Polishing Night's Stones - George Ttoouli and Simon Turner discuss, at length, M Night Shyamalan's The Village

ST: This is worth a gander. I genuinely thought we were the only two people left on the planet to give credence to any Shyamalan post-Signs (I've still yet to see The Lady in the Water: my misgivings haven't quite been overcome by your enthusiasm), but it's a nice surprise to read someone who's an enthusiast for The Village. I still stand by my assertion that it's his best movie.

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GT: Yeah, I get it. But note how the article kicks off with the declaration of preference for his most genre-obvious films. And then tries to reappraise The Village from genre terms: genre films are 'for the love' / escapist, rather than political.

 

The author also makes some really crude assumptions about how some films 'mean something' and others don't. I stopped reading at: "It’s not just a cheap gotcha moment like the end of the recent The Visit, a film that, as enjoyable as it is, is about nothing at all." When is a film ever about nothing, ffs?

But your prompting me with the article sent me to Shyamalan's website, which, frankly is utterly typical of his work: an attempt at total immersion, which you have to squint at to hide the sellotape and string holding it together in places because either the studio/web company weren't given sufficient budget to execute that vision (The Happening) or the makers are tongue-in-cheek enough to know that a little bit of exposed architecture reminds us we have to sustain our inner child in order to enjoy life (Signs).

 

The website, if you haven't looked, uses a point-and-click house navigation system, with a crow guide, to interact with each of his films. Each room (on the first/ground floor) offers a template set of information about his films up to 2009: Night's favourite dialogue; his favourite scene (as video); how stressed he felt while making it; the 'theme'; the point he thought the film was a failure (!); and a couple of other details.

 

"Mmm . . . forbidden berries."

The picture you get is of a creative person who is both inspired by failure (I think it quotes him on this in one of the upstairs rooms) and also sent into periodic bouts of depression by public reception. And there's a couple of heartwarming moments where he claims he wants to stop making films for 'them' and 'me' and only make films for 'us'; and one where he self-portraits as an art house filmmaker, who turned to genre out of a sense of failure. But really, that's the problem: he's an arthouse writer/director who enjoys genre as much as he enjoys Hitchock's suspense thrillers, or whatever.

 

It's a weird insight, but chimed with the feeling I've had all along that the vast majority of critics have so far failed to engage with his films with a level head. The marmite approach - you either love or hate it - doesn't allow for careful appraisal, most of the time. The Village, for example, is not a genre film; on the website, he describes it as a romance. Yeah, that's what I dug - the monsters are just allegorical threats between the lovers. If your world is so unsafe, how can you love?

 

And Lady in the Water (website says he wanted to call it Story at one point - which would have been SO MUCH better) is wonderful, but it has some unfortunate moments: the critic is too indulgent for my tastes and breaks the spell completely. (Though he admits to ripping off Wallace Shawn's role in The Princess Bride for that scene, which is cute.)

And I was seriously disappointed that he selected that scene for his 'favourite' on the website, instead of the scene where Giamatti monologues about his family while trying to heal Story. Which is one of the most moving scenes in cinema I've ever sat through, without a doubt (it's making me tear up again just thinking about it).

 

Yes, they're all piecemeal. But that's part of the joy, part of the arthouse tendency. I feel like his films give me permission to interact, to make sense of the logic. Maybe that was a drawback in The Happening, though really I can't remember much of that film, it lacks the set pieces of earlier films.

Signs was the one I felt most successful at sustaining those rough edges. Sadly, again on his website, I found out he wasn't happy with the alien costumes (he wanted them to border on invisibility, like "lizard octopuses").

But for me, when the hand appears under the pantry door, with those silly fingers like a sewn together costume, I couldn't help feeling the whole thing was the product of Gibson and Phoenix's characters, a narrative they'd made up to try and explain something to the kids about asthma, about terrorism, about losing their mother. And then the story starts to take on its own meaning for the men, which is a mirror of the way meaning is supposed to work in an arthouse film.

 

As an aside, Lady in the... No, I'm going to call it Story, has a lot more faith in an external 'truth' - the characters get the interpretation wrong at times, collectively, and the critic is punished for it. That's perhaps a weakness in the films - that they don't consistently allow for doubt and multiple interpretations. And that's borne out by his website, where at one point I read something about his desire for everyone to agree on whether they like/dislike a film. That's perhaps the genre side of what he's doing conflicting with the arthouse side.

 

The parts of his films that stand out for me are set pieces primarily about family, not the jump scares of Sixth Sense, or The Village. The emotion in The Village is massively heightened when they open the box. Up to that point, the film is deceptive, sure. But that deception is a classic magic trick, there's nothing wrong with that - playing with expectations.

 

Anyway, that's a long enough rant for now. I still haven't seen The Visit. I want to, but I'm suspicious of its genre leanings, as with most of his films. Only this one wears its horror producer on the trailer and that kind of puts me off - I couldn't be bothered with the banality of Paranormal Activity and so on.

 

ST: I see your game: you're trying the lure me into a demi-intellectual conversation that we can bang up on Gists and Piths as a stop-gap until such time as we've written something people might actually want to read.  Dirty pull, old man!  (Addendum: it also feels indicative of our current anti-contemporary modus operandi - 18th century watercolourists? Books from the 60s?  Three year-old email chains?  Unsettling pictures of Patrick Swayze?  We got it! - that we're about to launch into a detailed symposium on a movie that's 12 years old, and which only a few people actually liked the first time around.  I can feel the theoretical click revenue just rolling in.) 

Anyway, to the meat of the matter: I shared your concern with the article - particularly with the 'some films don't mean anything' canard: in this context it's worth reading A O Scott's discussion of the criticism he received for a not-entirely favourable review he gave of The Avengers, in Better Living Through Criticism, which I've enjoyed a great deal recently - but in its defence, it is a feature on a horror-specialising website, so the genre elements were inevitably going to be given precedence, right? 

That said, I'm with you re: the ways in which Shyamalan's movies have been read (or misread, wilfully or not).  It struck me today that MNS is a sort of forerunner to Chris Nolan: they're both indie-esque film-makers who've found mainstream success, they both use genre as a means of expressing their particular obsessions and narrative strategies, they're both auteurs in a studio system, which is impressive in itself, and they're both clearly indebted to the art-populism that Spielberg does so well.  They're also both prone to a degree of narrative over-determination, a micromanagement of plot and atmosphere to such an extent that characterisation, or characterisation as we've commonly come to expect it, is denuded or underdeveloped.  Heavy exposition, a symptom of that hypertrophied narrative urge, is also a recurring vice for both. 

But where Nolan's films are pretty universally praised to the skies, MNS is (or was until very recently) persona non grata.  It's also worth noting that Nolan gets away with a lot of the same stuff that MNS has been panned for over the years.  If the twists in The Sixth Sense and The Village are a little creaky, Nolan's deployment of final act volte-faces owes just as much to the Scooby Doo / Twilight Zone tradition as MNS.  I'm going to keep these Nolan twists free of narrative context, as I'm not sure how much of the recent Nolan you've seen, but here are some prime examples:

"Ah, but it turns out his wife wasn't dead after all!"

"Ah, but it turns out that he was stuck behind the bookcase all along!"

"Ah, but it turns out, maybe, that he's been dreaming this whole time!"

"Ah, but it turns out his lover was the big bad all along!"

"Ah, but twins!  Ah, but quantum physics!"

Those are the big ones, and anyone who knows and loves Nolan's movies will accuse me of wildly traducing his corpus to make a point, which indeed I am.  But the point still stands, which is that if any of these twists were appended to a MNS movie, they'd be critically trounced.  (Indeed, the twists would be the springboard, the essential justification, for the trouncing).  Whether that trouncing is fair or not is a moot point: what matters is context.  In the context of a Nolan movie, The Village's ending would be fine, most likely, with no controversies, no suggestions that he'd egregiously dropped the ball and irrevocably scuppered his career (this is the gist of the Guardian review of The Village that came out at the time; Roger Ebert was even tougher, apparently).  You're right about the 'marmite' response eradicating nuance, but it interests me that the marmite response should be so prevalent here. 

A conjecture: boring art is never divisive, and favours consensus.  Best Movie Oscar syndrome: it's not usually the 'best' movie that wins - even though we can't really quantify something as qualitative and subjective as a value judgement - but rather the movie that's likely to cause the least upset: hence Kramer vs Kramer beats Apocalypse Now, Ordinary People beats Raging Bull AND The Elephant Man, Dances With Wolves beats Goodfellas, Forrest Gump beats Pulp Fiction, and more recently, The King's Pissing Speech won out in a field that also included Black Swan, Inception, The Social Network, True Grit and Toy Story 3.  'It's alright' is the death-knell of genuine creative production, and the fact that MNS used to elicit this marmite response (and continues to, if the critical response to The Visit is anything to go by) is a measure of his value as a director.  Discuss.

GT: Me trying to goad you?! I thought you were dangling the bait at me, knowing my weird soft spot for him. But yes, we need a more clickbait title than 'Polishing Night's Stones', which, frankly, sounds like some kind of vampire poetry porn. 'Everything you've secretly felt about MNS's films in 14 (un)easy bullet points?'

 

Yes, your point about Nolan and the weird unforgivable air MNS has attracted is very relevant. I noted, going through the wiki page, that the only fluff post-Sixth Sense is [Story], which still just about broke even. Generally speaking, he's a good investment, as long as he's not left with total control. I'd imagine Nolan also needs the reins on.

