1. Sweetie
Director: Jane Campion
Release date: 1989

2. Relationships
Dawn
Kay
Louis
Gordon
Flo
Bob

8. Class and Class Stereotypes
What is Kay’s job, her social position?
How about Louis?
Bob and Sweetie?
Flo and Gordon?
What is the narrative function of the women whom Kay works with?

9. Physical Environment as Metaphor
What sort of physical environment do the characters live in?
How might it reflect their internal states and lives?

10. Character Sympathy Do we sympathize with Sweetie? Kay? Louis? Gordon?
Flo?

11. Explanation and Focalization
How responsible is Dawn for her situation?
When are other characters cruel to her?
What motivates their cruelty?
Why is the film called Sweetie and not Kay?

12. Reason, Normalcy, Abnormality
Does Flo speak with the voice of reason?
Why do several characters (Gordon, Louis, and Kay) question what is real or not real, what is normal or abnormal?
Are any of the characters in this film normal?

13. The End and the Future
Is there any hope at the end for Kay and Louis, for Flo and Gordon, for anyone?
What is the meaning of Gordon’s hallucination at the end?

14. Theme: Fate and Chance
What range of meanings does fate have—in the sense of the different contexts in which you might use this word or idea?
How are fate and chance similar to each other?—a philosophical question
How much of our lives seem dictated by chance (or fate if you prefer)?

15. Fate/Chance for Kay/Louis
How does Kay “choose” Louis as her partner?
How does Louis respond to this choice?
Why is this situation unusual, especially for him? Or possibly it is not.

16. Examples cracks in the pavement tea leaves
meeting in the garage (section number!)
elapsed time before the tree shows (!)
“gently close the eyes”
meditation

17. Theme: Rational and Irrational
How do both Kay and Louis rely on or use “spiritual” solutions to their problems?
Where do these solutions and practices come from?
Are they using them in a healthy way?
What are they trying to deal with or escape from or explain in their lives in this way?

18. Fate/Chance for Dawn/Gordon
Unlike Kay and Louis, Dawn and Gordon do not look to some “spiritual” or “mystical” solution.
How do they contrast with them in this respect?
How might they represent another side of the problem—another kind of determinism?

19. Theme: Trees (past)
What is the symbolic meaning of roots, especially in relation to family relations or origins?
How does Kay feel about trees in childhood?

20. Trees (present) What is Louis’ motive for planting the alder tree?
How does Kay react to the tree?
How does his symbolic understanding of the tree contrast with Kay’s?
Where does Kay put the tree and why is this important?
Why is it important that Sweetie finds the tree?

21. The Tree House Tree symbols culminate in the tree house.
What might a tree house represent generally?
What does this specific tree house seem to mean?

22. Theme: Horses (past) Who collects horses?
What do the horses differ from each other?
What do the identities of the horses reveal about Kay?
segment: 14.40

23. Horses (present)
What happens to the horses and why is this significant?
Who plays at being a horse?
segment: 38.45
segment: 51:45

24. Horses (future?)
What is the significance of seeing the line of broken and mended horses at the end?
segment: 1:28.40

25. Incest and Mental Illness
Incest is portrayed indirectly. What are the consequences of this relation and how does it reverberate through and help to explain the film?
Why is it insufficient to explain the condition of the characters?

26. Narrative Structure 1 Where do we find non-narrative elements?
Do these parts seem unnatural or out of place or do you generally just accept them as part of the overall meaning of the film?
Are the non-narrative parts dreams or hallucinations?
segments: 11.15, 18.00

27. Narrative Structure 2
Whose perspective do we get, especially in the non-narrative parts?
Who “narrates” the non-narrative parts?
How is exposition changed in this film from the traditional Hollywood forms of narrative we have been watching so far?
What questions remain or can we piece together most of the history of this family?

28. Other Campion Works An Angel at My Table (1991) The Piano (1993)
The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
bombsite.com/issues/30/articles/1282

29. Back to Melodrama We might understand Sweetie as an anti-melodrama.
What is the basis of this assertion?

30. Campion as Outsider
Campion was an outsider director when she made Sweetie, but today she is a big name.
What separates her movie from mainstream Hollywood film?
You should be able to come up with a reasonable list.
Why was the film nonetheless successful?

31. Background: My Own Private Idaho
Director: Gus van Sant (b. 1952)
Release date: 1991

32. Representation and Power
What is representation?
Why is representation an issue for women and racial and sexual minorities?
What does it mean to speak for yourself, especially if you are a member of one of these groups?

33. Heterosexual Looking
How can looking be coded based on gender or sexual orientation?
What does it mean to be presented with a male or heterosexual viewpoint?
Why are sexual minorities understood to be outsiders to this system of representation?

34. Characters
River Phoenix (Mike Waters)
Keanu Reeves (Scott Favor)

35. Mike and Scott

36. Melodrama Once More I assert that Sweetie is possibly anti-melodrama.
How does My Own Private Idaho, at least on the surface, conform to the expectations of melodrama?

37. Melodramatic Elements in Van Sant
A young man, innocent and naïve, falls in love.
An emotionally-charged love relationship remains central to the action.
Family influences/obstacles affect outcomes.
The central love relation (seen through the sympathetic protagonist) remains mostly unsatisfied (conflicting understandings of love).
A love triangle develops.

38. Melodrama, continued The protagonist is rejected and abandoned.
The protagonist loses his mind.
“Normalcy” is achieved (or re-established after being threatened): rejection of “abnormal” sexuality, confirmation of institutions (marriage, reconciliation with the father’s values), firm distinction between classes and the behavior associated with those classes.

39. Conventions and Subversion
Why would Van Sant, definitely an experimental director, employ these clichés in making his film?
Is he able to subvert these conventions?
Or, does he invite us to reevaluate the idea of convention as an empty form?

40. Assertions
Sweetie and My Own Private Idaho are both self-conscious anti-melodramas but for different reasons.
What does each achieve by taking this oppositional stance?

41. Examples of non-narrative scenes
sped up shots (nature, clouds) 3.40
surreal elements (barns collapsing on roads) 6.10, 18.00
documentary style (“interviews” with various street people) 24.15
freeze frames (sexual encounters) 1:09.20, 1:17.55
flashbacks (home video segments) constant
disrupted timelines (sleep) constant

42. Campion and Van Sant
Today’s films were made by “outsider” directors—Campion and Van Sant.
Today, both have become big names, but at this point, they weren’t so well-known.
What separates their movies from mainstream Hollywood film?
You should be able to come up with a reasonable list.
Why were the films nonetheless commercially successful (by their own terms)?

43. For Next Time
Watch: Waking Life