I am very obsessed with Presley’s obsession with his hair. In the whole movie, there is only one scene (that I remember) in which his hair is messy, that is when he finally finds courage and jumps off the cliff, and he waves in the water to the crowd. As soon as he climbs up to the terrace of the hotel, his hair is already nicely combed and styled like always. I think this is because, for a super-super-star as the “King”, his image is required to be fixed, and this fixation can also be seen in other parts of the movie. Like the way he sings and dances (I don’t think his movement when he sings can be called dancing, but I’m lack of a more specific word).

Unlike the previous musical movies, many of the songs in this movie are not sang live in the scene, but rather like a background music, which gives me a feeling of seperation, like a music video, that he is only in charge of acting, and he doesn’t have to worry about the singing, because a well-recorded sound track will be played. Again I think this is because the movie has to garantee a “Elvis Presley”, instead of a character named Mike Windgren in a movie. So if in previous movies it’s true that we see both the character and the actor at the same time in the movie, in this one, I only see the King. For one reason, it’s because I don’t think Presley acts as good as the actors in the previous movies, and for another, it’s the fixation of his image required. In my opinion, for some movies, the audience are more than willing to pay and go to the cinema only to see the real actor in an unreal situation, but not an unreal cinematic character.

Another very interesting thing is that sometimes, the Mexican characters speak Spanish in an American way, mostly with the pronunciation “R”. It seems that they work very hard to attract the American market instead of the Latin American.

I am very curious about the reason why the movie sets up a character of a female bull-fighter, Dolores Gomez. At first I thought it’s because of a wave of feminist movement in the US at that period of time, but then the movie goes back to the cliche of the female subordination to the male. Dolores the Latina is depicted as a brave and free image, yet she falls in love with Presley at the first sight like usual.

In all, I like this movie. It’s not a “bad” movie as Jon described before the screening, although the narrative and the acting is not as good as “Touch of Evil” or “the Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, but I think it’s good as a musical movie.

First of all, it was quite strange to me that this 1948 movie is black-n-white, because Down Argentine Way in 1940 already has the technology of a colored movie, but the lack of coloring is not affecting the impact of this motion picture, and I am so glad that we finally get “down” to a more realistic life-style. All the four movies we saw before are somehow fantasy, like bubbles in the sky that we common people can never touch, all thouse celebrities and wonderful dancing and singing, and horse show….

    This is a really really great piece of work, the tension and those hints that appeared at the beginning which all have a reason afterwards, like the lottery Dobby bought, and the gold-digging history Howard was telling the first time Dobby and Curtin saw him. However, it was not very convincing for me the brusque change of Dobby in the second part. For me, I see no reason he changes so much from one extreme to another. At the beginning he begs for money and he feels fine about it. He is not very picky at the kind of work he is offered, and when he and Curtin know that the contractor is a liar, and they find him, beat him and get their salary back, Dobby has the chance to take all the money the contractor has in the wallet, but instead, he doesn’t even think about taking one more peso than what’s entitled to him. So it’s really difficult to imagine that such a decent man will change so much after he finds the gold, especially he even tries to kill Curtin, who has saved him before.  Of course this is the main idea about this novel, that Don Dinero es el más poderoso, but at least from the movie, I don´t think his change is well explained.

    This movie is already after the Good Neighbour Era, and we see a totally different Mexico. However, as I said before, it´s a more realistic world, because first of all, we finally see local Mexican speaking Spanish, and Howard translates for the Anglo. So what´s different is not hidden anymore. We also see some similarity as the Federales do hunt down the bandits like US police chasing for bad guys. So Mexico is not a lawless place. Anglo and Latin do have differences and similarities. Pretending that in this world only exists that latter wouldn’t make our planet better, just like the Good Neighbour Policy, which couldn’t last long.

The Indian tribe that Howard lives with in the end is a very good example. They have their own norms, like they consider it polite to smoke other people’s tabacco, and they have to thank Howard for bringing back the boy’s life, and they would even use force to keep Howard with them. These may seem wierd at first, but in the very essence, this is what every people would do. People offer hospitality by giving away what they have, like food or place to sleep for even strangers in old times, and we do thank those who have helped us, just that each and every one of us do it differently. So being same and different is actually the same thing.

Back to the main theme of the movie/novel, which is long-lasting since, maybe, the time when human people first invented MONEY, it’s like a curse for me, that we think we humans are clever enough to create this and that, but in the end, we discover that these creations become our masters. We human beings are the biggest enemy of our own kind (and of course, of all other species). There are no other animals or diseases that have killed more human people than human people ourselves. Yet we still are at guard toward wild animals, and considering them as a threat when they come to “our” land, the land that we took from them long time ago. I recently read a news saying that somewhere in Canada people had to shoot dead a bear because it came to the city and became a threat to the people. And I was so angry, because you could have just used an anaesthetic rifle instead. Maybe it was an urgent situation, I don’t know.  It’s just so difficult to understand the logic these days, that since every human has their human rights, even the most cold-blooded serial killers, who has deprived other people’s human right, they can live in a well equipped prison cell, enjoying their life sentence. They will have a doctor to attend when they are sick, and they get fed everyday. Yet those animals…. I think I am a little carried away….

The movies shows that paradise/happiness is actually not built by money. Curtin says the happiest time of his life was when he worked in a orchard; and Howard finally decides to stay with the Indians in Mexico and he is treated like a god and where he lives is a paradise, because he used his knowledge and saved the drowned Indian boy. It’s really a interesting question to think about, that since we created the concept of money, why and how come that people think that money is the thing that could make them happy? It’s easy to prove it negative, because it’s impossible to think that before the creation of money, people were never happy.

So happiness and money is not necessarily related, nor is Latin America and money, so by crossing the border south what could people get?

I was amazed by the development of the motion picture between 1920 (The Mark of Zorro) and 1933. And the creativity of Hollywood in movie making, I am just running out of words to express myself. Apart from all the music, singing and dancing, the airplane-wing-dance sequence at the end of the film was just astonishing, and according to Wikipedia, it’s made by special effects, but I actually believed that it was true airplane doing the trick when I was watching the movie. I don’t which would surprise me more, its being special effects or its being real.

Since we are here to talk about the border, in this movie, there is actually a two-way of crossing the border, as in the first part, the young Brazilian lady has crossed the border north to US, and in the second part it’s Roger Bond crossing border to the South. The film is focusing more on the second crossing, which is understandable, as it’s a Hollywood movie, and moreover, it’s male dominant at the time.

However, I find that the female protagonista’s crossing the border to the north doesn’t seem to change too much her usual behaviour, only that she is more flirtatious at the first scene, and Roger does fall for that, and of course for her beauty.

And the leave of Roger in the end was not expected at all, because from the first class we’ve been focusing on how people can change after cross the border, either imaginarily or physically, and usually they free themselves more when they cross the southern border, but Roger’s leave makes him more like a northerner, abiding by the moral protocols and being a gentleman. In the end it is Julio who acts more freely although he doesn’t cross any physical border.

Another interesting thing about crossing the border is when Roger’s small plane mis-lands on what they believe is a desert island, and both of them are talking to their true self and get persuaded and kiss one another. I think this kind of fighting between the true self and the social self (I don’t know if it’s called id and ego in Freud’s work?) is very popular among the audience even to the actual date, since people in the society always have to act apropriately, but in fact many social rules are not very natural and humane, and this kind of inner fight does happen a lot, but we don’t talk about it too often in our daily life, like it’s something that we only talk to a shrink, our best friends, or only in our diary. And now we can see it on the big screen. It makes me feel somehow that I myself is there on the screen and let go some depression and anxiety. So to me, walking into a cinema is kind of like crossing a border.

Last but not least, I really don’t like the scene when the woman shouted cannibals when she sees some indigenous on the “desert” island. It brings back all the memory of the cruel colonial history, and yet the director is trying to make fun out of it.

Zorro was one of the very first heroes that appeared in my childhood, actually the others were mostly from cartoon, so I really admired him a looooooot！ Especially in that time when you didn’t get to see much western stuff in China. In fact the only Zorro I watched was Alain Delon, and I really like him much more than this 1920’s version. I remember that in this movie Lolita calls him a “fish” as her first impression, which is an excellent description. However, I was impressed by his movements when he is trying to escape from the troopers. It might be the very first “parkour” on the big screen.

However, after equipped with all those notions of colonization, descolonization and de-colonization, I watched this Zorro from a different perspective, and came up with a totally different conclusion. I find that the story of Zorro is just another stereotype western hero move, just that this time the writer makes Latin America as the background, just like in “Le Magnifique”, you just change the background music and have some locals walking by, and you can make a movie titled “The Man from …” anywhere you fancy. Latin America is again a touch of exoticism in Western literature/movie/culture.

Although in the very first line, it says “Oppression, by its nature, creates the power to destroy it”, and Zorro stands out as the savior of the oppressed. He does avenge for some Indians and the priest, but the biggest move he takes against the oppressors is because his Lolita has been captured and oppressed. I remember when he calls together all the caballeros in town to dress with a black mask and ride black horse to break the prison where the Pulidos are kept, he frees one of the Indian prisoners, and he says something like I let you go because I know your story. At first it may appear that Zorro has his own judgement and he frees the innocent ones and let the real bad people stay in prison. However, I begin to think, if you Zorro already know that this good Indian has been kept in the prison, why hasn’t you turned up earlier and free him/her, but only comes now that Lolita is imprisoned? And this Indian, for me, is just a collateral benefit (I don’t know if there is really a frase “collateral benefit”, I just got it from “collateral damage”)

For me, this conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor doesn’t make Zorro the savior of the Indians anymore (I used to think of him like that). It is admirable that a man who is benefiting from the “oppression” can stand up and fight for the oppressed, but now I see it more of a conflict inside the colonisers instead of the conflict between the coloniser and the colonised. Or indeed, colonization may just be another way to express “oppression”. As long as there is hierarchy, there is oppression. Before the discovery of the New World, the Europeans oppress upon one another, and the history of colonization is just a change of the place where such oppression takes place and a change of object of the oppression.

