Shortly after finishing and handing in the last term paper of my undergraduate career, I sat down for a semi-scheduled chat with a dude I knew who was interested in some of the stuff I’d been doing for my thesis. Our conversation quickly veered away from all that, and we ended up discussing for about an hour the sorts of topics that reaffirm everything that we as a society hold to be near and dear about college; rather, the fact that we were having the conversation was reaffirming (and joyful but ultimately a little sad, as I was packing up shop and setting of for new frontiers so soon), as the topics themselves were slightly dour. I remember spending a great deal of time discussing spectacularly imaginative creations in fiction and the disappointing trend away from these very delights. For example, I partially wrote on Infinite Jest, and we both took some time to marvel at DFW’s creative brilliance, the Eschaton match in particular. What stood out, for us, wasn’t the simple fact that DFW had gone and created himself an immensely detailed alternate future-reality-thing (although that’s pretty awesome too), but the quality of Eschaton. Reading about that match, this dude and I concurred, was a direct look into a particular sort of imaginative genius, the sort that delights in flights of whimsy, that creates games like this not out of a sense of cold satirical rhetoric, but because it would be totally awesome to play a game that turns tennis and absurdly complicated mathematics into the best sort of real-time game of Risk ever. There must have been joy in DFW’s heart when he dreamt Eschaton up, and it comes through loud and clear to us reader-types.
The thing is, the dude says, we’re sort of drifting away from this sort of joyous creative kind of fictional imagination. The world of contemporary lit is vast, but the big titles and heavy hitters out there today are largely doing work that incorporates what could be thought of as a mean intelligence: rather than Eschaton or Middle Earth, we’re getting harsh realities more akin to Pynchon’s wacky alternate postwar Europe, in which everything is sort of nasty and cruel and reflects the author’s brilliance, but also a larger sense of purpose that’s probably communicating a bleak message about the state of our own Very Real World. I scratched my head at this one, having just come out of four years of reading decidedly non-contemporary books, but the dude is, as far as I can see, right. Like it or not, fiction has taken a turn for the cruelly brilliant, and has left whimsy behind.
In which the author attempts to justify that most irrational of all artistic impulses, the idea of the secret or personal piece of culture.
I was on an airplane a few years back, just kind of spacing out and waiting to land, when I heard the guy behind me make some innocuous comment about The Wire, a show I was about four seasons into at the time and was positively enamored with (still am). As I recall, dude’s friend or wife or whatever saw that they had episodes available on demand on this particular flight, which lead dude to describe his own enthusiasm for the show in a sentence or two—something fairly basic, like, “It’s awesome! I love how real the story is.” It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard said on an airplane, and the entire exchange lasted for a few seconds, but I can remember feeling deeply annoyed, upset even. Who was this random dude, this stranger, to comment upon the greatest show on television? How dare he express his enthusiasm in such a simplistic way? I bet he wasn’t even capable of understanding those storied Dickensian aspects that I so cherished, watching the show by myself with headphones on, spacing episodes at least a few days apart to properly contemplate and enjoy the storyline. It was downright disrespectful of this guy to watch The Wire too, because… well, it was mine.
Now, I recognize that this is absurd, a new level of cultural curmudgeonliness, but it’s entirely true because that’s what I felt—this guy was somehow desecrating my show. For whatever reason, my connection with a TV show that I had only begun to watch after it went off the air had reached the point where I felt protective about a show that had been enjoyed by a significant number of people over the course of five seasons, a show that wasn’t even mine by virtue of intellectual property or creation. In short, I had unwittingly come to possess, in some abstract way, The Wire, and possessed it in that furtive, Gollum-hiding-under-the-mountain-with-the-One-Ring sort of way. My love for a TV show had made me a little crazy.
