Germany 3:1 Portugal ... Bastian Schweinsteiger! He had a quasi-hat trick ... for those who didn't see the game, he put two long range rockets past Portuguese goalkeeper Ricardo--considered one of the better keepers of the tournament--and in between these goals, he hit the free kick that a Portuguese defender mis-hit and redirected into his own goal.
Regarding Cristiano Ronaldo and the booing he's received in the last few games, I feel it's a little harsh. I don't see how he's responsible for Rooney's red card, and yes, he dives, and that's frustrating to watch, but why single him out when this Cup was full of divers? Though I've written here that Ronaldo gets on my nerves sometimes, I think he was more deserving of, say, the Young Player award than Podolski, who really only had one superb game, and that was a Sweden match where his partner Klose did most of the work anyway. (As for other deserving Young Players, Rooney didn't have a fantastic tournament, which is understandable because of his injury and his piddling midfield support. Messi didn't get enough playing time.) At various times in the elimination rounds, Ronaldo would look like the only feasible threat from Portugal's offense, and that's no small feat.
I do have to say, the most disappointing things about this Cup have been that a lot of players didn't show up and have good tournaments (Ballack, Ronaldinho...), that some extremely talented teams were a shambles tactically and in terms of team cohesion (England, Brazil), and that the elimination rounds saw a lot of defensive soccer where almost none of the group stage dramatics returned.
As for today's final, I hope that it's a classic. I'm mentally preparing myself for a bore, though, just in case. What we have are two great 'tournament teams,' where Italy are 'micro,' France are 'macro.' The Italians played just well enough to succeed in match after match--so that if we look at them in their games against USA or Australia, we think, 'There's no way in hell this is a championship squad.' But put them in a superbly-officiated, high-stakes match like the one against Germany, and even I will admit that Italy played strong, clean soccer and won an honorable (if heartbreaking to me) victory. In the end, Italy have been rising to the occasion only as far as they need to rise. France, on the other hand, didn't rise to the occasion in each match, but strung together a long-term survival plan, taking three group matches (in an easy group) to find their sea legs, using their underdog status to devastating effect against Spain and Brazil, and battling Portugal in a game where neither team could seem to get a rhythm going ... in short, they're survivors, and with Zidane they can also be miracle-makers. If Zidane shows up, if he has another performance like the one against Brazil, then France will win their second star. Anything less, and Italy will contain him, and the fact that they have tighter teamwork and (man for man) probably better players will overtake the match. My prediction is Italy, 2:1, though I'll be hoping for the other way around.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Floating Hats: A Mere Diversion?
While I still haven't re-installed a DVD driver in my computer yet, I have figured out how to capture images playing in media players (hint for those who were clueless like I was: in the 'tools-options-performance' menu, click 'advanced...' and then de-check 'use overlays' under 'video acceleration'). So this post will partly be an exercise in screen captures!Hans Richter's Vormittagsspuk (aka Ghosts Before Breakfast) (1927-28) is regarded as either one of the last Dada films or one of the first Surrealist films.
"The story ... was originally intended to follow Werner Gräff's film script about the rebellion of revolvers. Richter opposed this idea, reasoning that revolvers that rebel do not shoot; therefore, not shooting is not an action. Richter settled on a story about benign objects that rebel instead. "We all had bourgeois bowler hats on." The hats were attached to black strings on long poles and were swung from the top of a garage in front of the camera."
(from Stephen C. Foster's Hans Richter: Activism, Modernism and the Avant-Garde, p. 131-132)
A title at the beginning of film reads, "The Nazis destroyed the sound version of this film as degenerate art. It shows that even objects revolt against regimentation." Richter infused his film with semiotic nuance--Foster writes,
"The flying hat is another potent metaphor ... . For a period of 100 years beginning in 1827 the hate was commonly used as a symbol in German literature. ... In the German culture of the nineteenth century, hats that fly from people's heads were a sign of existential danger looming in the near future. The hat was the quintessence of the bourgeois citizen and a symbol of the status quo. Pictures and words indicating that hats no longer fitted well, and were threatening to slip off heads, indicated that society's stability was in danger. A more familiar twentieth-centujry image is cited by Walter Benjamin about Charlie Chaplin's trademark bowler hat: "His derby wobbles for a lack of a secure place on his head, giving away the fact that the reign of the bourgeoisie is wobbling too."" (p. 133)
By the end of the film, the hats of course come back to rest on the cipher-characters' bourgeois heads:
And one could draw the further conclusion that non-regimentation brings harmony (while strict regimentation sows the seeds of confusion and chaos). I don't know that Richter would have liked that reading: it's almost a Deleuzian buggery of his worldview. Still, the underlying principle is that things get weird, and hopefully we get unsettled.
But if we're unsettled, are we guaranteed to be unsettled out of our (perceived) sociopolitical complacency? When do anti-bourgeois art tactics shock the privileged targets? When do they simply give us something new and unusual to look at? For I have MPEG files of both Richter's Ghosts Before Breakfast and also the infamous 'Tara Reid tit slip' on my hard drive, and I find (celebrity gossip whore that I am) that since I have paid for neither of these, I don't know what the concrete difference is--aside from the fact that one is a digital reproduction of a work of art, and the other a digital showcase for, um, a work of plastic surgery.
They both fascinate me. And ... might the supreme and carefree stupidity of a Hollywood party-starlet achieve the greater political good, though, galvanizing me into disgust for the star system and the culture it sits atop, blinding us to more important things? The fact that I rarely pay for multiplex entertainment--that I went through the calender year 2005 giving truly almost nothing to this monstrous establishment (or even its arthouse peripheries)--should stand for something, right? Then again, I find that even as I happily skip the films, television shows, and music of the celebrities I love to hate, I still spend my time reading, repeating, and discussing gossip about them. Is meta-entertainment a new form of entertainment, a new articulation of the culture industry!? It is this possibility that makes me think that something like a Hans Richter film has a renewed cultural viability: its straightforward attack on convention, which for a postmodern moment might have seemed achingly quaint, may actually be as true as it is easy. Sincerity rests at our feet, maybe a valuable tool, and I wonder if we (like the American national soccer team) will fumble with this object at our feet though we are so close to the goal ...
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Commentary
A reader wrote me a question and wondered if I'd respond with thoughts on my blog, so I'm giving it a shot. The general substance of the question was, first, What moves us to provide commentary, in-depth analysis, of some films (and not others)? Masterpieces that leave us overawed and worldless commingle with great films (or less-than-great films) that can draw out reams of analytical material, as well as disposable films which move nothing in our minds. The reader also asks if I'd describe three films that, as of now, I'd like to put on, say, Criterion DVD (clean slate) and do commentary tracks for ...
Very generally, I would say that what moves us toward commentary in films (or any art) is that ultimately we have a firmer understanding of our relationship to them than we do with films for which we have little, or only functional or conventional, understandings. What I mean by this is that there are films, for all of us, which (for great films: whether they touch us too profoundly or which we admire too coolly) we can write a little about, but find that we may either come up short, or that we write about with a certain anonymity. We point to this thing, that thing, quite visible in the film to anyone else, and we can perhaps "explain," a little, about why the film is great (or not great), or why it's formal/thematic integrity exists, how it's put together ... but because we're too overwhelmed or underwhelmed, or for some other reason perhaps, we leave nothing of ourselves on the page (or the screen). Criticism (very broadly defined) is perhaps like cooking, where great dishes require two things, two ingredients: the artwork and the spectator-writer. Competent analysis of a film which does not inspire, which does not necessitate, analysis in the writer is a bit like a restaurant offering a plate of a raw fruit or vegetable--potentially delicious, but not real cooking, merely evidence of good taste.
I don't refer, really, to 'personality' or 'biography.' I don't mean that real substantive analysis involves telling a story about how a film "means something special to you," because you were impressionable when you first saw it and you had your first kiss that after you watched it that hot summer, etc., etc. That kind of thing can still lead either way--to mere description of what's there and what's already thought about it (this time absorbed in autobiography), or to the creative fusion of a spectator with an inimitable position & voice exchanging, even flowing with, the work in question--in a capricious moment I'm tempted to say that real, great analysis of art makes the film at least a little unfamiliar even to those who know it well, simply because it's been so ingrained within the voice of the commentator. Similarly, though, the commentator upon these films might appear a little unfamiliar from article to article, unfamiliar to friends in her own writing or speaking. I don't actually know that this is all true--but it's an interesting possibility, and it is what the fingertips impress upon the keypad. (Ha--if I'm wrong, it's my fingers' fault!) At any rate, what I mean by all this is that the commentator's distinctive way of seeing, feeling, interpretating, taxonomizing, and even 'cartographing' the artwork in question will be impossible to duplicate anywhere else, only imitate.
So to return to the actual question, why do some films inspire commentary while others don't, I think that it may be because we are more cognizant, and more confident, of our distinctive and inimitable "reading-relationship" in these cases, whereas films that overwhelm us to speechlessness lead us into lack of confidence, maybe even a failure of cognition, and films that we admire only coolly have failed to provide us with a distinction that we would crave--a reminder that we humans are not always, 100% special (and brilliant) people with something always to say. We all have a truly inescapable right & obligation to be boring and mediocre, uninspired and uninspiring, from time to time!
Now to DVDs. This is a difficult question if only because there is so much to choose from. Of course, I'm picking from films that I've already seen. And the list would change tomorrow. But ...
An American Romance (King Vidor, 1944) A masterpiece, albeit one I've only seen once, and on video. It's a familiar story, a story of, roughly, my great-grandparents' generation--when European immigrants came here, learned English, worked hard, and eventually made good. At the time of this film's release the "message" of the film was roughly, You've earned citizenship, and a great life with your wonderful family, now play your part in the War! Today's viewer, such as myself, might take the film not simply this agenda of patriotic sacrifice, but also the inherent conservatism of its argument for the immigration debate today--we can't say this applies to An American Romance as it was made, but the act of seeing the film today ensures that the issues it raises draw a different web of psychological and social connections, connotations. For the myth of the American Dream that this film baldly promotes comes from an age when there were many (European) people successfully assimilating into the fabric of this country, and believed fully that they had lived and earned the American Dream. The indignation of their children and grandchildren at today's immigrants, who are demonized for being lazy (or working too hard and taking our jobs!) or for not learning English, comes from a familial foundation, laid out over history, as depicted in this film. Times have always been hard, my family went through poverty and tragedy, but through belief, loyalty, and Stakhanovite dedication (to the Protestant work ethic, that is) we perseved. (Why can't you?) This film remains alive, if criminally underseen, for this larger social discourse, among other reasons. Furthermore if I were to offer commentary on a film like this I would like to address the question of formal integrity & brilliance, and how this relates to ideological function. For this is a very American film, with very American ideological baggage, and yet it is in terms of aesthetics hardly just functional. The images are at times awe-inspiring, and in this respect it is difficult for me to describe, because as I have mentioned I have seen the film only once, on video. But I am certain of its aesthetic greatness (for the record, Fred Camper and I think possibly also Peter Tonguette consider this peak Vidor). And to have a chance to look at the images closely, both for their sensuous properties and their semiotic significance, and provide people with an informed, researched reading would be a treat. [This film is unavailable on home viewing formats, according to the IMDB, but it shows on TV sometimes, and if anyone out there would be interested in a dubbed tape and has extraordinary patience, I could maybe do something to get it your way.]
Viva la Muerte (Fernando Arrabal, 1971) I wrote a few words on this film when I saw it months ago, and now I think I'd enjoy the challenge of trying to identify (as I wrote) the "axes" which characterize this film. I'd probably want to start with all the associations and the historical/biographical context--but constantly I'd try to move into that area that threatens overwhelm me and remain ineffable, that motley bead necklace that is the aesthetic/formal organization of this film. Whereas An American Romance is a great film with conservative, capitalist, and mythopoetic ideological functions, Viva la Muerte is a film that offers intense, simmering anger and bewilderment at the Franco regime and all that it stood for--which is much closer to my heart, politically, as should be obvious to readers of this site. What can "the surreal" offer us? I think it can still offer us a lot, but if nothing else, it can be a way to exorcise demons and to attack the symbols, images, and conventions of forces that have injured us and destroyed those dear to us. [This film is available on DVD and should be watched right away!]
The Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter (Liu Chia-liang [aka Lau Kar-leung], 1983) This outstanding Shaw Bros. film was almost a disaster--the actor playing the intended hero died in the middle of production, so a new hero/actor had to emerge on the fly. Researching the film's production story, its early 1980s HK film context, and its allusions would be a pleasure. Elaborating on its quasi-Brechtian sets and acting (and this feels different, more deliberately artificial, than even something like the early, slightly creaky, but good 1965 Shaw Bros. martial arts film Temple of the Red Lotus ['65]) would be a great springboard for talking a little about the uses and possibilities of both artifice and anti-realism, and this film's specific strategies, and how improvisation operates in conjunction with both rigor and artifice--a triangle that has resonance for the film thematically, formally, and extra-textually (its production story). [This film is available on the Celestial Shaw Bros. region-3 DVD, and probably several other bootleg or gray market formats.]
If this question inspires anyone else to tackle the questions and pick three films, please drop us a line with a link to your blog or site to let us know (or post comments below).
Very generally, I would say that what moves us toward commentary in films (or any art) is that ultimately we have a firmer understanding of our relationship to them than we do with films for which we have little, or only functional or conventional, understandings. What I mean by this is that there are films, for all of us, which (for great films: whether they touch us too profoundly or which we admire too coolly) we can write a little about, but find that we may either come up short, or that we write about with a certain anonymity. We point to this thing, that thing, quite visible in the film to anyone else, and we can perhaps "explain," a little, about why the film is great (or not great), or why it's formal/thematic integrity exists, how it's put together ... but because we're too overwhelmed or underwhelmed, or for some other reason perhaps, we leave nothing of ourselves on the page (or the screen). Criticism (very broadly defined) is perhaps like cooking, where great dishes require two things, two ingredients: the artwork and the spectator-writer. Competent analysis of a film which does not inspire, which does not necessitate, analysis in the writer is a bit like a restaurant offering a plate of a raw fruit or vegetable--potentially delicious, but not real cooking, merely evidence of good taste.
I don't refer, really, to 'personality' or 'biography.' I don't mean that real substantive analysis involves telling a story about how a film "means something special to you," because you were impressionable when you first saw it and you had your first kiss that after you watched it that hot summer, etc., etc. That kind of thing can still lead either way--to mere description of what's there and what's already thought about it (this time absorbed in autobiography), or to the creative fusion of a spectator with an inimitable position & voice exchanging, even flowing with, the work in question--in a capricious moment I'm tempted to say that real, great analysis of art makes the film at least a little unfamiliar even to those who know it well, simply because it's been so ingrained within the voice of the commentator. Similarly, though, the commentator upon these films might appear a little unfamiliar from article to article, unfamiliar to friends in her own writing or speaking. I don't actually know that this is all true--but it's an interesting possibility, and it is what the fingertips impress upon the keypad. (Ha--if I'm wrong, it's my fingers' fault!) At any rate, what I mean by all this is that the commentator's distinctive way of seeing, feeling, interpretating, taxonomizing, and even 'cartographing' the artwork in question will be impossible to duplicate anywhere else, only imitate.
So to return to the actual question, why do some films inspire commentary while others don't, I think that it may be because we are more cognizant, and more confident, of our distinctive and inimitable "reading-relationship" in these cases, whereas films that overwhelm us to speechlessness lead us into lack of confidence, maybe even a failure of cognition, and films that we admire only coolly have failed to provide us with a distinction that we would crave--a reminder that we humans are not always, 100% special (and brilliant) people with something always to say. We all have a truly inescapable right & obligation to be boring and mediocre, uninspired and uninspiring, from time to time!
Now to DVDs. This is a difficult question if only because there is so much to choose from. Of course, I'm picking from films that I've already seen. And the list would change tomorrow. But ...
An American Romance (King Vidor, 1944) A masterpiece, albeit one I've only seen once, and on video. It's a familiar story, a story of, roughly, my great-grandparents' generation--when European immigrants came here, learned English, worked hard, and eventually made good. At the time of this film's release the "message" of the film was roughly, You've earned citizenship, and a great life with your wonderful family, now play your part in the War! Today's viewer, such as myself, might take the film not simply this agenda of patriotic sacrifice, but also the inherent conservatism of its argument for the immigration debate today--we can't say this applies to An American Romance as it was made, but the act of seeing the film today ensures that the issues it raises draw a different web of psychological and social connections, connotations. For the myth of the American Dream that this film baldly promotes comes from an age when there were many (European) people successfully assimilating into the fabric of this country, and believed fully that they had lived and earned the American Dream. The indignation of their children and grandchildren at today's immigrants, who are demonized for being lazy (or working too hard and taking our jobs!) or for not learning English, comes from a familial foundation, laid out over history, as depicted in this film. Times have always been hard, my family went through poverty and tragedy, but through belief, loyalty, and Stakhanovite dedication (to the Protestant work ethic, that is) we perseved. (Why can't you?) This film remains alive, if criminally underseen, for this larger social discourse, among other reasons. Furthermore if I were to offer commentary on a film like this I would like to address the question of formal integrity & brilliance, and how this relates to ideological function. For this is a very American film, with very American ideological baggage, and yet it is in terms of aesthetics hardly just functional. The images are at times awe-inspiring, and in this respect it is difficult for me to describe, because as I have mentioned I have seen the film only once, on video. But I am certain of its aesthetic greatness (for the record, Fred Camper and I think possibly also Peter Tonguette consider this peak Vidor). And to have a chance to look at the images closely, both for their sensuous properties and their semiotic significance, and provide people with an informed, researched reading would be a treat. [This film is unavailable on home viewing formats, according to the IMDB, but it shows on TV sometimes, and if anyone out there would be interested in a dubbed tape and has extraordinary patience, I could maybe do something to get it your way.]
Viva la Muerte (Fernando Arrabal, 1971) I wrote a few words on this film when I saw it months ago, and now I think I'd enjoy the challenge of trying to identify (as I wrote) the "axes" which characterize this film. I'd probably want to start with all the associations and the historical/biographical context--but constantly I'd try to move into that area that threatens overwhelm me and remain ineffable, that motley bead necklace that is the aesthetic/formal organization of this film. Whereas An American Romance is a great film with conservative, capitalist, and mythopoetic ideological functions, Viva la Muerte is a film that offers intense, simmering anger and bewilderment at the Franco regime and all that it stood for--which is much closer to my heart, politically, as should be obvious to readers of this site. What can "the surreal" offer us? I think it can still offer us a lot, but if nothing else, it can be a way to exorcise demons and to attack the symbols, images, and conventions of forces that have injured us and destroyed those dear to us. [This film is available on DVD and should be watched right away!]
The Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter (Liu Chia-liang [aka Lau Kar-leung], 1983) This outstanding Shaw Bros. film was almost a disaster--the actor playing the intended hero died in the middle of production, so a new hero/actor had to emerge on the fly. Researching the film's production story, its early 1980s HK film context, and its allusions would be a pleasure. Elaborating on its quasi-Brechtian sets and acting (and this feels different, more deliberately artificial, than even something like the early, slightly creaky, but good 1965 Shaw Bros. martial arts film Temple of the Red Lotus ['65]) would be a great springboard for talking a little about the uses and possibilities of both artifice and anti-realism, and this film's specific strategies, and how improvisation operates in conjunction with both rigor and artifice--a triangle that has resonance for the film thematically, formally, and extra-textually (its production story). [This film is available on the Celestial Shaw Bros. region-3 DVD, and probably several other bootleg or gray market formats.]
If this question inspires anyone else to tackle the questions and pick three films, please drop us a line with a link to your blog or site to let us know (or post comments below).
Monday, July 03, 2006
Semifinals
I have to admit, Germany, I'm pessimistic. I'm not sure you will do it--defeat Italy. I know you can. I don't know that you will. I hope Klinsmann riles you up so you play like madmen, tells you that the game is about scoring more than your opponent (not just scoring one while your opponent scores zero; not playing for a penalty shootout). It's been, what, six years since Germany have defeated outright a "top" national team? End that tomorrow! Overwhelm them with positive soccer, and with that victory leave behind the phantom husk of safe, uninspiring German tactics.
(Budweiser translation: Kick some ass!)
As for France-Portugal, I will be rooting for Zidane's squad, but I like Portugal's effort too and if they win I'll wish them well in the final, moreso if they play Italy.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Objects of Fascination
Bear with me, I'm not sure I know where I'm going with this.
Walerian Borowczyk's short film Escargot de Venus (1975) is an interesting work for its associations above all. One can download it and several other Borowczyk shorts from Ubuweb, where the description reads, "This is the portrait of painter Bona Tibertelli De Pisis wife of writer Pieyre De Mandiargues while working in her atelier, together with fragments of her graphic works inspired by one of Remy de Gourmont's writings." Gourmont (whose work I don't know) was something of a controversial libertine-hermit, a Symbolist, and an influential figure of Parisian letters in the late 19th and early 20th century. Pieyre De Mandiargues was among other things the writer behind Borowczyk's Cérèmonie d’amour (Love Rites), which was made in 1988, as well as the novel upon which La Marge (1974) was based. I like the idea of an artist building out his lineage, his network, his "tree of influences," and through Bona & Mandiargues Borowczyk has found one way (he has others) of reaching back into the extended fin-de-siècle for a figure like Gourmont, as well as the Surrealist lineage and its arguable forerunners of weird/dark literature (Mirbeau, Huysmans--writers whose work I've merely scanned in translation, no more, I humbly add). It is probably too great a stretch to group Surrealism in with the Symbolist moment in European culture, but I think Borowczyk focused on not a grouping of years so much as the texture of a broad historical moment before Europe's global "decline," that generation or two when the World Wars were fought, when the last great European empires (seemingly) fell, when the United States and the Soviet Union ascended into the roles of superpowers, when the economy and communications (media) reached towards a certain type of speed and global reach that nullified something of 'old handmade mysteries' (crafts and trinkets--but also mysteries of sex). On one level Borowczyk uses the whole filmic apparatus as a way of rescuing a shred of disappearing object-aura (and he'll treat his characters as "objects" too) in a mass-produced era. Benjamin saw photography & cinema as signifying the cultural eradication of the artwork's aura. Complementarily, Borowczyk saw cinema as the damned-if-you-don't technology which would paradoxically help keep discourse on these old objects alive.
(When it came to sex & culture, I might propose--not that I've even convinced myself yet--that Borowczyk was cinema's great oblique chronicler of the destructive nature of the twentieth century, while Makavejev was--for a while at least--its great ambitious problem solver.)
(Above: Sixth century Byzantine icon of Christ Pantokrator.)
Take the example of icons--if for no other reason (first) than to savor the idea of a hypothetical Borowczyk version of Andrei Rublev. I would venture to say that what marks Boro's entire aesthetic sense, as far as "the aura," would be completely neutral in terms of the fierce historical debates over icons--neither iconodule or iconoclast, I suspect he would neither venerate nor fear the power of the image. He believes in neither option because he believes in no power to glorify or offend, or so I infer from his work. What fascinates him is the power of the image or the object to spark debate, to spark devotion/revulsion, to draw affection, to symbolize, to be the focal point for intense psychic energies, to cause one to turn away. The effect of 'objects' (open to projection/interpretation if not exactly blank), discrete and special, upon human behavior is one of the great subjects of Borowczyk's treatment.
Earlier, I suggested that Joe Dallessandro's character's infidelity in La Marge is a function of the things around him, his environment--simply put, country vs. city. Above, however, it may not be the City and the Country as such, but the objecthood of Wife and Whore, in their separate and respective settings, who draw out different behaviors. The rumblings of the twentieth century in the time just before it truly "announced" itself, destroying something of the 19th century and its preceding age(s), are the source of artistic rivers such as Surrealism, and it is this historical-cultural-artistic reaction that Borowczyk (past the Surrealist moment, past the Symbolist moment, past the Arts & Crafts movement) seeks to recapture, casting his art back there like a fisherman casting a net.
On the other hand, Makevejev, takes the signs of this New Age and makes them unfamiliar, weird, alienating, decrepit, maybe comic ...
... and wonders if we can reclaim something, or liberate what we never had claim to, through more radical experiences, ineffable libidinal experiences, whose specialness is not old & lost--perhaps hung on to by threads (Borowczyk)--but altogether new.
Walerian Borowczyk's short film Escargot de Venus (1975) is an interesting work for its associations above all. One can download it and several other Borowczyk shorts from Ubuweb, where the description reads, "This is the portrait of painter Bona Tibertelli De Pisis wife of writer Pieyre De Mandiargues while working in her atelier, together with fragments of her graphic works inspired by one of Remy de Gourmont's writings." Gourmont (whose work I don't know) was something of a controversial libertine-hermit, a Symbolist, and an influential figure of Parisian letters in the late 19th and early 20th century. Pieyre De Mandiargues was among other things the writer behind Borowczyk's Cérèmonie d’amour (Love Rites), which was made in 1988, as well as the novel upon which La Marge (1974) was based. I like the idea of an artist building out his lineage, his network, his "tree of influences," and through Bona & Mandiargues Borowczyk has found one way (he has others) of reaching back into the extended fin-de-siècle for a figure like Gourmont, as well as the Surrealist lineage and its arguable forerunners of weird/dark literature (Mirbeau, Huysmans--writers whose work I've merely scanned in translation, no more, I humbly add). It is probably too great a stretch to group Surrealism in with the Symbolist moment in European culture, but I think Borowczyk focused on not a grouping of years so much as the texture of a broad historical moment before Europe's global "decline," that generation or two when the World Wars were fought, when the last great European empires (seemingly) fell, when the United States and the Soviet Union ascended into the roles of superpowers, when the economy and communications (media) reached towards a certain type of speed and global reach that nullified something of 'old handmade mysteries' (crafts and trinkets--but also mysteries of sex). On one level Borowczyk uses the whole filmic apparatus as a way of rescuing a shred of disappearing object-aura (and he'll treat his characters as "objects" too) in a mass-produced era. Benjamin saw photography & cinema as signifying the cultural eradication of the artwork's aura. Complementarily, Borowczyk saw cinema as the damned-if-you-don't technology which would paradoxically help keep discourse on these old objects alive.
(When it came to sex & culture, I might propose--not that I've even convinced myself yet--that Borowczyk was cinema's great oblique chronicler of the destructive nature of the twentieth century, while Makavejev was--for a while at least--its great ambitious problem solver.)
(Above: Sixth century Byzantine icon of Christ Pantokrator.)
Take the example of icons--if for no other reason (first) than to savor the idea of a hypothetical Borowczyk version of Andrei Rublev. I would venture to say that what marks Boro's entire aesthetic sense, as far as "the aura," would be completely neutral in terms of the fierce historical debates over icons--neither iconodule or iconoclast, I suspect he would neither venerate nor fear the power of the image. He believes in neither option because he believes in no power to glorify or offend, or so I infer from his work. What fascinates him is the power of the image or the object to spark debate, to spark devotion/revulsion, to draw affection, to symbolize, to be the focal point for intense psychic energies, to cause one to turn away. The effect of 'objects' (open to projection/interpretation if not exactly blank), discrete and special, upon human behavior is one of the great subjects of Borowczyk's treatment.
Earlier, I suggested that Joe Dallessandro's character's infidelity in La Marge is a function of the things around him, his environment--simply put, country vs. city. Above, however, it may not be the City and the Country as such, but the objecthood of Wife and Whore, in their separate and respective settings, who draw out different behaviors. The rumblings of the twentieth century in the time just before it truly "announced" itself, destroying something of the 19th century and its preceding age(s), are the source of artistic rivers such as Surrealism, and it is this historical-cultural-artistic reaction that Borowczyk (past the Surrealist moment, past the Symbolist moment, past the Arts & Crafts movement) seeks to recapture, casting his art back there like a fisherman casting a net.
On the other hand, Makevejev, takes the signs of this New Age and makes them unfamiliar, weird, alienating, decrepit, maybe comic ...
... and wonders if we can reclaim something, or liberate what we never had claim to, through more radical experiences, ineffable libidinal experiences, whose specialness is not old & lost--perhaps hung on to by threads (Borowczyk)--but altogether new.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Links Abound + World Cup
Suggested reading/surfing material ...
Go here for "A History of Hong Kong Production Logos, Part One: The Early Years."
Photography, television, cinema, culture industry, Seinfeld's funniness, and one of my favorite novels (yes, in translation), Goethe's Elective Affinities (and more) first here, then here (same author, old blog & new blog).
If you haven't seen this ode to George Washington by indie comics guy Brad Neely, you may want to. Not quite work safe, if you work in a particularly stuffy place (or don't have headphones).
Commercial that's making the rounds lately as footage of "Italian soccer practice."
Speaking of the Italian soccer team, I have a queasy feeling that they (who made short work of Ukraine yesterday) will be the ones to dispatch Germany in the semifinal--they will do so with great skill, cynicism, and defensive singlemindedness. Wouldn't it be awful if the final were a match-up between, say, Italy and Brazil (assuming Parreira continues to avoid the beautiful and dominant soccer that characterized their Japanese victory)? Or, worse but less likely, if England were to stumble into the final somehow without really managing a single good 90 minutes for the entire tournament? (And I don't dislike Brazil or England per se--but I've been soured by the way they've played in this World Cup.)
As for the Germany-Argentina game, that was difficult to watch. It wasn't always great soccer, but to me it was a great battle. Though I would have been very disappointed if Germany were knocked out, it was sad to see Argentina go simply because they really were the best team in the tournament. That said, I don't think Germany failed to earn their win on PK's--they resorted to somewhat more conservative tactics against the South Americans, which worked well enough, and even if Argentina are the best side in the Cup, in this game they failed to put one more ball in the back of the net than Germany did, and that was with several severe German defensive lapses.
The games today are difficult for me to predict--Portugal and Brazil have the edge, certainly, but one would think England are bound to have a good game at some point in this Cup (maybe Lampard & Rooney can finally net a few beautiful shots today, against a Portugal team that's missing a few key players?), and Brazil's conservatism could very possibly be trounced once again by a canny French team that showed a bit of that '98 spark when they upset the Spanish a few days ago. If there's a midfielder I like watching at his best even more than Ronaldinho, it's Zidane. I have no favorites today (unlike yesterday, pro-Germany and anti-Italy), I only want the sides who exhibit better soccer to win.
Go here for "A History of Hong Kong Production Logos, Part One: The Early Years."
Photography, television, cinema, culture industry, Seinfeld's funniness, and one of my favorite novels (yes, in translation), Goethe's Elective Affinities (and more) first here, then here (same author, old blog & new blog).
If you haven't seen this ode to George Washington by indie comics guy Brad Neely, you may want to. Not quite work safe, if you work in a particularly stuffy place (or don't have headphones).
Commercial that's making the rounds lately as footage of "Italian soccer practice."
Speaking of the Italian soccer team, I have a queasy feeling that they (who made short work of Ukraine yesterday) will be the ones to dispatch Germany in the semifinal--they will do so with great skill, cynicism, and defensive singlemindedness. Wouldn't it be awful if the final were a match-up between, say, Italy and Brazil (assuming Parreira continues to avoid the beautiful and dominant soccer that characterized their Japanese victory)? Or, worse but less likely, if England were to stumble into the final somehow without really managing a single good 90 minutes for the entire tournament? (And I don't dislike Brazil or England per se--but I've been soured by the way they've played in this World Cup.)
As for the Germany-Argentina game, that was difficult to watch. It wasn't always great soccer, but to me it was a great battle. Though I would have been very disappointed if Germany were knocked out, it was sad to see Argentina go simply because they really were the best team in the tournament. That said, I don't think Germany failed to earn their win on PK's--they resorted to somewhat more conservative tactics against the South Americans, which worked well enough, and even if Argentina are the best side in the Cup, in this game they failed to put one more ball in the back of the net than Germany did, and that was with several severe German defensive lapses.
The games today are difficult for me to predict--Portugal and Brazil have the edge, certainly, but one would think England are bound to have a good game at some point in this Cup (maybe Lampard & Rooney can finally net a few beautiful shots today, against a Portugal team that's missing a few key players?), and Brazil's conservatism could very possibly be trounced once again by a canny French team that showed a bit of that '98 spark when they upset the Spanish a few days ago. If there's a midfielder I like watching at his best even more than Ronaldinho, it's Zidane. I have no favorites today (unlike yesterday, pro-Germany and anti-Italy), I only want the sides who exhibit better soccer to win.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Quote of the Day
"I am aware of and most grateful for the benefits of the age. No matter what complaints we may have, Japan has chosen to follow the West, and there is nothing for us to do but move bravely ahead and leave us old ones behind. But we must be resigned to the fact that as long as our skin is the color it is the loss we have suffered cannot be remedied. I have written all this because I have thought that there might still be somewhere, possibly in literature or the arts, where something could be saved. I could call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them."
--Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the final paragraph of In Praise of Shadows (trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker)
--Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the final paragraph of In Praise of Shadows (trans. Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker)
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
(Part of a Blog-a-thon which includes--tentative list here--Jen at Invisible Cinema, Michael at The Evening Class, and Girish.)
I don't know entirely what I want to say about this film (Lian Lunson's documentary Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man) or this artist (Cohen), so I'll figure it out as I write. The film intersperses footage of a tribute concert for Cohen with interviews with and some archival material about Cohen himself. U2 (particularly the Edge and Bono) make an appearance, and their presence closes the film, which is to me a blemish on an otherwise tasteful selection of musicians. (At this point, can anyone watch Bono without smirking or sneering? He brings out the cynic in me, that's for sure.) The rest of the talent (which includes Rufus Wainwright, Antony, Nick Cave, Linda Thompson, and many more) does passable-to-excellent covers of Cohen songs. What's fascinating to watch is how much fun most of these people seem to have singing these songs. Some of them dance or contort in ways that made me think that they were performing in front of a mirror at home, "trying on" Leonard Cohen like a suit, taking his words and milking them for full expressive effect. As though his words guided them somewhere altogether new--chords and lyrics (tea and oranges) that seduce them.
Here are some lyrics from one of my favorite Cohen songs (unfortunately left out of the tribute concert):
"And now you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many use her body,
many comb her hair.
In the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she's happy that you've come,
she's happy that you've come."
This is the fourth and final verse of "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," which is a reflection upon a woman, Nancy (apparently someone Cohen knew who committed suicide). These lyrics are an exposition upon a certain haunting memory: the ghost of Nancy is that which invades your perception, showing others "using her body," "combing her hair," a voice which comes to you in the deep hours of the night. There's something both romantic and amicable in the narrator's recollection of Nancy, but it's told in an almost casual way ("Nancy wore green stockings / and she slept with everyone," etc.) so that her specter hovers in the mind of the narrator between significance and insignificance--she's an elusive figure, neither cipher nor center.
What makes this important to me is that, as Cohen insists in I'm Your Man, he's not a nostalgic person. Instead, LC deals with the problems of memory, and the inclusion of the past inside the present, not as a matter of nostalgia but as a condition of daily experience (compare this song to, say, "Bob Dylan's Dream"--a heartbreaking song, but as wistfully sentimental as "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" is stoically-resigned). This is to say, maybe, one doesn't look back in LC's universe so much as he or she is pushed forward by constant, complex, and even irrational presences of the past. Even when the signifiers can be ascribed to Cohen's personal life and history, the relation to the listener (and the potential for the reinterpreter) works because it is a whole self-sufficient system of meaning-making. This is what good songwriters and poets often do, constructing something deeply personal but expressing something that exists outside of persona.
At any rate, this is what I have to offer up in honor of Leonard Cohen--it's not much but there it is. Respond with your favorite LC songs/poems!
I don't know entirely what I want to say about this film (Lian Lunson's documentary Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man) or this artist (Cohen), so I'll figure it out as I write. The film intersperses footage of a tribute concert for Cohen with interviews with and some archival material about Cohen himself. U2 (particularly the Edge and Bono) make an appearance, and their presence closes the film, which is to me a blemish on an otherwise tasteful selection of musicians. (At this point, can anyone watch Bono without smirking or sneering? He brings out the cynic in me, that's for sure.) The rest of the talent (which includes Rufus Wainwright, Antony, Nick Cave, Linda Thompson, and many more) does passable-to-excellent covers of Cohen songs. What's fascinating to watch is how much fun most of these people seem to have singing these songs. Some of them dance or contort in ways that made me think that they were performing in front of a mirror at home, "trying on" Leonard Cohen like a suit, taking his words and milking them for full expressive effect. As though his words guided them somewhere altogether new--chords and lyrics (tea and oranges) that seduce them.
Here are some lyrics from one of my favorite Cohen songs (unfortunately left out of the tribute concert):
"And now you look around you,
see her everywhere,
many use her body,
many comb her hair.
In the hollow of the night
when you are cold and numb
you hear her talking freely then,
she's happy that you've come,
she's happy that you've come."
This is the fourth and final verse of "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," which is a reflection upon a woman, Nancy (apparently someone Cohen knew who committed suicide). These lyrics are an exposition upon a certain haunting memory: the ghost of Nancy is that which invades your perception, showing others "using her body," "combing her hair," a voice which comes to you in the deep hours of the night. There's something both romantic and amicable in the narrator's recollection of Nancy, but it's told in an almost casual way ("Nancy wore green stockings / and she slept with everyone," etc.) so that her specter hovers in the mind of the narrator between significance and insignificance--she's an elusive figure, neither cipher nor center.
What makes this important to me is that, as Cohen insists in I'm Your Man, he's not a nostalgic person. Instead, LC deals with the problems of memory, and the inclusion of the past inside the present, not as a matter of nostalgia but as a condition of daily experience (compare this song to, say, "Bob Dylan's Dream"--a heartbreaking song, but as wistfully sentimental as "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" is stoically-resigned). This is to say, maybe, one doesn't look back in LC's universe so much as he or she is pushed forward by constant, complex, and even irrational presences of the past. Even when the signifiers can be ascribed to Cohen's personal life and history, the relation to the listener (and the potential for the reinterpreter) works because it is a whole self-sufficient system of meaning-making. This is what good songwriters and poets often do, constructing something deeply personal but expressing something that exists outside of persona.
At any rate, this is what I have to offer up in honor of Leonard Cohen--it's not much but there it is. Respond with your favorite LC songs/poems!
Round of 16
Germany! Germany! Two months before this tournament, a quarterfinal match-up between Argentina and the hosts would have had people saying "Auf wiedersehen" to Klinsmann's squad. And that still might happen: Argentina could win this whole thing, and Germany aren't guaranteed to stop them on their way. However, anyone who has watched this Cup knows that the Germans, to our pleasant surprise, are playing some of the most entertaining soccer. (Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger of SoccerNet wrote after the Poland match: "Of all the teams we have seen so far, Germany is also the one that has delivered the most unforgiving high-tempo, route-one football.") I feel my status as a Germany-supporter--over barren years!--has been vindicated by this tournament so far. It'd be a shame to see them stymied by Argentina. Just as it was a shame to see Mexico drop out after challenging Argentina so thoroughly.
I've been all over the place with my predictions, some of them way off (such as Germany continuing to play conservative soccer!) ... but two that I'm happy about predicting correctly are Switzerland topping Group G and Australia advancing to the Round of 16. I will be rooting for an upset in the Italy-Australia game--that's what would make that corner of the Round of 16 interesting, because otherwise we're looking at (probably) a straight-shot to the semis for Italy (as they can top either Ukraine or Switzerland). And Italy have given us, as I see it, the most boring soccer of the tournament, at least among the big teams. So bring it to 'em, Aussies! I'll drink a Foster's for the Socceroos.
Other predictions: England, Netherlands, Ukraine, Brazil, and Spain will advance in their respective matches. Portugal beating the Netherlands is possible, but it wouldn't be an "upset," but if there is going to be one, I'll predict Ghana to stun Brazil. Not likely, but ... . As for eyebrow-raising results, I think we may see Spain trounce France by three goals. A team with a lot of firepower versus a team that has had so much recent trouble scoring in World Cups? The only thing that stands in Spain's way is the fact that it, um, always always always underachieves.
A few words about the dearly departed Team USA: they could have done OK for themselves, but the fact of the matter seems that, while they can play well, they can't play extraordinarily well. In a Group of Death, they're still going to need a lot of luck to get out, and the fact that we faced the aging Czechs in their first and most invigorated match, that we had those two questionable red cards versus Italy, and that Ghana were awarded (in my opinion) a bogus penalty kick does not change the fact that we didn't display the high level of footballing that the Czechs, Italians, and Ghanaians all did in at least one game. Our attack is weak (the opponents' third is like kryptonite to the Americans). Our touch and our pace are nothing enviable. We may have been unlucky in a few big ways, but the fact that we exited at the group stages remains a fair estimation of our abilities & achievements--not just the US men's national team, but as a whole 'soccer culture.' Now to see if Jurgen Klinsmann can step on for Bruce Arena, as rumor has it, and try to repair our US soccer program for a good showing in 2010.
(Leonard Cohen post coming very soon ...)
I've been all over the place with my predictions, some of them way off (such as Germany continuing to play conservative soccer!) ... but two that I'm happy about predicting correctly are Switzerland topping Group G and Australia advancing to the Round of 16. I will be rooting for an upset in the Italy-Australia game--that's what would make that corner of the Round of 16 interesting, because otherwise we're looking at (probably) a straight-shot to the semis for Italy (as they can top either Ukraine or Switzerland). And Italy have given us, as I see it, the most boring soccer of the tournament, at least among the big teams. So bring it to 'em, Aussies! I'll drink a Foster's for the Socceroos.
Other predictions: England, Netherlands, Ukraine, Brazil, and Spain will advance in their respective matches. Portugal beating the Netherlands is possible, but it wouldn't be an "upset," but if there is going to be one, I'll predict Ghana to stun Brazil. Not likely, but ... . As for eyebrow-raising results, I think we may see Spain trounce France by three goals. A team with a lot of firepower versus a team that has had so much recent trouble scoring in World Cups? The only thing that stands in Spain's way is the fact that it, um, always always always underachieves.
A few words about the dearly departed Team USA: they could have done OK for themselves, but the fact of the matter seems that, while they can play well, they can't play extraordinarily well. In a Group of Death, they're still going to need a lot of luck to get out, and the fact that we faced the aging Czechs in their first and most invigorated match, that we had those two questionable red cards versus Italy, and that Ghana were awarded (in my opinion) a bogus penalty kick does not change the fact that we didn't display the high level of footballing that the Czechs, Italians, and Ghanaians all did in at least one game. Our attack is weak (the opponents' third is like kryptonite to the Americans). Our touch and our pace are nothing enviable. We may have been unlucky in a few big ways, but the fact that we exited at the group stages remains a fair estimation of our abilities & achievements--not just the US men's national team, but as a whole 'soccer culture.' Now to see if Jurgen Klinsmann can step on for Bruce Arena, as rumor has it, and try to repair our US soccer program for a good showing in 2010.
(Leonard Cohen post coming very soon ...)
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
De Palma Image of the Day *
* (Not necessarily a daily feature.)
A severe diagonal composition here, predicated upon the splash of color and of darkness: a woman's features (a woman whose "guilt" becomes part of the subject-matter and fabric of the film--like Carrie, like Femme Fatale). De Palma's images come to us pristinely but with unsettling formal properties--they are not always balanced, or are balanced all too readily (hence his penchant for split-screens). Something pent up may explode. An image like this one remarks upon the psychic state (as well as its fictive, dramatic energies!) of the woman-figure, the chosen protagonist, an underdog.
A severe diagonal composition here, predicated upon the splash of color and of darkness: a woman's features (a woman whose "guilt" becomes part of the subject-matter and fabric of the film--like Carrie, like Femme Fatale). De Palma's images come to us pristinely but with unsettling formal properties--they are not always balanced, or are balanced all too readily (hence his penchant for split-screens). Something pent up may explode. An image like this one remarks upon the psychic state (as well as its fictive, dramatic energies!) of the woman-figure, the chosen protagonist, an underdog.
Excerpts on Revolution, Authority, Freedom
World Cup rantings & vague Marxist ruminations on cinema--I am sure that lately Elusive Lucidity has been more fun than a barrel of monkeys!! Here are some excerpts that I thought had a nice confluence of 'talking points' ...
From the Preface to "Political Position of Surrealism" (1935):
From Marx to Lenin, this period of gestation which lasted more than half a century [1848-1917] sustained such a great effervescence of ideas, the problem of its outcome gave rise to so many debates, the points of view relating to it clashed with one another on all occasions with such violence, and, finally, the view that was to carry the day did prevail so forcefully that I cannot help but consider the constituion--both through men and events--of scientific socialism as a model school. As a school of an ever more profound understanding of human need which must aim, in all areas and on the largest possible scale, at finding satisfaction, but also as a school of independence where each person must be free to express in any and every circumstance his way of seeing things, and must be ready to justify endlessly the domestication of his spirit.
For years now, however, a great deal of time and effort has gone into telling us that times have changed on five-sixths of the globe (since a catchword prompts us to subtract) the revolutionary has no longer basically to look to himself for the re-creation of the reasons which militate in favor of social transformation, and to try to accelerate, from the point where he now finds himself, this transformation by every possible means. He is invited to leave that up to other men--men who have "made the Revolution" in the U.S.S.R. and who, some day or other, will presumably be called upon to fill a providential role everywhere else. The unbridled exaltation over whatever these men undertake, be it great or small, takes the place of judgment with respect to the possibilities which are theirs. We are witnessing the formation of a taboo, of the deplorable crystallization of what may be the most moving and most protean in the essence of human demands. Can we be asked to toss onto the dunghill this unlimited capacity to say no which is the whole secret of human progress in order to watch and wonder unreservedly at what is going on without us at the other end of the world? No, this contemplative, ecstatic attitude is totally irreconcilable with the revolutionary movement.
=======
From Slavoj Žižek's "Can Lenin Tell Us About Freedom Today?":
This Leninist freedom of choice--not "Life or money!" but "Life or critique!"--combined with Lenin's dismissive attitude towards the "liberal" notion of freedom, accounts for his bad reputation among liberals. Their case largely rests upon their rejection of the standard Marxist-Leninist opposition of "formal" and "actual" freedom: as even Leftist liberals like Claude Lefort emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion "formal," so that "actual freedom" equals the lack of freedom. That is to say, with regard to freedom, Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort "Freedom--yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?"--for him, in the above-quoted case of the Mensheviks, their "freedom" to criticize the Bolshevik government effectively amounted to "freedom" to undermine the workers' and peasants' government on behalf of the counterrevolution.
... and, earlier in the essay ...
In contrast to this false radical Leftist's position (who want true democracy for the people, but without the secret police to fight counterrevolution, without their academic privileges being threatened), a Leninist, like a Conservative, is authentic in the sense of fully assuming the consequences of his choice, i.e., of being fully aware of what it actually means to take power and to exert it.
=======
In a prefatory segment to Michael Chanan's Cuban Cinema, there is an interview between Robert Scheer and Francis Ford Coppola from 1975, after the latter's visit to Cuba. One question & answer follow:
Did you ask questions about the problem of artistic freedom?
Yes. No one is permitted to criticize the government, other than through the channels that are provided for them. If you're a worker or if you're a writer, you can do it in your various workers' groups. In a factory they get together a couple of nights a week and discuss problems--how to make things better, what's unfair, and stuff like that. So, in other words, there are channels that allow you not to criticize the idea of the society but to figure out how to make it better. I like the honesty of it. They say no, you cannot criticize the government--that freedom, no, you don't have.
Here in America you can write or say anything you want, and many people in Cuba are very impressed when you tell them this. They are surprised when they see something like Godfather II. They wonder, "How can you make a film that says nice things about our Revolution?" But the truth is, I believe, that the freedoms we have here are possible because they do not even come close to jeopardizing the real interests that govern our country. If there were someone who really came close to jeopardizing those interests, I believe our freedoms would vanish, one way or the other. If there were a man, a political candidate, who was elected to office and began implementing real programs that were counter to the big interests, there would be a coup or a murder or whatever was necessary.
In Cuba they don't even have the illusion of that kind of political freedom. It's as though they're saying, "Our Revolution is too fragile, it has too many enemies, it is too difficult to pull off to allow forces inside or outside to work to counter it." I understand the implications of what I'm saying, the dangers. But I put it to you: if they are right--if their society is truly beautiful and honest and worthwhile--then it is worth protecting, even with this suspension of freedom. In Chile, the newborn, elected society was not protected in this way, and so it was destroyed. Ironically, the government that replaced it is not taking any chances and is controlling the press and opposition in a way that Allende did not."
(...at which point Ruiz fled his homeland and became one of our greatest transnational filmmakers...)
From the Preface to "Political Position of Surrealism" (1935):
From Marx to Lenin, this period of gestation which lasted more than half a century [1848-1917] sustained such a great effervescence of ideas, the problem of its outcome gave rise to so many debates, the points of view relating to it clashed with one another on all occasions with such violence, and, finally, the view that was to carry the day did prevail so forcefully that I cannot help but consider the constituion--both through men and events--of scientific socialism as a model school. As a school of an ever more profound understanding of human need which must aim, in all areas and on the largest possible scale, at finding satisfaction, but also as a school of independence where each person must be free to express in any and every circumstance his way of seeing things, and must be ready to justify endlessly the domestication of his spirit.
For years now, however, a great deal of time and effort has gone into telling us that times have changed on five-sixths of the globe (since a catchword prompts us to subtract) the revolutionary has no longer basically to look to himself for the re-creation of the reasons which militate in favor of social transformation, and to try to accelerate, from the point where he now finds himself, this transformation by every possible means. He is invited to leave that up to other men--men who have "made the Revolution" in the U.S.S.R. and who, some day or other, will presumably be called upon to fill a providential role everywhere else. The unbridled exaltation over whatever these men undertake, be it great or small, takes the place of judgment with respect to the possibilities which are theirs. We are witnessing the formation of a taboo, of the deplorable crystallization of what may be the most moving and most protean in the essence of human demands. Can we be asked to toss onto the dunghill this unlimited capacity to say no which is the whole secret of human progress in order to watch and wonder unreservedly at what is going on without us at the other end of the world? No, this contemplative, ecstatic attitude is totally irreconcilable with the revolutionary movement.
=======
From Slavoj Žižek's "Can Lenin Tell Us About Freedom Today?":
This Leninist freedom of choice--not "Life or money!" but "Life or critique!"--combined with Lenin's dismissive attitude towards the "liberal" notion of freedom, accounts for his bad reputation among liberals. Their case largely rests upon their rejection of the standard Marxist-Leninist opposition of "formal" and "actual" freedom: as even Leftist liberals like Claude Lefort emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion "formal," so that "actual freedom" equals the lack of freedom. That is to say, with regard to freedom, Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort "Freedom--yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?"--for him, in the above-quoted case of the Mensheviks, their "freedom" to criticize the Bolshevik government effectively amounted to "freedom" to undermine the workers' and peasants' government on behalf of the counterrevolution.
... and, earlier in the essay ...
In contrast to this false radical Leftist's position (who want true democracy for the people, but without the secret police to fight counterrevolution, without their academic privileges being threatened), a Leninist, like a Conservative, is authentic in the sense of fully assuming the consequences of his choice, i.e., of being fully aware of what it actually means to take power and to exert it.
=======
In a prefatory segment to Michael Chanan's Cuban Cinema, there is an interview between Robert Scheer and Francis Ford Coppola from 1975, after the latter's visit to Cuba. One question & answer follow:
Did you ask questions about the problem of artistic freedom?
Yes. No one is permitted to criticize the government, other than through the channels that are provided for them. If you're a worker or if you're a writer, you can do it in your various workers' groups. In a factory they get together a couple of nights a week and discuss problems--how to make things better, what's unfair, and stuff like that. So, in other words, there are channels that allow you not to criticize the idea of the society but to figure out how to make it better. I like the honesty of it. They say no, you cannot criticize the government--that freedom, no, you don't have.
Here in America you can write or say anything you want, and many people in Cuba are very impressed when you tell them this. They are surprised when they see something like Godfather II. They wonder, "How can you make a film that says nice things about our Revolution?" But the truth is, I believe, that the freedoms we have here are possible because they do not even come close to jeopardizing the real interests that govern our country. If there were someone who really came close to jeopardizing those interests, I believe our freedoms would vanish, one way or the other. If there were a man, a political candidate, who was elected to office and began implementing real programs that were counter to the big interests, there would be a coup or a murder or whatever was necessary.
In Cuba they don't even have the illusion of that kind of political freedom. It's as though they're saying, "Our Revolution is too fragile, it has too many enemies, it is too difficult to pull off to allow forces inside or outside to work to counter it." I understand the implications of what I'm saying, the dangers. But I put it to you: if they are right--if their society is truly beautiful and honest and worthwhile--then it is worth protecting, even with this suspension of freedom. In Chile, the newborn, elected society was not protected in this way, and so it was destroyed. Ironically, the government that replaced it is not taking any chances and is controlling the press and opposition in a way that Allende did not."
(...at which point Ruiz fled his homeland and became one of our greatest transnational filmmakers...)
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Not Over Yet
Before too long I'll get back to posting about films. (Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven sucks, by the way.) I can't even put out thoughtful game analyses or even larger intellectual musings about the culture of the sport. Only fannish reflection. This World Cup fever has been intense--and it's a really good tournament so far. At the end of the day all I want to do is drink. Sometimes not even eat--I think there were 3-4 days last week when I didn't break 1000 calories.
Italy 1 : 1 USA
Shit! The US still have a chance. They played a physical game, and even though I think the two red cards were harsh, the foul tally was pretty high. I think that our boys need to fine-tune the art of playing tough without playing rough, because yellow cards can hurt you in this tournament. The other thing USA need to do is figure out how to attack in the penalty area--too often they'd get to the Italian box and then just pass it around among their midfield, desperately hoping someone either got a breakaway or a cross. So they'd get up there quite often, but not go for that final slog. They need more team confidence in the attack! (Especially lacking players with long shots like Lampard's or Gerrard's, though Mastroeni's one effort yesterday was good.) Overall they played well against Italy, they showed that fighting spirit that makes them fun to watch even when they're not the most skilled team. Italy were disappointing, they were definitely the weaker side in the first half (though they capitalized on US defensive flaws very well with the one goal they scored), and it's to the US' credit and their demerit that they couldn't score a go-ahead goal in the second half.
Ghana 2 : 0 Czech Republic
Wow! Even more so than the US/Italy game, we see a completely reversal, and Ghana dominate the Czechs almost as much as the Czechs dominated the United States. Group C may be the real Group of Death, but by this second go-round Group E (the Group of Injury?) shows at least that all four teams want it (whereas Group C showed only three contenders: Serbia & Montenegro didn't seem to show up).
Ghana will be a dangerous match for the United States, but a doable one--what throws the US off so much is, I think, that daunting European tactical professionalism. Sometimes they can prepare themselves well against it (as with Italy yesterday), and sometimes they just crumble horribly (as against the Czech Republic). Ghana won't present that exact challenge, and so the US will have to play athlete-to-athlete, speed-for-speed, shot-for-shot. It should be an intense match. Either team could win it.
The one bad thing about the US and Ghana doing well is that if the Czechs actually exit in the first round, it'll be a big loss for the tournament overall.
Portugal v. Iran was a little bit boring. Cristiano Ronaldo bugs the hell out of me; we get it, you can move your legs around the ball really well. In these last two games, at least, has his fancy dribbling (as opposed to, say, his speed) actually made him at all dangerous!? As for today's games--the Brazil-Australia one should be excellent, hopefully the Socceroos can not only put up a good effort but also lull Perreira's squad out of lethargy. Croatia should trounce Japan. I have a weird feeling that Korea might upset France. They've got team organization whereas France don't give any indication of having found their form or their synergy.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Vintage '98?
In 1998 the United States had an "off" World Cup, to say the least, finishing (statistically) dead last out of 32 teams. In 2002 they had a decent World Cup, playing two mostly excellent games (against Portugal and Germany), recording only two victories in five games (against a surprised Portugal and a superior Mexico side), and managing to coast on good fortune the rest of the time. The (American) media like to rattle on about USA's #5 FIFA rating for the United States (which every soccer fan knows is merely indicative of the ranking system's faults, and in no way accurately reflects our footballing status). The fact that they made it to the quarterfinals last time just inflates fairweather fans' sense of what the American team can and should do.
I wasn't expecting a semi-final finish this time around, nor even a quarterfinal repeat. I understand that soccer talent doesn't spring up overnight. I didn't expect to see the United States advance to the Round of 16 after seeing their tough draw, and I still don't expect them to work miracles after today's match against the Czech Republic.
But some things are just too much. Here is my advice for the United States, who play Italy on Saturday:
Pass the ball even slower. You all were passing it pretty slowly in the Czech game, but I bet you'll perform better if you crank up the lethargy. The same goes for your feet. I saw a lot of standing around, but if we're going to win soccer games and the respect of the footballing world, we'll have to do more sauntering. Heels on the ground! As for moving into space and opening up for teammates. You barely did that against the Czechs, and I don't see how you could minimalize on this front any more. So good job at being the best on 'static football,' which I hear is all the rage at Ajax right now. And whatever you do, don't even try to pretend that you want the ball, you want to win, you want to play. It's clear from this game that you didn't, and I'm OK and you're OK with that.
(Eddie Johnson, you're somewhat exempt from the above sarcasm. You made something of an effort. As for the rest of you guys, it pains me to say it because I think some of you are fantastic, but this match was well below what anyone should just chalk up to a tough break, for any of you.)
All in all, it was one of the more embarrassing games I've seen a squad play at the World Cup level, and it's sad because I have been pulling for my fellow Americans so genuinely these years, and will continue to do so, as painful as it gets. But they were outclassed in every conceivable way by the Czechs, by huge margins. I expected Nedved & Co. to beat them. I also expected them to put up a fight. It's possible for USA to beat Ghana, and they do actually have the skill to perhaps top Italy if the Americans play a phenomenal game and the Italians stumble just a bit. We're not dead yet. But it's a prerequisite for this fan's respect for the team to play with some heart, which they resoundingly did not do today. And I see no reason why I should be optimistic about Saturday's game. It could very easily be another 3:0 trouncing from a dangerous Italian side.
The Czech Republic deserve praise for playing an excellent match--they're an extraordinary team.
World Cup highlights so far: watching Mexico beat Iran (and reach my personal score prediction of 3:1) while eating tacos and drinking cervezas in a local taqueria with friends; seeing Germany play their exciting opener; gradually starting to root for Trinidad & Tobago. Disappointments included Ghana's loss and Ivory Coast's loss, and also seeing that Portugal fizzled after some really fast and exciting play against Angola. (I didn't see the Netherlands/Serbia game.)
I wasn't expecting a semi-final finish this time around, nor even a quarterfinal repeat. I understand that soccer talent doesn't spring up overnight. I didn't expect to see the United States advance to the Round of 16 after seeing their tough draw, and I still don't expect them to work miracles after today's match against the Czech Republic.
But some things are just too much. Here is my advice for the United States, who play Italy on Saturday:
Pass the ball even slower. You all were passing it pretty slowly in the Czech game, but I bet you'll perform better if you crank up the lethargy. The same goes for your feet. I saw a lot of standing around, but if we're going to win soccer games and the respect of the footballing world, we'll have to do more sauntering. Heels on the ground! As for moving into space and opening up for teammates. You barely did that against the Czechs, and I don't see how you could minimalize on this front any more. So good job at being the best on 'static football,' which I hear is all the rage at Ajax right now. And whatever you do, don't even try to pretend that you want the ball, you want to win, you want to play. It's clear from this game that you didn't, and I'm OK and you're OK with that.
(Eddie Johnson, you're somewhat exempt from the above sarcasm. You made something of an effort. As for the rest of you guys, it pains me to say it because I think some of you are fantastic, but this match was well below what anyone should just chalk up to a tough break, for any of you.)
All in all, it was one of the more embarrassing games I've seen a squad play at the World Cup level, and it's sad because I have been pulling for my fellow Americans so genuinely these years, and will continue to do so, as painful as it gets. But they were outclassed in every conceivable way by the Czechs, by huge margins. I expected Nedved & Co. to beat them. I also expected them to put up a fight. It's possible for USA to beat Ghana, and they do actually have the skill to perhaps top Italy if the Americans play a phenomenal game and the Italians stumble just a bit. We're not dead yet. But it's a prerequisite for this fan's respect for the team to play with some heart, which they resoundingly did not do today. And I see no reason why I should be optimistic about Saturday's game. It could very easily be another 3:0 trouncing from a dangerous Italian side.
The Czech Republic deserve praise for playing an excellent match--they're an extraordinary team.
World Cup highlights so far: watching Mexico beat Iran (and reach my personal score prediction of 3:1) while eating tacos and drinking cervezas in a local taqueria with friends; seeing Germany play their exciting opener; gradually starting to root for Trinidad & Tobago. Disappointments included Ghana's loss and Ivory Coast's loss, and also seeing that Portugal fizzled after some really fast and exciting play against Angola. (I didn't see the Netherlands/Serbia game.)
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Futbol!
The FIFA World Cup starts tomorrow, and I may write a few blog entries on it over the course of the next month. Skip 'em if you actively dislike the game--some Americans, especially, have a psychological complex where they go out of their way to put down the sport. Some scattered thoughts:
Reason Why I'm Finally Rooting for Brazil: Ronaldinho. I've always loved what I've known and encountered about Brazilian culture, but I've never gotten behind their national soccer team because (a) they had a bad habit of eliminating teams I really liked in recent World Cups, and (b) I was rubbed the wrong way by some of their recent stars--Rivaldo, Romario, Ronaldo. But Ronaldinho? That goofy, infectious smile, and especially the superhuman skill ... what's not to like? He is the primary reason for my turnaround. (On the flipside, I would usually pull for the Clockwork Orange to do well, but I'm less enthusiastic this time around because of bad vibes from ... Ruud van Nistelrooy. Don't ever mistake me for a rational soccer fan.)
Teams I Will Root For, Always: USA (World Cup brings out my nationalism), Germany (I learned to play soccer when I lived there as a kid). I'm preparing to have my heart broken in the group stages by the US, and in the quarterfinals by Germany. But I'll be cheering them on--and hoping against hope--the whole time.
