grace must be, again and again, performance

This cover was a big deal for me.  I am such a sucker for ink.  And French.  And ravens.  And the Criterion collection.

I watched Le Corbeau this week.

Which is not the Crow unfortunately.

A movie which DID NOT AGE AS WELL as one might have thought.  What was once every goth's heartthrob/role model now just looks like Joker at a fetish ball.  

(So...still a heartthrob/role model HAHAHA oh man.)

But so Le Corbeau:

What a strange ugly snip of a movie.  I didn’t really enjoy watching this, which could be a combination of mood or disposition or whatever.  This was strange because normally I am just all about older French movies because a) their language is simple and slow enough that I can follow along okay without subtitles and b) foreign movies with subtitles are what I watch while I fix my hair because I don’t need to hear over the blow-dryer.

The portal to sophistication.

 I did not appreciate this movie at all till I researched it later, and found out it was made during the Nazi occupation of France, and then it made sense. Actually, for me this film only has charm within context: when it was released, its unpleasant and murky ambiguity angered basically every so much they were like calling for major players’ executions.

All of these people?  WANTED DEAD.

The basic (semi-stolen) synopsis: A mysterious writer of “poison-pen” letters, known only as Le Corbeau (the Raven), plagues a French provincial town.  They send progressively crueler letters exposing dirty little secrets, thus exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community’s oh-so-quotidian surface.

Seething I say.

Le Corbeau is not like technically noir but it has noir’s claustrophobia, where you are a person getting caught in a sharp, oppressive, and progressively smaller trap (usually represented by a city or in this case a social system); the more you struggle the more it closes.  It is inevitable.  The struggle is almost ritual, as with most genre movies actually.

This is how they feel inside and outside.  Trapped and claustrophobic...and sassy.

It’s so, so very French, but harsher and more sterile than expected.  A cultural difference between France and America is that in France people are much more understanding of people’s banal little weaknesses when it comes to whatever appetites.  Whatever it takes to get you through the day, you know?  But in this film people are hated and penalized as even the smallest and thus most pathetic of indiscretions are wrenched to the surface for everyone to see and judge.  (LIKE PROVO AM I RIGHT.)

The fact that is left a bad taste in my mouth is a testament to its quality I guess.  It evoked that whole spirit of paranoia and pettiness and self-loathing that is all too familiar sometimes like really, really well.

Some more seething, now with added loathing.

The closest thing to a protagonist we get is a bitter doctor trying to hide from his own demons.  Of course all the lovely ladies love him.

OH MAN GIRLS AND BOYS GET IN LINE FOR THIS.

We follow him through his travails, and it is he who of course uncovers the mystery.

Actually the whole experience watching this reminded me of reading “Kissing the Mask” by William Vollmann, an author that I can’t exactly deny the quality of his telling but is extremely caught up in his own (in this case puerile) present-tense that I have no hope of relating to or even to a degree understanding. 

I special-ordered this used from Amazon.  Then I saw it at the BYU bookstore.  I need to rethink my assumptions about something for sure but I don't know what.

(At nineteen, his book Rainbow Stories just floored me.  But what is exhilarating and edgy at nineteen often proves less so when older; revisit those works with caution and preaccepted loss.)

I bought Kissing the Mask on sale because of my interest in him and identity-as-performance (and vice versa).  It’s not really a book but an extended essay on Noh theater as a venue for understanding femininity.  I was disappointed.  For such a venture to understand the ultimate other (both archaic Far Eastern performance/allusion to an American and femininity as a male) it was the most narcissistic self-indulged thing I’ve ever read.  (And I love Infinite Jest.)  I don’t think it’s just me obviously, but the reviews were worshipful and simpering and I was all like IS THIS REALLY ALL IT TAKES TO BE A SUCCESSFUL AUTHOR but I’m sure I’ll write more on him later because I just have ALL SORTS of thoughts and feelings.

The point is, is that Vollmann chose for his subject transvestitism in Noh theater as a way to try to understand something as foreign from him as possible, through as many filters as he could.  So, he’s aiming to understand the principle of femininity through centuries of stylization and ritual through a foreign a culture as possible through performance.  And so for the (especially female) reader there’s just too much filtration to get a good grip on what (if anything) he’s saying.

 Here’s the quote in particular that stuck out: Reading those Noh plays is sort of like reading the libretto of an opera and never hearing the music. But even so, I was very impressed, the stories were fairly haunting, and years later when I was interviewing this Noh actor, Mr. Umewaka, he was kind of laughing that I was so ignorant about Noh performance in general and yet I knew the actual stories better than a lot of Japanese. Because in a way, the plot and what’s actually said is the least important part–and you can hardly understand it anyway because it’s chanted in a peculiar way. 

Emphasis mine.

Now I'm cruising Ebay for masks though.

THE EXTREMELY LONG-WINDED POINT I AM TRYING TO MAKE: I am in the wrong place and am the wrong person to appropriately enjoy or even really appreciate this movie as it should be.  It both was so impossibly far away and way too close to my own personal experiences.  I’d watch a lot of other movies before I ever watched Le Corbeau again.

THE EVEN MORE BASIC POINT:  It is time to get the eff out of Provo for sure.

But let’s go out on a high note:

 OH BABY.  I have such good memories with this movie--namely rigging the TV on the porch and watching it in front of the fire with Paul and Katherine one emo night.  Maybe I should just talk about this instead.  Except I feel this shot kind of sums up the whole film.

instead of pictures or cleverness here is a playlist

See that annoying playlist?  Yeah.  Totes took me about an hour to add.  Which hour breaks down into one minute of going "Holy crap I have discovered a way to share my offbeat yet charming music taste to all who care to partake!"; two and a half minutes of adding songs stuck in my head; thirty seconds of deciding I do not even care how the thing looks and I hate color anyway; and the rest of the time figuring out where the ADD HTML button was.

(Hint: it's under the Add HTML option.)

I ended up reading miles of instructions.  But since I kind of speedread  only read the first and last sentence of a paragraph which is awesome when you need to find out which Harry Potter character dies AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE but really lets a girl down when it comes to, like, reading directions.

Although a side benefit of speedreading is that you can read any book like five times and discover new things every time.

Also the film adaptations are never old news.

It is letting me down right now reading Borges though, although I will claim in my paper that my experience was even more surreal and paradigm-shifting and thus I should get extra credit.

I had a weeklong crisis this week (redundant!) about what to do after graduation.  So I asked everyone—or at least a whole lot of incredibly smart people I respect very much. 

Half told me not to go to grad school and like I was an idiot for considering it.  Half told me to try as hard as I can to go to grad school and I was an idiot for not considering it.  (Interestingly enough these fell exactly along gender lines—the men said I shouldn’t, the women said I should.  What does that mean?  I don't know.)

The main reason I wouldn’t?  I am feeling so very, very restless.  I am tired of living a boring and impeccably respectable life.  I hate school.  I hate like ninety percent of academics and academia.  I feel like I would just be signing up for two more years of repressive safety rather than actually having a real life not floundering for approval of people I don’t care about.

Why I would?  I have had like one fiction teacher in my entire life, and that was only in the past year, and we didn’t jive.  Even despite that I am getting pretty good feedback.  And I really like doing it.  I want to get as good at it as possible. 

Even if all I write lately are sexy, sexy ghost stories.

I guess I’ll just apply everywhere in the world and see who wants me.  I’m also guessing that’s what everyone does.

BORING.  Can I talk about how funny and wonderful Hannah and Finn Hillam are?  Or my grandma?  Or Indian food?  Or soda all the time?  Or etc.?

te occidere possunt sed te edere non possunt nefas est

One time me and a gorgeous girlfriend finagled our way backstage to hang out with a favorite musician.  It was awesome.

That stupid story should offset a message of today, which is wow I was shocked both by how cruel and how magnanimous and lovely people can be.  According to my rules I cannot now complain about Utah for at least a week.

But back to the story.  I looked up the band today because I was feeling nostalgic for more exciting times and LOOK HOW COOL THESE ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEOS ARE.  It's a trilogy, so here's the first one:

This is one of my favorite songs.

The other ones are "Swan Meat" and "The Long Vein of the Law" which typing them out together there makes them sound way sexier than I had realized before but that's neither here nor there.

I like everything about these.  They're done by a company called SSSR, which is a self-described Norwegian/Japanese animation collective, who are hopefully taking applications because I will not rest until I become a denizen of this thing.  If I can find their website which is proving more difficult than anticipated.

you're a prick with a pin, woman; push it into my skin, girl.

It was just a lovely weekend--kept up my running and saw Paul and Katherine's new apartment and many other lovely loved people.  Holly helped me with a lovely queue of documentaries I need for research on my next story.

But HOLY CRAP I cannot get over how much I love this video and song.  I am so in love with this band and Alison Mosshart is my new icon.  And least importantly--I lose track of Jack White for like ten minutes and he gets all hot.

I thought about pretending Gaunt Wild West Mortician wasn't my type but who am I kidding:

I know everyone else in the world has seen it but I don't care.  This is my blog.

Nosferatu! who stars in Spongebob sometimes.

This is a movie review, and here movie review is defined as a way of ameliorating guilt at not writing/editing fiction.  Also because I have this uncomfortable obsession with all things film.

This is the first theater I went to in Paris.  I didn't know French theaters only unlock their doors ten minutes before showtime so I spent a good half hour loitering uncomfortably around the theater.  I am so nostalgic right now.

So here’s some semi-quick and pretty dirty and altogether unstructured thoughts on watching Werner Herzog’s weird 1979 remake of Murnau’s Nosferatu, with Klaus Kinski as Dracula.

Which is a whole different weirdness from his remake of Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant but relevant thoughts on coke and iguanas as plot devices will be discussed elsewhere I’m sure.

I forgot to put a current movie I wanted as #1 in my Netflix queue, so this silly movie from my Herzog phase came in the mail next in line.  While initially I was pissed, I remembered the massive wellsprings of affection I have for both Werner and Klaus, and, let’s be real, vampires. 

It's based almost exactly on Murnau’s plotwise.  Almost.  Since Stoker’s estates’ copyright had run out, unlike when Murnau made his, the characters kept their real names: Dracula, Lucy, Jonathan.

Nosferatu follows the plot that is familiar to goths, horror fans, and English majors.  Sweet young dude goes to Transylvania to sell a house to Dracula, but Dracula is much more interested in sweet dude’s wife and homeland, so bites dude and goes off to England to menace said wife and homeland until he is killed (spoiler!) by Dr. Van Helsing, who is never as hot as Hugh Jackman was in Van Helsing.

Hello gorgeous.  I bet our family quotes this movie more than any other family ever.  We chose to watch it as a comedy.

Except while the original is so powerful, a nightmarish wordless thing piercing right from and to your subconscious, this remake is a dreamier retelling.  Still a nightmare, but after you wake up.  It’s almost lulling.  I will break down and throw “lush” and “oneiric” right into the mix too.  The filming is a weird mélange of deference to and disinterest in the original.

The film begins with POV shots of mummies, and the camera gaze lingers like you yourself might linger on certain aspects—like the silent screams of the open mouths, or the strange fact that below desiccated naked bodies they are wearing shoes.  Herzog sets the tone here—he lets shots linger from a middle distance, not framing anything or pulling back or forward to elicit reaction.  It immediately cuts to two kittens playing with a locket, filmed in the same polite yet intimate/invasive gaze.  You don’t see the kittens again really but anytime the little dude Jonathan and his wife Lucy are home together there’s always this insistent high-pitched mewing and the sickly distillation that is Northern European sunlight.

The only kitten-free shot before things go south.

Herzog is always pretty adorably unconcerned with plot and character, preferring to obsess over forces, nature, and forces of nature—the more violent and implacable and ineluctable the better.  It takes Jonathan a good half hour to get to Dracula’s castle, through desolate shot after desolate shot.

This sort of thing like for an hour.  Exactly what you'd expect from a foreign film actually.

We’re always perched behind a rock or outcropping, unconcerned, watching him drift in and out of frames with cool purpose.  Herzog uses this method to great effect in all of his movies, letting the images do the work for him.  There’s this great silent shot of the ship with everyone dead coming into port in the canals; floating slowly and scraping into the sides.

Or right after the boat, the hilarity of an awkward Dracula scurrying off with his coffin in arm.  One thing that always gets overlooked is how funny Herzog is.  Like the first time Dracula shows up in Jonathan’s room.  I was laughing so hard.

Oh...hey...I thought you were asleep...uh...what's up, buddy?

All the characters actually go about their business with a sort of implacable distaste.  Especially Dracula.  He is not happy about his circumstances or what he does.  He is polite and respectful in his demeanor.  But he is going to drink you dry, however pleasant your other interactions.  It’s just kind of an embarrassing circumstance that everyone should get over now.

He spends the whole movie making this face.

Kinski is just such a perfect vampire.  Before this I'd only seen him in his more bombastic roles; it was strange seeing him so melancholy, although that tortured-animal look he does so well (especially in Woyzeck and Fitzcarraldo) is used to full effect.  Even in makeup Kinski’s face is always weirdly mesmerizing.  He’s close to being good looking, but it seems as if his personality has warped his features.  His nose is too sharp, his eyes too close and intense, and his mouth too large and mobile.  It was unsettling seeing such a pair of lips on Nosferatu actually.  I thought of Ralph Fiennes playing Voldemort—a pale hideous monster except for those sad eyes and full lips.  Of course Kinski is much better at “repulsive” since he tends towards the compelling rather than attractive.  As far as my tastes go anyway.

How German can you look?  THIS GERMAN.

Also, presaging vampire films today, Dracula talks about his feelings for like 60 percent of his dialogue.

Seriously, my friend, she does not care.

This movie, following the original’s unusual lead, is not your standard gothy conflation of sexy death and deathy sex that makes the archetypal vampire story, although it’s an undercurrent for sure.  The big final bloodsucking scene at the end with Dracula and Lucy is not remotely erotic as it’s mostly done elsewhere.  It’s more tender than anything, although that’s not the right word for two beings that are causing each other’s death as they both give into each other.  Sad is probably the word I am looking for.

This shot and composition looks like a Füssli painting which I never even noticed before.

At first I was irritated that the film was obviously made in the seventies.  They’re wearing period costumes, but something about the hairdos and actor’s looks scream seventies.  Lucy has her hair obviously crimped, for example.

But to get super meta and overheated and loopy, after a while I felt this was appropriate.   In a metaphysical-whatever sense all these characters have been going through these same motions for the last fifty years.  They are men and women and monsters caught in a loop.  The reluctance and fatigue of Dracula, the way Lucy gives in, the stony certainty with which Jonathan rides to and from his death—I felt like we were checking in on these characters after they had been going through the same motions for the last half-century, and will continue to do so as long as there are film students.  Which in a sense we were.  They are tired.  And like all Herzog’s subjects, real or fictional, they can do nothing but succumb to forces greater than themselves.

The end is a little bleaker but I think it works.  This narrative will after all be going on indefinitely.

I watched the little making-of featurette of course.  Herzog is always so funny to me.  He was still really young and ambitious and open.  There are a couple of just artless moving moments seeing the director and lead work together, and citizens of the little Dutch town they filmed in, and seeing baby Herzog admit, with a little laugh and distinctive Teutonic accent, “Yes, all of my narratives come from pain.  Pain is my subject.”

Haha who is a German boo?  YOU ARE.

Should you see it?  Of course.  But it is not the first Werner Herzog movie you should see.  Grizzly Man is a good starting point—it’s where I started anyway.  And you have to see Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre the Wrath of God of course.  This is not his best.  It’s an homage.  It was not meant to be his best.  But it is an adorable little project and I loved watching it.

PHEW does that count as writing I hope?

If you haven't seen it before, here's a parody of his documentaries that hits pretty close to home.

WHAT NOW.

Basically I am feeling this same exact mixture of happiness, sexiness, and slight queasiness.

I am now a research assistant as well as a staff writer. This will make my resume crazy good and I will be editing interesting things.

AND I found a place for just Fall semester which is practically unheard of for the draconian BYU housing system.

WHAT NOW.

FKO

"We live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which relations between who someone is and what he believes and how he expresses himself have been thrown into big time flux."

--DFDubs. This is super earnestly copied into my notebook. I even gave it spacing lines above and below so its wisdom would not be lost in the penciled mess that is the rest of the pages.

I had a film review but it got long and weird, so until I post that:

Getting back from vacation was strange. Not running on much sleep, I giggled a lot. But I also cried. Provo for various reasons is my self-imposed purgatory, if that isn't redundant. And after the relative freedom of being somewhere else, I could feel all those constraints and cages and chains etc. tightening and closing and snapping etc. as soon as I got home. And even today I find myself being too shy and thoughtful again. Too calculating. I hate it.

It's irritating because that is not who I am. (Although I am consistently a drama-bear.)

And it really hit home how much of identity seems to be contextual. And maybe this is why some people are afraid to go other places and why I can think of nothing else but chose to come back here in the first place.

I mean, I'm a girl who's lived all over. I'm published. I've had some crazy adventures. This is not in accordance with who I seem to be here. Whatever.

WHO CARES though.

6 months, knock on wood, and I'll be gone! Although I'm extremely sad to be leaving my family and friends.  Boo.  Don't even want to countenance that right now.
.

Pirate or Mermaid are the only options actually.

I am supposed to be editing my story for this anthology (which is not as exciting as it sounds. Does it sound exciting? Pretend it does) which I wrote like almost a year ago at this point. So it's like desperately, hideously, excruciatingly juvenile. Like I cannot even believe the words I used.

I only noticed I am totally unqualified to fix this as I am reading over my edited text and it mostly has characters thinking to themselves "Wow this sounds totally juvenile and yet I have no idea how to go about things differently and I can't even believe the words I am using."

Cleeeeeeever.

So then my second solution was to write this kind of self-flaying letter to the editor crying "I'm sorry I am evidently fourteen years old, but given my track record it is unlikely I will progress past this emotional immaturity so you are either going to have to live with it or change it yourself because you seem like an adult."

Luckily I didn't send that.

Obviously I did not write it in this general conversational tone. But what do you do when everything you write sounds so childish. I tried the "accruing craploads of life experience" trick and that is evidently not doing it. It's probably some stupid issue of integration or something.

In other news I am in that restless mood of giving up all my responsibilities and becoming a pirate or mermaid or something.

And singing this song really dramatically, no doubt with a really poignant expression on my face.