After interviewing George Romero at Sundance 2008, Joe Swanberg and Ronald Bronstein (the interviewers) began to debate whether or not there’s even a place today for subversive directors (i.e. those who defy an institution–Hollywood–while pretending to support it). Romero’s Night of the Living Dead served as a blood and guts zombie vehicle carrying everything troubling him about the turbulent 60’s. The argument today is that subversion is unnecessary. No filmmaker is limited to studio controlled dollars, equipment or theaters to get their ideas out. Although you don’t have to take subversive tactics to get a film made anymore, I think there’s a new institution to game, that of a jaded movie watching audience.
For a generation who doesn’t know a world without premium cable channels and DVD shops on every corner, a trailer is shorthand (largely due to uncreative marketing) telling an audience to drop a film full of challenging ideas into the skip it bin. A lot of films buzzing through the festival circuit offer more of the same life-crashing drama Robert Downey Jr.’s characters are synonymous with. So, in a statement about his decision to play Tony Stark in Iron Man, a remark that there’s more room to build a character with a comic book hero than in most parts that come across his desk rings true. However, I think what he’s referring to is more than just the opportunity to enjoy his craft, it’s an opportunity to implant something in an audience that rolls their eyes at the “broccoli” dramas he’s expected to play in.
The new subversion is to get in front of a jaded audience that switches off interest the moment they hear of hot topics like Darfur or Iraq. By pretending to play to their sensationalist needs, directors like Jon Favreau engage a disaffected audience that has a thousand titillating stories to distract them from anything of substance. At least, that’s what I’m hoping he does (I haven’t seen Iron Man). Maybe comic book heroes are the perfect vehicles to reopen thoughts about Iraq and other box-office poison. To that end, I hope I’m right about Iron Man and I hope it succeeds.
