Lewton Thomas Jones
Graduate Film Theory
ISHTAR THE LAST GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
The movie Ishtar by Elaine
May is a comedy starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. The plot went
something like this~ Two struggling songwriters meet by circumstance in New
York and begin doing their own unpolished songs like ‘Dangerous business,’
‘Software,’ and Wardrobe of Love’ (We’re Just as good as Paul Simon or Bruce
Springsteen) w/their spouses along for a tortuous ride. They get a music agent
named Marty Freed (Jack Weston). After getting a bad response from an open-mike
Marty tells them he can book them out of the country. Elaine May takes Rogers
and Clarke to Morocco and finally to Ishtar. They meet a left-wing agent (May
was considered a Commie in the 50’s) named Shirra Assel (Isabelle Adjani) then
a CIA agent Jim Harrison (Charles Grodin) never suspecting they are carrying
the map that will inflame the middle east. The Emir wants them dead and all
they want to do is get booked at a club and cut an album. As comedy Ishtar
falls into several genres. The film is May’s attempt at new fetish comedy in
that marriage is in the narrative (Gerald Mast 458) despite the obstacles
creates a wedding of sorts, even though both of their spouses are gone but the
songwriting duo and Shirra Assel are wed metaphorically with their goals. (pg
459)Gerald Mast describes this type of comedy as; “after successfully combating
terrible foes, the protagonist earns both life and love as his rewards.” This
is the typical plot of melodrama.”
Ishtar is also a parody /comedy as
it was intentionally similar to Romancing The Stone, but as mock-up in
its style. The third comedic style you find is The reductio ad absurdum which
Gerald Mast describes as; “A simple human mistake or social question is
magnified, reducing the action to chaos and the social question to absurdity.”
We can see in Ishtar shades of Ionesco-Chairs, Sartre’s No Exit and Stoppard’s
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead. Not to mention Anton Chekov the father
of ‘realistic absurdism.’ Ishtar is didactic
(pg 460) Mast points out; “The typical progression of such a plot rhythmically
is from one to infinity. Perfect for revealing the ridiculousness of social or
human attitudes, such a plot frequently serves a didactic function.” Elaine May
takes the dream of being songwriters to the point of manic obsession. Hoffman
and Beatty’s characters are willing to lose everything, their spouses, their
homes, their passports and even their lives to get to the vanishing point.
Another comedic style we see is called ‘riffing’ or what (462) Mast describes
as; ‘goofing’ or ‘miscellaneous bits,” or improvised and anomalous gaggery.”
May was an expert in this style; coming from the comedy team Nichols and May.
She was a woman intellectual during television in the 1950’s. Mast (462)
continues; “The Sennet/paraody riffing films take some initial situation-perhaps
a place (Ishtar in this case) and then run off a series of gags that revolve
around this central situation.” Woody Allen a peer to May comes to mind
regarding this style. The semiotics of a film reveal its nature by introducing
us to the characters of the film and we as spectators then identify the scene
as comic. We as spectator are ready to follow the genre with this in mind.
The goddess Ishtar is a goddess
of fertility, love, war, romance and adventure and is equivalent to Venus,
Kali and Isis. Elaine May’s Ishtar is a movie that in theory is both mythology
and contemporary realism via the use of the apparatus and the jingle of big
business. The Elaine May Ishtar was a movie of huge proportions costing 51 million dollars in 1987. It was 23
million over its original budget. Key terms in film theory immediately pop
up-‘excess, auteur, feminism and production. When Warren Beatty is thrown in
the equation as co-producer we think of ‘perfectionist’ and Hollywood star and
womanizer. Add Dustin Hoffman to Ishtar and we have a montage of great interest
and possibility in the brew. The excess
began from the beginning; for example, Columbia spent 8 million dollars on
advertising, prints, promotion and publicity. (NY Times 87) The question arises;
how did a movie that was scheduled to cost 28 million go so wildly over
budget? The Hollywood Reporter called it
in 1987; “Colossally dunderheaded.” The
Daily News said; “A half -baked comedy that somehow turned into a runaway ego
trip.” The Los Angeles Herald Examiner called it; “a piffle with a 40
million-plus price-tag.” Those who hated it even before it came out probably
didn’t like Elaine May anyway. Janet Maslin of the New York Times admitting a
lot of monotony in the film said; “The best is funny, sly, cheerful and here
and there even genuinely inspired.” The stars of the movie appealed to an older
audience. Columbia’s distribution president James Spitz at the time said; “We
did very good business in Los Angeles, but it was a disaster of major proportions
in Chicago. The cultural semiotics obviously played on the star appreciation in
Los Angeles where Chicago didn’t care it would seem. Spitz went on to say; “When Siskel and Ebert
got through with the movie, nobody-and I mean nobody-came to see it.” The
inside info was that Warren Beatty proposed the film to Guy McElwaine,
Columbia’s chairman. The idea presented was a comedy with Beatty and Hoffman
directed by improvisation comedian/auteur Elaine May. It was whispered that Mr.
