Non Photo-Blue

So, I intended to post a few things. I just saw Last Days and I wanted to post a review of that. I never finished my analysis of Sherlock Jr. and capitalism, and the connections between that movie and Fellini's 8 1/2. So many things to blog about! Plus, I don't even have a computer right now. I'm living out of boxes, ready to go cross-country. But Lotte and I have been having a little debate about acting, genuineness and artifice, and her response to my post was well thought out and deserves a response in turn. So here we go again: a response to Lotte's response! The joy of internet communication.

I think that Lotte and I, conceptually, are on the same page. We both agree that Marilyn Monroe's performance in The Seven Year Itch seems genuine. And I also agree that acting, or writing, is based outside the world of truth. It must be a lie! No actor is the person they are trying to portray. No written work is real! It's a book, letters on a page. There is nothing "real" about it.

But as soon as you pick the book up, you move into that world - when the lights go down in the theater, you move into that world. Inside this world, the world of the artwork - this is where I am looking for genuineness. So I am making a destinction between the levels of reality- modes of being, perhaps. Crossing a line between the "world" of a movie or a book, and the world of reality, where you are looking at it from. (Though, that world is equally as fragile.)

Lotte says, "She (the actor) must cover her own tracks, obliterating any trace of the truth...that her speech and motions are prescribed and fictional instead of spontaneous and actual." I'm glad you brought this up, because I think it can clarify how we're looking at this differently.

In acting terms, this is bad acting. It's called anticipating. What you are looking for is spontaneity and the actual. "Acting is action." "Acting is reacting." I'm quoting Uta Hagen again. You want to be in a place where you are on the stage but you are reacting honestly to what is happening before you. Yes, it is granted, that as soon as you hit the stage it's a lie. But once we accept that world, accept that basic lie, the rest must be true.

Well, it doesn't have to be. Like one of the commenters on your blog said, sometimes stylist acting is great, and a work of art in its own way. Again, a different mode of creativity, a different system upon which to judge art.

I liked Lotte's little walk on the deconstuctionist wildside. I'll jump along. If acting is a lie, and writing is one too, which, in the terms that Lotte describes it, I agree it is - is not consciousness a lie too? Is there a difference between how an actor takes on a role, and how one is playing a role put before them in reality? A role of a mother, or father, or child: You model your behavior on what you see, not much different than an actor would. I question how much truth there is in anyone's "performance" as a human.

How often have the thoughts in your head come from a script? A movie you saw, or a book you've read? People think in cliches! That's why they are all over Into to Creative Writing classes. Isn't the voice of your consciousness a free floating narration? And just as a narration seeks to deceive to create verisimilitude, doesn't the very act of thought do the same?

Yet, if nothing is quite real - all the signifiers do point to each other, then, what is "real" to look for at all? If it's silly to look for truth in art, it's equally silly to look for it in "reality." Because either way, you way to take on certain assumptions to even bother to fight over it, like we have.

Thanks for all this, Lotte! It's been fun to think about.


P.s. Quoting the end of Lotte's post, that starts by quoting me:


"It's the one golden rule of all art forms — make it new."

Novelty is only insisted upon in "high art," which is, of course, neither interesting nor comprehensible to most people. Furthermore, novelty has only been especially valued in art over the last few centuries; only recently have artists felt the suffocating pressure to "do something fresh," whereas before they could content themselves with "doing something well." I could launch into my Utterly Unsupported Theory that pins this development on the maturation of capitalism and the commercialization of art — but it's really not germane. I seek only to place this so-called "golden rule" in context, and show that it is not an all-encompassing truth of art-making, but a strange quirk of recent history and limited audience.

Good point about defamiliarization. It is a recent way of interpreting art. But it is the current way, in that it has for some reason (perhaps the development of capitalist society, hmm) evolved from preceding paradigms. And I don't think that a century long paradigm for critiquing and creating art deserves to be marginalised by being called a "quirk" (gasp!) Plus: who cares what most people do! I'm usually the least interested in that. Most people enjoy silly Hollywood action movies. Most people don't want to think on a regular basis. Actually, in this highly commercial, capitalist state - "high art" as you call it, is not really that "high," except in comparision to the mindless drivel the society forces upon its members on a daily basis. But the discussion about doing something "well," versus doing something new, is a long and interesting one, and would require much more than an afterthought.