OK, I grant you, the ending is lame--I'd actually like to hear more on that
point, though: how and why is it lame, and what is it buckling under to in its
lameness?
Yes, it's two movies, as I warned (and I'm sorry I didn't make the screening:
I've been dealing all evening with a mailbomb attack on the Institute's server
which emanates from software designed for the purpose of mailbombing and
packaged with a list of IATH discussion groups as targets, among others--the
interesting
thing here, in a sick way, is that all of the targets seem to be sites with
discussion groups that deal with gay/left/feminist/jewish/black/asian
themes: in other words, mailbombing as hate campaign. But back to the movie...)
The first of the two movies is obviously the better movie, in traditional
terms: it has plot, tension, character, movement, visual appeal, etc.. And
yes, if it ended with the EM pulse, it would be a tidier package.
BUT: the second movie, I am happy to argue, is the more interesting one, and
is really the reason for assigning the film in the context of this class.
The second movie has to do with the filmic representation of interior
life--the recording of dreams--and the way in which the externalization of
those images turns a natural process (dreaming) into a narcotic (the replay
of our images of loss, love, dread, death, etc.). The second movie is also
interesting in its opposition of Aboriginal dreaming to techologically
mediated dreaming--two cultures/practices which aim to *do* something with
dreams, but by very different methods. One could argue, easily enough, that
the treatment of the aboriginal here is bad western exoticism, treating the
"native" as some supernaturally natural being, primitive in a supposedly
positive, but actually stereotypical way; still, having admitted that, there
is an interesting interplay between the ideas of community and technology
throughout this second movie, with the two acting as fundamentally opposed
terms: the Aboriginal dreamers forge a community (hold hands while dreaming,
meet in dreams, etc.); the techno-dreamers become solipsistic and
dysfunctional as a community, and fall away into their own narcissism.
The ending, lame yes, might nonetheless cast some light on Galatea 2.2
(story telling, novel writing); the business of capturing family photos for
Mom (the purpose of the head-mounted REM camera) might cast some light into
Vineland; the notion of a post-apocalyptic world in which all communication
is blocked out (no radio, no TV) while we fall into the opposite of
mass-media, namely me-media, might cast some interesting shadows on White Noise.
John Unsworth / Director, IATH / Dept. of English
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http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/