Category Archives: theory

The Assault on Culture (1988) – Stewart Home

The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War (1988) – Stewart Home
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Stewart Home (born 1962) is a British fiction writer, subcultural pamphleteer, underground art historian, and activist. His mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, was a model and hostess who was associated with the radical arts scene in Notting Hill Gate. She knew such people as the writer and situationist Alexander Trocchi. Stewart was put up for adoption soon after his birth.

The Assault on Culture, originally written but rejected as a B.A. thesis, is an underground art history sketching Stewart Home’s ultimately personal history of ideas and influences in post-World War II fringe radical art and political currents, and including – for the first time in a book – a tactically manipulated history of Neoism (including character assassinations of individual Neoist) that was continued in the later book Neoism, Plagiarism and Praxis. Despite its highly personal perspective and agenda, The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is considered a useful art-history work, providing an introduction to a range of cultural currents which had, at that time at least, been under-documented. Like Home’s other publications of that time, it played an influential part in renewing interest in the Situationist International. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Home

See also: Lettrism – Situationism – assault – culture – 1988

Punk Rock: So What? (1999) – Roger Sabin

Punk Rock: So What? (1999) – Roger Sabin
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From the publisher

It’s now over twenty years since punk first pogoed its way into our consciousness. Punk Rock: So What? brings together a new generation of writers, journalists and scholars to provide the first comprehensive assessment of punk and its place in popular music history, culture and myth. Combining new research, methodologies and exclusive interviews, Punk Rock: So What? brings a fresh perspective to the analysis of punk culture, and kicks over many of the established beliefs about the meaning of punk.

Punk Rock: So What? re-situates punk in its historical context, analyzing the possible origins of punk in the New York art scene and Manchester clubs as well as in Malcolm McClaren’s brain. The contributors question whether punk deserves its reputation as an anti-fascist, anti-sexist movement, challenging standard views of punk prevalent since the 1970s, and discussing the role played by such key figures as Johnny Rotten, Richard Hell, Malcolm McLaren.

Tracing punk’s legacy in comics, literature, art and cinema as well as music and fashion–from films such as Sid and Nancy and The Great Rock `n’ Roll Swindle to the work of contemporary artists such as Gavin Turk and Sarah Lucas–the contributors establish that, if anything, punk was more culturally significant than anyone has yet suggested.

Contributors: Frank Cartledge, Paul Cobley, Robert Garnett, David Huxley, David Kerekes, Guy Lawley, George McKay, Andy Medhurst, Suzanne Moore, Lucy O’Brien, Bill Osgerby, Miriam Rivett, Roger Sabin, Mark Sinker. Roger Sabin is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design.

Roger Sabin also edited Below Critical Radar : Fanzines and Alternative Comics from 1976 to Now (2001) – Roger Sabin [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] and Adult Comics: An Introduction (1993) – Roger Sabin [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

See also: punk rock – 1999

Sonic Alchemy (2004) – David N. Howard

Sonic Alchemy: Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings (2004) – David N. Howard
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I read the chapter on Lee Perry and King Tubby and liked it. Howard compares Bunny Lee’s ‘flying cymbal’ sound with the ‘Philly Bump’ American soul beat.

From the publisher

You may not have heard of them, but you have certainly heard their songs! From the lo-fidelity origins of early pioneers to today’s dazzling technocrats, the role of the music producer is as murkily undefined as it is wholly essential. Sonic Alchemy: Visionary Music Producers and Their Maverick Recordings is an exploration of the influence of the often colorful, idiosyncratic and visionary music producers through popular music and the fascinatingly crucial role they have played in shaping the way we hear pop music today. Sonic Alchemy is nothing short of the secret history of the music producer.

