While it had its flaws, I'd enjoyed the 1964 film The Last Man On Earth (with Vincent Price), like this film based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend (which I haven't read), so I was curious to see what this treatment was like. This film, however, didn't have a whole lot to recommend it despite a few nice moments.
Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, a virologist who failed to prevent a cure for cancer mutating into a hideous disease which killed most of the population, and turned the rest into ravening zombies, except much speedier than 'zombies' would normally imply. Neville, who may be the last survivor, and whose wife and daughter may be dead, is still working on a cure in post-apocalyptic New York, with only his faithful hound for company. One of the film's worst scenes involves the death of said canine. There's also an awful, bathetically angsty scene between Smith and some mannequins (seriously).
I'll admit that I like Will Smith; he's got an easy charisma that's rare among male Hollywood stars. And he's certainly smoking hot in this film - we get to see a lot of flesh, though nothing too intimate - this is Hollywood, after all. However, as other reviewers have noted, in this film, playing such a tortured role and without (for the most part) other characters to bounce off, his charisma (his strong point) is muted. Another flaw is the completely illogical plot; why, for example, does Neville still have access to electricity and running water for his experiments? This example could be multiplied many times over.
A more serious issue is the not-so-subtle Christian propagandising the film engages in throughout. I really didn't appreciate being evangelised to in this propagandistic, concealed way.
Strengths? The aforementioned Will Smith eye candy - and there were some very nice, atmospheric scenes set in an abandoned New York city (though in conception that's nothing we haven't already seen in 28 Days Later, a more interesting failure), and also in Neville's underground laboratory. But overall, I'd stick with The Last Man On Earth.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Susanna Clarke - The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories (2006)
Since leaving my teens, I've never been a fan of the updated fairy tale, perhaps because it tends either to simply (re)include heavy sexuality, or else put a heavily obvious ideological spin on the proceedings. And (in contrast to a former self) I rarely read short stories these days. But Susanna Clarke's fantastic (in all senses), monumental novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, an epic story of faeries and magicians set in a Victorian alterna-history in which magic took the place of the Industrial Revolution (this sells the work extremely short, and I can't recommend it highly enough), was a feast - and so I gave her new work, a collection of short stories based on magical and, in particular, faerie themes, a go.
As a complete Victoriana-phile, I'm always looking for modern fiction set in the Victorian period which actually manages to pull off the period detail, society, and language, rather than Mills & Boon cod-Victoriana, or an unfunny, over-the-top send-up of Victorian manners. It's a difficult quality to find, but Clarke has it in spades (some others I'd recommend in this vein, though without the fantasy aspect, are D. J. Taylor's Kept and Wesley Stace's Misfortune). The best of the stories here are set in the world of Strange and Norrell (and some familiar characters recur), that is, the late-Regency to Victorian period in Britain, in which a familiar opposition takes place between the magic of the 'head' (modern, rational, booklearning, technological prowess) and of the 'heart' (ancient, emotional, connected to gods and faeries, natural, uncontrollable). The theme of the cunning mortal outwitting the faerie is also a recurring plot.
The most successful stories are those which most inhabit the world of Strange and Norrell, while the least are those which simply retell old fairy tales. Overall, in opposition to JS&MN, plot is not the point here: even the more elaborate stories are fairy tale retellings, cast into a different world, or else based heavily on traditional fairytale narratives. But, unusually for me, I didn't find this a problem - all the stories held my interest, and I devoured the whole (modest) book in one sitting.
There are some other interesting points to the work; the one 'retelling' aspect which comes up fresh, original and shiny is a fascinating piece which compares the situation of Jews and Faeries in the society created by Clarke. There's also a story set in the village of Wall (where the human and fairy realms meet), created by Neil Gaiman in Stardust (having said which, I've never liked anything of Gaiman's except for his original Sandman series).
This work threw a lot of things at me which I don't usually have much time for (these days, at least): short stories, 'updated' fairytales and myths, and modern genre fantasy (Clarke thanks Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, among others) - but I devoured it. I wouldn't lay money, however, on whether it would universally find the same reception amongst those who haven't read JS&MN. The work, to me, was a tease, a little taster of what's been happening in that world since and contemporaneously with the original novel - I can only hope Clarke doesn't keep me waiting too long for something more significant to sink my teeth into.
As a complete Victoriana-phile, I'm always looking for modern fiction set in the Victorian period which actually manages to pull off the period detail, society, and language, rather than Mills & Boon cod-Victoriana, or an unfunny, over-the-top send-up of Victorian manners. It's a difficult quality to find, but Clarke has it in spades (some others I'd recommend in this vein, though without the fantasy aspect, are D. J. Taylor's Kept and Wesley Stace's Misfortune). The best of the stories here are set in the world of Strange and Norrell (and some familiar characters recur), that is, the late-Regency to Victorian period in Britain, in which a familiar opposition takes place between the magic of the 'head' (modern, rational, booklearning, technological prowess) and of the 'heart' (ancient, emotional, connected to gods and faeries, natural, uncontrollable). The theme of the cunning mortal outwitting the faerie is also a recurring plot.
The most successful stories are those which most inhabit the world of Strange and Norrell, while the least are those which simply retell old fairy tales. Overall, in opposition to JS&MN, plot is not the point here: even the more elaborate stories are fairy tale retellings, cast into a different world, or else based heavily on traditional fairytale narratives. But, unusually for me, I didn't find this a problem - all the stories held my interest, and I devoured the whole (modest) book in one sitting.
There are some other interesting points to the work; the one 'retelling' aspect which comes up fresh, original and shiny is a fascinating piece which compares the situation of Jews and Faeries in the society created by Clarke. There's also a story set in the village of Wall (where the human and fairy realms meet), created by Neil Gaiman in Stardust (having said which, I've never liked anything of Gaiman's except for his original Sandman series).