Mc Elwaine purchased Ishtar without a script.” The Hollywood model for making a movie was
activated by Beatty and Hoffman getting 5.5 million each, plus Beatty getting
$500,000 for producing. Elaine May got $1.5 million for writing the script and
directing. The movie budget was $14
million without the camera being turned on. A metaphoric apparatus was at play
in Ishtar. The trio of equal force have all been dubbed perfectionists. Their
differing views almost created a static mise en scene. The word on the street
was that each star and the director worked on their own final cuts of the film
once during the editing. Plus there were three separate teams of editors
working all day getting paid double time, triple time, and the most expensive
of all golden time. If that excess wasn’t enough Beatty didn’t approve the
poster until a year later –six weeks before it opened.
Elaine May was originally with Mike
Nichols as a leftist comedy team. The
joke of this movie would be as Deleuze’s notion of political cinema; “If there
were a modern political cinema it would be on this basis; the people no longer
exist, or not yet.” Elaine May’s profile in society as a woman film maker could
be viewed in the feminist dogma as ‘victim.’ Laura Marks argues;“ The element
of communal experience that is implicit in Bergson’s theory of perception
necessarily informs the process of cinematic spectatorship as well. Perception
is never a purely individual act but also an engagement with the social and
cultural memory.” We see cultural
semiotics already in post production ie. the level of fiction, organization, of
film content . Rutsky regarding film analysis states; “The context in which a
film is made determines how it is made. It is therefore a mistake to neglect
examining a film’s context or to treat contextual analysis, as merely “extra
work” …(which leads to excess). Ishtar was imitating the comedy of life
which is its tragic absurdity. It deals with show business, the military
Industrial Complex, cultural screwball and the demise of The Great Amercian
Novel which Norman Mailer said
couldn’t be wrote anymore, because of our fragmented society. Elaine May in a
comedic brushstroke reveals that mediocrity is the gel that holds us together
today. The film is prophetic of the Bush Iraq invasion. Rutsky, goes on to say;
“The production of a film is the situation when financed and produced. Films
financed and produced by major Hollywood studios are, for example, subject to a
range of influences and pressures that affect the film’s ultimate form. Financial
pressures and creative vision are in many ways, structurally at odds in this
process and the negotiation of these conflicts cannot help but define the
resulting film. Often this process has been seen in terms of a conflict between
the vision of the auteur and the restrictive structures of Hollywood.” No none
could have predicted the cult status that Ishtar receives today. Elaine
May a known esoteric and no stranger to sarcasm. In her film a NewLeaf
she shows how people will react to money and power through Walter Mathau’s
character. (who will kill to get his money until love stops him.) The
impression of reality takes away the psychosis of false desire. This style
could be her signature as director/ auteur.
The goal of Elaine May’s characters in
Ishtar is to become ‘famous’ at least with Lyle and Chuck (Beatty and
Hoffman). Chuck is or ‘The Hawk’ is willing to give this dream up temporarily
after gazing at Shirra Assel’s breast
(People’s Party in middle East) in the airport in Morocco. The feministic humor
is in a soft Marxist way revealed in this scene. The Wikipedia defines the
Apparatus theory as; “The cinema is by nature ideological because its mechanics
of representation are ideological.” The breast is in fact an ideological and
cultural exchange if not mythological and psychoanalytic.
