Won't somebody post about the genocide?

I just finished reading Snow Crash and liked little more than a few out-of-the-blue lines on dentata as contraception, a horrendous sex scene (which I enjoyed only because of how bad it was), and the inclusion of so much Mesopotamian mythology (hey, I like Eco).

To quote the man himself, Neal Stephenson writes with the "strained tones of a man with an erection."

Seriously, why is he so popular? I've not read much sci-fi beyond the Victorians, but I can't believe it's all so much lesser that Stephenson to make him as great as so many tell me he is. Though he could be excellent and it just doesn't show in Snow Crash, I'm not willing to commit to The Baroque Cycle in light of what I have read.

So, what is good about Stephenson?

Aus Specs.

Picture this, Looney Tunes style, if you will:

There is a cave – a cartoon cave – in which a group of prisoners – cartoon prisoners – are chained to the back wall, facing it. There is a large fire – a large, cartoon fire – behind the prisoners; and in front of the fire, yet behind the prisoners, is a walkway – a cartoon walkway – which is slowly being filled up.

The collective who are filling this walkway are all, bar one, stereotypically French. That is to say, there are four Frenchmen, and another. The names of the four Frenchmen are as follows: Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Franz Fanon, and Jacques Lacan; the other is me, Mark, your humble narrator. And what these men are filling the walkway with is dynamite – cartoon dynamite, in great big red sticks, all bundled together.

As the cartoon men are carrying the cartoon dynamite onto the cartoon walkway, the cartoon prisoners overhear a few words. It seems as though the men are carrying in a mixture of cartoon “poststructuralism,” “deconstructionism,” “postcolonialism,” “psychoanalysis,” and “shadows.”

Once the dynamite is in place, the men leave the cave, unrolling a very long fuse as they go. When outside the cave, they attach the fuse to their “Acme Detonator,” and I, Mark, your humble narrator, push down on the plunger.

“KA-BOOOOOM!” There is a mushroom cloud, all grey and white, and then the cave is there no more. All that is left are four blast-blackened Frenchmen, myself, and a disgruntled duck whose beak has relocated to the back of his head.

As the Kino-Eye shut before me, mine couldn’t help but take queue and close as well. Slumping in my chair, I felt overwhelmed, exhausted, and completely drained by the not-so-passive act of viewing. The final minute of Dziga Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is nothing less than an all-out physiological assault on the senses. In “We: Variant of a Manifesto” (1922), Vertov claims “necessity, precision, and speed are the three Components of movement worth filming and screening,” and that the “geometrical extract of movement through an exciting succession of images is what’s required of montage,” (p. 8). This is what had just hit me: Vertov’s montage.

In “We”, Vertov poses the following question:

However, Vertov does not simply exclude all human flesh from his film; instead, The Man with a Movie Camera’s path leads “through the poetry of machines... to the perfect electric man” who “will have the light, precise movements of machines, and he will be the gratifying subject of our films,” (p. 8). So, instead of focusing the Kino-Gaze on just machinery while excluding man altogether, Vertov synthesises the two in cyborgian fashion.

Such logic becomes evident when a series of bodies are depicted, whilst engaged in exercise, as becoming mechanical. In this scene, every movement is as stilted and unnatural as the accompanying music. And further to this evolutionary turn, the bodies on display are simultaneously sexualised – to put it bluntly, several of the women most certainly thrust their way through the scene. As a result of this, Vertov’s ‘new’ humans are both organic and mechanical.

Yet the power of Vertov’s cinematic manifesto is not strongest in what it can display; the power of cinema, for Vertov, is strongest in the technique by which its puts these things on display. Here, the power of Vertov’s kinochestvo is best described as the Deleuzian movement-image, the purely optical and sound situation. This image

can have two poles – objective and subjective, real and imaginary, physical and mental. But they give rise to opsigns and sonsigns, which bring the poles into continual contact, and which, in one direction or the other, guarantee passages and conversions, tending towards a point of indiscerniblility (and not of confusion). (p. 267)

In The Man with a Movie Camera these two poles are, quite obviously, man and machine. And by uniting the two, the Deleuzian movement-image forces its viewer to grasp “something intolerable and unbearable... something too powerful, or too unjust, but sometimes also too beautiful, which henceforth outstrips our sensory-motor capacities,” (p. 267).

And at this point it is nigh imperative to turn back to where I began this entry – slumped in my chair, utterly exhausted – in attempt to explain this cinematic phenomenon. Quite simply, The Man with a Movie Camera outstripped my sensory-motor capacities. Vertov shows us the poetry of machines; new man, the machine-man; and then he shows us our evolutionary weakness: we are not machines; we are just organic matter whose senses cannot keep up with the technology of kinochestvo.

Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera concludes with an act of violence committed against our senses. However, this act is utopian; it is the physiologically forced realisation of the ideals Vertov set out in “We”. And upon this moment of realisation, “[o]ur eyes, spinning like propellers, take off into the future on the wings of hypothesis,” (p. 9). And what does the future hold? To quote another, more contemporaneous, film: Long live the new flesh!


Works Cited:

Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. “Beyond the Movement-Image”. In Film Theory and Criticism, edited by Leo Baudry and Marshall Cohey. New York: Oxford University Press: 250-69.

Vertov, Dziga. 1922. “We: Variant of a Manifesto”. Translated by Kevin O’Brien. In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, edited by Annette Michelson. Berkley: University of California Press: 5-9.

This was also posted to my cinema blog but, in the spirit of my Thinking in Theory (TIT) discussions, I thought I'd post some of my thoughts on film and cinema. For this one I refer to a film which can be found, in its entirety, right here. However, you need not see the film to follow what I'm talking about.

The cinematic experience is essentially twofold. The purpose of this entry is to delineate between its two binary elements, splitting the signifier ‘cinematic experience’ down the centre, and to then discuss Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936) in terms of this deliniation. To wit, this entry is an attempt to answer the following question: what happens when an eclipse takes place, or, more concisely, what happens when cinema is eclipsed, leaving only its experience?

The cinematic experience, as a whole, takes the form of a cinematic heterotopia which

is constituted across the variously virtual spaces in which we encounter displaced pieces of films: the Internet, the media and so on, but also the psychical space of a spectating subject that Baudelaire first identified as 'a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness,' (Burgin, 2004, p. 10) [my emphasis on 'across'].

At the centre of this disparate convergence is the film itself. The film is what constitutes the cinematic in cinematic experience, whereas the experience is made up, mostly, of peripheral fragments – posters, advertisements, reviews, cast, memories, and so on – which are both variable and transitory. These fragments maintain the existence of the heterotopia, and the film maintains theirs.

Because of the way the cinematic heterotopia is structured, the film and its fragments have a parallax relationship to and with one another: the subjects (cinematic fragments) each have different and differing positions from which to observe the object (the film), presenting

constantly shifting perspective[s] between two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible. Thus there is no rapport between the two levels, no shared space – although they are closely connected, even identical in a way, they are, as it were, on the opposed sides of a Moebius strip, (Žižek, 2006, p. 4).

This irreconcilable space between subjects is the heterotopia; this space is what constitutes the experience in cinematic experience.

Rose Hobart is a film which effectively translates the cinematic experience into celluloid. The object of this experience is East of Borneo, a B-grade jungle film which, in this case, is the binding force of its own heterotopia (that which we call Rose Hobart). Rose Hobart obscures East of Borneo, removing the cinematic, leaving just the experience. More specifically, Rose Hobart depicts what takes place between the parallax views which make up the heterotopia.

Such is borne out across two different parallax axes: the synchronic and the diachronic. By this I refer to the space between the cast and the viewer; and to the space between the viewer as they first experience the film and the place it occupies in their mind thereafter.

The former is exemplified by the eponymous actress and the relationship the viewer has with her and her role, and the relationship she has with the role she plays. As Rose constantly gazes off-screen – as though to glance out of Borneo and into the cinema – it appears as though she is conscious of her own role. In Rose Hobart, we are no longer watching Linda played by Rose Hobart, but Rose Hobart playing Linda. Consequently, Linda becomes the focus of two views: that of Rose Hobart and that of the viewer, both of which are drawn together – and filmed – by diluting Linda and foregrounding Rose.

The latter is characterised by the film’s aesthetic quality. As a result of the silent-speed projection, asynchronous yet repetitive soundtrack, and the deep blue tinting which Cornell applied to Rose Hobart, its “characters move with a peculiar, lugubrious lassitude, as if mired deep in a dream,” (Frye, 2001). Instead of a simple collage cut from East of Borneo, Rose Hobart becomes something very much akin to the fractured and dreamlike memories to be found in a viewer’s sub- and unconsciousness.

As I have claimed Rose Hobart consists of experience without its cinematic instigator – the subjects without their object – it appears as though I imply that East of Borneo has been effaced at the advent of its own experience. This is incorrect. Instead, I wish to state that cinema and experience are mutually edifying: there must always be a film to generate this sort of experience in its totality; and this sort of experience will, in some form, always be generated by a film. In short, without East of Borneo, there would be no Rose Hobart.

Such brings to mind Rose Hobart’s antepenultimate shot: the eclipse. In this shot, the peripheral fire of the sun is blazing in full view while its centre is blacked out. Yet the sun is still present, for without it there would be no fire. Instead of vanishing entirely, it has been obscured, thrusting its peripheral fire into the fore. In terms of the cinematic experience, cinema will almost always marginalise its experience, and only when it is hidden does the experience become apparent in its entirety. Only do we notice the surrounding fire when we bear witness to an eclipse.

Works Cited:

Burgin, Victor. The Remembered Film. London: Reaktion Books, 2004.

Frye, Brian. “Rose Hobart”. Sense of Cinema, November, 2001. Retrieved 12 August. 2007 from <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/17/hobart.html>

Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2006.

Dear all,

This journal is now completely friends only. For more information, see the picture:


Peace,
Mark

Rather than ethos, pathos, and logos combining in Aristotelian fashion to any great effect, they miss one another entirely, thus leaving the orator to succumb to his own pathos.

Once more, words fail me. Or I them. I’m not sure.

Page 512. What a total bitch.

Also, I am a walking spoiler-bomb. Fuck with me and I'll ruin your wizard book. Because that is how I roll.

Real update soon, maybe, as I've been doing more than just Pottering of late.

On page 405 Lord Vo... You-Know-Who gets a sparky!

I just received my uni results from last semester and, like everyone else on my f'list, I'm going to post them.

GCST 2606 Genres in Cultural Context - High Distinction
ENGL 2635 Contemporary American Literature - High Distinction
ENGL 3661 The Long Nineteenth Century (American Romance) - Distinction*
ENGL 3961 English: The Language and the Canon - High Distinction

Three more semesters of this and I may actual stand a chance at the university medal.

Now, back to searching for a job!

*84, fucking group work.

The Central Coast in uncomfortably quiet, even though it is 3.37am on Tuesday morning.

In the stead of a complete journal entry: socks make the very best tourniquets.

In 2009, when I finally up and leave Australia, I think I'll have to go to Burning Man.


I want to leave Australia. I want to see the world. And I want to do so right now.

Imagine enormous walls of water, crashing down, dredging up sand and seaweed with every surge. Imagine grey skies, rumbling and spitting; imagine an ocean equally as inhospitable. Imagine total solitude – a desolate beach from which all footprints have since blown away. Situate yourself fifty metres off shore, shivering atop six feet of fibreglass and very much alone. There’s a lull. No waves have come for a few minutes so you’re just paddling around in circles to keep your arms working. Now, a wave is rolling in, big and black (so big that it blocks your view of the horizon). Then you see a swirl and a fin, just ahead of it.

Scary, huh? – it sure as hell took my mind off of things for a while.

Tea and biscuits induce much needed comfort.

In the last week or so, I’ve been reading fiction of the American Gothic ilk. Yesterday, I started reading Carpenter’s Gothic and, being about 70 pages into it, have since realised that Gaddis in fact hates those who dwell within his curious little tome. Irrespective of this, I just thought I’d share the opening paragraph, as it’s one of the most blatantly and, dare I say, belligerently black passages I’ve ever encountered.


Chuck P., eat your heart out.

You know you have a terrible shower when you’d rather wash in a smelly room filled with naked men than at home. Didn’t get the job at Macro – another case of people hiring their friends over those more suited to the job. Am angry. I was going to write an American Psycho inspired entry about how much I can lift, but thought people would take me too seriously and think that I’ve gone insane. Belinda, your new name is Malinda-bee, thanks to my lovely long-haired creature. Yesterday, I went surfing in nothing but board-shorts. So cold I thought I was going to die. I just threatened Andrew with a knife – because he poked me on Facebook. My Dad is sick and this worries me immensely. I’m reading three books at the moment: Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgement; Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, and Carpenter’s Gothic by William Gaddis. Getting healthier, I think. Although, I’m still incredibly damp after being caught in the rain earlier today. Yet I'll not change as I’m no doubt going to be rained on again this afternoon. Am I going to hell because I prefer the new King Kong to the original? This, I think, is one of the cleverest films ever made. Right now, I can’t help but smile when I think of standing on the beach, huddled together, staring up at the stars.

Boom.

I adore this song. It’s tragic, defeatist, and exudes utter melancholia. Nevertheless, I adore it so.

Anyone else with me on this one?

    - Ignore the youtube clip.