« June 2003 | Main | August 2003 »

July 31, 2003

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today...

Just realized that I first moved to Atlanta about twenty-five years ago this week (I'm not sure about the exact date). I do remember that I saw my first Atlanta Braves baseball game on August 1, 1978, the night that Pete Rose's 44 game hitting streak came to an end. The game ended dramatically with Rose striking out in the ninth inning with one last chance to keep the streak alive. The game was a rare Braves victory by the score of 16-4. If I remember correctly, four $6 tickets put my family about fifteen rows behind home plate. I thought it was a pretty cool night.

Posted by chuck at 11:56 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 30, 2003

Happy Endings and Afterimages

I'm still thinking about issues pertaining to the temporality of blogging and had the good fortune of coming across an interesting definition via Jill's blog: In weezBlog, Elouise Oyzon writes,

Blogs are a first person narrative in real time.

Can't wait to see how mine turns out. I do so hope it has a happy ending. Don't we all?

I certainly like this definition and the way in which it plays with the two forms of immediacy (personal and temporal) associated with blogging. There's an interesting wrinkle or two here, one that I keep trying to grasp. First, I'm struck by Elouise's mention of the much desired "happy ending." Much of the writing I do (I won't speak for anyone else) anticipates certain conclusions (finishing an article or book, securing a happy relationship, getting a tenure-track job), some of which--of course--entail new beginnings. Then again, as Margaret Atwood reminds us, there's really only one way of ending a story. But this sense of anticipation seems structurally crucial to my blogging, and may be relevant to others.

I'm also working through some of the contradictions raised by the attempt to capture "real time," the temporal immeidacy of blogging, and the project of the archive. In Mary Ann Doane's latest book, she comments on the tension in recent technologies of representation between the desire for immediacy and the wish to archive. Doane comments that

"The obsession with instantaneity and the instant ... leads to the contradictory desire of archiving presence. For what is archivable loses its presence, becomes immediately the past" (82).
In this sense, I'd like to add to the notion of blogs as "first person narrations in real time" the concept of the after-image, where what appears to be instantaneous, present, might actually be marked (perhaps usefully) by delay.

There is certainly something imprecise about imposing a visual metaphor onto the textual medium of blogging, but in a strange way, I think it fits. Both film (in its original form) and blogging are characterized by similar desires--the desire to produce a stable representation of the present. Both are characterized by their sequential structure, although film's sequentiality (24 frames per second) is much more structured than the blogger's. And, of course, blogging is much more explicitly characterized by a subjective frame of reference than the motion picture camera, which advertised itself as an objective image of reality. Hmmm....I still have lots to think about here.

Posted by chuck at 3:08 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

July 29, 2003

Time, Death, and Sex in Early Cinema

I'm completely fasicinated with the early films stored in the American Memory Digital Library, especially after reading Mary Ann Doane's discussion of their treatment of time. Note: To view films, click the above link, click "search," and then type the name of the film. I've been having touble with establishing direct links to the films themselves.

A few of the films I checked out (most by Edison's studios):

I was struck by the use of film to convey the temporal irreversibility of death (there were other "execution films," including actual footage of an elephant being electrocuted, but most aren't available in the Digital Library). Of course, as I mentioned yesterday, early film used the potential reversibility of the cinematic image in some complicated ways, and it was common practice during the earliest days of "the cinema of attractions" to play films backwards, to show them several times in succession, to play with the multiple temporalities of cinema (the time of the narrative, the time of projection, the time of spectation) in complicated ways. I think there is a tendency in certain teleological histories of cinema to view these early films as "primitive," and while it certainly takes a while for the language of narrative cinema (or "classical cinema" to use the Bordwell-Thompson language) to develop, already by 1900-1901, complicated temporal schemas are already starting to appear. Very cool stuff.

Posted by chuck at 11:37 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 28, 2003

Early "Time-Bending" Film

I'm currently reading Mary Ann Doane's impressive 2002 book, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, which focuses on the relationship of the emerging technology of cinema and various constrcutions of time at the beginning of the twentieth century. I'll have a lot more to say about this book in the days ahead, but so far, I've read her discussions of cinema's capacity as an archive in relationship to Freud's theories of the unconscious; her consideration of the impossibility of capturing the present; and--most relevant here--the apparent irreversibility of time's arrow.

In her discussion of temporal irreversibility, Doane mentions a 1901 Edison film, The Artist's Dilemma (directed by Edwin Porter), which takes place in an artist's studio, consisting of a stage for models, a grandfather clock, and an easel. A model steps into the studio from inside the clock, and the artist begins to paint her portrait, when a second figure emerges from the clock. This "ghostly figure" removes a paint can from the clock and takes over for the artist, and begins to swiftly paint the portrait. As Doane points out:

It is clear that this section of the film is reverse motion: a film strip in which the clown/demon had painted black over an already existing picture of the model is simply run backwards so that it appears as if an impressive likeness of the model emerges magically from the broad, careless strokes of the demon's brush
Once the portrait is complete, the "demon" invites his representation down from the painting, essentially bringing her to life. Notably, throughout the film, the grandfather clock remains set at four o'clock. As Doane points out, "reversible time" is subordinated to the narrative--painting the portrait--but in my reading, The Artist's Dilemma is not quite time travel, but might be considered a "time bending" film, one that works against the linear, chronological time of cinema (especially the early "actualities").

