"...two weeks from everywhere."

What would Winston Smith be saying?

2009-12-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

Above is my copy of 1984. You cannot have it--in fact nobody can have it. If you want it, you will have to fight me for it. More importantly, if the government, police, some internet company, et cetera want it, they will have to forcibly attempt to enter my home to even get near it--and they better bring plenty of ammunition.

With that said, the first of the web destinations I visited for my presentation, was an entry on Jonathan Zittrain's blog, and was entitled "Orwellian Indeed." Basically, the article, or blog entry, or whatever the proper term is, is about Amazon's ambiguous--yet potentially ominous--faux pas with, ironically enough, George Orwell's 1984, and Animal Farm. We have talked about this enough times in class, so I shouldn't have to get to far into what Amazon did. It should be enough to say that some Kindle users had these two--fitting--and incendiary classics deleted from their "readers." Zittrain's blog entry briefly discusses some of the different implications of a company like Amazon being able to do something like this, and of course, the implications of institutions beyond Amazon being able to do something like this. For instance, he writes: "Another fascinating aspect of the Cloud [his term for the intangible world of all things "virtual"]: everything is rented rather than owned, and can be taken away with only a refund to show for it." Awesome!

He then includes a response he elicited from Amazon's Director of Communications, Drew Herdener (which might attest to Zittrain's qualifications and credentials), alleging that the were removed due to copyright issues--basically he says that the books were put in Amazon's archives (Jesus, is that the right word?) by "a third-party who did not have the rights to the books." Herdener says that the deletion was the only way for them--under the current circumstances--to deal with the situation, and concludes by assuring Zittrain that they are attempting to change things, so that they will not have to delete people's books in the future. Kind of sketchy if you ask me.

The last entry pertaining to Amazon's ominous imbroglio, that Zittrain posts, is the extremely humble and self-deprecating apology that Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos made to the public. "Our 'solution' to the problem," Brezos says at one point in the apology, "was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully our of line with our principles." To this, Zittrain writes that it is "hard to ask for more than that." I do not know if I agree, because that just sounds like an ingeniously crafted act of PR.

The site that this article is found, is basically a site dedicated to Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet: And How To Stop It. In the brief description of the book's content on the home page, Zittrain refers to all of the novel little gadgets that we have today, as increasingly being "tethered appliances." This means that they are increasingly becoming "products that can't be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners." Of course, the other--perhaps primary--concern is the increasing ability of "Big Brother" to look into our private lives. The site seems fairly well up to date, and all of the links are current and operating (if that too is the right word?). Zittrain's list of credentials is fairly voluminous, and includes a number of formidable scholarly positions and achievements, so in addition to the "domain" being a ".org," this site, book, and article seem to be fairly dependable. And with regards to being able to contact him, well, there is a blog, and an ongoing discussion, so I would say accessibility to the author is pretty much unlimited.

My second web destination is an essay entitled "Is the Internet the Harbinger to Orwell's Nightmares?" It was written by what looks to be a freelance "web developer" named Peter Braden. The essay is convincingly argued, and highlights a number of different ways that the internet seems to be manifesting circumstances--Orwellian circumstances--seen in Orwell's 1984. The essay is separated into five different sections: "Censorship," "Rewriting History," "Privacy," "The Internet Against Orwellianism," and the conclusion. He begins each section with a passage from 1984, and then discusses a modern circumstance that is similar to something that Orwell is describing in his book. For instance, he starts the section on rewriting history, which focuses on what something like Wikipedia is doing to the validity of information, and how corporations and the government get "in there" and tamper with stuff, with the following passage from Orwell's book:

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened--that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death."

I don't know about that though. As we all saw in the filmic adaptation in class, it is quite literally a "no-holds-barred" torturathon when the Party wants it to be (that rat scene bad enough in the book).

Despite what seems like it would have the potential to be an acute instance of "technophobia" (any time I see the word "Orwellian,' I figure the potential for fanaticism is there), this essay is fairly positive, and definitely pro-technology. Braden just seems to show a sincere concern for warning signs that the abuses are indeed possible--if not inevitable.

With regards to the credibility of the site, well, it is basically a really fancy blog--the domain is the U.K.'s version of our ".com." The site includes Braden's photography, a number of other completely unrelated essays, and his resume--in other words, the site is a fairly unapologetic display of "fawning self-promotion." Which is fine, I guess. This like the other web destination that I am looking at, do not contain any of those little advertisements that one finds at the New Yorker's site or anything...but...both of these sites are basically commercials for Braden and Zittrain. Other than that, the only money anyone is looking for, is, funny enough, a link to Pay-Pal on Braden's site, so you can "Buy [him] a drink." This site, like Zittrain's, contains updated links, that all seem to connect (damn, once again, is that the right word?) to the site that they are supposed to link to.

Despite the fact that Braden's site is in a "domain" equivalent to our ".com," his essay is thoroughly and convincingly argued," and despite any questionability of the source, a well formulated and argued assertion is difficult to ignore.

"...a trooper's life for every worker killed..."

2009-11-20T09:29:00.000-08:00

This week's blog is going to be a bit of a history lesson (if you will), and perhaps a rough draft of what might turn into the introduction and historical contextualization of the movement and union whose art, songbooks, posters, buttons, handbills and leaflets, and newspaper I plan to be examining for my final research paper--the Industrial Workers of the World (or, the Wobblies). I say lesson only because not only have I found that many people have never heard of the IWW, but they are viewed rather negatively by many historians because of their radicalism, and are often ignored. Keith and Sarah's comments regarding how completely useless and emasculated (in fact, often counterproductive and detrimental) modern labor unions have become, gave me the idea to work this out a little, "in here," via this forum.

Labor and class history have been a passion of mine since I was about 17 or 18 (as should be the case for any self-respecting Marxist), and before I go any further, I would like to give a really concise explanation of an event that I read about back when I was 17 or 18 that struck me to the heart, forever stirred my mind and my spirit, and is one of the primary reasons that the IWW in particular, and labor and class issues in general have remained so important in my studies. The event is often referred to as the Ludlow Massacre, and is one of the most lucid examples of the kind of shameless, indiscriminate, and vicious strike-breaking tactics used--without the slightest blink of an eye--by the industrialists and politicians of the twentieth century (in this case, the Rockefellers and Woodrow Wilson).

The Colorado coal strike of 1913-1914 was officially sparked as the result of the murder of a worker by a hired thug of the Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, and what the workers were striking against, in historian Howard Zinn's words, was "low pay, dangerous conditions, and feudal domination of their lives in towns completely controlled by the mining companies." Basically, they just wanted enough to live with a little happiness, health, and dignity and not in a slave-like state. The IWW led the strike.

As soon as the strike began whole towns of workers and their families were evicted from "their shacks" in the corporation's towns, and moved into giant shantytowns (or colonies) of tents in the hills. Throughout the strike, the Rockefellers sicced the Bladwin-Felts Detective Agency--with their Gatling guns and rifles--on the colonies (full of women and children), and so there were repeated shoot-outs between the strikers and these thugs, resulting in far more striker's deaths, than anyone else's. Regardless, the strikers persevered. When the strike had made it through the winter, the Rockefellers and the government decided they needed to take some kind of "extraordinary measures," and on the morning of April 20, 1914, these measures were taken against the largest tent colony of "a thousand men, women, [and] children."

Two national guard units fired machine guns indiscriminately into the colony, from hills overlooking the colonies. Although the miners fired back, they were completely outgunned, and positioned in utterly vulnerable locations. I'll use Zinn's words to explain the most deplorable aspect of this massacre:

"The women and children dug pits beneath the tents to escape the gunfire. At dusk, the Guard moved down from the hills with torches [and] set fire to the tents....the following day, a telephone linesman going through the ruins of the Ludlow tent colony lifted an iron cot covering a pit in one of the tents and found the charred, twisted bodies of eleven children and two women."

I wanted to include this to offer an idea of what it meant for workers to try to gain anything for themselves in the early and mid twentieth century. In this environment, the IWW stood out as a fierce and steadfast enemy to families like the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. In fact, the IWW stand out as perhaps the most revolutionary, egalitarian, and sincere union in America's history. They are considered an "anarcho-syndicalist" movement. This basically means that they felt--and I agree--that the only solution to poverty and privation is putting the means of production and distribution in the hands of the people. At a time of increasingly virulent racism and sexism, they welcomed every race and every sex, and equally assigned all tasks and responsibilities--women were some of the most powerful orators and fighters amongst them. And when many unions were exclusionary, and only allowed skilled workers, the IWW was all inclusive, and included all industrial workers.

When one studies about any of the different individual labor revolutionaries, activists, and agitators of the early to mid twentieth century, and sees that at one point or the other he or she have belonged to the IWW, than one automatically knows that she or he was fearless and wholeheartedly committed to "the one big union," which is the only kind of union that will probably ever be able to change things for the masses. That he or she was one of those radical individuals that wasn't afraid to strike back when struck--in the face of the kind of indiscriminate and malignant tactics described above, they "promised to take a troopers life for every worker killed."

The IWW did not sign contracts, and looked at each separate strike as but one battle in a class war whose ultimate goal is the means of production, in the hands of the people. A short passage from their founding constitution seems to say it all:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together...and take and hold that which they produce by their labor, through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party..."

Just as World War II, and all of the nationalist fervor and cracking-down on "un-American activities" spelt the end of leftist labor activism (and to say something to Keith's comments from last week, this period as far as I have studied, marked the end of labor's strength and value for good) in the U.S. at mid-century, World War I was used by the government and industrialists as its excuse to attack and--almost completely--destroy the IWW. Literally, almost every IWW union hall was simultaneously attacked and raided, and about a hundred of its key figures arrested all in one day. Leftist ideologies and Communist party connections and refusal to fight in World War I were the excuses.

OK, I know this is getting long, and I am thankful to any of you who have taken the time to read everything thus far--I'm almost done. So, as I stated, the IWW relied greatly on print technology to agitate, educate, inspire, and organize through posters, buttons, leaflets and handbills, a newspaper, and most importantly, what came to be known as The Little Red Songbook. Singing songs was a fundamental aspect of organizing and striking for the IWW, and aside from being an utterly efficacious way of emboldening men and women in the face of often fierce enemies and dire circumstances, and showing solidarity, I feel that it is one of the aspects of the IWW that illustrates what a genuinely civilized and human institution it was.

The two satiric cartoons included above, are extracted from Franklin Rosemont's comprehensive study of Joe Hill and the IWW, The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture, are just a hint of the kind of imagery and messages of the print-culture of the IWW, and are perhaps two of my favorites. The first is by IWW cartoonist, Charles E. Setzer, and it seems that the image is clear enough for you to be able to read it. I chose it because it illustrates the way the IWW supported black workers against things like Jim Crow laws, and the "color bar" in the craft unions--few if any other unions did at this time. The IWW knew that without total solidarity among industrial workers, labor would just remain fragmented and unable to defend itself.

The second is by one of my favorite Wobblies--the labor martyr, Joe Hill, whose famous last words before his assassination, "Don't waste time mourning, organize," remain an inspiration to many in the struggle. I like it especially because it illustrates how important, valued, and equal women were in the movement. Just in case the text is too small for you to read, the homeless man is saying "Gee my feet are sore," and the prostitute is saying "Come inside kid," and underneath it says, "He can't afford to have a home. She never had a chance. That's why they are both selling themselves: the highest bidder."

"If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists..."

Sniffin' glue, abscessed anal fistulas, pornographic coloring books...

2009-11-13T14:14:00.000-08:00

...and the effects of common pharmaceuticals taken in excessive quantities, are just a few delicious thematic drops in the infinitely eclectic and boundless ocean of topics, themes, digressions, concerns, and tangents in the zines that I have encountered thus far in my research.

The image above, is extracted from Liz Farrelly's graphic anthology of zines, imaginatively titled, Zines (I hope the image is big enough for you all to read the text and see the little stars). It is a page from a zine entitled Kachina, made by someone who goes by the--I'm assuming, pseudonymous--title of Mona Weiner, is produced here in the good ol' U. S. of A., and the material that this particular issue of Kachina is made out of, is cartridge paper.

The subject matter in Kachina is what some people might call, incendiary--maybe even downright dangerous. I love the little amerikkkan flags, made of stars and text which communicates different damning truths about this "culture" of ours, as it slips into a state of terminal decline.

I figured I'd include an imaginal extract or two from the zines that I am encountering, because I do not plan on focusing on layout, artistic attributes, or formal and technical qualities of zines--it will be hard enough to fit what I have already compiled in 10 to 12 pages, just focusing on the political, social, and cultural issues surrounding zine publishing. So, out of the innumerable quantity of cool, stirring, inexplicably original, astoundingly creative imagery and formats (I have found zines that come in little wooden boxes, and some whose covers are made of materials such as fake fur, foil, and plastic flowered shower curtain rings), I figured I'd at least share one of my favorites, and it is that page full of those dangerous little amerikkkan flags, included above. Since part of zine-making is stealing things from wherever one sees fit, I'm assuming my reproduction of the above page from Kachina is--with regards to matters of copyright--safe, appropriate, and encouraged.

With material like the page included above, it is pretty easy to argue that there is indeed a continuity in subject matter and intent between modern-day zines, and something like Thomas Paine's pamphlets The Crisis or Common Sense--likewise, between zines and the radical songbooks of the IWW labor union.

The sad thing is, my research concerning the many ways the radical, early twentieth-century labor union, the IWW (or the Wobblies) used print technology to organize and agitate, might become my whole topic, and I might be giving up on the zine aspect. Dr. Maruca, upon reading my research plan and how much material I have already compiled, said what I have is more of a senior thesis--not a 10 to 12 page paper. The Wobblies used leaflets, handbills, satiric cartoons (fucking with bosses, strike-breakers, and Pinkertons), and songbooks to agitate, organize, educate workers, and in general, cause a whole shitload of trouble for the malignant industrialists of the early to mid twentieth century.

The more radical the subject matter, the more irresistible it is...I can't help myself...

Compared to most of this semester's blogathon...

2009-11-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

...these blogs focusing on the research for the final paper/project, seem kind of boring. Shit, I do not have to worry about offending anyone with any of my foul language, or any of my acutely subjective broadsides, or any of my damning condemnations of this university's student-body. B...o...r...i...n...g!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With that said, I do indeed believe I have decided to focus on my 'zine idea, and have found a few sources to deal with, outside of the punk-rock and skateboarding worlds that comprise most of my material up to this point. One book I found is entitled--creatively enough--Zines, by Liz Farrelly. I haven't had a chance to get to deep into it...but...I am afraid that it is especially focused on layout and other formal and technical aspects of 'zines, and not the social, cultural, and political aspects and relevance that I had hoped to focus on. Although, some of the first 'zines she shows the covers of include some typically incendiary and silly titles, that I have come to love and expect from subversive 'zines--such as Maximum Speed; Crust; Plotz; Cheap Date; Come On In, The War's Fine; Temp Slave; Monk Mink Pink Punk; and of course my favorite, Sniffin Glue.

Some of the tiles from skateboarding 'zines are just as awesome--if not better--than many of these punk-rock/political titles. For instance, dimentia, Skate Fate, acid love, dancing skeleton, contort, smelly curb, Kill Rocco 'zine, and My Head Size (just to name a tiny little few).

Speaking of skateboarding 'zines, Thrasher Magazine (which many consider the bible of skateboarding, and which started out as a 'zine, and for many years was made of newsprint that turned your fingers black), to this day, does a monthly 'zine round up. Wez Lundry is the dude that does the review, and one of his...uh...barometers for judging the length and depth of 'zines, is the amount of visits to the "throne" that the 'zine will provide entertainment for. In other words, one 'zine might be worth--and I'm quoting here--"a couple of turds" worth of reading (yeah, so much for not offending anyone), or some longer 'zines might even be worth "two or three visits to the shitter."

