Posted on 08/26/2011 11:11:00 AM PDT by Borges
Edited on 08/26/2011 11:32:12 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
I’ve given a reason why it’s so fascinating. The disjunction between the style and subject matter.
“You sound like you just don’t like Modernism”
I certainly like other eras—ancient, baroque, classical, romantic—better. But, no, I do like some modernism. I love Conrad (if he is a modernist, and I think so) and Kafka, am fond of Fitzgerald (as required by law, being a Minnesotan) Hemingway, Anderson, etc. As for poets, I gobble Yeats and enjoy certain Eliot, though not much the footnotey “Wasteland.”
“You probably don’t like Virginia Woolf or Proust either?”
Woolf, no. Talk about pretentious. As for Proust, I see him as antithetical to Joyce, at least in some aspects. His sentences are beautiful, his characterizations ring true without dwelling on bowels and such, and his details are actually interesting instead of the stuff that just happens to be around as in Joyce.
Proust’s style, too, has an aesthetically unearned density of meaning. I mean by that to say the discursiveness of his sentences is not fully justified by what they yield to the understanding. And talk about digressions! Though, in this case, he’s not really digressing from anything, as the books could be seen as nothing but a series of digressions. On the whole, though, Proust yes, Joyce no.
“They were inheriting a Victorian storytelling tradition that they felt had become exhausted and they wanted to make language more important.”
Yeah, you hear this a lot. Painters felt representation and perspective had been done to death, so they replaced them with abstraction. Composers felt the sonata, symphony, opera,and ballet worn out, so they turned to atonality, serial and accidental music. Writers saw nothing more to be gained from meter and rhyming in poetry, and lineality and first-person narration in prose.
So they tried new things. And know what? They made it worse. Tonality is better. Perspective is better. Meter is better. Mimesis is better. Rising and falling action and climaxes are better. You failed, grand experimenters.
By the way, people bash Victorians a lot, and they surely were gas bags. I have to get a running start to read Arnold, Stephens, Spencer, Bagehot, etc. Don’t even get me started on the Germans. But you know what? They were on to something. No matter how little we’d like to go back to talking like that, they were onto something. Something more than Joyce, Beckett, Woolf, etc. I’d rather read a Dickens, a Hawthorne, or even a Melville any day than read “Ulyses” again.
“Joyce was a comic writer who could write in just about any style you choose”
Too many. So many that he lost all grasp on the benefit of sticking to a style, or what artistic point abruptly changing styles might serve.
“Ulysses is an epic on the head of a pin”
This sort of statement might sound profound to some, but is meaningless to me. Except insofar as he deals with ordinary things in limited time and space, I guess. There’s nothing epic about the events, setting, or characters, nor in the way the story is told. It’s just a bunch of slumming and dead-end deep psychologizing.
The only way to perceive epicness is to delve into the footnotey depths. But such depths, in my opinion, have nothing to do with the art of novel writing. Everyone can see this in “Finnegans Wake,” since it’s impossible for anyone really to enjoy, unless they’re enjoying it the same way scholars get a kick out of translating Linear B or mapping genomes.
We can’t see that “Ulyses” is no different only because it, as I have said, is fun to read once you get the hang of it. But not all fun is good, at least when we’re dealing with the subject of high art. The general choppiness and fragmented prose, as well as the famous stream-of-consciousness, and the whiplash style changes are all destructive of good writing, in my opinion. The fact that they are used to cover up the fact that we’re dealing with ordinary, boring, vulgar, and sometimes obscene matter (on the surface, anyway, though not in the footnotes) makes it all the worse.
“he popularized the epiphany as a literary climax so I don’t know who did it better”
To clarify, it’s not that Joyce misused the epiphany. When I call his epiphanies anti-climactic, I should clarify that I was being redundant, and all epiphanies are anti-climactic. It’s a bad trick, and destructive of good storytelling.
“The Dead is probably the best short story ever written in English.”
I couldn’t disagree more. Well, maybe if you had cited “Death in Venice,” but who knows? “The Dead” is compelling. I’d call it a page-turner. It is saturated with details, without it being overwhelming or them being uninteresting (as in “Ulyses”). The setting is well realized. The characters are thinner than I’d prefer; the only one who ends up sharply drawn gets that way via the epiphany, which I shall address presently.
