Poster Analysis #1: The Jungle Book

In a previous life I wrote a lot of film reviews. It made little money but it was a labor of love and, hey, who doesn't love movies? I still love cinema but I don't get anywhere near enough time these days to keep up with its latest ebbs and flows. 

 

I can still indulge in my fascination with film posters though because the internet is awash in them!

One of the benefits of the internet is that it democratised information. Things became accessible to a broader range of people and this continues to grow broader, meaning that if you have the inclination to design your own film poster you can do this and then potentially share it with millions upon millions of other people. This also works for the big guys too, with any marketed material now proliferated throughout the internet.

Over the next month I've decided to tackle Nanowrimo for the third time (third time's the charm, right?) so I'll have little time to write blog posts. I thought I might keep things ticking along by looking at a few posters.

There are several striking things about the above poster that tie into the study of visual literacy in the English classroom. Let's break it down element by element.

Light and Shade: The borders of the poster are cast in shadow, creating silhouette-like effects for the figures in the foreground. This 'vignetting' of the image pulls the viewer's focus into the middle, where the source of light is, which brings us to...

Salience: The salient (main) feature of an image is usually its central figure, or a large piece of writing. This is almost always a matter of perspective - what each viewer sees as having salience may differ, as does the creator's vision of what will be salient. It's worth thinking of a poster as an exercise in persuasion - it's a product design to persuade the viewer to be interested. I would argue that the salient part of this image is one of it's smallest visual features - the flame in Mowgli's hand, which may be making a thematic point. A lot of the elements work together to draw our eye to this point. But, as mentioned, this is a matter of perspective. 

Colour: Colour often functions as a form of symbolism. We attach colours to certain connotations or associations, dependent on our cultural background. For example, in Western cultures the colour white is used to symbolise purity and peace (as seen in the wearing of a white dress at a wedding, or the waving of a white flag). In Ancient Egypt, however, white was the colour for death, and among the Bedouin peoples white represents fertility and happiness. In the case of The Jungle Book, the colours are organic, orange/yellow to represent the light brought by Mowgli, and blue/green to demonstrate the nature-based setting of the jungle.

Colour wheels demonstrate colour oppositions and help designers select colours that will contrast well with one another.

 

Colour also functions, from a design standpoint, in concert with other colours for aesthetic impact. A cursory understanding of colour theory will help students comprehend why certain colour palettes are used when creating images for film. The poster for The Jungle Book takes a muted approach to the often overused blue/orange contrast (look up blue/orange film posters to see just how often these two colours get used together). Part of the reason for this is that it demonstrates a juxtaposition between a 'cool' colour and a 'warm' one, which can assist with attracting the eye. 

Camera Angle / Shot Size: The camera is placed somewhere between eye level and slightly lower, and captures an extreme long shot of Mowgli in his environment. The angle and shot size work together to place an emphasis on the setting (the jungle) and Mowgli's role in leading a vanguard of sorts into this realm (making him the viewer's identification point in this poster/film). The size of Mowgli in comparison to the environment also suggests a certain power in the setting - that Mowgli is dwarfed against these ruins suggests that they are something to be reckoned with, something that will feature significantly in the film.

Mise en scene: This French term literally translates as 'setting the stage' and refers to the design of things within the shot. A director needs to consider mise en scene when arranging what the audience sees in each shot and how they see it. In this case, we have an 'over-the-shoulder' shot of sorts that places the viewer on the shoulder of the animals as they look up towards Mowgli. The image itself is neatly split into background-midground-foreground by the architecture, creating a three-dimensional effect looking into the environment, which dovetails nicely into the film's promotion as a '3D' experience. 

Focus: The camera is focused predominantly on the foreground and, at a pinch, the midground too. The large statue-head in the background is unfocused - perhaps inviting curiosity from the viewer, a sense of something being held back out of reach, something that would bear further investigation if the viewer agrees to watch the film. 

Vectors: Images often utilise lines (imagined or real) to draw the viewer's eye to where the designer wants them to look first. There aren't clear, strong examples of this in The Jungle Book's poster, but the contours of the animals in the foreground - the big cat, the wolf, the monkeys, and even the snake, all seem to point towards Mowgli in the middle. This isn't a coincidence; he's the main character. This is part of how we know he's intended to be interpreted as the main character.

