Stephen McClurg's Blog, page 44

Do not disturb my circles: Plutarch’s Archimedes

One of the long haul reading projects I currently have going is Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, aka Parallel Lives or simply Lives. One of my favorite pieces is on Marcus Claudius Marcellus, in which Archimedes, one of the great mathematicians and inventors appears. While there are plenty of military anecdotes throughout the work, this interlude with Archimedes reads like an ’80s action film.

A little historical detour through the context Plutarch gives us: 

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“But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers, came to be regarded as one of the military arts.”

Who knows how much of this is true, but it’s fun to read about the dichotomy of theory and praxis as related here to ancient philosophy. Plato and Socrates are frequently depicted, even comically as in The Clouds, as serious chasers of the abstract and Truth, though it’s difficult to know how much of this perspective is real. Plato, based on his own writings, is particularly difficult to pin down. No one may have known more about not heeding Plato’s warning than Oppenheimer, who described the destructive capabilities of the nuclear weapons he helped create by applying theoretical physics to warfare through another ancient document: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Recently, some folks were upset that Brie Larson said Captain Marvel could move planets. They said it was “stupid” based on Captain Marvel’s abilities in the comics. I get pretty confused about the logic of what is stupid and what isn’t for superheroes. Anyway, long before Captain Marvel, Archimedes suggested he could move planets. He doesn’t do that, but he does build some magnificent booby traps. This seems to be how he got the anti-Indiana Jones job:

“And yet even Archimedes, who was a kinsman and friend of King Hiero, wrote to him that with any given force it was possible to move any given weight; and emboldened, as we are told, by the strength of his demonstration, he declared that, if there were another world, and he could go to it, he could move this. Hiero was astonished, and begged him to put his proposition into execution, and show him some great weight moved by a slight force. Archimedes therefore fixed upon a three-masted merchantman of the royal fleet, which had been dragged ashore by the great labours of many men, and after putting on board many passengers and the customary freight, he seated himself at a distance from her, and without any great effort, but quietly setting in motion with his hand a system of compound pulleys, drew her towards him smoothly and evenly, as though she were gliding through the water. Amazed at this, then, and comprehending the power of his art, the king persuaded Archimedes to prepare for him offensive and defensive engines to be used in every kind of siege warfare. These he had never used himself, because he spent the greater part of his life in freedom from war and amid the festal rites of peace; but at the present time his apparatus stood the Syracusans in good stead, and, with the apparatus, its fabricator.”

So Archimedes makes a large boast, but ends up moving a large boat. Good enough. He defends the Syracusans against the Romans almost single-handedly through cantraptions like giant claws, beaks, stones, arrows, etc., and a scorpion, which sounds like a GI Joe vehicle. Maybe the following was also an influence on Home Alone.

“When, therefore, the Romans assaulted them by sea and land, the Syracusans were stricken dumb with terror; they thought that nothing could withstand so furious an onset by such forces. But Archimedes began to ply his engines, and shot against the land forces of the assailants all sorts of missiles and immense masses of stones, which came down with incredible din and speed; nothing whatever could ward off their weight, but they knocked down in heaps those who stood in their way, and threw their ranks into confusion. At the same time huge beams were suddenly projected over the ships from the walls, which sank some of them with great weights plunging down from on high; others were seized at the prow by iron claws, or beaks like the beaks of cranes, drawn straight up into the air, and then plunged stern foremost into the depths, or were turned round and round by means of enginery within the city, and dashed upon the steep cliffs that jutted out beneath the wall of the city, with great destruction of the fighting men on board, who perished in the wrecks. Frequently, too, a ship would be lifted out of the water into mid-air, whirled hither and thither as it hung there, a dreadful spectacle, until its crew had been thrown out and hurled in all directions, when it would fall empty upon the walls, or slip away from the clutch that had held it.”

The Romans decide a smaller attack at night. It doesn’t go well either.

