Slavoj Žižek, Film Theory, Masturbation, and Casablanca

Slavoj Žižek,
Film Theory,
Masturbation,

and Casablanca

In the stunningly brilliant comic book analysis comic book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud proposed that the "grammar" of sequential-art was the "phenomenon of observing the parts and perceiving the whole" or "closure." What he meant to posit with this slightly obscure additive is that if the visual signs and cues within the panels amount to a comic's "vocabulary", than the way we put all those separate panels together into a single story or narrative stream is a comic's "grammar." McCloud further proposes that the space between each panel - known as "the gutter" - is instrumental to this grammatical structure.

What the gutter does for comics is excite the imagination and the intellect in order to create assumptions, based on what we understand of the world as well as the specific comic book world in question, that help us reach a sort of closure. The gutter is a both a literal and non-literal gap. On the pages, the gutter is an empty space that distinguishes independent panels. However, in the language of comics, the gutter is a spatial, temporal, perspective, and philosophical gap. It challenges us to decide where the narrative is trying to take us, or perhaps, where we would like it to take us [1].

This is why I always felt that "the gutter" was a perfectly ingenious title: the gap between each panel must ultimately be filled with and satisf ied by our imaginations. It's the dark, obstructed pathway of the underground sewage, filth collected by the torrential rains from above, violently churning dead rats mummified in yesterday's headlines. Potentially, we could impose any number or degree of our own fantasies into a comic book world, and that is despite the artist's intended narrative stream. Of course, the artist is aware of our conditioning and realizes that if he wants to express a coherent story of singularity, he must encode his work with instructions.

McCloud briefly acknowledges the similar role of closure in the filmic arts, however he describes the act of connecting the gaps as more or less seamless: "in movies, our minds effortlessly connect each frame to those preceding and fo llowing it." Largely, this is true. The frames of a film are abundant and, at the same time, invisible due to the speed at which they are projected and then discarded (and then projected) onto the same space. Still, the sort of conscious and active engagement involved in reading a comic is not entirely absent in the grammer of cinema (as any movie-goer should realize).

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek presents to us a very specific case of this active engagement: In the Hollywood classic Casablanca, leads Bogart and Bergman are seen in a passionate embrace. The film fades out and into a shot of the Casablanca tower. After about three or so seconds, it cuts back to Bogart and Bergman, apparently continuing their conversation. There are multiple signs which seem to suggest contradictory conclusions. On one hand, it appears obvious that the three second gap was actually a much longer (or not so much longer, circumstantially) period of fucking (or love making). Bogart smokes a cigarette; further, who can argue with the phallic symbology of the Casablanca tower? Yet, on the other hand, the three seconds could be literal in that it appears the same exact conversation is continuing. This is not a simple case of censorship. This is, arguably, a case of the author exciting our repression, while, inversely condemning the idea (by means of already established social institution).

Somehow, there is a perversion here that exceeds even that of explicit fucking. When an author shows two people fucking, the audience is compelled to engage in that specific narrative. So, we think about fucking. Yet, we are imposed upon by the real purveyor of filth, the artist; we have a scapegoat. But, aha! When an author so masterfully censors his piece to make even the nature of implication (of fucking) ambiguous, the audience is compelled by nothing more than their fantasy. This is when, as Žižek would argue, the true fantastical and masturbatory instance of censored cinema occurs. This is when we engage ourselves at a unique ideological level.

According to Žižek, this is a model for the functioning of ideology itself (specifically that of Hollywood censorship). It enforces, by means of symbolical normative language, an ideal. Yet, at the same time, it must, if it cares to be heard, allow a gutter. An audience is a composite of their fantasies and repressions, and they will, inevitably, be attracted to the dual relationship between the streets above and the sewers below. And, when we're given an opportunity, in film, to consciously and ideologically evaluate a gap, our fantasies have an opportunity to communicate with the screen - and, sometimes, the screen will serve as flooding waters, raising the waves of the sewers below, bringing an odor to the surface that is perversely pristine. This is an opportunity worth much introspection, experimentation, and discourse. This is the active fantastical imagination of the pervert's cinema.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Joss Whedon, 2008)

