Lights, Camera, Hack
If you are reading 2600, I'm willing to bet you've been asked by someone either "What is hacking?" or "Who are hackers?"
Don't worry, I am not going to make a big commentary about the meaning of hacking. We, as a culture, have a tendency of thinking about hacking with regard to computers (I certainly did before I got into film). Hacking can be found in every facet of life. We just have to, well, hack our preconceived notions surrounding a subject. In this article, I will look at a place where hackers aren't often attributed: film.
First, I should specify how I use "hacker" and "hacking."
There are, as I'm sure you know, a plethora of definitions, varying from "Hacking is unauthorized use of computer and network resources1" to "A hacker is an aesthete.2"
I and fellow readers will probably gravitate towards the latter. The emphasis, then, is not on computers but on an attitude. I have always thought of it as "making something function outside of its original design."
If we want to look at hackers in cinema, we should look no further than filmmakers. A film, after all, is largely about aesthetics, so we should look at what goes into making a film, particularly with regard to film history.
Now, I would like to examine one of the first cinematic-hackers, Georges Méliès, best known for his 1902 film, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon). He was thought of as a magician because he would make things disappear and reappear on screen, a trick he discovered when filming a city street.
While filming this city street, his camera ran out of film. He stopped and reloaded the camera with film. By the time he started recording again, a horse came into the frame (or camera's view). When he was looking back at the footage, it appeared as though the horse appeared out of thin air. He recreated this effect in his films to make a character disappear in a cloud of smoke, for example.
Méliès used the physical nature of film to his advantage, making a never before seen effect. But wait, I can imagine someone objecting because this was a coincidence. "It wasn't as if Méliès meant to do that." Have you heard of Captain Crunch? He discovered that if you blew the whistle found in Cap'n Crunch cereal, it made a frequency which allowed for free long distance calls. I hope if you are reading this magazine, you know the frequency of the whistle.
Méliès was an example of a technical type of hacking. He was able to take what was understood about film and what he discovered to make something new.
Let us talk about one more hacker, Jean-Luc Godard, and his first film Breathless (1960). Godard loved film noir (think Casablanca) and wanted to make one as his first movie. But what does it take to make a film noir? You need a morally ambiguous leading man like Humphrey Bogart from The Maltese Falcon (1941), a man who "makes crime a career - and ladies a hobby.3" He is tough and über-masculine, but isn't really that bad of a guy - he is just trying to survive in a hard, cold world. You need a femme fatale, a beautiful, black-widow of a woman who seduces men to compromising (sometimes fatal) situations.4
On paper, this seems pretty straightforward and his movie seems to follow this structure. We have the car thief Michel and his lover Patricia who leads him to his death. In actuality, this movie inverts genre definitions and expectations.5
How does the male protagonist, Michel, compare to Bogart? Before he became a car thief, he worked as a flight attendant which, classically, isn't considered the most masculine profession. Instead of being followed by a lover, he pursues a woman who isn't that interested in him.
Patricia is as close as we get to a femme fatale. Physically, instead of being a tall, dark woman with hard eyebrows and flowing brunette hair, she has a pixie cut. She doesn't seduce Michel for personal gain (she doesn't seduce him at all, quite frankly), nor is she the cause of his death.
The film's cookie-cutter structure on paper inverts all genre assumptions through its realization on film. Why did he do this? He was largely unhappy with the way films were being made and wanted to do something different.
Hacking is, as you know, just as much freedom of expression as anything else. Godard and Méliès were both able to break from preconceived notions surrounding their medium. This isn't, of course, specific to these two gentlemen. I just wanted to give you a taste of how hacking is present in film. More importantly, I wanted to illustrate how hacking is much more prevalent than may have perceived.
I love hacking and I love film and, with this article, I hope to move towards merging my two passions.
Whatever your passion may be, happy hacking.
- What is Hacking?
- What is a Hacker?
- Maltese Falcon Official Trailer Humphrey Bogart movie (1941)
- Film Femme Fatale - The Role of the Hollywood Femme Fatale
- Brody, Richard Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard