The War to End All Wars

Potemkin

The revolutionary film, Battleship Potemkin, is a silent film from 1925 by director Sergei Einstein whose story is loosely based on the real life mutiny which occured on the Russian Battleship Potemkin and the events which followed. Though the film is silent, Einstein creates a powerful political message by utilizing a dramatic score, a cast with emotionally-driven performances and a montage style of editing (a practice not put to use by many of the time), in order to induce a feeling of empathy and siding with the people of Odessa and the rebels of the battleship. Einstein effectively uses these elements throughout the film to weave a strong narrative that is considered by many to be one of the most influential propaganda films of all time.

The narrative of the film is segmented into five parts, with the first titled “Men and Maggots”, in which the men on board the battleship refuse to eat soup that was made with rotten meat. This segment of the film introduces the tension between the crew of the ship and their ruthless commanding officers, who are shown taking out their anger on the crew by whipping them with small whips in their sleep. When the crew is made to eat the rotten soup, their disgust at the maggots crawling on the meat can be seen distinctly, and as the score of the film begins to intensify, tensions being to rise to a breaking point and disgust turns to anger, leading to the next segment of the film.

The elements that make the first segment of the film successful are used continually in the following segments to further strengthen the film, but where the effectiveness of these elements really shines is in the famous and extremely emotional climax of the film, “The Odessa Staircase.” The segment starts softly with shots of the people of Odessa waving goodbye to the sailors as they set out for battle, but things quickly take a turn for the worse when a shot suddenly rings out and the massacre begins. The score of the segment takes the turn along with the picture, which starts out upbeat and adventurous, but becomes frantic and terrifying as the scene plays out. This segment is also where the montage style of editing which Einstein employs really stands out. Many quick cuts are made between wide shots of the Odessan people running down the staircase, close-up shots of people screaming, crying and dying, and shots of the soldiers’ boots as they uniformly walk down the steps as they conduct the massacre. This scene itself is one that could single-handedly make the film the powerful propaganda film that it is. The juxtaposition of shots between the horrified and murdered Odessans, and the oppressive image of the soldiers’ boots as they march down the steps is effective in creating a scene that stays with the viewer and elicits a strong emotional response. In fact, the scene is so believable, that to this day, many refer to it as having actually happened when it actually did not. Einstein was innovative in the techniques used in making the film and effectively used them to make a haunting film with great support toward it’s political bias.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

A Tale of Two 'Vermin'

So, I’ve got a special treat for you all today.  While I was clearing out some junk from the garage yesterday, I found a children's book I used to love titled Beetle Boy, a children’s adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Leafing through it, I found that it had its own type of horror regarding a sudden and dramatic transformation, that can be very interestingly compared to the original work.  Because it turns out, a kid’s book can be crammed full of high-octane nightmare fuel!   I guess kids really can handle more than we thought they could.

The two stories start off the same, with our main characters awakening one morning to find themselves transformed, but in the kid’s version, Gregory (ha) is explicitly a beetle, whereas Gregor is just some vaguely defined ‘vermin’.   Both our protagonists are disturbed by what has happened to them, but our two narratives begin to diverge at this point, and begin to make their statements regarding fear and ‘otherness’.   When Gregor is called to begin his day, his family immediately notices this change, and uniformly reacts with fear, anger and revulsion.  Gregor’s change is incredibly noticeable, and the world reacts with anger and violence, which is Kafka’s statement about fear and otherness in a nutshell. Gregory, on the other hand, scuttles downstairs to find his family totally unaware of his sudden change.   All his protestations and pleas for attention are met with bland platitudes and brushoffs, exposing that primal childhood fear and/or worry of being totally ignored.  No matter how much Gregory tries to prove something has changed, he is totally ignored by all the authority figures that are nominally meant to pay attention to him and his troubles.   

Beetle Boy creates a world driven by blind ignorance and inertia, in which things keep going on as usual because they have always gone on as usual, no matter the circumstances. It doesn’t matter that your child now has a coffee colored carapace and 50% more limbs than they had when you tucked them in the night before, all that matters is that he likes his sandwiches cut into triangles, and his little sister likes them cut into rectangles, and God help you if you mess them up again, and the world can continue spinning like it always has.  Gregory spends the entire story trying to get people to notice his new look, and using the surprising new advantages that being a child-sized beetle comes with.   The final scene of the story begins with Gregory’s family at last discovering what has happened to their son, but instead of flinging fruit at him and shouting, as what happens in Metamorphosis, the children’s book ends with the kid-friendly moral that ‘your parents will love you, no matter what’ and the story ends with our protagonist happily drifting off to sleep, secure in the love of his family.   The last image in the book is of a boy standing on his bed, excitedly greeting the new day, and the future it represents, which is weirdly evocative of the end of Kafka’s original work, only this version doesn’t have our protagonist dying alone and unloved, so it’s overall a much happier read.    

Musings on "Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street."

Virginia Woolf was an amazing writer.  I have to lead off with such a bold statement because it deserves front  point in this blog post.  I’ve just finished reading Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street, and having never being really exposed to stream of consciousness work except in short bursts ( I have a tendency to select genre fiction in lieu of anything else, but I’m trying to work on it),  it was a revelatory experience. The story is deceptively simple, as the elevator pitch would be “The reader follows a lady as she tries to buy gloves one day.”, but since we the reader are inhabiting the titular character’s mind, we are also treated to that constantly running commentary that is consciousness.   Mrs Dalloway passes judgement on the things she sees before her, reminisces about the past, and thinks about the future in a stunningly real fashion.   In fact, I interpret this story as the reader coming into the story in media res, seeing as the first statement is a declaration: “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the gloves herself.”  

To me, this sounds like Mrs. Dalloway has just decisively settled an issue of gloves, and asserting her own autonomy, an important point due to the fact that this story is set in  post-WW1 London, in a time of societal upheaval.  Te fact that it is over something as seemingly simple as a set of gloves is in fact quite important, owing to the societal position we can infer that Mrs. Dalloway occupies due to some of the text.  Working class folk don’t attend parties at embassies or have lunch with the Queen, not in this day and age, and most certainly not then, societal upheaval or no.  In those circles, fashion and dress are signifiers of power and status.   Mrs.  Dalloway could be buying these gloves as a sort of statement.  “I know my tastes better than any sort of gift giver could!”  Which is a state I find quite empowering and refreshing, even nearly a century after this story was written.

Now, I mentioned previously that this story is set post-WW1.   The fact that Mrs Dalloway and most of the other people she interacts with during the course of the plot survived what was termed “The War to End All Wars” colors all the interactions and events that are remarked upon.  During that embassy party I mentioned earlier in my post, Mrs. Dalloway has this thought upon seeing a landed acquaintance: “how they suffered, she thought, thinking of Mrs Foxcroft at the Embassy last night decked with jewels, eating her heart out, because that nice boy was dead, and now the old Manor House (Durtnall's van passed) must go to a cousin.”

Obviously someone close to Lady Foxcroft had died in the war, and due to the way inheritance worked, someone distant would now get the lands and titles the Lady would pass on after her death.  Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street  has a deeply lyrical and haunting quality that blends sadness and happiness in a way that reflects reality, the way that we never feel just one thing at one time, but experience shades of emotion, colored by our past and our present.   This is the sort of stuff Woolf conveys in just a hair over 3,000 words.   Stunning, really.  I’ll end this post be reworking my opening statement: Virginia Woolf is an amazing writer, and I am enriched for having read her work.    

Kafka and Metamorphosis: The Spooky Coincidence

So this week, I’m writing about Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. The tale of a man caught up by unknowable forces has resonated with readers and scholars alike for generations, but after doing some cursory biographical research on Kafka’s life, I am looking at Metamorphosis with renewed eyes, owing to what may be  one of the oddest examples of ‘life imitating art’ I’ve ever seen.  Namely, the fact that in the ending to Metamorphosis, Kafka ending up predicting the manner of his very own demise.  Spooky and unbelieveable, I know, but entirely true!  

