Author: WillJang

Along the polyurethane track encircling the park, I saw a rat slightly bigger than my hand running in the shadow of the curb holding back the dirt. It was running alongside a young woman who was exercising in the middle of the night. In the heat of a South Korean summer, it was fairly customary that the busy professionals of the urban hub of Seoul would exercise once the day cooled off. I could not take my eyes off of that grey rodent nor could I tell the runner in front of me of her uninvited workout partner. It was one of those moments, that was not particularly astonishing, exciting, or at all warranting of a blog post, but it was certainly memorable, sitting right on the edge of banality and extraordinary.

I cannot even describe the rat to you in full detail. In fact, it may have been a mouse for all I know. However this mysterious rodent was special to me in that it validated the existence of a critter my mother abhors (not suggesting that I felt like rats were a fairytale before). There is this dated fear my mother has: you cannot, or you must not, sit on the grass in any old park in Seoul, for the diseased rats could have, or most likely did, scurried over every inch of the sea of green blades. Silly. And a part of me could not accept that my free will, to step on, sit on, or I don’t know, chew on grass, was somehow halted by a rodent that I had never seen before in the wild urban landscape of the far east. Fuck the rat that tells me what to do.

But seeing the rat run alongside that woman, made me consider Veronica the name of an all too important rat in the sewers of Manhattan (ironically my mother’s baptismal name). Father Linus Fairing, the mad priest who preached to rats, had one special one that just kept on returning for that good old sermon. I never much cared for religion either. Feasibly, what keeps the rat running at night is not so different from the runner in the night – a sense of security beneath the moon and the dim street lamps; a feeling that the great heat of the day has sailed on by, leaving the grassy realm free for their tiny palms, dirtied by the dirt treaded on by countless others. It is but a part of a fiction we are all a part of.

Of course I see reason to hate the rat. I see reason to love the rat as well. It never told me what to do of course. That was simply my mother (who had every reason to be suspicious of grass). But the rat is running not because it needs to lose weight, but because it has things to do, rats to see, food to eat, and places to be, just like the runner in the night. When the unseen becomes seen, it is quite dazzling. It is amazing how a little critter just minding its business, can be the producer of so much abhorrence.

The Titters alongside the tree of round-red strawberries and dead eye afro-men, features the stand-up dog, limp and wet, puddles surrounding the stump it lies upon, and a yellow bun sitting atop – heating beneath the light. “Oooooooooooooo,” cries the dog. The narration suggests otherwise, the long, weak, ghostly, sound, slightly edged out by the industrial rectangular text box. What did all these undefined masses of spectators hear during that show? Did they hear the narration or the cry of the limp storyteller? But the dog is never weak; his inner-monologue an instance of assured identity and yearning. The “oooooooooooo,” is just a ruse. The dog is strong in weakness, weakness is strong.
But what of that tree, the tree, the tree? The red of round-red strawberries within the mouth of the black mass composed of cells and sweat and grooves and skin folds. Beneath the black mass or above, lies the face of a woman whose eyes are blue and dead. Vampirism runs rampant in the blue eyes. The triptych woman measures herself from waist to chest. The red lines tell us the measurement from ear lobe to cheek. The entirety of the mass is undefined. Are we but digested masses from a great tree? Droplets of fruity sweetness, cared by the deadeyes, created in the rounded gaze of the watcher. “Ooooooooooooo” cries the limp, “I’d never wanted anything more in my entire life.” To you Deforge.

If you tell me all about the spotting deer: its sexual aqueduct, caudal mucus pit, and depressive tendencies, just to name a few; then you so lead me on to say that all is all. But my own skepticism of your own taxonomical work on the spotting dear, rests not in the dead skin cells on the creatures back, or in the polyps that feed on it, rather it stems from your own bibliography – that of a book inside a comic inside a book. Who are you to suggest that this is all about the spotting dear? Who are you to suggest, Mr. Author of the author, overseer of the all abouts. Oh Kay Figgle, Levan Rumble, and Buffalo Luck; you made it in black, cardboard, and ink. You brought me meat that can change to whatever it is I want to eat. Flankpalin alongside my prosthetic antler, so hand in hand I stand with you, as I forge this response to a comic so true. Spotting deer, it sniffs the book it lives within, because the spotting deer is you and I, walking bits of necrotic tissue, leaving ink spots wherever we choose to meet. (Capreolus Vulgaris), so oily black – you say it is that youohme, the terrestrial slugs, twist and form together. To you Deforge.

There is something terribly wrong about the quest for immersion. By which I mean complete and total immersion, eradicating any partial possibility to have a single toe or hair in the world you just stepped out of. Perhaps my bias towards immersion rests upon a nugget of ignorance regarding the exact motivation one may have in order to accomplish virtual reality – the application of which may find suitable use in realms of scientific enquiry, operating as a form of total interactive simulation. It can act as a training mechanism for athletes or pilots in training perhaps. So it becomes necessary for me to isolate the topic to immersion for entertainment processes.

Probably the modern medium with the most literal pursuit for immersion is the video game. However, before virtual reality devices started to get marketed, from gaming devices to headsets where you attach your phone to act as a screen, there was James Cameron’s Avatar. It must be stated that I am not a fan of James Cameron (I enjoyed Terminator 2 however), so some bias will follow. The film, as we undoubtedly all remember – either having seen it or heard of it from the countless articles and friends that came out of the newest and most innovative 3-D movie going experience to date – as “it seems awfully similar to Pocahontas.” Indeed, the fundamental silhouettes of the two stories are similar – a storytelling error seemingly more noticeable in the recent catalogue of summer blockbuster films (but truthfully, it is not a problem isolated to the current state of the entertainment industry). “But the CG and the animation were so beautiful. And the 3-D! It was like I was actually there!” That is fine, but if you take it away, say you watch it at home with that old CRT your parents refuse to throw away. Then is it the same? Obviously no. The primary visual gimmick is lost. Of course you can argue that that destroys the work as a whole. Disjointing the work from its observable context. This is fair, so let’s consider as it was meant to be, in the theater.

I watched this movie about two weeks before its run in the theaters concluded. At first, I was amazed. That bubble…But then that bubble burst, because the narrative kicked in. The point is, you can fill the world with as many CG animals, plants, lights, blue people, mechs, battles, airships, floating islands, waterfalls, and bubbles as you want, it can feel immersive, surrounding us in a spherical visual dome, like the silver screen is surrounding us, (although this is not the case with Avatar if we are to assume that the immersion is total – meaning we can’t tell the difference between our world and the fictional one) but eventually this new world will just become a world, and like our actual world, we will get bored. We will want entertainment, and hence, we hypothetically need a movie inside the movie for us to stay invested. Or perhaps we need a game inside a game. Essentially, it is back to square one.

Avatar gave me nothing past the visuals; hence I came out of the movie fairly bored. I did not care about the main characters, or the blue people, or the hair lovemaking.

I do not think immersion is bad in conjunction with well-developed narratives. But I do believe an isolated drive to make the best graphics possible is just silly and frankly a formal dead-end. This is because immersion does not have to occur physically – through visual, sonic, and physical construction. Rather, it can occur through a good story. Something Avatar lacked.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a film often credited with removing the sensationalism from the spy film genre. This is not to suggest a subsequent removal of the sensational from every spy film following its 2011 release. However, the film’s departure from the blockbuster epic filled with hyper-kinetic action was heavily emphasized by some of the coeval films. The Bourne Ultimatum was released four years before and Salt just a year. Of course there were the Bond films, Quantum of Solace releasing three years before and Skyfall appearing in 2012.

Regarding cinema of the 21st century, it would appear as if the Tomas Alfredson’s (Let the Right One In) film was a blip in a series of spy films that seemed to be primarily focused on spectacle – even if the action scenes attempted to ground themselves in brutish reality. Through the entire run of Tinker Tailor, there is one punch landed, and it occurs between two coworkers over annoyance/anger rather than any murderous intent. There are only three people who get shot, all of whom were standing still. There are no chase sequences. There are no explosions. There are no sexy cars. There are no gadgets. There are no fight scenes. Death occurs almost entirely off screen, leaving only the brutish result behind.

But a bloodied, disfigured, or in one case, disemboweled corpse, is in itself sensationalism within the context of the cinematic experience. The large lambency casts the horrific in an arguably digestible light. It does not remove the grotesque from the sordid realm, but the diabolical is relatively contained within the verisimilitude – we know it is not real. In the case of Tinker Tailor, suggesting its separation from sensationalism is an understood statement; it is not a form of absolute. Simultaneously, to enter a discourse on the effects of violence, although rare in this film, albeit grotesque upon arrival, is a perambulation I do not wish to go about.

