The Kolog

About midway through Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), Madame Anne Sebastian (Leoppaline Konstantine) walks down a long staircase and walks right in front of the camera, looking off-screen-right just a bit.  She introduces herself to Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman): “You resemble your father very much” (0:42:00).  Alicia quickly informs Alexander Sabastian’s (Claude Rains) mother, Madame Anna, that she did not testify in her father’s hearing–her voice was supressed from the legal record.  Because I have screened Notorious only twice and considering it takes me three or four times to finally comprehend the majority of a Hitchcock film, I will have to look more closely at the relationship between Alicia and her father viz a viz the law.  I can just hear Susan telling me that I need to complete/develop a thought like this, but it’s late.  So, I throw it out on the Kolog hoping to return one day in the near future in order to incorporate it into my dissertation.  You could say I’m planning ahead to the next research stage as I seem to be making good progress regarding the books/articles/novels/films collected up to this point.  I sense I’m on to something regarding this project as it seems to appeal to a variety of interests and, consequently, people.  The plan I have outlined over the past few weeks has coalesced, in my opinion of course, into a respectable argument that employs a fair share of canonical and more marginal texts.  I’m banking on the fact that my aims will allow me to contribute mightily to the next program in which I find myself.  But again, it’s late…or should I say early?

Like most other evenings, tonight I screened two films: Penny Marshal’s Awakenings (1990) and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974).

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The trope of listening functions in Awakenings as a means by which a mother, Mrs. Lowe (Ruth Nelson), loves her son, Leonard (Robert De Niro).  In this sense, Marshal’s film could be coupled with My Left Foot (see below)In an important scene towards the end of the film, when Leonard seems to have begun slipping back into a commatozed state, Mrs. Lowe tries to tell Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robing Williams) but he the doctore does not seem to listen to her?  Also, a woman’s voice singing functions as a moment of humanity in the film (which character is this? and is her voice silenced in the end?).  The film could work very well with Kaja Silverman’s The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Film, in addition to the already stated My Left Foot.  Most importantly, for me, is the fact that Awakenings was directed by a woman, which to this day remains a remarkable occurence/utterance in Hollywood.

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In his introduction of the film, Robert Osborne points to the theme of water–taught by Susan and I last semester in ENGL 300, might I add–as the reason for airing Chinatown as it was the theme of the evening on TCM .  Having already screened the film a couple of times last fall, I want to pay particular attention to Evelyn Cross Mulwray’s (Faye Dunaway) voice–not to mention the voice of Curly (Burt Young), which opens the film and which many characters/adiences ignore.  Does J.J.”Jake” Gittes listen to her in the restaurant?  Is Gittes flawed by the inability to listen or does he possess an intuitively sound ear (or both)?  What about Mr. Cross?  Who listens to him and to whom does he listen? What about Curly’s wife???  Does Jake listen to Curly when the latter complains of Albacore in the scene following the opening credits????  Does the public listen to Mr. Mulwray at the open town hall (or council meeting) in the second scene of the film?

With the fetishizing of looking (through binoculars, rear-view mirrors, etc.), perhaps Polanski distracts us from his brilliant soundtrack.  Sound Editor Bob Cornett et al. employ loud sounds of running water early and throughout the film in order to draw more than one sense’s attention to the theme.  The use of music functions in a similar manner: the lack throughout much of the film emphasizes the moments in which sounds have narrative significance.

Jake certainly does not listen to his coworkers when they try to inform him that the real Mrs. Mulwray is in his office.  Jake insists on telling the joke about “Chinamen.”  Does this funny scene (funny as a result of Jake’s ignorance and not his taste in jokes) serve to establish the trope of listening that will function throughout the film?????

So many questions to return to over the next few months…and I haven’t covered the first thirty minutes in this post.  I believe the cops refuse to listen to Jake in Chinatown at the end of the film, which would place Jake on both ends of the trope of listening.  After all, the gardener tells Jake early on that the water is bad for glass, but the latter is interrupted with the arrival of Evelyn.

Side note: Faye Dunaway’s performance in Chinatown, particularly her voice, reminds me of Jilian Moore in The Big Labowski.

In Gaby (see below), a woman in bed cries out and wails as the image cuts to a close-up of her nurse/maid (???) listening in the stairwell.  The scene makes me think of the baby’s cry in Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is a primal sound, the meaning of which is inherently in the ears, if you will, of the listener.  In the proceeding scene, the sound of laughter flings around a classroom, representing, among other things, a tense/tumultuous experience in Gaby’s life.  In the next scene, Gaby is spotted, by a boy, listening to her caretaker read.

Again, I would need to unpack this in order to clarify these nascent thoughts.  Nevertheless, I wanted to get the idea out of my head before I lost it.

In My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989 dir. Jim Sheridan, perf. Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Alison Whelan), Sheila (Whelan)  understands–i.e. listens to–Christy (Day-Lewis), who, as a result, falls in love with her.

Later, while Sheila and Christy are talking in the latter’s bedroom, his mother, Mrs. Brown (Fricker), downstairs with his father in the kitchen, eavesdrops on or listens to her son–troubled by the sound of hope she hears in his voice.

As usual, I need to unpack/develop such a thesis concerning Jim Sheridan’s film, but I think these two scenes depict a few of the ways in which listening functions in the relationship between Sheila, Christy and his mother.    Christy Brown worked his entire life to be heard and loved those, above anybody else, who listen.  Indeed, listening serves as  a means of recognition and a possible remedy against alienation the likes of which came to define the twentieth century and postmodernity.

In order to flesh out the concepts discussed in relation to My Left Foot, I could turn to Gaby: A True Story (perf. Liv Ullmann, Norma Aleandro, Rachel Levin, 1987) as a reasonable companion piece.  Still, what theory would I apply to my reading of these films??? I know the pool from which I will select the theorists, but it is too late–and I too sleepy–to make such connections now.  Call it a self-imposed homework assignment.

Several weeks ago, Amy suggested I think about The Princess Bride as listening plays in important function during a scene when the villain tells the captured-hero he will mutilate every inch of the man’s body except his ears so that he’s forced to listen to the responses of horrified onlookers.  While it started off as a relatively insignificant instance of the trope of listening, when coupled with Cecil Pineda’s Face, the trope of listening functioning as a form of torture could expand into a significant section of the dissertation.  After all, I’ve already thought about discussing listening and subjectivity in Native Son.

I post this as a reminder to myself–you can only imagine how difficult it can be to remember thoughts hatched at three o’clock in the morning–and as an example of the way in which ideas discussed in passing can germinate into sophisticated arguments…at least, I think so.

In previous posts and even in a few essays, I emphasized the literary use of soundscapes, employing texts by American Indian and Puerto Rican authors to demonstrate a push against a perceived hierarchy in which the visual image is fetishized at the expense of the sonic realm.  There’s quite a bit to unpack in that sentence, and it’s too late at the moment, but I could spend a chapter (or part of a chapter) of the diss. reintroducing sound to our notion of literary (not to mention cinematic) landscapes–primary texts could include the work of Piri Thomas, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Greg Sarris and/or Ray A. Youngbear.

While sleeping better these days, I’ve still  been keeping late hours.  I’m beginning to think its par for the course.  At night, after everyone else is in bed, I can watch some old movies and read some wonderful books without interruption–even the television is less distracting, what with all the paid programming late at night.  For instance, tonight (or this morning for most of you), I screened the rest of Arizona, and began rereading James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, which must be in my dissertation:

Today, I went to see Fonny.  That’s not his name, either, he was christened Alonzo: and it might make sense if people called him Lonnie.  But, no, we’ve always called him Fonny.  Alonzo Hunt, that’s his name.  I’ve known him all my life, and I hope I’ll always know him.  But I only call him Alonzo when I have to break down some real heavy shit to him.

Today, I said, ‘–Alonzo–?’

And he looked at me, that quickening look he has when I call him by his name. (my emphasis 3)

The end of this passage  makes me think of Althusser’s theory of interpellation; and that’s only the first page.  Not long after, Baldwin writes of a visit between friends in jail:

He’s in jail.  So where we were, I was sitting on a bench in front of a board, and he was sitting on a bench in front of a board.  And we were facing each other through a wall of glass between us.  You can’t hear anything through this glass, and so you both have a little telephone.  You have to talk through that.  I don’t know why people always look down when they talk through a telephone, but they always do.  You have to remember to look up at the person you’re talking to.

