CHAPTER SIX.

Case Study Analysis: Up, Close & Personal (1996):Redford’s Compromised Return

“Our opening observations concern the function of the film as a corporate text and assume, thence, that it performs as an advocate of certain corporate ideologies. In order to succeed, however, it needs to act as a rhetor in constructing a positon (through the story) that, from Cheney (1991),

“…must foster some type of identification or association between his or her interests and those of the audience addressed. Any organization that seeks to speak to one or more publics must observe these complementary principles. That means that in organizational settings an entity or an individual must find ways to adapt to other’s views while maintaining the distinctiveness claimed by the rhetor.” (Cheney, 1991, p. 170).

With these important provisos in mind, we shall begin our analysis with a unique insight into the documented operations of the corporate author, in this case, the Disney Corporation.

When screenwriters the late John Gregory Dunne and his wife Joan Didion attended an initial script conference at Disney’s Burbank headquarters in 1989, for example, they had little confidence that the proposed project under discussion would engage the family-orientated corporate executives of Touchstone Pictures. The proposed script – provisionally entitled Golden Girl – was to be based on the true-life of Jessica Savitch who emerged from small-town beginnings to become a nationally recognised and renowned television journalist but who died at the age of 35 in a ugly freak car accident. Her career arc was in dramatic contrast to that of former Nixon press aide Diane Sawyer who, as the script was being discussed, was establishing herself as correspondent on Don Hewitt’s 60 Minutes.

By the time the film was nearing actual production, Sawyer would be making fast ground as co-anchor on the CBS PrimeTime Live. The success of this programme would secure her $7 million contract of 1994, about the time when the film was in production.

Disney’s Problem with Reality

Back in 1989, however, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then Head of Motion Picture Production at Disney, was confronted with entirely different real-life story material. He was prepared to make an offer “if somewhere in Savitch’s messy life we could find an angle that would fit within the studio’s story parameters” (Dunne, 1997, p.17). The crucial point at the start of the meeting was the issue of veracity, of how close, or how far, the writers were prepared to veer from the established facts of her short vainglory life.

As recounted by Dunne (Monster, 1997), Katzenberg immediately contravened the proven record of history on which the film would be based by asking simply, “Did she have to die in the end?”. For Dunne (1997) and his wife, it was a,

“…question we had anticipated. If the character was not called Jessica Savitch, we answered carefully, then it was not necessary that she die. Disney, with its family reputation was also uncomfortable with Savitch’s addiction to cocaine. The transformation had begun… Savitch had once had an affair with CBS newscaster Ed Bradley, and we surmised that the interracial nature of that relationship might be another source of discomfort for Disney’s core audience. Her abortions could also pose a problem, as could her two marriages, especially the second to a gay gynecologist who, less than a year after they married, hanged himself from a cross-beam in the basement of her Philadelphia home.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 19-20)

As if this was not enough, Dunne (1997) concludes that it was,

“…clear that an uplifting story that would make an audience feel good about itself was not going to encompass any allusion either to Savitch’s suicide attempts or to the lesbian episodes in her life.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 19-20)

Dunne and Didion recognised quickly the emerging studio “story parameters” that demanded a scenario “that will make the audience walk out feeling uplifted, good about something and good about themselves…” (Dunne, 1997, p.17). In time,

“Jessica Savitch, a middle-class Jewish girl from Kennet Square, Pennsylvania, was fast becoming Sallyanne Atwater, trailer trash from Stateline, Nevada.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 25)

Dunne and Didion proceeded, through numerous on-going contracts and several executive changes, to deliver an acceptable script to the main “elements”. Looking to the character of Warren Justice, for example, early drafts by Dunne and Didion attempted to draw some parallels with his real-life counterpart, Ron Kershaw,

“He would drink too much, smoke rock cocaine, be a full-time philanderer, the kind of self-destructive “dark star…that explodes and sucks in everything else around him”.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 30)

In early 1990, however, the Disney story executives submitted extensive response notes to first draft work, which Dunne (1997) summarises as follows. From Disney’s point of view,

““We agreed to make Tally a more sympathetic character. We feel it essential to show that Tally has other aspects to her personality besides her ambition. If we are to root for her, we must see she has doubts and insecurities, compassion and love. We’d like to help balance her character by showing…instances of kindness towards co-workers. We discussed making Warren a more accessible character by making him more likeable”.” (in Dunne, 1997, p. 32-33)

The notes emerged from a meeting between the writers and Touchstone’s President David Hoberman and an assortment of creative executives,

“…many of whom are second-generation Hollywood, often innocent of history, politics, art and Western civilization.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 32)

After twenty seven script drafts, Golden Girl would emerge seven years later as Up, Close and Personal (1996), staring Robert Redford and with Michelle Pfeiffer in the central role of Tally Atwater. By September of that year, it would gross over $100 million in U.S. box-office rentals alone. At the head of the film titles is the putative name of the production company ‘Cinergy Films’.