Surprises: Switzerland and Australia. I'm going to predict them both to make it to the Round of 16 at least. Switzerland may even surprise France and top their group.
Dream Final: England v Brazil, with healthy players all around. My real dream final would involve Germany playing a surprisingly great tournament all the way through to the trophy, but that's even less likely than the United States managing to emerge from the same group as Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic.
Prediction for Tomorrow's Opener: Germany 1 : 0 Costa Rica. The Germans will control the pitch but play cautiously, until Miroslav Klose's lanky ass finds its way in front of the right cross. We'll maybe have to wait until Ballack is fit to play to see the Germans try anything creative ...
Reason Why I'm Finally Rooting for Brazil: Ronaldinho. I've always loved what I've known and encountered about Brazilian culture, but I've never gotten behind their national soccer team because (a) they had a bad habit of eliminating teams I really liked in recent World Cups, and (b) I was rubbed the wrong way by some of their recent stars--Rivaldo, Romario, Ronaldo. But Ronaldinho? That goofy, infectious smile, and especially the superhuman skill ... what's not to like? He is the primary reason for my turnaround. (On the flipside, I would usually pull for the Clockwork Orange to do well, but I'm less enthusiastic this time around because of bad vibes from ... Ruud van Nistelrooy. Don't ever mistake me for a rational soccer fan.)
Teams I Will Root For, Always: USA (World Cup brings out my nationalism), Germany (I learned to play soccer when I lived there as a kid). I'm preparing to have my heart broken in the group stages by the US, and in the quarterfinals by Germany. But I'll be cheering them on--and hoping against hope--the whole time.
Surprises: Switzerland and Australia. I'm going to predict them both to make it to the Round of 16 at least. Switzerland may even surprise France and top their group.
Dream Final: England v Brazil, with healthy players all around. My real dream final would involve Germany playing a surprisingly great tournament all the way through to the trophy, but that's even less likely than the United States managing to emerge from the same group as Italy, Ghana, and the Czech Republic.
Prediction for Tomorrow's Opener: Germany 1 : 0 Costa Rica. The Germans will control the pitch but play cautiously, until Miroslav Klose's lanky ass finds its way in front of the right cross. We'll maybe have to wait until Ballack is fit to play to see the Germans try anything creative ...
Desire & Capital: More Notes
I'm about to begin reading Herbert Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension, and will hold that in comparison/contrast to some of his fellow Frankfurt Schoolers. A big question for me, when the mind wanders, is whether or not we have some mental aspect that is not imprinted by society, and is furthermore indomitable--i.e., is there something within "the human spirit" in which we (progressives) can put our energy into: a trigger, a tap, a safe space? Or is the project of human rights & civilization a constant and necessary battle against its own inherent threats--the "recidivist element" within our enlightenment (cf. Horkheimer and Adorno's prefatory notes to The Dialectic of Enlightenment)? As something less than even an aspiring historian, sociologist, psychologist, or philosopher, I can't expect to come up with good answers to this question in the foreseeable future. What I can try to do is see when and what artwork throughout history has to say about this question, what arguments it puts forth for an explanation of one form or another--and what material, practical, or ideological employment these explanations may undergo for people in historical reality. Being a cinephile I'm obviously drawn to the ways that the modes, technologies, and aesthetics of later modernity (or we can just call it the twentieth century) address this question. Special emphasis here on surrealism, fragmentative aesthetic practices, and the so-called unconscious mind.
When we, culturally, unloose and share our libidinous, mysterious, and starstruck fascinations upon the images we make with each other ...
(Above: Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart; Patrick Bokanowski's L'Ange; Luis Buñuel's Subida al cielo)
... is there something tangible we can get from this exercise of free expression and the recounting of dreams? Aside from the pleasure of that expression itself? Can we craft our stories and images to do what we want, socially? Well, obviously, we can and do, within limits--but what are those limits? Once we have started using a disruptive, disjunctive impulse to patch together new artworks that examine our social mores and patterns ...
(Vera Chytilova's Daisies)
... or our individual, psychic perceptions ...
(Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr)
... or our collective psyche (does it ever emerge with a clean bill of health!?) ...
(Alexander Kluge's The Eiffel Tower, King Kong, and the White Woman)
... can we really ever be assured of the revolution (of whatever magnitude and stripe we expect) we feel we've been promised? Does Makavejev urge us to fuck as a way of getting the revolutionary ball rolling or does he think seeing his films about--among other things--fucking will do the trick (now this is a question more easily answered with some simple research, though)? In other words, what are the real differences when a viewer sees a film that plays up its performative enunciation ('I am a film that is out there attacking or promoting something through my very presence') versus a film that seems to promote action at expense of itself ('I, as a film, am invisible and unreadable beyond being a call to action')? To ask a related question [which Marcuse tackles], is great art always potentially subversive and productive [if so what is great art!?] ... or is there something that politically-minded observers must be sure to separate when dealing with art, since something great might also be something bad?
My temperament in this case is cautious and a little pessimistic--my suspicions are that art (and aesthetic experience as a category within experience) are not essentially, not even always potentially, "productive" or "positive" sites for the human being. Whatever is deemed good or bad for people, art can and does do both.
Mayakovsky charged that the bourgeoisie were subconsciously afraid of the electricity (the force) they had invented--they ate by candlelight (quotation found here). If the larger project of surrealism, for instance, which melded waking, rational reality with the streaming mental reality of the subconscious, what ways can we make sure that we're not just unleashing some more latent force or invention of ruling interests? I'm not trying to even skirt with a 'vulgar Marxism' here, as though that which is suspected to be "bourgeois" is bad and deserves to be destroyed or ignored. I'm only caught inside a question: how can I be sure when and where my fantasies are my own? Will it really be a case of the the unconscious breaking through our false consciousness (maybe the first impulse of the surrealist-marxist) or will our conscious, rational minds have to save us from our own socially-constructed desires? Probably what is needed is a dynamic balance between the two. And when it comes time to construct or consume images, sounds, narratives ... we're left with a vital necessity to think on-the-fly, case-by-case, provisionally, with a pragmatic and somewhat relativistic rigor.
Which brings me back to where I've started, really, and I have the feeling that in climbing the saddle between the giant mountains of Social and Aesthetic Theory, I've done nothing more strengthen my grip on the rocks I'm already holding for dear life. (Which is precisely why I'm blogging on this subject rather than publishing on it, at this moment in time.) Still, there were some pretty film frame enlargements along the way, right?
When we, culturally, unloose and share our libidinous, mysterious, and starstruck fascinations upon the images we make with each other ...
(Above: Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart; Patrick Bokanowski's L'Ange; Luis Buñuel's Subida al cielo)
... is there something tangible we can get from this exercise of free expression and the recounting of dreams? Aside from the pleasure of that expression itself? Can we craft our stories and images to do what we want, socially? Well, obviously, we can and do, within limits--but what are those limits? Once we have started using a disruptive, disjunctive impulse to patch together new artworks that examine our social mores and patterns ...
(Vera Chytilova's Daisies)
... or our individual, psychic perceptions ...
(Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr)
... or our collective psyche (does it ever emerge with a clean bill of health!?) ...
(Alexander Kluge's The Eiffel Tower, King Kong, and the White Woman)
... can we really ever be assured of the revolution (of whatever magnitude and stripe we expect) we feel we've been promised? Does Makavejev urge us to fuck as a way of getting the revolutionary ball rolling or does he think seeing his films about--among other things--fucking will do the trick (now this is a question more easily answered with some simple research, though)? In other words, what are the real differences when a viewer sees a film that plays up its performative enunciation ('I am a film that is out there attacking or promoting something through my very presence') versus a film that seems to promote action at expense of itself ('I, as a film, am invisible and unreadable beyond being a call to action')? To ask a related question [which Marcuse tackles], is great art always potentially subversive and productive [if so what is great art!?] ... or is there something that politically-minded observers must be sure to separate when dealing with art, since something great might also be something bad?
My temperament in this case is cautious and a little pessimistic--my suspicions are that art (and aesthetic experience as a category within experience) are not essentially, not even always potentially, "productive" or "positive" sites for the human being. Whatever is deemed good or bad for people, art can and does do both.
Mayakovsky charged that the bourgeoisie were subconsciously afraid of the electricity (the force) they had invented--they ate by candlelight (quotation found here). If the larger project of surrealism, for instance, which melded waking, rational reality with the streaming mental reality of the subconscious, what ways can we make sure that we're not just unleashing some more latent force or invention of ruling interests? I'm not trying to even skirt with a 'vulgar Marxism' here, as though that which is suspected to be "bourgeois" is bad and deserves to be destroyed or ignored. I'm only caught inside a question: how can I be sure when and where my fantasies are my own? Will it really be a case of the the unconscious breaking through our false consciousness (maybe the first impulse of the surrealist-marxist) or will our conscious, rational minds have to save us from our own socially-constructed desires? Probably what is needed is a dynamic balance between the two. And when it comes time to construct or consume images, sounds, narratives ... we're left with a vital necessity to think on-the-fly, case-by-case, provisionally, with a pragmatic and somewhat relativistic rigor.
Which brings me back to where I've started, really, and I have the feeling that in climbing the saddle between the giant mountains of Social and Aesthetic Theory, I've done nothing more strengthen my grip on the rocks I'm already holding for dear life. (Which is precisely why I'm blogging on this subject rather than publishing on it, at this moment in time.) Still, there were some pretty film frame enlargements along the way, right?
Saturday, June 03, 2006
All Kinds of Loose Ends
One of the cool things about Birth (some appropriate linkage here, here, and here--probably more that aren't coming to mind immediately) is that it doesn't suffer from what I'd call 'Vanilla Sky syndrome,' that is, a willingness in mainstream cinema to push into some interesting and really fractured territory (with regards to at least storytelling, possibly form), and an even greater willingness to resolve all these apparent loose ends in the final reel, reducing the whole experience into a clever puzzlepiece contraption--and severing all the loose and ambiguous, potentially profoundly evocative, tendrils that hurl out from the screen. I'm not against this sort of plot construction in an ironclad doctrinaire way, but, well, you can't imagine the disappointment I felt in the final minutes of Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky when I saw it some years back. Jonathan Glazer's Birth (I thought his Sexy Beast was very good, as well) feints in this 'plot cleanup' direction and so for a few minutes I was very nervous ... but it mostly retains the heft of its mystery. I'm not as over-the-moon about this film as some people, but definitely put me down in the camp that greatly admires and appreciates it, and would like to see more like it.
