Earlier in the semester I did my class presentation on melodrama in The Fountainhead—in the book, in the film, and in Rand’s Objectivism. Here I want to talk about Rand’s didacticism, but I am particularly interested in some of the subtler ways in which The Fountainhead conveys its message, as opposed to the already-discussed melodramatic aspects like Roark’s impassioned speeches and Toohey’s evil manipulations.
A particularly interesting way in which Rand conveys her ideology, and one repeatedly cited in scholarly work on the novel, is the manifesto claim of modernist architecture (to which both novel and film refer) that “form follows function”. This claim cites an essay by architect Louis Sullivan:
It is the pervading law of all things organic, and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. (111)
Although Sullivan isn’t directly quoted in Rand’s novel, and instead his words are re-interpreted and attributed to various characters, the tone of Sullivan’s statement is as relevant as its sentiment. As Nancy Levinson points out, the manifesto claims of modernist architecture were as grand and world-forming as Roark’s (30), and clearly part of the inspiration for his vocation.
For Melissa Hardie, Rand’s “extraordinary didacticism is mitigated by the function of readerly persuasion and consent: Rand’s libertarian philosophies, above all, suggest the interrogative participation of her reader in the formulation of her novels’ complex rhetorics”. Thus, she claims, the “uncanny appeal of the cult text” is an effect of what exceeds its “polemic” (371). Hardie and Robert Hunt agree that Rand “generates ironic humor in her texts precisely at the point of hyperbolic sincerity” (377). Aspects of The Fountainhead that might be seen as camply funny are often also central to the ideological impact of the narrative: its silhouette cast of extreme types, highlighted in the movie by stagy performances and extravagant sets that strive to further type the characters with which Roark interacts and to which he is evidently superior. Levinson also stresses the ideological force of casting Gary Cooper as Roark given that he was, by “the late 1940s, a screen icon identified with the portrayals of. . . legendary Americans” (Levinson 30). And costumes, Levinson points out, work to reinforce this as a kind of architecture of character: “Dressed in a plain suit or, more often, in physique-flattering shirtsleeves, Cooper/Roark is too confident and good-looking even to need the crutch of costume; this is in pointed contrast to his adversaries”, notably Wynand’s various costumes for different roles and Toohey’s dated dressiness (31).
Hardie and Levinson both use Sullivan’s “form follows function” to make their point, and Christensen uses the quote to open an essay on the film of The Fountainhead. He argues that The Fountainhead is a film about corporate/studio authorship in which Roark stands for Warner Bros. To make this argument he dwells on a contradiction between Sullivan’s “form (ever) follows function” and Rand’s/Roark’s “a man has a right to exist for his own sake” (Christensen 24). Christensen draws on a now long architectural debate to argue that “functionalist architecture was more symbolic than functional. It was symbolically functional. It represented function more than resulted from function (17). This is an argument that could be used to discuss Roark’s ambivalent relationship to the practice of architecture but also to discuss how Rand’s message is conveyed through her blunt use of symbolism while trying to remain independent from its form. This explains the problem of Rand’s attempts at controlling the film, on which Christensen focuses, and the slippage Melissa points to as open to “camp” reading.
Christensen, J. ‘Studio Authorship, Warner Bros., and The Fountainhead’. The Velvet Light Trap, no. 57, Spring 2006, pp. 17-31.
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