January 22, 2016
Bill Ransom
White male, early seventies, commercial novelist
January 29, 2016
Linda Fenstermaker
White female, early twenties, experimental filmmaker
Author: Jarrod Tallman (Page 2 of 2)
I am guilty. I got the better of myself today. My passions overflowed. I’m not talking about having something to say about everything in every seminar––of which I am also guilty. No. I’m talking about my tone in today’s seminar. I could only chew my lip for so long.
I am saddened by the incessant fact-checking culture which dominates society today. The need for something tangible in order to validate experience. I want it, too, and I can’t stand that I do. Don’t get me wrong, I find immeasurable value in the love of family and friends; love: ever-present and yet never-present, a concept which I cannot separate from faces, I want something I can hold on to: nostalgia that I can bottle up; holy water for the loneliest of times.
In my short and wonderfully miserable and privileged life, I have found concentrated traces of this magic elixir in works of carefully crafted fiction. I keep these life-fulfilling potions arranged on bookshelves throughout my house, always at the ready.
I heard a story on NPR the other day, before The Revenant came out. It was about how the film was shot with “natural” lighting, and how the actors were “really” cold during the filming; and, knowing what I know about the mythological machine of advertising, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, and how easily a press release becomes a news story, becomes a myth, becomes a fact––that value today is nearly synonymous with the perceived factuality of an event––I wanted to throw my Bluetooth speaker, my iPhone, the ignorant news anchor, and the rest of the world somewhere far away. I didn’t, I can’t.
Later that night, watching “Air Disasters,” I saw a teaser for the film which firmly confirmed the truth of the story with a self-approving stamp of approval: “Based on a true story.” I metaphorically demolished my television by pushing the power button on the remote and picking up Barry Hannah’s short story collection, Airships––a collection of fantastic and absurd stories that contain more unadvertised truths than even a millennium of mythologizing would likely be able to impart on a blockbuster film. I haven’t seen The Revenant yet, so I don’t know. It probably has something more to it besides cinematography that “puts the viewer in the action,” or “natural” lighting, or actors who are acting like they’re cold “really” being cold. The truth is, I’ll probably never know, there’s about two lifetimes of other stuff on my to watch/read list.
Thinking about Sebald’s Rings of Saturn and the desire for a truth that can be held, and my tone that got away, a tone that probably sounded hostile: I said, “What difference does it make if the stories are true or not?” And I said it like it wasn’t a question. That’s the problem. Passion has a way of making things go wrong if it’s not reigned in tight. I meant to ask––calmly, thoughtfully, and most sincerely, “What difference does it make if the stories are true or not?”
I’d like to take a look at two films using a dichotomic model to explore pacing, motion and meaning in cinema: Jay Rosenblatt’s “The D Train” and Su Friedrich’s “Gently Down the Stream.” Both films have some base similarities, the most obvious of which is their experimental attitude. While “The D Train” certainly follows a very linear and traditional plotting, its use of found footage results in a heavy metaphorical form of communication that gives it its experimental quality. Su Friedrich’s piece, “Gently Down the Stream,” on the other hand, contains hardly any traditional narrative methods; and it is certainly debatable whether it possesses any narrative qualities at all, at least in terms of the way pure poetry and pure narrative might occupy different ends of the spectrum within a particular paradigm.
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The elusiveness of “Gently Down the Stream” makes it the more difficult of the two films to approach critically, for no better reason than that, I’m going to start there.
“Wander through / large quiet / rooms.” That is the first, and perhaps most easily apprehended, part of Friedrich’s film, “Gently Down the Stream.” Those words float, barely moving, but the pacing of the edit is fast, and with the snap of the first cut, like a taut rubber band let loose from a finger, the film launches, without so much as a sound, into a competitive melee for my attention. Flickering images, dancing words, blown out whites and crushed blacks, it’s all so extreme, especially the motion.
The film ranges from moving at a seizural pace to being frozen in time. It is almost pure motion. The three most distinguishable elements of motion would be: the text; the images on the film (which includes images captured by the camera as well as various scratches, alignment marks, etc.); and third, the kinetic pacing from the editing. None of these elements operate in isolation, and are often at odds with each other.