Horribleness,
Getting the Girl,
Anarchy, and the
Greek Tragedy:

Much like in Whedon's seminal television work, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nothing is exactly as it seems in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. In the horror world, before Buffy, we knew who was bad and we knew who was good. We knew who was helpless and we knew who wasn't. This assurance made facing the horrible all that less horrifying - it was a safe, formulaic, and predictable world. These sorts of clichés were the immediate inspiration for Buffy. Whedon created a woman with power, who was a hero, and placed her in the horror realm where, traditionally, "the little blonde girl... goes into a dark alley and gets killed." Whedon explained this rebellion as a more subverted feminism: "The very first mission statement of the show was the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it." [1] This would, essentially, become a sort of "whedormula" in of itself; Villains would become heroes, heroes (sometimes) would become monsters (or be monsters), and you could learn to expect the unexpected.

The formula was successful; Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a critical and cult success and remained on television for seven full seasons. The Buffyverse further extended into the (equally successful) spin-off Angel, several different comic book series (both canonical and non-canonical), heaps of novelizations, action figures, video games, and even university-level lectures. Buffy was at once not only a commercial success, but an immensely successful philosophy. Even today both the surface and subverted qualities of Buffy are discussed on an academic level [2]. What I mean to illustrate by introducing the origins and success of Whedon's earlier work are the recurrent ideas (behind and implemented into nearly all of Joss' work) that echo and reverberate in
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

Just as Buffy inverted and played on the ceremonies of the Horror genre, Dr. Horrible subverts the super hero world. There is a perfect sense of anguish and irony that serves as an undercurrent throughout all three acts of Dr. Horrible, arguably resurfacing from the sort of dubious way many of us, as children, must have viewed super heroes. Batman was an obvious capitalist cheerleader (independently wealthy, kicking the shit out of petty criminals). Superman was the personification of the American Dream (the ultimate immigrant, rising to success and heroism in the new world). Often the lines between good and bad were not only drawn, they were bolded and made to carry giant flashing billboard size marquees, "Joe Chill bad, very very bad!" Sure, there was serious socio-political subversion in the comic world, especially into the twenty-first century, but the majority of super hero worlds were full of democracy-wielding-might-as-well-be-slave-traders dressed up in capes and masks. Even as children we knew that this wasn't how the world worked, and we became aware of the pacifying nature of most media.

Dr. Horrible is the result of all this skepticism we have for our heroes (which includes capitalism, democracy, love, and charity), and because of this we immediately relate to him. His frustration is our own. His pain is not just a plot device or character motivation, it is a real and honest discontent that we all have with the world, and the "powers that be." This is why Dr. Horrible's arch nemesis, the so-called hero, Captain Hammer is such a prick. Captain Hammer is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the world: unmitigated egoism, exaggerated masculinity, bombastic idiocy, and malicious deceit. This is the most immediate inversion within Joss' new creation; Dr. Horrible, the villain, is truly our savior while Captain Hammer, the hero, is truly the bad guy. This point is obvious, but is necessary to establish before pushing this tale to its iconoclastic end.

What Dr. Horrible is, after a confused, love sick, and angst ridden young man (Billy), is an anarchist, and that the anarchist is our hero speaks volumes to the subversive elements present in Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Captain Hammer "corporate tool" is a destructive, militaristic entity; he is careless, moronic, yet well-liked and exceedingly powerful. I mean to posit that Captain Hammer is democracy, corporate interest democracy and Dr. Horrible is freedom, anarchy (sensitive, confused, impractical, vilified). As such, it is no surprise that romance is what moves both of these characters. For Dr. Horrible, Penny (the beautiful nerd from the laundromat) is the gentleness of mankind. Without the hope of a better future (Penny), Dr. Horrible could never aspire towards social change, or an upheaval of power. So, it is integral that Dr. Horrible love Penny, despite, of course, having never actually made contact or consummated his love (either of which would mean an actualized hope, and a new future which steps outside of just mere fantasy). However, Dr. Horrible fails to save his love and Penny is, ironically, the last to be corrupted by the perversion of Captain Hammer, and therein lies the tragedy.