Even cooler, you can view the film (type in the search term "The Artist's Dilemma") through the Library of Congress' "American Memory National Digital Library" project, using Real Player or Quick Time. I haven't had a chance to thoroughly check out the holdings at the digital library, but it strikes me as a valuable tool for retaining some semblance of our cinematic past, especially as celluloid begins to deteriorate. Of course as Matthew and Kari point out, "preservation also always entails loss." There was something unsettling about viewing this old film on my computer--the loss here, in part, the flicker of the projector, and perhaps the experience of viewing the film with an audience. Matt also addresses several key concerns about digital preservation in his entry on the e(X)literature conference, specifically Stewart Brand's observation that presevation is a social--not technological--problem (Matt's also absolutely right to reflect on the relationship between preservation and mortality). More about digital preservation here.

It's interesting to think about how the questions raised by the cinema about the archive are being revisited--in strikingly similar language--with the emergence of digital technologies.

Posted by chuck at 10:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Contextualizing Your Blogroll

My former student, Patrick, has addressed a question that I've had for a while: How do you convey the relationship between your blog and the links in your blogroll? Patrick offers an elegant solution, a brief bit of code allowing the author(s) of a blog to include a second link with a brief explanation of why you've linked that particualr blog--or what you find interesting about it. I've found several interesting blogs by searching friends' blogrolls, and this kind of information might make that process easier.

Posted by chuck at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Y tu mamá también

I finally saw Y tu mamá también this weekend, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. También focuses on two teenage boys--one middle class, the other upper class--who convince an older woman to travel with them to the legendary Heaven's Mouth beach. The film is bracketed by a past tense voice-over narration that provides the film with a reflective, slightly nostalgic tone. The class distinctions--and the generic conventions of the road movie--allow director Alfonso Cuarón to address not only the sexual coming of age of the two boys but also the political landscape of Mexico.

I liked the film's honest treatment of sex, and like Roger Ebert, I think the film underlines the impossible constraints placed on American filmmaking by the MPAA's rating system (Kevin Sandler's discussion of "The Incontestable 'R'" seems relevant here--I'd also warn against renting this film from Blockbuster). Their interactions with the older Luisa allow Cuarón to explore the tensions between the two boys, and an important detail we learn near the end of the film also helps us to reinterpret many of Luisa's decisions as she playfully teases Julio and Tenoch. I'm still torn about this discovery about Luisa. In my original viewing of the film, it felt a little forced, but I think it does motivate her actions more plausibly than the discovery of her husband's infidelity.

The film also foregrounds class distinctions in complicated ways. We learn that Tenoch is the son of a conservative Mexican president, and one of the opening sequences of the film shows Julio and Tenoch weaving through a protest in order to borrow a car from Julio's sister, who is protesting Tenoch's father's government. Later, Julio and Tenoch drive through police roadblocks and encounter the poverty of rural Mexico--illustrated in part through the run-down hotels where the group stays. When they finally arrive at the legendary Heaven's Mouth beach--more or less by accident--we learn that it will soon be transformed into a resort, with a local fisherman and guide forced to take a job as a janitor ("He never fished again," the narrator tells us).

In his Salon review (subscription required), Charles Taylor reports that Cuarón has commented that También is

"about two teenage boys finding their identity as adults and ... also about the search for identity of a country going through its teenage years and trying to find itself as an adult nation."
Cuarón addresses both of these concerns gracefully, especially through the background landscape that Tenoch and Julio can barely see--their energies so focused on reaching the legendary Heaven's Mouth.

Posted by chuck at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 27, 2003

Hiatus

I haven't blogged in a few days, mostly because I've been busy doing research/reading and rethinking the framework of my book project. I did take a break this afternoon to attend an exhibition opening, "The Art of Africa," with S at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, which was very cool--interesting art, good music, and great food. I'll try to blog more in the next few days, but right now, I'm pretty tired.

Posted by chuck at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 22, 2003

Hey Nostradamus!

I read Douglas Coupland's latest a few days ago, but haven't had the opportunity to blog about it. It's an enjoyable read and extends some of the concerns about celebrity and death that he raised in Miss Wyoming. Nostradamus has four distinct narrators. It begins with Cheryl's serene desciption of a massacre at a Vancouver High School in the late 1980s, with Cheryl eventually narrating her own death, but rather than focusing specifically on the media spectacle such events attract, Coupland turns to the aftermath of such events in the three remaining sections of the book. Several of Cheryl's friends from a school religious group--for example--take her doodling the words "God is Nowhere...God is Now Here..." on a notebook as a sign of her abiding faith. Other characters, including her boyfriend Jason, cannot reintegrate themselves into their (religious) community after the shootings. Coupland also avoids focusing on the motivations of the murderers--their crime remains unexplained--instead concerning himself with the characters who survive the tragedy and are forced to make sense of it.

The novel fascinated me in part because of its use of multiple narrators in order to expand on--and then--undermine our perceptions about the school shootings and the story's central characters, especially Reg, Jason's fundametalist father, whose faith is tested in complicated ways. Coupland provides each narrator with a distinctive voice and manages to address their attempts to work through the tragedy with humor and sensitivity.

I liked this novel a lot, and I fear that my description isn't going to adequately represent my enjoyment of it. In an odd way, the novel reminded me of Spike Lee's 25th Hour, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. Both texts deal with the difficulties communities face when trying to make sense of tragedy. In Lee's film, the narratives of the American Dream, of the perfect multi-ethnic family, only temporarily ease Monty's pain. Similarly, in Coupland's book, the need to believe in a higher power is severly tested--in a variety of complicated ways--for each of the novel's four narrators.

Posted by chuck at 1:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 18, 2003

Reading in a Coffeehouse...

...is now apparently suspicious behavior. Check out this article in Atlanta's alternative newspaper, Creative Loafing about a local retail employee, Marc Schultz, who was questioned by the FBI after a Caribou Coffee employee reported him for reading a left-wing editorial in public. After being asked if he had carried anything into a Caribou one Saturday, Schultz is unable to recall.

Then [Agent] Trippi decides to level with me: "I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that."
No, we wouldn't want that, would we? Here's the "controversial" article Schultz was reading.

Posted by chuck at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2003

Quick Question

I just changed the font size for my comments because I was finding them difficult to read. For those of you who are familiar with my blog, does the new font size make the comments easier or more difficult to read? If you prefer, you can email me your observations.

Posted by chuck at 7:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 16, 2003

Marxist Film Theorists are Destroying My Daughter's Life!

I came across this Los Angeles Sunday Times Magazine article complaining about required film theory courses through Planned Obsolescence. The author David Weddle is shocked by his daughter's C on her film theory final and awed by all of the incomprehensible jargon on her final exam. As KF points out:

Weddle's article is so rife with the kinds of anti-intellectualism often found in the mainstream media that it becomes a sort of cliché.

Professors are characterized as wild-eyed Marxists with bad hygiene who have no concpet of how the "real world," in this case the film industry, functions. More specifically, he identifies the rise of film theory with 60s politics, which he characterizes as "a fantastic Day-Glo wonderland, a frothing kettle of New Left politics," primarily using Penley's experience at Berkeley to support his argument. The dismissive identification between drug use ("Day-Glo wonderland") and leftist politics is bad enough. Weddle is also careful to choose his political "straw men" carefully, focusing only on film theory professors' "Marxism" (which is of course a tremendous generalization) and ignoring the important contributions of feminist film theory (for example). Along with these charges of radical politics (one professor is condemned for participating in a Gulf War protest), Weddle has a particuarly incoherent discussion of how leftist film theory has destroyed any focus on authorship, another vast generalization, replacing it with a focus on the social forces that produced a given film.

Special ire is reserved for Edward Branigan, the offending professor who dared to "give" his daughter a C:

Branigan stands before a blackboard covered with rectangles and hexagons heavily notated with abbreviations. They appear to be the complex equations of an astrophysicist, but are in fact illustrations of semiotic theories of "narratology." Branigan has tangled brown-gray hair, a shaggy beard, large glasses coated with flecks of dandruff and fingerprints, and wears an oversized gray sweater and corduroy pants. As he speaks, his hands grasp at the air, shaping it as he shapes his thoughts....Branigan's oratory mesmerizes many of the students. They lean back, deep into the seats' red upholstery, eyes staring blankly into space. Some give up and close them altogether.
Certainly someone so unaware of his physical appearance can have nothing useful to say about how film operates. Perhaps more troubling, Weddle (echoing Roger Ebert) implies that film theorists are essentially cultists, viweing themselves as "high priests of culture." He dismisses Constance Penley because "she exudes an almost religious fervor for film theory and its power to transform" and then changes her admiration of Christian Metz into that of a gooey-eyed Justin Timberlake fan: "with the I-can-hardly-believe-I-actually-got-to-hang-with-him glow of a teenager who's met a rock 'n' roll idol."

This kind of anti-intellectualism is troubling for me. I recognize that film theory requires students to tackle difficult concepts and to challenge--and possibly rethink--standard assumptions about the world, but isn't that what a liberal-arts education is about? I also find it troubling that these complaints are frequently directed at film and literary theory, while math and science courses are rarely criticized for their use of specialized jargon which seems to assume that studying a film should be "easy" and math/science courses can be "hard." One of the major points of film theory is that sign systems are complex things--that they have a profound effect on the ways in which we pecreive, understand, and act in the world. Even though one of the professors Weddle interviews makes this point, he refuses to seriously entertain it. Still, I am troubled by these charges of "elitism" and the continued emphasis on "hands-on" practical experience that threaten to marginalize the work that I do. These perceptions about the academy have a lot of power, which leaves me wondering how we can change them.

Posted by chuck at 1:17 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

July 15, 2003

Donnie Darko

I'm working through some ideas about what I find to be one of the more striking films of the last couple of years, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko. It's a visually compelling film, beautifully filmed, with great performances. Kelly also uses music very effectively, evoking the John Hughes films of the 1980s with songs by The Thompson Twins, Joy Division, and a cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World." This post may be a little disjointed as I'm still thinking through the film.

While thinking about Donnie Darko this morning, I had the chance to look at the film's official website. The site opens with the film's haunting score while Donnie's police dossier appears on screen in an archaic font that recalls 1980s computer technology; then we are carried into a collection of obituaries for characters who have died since the 80s setting of the film. Finally we are given the chance to read sections of Roberta "Grandma Death" Sparrow's book, The Philosophy of Time Travel. This material provides an interesting supplement to the film, working out the science-fiction premise of tanget universes in further detail. The site also requires some patience, asking the viewer to learn how to naviagte it, and this "learning" reinforces the contemplative tone of the film.

I've become more intrigued by Darko with each viewing, especially its use of time travel to unsettle the stability of the middle-class community in which Donnie lives. I'm still trying to sort through how the film fits within some of the categories I've established. The 1988 election provides one of the film's prominent motifs. In fact, the opening line of the film is Donnie's sister's announcement that she is "voting for Dukakis." In this sense, the film seems interested in working through some version of time travel's "utopian" logic. In other words, it uses time travel to "undo" the problems (the emptiness of suburban life, for example) of Donnie's late 1980s existence. Steven Shaviro identifies this logic at work in the film:

Everything comes together around the theme of time travel, as a way of both undoing the pain of the present, and averting the apocalyptic catastrophe that continually seems to Donnie to be just around the corner.
Usually I am critical of time-travel films for providing what generally appears to be an artificial closure, but in Darko, I read the "tangent universe" as a disquieting solution. I need to think more about this topic, though.

I am also interested in the sequences in which Donnie sees what Shaviro calls "gelatinous emanations that emerge out of people's bodies." The people follow the paths established by the emanations, and the implication is a deterministic universe in which everything is alreay scripted, a perception that Donnie desperately tries to resist. The effects remind me of the tuning sequences in Dark City, in which material objects are manipulated by acts of will. I haven't fully worked out this connection, but the fact that we are aware of these effects as effects seems significant. I'd like to know if others have seen the film and what they make of the time-travel plot device and the use of special effects.

Posted by chuck at 3:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 14, 2003

SCMS Panel Proposal

I just submitted the following panel proposal for the upcoming Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Atlanta in March 2003. If anyone is interested in submitting an abstract, feel free to contact me by email. Other proposed panels are available here.

This panel explores how digitization transforms our understanding of moving images, producing what Lev Manovich refers to as a “‘crisis’ of cinema’s identity.” Possible questions may include: How does digitization transform cinematic montage? How does the apparent malleability of the digital image transform cinematic perception? How has cinema’s “identity crisis” been displaced onto the “identity crisis” associated with discussions of the “posthuman?”

Posted by chuck at 3:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Indy Media Reminder

Just wanted remind Atlanta readers about tomorrow night's media forum and celebration of WRFG's (Radio Free Georgia) 30th anniversary. I'm looking forward to going and meeting with others who support or participate in the independent media.

Posted by chuck at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 13, 2003

Turning Tables

In the original incarnation of the chutry experiment, I reflected (scroll down to March 16 and 17) on what I found to be a fascinating use of blogs, the first hand accounts from journalists, soldiers, and civilians on the war in Iraq, the most famous of which is, of course, Salam Pax. I was struck by the fact that the immediate publication associated with blogging seemed perfectly fit to the immediacy of first-person narratives about the war. I'm less wide-eyed about the medium now, but I have recently come across a blog published by a U.S. soldier that struck me as particularly fascinating. The soldier, who publishes under the identity "moja," is frequently critical of U.S. policy and in many of his posts carefully weighs the consequences of our actions in Iraq, while often expressing sympathy with the Iraqi citizens (including Salam Pax). Perhpas most interesting is his reflection on what is permissible for him to say, a question that comes across in an exchange with an ex-Navy Seal. Moja writes that the ex-Seal

feels that as a soldier i should keep quite about all of my political beliefs...i, as a soldier, feel that i do have the right of free speech with in the realm of the army...there are things that i can not speak about...my chain of command...the president...their decisions...and the like...
These questions frequently come to the surface in Moja's blog, and through his ambivalence about U.S. policy, he provides an intriguing perspective on the situation in Iraq. As with other "front bloggers" (I prefer that term to "warbloggers"), there has been some debate about the authenticity of <...turning tables...>, but it's still an interesting read.

Posted by chuck at 1:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 12, 2003

Winged Migration

Went to see Jacques Perrin's stunning new film, Winged Migration, last night at Garden Hills (S referred to it as "riveting"). Migration uses exquisite camera work to follow several species of birds during their spring and fall migrations.

The narration and subtitles add little to our knowledge about birds, but that doesn't seem to be the purpose of Migration. The film is structured around these annual trips, opening and closing with a young boy watching birds play in a small pond, and an older woman feeds cranes that stop in her backyard every year, but the circular organization of the film isn't the major point. Instead, the "star" of the film is the amazing camera work, with the birds' flight captured by cameras mounted on hot-air balloons and ultra-light aircraft. Amazing tracking shots capture not only the extreme difficulty of the birds' flight, but also the film technologies that record it. Several other birds were "trained" to make friends with the camera crew (check out Ebert's review for some of these details), and we quickly identify with many of the birds through close-ups that show the birds eating, playing, and feeding their young on the ground. Oddly, these sequences, perhaps more than others, led me to anthropomorphize the birds, projecting my own human desires and perceptions onto them.

There are some more overtly "political" images in the film. We see images of birds caught in industrial sludge as they rest while flying over Eastern Eurpoe, but any political commentary about human intervention in the animal world is relatively muted. An image of duck hunters is disturbing because we know the difficulty of the ducks' flights, the hundreds of miles they have covered in their journeys; the film has, by this point, so clearly established our identification with the birds that the gunfire, and the falling birds, come as a painful shock, disrupting the gracefully flowing camera. But we earn a moment of triumph near the end of the film as a blue parrot, captured to be sold as an exotic pet, manages to figure out the latch on its cage door and flies to freedom. All in all, I'm finding it difficult to explain how powerfully Winged Migration moved me, how much it captured my attention.

Posted by chuck at 2:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 11, 2003

Auto Focus

Just caught Paul Schrader's Auto Foucs on DVD last night, and like many of Schrader's other films and screenplays, Auto Focus left me feeling a little like I'd been beaten up in a fight because of what feels to me like a somewhat heavyhanded moral tone, possibly due to Schader's strict Calvinist upbringing, as Stephanie Zacharek mentions (Salon article--subscription only). J. Hoberman's review in the Village Voice affirms my Calvinist interpretation.

[Some possible spoilers ahead] In the film, Greg Kinnear plays Bob Crane, the star of TV's Hogan's Heroes, focusing on his "offscreen" participation in the sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 70s. Foucs emphasizes Crane's friendship with early video technician to the stars, John Carpenter, and their habit of videotaping their sexual exploits. The story culminates in Crane's unsolved murder in a Scottsdale, Arizona, hotel room, strongly implying that Carpenter may have been the murderer.

The observation that a beloved TV star had a secret life wears off pretty quickly (in fact his penchant for documentation suggests a desire to get caught, and presumably punished for his sins), even though the film takes great pains to emphasize Crane's innocent side early in the film (he attends church with his first wife, "confesses" to his preist, and orders grapefruit juice "straight" when he goes to the bars). The effect is that Crane's sexual explorations end up playing like some form of moral decline, one that is precipitated by the emergence of videotape as a consumer product (which gives Auto Foucs a strange resonance with Boogie Nights). The late 1960s, early 70s atmosphere (after the Pill and Playboy; before AIDS and "Just Say No") is well-captured, with some degree of nostalgia for the era of swinging and hedonism, but strangely tinged with clinical distance, a point I'll address momentarily.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is Greg Kinnear's performance. As Roger Ebert points out, Kinnear gives Crane a slightly creepy likability and a complete absence of depth or reflection. The sex scenes are treated with clinical distance and eventually have a numbing effect rather than any kind of erotic charge. This lack of eroticism has the result of making Crane's behavior seem more the product of sexual compulsion rather than anything resembling desire and contributes to my experience of the film as overly moralistic. In fact, the only real chemistry in the film takes place between the depthless Crane and the slickly seductive Carpenter (played by Willem Dafoe); Foucs briefly addresses the homoerotics of their relationship, but fails to do much with it, other than potentially suggest that Crane's rejection of Carpenter might have motivated him to murder the TV star (rehashing the jilted homosexual stereotype).

We are also left on the outside of any female characters' perceptions of sex; Crane's second wife is initially open to his sexual experimentation with multiple partners, but we don't get any sense of how she feels about sex. Part of this is due to Crane's own sexual obsessions, but I think these details should be addressed by the film (even if Crane himself doesn't see or understand them).

The emphasis on Crane's sexual obsessive behavior--and his desire to record his sexual encounters--reads moralistically from my point of view. Schrader's biography complicates this interpretation, but Auto Focus seems concerned to deny pleasure; sexual activity is engaged in comuplsively, habitually, and auto-matically. Ultimately, the film seems engaged in what J. Hoberman calls "relentless sermonizing," and it left me feeling very cold, like I'd been sitting on a hard wooden pew for two hours.

Posted by chuck at 4:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 10, 2003

Steal a Little...

Interesting controversy brewing around the discovery that Bob Dylan may have borrowed lines from a 1991 Japanese book, Confessions of a Yakuza, by Junichi Saga. The discovery was made by an American English teacher living in Japan, and looking at the lyrics listed at the end of The Guardian article, there are some strong similarities, but I think accusations of plagiarism are vastly overstated. I don't see Dylan's actions as simply "stealing" the words of another artist as the Globe and Mail editorial implies; Dylan's incorporation of the references to Saga's book (if that is really what is happening) is much more complicated than that. I certainly don't see Dylan's actions as "tarnishing" his career (Globe and Mail again).

Saga has graciously claimed in interviews that he has no plans to sue Dylan, and news of the connection has considerably increased sales of his book. In fact he claimed to be flattered by the attention of an artist of Dylan's caliber, and I generally share the suggestion that credit in future copies of the album might be a reasonable solution.

This criticism of Dylan certainly belongs in the current discussion of intellectual property, and in general, it feels a bit too policing for my tastes in that it takes focus away from the wrong targets (the way that copyright law is constructed). Of course, there are other people who are much more prepared to talk about this issue than I am.

Posted by chuck at 11:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ramesses I

Had lunch with S who is working at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University this summer. Before lunch, S gave me an excellent tour of the museum's special exhibit on Ramesses I, who is the grandfather of Ramesses II, famous for being the pharaoh during the time of Moses. The exhibit and the history of this particular mummy were both pretty interesting.

Ramasses I succeeded two other generals who had fulfilled the role of pharaoh after Tutankhamen's early death. The mummy was only recently identified as Ramesses I after being purchased by the museum in 1999, and there is still wide debate as to the accuracy of these claims. The identification process itself is pretty trippy (click on the appropraite link of the Ramesses website), with the use of X-rays, DNA, the placement of the mummy's arms, the mummification process, and other forms of testing.

The story of the mummy itself (and how it came to be lost) is fascinating, but I won't go into too much detail for fear of getting facts wrong, but apparently many mummies were reburied in a well-hidden cave because of tomb robbers during a period of economic and political turmoil during the Egyptian dynasty around 1000 BCE. However, Ramesses' mummy disappeared during the late nineteenth century, and it is implied that the Abd el-Rassul family who discovered the cache may have been selling off bits and pieces of the collection to dealers (including the mummy in question) who would, in turn, sell them to (usually Western) collectors, such as the Niagara Falls Museum and Daredevil Hall of Fame where this piece resided.

One of the artifacts that I found most interesting was a stereoscope image of the mummy that dated from the 19th century. I don't know that I have a clear interpretation here, but the novelty of stereoscopes in the nineteenth century, the association between photography and death, and the mummy as the object of the image was pretty cool.

The Carlos Museum itself is well worth checking out if you're in Atlanta. It has a nice collection of Egyptian and South American antiquities, all of which are very well-contextualized. Cool stuff.

Posted by chuck at 2:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 9, 2003

Blogathon Revisited

One of my former students is participating in Blogathon 2003 for a cause that he is deeply passionate about. My financial situation is a little rough right now, but I thought I'd give him (and his cause) a little free publicity. I can't state the value of his goals nearly as eloquently as he can, so please take a look.

Posted by chuck at 11:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Animatrix

After Jason's discussion of "bridging worlds," I was inspired to check out The Animatrix, which is a collection of nine animated segments that provide us with more background into the world of the Matrix films (and provide another outlet for lining Warner Bros' pockets). For the most part, I enjoyed The Animatrix and felt that it extended some of the "universe building" that Jason describes in his post. In general, I enjoyed most of the segments, even though they often resorted to generic Matrixian platitudes (some of which reminded me of TV shrink, Dr. Phil) about perception and reality. The animation was generally inventive, and each segment had its own "signature" animation style, which added considerably to the film.

