Arts One Open, from the University of British Columbia

What the heck is up with “The Snow Child”?!

I haven’t finished reading The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter yet (about thirty pages to go!), but let me tell you about what I’m feeling because I’m feeling a lot of things.

First of all, FEMINIST INTERPRETATIONS ABOUND and this makes me so very happy. Notice that all of the books and movies we have read so far have been by old, snooty, white men (and we will continue to only read books by snooty white men except with this and Toni Morrison – c’mon Arts One, step it up!), so I’m so very pleased that we’re reading something by a woman that’s focused heavily on a female perspective and has so much underlying feminist commentary.

Second, this prose throws Conrad out the window. Like, wow. The writing is gorgeous, cloaked in a rich, gothic atmosphere. It, admittedly, gets too caught up in its prose-y-ness at some parts and gets hard to figure out what exactly is going on (see: The Erl-King), but that’s cool. I don’t always know what’s going on in life, but I, too, pretend to know what I’m doing behind a facade of pretentious adjectives. So I definitely feel you, Angela Carter.

Third, I am a 7 year old girl at heart. I will always love fairy tales, as objectionable as they are. I just love the idea of a bloody, sexual rewrite of fairy tales, especially as they have been bastardized and made cute by Disney, bless his heart.

I have lots to say on pretty much every story I’ve read so far, but in this post, I’ll just ramble a bit about”The Snow Child” because it’s short, but punchy and just has so much going on. If you haven’t read the story yet, go read it. It will take literally 3 minutes. Go. I’ll wait.

Alright, so what the heck, right? There’s a lot going on and a lot to think about, but I’m not sure what to make of it all.

By Paulis (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

There’s the element of competition between women for the affections of men, for sure. Why did the Count desire “a girl”? Was the Countess getting too old for the Count? Not enough sexual satisfaction? It’s weird because the Count asked for a girl and originally, the queen in Snow White wanted a daughter, so I drew the link between that and the Count wanting a daughter, which is innocent enough until it turns uncomfortable.

Speaking of wanting a daughter, how is it that the Count lists the things he wants in a girl and poof, there she is, naked and ready? Some weird witchcraft going on here, but I won’t question it too much. It kind of reminds me of the rosebush they eventually come upon though – “They came to a bush of roses, all in flower” (Carter 92). It is winter and there is snow all over, as established at the beginning, so how can there be a random bush of roses in bloom? Can we parallel the roses to the girl? Hmm…

Speaking of the girl, it seems significant that she be naked when she appears because she will eventually strip the Countess of her clothes. But why? What’s with the transfer of the Countess’ furs and boots to the girl and what does that represent? The Count’s love being transferred? The Count’s sexual desires? But why the clothes? Being naked can represent being newborn and therefore being pure (which seems to be something Carter tends to play on a lot), so perhaps the girl becoming tainted or socialized by being clothed. But what would it mean for the Countess to lose her clothes? I thought maybe it had something to do with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, so I decided to consult Brandon. He explained to me that after Eve and Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they realized that they were naked and that they felt shameful because of it, so they fashioned clothing out of fig leaves and loincloths. In this way, clothes represent the hiding and covering up their bodies, which are a source of shame. Relating this back to the Countess and the girl, perhaps this can be seen as the Countess’ growing shame that she was “losing” to the girl, and her shame becoming more and more exposed. Somehow I’m not convinced that this is the way to look at it, but that’s all I have for now.

And for the rose, what is the significance of it? What does it symbolize? I drew the connection between the girl and the rose bush earlier but I’m not convinced that that’s the way to interpret it. It was the thing that killed the girl and at the end, the Countess touches it and drops it, claiming that “It bites!” (92) So with that, I thought that maybe it represents jealousy – jealousy was what led to the girl dying and it certainly hurts, so that’s definitely a possibility. Or maybe it represents the Count’s love or, to take it to the next level, maybe the patriarchy. In the context of the story though, the rose was what the Countess wanted the girl to pick for her; the Count, taking pity on his wife, lets the girl pick the rose; the rose kills the girl; and the Countess touches the rose and drops it, despite it being what she what she asked for. The strange thing is, when the Countess told the girl to pick up her gloves or fetch her diamond brooch, she has some pre-conceptions about how the act would kill the girl. But when she asks her to pick the rose, she doesn’t say anything about how the rose might kill the girl. So either she knew that the rose would be the girl’s undoing (the previous two times, she “meant” or “thought” that going to pick up the gloves or the brooch would kill the girl) or she didn’t know or mean for that to kill the girl and just simply wanted a rose. That would change the meaning of the rose altogether, but I’m not sure how to interpret it. And why did the rose bite at the end? If it’s a symbol for the girl, it could simply be the girl taking revenge, but like I said, I’m not sure that’s what the rose is symbolizing. I have no idea.