Font: There's a slightly cursive, scimitar-like quality to the key parts of the lettering that is reminiscent of colonial India. The pock-marked texturing of the letters also correlates with the texture of the ruins in the image, suggesting the worn and aged surface of stone structures deep within the jungle. 

Gaze: Gaze is often characterised in terms of how the viewer engages with media. In the English classroom this can refer to where a central character is looking in an image - do the eyes make contact with the camera (and therefore the audience)? Do they look off-centre at something else? What do these acts symbolise in relation to the content of the text? In the case of The Jungle Book, we are given no eyes to observe. Instead, Mowgli's gaze is elsewhere. The gaze of the animals is elsewhere. Where do these eyes look? What role is the audience being cast into by this act? These things coincide to place emphasis on the setting and it's three-dimensional quality. It's an invitation to adventure.

Generic Conventions: Allowing the viewer to identify genre is a big part of a film's effort to promote itself. In this case, The Jungle Book suggests the genres of adventure and fantasy through its inclusion of animals, architecture suggestive of ancient civilisation, the boy's heroic and curious stance, and the previously-mentioned evocations of the font and the gaze of the characters. The image also showcases the computer-generated scenery and animal-characters that feature in the film - elements made possible by 21st century technology. This is a wave of technological innovation that has played into Disney's relatively recent effects-driven wave of adapting their classic animated oeuvre into live action, a trend that could be seen as a 2010s-2020s sub-genre unto itself (see their effects-heavy live action remakes of: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, Dumbo).

Promotional Choices: The choice to only portray these characters from behind could also be interpreted as a deliberate 'holding back' of detail. Disney knows that these are popular characters and that a big drawcard for modern audiences will be seeing what Shere Khan, Baloo, Bagheera, King Louie, etc., all look like in this expensive, modern adaptation. The property itself - a story produced by Disney from a well-known book and a well-known animated film - means that there is little need to rely on A-list actors to attract viewers. Hence, we don't see any actors in the poster, and the names are relatively small. There is also no need for a tagline - it's The Jungle Book, most people already know approximately what it is, so Disney knows that their best approach is to instead focus on their recreation of this beloved story and the way that modern cutting-edge special effects are being used to bring it to life.

Questions for Students

Students will need to think about some of the bigger questions tied to the purpose of a film poster.

1. What message is this poster trying to convey about the film?
2. How does this poster want the audience to think about the film?
3. What are the filmmakers relying on to to help 'sell' the film?

In order to get them there, you could ask a range of questions related to the above visual literacy elements. Think about:

1. How has colour been used to attract the viewer's attention?
2. How has colour been used to represent the film's themes?
3. Comment on the body language and gaze of the characters, and how the viewer interacts with these.
4. What is the salient part of the image?
5. Draw the vectors and indicate where they lead the eye, and why.
   
6. Describe the mise en scene and angle/size of the shot.
7. What genre is being suggested and how?
8. Explain why the film does not have a tagline.

And then, after all of the above has been completed, ask students to consider whether they think the poster worked in getting their attention and why this was the case. If they did not like the poster, they will need to justify how they would redesign it.

Book Journeys: Grendel

Beowulf is a famous Anglo-Saxon poem from around the 9th century about a warrior (Beowulf) who slays three monsters - Grendel, Grendel's Mother, and a Dragon. This book by John Gardner is a postmodern retelling of the first part of the story from Grendel's point of view. 

It's said that you need to have read Beowulf, or be familiar with it, to be able to follow Gardner's narrative. The writer certainly intends this, but I think only a passing familiarity is really necessary. The above paragraph of this very blog would probably be all the prior information you would need, I never really knew all that much about the poem/myth ahead of the first time I read this book and I don't think it hindered my enjoyment whatsoever - especially considering that Grendel is one of my all-time favourite novels. 

It's a fairly slight book, more of a novella than a novel, but it's by no means a simple work - it has a certain density and complexity. Gardner uses the basics of medieval myth to deconstruct humanity and some of the philosophies that power the very essence of our civilisation. He does this with a sort of academic wryness that often comes across as blackly humourous. 