The dominant ideology of the
culture within the viewer is in this case the goddess of past and present as
revealed by the apparatus. Ideology is
not imposed on cinema however it is part of its nature. The best joke is that when Lyle touches her
breast after he mistakes Shirra Assel for a guy. The screwball nature of the film is the left
breast (Marxist) is gazed by Chuck and the right (Capitalist) breast is not
seen but is felt up. This is Elaine May coupling. It is all part of the goddess
and the modernistic connection to that which serves the primal functions. The
woman is the image and the look, but only in regards to the goals, of the
characters. The suspicions are released as Lyle is advised by Shirra Assel to go
to the market ask for Mohammed and buy a blind camel. Chuck (Hoffman) is
accepting money from the CIA (Grodin) who helped him get his passport back.
Perception is May’s way of joining the paralleling of plot and sub plot. We as
the spectators know that Lyle and Chuck are hiding in their new roles from each
other. It is the shift from New York to Morocco that flips this perspective and
why it created detractors. Unlike the Hope Crosby travel movies Elaine May has
cast an existential paradox in the montage. This as film theory is‘variety’
-(151 Anatomy of Film) Bernard Dick writes; “A great director need not have a
wide repertoire of themes; there is a difference between a varied body of work
and a varied number of themes. The same scenes can occur within that body of
work, repeated or modified to fit the particular type of film.” The style of
Elaine May is repetitive in that she enjoys revealing absurdity in narration
and action. She uses language as a sort of contradiction of purpose. In the
auctioneer scene Chuck (Hoffman sells guns to the runners as Lyle (Beatty)
relays the nonsensical yelling with positive responses. May shows us a parallel
to the breast scene how desire can transcend language . When you need water or
your life is in danger you will reach out in primal way to simply communicate
any way you can. The mise en scene is the reality of whatever culture one is
caught up in. It dominates the air with language. Wittgenstein wrote; “Language
is the mirror to Society.” Godard would see this as the reflection of reality
on itself. Orson Wells once said; “I believe a work is good to the degree that
it expresses the man who created it.” In May’s case the woman who created
it. The Hope Crosby road films are a
genre that Elaine May modeled Ishtar after. Ishtar fell into Becket’s Waiting
For Godot with cinematic humor at play in the desert scene with the blind
camel. (the beads didn’t shine like they were told) The desert’s existential overtones were never
intended in the early road movies. This analogy can be seen (text 693) in what
Thomas Schatz describes; “Although verbal language systems are essentially
neutral and meaningless, film genres are not. As a system English grammer is
not meaningful either historically or in socially specific terms. It is manipulated
by a speaker to make meaning.”
The inability to speak Arabic but
able to communicate is May’s way of injecting the entertainment communication
she is versed in, which is comedy of the absurd. Like Anton Chekov ‘The father
of realistic absurdism.” May creates a story too real to not evoke laughter.
(692 Text) –Schatz states; “Among other things, the commercial film is a
communication system- it structures and delivers meaning. Throughout its
history, evocative phrases like “the grammar of film” and “the cinematic
language system” have suggested that filmic communication is comparable to
verbal communication.” Ishtar is a movie about communication whether it
be chuck and Lyle singing bad songs in clubs or the CIA cutting deals with
Shah. The climax of course is the map that will inflame the Middle East brought
by the two messengers. It would seem that to succeed in the arts you need to go
to an oil rich Arabian site find something of huge historical value and black
mail two cultures in order to get a recording contract. Bordwell (text 775)
says; “The classic narrative cinema –paradigmatically, studio feature film
making in Hollywood since 1920-rests upon particular assumptions about the
narrative structures, cinematic style, and spectorial activity.” In regards to
art as a mode of cinema May would agree that a narrative is a way to create art
as life.and vice versa. Ishtar is definitely political social satire her
trademark since television in the 1950’s. Bordwell goes on to say; “Identifying
a mode of production/consumption does not exhaustively characterize the art
cinema, since the cinema also consists of formal traits and viewing
conventions.” Ishtar was labeled “Hollywood” from the get go so it was
placed with less than artistic high art. The spectator understands the
communication of the film which commercial. It is in retrospect especially
after the invasion of Iraq that the viewer is privy to the information and
chaotic intentions that Elaine May put into her script. The spectator is
educated by the realism of an historical fact and can now understand the
consequence of bad communication.