And then I just have so many questions about the necrophilia. If the Count meant for the girl to be his daughter, then the sex takes on a whole new edge of incest. And perhaps pedophilia, if the girl was a child (which, as the title says, she probably was.) But why did he do that and what does it mean? As if it couldn’t get weirder, the Countess stands by passively and watches him do the deed, not stopping him or anything. You would think, considering her jealousy, she would react differently, but it’s all good. It seems that as long as the girl dies, she’s fine with it – which comes with the idea of women and competition amongst each other, again, and women destroying women. As for the Count, the sex seems to either be his end goal or he has a corpse fetish. He either wanted to have sex with the girl all along and did it to her even though she was dead, OR he has a thing for dead girls and did it because she was dead. Also, how can we relate this thing to the contruct of masculinity and the patriarchy? And why doesn’t the girl ever get to say anything? What’s the connection between a creepy necrophiliac, his murderous wife, and a mute girl they manipulate and kill? I’ll have to think about this a little more, but I’m sure there is a rational explanation for ALL of this.

This is getting super long, but it’s amazing how much can come out of a tiny little one-page short story. I just had a lot of thoughts I needed to deposit somewhere and try to make sense of. I’m doing a presentation on Bloody Chamber in the coming week, but I’m not even sure I will be talking about this story because there’s just so much I want to talk about. For now this is just a collection of thoughts and maybes.

Thanks for reading my ramblings once again and if you didn’t read them, tl;dr what the heck is up with “The Snow Child”?! Hope you’re enjoying The Bloody Chamber as much as I am and I’m so looking forward to the discussions that will come out of it!

AMENDMENT (Jan 25th): I just went through our Arts One texts and counted. We’re also going to be reading David Dabydeen, Stephanie Strickland, Laura Mulvey, and Osamu Tezuka. Still, out of 31+ texts and movies, only 6 are by women or racial minorities…

Posted in blogs, lb4-2015 | Tagged with angela carter, the bloody chamber

Nonchalance and Decadence in the Weimar Republic?

Hello, fellow Arts One students!

For my inaugural post / presentation of the year, I would like to focus on the motif of “showmanship” or performance in some of the films we’ve discussed this week. In particular, I think “Caligari” and “Dr. Mabuse, Part I” display this idea more strongly, but given enough thought, I think it could apply to “Nosferatu” as well.

I have always been interested in exploring the profound influence of World War I on the culture of the time as well as the dawn of the 20th-century modernist mindset. The Roaring Twenties in America (the culture of which was partially exported to Weimar Germany, as Prof. Lieblang discussed in lecture) witnessed, among other things, the predominance of the cabaret, the dazzling lights of show business, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the sort of jaded decadence that we harken back to in narratives from “The Great Gatsby” to “Chicago” – a decadence that I suggest is influenced by how Germans reacted to the results of the war. I’m also interested in exploring the notion, also brought up in lecture, of this decadence being “dancing on the edge of a volcano” – what exactly got them to the edge of the volcano? Why are they dancing? My aim is to present the films, particularly “Caligari” and “Dr. Mabuse”, for you in a new light – looking for evidence of a need for spectacle, a desire for attention, an empty bombast that signals the cultural ambiance of the age.

