As to Chris’s post regarding diminished participation on this blog (“Critical Mass?”) . . . I've been feeling a bit guilty, myself. Of course, Christy and I have that new baby thing going on (Leo says "goo" to you all) . . . but, on top of that, as you said, Chris, there haven't been a lot of new blog-worthy movies of late.
We are avid NetFlix junkies, but much of our renting is dedicated to television shows (and primarily older movies, which I suspect many have already seen, and probably don’t need to be belabored or even recommended). We have been crawling through the old, cold war spy series, Danger Man/Secret Agent Man with Patrick McGoohan, which we like very much (we were huge fans of The Prisoner). At times, John Drake's one punch knock outs and some of the other dated conventions are a bit funny, but this is more than made up for by the often fascinating take on cold war espionage and (colonialist) politics, which is so multifaceted and conflicting for the protagonist, that the creation of The Prisoner seems to be an inevitability). The show still seems poignant . . . especially with the "Come on back to the cold war" Bushites livening things up for those of us who don't remember what that whole fascism thing was about way back in that other era . . . in that other continent across that ocean.
Our most recent indulgence has been the HBO series, Carnivale. We just finished the first season on DVD, so we are a bit behind, but both Christy and I are enjoying it quite a bit. As someone mentioned in one of the Carnivale special feature interviews, this is potentially a great era for television, since much of the artistry previously reserved only for the novel can been spun into a complex and unusual series like Carnivale without commercial interruption (or corporate content meddling). In fact, this era of TV on DVD is immensely exciting for me, allowing me to increasingly see the tremendous potential in an excellent series for the development of complex issues and characters . . . a thing (rightly or wrongly) often thought to be an artistic weakness of the film genre.
Of course, there are still a number of shows that tend to fall apart under the burdens of a more "novelistic" style of creation. Alias comes to mind. It started very strongly, we thought, but lack of a long term vision and some eccentric silliness with a plot too twisted for the writers to untwist (brings back the X-Files let down all over again) have started to take their tolls . . . and now I hear the sound of grave shovels biting into the dirt. My comment (as of this season’s new opening credit sequence dedicated to Sydney Bristow’s abundant yet scanty wardrobe), to paraphrase the great Marge Simpson, was, “Alias turned into a soft porn show so gradually I didn’t even notice.”
J.J. Abrams’ new show, Lost, currently holds the most promise for our camp. But it has a tough (and winding) road ahead of it . . . so I’m not holding my breath.
The corporate mentality behind the television studios is frightening. In fact, it is a wonder to me that anything interesting and strange (like Lost) every gets made. When I see a show like Carnivale given a nice, glossy, and, I hope, patient treatment by HBO, I start to feel a little match head of hope flare up inside me. And this leads inevitably to my ultimate television fantasy: that HBO would hire Joss Whedon to make a show for them. If that ever came true, Christy and I might be forced to get cable.
My only comment on “livening up” the blogging here (of course, a larger community would help, too) would be to expand the range of potential input. For instance, as this post hints, television (past and present) could be included . . . and maybe even more along the lines of Ken’s “Is the Blockbuster the End of Cinema?” citation. We are film lovers, but because we are human, we have a relationship with the whole ecosystem of film that stretches beyond small, “quantitative” critiques and recommendations of the movies we’ve seen . . . stretches, maybe, to “how do our experiences of/with film inform our personal universes?”
I know I am specifically renowned for having a few philosophical and abstractly speculative bugs up my ass (so maybe I’m a poor example), but I find that I only rarely have a recommendation for or against a film. More often, I am interested in how the film “means” to me (and might mean similarly to others), in how the film affects or even restructures my life (or fails to do so) insomuch as I chose to participate with it.
Speaking now as an artist myself, I wouldn’t want people who read my poems to merely give them a thumbs up or down, nor even to simply like or dislike them . . . I would ideally want them to engage with them, wrestle with them, try to tie them to aspects of their own lives (not just academically to a “literary tradition”).
In general, that’s the way I try to engage with the art of others, as well . . . to lift the experience of that art out of the realm of my personal opinion and place it into the context of usefulness, association, connection to a web of humanness . . . and then only resort to judging that which isn’t substantial enough to live with relationally.
Of course, that’s pretty romantic . . . especially coming from a guy who likes bad kung fu movies (and has been known to utilize snake and crane method, drunken boxing, and monkey kung fu in mythic household battles against his dog) and feels he can somehow make a distinction in quality between The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not so good),Van Helsing (a little bit better than not so good), and The Mummy (quite fun . . . in fact, we own it) . . . despite the fact that these movies are all up to a lot of the same things in a lot of the same ways.
Oh, also, I have mixed feelings about the comments being hidden beneath the facades of the original posts they are replying to. In some ways, it’s tidy, but it also limits the feeling of the posts functioning as a true dialog, or rather, multilog, of voices. I think it might decrease the spurring of reactions, instead nipping in the bud the process of communication which brings the films and thoughts about them to bear in our consciousness. But this is maybe just my lack of blogging experience outing itself. It’s not the convention I am most familiar with.
Whatever the solution may actually be, I hope The Usual Suspects keeps on truckin’.
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4 comments:
I also dislike the hidden comments. I like comments to function as part of the literature, in the same way that commentaries function as integral parts of the early Chinese novels my brother the Chinese scholar talks about. The tension of the text with the response of the reader [uh... media with the viewer, whatever] is what makes it special. Literature, or any art, is as much about the response as the text.
Television *IS* film for me.
I never watch broadcast TV. Or Tivoed TV. I always see it as DVD programs, or recorded by generous friends.
I was initially intrigued by Carnivale. Love the themes. Love the intro graphics. Loved how it started out. Then, after about three or four episode, I sensed a reluctance to come to grips with any of the themes... a tendency to spin out the narrative threads over and over again, rather than wrap them up and move on. That is perhaps a sound narrative scheme for an extended series. But the moment I feel like the characters have lost the urgent drive to complete their arcs, I feel like I being served product rather than being treated to stories.
I'm not confident that I'm describing anything in the text; it may just be my own response. There's an author, for example... Robert Jordan... who I initially enjoyed, because I liked his setting, characters, and plot. Then, after about the third novel, I realized he loved his setting, characters, and plots too much to ever resolve anything about them. And his books just seem to go on and on forever. For someone who wants to inhabit those worlds, that's the Best Thing Ever. For someone who wants to feel urgency in the characters, it's Death.
I currently follow only four televison series: West Wing, Arrested Development, Deadwood, and Dead Like Me. I recommend them all for those who don't know them. Dead Like Me is most likely to be obscure and overlooked, but the first season is simply wonderful, and the second season has many fine moments.
West Wing is slumping... but it has faded before, and come back from the dead. Dead Like Me has been canceled after two seasons. [I believe Season 3 may be in the can, and may see release somewhere other than Showtime.] Arrested Development, is fun, but it's comedy, slight, and pretty meatless for discussion. That leaves only Deadwood for comment. And I have something to say about it in future posts...
But I would very much like to see commentary on TV stuff. I remember TWIN PEAKS, and how it changed my notion of television. I would hate to be missing something of similar charms.
Ken, I have also noticed what you saw in Carnivale, and I agree that themes that run, but run on the treadmill, are death to good story. My hope (and I have only seen the first season) is that this won't sink Carnivale. I am currently suspending my disbelief, giving it the benefit of the doubt, etc. Sometimes, having a sense of an entire story arc can be helpful for a writer/creator, but such foreknowledge can also undermine the organic or animal nature of a story, that autonomous intelligence that can take control of plot and characters and run them into some wilderness the writer never imagined.
I have been burned by too many shows I originally enjoyed (Alias, X-Files, etc.), and now I approach TV shows like a commitmentphobe, holding back that last piece of willingness to lunge into the abyss of audience participation. That grumpy (and sarcastic) voice did pipe up as I watched Carnivale, warning me to look out for all wind up and no delivery. This is often my reaction to mythic and genre film/fiction like fantasy or sci-fi. When the delivery is just as good as the wind up, it's my favorite kind of film . . . but all too often, such genre work is a fascinating dream with a lame execution.
What has been one of the major undoings for the shows I mentioned above (and may end up undoing Carnivale also) is a lack of willingness on the part of the creators/writers/directors to let the characters evolve. It's a very autocratic approach that I don't much care for . . . but it's pretty common. Writers have "a vision" for their characters, but the vision doesn't always fit (as time goes by and events take place), and it eventually becomes oppressive. This is a big problem with Alias. J.J. Abrams, et al, seem to want the characters to mean very specific things to one another and to the audience. At first, this led to some missed opportunities, but after enough of those accumulated, the show lost all of its potential energy and suffered a "death of the soul". The X-Files was one of the most extreme examples of this phenomenon. The despotic typing of the main characters got to be so absurd that the whole show become unintentionally comical. Christy and I always felt the show was at its best when it showed awareness of this and went with it instead of against it (Jose Chung's From Outer Space, for instance).
Carnivale is a bit slow moving . . . "moodiness" I guess is the common euphemism. But there is still potential for character evolution. Ben Hawkins is, of course, still a "rube", so he's got a ways to go to come into his own. Brother Justin on the opposite polarity, also. I think Brother Justin has been the most interesting character for me so far. His self-conflict is so palpable. He seems to have (throughout the first season) a genuine desire to be a "man of God", but, well, darn it, he just can't completely do it. There's that whole "left hand of God" thing always tripping him up.
My fear is that Daniel Knauf knows the alpha and omega of his characters, but may be a bit slack on the rest of the alphabet. Do I intuit that he is worried that he may too quickly leap from A to Z . . . and then, goodbye character evolution? Could the slow pacing and moodiness be related to that trepidation? I'm not sure, but I am anxious to keep watching . . . and hoping.
Oh, and I should say that I’m using the word evolution in contrast to “unfolding”. Characters that unfold are less interesting, are more mechanical. Evolution is an art of mutations and adaptations. It can’t be predicted. Evolution pays homage to environment . . . which is a thing too enormous for any artist to control. For a writer to think he or she can control character while having no control over environment is foolish. Real people can’t predict what is going to happen to them or how that will change them or how those events will change in their perception of them as time moves on. Dictatorial authorial control over characters can have the effect of creating too much artificiality.
It all just brings me back to my oft-pimped Joss Whedon, of course. One of the great things about his series has been his willingness to let his characters evolve as the stories go their various ways. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow is the most distinct example, although Xander and Buffy also qualify (I only wish Giles was given the same opportunity). In Angel, this evolution was less graceful (Cordelia), but the creative ethic that allowed for it was still there. I can only dream that Firefly, which promised to be the most adult, most realized Whedon creation, will return (post-movie release) and give Mal Reynolds and crew their chances. So much potential there . . . and of course, they are on a "quest", which is myth-speak for "engaged in a process of transformation". The fact that they have no idea they're on a quest is the best part about it. They are under the erroneous impression that they are simple "entrepreneurs" on the outskirts of society living episodic lives . . . not reluctant heroes. Mal Reynolds is fascinating for his struggle: a warrior-priest trying to erase and escape from his own sense of purpose and faith . . . and failing. First he failed to be that faithful hero, now he is failing NOT to be. Great character. I think, probably my favorite TV character.
Oh well, I better quit now before I throw myself into a depression.
Agree, evolving is what I want, not unfolding. 'Revealing' hidden depths in a character is a good feature, but it still implies a static character. Static characters are WAY easier to manage in a persistent narrative setting... and therefore relatively commonplace, and therefore less interesting to me. That is, I sense the economy of craft driving developments, rather than an organic inner life of the narrative.
That's why I really respect Deadwood for killing off major characters. That is a rather weak subset of evolution... at least, it is a genuine state change. It is not really evolution. I suspect a good writer of an episodic TV narrative does NOT want his characters to evolve. If they evolve, they evolve away from the target audience identification that insures a series success. Evolving is gambling on the narrative payoff outweighing the sense of loss in the viewer who DOESN'T want change in any character he likes. [And it occurs to me... a TV series probably trades in characters, rather than narrative. Kinda obvious, actually.]
Sadly, I know nothing about Buffy, and only that X-Files had an annoying habit of using flashlights in fog. That is one of the great tragedies of discussing TV for me... I rarely have a shared viewing culture with anyone.
BTW: Dead Like Me does seem to me to have modestly evolving characters. Perhaps that's why they cancelled it [he said, sucking on a lemon].
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