Category Archives: theory

Any similarity to any person, event, or institution is intentional and anything but coincidential

In search of intentional and unintentional similarities in fiction

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrV1sfJHLHg]

Addio Zio Tom (Goodbye, Uncle Tom) (1971) by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi

“All events, characters and institutions in this motion picture are historically documented and any similarity to any person, black or white, or to any actual events, or institutions is intentional and anything but coincidential.” –from the credits to Goodbye Uncle Tom, see fictionalization and fiction disclaimer.

Thus opens or closes Goodbye Uncle Tom of which a clip is listed above and it provides an excellent introduction to the tenuous relation between fiction and reality.

Addio zio Tom (1971) – Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi
Image sourced here. [Dec 2005]

Two more quotes provide further food for thought:

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction.” Fiction has to make sense – Mark Twain
“The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed.” —Edgar Allan Poe, 1840

If we represent the relationship between fiction and reality on a sliding scale we find on the left hand side: fiction which makes no claim to reality. This kind of fiction is nowadays always preceded by the fiction disclaimer:

“Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”

The above is sometimes preceded by “The characters in this film are fictitious,”.

This kind of fiction is helped by Poe’s quote in its theoretical approach. If done well, this kind of fiction is called the fantastique, that area of literary theory which provides us with an unresolved hesitation as to our position on the reality/fictitiousness scale. Another growth of this kind of fiction is the roman à clef a novel and by extension any sort of fiction describing real-life events behind a façade of fiction. The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include satire and the opportunity to write about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel.

On the right hand side of the scale we find fiction that does make claim to reality. This kind of fiction is nowadays usually preceded by the claim based on true events:

This kind of fiction is helped by Twain’s quote in its theoretical approach. Real stories are often so unbelievable that we need to make the claim that they are based on actual events.

As a narrator of fiction, one is always aided by this claim to capture the audience’s interest. This is true in the case of a joke (tell it as if it has happened to you), in the case of novels (Robinson Crusoe was soi-disant based on actual events) and film (Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) was supposedly about Ed Gein)

A whole range of concepts falls into this category, listed under the heading fictionalization: faction, based on a true story, false document, nonfiction novel, true crime (genre), histories (history of the novel), stranger than fiction and mockumentary.

The funny thing about the right hand position on the fiction/reality scale is that the act of narrating alters reality by default. I always illustrate this point by going back to your youth. You had a brother or sister and you fought with him over something. You went to your mother or father or any other judge-figure, who gave you both the opportunity to tell the story. You both came up of course with a different version.

Which brings me to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the observer effect. If the act of perception alters reality, the act of telling a story alters reality. That is why I dislike films such as Schindler’s List because in this case, “real” documentary material is available. Maybe this is also the case for Goodbye Uncle Tom, but boy, I sure would like to see that film.

L’erotismo by Francesco Alberoni (1986)

L'erotismo by Francesco Alberoni by Jahsonic

Looks like Japanese translation of L’erotismo

I started reading Francesco Alberoni‘s L’erotismo (“Eroticism”, 1986). I discovered Alberoni through de Botton when I read Essays in Love, Alberoni’s predecessor is a cult item.

The main discourse of the book is difference between female and male feelings for eroticism along the continuity/discontinuity axis, an approach I believe first explored by Georges Bataille, although Alberoni invokes Pascal Bruckner and Alain Finkielkraut (Le nouveau désordre amoureux).

It also mentions a 1894 funny study by Francis Galton on skin sensitivity in women and men: The relative sensitivity of men and women at the nape of the neck.

The book is well-informed and references Nina Baym (mother of Nancy Baym) and her work on women’s fiction and female reading and writing practice (and the mishistoriography thereof). It equates female pornography with the novels of Barbara Cartland and her equivalents in Europe (Liala in Italy and Delly in France).

Also mentioned are Helen Hazel, the author of Endless Rapture: Rape, Romance and the Female Imagination[1], a work on the rape fantasy (bodice rippers), and Opus Pistorum by Henry Miller (but actually ghost-written by female writer and entrepreneur Caresse Crosby.

And I’ve only read 10 pages.

Dare I say one of the more interesting works on eroticism to have crossed my hands?