 

But I wonder if it's also to do with the familiarity of the narrative arcs. Nolan's films almost unequivocally tend to track the rise and fall and rise again of a male protagonist (even the 'twins' scenario). They have very often easy to follow focal points and conflicts. There's rarely a sense of you not being able to follow the central point.

 

Maybe the way MNS's films wear alternate between wolf/sheep costumes is troubling for some. Hence his slip ups, his risk-taking, appears less forgivable? I don't want to make this too much about the demands of 'genre fans' vs. 'normal fans' - that's crude and elitist leverage.

That is, however, a very real fear in MNS, by the accounts I can read from his website and elsewhere. It might be that the fans can smell his fear, or they can at least identify when he is pandering to what he perceives as their genre tastes, and that's just condescending. Perhaps it's a matter of confidence...

 

But that then leads me to a weird thought. Do any of Nolan's male protagonists make actual mistakes? I mean, like, make the wrong decisions? I don't mean wrong in the sense of the impossible decisions set up - like a memory-damaged tattoo canvas who can't make right decisions because of a disability; or the impossible decision of who Batman must save.

(Even that Pacino cop film in the ice (name escapes, can't be bothered to look it up [it's Insomnia, you lazy good-for-nothing: S]) is, from what I remember, set up so all the mistakes happened before the film - it's an atonement film.) When trouble besets them, those Nolan heroes respond with violence, with more muscle; with defter wit, intelligence, technology. They fight fire with nukes.

 

The characters in MNS are the opposite: they demonstrate weakness, they cry, they are humbled and show humility. Against violence, most often, there's a collective response, a sense of the need for community to help overcome obstacles and also to share in the grieving process. The powerful characters, when they exercise power, are dangerous, wrong, or unhinged.

 

I guess what I'm driving at here is that of the two directors you've picked, one expresses far more conventional ideas of masculinity and power than the other. And perhaps that exploration of weakness is what attracts me to films like Signs and [Story]. It's offering an alternative mode of being in the world to toxic masculine values.

 

So, yeah, excuse me, I'm off to play zombie games and burn ants with a magnifying glass for the rest of the afternoon, but I'm glad you get to air your Nolan fixation in public. It's been a while. Though I am a little surprised by your closing point: 'boring art is never divisive'. Which, against your earlier comment about Nolan's films being pretty much 'universally praised to the skies', suggest you've achieved some healthy distance?

 

Local council politics, Skeksis-style.

ST: Surely the prospect of vampire porn's always a vote winner, particularly among the cellar-dwelling nerds who make up the majority of our readership?  Anyway, I was sort of favouring 'The Skeksis come to Trumpton: Revisiting The Village', or something similarly confrontational, although that feels a little mean-spirited given how fondly I feel about the movie under discussion.  (This is particularly true having rewatched it, and finding myself surprised at the emotional heft it still has, which is something that happens again and again with MNS, much against my will and better judgement - it's certainly what leapt out at me most when I saw The Sixth Sense for the first time, for example: once the scares have abated, you're left with a surprisingly heartfelt story about damaged people finding solace and emotional recuperation through the narrative of post-traumatic therapy.)    

Onto your other points: I'd disagree on the notion that Nolan 'needs the reins on', as he's generally seen as very safe pair of hands, bringing movies in under budget, which is pretty unheard of when you're talking productions of that scale, and reeling in moolah to an almost unprecedented extent.  I'd say, too, that his two weakest films so far - Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises, much as I love them - were problematic at least in part because the reins were on: TDKR because studio expectations were so immense, and Interstellar because it was a kind of inherited project (Spielberg was initially scheduled to direct), and the optimism of the film's premise was never an easy fit with Nolan's worldview, to my mind, which prior to it, seemed to be getting darker and more cynical with each passing film.  (I'd also disagree with the notion of his male characters not making mistakes: there's a strong case to be made that The Dark Knight Rises ought to be retitled The One Where Batman Fucks Up, Repeatedly, but I guess they couldn't get that past the Warner Bros. marketing department.)      

Anyway, back to Night, and the matter of narrative arcs.  I take your point about genre expectation maybe creating a false aura of betrayed hopes around his work, and it's certainly true that the marketing for The Village definitely played up the horror side of proceedings, rather than the slow, textural recreation of the 19th century that forms the backbone of the film; that is, indeed, its real subject.  But even without those expectations being played with and undermined, The Village is rather a tricky piece, never quite settling or allowing the viewer any kind of traction on proceedings.

Interestingly, in one of the special features on the DVD, MNS mentions the notion that he disguises the film's key protagonist until the final third of the narrative; that events unexpectedly clear a space for Ivy to step forward as the heroine, and we're suddenly in the midst of a narrative arc we didn't even know was being signalled until that moment.  Which is to say, that even before we've taken into account the monsters, the post-9/11 allegory of fear and ideology, the narrative rug-pulling, etc, etc, he's already dead-set on subverting expectations, camouflaging one mode of storytelling within the carapace of another.  That's probably one of the things that gets critical and popular hackles up, I'd imagine.