I wanted to look for a cool picture that encapsulates what I’m talking about, and it turns out there’s this sculpture called “Dance on a Volcano” by Ludmila Seefried-Matejkova that expresses this concept exactly. My work has been done for me. By p.schmelzle (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

First question – why are they at the edge of the volcano? One can assume that the volcano itself – the thing that will eventually cause the end of the decadence – would be the Great Depression looming on the horizon, or the political instability that eventually leads to Hitler getting elected, or any number of things signalling the fragility of the peace and the approach of the next war. I would like to suggest that despite all this, the partiers of the Twenties, in Germany, America, or elsewhere, didn’t really care. I don’t feel highly qualified to provide flawless commentary on the social conditions of the time, but the end of the last war perhaps was so precious to them that all they wanted to do was celebrate with reckless abandon (or, at least, that’s what literary works depicting the time suggested).

Secondly, why are they dancing? I have several interpretations for this. First is the idea that “dancing on the edge of the volcano” is meant to be read as a single phrase; the people of the Weimar era are intentionally taking the risk, intentionally engaging in casual sex (as we referenced in Schnitzler’s “Reigen” for Austrian society, albeit before the war) or moral depravity or intense partying because they know it’s not going to last. Another idea is that they’re disoriented, stepping to and fro like a drunk, which is why it seems as if they’re dancing, but also in danger with every (mis)step they take – the decadence is a way for them to cope with the trauma of the war, the devastation that it brought to Germany. I think both of these points are valid; I think maybe both of them could even be true, like a Nastasya Filippovna-sort of thing, continually ruining herself and knowing that she’ll probably die, but doing it anyway.

Dancing can also be aesthetically beautiful, and that’s one way we can connect this “volcano” imagery to its literal, cultural manifestation. The “Weimar glitz”, as I’ll call it, looks fun and fancy free on the outside – like we see in “Dr. Mabuse” with the opulence of the gambling clubs, including the technologically-superb Petit Palais that features near the end – but on the inside, at its “heart” (Conrad reference right there) is full of emptiness, bitterness, secrets, plotting – the immorality of gambling, the ambiguity of relationships between “Hugo Balling” and Hull, between Hull and Carozza. Secrecy and a dissonance between what others perceive and what is actually true looms large for both Doctors Caligari and Mabuse; Ellen in “Nosferatu” also struggles for a while between keeping herself hidden from Count Orlok and sacrificing herself, the “better” outcome but also a fatal one for her.

And now, showmanship!

Dr. Caligari initially wants to “show off” the somnambulist Cesare to the audience; I also interpreted this scene as Caligari using the fair as the means to pick his next target (and Alan, unfortunately, fell victim to the plot). The way I look at it, Caligari is actually using a public spectacle to perpetuate the secret plot – as if showmanship will hide the underlying motives of what exactly is going on.

Another scene that struck me is that of Dr. Mabuse at the stock market. Above the crazy activity, he stands alone, nonchalantly, on some sort of platform and proclaims, “I’m buying!” “I’m selling!”. I wondered, how is nobody noticing him, wondering why this guy is standing there so calmly? Doesn’t he seem suspicious? While everyone is tearing their own hair out, with their heads buried in the sand, wondering about their own wealth, Mabuse takes advantage of the confusion and his prior knowledge, and looks cool at the same time, like a master thief pulling off a grand heist (which he pretty much is). A cool exterior belies a secret, malignant knowledge and conviction.

What about Nosferatu? Well, his aesthetic has clearly been well-thought out; Nosferatu himself is a frightening and imposing figure, with his long nails, elongated jacket, and, of course, the unmoving eyes of the undead that, if put on a living person, might instead convey a strong sense of confidence or intention. Given the tone and plot of the film, public spectacle doesn’t seem to play a major part, but a lot of things about Nosferatu call attention to the character himself – attention that is sucked from every human being he crosses paths with (see what I did there?).

In the end, I’m trying to say that the idea of attention, image, performance, showmanship, as featured in the films, seems to belie an internal depravity, a dissatisfaction. Yet at the end of all the narratives, all the “showmen” are eventually caught and unravelled: Caligari (at least in Francis’ dream) is put into the asylum, Nosferatu is destroyed by Ellen’s sacrificial revelation of herself (the idea which I referenced before being a pretty cool topic to explore), and Mabuse (thanks, Jake, for spoiling it in seminar) is caught. The villainy, the decadence, the dancing is put to an end; the jazz music is silenced, and Germany is again thrust into an antagonistic role in the next war.

