Watched Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch today. After the film, which was incomprehensible (but exciting) to me, MKR offered a few insights as usual, and then the discussion turned to the apparent timidity of present day filmmakers. “Thoughts,” he said, “are disappearing, because they aren’t being articulated in print.” (I’m paraphrasing all these quoted bits.) In other words, it doesn’t matter if people are thinking strange/politically incorrect/unethical/violent/etc/all of the above thoughts, if they don’t get printed in some fashion. If it doesn’t exist in language, it doesn’t exist, period. Why should anyone care what I’m thinking? Only when I articulate it, it begins to exist.
It’s a hugely intriguing idea for me. And yes, at times, I do think we’re moving towards a tamer literature and cinema. At other times, I have to agree with J, who said that you can find anything on the internet. The most perverse perversion (yes, that’s the best way I could think of saying it) you can think of, someone already thought of it, and made a website, and maybe someone’s hunting them down, too. We’re as sick as ever.
I have to negotiate between these two positions. And I think that while we’re thinking these “unacceptable” thoughts and publishing them, there’s so much noise out there, that only the safe stuff surfaces. Unless you’re looking for it, you won’t find it. What you’ll see sans a focussed search (barring a lucky accident) is censored experience, life/imagination in a series of euphemisms.
This is what I’m thinking for the moment. My mind tends to change, and ideas are welcome. Meanwhile, I’m reminded of a brief discussion on vulgarity that happened at a book launch. The publishers concerned host writing competitions every year, and the judges were called on stage to talk about their experiences in judging, the kind of writing they favour, and so on. The audience was invited to ask questions about the judging process. One man asked the judges what their view on vulgarity was. I think he suspected that the judges (CK Meena, KR Usha and David Vasnaik), being a bit older than him, were prude little Gandhian monkeys. It was an unfair unjudgement to make, if that’s what he was thinking, because CK Meena immediately responded (after giving him a piece of her mind for talking about Salinger and Chetan Bhagat in the same sentence), “If a writer has to say fuck, then the writer has to say fuck.”
I agree, but the discussion proved problematic again. The argument for vulgarity — or cussing, as I prefer to call it — was constructed around the notion of authenticity. It’s okay for Holden Caulfield to cuss, because that’s what one would expect of him. Showing him cuss builds character, etc. This is just like saying, “I don’t mind nudity in film, but there has to be a reason for it.” Why? Is nudity mindless? So what if I have a naked woman walk across the screen in my film? What will happen to you? Will you wither and die?
The excuse is that “unnecessary” cussing, nudity, sex and violence somehow compromise the integrity of the film and/or of the filmmaker. I would like to know how.
I got my contributor copies of Argot Magazine a couple of days ago, along with a letter from JS. I love mail, so that was a fantastic day. Since then, I’ve had a string of good things happening in the poetry world.
Mimesis 5 is ready for pre-ordering, and you should go check it out. No, not because I have poems in there — I do — but because it’s one of the coolest mags I’ve ever read, and very stylish too. For me, of course, the pleasure is even greater, because I get to be in a mag with so many fantastic poets.
I also had a poem accepted for the January 2009 issue of nthposition – that one caught me by surprise, and I can’t wait for January. Check out their current issue if you can.
And then, today, the winners of the PFFA 2008 contest were announced, which was judged by George Szirtes, and I was runner-up! The best part is that all of us shortlisted got critique from George Szirtes himself.
Wow, it sure took a long time for those copies to get there. Sorry about that, but we just can’t afford post 18th-century modes of shipping.
I hope you like them, though they’re not as sexy as James’s!
Congrats on your recent successes. nthposition is a neat zine, mad props on that.
Oh, I meant to say I really enjoyed it. I was going to copy out a bit from the editorial that I really liked — the white flag — but I didn’t have time, and I really shouldn’t be responding this because I have to study for an exam. I haven’t read the entire issue yet, just the essay by Cyril Wong, which I loved, your editorial, and some of the poetry. Will get back to it after the 17th.
Thanks muchly! : )
My guess is that a person can be accused of pandering to the lowest common denominator, which has very little to do with artistic integrity. It’s not nudity alone that’s mindless, simply the way it’s being used.
One could argue that any element in a work of art, no matter how tangential or digressive, has to relate in some way to the whole. There are many films in which the crude language serves as texture and atmosphere, e.g. Scorcese’s Goodfellas. And then other films that simply couldn’t function w/o sex, even if they’re not about only sex, like Last Tango in Paris or Sex and Lucia.
I do agree essentially w/what you’re getting at. Sometimes “good taste” or “decency” is used as a way to dismiss work that is actually thought-provoking. At the same time, we live in a world where access to these dark little worlds is very open (perhaps moreso in the US and Europe, and certainly more than when I was growing up). It makes sense that some would react against that.
Out of curiosity, have you read the Burroughs novel?
No, I haven’t read the book. I’m afraid of the Beats, to be honest, and more so after reading Henry Miller, who is a precursor. I watched the film with a film club that meets every Saturday, and the films are scheduled in advance, so one of my friends was trying to read the book before she watched the movie. She said it was quite difficult and also that the film had been constructed differently.
I agree that a film — like any other creative work — must be cohesive, but I also think that we can make meaning out of seemingly unnecessary or irrelevant details. For example, in another of Cronenberg’s films, A History of Violence, there are two love scenes between the married couple. One is sweet, happy and very awww. The other is violent, almost bordering on rape. But these two scenes, graphic as they are, can be understood as sex with the two different personalities of the husband. (I don’t mean to be preachy — I’m just explaining in case you haven’t watched the movie, so that my argument makes sense.) So here, nudity/sex is relevant to the story.
But at another point, the wife walks out of the shower, wearing an open bathrobe. I remember seeing a question at IMDB asking why this scene was necessary at all. It seemed to have nothing to do with the story.
To me, it was logical, at first, to ask the question. Then I realised that the scene could irritate you into thinking. Is such a scene meaningless? Can I not impose my own meaning on it? And I found it possible to understand the scene as an articulation of coldness between the husband and wife.
The other problem is that the question is not so much “Why nudity?” but “Why show it on camera?” Would we ask this situation if it were a real-life situation? Isn’t it possible for a woman to walk out of the shower naked in front of her husband even if their relationship had become strained?
What we’re criticising is the filmmaker’s right to include and exclude aspects of life, and our criticism is based on a basic kind of prudery and discomfort with nudity. I say “we” because I include myself in it — paradoxially, clothing is natural to me, and nakedness is not.
I’ve been thinking along these lines recently: (a) the filmmaker(s) has the right to include or exclude whatever s/he/they like in the film; (b) the viewer has the right to critique/criticise anything in the film, including the filmmaker’s choices of inclusion/exclusion; (c) but, in criticism, to argue about content usually leads to common sense conclusions about the film, the practices of filmmaking and film viewership.
I suppose though, in general, arguing for decency will always be a part of the way we watch films. My father, for example, loves action/adventure films, which usually involve a lot of killing and gore. But he hates Pulp Fiction. Being not very articulate (when he talks to his kids), his criticism was simple, “There’s too much violence for no reason.” Of course, I got all huffy (“But what about all those stupid movies you watch in which so many people get killed? Huh? Huh?”), but then I realised, he said, “for no reason”. In his favourite action films, the violence was leading to a positive kind of equilibrium. The bad guy dies/is punished; the good guy gets his girl, and we’re all happy. Pulp Fiction, however, does not fit into my dad’s belief system.
I need to start to recognising this, because I don’t have any moral beliefs, really, especially for art. It’s just so hard!
Yes, the film is very different from the book. It’s actually not a precise adaptation and borrows elements from other works and then Burroughs’s own biography. This bothered me when I first saw the film, but I’ve since come to accept and appreciate what Cronenberg was doing.
It’s one of my favorite novels, though it is difficult and complex and not all that heavy on plot. While Burroughs is considered part of the Beat movement, he was older than Ginsberg and Kerouac and I think came at writing with a different approach. If you feel daunted by his work, I recommend Junky or Queer, as the writing is more straightforward.
I’ve seen A History of Violence and know precisely what you’re talking about.