P. S. I’m reading a Dutch translation, I’m not sure if L’erotismo has been translated into English.

Nobrow manifesto #3

A day at De Slegte and I like Stupid ThingsA day at De Slegte and I like Stupid ThingsA day at De Slegte and I like Stupid Things

French Undressing – Naughty Postcards from 1900 to 1920,

L’age d’or de la carte postale and

Kaarten.

I went to De Slegte and found French Undressing by Paul Hammond, along with the previously acquired L’age d’or de la carte postale and Kaarten, a good start for a bibliography regarding postcards, and certainly naughty postcards.

Paul Hammond is a cultural critic on a pair with Colin Wilson, Ado Kyrou and Greil Marcus, to name but a few. He wrote The Shadow and its Shadow (2000) and Marvellous Méliès (1974).

On the first page of French Undressing Hammond quotes from Rimbaud‘s A Season in Hell (“The Alchemy Of The Word“), possibly the earliest defense of popular culture/mass culture. Such a defense always comes from an intellectual, and thus qualifies as a nobrow manifesto, possibly the first of its kind (see prev. once below). I include it here as Nobrow manifesto #3.

“For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes– and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children’s books, old operas, silly old songs, the naïve rhythms of country rimes.” –Translation Paul Schmidt

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWrFUR_CF6c]

Here is a spoken word version of “The Alchemy Of The Word.”

DSC01912

What else did I buy at De Slegte? A silly volume on Baudrillard (pictured below) and an issue of Le Magazine Littéraire dedicated to drug lit, entitled La littérature et la drogue[1] and The Quincunx (I’ve enjoyed this one while on holiday in Malaysia (Tioman Island) twenty years ago).

A day at De Slegte and I like Stupid ThingsA day at De Slegte and I like Stupid ThingsA day at De Slegte and I like Stupid ThingsA day at De Slegte and I like Stupid Things

I did not buy A Humument, Will Self‘s Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys, Le Fantastique dans l’art Flamand by Paul Fierens, Catalog of Unfindable Objects by Carelman, Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic and Eros du dimanche by Anatole Jakovsky.

P. S. Previous nobrow manifestos included Sontag’s The Pornographic Imagination [2] and Fiedler’s “Cross the Border — Close the Gap” [3]

On the nature of guilty pleasures

Related: Mondo Cane (1962) – Mondo Bizarro – Italian cinema – Gualtiero Jacopetti

Mondo Cane (1962) – Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco E. Prosperi

Having recently received comments by Lichanos and o. h. about the validity of guilty pleasure as a separate cultural category I show the film above, Mondo Cane (1962), by Gualtiero Jacopetti and his colleague whose name escapes me at this time.

I always feel tempted instead of arguing to cite a collection of words and concepts which will tautologically exlain the concept. I will not resist the temptation now. Here they come:

bad taste – camp – kitsch – “low culture” – trash – taboo

I continue:

See also: “body” genres” – bread and circuses – “low” art – lowbrow (American art movement) – working class culture – culture – folk culture – popular culture

Related by connotation: artificial – bad taste – basic instinct – camp – cheap – commercial – conventional – common – derivative – entertaining – ephemera – exploitation – formulaic – low budget – lurid – mass – ordinary – pop – popular – proletariat – prurient – sensationalism – scatology – shocking – stereotype – trash – under-the-counter – underground – vulgar

Contrast: “high” culture

See also: low modernism

In film: B-movies – exploitation films – grindhouse films – paracinema – television – video nasties – violent films

In print: comics – escapist fiction – dime novels – genre fiction – men’s magazines – paraliterature – popular fiction – pulp fiction – yellow journalism

In music: disco – house – music hall – popular music – pop music –

In the visual realm: advertising – applied arts – caricature – decorative arts – design – graffiti – kitsch

In performing arts: burlesque – circus – peepshow – striptease – vaudeville –

By genre: adventure – “body” genres – carnival – comedy – horror – melodrama – pornography – romance

Perhaps one day I will put all of the above words in the right order, divide them into chapters, add adjectives, conjunctions, phrases and clauses and page numbers.

Furthermore, guilty pleasures are marketing categories (see the Foute CD products in the Dutch-speaking region), and marketing categories are the strongest indication of genre identity.

Notice that all links go to Jahsonic.com pages, a project which was from the outset a “guilty pleasure” in nature and purpose.

Andrew Sarris @80

The American Cinema Directors and Directions 1929-1968 by you.