It’s nothing more than a trick, a dirty trick. It runs afoul of all we used to know, up to the modern period (though scholars no doubt could gainsay me with previous examples) of good storytelling. What do you call the reverse of a Shaggy Dog Story? An epiphany. It’s all blow and no build-up. You may counter that the whole story up to the epiphany is the build-up, but it isn’t. Nothing that came before, or at best only subtle little hints, have anything to do with the epiphany scene in “The Dead.” The title does, obviously, but not the rest of the story.
Narrative form is governed by causal chains of rising and falling action capped off by a climax, which is (or isn’t) resolved in a denouement. Long story short, what happens before the climax is supposed to lead to it. To inform it, to help us understand what’s going on in it, to build tension for it, and so on.
What happens in “The Dead” is a bunch of stuff. Interesting stuff, well-drawn stuff, not very dramatic yet pleasing stuff. Then, suddenly, something happens. It’s as if the earth cracks open and Deep Meaning oozes out. Only we weren’t prepared for it. Nothing built up to it. It just happened. Not that nothing like that ever happens in real life. Events like epiphanies have happened to me, I suppose. But only in the sense that nothing immediately preceding them caused them. But I, unlike “The Dead,” have more than one night to reference. Certainly something happened earlier to prepare the ground for what could be considered personal epiphanies.
Literary epiphanies are like a 1.5 seconds of intercourse after an hour of half-hearted foreplay. I can’t say the intercourse would be worthless or that I wouldn’t have a good time. But that’s not the best way to have sex, nor is it the best way to tell a story.
“Faulkner’s influence extends to places like China, Russia and Latin America so it has nothing to do with Americans asserting his greatness”
It involves someone asserting his greatness, and I’d like to know, finally, why.
Maybe you see a line between direct murder and indirect. Most people don’t, killing is killing, having it done and doing it yourself doesn’t really change the amount of blood on your hands.
It’s not even a matter of shortly before. Tony was very upfront with Frank about what he wanted to accomplish with Frank’s drug empire, and what he was willing to do to accomplish it. Frank could have played along, instead he got in the way. If he’d paid attention he had MONTHS to see it coming, and most importantly PREVENT it.
Who says they’re nice people at the restaurant? They all know what the place is, they all know who goes there. There’s a certain crowd of people that go to expensive restaurants frequented by drug lords.
I never said subsidize, I said need. There’s a major difference. There’s a lot of stuff in the world we need but never deliberately pay for. Often times we don’t even stop to realize we need it.
Nobody cares about drug kingpins anymore. Quick name 3 drug kingpins active today. Now name 3 business leaders that are often “credited” with crashing our economy. Bet you can’t do the first but can do the second. Which tells you which group are the villains of the day. And I never said anything about benefactors. Stop adding to what I wrote.
I don’t know about deep. But Tony’s rant is accurate. sorry you can’t see the plainly obvious truth in it. Maybe you’re adding extra text to it like you did to what I wrote. Edit out the extra text and it might make a lot more sense.
I don’t think he’s a tragic hero. I mean I suppose if you want to strictly apply the “rules” of Shakespearean tragedy then yeah he has a “tragic” flaw (well a couple really) that eventually destroys him. But he’s never really a hero, and there’s nothing non Shakespearean tragic about his demise. He’s a sociopathic drug lord/ addict with incestuous love for his sister that deserves to die, not really a tragedy. But it’s all in a very complex plot with certain morality lessons. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun. And a lot more interesting than most of the movies that came out in 1983. Nobody is picking up tickets to see The Dead Zone in theaters again.
I just found it dreary with hackneyed dialogue and trite notions about the Success Ethic. It’s really a parody of gangster films. 1983 films I prefer include Zelig, The Meaning of Life, The Right Stuff and A Christmas Story.
I think you just didn’t want to like it. It’s a fun movie. Of course it’s exactly the kind of fun movie literati don’t like, which is a large part of why it’s a great movie.
