Cindy Sherman’s debut feature-length film, OFFICE KILLER, begins with the scattered sounds of corporate America emanating from the darkness. Stacks of paper slap down on desks, telephone rings bombard distracted voices with new and distant conversations, the clump-ding of the elevator unloads half a dozen more pairs of shoes to shuffle through the labyrinth of desks and file cabinets. Then the titles slither mechanically across the screen in flashing fragments. They are accompanied by the thud of a mopey jazz bass line, and then, the small, unsteady voice of a woman eeks out of the darkness. She introduces the corporate mantra of the magazine, Constant Consumer, which dominates her pitiable life. “Get the job done,” she laments, as the first image appears on the screen. It is a tight close up of a letter heading jerking up through a dot-matrix computer printer. Dorine Douglas, it reads—another incarnation of the voice we hear.
Through a series of these tightly cropped shots displaying various body parts and office mechanisms, the setting for the story slowly expands, piece by piece. These tight frames bouncing throughout the space in rapid succession are intercut with a few long, slow shots moving down crowded hallways or zooming in toward the windows from the dark, non-descript exterior of the building. The interior world does eventually cohere, and presents the cluttered, sixties-era office building with dingy cinderblock walls and hazy yellow fluorescent lighting, where most of the action takes place.
The pace of the introductions of Sherman’s players in the opening scene is decidedly clipped. The shots are most often filmed from odd, overhead or below-the-waist angles, offering only fragments of each character at any given time. As a result, the camera always finds them in their most defining postures, so that though the introductions are brief, after the whirlwind, one more or less has a grounded understanding of where all the pieces fit in the complex social structure of the workplace. Sherman uses a young stud pushing a mail cart as the tour guide through her playing space. As he rolls the cart down the narrow passageway between cubicles, a slender pair of legs goes by, peeking out of a high slit up the side of the skirt they’re wearing. This would be Kim, played by Molly Ringwald, who fills the role of office-piece-of-ass. As the mail boy turns to check her out, he slams the cart into another, shorter pair of legs bundled up in a thick wool sweater. This would be Dorine, played by Carol Kane, who, dutifully filling the role of office-doormat, scurries away from the cart, injured and embarrassed, back to her desk in the corner.
The opening sequence establishes a sensibility of controlled confinement that runs throughout the course of the film. The office arena is set up to feel much like a child’s dollhouse; each character that Sherman brings in is relatively one-dimensional, and merely functions as a cog in the plot-driven narrative. This lack of depth early on is reinforced by the film’s rather domineering score—composer Evan Lurie thickly lays in a kitschy, creeping jazz line that I can imagine coming from some sort of vaudevillian puppet show. Along with Sherman’s use of archetypal characters, Lurie’s score gives the film a distinct theatrical quality. In the same vein, Sherman focuses intently separating her office from the surrounding world. Almost every shot in the film is used to expand the interior world, while everything else outside the office is left in total mystery. Only two scenes were filmed outdoors: Dorine’s memory of her father’s death, and that which shows Dorine driving on the freeway away from the city, which is meant to symbolize new possibility there in the last shot of the film. Both of these scenes also part with the usual tight and rigid cinematography of the rest of the film, and instead show more fluid, organic camera work. There are also occasional smoking breaks that take place on a concrete balcony, but which are only filmed facing the building, so no exterior environment can be detected—just a tease of fresh air before the employees have to trudge back to work. Sherman consistently presents her characters through the lens of the office, tying their identities only to their roles in the workplace.
As the film progresses, Dorine’s actions directly reflect this dollhouse sensibility, except that she gets to be the one to move the dolls around for a change. After she accidentally murders an unfavorable editor, Dorine decides to cut loose, Dahmer-style, and expand the operation. As she continues to murder her co-workers, one by one, she actually brings their bodies home to fill roles in her very own make-believe office, in the basement of her mother’s house. She is literally playing with dolls, but in a dollhouse wrought with nauseating violence and perversity.
The gruesome string of events is kicked off by a typical corporate downsizing campaign that sends many of the employees out of the office to work at home, which, in this case, is enabled by the introduction of email technology. By removing their physical bodies from the office, the downsizing in effect obliterates the employee’s identities within the work environment and replaces them with email accounts. In this way, Dorine’s killing spree can be seen as a reaction to the devaluing of the body. She indeed reasserts the body’s importance by actually physically removing it from the office, destroying it via murder, and then managing to assume the person’s virtual identity by simply typing someone else’s name instead of hers at the bottom of her emails, and conducting business as usual. By the time anyone notices, there is no one left alive to run the company. One of the more poignant moments toward the end of the film is Dorine writing a clean, untraceable, email as her boss, Norah, but typing on the keyboard with sticky fingers covered in Norah’s blood.
The film was made in the mid-1990s, which nowadays is easily recognized as a watershed moment in the history of integrating business and technology—the emergence of internet in the economic sphere is now commonly viewed on par with the Industrial Revolution. Given this context, it is all the more reasonable to see Sherman’s film as a piece about the human body and its ever-evolving relationship with the technological landscape. Throughout the film Sherman presents her subjects in fragments, often understandable only as separate pieces of the machine whole—in this case, Constant Consumer Magazine. The breakdown of the body into pieces and the strain that it puts on the identity of the individual even extends beyond the workplace. For example, Dorine comes home from the office to care for her crippled mother, who could be seen as only half of a complete person, depending on Dorine for meals, and an electric rail to carry her up and down the stairs. The infringement of technological dependence upon the self often leads to downfall among Sherman’s characters. Norah (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is exposed for embezzling funds when she fails to transition her operation to the digital realm. The asthmatic magazine owner Virginia is slain when Dorine swaps poison into her respirator. Even the tech-wiz, Daniel, dies because his pager goes off at just the wrong moment. And by enabling Dorine to orchestrate her massacre with the aid of email, Sherman also points out the radical, and often damaging, shift in social structures caused by the chasm between individual consciousness and rapid technological development. In the final scene, a newly made-over Dorine speeds off with her cats and a bag of body parts to find a job as an office manager. The classified ad reads, “Computer Skills A Must!” I can only assume she’ll get the job.
