portishead's third; thinking about music criticism

If art criticism could be defined as the art of objectifying a subjective experience – of filtering a visceral experience through rational evaluation – then music criticism has to be the black sheep of the criticism family. Resistant to the kind of analysis that can take apart a novel or film, music can obviously be judged on the technical side of music theory, but in the end boils down to the visceral, pre-rational experience. This aesthetic kind of criticism, limited only by the obvious requirement that musicians hit the right notes – is more of a genealogical, historical, comparative affair. Which explains why music reviews often read like a catalogue of analogies, snap judgments, and unsupported assertions. The film critic, at least, can point to a film’s technique (writing included) to justify why this or that aspect of the film works or doesn’t work. With music, however, once a certain proficiency threshold has been passed (and the bar isn’t necessarily that high), criticism yields to interpretation. At which point, the only thing to do is listen to an album and decide for yourself whether you like what you hear or not. Perhaps distinguishing between “criticism” and “review” is actually useful here.

I’ve only once done music reviews, for Morbid Outlook way back in August 2007. It was a fun experience and I’d do it again, but there’s something about reviewing music that feels like mere opiniating, like passing judgment without the net of reason beneath to catch the loose ends of the purely subjective. Music reviews are the equivalent of lazy film critics who settle for summarizing a film’s plot instead of dissecting the plot’s manifestation through cinematic technique. As an example, here’s Rob Sheffield’s review, at Rolling Stone mag, of Portishead’s long-awaited third album:

It's been ten years since the world last heard from Portishead, the U.K. trip-hop trio, and they do not sound like they've spent the past decade going to therapy, listening to new music or making friends. Actually, they sound like they spent it locked in a tea cupboard underwater off the coast of Bristol, with a piped-in orchestral soundtrack from Dario Argento horror movies. Is this a problem?

No way — nobody ever listened to Portishead for their sparkling personalities or musical variety. What they're brilliant at is obsessively textured studio dread, and Third is an unexpected yet totally impressive return. Beth Gibbons still has her high-pitched trill ("Wounded and afraid/Inside my head," she sings in the opener, "Silence" — big surprise), but she's just another sound effect in the audio creep show of Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley. "We Carry On" is a smashingly claustrophobic two-note electro riff, with heavy echoes of the Silver Apples' "Oscillations." In highlights like "The Rip," "Small" and "Machine Gun," Portishead mix up dub, break beats, cathedral organ, Moroccan drones and even surf rock into a headphone album for sour times.

Can I do better? Unlikely. (Well, maybe a little?) Here’s my take on Third:

Portishead’s eponymous second outing illustrated the hazard of achieving that holy grail of music, a distinctive sound: the hazard of getting stuck in an endlessly-repeating groove. But the album was solid in its own right, a masterful and necessary continuation of the scratchy, sample-laden, and tripped-out mourning vibe that made Dummy so singularly special and genuinely brilliant. And the concert album, Roseland NYC Live, proved that Portishead could work its way with different kinds of instrumentation, a quality of musicianship also revealed by their remixes and artist collaborations. Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, along with Beth Gibbons, are musicians, not monkeys acting out their training.

So Third presented the band with the challenge of being Portishead without being Portishead. Consummate musicians that they are, they meet the challenge head-on with a superlative album that comfortably fits the mood of a dimly-lit room. Veering away (more or less) from hip-hop and into electronic territories laced with industrial, Third is both reinvention and reassertion, possessed of the same introspective melancholy that gives Portishead’s music a gothic flavour, but juiced up by ever-unexpected rhythms, sonic booms, burrowing melodies, and aching lyrics. And, of course, there’s Gibbons – whose voice is often raw, but with a plaintive, breaking quality that is just right for songs of sorrow.

Typical of Portishead, Third is the kind of album that makes adjectives nervous. A hip-hop flavour there, a trace of Trent Reznor here, surreal soundscapes everywhere; this is an album from far out of left field. Just as the Portishead “sound” had long reached overexposure, Third comes along to shake up the music world’s complacency with an effort that evades crass commercialism and preserves the scrappy spirit of musicians developing their own voice in the wilderness.

In all fairness, it is possible for music reviews to go beyond simple aesthetic reactions – see Brian Hiatt’s review of AC/DC’s latest. But I still have to ask: if somebody doesn’t like the way a piece of music sounds, can a music critic change that with a review?

a shoe without sole - silly or sublime?

Take a look at this shoe, if it can be called that. (Note: the image was taken from a Huffington Post article and is here displayed under Fair Use principles. If this is nonetheless objectionable to whomever holds the copyright, I will remove it.)

It evokes, at first impression, total disbelief. Ridicule, even. There’s nothing practical about the “shoe.” It leaves toes exposed to stubbing and soles exposed to dirt (and other substances). It’s nonsensical. But in an example of the art of criticism, in which a gut reaction isn’t enough to properly appreciate something – whether positively or negatively – a little bit of consideration can bring about a change of perspective.

For one thing, the shoe is clearly not designed for practical wear and day-to-day use. It’s a question of form as it relates to function, and to condemn the shoe for being impractical is asking the form to function in a way that counters its design. What we’re left with, then, is the shoe as an aesthetic and conceptual experience. The sole-less heel is a concept, a gamble, a toy; this is the basis on which the shoe is best judged. And on this level, the shoe’s designers Aminaka and Wilmont should be credited for their imagination.

Take a look again. Notice how the heel block conforms to the heel of the foot. Notice how the straps not only anchor the heel in place, but give the shoes a gladiatorial look softened by the choice of material. The shoe’s engineering is masterful as it serves a concept of risk: exposing the foot, elevating it off the ground. It’s ultimately clever in its audacity – could it even be sexy? It does possess an idealized fetishism that brings, inevitably, sex into the design. When seen in the context of Aminaka and Wilmont’s 2009 spring/summer collection (see here and here), the sole-less heel is, not a folly, but an artistic expression of fashion perfectly suited, not for the real world, but for the universe of the catwalk and, perhaps, the private home where sharp objects and dirty substances aren’t a threat. What seemed silly at first has become, amazingly, sublime.

So when Ebert addresses the role of (film) critics in light of people’s hostility to criticism…

I believe a good critic is a teacher. He doesn't have the answers, but he can be an example of the process of finding your own answers. He can notice things, explain them, place them in any number of contexts, ponder why some "work" and others never could. He can urge you toward older movies to expand your context for newer ones. He can examine how movies touch upon individual lives, and can be healing, or damaging. He can defend them, and regard them as important in the face of those who are "just looking for a good time." He can argue that you will have a better time at a better movie. We are all allotted an unknown but finite number of hours of consciousness. Maybe a critic can help you spend them more meaningfully.

…I offer my own pennies in adding that the art of criticism – regardless of what the object of that criticism is, whether film, shoes, or whatever – is the art of appreciation, of looking more deeply into things. In other words, it is a reflection of the view that the examined life - both the good and the bad - is a life worth living.

new column: cry me a river, rich man

Trying to find someone who knows something about the economy in today's political climate is a lot like living in the land of the blind and trying to find a one-eyed man. With headline after headline of increasingly disastrous economic news - global in scope with Wall Street at the epicentre -it's become obvious that the dominant economic model that more or less began with Ronald Reagan, and continued on even through the Clinton administration, is severely flawed. Deregulation, creative financial maneouvres - it just goes on.

But the problem isn't simply with specific elements of the economy, but how the economy functions as a whole, starting with bedrock principles. Critically, there seems to be two parallel economies: one based on labour, and one based on money itself. The former, of course, is the easy-to-understand economy, based on concrete economic transactions that everyone participates in. But the money economy is arcane and cryptic, filled with such strange beasts as hedge funds and securitized mortgages. This is an economy based on numbers and abstract calculations - and when it fails, it takes everything else down with it.

Into this comes the myth of Republican fiscal conservatism, that is, fiscal responsibility. Why the Republican party still has any credibility on economic matters is a mystery to me. The budget for the Iraq war was kept separate from the national budget, a strange way to do accounting. Tax cuts for the rich have never trickled down, acting instead to shrink the middle class and polarize the rich-poor divide. Deregulation of financial markets made possible Enron and the like. It just goes on. For a more primal example of how Republicans are out-of-touch with economic reality, one doesn't necessarily need to get into the highly technical aspects of modern economics. We can return to a discussion of first principles, such as: what is wealth? Without necessarily saying that Democrats are shiny beacons of hope, in comparison to the aristocratic, let-the-eat-cake mindset of Republicans, it's at least clear that in the game of Lesser Evil, Republicans are not the ones to get us out of this mess. And so, in answer to the charge that non-Republicans are jealous of the rich folk's success - jealous enough to steal their money - I say:

Cry Me A River, Rich Man

from hell: movie vs book - part 3

As I wrap up my discussion on From Hell, I’ll turn to the movie, which stars Johnny Depp as Inspector Abberline. Unlike the book, in which the good Inspector is a proletarian street-saavy copper, the film version is an intuitive savant driven by opium-fueled visions. He is the main focus of the story, as he develops a romance with Mary Kelly, one of the prostitutes targeted by Jack the Ripper. Interestingly, the romance and its denouement have an equivalent in the book, but the movie is notable for a surprising, even bold choice that. Mary Kelly survives Jack through a case of mistaken identity, but in order to protect knowledge of her survival, the movie’s Abberline chooses to commit suicide rather than leave open the possibility that the Jack/Masonic conspiracy would use him to get to her. In the book, Abberline is left little more than a sad goodbye note as Mary Kelly escapes Whitechapel.

It’s actually quite fascinating to see how the book and the movie correlate with one another, how the same essential events take on different forms. But what I’m getting at is the fundamental difference between movie and book: Abberline is the film’s central character, whereas he is co-protagonist with Jack in the novel. And as the central character – an inspector investigating a crime – the film is structured as a whodunit in which the killer’s identity is only revealed at the end. The novel isn’t concerned with suspense as it is with philosophy.

You can see where I’m going, even if I don’t dissect all the differences between the movie and the book: structure is everything. The movie loses out on fleshing out Jack the Ripper as a character because, at least until the end, our encounters with him consist of his murders. Of course, to spend too much time on the killer without knowing his identity would also rob the film of its suspense, although the movie solves this to some extent by having us get to know Jack through his reluctant accomplice, a coachman.

So we have the same story, but told in structurally different ways – fascinating stuff for writers. But of course, the next question is, which structure is better at conveying the story? While I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the movie, I’ll have to go with the book. However interesting it is to know how a character does something, it’s the why that offers the most rewarding drama and psychological insight. All too often, stories get caught up in the thrill of action and forget the quiet, but vital, joys of introspection.

from hell: movie vs book - part 2

In From Hell, the novel, a stroke results in Gull experiencing what he interprets as theophany – a vision of God – in the form of Jahbulon, a trinity consisting of Yahweh (Jah), Baal (Bul), and Osiris (On). This is the trigger that sets him on his path. As he murders each woman in turn – leaving the bodies in locations that, from an aerial perspective, correspond to the points of a pentagram – he experiences visions of 20th century London, computers and all. His last mystical experience, as he lies dying within the cell of an insane asylum, sees him traveling through time to interact with other murderers as well as notable people like William Blake, followed by a second encounter with Jahbulon and, arguably, ascension to godhood.

