Melancholia Part I: A Response to David Edelstein, Or, How Do You View a Film?

In December 2011, all manner of "Best of 2011" lists appeared. I took note of the ten-best list that David Edelstein discussed with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Thursday, December 22, 2011. He was talking about the year in film, and revisiting his own ten-best list.


You can find the transcript here.

"EDELSTEIN: On this very show, I described Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" as a masterly film. I think I called it a hateful masterpiece. And I'm not somebody who throws around words like that and then doesn't follow up on my 10-best list.

"I just couldn't - I put it down on my list, and I just couldn't do it. It is such a hateful film. It's a – it's the work of a nihilistic annihilist. For Lars von Trier, the world, when it ends, is, well-lost. Capitalism has poisoned it, and families are useless, and the heroine, the protagonist of the movie played by Kirsten Dunst, is so utterly hateful that she's really quite happy that everything is going to hell.

"And I guess I - when one chooses, you know, the things that one loves and one wants to recommend, how - it's a very difficult question: Can you love a film, can you recommend a film that highly that peddles a worldview that you find so utterly hateful, even poisonous? I don't know the answer to that. I struggled with it."

I think that David Edelstein puts his critical finger on a problem that has been plaguing readers (of all stripes) for a good long while. His review of Lars von Trier's Melancholia rests upon the ethical or moral disposition of the viewer. And he assumes, casting a broad ethical and moral net, that the end of the world--no matter how artfully it might be depicted--is disagreeable to the film's viewer. 

Melancholia may be a sad, bleak, fated, and morbid film. But to call it "hateful" is simply naïve.  The approaching planet of Melancholia, like Justine (Kirstin Dunst), we should read as human mortality in its most unadorned form. Ultimately, neither human, nor animal, nor golf cart will cross the bridge beyond the film's private golf course and escape into the seeming sanctuary of the never-seen village. The question posed by the film, however, is: How shall we react to all of this? With numb depression and nihilism? With crippling anxiety? With a wishful optimism followed by suicide? With fantasy? Each character poses his or her own possible response to the approaching planet Melancholia, and it is up to the viewer to chose his or her own point of identification.

Stay tuned for part 2 to see how I read this film in a less "hateful" light than David Edelstein.

The New Weird is Dead, Long Live the New Weird!

An Open Letter to 2011:

What happens to a year on December 31? On January 1? Does anything ever really begin and end there?

So dear 2011, you, who I have affectionately christened "The New Weird," come to an end. My Big Lebowski calendar has been replaced by one called Magnificent Specimens, which features photographs of eccentric men's facial hair to last for the next twelve months. But what sort of ending is this anyway? While the calendar marks a certain transition, others might be harder to detect. In my mind, New Weird, you are not so much a period of time, but a state of being. You are an embracing of art, a willingness to ask the unasked questions, and a glancing sideways at the world around you. So on this new year, I wish The New Weird a happy birthday, and look forward to your second chapter. Hopefully one of many to come.

My friend Ben Trumbo has already given your second phase some marching orders. New Weird, now you have an official slogan: "2012: Freaky Awesome!" And also a motto: "Suck it up and party." Interpret these however you will. But whatever your interpretation, Happy New Year, Happy New Weird, and may we all revel in your freaky awesome weirdness!

Photo courtesy of Ben Trumbo (2011).

Click here to check out some more of his freaky awesome work.

Technicolor Space Boobs Redux (My Weird Holiday Gift To You)

December is . . . the season for technicolor space boobs!!!

And no matter which December holidays you celebrate (or don't), I believe that decorating one's living space with a bunch of crazy colored twinkle lights makes the world a better place. I mean, it can't really hurt, right? Apart from the increased electric bill and the impending doom of the planet due to fossil fuel induced global warming. But that's where LEDs come in. These strings of light emitting diodes not only use less electricity than conventional xmas lights, they contribute a whole new kind of weird to the holidays. Behold...

Last year marked my induction into the LED xmas light fan club, when I discovered that the Home Depot brand lights cast crazy colored circles all over the place. This year, in addition to the tree, the technicolor space boobs have also colonized my front porch in the form of icicle lights. I attempted to capture their glory in video form, but it was unsuccessful. Maybe this time next year I will have learned how to take a decent movie of my beloved lights. In the meantime, here's a video of someone else's totally insane exterior light display. Happy Weird Holidays!! 

Reminder: Parabola Art Exhibit Today and Tomorrow!

Parabola Wash U grad student art exhibit opens tonight at 6pm, runs until Saturday 12/3 at 6pm: Des Lee Gallery, 1627 Washington Ave., St. Louis, MO. http://desleegallery.com/ Check it out if you're in town.

Recognition! or, The Utterly Naïve "Artist"

Now this is really weird: On December 2, 2011 I will be participating in my first art show at a gallery. One of my collages has been selected for display in a graduate student art show at Washington University in St. Louis. Here is some more information about the show. It is open on December 3 as well.

If you are in St. Louis that weekend, please stop by and see me performing the role of "artist." I am still not sure what this word means, or whether I can be comfortable self-applying it. But I am choosing not to worry about that right now. If you cannot be in St. Louis that weekend (and I can think of no reason why you wouldn't), you can see the piece that will be on display below, along with the explanatory blurb I composed about it for the occasion.

