Sunday 10 April 2016
Chinese Philosophers
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/09/forget-mindfulness-stop-trying-to-find-yourself-start-faking-it-confucius?CMP=fb_gu
Being John Malcovich
'Being John Malkovich utilizes a surreal persona transferral technique to address, among other things, problems of displaced desire.'
I often think about wanting to be inside someone else's mind, so i can then compare it to me own. However in the film this only leaves people realising what they are missing, for example Lotte becomes hooked on the experience because she finally feels comfortable in her skin but only in her skin in Malkovich's skin. But is the more a self -realisation that really what she was missing her whole life was a mans body, or is ignorance actually bliss? Then Maxine having experienced the desire of two people from one body, or the womans gaze coming from a mans body, does not desire them separately. Once you have experienced something greater you cannot go back to the way things were before. Or when Maxine is pregnant, whose baby is it, it is said to be Lotte's but it is Malkovich's DNA, does Lotte being in his head at point of conception mean that it is her child. Or most spooky at the end, Craig in the mind of the daughter of Lotte and Maxine, yearning for Maxine still.
A really fascinating point was when Malkovich entered his own portal, what would happen?, i actually paused the film at the point trying to think of possibilities, would he just get trapped in a loop of endless Malkovich going in circles or would the two Malkovich's cancel each other out and so he would just become a vegetable in a body, or would he become double Malkovich, with two minds, would he get trapped there? Would he explode? No instead his unique experience was a world full of Malkovich where the only word was Malkovich, although this to me didnt add up to me, but perhaps its better they treated it that way, as if they treated it more seriously then it would move the story somewhere else.
After that something really stuck with me when Malkovich wanted the portal to be closed, was it his right just because it was his head, did Craig have any right? Even more worrying when he said he would take him to court and Craig questioned who would be thinking in court. How to you deal with the possibility of someone invading your thoughts.
Craig likes puppetry because he can get inside someone else's skin, he also says to the chimp that conciousness is a terrible thing, being able to think and feel. He feels through the puppets giving them emotions, he is putting his terrible curse of conciousness into them. The same could be said for Lotte and her obsession with animals, having trapped all these animals with her in her concious human life and reflecting human emotions onto them, for example the chimps supressed childhood trauma which she wants to treat through psychoanalysis. She is isolated from them as she is human. The film has so much concerning human isolation, isolation that everyone has trapped in their own thoughts, never really able to communicate what they want to. Even through experiencing life as another, they are still in their own thoughts and head within the head of another, so are still isolated. Craigs puppet show at the start forshadows this isolation as the two sexually frustrated puppet characters are isolated by a wall. The body of John Malcovich is a wall for many of the characters who enter it, for example Lotte and Craig can only have sex and be intimate with Maxine from behind the wall of Malkovich and vice versa for Maxine. Even the physical portal itself is within the walls of a wall. In a way the irony of it is that to be really in someone elses head you could no longer be aware of the self the were before, otherwise you would just be a spectator, to really be somone else you have to be them fully so therefore you would not be aware of the fact you were in someone elses head as it would be you.
I often think about wanting to be inside someone else's mind, so i can then compare it to me own. However in the film this only leaves people realising what they are missing, for example Lotte becomes hooked on the experience because she finally feels comfortable in her skin but only in her skin in Malkovich's skin. But is the more a self -realisation that really what she was missing her whole life was a mans body, or is ignorance actually bliss? Then Maxine having experienced the desire of two people from one body, or the womans gaze coming from a mans body, does not desire them separately. Once you have experienced something greater you cannot go back to the way things were before. Or when Maxine is pregnant, whose baby is it, it is said to be Lotte's but it is Malkovich's DNA, does Lotte being in his head at point of conception mean that it is her child. Or most spooky at the end, Craig in the mind of the daughter of Lotte and Maxine, yearning for Maxine still.
A really fascinating point was when Malkovich entered his own portal, what would happen?, i actually paused the film at the point trying to think of possibilities, would he just get trapped in a loop of endless Malkovich going in circles or would the two Malkovich's cancel each other out and so he would just become a vegetable in a body, or would he become double Malkovich, with two minds, would he get trapped there? Would he explode? No instead his unique experience was a world full of Malkovich where the only word was Malkovich, although this to me didnt add up to me, but perhaps its better they treated it that way, as if they treated it more seriously then it would move the story somewhere else.
After that something really stuck with me when Malkovich wanted the portal to be closed, was it his right just because it was his head, did Craig have any right? Even more worrying when he said he would take him to court and Craig questioned who would be thinking in court. How to you deal with the possibility of someone invading your thoughts.
Craig likes puppetry because he can get inside someone else's skin, he also says to the chimp that conciousness is a terrible thing, being able to think and feel. He feels through the puppets giving them emotions, he is putting his terrible curse of conciousness into them. The same could be said for Lotte and her obsession with animals, having trapped all these animals with her in her concious human life and reflecting human emotions onto them, for example the chimps supressed childhood trauma which she wants to treat through psychoanalysis. She is isolated from them as she is human. The film has so much concerning human isolation, isolation that everyone has trapped in their own thoughts, never really able to communicate what they want to. Even through experiencing life as another, they are still in their own thoughts and head within the head of another, so are still isolated. Craigs puppet show at the start forshadows this isolation as the two sexually frustrated puppet characters are isolated by a wall. The body of John Malcovich is a wall for many of the characters who enter it, for example Lotte and Craig can only have sex and be intimate with Maxine from behind the wall of Malkovich and vice versa for Maxine. Even the physical portal itself is within the walls of a wall. In a way the irony of it is that to be really in someone elses head you could no longer be aware of the self the were before, otherwise you would just be a spectator, to really be somone else you have to be them fully so therefore you would not be aware of the fact you were in someone elses head as it would be you.
'Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.
The other thing that happens is adjustment. You find out which part of the story works, which part to embellish, which to jettison. You fashion it. Your goal is to be entertaining. This is true for a story told at a dinner party, and it's true for stories told through movies. Don't let anyone tell you what a story is, what it needs to include. As an experiment, write a non-story. It will have a chance of being different.
I'll tell you this little story. There's something inherently cinematic about it. I run in my neighbourhood, and one day I ran past this guy running in the other direction: an older guy, a big hulky guy. He was struggling, huffing and puffing. I was going down a slight hill and he was coming up. So he passes me and he says: "Well, sure, it's all downhill that way." I loved that joke. We made a connection. So I had it in my head that this is a cool guy, and he's my friend now.
A few weeks later, I'm passing him again, and I'm thinking: "There's the guy that's cool." As we pass each other, he says: "Well, sure, it's all downhill that way." So I think: "Oh, OK. He's got a repertoire. I'm not that special. He's probably said it to other people, maybe he doesn't remember me ... but OK." I laughed, but this time my laugh was a little forced.
Then I pass him another time, and he says it again. And this time he's going downhill and I'm going uphill, so it doesn't even make sense. And I started to feel pain about this, because I'm embarrassed for him and I think maybe there's something wrong with him. And then it just keeps happening. I probably heard it seven or eight more times. I started to avoid him.
I like the idea that the story changes over time even though nothing has changed on the outside. What's changed is all in my head and has to do with a realisation on my character's part. And the story can only be told in a particular form. It can't be told in a painting. The point is: it's very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you're doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can't think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn't need to be done.' KAUFMAN
changes all in the end to change the way it is going and realisation, this rings true to what i am doing, especially in the piece of myself talking into the camera and reflecting on my thoughts from seconds ago, everything changes through the thoughts, when nothing really changes at all.
Communication through language
I have been finding it hard to know what to make for a while, ever since really I found my old songs, plays, films i had made and my old fashion blog. There was so much in it that i knew i had to use as it felt like a very important turning point, but i found it very hard to use. Reading the songs from my 7 year old self felt very alien, i could not communicate with them properly, i did not know whether the things in the songs were genuine feelings as they were very sad and spoke about things i did not know I felt, or whether I was imagining they way people might feel and then writing songs about it. The problem is I can never know now, which is very frustrating as it was my own mind, so that mind is now gone? how can it be gone as it is me. how do I communicate with it. I envied that mind from the past as it was so much freer, i tried writing as freely as that but it was hard as i kept feeling stupid in front of myself, the third bit between language and thoughts seemed to get in the way, why did i feel stupid in front of myself, how can you use your mind to feel stupid and embarrassed about the very mind you are using. It also became very hard to then think write about all of this as everytime i would get frustrated as the words were not what was in my head, even now its frustrating to write as this is the very problem. I just noticed that i have been typing out loud whilst writing, so have been doing all three, thinking, using live language and then language in writing, all which are very different and all are doing different things. Every time i try and write about what i have been looking at with my work, i end up getting distracted by my current thinking situation thinking about the way I am transferring my thoughts into the external world incorrectly.
I have realised ever since finding all my old material is that now anything i write or do is tainted, because i have realised it can be used as artwork, this is both positive and negative, negative because subconsciously now this will always be around with everything i do, so nothing can ever been innocently written anymore. I did find anyway before that though, that i always had this feeling behind my most apparent thoughts that someone would see everything that was taken out of my mind through written language, but i have come to realise now that maybe its just myself. I want to impress my future self, not even in the far future but perhaps from a few days into the future. So aswell as trying to communicate with my past self. the future self interests me too, even the small journey from when i started writing this paragraph to now, what has changed with the language and the way i feel, i can never get back to that self, or the self that just wrote that part. Obviously its all the same self, but if i look at how much i cannot understand my self from 10 years ago, surely a very small part of me cannot understand myself from seconds ago.
I just read this whole thing back and its frustrating as its not accurately communicating what i want it to, or maybe it is communicating what myself 5 minutes ago wanted but not myself now.
This is why I am stuck, because every time I end up getting distracted, and I cant work out how to use the old stuff I wrote or did, without just putting it in, maybe I need to extract parts.
For now to break from this I need to make something without pre thinking it, just make whatever I want unrelated to what I am doing, and then do something with it without trying to make it about what i am doing and see what happenns, I NEED N OT USE LANGUAGE FOR IT.
I have realised ever since finding all my old material is that now anything i write or do is tainted, because i have realised it can be used as artwork, this is both positive and negative, negative because subconsciously now this will always be around with everything i do, so nothing can ever been innocently written anymore. I did find anyway before that though, that i always had this feeling behind my most apparent thoughts that someone would see everything that was taken out of my mind through written language, but i have come to realise now that maybe its just myself. I want to impress my future self, not even in the far future but perhaps from a few days into the future. So aswell as trying to communicate with my past self. the future self interests me too, even the small journey from when i started writing this paragraph to now, what has changed with the language and the way i feel, i can never get back to that self, or the self that just wrote that part. Obviously its all the same self, but if i look at how much i cannot understand my self from 10 years ago, surely a very small part of me cannot understand myself from seconds ago.
I just read this whole thing back and its frustrating as its not accurately communicating what i want it to, or maybe it is communicating what myself 5 minutes ago wanted but not myself now.
This is why I am stuck, because every time I end up getting distracted, and I cant work out how to use the old stuff I wrote or did, without just putting it in, maybe I need to extract parts.
For now to break from this I need to make something without pre thinking it, just make whatever I want unrelated to what I am doing, and then do something with it without trying to make it about what i am doing and see what happenns, I NEED N OT USE LANGUAGE FOR IT.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)