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Apr. 11th, 2010 03:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionContinuing the pre-Housman post with meandering Fryelike observations on girls and/or friends and suddenly Chinatown:
Can't remember how close the Vineland plot is to that of Eddie and the Cruisers. I'd be astonished if this is an influence case, but Pynchon is an astonishing one.
Because we're talking gnosticism here.
Twin Peaks uses the lost girl but not the attrition element--until the rather nihilistic last episode, anyway.
The lost girl or woman--Sophia. Big in V. too. Roth, usually a myth-dodger, uses it very effectively in his most lauded '90s books. And Crowley multiple times, Calvino passim. It's probably an odd fit with the attrition method, since the girl is usually the Desired Other, not an Ego Double. Mulholland Drive fascinatingly combines the two (as compared to their being both present but rigidly separated in Lost Highway)--and perhaps the petering off of the labyrinthine, vestigial pilot elements fills something like the function attrition does? The less essential characters don't die or change deathlily, they just spill away.
Aguirre's a great attrition entry. The Seven Samurai and its imitations, too, but in the non-gnostic category--the adventure version, like in Cooper and Tolkien. Which sounds demeaning but I don't mean it that way. The number of survivors in Kurosawa's is pointed, and uses the film number magic I mentioned earlier to make that point--too much was lost, but an infinity remains. Gnosticism runs the risk of being all about Me, humanism insists on an Us. Not that they're incompatible, but they're not typically being emphasized equally.
The Great Escape must be one of those imitators, mustn't it. Never occurred to me.
Opposite to attrition, but just as ubiquitous in adventure stories, is the friend-gathering. Wizard of Oz is the iconic example, and there they don't drop away later, as they do in Samurai and Tolkien. Gnostic stories tend not to include that phase, since the atmosphere of loss becomes less absolute (or too intolerable?) if it hasn't tainted every present-tense moment of the story. One of the rarest things in narrative is the presentation of happy and of sad both in present tense. Mulholland Drive miraculously has it both ways here too, doesn't it.
Hence the importance of black and white, or labeling by words, or vaseline, or sepia or whatnot to differentiate time periods in movies. You gotta keep 'em separated.
Blood Meridian does have a gathering phase, but it's not terribly friendly. And it's probably important that there's a large group already together that the Kid joins. It's not his thing, though the Judge rejects this excuse when needling him near the end. And the group is continually renewed, since its own attrition is its ultimate reason for being--it rides on its own melting, like the ice in a frying pan, or was it butter, to which Frost analogized poetry.
(The Lost Girl is present in McCarthy too--in The Road, quite literally; but she's resonant in Cities of the Plain, and, strangely, at the other end of the Border Trilogy in the aggressively offstage mother. Grady's rejecting the mother, or the mother's having rejected Grady, starts everything off in some mysterious way, till the equally mysterious feminine calming in the arch-gnostic Cities coda.)
That Nicholson suddenly has comrades, who understand completely but know there's no helping, is very strong at the end of Chinatown because it's a sudden, retroactive attrition--they were once a band, but all fell, one by one in untold stories, from thinking anything could be done. And somehow their stories being untold is more convincing than if they'd been told--we don't see them weak or tempted, we just find out that all are disillusioned who approach the center of the night. That movie does want to convince us to give up, and that element is crucial for the astonishing, abrupt, perfect finish. The associates from Back Then--are there just two, making an infinite three with him?--go from being jackasses to comrades immediately. It's him that's been wrong for still trying, still fighting. Which of course the film can't possibly mean but nevertheless means, a contradictory overlapping that the sudden shift helps make possible: we're still with him in his mode with his goals, and the shock of sudden failure and then rolling credits haven't purged us of our investment in heroism. We have to try, we feel, and we could never have not failed, we suddenly know. Had we come to know more gradually it would have been ridiculous to try; and the tone of the final words informs us that there's no way we could have known without having tried. Not letting us have the time to accept the lesson means that the movie doesn't end, in a crucial sense. Thus projecting "Chinatown" out here, though I suppose also letting us fight the contaminating half-conclusion with whatever weapons we've got out here.
(I wonder what's been written about this sort of peer pressure in fiction--how the author creates and/or alters norms using accessory characters, characters who are 'foils' more to the reader than to the protagonist. Have I discussed this with someone here?)
Can't remember how close the Vineland plot is to that of Eddie and the Cruisers. I'd be astonished if this is an influence case, but Pynchon is an astonishing one.
Because we're talking gnosticism here.
Twin Peaks uses the lost girl but not the attrition element--until the rather nihilistic last episode, anyway.
The lost girl or woman--Sophia. Big in V. too. Roth, usually a myth-dodger, uses it very effectively in his most lauded '90s books. And Crowley multiple times, Calvino passim. It's probably an odd fit with the attrition method, since the girl is usually the Desired Other, not an Ego Double. Mulholland Drive fascinatingly combines the two (as compared to their being both present but rigidly separated in Lost Highway)--and perhaps the petering off of the labyrinthine, vestigial pilot elements fills something like the function attrition does? The less essential characters don't die or change deathlily, they just spill away.
Aguirre's a great attrition entry. The Seven Samurai and its imitations, too, but in the non-gnostic category--the adventure version, like in Cooper and Tolkien. Which sounds demeaning but I don't mean it that way. The number of survivors in Kurosawa's is pointed, and uses the film number magic I mentioned earlier to make that point--too much was lost, but an infinity remains. Gnosticism runs the risk of being all about Me, humanism insists on an Us. Not that they're incompatible, but they're not typically being emphasized equally.
The Great Escape must be one of those imitators, mustn't it. Never occurred to me.