But I believe that in the end, there is redemption. Part of the reason why I think performers perform is to battle with the darkness within themselves; the famous dance artists of the time, Sergei Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky in particular, are famous in ballet history for their turbulent psychologies and the way that affected their art. That’s a story for another time, though! I think Caligari, Nosferatu, and Mabuse, in their desire for attention and performance, are representative of the desire of the Germans at the time to have fun and look snazzy, and try to forget all the bad things that happened to them. Even though they get beaten down again, great performers, when they fall down, plaster a smile on their face and get back up; the Germans perform again, and they’ll keep on performing.

Posted in blogs, lb4-2015 | Tagged with Dr. Mabuse, Fritz Lang, German Films, Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Weimar Films

German expressionism and architecture

Throughout expressionist films, the common theme when viewing in the light of architecture portrays similar aspects. The sets and scenes of these films tend to use buildings with sharp angles, heights, crowded atmospheres and a view of a metropolis. However, German expressionist films rejects all these naturalistic depictions of reality. Often having disorientated figures and portraying landscapes in a disorganised manner.

An example of this can be seen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Classified as one of the classic German expressionist films during the time. Hermann Warm, the film director, worked with Walter Reimann to create the setting of the film portraying dark and uncanny sets, structures and landscapes are disorientated with sharp-pointed formations.

It is evident that German expressionist films produced immediately after the First World War holds concepts of the social political contexts, however, embodying modern problems of identity. The role of identity can be further explained seen in German society. The role of masculinity during the time after the world war played a significant role in the ideas displayed in expressionist films through the role of insanity and promiscuity in male actions. This can be explained through the changes in society and the increasing importance of the role of women in the country.

Posted in blogs, lb1-2015 | Tagged with Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Apocalypse Now and Half-lit Faces

Coppola opens the film with a bang by dropping us right in the jungle. There are no opening credits; only darkness with the faint sound of helicopters approaching from the distance. The first image we see is that of a jungle tree line, which stands alone until one of the helicopters crosses the screen in front of the trees, a similar technique as John Boorman used with his cars in the opening of Deliverance (1972) to express mankind’s rape of nature. As psychedelic smoke rises to the music of The Doors singing “The End,” we realize the genius paradox of opening a movie with the words, “This is the end.”

As soon as these words arrive, the helicopters light up the jungle with napalm, superimposed over shots of Willard in his Saigon hotel room watching a ceiling fan. As his POV of the fan blades matches the sound of ‘Nam choppers in his head, it’s a reminder that veterans never truly leave the battlefield; fragments of swirling smoke, screaming comrades and chopper blades always remain.

This battle against one’s self, against our own dark side, is expressed visually throughout the film in a series of half-lit faces, from Willard (the light side) to Colonel Kurtz (the dark side), or as later articulated, “the kind who loves” and “the kind who kills.”

This duality of lightness and darkness hangs over the entire film, as Coppola offers paradox after paradox, most notably Brando’s line, “We teach the boys to drop fire on people, and yet we won’t let them write the word ‘fuck’ on their airplanes.” When you understand Coppola’s artistic sensibilities, you come to understand that the half-lit faces of lightness and darkness represent our internal choice as people — and as a nation — between the “hawk” and the “dove,” an eternal battle of gungho military adventurism versus anti-war peacemaking.

These half-lit faces always from the side and looking in parallel a technique used in early film noir movies to convey mystery and tragedy. To loose sight of ones own face is to give into the darkness and let it consume oneself.

Posted in blogs, lb1-2015 | Tagged with Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, joseph conrad

Apocalypse Now and Dostoyevsky

Apocalypse Now is a film that is steeped in references to other works of literary significance – it is directly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, borrowing much of its subject matter and character names from it. However, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky while watching, which is ironic because Conrad apparently quite disliked Dostoyevsky himself as well as his work (Wood, 2005). The Idiot’s exploration of what happens to a man who is good and moral to a literal fault contains a sense of forbearing and a dark atmosphere throughout, precipitated by Dostoyevsky’s style of writing that is eerily similar to the directorial direction of Apocalypse Now. At one point in The Idiot, Hippolyte states that “It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool’s paradise!”. This almost perfectly describes that character of Walter Kurtz as, unhappy and knowing the worst, he has built himself his own fool’s paradise that ultimate comes crashing down around him. It is fascinating how works of such different time, character and platform can contain such similar sentiments. So much literature is interwoven, even tangentially, that meaningful comparisons can be found in the most unexpected of places.