A filmmaker’s unconscious mind and the
psychological mechanisms effect the viewing process Baudry asserts. “The union of semiology which
is psychoananalytic is concerned with the symbolic science of cinema or
semiology of the cinema” according to Metz. In Ishtar Elaine May has
similarities to Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser who believed that
individuals as ‘subject’ think they are creative agents much like Beatty and
Hoffman’s characters (songwriters). They enjoy the very experience that
subjugates them. This is even more true when they are being chased by the CIA
and the Middle East for mistaken identity. For Baudry this self-mis-recognition
is what Lacan called the ‘mirror phase.’ We watch the music careers of Chuck
and Lyle as spectators with a sense of power because we identify with the
apparatus as voyeur. It is not really us that are so untalented. We watch the
film as optic judges which Baudry defines as ; “artificial halluncinatory
psychosis of the cinema apparatus.” The dream of being famous is what Freud saw
as a biographic psychoanalysis that is using the dream as metaphor. Ishtar
as a film about losers and in reality becoming a loser film becomes cult like
because reality is in conformity to our inner dreams. It serves as a mirror
through which the spectator can identify their self as a coherent and
omnipotent ego able to judge what is good and what talent is. People can sit in
the theater or watch Ishtar like gods with the camera activity hidden. Elaine
May as film maker uses her unconscious mind to reveal the psychological
mechanisms in the viewing process or what Baudry calls; “more than real or
perspective artificalis, the mystic writing pad, the cave or mimesis.’ Elaine
May helps us to understand our past as film stops being special and becomes
temporal or as Deleuze says; “It is through the camera that we have to live in
a universe that is metacinamatic.” This lets the spectator into all kinds of
virtual past and future images which are stored-actual-present images
constantly generated with both types mutually influencing one another. In
Elaine May’s script we can in this sense come to understand the past, present
and future through camera consciousness which has entered our perception.
Shapiro states; “experiencing events critically in the present is made possible
not by the exercise of a faculty of judgment, that is: to integrate with
cognitive function but by a cinematographic apparatus.” The confusion of
American culture and Arabic culture in Ishtar is to understand
contemporary culture and its parts and futures and necessitates a development
of a camera consciousness. Otherwise we are lost in imperialistic voyeurism and
blatant dumb down humor to benefit those ignorant to the joke. It is easier for
May to use film and editing to jump between layers of time as well as the
actual and the virtual, immersion where the past, present and future coexist.
Ishtar starts with the mundane lives of two characters who want to be in show
business with the song; “telling the truth can be dangerous business, honest
and popular don’t go hand in hand, if you admit that you play the accordion, no
one will hire you in a rock and roll band, but we can sing our hearts out, and
if we are lucky the neighbors won’t complain.” (song Dangerous Business) The
scenes are broken up in flash backs and then a geographical jump to a totally
foreign culture but they maintain this dream that is like the film/Hollywood.
It is in various as well as linearly another world with a transcendental world
of difference, like Oz when Dorothy leaves Kansas in a dream.
There is the real and unreal
images where only the actual is in the physical present as we follow Chuck and
Lyle on their path to stardom and intrigue. This is the l’actuel et le virtuel.
As Baudry sees it; “ Every actual image is surrounded by a fog of virtual
images.” We can’t see the vision of Chuck and Lyle’s dream in Ishtar but we
know it there by their actions and the narrative at play. All our perceptions
are like particles that construct and deconstruct themselves from frame to
frame as our real object-mirror-object. The screen comes alive with sound that
is culturally contemporary and we join in to laugh or judge the movie Ishtar.
