Art vs. Entertainment
Jun. 20th, 2005 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drscottSaturday night we dropped in on Scooby/Dan and Scott's house party in Menlo Park. The house was completely gutted and rebuilt; the most recent improvement was Scott's complete interior painting makeover. Wonderful woodworking (largely in cherry) and tilework by Scoob. I didn't realize we had the craftsman gene in common; but he's gone way beyond anyplace I ever was in furnituremaking. I hope he starts taking commissions so I can buy something of his. They have a variety of interesting friends, and I talked to a few people I knew only from seeing them around the gym. One is the photographer who does "art" photos of bodybuilders, but who also turns out to be a prime mover in the Final Cut (Apple film editing software) team.
Sunday we took my mother up to the city for Beach Blanket Babylon, which is a rather silly revue featuring outlandish costumes, hats, and topical celebrity humor. It was very hot in our seats (we were in the upper balcony since I'd bought tickets late) and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
excessor was nearly ill from it. But he recovered and the show was fun. After that, we wandered around enjoying the sunshine at the North Beach festival, which was kinda dull, then stopped in for a bite at Pasta Pomodoro on Market, looked for good workout shirts at Max Muscle (no synthetic muscle tanks, alas) and stopped at the Diamond Heights overlook before driving home via 280 for its scenic value.
We've been watching The English Patient piece by piece in the evenings. It's one of my favorite movies of recent years, though it really needs to be seen all at once in a theater to have its full impact. Bothexcessor and my mother don't seem to be enjoying it like I do -- it's a bit grim, starting out with a plane crash, battle scenes, horrific burns, and field surgery. The time sequence is confusing for the unsophisticated and since it's clear at the beginning that the central romance is doomed, you have to be interested in its meditation on the nature of love and the meaning of tragic loss. The archaeologists working in prewar North Africa discover cave paintings of swimmers in the middle of the desert, showing that there was life and striving where now there is only death; the striving is no less worthy because it was doomed, as all things are, to end. But most audiences -- and, notoriously, American audiences -- prefer to end any story at the point where happiness seems evident and obstacles have all been overcome. But what comes after that? And after that? And after that? ....
Which ties into what some of my friends think of the last season of Six Feet Under. Yes, it lost a lot of its humorous leavening. Yes, too many grim things happened to the Fishers and friends to be very realistic. Yes, David's engaging personality has been turned into an hysterical neurotic for dramatic purposes. But viewed as a whole the series is great art -- sometimes stressful, sometimes hard to watch, but more close to life than most anything else on TV.
This morning I got up early and delivered my mom to the parking lot at Bennigan's off Great America Parkway for the bus trip to the Riverrock Casino in Geyserville, north of Santa Rosa. We got there ten minutes early and spotted the crowd of 10-20 oldsters waiting for the bus. My mother wanted to wait in the car since there was no place to sit, but after awhile the waiting group split in two and half of them crossed the street to wait on the other side. I was struck by the strange feeling I was taking her to school for the first time and had to gently encourage her to get out and meet her little friends. So I suggested she go find out what was going on, and she got out and walked over to the group. I could see her chatting away happily with the ladies, and after awhile she came back and said they'd told her it was typical for the bus to be late, and since occasionally they overbooked, I should wait until it was certain she could get on before leaving. So when the bus finally arrived 25 minutes late, I had been twiddling my thumbs and listening to NPR for 40 minutes. But it's nice to see the bird getting out and meeting some new friends. The trip should be scenic, since they cross the Golden Gate Bridge and head up 101 into prime wine country.
Sunday we took my mother up to the city for Beach Blanket Babylon, which is a rather silly revue featuring outlandish costumes, hats, and topical celebrity humor. It was very hot in our seats (we were in the upper balcony since I'd bought tickets late) and
excessor was nearly ill from it. But he recovered and the show was fun. After that, we wandered around enjoying the sunshine at the North Beach festival, which was kinda dull, then stopped in for a bite at Pasta Pomodoro on Market, looked for good workout shirts at Max Muscle (no synthetic muscle tanks, alas) and stopped at the Diamond Heights overlook before driving home via 280 for its scenic value.We've been watching The English Patient piece by piece in the evenings. It's one of my favorite movies of recent years, though it really needs to be seen all at once in a theater to have its full impact. Both
excessor and my mother don't seem to be enjoying it like I do -- it's a bit grim, starting out with a plane crash, battle scenes, horrific burns, and field surgery. The time sequence is confusing for the unsophisticated and since it's clear at the beginning that the central romance is doomed, you have to be interested in its meditation on the nature of love and the meaning of tragic loss. The archaeologists working in prewar North Africa discover cave paintings of swimmers in the middle of the desert, showing that there was life and striving where now there is only death; the striving is no less worthy because it was doomed, as all things are, to end. But most audiences -- and, notoriously, American audiences -- prefer to end any story at the point where happiness seems evident and obstacles have all been overcome. But what comes after that? And after that? And after that? ....Which ties into what some of my friends think of the last season of Six Feet Under. Yes, it lost a lot of its humorous leavening. Yes, too many grim things happened to the Fishers and friends to be very realistic. Yes, David's engaging personality has been turned into an hysterical neurotic for dramatic purposes. But viewed as a whole the series is great art -- sometimes stressful, sometimes hard to watch, but more close to life than most anything else on TV.
This morning I got up early and delivered my mom to the parking lot at Bennigan's off Great America Parkway for the bus trip to the Riverrock Casino in Geyserville, north of Santa Rosa. We got there ten minutes early and spotted the crowd of 10-20 oldsters waiting for the bus. My mother wanted to wait in the car since there was no place to sit, but after awhile the waiting group split in two and half of them crossed the street to wait on the other side. I was struck by the strange feeling I was taking her to school for the first time and had to gently encourage her to get out and meet her little friends. So I suggested she go find out what was going on, and she got out and walked over to the group. I could see her chatting away happily with the ladies, and after awhile she came back and said they'd told her it was typical for the bus to be late, and since occasionally they overbooked, I should wait until it was certain she could get on before leaving. So when the bus finally arrived 25 minutes late, I had been twiddling my thumbs and listening to NPR for 40 minutes. But it's nice to see the bird getting out and meeting some new friends. The trip should be scenic, since they cross the Golden Gate Bridge and head up 101 into prime wine country.
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Date: 2005-06-20 03:50 pm (UTC)I must have given you the wrong impression about the movie. I'm truly enjoying The English Patient. The time sequence isn't that hard to figure out: it's a standard flashback movie, so two timestreams that will, presumably, merge into one. The movie is astonishingly beautifully filmed, in terms of lighting, sound, and framing, and I could watch Ralph Fiennes all day long. The central theme of identity is engaging, especially against a backdrop of wartime activities and the desperate loss that can result, in what must be some of the most beautiful locales to be filmed.
The reason I avoid such films is because I get lost in them. I somewhat resent the emotional manipulation in most films; the period of introspection that follows a good film can last, for me, weeks. It's a very personal meditation space. It's not that I'm afraid of what I'll see or experience or discover—I know those areas of my psyche very, very well—but it takes a lot of energy to re-sort who I am in the context of the story.
As for Six Feet Under, I'm ok watching that but it's hard to watch an intricately woven story after having seen bits and pieces. The sense of the series' being extreme probably comes from the compactness of the timelines. The physical violence gets to be a bit much. I think most people react to the fact that there's not much with which to identify anymore, in that none of the characters is too likable. That doesn't mean it isn't art, of course.
Some of the reason I haven't enjoyed it as much is that I know these people. I lived with the David character for 20 years. The mother character is very familiar. The playboy brother-turned-philosopher is familiar. I could go on.