AbstractThis dissertation aims to analyse how film director Sean Baker explores the theme of subcultures throughout his filmography while also examining his influences regarding the social realism genre. When looking at the subculture theory, mainly focusing on Dick Hebdige's ground-breaking Subculture the Meaning of Style (1979), the dissertation will examine the different meanings of subculture and the multiple distinct subcultures and hidden communities Baker poses in his films. While exploring this, the aim is to acknowledge why Baker chose to exhibit these communities and what drew him to them. I hope to answer this through my primary resource of an interview I've undergone with Baker himself where he answers these questions. When examining Baker's influences, the objective is to discuss his influence of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh but also show how his style is and isn’t like his influences as unlike British social realism, he tends to favour bright cinematography that links to the subcultures themselves and also his protagonists. The dissertation will also explore the tradition of American social realism, for example, the films of John Cassavetes and Andre Arnold's American film American Honey (2016), comparing how Baker's work is different to this as he also suggests in my interview with him. Finally, the aim is to compare the subcultures Baker has shown in his films to other films that showcase these and how they exhibit them. The focus on this topic will be the transgender community in Tangerine (2015) and how Baker represents them in comparison to other films surrounding transgender individuals. AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank Sean Baker for agreeing to let me interview him for this piece. I honestly believe that without his contribution, I wouldn’t have gained the breadth of knowledge to write this. It is also so inspiring that he agreed to do this for me, and I am so grateful. I am massively thankful for my friend, Sam Cherry, for giving me the inspiration to contact Sean Baker directly and ask for an interview. This provided me with the information I needed and having that behind me motivated me further to complete this dissertation. I would like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Dylan Pank, for constantly being there to provide me with advice to try and make this dissertation the highest standard it could be. I am thankful for my Mum, Kimberley, for always being so supportive and motivating me to always do the best that I could. I am massively thankful for my Nanny and Grandad who started my love of cinema and always supported me with whatever I wanted to do. I would like to express how grateful I am for my longest and greatest friend, India Devonshire, for all your love and support throughout the years. Finally, I would like to thank my love, Sam Osborne. Throughout this you have always been by my side to help me, motivate me and support me through this mammoth of an essay. I am so thankful for all your love and support during this time and I couldn’t have done it without you. IntroductionSean Baker has spent his career showcasing individuals who are ignored by a mainstream society and removes the stigmas attached to them. He began working with his frequent collaborator Chris Bergoch who worked on what Baker names his “sex work trilogy” (Porton, 2017, p.22) which this essay will focus on. The first in the trilogy is Starlet (2012) which documents the unlikely friendship between an adult film worker, Jane, and a widowed elderly woman, Sadie. The second is Tangerine (2015), which follows two transgender prostitutes, Sin-Dee, and Alexandra, who storm through Hollywood, LA on Christmas Eve trying to find Sin-Dee’s Pimp boyfriend. The third is The Florida Project (2017) which follows Baker’s newer technique of “stylized realism” (Porton, 2017, p.22) and explores the life of the hidden homeless living on the outskirts of Walt Disney World, Florida. Although the film is told from the POV of a child, it still shows the struggles of her mother Halley who turns to prostitution to supply money for rent. The main critical framework that is used throughout is subculture theory. Subcultural studies began in the 1920s in the University of Chicago where sociologists turned “their attention to marginal social groups and ‘deviant’ social behaviour” (Gelder, 2007, p.27). Chicago, as a city, was the second largest in the United states, so it made a good source of research when exploring “the wide variety of immigrant populations, not just from Europe and elsewhere but also from the American Hinterland.” (Gelder, 2007, p.27). The Chicago school highlights “the symbolic normative structure of groups smaller than society as a whole” (Jenks, 2005, p. 6). One of the most key figures from the Chicago School of Sociology was Robert E. Park who focused on subcultures and the misfortune of the immigrant population. In one of his papers he discussed how Chicago is “divided into various ‘zones’ and defined by vocational specialisation and social difference” (Gelder, 2007, p.29). He states that depending on where a person lives, it affects their class and how the poorer classes can’t “defend themselves from association with the derelict and vicious” and how “Each separate part of the city is inevitably stained with the peculiar sentiments of its population“ (Park, 1915, p.579). “Then in the 1970s, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) used it in a UK context. They focus on “urban grit and glamour” (Huq, 2015, p.107). The CCCS began in 1964 with Richard Hoggart as its founding Director. “Hoggart’s influential work, The Uses of Literacy (1957) and Raymond William’s work, Culture and Society (1958) became the foundational texts for British subcultural studies'' (Nwalozie, 2015, p.7). Subculture itself is a “micro-sociology, or perhaps a microcosmic sociology, that gives a voice to and directs our attention to the ways in which such groups differ in such elements as their language, belief systems, values, mannerisms, patterns of behaviour and lifestyle from the mainstream, larger society, of which they also belong.” (Jenks, 2005, p.6). The main text that I will be referencing is Dick Hebdige’s influential text Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) which focuses on resistant British youth in the post-war period. Dick Hebdige is a media theorist and sociologist whose work focuses on society rebelling against the mainstream. The focus will be on Baker’s sex work trilogy as each of these films share the theme of subcultures and the negative stereotype put on them. Each of these films also feature a female protagonist which juxtaposes the fact that subculture theory usually focuses on male youth (Jenks, 2005, p.5). “The C.C.C.S. has recognized the problems of the "invisibility" of female youth in male dominated subcultures and male researcher bias.” (Calluori, 1985, p.47). Chapter 1-How Baker exhibits subcultures in his sex work trilogyIn Dick Hebdige’s writing, he links the term hegemony within subculture theory saying it “refers to a situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert ‘total social authority’ over other subordinate groups'' (Hebrige, 1979, p.16). This shows how due to the higher classes having more “social authority” the lower classes then become “the silent majority” (p.18). Hebdige then discusses how subordinate groups are “dismissed, denounced and canonized; treated at different times as threats to public order and as harmless buffoons” (Hebdige, 2919, p.2). As a society, people tend to look at people who are different as being “threats” or just living their life in a stupid manner, “buffoons”, as they aren’t living life in the “normal” or traditional way for a western society. In Baker’s sex work trilogy, the fact that the protagonists rely on sex work to make a living, isn’t considered the norm. Sex work can be considered as dirty among a mainstream society, but Baker follows these characters so, an audience can see it being “‘sex as work” (Sanders, Pitcher & O’Neill, 2009, p.1) and not for pleasure. They’re performing sex acts to earn money to provide for themselves and the people around them, for example, Halley in The Florida Project (Baker, 2017) providing for her daughter, Moonee. As theorists Sanders, Pitcher and O’Neill state, prostitution and sex work is seen as “deviant behaviour” (2009, p.1) because it is seen as a distasteful act. “On the one hand, the prostitute is made morally reprehensible, a victim, impure, depraved and suffering marginalization and ‘whore stigma’ and, on the other, she is a body-object of fascination and desire.” (2009, p.2). Baker presents in the sex workers being an “object of desire” but, he also normalises them as this is what is normal to them and the audience gets to experience that with them. The key part of this quote is “marginalization” as this connects to Hebdige’s subculture theory. Baker presents stigmas such as unfaithful culture with cheaters and crime culture in Tangerine (2015). In Starlet (2012) he presents the lonely elderly and a woman struggling for money. And in The Florida Project (2017) he presents the film from the POV of children whose parents are homeless and struggle to provide for their children. Despite this we view them as normal because Baker is removing the stigma, in the films, that society has of them. Society