Works Cited
Wood, James. “Warning Notes from Underground.” The Guardian. N.p., 26 Feb. 2005. Web. 16 Jan. 2016. .

Posted in blogs, lb1-2015 | Tagged with Apocalypse Now, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Heart of Darkness, joseph conrad, the idiot

German Novellen: Kleist, Tieck, Grimm

Heinrich von Kleist, “The Earthquake in Chile” (1807)
Edition used: Five Great German Short Stories, Dover

Ludwig Tieck, “Fair-Haired Eckbert” (1797)
Edition used: German Literary Fairy Tales, Continuum.

Brothers Grimm, “Little Snow-White” (1812)
Edition used: The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Pantheon

In this lecture, Jason Lieblang discusses German Romanticism, the form of the German Novelle (short story) from the 18th and 19th centuries, German idealism, and the three stories noted above.

Faculty:
Jason Lieblang
Lecture date: November 23, 2015
Theme: Seeing and Knowing

link to presentation on prezi.com

Freud argues in “The Uncanny” that fairy tales aren’t uncanny. Explain why this is the case, for Freud, and argue for whether or not you think he’s right by discussing at least one of the fairy tales assigned for this week. Be sure to discuss his definition of the uncanny and say whether it applies to the fairy tale(s) you choose. You may, if you wish, compare/contrast the fairy tale with Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” in your discussion of whether or not the fairy tale is uncanny.
Develop a Freudian reading of either “Little Snow-white” or “Fair-haired Eckbert.” You may choose to focus on the role that elements such as narcissism, family dynamics or the return of the repressed play in either tale.
Discuss the representation of gender and/or relationships between men and women in Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” and one other text assigned for this week. Do you find anything problematic in this representation?
The Novelle has proven a difficult genre to define – but not for a lack of theorizing. Discuss one or more of the stories you read for this week in terms of the different distinguishing features of the Novelle to which you’ve been introduced.
Compare the representation of childhood in Blake and any of the stories assigned for this week.
What do the German Romantic writers you’ve read for this week think about our access to truth? Focus your argument on one or two stories. You may wish to discuss the role German idealism played in guiding their understanding of human knowledge.
Develop an argument about what “The Earthquake in Chile” or “Fair-Haired Eckbert” say about human nature. You may want to discuss this in the context of Hobbes’ and/or Rousseau’s arguments.
Develop an argument regarding how the narrative voice shapes the story in two of the following: Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” Kleist’s “The Earthquake in Chile,” or Tieck’s “Fair-Haired Eckbert.”

More material related to Kleist
More material related to Tieck
More material related to the Brothers Grimm

Posted in Jason Lieblang, lecture, powerpoint, Seeing and Knowing, video | Tagged with C18th, C19th, German Idealism, German Novelle, German Romanticism, grimm, Kleist, Tieck

The Heart of Darkness…In Us

Between Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, I find Heart of Darkness infinitely more disturbing than Apocalypse Now. The reason is simple. Apocalypse Now is a movie about war, or perhaps in the words of Coppola himself: “It is war.” War is horrible, that is a universal fact. When we think of war, we expect to find gruesome murders, horrific deeds, and utter madness. There is no surprise when we see that in the movie, after all, what do you expect in war?

