Some Came Running

The hipster beardo patriarchy

"Death and my cock are the world."—Jim Morrison, I think

In his review of the inventive enfant-terrible indie Bellflower for The A/V Club, Keith Phipps hits on something crucial about the film that I've yet to see any other reviewer mention. He says that "after a point" it becomes "a film about men who hate women, and it comes awfully close to endorsing that point of view." Well, screw that, I'll go even further: it doesn't "come close" to endorsing that point of view, it absolutely embodies that point of view, it can see no other possibility but that point of view, it IS that point of view. 

But the film ought to be given some points for honesty. It's true that not all of the ball-flappin' PBR-swillers who are this film's ideal audience and sort-of subject matter have the time or wherewithal to build flame-throwing cars modeled after the Road Warrior movies, but the movie does paint an accurate picture of how those types like to roll, "romance" wise. Which is to say (and here maybe I ought to interject a spoiler alert; be warned), that if you're hanging with a chick who is reckless and irresponsible in ways that jibe with your own recklessness and irresponsibility, e.g., she'll go off with you on a week-long road trip from California to Texas at the drop of a hat without even bringing a toothbrush let alone a change of clothes, then that chick ROCKS, or even RAWKS; on the other hand, if she's reckless and irresponsible in ways that might chafe you, e.g., she fucks her old roommate in your bed, then she's the FUCKING SLUT BITCH WHO BROKE YOUR PRECIOUS BUT NOW EVER-HARDENING HEART, WAAAUUGH! I believe the industry term for this kind of double-dealing is "bullshit." 

This sort of thing isn't exactly rife in DIY indies, but it's not exactly inconspicuous either. A very pertinent example, alas, is Nights and Weekends, which is a 100-percent "Respect The Cock" movie in spite of Greta Gerwig's directorial co-signature. The frustrated desire of Joe Swanberg's James is played throughout for poignancy and squelched potency, while Gerwig's Mattie is drawn more enigmatically, in a kind of "What do women want—no, never mind, actually we don't care" way. Its will to a particular kind of power is so upfront that one needn't read between the frames to see Swanberg's rather disgusting extra-diegetic agenda at work. And note well the wannabe-quirky studio piece Crazy, Stupid, Love, in which the only vaguely sexually liberated character is left out in the cold, as it were, at the end, alone and resentful after all manner of patriarchal order is restored, impotently giving the finger to the man who scorned her. She doesn't even drink, the poor freak. Why, it's "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" all over again. 

"Stockhausen Serves Imperialism," Cornelius Cardew charged in 1974. Were one to allow that point, one could go on to argue that under the circumstances, Stockhausen could not do the work that he did WITHOUT serving imperialism. Among other things, Bellflower serves sexist oppression—and it does so by choice, achingly, whole-heartedly, and with its eyes wide open.

Brash "Blessed"

Mrs. Kenny didn't raise no fool (relatively speaking); when friend Daniel Kasman sent out an e-mail to various and sundry contributors to the very fine MUBI Notebook he oversees, asking for contributions to a guide to the Film Forum's summer Essential Pre-Code series, Mrs. Kenny's son jumped right on the great newsie comedy Blessed Event, knowing that EVERYBODY ELSE would be bidding to get in a paragraph on it: it's just that kind of film. Hence, out of a kind of spite for dibs comes the first thing I've written for the Notebook in a while, but don't get too excited, it's pretty short. On the other hand, do get excited, as other contributors to the guide include such sharpies as Gina Telaroli, Ben Sachs, Jaime Christley, Davids Cairns and Phelps, the always pleasant and easy-to-get-along-with Craig Keller, and others. Good reading, good viewing. I'm curious as to whether the print Film Forum is showing restores a couple of Jewish-baiting jokes uttered by Lee Tracy's gossip columnist character that were disappeared from the film in the bad old days of Turner tampering. Also, the movie' ALWAYS worth seeing again, and Warner Archive hasn't yet put it on disc, so, if you're in the tri-state area, you ought to go too. 

Literary interlude

You set particular by the use of irony in bringing me up, it was also especially fitting given your superiority over me. You usually reprimanded me like this: "Can't you do it this way instead? Isn't that a bit too much for you? Surely you don't have time for that?" or similar. And all of these questions were accompanied by a spiteful laugh or a spiteful face. You punished me sometimes even before I had done wrong. When you particularly wanted to antagonize me you would refer to me in the third person, as if I was not even worthy of an angry address; you would say ostensibly to Mother, but actually to me as I sat there too, something like: "We simply can't have that kind of behavior from our son" (This produced a counter habit in me: I never dared, or later never even thought, out of sheer habit, to address you directly while mother was present. It was far less dangerous for me to put questions to Mother as long as she sat beside you, so I would ask Mother: "How is Father?", thus protecting myself from any surprises). Of course, there were times when I agreed with your extreme irony, notably when its target was someone else, Elli for example, with whom I had been on bad terms for years. For me it was an orgy of malice and Schadenfreude when you referred to her like this at almost every meal: "Look at the fat cow, she has to sit ten meters from the table," and again when you imitated her, in spiteful and exaggerated fashion as you sat in your chair, without the faintest hint of warmth or humor, but rather with bitter enmity, as if trying to show how terribly she offended your sensibilities. How often scenes like this must have occurred, and how little they actually achieved. This, I think, was because the extent of your anger and spite was so disproportionate to the matter at hand, we felt that your anger could not have been caused by such a trivial thing as sitting so far from the table, rather it must have been latent from the beginning, triggered in this case purely by chance. Since we were convinced that it would eventually be triggered anyway, we did not really let it trouble us, we were also desensitized by your constant threats; little by little we gradually became aware that there was no danger of a real thrashing. We became surly, unobservant, disobedient children, constantly preoccupied with escape, mostly internal escape. And so you suffered, and we suffered. In your opinion you were doing no wrong when you stood there with clenched teeth and that gurgling laugh which had given me my first idea of hell as a child, and said bitterly (as you did recently on receiving a letter from Constantinople): "What a rabble!"

—Franz Kafka, Brief an den Vater (Dearest Father), 1919 (translation Hannah and Richard Stokes)