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American beliefs and values as reflected in the movie national treasure directed by John Turteltaub in 2004
THESIS
Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Sarjana Sastra Degree at English Department
Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University
by Roko Patria Jati
C.0301052
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF LETTERS AND FINE ARTS
SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY SURAKARTA
2006
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AMERICAN BELIEFS AND VALUES AS REFLECTED IN THE MOVIE NATIONAL TREASURE
DIRECTED BY JOHN TURTELTAUB IN 2004
by
ROKO PATRIA JATI C 0301052
Approved to be examined by the consultant
Thesis Consultant
Drs. Bathoro M. Sarjana, M.A. NIP 130 529 731
Head of English Department
Drs. Riyadi Santosa, M.Ed. NIP 131 569 264
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AMERICAN BELIEFS AND VALUES AS REFLECTED IN THE MOVIE NATIONAL TREASURE
DIRECTED BY JOHN TURTELTAUB IN 2004
by
ROKO PATRIA JATI C 03 01 052
Accepted and Approved by the Board of Examiners Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University
On 8th August, 2006
Position Name Signature Chairman Drs. Hendarto Rahardjo, M.A. ( ) NIP 130 786 656 Secretary Fitria Akhmerti Primasita, S.S., M.A. ( )
NIP 132 205 442 First Examiner Drs. Bathoro M. Sarjana, M.A. ( ) NIP 130 529 731 Second Examiner Dra. Endang Sri Astuti, M.S. ( )
NIP 130 902 533
The Dean of Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts
Sebelas Maret University
Prof. Dr. Maryono Dwirahardjo, S.U. NIP 130 675 167
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STATEMENT
Name : Roko Patria Jati NIM : C 0301052
I declared truthfully that this thesis entitled American Beliefs and Values
as Reflected in The Movie National Treasure Directed by John Turteltaub in 2004 is originally made by the researcher. It is not a plagiarism nor made by others. The things related to other people’s works are written in quotation and included in the bibliography.
If it is later discovered and proven that this statement is not true, the researcher willingly accepts any penalty from the English Department, Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts, Sebelas Maret University.
Surakarta, 4 Agustus 2006
Roko Patria Jati
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MOTTOES
I left behind me for all of you two keys of truly salvations: Quran and Sunnah; take care of both in your daily live and you will be forever
enlightened and guided (from being lost) by Allah Taala. [Hadits, Muhammad SAW]
To hope for the benign end of history is human. To expect it to happen is unrealistic.
To plan on it happening is disastrous. [Samuel P. Huntington]
We are just survivors who live in this cynical world which is filled by so many hard competitions
[Jerry Maguire]
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I dedicate this thesis to me, my grandpa, my grandma,
my parents, my brothers and sisters and all of my friends.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin. All praise is just for the Almighty God, Allah
SWT, for the entire blessing, grace, and guidance in completing this thesis.
This thesis will not be accomplished without helps from everyone who has
given their power and spent their time to guide and assist the researcher.
Therefore, the researcher would like to thank and give appreciation to:
1. Prof. Dr. Maryono Dwirahardjo, S.U., as the dean of Faculty of Letters and
Fine Arts for his approval.
2. Drs. Riyadi Santosa, M.Ed., as the head of the English Department for his
permission to complete the thesis.
3. Drs. Bathoro M. Sarjana, M.A., as thesis consultant for his support and
advices to help me finish the thesis.
4. Drs. S. Budi Waskito, M.Pd., as the academic advisor for the advices and
guidance.
5. My father, mother, brothers and sisters who always support me finishing this
thesis as soon as possible. Sorry for making you upset sometimes, but I have
done my best. My beloved grandpa (you make me survive up to now, your
spirit and compassion) and my grandma’s mom of Banjarsari, also my father’s
father, all rest in peace, I pray always may Allah give you a better place in
heaven, Amin. My beloved grandma of Banjarsari, you are the only person I
rely on when I feel bad in this wild world, and my father’s mom. I give also
my gratitude to my big family, my uncles, aunties, nieces and nephews.
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6. Kinasih Club, for being my source of inspiration in the past, present, and
perhaps tomorrow in my future. It was my first stage in the faculty, to
recognize my friends, share and give with them, and try to do something
useful we never tried before.
7. PRESS DIV and ISDIV of EDCOM then flourished in my heart, I will never
forget the fun, the smile, the fools, the first impression, and of course the
partnership in conducting many memorial activities.
8. For PII or IMSA (Indonesian Moslem Student Association) which has
permitted me to grow up together, to socialize with others, to be a more
mature person, and to have the same process in every training I followed. It’s
just such nice things I’ve ever had –its spirit, its friendship, etc –and it
becomes the most important passage in my life till now.
9. SKI & KAMMI & ARROYAN which I always remembered for every single
kindness and compassion of the members, the seniors, and the teachers. It
really ties up in one unity and one big family as fellow moslem.
10. Kartopuran Community with every hot issues we tried to handle it in fast
reaction, some crazy people, the creative community, sometimes NATO
sometimes action first, broken radio, bongso thox, the mazhab of Imam
Samudera, table tennis club, the north and the south, the gates, food stall, etc.
I’m just running to come home, not running away. I like you all guys, always
be proud, and always waiting for the reunion day.
11. Bu Tesa, Bu Fitria, Bu Endang, Bu Nanik, Bu Rini, Pak Hendarto, Pak Yusuf,
Mas Taufik, Bu Retno (alm), Bu Samiati, Pak Jatmiko, Pak Agus DP, Pak
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Agus Hari, Pak Gatot, Pak Marmanto, Bu Ida, Pak Thomas, Pak Nababan,
Pak Yoyok, Bu Diah Kristina, Bu Diah Erna, Bu Rara.
12. Adi, Aisy, Alfi, Ami, Aphien, Asih, Ayes, Bowo, Budi, Diah, Dila, Elida,
Erika, Erlina, Esthiwi, Gigih, Gresia, Hana, Hilda, Ira, Isna, Janna, Januar,
Latifah, Lukman, Lusi, Luthfi, Munir, Naning, Narno, Ndari, Nia, Niko,
Norma, Novi, Nurul, Ratri, Retno, Rini, Rita, Rizki, Rosida, Rosita, Ryan,
Sani, Sari, Septi, Setyo, Stiya, Titi, Uli, Vieta, Wahyuni, Widi, Yanti, Yustina.
Ika Rani, Eno, Maya, Ibnu, Sidik, Andiria. Ari S, Vita, Salieg, Luthfi, Lisa,
Sanjaya, Weni, Mbak Kikit, Ajeng, Dipa, Tomi, Yudis, Iwan. Umi P, Nurul K,
Ambar, Kartini, Vita S, Galuh, Esti, Faruk, Puput, Junaidul, and other friends
of EDS ‘02 and ’03. Burhan Shodik ’98.
13. Just forgive coz sometimes… I forget a single name, but no worry… I always
remember the memory deeply in my heart. I promise to keep it all the time.
14. Empty space in my life… for the long long night and a boring day time to
time.
15. Finally, for those who has been coloring my life again and again until the time
tomorrow, I thank you so much that I become useful and powerful in this
unpredictable world.
The researcher realizes that this thesis is far for being perfect. Supportive
criticism and suggestion will be kindly accepted. The researcher hopes that the
thesis will be beneficial for those who are interested in American Studies.
Surakarta, 4 Agustus 2006
Roko Patria Jati
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE ........................................................................................................... i
APPROVAL OF CONSULTANT .............................................................. ii
APPROVAL OF BOARD EXAMINERS .................................................. iii
STATEMENT ............................................................................................... iv
MOTTOES ................................................................................................... v
DEDICATION .............................................................................................. vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENT ............................................................................. vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................. x
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................. xii
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
A. Research Background ......................................................................... 1
B. Scope of the Study ............................................................................. 3
C. Problem Statement ............................................................................. 4
D. Objective of the Study ........................................................................ 4
E. Benefits of the Study .......................................................................... 4
F. Methods of Research .......................................................................... 4
G. Theoretical Approach ......................................................................... 6
H. Thesis Organization ........................................................................... 7
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Popular Culture .................................................................................. 9
B. Semiotic Film Theory ........................................................................ 19
C. Sociological Approach ....................................................................... 23
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D. American Society between 2004 and 2005 ........................................ 27
E. Historical Overview of Conspiracy Theories in America:
Between 1600s and 1820s .................................................................. 33
F. Popularity of the Film National Treasure .......................................... 37
CHAPTER III. ANALYSIS
The Beliefs and Values Reflected in the Film National Treasure ........... 40
CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSION
Conclusion ............................................................................................... 67
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................ 68
APPENDICES
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ABSTRACT
Roko Patria Jati. C 0301052. 2006. American Beliefs and Values as Reflected in the Movie National Treasure Directed by John Turteltaub in 2004. Thesis: English Department Faculty of Letters and Fine Arts Sebelas Maret University Surakarta.
National Treasure was one of American popular film in the end of 2004
and early of 2005 directed by John Turteltaub. It stayed for several weeks in the first level of American box office. The original VCD of National Treasure distributed by PT. Vision Interprima Pictures in 2005 was analyzed and became the source of the main data. It consisted of dialogues, actions, pictures, sounds, setting of time, setting of place, etc in a whole movie. Meanwhile, the supporting data were from other informations from books and websites.
The thesis presents a discussion about American beliefs and values as
reflected in the movie National Treasure. It is a reflective study; thus the focus of the thesis is directed on the beliefs and values. Concerning the focus, the sociological approach, semiotic approach, and historical approach are used proportionally from their own specific context. Popular culture study leads the thesis to reveal the beliefs and values of the culture but it cannot judge whether they are good or bad. This is not film criticism which can freely do that, but it is the popular culture study which objectively combines the theory of popular culture, film semiotics, sociology, and history. Here, National Treasure is not seen as a film only from its aesthetic point of view, but also as an art which reflects several society’s beliefs and values.
There are several beliefs and values which can be revealed in the movie
National Treasure, they are: (1) Sometimes action with a high consequence (illegal or criminal) must be faced to continue reaching the final goal, (2) America is a special nation with special government, people, and duty, (3) Technology is needed as a means to do some acts, (4) Individuals have their own freedom to do anything, (5) A belief in process or practice to prove something is more important than the legend or theories, (6) Every individual is actually running for their material success, (7) The happiness will be completely reached after having a family, (8) America has a very much great treasure, (9) Romantic love can happen to anyone in a very unique condition, (10) The success has not completed without living in a house with certain expected condition.
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Research Background
The popularity of a given cultural element (object, person, or event) is
directly proportional to the degree to which that element is reflective of
audience’s beliefs and values. The greater the popularity of the cultural element in
an era, the more reflective the zeitgeist this element is likely to be (Nachbar and
Lause, 1992: 5). In addition, Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause in their book Popular
Culture: An Introductory Text re-emphasize that popular culture refers to the
products of human work and thought which are or have been accepted and
approved of by large numbers of people (ibid., p. 10).
Therefore, reflective study of popular culture means that the study will
primarily be intended to reveal out the beliefs and values which are kept on the
certain cultural elements in order to ensure their popularity. In other words, the
study constantly returns to the hidden beliefs and values of the popular culture
products to determine their meanings and significances (ibid., p. 22). Besides
reflective study, it is also descriptive study to describe and analyze the subject, or
as the cameras (record, examine, illuminate). It differentiates from film criticism
as the study of culture which can freely give some evaluations, judgments, and
labels to the culture (ibid., p. 12).
Basically, human’s beliefs and values in daily life are uncountable and
unseen, they can only be seen through the popular culture products. The beliefs
and values of popular culture product will be examined thoroughly in this thesis.
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Thus National Treasure is not seen as the movie or story itself but in relation to
the beliefs and values that can be revealed out by the movie.
Anyway the movie National Treasure is interesting to be analyzed further
as an object of American popular culture study due to its popularity. The movie
was a very popular movie with fantastic acquisitions. It succeeded moving to the
top ten American box office and stayed at the first level for three weeks long since
its release on 19th September 2004. The movie was played in 3.243 movie theatres
or became the most wanted movie on theatres in the second and third weeks
(www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/NATTR.php, accessed on 19th February
2006 at 20.00).
National Treasure is an American fiction action adventure movie genre
released in 2004 by director John Turteltaub. In short, it tells about national
treasure hunting, the secret treasure which has been kept by the secret society
(brotherhood) namely Freemasons since American Revolution. The legend came
from a grandfather named John. Then it became a family legend of treasure map
recounted to his little grandson named Benjamin Franklin Gates (Ben). At one
beginning occasion, Ben, Riley, Ian and his gangs were looking for a ship named
‘Charlotte’ in which they believed could be searched in North Arctic. Ben was so
glad could realize his dream with some help of a rich investor he met two years
before named Ian. Unfortunately, they just found the meerschaum pipe in the
cargo room of Charlotte, not the treasure as they imagine. According to Ben, the
pipe was only clue that led to another clue. The first clue in pipe was resolved and
it said that the next clue was in the back of original document of Declaration of
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Independence. Ben must have serious deal with his partner Ian when Ian asked
him to join stealing the document of the Declaration.
Ben and Riley told such information about Ian’s stealing plan toward
government institutions, but such institution like FBI and Department of
Homeland Security disbelieved them. Then they met Abigail Chase (the curator in
National Archives) and she also had the same opinion as previous institutions. She
thought surely it was impossible thus she was not going to worry about its safety.
Ben felt desperate and he had a plan to steal the Declaration in order to save it
from Ian. Moreover, Ben’s father Patrick Henry Gate had unpleasant attitude
regarding the treasure story. He wanted to stop the madness and defected from the
ranks of the obsessed to become disbeliever. There was a ‘hide and seek’ action
from Philadelphia, New York, to New Jersey between Ben, Ian, and Peter (FBI).
Ben was arrested by FBI when he ran from Ian gangs. Ian then tried to escape Ben
because he still needed Ben’s help. In order to increase the gravity of situation,
Ian also involved Patrick, Riley, and Chase as hostages. Finally, Ben, Patrick,
Chase and Riley found a lot of treasure there, the greatest treasure in history
which belonged to every people in the world. Ian was arrested by FBI for many
accusations.
B. Scope of the Study From the previous background, the focus of research is obviously put on
the beliefs and values reflected in National Treasure as a popular movie. The
popularity of the film was in entire America when the film National Treasure
stayed in the American box office between the end of 2004 and early 2005.
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C. Problem Statement
In this popular culture research, the researcher raises one problem as
follows: “What beliefs and values are reflected in the movie National Treasure?”
D. Objective of the Study
One point of question in problem statement is analysed later employing
related approach in order to find the answer. The objective of this study is: “To
reveal out the beliefs and values which are reflected in the movie National
Treasure”.
E. Benefits of the Study
This thesis of American studies mainstream gives proper description of
the American beliefs and values reflected in this movie. Moreover this study is
beneficial to complement the study of popular culture in popular art or product,
especially in a movie.
F. Method of Research
Type of Research
The type of research of this study is library research in the form of
descriptive qualitative one. According to Strauss and Corbin, qualitative research
means any kind of research that produces findings not arrived at by means of
statistical procedures or other means of quantification. It can refer to research
about person’s lives, stories, behaviours; but also about organizational
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functioning, social movements, or interaction relationship. These includes
observation and interviews, but might also include document, book, and video
tapes (Strauss and Corbin, 1990: 18).
Source of Data and Supporting Data
The main data of this research were taken from the original VCD of
National Treasure distributed in Indonesia by PT. Vision Interprima Pictures.
This 2004 released movie is directed by John Turteltaub, produced by Jerry
Buckheimer in corporation with Walt Disney Pictures, and distributed by Buena
Vista. Running time is approximately 135 minutes. The main data consisted of
dialogues, actions, pictures, sounds, setting of time, setting of place, etc in a
whole movie.
Supporting data were collected from sources such as reviews of the film,
production notes, criticisms taken from the internet and other books, and also
references on philosophy, American history, American social political condition,
etc.
Technique of Processing the Data
The data processing phases were directed as follows:
- Understanding phase: the main data were watched repeatedly and then
trying to understand the appropriate theory.
- Analysis phase: the approaches of this research were applied in describing
the beliefs and values in the movie.
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- Concluding phase: researcher evaluated and examined the result. The phase
included conclusion or evaluation of the previous phase (main data
analysis).
G. Theoretical Approach
Since this research is based on American Studies, National Treasure is
analysed by using the interdisciplinary analysis. The application of
interdisciplinary analysis involves or covers “more than one area of study”
(Hornby, 1995: 622). It is intended to give a holistic analysis that covers historical
condition, economic, social, or even political and constitutional condition (Spiller,
1981: 225).
In this research, the researcher uses some fundamental theories and
approaches, such as: popular culture theory, semiotic film theory, sociological
approach, and historical approach.
1) Popular Culture Theory
Popular culture theory here is mainly taken from Jack Nachbar and Kevin
Lause in their book Popular Culture: An Introductory Text. It is not film study
or film criticism but it is the popular culture study which tries to reveal and find
beliefs and values that are reflected in the movie and then related to its popularity.
2) Semiotic Film Theory
Film semiotics is an intellectual field of study in its own right and can shed
interesting light on how a film conveys meaning. The emphasis in semiotics is
more purely anthropological, philosophical, even political however, and is not
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intended to illuminate film and the filmmaking process so much as to illuminate
the workings of the human mind (Douglas and Harnden, 1996: 250).
Film is seen as a language that is composed of signs. It is directly and
obliquely social representation. In film, characters are given attitudes, gestures,
sentiments, and motivations that are based on social roles and notions about how
they are supposed to act (Allen and Gomery, 1985, p.158). Therefore, the research
employed the semiotic theory to analyze the beliefs and values in the movie
National Treasure.
3) Sosiological Approach
Sociological approach is significant in order to find the association
between humans and the society around them. It is concerned with every aspect of
the social worlds that affects a person’s thoughts or actions. Thus Sociology is the
study of social life and the social causes and consequences of human behaviour.
This study encompasses all interpersonal relationships, all groups or collections of
persons, and all types of social organizations (Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 6).
4) Historical Approach
Since the thesis was dealt with several myths, beliefs, and values thus the
application of historical approach is necessary. By using historical approach, the
historical facts that can be used as the basic understanding of the situation in the
film can be obtained. “Historical approach is important to be used to know a
history as a revelation of an event that becomes the setting background of the
film. It can reveal the facts that are hidden by the time and place boundaries into
an understanding of a social phenomenon and then create some pattern of society
behavior” (Daiches, 1974: 94).
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H. Thesis Organization
The thesis is organized into four subsequent chapter, outlined as follows:
CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION, provides Research Background, Scope of
the Study, Problem Statement, Objective of the Study, Benefits
of the Study, Methods of Research, Theoretical Approach, and
Thesis Organization.
CHAPTER II : REFERENCE REVIEW, consists of Popular Culture,
Semiotic Film Theory, Sociological Approach, American Society
between 2004 and 2005, Historical Overview of Conspiracy
Theories in America: Between 1600s and 1820s, Popularity of
The Film National Treasure.
CHAPTER III : ANALYSIS, consists of the Beliefs and Values reflected in the
film National Treasure
Chapter IV : Conclusion
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CHAPTER II
REFERENCE REVIEW
A. Popular Culture
1. Popular Culture Characteristics
The major themes of the study of popular culture will revolve around
several important characteristics of the subject. It is important to know firstly
whether our object of study belongs to popular culture or not. The characteristics
of popular culture are:
a. It consists of artifact (objects and people) and events (activities surrounding
the objects and people)
Artifacts is one of the elements of popular culture which consists of
objects and people. They are visible expressions of beliefs and values. Popular
artifacts are of two types: popular objects are termed icons and popular people
are labeled heroes or celebrities. Each of these categories is then further
subdivided into real and imaginary types depending upon whether or not the
hero or icon exists in the real world, historic or present, or only within the
context of some fictional creation. Celebrities cut across the real and the
imaginary because even though they actually exist in three dimensional form –
living and breathing like the rest of us, their hyped-up, fabricated star persona
is often so distant from the real person as to be more properly considered a
type of fiction (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 24).
There is also “events” as the another element of popular culture which
consists of rituals and arts. Rituals are highly patterned symbolic events in
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which we all participate as a way of marking important passages in our
individual lives or in society as a whole, in which we bind our culture together
in a celebration of our common beliefs and values and/ or in which we release
tension and anxiety in a socially acceptable, “safe” manner. While the arts are
vast and diverse, however, but they do not stand isolated from the other rooms
and they derive their meaning and significance from the beliefs and values in
the basement of the popular mindset. The examples are popular magazine,
movies, television, recordings, comic books (ibid., p. 27-28).
Movie is an interesting and relevant one as the example of arts. Art
covers such a wide range of human endeavor that it is almost more an attitude
than an activity. It correlates with culture and society thus there are terms
“community”, “criticism”, “science” (Monaco, 2000: 22). Originally, it is a
performance arts which happen in real time, then the representational arts
which depend on the established codes and conventions of language (both
pictorial and literary) to convey information about the subject to the observer.
Finally it is the recording arts which provide a more direct path between
subject and observer, media not without their own codes but qualitatively
more direct than the media of representational arts (ibid., p. 27). In other
words, the arts also can be “popular” by the development of technology which
gave the masses enough affluence and leisure to become an audience for the
popular arts (Hammel, 1977: 2).
b. It reflects beliefs and values of audiences
c. It shapes beliefs and values of audiences
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Previous point b and c explain popular culture as a “Funhouse Mirror”
of which it both reflects our image back to us but also alters our image in the
process of doing so. This both sides of the Funhouse Mirror is also called as a
dual function of Popular Culture (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 7). The important
explanation of the process of Funhouse Mirror, as written by Belgard, always
refers to Rockwell’s “Triple Self-Portrait” (1960). It was a study of painter
seen from behind, regarding himself in a mirror as he works on a self-portrait.
It was an image reflection in the real mirror which then was altered differently
in the canvas (Belgrad, 1998: 64).
d. It must be commercial because it is produced to have the goal of making
money
Popular cultures were not made with the intention of educating,
challenging or enlightening their target audience. They were produced with
the intention of getting as many people into the theatres as many times as
possible (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 41). Therefore popular culture as a
commodity has its economic role of which it ensures the generation and
circulation of wealth, and it can vary from the basic necessities of life to
inessential luxuries, and by extension can include non material objects such as
television programs, a woman’s appearance, or a star’s name (Fiske, 2001:
11).
e. It is often imitative or makes the repetition
The forms of imitation can be devided into four:
1) Sequels or Series
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2) Ripoffs and Wannabe: Popular cultures which seek to isolate the popular
element of successful blockbuster and then reproduce them in slightly
altered surroundings.
3) Imitation of Earlier Forms: The imitative process which looks backward as
well as forward.
4) Media Makeover: It is prevalent tool of imitation that it deserves to be
considered in its own category. It also frequently consists of authorized
imitations in other forms (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 42-45).
f. The result of popular culture surrounds us
Popular culture forms the vast majority of the artifacts and events
which compose our daily lives, but it does not consist of our entire culture. It
surrounds us but does not drown other opportunities for existence apart from it
(ibid., p. 15).
In addition to characteristics above, popular culture refers to the product of
human work and thought which are accepted and approved by a large number of
community or population (ibid., p. 14). As we see from the definition of popular
culture, it must have the elements of “the acceptance” and “a large number of
community”. If one of those, the acceptance or a large number of community, is
ignored or eliminated, the culture will not be the popular culture.
Popular culture is also the mass communicative variety means which has
some difficulties. First difficulty is that the popular culture lends themselves to an
almost infinite number of approaches (Hammel, 1977: 3). There will be many
approaches to define the popular culture but it still represents one approach to the
popular culture. Actually they represent a multiplicity of approaches.
xxv
Second difficulty is about the problem of taste. Although taste can never
be absolute, it does seem to develop the practice. The more the audience read, see,
hear, the more they are exposed to. In other words, popular culture is more
democratic since they are accessible to larger number of people. It often depends
on a mass audience for their very existence (Hammel, 1977: 1). Therefore, the
level of cultural development or education of the people has a direct bearing on
the quality of popular culture (ibid., p. 3-4).