Grendel is a brutish and crude figure. He is cruel and ugly and every bit the monster he is portrayed to be in other versions of the tale Beowulf. Gardner has gone to great lengths to keep his protagonist monstrous in both appearance and personality. Grendel is by no means stupid though, he is confused by his own existence and angered by the differences between himself and everyone around him. His own mother is a depraved and loathsome creature that he is unable to communicate with, the local Dragon is all-knowing but nihilistic and does little to help reconcile his point of view with the world, and the village of humans that Grendel spends twelve years of his life observing, molesting, taunting, and waging war on, are so far removed from his own understanding of life that they only fuel his confusion to the point of outright fury.

The 'hero' Beowulf himself doesn't turn up until the last sequences of the novel and remains unnamed, which is fitting considering this narrative has been re-centred from the monster's perspective. Grendel's confrontation with the village's saviour is resoundingly ambivalent and provocative. Grendel is a miserable and bored creature, neither superior or inferior to the little people he torments... he's like an ur-anti-hero, and this book really pulls apart the foundations of concepts like 'heroes' and 'villains' in a big way. 

There's something highly engaging and amusing about Grendel's detached interpretation of the village's growth. His view of its advancement characterises humans as a parasitic and stupid species. The monster's prime motivation for wreaking so much havoc among them is boredom and curiosity, which is perhaps more relatable than most readers would care to admit. 

In terms of style, Gardner uses a lot of stream-of-consciousness to explore Grendel's thoughts and the novel is written mostly in present tense. When I first read Grendel I was quite impressed by the way it sustained a present tense narrative - I'd never much liked present tense before but Gardner converted me into seeing how it can work and I've used it more often in my own writing since.

Anyway, I highly recommend Grendel. If there is such a thing as a canon then I would put this book in it as it has so much that going for it - it's entertaining, intellectually stimulating, intertextual, amusing, tragic, and subversive. I'm yet to find another book even remotely like it.

The Obscure and Forgotten - Speculative TV Fiction

Our TV in the 1980s didn't quite look like this but was similar in several ways - it had push-buttons for each channel, stood on four legs, and had a brown faux-wood finish. Up until the late '90s TVs and other entertainment appliances were often referred to in the retail sector as 'browngoods' due to this plastic-wood trend.

I love television. You probably love it too, right? I have a longstanding committed relationship with the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, which originates with a childhood obsession with Doctor Who that was facilitated by the television. My love for Doctor Who will never die but over the years it has also broadened to encompass a lot of other stuff.

In the 21st century Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans are pretty much spoilt for choice. Star Trek and Star Wars have become huge franchises. Doctor Who has been rebooted to become a BBC flagship series. And then there's the Marvel and DC universes, which are this whole other thing. There are second tier telefantasies as well (remember the term 'telefantasy'? No? Just me?) - The X Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, and all the stuff that's found on the SyFy network.

What I find endlessly fascinating though are the 20th century diversions that explored the genre for relatively brief spans of time. The TV series that were weird and wonderful, that failed because the market they were tapping into weren't interested in another X Files ripoff, or the shows that continue to command a cult following. How many of these do you remember?

British Telefantasy

The Prisoner

Did you ever see The Simpsons episode where Homer starts a website under the name 'Mr. X' and begins exposing Springfield conspiracies? He ends up on an island with a guy called Number 6, and gets chased by a giant sentient ball when he escapes by sea. This whole bit is lifted straight from The Prisoner, with the actor Patrick McGoohan (perhaps best known to more modern audiences as the evil English king from Braveheart) basically reprising his role as Number 6 from the original TV series.  

The Prisoner went for just 17 episodes and dealt with a British secret agent who wakes up in a mysterious village by the sea after he attempts to retire from the business. Each episode 'Number 6' would attempt to escape from the Village and enter a duel of wits with Number 2 (a rotating roster of characters who work as administrators of the bizarre prison). It was kept ambiguous as to whether the Village was controlled by the Russians or the British, and Number 6 would contend with all manner of Cold War Sci-Fi delights - hallucinatory drugs, identity theft, mind control, and Rover (the surreal giant ball that prevented escape via sea). A true one-of-a-kind series.