But it's a strange combination, isn't it, of narrative tricksiness and emotional sincerity?  That might also help situate some of the reaction to his work, particularly during / after The Village: that one can't be at the same time a serious artist with a capacity for emotional heft, and a fire-side storyteller who's more interested in wowing the audience with his box of tricks and keeping them dangling on the hook with the promise of 'what happens next?'.  I would contend that you can in fact do both, that there isn't a contradiction in those narrative modes in any way, and that The Village is the proof.  That may put me in a minority of one, or three at any rate, but I stand by it.   

Aggressive Interview #4: Sophie Mayer

Having recovered sufficiently from former wounds inflicted in the interview room, George Ttoouli has decided to resume the foolhardy interview series, which may become regular, or might just be as sporadic as before.

Round 4: Sophie Mayer, most recently author of Political Animals (IB Tauris, 2015), (O) (Arc, 2015) and kaolin (Lark, 2015). A writer, editor, activist and educator based in London, she is so prolific online you could be forgiven for thinking she's some kind of post-human datacloud. Her poetry also features in Out of Everywhere 2, which launched this week in London.

So, Sophie, thanks for agreeing to an interview. How's the armchair activism going these days?

Sofa feminism (preferred term, please) has never been better. I even joined Twitter and Tumblr so I could shout more into the black hole of the internet, mainly about this totally niche artform called film.

Writing for poetry magazines like Athens-based international journal aglimpseof and new UK experimental magazines like Datableed or para*text has really confirmed to me that this internet thing is on a hiding to nothing and/or the doom of our time: who wants the possibility of international community and exchange that’s not dependent on increasingly expensive travel? Pfft. Or the integration of vispo, filmpoetry, sound poetry, experimental narrative etc. on a single site, in two or more languages, available for free?

I look at world-class writers such as Rebecca Solnit and Alison Croggon wasting their time writing impassioned and informative posts for online magazines and then sharing them via Facebook and think: really? So clickbait. Such attention-seeking behaviour. Surely this stuff is best kept in closed-access journals, for the élite – and really, far fewer people should be allowed the tools of research and self-expression. Nothing good will come of all this communication and conversation. Particularly because it bears no relation to RL (as the kids call it): no-one starts a conversation on Facebook idly one Sunday morning that leads to a (print) anthology featuring over one hundred poets that raises thousands of pounds for Pussy Riot’s legal fund, with over a dozen live launch events.

But, tbh (as the kids say), a lot of the internet is shit and a lot of clicktivism is disjointed from larger political communities and strategies. Which is why I think poets need to spend *more* time online doing that unacknowledged legislator thing. As the current government destroys education, including all media and arts education, and reduces the complexity of language and rhetoric to recognising made-up grammar, someone needs to intervene into the corporate double-speak, alarmist preaching, and displacement of verbal language by gifs and emojis. Who better than poets? This is our business. 🙊💪✒️💻💣 [*]

Indeed, that 'niche' artform, film. Many of your film recommendations, by feminist or female directors and writers, don't seem to manifest in my local supermarkets/multiplexes. It's fair to say, isn't it, that your war fronts are London-centric hipster battles--aren't they?

Oh, absolutely. Because video on demand – and possibly the internet – hasn’t reached outside gentrified urban areas, with tons of cheap or even free viewing options. Safe to say, if you’re spending your time and money at the multiplexes (all owned by big US corporations), you won’t have the time to save money and get better films at the growing number of independent cinemas across the UK (homemade cakes AND a wider choice of films!) and the amazing community screening spaces, like An Lanntair in Stornoway, some of which have been outfitted with excellent portable digital projection by the BFI’s Neighbourhood Cinema Fund. Liverpool Small Cinema has committed to the 58% project, screening films by female, trans, intersex and/or non-binary directors across their 2016 programme (I have a spreadsheet of 500 that you can consult).

It is sadly true that independent DVD and video rental and retail stores are vanishing, like bookstores and record stores. As rent rises, it’s harder to see a “disposable” income available to give to culture of any kind. So then it becomes even more important to choose wisely. Sure, you can see BlockBusterFaceSmashYesAllMen for a tenner each, plus a tenner for snacks. Or you could take that 20 quid and check out a site like ourscreen, which lets communities “pull” the films they want toward them, to screen in independent cinemas. Or start your own curation group or film club. Or just stay in and watch independent Indian films directed by women on Netflix (really).