Opposite to attrition, but just as ubiquitous in adventure stories, is the friend-gathering. Wizard of Oz is the iconic example, and there they don't drop away later, as they do in Samurai and Tolkien. Gnostic stories tend not to include that phase, since the atmosphere of loss becomes less absolute (or too intolerable?) if it hasn't tainted every present-tense moment of the story. One of the rarest things in narrative is the presentation of happy and of sad both in present tense. Mulholland Drive miraculously has it both ways here too, doesn't it.
Hence the importance of black and white, or labeling by words, or vaseline, or sepia or whatnot to differentiate time periods in movies. You gotta keep 'em separated.
Blood Meridian does have a gathering phase, but it's not terribly friendly. And it's probably important that there's a large group already together that the Kid joins. It's not his thing, though the Judge rejects this excuse when needling him near the end. And the group is continually renewed, since its own attrition is its ultimate reason for being--it rides on its own melting, like the ice in a frying pan, or was it butter, to which Frost analogized poetry.
(The Lost Girl is present in McCarthy too--in The Road, quite literally; but she's resonant in Cities of the Plain, and, strangely, at the other end of the Border Trilogy in the aggressively offstage mother. Grady's rejecting the mother, or the mother's having rejected Grady, starts everything off in some mysterious way, till the equally mysterious feminine calming in the arch-gnostic Cities coda.)
That Nicholson suddenly has comrades, who understand completely but know there's no helping, is very strong at the end of Chinatown because it's a sudden, retroactive attrition--they were once a band, but all fell, one by one in untold stories, from thinking anything could be done. And somehow their stories being untold is more convincing than if they'd been told--we don't see them weak or tempted, we just find out that all are disillusioned who approach the center of the night. That movie does want to convince us to give up, and that element is crucial for the astonishing, abrupt, perfect finish. The associates from Back Then--are there just two, making an infinite three with him?--go from being jackasses to comrades immediately. It's him that's been wrong for still trying, still fighting. Which of course the film can't possibly mean but nevertheless means, a contradictory overlapping that the sudden shift helps make possible: we're still with him in his mode with his goals, and the shock of sudden failure and then rolling credits haven't purged us of our investment in heroism. We have to try, we feel, and we could never have not failed, we suddenly know. Had we come to know more gradually it would have been ridiculous to try; and the tone of the final words informs us that there's no way we could have known without having tried. Not letting us have the time to accept the lesson means that the movie doesn't end, in a crucial sense. Thus projecting "Chinatown" out here, though I suppose also letting us fight the contaminating half-conclusion with whatever weapons we've got out here.
(I wonder what's been written about this sort of peer pressure in fiction--how the author creates and/or alters norms using accessory characters, characters who are 'foils' more to the reader than to the protagonist. Have I discussed this with someone here?)
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 06:31 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for this post! It's true, it's something about Chinatown I'd known but not thought consciously of. How it becomes fun for a while, right at and after the visit to the old-folks' home, how the antagonism of other people is maintained in one way, and totally drained in another. Because, I guess, people have personal and professional selves?
I'm comparing Blade Runner - an easy comparison because it's also LA, it's also noir, it also features both a lost girl and attrition. But in comparison to Chinatown it's so monumentally unfriendly. Pretty much everyone turns out privately to be worse, the big friendship scene is a rejection (Roy tells Deckard he can't understand and what can Deckard do but agree), and the big friendship act is an absence (Gaffe elects not to show up, and signals it by leaving an orgami creature that doesn't exist).
It's weird, in this light of consideration, how much friendlier Chinatown is than Blade Runner. But I knew that. Chinatown is a run through a serial collapse of places that really were sanctuaries until, pretty much, the moment you see them (the boat in Echo Park, Faye's house, etc.). Everything in Blade Runner is a pit with or without you, there's nothing in its structure that could shift.
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Date: 2010-04-11 09:40 pm (UTC)The pitsness might make Bladerunner less painful. Movie atmospheres are interesting that way--darkness can be actual darkness or something fun, just a Halloween-themed Disneyland that you visit and leave. Chinatown starts so hot and bright, ends dark in all ways. I guess if happiness is unattainable you find your happiness in things other than happiness--but in Chinatown you're already invested in it. Everyone assumes it exists except the silent jaded, who can only really talk to Jack when his own fall is complete.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 10:16 pm (UTC)Everything you say about Chinatown is excellent. I hadn't thought of the day-to-night shift, either.
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Date: 2010-04-11 10:22 pm (UTC)Fanny & Alexander, Chinatown, Mulholland Drive I love almost as much as my favorite books.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 01:20 am (UTC)It's an interesting take on degradation and exposure. I don't know that anyone else has tried it, I don't know that anyone but Charlie Kaufman would want to try.
The dream sequence is cut from the movie as released, and I think it may even still be gone from the "director's cut" that takes away the voice-over? Not sure.
You don't really want to see it, it's like watching Legend in 15 seconds. But here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhDDybv8_Ro
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Date: 2010-04-11 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 12:29 am (UTC)Whereas Chinatown is the opposite, it starts with hope and ends in futility. There's nothing glorious in it, anything that could be redeeming is sucked back into the futility. All the unicorns turn out to be dead horses with arrows in their heads.
The "Is Deckard a replicant?" angle I never found very interesting because there just isn't enough evidence for it. A replicant hunting replicants would have been a different movie; this is a movie about a human observing replicants and seeing that they're only a more intense version of ourselves. They feel more in a shorter period of time. So "Is Deckard a replicant" is moot, we're all replicants. We die for no reason, we hate our maker, etc.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 01:27 am (UTC)But, while I'm linking from youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7o0rvVxU0w&feature=related
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 01:52 am (UTC)the unicorn dream is in the director's cut, i remember it.
still, though.
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Date: 2010-04-12 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 03:24 am (UTC)