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5 From the Sublime to the Vernacular
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c h a p t e r 5 From the Sublime to the Vernacular The older I grow and the longer I look at landscapes and seek to understand them, the more convinced I am that their beauty is not simply an aspect but their very essence and that that beauty derives from the human presence. For far too long we have told ourselves that the beauty of a landscape was the expression of some transcendent law: the conformity to certain universal esthetic principles or the conformity to certain biological or ecological laws. But this is true only of formal or planned political landscapes. The beauty that we see in the vernacular landscape is the image of our common humanity: hard work, stubborn hope, and mutual forbearance striving to be love. I believe that a landscape which makes these qualities manifest is one that can be called beautiful. JOHN BRINCKERHOFF JACKSON, DISCOVERING THE VERNACULAR LANDSCAPE 125 Twister It is difficult to imagine a more typically American film than Twister (1996). The focus, of course, is the tornadoes that rip through the American Midwest —particularly Oklahoma, North Texas, and Kansas—during the spring, annually pelting the region with hailstones the size of quarters, golf balls, or baseballs and tearing the roofs o¤ of houses and, in some cases, the houses themselves o¤ the land. If The Wizard of Oz (1939, directed by Victor Fleming) remains the best-known filmic rendering of a tornado, the advent of the Weather Channel has brought to the regular attention of millions of TV watchers spectacular imagery of tornadoes swirling across vast midwestern spaces. In spring 1996 Jan DeBont was able to turn this new media awareness of tornadoes into gold. As a result of the film’s impressive special e¤ects and the casting coup of signing Helen Hunt to play the female lead (and perhaps the timing of the film’s release, which allowed it to profit simultaneously from the usual May–June excitement of moviegoers ready for an industry blockbuster and the particular consciousness of violent weather, at least in substantial areas of the United States, during the late spring and early summer), Twister became one of the leading moneymakers of the year. The central character of Twister is Bill (Bill Paxton), a scientific researcher turned weatherman, who is in the process of leaving the adrenaline rush of storm chasing for the more secure space of the television studio.1 His momentary choice of an adventureless maturity over an exciting youth is reflected by the two women in his life: Professor Jo Harding (Helen Hunt), his former collaborator in storm chasing and the passion of his youth; and Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz), a reproductive therapist who loves him but comes to rec126 F R O M T H E S U B L I M E T O T H E V E R N A C U L A R [23.22.23.162] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:14 GMT) ognize that she cannot compete with the more energetic, active Harding. That the male hero is rewarded with two beautiful lovers, both of whom are true only to him; that these lovers are capable, professional women who, despite their accomplishments, remain incomplete without a man; that the ultimately victorious lover is a blond while the rejected lover is darker, “more ethnic” looking; and that the energetic Jo Harding is seen in juxtaposition to the land and the elements while Melissa Reeves is depicted as a city person ministering to the psychic ills of city folk are instances of patterns endemic to American pop film and television. As a result, the reuniting of the original couple is as inevitable as the counterclockwise spinning of the tornadoes that periodically interrupt the plot and, for an hour and a half, conveniently (and often spectacularly ) forestall the inevitable. At least as quintessentially American as the film’s heartland of America location and its central characters and plot is the way its midwestern spaces are filmed. Few films have made more dramatic use of the helicopter shot. As the storm chasers follow the twisters from one town to the next, their speeding cars and vans are, again and again, filmed from helicopters that track their movements from considerable distances and heights. These helicopter shots express the characters’ excitement about the adventure they’re on (and the fear this excitement creates for Melissa) and in some instances provide a storm’seye...