A Different Set of Jaws

 
 

The film starts with the screen fading to black and over-sized, disembodied female lips (inspired by the surreal Man Ray painting A l’heure de l’observatoire, les Amoureux) appear overdubbed with a male voice, creating the androgynous theme to be repeated as the film unfolds. The opening scene and song, Science Fiction, Double Feature consists of the lips of Patricia Quinn (who appears in the film later as the character Magenta), but has the vocals of actor and Rocky Horror creator, Richard O’Brien (who appears as Magenta’s brother Riff Raff). The lyrics reference science fiction and horror films of the past and list several film titles from the 1930s to the 1970s, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, Flash Gordon, The Invisible Man, King Kong, It Came from Outer Space, Doctor X, Forbidden Planet, Tarantula, The Day of the Triffids, Curse of the Demon, When Worlds Collide and The Bride of Frankenstein. The disembodied lips are featured on posters and other merchandise for the film, with the tag line “A Different Set of Jaws”, a spoof of the poster for the film Jaws, which was also produced in 1975.

As stated before, the song is made up of fragments from sub-genre horror and science fiction films and likened to that of avant-garde artist Tristan Tzara by author Vera Dika in her book, Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film. Tzara would construct poems by taking snippets of words from newspapers and placing them into a bag to randomly draw from and arrange. Instead, the words in Science Fiction Double Feature are purposely made to rhyme with a set structure and set with phrases that create cohesion.

The original concept of the song for the feature film as indicated in the original script was to have film clips of each movie shown with a scratched aged effect overlay during the song and opening credits. The idea was dropped when it became apparent that the cost of acquiring the rights to these clips in 1974 was far too prohibitive.

 
 

FILMS REFERENCED IN THE LYRICS :

“Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still, but he told us where we stand” (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Robert Wise, 1951)

“And Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear” (Flash Gordon, Frederick Stephani, 1936)

“Claude Rains was the invisible man” (The Invisible Man, James Whale, 1933)

“Then something went wrong for Fay Wray and King Kong, they got caught in a celluloid jam” (King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

“Then at a deadly pace it came from outer space” (It Came from Outer Space, Jack Arnold, 1953)

“Doctor X will build a creature” (Doctor X, Michael Curtiz, 1932)

“Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet” (Forbidden Planet, Fred M. Wilcox, 1956)

“I knew Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel when Tarantula took to the hills” (Tarantula, Jack Arnold, 1955)

“And I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills” (The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham, 1962)

“Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, and passing them used lots of skills” (Night of the Demon, Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

“But when worlds collide, said George Pal to his bride, I’m gonna give you some terrible thrills” (When Worlds Collide, Rudolph Maté, 1951)

 

To watch the movie clip, please check out The Genealogy of Style‘s Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228

References to Franz Kafka and Popular Culture

 
 

Haruki Murakami makes numerous literary, musical and film references throughout the novel Kakfa on the Shore, particularly to (who else?) Franz Kafka. Several of the characters in the book have a relationship with Kafka or “Kafkaesque” themes, the most obvious being the name the protagonist gives to himself, Kafka Tamura. While the reader never finds out his real name, he explains why he chooses the name Kafka to represent his identity. But why Kafka? It is possible that Murakami used Franz Kafka to emphasize themes of isolation and alienation, as well as to critique forms of Japanese bureaucracy and the police force investigating his father’s murder in particular.

 
 

“Nobody’s going to help me. At least no one has up till now. So I have to make it on my own. I have to get stronger–like a stray crow. That’s why I gave myself the name Kafka. That’s what Kafka means in Czech, you know–crow.”

 
 

Franz Kafka is also a figure that draws many of the characters together. Kafka Tamura is only allowed to stay in the library after revealing his name, which has an profound effect on the library staff. The tragedy of the death of Miss Saeki’s lover is shown in a song she writes for him, named Kafka on the Shore, which also becomes the title of the book. There is a consistently a switching of identities concerning the protagonist which all seem linked in some way or another to Franz Kafka. He switches from 15 year-old runaway, to “Crow”, his alter-ego, to Miss Saeki’s 15-year old boyfriend (who is also named Kafka by Miss Saeki) when he enters his old quarters. In this way, Murakami ties together some of the surreal events in the book by using Franz Kafka as a continuous reference.