The Tripods

I only caught The Tripods occasionally. This was a 1980s British TV series that ran for two years and was based on a trilogy of books by John Christopher (he later wrote a fourth and final prequel book in 1987 after the TV series finished). In this series the human race has been enslaved by aliens who pilot giant three-legged machines (the Tripods of the title), society has regressed to a medieval state, and a human resistance force secretly plots the destruction of their alien masters. Primarily marketed towards a kids' audience and featuring teenage protagonists, The Tripods is something I've been meaning to revisit because I've been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic kick at the moment.

Survivors

There's this writer called Terry Nation who wrote the second ever Doctor Who story and due to this he's officially credited as creating the series' most famous monster, the Daleks. The rights to the Daleks have remained with Nation's family ever since and the writer even briefly took them away from Doctor Who for a few years in the late 1960s so that he could use them in their own spinoff series. This never eventuated but Nation would use his Dalek-profile to create other science fiction TV series for the BBC in the 1970s. One of these was Survivors, a post-apocalyptic series about a Cold War bio-engineered virus escaping from its lab and wiping out the majority of humanity. For three years, Survivors tracked the ongoing efforts of a small group of surviving Britons as they navigated their way through a lawless post-virus landscape. I watched this on and off when I was a teenager and there was always something about it that was both unsettling and compelling.

Blake's 7

After Survivors wound down, Terry Nation went on to create a more popular series, Blakes 7, which he pitched as 'the Dirty Dozen in Space'. In this show a political subversive named Roj Blake is arrested by the totalitarian Terran Federation and deported to an offworld penal colony. Blake manages to escape with his own ship, assembling a motley crew of seven, and begins a campaign of interplanetary harassment against Earth's authoritarian government. What sets Blakes 7 apart from its most similar contemporary, Star Trek, is its gloomy dystopian themes and cast of roguish antiheroes. Whereas Star Trek presented a utopian view of a future human civilisation focused on exploring the stars, Blakes 7 depicts a brutal and exploitative regime that must be fought against by its own oppressed citizens. And whereas Star Trek's characters were idealistic and of generally sound morals, Blake's crew of criminals are often outright immoral or - at the least - incredibly bitchy towards each other. If you can get past the very British 1970s production values this is a great antithesis to Star Trek with some fun, memorable, and highly quotable characters.

Ultraviolet

Back in 1998 there was a single series UK television show in 1998 called Ultraviolet, a show about vampires that quietly came and went before the market became completely oversaturated with vampire fiction in the 2000s. This six episode police procedural took a sleek, technological view of vampires - never once referring to the undead by the 'v' word but instead calling them 'Code Fives'. It's a creepy, well put-together time capsule of 1990s genre television, hybridising the crime and horror genres and featuring early turns from Idris Elba and Jack Davenport as the stressed out detectives who find themselves increasingly out of their element. Ultraviolet is a welcome and stylish diversion in an age when original takes on vampires have become increasingly hard to come by.

American Telefantasy

Alien Nation

Starting as a 1988 movie set in the 'future' of 1991, Alien Nation was a buddy cop/science fiction film that paired up a veteran police officer with a rookie 'Newcomer' cop. The Newcomers are a race of alien refugees who have integrated into American society, and the film generated enough interest to be spun off into a TV series - albeit one that lasted for only one season and a couple of TV movies. It's basically a police procedural show with an added sci-fi element used to explore themes related to xenophobia, migrant narratives, multiculturalism, etc. It's a decent concept and the culture and biology of the Newcomers is explored enough to warrant the sci-fi tag, even if the rest of the framework remains firmly rooted in the lighthearted tone of an early 1990s buddy cop show.

Quantum Leap

Unlike most of the other series in this list Quantum Leap is one that mum, dad, and the grandparents can enjoy due to the lack of obvious science fiction elements like aliens, spaceships, or lasers. For five seasons Scott Bakula played physicist Sam Beckett, a man who becomes unstuck in time and 'leaps' into the bodies of different people throughout the 20th century. In order to move on from each time zone Sam must 'correct' something that went wrong in this period of history. It's a great show and, as mentioned, it tends to have wider appeal than most sci-fi due to its focus on social commentary and drama rather than predominantly science fiction conceits.

Earth 2

Earth 2 was a one-series wonder that aired in 1995. Ambitious in scope, Earth 2 is set in the 22nd century when Earth has become uninhabitable and humans live mostly on space stations. A small group of colonists escape their space station to start the colony of New Pacifica on a planet with Earth-like conditions and, after becoming marooned and scattered across the new world's surface, they begin to pioneer a new beginning. There are a lot of good ideas in Earth 2 and enough angles to build a solid mythology that could have given the series longevity and depth - the colonists find themselves contending with two indigenous races, an Earth government resistant to the idea of the colony, shifting dynamics within the colonist group, and the planet's legacy as a secret penal settlement. At times the series could be a bit hokey and a little too American but I have to admit that I was quite bummed out when it was prematurely cancelled as it promised to explore some pretty interesting territory.

Dark Skies and American Gothic

Remember the mid-'90s when The X Files was a huge hit and the world seemed gripped by Muldermania? There was an X Files soundtrack with a secret track hidden at the start of the CD, a movie released at the show's height of popularity, and two spinoff series (Millennium, The Lone Gunmen). But perhaps the most interesting impact of the show was how it shaped a new wave of American television series. The X Files dealt with two completely separate strands of speculative fiction loosely aligned under the catch-all term 'paranormal': one being aliens and the other being supernatural events. Few shows seem able to explore both the fantasy and science fiction genres with as much balance and success so it was inevitable that the various imitation shows would opt to choose one or the other.  

Dark Skies was a science fiction series developed by a rival network as a direct competitor to the The X Files. Set during the 1960s, Dark Skies explored the idea that an alien race known as the Hive had infiltrated the American government and were manipulating human history in order to pave the way for invasion. It was basically like all the story arc episodes of The X Files but tied into real life events from the recent past, and it only lasted one season.

American Gothic was another series developed by a rival network in the mid-'90s, also only ran for one season, and leaned into the Americana-based horror aspects of The X Files. It focused on the evil machinations of Lucas Buck, a small-town sheriff with supernatural powers whose hobbies included rape and murder. I remember watching a few episodes of this show when I was 15 and felt very creeped out by it.

Space: Above and Beyond

Another mid-'90s one season effort, Space: Above and Beyond was created by two regular writers from The X Files but has more in common with Star Trek and Starship Troopers than the paranormal. Set about 70 years into the future, this series presented an early Earth Empire coming into conflict with a more experienced space-faring alien race called the Chigs. The writers had a plan to unfold their narrative over five seasons, with various subplots put into motion throughout these first 23 episodes. Fans were understandably frustrated when the show was cancelled before it had a proper chance to get going, however, I can't say I was ever particular enamoured with this one. Being a '90s show created by the same production team as The X Files, the lighting was incredibly dark and shadowy, and the militaristic aspect of the storyline gets kind of old when it takes 21 episodes to get around to even showing the audience what the aliens look like.

seaQuest DSV

Marketed as 'Steven Spielberg's seaQuest DSV' (though he had little to do with it other than chucking some money at it), this series basically became an underwater version of Star Trek despite initial intentions to do something a bit different. 

I don't know what it was about the 1990s but there was this brief moment when everyone in Hollywood seemed to forget how expensive it is to film on water. Waterworld and Cutthroat Island were two films from 1995 that blew out their budgets due to the difficulties involved with water-filming and seaQuest was reported to be quite expensive for a television series too. That said, it managed to stay afloat (sorry) for three seasons. Roy Scheider signed on as the lead but became angry when the focus of the show shifted from realistic near-future science fiction in Season 1 to things like aliens, water monsters, and psychic powers in Season 2. The third season limped along with new cast members and further efforts to 'retool' things with a new lead actor, Michael Ironside, who stipulated in his contract that his character would never be seen talking to Darwin, the ships' talking dolphin. I watched seaQuest on and off when I was a teenager and even back then I could see that the show was a mess; unable to settle on a consistent tone or purpose.

Sliders

Finally a TV series about tiny burgers. The impact of Sliders on fast food cuisine shouldn't be underestimated.

As usual with these sort of things the above list is by no means complete. Other shows I've heard of but never had a chance to watch include: The Last Train, Space: 1999. Star Cops, Tomorrow People, Doomwatch, Sapphire & Steel, V, UFO... at one point these shows felt like points of interest and were just a little bit lesser known than the more popular ones but, as time marches on, some of them seem to be becoming increasingly obscure and less spoken about.

