film: The Matrix trilogy

I’m not watching these three films entirely for pleasure. They’re actually part of a homework assignment. I was turned off by the first one way back when it was new because I thought it was so gross that I had to keep my eyes half closed to watch it. This time I knew when to shut my eyes. I’ve always heard it was heavily based in religion, and like the DaVinci Code, the films instantly were thus popularly regarded as scholarship or life-changing parable. They’re action movies. Period. They’re one excuse after another to play Rob Zombie or show nipples or make empty sermons, but mostly, they’re fightin’ movies. It’s hard to find anything to say about them…but I have.

About 1:40 through The Matrix Reloaded something funny happens. Something like four scenes begin taking place at once, but the four scenes share some characters, occur at different or the same moments, and different places. I know some people who have difficulty compartmentalizing multitudes, but it is how I operate, to the point that the first thing this reminded me of was how I often read poetry, which is not linearly, but in waves, I read down the poem, and then I read back up, sweep back down, and then back up a bit further, and it feels like a three-dimensional cycle to me. In bookstores and in tables of contents I often become confused because I create titles from multiple rows of books or text, titles that aren’t there, titles that sound wonderful and that I’d love to read, and then turn out not to exist at all. Anyway, I find some comfort in this segment of the film, I feel engaged, and also able to breathe easily because of the freedom in movement it has, it isn’t constraining.

And this, I think may be the reasoning behind it. The film spends much time emphasizing transcending time and space, the character Neo being the one best able to do this, to operate outside ‘the matrix’ while engaging within it. And as an audience, this section of the film gives us precisely that experience, the undeniable knowledge that we’re outside the film, in the theatre, watching it, and watching four scenes at once, we ourselves able to transcend the film world’s time and space, not only when we go home, of course, but also in the theatre itself, while we also allow that ‘voluntary suspension of disbelief’ to occur. Great job! Now I don’t have to write anything else about the fucking Matrix ever again. Yay!

Ballroom, Week 11

Because I’m temporarily moving to Philadelphia this is the last lesson I’ll be having for a while (there’s no dancing allowed in Philly, I know, I know, it’s so sad). I was barely conscious for the lesson, which taught me something very important: I don’t always, always, always feel like dancing. The fancy footwork I’d learned last week I couldn’t even bear to attempt as I struggled to remember where to transfer my weight. But, in the end my instructor said I’d danced the best I’d ever done when he was having me lead and improvise. My main weakness, in my opinion, is a tendency to focus on one element to the detriment of the others, including keeping time.

Points on which to focus this week:

1. Left Turning Box: when stepping forward on 1, the foot remains parallel/straight, while the CBM occurs otherwise.

2. Right Turning Box: closing on 6 the R heel MUST touch the floor. On 7, the L leg/foot turns inward as it steps backward; also, it must step backwards leaving enough space between the both legs/feet that one’s partner can step between them easily. This ’stepping’ between the leader’s legs is, as I understand it, the reason why the Right Turning Box takes place between two Progressives rather than beginning on the L foot somehow.

3. I forget its name, but it’s a turn of the Lady during the Left Box. Simple. This takes place during a figure of two Left Boxes, meaning 12 steps. On 4, the leader steps back with more force than usual, uses his arms to increase the space between the dancers, removes his R arm/hand from his partner, to his side, and begins lifting his L hand higher. It is not necessary to ’stir the pot’ with one’s hand, so the Gentleman merely concludes the first half of the figure and commences the second as normal, until 10 when he places his arm and hand back in the normal position. As for the Lady’s steps, I don’t know what they are because I was instructed ‘don’t look down or you’ll get confused.’

Religion, Theology, and other things I see on a milk bottle.

All I wanted to say was, ‘here’s some really great copy!’ and then:

‘Know what? Great farmers wouldn’t exist without great eaters. No kidding. When you choose organic food you’re helping the earth’s best farmers, and in so doing, creating a better world for tomorrow. Your tomorrow. Hello, hero.’

If you’re anything like me then you’ll read whatever’s placed in front of you, and read it again, and read it twenty or thirty times in one sitting if there’s nothing else to do while you’re eating alone. So finding something written well is almost exciting.

Religion is the things we do. Theology is how we try to excuse the things we do. No doubt Christmas traditions began ages before Jesus, and not in anticipation of him, but in celebration of more obvious things.

