A Few Notes on TRASH HUMPERS
# Cannot help but call “things” into question. Such as: why do we watch this? And: why do we question why we watch this? And: Youtube. We watch youtube. This is a critique from Korine. This is also not a critique. A critique of some “things,” not of others. Both and. Neither nor.
# Home movies. The cameraman’s role. Shadows seen, shoes shown, same shoes as the rest of the humpers. That screech/chicken sound/laugh is often hard to place–sometimes it comes from the cameraman. What is his role, how much? The camera brings the humpers into the world. What does its presence do to what it gazes?
## The cameraman is a bully, sometimes, it seems. Driving down the street an night, Elvishair humper rhapsodizing, redshirt humper sullen in backseat, cameraman shining spotlight beam on redshirt humper’s eye.
### Bearded middle-aged man in drag, on a bridge, delivers humper manifesto–they hump as a response to the commercial trash of the world, that which has sullied god’s green babe–they later kill him in the kitchen. He was not one of them. His manifesto was false. Their behavior is not what one makes manifestos from. The camera catches it, the camera can stay. The camera is silent, the cameraman intimidates.
#### The monologues, the “faggot” jokes. They observe them all. They only kill the manifesto giver. He, also, was the only one speaking from a script. It was artifice. So, he had to go.
# The end: The female humper, lullabying baby to sleep in the street: does she settle with motherhood, is that this film? Jackasses no more, with the beauty of reproductive creation. They hump trash. They hump trash but fragile beauty from trash humping can spring.
## Or: Dichotomy. No change for female humper–both are her, they jostle in there.
Review of MONEY POEMS by James Gendron
James Gendron’s “Money Poems” is small; its smallness is its modus operandi. A chapbook that propels itself to its end not only by the brevity of the individual poems and the speed at which you can move through it, but by the monologue that builds in all the voices. Each poem is its own voice because each poem is a single mood. For some it’s simple–fear, humor, regret–but in most it’s some multiplicity of moods fused into a single essence that has no name. For example, the poem “Love,” which I may as well quote in its entirety:
I bought my love a gallon of the ocean.
We walk hand-in-hand to the beach.
There! There! I think I see our gallon!
The poem works because it begins with a fanciful premise and extends it. That spark is the driving force of the poem, and the poem only lasts as long as it takes for the fuse to burn. Too often poets feel the need to apologize for a slight absurdity, over-explaining it and drowning it in realism until all the life and excitement has been drained and that initial bit of interest, the interesting (even if in a minor way) phrase or idea, becomes estranged from the very poem that it caused to be. And the poem is all the worse for it.
But Gendron knows how to ride that spark, and here that spark is one of love&naivety–a single unit–and so it ends with the maximization of that love&naivety in the wonder that obtains in being in love and the naivety that is required by that sort of love: of course he can’t ‘really’ see their gallon, but what good does it do to smash that joy? The love&naivety present is made powerful because, in fusing the two terms, they come to stand for something other than the two individual terms battling against one another; it’s about trying to grab on to a small piece of something immense and ungraspable, and the audacity of allowing oneself to own your piece of that, even if what your piece is a part of is incomprehensible and untenable as a whole.
Plus, it’s silly. It’s silly in a way that I find enjoyable, but I could see how others would find it not to their taste. Yet the fact that it is silly and contains these other, deeper implications is what gives it lasting value. When you’ve exhausted one route, the other opens up and refreshes the poem. And, despite all this time spent on it in this review and as much as I enjoy it, “Love” is far from my favorite poem in here. I chose “Love” as my example because it does what all of these poems do but in a more straightforward way. Its mood–that love&naivety thing I keep talking about–is more straightforward by its very nature because of what happens at that fusion point. For an example of this principle, take the first poem in the book, “Toolbox” (quoted, again, in its entirety):
To clean the dirty water: more water.
Our low, rough voices drift
over the shacks of millionaires. Nobody
is going to tell us what to do.
And here comes nobody now.
The mood of this poem is more complex. Its elements are filth, cleansing, wealth, authority, and submission. Its moods on these elements disgust, sadness, and, perhaps, peeking out beneath these and other elements, hope. To see this glimmer of hope, read the last two sentences again from the perspective of someone helpless to cleanse themselves of their sad drifting–someone who only knows of one way to solve a problem (“To clean the dirty water: more water.”) and could use the comfort of conforming to authority that vanishes with childhood. And it’s not an either/or with the hope or disgust. It is both hope and disgust (I won’t make it hope&disgust this time, because this one is more complicated than “Love”–it has more moods amalgamating than that).
Poems like “Toolbox” are the voices that build into the monologue. And while all the individual poems of “Money Poems” remain heterogeneous, they work as a snowball rolling downhill, themes emerging, textual decisions from one poem influencing later poems, culminating in a final poem that ends the only way a book like this one should, though no one else would have thought to do it.
