August 31, 2014
Where was I?
Cinema: Army of Darkness at Plaza Theatre the 8th of last month and Texas Chainsaw Massacre the 22nd of this month. TCM reminded me of movies from the Drive-In Cult Classics collection that I had picked up back in 2011. At times, the movie was a crazy assault to the senses: abrasive soundtrack, exaggerated malevolence. Guardians of the Galaxy at the beginning of the month (!!!). Must go see it again.
Music: The Musical Box performing Selling England by the Pound at Variety Playhouse the 24th of last month. Great follow up to seeing them do Lamb Lies Down on Broadway January of last year. Was blown away when the lead singer started the narrative that I knew would lead in to Supper's Ready. Really just a wow night, and ended at The Vortex in L5P with death metal fans from a show at the Star Bar.
Travels: Lake Tullahoma, TN the weekend of July 18th. Fourth annual trip to St. George Island the end of July. Second semi-annual trip to Lake Keowee the weekend of August 15th.
Started new job in Buckhead on the 4th! Commute is now Marta and reading or Vespa-ing on nice days.
August 10, 2014
Upstream Color and Under the Skin
I just discovered the YouTube channel "Understanding Art House" by Nerdwriter1. There're only two videos out, but those two are the excellent Snowpiercer and Under the Skin. Here's the video for Under the Skin:
After watching it at Landmark, I was reminded of Shane Carruth's equally abstract Upstream Color from last year. Both struck me as simple stories told in an un-simple manner; each using its own visual language. Upstream Color, at its most basic, could be viewed as the story of woman whose life is destroyed, willingly, by drug addiction. The men from the bar who feed her the drug are merely manifest agents of her own desire. They drain her bank accounts and sell her possessions as she would. The latter half of the movie is her struggle through recovery by partnering with a fellow ex-addict. The pig farm maps to their contrasting impulses of desire and structure.
Under the Skin represents the lead's development over time with how she relates to partners. First from having power without empathy as she lures and desiccates others. Then to a series of conversations and examinations that softens her relationships, which then leads her to live with a man who treated her kindly. That relationship ends as she is reminded shamefully of her past alien-ness. She finally shuts herself off from others, feeling unable to connect, and becomes a victim of that isolation.
That said, there's always an unfairness to analyzing abstraction as absolute metaphor. The imagery in each film is resonant precisely because it works beyond language. Neither film needs to be mapped to a traditional narrative: their internal structures are expressive enough.
August 3, 2014
Group engagement
Beach reading at St. George Island included Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It is a post-scarcity novel where basic needs are free and unlimited, and death is avoided by regular brain backups and fast cloning. Money is replaced by reputation points (called, humorously, "whuffies"). The key setting is a Walt Disney World taken over by "ad hocracies" that run the different theme parks within in order to increase their collectives' reputation points. Most action revolves around The Haunted Mansion (which resides in Liberty Square, which itself resides in the Magic Kingdom, which is only one land in Disney World), in particular. I had no idea that there was such a byzantine hierarchy of lands-within-lands in Disney World, having only been there once when I was (?) 3.
The key storyline involves the Haunted Mansion's ad hocracy's attempt to defend their curatorship against another, more technologically advanced, ad hocracy. Everyone in the Haunted Mansion group, much like today's various *con-attending cosplayers, are obsessive in recreating and participating in the simulacrum of the Mansion. Group engagement with entertainment as a performative experience is the end in itself.
Compare this with the installation performance of "Forty Part Motet" by Janet Cardiff, as described in the article Solitary Pursuit. The piece, installed in The Cloisters' Fuentidueña Chapel in Manhattan, consists of a recorded performance of the motet "Spem in alium" by Thomas Tallis, with each of the individual singers broadcast through a separate speaker and inter-performance chatter included in the broadcast. The listener can walk through the voices to physically control which line is dominant and to eavesdrop on the private, backstage comments (e.g. "That line there got me messed up"). The article's main theme is the question of where we can experience solitary reflection in a group setting. The idea, a contradiction of sorts, has at times been a promise of museums and galleries and concert halls. Here, group engagement as private experience is the end in itself.
Years ago, I had gone to The Vortex bar late on a weekend night in order to pick up food for our movie night back upstairs at home. While I drank and waited for the order, I saw a woman alone at the crowded bar reading a hardback novel. That struck me. I'm just as likely to go to the Cafe Intermezzo bar and do the same. Though it's easy to read at home, being isolated in a group satisfies a different impulse.