Waiting for Godot

The first minute of this clip from Waiting for Godot is certainly one of the most captivating scenes in all film adaptation history (well, I might be exaggerating a bit, but the scene is powerful nonetheless):

http://video.google.ca/videosearch?q=waiting+for+godot&hl=en&emb=0&aq=0&oq=waiting+for+g#

A homesless man on a barren land stares at the sky, waiting for something, anything, or anyone. The sky is empty. Beside him, another homeless man fights to take his boots off, completely immersed in his own attempts in getting those damned boots off his feet! He sighs and says, "Nothing to be done" (of course, he was talking about the shoes swallowing his feet) and his friend turns to him and says, "I'm beginning to come around to that opinion" (and here, Vladimir is talking about salvation).

I remember reading Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in my first year at UofT and with all honesty, I was bored to death and was looking for some excitement, some action, some blood and gore. It was a good thing that the total reading time lasted no longer than 1hour! It took a long time for me to finally realize Beckett's intention in writing such a play, but this realization came after watching this one minute section of the film adaptation.

When reading a book, the reader's imagination is working continuously and often strenously to create possible worlds which could aid them in better understanding or preferrably matching the author's intent for orchestrating their work. Personally, I found it difficult to place myself within the character's world. Yes, I was bored like the characters. I was looking for someone or something (Godot) to un-bore me. I felt connected to them in that sense, but there had to be more.

I then began imagining what it would have been like if I had seen Waiting for Godot on stage. Would it have a better effect on me? Would it finally make me say, "Ahh, I get it Beckett!". The answer: nope, definitely not. I'd probably find myself staring at the back of everyone's head, imagining what their faces look like.

The wonderful thing about film adaptations is that it enables its viewers to completely enter a new world with very little effort on their part. The set doesn't seem artificial. We can enjoy a film in the comforts of our own home with little distraction. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the 2001 film adaptation of Waiting for Godot, beautifully portrays our own individual quest in finding that something or someone to change our lives, whether we're anxious to fall out of the repetitiousness of every day living to finally getting a break from the mania happening all around us. The film's setting also enables us to wonder what it would be like when everything we've ever come to know is gone, taken away from us. We'd be left scurrying for Godot just like Vladimir and Estragon. We'd be left either wondering if the answers are written in the sky like Vladimir, or be left fighting for our survival like Estragon. The film made me realize that life is essentially this: it is a fight for survival and a time to wait for divine salvation.

Allen Ginsberg's Recitation of "White Shroud"

I've seen this videoclip a billion times and thought I'd post it up here. It's of Allen Ginsberg talking about his methods of thought collecting and writing it all down. Closer to the end of the clip, he recites a poem called "White Shroud" which he dedicated to his deceased mother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBDCrp_8NwM

You could say that Ginsberg's recitation is a form of adaptation. It was likely that he read that poem a million times over in front of a million different crowds and with every reading, his intonation and emphasis on certain words may have been altered during the process. He also had the authority to emit words or add them. So why then does it have such a strong effect on me as a listener, viewer, and reader? Doesn't he become a mere actor? A medium to repeat the lines of written work? Unlike the videoclip that I posted in the blog below of Ginsberg's "Howl", his recitation of "White Shroud" made the hair on my neck stand up. If films were stripped down to the core (if we take away the special effects, the sounds, the extras, etc ...) we'd be left with an actor/actress alone with his/her lines. All of the colorful and loud mumbo-jumbo that motion pictures presents to us steals away the intention or meaning of the author. I love this video clip of Ginsberg because we better understand his loyalty to his writings. When we hear him, he emphasizes again and again that what really matters is his writing.

Fidelity In Poem Adaptations: Is It Possible?

Every once in a while (or whenever time allows me), I try my best to find silence so I may immerse myself entirely in the works of my favorite poets. Lately, thanks to Youtube, I've been spending a lot of time going through videoclips of poets reading their poetry. A lot of the videos also include personal interpretations and include music and motion pictures to accompany the recited poems. Now, after reading a few of the comments under some of the videos, I noticed that a lot of people are apprehensive about what they're seeing and hearing. Many people discredited some videos for their failure in interpreting the "true" meaning of the poems while many others praise and thank the video creator for enlightening them.

Here is a video clip of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" released in a collection in 1956.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBzCG4H8uo

One person commented on the animations of the video and suggested that it be more "abstract" rather than being right on point. In my opinion, I don't believe that this will make a difference. It will still be an adaptation nonetheless. Although the animation serves to clarify the meaning of the poem, it still fails to effectively express the brutality, the ugliness, and crude honesty coming from Ginsberg's words and his actual self.

Here are the first few lines of Ginsberg's epic poem "Howl":

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix [...]

In these few lines, he speaks of deadly drug addictions and the fall of his fellow Beatnik comrades. I've read these lines over and over again and have it tattooed on my mind. I've allowed myself to be situated in Ginsberg's mind and allowed myself to feed on his every word until I understood and felt the hysteria that he speaks of. After watching the video, I was happy to see its colorful depictions but it was incapable at grabbing the meat and soul of the poem. I believe that any sort of interpretation cannot effectively emminate the profoundness and brutal honesty of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl".

Dangerous Knowledge Will Eat You Alive.

Hannibal Lecter is by far, the most fascinating of all horror film villians (at least in my books). He's the representation of "dangerous knowledge". "Dangerous knowledge" can be anything. With Hanibbal Lecter, its the "I know what went on in Dante's mind when he wrote the Inferno" and "I can tell how deranged your soul is by the way you look at me" type of knowledge. He represents the kind of knowledge that people labor and sacrifice their life to attain. Those who try to capture him, to contain him, or to kill him end up being "eaten alive".

Edward Scissorhands: Society's Much Needed Change.

I just finished watching Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" and it is by far one of the best movies I have ever seen. Truth be told, I hardly watch films and rely on friends to guide me when it comes to film choosing. This film beautifully and colorfully portrays the feelings of being Othered in a society that is so perfectly constructed and so stainlessly white that a single disturbance causes the entire neighborhood to fall into crumbles. It conveys humanity's fear in CHANGE (I have taken into consideration that a lot of films have monsters just to scare the souls out of people but monsters such as the creature in "Frankenstein" perfectly exemplifies this change that I'm talking about). Back in the 1950s and the 1960s, the biggest trend was conformity. This was in style back then:

So in this picture, we have the husbands/fathers/breadwinners in their cars driving off to work. In the different colored yet similarly structured homes, we have the wives eagerly waiting for the latest gossip because there's nothing else to do at home but flirt with plummers and sing Christian hymns. The children are at school learning about things that they're "supposed" to know about their reality and dogs are doing what dogs do best on the lawn. Perfect neighborhood, right?
Then in comes the CHANGE or the "shit disturber":

His Being was made with good intentions (born with a "cookie heart") and his creativity is inspiring. But why are people still afraid of Eddie?


I find it funny how the encounter with the Other is portrayed as sexually arousing in this film. I'm talking about the scene when the cougar had her first hair cut by him. There's no doubt that she was truly enjoying herself. However, their encounters went sour when Edward (the Other) appeared to be more in control (ie. when he ran away from her after she took off her clothes in the back of the salon). It was then that the he was seen as a violent threat to the society's 'purity'.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is this: imagine if we allowed a bunch 'Scissorhands' to live in our neighborhoods. We'd have incredibly good looking lawns and not only that, we'd be sporting wicked hairdos and our dogs wouldn't be so boring to look at.

Terrorists In Films.

Last summer, for Garry Leonard's 'Imperial Imaginary in Cinema' class, we watched a film called "Safe". It's about this woman named Carol White (notice the last name), and she undergoes these spells of hallucinations as the environment around her changes. The entire semester consisted of analyzing first world and third world films and how they depict so called "heroes" and "terrorists". In this particular film, the terrorists are invisible and resides in the air. The cause of her illness was due to the increasing progression of her society, a.k.a. modernity (insert scary music here). Her frantic ill episodes were also the cause of her purity or "whiteness" being stained. In this YouTube clip, we see her reacting to the "whiteness" of her social circle and she begins an angry convulsion that freaks out her friends. The stain on her "whiteness" becomes more visible to her and her friends:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwNsS2XIKvk

The 'terrorist' in this film (the chemicals in the air) reminds me so much of the creature in "Frankenstein". Although he is a visible threat to society, he embodies 'modernity' by being a creation of modern technology (electricity and science). He also terrorizes a predominately white and pure community. In the film, he drowns a "flower picking white virginal girl" in the water and in the novel, he kills William, Victor's innocent younger brother. He causes everyone anguish yet Victor Frankenstein knows that he is the creation of humankind. In the end of "Safe", we see Carol White in front of the mirror saying "I love you, I love you, I love you ..." and the movie ends there. It is assumed that she committed suicide but the film doesn't show proof of this assumption. In monster films, the monster never dies. It will forever lurk in our existence. It seems that death itself is the end all of all problems. By not showing Carol White's death, Todd Haynes ("Safe"'s filmmaker) suggests that the terror of the invisible galls in our environment will forever haunt us and that there is always something to stain our "paradise".

Alfred Hitchcock's "Shower Scene"

Here is a clip of Alfred Hitchcock's infamous shower scene in his film "Psycho" which was released in 1960:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbH0wp_2vPQ

During the past couple of classes, we've been talking a lot about sex. More specifically, we've been talking about the inexplicit suggestion of sexual violence in films such as 1931's "Frankenstein" and 1979's "Alien". Being the last survivor of a ship that unfortunately lands on a distant planet inhabited by strange creatures, "Alien"'s Ripley is left vulnerable and alone. The camera angles reinforce her vulnerability as the view focuses on her rear as she reaches over a control panel. To cut the story short, the creature leaps out of nowhere, sees her half naked, tries to capture her, but is shot out of a gaping hole and is thrown out of the ship. The creature itself is a male phallic symbol. It wants to inseminate the ship in hopes of creating more monstrous offsprings.


It even 'looks' like a phallus.




Now, in "Frankenstein", the gap between Elizabeth's encounter with the monster in her bedroom and her screams suggest that the film maker's censorship insinuates that Elizabeth had been raped in between the gap. Her tossled hair and limp body on the bed further reinforces this idea.

I would like to now focus on Hitchcock's "Psycho". The female character in the shower cannot be any more vulnerable ... being naked and all. Then someone comes out of nowhere with a knife. It is characteristic of "monsters" to come out of nowhere, like from creepy corners, from dark rooms, and eerie garbage bins in dark alleys. In this film, the "monster" comes from behind a shower curtain. Now the stabbing incident is the most interesting part of the shower scene. The knife, according to many cultural critics (especially feminist critics) is symbollic of the male phallus. What caught my attention is this one shot of her lower abdomen being stabbed:






Most of the shots taken during the shower scene are close-ups of the female victim's face but the only shots to show 'penetration' happens to be of her lower abdomen. Once again, we as viewers are inexplicately shown the female characters being raped by the 'monsters' in the film. With closer examination, we see a conventional image of the defenseless female unable to save herself let alone save humanity altogether. To sum up, it seems like the female victims of horror films are left to suffer the same fate.