I saw "Pandora's Box" in film school. It was the longest silent film I had ever seen, and it was amazing. The thing that made that film, the thing that absolutely cemented it in film history was Louise Brooks. I don't think that there has been another actress so striking, so unforgettable, and so heart breaking since.

"Pandora's Box" was shocking, even to a college student, especially when we thought that all movies from back then were staid and rather conservative. Sex was front and center, as was violence. She managed to combine desirability, innocence, and danger all in one character. She ensnared every man and woman she came in contact with and destroyed them.

 

It turns out that one of the reasons that Louise Brooks could play the part so well was that she was essentially playing herself. Her hedonism made her notorious back then. In her later years she talked about the many lovers she had and her love of going to lesbian bars in Berlin. She left  lovers and husbands with broken hearts in her wake. Luckily for her, life did not imitate art, her character of Lulu in Pandora's box ended up being killed by a sexual predator while Louise Brooks lived to her 70's and reinvented herself as a writer. The rap on her when she was in films was that she couldn't act, that she didn't "do" anything. Film acting was still developing, actors still a tendency to use really big, stage inspired actions. Brooks was quite a bit more restrained, and her style led the way to modern film acting.

If you ever get a chance, please check out "Pandora's Box." It will change your attitude towards silent films and what was possible. Louise Brooks's career was cut short by her self destructive habits and her constant diva antics, but she has become the icon of the 20's and 30's. They don't make them like that anymore...

 

That's what I become known as back in college. It's mostly true, I don't particularly like the idea of watching films in general anymore. The thing is, I wasn't always that way. I did, after all, pursue a film degree. I started thinking about this again after a co-worker and I chatted about films. Her reaction brought up my curiosity about my dislike of films again.

I let it go and didn't think of it much until yesterday. While reading a book that was set in Nazi Germany, one of my most shocking and indelible film-related memories came back to me in a flash. I think it was during freshman year, in the film theory 101 class (whatever it was called). We watched part of "Triumph of the Will." For those of you not familiar with it, it is a "documentary" of the 1934 Nuremberg congress/rally for the Nazi party. Why were we watching it? Leni Riefenstahl had created a masterpiece, that's why. Triumph of the Will is generally seen as one of the most influential films ever made. Hitler was the official producer and it is as emotionally manipulative as he was.

I have to tell you, seeing all of those people being whipped into a frenzy over Hitler was soul destroying. Thank God that sound design wasn't all that advanced back then, the recording of those thousands of people yelling "SEIG HEIL! SEIG HEIL! SEIG HEIL!" was chilling enough as it was. I think I may have shed a tear watching it, it was that horrific.

We then spent the rest of the class discussing the effective techniques used in the film and all of the films it had inspired. The one that stands out in my mind was the professor's off hand comment, "Does anyone remember the award scene from Star Wars?" It was a pretty good appropriation of the techniques in Triumph of the Will.

Looking back, I think that sunk in over the following weeks and months and it colored my perceptions of films. That whole semester was really about film techniques, about viewer manipulation. I don't view films in general as Nazi propaganda films, but I do think an association was made in my mind. I remember recoiling against the emotional manipulation in that film and I think I become hypersensitive to other films doing the same thing.

Thinking about this, it is now hardly surprising that I find the idea of sitting down to watch a film distasteful. I think I've actually mellowed a bit since my college days, but I still prefer a good book or even audio to films.

That's a question I got a lot when I sold photo gear and I'm still getting it now. Last night, a lady was comparing the regular glossy screen to the anti-glare one on the laptops. They do look different but she was distressed because she didn't know which one was "right."

*PISH* Give me a color slide any day:-) Seriously, there is something satisfying about making a physical object that actually exists. Making a string of numbers whose appearance varies considerably depending on how it is rendered just doesn't feel the same. Or maybe I'm just old fashioned.

I do think that the analog still has a place in this world, even if it's only in the way people think about stuff. Are we hard wired to think in an analog fashion about certain things or is it just the way we were taught?

For the longest time, I've been telling people that I've essentially given up on fiction. And it's mostly true, the vast majority of movies do not interest me in the slightest, and the idea of picking up a novel rarely seems like a worthwhile thing. It has been nonfiction for me for quite a while. Econ, language, audio, computers, photography, optics, etc. have captured my attention for quite a while.

I do have favorite novels, and they are all of the highest pedigree of course. Orwell, Borges, Heller, Vonnegut, Dickens, Rand, Nabakov, Salanger, etc. all line my shelves. So why is it that my one weakness for fiction involves Dr. Who?

It's true, I continue to devour all things in the Who universe. I've seen all of the TV shows save the second doctor. That spans from about 1965 (I think) to this past summer. That's a lot of shows. A lot of them are pretty bad too, but I watched them. I have found the audio plays from Big Finish to actually be of a more consistent quality. There are a ton of those too. I have listened to 107 of those now.

Today, I learned that the BBC has some ebook versions of some Doctor Who novels on it's site. I read one tonight. Sigh, it looks like I'll be reading more of them in the future...

I plan on continuing to acquire more Big Finish Doctor Who plays (and related audio plays like the Bernice Summerfield stories, the companion Chronicles, and the Galifrey stories) and now it looks like I'll be adding various books to the collection too. God help me.

So what is it that appeals to me so much? I wish I knew. It is fun, but I don't know why I am able to throw myself into these and not be able to tolerate most other fiction. This is hardly great literature, but I can't get enough. Luckily for me, the is a vast quantity of stuff out there, I'll never run out.

I noticed how incongruous this is for me just tonight. I'll be puzzling over this for a little while, probably while listening to "Assassin in the Limelight," my newest audio drama....

This came from the website of the Yemen Observer, one of the English language newspapers in Yemen.



Her name is Boushra Almutawakel and she is a photographer in Yemen. Needless to say, a female photographer in Yemen is a rather unusual thing. You can read the article via the link above to read more about her. I want to say a few things about this picture.

There's no way to know what she meant by it but I find it quite powerful. Many people in the US and Europe see the hijab as a repressive aspect of Arab culture. Of course those people have probably never asked one of those women why they cover up. Part of it is simply dressing appropriately in that culture. A woman here in the US might have a reason to go topless, but she would have to think about it long and hard before she did so. It just isn't done for the most part.

A more important part of the hijab is its religious importance for those women. By wearing the hijab, they reaffirm what they believe. Here in the US and in Europe, it is also a marker of her faith. Women who wear hijab here know that they are in some senses representing Islam so they better act accordingly. I wish more people that wore a cross would remember that as well.

The hijab is very powerful symbolism when taken in context of faith. Women are quite literally taking refuge under it and by extension Islam. That is why, in my opinion, wearing the American flag as hijab is so powerful. It is not just a religious statement, it is political.

Of course, it is the kind of politics that I like. She is free to do this, the US constitution guarantees her freedom to not only make this statement but to be a Muslim as well. It is everything that makes this nation great.

She may have been making an "in your face" statement to Americans with it. She might have targeted those people that conflate Christianity and being American or it may have been some sort of statement about the so called War on Terror. I have no idea, but that's one of the great things about art, the artist does their thing and we are left to makes sense of it. What I love about it is going to piss some others off. How an American acts will probably be different than someone living in the middle east. The many different responses that can come from this is what makes it a great work in my opinion.

You go girl!

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