No I saw it when I was a kid and then repeatedly in this or that context. I can only take it as an OTT send up. Actually it has a moderate cinephile following as does DePalms in general. For the record, I think his 1981 film ‘Blow Out’ is one of the best American films of the early 1980s. Ever see that?
By “taking it” as a send up you’re basically rewriting the movie to your liking. Scarface has a pretty strong following outside of the normal cinephile group, just like the article points out, you can walk into any poster store in this country and find half a dozen posters for it on prominent display. It’s got all that larger than life stuff that brings normal people to the movies.
Haven’t seen Blow Out, looks interesting though, popped it into the Netflix queue.
“Maybe you see a line between direct murder and indirect. Most people don’t, killing is killing, having it done and doing it yourself doesn’t really change the amount of blood on your hands.”
It doesn’t if, say, you employed someone to kill someone else. But we’re not talking about that here. We’re talking about people who may or may not take drugs, and the fact that the drug industry is systematically violent. You may see the moral equivalent of murder in knowingly contributing money to a violent enterprise, but I don’t. Nor does the law, and with good reason.
“If he’d paid attention he had MONTHS to see it coming, and most importantly PREVENT it.”
So what? You’re talking about practicality now. Morally, Tony still isn’t allowed to murder him, as no one’s ever allowed to murder.
“Who says they’re nice people at the restaurant?”
I suppose I could have put nice in quatation marks. All I meant was to distinguish them in the same manner as you distinguish them, i.e. as publicly respectable, compared to Tony, the “bad guy.”
“They all know what the place is, they all know who goes there. There’s a certain crowd of people that go to expensive restaurants frequented by drug lords.”
Again, so what? Now we’re talking about celebrity culture, Tony as a sort of Jack the Ripper, whom people need to see on the evening news and point a finger at to make their otherwise dull and ambiguous lives entertaining and meaningful. I realize this is a large part of Tony’s rant, and the only part of it that makes any sense, but it’s not the part we’ve been back and forthing about. It doesn’t impinge on the “nice” people being hypocrites, nor there being a moral equivalence between them and Tony, which is what you’re mostly on about.
“I never said subsidize, I said need. There’s a major difference. There’s a lot of stuff in the world we need but never deliberately pay for. Often times we don’t even stop to realize we need it.”
Are we still talking about drugs now, or what? Because what you’re saying makes sense if we switch back to the “bad guy” celebrity thing. I hadn’t thought that was the subject, but if it is, there’s even less of an equivalence and much, much more of a gulf between Tony and the audience who “needs” his villainy.
“And I never said anything about benefactors. Stop adding to what I wrote.”
Oh, please. It’s called sarcasm. What you said, or implied, is that there was less attention on business corruption in the 80s. Hello! Do I really have to respond to this claim? It’s utter ludicrousness basically forces me to parody your claim by talking about benefaction.
“Nobody cares about drug kingpins anymore. Quick name 3 drug kingpins active today. Now name 3 business leaders that are often ‘credited’ with crashing our economy. Bet you can’t do the first but can do the second”
Okay, so Tony’s sort of “kingpin” isn’t popular anymore. I don’t really remember when they were, unless you go all the way back to Prohibition and Capone, except that guy they made “Superfly” about, but whatever. I assume there were real-life inspirations for Tony, and there aren’t anymore. Fine. Drug cartels grab major headlines all the time, but we don’t any longer have names.
That’s not to say criminals (or alleged criminals) no longer make names for themselves. It’s just not drugs anymore. It’s possibly killing your cute little kid, or kidnapping attractive college students in the Caribbean. Point is, criminals are as popular as ever. You have to know where to look.
On the flip side, no, the average man in the street cannot name three individuals off the top of their heads responsible for the ‘08 meltdown. They can name Madoff, perhaps, but of course his story is seperate from the larger issue of the crash. They can name institutions and politicians, but that’s it. The current anti-business climate is just that, climactic. It is generalized and institutionalized, and not comparable to the celebrity culture of Tony.
It’s = its
“For the record, I think his 1981 film ‘Blow Out’ is one of the best American films of the early 1980s.”