I always remember now, because he’s in jail and I love his eyes and every time I see him I’m afraid I’ll never see him again.  So I pick up the phone as soon as I get there and I just hold it and I keep looking up at him.

So, when I said, ‘–Alonzo–?’ he looked down and then he looked up and he smiled and he held the phone and he waited.

I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass. (my emphasis 4)

The title of Baldwin’s 1974 publication beckons the trope of listening.  It is conditional–based upon two assumptions–one, that Beale Street can talk, and two, someone’s listening.  I cannot wait for Professor Scruggs course next fall on Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.

I also have the time late-at-night to read Lacan’s “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire.”  The psychoanalyst points to the trope of listening as it functions in confering subjectivity:

I have some difficulty in getting across–in a circle infatuated with the most incredible illogicallity–what it means to interrogate the unconscious as I do, that is, to the point at which it gives a reply that is not some sort of ravishment or takedown, but is rather a ‘saying why.’

If we conduct the subject anywhere, it is to a deciphering which assumes that a sort of logic is already operative in the unconscious, a logic in which, for example, an interrogative voice or even the development of an argument can be recognized.

The whole psychoanalytic tradition supports the view that the analyst’s voice can intervene only if it enters at the right place, and that if it comes too early it merely produces a closing up. (my emphasis, Ecrits 283)

The trope listening within Lacan’s prose only becomes more pronounced as he waxes:

The day someone who is not simply a moron obtains a hearing for a view of this kind will be the day all limits will have been abolished.  We are still a long way from that. (284).

And lastly, Lacan indicates the function of listening in psychoanalysis:

My definition fo the signifier (there is no other) is as follows: a signifier is what represents the subject ot another signifier.  This latter signifier is therefore teh signifier to which all the other signifiers represent the subject–which means that if this signifier is missing, all the other signifiers represent nothing.  For something in only represented to. (my emphasis 304)

Now that my mind is clear of these passages, good night or, should I say, good morning.

I’m working hard to spend those fifteen minutes everyday: today, I incorporated Norma Rae (1979) into my chapter on listening and recognition (to the female worker).

Then, Katie reminded me of the power Sally Field’s character obtains by convincing people to listen to her (and, thus, the union effort), which will allow me to discuss Martin Ritt’s film in another chapter on Foucault, power and listening (at this point, it’s chapter three but will likely move in the near future).  Norma Rae’s ability to be heard is reminiscent of Pheobe Titus (Jean Arthur) in Wesley Ruggles’s Arizona (1940) as the latter commands attention of townsmen in Tucson as the former commands the ear of her co-workers.  I’m sure there are other films in which the trope of listening functions as a means of power (I will have to define this term in Foucauldian terms more thoroughly later) for women.

On a note that may or may not be related: Katie and I screened Kristen Sheridan’s August Rush (2007), which I must consider working into my dissertation as the film’s soundtrack begins and ends with the word listen.  Listening to music plays a crucial role in an orphan’s search for his birth-parents, both of whom were musicians (and literally communicate via their music throughout the film).   To state the obvious: there are a number of ways in which the trope of listening functions in August Rush, might the fact that a woman directed it influence this?

August Rush vascilates at times between being a sophisticated film and a melodramatic flic–of course, who is to say the two are mutually exclusive?–nevertheless, it’s a ripe example of the trope of listening in twenty-first century Hollywood!

Recently, I’ve been reading the Bible, which I never read as a child.  Don’t get me wrong, my mother instilled many of the lessons from the great book–so much so, I never felt the need to read it myself.  All that began to change, however, when I started studying literatrure.

In order to make up for lost time, I read “Exodus” and have just begun “Song of Solomon,” in which the very first line of verse two reads:

Listen! My beloved!

I would love to begin my dissertation with a few quotes from the Bible, not to mention the work by Plato et al.  I may be setting the bar too high, still it never hurts to explore and extend the boundaries of your argument.  Having said that, could I make a leap from the birth of Christ–from which I would like to start, in Chapter One, arguing for a trope of listening in literary theory–to Chapter Two and the publication of David Walker’s Appeal in nineteenth century Antebellum America not to mention Richard Wright’s White Man, Listen! in the twentieth century?