tends to view people that struggle for money as being vulnerable. Baker follows these protagonists, so the audience doesn’t think they are vulnerable individuals anymore. This is their life and it is normal and so the audience perceives it as normal too. Through bringing light to subcultures in his work he is articulating “the unspoken, or perhaps, unheard” as these are voices, usually seen from an outsider’s perspective. Here we are seeing them first-hand. (Jenks, 2005, p. 5). Baker’s aim with Starlet (2012) was to show a realistic side of the porn industry. Baker says- “In the past, when people have focused on this industry in film, it’s always been about “the work”. I wanted to take a character and represent her in a way in which her profession didn’t define her.” (Weinstein, 2013, p.25). The porn industry is “a topic on which many individuals have a fervent opinion.” (Griffith, 2012, p.254). One theorist says “individuals were drawn to porn by its “perceived glamour” due to high-budget films, black tie events and money (Voss, 2015, p. 4). Although a big part of the porn industry is that it is perceived to be rich (the porn industry revenue in 2018 estimated for the US range from $9bn to $97bn a year.) (Naughton, 2018, para.4), Jane isn’t presented as rich as she is living with another porn-performer and she must move in and out of her room to allow her landlord to film porn. This life is not a glamorous one. Baker says in the interview I underwent with him- “That’s survival sex work and I think that people, we glam up sex work, we glam it up in film and television, I think. We make it look kind of cool and sexy and when it comes down there's some people that are literally doing it to survive. And in a way Jane is doing that as well. I didn’t want to harp on it too much but in Starlet, she's not doing it because she's sexually liberated or having fun, she's doing it because she probably had very limited opportunities in her life, her mother is doing drugs, she probably comes from a broken family. There are many reasons and I didn’t really have to explain all those reasons but obviously that’s what I'm trying when it won’t let certain people into the system and they are forced to have their own system.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). Them creating their “own system” links to the idea of this being a subculture because they are creating their own way surviving. Subcultures “illustrate the fluidity of moral and legal boundaries in the context of surviving at the margins of society” (Hughes, 2018, p.250). The contrast of porn glamour and reality is exhibited in the opening shot. A close-up of a blank wall that is high-key lit by the sunlight. Then Jane is awoken and appears from the bottom right corner of the frame. She slumps against the wall, yawning the hair away from her face. “She’s hardly ready for her close-up, but there it is anyway.” (Nayman, 2012). This quote from Nayman is a direct pun at the porn industry’s glamour. Porn involves close-up shots of the performers in a glamorous fashion, but in this case, it strips the industry of its glamour and normalises it-presenting one of its performers in her usual habitat. Baker says- “I’m normalising and that is putting my values and beliefs forward with the hope of hopefully saying this is another way of thinking. In a way it’s propaganda if you think about it because my films are normalising sex work, normalising drug use, normalising immigration.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). At the film’s equilibrium, the camera pans to see Jane’s bedroom. The room is bare, what is visible is her bed, an unpacked suitcase, and her dog, which the film is named after. Connotations of this is that she doesn’t really have a home or a real family. She is introduced to Sadie when she buys a thermos from her. When Jane fills up the thermos with water, she discovers $10,000 in the bottom of it. She doesn’t return it to Sadie and instead drives her to and from the grocery store, gives her company at bingo and treats her like her own family. This could be a crime due to her taking the money and not giving it back, which is part of subculture studies. She is “crime against the natural order” because it’s against the law to steal. (Hebdige, 1979, p.3). Jane follows Sadie who thinks Jane is a stalker. Despite this, Sadie discovers Jane was just trying to be a good Samaritan. Jane is so nice to windowed Sadie and does all these things for her, even buying her a ticket to Paris where she has always desired to visit, this makes the audience like Jane and we don’t judge her for taking the money. Instead we admire her for her friendship with Sadie. Tangerine follows two transgender sex workers. This is a common narrative about subculture which “casts them as nonconformist and non-normative: different, dissenting, or ‘deviant” (Gelder, 2007, p.3). They are nonconformist because they are transgender, meaning they are different from most of society. Sin-Dee is presented as deviant as she has just been released from prison and spends most of the film hunting down Dinah who her pimp boyfriend cheated on her with. Both sex workers can be deviant and breaking the law as their occupation is illegal. The film is called Tangerine because of the bright orange saturation that was added in post-production with Baker stating- “the world is so colourful, and the women are so colourful” (Denham, 2015, p.1). Tangerine begins with Christmas music (Toyland Waltz) over a yellow background. The yellow background is then revealed to be a table when our protagonists place a doughnut on it exclaiming “Merry Christmas Eve bitch.” The table has scratches where people have graffitied it. This acts as a visual representation for our protagonists as they are bright, but damaged. In this opening scene, the two protagonists are positioned to the left and the right of the frame, in between them is a window establishing the setting- an intersection in Hollywood, LA. Baker states- “usually there are locations which I am fascinated by because there is a microcosm there that has been underrepresented or not represented at all in film and television” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). It is in his story-telling and filmic nature to present people and places that are underrepresented or misrepresented in society, meaning he focuses on subcultures. Baker says, in terms of Tangerine, “I would pass by an infamous intersection every day because I happened to live near it. I usually live in close proximity to these areas” and he finds it compelling to represent these parts of America. (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). Tangerine (2015) has its two protagonists, Sin-Dee, and Alexandra, but we also have Razmik, a taxi driver, who is unfaithful to his wife and family, receiving sexual favours from the transgender sex workers while he is working. The community of subculture is presented through the eyes of a taxi driver. He is familiar with the locals and the sex workers. This is presented through the montage of different people in his taxi, for example, the elderly lady who just put her dog down and an Asian girl taking selfies in the back of his car. The audience is also positioned in the back of the car looking forward at Razmik like we are a passenger in his car and are part of this community. When Razmik returns home from work, the audience is shocked to discover he has a wife and child. It’s Christmas Eve and they are spending it together like a traditional family. Razmik lives a normal life in the evening but during the day becomes involved with this sex work subculture community presenting a divide between them. During the climax, Razmik leaves his house, saying he wants to earn some more money in his taxi but, in reality, he wants to go and watch Alexandra sing at a show she is paying for. The show itself presents how this subculture is considered as an outcast community in society as Alexandra has to pay the venue to let her sing and the only people that come is her best friend Sin-Dee and Dinah who Sin-Dee has basically kidnapped. Razmik is followed by his mother-in-law who believes he is being unfaithful. She discovers him at Donut Time, the shop from the equilibrium of the film. During this scene, his wife also arrives and is shocked when becoming aware of Razmik’s unfaithfulness to her. The two worlds in this scene collide showing the difference from a mainstream “normal” society (Razmik’s family) and the subculture community (pimps and sex workers). When Chester (Sin-Dee’s pimp) reveals to Razmik’s mother-in-law that he is sleeping with prostitutes she becomes stunned and then repeats “oh my god, these are men” when discovering another shock that the sex workers aren’t cis-gendered females and then exclaims that she is “going to have a heart- attack” (Baker, 2015). The fact she has reacted strongly to this subculture community presents an outsider's view of the subculture which is something Baker does frequently in his films to present how subcultures are misunderstood and the stigma attached to them. The two protagonists in Tangerine are transgender and this describes people whose “gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be when they were born.” (National Centre for Transgender Equality, 2016). “Members of the transgender community are often the victims of prejudice and discrimination” by