Since cinema’s inception, the choreographed fight sequence has endured as a site of spectacular display, evolving from Douglas Fairbanks’ athletic fight sequences to the stylised showdown between Neo and Mr. Smith in The Matrix(USA 1999). [1]  In the late 1990s techno music was employed to aurally heighten the spectacle of fight scenes in science fiction films, effectively reconfiguring these scenes as musical numbers. This essay will consider three blockbuster films – The Fifth Element (USA 1997), Blade (USA 1998) and The Matrix (USA 1999) – which meld the Hollywood cinematic conventions of dance and combat and thus function as hybrids of the musical, action and sci-fi genres. The use of hyper-kinetic techno music in these films evokes the utopian, socially transformative ethos associated with both the fantasy worlds of the classic Hollywood musical and contemporary sci-fi genres, as well as the radical aspirations of rave culture to which this music is indelibly linked. Techno in these scenes operates as more than a non-diegetic soundtrack accompaniment; the use of this music and the references to rave culture also inflect the mise-en-scene, editing, and cinematography of these films. Just as the conventions of the musical are reworked through the sci-fi film, the revolutionary aspects of techno music are transported from its warehouse inception to the cinema multiplex.

From warrior to performer: the Hollywood musical and genre hybridity in the late 1990s sci-fi blockbuster

The hybrid nature of blockbuster Hollywood film in the 1980s and 1990s facilitated the inclusion of conventional musical-coded performances within the combat sequences in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element. [2] The musical and the sci-fi genres share the characteristics of performance-driven narratives, the foregrounding of fantasy and the prioritisation of cinematic spectacle. The contemporary techno in the compilation scores works like all film music to suture the audience into these films; it also provides those familiar with rave culture a further level of identification, in the way that techno evokes the ideologies and aesthetics of rave culture. This use of music effectively re-writes the thematic emphases upon utopian fantasy associated with both the musical and sci-fi genres in accordance with the particular utopian aspirations of rave culture.

Jane Feuer notes the hybridic transformation of the musical genre that occurred with the teen musicals produced in the 1980s. She argues that the musical genre’s iconic musical montage sequences are extensively employed across various Hollywood genres during this period. [3]  Feuer contends that the production numbers in the teen musical produced after Flashdance (USA 1983) were shaped by an intertextual relay with music video that facilitated the genre’s hybridic expansion across contemporary Hollywood genres. Whereas in the classical Hollywood musical the skilled kinetic performance was the domain of highly trained dancers, the contemporary reconfiguration of the supradiegetic conventions of the musical sequence has made this kinesis available to a range of sites and performances. [4] Sharing Jane Feuer’s theoretical model regarding film genres as fluid cultural forms in a constant process of citation, revision and negotiation, Jim Collins argues that by the 1980s generic transformations were no longer confined to an evolution within a specific genre. Instead, “the eclectic, hybrid genre films of the eighties and nineties […] all engage in specific transformation across genres.” [5] The teen musicals produced during the 1980s discussed by Feuer therefore serve as one example of the transformation of the musical genre and its hybridic engagement with and across numerous other Hollywood genres, including contemporary sci-fi.

Feuer has described the classic Hollywood musical as a genre which was designed to showcase the latest innovations in spectacle or special effects technology, shaped through the talents of the performer and choreographer. [6] The narrative focus together with the spectacular nature of the classical Hollywood musical determined its cultural function to affirm democratic, capitalistic American values-including an emphasis on individualism and a belief in the utopian promise of entertainment-and crystallised the musical’s status as the quintessential Hollywood genre of the studio era. In the contemporary Hollywood period, this mantle was conferred upon the blockbuster sci-fi genre. Initially located as a B-grade genre, the success of Star Wars (USA 1977) in the post-studio period resituated sci-fi as the one of the most popular and profitable blockbuster genres of contemporary Hollywood cinema. As with the musical films of studio-era Hollywood, Star Wars appeared to be designed to re-affirm American democratic and capitalist principles via both its narrative and thematic focus and its innovations in special effects technology.

In the first Hollywood musical, The Jazz Singer (USA 1927), musical numbers demonstrate the utopian role of entertainment as they provided an intermission from the gritty realism of the narrative. The Jazz Singer established the “song-as-performance”[7]  convention-in which a realist narrative is interspersed with spectacular performance numbers-as the prevailing structure of the musical’s performance driven narrative. This structural trait has been assumed by contemporary sci-fi, as the narrative in science fiction films operates to support and motivate the rhythm and style of the special effects sequences. [8] The appeal of the spectacular scenes in contemporary sci-fi lies in the use of cinematic technological innovation to create a sense of astonishment or awe in the audience, similar to the effect of spectacle in the musical’s production number. Commenting on the role of spectacle in the musical, Timothy E. Scheurer argues that the Hollywood musical constructs “a highly stylised representation of life,” to support the production numbers that are governed by “a different mode of reality, the inner reality of feelings, emotions, and instincts [which] are given metaphoric and symbolic expression through the means of music and dance.” [9] Similarly in the contemporary science fiction film, exotic alien and futuristic settings blend fantasy and reality in such a way that present day hopes and fears about science and technology are projected onto narratives with futuristic settings. Science fiction relies heavily on the latest innovations in cinematic technologies to dazzle the audience with realistic images of fantasy realms and their non-human inhabitants, and thus render the audience awestruck. As well as the advances in visual effects technologies, contemporary sci-fi, like the musical genre of the studio period, [10]  is celebrated for its ability to capitalise on innovations in sound technologies. For example, the innovative cine-sound technologies that complemented the visual spectacle in Star Wars have developed throughout the post-classical period to the point where in contemporary Hollywood bass-driven surround sound can “cause the spectator to vibrate-quite literally-with the narrative space.” [11] Thus, through developments in film sound, the visceral appeal of sci-fi can be seen to parallel the emotive appeal that characterised the classical musical. Moreover, in the examples discussed here, the effects and appeal of science fiction and musical genres are blended; as I will show, the use of techno music in contemporary combat scenes references rave culture in such a way that the “cinematic experience” and the “dance floor experience” are explicitly linked.

