Three points from me today:
(1) Nice forking around Kafka yesterday. Appreciations for in-class discussion, as always.
(2) I have on the course website for next week some "Madness Discussion Ideas," which I hope can spur some blogs from you (particularly those of you who've not yet written one). Ergo, I won't get long-winded here. Suffice it to say that we will be talking very directly about the narration in these texts (whence and how we get the info we get).
(3) If you have some thoughts about such, shoot me an email or an anonymous note giving me some feedback on (a) how you think the course is going, (b) what foci you would like me to bring to the class, and (c) suggestions for making it a more productive 2 1/2 hours, specifics I can change (no, we're not going to get out 45 minutes early!).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yesterday's screening was creepy. I don't know how else to describe it. Seems like that facility was conducting ass-backwards therapy. The random shots didn't tie together at all and to me the film had a Rob Zombie, House of 1000 Corpses feel. Especially the end with everyone singing and dancing.
ReplyDeleteAs far as class I think it is going great. Agreed it is a little long. Maybe incorporating short clips during your lecture would help? My only suggestion...
Cheers,
Todd
Titicut Follies have great amout of alienation effect to audience. The dehumanization (Insulting and treating the patient like a shit) defintely distance me from being emotional involved with those mental patient, and forced me to be a crtical observer. I observed their behavior, and asked myself, "Who had a right to treat people like that?" The elements of dehumanization taken place in the film and Kafka's work. In a way, it is true realism documentary to me.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how the lack of an obvious, capital-N "Narrator" telling us how to feel about the events depicted only made (what I would assume is) Wiseman's point come through more strongly. Even though there was only a minimal amount of conventional documentary narrative structure--the bookending scenes of incredibly damaged people putting on a show to boost the hospital's P.R., and cross-cutting of a patient being force-fed through his nose and a (the same? I couldn't tell) patient being put away in the morgue, the recurring "plot" of the schizophrenic who's convinced of his own stability--the fly-on-the-wall P.o.V. was far from neutral. The hospital superintendent came across as the worst kind of self-absorbed, apathetic monster (like Nero, telling cut-rate Borscht Belt jokes as Rome burns), but I'm sure that the reality of the situation was at least a little less dramatic than portrayed in the film. Even though it is delivered as though the audience itself is passively observing, the single viewpoint (as opposed to the audience literally sitting in the panopticon/security office watching the entire hospital for days on end) makes the camera an inherently unreliable narrator.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast [hey, nice transition, high school sophomore!], Chief Broom's narration in "Cuckoo's Nest" is so transparently crazified that there's no question about his unreliability. Characters are distorted into comic book archetypes, almost--McMurphy becomes a swaggering John Wayne hero, to cite the most obvious example--and the hospital's administration becomes a dystopian Combine at night. The movie, while a good film in its own right, loses a lot of what makes the book unique by presenting the story "realistically" instead of offering the Chief's cracked perspective.
ReplyDelete("The movie" referenced in the last post was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," not "Titicut Follies")
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jamey on the fact that the camera is an inherently unreliable narrator. It was as though the filmmakers dropped a guy with a camera into the asylum and randomly edited the footage taken. This gives the viewer no point of reference causing all of the scenes to be taken out of context. At one point there's an interview with a patient and then there's a cut to the field where patients are milling around outside. In the end to me it seems that it isn't the film that takes a position in relation to the subject but it is the viewer that forms a stance on the issues being shown in the "truth cinema."
ReplyDeleteBecasue there is no distinct narrator in Titicut Follies telling the viewer how to feel and think about what they are seeing, the film seems to rely on human nature to elicit a response. This is not to say that the film takes a completely objective view and has no opinion, but rather that by saying nothing, the film points how obviously wrong the treatment of patients at the hospital in Titicut Follies is. So, by saying nothing, it (meaning the film) is actually making a very clear statement. Hopefully that is not as unclear I think it may sound!
ReplyDeleteThis could be a bit underdeveloped, but I was struck by how Nurse Ratched seems to implore a similar technique to the camera work of Wiseman, as well as the ward director in “Follies.” Through the narration of Chief, we find that Ratched doesn’t typically say anything that is directly spiteful but her silence causes the patients to become overwrought with guilt and anxiety (similar to a girlfriend who waits for you admit guilt for something, though you’re not exactly sure what you did wrong). What in turn seems to follow is each patient jumping on the mistakes and flaws of the other patients, though, at first glance, the dilemmas of the entire group appear to be minimal. It’s not with severity that Ratched wields power, but with a subtle, passive-aggressive style. This seems to be the same exact way that the ward director maintains his authority, particularly over the patient who is thoroughly convinced that being in the ward is causing irreparable harm. In similar fashion to Ratched, the ward director lets the man ramble on and on to the point where he gets lost in his own accusations and confirms his need for psychiatric care; the ward director’s passivity becomes a weapon. In this case, what may or may not have started out with coherence ends up almost completely unintelligible, which is a very similar feeling to the chaotic ramblings of the group meetings in Cuckoo’s Nest.
ReplyDeleteFollies is able to capture this by having the camera linger on the subjects for painfully long periods of time. For short periods, many of the patients come off as coherent, but when Wiseman allows them extended camera time, they begin to unravel right before the audience’s eyes as they seep deeper and deeper into abnormal behavior. I was struck by the way that seemingly “normal” sentences often slipped in between rants of pure insanity in Follies. A different editing approach could have minimized the psychotic behavior but it appears to ultimately be the intent of the film – and perhaps the ward director – to prod the patients until they reveal the insanity that was brewing just beneath the surface. Before Chief meets McMurphy, this is essentially what he has been watching take place in the ward for years.
I think I agree with Beth. In most documentaries I've seen there was a clear and specific narrator guiding the viewer along a predetermined roller coaster path. In Titicut Follies, the lack of a narrator was actually a bit jarring for me because my mind was working overtime to piece everything together. At first I wasn't even sure if everything going on was particularly wrong or out of place but slowly I felt more and more affected by the movie, even cringing and gasping at the scene with the 'tube feeding'. The treatment of these people felt more and more inhumane as scenes focused on the same people again and again.
ReplyDeleteOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has the complete opposite effect. The Chief's narration is so completely batshit that there's no sense of reality at all. He contradicts himself in the same sentences and breaks the third wall to tell the reader how crazy it all is. It's just madness but still SOMEHOW almost makes sense which worries me about my own mental health.
I agree with what Dave had to say about how the patients seemed to slip deeper and deeper into insanity the longer the camera stayed on them. It also seemed like the staff in the ward were provoking the people into fits of insanity, such as the man who went to get shaved, he seemed to be coherent enough when they were asking him about his day and why his room was so messy, but the man kept asking him the same questions over and over like he was trying to provoke some sort of violent response out of the man. This seemed to be almost a theme throughout, the men were aggrivated by the treatment they were getting and were unable to express those aggrivations, which made this film difficult to watch. Also the lingering camera was very voyeristic with a mood that was almost "I need to look away but I can't" causing tension in the viewer. There also seemed to be a very twisted sense of medication in this ward, the man who had to be forced fed through a tube in his nose cross cut with him dead and being prepared in a morgue seemed like a statement aganst the medical practices in the hospital, although the viewer has no way of knowing what caused the death of this man it is easy to assume that it was caused by his being forced fed.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Dave about his view on nurse Ratched. Yes she does use techniques of manipulation to have the patients turn on each other, but ultimately her "power" comes from her speech; what she says in that institution is law. She keeps only people who are willingly to do as she says without question as supported by her group of staff members: "the boys" or Doctor Spivey. She loses the power and authority when she loses her voice because McMurphy attacks her. The movie was eerily creepy but also comical... I actually googled the movie while watching the film because I wanted to know if it was fiction or nonfiction. I mean the way these people are treated you feel sympathy and you think how could people do this (scenes: like the tube feeding where he is actually smoking a cigarette in one hand while he is giving the food to the patient), but then on the other hand the film makes you think that you actually do not want these people on the loose with "normal" people... I mean the guy that keeps yelling out random things about JFK or Christ, or the man that stands on his head and sings... in that sense I think the book gave a more clear conclusion than the film. In the book there is a sense of happy ending... the Chief escapes (the narrator) back into society which shows ultimately what Mcmurphy was fighting for in a sense is acheived; whereas the film makes you think ok... the ending is these patients singing does it mean they are happy? I mean the one patient that seems normal that keeps asking to be released to normal prison is never released and we never see him in the ending. The concluding feelings of the film is it made me personally feel thank God I'm not crazy and I hope I never end up there not oh my goodness what horrible situations can i write to my Congressman to change that...
ReplyDelete