With the majority of the novel being set in a library, it is abundant with literary and musical references. Much like the Franz Kafka reference, Murakami uses these references a moments in the plot that draw characters together. In their isolation, the main characters are absorbed in literature, music, and art, providing a starting point for much of their conversations and relationships. In addition to the obvious Oedipial reference throughout the novel, as Kafka searches desperately for his mother and sister, however at the same time, Murakami brings references from popular culture to life, adding a surreal and oddly comical overlay to the events in the novel. In a parallel storyline, Kafka Tamura’s father, brilliant sculptor and crazed cat murderer, takes on the pseudonym of Johnnie Walker. Colonel Sanders, the KFC icon, becomes a character in the novel, a pimp that guides Nakata and Hoshino to Takamatsu and the library, merging both storylines. Truck driver Hoshino, throws away his job and uproots himself after listening to Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, while Kafka Tamura calms himself in an isolated cabin, listening to Prince on his walkman. Murakami cultivates these references similarly to the way he develops architecture in the novel; both historical and contemporary, they blur the passing of time and are devices for the character’s self exploration and identity.

 
 

LITERARY REFERENCES:

• The Book of Thousand Nights and a Night, Translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton

• The Banquet, by Plato

• The Castle, by Franz Kafka

• The Trial, by Franz Kafka

• The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

• In The Penal Colony, by Franz Kafka

• Complete Works of Natsume Sōseki

• The Tale Of Genji, by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

• Trial of Adolf Eichmann, (Unknown)

• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

• Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

• Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

• Agamemnon, by Aeschylus

• The Trojan Women, by Euripides

• Rhetoric, by Aristotle

• Poetics, by Aristotle

• Electra, by Sophocles

• Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles

• The Hollow Men (poem), by T. S. Eliot

• Tales of Moonlight and Rain, by Ueda Akinari

• Matter and Memory, by Henri Bergson

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

• Aladdin, Added by Antoine Galland to French translation of The Book of Thousand Nights and a Night

• The Frog Prince, The Brothers Grimm

• Hansel and Gretel, by The Brothers Grimm

• Uncle Vanya, by Anton Chekhov

• A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, by Jean Jacques Rousseau

 
 

AUTHORIAL REFERENCES:

• Leo Tolstoy

• Federico García Lorca

• Ernest Hemingway

• Charles Dickens

 
 

MUSIC REFERENCES:

• Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, by The Beatles

• The White Album, by The Beatles

• As Time Goes By, from the movie Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

• Blonde on Blonde, by Bob Dylan

• Mi chiamano Mimi, from La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini

• Sonata in D Major (known as the Gasteiner), by Franz Schubert

• Crossroads, by Cream

• Little Red Corvette, by Prince

• Greatest Hits, by Prince

• Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay, by Otis Redding

• Archduke Trio, (by Rubinstein, Heifetz and Feuermann) by Ludwig van Beethoven

• First cello concerto, (solo by Pierre Fournier) by Franz Joseph Haydn

• Posthorn Serenade, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Kid A, by Radiohead

• My Favourite Things, by John Coltrane

• Getz/Gilberto, by Stan Getz

 
 

ARTIST/COMPOSER REFERENCES:

• Duke Ellington

• Led Zeppelin

• Schumann

• Alfred Brendel

• Rolling Stones

• Beach Boys

• Simon & Garfunkel

• Stevie Wonder

• Johann Sebastian Bach

• Hector Berlioz

• Richard Wagner

• Franz Liszt

A Tribute To The Seventh Art

Mark Summer’s process of drawing

 

Step 1: A quick sketch to block out the final composition.

 

Step 2: The preliminary sketch
“I don’t always go to this extreme for a rough sketch- only if the piece is fairly complex or if the client needs to see some indication of where the exact light and darks will fall. I’m not sure how I wound up doing sketches in such a Byzantine fashion, but it is a quick way to determine the overall tone.
This is a simple line drawing, done with a felt tip pen. On tracing paper- I then spray mount it onto a light toned paper. The highlights are acrylic paint. Even after this step I will still tend to “fiddle.” If I feel a hand is too small, or a figure too large I photocopy it to the proper size and just paste it in.”

 

Step 3: The finished black and white.
“Each drawing begins as a black square. After this, using a knife, I scratch white lines into the surface. I try to discourage clients from asking to see “the work in progress,” as at any time there will be an entirely finished head here, a hand there, all floating in a sea of black.
I tend to work size-as (this drawing is 12” high- each face being approximately 2” high.) In a drawing such as this, I find it takes a full day to finish each figure. I then have the finished work scanned and printed onto photographic paper.”

 

Step 4: Finished color.
“A fast process, as the black and white drawing already defines the modeling. Simple flat tones of color are all that are really needed. I paint details with watercolor and then everything else with oil glazes. Sometimes I go in and smooth things out with airbrush. The final step is to paint in highlights with acrylic.

The coloring of this piece took about three hours.”

 
 

Orson Welles (as Charles Foster Kane), hominid (from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddyssey), Peter O’Toole (as Lawrence of Araby), Alfred Hitchcock, Marlon Brando (as Vito Corleone), Judy Garland (as Dorothy), James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart (as Rick Blaine) and Vivian Leigh (as Scarlett O’Hara).