John Harris can be incredibly irritating sometimes. What exactly does he want to be? Political commentator with a diluted socialist angle? A cultural connoisseur? Or just a good old fashioned music hack?
He may have some good points in his lukewarm review of the new Magnetic Fields album for The Guardian (although his obvious contempt for Stephin Merritt's ironic approach to songwriting merely suggests that he lacks a sense of humour). Whilst I am an admirer of the group, my considered thoughts on that release will have to wait until I've heard the entire album. What has irked me more is the final paragraph: '...what might follow this? Merritt's next wheeze could find him mixing up any number of his previous releases - Sonny and Cher meets Randy Newman, perhaps, or maybe a fusion of Sinatra and Philip Glass. That would surely get him a load of five star internet reviews and drooling acclaim in the blogosphere.' Why does The Guardian, a paper with its very lifeblood currently dependant on its excellent website, still insist on printing this nonsense? Why can they not appreciate that a number of the people who read arts sections in newspapers are themselves bloggers? Why are all bloggers consistently tarred with the same brush, as if we're some kind of grand cult of ineptitude? Is it because the blogosphere has become something of which mainstream papers like The Guardian are increasingly wary - something that is undermining their supposedly untouchable position as the nation's arbiters of taste?
Whilst I am sometimes as guilty of lapsing into hyperbole as any writer, I try very hard to avoid writing purely as a fan. Indeed, I've written critically and honestly about artists whose work I really admire (wait for my hatchet job on Morrissey's forthcoming Greatest Hits for example, or see my thoughts on Prince at the 02 or my critical review of Bruce Springsteen's 'Magic', a good deal more honest than some of the slavish fanboy writing that appeared in print - 'the best album of his career' - do you really mean that?). Not every blogger drools slavishly without exercising critical judgement - indeed, such acumen is less and less the preserve of print journalists, many of whom seem to have a bewildering lack of knowledge of musical history or cultural context.
It's also worth remembering that musical appreciation is subjective - for every listener turned off by an artist like Stephin Merritt's reliance on conceits and wit, there will be another listener enticed by it. When writers discuss music, they ought to concentrate on trying to identify elements that could unite a group of listeners, even if that group might be a marginal minority (let's also not forget that, not least do the margins often become the mainstream in the long-term, but that minorities can exercise their own significant influence). At the most conservative interpretation - this might focus on a songwriter's grasp of melody, rhythm, metre, harmony or poetry. If they combine all of the above, they are probably on to something. If we're adopting a more adventurous standpoint, we might be wise to look at how successfully writers subvert expectations on these criteria and challenge their audiences, developing their wider tastes. Simply writing to assert your authority over other, mostly non-professional writers is too easy and serves as an unhelpful guide for readers.
The newspaper that pioneered internet content with Comment is Free ought to avoid alienating those people who most welcome the freedom and creativity afforded by the internet. Otherwise, their cultural commentators will simply render themselves irrelevant. For all the current media hype surrounding predictions for 2008, it's worth remembering that for every Mika, there's a Burial or Arcade Fire - acts now invading the mainstream whose unique and broad appeal developed initially from word of mouth over the internet. The 'blogosphere' has introduced me to a good deal of uncynical and positive, but also ultimately realistic writing about music. This comes from the people who actually consume music, rather than simply blagging their way through a PR-directed selection. Is there any reason why I should not be informed by these people every bit as much as by the journalists whose writing I also admire?
Friday, January 04, 2008
Write It Down and Set It To Music
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007)
Interest in Gus Van Sant’s succession of dreamy, listless, and morally ambiguous films seems to have waned in this country since ‘Elephant’ deservedly won him the Palme D’Or at Cannes. How bizarre that this film was only afforded a release on Boxing Day, surely a time at which nobody attends the cinema, with particularly hopeless distribution (it’s rare that I relent and pay an extortionate £10 to see a film at the Curzon Soho).
‘Paranoid Park’ is, perhaps mercifully, a good deal closer to ‘Elephant’ than Van Sant’s previous film, the overrated ‘Last Days’. ‘Last Days’, inspired by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, seemed to suggest that that tragic event could be attributed purely to boredom and disaffection, as opposed to any more complex malaise or personal torment. ‘Paranoid Park’ is the most subjective of this trilogy of films. Given that his films hardly aspire to be anything else, it’s odd that the word ‘subjective’ has been brandished against Van Sant pejoratively. ‘Paranoid Park’ captures its central character (an uncertain and hesitant teenage boy named Alex) at a period of profound dislocation and discomfort, facing his parents’ awkward divorce and unable to accept responsibility for his role in the particularly gruesome death of a railway security guard. Much like his portrayal of the high school mass-murderers in ‘Elephant’, Van Sant offers no explicit moral judgement or condemnation of Alex here – this is simply not his concern. Van Sant simply portrays Alex’s troubled existence in a fragmentary, but matter-of-fact manner.
I found it rather affecting and convincing, its desolate mood appropriately conveying isolation and estrangement from reality. Alex is an endearing character – neither academic nor especially intelligent (his voiceover is deliberately hesitant and without flow), he speaks in naturalistic language and somehow achieves his own appealingly clumsy poetry. This chimes with the dependable visual poetry of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, whose photographic language is among the most eloquent in contemporary cinema. The more rough-hewn Super 8 footage of Skateboarders comes from Rain Kathy Li – neatly conveying Van Sant’s obvious affection and understanding of the disaffected teenagers that dominate the Skate Parks of Portland, Oregon.
