On Manhatta

Lisette Model’s photograph taken spontaneously on the streets of Manhattan
Image via NOWNESS

Perhaps it was the unusual poetic beauty of its subject, its brevity, or the fact that I’m still basking in the warm honeymoon glow of a recent pilgrimage wearing a pair of rose-coloured eyeglasses I picked up there (and have been unable to remove since)  – or an apt cocktail of all three - but Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler’s 1921 ode to early modern New York, the City Symphony Manhatta, held my gaze unwaveringly for its almost ten minute duration, admittedly unlike the other two Symphonies before it; so much so that I felt compelled to don one of those tacky (but great) and ubiquitous I <3 NY t-shirts and never take it off. Or perhaps not; instead a blog entry will have to suffice for now.

The film, much like its contemporaries, chooses a loose, vignette based narrative in favor of a linear plot; and, where other symphonies shirk intertitles, Strand and Sheeler intersperse stanzas extracted from Walt Whitman’s poem ‘Leaves Of Grass’ to both inform the languid series of takes in between and imbue the film with the pace and poeticism of the prose form. Whitman’s stanzas are visually realized, almost word-for-word, or word-for-image, from the first frames: a ferry approaching the South Sea Port of Manhattan, at first from the perspective of a passenger on board a boat which we soon see is teaming with commuters and then from a height far removed from the masses, is paired with intertitles reading: 


City of the world
(for all races are here)
City of tall facades
Of marble and iron,
Proud and passionate city...
When million footed Manhattan
Unpent, descends
To its pavement


We are simultaneously immersed within and distanced from the masses that form the lifeblood of this city, the million footed citizens we now see descending from the ferry into the city. By contrasting perspectives of both a passenger on board and a bystander, a witness from above, the cinematic apparatus is removed from an entirely human field of vision and perception; we are at once both a part of and a participant in this city from the level of the street and from beyond.

The film, though silent, takes on an oral and aural rhythm by virtue of the extracts interspersed throughout – emulating the spoken word in its tone of grandeur and awe at the marvel of modernity, or at least, that’s how I found myself relishing in the resplendent descriptions of ‘high growths of iron, slender, strong, splendidly uprising toward clear skies’. The camera then luxuriates in these images, hardly moving from the highly abstract compositions created by the cinematic lens. This provides an interesting contrast to the nature of what is being presented: where Manhattan is usually considered a city of perpetual motion, it is interesting that here the camera provides moments of stillness far above this bustling metropolis. Here of course Strand’s photographic background, with his eye for composure and the explicit distinction between the tallest building and the smallest laborer, comes to the fore in an elaborate exploration of the poetics of scale.

The camera then continues to alternate between the city at eye-level and the city from above, juxtaposing images of construction – building sites with subterranean roots – with panoramic vistas filmed from atop skyscrapers. From this privileged vantage point we bear witness to the striking architectural facades of these colossal modern structures, steadfast and unwavering, the only glimpse of an interior life gestured to in the forms of anonymous masses of workers and the billowing steam which pours forth from rooftop vents – at once both a tangible presence and an ephemeral specter of impermanence in contrast to these (seemingly) permanent monuments to modernity. 

On Berlin

Berlin, November 9, 1980.

Image via NOWNESS

I'll be honest, this is the first thing that popped into my head when I started to think about thinking about writing this post on my initial reaction to Walther Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City - a line from the lyrics of Nelly Furtado's popular dance/pop/R&B song from 2006, 'Promiscuous', which, despite the considered subtlety of the lyrics, neatly sums up my initial reaction upon viewing the first highly constructed frames of Ruttmann's film:

I be [sic] the first to admit it,

I'm curious about you,

You seem so innocent.

You wanna get in my world,

Get lost in it,

Boy I'm tired of running let's walk for a minute.

And now, due to the infectious rhythm and verbal ping-pong of the song, it’s firmly planted in my head and I’ve no choice but to run with it from here on in.

