It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Metropolis. It was absolutely essential to the creation of science fiction as a whole. Not only this, but it comes from a deeply stylized artistic genre that only works in silent film, an art lost to film history. Metropolis is considered German Expressionist, a full fledged artistic as well as filmic movement, with heavy symbolism and art-deco set design. The film is carried by the main female character, Maria, played by Brigitte Helm. Maria and her double are the catalysts for the entire film.

Largely considered by film critics as a late entry into the German Expressionist film canon, Metropolis can’t be taken strictly at face value. German Expressionism came as a reaction against realism, and the high aesthetics of the sets speak to the symbolic nature of much of the film. Viewers today might not say that Metropolis is particularly subtle (the first title card reads: “The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!” – laying out explicitly the metaphor for the entire film), but the symbolism works on several levels, and that overt symbolism covers up multiple levels of delicate, covert symbolism.

The movie is about a city, set far in the future, that is dependent on an oppressed lower class to run machinery constantly, or the city will malfunction on a catastrophic level. The upper class enjoys a city of light, with all the riches and technology they might need or want. The lower class lives under the city, and the upper class never has to see them. They walk in unison to and from work, as if they lack an identity outside of their job. Their jobs are mindless, but desperately important. If no one is there to run the machines, the lower city is in danger of flooding entirely.

Freder is the son of the wealthiest man in Metropolis, and has lived a life of leisure. One day while frolicking in the garden, Maria disturbs him by ushering in children of the workers. Freder, who has never seen one of the workers, is so moved that he wishes to join them. At the same time, a mad scientist has been working for Freder’s father, Joh Fredersen, to create a robot that would be so lifelike as to replace his dead wife. While Freder is organizing in the depths of the city, the scientist shows Fredersen what Maria is up to. Incensed, Fredersen instructs the mad scientist to capture Maria and stifle the masses. Instead of creating the robot in the dead wife’s image, he creates it in the image of Maria to sabotage her work with the lower class.

The plot is much more involved than this, but these are the major points to get to before chaos ensues in the city. Lang points to a population terrified of internal subversion using the overarching message of the mediator. The double of Maria – who is directly referenced as the “whore of Babylon” – sabotages the instincts of every story line within the film. She is not only a foil for the “good guys,” she is a foil for everything – including herself.

Maria is the only woman within the film who is given an identity separate from either sex or the machines. She is both saint and whore, in classic dichotomy, bearing both the choice and the outcome for the revolution. On the one hand, a peaceful uprising with mutually beneficial outcomes for the upper and lower classes, and on the other she represents bloody revolution and chaos out of which no good comes.

It’s a classic problem of Madonna vs. whore. In this abstract world, where symbolism is more important than reality, those are the only two options that a female character like Maria is given. Yet the male characters aren’t allowed much more depth – many of them are simply given a role, with no subtlety or realism or personality. Metropolis is less about gender in the eyes of the director/writer than it is about gender as a societal structure. The way the audience reads gender is an important clue to unlocking the symbolism of the film.

Silent film itself provides a set of unique challenges for both director and star. The actors are challenged to act primarily through body language – almost like dancers – and the extreme and expressive make-up conveys meaning beyond the forms. Today, seeing a film without a bombast of sound is a rare experience (with the exception of surprise hit The Artist). Mainstream directors have mostly done away with the idea of the silent film, and the experience may be new for a lot of viewers. Metropolis is a masterpiece, and while some viewers may need to adjust to the style, it resonates deeply for fans of science fiction and dystopia.

Metropolis, in its restored version, is currently streaming on Netflix Instant Queue.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rosemary discovers marks from inception.

It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it was about Rosemary’s Baby that stuck with me so much. This is the first (and at this point, the only) film I’ve seen by Roman Polanski and I went into the film thinking it would be another classic horror tale. Now, having seen it, I wouldn’t even really describe it as “horror.” It’s frightening because there’s very little, if anything, in the film you can trust as a viewer.

There’s something very primal about Rosemary’s fear. It’s natural that she would feel protective of her child, and also that she would feel threatened by shadowy forces. Mia Farrow’s performance is understated, to the point of almost feeling like a beautiful blank slate, which makes it easy for the audience to empathize with her. Ruth Gordon (of Harold and Maude fame) won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the intrusive, endearing, but ultimately evil neighbor. She plays up Polanski’s subtle, bleak humor, at the same time providing a powerful personality for Rosemary’s “blank slate” to shine against.

For the rest of this post, head over to Video Word Made Flesh and check it out!

