Jingi Naki Tatakai

Watching Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, I was somewhat reminded of the camerawork used in most multi-camera sitcoms. The camera never seems to move very much higher than the ‘audience’s’ perspective, much like in shows such as Roseanne or Cheers. Whereas in these sitcoms, the audience is at a slightly higher vantage point which works with the higher seating position of a western dining table, (A much used set-piece in Roseanne) the camera in Tokyo Story is often at a lower height as if the audience were looking up towards a stage, this being because the traditional Japanese position for dining was seated on the tatami mats on the floor. Being that I was watching this film, unconsciously through the frame of these American sitcoms I was rather upset that I did not produce a tear for the Grandmother’s death. I quite often find myself crying as a result of the family patriarch, Dan Connor’s reactions to his family in Roseanne or Sam Malone’s constant battles with his past in Cheers but this same reaction did not surface in my viewing of Tokyo Story. Admittedly, several reasons do arise for this, such as the fact that I was pre-warned that the scene was coming, my easy empathy towards Sam and Dan’s characters due to their emasculated emotional deficiencies and the fact that Tokyo Story contextually, is much further from my own reality than these sitcoms.

This lack of empathy due to context reminded me of a quote from either Akira Kurosawa or Kenji Mizoguchi who, in reference to Westerners describing Ozzu’s films as showing the ‘real Japan’. The argument was that, though Ozu’s films may have shown a reality that had once existed in Japan during the Meiji era which ended in 1912 just before the instatement of the Taisho emperor whose major contribution was the push for integration of ‘foreign customs’, which meant that more men were trading their kimono for western-style suits, tea ceremonies were reserved mostly for formal occasions, replaced in social circumstances by saki drinking and less traditional versions of geisha parties which began to take on a slightly cabaret sort of effect. After World War 2, during the American occupation it became even more common to see Geisha replaced by western-dressed escorts and whiskey drinking becoming commonplace.

These changes attribute Ozu’s aesthetic a particularly ‘old-world’ effect, which is another reason why, as a western viewer in the 21^st century I struggled with the material. My true passion for Japanese cinema stems for the Jingi Yakuza (or Chivalrous Gangster) films of the post-war period that replaced the banned feudalistic Samurai films and also the Jitsuroku Yakuza (real-event Gangster) films that began to show up during the 1970s as a result of directors who were raised during the militaristic Showa period of the Manchurian occupation up until the end of the War, rallying against the falsehoods of the Jingi pictures. The vibrant, dandyish aesthetic of some of the Jingi films much like the Italian Westerns of the 1960s and the desperate dynamism of the Jitsuroku films that owe a great debt to my other favorite eras of film, the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and 1960s and the New Hollywood the late 1960s and 1970s are what really rests comfortably in my over-active mind.

Peasant Logic

Reading and watching Wise Blood, I was reminded a lot of my time living in a Greek village as a boy. Hazel Moates, in the novel has a sort of uneducated wisdom and logic that I can appreciate. A quality a lot of the older men and women in the village shared.

When he is told by his grandfather that Jesus died for his sins he comes to the decision that ‘the only way to keep Jesus away is to not sin. So I just won’t sin.”

He may be missing the preacher’s point but his logic is flawless. He does not see Jesus as a font of love. He sees Jesus as a punishment. If he sins, Jesus will be unhappy with him, so therefore he would rather just be ignored than have to stand accusation.

I remember speaking to my grandfather once, he was telling me the story about the time he killed a snake. It had appeared in the rows between the vines. Not a very poisonous snake but its bite would hurt like crazy and the fact that the closest doctor was a long walk down a mountain and over to the coast, infection would not be fun. I looked up at him with wonder in my eyes, ‘So how did you kill it, Papouli?’

“Kill it?’ he replied, ‘why would I bother risking my health. Snakes only hang around when it’s warm. I just went and had a siesta until it got colder later in the afternoon.’

To stay away from the snake just don’t do anything that will attract its attention.

This concept of uneducated wisdom also brings to mind something that I once read about Scientology. Scientology is aimed at people with an overabundance of imagination but not very much education to help harness it and aid in analysis rather than free-form daydreaming. This is why so many actors go to Scientology eg. Tom Cruise, John Travolta. They are uneducated ‘artists’. They want something to use their imagination on but never had any form of release for it other than their acting.

This, I believe, is why Hazel Moates does not want to be a preacher, why ‘(He doesn’t) believe in anything.’ (pp20) He has too much logic going through his head for such ‘nonsense’. If Jesus will get you if you sin just don’t sin. Why do you need a bible for that? I appreciate the logical simplicity of this mindset. I fondly call this ‘peasant logic’. I come from two lines of proud, hard-working peasants. Just because I have gotten the chance to get an education doesn’t mean that when I injure myself I don’t immediately cause as much pain to the injured area as possible so that the adrenaline kicks in quicker and I can keep doing what I’m doing, no matter how many times doctors call me an idiot. Rand would be proud, if only she wasn’t so caught up in her hating.

Conan Roark

I think the most enjoyable aspect of The Fountainhead was the propagandizing. I admit that I am an atheist but that does not hinder my ability to enjoy a well-presented preaching. What Rand does well, is play on the ego of the reader and as a man with ample ego I was fully prepared to be stroked.

As I read the book I felt myself steering further and further to her Objectivist point of view and I actually felt no guilt for this. I have always appreciated logic over ‘soft’ feelings, so she already had an ‘in’ with me. What made her preaching successful was the way in which she presented it within the genre of melodrama. I know melodrama. I like melodrama. What I enjoy most about melodrama is that, even if it is never made blatantly clear, the story is always basically just about people wanting to sleep with each other. As a mid-twenties male, (till with original, working equipment, only been crashed once, paint-job slightly faded) I do so enjoy reading about my hobbies especially if they are hobbies that anyone can be good at as I don’t enjoy research.

Reading this novel made me think about other films and books where I felt that I was being steered politically in one direction by was so swept up by the accessible story that I did not care. There are countless films like this but the films that I find are as obvious as The Fountainhead are the films of John Milius. He was the dialogue writer on Dirty Harry and the writer of its sequel Magnum Force. It is his adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian that I find most exciting because most people are swept up by the fantastic Sword and Sorcery adventure plot and never realize they are watching a Regan era right-wing propaganda film.

Conan, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his slightly pared down MR Universe body, lantern jaw and standing well over six feet represents the Nietzchen superman. Nietzche is even quoted at the beginning of the film as the war drum theme starts to play.

“That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”

But ultimately as the film goes on it becomes apparent that Conan’s real enemy is the previous two decades of American cultism and hippies. Conan scoffs at the “flower people” when they tell him to lay down his arms and armour and join them on their pilgrimage. His ultimate goal is to kill the cult leader, a Manson-esque James Earl Jones, as Thulsa Doom.

The most Roarkian scene in the film is when Conan describes his no-nonsense god. He explains that he does not pray to his god, Crom as he seldom listens. Crom’s ethos is for one toi live they’re life and become the best man or woman they can and never expect divine help. There will be no weakness.

‘He’s strong. If I die I will have to go before me and he’ll ask me “What is the riddle of steel?” If I don’t know it he will cast me out. That’s Crom. Strong on his mountain,” Conan says to his friend Subotai as they discuss who’s god is stronger.

This reminds me of Roark worshipping logic over any god. He does not expect divine providence, he takes responsibility for his life so that he can die knowing he has achieved. Got to love a philiosophy that tells you to be the best you can be and not get bogged down by too much moralizing.

Bibliography

LITTLE BOBBY HOSE


Interpellation
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation) / Louis Althusser
As quoted in: Cinema and Spectatorship / Judith Mayne.
London ; New York : Routledge, 1993. Chapter One

Ephebophilia
Sparkings: 

Joseph Cornell and the art of nostalgia / Adam Gopnik

New Yorker Magazine Feb 17 2003 and http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/02/17/030217crat_atlarge

Little Bobby Hose

When the camera first starts moving in toward a figure lying behind a curtain in Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936) it looks as though the subject of the shot is a mildly effeminate male with a moustache. As the camera crawls ever forward, the figure moves and the shadow that once looked like a moustache disappears. It isn’t until the shot changes to a close-up on a candle burning then cuts back to the figure on the bed that we realise we are watching a woman. This is the titular Rose Hobart, object of Cornell’s obsessions. Interestingly, Cornell introduces her to the spectator dressed in a man’s jacket and tie followed by a jump-cut to her in a dress whose thin shoulder straps and gossamer fabric serve to highlight the unusually wide shoulders and hipless body of the actress. Louis Althusser uses the word ‘interpellation’ to define the ‘process whereby individuals respond to ideologies by recognizing themselves as the subjects of ideology.’ Perhaps this is why so many students in the history of this ‘Cinematic Modernism’ course have found it so hard to sit through or appreciate Joseph Cornell’s film.

Cornell made this film as almost a love letter to this woman by whom he was enamoured and I personally find it hard to be able to subjectify myself into this gaze. I’m sure that many other viewers are the same. Watching this woman who has the body of a small boy through such a predatory lens as Cornell forms with his violent cuts as soon as other men appear on screen and the constant overlapping of the image of a rock falling into a pool of water - which in the slowed down style that it is played makes one think of male ejaculate – over images of Hobart’s face is confronting to say the least.

Reading up more on Cornell one can find many other reasons to distrust his intentions. In an article from the New Yorker, February 17 2003 called Sparkings one can read all about his ephebophilic tendencies towards young boys and girls including sending a young girl a tracing of a piece of string he used to measure the size of his penis. I don’t have the space to go into detail on this subject here but the article is very insightful.

After reading the article I wonder how it is that viewers can make themselves subjects of the ideology of a film where predation upon children is veiled in the form of a ‘surreal’ art piece.

Times have changed and my question is this: Could a man such as this be accepted as an Artist in our current moral climate where a school-teacher cannot hug a crying student without the risk of being fired for improper touching? If we look at Michael Jackson we can see a similar situation but the difference is that Jackson never made any of his Fées the topics of his work so it could be seen as easier to appreciate his artistry and separate it from his curious behaviour. I do not wish to know if you would let Cornell look after your children. I’m asking if you think it is right that his work be considered seriously as Art when its topic is an honest exploration of ephebophilic predation? Bring on the ‘Freedom of expression’ debates!

Bibliography Here

Sinking Feeling

Inspiration has not yet struck me with an idea for a blog about the texts we have already studied but whilst reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" I was, at least, struck by something. This is my attempt at writing a story about conflicting clichés like the characters in Rand's novel. I did not attempt to mimic Rand's satirical style as I find it more enjoyable to make my irony less apparent. or maybe that's my excuse for a lack of  things 'between the lines'.

 If you were to start reading The Fountainhead from the second part entitled 'Ellsworth M. Toohey' it would be excusable to begin thinking you were reading a romance story between Dominique and Roark but this mirage soon disappears and we realise Rand's amazing artifice. She is able to draw the reader in with illicit promises and then smash them under the smiling view of the duped audience. I like this idea of a romance story without romance and this story perhaps stemmed from my desire to write one of my own.

Andrew James Merrick

SINKING FEELING

‘If they’re too weak, too stupid, to rise above the level of shit-kicker then they haven’t earned the right to complain. Unions are full of greedy men trying to get something for nothing through force of numbers. A dozen rotten eggs don’t make a good omelette just by mixing together. Why should a union of imbecilic shit-kickers even be heard, let alone allowed to strike. They’ve got a job to do just like the rest of us. They should be happy we even allow them to get paid.’ George sliced calmly through an onion as he stood at the kitchen bench. The rest of us just sat astonished on chairs or cushions on the floor around the eat-in kitchen. He wouldn’t even turn to look at us as he delivered his hateful sermon, not even when Paul tried lamely to argue against his point. He merely raised his voice to cut off Paul’s abortive attempt and continued his tirade. The knife in his hand never wavered or moved passionately even as his voice grew in fervour.

The first time I saw George Stanwell I thought he was beautiful. It was months ago that I met him at his restaurant. When I first spoke to him I saw only a cold arrogance in his eyes. The illusion of his beauty was violently revealed to me in that moment.

I realised, sitting in the kitchen of my family’s holiday house as he held court, that it wasn’t arrogance I had seen in those cold, dark eyes, but contempt.

We all stared daggers into his back as he continued his bilious speech. What had started as a relaxing weekend away with friends had suddenly become a violent polemic on fascism. He disgusted me.

George was one of those men who had come from a poorer background and had “risen above his station”, as he had once described it, so he felt a unique right to hate those he deemed “too weak” or “too stupid” to do this for themselves. I had never liked him and right then he disgusted every fibre of my being.

As he was beginning a new tirade on religion I jumped out of my chair and stormed out the back door fuming.

I walked over and stood by the pool which gazed over the cliff-top the house stood on, staring at the waves raging against the rocks below. I heard someone follow me out but didn’t turn to see who it was.

‘Baby, I’m sorry. He sometimes does this. He’s just trying to get a rise out of everyone.’ Daniel tried to stroke my shoulder reassuringly as he spoke.

I spun around violently, pushing his hand away. ‘Don’t call me baby. I hate it and I hate him. He’s a cruel, selfish child. I don’t care if he’s just trying to “get a rise out of me” I don’t want him here. Why did you invite him?’

I shouldn’t have asked that question and diverted my point. I should have just made him tell George to pack up and go then and there. He took solace in the diversion, thankful to avoid facing the more powerful male.

‘He’s one of my oldest friends. He only just got back from his mum’s funeral. I wanted to give him a distraction. Show him a good time.’

At the mention of George’s mother I felt my anger dissipate slightly and allowed Daniel to take me back inside.

When we arrived the mood in the house had changed dramatically. Everyone was now standing watching George dazzle them with his Teppanyaki-style cooking tricks. They gasped as he tossed sauce from one pan to another without spilling a single drop. He bared his white fangs in a smile as he flipped and threw the vegetables in the wok. I couldn’t believe they had been wooed so easily. I poured myself a glass of wine then took it and the rest of the bottle into the bedroom Daniel and I were sharing. I felt George's eyes watching me as I left. He knew he had some sort of power over me but I was too maddened to resent the fact.

When dinner was ready Daniel came to collect me but I refused to eat. He dutifully offered to stay but I told him to leave.  I finished the bottle of wine while my friends and George entertained themselves outside. I could hear the murmur of his voice and could sense the tone in their voices as he effectively won them over like a political recruiter. I forced myself to get into bed and calmed myself with the thought that I would be cutting his getaway short in the morning.

Late in the night I woke groggily as Daniel tried to slip silently into the bed. He put his arms around me and pressed his body against my back. After a moment I noticed him slowly thrusting his crotch against me. When he slipped his hand over onto my breast I got up making excuses about needing a glass of water.

Walking through the house I noticed that everyone else had also gone to bed. I was alone. I quietly filled a glass at the tap then took it outside to the pool to drink it. As I stood, once again gazing at the ocean enjoying the cold night wind on my face I noticed moonlight glinting off something on the poolside table in my periphery.  I turned to find a metal lighter sitting atop a pack of cigarettes and a half-empty wine bottle standing beside them. I sat down at the table and took a cigarette. As I lit it I noticed the lighter had a plain, unadorned engraving upon one of its faces. “M. Stanwell”. It was George’s lighter. I threw it angrily into the pool then took the wine and drank fully from the lip.

When I was near the end of the cigarette I happily took another and lit it with the last embers of the first. I had decided to smoke as many of George Stanwell’s cigarettes as I could, all the while drinking the rest of the wine I imagined was also his.

As I neared the bottom of the bottle and my third cigarette had started playing the light fantastic with my head a memory sprang completely unwelcome into my mind. Maria’s. That was the name of George’s restaurant, named after his sick mother. Maria Stanwell. It was his mother’s lighter!

No matter how strongly I hated the man I couldn’t allow myself to be so cruel. I attempted a sudden jump out of my chair but after a night spent pickling my limbs with wine I only managed to fling myself onto my knees on the hard concrete tiles. I winced and raised myself, feeling pressure welling behind my eyes and ran as best I could over to the poolside. The lighter lay gleaming at me in the pool lights about half way along, thankfully within a short distance of the edge. I gazed around for some sort of reaching tool to collect it with but found none. I stumbled my way to the kitchen and returned with a broom.

I sat down on the lip of the pool reaching out with the broom but only managed to knock the lighter further away. I stood up and braced my legs on the tile lip, reaching out as far as I could with the broom, but still fell short. I leant further in, tried for the lighter again, and missed. I carefully leant further and almost found purchase. Leaning further still, I made another attempt. Still too far. As I was bringing the broom back the inevitable happened. I flew headlong into the water.

As soon as the icy coolness struck my face I began to panic. I flailed but could not rise. I felt myself overcome by a primeval fear - like I was being swallowed. My mind began to cloud. I realised, even with the sound of my flailing limbs, the pool was still too far away from the house for anyone to be woken by the noise and come rescue me. I felt my feet strike the bottom of the pool and tried to push off against it to reach the surface, but in my panic I’d managed to float out further into the deep end. Water entered my mouth and nose as my field of vision grew more restricted. My lungs were filling with a heaviness and I realised I didn’t feel cold, nor could I feel the pain in my knees any longer. As my peripheral vision disappeared completely I started to welcome the weightlessness, the painlessness. I felt as if I was being pulled by some unknown force from behind, then, as my face cleared the surface, I realised I was. Someone dragged me to the edge of the pool as I coughed the water out of my lungs. My vision returned and my saviour was finally revealed to me. I was looking into the cold, dark eyes of George Stanwell.

He placed his hands around my waist to try and lift me out but his touch repulsed me. I pushed him away and lunged to get away from him. I found myself engulfed again. In my blind rage I had thrown myself right back into the deep. Panic returned, then the flailing. I felt George grab me once again and I allowed him to haul me back up.

‘What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know how to swim?’ He blasted disdainfully.

The truth was I had never learned. I couldn’t look at him. He made me feel so weak, so stupid. To him I was one of those girls who had been coddled by wealthy parents their entire childhood and never bothered to learn such things. It had never been necessary though.

I finally forced myself to look towards him expecting to see this hatred in his eyes. He stared back at me but his eyes were unreadable.

‘Trust me.’ The words were like a slap from an unseen foe. I was dumbstruck. He placed his hands gently around my waist and lifted me until my body lay laterally across the surface of the water. I had expected his hands to be rough and calloused from all the years working in the kitchen but they were soft. I felt myself relaxing in his grasp and my body began to float as he pulled me over to the shallow end.

He stood me up. Feeling my feet touch solid ground again sent a further calm through me.

‘What are you doing?’ I managed.

‘I’m teaching you how to swim.’

This was no longer the cruel, arrogant George Stanwell I had known. This was a stranger. A stranger I felt safer with than anyone else I’d ever known. He had saved my life and was now teaching me how to save myself.

He spent the rest of the night calmly, patiently teaching me how to survive. Giving me a sort of strength. When the sun began to rise I was able to struggle from one end of the pool to the other in some semblance of freestyle.

As we were drying off afterwards he turned to me and asked, ‘How did you end up falling in anyway?’

Realisation dawned on me violently. I shrieked out a gasp and rushed back to the pool. The lighter was still in there winking at me in the lights. George followed me and saw what I was staring at. Without hesitation he dived in and fetched it.

Pulling himself out of the water, he grabbed a towel and walked back towards the house. With his back toward me he stopped to ask, ‘How did it get there?’

I could not speak. He seemed to know my answer. He walked into the house.

I stayed by the pool. After a few moments I heard his car start out the front and he left.

Daniel never asked why he left and made a point of never seeing George again. Even after our relationship ended I never tried to see George either.

I sincerely hope that that man, that patient man who had calmly taught me to swim that night, hates the person he appears to be - if only so I can forgive myself for caring about him.