The nice thing, though, is that I’m not alone on this one (I think). I’ve chatted with other people about this sort of annoyance/anger to recognize that it is a legitimate pop-cultural phenomenon: when we really like a show, band, book, or movie, we are inclined to ignore the fact that these various arts are public things, and take their pursuit and enjoyment personally. Because we have developed such a relationship with the art, the fact that strangers dare to speak of it in public counts as desecration, as they are incapable of ever appreciating our personal arts as we do. We alone can properly appreciate the genius of the show or whatever, and thereby appoint ourselves the secret torchbearers of our personal arts. All rise.
Okay, so I just finished The Hunger Games (the first book, not the whole series) and I must say that I’m a tiny bit vexed. Not because the book wasn’t every bit the engaging page-turner it was presented as—that it was. It’s mostly just that it fell prey to what we were all hoping it wouldn’t, a standard tale of adolescent angst. Significant spoilers to follow, so abandon all hope now ye who enter here.
This one’s been in the pipeline for quite some time, and has expanded drastically through quite a few stream-of-consciousness drafts to a point of seeming unmanageability. I debated just dropping the entire mess on you guys, with a nice concluding paragraph to explain everything into a logical point, but that seemed self-indulgent. So here’s the whole mess, in reduced and readable form, as incredible as that may sound:
My original plan was to discuss the State of the Newspapers today, in light of a special report in the Economist from July of 2011 (I think) detailing the very same topic. But talking about declining readerships and the death of print media has been pretty much played out by this point, as you are doubtless well aware, and the question now isn’t so much what can be done to salvage newspapers as how journalists will get paid to distribute stuff on the internet. Or at least that’s the prevailing theory—I’d like to propose a different idea, which is that newspapers, like old soldiers (and records and typewriters), will never die; they just fade away into a sort of highly specialized existence. Does this mean kitschy irrelevance and retro-fetishized reverence? Actually, probably not. But let me build my argument first.
Just a quick one, while I’m away: the most interesting thing about “Haywire” isn’t so much that it’s Soderberg’s super-smart realistic action movie, that the heroine is really capable of beating people up like that in life (and does so, for a living), or that it’s remarkably polished and smooth and easy to follow; rather, it’s all that stuff in the context of the Action Movie Canon at large. Think about it: after the old classic gangster movies with Cagney, and old British war movies like “Lives of a Bengal Lancer,” the dawn of the action movie in the modern shoot-‘em-up sense would be the spy (or really Bond, because he dictated the terms of the game) flick. And I don’t know too much about this particular area of cinema, so take this as a musing instead of something exhaustively researched and arguable. Because, when you think of it, basically all of the modern action movies are thrillers of one variety or another, or genre flicks that have spun off of thrillers or have been informed by their pacing and styling. “Kill Bill,” for example, is technically a kung fu movie, but has been informed by the kill everything sensibilities of the grindhouse, which in turn seem to have come about as a gritty, low-budget answer to the audience’s cries for more violence from the Bond-type thrillers and spy movies. I may be mixing and matching at will here, but the point is that “Haywire” does follow in certain action movie genre footsteps, and it’s important to know where the genre begins.