This work threw a lot of things at me which I don't usually have much time for (these days, at least): short stories, 'updated' fairytales and myths, and modern genre fantasy (Clarke thanks Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, among others) - but I devoured it. I wouldn't lay money, however, on whether it would universally find the same reception amongst those who haven't read JS&MN. The work, to me, was a tease, a little taster of what's been happening in that world since and contemporaneously with the original novel - I can only hope Clarke doesn't keep me waiting too long for something more significant to sink my teeth into.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Eli Roth - Hostel (2005)
Presenting the second, and possibly final, instalment in my grumpy-underculture-snob-meets-horror-of-the-noughties series... this film really had no redeeming features whatsoever, and I don't mean that in a good way.
We follow the story, such as it is, of American backpackers Josh and Paxton, and the Icelandic Oli, who are hanging around Europe doing what backpackers do (drinking, taking drugs and looking to get laid) when they find themselves in a whole passel o' trouble when they fall prey to an organisation 'sourcing' subjects for the snuff play of the rich and perverted. There is a skerrick of character development in the juxtaposition of uninhibited Pax with the supposedly more bookish Josh (I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief when he mentioned Kafka), but overall there's little here in the way of character or plot: boys meet psychos, boys get tortured, boys try to escape from psychos.
What's interesting, though not, I think, intended, is what this film says and doesn't say about the relationship between the USA and Europe. Made by Eli Roth (I quite enjoyed his Cabin Fever, which had a shadow more of the original, and of the b-grade, about it than Hostel) with the support of a cinematic bete noir of mine, Quentin Tarantino (did you know that in France they call it 'bete noir'? Leaves 'Royale with Cheese' in the shade anyday - I think I'm freaking out!), this film plays very heavily on stereotypes of Europe in general, and Eastern Europe in particular, as an old and evil place where a thin veneer of civilisation overlies a deeply cynical barbarism. In this world, the young and naive Americans (along with the hapless party animal Oli) find themselves entirely out of their depth and easy prey.
But the film doesn't seem sure what it wants to say. Are we to view the protagonists, who are a typical amalgam of the privileged (they're studying law and English) and the boozing party animal, as stereotypical idiot, ignorant American tourists who are only concerned with the gratification of their own desires on whatever object presents itself, and deserve all they get? Are we to see them as understandably hedonistic, carefree young men indulging a last bender, for whom we should feel sympathy? Given the lack of character development or emotional involvement, this seems unlikely... What isn't in doubt in terms of perception is that Eastern Europeans themselves (and indeed all Europeans, with the exception of Oli) are seen as black-and-white figures of evil. There's a long tradition of the Anglo colonies holding this view, of Europe as corrupt and corrupting of the youthful, naive and innocent colonial, from the works of Henry James through to David Cronenberg's latest, Eastern Promises. But I wouldn't call this Oedipal stereotype a proud pedigree.
Hostel has been both highly praised and highly damned; but I don't particularly think it merits either. Despite the plaudits given to the film as a horror film, I didn't find it scary at all - even the usual chase-scene-shrieking-violins-suspense, which most modern slasher flicks have on tap (because it's an easily achievable emotional trick), don't really work in this film, where they're let down by a soundtrack that goes beyond the standard 'noticeable violin cheese' into the realm of fondue.
On the other hand, accusations that the film has led to a new genre of 'torture porn' or 'gorno' also seem overblown; certainly as a one-time gore aficionado I didn't find it particularly confronting, and we might think both of historical predecessors such as Bloodsucking Freaks, the Troma films, or Mexican and Italian horror exploitation films, all of which are much more interesting than this little work. Indeed, perhaps the novelty was that this film brought splatter-gore out of the cult underground and into the popular mainstream; but even then I don't think this argument would hold, given the popularity of big-budget movies like the recent ...of the Dead films, or House of 1000 Corpses. Or perhaps (I can't speak for Corpses here, as I haven't seen it) the novelty is that the only thing about Hostel which makes an impact is the gore. I suspect the latter...
We follow the story, such as it is, of American backpackers Josh and Paxton, and the Icelandic Oli, who are hanging around Europe doing what backpackers do (drinking, taking drugs and looking to get laid) when they find themselves in a whole passel o' trouble when they fall prey to an organisation 'sourcing' subjects for the snuff play of the rich and perverted. There is a skerrick of character development in the juxtaposition of uninhibited Pax with the supposedly more bookish Josh (I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief when he mentioned Kafka), but overall there's little here in the way of character or plot: boys meet psychos, boys get tortured, boys try to escape from psychos.
What's interesting, though not, I think, intended, is what this film says and doesn't say about the relationship between the USA and Europe. Made by Eli Roth (I quite enjoyed his Cabin Fever, which had a shadow more of the original, and of the b-grade, about it than Hostel) with the support of a cinematic bete noir of mine, Quentin Tarantino (did you know that in France they call it 'bete noir'? Leaves 'Royale with Cheese' in the shade anyday - I think I'm freaking out!), this film plays very heavily on stereotypes of Europe in general, and Eastern Europe in particular, as an old and evil place where a thin veneer of civilisation overlies a deeply cynical barbarism. In this world, the young and naive Americans (along with the hapless party animal Oli) find themselves entirely out of their depth and easy prey.
But the film doesn't seem sure what it wants to say. Are we to view the protagonists, who are a typical amalgam of the privileged (they're studying law and English) and the boozing party animal, as stereotypical idiot, ignorant American tourists who are only concerned with the gratification of their own desires on whatever object presents itself, and deserve all they get? Are we to see them as understandably hedonistic, carefree young men indulging a last bender, for whom we should feel sympathy? Given the lack of character development or emotional involvement, this seems unlikely... What isn't in doubt in terms of perception is that Eastern Europeans themselves (and indeed all Europeans, with the exception of Oli) are seen as black-and-white figures of evil. There's a long tradition of the Anglo colonies holding this view, of Europe as corrupt and corrupting of the youthful, naive and innocent colonial, from the works of Henry James through to David Cronenberg's latest, Eastern Promises. But I wouldn't call this Oedipal stereotype a proud pedigree.