One character who stands out from Sherman’s other players is Kim Poole (Ringwald). First, she is the only major character to survive Dorine’s wrath, despite the fact that she was especially mean to her early on. I find this interesting not because of some disparagement in Dorine’s motives (she did try to strangle her in a stairwell), but because of how Sherman has chosen to use her in the context of the film. At the top Kim seems like another shallow stereotype acting out Sherman’s goofy technorganic thrillodrama. After a string of nasty, unprovoked, and wildly off-base insults thrown toward Dorine, I am certain she will die a gruesome death in no time. But Sherman keeps her alive, even as she grows more and more angry and hysterical. By the end of the film, Kim has transcended the realm of stereotype, and comes across as a real, sympathetic woman in an otherwise cartoonish environment. I think that the deepening of her character was essential in order for OFFICE KILLER to connect with its audience. Although the ways that Sherman addresses the body/technology dialectic with things like tight, rapid cinematography is quite successful, with all its smirking theatricality, the film runs the risk of being an art world in-joke. However, Sherman’s use of Kim—and her ingenious move to cast the beloved 1980s John Hughes it-girl—brings in a necessary dose of fast-paced girl-talk and heartrending sincerity to yank the film out of its perhaps-too-kitschy packaging. In the end, it seems that Sherman would have it that the pieces that don’t fit into the machine are just the ones to make it run smoothly.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Witkin's Backwoods High Art Freak Extravaganza
In Joel-Peter Witkin’s 1992 photograph titled “Cupid and Centaur”, the viewer finds several different animal skeletons, one of them human, combined to create the illusion of two unnatural creatures. The human skeleton is complete, down to the base of the spine, at which point Witkin has attached it to the body of an ostrich, in the middle of its neck. The length of the combined vertebrae is similar to that of an ostrich’s natural neck, so the viewer can more easily perceive these mutilated bodies as a single mythical beast. On the back of the ostrich sits what appears to be either a complete ape skeleton or else a human child’s skeleton with a baboon skull—the legs are long enough to rouse that haunting suspicion. The ape-headed creature, whatever it is, also has a large, fully-feathered bird wing fixed to its back, and sits slumped with its arm dangling, staring lazily off to the side like a sub-moronic jockey.
Witkin seems to intend the surrounding set to resemble a turn-of-the-century artist’s studio (the skylight, the large stained curtain, etc.)—or else Frankenstein’s laboratory—and goes further to impose this phony antiquity onto the photograph by physically distressing the surface with scratches and smudges when printing. These tactics come across as cheap ways to hide the irrefutable goofiness of Witkin’s whole project. All he’s really done is had the stomach and, I suppose, audacity, to work and play with the creepy-crawlies—bones, heads, fetuses, the like. However, his combinations of these things hardly bring anything to light. The viewer confronts his images like any circus-goer would: with a dull sense of wonder and a brief pang of disgust. At least, in this particular piece, Ringmaster Witkin is not directly exploiting the oddities of living human beings, as he does in much of his other work.
Perhaps the most obnoxious thing about this freak show science project is Witkin’s title, in which he designates his forms the two familiar mythological figures, Cupid, and the centaur. Although he does not even accurately recreate the figures as the legends call for—obviously Cupid was no monkey, and centaurs were part horse, not part ostrich—he seems to long for this connection to Greek Mythology as a way to pirate its legitimacy as high artistic source material. Besides, any recognition of combined animal forms calls back to mythology anyway, so there is no need for Witkin’s reiteration. Either he must think that the intelligence level of his audience is equivalent to that of a second-grader, or else he’s spotlighting the difference between all the “mainstream” mythology paintings and his outrageously radical combines with snotty sarcasm.
In general, what is irritating about Witkin’s work is the distance he goes to ensure his work a sense of fine art authenticity. I find his amalgamations in “Cupid and Centaur” interesting objectively, however, the excessive layers of artsy motifs (the black and white film, the faux smudges, the artists’ drop cloths and dried flowers on the stage) wind up absolutely smothering the minimal uniqueness that Witkin’s project might have had going for it in the beginning.
Witkin seems to intend the surrounding set to resemble a turn-of-the-century artist’s studio (the skylight, the large stained curtain, etc.)—or else Frankenstein’s laboratory—and goes further to impose this phony antiquity onto the photograph by physically distressing the surface with scratches and smudges when printing. These tactics come across as cheap ways to hide the irrefutable goofiness of Witkin’s whole project. All he’s really done is had the stomach and, I suppose, audacity, to work and play with the creepy-crawlies—bones, heads, fetuses, the like. However, his combinations of these things hardly bring anything to light. The viewer confronts his images like any circus-goer would: with a dull sense of wonder and a brief pang of disgust. At least, in this particular piece, Ringmaster Witkin is not directly exploiting the oddities of living human beings, as he does in much of his other work.
Perhaps the most obnoxious thing about this freak show science project is Witkin’s title, in which he designates his forms the two familiar mythological figures, Cupid, and the centaur. Although he does not even accurately recreate the figures as the legends call for—obviously Cupid was no monkey, and centaurs were part horse, not part ostrich—he seems to long for this connection to Greek Mythology as a way to pirate its legitimacy as high artistic source material. Besides, any recognition of combined animal forms calls back to mythology anyway, so there is no need for Witkin’s reiteration. Either he must think that the intelligence level of his audience is equivalent to that of a second-grader, or else he’s spotlighting the difference between all the “mainstream” mythology paintings and his outrageously radical combines with snotty sarcasm.
In general, what is irritating about Witkin’s work is the distance he goes to ensure his work a sense of fine art authenticity. I find his amalgamations in “Cupid and Centaur” interesting objectively, however, the excessive layers of artsy motifs (the black and white film, the faux smudges, the artists’ drop cloths and dried flowers on the stage) wind up absolutely smothering the minimal uniqueness that Witkin’s project might have had going for it in the beginning.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Playtime at BCAM!
In Robert Therrien’s piece No Title 2003 (Table and Six Chairs), the artist presents just what the parentheses indicate: a table, and six chairs. However, the simple description does not give away the fact that this otherwise mundane dining room set is in fact ten feet tall and nearly thirty feet across. Therrien had each piece professionally fabricated with metal, which was then painted to look like the dark wood of the original set in Therrien’s kitchen that he used for inspiration. Every detail of the furniture has been attended to, from the aged metal hardware under the table to the subtle overlaps in the hand-made joints, to the round plastic feet on the bottoms of the chair legs.
The fact that Therrien went so far to accurately replicate the particulars of this ordinary furniture set makes the viewer’s experience of the piece entirely determined by its scale. He has made sure that no differences between his mammoth sculpture and the original set will attract a critical eye, besides the obvious. Upon encountering Table and Six Chairs, the viewer instantly recognizes the objects and overlays his memories of similar furniture onto his present experience with Therrien’s piece. In other words, the sculpture is a table and six chairs in the mind of the viewer, they just happen to be very large.
Once this recognition is achieved, the experience of Therrien’s work becomes more about the viewer’s experience of himself in its presence. The conscious understanding that the table and chairs are big, is outweighed by the viewer’s own sensation of feeling small. The artist is intending to trigger such a sensation because viewers are encouraged to walk between the legs, stand underneath, peer up at the bottom of the table, and so forth. From this bizarrely familiar vantage point, the work activates the memories of childhood, and incites the imagination to conjure up all the possible conditions of having such a vantage point. As I stand beneath the table I imagine whose legs would be jutting out from those chairs…there’s my mother, then my grandfather at the head, then perhaps my aunt with her black high-heels and crossed legs. As I continue to mill about below, I come to imagining that I am my cousin’s cat, China, rubbing up and down on all the various ankles, looking for a hand to pet me or perhaps smuggle me a piece of chicken skin.
