246. Bat the Movies
I’m back, in black. Well, not really, I’m still white, and uh... I still don’t like AC/DC.

Speaking of “black”, I saw The Dark Knight properly in cinemas tonight. I wouldn’t say it improved it, because it’s rather difficult to improve, but it certainly made it, you know... cinematic.

...I was hoping the above paragraph, through careful wordage alone, would make it obvious what I thought about it. If not, then, well, bully for you. You’ll just have to suffer.

Oh, alright, I liked it. A hell of a lot. Not as brilliantly-amazing-best-thing-ever as it’s been called, but then, what the hell is? I watched Citizen Kane as movie no. 100 in my 1001 list (1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die... I’m getting through them quickly, as I’m planning to kill myself this month along with Dash), and though it was good, I was incapable of getting massively excited about it. Maybe that’s because I knew what “Rosebud” was. But then, I knew the twists of Psycho.

247. Spoilers and Parodies
Spoilers annoy me. This is the thing I’ve realised the most from my 1001 marathon. It’s all well and good telling a bunch of film nuts in film media classes why the shower scene (I’m not referring to it as anything but that, to try and make it ambiguous) is brilliant, but I’m annoyed that it’s shoved down everyone’s throats. I don’t even mind it being parodied, because I’m able to love the original thing whilst finally connecting in my head, “Oh, so that’s what [inevitably, The Simpsons] episode is parodying.” I did that with Twin Peaks recently with the ‘Who Shot Mr Burns’ ep, for example. And ‘Itchy & Scratchy & Marge’ has the funniest and cleverest – on numerous levels – parody of the shower scene that I’ve ever seen in anything.

But there’s a limit with parodies, because... well, it’s hard to draw the limit. To take two examples from The Simpsons, I’m fine with the episode where Mr Burns loses his bear Bobo (which I’m guessing is called ‘Rosebud’) being a big parody of Citizen Kane because, realistically, it really only takes the themes of Citizen Kane and certain shots. Indeed, you could say the entire episode is a building-on of the premise of the last scenes of Citizen Kane. But ‘Bart of Darkness’, despite me finding it really funny, really annoyed me when I came to watch Rear Window. Possibly because it mimics the plot as part of its parody.

...but then, so does the Treehouse of Horror The Shining ep, and I love that. But then, maybe that’s because that one is genuinely scary, and because different rules apply. We all know that The Shining is a horror film, so realistically the parody doesn’t spoil too much. My problem with the Rear Window parody – and having the shower scene shoved down our throats all the time, too – is that the movies would work infinitely better if we didn’t know what was coming. Apparently the shower scene was shocking to the audiences at the time. Not because it was brilliantly directed, not because it was brutal and violent – though those could be parts of it – but because it’s so unexpected. You can see that, if you watch Psycho from the beginning. It’s a bloody heist movie. In fact, it’s Marnie going in a completely different direction partway through. Ironic, considering Marnie came later.

248. Buried in a Rosebed
By the way, about The Dark Knight; I find it amusing that, in the space of two weeks, Peter Cundall left Gardening Australia, Ledger’s last performance arrived in the shape of The Dark Knight, and... the Pope came to Australia. Now, it’s probably down to the social circles I hang around in, but hell, the first two felt far more important than the Pope. As harsh as that may sound.

I’m still amazed that there hasn’t been some sort of fanfare or something for Cundall leaving Gardening Australia. I know he’s not dead, but... guys, it’s Peter Cundall. He’s a fucking Australian icon, and better yet, one who’s quiet and lovely about it. He’s the most normal man on the planet, barring his obsession with shit.

...in response to what you just thought; no, he’s Australian. He was an Australian icon on an Australian show. Regardless of what his accent was. Hell, if we’re going to get that picky, it’s not like Ledger played the Joker with an Australian accent.

249. *pretentious title*
You know what annoys me more than spoilers?

The word “pretentious”.

I think I’ve blabbed about this before, but to recap; so many people use this word poorly, in the same way that people refer to “postmodernism” for loads of ridiculous things. The most jarring thing is that, immediately, anyone who uses the word “pretentious” as a criticism is being pretentious themselves. They might as well just say “wanky” and get it over with, for god’s sake.

Anyway; I argued a while ago – as in, last year – that there’s definitely pretentious things in this world, but what’s usually considered pretentious really aren’t. For instance, I don’t find Radiohead pretentious in the slightest, because they talk about alienation in their albums, as well as political themes and such. I’m not criticising Thom Yorke here, but hell, there’s nothing pretentious about any of this. His thoughts on alienation amount to nothing more complex than what he said way back in Pablo Honey with ‘Creep’ – “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo” – and his thoughts on politics (as represented in their albums, anyway) aren’t really more complex than “Government=bad”.

This political thing is of particular interest to me; in fact, the very first blog thing I ever wrote (http://tds4ayesterday.blogspot.com/2008/04/1-6.html - 4. Music and Politics - Should the Twain Meet? and 5. A Black Day in Greenday) was about Music and Politics. I said there that Pink and Greenday were guilty of poorly constructed political themes, Pink moreso with her terrible song where she addressed Mr Bush and basically lambasted him from on high. Radiohead, on the other hand, aren’t happy with the government (who are, of course, unnamed and ambiguously referenced), but then, they’re rarely happy with anything. Except the little moments.

Here’s the problem, then; Thom Yorke can sing about politicians being corrupt, greedy pigs, and he can get away with it because he’s genuine and he knows he’s fucked up personally. He accepts that everyone has fault, including himself. Pink, on the other hand, has spent ages trying to make us feel sorry for her, and then releases a song where she tells Bush how crap he is without a) recounting much actual evidence and, more to the point, b) ignoring the irony of her position. When she says to him, “Let me tell you about hard work”, the song collapses into smug, wanky shite. To which my reaction is always:

“O! Pink, tell me about hard work. Because this song must’ve been so hard to write, and you must put in so much effort. Hmm. Indeed.”

So mostly, it depends on the way a band does it. If anything, I’d call Pink pretentious here, because she’s assuming that she’s the fount of all knowledge, and that she has something to tell the American President about running a country. It’s like she’s writing a letter home to his parents, for fuck’s sake.

Incidentally; Bjork’s song ‘Declare Independence’ would seem to fall into the same category, seeing as it yells “DECLARE INDEPENDENCE! DON’T LET THEM DO THAT TO YOU!” and “RAISE YOUR FLAG!” in ascending craziness. Being biased, I simply like the song a hell of a lot anyway and think Bjork is one of the most genuine singers out there (she can sing about love and make it not-sappy, for fuck’s sake). But for the point of objectivity; again, despite being vocal in what she wants to happen, being completely unsubtle... Bjork hasn’t named any country whatsoever, or included any references whatsoever. The only reason I know it’s an attack on China is because I read about it. Not because the song itself told me so.

Anyway, another reason that Radiohead get away with it is because, not only are they incredibly ambiguous (considering), but... they actually aren’t really talking about the real world at all.

Well, okay, of course they are. But not in the album itself. Not in the story of the album. Taking Ok Computer as an example; it’s a sci-fi story that seems to be set in the real world, but isn’t actually. ‘Airbag’, for instance, may be about surviving a car accident, but Yorke does sing “In an interstellar burst, I’m back to save the universe”.

Why is sci-fi a good genre for albums to utilise? Well, it’s not really... not more than any other, anyway. But if albums can be about the present, and about the past, then I don’t see what’s wrong with looking at the future too. Even if the future is made-up. Inevitably, though, the “future” will be based on the musician’s perception of what today will lead to, so it’s as much about today and the real world as it is the future and a made-up world.

Anyway, sometimes it can fall flat on its arse. Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations is impressively ambitious, but the sci-fi metaphor of it falls flat. At least, it does on the album; I’ve watched the videoclip for ‘Knights of Cydonia’ and found it far more interesting than the song. I wasn’t even aware, from the lyrics, that there was meant to be a western flavour at all. It’s much better that way, even if it is a little Firefly.

