While viewing this film in class I was really surprised by how different it was from the other films that we have watched so far. In class we learned about exploitation in films of this time period and para cinema films. This film to me didn't feel like it was exploiting the audience but rather the audience of Kowalski in the film.
I really enjoyed the film in that it was fun to watch and guess what would happen next to him and where he would end up in the final part of his race to California. There were a few things in the film that "Super soul" was saying to try to insinuate that what Kowalski was doing was getting his freedom, and was the last cowboy or hero of his time, to me I don't think he was a hero at all. In fact a lot of his life was quite the opposite of heroic. Whenever he tried to be heroic, for example saving the girl in the cop car from getting raped, he failed tremendously. I think that when he heard the radio and "Super soul" telling him all of these positive things and making him feel like he was a star he started to believe it himself. The crowd in town starts to question if he is also, we the audience almost believe for a mil sec that he is heroic. Then we stop and think, for what? What could he possibly be called heroic for right now, in this situation driving this car so fast.
I think that the naked rider, could represent freedom and being a member of society that doesn't belong, so could the snake tamer, the man with the drugs that lives with the naked girl, and "Super Soul" They all are a little different from the vast majority. They represent the group that Kowalski almost desperately wants to be a part of, but really doesn't have that "thing" to put him in that category. I think that is why he drives so very fast. He wants to, its something he knows how to do and has trained for, he is against the police for their injustice BUT most of all because he wants to do the best at something and to stick out as different.
In the reading they talk about the open road and how the american west has wide open spaces, cowboys. These wide open roads are regulated and run by the government for the government with our permission to use them while abiding to their rules. How can one be completely free, on a regulated place? If that's what he's looking for he may be chasing an impossible freedom and should look for it in a different way or place.
Overall I really enjoyed this film, everyone loves a good car chase and whether we know why or not we're routing for Kowalski to get there on time. We want him to succeed. I really don't think he's the last hero, he just wanted something a little more exciting and I guess he got it. I think the ending had to happen the way that it did. It was the only way he could truly be remembered and the only way he could "win" I suppose. He didn't have to stop or surrender as gruesome as it is to say.
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I really liked what you said about this exploitation film being about the audience exploiting Kowalski rather than gore and race and women. I wish you had gone into more detail about that, because it's a really cool observation.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about something similar in my blog about the naked rider. I couldn't decide whether it was just gratuitous nakedness or if the symbolism went deeper. I also thought that it represented freedom from society and restricitions and her nakedness represented a newborn.
I kind of thought that Kowalski was a hero. He also is a "good person". Every time someone might be hurt he stops to make sure that they are all right. Then he keeps going again.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the naked rider, it seemed pretty normal to me. I feel like there was a lot of people running around naked in that era of time. That lady, along with her man friend, both live outside of society because of the ways they choose to live their lives. They wouldn't fit into normal society i don't think.
My response is the same as Kim's. I really liked the point about exploiting the audience _inside_ the film, and wanted a lot more about that. And I think you're right too that there was nothing particularly heroic about Kawalski's drive. He was just a guy in a fast car breaking the speed limit. But he didn't fail at saving the girl who was being raped. He just failed to keep his job as a result. And he was a war hero. In the context of the movie though, this more traditional type of heroism becomes pointless--he's never rewarded for it. Tim's point is good too, about naked being not all that unusual at hte time--though it was still fairly unusual in movies that weren't porn--the Hayes Code had only recently been lifted.
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