Film yak
--Mystic was great fun. I got to spend all weekend singing away and making up verses with redcolumbine . I'm still in denial about its being over, actually. Fortunately for me, the MIT Chantey Sing is coming up this Sunday (2-5 p.m., as I recall; comment if you want directions). I can get my fix of good loud choruses in public. I haven't had nearly enough chances to sing lately, and it's mostly because I haven't taken the trouble to go out and find them.
--Tomorrow I have to go back to work after a week off for the Festival weekend. Bah. But on the other hand, on Saturday I may have the time for a kayak trip. Man, that'd be fun.
--I bought a cell phone! After putting it off for some months, I finally did it. For some reason I can't quite define, I was very reluctant to purchase one. But it had to be done, and now I'm very glad I've got it. I won't be using it every day, but as nineweaving once said, it's like a signal flare, for use in emergencies.
--Hey, you know what I think I'll buy? A box of those red highway flares where you stick them upright and light the end to warn away traffic. If I ever got the car stuck in the mud or had a flat on the highway, they'd be useful for safety. Plus, bright red sparks are cool. (My Uncle Alanson was a pyromaniac. I never met him; he was actually a great-uncle by marriage, and he died of natural causes some years before I was born. But he had a spectacular reputation on account of once setting fire to a field in back of his house. His wife and neighbors found him setting the dry grass alight with matches and staring at it with a big, maniacal grin. "Lannie? Why are you doing that?" "Hunh? Oh, it's fun." "Hadn't you better stop before it spreads?" "Uh. Yeah, I guess so." He was the nicest, most law-abiding fellow otherwise. My mother and I both take after him, despite not actually being related by blood.)
--I've been watching a lot of gangster movies lately with my parents. That's one of the places where we can coincide. I don't like their modern-day action movies, they hate my monster/horror/supernatural favorites, but these days we all like black-and-white crime movies, gangster flicks, noir in general. We watched "Little Caesar" the other night, "The Big Sleep" tonight.
--That reminds me. I've been thinking about film noir. It's a smashing genre name, isn't it? Just sounds like a nice portentous phrase to put in the subtitle of your term paper. It's French, so it must be meaningful. You can even pluralize it as "films noirs" and astonish your less worldly friends. And what does it mean? Hunh? I ask ya, what's it mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means a movie with:
These things:
Lots of dark/light contrast
Shadows of venetian blinds OR palm fronds
Men in hats
Men with guns
Men in hats with guns
At least one gorgeous and amoral chick
Unpleasant death(s)
Bleak views on the human condition
Moral turpitude
Cigarette smoking as a fine art
And at least one item from each of these categories.
Category one:
Humphrey Bogart being a Gary Stu
Elisha Cook being clueless
Cars (trendy when the film was made, vintage now)
Alleyways
Rain
That thing where they show you guys' heads in silhouette against a frosted glass office door
A spectacularly brutal beating for the hero
A raspy baritone voice-over
Smart-assed yet world-weary banter
Category two:
Drug abuse
Ambiguously gay villains, about whom I shall have more to say anon, and you may lay to that
A Macguffin
Los Angeles in the early to mid-20th century
Diners
Neon
A harried D.A.
Homophobia
Misogyny
Casual and irrelevant racism
Thus we see that a film can be a film noir and yet not actually be good or enjoyable. (Will the students in the back of the classroom please turn off their cell phones and attend to the lecture. Thank you.) A lot of noir films are good and enjoyable, not merely because they contain the elements above but because those elements are used well. And yet highbrow criticism will have it that any old gangster film is a film noir because it contains those elements, and that therefore (here's the tricky part) its being a film noir makes it automatically good. All b&w crime thrillers therefore have the opportunity to scoot in under the umbrella of respectability and approval offered by the term "film noir".
I'm not saying they shouldn't. What I am saying is that we need terms of highbrow respectability, to shelter other genres we like. What about early horror? I ask you. What about '30s Universal monster movies? What about movies with big bouncy rubber bats on strings, where the dry ice swirls moodily about the actors' ankles? What about early silent films where Count Orlak loads twenty coffins onto a cart and then drives away in fast-forward, leaving the audience in inappropriate gales of mirth? What about films with the same cute little cobbled main street which appeared in about fifteen different monster movies, starting with The Wolf Man? What about films with a huge, ghastly monster who has been so folk-processed through time that he appears totally innocuous to us today, yet was state of the art for his day? What about Lon Chaney Jr. covered in yak hair, damn it? Where is the shelter of artistic merit for films about monsters who look like Bottom the Weaver? (Sorry, Larry, but you do.)