So with that in mind; albums can be full of metaphor. Hell, considering lyrics often contain elements of poetry, I’m surprised that metaphor isn’t used far more often. I suppose it might confuse people who aren’t as interested in music as, say, me (and fair enough), but that doesn’t mean it’s pretentious to do so.

Okay, films that I’ve recently heard being called pretentious are many, but here’s a select two that I want to talk about a little bit:

250. The Thin Red Line
This came out in the same year as Saving Private Ryan. This is often compared to it. This is beaten by it in many polls.

This is better than it.

Actually, though... I don’t hate Saving Private Ryan, at all. A year ago I compared it to chick flicks (http://tds4ayesterday.blogspot.com/2008/04/38-45.html - 40. Saving Private Rhian) and to The Thin Red Line, and yet it’s taken me a year to actually watch the latter. Typical.

Anyway, most of the criticisms of Saving Private Ryan revolve around them being, well... Spielberg-y. They wear their emotions on their sleeve. They may have lovely direction, but they’re feel-good in a rather manufactured way, and the ending is sickeningly patriotic, and –

– and that’s not enough to condemn it fully. For another example of this, I hate the misogyny of Sin City with a passion, but I’d still give it four stars. Because even though it fundamentally disagrees with my... well, not so much “beliefs” as “values” or, indeed, “common bloody sense”... I can still see that it’s a unique and rather wonderful little product. Despite, yes, hating bits of it.

I don’t even hate those bits in Saving Private Ryan as much, either, so that’s a bit of a saving grace. So while I’m happy to compare it and The Thin Red Line, and while I do think TRL is better – I don’t see why I can’t like both, why they’re mutually exclusive.

(This happened recently with the Batman films – Burton vs. Nolan. My response was, “Um? I like both...?”)

TRL, you see, flits between characters, internal monologues, etc, as much as it can. It’s determined to show numerous soldiers and – strangely enough – nature, too. SPR doesn’t, and centres around a core group of guys (as does what-is-possibly-still-my-favourite-war-film, All Quiet on the Western Front). Some have compared the two in that way, and said that TRL’s approach is more cerebral. It is, perhaps, but the problem with this is that it assumes SPR is trying for the same thing in a less intelligent way. Which isn’t true.

TRL is about war. SPR is about comradeship. There’s a difference.

They’re telling entire different stories, and that’s why I’m not that eager to compare them, in terms of quality anyway. They’re not even content with showing warfare in the same way; SPR is a visual treat of disturbing dark colours and explosive gore, whilst TRL is all about grass blowing in the wind whilst soldiers are dying around them. TRL probably sounds more artistic, but then, there’s such a thing as shock art. Both of them are actually artistic, but just doing different things.

I’d describe TRL as beautiful, and that’s because it is; much has been made of the way Malick shows animals with the camera, but even when the humans are the focus, the background is often more important than them. It’s a weird displacing feeling, and instead of suggesting that they’re destroying nature as many have, erm, suggested, I feel it’s actually showing how out of place they are. The soldiers may describe the war as an act against God and nature, but we never see a single bird die. Hell, we never see a single insect die. We never see blood on the grass. The overall feeling is that the soldiers aren’t really there at all, that nature isn’t really concerned with them at all. The landscape is constantly beautiful, yet all these people are dying on it. It’s such a weird feeling, and it either works for you, or it doesn’t.

It did for me.

Also, the music helped.

251. Awezone
So that’s one aspect of the “pretentious” argument covered; the other is its philosophy. As I already said, there’s loads of internal monologues – or I should say, voiceovers from different characters speculating about the war. I didn’t find this pretentious in the slightest, and do you know why? Because I’m not a soldier. Because for all that I can speculate and guess, and even if I turn out to be right, I don’t honestly know what a soldier goes through. I’ve never had anyone shoot at me. So if a soldier starts spouting philosophy that sounds tired and crap to us, we’ve got to remember the context we’re in. If the movie was about some guys talking the same philosophical stuff whilst walking down a street, talking about nature and us encroaching on its territory, then it’d seem stupid and dull. But in a warzone, actually in the thick of that nature, then it doesn’t. I’d be incredibly surprised if a soldier from WWII watched this and thought it was “pretentious”.

