of tasks is a device familiar in the world of gaming, it seemed “inorganic” in terms of Murphy’s character development. When I discussed with Yuka the qualities (curiosity, compassion, resourcefulness, community spirit, value of labour, and respect for nature) of Miyazaki’s heroines that I had distilled through my research of films and academic articles she was taken aback. She said being an insider she hadn’t really noticed these traits as peculiar to Miyazaki’s heroines, but upon reflection she agreed that each rang true. The first thing Yuka suggested was that rather than performing several escalating tasks to qualify for her surgery, Murphy should experience situations on the journey to meet her father that develop in her each of those qualities she admires in her idols. In learning and discovering these qualities Murphy begins to transform from within. It was a Eureka moment. I completely rewrote my second act so that Murphy is led to her new technological identity (her anime avatar) through a process of constant, internal metamorphosis. When I gave up on the idea of reconstructing Murphy in five different national animation styles, I sacrificed exploring the architecture of the body as artifice and gender as social construction. What I lost in breadth, I wanted to make up for in emotional depth. Even though this new version would only see Murphy in her Pixar body and then later, temporarily, in her Ghibli body, I wanted to push for that idea of animation affording a genderless identity. So in the climax, at the peak of her triumph when she rescues both her “fathers”, Murphy chooses to become “bodiless” – reduced to just a voice—her inner voice—the one that bears the weight and liberation of her internal transformations. This is why at the end of the film when she returns to her Pixar body, she is for the first time, not yearning to be anyone else, but accepting who she already is. After this transcultural journey of transformations, transfusions, detours and interventions for Murphy, and for me as a screenwriter, this is what Making Murphy looked like:

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Unhappy with her life in the San Fernando Valley, twelve-year-old Murphy Meyer believes the root of her problems stems from being born into the wrong body in the wrong country. She desperately wants to shed her Pixar-style valley girl body and become a Studio Ghibli-style anime girl, so that she can look like her idols from Miyazaki films and unite with her real father. Once the good doctors at the Ghibli clinic give her a makeover, she imagines she will find her biological father Jiro Mayeda, and live with him happily ever after. Murphy finds a way to get to Tokyo, but it is a far cry from Miyakazi’s idyllic Japan. Her journey to Jiro’s Ryokan in Yakushima is an adventure fraught with danger, detours and excitement through which Murphy slowly transforms from the inside. She learns to be compassionate, resourceful, to value labour and respect nature, qualities that set apart Miyazaki’s heroines. After an epic battle at the end of film to rescue both her father and an endangered forest, Murphy understands that whatever she looks like on the outside, it’s who she is on the inside that matters the most. (Synopsis of Making Murphy, December 2015)

This new synopsis more strongly rendered my initial thematic concern (“a real makeover transforms you from the inside”) but had been shaped by the inherently transcultural process of negotiating stylistic and narrative differences in American and Japanese animation traditions, the economic imperatives to which creative labour is bound, including transnational and translocal production flows, as well as collaborative research and cultural immersion. This assemblage would be embodied in Murphy and her transformations.

References Birthisel, Jessica. 2014. “How Body, Heterosexuality and Patriarchal Entanglements mark Non-human Characters as Male in CGI-animated Children’s Films,” Journal of Children and Media 8(4): 336-352. Clarke, James. 2013. The Films of Pixar Animation Studio. London: Kamera Books. Kindle edition. Debruge, Peter. 2009. “Review: In the Attic: Who has a Birthday Today?” Variety 18, November 23-29: 34. Fleming Jr, Mike. 2011. “Universal Pictures Buys Paris Animation Unit For Chris Meledandri’s Illumination”. Deadline Hollywood, November 14. Accessed 29 March 2016. http://deadline.com/2011/11/universalpictures-buys-paris-animation-unit-for-chris-meledandris-illumination194898/. Hoy, Selena. 2015. “Why are Little Kids in Japan so Independent?”

