Thanks again for these lectures, and, yes, the links too, although I'm still working through _The Sphere & the Labyrinth_ from the first lecture!
An interesting aside about the Wooster group-- I saw them sometime in the 90s in NYC. Now I was not at all well educated, I was a dancer with a high school degree and that was it. Someone savvier than me took me. I remember thinking it was interesting and even funny, but that there was something about the acting that bothered me. Flash forward to your lectures & posts and at some point in the past couple weeks you mentioned the style of acting of shows like Hill St Blues or something--a sort of flat, superior, almost internally sneering style, and it hit me-- THAT's what I saw first in the Wooster group years ago. I think maybe they pioneered that. Which isn't to say that some of them weren't good actors, they were. But it was that style that rang somehow false to me.
I just realized well of course the WG were parodying a style. But a parody has to have something underneath to parody--and this didn't.
Shaenah’s point about how the “emptying” of connections – the notion that e.g. a sweater can no longer imply anything other than itself – made me think of Fredric Jameson’s description of postmodernism as “depthlessness”. If everything is only itself then in a sense, it isn’t even itself. It has been severed from connection with anything else. This may be why I have come to feel that so many modern productions, e.g. on Netflix, are impossible to empathise with. This is how I felt with “Eric” and another series called “1899” – one of those fantasy mystery pieces reminiscent of “Lost” but with a bizarre almost schizophrenic emptiness whereby none of the characters had any sense of substance. It was akin to a series of pure effects (or affects?).
Whilst musing on this I came to the possibly random notion that one precursor to this (or one example of a deteriorating line) is the Harry Potter movies. Of course they are fantasies but it is possible for fantasy to have a consistency and a discipline. Tolkien, whatever you might think of his reactionary sentimental longings, could generate this consistency as could Ursula Le Guin, the first of whose Earthsea novels has a school for wizards that is envisioned with a vastly superior sensibility – and a more responsible moral sense – than with Rowling. Hogwarts is an unappealing Potemkin village of cobbled together clichés of the old public school system whose obvious appeal to an enormous number of people seems bizarre and perhaps worrying in the early 21st century.
I only highlight the Potter series as an example of a trend towards increasing fragmentation and superficiality. I realise they were intended for children but then it seems they have a huge adult audience too. Michael Moorcock noted the ironic tendency whereby books written for children were often more tightly disciplined than those written for adults. It may even be said that the bloated adult bestseller has a more childish outlook than the slim books intended for children.
The sad prevalence of movies based on comic book characters comes in here too. I only recently saw “Venom” and there are scenes that are perfectly acceptable as comic book sequences but excruciatingly infantile in an “adult” movie.
Thanks again for these lectures, and, yes, the links too, although I'm still working through _The Sphere & the Labyrinth_ from the first lecture!
An interesting aside about the Wooster group-- I saw them sometime in the 90s in NYC. Now I was not at all well educated, I was a dancer with a high school degree and that was it. Someone savvier than me took me. I remember thinking it was interesting and even funny, but that there was something about the acting that bothered me. Flash forward to your lectures & posts and at some point in the past couple weeks you mentioned the style of acting of shows like Hill St Blues or something--a sort of flat, superior, almost internally sneering style, and it hit me-- THAT's what I saw first in the Wooster group years ago. I think maybe they pioneered that. Which isn't to say that some of them weren't good actors, they were. But it was that style that rang somehow false to me.
I just realized well of course the WG were parodying a style. But a parody has to have something underneath to parody--and this didn't.
brilliant observation lorie. Id not made that connection. And yes, im sure that was where Milch and bocho saw it. Makes perfect sense.
Shaenah’s point about how the “emptying” of connections – the notion that e.g. a sweater can no longer imply anything other than itself – made me think of Fredric Jameson’s description of postmodernism as “depthlessness”. If everything is only itself then in a sense, it isn’t even itself. It has been severed from connection with anything else. This may be why I have come to feel that so many modern productions, e.g. on Netflix, are impossible to empathise with. This is how I felt with “Eric” and another series called “1899” – one of those fantasy mystery pieces reminiscent of “Lost” but with a bizarre almost schizophrenic emptiness whereby none of the characters had any sense of substance. It was akin to a series of pure effects (or affects?).
Whilst musing on this I came to the possibly random notion that one precursor to this (or one example of a deteriorating line) is the Harry Potter movies. Of course they are fantasies but it is possible for fantasy to have a consistency and a discipline. Tolkien, whatever you might think of his reactionary sentimental longings, could generate this consistency as could Ursula Le Guin, the first of whose Earthsea novels has a school for wizards that is envisioned with a vastly superior sensibility – and a more responsible moral sense – than with Rowling. Hogwarts is an unappealing Potemkin village of cobbled together clichés of the old public school system whose obvious appeal to an enormous number of people seems bizarre and perhaps worrying in the early 21st century.
I only highlight the Potter series as an example of a trend towards increasing fragmentation and superficiality. I realise they were intended for children but then it seems they have a huge adult audience too. Michael Moorcock noted the ironic tendency whereby books written for children were often more tightly disciplined than those written for adults. It may even be said that the bloated adult bestseller has a more childish outlook than the slim books intended for children.
The sad prevalence of movies based on comic book characters comes in here too. I only recently saw “Venom” and there are scenes that are perfectly acceptable as comic book sequences but excruciatingly infantile in an “adult” movie.