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Aug 28, 2008
COMMENTS
This is not an exit.
May 3, 2008, 2:32 pm - RealmOfSoftDelusions
1.
Sleeplessness... It's one of those nights where at midnight, even after a long day, I can't get to sleep. 'The Pianist' is on television, and if anything should be enough to put me to sleep, it's television. As it is, 'The Pianist' is about the invasion of Poland. And, for some reason, I have the sound turned off and merely read the subtitles.
Freezing temperatures so there are frozen people on thes street. People so hungry that when they fight for food and it ends up on the ground, they go down on all fours to eat it. People in wheelchairs thrown from the fifth floor to land dead on the ground below. People randomly chosen and indiscriminately shot. People ridiculed and made fun of when forced to dance. The trains departing for the death camps and the protagonist who knows and understands where his family is going, but is helpless to stop it. Watching as his friend is forced to lie on the ground and wait while the person aiming a gun at his head reloads after killing the six people lying next to him have been shot. The friend is shot ad the protagonist can't do anything about it.
This should have brought about some kind of emotional disturbance in me. It didn't. Now, it would be easy to say that if the sound was turned on, it would have. Or, if it wasn't midnight, it would have. Or, if it was a better television. But it's not the case.
These are images which have been shown so many times before. Actually, I hadn't seen the frozen people image previously. They looked very realistic and blue. And dead.
2.
In a tobacco shop, there was a display of various pipes. There was also a cigarette case with a pop-art picture of Che Guevarra. And an ashtray with his picture. And a packet of cigarettes.
3.
It is in fact a mini-genre; Holocaust Literature. This isn't to say that the events shouldn't have been written about. This isn't to say that the films shouldn't have been made. This isn't to say that 'The Pianist' isn't a good film. It's just that once we've seen it all so many times before, it loses it's power. The books about Auschwitz can tell of the horrors, of carrying the dead back to the camp after a day because there would be people shot if they were short at the headcount. The cells. The rooms of hair. The rooms filled with glasses. The rooms filled with luggage. The stories about teeth being pulled and sold. About being told they were showers. Driven in the back of cars.
And once it's all been told, it becomes a reflex. "Do you want fries with that?" When the tourist guides at Auschwitz give anecdotes, do they think about what they say? Do they see the humanity any more? If people break down and cry, do they actually feel the sorrow any more? Do they feel anything or do they know when people will panic or scream or look away? Because it is the case with the literature. We know how people are supposed to feel when an innocent life is taken, especially if it's taken because of pure cruelty.
If we can create art where we know what the feeling is supposed to be on the reader or audience, where does it leave us? Are we robots? It is actually destroying our opportunity to feel and to make decisions about what we feel.
If the sound, and, especially, the music for the film had been audible, it would have been an even better indication of when to feel sad, when to feel tense, when to feel agitated. It would have left even less scope to make a decision.
4.
"A string of days pass. During the nights, I've been sleeping in twenty-minute intervals. I feel aimless, things look cloudy [...]during a quiet lunch at Alex Goes to Camp, where I have the lamb sausage salad with lobster and white beans sprayed with lime and foie gras vinegar. I'm wearing faded jeans, an Armani jacket and a white, hundred-and-forty-dollar Comme des Gar9ons T-shirt. I make a phone call to check my messages. I return some videotapes. I stop at an automated teller. Last night, Jeanette asked me, "Patrick, why do you keep razor blades in your wallet?" The Patty Winters Show whis morning was about a boy who fell in love with a box of soap.
Unable to maintain a credible public persona, I find myself roaming the zoo in Central Park, restlessly. Drug dealers hang our along the perimeter by the gates and the smell of horse shit from passing carriages drifts over them into the zoo, and the tips of skyscrapers, apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, the Trump Plaza, the AT&T building, surround the park which surrounds the zoo and heightens its unnaturalness. [...] The zoo seems empty, devoid of life. The polar bears look stained and drugged. A crocodile floats morosely in an oily makeshift pond. The puffins stare sadly from their glass cage. Toucans have beaks as sharp as knives. The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by chldren. [...] It's not the seals I hate - it's the audeince's enjoyment of them that bothers me.