“When, therefore, the Romans came up under the walls, thinking themselves unnoticed, once more they encountered a great storm of missiles; huge stones came tumbling down upon them almost perpendicularly, and the wall shot out arrows at them from every point; they therefore retired. And here again, when they were some distance off, missiles darted forth and fell upon them as they were going away, and there was great slaughter among them; many of their ships, too, were dashed together, and they could not retaliate in any way upon their foes. For Archimedes had built most of his engines close behind the wall, and the Romans seemed to be fighting against the gods, now that countless mischiefs were poured out upon them from an invisible source.”

Archimedes becomes a literal God-in-the-machines. Below Marcellus displays his military skills and rhetorical flourishes.

“However, Marcellus made his escape, and jesting with his own artificers and engineers, ‘Let us stop,’ said he, ‘fighting against this geometrical Briareus, who uses our ships like cups to ladle water from the sea, and has whipped and driven off in disgrace our sambuca, and with the many missiles which he shoots against us all at once, outdoes the hundred-handed monsters of mythology.’ For in reality all the rest of the Syracusans were but a body for the designs of Archimedes, and his the one soul moving and managing everything; for all other weapons lay idle, and his alone were then employed by the city both in offence and defence. At last the Romans became so fearful that, whenever they saw a bit of rope or a stick of timber projecting a little over the wall, ‘There it is,’ they cried, ‘Archimedes is training some engine upon us,’ and turned their backs and fled. Seeing this, Marcellus desisted from all fighting and assault, and thenceforth depended on a long siege.” […]

“Some time afterwards he made a prisoner of a certain Damippus, a Spartan who tried to sail away from Syracuse. The Syracusans sought to ransom this man back, and during the frequent meetings and conferences which he held with them about the matter, Marcellus noticed a certain tower that was carelessly guarded, into which men could be secretly introduced, since the wall near it was easy to surmount. When, therefore, in his frequent approaches to it for holding these conferences, the height of the tower had been carefully estimated, and ladders had been prepared, he seized his opportunity when the Syracusans were celebrating a festival in honour of Artemis and were given over to wine and sport, and before they knew of his attempt not only got possession of the tower, but also filled the wall round about with armed men, before the break of day, and cut his way through the Hexapyla. When the Syracusans perceived this and began to run about confusedly, he ordered the trumpets to sound on all sides at once and thus put them to flight in great terror, believing as they did that no part of the city remained uncaptured.”

Thus Marcellus becomes victorious. Archimedes then suffers three deaths. Maybe. However Archimedes was “dispatched,” the invader and victor, Marcellus, was bummed.

“But what most of all afflicted Marcellus was the death of Archimedes. For it chanced that he was by himself, working out some problem with the aid of a diagram, and having fixed his thoughts and his eyes as well upon the matter of his study, he was not aware of the incursion of the Romans or of the capture of the city. Suddenly a soldier came upon him and ordered him to go with him to Marcellus. This Archimedes refused to do until he had worked out his problem and established his demonstration, whereupon the soldier flew into a passion, drew his sword, and dispatched him. Others, however, say that the Roman came upon him with drawn sword threatening to kill him at once, and that Archimedes, when he saw him, earnestly besought him to wait a little while, that he might not leave the result that he was seeking incomplete and without demonstration; but the soldier paid no heed to him and made an end of him. There is also a third story, that as Archimedes was carrying to Marcellus some of his mathematical instruments, such as sun-dials and spheres and quadrants, by means of which he made the magnitude of the sun appreciable to the eye, some soldiers fell in with him, and thinking that he was carrying gold in the box, slew him. However, it is generally agreed that Marcellus was afflicted at his death, and turned away from his slayer as from a polluted person, and sought out the kindred of Archimedes and paid them honour.”

All quotes from the 1917 Loeb edition.

Plain Ordinary People: On Finally Reading The Outsiders

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One way I disappointed students was not reading one of their favorite books. This was certainly not the only way I disappointed students, but not having read S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders was at the top of the list from the beginning of my teaching career. This proved to be particularly disappointing to one student who I taught for two years and thought that by the second time she was in my class, I surely should have read it and by not doing so I was not only neglecting my duties as an educator, but also personally letting everyone down. 