2. The Beliefs and Values
Beliefs and values are the ideas which cannot be “seen” in and of
themselves. They exist in the cultural mind and in the minds of the individual
member of mass society. Beliefs and values closer to the surface in “The House of
Popular Culture” are those which are most transitory, shallow, and faddish.
Beliefs and values deep down in the solid rock of the house’s foundation can be
termed “bedrock beliefs and values” because they are the most stable,
longstanding, and significant ones characteristic of broad components of the total
population. Recently, cultural analysts have begun to refer to the bedrock beliefs
as “myths” (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 22-23).
Mindset is a view of reality based upon only limited evidence but believed
to be entirely correct by those who hold it. The mindset consists of beliefs (the
view of reality) and values (the judgment or evaluation of that reality) expressed
in material forms (artifact or events). Mindset are formed by two elements namely
individual experience (which makes each mindset unique), and cultural
experience (which one shares with others and thus makes mindsets of those in the
same culture bear a strong resemblance to each other). (ibid., p. 8).
xxvi
People share their beliefs and values with other people in society. They
differ from one society to another. After people see some specific realities or
phenomena in society and propose their own view of reality (beliefs), then they
learn for several values. Most of people’s basic values are learned in life from
family, friend, mass media, and other sources within society. The beliefs and
values are generally shared and reinforced by others in daily interaction. They are
sometimes emotional and each of them are also in conflict either in one individual
or between individuals in society (Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 6).
In addition to the conflict (contradiction), at least there are three other
kinds of natural complexity in the relationship of myths, beliefs, and values. The
complete four kinds of the complexity are:
a. Each myth has a number of associated beliefs and values
b. Each myth and its associated beliefs and values is related to at leas
one other myth in a symbiotic manner
c. Popular myths often contradict each other in important ways
d. Beliefs change and evolve over time (Nachbar and Lause, 1992:
99-101)
3. The Position of Popular Culture
All of people participate in at least two kinds of culture besides popular
culture which forms the bulk of our cultural existence. We need both as a means
to understand, illustrate, and identify several other significant characteristics of
the popular culture.
The first is folk culture. It refers to the products of human work and
thought that have developed within a limited community and that are
xxvii
communicated directly from generation to generation, between folk who are
familiar to each other. The means of communication is usually oral, the author or
creator of the artifact or event is often unknown or is termed as a spokesperson
who tells and demonstrates something which had previously been told or
demonstrated to him or her and it is also typically simple both thematically and
technologically. We are all part of a folk as well as a member of the masses. It is
equally important to recognize what folk culture is not as well. Folk culture is not
merely the culture of the poor or uneducated. (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 15)
The second is elite culture. It refers to the products of human work and
thought produced by and for a limited number of people who have specialized
interests, training, and knowledge. The elite artists are known by the audience and
the artist’s works are used to express the interpretation of the world (of society or
all of reality). The roles of audiences are very important because the more
audiences know about the artists, the more meaningful the artist’s works is. Elite
art is produced for the ages not for a tiny folk community or for the entertainment
and diversion of the masses (ibid., p. 15-16).
Most of audiences or common people thought that the folk culture deals
with the poverty and stupidity and the elite culture deals with the intelligence and
wealth. However those thoughts are totally wrong because there are no connection
and relation among the folk and elite cultures to the stupidity, poverty,
intelligence, and wealth.
The three parts of culture: folk, popular, and elite have the relationships in
understanding the study of popular culture and the approach in culture. The
relationship among folk, popular, and elite culture has been illustrated by Ray
xxviii
Browne and it forms a simple diagram that represents several significant aspects
of the way the cultures interact with each other.
Folk Popular Elite Culture
a. The relationship among the three is non evaluative. It means the three kinds of
culture have the same level and there is no designation of low, middle, or high
and no one culture is to be described better or worse than any other.
b. The shape of the representatives “egg” indicates that popular culture is the
major portion of a society’s total way of life. It surrounds us and forms the
fabric of our everyday lives in a way that folk and elite culture do not.
c. The relationship among the three is fluid. It means there are no hard and fast
lines separating the cultures from each other, but rather, each culture seems to
flow almost indefinably into its neighbor. This fluid relationship in turn has
two important elements:
1) Each member or a society experiences all three types of culture. There are
no lines to prevent an individual from moving freely from one cultural
type to another.
2) A given cultural artifact or event can change culture categories over time
or because of changes in its mode of presentation or audience (Brown in
Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 16-17).
4. Reflective Study of Popular Culture
Taking popular culture seriously cannot be separated from the beliefs and
values. Those are kept inside the popular culture and must be revealed so the
xxix
messages in it can be explained clearly. Popular beliefs and values are those
unseen convictions about the world which form a culture’s mindset and mold and
color the way which the culture sees and interprets (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 7).
The range of beliefs and values characteristics of a cultural mindset is as vast as
the culture’s history, its present circumstances, and its hopes and dreams of the
future and it can be as specific as the reasons which lie behind the way. Popular
beliefs and values are the meanings which lie behind the artifacts and events
which are their visible expressions which its forms are the truths which explain
the facts and thus weave existence into a pattern which we can recognize and
share (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 24).
Reflective study of popular culture leads us to reveal the beliefs and values
of the culture but it cannot judge whether it is good or bad. It is guided by the
popular culture formula as a valuable tool in which it both aids us in selecting
cultural elements for examination and reminds us how to examine them. Popular
culture formula states that the popularity of a given cultural element (object,
person, or event) is directly proportional to the degree to which that element is
reflective of audience beliefs and values. The greater the popularity of the cultural
element in an era or over time, the more reflective of the zeitgeist this element is
likely to be. The formula assumes that audience choose a specific cultural element
over other alternatives because they find it attractive in its reassuring reflection of
their beliefs, values, and desires (ibid., p. 6).
The reveal of the beliefs and values from the popular culture product really
has the connection to the objectivity of true and false. However the way is very
irrelevant to the study of popular culture because it should not judge whether the
xxx
object is true or false. Popular culture must need the understanding and
appreciation to analyze it and the most important is to reveal the beliefs and
values in the artifacts and events of popular culture. It never assumes that popular
culture studies of the mindset simply reveal that which is obvious, right, or
common sense. Popular culture reflects and molds the beliefs and values that are
so embedded, that their truth is assumed rather that proven. The study of popular
culture brings these assumed-to-be-true beliefs and values to the surface (Nachbar
and Lause, 1992: 9).
The most important thing of revealing beliefs and values in popular culture
is concerned only with describing, defining, and understanding what a cultural
beliefs and values not whether the culture is wise or foolish, correct or incorrect.
Popular beliefs and values do not argue the truths they embody and express, but
that they assume them. The result is that a cultural pattern can become an
entrapping web of beliefs. Its result must be seen as one build not as a separated
one.
The audiences take the important role in valuing the artifact or event of
popular culture so that the audiences will influence whether those cultural
elements will be popular and long lasting or not. They have the needs and desires
to reflect their beliefs and values in order to ensure and strengthen that the product
will be accepted or not by them. The culture’s beliefs ought not to be taken as
articles of faith because the audiences need to understand so they can decide,
choose, accept, and believe it. The point of the purpose is that the beliefs and
values are believed and people make choice and take action based on it.
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Beside reflective study, it is also reflective mirror in which the product of
popular culture really connects with the cultural mindset of the audience. As the
reflective mirror, popular culture must focus upon two aspects of the zeitgeist, the
“transitory” and the “concrete” (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 5). Zeitgeist is a
German word that refers to the spirit of an era, the major beliefs and values which
describe the particular outlook of a culture during the specific period of time
(ibid., p. 4). The zeitgeist which characterizes a particular era is composed of
“transitory” attitudes and perspectives which last only as long as the era itself and
then fade from view. But an era’s zeitgeist also expresses deep-seated, highly
significant “concrete” beliefs and values which transcend the specific time period
and represent the fundamental character of the culture itself (ibid., p. 5).
B. Semiotic Film Theory
1. Saussure’s Theory
Saussure theory should not be ignored in viewing semiotics. Saussure
broke with previous approaches to the study of language in asking not how it
developed but how it works. Philology had been content to face the evolution of a
word or sound over the centuries; Saussure sought to explain how that word, that
sound produced meaning. The essence of the explanation and the second point is
that meaning exists only within a system. It is contradicting to the understanding
of language, that language acquires its meaning by reference. Saussure, as cited by
Lapsley and Westlake, argued that meaning derives solely from the system within
which particular utterances are articulated (Lapsley and Westlake, 1988: 33).
xxxii
The system is known as langue, and the actual or potential utterances are
known as parole. They may be compared to the rule system of chess and to the set
of moves which may be actually or potentially played. Langue defines both what
the permissible or impressible utterances are (as do the rules of chess in relation to
moves) and what their significant is (again, as in chess) (Lapsley and Westlake,
1988: 33).
Saussure distinguished the functioning of language as a system between
the signifier and the signified, which together comprise the linguistic sign
(typically a word). The signifier is the actual sound (or if written, the appearance)
of the word. Then the signified is the concept or meaning attached to it. The
relationship between the signified and the signifier is arbitrary because there is
nothing in the nature of things to dictate that a signified should have a particular
signifier. The same signified has different signifiers in different languages.
Saussure also claimed that the value of a signifier is given not by its relation to a
pre-given signified but by its relation to other signifiers. (ibid., p. 34).
In other words, meaning is produced by a system of differences. Such
differences may be specified in relation to two basic axes. They are the
paradigmatic (or axis of selection) and the syntagmatic (or axis of combination).
The paradigmatic pertains to potential substitutes for any element in the signifying
chain. Then the syntagmatic runs as it were horizontally from one signifying
element to the next, and pertains to the way meaning is established by the
combination of any given element with other elements in the signifying chain.
(ibid., p. 34). The meaning of element is determined by its relation both to the
present set of elements, it is in combination with and to the absent set of elements
xxxiii
that could be substituted for it. The essential point is that the language has many
differences. The differences in languages are the diacritical theory of meaning
which proves the single more influential idea operative within film semiotics.
2. Metz’s Theory
The key figure among the filmo-linguistic pioneer was Christian Metz.
Stam dedicated his book New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics in 1992 to his
mentor, Metz, as an outer framework of film theory. Stam stated that Metz’s
purpose was to “get to the bottom of the linguistic metaphor” by testing it against
the most advanced concepts of contemporary linguistics (Stam, 1992: 33).
In another book, Lapsley and Westlake included Metz’s answers
concerning the main semiotics question if the cinema is a language or not. Metz
says, as cited by Lapsley and Westlake, that the cinema is a language but it has
not a langue, where langue is understood in the Saussure theory as the system of
signs intended for inter-communication (Lapsley and Westlake, 1988: 38). Metz
wanted to achieve an understanding of how films are understood, but the
recognized fundamental differences between language and cinema had prevented
the wholesale importation of Saussure’s concepts. The concept of langue was
inapplicable to cinema for three basic reasons. They are:
a. Cinema is not available for inter-communication. It is a communication at all
(rather than expression), it is one-way communication.
b. The filmic image is quite unlike the Saussurean sign, with its arbitrary relation
between signifier and signified, and instead, in its reproduction of the
conditions of perception, can be termed as the block of reality. The cinema has
as its primary material a body of fragments of the real world, mediated
xxxiv
through their mechanical duplication. Whereas a verbal signifier acquires its
significance from its place within a system, that of an image derives from
what it duplicates. Moreover, as well as resemblance there is material link
between the image and its objects, making it index as well as icon, and
therefore motivated. However, there were qualifications even in Metz early
work, as when he acknowledged that an image necessarily involves distortion
and deformation. Later, this idea was developed through the identification of
codes at work in the image. Despite such qualifications, the general tenor of
the argument was that cinema duplicated rather than articulated reality.
c. For refusing cinema’s status of langue was that it lacks the double articulation.