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Citylab, September 28, 2015. Accessed December 17, 2015. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-injapan-so-independent/407590/. Hu, Tze-Yue G. 2010. Frames of Anime: Culture and Image Building. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Huddleston, Tom and David Jenkins. 2015. “Studio Ghibli vs. Disney Pixar: An Animated Debate”. TimeOut London, no date. Accessed December 17, 2015. http://www.timeout.com/london/film/studioghibli-vs-disney-pixar-an-animated-debate. McCarthy Helen. 1999. Hayao Miyazaki, Master of Japanese Animation: Films, Themes and Artistry. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. Napier, Susan J. 2005. Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,. —. 2006. “Matter of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away”. The Journal of Japanese Studies 32(2): 287-310. Neupart, Richard. 2011. French Animation History. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Odell, Colin and Michelle Le Blanc. 2015. Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. London: Kamera Books. Osmond, Andrew. 2010. 100 Animated Feature Films. London: British Film Institute/Palgrave MacMillan. Polt, Harriet R. 1964. “The Czechoslovak Animated Film”. Film Quarterly 17(3): 31-40. Rifa-Valls, Monteserrat. 2011. “Postwar Princesses, Young Apprentices, and a Little Fish Girl: Reading Subjectivities in Hayao Miyazaki’s Tales of Fantasy”. Visual Arts Research 37(2): 88-100. Sheppard, Iris. 2013. “Representation of Children in Pixar Films: 19952008”. In Portrayals of Children in Popular Culture, edited by Vibiana Bowman Cvetkovic and Debbie Olson. 169-182. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Solomon, Charles. 2002. “Discovering the Spirit Within: Miyazaki’s Spirited Away”, Animation Magazine 16(9): 34-38. Wells, Peter. 1998. Understanding Animation. London and New York: Routledge. Whelan, Bridget. 2012. “Power to the Princess: Disney and the Creation of the 20th Century Princess Narrative”. Interdisciplinary Humanities 29(1): 21-34. Wright, Lucy. 2005. “Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: the Nature Vision of Hayao Miyazaki”. Journal of Religion & Popular

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Culture 10. N.PAG. Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost. Accessed December 17, 2015. ISSN 1703-289X Zahed, Ramin. 2005. “Plasticine Poetry in Stop Motion”. Animation Magazine 19(6): 14-18.

CHAPTER NINE THE AUDIO DESCRIPTION OF JULIANA: TRANSCULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS IN RETELLING A CINEMATIC STORY FOR BLIND PEOPLE FLORENCIA FASCIOLI

Introduction Audio Description (AD) is a practice that gives people who are blind or visually impaired access to audiovisual products. It is a technique that takes advantage of the gaps in the dialogue to describe what is shown on the screen. These descriptions provide indications of time, space, characters and actions that guide the blind audience through the film´s plot. The audio describer, whose role it is to retell the story for those who cannot see it, acts as a screenwriter of a special type of screenplay and is responsible for deciding what goes into the description. S/he develops an audio description script that focuses the attention on, among other things, where the story is taking place, who is carrying it forward, and how they are doing this. Overall, the aim of the audio describer is to translate images into words. As a translation practice, audio description is inserted into Audiovisual Translation Studies. Moreover, as any translation process, audio description is based on an original product (in this case a film), but at the same time, it runs into technical restrictions, and also struggles with cultural considerations that transform the final piece. Juliana is a Peruvian film made in 1989 by Grupo Chaski Audiovisual Communication. It has received numerous awards, including the “Saul Yelin” at the X Latin American Film Festival of Havana (1988) and the Golden Columbus at the Huelva Film Festival (1989). The film tells the story of a 13 year old girl who runs away from home and starts living on the street. By getting a haircut and disguising herself as a boy, Juliana

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manages to integrate herself into a gang of children who sing on the buses in the city of Lima and who are protected but also exploited by a man who takes the money they make. Her temperament and leadership lead her to start a revolution to free herself and the other children from their situation. The film made such a great impact on Peruvian society that almost 23 years later, in 2012, it was chosen as the subject for the first, and so far only, audio description of a Peruvian film. This project was conducted by a multidisciplinary working group, in which I had the pleasure to participate. The experience was possible due to collaboration between universities from Uruguay, Peru and Spain, all members of the Melisa network1. As the Uruguayan representative, my role was to write the audio description script, which would then be tested in Peru. Due to the multicultural nature of the working group, with professionals from different countries, some intercultural issues arose during the audio description process. This article traces the process of audio description of this particular case and describes some of the technical restrictions, centering the analysis on how these intercultural issues affected the audio description script. Since the process did not occur without difficulties, a comparative analysis of different drafts, i.e. the first and the last, aims to show the challenges we ran into when dealing with audio description in a multicultural setting, and the strategies we developed in order to solve these problems.

Audio Description The aim of audio description is to make cultural productions accessible for blind and visually impaired people. According to Pilar Orero: It is as old as the visually impaired, since they have always had the need for a description of what takes place around them. As a formalized technique for helping people with sight problems to attend cultural and leisure activities, audio description started around the 1980s in American theatres (2005a, 7).

In recent years the use of this technique has been growing steadily, which is shown by its application in different fields like films, television, theater, 1

Melisa is an Ibero-American network that supports the development of accessible services on DTT and the internet, detecting, analyzing, and proposing solutions for people with disabilities. It is comprised of Ibero-American Universities that work together for the development of accessible projects (www.redmelisa.org).