The fertile imaginative ground in and around Therrien’s piece is the result of a profound sense of dislocation one feels when next to such fantastically sized objects. The piece is so large that when underneath it, everything beyond the legs of the chairs might as well be in another museum. Therrien’s use of scale in this piece is even more complicated than that, however. Each piece is not in fact fabricated directly to scale. Therrien based their measurements on how the original set appeared when photographed from the floor. And since every viewer is guaranteed to share that perspective, no one would ever think to question the objects’ dimensions. In this way Therrien in infusing his piece specifically with a child’s perspective (or for that matter, a cat’s, or anyone besides an average adult’s,) so that the jump to that childlike, imaginative state of mind is all the more immediate.
There is also something to be said for that fact that experiencing Therrien’s Table and Six Chairs and taking his imaginative cues is fun. Fun isn’t often the outcome of looking at art, though it should be recognized as a rather significant transportive device. There have been many artists who work with humor, making viewers smile with their clever jabs at the establishment, et cetera, but rarely does an artist harness the power of what is fun to us as children. There are no waterslides or pillow fights or costume chests to be found at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. In adult life, seeing the world in any way but the way it is, is usually deemed unproductive, inefficient, and even insane. Robert Therrien however captures in his piece the significance of the fun in pretending. His huge, uncanny objects are so other-worldly, that they instantly authorize the viewer to leave the world of the museum, and wholeheartedly engage in the invention of a world all his own.
The fact that Therrien went so far to accurately replicate the particulars of this ordinary furniture set makes the viewer’s experience of the piece entirely determined by its scale. He has made sure that no differences between his mammoth sculpture and the original set will attract a critical eye, besides the obvious. Upon encountering Table and Six Chairs, the viewer instantly recognizes the objects and overlays his memories of similar furniture onto his present experience with Therrien’s piece. In other words, the sculpture is a table and six chairs in the mind of the viewer, they just happen to be very large.
Once this recognition is achieved, the experience of Therrien’s work becomes more about the viewer’s experience of himself in its presence. The conscious understanding that the table and chairs are big, is outweighed by the viewer’s own sensation of feeling small. The artist is intending to trigger such a sensation because viewers are encouraged to walk between the legs, stand underneath, peer up at the bottom of the table, and so forth. From this bizarrely familiar vantage point, the work activates the memories of childhood, and incites the imagination to conjure up all the possible conditions of having such a vantage point. As I stand beneath the table I imagine whose legs would be jutting out from those chairs…there’s my mother, then my grandfather at the head, then perhaps my aunt with her black high-heels and crossed legs. As I continue to mill about below, I come to imagining that I am my cousin’s cat, China, rubbing up and down on all the various ankles, looking for a hand to pet me or perhaps smuggle me a piece of chicken skin.
The fertile imaginative ground in and around Therrien’s piece is the result of a profound sense of dislocation one feels when next to such fantastically sized objects. The piece is so large that when underneath it, everything beyond the legs of the chairs might as well be in another museum. Therrien’s use of scale in this piece is even more complicated than that, however. Each piece is not in fact fabricated directly to scale. Therrien based their measurements on how the original set appeared when photographed from the floor. And since every viewer is guaranteed to share that perspective, no one would ever think to question the objects’ dimensions. In this way Therrien in infusing his piece specifically with a child’s perspective (or for that matter, a cat’s, or anyone besides an average adult’s,) so that the jump to that childlike, imaginative state of mind is all the more immediate.
There is also something to be said for that fact that experiencing Therrien’s Table and Six Chairs and taking his imaginative cues is fun. Fun isn’t often the outcome of looking at art, though it should be recognized as a rather significant transportive device. There have been many artists who work with humor, making viewers smile with their clever jabs at the establishment, et cetera, but rarely does an artist harness the power of what is fun to us as children. There are no waterslides or pillow fights or costume chests to be found at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. In adult life, seeing the world in any way but the way it is, is usually deemed unproductive, inefficient, and even insane. Robert Therrien however captures in his piece the significance of the fun in pretending. His huge, uncanny objects are so other-worldly, that they instantly authorize the viewer to leave the world of the museum, and wholeheartedly engage in the invention of a world all his own.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Rock My Religion
Dan Graham’s 1984 video piece, titled Rock My Religion, is a 50-minute montage that offers a spread of imagery ranging from pre-revolution American settlements to evangelical religious revivals, to sunbathing hippies, to contemporary hardcore punk rock mosh-pits. Initially, these clips come in quick succession, with no apparent interest on Graham’s part in establishing any form of narrative structure. Different video and audio fragments that present various historical eras, cultural epicenters, and pop punk icons weave in and out of each other relentlessly, injecting the viewer with a monumental dosage of cultural information. From one minute to the next, we are plodding along the muddy lanes of a 17th century village, then staring up at Jerry Lee Lewis, dripping with sweat, banging on a piano with his shoe. Graham’s overwhelmingly diverse flood of footage is punctuated by low-budget text scrolls, which are often white block letters moving in front of an image, or else a solid black or red back ground. The text usually describes specific events or states philosophies relating to the topics of faith, worship, rock ’n’ roll, and American youth. The artist increases the risk of total disorientation by adding voice-over or sung lyrics to the scrolling text, which have no direct link to the written words.
After the first fifteen minutes or so, all the connections Graham is orchestrating begin to clarify. Early in the video he documents the organization of religious fanatics known as “The Shakers,” who would fall into rapture-induced comas and shake violently to announce the presence of the Holy Spirit in their bodies. Given this information, we are then confronted with footage depicting this same sort of ecstatic seizure in modern rock ‘n’ roll environments. The look on each movement’s participants’ faces—the eyes closed, the lips parted, the brow slightly furrowed as though expecting an answer from God at any moment—is practically identical. At one point Graham makes a particularly direct association by presenting visual content of an elderly crowd of churchgoers tossing and swaying with each other, that is then overlaid with a song by LA hardcore band, Black Flag, with remarkable synchronicity.
As the video progresses, each successive image or audio fragment comes with increasing familiarity. Graham’s montage finally establishes a direction to its movement, which seems to trace the development of American counter-culture identities through the combined powers of intense physical exertion and crowd-fueled delirium. He draws a connection between the loss of oneself by way of fanatical worship practices and the sublime displacement that sex-starved teenagers sought after in the thunderous drone of the 1960s rock concert. Graham isolates music and rhythm, and specifically the movement that they inspire, as the common binding in each of the cultural or religious factions that he imparts. The video feels much more like a documentary in the middle section, as he describes, in noticeably more coherent juxtapositions of text, imagery, and narration, the introduction of the guitar into worship services, and then the eruption of gospel music in African American communities. Graham suggests that the evolution of the church as an energetic social gathering that involved wild, redemptive dancing is what laid the foundation for rock ‘n’ roll.