I promised her some thoughts on it. It’s only taken about a decade. I’m interested in hearing about what the book means and has meant to her.

Overall, it felt like a book that I would have liked more when I was younger, but I was much more interested in Stephen King or Clive Barker. Though I remember the movie, I was too busy watching stuff like ET or The Thing. 

I also wonder how many kids still relate to the characters, not because they don’t have the same feelings or financial difficulties, but the technological landscape resembles nothing like this. Maybe the YA novels that deal with addictions are similar, but maybe The Outsiders isn’t gritty enough to stand up to these? (And see Ponyboy’s “American Dream” below. How do his dreams match up with today’s kids and their dreams?) I’m not saying kids couldn’t relate to the novel, but I’d be interested in how they relate to it.

This is Hinton’s first novel and she wrote it when she was fifteen. It’s quite an achievement considering the depth she gives some of the characters. Despite their flaws, it’s not difficult to care about the characters. There are hints that the “villains” also have tribulations. I was thinking of similar first novels I like better, but I don’t think any of them were written at the age of fifteen: The Bell Jar, The Neon Bible, Wiseblood. I also read it as a book from the other side of the tracks Ellis’s Less Than Zero–Rodeo Romantics versus Nightclub Nihilists. 

I found the absence of women and the feminine interesting. For one, femininity doesn’t belong with the outsiders and their codes and either notion of being “tough” as described in the book. But I think this plays into the characters’ lack of parental supervision and care in some cases, especially Ponyboy’s loss of his mother. In a quote below, He calls her “golden”–a descriptor in the book, associated with Frosts’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and related to innocence and idealism in the novel. I believe the lack of women in the novel makes sense, but I really wanted more scenes with Cherry Valance. 

Below are some quotes I like with bits of commentary.

“It seems like there’s gotta be someplace without greasers or Socs, with just people. Plain ordinary people.”

I can relate to Ponyboy here, of course, in an interpretation writers would argue about who or what are “ordinary people” and about who gets to decide what is “ordinary.” For Ponyboy, I think the “plain ordinary people” relates to having his family back together out in a house in the country as quoted below.

His dreams, with the exception of wanting his parents and family back together, are essentially American pastoral: farms and horses, cakes and cattle.

“I wanted to be out of towns and away from excitement. I only wanted to lie on my back under a tree and read a book or draw a picture, and not worry about being jumped or carrying a blade or ending up married to some scatterbrained broad with no sense. The country would be like that, I thought dreamily. I would have a yellow cur dog, like I used to, and Sodapop could get Mickey Mouse back and ride in all the rodeos he wanted to, and Darry would lose that cold, hard look and be like he used to be, eight months ago, before Mom and Dad were killed. Since I was dreaming I brought Mom and Dad back to life…Mom could bake some more chocolate cakes and Dad would drive the pickup out early to feed the cattle. […] My mother was golden and beautiful…(48)”

I believe this was said by Johnny:

“There sure is a lot of blood in people.” (74)

Most parents can probably relate to Ponyboy’s idea below and I think it plays into these boys having to nurture each other. Small moments like this show that the guys are more than troublemakers. I remember holding my children until they fell asleep and then watching them in their cribs. I still look at them in bed at night and in the morning. It’s hard not to make that connection to when they were babies. The quote resonated with me and the idea of these kids trying to nurture each other in ways acceptable to their codes, but at the same time, it shows that they are still children in difficult situations fending for themselves.

“Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep, too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.” (104)

I like this next passage. And Ponyboy, you’d have it made today with the e-cigarette craze. I thought kids were wearing cologne that smelled like Fruit Loops and Yoohoo, but it turns out they’re just vaping in the bathroom. 