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opera and museums, the professional training, the multiple legal instruments that require its use and development, and the policy that attempts to regulate its technical realization–and finally, in its study as an academic discipline framed into Audiovisual Translation Studies. In this regard, it is understood to be a form of intersemiotic translation that allows the transfer of information between different codes. According to Jakobson: “Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems” (2000, 114). In the case of audio description, images and some non verbal sounds are translated into words, and then are transformed into an audio file that accompanies the audiovisual product. Nowadays, professional audio description follows different standards developed in each country (ITC 2000, AENOR 2005, ACB 2010). These standards provide definitions and guide the audio describer on what to describe and, in some cases, on how to do it. For the analysis of the audio description script of Juliana we will follow these guidelines. The standard UNE 153020 developed in Spain in 2005 defines audio description as a: Communication support that consists of a set of techniques and applied skills which aim to compensate for the lack of visual component contained in a message, providing adequate audio information to translate or explain it, so that the visually impaired individual receives the message as a harmonious whole in a way that is as similar as possible to that perceived by a person who can see (AENOR 2005, 4)2.

The description is a commentary that is intertwined with the soundtrack of the audiovisual production itself, and that uses the pauses in dialogue to describe actions, places, characters, costumes, and other relevant visual aspects. Through this medium, blind people increase their understanding of the audiovisual text (Ballester 2007, 152). This system represents the way in which people with visual disabilities can approach audiovisual products. As Luis Pérez mentions: If Audio-Description is not promoted, blind people are marginalized by the content of television broadcasts and other audiovisual media, and their constitutional right to information and access to basic public services is therefore compromised (2005, 1).

2

All the translations were made by the author, unless it is mentioned otherwise

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The Audio Description Process The audio description process involves several distinct steps: Analysis of the audiovisual production. First of all, the possibilities and difficulties of accessibility are evaluated. To describe a movie, it is necessary to consult supplementary material (including the screenplay, director’s notes and information about costume and art), as a way of corroborating the choice of specific vocabulary and providing accurate information. Audio description script. This is the written document with descriptions linked to the correct timecode (indicated in hours-minutesseconds). At this stage the intersemiotic translation mentioned above takes place. Review and testing. Afterwards, the text is corrected a number of times, and also tested by people with disabilities. Speech. Once the script is ready, the text is read by a narrator. At this stage, it is necessary to consult the movie to adjust the reading time and ensure that the inflection used matches the intention of the commentary. Editing. Finally, the final assemblage of the audio description with the original soundtrack is made (Fascioli 2013, 40).

What is included? The audio description script describes all the visual information: initial logotypes in the case of a movie, titles or credits, spatial frame, characters and actions (Fascioli 2013, 41). The description of the spatial frame requires the audio describer to have some general knowledge, which should be documented so that the information is as precise as possible. The sets also provide cultural references that must be taken into account and include aesthetic elements. In addition to this, time references are an important aspect to describe; both space and time must be made explicit to the visually impaired viewer in order to aid their understanding. In relation to the characters, their physical characteristics (age, ethnicity, eye color, hair, physique, scars, facial expressions, body language, etc.), their costumes, their makeup, and their emotional, physical or mental

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states should be considered. Additionally, the actions that these characters perform should also be described. The audio description of the actions depends on their presentation in the narrative. It should also be noted that films with a nonlinear order of actions require a greater cognitive effort for people with visual disabilities, because they must adapt themselves to the temporal leaps. Beyond the literal description of each of these elements, the audio describer should go a step further in understanding what function each of these elements has in the film language and what the filmmakers are trying to say. Each element must be seen in context, as each specific situation has cultural significance. It is therefore necessary for the describer to have sufficient cultural knowledge to understand the audiovisual text in context and not limit its meaning. Indeed, the audio describer is effectively rewriting the screenplay by including scene descriptions.

Technical Restrictions The audio description technique has its own specific limitations: the features of a visual image, the time gaps available in which to include the description, the so-called objectivity and the cultural differences, among others. Each of these restrictions could be deeply analyzed, but due to the limited length of this article and the emphasis of this analysis, the focus will be on the cultural differences encountered during the audio description process of this particular project, as it was a main point to take into account. The audio description must fit into the gaps in the dialogue; on occasion, therefore, the translator is not able to say what s/he wants, but only what s/he can. This becomes particularly problematic when there are images to translate. In this regard, Vercauteren states that: There are at least two fundamental differences between visual communication and verbal communication that complicate the audio description process. First of all, visual communication is more implicit than its verbal counterpart (Sperber & Wilson 1995), making it sometimes hard to determine what exactly is being communicated. In other words, there will be instances where audio describers will find it difficult to determine the precise visual content they have to include in their verbal description. Moreover, visual communication presents information simultaneously, whereas a verbal translation of this information can only be presented sequentially (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1990) and thus takes (much) more time to render. Because audio descriptions can only be

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inserted into the audiovisual product when there is no dialogue or meaningful sound effect – a constraint imposed by all existing AD guidelines–there will sometimes not be enough time to describe everything shown on screen, obliging the describer to select only the most relevant pieces of information (2012, 210).

