Advertisement
Hey, I'm new to this tribe, we've probably discussed it before, but I'm interested to know what some of you think about the overriding and underlying themes of these films? I'm sure some of you have read through the 'big book' (main catalog on the Cremaster Cycle that the Guggenheim published at the time of the big exhibition) and familiarized yourselves with the central ideas of Masonic theory and practice, Celtic mythology, genetics and physiology, etc, that play a major role in constellating Barney's 'self-contained universe' in the Cremaster movies...
But what are your personal impressions and ineterpretations?... Like: petroleum jelly? Does MB's preoccupation with this substance somehow relate to the central enabling role of petroleum in world civilization as we know it? (fuel for energy, ingredient in plastics, necessary for transport, electricity, basically our entire economy is built on OIL...) - But that's just one facet...
After viewing Cremaster 3 for the first time (it was the first film in the cycle I witnessed), my fundamental interpretation was/is this - MB is critiquing the decay of culture/morality/integrity in post-WWII America, the replacement of ideals such as character and honor and leadership by a crass value system in which MONEY and PROFIT are the ultimate and sacrosanct goals and measures of progress and merit - Ex: the auto demolition scene - Five late-model Cadillacs gang up on a beautiful elegant early-model sedan (what is it, a Rolls? a Bentley? I forget) and destroy it, pulverize it, by running into it in reverse, as though we are no longer advancing but regressing in terms of our cultural evolution - And then the Cadillacs set about, like cutthroat capitalists, destroying each other - The big book touches on the theme and role of *hubris* in all of this... Leftists (like myself) may disagree to some extent, but MB is presenting a vision of an earlier (pre-WWII) ruling class which viewed itself (rightly or wrongly) as moral and cultural leaders of society, where things like manners and breeding mattered (now all that matters is one's Fortune 500 rating in the corporate echelon and oligarchy) - Integrity has been replaced by bare-assed greed and cynical materialism - Without wishing to gloss over the genocidal and imperialist history of the US, there was a time when our political leaders were men of culture and learning, and when a ne'er do well oaf like GWB as President would have been unthinkable - We are truly in the terminal stages of the decline of empire, and this is one of the things MB is showing us...
Whereas Cremaster 2 (my personal favorite of the cycle) similarly portrayed the death of idealism but from the perspective of the last American outlaw - Gary Gilmore lived out his life in accord with Bob Dylan's famous line "To live outside the law you must be honest"...
Well, those are a few of my own impressions - What do the rest of you think?...
But what are your personal impressions and ineterpretations?... Like: petroleum jelly? Does MB's preoccupation with this substance somehow relate to the central enabling role of petroleum in world civilization as we know it? (fuel for energy, ingredient in plastics, necessary for transport, electricity, basically our entire economy is built on OIL...) - But that's just one facet...
After viewing Cremaster 3 for the first time (it was the first film in the cycle I witnessed), my fundamental interpretation was/is this - MB is critiquing the decay of culture/morality/integrity in post-WWII America, the replacement of ideals such as character and honor and leadership by a crass value system in which MONEY and PROFIT are the ultimate and sacrosanct goals and measures of progress and merit - Ex: the auto demolition scene - Five late-model Cadillacs gang up on a beautiful elegant early-model sedan (what is it, a Rolls? a Bentley? I forget) and destroy it, pulverize it, by running into it in reverse, as though we are no longer advancing but regressing in terms of our cultural evolution - And then the Cadillacs set about, like cutthroat capitalists, destroying each other - The big book touches on the theme and role of *hubris* in all of this... Leftists (like myself) may disagree to some extent, but MB is presenting a vision of an earlier (pre-WWII) ruling class which viewed itself (rightly or wrongly) as moral and cultural leaders of society, where things like manners and breeding mattered (now all that matters is one's Fortune 500 rating in the corporate echelon and oligarchy) - Integrity has been replaced by bare-assed greed and cynical materialism - Without wishing to gloss over the genocidal and imperialist history of the US, there was a time when our political leaders were men of culture and learning, and when a ne'er do well oaf like GWB as President would have been unthinkable - We are truly in the terminal stages of the decline of empire, and this is one of the things MB is showing us...
Whereas Cremaster 2 (my personal favorite of the cycle) similarly portrayed the death of idealism but from the perspective of the last American outlaw - Gary Gilmore lived out his life in accord with Bob Dylan's famous line "To live outside the law you must be honest"...