Wait. I have it. We will call classic monster movies film yak.
--Tomorrow I have to go back to work after a week off for the Festival weekend. Bah. But on the other hand, on Saturday I may have the time for a kayak trip. Man, that'd be fun.
--I bought a cell phone! After putting it off for some months, I finally did it. For some reason I can't quite define, I was very reluctant to purchase one. But it had to be done, and now I'm very glad I've got it. I won't be using it every day, but as nineweaving once said, it's like a signal flare, for use in emergencies.
--Hey, you know what I think I'll buy? A box of those red highway flares where you stick them upright and light the end to warn away traffic. If I ever got the car stuck in the mud or had a flat on the highway, they'd be useful for safety. Plus, bright red sparks are cool. (My Uncle Alanson was a pyromaniac. I never met him; he was actually a great-uncle by marriage, and he died of natural causes some years before I was born. But he had a spectacular reputation on account of once setting fire to a field in back of his house. His wife and neighbors found him setting the dry grass alight with matches and staring at it with a big, maniacal grin. "Lannie? Why are you doing that?" "Hunh? Oh, it's fun." "Hadn't you better stop before it spreads?" "Uh. Yeah, I guess so." He was the nicest, most law-abiding fellow otherwise. My mother and I both take after him, despite not actually being related by blood.)
--I've been watching a lot of gangster movies lately with my parents. That's one of the places where we can coincide. I don't like their modern-day action movies, they hate my monster/horror/supernatural favorites, but these days we all like black-and-white crime movies, gangster flicks, noir in general. We watched "Little Caesar" the other night, "The Big Sleep" tonight.
--That reminds me. I've been thinking about film noir. It's a smashing genre name, isn't it? Just sounds like a nice portentous phrase to put in the subtitle of your term paper. It's French, so it must be meaningful. You can even pluralize it as "films noirs" and astonish your less worldly friends. And what does it mean? Hunh? I ask ya, what's it mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means a movie with:
These things:
Lots of dark/light contrast
Shadows of venetian blinds OR palm fronds
Men in hats
Men with guns
Men in hats with guns
At least one gorgeous and amoral chick
Unpleasant death(s)
Bleak views on the human condition
Moral turpitude
Cigarette smoking as a fine art
And at least one item from each of these categories.
Category one:
Humphrey Bogart being a Gary Stu
Elisha Cook being clueless
Cars (trendy when the film was made, vintage now)
Alleyways
Rain
That thing where they show you guys' heads in silhouette against a frosted glass office door
A spectacularly brutal beating for the hero
A raspy baritone voice-over
Smart-assed yet world-weary banter
Category two:
Drug abuse
Ambiguously gay villains, about whom I shall have more to say anon, and you may lay to that
A Macguffin
Los Angeles in the early to mid-20th century
Diners
Neon
A harried D.A.
Homophobia
Misogyny
Casual and irrelevant racism
Thus we see that a film can be a film noir and yet not actually be good or enjoyable. (Will the students in the back of the classroom please turn off their cell phones and attend to the lecture. Thank you.) A lot of noir films are good and enjoyable, not merely because they contain the elements above but because those elements are used well. And yet highbrow criticism will have it that any old gangster film is a film noir because it contains those elements, and that therefore (here's the tricky part) its being a film noir makes it automatically good. All b&w crime thrillers therefore have the opportunity to scoot in under the umbrella of respectability and approval offered by the term "film noir".
I'm not saying they shouldn't. What I am saying is that we need terms of highbrow respectability, to shelter other genres we like. What about early horror? I ask you. What about '30s Universal monster movies? What about movies with big bouncy rubber bats on strings, where the dry ice swirls moodily about the actors' ankles? What about early silent films where Count Orlak loads twenty coffins onto a cart and then drives away in fast-forward, leaving the audience in inappropriate gales of mirth? What about films with the same cute little cobbled main street which appeared in about fifteen different monster movies, starting with The Wolf Man? What about films with a huge, ghastly monster who has been so folk-processed through time that he appears totally innocuous to us today, yet was state of the art for his day? What about Lon Chaney Jr. covered in yak hair, damn it? Where is the shelter of artistic merit for films about monsters who look like Bottom the Weaver? (Sorry, Larry, but you do.)
Wait. I have it. We will call classic monster movies film yak.