This song increasingly tugs at my heart. From the first time I saw Romain Duris on film to tonight. Just saying...
15 March 2009
Meta meta (and a dance by a caped crusader)
What does Nature Theater of Oklahoma's No Dice, a 4-hour epic of sandwiches, accents and the occasional dance...
...have to do with tv shows like 30 Rock?
They're both royally post-post-modern in a meta fashion.
In the first clip, the performers in No Dice begin to discuss dinner theater. As their conversation progresses, their description increasingly resembles what they are actually doing - the goofy costumes, odd accents, inflated acting, etc. They are subverting the oddness of what they are describing by enacting it and, furthermore, have begun to fuck with conventions of accepting the inherent falsehoods of theater.
In the second clip, Liz Lemon talks about a wireless provider service with her colleague, only to turn and face the camera and directly address that same provider, asking where their check is. She has broken both the conventions of the tv fourth wall and of quietly accepting product placement.
Both the performance and the tv series have an awareness of the paradigms of their medium and a desire to display this awareness. In the past decade, more and more entertainment along these lines has populated the theater and creeped into mainstream television - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (toying with teen and horror genres), Family Guy (cartoons and tv), Mark Haim's Goldberg Variations (expectations of dance/movement vocabularies), etc.
It seems like an interesting trend to watch... But that interest could be influenced by the intoxicating combination of cheap sandwiches, dr pepper, a little whiskey, a lot of time in a vacant office space and a nightcap involving tv reruns on my laptop.
To take this out on a random note - the dance starting at 1:35 in the following video of No Dice will remain a highlight of things I've seen this year (listen carefully and you'll hear the performers proclaiming "I'm a sexy robot").
...have to do with tv shows like 30 Rock?
They're both royally post-post-modern in a meta fashion.
In the first clip, the performers in No Dice begin to discuss dinner theater. As their conversation progresses, their description increasingly resembles what they are actually doing - the goofy costumes, odd accents, inflated acting, etc. They are subverting the oddness of what they are describing by enacting it and, furthermore, have begun to fuck with conventions of accepting the inherent falsehoods of theater.
In the second clip, Liz Lemon talks about a wireless provider service with her colleague, only to turn and face the camera and directly address that same provider, asking where their check is. She has broken both the conventions of the tv fourth wall and of quietly accepting product placement.
Both the performance and the tv series have an awareness of the paradigms of their medium and a desire to display this awareness. In the past decade, more and more entertainment along these lines has populated the theater and creeped into mainstream television - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (toying with teen and horror genres), Family Guy (cartoons and tv), Mark Haim's Goldberg Variations (expectations of dance/movement vocabularies), etc.
It seems like an interesting trend to watch... But that interest could be influenced by the intoxicating combination of cheap sandwiches, dr pepper, a little whiskey, a lot of time in a vacant office space and a nightcap involving tv reruns on my laptop.
To take this out on a random note - the dance starting at 1:35 in the following video of No Dice will remain a highlight of things I've seen this year (listen carefully and you'll hear the performers proclaiming "I'm a sexy robot").
14 March 2009
The unspeakable act
In 1973 the crimes of serial killer Dean Corll were unearthed. The combination of his appetite for strung out young boys and a tendency towards hypersadism proved ruthless as he wound his way through upwards of 20 victims.
In 2007 French director Gisele Vienne adapted a novella, JERK, about Corll by US author Dennis Cooper. The story was brought to the stage under the guise of a lecture of sorts - one of Corll's accomplices told the story of what had happened leading up the day of Corll's death. Using puppets and gruesome sound effects, the solo performer demonstrated the acts he had been present for and, when unable to talk about the crimes, he instead had the audience read from a zine he had constructed prior to the performance.
The masterful construction of the show had an emotional impact so strong that it became physical - it was as my stomach sank through me to anchor my body to the seat. This effect left me in a post-performance daze that lasted until the weekend was over. Once it lifted, one of the themes that struck me most was that of the unspeakable act (an act, a moment an idea that is so abhorrent that to talk about it is impossible) and how it was communicated throughout the show.
[An aside - to speak of something is to take steps towards comprehension and, in turn, ownership over an idea. I think we avoid this in some cases because we don't want to become even momentarily involved or acknoweledge involvement.]
In JERK we see different levels of ownership and avoidance of this act (or acts, as it were). I would divide it out into the production's use of the following:
PUPPETS This secondary medium (secondary in that the puppeteer speaks through it) allows the voice to be heard, but projects the actions onto a different object.
ZINES The actions are so awful that they can't be spoken. Instead they are written out, but remain unpronounced.
VENTRILOQUISM The actions are communicated through spoken words, but the lips and tongue refuse participation - the speaking organs reject their role in naming the act. The voice continues on, but the source of the words (the sight of the puppeteer in this case) is no longer recognizable.
DROOL The words will not remain dormant and force their way out in such a way that they become physical, in a liquid form.
