From a Diary of the Plague Year (5)

Someone said to someone
as they walked by at the appropriate
pandemical remove, "Why
isn't the inactivity more uncontrived?"

The other person replied, "Is that
really what it said?"

As I was already uncontagiously
past them, I had to make up answers:
"Because we're dealing with actors" and
"No, but that's what she said it said."

Anti-social distancing is turning my life
into a French experimental film
from 1977. I'm grateful.


hans ostrom 2020

In a Lobby of a Cinema Complex

This complex isn't simple. Figures
strolling across a neon-glossy floor
toward theater-caves, bathrooms, or
sugar and salt: they and I
are already dead--like people
photographed by cinema in 1939.
And we've been replaced by others
who move about here just as we do,
we did. Maybe one of them

is morbid, or at least fatalistic,
and feels for a moment as if time
has already departed, leaving
behind only light on a screen
flickering imperceptibly
and kernels of corn exploded
into tiny thunderheads. Before
going into the movie, I think
this scene may be the better movie.


hans ostrom 2016

Aspects of the Main Stream

In the pavilions of forbidden solitude,
citizens could not escape their screens.
And tiny hovering machines
recorded what little reflection people
could manage to generate,
for thoughtfulness was deemed
counter-productive to all aspects
of the status quo. There had been no need

to prohibit poetry, improvised musics,
philosophy, and playful disquisitions
in public squares, for all of these,
including public squares, had simply
fallen out of style, and style was all.

Self-regimentation and enervated irony
(pallid sarcasms) prevailed in those days.
The cinema and its derivatives featured
chiefly "super heroes" and sequels,
categories that rose like massive
computer-generated plinths
over the tomb of imagination.


hans ostrom 2015

The Post and the Cinema

I grew up fond of the post,
its letters and envelopes,
typed script and cursive,
stamps and addresses.
Its pace of weeks and days,
years and months.
Its slow magic. Now
it labors, a harried
beast with no charm
and many enemies.
I'm used to its
alleged replacements,
but once I loved the post.

I used to fall into cinema
as if it were a liquid dream,
a pool of better reality.
Now I see through it to
the cynicism, the
racism and capital,
bad writing, bad acting,
no acting, no point.
Hollywood's a sewage-
processing plant by another
name. I like some films
all right. But I used
to love the cinema.

It's another thing
to watch, is all,
institutions altered,
dead, or dying,
drifting by like dirigibles.



hans ostrom 2015

Video: "Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley In Heaven"

Re-posting the short film based on my poem of the same title.

What Should I Watch?

Wow, I can order, like a general,
movies on my TV! On Demand, with a
price. So: On Pay. That's
kind of cute. I see what
you did there. What should I watch?

How about the tenth sequel based
on a fucking comic book, with a short
actor dressed in latex
and a plot
as predictable
as a
bowel
movement
and credits
as long as
the Bataan
Death March?

How about the 15th gangster movie
from the noted director who makes
gangster movies with short actors
who have New York accents and
play at being tough, with make-up
and all? Bada-Boom, Bada-Wadda-
Dada could you please just
stop talking, stop
talking
in
that
accent?

How about a film in which Black
women actors play maids or whores?

Or another film with the wrinkled,
70-year-old actor whose eyes look
like charcoal piss-holes in the snow?
He will be paired with a woman
who has had her faced carved
by switch-blade Frankenstein
cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills.

Or another political thriller
in which a short man with a broad
female ass plays a rogue agent
who is American
who is American
who is American
who blows up shit
who glows up shit
and flows up shit and
who never grows up? Shit!

How about a goddamned puppet-movie?
Or a virtual puppet-movie, with
that digital puppet-crap they
invented? Yeah, a talking fucking
car, a virtual teddy bear, all of it
"voiced" by members of this
bizarre celebrity oligarchy
that invites world leaders
to parties in Malibu, pays
people to carry dogs no bigger
than postage stamp, and gets
high-colonic enemas in Costa Rica?

Oh, I know. A romantic comedy,
in which the actress, who is 45,
plays a flirty nerd who is,
I shit you not, supposed to be
less than 30. You know, one
of those romantic comedies
that isn't romantic or funny
but basically a set of still photos
paired with frozen jokes
and inept physical stunts?

Jesus Moses Sebastian Mohammed
Buddha Bogart, what ever
happened to timing?

Oh, wait. There's another movie
by that guy who is 108 years old
and jacks off to kiddy-porn
and lives in New York
and is important
and gets the financing
and gets the financing
and has a broker
and is afraid of anybody
not White
and is
a
genius
and is
a genius
and is
and is
and is
and is
a genius? Have
you seen his
latest movie?
Oh, it's wonderful.
It's set in a famous city
that middle-class
Americans
visit
by
the
millions. He
is a
genius. Have
you seen it? Oh,
he is wonderful. Oh,
I love
his
movies.

Yes, please, a movie
by the hick-genius
who made one good movie
and who is short
and talks tough
and now says "we"
when he means "I"
and is no doubt
and is no doubt
thought to be smart
in Hollywood.

Better yet, a movie
with one of the three
older Black male actors
who get work in Hollywood.
One has a voice but doesn't act.
One acts but doesn't have a voice.
The third acts and has a voice
but is just a bit too
talented to be safe.
"A Black man in Hollywood ..."
say those in the know. Inside
joke.

Imagine if people, seriously,
Occupied Hollywood. Imagine
progressive, suave poseurs
having to call the police
to have the police
beat up the people. Imagine,
that is, Hollywood
without the makeup,
no longer the last
institution that is
beyond
scrutiny,
beyond
contempt.

Imagine Hollywood
on
the
run,
shitting
its
pants,
stuck
in its BMW,
stuck
in a mob. Cut!

Wow. I think I'll
watch
that.




hans ostrom 2013

Recommended Film: Two Indians Talking

Two Indians Talking is a new independent Canadian film directed by Sara McIntyre and written by Andrew Genaille. It's deftly directed, understated film about what it says it's about: two Cree Indians talking about life, love, right and wrong, beliefs, aspirations, and especially their people.  The conversations occur as the two wait for reinforcements are supposed to help them block a major highway as a way of advocating for tribal rights and title.

Nathaniel Arcand plays Nathan, who is heading toward 30 if not already there. He dropped out of high school and has given up on his dream of being a famous musician.  He is, however, savvier than he pretends to be.  His main interests are women and looking out for the best interests of his people.

Justin Rain plays Adam, a kind of prototypical gifted child who eventually went off to college.  He's well read and opinionated, fierce in his own way, but also a shy loner who is less certain of his views than he pretends to be. He's the reluctant participant in the impending protest, caught between the instinct to live life through gaining knowledge and the necessity to fight back by means of activism.  Adam and Nathan are cousins but the dynamic of their relationship is more like that of younger and older brother.

There are faint echoes of My Dinner With Andre, from back in the day, but these conversations are earthier, less pretentious, and well grounded in the predicament of the Cree in Canada.  Nonetheless, Nietzsche plays more than a cameo role, thanks to Adam and his philosophical bent.

A lot of droll, wry humor threads itself through Adam's and Nathan's bickering and reminiscences as the film develops toward its denouement.

The actor Sam Bob also injects a superb comic performance about two-thirds of the way through.  He appears to be the sum total of the reinforcements but assures Adam and Nathan that "one Cree is all it takes." 

Denyc and Ashley Harry also turn in strong performances as two young Cree women who drop by to see the lads. Denyc plays Tara, who matches Adam opinion for opinion.  Sara McIntyre's careful direction brings out the best in these and other scenes.

The film is, among other things, perfectly suited to college classes in Canada and the U.S. that focus on the situation of contemporary Indians, aboriginal peoples,  multi-ethnic issues, and independent film-making.

Two Indians Talking has already won awards from the Vancouver International Film Festival and the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. It will also be featured at the Victoria B.C. film festival, and this weekend, Sara McIntyre (and the film) will visit the Spokane Film Festival; she will be there February 11 and 12.

Here is a link to the facebook page for the film.

Positionality?

If you hang around academics who teach in the humanities, then you have my condolences. Just kidding. Before that rude clause intruded, I was about to write . . . then you will eventually hear the terms "subject-position" or "positionality."

No, the words don't refer to yoga or Zen, or to grammar, or to sports, in which one may play different positions.

They refer to what used to be called something like "point of view" or "perspective."

Yesterday my point of view was pretty glum. In fact, I may have had the blues--or "the blue-devils," as Abraham Lincoln referred to the condition. But I managed to get some perspective on my perspective by evening (nice word, evening). Good grief, now the lyric, "I just dropped in to see what condition my condition is in," is in my head--Kenny Rogers and the First Edition--help!

Anyway, my perspective, a couple of close advisors, and I watched a film from the Eighties, Diva. French film, 1981. And--surprise!--it was as good as if not better than I had remembered it, and I hadn't seen it since 1981. It is visually superb without being mannered.

In part in concerns electronic recording, and although the equipment is antique and therefore potentially laughable, the writers and directors don't make too much of the technology. Recording and plot mix with the ethics of recording, so you don't focus on extinct things like cassettes. Toss in just a bit of Zen, opera (and music in general), race, gender, wit, and exploitation, and you have a terrific movie, and one that knows its limits. It's one of those films that tries just hard enough but not too hard.

I did notice how much longer scenes from Eighties movies are. There's very little manic camera-work and editing-on-speed that characterizes most feature-films today. I think the attention-span of visual-image consumers now can't span very much.

Oh, and the diva happens to be a diva in real life: Jessye Norman, American opera-singer.

But back to "positionality." Why was a funny new word like that necessary to invent? Well, that's partly what academics do. They invent new words. Also, the emphasis is placed on what a person or a character in a novel or a writer does, as opposed to what that person sees or thinks, so there's a focus on power or (wait for it) "agency." Also, one may speak of "positions" in relation to one another. (Wow. Go crazy.) Of course, there's some recent post-modern, post-Structuralist history to the shift in terminology, but we needn't go into that.


Positionality

I've misplaced my subject-position. It happens.
According to the post-modernist rulebook, which
is only virtual, my default positionality is therefore
one of befuddlement, which could be a ruse, except
a ruse seems so pre-modern, even atavistic. One
thing's certain: I'm not a mystic. Positionality
is such a tricky business. If you write or speak

the word, "positionality," then you've pretty much
positioned yourself into a pretentious corner, and
the commonly insensitive Anglo-Saxon ax will fall
on your multi-syllabic Deluxe Latinate Impressor,
which comes with its two-speed abstractionator.

Cut to: a meadow. My subject-position transport-
system, a hot-air balloon, lies sideways and un-
inflated, mere fabric amidst flax-stubble. This
is Not A Problem. This is Laugh Out Loud.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom