We often hear critics and fans talking about how much an actor or actress sucked in a certain film. How they weren’t good enough. Even I critiqued Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in Sherlock Holmes for not embodying the wittiness that both characters, Holmes and Watson, illustrate in the original plot. Then again, I might have been influenced by my personal expectations from having read the book before watching the movie. I was expecting something different, but because I didn’t get what I wanted, it does not mean that their performances weren’t credible.
Performance is much as part of film as cinematography, editing, production design and any other cinematic term that can be thrown in there. Performance as Dyer mentions it “is how the action/function is done, how the lines are said” (134). In other words, performance is how the character transgresses through the story making it grow, reaching the climax and then having a resolution/conclusion. As performance has this great impact within the context of film, although Barry King argues that theatrical performance outweighs cinematic performance, many theories have evolved in terms of how to read and analyze a star’s performance within a film.
One aspect of performance that King, Dyer and Bozzola all hit upon is how the personal life, the metaphysical aspect of a star/performer can influence his performance or how the audience’s reception might be. For instance, if Pamela Anderson, an overly sexualized figure in Hollywood were to portray an innocent housewife with kids, it would be difficult for the audience to comprehend and accept that performance, and would dig deeper to find the persona that Anderson usually portrays in her characters. Applying this theory to Warren Beatty can be a bit deceitful and confusing. Lucia Bozzola mentions in her article, “Studs Have Feelings Too,” that “Warren Beatty as a star is just as famous for never talking about his personal life; the power over his cinematic image exercised as producer/writer/director extends to his private activities.” Because Beatty never talked about his life many rumors ensued that he was a ‘lady’s man,’ someone that went around. Then, it isn’t difficult to accept his performance in Shampoo, where he sleeps with about four different girls, all within a couple of days.
Although Beatty’s performance of George is accepted as a somewhat-player figure, what is a bit weird is they way he expresses his feelings and how he becomes the center of the gaze on screen. Bozzola mentions that, “The benign nature of George as stud and the rethinking of male and female roles continue in the figuring of the women around him as decidedly not passive, and George’s own status as an object for their desires.” This changes the role, even though George is sleeping with all these women, he is not the one looking for them, but rather he is being used. Then, can this character reflect and parallel the rumors that were said about Beatty? Since it is not the same circumstance, is it okay to accept this performance or question it? With George being used, the females are the ones exerting the power, and George is the one being used. In a way, gender roles are switched here in the context of social indoctrination, where it is typical for the male to dominate the female. For instance, in terms of the gaze, the camera pays more attention to George’s body than any of his female partners.
Questions
1. How does Shampoo deter or exemplify Laura Mulvey’s theory of the gaze in cinema?
2. In terms of Beatty’s personal life, do you think that this character works because he is embodying himself, as an object that is used?
3. In terms of performance theory, do you see any intertextuality in Beatty’s performance and how does that relate to the sexuality of the performance?
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