Peter Brook's Salome

In 1949, Brook was the director of productions at the Opera House, Covent Garden. From this privileged position, he started to work on Richard Strauss' Salome, with Oscar Wilde's libretto. He picked as stage designer a controversial figure at that time, Salvador Dali. Brook went to Spain not to work with Dali on a set, but on a "hallucinatory fantasy".

Before the production opening, Brook was writing: "Strauss' music is the hallucination-producing drug which induces the same emotional reaction as the highly stylised, artificial, rhetorical and elaborate visual imagery of Wilde's original... The task of the producer and designer is to find the same approach in "theatre style" which Wilde supplies in his dialogue."

Brook connected to Dali plagiaristically, he returned to London with an amazing portfolio. He remembers awkwardly Gala running after him to get a receipt for it. He did not understand why was she afraid of plagiarism or unauthorised sales. I guess seeing them working together was enough to understand the hysterical identification of Brook with Dali's ideas.

But the story is not over: on his way back, Brook experienced what his biographer, Michael Kustow, calls "an encounter that might have figured in a Dali nightmare." Brook was held and robbed in a forest by what the English press called "Spanish bandits" (some underground Republican militias), armed with rifles, machine guns and grenades. They took the car and all their belongings. Brook asked them if he can keep Dali's drawings in exchange of his silk pyjamas. The bandits tied everyone up and threw the designs at Brook's feet.

"I was as close to death a young life being extinguished as one could think - I know that I was terrified. But ten minutes later, I was only aware of the comic side of it" remembers Brook. His identification with Dali's work went so further that it denied the materiality of his own life, the only material connection to reality was given by the Salome drawings.

But the real attack came in London, where critics were unmerciful with Salome: one of them, Ernest Newman, wrote "Of the production in general, it is difficult to speak in the restrained language appropriate to a Sunday paper. One absurdity followed fast on the heels of another..."

Brook wrote an answer to his virulent critics containing "The critics all decided that Dali and I were only out to annoy them. There, at least, I might claim that they underestimated us; if that have been our intention I think that between us we might have done much worse..." This "us" reminds me a lot of Freud-Fliess connection and the long letters about another "us".

The first result was that Brook lost his job, his contract as Director of Productions at Covent Garden was not renewed in 1950. Musical Opinion's comment is remarkable: "his meteoric rise to such an exalted post at the age of twenty-seven was an artistic mistake on the part of authorities who should have had more respect for tradition than to permit it to be the plaything of a young experimentalist. "

Sergiu Nicolaescu vs Edward D Wood jr.

First of all, who the fuck is S.Nicolaescu? Considered the worst or the best Romanian director of all times, he begin his career as an engineer so much in love with cheap American gangster movies that he started to make them. You can still observe in his old movies from 1960s and 1970s the good-old-engineer eye for perfect imitation. He loved moral stories and also big Hollywood epics. He found his way to support his projects by the Communist Party in charge, of course with some compromises, which are better seen in his later nationalist movies, following the political lines of the dominant discourse. This is enough for introduction, I am sure there is a lot of stuff on Sergiu online, if you want to get into his plastic universe. What I want to write more about is his last movie, from 2008, The Survivor. He manages to resurrect one of his dear characters from the 1970s, a leftist police officer that fights the interwar gangsters. Now the setting is changed, the police officer escapes the communist hell from the 1970s and ends up in Prague where he plays Russian roulette for survival. All the good-old characters are there, a wonderful occasion for our ragged hero to remember: Sergiu brings in all the possible clichés of an afternoon action American movie to support some local bias, anti-Semitism (the evil Jew that hunts his memories, the Jew that has no consciousness when he destroys lives, it’s all for the money, get it, right?), racism (the musicians are toys in the hand of the evil Jew, they are “the sentimental gypsies”, the one “good” and faithful Roma is a small thief, a motif for friendly plain racist jokes with no motivation in the script, just for Sergiu’s own racist pleasure I guess), sexism (women have no lines, they are undressed and killed, insisting on cock-teasing details) and direct assholism. Sergiu’s success at the box office is given by a nostalgia for state socialist symbols that lead the way for some contemporary bigotism. One last thing to mention: the script for The Survivor won the money from the Romanian state institution for cinema when the script for 4,3,2 by Mungiu was only on the 4^th place.

Nicolaescu and Wood share same hysterical obsession for their self representation in their movies: it is all about them, their current age when the movie is made, their bodily portrait, their small obsessions and fetishes. Ed Wood became a cult hero in the eyes of contemporary yuppies as something extreme: “he is the worst”, a source for humor, without paying attention at his extreme subversion of Hollywood cinematography, narrations and characters. By comparing the worst Romanian director to the worst director of all times, there are some significant differences to point out: while Edward D. Wood jr. brings forth nonlinear scripts that sound crazy, his Angora fetish, his homosocial buddies and personal drags, Sergiu comes with a strong reiteration of the most conservative version of the status quo with all its deadly elements. They are both sincere and they both talk about themselves with ridiculous cinematic poetics: that marks the whole distinction.