Graham continues in this documentarian style a deeper exploration of the rock ‘n’ roll phenomenon of the 50s and 60s. He puts a lot of focus on the sexual liberation that accompanied this defiant new musical style, illustrating its importance with several minutes of Jim Morrison in tight leather pants, strutting in front of an incapacitated audience. His attention to this aspect of rock culture casts a new light on rock’s roots in religious fanaticism. It appears that throughout history humans have had a need for an aggressive response to the sexual energy that is pent up inside of them, especially in societies with rigid moral guidelines in place, such as America since the time of the Puritans. Graham points out that to American youth, the rock star represented the unrepentant sinner who demanded to receive his ecstasy in this life instead of waiting for salvation in the afterlife. This immediate gratification of course meant sex, which in this way took on an angelic quality; the pure, sacred benevolence of angels was replaced by a notion of pure sexual feeling. Patti Smith says late in the video that rock and violence must always coexist. Here, violence stands for all the obstructed energy that was seeking a way out in pre-revolution era religious rituals, up through Black Flag concerts.
Just when the video seems to tie everything together, Graham inserts an odd five-second gap in the tape, after which there is a brief description of Patti Smith falling off a stage and breaking her neck, then returning after a few months in a neck brace and continuing to perform. The piece ends abruptly here, leaving the viewer in the dark with a combination of the startlingly brutal report of Smith’s accident and an uplifting symbol of righteous perseverance, which seems to contextualize all 50 minutes of footage into a radical celebration of the vehemence of human nature.
After the first fifteen minutes or so, all the connections Graham is orchestrating begin to clarify. Early in the video he documents the organization of religious fanatics known as “The Shakers,” who would fall into rapture-induced comas and shake violently to announce the presence of the Holy Spirit in their bodies. Given this information, we are then confronted with footage depicting this same sort of ecstatic seizure in modern rock ‘n’ roll environments. The look on each movement’s participants’ faces—the eyes closed, the lips parted, the brow slightly furrowed as though expecting an answer from God at any moment—is practically identical. At one point Graham makes a particularly direct association by presenting visual content of an elderly crowd of churchgoers tossing and swaying with each other, that is then overlaid with a song by LA hardcore band, Black Flag, with remarkable synchronicity.
As the video progresses, each successive image or audio fragment comes with increasing familiarity. Graham’s montage finally establishes a direction to its movement, which seems to trace the development of American counter-culture identities through the combined powers of intense physical exertion and crowd-fueled delirium. He draws a connection between the loss of oneself by way of fanatical worship practices and the sublime displacement that sex-starved teenagers sought after in the thunderous drone of the 1960s rock concert. Graham isolates music and rhythm, and specifically the movement that they inspire, as the common binding in each of the cultural or religious factions that he imparts. The video feels much more like a documentary in the middle section, as he describes, in noticeably more coherent juxtapositions of text, imagery, and narration, the introduction of the guitar into worship services, and then the eruption of gospel music in African American communities. Graham suggests that the evolution of the church as an energetic social gathering that involved wild, redemptive dancing is what laid the foundation for rock ‘n’ roll.
Graham continues in this documentarian style a deeper exploration of the rock ‘n’ roll phenomenon of the 50s and 60s. He puts a lot of focus on the sexual liberation that accompanied this defiant new musical style, illustrating its importance with several minutes of Jim Morrison in tight leather pants, strutting in front of an incapacitated audience. His attention to this aspect of rock culture casts a new light on rock’s roots in religious fanaticism. It appears that throughout history humans have had a need for an aggressive response to the sexual energy that is pent up inside of them, especially in societies with rigid moral guidelines in place, such as America since the time of the Puritans. Graham points out that to American youth, the rock star represented the unrepentant sinner who demanded to receive his ecstasy in this life instead of waiting for salvation in the afterlife. This immediate gratification of course meant sex, which in this way took on an angelic quality; the pure, sacred benevolence of angels was replaced by a notion of pure sexual feeling. Patti Smith says late in the video that rock and violence must always coexist. Here, violence stands for all the obstructed energy that was seeking a way out in pre-revolution era religious rituals, up through Black Flag concerts.
Just when the video seems to tie everything together, Graham inserts an odd five-second gap in the tape, after which there is a brief description of Patti Smith falling off a stage and breaking her neck, then returning after a few months in a neck brace and continuing to perform. The piece ends abruptly here, leaving the viewer in the dark with a combination of the startlingly brutal report of Smith’s accident and an uplifting symbol of righteous perseverance, which seems to contextualize all 50 minutes of footage into a radical celebration of the vehemence of human nature.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
John Stezaker: Beware the Black and White
In John Stezaker’s 2006 collage piece, Untitled (Film Portrait), the artist has combined two 40s-era, black and white film stills along a diagonal axis, to unite two unrelated people as a single human form. The axis along which these images meet cuts at approximately an 80 degree angle from top to bottom, just right of the center of the frame, leaving the left side slightly larger. As in many of Stezaker’s pieces, the two bodies being joined are of opposite genders. The male, residing on the left side, appears to be seated, with one arm likely resting on his knee. He is dressed in a checked shirt, a light, solid-color vest, a rich, dark tie—which I assume must be red—with diagonal stripes, and a thick tweed blazer. The imagery behind the man is out of focus and therefore abstracted, but the play of bright light on the man’s shoulder and on the tips of his hair, as well as the absence of any furniture or recognizable architecture within the frame, suggest an outdoor setting. The right side of the frame presents a young woman with dark, wavy hair, leaning toward the camera, resting on her elbow, with one hand placed neatly on her forearm. She is dressed in a shimmering, sequined blouse or gown, and is wearing eye shadow, mascara, and dark lipstick—all of which suggest evening attire. The background is out of focus here as well, but the light and the presence of furniture imply an indoor setting, and the woman’s attire as well as the hard-edged shadows on her face further indicate that her scene is taking place at night.
At first glance, the face appears to be complete, without any interruption. The angle at which Stezaker combines the images lines up very closely with the angle at which the two figures’ heads are cocked. Stezaker carefully matches up key facial features, such as the top of the head, the curve of the chin, and with perfect precision, the edge of the top lip. With these particular joints so firmly in place, the other parts of the face, and certainly the bodies, that don’t line up so exactly are forgiven, or simply overlooked. The real kicker, of course, that gets the slip on our critical eye right from the start, is that these two figures’ eyes happen to be looking in exactly the same direction. With that, a single, complete form is instantly established in one, common 3-Dimensional space. The man on the left gracefully glances across the divide to the person on the woman’s left, calling her attention.
The work’s striking unity is not achieved simply through the precision of Stezaker’s alignments, or through the level of physical coherence he achieves in the combined space. The combination of the figures’ bodies in this piece makes almost no sense at all: the man’s right hand seems to teleport from the bottom left corner of the frame over to the right side, to rest delicately on the woman’s forearm, which itself extends across the axis, into the man’s chest cavity. But the line of her forearm is carried on in the folds of the man’s vest. Unity is established also in Stezaker’s attention to color and texture. There is an obvious correlation in the woven quality of the man’s tweed and the woman’s sequins; the light shade of the woman’s chair is picked up in the man’s shirt and the glare on his shoulder; the contrast of the smoothness of her bare arm against the grainy chair is repeated with the man’s smooth vest against his tweed.
These more abstract parallels provide some access to what I assume Stezaker intends to do with this work. He is upsetting our confidence in our discernments by pulling similarity out of the unexpected places. While often this act yields visual abstractions with beautiful formal complexity, one cannot deny that the artist intends to deal with the complexities of human character. By selecting stills from the 1940s, Stezaker is working with distinct, culturally familiar archetypes for each gender—sexual confusion was not a common topic in the popular media of this era. But the striking harmony of the split face, and particularly it’s furtive, knowing, rather comfortable expression, tears down the idealized separation and authorizes the exploration of a much stranger and deeper complexity to human nature. But the collapse Stezaker is enacting in this piece does not only address the historically unenlightened cultural standards of pre-1960s America, it functions as a reminder to exercise a certain amount of distrust when encountering all information presented in black and white, even, and perhaps especially, when encountering typically trustworthy visual information.
At first glance, the face appears to be complete, without any interruption. The angle at which Stezaker combines the images lines up very closely with the angle at which the two figures’ heads are cocked. Stezaker carefully matches up key facial features, such as the top of the head, the curve of the chin, and with perfect precision, the edge of the top lip. With these particular joints so firmly in place, the other parts of the face, and certainly the bodies, that don’t line up so exactly are forgiven, or simply overlooked. The real kicker, of course, that gets the slip on our critical eye right from the start, is that these two figures’ eyes happen to be looking in exactly the same direction. With that, a single, complete form is instantly established in one, common 3-Dimensional space. The man on the left gracefully glances across the divide to the person on the woman’s left, calling her attention.
The work’s striking unity is not achieved simply through the precision of Stezaker’s alignments, or through the level of physical coherence he achieves in the combined space. The combination of the figures’ bodies in this piece makes almost no sense at all: the man’s right hand seems to teleport from the bottom left corner of the frame over to the right side, to rest delicately on the woman’s forearm, which itself extends across the axis, into the man’s chest cavity. But the line of her forearm is carried on in the folds of the man’s vest. Unity is established also in Stezaker’s attention to color and texture. There is an obvious correlation in the woven quality of the man’s tweed and the woman’s sequins; the light shade of the woman’s chair is picked up in the man’s shirt and the glare on his shoulder; the contrast of the smoothness of her bare arm against the grainy chair is repeated with the man’s smooth vest against his tweed.
These more abstract parallels provide some access to what I assume Stezaker intends to do with this work. He is upsetting our confidence in our discernments by pulling similarity out of the unexpected places. While often this act yields visual abstractions with beautiful formal complexity, one cannot deny that the artist intends to deal with the complexities of human character. By selecting stills from the 1940s, Stezaker is working with distinct, culturally familiar archetypes for each gender—sexual confusion was not a common topic in the popular media of this era. But the striking harmony of the split face, and particularly it’s furtive, knowing, rather comfortable expression, tears down the idealized separation and authorizes the exploration of a much stranger and deeper complexity to human nature. But the collapse Stezaker is enacting in this piece does not only address the historically unenlightened cultural standards of pre-1960s America, it functions as a reminder to exercise a certain amount of distrust when encountering all information presented in black and white, even, and perhaps especially, when encountering typically trustworthy visual information.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Walt Disney Concert Hall: Keep Your Distance
I approach from the corner of 1st Street and Grand Avenue, where the Walt Disney Concert Hall greets its visitors with its main entrance. After crossing the wide stretch of concrete keeping the downtown traffic at a comfortable distance, I behold a massive entanglement of steel and glass, of angles and curves, of industrial ferocity and organic tenderness. Huge walls rise up out of the concrete at different angles and bend and curl around each other, pumping with a fearsome vitality. At this corner, the forms open up dramatically, like the mouth of a Leviathan, to reveal a simple concrete entry way, offering a glimpse of the mysterious structure’s innards.
Each of the immense walls is plated with large, rectangular steel panels, laid on top of each other in a strictly regimented stair-step pattern, notably contrasting the apparent disorder under which the rest of the structure operates. The steel is brushed, I assume to reduce reflectivity (as well as complaints of blindness from the residents of neighboring buildings), which gives the structure’s rather bold presence a classy subtlety, and also establishes a link to the cold industrial might that inevitably pays for extravagant architectural projects in major metropolises like Los Angeles.
From across the street, I marveled at my total inability to spatially grasp what was unfolding before me—and closer inspection further suspended my comprehension by introducing a multitude of new forms and dimensions, all of which continued to morph with the slightest perceptual adjustment. My disorientation is largely due to the scale of the curving, windowless walls—windows being a standard tool for measuring the otherwise overwhelming size of typical downtown skyscrapers. But the entire structure resides at the very threshold of chaos. It thrives on treading the line between acute mathematical precision and total architectural anarchy. I am enthralled by how well behaved Gehry’s pet monster has agreed to be in such a lawless environment.
However, when I walk up next to the structure, the wonderment starts to fall apart. I start noticing how much inhabitable space is wasted by all the extreme angles. I look up at the expanses of curving and realize they must be empty. I look down behind a colossal steel arm and see where a hose and a golf cart are being stored. These observations disrupted my ability to perceive the Disney Concert Hall as true architecture; the difference between architecture and sculpture being that architecture has the directive to house human activities. It is here that Gehry’s design starts to slip; his building is no doubt impressive, but that impressiveness depends upon the fact that it is a building, and not a sculpture in a public courtyard. It is of course impressive, and extraordinary, and beautiful to look at all the same, but I cannot deny a sense of disappointment when I discover that he didn’t bother making his radical forms work as a space for people, but just stuck them on a street corner for people to navigate like ants in a crumpled can.
I was also disappointed by the surprising shoddiness of how the structure was put together. A distant perspective presents elegant, futuristic precision, but up close I notice that the steel panels are never quite flush. At every edge, there are crooked gaps of varying sizes. In certain places, where Gehry is attempting particularly difficult bends or twists, the panels are actually often lifting off of one another. In these spots the structure feels like just a temporary mock up of Gehry’s big idea that should have never left his studio. You can imagine him taping additional pieces of paper on to his cardboard model, to smooth out the complicated junctures. It reminded me of what it felt like in grade school to find myself pulling an all-nighter at the last minute, trying to make the damn thing actually work before the deadline.
For a moment, I wonder if perhaps I like to see how the artist struggled to put the forms together. It seems to work nicely with the organic quality of the structure. I think that maybe being able to notice this delicate vulnerability lends a powerfully human condition to an otherwise unapproachable alien fortress. But then I continue my walk around the block, back to the main entrance where I come across the sales display for a new, ultra-chic Acura SUV, which sits haughtily before the glass doors. I then realize that this building was probably never intended to reflect the foibles of man. It more likely is just another symbol of commercial success. In this light the building seems to audaciously suggest that it is simply too important to yield to the needs of its inhabitants. Which of course, is not the problem. Many of the manmade wonders of the world have little regard for utility. However, if Gehry really wants this thing to sing the names of wealth and power, he shouldn’t have made it look like it was constructed with a glue stick.
