Postmodern Moulin Rouge

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Postmodern Moulin Rouge

Henri Ramone de Toulouse-Lautrec At the Moulin
Rouge (1895)
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Outline

• 1. Introduction
• A. Starting Questions
• B. Setting Plot
• C. Major Argument
• 2. Structuralist?Marxist Approach
• Binaries
• Plot and Motif ? Toulouse roles
• Actants ? Who is the real opponent?
• 3. Semiotic Approach -- MR as a postmodern
  pastiche on love
• Songs in the Musical Scenes
• Self-Reflexive Signs
• Signs of Minorities
• 4. Moulin Rouge in Todays Context
• Next Time

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Starting Questions

• Do you like the film? Is it a great love story?
  How is it compared with some other famous love
  stories, such as Titanic?
• What patterns have you found in the story?
  (plot, intertext, genre, irony, pun and innuendo,
  etc.)
• How do you relate the film to contemporary views
  of love?

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Introduction Fin-de-siecle Setting

• Montmarte -- Many artists, from Berlioz to
  Picasso, lived, worked, and played here. These
  creative spirits (and their cafe, the Lapin
  Agile) helped keep this area the city's
  intellectual and artistic center up until the
  first World War.
• Moulin Rouge (The Red Windmill) A kingdom of
  night-time pleasures where the rich and powerful
  came to play with the young and beautiful
  creatures of the underworld.

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A. Setting (2)

• Bohemian spirit
• The state of mind and way of life began in about
  1830 and continued until 1914. It was a time and
  place where misfits spent their lives outside
  society, choosing penury, squalor and freedom
  over prosperity and convention. They protested
  against the bourgeois, against a social structure
  based on money, against the increasing uniformity
  and drabness of existence. Bohemia had always
  been a lotus land for misunderstood and
  unproductive genius it had given an artistic
  aura to vagrants without talent.

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B. Plot

1. narrator (1) Toulouse narrator (2) Christian
2. Story Christian/Satine vs. the Duke
3. The story within the story Indian
   courtesan/penniless sitar player vs. maharaja
4. Intertexts the myth of Orpheus, La Bohème
   courtesan story Madame Butterfly, Dumas
   Camille/Verdis La Traviata ??? more later

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Note

• Orphean myth Orpheus, the son of Apollo and
  Calliope, has the power to enchant with his
  music. When his love, Eurydice was killed,
  Orpheus descended into the Underworld to plead
  for her return. Enchanting Hades, monarch of the
  Underworld, with his music, Orpheus is permitted
  to leave with Eurydice on condition he does not
  look back to see if she is following him. When
  Orpheus nears the entrance to the underworld,
  fear overpowers him, he turns back to see if
  Eurydice is following, and he loses her forever.

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Main Idea Postmodern Pastiche of Love

• a story about love. A love that will live
  forever. The end.
• Love cannot be represented except with pastiche
  (all-in-one) and repetition.
• Pastiche paintings, musical, melodrama,
  burlesque, dances, animation, songs
• Repetition and punning funny feeling inside
  The greatest thing youll ever learn Is just to
  love and be loved in return, death of the
  outcast and loyal woman.

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Structuralist Analysis (1) Binaries

• 1.  Bohemia underworld (Toulous) vs. Bourgeois
  world (The duke).
• 2. Idealistic/Love (Christine) vs.
  Practical/Money (Zilder)
• (Satine) in between
• 3. The romantic or melodramatic vs. burlesque
• 4. The black and white vs. the colorful vs. the
  surreal (artificial) colors

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Structuralist Analysis (2) Plot

• Motifs
• misidentification ? recognition, attraction ?
  commitment? trial (Duke) the supper, the ending
  ? jealousy and misunderstanding ? love
• Repetitions of Children of the Revolution and
  Nature Boy
• Bohemian spirit wins over materialism?
• No. The use of Toulouse is only
  superficialfor plot development and setting.
  --one that confirms love, and has his paintings
  set the tone of Moulin Rouge (see images of
  posters in Zidlers office)

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Toulouse

• 1. introduce the nature boy, 2. undercuts the
  love scene, 3. confirms Satines love, 4. reveal
  the dukes plot.

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Biography of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

• His stunted physique earned him laughs and scorn,
  and kept him from experiencing many of the
  physical pleasures offered in Montmartre, a
  sorrow that he drowned in alcohol. At first it
  was beer and wine. Then brandy, whiskey, and the
  infamous absinthe (???, the green fairy) found
  their ways into his life.
• Art and alcohol were his only mistresses, and
  they were mistresses to which he devoted all of
  his time and energy. He was doing one or both
  almost every day of his life until he died.
  (source)

                                                                                                                                                                                    Lautrec dressed as a clown circa 1895
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Moulin Rouge A Structuralist Analysis (3)

• 3 Quests and 2 Missions
• The Bohemian artists want their play "Spectacular
  Spectacular" accepted. They sends Christian to
  persuade Satine.
• Christian (subject) searches his ideal love, who
  turns out to be Satine (object) in the underworld
  of Paris.
• Zidler (sender) sends Satine to persuade the Duke
  to support their show, promising that she will be
  a real actress.

