Hendonblog

Well, I have given thought for some time to Marienbad, and I only have a few things to say. Aside from the fact that it is a difficult movie, there has been much written about it and there is little a novice such as me could add. So.
If you have not seen it, it is a 1960 movie without a traditional narrative. It involves a woman and a man who is trying to convince a woman that they had med earlier at a resort called Marienbad and that they had agreed to go away together after year’s interlude, leaving behind her guardian/husband (?). What really happened is never clear, and the viewer is supposed to try figure it all out. There is an appropriate passing tribute to Alfred Hitchcock.
Black and white with interesting lighting certainly plays a role in the mystery. The locale is supposed to be a fancy hotel but in reality the shots are taken at Nyphenburg and Schleissheim palaces. The internegatives were shot at the same level of exposure throughout. Scenes that are dark naturally become darker and scenes that are light become lighter.
Sometimes the main female character (Delphine Seyrig) appears in black dresses, sometimes in white, a few times in something in between. Sometimes in the same scene the dress color changes as the camera shifts between her and the male character. I thought for a while that her dress was black when she was inclined to accept her pursuer and white when she was asking to be left alone. But then toward the end after an sexual encounter (rape?) she seems to have to decided to go away with her pursuer (Giorgio Albertazzi), and he meets her and describes her as being in a black cape—“perhaps.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q27jRItLHAw&feature=related

When I posted my comments “On Black and White” I got a query from Gardner: What did I think of “Last Year at Marienbad?” At that point I had not seen the movie and now I have. I am not yet ready to comment–even on the issue of black and white much less the movie as a whole. Those of you who have seen it will understand my reluctance. I will try at some point. I was amused to see how much of it was filmed at Schleissheim near Munich. Many, many years ago I went to Schleissheim to hear a concert by John Cage!

I recently watched again the great movie The Third Man (1949) directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Wells, and Trevor Howard. It is a commonplace to say that such films show the power of using stark images in black and white, but it struck me anew in watching the movie. Of course others have used black and white in powerful ways. One thinks of the Bergman movies:

Also very important was F.W. Murnau’s use of shadow and contrast in Faust (1926). Murnau shot scenes with two cameras and shot them more than once and then chose the version that made the greatest contrast:

But The Third Man is the best. The scenes of Vienna still show some of the damage of the war. The streets are always wet. The play of light is magical:

For me the film evokes special emotion because my visits to Vienna in the early 1980s. Memories return of walking the steps below St. Ruprecht’s Church or the paths and roads of the Zentralfriedhof:

In the age of Avatar, what might the equivalent of such black and white contrasts be?

Micheal Atkinson, a movie maker and critic, has written an article about gaming. He notes that 68 percent of American households played video games. In these homes 41 percent of all video gaming involves mission/action/narrative gaming while 47 percent of gaming (mostly older people) involves solitaire, word games, and similar things. Could there instead be progressive virtual games, he asks.  I have bookmarked this article on Delicious.

Last December I bought a Blue Ray version of the 2001 restoration of Fritz Lang’s classic film “Metropolis.” So it is with mixed feeling that I now learn of an even better restoration. The 1926 original version was 153 minutes and was not a commercial success. To improve ticket sales it was repeatedly cut and many of the cuts were lost. The 2001 restoration includes 120 minutes from newly discovered cuts. The upcoming version adds material discovered in a Buenos Aires archive and is 147 minutes, that is, erything is back save 6 minutes. Of course I must see this and I may even buy another Blue Ray. I could watch this futuristic dystopia time and time again despite its cornball happy ending.  Trailer for 2001 version:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j8Ba9rWhUg

I have just read R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated.  Now, those of you who are conservative in your reading of the Bible might be offended by the idea that Crumb, creator of Mr. Natural back in the 60s (above), would do this, but it is a serious effort.  Crumb says that he tried to be as literal as possible in illustrating the text.  This is just a strategy for illuminating the text as it stands.  Notes at the end make it clear that he is very knowledgeable about modern historical-critical approaches to the text—including feminist ones.  So Biblically conservative people will still be offended most likely.

But for me using the format of a graphic novel really brings out things that are easy to glide over if one is just reading the words.  This comes out best in the figure of Jacob.  What a character!  He tricks his brother out of his inheritance. He deceives his dying father.  He marries two sisters and has children by them as well as by their servants.  He tricks his father-in-law out of his wealth.  And so on and so on.  I asked a colleague in Biblical studies about Jacob, and he noted that Jacob can be read in the context of some ancient stories in which God is portrayed as a trickster.  I replied that Jacob reminded me of Odysseus, the many of many ways, the man of mêtis (cleverness, cunning).  Odysseus is always tricking people and telling lies to cover up his identity.  After his return to Ithaca, he continues the subterfuge until the time is ripe for his revenge against the suitors.  In Book XIII Athena confronts him:

            “Only a master thief, a real con artist,
            Could match your tricks—even a god
            Might come up short.  You wily bastard
            You cunning, elusive habitual liar!
            Even in your own land you weren’t about
            To give up the stories and sly deceits
            That are so much a part of you.
            Never mind about that though.  Here we are
            The two shrewdest minds in the universe,
            You far and away the best man on earth
            In plotting strategies, and I famed among the gods
            For my clever schemes.”

