![]() ![]() Such was the case this week in our viewing of Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull. By breaking down film to its bare essentials, namely a moving picture that was recorded by a camera and shown to spectators via projector, Metz makes it possible for readers to apply his ideas to any filmic text they might come across. ![]() Only vague movements are visible from those just outside the ropes flashbulbs occasionally burst through the gloom.Christian Metz’s assertions in The Imaginary Signifier have truly profound implications for the way we interpret film as a medium. In the opening title sequence, a boxer spars with the smokey air in an empty ring. Raging Bull begins with a very specific circumstance of performance. Through allusion and homage, this closing scene has been re-performed numerous times since the film's release, and additional layers of complexity accumulate as Raging Bull gathers history. Incorporating Brando's famous speech from On the Waterfront (1954) near its end, Raging Bull adds further layers of performance: De Niro as Jake as Brando as Terry Malloy. As a biographical film of a performer, Raging Bull shows Robert De Niro performing as Jake La Motta performing as both a boxer and as a stand-up comedian. In so doing, it begs comparison with the great stage plays of the mid-twentieth century that also interrogate the performance of masculinity. The film examines how masculinity is performed within the boxing arena and without. As the opening sequence suggests, Raging Bull makes the idea of performance a predominant theme. Answers to such questions as who is performing and what is being performed are far from simple. Seen from the perspective of this emerging field of studies, Raging Bull becomes an even more complex work. Performance studies can offer film studies much. ![]()
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