This short account juxtaposing the contrast between the true story of Jessica Savitch and Ron Kershaw (as described by Dunne, 1997) and the screen images (as consciously constructed/nudged by Disney’s Touchstone) reveals much about how corporate ideologies directly impact upon screen storytelling within Hollywood. The irony is all the greater in the case of a film that appropriates a deconstructuralist agenda by exploring the social nature of identity and exposing the operations of (‘tabloid’) news. It also vividly crystallises the importance of representation as an avenue of critical analysis within Media Education since,

“…uncovering the many levels of construction…in media messages is helpful to see that what is “constructed” by just a few people then becomes the way it is (or worldview) for the rest of us who buy into the message as news, textbook story, or TV sitcom.” (Semali, 2000, p. 94)

So, a story representing the life of a woman devoted to the verities of news presentation in the 1980s would emerge within the secure “story parameters” of the Disney corporation in the 1990s in order to make mainstream audiences “feel good about themselves”.

Corporate Narrative Strategies

The story is framed at the beginning by Atwater’s own account of her rise to success. With some gesture towards deconstructive irony, this takes the form of a back-stage studio interview where she answers off-camera (male) questions in conventional Hollywood terms as the star. We the film audience are privileged in witnessing the televisualised construction of the emerging set-up that brings together lights, background-feed, and off- camera question cues. We witness in Pfeiffer’s nuanced performance Atwater’s own skill in successfully merging both the private and public personae who is personable, beautiful and suited. This level of mature, seasoned and polished professionalism is neatly contrasted with video clips showing her past amateur attempts at news journalism in the 1980s as she, pioneer-like, constructed her own cv video portfolio despite shaky camera set-ups and in the face of intemperate weather conditions.

However, despite the film’s opening posture that appears to contrast truth and visual construction, there exists no real critical incision that undermines or questions television or film’s claim on veracity. Indeed, Scott Rudin, an early producer on the film, would insist to the harassed screenwriters, “I keep telling you, this is a picture about two movie stars…” (Dunne, 1997, p. 127)

With the happy ending neatly established at the start, the initial narrative arc takes us from Atwater’s poor mid-west beginnings in Nevada (surrogate mother to her baby sister) to a small-scale Miami affiliate station where she is employed first as tight-skirted and clumsy secretary, then novice weather ‘girl’ and finally challenging ace reporter. The second stage, or act two, takes her further towards network heaven – to Philadelphia – where she builds on the ground work in Miami. Here she proves herself as hardened street journalist while trapped in a highly dangerous (black) prison riot. The successful network pick-up of her work from the prison promotes her to the prestigious Independent Broadcast System (IBS) at the end of act three. This positive narrative charge is quickly followed by the death of her husband, Warren Justice/Robert Redford, while researching a foreign war news report. The film concludes with a return to the opening narrative frame and her acceptance speech at the annual network conference where she receives an award as journalist of the year.

Her advance through the (white) male dominated media industry, however, is guided by the sure and seasoned hand of Warren Justice, former Washington, D.C. crusading reporter of the 1970s, and current station producer of WMIA News, Channel 9 in Miami. In typical Pygmalion fashion, Justice takes the novice Atwater through a hardened course of news journalism, sharpening her clothes style, her hair, her language and even her name (now ‘Tally’), towards the honourable profession of “getting the story” by at first identifying with the plight of victims of natural and social tragedy and then delivering a professional account with sufficient relevant informed context to the television audience.

Justice takes Atwater through a steep learning curve on-the-job – undertaking politically charged interviews, overseeing his deft finger work on the editing consoles where crude footage is turned to “gold” and, crucially, writing and then delivering stories on screen in a way that magically combines her personal/social commitment to politically charged issues with a performance that is soon recognised by the film audience as a hard-won professional screen presence to be admired. As an added layer of irony, the process mirrors the conventional assumptions and working practices of Actor Studio training – the breaking down of the actor, the stirring of empathy for the character, and final delivery as a natural persona merging wholly with the role.

The overall ideological agenda, then, is to merge prevailing Feminist discourses concerning career advancement in traditional male dominated industries to the mainstream (largely male) fantasy that such advancement can only be achieved with the help and assistance of the gallant and selfless male Knight over other women (in Proppian terms this would be the Helper providing the Magical Agent to aid the hero in his – now her - Quest).

