Twelve Essays

Ditmann | Labor of Love Robert Fyne Kean University RJFyne@aol.com Twelve Essays Don Kunz, Editor. The Films ofOliverStone. The Scarecrow Press, 1997. (307 pages, $30.00) As a leading Hollywood director and media gadfly—whose films are "loud, angry, full ofjagged politics, and big emotions "—Oliver Stone's reputation, after twenty-four contentious years, stands firm. From his modest beginning with two lowbudget , horror pictures, The Hand (1974) and Seizure (1974), to his polemical JFK(1991) and Nixon (1994) and, recently, his dark-sided U Turn (1997), Stone's cinematography dominates the world market as viewers flock to see a new release. Why wouldn't they? Who would stay away from another controversial title? What subject will Stone anatomize, deconstruct or excoriate next? What hornet's nest is he stirring up now? These are some of the questions that Dr. Don Kunz's new anthology, The Films ofOliver Stone, examines and the answers —spread out in twelve essays—continue to shed new light on Stone's methodology, acumen, and creativity by delving into his peppered background as a "teacher, seamen, soldier, freak, failed novelist, decorated director and screenwriter." Starting offwith David Breskin's four-hour interview, Stone's career—told in a casual, uninhibited first-person narrativecomes full cycle. Born in 1946 and raised in a conservative East Coast milieu, Stone would subsequently attack much of the traditional values associated with his formative years. Eventually labeled a pariah, Stone's photoplays revealed America's hidden secrets by exploiting the themes associated with paranoia and catharsis. Other motifs punctuate Stone's cinema work. In "The Hysterical Imagination," David Sanjek analyzes the Manichean dualism and martyrology that lurk beneath the surface in JFK and Platoon, while John F. Stone looks at the foreign culture paradox found in Salvador. On a similar note, Richard Keenan cites the protagonist/alter ego pattern in this Central American film, an idea that culminates as the hero/photographer John Cassady/Robert Capa, captures with his lens the unsavory elements of the guerrilla movement, only to perish exactly as the Spanish loyalist did in the famous 1936 Civil War picture. As for the Vietnam conflict, Clyde Taylor appraises the colonist system that frames Platoon citing the inherent racism this foreign policy fosters. Here, the Black GIs-deployed as "shadows"—coalesce into their own identity that creates "Black Panther units, mutinies, officer-fragging, and shoot-outs with 92 I Film & History Whites." On a different interpretation, Donald Whaley understands Platoon as the "cultural history ofadventure." Citing the "writings ofNorman Mailer, the performances ofthe Doors, and the drug narratives ofCarlos Castañeda," this war narrative represents another twentieth-century myth following the same tradition as Moby Dickor Heart ofDarkness. Other essays offer varied interpretations. Jack Boozer's study of Wall Street delineates the protagonist, Gordon Gekko (GG) as a modern-day Great Gatsby (GG) redefining the American dream. Don Kunz's analysis of Born on the Fourth ofJulydissects masculine heroism, while Suzanne E. O'Hop views The Doors as Oliver Stones' motion picture tribute to Jim Morrison's rock music and poetry. Similarly, Robert A. Rosenstone, Martin J. Medhurst, and Jim Welsh add more fuel to the JFKconspiratorial fire with their research. Finally, in Heaven and Earth, NaturalBorn Killers, and Nixon—three photodramas that focus on an angry male protagonist pursing some form ofredemptive quest—three essayists offer discrete opinions about Stone's directorial skill. Overall, Oliver Stones' motion pictures reveal his often quoted credo that he is a man on a mission. Why is this? As Dr. Kunz summarizes, Stone "became an insider by behaving like an outsider" by challenging the capitalist idea that "American cinema was primarily entertainment." Is this valid? Apparently so. Didn't Platoon—a photoplay debasing the conservatism promulgated by the Domino Theory—reap more than $250 million worldwide? Were audiences polarized after watching this show? Ofcourse, they were. After this, who could turn on a television to view The Green Berets without giving John Wayne the raspberry? What, then, is Oliver Stone—the 52-year-old wag who once donned stylish jeans for a Gap commercial and lists J.P. Donleavy's The GingerMan as must reading—all about? Do his titles mirror...