You can (and should) buy MONEY POEMS over at Poor Claudia.
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NOM NOM 4 DOREN
The Glamorization of Real Trouble: Formalism’s Failure in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
The Glamorization of Real Trouble:
Formalism’s Failure in Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire
Why, in a film in which the protagonist suffers an outlandishly awful list of abuse, does none of it quite seem real? Precious’ situation, through atrocious, is not an impossible one, even if the details—two children by rape by her father, and sexual abuse by her mother—approach gratuity. However, for a film to present this level of abuse and yet be unable to achieve, let alone maintain, a tone appropriate to it is to present the atrocities not for their realistic effect but for an ulterior purpose—to provide a springy platform from which to propel the film’s feel-good mentality. The best example of this is the living room brawl that takes place between Precious and her mother when Precious returns home from giving birth to Abdul. The brawl is certainly not a feel-good moment, but its melodramatic treatment has the effect of scraping the bottom of the barrel, only to scoop up what is found there and place it atop the perseverance ice cream cone that is the film’s overall aesthetic—an aesthetic achieved by accretion of fantastical, glamorous, fun, fantasy moments that outweigh the bleak state of Precious’ circumstances.
A realist would choose to depict with simplicity a fist fight between a mother and daughter, recognizing that, with the emotional density of the situation, the lens need only act as a silent observer, an effect that would allow the audience to respond directly to the (already potent) action. The scene does open with realism, with an unsteady handheld camera on the door as Precious enters, and a shaky, medium take that pans from Mary to Precious, before it transitions into quick jump cuts when they begin to slap one another. However, the film’s half-hearted underpinnings to realism reaches its breaking point at the moment that Mary pushes Precious down: Precious stumbles and falls in slow motion, Abdul and Precious both let out a cry as a treacly soul choir song begins to play, leading to a fade into a Polaroid of Mary holding an infant Precious beside the Christmas tree. My immediate response to the fluid shift from a shoving match to funeral-march-esque slideshow was to laugh out loud, and when I rewatched the scene, it had the same effect. Daniels certainly was not aiming for laughter at this moment (since all the meant-to-be-funny moments are obviously so in a pronounced, nearly slapstick way, e.g. Mary’s armpit hair, which had the opportunity to be a subtle bit of realistic detail, but which was made into comic relief due to it appearing in close-up during a comic relief scene of overweight Mary dancing around in a flowery spandex bodysuit)—this was his scene of climactic despair, the scene spurring Precious to empower herself enough to distance herself from the abuse. So why, then, did it elicit laughter from me?
The most primal reason was due to the abrupt and odd shift in tone from realism to highly stylized sentimentality. The shift is a jarring one, entirely disrupting the flow that is building in the scene. Daniels certainly was aware that his formal manipulation would disrupt the flow of the scene, and the argument could be made that he was subverting the viewer’s expectations for the fight, creating a different sort of tension. But subversion of expectations only is effective if it is done to some end, or at the very least, done in an aesthetically pleasing or interesting way. Daniel’s choice meets neither of those criteria, since its goal is to show how sad the situation is (which the viewer already knows) by means of showing that things were not always so bad via family photos (which proves nothing, since even Mary is capable of being kind for milliseconds at a time).
The second reason was for the absurdity of this event—Precious being pushed—being the one chosen to be her breaking point. Sure, all the abuse has added up, and Precious is now returning from the safety of the hospital, where sexy Nurse John kissed her forehead and gave her a racially-conscious Christmas card, and a breaking point is often an event that would be minor in other circumstances. But it is the melodramatic formalist technique, the piling on of effects and music, the purpose of which is to signify This is a painful yet important moment in Precious’ life, which elevate the importance of the event as an Event within the film. The use of slow motion literally makes the fall take up more space, and the expression of agony on Precious’ face as it fades into the Polaroid overlay is one that would have more realistically belonged there during any of the previous atrocities. Just a moment before, when Mary tossed Abdul off her lap and hurled the ash tray, it shattering over Precious’ head, Precious says “You crazy Momma?” but appears mostly unfazed by the attack. Yet, to be shoved and stumble to the ground is somehow more excruciating, more damaging, and more worthy of the viewer’s empathy.
This inconsistency of significance stems from the sloppy mixture of realism and off-putting formalism. Each technique is used only as it is convenient, which leads to such things as the portrayal of Precious’ blankness during the rape scene transitioning through the crack in the ceiling into her mind, where she is a glamorous, sophisticated diva. Or take the example of Precious reading her fairytale to the class, which is interrupted by a funky, energetic song cut in time with her being raced through the corridor on the hospital to deliver her incest rape-baby. I cannot help but feel dismayed by the ambiguity that the lack of a clear aesthetic vision creates within the film thematically and morally. Daniels wanted us to be grooving and laughing to Precious’ water-breaking scene, and commiserating to her agonized tumbled to the floor in her mom’s apartment. But the effect on me is reversed, and I find myself laughing from the heavy-handed, heartstring-tugging sentimentalism, and shaking my head at the glorification of Precious’ ride to the ER to give birth to a child borne of the most miserable circumstances.
I’m Sorry
Tesla made Mark Twain shit his pants.
That was a line that is true but that
I thought would be a good idea to put into
a poem. Now that I did and see what next sentence
it lead to, I see it wasn’t such a good idea
after all. Because this is now like something
one of those 19-year-old prodigy-writers-who-are-
not-actually-in-any-way-prodigies-but-who-get-published-
and-being-“19”-it-means-something-different.
They are the anti-prodigies, because what they make is anti-good.
This is what we’ve come to, not that it’s unexpected.
Youth over age over all. Why Zachary German? Why David
Fishkind? There are probably others in this category
that I’m not keen to. Not hip to. Not “with it” enough to
know, though “with it” enough to know to be “with it”
I wouldn’t say “keen to,” but not enough “with it” to know
what I would say, and not enough “with it” to have stopped
putting scare quotes around with it until now. Tao Lin.
He’s another. But he’s now too old, an old fogey. He’s what?
Twenty-seven? This is not a poem and thus it is less of a poem
than Tao Lin’s poems but still as much of a poem as the poems
I’ve read by Zachary German and David Fishkind. I’m 22.
I hate that I’m typing this right now. Is this the honesty that, for people
who don’t think their work is horseshit, is one of the positive features
of it? Because this is absurdly easy. Not that art can’t be easy. But this….
There is a difference between this not-poem and one of theirs. See,
David Fishkind’s poems are like “I wanted to call her, but I couldn’t at the
time / so I texted her instead. And she didn’t answer / until 2:00 AM. And
I didn’t see that she texted me back / until 3:00 AM.” Is that better
than this? This is more bitter than that. Less blasé too. Really I’m
only still going with this because this is something that I’m writing instead
of what I ought to be writing right now and because I’ve had these
figures on my mind and because I thought what the hell, I haven’t
posted anything on my blog in forever, even though I really shouldn’t
post this, because unlike Zachary German who said in the interview
I just read something to the effect of “I write exactly what I want to read,”
I never would want to read this. Yet I have. And now you have.
I’m sorry.
The Marissa Files (trailer)
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“A devil of a lot of trouble”
“I am going to read my poems with great emphasis upon their rhythm. And that may seem strange if you are not used to it. I remember the great English poet William Morris coming in a rage out of some lecture hall, where somebody had recited a passage out of his Sigurd the Volsung. ‘It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble,’ said Morris, ‘to get that thing into verse.’ It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read. And that is why I will not read them as if they were prose.”
-William Butler Yeats
Tubin’ with Chad Kroeger
TUBIN' with CHAD KROEGER
The new Frog Eyes album is rumored to have a late April release. In honor, let us ponder over the below document of one fan’s devotion to a fellow Canadian musician:
Alright, enough of this poll stuff–I have a Faulkner paper to finish.
And besides, we all know–whichever one you voted for, it all comes down to love, either way.
Phoenix Rainbow – Strange Creek
The transmission is fuzzy. It’s hazy, there’s a wall of bass and some radio voices saying nothing intelligible or should I say decipherable. It’s certainly telligible, all about love and loneliness, lonely lovelyness, and this evolution, this moving outward always to escape the last-second’s selves that collapse in on us always unless we outmaneuver them. And Cody has so many selves that threaten to sink in on him. They line the cover of his latest album in a Brady Bunch collage and it’s CodySmokingCigarettes, CodyLightingCigarettes, CodyLookingYoung(MaybeBeing Young), CodyLookingAside, CodyLookingUp, and Sad. And then there’s just Cody. The most recent Cody, I guess, the one I haven’t spoken to in what seems like much longer than it actually is, the Cody in the top row, center, with a mustache, and looking like the kind of old man that breaks your heart just hobbling out to the mailbox, only he doesn’t look elderly, he looks insane (just a bit), but like a nice rural man who has forgotten all about cameras and film and most things aside from sitting in a cabin and playing a broken old guitar. And he’s at the DMV, and he’s getting a new license and smiling nice into the lens. Only he smiles too late, just after the flash. But he keeps it, no trouble, he tells the deadeyed mother of four, no trouble at all, he tells her and he means it but it’s really because he thinks it looks nice. It’s really because “there’s a calm in the mountains like no [unintelligible]” and because that deep calm, that deep lonesome calm will never be enough.
Echoes of Airplanes 