The objectivity of the translation, upon which there is no agreement but which is dictated by most of the audio description guidelines (ITC 2000, AENOR 2005, ACB 2010), is an additional technical difficulty. It means that translators should aim “not to include value judgments in audio description. As a result, the blind user perceives the film with audio description similarly to a person who sees the original film” (Limbach 2012, 57). As Vercauteren mentions: Descriptions should be objective, which means on the one hand that no personal opinions/preferences/preconceptions should be expressed and there should not be any interpretations. On the other hand, objectivity also means that censorship has to be avoided (2007, 144).

The concept of objective audio descriptions is, however, strongly questioned. Writing objective descriptions (should that be possible in any translation practice), could actually lead to blind users having more and not less trouble understanding the film. They would have to process a more detailed description in addition to dialogue and narrative text, and this could disturb their filmic experience (Limbach 2012, 67). Moreover, longer sentences are necessary when describing visual information and it is common sense that these longer sentences would be more difficult to fit into the gaps in the speech available. The concept of objectivity recalls the concepts of equivalence and fidelity in traditional translation and adaptation studies respectively. It too is being questioned more and more, and is actually turning into a more narrative and interpretative audio description (Limbach 2012, 72). However, this does open up the possibility that the film could be misinterpreted. In the words of Ana Matamala and Naila Rami: “Audio description describes what you see, but perhaps not all viewers look at the same visual elements and consider them relevant. Or even more crucially, not all cultures interpret the visual content in the same way” (2009, 1). This last point is linked to an even more interesting question: what happens to descriptions when they are interpreted in different cultural contexts? Amparo Hurtado Albir argues that: “Translation occurs not only between two different languages, but also between two different cultures;

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translations thus represent intercultural communication. The transfer of cultural elements in a text is one of the biggest problems faced by the translator” (2001, 607). To this end, the audio description not only involves the transfer of visual elements to words, but also requires the translator to detect the specific significance of the images. Cultural references, as such, are one of the most complex elements that the audio description process tackles. Indeed, it can be difficult to even detect these references. As Nathalie Ramière explains: The translation of cultural specifics in particular constitutes one of the most challenging areas of intercultural transfer, to the extent that cultural references are traditionally regarded in the literature as being ‘untranslatable’ (Catford, 1965; Cornu, 1983; Arson, 1988), therefore touching on the very limits of translation (2006, 1).

Several authors have explained the concept of cultural references. Hurtado coined the term “cultureme”, defined by Nord as: “A social phenomenon of a culture X that is regarded as relevant by members of this culture and, when compared with a corresponding social phenomenon in a culture Y, is found to be specific to culture X” (1997, 34). However, Lucía Luque Nadal proposes another definition of cultureme, indicating that it is: Any symbolic element of specific culture, whether simple or complex, that corresponds to an object, idea, activity or event, that is well known among members of a society, that has symbolic value and that serves as a guide, reference or model of interpretation or action for the members of that society (2009, 97).

In the field of translation, Jorge Díaz Cintas and Aline Remael use culturebound terms to describe “extralinguistic references to items that are tied up with a country’s culture, history, or geography, and tend therefore to pose serious translation challenges” (2007, 200). What is more, in the context of translating a movie, the cultural references may be present in any of the narrative elements: space, actions, characters and dialogues. They can have both a narrative function, and a function of anchoring to a particular cultural framework. The translator should interpret them to find out what their function is within the film, what their meaning is in that context and how much of that meaning can be preserved.

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The Audio Description of Juliana Juliana´s audio description script was developed in Uruguay and later corrected and tested in Peru. Peruvian professionals who participated in the process are part of a research group at the National University of Engineering (UNI). Subsequently, the script was also edited by members of Grupo Chaski (executive producers of the film), and members of the National Union of the Blind of Peru (UNCP). The correction process included aspects of content and form with special emphasis on three areas: the translation of some of the cultural references in the film, the terminology used and the accuracy of the description. During the correction process, more than five drafts were made. The script writing process took nearly a month and the process of corrections and tests took a further three. Later, the speech was recorded in the sound studios of the Technological University of Peru (UTP) and was mixed with the original soundtrack in Uruguay. Despite the fact that all the members of the work group share the same language (Spanish), numerous difficulties arose in relation to the interpretation of some images and the terminology used in their description. This is due to the fact that there is a difference between the Spanish used in Uruguay and the Spanish used in Peru.