Religion: carrying a gun all the time out of paranoia or because it makes us feel powerful or because it’s fun to break shit.
Theology: 2nd amendment rights; in case the US government commits genocide against the bourgeoisie this afternoon, beginning with this Wal-Mart in Kentucky; if everyone would carry a gun then there’d never be a violent crime again, (like in Mexico, where the members of rival drug cartels don’t mess with each other or the police, or in the Swat Valley where recruiting well-trained warriors means recruiting teenagers)–because Americans are different from people of other cultures, because Americans understand restraint and the importance of peace, which is why they wouldn’t use violence against each other so long as they all carried guns.

Religion: eating shitty food and not giving a fuck.
Theology: why do you think that people are bigger and taller than ever before in history? It’s because of the chemicals and hormones since before we’re even born! If it wasn’t for processed foods, and for chemicals sprayed on our produce, and hormones injected into our livestock, we wouldn’t be nearly so healthy as we are now. Nobody in history has lived so long as we do now, and what’s the big change? That for the first time in history people aren’t eating organic food.

Marilyn Manson has a pretty wonderful autobiography that’s definitely worth reading. In it he tells about how when he was a child his father would go to VFW sorts of meetings with other ex-military sorts who’d fought in Vietnam. They’d often bring their kids along. But all their kids were physically deformed as a result of exposure to Agent Orange. Except young Brian Warner (Marilyn Manson), because his father’s job in Vietnam was spraying the Agent Orange.

I’m still dealing with how I should view Kurt Vonnegut. He’s either a nice bridge for disaffected youth to carry them between comics and sci-fi to “literature” or an end in himself. For those who see him as an end in himself, which generally means turning around and heading back towards the sci-fi comic book genres, one is left just plain cynical. Life is a scary and dangerous place that can only be dealt with through cynicism, listlessness, and arrogance (and comic books). But I’m a firm believer in balance–which doesn’t always imply moderation–and am certain that exposure to the things we find hateful gives us the capacity to appreciate their opposites in intensity. More or less, I think all things are pretty much how we find them, that it’s our experiences that make the difference.

So, why pay more for organic food?

Because oftener than not it looks and tastes like food should. I know how food is supposed to look because I’ve seen paintings of Adam and Eve, I’ve seen storybooks that take place on farms, and I’ve tasted fresh foods that are more delicious than I can even imagine. An important question to ask is ‘do I want this to become part of my body?’ because really…isn’t that what happens when you eat something? or breathe? or witness anything?

Ballroom, week 10

The Right Turning Box is the first figure that I think is actually beautiful from a perspective of theory and time; I love the way we have two feet whose graceful movement depends upon our shifting the weight back and forth between them, yet we’re dealing with bars of 3/4, a gorgeous crisis, and furthermore treating the Rise and Fall in terms of 6/8. In this figure one opens a door between bars, steps out, and then steps back in–it’s breathtaking, really, and it’s the sort of thing I’ve always loved in music, simultaneously dominating and being carried away by structure.

Today things got a little exciting, and a lot more difficult. An exercise he gave me two weeks ago on arching my foot–as close to ballet as I’ll be getting in ballroom, perhaps?–and my new flexible shoes began to make sense.

1. A simple heel-toe step as described in prior lessons and by Alex Moore is fairly uninteresting, though it gets the job done. The gracefulness and beauty of this improved by changing it to a toe-ball-heel step.

In an example of commencing a Progressive: the heels are both raised, knees bent, and during the lowering action the R heel lowers more quickly so that weight is transferred there immediately, but even during this lowering action the body must already be commencing the next step. The R knee bends to a 46 degree angle, and L foot arches so that the toe is to the floor, sliding forward before the point of contact moves to the ball of the foot and then with a flick of the toe the point of contact is moved to the heel. Key here is not waiting too long to change contact point to ball of foot, as delaying leads to a flat foot and ruins everything. Weight is held on the R foot with the whole foot on the floor for as long as possible before it begins transferring to the L ball. As soon as weight is transferred to L, that knee should be bent immediately to the 46 degree angle to preserve the rise and fall.

The movement of the toe-heel flick, etc. can be practiced while holding on to a bar. The body must continue to move always–always–always–there is not pausing with weight transfer or lowering action.