Overall, it is difficult to determine a definitive rhythm or structure in the language of the film’s editing. At the beginning there is an off-beat visual rhythm: white, textured words flash sequentially over a black screen; followed by a slipping, jumping, pausing image of The Virgin Mary. This visual pattern repeats twice before the words begin to slip, too; the word “think” begins to slip. Then a woman shouts in white letters: “Why do you come here and spoil everything?” I’m beginning to sympathize with her. The rhythm is disrupted, the mid-sentence of changed have parameters form the. Exactly. What I said was, the parameters of the form have changed mid-sentence. The only thing I am sure of at this point is that any meaning I was beginning to form based on the language of the edit, its pacing and rhythm, is gone––and there’s still ten more minutes to go. In short, the film’s pacing and rhythm is constantly disrupted throughout the film, and the language of the edit never seems to establish the level of consistency required for effective communication. If Friedrich has a secret method behind her editing decisions, a secret language, it feels like she’s doing her best to keep it to her self.
The next two elements of motion: the images that appear on the screen and the text, are tough to consider separately, which makes sense, since the text is itself an image, albeit a vastly different type of image compared to the geometric shapes and live action. Because of this difference, which is too nuanced to indulge in this paper, the text tends to compete with those other images when occupying the same space within the screen. The text certainly screams for my attention in these instances, jumping around and waving wildly, but it doesn’t always get it. There’s a particular instance where a white square takes up about three-fifths of the screen and is positioned in the upper right corner. It just sits there, motionless, while very nervous and scratchy words flash across the bottom left corner. A similar composition appears at least a couple other times, but with live action: a woman on a rowing machine and a woman getting in to a swimming pool. Each time this dueling composition appears, maniac text versus stationary image, I choose the calm image, I ignore the text––as best as I can anyway. There’s just so much motion: the dust particles, the freeze frames, the gate slips, the arrhythmic edits, the white flashes and black voids; every time I’m given the chance, I gravitate toward the stationary, a welcome relief from the anxiety of all those nervous words. Does Friedrich want anyone to apprehend her film? It’s certainly hard to catch.
When the images or the text do occupy the screen independently, there’s a certain amount of access granted, but the lack of context, the lack of limits imposed by the filmmaker, make it tough and tiresome to create meaning.
On the independent film streaming service Fandor, the logline for Su’s film reads:
GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM can be described about as easily as you can hold on to a handful of water.
I don’t know who wrote it. Usually, the filmmaker supplies that sort of thing. If that’s true here, then if one wants to speak of intentionality in the case of Su Friedrich’s “Gently Down the Stream,” the film’s chaos, generated in no small part by the intense motion, is perhaps the most obvious candidate for subject matter.
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Even though “The D Train” deserves its experimental label, Jay Rosenblatt’s film can certainly serve as a representative for more traditional film techniques in this dichotomic presentation. Rosenblatt’s editing techniques are subtle and predictable, thus less noticeable and effortlessly understandable. Jay doesn’t just speak to the viewer in a language most people can understand, he invites them in to his world, offers up his own comfy seat, brings a tray of tea and cookies, and says, “Stay a while.”
At its most basic level, this film is about moving through life; there is a kinetic energy in each shot and every edit that moves us through a life. One of the more prominent aspects of Rosenblatt’s use of motion in “The D Train” is the use of live action with motion that simultaneously contributes to both the form and the content of the film. There are two main motion-based shots whose repeated and predictable appearance creates a rhythm of anticipation and fulfillment that helps to establish a major “progression through life” theme, providing a context for the other shots and giving the film its potential for meaning. The first of these, which is central to the main plot, is the old man’s train ride, where the world whizzes by outside the windows, like the moments of his life. Literally, he is moving from point A to point B, from the station to a park bench; symbolically: from conception to death. The other shot is a pedestal up shot, or an elevator shot, inside of a business complex. This shot is used to symbolically represent major life shifts, bookending “stages of life” montages made from touching representational images and the occasional metaphorical shot or two. For instance, we see all those parachuters, who look vaguely or quite like an army of sperm, before the arrival of the car baby. Then: ped up, “Next floor: toddler time.” Crawl, push your sister, piss off your mom, jump in a pool, swim underwater; then, ped up and your mowing the yard with your dad and other Rockwell-esque life events. How does it go: First come loves, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage? All packaged nice and neat between a ped up elevator shot. “Next floor: grandchildren.”
