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Film as Subversive initiation.

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
electric monk
16:18 / 06.06.08
I'm honestly not trying to "write off" the importance of human imagination at all, but I've found that most all artists I have ever known have been "touched" in some way shape or form: either by drug experimentation, religious experience, possessing incredible focus, or in a couple of rarer cases, diagnosed as having a chemical imbalance.

I think you're generalizing your observations on the subset of Artists You've Met out to the set of All Artists. I've met a few artists myself, and not all of them had been "touched" in the ways you describe excepting, I think, the bit about focus. Of course, I'd argue that focus is necessary for an artist and originates from within the artist. It has to be there or, by Jove, we'd all be on the couch watching Big Brother and not finishing our latest masterpieces. But "incredible focus" isn't exclusive to artists. Necessary, yes, but not exclusive. Hell, accountants have to be incredibly focused. Substation electricians have to be incredibly focused.

I have never met a "normal" person (is there such a beast?) who is truly creative. (Maybe I just don't have the faculty to recognise it as such...)

I know this is a thread dealing with the arts in general, but this to me sounds very dismissive of the different kinds of creativity that people can display. Watch a really great teacher help a student make a breakthrough of some sort. That is creativity at its finest, and arguably 9000 times more important to the World and our collective advancement than any ten films that address timeless heroic themes. I get where you're coming from, I think, but I couldn't let that pass without comment.

Now is this thread there because it's hardwired, or because that it's been passed along and either used as a loose foundation for stories or has been refined into a sort of meme, instantly recognizable?

None of the above, I think. The Hero's Journey resonates because we are all the heroes of our own stories. It's just how we live life, magnified and mythologized and reinterpreted. It speaks to us because we recognize our own struggles, our own triumphs and tragedies in it. Nothing ideaspace-y about it. That's if I remember my Campbell correctly, of course.

And for my own geek moment: It's funny you mention Luke Skywalker, FT. IIRC, George Lucas has said that the work of Joseph Campbell was a major inspiration for him and that the Star Wars saga was his (Lucas') attempt at utilizing the themes Campbell indentifies.
 
 
electric monk
16:33 / 06.06.08
On review, I do believe I've got Campbell all wrong. Attribute my thoughts on the Hero's Journey to me only plz.
 
 
Tomb Zero
21:21 / 06.06.08
doctoradder: "I'm curious -- how old is the B&W dreamer? I've met people from my parents' generation who say they dream in B&W, but none from my own."

He's 33. He says he's never dreamed in colour, ever. He's the only person I've ever met, of any age, who dreams in B&W.

What you say about the resemblances between your dreams and film is fascinating to me, because it's something I'm completely unfamiliar with. My own dreams don't work like that - I never see the scenes in them from different 'camera-angles' or with cuts etc. Although the 'plot' and 'setting' are usually really very different to my waking life, the viewpoint is always exactly the same as in my day-to-day existence - ie. from wherever my eyes happen to be.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
15:12 / 07.06.08
I have never met a "normal" person (is there such a beast?) who is truly creative.

Good grief. Um... I'm not sure what to say to that. I'm not sure what you actually mean by "a normal person" in this context because you don't give us much to go on, but I'm assuming you mean someone in a standard "non-creative" employment, not a magic user, and not a drug user. Have I got that right?

The closest I have seen (and this could be insulting) are colour-by-numbers or connect-the-dot "artists" who say that they are, or are told they are, "really creative". Even then these people sometimes have a brush with some external I-don't-know-what and actually "learn" to become creative. It usually comes as a surprise to them, as well.

Do you think it may be that your assessment is based on your own prejudices? That you're seeing a person with certain kind of appearance and lifestyle and assuming that ze is only producing a paint-by-numbers or join-the-dots variety of art? Remember that art is often intensely personal, and your paint-by-numbers guy or gal might simply not feel comfortable sharing the deep end of hir work with you. You'll see the cushion-covers from Kross-Stitch Kitten Monthly on the sofa, but you won't get to see the watercolours stashed in the back bedroom. Especially if the kittens get a dismissive reception.

Something else: this free, touched-by-the-Universe-Space kind of creativity is often an artifact of privilege. It's not immediately accessable to everyone. Being terribly inspired is all very well, but you need the mechanics of art--the techniques, the practice, the materials--if you're going to deliver anything. Well-off middle-class kids from arty families are more likely to have access to quality materials, art education and support in developing their own creative "voices" than people from less materially comfortable backgrounds. This effect continues into later life, with support and training in artistic subjects being more easily accessed by the wealthy than by the poor. Even less-well defined and less financially hungry kinds of support, such as the society of other artists, are harder to come by if the person is not our kind, dear.

So the idea that "normal people" lack this creative spark becomes self-fulfilling. It's assumed to be absent, and therefore never recognised or nurtured.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
17:42 / 07.06.08
Even less-well defined and less financially hungry kinds of support, such as the society of other artists, are harder to come by if the person is not our kind, dear.

Isn't the society of other artists something you'd try to avoid, most of the time? You might think it was an idea, but the odd pat on the back at somebody else's gallery opening is going to leave a sour taste, surely? I suppose that'd be especially true if the artist's parents were considerably richer than one's own.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
17:53 / 07.06.08
As with any skillset, support from peers--in the form of feedback, encouragement, swapping tips, and constructive criticism--can be very helpful.
 
 
doctoradder
03:57 / 08.06.08
freek: Campbell's argument is indeed that there's an identifiable thread from Gilgamesh up through the most modern of myths -- but the thread isn't just a straight through-line through Western culture; he also seeks to demonstrate how mythic motifs developed, seemingly simultaneously, in other widely separated cultures. A student of Jung, he seems to suggest that these mythic motifs are an organic part of the compleat breakfast we call Human Life. (However, of course, stories influence other stories... and Campbell's ideas directly influenced a lot of current filmmakers -- George Lucas claimed that reading Campbell's work led him to beef up mythic motifs that were already latent in his original Star Wars script, and he brought Campbell to Skywalker Ranch as kind of a "scholar in residence" in his waning years.)

tomb: About filmic dreams -- yeah, I read someplace that dreaming of yourself in the third person is a warning sign for schizophrenia or some other kinda mental heebyjeebiness. In which case, I oughtta be deeply concerned! (Though I think it has much more to do with working in the filmmaking industry and constantly thinking in visual terms of shots / cuts / etc.)

General to the discuss about "normal" people and creativity: My personal take on this is that the public education system tends to take a crop of imaginative, bright-eyed, creative children and proceeds to grind the creativity out of most of them, teaching them to think in rote ways or training them to fear thinking or acting "differently."

The myth of the artist often over-romanticizes the Dionysian/chaotic aspects of creativity and downplays the Apollonian side -- the business of bolting one's ass to one's chair and assembling order out of chaos.

However: there's a reason that the stereotype of "the artist as doomed outsider" / "the artist as drug addict" / "the artist as reckless antisocial risk-taker" persists -- because there's at least the seed of truth in it. Certainly not all artists have displayed these traits, but a whole bunch of them have. There's a book called Altered States: Creativity Under the Influence by James Hughes which explores why this theme persists. Despite its title, its not strictly about drug use /abuse among creative types; it explores all kinds of different ways that artists have suffered from or induced "altered states" of mind that had nothing to do with drugs.

As Hughes writes, "The creative act is not 'normal' since it involves using unconscious processes in unifying opposites in a new synthesis."
 
 
doctoradder
04:01 / 08.06.08
Mordant: Your points about the economics involved is dead on.... I have a friend who grouses that the history of the arts, particularly of filmmaking and the fine arts, is a Secret History of Rich Kids.
 
 
doctoradder
04:20 / 08.06.08
>>>The two examples you give (El Topo and V for Vendetta) were written by people (Jodorowsky and Moore) who quite openly are magicians.

And sorry to toss this back into the mix from many posts back.... but this was bugging me: I don't know about Jodorowsky's history, but Alan Moore WAS NOT practicing magick when he wrote V. In a number of places, Moore has stated that he came to magick belatedly -- almost arbitrarily deciding to pursue it around his 40th birthday. And I think to attribute V's strengths to Moore's "magic" is getting the cart before the horse: Moore, both in the context of Promethea and in numerous interviews, makes it clear that what drew him to magick was its appeal as an aesthetic system -- in part because it addressed a sense of the inherent esoteric power of language, a power that Moore had sensed and employed as a writer. Possibly art led him to magick, and not vice versa.

This was certainly true in the case of Maya Deren -- She was well into her career as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker when she discovered Voudon; and I don't think there's any evidence that she was seriously pursuing any magickal studies or actions until she went to Haiti as part of her process of making a film. What drew her into exploring Voudon and writing The Divine Horsemen was her recognition of Voudon as a complete aesthetic system. She had initially planned to shoot a few ritual dances for a film comparing and contrasting different kinds of dance and movement; but she began to feel that she couldn't just rip the dance out of its context and use it for her own purpose -- she had to understand it fully as a facet in part of the complete network of beliefs and practices, the spiritual aura that binds Voudon as an ever-changing and living "work of art," a creative effort infused by both the spirits and the practitioners.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:43 / 08.06.08
Certainly not all artists have displayed these traits, but a whole bunch of them have.

As have, it's worth pointing out, a lot of hedge fund managers.
 
 
doctoradder
15:26 / 09.06.08
Off to the stables, then... there's a dead horse that wants kicking.
 
 
doctoradder
15:30 / 09.06.08
(And my smartassery is directed at no one in particular... there's an interesting discussion to be had here, but it just feels like we're circling the same points over and over.)
 
 
Alex's Grandma
03:49 / 11.06.08
I have a friend who grouses that the history of the arts, particularly of filmmaking and the fine arts, is a Secret History of Rich Kids.

I appreciate this isn't presented as a statement of fact, but still, I suspect he or she's talking about the (not-so) secret present of filmaking and the fine arts, all the same.

In the secret history of the past though; was Billy Wilder a rich kid? Was Marilyn Monroe, was Francis Bacon? Was Andy Warhol even? And what about Da Vinci, or Van Gogh? Mozart, it's clear now, was just having a laugh when he went begging for money to put on 'The Magic Flute'. Frida Khalo was posh, and in no real pain at all, subsequent to the accident. Jack Kerouac joined the merchant navy for his own amusement.

It strikes me as the most bird-witted analysis of the history of art possible, to put it all down to the question of family money. Of course, it's very difficult to do anything if you're down to subsistence level, if you're right at the bottom of the heap, but then things can't have been easy for Tricky or Tracey Emin - I dare say she wasn't the right sort when she started out, but none of her contemporaries (Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili) seem to have anything against her, and I doubt they ever did - and yet they all seem to have managed somehow.

In England, anyway, it's going to be more difficult to be an artist of whatever stripe to 'get on' these days, because of the cost of the education - how can you justify being fifteen grand in debt when you graduate if you're going to be a painter, and your father/mother isn't doing pretty well?

But let's consider who's really responsible. You, perhaps, for being so self-indulgent as to expect state-funding for your art career when there are people dying on foreign soils?

When your own government is largely responsible for shooting, and/or starving them?

I suppose you could always get a job as a war artist, but then in that case you'd really have to pay for your own materials, morphine, film, a quick flight home, that would in no sense immediately arrive.
 
 
doctoradder
07:33 / 11.06.08
I have a friend who grouses that the history of the arts, particularly of filmmaking and the fine arts, is a Secret History of Rich Kids.

This was a response to Mordant's earlier sentiment. And as I mentioned, I was quoting a friend. I don't necessarily agree with the statement 100%. But my friend is from an extremely poor working class background and knows whereof he speaks. He works in the entertainment industry where nepotism runs rampant, and where having the creative leisure time money provides can be a boon to one's career.

Whole legions of second & third generations of talent have thrived in Hollywood (the Barrymore clan, Jason Schwartzman, Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola, Joss Whedon, Jake Kasdan, Robert Downey, Jr., etc.) And though history is full of writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc. who struggled up from nothing, it's also filled with creators like Lord Byron, Horace Walpole and William Beckford who benefited from the inheritances of the landed gentry, while talents as diverse as William S. Burroughs, Arthur Machen, Marcel Duchamp and Spike Jonze (nee' Spiegel) all seemed to have fallen into family money that enabled them creative luxuries at vital points in their formative years.

The last time I checked, the conversation was emanating from the question of separating "creative" people from "normal" types, and Mordant had pointed out that opportunities to be creative come more readily to people with the financial luxuries for leisure time.

What the various wars on foreign soil have to do with this... I have no idea. And I'm not really sure what a "war artist" is, nor where anybody would be offering a "job" in it.

Back to the stables...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:25 / 11.06.08
A "war artist" is pretty much exactly what it sounds like - an artist commissioned to cover a war. I think the US Military has three currently-commissioned war artists, only one of whom - Michael Fay of the USMC - I am afraid I know by name. The US tends to have "embedded" artists, whereas I think the UK tends to have non-military artists who bimble around painting things.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:43 / 11.06.08
Making clear from the start, incidentally, that the idea that there are "creative" and "normal" people is arrant bullshit advanced by self-mythologising mediocrities, it is worth noting that some industries termed creative - magazine writing, publishing, advertising, television and film - have incredibly low or no salaries at the early stages of the traditional paths in - interning, running, gofering and so on. My first badly-paid job in advertising was so badly-paid that having paid rent I had no money for food, plus, of course, these jobs often involve very long hours and are located in expensive metropolitan centres. As such, having some sort of seed capital or some means to skip the standard cursus honorum or both is probably a very good thing.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
10:47 / 11.06.08
But my friend is from an extremely poor working class background and knows whereof he speaks. He works in the entertainment industry where nepotism runs rampant, and where having the creative leisure time money provides can be a boon to one's career.

One's career doing what though? I'm guessing script-writing, telly, that sort of thing?
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
12:59 / 11.06.08
Ok. I'm afraid that once again I will probably generalize based on personal observation and reaction, but...

Making clear from the start, incidentally, that the idea that there are "creative" and "normal" people is arrant bullshit advanced by self-mythologising mediocrities

I will have to agree and disagree with this statement. Perhaps every single person on the planet has the capability to be artistically creative (I will use the term "creative" in an purely artistic context - The previous example of a creative teacher is incredibly valid as would be the examples of creative people in such diverse fields as sciences, sales, public service, mechanics...etc. but this thread is about the creation of film media, not about the definition of "what is creativity", and though subjects like painting, music, writing and dance may be touched upon, keeping a tight reign on what is considered "creative" in this case will probably be for the best.)
It has been my experience that most people tend not to be artistically creative for several reasons: Fear that they are not "good enough"; Lack of training or direction; Laziness; and in some cases, seemingly zero talent or aptitude (Maybe just never found something they're good at...)

My experience with the Canadian school system (Protestant school board in Quebec) showed me that creativity, while not actively frowned upon, is not really encouraged. Paradoxically, the competitive environment fostered in the school system seems to discourage kids from expressing a creative, artistic side. It really is a case of, "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down".

I've also noticed what I see as a "Consumer/Lazy" attitude amongst the people I know: Art is much easier to buy and consume than it is to create. The attitude I've encountered is that things are made much better and less expensive by others so why bother? This is a taught attitude, I believe. (Perhaps it's just my circle of family, friends, co-workers, etc... While there are a number of musicians, crafters, painters, etc... Who are "in my circle", they form a small minority.)

I do not know anyone who possesses zero% creativity(artistic), but it seems that most people I know rarely exhibit their creative side, so little that it leads one to believe that they are not creative at all. Whether due to lack of confidence, encouragement, or outright laziness seems irrelevant: It is my view (and please correct me if I am so out in left field...) that it is a minority of people who show an artistic creative side.

Now, I really would like to discuss films. And what anyone feels they perceive as magickal initiatory portrayals in films (whether intentional or not; speculation is welcome...) Perhaps the source material which inspired the filmmakers may have been Occult themed. Perhaps the filmmaker may be an occult aficionado, or associated with a group such as the Masons. Whatever the case, as a person who practices some form of initiatory magic, what films speak to, or seem to contain some "hidden" knowledge or message, to you?
 
 
doctoradder
17:55 / 16.06.08
This event just happened last night... didn't find out about it until the last minute.

Occult L.A. at the Silent Movie Theatre

Los Angeles has long been home to one of America's most powerful occult scenes. The frontier town was already packed with Theosophists and Hindu gurus when the mystic Manly P. Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society in 1934 and started compiling the largest occult library west of the Mississippi. Some of Aleister Crowley's most influential followers also made the Southland a crucial center of Crowley's magickal religion of Thelema.

Tonight's program will combine presentations by independent scholars, and experimental esoteric films from Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington, Chick Strand, and others. Leading the evening will be Erik Davis, author of "The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape." Also presenting will be Louis Sahagun, author of "Master of the Mysteries", a new bio of Manly P. Hall; and Brian Butler, an expert on the life of Cameron, mistress of JPL rocket scientist Jack Parsons and LA's most intriguing enchantress.

For me the highlight was a screening of director Curtis Harrington's "Wormwood Star" -- a little-seen short film depicting (Marjorie) Cameron, her poetry and her artwork. (If anybody knows where to track down a copy of this, I'd love to see it again.)

Harrington had an interesting career -- he was part of Kenneth Anger's circle, appearing as the Cesare / Somnambulist like character in "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome." He went on to direct the low-budget supernatural romantic thriller Night Tide then had a career on Hollywood's fringes, directing network TV shows and low-budget grindhouse style movies.

The other surprise to me was that Manly P. Hall (author of The Secret Teachings of All Ages and founder of PRS (the Philosophical Research Society)) made a concerted effort to introduce esoteric ideas into film -- resulting in an obscure Zodiacally themed mystery film When Were You Born? (1938), starring Anna May Wong. (Hall provides an onscreen introduction to the picture, which is a hoot -- he gives an overview of the signs and their major characteristics.)
 
  

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