“Your Beautiful Exploding Cerebrum”

            The human cerebrum: home of language, sensory perception, memory and knowledge. As a student and instructor of literature, my work seeks to engage these critical areas as they have been expressed in language across time and culture. My research asks the question: How does literary fiction represent and embody the operations of the human mind, including memory and the imagination? My work analyzes twentieth-century novels written in English and French, which trace a narrative of Transatlantic travels and find the Caribbean as a point of convergence. 

            In “Your Beautiful Exploding Cerebrum,” Caribbean corals mimic the intricate folds of the human brain. Books glow with the illuminating power of the island sun, and also form an arm from which a rebellious hand emerges. A woman expresses her mission: “Freedom Thru Books Not Murder,” an appeal to language, art, and reason over hate and violence.

In a period of history possessed by international terrorism and economic disaster, the study of literature might seem to be a frivolous, academic indulgence. However, the novels I study—primarily written by members of the African diaspora—show us that literature, artistic expression, and the life of the mind each plays a role in the quest for liberty, self-determination, and social harmony. These concerns also lie at the core of the university’s educational mission. I ask my undergraduate students to engage literature as a way to productively “explode” their own cerebrums, in order to better understand the way that we all interact with language and thought on a daily basis.

Collagista

First of all, I know I've been neglecting my lovely blog lately.  But rest assured that there is some major weird in the works, and that I'll be able to report on it soon.  In the meantime, I've put off telling you about my new hobby long enough.

In January, at the birth of The New Weird, I started tinkering with papers and glues, and have been making collages ever since.  My technique is still pretty poor, but I'd like to think that my composition has improved somewhat in the past seven months.  For someone who has (as of yet) shown very little aptitude in the visual arts, this is a weird and fun adventure.  And the images that I'm creating are very weird indeed.  Here are some that I've completed in the past month:

Fidelity in the Age of Digital Self-Reproduction

Collage of magazines and crêpe paper

 Your Beautiful Exploding Cerebrum

Collage of magazines and cocktail parasols

  Hungry Eyes Part 2

Collage of magazines

I like to work in materials that I find in magazines.  They tend to carry a potent graphic punch, and (as you've no doubt already detected) I have little patience for subtlety.  I find idealized or stylized images of the human body to be especially interesting.  These get very weird indeed when you mess them up a bit.  There is probably some critique of some gender/consumer something in these works, but I have to admit that I prefer to leave my analytical hat in the intellectual hat box while creating and considering these collages.  For once, I will leave the interpretation up to others, preferring to bask in the unbridled weirdness that results from the simple combination of papers and glues.

If you'd like to see some more of my collage work, you can find it here.

Weird Travels

I know, Dear Reader, you probably find the title of this post to be reductive, redundant, or both.   Reductive, because travel is one of those richly rewarding experiences that I cannot represent accurately using a single adjective.  Redundant, because travel gives us access to a globe of possibilities and (after all) one human's quotidian is another human's weird.  This post, however, will treat a particular subset of travel: the weird in-between world of the tourist experience.  Existing in a temporary limbo in which she is neither at home nor truly abroad, the tourist packs a bag full of dreams and heads off into a kind of parallel universe.  Thanks to the Houston airport baggage claim for making visible the glowing oddity of tourist travel:

Upon arrival in the unknown locale, this parallel universe might seem normal enough.  The laws of physics remain in place; gravity still keeps her feet rooted to the ground.* Faces and food stuffs might seem uncannily similar to the ones she left at home, but also not quite right all at the same time.  The bed in the hotel room seems normal enough.  So does the water in the tap, but something tells her vulnerable digestive system not to drink it.  The towels are still towels, in substance, but they look like this:

She would never mistake towels for fish at home.  But then, she spends such little time thinking about towels, which occupy her cognitive space in proportion to their functionality.  Do they need to be laundered?  Are they waiting for her when she gets out of the shower?  They rarely ever sprout fins . . . at home.

This uncanny sense that the familiar has become foreign is, I think, one of the most interesting aspects of the tourist experience.  And it is most certainly weird.  Don't get me wrong: sight seeing is lovely; encountering new places and people is not only exciting but essential to the maintenance of one's humanity; practicing a foreign language is a humbling and thrilling challenge.  But being forced to reconsider the basics of daily life can cause us to notice them in more detail than we otherwise would.  Can cause us to discover just how unfamiliar they really are. (Like towels... If you live a towel-less lifestyle, substitute some other object.  Maybe a thimble, wooden spoon, or crescent wrench... I don't know what you do at home.)  

There can be a kind of psychic violence in this.  After all, where does it end?  If towels can become unfamiliar, unreliable, perhaps other things can as well.  Perhaps the tourist might find that in this new place, she will become utterly unfamiliar to herself.  While my own recent vacation days in Mexico were spent in relaxing beachy bliss, I had uncharacteristically violent dreams each night.  Normally my subconscious is more Jarmusch than Peckinpah, but this was a solid week of nightly slasher films.  Was this touristic revelation of the daily weird causing a nocturnal mind-war?  I guess it could just as easily have been brought on by my weirdly handless new amiga:

But maybe not.  I brought these gorgeously weird amigos home with me, and my dreams have returned to their typical pacifism:

Here at home, where my brain can safely assume that a towel is just a towel, I suspect that my mind ceases to make war on itself.

And you, Dear Reader, what experiences and thoughts (weird or otherwise) have crossed your path during this summer travel season?  Leave a comment below, and let's compare weird notes.

For some weird photos of the beach in Playa del Carmen, click here.  May your own travels be weird and wonderful!

*Except in the case of interstellar tourism.