Identity and Editing in New York City
Kristin Langevin
COM 126.01
Professor Saphire
4 December 2020
Identity, New York, and Editing
The intertwining of New York's layout and the display of events within ethnic groups is a great way to encapsulate the everyday happenings of ordinary people. The arrangement of people sets a solid foundation for dispute, mistrust, and controversy between the communities, and can be used as a backdrop for wonderful cinema. The films “Mean Streets”, “Annie Hall”, and “Do the Right Thing” all incorporate different styles of editing to produce a specific message while still retaining the rawness of New York City. In this way, New York becomes a reflection of the troubles that orbit various races, ethnicities, and religions.
In Do the Right Thing By Spike Lee, there is an obvious message that is introduced and gets followed throughout the film. The use of almost comedic-like dialogue makes the viewer retract away from this message, and are horrifically reminded of it at the end of its runtime. By creating a scene that holds the severity of a hot New York City day, and then topping it with the harsh reality of racism within a black community, you get an outcome of anti-romanticism. The majority of New York based films shine the city as a bright and happy place to inhabit, but tend to avoid the obscurity of real life activity and events. Do the Right Thing skips no beat with this concept.
This also occurs in Mean Streets. On the surface, you have a tight Italian community, but the reality of this circle revolves around racism, misogyny, greed, crime and violence. This choice of anti-romanticism correlates to the New American Cinema movement. This movement was done in the 1960’s to change the formula of movie making in America. Each of these directors chose a dissident route when producing these films. This translates to a more authentic, yet darker outlook on living in the city.
That being said, Annie Hall displays a more comfortable existence in the city, but is contrasted by Alvy’s pessimistic and isolated way of thinking. In both Annie Hall and Do the Right Thing, associative editing is used creatively to provide differences in identity. Annie Hall regularly uses the breaking of the fourth wall to connect the viewer with Alvy’s opinion and mindset. Similarly, Do the Right Thing uses fast editing and the breaking of the fourth wall to depict the racism in the community. What’s effective about this technique is that it shows transparency, without influence of New York City in the identity of characters.
Despite the crowds that populate New York City’s streets, the city becomes the perfect backdrop for giving characters identity. Race, ethnicity, and religion all contribute towards identity. However, with the help of New York City, it is the interactions between identities that ultimately gives the setting its own identity. This characterization of New York City illuminates the division and fracturing nature of human beings. All three films use editing to strengthen these differences, and shape conflicting identities.
There is a wonderful statement in your conclusion (“the interactions between identities,” that illuminates the “fracturing nature of human beings”) that should be expanded upon and moved up to your intro in order to support it in the body paragraphs. Nice job to incorporate comparisons of editing tactics, but I wonder if similar comparisons between characters and ethnic groups might have helped to support the above quotes. You’ve set the stage in your essay to connect some of the dots between these films, but in the end you keep your analyses of each film fairly separate. It might be interesting, for instance, to discuss the portrayal of Italian Americans in both Mean Streets and Do the Right Thing (some similarities, some differences!) or Anglo-American whites in Annie Hall and Do the Right Thing (I’m thinking of the Brownstone owner, as well as Annie’s family). In this way, identity is a huge, messy collision, and the city is the container. In that your essay is slightly short, a few more contextualizing sentences might have fleshed out these connections. Nice work in particular to make a metaphor out of Lee’s sweltering day, in that the temperature rises to the brim by the end.
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