Thanks a Lot

The first ep of Fox's new reality series On The Lot started off virtually indistinguishable from pilots of other competition reality shows - "confessional" interviews, meltdowns, triumphs, and tragedies. Things got a bit more interesting in the second episode. The format is true to the American/Pop Idol template, but its clear that there will be more controversial debates than the ones over song choice and pitchiness.

The first controversy: is this guy's film exploiting the mentally challenged? Hopefully the judges' comments (and the obvious discrepency between their perception and the will of the audience) will ignite the honest conversation we need to have about laughing at freaks (explored in depth in this earlier post). Its too simplistic to say that the Hollywood judges are too politically correct for the masses, but I can't help but wonder what the discrepancy between the judges' and the audience's opinions (not to mention that the judges harp on the fact that there aren't enough female directors in Hollywood, and the voting audience doesn't seem to care) says about who is really offended by anything on television.

Isn't there something vaguely paternalistic about the news media determining what is offensive and what isn't offensive? How many careers would've bit the dust over the past year if it had been put to a vote? The new visibility of the lives of the famous makes every little slip up a career-ender, but there are two things that might counter that: the ever-shrinking duration of the news cycle, and the democratizing effect on what is deemed offensive. There's an entire generation growing up thinking that they can get away with broadcasting racist rants online. We can keep them off TV, but when you can reach billions of people online, who needs TV? Is it any wonder that one of the most enduring TV comedies of the internet era is one of its most uniformly offensive? To quote Mr. Politically Correct himself (Kramer): "People, they want to watch freaks!"

Between the fact that the key demographic is an audience weened on YouTube video shorts that tend to be more sensational and offensive than anything on TV, and the fact that a vicious "vote for the worst" campaign could do serious damage in light of the low ratings, we might see films that give new meaning to the term "lowest common denominator." Would Spielberg have to give the Fred Durst of filmmaking a development deal at Dreamworks? Considering the fact that the real Fred Durst already has such a deal, it doesn't seem too far-fetched.

Somethings - television and music - seem ideally suited to the pseudo-democratic system that American Idol employs. Other endeavors - fashion and interior design - are not, and so we defer to a panel of experts. Where does film fit into this? On The Lot is taking place at a time where film, once a populist medium, is becoming a more and more elite medium, with internet taking the bottom rung on the ladder and TV moving up a notch. Filmmakers, like fashion designers, are the tastemakers. Its an expensive, top-down medium.

Speaking of beloved mentally challenged characters, this guy always seemed a little slow to me. And he's a professor!

Is Lost a Unified, Coherent Text?

As many have observed, there are two levels on which Lost is analyzed - what happens within the story, and how the story is being told. I'll start with the latter.

I just finished re-watching the 3rd season finale, which aired last night. As with The Sopranos, which is wrapping up in 2 weeks, its exciting to be able to analyze these programs with a bunch of other people online as they unfold . Its significant that we're not analyzing it after it aired (as with a movie), but rather while the story is unfolding. The writers can observe our reactions, our speculations, and learn from those reactions and speculations. This allows for a new kind of storytelling, in which the authors become more and more adept at being able to guide the emotions and speculations of the audience by observing how they react to various twists and turns.

Though its possible that Lost is written in this manner, its also possible that the major, underlying story was written some time ago, and we're just being let in on elements of the story, pieces of the puzzle, in a drawn-out, non-linear fashion. To use an aquatic metaphor, the audience observes what appear to be unconnected islands on the surface of the sea only to learn that they are parts of one, pre-established, unified structure that lies underneath the sea. The writers had decided long ago what the ultimate reality of the show was. The only part that they are making up as they go is how they will reveal that reality.