2. The Right Turning Box: we enter into this as an infix to a Progressive, which makes it into an 18 beat figure. The Progressive is six beats; after the first half of the Progressive, at which point one is now dead center of a two bar phrase and will remain between phrases until the end of the figure, which will lead back to the normal flow.
1-3: progressive, beginning on L
4-9: first half of Right Turning Box
10-15: second half.
16-18: progressive, beginning on R.

Clair: À nous la liberté (1931)

It’s very difficult for me to say anything about this film because I so deeply long to forget it, to pretend that Clair never produced any work except Sous les toits de Paris — and it’s for all the wrong reasons, perhaps. In toits de Paris Clair uses sound so brilliantly that it led me to reconsider how I understand sound not only in film, but also in every single moment of life. I began studying something along the lines of ‘the physics of sound’ recently, and though it tends to be a very dry subject on paper, it’s when I lift my head and look around, clap my hands, shout at the walls, and observe speaker cones that I become fascinated. Because I take it for granted now, but Rene Clair didn’t, and neither did his audiences. Development is natural for us, but so is reminiscing, even if I’m watching a 1931 film and reminiscing about 1930, there’s still development that his audiences must have gleefully pointed out to one another, how one year ago the characters didn’t really speak except when you couldn’t see their lips, you know, when the lights are out or when their faces are turned. Now they do. It’s almost as if they’re real people. And yet I prefer a grainy black and white to something that looks real?

I really haven’t anything else to say about this film except to point out its being a milestone for sound, then. But whereas Clair was forced to be brilliantly creative in Paris, in liberté, he only has to be technically knowledgeable and slightly gimmicky. And so I can’t fall in love.

Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

I haven’t any idea why both Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart hold such happy places in my heart–but they do. This is the sort of Hitchcock I enjoy most, when I’m not left feeling sick and paranoid. Well, right now I’m feeling sick because I’ve been drinking coffee all night and that’s a miserable thing for one to do. Beyond everything else, what I found striking in this film was his character development, which extended beyond the individuals and into their relationships with one another. I argue that Hitchcock takes the archetype of the hero/homecoming story for his model, but improves and modernizes it (don’t the two always go hand in hand?) by giving us two heroes whose ‘home’ is contentment in marriage; and I don’t mean that marriage is the goal, as in much of comedic Shakespeare, but rather more like in Austen, where characters battle each other and themselves in order to discover why a marriage would be happy.

Hitchcock throws us in some sense in media res by placing us at what proves to be the crucial moment in a troubled marriage. And then, rather than relying on flashbacks a la Telemachus to divulge the prehistory, the characters themselves drop hints. The first indicator in the film that this Hitchcock follows the archetype is that the film is neatly divided into two segments, both of which begin and end abruptly, and all hints are found within the first segment. A third segment is the one that occurs before the film, being the one only hinted at. The Morocco segment lays out all the problems: the marriage is in trouble, and the son is kidnapped. The kidnapping of the son arguably is a result of the failing marriage, and the London segment is dedicated to saving the son and fixing the marriage.

The first thing I noticed was that the son talks a lot. He’s obnoxious because he’s constantly commenting on everything his parents say, usually in a way that serves to lift the mood of the conversation though he acts as if he doesn’t know he’s being witty or funny. I’ve seen children act like this before–it’s how they desperately attempt to keep everyone happy. It’s how they try to prevent their parents from arguing.

1. Ben (Jimmy Stewart) says he’s called his wife ‘Jo’ for so long that he’s forgotten that she’s called anything else–her name is actually Josephine. Not only has he forgotten who she is, but he’s also given her a new name, which, as in the first chapters of Genesis, is a way of acquiring domination over anyone/anything.

2. They easily get caught up in tiffs. This is maintained throughout the Morocco segment and ends with the London segment, when they immediately begin working together seamlessly.

3. He’s fickle about what he feels strongly about, or else he tries to take up her cause with excess vigor. When he pushes aside her distrust of Louis Bernard, after she insists he finally becomes enraged with Bernard, to the point that even Jo tries to calm him down–because his emotions don’t make any sense. This is what made me begin taking notes, because it made me believe they’d had a fight in the past to which he was reacting.