Eventually, the montages reach the top floor, there’s nowhere left to go. The train pulls into the depot. We are back in the present. Our hero has arrived at point B, the park bench, the last stop. The reflection ends, reality sets in, check your watch, your time is up; clean up the fallen leaves, there will be more.
It’s definitely worth noting here, too, that Rosenblatt uses several shots with motion in the action to evoke a particular climate. The group of people sliding down the giant slide, the merry-go-round, the carousel, all these shots have a fantastic kinetic energy that emotes a blissful feeling and sense of freedom. The success of these shots to communicate such a particular feeling depends, at least in part, on limits set by the filmmaker that define the fictional world of the film.
All in all, the use of kinetic pacing and motion in Friedrich’s film feels like obscurantism, a device to keep her secrets secret; while Rosenblatt seems to use kinetic pacing and motion to clarify and compliment his story.
One may have a feeling, an urge to love or be loved, to know their self or an other, to be a part of something, to feel validated or at peace. And one may be inspired to tell a story by these general feelings alone, with no particular instance at hand. Thus, the objective of a literary creation in this situation is to bind a general feeling, which the writer must believe has the potential to resonate on some universal level, to a particular situation. The writer then draws from the world a collection of particular images and arranges them so as to [re]form a story in which the climate of the general feeling might be [re]experienced.
Likewise, a lucid observer may witness a particular event and sense something ineffable in the act, and so they set out, by way of exploring, shaping and polishing details of the event––by giving it form, in short––to illuminate the ineffable quality, a quality which emitted enough of the general so that the lucid observer, at least, was made aware of its potential universality. In both circumstances of this simple dichotomy, the general is reverberated by way of giving form to the particular, which allows for the potential of meaning. And it could be said that this binding of the general and the particular to illuminate ineffable truths is the aim of a literary work of art.
On the other hand, the historical and political works have less concern than the literary work with this binding of the general and the particular.
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Both the historical mind and the artist seek to remake the world. But the artist, through an obligation of his very nature, recognizes limits the historical mind ignores.
– Albert Camus, “Helen in Exile”
The historical work is primarily concerned (dare I say obsessed?) with the particular, amassing a coherent narrative of particular facts in an effort to illuminate a particular truth (it is essential that this truth be a discovery rather than a destination, otherwise the work becomes didactic, an innate and unsavory quality of the political work). This aim of arriving at a particular fact-based truth does not necessarily dismiss the value of the general and universal, but it does not depend on it the way a literary work does. The truth that the historical work seeks is a tangible one, unfamiliar at its best, but one that can be pointed to as an actuality. This approach to historical truth, when not carried out in a lucid and indifferent manner, has the potential to become subservient to policy (this is also true of the literary work).
The political work, the work written in the service of policy, certainly depends on the general, but it only pretends to honor its value, exploiting the universal as a rhetorical device of persuasion. Likewise, the political work does not pursue the particular with the same honesty and passion for truth as the historical work. Instead, it is formed by the calculated omission and presentation of particular facts with the aim of serving a pre-determined policy. This raises serious questions about truth in the political work, which, contrary to literary work, seeks to posit its conclusion as nothing less than The Truth. This is not meant to be a negative criticism against the propaganda generated by the political work, for such propaganda has been instrumental in the liberty and freedom of many human lives, and it certainly has its place in our societies. Rather, this is an attempt to illustrate the potential importance of separating politics from art and the link which the historical mind plays between the two.
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History, necessary but not sufficient, is therefore only an occasional cause. It is not absence of values, not values themselves, nor even the source of values. It is one occasion, among others, for man to prove the still confused existence of a value that allows him to judge history.
– Albert Camus, The Rebel
Let us now look at a more nuanced relationship between fiction and history using some Nietzschean and Camusean points of departure. Our goal is to hone in on the dodgy point where history has the potential to be claimed as a Truth and enter into the servitude of policy.