“All three of us like chocolate cake for breakfast. Mom had never allowed it with ham and eggs, but Darry let Soda and me talk him into it. We really didn’t have to twist his arm; Darry loves chocolate cake as much as we do. Sodapop always makes sure there’s some in the icebox every night and if there isn’t he cooks up one real quick. I like Darry’s cakes better; Sodapop always puts too much sugar in the icing. I don’t see how he stands jelly and eggs and chocolate cake all at once, but he seems to like it. Darry drinks black coffee, and Sodapop and I drink chocolate milk. We could have coffee if we wanted it, but we like chocolate milk. All three of us like chocolate stuff. Soda says if they ever make a chocolate cigarette I’ll have it made.” (104-5)

A Cinephile’s Sins of the Fathers or Let’s Put on a Show!

Even the first career I dreamed about began with a movie–Jaws. I wanted to be a shark expert. Later, I wanted to be Ray Harryhausen. That began with Clash of the Titans (and King Kong, which I saw around the same time). I wanted to make stuff like the Kraken, not only the stop-motion scenes, but the haunting underwater shots. (Watching Godzilla (2014) I couldn’t help but think there was a little tribute to the underwater Kraken sequence.)

Over the years and I decided I wanted to be more like Tom Savini. Then a sort of Savini/Romero hybrid, an effects artist and director. I saw some old family Super-8 films (including one with my dad crying in a dress, but that’s another story) and loved the idea that I could make a movie.

I drew storyboards and watched a ton of movies. I got a VHS camcorder one Christmas and I tried to make stop-motion films. I made a few shorts, but found the editing process exhausting and the product unsatisfying. I couldn’t figure out why my handheld VHS short, with no lighting or sound equipment, didn’t look like Predator.

Around the same time, friends started playing music, but people always seemed to need a bass player. I liked the sound of bass on records, so I ventured into that. Even though I had no idea what tuning was–I tuned strings to what I liked and then awkwardly learned off of records and the radio–I eventually fell into playing in bands.

Only recently, after listening to a few film podcasts and hearing directors like Sean Baker talk about just going for it with the tools available on a phone, I decided to take on some digital filmmaking projects. I’m learning so much in the process of taking an idea from paper to screen. It’s done purely for the love of it. And right now, these are like art projects to do with the kids. Every now and then I have been able to assist friend’s on their films and it’s always been fun.

We’ve been working for months on our next video, not necessarily because our vision demands it, it’s more because of a lack of time (very little) and budget (none). The kids are writing new material for some hand puppet designs, too.

The films below were written by the kids and they shot the backgrounds and built the puppets.

I’m hoping that they continue to enjoy making these. I’m also hoping that it encourages them to have the stamina to complete ideas they have. And also, that they try to focus, whenever possible, on something they love and to not let the technology get the best of them.

Episode 1 was written by my seven-year-old. Episode 2 was written by my five-year-old. Enjoy!

Sometimes murder is like love: Recent Viewing

Limite (1931)
This is the only film completed by Brazilian director Mário Peixoto and it has been lost at various times throughout the decades. Supposedly Peixoto saw a magazine cover image of a woman’s face and a man’s hands in cuffs and he decided he would make a film.

The story involves three people stranded in a boat and flashbacks that reveal their backstories. I used to love teaching Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” and talking about not only some of the dark humor, but how Crane uses perspective. We don’t have access to the characters’ interiority. This movie has a similar set-up and then takes the opposite approach, melding subjectivity with imagery not far from Deren or Buñuel’s L’Age d’Or (1930), but now that I see those dates, he was contemporary with Buñuel–a shame there weren’t more films

I intend to see this one again. Peixoto pulls off some really fantastic camera work in this with the time, experience, and budget he was working with.

Moonrise (1948)
Described as a “film noir crime film”–I’d say it has a tad of Southern Gothic thrown in–Moonrise is gorgeously shot with fun performances for such a potentially dark movie. Everybody, including the director, is just going for it in this one. The story revolves around a boy who grows up in the shadow of his father’s execution as a murderer. You want to root for the guy, but he’s a jerk (and in the first five minutes or so, a murderer himself), but still somehow elicits empathy. Gail Russell is enthralling. I think this is my first Frank Borzage film and if his other pictures look like this one they are going to be worth it. Evidently he was influenced by Murnau, which explains some of Borzage’s use of shadows and heightened sensibilities.