But let’s go back to the supermarketplex. And a film called Selma, which had wide theatrical distribution here. Major historical biopic. Nominated for major international awards. Directed by an African American woman. Whose name doesn’t appear on the DVD you might pick up at the supermarketplex or order online. So believe me, some of my recommendations are there — but they are (as James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon put it so brilliantly) “the women men don’t see”.

I noticed via your recent tinyletter that Sara Ahmed quit her job at Goldsmiths. And that she thinks she can do "more by leaving than staying". But how can you effect change from the outside? Via a right-wing mass media? And what about your own hypocrisies, in fighting the good fight from your divan, macbook resting on your lap, cup of fairtrade/organic chamomile steaming on the table beside you?

The existence of the question is proof I’m doing it right. You've already read my tinyletter, which was written shortly after Professor Ahmed resigned and reached audiences immediately. My academic paper on Ahmed’s life/work will be years in the finessing, and decades in the publishing, and then accessible only to a tiny élite. Whether Ahmed remains outside the academy permanently, or takes another job as a professor, her post has done more to generate conversation about sexual harassment in academia than any number of internally-focused conferences. Enjoy your ivory tower privileges, and remember that ivory is made from murdered elephants. Plus via writing the tinyletter I learned that fitte is Norwegian slang for vagina. You don’t learn that in school.

I’ve held short-term teaching contracts at half a dozen UK universities in the last decade, and been a guest speaker or seminar leader at a dozen more, so I’m hokely-cokely doubly hypocritical (as well as a dilettante and a flibbertigibbet). And I often feel like a double agent, especially when I’m trying to get arts organisations and academia to work together: I wish it were dangerous liaising, but it’s just frustrating. Not as sexy a quality.

For every hour I’m quaffing fair-trade organic tea on my divan (aka scalding my tongue on something from EAT on the bus running between fifteen different jobs while trying to write a blog post on my phone), there’s at least three hours where I’m at a meeting or on a panel or participating in a seminar or workshop or supervision or training or exchange or screening or conversation (I refuse to use the word “networking”). I don’t know if that’s TEF standard. But standing up and moving around certainly keeps the macbook from frying my innards any further; even fair-trade camomile can’t repair that degree of free radical damage.

It sounds like you're merely reinforcing binary power structures: let's all replace patriarchy with matriarchy; rigorous heteronormativity with rigorous trans-culture, yadda yadda. Even queering as a process suggests an unchanging social power structure, the need for a process because society ain't getting any better.

So: if you became Kueeng of the World (through democratic revolution by armed insurgent-workers), what ten books/writers would form the basis of your Literary Canon?

Wait, are those the same question? Base-2 and base-10 are different things, aren't they? Even in queer math (which is a real thing, particularly in superalgebra). But (to address the first question first) even in normcore boring heteronormative math, a spectrum (or sphere) and a binary are not the same thing. And (I'm warming to my theme now) processes in mathematics are agents of change: addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. Within the Euclidean universe, yes, but they are based on the core idea that performing a process or function creates change.

Society is a set of processes: they can be repeated ad infinitum (more math language! I am a language thief, see below); or they can be interrupted, altered, redirected, reversed. Society is not an iterative zero-sum in which we cannot intervene; queerly, if you will. I think about the appropriation of the iteration in Claudia Rankine's Citizen, the use of repetition to foreground (make aware, interrupt) social/political unthinking repetition of the (extra-)judicial murder of African Americans.

So (queerly), given that society is a process (and one that is not unidirectional, linear or eschatological: that's another normative myth), there can only be canons for a given moment. (Did you know that canon comes from κανων (Gk), meaning straight rod – which makes me think of fasces (Latin), bundle of straight rods, etymology of fascism. But κανων (Gk) itself derives from καννη, reed – so maybe instead of a canon we need leaves of grass?)

Reeds to read right now:

• For Black Lives Matter: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
• For Idle No More and decolonisation: Gloria Bird and Joy Harjo (eds), Reinventing the Enemy's Language
• For Brexit: Gwyneth Jones, the Bold as Love series
• For the unbinary: Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon, Gender Failure
• For migration 1: Caroline Bergvall, Drift
• For migration 2: Etel Adnan, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country
• For the memory of our elected leaders' wrongs: Han Kang (trans. Deborah Smith), Human Acts
• For the memory of another Europe, and its poetries: María Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
• For another way being possible 1: Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Movements
• For another way being possible 2: Inger Christensen (trans. Susanna Nied), It

Language does not equal the author. Reading black or female authors or tracts by trans, two-headed, aliens won't guarantee change. All this meritocracy and remixing says to me, is, Don't read Sophie Mayer, read these other people. Amirite?

You’re absolutely right. As Björk says (argh, I can’t stop myself), “I go humble.” When I think about what I’ve done that really counts, I think of co-editing Catechism, Binders Full of Women, and Glitter is a Gender – projects that amplify and contextualise a range of poetic voices; I think of collaborating with Test Centre to bring Derek Jarman’s poetry chapbook A Finger in the Fishes Mouth back into print; I think of a hundred people singing “Building Bridges” from the Greenham Songbook at a Club des Femmes screening of Beeban Kidron’s Carry Greenham Home.

Surely one way out of capitalism (heteropatriarchal colonial edition) is to think about what we do (whether teaching or writing) as acts of collaboration, sharing and clearing spaces for each other, together, so that no one is (read as) an alien. There’s no change as long as there’s a sense that “author” is a neutral universal that excludes trans, two headed beings – or, worse in some ways, grudgingly includes them on the authority of those who hew closer to the neutral universal.

So maybe the whole concept of “author” is the problem — the authority, the ego, the rugged individual with his Bic for Men pen. We need an auteurnative that keeps visible the differing sets of social and political conditions from which creative labour arises, the specific shape of a voice or a practice, but that doesn’t just simplistically equate that with being in charge or worth it. After all, we’re all multitudes. Being a hero is a bullshit narrative; adding your voice to the chorus is where it’s at.

Or in the words of Trinh T. Minh-Ha, in Woman, Native, Other:

By laying bare the codes of literary labor, it unequivocally acknowledges the writer’s contradictory stand – her being condemned to do ‘good work’ in choosing to ‘write well’ and to produce Literature. She writes, finally not to express, not so much to materialize an idea or a feeling, as to possess and dispossess herself of the power of writing. Bliss. (italics in original)

Interesting how well you've failed to contain your multitudes, but I'm glad to hear you're at least aware of your hypocrisies. Some poets might even take that unresolvable position as creative energy, but I noticed, in your latest book, (O), you've basically repackaged a lot of other women's words: Samira Makhmalbaf, Sappho, etcetera.

David Hart called your process "translating English into English." I'd call it yet more faux-experimental derivative sampling as intellectual posturing. Where the hell do you locate 'poetry' in your thefts?

Sadly, Samira Makhmalbaf didn't make the final cut for (O), although her words (which are the words of the young women with whom she made the film Sib (Apple)), are in a poem that you published in an anthology about apples (long a tendentious subject for women under Judaeo-Christianity). I.e. if I say apple, I say Eve (Milton, Newton). Blessed be the pure of subject/content, for they are ignorant of their history and/or references.

When I quote, I attribute: there's no theft or nod-wink "sampling" expecting readers to be hip to the source. OK, one line where I scratch an Emily Dickinson phrase. Flipside: a lot of potential readers wouldn't recognise an Audre Lorde reference if it wasn't attributed, although they might well recognise a Walt Whitman one. Or the expectation would be there.

Let me anticipate the follow-up question: I give the pale, stale, male canon a bloody good kicking, unashamedly (perhaps unadvisedly considering its contemporary iteration still rules whatever roost poetry lays claim to). It's a very small act of trying to settle the balance.

Obviously, with both Makhmalbaf and Sappho, I'm not translating English into English, but translating (or working with translation) in the more formal sense. I think Hart does capture that my work is exactly translation (transferre [Latin], metaphorein μεταφορειν [Greek]), an act of carrying). Absolute magpie acts – but because the words shine, shine, shine. Call it my critic side leaking through: I see all my writing as advocacy, as a Lily Brik-style shout-out, the poetic hand as megaphone saying READ THESE WRITERS! Voices carry, collectively, better than a single voice alone.

So I'd locate the poetic in the invocation. Witch work/squad goals, depending on your idiom. England may want to be a walled-in island, but no poet is/should. I'm proud of my lineage, my sisterhood, my un-nation. Call it grave-robbing if you like, but there's no ghostbusting this parade of goddesses.



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[*] Respectively, these are: Speak no evil monkey, flexed bicep, black pen nib, personal computer, bomb. This apparently describes visually a narrative in which those monkeys chained to typewriters trying to produce Shakespeare have upped their game and are preparing to overthrow their human overlords.

Anticord: Renegade Angles: Xavier

In between musing about the possible representation of landscape sans meaning in Peter Riley's Alstonefield, this arrived in my inbox, courtesy of Peter Blegvad.

Warning, mature content, antilinear structures, etcetera...



Yes, Simon, I will take this seriously once again.

An antidote to high budget waste

Interesting enough in itself to see YouTube hosting free films.

More interesting that Plan 9 from Outer Space is up there for free. (You do need to sign in to view, but given Google owns that and half the free internet world, you can use pretty much any online account, from gmail to blogger, to your Tesco Clubcard (note: unverified).)

The Editors often have conversations about failed masterpieces.[*] In exaggerated language, the conversation runs along these lines, with editors interchangeable for each other:

Ed: I am always far more impressed by the failed ambitions of an auteur--

Ed: Especially when that ambition fails by the naivete of the Artiste's technical understanding--

Ed: Of the medium operandi.

