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Figura ojca w filmach Clinta Eastwooda

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Plesnar Ł. A.

Studia Filmoznawcze

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2012

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vol. 33

127-143

EN

A character of a father performs double function in the Euro-American culture. On the one hand, he has the attributes of power. He is a tyrant and a great supervisor and has a right to punish. Such image results directly from the symbolic representation of God the Father. On the other, a character of a father, owing to the appeal to New Testament, appears as a protector capable to forgive and have mercy. As a result, a father figure is characterized by the kind of duality. This doubleness is emphasized by the exponents of psychoanalysis from Sigmund Freud to Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. Simplifying, we can say that ― in the opinion of the psychoanalysts ― a child must love and hate his/her father at the same time, as he is the perfect person worthy of love as well as the subject reducing the impact of impulses and the relationship between a child and a mother. This contradiction is permanently inherent in human life. So a father figure acts as an ideal and, at the same time, as an avenging subject and a representative of law, culture, and language. In the films by Clint Eastwood a father figure acts first of all as a symbol of protection, preservation, safety and good advice, but also as an example which allows “a child” to built a new identity. “Father,” however, is rarely explicitly an ideal character; he is often “the prodigal father,” who admits his “fatherhood” as compensation, redemption of the former guilts. In my paper I analyze the father figures in three films by Clint Eastwood: A Perfect World (1993), Million Dollar Baby (2004), and Gran Torino (2008). I focus my attention on the main characters of those works: Robert “Butch” Haynes (Kevin Costner), Frankie Dunn (Eastwood), and Walt Kowalski (Eastwood).

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Przemijanie Zachodu. Nostalgia w filmach Sama Peckinpaha

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Plesnar Ł. A.

Studia Filmoznawcze

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2013

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vol. 34

79 - 102

EN

The author analyses six films directed by Sam Peckinpah — Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Junior Bonner (1972), and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) — which compose a series of the laments in honour of the bygone Old West and its way of life. Plesnar comes to the conclusion that Peckinpah, contrary to John Ford, Howard Hawks or Budd Boetticher, did not mythicize the frontier, nor did he tell the allegorical stories about the conflict between civilization and wilderness or the building of American nation. The director did not paint the portraits of the idealized “larger than life” folk heroes: sheriffs, cowboys, ranchers, avengers, gunfighters and troopers. He presented the psychically injured men, who — celebrating the individualism in the corrupt world — were living according to their own rules. His characters were rebels and outcasts, badly adapted to their times, as well as the solitary men without homes, love, and acceptance. They constantly made their way towards self-destruction and death to expiate their guilts and sins. The plot of almost all of Peckinpah’s westerns is in the turning-point, when the Old West is moving away and instead the new West is coming. It is not the West of respectable, brave, and honest men any more, but the West of corrupt politicians, bankers, and corporations. The characters created by the director do not fit into the new West. They have the tragic consciousness of being out of history, nevertheless they are not able and even do not want to adapt to the social, economic, and moral transitions. They hanker after the recent past and are determined to keep the traditional way of life. The opposition of the Old West vs. the new West (or the past vs. the present) is fundamental for Peckinpah and is expressed on both the level of plot and iconography. The images of wilderness (forests, deserts, and mountains) are the basic iconographic symbols of the Old West. Then the automobiles and other machines (bicycles, motorcycles, machine guns, bulldozers, and even aeroplanes, which are the subject of the discussion in The Wild Bunch) are the symbols of the new West and, at the same time, of evil, threat, and destruction. Plesnar notices the fact that the plots of most of the movies directed by Peckinpah include two themes: betrayal by a friend and wandering. Betrayal needs redemption (by death or at least by the act of repentance and self-sacrifice). Then the wandering is not only the translocation of the characters in space but also their journey into their own souls in search of integrity and self-awareness.

3

Dzieci Hitlera: film jako narzędzie indoktrynacji młodzieży w Trzeciej Rzeszy

100%

Plesnar Ł. A.

Eruditio et Ars

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2018

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vol. 1

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issue 1

56-71

EN

I discuss motion pictures produced in Nazi Germany that were aimed to politically indoctrinate young people. I analyse the most important propaganda and persuasion mechanisms used in both fiction and non-fiction films. I lay special emphasis on these tools of manipulation that influenced emotions of inexperienced viewers. They resulted in youth’s intellectual incapacitation and uncritical acceptance of the leading role of Hitler and NSDAP.

PL

W swoim tekście omawiam wyprodukowane w nazistowskich Niemczech filmy, których celem była ideologiczna indoktrynacja młodzieży. Poddaję analizie najważniejsze mechanizmy propagandowo-perswazyjne, wykorzystywane zarówno w utworach fabularnych, jak i dokumentalnych. Szczególny nacisk kładę na te narzędzia manipulacji, które oddziaływały na emocje młodych widzów, co prowadziło do ich intelektualnego ubezwłasnowolnienia i bezkrytycznej akceptacji przywódczej roli Hitlera i NSDAP.

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Figura ojca w filmach Clinta Eastwooda

Przemijanie Zachodu. Nostalgia w filmach Sama Peckinpaha

Dzieci Hitlera: film jako narzędzie indoktrynacji młodzieży w Trzeciej Rzeszy