Out with a bang

I felt like tonight's VM was truly old school- even VM said so herself, when she remarked that it felt like she was back in high school

but it had that VM against the world vibe: she was vulnerable but still couldnt be disempowered, she still kicked major ass. interesting addition of the guy with "connections" who VM decides not to mess with but Logan attacks anyway

so they didn't wrap up LoVe of course, but they hinted that it could be possible. Logan was back to being his old misunderstood heroic self. and Lily and Duncan made some surprising returns. I also continue to like Dick and like the complicated way the show develops him but also keeps him the same.

so it was a stellar episode- Veronica marshalling her powers to bring down patriarchy, with complicated results. and in the end V walks down the street in the pouring rain and that scene echoes my own sadness.

this might be the end for this blog too, which was VM inspired. it will be truly hard to find a new TV show worth talking about.

here's to you, Veronica Mars!

sad sad day

Veronica Mars is cancelled

Why? Why do they cancel THE only show on television that is actually smart and progressive and youthful and interesting. WHY????

i hang my head and die

VM- Debasement tapes

1) love the film studies ref- yeah VM, change your major

2) loose Imus ref- dj swore on air, big trouble. like the keeping it current

3) PAUL RUDD. need i say more. be still my clueless heart

4) classic love triangle misunderstandings. almost shakespearean

5) VM and piz holding hands? umm no

6) Leo leo leo, i love me some leo. if logan deserves any competition its definitely leo

Smallville Vampire Episode

Ok, get this

Smallville gets James Marsters to play the villain (big bad) for season 5
Marsters was Spike on Buffy (a notorious campy vampire)
Smallville has a Vampire episode
Clark tells the Marsters character that Chloe was bitten by a Vampire; his response, "Clark, there are no such things as vampires"
later Chloe tries to sell the story a/b Buffy Sanders and vamp soroity but her editor says only tabloids buy stories about slaying Buffy the vampire

Wow
dont you love ficitonal incest?

The return of VM

So Veronica came on again for the first time after a while last night. I actually watched the whole thing- commercials and all.

Good points: All the side characters made apperances- glad to see Mac and Wallace finally in the same episode although they didnt actually manage to talk to each other. Keith as sheriff is great, it really changes the dynamic of the show but I still miss Lamb (i loved to hate him).

Veronica and Logan? Well Logan was sickly attached to Parker- I mean who puts a picture of yourself as a couple on the birthday cake??? So that almost made the Veronica and Piz hook up tolerable b/c it was so in Logan's face.

Politics: the feminists are MIA. Whatever happened? The new social drama was an odd commentary on the war. So yay for sympathizing with the soldier and sticking with the asswholeness of the soldier's uber-American brother. yes, we all were on the side of the nice "Arab" couple. But's what with Nassir being deported and turned into the INS? That was one step too far, and left me with big question marks as far as how the show is trying to set up its political alignment. I mean, its okay to have racial diversity as long as you are not an "illegal immigrant"? that's a rather contentious statement (especially with my background from Texas, where calling someone from Mexico an alien seems incredibly bizzare).

So over all, good Veronica. We had some LoVe drama, nice friend interaction, and problematic plot, which just makes you want to talk more about the show.

WELCOME BACK, old friend. :)

VERONICA MARS RETURNS

SWeet sweet life. I'll post a review as soon as I see the new episode. love the tag line: "someone will get hurt"- they are not desperate enough for a character death, lol.

cinephilia

Reading Response: Elsaesser Cinephilia

Elsaesser explores several different definitions of cinephilia. The broadest and most applicable definition for cinephilia was “deferral: a detour in place and space, a shift in register and a delay in time” (30). His example includes how, when and why films are watched- detours of city, language, and location. He also talks about detours of time. The first kind is “Oedipal time: the kind of temporal succession that joins and separates paternity and generational repetition in difference” (31). Considering that our other reading for this week was Laura Mulvey, I found Elsaesser’s recourse to psychoanalytic and masculine based film time an interesting choice. But I think it’s a very valid point about how cinephilia clusters around auteur, the fathers of cinema, and sets up (male) directors as the forbears of cinematic tradition. The second discourse was a “lover’s discourse” which structured desire through cinema, also coinciding rather well with Mulvey’s past and current work. Hmm…the father and desire in film? Who would’ve thought? Elsaesser makes this connection directly when he talks about how the love of cinema turned into a shamed gaze when Mulvey dissected cinephilia into voyeurism, fetishism and scopophilia (32). “Naming here is shaming,” Elsaesser writes. “Cinephilia had been dragged out of its closet, the darkened womblike auditorium, and revealed itself as a source of disappointment: the magic of the movies, in the cold light of day, had become a manipulation of regressive fantasies and the place of the big male escape from sexual difference” (32).

