Page 339 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 30: Umberto Eco's 'Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage’ (Textual Analysis)

human beings, but a life as stereotypically portrayed by previous films. Casablancab rings with it Notes
the scent of dijd vu to such an extent that the spectator is ready to see in it also what happened
after it. It is not until To Have and Have Not that Bogey played the role of the Hemingway hero,
but here he appears "already" loaded with Hemingwayesque connotations for the simple diegetic
detail that Rick fought in Spain. Peter Lorre trails behind him reminiscences of Fritz Lang; Conradt
Veidt wraps his German officer in a faint perfume from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-he is not a
ruthless technological Nazi, but a nocturnal and diabolical Caesar. Casablancah as succeeded in
becoming a cult movie because it is not one movie. It is "the movies." And this is the reason it
works, in spite of any aesthetic theory. For it stages the powers of Narrativity in its natural state,
before art intervenes to tame it. This is why we accept that the characters change mood, morality,
and psychology from one moment to the next, that conspirators cough to interrupt the conversation
when a spy approaches, that bar girls weep at the sound of the Marseillaise. ... When all the
archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two cliches make us laugh, but a
hundred cliches move us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves
and celebrating a reunion. Just as extreme pain meets sensual pleasure, and extreme perversion
borders on mystical energy, so does extreme banality allow us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime.
Nobody would have been able to achieve such a cosmic result intentionally. Nature has spoken
here in place of men. If nothing else, this is a phenomenon worthy of veneration.
30.2.5 Cult Culture
The structure of Casablanca helps us to understand what happens in those movies that are born in
order to become cult objects. What Casablanca does unconsciously, other movies will do with an
extreme intertextual awareness - and with the expectation that the spectator be equally aware of
their purposes. These are "postmodern" movies, where the quotation of the topos is recognized as
the only way to cope with the burden of our encyclo-pedical filmic competence. Think, for instance,
of Bananas, with its explicit quotation of the Odessa steps sequence from Eisenstein's Potemkin. In
Casablancaon e enjoys the quota-tion even though one does not recognize it, and those who do
recognize it feel as belonging to the same clique. In Bananas those who do not catch the topos
cannot enjoy the scene, while those who do simply feel smart. Another (and different) case is the
quotation of the topical duel between the black Arab giant with his scimitar and the unprotected
hero in Raiders of the Lost Ark. If you remember, the topos suddenly turns into another one, as the
unprotected hero is transformed, in a split second, into The Fastest Gun in the West. Here the
naive viewer is allowed to miss the quotation, except that his or her enjoyment will then be pretty
trivial; and the real enjoyment is reserved for the people accustomed to cult movies, who know the
whole reper-toire of "magic" archetypes. In a way, Bananas works for cultivated cinephiles and
film buffs, while Raidersw orks for Casablancaa ddicts. The third case is the one of E. T., when the
alien is brought outside under a Halloween disguise and meets the dwarf from The EmpireS
trikesB ack. You remember that E.T. is startled and then runs to greet him (or it). Here nobody can
enjoy the scene if they do not share, at least, the following elements of intertextual competence:
1. they must know where the second character comes from (Spielberg citing Lucas),
2. they must know something about the relationship between the two directors,
3. they must know that both monsters have been designed by Rambaldi and that, consequently,
they are linked by some form of brotherhood.
The required competence is not only inter-cinematic. It is inter-media, in the sense that the spectator
must know not only other movies, but the whole of massmedia gossip about the movies. This
third example presupposes a "Casa-blanca universe" in which cult has become the normal way of
enjoying movies. Thus, in this case, we witness an instance of meta-cult, or of cult about cult-a cult
culture. It would be semiotically uninteresting to look for quotations of archetypes in Raiderso r in
Indiana Jones: they were conceived within a meta-semiosical cul-ture, and what the semiotician
can find in them is exactly what the directors put there. Spielberg and Lucas are semiotically

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 333