The characteristics economy of language, through which infinity of utterances
can be generated by means of a very small number of basic units, is achieved
through this double articulation. At the level of the first articulation a limited
number of words are combined in different orders to provide a limitless
number of utterances. But a still greater economy is permitted through a
second articulation, by which morphemes are made up of a very much smaller
number of phonemes, these become the smallest distinctive units of language.
These are without meaning in themselves, but systematized on the basis of
phonological properties to produce consequential differences. Metz concluded
that the shot is more like a statement than a word, but even here the
resemblance is limited in that a statement is reducible to discrete elements, the
morphemes and phonemes, in a way that the shot is not (Lapsley and
Westlake, 1988: 40).
xxxv
Based on the three reasons above, hence cinema is not langue, it is
nonetheless language. It is due to the extent that it orders signifying elements
within ordered arrangements different from those of spoken idioms, and to the
extent that these elements are not traced on the perceptual configuration of reality
itself. Cinema transforms the world into discourse, and is not therefore simple
duplication. But a semiotics of the cinema cannot work at the level of the image,
since each image is unique, novel and analogous to reality, with its meaning
produced not by its place within a system but by what it duplicates. There is no
process of selection from a lexicon of images in cinema as there is from the verbal
lexicon of a natural language (Lapsley and Westlake, 1988: 40).
3. The Language of Film
Since a film is constructed of visual, aural, and linguistic components that
are manipulated in particular ways, it is a challenge to take apart the totality of the
film experience and to interpret how that experience was assembled.
Understanding the film image, its signs and codes, as a language system is very
essential to help reading the movie. In film language, cinematic signs are
paradigmatic while cinematic codes are syntagmatic (syntax). They make up the
images in a film as a language system. Here, the semiotic film theory is used to
interpret all meaning behind the image, not only on words or sentences.
C. Sociological Approach
1. Sociology
Oxford dictionary tells that sociology is the scientific study of the nature
and development of society and social behavior (Hornby, 1995: 1128). In its term,
xxxvi
sociology is often credited to Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the founder of
sociology. It is derived from two roots: socius, which means “companion” or
“associate”, and logos, which means “word”. Thus sociology means “words about
human associations or society” (Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 6).
Another way to find out what sociology is would be to observe some
sociologists at work. They all suggest that sociology is concerned with every
aspect of the social worlds that affects a person’s thoughts or actions. As stated by
the American Sociological Association in a booklet called “Careers in Sociology”,
sociology is the study of social life and the social causes and consequences of
human behavior. This study encompasses all interpersonal relationships, all
groups or collections of persons, and all types of social organizations. Beside that,
other areas which are investigated include racial and ethnic relationships,
prejudice and discrimination, power and politics, jobs and income, families and
family life, school systems and the educational process, social control,
organizations, bureaucracies, groups and group dynamics, leisure, health-care
systems, military systems, women’s movements, labor education, stratification of
people, etc (Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 6).
Sociology is also a perspective, a way of looking at society and social
behavior. It is a conscious effort to question the obvious, to remove from familiar
experiences and to examine them critically and objectively. This sort of empirical
investigation enables every researcher to determine whether their generalizations
about society are accurate. The sociological perspective operates at two levels,
which is termed macro and micro. The difference relates to the size of the unit of
analysis. Macro-sociology deals with large-scale structures and processes, while
xxxvii
micro-sociology is concerned with how individuals behave in social situations
(ibid., p. 8).
2. Society and Culture
The term culture means different things to different people. In the minds
of some people, culture is associated with such activities referred to elite culture
such as the opera, classical music and art museums. Yet in the contrast of the
upper classes, there were popular culture for common persons to involve soap
operas, wrestling matches and baseball games, Playboy and Playgirl magazines,
etc. Basically, a culture is viewed as a system of ideas, values, beliefs, knowledge,
norms, customs, and technology shared by almost everyone in a particular society.
While society is a group of interacting persons who live in a specific geographical
area, who are organized in a cooperative manner, and who share a common
culture. A culture is a society’s system of common heritage. In general terms, a
culture can be said to include all the human phenomena in a society that are not
the product of biological inheritance. Culture includes all learned behavior, it
consists of both the nonmaterial (language, ideas, values), and material aspects of
society (houses, clothes, tools). Both the skills needed to make a product and the
product itself are parts of culture. Sociology does not judge culture on the basis of
the taste or refinement of the society of which it is only a part of culture
(Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 92).
In most discussion of culture, it is assumed that the various groups of
people within a society share some expectations about how it works and how its
members should behave. Behaviors vary from one group or society to another,
they are viewed as products of culture rather that as basic aspects of human
xxxviii
nature. These behaviors are not programmed genetically like animal life but they
are determined by the various culture learned by human. There are several
elements of culture such as symbol, language, values, norms, cultural lag,
technology and material culture (Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 92-101).
3. Sociology and Popular Culture Study
People widely assume that research findings tend to support what they
already know. They have some idea as to why they act the way they do and how
they work. As social beings, most people were raised in families and
communities. Everyone has learned from book, television, radio or perhaps from
the direct experience in daily life which influence both idea or research findings.
Nevertheless not all of the obviously true idea has similar results with research
findings. Although some popular observations may be true, many others are not
supported by empirical data. Without social research, it is extremely difficult to
distinguish what is actually true from what people’s common sense tells what
should be true. Many researchers have not been satisfied with their research
because they run on the basis of what they considered common sense about what
they believed was the truth. Thus by employing sociology, it will improve the
quality of understanding people, society, and human behavior as well as
increasing the ability to question many of the popular observations widely
accepted as truth by the press and by others (Eshleman, et.al.. 1993: 10).
Popular culture study is a social study like sociology or other social
sciences: psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, etc. Each social
science focuses on selected aspects of social relationships or social systems.
Scientist in each field generally devotes their attention to “what is” rather than
xxxix
“what should be”. The social sciences are also likely to have as a goal the
acquisition of knowledge rather than the direct utilization of that knowledge. Thus
they differ little in their focus on social phenomena, in their methods, and in their
goals, but they do differ in their particular focus of attention. Also, it is not
unusual for the social sciences to overlap somewhat. Popular culture study is a
reflective study to reveal out the beliefs and values of cultural elements based on
its popularity. Therefore, the focus of the study is on the beliefs and values
reflected on that cultural element. Concerning both themes, the sociology or
sociological approach will approach them proportionally from the context of
society and social life.
D. American Society between 2004 and 2005
2004 was the year in which the film National Treasure was released. It
was four years goes by in the twenty first century. While the years between 2004
and 2005 were the important years in which the film National Treasure became
popular in American theatres. The film reflects and alters beliefs and values in
society means that the beliefs and values of film National Treasure influenced the
beliefs and values in society. It was the beliefs and values which already exist in
America since long time ago and were preserved from time to time by the
American people. In other words, the American society between 2004 and 2005
was the society in relevance to the beliefs and values they kept at that time, which
may refer also to the previous American fundamental or traditional beliefs (myth)
and values.
xl
Nachbar and Lause stated that the evaluation of beliefs and values from
their stability and significance results in two categories of beliefs and values. The
first ones are the most stable and significant beliefs and values, and the second
ones are the less stable and important. The beliefs and values become unstable and
less important when they have weak relation to the myth. They are popular for
only several decades (short-lived). For instance are the beliefs and values about
“Communist Bloc” as an evil empire, and also the political discrimination toward
women and Afro-Americans (Nachbar and Lause, 1992: 83).
In the first type, beliefs and values become stable, important, and
significant when they are closely associated with the myth. It can also be
representative enough in defining the cultural mindset (ibid.). In this case, the
beliefs and values mentioned by Nachbar and Lause are such as the family values,
the values of America as a democratic country, individual freedom, technology,
material success, romantic love, etc. They existed as American beliefs and values
since the early age of American society in 18th century until nowadays in 21st
century. Those are the “American Dreams” which are believed by American
people to be realized and preserved. Therefore American values today (or
tomorrow) need to be very similar to those in the past times (centuries).
Besides the categorization of American society’s beliefs and values related
to myth above, there are also other beliefs and values of American society
between 2004 and 2005 from other sources which may have connection or
relation with the beliefs and values of film National Treasure. They are:
xli
1. Adulthood is an essential period between childhood and parenthood
Ideal picture of human development may stand differently from its reality in daily life. One major function of adulthood is to protect children during their season of protracted vulnerability, but current events force American people to recognize that they are in a drawn out and worsening adulthood. The crises of childhood (adolescence and youth) in contemporary America have been tragically demonstrated in relation to adulthood, parenthood (father, mother), and also the condition of society (cultural development).
In post-modern America, national cultures as well as sub-cultures have
their moral foundations or identity of values, traditions, institutions and
disciplines. But in every enlightened society like America, the national cultures
and sub-cultures are opposed by the high culture that makes its agenda in
provoking culture wars. American people who cannot choose several hard choices
required by identity will find it hard also to make the commitments required by
intimacy. The ceremony like wedding thereby reminds each couple at the outset
of their life that one of them would probably become alone in the absence of the
other. Finally, in American lifetime, intimacy is too often called on to substitute
for identity, even such individual of fragile identity put very heavy demands on
their partners. They insist that their partner provide an unshakeable security and
something other assurances that actually come only from the well-founded self.
Any difficulties around identity and intimacy are exacerbated by the prospect of
the parental condition. Thus at this point, the parents or the older persons are
important in order not to give some bad effects toward adulthood
(www.americanvalues.org, accessed on 29th May 2006 at 22.00).
2. Marriage is more than something personal and it sustains love
Love is one’s own private possession, but marriage is more than
something personal, it is a status. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to
rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely love for each other, that
xlii
joins couples together in the sight of God and man. It is not love that sustains the
marriage, but the marriage that sustains love. Marriage is more than a personal
relationship between spouses. It is a social institution, with rules, public meaning
and a story to tell. Marriage is a status people graduated into, and it is bigger than
any human beings (www.americanvalues.org, accessed on 29th May 2006 at
22.00).
This seems like a strange American value in which the truth is that almost
everything these days impels people to consider the troubled institution of
marriage. There are many students settling for “uncommitted relationships”, they
struggle academically because their single mothers are unable to give them the
economic, emotional and directional support they need. As the result, many young
men and young women seem cannot really make sense of their role in modern
life. In this case, American people should not be surprised at the sense of rootless-
ness and directionless-ness. Today, fathers are not really necessary and it is not
shocking anymore. There are so many married fathers who are doing a terrific job,
very involved with their children, have a pretty good marriage, respect their wives
as equals, and they may look like the best fathers for their family. However, in
terms of numbers, families that do not have a father at all are swamping them.
American people seem to be losing the institutional imperatives of marriage,
leaving only the private relationship and that is increasingly likely to turn on
personal satisfaction (www.americanvalues.org, accessed on 29th May 2006 at
22.00).
3. Thrifty is good both for individuals or society
Thrift is a complex idea that includes the habit of saving, sharing, etc. Thrift is much more than sound approaches to managing one’s finances, and the main
xliii
goal of thrift has never been the accumulation of wealth as an end in itself. In 1920s, the slogan of “Thrift Week” which began on January 17 (Franklin’s birthday) was for celebrating success and happiness. Thrift is therefore flatly inconsistent with miserliness, or hoarding, or seeking wealth for wealth’s sake. Franklin refused to accept money for any of his many inventions, and spent much of his life performing public services for which he was not paid. One of the ten planks of National Thrift Week was “share with others”. The idea is that being thrifty enables us to be generous. More broadly, thrift is a pathway to social awareness and humane moral values. Franklin was an unabashed moral and civic reformer who viewed the thrift ethic as essential to improving the national character and insuring American progress. In almost identical ways, the leaders of the National Thrift Movement of the 1920s believed that their movement was vital to the broad goals of moral reform, character education, and civic progress. Since more than three hundred years ago, Ben Franklin shared his ideas on the values of thrift with American people, it involved:
- Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich
- Hope of gain lessens pain
- Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship
- Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with
Infamy
- Employ your time well, if you meanest to gain leisure
- Avarice and happiness never saw each other, how then should they
become acquainted
- Nothing so likely to make a man’s fortune as virtue (www.americanvalues.
org, accessed on 29th May 2006 at 22.00).