Heart of Darkness on the other hand, shows the horror of human nature without war. Sure, the worst of mankind is brought out by war, however, even in times of peace, and prosperity, humans are capable of terrible things. Heart of Darkness shows us that we cannot just attribute our horrible deeds to war, it is ultimately humans that orchestrates all the terrors of war. Humans are terrible, not war. This revelation is exactly what I admire in Heart of Darkness, it forces us to gaze inside our heart and see the immense darkness that shrouds it. It shows us the consequences of Kurtz’s exposure to this darkness–insanity. Insanity for Kurtz is an escape, he cannot face the horror of the realization of his own nature, so he chose to run away from it into the realm of insanity. Insanity relieves us of all morals, all judgements, and all ego, so we can act out the most cruel and horrible part of our nature without guilt. Heart of Darkness is a great novel which explores the worst of mankind, and the effect it can have on us when we witness it. It puts into question the so called progress made by Europeans. To Conrad, the civilization of Europe is only a flicker in the darkness, and by no means the light which his contemporaries saw Europe as. No matter how civilized Europe or the entire mankind gets, the inner longing for the primeval ages will never fade, and the brutality and cruelty of human nature will persist.

Posted in blogs, lb1-2015 | Tagged with Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, joseph conrad

Freud & Hoffmann

Sigmund Freud, “Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood” (1910), “The Uncanny” (1919), selections from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
Edition used for the first two essays: Penguin
Edition used for Interpretation of Dreams: Basic Books

E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman”
Edition used: Five Great German Short Stories, Dover

For the Seeing and Knowing theme in 2015, we had half of a two-hour lecture on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and “Leonardo Da Vinci,” and the other half on Freud’s “The Uncanny” and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman.”

Faculty:
Christina Hendricks
Jason Lieblang
Lecture date: November 16, 2015
Theme: Seeing and Knowing

What is the relationship between Leonardo’s homosexuality and his artistic output, according to Freud? Do you find his argument convincing? Why or why not?
Do a Freudian analysis of one or two poems by Blake or Hopkins, focusing on the issue of repression or anything else from Freud that you think relevant.
Freud discusses castration anxiety in both his “Leonardo” and “Uncanny” essays, and in both works castration anxiety is related to vision. Discuss the relationship between vision and castration in at least one of the works by Freud assigned for this week.
Freud’s “The Uncanny” can be understood as an attempt to explain how, and more importantly why, horror scares us. Explain and critically evaluate Freud’s answer to these questions.
Analyze Freud’s anecdote on p. 144 and the footnote 1 on pp. 161-162 as evidence that “uncanny” experiences in real life evince “the return of the repressed,” and that such moments often involve uncontrollable repetition.
Analyze Freud’s anecdote on p. 144 and the footnote 1 on pp. 161-162 as evidence that “uncanny” experiences in real life evince “the return of the repressed,” and that such moments often involve uncontrollable repetition.
In what ways can the selections from Interpretation of Dreams help us understand Freud’s analysis of Leonardo in “Leonardo da Vinci” or his analysis of the uncanny in “The Uncanny”?
“The action of [Oedipus Rex] consists in nothing other than the process of revealing, with cunning delays and ever-mounting excitement—a process that can be likened to the work of a psycho-analysis” (Freud, Interpretation of Dreams 279). What similarities and differences do you see in what Oedipus does in the play and the psycho-analytic analyses Freud does in one or more of the works we read by him?
Both Freud and Rousseau attempt to uncover what is hidden in a shadowy past in order to show us the sources of some of our ills. Discuss similarities and differences between their respective attempts to see what is “so difficult to see” (Rousseau 68).
Discuss the significance of vision and eyes in Hoffmann’s “The Sandman.”
Freud’s reading of “The Sandman” has been extremely influential, but the story is certainly amenable to other readings. Provide a non-Freudian interpretation of the story.
Argue against Freud’s rather easy dismissal Olimpia as the source of the uncanny in “The Sandman.” You may also, if you wish, discuss his critique of Jentsch’s theory of the uncanny as a kind of intellectual uncertainty.

More material related to Freud
More material related to Hoffmann

Posted in Christina Hendricks, lecture, powerpoint, Seeing and Knowing, video | Tagged with C19th, C20th, Freud, Hoffmann, Interpretation of Dreams, Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, Sandman, Uncanny

The power of film

In Arts One this week we discussed Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. It was really challenging trying to talk about everything we wanted to discuss about both works, in two seminars (1 hr 20 minutes each, but still…). One thing I asked towards the end of class yesterday was something like:

What can film do that a book with just words can’t do, or can’t do as well? And how can we see that in Apocalypse Now?