I did find the CG representations of human faces in the opening segment, Final Flight of the Osiris, somewhat distracting. Like Final Fantasy and the "Burly Brawl" in Reloaded, faces appeared too clean, too perfect, even with the attempts to mask the clean lines with stubble and cast shadows.

Two of the segments (The Second Renaissance Parts I & II) focus on the backstory of the war between humans and machines, and those two sections tended to focus on the watered down master-slave dialectic that undergirds the first film. These segments are presented as if they were animated encyclopedia entires documenting the history of the conflict, and while these shorts lead us to further sympathy with the machines, they didn't add a lot to my understanding or interpretation of the world, and some of the historical references (to 19th century slavery, Vietnam, and the Holocaust) seem a little cheap. In general, thse two segments felt somewhat constrained by the already existing narratives about this world.

Many of the segments involved near or partial awakenings, humans embedded in the matrix who begin to see or come close to the truth. My favorite segment was probably A Detective Story, in part because the animation stood in such stark contrast to most of the other segments. Detective is essentially a film noir in whcih a private detective is hired by a mysterious figure to track down Trinity (the jokes focusing on expectations about Trinity's gender are revived, with some interesting results given the noir plot). The detective plot, of course, fits nicely onto some of the Matrix universe's epistemological questions, specifically in terms of characters' recognitions of the simulation unsettling the fabric of the matrix in ways similar to the amnesiac's disruption of the social order in film noir. The animation draws from "art deco imagery," and I enjoyed how it used noir's tropes for a new set of philosophical questions.

I also enjoyed the way in which the character in World Record comes close to recognizing the existence of the matrix by nearly transcending the limitations of the human body (although most other reviewers tended to disagree). In general, The Animatrix is an interesting addition to the Matrix universe, and most of the animation was generally impressive, if not stunning. Neo and Morpheus are almost completely absent from this film, and Trinity only makes a brief, fleeting cameo, which feels about right. Most of the segments seemed to sustain the reality-simulation dichotomy that Reloaded discards, but in general, I think I agree with Onion reviewer Tasha Robinson when she appreciates the "bleakness and lethality" of the expanded world, outside the narrative arc of the safely ensconced central characters.

Posted by chuck at 1:47 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

July 8, 2003

Secretary

While fighting my cold, I finally had the chance to see the recent cult fave, Secretary, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. Gyllenhaal plays Lee, a young woman who has just been released from a mental hospital because she mutilates herself. She takes a job as a secretary, working for E. Edward Grey, a lawyer played by Spader and begins to date an old high school classmate (played by Jeremy Davies). Their relationship quickly takes a sadomasochistic turn, with Lee relishing in the attention given to her by her boss. I'm still sorting through my interpretation of the film, but a few things stand out.

  1. The cast is well-suited for the material. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Ebert points out, makes Lee appear "plucky" rather than pathetic or weak, and James Spader, famous for this type of sexual obsessive, plays Grey with just the right amount of self-loathing. Even though he plays the dominant role and Gyllenhaal the submissive, both actors convey their characters' neediness rather effectively. Jeremy Davies adds the right touch as a tender, but somewhat ineffectual boyfriend.
  2. Amy Danger's beautiful set design, especially Grey's office, establishes the eccentricity of their relationship, and along with Angelo Badalamenti's score, recalls images of "David Lynch's suburban underworlds," as Cynthia Fuchs points out, but rather than distancing us from this world either through Jeffrey's voyeurism in Blue Velvet, or through the road trip tropes in Wild at Heart, the office, provides a certain entrance point into the relationship between Lee and Grey.
  3. Secretary seems conscious of its treatment of power relationships and the potential for critique. The title "Secretary," now replaced by the terms, "administrative assistant" or "executive assistant" already hints at this awareness, and as Bradshaw's review points out, Secretary avoids the trap associated with many "sexual and office politics" films, such as Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, in which the sexual politics are basically "pure evil."
I found the film fascinating, especially in terms of the smart visuals (both set design and cinematography), especially given the low budget, and the intelligent performances. Gyllenhaal's performance is certainly key here. It would have been easy to play Lee as weak or pathetic, but the story allows her to gradually develop strength, especially in the final scene in the office.

I do share some of the concerns addressed by MaryAnn Johanson: the film risks affirming violence against women and abuse of power relationships, but I do think one of the key examples Johanson uses to support her interpretation, the scene in which Lee's father hits her mother is not meant to be seen as a role model for Lee at all. We watch the scene from Lee's POV and view it with some distance and see it as the painful image that it is and see the father's actions as abusive. Now that I've reflected on the film for a couple of days, I think it works, but I still have mixed feelings about it. Has anyone else seen this film and come to a more confident interpretation?

Update: I've been thinking a little further about the political baggage associated with sadomasochism, and that is certainly upsetting my more affirmative review of the film, especially given characterizations of Grey that describe him as a "martinet" and the degree to which the director, in an interview on the DVD comments that he sees Secretary as a My Beautiful Laundrette for S&M culture.

Posted by chuck at 1:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Forum on Independent Media

FYI Atlanta readers: A follow-up event to the FCC town hall meeting is scheduled for July 15 from 7-10 PM at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. The event is also a celebration of community radio station WRFG's 30th anniversary. Full text of the announcement follows.

[By the way, the reason for the light (non)blogging the last few days: I've been fighting a cold (I finally won).]