Today, of course, this movement is hardly remembered. Men and women
did good work, in so many ways, they are in their debt just as they were in
Franklin’s and others’ debt. Much of what they fought for is still quite relevant to
their lives. The word “thrift” today has a quaint, old-fashioned sound. Our
government budget deficits are ballooning out of control. Americans do not save
much at all, even though most economists agree that more savings and investment
xliv
relative to consumer spending would be good for them, both as individuals and as
a society. People sometimes seem to think that buying more stuff will make them
happy. They sometimes seem confused about the relationship of private gain to
the public good. Instead of inventing a new philosophy to help them wrestle with
these important issues, they might consider dusting off an old one for recycling
that would be the thrifty thing to do (www.americanvalues.org, accessed on 29th
May 2006 at 22.00).
4. Human person is primed for both individualism and deep connection
A conversation in a New York cafe in 2003 led to a report called
“Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative
Communities”. The report was co-authored by 33 children’s doctors, research
scientists, and mental health and youth service professionals. More specifically,
for what they believe is the first time, the study brought together neuroscientists
(who study the child’s developing brain) with social scientists
(www.americanvalues.org, accessed on 29th May 2006 at 22.00).
The report’s main argument is that too many U.S. children are suffering
from a lack of connectedness. The authors mean two kinds of connectedness:
o Close, enduring connections to other people (also known as
individualism)
o Deep connections, to moral and spiritual meaning
The report argues that the human person is biologically primed and also hardwired for these two types of connectedness. The weakening of both of these forms of relatedness in American society in recent decades is a primary cause of today’s high and rising rates of mental problems and emotional distress among U.S. children and adolescents (www.americanvalues.org,accessed on 29th May 2006 at 22.00).
The previous beliefs and values are only several of many beliefs and
values which can be found in American Society between 2004 and 2005. They are
xlv
not the exact parameter but they can change and develop from time to time
influenced by many factors in society.
E. Historical Overview of Conspiracy Theories in America: Between 1600s and 1820s
Conspiracy theories from time to time have played a vital role in shaping the course of American history. Although often dismissed as the delusions of extremists, the possibility of a conspiracy has repeatedly been at center stage in U.S. politics and culture. Resonating with core values and fueled by ethnic, racial, and religious differences, conspiracy thinking became a U.S. tradition. It can be traced back from the early history of America, at least from the Puritan era and then American revolution until the Anti Masonic Party in 1830s.
Conspiracy was a prominent feature on the mental maps of the first English settlers in 1600s. Early colonists feared and then suspected both neighbors and strangers of secret alliances and dangerous plots. Later waves of immigrants not only strengthened or stimulated traditional beliefs, but also expanded the pool of potential conspirators. When Puritans disembarked from the Arbella in 1630, they knew that the Massachusetts colony would soon be a battleground. Their errand into the wilderness was to raise a Bible commonwealth devoted to God’s commandments. Governor John Winthrop announced that the God of Israel is among American people and they shall be as a city upon a hill. The puritans were just as certain that the enemies of the Lord were close at hand. Battling for the Lord against the Satanic conspiracy justified cruelty thus the atrocities were common. Contested spaces and tribal names would change, but the cry of conspiracy, real and imagined, remained constant and echoed throughout the history of the westward movement (Goldberg in Knight, 2003: 1).
During the seventeenth century, New Englanders repeatedly heard and
believed the accusation of witchcraft. Magistrates presided over more than 240
cases. In all, Puritan courts condemned thirty six women and men to death. Those
who escaped from the gallow only strengthened the fire of conspiracy thinking.
Events in Salem village in 1691 and 1692 accounted for most of the victims. Over
a period of ten months, forty eight young girls denounced mainly isolated for
entertaining Satan and attempting to attract them into a conspiracy. Again,
townspeople witnessed the torment of the accusers who shrieked and writhed,
xlvi
tortured by invisible hands. Approximately 200 men and women were charged in
Salem, 20 were executed (Goldberg in Knight, 2003: 2).
In eighteenth century, the fear of slave conspiracies would fire white imaginations for more than a century. The citizens of New York City found that the enemy within the gate was a Trojan horse of their own making. In 1712, slaves rose in a bloody conspiracy to avenge some hard usage at the hands of their masters. Bound by a blood oath and armed with guns, knives, and hatchets, they set a fire to attract their white masters into a killing field. For the nine whites who died, twenty one blacks were condemned to death. Events during the 1740s reflected the dance between the real and the imagined. In 1741, the rumor of black conspiracy was sufficient cause to hang proactively eighteen blacks and burn another eleven at the stake (Goldberg in Knight, 2003: 2).
The chant of conspiracy offered the revolutionary generation both explanation and a motive to action. The liberty was in danger. Corrupt government ministers were plotting to destroy the rights of people. When combined with the sense of American exceptionalism and traditional distrust of government, the image of conspiracy became clear. In linking events, conspiracy thinking accelerated the race to revolution. Still, Americans would only cross the last bridge to independence when they convinced themselves that the king was not only aware of the plot, but a co-conspirator. Moreover they accused the king as an Anti-Christ, even possibly he was only the victim of a desperate conspiracy.
In sealing the connection between conspiracy and revolution, Thomas Jefferson included some words about conspiracy in the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the people’s right to revolution. Anyway conspiracy thinking did not become less when the British threat was turned aside. In the 1780s and 1790s, Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion provided abundant grist for counter-subversives in an age flush with conspiracy explanations. Besides, particularly dangerous to the Federalists was the order of the Illuminati, a secret society of free thinkers that preached resistance to state authority and vowed to destroy ecclesiastical power. Birthed in Bavaria in 1776 by professor of law Adam Weishaupt, the Illuminati was said to have penetrated France by means of the secret Freemason fraternal order and then engineered the French Revolution. Congress acted in the wake of the Illuminati scare and amid concerns that French intrigues in national politics had placed America in a hazardous and afflictive position. In the summer of 1798 Illuminati passed the Alien act, which authorized the president to arrest and expel foreign nationals involved in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government. Then the Sedition Act followed limiting the freedom of speech and press and setting fines and terms of imprisonment for those who unlawfully combine of conspire together with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government. Concerns about the Freemasons reappeared in the 1820s. In this age of the common man, a rapidly growing secret society ran counter to a prevailing ideology that rejected privilege and pretensions of superior status. Suspicion ignited activism in 1826 when a New York Mason who threatened to
xlvii
expose the secrets of his order was kidnapped and murdered. Authorities were unable to solve the crime. This touched off a mass movement that spread to New England and the Midwest and launched the first third party in U.S history, the Anti-Masonic Party (Goldberg in Knight, 2003: 3).
Sometimes, as between 1600s and 1820s, conspiracy thinking draws power by merging with and reinforcing traditional American beliefs and values: a sense of mission, Protestant supremacy, concern about encroachments on liberty, antielitism, maintenance of the racial order, and the sanctity of private property. In the midst of diversity, conspiracy theories nurture a sense of peoplehood while discovering the enemies of the American dream.
F. Popularity of the Film National Treasure
Popularity of a film can be obviously seen from the movie box office as
the measurement of the successful film. The film National Treasure succeeded
moving to the top ten America box-office and stayed at the first level for three
weeks long since its release on Friday (19/11/2004). National Treasure got
income US$ 35,142,554 in the opening week. A week after, this movie still took
its place and the total income increased to US$ 87,270,875. Until third week the
total income was US$ 110,113,345. The movie was played in 3243 movie theatres
or the most theatres in the second and third weeks (http://www.the-
numbers.com/movies/2004/NATTR.php, accessed on 19 February 2006). Those
acquisitions proved how popular National Treasure in America for couple weeks
after being released.
The November 25 is a special day for all Americans, it is Thanksgiving
day. They annually celebrate it by conducting some special activities or rituals
such as having a family meal with chicken as a special menu. They thank God for
what they have achieved in the past, in the early age of America. Thus the
situation is happy, fun, full of thanks feeling, introspection, and hopes for the
xlviii
future. Around the weeks of Thanksgiving day, film National Treasure became
the most popular film they wanted to enjoy with the people they loved.
National Treasure could not survive any longer in the first rank after the
day of 19 or after 6 December 2004. In December actually there is a Christmas
day but the film can not keep their popularity by presenting the better
circumstance of happy Christmas than other movies. The extraordinary days of
playing the movies was on 20 November –second day of releasing, when this
movie got the most achievement of Gross, that was $ 14,588,162. Then 26
November or one day after Thanksgiving when it got the second most acquisition,
that was $ 12,949,150 or changed 65.80% from previous day. The last was 3
December 2004 of which the change in percent was the highest, it reached the
amount around 269.00%.
Daily Chart Record
Date Rank Gross (US $)
Change(%) Theaters Per
Theater Total Gross
(US $) Days
11/19/2004 1 11,000,000 3,017 $3,646 11,000,000 111/20/2004 1 14,588,162 +32.62 3,017 $4,835 25,707,235 2
11/21/2004 1 9,435,319 -35.32 3,017 $3,127 35,142,554 3
11/22/2004 1 2,987,000 -68.34 3,017 $990 38,129,000 4
11/23/2004 1 3,527,000 +18.08 3,017 $1,169 41,656,000 5
11/24/2004 1 5,648,000 +60.14 3,243 $1,742 47,304,000 6
11/25/2004 1 7,810,000 +38.28 3,243 $2,408 55,113,958 7
11/26/2004 1 12,949,150 +65.80 3,243 $3,993 68,063,108 8
11/27/2004 1 12,689,604 -2.00 3,243 $3,913 80,752,712 9
11/28/2004 1 6,518,163 -48.63 3,243 $2,010 87,270,875 10
11/29/2004 1 1,609,000 -75.32 3,243 $496 88,880,000 11
11/30/2004 1 1,506,000 -6.40 3,243 $464 90,386,000 12
12/1/2004 1 1,367,000 -9.23 3,243 $422 91,753,000 13
12/2/2004 1 1,355,000 -0.88 3,243 $418 93,108,378 14
12/3/2004 1 5,000,000 +269.00 3,243 $1,542 98,100,000 15
12/4/2004 1 7,666,947 +53.34 3,243 $2,364 105,837,303 16
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12/5/2004 1 4,276,042 -44.23 3,243 $1,319 110,113,345 17 12/6/2004 1 1,107,000 -74.11 3,243 $341 111,221,000 18
12/7/2004 1 1,128,000 +1.90 3,243 $348 112,349,000 19
Color coding: = Weekend days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) = Thanksgiving day (25 November 2004)
(Retrieved from http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/NATTR.php,
accessed on 19 February 2006).
CHAPTER III
ANALYSIS
The Beliefs and Values Reflected in the Film National Treasure
1. Sometimes action with a high consequence (illegal or criminal) must be
faced to continue reaching the final goal
National Treasure is a movie which consists of many actions which are
illegal or belongs to crimes. There are four characters which are exposed of their
illegal actions. They are Ian, Ben, Riley, and Chase. Ian is the first character who
raises his action plan to steal the Declaration of Independence in the opening of
film. This plan bothers Ben’s mind and he also decides to steal the Declaration but
in order to save it. Riley is automatically involved in this case because he joins Ian
and Ben in the first hunting of the treasure on a ship named Charlotte. Chase is
l
indirectly entrapped on this stealing action because she is so weak to save the
Declaration from both groups. Yet Chase voluntarily follows the way of Ben and
Riley to save the Declaration by keeping it on hand until the clues of treasure is
resolved.
In scene 0: 17: 12, Ian tries to convince Ben about what he has done before
that time. He arranges illegal operations with some professional persons who are
experts. Ian thinks that the only alternative way to examine the Declaration of
Independence is by stealing it. At the same meaning, Ian is provoking Ben to help
him in such kind of high risk crime.
