The Illusion of Depth

On the 7th of April, 1932, future-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a radio speech addressing the many problems facing Depression-hit America at that time. Touching on a number of points (and laying the groundwork for what would presently become known as the "New Deal") he expounds on the plight of those hit hardest by the economic downturn: These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten , the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. "Forgotten Man" (1934) Maynard Dixon Roosevelt himself had not personally coined the term Forgotten Man but he was the one who successfully made the label synonymous with the destitute masses of unemployed and homeless who were rapidly becoming a familiar sight in 1930s America. By the time Roosevelt took...

There's an old saying: It takes two to tango. I'm not (just) bringing that up because the Step Up franchise is all about the dancing; I'm bringing it up because the Step Up franchise is, well... a franchise . And you really can't have a franchise with only one film. Actually, I'm not even sure you can have a franchise with two films. Is there a threshold? How many instalments does it take before a series gets to call itself a franchise ,   anyway ? ( It Takes Four to Franchise? ) There were eventually five films in the Step Up Universe, so the issue is completely moot in this context, but hey; something to think about... In any event, the first sequel is always the moment where the film-makers need to start defining their product. What exactly makes a film identifiable as a Step Up movie? Is it about the further adventures of the same characters? ( spoiler : no) Is it the same writer/director team? (not really) Is it an otherwise unrelated movie that happens to ...

When is a musical not a musical? When Jon M. Chu (director of Step Up 2 in 2008) tried to describe his film to an interviewer in 2019, he coined the term dancical (a musical with dances rather than songs). Sidestepping the minor point that the most memorable musicals ever filmed have featured quite spectacular dance sequences... ...it is revealing that Chu was so reluctant to refer to his film (or presumably the rest of the "Step Up" franchise) as a musical .  It's possible of course that he was afraid "musical" might conjure up some unwanted preconceptions with the film's target demographic, but I tend to think there was something deeper going on here. There is an argument to be made that the Step Up movies are not musicals, insofar as the characters never actually break into spontaneous song (or dance) at a moment's notice (well... hardly ever... but we'll deal with that when the time comes). They are films about dancers, and so there is a lot of...

Six months ago, I launched our current series of films, which I have been calling Depression/Comedy .  At the time, I spoke (perhaps controversially) about my reasons for presenting this series . When times are bad, suffering can be seductive, and it is all too easy to allow the suffering to define you. The pain, the misery, the anger can become your identity, and before you know it, that is all that everyone else can see. What I hope I have been able to convey in this series is how hard film-makers of the 1930s worked to avoid that. Things may be awful, but that doesn't mean we have to abandon art, and it doesn't mean that any art that is produced has be about nothing but the awfulness. At the same time, it is not necessary to completely ignore the hardships we are facing. It is possible to acknowledge painful realities without allowing that pain to become the be-all and the end-all of existence. If anything, Bad Times make it more important than ever to hold on to all the oth...