Well, those are a few of my own impressions - What do the rest of you think?...
posted by:
|
Unsubscribed |
Advertisement
Advertisement
-
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Sun, May 8, 2005 - 3:10 PMi haven't read the big book, but here are a couple of 'themes' that made an impression on me . . .
c3 (my personal fave): i'm not sure i felt a critique of capitalist money/power structures so much as i just took those structures as raw material through which to explore the theme of hubris. the most fundamental hubris that the film presents, though, i think is the narcissistic quest for moral perfection. this quest is doomed to fail precisely because of its lofty and self-aggrandizing presumptions -- as one becomes more 'perfect' one also treads deeper into a quicksand of self-obsessed egotism. this 'paradox', though, i think is itself just a reflection of the fundamental narcissism (the 'closed', 'self-contained' system) of barney's entire project. the order sequence further underscores this narcissism by embodying the whole cycle -- the cycle is embedded within the cycle, and within the cycle-within-the-cycle this emedding of course is reflected (the 3rd guggenhiem level) . . . a paradox of self-creation, self-destruction, infinite regress, mirrors reflecting one another. and i'm reading into all of this a bit of lacan -- i'm thinking particularly of the mirror stage of self-consciounsess in which the ego-to-be forms an idealized image of itself -- an ideal to which it will try to live up, but fail, for the rest of its life, this continual failure being the motion of desire which pulls it through life.
c2: god/destiny as evil or malevolent or as terror. the opening shot of the mirrored saddle immediately struck me as 'the kingdom of heaven' - a cold, narcissistic, mechanised kingdom that does nothing but reflect its own ascetic austerity. fundamentalism as terrorism. i'm basing this primarily on my gut-level reactions - the film scared the crap out of me the first time i saw it & i left the theater literally shaking & in tears but couldn't begin to explain why. also - the scene in which gary gilmore approaches the clerk with a gun, where his eyes are bloodied(?) -- rather than horrifying me, the image made me feel a profoundly deep sorrow. still not sure why.
also - don't know if this has been pointed out elsewhere - but i was intrigued with the way the football field in c1 was surrounded by blackness (literally "nothing" outside the system?) and the black pearl (?) in the magician's (?) mouth at the end of c5. one could imagine a little c1 taking place inside of that pearl. the whole story of decension as one in which the void begins on the outside and works its way through the very center of the inside. or maybe the system grows around the void.
in the end, though, i think everything that the system brings into play is simply brought into to play because it embodies some aspect of the system's dynamics. the system itself strike me as pure abstraction, a kind of motion of self-reference, self-splitting, self-creation (very hegelian). in that sense, i suppose the choice of raw materials (characters, locations, myths, etc) could be considered relatively arbitrary . . . -
-
Unsu...
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Sun, May 8, 2005 - 5:03 PMVery provocative impressions, Jay - You seem to have a more structural and dynamic understanding of it than I do, I'm not really familiar with Lacan and all of that... I like the vision of the kingdom of Heaven in the mirrored saddle.. I wasn't scared at all by Cremaster 2 but I did feel the profoundly deep sorrow you describe - That whole movie had a very *elegiac* sense and sensitivity... the epic depiction of landscape, a wistful homage to the natural world and 'frontier' spirit - The slow choreographed movements of the bison and horses made tears well in my eyes - And when Baby Faye finally meets her match in Harry Houdini, and she drops the dog which scurries off, there was a feeling of Mysterium Coniunctionis that was touching and awe-inspiring... -
-
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Sun, May 8, 2005 - 8:19 PMi'd forgotten about the dog - that was very cool.
sorry to be a bit ignorant here, but by Mysterium Coniunctionis do you mean a sense of mythical/mystical/alchemical completion, things coming together? if that's what you mean, then, thinking back, i do recall that feeling with that whole sequence. interesting, as 2 is largely about conflict . . . maybe the dog running away foreshadows the movements in 3 in which something gets passed from one part of the system into another . . . ?
what i really loved about all the cremasters, but particularly 2, 3, and 4, is that i had such strong emotional reactions to them but could never explain exactly why. watching them was like listening to a story unfold in a language that i didn't know i knew how to speak -- but a language that can't be translated into anything else.
i suppose i've had similar reactions to certain paintings, poems, etc., but never to 'abstract' film in quite the same way . . . with the possible exception of un chien andalou . . . -
-
Unsu...
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Sun, May 8, 2005 - 11:00 PMMysterium Coniunctionis... well, I haven't read the book of the same name by Jung, or deeply studied the alchemical scriptures... but yeah, a sense of mystical union between male/female complementary/contradictory principles, with an aura of that which is holy and ineffable, and animal/corporeal being is transcended by coalescence on a higher plane - as when Alexander and the witch Maria levitate during intercourse in Tarkovsky's 'The Sacrifice'...
> i suppose i've had similar reactions to certain paintings, poems, etc., but never to 'abstract' film in quite the same way . . . with the possible exception of un chien andalou . .
hmm... well, I think Eraserhead hit me in that way... -
-
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Sun, May 8, 2005 - 11:51 PMaha - thanks.
you're right, erasehead did push emotional buttons in a similar kind of way, though the ways in which in operate seem more superficial (i don't mean that in a derogatory way); i,e., it's clearer how certain images evoke certain reactions. why the gilmore murder sequence with the sound of bees and the death-metal voice superimposed over the singing voice of gilmore's girlfriend (?) would produce, in me, a sense of overwhelming sorrow rather than horror is, to me, much more mysterious than why certain scenes from eraserhead might evoke feelings of awkward humor, alienation, sadness, etc.
glad you mentioned tarkovsky - i can think of at least a few sequences which moved me in ways i don't quite understand. the slow-motion horse in Andrei Rublev, or the opening tv show in Mirror in which a teenage boy's stuttering is cured by hypnosis.
now i'm thinking i'll have to throw something by harry smith into this mix (not Mahagonny, though - i tried so hard to like it but just wasn't up to the task). and maybe Playtime by jacques tati . . . -
-
Unsu...
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Mon, May 9, 2005 - 12:05 AMHarry Smith - haven't seen anything by him except half of Mahagonny, which I am embarrassed to admit I walked out of (Chelsea Girls was riveting by comparison)... Tati is someone whose work I have also overlooked...
-
Unsu...
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Mon, May 9, 2005 - 9:44 AMI might add that one of the most haunting, tragically unsettling images in the cycle for me is the tableau of a seated and blindfolded Aimee Mullins with the lambs on ribbon leashes and her shrivelled stumps exposed, which appears at the end of the Order sequence in Cremaster 3 - There's a sense of 'the obscene' and of violation in this image, at the same time as a feeling of idyllic repose - very troubling... Is this an allegory, and of what? (I think of Justice blindfolded, and of the Lamb of God...) -
-
Re: What does it all mean?!?
Mon, May 9, 2005 - 8:24 PMthat was a powerful and haunting image. i absolutely agree about the sense of the obscene/violation combined with repose, and i thought immediately of justice as well. looking at the dvd just now, i noticed that her stumps are placed in some kind of plexiglass extensions that look impossible to walk on (they break down into a bunch of what looks like curl-shapes), heightening the tension of the repose -- she couldn't get up if she wanted to.
for what it's worth, here's are some excerpts from mb's not terribly interesting commentary on the dvd (in which he sounds quite bored, by the way).
regarding the apprentice striking down amiee mullins and the image we're talking about, he says:
"hiram abiff was executed by the apprentices with one strike of the plumb to the temple another strike with the level to the temple and a third strike with the maul to the forehead; and here amy's wearing the initiation outfit of an entered apprentice with the noose around the neck, one sleeve exposing the elbow for the five points embrace, one pant leg rolled up over the knee, to expose the knee for the five points embrace and another off of her breast exposing the chest, again, for the five points of fellowship . . ."
a little earlier he says: "i was interested in amy's character to be somewhat of a reflection of the apprentice in that way that if the apprentice needed to learn to kill himself on level three then her character would be an aspect of him in some ways; i was interested in amy's biography being somewhat parallel to mine in terms of my experience as a model and as an athlete . . ."
and he goes into detail on the five-points embrace when talking about the laughton ram on level 4:
"this a modified laughton ram, indigenous to the ilse of man the ram has five sockets in its body, the apprentice here needs to learn how to engage these objects into the ram . . . the five points of fellowship besides in this case referring to these five points on the ram are also referential to a masonic embrace where two masons will touch the inside of their opposing feet, they'll touch the insides of their respective kness, their hands will touch the small of one another's back, they'll touch their chests to one another and position their mouths next to each other's ears to whisper a secret word"
it's interesting that in the image we're talking about, amiee holds four lambs . . . pointing toward cremaster 4?
btw, i don't blame you at all for walking out on mahagonny . . . if you ever get a chance to see his short film FILM #11, MIRROR ANIMATIONS, though, do see it. it's a kind of absurd, hermetic collage animation set to thelonius monk's "mysterioso" - with a very weird formalist twist thrown in at what you think is going to be the end. i caught it a couple of years ago at craig baldwin's other cinema series . . .
-
-
-
-
-
-
