Last Year At Marienbad

Last Year At Marienbad: I first saw this, unbelievably, on television. . .maybe 25 years ago, on WGPR channel 62 in Detroit. This was way back before 62 was a CBS affiliate. This was back when 62 was the first black-owned station in America, back when 62 was an amateurish independent operation, with a miniscule audience, weak signal, primitive production standards and terrible programming. . .terrible programming except for their late night movie. There was a period back in the day, for maybe a year or two years, when 62 would show European movies in the middle of the night. They must have found a package of Euro flicks in some bargain bin at a distributor’s fire sale. They had maybe 30 foreign movies they would run over and over again. . .awful, grainy prints with faint subtitles. And I doubt anyone at 62 ever screened any of these movies, because they were shown uncut, nudes scenes and all. There must have been only a handful of other night owls beside me watching, as there was never any public outcry from *family groups* about 62 showing skin.

It was an odd set of films—most of them sexcapades or *erotic thrillers* starring the likes of Laura Antonelli (it seemed like Wifemistress was on every other night) and Isabelle Adjani (I saw One Deadly Summer so many times, with Adjani’s psycho nude nympho burned into my mind, I could never accept her later in her career as a *serious* actress). But mixed in with the lightweights were a few classics, such as Ecstasy, The Rules of the Game, Contempt. . .and the incomparable Last Year At Marienbad.

Watching the creepy, trippy, gothic Last Year At Marienbad became a genuinely surreal experience as it was interrupted every ten minutes for Mel Farr *the Superstar* Ford and Henry the Hatter ads. The juxtaposition of the height of European culture and the tacky depth of American commercialism was mind-boggling. . .

Well, Marienbad has just been released on dvd, and I finally got to see it uninterrupted. . .

It is even better than I remembered. I had forgotten how cleverly and with meticulous detail and stunning design the filmmakers explored the illusions of reality & memory, and the mysteries of experience. David Lynch, of whom I am a fan and who also dabbles in these themes, could learn a lesson on the value of self-discipline from Marienbad’s director, Alain Resnais, and screenwriter, Alain Robbe-Grillet. Resnais and Robbe-Grillet were able to present ideas as esoteric as Lynch’s, but without Lynch’s rambling excess. Marienbad is a masterpiece of control. The story is as ambiguous as any of Lynch’s, but it never becomes self-indulgent.

With Lynch, I have the feeling the fellow is not telling everything he knows [it doesn’t matter whether this is because he isn’t telling everything, or because the story is imperfectly told], but Resnais and Robbe-Grillet tell the viewer everything. . .they tell us every possible thing, so that Marienbad is the most user-friendly *art* film ever made.

Marienbad is constructed around a familiar plot: the love triangle, here between the characters X, A and M.

X meets A at a grand chateau resort, and pesters her to the point of stalking as he harangues her with his memories of their affair from the previous year (perhaps at Marienbad) and her promise that she would meet him exactly one year later at their present location, whereupon she would leave M, her husband, and run off with X. But X has one small problem: A claims to have no memory of ever meeting X.

The ingenious Robbe-Grillet script unfolds, then refolds, then unfolds again as X repeats over and over and over again the details of the alleged affair in a sometimes pathetic, sometimes pleading, sometimes cool and suave, sometimes whining and desperate attempt to convince A of its reality. The repetitions, however, gradually incorporate variations, at first trivial, then becoming increasingly unsettling. By the end, the viewer is over-loaded with interpretations, all equally valid:

X made the whole story up. X and A did have an affair, but A chooses to deny it in order to remain with her husband M. X stalked and raped A, and A is suffering from a traumatic disorder. X stalks and rapes A, and invents the affair from last year as part of an alibi. X and A had an affair which M discovered, and then M killed A, and now a year later X is just wandering around the insanely ornate chateau in his own fantasy world. Etc. Etc. Etc. The interpretations are limitless.

The contemporary movie-goer, raised on a diet of mindless *action* films and juvenile sex *comedies,* would likely ask of Marienbad, 'what is the point?' And that would be the point, exactly. Resnais and Robbe-Grillet require the viewer to use his/her brain, to think, to participate, instead of sitting back and becoming desensitized to bludgeoning violence, or revertng to infantilism from adolescent humor.

Marienbad received a mixed response upon its release nearly fifty years ago—were it to be released today into our Cineplex Temples of Sensory Assault, the response would be unanimous: the slugs in the theaters would greet it as the Sex Pistols were greeted in the deep south on their US tour, with angry howls and beverage showers.

Marienbad is an eerie, disconcerting film, aided by an almost silent film era horror score heavy with funereal organ music. . .

Giorgio Albertazzi plays X, and he seems the most *normal* of the characters. He drives the plot with his narration of the alleged affair. He seems like a fellow trapped in a recurring dream, trying to reason with phantasms from his subconscious. . .

Delphine Seyrig plays A. . .no, really, she poses as A. With her defensive body language and corpse-like make-up, she seems like the personification of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. . .

The weird, almost ghoulish-looking Sacha Pitoëff plays the sinister M, who has a seeming supernatural ability at a misère nim game which figures prominently in the movie. Marienbad is replete with symbolic triangles, and perhaps most revelatory are the game scenes, in which 16 cards are laid out in a triangle shape. . .

I had thought Marienbad might seem dated, but, no, it is a timeless masterpiece. In its geometric staging, unnatural lighting effects, and the highly mannered cast performances, Marienbad has the appearance of an artificial world inhabited by creatures struggling with their illusions of determinism. In the end, one may view Marienbad as an exaggerated picture of our own attempt to understand human experience.

David vs Goliath, 2009

Ha ha ha. . .look at this pathetic white buffoon! Confronting the government! Standing up for. . .uh. . .standing up for. . .uh. . .Big Pharma and the Insurance Industry?!?! It’s great when the little guy comes to the aid of poor defenseless Corporate giants!! They’ll reward him by selling him his Diovan for $5 a pill. . .

This jackass claimed to speak for God. . .but he kinda knocked God down a peg or two. . .he said God would one day stand before Arlen Specter. . .ha ha ha. Uh, no, God ain’t gonna get off His throne for a fleabag like Arlen Specter.

But anyway, I wonder if this brainwashed clown thinks he scored some brownie points with the Almighty? Ha ha ha. . .his pastor will probably ask him to give the sermon this Sunday: David vs Goliath, 2009. . .

Does this bumpkin really think God is worked up about *Health Care Reform?*

All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity.

America herself is less than nothing to God, so what is her grubby politics, then, but less than less than zero? But this Pennsylvania shit-kicker imagines himself fighting the good fight. . .

No, this clodhopper is nothing but a hash-slinger after the heart of Martha. . .laboring in vain before God. And his burden will be dismissed, just as Christ dismissed Martha’s busy-work (Luke 10:38 – 42).

Connubialis Nervosa

AP, 5 August 2009: George Sodini seethed with anger and frustration toward women. He couldn't understand why they ignored him, despite his best efforts to look nice. He hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years. "Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive," the 48-year-old computer programmer lamented in a chilling diary he posted on the Internet. For months, he also wrote vaguely about using guns to carry out his "exit plan" at his health club, where lots of young women worked out. On Tuesday, Sodini put his plan into action. He went to the sprawling L.A. Fitness Club in this Pittsburgh suburb, turned out the lights on a dance-aerobics class filled with women, and opened fire with three guns, letting loose with a fusillade of at least 36 bullets.

I wonder if five or ten years from now this guy won't be looked at as one of the first suffers of a new anxiety disorder? An anxiety disorder spawned by our grossly sexualized culture?

Sodini seemed to think hooking up was the be-all and end-all to existence. Life wasn’t worth living without sexual validation.

The poor fellow hit a dry spell when he was thirty years old. . .he couldn’t get laid. . .couldn’t get laid in a culture that was choking with easy sex. . .and then internet porn exploded. . .and then high school girls were showing what they know on MySpace and cell phones and having texting orgies. . .everywhere he looked, people were fucking or virtually fucking. . .everybody was fucking—except him. It didn’t make sense. So he started obsessing. . .what’s wrong with me???? His internet diary is full of passages like this:

I guess some of us were simply meant to walk a lonely path. I have slept alone for over 20 years. Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don't even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me that NO goddam person will tell me what it is.

Here’s a decent-enough looking guy, who had good jobs, made good money, was apparently in good physical health, and from his web page seemed like he could at least get along with co-workers and acquaintances. . .yet he had this sex barrier.

It must have been an anxiety disorder, due to his growing obsession with his celibacy in the Übersexual States of America. . .

What’s wrong with me?

It began to prey on his mind. . .so much so, you can imagine this poor bastard on one of his infrequent dates. . .he probably had little difficulty meeting women, interacting with them, say, in the work environment, to the point where he could get them to agree to a date. . .but I would bet that when they were on the date, he felt so anxious he turned into a stammering, twitching, sweating loser. . .

Connubialis Nervosa. . .

The longer he didn’t have sex in a culture stinking of semen and vaginal secretions, the more impossible it seemed. . .grade schoolers were getting laid, for crying out loud! Grade schoolers were banging their art teachers left and right, and here he was, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, all alone, all alone. In his depressing blog, he reveals:

I masturbate. Frequently.

All day long in the Übersexual States of America he sees the orgies of easy sex. . .and yet every night he is alone with his fist. So there must be something wrong. . .but he couldn’t figure it out. . .he was the 48-year-old virgin. And intercourse seemed unattainable. To poor George Sodini, our first case of connubialis nervosa, scaling the mons pubis seemed as impossible as scaling Olympus Mons. . .

The man simply forgot how to fuck. . .his life resembled that episode of Beavis and Butt-head where they forget how to piss. . .

He became alienated from all those fornicators around him. . .alienated from the übersexual culture. . .the man without a cuntry. It drove him mad. . .and he had to destroy that which he could not have.

Night of the Living Dead

I love places like this. Weathered Americana. We were heading back from a cavern trip to southern Ohio, and passed this drive-in movie relic on US-68, just outside Kenton. Man, I wished we had passed it a little later in the night, I would have loved for my kids to see Transformers in a place like this. You can’t see it in the picture, but there is a shabby little playground at the back. That old drive-in really stirred the memories, one in particular. Way, way back, in the last century, my mom, never a movie expert by any means, took me and my brother to a drive-in. I was seven and my brother Larry was nine. The movie my mom took us to? *Night of the Living Dead.* Ha ha ha. She thought it was just going to be some silly Sir Graves Ghastly-type monster movie. . .next thing you know, a little girl is eating her mother’s entrails!!! My brother and I loved it, mom was mortified. Yeah, back then there was Vietnam and Manson girls and race riots and all that, and that probably ain’t even the half of it, but I remember America, back at the time when I was watching that little girl snack on her mother’s guts, as a less vicious place. Was it really? Who knows? What is truth, as Pilate asked?

Little Palestine

Most nights between 7:30 and 8:00 the Palestinian kids in my strip of the Council Flats hit the Common Area for a soccer game. They’re a raggedy bunch of refugee camp escapees ranging in age from about 9 – 16. They use the covered drain holes at each end of the Commons as goals.

They are well-behaved kids. I say this even though I really don’t know how they behave. They keep to their own kind. They don’t mix with the Asians or the blacks or the white trash among us. Since they will not have anything to do with us, this makes them well-behaved, in my estimation. Perfect neighbors.
The Commons is right out my back door, so I see the Palis turn it into the Occupied Territories almost every night. Saturday I took some pictures, with my two kids tagging along. One of the Pali moms saw me with the camera and asked what I was doing.

“I’m a social scientist. I’m doing field work,” I say.

She stares blankly at me, then jabbers in Arabic to the other Pali moms. They sit there drinking Coke and snacking puffed Cheetos as they watch the bambino Pali rugrats play on the Commons’ beat-up slides and swings. I see her looking at my kids. She sees me looking at her.

“Where your other kids?” she asks.

Other kids?

“’Other kids?’ That’s it. Just those two,” I say.

“Two only? Nine I have.”

Nine? She looks maybe 35. Nine kids. No wonder she’s so fat. She’s been popping them out one after another, without a break to take the weight off.

Nine kids in these tiny Council Flats? Plus two adults? Hell, maybe a couple grandparents, too? A camel jockey demolition derby 24/7. My two kids have put a beating on our little flat, imagine what a wreck their place must be. But Hell, if they came from some slum in Gaza, it must seem like one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

“Nine kids. That must be a lot of fun,” I say.

The Pali mom nods her head.

“Why you have two only? Your wife sick?” she asks.

“Sick of having kids,” I joke.

She doesn’t laugh, though. She looks at me like I just threw a shoe at Allah.

I start to slink after my sons, who are heading for the basketball *court* (a small slab of blacktop with a pole, a backboard and a bent rim with no net) when the Pali mom says:

"The Chinese have two only."

"The Chinese?"

She nods.

"The Arabs they keep out. All Chinese come now. Two kids only."

It's true, in the last couple of years there has been a real Asian invasion. The Asians and the Arabs are now neck-and-neck for the majority.

"The Arabs, they don't want. Too many kids."

"I got Chinese on one side," I say.

"How many kids they have?"

"Two."

She nods and jabbers in Arabic to the other Pali moms. They are all fat. Prolific breeders, never allowed to deflate.

"The Chinese. The smell!" she says, and she makes a face as she shakes her head.

Ha. How many white people have I heard say the same about Arabs? People are all the same, all the same. They all stink, to somebody except themselves.

"The Chinese stink?"

The Pali mom crinkles her nose.

"And they always cooking." She opens her mouth and pretends to vomit. "Pigs cooking."

She jabbers in Arabic, and the other fat Pali moms nod and make faces like a pig has just farted.

"I hear the Chinese walk around nude a lot," I say.

She tells this to the others. They all stare at me.

"The Chinese you see naked?" she asks.

"Not me personally. Somebody else who lives here told me he sees them walking around nude in their house, with the curtains open."

She passes this on. They all look scandalized.

I feel bad for messing with them like that. Like some fucking Bruno or something.

"It's probably not true," I say. "You know how people are. Hey, in the end, we all got to live together, right?"

The Pali mom just looks at me.

"I mean, us poor, we got to stick together, right?"

"Who poor?" she asks, indignant.

"No, uh, I mean, we all just have to get through this together. Make a nice environment. For our kids."

"You have two only," she says.

Man, there's no way out of this conversation. Then it hits me:

"At least no Jews live here!"

Her face lights up. She laughs. She laughs and laughs, then jabbers in Arabic to the other Pali moms, and they laugh and laugh, and I laugh, and we're all laughing. We chat amiably for a couple minutes about this and that. We've made peace. We've made peace at the expense of that old scapegoat. I'd have liked to have done it in a more dignified fashion, but this is the Council Flats, man—you do it by any means necessary.

The Vision

That’s me. That’s me, there in the chicken suit. I snapped this picture of me on Sunday, as I was driving back from Father Rimbaud’s. When I saw me standing there in the chicken suit, I grabbed the camera and, one-handed, snapped the photo. Snapped? No, I did not *snap* the photo. I merely pushed down on the camera’s silver button.

Anyway, that’s me. Sooner or later, that’s me. It was a vision of the future. Yes, I know. Carpenter Road is not exactly the Isle of Patmos—but a vision is still a vision. It was me, no question. Me in a chicken suit. A human being pretending to be poultry holding a dumb advertisement in front of a strip mall.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll be happier as a chicken? No. No. It is not a question of the *pursuit of happiness.* It is a question of the pursuit of knowledge. Self-knowledge. One of the great philosophers, one of the Germans, I believe it was, once stated:

In order to know the truth, every man must face life from inside a chicken suit. . .

Of course, he did not mean chicken suit exclusively. . .any type of animal mascot costume will suffice.

Looking out from inside the yellow feathers, removed from the play-acting of our typical role as *human being,* freed from having to appear to be *doing something,* we can confront the awful emptiness of our modern scientific and technological existence. In the guise of the dumb farmyard beast, stripped of scientific and technological man’s vanity, we discover anew that we are mere creatures, entirely dependent upon the Creator for our continued being.

The experience will be different for the believer and the infidel. For believers, time spent inside the chicken suit will be a chastening and a refreshing, and offer an opportunity for renunciation of the world. After shedding the feathers, we will return to our First Love.

For the infidel, the experience will be terrifying. Stripped of his/her material illusions, alone in the blackness under the fake feathers, the stygian interior of the chicken suit will serve as an omen of the Outer Darkness that is his/her eventual destination. He/she will peer out from the darkness through the costume’s small eye holes, and see the world to which he/she formerly belonged, and to which he/she is unable to return. This experience itself a shadow of what awaits in Hell:

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

For the infidel, the chicken suit is the great gulf fixed. . .

This is, of course, the metaphysical aspect of the chicken suit. The chicken suit also has a utilitarian purpose, answering the question asked here.

What will the new economy look like? It will look like underemployed men and women dressed as beasts, pitifully paid by pawnbrokers and assorted peddlers desperate to attract the attention of the smaller and smaller numbers of the monied class.

But I say to the brethren: fear ye not the chicken suit.

But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

The *Failure* of the Tehranatti

Telegraph.co.uk, 8 July 2009: Almost a month on from Iran’s presidential election, it is now time to recognise that the so-called “Twitter revolution” has utterly failed to achieve anything - save dead and injured young Iranians, and up to 2,000 new political prisoners.

[The complete article may be read here.]

The butthead who wrote the above article actually believes the Tehranatti staged their *performance revolution* for the benefit of the great unwashed of Iran!

Oh, so that is why the Tehranatti held up *protest signs* with English language slogans?

No, the hijinks of the Tehranatti were staged for the benefit of the thick-headed in the West. . .stagecraft to continue the demonization of Ahmadinejad and Iran. . .theatrical propaganda meant to continue the conditioning of the Western masses to accept the necessity of a *war on Iran.*

[Article here detailing Western fingerprints on the Tehranatti.]

The altruism of *freeing* the Iranian peasants from tyranny, combined with the egoism of *freeing* post-9/11 Western nervous nellies from the Iranian *nuclear threat,* make for a powerful cocktail of the noble and the selfish with which to deaden any dissent to the inevitable war on Iran.

No, the Tehranatti did not fail. . .they are the darlings of the West, the Pets of the Month, and they played their roles perfectly. . .and their show will be rerun endlessly in the run-up to the war on Iran.