mainstream society (Greenburg & Gaia, 2019, p. 18). In 2015 (Tangerine’s release date), the “U.S. Transgender Survey of 27,715 transgender individuals in the United States revealed the high prevalence of mistreatment and discrimination of children, adolescents, and adults who identify as transgender.” This included “verbal harassment, physical and sexual assault, and general maltreatment due to their transgender identity.” “Trans individuals reported unemployment at twice the rate of the general population and experienced severe maltreatment in the workplace due to their transgender identity and expression” which suggests why the protagonists in Tangerine have turned to prostitution to earn money. (Greenburg & Gaia, 2019, p. 19). John Waters is an example of a high-profile director who engages with a gender non-conforming character, Divine. A stereotype of transgender people is that they are very theatrical and dramatic. Divine presents this through her drag attire presented in Pink Flamingos (Waters, 1972). Although Divine was not transgender and was a drag queen, one of the earliest conceptions of transgender people was they just dressed in the opposite sex’s attire. Although Baker presents the transgender characters as being theatrical through their curse words, the upbeat music and eccentric camera work and editing, he presents a raw look at this subculture. We’re aware the characters feel the world can be horrible to them from the scene where Alexandra says to Sin-Dee that “The world can be a cruel place” and then Sin-Dee replies- “like when God gave me a penis” (Baker, 2015). Baker presents a softer side to them as when Sin-Dee has urine thrown in her face from a passing car with the passengers exclaiming “Merry Christmas you fucking faggot”, Alexandra takes her to a dry-cleaner and pays for her clothes to be washed. Sin-Dee takes her wig off to be cleaned and she acts insecure as her wig is her security. Alexandra gives her wig to Sin-Dee to make her feel comfortable, presenting a softer look to this subculture and unmasking the prejudice and stigma. As Baker says- “it’s all about removing stigma.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). Before Tangerine’s release, there’s been multiple films that have a sensitive attitude towards transgender individuals. They also can fall under the social realist approach Baker is taking. Examples of these films are- Boys Don’t Cry (Peirce,1999) and Dallas Buyers Club (Vallée, 2013). Both actors who played the transgender characters in these films, won an Academy Award for their performance. Despite their sensitive approach to the trans community, the actors face criticism because it is straight, cis-gendered actors playing them. Jared Leto, Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club, “was heckled at a Santa Barbara film festival by transgender activists frustrated that the role didn’t go to a transgender actress. […] Transgender performers are underrepresented or nearly non-existent in Hollywood” (Friess, 2014, para. 12). Baker, on the other hand, choses to showcase transgender actresses, Kiki Rodriguez, and Mya Taylor in Tangerine, presenting how he is giving the subculture a voice in a mainstream context. Baker says his films present his desire “to see more diversity on screen […] that are under-represented or haven’t been represented perhaps fairly.” As previously stated, transgender characters are usually played by non-transgender actors and therefore Baker is giving these actual transgender actresses’ a platform. This also falls into the first wave of indie cinema (which I’ll discuss in chapter three) because these actresses were unknown and are also part of the transgender subculture. (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). The Florida Project (2017) is spreading word of marginal voices that are usually silent, and, in this case, it is the “hidden homeless” (Porton, 2017, p.22) that live in the suburbs of Disney World. The subculture here is the motel community. These communities “can’t secure permanent housing, and therefore, are stuck in this situation. This is basically their last resort before hitting the streets.” (Suzanne-Mayer, 2017). Each struggle to keep a roof over their heads as shown through Halley paying her rent late and turning to prostitution to earn money. One of the first subculture accounts of homelessness was by Nels Anderson (1923) who discusses ‘hobos’ during the 1920s who documented the “unique social milieus and how they operate as separate societies from the mainstream” (Frederick, 2019, p.1134). Halley is young and reflects the real figures that 20% of the homeless population in the US and Canada are between 16 and 25 years old (Frederick, 2019, p. 1133). Subculture can be referred as hidden communities in society. This film exhibits this as the characters in the motel all know each other as shown when Moonee and Scooty give Jancey a tour, describing the residents by their room door. Some examples being “the man who lives in here gets arrested a lot”, “this woman in here thinks she’s married to Jesus” (Baker, 2017). Hebrige says the people above these subcultures in this hierarchy of class have a “common sense” ideology (p.11) towards those in a lower class. This means they have a prejudice towards people lower than them. For instance, when the newlywed couple arrives at the Magic Kingdom motel, the husband realises he’s mistaken it for THE Magic Kingdom in the Disney park. He frantically talks to Bobby, (Willem Dafoe) to make the changes as he doesn’t want to disappoint his wife. His wife becomes aware of the mix-up and exclaims “This is a welfare slum hotel. We’re spending our honeymoon in a gypsy project” (Baker, 2017). She has this negative view of the motel and the people in it as she’s using her “common sense” ideology to come to those conclusions. The divide here can be seen as the couple are wearing higher-class and overall nicer clothing whereas the rest of the people in the motel are very casual, exhibiting the divide between both classes. One of the actual residents of the real motel states “You do get honeymooners coming to the Magic Castle thinking they’re coming to some great, grand resort by the Magic Kingdom, and they end up disappointed when they wind up here” (Luscombe, 2017). The “common sense” aspect is shown when one of Halley’s “customers”, returns to the motel in search of the Disney World park hopper wristbands she stole. When Bobby asks him to “get off the premises,” he says, “it’s not a premises, it’s a fucking dump”. It’s ironic here that he chose to come to what he considers as a “dump” to fulfil his sexual needs, and so he is unfaithful to his family but becomes outraged when something of his is stolen. Halley is committing a crime by stealing and fits into the stereotype of subcultures being deviant. “Prostitution is illegal in the United States with the exception of 10 Nevada counties.” If Halley is caught doing this, she risks up to 5 years and a $5,000 fine in Florida, where the film is set (ProCon.Org, 2018). Halley struggles for money to provide for her daughter as she is risking being caught by prostituting herself, exhibiting her desperation. In Frederick’s writing about homelessness in the UK, USA, and Canada, he states that homeless people are “vulnerable [to] high rates of crime” (Frederick, 2019, p. 1133) which is what Halley is doing here through desperation. Although she is committing these crimes, Baker doesn’t present it in a harsh light, because we follow Moonee in the story, and we know that Halley is trying her best to provide for her child. Hebrige quotes Stuart Hall saying, “you cannot learn through common sense” and that class’s “ideological nature is most effectively concealed” (Hebrige, 1997, p.11). Linking this to the quote about the “silent majority”, it is Baker that is making these voices heard, through the children. What Hebdige is saying is that you can’t learn from your prejudices against these people because the very nature of these societies is concealed by this. Baker chooses to reveal these natures, rather than leaving them concealed. Hebdige describes the tensions between dominant and subordinate groups. A scene where this is presented is when the DCF, Department of Children and Families, come to put Moonee into temporary foster care. The class difference is clearly seen here through the positioning of the characters and their clothing codes. The DCF including the police are placed outside the door and Halley and Moonee on the inside. The use of the door shows the juxtaposition between the two classes. The DCF are smartly dressed in blouses whereas Halley is in slouchy joggers and a tank top, showing the difference in class and bringing light to this subculture and their struggles. The film’s location is ironic as this community is living on the outskirts of Disney World which is known as “happiest place on Earth” (Blitz, 2014). The characters in the film are struggling and are homeless although they are surrounded by a company with a net-worth of $130 billion (Hoffower, 2020), creating a binary opposition of the rich and the poor. The fact our main protagonists are children further intensifies the irony as the primary audience of Disney is children. Despite this, Moonee and her friends don’t care and the motel they live in, called The Magic Castle (a direct knock-off of the iconic Disney castle), becomes their playground. One man that actually lives in the motel where the film is set, Tommy Delgado, states “This area is good in certain parts but there’s still crime, there’s prostitution and that happens a lot. There’s guys that will come from Disney and rent a room for just 45 minutes, that’s a part of it, you’ll see it in the movie. People will call social services if they see something going on. It’s happened.” (Luscombe, 2017). Tommy describes multiple people that lived in the hotel at the same time as him including “a woman living with her five kids in a small room” presenting how people know each other in this community which is exhibited in the film when Moonee gives Jancey a tour of the motel. The location of the film, Kissimmee, has a poverty rate of 25.6% which is 10% above the national average (Luscombe, 2017). The Florida Project is what the original plans for Disney World were called, before it was built. “For Disney, the “Florida project” was the utopian dream that blossomed into the money-spinning Walt Disney World. By contrast, the run-down motels of Baker’s summer-break drama are more like “projects” in the US welfare-housing sense – home to low-income families living a hand-to-mouth existence, just beyond the boundaries of the upmarket tourist attractions.” (Kermode, 2017). In conclusion, from the evidence I have provided it is clear to see Baker presents an honest perspective of multiple subcultures from their own point of view, without the stereotypical view already placed on them by society. Baker achieved this by using a first-person narrative from someone or multiple people in the subculture. He sometimes includes characters not in the subculture to provide a stereotypical and prejudiced view of these subcultures so the audience can see who these characters really are and have the opportunity to remove their own stereotypes they may have of these subcultures previous to seeing the film. Chapter 2- How Baker’s influences have affected his own work. Baker has made many of his influences known through the multiple interviews he has underwent over his filmmaking career. Baker says “there are the go-to directors, yes there is the Ken Loach neorealism thing and then there’s also somewhat more genre and poppy directors. Directors who work with a poppy aesthetic. For The Florida Project there was just like a bunch of films about kids and Little Rascals (Roach, 1955), had a lot to do with that. Anything that was comedic that dealt with children but for the other films, I would just say a combination of Ken Loach and Vicctoria de Sica and Cassevetes and Lars Von Trier. Every film has its different influences, but I always try to make my own film as well.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). One of Baker's most important influences is Lars Von Trier and the Dogme 95 movement he founded alongside Thomas Vinterberg and lasted between the years of 1995 and 2005. Both created the Dogme 95 manifesto and filmmakers took the vow of chastity which contained many rules including- “shooting must be done on location”, “the camera must be hand-held”, “the film must be in colour”. (Von Trier & Vinterberg, 1995). This movement has been called a “disabled aesthetic” because it’s “rebelling against the classicism and cosmetic fixations of the traditional Hollywood film” (Britt, 2013, p. 292). It’s rebelling against the over-reliance of special effects, technology, and filmic tools. Although Baker doesn’t follow Dogme 95 completely, he uses certain aspects. Baker chose to shoot on an iPhone for Tangerine (2015) when “he stumbled upon some “gorgeous” iPhone footage on Vimeo” (Leow, 2015, p. 61). What also inspired Baker was the iPad footage in Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer (2012) (Broderick, 2015). This follows Dogme 95 because he used a handheld camera and he shot everything on location- Starlet (2012) was filmed in Los Angeles, Tangerine (2015) in Hollywood, LA, and The Florida Project (2017) in Kissimmee, Florida. Baker follows Dogme 95 because he uses natural lighting. In the opening shot of Starlet (2012), we are introduced to our protagonist, through the high key lighting from the window and the rest of the film is basked in the sunlight from LA. Some of Starlet appears too bright as there are constant lense flares, but Baker doesn’t attempt to detract from this light, the film embraces it, giving the audience this sense of where Jane lives. She lives in LA which has the stereotype of being celebrity central and it's where people go in the hope of becoming famous or making it big. Baker states, Jane has “probably had very limited opportunities in her life, her mother is doing drugs, she probably comes from a broken family. There are many reasons'' (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). He’s implying that Jane has moved to LA in search of better opportunities. With this bright cinematography, you’d almost expect this to be paired with the protagonist of a film star, but here we have a porn performer. As noted in the previous chapter, sex work can be seen as dirty and an audience may expect the cinematography to be dull, but Baker makes it high-key, normalising sex work and removing the stigma attached to it. British social realism is another of Baker’s influences. It can be described as “‘gritty’ and ‘raw’, offering a ‘slice of life’ and a ‘view of life as it really is’” (Lay, 2002, p. 1). Social realist texts tend to be low budget, the connection of character and place to emphasise “the relationship between location and identity”. (Lay, 2002, p.6). They are usually independent projects, shot on location with little known/ non-professional actors. The cinematography and appearance are also bleak and dull as it attempts to achieve a level of naturalism to appear as realistic as possible. Baker states “When I went to film school, I wanted to become a very commercial filmmaker. […] As I got older my interests changed towards more of a sociological point of view. Filmmaking took me down that road, especially when I discovered British social realism and Italian neorealism, filmmakers who were using cinema to make a political statement” (Monks Kaufman, 2017). Out of all the British social realist directors, his favourites are Mike Leigh and Ken Loach who he calls his “heroes” (Monks Kaufman, 2017). After WW1 people thought the key to a national cinema lay with “realism and restraint” but working-class audiences preferred Hollywood films. (Armstrong, N.D. para. 3). Michael Balcon, head of Ealing studios, described British vs Hollywood cinema as “realism and tinsel”. (para. 4) Due to the relaxation of censorship, “British 'auteurs' like Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and John Schlesinger dealt with prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, alienation and relationship problems” while following the documentary aesthetic, this became the British New Wave. (Armstrong, N.D, para.8). “The New Wave protagonist was usually a working-class male without bearings in a society in which traditional industries and the cultures that went with them were in decline.” (para.9) In the 1960s, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach “assessed the impact of the consumer society on family life, charting the erosion of the welfare state and the consensus that built it.” (para.10) Loach’s films often focus on “issues of social justice, labour rights, and the lives and struggles of the working class.” (Jones, 2016, p. 369). Leigh’s films celebrate “the sense of the real” (O’Sullivan, 2011, p.2) and examine “the fractures in domestic and social life wrought by divisive Thatcherite policies in an increasingly fragmented and multicultural Britain.” as presented in his films Secrets & Lies (Leigh, 1996), Life is Sweet (Leigh, 1990) and Naked (Leigh, 1993). In Baker’s Criterion closet video he picks up Life is Sweet and Naked saying “both films really had a major influence on Tangerine” in regard to the conflict, climatic scene in Donut Time, resembling the multiple argument scenes between Wendy and Nicola in Life is Sweet (1990). (Criterion Collection, 2015). The women in Loach and Leigh’s filmography are “often complex and powerful individuals (Armstrong, N.D, para 10) mirroring the women in Baker’s films. Baker’s sex work trilogy doesn’t have the same aesthetic as social realism films. His trilogy is very bright, colourful and has been described as “stylised realism” (Porton, 2017, p.22) as he swaps the gritty cinematography to one full of light and colour. Starlet (2012) is high key lit which gives the audience the feeling of sunny LA and how Jane is in a hopeful situation. Tangerine (2015) is overly saturated to present how colourful these characters are. Baker notes- “In a lot of social realist films, there’s a tendency to desaturate because for some reason we associate desaturation with reality.” He originally tried a desaturated look for Tangerine but says “something felt off. The world that these girls lived in was so colourful. Why didn’t I go the other way and oversaturate it? So, we pulled up all the saturation.” (Leow, 2015, p.61). This contrasts social realist films such as Naked (Leigh, 1993) as it is extremely low key, to replicate the characters. Social realist films tend to be dull and gritty to show a harsher society. When watching a film like this the audience tends to see these communities as apart from their own. The fact Baker brings up the saturation and makes his films brighter, allows the audience to see them on the same level, removing the dark filter and seeing a side of the subculture we don’t see in the media. Although social realist films tend to follow a male protagonist, there are a few exceptions. Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home (1966) follows a mother who loses her home, husband and child due to the British Welfare system, which is fairly similar to The Florida Project (2017) as Halley is homeless and loses Moonee in the end. Although they follow similar themes, Loach’s cinematography is black and white, providing a gritty tone to the film. Another example is Loach’s Poor Cow (1967) which follows a mother who turns to prostitution to provide for her son when her abusive husband is sent to jail. This is also like The Florida Project (2017) as Halley turns to prostitution to provide for her child. Similarly, to The Florida Project (2017), this film is in colour but doesn’t have the same high key effect. Poor Cow (1967) on the other hand, favours a documentary-esque naturalist lighting to portray realism. In contrast to this, although Baker wants to present realism, he wants to make it more vibrant or, as he calls it- “pop-verité” as it’s realistic but uses poppy and bright colours. Baker says, “I feel that is what's going to keep an audience engaged in 2019.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). For The Florida Project (2017) Baker took influence from the neo-realist movement in post-war Italy due to the frequent use of children as protagonists. “Where children are concerned, two myths predominate on film: that of the original innocence of children, an innocence that only becomes sullied by contact with the society of grown-ups” (Cardullo, 2015, p. 7). An example is Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) which follows the story of a man and his son who set out to find his work bicycle after it is stolen in war-torn Rome. Although this story is distressing, the emotion is amplified by the presence of an innocent child in this environment. “The post-war period was the great season of casting non-professional actors, and especially very young children due to their notorious lack of self-consciousness in front of the camera.” (Vacche, 2018, p.169). In the case of Bicycle Thieves, this was Enzo Stajola (Bruno) which was his first role, and in The Florida Project, it was Brooklynn Prince (Moonee) and this was her second, and biggest role. “Before 1900 the Lumière brothers had made the first films about children, and soon thereafter virtually every film culture grasped the new possibilities of capturing on screen children’s cuteness and mischief and pathos.” (Cardullo, 2015, p.7). In The Florida Project, Baker combines the innocence of children living in harsh circumstances and their “cuteness and mischief”. In this film the colours are heightened, like we’re experiencing life through these children’s eyes. In one scene, we follow Moonee, Scooty and Jancey as they scamper down the street, they pass odd shaped colourful buildings such as “Orange World” and the ice-cream parlour, shaped like the desert it is selling. They live in a purple motel shaped like a castle on the outside. These factors, along with the innocent dialogue, present this world as the children’s playground, filled with rainbows and wonderment. Baker places the camera low, so it is from the child’s perspective. The camera presents a low angle of adults, such as Bobby, putting the audience in the child’s shoes, like we’re looking up at him. Baker states- “It’s also a stylistic choice, Alexis, my DP, and I talked about how Spielberg was great at this where he would always keep the camera on their level to give them equality, to treat them the same way you would treat an adult.“ (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). Baker uses innocence as a contrast to the harsh realities like Italian neorealist directors do. In one scene Halley is prostituting herself in her room and hides Moonee in the bathtub. Halley’s “customer” opens the door to the bathroom, breaking this barrier between the adult and child world. We don’t see the customer’s face, the camera remains on Moonee as we follow her in this story, making this scene more shocking. Halley then draws the shower curtain as a temporary barrier between the two worlds. In another scene Halley attacks Ashley, Scooty’s mother, because she discovers Halley is prostituting herself. Although this scene is shocking already, it is amplified by the camera being positioned behind Scooty witnessing his mother being attacked. Baker says that these children have “simple eyes” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019) and therefore an event like your mother being attacked before your own “simple” eyes immediately amplifies the shock factor for the audience. In conclusion, although Baker has a vast array of influences that inspire him, he doesn’t just replicate the style. He takes aspects and makes the film his own- examples being through the colour and narrative. Baker acknowledges his many influences but says- “I always try to make my own film as well.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). The fact he uses bright cinematography contrasts the dullness of social realism and this could be because when an audience views a social realist film, they view it as a culture apart from their own, a culture lower than their class. Baker’s use of bright cinematography, brings these subcultures to the audience’s level and they remove the stigma and can see subcultures for who they really are. Chapter 3- The tradition of American indie cinema/ American social realism and how Baker follows and rebels against it. Janet Staiger describes American indie film as a cinema of “low budgets and risky subjects, themes, or plots, and neglected genres” (2013, p.21). They also “depart from Hollywood filmmaking ‘either in making greater claims to verisimilitude/realism, or in the use of more complex, stylized, expressive, showy or self-conscious forms’ and ‘offer visions of society not usually found in the mainstream” (p.21). They take part in “social engagement and/or aesthetic experimentation—a distinctive visual look, an unusual narrative pattern, a self-reflexive [sic] style”. (p.21). They traded studio shooting and rigid scripting for “real locations, improvised dialogue” like Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969) and Kes (Loach, 1969). (Staiger, 2013, p.22). “In the early 2000s only two percent of the films on US screens are foreign films: ‘The values associated with foreign film-making—serious treatment of adult issues, self-conscious cinematic style, film seen as art—were taken over by American independent film-makers’ “ (Staiger, 2013, p. 22). An example of an early independent film is Shadows (Cassavetes, 1958) which has a “lack of a narrative set-up, extended conversations among friends, episodic narrative, improvised acting, slice-of-life use of location mise-en-scène, extensive close-ups without standard continuity editing, and, importantly, explicit raising of contemporary social issues.” (Staiger, 2013, p. 24) which is very similar to British social realism films. These techniques juxtapose Hollywood films which are about providing escapism and the Hollywood system “tends to be associated with a commercial bottom line in which the sole emphasis is on blockbuster-scale franchised products designed to appeal to the widest possible global audience” (King, 2016, p.1). They focus on “action, spectacle, star appeal, simplistic narrative and broad varieties of comedy” (King, 2016, p.1). Indie films focus on “extended character exploration, flattened dramatic arcs, ‘realism’, and smaller epiphanies (rather than the blockbuster explosive climax)” (p.24). American Independent cinema theorist Anna Backman Rogers describes indie cinema or “indiewood” as “a cinema in crisis, but it is also a cinema of crisis” (2015, p. 1). Crisis “designates a turning-point within an individual’s life when old values and identities are left behind in order to receive new attributes. Crisis denotes a state of becoming-other”. “The ritual subject goes through a period of instability in which he/she is subjected to various trials and his/her former self is effaced”. (p.3). The 1970s witnessed many films produced away from the Hollywood system including A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes, 1974) and Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977). “ They were considered examples of low-budget independent filmmaking, financed and produced entirely away from the major studios and distributed by boutique releasing organisations that specialized primarily in non-US arthouse film or, quite frequently, by exploitation film distributors who added the occasional ‘quality film’ in a release slate otherwise dominated by low-budget genre filmmaking” (Tzioumakis, 2013, p. 31). By the late 1970s “a significant number of feature-length narrative films and documentaries produced entirely away from the Hollywood industry found commercial distribution and limited box office success” (2013, p.31Their commercial success encouraged “a number of contemporary critics to pronounce the arrival of a new era in independent filmmaking.” (2013, p.31) which started the