Ed & Ed: HA! Aren't we pretentious?

Ed: It's satisfying to see so much mad energy arise from what some call 'mistakes'.

Ed: Maybe if we 'dulled our senses' with a little more of this Thai whiskey, we might come up with something as good.

Ed: Chin-chin old chap!

(Two hours later.)

Ed & Ed: *blllluuuurrbbbble bbbbuuuuurrrrrble*



[*] Unfortunately, 'Plan 9' doesn't really have masterpiece status written into it, but it's very watchable for the wrong reasons.

THOR! (George Ttoouli + Hammer + Horned Helmet = Happy Rampage)

The other morning I was running around shouting "THOOOOR!!" loudly, calling for mead and dusting off the mallet in the toolbox, in anticipation of Kenneth Branagh's new film. I would have gone to see it anyway, but the thought of Mr. Shakespeare's LoveChild (tm) himself directing this was so amusing to me that I decided it would only be fair to go in fancy dress. This was an 11am screening, so I thought the kids might even ask for my autograph, with questions like, "Are you a real viking?" to which I would respond with a growl, like what bears do in clichés when heroes enter caves that obviously haven't been bear-filled for decades.

From the trailer, I was convinced I'd be going into a braindead bash up, slightly camp, not taking itself too seriously, even though Anthony Hopkins was in it. I don't think I've ever seen him take on a role where he didn't get to be slightly melodramatic. Kind of like putting the end of The Fellowship of the Ring film in straitjackets.The sidekicks, done up like extras from Xena, but with a budget that extended well beyond 'bits of brown cloth that look like they might have been animal skins in a version of ancient Greece that never existed', looked marvellously like characters straight out of my childhood tabletop D&D imaginations. Impractically cool bits of metal armour, gung ho expressions, big shiny weapons... My subconscious actually started providing a non-existent soundtrack of dice rolls as they swiped and hacked at the Frost Giants.

Yes, well, you've guessed it: how wrong I was. The reviews have been great, putting this way up alongside The Dark Knight, possibly the best of comic book adaptations. In terms of quality, I wouldn't make that comparison lightly, knowing how my co-editor, in his own words, "Understands The Dark Knight better than Christopher Nolan himself". They're very different beasts, however, and as a companion to it, Thor shows how ideas of terror, militancy and stupidity can play out in a far more beautiful and exhilarating fashion.

The first twenty minutes or so didn't do too much to undermine my expectations. I was delighted by how well-crafted and intensely satisfying it all was, though, from the lush graphics, the stunning costumes and scene sets, the wonderful presence of the cast members, the camera angles that always seemed to be at Odin's feet when Hopkins appeared, to the gung ho 'let's invade' dialogue, which, although playing out familiar tropes in some ways, managed to stay within character-building reference points at all times.

I can pin down the point where I realised the film's intelligence very accurately. Early on, Thor and his adventuring party (the segment so deliberately played up to RPGs for this episode) invade the land of the Frost Giants and, towards the end a giant beast is unleashed. Thor's response is a typical escalation of violence, launching himself at it with his flying hammer. It's very subtle, but listen carefully: the soundtrack, as Thor flies through the air, straight as a rocket, is very much that of a missile's engines.

Let's be specific here: a cruise missile? Why not? That's what I thought. And then, suddenly, it all began to fit into place. Frost Giants: penned into a tiny prison island, physically frightening, psychologically alien; Asgard: self-promoting masters-of-the-universe race, patriarchs of the lesser worlds.

At first the film plays up to the allegory well, interrogates ideas of representation, good vs. evil and so on.(*) And that's all part of the film's subtle contextualising of the ridicule to come. Once Thor comes down out of the clouds (literally and metaphorically), the realism (and 'scuse me French here, kids) kicks the shit out of him. Steadily the film begins its deconstruction of the political in favour of the personal; Thor's character development is what this is about, and what Thor represents isn't so much the US Govt. or affiliated warmongers, but everyday people and their views. The scene where he's cooking breakfast for the scientists, you can imagine him in checked shirt and baseball cap, an Average Joe, bottle of beer and barbecue man.

This is Shakespeare, in many ways. Branagh's feel for stage directing leads to seamless scene changes, a kind of fluidity in how he moves the camera to show the next set piece already establishing itself beside the current scene. It's the characterisation, above all, that does it for me: yes, Thor is royalty; yes, he's a bit of a meathead; but that doesn't preclude compassion, a learning curve. Tradition dictates that gods of mythology are spoiled brats, playing out the urges and whims of children with no checks to their power and ability to meddle except the older, only marginally wiser gods. Yet they also play out the fears of mortals, of what would happen if we tried to behave in the same way.