But more about Eddie in future posts, his book Hollywood Rat Race is on my very short list to be read.

playing with organs

A piece of Lacan for today: “The hysteric plays to the extreme with the feeling of elasticity” in a sort of mortal game with organs taken to their extreme function, organs which “should be called unreal,” evaginate or turn inside out in a process of “coming and going,” until extenuation. In Lacan’s reading these organs are terms of pleasure and pain. The hysterical body tries to get to the final point of extenuation through grand gestures, spontaneous and numerous, mixing cruelty with desire, aggression with caring, a multiple presentation of oppositions “an object of anxiety in the gestures of jouissance – the jouissance in which everything is there – presented, open, offered. Inaccessible.”

my artaud article in egophobia

my reading of Artaud's Here Lies. here.

update: footnotes are missing. and funny thing, this is a Vakulovski special, read the other post today

The return of the clown

Meyerhold in his clown costume

Charcot identified a second phase of hysteria that he called “the phase of clownism” or later known as the buffoonery syndrome. Protracted movements, big gestures and excessive behaviour were main symptoms. Mady Schutzman spots this phase of hysteria in contemporary advertising. Hysterical joy, full blasted energy and euphoric uprising appear in hundreds of commercials in relation to a product to be consumed in nowadays capitalism. Bodies of women in commercials are putting the mask of hyperfemininity and are manifesting the buffoonery syndrome. Hysteria in its theatrical visualization can be used in popular culture as a critical tool in reviewing the construction of hyperfemininity as a clown discourse. If Charcot’s patients were considered “sublime comediennes” and studied by actors like Sarah Bernhardt for their melodramatic roles, the popular hyperfemininity can be read as a radical potential of buffoonery inspiration. The hysterical spectacle is an act of self-mockery, where subjectivity is replaced with something bigger, something oversignified, a suggestion of hypersubjectivity. The becoming of a clown implies the abandonment of consciousness that is understood as a lie, a myth that is to be avoided.

The clown manifests hysterical symptoms especially in the area of gender identification. The male clown acts his desire to be the female, the desire for women clothing. In Marx Brothers’ film A Night at the Opera, Harpo is caught wearing the clown costume of an opera singer. When he is ordered to take it off, he reveals the uniform of a naval officer, and from beneath it, a woman’s dress. If the naval uniform is the sign of masquerade, the dress underneath stays on, the unlayering goes no further. If the uniform used by the clown is a mockery of male authority that the hysteric rejects, the dress is the fantasy of femininity attached to the male imaginary, where sexual difference cannot function anymore. The story of the hysteric is as controversial as the story of circus clowns. They both had to disappear in the 20th century, due to their masterful refuse of mastery but their contradictions can be revalued and used in capitalism’s dynamic of its internal contradictions. As Mady Schutzman observed the clown is back especially in advertising, and hysteria is back in neurosciences.

a disturbing case from Moldova

The tabloid never sleeps. In Moldova, Boris Ungureanu was shot by his father, the mayor from Hancesti. With a shotgun. One shot. Deadly. The father protects himself by saying that there was a weird connection between son and mother. She was giving him a lot of cash for dirty purposes. He couldn't take it anymore. What looks like a simple boring everyday situation hides much more... This case, presented by Chisinau Journal, is quite interesting for raising some important questions: How does a father reacts in a case of reversed Oedipal Complex, like this one? How does hysterical symptoms, especially those connected to strong sibling relations that I identify here between mother and father, affect children? And I am talking about children of hysterics. Can we launch the hypothesis that they take at some point the role of parents, due to age difference, that can work in a reversed way? And that is highly disturbing for a parent with authority: to become his own child’s child. But the way out exists. This guy found the most unfortunate version of it.

Balanescu Quartet at Urania – Budapest

This concert was taking place in relation to a Hungarian movie premiere, that I won’t talk about. Balanescu made the soundtrack and tours now with the movie. This was the firs gig ever with this new composition. Brand new songs, full of intensity and passion as Balanescu presented it in English before. He was so shy and modest on the mike. But him talking was a complete opposition to him playing. First of all, the outfit: a colorful long coat that looked too big and his typical hat. Already a character, his outfit comes as a necessary tool to hide an introverted self I guess, a hysterical identification to hide an absent body. But just for a moment. When he had his violin, everything exploded. He was not playing, he was dancing. He was changing faces, now sad, now laughing with a big mouth, now a small baby, now a huge monster, now growing, now getting small. Balanescu playing the violin is a Misha Katz conducting. And the music for all this process... a true project of corporeal transformation through sound. Balanescu’s spastic body puts up with his quartet a visual attack where sound is becoming the most real mark of his corporeality. It was explicitly materialized for audience in his struggle with his violin. For the spectator it was a tough experience of the entire nervous system. This is what I would call one of the last experiments to actively end the process of representation through sound. A la Merleau Ponty, Balanescu claims through his music “not the possible body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine but that actual body I call mine.” His body on stage expresses through sound first of all exactly this lively concreteness.

