Categories
Media People

Agee on film: episode 1

I was introduced to James Agee with the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men but became aware only recently that he was at one time a film critic, as well as a poet, and a screenwriter (he helped adapt The African Queen for the cinema).

I was also unaware that James Agee died so young, at 46. His accomplishments remind me of David Marr (author of Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information), another person who died far too young (at 35 from leukemia) but who still managed to make a lasting impact in his field.

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At the library, I found a book, Agee on Film with a collection of reviews and articles from his tenure as movie reviewer for the Nation. The editor had promised him that he could review any film he wished, and write what he wanted; an offer too good for Agee, who had a passionate love of movies and unrestricted writing.

I’ve enjoyed reading through the book, not only because it’s fun to see a contemporary review of some of the movies we now consider classics; but also because Agee’s reviews were an art form themselves.

Deerslayer on the other hand, can be recommended to anyone who would not feel that an eight-year-old boy that gallops up howling “Wah-wah, I’m an Indian” needs to consult a psychiatrist. I don’t feel that most bad pictures are “bad enough to be funny”; they are bad enough to be fascinating, not to say depressing as hell. But this defenseless and disarming show is the purest dumb delight I have seen in a long time.

Agee wrote his reviews in the midst of World War II, and it is his commentary on the war that stands out for me because the words, though over half a century old, are still as fresh as the mind from which they sprang.

Even the Army Orientation films, through no fault intrinsic to them, carry their load of poison, of failure. You can hear from every sort of soldier from the simplest to the most intricate what a valuable job they are doing. But because they are doing it only for service men they serve inadvertently to widen the abyss between fighters and the civilians who need just as urgently to see them. Civilians, however, get very little chance to learn anything from moving pictures. We are not presumed to be brave enough. And the tragic thing is that after a couple of decades of Hollywood and radio, we are accepting such deprivations and insults quite docilely; often, indeed, we resent anyone who has the daring to try to treat us as if we were human beings.

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For the time, when people in this country were more interested in escapism, Agee’s reviews would stand out for their uncompromising look at the movies. What I found particularly compelling about his writing, though, is that he recognized when his emotions were engaged by a movie, and in a couple of cases, actually held off on reviewing the movie until he had a chance to regain enough objectivity to review the movie effectively.

Recently I saw a moving picture so much worth talking about that I am still unable to review it. This was the Italian Open City. For the moment I can say only that I am at once extremely respectful and rather suspicious of it, and that I can recommend it very highly, with a warning, however, to those who are particularly sensitive to scenes of torture. I will probably be unable to report on the film in detail in the next three or four weeks.

Agee ended up reviewing the movie almost a month later, and was able to be critical as well as complimentary.

Agee’s reviews differed enormously in length. Some, like those for Open City went on for pages; others were just a sentence or two. However brief, though, his opinion always came through, loud and clear:

San Diego I love you is a coarse-weft, easygoing little farce about an inventor(Edward Everett Horton), his daughter (Louise Albritton), a girl-shy financier (Jon Hall), and some pleasant comics (notably Buster Keaton). I can’t exactly recommend it, but if you see it by accident if will cause no particular pain.

Tycoon. Several tons of dynamite are set off in this movie; none of it under the right people.

You Were Meant for Me. That’s what you think.

I wonder what Agee would think about our modern movies and movie goers, especially with movies that have caused some controversy. I noticed with Lost in Translation and in particular, Mel Gibson’s Passion that people’s views of the movies are, to a great extent, a reflection of their life experiences, their viewpoint of themselves, and the world around them. There seems to be little room left for appreciation of the movies as craft.

Or is that the ultimate measure of the success of a movie?

Lost in Translation. I haven’t seen it yet, though plan to from all I’ve read. According to reviews of the movies, I gather the story is about a has-been comic in Japan to make commercials, who meets up with another American staying at the same hotel. The movie focuses on them, and the possibility of a relationship between them, all surrounded by Japan: Japanese culture, people, and activities.

Some say that Lost in Translation is racist because of the stereotyping of the Japanese in the movie. Others say that the view of the Japanese in the movie reflects the alienation that the Americans feel, strangers in a strange land. One innovative person said that the movie really demonstrates Japanese stereotyping of American stereotyping of the Japanese–a circular reference I can’t help thinking that Agee would like, if his review of The Lost Weekend is anything to go by.

While I watched the movie, which Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett have made out of Charles Jackson’s story about alcoholism, The Lost Weekend, I was pretty consistently gratified and excited. When I began to try to review it, I could not forget what Eisenstein said, years ago, when he was asked what he thought of Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. He said he thought it was a good Ph.D thesis. I am afraid that applies to The Lost Weekend, too. I don’t mean that it is stuffy: it is unusually hard, tense, cruel, intelligent, and straightforward. It is, rather, a skillful restatement, satisfying and easy to overrate in a time of general dereliction and fatuousness, of some sound basic commonplaces.

On that scale, of course, excellent things can be done.

Agee’s reviews were fun reading, but it was his award winning article on comedy in the movies that made me take a closer look at Passion.

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Categories
Weblogging

Why I like Andrew Orlowski

I like Andrew Orlowksi, the infamous scourge of weblogging. I love it when he writes another article trashing weblogging. Now, you might think I’m biased because he once paid me a very nice compliment in comments to one of my weblog posts, but that’s only part of the reason. I like him because he makes fun of us. We need to be made fun of because we’re very silly and pretentious at times.

Now, if we were to make fun of ourselves more often, Andrew wouldn’t have much fuel for his fires. Instead of laughing at us, he’d be laughing with us. Jeneane Sessum understands this. Unfortunately, too many people do not.

But then, I take myself too seriously when I say we should laugh.

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Categories
Just Shelley

How are you tonight?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Just peachy. How are you?

I opened the refrigerator and found it and everything in it completely covered with diet Coke. Diet coke with lime, to be exact, a brand new flavor I’m trying (but regret ever so much because I feel as if my tongue has been dipped in furniture polish after drinking a can). The can had been pushed back next to the wall of the refrigerator on the top shelf; combined with a full freezer resulted in the can freezing and then bursting in a beautiful explosion that managed to cover everything quite nicely.

After I had hauled everything out and cleaned down the sides and shelves with soda-water, I noticed that I had a series of jars with only a dib of this and a dab of that so I tossed them. I then noticed that several other things had passed expiration, so tossed them, too. I washed the eggs off and lined them up neatly in the door, and put everything away, dairy here, cokes there. In the front.

But what’s a clean inside if the outside is dusty, and stained.

Nothing shows up dingy cupboards like a clean refrigerator.

When was the last time I moved the microwave and cleaned thoroughly underneath it?

Why is it that stainless steel sinks stain?

The oven smokes so when I use it. Sets off the fire alarm.

The cans and boxes in the open pantry shelves along the wall are all disorganized, and older stuff has been pushed to the back.

You know, I really love copper, it’s my favorite metal. That huge copper vent and hood over the freestanding stove has years of grime and tarnish covering it . I wonder what it will look like polished and clean?

The birds are building nests. Look at that silly finch trying to haul that huge piece of weed across the ground. Easier to see when the windows in the french doors are clean.

The floor. Nothing better than a freshly scrubbed and waxed floor.

Now I’m left with the can, which I’ve decided to keep. It’s a pretty can. It reminds me of nights when I wake, unexpectedly. It looks familiar.

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Categories
Weblogging

Shock blogging

Articles are now appearing that the FCC is going to be going after stations carrying the nation’s shock jocks, including Howard Stern. In fact, he is going to be the organization’s number one target, which isn’t surprising because he is the number one rated shock jock in the nation.

The FCC is also lobbying for setting higher fines, a move that the Public Relations Society of America believes could impact on First Amendment’s freedom of speech unless the FCC also provides more explicit guidelines about what is ‘obscenity’:

“The problem is that the FCC never has spelled out what’s permissible and what’s not permissible,” said Reed Bolton Byrum, APR, immediate past president of PRSA. “‘When in doubt, leave it out’ cannot be an acceptable policy in a democracy that depends on free and open discussion. And, if we start losing small, independent broadcasters because they can’t afford the risk of getting fined on some arbitrary application of a vague standard, all we’ll have left are a few big media companies. And the fewer entities there are, the easier it will be to control them.” “As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once observed, ‘Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself,’” Byrum added.

To underscore the vagueness of the FCC regulations, PRSA pointed to the widely publicized use of the “F” word by rock star Bono in a live broadcast on an awards program. The FCC ruled that was not obscene because it was just an epithet and not a reference to a sexual act and did not impose a fine. In the wake of the recent imbroglio, FCC Chairman Powell says he thinks the commission erred in that decision.

Unlike Canada’s Broadcast Standards, which provide specific detailed information about what is and is not permissible (such as derogatory material based on race or sex), the FCC’s guidelines have been kept deliberately vague, relying on each community to determine what is or is not obscene in their area. The only law specified is the following:

Obscene speech is not protected by the First Amendment and cannot be broadcast at any time. To be obscene, material must meet a three-prong test:

An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and

The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The average person in this country doesn’t even know what prurient means, much less have the ability to objectively define the artistic value of any given material. However, this definition was not derived by the FCC–it is from two rulings by the Supreme court based on landmark cases: Roth v. United States and Miller v. California. It is the second case where the three-prong approach to judging obscenity arose; a measure to allow individual communities to set their own standards, but unfortunately, leaving a great deal of vagueness in the interpretation. (More at the First Amendment Center.)