I had a few ideas, and I heard some of the small groups in class yesterday giving a few others. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the things I thought of couldn’t be done in text alone (some of them could, in ingenious ways), but here are some things I thought film does especially well in comparison to written texts without images.

Visuals

Obviously, film has the benefit of visual images different from just the visuals of words. One thing that stood out to me in Coppola’s film is how we can get meaning just from the way the images are and work together.

For example, we can get a sense that Willard and Kurtz are in some ways the same, or at least similar, by:

In the scene in which the water buffalo is killed, and Kurtz is killed, towards the beginning we see Kurtz standing in the doorway looking out over the sacrificial ceremony, then going inside. Then after Willard kills him we see Willard standing in the doorway, looking out over the people who were conducting the ceremony. The shots aren’t exactly the same, as Kurtz is in shadow, backlit, and Willard is lit by the front, but he’s in the same place, facing the same people–who then bow down to him as they did to Kurtz. My point is that putting them in pretty much the same position in a shot can communicate a lot, even if nothing else were to happen to make us see them as similar.

Ruins–Apocalypse Now, Flickr photo by Ian Burt, licensed CC BY 2.0.

At the very end, after Willard and Lance leave Kurtz’s compound, we get a juxtaposed shot of Willard’s face and the image of the statue in Kurtz’s compound. That statue was associated with Kurtz–it was being shown while Kurtz was reading Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” At the end, Willard’s eye moves to be superimposed onto the statue’s eye, which to me suggests a melding of Willard and Kurtz.
Also, at the beginning, we get a shot of Willard’s face while he is in the hotel room, on the left of the screen while there are various things on the right, one of which is that statue again. In the beginning, Willard’s face is upside down, but at the end his face is right-side-up next to the statue before his eye becomes superimposed onto it. This might suggest a kind of disconnect between Willard and Kurtz at the beginning, but more of a connection at the end.

Lighting

A great deal can be shown by particular choices of lighting in an image or a film. One thing that really struck me in this regard was the Do Lung Bridge scene, where the light comes only in flashes, so you see a little bit and then you’re back in darkness; then there’s a little light, then darkness. A number of meanings might be connected with this, such as that at that point, they are on the border between order and chaos. That’s the last army outpost on the river, if I remember correctly (“beyond it was only Kurtz,” or something like that), and there is a very tenuous grasp on order and military activity. There is no clear commanding officer, but people are still fighting. There’s a veneer of doing what they’re supposed to do–they keep blowing up the bridge but the army keeps rebuilding it so they can say the road is open. The flashing of light and mostly darkness can express this borderline between things happening as they should and utter chaos.

Music

One thing that can really stand out in a film as providing another layer of meaning or evoking feeling is the background music. I didn’t pay as great of attention to this as to other things, but one thing that stands out is the silence after Willard kills Kurtz and comes out of the building to face the rest of the people. It’s completely silent except for the crickets, even though there was loud music before that (The Doors’ “The End”). Then we just get the rain as Willard and Lance move away in the boat. Willard even turns off the radio when “Almight” is calling for them on it. For me, this suggests perhaps that this is “the end” for Willard. There is nothing left for him–no military, no Kurtz, no Kurtz’s voice (in the book he is nothing but a voice, so silence would make sense), no nothing. But I don’t feel strongly about this interpretation; there are likely other interesting things to say about this silence!

I also wanted to say something about the song “The End,” as was discussed in the lecture on this film. The thing that struck me about it is that we get it both at the end of the film and at the beginning. That seems rather paradoxical–the end at the beginning? Or better, it’s circular. This is not actually the end; not the end of the war in the context of the storyline in the film, of course, nor the end of people like Kurtz, nor the end of insane wars altogether. It will just start again. Which, yes, goes a bit against my point in the previous paragraph about this being the end for Willard, which is partly why I’m not that thrilled about that interpretation!

These are the things I came up with on first thinking of this question…curious if others have other ideas!

Posted in blogs, lb4-2015 | Tagged with Apocalypse Now, Conrad, Coppola

Apocalypse now: an acid trip, a story about insanity, or both?

