I wrote this essay back in 2019 in the hopes of getting in peer-reviewed in a cinema journal, that did not happen so I have decided to post it here. Moving forward, I hope to do more cinema related pieces as there are a ton of good movies out there worthy of analysis.
The Kids Will Be Just Fine:
A Reflective Look at the Symbols and Meanings of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood
In this reflective film about change, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood tells the story of an aging Hollywood star, an aging stunt driver, an up-and-coming Hollywood starlet, and an industry going through change representing a microcosm of society. What this film reflects is a change not only in time but in attitudes reflected in 1960s Hollywood, rather opening a view into the modern age of American cinema. Three key themes that are presented in the film have to do with change, ownership, and acceptance: introducing further analysis of the ‘idea of Hollywood’, the director’s reflectiveness, and the impact on new directors coming up in the business. Discussion of three main themes presents a reflection of the characters and the motives of those characters found throughout the film.
Through a semiotic analysis of the film, symbolic conception is at the heart of understanding a semiotic analysis that finds meaning behind signs and symbols that a film represents. The semiotic analysis attempts to find themes that relate to the research conducted. Using the understanding of semiotics through Ferdinand De Saussure, which uses linguistics as a tracing tool and a significance in the linguistic (Culler, 1986), the understanding of semiotics within the film focuses attention to develop symbols from the themes answering philosophical questions correlating a deep understanding of American cinema.
Change
Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood reflects the change of an old Hollywood to a new Hollywood with its writing and character motivations. The motivation acts as the overall theme of the film, where the main characters feel the impact of change, more internally, as we are introduced to Rick Dalton, the stuttering, manic, and temperamental former T.V. cowboy looking to hang on to the older days as long as he can. The scene that stands out most aesthetically, is showing the generational change when the dumpster-diving hippy girls walk in front of the cowboy mural on the side of the building with the camera moving from left to right. The image conveyed reflects what Tarantino was looking for – the camera moving from left to right shows a chronology of events as the girls represent the future moving with the camera from left to right where the cowboy represents Dalton as a frozen image of Hollywood that is passed or passing. This echoes a scene only minutes later when Rick and Cliff are stopped in their vehicle and the hippy girls cross the road moving in front of the vehicle, left to right. Cliff and Rick are stopped watching the future move left to right in front of them and their existence.
Not only the story choice to keep this in was important, but the cinematography of this scene is also rooted in a scientific understanding of cinema. Egizii et al., (2018) try to make an understanding of the left-to-right movement in films with camera work ranging from preference of lighting, inherent stylistic choice by the director, literary tradition, and a theological understanding of right being the good, and left being the bad. However, it is Eisenstein and Vasilyev (1938) who used the ‘Battle on Ice’ sequence to train the movement of eyes from left to right, introducing an idea of inherent nature to follow a chronology in this form.
What produces this change, especially in the realm of Hollywood? According to Walls and McKenzie (2012), American cinema influences cultural change in outside markets. Therefore, the star of the movie is Rick Dalton, but the concept or idea of Hollywood is bigger than any one actor or director. This pragmatic idea is represented in Cliff Booth the mild-mannered, and pragmatic-yet-supportive friend to Rick. In many ways Cliff represents Hollywood as just a thing not to be cherished or rejected and that the spirit of Hollywood is bigger than any one person. Thus, the spirit advances through time and one’s time in Hollywood will end, something out of our control.
Ownership
The theme of ownership in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood is shown through physical ownership of property and is reflected in the idea of owning an intangible aspect of the Hollywood dream. After Cliff drops off Rick at his house, Rick mentions that you have to buy a house in L.A. and never rent. What Rick is saying is that with buying a house you own land in Hollywood, which means you own this piece of the aesthetic wealth and privilege that the idea of Hollywood provides.
With ownership, we see the interesting juxtaposition between the two main characters Rick and Cliff. The irony is that one is the actor, and the other is the stunt double, and in addition to being friends, one would use this idea both socially and professionally that they are the same. However, that could be further from the truth as the outlandish attitude of Rick is almost tempered by the calm rationality of Cliff. Rick lives in a Hollywood Hills home with a pool that overlooks the city with movie posters of himself inside and outside of his house. Tarantino is painting the prototypical, narcissistic Hollywood actor who wants to see, and be seen by everyone. This is dichotomous with Cliff, after his chauffeur work is done with Rick, he returns to his home beyond the Hollywood sign in the north near Van Nuys, living in a tin airstream accompanied by his dog Brandy. In many ways, Cliff lives behind the curtain of Hollywood much like his vocation as a stuntman.
