“Shakespeare, He’s in the Alley” & “Indie Culture: In Pursuit of the Authentic Autonomous Alternative”

1. Some broad characteristics of "Van Santized" Shakespeare are are costumes meant to "evoke Elizabethan dress" fused with more current fashions, script elements reminiscent of current slang and Shakespearean dialogue which are used in scenes that are traditional in nature while still bringing about certain aspects of Portland.  More specifically, Gus Van Sant had to change the tone of the dialogue to better fit into the landscape and feel of Portland.  He makes the characters into street hustlers.  Shakespearean characters, such as Hal, were changed to fit the new setting of the life of street hustlers in Portland, like Hal becoming Scott Favor, the son of Portland's mayor who spends his time upsetting his father by hanging out with the street hustlers.  Other characters in the film also have commonalities to Shakespearean characters while being shaped to fit into the location of Portland.

2. The characters of Mike and Bob both represent different avatars of the Falstaff of the original story.  Mike represents the younger version of Falstaff who "cavorted" with Hal as a brother before the time of the original play.  Bob, however, fulfills the traditional role of Falstaff in the original play.  Seeing both aspects of Falstaff's relationship with Hal allows for the story to be re-examined and looked at from a different perspective.  Chimes at Midnight becomes a frame of reference for Van Sant's retelling of Henry IV in My Own Private Idaho because it follows the story of Falstaff directly while adapting five Shakespearean plays to tell his story.  This makes the film very important as Van Sant splits Falstaff into two characters, Mike and Bob, and must truly understand the journey that the character takes while seeing how to successfully adapt Shakespeare for the big screen.

3. Some of the effects of Falstaff being changed from a "knight lowering himself" to a street hustler in Portland are the fact that Scott's rejection of both Mike and Bob comes across much more harshly than Hal's rejection of his mentor in the plays, with Scott's father only being a mayor and not merely a king, Scott cannot merely ignore parts of his past in order to ascend to the throne his father one held at the time of his father's death, and by having both Mike and Bob be hustlers who share in a gay relationship with Scott before he becomes a "sellout to straight society and its corruption," Van Sant is able to issue challenges of status and place.  This, in effect, leaves the audience with more of a sense of guilt as they bear witness to the downfall of both Mike and Bob at the film's end, and the characters are meant to be "remembered and memorialized" regardless of their lower station in life.  Van Sant, then, shows the damage caused by the Scott Favors of the world and aligns himself with the street hustlers.

4. This changed context, with two Falstaffs, Scott's rejection of the homosexual street hustlers, and his supposed selling out to "straight society and its corruptions, changes our perception of Scott Favors by painting him as a guy who rejects no one but two friends for his own ascension in the society in which he lives while completely rejecting the lifestyle of the street hustlers.  The focus of the end of the story is not on that of the new life of the "glorious king."  Instead, it focuses on the damage done by Scott Favors' selfishness.

5. Newman believes that "indie" is a distinction not determined by an industrial definition because the independent films, music, etc. being produced and distributed by major labels from the supposed indie labels of the past did not "diminish its salience" in our culture.  Instead, it "amplified" the salience of independent media in our culture.  The alternative discourse remains integral in "indie" appeal by producing media outside of the mainstream norm.  Instead of hurting the independent film and media community, the co-opting of "indie" media by mainstream media turned the mainstream industry into competition for itself as the studios struggled to get the "niche" products out to as many people as possible who might be satisfied by such forms of media.  "Indie" media criticizes mass culture while perpetuating the ideas that promotes the ideals of the social elite.  The "tension at the heart of indie cinema and culture between ideals and realities" is: "an oppositional formation that sees itself as the solution to an excessively homogenized, commercialized media" and "a form of expression that is itself commercial and... serves to promote the interests of a class of sophisticated consumers."

