I put it together with Brazil because at some level they both concern the breakdown of society and the individual's attempt to balance his reality and his perceived reality. Whence the (unrealized) expectations in these characters (Prufrock and Sam)? What is it about their societies that prompts such (seemingly disconnected) expectations? Additionally, can you discuss the forces at work on thee characters that prompt such? We know that Brazil is visually rich. Does Gilliam use this texture toward anything more than baroque excess?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Brazil and Prufrock
I suspect that the poem for next week might present some challenge. That's OK. In class, we will spend some time breaking it down; that is, we will work through much of the poem to discover how it makes meaning (which is similar to the ways we perform cinematic analysis: breaking down scenes in terms of cinematography, editing, etc. to find out how meaning is made). Do be sure to read the poem and try to work through some of it on your own.
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Sam is living in a mechanical world, where he work and live like a robot. Therefor, it triggers his intense fantasy for separating the reality. The perceived world by Sam is not the same as the real world, because he is nobody in the real world. But he is a hero who save his love in his fantasy dream world, which reveals that he hate the reality, and he want to achieve something that is beyond his ability. Eventually, he mixes up his fantasy world and the real world. The film Brazil contains the text that we been reading throughout the semester. We can see the magical realism and reality fiction in the film. The film is dealing with a fantastical images from Sam, the fantastic images is "logical" because it was related to his fantasy about Jill, and the film uses imagery extensively such as wide-angle shot, and dream sequence. The dream and reality sequence is the texture and layer to explain the different state of mind of Sam.
ReplyDeleteBRAZIL:
ReplyDeleteBrazil follows the life of Sam. Sam doesn’t seems to want to be extraordinary or embrace that he can be considered higher up in the society he lives in because of his mother’s status. He is happy in the job he has and what he does. He also has elaborate dreams/fantasies with him having wings and saving a damsel in distress. So outside of his “real world” life he is extraordinary and seems to like that he is. Then about half way through the film his life and dreams/fantasies merge. He sees and tries to save a woman who looks similar to the one he visions in his dreams. but instead of completely saving her and her wanting him he makes both their lives slightly more complicated. Since we have not finished viewing the film I can’t come up with a particular conclusion about the end of the film, whether it is a happy ending, a slightly depressing ending, or an ending that does not make complete sense and leaves the audience questioning ‘what just happened.’ Since what we’ve seen I have feeling the film’s ending is going lean slightly toward the choice of the audience questioning/asking: ‘what just happened.’
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK:
The poem by T.S. Elliot seems to be stream of consiousness. The man telling the story is kind of writing about what’s going through his mind at the moment. Discussing what is happening in his own world. And also what he doesn’t completely understand or know outside his reality and life. Since it is the characters thoughts, he seems to have a few moments of fantasy that he’s written down, such as things that he imagines or wants to happen in his own life or in the world in general. There isn’t a specific narration or pattern to the writing or verses. It is an interesting poem and makes the reader think what is the character or T.S. Elliot trying to say. Also the reader or at least I did begin to think about his/her, my own life. What I’ve seen and experienced compared to the rest of the world.
BOTH:
Since we haven’t completed Brazil I can’t give an exact comparison between the poem and the film. But both seems to have a line between the character’s own reality/life and also fantasy. There is a feeling of content in both their lives and they are ok only imagining their fantasies and what is going on in the world or society outside of their own lives and societies. Brazil and the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock both have ambiguity to them. It is as if the director and writer want to audience to come up with their own separate storyline and understanding of what is happening to the characters and in the societies they live in.
Brazil is a great film. I haven't finished watching it yet but I have it coming in the mail. It almost seemed like Gilliam had seen the future already and just put what he had seen on film. Brilliant stuff! Anyway, I thought the poem was quite interesting as well. I'm not very good at deciffering that kind of stuff, but I think I got the gist of it. I feel like the person in the poem is kind of recollecting the past, throwing random moments of sorrow, happiness, and uncertainty together. The person seems to be somewhat regretful as well. I think verses 89-120 towards the end express a little of that regret, to show a real sense of humanity in the poem. I don't really know for sure what he is trying to say, but I really liked it for whatever reason. I think it relates to Brazil in the way in which both characters, Sam and Prufrock, seem to have this place of uncertainty in their worlds, not really understanding what is unfolding around them. They also both seem to be reaching deep into their subconscious in order to get away from these uncertainties, to try and put them at ease of there circumstances, but there always seems to be an obstacle in their way no matter what they do. Whether it be the badass monster villians that get in the way of Sam's one true love, or Prufrock's constant questioning of himself and his thinning hair or skinny arms and legs. I hope to grasp a better understanding of it all in class, and I can't wait to watch the rest of Brazil.
ReplyDeleteIf J. Alfred Prufrock wasn’t such a cynic, what a boring and dreary poem subject he would make. Instead of reading about the beauty that simply is, T.S. Eliot’s poem forces us to read about a level of beauty that exists only within the mind of Prufrock, far from any form of achievable reality. Because of the digressions he frequently indulges, we begin to feel the pain brought about by a crippling cynical paranoia. How does one, after all, approach a woman with a glaring bald spot, nothing to say and only neuroses as a guide? Because of this cynicism of how others will view him, we begin to understand such seemingly out of place lines such as:
ReplyDeleteI should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Within a mind as Prufrock’s, such a simple lifestyle as a sea creature on the ocean floor could be fairly divine by comparison; all his neuroses and cynicisms would be muted by the simple desire of finding enough food to survive and moving on. Society comes into place because in his upper class position, filled with firm collars and neckties, he has nothing but time to count coffee spoons and contemplate what he already knows – that the mermaids will never sing for him. And if they did, he would soon be woken.
Brazil and the poem coincide, for me anyway, because they are not only about consciousness but about the unattainable fantasies we’re all forced to contemplate. What purpose do such fantasies serve? Without such romantic fantasies, Prufrock and Sam would be unaware of the suffocating world they inhabit, which makes such levels of consciousness feel like a curse. But then again, without the fantasies, perhaps they would have nothing at all.
At times, the film directly illustrates a dialectic taking place between Sam’s dream world and the real world. In Sam’s “real” world, he is a cog in a self-styled “advanced” society in which modern conveniences (few to none of which actually work) are almost as ubiquitous as the myriad web of ductwork that hangs like smoke in virtually every frame of the film. Initially, while resistant to the expectations of want and ambition thrust upon him by his family and peers, he is unaware of, or simply accepting of, his own complicity in the totalitarian dystopia. He is content with skillfully hiding behind an impenetrable wall of bureaucracy and procedure, which allows him to shirk responsibility for the inevitable outcomes of such malfunctions and occasional malfeasances. Over the course of several dream sequences, his complicity in this system is slowly revealed, if only sub-consciously. For example, in one of his dreams he sees his love interest swallowed by the shadows of massive towers of modernity and industry, while in reality he lives in just such a tower. In another dream he sees his “Jill” held against her will inside a metal cage towed by baby-faced trolls, while the next scene shows him back in a conscious state, stepping out of a monorail car that would look futuristic if not for its uncanny resemblance to the cage in his dream. It is, in fact, exactly the same as the cage as the one from his dream, with a frosted glass added between the bars, giving it the appearance of a basement window or a shower door.
ReplyDeleteBrazil and The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock are very familiar and relatable to my own life strangely. When reading the poem, I imagined the poet being in a darkly lit night bar/coffee shop considering life as I usually do. That is, in question of reality it is difficult to separate reality from the non. Especially when one is aware of existence in itself. When I, for example, think of reality and question the purpose, the conclusions often found in my brain are like that of the poem. There is not one, and it is unexplainable.
ReplyDeleteJust like the end of Brazil, the audience is very well fooled into believing that Sam's story end's in a happy whimsical reality. However, we are ripped from that instantly when discovering that Sam has merely imagined this version of reality. Then we are stumped again when realizing...what is reality anyways? Then we ask did Jill even really exist or was she just made as a mind scape to maintain a happiness outside the disturbingly gross existence his physical body functions in? Ultimately the mind is led into a frenzy of scary questions that drown the stableness of our normal day to day thinking. Like the last line of the poem says, "Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
Sam's dreams in Brazil are a reaction to his environment. He is constantly surrounded by machines and robots that run everything in his life. He has very little control over anything, including his breakfast! These machines very rarely seem to work as they are intended and even when they do, they complcate an otherwise simple task. At the begining of his dreams, Sam sees himself soaring over a landscape that has not yet been ruined by all the machines of society. Also in his dreams he sees himself as a heroic figure, someone worthy of Jill. His dreams are not only a response to the environment but also his own feelings of inadequacy. Sam knows that he has no control over his life. Similarily, in The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock, Prufrock also escapes to an idealized alternate reality. Prufrock also obssesses over his percieved inadequacies, such as his bald spot. He, like sam feels that he could not possibly be interesting to beautiful women. Both of these men are very aware of their boring, and maybe meaningless loves, and it is through their dreams that they are able to try and reach some sort of existence that they are able to stand.
ReplyDeleteThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Brazil both describe characters who's inability to project themselves fully leads them to imagine the possible outcomes if they had acted differently. In Brazil, Sam envisions himself in heroic battles with various forms of evil creatures, which contrasts with his struggles to assert himself against the world that suppresses him. As in Prufrock, this suppression Sam feels is a result of various societal pressures. Neither man is strong or assertive in their lived reality, thereby rejecting accepted norms of masculinity. This timidness carries over to the lack of desire both share in achieving status in their societies. They both resign themselves to lower positions in life, failing to adhere to American dream doctrine and the like. Yet these characters don't seem to have the desire to change their environments and surroundings but rather themselves, as Prufrock tells us what HE should have done and Sam uses his fantastic escapes to envision not a perfect world but rather a perfect him. This acknowledgment leads to the perpetual problem of these characters, as instead of challenging societies reactions to them and asserting themselves they instead seek to adhere and conform to them. That is, in both Brazil and in Prufrock the only thing questioned is the characters and their actions, which demonstrates the inability the characters have to believe in their own behavior or actions.
ReplyDeleteI could've sworn I posted this a week ago--by which I mean, I did post this a week ago, but didn't realize Blogger was being uncooperative until right about now--but I guess I'll go ahead and give it another shot.
ReplyDeleteCertainly we've all encountered enough works about the neuroses of middle-class males in modern society (and I'm speaking as a neurotic middle-class modern male who just recently finished re-reading Jimmy Corrigan, so I know what's up RE: that particular issue, thank you very much), but I dug both of these, probably because they both took very full advantage of their respective media. What threatens to merely be "baroque excess" in Brazil instead perfectly communicates to us just how overwhelming the world is to Sam Lowry, and the extent to which modern technology maintains a state of perpetual disconnect between human beings. Rather than simply outlining Sam's alienation in an obvious and not-especially-cinematic way (in internal monologues, or whatever), Gilliam visually represents it through what must be at least an entire Home Depot's supply of ridiculously bulky tubing and his usual array of elaborately stylized shots. Sam is only "truly" happy (inasmuch as he ever is, which is pretty unlikely) when living out his romantic/heroic fantasies. Somehow his dreams actually do make more linear sense than the main plot, at least intuitively speaking: it takes a couple viewings to really put together the convoluted "real world" plot, but his dreams--however strange--do generally boil down to "beat the giant fiery samurai robot thing and get the girl." Any type of heroic attributes applied in the main plot come across as entirely absurd, however; the closest thing the world in Brazil has to a heroic figure is a freelance "renegade" repairman, and Sam's attempts to change that paradigm prove predictably short-lived.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" addresses what's ostensibly a more mundane situation, but demonstrates its point--not that there is a single point, really, but for the sake of argument let's pretend there is--by taking a more abstract perspective than even Brazil's comically exaggerated approach. Like In Search of Lost Time (or plenty of other Modernist texts, really), "Prufrock" uses language as a lens through which to stretch and distort time, portraying reality in a way that's less objectively "real" but at the same time much closer to the way we--okay, I, not that I can speak for everybody by any means--actually experience the world. Like Gilliam, Eliot shows his narrator's insecurity, fear of inadequacy, and complete inability to connect with other people through his control of the form itself. Rather than some cut-rate emo bullshit about how "I'd just like to talk to you but I can't and now I'm sad" (to be sort of flippantly reductive), "Prufrock" goes in all the myriad directions its narrator's mind takes him; some are directly relevant, some less so, but the initially confusing mix of the two makes it a tremendously affecting poem.
ReplyDelete"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was an interesting poem that explored the narrator's mind often visiting his fear of being accepted by society more specifically women. The narrator of the poem and the character Sam from Brazil are both similar in regards to them both not having any control of their reality. They both live in their dreams, in a sense, because they are not accepted in reality. The narrator from the poem comes off as being terrified of simply striking up a conversation with women simply because he is afraid of rejection. Sam resembles a hero in his dreams where he feels worthy of Jill's affection. Reality for both men lacks substance...neither men are strong enough to grab control of their reality. THey both lack characteristics of being "MANLY"... they come off as losers who live very depressing boring lives. They both lack the ability to believe in themselves.
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