Another artforum article. This time I left my room and read at the corner coffee shop where it started to rain outside. My head wasn't clear it seemed and the subject of the article seemed hazy as I read it. The focus was on two silent german films from the 1930's.
The films both shared an attitude of a kind of utopia that rejected the idea of casting professional actors and the plots involve the characters going to a primitive settings very much in the vein of the painter paul gaugan. This also beckons the ideas I've been reading from jung about the symbols of the unconscious.
The idea behind the films also seem to celebrate youth and the time where one becomes aware of aesthetics and choosing to follow a path towards pleasure that seems to come from within. And the article was also connecting how the film makers reflected their idealism by the way the projects unfurled. One of the films was supposed to be shot in color but funding fell through and the film makers had to use their own money. Not only sacrificing their own money but compromising what the film started out being--they opted for a cheaper black and white film. I think it also effected the casting and even production was stop and go. They would pause to raise funds definitely indicating that it was not a project thought through in entirety but continued by the tenacity of a youth doggedly trying to produce the forms that are just emerging and maturing in their minds.
The anti-establishment vibe and home made aesthetic related to 60's camp movies I've read about before (The sins of the fleshapoids to be specific). This attitude was present at the start of the film industry and oddly enough both eras seem to idolize youth and hedonism. Perhaps the form the movies take result from the way the mind wraps itself around the idea. Originally I thought of the 60's camp movies as a reaction against an film industry that became overbearing, but now see it a struggle that happens as something is beginning and is anticipated.
People one sunday--one of the movies from the article--was on youtube so I took a look at it. For some reason I really enjoy when the magazine covers movies. They are generally the only things I'm interested in outside of the article itself.
The most enjoyable moments happened to do with photographs. A warp of the media portrayed moving photographs with static photographs and the characters relationship towards them. At first there is a fight between a couple who became jealous about the other's photographs of actresses and actors hung in their tiny room-- at a moment when they realized why the other idealized them and by the quantity of different photos there were. The photos were taken down from the wall and mutilated by tools the characters used to groom themselves for vanity re: shaver and curling iron. The reflexive nature was almost overwhelming and a smile came about from deep within delighting in what I was watching.
Then an opposite moment happened while people were at the beach. There is a photographer there photographing average people in states of euphoria as they enjoy their day off. Their motion gently slows to a halt transforming them to a single photograph while in reality the film of the camera is still moving just as fast. Probably this is the film makers penultimate articulation of meaning in this film. Taking into account the destroyed photographs from the beginning and living your own or dreaming your own that no one else can see.
Another thing that puzzled me was the character of the taxi driver's partner who misses the whole outing because she sleeps in and her partner decides to court someone else for the day out. The movie seemed to celebrate passion and chasing after one's will, but to me the most seductive moment was this wild stare given by the person who spends the day dreaming rather than realizing her fantasies in real life.
The characters related to their gender. This was very uncomfortable for me especially as they get into the woods and resemble old greeks myths of men chasing after girls who resist their advances in some golden rape fantasy. A lot of times rather than submit to the god chasing her, the woman is transformed into a tree. This seems to be alluded to when the men wear down the woman who then stands on the opposite side of a tree. They embrace awkwardly and their body language give every indication the man is forcing his will on the woman who wishes to flee but is worn out in a state of weakness. Shortly after this they make love and only after the coupling happens does the woman show signs of pleasure.
This upset me because I thought this film would be something I could show people as some sort of novel interest--just an interesting silent movie people probably haven't seen. Now that I know the behaviour of the men I definitely think twice in recommending this video. I don't think I'd have watched it if the article was upfront about it all.
The last thing I plan on mentioning is the role of motion in the film. The very beginning introduces us to a city that is moving in every direction largely by machines. This motion is related the city and it's way of life. Spinning wheels of cars and people hopping on to moving trolleys. There is also a moment later on which suggest the city has emptied and work has stopped--everyone has gone to the beach for the day. This transition leads to the scene where they two couples are on a paddle boat and its mechanized but powered by the people enjoying their day and not a product of all the necessary steps needed to make gasoline and electricity. As the day is ending the bus takes them back and we slowly transition back to the cultivated city out of the individual pleasure of wilderness. The film maybe stating that pleasure is an individual affair that takes us back to our animal selves but most of the week we work collectively in cities that function but we loose sight of ourselves and argue and get absorbed in how machines work. But we long for both worlds and for some reason spend most of the time in artificial one that causes us to labor.
The motion of the wheels and machines also relates to the camera. Just as the beach photographer quietly reminds us the actors are simple photographs the spinning wheels constantly call to mind the spinning real of film that originally produced the images. The allusion of spinning wheels proclaims the director's goal to harness the mechanical object of the camera and put it in service of hedonism and youth. The real people of berlin may have to work on other days besides sunday but the film itself portrays mostly that day of freedom.
Conscious, unconscious, and individuation
Someone came in the coffee shop and there was an irony overload so tried a table outside under an awning while it rained. I became more interested people watching than reading so I red this essay when I got home.
The past few essays by jung have been an obstacle--or burdensome to read. This one seemed relaxed and he was elaborating on the nature of how the unconscious interacts with the conscious mind. He reveals that the conscious mind is not present at the first stages of life. The primordial unconscious is always present but out of it becomes this awareness that is embodied by the ego. He is careful not to imply that the unconscious mind creates the ego from it's ageless crystalline structure but continues to goad consciousness further and inform what it sees. He informs us that the conscious mind would be static if it were not from the gentle massages of the unconscious bringing forth forms of thought.
He also cautions us to take both sides of our mind and not to favor one over the other. The patients he treats have problems either with the unconscious mind aggressively asserting itself over consciousness OR by the conscious mind naively trying to repress thoughts and neglecting the unconscious.
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