The sound narrative in Ishtar is a musical sound track but it
also is a cultural exchange as we see Chuck and Lyle bumbling through the
streets of Morocco. Charles Grodin as a CIA agent enters Chuck’s room and says,
“Hi I’m an American, I heard you were here too.” He has Chuck give his
autograph for his son and tells him to keep the pen which is a bug. Privacy is
the issue and the idea that if you are American you will be watched if you go
outside the language of one’s reality. Doane sees this as,” the voice in
humans” or the fantasmatic in cinema where sound is married to image. Doane
feels it is technicians and presence that make sound marketable and closer
where the sound seems anchored in space. She sees this as ‘body oppression’
with characters and spectators (with topology) are the server spaces. Chuck is
the servant to the CIA in Ishtar in a representational illusion of place
or as Doane says; “A disconnected bulb for enunciation mise en scene
perpetuating the image of unity.” The CIA in Elaine May’s film is there to give
it a controlling tone of oppression but distance for the viewer.
There is a scene in Ishtar
where Chuck is negotiating in the customs room to get another passport. He
realizes that he made a mistake and jumps up a punches the wall which turns out
to be very thin with a stranger looking in. It is slapstick in a sense but it
also reveals to the spectator that even in the movie the apparatus or what
seems hidden is a prop of sorts. Belton says; “You can’t conceal the artifice,
effacement is never totally successful, it reveals itself in a kind of
transformed state in the aesthetics and stylish practices that grow out of the
work.” Elaine May is a comedian foremost and understands absurdism and
existentialism which are in play all over Ishtar. The sound track in
Ishtar pervades an almost anthem of mediocrity making a nonsensical
connection to the reality of show biz and what we perceive as spectators.
Belton sees sound technology; “as transparent or not inevitable revealing its
own presence in the form of consciousness that intervenes between one spectator
and the original sound…transmit and transform, the cinema remains the
phenomenological par excellence, it weds or collapses consciousness with the
world.” Ishtar received no Oscar awards but it received three Razzie
Awards, ‘Worst Director-Elaine May, Worst Producer-Warren Beatty and Worst
Screen Play-Elaine May. In defense Warren Beatty said; “Ishtar is a very good,
not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman, and I think it’s funny.”
Dustin Hoffman commented; ”There’s an underlying message to that movie, you
know, that I think made it worth doing, and I would do it again in a
second.” Elaine May in an interview with
Mike Nichols said that she has met many people who say they hate Ishtar but
never actually saw it. In the New York Times June 1, 1987 (Late City Final
Edition) David Chasman, a long time studio executive commented; “The 94 day
shooting day shooting schedule was not out of line for a major movie, but it
was out of line for a supposedly small comedy.” He went on to say; “The villain
is not the unfortunate star but the irresolute, weak, and indecisive executive.
Artists aren’t supposed to be responsible. Executives are supposed to make
shrewd judgments.” It is possible that post production editing could have make
her mirror of reality more palatable, but the slow dance on the killing ground
clowing would not existed. The auteur status of Elaine May was left unsullied
and film theory has a new icon of contradictions to add to the pile.
In regards to Hollywood genres Ishtar
was expected to fall into that mold and when it didn’t it was condemned. The
comedy that Elaine May is known for is improvisation or free association. When
humor is sophisticated as much of it is in Ishtar you need a select
audience. A Hollywood audience especially at the time saw no humor in failing
songwriters or U.S. dealings in the Middle East. May told Mike Nichols in a
recent interview that she modeled the movie around the Iran-Contra, Reagan
time.(she missed Trump/Syria/Kurds) The prophetic truth was soon to be revealed
with Star Search, George Bush w/ son, all compelled to act out the movie Ishtar with zest and gusto to a sea of
television viewers in the early 90’s and 2004. The Hollywood of 1987 is much
different to the one after 911 as well. Thomas Schatz (pg. 691 Text) states;
“There is a sense, then in which a film genre is both a static and a dynamic
system. On the one hand, it is a familiar formula of interrelated narrative and
cinematic components that serves to continually reexamine some basic cultural
conflict.” In regards to typecasting a genre as say ‘Hollywood’ Schatz goes on to say; “ For as one sees more genre
films, one tends to negotiate the genre less by its individual films than by
its deep structure.” The playfulness in Elaine May’s script was in contrast to
what a ‘road movie’ or a Hollywood comedy should be. The language had a
different tone in Ishtar and this for May was true to the nature of the
comedy. Schatz might agree when he says (Pg693 text), “A film genre,
conversely, has come into being because of its cultural significance as a
meaningful narrative system.” Elaine May who uses language to go out of genre
would lend her prowess to the verbal narrative. Regarding this Schatz says;
“Whereas a verbal statement represents a speaker’s organization of neutral
components into a meaningful pattern, a genre film represents an effort to
reorganize a familiar, meaningful system in an original way.” May’s originality
is never in question and her script in Ishtar is all about the female
role and the outside inside Godardian dance into the real.