As Dr. Horrible reported in his blog, "the status is not quo." And, it's true. The world is messed up. This is, fundamentally, why Dr. Horrible is our hero - however mistaken, he intends to save the world. However, his savior role is powered only by the love he holds for Penny. Some may see this as a character flaw, or a selfish conceit, and they wouldn't be wrong. But, in my model, Penny is symbolically the innocence and purity of mankind, thus, Dr. Horrible's love interest is not only optimistic in nature, it is also the root of his anarchistic aspirations. If mankind truly has no love, then we could not hope to survive in a state of... statelessness. Penny provides that hope for a better future, and, as such, operates as a justification for any "evil" committed in the hopes of revolution. At the end of the first act, when Dr. Horrible inadvertently introduces Captain Hammer to Penny, the real downfall of our hero begins.

Penny is slowly seduced by the power and disguise of Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible feels helpless to save her. This is when (in the second act) the darker tones of the series begin to truly flesh themselves out. Billy (Dr. Horrible) sings, "hopes and dreams are shattering apart, and crashing to the ground," and that "evil inside" of him "is on the rise." This is the depressive state of cynicism Billy faces after having seen his love in the arms of his enemy. Or, to put it in other words, this is the pessimism born from the innocence of man being destroyed. Later, when Billy's aspirations of domination are challenged, he decides, for the first time, that he may be ready to kill to get what he wants, and he decides to assassinate Captain Hammer to claim his victory. This rash behavior, however, will amount to Billy's harmartia and the story's tragic ending.

The final battle, which ends in the malfunctioning of Dr. Horrible's death-ray, is set at the press opening of Captain Hammer's single-signature homeless shelter (a treatment of the symptom). Here, the mob style fans are present in full force and "justice" is renamed "Captain Hammer." But, Dr. Horrible lays in wait. In the middle of Captain Hammer's address, which amounts to self-praise and mob appeasement, Dr. Horrible freezes the Captain and delivers his own address. In his final mantra, Dr. Horrible sings, "now that your savior is still as the grave you're beginning to fear me," asking "can you really hear me?" In a violent rage, Dr. Horrible fires his death-ray into the air and the crowd runs for cover. For once, Billy has his chance to end it all by taking the life of Captain Hammer, yet he hesitates. This mistake is fatal.

Having been unfrozen, Captain Hammer gets the upper hand and turns the death-ray on Dr. Horrible. Hammer ignores Billy's warnings and misfires the death-ray, sending debris from the rifle everywhere. For the first time, Hammer feels pain and runs off in tears. For a moment, Dr. Horrible realizes his victory, that is, until he sees Penny. Shrapnel sent flying from the exploded death-ray had impaled his love. Apparently unaware that Captain Hammer had effectively murdered her, Penny tragically ensures Billy with her dying words that "Captain Hammer will save us." The press spins the story in Hammer's favor, labeling Dr. Horrible as a murderer. As a murder was the requirement for Dr. Horrible's admittance into the Evil League of Evil, the events are a sort of demented success. Dr. Horrible gains popularity, power, and dominance, yet loses the love of his life. In the final song Dr. Horrible is seen, for the first time, wearing his goggles singing, "now the nightmares real. Now, Dr. Horrible is here to make you quake with fear, to make the whole world kneel." Here is Billy's transformation into true villainy: the colors of death adorned and the light of day obstructed. This is the result of Dr. Horrible's anarchy without the hope he had for mankind, without Penny. The persona of Dr. Horrible has become overpowering and Billy hides away from the world and all its sensation by giving into the evilness which arose inside of him after Penny's death. In a final frame, Billy is seen sitting at his blog without his supervillain costume. He sings the last words of the last line of the last song, "and I won't feel a thing."

In the end, what is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog but an exceedingly poignant and complex tragicomedy? The absurdist, almost silly quality of the whole thing only makes its tragic and socio-political concerns that much more cathartic. The audience is lulled into a musical sanctuary - hidden from the themes of tyranny, pain, and obsession - but, what we're left with is an unbelievably cynical ending punctuated by the downfall of our hero and the death of mankind's innocence and sincerity (all within an already dark and insincere world). And, really, the final absurdity of it all is how enjoyable and celebratory the whole thing is (I'm still singing the songs in my head). It works almost perfectly on the level of a Shakespearean tragedy; it grants the same sense of assertiveness and fascinated marvel that permeates from the pages of Macbeth or Julius Caesar. When we found a hero in Dr. Horrible, we truly found ourselves. In the end, we're forced to examine and reconcile the relationship we have with our hero selves (our revolutionary aspirations, and our fairy tale romances) and our true place in society (the "not so heroic" place Captain Hammer sang of). We have to recognize Dr. Horrible as an evil fool, but a beautiful, forgotten, and confused hero nonetheless.

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*this whole thing has essentially been me thinking far
too much about the ideas behind this sweet little creation
by Joss Whedon. But, nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed it,
and I hope you support Whedon's efforts here in his extra-
media experimentation (buy DVDs, buy Soundtracks, etc.).
Also, if you have any comments on my unsorted, scatter-
brained ideas (or any theories of your own), let me know.

Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999)

A Short Reflection on the
Mechanized and Mutilated
Found Footage
of Peter Tscherkassky's
Outer Space:

I love how Tscherkassky can seem to turn the violent force of disjointed narrative and avant-garde aesthetic into a villain of sorts: we see a young woman enter a small suburban home, surrounded first by an eerie calm... the woman is assaulted by broken images, the rumblings of the film itself (being torn and juxtaposed against itself). She screams in pain, seemingly raped and horrified by the narrative break. She seems to struggle against this chaos, however "the film itself screeches and tears as the sprockets and optical soundtrack violently invade the fictional world."[1] It is irresistible.

This is not only the aesthetic modus operandi of Peter Tscherkassky but, arguably, his own subversive conspiracy against the conventions of filmic narrative. Tscherkassky is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker who uses "found footage" and heavy photo-manipulation and editing. Although he studied journalism, political science, and philosophy at the University of Vienna, his life moved towards the production and promotion of film as art after, in January of 1978, he attended a five-day lecture on avant-garde cinema by P. Adams Sitney.[2] Evidently, this inspired Tscherkassky to experiment on his own and at the edge of film narrative, leading to the contradictory, grotesque, and beautiful short films he is best known for today.

Previously, I alluded to a "conspiracy" in Tscherkassky work. That conspiracy, insofar as I can tell, permeates and vibrates out of Outer Space - A place, literally, outside of our world, our understanding, and, often, our reach. Already we're aware that we're being taken far away. Even in a short ten minute running time, Tscherkassky is able to comprehensively exhaust his audience. The onslaught of broken images, echoed gestures, and fragmented shots is almost completely without repose. The film begins with strong implications of genre - a dark suburban landscape with a woman (Barbara Hershey from Sidney J. Furie's 1981 film The Entity) moving towards a dubious sanctuary. As much as the footage was chosen for Hershey's manic performance (attacked by an invisible force), the idea that the symbology of classic horror scenario was just as powerful (if not more powerful) is persuasive. As the woman reaches the door, the film gesticulates and moans. The woman turns the handle and as the door opens a great foreboding falls over the viewer. Slowly, the physical structure of the film reveals itself: images becomes ghosts of themselves, the soundtrack becomes more forceful and violent, and our protagonist splits apart.

There is an attacker, an invisible agent inside the house. As the woman fights back (smashing mirrors, screaming in horror, and attempting to flee) the editing becomes so heavy and realized that the film reel itself becomes apparent. I'm tempted to say that this makes the filmmaker himself the antagonist... there was a narrative, a character within it, and Tscherkassky violently tore both of them from their world. Further, this highlights the distinction between the world behind the camera and the world the camera absorbs. The absence of coherence and the exaggerated departure from conventional story-telling can be difficult to digest, and we're compelled to believe that this is what is so horrifying to the woman on-screen. Or, possibly, it is just the aesthetic itself which is the monster. In either case, Tscherkassky's piece, however esoteric, is part of a larger philosophy - the idea that cinema as a reflection of reality is not enough. That, the appeal to realism is one born and sustained by a lack of imagination and the bravery to step out into world's unknown.