4. She wants to have another baby. She brings this fact up entirely out of the blue. To us. But it’s a continuation of a series of conversations that take place in the pre-film segment that we don’t see.

5. They have monthly fights. They let us know this–and the ‘monthly’ bit threw me off because it inevitably implies that it’s her fault, but it’s not Ben who says it. She asks, ‘Ben, are we about to have our monthly fight?’ when, if it was related to her, he would be looking to her for the answer. At the same time, this happens to be the same day that she’s mentioned that she wants another baby. The conclusion I reach is that everyone should be praised for not blaming the fights on monthly lunacy, but rather they should be blamed on a monthly reminder of fertility.

6. ‘Six months ago you told me I took too many pills,’ says Jo. They measure time with their fights; but also, if she’d merely taken one aspirin too many and had a stomach ache, she wouldn’t have pinned it to a date like this. I’m going to call it a suicide attempt. Ben says ‘you know what happens when you get excited and nervous’–and she usually becomes hysterical (whose Greek root suggests the stereotype I mean), the hysteria ultimately being what saves the day.

7. Ben’s big plan is to offer the kidnappers ‘every penny I have’ to get back their son. He’s thinking in terms of his own money, not what they share. This would be meaningless except for the detail that she’s a world-famous singer who he’s convinced to give up her career and move to a backwards town in the midwest and be supported by him. In fact, their whole Europe/Morocco vacation is being funded by him and his work as a small-town doctor. They begin and carry on a joke for quite too long about which fixed body-part or delivered baby is responsible for, i.e., ‘I’m wearing Johnny Matthews’ appendix’ and ‘All the way home we’ll be riding on Herbie Taylor’s ulcers.’ Jo’s the one who comes up with this concept–and it’s the first time they’ve discussed it, as Jo says she’s ‘never thought of it that way’ before. Where is her money, as one would expect her to be worth significantly more than he is? Who knows.

So, these are the hints. And I think what it comes down to is likely this: they made a ‘deal’ that meant her retirement, their marriage, some children, and their total settling down. It wasn’t in that order, as she’d played London four years before the film’s action, and their son is older than that, but since then she’s settled down–and another child hasn’t come. And I think this is why they fight, because he hasn’t held up his end of the deal, and he’s holding her down because he feels inadequate when he compares their respective financial values.

In the end, it takes what he regards as her weaknesses (her hysterics, when she screams and thwarts the murder; her music career, when she uses it to both find their son and keep all the bad guys occupied) to save them all. And while this occurs, he’s given the opportunity to deliver their son to her by rescuing him from near-murder. If the son was the most important focus of the film, it would have ended with his rescue, the happy family back together. But it doesn’t. There’s an additional, slightly jarring, brief scene in which the happy family returns to the hotel room: they open the hotel room door, Jo’s uppity friends who used to work with her in showbiz are waiting there for them, and only one line is spoken, Ben saying, ‘I’m sorry we were gone so long, but we go and pick up Hank’ [sorry, but the screenplay transcript I'm using was made by a Russian (seriously), and I don't have the energy to go back and see what the actual Jimmy Stewart quote was, so you're just going to have to imagine Jimmy Stewart speaking in broken English]. I think his apology indicates that he’s accepted Jo more fully as a person–accepted her past in music, and may be willing to give her back her career (he never flaunts her career in the film–though she’s happy to mention it, he’d prefer to discuss himself), and who knows, maybe they’ll make some more babies.

My Job & Ellis Island

My Job & Ellis Island

Half my family can’t trace their history back more than a hundred years because when we entered the harbor our names were changed, in one case a simplification of the original name, in the second case to the name of the town whence we came. Many people take for granted the fact that even have family histories, though by the complete disinterest shown by my older relatives, perhaps I’m just wrong, as they don’t seem to care in the slightest about who came before them. So it’s up to me.

In the meantime, as I transfer old medical records from handwritten to digital, a lot of these people don’t seem to have any idea how to even write their own names. I don’t hold potential illiteracy or poor handwriting/memory/deteriorating bodies against Them except insofar as it makes my job more difficult, especially considering that a large number of these troublesome records likely represent deceased patients. And what do I do? I write their names however I see fit. And their addresses. Sometimes I discover a corrected spelling of the name when two patients have the same address. A lot of people aren’t sure if they have diabetes or not. A lot of people don’t know their zip codes. A lot don’t know how to spell the name of their cities. A lot don’t check either ‘male’ or ‘female.’ A lot aren’t sure of what year they were born, and significantly more don’t know how to properly express the full date of their birth–so they take creative liberty in doing so. And then, here I am, trying to transliterate all of this into what makes the most sense to the greatest number of people in the office. But, no doubt, I get it wrong often enough. And in a way, I’m just inventing people, addresses, and medical histories; I might as well work at Ellis Island; I might as well be Shakespeare.

Ballroom, week 9

After much discussion of theory, and extensive attempts at solo technique, it was time for me to dance with him again. I led poorly. Even leading a right box was difficult because I kept giving slight indications of a turn and well, just generally lacked confidence, kept ‘double lowering’ instead of following the 3Cs, and upon failing to transfer weight during a progressional just stopped, lost my cool, contemptuously muttered ‘fuck.’ We tried again. I was a bit pissed off. And when we finished he said ‘that’s the best you’ve done.’ Then, and today, it has come down to confidence, and especially to not overthinking–to rather being in the dance than figuring it all out on the floor. I suppose, like anything else, that’s what practice is for, reaching a point where it’s unnecessary to think about the components, to focus only on the whole.

My grandmother is horrified that my instructor is male.

‘This might be a silly question…but…do you dance with your teacher?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘And…your instructor is a man.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you dance with him?’ she chuckles.
‘He’s not bowing me over and kissing me. He’s my instructor.’
‘Yes, I know but…why didn’t you choose a woman?’
‘Because I spent a considerable amount of time looking for the most qualified instructor in the area. And furthermore, my first instructor, he moved, he began by telling me that it’s too bad more men don’t come to him for lessons since he himself is twenty-thousand times a better man than a woman. Doesn’t it make sense?’
‘Well, I don’t know. But…echem, if he pats you on the bottom I think you’d better begin looking for a new teacher.’
‘Yes, Grandmother.’

Concerning the Line of Dance: this is the direction couples follow as they dance. It hadn’t occurred to me that something like this existed since in films it’s never noticeable, but, essentially, the center of the floor should be regarded as having ‘double-yellow’ lines as roads do, and, as in driving in the US and Europe, couples move down the floor on the right side, counter-clockwise. One should move to the end of the room before turning, though people tend to congregate in the center; thus, it’s, if not easiest, then perhaps most enjoyable, to be as far to the perimeter of the floor as possible where one has space to navigate and not be crushed. So far as the Line of Dance goes, the flow is to maintained by a leader with a decent working vocabulary of figures, thus if the couple in front of you is moving down the LoD slowly or not at all, knowing what I know at this point, I’d respond by leading natural boxes or turns that always place me back into the same starting position until space opened up and I could use progressionals to continue down the LoD.

Concerning Sway: the body should be always moving as the figure progresses, there is no point at which one should be still to complete some footwork or rise and fall. This fluid motion assists in creating a proper sway to the music.

Concerning the knees: they must be kept bent lower than one would expect, and also must be as loose as rubber bands.

Concerning Posture: I sleep on my right side out of superstition, and he called me out on it because he noticed a tenseness around my right shoulder and a slight tendency to turn my hips towards the right, which leads my arms to push towards the right and communicates confusing signals.

Exercises:

1. Balls of one foot on a stair, the other foot hanging down. Drop first heel and then bring it up as high as possible.

2. Practice closing by pretending one foot has a high heel and the other a low heel.

3. Back, heels, head against the doorframe or wall and sliding out foot and then closing.

4. Practicing everything while holding a tray with cups of water on it, and I must not spill any.

film: Fellini: 8 1/2 (1963)

Obviously, I’ve been putting writing about this film on hold for nearly two weeks, and I’m still not particularly eager to think about it, but it must be done, and so that’s that.

I suppose a good starting point is Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. The turning point for me, when I stopped judging books on their entertainment value and began considering them as ways to learn about life and myself, it took place over a month or so when I was 15. I’m sorry to say it involved precisely the books one would expect, but the truth is that around here we simply don’t have access to the names or titles necessary to an education–that is, if we’re not introduced to it, we don’t know what the right questions are. So when Lord of the Flies brought me to my knees, the people at the bookstore told me I should read Catcher, and from there I was assigned Catch-22 for school. I was more than 200 pages into it before I realized that it was supposed to be funny, and that all the things I hadn’t understood were because I was trying to read it as an entirely serious novel. And then I read 17 books by Kurt Vonnegut–usually I read about one per day. Vonnegut is a starting point, and I don’t think he’s much more than that. Mother Night remains my favorite work of his because it doesn’t fall into the trap that is the decades long retelling, retelling, retelling of his philosophy on life. At some point it occurred to me that I was simply reading the same book repeatedly. And the worst thing one can do is to look for what’s next by moving forward in time–it’s not difficult to move from Vonnegut to any number of postmodern authors, I don’t know, Pynchon or Barthelme, or simply look for the strange, Batailles or Beckett or Sartre, but at some point, one will be shown a door to the past, and refusing to open it is a terrible mistake. Doing otherwise, I think, leads to a hell of circles and confusion, of endings and false beginnings, and no concept of gravity or greatness. Luke and I once argued, his position being that the aesthetic or creative value of all works of art must be judged against both what came before and what came after them. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.

That was a tangent, and I was hoping it would lead nicely into what I wanted to discuss, but it didn’t, and so it’s very likely that I’m not really going to discuss anything at all, but I have to write until I make some sort of point. Oh, well, here’s the comparison between Fellini and Heller: the opening to 8 1/2 chilling. During a traffic jam in which no cars are moving, the cars are close enough together that they cannot open their doors. It’s summer, everyone is very hot. In one of the cars, smoke begins pouring out of the dashboard, but the man cannot open his door, nor can he break open his windows,  all while people in other cars look on not with fear, but as if at least something entertaining is occurring. And then he dies. The face of the man is never shown, but the hat is the same hat worn by the protagonist, so things begin making sense. What’s difficult is that nobody tells you that this film contains many comic elements–what’s also difficult is that I don’t know how it gained such wide success when it seems to address a problem faced by a small minority of people: artists: writer’s block. I’m led to wonder if perhaps everyone else simply has to deal with life-block, since satisfaction in life seems best attained through creativity of one sort or another, whether that means painting or fucking. So, life-block.

Guido’s ‘dead father complains about the size of his tomb’ (‘8 1/2.’ John C. Stubbs. Journal of Aesthetic Education © 1975 University of Illinois Press. p97), there’s a ‘Mack Sennett’ chase scene on the beach, ‘Gloria’s phony intellectualism, Guido’s cowboylike flick of his hat in the harem sequence, Jacqueline Bonbon’s dance, and the hanging of the pessimistic critic, to name only a few examples.’

But what I think I got wrong is Fellini’s use of comic elements–rather, they happen to be comic caricatures amongst a great number of varied caricatures. Here:

1. The episodic nature of the film.

2. The ugly faces.

3. Lavishness.

4. Comic treatment of dreams/fantasies

5. Grotesques of the mundane

6. Characters’ own grandeur.

Briefly, Fellini got his start as an artist of caricatures, line drawings; he went on to study comedy and become a comedy/sitcom writer, and only then went on to directing. But I think his interest in caricatures strongly characterizes his treatment of nearly every subject he explores in this film.

1. The episodic nature of the film: Fellini summed up the film as one ‘”in which parts of the past and imaginary events are superimposed upon the present“‘ (ibid. p102). And while this is something that undoubtedly occurs at all points in our lives, almost constantly, it’s not something usually addressed nor dissected. In this case, it is, all three seamlessly given equal attention that, through the unnecessary weight is nothing short of caricature.

2. Ugly faces: when we watched the first half of Juliet of the Spirits, I was crushed to be so disgusted by a film whose soundtrack I’d so long loved. Indeed, one of the difficulties for me watching Fellini’s films are that I know the music of Nino Rota pretty damn well, so that I already have associations with each song, they are not connected to the films. But, to the point: he not only chooses ugly and obese people, he gives them many close-ups. John Waters also chooses ugly and obese people, but he does not treat them in the same way because he rather abuses them while Fellini lets them just exist so that he might study them.

