Cornered by Culture, August 2024
Well, that's embarrassing. A whole month has passed and I haven't posted anything since the last Cornered by Culture. For most of August I have been doing what millenials call "adulting", which means running errands and generating value for shareholders. I also experienced lots of nostalgia and daydreamed of a world where everything is perfect. Those were all daydreams, mind you, and my real dreams were actually nightmares. No matter...
Music: Howler by Martin Gore
As it turns out, Martin Gore from Depeche Mode has a bandcamp page. Howler is the first song from his The Third Chimpanzee EP, which consists of a few electronic instrumentals. The synths in this song sound raw and edgy, and evoke an industrial setting. It brings to mind steel assemblages swinging around and echoing across concrete walls; you could say it's a work of science fiction in musical form. That world of giant machines reminds me of how I thought the future would be when I was a kid.
What makes Howler atypical, even for an electronic piece, is that it breaks from the usual verse-refrain structure and is instead a big progression towards more complex sounds, and in the end it kind of bursts open. Actually it does remind me of certain Xeno & Oaklander pieces, especially the dissonant or gritty sound of the synths. If you really want to know what I'm talking about, listen to Italy. It's interesting how synthesizers can produce almost any sound, but the gritty timbre in Howler and Italy still seems unusual. Is it just by convention that most electronic music uses a common palette of sounds, or is there something more to it?
Also, I'm a sucker for fun rhythms.
Literature: The South by Jorge Luis Borges
When deciding which piece of literature to review for this month's CxC, I had few choices. This comes as a consequence of my unusual reading habits: at any given moment, I'm in the middle of several different books, so it takes me a long time to finish any of them. I read a poem from a poetry collection, a chapter from a novel, a section of a nonfiction book, a story from an anthology, and repeat; and when I finish one of those books, I start another. The main problem with this habit is how long it takes to complete novels--because most novels are long and tedious, and my brain has been fried by years of internet usage. Or maybe I was born that way, because I remember novels took forever to read even before I used the internet. This month's story came from an anthology of Magical Realist literature and included works by well-known authors like Kafka, Calvino, Faulkner, and of course Borges. It manages to depict the journey of a realistic character in only a few pages: Juan Dahlmann receives excruciating medical treatment for a head injury, and after recovering travels to the south of Argentina and agrees to a duel with one of the locals. As I read this story, I had no idea how it would end, and felt invested in learning the fate of Juan Dahlmann. Next time I decide to write a short story of my own, this one could serve as a model. Previous times I've attempted to write stories, I always got lost trying to add more substance in the form of characters and plots and dialogue; but with The South, Borges proves that such complexity is unnecessary.Kino: The Pillow Book by Peter Greenaway
Lately I've been lurking on tumblr a lot and have noticed a certain aesthetic sensibility arising among some users. One might describe it as a romanticization of the ordinary and overall re-enchantment of life. Maybe this is an ethos particular to an older contingent of zoomers, because it contrasts with the pervasive irony culture of online millenials. Or perhaps it's all projection.
A couple of these tumblrinas-aesthetes posted about a Peter Greenaway film called The Pillow Book, so I looked it up because it seemed interesting. Then I noticed it in more places: for example, there's a poster for it in the background of this meme.
Fancy that. In many ways, this film was made for tumblr, or at least the tumblr that exists in 2024. With tasteful cinematography, there are plenty of frames that could be eye-catching aesthetic posts, and its overall sensibility reminds me of something Oscar Wilde would write.
In a sentence, this film was strange, but not unpleasant; inventive, but not perfect.
The director (or whoever was responsible for editing) chose an unorthodox aspect ratio that was wider than usual on the horizontal axis, and in some scenes there were smaller rectangles of footage superimposed upon the screen, and sometimes the subtitles appeared for the soundtrack, which was mostly in French and Japanese. Many of the scenes resembled what you'd see in a play, because the props were arranged in a meticulous and slightly unrealistic manner. One of the primary motifs in The Pillow Book is calligraphy painted on human skin, which naturally leads to impressive visuals.
This film wasn't without its flaws, however.
My biggest issue with it was the narration provided by the main character Nagiko, played by Vivian Wu. She spoke in a cold and stilted way that comrpomised the film's otherwise sensual and romantic mood. Second, it was too difficult for me to understand the plot. After finishing The Pillow Book, I did look up the plot summary on Wikipedia and found it pretty compelling, but I had a poor idea of what was going on when watching it. I think the film could have had a far more powerful emotional impact if the acting were better and the plot more perceptible.
What I enjoy about art films is that they may be far from perfect, but there are certain innovative techniques that can't be found in more conventional movies. Art films invite you to put on your director hat and contemplate all the stylistic and thematic choices that a filmmaker is faced with, etc.