(Scene 0: 17: 12)
Ian : “We all have our areas of expertise. You don't think mine are limited to writing cheques, do you? In another life... I arranged a number of operations of... questionable legality”
It is a begging action thus Ian speaks in a low level of voice, certainly with
a great expectation that Ben agrees joining him. The action is in the cargo room of
the ship Charlotte. Ian is sitting down and bending down his face. His eyes or his
face expression is weak, signifying a need for help. The lighting system is soft
lighting in order to support the natural characteristic of Ian. It is not bright enough
li
but the expression still can be read easily through a medium close up and a
straight on angle of framing.
In scene 0: 26: 49, in front of the Declaration of Independence in National
Archives Building, Ben realizes that there is no way out to stop Ian stealing the
Declaration. Therefore, he runs on his own way to save the Declaration, even if it
is illegal or crime. His eyes look at the Declaration of Independence trying to
deeply understand every word written on it. Ben perceives that every word seems
to guide him in doing his intention, which is to steal the Declaration. The
underlined sentence is “…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
despotism”. Every word on it was included by Thomas Jefferson in sealing the
connection between conspiracy and revolution at that time, proclaiming the
people’s right to revolution. Then Ben tells carefully but surely what he intends to
do to Riley who is standing up beside him (outside the frame). It looks like he
finds the strength inside his heart.
(Scene 0: 26: 49)
Ben: “I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence”
lii
The camera is on medium close up shooting a third body of Ben from his
head. It is still combined with a soft lighting and a straight on angle to make a
steady situation with a steady emotion in the shot. His face expression shows
something big which is burdening him so much. However the face also keeps the
cool and calm expression which has a meaning that he can handle it well anyway.
Riley in scene 0: 30: 01 (Appendices, p. 3) is impressed by the detail
explanation of Ben about the Preservation Room. His mouth is half opened as the
expression of impressive and a bit shock that he is in front of big evil plans. The
condition can be changed, he says haltingly hearing the information from Ben.
In scene 1: 04: 07 (Appendices, p. 6), Chase does what she actually knows
that it should be rejected by a civil servant like her. She worries of what she will
do, because examining the declaration is always wrong and belongs to a crime
anyway. Chase speaks up what she worries much to Ben and Riley. Ben is also
shot in this scene looking at Chase as if he wants to relieve her. Chase’s face
looks down to the Declaration very nervously.
2. America is a special nation with special government, people, and duty
America is considered by several characters such as John, Chase, Ben,
Riley, and Peter as a special nation with special government, people, and duty.
America is a nation-state governed by special government and occupied by
special people in which both will always struggle on behalf of its special duty
until tomorrow. The old generation can be turned over by the young generation
but their spirit is still the same. John believes in the legend about America as a
special nation with the founding fathers who will be brave to keep the treasure
from the British’s hand. He tells this legend to his grandson Ben Gates who
liii
positions himself as the special person with special duty. On another side, Chase
regards America as a country which has strong security handled by the
government institution like the FBI. It is certainly the same opinion of Peter
Sadusky as the FBI agent in charge.
Scene 0: 25: 56 tells that Both Ben and Riley stand in front of the
Declaration of Independence in National Archives Building. Ben is standing up,
looking and reading the whole text which is about American people, their freedom
and their special duty. Ben feels as a part of those people thus he must take the
proper action as required. His eyes look straight to the Declaration as if no one
can spoil his concentration. He looks amazed and being little in front of something
great.
(Scene 0: 25: 56)
Ben: “Years of searching, and I'm three feet away. Of all the words written here about freedom, there's a line here that's at the heart of all the others”
The camera is set up appropriately in order to sustain the impression of
greatness. The lighting system is soft and only adds the lighting of the room. The
shot is medium and low angle so that the image of the beautiful historic large
liv
room is recorded. The deep focus means that the object and also the environment
around it are in the same position or significance.
In scene 0: 23: 30 (Appendices, p.2), Chase suggests that Ben and Riley
see the FBI if they want to give certain tips of national security. She believes that
the FBI will be able to handle it well, because it is FBI’s job in securing nation
and something which belongs to nation from any threats. She looks at them and
her eyes are asking them to believe in his words.
In scene 0: 27: 31 (Appendices, p. 3), Riley points his finger to the
national monument which is exactly in front of him in order to prove Ben that the
stealing cannot be done in any way. The national monument which is shot so far
from the National Archives Building signifies how great America is from those
two national symbols.
In scene 0: 49: 45 (Appendices, p. 5), Peter Sadusky as the FBI agent in
charge recognizes himself toward the guests of the National Archive’s Gala
Anniversary. He stands among the guest of National Archives and tries to control
or neutralize the situation. He acts in his authority so that his words sound aloud
and confidently. Everyone pays attention on him, no sound in that room except his
explanation of what has just happened.
3. Technology is needed as a means to do some acts
Technology is needed as a means to do some acts. Technology can be used
for good purposes and also for evil purposes depending on the subject. Riley, Ben,
Chase, Peter, Patrick are the subjects with good purposes. They use many kinds of
modern technology such as: telephone, mobile phone, computer, gun, helicopter,
handy talky, car, lab, etc. Reversely, although Ian and his gangs also use the same
lv
technologies but they are for evil purposes. However, technology as a modern tool
plays important role in a democratic society, with bad or even destroying impacts
such as bomb or demolition. It is like an inevitable necessity in modern society.
Riley is included as an expert of technology in National Treasure. Scene
0: 27: 58 tells how he depends on technology. He uses technology as rhetoric to
answer Ben’s question. His eyes look at Ben which is reading several books in the
Library of Congress as the biggest library in the world. Then in scene 0: 29: 16
Ben interrupts Riley by arising an inducing question and followed by some
important information about the preservation room of National Archives Building.
They are sharing in turn some information they get from the books. Ben is reading
and Riley is listening. Ben also trusts on technology as Riley does and he just
gives some additional information. Ben thinks that he has found a smart idea as a
solution after searching and reading several appropriate books.
(Scene 0: 27: 58) (Scene 0: 29: 16)
Riley: “…listen to Riley…Now, when the Declaration is on display, OK, it is surrounded by guards and video monitors… when it's not on display, it is lowered into a four-foot-thick concrete, steel-plated vault...”
Ben : “Do you know what preservation room is? That's where they clean, repair and maintain all the documents and the storage housings when they're not on display or in the vault…”
lvi
The condition of the library is so quiet and comfortable thus they can
concentrate on reading and look so relax in their discussion. Lighting in both
scenes is soft lighting but in medium close up and a straight on angle so that the
visual is quite clear. From the glasses worn by Riley, one knows it supports him
as a smart person in the movie.
Scene 0: 33: 58 (Appendices, p. 4) shows the image of National Archives
workers who are running full diagnostics as instructed by Chase. They work using
many modern technologies, wearing sterile clothes in a sterile room. In this scene,
only the sound of Chase is heard. She is in somewhere outside the room of
preservation (outside the frame). She has more authority than the workers so that
she does not directly do such a kind of job.
It is the image of a bomb (demolition) in scene 0: 34: 19 (Appendices, p.
4), one of modern illegal technologies used by Ian and his gangs to make their
action run well. Several dangerous tools are put above the table, they are military
only tools. Through the image of demolition, it signifies that the actions they take
are in rough actions, using some violence, or featuring with some destroys.
Scene 0: 50: 00 (Appendices, p. 5) tells that in the way running his
authority properly to handle the problem as soon as possible, Peter instructs all of
his agents to do anything in order to search and get positive ID of the suspects. As
the leader, his simple instruction has covered a wide application that must be
followed by all of his staffs, including operating any modern tools or technologies
they have.
In scene 1: 03: 12 (Appendices, p. 6), Patrick suggests that Ben, Riley, and
Chase throw the old paper to the oven, even Patrick does not know what it is
lvii
actually. His simple idea is that the oven or the heat will help them to reveal out
the specific ink which is invisible. He thinks that the idea is a conventional idea
thus his advice is only to remind them. He holds something in his left hand and
towel in his arm. He looks like doing some closing activities before he gets sleep.
4. Individuals have their own freedom to do anything
Every American has his or her own inalienable rights of freedom. They
can choose their own decision or way of life. These rights create a democratic
condition with equality for all people, regardless of sex and age. It is like an
American tradition as showed in the movie National Treasure where the father
gives his sons wide opportunity to grow up with their own preference and idea.
This kind of education is really important to sustain one’s adulthood. For example
in the movie, John gives Patrick some rights to approve or to refuse the legend he
told. John is learning at that time, and as the result, he also does the same thing to
Ben in his old time. He realizes that it is Ben’s right to go with him, with grandpa,
or with his own idea. Then in the next relationship with Ian, Ben chooses to quit
from operation when he thinks that it is illegal or against the rules. Sometimes
freedom of individual whether in adulthood or not is also termed as individualism.
This right of individual is actually very fundamental and valuable in America as
the reason for the existence of America itself. Therefore, the character of citizen in
the movie like Chase voluntarily joins Ben and Riley, without pressure of anyone.
There is Ben in scene 0: 17: 50 speaking seriously to Ian in the cargo room
of the ship Charlotte. He states his independence or freedom in which he does not
let Ian steal the Declaration of Independence. Ben is challenging Ian by delivering
a deviant statement. He is not afraid but he keeps the distance several feet in front
lviii
of Ian in order to avoid some unexpected things. He dares to take such preference
in dealing with Ian; it can be heard from the fluency of his voice.
(Scene 0: 17: 50)
Ben: “lan... I'm not gonna let you steal the Declaration of Independence”
The lighting is soft to increase the suspense in the small room of the ship
Charlotte. The deep space arranges the characters in a considerable distance and
takes Ben in the central focus. While a straight on angle is to position equally each
character in the scene.
Scene 1: 02: 24 tells that Patrick has no authority anymore toward his son.
Ben is mature enough and Patrick can not stop what his son wants to do. Both are
seriously quarrelling in the living room. Every advice of Patrick is denied by Ben
so that he looks desperate and swings round his face. Patrick is also powerless; it
can be seen from his weak body language and his old eyes which are so tired. But
the important one at that time is that he really understands the freedom of Ben as a
grown person.
(Scene 1: 02: 24)
lix
Patrick: “Well, you can believe what you want. You're a grown person. What am I doing? Do what you want, Ben. Do what you want”
Both characters are standing in their own distance at the edge of frame. A
straight on angle in this scene is set up to give the same position on them. Medium
shot is displayed to show the space between Patrick and Ben. Beside that, the
lighting in the scene is high key lighting and the focus is deep focus in order to
keep or following the awkward tension of quarrelling.
There are two characters in scene 0: 05: 24 (Appendices, p. 1), they are
Ben and John which are shot backing the camera angle. The sound heard in this
scene is John’s voice, who is speaking to Patrick in that room (outside the frame).
Ben is only quietly sitting in front of John and listening to the conversation
between them. John denies Patrick’s argument, but he still respects him as his son
who has a freedom to raise his own opinion, and also as a parent of Ben with his
own autonomy to educate him.
In scene 1: 03: 41 (Appendices, p. 6), Chase holds Ben’s hand and says
that she must handle this job. She feels responsible toward the Declaration of
Independence and it is her right also to get involved in examining it. Her sense of
responsibility and freedom take her one step ahead in cooperation with Ben and
lx
Riley. Ben looks surprised and disbelieves on what Chase states to do, thus he
watches the girl with so many questions in his head.
5. A belief in process or practice to prove something is more important than
the legend or theories
All main characters in National Treasure do not only believe in something
but also act in the process or practice of proving it. Moreover, they prefer to keep
the legend in the plane of process or practice rather than academic theories. Ben is
an archaeologist but he denies to think or to act just like what academic
community or government institution usually does. That is why John tells the
story only as family legend, because it will be lacking of empirical proofs in
academic theories. Patrick ran the mission, even he still kept many questions of
treasure, and he did not share it academically. Riley and Ian are influenced by Ben
about the way to find the treasure. Chase and Peter are little bit shocked in the
process of doing their job facing the complicated trouble. Therefore they are
enforced to do something outside the theory or job’s ethics.
Patrick in scene 0: 05: 17 is blaming his father, John, for retelling the
treasure legend to Ben. He is bored hearing the legend and he is also disappointed
of being foolish. He has been once involved in the process of hunting the treasure
but he failed. As the result, he regards the treasure as a foolish gold. Then he
keeps it for his own self, he does not look for the solution academically which will
be more theoretical. Therefore even he has forgotten all about the treasure, he is
still confused, exhausted and frustrated, it spreads out through his face.