3. Lavishness: in Juliet this is obvious because of the colors, so bright and offensive I can barely breathe. They’re somewhat unnatural, which is also the nature of technicolor (whose day had already come and gone, which makes me think it likely he chose technicolor precisely for this reason), but there are enough examples of technicolor subtlety that his decisions are another example of, indeed, caricature.

4. Comic treatment of dreams/fantasies: comic because it’s the sort of things we think about: while being criticized many people may imagine the death of the critic. In this film the fantasies are carried out, and then swept away just as quickly. The death of the critic is very, very funny, as a result. Guido’s own fantasized death is less funny, as in his shame he crawls beneath a table and shoots himself during a press conference. But it makes us chuckle because it’s also true. Perhaps dreams and fantasies are inherently caricatures because of the depth of focus we give them as they consume us, but, regardless, treatment of them in a film is uncommon, and thus…

5. Grotesques of the mundane: In the meantime, everything commonplace in the film becomes outlandishly grotesque, silence is softer, the elderly older, parties more frantic, time moving faster. Scenes occur in places that seem unreal yet familiar.

6. Characters’ own grandeur: the spaceship launch pad that has no known purpose, but will be used somehow, the columns, the sizes of all buildings and the extent to which Guido carries everything is simply beyond what’s necessary.

Okay, I’m completely done with this.

Ballroom, week 8

I never mentioned dance shoes to my instructor before–I figured that if I waited long enough, if he came to believe in me, he’d ask me to go buy some. Today he asked. Hooray! So I went to go buy some, it all seemed pretty straightforward, and they didn’t have any like the ones he described–character shoes and ballroom shoes both had a steel bar through the bottoms so that they wouldn’t be flexible. But jazz shoes, that have split soles, are like little rubber socks. I didn’t want rubber bottoms, and she said leather would be too slippery, but that suede would allow me to slide without slipping, which is what my instructor told me was something I should look for, though he said leather. So I didn’t buy any shoes…though I nearly bought all of them. In any case, I don’t have anywhere good to practice. The kitchen is too small now, so I’ve been doing it in socks in a carpeted room or in shoes outside. It’s all rather silly.

Concerning the Left Box: I don’t know why it’s called that since it goes to the right, though it commences on the left foot.

Concerning the 3-Cs: this is the term to remember the Rise and Fall pattern when waltzing. The term stands for Commence-Continue-Continue. That is, one begins with bent knees, commences the rising action on beat 1, continues it on 2, continues it on 3. On the + of 3 the falling action begins, which would be perceived as a ‘drop’ (an indelicate term, apparently) if the entire falling action took place between the + of 3 and beat 1; rather, the lowering action begins on the +, which is where the knees are being lowered, the weight transferred to one foot, and CBM takes place if necessary. It’s in the next step, on beat 1, that the falling action concludes and rising action begins.

Concerning Rise: Keep in mind that the body will try to compensate for beginning with one’s knees too high by ‘double-lowering’ on beat 2, in anticipation of the rise on beat 3. The proper way to navigate this dilemma is, of course, to begin with one’s knees bent lower, and to Think about it as if one begins low, continues low, and then rises on beat 3. The body will take care of the rest, that is the commencement and continuation on the first two beats, naturally, from what I can tell.

Concerning Fall: In the Left Box, on the + of 3 (where the leader steps backwards on R), the left knee should be bent low enough that it covers the foot. This places one low enough to commence rising on 4. Rise and Fall should additionally be found within the pulse of the music, which will dictate the flow of movement.

Concerning leading a reverse step: This is led by not giving any indication of moving forward but actually moving one’s body backwards.

Concerning Progressives: So called because they assist one in ‘progressing’ down the floor. I’ve learned two reasons why not to go with a dance school chains, the first being that they teach patterns rather than method so that one only knows what to do when dancing with other students of the school. The second reason, then, is that it takes more than patterns to dance well socially since as a leader one must know what the next figure will be at least before closing the previous one–this is because rooms have different shapes and obstacles (such as columns) and a varying number of people who may or may not know what they’re doing.

So I totally bought some shoes. I don’t know if they’re what I was supposed to buy, but the bottoms are suede, and they don’t look like leather socks (which is what jazz shoes seem to me), and they’re special because I’m not allowed to wear them outside or else I’ll ruin them instantly. They’re so much fun, though, I’m very pleased!