Each of the immense walls is plated with large, rectangular steel panels, laid on top of each other in a strictly regimented stair-step pattern, notably contrasting the apparent disorder under which the rest of the structure operates. The steel is brushed, I assume to reduce reflectivity (as well as complaints of blindness from the residents of neighboring buildings), which gives the structure’s rather bold presence a classy subtlety, and also establishes a link to the cold industrial might that inevitably pays for extravagant architectural projects in major metropolises like Los Angeles.
From across the street, I marveled at my total inability to spatially grasp what was unfolding before me—and closer inspection further suspended my comprehension by introducing a multitude of new forms and dimensions, all of which continued to morph with the slightest perceptual adjustment. My disorientation is largely due to the scale of the curving, windowless walls—windows being a standard tool for measuring the otherwise overwhelming size of typical downtown skyscrapers. But the entire structure resides at the very threshold of chaos. It thrives on treading the line between acute mathematical precision and total architectural anarchy. I am enthralled by how well behaved Gehry’s pet monster has agreed to be in such a lawless environment.
However, when I walk up next to the structure, the wonderment starts to fall apart. I start noticing how much inhabitable space is wasted by all the extreme angles. I look up at the expanses of curving and realize they must be empty. I look down behind a colossal steel arm and see where a hose and a golf cart are being stored. These observations disrupted my ability to perceive the Disney Concert Hall as true architecture; the difference between architecture and sculpture being that architecture has the directive to house human activities. It is here that Gehry’s design starts to slip; his building is no doubt impressive, but that impressiveness depends upon the fact that it is a building, and not a sculpture in a public courtyard. It is of course impressive, and extraordinary, and beautiful to look at all the same, but I cannot deny a sense of disappointment when I discover that he didn’t bother making his radical forms work as a space for people, but just stuck them on a street corner for people to navigate like ants in a crumpled can.
I was also disappointed by the surprising shoddiness of how the structure was put together. A distant perspective presents elegant, futuristic precision, but up close I notice that the steel panels are never quite flush. At every edge, there are crooked gaps of varying sizes. In certain places, where Gehry is attempting particularly difficult bends or twists, the panels are actually often lifting off of one another. In these spots the structure feels like just a temporary mock up of Gehry’s big idea that should have never left his studio. You can imagine him taping additional pieces of paper on to his cardboard model, to smooth out the complicated junctures. It reminded me of what it felt like in grade school to find myself pulling an all-nighter at the last minute, trying to make the damn thing actually work before the deadline.
For a moment, I wonder if perhaps I like to see how the artist struggled to put the forms together. It seems to work nicely with the organic quality of the structure. I think that maybe being able to notice this delicate vulnerability lends a powerfully human condition to an otherwise unapproachable alien fortress. But then I continue my walk around the block, back to the main entrance where I come across the sales display for a new, ultra-chic Acura SUV, which sits haughtily before the glass doors. I then realize that this building was probably never intended to reflect the foibles of man. It more likely is just another symbol of commercial success. In this light the building seems to audaciously suggest that it is simply too important to yield to the needs of its inhabitants. Which of course, is not the problem. Many of the manmade wonders of the world have little regard for utility. However, if Gehry really wants this thing to sing the names of wealth and power, he shouldn’t have made it look like it was constructed with a glue stick.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Ofili's African Virgin
Chris Ofili’s painting, titled The Holy Virgin Mary, presents the image of a woman in a bluish gown, hovering in the center of a field of gold paint and glitter. Beams of light radiate from the top of the figure’s head as her eyes stare forward. These aspects are all familiar when I think of traditional, Medieval European religious paintings. However, before I even need to take a closer look, major contrasts are apparent: For one, the Virgin Mary’s dark brown skin, wide nose, and thick lips suggest that she is African. There is also a protrusion from the picture plane on the figure’s chest, indicating an exposed breast. And the figure is surrounded by strange conglomerates of purplish polyps that seem to be raining down around her.
At this point a closer inspection seems warranted. I realize that the polyps are in fact paper cut-outs of male and female genitalia from rather extreme pornographic magazines that have been collaged onto the background, as well as onto the virgin herself. Wherever the pieces of paper rest on the background, tiny waves of gold emanate in reaction to their presence, as though the bits of collage are floating in a pool of liquid gold. The collage element establishes a certain childhood craft-making sensibility in the piece. The pieces of paper are positioned somewhat haphazardly, some overlapping, and the single line of smaller pieces along the bottom of the frame are reminiscent of cowrie shells found on the beach and carefully glued to some Grandma’s birthday card. The rendering of the virgin also carries the mark of a child’s hand. Her body is somewhat formless, her two eyes are lopsided and different colors, and the coarse, brown flesh reminds me of mud—a substance that can easily be linked to childhood occupation of baking mud pies.
However, the flesh is not painted with mud, it is painted with elephant dung. The charms of childhood nostalgia suddenly fall apart here. The cut-outs of genitals come hurtling back to the foreground, and the virgin herself becomes instantly grotesque. The pool of gold in which the images float now seems much more like a puddle of piss, rich and deep and stinking. Now the previously harmless bits of genitals become unquestionable carriers of putrid, festering disease. In this same light, the shock of red that is the virgin’s mouth now appears to be a wide-open, exposed vagina—in this sense, the gaping threshold of both birth and sexual violence.
What I find so interesting about this work is the balance between these radically different ways of seeing it. Regardless of all the filthy elements at play, the figure still maintains the sense of balance and calm that Ofili borrows from Medieval iconography. Though the beastlike eyes lack the beauty and wisdom traditionally adorned to the image of Mary, there is nonetheless a stability in their gaze. It is soothing, despite the ruptures this painting causes in our preconceptions of the mother of God. From this perspective, the materials Ofili has chosen relax in their effect. Her flesh loses its explicit scatological charge and becomes simple, earthy material. The body parts in the paper collage become simply, organically human. The virgin stands in her blue frock, with her breast and backside exposed, as the Earth does: calm and maternal, nurturing and accessible.
It is here that the vicious uproar ignited by this work becomes more complicated. New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, as well as countless fuming Catholics, led a robust opposition to the piece because of the use of excrement in the depiction of a sacred religious figure. The use of excrement in African cultures, however, can often indicate respect and admiration. So what Ofili is doing to the scared icon is not totally for blind shock-value. He is surreptitiously setting up the Virgin Mary as an African entity, complete with elements ranging from the excrement of indigenous African animals and its use to adorn sacred images, to graphic images from Blaxploitation pornography. Ofili baits the opposition with the pornography and elephant dung, but allows the ensuing outrage to point to the real discomfort at play here, which has to do with one culture subsuming the precious belongings of another.
Ofili actually dodges most of the opportunities to make something truly vulgar. It would be easy enough to paint the Virgin Mary right into a scene from a scat-porn video. Instead, Ofili makes his comment, but preserves the unwavering maternal grace that is at the core of this Christian figure.
