As I revise my novel more and think about the art I like, I keep bumping into the concept of form. I think it's something I've become particularly interested in once I started college. In the future I'll post a bit about what I call the "oppositional voice," the occurrence of some feeling of discontent or opposition with whatever you're doing. This relates to what some call the Imposter Syndrome, or yin and yang; you have Jung and the shadow, God and the devil, and for myself a fixation on being both happy and sad. It seems, sometimes, that there must always be an oppositional voice, which is good and bad. When it works, it's called balance: yin and yang. When it doesn't, you find yourself tearing yourself down, which can relate to all kinds of psychological issues. You sabotage yourself. At my most playful, though, I have a certain desire to resist forms of authority, and form itself is an authority. I want to talk about form within the film medium.
The true language of human beings is nonsense, speaking in tongues (the language of dreams); that is, those things which can be felt, but not expressed. In modern language, the medium of this illogical vocabulary is the collage. In the Industrial Era we all help perpetuate our very human desire to manipulate the environment, no matter our stance, but we do this to a dangerous end (climate change, pollution, etc.). Our reaction to this is to return through art to the language of dreams, the natural language. If our world is a monotonous collage of plastic and concrete playing endlessly with one Home Depot and Wal-Mart every three miles as a kind of time piece or spacial marker, then in defense we create scrambled images to help immerse ourselves in deep emotions and thoughts which can only flourish in our natural setting and must be expressed thusly, partly because that is their nature and also as defense against the assault of advertising. Advertising takes dream language and sucks the meaning out of it in order to have a singular focus: to sell the product. It perverts human language, and we respond with art which revels in the irrational. The art appears meaningless superficially, but in reality is a world of meaning. It's a projection of our interior world, the element of "reality" which we can rely on more than anything else. Advertising truly has no value outside of its ability to push a product, and then its value is relegated to the company it supports. It attempts to create need where there is none. Truly necessary items, such as healthy food or water, aren't advertised. They are part of our natural world and don't need a sales pitch. Other necessities--sleep, creation, love--cannot be sold. Advertising perverts the natural order through its assertion in our lives, and film is a great medium through which to study form because in 2008 so many ads are based on video. The rebels fight back by perverting the medium which perverts.
To discuss, praise, and understand some formal subversion I'll look at a few of my favorite movies, often maligned, which try to decode the rationalism and simplicity which perverts our lives now. These are Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda? (1953), the Monkees' Head (1968), and David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997). Lynch's work from Fire Walk with Me (1992) on has dealt with form very specifically, as does Eraserhead (1977). So perhaps I'll change that section of this series when I get to it, because he truly deserves a major analysis. Wood's work does as well, and he'll be getting a bigger post at some point. I should also mention Orson Welles' 'F' for Fake and perhaps even The Kids in the Hall. Godard's Alphaville (1965) also applies, especially considering that it's an Ed Wood knock-off, but don't tell Criterion Collection. And, of course, you can't forget his Weekend (1967).
So let's talk about form.
No comments:
Post a Comment