Hostel has been both highly praised and highly damned; but I don't particularly think it merits either. Despite the plaudits given to the film as a horror film, I didn't find it scary at all - even the usual chase-scene-shrieking-violins-suspense, which most modern slasher flicks have on tap (because it's an easily achievable emotional trick), don't really work in this film, where they're let down by a soundtrack that goes beyond the standard 'noticeable violin cheese' into the realm of fondue.
On the other hand, accusations that the film has led to a new genre of 'torture porn' or 'gorno' also seem overblown; certainly as a one-time gore aficionado I didn't find it particularly confronting, and we might think both of historical predecessors such as Bloodsucking Freaks, the Troma films, or Mexican and Italian horror exploitation films, all of which are much more interesting than this little work. Indeed, perhaps the novelty was that this film brought splatter-gore out of the cult underground and into the popular mainstream; but even then I don't think this argument would hold, given the popularity of big-budget movies like the recent ...of the Dead films, or House of 1000 Corpses. Or perhaps (I can't speak for Corpses here, as I haven't seen it) the novelty is that the only thing about Hostel which makes an impact is the gore. I suspect the latter...
Monday, December 31, 2007
Judith Flanders - Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (2006)
I'm an absolute sucker for well-written books of Victorian cultural and social history, and Flanders' CP fits that bill exactly. Flanders has written two other books on the Victorian period which I haven't had the pleasure to read. However, this one, on a subject which I haven't seen explored at any more than chapter-length in most popular books I've read on Victorian history, was really fascinating, giving both an excellent social history of the explosion of leisure among the working classes, and of mass consumption and the technologies which drove it; and, though treating little with personal narrative, an excellent sense of the concrete, day-to-day realities of Victorian life across the classes.
In terms of subject matter, CP deals with the Great Exhibition, the development of the shop (from retail to department) and advertising, the modern newspaper along with serialised and commercial fiction, travel (especially by road and train), holidays and tourism, theatre and spectacle, music, art (especially the development of the artist from a figure of patronisation to a commercial individual, as well as public museums and galleries), sport, and Christmas. Personally, I would've liked to see a chapter on the commercialism of sex and sexuality (surely the ultimate activity involving 'leisure and pleasure'), as well as on drinking and recreational drugs (and all of these, a two-faced attitude to sexuality, a change in the nature of the 'corner pub' and the substances consumed, or the rise and cultural role of 'opium dens', or example, would be fascinating); but and of these would perhaps be another work, and these topics are already covered, to greater or lesser degree, in other works on the era - besides which, at 500-odd pages, CP is already a fairly significant brick.
As well as tracing the grand outlines (the changes brought to peoples' lives in terms of psychologicality, temporality and geography by the new availability of consumer goods, travel and entertainment, and the struggle, mostly class-based, of what forms these new pleasures were to take and who would be included and excluded), Flanders' work is a wealth of fascinating incidental asides on the less-considered aspects of Victorian life (it was impossible, for example, for a woman to visit a bathroom outside her home until the development of the tea shop and the department store, thereby leading to a considerable increase in her outside-the-home purchasing hours; traditional Christmas plum pudding developed from an earlier standard Christmas-porridge, beef broth thickened with bread, dried fruit, wine and spices, beloved in England but 'a dish few foreigners find to their taste'; or the legal necessity for 'low' or popular theatres, forbidden to perform serious works, to produce Shakespeare in tableaux featuring signs in order to get around the rule against spoken performances of 'high'[er] art). But the book is also excellent at tracing the unexpected synchronicities of technology and discourse, and the non-directed developments, of the period which lead to its classic manifestations; for example, the combination of new technologies developed entirely separately in metalwork and in rubber, a good road system covering a relatively small area, a view of lower-middle class men in office jobs as effeminate indoors weaklings, led to a huge boom in the production and use of the bicycle (first mooted in the late 1860s) among the general population.
The Victorian period is usually understood, with justification, as the beginning of the contemporary period as we understand it. In reading Flanders' book, the embryonic outlines of many of today's practices are quite clear (sometimes even near-fully-formed) and the way in which our primary identities, as self-constructed consumers and possessors of individual and shaped personalities, as well as our mentality of constant growth and 'improvement', can be seen, without explicit links being drawn by Flanders herself. The way in which it traces the connection between leisure, consumption and identity, without specifically addressing itself to this subject as an academic topic in itself, is one of the work's great strengths. However, without specifically laying it out (and particularly in the areas where we venture into the eighteenth century in search of the roots of the nineteenth and the historical context in which these changes were occurring), it also gives some truth to the argument, laid out in other writers' work on the period, that the classic schematic separation between pre- or proto-modernity, and contemporary modernity as we know it, took place halfway through what we consider 'the Victorian period' - and we can understand the period better in this light.
Overall, I'd second A. N. Wilson's description of CP: 'as packed with goodies as a rich Victorian Dundee cake'. To be put on the shelf along with works like Wilson's own The Victorians or Liza Picard's Victorian London to return and be dipped into to at leisure (and, of course, at pleasure).
In terms of subject matter, CP deals with the Great Exhibition, the development of the shop (from retail to department) and advertising, the modern newspaper along with serialised and commercial fiction, travel (especially by road and train), holidays and tourism, theatre and spectacle, music, art (especially the development of the artist from a figure of patronisation to a commercial individual, as well as public museums and galleries), sport, and Christmas. Personally, I would've liked to see a chapter on the commercialism of sex and sexuality (surely the ultimate activity involving 'leisure and pleasure'), as well as on drinking and recreational drugs (and all of these, a two-faced attitude to sexuality, a change in the nature of the 'corner pub' and the substances consumed, or the rise and cultural role of 'opium dens', or example, would be fascinating); but and of these would perhaps be another work, and these topics are already covered, to greater or lesser degree, in other works on the era - besides which, at 500-odd pages, CP is already a fairly significant brick.
