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August 04, 2007
Too Much For Guy!
For those who saw it this evening, or on some evening prior or yet to come, here's a an erudite analysis of Brand Upon The Brain, courtesy of Steven Shaviro. In addition to precisely describing the manner in which Maddin's hyperbolic melodrama is, in fact, autobiographical, he offers an excellent precis on how that same melodrama has evolved over the course of its directors' oveure.
Also, I don't know that I've ever seen the word "hauntological" anywhere else before, but I'm hoping to use it myself someday soon.
I sat through about forty-five minutes of A Pervert's Guide To Cinema again the other night, during its Video Fest engagement. I'm not informed enough to square off against Zizek (after three months and lots of re-reading, I'm still no further than 100 pages into A Parallax View) the way Shaviro or Zach Campbell have. Nor am I disciplined enough in my own practice of critical theory or understanding of modern philosophy to find much fault in his arguments, even when I can see why the impetus for those arguments might be criticized. I do, however, still get a kick out him; likewise, I'm happy to ease into the comfortable incline of his more classical generalizations and find in their articulation ample support for my own ideas. Last night, I listened to the scene in the film in which he proposes that pornography represents a far more drastic form of censorship than what might be levied upon regular motion picture with some degree of sexual content; that this censorship is, indeed, tragic, because it impedes emotion and intelligence, whereas its opposite is merely a stopgag to biological function. Hence, one can choose to indulge in those two factors and draw the line at depicting their eventual physical intersection, or show that intercourse and be condemned to contextual banality. This dovetailed into a conversation James and I were having earlier in the evening about our respective feelings about including unsimulated sex in our films, something I'm not at all opposed to. My interest in it is not reductive: the defense that "it's just sex" doesn't really apply, at least in my mind, because even if one's intent is to be reductive, to depict the act in question as something purely biological, that depiction in and of itself represents a rather problematic intersection between the third and fourth wall of cinema. Because it is sex, it can't just be sex. Is it ethically tricky to ask actors to occupy this space? I think so (I'm reminded of that rumored story from the set of Last Tango In Paris, about Bertolucci telling Brando and Maria Schneider that they could go ahead and have sex if they wanted to, a suggestion which Brando took as a grievous insult to his craft), but I don't think it's wrong explore it. My own interest walks a fine; the sex can't be the film's raison d'etre, and yet its volatility mustn't be disregarded. There's a deference to form that must be taken into consideration, too; most films don't need to be primers on plumbing.
Anyway. Back to Zizek. I was amused by what seems to be a bit of a slip-up in his anaylsis of the Star Wars prequels within The Parallax View; he refers to Anakin Skywalker as Ken Annakin - who is, in fact, a British filmmakers (director of Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and The Swiss Family Robinson, among others). Although I don't think it's ever been decisively proven, the general consensus is that Lucas did indeed borrow the older filmmakers' name. Incidentally, the fact that it's a bit of nomenclatural trivia that catches my eye in the midst of such ontological machinations only adds to my already massive inadequacy complex.
Posted by David Lowery at August 4, 2007 03:45 AM