The MacGuffin: News and Comment (19/Jan/2004)
(c) Ken Mogg (2004)
January 19
Okay, here's one of the Editor's notorious stream-of-consciousness pieces. (Bet you've been missing 'em, huh?!) Australia's 'Mr Movies' (on cable TV), Bill Collins, once quoted in some context or other Lady Gregory of Dublin's Abbey Theatre telling a young W.B. Yeats to savour the warmth of his girlfriend's body and to enjoy his new fame as a poet, for 'one day you will find yourself alone in life's Arctic wastes' - a comment on what fame and a special genius can entail. Well, I wouldn't know about that, gentle reader! Nonetheless, I know that specialisation has its risks. I was trained in literary criticism while simultaneously (as an undergraduate and afterwards) keeping an active interest in movies and 'film culture' (the name of a journal to which the great Andrew Sarris was a contributor!). And my Mum's influence was such that I always valued what used to be called 'general knowledge' (a subject for which Mum once won a prize at university!). So although I soon became an Alfred Hitchcock admirer, and specialist, I always tried to keep the broadest possible perspective on things. My yoga training, under Shri Vijayadev Yogendra, facilitated that attempt, I believe. I wanted to remain receptive to as many valid and worthwhile 'ways of seeing' (in John Berger's phrase) as I could. Not necessarily by being all things to all people - dissipation was never for me! - but by simply keeping an open mind. Well, I still try to do that, and I am aware of the temptation to be unduly impatient with seemingly closed minds! Nonetheless, I'm full of self-doubts! Take what happened tonight. I was reading on the Web an essay on Hitchcock's Rear Window written by an architect. The essay has the obligatory citations from Walter Benjamin, and is full of references to artists from Velazquez to Edward Hopper. Impeccable! And yet I found myself growing impatient at the constructed nature of the piece. (Yes, I know, it's by an architect!) It seemed to me to be all erudition and claims for significance, rather than to offer realised insights and detailed analysis of how the film actually works. (One exception: the excellent point that Hitchcock shows us the wife-murderer wrapping up a saw and knives while counterpointing the image with the sounds of children playing nearby.) When a friend rang up and asked me what I was doing, I quoted to her the passage on Velazquez I had just that instant read: 'The complicated relationship between the watcher and the watched in Rear Window brings to mind Velazquez's painting "Las Meninas". The location and role of the watcher have been the subject of philosophical contemplation in both [cases].' That's all! That's the author's whole point about Velazquez and Hitchcock! I must confess that I proceeded to earbash my friend with a complaint at how inadequate I thought it! Why, I said, I could have guessed that there are paintings - probably hundreds in fact - that have the theme of watcher and watched! Simply naming one such - showing off the author's erudition - leaves me decidedly undernourished, and unimpressed. But I can't help asking myself: is there something wrong here? Am I, with my literary training, simply blind to what excites many readers of essays by artists and architects? More tomorrow.
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