            (Lombardo translation, 299-309)

While the illustrations are revealing, I also recommend the fairly brief notes at the end.  They draw on scholars such as Savina Teubel for some insight into some of the stories about women that seem so strange to us moderns.  One starts with Abraham having Sarah say she is his sister which leads to sex with the pharaoh.  This story is repeated two more times with other characters.  Teubel interprets these stories as reflecting themes from an earlier partly matriarchal world in a society that had become patriarchal.  In brief in early Mesopotamia men who wanted to get ahead had to go to a priestess at a temple to get her approval.  The decision was based on whether the man could please her.  I have no idea about how widely this view is held among scholars now. 

The translation used is largely that of Robert Alter, one of the most prominent scholars of the Hebrew Bible.

I have begun exploring the Europeana site maintained by the European Commission (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/). It contains images, texts, sound, and video from archives, museums, and libraries from around Europe. This includes the Rijksmuseum, the British Library, and the Louvre among others. With it I can read a 1777 universal history in the Staatsbibliothek in Munich. Or I can look at old newscast such as one from BBC dealing with British reaction to German unification

This project appears still to be in its early stages. When I do searches, I am surprised at the uneven distribution of items. For some there was much. For others there was less than I would have expected. Still, I think this is a promising innovation.

The April 8 issue of The New York Review of Books has an article entitled “The Corrupt Reign of Emperor Silvio”  written by Alexandre Stille, a professor of journalism at Columbia. It is about Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his enduring popularity in the face of repeated scandals. It may just be the Italians, but the article focuses on how the prime minister’s media empire influences public opinion in his favor.

First, some of the scandals. He has a peculiar relationship with a teenage girl from Naples, Noemi Letzia, who calls him “Papi.” Is she his illegitimate daughter or one of his lovers? Says his wife, Veronica Letizia: “I wish she was his daughter.”  The wife has publically asked for a divorce. Then there were the photographs of a party with topless women and pantless male politicians at his pleasure palace on Sardinia. And call girls show up at parties in the presidential palace in Rome. For sixteen years he has been fighting legal charges of corruption, bribery, and ties to organized crime. He had gotten Senate and Chamber of Deputies to pass a law giving him immunity while he was still in office, but last October Italy’s highest court threw the law out.

Now comes the role of media. On December 5, 350,000 Italians attended a “No to Berlusconi Day in Rome. The defenders of Berlusconi said the few newspapers and magazines that dared criticize Berlusconi had created “a climate of hate.” Berlusconi owned television stations, radio stations, and newspapers launched character attacks on his critics. In response parliament passed another law to protect him from prosecution. His poll numbers remains high even as he appoints attractive showgirls to government positions. Probably the most important thing that Berlusconi media do is to make sure that many Italians never hear about the scandals. He has bragged, “Don’t you realize that something does not exist—not an idea, a politician or a product—unless it is on television.” The one area of media that Berlusconi does not control is new media, but so far his critics have not been able to use these effectively. Meanwhile Italian-Swedish director Erik Gandini has made a documentary about all this called “Videocracy.” AP has written of it: “Take a sex scandal, add scantily clad women in a culture where television lies at the nexus of power and politics, and the result is SEX, THIGHS AND VIDEOCRACY.” I’ve got to see it.

If I understand McLuhan correctly, electronic media change the way we experience the world. We get beyond sequential, linear thinking and restore an earlier, almost mythical, way of dealing with the world but at an enhanced level. We recover the tribal and move toward a global village. I am ambivalent about this. I think I can accept the idea that through electronic media we experience reality in a way that is different. Where I have doubts is with the global village idea or that there is emerging one world tribe. Is it really one tribe? Often what we see is people using blogs or online sources just to get information that falls within a perspective we already have. Given their power such media may make even more divided tribes. Granted, McLuhan sees his one world reality as “diverse and discontinuous.” I think the trick is finding ways to link self-selected tribes together. Just because we can talk to anyone in world almost immediately does not mean that we will. This is not entirely a new condition. It is just that powerful tools can make existing tendencies stronger. There is a good thing in the WEB in that we change talk to people from completely different cultural backgrounds. I guess my conclusion is that we as educators need to encourage our students to culturally expansive exchanges to avoid a narrow versiion of tribalism.

On a personal note I have to say that I still feel like an alien in the new world. I was not born in it. I have spent over fifty years in a book (Gutenbreg) world. I cannot and do not want to leave it entirely. I take some encouragement from the model of Homer and the Bible. There oral tradition became written tradition. Maybe something analogous can happen as we move forward. I would buy a Kindl if I had a few extra bucks.

I found much that I thought was good in the Nelson essay on Computer Lib, there are some things in the rhetoric that evoke skepticism in me. First, what did I like? I certainly agree with the comment that compute systems need to be simple for the user. Secondly, I agree that it is good to get beyond thinking sequentially. Third, I do think that is good for students to pursue their curious streaks, and that computers can help in this. When did I become skeptical? It was when I read the box on p. 109. “The human mind is born free, but yet everywhere is in chains.” It has been a long time since I have encountered anyone who voiced this Rousseauan perspective. I know people get enthused about the possibilities for the future, but I do not think that utopian thinking is helpful. Every progressive change in history bring new challenges and issues. We should be prepared for these along with the gains we make.