I also see a very serious self-oppression/colonization, like when Lolita says “if I were  a man, I’d ride the highway like this Zorro”, or those many Indians who act as informers or assistants of the troopers. It is very difficult to free those who are oppressed and imprisoned mentally. So Lolita will remain always a figure to be saved, and she would never think of saving herself and helping others. And so are those Indian informers.

I have some doubts. 007 always changes the bond girl, but all the US superheroes they do have a “fixed” wife/beloved one. Is it a UK vs US style?

And is Zorro the first hero in black? Because commonly we would think of good characters in white and bad characters in black, but in this movie the troopers are riding white horses and the caballeros and Zorro have black horses. Is this another element that makes Zorro classic?

Oh, and one more thing about the rape (Captain Ramon tries to rape Lolita) which kind of again support my view that the colonization of Latin America is just another move-on of the oppression that the Europeans are accustomed to do. So when we talk about how the colonisers raped and exploited over the people and the land in Latin America, don’t be surprised, because that’s what they always do. So again, civilised and barbarian, this is a question…

The following is the impression I had and the note I took while I was watching the movie. Before the screening, Jon mentioned that this was some sort of a “Sub” James Bond movie. I hope I am spelling “sub” correctly.

The overall comment that I have is that this is a counter-stereotype movie. Just like what Cervantes wants to do with Don Quijote to criticise those novels of caballerismo, the director is using this movie to criticise the 007-style movies. And the director actually expresses his intention through Christine, a student of sociology, which is not a very common act in movies.

For the first 1/3 of the movie, it’s a mix of all the stereotypes of 007 movie–heroic secret agent that never dies, beautiful bond girl who will eventually fall in love with “007”, a touch of exotic (Mexican) ambience, and a clever bad guy who dies or escapes in the end. However, with some exaggeration, it becomes a comedy in this movie.

Then with the intrusion of a maid vacumming, the movie takes place now in a real world in Paris, where it is always raining, and the leading actor is living a humble life as novel writer. He is exactly the opposite of 007: he has no love, no money, with a bad shape, and is struggling in his career as a novel writer. He’s written 10 (or maybe more?) novels as a serie with the same heroic secret agent and the same bad guy from Albania. In every novel the secret operation takes place somewhere exotic, however, he has never been to those places, and all the knowledge he knows comes only from a map of that place, some brochures and his imagination. So here we can talk about some of the construction of the image of Latin America.

Just like what Roland Barthes mentions in The Blue Guide, “[f]or the Blue Guide, men exist only as ‘types’. In Spain, for instance, the Basque is an adventurous sailor, the Levantine a light-hearted gardener, the Catalan a clever tradesman and the Cantabrian a sentimental highlander (Mythologies. Noonday Press, 1972, pp74-75), places exist only as “types” as well: in order to show to the readers/audience the world of Acapulco, all the author/movie director needs is a band of mariachis, some local dancers and the pyramid. And if I were a lazy director, I’d just replace the people with pandas, play some background music of a Chinese opera, and let the fight take place on the Great Wall, and I’ll have my own movie titled “The Man from Beijing“. Just don’t forget to add a lot of blood and sex into the movie, and this can be the next blockbuster. No wonder last year an article written by Artificial Intellegence entered into the final round of a literature competition in Japan. With all the stereotypes, the actual human intellegence may eventually give way to AI.

Of course, this movie is used as a weapon to fire at all the 007-stereotypes, so in the end, the secret agent who is always the representation of masculinity is feminized and falls in love with the bad guy who is no longer bad anymore but a cute guy (and I imagine they will live happily ever after…), and the beautiful heroine is abandoned, covered with mud, and there is no big blast or nuclear crisis.

Another thing Jon mentioned before the screening is how caracters tend to release a burden and become a different type once they cross the border to the South. It’s like what the author in this movie is doing: once in the novel that he writes, he is the God in this imaginary world and can do whatever he couldn’t do in the real world. South is always co-living with the North. The civilized need the barbarians to reflect their civilization, although we always doubt whether civilization exists in the almost 500 years of colonization.

Yet from my perspective, the more extraordinary people are in their imaginary world, the more frustration they’d get in the real one, because the contrast is bigger. So I really doubt that people could de-stress themselves by crossing the South border, as long as they have to get back to North in the end.

Lastly, I have some doubts about the movie.

1. Why there is emphasis on the author in the real world keeping smoking?
2. Why does the director use so much white in the movie? It’s comprehensible that the bad guy is always in black;however, while the secret agent wears from time to time white shirt, the bond girl is almost always in white, and the helicopter, and the car, and in the real world in the movie, there is a lot of white as well. I wonder if there is something in it.
3. Why use classic music in the imaginary world of Acapulco? I remember one clip that the mariachi band playing Hendel, which is apparently very odd.
4. Why do women in the real world always break glasses, like the maid, and Christine?

To conclude, I really like this movie, for it works perfectly as a comedy in the first part, and then after laughing a lot, it can get you to start thinking a little bit. I don’t like the fact that the director let Christine say about the 007-stereotype, which makes the movie academic.