Elsaesser then goes on to explain how disenchantment is a useful way to restructure cinephilia. Disenchantment offers distance and self-consciousness: “it is a form of individuation because it rescues the spectator’s sense of self from being engulfed by the totalizing repleteness, the self-sufficiency and always already complete there-ness that especially classic American cinema tries to convey” (33). The spectator becomes more critical as she gains awareness of her own place in the theater, her implication in all the gazes of the viewing space. This also corresponds to Mulvey’s article which tries to negotiate different temporalities- the here, the now-ness, the then. The cinephiliac is on a never-ending quest to find the best films, but the best films are always in the past, wrapped up in nostalgia and memory. Elsaesser’s metaphor of “cinephilia-as-unrequited love” addresses the bittersweet feeling of the cinephiliac, who knows even as she is watching the ultimate film of films that it will soon be over and nothing can ever recreate that same first time feeling- and that the film does not answer back to the viewer, that it is there to be worshipped in the darkened theater.

The next step after disenchantment is the “post” stage of post-auteur, post-theory cinephilia that embraces new media and involves “re-mastering, re-purposing, and re-framing” (36). This leads into sticky issues of fan power, re-readings, fancy new boxes, etc. Elsaesser compares stage one to “trepidation in anticipation” and stage two “stressed/distressed.” Take two cinephilia is “a search for lost time, and thus the acknowledgement that the singular moment stands under the regime of repetition, of the re-take, of the iterative, the compulsively serial, the fetishistic, the fragmented and the fractal” (39). This reminds me of Mulvey’s search in the freeze frame for the secret, hidden, ignored image that somehow reveals the uncanny deadness of the entire film- its actual existence of separate frames on film stock that disappears with new digital media.

Melodrama- Sirk and Fassbinder

Melodrama Response: Color and Space in Sirk and Fassbinder

I love melodrama. Watching this set of films in particular was a rewarding experience because they are so richly entangled. In his discussion of epic theater, Benjamin discusses the “quotable gesture” which is an interruption within a text. Melodrama is full of these interruptive, quotable gestures; it draws on endless circles of representations, moments of nostalgic homage that interrupt and reframe previous incarnations. I also noticed that these three directors were involved in an indirect conversation, talking about each other’s films and deliberately (mis)quoting the other’s style (Sirk could be problematically placed as the “origin” of this discourse). I want to think about the aesthetic quotations of color and space between Ali Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974) and All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955).

Both films are saturated with color. The predominant colors in Ali are associated with the 70s- bright red, yellow and blue, lime/chartreuse green. When Emmi first walks into the bar, the red brick paint, the red boots, the red tablecloths- it was quite stunning. And when she dances with Ali, a red light comes on over their bodies. The 70s color schemes also come through in the character’s clothes as quite garish attempts at life, as if by wearing such bright and bold patterns the characters can prove they are alive, when in reality they are consumed by fear. I am thinking of Emmi’s green and brown patterned dress and her three inch yellow pumps- a bit “old” for her? The colors seem out of place, especially when she takes off her boring black coat (revealing her often hidden desires). I was always waiting to see what the waitress was wearing, because her clothes were simultaneously attractive and not flattering. The red boots were great, but the orange zip down dress? The bubblegum pink and black glitter outfit? The camera gave a lot of time to the waitress, following her from the bar over to Emmi’s table and back, often turning for a silhouette which outlined the waitress’ generous bust. The waitress was supposed to be Emmi’s competition- after all, she was young, blonde, pretty and could provide couscous and beer. Yet there was something so desperately unhappy about her that the outrageous clothes seemed to hint at.

Carrie also “reveals” herself through clothing. The night of the country club party she wears a red dress which prompts comments from nearly everyone. The red dress signals her availability as a woman and the official end of her “widow” status- she is now a single woman instead of a mourning wife. Rock Hudson is almost always dressed as a rugged outdoorsman with the plaid shirt and the work boots. His wardrobe is coded through the autumn motif of the rest of the movie- the sets of ambers, reds, yellows and browns. Ali is also dressed as a worker; both he and Rock shared the “working man” muscled kind of look that implies their sexuality is not straight jacketed by a suit and tie. In a disturbing scene from Ali, Emmi’s coworkers even fondle Ali’s muscles.

The spaces of the two films are also very evocative. Ali is full of twisting staircases, doorways, windows, and bars which always divide spaces into hierarchies of knowledge. When Emmi and her coworkers sit on the stairs, she is trapped between all of them, surrounded as they unsympathetically dismiss her compassion toward foreigners. Later, when the “foreigner” Yolanda arrives, she is excluded from the group and divided from them by the staircase banisters which become jail like. The neighbor in the apartment is always visually restricted- seen through the mesh of her screen, behind the stairs, from a window above. Sirk also creates this restricting space, but his is almost more nostalgic and dangerously friendly. It is Small Town America that entraps Carrie, from the huge suburban house to the country club to the town itself and the clock tower. These spaces are inundated with power dynamics, as in Ali. The country club is off-limits and guarded by pompous gossips; Rock’s friend’s house is perched up like a treehouse and open to all the eccentrics. Rock’s home is excessively picturesque- he’s got a greenhouse, a cabin, a river, a bridge, even an old mill! The loss of autumn and the deadness of winter surrounds the whole story. The snow seals the two lovers away but also troubles the ultimate productivity of their relationship. A gardener should know how difficult it is for “love to grow” in the autumn of life.