I.
Ezra Pound suggested nearly eighty years ago that there are two kinds of outstanding artwork. One kind traverses new territory. It opens to the accepted purvey of art previously closed realms of the human experience. It brings us into contact with new kinds of what Robert Bly calls "news of the universe".
The other kind of outstanding artwork perfects the treatment or utilization of these new realms. The latter achievement cannot occur without the former. And both, Pound (the unrepentant, insufferable-yet- insightful modernist) argued, are more worthy of attention than most other artistic endeavors. The implication is that if a creative expression is not doing something new--nor doing something better than what has been done before--the resulting piece of art has not achieved its potential.
This is not to dismiss efforts that reach neither of these goals. But it is to suggest a starting point from which to understand what detracts from one's appreciation of a piece of art. "It didn't say anything new." Or, "It didn't say something 'old' better than other efforts have."
One of the most difficult kinds of artistic expression to successfully create (if one judges difficulty by the number of partially successful attempts and the scarcity of compelling realizations) is the exploration of the functions of art. Each medium, whether the truly archaic (such as poetry) or the relatively recent (such as the motion picture) has a long list of works dealing with the role of art in the world. Perhaps the most difficult kind of such work examines not only the role of art in general, but the role of its own medium in particular.
Borges, elsewhere in the poem quoted above, writes:
To see in death a dream, and in the sunset A sad gold--such is Poetry, Immortal and poor. Poetry Returns, like the dawn and the sunset.
There are, to be sure, ancient assertions about the role of poetry that touch upon this comparison of poetry's fundamental likeness to an element of the natural world. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Hesoid's beseechment of the Muses (who live at the river's source) are two examples. But one could readily argue that Borges achieves what Pound would consider a full realization of this kind of portrayal of poetry. Borges was not the first to broach this subject this way. But one could convincingly argue that his effort--though probably equaled--has not been bettered.
II.
Katheryn Bigelow's new film, Strange Days, now playing in Arcata, is an amalgam sci-fi, action-thriller, film noir. One of the key plot elements revolves around a device called a SQUID. This is a "Superconducting Quantum Interference Device," a bit of virtual reality technology that permits the wearer to experience the events of another person's life in short but absolutely vivid thirty-minute chunks. It's basically a more involving version of the familiar camcorder. But Bigelow's treatment of the SQUID presents an interesting, nearly self- reflexive statement about the role of much art (and, especially, many films) in our society.
Bigelow and James Cameron (the creator of the story and the screenplay's co-author) present an interesting statement about film through a cross-sectional portrayal of the underground world's uses of the SQUID. James Cameron brought us the relatively definitive (and superficial) action filmThe Terminator, and such recent, overblown right-wing big-budget "gems" as True Lies. (Bob Dole suggested that this latter, Schwarzenegger blood-bath was the kind of wholesome entertainment he hoped Hollywood would continue to make.)
SQUID is an "underground" commodity. In December, 1999, the police state is in even more full-swing than in 1995. And this new form of electronic recreation has proved both more addictive than television and much more difficult for Babylon to control.
Ralph Fiennes (as Lenny Nero, fiddling while Rome/L.A. burns?) portrays an ex-L.A.-vice-cop-turned-SQUID-software-hustler. We are introduced to the popular SQUID genres via Fiennes' character. He peddles erotic electronic trips and vicariously experienced gun-point heists to his clients whose social position (lawyers, lawmakers and the like) prevents them from engaging in such activities. To the more impoverished he offers virtual ski vacations at Aspen. Hit the slopes without leaving your tenement couch.
He refuses to provide his clients with "black jacks". These are the SQUID equivalent of "snuff films" and seem to be an acknowledged "market segment". Black jacks are divided into two categories. In the first, the person recording the software died while making the recording (thus letting the "viewer" of the software experience the feelings of the moments before--and at--death). In the second kind of black jack, the point of view is that of a murderer carrying out his deed(s). As with all SQUID material, the events must really take place to be recorded via the perpetrator's/recorder's brain waves.
In scenes reminiscent of old "documentaries" about pornography (in which it was okay to present copies of pornographic material not for its own sake but for the broader purposes of the "documentary"), Bigelow subjects the viewer to experiencing the rape/murder of one of the films characters, from the perspective of the perpetrator. If one is going to portray such a heinous event (and there is ample reason to argue that such a portrayal is never appropriate, no matter what the context nor larger statement being made), it had better do more than just provide another plot device.