first wave of independent cinema. What distinguished these films from Hollywood filmmaking were the juxtaposition of “big stars with fresh faces, big deals with intimate canvases and big studios with regional authenticity, these filmmakers treat inherently American concerns with a primarily European style” (2013, p.31). The second wave, had arguably the most important development in distribution for Indie cinema, “when United Artists created United Artists Classics with a mandate to trade in foreign arthouse films, re-releases of titles from the former’s vault and independently produced US films.” (2013. p.32), this was the start of a wave of speciality film divisions of the major studios. Films made post-1990 venture into the areas of film finance and production. “the label ‘independent’ ceased to signify economic independence from the majors when it came to questions of production; instead, the label became a signifier of a particular type of film, the ‘indie’ film” therefore presenting a different type of American indie film from the ones presented in the 1980s. A huge amount of film festivals dedicated to indie films began such as The Sundance Film Festival. This made indie cinema was popular in the mid-1990s with films like Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) being the “first indie film to break the $100 million mark at the US theatrical box office.” (Tzioumakis, 2013, p.35). The third wave is indiewood according to Tzioumakis. “The period 1996–98 seems to have held a number of events and developments that point towards a new stage in the history of the independent sector, and in this respect could function as the transitional period from indie to indiewood.” (2013, p.36). Indiewood also started studio speciality film divisions including- Fox Searchlight (1995) and Paramount Classics (1997). This started a new group of production and distribution companies including Lions Gate Films (1999). By the end of the 1990s independent films “had succeeded overwhelmingly in entering the mainstream system of commercial exploitation and finance, as the economics required to make oneself heard even as an ‘independent’.” (2013, p.36). Indiewood is a zone where “Hollywood and independent film merge or overlap” (p.36). “the most clear-cut institutional base for Indiewood is either studio created subsidiaries or independent operations taken over by studios” (p.36). In Baker’s sex work trilogy, each was made for a fairly low budget. For example, Starlet (2012) had a “$235,000 budget” and relied on awards and critical attention for its success. Baker struggled to get a budget on Tangerine (2015) and “committed to make it for less than half the cost of “Starlet” (i.e. under $117,500)” (Broderick, 2015). Baker found that shooting on an iPhone was very cost effective as it was a cheaper camera. The use of mumblecore filmmaking here is an example of the first wave of indie cinema as they are produced away from Hollywood studios and were made for a lower budget. The Florida Project (2017), on the other hand, would fit more into the third wave of indie filmmaking “indiewood” as Baker had a far greater budget of $2 million. Despite this, “The filmmaker’s kinetic camera remains intentionally raw, giving the sense of documenting. And the movie’s partially improvised script is filled with the small, well-researched details that allow the audience to understand what it’s like to live on the outer margins of American society” which fits into the first wave of indie cinema which featured many documentary films which is a style that Baker uses to present reality in his films and to exhibit his subcultures for who they really are and not how the media presents them. (O'Falt, 2017). “Mumblecore was a cycle of independent, very low budget American movies, mainly shot on digital video, that emerged in the middle of the 2000s” that feature naturalistic performances of the lives of contemporary young Americans. (Johnston, 2014, p.67). It was “coined at SXSW in 2005 by Bujalski’s sound mixer” because of the mumbled speech in the films. (Taubin, 2007, para. 2). Some examples of these films are Funny Ha Ha (Bujalski, 2002) and Hannah Takes the Stairs (Swanberg, 2007). In Taubin’s article she discusses that these films focus on heterosexual relationships. In comparison, Baker focuses on two trans-prostitutes, a young girl and her prostitute mother and a porn performer and her elderly friend. “Mumblecore's micro-budgeted minimalist aesthetic, localized D.I.Y. generative methods, and distinctively unpolished idiom actively resist both Hollywood's model of packaging, outsourcing, and merchandising, as well as recent American independent cinema's reliance on heart-warming quirkiness featuring star power working for scale.” (Filippo, 2011, p.2). Baker tends to follow this movement in terms of being low budget, American, and using naturalist performances but his films do diverge from this movement too. In an interview with IndieWire, he says “many Mumblecore films are limited to a single location, use very few actors, and have a short shooting schedule.” (Broderick, 2015). Instead, Baker decides to shoot in multiple locations in his films. For example, in Tangerine (2015) he films all around Hollywood, LA including Donutime, Taxi cabs, bars, a prostitution motel and a Taxi driver’s house. Some indie films that follow a one character study are Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012) which follows a ditsy woman (Greta Gerwig) who is trying to follow her dreams in New York City and A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes, 1974) which follows Mabel (Gena Rowlands) who is a wife and mother and her mental illness causes problems in her marriage. Sean Baker follows character studies in his oeuvre but tends to focus on multiple characters. For example, Jane and Sadie in Starlet (2012) and Sin-Dee and Alexandra in Tangerine (2015). In The Florida Project (2017), the study is predominantly on Moonee but Baker brings in characters like Halley, Bobby, Ashley, etc to present this subculture and hidden community. If he focused on a singular character it may be difficult to portray the subculture theme. It is important to focus on more than one character when exhibiting subculture as in Hebdige’s writing he discusses “expressive forms and rituals of those subordinate groups.” (Hebdige, 1979, p.2). Subcultures focus on a group/ community of people and therefore it is important to focus on multiple characters. American indie films tend to follow many techniques that social realist films do. An example of this is the use of non-professional actors that have never acted before. This allows the audience to see the person for the character they’re playing without their star persona clouding the viewing. An example of this would-be first-time actor Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) which follows his character across twelve years through his growth. Richard Dyer writes on star theory, comparing stars to having charisma which he describes as “ a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman or at least superficially exceptional qualities’.” (Dyer, 2000, p. 58). Star theorist Christine Gledhill says of Dyer’s theory that he suggests that “certain performers become stars rather than others because their images embody central but threatened values within a given social conjuncture” (Gledhill, 2000, p. xv). Baker uses Dree Hemingway in Starlet (2012), Taylor and Kiki Rodriguez in Tangerine (2015) and Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project who were all unknown actresses at the time of release. Baker “didn’t want a star” to play Halley in The Florida Project as he was “concerned that the audience was going to be taken out of it every time they saw a recognizable face in this role, because of her struggles.” (Raftery, 2017). I think that Baker found it important to cast non-actors to play characters in subcultures as he didn’t want people to recognise them but to see them as part of a different subculture and community. Hebdige describes subculture as being “opposing definitions clash with most dramatic force” (1979, p.3). This presents how a subculture rebels against the norm and as Dyer suggests, it can be difficult to see past the star to the actor they are playing, therefore they may not seem to belong in this subculture community and this takes away from the verisimilitude Baker is presenting. Due to this, he discovered Bria Vinaite on Instagram, selling her marijuana themed clothing line and to Baker it embodied Halley’s carefree spirit. This is similar to Andrea Arnold casting her lead in her American indie film American Honey (2016). Arnold discovered Sasha Lane (Star) “on a beach in Panama during Spring Break'' (Hans, 2016, p. 19). Lane had never acted, and this produced a raw performance without the star persona. Despite this, both Baker and Arnold include stars in their films. In American Honey, Arnold uses Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough and Baker uses Willem Dafoe. Despite what Baker said about not wanting a star, he says “Willem is such a transformative actor, willing to take the time to develop the character and become this guy, that I felt like he could blend in” with the non-professional actors (Kohn, 2017). This is also a technique used frequently in Indie films as presented in the third wave indiewood. Here they are merging “big stars with fresh faces” (Tzioumakis, 2013, p.31). Baker follows some of the techniques Arnold does, for example the blending of professional and non-professional actors and the use of female protagonists but, he also changes things. Baker states that social realism has its own formula and they all tend to follow the same beats. “Fish Tank is beat for beat a social realism film and I've been trying to battle against that just because I feel we've reached a point where audiences, well first off we can all shoot reality on our phones now and I don’t think it's as exciting anymore to audiences and I also feel as if audiences dealing with so much these days, and what I mean by that is social media we usually focus on the bad news” he continues by saying- “So basically what I’m trying to say is I've been trying to find a hybrid between social realism, or I guess neorealism, and poppy cinema and I feel that there was a critic that wrote up something about Tangerine when it first came out and they called it pop-verité and I loved that because it’s a perfect hybrid between pop and cinema verité and I feel that is what's going to keep an audience engaged in 2019.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). Indie cinema and social realism can focus on the negative parts of life. Arnold’s American Honey (2016) presents narratives of prostitution, drugs, poverty, bad family atmospheres and in Cassavetes A Woman Under the Influence (1974) he presents themes of mental illness and a straining marriage. Also, each film ends on a sombre note. American Honey’s ending finishes with Star prostituting herself and she remains in the situation with the mag crew at the end, nothing changes for her. A Woman Under the Influence ends with Mabel having another psychotic episode and cuts herself. Her husband, Nick, then decides to put the children to bed and then goes to bed with Mabel. Baker contrasts this in his endings as they’re always hopeful, maybe to please a more mainstream audience that desires a happy Hollywood ending. Moonee isn’t taken away by the DCF in The Florida Project (2017), instead she escapes to Disneyland. Jane doesn’t stay in the porn industry in Starlet (2012), instead she plans a trip to Paris with Sadie. Sin-Dee doesn’t end up alone in Tangerine (2015), instead she has Alexandra, and both support each other. These hopeful endings present the lighter side of subcultures that are usually presented as being dull and deviant. These endings are also very open ended. Baker states- “My endings are very deliberate; they're usually written first and it's to leave the audience thinking and asking questions and hopefully motivating them to do homework after they leave the theatre. If I gave them all the answers there wouldn't be anything to discuss afterwards right?” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). Baker makes his endings open as it encourages discussion and encourages people to research these subcultures and be made aware of the truth about them. In conclusion it is clear to see that Baker follows different waves of indie cinema from the funding of his films, the themes, and the casting. Despite this, he doesn’t follow the one-character study but follows multiple to portray a wider view of a subculture. He uses hopeful endings to potentially appeal more to a wider audience, not just a speciality audience that prefers art house cinema. ConclusionThe overarching theme is that Baker tries to present the subcultures he is portraying in a realistic but also positive light. Although he is portraying prostitutes and porn performers, subcultures audiences may portray as dirty, the audience sees them for who they truly are and can understand why each of the characters have turned to this career. It allows the audience to understand how these subcultures have adapted to their careers, in order to earn money and survive. He presents multiple scenes exhibiting an outsider's perception of these subcultures and how they are using their “common sense” (Hebdige, 1979, p.11) to portray their stereotype upon these people, as seen through the higher class couple in The Florida Project (2017), describing the motel as a “gypsy project”. He presents many of his influences in his films including Dogme 95 and British social realism but he also differs from both of these due to his use of some Steadicam cameras and the fact he favours bright, colourful cinematography over the dull cinematography you tend to find in British social realism. He states the look he is trying to achieve is “pop-verité” as he feels this is what will keep an audience engaged in more modern times. (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). In my opinion, I feel he is doing this to gain a wider audience so they can see this unfiltered view of a subculture. In Social realism films audiences tend to look on the characters presented as being below then due to the bleak and dull cinematography. Through using brighter cinematography, as presented in his sex work trilogy, it brings the characters up to the same level as the audience. For example, in Starlet (2012), the lighting is high-key and so we don’t look down on Jane and her circumstances but view her as our equal. He also is a part of the American Indie cinema, mainly the first wave as some of his films were produced away from Hollywood and also the third wave as The Florida Project (2017) can be seen as part of Indiewood due to it featuring non-professional actors and a Hollywood star. Hebdige states that higher classes have more “social authority” than the lower classes so they become “the silent majority” (Hebdige, 1979, p.18). Hebdige also discusses how subordinate groups are “dismissed, denounced and canonized; treated at different times as threats to public order and as harmless buffoons” (Hebdige, 1979, p.2). As I discussed early on, society look on people that are different to them as “threats” or “buffoons” as they aren’t living in a traditional way for a western society. Sex work isn’t considered as normal and can be describes as “deviant behaviour” (Sanders, Pitcher & O’Neill, 2009, p.1). Baker presents his characters, Halley, Jane, Sin-Dee and Alexandra as not being deviant but simply having their own way of living in order to live and provide, such as Halley providing for her daughter Mooney in The Florida Project (2017). Due to this overall perception of subcultures in subculture theory, Baker is trying to remove this stigma across his films, presenting his characters in a positive and hopeful light. He’s removing the stigma about their careers and habitats and presenting the fact that these subcultures are doing what they must do in order to survive. Baker states- “I really feel that all of my films are now a conscious but at one time, a subconscious reaction to what I’m not seeing enough of in US cinema. Literally this stems from a true interest to see more diversity on screen meaning more stories told about communities, groups of people, minorities, subcultures, microcosms that are under-represented or haven’t been represented perhaps fairly.” (S. Baker, personal communication, August 13, 2019). BibliographyArmstrong, R. (No Date). Social Realism. BFI Screen Online. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1037898/index.html
Arnold, A. (Director). (2016). American Honey. [Motion Picture] United Kingdom: Maven Pictures. Backman Rogers, A. (2015) American independent cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Baker, S. (Director). (2000). Four Letter Words. [Motion Picture]. United States: Cre Film. Baker, S. (Director). (2004). Take Out. [Motion Picture]. United States: Cre Film. Baker, S. (Director). (2008). Prince of Broadway. [Motion Picture]. United States: Little Creature. Baker, S. (Director). (2012). Starlet. [Motion Picture]. United States: Cre Film. Baker, S. (Director). (2015). Tangerine. [Motion Picture]. United States: Duplass Brothers Productions. Baker, S. (Director). (2017). The Florida Project. [Motion Picture]. United States: Cre Film. Baumbach, N. (Director). (2012). Frances Ha. [Motion Picture]. United States: Pine District Pictures. Blitz, M. (2014, September 30). A Brief History of the “Happiest Place on Earth”. Today I Found Out. Retrieved from: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/09/happiest-place-earth-history-disney-world/ . Britt, T. R. (2013) ‘Dogme 95 and disabled identity on film’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 12(3), pp. 291–304. Broderick, P. (2015, July 10). How To Be Unstoppable: Sean Baker and the Digital Filmmaking Revolution. Indiewire. Retrieved from: indiewire.com/2015/07/how-to-be-unstoppable-sean-baker-and-the-digital-filmmaking-revolution-247890/ . Bujalski, A. (Director). (2002). Funny Ha Ha. [Motion Picture]. United States: Sundance TV. Calluori, R.A. (1985, Autumn). The Kids Are Alright: New Wave Subcultural Theory. Social Text, No. 12, pp. 43-53. North Carolina: Duke University Press. Cardullo, B. (2015) ‘Neorealism, History, and The Children’s Film: Vittorio de Sica’s The Children Are Watching Us reconsidered’. Film Historia 9 (1), pp. 7-17. Cassavetes, J. (Director). (1958). Shadows [Motion Picture]. United States: Lion International. Cassavetes, J. (Director). (1974). A Woman Under the Influence. [Motion Picture]. United States: Faces. Criterion Collection. Sean Baker's DVD Picks. (7 December 2015). Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCv5MnpDqYc Denham, J. (2015, January 30). Tangerine: The Sundance Film Festival trans movie shot entirely on an iPhone 5S. Independent. Retrieved from: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/tangerine-the-sundance-film-festival-trans-movie-shot-entirely-on-an-iphone-5s-10013900.html De Sica, V. (Director). (1948). Bicycle Thieves [Motion Picture]. Italy: Produzioni De Sica. Dyer, R. (1991). Charisma. (58-61). In C. Gledhill (Ed). Stardom Industry of Desire. London: Routledge. Filippo, M. S. (2011) ‘A Cinema of Recession MICRO-BUDGETING, MICRO-DRAMA, AND THE “MUMBLECORE” MOVEMENT’, CINEACTION -TORONTO- (pp. 2-8). Frederick, T. (2019). Conceptualizing the social and cultural organization of street life among young people experiencing homelessness.’ Journal of YouthStudies, 22(8), pp. 1133-1149. Friess, S. (2014, February 28). Don't Applaud Jared Leto's Transgender 'Mammy'. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/10650/dont-applaud-jared-letos-transgender-mammy/ . Gelder, K. (2007). Subcultures. Cultural Histories and Social Practice. Oxon: Routledge. Gledhill, C. (1991). Stardom Industry of Desire. London: Routledge. Greenburg, J. and Gaia, A. C. (2019) ‘Interpersonal Contact, Stereotype Acceptance, Gender Role Beliefs, Causal Attribution, and Religiosity as Predictors of Attitudes Toward Transgender Individuals’, Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 24(1), pp. 18–32. Griffith, J. et al. (2012) ‘A Comparison of Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes, Self-Esteem, Quality of Life, and Drug Use Among Pornography Actors and a Matched Sample’, International Journal of Sexual Health, 24(4), pp. 254–266. Hans, S. (2016, October). Wandering Star. Sight & Sound, 26(10) pp. 18- 22. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: the meaning of style. London ; New York : Routledge. Hoffower, H. (2020, February 25). A family feud over a $400 million trust fund, a massive fortune that left one heiress with an inferiority complex, and a sprawling media empire. Meet the Disney family. Business Insider. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-family-net-worth-fortune-media-walt-2019-6?r=US&IR=T . Hopper, D. (Director). (1969). Easy Rider [Motion Picture]. United States: Pando Company Inc. Hughes, K. (2018). From Escalation to Abjection: Depictions of Subculture in Quadrophenia and Ill Manners (pp.237- 253) . In N. Bentley, B. Johnson & A. Zieleniec (Eds.) Youth Subcultures in Fiction, Film and Other Media: Teenage Dreams. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Huq, R. (2015). Young People on the Edge A World of Post-Subcultures and Post-Suburbs? (pp. 107-122) In B. Segaert, J. Haers, A. Dhoest & S. Malliet (Eds). The Borders of Subculture : Resistance and the Mainstream. Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies. New York: Routledge. Jenks, C. (2005). Subculture the Fragmentation of the Social. London: Sage Publications. Johnston, N. (2014) ‘THEORIZING “BAD” SOUND: What Puts the “Mumble” into Mumblecore?’, Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, (74), pp. 67–79. Jones, H. D. (2016) ‘UK/European Co-productions: The Case of Ken Loach’, Journal of British Cinema & Television, 13(3), pp. 368–389. Kermode, M. (2017, November 12). The Florida Project review – thrillingly vibrant. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/12/the-florida-project-review-sunshine-state-of-mind . King, G. (2016) Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in Contemporary Studio Film. London: I.B. Tauris. Kohn, E, (2017, October 4). Willem Dafoe On What He Learned from Working with Non-Actors on ‘The Florida Project’ — Exclusive. Indiewire. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/willem-dafoe-interview-the-florida-project-oscars-1201883667/ . Lay, S. (2002) British social realism: from documentary to Brit-grit. New York: Wallflower Lee, S. (Director). (2012). Red Hook Summer. [Motion Picture]. United States: 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks. Leigh, M. (Director). (1990). Life is Sweet. [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Channel 4 Films. Leigh, M. (Director). (1993). Naked. [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Channel 4 Films. Leigh, M. (Director). (1996). Secrets & Lies. [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Channel 4 Films. Leow, K. (2015) ‘Independence Transcendent’, MovieMaker, 22(114), pp. 56–63. Linklater, R. (Director). (2014). Boyhood. [Motion Picture]. United States: ICF Productions. Loach, K. (Director). (1966). Cathy Come Home. [Television Play]. United Kingdom: BBC. Loach, K. (Director). (1967). Poor Cow. [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Vic Films Productions. Loach, K. (Director). (1969). Kes [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Kestrel Films. Luscombe, R. (2017, October 15). In the shadow of Disney, living life on the margins. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/15/in-the-shadow-of-disney-living-life-on-the-margins . Lynch, D. (Director). (1977). Eraserhead. [Motion Picture]. United States: AFI. Monks Kaufman, S. (2017, November 9). Sean Baker: ‘If you’re a filmmaker in the 21st century, it’s hard not to be a social activist’. White Little Lies. Retrieved from https://lwlies.com/interviews/sean-baker-the-florida-project/ . National Centre for Transgender Equality. (2016, July 9). Understanding Transgender People: The Basics. Retrieved from https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-transgender-people-the-basics . Naughton, J. (2018, December 30). The growth of internet porn tells us more about ourselves than technology. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/30/internet-porn-says-more-about-ourselves-than-technology . Nayman, A. (2012) ‘Golden Girls: Sean Baker’s Starlet’, Cinema Scope, 52, pp. 31–35. Nwalozie, C. J. (2015) Rethinking Subculture and Subcultural Theory in the Study of Youth Crime – A Theoretical Discourse. Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Criminology, 7 (1), (pp. 1-16). O'Falt, C. (2017, October 6). ‘The Florida Project’: Sean Baker Almost Lost His Crew and Movie During Production. Indiewire. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/florida-project-sean-baker-almost-lost-crew-avoids-disaster-1201884419/ . O’Sullivan, S. (2011) Mike Leigh. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Park, R.E. (1915, March). The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behaviour in the City Environment. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 20(5). pp. 577-612. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peirce, K. (Director). (1999). Boys Don’t Cry. [Motion Picture]. United States: Fox Searchlight Pictures. Porton, R. (2017) ‘Life on the Margins: An Interview with Sean Baker’, Cineaste: America’s Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema, 43(1), pp. 22–25. ProCon. Org. (2018, April 5). US Federal and State Prostitution Laws and Related Punishments. Retrieved from https://prostitution.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000119 . Raftery, B. (2017, October 16). How Instagram Helped Discover One of This Year's Breakout Movie Stars. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/florida-project-breakout-star-instagram/ . Roach, H. (Creator). (1955). The Little Rascals [Television Show]. United States: Hal Roach Studios. Sanders, T., Pitcher, J. and O’Neill, M. (2009) Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Staiger, J. (2013). Independent of What? Sorting out differences from Hollywood. (15-27). In G. King, C. Molloy & Y. Tzioumakis (Eds). American independent cinema.: indie, indiewood and beyond. New York: Routledge. Suzanne-Mayer, D. (2017, October 5). Find Your Kingdom: A Conversation with Florida Project Filmmaker Sean Baker. Consequence of Sound. Retrieved from https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/10/find-your-kingdom-a-conversation-with-florida-project-filmmaker-sean-baker/ . Swanberg, J. (Director). (2007). Hannah Takes the Stairs. [Motion Picture]. United States: IFC Films. Tarantino, Q. (Director). (1994). Pulp Fiction. [Motion Picture]. United States: Miramax. Taubin, A. (2007). Mumblecore: All Talk? FilmComment. Retrieved from https://www.filmcomment.com/article/all-talk-mumblecore/ . Tzioumakis, Y. (2013). Towards a periodisation of contemporary (post-1980) American independent cinema. (28-40). In G. King, C. Molloy & Y. Tzioumakis (Eds). American independent cinema.: indie, indiewood and beyond. New York: Routledge. Vacche, A.D. (2018) ‘American Neorealism? Sean Baker’s The Florida Project’, Cinergie, Vol 7, Iss 13, Pp 169-171 (2018), (13), p. 169. Vallée, J.M. (Director). (2013). Dallas Buyers Club. [Motion Picture]. United States: Truth Entertainment. Von Trier, L. & Vinterberg, T, (1995). The Vow of Chastity. Dogme95.dk. Retrieved from http://www.dogme95.dk/the-vow-of-chastity/ . Voss, G. (2015). Stigma and the Shaping of the Pornography Industry. New York: Routledge. Waters, J. (Director). (1972). Pink Flamingos [Motion Picture]. United States: Dreamland. Weinstein, M. (2013) ‘The Heart of the Porn Industry’, MovieMaker, 20(103), pp. 24–26.
0 Comments
|
AboutThis dissertation was completed as my final project at university. It was inspired by my interest of subcultures and Sean Baker's oeuvre. ArchivesCategories |