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Seeing with a Filmmaker’s Eyes: Glimpses of Mobilized Landscapes in Stan Brakhage’s The Wonder Ring (1955) and Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde (1989)

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Boczkowska K.

Roczniki Humanistyczne

2017

vol. 65

issue 11: Anglica

75-89

In this paper I present various ways in which Stan Brakhage’s The Wonder Ring (1955) and Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde (1989) tend to challenge the concept of American landscape by means of cinematic conventions traditionally associated with phantom rides, city symphonies and contemporary road movies. It seems that Brakhage’s works do not only employ non-standard editing, camera movement and extended shot to reproduce a continuous flow of motion, but they also exploit the dynamics between the spectactor’s “mobilized virtual gaze” (Friedberg, Window 2) and passing views by evoking a distorted experience of sensational and meditative voyages, hence questioning panoramic perception and an idealized image of American (film) landscape intrinsically bound with the natural and technological sublime. Particularly, both films draw on rapid handheld camerawork, superimpositions, anamorphic lens, bright or dim exposures, fades, odd angles, softened focus and other techniques to defamiliarize and objectify the protagonist’s journey and thus document Brakhage’s perception and extra-objective reality.

Przedmiotem artykułu jest próba analizy reprezentacji amerykańskiego krajobrazu w filmach eksperymentalnych Stana Brakhage’a The Wonder Ring (1955) i Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde (1989), przedstawionego za pomocą wybranych konwencji gatunków filmowych obejmujących phantom ride, symfonię miejską i film drogi. Analiza materiału filmowego autorstwa Brakhage’a pod względem wspomnianych cech gatunkowych może prowadzić do wniosku, że stosowany przez reżysera niekonwencjonalny montaż, ruchy kamerą i długie ujęcia mają na celu przywołanie zniekształconego doświadczenia czuciowej i kontemplacyjnej podróży poprzez wyeksponowanie dynamiki między mobilnym spojrzeniem wirtualnym (“mobilized virtual gaze”; Friedberg 1993) ze strony widza a mijanymi obiektami obserwowanymi z perspektywy pojazdu. W szczególności, dzięki wykorzystaniu takich technik jak kamerowanie “z ręki”, supernałożenie, dynamiczny “fast cutting”, obiektyw anamorficzny czy też wielokrotna ekspozycja, oba filmy zdają się kwestionować panoramiczną percepcję i wyidealizowany obraz amerykańskiego krajobrazu, nierozłącznie związanego z koncepcją naturalnej i technologicznej wzniosłości (natural/ technological sublime).

The Outlaw Machine, the Monstrous Outsider and Motorcycle Fetishists: Challenging Rebellion, Mobility and Masculinity in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Steven Spielberg’s Duel

100%

Boczkowska K.

Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

2019

issue 9

81-99

The paper analyzes the ways in which Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963) and Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971) draw on and challenge selected road movie conventions by adhering to the genre’s traditional reliance on cultural critique revolving around the themes of rebellion, transgression and roguery. In particular, the films seem to confront the classic road movie format through their adoption of nomadic narrative structure and engagement in a mockery of subversion where the focus on social critique is intertwined with a deep sense of alienation and existential loss “laden with psychological confusion and wayward angst” (Laderman 83). Following this trend, Spielberg’s film simultaneously depoliticizes the genre and maintains the tension between rebellion and tradition where the former shifts away from the conflict with conformist society to masculine anxiety, represented by middle class, bourgeois and capitalist values, the protagonist’s loss of innocence in the film’s finale, and the act of roguery itself. Meanwhile, Anger’s poetic take on the outlaw biker culture, burgeoning homosexuality, myth and ritual, and violence and death culture approaches the question of roguery by undermining the image of a dominant hypermasculinity with an ironic commentary on sacrilegious and sadomasochistic practices and initiation rites in the gay community. Moreover, both Duel’s demonization of the truck, seen as “an indictment of machines” or the mechanization of life (Spielberg qtd. in Crawley 26), and Scorpio Rising’s (homo)eroticization of a motorcycle posit elements of social critique, disobedience and nonconformity within a cynical and existential framework, hence merging the road movie’s traditional discourse with auteurism and modernism.

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1 Roczniki Humanistyczne

1 Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

2 Boczkowska K.

1 2019

1 2017

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Seeing with a Filmmaker’s Eyes: Glimpses of Mobilized Landscapes in Stan Brakhage’s The Wonder Ring (1955) and Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde (1989)

The Outlaw Machine, the Monstrous Outsider and Motorcycle Fetishists: Challenging Rebellion, Mobility and Masculinity in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Steven Spielberg’s Duel