Part 2

Star Theory and Genre – Redford’s Completed Trilogy

One telling element that helps support this agenda is, of course, the figure of Warren Justice as played by Robert Redford “a brilliant, hard edged, veteran newsman…” (video cover). We have already registered from Dunne (1997) how the Justice character was evolving, even before Robert Redford became attached to the production and, further, how it was Redford’s firm commitment as an “element” to do the project that accelerated the production schedule into the green light. In reverential terms, Dunne (1997) reminds us that, like other screen icons,

“What he brings to the party is the power of his iconography, a presence that must be heeded. He is not only a movie star…but also the producer of, among other films, All the President’s Men; the director who won an Academy Award for Ordinary People and was a nominee for Quiz Show…and an environmentalist not known to suffer fools or politicians gladly.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 148)

And it is this aspect of the star as a signifying practice that helps refine our appreciation of the film’s overall ideological agenda. Dunne’s (1997) reference to Redford’s All the President’s Men (1976) indirectly supports Dyer’s (1979) contention that, any film,

“…may, through its deployment of other signs of character and the rhetoric of film, bring out certain features of the star’s image and ignore others. In other words, from the structured polysemy of the star’s image certain meanings are selected in accord with the overriding conception of the character in the film.” (Dyer, 1979, p. 143)

Those meanings and intertextual allusions which Up, Close and Personal (1996) draw upon range across Redford’s established screen persona as a Romantic lead (The Way We Were, 1973), fashionable man of mystery (The Great Gatsby, 1974), but more crucially, they draw on his role as crusading ace Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men (1976). Bearing in mind that film’s own tortured inconsistencies, the film represented Redford as Woodward and Hoffman as Bernstein as the archetypal Liberal consciences of the American Left which brought down the corrupt Nixon Presidency through the operations of the free press and the noble pursuit of truth (Boylan, 1998 and Dyer, 1979).

Redford’s known political allegiances since the 1970s have emerged in his ‘outspoken’ criticisms on Republican environment policies and, more recently, George W. Bush’s assumed qualities as U.S. President. In addition, other films including The Candidate (1972) and more notably Quiz Show (1994) confirm his on-going engagement with the influence of television on American culture and particularly the direct impact of the network television broadcasting on the American electoral system. Lastly, his support for the Sundance Institute positions him, however uncertainly, as a leading figure in the area of U.S. independent filmmaking in contrast to the mainstream Hollywood system in which he functions primarily as star-icon “element”.

Redford’s casting as Warren Justice, therefore, requires some scrutiny if we are to fuse star performance (Dyer, 1979) to the film’s underlying rhetorical strategies (Dow, 1996).

We first see him, notably from the Atwater/Pfeiffer camera point of view, wearily dictating to his main anchor the closing lines of the news broadcast (a generic echo of Broadcast News (1987)). As he soon explains to Atwater, the criteria that determine news content and selection follows the ugly commercial logic that has been inherited from the 1980s – that, “If it bleeds it leads…”. In typical fashion, the station focuses primarily on not delivering human interest stories, but presenting all possible stories as human interest stories to meet the commercial needs of the advertisers (“there must be a kid caught in the wreckage before we go to the break…” he instructs). In this way, the film representation of news broadcasting neatly agrees (however lightly) with those fore-mentioned contemporary critical commentaries from Postman (1987) through McChesney (1999) and Foerstel (2001), for example. Redford ‘speaks’, and as we would expect, in this instance for the Liberal conscience against the corporate commercialism of news content. Like his vainglory predecessors in previous decades, Howard Beale/Peter Finch in Network (1976) and Jane Craig/Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), he personifies the more noble ethics of investigative journalism amidst the contemporary wreckage of (cable) commercial entertainment. In this respect the process of cultural appropriation by mainstream corporate media of alternative social narratives has already begun in act one.

As Atwater learns from her own active research initiative, Justice’s present position contrasts strongly with his half-buried past where as ace Washington Post reporter during the 1970s he enjoyed privileged inside access to the corridors of power (wall photographs and archive footage preserve the image of the younger Justice/Redford characteristically questioning Nixon in the Oval Office and, by way of contrast, smiling in friendly association with Democrat President Carter). Her greater appreciation of his former prestige and, by inference, his Left-Wing leanings, counterbalances and begins to eclipse his problematic role as father-figure/villain. Her trust and growing respect is further secured with his offer of promotion from bouncy fun weather girl to seriously committed ‘beat’ journalist – without the usual sexual claims and expectations that she has grown to (rightly) anticipate in the male dominated industry.

