Table Of Content

the scorsese connection lesley stern Tlil* 1 *«*- wUL THE SCORSESE CONNECTION THE GOLLEG3 z OF RICHARD COL LYER PERSPECTIVES Series Editors: Colin MacCabe and Paul Willemen The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System Fredric Jameson Apocalypse Postponed Umberto Eco Looks and Frictions Paul Willemen The Vision Machine Paul Virilio The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini Sam Rohdie The Scorsese Connection Lesley Stern Fetishism and Curiosity Laura Mulvey THE SCORSESE CONNECTION Lesley Stern INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis F©ILM lN sT/rt * % BFI PUBLISHING First published in 1995 by the British Film Institute 21 Stephen Street, London W1P 2LN and the Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47404 Reprinted 1996 Copyright © Lesley Stern 1995 All rights reserved The British Film Institute exists to promote appreciation, protection and development of moving image culture in and throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Its activities include the National Film and Television Archive; the National Film Theatre; the London Film Festival; the Museum of the Moving Image; the production and distribution of film and video; funding and support for regional activities; Library and Information Services; Stills, Posters and Designs; Research; Publishing and Education; and the monthly Sight and Sound magazine. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-85170-512-X 0-85170-513-B pbk US Cataloguing data available from the Library of Congress A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-253-32952-3 (clothbound) 0-253-21011-9 (paperbound) Cover design: Romas Foord Front cover stills from Taxi Driver and Mean Streets Back cover: Scorsese filming Taxi Driver Typeset by D R Bungay Associates, Burghfield, Berks Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents Acknowledgments vi Chapter 1 Life Is Fraught with Peril 1 Chapter 2 Meditation on Violence 11 Chapter 3 A Glitter of Putrescence 32 Chapter 4 Cracking Up 69 Chapter 5 Remember, Remember: It’s Not Blood, It’s Red (Frame-Work) 115 Chapter 6 Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon 167 Chapter 7 Time’s Covetousness 222 Notes 229 Filmography 253 Index of Films Cited 255 Index of Names 259 Acknowledgments During the slow writing of this book, John Frow, Laleen Jayamanne and Jodi Brooks have been a constant inspiration through their own work and through the kind of provocative criticism that is sometimes alarming, always enliven¬ ing. Many other people have contributed by reading parts of the book in draft form and providing invaluable feedback. I would particularly like to thank Christine Alavi, Lisbeth During, Anne Freadman, Ann Game, Ross Gibson, Jane Goodall, Bill Green, Liz Jacka, Noel King, Sylvia Lawson and Ross Poole. Others have generously given information and ideas, helped me to work out particular problems or provided very practical assistance: Eleanor Frow, Jan McKemmish, June McGowan, Carlos Calero, Bruce Hodsdon, Lynne Tillman, Mike Campi, Glenn d’Cruz, Tracey Moffat, Jane Rowden and Ken Kruikshank. Pauli Karkkainen, Jennifer Kitchener and Genevieve Lloyd have made much possible. Helen Barnes, the best of friends and neighbours, has been an enormous help and encouragement. I have been fortunate in the last few years to belong to a seriously ludic writing group: thank you to Ruark Lewis, Diane Losche, Martin Harrison, Ian Maxwell, Cathie Payne and Martin Thomas. The ideas for this book, and its shape, have been developed whilst teaching in the School of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of New South Wales. I am particularly grateful to the many students who have participated in the course on Contemporary Approaches to the Cinema and to the few who have partici¬ pated in Histrionics. Their enthusiasm, curiosity and weird perspectives have pushed me to refine many hazy propositions. Their questions and insights are manifested in the book in various ways, sometimes, no doubt, as unconscious ap¬ propriation. I hope that they will take this as a sign of life. My colleagues in the School have provided a rare atmosphere of intellectual generosity, for which I am more thankful than I usually let on. I have received two research grants from the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of New South Wales. Paul Garcia provided excellent research assistance in the initial stages of the project; Jennifer Harris did so in the latter stages when her calmness and lucidity were invaluable. VI Early versions of chapters were delivered at the following events and venues: ‘Kiss Me Deadly: Feminism and Cinema Now’ at The Power Institute, Sydney University (1991); ‘Cinema and the Perversions’ at The Brisbane Cen¬ tre for Psychoanalytic Studies (1991); the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (1992); The Ultimo Seminars, University of Technology, Sydney (1993); Film and History Conference, Fa Trobe University (1993); ‘Sexuality in Cinema: East and West’, University of Newcastle (1994). I am grateful to the organisers for inviting me and to the participants for their responses. Parts of Chapter 4 originally appeared as ‘The Oblivious Transfer: Analysing Blue Velvet’, in Camera Obscura, no. 30, 1994. Paul Willemen, long ago it now seems, astonished me by suggesting that I write about the cinema of Martin Scorsese. The idea brewed and took posses¬ sion. What eventuated may not be what he had in mind, but I am nevertheless very grateful to him for seeing something that I could not see, and for his encouragement and patience as an editor. In addition, I would also like to thank Colin MacCabe and the British Film Institute’s publishing crew for their support. vii