Oblique pop cultural references aside, I was in fact at first entirely curious about the world in which we find ourselves lost through Ruttmann’s deployment of a highly modern, avant-garde aesthetic. However, I’ll admit that the noticeable lack of a soundtrack proved to be an unforeseeable challenge to my viewing and enjoyment of the film. The silence of the film, and the silence of the sparse auditorium in which it was screened, evoked an almost awkward reverence for the projected image with uncanny parallels able to be drawn with the original perception and reaction of early modern audiences to early screenings of the film, and of cinema in general.

I found it interesting, in subsequent discussions of the film, the number of ways in which people have responded to the absence and presence of sound, which has lead me to consider the importance of absence in regard to these silent films – a concern which has further extended into my consideration of texts in other subjects I’m undertaking, both film and novel alike.

I thought one concept that was raised, of auditory hallucinations, was particularly interesting; a notion which resonates with the film’s lack of a conventional plot, inviting the viewer to instead conjure narrative hallucinations and invest narratives of their own making into a film otherwise driven by an almost documentary sequence of images and events that provide an impression of daily life in a thoroughly modern city. The importance of absence is something that has been raised in another English course I'm undertaking - ENGL3605 Contemporary British Literature - with particular regard to the film discussed in this last week's seminar, an interesting, albeit bleak, film from the UK, Morvan Callar. Specifically, the first five or so minutes of the film are completely silent, void of both dialogue and music; the silence is only periodically permeated (and the scene entirely lit) by the monotonous drone of a set of Christmas tree lights. The complete absence of a guiding soundtrack provides an interesting point of departure for an audience, who are left unassisted and challenged in the viewing of the film. I found this to also be true of Berlin.  

The fracturing of the film’s structure, and the replacement of a discernable narrative, had an obvious and an interesting resonance with the nature of modern life and demonstrated a self-awareness or reflexivity of cinema as part of forward thrust of modernity that the film so explicitly documents. As above-mentioned, I often find the beginning of a film to be largely indicative of its overall mood, or at least one of the more interesting and important moments (if it doesn’t grab you then you know you’re in trouble) and I felt that Act One was exemplary of this. The abstracted and rhythmically overlain shapes emulating the constant rhythms of sunrise and sunset, superimposed with the shapes replicating the lowering of the level crossing at a train intersection, which then dissolved into that juxtaposition with the actual train evoked not only the history of cinema itself, but the symbol of the locomotive as an avatar of the forward thrust of modernity. Other filmic parallels were then further evoked between the repeated frames of the train tracks and film reels; the windows from which the footage was shot and the cinematic frame within which this highly constructed view of the world is contained. The relationship between the city and its inhabitants was explored through the use of rhythmic cutting and associative montage as devices to suggest that although the human figure may appear diminutive in scale to the modern metropolis with its grid-like anatomy of empty streets, factories and sewers, the poetic forms and interiors of infrastructure - the bones of the city - the two are undoubtedly linked at both the level of the smallest gesture (a flight between two men) and the grandest scheme of cinema. 

On Blogs

Fashion/Personal Style Blogger, Tavi Gevinson, who achieved fame/notoriety/acclaim/derision 

for her blog http://www.thestylerookie.com/ in 2008 at Age 11. 

When I was sixteen - so in 2007 - my English teacher encouraged (read: it was compulsory) the entire class to write and submit a short story for the Young Writer Of The Year competition. The idea, I assume, was to enable us to think creatively (as is often the point) and develop a compendium of short narratives to have at our disposal for future assessments - ones which might be easily adaptable to a stimulus text in an English exam (was it Paper 1 or Paper 2?) - say, an image of an overgrown path winding through a black forest or a quote about overcoming adversity pulled straight from a motivational poster illustrated by a victorious one-legged seagull, potato chip hanging flaccidly from the vice-like grip of its fluorescent orange beak. The exercise, admittedly like most other forms of exercise I participate in, was left to the last minute and executed without as much as a drop of perspiration (this is blatantly untrue, I am a semi-regular jogger and one time Bikram Yoga enthusiast, which, in case you are unfamiliar, involves a previously unprecedented amount of sweating through a series of twenty-six postures over ninety minutes in a forty degree room).

I promise this is going somewhere.

To continue: I (for reasons unknown to me today) decided to write one thousand words from the perspective, and in the format of, a highly neurotic (and unlikeable) blogger who suffers from a crippling case of agoraphobia, and consequently, is only able to engage with the world beyond his window via the internet. Not a lot happened (I was – and still kinda am -  really into contemporary short fiction, in which not a lot happens), which could be attributed to my writing about exactly what I saw outside my own window and what I had experienced during my own day. Essentially, I was blogging by means of this take-home assignment. They (the gender non-specific protagonist) ate eggs for breakfast that day, and so did I. They didn’t care much for the overpowering flavor of bergamot in Earl Grey tea, and so did I (although I am a reformed Earl Grey enthusiast today). They had a passionate dislike for Kyle and Jackie O, and – you guessed it. Etcetera. Although a conflict or sorts arose when they awoke one morning to find their eggs cold and their mother dead under suspicious circumstances. Consequently, by virtue of their condition, they were unable, or at least not immediately compelled to, phone the relevant authorities for fear of having to ‘go downtown’ and leave the house – so instead, they blogged about it. End one thousand words, change the font, add an emoticon relevant to the format of social media blogging at the time (Hello, MySpace ;) ), spell-check, print.

The whole point of this spiel is to highlight that at this point, I was one of the very few people in my class of twenty-something something-teens who actually knew what a blog was. To this day, I’m sure a few of them might still be hesitant to describe one to you. Besides the vaguely onomatopoeic and unappealing name (it’s too close a relative to ‘blob’, ‘blot’ and ‘bloat’ – that, and my dictionary widget recommends you pronounce it bläg) which to my mind conjures portly, disheveled and stain-covered over-opinionated twenty-something’s mouthing off about topics considered dinner-party conversational taboos. I still feel like the overarching perception of blogs in general is that they are a maybe a little bit self-indulgent, narcissistic (that word gets thrown around a lot where blogs are concerned) and a conversational taboo of themselves. Again, my most reliable source of general knowledge ever, my dictionary widget, follows up on its entry on ‘blog’ with the example, ‘Most of his work colleagues were unaware of his blog until recently.’ Is it not just a little bit telling that our fictive exemplary blogger is perhaps so shamed of his pastime that he has been unable to share it with his work colleagues, like taxidermy or competitive line dancing, until now?  No? Just me?

‘Later that day I got to thinking…

(Thanks, Carrie Bradshaw – who would surely have a blog today had she actually been computer literature, let alone a three-dimensional character who could actually type despite the impediment caused by her having horse hooves – too much?)

… I couldn’t help but wonder’: is ‘blog’ still a dirty word? Maybe I’m reading too far into this, but lately people have seemed to wince in the split second before they pronounce the word; almost as if there is some electrical current which short-circuits somewhere between the brain and the tongue, as if a small man wearing denim overalls inside our brains sticks a fork into a power socket in that split second, looking up and asking us ‘are you sure you want to say this?’ and causing us to grimace and jerk involuntarily. Look out for it, especially from me.

Then again, maybe it isn’t - a dirty word, that is. Perhaps, outside of this realm of academic necessity, there is nothing at all wrong with freely and openly publishing one’s thoughts and opinions on the minutiae of everyday life and everything in between; offering their (presumably non-existent – not everyone can amass a following) readership a taste of what they too ate for breakfast that day, what they’re doing now, or what they wish they were doing instead. But then again, maybe there is - begging us to ask (and answer for ourselves) the age old question: who gives a… Not all bloggers and their blogs are bad though. In fact, these days, it would seem that a blog is now a valid platform from which to launch a successful career as a writer, a photographer, a journalist or just a talking head. We've come a long way since that English class in 2007...

But, then again, who isn’t a blogger these days? Every time one of my ‘friends’ posts something on Facebook, or Twitter, about their failed relationship or the state of their hangover, I die a thousand deaths, and concede that these updates are really just abridged versions of the blogs I read when I should be doing other things, albeit with less style, substance and aesthetic pleasure and taste. And to that list, now I can add: things I write when I should be doing other things, which is exactly what I'm doing now. I guess that would make be a hypocritical blogger, or, and this a hypblograsy. However, as so articulately put by one of our peers: I’m only doing this because I have to. At least that offers me some comfort.