Another funny part of Lundry's review section, are the little extracts from the 'zines, that he fills the page with. One of my favorites is as follows: The image is of a punk-rock looking guy with a microphone in his hand, who is being choked from behind by a huge bouncer-looking fella', and is surrounded by a bunch of other angry looking fellas' who look like they are trying to get the microphone out of his hand. The caption attached to this photo says: "But the sign out front said open-mike night!"

I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, the other tome I found on 'zines looks to deal with more of their social, political, counterculture qualities, which is what I wanted to focus most of my attention on--especially if I am going to try to illustrate some continuities between punk-rock/skateboarding 'zines, and something like Common Sense from Thomas Paine. I see many parallels regarding the ways in which they have been published and distributed, and the underlying theme of social, political, and cultural subversion. This second book is entitled Notes From Underground, by Stephen Duncombe, and the epigraph is as follows:

"wandering between two worlds, one dead,the other powerless to be born"

I guess I'll see soon enough if this seems as helpful as it looks like it might be. I told Dr. Maruca that I was a little discouraged about finding sources that would help me to draw some kind of line between early subversive pamphlets and publications in this country, and the 'zines that I have contributed to, and which I have been reading since I was given my first copy of the Anarchist Cookbook and GBH's album City Baby Attacked By Rats by the older punk-rockers and anarchists that got a kick out of stirring my adolescent mind, when I was about twelve years old or so (when I first started listening to punk-rock, I still played with Star Wars figures, and since my folks wouldn't let me leave the house with my mohawk standing up, I would stand it up with Aqua-Net, just to listen to GBH, the Stooges, and Black Flag, and play with my Star Wars figures in the house). Dr. Maruca said something along the lines that I may be wandering in uncharted territory of a sort, which excites me.

I also thought of looking for continuities between 'zines, and the literature and leaflet-making of the communistic and anarchistic labor unions of the early twentieth-century--especially the IWW (the Industrial Workers of the World), or as they came to be known, the Wobblies. They relied greatly on leaflets and small song-books to organize, and I see a definite similarity.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll--of course--keep at it. As always, if anyone has any advice, comments, insults, et cetera, please send them along...

Both of the topics that I am considering...

2009-11-02T02:51:00.000-08:00

...involve countercultures that I have been immersed in for well over twenty years now. Likewise, both topics will--albeit in varying degrees--deal with subversive and independently produced literature, social and political critique, and art.

The first topic that I am considering (and the one that I am most probable to choose) would be an examination of the fanzine (or 'zine"), and the vital and irrevocable role it has played in the subversive worlds of punk-rock and independently released music, and skateboarding--skateboarding and punk-rock being fairly synonymous for as long back as one cares to remember. I am told that there exist something called "e-zines." These are by no means what I am talking about. What I am talking about, is the myriad of underground, often anarchic, independently produced periodicals from deep within the bowels of the worlds of skateboarding and punk-rock, that genuinely embody the DIY, independent ethos behind these countercultures. These 'zines are often nothing more than 81/2" x 11" paper printed on all sides, folded in half, and stapled, but they are the primary forums for many "scenes" throughout the world, and are vital in this way. In fact, many "scenes" radiate outward from 'zines. The terms "copy and paste," or, "cut and paste" come from making 'zines, because, when one makes a 'zine, generally one literally cuts and pastes.

That is my attempt to concisely describe what these independent, underground periodicals are--I think I failed, because they encompass so many things. Nevertheless, aside from dealing with 'zines themselves, and the roles they play in "scenes," what they are comprised of, et cetera, I would like to attempt to follow their evolution back to early revolutionary periodicals and pamphlets of subversion and dissidence, that also--of pure necessity--have been independently produced and disseminated, such as, for instance, Common Sense by Thomas Paine. I feel 'zines are yet another generation of the underground press in this country.

I am a little worried about sources. I have not had a chance to research this much, but I have contributed to a number of 'zines in the Detroit area (and in the other cities I have lived in), and I hope that my experience will help guide my research. Oddly enough, and to give an idea of how eclectic some of these 'zines have been, I have written articels on American history for a 'zine that was primarily a skateboarding 'zine--I am especially proud of an essay I wrote on the Ludlow coal-miner strike of 1913 and 1914, which ended up being called the Ludlow Massacre.

OK--the other topic I am considering, as I have already stated, also deals with a subversive counterculture--graffiti. Although I have never "painted" myself, I have been a bit of a patron to the world of graffiti, especially in the city of Detroit. For a few years I was the owner of a skateboard company (it seems funny calling it a company) called, Mother. All of the art on our boards and shirts was done by two of the most prolific graffiti-kids in the city at the time (meaning they were up everywhere), Mesh and Dibs. Not only this, but after the first run of decks, we stopped having the graphics screened on the boards, and instead, Mesh and Dibs hand-painted them all. I would bring boxes full of blank boards to their apartment at Forest and Second, give them money for supplies and food and rent, and they hand-painted all of them. What's funny is, no self-respecting graffiti-artist actually pays for their spray-paint or markers, so despite me giving them money for supplies, they still stole them anyway--yes, truly subversive indeed.

Anyway, despite being utterly esoteric to the untrained eye, graffiti--whether it is the sophomoric characters painted by gangs, or the elaborate works of art by graffiti-kids--is indeed its own written language. It is a truly anarchic activity, in its utter disregard for the integrity of "property." With this in mind, I would like to focus on--among other things--how it is now, that graffiti artists are being paid massive amounts of money, and being regarded as "true" artists, with shows in galleries and all that. I guess you could say, I am planning to examine the attempted confinement and trivialization of it--or you could say, how the main-stream is attempting to co-opt and control it. This would include examining how the underground world of graffiti is responding--mainly, how graffiti-kids who paint anything other than buildings, trucks, overpasses, et cetera lose respect and venerability the more they paint pieces for galleries and exhibits.

Yeah, the above descriptions of my topics are admittedly real broad and general, and I plan to start narrowing them, and focusing on one or the other this week.

Creativity, Censorship, and...Hitler?

2009-10-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

"They will draw a sigh of relief and express their joyous agreement with this purification of art."

Adolph Hitler

After my insurmountable boredom with, and consequent inability to muster any kind of scholarly, insightful, or even sarcastic response to last week's readings, Doctor Maruca's essay on "Women in the Eighteenth-Century Text Trades" is more like it. Hell, by the end of the second epigraph I was already stirred, because the issue of how exactly censorship and creativity work together--or more aptly put, work against each other--is a very delicious topic to me.

According to Doctor Maruca's second epigraph, Lord Chesterfield declares that despite the admitted plausibility of the eternal insistence of many, "that arts and sciences cannot flourish under an absolute government; and that genius must necessarily be cramped where freedom is restrained," Lord Chesterfield insists that this "is false in fact." No, no, no, according to Lord Chesterfield, artists and scientists should always be able to flourish, because, "the despotism of government" notwithstanding, artists and scientists will always, in some confined, imprisoned, suffocated, unrealistic way, be able to find "subjects enough to exert genius upon." Awesome...piece of cake!

The first thing the aforementioned imbecilic balderdash from Lord Chesterfield brought to mind, is a book that I have dealt with entitled Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, by Frederic Spotts, and in particular, chapter eleven of said book, entitled "The Failure of National Socialist Realism." Now, despite the ways in which Doctor Maruca illustrates how "eighteenth-century English censorship, rather than being purely repressive, was productive of certain types of discourse," the other 99% of the time, the imbecilic balderdash of Lord Chesterfield is as wrong as wrong can be. And the aforementioned chapter from Spotts' book, lucidly illustrates one example of how.

Basically...well...aside from being the eternity-wide poster-child for pure, unadulterated human malignancy, Adolph Hitler was also a patron of the arts--in fact, he was an artist himself, albeit a misunderstood and undervalued one. Anyway, after the capitulation of the Weimar Republic to the murderous force of the SS juggernaut around 1933, Hitler, among many other acutely nationalistic endeavors, sought to show the world the brilliance of the art of the Third Reich. So in July of 1937, at his garishly constructed House of German Art, he had the first annual Great German Art Exhibition, "simultaneously and right across the street from" what was referred to as "the degenerate show." In other words, across the street from the show of artists who were not Nazis or Nazi supporters, which included according to Hitler, "Modernist, Bolshevist, [and] Jewish influences." Hitler liked the century old German Realism of "the fatherland," which included subjects like "landscapes, flowers, animals, family scenes, [and] portraits," not "sloppy paintings where you cannot tell which is top or bottom." And he had his first exhibit right across the street from, and at the exact same time as "the degenerates" to show "Germany and the world" the supremacy of the art of the Third Reich.

Hitler's whole exhibit quickly became an enormous and humiliating fiasco, complete with him repeatedly throwing pitiful--yet obviously ominous--temper tantrums, that would ultimately result in the resignation of his head curator, Gerdy Troost. Aside from the modernist influences that unavoidably found their way into his exhibit, the bottom line was that the massive amount of art that he commissioned, plain and simply sucked. As Spotts writes, Hitler "erred in thinking that by getting control over artists he was getting a grip on the arts...he soon learned that even totalitarian power has its limits...

...It can ban and burn art, and imprison and kill artists, but it cannot incubate talent."

Which in some cases, is fine...eh? Some despots and dictators are fine with failure and people that don't listen to them...psych! To follow Lord Chesterfield's line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, we need only examine Hitler's response to the failure of the artists in Germany to succumb and acquiesce to his ideas of art. Or to put this in Lord Chesterfield's words, we need only examine Hitler's response to the artists in Germany who refused to confine themselves to what Hitler thought was "subjects enough to exert genius upon." To these artists Hitler warned:

"By standing foursquare on the principle that someone who considers himself a painter but submits some kind of garbage is either a swindler, therefore belonging in prison, or a buffoon, therefore suited for an insane asylum, or, if his mental state is confused, a concentration camp to be reeducated, the exhibition will be a real terror for the incompetent."

This has nothing to do with our readings and will inevitably piss someone off.

2009-10-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: The following contains coarse and vulgar language. Those with fragile temperaments, sensitive ears (eyes), and/or who do not get out of the house much, should probably abandon ship right here...seriously.

This week's readings bore me. I do not want to write about either of them. And seeing as I am ahead on points, and have plenty of weeks left to fulfill the 100 possible points for these blogs, I am going to write about something that pisses me off, concerns all of us here at Wayne, and will probably piss at least one of you off (at me, I mean). How does that old saying go? "Tell people lies and they will build monuments to you, tell them the truth, and they'll kill you for it," or something like that. Anyway, although there is a particular incident that the following broadside is pointed at, this incident is merely one foul manifestation of a much broader debacle. I've wanted to say something about the following incident to someone...anyone, for a while now, and since I have come to respect many of you--my dearest classmates--through this forum and our class discussions, I figure who better to share my concerns with?

So, to get right to the heart of the matter, and to introduce the wretched hyena of a problem that my grievances are directed towards, I will starkly and simply state...

...fuck "Midtown"!

Fuck Starbucks. Fuck condos and $100,000.00 lofts right next to squalor. In this respect, fuck the expensive gated-community on Alexandrine, between Second and Third. And fuck what has happened to what used to be a Dally in an alley.

"Midtown" is a fatuous, public-relations, marketing euphemism for what is, and always should be the Cass Corridor, and the complex mixture of human beings that the Cass Corridor has always been comprised of. I like how all of these hipsters, artists, yuppies, intellectuals, and affluent eccentrics, who all think they are the most progressive and conscious individuals in town, think that you can turn the Cass Corridor into "Midtown," and not have it be at the expense of a whole community full of poor people. For as often as these urbane people decorate their progressive, conscious outlooks with impressive and lofty ideals that condemn ignominies like blatant, cruel, and unapologetic gentrification--or even more fitting to what is happening to the Cass Corridor, sterilization--they sure don't mind that it is exactly this sterilization that has made it safe enough and clean enough for them to move "to the city" to reinvent themselves as the hip, urbane, conscious city-goers that they--for now at least--fancy themselves as. Never underestimate the power of denial.

Wayne State is an open sore...

...as a good friend of mine once said, "it is the meeting-place of the haves and the have-nots." It is a section of this area, where one daily witnesses disheartening manifestations of what it takes to turn the Cass Corridor into "Midtown." It is the most rigid police state that I have had to deal with on such a consistent basis. One particular incident that I had the misfortune to witness, aptly illustrates one aspect of the problem.

One morning, on a weekday, a few weeks before the end of the summer semester, I had been skating downtown all morning, and around 11:00 or so, I was skating north on Cass, back up to my apartment at Antoinette. An ambulance, heading north, rushed pass me around Willis or so. As I approached Warren, I got off of my board so as to walk across Warren. Ahead, in front of the science building, and across from La Pita, the ambulance had stopped, and I saw a couple of cop cars as well. All of a sudden, I saw someone attempt to run away from the cops and the paramedics, just to fall to the ground in the street, at which time I heard the unmistakable, nauseating, and troubling sound of a taser.

The man was black, and from what little I saw of him, looked like he was probably homeless.

As I was about to jump back on my board, once I had crossed Warren, this random bunch of frat-boy-looking white males were passing me, who had just witnessed this shit situation, and they were joking and fucking laughing about it. One looked at me, with an infuriating shit-eating grin on his face, and exuberantly told me that "they tased him!" I guess he expected some kind of empathetic response from me to his jovial approval of the aforementioned man's tasing, because this frat-boy-looking white student--along with most of the group that was with him--looked fairly confused when I growled back at him...

..."and you motherfuckers think that's fucking funny?!"

The whole scene was the foulest thing I witnessed all summer, and as far as I am concerned, aptly illustrates what kind of deplorable circumstances surround turning the Cass Corridor into "Midtown." As I skated by the cops, the paramedics, and the man that had been tased, I didn't look, because I am cool enough with myself, and life, that I don't need to gawk at this kind of treacherous shit. What I couldn't help to catch, were the smirks on the paramedics (for crying out loud); the man still laid-out groaning on the concrete; the smiles on random passers-by; and most of all, the elation and pleasure and entertainment a bunch of jackals and hyenas across the street at La Pita were having over this man's problems, while they ate tabouli and hummus at the sidewalk tables, on this otherwise beautiful summer day.

I don't--necessarily--blame the cops, because I did not witness what led to the tasing. Hey, maybe the man had left the cops no other choice, and tasing him was the most humane way to deal with him (however that works). Nevertheless...

...fuck the group of frat-boy-looking white students that derived such pleasure from one man's problems, and fuck all of those students at La Pita with the smiles on their faces as they ate their tabouli and hummus, and were so entertained by what had happened.

I know this kind of indifference to other people's misfortunes is indicative of the kind of moral and social rot that increasingly plagues this terminally declining country, and which people love to watch on their televisions, but come on, this is supposed to be a place of "higher learning." I expect this kind of jovial indifference and pleasure towards the plight of homeless people, from all of the inebriated, white assholes that make downtown unbearable during sporting events (and the Hoedown), not from students at Wayne State.

As we each witness the disheartening manifestations of the transformation of the Cass Corridor to "Midtown," that spill over on to this campus, the very least we can do, is remember that these individuals which are being rousted, harassed, arrested, and assaulted by the police, are human beings, and conduct ourselves befitting this realization--conduct ourselves how we would want others to conduct themselves if we were in similar circumstances.

"Now look who is laughing at his brother in the mud. Now look at who is asking, 'where is that brotherly love'?"

Sizzla Kalonji

"At the expense of others"?

2009-10-09T06:27:00.000-07:00

In the introduction to The Zinn Reader, historian and activist Howard Zinn writes:

"There was never, for me as teacher and writer, an obsession with 'objectivity', which I considered neither possible nor desirable [my italics]. I understood early that what is presented as 'history'...is inevitably a selection out of an infinite amount of information, and that what is selected depends on what the selector thinks is important....I was relieved when I decided that keeping one's judgments out of historical narrative was impossible, because I had already determined that I would never do that....the world is already moving in certain directions--many of them horrifying. Children are going hungry, people are dying in wars. To be neutral in such a situation is to collaborate with what is going on [my italics]."

I must beg the pardon of whatever readers that I am fortunate enough to share my thoughts with here, as I know that such a lengthy quote in this type of forum may not necessarily be appropriate, but...

...I simply could not help myself.

That passage from Professor Zinn's book, was in my mind throughout my reading of Ronald J. Deibert's--admittedly--thoroughly and convincingly argued chapters from Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia. And I will soon get to Deibert's chapters, but first must say one last thing about Professor Zinn's view of dealing with history. This would be that Professor Zinn has concisely summed the aforementioned sentiment up by simply asserting that:

"You can't be neutral on a moving train."

No, no, no, some of us--for good or ill--are simply not made that way. And thus, I (me, personally) can wholeheartedly relate to Professor Zinn when he warns his readers, as I guess I am warning you, dearest readers, that in the following words, and unlike the case of Deibert's chapters, you will not find "any hint of 'neutrality'."

With all of that said (and I apologize, I know it is a lot), and as I stated above, Deibert's argument is thoroughly convincing. Simply put, he seems as correct as correct can be. There is no getting around the substantial part that printing has played in the rise of capitalism, and "the new world order." And of course, under the sweeping and malignant umbrella of capitalism, as Deibert notes, we find circumstances such as, for instance, centralized governmental bureaucracies; "complex division[s] of labor"; the narrowing, hardening, and proliferation of borders; and of course, along with all of this fun stuff, wars. War is immensely lucrative. In fact, war just might be the most lucrative capitalist venture there is. As the incendiary journalist, Randolph Bourne, wrote back in 1914: "War is the health of state." I mean, World War II ended the Depression--stopped it dead in its tracks. From a capitalist perspective, World War II was the best thing that could have happened to the U.S. at that point.

But I digress. Or do I?

Once again, I am not trying to refute the validity of any part of Deibert's argument, as I have already said, he's done his homework, and these chapters are indeed convincing. My problem is how completely creepy it is to read someone, who so thoroughly examines all of these disheartening stages of the growth and spread of something that exists at the expense of such a vast multitude of human beings--meaning capitalism--but who does so in such a cold, utterly objective, matter-of-fact manner, and with such dismissive indifference to the oppression that grew right along with capitalism. He does not once express a sentiment of regret or dismay. And hey, that probably makes him a much better historian or political scientist than I will ever be...but, so what?

I mean, at the end of chapter three, he concludes by writing that he has "described how the introduction of printing in medieval Europe brought about specific distributional changes that empowered certain actors and social forces at the expense of others [my italics]." But the only "others" he specifically mentions, is the hegemony of the papacy. This is really irritating to me.

"At the expense of others"? How about the mass of people that all of a sudden were now imprisoned in a capitalist state? After all, printing in these new centralized bureaucracies simply made it so the class system was infinitely more organized, solidified, and methodical than it ever could have been under the papacy. Simply put, the oppressed had never been so oppressed. Or as Deibert even indifferently notes, the mass of people, under the development of capitalism, now could be said to be increasingly living in Michel Foucault's "disciplinary state." At the expense of others indeed. How about all of the "common people" fighting, being maimed, and dying in all of these wars, to protect these borders, and all of these "imagined communities" that all of this printing has helped to proliferate and strengthen? Is it at their expense too? Do they not deserve at least a trace of recognition...perhaps just parenthetically?

As a de facto Marxist--if you will--I have to balance the undeniable advantages of something like printing, with the undeniable disadvantages (of course, any conscious soul must). I know this. Nevertheless, I can not help feeling that my problem with Deibert's chapters, are in some way, an example of the problems that arise from "the interdisciplinarity" that Howsam writes about. In just trying to focus on printing and the printing press, he unavoidably has to brush up against other issues and circumstances, outside of the thesis he is focusing on, and though he illuminates them in some degree, by brushing by them, to stick with his narrow topic, he is forced to completely ignore them...or something like that...I guess.

I also have to acknowledge that my conclusions are based on an incomplete reading of Deibert's book--just three chapters. But based on these three chapters, I feel that Deibert's thorough and objective study of this narrow topic opens a number of doors to other, more dire consequences of the introduction of printing, and then just walks past these open doors without taking the slightest glance in...

"To be neutral in such a situation is to collaborate with what is going on."

"Hands, touchin hands, Reachin out, Touchin me, Touchin You"

2009-10-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Once again, what follows contains allusions to debauched and immoral behavior.

This is going to be a difficult one to be serious and scholarly towards, and consequently, I beg the pardon of whatever readers may happen upon what follows, as I am sure to occasionally, arbitrarily, and--perhaps--involuntarily sink into lapses of fatuous doggerel and outright immature sarcasm.

Case in point: so let me get this straight, Johannes Trithemius (that old SOB) has a monastery full of young monks, whom, like all young men, are unavoidably subject to "vain and pernicious thoughts," and of course, indulging in these "lower passions," and Trithemius (that old SOB) thinks that forcing these young monks to sit, alone, in their "cells" (and isn't it ironic that these rooms for the young scribes are called cells?) vast amounts of time--in fact, most of their days--copying scripture and such, is going to prevent these young monks from...well...since we are all adults here...giving it a yank from time to time?

Sure...piece of cake. Trithemius has it all covered...keeping the hands and eyes occupied...hand, eyes, writing, eye/hand coordination...yes indeed, I'm sure his intention to suppress these young mens' "idle desires" wouldn't have been nearly as efficacious, if he would have, instead, suggested something like...say...long-distance running.

Given the fairly glaring nature of Trithemius' real reasons for writing this "praise," it is damn nigh impossible to take anything he writes about, concerning the alleged merits and benefits of "the labor of writing" seriously. I mean, of course, dude is utterly and completely wrong about the life-span of books and paper--which is probably unnecessary to even note, considering he does not make the slightest attempt to justify, explain, qualify, or support his assertion, and thus, probably didn't believe it himself.

In this respect, any and all of his points regarding subjects like the longevity of the written word as opposed to the fleeting nature of the spoken word, or the spiritual benefits of the work of scribes, and of course the right to eat that accompanies this work, all start to sound like the glum and dour buffoonery of a spiteful and unrealistic old monastic wing-nut, making up a bunch of bullshit, so as to cram his ideas of the indispensability of "obedience" down the throats of a bunch of--for the most part, poor--young men (and thus obliterate the precious, fleeting, and beautiful vitality and spirit of youth in all of them) who have been forced into the drudgery of monastic life due to matters of circumstance.

I think that Johannes Trithemius sounds like he must have been a riot to hang out with. Generally, I have found that such has been the case with the people that one encounters who insist that "nothing but good can come of obedience." Nothing but good indeed. After all, without "obedience," and especially the kind of absolute and blind obedience that Trithemius (that old SOB) is talking about, how could history have had its Nazis and Hitlers, and Stalins, and indian-massacring Andrew Jacksons, and Pol Pots, and slavery, and genocide, et cetera...

"...knowledge unfits a child to be a slave."

2009-09-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

I am reading Angela Y. Davis's (the ex-Black Panther) book, Women, Race, and Class, and I am just now in the chapter entitled, "Education and Liberation: Black Women's Perspective." This is basically a thorough and stirring account of all of the measures and lengths and sacrifices and risks that slaves and freedmen went to, and took, for an education, in antebellum and postbellum America--of course risking every kind of wretched form of retribution that the demons and nasferatus who made up the slaveocracy, could come up with.

"Black people were allegedly incapable of intellectual advancement," Davis writes, but if this was the case, "no prohibition of learning would have been necessary." And of course, there were all kinds of laws forbidding the education of black folks.

Anyway, the primary reason for this blog entry, is because the following quote from Davis's book, seems like it illustrates quite aptly, how little it really takes to make a space a "study":

"A pile of books is seen in almost every cabin, though there be no furniture except a poor bed, a table and two or three broken chairs."

The view from my apartment...

2009-09-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

When I got to the section in our reading from Roger Chartlier entitled, "The library, retreat [my italics] from the world," I got a little tense and thought, "wait a minute, do not tell me this yutz is going to try to illuminate some way in which libraries could be thought to be an avoidance of reality, in the same way--for instance--that some of us feel the banal infinitude of the 'information superhighway' is"! But he of course does not--in fact, this section of Chartier's article rung so many bells in my own head, pertaining to the way in which I value my own relatively small, yet dense and broad collection of books, and the invaluable solace of my "study," that I had to read the section twice. I guess what got me at first, was his use of the word retreat, which makes it sound like one is trying to act like the world is not out there (which definitely seems the case with a great number of the sociopathic misanthropes out there, who seem to have lost the ability to have a face to face, human conversation outside of the false reality that the internet often serves as, and who can only speak in digital type, and mostly with irritating, grammatically challenged grunts, fragments, and acronyms).

Although Chartier does deal with public libraries, the most important sense of the word "library," that he deals with, is actually probably more aptly put, when he calls it a "study." This seems to convey the personal and individualistic importance of what he is examining. Quite simply, he quotes, a study is a "place for keeping 'one's most precious goods', not only useful and rare books but one's own self." I do indeed believe, after a few discourses now with the other "bibliophiles" in our class (and you know who you are), that there are plenty of us that, if we do not necessarily have our own study per se, we by all means have a place in which we can gloat over whatever kind of collection of books we have been able to collect, and an adjacent area that silently tells our own personal history through all of the personal artifacts that end up on the shelves and the walls that surround said collection of books.

This is not an area, for the most part, to share with many people. It is an area to do essential things like, well, of course read, study, research, and write, but also--for instance--meditate, contemplate, lick one's wounds, burn incense, put one's new skateboard together, clean one's gun (or guns), pace, drink cognac, talk to oneself, pray, take refuge, do push-ups, listen to music, and in general, provide oneself with the solitude that is the grounding and empowering counterbalance to all of the often monotonous, unnerving, and taxing social stuff we all deal with every day, and thus, enable oneself to live a genuinely complete life. I have friends--especially a couple with kids and a spouse--who do not have such an area, nor do they really get much time for any kind of solitude, and thus they are reduced to driving up to the store to buy shit they really do not need, so they can sneak a couple of hits off of a joint, and maybe listen to a little music. Some of us simply could never live that way.

"The hours spent in the library," Chartier explains, "are hours of withdrawal in two senses, which define the essence of privacy in the modern era." These two senses, he continues, are the withdrawal from "the public sphere" and all that it encompasses, and the withdrawal from the often suffocating confines of domesticity. It seems to me, that without the consistent opportunity to enjoy such refuge and solitude, one is not living a genuinely free life. I mean, obviously one's "study" is not going to be as extravagant as that of that Montaigne rogue that Chartier describes, nor is one's own personal book collection going to be as voluminous, broad, and meticulously organized and displayed as John Locke's. And they do not need to be, to serve their purpose. One's "library is a place from which one can see without being seen, which gives a kind of power to the person...[a] power over the knowledge accumulated in the books that the eye takes in at a glance."

From my "study" (the front room in my apartment), my horizons have no limits. I can see Thoreau writing in his dwelling next to Walden Pond, and also, pleading for the life of Captain John Brown, when all that man wanted, was to free the slaves. I can see Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov in nineteenth century Russia, telling a pig that some people have a right to commit crimes. I can see the invaluable, radical, Wobbly labor organizer, Joe Hill, uttering his last words before he was assassinated: "Don't waste time mourning...organize!" I can see Niccolo Machiavelli in sixteenth century Italy, warning men of power for centuries to come, that nothing is more important in the governance of people, than lies and deception. I can see Thomas Paine reminding his countrymen, as America's war for independence was becoming inevitable, that "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." I can see the German revolutionary and martyr, Ulrike Meinholf, when she warned all of the ex-Nazis that still pervaded Germany's government and academic institutions after World War II:

"Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too."

And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on...

"...a handful of magic goat dung..."

2009-09-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Robert Darnton writes that, in the old French tale about that rogue, Kiot-Jean, after the father of ol' Kiot-Jean's true love has forbidden the two from seeing each other (because Kiot-Jean is poor) Kiot-Jean decides to consult the wisdom of an old witch. And what does the witch do to help? Well, she gives him "a handful of magic goat dung." And what does this formidable pile of shite do? Well, it makes everyone in Kiot-Jean's love's family (including his love), fart, uncontrollably. In fact, it makes them fart to the point that they can't get anything done in the household. Not just that, but, the priest, who has the misfortune to be hanging out at the house, ultimately is rendered null and void by what Darnton refers to as "a spectacular string of farts."

What the?

Finally Kiot-Jean promises them all that he can help, in exchange of course for his true love. And seeing that the farting has made life in the household "impossible" (one can only imagine), the father acquiesces to Kiot-Jean's demand, and he gets his girl. Of course, after he "surreptitiously" removes the dung.

I don't know...that very well may be my favorite tale out of all of the tales that we encounter in Darnton's...uh...stirring chapters. It is either that one, or the one about that treacherous old SOB, La Ramee. That story, Darnton explains, is similar to the aforementioned story about Kiot-Jean, in that it follows the time-proven formula of the "underdog boy meets overprivileged [sic] girl." Yes indeed, when the king reneges on his promise to allow poor ol' La Ramee to marry his daughter, by offering up another suitor of higher status to compete with La Ramee, and then forces the princess to sleep with both to choose, La Ramee ends up hustling them all. Of course, he, does not have a gnarly, fart-inducing "handful of magic goat dung." No, no, no, although La Ramee also ends up winning his love, he has to settle with the old sophomoric parlor trick of "dispatching a flea into his rival's anus." Yeah, that sounds kind of bush-league to me too, especially compared to the daunting power of Kiot-Jean's "handful of magic goat dung."

Mother of babbling god, I have tangentially meandered way off of the coherent path of scholarly discussion which I had intended to follow "in here." All I wanted to start off with, for crying out loud, was the sincere admission that most of the old French tales that Darnton burdens us with in his chapters, are paradoxically some of the funniest, strangest, and most troubling words that I have read in a long while. Of course, as we all know, the tales that I have mentioned above can really be said to be--dear god--light hearted compared to a number of the others. But as Darnton writes, "from rape and sodomy to incest and cannibalism...the storytellers of eighteenth-century France portrayed a world of raw and naked brutality." And he by all means manages to supply us with a plethora of harrowing historical tidbits about widespread acute privations, catastrophes, wars, poverty, and plagues that are all of seemingly biblical proportions, to help explain why these tales are the way they are, and more importantly, what they are.

Which is, in so many words, pressure valves. After all, it must be easy--and dare I say, perhaps even appropriate--to joke and spin about themes such as rape and cannibalism when you've had little or nothing to eat in days (due to reasons of circumstance of course, and not because you're some new-age kook trying out the latest "power-cleanse"), two-thirds of your village is dead and/or dying from a plague started by the fleas on rats, and despite all of this, some royal asshole and his army of murderous dingbats and flunkies still expect their "dues, tithes, ground rents, and taxes."

Now, in this regard, although the tales that Darnton deals with elicit a myriad of different questions, one keeps coming to my mind, and it involves a major and seemingly glaring thematic difference between the old French tales, and the slave tales that we read about in the chapters from Lawrence Levine. I would never want to get into any kind of comparative analysis of which catastrophe was worse, or which conditions and circumstances were worse, or who suffered more between the peasants of eighteenth-century France, and the slaves of North America. The two debacles were deplorable and disheartening, and seem--for the most part--incomparable. It should suffice to say, that the human beings dealing with both sets of circumstances were dealing with circumstances that were harsh and deplorable enough that (as we discussed in class) none of us, by any stretch of the imagination, will ever be able to genuinely relate.

With that said, I can not help but to wonder why exactly the French tales needed to express such extreme levels of depravity and morbidity, yet the slave tales did not? There are similarities that we have discussed, the most important of which would seem expressed when Darnton explains, that despite the fact that the tales often depicted the "humiliation" and duping of the powers and people over the French peasants (and likewise, the powers and people over the North American slaves), there were few--if any--delusions expressed about conquering these powers and people, or for that matter, altering their circumstances and situations. "In most of the tales," Darnton explicates, "wish fulfillment turns into a program for survival, not a fantasy of escape....despite the occasional touches of fantasy, then, the tales remain rooted in the real world." For the most part, as we have read, this was the case with the slave tales as well.

So, the above is my question--why did the French tales need to depict such depravity and morbidity, yet the slave tales did not? I'm not--in any way--saying it necessarily means that the French were more morbid or depraved than the North American slaves were, or that either situation and set of circumstances were worse than the other, I am just wondering what some of you--my most appreciated academic colleagues--might think was the difference?

"Islands of seals"

2009-09-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: What follows is a genuine example of something that is truly, "neither here nor there."

I do not know why I feel as compelled as I do, to comment on this, but for some reason it seems related to Dr. Maruca's request for a blog entry pertaining to a "significant [although this is by no means significant] experience with literacy and technology." If nothing else, what follows shows a fairly trivial reason (and there are not many in my case) that maybe this whole technology gig isn't all bad.

So, in the grips of my often dizzying and infinite eclecticism when it comes to music, I have been on a Go-Gos trip the last few days. Now, before you start laughing at me, it is important to remember that the Go-Gos have pretty subversive roots (Belinda Carlisle was the drummer for The Germs after all). Anyway, off of Youtube, I downloaded the videos for "Our Lips are Sealed," and "Vacation" last night (incidentally, if you look up The Go-Gos Vacation 1982, there is a sick live performance). As I scroll down the comments, someone has written that when he or she was a kid, they thought that they were singing, instead of "Our Lips are Sealed," "Islands of Seals"--that was her or his whole comment. I'm not exactly sure why, but that struck me as being so completely and totally ridiculous that I nearly shot Cognac out of my nose, all over my Mac contraption from laughing so hard.

Yeah, like I said, this entry was not going to be a real...uh...scholarly one. I have often referred to "the information superhighway," as being made up of a banal infinitude (and I don't mind if you use that one, I'll share), and the above is just one, little, sole drop in that vast, limitless ocean. Which, I guess, is my point. Where else can you express such a fatuous and silly, and seemingly useless fact like "Islands of Seals"? So...uh...yeah, this entry has something to do with technology, but how exactly it might relate to issues of literacy is a whole other...uh...yeah...

The Book as "artefact"?

2009-09-10T05:41:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Part of what follows is of a relatively personal nature, and includes brief depictions of rude and unsavory behavior...but...is necessary to illustrate my point, so please bear with me.

Leslie Howsam's Old Books and New Histories may be a short book (in fact, an essay), but as we all know after reading it, it is indeed dense, and confronts and illuminates a myriad of questions, difficulties, and issues pertaining to what she often refers to as "Book History." Consequently, I will be focusing on one particular aspect of her argument, which will also tie in to a personal "significant experience with literacy and technology" that I have had, and which I feel is profoundly connected to one of the points she raises in her book. I say technology, meaning that I consider the book, to be a technological tool--in fact, I consider the book, to be perhaps the most important technological tool.

Throughout Howsam's book, the book is referred to as an artefact. I am extremely interested in this perspective of the book, but as it pertains to the book being a personal artefact, more than a cultural artefact. Perhaps I should explain--throughout my travels, and in my friendships and relationships with the myriad of rare, glorious, beautiful, and tragic human beings that I have had the honor and good fortune to encounter in my nearly forty years on this planet, books have served as conduits (if you will) between these friends and I. Books--aside from the literary content within them--have physically and figuratively served as gifts, good-byes, hellos, weapons, insults, break-ups, bandages, encouragements, and reminders that one is "blowing it" (just to name a few functions).

One of the most important ways that books have done this, is by what my friends and I have written in the margins, and on the pages of these books. Howsam deals with the importance of this aspect of the book, as artefact, on page 22. "Another rich resource for the histories of reading and of ideas," Howsam writes, "is to be found in the margins of books where readers recorded their immediate responses." Of course, what I am focusing on here, since I am looking at the book as a personal artefact as much as a cultural artefact, is not merely comments written in the margins which strictly pertain to the text, but also, comments written in the margins (and on the inside of either cover) pertaining to personal relationships, and how--in my case--they generally relate to the text.

A brief personal illustration might help to clear up what I mean. The last time I lived in San Francisco, I lived with my friend Anthony, and his family. This was about the time that the ugly reality reared its disheartening head, that my dreams of skateboarding stardom had been officially and irrevocably dashed on the rocks of an ACL in my left knee that was hanging on by but a thread. Simply put, I was dealing with the stark reality that I had lived the life that I had planned to live, and was now, "winging it." This entailed, doing a bunch of cocaine with the yuppies up the street, and smoking joints dipped in PCP and drinking "forties" with Anthony's younger brother, and all of his cholo and Norteno friends. "Y2K" was a couple of days away, and one morning, notices were put in everyone's mailboxes stating that the military and medical helicopters were going to practice landing in the baseball field across the street from our home (at 26th and Hampshire), to prepare for "the festivities." I hadn't really bought any of that "Y2K" malarkey up to that point, but those notices struck a chord in my currently paranoid mind, and after living in that home for over a year, I decided to move back home, to Detroit, that day--and I did. I figured, in my confused and paranoid mind, that if society was about to crumble, I should be close to my family.

I didn't even get to say goodbye to anyone. All I left was a box in the closet, with what little possessions I had, and a copy of Love is a Dog From Hell, by Charles Bukowski, for Anthony. It seemed to fit, because Anthony's ex-girlfriend (the mother of his child) had run off with his child, and at that point, he did not know where they were. Anyway, perhaps more important than the actual text (not to say Bukowski isn't the heavy-weight that he most certainly is), was the sentiments of gratitude and regret that I expressed with what I wrote on the inside cover to Anthony.

I left with a copy of Jack Kerouac's classic, On the Road, which considering the transient and nomadic lifestyle that I have lead, fit quite nicely. On the inside cover, when Anthony gave me the book, he wrote:

"Like Bukowski, Kerouac wrote about the ordinary because it is worthy of great literature. But different from others he saw the ordinary as sacred."

Admittedly, the above is a pretty long way of saying what I set out to say, but I think it efficaciously illustrates what I mean, when I say that the actual texts of the aforementioned books, that serve as conduits between my friend Anthony and I (who I have not seen since incidentally), are almost secondary, to the actual books--as personal artefacts--and the comments and sentiments that Anthony and I wrote to each other, on the pages, and on the insides of the covers.

After all, one of the most revolutionary things Martin Luther did, was ask for copies of biblical texts, with blank margins--free of the comments of the Church fathers--so that his students would be able to write their own thoughts in the margins. In his book on Hermeneutics, Gerald Bruns writes that by giving his students these Biblical texts with blank margins, Luther "produced for his students a modern, as opposed to medieval, text of the bible--its modernity consisting precisely in the white space around the text."

"...protecting the rights of poor folk." (The class warfare of Arthur Penn's, Bonnie and Clyde)

2008-12-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

"They will certainly plant vineyards and eat their fruitage; they will not plant and someone else do the eating."

Isaiah 65: 21,22

In a symbolic gesture of solidarity as simple, righteous, and revolutionary as allowing a poor farmer to keep his money, while robbing a bank of its money, Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) legitimizes and justifies everything that he and his gang do, throughout Arthur Penn's lurid manifestation of the French New Wave, Bonnie and Clyde (1967). At least, in my eyes, it legitimizes and justifies everything that they do. But for those obedient, law-abiding citizens who unquestioningly accept the laws that some of us view as nothing more than insidious mechanisms for the perpetuation of the class system, Clyde's gesture--at least--illuminates a legitimate moral counterbalance, against the gang's--otherwise--anarchistic criminality, that is difficult for a conscious soul to ignore.

The actions of Clyde Barrow and his gang--in the spirit of John Steinbeck's mythological, migrant antihero, Tom Joad--highlight the vast gulf that often exists between genuine justice, and the law, and in doing so, call into question the very foundation on which the average citizen bases his or her perceptions of criminals and criminality. And in this respect, no era in American history could serve as a more exemplary contextual backdrop, for a time marked by the confusion of conventional ideas of right and wrong, than the Great Depression. Simply put, in an era when banks ceaselessly and mercilessly throw farmers and their families off of their land--land that these families have commonly farmed for generations--than the banks and the law that protects them, become the enemies of the people. And thus, any form of resistance or retribution is legitimate and justified.

The systematic attrition--and eventual extinction--of the family farmer, is one of the most infuriating and lamentable injustices of the Great Depression, in particular, and in the saga of the class struggle in the United States, in general. And in Bonnie and Clyde, Clyde Barrow--the son of sharecroppers--and his gang, are fighting a war against the shameless enemy of this inestimable number of forsaken farming families. This of course explains the repeated scenes of solidarity we see between the Barrow gang and the farmers that they encounter.

One of the first of such scenes (and perhaps my favorite), is when Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde are camped out at an abandoned farmhouse. As they are outside taking target practice with their pistols, the farmer who used to own the farm happens upon them while he is taking one "last look" at the empty house and fallow land that the "Midlothian Citizen's Bank" now owns. As the farmer tells them of how the "bank took it...[and] moved us off," we see that he has his wife and kids, and everything they own, piled high in his truck--assumedly to join the great "okie" diaspora to California (And it was indeed a diaspora, because regardless of natural calamities of drought, wind, and heat, what would ultimately disperse this vast wave of distraught farming families--westward--from the great plains, would be the venal and deplorable proclivities of the banks).

This mournful scenario was played out an innumerable number of times during the Depression, and is lucidly depicted in the following passage from John Steinbeck's invaluable story of this shameful period in America's history, The Grapes of Wrath:

"And a homeless hungry man, driving the road with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the thin children....And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark, green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low...."

So when Clyde hands the farmer the pistol--after taking a few self-gratifying shots himself--and the farmer and his farmhand, "Davis," (who the farmer had "put in the years" on the farm with) take their shots at the empty house and the "Property-of Midlothian-Citizen's-Bank" sign that is out front of the house, there are smiles on everyone's faces (including us viewers). Not only this, but a conscious, compassionate soul is stirred, and ready to see some banks get robbed.

There are indeed a number of other scenes that convey the aforementioned solidarity and appreciation for the Barrow gang's class warfare. For instance, after Bonnie and Clyde have both been wounded, and C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), in desperate need of "drinking water," happens upon a shanty town of homeless, migrant farmers, the farmers not only give the gang water, but food as well. Likewise, when the Barrow gang captures Captain Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), Clyde--laughing about the confusion of conventional ideas of right and wrong--recalls how "down in Duncanville last year...poor farmers kept you laws from us with shotguns." One again, when the banks, and the law protecting them, become the enemies of the people, than anyone attacking the banks and the law, becomes the friend of the people.

Of course, Captain Hamer, who is a Texas Ranger, catches up with the Barrow gang in Missouri, attempting to catch them and get "the extra reward money" that the banks are offering for them. Here, Clyde appropriately admonishes Captain Hamer's blatant disregard for his duty to protect and serve back in his own state, by reminding him that he "ought to be home protecting the rights of poor folk."

Burning Bridges (addendum)

2008-12-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

So, the first part of this...hmmmmmmm...discussion...yeah, sure, this discussion about Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, was impulsively scribbled right after we viewed that weirdness in class last Tuesday. And now, sitting here at my desk with a hot cup of Cafe Bustelo, in the genial comfort of my apartment, on this delicious Sunday morning--after yesterday's snow-storm--I see that what I wrote last Tuesday, was indeed an emotional harangue...to put it mildly.

And I meant every fucking word of it. And Godard's punk ass would probably be quite pleased about fucking with someone's emotions to such a degree--although he would probably be surprised about what exactly has me so vexed. Because, aside from the utterly pointless slaughter of animals, I feel Godard on pretty much everything he condemns and is pissed about, and likewise, I feel Godard's unique and confrontational ways of expressing these things. Weekend is--quite literally--in a category of filmmaking all by itself. With Weekend, Godard has taken the film, as an art form, and brought it to a disquieting, acrid, and "alienating" (as the truth often is) extreme that transcends the banality and benignity of mere "entertainment." Simply put, Weekend is as close to being a weapon--of sorts--as a work of art can get.

But...

...it is still nevertheless, merely a work of art--and a work of art that caused the completely unnecessary and horrendous suffering of a few innocent, sentient animals. A few animals that some of us consider as precious and important as any human asshole running around. I've physically--had to--hurt (and been hurt by) a number of other human beings over the years, but I've never hurt (or been hurt by) an animal. They simply do not have it coming--at all. Aside from that, there is that mortal debacle that Milan Kundera writes about in The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."

Now, Professor Shaviro, I'm sure that if you understood how serious some of us are about all of this, than I assume that you wouldn't have sarcastically and dismissively commented about not knowing Godard's "culinary politics," during our discussion in class. Fuck Godard and his "culinary politics." With all due respect, to reduce this issue to nothing more than a person's "culinary politics," is to take the typical, benighted, myopic, gluttonous perspective of a consumer. The animal and its well-being, isn't even a factor in that equation. Or as Matthew Scully puts it:

"When you look at an [animal] and see only a pest, or vermin, or a meal, or a commodity, or a laboratory subject, you aren't seeing the [animal] anymore. You are seeing only yourself and the schemes and appetites we bring to the world."

I cannot overstate how much I share Godard's disgust and disillusionment with things, or how much I agree with him about pretty much everything I've seen him attack in his films--especially consumerism. And even more so, the United States' malignant and ruinous extreme of consumerism. But Godard's irreverent disregard for the value of something as simple and precious as the life of a pig, is--in my eyes--the same kind of disregard that underlies consumerism, and it is also a lucid manifestation of the same kind of cursed human audacity that defined the United States' behavior in Vietnam. It is this same kind of infuriating disregard and human audacity that has culminated in the ceaseless, industrialized, torturous, systematic, merciless slaughter of over 700,000 animals--700,000 sentient creatures--every hour of every day, in our country's modern "factory farms." That breaks down to--among all of the other animals killed daily--over 90,000 cows and calves every 24 hours, over 355,000 pigs every 24 hours, and over 14,000 chickens every motherfucking minute.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated."

Mahatma Gandhi

Burning Bridges

2008-12-07T08:13:00.001-08:00

As this final section of our semester has run its course, and the Godard films have--as we were warned they would--become increasingly non-linear, unsettling, "alienating" (as the truth often is), abrasive, confrontational, and idealistic, I have increasingly dug what I have been seeing. I--feel I--completely understand why he was so disgusted with what was happening throughout the late 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s. I do think that those particular fifteen-to-twenty years were a dismal watershed for the planet as a whole--but especially for all of the countries that can be lumped into the ignominious category of "the west."

My increasing fondness for Godard and his films, is not simply the result of my perspective of mankind's social, political, and industrial structures being from as far left as Godard's increasingly was. You do not have to be a communist or a socialist to be mortally disheartened and infuriated by circumstances like the United States' barbaric behavior in--among other places--Vietnam, or the increasing pervasiveness of the hollow and cursed consequences of western consumer culture, or the ceaselessly widening gap between rich and poor, or the all-out industrial/technological assault on the environment.

But it helps--to at least channel this anger and concern. The recurrent and acute anti-Americanism in Godard's Pierrot Le Fou (1965), Masculin Feminin (1966), Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), and finally Weekend (1967) is by all means warranted. The United States was and is the breeding ground for pretty much every deplorable, regrettable, and ruinous debacle plaguing this planet--either directly or indirectly, you can trace most of it back to "the good ol' U. S. of A." So for the most part, I have been increasingly on the same page as Godard, as we have been following him along his filmic evolution--or devolution.

But...

...with Weekend, Godard has lost--even--me. For one gigantic fucking reason that I couldn't ignore if I tried--he actually kills animals. I am one of those anomalies that does not exalt human life over any other creature's life, and by slaughtering animals in his film, Godard--in my eyes--has reduced himself to the level of any murderous American soldier running around in Vietnam, annihilating "women and children." Fuck him--if I'd of been there when they disemboweled that pig, I'd of grabbed that motherfucking sledgehammer that they knock the pig in the head with, and knocked Godard up against his motherfucking head.

In Weekend, by actually slaughtering actual, living animals just for the sake of "art," Godard has--in my eyes--descended to the absolute nadir of hipsterdom. Which is something I've mentioned in class anyway. If he had half of the heart he seems to have become obsessed with portraying in his films, he'd of picked up a gun and started some shit. Instead of trying to shock and offend people with some half-ass, jive bullshit about cannibalistic, hippy, revolutionaries going "back to the land," throw a fucking pipe-bomb through the window of a police station, start the shit, and get it over with--incite the change.

That's my whole fucking problem with hipsters and artists (which plague this city), instead of taking part in relevant forms of resistance, rebellion and civil disobedience, they just self-indulgently produce cowardly, hollow, half-hearted, only-when-it's-convenient, banal "works of art" about revolutionary bullshit. Yeah yeah, Godard illuminates some relevant and fundamental problems with the world in Weekend, and I understand why he would want to burn the proverbial bridge between him and the film industry, the art world, and the popular culture of the time--but when he slaughtered some innocent animals in the process of doing it, he burned the bridge with me as well. I'll bust that motherfucker in his head if I ever see him...

"...I cannot expect mercy if I am unwilling to give it."

Dominion

Matthew Scully

"...the bill to come."

2008-12-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

The entire time I was watching Jean-Luc Godard's, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, I was thinking about Mathieu Kassovitz's invaluably jarring film, La Haine. Especially during the scene where Juliette (Marina Vlady) is speaking in some random courtyard of a French housing project, and Godard has shot her only from the neck up. Even if those housing projects were not vast, sprawling, towering "rat cages" for human beings--which they indeed are--by only shooting Juliette from the neck up, Godard shrinks her presence in the scene to an even greater degree, and in doing so, lucidly conveys Juliette's--lamentable--insignificance in the grand scheme of what passes for "progress." The "housing project" in general, as a solution to the housing of large numbers of poor, forsaken people, has proven to be an utter failure--no matter what country they are in. And as a remedy to the societal debacle they are supposed to be ameliorating, they will go down in history as one of the worst examples of human indifference towards the well-being of other human beings.

The aforementioned relationship between Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and La Haine, can be expressed with the simple equation of cause and effect. In the repeated conveyances of human-forsakenness, and perpetuations of "class discrimination" that are inherent in "the planning of Paris," as depicted by Godard in Two or Three Things I Know About Her, we have the cause. And in the logical, inevitable, and understandable violence and unrest in La Haine, we have the effect.

In general, Godard is lamenting the sprawling freeways and--exponential--covering-up of the countryside with vast tracts of cement and concrete. "A landscape is like a face," is repeated in the dialogue, and the faces we see, are the mutilated and burned faces of Vietnamese citizens (the United States' deplorable war in Vietnam, of course, being another primary focus of condemnation in this film). So if a landscape is indeed, "like a face," than the face that Godard saw around Paris back in 1967, was a gruesome and scarred one. The manic sense of "progress" that was/is gripping the western world, not only continued at the expense of a vast multitude of human beings, but at the expense of the land as well.

In Two or Three Things I Know About Her--"Her" being Paris--Godard's condemnation of what was occurring, shows a prophetic foresight for what seems to be the inevitable consequences of mankind's manic sense of "progress"--this manic sense of "progress" being illustrated continuously throughout the film by repeated shots of construction. Aside from stranding large numbers of poor French citizens far from the hubs of activity, commerce, and employment, and expecting them to live in vast, sprawling, towering "rat cages" for humans, you then add to these already volatile circumstances, the pervasive police brutality and repeated, "accidental" deaths of youths in these housing projects, which are depicted in La Haine, and one has to ask: why wouldn't the people attack police stations, and periodically have country-wide uprisings?

In this regard, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, is a lucid illustration of the early stages of the kind of human-forsaking, manic sense of "progress," which would ultimately result in the kind of country-wide riots that France has been rocked by in recent years. Despite a line in this film, where it is said that "no one knows what a city of the future will be like," Godard seems to have an idea. Back in 1967, as the Paris countryside was being destroyed, and large numbers of human beings--whose biggest sin in this world was being poor--were beginning to be corralled and housed like animals, Godard seems to have been one of the few to realize that there was going to be an--understandably--costly and destructive "bill to come."

No future.

2008-11-21T12:20:00.000-08:00

Evolution is a process too slow to save my soul

But I've got this creature on my back

And it just won't let go

If I am only an animal

Then I can do no wrong

But they say I'm something better

So I've gotta hold on

Manimal

Darby Crash (The Germs)

But Darby Crash, did not hold on. After disbanding earlier in the year, the seminal punk-rock band, The Germs, got back together to play--what would end up being--their last show, on December 3rd, 1980. Then, four nights later--on the eve of John Lennon's death incidentally--Darby Crash killed himself with $400 worth of heroine, in the poolhouse of his friend's mother's home (the girl who was supposed to die along with him, but survived).

The Germs were part of the "first generation" of punk-rock (the mid to late 1970s)--and a vital part of the Los Angeles contingent of the...uh...movement. Darby Crash's performances, as singer of the Germs, were often marked by bleak gestures such as self-mutilation, and showering the audience in food and blood. Crash (like Sid Vicious) was the epitomization of the fatalistic nihilism and disillusionment that summarily defined that particular generation of punk-rock--before of course, pockets of positivity and revolutionary vitality started forming later in the 1980s.

I begin my discussion of Jean-Luc Godard's ingeniously "alienating" (as the truth often is) and non-linear, Masculine Feminine, by talking about the fate of Darby Crash, for one primary reason. And it lies deep within the fate of a generation defined by the utterly irreconcilable paradox of "Marx and Coca Cola." Darby Crash is the tragic poster-child for the fatalistic nihilism and existential torment, of the generation that was the aftermath of Godard's "Children of Marx and Coca Cola." I do indeed believe that the generation that Godard's "Children of Marx and Coca Cola" embody, was a profound watershed. Not only had the Marxist revolution failed (as the ultimate inconsequentiality of France's student/labor uprisings of 1968 illustrates), but the essential ethics of struggle and sacrifice, that are necessary for such a revolution, were buckling under the sheer gravity and pervasiveness of the gospel of possession, convenience, and leisure, that was/is Western consumer culture.

Which was no big deal, if you were a child of the bourgeoisie and upper classes. But if you were a child of the vast majority--or the lower classes--which did not get to enjoy any of the comforts and conveniences, terminal disillusionment inevitably followed the realization that the war was over with, and they won. And within a decade, came the nihilistic desolation of punk-rock.

Godard efficaciously illustrates the confusion of ideals and motives of France's youth of the time, in a number of different ways. For instance, the polling-interview that Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) does with "Miss 19." She has won a bit of a prestigious status that has given her the benefits of consumer culture. She knows little--if anything--about the wars occurring at that moment in the world, she owns a car, she doesn't know what "socialism" is, and doesn't care. But more importantly, she has been to the United States, and loved it. She is very attracted to what she feels it means to be an American--or as she says, it's like "Being somebody [and] having lots to do."

On the other hand, one particularly odd scene seems to convey--presciently--the forthcoming nihilistic tide. This is the scene where Paul is chased out of the arcade by the young man with the knife, who then illogically commits suicide, by stabbing himself. Another suicide occurs when a man lights himself on fire in front of the American Embassy to protest the Vietnam War (but I guess that suicide is noble, although that is a whole other discussion in and of itself). But in general, the male characters in this film, seem to be struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable--like Paul attempting to act like he cares about the labor or class struggle, and at the same time, get along with Madeleine (Chantal Goya) and her acutely narcissistic desires for fame and success.

Which brings us to the girls in Masculine Feminine. Enough has been said about Godard's misogynistic tendencies. There's no sense in going on about them here...but...considering the roles that women play in this film, it seems quite...uh...fitting that Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert) is eating an apple throughout her whole interview scene. The apple, of course, being a rather universal symbol of the--allegedly--inherent proclivities of women, towards such regrettable tendencies such as betrayal and desire and covetousness. Whether we buy that whole original sin crock or not, and despite her aspirations and moderate level of success as a pop-singer, Madeleine leaves us on as much of a dismal and doomed note at the end of the movie, as any other character or occurrence. After all, the last thing we hear her say--after indifferently agreeing with Elisabeth's version of Paul's death--is that she considers "a curtain rod" to be her most viable option in dealing with the life growing inside of her...

...no future indeed.

...Dragged on a table in a factory

Illegitimate place to be

In a packet in a lavatory

Die little baby screaming

Body screaming fucking bloody mess

Not an animal

It's an abortion

Body! I'm not an animal

Mummy! I'm not an abortion...

...Fuck this and fuck that

Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat

She don't wanna a baby that looks like that

I don't wanna baby that looks like that

Body, I'm not an animal

Body, an abortion

Bodies

The Sex Pistols

"A nice grog..."

2008-11-18T04:51:00.001-08:00

grog \noun\ [Old Grog, nickname of Edward Vernon (1757) Eng. admiral responsible for diluting the sailor's rum] : alcoholic liquor; esp : liquor (as rum) mixed with water

Was Francois Truffaut's, L' Histoire d' Adele H., supposed to be a comedy, because that shit was funny as hell? By the time Adele has lied about being pregnant and married to that poor fool, Lieutenant Pinson, and in that one scene where he is out riding around with his army regiment, and Adele is straight lurking in the bushes stalking his ass, and then she just pops out of the bushes--in front of all of his soldier friends--pulls out the pillow that, I guess, was suppose to be her fake pregnancy, and then throws a fistful of money at his ass...shit...that shit's as funny as that scene in Next Friday, when that Tawana chicken-head has keyed Dae-Dae's BMW, and maced him on his front lawn.

Nah, but seriously, L' Histoire d' Adele H. is pretty much the most boring, average, garden variety, Hollywoodish film (movie) we have seen yet. Which isn't necessarily a criticism...I guess...just more of an observation and/or impression. I guess it's also an excuse for the fatuous nature of what follows from here on out in this blog entry. With this film, at this point in Truffaut's career, and especially compared to the innovative uniqueness of films like, Les Mistons and Les Quatre cents coups, he seems to have--for good or ill--adopted a much...uh...safer formula for filmmaking. This circumstance, combined with the fact that this film is based on historical events (and I don't feel this is the time or place for a historical discussion) has left me--for the second time this semester--at a loss for thoughtful things to say. And consequently, I am--once again--forced to express myself outside the parameters of insightful, scholarly discussion. Or in other words, what follows is going to be a lucid example of oblique, evasive shit-talking and babbling. In fact, this particular blog entry, it is safe to say, and academically speaking, will be the most worthless entry I will write this semester, and I will apologize here for the fact that, whomever does read it in its entirety, will walk away stupider than they were before they read it.

For instance, I'm not saying that--in real life--it would be amusing or entertaining to witness the gradual and systematic decay and collapse of a young girl's mental and physical health, due to a broken heart, but by the end of this film, it starts to seem pretty fucking funny. I mean, I thought that the character, Alphonse, in Truffaut's, La Nuit Americaine, was a hysterical dingbat when it came to dealing with the opposite sex, but mother of babbling god, compared to Adele Hugo, Alphonse is "too cool for school." Jesus, Adele Hugo, at least as her story is told by Francois Truffaut, is the poster-child for male-celibacy. In fact, if poor Adele Hugo's story illustrates anything, it illustrates the benefits of being a genuinely vain, shallow, and utterly self-absorbed person, because if Adele was such a person--as plenty of us can attest--it is quite difficult, if not downright impossible to become so enamored of any particular person (except of course, for that beautiful motherfucker in the mirror every morning). Holy shit...did I just say that?

Aside from all of that doggerel, I like these filmic depictions of "olden" times, because them fools talked funny, and shit was just weird. Like when that amiable old SOB, Mr. Whistler comes over to see how Adele is feeling, and she can't come down and see him because she's in bed with a case of pleurisy. What the? And speaking of Mr. Whistler, I like how dude owns a book store, and when Adele comes in looking a little...uh...sallow, he offers her "a nice grog"--at a book store, in the middle of the day. I want some "nice grog," at a book store, in the middle of the day. That shit's as funny as that one time back in one of the other days, on Saturday Night Live, when Bill Murray had to go see the barber (it was "olden" times), for a "good bleeding," because while he was "over celebrating at the festival of the vernal equinox," he had "a little too much mead, and dotted out in front of an ox cart." I love that shit...

Some money for the whorehouse...

2008-11-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

"The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money."

Marlon Brando

All of a sudden I feel like my blog entries are all becoming malevolent and sardonic--my last entry for Jean-Luc Godard's, Contempt, after all, is downright hateful. But then I remember that the current film I'm writing about, Francois Truffaut's "self-conscious" "feature," La Nuit Americaine, as well as Godard's, Contempt, are both films about...well...making films. And their "insider's" look at the degenerate nature of the small class of people who populate this gratuitous and nonessential (if not downright detrimental) industry, of course explains my rancor. Although Truffaut's film shows a...uh...more benign and "romantic" side of filmmaking, it still illustrates the childish dysfunction and acute narcissism of a class of people that I would just assume see collectively tied to cinder blocks, at the bottom of the Detroit River. Included in this desire, would be the veritable ocean of insignificant, sycophantic, "aspiring," desperate, groveling underlings doing all of the "behind-the-scenes" work as well.

But since we are discussing the French New Wave, and not--directly--the pervasive detriment of Hollywood and our modern media juggernaut, it is necessary to not get carried away here. And anyway, my entry for Godard's, Contempt, is probably as much as I need to say about all of that. La Nuit Americaine is Francois Truffaut's filmic admission of his life-long love and obsession for the art of filmmaking. And in its purest, most unspoiled form, before money, fame, and success have profaned it, that is a love I can dig and respect. Perhaps the sincerest conveyances in this film, of Truffaut's love and passion, are nothing more than a couple of brief, dreamy interludes. Of course, there is the repeated flashbacks to Truffaut's childhood mission, of stealing Citizen Kane posters from a theatre. But the most elegant and subtle conveyance of Truffaut's love, is simply the brief interlude where we hear the beautiful and melodic score over the telephone (and in the diegesis), as we see Truffaut thumb through a number of books on films and his favorite auteurs. I feel that this is a graceful and dignified gesture of respect and admiration to his influences and inspirations.

But that is where the poetry ends. The rest of the film is--consciously or unconsciously--one dizzying and irritating example after the other, of what a sordid, dysfunctional, contemptible, pampered, unreasonable class of people populate the film industry. From Severine's (Valentina Cortese) inebriated vacuousness, to Alphonse's (Jean-Pierre Leaud) fatuous pitifulness, we are continuously subjected to the kind of melodramatic bullshit that one expects from spoiled children. And what makes this all worse, is the unarguable fact that there is no exaggerating exactly how fucked most of these kind of people are. Despite the harmlessness of Julie's (Jacqueline Bisset) admittedly laughable request for "tub butter," as she balances on the brink of--yet--another emotional collapse (after sleeping with that pitiful dingbat, Alphonse), it still makes a conscious human being want to throw her out of the fucking window. Or at least start looking for the aforementioned cinder blocks. And likewise, when that miserable wretch, Alphonse, finally leaves his room after being--understandably--dumped for the stuntman, and declares that he needs some money for the whorehouse (although that is pretty fucking funny--pitiful, but funny).

In this context, and combined with the myriad of other obstacles and challenges the director faces, it is--indeed--easy to say that La Nuit Americaine is an extremely "romantic" depiction of an artist's struggle to simply finish his film. Which seems fine. Truffaut obviously loved the art of filmmaking, and as I've already stated, I can respect that. Any condemnation I have, does not lie in the accuracy of this film's portrayal, of the formidableness of making a "feature"--I'm sure, that in this respect, the film is dead on. My vehement condemnation and animosity lies with the actual class of human detritus this film portrays. And in this respect, I wouldn't be honest, if I didn't say that Truffaut himself, sounds like he was a little too self-indulgently shrouded in "romantic" subjectivity, if he was indeed confused (actually, his own word was "tormented") about the question: "Is cinema more important than life?" That sounds like the kind of Hollywood director that would spend twice as much time and money making a film about some kind of awful tragedy, than what he would spend in time and money to actually help ameliorate it.

Eat the rich.

2008-11-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

Warning: If easily offended, abandon ship right here...

First of all, and especially compared to Anna Karina, I don't--for the life of me--understand what all of the fascination and obsession with Bridgette Bardot was all about. Granted, I've never found that whole blonde hair/blue eyes idea of beauty very appealing, but besides that, Bardot just seems kind of bland and frumpy. Not to mention, the color in Jean-Luc Godard's, Contempt, makes Bardot's hair look like a shoddy shade of yellow straw, and makes the character Camille look like the kind of girl you'd meet while hanging out in the parking lot of a White Castle restaurant on Gratiot, in an old, teal Dodge/Grand Am with a "princess" sticker on the bumper, in some wretched shithole of a city like Warren or Roseville, smoking joints of brown weed, and slamming cans of warm PBR to old Def Leppard songs.

But enough of all of that foolishness. The reason I'm minoring in film, is to perhaps have the option of teaching it eventually. I want to teach it because I consider the film industry as a whole (despite a few fleeting pockets of creativity and value) to be the biggest, most detrimental, most expensive, most insidious sedative that the American public uses, to ignore the world and country that is falling apart around them. And if I was to teach film, it would give me an opportunity--perhaps--to repeatedly illustrate what a colossal waste of resources, time, and attention it all is, and how some of the most insatiable, venal, contemptible, malignant, terminally narcissistic examples of human detritus walking among us, are inevitably and logically produced by this industry. And if the people ever organize (or are pushed hard enough) to finally have the initiative to fight the class war that some of us have been waiting and preparing for, these film people will be some of the most deserving targets of wrath.

Obviously, the character of Jerry (Jack Palance) in Contempt, is a lucid embodiment of the kind of person I speak of. In all actuality, the character of Jerry would be completely laughable, if not for the disheartening fact that there are plenty of human beings running around that are indeed that fucked. And it really is difficult to overstate how staggeringly fucked some of these people are. Perhaps one subtle example is, when Jerry mentions how he likes Gods, because as he says, he knows "exactly how they feel...exactly." If nothing else, this conveys one particular reason that, when the class war comes, and after twenty-some years of vegetarianism and veganism, the first flesh I will taste, will be the flesh of someone like Jerry (ah, settle down, I'm only half serious).

That's not to say that Paul and Camille aren't both rotten in their own mediocre ways, but their form of wretchedness doesn't exist at the expense of so many other people. Paul and Camille simply illustrate how doomed a relationship between a man and a woman is, when it is bereft of things like honesty, love, trust, faith, commitment, etc. Compared to Jerry's acute level of pure, acrid malignancy, Paul and Camille just kind of seem like your garden-variety, insignificant, bourgeois hyenas--like many of the fatuous, aspiring couples we have running around in our country these days (as our exorbitant amount of divorces attests to).

Yes indeed, the day is coming for the tiny class of human detritus that is embodied in the character of Jerry...

I got something to say

I killed your baby today

And it doesn't matter much to me

As long as it's dead

Well I got something to say

I raped your mother today

And it doesn't matter much to me

As long as she spread

Sweet lovely death

I am waiting for your breath

Come sweet death, one last caress

Last Caress (1982)

The Misfits

"Go on, asshole! Go to war, fast!"

2008-11-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Jean-Luc Godard's disquieting anti-war film, Les Carabiniers, is the bravest film we have seen yet. Vivre sa vie was brave--and honest--but Les Carabiniers is so stark in its condemnation of the waste and destruction of war, and of the vacuous willingness of the common people who are duped into doing the actual fighting, that it is completely surprising that Les Carabiniers was allowed to be released. Especially considering that it was released one year after France's barbaric colonial endeavor in Algeria had failed.

One selfish, personal reason I particularly like this film, is because it is a powerful affirmation of my opinion (expressed in my essay), that any claims that Jacques Demy's fatuous musical, Les parapluies de Cherbourg, is supposed to be some kind of anti-war statement, are unfounded. Les parapluies de Cherbourg's irresponsible dismissal of the atrocities that the French visited upon Algeria, is illuminated when juxtaposed with the blunt, "alienating" (as the truth often is) starkness of Les Carabiniers. Of course it has been said that Demy was not trying to make an anti-war film. But if this is the case, than he did indeed use the Algerian War for nothing more than a peripheral backdrop for the story of two French lovers. Which, considering the malignant intentions of the French in that war, seems as inappropriate as a story about a Nazi romance using World War II as the backdrop.

But I digress. In the character Michelangelo (who I call the village idiot), Godard has embodied every contemptible human trait that makes us, as a species, seem justifiably cursed and doomed. Acute stupidity, terminal gullibility, sleazy and vicious licentiousness, sophomoric insatiability, and a vacuous willingness (and perhaps need) to follow anyone who demands it. The vast and unfortunate ocean of Michelangelos throughout human history, have single-handedly enabled all of the monstrous, malevolent tyrants throughout human history, to commit the seemingly never-ending list of crimes against humanity that plague our history books. As that precious old SOB, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his invaluable essay, Civil Disobedience:

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones...such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs."

Or as the blonde, communist girl--that Ulysses and Michelangelo execute in the woods--says about the armies of the capitalists (but which applies to many armies): they act like nothing more than "evil insects," blindly and obediently and mercilessly working away for some queen (or king). Which brings up a point that came up in class. Is Godard necessarily condemning all war, or just when it is in the name of malignant causes like conquest? It is--after all--difficult to condemn war in some instances, such as self-defense, or to rid a country of invaders or conquerors.

In Les Carabiniers, Jean-Luc Godard doesn't really make the distinction though. It seems like an unsettling lament over war in general. All war is indeed unfortunate. But it also seems that war for shameful reasons like conquest, is where the primary condemnation of this film lies. This is conveyed in the film's focus on the futility of acquisition and possession of--among a long list of things--natural wonders, human beings (women), industry, and architecture. These are the kinds of incentive that the riflemen use to convince Michelangelo and Ulysses to fight. If they were fighting for causes as pure and warranted as freedom or independence--like say, what the Algerians were fighting against the French for--than it wouldn't require nearly as much convincing...

"You look stupid. And your hair is awful." (Or, a requiem for Nana.)

2008-10-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

"...but I, prompted by that worst of devils, poverty, returned to the vile practice and made the advantage of what they call a handsome face be the relief to my necessities, and beauty be a pimp to vice."

Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe

To begin with, in going from her role in Jean-Luc Godard's third film, Une femme est une femme, to her role in his fourth film, Vivre sa vie, Anna Karina has displayed an exceptional adaptability. In the former, the character of Angela--for the most part--is spoiled and childish, and in Vivre sa vie, the character Nana has--in a sense--been forsaken. Of course, the two characters are antithetical visually as well. In my eyes, the cute and dainty character of Angela in Une femme est une femme pales in gravity and presence, to one of the most tragic and bewitching antiheroines I have ever seen in a film--Nana.

If there is any continuity between these two roles, it is quite simply, Anna Karina's uncanny naturalness in front of the camera. In Vivre sa vie, Godard utilizes Karina's naturalness in front of the camera for all it's worth. Through prolonged close-ups of Nana (without dialogue), Godard uses Karina's stark, imploring, and bewitching (yeah, I used that word again, and I'll probably use it again before this is finished) facial expressions to convey more than the film does as a whole, through dialogue. In fact, some of the close-ups are so prolonged and candid (to the point of seeming uncontrived), and Nana's situation is so unfortunate, and so the product of the shameful and predatory proclivities of the men in her environs, that as a man, it is difficult at points to return her "Gaze."

I'd like to think that this is a manifestation of me--as a man--having a conscience. Because, as a man, Vivre sa vie illustrates a number of reasons to be ashamed of the motives and actions of other members of my gender. Even though, during her conversation with Yvette, Nana professes her belief that she is responsible for all of her actions, I do feel that her circumstances in this film illustrate the complex reasons why she is wrong in her belief. One scene that concisely conveys the dire circumstances that eventually drive Nana to prostitution, is the scene where she attempts to sneak into her apartment, after we've seen her repeatedly attempt to borrow 1000 francs from different people. Obviously she is homeless, which is a circumstance that--no matter how in control of our decisions we like to think we are--will drive anyone to extreme and desperate measures.

And of course, in this film, there is no shortage of assholes to facilitate Nana's extreme and desperate measures. And for that matter, there is no shortage of assholes to remind us of how petty, vicious, and unsympathetic men can be to a woman in such dire straits. One line in particular, that stands out as especially contemptible, and summarily conveys a disheartening flaw in the predominate reasoning of men towards women (to this day), is in the cafe, when Yvette's male friend wants to meet Nana. He asks his friend how to tell if she's a lady or a tramp, to which his friend answers:

"Insult her. If she's a tramp, she'll get angry; if a lady, she'll smile."

Nana, of course, smiles.

In this sophomoric question and test, Godard--perhaps unconsciously--illuminates the cursed, earthbound confines of male thought. This is not to say that women don't suffer from their own type of existential myopia, but that is not our concern here, nor does it generally exist at the expense of others--nearly--to such a degree as the myopia of men. The kind of human detritus that becomes a pimp, and thus has been reduced (and I do mean, reduced) to viewing women as only either one of two things--a lady or a tramp, is lost. Lost like any human being who has been reduced to the point that they no longer possess the capacity for sympathy or mercy. Lost like the monk in Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, who comes to tell Joan that she is going to be executed--which of course produces empathetic tears in Nana. Lost like any human being (like the monk) who has become miserable enough to need to question another human beings' faith, by asking, "How can you still believe you were sent by God?"

Aren't we all?

"All that singing gives me a pain."

2008-10-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

Throughout the life and world of celluloid, real and barbaric wars and conflicts have been repeatedly trivialized (whether consciously or unconsciously) by being used as peripheral backdrops, with which, a tragic circumstance or element is added to some romantic story line. In some cases this is fine, but in others, the romantic story in question involves characters from the side of the conflict that is in the wrong, and in doing so, reduces the film into nothing more than an irresponsible--if not morbid--dismissal of the wrong that has been done. In other words, it involves characters from the side of the conflict that has used shameless tactics, or has been fighting to preserve some kind of malignant institution or deplorable condition, or has exterminated large numbers of innocent lives, or--which is often the case--has been a wretched combination of all of these circumstances. Regardless of its--admittedly--admirable attempt to, as Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, show viewers "the traumatic effect of the [Algerian] war on French civilian life," Jacques Demy's musical, Les parapluies de Cherbourg, nevertheless trivializes a vicious and shameless colonial war that cost a staggering amount of Algerian lives, by using the war as nothing more than a backdrop for the story of two French lovers.

Perhaps it is not fair to go so far, as to lump Les parapluies de Cherbourg into the same ignominious category, as a film like Victor Fleming's "Epoch" about the American Civil War, Gone With the Wind--which fatuously and pitifully attempts to convince audiences, that there is supposed to be some kind of tragedy in the personal losses suffered by the slave-owning aristocracy of the antebellum south. Nevertheless, Jacques Demy's musical is supposed to show viewers that "ordinary" French citizens suffered during Algeria's war for independence. But when one considers the monstrous loss of Algerian lives (estimates range from 300,000 to over a million), the tens of thousands of injured and maimed, the millions of Algerians that were uprooted and displaced, and the abominable tactics used by the French (tactics so indiscriminate and detestable that they have become known as the "French School" of counter-insurgency), it becomes difficult to enjoy any of the singing in Les parapluies de Cherbourg, or the "sugar and spice" of Michel Legrand's musical score--or for that matter, feel very commiserative towards the tragedy of any French love that may have been lost. In real life (since this film is supposed to be concerned with the "ordinary"), if someone like the character Guy had any heart at all, he would have been one of the French citizens who got arrested for refusing to take part in that murderous colonial endeavor. He loses Genevieve in the end anyway, so at least he could have done it without the blood of innocent Algerians on his hands, conscience, and soul.

With all of that said, it does seem important, if this is to be fair, to consider--in Jacques Demy's defense--the milieu in France at the time this film was being conceived, filmed, and released, as well as the significance of what France lost. To begin with, France had been forced to relinquish Algeria in 1962 (because of the steadfast fighting of Algeria's Front de Liberation National)--just two years before Les parapluies de Cherbourg was released. It is important to remember how profoundly this loss hurt an already troubled France, that had been rocked domestically by an adamant anti-war resistance which was comparable in force and scope, to that which rattled the United States to its core, during the Vietnam War. France's government and military, as historian Michael H. Hunt writes, were already "frustrated and demoralized" from repeated losses and embarrassments that had preceded their loss of Algeria. "They had surrendered to the Germans during World War II," Hunt goes on to write, "and more recently [had surrendered] to the Vietnamese, had abandoned control of Morocco and Tunisia without a fight, and had suffered humiliation in the Suez crisis." Of course, aside from all of this, Algeria was also considered a vital, integral part of France, because of--among other things--its geographical proximity, just across the Mediterranean.

In this context, and considering the oppressive--virtually Fascist--repression of dissent in France at the time, it is a little easier to understand how some people could have considered Les parapluies de Cherbourg to be one of the first films released in the country, that confronted the negative and detrimental effects that the war had had on "ordinary" French citizens. In fact, in Agnes Varda's documentary about Jacques Demy, one French film critic even recalls that his parents--who were communists--insisted that Les parapluies de Cherbourg was "the first honest film about the Algerian war." If this is indeed the case, than that is pretty pitiful.

Caroline E. Layde writes for senses of cinema, that Jacques Demy did at least attempt to address social and political realities, "but through [a] romantic, rose-colored lens." Well, after studying--exhaustively--about what exactly the French did to the people of Algeria, and learning that over 400,000 French citizens were willing to go over and take part in that colossal barbarism, it seems more fitting to say that Les parapluies de Cherbourg does not view Algeria's war for independence through a "romantic, rose-colored lens," but through a cowardly, dismissive veil. Compared to all of the death and torture, the fact that Guy and Genevieve lose each other's love, is as much of a poetic and insignificant incidental, as any anguish that that racist bitch in Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara might have experienced. In other words, when 400,000 "ordinary" French citizens are willing to take part in such an ignominious and vicious war, who cares about its traumatic effects on them?

And aside from all of that, "All that singing gives me a pain."

"You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she's a whore."

2008-10-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

I guess it is easy to see how Jean-Luc Godard could have been so completely smitten with Anna Karina, that he made a film like A Woman Is A Woman, just to--in a sense--gloat over her. But perhaps that is an unfair way of saying it. She is after all, "a natural" in front of the camera--perhaps too much so. In fact, as a male viewer, it is hard to not feel as though I am being--in a sense--seduced. When reflecting on the character of Angela in A Woman Is A Woman, it is difficult to overstate just how completely (to use an expression from our discussion in class) "self-conscious" the character is. I don't know if I'm aggravated, distracted, entertained, repulsed, or turned-on by the plethora of Angela's blatant displays of "self-consciousness" (for instance, sticking her ass out, and looking at it, every time she walks by the mirror in her and Emile's apartment), or if in fact, it is actually some kind of mixture of all of these reactions at once.

One thing I do know is, Anna Karina's performance in A Woman Is A Woman is a vivid display of pure, unadulterated, visceral vanity (not that all acting isn't, but these types of relationships between directors and actresses are extreme cases). How could it not be, when one of Godard's primary reasons for making this film was simply to exalt a woman that he was--at the time--obviously enamored of. Which is fine, I guess, but when I have a venerable feminist (meaning I respect her as a formidable intellect) like Laura Mulvey making me feel like I should feel guilty about something as rudimentary as...well...looking at what is front of me, by carrying on about the vast and unconscious intricacies of my male "Gaze," as it regards the female form, and how in some way, the female in question is being oppressed by my "Gaze," than the female and the acute vanity that has motivated her to be up on the screen, become a little fucking irritating.

Mother of babbling god, that last sentence was a mouthful. I guess all of this is me acknowledging that I understand why feminists are concerned. But I can't get around the fact that nobody forced Anna Karina to make a bunch of films, whose underlying themes are how beautiful and unique she and some director/husband think she is. In the end, it seems to me, that film roles like that of Anna Karina in A Woman Is A Woman don't prove Mulvey's argument--they detract from it (and the feminist cause in general). And in doing so, they illustrate a profound lack of solidarity amongst women, that to this day, undermines a good deal of the progress that "the intimately oppressed" have fought adamantly for.

Alright--with all of that bellyaching out of the way, I feel free enough to say that I really did enjoy Jean-Luc Godard's vibrant "deconstruction" of the Hollywood musical. Likewise, I also feel freer to say that Anna Karina's pouty, charming, flirtatious, and unreasonable performance is deliciously entrancing. Especially when she sticks her ass out in front of the mirror, and looks at it (please forgive me Ms. Mulvey).

Technically speaking (which is something that I generally try to avoid) Godard's use of music is jarring and conspicuous, and does indeed break the traditional musical format to pieces (which is why I actually was able to enjoy it). Perhaps one of the queerest examples of Godard turning a scene on its ear through his use of music, is when he will plays dramatic, suspenseful crescendos over and over again, but nothing of consequence occurs. In regular musicals, after the crescendo has peaked, we are generally subjected to some singing and dancing (I assume)--a torment that some of us are thankful to Godard for sparing us.

"A woman like that."

2008-10-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Warning: This is going to be a long one. Also, this was written while listening to the almighty Fela Kuti doing "Lady," and if you listen to "Lady" while reading what follows, it will, as far as I'm concerned, help put things in context.

I had been living in Chicago for about two years, and was back in Detroit to spend Thanksgiving with my family. As usual, my friend Eric picked me up from the Greyhound station the day of Thanksgiving eve (the biggest bar night of the year, blah blah blah), and we went to his house in Corktown and started drinking. It was--as always--good to be home. That night--since our friend Nick was head-bartender and we drank for free for the most part--we went to Fifth Avenue Billiards while it was still adjacent to Ford Field and the new Tiger Stadium, to get drunk and play pool. You're probably wondering, what does this have to do with our film class, let alone Francois Truffaut's ill-fated morass, Jules and Jim? And rightfully so, but if you--dear, appreciated reader--will bear with me, I will get to it soon enough.

So, Eric and I are drinking and playing pool, and by this time, have been joined by some other friends--namely, Jason, Donovan, and Dre, and all is indeed well, and we're getting drunk and having fun on the eve of this declining nation's "day of thanks" (where, incidentally, instead of fasting or some other genuine display of gratitude, we stuff ourselves even more than we usually do). All of a sudden I realize that some trifling-looking, blonde, bar-nymph has joined us. As the evening rolls on, I--at one point--watch her walk away from our group with Jason, which infuriates Eric, and later on, I see her walk away with Eric, which infuriates Jason. Eric ends up being the one to officially "hook up" with her.

Eric and Jason, to this day, (five or six years later) hate each other, and do not speak. What's even funnier is, Eric only "hung out" with the aforementioned "whore of Babylon" for a few fleeting months before she cheated on him, and moved on. But the fissure she created between these two alleged friends has endured to this day, and does not look like it is going to be bridged any time soon.

Damn, that took a lot of space to explain. What is my point? Well, in Jules and Jim, with the friendship between Jules and Jim, Truffaut has illustrated that if at least one friend is willing to act tolerant and reasonable when a woman attempts to wedge herself between two friends, that that friendship can endure. Truffaut illuminates the strength of the friendship that Jules and Jim share, to an even greater degree, by having it endure the two friends fighting on opposite sides of World War I.

But I'm forgetting Catherine (god forbid)--the woman with the statue's smile, who runs off and commits "some irreparable act" every time she does not feel "sufficiently appreciated." The only reason I can see, to not write Catherine off as an utterly cursed, predictable, contemptible, and malign creature (and the same for the "whore of Babylon" who got between my two friends) is that she only causes as much anguish and turmoil as she is allowed to cause--which in Catherine's case, is a whole bunch, including the eventual and poetic murder of Jim. In other words, Catherine would be harmless if it wasn't for the pitiful and infuriating defeatism and passivity of Jules, and the back-stabbing weak-mindedness of Jim.

In general, and whether it is conscious or unconscious, there is not one single redeeming female character in all of this film. In fact, the girl at the bar with the short hair (after Jim has returned to France), who is said to be--literally--to stupid for conversation, despite how erotic and fetching she is said to be by her...uh...handler, just may signify the all-time, end-all-be-all nadir of how women are portrayed in the world of celluloid. She's like nothing more than a beautiful tree with a pulse (dear god, where is Laura Mulvey when we need her?!).

Which, as I've written before, is all fine with me--it is just a movie. In real life, and as many lucky men know, there are, of course, as many selfless, strong, faithful, and intelligent women as there are "whores of Babylon." With regards to the latter though, I don't necessarily condemn them for getting away with what they are able to get away with. I do indeed believe in hating the "game" (as they say), and not the "player." Anyways, despite having an abundance of power over Jules and Jim, Catherine isn't any better off for it. In fact, she seems like a pretty tormented soul--hell, she even finally commits suicide. It all seems to boil down to how Jules and Jim, or for that matter, how my friends Eric and Jason decide they are going to act towards "A woman like that."

"A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons."

An old Cheyenne saying.

"Idiot."

2008-10-10T13:30:00.001-07:00

I am smitten with Maud. Which is an odd reality in and of itself, because I am rarely distracted by actresses, or musicians, or any media or celluloid figures of any kind. If she is not standing in front of me, it is hard for me to be distracted by a woman--or in other words, I need actual interaction and proximity. I've never understood those people who obsess over people they will never meet. But, after viewing Eric Rohmer's, My Night at Maud's, I feel compelled--literally, for the first time that I can remember, and at the ripe age of 37--to go out and try to find a poster of Maud (Francoise Fabian), and hang it up in my apartment. Weird.

It is difficult to pinpoint, exactly what point in the film I realized that I was indeed, smitten, because at first, Maud irritated me a little bit. I know that when she pulls her hand away from Vidal, I was starting to like her. But, I think I was officially, smitten, at that point where Jean-Louis and Vidal have just arrived at her apartment, and told her that they have been at church, at a Christmas Eve mass, and she deliciously admonishes them that they both "stink of holy water." Yep, I think that that was the exact moment that I realized that--with Maud--Eric Rohmer has, not only found a devastatingly entrancing actress in Francoise Fabian, but he has also created an intoxicating, stark, passionate, brutally honest, and utterly believable character.

Not to mention, a female character that--quite refreshingly--breaks with the trite habit of films back in the 1960s, to treat female beauty like it only comes with fair features and blonde hair.

Maud's honesty and directness is illuminated by the juxtaposition with, as Rahul Hamid puts it for senses of cinema, "Jean-Louis's self-deception...[and] sophomoric test of male self-control." In fact, Maud, throughout the glorious scene of Jean-Louis's night in her apartment (Rohmer's dialogue in this scene being some of the best I've ever heard), makes it easy to see how Jean-Louis and Vidal are suffering from--as Maud says--a "protracted adolescence." Dear god, between Vidal's pitiful groveling and Jean-Louis's fatuous (but admittedly harmless) "Jesus Complex," she really does command the scene.

But Jean-Louis's "protracted adolescence" shines bright enough without her around. We find Jean-Louis--after all--in the very first scene of the film, sitting in mass in a church, ogling his nice, little, blonde, Catholic girl. Which is fine, I guess, but for someone who goes on and on about his faith and self-control, you'd think that, at least at worship, he could focus on god. I would never detract from the kind of admirable integrity it takes to abstain from sex--especially the fleeting wonderfulness of a one-night stand--but Jean-Louis seems to be doing it because of some kind of self-righteous, self-deceptive, existential conundrum he is in the grips of, not for any kind of genuine spiritual goals. This glitch in Jean-Louis's reasoning is the defining quality of his whole half-hearted, only-when-it's-convenient kind of faith--it's based on odds and "wagers," not on "true faith." That whole wager of Pascal's, and how it applies to having faith, is as shoddy as "finding god" because you're in prison--I guess.

In the end, as we are given hints about the "painful irony" involving Jean-Louis's nice, little, blonde, Catholic girl, and Maud, we see that all of the praying and time spent in church, still didn't prevent the nice, little, blonde, Catholic girl--and all of her piousness--from being Maud's ex-husband's mistress. We get a hint of this indiscretion, from Vidal, earlier in the film, when he is introduced to the nice, little, blonde, Catholic girl (even though he obviously already knows her), and also when Jean-Louis and her meet Maud on the beach. Also, in the end, and as Rahul Hamid writes, there is that delicious sense of "wistful regret" between Maud and Jean- Louis, which is conveyed by their questions to each other, about visits to where they each are currently living. And how couldn't Jean-Louis regret passing Maud up? When we see her in that last scene, her hair is longer, and all down, and it looks even darker because of how tan she is, and she is wearing that splendid summer dress, and in general, just looking crushingly exquisite.

But, Jean-Louis has to go back to his nice, little, blonde, Catholic girl...

...idiot.

That one tree outside of the orchard...

2008-10-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Aside from the fact that the following rant was written under the influence of cheap cognac, I am the son of a beautiful, faithful, and honest (to a fault) woman, who was wronged by an inherently good, but utterly lost man (my father, god bless his soul). I take infidelity very seriously, as it caused a lot of hurt and turmoil in my family, and thus, I must ask you--dear reader--to bear with the pervasive presence of cuss words in what follows. To edit, would be to rob the following words of their sincerity.

Carloss James Chamberlin, writing about Agnes Varda's, Le Bonheur, writes that "Jacques Demy, Varda's husband, thought the film's conclusion monstrous," and so do I--even if poor, sweet Therese accidently fell into the pond. Which is of course, bullshit, because it seems pretty obvious that she killed herself. The little flash of Therese struggling to save herself by grabbing the branch, in my eyes, is simply Francois--that treacherous fucker--attempting to alleviate some of his guilt, over the manifest fact that his wife drowned right after he told her of his affair. Chamberlin seems to agree that Therese killed herself as well, as he writes that "her action, which will change everything, and nothing, is a perverse token of her love."

Therese's death is the hinge of the story. After all, this is a story about "happiness" (or the lack there of), and the fact that Therese kills herself as a result of Francois' infidelity, makes his infidelity even worse, because it has caused Therese so much hurt, that she is driven to suicide. If we're supposed to believe that Therese is fine with Francois' fatuous doggerel about trees "outside of the orchard," and that her drowning is simply an accident, than it does indeed "change everything."

Or does it? Hasn't the damage already been done? When Francois cheated on his wife (and his children, because when people cheat on their spouses, whether they ignore the fact or not, it effects the children involved just as much), he was thinking about one person's "happiness"--his. And fuck him for it. Whether Therese accepts it or not, is beside the point of what makes this whole deal a wretched imbroglio to begin with--Francois being a selfish, weak-minded, predictable motherfucker.

But Therese does not accept it. After that treacherous fucker--Francois--lays that bullshit about orchards on Therese, she kills herself. Which leads to that "monstrous conclusion" that Varda's husband was talking about. This begins with Francois searching for Therese after he wakes up and she is missing. As he wanders around the park--with his poor children in tow--asking people if they've seen a "blonde," or a "blonde in a blue dress," or simply a "blue and yellow dress," he seems at this point, to have completely confused his wife with any other attractive "blonde in a blue dress." This carries on a similar theme from a montage earlier in the film, that consists of flashes of close-ups of Francois in bed with the two different women, at different times. They just blur together, as if it doesn't make any difference who Francois is in bed with.

Then comes the final "monstrous" montage, to some kind of manic, demonic music from Mozart, showing Francois getting right on with his life (like Therese's death was no big deal), and moving Emilie right into Therese's place--with the kids and everything. And...well, all appears to be just fine.

Or is it? In the final scene (now in the Fall), we have Francois and Emilie and the children walking through the woods, and all of the colors in the scene are browns and yellows (even the clothes that Francois and Emilie are wearing)--except for the kids, whose bright red outfits undeniably contrast sharply with everything in the scene. Varda is clearly conveying the sense that something does not fit--something is messing up Francois' little utopia. That would seem to be the kids--two little walking, talking reminders of poor, sweet Therese.

"...a kind of death."

2008-10-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

Generally, I support most everything that feminists fight for, and agree with them about all of the problems in the world of old, wealthy, white men. Hell, I even accept most of what Laura Mulvey has had to say (regardless of how manic it seems at times). With this said, Agnes Varda has created a female character in Cleo From 5 to 7, that is difficult to empathize with, or for that matter, feel commiserative towards.

Despite the admittedly omnipotent, oppressive, and ubiquitous nature of patriarchal domination in our world (to this day, let alone back in the early 1960s), Cleopatra is simply not a happy or content human being, and thus, says and does a lot of contemptible shit. Yes, she is treated like a spoiled child by her caretaker-lady, and by her older-gentleman-lover-friend, and by the pianist, but how else do you react to a grown person who throws temper tantrums all of the time (even in public places)? But to answer this question, it seems necessary to first figure out if Cleopatra is a product of her environment, or if her environment is a product of her? She is the one--after all--who wants to be the music star.

This dilemma is analogous to--for instance--the demons and nasferatus of our modern media juggernaut, complaining about being hounded by the paparazzi. It makes you want to say...

"...are you really serious...Princess Diana decides to be a...well...a princess...and consequently, dies as a result of the kind of attention that accompanies that kind of status...and...compared to all of the heartbreaking war and starvation and suffering and poverty and chaos on this planet at this very moment...at any moment...we're supposed to care about what?"