Sleeplessness... It's one of those nights where at midnight, even after a long day, I can't get to sleep. 'The Pianist' is on television, and if anything should be enough to put me to sleep, it's television. As it is, 'The Pianist' is about the invasion of Poland. And, for some reason, I have the sound turned off and merely read the subtitles.
Freezing temperatures so there are frozen people on thes street. People so hungry that when they fight for food and it ends up on the ground, they go down on all fours to eat it. People in wheelchairs thrown from the fifth floor to land dead on the ground below. People randomly chosen and indiscriminately shot. People ridiculed and made fun of when forced to dance. The trains departing for the death camps and the protagonist who knows and understands where his family is going, but is helpless to stop it. Watching as his friend is forced to lie on the ground and wait while the person aiming a gun at his head reloads after killing the six people lying next to him have been shot. The friend is shot ad the protagonist can't do anything about it.
This should have brought about some kind of emotional disturbance in me. It didn't. Now, it would be easy to say that if the sound was turned on, it would have. Or, if it wasn't midnight, it would have. Or, if it was a better television. But it's not the case.
These are images which have been shown so many times before. Actually, I hadn't seen the frozen people image previously. They looked very realistic and blue. And dead.
2.
In a tobacco shop, there was a display of various pipes. There was also a cigarette case with a pop-art picture of Che Guevarra. And an ashtray with his picture. And a packet of cigarettes.
3.
It is in fact a mini-genre; Holocaust Literature. This isn't to say that the events shouldn't have been written about. This isn't to say that the films shouldn't have been made. This isn't to say that 'The Pianist' isn't a good film. It's just that once we've seen it all so many times before, it loses it's power. The books about Auschwitz can tell of the horrors, of carrying the dead back to the camp after a day because there would be people shot if they were short at the headcount. The cells. The rooms of hair. The rooms filled with glasses. The rooms filled with luggage. The stories about teeth being pulled and sold. About being told they were showers. Driven in the back of cars.
And once it's all been told, it becomes a reflex. "Do you want fries with that?" When the tourist guides at Auschwitz give anecdotes, do they think about what they say? Do they see the humanity any more? If people break down and cry, do they actually feel the sorrow any more? Do they feel anything or do they know when people will panic or scream or look away? Because it is the case with the literature. We know how people are supposed to feel when an innocent life is taken, especially if it's taken because of pure cruelty.
If we can create art where we know what the feeling is supposed to be on the reader or audience, where does it leave us? Are we robots? It is actually destroying our opportunity to feel and to make decisions about what we feel.
If the sound, and, especially, the music for the film had been audible, it would have been an even better indication of when to feel sad, when to feel tense, when to feel agitated. It would have left even less scope to make a decision.
4.
"A string of days pass. During the nights, I've been sleeping in twenty-minute intervals. I feel aimless, things look cloudy [...]during a quiet lunch at Alex Goes to Camp, where I have the lamb sausage salad with lobster and white beans sprayed with lime and foie gras vinegar. I'm wearing faded jeans, an Armani jacket and a white, hundred-and-forty-dollar Comme des Gar9ons T-shirt. I make a phone call to check my messages. I return some videotapes. I stop at an automated teller. Last night, Jeanette asked me, "Patrick, why do you keep razor blades in your wallet?" The Patty Winters Show whis morning was about a boy who fell in love with a box of soap.
Unable to maintain a credible public persona, I find myself roaming the zoo in Central Park, restlessly. Drug dealers hang our along the perimeter by the gates and the smell of horse shit from passing carriages drifts over them into the zoo, and the tips of skyscrapers, apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, the Trump Plaza, the AT&T building, surround the park which surrounds the zoo and heightens its unnaturalness. [...] The zoo seems empty, devoid of life. The polar bears look stained and drugged. A crocodile floats morosely in an oily makeshift pond. The puffins stare sadly from their glass cage. Toucans have beaks as sharp as knives. The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by chldren. [...] It's not the seals I hate - it's the audeince's enjoyment of them that bothers me.