Bonus: Lloyd Bridges plays a baddie!

Girlfriends (1978)
I rarely get to use the word Künstlerroman, the coming-of-age of an artist. Technically, I suppose it’s used for novels, but there’s a lot of interchanging of terms in criticism, so I’m going to use it here to describe Claudia Weill’s film.

The artist in question is Susan Weinblatt, an aspiring NYC photographer taking on wedding and bar mitzvah gigs to make ends meet. She lives with her best friend who decides to get married. The film is about Weinblatt figuring out who she is and how to maintain the relationship with her best friend, if it’s even possible, as their lives diverge.

It felt like a Woody Allen movie from the era, but grittier and told from the perspective of the women in his films. I would say it’s akin to Margarethe von Trotta’s films, but from an American perspective. I’ve only seen Von Trotta’s first three films and this one film by Weill, and I can’t wait to see more. I guess while I’m recommending similar films I’ll say Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground (1982) is another great one, though it deals more with the dynamics of married life, rather than the friendships of women.

Melanie Mayron is fantastic, plus you also get Christopher Guest as the young boyfriend and Eli Wallach as Rabbi Gold.

Solar Walk (2018)
Incredible multiple universe/Big Bang/creation myth animated film by Hungarian artist Réka Bucsi. Initially commissioned as a Fantasia-like feature for live jazz orchestra. You can see this one on a variety of online platforms. Evidently, the live score viewing also tours and is about an hour long. Anyone want to send me to a film festival in Europe so I can see it? The short version is about 20 minutes. Well worth it. For fans of Fantastic Planet (1973) and Son of the White Mare (1981).

From the Eunoia Archives: The Terror Test: Test Prep #3

Originally posted with The Terror Test episode on Psycho (1960) and Frenzy (1972). This was the first time I got to talk with Murray Leeder, a professor, writer, and cultural critic. A short bio and some of his titles listed after the interview. I’ve found his work invaluable as I continue to watch and think about film.

Hitch Me Up! Hitch Me Down!

The oldest memory I have of terror involves the piece of music “The Lonely Man” by Joe Harnell. My body electrified with fear when I heard the first four notes of the melody. And then I would run. I didn’t have to see Bruce Banner’s eyes turn white or light green. I didn’t have to see Lou Ferrigno jump out of a parade float reducing it to splinters like a mutant stripper exploding out of a cake. Just four notes from the theme of the TV series The Incredible Hulk was all it took. Scream. Run. Hide.

Sometimes my dad would make me watch the show until I cried and ran. Sometimes he would tell me he was watching something else and then those light green contacts would appear and I would disappear. I teach my students about notions like the sins of the fathers being revisited on the sons, eternal recurrence, the return of the repressed, often in the context of ghost stories. I found out later that my dad did this because my grandfather made him sit and listen to the theme of a show that terrified him. That piece is Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March for a Marionette,” but it is better known as the theme to Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

I wasn’t even a decade old when the 1985 revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents aired. I loved the original, so the revival was a must-see. While I reveled in the grim and goofy theme that perfectly echoed Hitchcock’s dark wit, my dad, who had been in the military, who boxed at an amateur level, and who was a police officer, got up and left the room every time that music played.

Hitchcock may have been the first director I understood as an auteur, though I didn’t know that word. I started spotting his cameos in the films. I picked up on the “innocent man wrongly accused” theme. I loved Bernard Herrmann’s music and still do.

When The Terror Test announced a Hitchcock episode, I was excited, but unlike my early Fear-of-the-Hulk years, I didn’t know in which direction to run. I kept thinking about how when I had read or saw references to Hitchcock lately, they were often negative. Not sure what to do with that, I called in reinforcements and talked to Murray Leeder, a critic whose writing I enjoy. He is an Instructor in Film Studies at the University of Calgary and author of Halloween (2014) and editor of Cinematic Ghosts (2015). He has also written numerous articles, mostly about horror and ghost films.