Feminism was not the driving force with
Elaine May because she felt comfortable interacting with men and regarded their
burden as universal. We can see this in her empathy for the male characters who
follow their art just may did and the repercussions on their relationships.
Willa leaves Lyle and Carol leaves Chuck (Hawk). The idea here is dedication to
the craft as May sees it creates a different marriage which is show business.
When Chuck arrives too save Lyle from his bad versions of Simon and Garfunkle,
they highlight the night with a sing a long- There’s No Business Like Show
Business.” This is not to say May’s
unaware of the gazing at Shirra Assel by Chuck and Lyle. Shirra Assel is a
protagonist for her own country as a left wing agent to unseat the Shah. There
is a Jewish spin on the film’s idiom and linguistic stasis concerning cultural
repression, but Elaine May lets the action pull the film along till all three
get what they want. For Shirra Assel it is equal rights for her people. The
only way to secure human dreams however is to get control with a map of
antiquity that will inflame the Middle East if the wrong hands get it. This
political positioning according to Stam
and Spense (Pg 885 Text) is described as; “Satirical or parodic films, in the
same way, may be less concerned with constructing positive images than with
challenging the stereotypical expectations an audience may bring to a film.” In
response to the Arabic images in Ishtar (pg 887) Stam and Spense write;
“Western attitudes toward non-western peoples are also played on here. Hassiba
is first seen in traditional Arab costume, her face covered by a veil.” Shirra
Assel is veiled and both lyle and Chuck first mistake her for a boy. Stam and Spense continue (887); “So dressed
she is a reminder of Arab women in other films who function as a sign of the
exotic.” May gets this joke and uses it to say that women are empowered by
their own circumstances and not by western standards. Shirra Assel tells Lyle
who says he will see her again soon; “you are such an American, this is a very
old culture you are in.” This point of view is addressed by May in many scenes
of Ishtar’s contemporary antiquity. The line that chuck wisely proclaims
to Lyle in their earlier meetings: ‘That’s because most men choose to live
their lives in quiet desperation.” Lyle (Beatty) responds in a Texas drawl;
“Boy you can say that again.”The advantage of colonial privilege is apparent in
Ishtar and would be suspect by audiences today due to a younger audience
with coined diversity tattoos rampant. Elaine May’s humor doesn’t change the
fact but it creates a laugh like Chaplin, she has brought empathy into the dark
cave of spectatorship. Stam and Spense (Pg 888) write; “The question of the
point of view is crucial then, but it is more complex than at first appear. The
granting of point-of-view shots to the oppressed does not guarantee a
non-colonial perspective.” Elaine May greatest accomplishment in Ishtar
was to create a movie that takes reality and through a series of montages
deconstructs the deconstruction dogma of the new insecure rules in art. It is
better that it failed than succeeded commercially because its biggest trick was
to neutralize the idea of war and conflict as being nothing more than people’s
need for fame, power and marriage of
cultures. (Mast 75) Eisenstein in regards
to montage and conflict says that; “ a
montage is characterized by collision. By the conflict of two pieces in
opposition to each other.” Ishtar is full of this conflict, first personally
then culturally. Eisenstein says; “So montage is conflict.” May as auteur was
examining her own conflicts in Ishtar either, as a women spectator,entertainer
or social political comedian. Her cinematographer language is about the relevance. De Saussure’s project of general
semiotics states; “to study the ordering and functioning of the main signifying
units used in the filmic message.” (103 Mast)
May used Ishtar as a didactic narrative for the first gulf war. She did
this by showing us the American dream and then the Middle East dream. May’s
connotation and denotation brought these signs together. The viewer can decide
if it’s funny or boring as many did though some didn’t. Metz writes; “The study of connotation brings
us closer to the notion of the cinema as an art (the seventh art). As I have
indicated elsewhere in more detail, the art of film is located on the same
semiological “plane” as literary art.” May’s script depended on the star power
of Beatty and Hoffman. Her cinematographic style was philosophical,
humanitarian and ideological in a comedic atmosphere of semiological material.