As well as tracing the grand outlines (the changes brought to peoples' lives in terms of psychologicality, temporality and geography by the new availability of consumer goods, travel and entertainment, and the struggle, mostly class-based, of what forms these new pleasures were to take and who would be included and excluded), Flanders' work is a wealth of fascinating incidental asides on the less-considered aspects of Victorian life (it was impossible, for example, for a woman to visit a bathroom outside her home until the development of the tea shop and the department store, thereby leading to a considerable increase in her outside-the-home purchasing hours; traditional Christmas plum pudding developed from an earlier standard Christmas-porridge, beef broth thickened with bread, dried fruit, wine and spices, beloved in England but 'a dish few foreigners find to their taste'; or the legal necessity for 'low' or popular theatres, forbidden to perform serious works, to produce Shakespeare in tableaux featuring signs in order to get around the rule against spoken performances of 'high'[er] art). But the book is also excellent at tracing the unexpected synchronicities of technology and discourse, and the non-directed developments, of the period which lead to its classic manifestations; for example, the combination of new technologies developed entirely separately in metalwork and in rubber, a good road system covering a relatively small area, a view of lower-middle class men in office jobs as effeminate indoors weaklings, led to a huge boom in the production and use of the bicycle (first mooted in the late 1860s) among the general population.
The Victorian period is usually understood, with justification, as the beginning of the contemporary period as we understand it. In reading Flanders' book, the embryonic outlines of many of today's practices are quite clear (sometimes even near-fully-formed) and the way in which our primary identities, as self-constructed consumers and possessors of individual and shaped personalities, as well as our mentality of constant growth and 'improvement', can be seen, without explicit links being drawn by Flanders herself. The way in which it traces the connection between leisure, consumption and identity, without specifically addressing itself to this subject as an academic topic in itself, is one of the work's great strengths. However, without specifically laying it out (and particularly in the areas where we venture into the eighteenth century in search of the roots of the nineteenth and the historical context in which these changes were occurring), it also gives some truth to the argument, laid out in other writers' work on the period, that the classic schematic separation between pre- or proto-modernity, and contemporary modernity as we know it, took place halfway through what we consider 'the Victorian period' - and we can understand the period better in this light.
Overall, I'd second A. N. Wilson's description of CP: 'as packed with goodies as a rich Victorian Dundee cake'. To be put on the shelf along with works like Wilson's own The Victorians or Liza Picard's Victorian London to return and be dipped into to at leisure (and, of course, at pleasure).
Sunday, December 23, 2007
James Wan - Saw (2004)
While I'm not at all a fan of the 'new' style horror movie (with the exception of the resurge in b-grade), I like to keep up with major developments in the field, so I'd been meaning to see Saw. for some time now. I'd been somewhat put off by comparisons to the highly overrated Se7en, but I found Saw a lot more pleasing, perhaps because it had no pretensions to be anything other than what it was - a nasty little psycho movie, but with smarts.
The film suffers from the usual modern horror problems - serial killer with no meaningful motive, over-reliance on gore (I prefer my films either b-grade gory, or without, thank you), and my very least favourite - what I call 'Friday the 13th' syndrome - the characters (especially but not only women) never take the opportunity to put the villain out of the action once and for all when they have the opportunity, but instead fail to for the sake of the plot, and in the process entirely jettison the shreds of realism on which the genre trades.
Having said this, however, the 'twist' in this particular example is very nicely done: we follow the characters from a deathtrap situation through a history of how they came to be there, and with what consequences. This format means that we don't get tempted by another sin of the modern-day slasher flick, setting up a line of ducks and shooting 'em down one by one as a substitute for a plot.
It's a clever work - the twists are nicely done so that, when you think you're one step ahead of the film, it's in fact got the drop on your expectations. The twisted, intricate little scenarios the film presents are themselves are very ingenious, and will please those with a mind for complicated death traps in classic crime style, with a modern twist in the upping of the macabre factor. The atmosphere is very nicely done (though nothing out of the ordinary) - I found myself at times conceiving of the movie as a game made in reverse, given the fact that much of it is a series of very elaborate problem-solving exercises - but unlike many films these days which seem empty inasmuch as they're made for or from action-based gameplay, the ingenuity this involves maintains interest in the film medium as well. Overall it's a well-put together little package which is not for the queasy, but which holds pleasures beyond the standard mindless short'n'nasty slasher film that passes for horror these days.
The film suffers from the usual modern horror problems - serial killer with no meaningful motive, over-reliance on gore (I prefer my films either b-grade gory, or without, thank you), and my very least favourite - what I call 'Friday the 13th' syndrome - the characters (especially but not only women) never take the opportunity to put the villain out of the action once and for all when they have the opportunity, but instead fail to for the sake of the plot, and in the process entirely jettison the shreds of realism on which the genre trades.
Having said this, however, the 'twist' in this particular example is very nicely done: we follow the characters from a deathtrap situation through a history of how they came to be there, and with what consequences. This format means that we don't get tempted by another sin of the modern-day slasher flick, setting up a line of ducks and shooting 'em down one by one as a substitute for a plot.
It's a clever work - the twists are nicely done so that, when you think you're one step ahead of the film, it's in fact got the drop on your expectations. The twisted, intricate little scenarios the film presents are themselves are very ingenious, and will please those with a mind for complicated death traps in classic crime style, with a modern twist in the upping of the macabre factor. The atmosphere is very nicely done (though nothing out of the ordinary) - I found myself at times conceiving of the movie as a game made in reverse, given the fact that much of it is a series of very elaborate problem-solving exercises - but unlike many films these days which seem empty inasmuch as they're made for or from action-based gameplay, the ingenuity this involves maintains interest in the film medium as well. Overall it's a well-put together little package which is not for the queasy, but which holds pleasures beyond the standard mindless short'n'nasty slasher film that passes for horror these days.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Werner Herzog - Grizzly Man (2005)
I'll come right out and admit it - this is the first Herzog film I've seen, though Aguirre and Nosferatu have been on my list for some time. But, if this film is anything to go by, everyone who recommended his work to me was right about the depth of the impression it leaves on the viewer. Despite its flaws, GM is one of the most thought-provoking films I've seen for quite some time.