Analysis In this section, the audio description script for Juliana will be analyzed in order to identify the challenges encountered during the drafting process. Script drafts are interesting documents that show the evolution of the translation and the translation strategies used to solve problems in a particular cultural transfer. For this analysis two drafts of the audio description script were selected: the first draft, made in November 2012, and the final draft, written in March 2013. Those were chosen because the texts show most clearly and explicitly the successive corrections made. The selected extracts are intended to illustrate the changes made regarding the description of cultural references, terminology and accuracy of description, considering the specific communicative purpose of the film at this “rescripting” stage.

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Tables: script extracts 1 Cultural references3 1st. Draft

1st. Draft Translation

Final Draft

Final Draft Translation

a)

Juliana atraviesa una calle llegando a las puertas enrejadas de un cementerio.

Juliana crosses the street and arrives at the gate of a cemetery.

b)

Más tarde, Juliana mira concentrada la televisión. A un costado, una señora adulta la acompaña.

Later on, Juliana watches television. An adult woman is by her side.

She crosses an avenue and arrives at the gate of Presbítero Maestro Cemetery. Later on, in a living room, JULIANA is watching a scene from the soap opera "The Rich Also Cry” on television. She is accompanying an adult woman.

c)

Luego, el LOCO está sentado leyendo el diario en la mesa de un bar. Le sirven un plato de sopa.

Then, LOCO is reading the newspaper sitting at a bar table. He is served a bowl of soup.

Atraviesa una avenida llegando a las puertas enrejadas del Cementerio Presbítero Maestro. Más tarde, en una sala de estar, JULIANA mira en la televisión una escena de la novela “Los ricos también lloran”. Está acompañando a una señora adulta. Luego, el LOCO lee el diario sentado en la mesa de un cafetín. Le sirven un plato de sopa. El diario titula “Se viene un nuevo paquetazo”.

Then, LOCO is reading the newspaper sitting at a cafe table. He is served a bowl of soup. The newspaper headline says "a new paquetazo is coming."

In relation to specific cultural references, several changes were made, mostly in relation to the identification of physical spaces or specific aspects of the set. For example, in extract a) the modifications were made in order to clearly identify a specific location in the city. The film takes place in Lima, so the images refer directly to well known places in this 3 Extracts from: Fascioli, Florencia. 2012. Guión de audiodescripción de Juliana. Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima.

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city. In that scene, the main character Juliana, enters the Presbítero Maestro Cemetery, a landmark in Lima. For blind Peruvian people, choosing whether to say cemetery or Presbítero Maestro Cemetery would make a considerable difference. Naming the specific location provides a clearer representation of the physical space in which the action takes place. On the other hand, extracts b) and c) refer to changes made in the description of specific details in the scene. In the first case, the final description details that the protagonist is watching a specific Mexican soap opera from the eighties. In the second case, a secondary character is reading a newspaper which relates to economic and political information relevant to the historical moment in which the film is set. The first of these three corrections to the script was made by Peruvian technicians and the latter two by one of the members of Grupo Chaski. The first draft overlooked these cultural references, with the understanding that it was not necessary to clarify this information, given the time available in which to do so. This can be explained by the fact that these references are Monocultural Extralinguistic Culture-bound References (ECR): A Monocultural ECR causes a translation crisis point, which arises when the referent of an ECR can be assumed to be less identifiable to the majority of the relevant TT audience than it is to the relevant ST audience, due to differences in encyclopedic knowledge (Pedersen 2005, 11).

After these changes were made, the script was adapted and simplified and these fundamental data was added to improve the user’s understanding of the context. The reference to the headline of the newspaper also represents a clear message that the filmmaker wants to deliver. The newspaper´s title “a new paquetazo is coming” (“se viene un nuevo paquetazo”) refers to the set of economic measures against inflation imposed during the government of Alberto Fujimori in the 90s. Including this information in the script not only helped to explain the historical period in which the film takes place, but also a political stance on the issue.

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2 Terminology4 1st. Draft

1st. Draft Translation

a)

En letras rojas, sobre la imagen de casas de un barrio humilde:

In red letters, over the image of houses in a humble neighborhood:

b)

De una casilla humilde, construida con cartones y chapas, salen una mujer adulta, dos niños pequeños y una adolescente que cierra la puerta.

An adult woman, two little children and an adolescent leave a humble house made of cardboard and sheets of metal, and close the door.

Final Draft

Final Draft Translation

Es de día en una estrecha calle de un barrio pobre. Sobre esta imagen, en letras rojas: De una casita humilde, construida con tripley, cañas y dos grandes puertas de calamina; salen una mujer, dos niños pequeños y una niña que cierra la puerta. Arrastran una pesada carretilla.

It’s daytime in a narrow street in a poor neighborhood. Over this image, in red letters: An adult woman, two little children and an adolescent leave a humble house made of plywood and poles, with two large doors of corrugated iron, and close the door. They drag a heavy handcart.