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Moulin Rouge A Structuralist Analysis (3)

• B. Quests and 2 Mission Frustrated or in
  Conflict
• The play becomes an arena for battle between the
  Duke and Christianeach wanting their script
  written.
• The intersection of the two stories e.g chap 22
  C because she doesnt love you Duke
  accept this as a gift to the courtesan from the
  maharajah (she is mine)
• Ideal love faces the trial of money
• Dream of becoming a real actress vs. the Dukes
  desire for possessing her. neither realized
  why?

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Moulin Rouge A Structuralist Analysis (3)

• 3.    Helper and Opponent
• Nini Opponent
• This endings silly. Why would the courtesan go
  for the penniless writer? Whoops! I mean sitar
  player.
• Dont worry Shakespeare, youll get your ending,
  once the Duke gets his end in.
• Chocolate Helper -- saves Satine twice
• when Satine falls down from a Trapeze
• when the duke (opponent) wants to rape her.

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Moulin Rouge Who is the real opponent?

• 3.    Zidler?
• Helps Satine -- chap 19
• Wavering,
• calling her little pumpkin, little sparrow,
• Why does he have to tell Satine that she is to
  die? To save Christian?
• He insists that the show must go on. Another
  hero, another mindless crime Behind the curtain
  in the pantomime. On and on, Does anybody know
  what we are living for? (chap 27)

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Moulin Rouge Who is the real opponent?

• 4. The illness revealed at the beginning,
  confirmed when S is faced with the first choice,
  terminating her life at the end.
• Never fall in love with a woman who sells
  herself. It always ends bad. (tango dance chap
  23 a contrast to the use of tango in Rent.)
• 5.    Pastiche style
• Meant to foreground the love, but also undermines
  it
• e.g. after loud and frivolous burlesque in the
  elephant room ? chap 13 One day Ill fly
  away.
• e.g. after Chap 21 Come what may

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MR Postmodern Pastiche of Love

1. Songs
2. Self-Reflexive Signs
3. Signs of the Exotic

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The Songs Musical Scenes

• All the Songs
• Chap 8 innuendo
• woman as muse to inspire artistic creation and
  sexual act ?
• funny feeling of sex, of love, of suspicion
  and jealousy
• (later) Nini Christian can have his ending if
  the Duke has his end in.
• Your Song--Christian to Satine
• Your Song--Satine to the Duke

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A. Songs Love Medley chap 14

1. Love Is Like Oxygen
2. Love Is A Many Splendored Thing
3. Up Where We Belong
4. All You Need Is Love -
5. Lover's Game
6. I Was Made for Lovin' You
7. Just One Night -
8. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
9. Don't Leave Me this Way -
10. Silly Love Songs
11. (Repeated) Up Where We Belong -
12. Heroes -
13. I Will Always Love You -
14. Your Song

What do you think?
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B. Songs

• a. American songs V.S. English songs
• ref. (the point of a group of students)
• songs performed by American singers represent
  materialism
• songs performed by English singers represent
  the theme of love

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B. Myths within the songs (2)

• 2. the example of Hindi
• lyrics? She is mine male dominance
• ?Satines part yielding to the domination
• Hindi melody? exotic, dangerous, tension,
  sexual, male dominance

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C. language (songs) meanings arbitrary
relationship

• . a. Emptied out and filled with a new concept
  
• In the Name of Love, Nirvana, Roxanne
• b. Meaning changes according to different
  contexts
• Its a little bit funny, this feeling
  inside
• c. Songs with different meanings are combined to
  present a new theme
• Elephant Love Medley

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Self-Reflexive Signs stylistic pastiche

• Genre musical cartoon styles (green fairy like
  Tinkerbelle) the gold flakesrepresents dream,
  magic and money
• camera styles e.g. changes from the romantic to
  the comic/burlesque
• music video (fast-changing scenes)
• theatrical showswhirling
• Burlesquequick cuts matching quick actions fast
  zoom-in and zoom-out,
• Melodramatic aura around the protagonists and
  clouds underneath them
• architectural styles
• gothic tower
• elephant house
• combination of the realistic and artificial
  (including the colors and the words
• Lamour, love, besides Christians attic.)

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Self-Reflexive Signs of the Theatric and Writing

• Typewriter A red velvet curtain framed by a gilt
  proscenium arch.

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Signs of the Theatric Another Stage
CHRISTIAN Love lifts us up where we belong. .
. SATINE Get down, get down! CHRISTIAN Where
eagles fly on a mountain high.
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Signs of the Digitally Animated

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Signs of the Exotic

• The Bohemian and the Argentinan
• The Indian (Bollywood) and the blacks

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Moulin Rouge Pastiche Today

• Courtesan The Story of a Geisha the issue of
  prostitution
• Moulin Rouge -- Dinner, Show and Souvenir
  (Toulouse-Lautrec Menu)
• Hollywood films pastiche
• ??????. Date Movie
• Shrek
• Is pastiche the language of love?

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Next Time

• Chap 12
• Morning
• Notes on a Scandal