You can pretty much pick your reason at this point, but it certainly seems as if we’re living in a world that is increasingly backwards-looking. Some examples, in no particular order, include the slow food movement (and growing attention to heirloom varietals and other, traditional ways of eating), the way in which hipsters of five years ago so readily embraced a fashion/pop-cultural sensibility from ten to twenty years ago (from the ironic love of the B-grade cartoons of their childhood to the more questionable ‘80s-era sartorial decisions), to the increasing trend in Hollywood of embracing the past via fond homage. I find nothing wrong with plenty of looking-back (hell, I do it all the time), but this isn’t the piece for that kind of commentary; rather, it’s interesting to note that the cinematic revival movement-that-isn’t-really-a-movement going on seems to be part of something larger, in the cultural sense. As far as the movies are concerned, we can either attribute this to the soulless, past-mining tendencies the studios are exhibiting, wherein re-imaginings of the past, re-makes and endless sequels have become the depressing norm decried in the papers, or we can see this as something more complex. Look, for example, to good old Quentin Tarantino and his “Grindhouse” homage of a few years back. Quentin certainly hasn’t been hurting for inspiration in his career, as his fertile imagination proved itself entirely capable of producing elevated B-movies for our modern world. Why, then, bother re-creating the sleaze of his beloved childhood grindhouse flicks for us, down to the intentionally missing reels and artificially distressed film stock? Love certainly has a lot to do with it, but there was also an element of homecoming. Quentin was raised on these movies, and they certainly remain an inspiration of his (“Basterds” and the upcoming “Django Unchained” sound a little schlocky to you guys?), but this beloved camp has evolved into less satisfactory direct-to-DVD kncockoff territory, or made-for-TV movies, or other interpretations that just don’t quite cut it. As “Grindhouse” demonstrates, there’s joy to be found in the best of camp, and Quentin decided that modern audiences needed to be reminded of that joy. Thus the homecoming: Quentin returns to the past, revives an extinct method of movie-making, and demonstrates to us that there has to be a better way, that we didn’t need cheap CGI to produce endearing absurdity, and that way is now behind us and largely forgotten/looked over.
Now, don’t get me wrong—I love Quentin Tarantino’s early stuff (iTunes just shuffled “Let’s Stay Together,” off the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, at me, as if to tell me to tone it down with the veiled criticism), and have rather complicated feelings about his recent work, “Grindhouse” included. But we didn’t come here to discuss Quentin—we’re here to talk about “the Artist,” which follows in this tradition of reviving past cinematic styles in concept only.
The following was written rather quickly as a response to the riff column in the January 15th NY Times magazine, a good column, and worth checking out regularly. This week’s installment was talking about the role of the novel, which got me pondering the ways in which reading is different from watching a movie. That doesn’t have much to do with the column, but should explain any repeated phrases or inconsistencies resulting from quickly dashing off some thoughts. Enjoy!
The difference between a movie and a novel is like the difference between seeing a fight at a bar and hearing the story about a fight at the bar. Sure, if the bar-fight is noteworthy, and cool things like breaking bottles and roundhouse kicks (interestingly, cool here being synonymous with cinematic), it will be vivid and remembrance-worthy, whereas if it’s a scruffier and more realistic barfight we’ll file it away with the rest of our documentary-ish life experiences, i.e. yes, this is what happens when a man 12 drinks in tries to throw a punch at a biker dude. Either way, though, the experience is entirely explicit. Now think back to all the stories of barfights you’ve ever heard or imagined—there’s an element of mystery, of evolution, of enhancement and wonder that comes from having to imagine, envision in some way, what this event would have been like if you were in the room. In mundane instances, it can be as simple as the fact that a fight happened in this bar; this will forever be the bar where that one time some vague and hazily-remembered fight occurred. If it was somehow noteworthy, say if a gifted storyteller recounted blow-by-blow how the old 12-drink drunkard roundhouse kicked a giant biker guy and then said something really witty, that guy will be a legend; we’ll imagine the various ways in which that fight went down, imagine what could have lead up to the fact and occurred after, and then we’ll continue to evolve the story. Notice how anecdotes transform over time? You’ll come back to a story at some point, like if the original dude in question is back in the room, and it’ll be suddenly different. You’ve been telling it with a spin, making it either more or less intense than before; perhaps some salient piece of information has been omitted, one that either complicated or compromised the awesome-ness of the story. But either way, that story is impermanent, transient, communal