The editing in Ishtar was a big problem as Metz explains; (109 Mast) “ Human intervention, which carries
some elements of a proper semiotics, affects only the level of connotation
(lighting, camera angle, photographic effects,” and so on.” Sequence needs the
apparatus to be in harmony with the creative process and Istar survived this as a cult DVD but a movie
disaster. Metz says; “ (119 Mast) “The filmic “shot” therefore resembles the
statement rather than the word. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that it
is equivalent to the statement.” “For there are still great differences between
the shot and the linguistic statement.”
The ideological content of Ishtar
was similar to the question (22 Mast) Bazin asks; “What is Cinema?”
He states; “The cinema owes
virtually nothing to the scientific spirit.” May would agree, sometimes when
its ‘art for art sake’ the apparatus and the rest are along for the ride and
the artist takes the abuse at the end. May provided the viewer with a high profile
of satire and exposure of dominant ideologies in a very funny way but didn’t
have an audience of artists to catch all the symbols on display. (25Mast) Bazin
describes it very well : “There are numberless writings, all of them more or
less wildly enthusiastic, in which inventors conjure up nothing less than a
total cinema that is to provide that complete illusion of life which is still a
long way away.” May brought America too close to a reality that we cared little
about in Morocco and an American karaoke culture that judges and is hateful of
its own reflection. Rochelle O’Gorman (Amazon. Com Editorial Reviews) wrote; “Ishtar
torpedoed May’s career as a director plus May’s unwillingness to make nice with
Hollywood.” Gorman went on to say; “If this comedy had been made by unknowns,
it would have simply faded into the obscurity it deserves, the fuss came about
because May squandered much talent and a ridiculously large budget.” Let us go
to circa 2008 and see the reality of this CIA/ military Industrial Complex/ The
New Show Business (Star Search etc.)/Middle East Oil OPEC world and then judge
Ishtar on this criteria. It would seem that May it would seem is a prophet or
an artistic visionary who depicted in Ishtar the false mirror of what we
call ‘art’ or the ‘profound’ or as Kracauser (Text pg. 153-1960) writes; “If a
film is an art at all, it certainly should not be concerned with the
established arts.” We now see Ishtar as a ‘cult film’ regarded as ‘film
art’ as opposed to traditional art or outside the mock documentary genre.
Gorman states; “Ishtar is a parody of Orientalism, American identity, politics
and popular culture.” In regards to the Hope/Crosby and Nichols/May duos Gorman
writes; “If Abbott and Costello had made this flick it might have worked.” I
would disagree because may was on the other side of comedy with a wit that is
only found in the brilliant Jewish history of comedy. The fact that May was
Jewish made the Middle East closer to the sensibilities of her own world of
spectator-ship. What May did with Ishtar was sublimate her own show biz
experiences with the politics and psychology towards a world with higher IQ’s.
She carries us to a better awareness for the general audience. The failure of
Ishtar is the success of writing a nonsensical script. How do you write the
Great American Novel in the metaphorical sense? The answer for the spectator is
simply to show that what ties us together at this point is ‘mediocrity’ in the
arts, in politics, in religion, in contemporary society today. May’s script may
very well be the last ‘Great American Novel.’ The art of film is now invisible
to the masses but mediocrity holds the show together. We see this when Lyle and
Chuck get their recording contract by cutting a deal with the CIA and the
Middle East. Parker Tyler( Film Theory #2 pg 45) writes; “If we scrutinize the
practice of film criticism, even in superior places, we find the better fiction
films frequently reviewed as if they were novels cast in sequences of pictorial
and aural illustrations…Naturally, critics don’t always consciously commit
themselves to an inevitable parallelism of film with literature and the stage.”
(Pg 45 text #2)Tyler goes on to say; “A whole book has been written by a
well-meaning and cultivated scholar about the methods by which film converts a
novel into its own technical idiom.”
(George Bluestone’s book –Novels into Film, University of California
Press, 1961).
In conclusion Elaine May is a
transcended feminist auteur of high merit who through language and high comedy
wrote a social political psychoanalytic
script that bombed at the box office but accomplished a place in the
arts as literature. Ishtar has
become a cliché for failure just as the last administration and their policies
and philosophies have become. May was concerned about Bush senior and his
Iran-Contra excesses and with this movie she has left an historical film for
the gene pool to gag on. I don’t think she was concerned about film theory when
she created this celluloid novel but it falls into a place of intellectual
discussion anyway. The rejection of Ishtar was the rejection of the
mirror that parallels the world of today. Johnathan Rosenbaum (Internet
Johnathon Rosebaum.com) writes; “I am willing to concede that Elaine May’s
fourth feature (Ishtar) is less strong than the three that preceded it. But
because I regard May as a major American writer-director and Ishtar as a movie
that in no way betrays her uncommon talents, I would have included this title
on my list even if it hadn’t sparked off a lynch-mob frenzy in the media.”
May’s integrity is obviously looked on well in the know. In film we do have the
message which begins with the press releases. We as spectator are involved in
the psychological and social semiotics of the introduction of a film. Rosenbaum
continues; “Most of the bile was occasioned by the film’s large budget and its
producer and costar Warren Beatty’s handling of the press, both of which are so
irrelevant to the film’s merits that
seem beneath discussion.” The expectations and the audience are influenced by
the lords of the apparatus god or the corporation. Rosenbaum writes; “If money
is a ‘real’ issue, why is much lesser talent like woody Allen given a free ride
and everyone’s blessings for shooting his ludicrous September script twice,
with larger separate casts? The female
victim wouldn’t appeal to May but she as feminist theory shows is not playing
the traditional game as expected by a woman in the film industry. May’s
wonderful sense of absurdity is apparent when Rosenbaum describes her at the
screening; “A prominent LA publicist told me that she (May) got into trouble
with some of her friends simply by laughing at the movie at a press screening.”
He goes on; “As I’ve had occasion to argue elsewhere, May strikes me as the
closest thing we have to Eric von Stroheim-not merely as an outlaw
perfectionist and obsessive truth-teller (telling the truth can be dangerous
business,” runs the theme song of Ishtar; “honest and popular don’t go hand in
hand’) with the darkest view of the American Dream around, but in the very
progression of her work.” (all quotes page 4) Rosenbaum summarizes May’s film
as; “a subversion of Hollywood fantasy from within, set in a mythical country.”
May is beyond American political correctness and sustainable consumptive up, up
with people smoke screens. She is the true radical and has created a cult
classic in a genre all to itself. Rosenbaum sums this up; “Perhaps the most
subversive thing about Ishtar is not so much failure or mediocrity of her
bumpkin heroes (Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, cast against type in Strheim-like
fashion), or the havoc created by their Reagonite ignorance in the third world,
with politics and show biz turned into mindless equivalents, as the fact that
she loves them just the same as with Bertolucci, her simultaneous contempt and
affection for the monstrous demands to be read, like her ferocious wit, as
intricate auto-critique.” May is the comedian of true empathy Promethean and
Chaplin in nature, and, Ishtar is her wonderful Trojan Horse delivered
to the dark cubicle of spectatorship. The great surprise is that she wants a
laugh rather than a war.
1.
Film Theory and Criticism, Mast and Cohen, New
York , Oxford University Press, London 1974, Toronto
2.
Film Theory and Criticism, Marshal Cohen, Leo
Baudy, New York, Oxford University Press, 2004
3.
Turning Point in Film History-Andrew J. Rausch,
Citadel Press, Kensington Publishing, New York, 2004
4.
The American Film Institute Desk Reference,
Dorling Kindersley Publishing Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York 2002
5.
Movie Making Course, Chris Patmore, Quatro
Educational Series, 2005