One of the depressing things about saying I'd like to see more films like Birth is that (as regular readers will know) I don't see many new films these days, for a variety of reasons, and though I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things, I feel really out of touch with not only the so-called moviegoing public (ah but don't all cinephiles?), I'm also out of touch with critics. Case in point: Peter Jackson's abyssmal King Kong, one of the most inane things I've ever watched. Also a critical hit. I don't like saying that films are boring because this really means "I was bored when I watched it," and with the right mindset practically anything can become interesting (or uninteresting). But for the sake of polemics and on the credit of my scarce usage of the word, I'm going to say it: this film is boring. Inept plot construction (what's with the black sailor-cum-lit-professor!?), a tired visual sense and production design, the Kraft-cheesiest trans-species "humanism" you've ever seen, and possibly the most blatant abuse of 'suspension of disbelief' principles in the history of cinema. If every single character (OK, every major white character) proves to be impossibly heroic, athletic, durable, and lucky ASAP, then what is the point of pretending for three damn hours that this action-adventure film is worth investing yourself into? It's essentially a lame and predictable (but fast!) roller coaster ride with some animatronic hugging along the way. You'd think there'd at least be a joke about how Adrien Brody is initially timid or Jack Black gets winded easily (or even some reference to Naomi Watt's superhuman whiplash-resistance), but nope--these horribly-frightened strangers to Skull Island prove themselves immediately capable of handling anything, and rescuing each other from everything. Anyway, I know a lot of people liked this movie and I don't really want to trash something just for the sake of trashing it ... but I felt the need to vent a bit. I don't do it that much, do I?
A P.S. about Kong--though I alluded twice above to race, I don't think the film is exactly 'racist,' a tag I believe some have attached to the film. (The '33 original is of course a racist film, borne of a cultural psyche rather than D.W. Griffith-like devotion to a cause.) I do think that Jackson's film has some serious racial baggage that needs examining, and it clearly has some residual content of the original's racism, but I don't think it's particularly malicious itself, nor 'racist' in any notable sense. Open to discussion on this point.
One of the depressing things about saying I'd like to see more films like Birth is that (as regular readers will know) I don't see many new films these days, for a variety of reasons, and though I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things, I feel really out of touch with not only the so-called moviegoing public (ah but don't all cinephiles?), I'm also out of touch with critics. Case in point: Peter Jackson's abyssmal King Kong, one of the most inane things I've ever watched. Also a critical hit. I don't like saying that films are boring because this really means "I was bored when I watched it," and with the right mindset practically anything can become interesting (or uninteresting). But for the sake of polemics and on the credit of my scarce usage of the word, I'm going to say it: this film is boring. Inept plot construction (what's with the black sailor-cum-lit-professor!?), a tired visual sense and production design, the Kraft-cheesiest trans-species "humanism" you've ever seen, and possibly the most blatant abuse of 'suspension of disbelief' principles in the history of cinema. If every single character (OK, every major white character) proves to be impossibly heroic, athletic, durable, and lucky ASAP, then what is the point of pretending for three damn hours that this action-adventure film is worth investing yourself into? It's essentially a lame and predictable (but fast!) roller coaster ride with some animatronic hugging along the way. You'd think there'd at least be a joke about how Adrien Brody is initially timid or Jack Black gets winded easily (or even some reference to Naomi Watt's superhuman whiplash-resistance), but nope--these horribly-frightened strangers to Skull Island prove themselves immediately capable of handling anything, and rescuing each other from everything. Anyway, I know a lot of people liked this movie and I don't really want to trash something just for the sake of trashing it ... but I felt the need to vent a bit. I don't do it that much, do I?
A P.S. about Kong--though I alluded twice above to race, I don't think the film is exactly 'racist,' a tag I believe some have attached to the film. (The '33 original is of course a racist film, borne of a cultural psyche rather than D.W. Griffith-like devotion to a cause.) I do think that Jackson's film has some serious racial baggage that needs examining, and it clearly has some residual content of the original's racism, but I don't think it's particularly malicious itself, nor 'racist' in any notable sense. Open to discussion on this point.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Desire & Capital: Preliminary Notes
I may start taking notes on the relationship between sexual desire and (Marxist) economic analyses in films that I see where the relationship between the two is implied or brought up explicitly. Sometimes the existence of overwhelming desire exists in a film as an (intentional) counterpoint to economic or sociopolitical crises, which causes the characters to behave in ways that don't appear to be rooted in politics, but which have a certain residual whose political roots are evoked through the structure of the artwork itself. In the famous 'Freud' and 'Marx' image from Godard's Le Gai savoir, it's as though the 'Freud' (libido) supplies the drama, and the 'Marx' (physical sexuality) supplies the action, and economy and society go on operating through individuals in ways that seem to be purely corporeal, neither economic nor social.
In Dušan Makavejev's Man Is Not a Bird (1965), the character Rudinski has to balance his dedication to his job as an engineer (for which he is given a medal) and his attraction to the young woman Rajka. A maxim that I believe the film postulates: a man cannot be ruled by his passions, but neither can he reject them totally--Rajka (as a mustachioed truck driver's advances suggest) is a bit more attuned to the pushing and pulling of the heart, and I think Makavejev's work is an ongoing attempt to unite the ideas of sexual liberation (release) with the self-control (labor & ownership) of workers, which arguably found its greatest culmination in WR--Mysteries of the Organism ('71). Makavejev is neither friend nor foe of the State, exactly, from my admittedly quite limited vantage point. What interests him is instead the attempt at true liberation in terms not only socio-economic, but in terms of the Godardian 'Marx' and 'Freud,' an attempt that a Communist government will not necessarily make in earnest, but which Makavejev will agitate for anyway.
Below, stills from Teorema (Pasolini, '68) and Shampoo (Ashby, '75) ...
Pasolini was a Marxist of course, and Towne & Ashby left liberals (I would think?)--both draw interesting portraits of sexual attraction and desire, the sexual revolution, the possibilities of a certain political promise (and also failure). I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of Teorema or Shampoo, each of which I've seen only one time, but both films are about a certain sexual proclivity, a propulsion among their characters, to which 'backgrounded' social and political elements depicted in the films have a very serious and complex relationship. So, I hope, more on them in the future. As with my previous post, this is something like a sketch or a study of a more serious work that may result some months down the road.
In Dušan Makavejev's Man Is Not a Bird (1965), the character Rudinski has to balance his dedication to his job as an engineer (for which he is given a medal) and his attraction to the young woman Rajka. A maxim that I believe the film postulates: a man cannot be ruled by his passions, but neither can he reject them totally--Rajka (as a mustachioed truck driver's advances suggest) is a bit more attuned to the pushing and pulling of the heart, and I think Makavejev's work is an ongoing attempt to unite the ideas of sexual liberation (release) with the self-control (labor & ownership) of workers, which arguably found its greatest culmination in WR--Mysteries of the Organism ('71). Makavejev is neither friend nor foe of the State, exactly, from my admittedly quite limited vantage point. What interests him is instead the attempt at true liberation in terms not only socio-economic, but in terms of the Godardian 'Marx' and 'Freud,' an attempt that a Communist government will not necessarily make in earnest, but which Makavejev will agitate for anyway.
Below, stills from Teorema (Pasolini, '68) and Shampoo (Ashby, '75) ...
Pasolini was a Marxist of course, and Towne & Ashby left liberals (I would think?)--both draw interesting portraits of sexual attraction and desire, the sexual revolution, the possibilities of a certain political promise (and also failure). I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of Teorema or Shampoo, each of which I've seen only one time, but both films are about a certain sexual proclivity, a propulsion among their characters, to which 'backgrounded' social and political elements depicted in the films have a very serious and complex relationship. So, I hope, more on them in the future. As with my previous post, this is something like a sketch or a study of a more serious work that may result some months down the road.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Kinds of Panoramic Vision
Scattered notes for (possibly) a future project:
- The view from the window of a [train] passing a landscape. A nineteenth century innovation in perception ... this is something that Wolfgang Schivelbusch has written about (though I've not read his work on this firsthand). Early cinema recorded quite a few films as seen from the window of a moving train.
- 'Panorama as form,' wherein the above is manifested in the rectangular (including, possibly, CinemaScope) frame of the canvas--the parameters of the image reflect the first principle of the composition. Or this can be a camera track/pan (think of the traffic tracking shot in Godard's Week End, or the shot of the supermarket in Tout va bien), or the movement of the eyes over a broad space which this camera movement presumably mimics.
- 'Panorama as content,' that is, the suggestion through even as it runs counter to form, as below, wherein the desire to see all around becomes the emphasis of the image if not its organizational principle. Below is Alma-Tadema's A Coign of Vantage (1895).
What makes these (particularly 'panorama as form') distinct from just any long horizontal space is that, representationally, they suggest or depict outright a coherent and unified space--unlike, say, the Bayeux Tapestry. One of my favorite 'follies' of early cinema is an attempt to create a coherent and unified space by way of pieced-together fragments, namely, the Cinéorama of Raoul Grimoin-Sanson (patented 1897, attempted to exhibit in 1900). Ten projections of footage in a circular sweep to show footage from ten cameras that go up in a hot air balloon over the countryside. When I was a child I saw a successful manifestation of this basic principle at, I think, Disneyland.
- The view from the window of a [train] passing a landscape. A nineteenth century innovation in perception ... this is something that Wolfgang Schivelbusch has written about (though I've not read his work on this firsthand). Early cinema recorded quite a few films as seen from the window of a moving train.
- 'Panorama as form,' wherein the above is manifested in the rectangular (including, possibly, CinemaScope) frame of the canvas--the parameters of the image reflect the first principle of the composition. Or this can be a camera track/pan (think of the traffic tracking shot in Godard's Week End, or the shot of the supermarket in Tout va bien), or the movement of the eyes over a broad space which this camera movement presumably mimics.
- 'Panorama as content,' that is, the suggestion through even as it runs counter to form, as below, wherein the desire to see all around becomes the emphasis of the image if not its organizational principle. Below is Alma-Tadema's A Coign of Vantage (1895).
What makes these (particularly 'panorama as form') distinct from just any long horizontal space is that, representationally, they suggest or depict outright a coherent and unified space--unlike, say, the Bayeux Tapestry. One of my favorite 'follies' of early cinema is an attempt to create a coherent and unified space by way of pieced-together fragments, namely, the Cinéorama of Raoul Grimoin-Sanson (patented 1897, attempted to exhibit in 1900). Ten projections of footage in a circular sweep to show footage from ten cameras that go up in a hot air balloon over the countryside. When I was a child I saw a successful manifestation of this basic principle at, I think, Disneyland.
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