4/30, On What Happens Next

Nearly all narrative film critics and theorists agree that Story is a series of events that keeps the viewers wondering "What happens next?" The causality of these events should be clear and drives each subsequent event. The Way Things Go strips the narrative form to its barest necessities of cause and effect; however, Duck Soup bloats the narrative with dialog, sight gags, musical numbers, and slapstick comedy so far that the linearity of story is all but completely lost. The two pieces, though both narrative, stretch the popular film form to its diametric extremes.

Driven by the strict confines of cause and effect, Fischli and Weiss followed a series of events to make Rube Goldberg proud through explosions, fires, collisions, projectiles, combustions, and tires climbing up hills. For the duration of the piece I found myself held in extreme suspense wondering, as any good narrative should inspire a viewer to wonder, "What's going to happen next?" I held my breath as each stunt was set up by the previous event. This narrative, however, didn't assume any pretense. There was no character study, thinly veiled social metaphors. Only causes and effects. Tire hits soda bottle that fills the cup of a lever that in turn lifts a candle to a fuse that will blow another tire into motion. This thrill with narrative is very basic, childlike.

A similar childlike place is exploited by the Marx Brothers in their Duck Soup. The story is hidden under layers of playful dialog and action. The narrative is structured in a very conventional three act structure; although, Duck Soup's three acts can be summarized by only three events of cause and effect: Freedonia appoints Firefly leader; Firefly and Trentino declare war; War erupts between Freedonia and Sylvania. These three scenarios, however, are enough to carry the weight of Groucho's quick quips, Chico's lingual confusion, and Harpo's silent shenanigans.

The two films intervene into the narrative structures of filmmaking in very different ways. The Way Things Go forces the viewers to become involved with the action, denying any traditional elements of emotional attachment. Duck Soup similarly demands of the audience a leap of faith through intervention: it is all character, action, music, no events that propel a thin plot toward a logical conclusion. Where the former denies the audience a conclusion, the latter forces it on the viewers.

4/21, The President is Dead: "Somebody will have to piece me together"

Don DeLillo's Libra presents a life of Lee Harvey Oswald, filling the historical ellipses with fiction. Oswald, like nearly every character in the book, spends the duration trying desperately to make sense of a world that seems to be conspiring against him; DeLillo seems likewise to be desperately trying to make sense of the world that could produce Oswald.

Bruce Conner with Report is similarly desperate for meaning. Rather than constructing meaning in the holes of the Warren Commission Report, Conner reconstructs the emotion living in those holes of knowledge. Starting with the news footage of the Dallas motorcade Conner establishes the visual space of Dealey plaza, 1963. As the motorcade stops and the soundtrack narrator slips into a tone of confusion, the image on the screen vanishes into visual white noise. The flicker increases with the panic of the narrator's voice. While watching this lengthy section of blankness my mind wanted to resolve the voided image with the disturbing audio; therefore, the flicker became something of a motion picture Rorschach card. I started to project images of Jack and Jackie, Oswald and Ruby on the screen. I became so desperate to see the image of this icon that when the second portion of the film began with the footage of the bullfight I recoiled. The images felt irreverent, out of place, and blasphemous.

When the film had finished, after introducing the breaking of lightbulbs and a commercial for a refrigerator, I realized that the montage, with very few images of Kennedy, was both an appropriate rendering of eye-witness emotions, but it was also the only way to resolve the anxiety of the blank screen. After allowing the effect of the film to mull around in my head after lecture, I began thinking of my own emotions and "blank screen anxiety" on 9/11/01 after hearing about two planes crashing into the World Trade Center but not being allowed to watch any news cast footage.

As a teenager I spent a substantial amount of time studying the Kennedy assassination, but my interest always had a certain romantic aura. I had no idea of the power such an event could hold over a generation of individuals. I was interested in conspiracy theory, in political watershed, and in cynicism. Report made concrete the chaos, the emotion, the blankness that could only have come from witnessing the assassination. Though I can never truly experience those things in relationship to the event, the film gave a deeper insight to the event. Where Libra helped to understand the event as a result of personal and cultural flaws Report made the assassination personal to someone whose was born over 20 yrs. later.

4/17, When Creativity met Copyright, On Negativland

Negativland's line-up, according to the wikipedia entry on the band, is "considered rather irrelevant, in the usual sense of band personnel, and [the] list may be inaccurate or false." Unconcerned with any of the politics of most western pop bands, Negativland is an idea of cultural criticism rather than the ideas formed from a specific group of minds. Using musical samples, found sound collages and other copyrighted materials Negativland faces more drama from the legal system than from personality conflict. Their records, all originally recorded on reel-to-reel 1/4 inch tape, reflect a hands on approach to criticism of a pre-fabricated world where even irony can be stupid.

Fact 1) They use[d] tape samples

Fact 2) They tell us how crazy the world of marketing is (turning down the spot because of Burroughs)

Fact 3) Though critical, they seem to revel in many of the sound bytes and images of mass communication culuture (DisPepsi)

4/7, Frampton on Dorsky

Frampton's assessment that a film is what most appears in it, at first, seemed accurate and nearly revelatory. Saying that Love's Refrain is about shadows because, upon first viewing, I paid most attention to those, is quite shallow. Frampton's illustration that Lana Turner is the subject of a film because she appears most could very easily be argued that the film is not about her, but her breasts. Even though an adolescent boy may have paid attention to little else, does not completely eliminate the other elements of the frame, even if it is just Lana Turner's plastic smile. I am quite sure that Love's Refrain had more going on than portions of the frame that had the sunlight blocked. To say that shadows is the meaning of the film would give a reader the sense that the film is rather glum, perhaps shallowly, but glum none the less. The glance shared by an elderly couple who observe the world we see as reflections on the sandwich shoppe window is ignored in favor of the shadow they cast on the counter. The film is about the shadow cast by a tree branch and not the movement of the tree branch just because, as an easily distracted viewer, I noticed a shadow in an earlier shot and so ignored any movement? It would save me, as a student and art audience member, alot of brain-time to be able to plug a movie into this equation, giving me more time to think about the Drew Carey Show. Frampton also spent great length discussing that film making is about subtracting from the white rectangle, not adding to it. If a film were to be about Lana Turner, surely, the filmmakers should not include her in any shot. Frampton's Lemon is about a lemon, that's all. Love's Refrain, I hope, is not just about shadows because my lazy and subjective eyes sought out the shadows of the compositions.