When I was brainstorming ideas for this piece, I kept coming back to the idea that Hitchcock’s status has declined. And then I couldn’t really figure out what I meant by “status.” Maybe what I was thinking was that he doesn’t seem to influence as many writers and directors and I certainly feel like I don’t hear him referenced as much as he used to be. I feel like John Carpenter and Michael Mann have been regaining status and Ozu is more appreciated than Kurosawa these days. I feel like part of the interest in Carpenter comes from his Lost Scores records and filmmakers using synths in scores again. I’m thinking particularly of Adam Wingard’s use of music and the music in Drive.

Perhaps Hitchcock’s status has declined, though not as noticeably as Howard Hawks’s or even John Ford’s. Here’s an example: where I teach Film Studies, the consensus towards the introductory class is that two filmmakers strictly need to be represented on it: Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein. With Welles, of course that means Citizen Kane; it’s not like anyone’s likely to drop Kane in favour of The Trial or Othello anytime soon, but with Eisenstein there are several viable choices. There’s also a need to show a French New Wave film, probably by Godard. No specific mandate to include a Hitchcock film, although I have done so (Rear Window, to be precise).

Carpenter most definitely is gaining in status, a rather fascinating process since he has not directed a film in many years now. Lost Scores has helped establish him as a kind of celebrity at large, his persona circulating in ways less and less attached to his films all the time. And as you note, one can have a Carpenter-esque film not by Carpenter (Neil Marshall seems to have that one down, too), just as there’s a slate of Hitchcock films not by Hitchcock (Charade, Obsession, etc.).

What are we talking about when we talk about “status” in terms of directors? Is it something that we have to define differently based on a particular context? In what ways is it valuable and how is it not? Ultimately, is it useful? Does it even matter?

Among the French critics of Cahiers du Cinema and Andrew Sarris and his followers in the States, the idea of the great director served as a kind of legitimizing force for the medium of film itself. At that time, there were still many who sniffed at cinema as a low medium — but if it had great directors in it, it must be a great medium, no? It’s an appeal to the Romantic conception of the great artist. I wonder if we have reached a time where that way of thinking about film directors as great artists is less necessary.

That said, though the auteur theory has been critiqued, sometimes very devastatingly, from all directions, it’s also not really going anywhere. After all, somebody makes the thing.

If there is a way to talk about Hitchcock’s status here, do you have a feeling that he’s not as important as he was or seemed to be? What would be the causes of this? I wonder if his films seem “old” to younger viewers.

Hitchcock is still one of the few classical Hollywood directors who are household names. Who else? Welles, perhaps. Certainly Disney. But Ford, Hawks, Preminger, Zinnemann, Cukor, Wyler, etc.? Not too likely. Maybe even thinking Hitchcock is still well-known is wishful thinking. But my experience is that when they sit down and watch Psycho or Rear Window or Vertigo, younger viewers get it: they look past what’s dated and find that these films don’t just play as old curios. I always like to look back at the classroom when Lars Thorwald looks into the camera in Rear Window and a collective gasp comes up. The movie has them!

In thinking about this piece, I was wondering what I could add to the discussion on Hitchcock’s films, particularly Psycho or Frenzy. What’s important about these films to the genre and do you have any particular thoughts on them or Bloch’s novel?

It’s funny, I’m currently proposing a collection on the films of William Castle, and a senior scholar who submitted an abstract noted that he’s always resisted writing about Hitchcock directly, but instead has done so obliquely, like writing about Castle’s Psycho knockoff Homicidal instead. I rather feel the same. There’s something awfully daunting about writing about Hitchcock. Like writing about Shakespeare, it’s amazing that anyone finds anything new to say . . . yet they do.

The confluence of Psycho and Frenzyis interesting as they together constitute Hitchcock’s bloodiest and grisliest films. Hitchcock claimed that he saw Psycho as a comedy, and a streak of black humour is more evident in Frenzy— Bob Rusk searching for the missing hand in the potatoes and all that. I sometimes wonder if people without a working familiarity with British wit grasp that part of Hitchcock.

As a critic, where do you see Hitchcock’s influence these days?

It’s a good question and I’m not sure I see it at all at the moment: I don’t know if people haul out the adjective “Hitchcockian” as much as they once did, and I don’t know if there’s a director out there who is, like Brian De Palma of old, consciously positioning themselves as an heir to the master. I’m not sure if there are still very Hitchcockian French thrillers being made, like With a Friend Like Harry, and I’m just not aware of them. There’s still Michael Haneke, though his last couple do not evoke Hitchcock as clearly as Funny Games or Cache.

As a horror critic, what are you working on? What are you thinking about in terms of the genre? What keeps you interested?

I’m currently working on an introductory-style book about Horror Films, as well as some work on the history of ghost films (horror or otherwise). This is exciting to me in part because I keep finding myself needing to write at least a bit about canonical films that I’ve never really written about before, like The Haunting or The Shining.

As a horror fan, what have you been excited about recently and what are you looking forward to in the genre?

I’m not as up on recent trends in the genre as I have been in the past, but I think there’s a mini-renaissance on, with films like The Babadook, It Follows and The Witch proving that there’s plenty of life left in horror.

What are your five favorite horror films?

So hard to choose! I guess I’ll have to start with Nosferatu (1922) as it was the film that got me interested in film history to begin with. Halloween (1978) is the film I’ve written most about, easily, and I’m still happy to watch it again. Dead of Night (1945) has a special place in my part as a thoroughly classy film that is also terrifying; it’s the one that really always gets my students, who are amazed to find a film that old can contain anything as intense as the ventriloquist dummy episode. The 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers always sucks me in with its slow build of paranoia. More of a sentimental favourite, but it was The Legend of Hell House (1973) that got me interested in studying ghost films specifically and I feel unduly proud of my essay about it in Horror Studies.

Thanks to Murray Leeder for his thoughts, energy, and time. Check out his work! Murray Leeder is a Research Affiliate at the University of Manitoba and holds a Ph.D. from Carleton University. He the author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Halloween (Auteur, 2014), as well as the editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2015) and ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

The Terror Test is back later this week with new episodes and new website.

Little Billboards #58

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Identity is the bumper sticker
and the hide-and-seek
rodeo vision.

Little Billboards #1: For Maurice Sendak

May my crimes also
be my daughter’s:
Stealing flashlights,
reading at night.

(For Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012)

There’s gotta be more to life than myself: Recent Listening

Lots of guitar and art rock below, though lots of good uses of electronics, too. Lots of comfort music (in these times).

And RIP Art Neville. The Meters are one of THE bands for me.

The Muppet Movie Soundtrack, the first record I remember turns 40. Still love it.

Black Sabbath (1970)
Paranoid (1970)
Master of Reality (1971)
Vol. 4 (1972)
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)
Sabotage (1975)
Technical Ecstasy (1976)
Never say Die! (1978)
I’m just getting to that last one, but I never realized that Sabbath put out that much material, much of it iconic, in the first five years. I like learning the bass and guitar riffs–it’s always been about the riffs–but what’s struck me listening to the material this time is Bill Ward’s drumming and the kind of feel he gets on songs like “Snowblind.”

Camel: The Snow Goose (1975)
Gentlemanly prog. Sometimes reminds me of Popol Vuh. I find them at times weirdly unhip, but enchanting. “La Princesse Perdue“–a well-behaved epic.

Devo: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)
One of the first bands I cared about. Debut album. Still great, and I like their version of “Satisfaction” better than the original. Always have.

U.S. Maple: Acre Thrills (2001)
Unpredictable rock-n-roll. Post-rock in the sense that the band removes a lot of the cliches of the genre and what most people probably love about it. No middle ground on this one. I’ve had “Open a Rose” in my head for weeks.

Julia Holter: Aviary (2018)
This may be one of my favorite records ever. It’s gorgeous, but dense, in a good way–there’s a lot to process. I don’t know. It took me about six months just to listen to it the first time all the way through. I’m hoping to write a larger piece on it soon. Right now the only way I can describe some of it is as having sensibilities of Robert Wyatt or Velvet Underground, but that’s not right either. I love this video, and I hope that Don’t Look Now (1973) was a partial inspiration.

Palm: Rock Island (2018)
Currently writing a longer piece on this album. Post-rock pop? Whatever–I like it.

Flying Lotus: “More” (featuring Anderson .Paak)
I only came to Flying Lotus after seeing his movie Kuso (2017), a wonderful apocalyptic gross-out. I haven’t been able to finish listening to his new album Flamagra (2019), but I love the linked track and video (the rhythm section/programming kills) directed by Shinichirō Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame.

Annotated Dreams and Swamp Things

The 5YO told me a dream:

I went on a walk and I found the pond.

(The one we walk to behind our place, though it sounds like she’s discovering it here in some dream geography.)

I saw a copperhead and he tried to get me, but I punched him in the face.

(There are snakes around us, but this is not the way she’s been told to deal with them.)

And then I ran and found one of my friends. We were playing in the swamp and there was an alligator that came up to us.

(Though my school bus used to drive past the occasional sunning gators, we don’t have any here. That I know of, anyway.)

But it turned out it was another friend in an alligator costume and we were doing a school play.

(That’s my favorite bit. I like to think it was a version of Pogo.)

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Then we went to a hotel. It was a nice hotel.

(The snake followed them there and a multi-story chase ensued. She described it with more excitement than fear. I haven’t told her about the several dreams I’ve had of snakes pouring out of heating vents or the dream about a snake biting me between my thumb and first finger and hanging there until the skin starting stretching like melted plastic. All in good time.)

_______

In other news, the kids have given each other nicknames: Big Sister is “Uranus,” while Little Sister is “Knickers.”

From the Eunoia Archives: He was not for all ages, but for that one time!

Originally published at Eunoia Solstice in 2013.

Though not often, I have written commemorative poems. Composing this way can be stressful, but also inspiring. It connects to ancient traditions, to times when the bard’s song was a monument as important as statuary. The specificity of the audience, rather than the imaginary, amorphous readers that I hope are out there, provides a unique challenge. I hope to make something that I am pleased with artistically, while staying true to the event at hand.

This week I finished writing and read a poem for a colleague’s retirement. She’s a retiring art teacher, but she’s memorized more poems than I have. I’ve heard her recite Chaucer, Browning, Coleridge, and Whitman from memory. She’s been supportive of my writing and once told me, “Poetry is the height of human expression.”

So, yeah, no pressure. 

About a month ago, I talked to her about her favorite artists. She mentioned Elizabeth Barrett Browning and “Sonnet 43.” She mentioned Debussy and La mer. (I realize now that she may have said “Clair de lune” and I goofed this thing from the beginning. I could only meet with her when one of us had cafeteria duty and couldn’t hear that well.) I tried to bring these artists together and say something meaningful for her. I hope she was as pleased as she seemed. I was honored to be a part of an event for such a kind and unique person.  The poem I read and presented to her is below:

Instead of Staring at the Sea
(For Quita)

Instead of staring at the sea
(With interest steadily waning),
Debussy reportedly said
That he’d prefer a painting.
And then for the first edition
Of his symphonic sketches
Depicting the sea, he chose
“The Great Wave,” which stretches,
In this particular view,
Even above Mt. Fuji.
It’s possible Hokusai
Captures the “ends of Beauty”
Mrs. Browning mentions. The white
Spikes of foam, like clawed hands,
Growing from the blue and black
Depths could crumble Holy Mountains.
And Browning also wrote of
The limits of “Ideal Grace”—
Only the sublime can kill the sublime.
I wonder if Debussy traced
This earthly power that stands
Over the little men in the little boats,
That reminds us we must risk
Drowning in order to float.