That may be me coming at this obliquely...maybe. If so, Varda conveys the idea I'm trying to get across here, by including news broadcasts and conversations throughout the film, about debacles like Algeria's war for independence (which France and its cursed colonial proclivities deserved to lose and suffer for) and all of the other unrest and chaos occurring elsewhere. Of course Cleopatra is completely oblivious to all of this war and chaos--but by including it in the film, Varda is illuminating how comparatively fatuous and trivial the majority of Cleopatra's problems are.

But not to her, which is understandable to some degree, because all humans have to deal with things like fear and doubt and loneliness sometimes. And Cleopatra is also dealing with the anxiety--after all--of waiting for the test results that could tell her that she has cancer. The problem begins when she stops counting her blessings, starts taking things for granted, and thus, ignores the fact that there is always a multitude of other human beings suffering far more than her (of course, this applies to any of us who live in even moderate prosperity and comfort).

Anyways, it isn't only Cleopatra's indifference to all of the disheartening shit happening elsewhere in France and the world, that makes her contemptible to me--it's also her pride and vanity (which I do acknowledge can be a result of inherent pressures of the patriarchal world she lives in, although I still feel that that is a lame excuse). Like her model friend says when her and Cleopatra are discussing being nude in public: "My body makes me happy, not proud." This is an alien concept to someone like Cleopatra, who is in a perpetual state of myopic intoxication, from the elixir of self-exultation. What's worse, is that her self-exultation is rooted in something as shallow and fleeting as physical beauty.

Although it sounds utterly cliche, we all nevertheless know it to be true--someone can be completely beautiful on the outside, and at the same time, acutely hideous on the inside. And in this regard, and as Cleopatra herself states in the film, the cancer just may be too late, if indeed "ugliness is a kind of death."

"The obvious necessity of remembering."

2008-09-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

"Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

Thomas Jefferson

To speak honestly and starkly about the bombing of Hiroshima (or for that matter, Nagasaki), it is first necessary to remember the scale of the destruction, and the pretenses under which the bombings were carried out. "Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima," writes Howard Zinn in his invaluable tome, A People's History of the United States, "were almost all civilians." This fact negates Harry Truman's erroneous claim that the city of Hiroshima was chosen as a target because it was "a military base." In a flash of light "the temperature of the sun," those 100,000 lives were annihilated, and tens of thousands more were burned, maimed, and contaminated (to effect future generations indefinitely).

In Hiroshima Mon Amour, Alain Resnais attempts the daunting and delicate task of confronting this ignominious manifestation of hell on earth. The task is daunting because of the difficulty of depicting an act of malevolence and destruction that can--quite literally--be considered biblical in proportion. The task is delicate because the film was released just fifteen years after those infamous days of August, and the wounds--both emotional and spiritual, as well as physical--had barely had time to heal (many of which, of course, never will). So it was--and still is--important to consider that there are boundaries of what is appropriate to recreate and represent.

Resnais efficaciously and tactfully toes this line, by approaching the tragedy obliquely, using sharply contrasting juxtapositions of images, and a story line riddled by nonlinearity. The primary focus of the story is of a Japanese man and a French woman, and a twenty-four-hour tryst they are locked into. What the two of them have in common, is that they have both suffered due to being, either on, or associated with the losing side of World War II. He, because his family was killed in Hiroshima (he was off fighting, and thus, spared), and she, because her first love was a doomed German soldier who was part of the German occupation of France.

The most direct attention the actual bombing of Hiroshima gets, is in the montage that makes up the first fifteen minutes of the film. Here, Resnais ingeniously illuminates the barbaric nature of the bombing, by juxtaposing actual images of the aftermath, with images of the two lovers embracing each other. Meanwhile--in what seems to be the non-diegetic soundtrack--she is saying that she can see and understand the destruction, and he is saying that she couldn't possibly see or understand. The stark contrast in textures, between the grainy images of hate and war, and the smooth images of love and affection intensify the vast gulf between the two.

The French woman is correct when she states that there is indeed an "obvious necessity of remembering." Perhaps, if that manifestation of hell on earth is never forgotten, it will never happen again (although, unfortunately, it is dangerous and irresponsible to underestimate the depths of hate that some humans dwell in). Nevertheless, it is essential, that in our remembrance, we are considerate and commiserative of those who have suffered. In Alain Resnais' lament, Hiroshima Mon Amour, this has been accomplished.

The lawlessness of it all...

2008-09-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

Going from viewing the dull and predictable linearity of a film like Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur, to viewing Robert Bresson's idiosyncratic imbroglio, Pickpocket, is a jarring experience, that intensifies and illuminates Pickpocket's unsettling effect. And Pickpocket is indeed unsettling--if for no other reason than the fact that it is almost always unsettling to have to look at the world through someone else's eyes and in someone else's mind. Which is where, as viewers, Bresson keeps us throughout Pickpocket--in Michel's head.

Pickpocket is one of those rare films that is so steeped in character subjectivity, that it is downright uncomfortable to sit through at points. But in a good way, that one would never consider retreating from--kind of like that long scene in Stanley Kubrick's, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where one of the astronauts has to go out in space to repair the exterior of the ship, and for ten minutes of the film, all that can be heard is the astronaut's (diegetic) breathing in the spacesuit. Kubrick ingeniously creates a disquieting sensation of claustrophobia, by utterly submerging his viewers into the subjective perceptions of his characters. Which, once again, and depending on the particular character and situation, can be a harrowing viewing experience (in other words, it is not necessarily how the film is filmed, or a lack of music in the soundtrack, or a frustrating story line that makes us uncomfortable, but having to look at things from someone else's perspective).

In Pickpocket, Bresson has done just that, by giving us no other perspective but Michel's. As Rick J. Thompson writes, Bresson limits "viewers strictly to that which [Michel]...sees, says, thinks, [and] writes." And by enveloping his viewers to such a degree, into the subjectivity of such a loner of a character, that is almost completely isolated from other humans in any social sense, Bresson has burdened us with a glimpse into a (perhaps) troubled mind--a glimpse that can be exhausting and irritating for some people.

But not for me. Although--with regards to the sordid and often vicious nature of human society--I do not totally agree with Michel when he says that his thievery "could set it right," I do indeed agree that "It's already upside down." But Michel betrays his dedication to his craft, by attempting to paint it (to the cop) as some kind of righteous, revolutionary endeavor to balance the differences between things like the law, and justice; or between white-collar crime and blue-collar crime. Quite simply, Michel is young and bored, and in the grips of some kind of existential crisis, and the instantaneous rush of anticipation, anxiety, fear, and excitement that accompanies his lawlessness, temporarily saves him from the monotony of his existence.

It is kind of like those homeless kids in South America, who climb on top of those speeding trains, and act like they are surfing (often falling off and dying). The rush and adrenaline is the only thing that can clear the head of all of the trying, awful shit we have to deal with everyday of our lives--but unfortunately, only for a moment or two at a time.

In fact, as a skateboarder of 25 years, I sometimes feel sorry for people who have never discovered the therapeutic value of breaking laws and scaring the shit out of yourself on a regular basis.

Or as Charles Bukowski once put it:

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

Famous last words...

2008-09-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

Considering that I find the whole American "Gangster" genre to be, not only irritating and monotonous, but bogged down in fatuous cliches as well, it makes perfect sense that watching a "gangster" film made by a French director whom, as Roger Ebert writes, "inhaled American gangster films," is as painful as the slow extraction of one of my teeth.

Now, I am not so myopic in my acute disdain for "gangster" films, that I can't appreciate Jean-Pierre Melville as an artist (and as the genesis of the "New Wave"), especially in the context of when, where, and how Bob Le Flambeur was made. If nothing else, the utterly predictable story line, and absurd characters are made bearable by the dreamy interludes of Parisian landscape (especially the opening scene) as shot by Henri Decae. But nevertheless, it was difficult to sit through this film, and thus, I am--for once--at a loss for thoughtful words about it. It is at moments like this, that one is forced to resort to other means of self-expression--in other words, sarcasm and slight.

Case in point...

...the most thrilling moment in the entire film is--by far--when Bob smacks Anne. Dear god is that a glorious smack! It messes her hair up and everything. In fact, it looks like it must have actually hurt when they filmed it. Mother of babbling god, and does she deserve it too, although, not as much as that pitiful dingbat Paulo does. Poor ol' Paulo and that woeful expression on his face when he deduces that Anne has had...uh...carnal knowledge of that treacherous punk, Marc, is the funniest moment in the film.

But I digress...I was discussing that glorious smack. Melville is gracefully and nonchalantly trampling all over the whole feminist movement with that one glorious smack--where is Laura Mulvey when we need her? But of course, that glorious smack is merely the shining apex of the all out, frontal assault Bob Le Flambeur wages on anything and everything feminist. From the greed and duplicity of the wife of the guy who supplies the layout of the casino, to Anne's licentious vacuousness, in a film that is rife with allusions to the honor and decency of men (even criminals), women (except for Bob's bartender friend of course) are portrayed as simple, petty, loose, and deceitful.

Which is all fine with me--it is just a movie. As I stated earlier, if anything in this genre in general, and in this film in particular aggravates me, it is the tedious predictability of the story lines. Jesus, when Paulo tells Anne about the plans to rob the casino, it is completely obvious that that "nimble little minx" is going to eventually let that proverbial cat out of the bag. And of course, when Bob has just won at the track, and his friend is trying to convince him to quit while he is ahead, Bob predictably utters those famous last words...

"I'm on a roll."

Ah youth...

2008-09-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Despite having been published years earlier, Francois Truffaut's manifesto, "A Certain Tendency of French Cinema," contains a subtle hint about the source of the problems young Antoine Doinel faces in The 400 Blows. "They behave toward the scenario," Truffaut writes about screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, "like someone who thinks that they are reforming a delinquent by finding him work." If nothing else, this seems to describe the adults Antoine is surrounded by (and dare I say, confined by) in The 400 Blows--all of which seem to have completely forgotten what it is to be young.

Not to say that this film's young antihero, Antoine, is not a walking, talking imbroglio, because he undoubtedly is, but considering circumstances like the militaristic nature of his school, and the...uh...less-than-ideal nature of his home and family, his behavior becomes a lot easier to empathize with. In fact, most of his behavior seems like logical reactions to bad circumstances, rather than problems with his temperament. He is simply floating along the currents of outside forces, reacting consistently calm and "stoically" to each new obstacle he confronts. One could say, he is drifting on these currents.

Although there is little variance in Antoine's reactions to each new obstacle or dilemma, there is a gradual change in the film's settings, that alludes to some kind of progression occurring. This is the broadening of the boundaries (both figuratively and physically) that confine Antoine.

First, we see Antoine in the tiny classroom. Then we see him in the even tinier, suffocating confines of his family's apartment. The apartment is so small that doors can only be partially opened due to beds and furniture in front of them. These small sets allude to feelings of imprisonment.

Next, after Antoine has been removed from school, and has--once and for all--run away, he temporarily stays with his faithful friend, Rene. Here, Antoine is free of school and his parent's dysfunction, and we find him in Rene's giant, old house, smoking cigars and drinking, virtually free of all parental influence.

Finally, although he is, in a sense, confined in the observatory for delinquents, it is still a gigantic building, surrounded by lots of land. But of course, Antoine escapes from the observatory. It is here, through incredibly long tracking shots of Antoine running (and running, and running) Truffaut gives us a sense of Antoine distancing himself from all of the adults, and confinement, and troubles that have plagued him throughout the film. Once Antoine is on the beach (once all of these currents which he has been drifting on, have lead him to the sea), he is in the freest, most limitless place and point thus far in the film.

Or is he? Has he really just reached the greatest boundary, or wall, of them all? This is where Truffaut sheds the tendency of the popular French Cinema he condemns in his manifesto, "to contain its characters in a sealed-off world," and burdens us with the interpretation of where Antoine is once he reaches the sea. After all, once Antoine has taken a few steps in the sea, he turns around and walks back, before the camera zooms in on him.

One thing is for sure--there is none of that convenient closure that viewers, to this day, expect. If, at the sea, Antoine is any freer (or for that matter, better off) than he was in the suffocating little apartment with his parents, is up to each individual viewer to decide. Personally, when contemplating this, I can't help but to think back to a quote that was recited in Antoine's classroom, earlier in the film:

"Better to have freedom and constant threat, than slavery..."

"And shit to you too!"

2008-09-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

For someone whom has never seen any of Claude Chabrol's other films, knows little about Paris in the mid to late 1950s, and--most importantly--always cheers for the characters that try to do "the right thing," Les Cousins leaves a bleak and acrid aftertaste.

Taken by itself, as a singular work of art, bereft of its frequent juxtaposition with Le Beau Serge (which, I hear, places it in a different context), Les Cousins conveys a lucid message about Paris's hipster society in the post-war years--there was no place for humility, honesty, or tolerance in it.

Of course--considering their inherently fatuous, hollow, and contemptible natures in general--there is no place for the aforementioned virtues in most, if not all, hipster societies, but in the particular "scene" that Chabrol plunges Charles into the midst of in Les Cousins, humility, honesty, and tolerance, in the end, spell Charles's doom.

One of Charles's biggest problems is, that he does not take a baseball bat to Colvis's knees in the very first scene. Nah, but seriously, Colvis and Paul smack of those bored, vicious, rich kids that used to ride through the English countryside in the 1700s and 1800s, tormenting and terrorizing the peasants--just for kicks. What little novelty Paul has, wears off by the second or third scene--not to mention, the virulent "Gestapo" joke he lays on his sleeping Jewish acquaintance. In this context, and despite his annoying timidity, Charles still gets my "sympathy."

First of all, Charles is showing humility and honesty when he pours his heart out to Florence--which is admirable in my book, regardless of how pitiful it was at points. How is he supposed to know that he is relinquishing himself to a garden-variety "whore of Babylon"?

Second, when that treacherous bastard, Colvis, and Paul "seduce" Florence, Charles, regardless of his reasons, shows tolerance and humility by taking it like a man. He could have taken a baseball bat to Paul's and Colvis's knees at that point, or even worse, started acting like that pitiful dingbat, Phillipe, but he shrugs it off, and gets on with his work. That is the kind of tolerant civility that makes any society, community, or clique bearable, let alone, livable.

Yeah, Charles starts to blow it towards the end of the film, but it is necessary to keep in mind that between Colvis and Paul, there is some manipulation working against Charles. By the time Charles is standing over a sleeping Paul, with a single slug in the pistol that is pointed at Paul's head, Charles has been through the ringer, and is acting out of desperation and heartache (heartache that was the result of manipulation). Not to mention, if Charles really wanted to simply kill Paul, he would have loaded the pistol and shot him. But the whole one-slug thing, is to see if fate is on Paul's side. And...well, it is.

Despite Paul's occasional charm, and regardless of any of the "ambiguities" about who exactly is guilty and innocent, which John Conomos mentions in his critique of this film, Paul ends up being the undisputed punk of the film. Colvis is indeed a treacherous bastard that deserves that baseball bat across the knees, but Paul is family to Charles, and that makes all of his insidious treachery and duplicity, inexcusable.

Yes, Paul old sport, "and shit to you too!"

Sniffing the seat.

2008-09-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this is really just to see how this blog-thing looks...but...Les Mistons was a splendid reminder of how frustrating it can be to be an adolescent boy, with a doomed infatuation with a woman...or hell...with a girl your age.

In second or third (or perhaps it was fourth or fifth) grade, I had a crush on Denise Schafer and she had a crush on me. But the best gesture I could come up with--at the time--to express my feelings to her, was to spit on her in my backyard.

I guess in this regard I can relate to that gang of "brats."

They say that a photo is worth a thousand words. No matter how well you write, the "brat" sniffing the bike seat, after Bernadette (I think that was her name) got off of it, sums up the utter hopelessness and fatuousness of adolescent infatuations, much better than words could.