eleutheria

Dogville + Celebrity

I have been thinking about these new television programmes featuring "celebrities" living in the homes of non-celebrities, in a new light thrown on by Dogville. I saw the 5 Obstructions the week before, so when I saw Dogville, I immediately thought - "Ah, he's put Nicole Kidman in there to study her as a person - as a glamorous Hollywood actress with no way of using her glamour." She is playing a role where she has very little to hide behind. It's a 'nice' person (tough to act), the acting around her was slow, stage like, and wooden, and it seemed it necessarily would be because the actors had to do things like open pretend doors. It did seem very much like a school production, as the set was very stage like, and the actors all seemed like they were pretending. It was as if Lars Von Trier was purposefully undermining the actors, and the acting. These were my first impressions.

I reasoned that all this was done in favour of the bare bones of the story, and/or to put the actors on show. But actually, it seemed only to be Nicole Kidman on show, as a human being. I looked at her face a lot, and thought how much like Meg Ryan she looked, and if they had the same plastic surgeon or something. Usually, I may notice things like that and feel that the film maker has used the actor regardless - but in Dogville, these elements of her were being put to practical use. I was meant to notice everything like that. Obviously, she was meant to be an oddity in the play, too, a sophisicated city type brought to live in the small-town dowdy world of normal people.

Von Trier's techniques also included reproducing a mature / constructed version of 'wooden' acting. Conversation was very stilted and boring. The continuity was all disrupted, the actors at some points were in different positions one second to the next; Nicole Kidman was suddenly wearing makeup once when she was least in the position to be able to have some available and put some on (when she was chained to the bed, I think!). There were probably other things I didn't notice.

He was definitely undermining the reality of the pretence by showing reality existed too (and the reality even mirrored the pretence). I think this is really important. The reality of the actors, the reality of the person making a film, the reality of someone trying to communicate the ideas to the actors and to you. This way, real communication was acheived by this film. And he was really doing something new.

Now, I had previously noticed a new television programme on Channel 3 which featured celebrities going and living in a 'normal' family home for 2 weeks and carrying out tasks to win the family a prize. I was very shocked that the celebrity actually had to live there. I saw 2 episodes that stood out, one had Samantha Fox, another Tara Palmer Tomkinson. They have scenes of the whole family hugging and kissing the celebrity for winning the prize, and the celebrity all kitted out in revealing celebrity type clothes. There are lots of hints from the presenter about how much the men must have liked having the celebrity in the house, but they all always get on "really well", and "feel really part of the family". The celebrity is there as a human being open to scrutiny, but necessarily as a celebrity (there's no other good reason to be there), and also as someone who has to be nice. Maybe, at first, this seemed to be the position that Nicole Kidman acting as Grace was in too.

There is another version of the programme with the Hilton Sisters, Simple Life, which I saw only once but think does all the same kind of things. None of these programmes seemed to manage to rise above voyeurism in aim or achievement.

There is no comparison between these faintly disturbing and grubby programmes and the film Dogville, but the film reminded me of them nevertheless, and I may not have put my finger on why.

Posted by Eleutheria at March 27, 2004 05:04 PM