An audio description script goes through several spelling, review and style correction stages. The restrictions involved force the describer to choose the best lexis and syntax to convey that idea in the time allowed. To demonstrate how terminology was important to the user’s understanding of the film, two extracts of the script were selected. In both of the examples in table 2, specific words needed to be changed in order to convey the correct meaning to the target audience. In paragraph a), the “poor” adjective was used to indicate a suburb of the city, where the most economically and socially disadvantaged live. However, in the target culture, the term “neighborhood” refers to a place with these characteristics. Thus, in Peru, a “neighborhood” is one that is impoverished in contrast to other areas of the city called “zones” or “urbanizations”. Therefore, the word “neighborhood” was the most adequate term to use in order to describe the images for this particular target culture. 4 Extracts from: Fascioli, Florencia. 2012. Guión de audiodescripción de Juliana. Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima.

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Likewise, there were changes made to the adjectives used to describe the main character´s house. In Uruguay, pauper constructions are made with materials such as sheet metal and cardboard. However, in Peru they use plywood, poles and corrugated iron. The cultural differences between the building techniques of the two countries required adaptations to the audio description script, in order to achieve more accurate and effective description. 3 Communicative purpose5

a)

b)

5

1st. Draft

1st. Draft Translation

Final Draft

Final Draft Translation

Juliana transita por las calles de Lima. Es alta, delgada y de rasgos indígenas. Los niños salen y se sientan sobre un asiento con la cabeza gacha, avergonzados. Don PEDRO se retira. El resto de los niños los miran con indiferencia y luego retoman sus tareas. La imagen funde a negro.

Julia walks along the streets of Lima. She is tall, slim and has indigenous features.

JULIANA transita por las calles aún despobladas de Lima. Es alta, delgada y de rasgos mestizos.

The children go out and sit on a bench with their heads down, ashamed. Don PEDRO leaves. The rest of the kids look at them with indifference and then resume their chores. The image goes black.

Los niños salen y se sientan sobre un asiento con la cabeza gacha, avergonzados. Don PEDRO se retira llevando un paquete sospechoso. El resto de los niños los miran asustados y luego retoman sus tareas. La imagen funde a negro.

JULIANA walks along the deserted streets of Lima. She is tall, thin and has mestizo features. The children go out and sit on a bench with their heads down, ashamed. DON PEDRO leaves carrying a suspicious package. The rest of the kids look at them with fright and then resume their chores. The image goes black.

Extracts of: Fascioli, Florencia. 2012. Guión de audiodescripción de Juliana. Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima.

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Mientras tanto, ARAÑITA y PELÉ caminan por la calle, van cargando una tabla de madera y un cajón peruano. En un parque, rodeados por una gran cantidad de personas, uno de ellos toca el cajón, mientras el otro zapatea sobre la tabla.

Meanwhile, Arañita y Pelé walk down the street, carrying a wooden table and a Peruvian cajón. In a park, surrounded by a large number of people, one of them plays the cajón, while the other tapdances on the table.

Mientras tanto, en otra parte de la ciudad, ARAÑITA y PELE, dos niños negros, caminan por la calle cargando una tabla de madera y un cajón peruano. En un parque, rodeados por una gran cantidad de personas, uno de ellos toca el cajón, mientras el otro zapatea.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, ARAÑITA and PELE, two black children, walk down the street carrying a wooden table and a Peruvian cajón. In a park, surrounded by a large number of people, one of them plays the cajón, while the other tapdances on the table.

In order to clarify their intentions, the filmmakers marked several corrections. In extract a) they corrected the description of a character. Juliana is a mestizo girl, whereas the initial description said that she was indigenous. Clearly the cultural differences between the context of the translator and that of the target audience meant that the original description was inaccurate. In paragraph c) it was necessary to add additional information to the description of Arañita and Pelé, two characters in the film. The filmmakers wanted to highlight that a group of children shown in the film has a diverse composition. Therefore, it was necessary to add that Arañita and Pelé are black children, or afroperuanos, an ethnicity that makes up a portion of the Peruvian population. In addition, these children were carrying Afro-Peruvian musical instruments, indicating race was a key element to stress. The polysemy of the images is another technical constraint of audio description and can lead to misinterpretation. Such is the case of paragraph b) where the attitude of the characters was interpreted as “indifference”, when in fact the filmmakers wanted to imply that they were “scared”.

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Conclusions Audio description, as a technique to provide media accessibility for the blind and visually impaired, has specific characteristics and restrictions. As it is a type of re-scripting of a film, it involves making decisions and paying attention to details and events that take place in a context which is not without cultural significance. Moreover, it involves changing entirely the way in which the information is presented, turning images into words. The audio describer plays an important role in the eventual accessibility of the film, as s/he analyzes and interprets the film according to their specific knowledge and cultural background. The describer is required to select which descriptions are going to go into the script and which are going to be left out, based on the time constraints presented. According to Sabine Braun: The multimodal nature of source and target text in AD (audio description) also has an impact on the interpretive element, which is present in AD as well as in any other form of translation (Gadamer 1960). Just as the production of any translation (i.e. target text) is based on the translator’s interpretation of the source text (rather than on ‘the source text’), so is the creation of an AD script based on the audiodescriber’s interpretation of the audiovisual source. (…) The ‘golden rule’ of AD that the descriptions should fit into gaps in the dialogue and should not overlap with important sound effects or music necessitates succinct descriptions and hence decisions and selective solutions on the part of the audiodescriber. Decision-making and selection involves [sic] interpretation. The rich amount of information offered by visual images makes this task highly demanding (2008, 3-4).

The process for the audio description of Juliana was complex and extensive, involving a large group of professionals. Some of the difficulties arose from the audio describer being from a different cultural setting, which obstructed the task of translation and testing. The analysis of the drafts shows that the main problems in this intercultural translation were the cultural references related to some scenarios and character features, the accuracy of the terminology, and the interpretation of the intention of the filmmakers. These difficulties were solved by making some strategic decisions during the process which included testing the draft with both disabled users from Peru and the filmmakers, and a very thorough documentation process. Nathalie Ramière wrote that:

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In the audio description process, the opportunity to test and revise the drafts is especially valuable. Only by making adaptations to the target culture was it possible to create a satisfactory script, and the process involved the correction of many errors in translation. Without the existence of the testing step, the audio description would have contained major errors that would have hindered audience understanding. In the same way, the documents produced during the filmmaking process were vital. These were of great help when selecting terms and developing accurate descriptions. The opportunity of coming into contact with the filmmakers was also very valuable. The process of audio description currently occurs at the distribution stage of the film, and is relegated to the background during the production process. Bringing audio description to the process of film production has significant value, as it allows the translator an insight into the approach to the making of the audiovisual work. All in all, an intercultural audio description process is possible, despite the fact that there will be some cultural differences to address. The audio describer must detect these from the early stages of the process and find strategies to solve them adequately. This article shows some of the cultural issues encountered during an audio description process in a multicultural setting and presents the strategies used in this specific project.

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discurso retórico moderno”. Language Design, Journal of Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics, 13:73-105. Accessed April 1, 2016. URL: www.elies.rediris.es/Language_Design/LD13/indice_vol13.html. American Council of the Blinds. 2010. “Audio Description Guidelines and Best Practices”. Online, URL: www.acb.org/adp/docs/AD-ACBADP%20Guidelines%203.1.doc Ballester, Ana. 2007. “La Audiodescripción: apuntes sobre el estado de la cuestión y las perspectivas de investigación”. TradTerm 13:151-169. Accessed October 3, 2016. URL: http://www.revistas.usp.br/tradterm/article/view/47471/51199 Braun, Sabine. 2008. “Audio description research: state of the art and beyond”. Translation Studies in the New Millenium 6:14-30. Accessed October 20, 2015. URL: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/303022/1/fulltext.pdf Chapado Sánchez, M. 2010. “La audiodescriptibilidad del film: una nueva perspectiva de análisis fílmico”. Frame, 6:159-195. Accessed November 27, 2015. URL:http://fama2.us.es/fco/frame/frame6/estudios/1.9.pdf Cid Jurado, Alberto. 2006. “De la traducción intersemiótica a la competencia intersemiótica” Revista VERSIÓN 18:115-132. Accessed November 23, 2015. URL: http://version.xoc.uam.mx/Mostrar PDF.php?id_host=6&tipo=ARTICULO&id=2201&archivo=7-1442201dxr.pdf&titulo=De%20la%20traducci%C3%B3n%20intersemi% C3%B3tica%20a%20la%20competencia%20intersemi%C3%B3tica Díaz Cintas, Jorge. y Aline Ramael. 2007. “Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling”. Manchester: St. Jerome. Fascioli, Florencia. 2012. Guion de audiodescripción de Juliana. Lima: Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería. —. 2013. “Imágenes que se escuchan, sonidos que se ven. Sistemas de accesibilidad audiovisual para personas con discapacidad sensorial y su desarrollo en Uruguay”. Revista Dixit, 18:34-45. Accessed July 4, 2016. URL: http://revistas.ucu.edu.uy/index.php/revistadixit/article/view/362/337 Gambier, Yves. 2007. “Multimodality and Audiovisual Translation”. En EU-High-Level Scientific Conference Series MuTra 2006 – Audiovisual Translation Scenarios: Conference Proceedings. Accessed November 25, 2015. URL: http://www.euroconferences.info/proceedings/2006_Proceedings/2006 _Gambier_Yves.pdf Ginter, Anna. 2002. “Cultural Issues in Translation”. Kalbu Studijos,

