Okay, so first up, we are getting my least favorite area of film studies out of the way.
It's Auteur theory.
So, when I was an undergrad in, like, the 1650s or whatever,
auteur theory always kind of turned me off because film, by its very nature,
is a collaborative art. And with some very rare exceptions,
no film is the sole product of one person. When I was first introduced to auteur theory,
it came across to me as a sort of celebration of egomania.
Like we're going to give a reach-around to these self-impressed nicotine-soaked French dudes...
for being the most important person on a set, and then invent an entire field of academia to justify it.
I say it came across to me like that because that's what it is.
OK, OK. Yeah. I'm not being completely fair. Even in it's original form, auteur theory wasn't just about...
"Hey, look how important we are over here with our voice-driven films".
It was about trying to get audiences and critics to see film as an art form, not just as commercial product.
Similar to the current conversations surrounding videogames as art we see today.
Auteur theory also has some good points.
It holds that there is a distinct style and preoccupation throughout a director's body of work.
And you can see this in action with most directors: Spielberg with his dad thing;
Tarantino with his revenge thing; and Michael Bay with his...
"I ate the whole plate. The whole plate!"
Well, we'll get to that.
Auteurism came out of the French New Wave in the 1940s, and film critics and theorists of the time...
developed the idea of the "french auteur" in contrast to the Hollywood studio system.
With a very real implication that yes, this was more art than...
whatever garbage the Hollywood machine was spitting out in the 1940s, like Casablanca and Citizen Kane.
Francois Truffaut developed this idea further in the 1950s,
with the assertion that it was the director's job to inject "politique" into the film.
Truffaut believed that a film was inexorably tied to the creative vision of the single author: the director.
According to Truffaut, "There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors."
Truffaut thought that greatness was a measure of originality and vision rather than of craft,
and that ultimately it is more important for a film to be interesting than good.
And I can kind of get behind that. You know, quality is great and all,
but art and medium can only really evolve if it evokes some reaction in the audience.
The term "auteur theory" was coined by American film writer Andrew Sarris, in his essay:
"Notes on the Auteur Theory" in 1962. The following year, Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" was released,
and it is something of a culmination of the idea of auteurship as defined by the French New-wave...
in opposition to the studio system.
Exploring themes of authorship in conflict with the shallow superficiality of Hollywood.
According to Andrew Serris, a filmmaker can only be considered a true auteur if he is in possession of the following attributes of increasing importance:
Number 1: technical competence. Says Sarris: "A great director must be at least a good director."
Number 2: A distinguishing personality. And number 3: interior meaning within the work.
Sarris cites the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, and D.W. Griffith as true auteurs.
Auteur theory, Sarris's version in particular, saw some of its earliest push-back in the writing of Pauline Kael.
"I'm Pauline Kael and I write about movies for the New Yorker." According to Kael,
entangling the perceived quality or meaning of one film with the director's body of work...
indicates that you are not capable of really judging either.
"When a famous director makes a good movie, we look at the movie. We don't think about the director's personality."
For instance, the existence of, say, "The Rock" doesn't make "Transformers 3" any less terrible, and...
the anti-authoritarian undertones in "The Rock" don't refute the authoritarian themes in "Transformers 3".
Kael argued that we should judge the auteur by the art, not the art by the auteur.
But there's a Marxist influence in early ideas of auteur theory as well.
We see it in "Contempt". Ateurism is, by its very nature, stillted by commercialism.
See, if you're worried about the market and what your audience will or will not buy,
"then you can't make real art, man".
"In cyber-land, we only drink..."
Diet Coke".
If the whole thrust behind classical auteur theory is that the true auteur must exist outside of the system of unrestrained capitalism and commercialism,
then can Michael Bay be considered a true auteur?
"Hey, I'm Michael Bay, and I am a strong believer in protecting the cinema experience."
Can auteur theory apply when the subject at hand is fundamentally,
from its very foundation as a toy franchise that blossomed as a result of hyper-capitalist deregulation...
in the early 1980s, completely and undeniably commercial?
To which I would ask: what if "unrestrained and undeniable commercialism" is the author's vision?
Let's use Serris's model. First, technical competence.
"Every Frame a Painting" did a great rundown on the technical stylings of Michael Bay and what defines them,
so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that, but it is nothing if not distinct.
Bay's stylistic ethos is summed up in the very name of his official website, Shoot for the Edit,
which is a calm, simple ethos especially relevant in the thing that Bay is most known for: action scenes.
Does Michael Bay have a distinguishing personality?
"Hold those." "What is that?"
"What? I wear 'em when I'm gonna fuck."
"Mojo, no dominating Frankie".
"What you're about to see is top secret."
"Do not tell my mother."
"I ate the whole plate."
Yes.
And an interior meaning throughout his work. I would argue that this third criteria makes the best case for Michael Bay.
It would be one thing if Bay's mark as a director was all point one and no points two and three,
that would put him more in the sort of bland milquetoast camp with the likes of Brett Ratner.
But Bay's movies are imbued with worldview and meaning.
Michael Bay movies all portray a distinct point of view, one which even casual filmgoers can nail down.