The documentary, narrated by Herzog himself and featuring a haunting acoustic guitar soundtrack by Richard Thompson, follows the story of Timothy Treadwell, the 'grizzly man' of the title. Treadwell was devoted to grizzly bears, and spent every summer for thirteen years with the bears, until, in 2003, he and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed and eaten by a grizzly. For the six years previously, Treadwell had been documenting his sojourns on camera. This footage makes up a great deal of the doco; the rest is interviews with those who knew Timothy or were involved in the events around his death, as well as some gorgeous landscape shots of the Alaskan wilderness where Treadwell lived with the bears.
Treadwell himself is a bizarre, irritating and fascinating character. An actor and a former alcoholic and heavy drug user, he seems to have had a 'conversion' experience which turned him into the 'grizzly man' (who nonetheless took his childhood stuffed bear with him into the wilderness). But his life involved a great deal of myth-making, from his name (which he had changed from 'Timothy Dexter'), to his origins (he claimed to have been born in Australia), to the fact that in the film he took of himself (intended for his own documentary) he consistently concealed the fact that he was not always alone in the wilderness, but was accompanied by Huguenard.
The film's greatest flaw, to my mind, is Herzog's intrusive, heavily accented narration, which is often portentous and pretentious, and adds little to the tragic and beautiful story which unfolds around Treadwell. The material Herzog presents could easily stand alone, and his observations, whether on the random beauty of the shots of the wilderness captured between Treadwell's gung-ho on-film heroics, or his criticisms of Treadwell's very obvious flaws and absurdities, are redundant. There is also a particularly objectionable, crypto-voyeuristic scene in which Herzog is played the six-minute sound recording of the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard (the camera had been running, but with the lens cap on), after which he tells Jewel Palovak (Treadwell's close friend, and the possessor of the tape and his other effects) that she must never listen to it, that she must destroy it, and that she must never look at the autopsy photographs of Treadwell (his remains and those of Huguenard were for the most part recovered from the stomach of the bear who killed them, which was shot when Treadwell's death was discovered).
Nonetheless, the questions the film raises are even more fascinating than the sheer beauty of the footage of grizzlies and foxes at play. The essential issue here revolves around the relationship between humans and 'nature'. Treadwell came more and more to loathe 'the human world', as he called it, and this was eventually to lead to his death: when returning from Alaska he got into an altercation regarding his plane ticket, and he therefore decided to return to the wilderness, staying later in the season than he ever had before and thus encountering hostile and starving bears with whom he had not previously come in contact. But his view of both 'nature' and of the human role was hopelessly utopian, and this, combined with a massive ego which led to a heavy overestimation of his own capacity to avoid conflict with the grizzlies, was a fatal flaw.
Treadwell, complete with Prince Valiant haircut (concealing his receding hairline), saw himself as a 'kind warrior' and a 'samurai' who, unlike anyone else in the world, was capable of interacting with grizzlies on their own terms. In this attitude, however, we see how monumental was his arrogance, and the way in which his project was all about himself, rather than about the bears. A telling moment is one in which he tells a fox he has named 'Timmy' that he (the fox) is 'master of all the bears and all the foxes'; telling also is the way in which his monologue (which is a bizarre, over-enthusiastic stream of childish enthusiasm and comic-book phraseology, punctuated by exaggerated emotional tantrums) constantly draws on concepts of 'mastery' and martial analogies. One can't help agreeing with the indigenous curator of an Alaskan museum that Treadwell's interactions with the bears (which included a great deal of close contact), contrary to his protestations of love (and he was also a tireless educator, giving free speeches to schoolchildren about bear protection) were the ultimate in disrespect, inasmuch as he did not respect the boundary between their domain and his own.
But why should we consider what Treadwell was doing, living among the bears, more reprehensible than the actions of figures such as Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey? While I'm not usually one to champion 'scientific objectivity', this discourse seems to have placed a distance between the abovementioned scientists and the objects of their research which Treadwell, as a self-conceived eco-warrior figure, did not possess (we might also add that, while ego must not be overlooked as a motivation in scientific work, Treadwell's self-aggrandisement seems to have grown from the 'conversion experience' which led to his self-mythologising as 'the grizzly man'). Gender issues also seem relevant, in terms of Treadwell's militaristic conception of his role in mediating between the 'grizzly world' and the 'human world', and in his macho conception of his ability to handle the grizzlies. Having said this, such an interaction is always problematic; Fossey herself seems to have begun to lose the plot in the final period of her interaction with gorillas in Rwanda, dressing up, for example, as a traditional evil spirit in order to scare off poachers and others from the gorilla habitat; and in this case, too, such behaviour may well have contributed to her death.
The publicisation of the work of individuals like Fossey and Goodall led to a much greater public appreciation of the inherent value of the lives of the animals they studied, and therefore can be seen as positive in this regard. However, if GM can be said to have a moral, the one I drew was that the best thing humans can do for wild animals is to leave them alone. Treadwell's utopian view of nature is certainly more benign than an attitude which explicitly values humans above other animals and sees nature as nothing more than a justifiably exploitable resource (indeed, a resource which it is morally incumbent upon humans to subjugate and exploit); but it certainly did him no good, and arguably harmed his cause (drawing a great deal of ire, and the intrusion of 'Treadwell-hunters' into the wilderness on at least one occasion). Here we might also think of the fate of Steve Irwin.