Being in different situations gives you different perspectives on things, and it’s stupid to be an intellectual cynic all the time. For instance, I couldn’t have cared less about visiting caves a year ago, but after listening to people talk about them on my aunt’s interviews... I mean, at first it sounded a bit silly. “Yeah, okay, I know it’s awe-inspiring. Whatever.” But over time, when I heard the enthusiasm they were displaying, and listened to the actual awe-inspiring nature of the caves, and suddenly had a moment of self-awareness that I was here, sneering slightly, on a fucking computer in my room with headphones in my ears... well, I realised that I was a pillock for even trying to judge. Because I simply can’t understand. And of course it sounds silly with them trying to describe their feelings in the caves on tape, because they’re no longer in the caves. But when they are...

For example, Picnic at Hanging Rock may not be the scariest film ever, but the way it uses Hanging Rock is amazing. And I’ve been to Hanging Rock, and when I heard about the story of the girls – way before seeing the film – I was scared shitless, and felt the compulsion to look for them. Because I was there, because I got it.

(Yes, they neglected to mention that the story was made up. I was young and impressionable, though, so I can see why they would’ve wanted to get me like that. I’m bloody glad they did)

So we can’t judge TRL on its own terms, because we’re not in that context. Throw this cynical audience who call it “pretentious” and “meaningless” into a warzone, and then ask them how they feel. Instead of being the most cerebral and clever and intellectual film ever, TRL is a film about what goes on in soldiers’ minds, and it’s fascinating to hear what they think.

Besides, TRL never tries to wow us with its philosophy. As I pointed out, the actual shots of wildlife are far fewer than reviews would have you believe (I’d barely have noticed them if I hadn’t had them pointed out so furiously to me), and Malick never, ever, tries to tell us, through the direction or anything, that the film means anything more than what’s presented. It never tries to tell us that it’s complex. On the other hand, that last shot of SPR – the American flag – is Spielberg shoving the patriotism down our throats in a way that having the characters talk about it isn’t as much.

...though as I said, I really do like SPR.

252. Eraserhead
Some context here; I watched Eraserhead, Pulp Fiction, The Royal Tenenbaums, Die Hard, Lawrence of Arabia and more in the same day. I liked all of them. So don’t try and write me off as being “intellectual”, you stupid whoever-the-hell-you-are. *is aggressive*

Now here’s the second thing that “pretentious” is a shorthand for when people use it; “weird”. Apparently being weird is pretentious. Leaving aside the fact that, without weirdness, humanity wouldn’t have progressed as far as – no, I’m not even going to bother. The idea that everything has to be homogenised and “normal”, whatever the hell “normal” is, is stupid.

Okay. Eraserhead is called weird, and it’s called pretentious. It is possibly weird, yes, though I’ll return to that later. But it isn’t pretentious. I think it’s also the fact that it leans more to “artistic” qualities than “entertainment” qualities that gets to people, but...

...as I said a while ago (http://tds4atoday.blogspot.com/2008/01/43-54.html - 45. Interaction (continued)), every film contains an element of art, and an element of entertainment. It’s the same set of scales, it’s just a balancing act that the creative person in charge (usually the director) maintains. They push it in whatever direction they want to. More artistic? Okay! More entertaining? Sure! And neither is intrinsically shit, and saying it is is an intrinsically shit argument. They’re at different extremes. I mean – and I’m not bringing down the former here, at all – Die Hard and Eraserhead, for example, aim for completely different sides of the art/entertainment balance, and both succeed brilliantly at what they do. So if Eraserhead is pretentious for being artistic, then, by that argument, Die Hard is dumbed down, idiotic trash for being entertaining.

That’s an incredibly simplified way of putting it, but considering the incredibly simplified way that people use “pretentious”, I feel that’s fair.

This is the most obvious point in the world to make, but; films have pictures. I know, isn’t that amazing?! There, I got the sarcasm out of the way to save you the bother, free of charge. But what this means is that the image has always come first. That doesn’t mean special effects either, it really just means the way the image is presented (direction, in other words). Note that a lot of the earliest films barely had plot at all. Let’s be honest here, people didn’t go to see A Trip to the Moon or The Great Train Robbery to get invested in the characters, or the storyline. They went to see the images. Going to the cinema practically was like going to an art gallery to look at all the pretty pictures.