Some background on Kafka himself, to set the stage.  Franz was born to a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague in the late 19th century, in fact he was the fourth  child in said family, and the only son, due to the untimely deaths of two previous boys.  The Kafkas were very close in that sort of “apples not falling far from the tree” way some families are.  Kafka himself only began living on his own at the ripe old age of 31!  By his own accounts, Kafka was deeply influenced by his father, who was a stern and authoritarian man.  No wonder so many of his works seem to feature authority and father figures and unknowable blustery creatures, if things were that bad. (And they were, if the fact that the letter Kafka wrote to his father pouring his heart out about all these things was over 100 pages!)  Educated as a lawyer solely to appease his father, Kafka always bemoaned the fact that his day job took away precious time that he would rather devote to writing, his life’s calling.  Kafka was so devoted to writing, that he considered it tantamount to prayer.  A lofty sentiment, considering that his own formal religious education ended after his bar mitzvah!  Kafka kept writing up until his death in 1924 of complications arising from tuberculosis.  Due to the fact that his throat had swelled shut, the cause of death is thought to have been starvation.  Ironically enough, Kafka’s last work is titled The Hunger Artist.

This brings me to my point, that Kafka had in fact predicted the manner of his death years before its occurrence.   Gregor Samsa, the main character in Metamorphosis, is a bright young man working in a job he hates to appease the overbearing family he lives with.  SOunds familiar, right?   Kafka was most definitely drawing from the well of experience there.  After being shunned and hurt by his family for ages following his monstrous transformation, Gregor falls ill and dies of starvation, only discovered by his family after the fact.  Kafka predicted his own death, in one of those supremely spooky coincidences that sets your spine ashiver.   I mean, its meaningless, but the fact that it happened is kinda great.   More evidence that real life is stranger and more confusing than any fiction.  (Save for Herr Kafka’s works, of course.  There's a reason byzantine social orders that make no sense are called Kafkaesque)   Next time, I’ll be talking about Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway, so stay tuned!

Initial Thoughts on Metamorphosis

   Thematic analysis of The Metamorphosis has tended to focus on the psychoanalytic and symbolic, or allegorical, nature of the story. While evaluations of the narrative vary, many commentators view the theme of alienation from humanity at the center of the story and interpret Gregor's transformation as a kind of wish-fulfillment or as an extended metaphor. Critics who perceive the metamorphosis as a form of wish-fulfillment on Gregor's part find in the text clues indicating that he deeply resented having to support his family. Desiring to be in turn nurtured by them, he becomes a parasite in entomological fact. The complete dependence of Gregor's family and employer on him, then, is seen as an ironic foil to the reality of Gregor's anatomical transformation into a parasite. Many critics who approach the story in this way believe the primary emphasis of The Metamorphosis is not upon Gregor, but on his family, as they abandon their dependence on him and learn to be self-sufficient. One interpretation of the story holds that the title applies equally to Gregor's sister Grete: she passes from girlhood to young womanhood during the course of the narrative. Another view of Gregor's transformation is that it is an extended metaphor, carried from abstract concept to concrete reality: trapped in a meaningless job and isolated from the human beings around him, Gregor is thought of as an insect by himself and by others, so he becomes one.

What I love about Kafka’s Metamorphosis, is the abrupt and brutal manner in which Gregor Samsa’s life is irrevocably transformed.  Much like how life often strikes and pounces when we least expect it, our hapless protagonist wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a “monstrous vermin”.   Now, in popular culture, this transformation has always been depicted as some sort of cockroach-like insect. But having actually read the base material for the first time, the word “vermin” really jumps out at me, as if to say that whatever thing Gregor Samsa has become is something wholly undefinable by any known rules of nature.  Something utterly outside of our understanding of the natural world.  No wonder his family is struck with such revulsion and horror upon learning of this condition!  What really interests me however, is the long drawn out process with which the family reacts and adapts to this situation.  In fact, if you strip out the “monstrous vermin” bit, Metamorphosis becomes a family drama dealing with the chronic and incurable illness of a loved one.  I especially 'enjoyed' reading about how the sister's care and affection eventually morphed into hatred and disgust, leading to the fruit throwing scene towards the end.   The story ends with the family happily riding off on an outing, freed of the burden that was Gregor, a deeply nihilistic ending that delivers a final gut punch to the reader.