In opposition to Treadwell's naive boys' own fantasies with an eco-twist, Herzog's view, as expressed in the narratorial voice, is the diametric opposite: that 'nature' is a harsh chaos, and that animals are nothing more than mindless eating machines (and, as mentioned above, I failed to see the necessity for this judgmental and heavy-handed intrusion). These two points of view draw on what we might call 'equal and opposite' binary traditions in the Western conception of 'nature': that it is either a hideous, dangerous realm, ultimately hostile to humanity; or that it is a morally and literally unspoiled wilderness which is a paradise for humans. Either concept sees Westerners (as opposed to, for example, 'noble savages') as somehow 'outside' of the realm of 'nature' which they 'encounter' in certain circumstances. Both of these views seem to me equally reductionist, and both revolve around a conception of humans as 'central' to an external 'nature' which can lead to nothing but harm, whether through benign or malign intentions toward that 'nature'.
Ultimately, whatever its flaws, this documentary is beautiful, haunting, maddening and thought-provoking; the intensity of any one of these aspects alone would make it worthwhile watching, but all together, they add up to an experience which, appropriately, enriches the viewer's mental landscape.
The documentary, narrated by Herzog himself and featuring a haunting acoustic guitar soundtrack by Richard Thompson, follows the story of Timothy Treadwell, the 'grizzly man' of the title. Treadwell was devoted to grizzly bears, and spent every summer for thirteen years with the bears, until, in 2003, he and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed and eaten by a grizzly. For the six years previously, Treadwell had been documenting his sojourns on camera. This footage makes up a great deal of the doco; the rest is interviews with those who knew Timothy or were involved in the events around his death, as well as some gorgeous landscape shots of the Alaskan wilderness where Treadwell lived with the bears.
Treadwell himself is a bizarre, irritating and fascinating character. An actor and a former alcoholic and heavy drug user, he seems to have had a 'conversion' experience which turned him into the 'grizzly man' (who nonetheless took his childhood stuffed bear with him into the wilderness). But his life involved a great deal of myth-making, from his name (which he had changed from 'Timothy Dexter'), to his origins (he claimed to have been born in Australia), to the fact that in the film he took of himself (intended for his own documentary) he consistently concealed the fact that he was not always alone in the wilderness, but was accompanied by Huguenard.
The film's greatest flaw, to my mind, is Herzog's intrusive, heavily accented narration, which is often portentous and pretentious, and adds little to the tragic and beautiful story which unfolds around Treadwell. The material Herzog presents could easily stand alone, and his observations, whether on the random beauty of the shots of the wilderness captured between Treadwell's gung-ho on-film heroics, or his criticisms of Treadwell's very obvious flaws and absurdities, are redundant. There is also a particularly objectionable, crypto-voyeuristic scene in which Herzog is played the six-minute sound recording of the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard (the camera had been running, but with the lens cap on), after which he tells Jewel Palovak (Treadwell's close friend, and the possessor of the tape and his other effects) that she must never listen to it, that she must destroy it, and that she must never look at the autopsy photographs of Treadwell (his remains and those of Huguenard were for the most part recovered from the stomach of the bear who killed them, which was shot when Treadwell's death was discovered).
Nonetheless, the questions the film raises are even more fascinating than the sheer beauty of the footage of grizzlies and foxes at play. The essential issue here revolves around the relationship between humans and 'nature'. Treadwell came more and more to loathe 'the human world', as he called it, and this was eventually to lead to his death: when returning from Alaska he got into an altercation regarding his plane ticket, and he therefore decided to return to the wilderness, staying later in the season than he ever had before and thus encountering hostile and starving bears with whom he had not previously come in contact. But his view of both 'nature' and of the human role was hopelessly utopian, and this, combined with a massive ego which led to a heavy overestimation of his own capacity to avoid conflict with the grizzlies, was a fatal flaw.
Treadwell, complete with Prince Valiant haircut (concealing his receding hairline), saw himself as a 'kind warrior' and a 'samurai' who, unlike anyone else in the world, was capable of interacting with grizzlies on their own terms. In this attitude, however, we see how monumental was his arrogance, and the way in which his project was all about himself, rather than about the bears. A telling moment is one in which he tells a fox he has named 'Timmy' that he (the fox) is 'master of all the bears and all the foxes'; telling also is the way in which his monologue (which is a bizarre, over-enthusiastic stream of childish enthusiasm and comic-book phraseology, punctuated by exaggerated emotional tantrums) constantly draws on concepts of 'mastery' and martial analogies. One can't help agreeing with the indigenous curator of an Alaskan museum that Treadwell's interactions with the bears (which included a great deal of close contact), contrary to his protestations of love (and he was also a tireless educator, giving free speeches to schoolchildren about bear protection) were the ultimate in disrespect, inasmuch as he did not respect the boundary between their domain and his own.
But why should we consider what Treadwell was doing, living among the bears, more reprehensible than the actions of figures such as Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey? While I'm not usually one to champion 'scientific objectivity', this discourse seems to have placed a distance between the abovementioned scientists and the objects of their research which Treadwell, as a self-conceived eco-warrior figure, did not possess (we might also add that, while ego must not be overlooked as a motivation in scientific work, Treadwell's self-aggrandisement seems to have grown from the 'conversion experience' which led to his self-mythologising as 'the grizzly man'). Gender issues also seem relevant, in terms of Treadwell's militaristic conception of his role in mediating between the 'grizzly world' and the 'human world', and in his macho conception of his ability to handle the grizzlies. Having said this, such an interaction is always problematic; Fossey herself seems to have begun to lose the plot in the final period of her interaction with gorillas in Rwanda, dressing up, for example, as a traditional evil spirit in order to scare off poachers and others from the gorilla habitat; and in this case, too, such behaviour may well have contributed to her death.
The publicisation of the work of individuals like Fossey and Goodall led to a much greater public appreciation of the inherent value of the lives of the animals they studied, and therefore can be seen as positive in this regard. However, if GM can be said to have a moral, the one I drew was that the best thing humans can do for wild animals is to leave them alone. Treadwell's utopian view of nature is certainly more benign than an attitude which explicitly values humans above other animals and sees nature as nothing more than a justifiably exploitable resource (indeed, a resource which it is morally incumbent upon humans to subjugate and exploit); but it certainly did him no good, and arguably harmed his cause (drawing a great deal of ire, and the intrusion of 'Treadwell-hunters' into the wilderness on at least one occasion). Here we might also think of the fate of Steve Irwin.