See also: music production – 2004

New Science (1725) – Giambattista Vico

New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations (1725) – Giambattista Vico [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

James Joyce was influenced by Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), an Italian philosopher who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his major work, New Science. Joyce puns on his name many times in Finnegans Wake, including the “first” sentence: “by a commodius vicus of recirculation”. Vico’s theory involves the recurrence of three stages of history: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans—after which the cycle repeats itself. Finnegans Wake begins in mid-sentence, with the continuation of the book’s unfinished final sentence, creating a circle whereby the novel has no true beginning or end. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return [Oct 2006]

See also Giambattista Vico

In search of cinematic realism

While Kracauer and Bazin located cinematic realism in distraction and plotlessness, which they saw as structurally analogous to the unscripted, indeterminate, ‘underplotted’ nature of reality, many recent films dilute even further the modality or intensity of narrative, spatializing time into disconnected and, through editing, treated as parallel narrative strands. This kind of indeterminacy proceeds from overplotting, from an excess of disconnected, reversible (i.e. meaningless) phenomena, events, and characters which acquire a minimal, purely formal kind of significance by virtue of being placed alongside one another: their only ‘meaning’ consists in their allegedly simultaneous existence with other phenomena, events and characters. –Realism in European Film Theory and Cinema (3/1/06; collection) by Trifonova, Temenuga via http://cfp.english.upenn.edu/archive/2006-02/0017.html [Oct 2006]

Theories of Film (1974) – Andrew Tudor
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The next chapter [of Theories of Film, Andrew Tudor.(NY: Viking, Cinema One Series, 1974)] is called “The Aesthetics of Realism: Bazin and Kracauer.” Tudor is sympathetic to Kracauer’s desire to formulate a consistent aesthetic system, but argues that Kracauer is hopelessly confused and in any case perpetually hedging his bets (seesawing on the question of whether “realism” involves being real in a certain sense or only appearing real). Among Kracauer’s assumptions which Tudor cannot accept is one that Kracauer shares with Bazin. An essentialist approach posits that a medium has a “nature”—in film’s case, a photographic nature which determines its “natural affinity” with recording and revealing reality. Tudor cannot accept this non-social aesthetic of the “real.” He sees in both Kracauer and Bazin a combination of positivism and romantic faith in nature, which is in any case ultimately anti-cinematic. –William Rothman via http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC09folder/TheoriesofFilm.html [Oct 2006]

I must mention a final slender point of disagreement. By including Murnau and Dreyer as realists Bazin is falling into the same trap that Siegfried Kracauer does when he accepts certain fantastical/formalistic scenes when they are in the proper “realist” context, such as a dream or a specific point of view (Tudor 94). Bazin is on shaky ground when he removes Nosferatu and The Passion of Joan of Arc from the expressionistic mode on the frail basis of Nosferatu‘s on-location photography and Dreyer’s refrain from the use of make-up for his actors (Bazin, What is Cinema Vol.1 109-110). What then becomes of Nosferatu‘s sinister shadows, fast motion and negative photography, and expressionistic acting, and The Passion of Joan of Arc‘s abstraction of space and extreme reliance on close-ups? In neither case do the slim realist tendencies compensate for the overwhelming artistic intervention, as does Welles’ spatial realism for example. Both films fail to completely qualify for either of Bazin’s realistic camps –the documentary- like “pure” realism or the spatial realism. Although one can argue that Nosferatu is ‘more realist’ than other expressionist films of the time, and that The Passion of Joan of Arc is so unique and iconoclastic in style, that the affect on the spectator is one of realism. –Donato Totaro via http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/bazin_intro.html [Oct 2006]

Boredom (1924) – Siegfried Kracauer

The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (1995) – Siegfried Kracauer
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The Mass Ornament is a collection of essays by Siegfried Kracauer first anthologized in 1995. It features a 1924 essay entitled Boredom. Kracauer is most famous for his film criticism book From Caligari to Hitler.

“People today who still have time for boredom and yet are not bored are certainly just as boring as those who never get around to being bored.”

“Boredom becomes the the only proper occupation, since it provides a kind of guarantee that one is, so to speak, still in control of one’s existence… [O]ne flirts with ideas that even become quite respectable in the process, and one considers various projects that, for no reason, pretend to be serious. Eventually one becomes content to do nothing more than be with oneself, without knowing what one actually should be doing… And in ecstasy you name what you have always lacked: the great passion.”

Purse lip square jaw writes:

Kracauer writes about boredom as a way of resisting constant distraction or, in other words, defying Debord’s spectacle and Lefebvre’s colonisation of everyday life by the commodity. But [Ben] Highmore suggests that Kracauer also shares an affinity with 1970s punk: “to declare yourself bored is not a mark of failure but the necessary precondition for the possibility of generating the authentically new (rather than the old dressed up as the new).” —http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2005/02/in-favour-of-boredom.php [Oct 2006]

See also: Siegfried Kracauer – 1924

Of boredom and interestingness

In defense of interestingness.

A week ago I reported on Harry’s ironically titled ‘Boring Art Films’ blog-a-thon. Harry specifies ironically because he does not believe that the type of contemplative cinema he refers to is indeed boring. Others may find these films boring, we think they are interesting.

While my favourite director of contemplative cinema or essay films (as Doug Dilliman has called them) is probably Catherine Breillat, I want to take this opportunity to write about a category of films which are boring if viewed from a to z – films which may not be worth to spend the 90 to 120 minutes to watch them – but that are all the more interesting to read about. These are the kind of films I wrote about on my page anti-film. The introduction went as follows:

Anti-film is film that does not respect the rules of film. For example, Andy Warhol, who forces us to watch a sleeping man during five hours, Chris Marker, who makes a film out of filmed photographs, with no moving images and Guy Debord’s Howlings in Favor of de Sade which dispenses with images and narrative altogether. [Jul 2006]

Claiming the aesthetic value of the category anti-film is a further defense of my mini-essays in praise of secondary literature and in praise of the paratext, which takes a meta-approach to the arts stating that films that actually ought to be viewed, books that actually ought to be read are just as interesting to read about.

I mean if you take the title of the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die seriously, you have to exclude the wealth of films which are extremely interesting but boring to watch in their entirety. That’s why I call my filmography 199 films you could read about before you die (2006), replacing the word should by could and see by read about.

Which brings me to my contribution to this blog-a-thon, the 1952 film Howlings in Favor of de Sade[Youtube] by Guy Debord (the man who published a book with a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy other books placed next to it):

Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade) (1952) – Guy Debord
image sourced here.

Instead of using pictures, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade) consists of black and white film leader in alternation for some 75 minutes. Debord’s voice is heard during the white sequences, while the black sections, often lasting minutes, are silent.

On April 9, 2002, Guy Debord’s films were screened in Paris in the Magic Cinema. Although I stated earlier that my purpose is to showcase films which I wouldn’t dream of seeing in their entirety, I would have been tempted to go to this screening (If I had lived in Paris and if I had known about the event). Not for the qualities of these films but from a tribal/sociological point of view: to see who attends this type of screenings.

In search of plotlessness

Metafilter has an entry on plotlessness.

I love Raymond Carver’s short stories because they’re complete and perfect without much happening in them, in terms of action and plot development. What I’d like to find is some novels that are similarly “plotless”? Do they exist?

There are Carver stories which are so good you HAVE to finish them, even though all that happens is someone goes to bingo, sees someone else there, goes home, feels sad and goes to bed. I’m looking for novels where the prime reason you keep on reading isn’t to see “what happens” but because you want to spend more time with the characters or the writing itself; ideally books where very little “happens” at all… metafilter, March 8, 2005

And Wikipedia has an article on slice of life story, which reminds me of the boredom and realism of everyday life and the kitchen sink drama:

A slice of life story is a story which has no real plot. Often it has no exposition, no action, no conflict, and no denouement, but an open ending. It usually tries to depict the every-day life of ordinary people. The term slice of life is actually a (more or less) dead metaphor: it often seems as if the author had taken a knife and cut out a slice of the lives of some characters, apparently not bothering at all where the cuts were made.

It has also been defined as an “episode of actual experience represented realistically and with little alteration in a dramatic, fictional, or journalistic work.”. —Wikipedia

The greatest critics help us understand

The greatest critics help us understand the greatest of poets and novelists; but sometimes the opposite is also true. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve in 19th-century France wrote marvelous essays on literature, which are perfectly readable today. Yet if you want to get at Sainte-Beuve’s deeper instincts, you should read him in the light cast by his brilliant friend Victor Hugo. Edmund Wilson was Sainte-Beuve’s intellectual heir in the United States — the man who figured out how to write Sainte-Beuve-like essays in American English. Yet Wilson, too, makes a little more sense if you read him in a light cast by Hemingway, Dos Passos and Fitzgerald — Wilson’s novel-writing friends and contemporaries. –Paul Berman, 2003, The New York Times