File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9812, message 70


Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 11:21:47 +0000
From: Daniel Haines <daniel-AT-tw2.com>
Subject: Re: Deleuze and Redemption - or flight.


phil,

yes, "a kind of violence on thought" - that's near to what i was getting
at.  Its also to do with speed- things begin to move so quickly that we
can no longer make them make sense, no longer interpret, trace,
articulate everything that is occuring - although it is quite old now, I
think star wars is the best example of this - the effect is dampened a
bit on video, but i saw it in the cinema a few years ago and what struck
me more than anything was how incredibly abstract and (in terms of
"narrative" or "meaning" - and also visually) impenetrable many of the
special effects sequences are.  Tie fighters flying past at speeds where
all that you can really see is patterned movement, grey against black, a
hint of symmetry.  and those incredible sounds, the noises that tear out
a movement-space for themselves..!!  not imitation, not even
representation, really... 

I read somewhere about how when they were doing those effects, they'd
show them to george lucas and he'd just say "faster!make it faster!" and
if you wach those sequences you'll see just how fast these ships are
moving... they begin to reach a threshold of non-sense through speed....

obviously, in terms of its overall narrative, it would be difficult to
hold up as some "deterritorialised" exemplar film!!  

- although i always wonder when yoda starts paraphrasing Castaneda's Don
Juan in Empire....

- also, i try and avoid thinking about this area in terms of
reality/illusion, or any kind of idea of escapism, because 1. i think
that implies a false idea of "reality' as somehow clearly demarcated in
real and not-real.  (What is the not real? ah - you mean the not
important within this world-view!)  and 2. it only allows an
"apollonian" notion of art -- what i'm talking about i guess could be
framed as ...enter dionysos....

or something like that ...

dan h.


michelle phil lewis-king wrote:
> 
> Dear Dan,
> 
>  I respond to your thoughts on the disruptive power (to narrative) of
> special effects, of cinema as rollercoasting punch fest in which teams of
> specialists strive to impress ever more imperceptibly. A special effect
> 'action'in which we surrender to the sheer quantity of effects, loosing our
> ability to recognise them as 'special effects'. These effects are the best
> special effects.. A kind of violence on thought... repeated hammer blows,
> which bust their way through 'common sense'... and might wake thought up....
> one question might be whether hollywood blockbusters string these 'blows'
> together into some hashed up narrative to make an  empty kind of common
> sense...  to lull thought back to sleep again.. reterritorialize ... twas
> but a dream.. a memory. The mere play of shadows on a giant screen as
> opposed to the grip of living through a bombardment.
> 
> Take Stephen Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' a story about singling out
> one unique person in a mass .. take away this story of the question of the
> unique and keep the first ten minutes or so as a short film ...two twentieth
> century industries (war and movies) come together in one thunderous
> representation.
> 
>  You mentioned ' Godzilla' ( which I watched on an airliner buffeted by air
> turbulence ) wasn't this originally a kind  Japanese response to the atomic
> destruction visited on them ?  (These films taken as bombardments might be
> likened to a Test Department concert )..
> 
> .... 'action'........
> 
> 'special effects' draw a limit to be crossed between knowledge and belief..
> we know that something isn't so but choose to believe it to be so... and yet
> we 'can't believe it!' .... then as a limit to be crossed a boundary we
> choose to go over .. ( it isn't real.. twas but an effect.. something we
> encounter that can either convince us of the film's veracity or explode
> it)..
> 
> " Thought is primarily trespass and violence..." wrote Deleuze 'following'
> Plato  in  'D+R' pp 139
> 
> and
> 
> " Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not
> of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. "
> 
> Grasping these affective effects.. believing in them and yet safe in knowing
> that they are illusions.. we are caught between wanting to recognise them
> and  (for the sake of the action) not. The special effect from the point of
> view of its producers doesn't want to be recognised in the action of the
> film and yet asks for its quality ( of not being recognised ) to be
> recognised later. We encounter the special effects in the narrative of the
> film... often a film might open with such an encounter.. Bunuels 'Eye
> Slicing' sequence cuts across pre-determined narratives or moralities we
> might bring to his film.. the string of shocks through a film is a kind of
> animation rather than a dramatic narrative.. we twitch and jerk from jump
> cut to jump cut... ripped into an actual dreamworld...caught up in a
> different machine entirely from that of classical theatre.. The
> deterritorialising jumps of surrealism have become cinematic convention
> against which waves of narrative normalisations roll so in a film such as
> 'Private Ryan' we can witness both at extreme degree.
> 
> Thanks, phil.
> 
> >i wasn't praising for "action" over "narrative" but only trying to point
> >out what a radical break in the narrative action sequences involving
> >special effects require - an asignifying break, a rupture, they have no
> >relationship to the narrative as such but bring into play a whole other
> >range of affects that have no place in a conventional narrative - in
> >short, they introduce the deluge, the inhuman...
> >
> >i'm not really talking about  rhizomes as such - what I was trying to
> >say (perhaps not very clearly) was that while moving images/sequences of
> >images have been used in cinema mainly to create narrative structures
> >that take a model of narrative based on writing, and have continued a
> >form of narrative specific to writing,  developed through writing (as
> >opposed to narrative in oral traditions, for example,which operates
> >differently, has different functions) this isn't the only way of using
> >cinema/film.   Film doesn't have to reproduce that kind of narrative, or
> >any kind of narrative - it can operate through rupture and break - the
> >cut.
> 
> >dan h.
> >
> >
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > [mailto:owner-deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of
> > Anthony Beck
> > Sent: 06 December 1998 11:17
> > To: INTERNET:deleuze-guattari-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> > Subject: Re: Deleuze and Redemption - or flight.
> >
> >
> > Dan,
> > May I merely touch on two points of the interesting ones you raise:
> > 1. the unconnectivity of rhizomes - in what sense is it still a rhizome?
> > 2.  The cut - I saw, degradedly, last night, again, Total Recall (Sharon
> > Stone. Arnie) in which SFX do indeed cut into what is on the whole for the
> > rest a narrative which passes muster as somewhat plausible, in order to
> > expose total implausibility.  One does indeed enjoy them as SFX and they
> > offer in some ways the best part of an empty film.  If the film was not so
> > vapid one would not be so grateful for the SFX.  That is not a defense for
> > your position - narrative is powerful in producinf suspense and sustaining
> > conflict, the essnticals of any dramatic genre, conventionally conceived.
> > There may be other conventions - but are they superior, or even is
> > no-conventions superior?  The bottom line is the aesthetic sense.
> >  It s not
> > that there is no bottom line.
> > Anthony.
> >

-- 
http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/chupacabras/48/     
http://www.tw2.com/staff/daniel/

Ware ware Karate-do o shugyo surumonowa,
Tsuneni bushido seishin o wasurezu,
Wa to nin o motte nashi,
Soshite tsutomereba kanarazu tasu.

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Should never forget the spirit of the samurai,
With peace, perseverance and hard work,
We will reach our goal without failure.

   

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