Dear Atlantans Concerned About US and Atlanta Media:

On July 15, 2003 from 7-10 PM at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, we at WRFG will celebrate our 30th anniversary by holding a forum on media in Atlanta and the United States. (See the attached flier.) The July 15 event is a follow-up to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hearing, held in Atlanta on May 21, which brought together close to 600 concerned individuals, along with representatives from Atlanta's independent media and progressive organizations. We are heeding the call to respond to the concerns Atlantans expressed on May 21 about the dismal state of mainstream media in America and the threat of more monopolization after the FCC decision on June 2 to relax media ownership rules.

Loretta Ross, Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education, will moderate the event. Jeanette Forman, Professor at Clark Atlanta's Division of Communication Arts, will provide us with an update on the media from a national perspective...and then we will hear from you.... your concerns about the US and Atlanta mainstream media and what we in Atlanta plan to do about it. The evening's events will be filmed and recorded for broadcast on media outlets throughout the city.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once said that the role of media is to "serve the governed not the government". Considering today's media it appears we have a long trek to reach that goal. Join us on July 15 from 7-10 PM and be a part of building a "people's media movement" of individuals, organizations and media outlets. Help decide where we go from here. The airwaves are publicly owned. They belong to us. The responsibility is ours! See you on the 15th.

Sincerely,

Heather Gray, President
WRFG Board of Directors

Building a People's Media Movement - July 15th WRFG's 30th Anniversary

Posted by chuck at 11:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 4, 2003

Matrix Reloaded

Much later than everyone else, I finally saw The Matrix Reloaded, and like Steven Shaviro, I thought the second film was somewhat more nuanced philosophically than the original. Shaviro offers a nice reading of the film, and I'd like to think through some of his ideas and hopefully add to the discussion.

To my mind, one of the second film's major strengths is that it complicates Morpheus's faith in the salvation narrative that provides the structure of the first film. In the second film, Morpheus is frequently doubted by his superiors in Zion who don't share his vision or his faith (specifically with Commander Lock whose name may be a pun on the English empiricist philosopher), and more importantly, the narrative of the film itself bears out this critique quite nicely with the choice that Neo is required to make at the end of the film during his conversation with the Architect of the Matrix and during another conversation with a Counselor in Zion.

This shift allows the filmmakers to move from questions about simulation to an interesting comparison between the Matrix and Zion, a comparison that is figured nicely in the dialogue between Neo and the Counselor. In this sequence the Counselor gestures toward the industrial substructure which keeps the city functioning. The human reliance on machines in Zion is immediately made visible (and, yes, that was Cornel West sitting on the council in a brief cameo).

Along the same lines, our new knowledge about the Architect and the Oracle also imply that Neo's rebellion, indeed the entire battle with Zion, has already been written into the system, leading Shaviro to suggest that "a Foucaultian analytics of power seems more relevant" in reading this film.

This opposition between Zion and the Matrix is also pertinent to the film's treatment of bodies. In his analysis of the action sequences, Shaviro comments that

There's not enough funk and grit in any of these sequences; they are simply too perfect. It's a well known fact that digitally generated sequences have to be "dirtied" up a bit in order to be convincing -- you have to add some "noise," degrade the quality of the images a bit, or otherwise they will be too smooth, too seamlessly rendered, to seem alive. While I'm sure the Wachowski Brothers did this on a technical level, conceptually and in terms of sheer flow the sequences still strike me as too precisely calibrated, or something, to be really gripping. It's in the special effects of the action sequences that we really get simulation and hyperreality -- rather than in the plot and premises of the film.
I had a similar reaction to the action sequences; they felt too crisp, too perfect, too clean, but I think that might contribute to the film's celebration of bodies. The dance sequence in Zion -- while somewhat contrived -- feels much "grittier" than anything that happens inside the Matrix, and I think that is a product of certain perceptions about bodies in relationship to cyberspace. Perhaps it's the technological limitations of digital effects, but I think the grit and dirt and bodies in Zion are meant to affirm the physical world in opposition to the harsh lines and the faces hidden behind sunglasses of the Matrix.

I did enjoy Reloaded, even though my visceral experience of the original was probably stronger since I saw it on opening night in a crowded theater, with no expectations beyond my appreciation of the Wachowskis' low-budget hit, Bound. What were other reactions to Reloaded? How did your experience of the second film compare to your reaction to the first one?

Posted by chuck at 2:42 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

July 3, 2003

Blogging and Research Revisited

Richard McManus offers a compelling argument for privileging "topics" rather than authorship as a key term in organizing the blogosphere. McManus is responding to an assertion by Clay Shirky that favors authorship as the key term for organizing blogs:

The weblog world has taken the 4 elements of organization from mailing lists and usenet -- overall topic, time of post, post title, author -- and rearranged them in order of importance as author, time, and title, dispensing with topics altogether.
One of McManus's strongest arguments is that organizing blogs by authorship can be "elitist," with the potential to exclude alternative voices. I think he's certainly right, and, as the disussion earlier this week implies, we need more flexible ways of "mapping" the blogosphere. But I am also well aware of the fact that authorship is an important factor in my interpretation of any text (written, musical, filmic, bloggish), so I absolutely do not want to dispense with the category altogether, and I think that McManus's emphasis on content ("I'd rather just read and write about topics that are of interest to me, thanks") elides this fact. Of course my blogroll, which is organized by author/title, reproduces the logic of authorship. But because we've been discussing similar issues the last few days, I thought I'd bring up this point as well.

Posted by chuck at 12:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 2, 2003

Salsa Recipe(s)

I thought George's "distributed recipe book" was a great idea, so here is my contribution, a salsa recipe given to me by some friends from my days in grad school at Purdue.