At this point a closer inspection seems warranted. I realize that the polyps are in fact paper cut-outs of male and female genitalia from rather extreme pornographic magazines that have been collaged onto the background, as well as onto the virgin herself. Wherever the pieces of paper rest on the background, tiny waves of gold emanate in reaction to their presence, as though the bits of collage are floating in a pool of liquid gold. The collage element establishes a certain childhood craft-making sensibility in the piece. The pieces of paper are positioned somewhat haphazardly, some overlapping, and the single line of smaller pieces along the bottom of the frame are reminiscent of cowrie shells found on the beach and carefully glued to some Grandma’s birthday card. The rendering of the virgin also carries the mark of a child’s hand. Her body is somewhat formless, her two eyes are lopsided and different colors, and the coarse, brown flesh reminds me of mud—a substance that can easily be linked to childhood occupation of baking mud pies.
However, the flesh is not painted with mud, it is painted with elephant dung. The charms of childhood nostalgia suddenly fall apart here. The cut-outs of genitals come hurtling back to the foreground, and the virgin herself becomes instantly grotesque. The pool of gold in which the images float now seems much more like a puddle of piss, rich and deep and stinking. Now the previously harmless bits of genitals become unquestionable carriers of putrid, festering disease. In this same light, the shock of red that is the virgin’s mouth now appears to be a wide-open, exposed vagina—in this sense, the gaping threshold of both birth and sexual violence.
What I find so interesting about this work is the balance between these radically different ways of seeing it. Regardless of all the filthy elements at play, the figure still maintains the sense of balance and calm that Ofili borrows from Medieval iconography. Though the beastlike eyes lack the beauty and wisdom traditionally adorned to the image of Mary, there is nonetheless a stability in their gaze. It is soothing, despite the ruptures this painting causes in our preconceptions of the mother of God. From this perspective, the materials Ofili has chosen relax in their effect. Her flesh loses its explicit scatological charge and becomes simple, earthy material. The body parts in the paper collage become simply, organically human. The virgin stands in her blue frock, with her breast and backside exposed, as the Earth does: calm and maternal, nurturing and accessible.
It is here that the vicious uproar ignited by this work becomes more complicated. New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, as well as countless fuming Catholics, led a robust opposition to the piece because of the use of excrement in the depiction of a sacred religious figure. The use of excrement in African cultures, however, can often indicate respect and admiration. So what Ofili is doing to the scared icon is not totally for blind shock-value. He is surreptitiously setting up the Virgin Mary as an African entity, complete with elements ranging from the excrement of indigenous African animals and its use to adorn sacred images, to graphic images from Blaxploitation pornography. Ofili baits the opposition with the pornography and elephant dung, but allows the ensuing outrage to point to the real discomfort at play here, which has to do with one culture subsuming the precious belongings of another.
Ofili actually dodges most of the opportunities to make something truly vulgar. It would be easy enough to paint the Virgin Mary right into a scene from a scat-porn video. Instead, Ofili makes his comment, but preserves the unwavering maternal grace that is at the core of this Christian figure.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Yes, Miranda, Art Is Beautiful
I find it difficult to figure out what artist Miranda July is trying to accomplish in her debut feature-length film Me, You, and Everyone We Know. The opening sequence shows July playing Christine Jesperson, a less savvy version of herself, engaged in a video project (the same for which July is known in real life) involving photos of romantic scenes, some quirky sound device and her own enchanted narration. When July (okay, Christine) finishes the take, she puts on her awkward employee vest and heads to work (making it clear that yes, she is the unappreciated geeky artist type.)
After this little slice of the secret, impassioned life of the leading misfit, I lost any hope of having a profound experience. This stuff was just too adorable to be taken seriously by any audience member outside the mainstream. Allow me to illustrate how I believe this film was intended to function, and how it failed. It easily fits into the category which I refer to as Geek Revolution films: this category is designed to express to the masses that it’s okay to be a Geek, that Geeks have feelings too, and that maybe you could love a Geek if you just took the time to get to know one. I for one consider myself a loyal and steadfast supporter of this Revolution, so I am continually dismayed at the insertion of sexy, wildly appealing protagonists into roles that should be reserved for only the most awkward, goofy-looking, and socially disastrous creeps and losers. When this happens, the audience ends up falling in love with the sexiness, not the geekiness, and the sacred ideals of the Geek Revolution are compromised.
So even though I found the opening scene somewhat charming, I was put off by the total saturation with adorableness. There was not a trace of anything objectionable about her. So then, it became rather difficult to feel any sense of crisis on her behalf, particularly in her struggle to find a mate; I just can’t believe it would be that hard. She’s ultra-considerate (drives around old people) ultra-creative and imaginative, ultra-dedicated to what she does, as well as ultra-gorgeous—the camera is consistently drawing attention to her dazzling blue eyes and neat dark curls, not to mention, on more than one occasion, coming dangerously close to delivering a classic Hollywood ass-shot. It is here that I find the biggest problem with July’s film. She is not sincere in speaking on behalf of the geeks, artists, and losers with which she pretends to identify, because she doesn’t believe it’s possible to make anyone love these precious people without lubricating them with a generous dollop of Hollywood bullshit.
Fortunately, the film is not restricted to following July’s quest to achieve that perfectly accessible, quirky cuteness. The man playing opposite July, John Hawkes, is quite good, and brings a more authentic loser-ness to the screen. Of course, he does have to have brilliant blue eyes that gaze out with childlike wonder, but even the most stalwart revolutionaries must make concessions here and there. I think it’s enough that he screwed up a marriage with children.
The film also creates some interesting relationships between its secondary characters, most of which play out in decidedly un-mainstream situations such as the little girl next door buying kitchen appliances for her hope chest, or the two awkward teenage girls flirting with the pervert posting dirty messages to them in his window. My favorite scene must be the two young brothers engaging in an anonymous sex chat over Instant Messenger. The success here is owed to the phenomenal little boy playing the younger brother, Robbie, as he carefully describes the act of “pooping back and forth.”
Regardless of how successful these brief scenes may be on their own, when the film is over I ask myself what was the point? Of course, films don’t have to make a point, often they intend only to present a piece of real life, in which myriad philosophies and opinions intertwine, intersect, and collide. However, Me, You, and Everyone We Know had anything but an objective perspective. July’s vision was overwhelming, not just in her portrayal of Christine Jesperson (the clothes, the room décor, the artwork) but also in the quick, memory-collage-style cuts dicing up the scenes, and especially in the unrelenting emotional punctuation provided by Michael Andrews’s electronic score. So if the point was to look through the eyes of a stylish, thirty-four-year-old, successful mixed-media artist, what were we supposed to see? That art is beautiful? And that beauty is often found in out-of-the-way places? The beauty in this film can be found at Hallmark. Next time, leave the Geek Revolution to the diehards.