(As a side note, I don’t agree with the new FCC fines and feel they are an election year gambit, and that they are going to adversely impact on broadcast television and radio. However, by taking such a foolishly extreme measure, I think this action will backfire and eventually this issue will most likely appear back in the Supreme Court, primarily because of the vagueness of the wording, and the extreme nature of the penalities. In addition, this is further complicated by the FCC allowing mergers that are putting most of the broadcast media into the control of large media corporations. Personally, I think this is a greater violation of the public’s right to an unfettered and free media than the obscenity laws.)

As coincidence would have it, Howard Stern’s movie Body Parts was on cable last night and I watched it. It was an interesting flick and I liked how the movie managed the seque between scenes. It also provides some insight into Howard Stern’s head. He at one point decided that he was going to say whatever he wanted to say on the air, regardless of the consequences. As he told it, he was going to be completely honest on the air.

One can admire a person who wants to be honest on the air. However, the movie also showed a Howard Stern who betrayed confidences of friends and family, manipulated people to his own ends, and who valued being on the air, the larger the market, the better, above all else. Additionally, his movie, like his broadcasts, seems to imply that he just can’t understand why people are offended at what he says, and it isn’t his fault if they are. This plaint of “it’s not my fault” and “nobody understands me” reminded me forcibly of the new Bush ad Safer, Stronger with its implications of a whiney President going “It’s not my fault the country is so fucked up.”

In some ways Stern is a champion of free speech, but from the movie and all I’ve read, he’s really interested only in his own free speech, and could care less about anyone else’s. In fact, Stern’s main interest in the First Amendment is as a silent but key player in his act.

As I’ve said before, this puts me into a quandary. On the one hand, I believe that speech should be protected, even speech that I find offensive. On the other hand, I dislike having to protect something I value so much, freedom of speech, by supporting someone who values it so little. Still, the measure of a belief occurs when that belief is challenged to an extreme, and if Howard Stern’s Constitutionally protected free speech is abrogated, I would have to support him.

But it is not.

All the FCC can do is levy fines on radio stations that carry material deemed obscene. It cannot imprison or force off the air any one person. In addition, the FCC’s jurisdiction ends at the end of the public broadcast airwaves. In other words, it has no say in what appears on cable, satellite, in print, or on the Internet. Why? Because these means of communication must be deliberately invited into a person’s home; they are not carried as part of a open signal that can’t be blocked. In fact, it is because these signals can’t be blocked that an organization like the FCC was originally created. Long, long ago.

If Stern’s stations can no longer afford to carry him, then he can move to cable or satellite, book or print, or even the Internet. However, and this is a key factor, he may lose income in this move; he’ll definitely lose some audience in this move. But, the First Amendment does not guarantee that everyone have equal access to the airwaves, or that a person’s income is protected–it only concerns free speech.

As much as free speech does interest me, Howard Stern does not so why am I returning to this topic? Because of a phenomena I’ve noticed in weblogging this week, and a scene in Body Parts that seems to provide some explanation for it.

In the scene, an NBC employee is telling the NBC Program Manager who had been trying to force Howard Stern off the air that Stern’s audience spent more time listening to him than listeners of other radio shows. Paraphrasing because I don’t have the exact words, on average a person listens to only 15 minutes of an typical broadcast; however Stern’s fans would listen to over an hour of his broadcast.

“Why”, said the Program Manager.

“Because they want to hear what Howard will say next.”

“Yeah, but what about the people who don’t like Stern”, asks the Program Manager.

“They listen on an average of over two hours per broadcast.”

The incredulous Program Manager asks why.

“Because they want to hear what Howard will say next.”

I got a chuckle out of this because I’ve been following, with fascination, Jeff Jarvis rather histrionic support of Howard Stern in his daily Howard Stern updates. With each, his readers repeat the same arguments I have also given. More so, many ask why he keeps repeating Howard Stern posts daily–why doesn’t he move on?

But look Jarvis’ posts. Look at the comment count for each. For most of the posts, he gets on average less than 10 comments. However, with a typical Stern post the comment count is usually over 50 comments. Or more. Most disagreeing with Jarvis, and most repeating the same argument over and over.

Categories
Weblogging

I thought I was the center of the Universe

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Returning to Halley Suitt’s writing, Delacour Rapprochement, she responds to Jonathon Delacour’s and Stavros’ statement about being “half a planet away from the action” with:

One of the things he mentions is how he and Stavros The WonderChicken live far away from some of us bloggers who hang out in Boston, SF, NY. I was very interested in that, just thinking about it the other day, not in terms of living near bloggers, but rather, thinking about how few people you see in any given day and our lives are lived – even in this jet-set world – in very local ways. If your local neighborhood includes Harvard University or Times Square or The Golden Gate Bridge, you do have a different “local” experience over a lifetime which some may call elite, but this is where we live. I don’t know if I want to apologize for it, but as I mentioned in my post “The Star You Are” it’s disingenuous to pretend it’s not part of the game here.