The musical genre of “techno” encompasses the wide variety of electronically produced music featuring percussion rhythms and rapid beats, synthesising drum beats with pre-recorded sounds played in continuous succession at raves. Techno emerged in Detroit in the 1980s and is distinguished by its premise that perception and pleasure can be heightened through the use of technology. [12]  Sound vibrating through the body is a repeatedly identified pleasure of the dance floor experience. The visceral thrill of techno music appeals to an increasingly aurally sophisticated cinematic audience. The combination of heavily percussive high-tempo music and combat sounds in action sequences not only complements the visual special effects technology, but also encourages identification with the onscreen spectacular performance via the dance culture of rave. [13]

By the late 1990s rave culture had evolved from an illegally organised activity enjoyed by a youth sub-culture, to an anti-authoritarian signifier of mainstream global youth cultures. The Detroit techno music style emerged as the central music genre for raves the 1980s, so that by the 1990s this music style was ineradicably associated with raves held in the United States. [14]  At its inception, Detroit techno conveyed “a utopian future in which the relics of heavy industry were transformed electronically into a weightless magic motion.” [15] The utopian, liberatory appeal of rave culture is similar to the pleasures offered by the Hollywood musical, described by Jane Feuer as “a glimpse of what it would be like to be free. …the musical presents its vision of the unfettered human spirit in a way that forecloses a desire to translate that vision into reality.” [16] The ability of music to transform the civilised spaces of the everyday into a transcendent utopian space is fundamental to the Hollywood musical – as well as to the culture of rave. [17] Key combat scenes in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element illustrate how, in the 1990s, transformative possibilities of music and performance once fundamental to classic Hollywood musicals were re-articulated through the utopian ethos defined by rave culture.

All three films construct their meaning through an ongoing dialogue between the spoken narrative and the spectacle of a highly choreographed, physical display which, like dance in the Hollywood musical, is employed as a privileged site of discourse. [18]  In Royal Wedding (USA, 1951), Tom Bowen (Fred Astaire) defies gravity and literally dances up the walls onto the ceiling as a means of expressing the liberating exultation of true love. Recalling Astaire’s wise-cracking wit and physical agility, the stars of Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element update such supernatural, unbounded performances. The re-inscription of the performer’s body through the celebration of cinematic technologies in the musical informs the construction of similar scenes in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element. Replicating Tom Bowen’s gravity-defying manoeuvre as part of their spectacular performance pieces, Neo, Trinity, Blade and Leeloo run up and across walls in slow-motion, and sail across ceilings. However, for these more contemporary protagonists, the musical’s fleeting moments of spectacular transmogrification are mediated by rave culture’s aspiration to technologically-defined transcendence; and, in science fiction’s vision of the future they are reconfigured as a technologically defined permanent bodily state.

The introduction of rave culture suggests that dancing to human-produced sounds is no longer enough to achieve transcendence from the mundane; instead, it requires the extreme technological enhancement of sound and image, including Laser light shows, a technologically produced rapid beat and often the chemically manufactured drug, MDMA. The technological augmentation of rave culture complements the sci-fi blockbuster’s function to showcase the latest in cinematic special effects technology.

The technologised bodies and movements of the central protagonists in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element enact the “active production of an ecstatic mind/ body/spirit/ technology assemblage” associated with rave culture. [19]  And, though aesthetically different from classical Hollywood musicals in their foregrounding of technology, these films are similar in their effect: writing on Fred Astaire’s highly skilled performance persona, Gerald Mast suggests that Astaire is “not quite mortal…Astaire doesn’t inhabit the same physical universe as anyone else.” [20] The central protagonists in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element are not metaphorically but literally “not quite mortal.” To a non-diegetic techno music score each character enacts solo and coupled performances that celebrate the fact that they are “not subject to the same physical and moral law” as the ordinary people they are trying to save. [21]  Instead, their performances are subject to a mode of reality defined by music and cinematic spectacle and science fiction’s commitment to future-oriented fantasy.

The spectacle of combat in these three films further reflects rave culture’s concerns with liberation through technology, while their fight scenes stylistically employ the central elements of the musical genre-music and dance. [22] The central protagonists, being situated at the borders of society, are defined by an identity constructed in a similar manner to that found in rave culture; the thematic trope of freedom of self-definition being yet another concern that the musical, rave culture and modern science-fiction films have in common. In these films, fulfilment and empowerment are achieved through a technologised subjectivity. By applying Timothy E Scheurer’s definition of the musical and its production numbers to a reading of these contemporary sci-fi films, the specific effects of genre hybridity can be understood. In Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element, the highly stylised reality created in the classic Hollywood musical – to convey the “different mode of reality” associated with musical entertainment – is literalised by the futuristic fantasy settings of these contemporary science fiction narratives. And, identification with the characters and their realities is mediated by means of an identification with the central protagonist as a skilled performer through the musically coded combat scene.

From meat to beat: re-writing the ideologies and conventions of Hollywood musical via techno’s rave culture.

The primary appeal of a rave is that of space providing an escape from social norms and the customs of everyday life. [23]  The utilitarian locations of the fight sequences in The Fifth Element, Blade and The Matrix adhere to the integrated Hollywood musical’s convention of creating the proscenium out of ordinary everyday spaces. However, it is configured differently in each of the three films, depending on the degree of engagement with the conventions and ideologies of both rave culture and the musical. Jane Feuer posits that, “whenever a number commences in any musical, the world does become a stage. …when performance is taken outside the theatre, the proscenium is reborn out of ordinary space and the world is a stage.” [24] Similarly, writing on the use of techno music in club cultures, Ben Malbon contends that techno music’s ability to create an “emotionally charged” atmosphere is crucial for the rave experience, as it facilitates the transformation of “fleeting” social spaces into a communal meeting space. [25] The opening sequence in Blade is set at a rave that takes place in a meat-processing factory, edited to New Order’s techno track, “Confession.” This provides a diegetic conflation of the classical Hollywood musical’s proscenium that is “reborn out of ordinary space,” with that of rave culture as a socially liminal space.

In his introductory fight sequence, Blade performs a highly skilled and sophisticated performance spectacle set to techno. The socially peripheral location of the meat-processing factory and the diegetic use of techno music explicitly links Blade withrave culture. The inter-textual relay is perpetuated through the techno-informed fight spectacle that erupts in this liminal space, an evolution of rave’s exploration of identity conveyed through bodily movement. The overlapping between rave space, the Hollywood musical’s dance space, and the sci-fi blockbuster genre’s fight space, provides multiple levels for an engagement with this scene and a site for the struggle of the competing discourses of liberation articulated through the musical genre, rave culture and the sci-fi genre.

Replicating the spectacle of the Hollywood musical, highly choreographed dance performance of display is used in this sequence to introduce and define the central character, Blade. This two-minute combat sequence is coded according to the dominant conventions of the classical Hollywood musical’s production number where all elements of the mise-en-scene, editing and soundtrack are subordinated to the spectacle of the performance. [26]  As Blade flies free from an attack, he lands squarely in the middle of a round chamber lit by a spotlight and positioned directly above the centre of the chamber, further emphasising the dance-performative style of this sequence. A series of rapidly inter-cut torso shots ensue as he slays his attackers without moving from his position under the spotlight. With Blade’s final conquering action the techno music ends, signalling the end of the performance. In this sequence the Kung Fu prioritisation of grace and skill dominate so that the fight scene exists as a staged “ballet of violence.” [27] This performance ends with Blade positioned under a spotlight in the middle of the proscenium, standing like a dancer awaiting the applause of the audience, configured as the star of a musical production number. [28]

Aesthetically, Blade’s performance style is the antithesis of the dance style typified by techno’s rave culture. Rave culture’s dance style is illustrated prior to Blade’s arrival through shots of the ravers moving rhythmically as a confined unified mass. The rave itself is transformed by the dichotomous nature of its participants, as the initial rave sequence is structured by intercutting shots of vampires amongst the ravers. The revelation that the ravers are the unwitting prey of the vampires destabilises the safe harmonious, inter-connected ideology of rave culture. [29] The use of high-speed editing combined with the vampire’s knowing glances starkly contrasts their insidious intent with the euphoria of the dancers. The rapid visual tempo associated with the vampires destabilises the communal harmony conveyed by the long shots used to define the ravers. The harmony that is being jeopardised is further reinforced by a slow-motion sequence which inter-cuts shots of the dancers and the DJ to convey both a dream-like state and their oblivion to anything other than the music.

This scene visually depicts a governing ideology of rave culture where ravers are encouraged to “lose themselves” in the music and mood. Thus they seek to lose their mundane individual identity to form a fantasy-based and technologically-enhanced identity and become subsumed into the mass identity of the crowd. [30]  Blade’s high-speed precise movements disrupt the oneiric aesthetic of the rave and yet, as with the ravers, Blade’s moves are choreographed to techno music. This juxtaposition between Blade’s expansive and disruptive performance style and the techno music genre to which he performs exemplifies the disjuncture created by the insertion of techno into the musical-defined performance “number” that is Blade’s fight sequence. The focus of the musical on showcasing the superior skills and ability of the performer contradicts the dominant ideology of rave culture, that is the breaking down of boundaries, both social and bodily. This de-individualising ideology of rave culture requires the deflection of attention from the individual, in order to celebrate a unified mass movement, and is thus markedly at odds with the dominant tendencies of Hollywood entertainment. The tension between the Hollywood musical and rave culture’s prescription for performative acts kinaesthetically demonstrates the thematic tension at the centre of Blade’s own hybridic identity as a vampire trying to be human. Blade’s violent and very public struggle to protect the status quo of a society ruled by humans and in which vampires reside at the periphery, parallels both the skilled and proficient displays of the musical star and the conservative telos of individualism associated with the musical genre. In contrast, Blade’s personal struggle against his vampire side figures the struggle against the status quo espoused by rave culture; and, his stealthy movements through the city allow him to blend into the crowd, similar to the participants in a rave. Aesthetic and ideological tensions between the conventional Hollywood musical and rave culture are thus encapsulated in the figure of Blade: his outcast lifestyle suggests the need to unsettle the status quo, not re-affirm democratic, capitalist values, even though his heroic performance is made on behalf of that status quo and in doing so engages with the values and conventions of Hollywood’s musical genre.

From battleground to dance floor: re-writing the shoot-out as a paired performance.

Jane Feuer contends that unlike the single diegesis of the classical Hollywood film, the musical constructs multiple narrative worlds that are “created so that they may be homogenised in the end through the union of the romantic couple.” [31] Astaire and Rogers, for example, “caught the public’s imagination as two vulnerable sophisticates who meet and after a cautious start acknowledge their love in a succession of dances in which the world is their ballroom.” [32] The stylistic and narrative conventions of the Hollywood musical, mapped onto those of contemporary sci-fi, facilitate the union of the couple in The Matrix and The Fifth Element. However, in contrast to the role of dance in the Hollywood musical, the performance numbers are reconfigured as a site, not of romance, but of the loss of mundane individual identity and the formation of a fantasy-based and technologically-enhanced identity. In The Matrix the heterosexual pairing within the classical Hollywood musical is reconfigured through the relationship of the performance number to the narrative, costume and choreography. In contrast to the musical’s use of dance as a metonym for romance, the shared activity of dance as it is experienced in rave culture is used as an expression of individual transcendence. [33] Trinity and Neo’s production number thus displays a rave culture-infused revision of this formula. Set in the foyer of a federal building, Neo and Trinity’s performance exchanges Astaire and Rogers’ ballroom for a site more closely associated with the inception of rave culture.