In opposition to Treadwell's naive boys' own fantasies with an eco-twist, Herzog's view, as expressed in the narratorial voice, is the diametric opposite: that 'nature' is a harsh chaos, and that animals are nothing more than mindless eating machines (and, as mentioned above, I failed to see the necessity for this judgmental and heavy-handed intrusion). These two points of view draw on what we might call 'equal and opposite' binary traditions in the Western conception of 'nature': that it is either a hideous, dangerous realm, ultimately hostile to humanity; or that it is a morally and literally unspoiled wilderness which is a paradise for humans. Either concept sees Westerners (as opposed to, for example, 'noble savages') as somehow 'outside' of the realm of 'nature' which they 'encounter' in certain circumstances. Both of these views seem to me equally reductionist, and both revolve around a conception of humans as 'central' to an external 'nature' which can lead to nothing but harm, whether through benign or malign intentions toward that 'nature'.
Ultimately, whatever its flaws, this documentary is beautiful, haunting, maddening and thought-provoking; the intensity of any one of these aspects alone would make it worthwhile watching, but all together, they add up to an experience which, appropriately, enriches the viewer's mental landscape.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Jeffrey Masson - Against Therapy (1990)
Though I read them some time ago, I was a big fan of Masson's books on emotions in animals, Dogs Never Lie About Love (despite the fact that I'd be lying if I said I was a dog lover), and When Elephants Weep. However, when I got to The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats, I felt that he was relying far too heavily on the, in my opinion dubious, claims of evolutionary biology to explain the emotions in animals. What I didn't realise was that Masson has a whole other history in the field of psychoanalysis (not to mention Sanskrit studies).
Masson is a fascinating character. A youthful savant, he was originally a sanskrit scholar before moving into the field of psychoanalysis. He quickly rose to the heights of editing an archive of Freud's letters, which had until then been kept from the public, held by Kurt Eissler, a man devoted to maintaining Freud's posthumous reputation; but Masson soon became disillusioned with Freud as an admirable person, and with psychoanalysis in general, and a massive falling-out ensued. Janet Malcolm describes this in her wonderful book In The Freud Archives, originally a New Yorker article; but, when she quoted Masson as having aimed to change the archives into a place of "women, sex and fun" he sued her for libel, and the ensuing case took a decade before finally being found in Malcolm's favour. Masson, disappointed by the lack of purchase gained by his work on therapy and psychoanalysis, then turned to writing about emotions in animals.
All this is by way of introducing Masson's self-explanatorily titled work, Against Therapy. Masson's position is that all one-on-one therapy is inherently deeply flawed, and that one-on-one therapy should be abandoned as a practice. This is because the therapist is inevitably in a position of great power, as an expert and as someone with the social power to determine sanity and insanity, normality and abnormality, while the patient (or client) is inherently vulnerable; because the therapist imposes his or her own belief systems on the patient in order to shape the patient into a more 'healthy' person, and in doing so, the individual is always considered the problem in need of change, rather than the nature of the society around that individual. Anyone who says that they have been helped by therapy (or by other psychologically-aimed interventions such as electroshock treatment) is either deluded, having been brainwashed into accepting the therapist's understanding of the world (a view which in itself could be seen as denying these individuals agency and telling them that 'the expert knows better' about you than you do yourself); or else has been helped in the same way that conversations with a close friend would help someone in distress, but at a much greater financial cost in a much less equal relationship. In order to expose this, Masson traces individual abuses by therapists, from Freud to modern feminist and radical psychoanalysis.
In some ways, Masson's points are well taken. Classical psychoanalysis is indeed a repressive institution, as its history demonstrates; to my mind, it is a fascinating and productive system of understanding, but of little use as a therapeutic tool. The abuses he details are indeed hideous, and difficult to believe, particularly those which take place in more recent times; and they do indeed support his thesis, that the role of the therapist is to force the individual to submit to the norms of society (particularly with regard to gender and sexuality), as dictated by the therapist, whose own prejudices are shaped by that milieu. Masson rejects the argument that the examples he gives represent a few 'bad apples'; rather, he says, power, of the kind possessed by a therapist, is almost always abused. As well as this, he notes that the psychotherapeutic establishment has done little or nothing to publicise or decry such abuses, and that it has a tendency to protect and make excuses for its own; and that therapists have an interest in maintaining good social networks (given that they rely on other therapists for referrals), and a financial interest in the general practice of psychotherapy, and, on the individual level, of not turning away clients who they might feel they are unsuitable to work with. All of these arguments are well received, and hold some truth.
Nonetheless, Masson's work is problematic. His argument, as outlined above, is never really clearly established; rather, it is pieced together over the episodes he describes. He fails to distinguish between people who are functional but who have issues around their own identity and behaviour that they would like to address, people who are functional but have mental illnesses, and people who are non-functional (to be fair, the lines between these states can be very difficult to draw). Rather, he takes the extreme position that 'mental illness' is nothing more than a label used for those who do not fit into social norms (another well-known exponent of this concept is Thomas Szasz, whom Masson mentions often, though not always, with approbation). Furthermore, although he mentions modern, non-psychoanalytic forms of therapy (which, of course, have their roots in psychoanalysis inasmuch as they involve a one-on-one 'talking cure'), he fails to clearly distinguish between psychonalytic and non-psychoanalytic forms; rather, the sins of psychoanalysis, which are many and varied, stand for the whole.
To my mind, however, the biggest problem with his argument is his solution to the problems of individuals who do not like or accept oppressive social norms and structures: that they should work to change them. This is very much in the vein of seventies radical politics: 'don't change yourself, change society' (and the introduction to the work, by Alice Miller, also champions this idea). In theory, this concept has a lot going for it. However, it ignores the fact that there are many aspects of society which change very slowly. While we work against patriarchy, for example, in our lifetimes we cannot escape a patriarchal society; even separatists must work with the norms and issues instilled in them from childhood. Given this, we need both strategies to change society, and strategies to deal with our encounter with a hostile and oppressive external social reality. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Despite these flaws, however, this work is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, therapy, concepts of sanity and insanity and their relationship to power and social control, or gender politics. Not being au fe with developments in therapies since 1990 (when this book was published; there was also a revised edition, published in 1993) I can't say whether they address any of the criticisms made by Masson; however, given his stance against any kind of one-on-one therapy, I'd think the answer would be, for the most part, negative. It's also inspired me to hunt down another work of Masson's, Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. Overall, for all its problems, this is a compelling and often-horrifying work which is a welcome, if over-extreme, riposte to the grandiosities, hypocrisies and cruelties of psychoanalysis in particular, and therapy in general.
Masson is a fascinating character. A youthful savant, he was originally a sanskrit scholar before moving into the field of psychoanalysis. He quickly rose to the heights of editing an archive of Freud's letters, which had until then been kept from the public, held by Kurt Eissler, a man devoted to maintaining Freud's posthumous reputation; but Masson soon became disillusioned with Freud as an admirable person, and with psychoanalysis in general, and a massive falling-out ensued. Janet Malcolm describes this in her wonderful book In The Freud Archives, originally a New Yorker article; but, when she quoted Masson as having aimed to change the archives into a place of "women, sex and fun" he sued her for libel, and the ensuing case took a decade before finally being found in Malcolm's favour. Masson, disappointed by the lack of purchase gained by his work on therapy and psychoanalysis, then turned to writing about emotions in animals.
All this is by way of introducing Masson's self-explanatorily titled work, Against Therapy. Masson's position is that all one-on-one therapy is inherently deeply flawed, and that one-on-one therapy should be abandoned as a practice. This is because the therapist is inevitably in a position of great power, as an expert and as someone with the social power to determine sanity and insanity, normality and abnormality, while the patient (or client) is inherently vulnerable; because the therapist imposes his or her own belief systems on the patient in order to shape the patient into a more 'healthy' person, and in doing so, the individual is always considered the problem in need of change, rather than the nature of the society around that individual. Anyone who says that they have been helped by therapy (or by other psychologically-aimed interventions such as electroshock treatment) is either deluded, having been brainwashed into accepting the therapist's understanding of the world (a view which in itself could be seen as denying these individuals agency and telling them that 'the expert knows better' about you than you do yourself); or else has been helped in the same way that conversations with a close friend would help someone in distress, but at a much greater financial cost in a much less equal relationship. In order to expose this, Masson traces individual abuses by therapists, from Freud to modern feminist and radical psychoanalysis.
In some ways, Masson's points are well taken. Classical psychoanalysis is indeed a repressive institution, as its history demonstrates; to my mind, it is a fascinating and productive system of understanding, but of little use as a therapeutic tool. The abuses he details are indeed hideous, and difficult to believe, particularly those which take place in more recent times; and they do indeed support his thesis, that the role of the therapist is to force the individual to submit to the norms of society (particularly with regard to gender and sexuality), as dictated by the therapist, whose own prejudices are shaped by that milieu. Masson rejects the argument that the examples he gives represent a few 'bad apples'; rather, he says, power, of the kind possessed by a therapist, is almost always abused. As well as this, he notes that the psychotherapeutic establishment has done little or nothing to publicise or decry such abuses, and that it has a tendency to protect and make excuses for its own; and that therapists have an interest in maintaining good social networks (given that they rely on other therapists for referrals), and a financial interest in the general practice of psychotherapy, and, on the individual level, of not turning away clients who they might feel they are unsuitable to work with. All of these arguments are well received, and hold some truth.
Nonetheless, Masson's work is problematic. His argument, as outlined above, is never really clearly established; rather, it is pieced together over the episodes he describes. He fails to distinguish between people who are functional but who have issues around their own identity and behaviour that they would like to address, people who are functional but have mental illnesses, and people who are non-functional (to be fair, the lines between these states can be very difficult to draw). Rather, he takes the extreme position that 'mental illness' is nothing more than a label used for those who do not fit into social norms (another well-known exponent of this concept is Thomas Szasz, whom Masson mentions often, though not always, with approbation). Furthermore, although he mentions modern, non-psychoanalytic forms of therapy (which, of course, have their roots in psychoanalysis inasmuch as they involve a one-on-one 'talking cure'), he fails to clearly distinguish between psychonalytic and non-psychoanalytic forms; rather, the sins of psychoanalysis, which are many and varied, stand for the whole.
To my mind, however, the biggest problem with his argument is his solution to the problems of individuals who do not like or accept oppressive social norms and structures: that they should work to change them. This is very much in the vein of seventies radical politics: 'don't change yourself, change society' (and the introduction to the work, by Alice Miller, also champions this idea). In theory, this concept has a lot going for it. However, it ignores the fact that there are many aspects of society which change very slowly. While we work against patriarchy, for example, in our lifetimes we cannot escape a patriarchal society; even separatists must work with the norms and issues instilled in them from childhood. Given this, we need both strategies to change society, and strategies to deal with our encounter with a hostile and oppressive external social reality. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Despite these flaws, however, this work is well worth reading for anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, therapy, concepts of sanity and insanity and their relationship to power and social control, or gender politics. Not being au fe with developments in therapies since 1990 (when this book was published; there was also a revised edition, published in 1993) I can't say whether they address any of the criticisms made by Masson; however, given his stance against any kind of one-on-one therapy, I'd think the answer would be, for the most part, negative. It's also inspired me to hunt down another work of Masson's, Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. Overall, for all its problems, this is a compelling and often-horrifying work which is a welcome, if over-extreme, riposte to the grandiosities, hypocrisies and cruelties of psychoanalysis in particular, and therapy in general.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)