Of course, there’s more going on then this synopsis can capture, beginning with the question as to whether Gull is insane or not and the implications of his state of mind for his mystical visions. On the one hand, it is valid to view his theophany as a hallucination brought on by the stroke. And, by the end of the book, his mental state has clearly deteriorated just as the post-killing mutilations of the sacrificial women increased in brutality. Throw in a subtext of sexual psychopathology, illustrated by early troubles with his wife and asylum staff having sex in his cell as he undergoes his dying mystical experience, and we could make the case that his mystical experiences are delusions. Yet, the content of his visions receives validation from us, the readers, because we know that, if nothing else, his visions of 20th century London are true. This raises the very disturbing prospect that his magical rituals, and the metaphysics underlying them, have a certain reality. Gull’s insanity is insane, yes, but also ambivalently tied to an accurate, transcendental awareness of reality.

But even if we accept Gull’s view that he gave birth to the 20th century and assured its male-dominated character, there are complications seemingly glossed over by Gull. In his most vivid vision of 20th century London, elicited by the last and most gruesome murder, he is struck by how lifeless people are, despite all the toys and women’s explicit sexuality. Could it be that the 20th century isn’t what he hoped it would be? And what does it mean when, on his second encounter with Jahbulon at the end of his jaunt through time, the deity points him in the direction of an Irish village, where Mary Kelly – one of his intended victims – is not only alive and well with the child, but can see and chase him away? The fact that he killed the wrong woman doesn’t so much cast doubt on the success of his mystical mission – he gets the 20th century he created, however it may deviate from his expectations – but suggest that the feminine cannot be so easily or completely suppressed. Whether he achieves godhood as be believes with his dying breath or is condemned to hell by Mary Kelly’s curse is unresolved and, frankly, not entirely relevant. His success, if it can be called that, is not complete.

My purpose in indulging this little bit of interpretation is twofold.

First, to offer a little taste of the book’s richness. Considering that the story also deals with issues of class – rich versus poor, of course, and royalty versus everyone else – From Hell is a densely layered book. While V for Vendetta, for political reasons, still resonates most with me, I’d rank From Hell alongside it as Moore’s best work – even above the much-vaunted Watchmen, whose deterministic view of time effectively eliminates free will and, in the process, robs the conclusion of its power to render the book an empty philosophical exercise. (In other words, I’m not too bothered about Watchmen.)

Second, to offer a baseline of comparison with the movie. When looking at how other books have been adapted into films and the problems encountered in the translation (see my review of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for an example), we can see that the differences between From Hell, the movie, and From Hell, the graphic novel, go beyond adding or omitting particular scenes.

To be continued…

from hell: movie vs book - part 1

After watching the film adaptation a week or so ago, I finally finished reading Alan Moore’s From Hell. As is always the case with adaptations, it’s fascinating to see how the film and graphic novel differ from one another, and how that difference, so dependent on the medium, influences interpretations of the story.

Both the film and the novel center on the Jack the Ripper murders and a now-discredited solution proposed by Stephen Knight in his 1975 book Jack the Ripper: the Final Solution. In brief: Jack the Ripper is identified as the product of a royal conspiracy involving royalty and the police, coming together in Sir William Whitey Gull, Queen Victoria’s personal physician. Acting on her orders, he killed the five prostitutes to neutralize the threat, by blackmail, of exposing a royal scandal involving Prince Albert and the perfectly legitimate birth of his child to one of the women, Alice Cook, whom he secretly married.

In Alan Moore’s book, and in the movie to a lesser extent, freemasonry provides the story’s metaphysical and metaphorical scaffolding, although Moore takes great liberties with actual freemason doctrines. Gull isn’t simply performing a service for the Queen, but enacting dark and profound freemason rituals to achieve specific aims. This is where the book and the movie diverge, in that the movie, centered as it is on Chief Inspector Abberline’s (Depp) investigation, doesn’t get far beyond the fact that masons are, for unexplained reasons, involved in the conspiracy and Gull’s statement that he will be remembered for giving birth to the 20th century. The book, however, is all about the birth and character of the 20th century, with Gull’s motivation for serving as mid-wife at the forefront of the story. In particular, Moore develops the following themes:

-The metaphorical edifice - I choose the word deliberately – of pagan symbols, as revealed in London landmarks such as Hawkmoor’s churches, that points towards the domination of masculinity over femininity via pagan mythology and magic. Thus, the murders are a ritual intended to reinforce that domination in the 20th century, lest the feminine, as it had prior to the masculine rebellion, regain its overthrown power.
-The notion that all time co-exists and it is only our perception that creates discrete temporal sequences.
-The possibility of transcending time and ascending to godhood.

How Moore develops these themes is worth considering before continuing with a comparison of the book and the movie.

Stay tuned...

the polemics of "Juno"

There’s an interesting debate surrounding Juno, and it’s not whether Diablo Cody is guilty of overwriting the dialogue. The debate is more political in nature, centering on the endless controversy that is abortion, adoption, and teenaged pregnancy. Over at Alternet, Ellen Goodman gets in a tizzy over what she perceives as an appropriation of Juno as an anti-abortion poster girl:

we are in the midst of an entire wave of movies about unexpectedly pregnant women -- from Knocked Up to Waitress to Bella -- all deciding to have their babies and all wrapped up in nice, neat bows.