After this little slice of the secret, impassioned life of the leading misfit, I lost any hope of having a profound experience. This stuff was just too adorable to be taken seriously by any audience member outside the mainstream. Allow me to illustrate how I believe this film was intended to function, and how it failed. It easily fits into the category which I refer to as Geek Revolution films: this category is designed to express to the masses that it’s okay to be a Geek, that Geeks have feelings too, and that maybe you could love a Geek if you just took the time to get to know one. I for one consider myself a loyal and steadfast supporter of this Revolution, so I am continually dismayed at the insertion of sexy, wildly appealing protagonists into roles that should be reserved for only the most awkward, goofy-looking, and socially disastrous creeps and losers. When this happens, the audience ends up falling in love with the sexiness, not the geekiness, and the sacred ideals of the Geek Revolution are compromised.
So even though I found the opening scene somewhat charming, I was put off by the total saturation with adorableness. There was not a trace of anything objectionable about her. So then, it became rather difficult to feel any sense of crisis on her behalf, particularly in her struggle to find a mate; I just can’t believe it would be that hard. She’s ultra-considerate (drives around old people) ultra-creative and imaginative, ultra-dedicated to what she does, as well as ultra-gorgeous—the camera is consistently drawing attention to her dazzling blue eyes and neat dark curls, not to mention, on more than one occasion, coming dangerously close to delivering a classic Hollywood ass-shot. It is here that I find the biggest problem with July’s film. She is not sincere in speaking on behalf of the geeks, artists, and losers with which she pretends to identify, because she doesn’t believe it’s possible to make anyone love these precious people without lubricating them with a generous dollop of Hollywood bullshit.
Fortunately, the film is not restricted to following July’s quest to achieve that perfectly accessible, quirky cuteness. The man playing opposite July, John Hawkes, is quite good, and brings a more authentic loser-ness to the screen. Of course, he does have to have brilliant blue eyes that gaze out with childlike wonder, but even the most stalwart revolutionaries must make concessions here and there. I think it’s enough that he screwed up a marriage with children.
The film also creates some interesting relationships between its secondary characters, most of which play out in decidedly un-mainstream situations such as the little girl next door buying kitchen appliances for her hope chest, or the two awkward teenage girls flirting with the pervert posting dirty messages to them in his window. My favorite scene must be the two young brothers engaging in an anonymous sex chat over Instant Messenger. The success here is owed to the phenomenal little boy playing the younger brother, Robbie, as he carefully describes the act of “pooping back and forth.”
Regardless of how successful these brief scenes may be on their own, when the film is over I ask myself what was the point? Of course, films don’t have to make a point, often they intend only to present a piece of real life, in which myriad philosophies and opinions intertwine, intersect, and collide. However, Me, You, and Everyone We Know had anything but an objective perspective. July’s vision was overwhelming, not just in her portrayal of Christine Jesperson (the clothes, the room décor, the artwork) but also in the quick, memory-collage-style cuts dicing up the scenes, and especially in the unrelenting emotional punctuation provided by Michael Andrews’s electronic score. So if the point was to look through the eyes of a stylish, thirty-four-year-old, successful mixed-media artist, what were we supposed to see? That art is beautiful? And that beauty is often found in out-of-the-way places? The beauty in this film can be found at Hallmark. Next time, leave the Geek Revolution to the diehards.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Fugitive, 1963
Like most members of my generation, my expectations for The Fugitive 1963 were influenced by a strong familiarity with the 1993 Hollywood thriller, as well as a comprehensive ignorance of anything filmed before 1970. So my first viewing of the original television series was unfortunately doomed to be a comparative process. Oh, I see, that guy is Harrison Ford. And that guy…Tommy Lee Jones, I guess. Who’s that? Oh… Wait. When is the waterfall thing gonna happen? This clash between my memories of the film and the series playing before me now didn’t last long, because the 1963 series really didn’t resemble the 1993 blockbuster at all. The longer I watched David Janssen mill about the Arizona bar, or pace around in his apartment, the more I realized I didn’t actually know a damn thing about the film I grew up with. What I did remember about it were only brief flashes of the big blockbuster spectacles. The actual plot of the film served as only a thin layer of connective tissue between train wrecks, gunshots, and the 300 foot plunge, so even that wore away easily with time.
After this rather abrupt erosion of my Hollywood vantage point, I realized the unique aspect that was coming through in the long quiet shots, and simple dialogues that made up the original show. The television series was not about a wrongly accused man who will stop at nothing to prove his innocence—it really isn’t about anything that can be easily summed up in a cinematic tagline. The series is really about presenting the sensibility of dislocation—a dislocation from the life in which the character felt he belonged. The ‘derailing’ in The Fugitive is given a much more profound context than a mega-budget crash sequence—that being the derailment of a man’s path in the world he has chosen to know, the derailment of his identity and ambitions. Where the 1993 film progressed along a well-determined plotline, the television series seemed to drift from place to place, without constantly reiterating Kimble’s long-term goal. He does bring up the one-armed man, but his actions do not constantly move along this trajectory of finding him and proving his own innocence. He instead finds himself being perpetually derailed, as he encounters unseen situations and becomes connected to new people and places. The 1963 Kimble accepts the cards he is dealt and sometimes must allow the restoration of his previous existence to be postponed.
It is this postponement that embodies the profound struggle that people faced everyday in 1960s America, and still face even today. The idea of the ‘American Dream’ still motivates people to work hard toward the goals they set for themselves, but rarely does this dream become reality, and more rarely does it happen according to any plan. People must reckon with the life they hoped for, and live alongside what could have been in the shadowy gutter of reality. But as Dr. Kimble always does, those of us in the gutter keep one eye on the road above.
After this rather abrupt erosion of my Hollywood vantage point, I realized the unique aspect that was coming through in the long quiet shots, and simple dialogues that made up the original show. The television series was not about a wrongly accused man who will stop at nothing to prove his innocence—it really isn’t about anything that can be easily summed up in a cinematic tagline. The series is really about presenting the sensibility of dislocation—a dislocation from the life in which the character felt he belonged. The ‘derailing’ in The Fugitive is given a much more profound context than a mega-budget crash sequence—that being the derailment of a man’s path in the world he has chosen to know, the derailment of his identity and ambitions. Where the 1993 film progressed along a well-determined plotline, the television series seemed to drift from place to place, without constantly reiterating Kimble’s long-term goal. He does bring up the one-armed man, but his actions do not constantly move along this trajectory of finding him and proving his own innocence. He instead finds himself being perpetually derailed, as he encounters unseen situations and becomes connected to new people and places. The 1963 Kimble accepts the cards he is dealt and sometimes must allow the restoration of his previous existence to be postponed.
It is this postponement that embodies the profound struggle that people faced everyday in 1960s America, and still face even today. The idea of the ‘American Dream’ still motivates people to work hard toward the goals they set for themselves, but rarely does this dream become reality, and more rarely does it happen according to any plan. People must reckon with the life they hoped for, and live alongside what could have been in the shadowy gutter of reality. But as Dr. Kimble always does, those of us in the gutter keep one eye on the road above.
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