I tend to think of DePalma as hackneyed, especially compared to the comany he’s usually included in, namely the Coppola/Lucas/Scorcese/Spielberg 70s Rebel (in the sense that they were an alternative to Old Hollywood, not that they were actually rebellious) Film School Gang. Which makes it odd that “Blow Out,” an actual remake, is my favorite movie of his, although I enjoy “The Untouchables.”
One caveat, however, is that it’s a little rough grafting the slasher thing onto an assassination thriller. It’s one thing for Lithgow to be a rogue nut; quite another for him to ritualistically murder women with a sexual overtone just to provide an alibi. I suppose the point is he’s crazy enough to want to do it anyway, but still, there’s a little too much madness going on in that scenario. Poltical thrillers and horror movies are close enough tonally to make it work, but it’s still somewhat unerving.
Other than that, I love damsel character, love the chase and climax, love the foreshadowing, and for once don’t want to punch Travolta in his giant face.
“Scarface has a pretty strong following outside of the normal cinephile group, just like the article points out, you can walk into any poster store in this country and find half a dozen posters for it on prominent display. It’s got all that larger than life stuff that brings normal people to the movies.”
You and the article seem to take the stance that 50 million hi-hoppers can’t be wrong (him after the fact, you apparently all along). Well, they can. There were wrong according to you when they didn’t like in the first place, right? So happens that “Scarface” is enjoyable on a certain level, and may be, as you say, “fun.” But there’s fun and there’s good and fun. “Scarface” is fun without being good. Poster store patrons would do well to drift on over to better, and equally as fun, gansta pictures like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.”
There’s a lot of people that like the movie that aren’t hiphoppers. There’s a dozen people in the software company I work at going to see the movie Wednesday, not a hiphopper in the group. Scarface IS good fun, too bad you can’t see that, but the fault there is 100% in you not Scarface, which sits proudly on my shelf WITH Goodfellas and Godfather.
The killing of that business class go a lot deeper than just buying drugs.
Keep in mind Frank tried to kill Tony first. Frank CHOSE to make their relationship violent, and Tony won. Frank could have been a partner with Tony and probably would have been much richer, he wanted to be an enemy, he got dead.
No we’re not talking celebrity culture. We’re talking about people that are just as bad as Tony just in trades OTHER than the drug trade. The only difference between him and them is the veneer. That’s the entire point of the scene, you can willfully ignore it, but that’s on you.
No, we’re talking about the fact that there’s always multiple types of bad people running around, but the attention span of the masses is only wide enough to focus on one and make them society’s villain du jour. All the bad guys that are getting to run under cover because the attention is focused on the “villain” get the benefit of anonymity. Drug dealers were the target bad guy in the early 80s, that let the other bad guys run free. Today it’s the business bad guys everybody hates, so the drug dealers get the cover. All the anonymous bad guys need the target bad guys.
In the early 80s drug kingpins were the big target, popular is a poor word for it, popular implies liked, they weren’t liked, they were the ones drawing fire. Drug cartels AREN’T grabbing headlines currently. The headlines read more like the one here now http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/blog-who-really-crashed-the-economy . It’s now the business sector’s turn to be the target.
You just proved yourself wrong. You gave a list of people the common man in the street would blame for the economy.
At least one significant critic thinks it was a comedy and loves it on those grounds. Al Pacino described it as Brechtian.
Critics are people too, they can like or dislike a movie based entirely on their misunderstanding of the movie. Having comedic elements doesn’t make it a comedy, lots of different genres touch on comedy to break up the emotional weight of the story, and to set up the audience for a bigger hit.
One can say that a lot of Depalma’s “thrillers” border on comic. Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise, Dressed to Kill. You can’t tell someone what they did or didn’t find funny.
Just because somebody found something funny doesn’t mean it’s a comedy though. Funny you picked 3 of the movies I’d list as reasons not to be a DePalma fan, why he’s rather touch and go, sometimes great (Scarface, Carlitos Way) sometimes atrocious (Carrie and Phantom heading up that list, Dressed is middling in my book). I’d say Phantom is absolutely hilarious, just not in a good way, it’s funny like Ed Wood movies are funny.
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