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Carmen Sofia Brenes is a full professor of poetics and screenwriting at Universidad de los Andes (Chile). Her research focuses on the relevance of Aristotle’s Poetics to contemporary screenwriting. Carmen Sofia has led seminars on screenwriting in Latin America and Europe, and has consulted on a number of projects. Her books on screenwriting are used in more than 20 undergraduate and graduate film and media programs in universities throughout Latin America and Spain. Patrick Cattrysse is an independent researcher. He currently teaches narrative studies and adaptation studies at the Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium) and screenwriting studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). He also teaches media theory and criticism as well as intercultural communication at Boston’s Emerson College European Center (in the Netherlands). Patrick is also the Head of the Vlaamse Script Academie (www.vsa-fsa.org), a research and training center for aspiring and professional screenwriters. Pablo Echart has been a lecturer of screenwriting at the University of Navarra (Spain) since 2001. He was the Director of its Master Degree in Screenwriting from 2009 to 2015. His field of research covers int. al. film genres and filmmakers who are also writers, including Woody Allen, Alexander Payne, David Mamet and Paul Auster. Pablo has published with the leading Spanish publisher Cátedra. He is the author of La comedia romántica del Hollywood de los años 30 y 40 (Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 30s and 40s). Rose Ferrell is an Australian independent screenwriter and experienced technician on feature films and television series both drama and documentary. She has held various crew roles from sound recordist to editor of picture and sound. Under Rosie Glow Pictures, she has developed a slate of original drama projects, including a 26 part family animation series, live action series, and miniseries, in addition to short and feature films. Her research interests focus on the screenwriter’s voice. Rose lives in regional West Australia, where she constantly finds inspiration for madcap characters and off-beat adventures in that stunning frontier: the

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wild Australian west. Florencia Fascioli Alvarez has a BA in Social Communication from the Catholic University of Uruguay, with an emphasis on the audiovisual. She is currently pursuing her Masters degree in Audiovisual Translation at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Since 2010, Florencia has initiated and coordinated numerous projects about audiovisual accessibility for people with disabilities in Uruguay and Peru. She works as a coordinator in the Accessibility Audiovisual Program at the Communication Department of the School of Human Sciences at the Catholic University of Uruguay. Shuchi Kothari is a screenwriter and Associate Professor in screen production at the University of Auckland. Her films (Firaaq, Apron Strings, Coffee & Allah) have screened at international festivals including Toronto, Telluride, Venice and Cannes. She has produced and executiveproduced award-winning short films, including Six Dollar Fifty Man. Shuchi also publishes in the areas of South Asian popular culture, food and identity, digital storytelling and the politics of cultural difference. Rafael Leal is a Brazilian screenwriter and Masters student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He holds several Brazilian TV credits including As Canalhas–3rd Season (GNT-Migdal Filmes), Canta pra Subir (GNT-Migdal Filmes), Sistema Solar (GNT-República Pureza Filmes) and Jungle Pilots (NBC Universal-Giros Interativa). Rafael is currently developing Too Soon, a feature film script being produced by FOX-Raccord Filmes, Brazil. Margaret McVeigh is a writer and film academic who lectures in screen studies and heads the screenwriting program at Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Australia. She has worked in the media in Australia and overseas and holds a Masters of Screenwriting by Creative Practice and a PhD in Film and New Media Narrative. Margaret has published and presented at conferences in Asia, Europe, the USA, South America and Australia on the creative process and the writing and making of transnational films and the development of intercultural competencies. María Noguera is assistant professor of film history at the School of Communication of the University of Navarra (Spain). She has written her doctoral thesis on Miguel Torga’s short stories and she has been a visiting researcher at the University of Porto, in Portugal. María currently works on realistic theory traditions in cinema, primarily focusing on the work of film directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Manoel de Oliveira.

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Sarah Renger is a PhD student at the University of Leicester, UK, in the Department of Media and Communication. Her research project is on “Serial Storytelling”. Sarah is also a lecturer of the course “Transmedia Storytelling” at the University of Film and Television Konrad Wolf, Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany. Her research interests include: Serial Storytelling, Transmedia Storytelling, Narration, Popular Culture, Intertextuality & Intermediality in Transmedia Storytelling, Transculturality, the Impact of Epic Theatre on Serial Television Storytelling, the Effects of Improvisational Theatre on Script Development Process, Body Images and Media Impact. Since 2010 Sarah has been a writer for and director of series and documentaries. She also works as a media educationist in schools.