Which is inevitable. But also sad.

Book Journeys: Gormenghast

The adjective 'Gormenghastian' has been used by writers to allude to things "Resembling or pertaining to the fictional Gormenghast, an enormous sprawling Gothic castle mired in inexplicable traditions" (Wiktionary)

The Gormenghast trilogy is both peerless and tragically underrated. The writing style alone is enough to recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading and/or writing in general. The author Mervyn Peake was a British poet, artist, illustrator, writer. In other words, he was a bit of a modern renaissance man, and the Gormenghast trilogy is his magnum opus. Conceived as a chronicle of the life of the fictitious character Titus Groan, the three books that make up this trilogy follow Titus from birth to young adulthood. It was Peake's intention to follow his hero from birth to death but unfortunately his own death from dementia prevented this and so we are instead left with just the trilogy; Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959).

It's probably somewhat false to refer to it as 'The Gormenghast Trilogy' as it's neither precisely about Gormenghast castle (where the first two books take place), nor was the overall story intended to end with the third book. In fact, whilst Titus Groan and Titus Alone link directly with the second book, Gormenghast, there is little in common between the first and third books themselves. And whilst this trilogy will most likely be found in the fantasy section of your local bookstore (though it's more likely you'd have to order it in), it doesn't really involve any of the usual elements of the fantasy genre... there is no magic, no monsters, etc.

Titus Groan introduces us to the Groan family - a decaying dynasty of ruling nobles who reside in the sprawling and near-endless castle of Gormenghast. The story starts with the birth of Titus Groan, heir to the Earlship, and ends with his first birthday. Curiously, despite sharing the novel's name, Titus is not really a major character here - the protagonist is instead Steerpike, a runaway Cook's Apprentice who slowly ingratiates himself with the Groans in his hungry quest for power.

The second novel, Gormenghast, picks up the story a few years down the track and follows Titus Groan through his adolescence as he grows both physically and mentally in preparation for facing off against the Machiavellian Steerpike. This book is on par with the first one.

Titus Alone, the most idiosyncratic of the three novels, doesn't even take place in Gormenghast castle. It's about half the length of the other novels and is about Titus' travels throughout the world outside of Gormenghast - a world that is strangely futuristic and seems to have very little in common with the medieval world Titus has come from. This book is pretty much only about Titus (hence the title) and is, sadly, of inferior quality due to the health problems experienced by the author while he was writing it.

The previous three paragraphs are only very brief synopses of the books. It would actually be unfair to judge these books via any synopsis you find on them as they are about much, much more than just plot. The mechanics of the narrative seem to be ultimately secondary as far as Peake is concerned as he primarily concentrates instead on atmosphere and characterisation. He draws on surrealism, the Gothic, and an almost Dickensian-tradition of the macabre, bizarre, and grotesque. Each character is a ruffling delight of descriptive language and eccentricity - each is written as if they are the protagonist of the story, and it makes for surprising reading as you're never sure where Peake is taking these characters (indeed - it is said that Peake had no real concerns for plotting when he wrote these books, his only rule was to write whatever he felt like writing, and not to get bogged down in silly things like story outlines!)

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy would have to go down as one of the true classics of the fantasy genre and of literature in general.

I would recommend the first two novels but maybe not the third... it's all too apparent that Peake was losing his faculties when he wrote it if you compare the level of description, characterisation, and length of the book to the previous two. The tone of Titus Alone feels all wrong, everything from the first two books disappears and it all moves in a different direction. I'm not saying it's not interesting or unwarranted, but it's only because of Titus Alone that the series feels very much unfinished - Peake wanted to continue the story of Titus with books called Titus Awake and Gormenghast Revisited but he never got there, so it leaves Titus Alone as a proto-steampunk oddity.

Read Titus Groan and Gormenghast as a self-contained pair of linked novels and you won't be disappointed. They form two halves of a great narrative regarding Steerpike's journey to villainy under the reign of the Groans and there's an amazing host of interesting supporting characters. Get it and get lost in the prose, it's wonderful, and experience firsthand a master of language's love for world-building.