Annie Hall (1977

If you have watched movies with me, you probably know that I’m not too into comedies. And when I am, it’s usually something really cerebral. Like anything Woody Allen makes.

Say what you want about the man, but his art … fantastic. I watched this a while ago, so there’s not much to say as far as analysis goes, but the script is brilliant, Diane Keaton is fantastic, and the fashion is wonderful. I don’t talk about enjoying comedies very often, but I loved “Annie Hall.”

I actually watched this a really long time ago, and it’s been a while, so I don’t have too much more to say, other than that I loved it.

Blue Velvet (1986)

"I don't know whether you're a detective or a pervert." "That's for me to know and you to find out."

The 2011 HD/re-release trailer claims that this is “one of the most disturbing movies of all time.” I’m … not quite sure I would say that, but it is pretty disturbing and not in any way for the faint-of-heart. The quote I used to caption this screenshot summarizes nicely the main theme of the film: voyeurism.

The movie starts out in a perfectly ordinary, even picturesque small town. The setting of the film seems to be a vague “some time in the past”, somewhere between the fifties and the eighties. The plot is kicked off when a young college student returns to his home town, goes on a walk, and finds a severed ear in the field. He talks to the local detective, but his curiosity is insatiable and he must continue the search for the killer. He leaps head-first into the dark side of the town, and soon gets in over his head with the local gang.

The young man (Jeffrey, I believe) determines that he must save this local night club singer Dorothy Vallens (played by Isabella Rosselini) from almost certain doom. Her husband has been captured, and to appease her husband’s captor, she must have graphic, kinky sex with him.

What I really loved about this film is the pseudo-nostalgia and the very dark humor. This movie is definitely making fun of the hard-boiled detective of film noir, turning questions of justice and righteousness back to the motive. I’ll be writing a much longer post about “Blue Velvet” for Video Word Made Flesh later this month, so I’ll refrain from writing too much here.

The X Files (seasons 1-2)

Scully and Mulder first meet!

I can’t believe it took me so long to start watching The X Files! I love this show – both the understated and the ridiculous aspects of it are done very well. I’m not sure whether to actually believe Mulder that things are as bad as they are, or to just enjoy watching Scully reign him in.

It’s difficult to sum up a tv show, especially one that aired for as long as this one did. I think the writers do a very good job of balancing the show being episodic with a sort of overall plot. They also make the show accessible to people that aren’t all that into UFOs. As a matter of fact, I think this is the first thing involving aliens that I liked. (At least, that I watched … I think there might have been a book involving aliens somewhere in there …)

**

This is just a sampling of the amazing movies/tv shows that I watched in 2011! Thank you all for bearing with me until the end of this post.

I do have some work planned for 2012. Specifically, I want to spend a lot of time reading books that Stanley Kubrick based movies on, watching the movies, and comparing the two. Should be fuuuuun … Anyway, there will be many more posts to come in the new year. Be excited!

Bronson isn’t a plot-heavy film. Instead, director Nicolas Winding Refn focuses primarily on Bronson’s relationship to art, and his transformation as an artist. This is largely what makes the film work. If it were simply a biopic about a violent prisoner, it would be one of those really serious (and really boring) Oscar dramas. Instead, the director makes the film interesting by borrowing stylistically from independent films from the 40s and 50s, with avant-garde aesthetics. The first shot of the film is of Bronson looking straight at the camera, with a black background. After two lines, the camera cuts to Bronson’s back, and we see he’s on stage with an audience in front of him. Full post up at Video Word Made Flesh.

• Started dating Boy-Thing almost 7 months ago. Wow time flies!
• Got a job! Working as a resource coach for low-income residents in affordable housing.
• Trying to find a way to go back to school to learn Spanish.
• Have started contributing to the film blog Video Word Made Flesh
• Interested in creative writing again. Now … to find the time.

… That’s all. I will hopefully post things here more often, but perhaps not? Trying to figure out what to do with this blog. Maybe … keep track of cool things I find/do.

All for now! New Year’s resolution(s)/goals to come soon.

These last few months have been at the same time really hectic, and really relaxed. I’ve spent most of my time focused on finishing up school and trying to locate the ever-elusive job. Most of what’s been going on has been either not quite significant enough for a blog post or very personal.

I’m also torn as to what to do with this blog – at the moment, it’s set up as my personal blog. Most of it is a travelogue of studying abroad, related to different projects that I’ve done, or related to activism. Well, I haven’t traveled too much lately, I haven’t had the money to start any new projects, and activist stuff is just getting started with the gardens. Honestly, most of the “activist” stuff I’ve been doing is trying to find a job within the field of social justice. Which isn’t particularly exciting for a reader.

But I’ve decided to get back into this blog. I’ve been reading like a maniac, and really want to get more into analysis of what I’ve been reading. I’m in a radical political philosophy book club right now, and we’re reading Emma Goldman, and there’s a lot to talk about there. We’ll be continuing the book club through the summer – I think our next book will be something by Lenin – and it’s opening up new lines of thought. So hopefully that kind of thing will be interesting to you.

I’m also starting my application process for the Peace Corps. I’m not sure exactly how I feel about the Peace Corps, but it would be an incredible experience. There will be an extensive blog post about my thinking on the Peace Corps soon. It might even have many parts/chapters.

I guess I just wanted to return from this blog from the “dead,” so to speak. I may decide to forego using this blog in favor of another, more private, username. In that case, I will definitely post here and link to that site.

Coming up soon: College Retrospective, ’cause now I can say things like “When I was in college …” and “I have two Bachelor’s Degrees …”

I did, however, get up to Duluth to visit family up there. It was wonderful to see my aunt and cousins again. It’s been far too long – I got to see the house that my cousins Diana and Joe have gutted and fixed up. It’s absolutely gorgeous – I’ll have to bug Diana for some pictures, and put them here. What they’ve done with the place is really inspiring.

The job hunt continues; I’m looking for a job that would resemble some sort of career thing, and that’s turning out to be more difficult than I had thought originally. I’ve got the interview for Green Corps coming up, I’ve submitted an application to US PIRG (which I should really check up on again), and I’m in the midst of applying to be one of the Sierra Club’s Environmental Career Apprentices. I’ve been looking for other jobs to potentially apply for, and most of them right now are looking to hire within the next three weeks – just at the time when I am, inconveniently, still a student.

I’ve been thinking more and more that I would like to do something a bit more … active than was in my original plan. I wish that I knew any sort of practical skill that would help me to be self-sufficient. Building, farming, fixing things, recycling old materials, bicycle maintenance, car maintenance, home improvement/upkeep – these all seem like very important skills, and I’m finding that I really have little clue how to do these. Well, I can recycle old materials, but I don’t do it on a consistent basis – what I mean by that is that I don’t often make things like end-tables out of old wood/crates.

I love to make things with fabric and yarn – why not learn to make things with other sorts of materials? And why not learn how to grow my own food?

I’ve done some stuff with SPROUT in the past – this basically meant watering, and helping sometimes with harvesting. But I haven’t planned, tended, and worked a garden with much consistency. And I would like to grow my own food at the very least, and if I like doing that … perhaps an organic farm is in my future.

I’m also realizing that my wanderlust isn’t quite over. I’ve been trying to think of ways that I can get some more traveling in – I would love to go back to Europe (Italy, Spain, France … as well as Prague, Denmark, and Sweden), but I don’t have the money to buy a plane ticket, or the means to save up to buy a plane ticket.

It’s been bothering me more and more lately that I’m not bilingual. I really want to learn to speak Spanish – it seems like one of the most useful languages I could possibly learn, and it’s beautiful. I’ve also flirted with the idea of French, Czech, or Swedish, but … Spanish seems like it would be more useful for more things in life, generally. So I decided that I wanted to learn Spanish.

Combine all of these together into a big mess, and you get the train of thought that follows.

Thus hatched this ridiculous plan. There’s this organization called WWOOF – where volunteers from all over the world can be connected with a network of organic farms, and can go there and volunteer. Which got me thinking – what if I could work on a farm in Spain, and then take classes in Spanish while I’m there? I would want to learn some Spanish before leaving, but I could definitely find “learn Spanish” programs while there.

… and then I realized that I have no money to buy a plane ticket, and thus wouldn’t quite make it to Spain. Alas, my foolish plot has been foiled again!

That doesn’t mean I can’t still do it – it just means that I need to get a job first (however temporary), maybe build up some time on some organic farms around here, and then go wwoofing across the world.

Which brings me right back to square one on the jobless front.

Trying really hard not to feel trapped by my lack of useful skills or useful degree.

I bus to/from school every morning. I have the same route, the same bus driver, everything. I was waiting in the bus shelter this morning, and a seat on the bench opened up. I sat down, thinking nothing of it.

I was sitting there for a while when the elderly black man sitting next to me turned to me and said something that I will probably always remember. He said, “I’m not trying to rape you.”

I turned to him quickly, not believing my ears. “What?” Then he acted like he didn’t say anything, or it didn’t matter. So I said, “It’s completely fine, no worries here.” Then he turned again and kind of smiled.

I continued the conversation, asking him what bus he was getting on, and we found out we were waiting for the same bus. We got on, he moved to sit closer to me, and said “You have a nice day now.” I smiled and told him the same thing.

**

It’s so sad to me that he felt the need to tell me he wasn’t going to rape me. It’s sad to me that young, white girls that look like me, are students, etc. could think or give this man the impression that they think that he’s going to rape them. That this old man, this harmless old man, is worried that others think he’s going to do them harm – an assumption/conclusion drawn from the color of his skin.

So I’ve been thinking about this on and off all day. I checked Racialicious, and one of the recent posts is about the racial politics of hailing a cab. Interesting coincidence.

I might go into more detail on my own thoughts/experiences of this. But if I don’t, the above post will also get you thinking.

Needless to say, we have a long way to go before we can say we’ve overcome racism.

Also: Some interesting class issues have become really clear to me today. Thinking about money, my own lack of it, responsibility, jobs, priorities, and all sorts of things. Difficult, anxious day, and it’s extremely hard for me to focus on/care about my physics test tomorrow. Oy vey. Somehow, everything else seems more important in this perspective.

January is also very cold. Thusly, it’s time for some knitting babble.

Mostly, I meant to finish knitting John’s shawl. It was supposed to be done by now. Seriously. As it stands, I’m a little over halfway and staring desperately at the calendar days wondering when the hell I’m going to get the time to get it to be at least 3 feet across. BLECH SO MUCH YARN.

I also really need to finish my gloves/mittens. I’ve been using mom’s gloves, and would like to return them to her. I also really want to start in on new projects, like this gorgeous hat. Sorry, if you’re not on ravelry you probably won’t be able to see that. Here’s another link.

Believe me, it’s pretty. And warm. The only problem with the hat that I made for myself is that I made it too small to fit over the front part of my head comfortably. That makes it delightfully slouchy, but not as warm as I would have liked.

So this weekend I’m having a knit-a-thon. I hope to, at the very least, finish my gloves. If I finish my gloves, I’ll start back up with John’s shawl and try to get through at least half a skein on it. Bumming around and watching movies will definitely help me in this endeavor.

Here’s the knit-a-thon lit list:

*There Will Be Blood
*Classic Russian Short Stories (audiobook)
*Dr. Who: Season 1
*Lolita (audiobook)

And as long as I’m on the topic of things I desperately want to knit …

There is an amazing sock pattern called “Staked.” I will copy/paste from the patter description so that you understand the beauty of these socks a little better …

Life’s rough when you’re a vampire slayer. One minute you’re falling in love or contemplating your destiny…the next minute you’re stalking off into the shadows and figuring out how to wash vampire dust out of your clothes. With a day job like that, you’d better at least be heading out in style. These socks have you covered: stabby, stake-through-the-heart cables extending from the leg and onto the foot, eventually diminishing and disappearing altogether, with only darkness and plain stockinette left behind. Stake, or be staked. It’s all in a day’s work.

Yeah. They’re Buffy socks. Did you hear me correctly? BUFFY SOCKS.

Unfortunately, the pattern isn’t free online, but I’ve decided that these socks are cool enough to buy the book they’re in, which is called Knitting to Stay Sane. They’re wicked hard, so it’s going to be a while before I can knit my Buffy socks. As a matter of fact, most of the patterns in the book look wicked hard, so rather than Knitting to Stay Sane, I think it should be titled Knitting What Drove Me To Drink. But all of the patterns look very good, as a matter of fact, so … worth it?

Also: Can you tell that my inner fangirl of science fiction and fantasy is going nuts these days? Yeah. I think it was Dr. Who. Or the Harry Potter film (which I still haven’t seen and am quite desperate to see). I will post something intelligent about science fiction some time soon, because a big part of it is that I’m fascinated by the concepts and problems investigated in science fiction.

But that’s another geeky post. This one has been geeky enough. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, I’ll have a victory post on either the gloves or John’s shawl.

Till then, enjoy the January weather!

FINALLY getting around to the book review of Rebecca b. Daphne du Maurier. I say that with such emPHAsis because the first half of this post about the book has been sitting around for weeks. At this point, I wouldn’t normally review a book, but I really want to talk about it and there are so few people out there now that have actually read it.

Reading this book has inspired me to read more feminist works. As in, not that this book is feminist per se, but that it doesn’t seem to be and that makes me hunger for more strong female characters, opinionated female authors, and more non-fiction feminist stuff. In a way, I could say that reading this has inspired me to do the Year of Feminist Classics.

That could also have something to do with all of the women’s issues I encountered in India, and the conversations about feminism and women’s issues that I’ve had since coming back. Actually, probably has more to do with those things.

That being said, BOOK REVIEW:

The first half of this book was really hard to get through. It moved slowly, and I couldn’t really relate to the main character. But I was determined, because it was an audiobook and I feel a strange sense of dedication to those.

“You are taking up room on my hard-drive? Damn you and your smirking, 14 hours of impertinence. I must finish just to SPITE you!”

Anyway, so yes, I was listening to/reading Rebecca, which is a 1930s classic that Hitchcock turned into a very good film. And on this one, I’m gonna say: Unless you’re strangely dedicated to the idea of reading the actual book, just watch the film for god’s sake. It’s a fantastic adaptation, and that way you won’t be subjected to hours and hours of the grating dependency and neurosis of the main character.

Honey, when you’re so worried about playing the perfect wife for your husband that you can’t even scrounge up the creativity to choose a costume for a masquerade ball (which, newsflash, is supposed to be fun), you really need to let it go.

That’s not being entirely fair. The main character doesn’t come from wealth – she marries into it, and then suffers constant anxiety about her perceived inability to function in the upper echeleon of British society. This is compounded by the fact that her husband is fifteen years her senior, and his previous wife was fabulously successful and born into that society. Rebecca (old wife) died in a mysterious boating accident not a full year earlier. Pretty sure I would be a wreck myself.

That being said, the main character falls into a pattern of dependency and childish behavior as she tries to navigate her place in the household as Maxim’s wife. He seems to love her, but toward the end (and I won’t give anything away, I promise) it turns out that he loves her out of a sort of convenience – he knows that she would be loyal to him no matter what, and is able to successfully manipulate her feelings to stay out of his own trouble.

The “villain” of the text is one of the servants – a Mrs. Danvers. She’s actually quite an interesting character – obviously mourning the death of Rebecca – with a grudge against the main character. She continues to sabotage the new wife throughout the book. She gets her to dress up in a replica of Rebecca’s costume for the party thrown at Manderly, infuriating Maxim and horrifying the main character. There is one incredibly interesting scene in which Mrs. Danvers attempts to convince the new wife to commit suicide.

It’s clear that the relationship between Danvers and Rebecca was intense and very close. One of the things that I didn’t like about the book was the way that du Maurier added to the villainy of Danvers and Rebecca by insinuating a lesbian relationship between the two. Danvers would say things like “She hated all men, she liked me the best. She would come back from her affairs and laugh at the men.” Personally, I think this is an interesting character to explore. I don’t think that Rebecca is virtuous, but I think that a new telling of the tale would have to deal with Rebecca not only as the femme fatale, but also as a multifaceted woman trying to get around the patriarchal confines of marriage.

Ultimately, I couldn’t tell whether the author supports her main character in the dependency on Maxim, or whether it’s meant to be creepy (which I think it is). The Hitchcock film makes this more apparent. He would seem to think that this dependency is chilling and problematic. One reason I believe this is that the character of Maxim is more ambiguous in the film. He comes across as kind of an asshole sometimes, whereas in the book he always seems to talk his way to gallant.

This is also heavily influenced by the viewpoint of the reader/viewer. In the book, the reader is subjected to the main character in the first person – it’s very difficult to get around her inherent bias to Maxim and her own assumptions that their relationship is as normal as could be expected. She is constantly cheering Maxim on, and he continuously appears to be the knight in shining armor to her.

In the movie, the viewpoint appears to be third person (just about omniscient). The way that Hitchcock directs, it appears that the viewer is very much outside of the world of the film. You don’t know what’s going on in her, or any, of the characters’ heads. that leaves their motives up for analysis, and the relationship between the new wife and Maxim up in the air.

That being said, I much prefer the movie’s story. It’s a very good adaptation, but that shift in point of view really does a lot to add to the mystery and ambiguity of the murder of Rebecca and the psychological issues of the main character.

There is a book written more recently that picks up some of these trains of thought. It’s called Rebecca’s Tale, and it was written by Sally Beauman. My mother owns a copy, and it is currently on my shelf. However, I have to say that it will be a while before I feel up to returning to Manderly.