In the above we see distancing, avoidance and, in some ways, acceptance as well. In the case of the latter two devices an interesting parallel to the story emerges and another layer is added on - complicity. David Brooks, the accomplice and the puppeteer in this play, was not directly involved in the murders or the torturing. He stepped back and often played the role of videographer. Towards the end he supposedly wanted it to all to be over; he no longer wanted to participate in the torture and the murder. But he did nothing to put it to an end; he sat back and let it happen. Fast forwarding to when he's in jail and trying to talk about what happened, he experiences something similar - he no longer wants to tell this story and own up to his role. The memories are overwhelming, but he remains complicit and unable to stop. His words go on, even as he physically shuts down.
So what bearing does this have on larger cases of the unspeakable? The case of JERK demonstrates how when we take a non-participatory stance, we are still connected whether or not we like it. The unspeakable will not just stop if it is avoided; if anything the consequences of such can be much larger (eg immaterial words becoming solid drool).
In 2007 French director Gisele Vienne adapted a novella, JERK, about Corll by US author Dennis Cooper. The story was brought to the stage under the guise of a lecture of sorts - one of Corll's accomplices told the story of what had happened leading up the day of Corll's death. Using puppets and gruesome sound effects, the solo performer demonstrated the acts he had been present for and, when unable to talk about the crimes, he instead had the audience read from a zine he had constructed prior to the performance.
The masterful construction of the show had an emotional impact so strong that it became physical - it was as my stomach sank through me to anchor my body to the seat. This effect left me in a post-performance daze that lasted until the weekend was over. Once it lifted, one of the themes that struck me most was that of the unspeakable act (an act, a moment an idea that is so abhorrent that to talk about it is impossible) and how it was communicated throughout the show.
[An aside - to speak of something is to take steps towards comprehension and, in turn, ownership over an idea. I think we avoid this in some cases because we don't want to become even momentarily involved or acknoweledge involvement.]
In JERK we see different levels of ownership and avoidance of this act (or acts, as it were). I would divide it out into the production's use of the following:
PUPPETS This secondary medium (secondary in that the puppeteer speaks through it) allows the voice to be heard, but projects the actions onto a different object.
ZINES The actions are so awful that they can't be spoken. Instead they are written out, but remain unpronounced.
VENTRILOQUISM The actions are communicated through spoken words, but the lips and tongue refuse participation - the speaking organs reject their role in naming the act. The voice continues on, but the source of the words (the sight of the puppeteer in this case) is no longer recognizable.
DROOL The words will not remain dormant and force their way out in such a way that they become physical, in a liquid form.
In the above we see distancing, avoidance and, in some ways, acceptance as well. In the case of the latter two devices an interesting parallel to the story emerges and another layer is added on - complicity. David Brooks, the accomplice and the puppeteer in this play, was not directly involved in the murders or the torturing. He stepped back and often played the role of videographer. Towards the end he supposedly wanted it to all to be over; he no longer wanted to participate in the torture and the murder. But he did nothing to put it to an end; he sat back and let it happen. Fast forwarding to when he's in jail and trying to talk about what happened, he experiences something similar - he no longer wants to tell this story and own up to his role. The memories are overwhelming, but he remains complicit and unable to stop. His words go on, even as he physically shuts down.
So what bearing does this have on larger cases of the unspeakable? The case of JERK demonstrates how when we take a non-participatory stance, we are still connected whether or not we like it. The unspeakable will not just stop if it is avoided; if anything the consequences of such can be much larger (eg immaterial words becoming solid drool).
13 March 2009
Culture of non sequiturs
This video serves as an excellent example of our culture that embraces and delights in non sequiturs. It counts among its disparate elements the act of punching, folks eating (or attempting to eat) a meal, ecstatic dances, a soundtrack of layered beeps and vocals, zombies, text, a Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego-esque tour of major cities/monuments and, in the final moments, a line ostensibly taken from a motivational poster hanging in a second grade classroom.
Now the first question might be why do all of these things need to be strung together? Some seem to come with a precedent (eg Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video with its zombies and dancing), yet others don't (punching someone just before they take a bite of their food?).
But the more interesting question is how does this SNL sketch become one of the most watched videos online? Somehow we've not only accepted this bundle of non sequiturs, but we, the community of people who have vorasciously clicked 'play again', have turned it into a hot little commodity. There's a cultural interest in this kind of material that fuels the creation of future bits of delightful oddity (the list of SNL digital shorts along these lines grows longer) that is utterly fascinating.
I bring this all up briefly because it's also a nice way of introducing a new endeavor in which I catalogue random associations . With Roland Barthes, Dennis Cooper and Tim Etchells as my personal trinity of inspiration (and a tip of the hat to Noam Chomsky and Rich Juzwiak), I kick off a new exercise that might include everything from posting various odds and ends to exploring the endless potential for intertextuality.
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