Rick Altman argues that a “sex-as-battle” convention shaped the performance numbers in the RKO Astaire/Rogers musicals of the 1930s. According to this convention, the dance performance moves from antagonism to romance, developing the couples romantic compatibility as the dances progress over the course of the narrative. Rick Altman argues that these antagonistic dance sequences employ dance to articulate fighting, where, “fighting is not opposed to sexual activity…it is sexual activity.” [3]  In contrast, in The Matrix, romance is primarily developed at the level of the spoken narrative rather than in the performances pieces. The performance numbers are reserved for the affirmation of Neo’s superhero status as “The One” rather than for building his romantic compatibility with Trinity. Re-writing the role of dance as it functions in the Astaire/Rogers musicals, when Neo and Trinity fight it builds instead of romance a shared desire for transcendence, foregrounding their matched abilities rather than any romantic desire. This reconfigures the musical’s romantically linked couple via rave culture’s self-actualising participants, united in their common goals of liberation rather than romantic compatibility or desire. The counter-cultural re-inscription associated with rave culture that prioritises individual transcendence over the musical’s heterosexual courtship myth is re-affirmed by the final performance number. In this finale Neo launches into the air like Superman, to the strains of the political hard rock group Rage Against the Machine’s demand, “Wake-up”.

The matched footwork of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ performance numbers is replicated through Neo and Trinity’s matched actions in the shoot-out scene to similarly convey a sense of expansion of self through pairing up. Neo and Trinity’s matched skills and abilities are evoked in this sequence by their appropriation of the conventions of the musical’s duet, as defined by Rick Altman:

the musical’s centre of gravity, its method of summarising in a single scene the film’s entire structure. Because it has such power, however, the duet is usually reserved for moments of maximum tension or exultation. [35]

The complexity and difficulty of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ dance routines, in their forward movement through multiple variations of steps and partner-positioning, provide a primary source of spectatorial pleasure in their films. Their danced duets act as a metaphor for their desire and suitability as a romantic and professional couple, as throughout the demands of the dance, Ginger effortlessly matches and responds to Fred Astaire’s moves.

The transformative nature of dance recodes the threat of violence in these combat scenes. Reality is transformed by the virtuosity on show in the combat sequences, matched to the aural appeal of the familiar and celebratory codes of techno. This operates to alleviate the perceived threat both to the protagonists and to humanity which is usually connoted by combat scenes. Each number is framed and edited to the beat of the music thus prioritising the highly skilled balletic movements of the film’s central characters. In analysing the classical Hollywood musical Jane Feuer posits that the intensive labour and sophisticated technology required in the production numbers is masked to imbue these performances with a sense of spontaneity and ease. [36] Correlatively, in the combat scenes in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element, the highly choreographed actions-combined with the special effects-obfuscate the violent implications of the fight itself. Instead, an exuberant and liberating mode of reality, based on an impression of effortlessness, dominates these sequences, a mode of reality and individual performance that is fundamental to the Kung Fu film, rave culture and the musical genre.

The shoot-out scene that initiates Morpheus’s rescue, and which complements the earlier dojo fighting sequence, is set to the Propellerheads’ electronica-influenced “Spybreak.” [37] This form of techno music dominated the early 1990s dance floor scene and, as used in the rescue scene, it conveys the “ill-defined conviction that something radical is at stake in this music.” [38] Although this performance is set in the seemingly mundane space of the foyer of a government building, the cyber-reality that characterises the world of The Matrix allows us to view this as a staged arena that is structured by codes of artifice, fantasy and performance. The foyer is clearly demarcated from the mundane space of the real world, and thus functions as would a proscenium in a backstage musical. At the beginning of this scene, the camera tracks back to reveal the soldiers fanning out to take up their defensive positions, a movement similar to the elaborate grouping of identical chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley-styled musical number. Berkeley’s set pieces erased “any sense of the individual,” [39]  so that the overall effect was that of an assemblage of bodies, rather than a focus on the talents of an individual.

The firepower and location evoke the hard-bodied action film of the late 1980s. [40] However, the use of costuming and musically-driven physical performance overwhelm these other tropes with those of the classical Hollywood musical, locating this sequence as a contemporary paired musical performance with a supporting chorus line. The music, initially, is overwhelming in volume and tempo as Neo and Trinity leap gracefully into action. The tracking shots are dictated by the rhythm of the music; the action, as with dance numbers in the musical, is dictated by the song. The later use of a slow rhythmic beat is matched by slow-motion cinematography. In the “Never gonna dance” performance number in Swing Time (USA 1936) Astaire and Rogers spontaneously dance together across the dance floor of an empty nightclub, matching each other’s ornate circular movements across the floor, up adjoining spiral staircases, and then out of the shot. Similarly, at the culmination of Neo and Trinity’s routine, the techno music abruptly stops. Trinity then picks up the bag of guns and both she and Neo are again framed in the paired position, as at the beginning of the scene. With the sudden retraction of the supradiegetic score, the now-decimated lobby returns to the “real world”-as opposed to a fantasy space-and the proscenium that was borne out of this mundane space has vanished. The lift doors open, Neo and Trinity step in simultaneously, and the scene ends when the doors close and the couple have left the floor. From its inception to its culmination, Neo and Trinity’s physical performance in the sequence has been structured by the same conventions that governed Astaire and Roger’s paired dance numbers.

Jane Feuer’s theory of the bricolage production number in the Hollywood musical offers a way of reading this musically coded transformation of mundane props and spaces into a kinetically driven fantasy world. [41] Her conception of the term bricolage is based on Levi Strauss’s model which posits that the completion of a project is subordinate to the use of materials at hand. She cites Astaire’s dance with a coat rack in Royal Wedding and Gene Kelly’s dance with a mop and a series of brooms in Thousands Cheer (USA 1943) as examples of this convention. [42] The bullets fired at Neo and Trinity function as props and enhance the choreographed display, replicating the role of props for Astaire and Kelly. Equally, Jane Feuer’s contention that Kelly’s use of the bricolage number signifies “American inventiveness,” and Astaire’s use of bricolage in his numbers to convey the fact that “no partner of flesh could match his grace,” [43]  combine in Neo’s character. The inventiveness and corporeal transcendence of Astaire and Kelly combine to inscribe Neo’s character and the attendant cinematic technologies used in The Matrix.

In contrast, Neo’s ability to dodge bullets on the roof of the government building in the next scene, framed in the Wachowski’s slow-motion “bullet time,” inverts the classical Hollywood musical’s use of bricolage performances to make these spectacular performances appear natural and spontaneous. Rather than naturalising the spectacle of the performance itself, the slow-motion, multi-angled bullet-time shot alters the narrative rhythm, in order to highlight and draw attention to cinematic innovations and remind the audience that these performances are neither natural nor spontaneous. The shift in focus from individual character skill to cinematic technological augmentation effectively disavows the violence through the hyper-aestheticisation in these scenes. [44]

As with the choreography in Blade, this sequence from The Matrix ends as Neo leaps into the air to kick a soldier in the face, landing squarely on his feet again. A point of view shot follows Neo’s gaze over to the other side of the room where Trinity mimics Neo’s flying leap, runs up the wall with her coat billowing behind her, and somersaults sideways to dodge the bullets. Her movements are more ornate than Neo’s, but are equally as powerful and controlled. In this context, pleasure is derived by the actions of the fetishised stars’ bodies, as they are in the Astaire/Rogers musicals. The music and the costuming are therefore used to upstage the violence of this scene and re-situate it as a dance that metonymically constructs Neo and Trinity primarily as musical stars, and secondarily superheroes who, in accordance with that genre’s conventions, will always triumph and can never die.

Complimenting this visual effect, the use of techno music in these scenes invites a reading of these spectacular performances through the time-altering, transcendent states of liberation and empowerment celebrated by rave culture. Rave culture shares the integrated musical’s dissolution into fantasy. However, unlike the prop number in the musical, cinematic technology is foregrounded in these scenes just as it is in rave culture; thus a distinction is drawn between the narrative and the production numbers, privileging the production numbers as a site of discourse via their ability to showcase cinematic technology. Through the hybridic evolution of blockbuster sci-fi with techno music – driven special effects, technology has become fundamental to the utopian expression and emotional effect of these contemporary musical performances.

The difference between Neo and Trinity’sstatic “daily-reality” bodies and the movement of their dancing bodies is visually emphasised through the musical’s use of colour and its costuming conventions. Citing the contrast between Kansas and Oz in The Wizard of Oz (USA 1939), Jane Feuer argues that the early film musical’s use of colour in mise-en-scene provided a contrast between the spoken scenes and the musical numbers. [45]  This effect is employed in The Matrix to contrast the grey-green drabness of the real world with the glossy superficiality of the world within The Matrix. The revival of the costuming convention of the classical Hollywood musical is evident in The Matrix as clothing becomes a primary site for the elucidation and interpretation of identity. However, the iconography of costuming here reconfigures the gendered conventions of costuming in the Astaire/Rogers musicals, to instead reflect a contemporary attention to the fluidity of identity and gender construction. The stylistic elements of mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing used to build Neo and Trinity’s characters and their partnership evoke the homogenising effect of rave culture, [46] especially in the reconfiguration of the costuming elements of the classical Hollywood musical.

In the classical Hollywood musical, the unity conveyed through the tightly coordinated dance movements is augmented by the careful co-ordination of the performers’ attire. In the Astaire/ Rogers musicals, costume-as both trademark and, by extension, ideological emblem-was employed to articulate the tensions between narrative and performer. As Gerald Mast notes, “these trademarks not only identify a performer; they also symbolise a view of human experience, a way of life, a mediation between the way a character sees the world and the way the world sees the character.” [47] The complementary dress of Fred Astaire’s top hat and tails and Ginger Rogers’ flowing, frilly white gown and curly blonde hair inscribe them as figures of modernity, aspiring to the level of affluence suggested by these outfits. These costumes figure highly stylised versions of masculinity and femininity, which denoted an idealised model of cohesive heterosexuality. The classical Hollywood musical’s employment of this stylistic element is transformed in the Morpheus rescue scene in The Matrix, where clothing is once again the primary site for the elucidation and interpretation of identity. [48] However, the iconography of costuming in The Matrix reconfigures the gendered conventions of costuming in the Astaire/Rogers musicals, to instead reflect a contemporary interest in the fluidity of identity and gender construction. The stylistic elements of mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing used to build Neo and Trinity’s characters and their partnership again evoke the homogenising effect of rave culture, especially in the reconfiguration of the costuming elements of the classical Hollywood musical.

Re-engineering the classical Hollywood musical’s use of costume to convey the performing couple’s compatibility, the visual conviction of the integrity of Neo and Trinity’s union is correspondingly expressed through the costuming of their action sequence. As they enter the agent’s building to rescue Morpheus, Trinity and Neo assume a similar amorphous subjectivity, the identity of depersonalised agents as they androgynously resemble each other on every level of appearance. Through their shared black outfits, black flowing coats, sunglasses and slicked back black hair the costuming in this “performance number” denies not only gender difference but individuation on any level. This is reinforced by a match of shots that bookend this scene. In the opening scene Neo and Trinity are framed standing side by side, sharing the same height, approximate build, clothing, eye wear, and later mirroring each other’s moves when the action commences. The final shot brings the two back to a position where they are framed in a mirror image of the initial shot. The elision of sexual difference and individual identity corresponds to a dress-code associated with early rave culture where the “‘unisex’ clothes and the whole ‘dress-to-sweat’ emphasis were important factors in the perceived erosion of sexual difference.” [49]

Through the highly choreographed skilled performance, Neo and Trinity re-inscribe the dance duets of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Their paralleled actions suggest that Neo and Trinity, similar to the characters played by Astaire and Rogers, are a suitable match for each other in terms of skill, prowess, visual appearance and capabilities. However, the editing of their action sequence to the rhythm of techno music infuses this sequence with an alternative level of meaning which substitutes the use of dance as a metonym for romance with the liberation of rave culture connoted through the hyperkinetic energy of the techno music soundtrack.

From romance to female empowerment: the danced duet in The Fifth Element

In The Fifth Element, the reconfiguration of the individual combat performance through the conventions of the Hollywood musical and rave culture is evident in the sequence which cuts back and forth between the Diva’s performance and Leeloo’s fight. The performance-location is split, performance styles mixed, and the performing couple is reconstituted as an all-female partnership, feminising dance through the tropes of rave culture. [50] Maria Pini argues that rave culture can be seen to provide a challenge to traditional notions of masculinity, as its enjoyment of dance and its friendly, accepting ethos traditionally imply a feminised domain. [51] This shift is reflected in the performance pairing of the Diva with Leeloo and their contemporary interventions into the classical Hollywood musical’s duet. In The Fifth Element, Leeloo is the technologically produced perfect being who, like the other protagonists, fights to save humanity. Her techno-informed stylised Kung-Fu fight sequence alleviates the sense violence in her performance by depicting her perfectly controlled combat movements as fluid and effortless-as enjoyable as participating in a rave. During her performance, Leeloo is not scared or angry, she commands the performance and she is having fun.

In this scene, the Diva sings a classically-styled opera aria in the opera house, which is filled to capacity. As the Diva sings high-pitched staccato notes set to a techno music beat, Leeloo begins to fight in an adjacent hotel room. The rapid inter-cutting between the Diva’s performance and Leeloo’s skilful acrobatic fighting techniques locate this fight scene as a dance performance. Each refrain the Diva sings is matched on the beat by a punch or kick from Leeloo as she dispenses with the invading Mangalores. The Diva’s dance movements are replicated in Leeloo’s combative movements, situating her fight as a spectacular entertainment performance. At the end of the sequence there is a series of rapid cuts between the Diva and Leeloo as both of them stretch out their arms as a signal that the performance has ended. Leeloo’s dance therefore constitutes the reconfigured dance of the musical to denote a powerful female subjectivity, independent of a male counterpart, and one that ensures the continuance of humanity premised on a female-female pairing. [52] This represents a contemporary revision of the heterosexual courtship myth, which Altman theorises is central to the classical Hollywood musical’s duet. [53] Whereas in the classic Hollywood musical the consonances and dissonances of the music narrate the highs and lows of the musical’s heterosexual courtship, here they are attuned to Leeloo’s individual experiences, as a character who, since her technological rebirth, has endeavoured to understand herself and the humanity she is designed to save. Accordingly, the representation of Leeloo’s actions in this scene, staged and edited to match the Diva’s, further evokes the mode of address of rave culture. As Maria Pini notes:

For many women, rave represents an undoing of the traditional cultural associations between dancing, drugged, dressed up woman and sexual invitation, and as such opens up a new space for the exploration of new forms of identity and pleasure. [54]

These ideologies informing rave culture ‘s appeal are in opposition to those that underpin the classical Hollywood musical’s bodily address: these are juxtaposed in this scene as they define Leeloo’s performance in contrast to the Diva’s. Rave culture is structured through “modes of looking that seem not to be based on objectification and separation, but rather on incorporation and unity.” [55]  This definition articulates a key feature of Leeloo’s performance in her fight sequences. Unlike the Diva, Leeloo does not perform to a diegetic audience. [56] Instead, by directly engaging with those around her to structure her performance, Leeloo performs according to the conventions governing dance at a rave, whereby the rave dance floor breaks down the divide between audience and performer and provides the possibility of being both simultaneously. By contrast, the Diva is cinematically situated as the staged performer of the classical Hollywood musical in this piece, as attention is directed towards her performance through its proscenium settings and the well-dressed audience seated in the auditorium. We are persistently reminded of the staged location of the Diva through the use of medium and long shots of the audience and Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), transfixed by the Diva’s performance. The Diva requires this staged setting to perform, as her star treatment and silent and mysterious arrival aboard the ship affirms. In contrast, Leeloo’s performance takes place in the everyday domestic-public space of a hotel room. Corresponding to early raves that re-inscribed socially liminal industrial spaces as dance spaces, Leeloo’s performance reinscribes a luxury hotel room as the site for individual control and social struggle-literally the struggle to control the world.

Maria Pini contends that rave culture prioritises the merger of the individual body with the mass of participants, rather than constructing the individual dancer as a performer. [57] This convention is paralleled in the combat performance that emphasizes Leeloo’s performing body, operating in the everyday space much as the body of rave culture does, in opposition to the Diva’s body as the body of the performer. Framed from the internal audience’s perspective for the majority of her performance, the Diva is coded according to the staged performance conventions of the classical Hollywood musical. [58] This is similar to the opening sequence in Blade where a performance shaped by the conventions of the musical and a performance that breaks down the barrier between participant and audience are set in contrast; in this scene, a teenager mesmerised by Blade’s vampire-slaying performance serves as the internal audience for Blade’s fight sequence. As theorised by Jane Feuer, in the classical Hollywood musical such an internal audience is a means by which the film’s audience is positioned to identify. Accordingly, at the conclusion of his performance Blade tells the teenager to leave, which signals the end of the performance for the film audience as well. In The Fifth Element, the lack of an internal audience in Leeloo’s performance, in contrast to the Diva’s, locates Leeloo’s performance more firmly within the conventions of dance in rave culture where there is no position allocated for spectator, and there are no boundaries between performer and participant. Moreover, the intercutting between the Diva and Leeloo bridges the distance created by the classical Hollywood musical’s proscenium, even as it splits the performance space of the proscenium between the formal stage and the integrated musical’s informal stage that “is reborn out of ordinary space.” [59]

This bridging of the two spaces is achieved through the juxtaposition of the Diva’s techno music sound with her diegetic stage location and the way that her music is thus associated with the rave culture-inflected performance of Leeloo. The Diva’s performance commences with a classical operatic musical style, which is accompanied by the filmic image of plush theatre space, the traditional domain of an operatic performance. Her musical transition to the tempo and technologically enhanced sounds of techno re-orient the expectations set up by this image and initial use of an operatic song style, while at the same time drawing attention to the inappropriateness of techno music to this performance environment. The intercutting between the Diva and Leeloo, combined with the match between the Diva’s techno sound and Leeloo’s rave-influenced performance, reconfigures the Diva’s solo as a female-female duet with Leeloo. The interdependency of meaning generated by this duet across this split performance space reflects the most formally innovative and conceptually sophisticated filmic incorporation of techno music of the three films considered here.

