Film Matters: Please tell us about your article that is being published in Film Matters.
Leif Tystad: My article, “Cracks in the Ornament,” uses Siegfried Kracauer’s text “The Mass Ornament” as a groundwork for defining a predominant visual structure of the twentieth century, in concert with the cinematic musicals of Busby Berkeley. Berkeley’s film Gold Diggers of 1933 is a particularly rewarding case study for this, as each of its musical numbers demonstrates the mass ornament’s distinct theoretical potential in terms of industrialization, voyeurism, and nationalism.
FM: What research and/or methodologies do you incorporate in your article?
LT: For this article, I have approached several major texts of film theory, from Kracauer to Mulvey, and attempted to explore how they inform and enhance our understanding of one another. Though Mulvey only mentions Berkeley once in her influential “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” I was interested in seeing how these larger theoretical concepts could all connect back to the mass ornament, each in unique ways.
FM: Describe the original context for/when writing this article while an undergraduate student.
LT: I wrote this essay initially in a Major Film Movements course, covering the legacy and influence of German Expressionism. Part of this course’s emphasis was looking at how the imagery of industrialization made an impact on mass entertainment, and that is perhaps nowhere clearer than in Kracauer’s text. Though the musicals of Busby Berkeley may not resemble early expressionist film, the emphasis on the mass crowd and the deindividualization of the musical numbers’ participants connects the film thematically to the likes of Fritz Lang’s M or F. W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh.
FM: How have your personal experiences shaped and influenced your writing?
LT: I was lucky enough to see several of Berkeley’s films throughout my undergraduate program and to encounter the texts which I cite here under several different contexts. I think this was incredibly valuable as it allowed me to see how these theoretical frameworks can be applied and reapplied in different ways, and how ideas of expressionism and modernism aren’t necessarily limited to historical frameworks.
FM: What aspects of the writing process were most challenging? Why?
LT: A difficult part of the writing process for this article in particular was trying to do justice to some of the great theoretical work which I was basing my own writing on without doing it a disservice. Kracauer and Mulvey are so particularly influential and thorough in their own work, and trying to balance my own film analysis with their writing without minimizing it or misconstruing it was a positive challenge in learning how to interact with my citations.
FM: What do you enjoy most about your article?
LT: I think Gold Diggers of 1933 lends itself perfectly to an essay format, as the disparate nature of each of its musical numbers provides something of an outline from the beginning. In covering each of the musical numbers’ unique theoretical approaches, one also gets a sense for the exciting nature of Berkeley as a creator and how unlimited his choreography was. I hope that the excitement of those scenes is at least partially captured in this article.
FM: How has the Film Matters editorial and publication process impacted the development/evolution of your article?
LT: The publication process was insightful as it allowed me to share the essay with readers who weren’t familiar with the film or with all of the quoted texts. When writing for my professors and peers, I think I naturally used shorthand and at times made the assumption that I didn’t need to explain the individual scenes or Berkeley’s techniques in detail. Getting to see the feedback from my initial draft really pushed me to explore how I could go about describing what are such elaborate visual sequences, trying to do justice to the film for readers not yet familiar with Berkeley’s work.
FM: What audience do you hope to reach with your Film Matters article and/or what impact do you hope it has on the field of film studies?
LT: I hope that this article can draw in readers unfamiliar with Berkeley’s musical numbers and reframe their thinking of mass ornamentation even outside of cinematic contexts. I hope that it can partly demonstrate how the musicals of Busby Berkeley and the concept of the mass ornament can exceed beyond one theoretical box and are instead applicable to different theories and modes of spectatorship.
FM: How has your department and/or institution supported your work in film and media?
LT: When I first came to Pace, I was convinced that I was more interested in the creative side of filmmaking compared to film scholarship. This quickly changed as I became more involved in the department and saw that my interest was rooted more deeply in film history and film analysis, and that this could be just as creative and fulfilling as working on a film set. My department gave me the opportunity to explore both creative and academic sides of film, and provided me with the resources to explore what directions I could take that weren’t limited to film production.
FM: How has your faculty mentor fostered your advancement as a film scholar?
LT: I was lucky enough to take several courses with Dr. Johnson during my four years at Pace. From this, I was able to follow recurring concepts between the different subjects she taught. From early film history to concepts of media archaeology, I was able to gather key texts and a few central films, including the works of Busby Berkeley, which I would reapply and revisit throughout my scholarship. My research always felt collaborative in a sense, getting to return to films and concepts which she had first introduced me to and explore how I could introduce new frameworks and areas of interest which I hadn’t considered before.
FM: What advice do you have for undergraduate film and media scholars?
LT: I would encourage undergraduate students to involve themselves in as much interdisciplinary coursework as they can, balancing the creative and academic sides of film studies to see how they can be beneficial to one another. I think students tend to pick sides, so to speak, between production and theory, when I think the best experience that can be gathered from both derives from an equal involvement and experience with each aspect of film.
FM: What are your future plans?
LT: I will be attending NYU for an MA in cinema studies beginning in fall 2021. I hope to eventually pursue teaching film and to further my own research, with a continued interest in the mass ornament and new objectivity, as well as topics of cinematic memory and Queer cinema.
Author Biography
Leif Tystad is an aspiring cinema studies scholar and author. Leif graduated in May 2021 from Pace University with a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Screen Studies and English Literature. They will be attending NYU beginning in the fall of 2021 to pursue a master’s degree in cinema studies.
