Tag Archives: Television

WORLD ON A WIRE/ WELT AM DRAHT – PART 1, (RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, WEST GERMANY, 1973).

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

Fassbinder continues to astound, this time essaying science fiction, for television, in a two-parter, each of feature length. What is the world? What is the self? What is real? How do we know? The world of WORLD ON A WIRE is one of simulation and simulacra dramatised a decade before Baudrillard published his book philosophising the concepts. Ideas and situations from WORLD ON A WIRE can be seen in later films like BLADE RUNNER (Ridley Scott, 1982), TOTAL RECALL (Paul Verhoeven, 1990), STRANGE DAYS (Katherine Bigelow, 1995), DARK CITY (Alex Proyas, 1998) and the MATRIX films, amongst many others.

Creating a sci-fi world

Set in the near future, the action revolves around the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science’s supercomputer, here called the Simulacrum, which hosts a simulation of a world with over 9,000 ‘identity units’, who live as human beings unaware that they and their world are just computer code, a world on a wire. Government, industry, and lobbying groups are in cahoots to use whatever findings they discover from the identity units in that world, indistinguishable from humans, so they can sell more stuff, foretell or rig elections results, etc.

Beautiful design by Kurt Raab, and always with a queer element

As the action begins, Professor Vollmer (Adrian Hoven), the technical director of the program, has made a new discovery that would mean ‘the end of this world’ should it get out. He dies soon after in mysterious circumstances. Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), the Professor’s replacement has a discussion with Günther Lause (Ivan Desny), the head of security, about what happened but Lause seems to disappear before his very eyes. Moreover, when Stiller asks others about Lause, no one seems to know of him: he seems to have been erased from the world. Stiller seeks answers by donning an electronic cap that permits him to travel within the simulacra as an ‘identity unit’ where he sees the Lause that non one in his world now seems to know talking to a mysterious figure, Einstein (Gottfried John), who seems to be able to simulate identity across various simulacra. Could it be that Stiller himself is an identity unit and that his world is simply a different level of simulacra?

Sinewy Tracking shots

Fassbinder and cinematographer Micahel Ballhaus use the modernist banlieus and shopping centres then being built outside Paris as a setting. They film in sinewy tracks and dollies, some thrillingly barely an inch above the floor, using mirrors or through windows and glass to create a sense of doubling and doubt, of estrangement. Indeed the first image in the film is shot slightly out of focus with a wobbly quality to indicate that the world is unstable and might dissolve into code at any moment.

A world of screens

Old stars

This feeling of estrangement is also added to by the cast, Fassbinder’s usual repertory (Margit Cartesen, Wolfgang Schenk, Ulli Lomel, Ingrid Caven, El Hedi ben Salem) here deliberately enacting the kind of stiffness they were often accused of, but also in the casting of old movie stars from another era (Adrian Hoven, Ivan Desny, Elma Karlowa) bringing their personas and what they represented into this futuristic pastiche of past, present, and future; of the world being the same but different, now peopled by strange mythic creatures from other eras and thus slightly fantastic and unreal; something also added to by evoking powerful moments of historical memory in new contexts (here a Marlene impersonator, using her voice, in a nightclub setting, singing ‘See What The Boys in The Backroom Will Have’. A thrilling and surprising work, very beautiful to look at, with gorgeous design by Kurt Raab and and unsettling electronic score from Gottfried Hüngsberg. I’m eager for the second part.

Marlene Simulation.

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 320 – The Many Saints of Newark

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

We’re joined by Dr. Ben Lamb of Teesside University, television scholar and Sopranos megafan, to discuss The Many Saints of Newark, the prequel to The Sopranos. Set in the 1960s and 1970s, it depicts a young Tony Soprano – played by James Gandolfini’s son, Michael – and offers a portrait of the family, time, place and culture that shaped him, but focuses primarily on his uncle Dickie, to whom he looks up.

We also discuss the film’s incorporation of the 1967 Newark riots, and the black gang that rivals the Italians’; how violence is used and what it expresses about the characters; whether the film is cinematic; and whether some of its characters’ actions are believable. And, key to the discussion: While Ben and José are familiar with the show, Mike’s never made it past episode one, and that disparity raises questions – how much knowledge of the show is required to understand this film, how much does it reward fan investment, and does it inspire Mike to finally watch the series?

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 269 – Small Axe: Education

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

 

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Small Axe ends with what, based on his 2014 profile in the Guardian, we take to be a tale partially inspired by Steve McQueen’s own childhood. In Education, a young dyslexic boy, Kingsley, is transferred to a school for the “educationally subnormal”, a real practice in the 1970s that disproportionately involved black children. The institution to which he’s sent is barely a school, the children left unsupervised by bored teachers and allowed to run riot – but it’s covertly investigated by a group of activists hoping to fight and end the system.

Mike relates to the film, recognising in Kingsley’s mum the same righteous anger and desire to fight for her son that his own mum showed for him as a youngster, and to its evocation of British school life. (It may be set twenty years prior to his school years, but British kids have had to perform London’s Burning on recorders and tambourines since time immemorial.) The aesthetic evokes the era vividly, the visual quality of the images, the shot selections and editing all perfectly emulating the look of Play for Today, the iconic anthology series. And as with the rest of Small Axe, a concise historical struggle within Britain’s wider racist society is effectively rendered complex…

… up to a point. Though the situation and its effects are complex, the characters are mostly fairly one-note, and the film’s ending is rather pat – even a little phony, though it’s forgivable for this series to want to end on a hopeful note. Still, it’s an intelligent, thoughtful film that fits in perfectly amongst the rest of the series, and as we have throughout, we implore you to watch it all.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 268 – Small Axe: Alex Wheatle

Eavesdropping at the Movies, podcast, , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

The theme of assimilation is given a fascinating twist in Alex Wheatle, the fourth Small Axe film. While Mangrove and Red, White and Blue, in particular, depicted black people’s attempts to assimilate into mainland British culture and life and the racism they faced, the title character here is a young black man brought up in an abusive children’s home, orphaned from his parents, and whose move to Brixton sees him culturally dislocated and having to, in effect, learn to ‘be black’.

Cultural and familial dislocation are connected through Alex. The abandonment by his parents led to his upbringing by the state, amongst white Britons, and when an influential Rastafarian he meets in prison expounds on the importance of education and knowing one’s past, to Alex, he’s speaking just as much about his personal past as about the history of the African disapora. This is the most interesting aspect of Alex Wheatle and we focus on it, but there’s more to discuss, including the continued invocation of music as a kind of life-giving force, how Alex learns to be black and British and the spaces in which that happens, and director Steve McQueen’s expressive formal visual storytelling.

Alex Wheatle elegantly tells a unique and complex story, and we continue to urge you to watch this remarkable series of films in its entirety.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 267 – Small Axe: Red, White and Blue

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Another Steve McQueen rendition of a true story, Red, White and Blue examines institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police, as did Mangrove – but from the inside. Leroy Logan, a research scientist, applies to the police with the express intention of combating its attitude and behaviour towards black people, in part because of his father’s own abuse at their hands.

The theme of black British identity runs throughout Small Axe, and here it’s intriguingly augmented by imagery of the Queen; we discuss how it can be interpreted, including as a symbol of the common nationality the Windrush generation ostensibly shares with British-born white people, and a painful reminder of the fact that that shared identity is not truly embodied, and also as an icon of the establishment Leroy hopes to disrupt and improve. We also concentrate on Leroy’s relationship with his father, which frames the entire film, and how their attitudes, experiences and understanding of each other intersect.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 264 – Small Axe: Lovers Rock

Eavesdropping at the Movies, podcast, , , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Small Axe continues with Lovers Rock, a stunning musical set in a house party in the 1980s. Hit follows hit on the soundtrack, and José in particular is blown away by how Steve McQueen’s camera observes its euphoric subjects, concentrating on specific body parts, taking as much time as it likes to explore the mood, the resulting experience as sensuous as any we can recall. We discuss the cross-national identity the partygoers occupy, the Christian symbolism conspicuously on display, the open-ended narrative structure, and more, but always returning to the bold and brilliant dancefloor sequences. A masterpiece.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 263 – Small Axe: Mangrove

Eavesdropping at the Movies, podcast, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s remarkable anthology of five films made for the BBC, begins with Mangrove, a dramatisation of the 1971 trial of the Mangrove Nine, a key event in British history in which the institutional racism of the Metropolitan Police was successfully litigated by members of the black community in Notting Hill. While it is undoubtedly key, it’s an event with which neither Mike nor José is familiar, and the film embodies the BBC’s iconic mission statement of “inform, educate, entertain”, doing all three wonderfully.

We discuss the way in which Mangrove both fits into and demonstrates an evolution of McQueen’s filmmaking – it’s as powerful and subtly impassioned as any of his previous work, but, perhaps owing to the medium for which it is made, unusually accessible, less keen to make the audience seek its depths for itself. The long-term implications of the trial in raising the nation’s consciousness about institutional racism are clear to the characters, and they’re not shy about discussing them, indulging in justified and welcome exposition. Mike discusses the differences between the characters, particularly Frank Crichlow, the owner of the titular restaurant, and Darcus Howe, an intellectual who is introduced to us as such, and how in which they play off each other, and particularly the way in which Howe persuades Crichlow of his central place in the West Indian immigrant community and their fight to address the racism they face from the police. And José picks up on McQueen’s style and visual expressiveness, confidently holding some shots for a long time, and carefully composing others with considerations of framing and colour to create striking imagery.

Mangrove is the first of an extraordinary series of films about black British history and the experience of West Indian immigrants and their children in the 1970s and 80s, and our podcasts on the others will follow. They’re on iPlayer and unmissable.

Chris McNicholl wrote José with the following, which I expect will be of interest:

I just finished listening to your podcast on Small Axe. I enjoyed it very much, and I’m looking forward to rewatching it again in light of some of your observations, especially the image compositions. I’ll make a couple of observations though. I think the young female protagonist somewhere in the film makes a passing reference to Ogun in a discussion with the owner of the restaurant. Well, i think that’s the cultural origin of the film’s title, and not only the Bob Marley song. Ogun in Afro-Caribbean derived religions is the god of iron and metals. A god of war and justice and protector of the community. And along with swords and machetes and other weapons, he is sometimes depicted with a small axe protruding from his head. He is the guy who opens the way by clearing away injustices.

On the subject of Darcus Howe. He is actually C.L. R. James’ nephew. And James lived in Darcus’ basement in Brixton. It’s quite a famous basement, actually. Stuart Hall and Edward Said visited him there and did interviews with him. And I know the government installed one of those Blue Plaques honouring where he lived in South London. Also, do you recall the scene where Darcus is lying on the sofa in the living room reading a text and his wife or girlfriend slaps it out of his hands and says I’ve had enough of these black jacobins, or something to that effect? Well, he is reading James’ famous text on the Haitian revolution, entitled The Black Jacobins. (see the attachment). That text in itself has an interesting history, given that it was first written as a play around 1936 and was staged shortly after in the West End with Paul Robeson playing Toussaint L’Ouverture before James worked it up into a book.

Anyhow, I am looking forward to listening to your thoughts on Lovers Rock.

 

Lastly Roy Stafford has written a really interesting introduction to Small Axe, which you can read here:

and also a really informative piece on Mangrove, which can be accessed here:

 

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eva Kastelic — Avatar: The Last Airbender, An Example of Pastiche or a Case of Cultural Appropriation

Practice of Film Criticism 2020, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

A video essay by Eva Katelic on TV and on animation, one that asks a question worth asking — is Avatar pastiche or cultural appropriation? — and that mobilises a whole array of audio-visual sources and techniques to help provide an answer. Also, great fun to watch.

 

 

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)

 

From the anime inspired, bright coloured animation to its bold, yet realistic, fighting styles, I believe that what truly sets the show apart from other kid’s series is its skilful interweaving of varying cultural artistic practices under a single story.

 

The show is set in an alternate universe that is comprised of four nations, the fire, water, air and earth nations. What differentiates this animated world from ours is that certain characters, called benders, have the power to control the elements to their will. There is only one person who is able to control more than one given element and that is the Avatar. The Avatar is destined to restore peace and balance amongst the nations which have been at war for the past 100 years. There is always only one avatar in the world at any given point in time and as soon as one dies the next one is born, this is called the avatar cycle. The next avatar in the avatar cycle is a young airbender called Aang. Aang wakes after being frozen in an iceberg for the past 100 years and, upon awakening, is burdened with the task of mastering all forms of bending to end the 100-year war. The overarching goal of defeating the fire lord remains the same throughout all three seasons. The series is a classic coming of age story which follows Aang on his journey of defeating the fire nation throughout all three seasons. During Aang’s journey the audience discovers the carefully constructed world which the show is set in. We discover the oddly realistic fighting styles, abstract yet grounded architecture and the prominent cultural norms which shape the avatar’s world.

 

The video critique delves into the dialectical tension between pastiche and cultural appropriation within the diverse cultural references of the Tv series Avatar: The Last Airbender. I delve into the show’s incorporation of the style of popular Japanese animation, how the show blends together diverse architectural styles, how the show’s simplification of respected cultural figures such as the Dalai Lama is a case of cultural appropriation and how Avatar’s inclusion of diverse Kung Fu fighting styles is a respectful pastiche to the art of fighting. I conclude with the fact that, although the avatar takes some forms of cultural appropriation, it predominantly celebrates the varying cultural art forms in what can be labelled as pastiche. Prior to delving into a detailed analysis of the show I delineate what exactly I mean by the terms pastiche and cultural appropriation within this context.

 

Pastiche carries with it a number of connotations, derived back from its Italian origins. In the words of Ingeborg Hoesterey, the opinions of pastiche art fluctuated between positive and negative ones over the years[1]. However, pastiche, in the context of contemporary film has come to hold a positive connotation and this is evidenced by numerous film critiques found online today. [2]  Similarly, the phenomenon of cultural appropriation can be viewed differently depending on the context, however, I view cultural appropriation as bell hooks views the “acknowledgment of racial difference”[3], a hegemonic commodification of the ‘other’ [4]. I outline the inherent juxtaposition between the two and question whether the Avatar series falls on the positive side of pastiche or the negative one of cultural appropriation. The aforementioned is evidenced by Avatar’s anime-like animation style (which celebrates the art of Japanese anime and thus falls on the side of pastiche), the creative adaptation of real world architecture, the incorporation of varying kung fu fighting techniques (both forms of pastiche) versus the simplification of cultural figures such as the Dalai Lama (an example of cultural appropriation).

 

 

 

 

[1] Hoesterey, I. (2001). Pastiche. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[2] CrackerJacked (2017). Pastiche: Great Artists Steal. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpHE7vXE3-A [Accessed 15 Dec. 2019].

[3] hooks, b. (2014). Black Looks. Routledge, pp.0-212.

[4] Ibid.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 178 – Downton Abbey

Eavesdropping at the Movies, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

deologically hideous and cinematically not even trying… we hate Downton Abbey. Hate it. But José especially so.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

A Conversation with Kieron Corless

 

A wide-ranging conversation with Kieron Corless, Deputy Editor of Sight and Sound on the magazine itself and issues that arise from it: What is film criticism? What is good criticism? What is the changing function of criticism? How has the digital turn affected not only what cinema is and how we see it but also what film criticism is and how it is now done? How has the eco system or matrix in which  audio-visual work is produced, distributed and exhibited changed over the years, with galleries and museums displaying moving image work on one end; and perhaps Netflix on the other.

We talk about cinephilia and film culture at home and abroad; and  further discuss the importance of advocacy, particularly in relation to international films that often  get seen only in small film festivals. We agree that the online environment has immeasurably improved criticism and helped create a different way of appreciating and writing about cinema, pushing film criticism in new directions, not least the increasing importance of the video essay. It’s an exciting time.

Because I was so gobby in the podcast, I’v also added some excerpts from a workshop Kieron led at Warwick. The short one below is on Sight and Sound itself.

The longer one below is on writing film criticism in general and writing for Sight and Sound in particular. Kieron’s talk ranges from how to pitch, the writing of a draft, right up to the  submission and editing stages. Top tips from Kieron, rather choppily edited by myself. But bound to be useful and certainly interesting.

 

José Arroyo