With their professional working understanding now in place, (in wild contradiction, we are reminded, to the original Atwater-Kershaw template), Atwater and Justice proceed as a wholesome team from the House of Disney to merge her 1990s aspirations towards stardom and fame with his politically engaged journalist commitment as developed in the 1970s. Aspects of Redford’s star iconography as crusading social conscience are therefore carefully plundered and shaped to enforce the film’s overall rhetorical move towards legitimising her eventual and rightful place as news anchor and, by implication, the contemporary corporate broadcast system of the 1990s – both presented as a natural extension of the more Liberal crusading era in journalism of the 1970s against which it is customarily and negatively contrasted (Boylan, 1998). In advertising circles, this would be customary ‘rub-off’, that is, the deliberate association of certain positive connotations from one superior product or brand (in this case, crusade journalism of the 1970s) onto another competitor of lowered status in the public eye (market journalism of the 1990s).

Justice’s journalist commitment – to contextualise human-interest stories – emerges forcefully in scenes that both sharpen Atwater’s own training (a number of stories focus on social issues that underscore the plight of the underprivileged) and his growing impatience with the commercial imperatives of his job. In one particular scene, for example, he berates the station owner in Miami for the patronising representation of the elderly and complains openly about the station’s news style and content that is driven only by commercial imperatives (as if this is something he has just discovered). The conflict between his 1970s journalist ethic and the contemporary commercial environment in which he struggles signals his more independent move through acts two and three which cover failed interviews, his marriage to his successful wife and their attempts in Pennsylvania as a news working team.

However, while the film begins and continues through act one and two with some critical account of the news broadcasting industry, voiced largely through Justice, it proceeds – through Atwater’s on-going rise to network success – to isolate, personalise and sift out such qualifications in favour of a wholly positive account that ends with her own successful move to network IBS in Washington,D.C.

Part of that sifting requires that Justice leave the scene. While original drafts required that he die from a car crash, the final act propels him abroad in pursuit of a breaking story in Panama which, in ideological terms, is the perfect squaring of the contradiction that has generated the film’s discourse. His death in a Panamanian war zone concurs with his perceived heroic role as the traditional committed reporter (paying local news teams from his own account). It is used within the film’s rhetorical discourse to forward the fantasy that such stories really do emerge from the valiant and committed few journalists out to “get the story” for the the folks back home.

In a film celebrating the trustworthy alliance of news broadcasting and film discourse, it is only fitting that the final exchange between the married couple should take place in the form of a live television link from Washington, D.C. to Panama and made possible by Atwater’s obliging new corporate bosses. The scene that unites the suited Atwater in her studio/home and the unshaven Warren Justice in his jungle rout is literally the final bind that seals their contrasting fates. Story source and corporate communicator are finally united through the very media of film and news broadcast that defines their existence, a transparent Realist style (‘Hollywood’) supporting its television counterpart. Invited to appropriate Atwater’s point of view, the film audience is positioned to read the televisual live transmission, if not real, as at least credible. Eye-line matches across woven close-ups realistically merge film and television frames that weld star images into a transparent truthful whole. The married couple’s mutual and intimate recognition through the televisual screen serves to confirm television’s own claim on veracity and emotional truth, as obligingly supported by the film frame.

Appropriating Alternative Agendas

As already outlined, another significant element in the legitimisation process that the film works towards is in how the notion of villainy shifts from the male to the female as Atwater/Pfeiffer is promoted from affiliate to network. This is clearly crucial, particularly in a film identifying with a woman’s struggle within a traditional male dominated industry and which thereby purports to uphold and confirm a broadly Liberal account of the Women’s Liberation agenda that, in its more conservative shading, promotes equality of opportunity in a given capitalist system. The contradiction is neatly crystallised in Touchstone’s own marketing review which betrays lingering misogynist agendas:

“Tally’s ascension takes her away from her lover/mentor when she is forced to relocate to Philadelphia. Tally struggles to stay afloat at her new assignment while dodging jabs from Marcia McGrath (Stockard Channing), a veteran warhorse reporter who jealousy protects her position as number one.” (http://movies.yahoo.com, 10.06.2002)

Any questioning of the news industries’ actual institutional bias against woman both before and behind the camera (Benokraitis and Feagin, 1995) may at first be addressed in act one (incorporation of alternative agendas) but it is then later neatly elided and replaced within a professional personalised contest between female journalists and within a generational/ageist context, with the elder McGrath/Channing “warhorse” eventually eased off stage and moved to Los Angeles. In contrast, the representation of men – particularly the corporate controllers of IBS in Washington, D.C. towards the end – becomes increasingly dramaturgically softened, thus countering and deflating Atwater’s initial resistance to accepting male assistance and management. Atwater’s initial meeting at their headquarters in this respect is noteworthy in terms of actual film analysis, since the film audience shares her camera point of view as she enters the expansive and inviting womb-like office and thus ‘meets’ their direct and obsequious welcomes direct to camera. ‘We’, as Atwater, are thereby modestly addressed and politely welcomed aboard the good corporate ship by the charming and discrete men of power and influence.