In Knocked Up, pregnancy from a one-night drunken stand transforms a slacker babydaddy into a grown-up. In Waitress, pregnancy empowers a woman to escape from Husband Wrong to Mr. Right. And in Bella, it's the belly that leads her into the heart of a warm Latino family.

Here is a cinematic world without complication. Or contraception. By some screenwriter consensus, abortion has become the right-to-choose that's never chosen. In Knocked Up it was referred to as "shmashmortion." In Juno the abortion clinic looks like a punk-rock tattoo parlor.

Perusing film reviews and discussion boards will expand on Goodman’s point, which is that Juno is an argument tailored for the (irritatingly named) pro-life side of the politico-cultural divide. But I think Amanda Marcotte, responding to this piece by a blogger named Publius, gets the conclusion right in her piece, "Sorry Anti-Choicers! 'Juno' Is Neither an Anti-Abortion or Pro-Adoption Polemic," although she doesn’t offer an explanation better than

Contrary to the many anti-choice hopes out there, the movie isn't an anti-abortion or pro-adoption polemic; on the contrary, it was a coming-of-age comedy plus teenage romance with teenage pregnancy as the hook.

The most critical reason why some see Juno as a polemic against abortion comes from misusing inductive reasoning and universalize individual situations. If a celebrity drinks a particularly drink, we should all drink it. If the cool kid does, so should we. If a woman is on the receiving end of a cumshot in a porno flick, then all women are being degraded. If Juno decides against having an abortion, we should all choose against having abortions. Of course, the second half of the previous sentences do not follow logically from the first halves; interpreting the individual to be symbolic of the whole is the problem with finding – that is, creating – a greater meaning in a particular story or event. In other words, and to use a bad metaphor, Juno is smoking a cigar that isn’t a phallic symbol.

Even if we granted that Juno could sensibly be layered with politics, a pro-life (or anti-choice) perspective isn’t necessarily the movie’s spin unless you severely distort the pro-choice position. I don’t know who advocates treating abortions like ear piercings, or who believes that abortions are “good” things. Pro-choice isn’t necessarily pro-abortion, but pro the individual’s right to make individual moral decisions – decisions that may involving choosing abortion over giving birth. Frankly, if a girl has a supportive and positive environment like Juno does and decides to have the baby, the response would be: rock on. Why not? It seems a far better situation to have a baby in than being pregnant without any kind of support, whether economic or familial. If anything, the film illustrates the right to choose, and as mistaken as it is to treat the film like a pro-life polemic, it’s also rather disingenuous to complain about exercising a choice by choosing to give birth rather than have an abortion.

All that’s a digression, though, a product of overthinking and overinterpreting. Maybe its in the pattern-seeking nature of our brain’s function, but we seem to be stuck with the bad habit of creating meaning where none is necessary.

the style versus content smackdown - part 4

It’s becoming clear by now that, to a large extent, Emerson and Gelderblom are trying to set fire to straw men. But to sum up they key issues undermining their case for equating content with style:

Literalism vs symbolism: the thing about symbols is that the condition of their possibility is simultaneously the condition of their impossibility. For something to serve as a symbol, it has to be, in some way, totally detached from the thing it symbolizes; it wouldn’t be a symbol otherwise, if it is even possible to conceive of a fixed, necessary symbol. The absence of meaning, nothingness, is thus always a possibility, which leaves open the possibility of new meanings, new symbols, etc, but can also remain without meaning. Gelderblom suggests that people who see style in substance are more liable to “hit” upon overlooked levels of meaning, but the mistake is that the meaning is not something to be hit upon (remember that quote by Jameson?). Meaning is something that is created and created anew. As such, meaning isn’t some static that can be overlooked, but a dynamic process that is ever-changing.

The Missing Links: It’s not simply that “style” and “content” are different words, but that in ordinary, everyday language we make a distinction between the two all the time. In an informal poll among people I know, no one agreed that style and content are the same. By itself, this doesn’t necessarily prove much except that if we don’t equivocate style and content in everyday terms, why should do so in formal film criticism? Gelderblom’s complaint – that arguing that style comes at the cost of substance assumes that style “by itself is incapable of prompting any thought” – actually misses the point, just as it misses a key concept: information. Of course style is by itself capable of prompting thought. It is even capable of serving a communicative function, as is content. In other words, just as content is informative, so is style. However, the information in style and the information in content are not necessarily identical. To use an example. I could say, “It’s raining today.” (Content) But tone of voice (style) can influence how the fact that it’s raining today is interpreted; it can even question the truth of that “fact.” Hence, “It’s raining today?” Or “It’s raining today!”

So with all due respect to Godard’s sensible definition, perhaps we need to view style not as a property of content, but as vessel for content. In other words, style is the medium of content. This brings me to another key concept lacking in Gelderblom and Emerson’s discussions on style: dialectic. Without implying that style and content are opposed to one another, we could informally say that they’re the thesis and antithesis that come together in synthesis to make a film. When it’s a good synthesis, we have a good film (irrespective of whether the filmmaker starts with style or content). When it’s not, we have a bad film. If there is no distinction between style and content, then the basis for saying that is inferior to rests on shaky foundations. After all, perhaps dismissing Lara Croft: Tomb Raider arises out of a failure to appreciate what the film’s formal qualities are telling. It’s ironic that the very thing Gelderblom argues for ultimatly has the effect he believes arises out of distinguishing between style and substance.

To illustrate, consider a great scene from No Country for Old Men (minor spoilers!). Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) sits in his hotel room, tensely waiting to find out what Chigurgh (Bardem) will do. He calls down to the reception, but without the camera leaving Moss’ face and telephone-holding hand, we can hear the phone ring endlessly in the lobby. We then get a shot of the cat licking spilled milk. The implication, of course, is clear: Chigurgh killed the desk clerk.

What makes the scene so wonderful is how the Coen Brothers set up the scene in terms of shots and the like as well as the choices they make in what to reveal and what to conceal. There is palpable tension and terror. Yet they could just as easily have shown Chigurgh walking into the hotel and killing the desk clerk. The overall information we learn – that Chigurgh killed the desk clerk and has no compulsion about killing anyone who might be in his way – remains the same regardless of how that information is conveyed. It just so happens that the Coens chose – masterfully – to be sly rather than explicit. The moral of the story, then, is however much style and content work as a seamless, unified whole when we experience a film, analytic distinctions between the two are unavoidable and perhaps even desirable when trying to figure out what makes a movie tick.

For the most dramatic example of how and content are distinguished, we actually have to look no further than the fact that there some questions that references to a film’s formal qualities won’t answer. Example:

Did the character perform action X with a motive that is both believable and consistent with other character information provided by the film?

Does it make sense for event C to occur given events A and B?

Are the characters well-developed or merely stereotypes?

And so on. In this vein, we come full circle to what launched this series of posts. To question the ethics of what and how a film represents a particular subject, to discuss cultural context as Jonathan Rosenbaum did; all these and more are perfectly legitimate questions, as is respecting a film for its formal qualities but rejecting the quality of its meaning/information (or vice versa). A film isn’t merely collection of isolated scenes; it is a gestalt of cinematic elements. In my view, No Country for Old Men is an example of the former. It has outstanding performances and some truly excellent scenes, but doesn’t gel as a gestalt. Even if I thought otherwise, I’d still think Emerson is off-base with his film theory and critique of Rosenbaum.

THE END (FINALLY)

the style versus content smackdown - part 3

I’ll leave Emerson aside for a moment and bring in Gelderblom, who is mighty irritated with critics who offer “platitudes” like “The film’s technical bravura can’t make up for its sluggish plot” and “If you like gee-whiz visual pyrotechnics above a decent story, this one’s for you.”

Part of Gelderblom’s irritation stems from how the accusation of style over substance is lobbed in a cavalier fashion against both “eye-popping Hollywood extravaganzas like The Mummy Returns, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Catwoman”and “offbeat fare like Lola Rennt, The Limey, Fight Club, In The Mood For Love, Elephant and Oldboy.” It’s interesting in-and-of-itself that Gelderblom recognizes categories of film quality, a recognition that clearly puts offbeat fare on a higher pedestal than Hollywood extravaganzas. He seems to be saying that it’s okay to indulge the style over substance argument for mainstream Hollywood films, but how dare critics use that same argument against this clearly superior offbeat stuff? According to Gelderblom, using the same argument against both “types” of film is to put directors like Steven Soderbergh and Michael Bay on the same even playing field – that’s begging the question, of course, from a critical standpoint. And a good example of the snootiness that mars this crusade against so-called lazy critics.

But to go on. Gelderblom is particularly displeased by the notion of style over substance – Emerson’s separation of style from the work itself: "…to claim that a medium’s formalist qualities are only skin-deep…is to confuse aesthetics with cosmetics and to ridicule the meaning of form altogether.” Again, this seems to be a rather unfair characterization of contemporary film criticism, in that even the platitudes Gelderblom bandies are about a particular film’s failure to have substantial formalist qualities. In other words, to say that film is emphasizing style over substance is to say that the director of a particular film has not made good use of film’s formalist qualities. This is a very different thing from saying that the formal qualities of film as a medium are skin-deep by definition, which I doubt any critic really believes.

And still critics choose to splice the unity of style and content over and over again. A real pity, because Godard’s formulation carries style beyond the mere serviceable and offers a way of acknowledging form as the outward manifestation of content. This criterion - style as the shape of substance - may sound pretentious, but those who examine films accordingly are likely to hit upon levels of meaning overlooked by others.

Gelderblom goes on to posit two more degrees of style-driven cinema: style as substance (“movies are, quite literally, about their style”) and substance in style (using “form to evoke and flesh out an inherent message”). He prefers these degrees to style over substance because “The word “over” suggests that style prevails at the cost of substance--as if style by itself is incapable of prompting any thought.”

Of course, I have a problem with that…I’ll get to it in my next post. (I’m deliberately keeping these posts short.)

Stay tuned...

the style versus content smackdown - part 2

Emerson’s beef with film critics hinges on a literalism whose result is that

film criticism itself is automatically made superfluous. A bullet is a bullet, a killer is a killer, a zombie is a zombie, a gangster movie is about gangsterism, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh, and don't even ask about the cigar. Lift and separate "content" from the movie and, once you've removed the context, what more needs to be said? In Keith Uhlich's eloquent words, such an approach exemplifies "the dubious product of American literalism, of an inability to grapple with a film's numerous layers of experience, falling back on easy prejudices and dichotomies as a way of stopping discussion and disagreement cold.

Ignoring the irony of Uhlich’s statement on stopping discussion and disagreement cold, which is the logical conclusion of Emerson’s restrictions on what constitutes valid film criticism, the argument is that there’s more to a film than what you see. That is, a film has a symbolic quality. His quoting of Richard T. Jameson sums up his position quite well:

"Content" is not content; "the meaning" is not a concrete certitude cunningly buried so that one may have the pleasure of a civilized, mental version of hide-and-seek, strip-mining through "the story" to get to "the themes." "The meaning" is only one more piece of material, as deformable by the operation of the artistic sensibility as the sea is by the pull of the moon's gravity. Content is what happens from moment to moment, and then in the suspended moment that is one's life within the aesthetic life-system the artist has created. And content is at the beck of style.

Emerson (through Jameson) is entirely correct about the nature of a film’s meaning, in that “meaning” is not built into a movie. It is not an objective, intrinsic property, but a fluid, subjective, malleable quality. But what does it mean to say that content is at the beck of style?

In agreeing with a commenter, Peet Gelderblom, whose essay The Shape of Substance I’ll get to in my next post, Emerson says:

That's a simple concept (an obvious one, I'd think) but many persist in seeing "syle" as a kind of mortar that can be slathered on with a trowel in between "bricks" of "content." To pretend you can separate the style from a work of art is like pretending you can separate an apple into its color, its shape, its texture, its smell and its taste, and line those things up for examination, side by side. It's metaphysically absurd, man.

I think Emerson is being quite unfair to critics by assuming that because they discuss one aspect of the film over another, they are metaphysically separating style from a work of art. More importantly, though, I think he’s wrong to assert that style can’t be separated from other aspects of a film – at least from an analytical standpoint. I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at with the apple, in that comparing a taste with a colour doesn’t make that much sense. But you can certainly compare the colour of an apple with the colour of an orange and achieve a meaningful comparison without having to consider texture or taste.

Emerson’s point, ultimately, is that “style over substance” arguments fundamentally neglect the essence of film as art, a point developed by Gelderblom in the aforementioned essay.

Stay tuned…

the style versus content smackdown - part 1

It’s well established my now that critics who DON’T fall to their knees and worship the new Coen Brothers movie, No Country for Old Men, are in the minority. (This minority includes me, and you can read my review here.) Naturally, this leads to some rather feisty discussions…and, I think, unintentional snobbery on the part of the film’s defenders. Jim Emerson (editor of rogerebert.com and a film blogger) in particular, seems to have taken issue with Jonathan Rosenbaum’s critical view of the film in the Chicago Reader.

I’m not going to dissect the discussion around Rosenbaum’s critique per se, except to point out that Emerson and Rosenbaum engage in rather different kinds of film criticism. Rosenbaum addresses the cultural significance of the film. He specifically wonders how films like No Country for Old Men offer us a “convenient cop-out” where “we can allow dog collars to be used even while we hypocritically shake our heads at the sadness of it all.” In response, Emerson quibbles that Rosenbaum misunderstands, among other things, the movie’s genre – it’s not a psycho killer movie, as Rosenbaum believes, but “a noirish crime thriller and a western and a detective story.” (Personally, I’d agree it’s a nourish crime thriller, but if it’s a western detective story, then it’s not a very good one based on standards of either genre.) More importantly, the foundation of Emerson’s film criticism specifically engages the film’s craft, although I suspect Emerson would dislike referring to his discussion of the film in that way. In other words, Emerson is focused on how the film functions as a film whereas Rosenbaum muses about what the film means in the context of today’s culture.

It’s worth quoting Emerson, who in turn quotes from something he wrote after seeing the film at the Toronto Film Festival, to get an idea of what drives Emerson’s critique:

"No Country for Old Men" is one of those movies I think provides a critical litmus test. You can quibble about it all you like, but if you don't get the artistry at work then, I submit, you don't get what movies are. Critics can disapprove of the unsettling shifts in tone in the Coens' work, or their presumed attitude toward the characters, or their use of violence and humor -- but those complaints are petty and irrelevant in the context of the movies themselves: the way, for example, an ominous black shadow creeps across a field toward the observer ("No Country" has a credit for "Weather Wrangler"); or a phone call from a hotel room that you can hear ringing in the earpiece and at the front desk, where you're pretty sure something bad has happened but you don't need to see it; or the offhand reveal of one major character's fate from the POV of another just entering the scene; or... I could go on and on. To ignore such things in order to focus on something else says more about the critic's values than it does about the movies. It's like complaining that Bresson's actors don't emote enough, or that Ozu keeps his camera too low.

This is, in many way, a rather remarkable and flabbergasting statement. First is the frankly condescending assertion that “if you don't get the artistry at work then…you don't get what movies are.” Holy condescension, Batman! Even more amazing is how Emerson dismisses criticisms about the use of violence, or tonal shifts, or whatever, as “petty and irrelevant” in comparison to how scenes and shots are set up. Interestingly, he does back-pedal in comments with his readers. Responding to someone taking him to task, he writes:

…I do not advocate "ignoring" anything, but rather NOT to ignore the broader picture of a film -- not to reduce a multi-layered experience to a one-dimensional literal concept. I don't think noticing tonal shifts is petty or irrelevant in and of itself. But noticing (while crucial) is only the first step in criticism. The next would be to give an example and explore, for example: Why does the tone shift in this way? What is the effect? What is the context? Go ahead and argue that something doesn't work, but cite an example from the film.

But while Emerson is right to point out that what critics choose to discuss about a film (and what they leave out) says more about their values then the film, it seems to me that his views on film criticism are rather guilty of confusing technique, style, and content. At the very least, it’s a bit obvious to say that a discussion of the film should start with the film, but I don’t think it’s necessary to use a shot-by-shot, scene-by-scene analysis, in order to successfully (that is reasonably) critique the film. I can only assume that Emerson quoted himself to suggest that Rosenbaum’s criticism of the film is based solely on ideology rather than anything contained within the film.

In order to accept this, however, one has to buy into Emerson’s equivocation of style and content. In order to explore that equivocation, however, it’ll be necessary to take a look at some of his other blog posts…which means another blog posting of my own as this one is long enough.

Stay tuned…

minor pet peeve about deconstruction

Every so often, I'll hear someone use the word "deconstruction" in a sentence. While it doesn't make me cringe per se, it does tend to be a mild irritant if only because there's more to the word than being synonymous with analysis. (Literally, to de-construct, to take apart in order to understand it better, thus to analyze.) The word is simply used in too cavalier a fashion, methinks.

In his Letter to a Japanese Friend, Derrida put it starkly: "All sentences of the type 'deconstruction is X' or 'deconstruction is not X' a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false." If this is a bit cryptic, the entry on Derrida at Wikipedia isn't necessarily more helpful, in that it mentions, in response to the popularity of deconstruction in literary studies, "Derrida's claims that deconstruction is an 'event' within a text, not a method of reading it."

But perhaps there is some clarity to be found in Derrida's lecture "Signature, Event, Context," (click here for the original French) in which he said:

Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to a neutralization: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is only on this condition that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes, which is also a field of nondiscursive forces. Each concept, moreover, belongs to a systematic chain, and itself constitutes a system of predicates. There is no metaphysical concept in and of itself. There is a work - metaphysical or not - on conceptual systems. Deconstruction does not consist in passing from one concept to another, but in overturning and displacing a conceptual order, as well as the nonconceptual order with which the conceptual order is articulated.

The question, then, is how this displacement occurs as an event within a text, while keeping in mind the"someone" that "performs" (or rather inhabits, that is, witnesses) the event of deconstruction. To offer an answer; more reading.

nihilism and the horror genre - part 3

To wrap up my posts on nihilism and the horror genre, I’ll answer a rather obvious question: what does any of that have to with (my) writing? To begin with, I want to deal with the impression that I’m dismissing an entire genre. I am, of course, but on the plus side I’m always open to being surprised. That’s why I’m enjoying writing book reviews for Morbid Outlook, because many of the books I’ve received are horror-themed and give me an opportunity to challenge my normal reading tastes. (In fact, I just finished reading Clive Barker’s new book, Mister B. Gone, and – surprise of surprises –I liked it!) But what about actually writing a horror story?

As it happens, I am thinking about writing a “horror” story. But for me to think it worthwhile writing, it has to adhere to the following guidelines.

• Put villains under the same moral scrutiny as the heroes. We examine how heroes hold up, or fail, under duress…but how do villains hold up when perpetrating their villainy?
• Just as there shouldn’t be unstoppable good guys – that’s boring drama – there shouldn’t be unstoppable bad guys. Unless Ma Nature is involved, villains shouldn’t be indestructible.
• No violence for the sake of violence. Also, no grotesqueries for the sake of grotesqueries. It’s easy to come up with twisted stuff, and if it isn’t, the Marquis de Sade, Hentai, or anything involving the Nazis and other genocidal maniacs will provide enough material. But it’s all exploitation if it comes without a good story and worthwhile characters to give it a meaningful context. Rule: never spill a bucket of blood when a pinprick will do.
• Don’t manipulate readers. Just don’t do it.

So far, I’ve figured out, but not developed, the two main characters (the heroine and a science-loving goth) and the general structure of the plot (ghost story, mystery). All I say about the plot is that it’s a take-off on the film “The Messengers,” which is itself a take-off on just about every haunted house story every told. My approach will be more along the lines of science-fiction than fantasy, however. Still left to figure out is the nature of the haunting and the motivations behind it, whether or not to bring in another concept that could make the story be part of a larger series, and what other characters are necessary to tell the story.

I still have some work to do before I get to writing it, not to mention other stories to write. Before all of that, however, I just finished another science-fiction story I need to polish and prep to send out into the world.

nihilism and the horror genre - part 2

In regards to the graphic novel underlying the just-released movie “20 Days of Night” director David Slade says in an interview with SCI FI WIRE, “It's actually a hard, bleak, nihilistic story.”

Nihilistic - a word I’ve often come across in the description of films that don’t have happy “Hollywood” endings, that is, stories in which good fails to triumph over evil. Sometimes the word is just used in an imprecise, colloquial way. “I'd have flagged it as pointless if it had not been so nihilistic,” writes an IMDB user about that French horror film Inside. “It's not like the recent "torture movies" of late, which tends to have some kind of happy ending.” Sometimes, the word is better used, like in this discussion of Chinatown. (My take on Chinatown: Polanski’s nihilism has all the dishonesty that comes with the arbitrary in terms of plot but ultimately director-controlled flight path of a bullet.)

However, the philosopher in me bristles at the misunderstanding of the term, an abuse that cheaply equates nihilism with the active destruction of values and sometimes even celebrates that destruction. There’s a paradox involved in this petty bourgeois kind of nihilism, though. To explain, it helps to understand what nihilism as a philosophical position is. The entry on nihilism in Wikipedia is a useful primer (given how long it’s been since I took philosophy classes, I certainly found it useful, at least, and close to what I remember).

In essence, however, nihilism can take on various flavours:

• the denial of all values
• the denial of existing things (ontological)
• the denial of truth and knowledge (epistemological)
• the denial of ethics

Without getting into an academic discussion (and fully realizing that these few paragraphs are enough to get me into trouble), my own view is that nihilism doesn’t make sense from ontological or epistemological standpoints. But it does make sense when defined to say that life, existence, everything, does not have meaning or value. This is the abyss that terrifies; that there is neither objective meaning nor divine order to create meaning for us. Yet, clearly, the nihilist who fully embodies this nihilism would, to be consistent, actually have to be dead. When alive, however, meaninglessness is not a sustainable state. Whether it’s Will to Power, the nature of consciousness, a simple desire to live, or something else, nihilism is, in my interpretation of it, both the recognition of objective meaningless and the subjective response to overcome that meaninglessness. (Bring in the existentialists!) In other words, the nihilist’s task is to overcome his or her own nihilism – through an act of creation. It should even be said that all meaning is essentially self-created, even those meanings and values we attribute to outside entities like deities because, ultimately, those entities do not exist.

So before I drift too far afield, here’s the point. Horror movies are not truly nihilistic because – and this assumes that horror writers actually have reasons to end stories the way they do – while asserting the fallibility and weakness of good in the face of evil, they also evoke a feeling of horror and despair. In other words, the incapacity for good to triumph translates to the futility of good trying to overcome evil (because evil will win out in the end), which translates to meaninglessness, which in turn is negatively valued as something horrible, frightening, and bleak. Negative values are thus not nihilism, but a mere fatalistic reversal of positive values; petty bourgeois nihilism.

To be truly nihilistic, however, it would have to be the case that the actions of evil are just as meaningless as the actions of good. This means there is no more value to the monster’s killings than to the hero’s failures. There is as much futility to committing evil acts and resisting good as there it to committing good acts and resisting evil. The question is: why bother do anything?

To call a horror story nihilistic, then, when the genre is really about those things that frighten us is to lend it a philosophical imprimatur it doesn’t quite deserve. Sometimes, a bad ending is just a bad ending. Of course, sometimes a bad ending is just a setup for a sequel.

nihilism and the horror genre - part 1

I dislike horror fiction as a genre. With the express goal of evoking horror, it is manipulative by definition, prone to formulaic plots (e.g. evil force kills people) and even more formulaic twist endings (e.g. evil force survives - surprise!). While it’s understandable that invulnerable infallible good guys are dramatically unsatisfying, it annoys me to no end that evil characters in horror fiction are rarely held to the same standard. If it weren’t for the often gruesome and gory violence, there wouldn’t be anything about horror fiction to get particularly worked up about beyond storytelling quality, but violence and gore are intrinsic parts of the genre, except, of course, in sibling genres like ghost stories or Rod Serling-like oddities. (And yes, I do recognize that there are exceptions to the rule. I did enjoy, for example, the "Silent Hill" movie.)

Of course, the fact that we live in a violent world makes it inevitable that violence will play a part in the stories we tell. To some extent, it is necessary as storytelling helps us, within limits, process our experience of the world. But I struggle with the notion of violence as entertainment – and there’s no question that, for many fans of horror, it is the violence that seals the deal. (Read the fan comments for horror movies like the recent French Film Inside at IMDB and you’ll see what I mean. One user writes “It is a very bloody movie mostly in the 2nd half but the one thing that puts it way over the top for the main-stream crowd is how it handles a woman who is 9 months pregnant. While I won't give away the ending (that's been done already in some spoiler sections elsewhere here ) lets just say the producers definitely took a road less traveled.. hehe” Hehe? The ending involves a pair of scissors, based on the spoiler, and this user says “hehe?”)

I admit that I can’t relate to this particular point of view. And I don’t buy into the more highfalutin rationales offered for gory violence as entertainment:

• Horror points out that evil exists in the world, that sometimes evil wins. (Really? We need horror fiction to tell us something we know by reading the news and actually living in the world? Granted, horror fiction isn’t the only genre afflicted with delusions of imparting wisdom to the masses, but it certainly has the weakest legs to stand on.)

• Catharsis. I don’t think the Greeks achieved anything by introducing the world to the concept of catharsis, which wikipedia defines as “a sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great sorrow, pity, laughter or any extreme change in emotion that results in the restoration, renewal and revitalization for living.” Then again, it’s entirely subjective and I admit that while catharsis isn’t something I experience often (if at all), especially with horror, other people might. But achieving catharsis doesn’t do anything about solving life’s problem. There’s no practically knowledge to be gained by it. So we watch a bleak horror film, get cathartic…and then what? We certainly don’t gain any useful knowledge in condemning or combating the evil that the metaphysics of the horror genre insists on waking us up to.

• Fictional violence is different from real violence. By far the most sophisticated argument I’ve come across, with an easy superficial appeal, it is also one of the most disingenuous. True, no one is actually getting hurt when the violence is fictional, but that isn’t the issue. The issue is our relationship and reaction to violence. Consider – and this is threading on risky philosophical ground, I admit, for the sake of keeping things simple – that ethics aren’t real, in the sense that ethics are metaphysical and not physical. When we say, “murder is wrong,” we’re not talking about any particular instance of murder, but of a moral judgment to which we compare reality. From an ethical standpoint, then, it is the definition of violence that counts – a definition expressed just as easily through fiction as through real actions. In other words, the concept of violence is just as much the object of condemnation as the act of violence; the two are inexorably tied together. Here’s a thought experiment: If we were to see a violent film and that it was equally possible that the on-screen death was real instead of fake, what would it say about us if we entertained?

This has nothing to do, by the way, with whether or not other people are right or wrong to enjoy horror. Sometimes people just enjoy scary stories. But insofar as I’m concerned, I find that beyond deficiencies involving how horror as a genre works, violence presented as entertainment (something we willingly subject ourselves to) leaves me feeling morally queasy. I just don’t enjoy seeing people get hurt and don’t see the horror genre as a means of coping or overcoming the horrors of the world. Unless a particular piece of horror offers a window into examining and understanding horror, it typically just strikes me as exploitative.

Now that I’ve provided background on my views of horror as a genre, I can actually get to the point I’m aiming for…in my next post.