Kristen Stegemoeller

Kracauer, �Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies”

 

In “Little Shopgirls Go to the Movies”, Kracauer indicts the sensational, melodramatic plot archetypes presented by film studios as subliminally (and sometimes explicitly) furthering and perpetuating the goals of the ruling class.  Kracauer’s premise is that these ostensibly improbable and unrealistic plot offerings, generally being filled to the brim with suicidal virgins and emotionally fraught billionaires, are actually mimetic of the society’s inner workings, saying, “stupid and unreal film fantasies are the daydreams of society, in which its actual reality comes to the fore and its otherwise repressed wishes take form” (292).  According to Kracauer, films targeted at a lower class audience must follow a very general, but very strict formula.  Specifically, these movies must contain some suggestion of social critique to appeal to the masses, while steering clear of any explicit denunciation of the established society.  The ultimate impact of this formula is that it “smuggle(s) in a respectable way of thinking” (291).  With a brief, and perhaps erroneously dismissive mention of the impact of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Kracauer asserts that no filmmaker can work outside or against this formula, insisting that such rogue filmmakers are either “simply tools of society, unwittingly manipulated yet all the while believing they are voices of protest, or they are forced to make compromises in their drive to survive” (291).  After addressing both the potential counter-examples of historical films like Potemkin whose “courage (…) declines in direct proportion with their proximity to the present” and contemporary bourgeois theatrical works whose “social determinants are harder to perceive than those in films” (293), Kracauer examines the multifoliate cultural implications of a series of general plot types of popular film. 

 

The first subheading, ‘Clear Road’ addresses those movies in which the main character achieves success and happiness against all odds (class status, criminal record, general misfortune, etc.), resulting in the elevation of his class standing.  ‘Clear Road’ films generally depict the lowest stratum of society, taking care to capture the grinding existence of the proletariat while specifically avoiding mention of class difference.  These films create a new sort of causality for the position of the poor: if proletarian characters are dissatisfied, it is because “they have suffered a personal tragedy, so that the public misfortune can be all the more easily forgotten” (295).  These depictions are piteous, sentimental and romantic, so as to give the illusion of conscientious concern without providing the necessary anger to provoke change.  The implication of a ‘Clear Road’ film is that when the beleaguered hero is elevated in class, all the concern for his previous position vanishes: “saving individual people is a convenient way to prevent the rescue of an entire class” (295).

           

In the subsequent ‘Sex and Character’ section, Kracauer addresses the preoccupation with eroticism in film, in which the hedonistic delights of a dancehall are offered as a distraction from the autocatalytic cycle of “the boredom that leads to the amusement that produces the boredom” of a working class existence (296).  In ‘The World Travelers’, the foreign of foreign locales is also implemented to alleviate monotony distract the viewer from the misery and ugliness of society.  ‘A Nation in Arms’ displays how movies about war are used to provoke idealism and patriotism in the viewer by disregarding the horrors of mass conflict in lieu of propagandistically glorifying the heroism of individual soldier.  Kracauer suggests that these films, in addition to ideologically preparing potential soldiers for whichever war they may someday be called on to fight, also “prove that certain influential circles are very interested in having others adopt a heroic attitude instead of materialism which these influential circles themselves promote” (297).   In both ‘The Golden Heart’ and ‘The Modern Haroun al Raschid’ types, both the middle class and the rich are made sympathetic to the masses through their respective discoveries that money and status are not as important as love (notably without abandoning either their money or status).  The most dramatic ‘Silent Tragedies’ type seem most explicitly to encourage the perpetuation of the status quo, featuring characters who sacrifice their lives in the face of an irrevocable and unchangeable social structure rather than sacrificing their lives in the attempt to change said structure. Kracauer’s final heading, ‘Close to the Edge,’ briefly mentions those films which seem to veristically portray the ugliness of society.  These films seem honest and critical, only to neuter their impact by a serving up compensatory happy ending.