Perhaps the most telling rhetorical manoeuvre in terms of representation of characters and social ‘minorities’ is in the unfortunate and highly cynical depiction of race – particularly in the case of Ned/Glenn Plummer, Atwater’s camera assistant first in Miami and then in Philadelphia to which he is sent by Justice. Again, we look to Entman and Rojecki (2000) who remind us of certain ambiguous trends in the mainstream white media wherein,

“The years since the mid-1960s have seen enormous increase in the media presence of Blacks, visibility that inherently denies the precepts of traditional racism by showing capable, successful Blacks in a variety of roles from news anchors to fictional doctors, judges and detectives…beyond this the media still contain traces of long-standing cultural assumptions not only of essential racial differences but of the hierarchy that idealizes “Whiteness”.” (Entman and Rojecki, 2000, p. 56-57)

More fully, the contradictory message becomes clearer when we consider more carefully how,

“At times the media promote, or at least open the door to, increased empathy on the part of Whites. At other times they can stimulate old habits of racist or ethnocentric thought. Quite often both these seemingly contradictory tendencies and others co-exist in a single television show, news report, or film and in the results of public opinion interviews.” (Entman and Rojecki, 2000, p. 57)

In becoming Atwater’s technical, physical and moral support, Ned exists as an extension of Justice’s own function as Helper. Ned’s unexpected arrival in her Philadelphia office prompts from her a genuine and intuitive response – a sudden joyful hug (but no interracial kiss). This would no doubt represent the kind of character revelation that Disney executives might approve of, since it is one of those key “…instances of kindness towards co-workers…” that they explicitly called for (Dunne, 1997, p. 33).

Further to earlier points, Ned also serves the useful multi-skilled function of photographer and organist at their wedding. More crucially, he acts as her protector during the dramatic high point of the film, the prison riot at Holmsville whose prison population is notably mostly non-white. While the event depicts and celebrates Atwater’s sturdy defiant professionalism in the face of physical danger, it does so at the expense of reworking the familiar cliché of surrounding the defenceless white woman with rampaging violent black men. Any potential critique in this direction can, however, in rhetorical terms, be counterbalanced with reference to the presence of Ned who is in equal jeopardy. In this respect, the foreshadowed shaping of his genial ‘step-n-fetchit’ character has been particularly mischievous.

The representation of certain women (Atwater) and certain Black males (Ned) is a clear example of a “liminal” status for a character representation in mainstream texts (Entman and Rojecki, 2000), and the kind Semali (2000) would be particularly keen to critically emphasise with his students. Writing from a critical perspective on U.S. media generally, Entman and Rojecki (2000) point out how,

“…the mainstream is an average of thinking among individuals who comprise a culture. These average weights establish where an individual falls on a social hierarchy of judgment that runs something like this:

IDEAL

NORMAL

LIMINAL

ABNORMAL

COUNTER IDEAL

Those falling into the “normal” category – most Whites, actually exhibit some though not all of the idealized traits. The liminal person has hints of these traits – some overlap with the positive- end of the spectrum but some with the negative part as well.” (Entman and Rojecki, 2000, p. 52)

So, towards the end of the film, it is Ned who thoughtfully draws Atwater’s attention to the news report that informs of Justice’s death. And at the conclusion, despite his lowly status as camera operator, he is able to sit at the same front table with Atwater’s sister and former boss from Philadelphia at the closing ceremony that celebrates Atwater’s victory. However, while there is recognition and due thanks for those (white) journalists like Justice and now Atwater who risk body and soul for the story, there is no such award or recognition for black cameramen (and their Asian back-up technical crew) who provide the visuals that allow the white professional performers to shine truthfully in the first instance. Having Ned sit at the front table as a supportive/consensual audience is a form of patronising comity that gestures towards notions of social equality while maintaining the representative regime of the corporate white male status quo that literally and figuratively still runs the show.

Finally, we turn to the character of Atwater herself and a recognition that the film narrative itself centres on the issue of representation of self in the first and last instance, witnessing her emergence from orphan status through to fully rounded career woman – of the corporate order. The agenda is neatly couched within a soft-focus deconstructive play with media images and a discourse that associates the political with issues of identity. So much scenic investment is therefore focused in exploring the layered performance of Michelle Pfeiffer as she moulds Atwater towards the ironic situation of finding and performing ‘herself’ within the set determinations of the news reporter’s objective persona. A further irony is how this process of establishing the true character is achieved through her professional independence from Justice, while becoming increasingly dependent on professional recognition from the corporation – her own adopted family/community – at the film’s closure. In other words, the closer she gets to her stated aim – network television anchor – the closer she becomes her true self and the two become synergised.

On a straightforward level this transformation is signalled through Atwater’s change of name from ‘Sally’ to ‘Tally’ – as engineered by Justice – and, more obviously her changing wardrobe. She arrives, for instance, at the Channel 9 studios in act one in a loud, tight pink outfit and blown hairdo immediately reminiscent of the 1980s. Within minutes she has accidentally torn her jacket, fallen over in discussion with Justice and scattered the contents of her cosmetic bag across his floor space.

By the film’s end she has undergone a series of radical changes that in her final performance combine her natural good looks with corporate grey suited clarity chic, an image that would echo the success of her real-life counterpart Diane Sawyer over at CBS.

The Anchor Profile – From War Hero to Corporate Presence

What initially then might seem so trivial and simple an undertaking – anchor news – is, within the film discourse/myth, ‘proven’ to be a highly worthy, technically sophisticated and a physically and emotionally demanding heroic challenge. Only the truly industrious, brave and politically/socially committed can hope to succeed in delivering anchor news – people like Atwater. Thus, looking to Entman and Rojeski (2000), we witness her rise from abnormal figure and counter ideal at the beginning, through to normal in the middle and ending in the living ideal – the happy combination of all – at the end. In this light, we have markedly moved on from the carefully balanced ambiguities of Broadcast News of 1987.

This aspect of mergence is fully dramatised in the film’s closing minutes as Atwater speaks the final words in honour of her late husband – and all crusading journalists everywhere. Through the course of the speech she shifts from prepared autocue commentary to direct and improvised audience address, thus,

TALLY

Panama turned out to be a big story for IBS…it didn’t start that way. It started with one reporter who had a hunch. He had a hunch, and did all the leg work…he went out alone and at the end of the day he got it, which is what it’s all about.

Thus, in the eyes of the film audience, she successfully merges the practiced professional and the authentic performance, the learned role and her real “self”, the corporate hero and impassioned crusader, the male and female. So while her audience witness ‘live’ the polished performance, we, the film audience see both the work and the performance, and thus become knowingly aware of how Atwater has earned her rightful status as trusting television anchor of authentic character.

From a position at the beginning where we are invited to consider the “self” in dramaturgical terms that acknowledge its social contructedness, we conclude back on traditional ground with the familiar Realist myth of the singular, intending actor – the small town working class girl from the mid-west winning her own pursuit of happiness. In this way the film achieves Barthe’s (1972) mythic mainstream ideal of fusing the opposites and squaring narrative contradictions. The rhetorical manoeuvring of narrative and representation by the Disney story executives tries to ensure that the contemporary audience’s lowly sceptical and cynical opinion of news anchors – and the news that they deliver – may be turned to a more positive account by Pfeiffer’s adroit performance.

Lastly, it is an irony worth noting that this final celebration of unscripted individual spontaneity completes a film which, over six years, underwent 27 changing script drafts – another example of how mainstream media works deftly to deny its own constructedness – and that, despite appearances, Pfeiffer the film actress is always reading a script. The film audience, therefore, is in the privileged position of witnessing this character metamorphosis and recognise in Pfeiffer’s layered performance how Sally/Tally is able to contest, negotiate and claim victory over those contesting discourses that centre around women’s role in contemporary America. Thus, the paradigm from Entman and Rojecki (2000) provides a useful analytic tool to measure how – in the case of Up, Close and Personal (1996) and, indeed Independence Day (1996) - the noble aims and objectives of the Civil Rights movement and Feminist agendas of the 1970s and 1980s emerge in corporate media texts of the 1990s as appropriated tokens of established equality and proven working social justice.

Narrative Framing – Setting Agendas and Feminist Discourses

On the wider contextual level that touches on Chapter One issues of (limited) public discourse, we should be keenly mindful of how, in ideological terms,

“… the meaning of feminism was (and still is) translated into public discourses that are consumed by millions of Americans.” (Dow, 1996, p. xvi)

In other words, the narrative shaping that concurs with Disney’s “story parameters” unjustly represents not just character functions/stereotypes (Entman and Rojecki, 2000) – but are influential and often determining discourses in themselves which translate, represent and frame the terms in which public discussion and understanding of such issues and causes take place in the first instance across the public sphere. For Dow (1996), this became first evident in 1970 with the debut of Brooks’ Mary Tyler Moore Show. Hence, the importance of recognising the corporate origin of such narratives and their influential role in dramaturgising - and limiting – vital alternative social discourses in contemporary America.

One instance is how the film purports to represent the very nature of investigative journalism itself. So in Up, Close and Personal (1996), like its two predecessors Network (1976) and Broadcast News (1987), only certain aspects of the Feminist agenda are selected and regarded as appropriate and seen to be worthy (Dow, 1996). Those, which are selected, concur with the largely conservative individualist ethic as constantly foregrounded by corporate America and which celebrates and rewards the noble individual’s rise to material and social success through a market system, which is true to core American values but as defined and supported by the leading patriarchal minority. This chosen ideological angle is selected from the range of possible discourses, tensions, and political positions which have characterised the Feminist agenda since the 1980s (Hilliard, 2001). It is these more radical alternatives, which the film serves to deflect and deny. As Dow (1996) helpfully puts it with reference to mainstream U.S. television in general but in terms equally applicable to our present study on film representation,

“The focus on the experiences of white, middle class heterosexual women has dominated contemporary feminism…and is importantly, congruent with the demographics of television’s target audience… Television programming, therefore draws from and contributes to the consolidation of a racially, sexually, and economically privileged version of feminism that, for the American public, has come to represent feminism in toto.” (Dow, 1996, p. xxiii)

This form of controlling power over social discourse is at the heart of those critiques that associate the increase of media conglomerates with decreasing quality of discussion and meaningful shared knowledge in the public sphere, despite the surface proliferation of alternative media outlets. Hence, from a dramaturgical point of view, social organisations, in our case an industrial conglomerate acting as an individual within a specific historical context to persuade enters, for H. Blumer,

“…into action only to the extent to which it shapes situations in which people act, and to the extent to which it supplies fixed sets of symbols which people use in interpreting their situations.” (in Brissett and Edgley, 1990, p. 27)

Symbols in this instance would be the star image of Pfeiffer and, as outlined, key aspects of Redford’s iconographic status in particular. Other forms of shaping occur in the chosen narrative angle, locations (Philadelphia?) and strategies of agreeable corporate representation as Atwater edges further away from cable TV.

Representation of The News Studio

We turn now to how the film represents the operations of news media itself. In so doing we will consider the formal institution and then how news events are represented in story and picture.

Pointing out that the high-tech two-story TV newsroom in Miami where Atwater meets Justice was filmed on Stage 16 at the Culver City Studios in Hollywood serves to remind us of the constructedness of the film’s discourse, and that like other forms of individual character representation, the representation of the news industry is itself a fabrication that merges selected known details with narrative/corporate rhetoric.

It has already been suggested how the film appropriates in its early stages certain prevailing critiques of news broadcasting; however, it fails in many respects to provide a more incisive, critical account that would recognise the deep confusions and contemporary disenchantment by working journalists of their industry. For example, the film is marked by the absence of characters representing advertisers or market analysts; there is no reference to differential pay structures, strikes, or union organisation; ideological differences (class) are diffused into personal struggles (career Feminists) and even more questionable – news content becomes more ‘worthy’ as Sally nears the network operation, edging up from illegal immigrants washed ashore in Miami to coverage of the economy from within the Washington, D.C. beltway.

Film and News Journalism – Crossing the Line

The core representational feature which demands focused critique is how the narrative positions the importance of story definition and story gathering. The film’s own representation of crusade journalism, for example, is subject to criticism since, through Justice’s tutoring and deft hand on the editing console, it suggests strongly that investigative reporting ultimately must be led by a human-interest element and helped along by a few suspect editing snips and telling subversive cut-in shots. This is set up as the contrast against which corporate news is unfavourably compared. The film, therefore, in narrative and visuals, betrays a highly suspicious account of news journalism that bleeds over into its own aesthetic design. For example, the sequence of news that interrupts Sally’s leaving party focuses exclusively on the dramatic rush of Warren Justice’s last moments on the airport runway in Panama, prior to his successful return to the United States.

The sequence adopts the frantic stylization of live location shooting under pressure – the awkward, erratic and uncertain camera movements catching his frantic leap towards the lens (audience), the ripping sound of exploding bombs, and pacing slowly to the tight closing long-shot that gradually focuses on a fallen dead body and his distinct red desert boots. We then return to the studio and moments of ponderous uncertainty before the news anchor stately confirms that Justice is indeed dead, killed, as it were, in action. Within the film story, the sequence is presented, then, as “newsworthy”.

Ironically, though, the sequence that holds the studio audience fixed captives is, in terms of style and narrative, typical of that form of 1990s television news journalism which Woodward (1997) argues satisfies the corporate need for greater market share over informed citizen awareness. It is, for example, an “expressive moment” that foregrounds dramatic picture action over in-depth analysis. The emphasis is only on “expressive content” based on a human story that serves to decontextualise the overall account – in this case, who exactly is firing the bombs and why?

What meaning the story has is framed by the studio anchor, and, in typical fashion, a foreign news item in this instance becomes meaningful only when a suffering (white, male) American is at the centre of that action narrative. The film sequence of the news report accurately depicts that trend towards “distortion through over-compression” as critically observed by Walter Cronkite himself (Barrett, 1978) and which Woodward (1997) considers endemic to corporate news broadcasting as it emerged in the 1980s and ‘matured’ into the 1990s.

The sequence within the film conforms therefore to that style of contemporary delivery of broadcast news as described by Woodward (1997) wherein,

“The story format exists in most general news reporting because it is an efficient structure for reducing complexity to the minimum, and for collapsing a long time frame into a short and interesting summary.” (Woodward, 1997, p. 76)

More significantly, without any (literal) critical angle of its own, the film sequence also presents the news report as a supporting device to maximise the dramatic potential of the encompassing film scene. We experience the rolling news story from the growing perspective of Atwater, so the truth of the sequence is only confirmed when one anchor (Atwater) hears it from another television anchor. Her agonised response adds to the credibility of the news message, and justifies our reading of it. With no critical distance of the kind anticipated in the credit sequence of the film, television and cinema aesthetic blend and become one. We, through Atwater, are interpellated into the television “expressive moment” – with no deconstructive critical angle here that would provide critical or ironic commentary on the given process. Such a critical account would suggest how the tightened news format reduces the scope of knowledge and the setting of wider contexts that would allow a wider more insightful range of perspectives to illuminate the news item. Instead, the news item as constructed for the film neatly justifies the working narrative paradigms of both mainstream industries. Frank Reuven, former executive of the NBC Evening News, neatly outlined the format: thus,

“Every news story should, without any sacrifice of probity or responsibility, display the attribute of fiction, of drama. It should have structure and conflict, problem and denouement, rising action and falling action, a beginning, a middle, and an end. These are the essentials of drama, they are the essentials of narrative.” (Woodward, 1997, p. 77)

Back with the film sequence, Atwater’s ‘unscripted’ celebration of story in her final speech successfully collapses into one single formulation those core narrative verities that in the film weave both corporate news delivery, style and content, and classical Hollywood product into a satisfactory whole. The ending of Up, Close and Personal (1996) is a victory for Atwater and the traditional narrative paradigm and its accompanying Realist transparent style over threatening deconstructive critique.

Part 3

The Film as Corporate Rhetoric

However, scriptwriter Dunne’s (1997) backdoor insight that launched our analysis does not escape stricture either since it too has its own deft omissions and narrative gaps which now bear serious scrutiny. It is by no means coincidental that during the course of these script developments (from 1989 to 1996) that the Disney corporation would eventually purchase Cap Cities – and become effective owner of the ABC news network in 1995, a process never mentioned by Dunne (1997) in any of his highly detailed behind-the-scene revelations of the film’s tortured route to mainstream box-office glory. The scope of the new corporation would embrace theme parks, publishing, TV and cable, newspapers, retail stores, magazines and six major television stations. It is within the frame of our present discourse, therefore, to argue that the narrative strategies of the film discussed above promote a clear up-close rhetoric that positively favours the-then current news broadcasting system in America and in a particular way compatible to the values and corporate aims of both Touchstone Pictures and ABC, their parent company, Disney, – and their key shareholders, the Bass family, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and State Farm Insurance.

In closing, Up, Close and Personal (1996) can be regarded as an extended pubic relations exercise (Cheney, 1991) – a rhetorical device richly designed by the corporate film owner (Disney) to advance the public estimation of another branch of its growing portfolio – news journalism (ABC) – at a time when such negative public estimations were turning decidedly against the profession (Woodward, 1997) as a result of the corporate ethos that negatively impacted on its deepest and most valued traditions (Sparrow, 1999).

In this respect, the media corporation is no different to any other corporate organisation from industry, which has been concerned since the 1970s with “identity management”. In his work on corporate rhetorics, for example, Cheney (1991) would look to the efforts of Chrysler, AT&T and, indeed, the Reagan White House of the mid-1980s and how,

“This trend towards personalizing and personification represents a confluence of organizational strategy and public need to see organizations as people. The public thus responds to efforts to overcome or obscure the necessarily impersonal aspects of large bureaucratic organizations. And much contemporary rhetoric in the public, private, and other sectors reflects and reveals the trend.” (Cheney, 1991, p. 22)

Working on the principle of identification, one of the most fiendish rhetorical strategies in the film is to appropriate and apply key aspects of progressive Civil Rights and Feminist agendas, as they had emerged and grew since the 1970s, in support of its own corporate worldview for the 1990s and beyond”.

2007 Update: Robert Redford´s Lions for Lambs

• http://wethemedia.edublogs.org/2007-lions-for-lambs/

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