From the Busy Basement

A fever swept over Hollywood in the mid-1980s – baby fever. As the nation took a conservative turn, the importance of the family came to the forefront and moviegoers could choose from an array of baby-related films (Gilmore 62). Molly Ringwold was a teen mother in For Keeps (1988), staunch career-woman Diane Keaton discovered the life-enriching joys of adopted motherhood in Baby Boom (1987), Kristie Alley's non-verbal offspring narrated life from an embryo and infant's point of view in Look Who's Talking (1989), and Leonard Nimoy even directed a film about three bachelors attempting to take care of an unexpected bundle of joy in Three Men and a Baby (1987). Nearly all of Hollywood's baby-centric films of the decade “mawkishly explor[ed] the longing for a family and the promise of happiness through reproduction” (Körte and Seesslen 68). As would become one of their hallmarks, in 1987 Joel and Ethan Coen remixed, deconstructed, and re-imagined the well-worn “baby picture” genre.

In a similar highly charged and comedic sequence, H.I. becomes part of an extended chase sequence after attempting to steal diapers from a convenience store. As the sequence progresses, H.I. is chased through houses, suburban streets, and a grocery store by the police, a pack of dogs, shotgun wielding store clerks, and his own wife. Police and the clerks fire their weapons without caution and every shot sounds like it has been fired from anti-aircraft artillery. The tires of Ed's car screech as she careens through the neighborhood trying to keep up with the chase and cereal boxes explode from gunfire in supermarket aisles. The sound effects mirror the overboard visuals, as well as H.I. and Ed's ramped up emotions.

At times, the emotions bubbling up inside the characters are simply too much for their verbal skills to handle and they erupt into screams, sobs, or angry yells, “as if regressing into an infantile, primal language state” (Evans 49). In a brilliant and bizarre moment, Ed suddenly begins sobbing after H.I. gives her Nathan Junior for the first time because she just “loves him so much!” Her body shakes with the force of her tears and emotion in a clear parody of the sudden and overwhelming maternal love mothers supposedly feel for their children after giving birth, especially movies of the period. It doesn't matter that she and H.I. have just kidnapped the child. After months of trying naturally to have a child, discovering she was infertile, attempting to adopt, and being turned away, receiving the stolen baby is Ed's “birthing” moment and she reacts accordingly. Similarly, when the child's mother discovers him missing, her grief is so extreme that she lets out a scream that echoes out over the desert landscape.

The loss of the child instigates screams of anger and frustration from other characters within the film, as well. After H.I. loses his battle with the larger Snopes brother and is tied to a chair while the two fugitives make off with the child, he lets out an anguished scream. Alternately, when the Snopes brothers accidentally leave Nathan Junior behind in the middle of the road (twice), they let out with roars, cries, and screams as they race back to get it. These are some of the most humorous episodes in the film, as the brothers pound their fists into the roof and dashboard of the car and shake their heads about while screaming and careening down the road. They take every action and emotion to its ultimate exaggerated, cartoonish limit. They have only just made a connection with the child, and yet there is a sense that language simply cannot contain their emotions for it. It is a clear and biting parody of every film with a cute baby that every character immediately falls in love with and would do anything for, as well as the rhetoric with which American society discusses having children.

When the importance of child-bearing and child-rearing are touted, a preoccupation with threats to children and family life are also present. Whether it be poisoned candy, pedophiles, single mothers, or a host of other sinister conditions, there is always something just waiting to tear about the perfect “family unit”. Raising Arizona lampoons this notion not only through its plot but through the use of overly dramatic music or exaggerated sound effects connected to threats to the McDunnough family.¹ For example, the Snopes brothers's escape from prison (through a self-dug tunnel that accidentally hit a sewer line) is prefigured by ominous music and the sounds of a heavy thunderstorm. In another example of emotions exceeding language, the men who will soon kidnap Nathan Junior from H.I. emerge from the mud screaming. The aural landscape of the sequence is every bit absurd and laughable as the twangy banjo music throughout the film, but the effect is far different. The audience can laugh, but they also know that the pair will pose a threat to the new family.

In contrast to the folksy, inviting quality of the music that follows Ed and H.I., composer Carter Burwell created a Spanish rock opera theme for the demonic biker that combines samples from opera singers and electric guitars (Levine 57). The theme also carried bits of a lullaby Ed sings to Nathan Junior (itself actually a traditional murder ballad titled “Down in the Willow Garden”) played on a synthesizer to “give it a mechanized, ominous air” (Robson 55). In addition to this ominous music, it seems that everything Smalls wears or does emits an exaggerated sound. His leather clothing creaks and his motorcycle belches fire and smoke. When flowers burst into flame as he passes them on his motorcycle, they audibly crackle and sizzle. Smalls is walking death, and it can be heard just as easily as seen.

One of the most meaningful noisy accessories is the pair of bronzed baby booties Smalls wears on his belt – although whether as a “memento or a trophy” the audience is unsure (Körte and Seesslen 83). In either case, they combine with his “Mama didn't love me” tattoo and off-handed comment to Mr. Arizona that he himself was stolen and sold as a child to further entrench him as the embodiment of all that threatens children. The pair of booties seem to tinkle as the camera takes them in, a sound that connects him directly to Nathan Junior later in the film. As Nathan Junior sits in his car seat in the middle of the road waiting for the Snopes brothers to return for him, he kicks his feet and they tinkle. This sound effect creates a direct relationship between the baby and the mysterious biker, which adds to the sense of danger the latter poses for the former. It is as though Smalls represents not only that which can destroy the family, but the terrible thing as sweet a child as Nathan Junior can become if not raised properly. It is an exaggerated potential outcome of the concerns over how best to raise a child replete in 1980s baby movies and American culture at large.

The absurdity and exaggerations functions as jokes, the purpose of which Ted Cohen describes in terms of “'relief from certain oppressions, and the attainment of a very special kind of intimacy'” between the teller and the hearer (Gilmore 15). Jokes require the hearer to fill in a bit of missing information or make a connection – the connection between Nathan Junior's twinkling shoes and Leonard Smalls's twinkling baby booties and “Mama didn't love me” tattoo, for instance – that results in the teller and hearer being “joined in feeling” (15). It gives us a moment to step back from the things like unrealistic or extreme pressures to have children or raise them in certain ways that weigh down on or oppress us and join with the joke teller to recognize and laugh at them. The joke does not obscure commonalities or truths or provide a vantage point from which the audience can judge the characters, but allows us to connect more intimately with them. As Richard Gilmore points out

[Ed and H.I.'s] marriage, ‘starter home,’ ‘salad days,’ infertility, despair, and kidnapping scheme are all a little ridiculous, and yet, even though they are presented as basically funny, there is a sort of underlying truth to all of it. America does have a fascination or love affair with the image of the outlaw, so choosing to be an outlaw is not really that crazy. And it is hard starting a family in this modern world, even if, or especially if, you are an outlaw by trade. And starter homes sometimes are little mobile homes in the desert. And sometimes, in spite of your best efforts, nature does not cooperate; infertility is a fact of life. (8)

Through laughter, we can feel a kind of tenderness towards these seemingly cartoonish characters and, Gilmore argues, even ourselves. Everything about the film is calculated to achieve this, and the very success of the film depends upon it. From the distorted effects of the wide angle lens to the delicious twang of the soundtrack and the excessive sound effects, the Coen brothers strive to poke a hole in the sacred fabric of the “baby film” and the American dream – and provide a space from which we can both laugh at and connect to the H.I. and Ed's around and within us.