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In a prior post, I referred to the films of Richard Linklater as "logocentric," by which I mean - in a good way - that no matter how visual Linklater’s films may be, they are fundamentally word-centered. (The same could be said of Godard’s.)
The term is appropriated from the late Columbia professor, literary theorist, and cultural critic, Edward Said (Orientalism), who used it to describe any texts, e.g. the writings of Joyce, Beckett, and Eliot, in which the word (the logos) is accorded an almost mystical significance or centrality. A Scanner Darkly, book and film, is logocentric, but certainly no more so than 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. In François Truffaut’s film version of Fahrenheit 451, the camera lingers with fetishistic intensity on images of burning books and of words going up in smoke. The same film ends with characters becoming "living books."
One of Professor Said’s favorite examples of a logocentric text was Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In Heart of Darkness, seaman Marlow travels downriver, through a jungle of dense verbiage, to locate the mysterious Mr. Kurtz. Throughout most of the tale, all we know about Kurtz is what is said about him – the words others use to describe him. By the time Marlow finally reaches Kurtz at the jungle’s heart, there is hardly anything left of the man but a mouth voicing the words, "the horror ... the horror."
Orson Welles famously chose Heart of Darkness as the first project he wanted to make after being given his initial "dream contract" at the RKO studio. (You can listen to Welles’s radio adaptations of Heart of Darkness and other stories here.) When the Heart of Darkness project aborted, Welles went on to make Citizen Kane, whose central character also ends his life as little more than a mouth, in this instance voicing the word, "Rosebud." Welles liked to blame the Rosebud concept on his screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz - who most likely came up with the particular word that was used - but the idea of a man’s life being reduced to (defined by) a single logos was in all probability Welles’s, by way of Conrad.
ADDENDUM (6/21/06): For more on logocentric radio drama, click here.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Logocentric Cinema
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3 comments:
Godard's logocentric cinema evolves from his love and admiration for the work of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the father of logocentric cinema (with ALL ABOUT EVE being the mother film).
Herman Mankiewicz (brother of Joseph) and Welles are equally responsible for the logocentricity of CITIZEN KANE - Mankiewicz, due to his background in journalism; Welles, due to his background in radio.
You want to hear Welles radio drama works? Tune in WNAR internet radio! They re-run the Campbell Playhouse series. I heard a 1938 radio play in the series just yesterday. I was absolutely riveting. Very, very visual. Not like running the sound track to a movie. But so good! People picked up their cues right on the money, especially Orson.
You can find WNAR on your Google browser. Their streaming WINAMP audio is great. These were recorded back in the days of VERTICAL RECORDING. Also called "hill and dale" recording because the recording method was directly akin to how CDs and DVD are now recorded nowadays! So now, the vertical analog audio phonograph recording method was remarkable in that there IS NO RECORD SCRATCH! The now-familiar Berliner lateral recordings would get scratchy. Many of them were instananteous acetate recordings. That's where records got their bad reputation as "scratchy."
Alas and alack!
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