At the end of part five of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche refers to everything as an aesthetic phenomenon. “It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.” In short, this reflects a concept that form does not exist inherently within nature: a realm of infinite chaos of which man is a part; but it is man’s consciousness that gives form to the otherwise arbitrary indifference of nature; thus: the potential for meaning can only exist within the form that man imposes on nature. Form is the result of an arbitrary set of boundaries placed on what is inherently infinite chaos, and as such, any meaning that is derived within the context of a given form is fictive (It’s worth considering at this point the etymology of the word fiction, which comes from the Latin word fingere, meaning to ‘form, contrive,’ and considering what is being implied and/or gained when the prefix “non” is added to the root word). Clearly, once this system of perception begins to germinate, history feeds the possibilities for old forms to become symbols that carry the mythological. But, history is in no way able to transcend the illusory nature of its own existence, since it, too, is merely an aesthetic phenomenon, an attempt to formulate meaning and gain knowledge within an arbitrary and indifferent universe.
On the other hand, fiction, whose lifeblood is the acknowledgment of it’s own illusoriness, contains an element of truth that the historical work ignores. The fictional literary work acknowledges history, incorporates history, seeks to understand it, celebrates it and condemns it, but is not chained to it. The passion of a fictional literary work burns in the attempt to bind the particular to the general, to bind diversity to unity. Fiction celebrates the limits that govern it and the mind that creates it.
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NOTES:
First, it should be noted, that the world is not divided up so neatly as this author’s mind would like. The fictional, the historical and the political do not exist in isolation, this is only an exploration of an idea, of concepts; it is not a postulate.
It is clear to the author that the next logical step of this inquiry would be to continue the exploration of form’s origins. It is also clear to the author that a closer look at form would introduce some of the paradoxical issues often found in philosophy.
It is also clear to the author that there is some vagueness in the relationship between the terms general and universal, and this is certainly something to be addressed as this exploration is taken further, and the writing is developed into something intended for publication. But, alas, this is a mere journal entry, even though it has been published here.
Another murky area in the above writing is the relationship between literary work and fiction. It should be somewhat evident that this author sees no distinguishing factors notable enough to the value of a literary art work to merit sub-classifications of literary art work. And that, due in part to the etymology given for the word fiction, and also due in part to the illusory nature of reality, the literary work is always fictive. This certainly does not mean that the fictive work is always literary!
For a more in-depth reading on breeching the particular with language, specifically in terms of exploiting the mythology attached to words, read Leonard Schwartz’s essay: “Lorine Niedecker and the Obstinacy of the Particular.”
I’m scared, to share with you, documents of my imperfection and ignorance.
It’s one thing when the world needs to hear your voice. It’s another when the world has heard more than enough.
Not that I am them, the white guys responsible for this mess, but I am. And if not by blood, by something even stronger: privilege. An Oedipal snafu: I am born of it and wed to it, and I am destined to father it. And, like Oedipus, knowledge cannot change this future, which has been chained to history. But what good would it do to gouge my eyes out? Even a child knows that the world doesn’t disappear just because they put a hand over their face.
The point is, I’m prone to seeing the world like a white guy, the Moirai have made their decree. And my journal, because it contains mostly the un-germinated seeds of these observations, is naturally going to reflect the perspective which my privilege affords me, the truths of which are not always apparent to me at first: a matter that justifies the revelatory poesies of writing (which, I see as different from journaling: last I checked, the painter doesn’t frame the palette where they mix their pigments––although, I’m sure someone has, and certainly not in the name of beauty). As a private space, my journal is a safe place to confront these many weaknesses and limits of my self. It is the silence that the privilege of voice demands. This reflexive activity situates my journal as a secluded document provoking serious self-inquiry. Through explorations of these observations, tainted and sincere, I hope to strengthen my fellowship with other humans and add to the beauty of the world. None of which will ever change the Oracle’s prophecy: the fact that my life, my person, my self, my identity, are shaped by a wave of tidal privilege that often overshadows my individual existence. First-world, white-guy problems, I know. Still, I’m scared.