Returning to Pound's two kinds of outstanding artwork mentioned above, if a filmmaker is going to show me something I really don't want to see, there had better be a new or supremely well-put statement being made. We already have the previous example of a murderer/filmmaker in the "classic" 1960 Michael Powell film, Peeping Tom. And, more generally, we have the superlative examination of the culpability of voyeuristic tendencies embodied in Hitchcock's Rear Window. I think I must have missed where Bigelow broke new ground or meaningfully investigated this subject.
Barring such a use of this interlude, one is left with the impression that this graphic episode is a plot device--and, perhaps, is intended as entertainment. I didn't care for it and the plot could have worked without it. (S)'nuff said.
In the grander scheme of reflecting one of the trends in the industry (and one of the underground genres that has been with us a while), I suppose that, unfortunately, this rape/murder is not so far removed from the realm of the possible. Bigelow takes an ambiguous attitude towards the episode, but I find her ultimately implicated in the exploitation and glorification of the event. Her main character refuses to deal in "black jacks". But Bigelow readily employs their elements in her film.
III.
In contrast to the overt misogyny expressed in this and other, less blatant parts of Strange Days, some of the racial issues examined speak more constructively. In a scene frightfully reminiscent of that captured on the Rodney King video tapes, the SQUID becomes a potential instrument of social justice as it is inadvertently used to record the vigilante-style execution of a revolutionary rap artist by members of the L.A.P.D. It is in this series of scenes that the potentially beneficial aspects of the SQUID become apparent (as the camcorder became an instrument of social justice in the King beating).
But in this sub-plot, the conclusion is partially absent from the film's scenario. The implication is that, once the evidence of police misconduct is presented to the proper authorities within the law- enforcement establishment, justice will be done. Reality is decidedly more complex than this scenario implies. Certainly the trial of the police officers in the Rodney King incident presents one glaring example. But further than that, we are left with an interesting quandary.
In the absence of a camcorder (or a SQUID), is injustice inevitable? One suspects Rodney King's case would not have gone as far as it did without the video. In Strange Days, the rap star's murder is attributed to gang-land violence (and to the general social mayhem of L.A. in the 1990s in which "execution style murders" are routine). Then the SQUID recording reaches a righteous public official who will bring about justice. The implication is that rogue individuals do evil, and that they can be readily curtailed. This troubles me. It is an unrealistic reflection of the real world, where the "Mark Furhman"s who plant evidence (and who beat the "Rodney King"s) are more prevalent than the occasional, strategically placed video camera and the unfailingly righteous public official.
IV.
But Nero, the disillusioned ex-vice cop at the center ofStrange Days, is only marginally interested in these issues. Sure, he is bothered by the "black jacks". And he understands the implications of the recording of the L.A.P.D. killing a revolutionary hero in cold blood. But in both instances, his interest largely revolves around his ex-lover, Faith (played by Juliette Lewis) and her plight. He worries that she may be the victim in the next snuff clip he receives. And he is willing, at one point, to suppress the evidence of the L.A.P.D.'s crimes if Faith is delivered safely to him.
His use of SQUID involves none of the genres he peddles (or won't peddle) to his customers. He simply relives old memories of the woman who left him, preferring an artificially more pleasant world to the reality of his life. This puts the viewer of Strange Days into an interesting position. Are we, like Nero, groping in the dark at images that have no reality? To what extent have we, too, by submitting ourselves to Bigelow's world, chosen to escape into a series of delusions?
It is in this depiction of the seductive qualities of illusion that Bigelow's work (unintentionally?) begins to approach the level of profundity Ezra Pound argued all art should strive towards. Wim Wender's Until the End of the World (to name one recent, flawed example) explored some of the same addiction-to-illusion territory. Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo more successfully examined ideas about the commingling of illusion and reality. But in introducing the political element, Bigelow (however imperfect her construction) permits us to ferret out some important ideas.
Nero wants to believe that Faith and he are still lovers roller- skating along the beach in Venice. Maybe we, as viewers, find a similarly contemptible comfort in the world Bigelow constructs. The appeal of a world in which bad cops are few and their superiors are not corrupt, in which technology fortuitously serves social justice, and in which true love closes each story is obvious.
The danger lies in forgetting where reality sits. Cameron's story portrays this risk but then negates it through a series of unlikely coincidences that suggest we (like Nero) can focus on our illusions yet inadvertently do the right thing in the real world. Bigelow's film (and the unreal world it creates) embodies this risk. To what extent will her viewers--despite our submission to her illusions--"do the right thing" outside the darkened theater?
[from the archives; originally published in 1996 in The News, Arcata, CA]