Again, I’m simplifying, but it’s still a pertinent point.

So with that in mind, films will always have artistic elements, regardless of what they are.

(‘Course, that makes it difficult to draw the line between “films” and “art films”. I’d say the difference is – like the way to wager what is and what isn’t art – purely down to who makes them. David Lynch classifies himself as a director, not as an artist, for example. But even this is slightly shaky ground, because, for example, An Andalusian Dog was directed by Salvador Dali, who did classify himself as an artist. Really, there’s no easy answer here)

But I don’t think it’s purely the images that turn people off Eraserhead, of course. It’s not just the fact that it’s artistically directed. It’s that the images are not – *dramatic music* – set in the real world. It’s told through metaphor.

And yet... and yet, despite the startling images, and the odd world we’re in, the metaphorical images themselves aren’t that hard to work out. Okay, the actual “eraserhead” of the title (not spoiling!) is up to personal interpretation, but it’s obvious that the-alien-thing is meant to be a baby, and if someone can’t tell that the tailed-white things are sperms, then I’d wonder if they ever did sex ed at school. The story itself isn’t obvious, but the images are; man gives birth to kid. It’s that simple, and Lynch has never pretended otherwise.

253. Don’t Call Me Baby
So if it’s that simple... why not just set it in the real world? Well, the obvious quick-fire answer is, “but why does it need to be set in the real world? Film is imagination”, but that’s, well, too quick-fire. I would say, though, that I think adults are too quick to discount imagination as being pretentious. I wouldn’t say Eraserhead is any weirder than Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, yet, because the first one is a kids’ film, it isn’t “pretentious”, apparently. Double standards going on here.

But here’s a question to the audience (who’ve seen it, obviously): the fate of the baby (no spoilers). Would you really want to see that in the real world? Would you really want to see that happen to a real baby? Would you?

Exactly. By throwing out the world we know, Lynch can throw in the darkest themes ever and get away with it because it’s not recognisable as something we know.

Oh, but did I still feel something for the baby? Of course I fucking did. No emotional core? Are these people kidding, or just unable to take it seriously because it’s an alien baby? For god’s sake, look at what happens to it. I was so repulsed, horrified and disturbed at this scene, and I suddenly hated the main character, even if I understood his (paranoid and abstract) reasons a bit. For a film that’s apparently all about the images, the strongest impression I walked away from this with was a gut feeling. That the-scene-in-question was wrong. That the morality was horrifying.

That’s what I took away most from Eraserhead. The rest is, in all honesty, a beautifully wonderful licker of paint over it.

God knows what rules the world of Eraserhead follows, but this is another point, and one I was getting at before; I don’t think it’s that weird. Or rather... well, see, as I said, I watched this in the same day as The Royal Tenenbaums. And I found Royal Tenenbaums weirder by far.

Why? Because Eraserhead isn’t even pretending to be real life. If something odd happens in that world, then it’s normal. The characters are eccentric because that’s the way they are. But Royal Tenenbaums is meant to be set in the real world... and yet its characters are eccentric, and odd, and the whole film is just odd in general. It didn’t feel like the real world at all, and I’m far more confused and weirded out by that than anything in Eraserhead. Honestly.

254. End Transmission
Actually, to come full circle; Heath Ledger’s Joker is far weirder than anything in Eraserhead. Because he’s in the real world (I know it’s called Gotham City, but it’s so obviously the real world). The film tries to make him fit in at times, calling him a terrorist (or rather, that’s how the characters try to understand him), but he’s just incomprehensible to everyone. He’s just this bizarre addition, and he’s incredibly weird. I’d question somehow who watched The Dark Knight, perfectly accepting the weirdness of that, and then watched Eraserhead and thought “that’s too weird”.

...and no, that isn’t a criticism of The Dark Knight, either.

...and yes, for the record, I’m aware that this entire rant could be written off as pretentious. You wankers. *is aggressive again*

Rant over.

HEY JACK BZ!