Near the end, Rick mentions that he cannot keep Cliff on the payroll anymore and plans to sell his home in the Hollywood Hills and buy a condo in a nearby city. The gravitation towards Rick moving outside of the Hollywood aesthetic acted as a foreshadowing to the industry. Webb (2015) commented on the New Hollywood moving towards locations outside of the studio system to places like Atlantic City and Philadelphia where The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), and Rocky (1976) were shot respectively, after studio financial trouble in the late sixties and early seventies. Emotional ownership works in tandem with economic ownership as your ownership (syn.) that you have in yourself represents the person that you perceive to be with individuals.
Acceptance of ‘Newness’
The theme of acceptance of the ‘newness’ has to do with the character of Sharon Tate who is introduced in parallel at the beginning of the film flying home with her new husband Roman Polanski, who, at the time is on top of the Hollywood world. While Rick is alone in his house studying lines for his work on the set of Lancer, we see Sharon and Roman getting ready for a party at the Playboy Mansion. This introduction offers a view of the contrast between Rick and Sharon, almost as Rick representing the parent staying at home, while the kids sneak out to go to a pool party.
The colorful new wave is discussed when Steve McQueen outlines the convoluted relationship between Tate, Polanski, and stylist Jay Sebring as a love triangle, which represents the changes in sexual attitudes, of a freer sexual style of the late-sixties. During the 1960s and 1970s, adults at this time embraced more sexually permissive attitudes compared to generations of the past (Twenge et al., 2015), and the idea of out-of-marriage relationships was common. This thread is relevant in the story of Tate who would engage with both Polanski (her husband) and still be friendly with Sebring (her former fiancé).
The contrast between Rick and Sharon foreshadows the ending of the film where Rick accepts the invitation for a drink at Sharon’s house accepting of a new generation. Moreover, acts as both an endnote to a movie about the generation of Hollywood before and an acceptance of a new generation of Hollywood that we could see in the real-life, modern landscape of today’s Hollywood. Webb (2015) states that the industrial crisis of the studio system from 1969 to 1971 led to decentralization outside of Hollywood and brought about sweeping change to offer a more spatial and effective landscape. This fictional story reflects the change in real-life leading to the generation that Tarantino would be involved in, essentially influencing him throughout his career.
The ‘Idea of Hollywood’ is Rick Dalton
What is the idea of Hollywood? What do you think about when someone says the word ‘Hollywood’? One image might be the Hollywood Sign almost as synonymous with America as the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. The final thirty minutes of the film represent how Dalton is symbolized as a view of Hollywood. When the Manson family members regroup for their attack, they mention the man who yelled at them was Rick Dalton a.k.a. Jake Cahill from the T.V. series ‘Bounty Law’ and that Tex had a Jake Cahill lunchbox when he was a kid. This is reflected again in the final scene where Jay Sebring says he is a big fan of Dalton, especially in ‘Bounty Law’ and the ‘Fourteen Fists of McCluskey’.
Dalton is especially proud of Sebring’s knowledge of his work representing a symbolic message about the idea of Hollywood relating to being known and who knows you. The aesthetic of Dalton’s life on the screen reflects the idea of Hollywood being preserved in the historical knowledge of television and the impact that Hollywood television has on everyone, regardless of one’s worldview. In Dalton’s mind, his acting work, in the end, is regarded as heroic, much like his role as the cowboy in ‘Bounty Law’. Dalton’s character Jake Cahill was considered an archetypal character which Olson (2000) explains as a “familiar stock hero” (p. 12). However, Dalton’s heroics is a façade, something manufactured and placed on a shelf, similar to Dalton’s life, a manufactured house with movie murals on a shelf of the Hollywood hills, an aesthetic to show an ‘idea’ of Hollywood.
Tarantino is Reflective of Dalton and Booth
A ‘meta’ look behind the camera of Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood observes the conductor of the train: Quentin Tarantino. This latest installment from the famed director works at a different pace from what we have seen in the past, except for the end-fight scene with Rick and Cliff against the Manson disciples. Looking at Tarantino’s career to this point, NPR stated that this is his most personal film since Jackie Brown (Chang, 2019, July 26); however, this film seems to be unlike anything the director has ever made before.