The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (1968) – Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris, born on October 31, 1928 in New York, is a U.S. film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism. He is generally credited with popularising this theory in the United States and coining the half-English, half-French term, “auteur theory,” in his essay, “Notes on the Auteur Theory,” which was inspired by critics writing in the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

He wrote book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, published in 1968, an opinionated assessment of films of the sound era, organized by director. The book helped raise an awareness of the role of the film director among the general public.

He is often seen as a rival to Pauline Kael, who had originally attacked the auteur theory in her essay, “Circles and Squares“.

A History of Derision, wikified

A History of Derision

A History of Derision

A History of Derision by way of Illusory Confections who wrote on its subject[1]:

“Be still my beating heart, this is practically everything I adore in one tidy 240 page bundle! But it isn’t referenced anywhere online and I couldn’t even find mention of it on the Atlas Press site. So I zipped an email to Atlas inquiring about it, and, sadly, its nonexistence was confirmed. Apparently it was a planned project that fell to the sidelines and “[1]

the website is the accurate source of what is available, the catalogue part bibliography and part fiction, if you like…

Here it is again in a wikified version,

A History of Derision is an aborted project by Arkhive, an Atlas Press imprint.

It builds on André Breton’s Anthology of Black Humour, but is more a history of French avant-garde.

French Romantics: Sade, Lassailly, Rabbe, Forneret, Nodier, Fourier

Bouzingos: Borel and O’Neddy

Hydropathes: Goudeau, Cros, Haraucourt, Lafargue, Richepin, Tailhade, Rollinat, Monselet, Sapeck, Allais.

Hirsutes and the Chat Noir: Salis, Moréas, Lorrain, Verlaine, Sarcey, Haraucourt.

Arts Incohérents: : Lévy, Rivière, Allais.

Zutistes: Allais, Cros, Nouveau, Rimbaud, Ajalbert, Haraucourt, Verlaine.

La Nouvelle Rive Gauche : Trézenick, D’Aurevilly, Verlaine.

Lutèce: Rall, Rimbaud, Corbière, Caze, Rachilde, Floupette (Vicaire and Beauclair).

Symbolists : de Gourmont, Jarry, Tailhade, Huysmans, Pawlowski.

Ecole de Paris : Apollinaire, Jacob, Salmon, Albert-Birot, Cami.

Dada : Aragon, Picabia, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Satie, Arp, Rigaut.

Surrealism : Desnos, Prévert, Péret, Topor, Magritte, Scutenaire, Daumal, Gilbert-Lecomte.

Situationists : Arnaud and Jorn, Dotremont, Mariën.

Daily Bul & Co: Bury, Béalu, Colinet.

Encyclopédie des FARCES et ATTRAPES et des MYSTIFICATIONS

Farcistes: Encyclopédie des farces et attrapes et des mystifications, François Caradec, Noël Arnaud.[2]

Oulipo.

anyspacewhatever, or, in search of philosophical poetry and poetic philosophy

in search of philosophical poetry and poetic philosophy

theanyspacewhatever

Time-image is a concept of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze which argues that because of film’s inherent ambiguity (it must be “read” as much as it is “seen” and “heard”); it produces what Deleuze calls “any-space-whatever.” The theory was first brought up in his books on film in relation to such directors as Yasujiro Ozu. He borrowed the term from Pascal Augé (although some scholars erringly reference Marc Augé).

Now Guggenheim chief curator Nancy Spector appropriates (borrows) French philosopher Deleuze’s concept as  theanyspacewhatever, an exhibition which brings together new installations by 10 artists including Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Jorge Pardo and Carsten Höller. Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho will be shown backwards in 24-hour sequences during which the museum will remain open.

Any computer-dating questionnaire will try to match intellectual like with like

300px-Madame_X_by_SargeantDying Adonis by Goltzius

Click for credits

“Physically, men and women are generally attracted to each other because of their differences. Ask any group of men from any culture to assess the attractiveness of a female, and they will tend to opt for the figure which curves where they are flat, is soft where they are strong and — though this may be a matter for aesthetic as much as scientific debate — swells where they are narrow. The same, in reverse, is true of women, who will tend to express a preference for men with broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips. … Yet in every other respect, we expect the sexes to be attracted to each other because of their similarities. Any computer-dating questionnaire will try to match intellectual like with like. —Brain Sex


Ocular eroticism II

The ocular eroticism mentioned in my previous post appears to be a niche art criticism trope.

Evidence:

Essays in Critical Materialism

Reconfiguring the Renaissance: Essays in Critical Materialism – Page 159

by Jonathan V. Crewe – Renaissance – 171 pages

37 The same model of what we may call “ocular eroticism” informs secular literature as well: one thinks of Wyatt’s “Through mine eye the stroke from her did …
Transcendence, Desire, and the Limits of ...

Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage: Transcendence, Desire, and the Limits of … – Page 103

by Celia R. Daileader – Performing Arts – 1998 – 194 pages

… displacing the “ocular eroticism” prevalent from Plato through Wyatt – an eroticism which pertained to the longing for one’s lady as well as the longing …
Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England

Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England – Page 208

by Gordon McMullan, David Matthews – Drama – 2007 – 287 pages

… point is that Mary’s ‘erotic fragrance’ — a vestigial remnant of medieval ‘ocular eroticism‘ — presupposes the importance of Mary’s physical knowledge …
Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing

Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing – Page 134

by Meredith Anne Skura – Performing Arts – 1993 – 325 pages

… particularly of the erotics of the gaze.50 The ocular eroticism associated with the hunt in general in Love’s Labour’s Lost is here epitomized in …
The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima

The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima – Page 70

by Jerry S. Piven – Literary Criticism – 2004 – 273 pages

… which is also consistent with Mishima’s ocular eroticism as simultaneously retaining, destroying, and merging with those on whom he gazes, …

Sexual Aliveness: A Reichian Gestalt Perspective

by Edward W. L. Smith – Self-Help – 1987 – 126 pages

Gotta love Google books.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Poetry… But Were Afraid to Ask Timothy Leary

Goede Raad is Vuur

Goede Raad is Vuur (cover photograph: ‘De Toren van Babel‘ in Ruigoord by Marrit Dijkstra)

Goede Raad is Vuur is a Dutch language poetry anthology and at the same time a theory of poetry, first published by Simon Vinkenoog in 2004.

Simon Vinkenoog is the Dutch Timothy Leary, just as Jean-Jacques Lebel was the French Timothy Leary, see counterparts.

The book is the definitive guide to cult poetry and begs for a English translation.

These are the poets and theorists mentioned:

Gerrit Achterberg, Fadhil Al-Azzawi, Hans Andreus, Antonin Artaud, Charles Baudelaire, Hakim Bey, Breyten Breytenbach, C. Buddingh’, Remco Campert, Ernesto Cardenal, Hugo Claus, Jean Cocteau, Gregory Corso, e.e. cummings, Isidore Ducasse, Jan Elburg, Desiderius Erasmus, Clayton Eshleman, David Gascoyne, Guido Gezelle, Allen Ginsberg, Goethe, Jan Hanlo, Hermann Hesse, Johan Huizinga, Jos Joosten, Rutger Kopland, Gerrit Kouwenaar, D. H. Lawrence, Lucebert, Navaho, Ben Okri, Paul van Ostaijen, Brian Patten, Ilja Leopard Pfeijffer, Sybren Polet, Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Rodenko, Jalal al-Din Roemi, A.Roland Holst, Nanao Sakaki, Bert Schierbeek, Hans Sleutelaar, Gary Snyder, Fritz Usinger, Hans Verhagen, Dominique de Villepin, Eddy van Vliet, Tito de Vries, Alan Watts, Lew Welch and Walt Whitman.

In this collection for example: “The Right Mask” by Brian Patten in a Dutch translation more powerful than its English original:

One night a poem came up to a poet.
From now on, it said, you must wear a mask.
What kind of mask? asked the poet.
A rose mask, said the poem.
I’ve used it already, said the poet,
I’ve exhausted it.
Then wear the mask that’s made out of
a nightingale’s song, use that mask.
Oh, it’s an old mask, said the poet,
it’s all used up.
Nonsense, said the poem, it’s the perfect mask,
still, try on the god mask,
now that mask illuminates heaven.
It’s a tight mask, said the poet,
and the stars crawl about in it like ants.
Then try on the troubador’s mask, or the singer’s mask,
try on all the popular masks.
I have, said the poet, but they fit so easily.

Read the rest of this sublime poem here.