The most Shakespearian tribute here, however, is to use the Norse Sagas and the comic book's ideas not just to play out an allegory. The film deviates from consistently obvious (at least to me) recent political events by returning to the unique quirks of Norse myth. This provides a freshness, more space to translate the film not only into commentary, but into a personal journey of one's own. Yes, it's ultimately a story we've seen before: the dumb, impulsive coming-of-age lessons; but it's done in such rich terms, I forgave it for all of my preconceived ideas. Branagh stays utterly in control of how each segment of the film is perceived, he knows exactly what you're thinking at each moment; and the direction is completely generous is how it manipulates you into reading Thor's personality, playing on your sympathies.

As a final point, I ought to relate this to discussions of convention and ideology that I've been pasting on G&P with sticky tape. I can see, through and through, Thor is a 'conventional' film. While I may have come across as tub-thumpingly pro-experimentation, I'm not zealously ascribed to it, but I am concerned with ideas of stagnation, when derivatives take over the vast bulk of publication.

Mr. Co-editor put it to me recently, in one of our late evening, over-caffeinated conversations, that the avant garde (whatever they are, Simon) are always at least one step ahead of what's just been published. Yet in terms of what's been published, we can still look at work and judge it by the merits of tradition and experimentation. If the work isn't yet in circulation, then it can't form part of a circle of reference points for reviewers, critics and even practitioners, unless we're in the community of experimenters, maintaining dialogue at the rockface of creativity. So we have to look at the published work to learn about where to experiment next, or how to assimilate new ideas into traditions.

Branagh sets out to exist within a tradition that allies itself not with mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, but with Shakespeare's drama. He's fully in control of the film's style, structure, character - all the technical elements, pretty much - by being an expert on the genre and an expert reader of how each element in the film can be perceived. (That makes me wish I knew a bit more about the editing process for Thor, given how tight the final result is.)

Arguably, there is something original to how he goes about this, by not adapting a Shakespearean story into the godawful conventions of a highschool teen drama, or similar crud. Instead he's adapting a comic book series, which is in itself an adaptation of Norse mythology, using the techniques of Shakespearean theatre directing, but positioning it within a marketplace of story/plot conventions that could be considered part of a Hollywood/mainstream US filmmaking cannon. Where other films (Kick-Ass, Iron Man) flounder dramatically in resorting to story and plot conventions that are utterly prevalent today and undermine any superficial entertainment these provide for me, or moral commentary they seem to be attempting to carry on their overloaded camel's backs, Thor kicks these aside it makes its way towards the podium of best comic book adaptations available. It rises above the genre, as Nolan's Batman films have done, but doesn't set out to imitate those films, or others immediately and obviously connected to the genre.

What I'm trying to say in summary is, don't miss it. And I'm hoping co-editor will run over and see it, then throw up a more detailed comparison of it to The Dark Knight, as he's far more knowledgeable than any mortal ought to be about it.

A Note on 3D:

I really didn't want to have to throw up such a dud aside about this stuff, but I have to. It's an unfortunate sign of things to come when credit sequences make better use of 3D technology than the rest of a film. Thor is incredibly lush, even without 3D, but what 3D there is makes feeble use of depth throughout. The juicier CGI sequences didn't really gain much scope from teching up, and the big shots, e.g. of Asgard, seemed static, as if only the camera was moving. As bad as it was as a story, Avatar is a great example of 3D use, extremely immersive, without being showy. Films like Thor, with the punch of story, script, tight editing and brilliant characterisation, don't need this crap. The visual medium is secondary to the aural experience. Once again, an example of studios trampling over the fanbase. (On that note, this is fun, but note: a faux-trailer.) Homogenising bastards, all of them.

(*) Can't work out where to insert this, so it's a footnote. A small niggle early on with the presentation of Asgard's backstory - Peter Jackson did it brilliantly in LOTR, the history of the severing of the ring from Sauron's finger; and he set a template for future epic fantasies which no one has tried hard enough to dismantle. The slightly distanced narrative perspective, serious voice over, the hordes of static CGI-ed combatants lined up implausibly in some kind of WWE face off, big sweeping battle scenes. Yes, it's a helpful shorthand for storytelling, but no, no, no. Unless you're going to make some serious comment on Jackson's style, Tolkien's campness and LOTR generally, why? Here's a challenge: why not let readers use their imaginations and set up a field on a table, with metalcast miniatures - painted Warhammer moulds and papier-maché landscapes. Has anyone done that yet? Probably cost a shitload less than CGI and look as beautiful. All you'd need is a decent soundtrack.

Here, look at this. Now imagine the intro and other intertitles read by James Earl Jones. And the sub/surtitles as stage directions. You can also note the realism of the set up: units formed into small squadrons, with a clear chain of hierarchy spreading through the different unit types. Multiple points of attack, multiple points of contact on a single battlefield... I'd better stop here, my geekery is getting the better of me. But it's a footnote, so that's OK, boy's and girls.