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[1]. Outer Space: The Manufactured Film of Peter Tscherkassky by Rhys Graham

I Really Know Very Little

I, much unlike most cinephiles and snobs, was born after the war was waged, by competing media and technology giants, for the video market. In the early 1970's home video cassette recorders (VCRs) first became available. On April 16, 1975 the first consumer-popular video format was introduced: Sony's Betamax. A year later, in an act formerly considered market-suicide, The Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan, Limited (JVC) denied the dominance and popularity of Sony's Betamax by inventing a videotape format of their own, VHS. Thus began the long-winded and bloody market battle that became known as "the videotape format war." It wasn't until a decade later that a clear victor in the battle had emerged, and that victor stood in contradiction of technological superiority (aside from running time, Betamax was superior to VHS in every way). I was forced into this world in 1988; it was the same year that Sony conceded defeat and began to produce VHS cassettes. [1]

In 1975 Opening Soon at a Theater Near You premiered on WTTW (PBS Chicago). The show starred print-critics Gene Siskel and (now) jawless-celebrity-status Roger Ebert. In '78 the show was retitled to Sneak Previews. In '82 the two critics left the relatively popular public broadcast in order to create their own show under Tribune Entertainment called At The Movies. Four years later the thumb-wagging duo signed under Buena Vista Entertainment (Disney's television division) and became the hosts of Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. In 1989, when I was nearly a year old, the series' title would change for the last time before Gene Siskel's death; "The Movies," was taken out of the title, "Siskel & Ebert" was all that remained. That same year the phrase "two thumbs up" was trademarked. This coincided with the show's immense success. It was becoming increasingly lauded and integrated into the public conscious. Arguably, this also coincided with a disheartening decrease in academic or scholarly film criticism. [2] American film critic Pauline Kael, who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991, was once asked by a prideful Ebert if she had seen his show. She responded scornfully, “If I want a layman’s opinion on movies, I don’t have to watch TV.”[3]

All this serves to inform me of the commercial and consumer orgy of video-media I was born into. Intelligent criticism had been replaced with thumbs, film was being seen merely as a "fun" time-wasting entertainment only academically considered by smelly eccentric hoarders, and "Blockbuster" was becoming a household name. I'm lucky though, really. I was born into the first wave of the information age. I have a world of knowledge at my disposal: this is actualized autodidacticism. Without any of this, I wouldn't even have my passion for cinema, let alone the ability to communicate it to you (anyone want to start a tape trade?).

In my small room, my mother's small apartment, the small town I live in, I am a sort of film aficionado, a real "cinephile": I know who Jess Franco, Frederick Wiseman, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dušan Makavejev, and Andrzej Zulawski are. However, this is not to say that I truly know anything about them - because, essentially, I don't. Despite the fact that I have been gifted with the rare opportunity to see some of the work of each of these artists, all of those instances have occurred in the last year, were dependent on some sort of (more or less) freak accessibility, and have only served to marginally ascend myself towards any degree of so-called snobbery. In my little town I'm a particularly knowledgeable and well-viewed movie-goer. However, in the perverted and exceedingly expansive terrain of underground network cables - the world-wide-web - I'm somewhat of a foolish, infantile, and half-blind insect. I'm small and insignificant in comparison to the verbose, well-read, and projection-absorbed elite who live inside of the corners of the most obscure world-cinema.

Despite all this, I have my own aspirations and that is what moves me to start this blog. I truly do have a love for film and a passion to dedicate myself to its study. Film has transformed, defined, brightened, and devastated my life - it is a force and power that I could not, for anything, oppose. Because of this, I have resolved to watch at least one movie a day. I have the hopes of genuinely expanding my knowledge of cinema and I not only want to catalog this journey for myself, but possibly give others insight into the process and the procedures it entails (finding some of these movies is impossibly stupid). Further, I need something - I have a deficiency in discipline - to keep me anchored and on task... I'm watching a movie a day.

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[3]. What we Don't Talk About When we Talk About Movies by Armond White