6. One big meaning of the term "independent" is the ability of its audience, a subculture all their own, to form their own identities from the perceived authenticity of the medium and its supposed distance from the mainstream, such as seen in the music industry.  "Indie" can be seen as opposition, as distinction, more authentic than the "mainstream" culture.  These definitions, or meanings, span across music, film, literature, and any other media that circulates within a cultural community.

7. The “major shift in the popular understanding of “selling out” and its relation to alternative credibility was the "upsurge" of popular music being used in television commercials in the late 1990s.  Instead of being met with opposition, the alternative community and fans welcomed the use of the songs by these popular artists because it allowed an outlet for music and artists that would not be given enough exposure without the use of television, since radio and music television stations, such as MTV, were only willing to use the safer, mainstream artists' music.  Allowing mainstream media, in the form of television networks, to use their music was no longer seen as "selling out" in a bad way as much as it was a means of survival for bands who were unwilling to sign with a major record label for fear of compromising their music.  Also, this allows for these "indie" artists, filmmakers, etc. to "subversively" infiltrate the mainstream world as a means of justification for taking the money and still staying credible.

8. With a statement like, “Like traditional high art, indie cinema appeals to an audience who has the wherewithal to appreciate it, which is to say knowledge and interest, and a community of like-minded people," Newman needs to back his statement up.  He supports this statement by first comparing it to American indie rock and how it used to be known as college rock in the 1980s.  This allowed for a connotation of not only a "college" level of education but as a social class.  In order to keep people out who might not be "like-minded," indie cultures, or subcultures, creates exclusionary boundaries or radical ideals to set themselves apart from others.  

9. Newman suggests that Todd Soldonz's Happiness “reveals how the indie scene attempts to have it both ways: it seeks autonomy but also profit, authenticity but also a marketing push, art without the taint of commerce but enough commerce to make the art pay” because as the film ran the film festival circuit, it gained a notoriety for being explicitly outside of the Hollywood mainstream by playing an oppositional role to many of the films that had already been released by major studios in the film industry.  When it made the theater circuit, it wasn't given a rating by the MPAA, so many theaters would not play it and many advertisers would not give it any publicity.  When the filmmakers refused to recut the film to gain an R rating so that the film could reach more audiences in more theaters, the film was dropped from distribution.  Critics really gave Universal a hard time for dropping the film and said that the studio not picking the film up only helped to make the film more authentic by keeping it distanced from the studio system of Hollywood.  By rejecting the film, Universal actually played a hand in helping the film to gain popularity when it was finally distributed domestically by Good Machine because many film critics already knew of the controversy and were, therefore, already familiar with the film.  

While Happiness did end up with quite a following and would have been critically known after its success on the festival circuit, it stands to reason, or at least be questioned, that the film could not have become famous by standing on its own if it wasn't for being picked up and then dropped by a major film studio like Universal, therefore, it questions how successful artistic autonomy can really be, especially as the film's producers blamed the lack of commercial success on Universal and that their second distributor was not experienced enough to market the film effectively.  They were unwilling to alter the film to get Universal's marketing push, but they still wanted to make money off of the product.

10. Some critics still condemn the mainstream co-opting of indie culture, and Newman draws this conclusion about their point of view: “A central problem with this perspective is that it gives too much uncritical credibility to the “authentic” subculture, failing to identify its function in maintaining class distinction. It also, crucially, misrecognizes the relation of indie culture to commercial culture as one of actual autonomy—as if such a thing were possible.”  This is an issue because it allows those critics, as well as those people who do not associate themselves with the mainstream mentality, develop a condescending, elitist outlook on those who enjoy mainstream media.  Consumers of mainstream culture are only seen as "passive victims."  However, many of the consumers of indie culture, meaning those who are not elitists, do not see accepting indie to infiltrate parts of the mainstream culture as "selling out" or being a bad thing.  Instead, the culture's participants are the ones who are truly able to decide what is credible or what is not credible "within the context of their experience."  Therefore, the critics do not have the authority to defend or attack the credibility of the mainstream culture or the "indie" subculture which they are criticizing.