taking music offstage

Trying to think about my favorite songs for last couple of months, I realized with great surprise that most of them were used in one show or another. In directing school, we always made fun of people that are using their playlist to illustrate the performance with no real connection to the show itself. Just a good way to promote the music that they like. I was surprised to see my final list: most of the songs were part of performances because they fit well with particular moment not because I liked them in a particular way outside the show. Afterwards I started listening them more intensively and got addicted. In a way, I plagiaristically identified with my shows and I started to live in the frameworks that I set on stage. What else did I take from stage to everyday life? Have to think more about it, because my shows are about me but on the other hand I am about my shows and other stuff that I create.

This is my short playlist:

1. Bauhaus – Antonin Artaud
2. Graham Reynolds – your move, peterbilt
3. Jay-Jay Johanson – Alone Again
4. Jelly Roll Morton – Tia Juana
5. Julie London – Come on-a My House
6. Beirut – Scenic World
7. Diamanda Galás – 25 Minutes to Go
8. Ian Dury – Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
9. B.B. King – B.B. Boogie
10. Billie Holiday – Don't Explain

The white priestess of black magic

i found this amazing story here. An Austrian woman becomes the spiritual leader in Nigeria and she claims a return to a pre-Christian pre-Muslim faith. An example of hysterical creativity that brings empowerment.

/wrists : the emo danger

I had enough. Every day I read or hear negative news about emos, these kids between 11 and 17, always crying, always sad, extreme posers and suicidal. Everyone agrees that they are completely ridiculous, dangerous for themselves and others and they need some good therapy.
Young girls accused of being emo deny it with a lot of anger. Same situation with the bands. At some point you wonder if there is such a thing as emo. But what is behind this entire mainstream story that I apparently cannot escape?
In Eastern Europe reactions to this subculture take a classical expression: another dangerous Western import that destroys our children. Jokes on emos’ expense got here in poor translations from English, other local jokes are adapted and all of them create a new category to make fun of. But in relation to them, another-dangerous-alienating-element-that-we-should-beware comes in discussion: internet and its destructions, how massively it influenced emo subculture.
Parents are affected also by this media interest in emos, they are scared that their child can become emo and kill themselves. Clinical discourse intervenes here: from the first signals that parents or teachers are dealing with an emo, they should send the sick person to a therapist.
In 2008 in Mexico reactions against emos started to get organized. Various anti-emo groups attacked teenagers in Mexico City, Querétaro, and Tijuana as an opened reaction to their queerness. This aspect is highly emphasized by their critics everywhere, they are directly accused of being queer or gay, in relation to their display of emotions and tenderness together with their fashion statement where differences between emo girls and boys are missing. Queerness is often associated with the theatricality of their display, a hysterical symptom of grabbing attention.
In Russia, a law is about to be voted by Duma to ban emo websites and emo fashion at schools or state buildings, based on the assumption that emo is a dangerous teen trend promoting anti-social behaviour and suicide.
In Romania, Timisoara Police created a collective to prevent events where emo kids are involved. They go in schools to talk to parents about emos. On the other hand, Romanian Orthodox Church reacted also on several times on the emo danger, considered framed by a bigger move away from traditional values and morality. Priests spoke freely about the involved manipulation, corruption and destruction of contemporary Western subject. Romanian newspapers signal that in every school there are at lest 2-3 kids that are emo, especially fifth and sixth grade and are complaining about lack of statistics regarding emo kids.
Emos are attacked on music and fashion grounds as lacking authenticity and being lame copies of Goths, punks or Japanese manga characters. Attention-grabbing effect, posing and histrionic behaviour are generating a whole subculture bashing. Journalists share a charming optimism: soon enough this fashion will die like all the others. Soon enough they hope. What can I say, things haven’t changed much: it was the same reaction towards women in the nineteenth century, as soon as they became visible, having a voice, hysteria came into place to put into mental institutions the most active ones. These teenagers have a voice now, quite a strong one, and with similar tactics are put down exactly like hysterical women a while ago. Besides the hysterical elements of emo culture that I mentioned here and are constantly under attack, there is one more “dangerous” in its subversiveness: their struggle against sexual difference. Many of the jokes are making fun of boys’ lack of masculinity and their queerness. I wonder how a 12 years old can act more masculine…but the main issue here is the heard voice of this generation that has clearly something to say. The response to teenagers’ demand for agency is a typical one: institutionalizing and silencing.