Still from Inland Empire, 2006
Although Lynch’s preoccupation with the film-within-the-film is a surreal and at times, incoherent exposé of the sinister dynamics of the industry, he devotes painstaking detail to the aspects of filmmaking that are often overlooked. In attempting to reveal what occurs outside the frame or behind-the-scenes, particularly through the mise en abyme structures of Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive, Lynch focuses on the labor demands of the movie industry that are conspicuously omitted from other cinematic narratives about cinema. Underneath the surface gleam of the star system, the auter system, and the studio conglomerates exist the vast reserves of labor that make the movies possible. Seemingly innocuous, tongue-in-cheek references to the production and the crew, particularly in Inland Empire, only emphasize the peripheral status of the individuals responsible for sets, sound, and lighting. In addition, the clandestine maneuverings of producers, bosses, and mobsters along the lines of the Castigliani brothers in Mulholland Drive assume a supernatural dimension in Inland Empire. For Lynch, the supernatural and the absurd are a form of hyperbole, a narrative device to parallel the equally elusive and disembodied forces that control Hollywood. Lynch evokes a collective unconscious of the industry, replete with graphic, incomprehensible dreamlike imagery and ungraspable glimpses of meaning that instantly vanish upon awaking, or once the lights come up.
Lynch made a film about the making of a “haunted film,” and in the spirit of self-reflexivity, Inland Empire is laden with narrative dislocations that evoke the supernatural: time, space, and identity collapse in a manner that is unsettling, disjointed, and absurd (a conjunction of adjectives that define the term Lynchian) but also revelatory in depicting the inextricable link between self-dissolution and Hollywood spectacle. The dream factory is a repository of dream images manufactured by the workings of the unconscious mind; hence dreamlike spaces are the apposite mode to portray the cinematic process. The inverse is also true: by transcending the conventions of continuity and narrative, the cinematic medium can intimate the farthest reaches of subjectivity.
To read more:
send me an email
Filed under: Los Angeles | Leave a Comment
Tags: David Lynch, Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive
The image of the paved river has achieved iconic, and perhaps notorious, status in cinematic representations of Los Angeles. In the documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen includes the concrete channel of the Los Angeles River among the few landmarks that “always play themselves,” along with City Hall, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Griffith Planetarium, the four-level freeway interchange, the Bonaventure Hotel, and Pink’s Hot Dogs. A staggering number of films have incorporated the river into scenes involving car chases, races, and clandestine exchanges, to the extent that the paved river has become an undeniable backdrop for violence, competition, crime, and danger: in other words, a concrete river bed of iniquity.
In James Cameron’s Terminator 2 (1991), an assassin from the future, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick)—composed of a liquid metal alloy and capable of morphing into anything it touches—returns to the “present” to kill the future leader of the human resistance against the cyborgs, John Connor (Edward Furlong). The temporal conundrums and technological marvels reach an apex on the Los Angeles River. An excessively long and elaborate chase scene involving the pursuer, the T-1000, and the pursued, the cyborg protector of the young Connor, the “Terminator” (Arnold Schwarzenegger), covers a vast expanse of the concrete channel and paved tributaries. Even in an 18-wheeler, the T-1000 is still no match for the cool, deadpan, leather-clad, future governor of California on a motorcycle, who seems to be in complete command of the situation amid the perversions of nature and science. The combination of the relentless, alloy aggressor amid the river’s urban detritus of a capitalist car park—an overturned shopping cart, a burnt-out skeleton of a car, and a rubber tire, all floating in a couple inches of dirty river water—coalesce to form one of the most menacing representations of the Los Angeles River on film. Here, the river transmogrifies into a sprawling, otherworldly extension of the freeway, a grotesque hybrid of infinite pavement for the sake of unbridled and transgressive movement. Partly organic but mostly cement, the river is the ecological equivalent of the cyborg…
To read more:
send me an email
Filed under: Los Angeles | Leave a Comment
Tags: Carey McWilliams, Chinatown, cyborg, Ecology of Fear, James Cameron, Joan Didion, Los Angeles cinema, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Los Angeles River, Mike Davis, Play it as it Lays, Robert Townes, Roman Polanski, Southern California: An Island on the Land, Terminator 2, Thom Andersen, urban landscape, water
The Exiles (an excerpt)
Still from The Exiles, 1961
Towards the end of The Exiles, and the end of the nighttime ritual of bar hopping and cruising, the characters ascend the Chavez Ravine to an overlook. Amidst parked cars and in various states of inebriation, they begin to ghost dance. The ritual dance, fueled by the modern conveniences of cars and alcohol and a lingering connection to tradition, is simultaneously cleansing and toxic: when the sun rises the morning after, a tracking shot reveals a litter-strewn landscape. The imagery suggests a degradation of the sacred—as if the cultural ambivalence is contributing to a toxic ecology and lifestyle—while still providing a vital outlet for tradition and transcendence of the encroaching demolition, displacement, and marginalization in the valley below.
The Exiles frames the lives of a marginalized group through the backdrop of Bunker Hill: the vertical lines of urban architecture emphasize their detachment and separation amidst the urban space they inhabit. Characters do not blend into the now defunct downtown landscape: high-contrast black and white imagery magnifies the division between self and space. Furthermore, the contextual gaps between inner monologue and imagery serve to convey an ineffable sense of uncertainty. A woman ruminates about her unborn child while browsing brightly lit display windows along a block of storefronts; economic uncertainty is unspoken but hangs heavily in the atmosphere of the film. The tension between the visual and the aural impart an evocative message about Native American identity and isolation in Bunker Hill—on the eve of destruction. Mackenzie’s film is significant to Los Angeles because it is unprecedented; The Exiles is a portrait of a nearly extinct cultural identity situated in a demolished neighborhood—two subjects that are rarely explored in cinema except confined to strict generic codes that are derogatory and damning. In film noir, Bunker Hill is a site of crime and iniquity, while in the western, the Indian is a threat and a villain.
To read more:
send me an email
Filed under: Los Angeles | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ancient L.A., Architecture of Four Ecologies, Bunker Hill, Chavez Ravine, City of Quartz, Kent Mackenzie, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Michael Jacob Rochlin, Mike Davis, Norman Klein, Reyner Banham, The Exiles, The History of Forgetting, Thom Andersen
John Fante’s 1939 Ask The Dust is one of the most detailed literary representations of depression-era Bunker Hill—while it was still a bustling, densely populated neighborhood. Fante’s obsessive, mercurial, and ambitious protagonist, Arturo Bandini, rents a room in a hotel in Bunker Hill, trying to make a living as a writer. Sporadic and meager checks from his mother, living in Arturo’s hometown of Boulder, Colorado, and his literary agent, Mr. Hackmuth, barely keep him solvent, and for the first half of the novel, he subsists on “miserable oranges” and grayish cups of coffee that taste like “boiled rags.” Fante’s Bunker Hill is a multi-ethnic, working class melting pot comprised of Mexicans, Midwesterners, drunks, prostitutes, grocers, retirees, and landladies. Physical descriptions of the neighborhood and the environment, oscillating between extremes of hope and decrepitude, ultimately reflect Arturo’s state of mind, which is vulnerable to the continuous ebbs and flows of desire and opportunity. He lusts after Camilla, a woman with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, and aspires to fame and fortune as a great writer.
Many of the descriptions in Ask the Dust are aligned with the image of Bunker Hill as a run-down, filthy, crime-ridden neighborhood, perhaps contributing to the negative reputation that justified the area’s demolition. Yet Fante’s depiction of Bunker Hill also reflects an urban density and atmosphere on par with other major U.S. cities during the same time period. Furthermore, Fante’s Bunker Hill, comprised of working class migrants living in close quarters, within walking distance to housing, commerce, leisure, and mass transit, also reflects an ideal of twentieth century urban planning models.
To read more:
send me an email
Filed under: Los Angeles | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ask the Dust, Bunker Hill, David Ulin, Imagining Los Angeles, John Fante
A Game of Sonic Destiny
Startling and revelatory, the reply. The game required asking a random music mix a question. I addressed the air. What was the image to unify my disparate fixations? What would make it cohere? “Here in my car / I feel safest of all / I can lock all my doors / It’s the only way live in cars.” Sonic destiny brought us together. Cars filled the void. The answer was instantly recognizable and undeniably true.
Composer Gary Numan transmitted simultaneous, contradictory sensations; monotone, synthesizer, bassline, and drum machine coincided to convey anxiety, elation, and control. “Here in my car / I can only receive / I can listen to you / It keeps me stable for days in cars.” A passive form of liberation, traversing space. The 25 year-old new wave single elicited resonances and epiphanies, bridged disconnections and disparities. Did the road contours conform to the surrounding topography? Driving became a form of disappearance and erasure.
Ears and eyes retained vanishing sites, yet absence induced longing. “Here in my car / Where the image breaks down / Will you visit me please / If I open my door in cars.” Dissolution sought repetition, then constructed a fragmented, hostile, and synthetic external environment to reflect the inward disintegration—steering the viewfinder. Speed, evasion, and illusory control stirred a temporary empowerment. Transported: incoherent, rapidly-changing signs afforded a momentary respite. Disjointed highway elements formed a montage: still shots.
The sound produced pleasure and panic, lingered as it careened; synthpop channeled the car horn, the song’s buried layer, an aural getaway. Foregrounded, a melody—shifted gears, changed lanes—divided the underlying drone. “Here in my car / You know I’ve started to think / About leaving tonight / Although nothing seems right in cars.” Austere roboticism mirrored wondering, reserved and forlorn. Speed triggered amnesia, remoteness, uncertainty; road and landscape did not harmonize. The movement lacked a destination, a logic, a function, thereby making the process pleasurable.
Filed under: game | Leave a Comment
Tags: Cars, Driving, Gary Numan, New Wave, Sonic Destiny, Synth Pop
I am on a stationery bicycle gliding along a train track-like link through the desert. This is definitely the west coast. I am gliding along through ravines with mountains on either side. Animals are watching me. At the bottom of a ravine I come upon two white Big Horn Sheep. I get off the bike and they approach me, perhaps in a threatening manner. I get back on the bike and they let me pass. Next scene: I am in a sleeping bag in a desert gas station with an unidentifiable male friend, tall and emaciated with pale skin and long jet black hair. Suddenly a little boy is standing next to the gas pump. His father is pumping gas. I look at the boy’s arm and see a big spider with skinny yellow legs. I pull out my camera because I notice the spider has a tiny human face. It is a benevolent, jolly old man’s face with a curly beard and a Viking helmet.
Filed under: dream | Leave a Comment
Tags: desert, dream, spider, viking
Viking Spider 