It is funny, but when I read both of the gentlemen’s use of this term, I read it as their being half way around the planet from the United States, not specifically Boston or New York or San Francisco. Within the given context of BloggerCon, this is Boston-based primarily because Dave Winer hosts the event there, not specifically because it was a a global center for weblogging.

I have lived in both Boston and San Francisco, and they are interesting communities, with lively histories and culture. They are both known for their universities, as well as being technical centers. However, considering that all webloggers aren’t academic, nor are they technical, I’m not sure where the implicit understanding of these two locations being focal points comes from, other than both locations have been the center of technical conferences.

(I do understand where the New York reference came from – New York and New Yorkers have always considered themselves the center of the known universe.)

I’ve known Stavros for close to three years, *Mr. Delacour for over two, and Ms. Suitt just over a year. Among the people they know or have known are folks who live in Wisconsin, Tacoma, Tennessee, Chicago, Georgia, Japan, Canada, various places in upstate New York, the UK, and yes, in Boston and San Francisco–but not to the exclusion of any other location. So I am puzzled by Ms. Suitts assertion that Harvard University, Times Square, and the Golden Gate Bridge provide some form of elite background.

I worked at Harvard Business School, and it was an interesting place. It’s a very pretty campus, and famous, but so is Indiana University, Washington University here in Missouri, Perdue, Yale, and, well, I could go on. Times Square is cool. I always try to visit Times Square when I visit New York. It’s a wild place, primarily because you’ll never know what or who you’ll meet there. But elite? Not unless you want to count the guy trying to sell fake diamond watches on the street.

Then there is the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. It is a treasure, and still one of my favorite places. What’s remarkable about it is how accessible it is. No matter what time of day or the weather, you can always find a quiet spot on the beach by the Bridge.

I am belaboring a point at Ms. Suitt’s expense and for that I apologize to her. She is only reflecting what is an unspoken assumption among American bloggers, which is these locations are the places to be. There’s always a conference, or symposia, or some blogger get together that features at least one, possibly more A-List bloggers. Even those of us within the US can feel half a planet away from the action sometimes.

But it’s really only an illusion, smoke and mirrors.

Ms. Suitt also wrote:

I want be a writer when I grow up. It’s not easy to make a living being a writer. It’s easier to get paid to write if people know who the hell you are. I do want people to know who the hell I am, because I want them to read what I write. I want to be paid for what I write.

If Stavros or Mr. Delacour were to visit from South Korea or Australia, I would first give them both **huge hugs and big, wet kisses–on the cheek, I hasten to add, lest some think I’m propositioning them here, in my weblog. I would show them my home and places I love, and wine them and dine them and delight in finally meeting them. I would ask who they would want to see and I’d load them tenderly into Golden Girl and take them anywhere they want to go. We could go to Washington, or even North to BC. How about close to home and Chicago? Texas? No problem. Georgia? You got it. Boston? It would be my honor.

But even if, as is likely, we never meet, nothing would change. My interest in them wouldn’t suddenly fade away, because it is their writing that attracted me to their spaces and it is still their writing that brings me back. Them boys, they be damn fine writers. And so is Ms. Suitt.

The only geography important to writing is your head. Writing isn’t who you know or where you live, it’s what you put on the page. You can’t write when you’re at a party, or a blogger dinner, or conference; all the parties and dinners and conferences in the world aren’t going to make you a better writer.

As for fame, there’s no guarantee that even the best writing in the world will make you rich and famous; being included within a weblog won’t make that writing somehow more lucrative. A few people have received professional gigs, writing and otherwise, because of their weblogs and their popularity and who they know. They will always be the very rare exception. Folks saying otherwise, and I’m not including Ms. Suitt in this, are doing everyone a disservice by implying that weblog popularity provides some form of shortcut to glory and fame.

Ms. Suitt seems to agree with this:

I came to blogging as a writer. Did I come to blogging to become a famous writer? No, I think I came to blogging just to write.

Walk down the street right now, no matter where you are. Ask the first person you meet who Glenn Reynolds or Dave Winer are. Then ask them who Janet Jackson is. Every time you confuse weblogging with fame and fortune, repeat this exercise, but replace Janet Jackson because fame is fleeting.


*I’m trying out Joseph Duemer’s use of formal last names rather than the more familiar first names when discussing ideas rather than people. There has been discussion that the use of first names can personalize conversations, which can lead to misunderstandings. In addition, use of first names may make new readers feel more excluded from the discussion.

**Well, there goes my attempt to withhold undue familiarity.