Setups and Payoffs

Cease to look for payoffs and you free yourself from the language of traditional cinema and open your film to multiplicity and plurality. 

Pierrot le fou (1965)

Leprechaun (1993)

In 1993's Leprechaun directed by Mark Jones, mentally handicapped Ozzie inadvertently has his face painted blue, in what is surely the setup for some ensuing hilarity (not that the moment in and of itself isn't 'gaggy'). However as the film progresses that payoff never materializes. Thus, in retrospect, nor did a setup. No cause without effect. 

This as a result brings to mind a question of authorial intent, and without much delving into the visual history of the cinema it is clear that the physicality and combination of colors are a direct intertextual reference to Jean-luc Godard's Pierrot le fou. This recontextualization of image ironically (or perhaps not so) evokes the notion of juste une image/ une image juste, a concept coined by Godard. 

Seemingly every other image in Jones' film could be describes as juste une image, simply an image in a long 'image stream' meant only to give way to new images. All fitting neatly into a coherent cinematic language. A language that presents itself as a realistic continuation of time and space, but is in fact a fallacy.   

With une image juste an image is, in addition serving a function within a film, an allusion to a larger context; what Michel Foucault described as "a node within a network." This particular image in Jones' film exists both within the film, but also within a larger social and cinematic discourse, and as a result opens itself up to a plurality. It contains narrative meaning in Leprechaun, but also pulls into itself all meaning derived from Godard's image as well as any emotions and personal history the audience has with said image. It renders the cinematic image into a photographic one. An image unto itself, removed from time, or perhaps more specifically the rapid succession of images.   

Mark Jones deserves credit for creating an image that not only gives way to more images, but also allows us to project our own subjective meaning onto the projected image. The significance of this scene therefore exists more in the space between the projector and the screen. The space occupied by a beam of light, dust and a multitude of personal narratives. 

Pierrot le fou is the set up to Leprechaun's payoff within the context of Leprechaun's image stream.