Another possibility is that they are making it up as they go along, but doing it in a surprisingly clever fashion which makes it appear as though they had planned things all along. If you leave a story sufficiently open while writing it, including many mysteries and gaps that can be filled in later (and lord knows, Lost has plenty of those), you allow yourself the leeway to do this. A prototypical example of this method of storytelling is Mulholland Drive, which was made as an open-ended TV pilot in 1999, and then re-made, with some additional footage, into a standalone film in 2001. According to interviews with David Lynch (and by virtue of the fact that the original was intended to be an ongoing serial plot), the decision as to what the ultimate reality of the story was - that it was all the fever-dream of a suicidal wannabe starlet - was not conceived of until after the bulk of the story was written and filmed.

What is miraculous about Mulholland Drive is that it does not appear this way (at least to me. Opinions vary, of course). It seems to possess a coherent unity, with foreshadowing and callbacks to elements or themes that pervade the text. This need for unity is most pronounced for mysteries, though unity of themes and intricately woven plots are the marks most commonly associated with quality by all critics of all texts. Even though it is certain that Lynch was "making it up as he went along," the text was open enough (and he was clever and careful enough) to make it appear as though he planned it all along. To me, this kind of retroactive unity is more impressive and pleasurable than the pre-established unity of a written-all-at-once text. Its almost like watching a magic trick.

As for the episode itself, the narration seemed unusually deceptive in its depiction of Jack's future life after he has escaped from the island. The camera featured a few close-ups and we heard the trademark whooshing sound that had accompanied flashbacks in previous episodes, and yet these were not flashbacks. I think audiences are cool with characters lying to us, as long as they are lying to other characters (though this has its limits, which Lost seems to be pushing), but to have the narration deceive us in this way is the kind of abuse of the internal rules of narration established by the show that drives viewers away.

As far as the content goes, here's what I can piece together (without having consulted other theories online): the apparently indigenous people - the "hostiles" - were being protective of the mysterious spirits (e.g. Jacob, Walt, possibly the big black cloud) that have always been on the island. Thus, they murdered all the members of the Dharma Initiative save for one - Ben - who decided to join up with them. Locke, having felt the healing powers of the island, is sympathetic towards this group, and thus wanted to keep it a secret from the corrupting forces of the outside world, namely whomever is on that boat waiting to rescue them. After Jack and Kate (and perhaps others) are brought back to civilization, they are told (by the military, the govt, the scientists) never to speak of the island to anyone. Perhaps the person in the coffin violated this non-disclosure agreement.

So the basic question of the show might be: if you discover some amazingly powerful force, do you keep it a secret, or do you allow scientists or governments to get a hold of it?

Seeing it Again, for the First Time

I watched Jacques Tati’s Playtime for the first time last week. I wasn’t as blown away as I had planned on being, given the stellar reviews I’d heard from friends and critics. At the outset, I understood that Playtime wasn’t your average movie, that I would have to maintain some sort of critical distance, appreciating framing and visual gags, not worrying about getting immersed in a fictional world. Even though I knew these things, I couldn’t help viewing it the way I view every movie – identifying characters, and trying to figure out what’s coming next for them. Even if I know that’s not how I should be viewing a film, its extremely hard to discipline myself to not think this way, especially on the first viewing.

So then I listened to a critic’s commentary track on the DVD, and of course, one of the first things he says (directly quoting Jonathan Rosenbaum, I think) is: you have to watch this film multiple times to appreciate it. So there was confirmation that I wasn’t a complete square for not having adored the film right off the bat. At the same time, I somewhat resented having to spend another 2 hours watching the film again to “get” it. And what if I watched it twice and still didn’t like it? Should I keep watching it until I like it, until I “get” it?

What’s the most intriguing to me about the whole experience is that even though I knew what to look for the first time out, I couldn’t help but be distracted by something. Perhaps it was not so much the fate of the characters (as is the case with most narratives), but with the suspense over what the author/artist will do next? What will the whole film look like? What is the overall shape of the film? How will it all tie together? All the while, I think I was trying to mentally construct what “type” of art film Playtime is, what sort of game Tati was playing, whether or not the pace of the film would pick up or slow down. And I think it’s the inconsistent pacing of a lot of so-called art films that throws me, that keeps me from sitting back and appreciating the film on its own terms during the first viewing. Playtime seemed internally inconsistent, flirting with becoming a traditionally-paced narrative, but never quite making it.

In contrast, Gus Van Sant’s trilogy of languidly paced films (Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days) are perfectly internally consistent. Most viewers (myself included) had almost certainly known what they were getting themselves into when they watched the films, either by reading reviews or, in the cases of the latter two, knowing that the director had made extremely slow-paced barely-narratives. With Elephant and Last Days being based on historical events, you know what’s going to happen in the end, so there’s no surprise there, even on the first viewing. And, more importantly, there are no stylistic surprises during the course of the films. They unfold at a perfectly even pace, not really trying to hook viewers in any more than they are already to the paper-thin plot. I have no problem sitting back and appreciating those films as art films on the first viewing. My mind can settle into one reading strategy. Its as if I’m adopting the “multiple viewing” strategy on the first viewing. I simply couldn’t do that with Playtime, or another film I watched last week (for the first time): Julien Donkey-Boy.

Why 1.5-3.5 hours?

On the two DVDs I watched last week – Julien Donkey Boy and Playtime – critics and/or writer/directors defend the work in question by saying that they were part of an effort to push motion picture making forward, to change the language of cinema. I appreciated those sentiments, and yet, I can’t say that I enjoyed either film very much, even though I knew before watching them that they were going to be “different.” Why couldn’t I break out of my standard viewing strategy of guessing what will happen to the characters, or guessing what kind of artistic statement either film would be, what specific developments in cinematic language they would bring about?

Part of it has to do with the fact that a movie unfolds over time. If you want to be non-linear, or non-narrative, fine, but you cannot change the fact that certain parts of the whole will be viewed before the whole can be evaluated. Thus, its really hard to banish the thoughts of “what will the whole turn out to be” or “how will the parts fit together” from the viewer’s mind.

With an abstract painting, you get it all at once, therefore there is no wondering what the whole will look like. You can try on different interpretive stances while looking at the painting. There is no penalty for adopting a stance which doesn’t turn out to be fruitful. You can just start over. However, with film (or any mode of expression that unfolds over time), there is a penalty for adopting an “unproductive” stance towards the material. Each passing moment, if you didn’t orient yourself in a certain way towards the film/video, then you’ll have to do the work of revising your initial interpretations after the fact, or you’ll have to watch it again. And many art films, Julien Donkey Boy and Inland Empire among them, flirt with traditional narrative structure within scenes and between scenes to such a degree that its very hard not to keep switching between various stances towards the work, and, in the end, feeling a bit lost.

Another thing that caused me to fall back into that traditional “what happens next” narrative viewing strategy is the fact that these films are almost always between 1.5 and 3.5 hours, roughly the same length as traditional narrative films. Really, the only thing I’m used to watching that is that long is a traditionally structured narrative. If Julien Donkey Boy had been a 9 hour long looped installation at a museum, or a sort of fictitious 9-hour webcam narrative available online, or a 10 minute short, I would've viewed it in a totally different way. Even if I know to try to watch either of these films as “art films,” its really hard to overcome that habit of viewing 2 hour motion pictures in a certain. Filmmakers like Harmony Korine and David Lynch have discovered how liberating digital video can be in terms of the footage shot, and yet they’re still slaves to the time constraints of cinema, for no good reason that I can discern.

My favorite example of an “art film” that I was absolutely devastated by is Clu Galagher’s A Day with the Boys – 10 minutes long. But had this been 1 and a half hours long, I’m almost sure it would’ve had very little impact on me. Really short videos get to you before you have time to wonder if you’re viewing it “the right way,” or if you need to keep track of characters. Really long videos/films (Empire, though I’ve never experienced it, seems to have this effect) wear you down, until you give up trying to interpret it and just let it happen.