Film Butter

            Most of the other characters in the film are based on movie tropes. Seeing these characters in past movies tells us their rolls in the story without delving too deeply into their characters. In Rango, we have the Wise Native who points the gang in the right direction, the Big Bad Government in the form of a paraplegic turtle, narrators who break the fourth wall, the crazy cook and the town idiot, along with the western classic: an inbred family of criminals. Just before the climax of the film, we find that the Spirit of the West is really Clint Eastwood, who has now himself become a trope within Spaghetti Western films. Rattlesnake Jake’s character references the“ Jake the Snake” children’s toy, telling me that, in the end, Rango will beat Jake because he is only a toy. Another plot point of the film tells me that Rango will save the day when the gang crosses an underground bridge at the -55:00 mark in the movie. The shot is the same as the beginning shot of the Balrog scene in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. As the crew crosses the bridge, they pass a giant orange eye, much like that of Sauron, the defeated antagonist of Lord of the Rings in which a motley crew band together to save their threatened homeland.

            The broadest references in Rango stem from its narrative structure and devices. Almost all narrative films begin with a setup, lasting about twenty-five minutes, in which we meet our protagonist and place him in a setting. In Rango we meet our character and place him in the Mojave. I know that he will encounter a problem to solve because I have seen other movies with this structure. At the 25:00 mark, we have our first turning point, which in Rango happens when we learn that the bank is running out of water. I understand that the plot, from here on, will be a series of attempts by Rango to save the day and his encounters with barriers that hinder him from reaching his goal, which is the resolution of the film. Somewhere around the 90:00 mark of most two hour films, there is a second turning point; here is where we learn that the mayor is the real thief all along. Of course, if I pay attention, I see this coming from a mile away because Bean has tries to tell everyone from the beginning that the mayor is corrupt, and, in most films that I watch, the bad guy is never who we first think he is. Using my familiarity with narrative structure, I can predict the entirety of Rango and most other films within the first half hour. However, Rango gets a bit more creative by being entirely self-referential in the climax. As a narrative device, we call this Checkov’s Armory. In the climax, we see the highway that Rango took to get to Dirt, the Mole family who first tried to rob the bank, Rattlesnake Jake’s fear of hawks, the tunnels that the Mole family dug, the underground pipes, and Rango’s legendary skill of using only one bullet to kill the Jenkins brothers and the hawk all coming together to resolve the story and defeat the mayor.  If we pay attention, we see the import of these small details earlier in the film, however insignificant they seem when they first appear.

            As Rango draws from past films, as well as its own past, Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho has become such an iconic film that other movies and TV shows make allusions to it, and sometimes the meanings of certain text change because of accidental reference to its iconography. Last week, in a critique of my video class’s projects, a girl used a shot of her friend in a white-tiled shower. The video was supposed to be about a mental-health disorder, but I completely missed the point because I kept expecting staccato violins and a knife covered in watery chocolate sauce. Texts can, after being referenced enough, become so recognizable that I cannot divorce the meaning of the text from the image I see on the screen. Luckily, some texts reference Psycho on purpose. The first episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog, “A Night at the Katz Motel” alludes to the Hitchcock classic throughout its entirety. I know from the title that this is on purpose because the Bates Motel is the setting for most of Psycho. I then know that the owner of this motel is a creepy inheritor who plans to kill his guests. Now that I understand the plot, I notice the subtle references that continue throughout the episode. The bathroom we see Muriel in.is the same bathroom as the one in Psycho, only instead of dying she just sits on the toilet.

Muriel sitting on the toilet becomes an allusion as well, because Psycho featured the first modern flushing toilet to appear on film10. Now, every time I see a white tiled shower, or any kind of toilet,  I instantly think of Psycho, and jump to the conclusion that murder, or at least an obstacle is in the near future. Psycho is also the first film to have its leading lady killed at the first turning point, just thirty minutes into the film. Other films, like I Saw What You Did, in which Joan Crawford dies within the first thirty minutes, instantly recall Psycho’s new take on narrative structure. I Saw What You Did makes clear that the allusion was intentional by making another one in the form of a shower murder scene later on in the film. Other texts reference equally iconic Psycho soundtrack. The violins sound in PeeWee’s Big Adventure, Monsters Inc., and Jackass: the Movie though the clearest allusion to this music occurs in Halloween H2O when we first meet Janet Leigh’s character, Norma, a feminized version of Norman Bates and played by the same actress, the music plays during her entrance. Director Brian De Palma alludes to Psycho in numerous films. Carrie and Dressed to Kill both open with shower scenes. In Dressed to Kill, the leading lady dies with minimal screen time. In Raising Cain, De Palma has John Lithgow watch a car sink slowly into a lake just as Norman Bates disposed of the body in Psycho. In the UK film Wonderwall, a man who lives alone watches women through hole in a room filled with taxidermy and later learns that his mother is dead. In the 1960s television show Thriller, season six episode one features a couple who stop at the Baites Motel, which looks exactly like the Bates Motel from Psycho. Even when tension builds in real life, I often find myself vocalizing the shrieking notes, just as characters do in Friends and Donnie Darko. Because there are so many references to Psycho in pop-culture that came after it, I understand moments that remind me of the film in the context of the film, even if they are unintentional, as many are in other films that are also based upon real-life serial killer Ed Gein. From here, I understand that Psycho is truthfully a reference to an event in reality. Other movies based on his persona include Ed and His Dead Mother, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.