property. We’ll tell our friends, who’ll tell their friends, and the event will be re-lived uniquely for everyone. Oddly, that’s the major difference between a book and a movie, even though both are technically fixed (images on a disk vs. words on a page). The movie is the same for everyone who sees it, and represents a vivid depiction of a single event. The viewer, to borrow some academic language, is the witness in film, and thus reflects not on the ways in which things might have happened, but the concrete reasons for why, and things in that vein. Contrast with what happens when we read a novel: even though we’re hearing about a fixed experience in the same way that we’d witness one on screen, we are involved in the creation of that experience. We have to imagine the way that things are playing out, construct the scene in our heads, juggle our own distracting thoughts and impressions and resonances (because, lets be frank, it’s kind of hard to get distracted from the pretty allure of moving images, which are in themselves an ultimate form of distraction). Most importantly, though, we don’t bear immediate witness to anything that happens in the novel—we only hear at best an extremely vividly rendered story describing certain events. Thus when we reflect on what we’ve read, the events of the novel sort of become a part of that communal mental property, except that we’ve taken an idea out of the public forum and are now mulling it over in our own little heads, where it gets to rub shoulders with all other sorts of unrelated ideas and imaginings, creating unexpected resonances. And that’s why novelistic storytelling is so very important to capital-C Culture as a whole: it forces us to get involved and ponder the subject matter and, in a way, make it our own via the power of the imagination. Things are getting complex, in that non-fiction narratives accomplish something rather similar albeit with historical facts, and spoken word does so spontaneously and colloquially and variably (in that it’ll change from rendition to rendition), so I’ll close off there with this thought: by listening to or reading or consuming (academic terms again) non-witnessing stories, a different and important bond is created. We are forced to sit back and reconstruct, imagine, and in a weird way become a part of the experience being recounted to us, causing the story to become a part of the larger legend that we develop for interpreting the world. (By which I mean the story becomes legendary-mythic, like old fables and folk tales, in that by forcing ourselves to experience rather than witness the events recounted we add the lessons learned from the folks in the story to our own arsenal of life lessons, and thereby get to use this story as another way of responding to daily life. Kind of a heady way to end this, but it’ll have to do).
I should probably start with the obvious: The Descendants is very much a movie about Hawaii (Word is yelling at me about whatever that Hawaiian apostrophe is, so I’m leaving it out. Sorry, Hawaiians), but at the same time isn’t about Hawaii at all. I’ve spent some time hanging out with the locals in Hawaii, and I can say that, from my relative outsider-insider’s perspective, they nail the sense of place. From George Clooney’s stable of Aloha shirts to speech inflections to local concerns (like “the traffic”) to the funny ridges on the aluminum cans, it’s all there. You can practically smell the plumeria and feel the trade winds, and it is a very good thing; while I love Forgetting Sarah Marshall dearly, we need to spend some time outside of the super-luxury resorts and visit the real world. Of course, this view isn’t exactly the real world of Hawaii. The story focuses on an iteration of George Clooney going by the name Matt King, ostensibly descended from Hawaiian royalty but pure rich haole for all intents and purposes (and haole is like the Hawaiian word for gringo, for all you haoles in the audience); our boy King’s extended family has some property on Kauai, allowing a judicious sweeping camera shot of their pristine bay while setting up part one of the conflict: should they sell, and to whom? King, being a lawyer-type, is conveniently the executor of this estate, but soon finds his job complicated (here comes conflict part two) by the fact that his wife lands in a coma within the first thirty seconds of the movie. And, about fifteen minutes later, we get the news that this coma is permanent—and, because she is DNR, she will die within the week.
And this is the point where The Descendants becomes not about Hawaii at all. The great strength of the movie is the way in which King, just another boring rich lawyer guy living on a tropical island, becomes a character through his particular reaction to uncommon hardships: the secret third factor in the overall conflict comes when King’s eldest daughter fills him in on the dark familial rumblings that he’s been oblivious to (being a hard-working boring lawyer guy), namely that dear wifey had been cheating on him. That, on top of everything the impending death, gets the man going. And this is where I’m going to have to abandon plot relations, as the reason that The Descendants is so good has everything to do with the experience of watching George Clooney handle a very human disastrous mess of a situation, on a nearly purely emotional spectrum.
I made an awesome discovery the other day: every Saturday from two to four, KPFK (90.7 FM for you Angelinos in the audience) has a program devoted to African music, from classic Afrobeat jams to the crazy new stuff that I, as a fledgling student of modern African music, have never even heard of. I stumbled on this while driving around town without music of my own, and was shocked and amazed that such a program could exist magically in the nether regions of scan-over frequencies, unnoticed until now. Possibly more amazing is that this program is actually good—the DJ was balancing classic tracks and new releases nicely, as well as occasionally stepping back to interview musicians passing through town and to plug Afrobeat-variety concerts. Also cool was that this dude, judging from his accent and then later confirmed as he stepped up to the mike at a Seun Kuti concert, was himself African, and occasionally uses his show to encourage his listeners to take musician X or notable person Y into their communities and show them some Nigerian hospitality, say, implying that the show serves as a sort of grand voice for the expat African communities present in our fair metropolis.
So the show (officially titled Afro-Dicia, with DJ Nnamdi) does three notable things, one indirectly: it brings awesome African music to the airwaves in a dedicated and comprehensive manner (i.e. a knowledgeable guy spins variations on a theme for two hours each week); it serves as an expression of unification and community in what could otherwise be a very lonely city; and it just sort of sits there, unhyped and unnoticed, until one happens to be skimming stations in that two-hour block. These three principles/characteristics/things are, in my humble and subjective opinion, what radio is supposed to do. We can think of it almost as the two primary rules in a charter, complimented by an intrinsic purpose: radio is supposed to disperse new music to the masses, and radio is supposed to be this strange fifth-business sort of community via communication, a one-sided relationship dictated by a schedule that nonetheless inspires a devoted following (we’ll get to ironing out the weird specifics of this feeling in a bit). The corollary to all this is that when you take all the stations in your area and consider all the different possible shows that one could listen to, the process of actually ferreting out the good stuff becomes daunting, so (unlike with television, where critics preview and analyze what is worthwhile and what isn’t in a way that becomes a part of the pop cultural conversation) an element of exploration enters the picture, and each show (that weird community-thing) exists as a sort of oasis of like-minded folks in the geographic vastness of the radio ether. We’re getting carried away with that analogy, but the point remains, and directs us to our line of inquiry for the day: if radio exists as a form of invisible community/a way of spreading new music to the masses, what does it mean that nobody listens to radio any more?
I’m fairly certain that “Another Earth” is well out of theaters by this point, but in the name of completion here’s a micro-review, for form’s sake. Rather than science fiction, consider this to be a simple exercise in philosophy fiction, or metaphysical quandary fiction; while the central premise does result from the astronomical anomaly of the presence of another earth identical to our own, all questions of Hard Science are left by the wayside (questions such as, if two earth-sized masses are approaching one another, doesn’t simple Newtonian mechanics dictate that they will essentially pull one another together with rapidly increasing acceleration? I’m just a humble English major, but I remember a thing or two about physics). Instead, the presence of the second earth is really just a foil of the sort so beloved by philosophers: say a demon removes our ability to X, or that there is an alternate reality where you are identical, but Y, etc. As such, this second earth allows out humble protagonist (proper names, due to my current lack of internet, will go unreported) to ponder what life is like in a world (a supposedly quickly approaching world) where she would be presumably freed from the rather heavy and jail-sentence necessitating sins that she has accidentally visited upon herself. But that’s all the subtext—the movie mostly consists of silent shots documenting the way our protagonist chooses to atone for her sin in this present world, namely by cleaning the house of the man she has wronged (explanation of plot mechanics but not necessarily spoiler: he doesn’t know the precise identity of who has wronged him). And so their relationship, predictably, grows complex, and that’s what the movie follows. As for its eventual conclusions/resolution, things grow a bit murky, but for my money I could have done with a bit less relationship-torment-charting and more beard-pulling and philosophical musing of the heady sort delivered by the climactic final shot. Upsetting things are all well and good, and it’s kind of inhuman to try and abstract them to within an inch of their power-to-upset-ness, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s fun to skew the balance of a film towards train-wreck-gawking instead of pondering the implications of what macro-scale stuff surrounds the train wreck on a conveniently placed alternate earth.