Instead, color seems an interesting subject. The film is muted. It is filled with brown and grey tones, a dully-colored wardrobe, and thick layer of cigarette smoke acting as an opaque veneer for scenes with groups of fellow Circus (MI6) members. It is possible that a muted visual pallet will act to de-sensationalize a film – a visual sobering. Yet, paradoxically, since it creates a stronger verisimilitude, the shock increases upon seeing death. Sometimes, it is nicer to see the cartoonish red spray of Tarantino. Hence, it is more shocking and it lingers for a greater period, the violent result sitting deep in the pit of your stomach as if you have seen something you really should not have.

“But it is made to feel more accurate right? It was not produced to create excitement. It was produced to create horror perhaps. Hence, by definition, it is not sensationalism!” Well, if Alfredson’s intention fit exactly as per description, then perhaps yes, it is not sensationalism on his part as the director. However, the problem lies in the communicative practice of cinema – an audience unfortunately shares it. The horrific can produce excitement within the setting of fiction. Perhaps the best Tinker Tailor can do is be a muted form of sensationalism and the only immoral way to escape it is to actually kill the actors. Which is perhaps why certain documentaries are able to escape the horror/excitement dynamic – purely because the accounts of violence within them, should they exist in the film, are unquestionably real leaving the viewer in a desolate emotional seat.

Outside the realm of the visual, the film ends with a Julio Iglesias’ cover of La Mer playing over a montage that wraps up some loose ends. It is an instance of the perfect moment where film and music match. It is pretty sensational. But perhaps not in the way you would expect from a spy film. Although the track features clapping that matches with the action of the montage in a climatic way, it also plays over scenes of deep emotional value, one of which is coldly unresolved. Hence, this sonic movement is incomparable to the Bond theme playing in the last scene of any Bond movie ever, or Moby’s Extreme Ways coming on at the end of a Bourne film.

To call Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a practice of distancing from the sensational is undoubtedly anchored in the films that came before and after it. Evoking the old adage of there is no purity without impurity, there is no sensational with banal accuracy on deceptively banal subjects. Obviously film started with as a rather sensational experiment, one early film featuring a train coming towards the audience only to terrorize everyone present. Then is Tinker Tailor a tasteful response to the Hollywood progression? Is the subtle form of the sensational better?

Why do I bother analyzing anything? This isn’t a statement meant to suggest that I am jaded or questioning my choice in academic subjects. Instead, I’m genuinely curious about who the analysis is even for? Ostensibly, it’s first and foremost, for me. But the problem is that I don’t really care about the majority of content I analyze. I’ve read countless novels, excerpts, poems, magazine articles, short stories, essays, and have seen countless (well not really, I am still young after all) films, paintings, installations, buildings, photographs, sculptures, and on and on and on. But only a fraction, of this mass of creation I’ve been and continue to be exposed to, do I actually have any stake in. I can only be so emotionally and intellectually invested across a never-ending spectrum of art. Yet I still analyze.

Perhaps I do it for the grades. Good grades are important right? This semester, I took some pass-fail classes and found myself unable to just…sigh…let it go.

“I don’t really want to try in this class. I just want to pass…but I don’t want to turn in a shit paper…as like a self-standard.”

Is that what this is all about, the fiction that I’m smart? I don’t consider myself an intellectual. Instead, I classify myself as an ignoramus of many subjects, trained to be able to craft some sort of bullshit concoction in a reasonable amount of time so that I can at least extend the illusion for one more minute, hour, day, or paper. Maybe that is just what analysis is – an improvisational act meant to assure oneself of their perceived academic prowess. Then there is the argument that my self-critique, or self-analysis, acts as some vague form of the imposter syndrome, believing myself to be incomparable to great artists that preceded or proceed me. Of course there are my contemporaries as well. Students who I believe are genuine. Genuine what? I’m not sure; perhaps that is why they appear to be such fetishized versions of truth.

I know the truth I seek, or imagine, is nigh untouchable by mankind. But nonetheless I like to believe that there are people out there who get it. Perhaps not consciously, but in some inherent sense, whether they realize it or not, are free from the question of why do I do “x”. I think this freedom may exist. Nah.

Wow, isn’t this the best thing to be thinking about during finals week? Also, isn’t it great that this is not an original thought and my own perceptions aren’t enlightening in the slightest? Only adding to the mire of collegiate babble that suffocates every coffee shop and dorm. I imagine that everything I write now, academic papers included, is followed not by an empty “Oh, that is interesting!” but a candid, “Ya, I get it.” Perhaps I shouldn’t turn in my final paper. Maybe it will be liberating. But I probably won’t cause I’m a coward at heart. That is one thing I’m certain of.