Conclusion

The construction of key combat scenes in Blade, The Matrix and The Fifth Element, via the aesthetic and ideological conventions of techno music, rave culture and the musical production number, re-codes the fantasy and utopian and violent impulses of sci-fi’s highly choreographed individual combat scenes. [60] As the intersecting point of multiple Hollywood genres and ancillary media forms, these multi-layered combat scenes epitomise the ideological and stylistic complexity celebrated by the highly self-conscious, intertextual Hollywood blockbuster of the late 1990, a Hollywood genre renowned for its formal and stylistic excess.

I would like to express my gratitude to the referees of this article for their insightful and encouraging comments, and I would particularly like to thank the editors, Amanda Howell and Cory Messenger, for their excellent editorial work as well as their patience and support with this piece.

Endnotes
[1] In her article, “Dance on film,” Arlene Croce cites the influence of dance on D.W . Griffith’s films, Fairbanks’ fight sequences, and the aesthetic beauty of Buster Keaton’s villain-conquering performances in which, “the whole universe dances.” (Cinema: A Critical Dictionary: The Major Film Makers. Vol. 1. Aldrich to King. ed. Richard Roud, New York: The Viking Press, 1980, 254).
[2] For further theories which account for the hybrid nature of film genres see Steve Neale, “Questions of genre,” in The Film Genre Reader 2, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas, 1995), and Rick Altman, Film/Genre(London: BFI, 1999), 70. For further details on the industrial factors behind the highly intertextual and hybrid nature of high concept film production in Hollywood in the 1980s, see Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).
[3] Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical (2nd edn.)(London: The Macmillian Press, 1993), 53.
[4] Rick Altman, The American Film Musical (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1987), 69.
[5] Jim Collins, Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age(New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 131. A very self-conscious intertextuality governs the three films under consideration in this paper. Blade is an adaptation of the Marvel comic. The borrowing of styles, motifs and plots from other film, literary and media genres is evident in The Matrix through its engagement with superheroes of comic books, especially the Mr X and Terminal City comic books. Fundamental to The Fifth Element is a parodic engagement with multiple media forms, including fashion and a pastiche of previous sci-fi films including Metropolis (Germany 1927) and Blade Runner(Ridley Scott 1982).
[6] Feuer, 67.
[7] Todd Berliner and Philip Furia, “The sounds of silence: songs in Hollywood films since the 1960s,” Style, Spring 2002, 36, no.1. 21.
[8] Brooks Landon, The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (re) production (Greenwood Press: Westport & London, 1992), 69.
[9] Timothy E. Scheurer, “The aesthetics of form and convention in the movie musical,” Journal of Popular Film, Fall (1974), 307.
[10] Jane Feuer (67) describes the Hollywood musical as a vehicle designed to show case the latest innovations in spectacle, or special effects cinematic technology, defined through the talents of the performer and choreographer. Similarly, Brooks Landon (69) argues that that the narrative in science fiction films operates to support and motivate the rhythm and style of the special effects sequences.
[11] Rick Altman, “The sound of sound: a brief history of the reproduction of sound in movie theaters,” Cineaste, vol 21, 01.01.1995.
[12] “Derrick May,” The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. eds. Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street. (New York: Cambridge UP, 2001). 208.
[13] Gianiluca Sergi argues that “as spectators…we enter the cinema complex already laden with our cultural background and the expectations it elicits.” (“The sonic playground: Hollywood cinema and its listeners,” Film Sound Design, http://www.filmsound.org/articles/sergi/ , (2004.) This use of techno can be seen as an appeal to the cultural experiences of the blockbuster audience demographic of seventeen to nineteen year-olds, who are also the target demographic for the soundtrack release. Will Straw notes that along with techno, house music was the dominant dance floor music from the 1980s through to the 1990s. (“Dance music,” in The Oxford Companion to Pop and Rock, eds. Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street, New York: Cambridge UP, 2001, 171 & 173.)
[14] Straw, 171. Lori Tomlinson (“‘This ain’t no disco’… or is it? Youth culture and the rave phenomenon,” in Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World, ed. Jonathon S. Epstein, Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, 197) also notes that “other related [music] genres soon developed, such as acid house, breakbeat, jungle, ambient, trance, tribal and progressive.”
[15] Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street, “Star profiles: Derek May,” in The Oxford Companion to Pop and Rock, eds. Simon Frith, Will Straw, and John Street. (New York: Cambridge UP, 2001), 158-177.
[16] Feuer, 84. Leo Braudy (World in a Frame: What we see in Films, Garden City, NJ: Anchor, 1976, 155, 140, 157) similarly notes that dance is the site of liberation in the classical Hollywood musical, adding that “formal self-consciousness, the shapes of individual energy, and the definition of the ideal community are the basic themes of musicals.”
[17] Scheurer, 308.
[18] Elisabeth Dempster, “Women writing the body: let’s watch a little how she dances,” in Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance, eds. Ellen W. Goellner and Jacqueline Shea Murphy (Rutgers: New Brunswick, New Jersey UP, 1995), 21.
[19] Maria Pini, “Women and the early British rave scene” in ed. Angela McRobbie, Back to Reality? Social Experience and Cultural Studies (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 156. Blade is the day walker, a vampire/human hybrid who controls his vampiric constitution with a scientifically formulated serum; in The Matrix, Neo is ultimately revealed to be a computer program; The Fifth Element‘s Leeloo is “the perfect being” scientifically rebuilt from a sample of her DNA.
[20] Gerald Mast, Can’t Help Singin’: The American Musical on Stage and Screen(Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1987), 144. Through his transcendent acts and his association with the innovations of jazz, Astaire literally stamped his anti-establishment mark on the diegetic worlds in which his characters live. His actions disrupt the oppressive old order of these societies, and ushers in a new youthful and vibrantly defined social order. This transgressive role similarly motivates the central protagonists in the 1990s sci-fi films.
[21] Mast, 144.
[22] Steve Neale, “Musicals,” Genre and Hollywood, (London & New York: Routledge, 2000), 105.
[23] Ben Malbon, “The club: clubbing: consumption, identity and the spatial practices of every-night life,” in Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Culture, eds. Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine (New York& London: Routledge, 1998), 267, 271.
[24] Feuer, 24.
[25] As rave culture evolved into the mid-1990s, the combination of increased amphetamine use and faster music tempos resulted in “a vibe that exhilaratingly blended euphoria and aggression. The result was a teenage ‘rush’ culture that had more in common with video games, extreme sports and joy-riding than late 1960s transcendence-through-altered-states.” (Everything started with an E,
http://members.aol.com/blissout/indie.html (2004).
[26] Feuer, 4.
[27] Stuart Kaminsky, “Comparative forms: the kung fu film and the dance musical,” American Film Genres, 2nd edn, (Chicago: Nelson- Hall, 1984), 77.
[28] The finale of Blade provides another example of the coding of Blade’s performance through the conventions of the classical Hollywood musical production number. A martial-arts-inspired sword-fight between Blade and Frost is staged to the techno beats of Expansion Union’s, “Playing with lightning”. In a pivotal moment in this sequence, Blade is framed flying through the air, his body hunched behind his legs which are stretched out toward the camera, a pose that replicates a publicity shot of Gene Kelly performing the same athletic dance move in the 1940s. This photo is featured on the PBS Gene Kelly tribute site,
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/kelly_g_homepage.html
[29] The spirit of raving archives, http://www.hyperreal.org/raves/spirit/ (2000)
[30] Pini, 159.
[31] Feuer, 68.
[32] John Tobal, “Introduction,” in Gotta Sing Gotta Dance: A Pictorial History of Film Musicals (Hamlyn: London, 1970), 139.
[33] Jim Collins, “Towards defining a matrix of the musical comedy: the place of the spectator within the textual mechanisms.” in Genre, the Musical: A Reader, ed. Rick Altman (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 143.
[34] Altman (1987), 168.
[35] Altman (1987), 37.
[36]Feuer, 5.
[37] As well as this scene, the rush culture that developed within rave culture is reflected in The Matrix as Neo practices his Kung Fu with Morpheus in a simulated dojo setting. The dojo scene further references the competition battle sequence in Mortal Kombat (USA 1995) in terms of setting, one on one combat driven by non-diegetic techno music, and the shared Kung Fu and dance movements. See Stuart Kaminsky’s article for more details on these shared movements, 75.
[38] Simon Reynolds, “Rave culture: living dream or living death?,” in The Club Cultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies, ed. Steve Redhead, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997), 103.
[39] Braudy, 670.
[40] The iconographic use of guns and a close-up of Neo’s and Trinity’s eyes followed by a cut to a medium long shot “shoot-out stance” also evoke the western genre. The numerous Hollywood genres and inter-media forms (including graphic novels) referenced in this scene are illustrative of the general self-reflexive, bricolage structure of the film.
[41] Jacques Schultz, “Categories of song,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol.8, no. 1, (1980), 24. Feuer (5) asserts, “It was Astaire who pioneered and perfected the prop dance.”
[42] Feuer, 5.
[43] Feuer, 5.
[44] The hyper-aestheticisation of violence is also evident in music video, from Michael Jackson’s work in “Thriller” and “Bad,” where the horror of a werewolf attack and a gang fight are diminished through the musical performances.
[45] Feuer, 67.
[46] Jeffrey Ressner cites these coats as an icon in John Woo’s films (“Popular Metaphysics: In The Matrix, the Wachowskis make a hit film out of the Bible, Cyberpunk and Higher Math.” Time 19 April 1999, 153, 15) in an interview with Maitland McDonald (“Interview with John Woo,” Film Comment, 29.5, Sept/Oct, 1993, 21-27).
[47] Mast, 142.
[48] Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies, (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), xviii.
[49] Pini, 165.
[50] This splitting of the space of the performance number through a parallel editing technique was previously used in The Cotton Club (USA 1984) through the intercutting of the shoot-out scene with a staged tap-danced performance on the stage of The Cotton Club.
[51] Pini, 154.
[52] I gratefully acknowledge Djoymi Baker’s feedback and assistance on previous drafts of this article, especially on this point of the reconfiguration of the duet structure through a female-female pairing.
[53] Altman (1987), 37.
[54] Pini, 154.
[55] Pini, 165.
[56] I am using Feuer’s (viii) distinction between the internal audience of the film and the spectator who watches the film at a cinema. This is further defined by Schultz (22) as the distinction between audience and the film’s spectator.
[57] Pini, 165.
[58]Feuer, 47.
[59] Feuer, 24.
[60]In writing on masculinity, sexuality and youth in Billy Elliot (UK 2000), Cynthia Weber notes that, “dance is commonly thought of as liberating, transformative, empowering, and even dangerous [where] corporeality is offered to us as a rhythmic, mobile spectacle.” (Cynthia Weber, “Oi, dancing boy! Masculinity, sexuality, and youth in Billy Elliot” in Genders 37, (2003).1-13.1.
Created on: Friday, 15 July 2005 | Last Updated: Thursday, 28 July 2005