"It squirts the fuel in so you can go faster." "Oh. I'd like to go faster."
Some subtext of Michael Bay movies include:
male protagonists eager to push back against own inadequacy; "soldiers good, government bad";
"minorities are loud, and that's funny";
"I don't know, boss, I've never seen it. That's loco." "Don't go Ricky Ricardo on me, Manny."
Bay's very distinct visuals; and the list goes on.
The Transformers films were not the first to receive generous subsidies from the U.S. Department of Defense to basically act as unofficial recruitment tools.
And this isn't just Bay being an opportunist. He is a private person,
but he is not just posturing when it comes to the subject of supporting the military.
"Simmons?" "Yes, sir."
"I'd do what he says."
"Losing's really not an option for these guys."
Every piece of every Michael Bay movie, from the aesthetic, to the edit, to the sound design...
to its portrayal of women and minorities, to the government and the military,
authority and subordinance, the weak and the powerful.
It may seem schizophrenic, and at times, wildly contradictory, but despite the studio oversight,
corporate demands, and the the inherently collaborative nature of film,
Bay's movies always retain a very distinct personality. But there is also a flip side to the idea of Auteur theory,
one that cares not one whit about the collaborative aspect of film as a medium.
Auteur theory was really gaining steam at the same time in American academia as another theory was gaining popularity,
arguably in response to the idea of auteur theory, "Death of the Author",
which was articulated in 1967 by French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes in the essay...
"La mort de l'auteur".
Barthes argues against the traditional literary critical practice of incorporating authorial intent.
"Intent is meaningless," says Basthes, and that all products of an artist should independently exist of each other.
So, whatever Michael Bay thinks about, say, the military, or capitalism, or black people, or women...
all of that is irrelevant--
*repeats with increasing distortion* All of that is irrelevant.
Oof. Sorry. Yeah, I think I've been thinking about Michael Bay too much. Anyway,
all of that is irrelevant to what the audience reads. And the thing is,
we don't really know what he thinks about all of these things, except for the military (he likes it),
and animal welfare (he really cares about dogs, you guys). Other than that,
he uses his medium to communicate his worldview, but he never discusses intent.
He has described himself as "a deeply political person," but will not go into what that actually means.
Michael Bay is a great example of why absolutism on either of these theories doesn't really work,
but you can't really discount either theory completely either.
He's a great example of an auteur, his movies have a very distinct politique and style,
but he's also a great example of "death of the author". He deliberately keeps his intent to himself.
There's this idea of Bay as a sort of totalitarian maniac:
"How's Micheal Bay to work with?" "You know, it's like looking into the mind of
madness, and then having it tell you: ‘Move out of my way, I'm trying to get this shot’ "
And I think the irony of a strict auteurist reading (a la Truffaut) is that Bay probably would side more with Pauline Kael.
He may or may not be an egomaniac (word in the industry is... mixed, to put it lightly).
"This has to be all grips on hand with this thing. It is not to move under the tail, you understand me?"
"Alright, am I very f*cking clear? Good"
"Working with Michael Bay is, it's not a picnic".
And that still does not shed any light onto his worldview, or what he is trying to do. Bay's style is distinct, but,
like Kael, he clearly thinks that the work should speak for itself.
So, we may not have an on-the-record manifesto of Bay's authorial intent,
but we can pretty strongly infer that he does have one.
So, in that regard, Bay definitely falls into Truffaut's ideas on an auteur politique,
and in the intersection between the Bay politique and Transformers lies the answer
both to why the films have been so successful, and why many fans of the franchise find the films so noxious.
Bay politique appeals to a mainstream, but it does not line up with a sincere honorship of nostalgia.
The message in Michael Bay's Transformers movies about Transformers is not...
"let's leave these wonderful creations in the innocent world of children where they belong,"
it's more along the lines of, "why would you play with plastic toys when you can play with titties, you f*cking losers?"
"Take a look at this 1939 Delahaye 165 Cabriolet, designed by a frenchman."
"Look at the curves, elegant, isn't it?"
So, when people say "Michael Bay raped my childhood," or used to say,
you don't really see that phrase being thrown around so much anymore, what they really mean is:
"Micheal Bay added politique to something innocent."
"Michael Bay took this memory of a property that I hold fondly and robbed it of its magical,
nostalgic value by dragging it into this idea of things that really matter like the military, titties, and cars."
"Sensual. Built to evoke the body of the ideal woman."
Which are all shown is vastly superior to the child-like quality of the franchise itself.
"Does it suck, or what? Like a bad sci-fi film..."
It isn't really even about political affiliation or worldview so much as its reverence for the source material,
of which Michael Bay has none.
"So you can really get in more depth with the robots this time. That's what we tried to do different than the other movies."
Which is why people who have a vague memory of the Transformers franchise (i.e. most people)
tend to respond more positively to these movies than people with a more intense knowledge and affinity for the franchise.
"They're so good, you know? And there's a lot of bad in the world. And it's like--they're always doing the right thing."
"Give me your face!"
But in terms of Michael Bay's preoccupation, as well as his influence, his technical prowess remains the most important.
It is both his defining attribute, as well as his greatest limitation.