Monday, June 15, 2009

If this wasn't a vaguely academic blog...

I would be venting unprintable anger over Vox, especially Vox not letting me sign up to post a comment, something I really didn't care to do in the first place. I went through the process, giving my name, fake D.O.B., etc. typing in an expletive password (if you guess, you can use my account), and still, Vox encountered an unexpected problem. What I am having trouble comprehending is that the moronic, unreliable, time-wasting enterprise would be able to predict their problems in advance, because I'm under the impression that Vox is one of a breed of "special" programs that was dropped on the head at birth. Repeatedly. (This complaint is not meant to offend anyone but the people responsible for the travesty of modern communication that is Vox.)

So, as a consequence, I am going to post yet another comment on my own blog. This one's a shout out to Claire:

"Your interest in how Ozu would portray our modern times intrigued me, for I felt that the crux of Ozu’s statement on modernity is how there is little time left to look after tradition. I think the best starting point to your query may lie in whether or not you believe our modern-day Western society still concerns itself with tradition."


And a message to Claire: stay off the Vox

What I'm going to do instead of trying to work out the intricacies of Blogger...

...is post my comment to another on my own blog space. So, in reponse to 'cinema(tom)odernism's entry, partly on Flannery O'Connor, I say this:

"Referring to how you say African Americans are painfully underrepresented in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, I am in complete agreement. It is disheartening to think of O’Connor’s attempt to project a semi-documentarian style of Gothic literature as excluding very present members of the society it portrays. I think there are very curious distinctions made by the author upon the types of people she wants represented - It seems Flannery O’Connor is happy to critique religion in a world fully entrenched in segregationism, which lays sadly untouched by her."



Sunday, June 7, 2009

Female Nude With Tumbleweed


I think Herb Ritts best portrays the concepts of Wise Blood and The Fountainhead combined:



Herb Ritts, Female Nude With Tumbleweed,
Paradise Cove, 1986, gelatine silver print

The Fountainhead

In startling contrast, is the grand, inspirational imagery of The Fountainhead, where the preferred movement is to the vertical, rather than the consequences of the horizontal, shown in the decaying urban sprawl of Wise Blood’s Taulkinham.

Perhaps following the depressing, though darkly comic read that was Wise Blood, against my pre-conceived judgment to dislike Ayn Rand and some of the ideals she stands for, I found the individualism purported in The Fountainhead to be inspirational. Rand makes a point for not following the examples of others and supports the idea of an unflinching stoic subsistence of an individual of his own philosophy, which he knows to be the only one he should follow for happiness and fulfilment. I say “he” when describing the Rand’s ideas in The Fountainhead because throughout the novel it is obvious that Rand classifies all meritable qualities of admirable characters as having a basis in masculinised power and righteousness. Without being vulgar, all of Rand’s analogies of individual success as created by an objective will stand erect: her statuesque Mr. and Mrs. Roark, and the skyscrapers she praises as symbols of unadulterated, unique expressions of the will of an individual.

Here lies what I believe to be a problem with the book. The characters, whose form, qualities and dialogue are constructed as analogies for whatever role or social performance they play, make decisions that are obvious to those who were able to define their personalities within the first page of their being mentioned. In this way, The Fountainhead comes off feeling like a game of chess: it is clear what role the pieces play, so it is mere playing through of a game that sees King Howard Roark move his ideology into a check mate.

The obviousness and shallowness of the characters helps Rand write such a long story in which her philosophy is put forward, but alas, the interactions become staid and slightly predictable, with some exceptions. Rand is successful, however, in cramming her ideas into a narrative context manipulated in a way that proves Objectivism feasible, achievable, and meritorious. Based on her own ideals, which are outlined a little more succinctly than in The Fountainhead in this very interesting 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, one gets an idea that Howard Roark is indirectly the author surrogate, or that she is the ideological love-child of Dominique and Howard – so much so that you feel her time in Hollywood has benefited her in becoming her own publicist.

As mentioned above regarding the grand span of the text, breaking into the lengthy description Rand thrives upon in The Fountainhead made me feel somewhat queasy, which is unusual because I have not been particularly averse to indulgent wordiness before, but something about Rand’s writing made me feel as if there was a lot to digest. Rand sets scenes intricately, and at numerous points branches out into overextended descriptions of sets, easily characterized as the hallmark of a previous screenwriter. It is like words are not enough for Rand; she needs her readers to ‘see’ exactly what she wants you to.

In reading the book over time, I described it differently many times. I’ve called it a well-written novel, a transport page-turner, a brochure, a television series, and a soap opera. I’ve said in its length and aesthetic it would make a presentable television series. The book’s predictability aids this, and makes the reading of it somewhat enjoyable for me, as you read on just to see if what you predicted eventuates, like a soap opera. It’s like being hooked on HBO. However, obviousness also means that when you are looking for surprise, it is a long journey to find sparse elements of it.

Wise Blood

I’m going to base my analysis of the two books of this course in the order of which I read them, as I have begun to consider the idea that this seemingly superfluous order has influenced my enjoyment of each. So, I’ll begin with my thoughts on Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.

When I began reading Wise Blood, the book made me feel quite uneasy. I described the book to those who saw me reading it at first to be more or less repulsive, not in the way that it is written, but in the content it smears in the eyes and under the nose of its readers. The protagonist Hazel Motes, whose wartime experiences have left him more than a little disillusioned with the Christian morality by which he was raised, is a tremendously jaded, morbid, and waxy young man. To top off his desirability, he drives a beat-up “rat-colored” [sic] car. The number of times Haze’s “rat-colored car” is mentioned to exacerbate the sordid filthiness alluded to throughout the span of the novel gives one the feeling that the world that O’Connor creates is tantamount to walking out your door of a morning to see a potentially endearing child destroy all illusion by digging out the contents of their nose and rubbing it in their eye with relish. And yet, Hazel Motes can at times be not entirely unsympathetic. One gets the feeling in the text that Hazel might be one of the few with his eyes open, but too often they glaze over with decisions that boggle the mind, until he snuffs them out in an act of self-salvation. Fair enough – if I was a character in Wise Blood, I might consider doing the same. In short, the conglomeration of characters and their ideas and circumstances highlights the grotesque.

However, as O’Connor writes in the style of Southern Gothic, it would be amiss to suggest that the grotesque is not what she aims to create. I understand this outcome to be necessary to the purpose of the text, which is in part to show humanity’s losses in the transfiguration of society through the processes of modernity. It also comes to be an indictment of religion’ influence in a modern world, as numerous contentions can be raised regarding the effectiveness of Haze’s rebellion in using religion’s structure and foundations against itself: his preaching proves largely counterintuitive, highlighting the confusion that ensues in a society where differences have yet to be reconciled.

It is evident that the town in which all the characters of Wise Blood is set is not yet up to speed either. The town of Taulkinham, which through its various descriptions of incongruous modernity and archaic sentiment, befits a welcome sign at its borders which could read “Welcome to the electrified dustbowl, where everything else is grease”. This inability to properly get with the times is possibly hinted at cryptically in the name Taulkinham, or ‘talkin’-ham’, perhaps suggesting a Ham Radio, a bridging technology in communication that connects separate and unknown participants by getting them on the same wavelength, much like function the town of Taulkinham in the text.

As the book ends with the anticlimactic death of the protagonist, one almost feels relieved for him to be released. That said, based on the initial descriptions of all characters, even before they have begun to make their morally questionable decisions, and the ends they meet, hope is certainly lost in Wise Blood.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Berlin, Symphony of a Metropolis

The above, I feel, is a much more appropriate translation of the original German title Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großtadt. This is because the film seems no to be about celebrating a ‘great city’, but rather, it portrays the mechanics of a working metropolis; a day in the life of an organic entity. The film is an exploration of a new age of industry, business and society via a relatively new form of representation that the cinematic moving image.

This idea of new goals and new horizons is evident from the very first in Berlin, where, after the initial opening shot of water the viewer’s eyes are met with a non-descript pattern of static white and black horizontal lines. Imposed behind this is a light circular object, rising up over and over, as if presenting the rising of the sun through blinds day after day. This abstract, mechanical symbol of a certain, natural event anticipates the manner in which the rest of the film is to follow. The film shows juxtaposed images of like terms in sequence, as seen in Act I with the progression of shots of men’s feet in movement, to the feet of cattle being herded, to the feet of soldiers marching, all on the same street, and all within approximately 5 seconds.


Even considering these elements of the film alone, it seems obvious that Ruttmann was very much influenced in his direction by the ideas of organic montage developed by the Soviet school of thought. Unmistakable marks of this style of film-making include dialectical material opposition, such as can be seen in the converging of horse-drawn carriages and automobiles onto a shared space, the use of clocks, highlighting the temporality of the movement-image, and the focus upon horizontality.

The previously mentioned horizontal lines are somewhat of a motif in the film, tying the city together through the representation of a flat space – an equal, social space. The links flow through train tracks, arrows, power lines, grates, buildings, windows, blinds, etc.


Another motif of Soviet organic montage is the absence of camera movement, which is evident in Berlin. Through this form of shot, utilizing to their greatest the simplicity and sophistication of basic camera angles, the city of Berlin is allowed to speak for itself. On a final related note, in watching the film, also, I found great similarity between the film and the photographic works of Edward Steichen. Steichen, however, dates the photographs in question to the early 30s, meaning that there is little doubt he took great influence from Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großtadt, or films of a similar strain. So, here, for your viewing pleasure, is Steichen’s George Washington Bridge (1931), and The Maypole (1932):



A little more Cornell.


Posted purely out of interest in the association, here is Le sang d'un poète's Lee Miller's interpretation of what goes on in Joseph Cornell's head.


Dissapointingly, 'air-head' and 'figure-head' are terms that spring to mind, unfortunate as that is.