Apocalypse Now is probably one of my favourite movies of all time. Not only does it include countless moments where, even after watching it many times, I still am not sure about the intentions of the creators, but it also explores human boundaries and the limits of sanity and rationality. “Every man has a breaking point, even you and me”. It looks as though it is impossible, though, to avoid murder and insanity when going into Vietnam. Willard seems to have already gone mad from the beginning, so does it really make sense to send a mad man on a secret mission to capture another insane man? Is there a more legitimate reason behind this mission? Why does it not exist, nor will it ever exist? I have a theory.

The theme of the movie, in my view, is insanity, self-discovery and how human consciousness is what sets the boundaries for what is and isn’t rational. Psychedelic drugs, especially LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, are known to alter human consciousness in very profound ways, inducing states of what I like to call “psychedelic catharsis” (which i think we can see at the beginning of the movie when Willard is in the apartment going crazy!). It is widely known that this movie was very influenced by this type of experience (and even the lecturer last Monday went over this briefly). These drugs also cause very intense spiritual epiphanies, that make you feel as though you’re stuck in an endless loop, which Willard seems to have constantly (“The more they [the soldiers] tried to make it feel like home, the more they missed it.”). Not to mention the countless experiments that the US government funded throughout the 60’s and 70’s with psychoactive drugs (cannabis, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, MDMA, etc.) in order to create a “super-mind” or to find a drug that would help them win the war, or even a truth serum (MK Ultra, Edgewood Arsenal experiment,…).

Okay Vlad, cool rant, but how is this related to the questions you asked? It really does not make sense, though, and Willard (the narrator and the character) acknowledges this, to want to terminate a man for his insanity and for murder in a place saturated by these phenomenons.

Jim Morrison in catharsis?

To me the whole movie is essentially a bad acid trip’s stages exposed through a politically engaging scenario. The visuals / hallucinations that one experiences, that are always there in the background of the experience, are to be paralleled with the constant state of chaos (bombs, loud noise, screaming, dead bodies, fire, smoke) that doesn’t seem to bother anyone on the surface – because they pretend to be okay with it – but in reality it makes them feel very uneasy. The strange episodes in the movie, weird things that the characters say, and in particular the Playmates scene, are to be compared with the peak of the trip, a dreamlike state where irrational things seem to make perfect sense as unfamiliar and ridiculous as they may seem when contrasted with reason. Cool fact: when you dream you are actually under the influence of the most psychoactive chemical in the world, present in a plethora of living organisms, called DMT (Dimethyltryptamine), so everyone has experienced this type of feeling at some point, where something makes perfect sense when you’re dreaming but when you wake up you wonder “What the heck was I thinking?!”. Essentially every “psychonaut” has experienced this at some point, and it is where the boundaries of rationality and consciousness become the most blurred with irrationality and higher consciousness (the unknown, absurd).

Finally, the insanity and bizarre sense of power and freedom that Willard experiences mostly near the end, and that Kurtz seems to bathe himself in, represents the comedown of a psychedelic trip, where the ego is coming back to life and one starts understanding reality all over again, reconnecting with consciousness and coming back to the earth as we know it, rediscovering ourselves. This is in fact a very unpleasant stage, at which the person may feel schizophrenic! Most “psychonauts” have experienced this too, feeling like they’re stuck in this acid world forever. Maybe Willard is sent in a higher mission, so mystical that it doesn’t nor will it ever exist (maybe because it’s a trip!), to find Kurtz, to find himself.

I can’t help but to see Kurtz as his alter-ego, one that has broken loose from all boundaries imposed by reason, and lives as a God in his own version of reality, like Willard is tempted to do. Hence my Fight Club reference today! Why would they choose a man who’s already suicidal, bound to kill himself? Because he has nothing to lose. “It is only when you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”

Playmates?

Some topics I haven’t covered that are still tremendously interesting could be: why did they pick The Doors? Is this an effective critique of the war in Vietnam? If so, what exactly is it exposing about the war besides PTSD? What’s the meaning of the Playmates? Is this movie racist intrinsically or can the narrow / offensive view of the people of Vietnam be justified by the motivations behind making the movie, in other words exposing a certain point of view in order to prove that it’s bad?

Posted in blogs, lb4-2015 | Tagged with Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, joseph conrad

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