With that said, the genre seems to follow the meandering realism reminiscent of the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) of the fifties and sixties. Thompson and Bordwell (2004) describe the meandering and stylized technique of French directors as impactful in the fifties and sixties with films such as The 400 Blows (Charlot & Truffaut, 1959), Breathless (de Beauregard & Goddard, 1960), and Hiroshima Mon Amour (Halfon, Dauman & Resnais, 1959). From the meandering style of troubled youth Antoine Doinel on the streets of Paris, to the relationship of Elle and Lui intertwined with their day-to-day lives in Hiroshima, Japan – the realism, narration, and general ambiguity of these films presented a pleasing aesthetic outside of bombastic Hollywood productions. This connects to today with Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood reflecting a sense of realism, narration, and ambiguity outside of the summer superhero blockbusters that make the most money offers an interesting critique of the economics of film.
The comparison between Tarantino and his characters draws similarities to a statement that Jules Winfield made in his hit Pulp Fiction (Bender & Tarantino, 1994). In this piece of symbolism, I use the final statement by Jules in the coffee shop, in which he states that Ringo is weak and he is the tyranny of evil men. This symbolizes the weak being the Manson family murderers, which their cowardice in real life is well documented, and Rick with his vein ideal of the Hollywood lifestyle is the tyranny of evil men. But as Jules says to Ringo that he is trying really hard to be the shepherd in the valley of darkness, the shepherd refers to the pragmatic and selfless act to protect the flock regardless of vanity. As the images of Hollywood show, people like Cliff who are not in the Hollywood circle strive to be like Rick, rather in a moral and ethical society, it is people like Rick who strive to be like Cliff. Much like Tarantino who has garnered Hollywood success and accolades throughout his career, sees the idea of Cliff as the reason he got into filmmaking in the first place.
The Kids Will Be Just Fine
The themes and the symbols of Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood reflect the change in styles and aspects of Hollywood as a reflection of Quentin Tarantino’s career. At this point, we will ask, how the future might be fine without the old tropes of cinema and technology, through observing the final shots of the film. In the final scenes, after Cliff is taken to the hospital, Rick stands alone outside of his house, when Jay Sebring notices him as Rick Dalton. Rick eventually gets invited up for a drink by Sharon and as the gate opens Rick enters a new home and meets Sharon for the first time and the credits start to roll. What does this final scene represent? First, it could represent that Sharon Tate and the members of the house did not see their real-life fate of what happened on August 8, 1969 and that this is substantiated as a fairy tale ending on a happy note with neighbors enjoying company.
The semiotics of the kids being ‘just fine’ is a new acceptance by Rick who has been rejecting the new way of doing things throughout the whole movie. From the hippies in the beginning, to the director on the set of Lancer, from spaghetti westerns, and the confrontation with the hippies at the end of the film; Sebring and Tate’s appreciation, comes as a bridging of ideals, and a bridging of old Hollywood with new-Hollywood to reflect change. This change in generations of filmmakers is a natural process, much like the change in the 1960s reflected in the film, to the change with the new off-Hollywood indies with the film store generation of filmmakers like Tarantino, to the new age of off-Hollywood styles with directors like Ari Aster (Hereditary, 2018; Midsommar, 2019), Robert Eggers (The Witch, 2015; The Lighthouse, 2019), Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, 2015; The Killing of a Sacred Deer, 2017), and Bong-Joon Ho (Snowpiercer, 2013; Parasite, 2019). This is what stands out as a message in the final frames of Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, as the young Jay Sebring and Sharon Tate are knowledgeable about Rick Dalton and his work leading to Rick accepting the future will be in good hands, much like Tarantino feels regardless of technological advancement the new age will be in good hands with new directors.
Conclusion
In summation, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood reflects the changing age of American cinema in the late ’60s and today’s society by using the themes of change and ownership to understand the perceived idea of Hollywood through the character of Rick Dalton, reflection on the career of Tarantino, and the passing of a torch to another generation of filmmakers creates a meaningful symbol to represent the movement of American cinema into the future. With an understanding of the film lineage of the past, this is a landmark film providing an end-note to a generation of cinema, at the same time offering a springboard to new auteurs to pursue their careers and ideas. Given the success of modern art-style films with more advanced technology, the field is wide-open for a new age of auteurs to live their passion and provide an attentive film for willing audiences, as willing audiences are starved for their generation of cinema to be meaningful and impactful.
References
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