Thoughts: Eames

It's the places you live that shape you. Not just the suburb and the street you come from, but the rooms and the people you live with. I grew up in tiny terraces in inner city Sydney and Melbourne, where winter was always freezing, the floorboards creaked and the plaster cracked after the rain. Those houses, and the spaces inside, have as much an effect on who I am, I think, as the people I met, the books I read and the music I listened to.

My favourite room in the world is in my father’s house. There are French doors looking out onto a courtyard and an over-burdened Jacaranda tree. Next to the doors is a huge antique leather wing-backed chair, which my father bought when he turned fifty and declared that he had worked hard all his life and from now on will only buy music on vinyl, write in French violet ink and buy expensive things he likes. It’s my favourite chair in the world. I can curl up in it like it’s a cocoon, balance a cup of coffee on my knee and a stack of books on the other. It’s not uncommon for me to fall asleep and wake up hours later with the cat at my feet. Next to the chair is an art deco fireplace, with tiled pictures of weeping women surrounding it. On the wall is a Communist-era Vietnamese poster of a smiling woman holding her baby with an AK-47 draped across her shoulder. And on the wall directly opposite is my favourite thing of all – a wooden bookcase which extends across the room, as high as the ceiling, with a ladder attached to a rail so you can reach the books at the top. I’ve discovered some of my favourite books in that bookcase. I study in that room, I sit and read, I listen to my father’s old records. In the summer I sit sewing on the floor, in winter I get drunk on hot chocolate with shots of whisky. There are crumbled attempts at origami on the shelves and coffee rings on top of the speakers. Every single thing in that room, every scratch and trip and every hour spent in it, contributes to how much I love it. Maybe if I hadn't lived part of my life in that room I wouldn't be precisely who I am right now. Just maybe...

I get frustrated with people who have beautiful jewellery but never ever wear it because it’s “too good.” I figure if something’s “too good” you should be wearing it all the time. Putting beautiful things in a box or cordoning them off with a rope is akin to Dominique Francon throwing the statue out of the window at the beginning of The Fountainhead. I don’t understand why you would choose to put everything you love most out of sight and never touch it, and then surround yourself with things which you know mean less to you. You should take them to you like a talisman to remind yourself of what's beautiful, of what you love. At the beginning of semester I lost my favourite earrings. They were peach-coloured clip-on’s from the fifties I got for five dollars in a Melbourne op-shop last year because nobody else was going to wear earrings that uncomfortable (your ear lobes go numb after a while). But I loved them. I wore them every day. And then I went out wearing them on Mardi Gras. When I got home they were gone. Somewhere in a sleazy nightclub on Oxford Street lie my earrings. And while I regret losing them, I don’t regret wearing them as much as I did, for using them as much as I did. I’d rather have done that than have them locked away in a box of things I never use. What does it matter if things might get damaged or broken in the course of your life with them? The fragments of everyday life are what make it beautiful.

Space only means something once it’s inhabited. You need to be able to use it, to touch it, to live in it, to love it. Otherwise what’s the point? That’s what I got out of the Eames films, and looking at the scrawled elliptical notes I made that week, that’s the most coherent thing I wrote down. The Eames house is beautiful, but part of it’s beauty is that it’s lived in – there’s half eaten toast in the kitchen and papers on the table. People run up and down it’s staircase and around it’s garden. Without all of that I don’t think it would signify anything, it would just be empty, but very well designed, space.

Thoughts: Tokyo Story

Ozu’s Tokyo Story is a transitional film. Situated in what is considered to be the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema in the 1950s, it lies at the juncture between traditionalism and modernism. Likewise it lies at a juncture somewhere between traditional Japanese aesthetics and Westernisation. What I want to explore are the ways in which Tokyo Story’s position in a unique period of historical and cultural transition is played out aesthetically and thematically in the film, by the use of transitional themes and techniques and the Japanese concept of mono no aware.

Cultural and historical space.

Tokyo Story was made in 1953, right in the middle of what is considered to be the Golden Age of Japanese cinema. More broadly, it was eight years after the allies had dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and it was one year after occupation forces had left Japan and a new, Americanised Japanese parliament had been created. Immediately after the war the Japanese film industry had become subject to tight restrictions, censorship and editing by the American occupation forces. Once the allies departed in 1952, the Golden Age of Japanese cinema is generally thought to have begun. But it frankly didn’t last very long. The 1950’s were a transitional period in Japan. Tradition and the immediate legacy of the war were transformed with the influence of America, increased Westernisation and economic prosperity as well as a generation of younger new-wave filmmakers who were beginning to emerge with vastly different concerns and interests. But Ozu and his contemporaries were making films whose thematic concerns derived from sets of cultural assumptions which were increasingly being challenged. The plot of Tokyo Story is one of disintegration, where a couple realise they have become a burden on their children. The disintegration of the family system can be seen as analogous to the disintegration of those traditional values happening in Japan during the 1950’s. Just like the characters in the film, people were abandoning the family structures which would traditionally focus around respect and care for the parents, and people were also abandoning the small villages which were so important traditionally, for the huge cosmopolitan cities of Tokyo and Osaka. And while Ozu’s films were by no means culturally irrelevant at the time, their concern with themes of nostalgia and the fading away of tradition reflects the transitional period the entire country was in.

Nostalgia and Loss.

The historical period of transition comes across in Tokyo Story through themes of nostalgia and loss, crystallised in the form of the dissolution of the traditional Japanese family. Japan was attempting to modernise, and had been for many decades, but in the 1950’s modernisation became the driving force of the government, and one of America’s biggest aims was to turn Japan into a thriving capitalist democracy with a pro-Western agenda. But Japan could only accomplish this by suffering a dislocation with its central traditions. One of the stylistic ways this comes across in Tokyo Story is the recurring image and sound of the train. One of the initial shots of the film is of a train rushing through a traditional Japanese fishing village. The whistles of the train echo throughout the film, and the image of the train bypassing the town is repeated at the close of the film once Tomi has died. It has the effect of emphasising that things are happening elsewhere, but not in the town. Everything is passing it by. However, the most obvious sense of loss is in the family’s relationships.

Transitional spaces.

In Tokyo Story the dislocation and dissolution of the family is not evident simply in the themes but also in the films spatial composition and the use of transitional spaces. The most obvious example of this occurs right at the beginning of the film. The first scene shows Tomi and Shukichi packing and preparing for their trip. The next scene is in Koichi’s house in Tokyo. Ozu moves between the scenes with shots of three transitional spaces: a shot of a smoke stack, one of power lines and then a shot of a sign outside an office. These shots do nothing to orient the viewer in space or time. The journey between cities is completely elided. The transitional shots do nothing to help us understand how much time has passed or where in space we are situated. The effect of having these shots has been called an ellipsis effect. They are beautiful but disorientating. The repetition of transitional spaces appears to be invested in mimicking the transitional space the family and the rest of Japan exist within.

Mono no aware.

The other crucial way transition is affected is through the concept of mono no aware, which is a Japanese aesthetic concept that emerged during the Heian period and was transmuted into a high literary technique. ‘Aware’ suggests an emotional duality that is present in all things, and so mono no aware, which literally translates as “the pathos of things” implies the duality between beauty and sadness. It means that by being sensitive to the pathos of life, a person can transcend confusion imposed by change. In Tokyo Story there is no attempt to reconcile things to create a happy ending, only an acceptance that life is disappointing. Life is ephemeral and because of that sadness exists. By structuring the film with this logic Tokyo Story sets itself up as a film which is nostalgic for tradition and the past, but accepts that change is what it is, neither good nor bad.

Thoughts: The Fountainhead

One of the things that got me the most about The Fountainhead is the way the relationships are constructed, particularly the power play between Howard and Dominique. It was probably pretty clear in class that I had some issues with it: I do understand where Rand is coming from and what the relationship was depicting. I just find the place she is coming from very disturbing and highly problematic. But then again, that probably applies to the rest of the novel, and my issues with the Howard/Dominique relationship are basically just a synecdoche for the mixed emotions I felt while reading the entire novel.

An idea that was brought up in class, which incidentally seems to be the only note I wrote throughout the entire seminar, was this idea that what Rand is representing is a kind of capitalism of desire. It seemed to me that all of the principles of objectivism and individualism that operated throughout the novel turned into this intense sado-masochistic dynamic when it came to Howard and Dominque’s affair. I did a bit of reading, and I found an article by Eva Illouz called The Rise of Homo Sentimentalis, which I thought was really interesting. In it she points out that in sociological accounts of modernity the two biggest points of analysis tend to be the advent of capitalism/individualism and the advent of modernity in terms of emotions. What she does is conflate the two and look at how both capitalism and one’s emotional life influence one another. Her basic argument is that the making of capitalism went hand in hand with a specialised emotional culture, and so while desire was put at the centre of production, intimate relationships increasingly enacted political and economic models of bargaining and exchange(p.4). I don’t really have a lot of space to talk about that much further, but suffice to say I think it’s a really interesting way of looking at the Dominique/Howard relationship.

In addition, I think it’s really interesting to look at how that might affect the people who use The Atlasphere. A couple of months ago Elena pointed me to what is basically a dating and social networking website designed specifically to hook up admirers of Rand’s books and philosophy. In it’s ‘About’ section it says: “The values dramatized in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged — the values of reason, independence, hard work, and personal integrity, among others — provide the framework for a unique moral vision, one which can be profoundly inspiring.” I also found this article in the New York Times – it’s the beginning bit that’s important – which outlines how one couple got together through the website. But all I can think about is how these people’s relationships must work if they’re so committed to Rand’s ideals. Do they torture each other in their professional lives and then go home and have violently passionate sex all over their functional furniture?

I might just leave that as a question.

I also thought it was interesting Ayn Rand was referenced in an episode of Mad Men. Burt Cooper, the head of Sterling Cooper, talks about Atlas Shrugged with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious text. Which, I suppose, is almost what Ayn Rand has become: a holy text for capitalism and individualism. I think a lot of her ideas are present in Mad Men. This has quite literally just occurred to me, but there are a lot of similarities between Don Draper and Howard Roark. Yet another point of discussion...

Thoughts: Piccadilly

I know we haven’t studied Piccadilly yet, but I went to the screening on Wednesday, and so I’ve already been thinking about it. As we were leaving the Woolley building someone said that Piccadilly seemed a little like Pandora’s Box, which you’ll be pretty familiar with if you’ve done From Silent To Sound Cinema. But the other film from that course it made me think of was Metropolis, or more specifically, the scene in Metropolis when Maria dances in the Yoshiwara nightclub. There is a similar scene in Piccadilly, when Shosho performs a ‘Chinese’ dance. In both films the women are scantily clad in the centre of the shot, and the camera cuts between the dancing woman and the audience (mostly men) watching her with great intensity.

What struck me as really strange about that dance was that it kind of wasn’t a dance at all. She moves her arms around, a little like a snake charmer, but in no way you’d generally think of being a dance. Shosho didn’t seem to be made more seductive from her dancing, in fact, she didn’t really dance differently at all. But she’s shown to be entrancing, and I think maybe the only way in which she’s entrancing, from my perspective, is that she’s foreign and unknown. In terms of Yiman Wing’s ideas about Piccadilly, and his theory that Anna May Wong’s acting of ‘Asian’ characters was ironically excessive and performative, I thought that reading applied less to her dancing really than to any other aspect of the film. You expect her dancing to be comparatively very different to the woman she’s usurping in the film, Mabel, but it’s not. The only difference between the dance Mabel did at the beginning of the film, and Shosho’s dance later on, was that the first was more absurd because Mabel had her mouth open the whole time.

The women in silent films often adopt gestures and expressions which have something of the neurasthenic about them. It seems in a lot of the silent films produced around the time of Piccadilly, whenever they had dancing sequences they were presenting a vehicle for those kind of neurasthenic rhythms - the slower more hysterical versions of which often seemed to lead to female characters swooning away (happens in Piccadilly) - to sexually and more aggressively reassert themselves through movement. When women in those early silent films danced, the rhythm of their performances always becomes slightly manic, and stands at odds with the movement of the other characters in the film or indeed the visual pace of the films themselves. Maybe that’s why they stick on your memory more than others. It’s always struck me, though, that the women in silent films who perform with motions that are manic and semi-sexualised always end up being punished in some way. That’s what happens to Shosho (not to spoil the ending or anything), and it also happens to Lulu in Pandora’s Box and to the robot-version of Maria in Metropolis.

Thoughts: Rutthman's Berlin: Symphony of a City

One of the things I thought was interesting in the discussion of Rutthman’s film Berlin: Symphony of a City were the ideas about walking in the city and being part of a crowd.

I know somebody brought up the perspective of the flaneur as being something that seemed to resonate within the film, and I really liked that point. The flaneur was typical of early nineteenth century France, and was always in the crowd but not of it. He was made possible by the dramatic change to the city wrought by the industrial revolution. So the opening up of the streets catalysed a radical change in urban existence, and the street became a confusing place, where encounters with others were transient and silent. I thought that the fragmentation and transience of the city came through particularly strongly in the Berlin Symphony.

The other idea I had was Michel de Certeau and his ideas about everyday life and how the inhabitants of a city in a sense write it through their walking. This is a quote I’ve always really liked: “the ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at which visibility begins…They are walkers, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen; their knowledge of them is as blind as that of lovers in each others arms.”

I think that part of what I liked about Berlin was that although it was chaotic and fragmented and sometimes sad, seeing the city as a whole, in a way that any Berliner would never be able to, was what made it beautiful.

During class I kept being reminded of another film, Wings of Desire, which was made in the 1980’s, but is similar to the City Symphony in that it’s about Berlin, it’s people and their everyday lives. The basic gist of Wings of Desire is that there are angels watching over the people in Berlin, and they can hear their thoughts. Eventually the main character falls in love with a trapeze artist and decides to descend from heaven. They hook up at a Nick Cave concert. You should watch it.

Wings of Desire also plays upon fragmentation and the lives of the multitudes. Maybe it’s something about Berlin that inspires that kind of introspection. You see the city from a distance, from the perspective of the angels, but you see, and hear, everything. You hear the rambling, tortured, banal and incoherent thoughts of everybody the angels pass by, and so you’re allowed into the lives of crowds, of people jammed into cars and libraries, and the people in their solitude as well. And that’s an idea I really like.

Here is a clip to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

And here is a completely gratuitous clip of the Nick Cave scene, just because I like it.