Even more striking than the rich and rewarding cinematography is the film’s bold and disorientating sound design. The use of wildly contrasting music – from Nino Rota’s famous score for ‘Juliet of the Spirits’ to some thrashing hardcore punk – highlights Alex’s confusion and internal torment. Similarly, the amplification of usually meaningless background noise serves to emphasise a sense of strife and disorder.
That Alex seems blank and empty on the outside has provoked Van Sant’s harshest critics, but there are convincing elements to this, notably his drifting away during science classes, his constantly shifting explanation to a Police Detective, his lack of interest in sex with his energetic but unengaging girlfriend and his burgeoning friendship with another female schoolmate. Surely this is a more complex depiction of adolescent emotions than the usual angry, passive-aggressive, confrontational stereotype?
Van Sant is indulging his preoccupation with disaffected local youth in this film, and some may feel uncomfortable with his near-fetishisation of his lead actor’s angelic features. This does at least serve to contrast his outward innocence and inexperience with the weighty burden of his terrible secret though, and therefore arguably has a justified purpose. Another Van Sant fetish, the shower scene (this must be the only reason he remade Psycho shot for shot), recurs here, although in this instance it’s one of the most powerful and symbolic moments in his cinema, a baptismal moment of quite surprising intensity, again with astonishing sound.
Alex pays a high price for venturing into Paranoid Park itself, a slightly menacing and unfamiliar world in which only the very best skaters go, many of them seemingly from social backgrounds far less comfortable than Alex’s own. Eventually we find out that Alex’s voiceover represents a letter depicting the events that he is encouraged to write by his friend Macy, a remarkably warm and perceptive character. At the end, he appears to burn the pages rather than deliver it to her, but at least his innermost, most disconcerting thoughts have somehow been released.
Interest in Gus Van Sant’s succession of dreamy, listless, and morally ambiguous films seems to have waned in this country since ‘Elephant’ deservedly won him the Palme D’Or at Cannes. How bizarre that this film was only afforded a release on Boxing Day, surely a time at which nobody attends the cinema, with particularly hopeless distribution (it’s rare that I relent and pay an extortionate £10 to see a film at the Curzon Soho).
‘Paranoid Park’ is, perhaps mercifully, a good deal closer to ‘Elephant’ than Van Sant’s previous film, the overrated ‘Last Days’. ‘Last Days’, inspired by the suicide of Kurt Cobain, seemed to suggest that that tragic event could be attributed purely to boredom and disaffection, as opposed to any more complex malaise or personal torment. ‘Paranoid Park’ is the most subjective of this trilogy of films. Given that his films hardly aspire to be anything else, it’s odd that the word ‘subjective’ has been brandished against Van Sant pejoratively. ‘Paranoid Park’ captures its central character (an uncertain and hesitant teenage boy named Alex) at a period of profound dislocation and discomfort, facing his parents’ awkward divorce and unable to accept responsibility for his role in the particularly gruesome death of a railway security guard. Much like his portrayal of the high school mass-murderers in ‘Elephant’, Van Sant offers no explicit moral judgement or condemnation of Alex here – this is simply not his concern. Van Sant simply portrays Alex’s troubled existence in a fragmentary, but matter-of-fact manner.
I found it rather affecting and convincing, its desolate mood appropriately conveying isolation and estrangement from reality. Alex is an endearing character – neither academic nor especially intelligent (his voiceover is deliberately hesitant and without flow), he speaks in naturalistic language and somehow achieves his own appealingly clumsy poetry. This chimes with the dependable visual poetry of cinematographer Christopher Doyle, whose photographic language is among the most eloquent in contemporary cinema. The more rough-hewn Super 8 footage of Skateboarders comes from Rain Kathy Li – neatly conveying Van Sant’s obvious affection and understanding of the disaffected teenagers that dominate the Skate Parks of Portland, Oregon.
Even more striking than the rich and rewarding cinematography is the film’s bold and disorientating sound design. The use of wildly contrasting music – from Nino Rota’s famous score for ‘Juliet of the Spirits’ to some thrashing hardcore punk – highlights Alex’s confusion and internal torment. Similarly, the amplification of usually meaningless background noise serves to emphasise a sense of strife and disorder.
That Alex seems blank and empty on the outside has provoked Van Sant’s harshest critics, but there are convincing elements to this, notably his drifting away during science classes, his constantly shifting explanation to a Police Detective, his lack of interest in sex with his energetic but unengaging girlfriend and his burgeoning friendship with another female schoolmate. Surely this is a more complex depiction of adolescent emotions than the usual angry, passive-aggressive, confrontational stereotype?
Van Sant is indulging his preoccupation with disaffected local youth in this film, and some may feel uncomfortable with his near-fetishisation of his lead actor’s angelic features. This does at least serve to contrast his outward innocence and inexperience with the weighty burden of his terrible secret though, and therefore arguably has a justified purpose. Another Van Sant fetish, the shower scene (this must be the only reason he remade Psycho shot for shot), recurs here, although in this instance it’s one of the most powerful and symbolic moments in his cinema, a baptismal moment of quite surprising intensity, again with astonishing sound.
Alex pays a high price for venturing into Paranoid Park itself, a slightly menacing and unfamiliar world in which only the very best skaters go, many of them seemingly from social backgrounds far less comfortable than Alex’s own. Eventually we find out that Alex’s voiceover represents a letter depicting the events that he is encouraged to write by his friend Macy, a remarkably warm and perceptive character. At the end, he appears to burn the pages rather than deliver it to her, but at least his innermost, most disconcerting thoughts have somehow been released.
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