(Scene 0: 05: 17):
lxi
(Scene 0: 05: 46)
John: “...Benjamin Franklin Gates, you take upon yourself the duty of the Templars, the Freemasons and the family Gates.
Patrick: “You mean laughing at us. You know what that dollar represents? The entire Gates family fortune. Six genera- tions of fools... chasing after fool's gold”
Patrick is wearing glasses in the scene; he looks like a smart person. He
bends down his face as the expression of disappointment. The setting of place is
in the house of John at night using a soft lighting, but the dark can be overlapped
with a medium close up and a straight on angle.
In scene 0: 05: 46, John makes Ben know the entire story of the treasure
legend. That is the time to tell the real story because of the curiosity of Ben. Then,
as it is also asked by Ben, John swears Ben to take the mantel of treasure hunter,
to search the treasure and to prove that the story is not only the legend, it is real.
The duty is turning over to Ben as the seventh generation in the family, and he
must go in the process as best as he can make. Ben is kneeling on the floor and
rising up his head, while John is bending down looks at Ben. Both crosses their
sight each other with a full trust.
lxii
The angle of framing in the John’s house is low angle so that the vision is
focused on John and the space above him. The soft lighting is helpful in
conditioning the sacred ritual of a knight. Medium close up is used to shot this
action in order to cover both characters.
In scene 0: 09: 34, Ian wears a white thick jacket; he is in the north arctic
along with his gangs, Ben and also Ryan. He has also the same opinion about
historical community which only revolves in the labs, therefore he directly goes to
accompany the hunting process. In their interaction, even Ian befriends Ben only
on surface, but he can understand what Ben intends to do. It is a very familiar and
polite communication from Ian in this scene. He can imagine the prospect of his
investments and he really has no doubt that Ben will find the real treasure.
(Scene 0: 09: 34)
Ian: “You would have found it, I have no doubt. That's why I didn't think it was as crazy an investment as everyone said”
lxiii
Ian wears a thick jacket covering all body including his head. His eyes are
also protected from cold weather by glasses. He can survive and support all of his
workers because of something he trusts much its existence. The lighting is soft or
natural. The angle of framing is straight and closed up in medium distance to
expose the strong expression and also the strong intention kept behind it.
In scene 0: 23: 40 (Appendices, p. 2), Ben states to Chase that he is
doubtful the Declaration of Independence will not be in any danger. He wants to
be given a chance of examining the document. He shares this idea because he
knows the real dangers in front of him. However, it can only be stopped by doing
some actions based on reality, not on theory of national security or others. His
face spreads a big eagerness to some help of Chase.
Scene 0: 25: 39 (Appendices, p. 3) shows that Riley is a typical of follower
in the movie. He has been influenced by Ben since the first hunting. His way of
thought is quite the same as Ben. He also does not believe in government
institution and much more believe on his own attempt. In this scene, Riley tries to
support Ben that Ben is not in a wrong way and he also realizes that the real
threats will come soon. Both of them are walking out of the Chase’s room and still
confused about what to do next after having trouble with the institution they
depend on at first. Riley walks after Ben as if he wants to always stand for Ben.
Scene 0: 50: 25 (Appendices, p. 5) shows that Peter almost disbelievingly
hears the information from his agent. It is too careless to pass the tips of security
until the action happens. He realizes that his agent has run in his position, but it
should not abandon every probability will happen in reality. He hides his anger
lxiv
and shows up his disappointment toward his agent’s job. He only raises a fool-like
question related to the impact of that carelessness.
In scene 1: 03: 57 (Appendices, p. 6), Chase applies her knowledge and
her experience in handling antique document to examine the Declaration of
Independence. Even she knows her fault exactly, but it has to be done after
knowing the continuity of the situation. She stands in the position of saving the
Declaration by helping Ben finding the real treasure. She puts aside temporarily
her job and takes every consequence in doing so. This scene tells that she is ready
to examine the Declaration based on her trained experience before.
6. Every individual is actually running for their material success
Every individual runs for his or her success which is materially oriented.
Material is very important in life. It will support people’s daily activities. Without
material, people in this capitalistic era tend to do nothing. It is commonly some
pieces of money to generate or to be a motor of human life. The differences
among the movie characters are on the way they search some materials in life,
about the legality of it and also about the management (being thrifty). It can be
proved from the illegality of Ian operation. Or from the way Patrick shares his
management of self and family; avoiding something useless and only wasting
time and energy. Beside that, they have some distinguished way in stating what
they really want. Patrick explicitly wants a job, a house, and health insurance.
Riley for more than one occasion likes to have much money; and Peter offers
some material as a bargaining chip. In the same thought of material success, Ben
and Chase never speak it honestly to others and just keep it hidden until the real
treasures are found.
lxv
In scene 0: 16: 53, Ian is implicitly stating his expectation for material
success by giving his sympathy toward Ben’s bitterness. He pretends as if he
listens, understands, and knows what Ben wants to do. He suggests that Ben’s
final achievement is material, that is a treasure in which he can rub it in the
arrogant faces of historical community.
(Scene 0: 16: 53)
Ian: “Look, Ben... I understand your bitterness. I really do. You've spent your entire life searching for this treasure, only to have the respected historical community treat you and your family with mockery and contempt. You should be able to rub this treasure in their arrogant faces, and I want you to have the chance to do that”
Ian is sitting down in the cargo room of the ship Charlotte. He turns his
face toward Ben in order to show up his sympathy and to deliver a serious matter.
The shot is a medium close up and a straight on angle. The lighting is soft to
follow the low voice of Ian and also to hide something else outside the point of
conversation.
Material success for Patrick in scene 1: 01: 08 is having a job, a house, and
health insurance. He convinces Ben about the material as a normal parameter or
standard of life. Patrick really tries as much as he can in order to stop the madness
of Ben in hunting the treasure. The treasure is also material but for him it is only a
lxvi
legend that he missed it long time ago, just before Ben. Therefore he does not
want Ben to follow the fault of him.
(Scene 1: 01: 08)
Patrick: “Sure, sure, I know, I'm the family kook. I have a job, a house, health insurance. At least I had your mother, for however brief a time. At least I had you. What do you have? Him?”
In his beautiful house at night, Patrick shows off his achievements in the
entire life. He is standing and talking seriously in front of Ben (outside the frame).
A third part of his body is shot in medium close up and the room is smoothly
filled up by a soft lighting.
As the reward for himself, in scene 1: 57: 25 Ben chooses not to go to the
prison. This is the low bargaining of Ben, but the important thing is that Ben still
considers material as an inevitable thing. Frankly, he has a big expectation to
build a new life after having a long journey of treasure hunting, to sustain his
other principles of life. He believes that everything material can be made again
and again, but it can work only if he lives freely outside the jail.
(Scene 1: 57: 25)
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Ben: “I'd really love not to go to prison. I can't even begin to describe how much I would love not to go to prison”
Ben turns his face toward Peter who is sitting beside him and so does
Peter. They stare each other. They are talking about serious matters in the church
with a medium close up. A straight on angle shoots them in an equal position by
ignoring whether Peter is an FBI agent or Ben is a historian.
Scene 1: 57: 03 (Appendices, p. 7) shows that Peter offers Ben a material
bargaining chip as if he talks in conventional way. In this scene he just
surprisingly hears the answer of Ben that the Declaration of Independence is not a
bargaining chip. He still almost disbelieves Ben thus he tries to check up the truth
from Ben’s face expression.
Chase expresses her feeling in a very short utterance in scene 1: 58: 29
(Appendices, p. 8). She is just really happy of what she gets that time. She walks
beside Ben and Riley, her hand grasps Ben’s hand. She thinks that both Ben and
Riley feel the same feeling thus she looks at them.
For more than one occasion, Riley in scene 1: 58: 34 (Appendices, p. 8) is
once more materially oriented. This scene tells how much he wants to have the
equal rewards like Ben has, at least a half or ten percent of the treasure. Yet here
lxviii
what he can do is only grumbling to Ben that he needs more than what he has
accepted.
7. The happiness will be completely reached after having a family
Family is the most important part of human life where people can share
their happiness or even sorrows with other members of family. They are wife,
husband, and sons with their own family role. In family as an institution of life,
there is more valuable thing than ordinary love; this is tied in the frame of
marriage and it must be maintained forever. This anyone’s dream is also the
dream of Patrick when he wants his son to be a good member of family, at least
after his wife (the mother of Ben) died. Ben does not leave his normal life; it is
only a matter of time until he finally finishes his duty and then he marries Chase.
Riley can only pretend to feel the happiness of Ben and Chase with a little
jealousy. However he still continues his life to look for it.
In scene 1: 58: 55, Riley is jealous in which both his friends got married.
They all think a marriage as something happy and funny, but Chase and Ben have
left Riley in this point. Riley also understands that marriage is everyone’s privacy
so that he can not disrupt it. He just makes a joke or a silly question which does
not need a serious answer. Anyway it truly expresses something hidden on him.
Chase and Ben in scene 1: 58: 57 approve and agree Riley’s opinion that they are
so happy as a husband and wife. They look very harmonious that they have just
built a new family. Both are watching, talking, and kissing each other, while Riley
only watches at them as if he is not there, not a part of them.
(Scene 1: 58: 55) (Scene 1: 58: 57)
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Riley : “That's not as funny. What do you care? You got the girl!” Chase : “It's true” Ben : “It's true”
Riley, Chase, and Ben are gathering in the garden of the old historic house
at noon. The lighting is soft to make the situation much more natural and fresh
with the sun light. First shot is a medium close up and then it changes to a
medium shot deep focus to cover all of them. The angle of framing is equal or a
straight on angle between three fellow friends there.
Scene 1: 01: 08 (Appendices, p. 6) tells that Patrick really considers a
family as a valuable thing in his life. At that time, his wife had died, and Ben is
the only family he has. He wants Ben to know his position in family also. He has
already been old enough and he needs Ben to take care of him.
8. America has a very much great treasure
All main characters in National Treasure are connected each other and
united in the same beliefs on the legend of treasure. For them, the treasures are
real and they are kept somewhere in America to protect it from falling into
British’s hand. The treasures are very much great treasures for all over the world.
All of them, including John, Patrick, Ben, Riley, Ian, Chase, and Peter believe in
its existence. They want to sacrifice anything in order to find it, even if it must
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take many consequences, their time and energy. Patrick has once believed on that
treasure and then refuses to believe, but finally he can see with his own eyes that
at least the treasure room is real. On another hand, Ian also searches the treasure,
but only to be rich with an uncountable wealth.
Scene 1: 51: 23 tells the cooling down of Ben’s spirit in hunting the
treasure. He gives up on reality that the treasure is gone from its room, taken by
the British or others. He looks so exhausted after doing the long journey and also
the long challenge. He can not say words any longer, he is just ashamed,
especially toward his father, Riley, and Chase who are also in that empty treasure
room (outside the frame). Scene 1: 51: 30 is the first time Patrick feels that the
whole story of treasure is real; even he does not find the treasure. His questions
are resolved at that time. He feels very happy for that because he has proven to be
wrong with his past opinion. He also feels guilty of his unpleasant attitude toward
Ben, but he does not want all of them to be stuck in the same dream of the
treasure. He asks Ben to keep looking for it. He makes a promise to Ben and
others who are in that room, hearing on him.
Then, in scene 1: 51: 36, Chase is walking closer toward Ben and his
father. She agrees Patrick to keep looking for the treasure. She has been involved
too long in hunting the treasure and she does not want to miss the event of finding
it in the next opportunity. She believes it so much and tries to make Ben relieve
that he has many friends who totally supports him. In scene 1: 51: 49, Riley
interrupts the long conversation about the true loyalty of partnership between Ben,
Patrick, and Chase. Actually, he also wants to continue hunting on the treasure he
believes since first time he met Ben. However he expresses it in different way, he
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tries to bring them back into the reality in that room, before doing so. He says it in
a low voice and a bit hopeless because he knows that they will understand what he
really means.
(Scene 1: 51: 23) (Scene 1: 51: 30)
Ben : “I just... really thought I was gonna find the treasure” Patrick : “OK. Then we just keep looking for it”
(Scene 1: 51: 36) (Scene 1: 51: 49)
Chase : “I'm in” Riley : “Not to be Johnny Rain Cloud here, but that's not gonna happen.
Because as far as I can see, we're still trapped down here”
The four shots are on the cave, several meters beneath the old church.
They are illuminated properly with fill lighting, side lighting, and soft lighting in
order to emphasize the real condition in the cave. Three of them are in medium
close up. One shot is a medium shot deep focus to include all characters with their
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own action. Four characters express some desperate actions differently in their
own space. Here, Ben is leaning on his body to the cave while the others are
standing and look so confused. The angles of framings are consistent in a straight
on angle.
In scene 0: 02: 56 (Appendices, p. 1), John is the person who tells Ben that
America has a very much great treasure in this scene. The word ‘treasure’
becomes very strange and rarely used in the modern era, thus John spells it
carefully with open eyes trying to describe how great the treasure is. Ben tells that
the treasure is beyond all imagination, it had originally been fought over for
centuries by tyrants, pharaohs, emperors, war lords. It did not reappear for more
than thousand years until the time when it was discovered beneath Solomon
Temple by the Knights of Templar. Then they formed a new worldwide secret
brotherhood named Freemasons. By the time of the American Revolution, the
treasure was hidden until no one knew exactly where the treasure was, only a
series of clues and maps to its location.
In scene 0: 09: 34 (Appendices, p. 2), Ian repeats again how much he
believes in the existence of the real treasure, somewhere in America as Ben told
him before. Ian is interested in Ben’s story by giving investments on the treasure
hunting. This time, instead Ian is so sure that the treasure will be found soon,
more than Ben himself. His tone is also optimistic, as a motivation to do much
more actions.
In scene 1: 56: 30 (Appendices, p. 7), Peter tells Ben that he also believes
in the story of the treasure, from the Templar until the Freemasons. He informs it
as if he has knowledge more than Ben. His eyes say that he admires Ben on what
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he has done to find it, until he has to deal with the law enforcement agent like
him.
9. Romantic love can happen to anyone in a very unique condition
Love refers to the abstract and unseen feeling. It can come to anyone
regardless of time or place. There are no specific conditions of love, it
immediately happens, sometimes in a very unique condition like in the National
Treasure. For instance when Ben kisses Chase in the cave beneath the church,
which is actually a wrong time to make a kiss, but it happens. Again, when Chase
excuses Ben for dropping her in order to save the Declaration, it is a unique love
showed in the film. Love is not only with a soul mate, but also between father and
son. It signifies a deep connection between human being; love each other, give
each other, etc. In this case, Patrick has some unique expressions in showing his
love to Ben. The jealousy of Riley is also the expression of love in this film.
In scene 1: 45: 11, Ben apologizes to Chase for dropping her in order to
save the Declaration of Independence. Ben is worried if he hurts Chase thus he
immediately walks closer to make a sure. He gives his hand, reaching Chase who
is standing in front of him. However, Chase does not blame Ben for dropping her
in scene 1: 45: 13. She really understands why Ben took such risk and she would
do the same thing if she was in the same condition. Both have passed the dangers
without losing the Declaration. This event will enable them to create certain
romantic love.
(Scene 1: 45: 11) (Scene 1: 45: 13)
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Ben : “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I dropped you. I had to save the Declaration” Chase : “No, don't be. I would have done exactly the same thing to you”
The romantic actions of the shots are sustained by a straight on angle and a
soft lighting. They are standing face to face, asking and giving apology in the
same position in the frame. The camera focus changes from medium shot deep
focus into medium close up to make the visual much more closer. Therefore both
Ben and Chase are so clear in their romantic face expression.
Scene 1: 01: 08 (Appendices, p. 6) signifies how Patrick loves his only
son. He is angry with him not for his happiness but for Ben’s happiness. He loves
Ben so much thus he tries to give some advices and shows the best way to be
followed. It is based on his experience. He says it aloud to express what he feels
deep in his heart.
In scene 1: 58: 55 (Appendices, p. 8), Riley is once more expressing his
needs to have a soul mate to love with. He is jealous because he still cannot share
his feeling with someone special. He looks at them with a big expectation to have
the same feeling of love sometime in the next opportunity. He smiles to Chase and
Ben as if he can feel what they feel.
10. The success has not completed without living in a house with certain
expected condition
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After reaching a success in life, someone is usually looking for what they
really want or dreamt, that is to spend their time in a house with certain expected
conditions. The house can be a simple house in village or a house with historic
value, etc. Ben chooses the house of Charles Carroll due to its historic background
from the previous owner. He lives there with his wife Chase. Their house is a big
house with a wide green garden thus it is very comfortable and enjoyable for
them. Riley gives his honest opinion that he also likes their house much.
In scene 1: 59: 19, Riley is sitting on his expensive classy red car and he
says to Ben that he enjoys the house. His words signify that he wants such house
like Ben’s house. He looks at Ben as if saying that Ben’s preference is the best he
ever sees. His eyes also thank to Ben and Chase for inviting him into their new
great house and sharing so many happiness with him. For Ben in scene 1: 59: 32,
the house is very special for its historic value. It was a big house of Charles
Carroll with so wide green garden. And as a good wife, Chase will only follow
Ben’s preference. She makes the house much more special for her husband. Ben
runs after Chase into the house when Riley has gone by his red car.
(Scene 1: 59: 19) (Scene 1: 59: 32)
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Riley : “For the record, Ben, I like the house” Ben : “You know, I chose this estate because in Charles Carroll met” Chase : “I made something for you”
The farewell takes place in the garden in front of Ben’s house at noon. The
situation is fun and far from formal impression. The lighting is a soft lighting to
be balanced with the sunlight outdoor. The focus is conversed from medium close
up into medium long shot with a deep focus. Moreover, the angle is also turned up
from a straight on angle into a high angle. Therefore in the last shot the visual of
the big house, the green garden, the red car, and the three happy characters are
covered all.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
There are several beliefs and values which can be revealed in the whole
movie National Treasure, they are:
1. Sometimes action with a high consequence (illegal or criminal) must be faced
to continue reaching the final goal
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2. America is a special nation with special government, people, and duty
3. Technology is needed as a means to do some acts
4. Individuals have their own freedom to do anything
5. A belief in process or practice to prove something is more important than the
legend or theories
6. Every individual is actually running for their material success
7. The happiness will be completely reached after having a family
8. America has a very much great treasure
9. Romantic love can happen to anyone in a very unique condition
10. The success has not completed without living in a house with certain expected
condition
Those beliefs and values which can be revealed from the film as the
popular arts are not the exact things. It connects with the interpretation of each
person and cannot be said as the true or false interpretation. It has connection with
the environment which surrounds it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Movie:
National Treasure (Original VCD). 2005. Directed by John Turteltaub. Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) and Walt Disney Pictures (distributor). Distributed in Indonesia by PT. Vision Interprima Pictures.
Books:
Belgrad, Daniel. 1998. “The Rockwell Syndrome”.
Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. 1997. Film Art: An Introduction, Fifth Edition. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
lxxviii
Daiches, David. 1974. Critical Approaches to Literature. London: Longman Group Limited.
Douglas, John S. and Glenn P. Harnden. 1996. The Art of Technique: An Aesthetic Approach to Film and Video Production. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Eshleman, et.al.. 1993. Sociology: An Introduction, 4th edition. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers Inc.
Hammel, William. 1977. The Popular Arts in America, Second Edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanonich, Inc.
Hornby, A.S.. 1995. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English.New York: Oxford University Press.
Knight, Peter, ed.. 2003. Conspiracy Theories in American History, an Encyclopedia. California: ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake. 1988. Film Theory: An Introduction.Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Monaco, James. 2000. How to Read a Film, The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nachbar, Jack and Kevin Lause, ed.. 1992. Popular Culture: An Introductory Text. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Spiller, Robert E.. 1981. Late Harvest: Essays and Addresses in American Literature and Culture. Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Stam, Robert. 1992. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. London and New York: Routledge.
Strauss, Anselm and Juliet Corbin. 1990. Basics to Qualitative Research.California: SAGE Publications, Inc..
Websites:
http://www.americanvalues.org. (Accessed on 29th May 2006 at 22.00).
lxxix
http://faculty.uwb.edu/mgoldberg/students/readafilm.htm. (accessed on 2nd July 2006 at 19.00)
http://www.script-o-rama.com/moviescripts/n/national-treasure-script-transcript. html. (accessed on 6th December 2005 at 19.00).
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2004/NATTR.php. (accessed on 19th Febru- ary 2006 at 20.00).
lxxx
(Scene 0: 02: 56):
John: “A treasure. A treasure beyond all imagining. A treasure that had been fought over for centuries by tyrants, pharaohs, empe- rors, war lords. And every time it changed hands it grew larger. And then suddenly... it vanished. It didn't reappear for more than a thousand years, when knights from the First Crusade discovered secret vaults beneath the Temple of Solomon. You see, the knights who found the vaults believed that the treasure was too great for any one man, not even a king...”
(Scene 0: 05: 24):
lxxxi
John: “It's not about the money, Patrick. It's never been about the money”
(Scene 0: 09: 34):
Ian : “You would have found it, I have no doubt. That's why I didn't think it was as crazy an investment as everyone said”
(Scene 0: 23: 30):
lxxxii
Chase: “I think I'd better put you gentlemen in touch with the F.B.I.”
(Scene 0: 23: 40):
Ben: “My friend and I are less certain. However, if we were given the privilege of examining the document... we would be able to tell you for certain if it were actually in any danger”
(Scene 0: 25: 39):
Riley: “If it's any consolation, you had me convinced”
(Scene 0: 27: 31):
lxxxiii
Riley: “Ben, for God's sakes, it's like stealing a national monument. OK? It's like stealing him. It can't be done. Not shouldn't be done. It can't be done”
(Scene 0: 30: 01):
Riley: “Well, if lan... Preservation... The gala, huh? This might be possible”
(Scene 0: 33: 58)
Chase: “Run full diagnostics, then I want them all changed out”
(Scene 0: 34: 19)
lxxxiv
Ian’s gang: In preparing a bomb.
(Scene 0: 49: 45) (Scene 0: 50: 00)
Peter: “Ladies and gentlemen... Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Peter Sadusky. I'm the agent in charge. I wanna reassure you, you are not in danger in any way. If we all cooperate, we'll get through this with as little frustration as possible. Thank you”
Peter: “Get positive IDs. Search everyone, including the security staff. If they refuse, detain them and get warrants. Yes, Agent Hendricks? You have something?”
lxxxv
(Scene 0: 50: 25)
Peter: “How about now?”
(Scene 1: 01: 08)
Patrick: “Sure, sure, I know, I'm the family cook. I have a job, a house, health insurance. At least I had your mother, for however brief a time. At least I had you. What do you have? Him?”
(Scene 1: 03: 12)
lxxxvi
Patrick: “Throw to the oven”
(Scene 1: 03: 41) (Scene 1: 03: 57) (Scene 1: 04: 07)
Chase: “Then someone who is trained to handle antique documents is gonna do it” Chase: “OK. Now, if there is a secret message, it'll probably be marked by a
symbol in the upper right-hand corner” Chase: “I am so getting fired for this”
(Scene 1: 56: 30)
lxxxvii
Peter: “You know, the Templars and the Freemasons believed that the treasure was too great for any one man to have, not even a king. That's why they went to such lengths to keep it hidden”
(Scene 1: 57: 03)
Peter: “You really don't understand the concept of a bargaining chip”
(Scene 1: 58: 29) (Scene 1: 58: 34)
lxxxviii
Chase: “That's fun” Riley: “Yeah, big whoop. We could have had a whole fleet of private jets. Ten per
cent, Ben. They offered you ten per cent and you turned it down”
(Scene 1: 58: 55)
Riley: “That's not as funny. What do you care? You got the girl”