Red Salsa:

Put all of the ingredients in a blender and mix (I usually use the "blend" or "chop" settings) to ensure the flavors mix nicely. The salsa usually tastes better if you refrigerate it for a couple of hours before serving, but it's ready to eat right away. You can also substitute tomatilloes for the roma tomatoes for a nice, mellow salsa. The amount of jalapenos is, of course, optional depending on your tolerance for spiciness, but I usually find that using four works best.

Posted by chuck at 11:44 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Blogathon 2003

I'm probably not going to participate, because I don't like asking friends for money, even if I believe it's for a good cause (plus I just found out I can make some money that day), but I found the concept of a "Blogathon" too intriguing not to mention:

Remember when you were in school and you would bowl for charity? And for every pin you knocked down you got, say, ten cents? Or run for a dollar a mile? During the Blogathon, people update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight. For this, they collect sponsorships. Pledges can be a flat donation, or a certain amount for every hour the blogger manages to stay awake.

Many of the suggested charities (Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders) are doing important work, and I have to admit, the experiment of tracing the course of an entire day is enticing, especially given my interest in blogging and temporality. Last year's Blogathon also appears to have inspired several creative approaches tailored to the concept of a blog marathon, including one blogger who posted in haiku and another who wrote a blog novel. Of course, when I participated in these activities as a teenager, including a Rockathon, which required me to sit in a rocking chair all night, they (or at least I) usually faded pretty quickly. Still, I'll be interested to see what kinds of "gimmicks" this year's Blogathon produces.

Update: Earlier today, I was stumbling over what made this sound so interesting, and I think it has something to do with what Dave called the "blog's illusion of immediacy," and a Blogathon seems to play off that illusion, or perhaps better, that desire.

Posted by chuck at 12:09 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 1, 2003

25th Hour

Last night, I watched Spike Lee's latest film, 25th Hour, starring Edward Norton as a New York City drug dealer, Monty, who has just been convicted and faces seven years in prison. The film focuses on his last day of freedom, and I found it to be a very thoughtful, introspective film. I think what I found to be most powerful was the "elegiac tone" of the film (Ebert's review is quite good), especially given the post-9/11 context. Monty spends his last day in the city making peace with his friends and family. He returns to his old school to reflect on some of his bad decisions. He makes several attempts to determine who informed on him to the police, but his movements lack focus and direction (Ebert even suggests the film is "plotless," which I read as a compliment--more on that later).

The film briefly uses Ground Zero during one scene in which Monty's longtime friends, Francis, a hotshot Wall Street investor, and Barry, a liberal school teacher, are talking in Francis's apartment, which overlooks the scarred space where the World Trade Center towers once stood, the sense of loss permeating the scene. Constant reminders of September 11 (American flags draped from fire escapes, shrines to firefighters in local bars) also fill the mise en scene, and Monty's story provides Lee with a way of understanding this sense of loss. Francis's attempts to bury himself in his work are seen as hollow gestures; despite his success as an investor, he is unsatisfied. Similarly Barry's faith in education and his rejection of his parents' wealth fails to provide any sort of fulfillment as his students don't respect him. Through these characters, Lee asks some powerful questions about the current situation in New York and the U.S.

One of the most powerful sequences, to my mind is a monologue Monty delivers in front of a restroom mirror, expressing hatred for many of New York's ethnic and economic groups. After seeing the words "Fuck You" scribbled on a mirror, Monte tries to rub the words out (a la Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye). He then launches into a diatribe against many of New York's ethnic groups. The scene recalls, as Ebert points out, similar sequences in Lee's 1989 film, Do the Right Thing. Through these monologues, both films capture some of the tremendous conflicts associated with life in New York (DTRT was Lee's intervention into several cases of police brutality in the late 1980s).

The mirror sequence is answered later in the film when Monty's father (played by the great character actor, Brian Cox) is driving him to prison and we see Monty imagining representatives of these ethnic groups waving goodbye, implying a wish for redemption for himself and for the city that is so visibly scarred. The father, who is also mourning his wife's death) later imagines turning West, crossing Pennsylvania and dropping his son off in Middle America (with a capital M.A.) where Monty makes a new life for himself, creating a whole new identity, getting by on his intelligence and charm, and eventually marrying his Puerto Rian girlfriend. They have a family, and as an old man, Monty tells his children his tale of redemption and renewal (this scene is beautifully filmed with Monty and his family all wearing white/off-white clothing). But, both men know this is a fantasy; the American dream doesn't hold anymore, not for Monty. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian is critical of "the final gooey sequence," calling the film "turgid" and "bombastic," but given the context of the scene, I read it as profoundly sad, mourning a New York City (and a country) that has been forever altered by the terrorist attacks (and I think that Lee is very careful to avoid taking any simple position on these events).

I don't think the film simply equates the destruction in Monty's life with the destruction of New York, as the Salon reviewer suggests, and I think the film is wise to avoid the trap of being "about" 9/11. Instead, it seems to be using Monty's story to tackle the complicated questions about how to proceed after such an emotionally scarring event. In this sense, the film reminds me of Deleuze's discussion of the crisis in the action-image, when any action a character might take appears incapable of changing his or her circumstances (the hopeless search for the stolen bicycle in The Bicycle Thief; the characters' meaningless journeys in Breathless), and I think Lee's film captures this particular crisis in a powerful way. Thus, Monty's lack of purpose, his restlessness, and his unfocused journeys through the city, all gesture toward this inability to respond to all of the crises that faced New York after September 11.

I've really struggled with this review (more so than most of my posts), but this film has challenged me. It's certainly not a perfect film, but I think it is pretty compliated in some interesting ways.

Posted by chuck at 11:29 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack