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Difficult Video Games & OMORI

Specifically writing or commenting on independent game development rather than what is more commonly critiqued (movies, music, sculpture/art, etc.) is seen as much ‘lesser’ than its others, despite the fact that many of those who craft within the medium see it as the ‘ultimate form of art’. Misguided or otherwise, the case for it being so is strong. The question here is in what other piece of media can you get the vicarious emotional impact of theater and music wrapped with multimedia interactivity, but with a fan base consisting of people who could not give a fuck either way. This is a triumphant opening of a review to a game I finished recently that only really wowed me in a few respects. I would not really compare it to some of my favorite movies or even my favorite albums, but it really does seem to gradually push the boundary of blunt emotional impact, something a video game can truly excel in. OMORI presents itself as just another of its kind, but it's when really given a chance to come to grips with, it shines in a true manner that should be what all art strives to accomplish. 

There is a strong case for a game needing to be difficult in order for it to be “immersive”. This is true of the most difficult games that I have ever played (in recent months “Rain World” comes to mind, as well as the ever-present “Dark Souls” of which the remaster I recently played. The thesis is simple, the more difficult a game is, the smaller the distance is between a player and the character they are specifically controlling. “Ontologically” (I don't actually really know if that’s the correct word here), the subject of the video game would be the player rather than their character (these two points would be effectively the same thing). Therefore any object within the game would be an object the player would have to interact with rather than the character, any enemy the player would conquer, any goal the player would accomplish. It’s easy to make this divide wider when the game seems specifically designed to allow the player to win, as in this case the player has no reason to suspend disbelief. 

OMORI is basically easy. When battles are lost you have the option of starting over from their beginning rather than their checkpoint. Checkpoints are near grinding locations and shops to stock up on revives and health items. Travel is easy and evading battles is not discouraged. However, in a first for me, this did not provide distance between me and the story. It rather made me want to progress the story faster. In OMORI the game is punctuated by two different “world” states, when Sunny is dreaming and when he is in the real world. The game’s clock of days until a certain event happens allows for a time signifier as to how much progress has been reached per play session. There is a “mystery” of sorts, in which your protagonist is involved with something that doesn’t really get explained until the final hour or so. I’m being extremely vague because a lot of the enjoyment in the way the story unravels is contingent on your blindness to as much of the game’s story as possible. This in general makes it relatively hard to give a recommendation for, which is only one of the reasons why I usually think that “spoilers” in general are something that is used to disguise the quality of a product. If you are already previously aware of the central plot twist or conflict in the movie beforehand and it takes away a significant amount of the “fun” of the work for you when you acquire that information, it seems as though that's a result of a weak piece of art rather than your perceived inability to not enjoy it. If any of this piques your interest, I recommend picking up OMORI on steam right now, it’s on sale I think.

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I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) Review

It will become a habit by early teenage years for you and your generation, and for those older and younger who have found their way in the same direction, to become boring with their stories. To become boring with their stories not only vocally (start to finish, each act cleanly recounted, comedic timing rehearsed, a strong finish that leaves the audience satisfied), but on paper as well, what with writing classes teaching fiction in five parts (a beginning, three rising actions, a conclusion), expository classes not deviating from the same formula too cleanly, however in the end that is created for the sole purpose of allowing young academics to grasp hold on the fundamentals of writing. You, and they, are taught early on that: not only are there rules associated with your writing and it’s structure, but stray too far from them and it will actively make your writing less desirable. To whom? To me. Your teacher, the one who will grade you. The one who has not deviated themselves, unfortunately. I was caught in the same cycle of crafting within a mold, judged by the man who created it. Unfortunately.

And now that school is gone, the man who made the mold has left the picture. Yet you, yourself, can’t manage to remove that mold. It’s difficult. Difficult to draw outside the lines of your mold.

To view outside the lines of the mold are even more incomprehensible. There’s a severe lack of ways to describe things that just don’t “fit” within our regarded ways of viewing and consuming media. We only bother to understand those pieces that “fit” into the pattern we’ve already created. We only create a pattern based on pieces of media that “fit” together. We only watch and enjoy pieces of media that create a pattern. 

“After all these years wasted,” I exclaim, “of honing in on this idea of perfection.” I stride, growing tired of the same methodology, the same persistent formal guidelines to creation. No new knowledge of how to separate myself from this eventless self-fulfilling-prophecy comes to mind, really. “It doesn’t seem, by way of traditional methods of reviewing, that I’m Thinking of Ending Things actually contains any real merit, artistically, in the grand canon of film, or of art.”

I guess he lights a cigarette at that point. 

4/5

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Nolan and Kaufman: Thoughts on Tenet (2020)

Reading a good amount of Charlie Kaufman’s Antkind got me thinking more or less about what he personally is attempting to say with his satire; and his satire runs deep. It overflows his pages. It becomes not only an element to accentuate his points within the text but the text itself. Antkind’s first few pages sets up Kaufman’s protagonist: someone who everyone more or less knows. He’s a little bit ill-mannered (but we only see this from the point of view of his mind), he’s self-important with his virtue (going out of his way to attempt to inform the reader that he, himself, is dating an African American woman. And, while that doesn’t make him any different than the average man, he says, it definitely is something worth repeating. Something the viewer should take note of.) He’s a feminist, he’s working on his usage of gender neutral pronouns, but he wants you to know this. He inserts it into every page. Every thought. He would like nothing more than for you to look at him and think: this guy is smart. This guy is cultured. This guy knows more than I, he’s not a dilettante: he’s the real deal. He’s seasoned, he’s got everything in check. And, to top it all off: he hates Christopher Nolan.

“First Starbucks, then Dunkin’ Donuts. Of course Dunkin’ Donuts makes the better coffee. Starbucks is the smart coffee for dumb people. It’s the Christopher Nolan of coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is lowbrow, authentic. It is the simple, real pleasure of a Judd Apatow movie. Not showing off. Actual. Human. Don’t compete with me, Christopher Nolan. You will always lose. I know who you are, and I know I am the smarter of us.” (From Antkind)

While a good part of the population is enjoying Nolan movies for what they are: sometimes confusing (often not), very pretty and stylish movies that command huge budgets and deliver on specticality that James Bond, Mission Impossible, Marvel etc. can’t really live up to, another part is dunking on him for cultivating another group that they themselves have invented (and that Kaufman is considering here). So therefore, there’s a lot of social politics going into viewing a Nolan, which already makes the experience special. Add in the part that he wants you to see it in theaters (even during a pandemic) and that less oxygen is probably hitting your brain through the face mask. Overall, Tenet is a pretty dope experience. I had fun. I felt cool, cooler than Bond could make me feel with its vintage idea of coolness. Cooler than Mission Impossible could make me feel with it’s less stylized visuals. Cooler than Marvel could make me feel because that’s not very hard to do. All the characters talk in that Nolan way like they have a gun to their head. All of them dress like Zara models. I don’t really care about the plot too much. It made me think but that doesn’t make it a good movie. In fact, the grand majority of time on screen is spent purely in conversations that only serve to give further exposition, which goes beyond and in effect, becomes reactionary to the traditional idea of a straightforward narrative action movie, reactionary cinema almost becoming thriller accelerationism. And if culture is going to head this way, we can laugh at these people who need to prove their taste as some sort of contest of being seen as seasoned or not. Don’t make decisions based on where culture has pushed you, try to bear with us and push culture into a new direction and I assure you, you’ll have much more fun consuming media.

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Thoughts on Kaiba (2008)

It’s mostly a consequence of the severe lack of experimentation within American animation as a medium that there isn’t much way to describe pieces outside of what we consider to be “average” other than to compliment the work’s “atmosphere”. Kaiba has great atmosphere. Saying this at a minimum should address many of the points about what works in this series in a clear and concise way that doesn’t waste a lot of verbiage to be overly sentimental and grandiose about my opinions. The problem that comes is that Yuasa’s style and what he presents to us on screen is the direct embodiment of all of these things that we cannot describe (from under exposure, or what is most probably the case: that he himself is the bleeding edge of the medium and there really isn’t much in the way of words or comparisons yet to properly contextualize what he’s doing here).

Although, this isn't to say that there haven’t been great efforts at making pieces of limited series animation in the west “special”. recently Netflix’s Midnight Gospel comes to mind, which is not a bad show by any stretch of the imagination, although a lot of personalities who are immediate to dismiss any adult animation will be more than happy to give you their opinions on the matter. the truth about this debate is that, like most things, it sits somewhere in the middle. American adult animation sometimes approaches success but the grand majority of what you are viewing on screen is most likely put in place to placate a certain type of person (read: not you, or the people you associate with). There’s not much online about this but the comparisons between Gospel and Kaiba are there, and only when viewing them both is it much clearer to the viewer what makes Kaiba special, and what makes gospel just an above average throwaway show.

Atmosphere can mean a lot. It can mean purely aesthetic visuals, it can mean the feeling that you get through the experience, it could mean the sound's overall design. Kaiba benefits from experimenting within all of these categories, but the largest thing that always shocks me (in regards to Yuasa’s adeptness) is that he has total control of the space in each frame. the environments where the subjects are placed and where they will end up before the next scene is entirely mastered by and from his direction. And again, it’s very hard to articulate what exactly is masterful about this direction, because I’ve rarely if ever seen it anywhere else in any medium. However it’s very wordlessly clear if you’ve ever seen a gif or clip from one of his works.

A specific part of the visual and sound-centric aesthetic that stuck out to me in a more profound way has to be the mixture of a sort of mystic and ancient religious atmosphere with technology. The only other piece of media I’ve seen that had a similar sort of direction was Castle in the Sky, a famous Ghibli work which in retrospect was where Kaiba took a majority of this from. the ideas include but are not limited to: extremely digital and hollow sounding effects to accentuate technology moving or working, uncannily perfect or sleek surfaces that fit together with almost no seam, large open spaces that juxtapose with smaller, more cluttered lower class spaces, I’m sure theres more i cant remember. its a very attractive setting to include a piece of the plot that includes modern technology but seems lost to our main characters because it was some secret guarded by ancients. Crowns of the sun's rays on a benevolent all powerful leader. Falling through the sky and losing your memories, but being saved through personal fortitude. I digress.

I wanted this review to be much more sentimental due to the nature of this cartoon, and how it grasps your emotions, and has total unilateral control over them over the course of the entire series, however it’s much more apt to - in the spirit of this work - list down ideas as they come to me and treat the entire work that comes together at face value. I can’t really recommend this series enough, there are very rarely things that scream “special” and contain an essence of magic that is irreplicable. Kaiba manages to cover all this and most likely do much more I haven’t organized in my head enough to put into long form. most of the best works don’t leave you much leeway to make an attempt to, anyway. it’s a shame that we don’t have access to this kind of magic more often, but i’m guessing their importance has something to do with its scarcity. So it goes.

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Missions of Possibility: Space, Virtue, and Empathy in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Mission: Impossible - Fallout mobilizes space and character alignment to maximize the physical and moral catharsis that the action film genre seeks to provoke. In the film’s action scenes, McQuarrie imbues treacherous problem spaces with a moral conflict between Hunt’s yen to avoid the loss of innocent lives (through his strategic, harm-reduction-focused “scalpel” approach that is associated with his alienation from wife Julia) and the CIA’s demand for success through whatever means possible (through the efficient, life-endangering “hammer” approach). Action sequences, then, become virtue-driven set pieces that seek to resolve problem spaces via these conflicting models. Forward movement of the plot hinges on the success and/or failure of these methods. At times, Ethan will fail to master the problem space around him at the expense of moral success; at others, Hunt agent will resolve the problem space but fail to preserve his virtuous methods. The emotional and action arc of the film traces the alignment of spatial mastery with the upholding of virtue, culminating when Ethan can finally integrate the successes of the hammer approach into those of his scalpel. Mission: Impossible - Fallout rejuvenates the action film genre by mapping our investment in melodramatic catharsis onto our investment in the mastery of space, making us unsatisfied until the two harmonize in the film’s climax.

The forward movement of the plot tracks the competition between Ethan’s success in his mission and his own moral failings. Hunt’s relinquishing his mission’s objective for moral rectitude often accelerates the plot. For instance, the entire premise of the movie (successfully extracting Plutonium to keep out of the hands of the Apostles) could have been resolved in the. first action scene had Hunt nabbed the suitcase and let Luther perish; Ethan’s failure, instead motivates the next scene and his globe-trotting mission to track down the remaining nuclear spheres. Failure inspires forward plot movement in this way. It’s almost as if we’re waiting for his virtuous methods to actually succeed. Similarly, Ethan’s accomplishing an IMF objective is often met with a moral compromise that tugs against the story’s progress: Hunt successfully plucks Lane from an armoured convoy but has to run over Ilsa in order to do so. His success prods the narrative forward but we don’t want Hunt to begin the next leg of his mission (and indeed he doesn’t) until he makes amends with Ilsa and reassures us of his goodness. McQuarrie even takes us into a kind of The Killer-esque narrative space that vies to reinvest us in the melodramatic stakes of the film through visual romance: after reckoning with Ilsa, Ethan has a dream in which Lane and Julia stand side-by-side in a red room shimmering with golden lights and lens flares. Just as in the expressively-lit scenes of Ah Jong’s saving Jennie in an alleyway in The Killer, the lighting pyrotechnics here remind us of the splendor of Ethan’s married life and of the necessity of the “hammer approach” that enabled him to nab Lane in the police chase sequence. The narrative, in this way, must absolve Ethan of his moral failings before we can jump into the next action sequence. We cannot have spatial mastery without first having been reassured of moral goodness. This plot structure, coupled with the aesthetically-heightened melodrama beats, conditions us to crave the harmony between the successful completion of his mission (via the mastery of treacherous problem spaces) and the bulwarking of virtue.

The plutonium deal set piece further shapes our desire for spatial mastery to coalesce with the reassurance of virtue. McQuarrie’s approach to problem spaces reanimates those of Buster Keaton to strengthen our empathy for Ethan’s moral crisis in the heat of action. Both directors guide the audience to obvious possible resolutions to action set pieces only to upend our expectations through an improbable solution. In a scene like when Sherlock, Jr. jumps from the roof of a building into a car via a railroad gate, Keaton uses wide shots that both articulate the issues of the problem space posit solutions to these issues. We scan the frame as Sherlock might and deduce that he could: simply jump off the roof onto the car; clamber down one of the telephone poles; or sidle one of the telephone lines until he is directly over the car and then jump in. When he chooses an improbable stunt, we are amazed by his mastering of the space and our alignment with his plight bolsters.

In this scene from Fallout, McQuarrie pits the problem space against Ethan’s conscience and inveigles us to believe that Hunt can resolve the sequence without sacrificing his team. The director sets up a series of treacherous environments that build off each other and make us crave the mastery of physical space. Indeed, blocking, color, and editing help signal the function of certain spaces in the frame that are later upended: when the dealers aim their crosshairs at Ethan and Benji, we know that their section of the parking garage (denoted by a large golden red light) will erupt into violence if the agents fail to procure the requested payment; similarly, as Ethan and Benji look behind them when asking Luther to “bring the money,” we know that the deep background of their frame (denoted by an eerie fluorescent green light) will be where their partner comes in with the money. The edits and color essentially serve the same purpose as the long shot in the scene from Sherlock, Jr.: they clearly articulate the possible outcomes and solutions of the problem space. In Fallout, however, the string of closer range shots bring us closer to the action, the green lighting casts a grimness over the scene, and the golden red light supplies the frame with suggested violence. These artistic choices intensify the atmosphere and make us feel the danger of the situation rather than viewing the film space as a kind of equation.

In Keaton’s film, we want to resolve the problem space because of the pleasure of watching something nearly impossible unfold before our eyes; in Fallout, we want the problem space to be resolved so we can shake off the oppressive atmosphere and partake in the mastery of a dangerous space.

As the problem space evolves, our desire for spatial mastery tugs against that for Ethan’s retaining virtue. McQuarrie compounds the problem arena by having the previously established parts of the frame fulfill an unexpected function: the deep background behind Ethan and Benji, instead of serving as the assumed spot for Luthers’ delivering the money, sprays the nuclear arms dealers with bullets. Our sense of space becomes convulsed, doubly so since we expect violence from the golden-red frame not vice-versa. We then get a new slate of spatial rules and obstacles: the walls are safe areas; don’t cross the alleyway where The Apostles are raining gun volley; somehow deliver the plutonium from one side of the alley to the other. We get an easily executable but morally dubious solution when Benji summons their car, for Ethan can stow the plutonium in the truck and speed away but in the process would leave his team in the clutches of the Apostles. A point of view shot that pans from the suitcase to the car, then to the street outside spells out how simple the space could be resolved but the final rack focus aligns us with Ethan’s desire to save his team. Virtue thus complicates the problem space in Fallout. We are made to prefer the safeguarding of moral goodness over the fantasy of spatial mastery.

This sequence demonstrates that Fallout is invested in the limits of virtue and the ways in which its powers are unable to resolve problem spaces. Unlike in the Keaton space, the unexpected solution (shooting Luther’s bullet-proof vest before the Apostles can, then firing at the legion) fails. The camerawork momentarily convinces us - by concealing the Apostles’ actual theft of the plutonium - that Ethan’s scalpel approach works and we fleetingly possess the fantasy of spatial mastery and the reassurance of moral. We want virtue to resolve the problem space but it ultimately fails without a callousness to destruction.

The final action sequence, then, becomes especially satisfying because Ethan welds his tactical scalpel approach with the more destructive hammer approach and we are able to witness the marriage of spatial mastery with the reassurance of goodness. Because the stakes (a nuclear bomb incinerating a village in Kashmir) are so monumental and because the IMF agent operates alone, Hunt’s desire to save his team conflates with that of accomplishing the broader mission of saving millions of lives. As a result, in the helicopter chase set piece, Hunt’s off-the-cuff strategy-driven style merges with a more brutal approach. Long shots of the two aircrafts flying over the mountaintops succinctly underline the problem space: once he hijacks the chopper, we intuit that he must somehow bridge the gap between his aircraft and Walker’s in order to retrieve the detonator. Two possible solutions crop up that respectively embody the scalpel and hammer approaches: the dangling payload could be dropped onto Cavill’s aircraft; the constant motion of the shot also suggests that Hunt could simply, brutally ram into Walker. Since Ethan throughout the film endeavors to out-maneuver his enemies with varying degrees of success (he escapes the cops, but is unable to catch Walker after his true identity is unveiled), it becomes satisfying to witness the IMF agent total Cavill’s aircraft through brute force. Hunt is able to finally cause large-scale destruction for virtuous reasons. The moment solidifies his arc from a scalpel to a hammer that is still able to accomplish the mission at hand with morals in tact.

The editing in this scene further reinforces our empathy for Ethan’s struggle with his environment. McQuarrie takes an approach to montage that is in some ways antithetical to the intensified continuity of Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum. In the scene where Bourne lights a trash can on fire, for instance, the mobile shaky cam cuts: from a close up of his hands unbottling the hairspray; to a close up of the hairspray going into the can; to a medium long front shot of Damon speed-walking away from the can; to a medium back of Damon still fleeing; to a medium of Damon again escaping the scene as the trash can blows up; to a profile close-up of Damon fleeing as passersby wail at the sudden explosion. Greengrass ekes visual dynamism out of rapid editing (six shots in five seconds) on different angles on the same subject. This montage style jolts the viewer and emphasizes the intensity and violence of the set piece while also blurring our awareness of space.

The editing in the helicopter scene in Fallout instead highlights Cruise’s performance and the perils of the environment. As Ethan climbs the payload after falling, McQuarrie cuts between each shot in a relatively to attune the viewer to the perilous environment. A wide shot that slowly pulls back from Ethan scaling the copter signals to us the depth of his fall if he fails again. We feel the danger of the space, which is compounded by the proceeding shot, a low angle of Walker in his copter. This doubles the sense of danger, cuing us to the fact that if Ethan does manage to hijack the chopper, he will still have to deal with his foe. We cut back to a brief extreme high angle, medium close of Ethan, which re-emphasizes the depth and danger of the space while making palpable Hunt’s desperation. McQuarrie then cuts to a single long of Hunt monkeying to the top of the rope and successfully swinging to the ledge of the copter. This sequence of four shots lasts 39 seconds -- a much more patient pace than the series of six shots in Ultimatum. Greengrass would have likely cut on several angles (from medium to close, back to front, etc.) as Ethan swings to the chopper’s railing. Rather than impute movement onto the frame through rapid editing, however, McQuarrie’s static camera emphasizes the actual actors’ movement through the frame (made all the more impressive by Cruise’s performing his own stunts). Our alignment with Ethan is fortified, and we are more astonished when he pulls off the improbable feat of scaling an airborne helicopter because we are more aware of the environment’s dangers. Our physical catharsis is made much more powerful from violating the norms of intensified continuity.

This is likely what makes Mission: Impossible - Fallout an exciting action film -- rather than give the audience a total roller-coaster ride of spatially vague kinetic energy, we get action-driven puzzles that are at turns solved by brute force and strategy that either reinforce or undermine the protagonist’s capability of virtue. The narrative takes us from these methods to their coalescing in the final act, where the satisfaction of destruction reassures us of virtue in the protagonist and in the world at large -- giving us a sublime sunset peeking through purple and white mountaintops that let us know the world is a good place.

[scotchfields]

Committing to the Bit

As viewed by the consumer, what is known as “performance art” rarely falls under what would generally be considered “digestible”, “democratized”, or more or less “easy to consume”. Although, regardless of this fact (and whether or not the true meaning of the piece is intentionally obfuscated due to some misguided attempt to appear “academic”) the great majority of performance art that I’ve either studied in a classroom setting or came across on my own time has been at the very least “fun to watch”. 

Joseph Beuys of German art world fame traveled to New York City in some spring month of 1974 to conceive his opus “I Like America and America Likes Me”. And, since then, there has been a gratuitous amount of writing on it: critique, political contextualization, analysis, etc. In honest words, Beuys shared a room with a wild coyote for three days and took a bunch of evocative images. Evocative of what? It honestly doesn’t really matter but they’re great pictures. In 1981, Andy Kaufman stopped, or appeared to stop to the audience that night, an entire skit on ABC’s Friday’s short to ostensibly protest against a joke that he himself didn’t find funny. What ended up ensuing was an onscreen fight between cast members and a furious producer screaming at the cameras to cut to commercial. Watch this clip on youtube and you’ll definitely feel as though this is evocative, or at the very least an important part of American culture. Evocative of what?

Andy Kaufman and Joseph Beuys have much in common; many academic words could be written about how contextually important these “acts” were in the history of political and comedic performance art. But to the layman, were either of these acts enjoyable to watch? The Kaufman bit was, anyone who’s seen it has the same shocked reaction. There's no video archive of the three days Beuys was trapped in a room with a Coyote but this is a high enough concept situation that I’m sure most people would be interested in seeing it. So, what we have is that the most important pieces of performance art in American history seem to more or less have some connection to what people “want to see”. And, this leads us to “The World is Mine”. 

“The World is Mine”, as directed by Israeli artist “Ann Oren”, is an extremely short “documentary” running at just a little bit over an hour. At first glance and according to any synopsis you’ll find online, this documentary is about a woman who enjoys dressing up as a specific famous character within a japanese subculture to the point where she has moved to japan to engage herself in others who share her passion. To contextualize the rest of this write-up, it’s necessary to say right now that around halfway through the documentary this entire synopsis was the thesis for Ann Oren’s performance work, a letter to the consumer about the lines drawn between reality and fantasy. The rabid fans she surrounds herself with for the purposes of this experiment have trouble dividing between what’s real and what is the character (an observation that would sound ridiculous to most, but is extremely prevalent to those who engage or study these consumerist cultures), just like how the viewer is subjugated to figure out for themselves whether Ann Oren is actually a rabid fan herself or “playing a character” to receive the reactions she hoped for. The film’s great, really ambitious, go watch it. And I can go off about how meticulously directed and shot it is, in a way that directly puts you at unease, and how it gives the viewer a chance to exist in a voyeuristic position, painting the setting being documented in a form that is "augmented”, but the piece does a great job at being didactic as well as entertaining. It’s something that someone who isn’t “academic” can enjoy as a piece. The “performance” aspect (like kaufman) is just part of the experience, and the “art” part (like Beuys) is there to give it a little bit of edge. But in terms of works that seem to be “evocative”, it’s dead on. But, evocative of what?

[scotchfields]

Class and Renoir

Renoir’s goal for The Rules of the Game was to create a satire of high French culture, attempting to illustrate how the bourgeoise acts in comparison to the proletariat (their staff and workers). The majority of the comedy and satire comes specifically from seeing the non-parallelism of the extreme wealth and status of the main characters from how they act when being shown extreme circumstances. They abandon any class that their clothing and class status would predicate and instead choose to act like children. This leads us to believe that it’s not their status or even their upbringing that would convince us that they should present themselves in a way that begs respect, and the sweeping claim that Renoir is hinting at is that not only are the upper class not as glamorous as their image has led us to believe, they’re much less capable of acting like adults than even their live-in staff. 

The plot of The Rules of the Game acts in a sort of series of complex love-triangles akin to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. People change their romantic interest on a whim and there are many misunderstandings that cause tension and even death towards the end. And with any other more contemporary comedy, the punchline of the jokes doesn’t come from the action alone, but the reaction of the other characters. They are written to react to certain aspects of the conflict in ways that seem absurd or are there to move the plot forward rather than to clear any tension. This builds up to the very end which climaxes with a also very Shakespearian way of a lover dying due to a misunderstanding. 

The question of whether Renoir accomplished this goal of satirizing high society should be met with another question of if he followed the rules of good satire. This begins with a good balance of irreverence with consideration to what makes certain aspects of what is being satirized funny. Satire with no punchline is just rude, but over-considerate satire is neither funny nor effective. In addition to this, satire should exist to be seen if one wants to see it and not seen if they do not want to recognize this. I believe that Renoir accomplishes this well, as I can divorce myself from the fact that this is clearly a movie meant to make jokes about upper class French culture and just enjoy it as a comedy movie instead. 

The use of the camera is also extremely interesting in this film as well. For the first time, more experiments are being made in the movement and use of the cameras, which causes for more interesting ways to show the story that the director wants to show. Specifically, in the scenes with the gunshots, the camera followed characters running around the set, which was much more interesting than if the shots were static, since the majority of the action was in the movements and gestures rather than the dialogue. 

There is definitely a political agenda on Renoir’s part that plays with the entirety of the satirical aspect of the film. Pinning the lower class against the upper class not only shows the huge dichotomy between the ways that each class should or ought to be acting, but also makes the viewer realize that their preconceived notions about the differences in a person that class determines are only monetary. The lower-class viewers would be realizing that not only their personal ideas about the gaudiness of the upper class are substantiated, but that they themselves have probably better ideas of what it means to be an adult when compared to someone who treats themselves and everyone around them like a child. One of the biggest scenes that highlights this point is when Octave is told that Christine cannot be with him, not because he in incapable of loving her, but because she’s monetarily high maintenance and he would not be able to support her lavish lifestyle. A majority, if not all of the conflict stems from selfishness and childish views on how the world should work. 

This story would work just as well if all of the characters were teens in a high school, which I’m sure Renoir understood as well, and he utilized that characterization for all the main leads to paint a picture of selfishness and egotism for those with wealth. 

[scotchfields]

Galbraith, Friedman, and the Televised Argument

I recently subjected myself to an entire season of the all-but-forgotten 1977 BBC documentary series The Age of Uncertainty, a drab early version of the now ubiquitous “television documentary”. Filled to the brim with stiff academic talk, thick cigarette smoke, hokey animation, and silly references to the New Wave, The Age of Uncertainty is a neat little time capsule. It was written, produced, and hosted by Canadian-American economist and sensation John Kenneth Galbraith, more than once dubbed “sexiest man alive,” and also remembered as a profoundly radical and influential public economist. Adopting a similar style to earlier television documentaries like Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man and Kenneth Clark’s Civilization, Galbraith had a big budget, plenty of important names attached, and complete creative control over the show’s content. With the BBC’s backing, and embracing a tongue-and-cheek, at times fiery style, Galbraith launched the first major attempt at a television documentary covering economics.

And in this modern viewer’s hindsight, the result was a complete and utter trainwreck. The Age of Uncertainty is not only boring as fuck – it ranks among the snooziest programs I have ever laid my eyes upon. For all of Galbraith’s sophistication, all of his finesse, the man’s slow monotone tests absolute limits of sustained attention to even the most passionate audience. Still, The Age of Uncertainty is worth talking about, even if it is probably not worth watching. In our day of Netflix, Kanopy, Hulu, HBOGo, et cetera, the television documentary has become a staple of living room background ambience. The Age of Uncertainty was at the apex of the format, brandishing some of its worst and best characteristics. The Age of Uncertainty also spurred unprecedented amounts of debate and rebuttal from public intellectuals. It proved, if anything, that television documentaries could matter in the real world.

Over the course of twelve episodes and three one-hour special interviews, The Age of Uncertainty explores the history of economic thought since the 18th century. Special attention is paid to the ways in which ideas shape institutions, and how history has been fundamentally altered by different notions about how the economy functions. In framing economic thought as profoundly institutional, Galbraith hopes to break down the barriers of academic discourse that, in his view, make economics needlessly complex to ordinary people. By the end of the final episode, Galbraith develops his thesis: markets, far from an abstract, complex concept, actually affect day-to-day material realities, and thus should be put under greater public, democratic control. Galbraith’s argument, rooted in an explicitly neo-Keynesian, left-of-center ideological background, connects form with content. He attempts to use accessible language, along with various methods of viewer-friendly visual storytelling, to reject free-market economics, and to propose an economic order more oriented around human need and participation. Galbraith’s use of animation, skit acting, expensive sets, and various other techniques are hit-or-miss, but do reveal the ideologies informing Galbraith and his opponents, and help us understand the relationship between an economist and the public.

Before exploring the content of the show, it’s important to understand Galbraith’s position within the economics discipline and his views on academia more generally. Indeed Galbraith’s lofty ambition in creating The Age of Uncertainty, and his more implicit desire for audience resonance and participation, both stemmed from his unique relationship to the academy. Galbraith was a recognized and even self-admitted heterodox economist, who tended to break from mainstream economic thinking on a number of important questions. Most notably, Galbraith tended to reject economics as reducible to a set of concrete laws. Human behavior, in Galbraith’s view, was a product of the institutions, communities, and cultures from which it developed, rather than any process reducible to mathematical models. As a result, Galbraith tended to reject many core economic precepts, such as the tendency towards perfect competition in markets. Economic historian Alexandre Chirat has written extensively about Galbraith’s relationship to the economic mainstream, explaining:

“Heterodox economists — and, more specifically, institutionalists — have always dealt with power in economics more than others. Whereas textbooks economists find this notion disappointing at best, Galbraith thinks, as Bertrand Russell,  that power is a fundamental concept in social sciences. According to him, “in eliding power — in making economics a non-political subject — neoclassical theory, by the same process, destroys its relation with the real world.” In other words, it destroys its raison d‘être… It is exactly because of the introduction of power in his analysis that Galbraith gives up on orthodox postulates, on one hand, and deals with the power of economists, on the other.” [2]

Chirat sees Galbraith’s power analysis as the core motive that undergirds his entire worldview. In particular, Chirat brings up Galbraith’s interest in three crucial power dynamics: the sovereignty of the consumer, the sovereignty of the citizen, and the maximization of profits. These three factors, which Galbraith sees as largely ignored by the economic mainstream, introduce elements of uncertainty to economic decisionmaking on a massive scale. Chirat considers Galbraith’s mutli-faceted power analysis as veering towards disciplines like political economy or even social theory, especially in its consideration of “socially-constructed” understandings. “Considering power in economics,” Chirat argues, “leads Galbraith to reflect on the role — and, therefore, the power — of economists.” For Galbraith, the very way academics think about issue areas like education, healthcare, and immigration determines real-world outcomes. Such a self-reflexive notion – breaking down the ideologies that form how decisionmakers think about the economy – leads Galbraith to a “pluralism regarding social purpose.” For Galbraith, “the economy” is not and ought not be synonymous with “public welfare.”

Galbraith’s heterodox economic views are expressed in both the content and form of The Age of Uncertainty. Firstly, with regard to content, the scope of Galbraith’s historical analysis seems to fit his ideological background. Galbraith makes clear the connection between “ideas,” or the economic orthodoxy that he so opposed, and lived, material realities. The history of modern society, in his view, was little more than the net outcome of ideas adopted and ideas rejected. One example comes with Episode 2, “The Morals and Manners of High Capitalism,” an episode almost singularly concerned with the rise of robber barons, and the ideology of “Social Darwinism” that permitted their existence. Galbraith says that “a strong and even dominant current of social thought in the last century set the rich apart and held that they were, indeed, a superior caste.” This current of social thought, Galbraith explains, “protected wealth,” as no entity “could interfere with the essential process” of wealth concentration. Social Darwinism, in Galbraith’s view, is an idea like any other, depending “a little on economics,” a little on “theology,” and mostly on a notion of “biology.” But this simple concept had immense power in the shaping of Western society in the 19th century, justifying the stratified social system under which nations existed. Galbraith goes on in the episode to discuss Thorstein Veblen, Norweigan-American economist and Galbraith’s “main influences.” Veblen’s ideas about “conspicuous consumption,” Galbraith argues, had the effect of beating back the trend of Social Darwinism, and targeting criticism towards the wealthy. Ideas, then, can work both ways.

In fact much of Galbraith’s analysis, from the early days of industrialization in England to the modern, postwar Keynesian period, is concerned with the nature of ideas about wealth, poverty, and inequality. He is especially concerned with how ideas are adopted, and how power relationships impact perception of ideas. In Episode 7, “The Mandarin Revolution,” Galbraith talks about the origin of the Keynesian idea, and the ways in which it fundamentally transformed society. “Keynes,” Galbraith says, “had a solution without a revolution… [When] Washington was cool to Keynes… he captured the United States by way of the universities.” Galbraith discusses how the older generation of economists roundly rejected Keynes’ ideas, while younger economists were quick to adopt them. Eventually, Keynesianism became ubiquitous, and as a result, human welfare improved. During his discussion of Nazi Germany’s response to the Great Depression, Galbraith is sure to invoke this skepticism of “mainstream” academic thought. “The Nazis were not given to books,” he writes. “Their reaction was to circumstance, and that served them better than the sound economists served Britain and the United States.” He discusses how the German motivation to borrow and spend money on public works like the Autobahn massively reduced unemployment. In the end it was nothing short of an economic miracle, where the Germans recovered from the Great Depression much faster than their peers.

In examining the ideological content of The Age of Uncertainty, Galbraith’s analysis should also be contextualized within the historical moment of the Cold War. In particular, Galbraith seems intent on understanding both sides of the conflict, and perhaps even arriving at some sort of a consensus between the two models. One of Galbraith’s main policy ideas, after all, he termed “new socialism,” and involved the extension of various aspects of centralized planning in the United States. While preserving a market-based framework, Galbraith’s “new socialism” adopted elements from the Soviet system regarding  medicine, public utilities, and the industrial sector. The twelfth episode of The Age of Uncertainty captures Galbraith’s attitude towards these two poles of capitalism and communism, concluding with a somber warning about the horrors of nuclear warfare and the common humanity shared by Americans and Soviets. “The Russians are no less perceptive, no less life-enhancing, no more inclined to a death wish than we are,” he explains. “That, indeed, is the highest purpose of politics in both countries, one that far transcends differences in economic of political systems.” While this quote digresses slightly from my point about Galbraith’s search for capitalist and socialist consensus, it still captures his attitude towards the Cold War quite effectively. Galbraith, in final analysis, viewed both systems as having merit. The “great uncertainty” of the show’s title, after all, refers to Galbraith’s view of the ideal economic system as basically undiscovered.

The Age of Uncertainty’s visual style compliments Galbraith’s ideological message by twisting and contorting the traditional science-documentary format. In doing so, Galbraith attempts to break down the barriers between audience and expert that he feels needlessly complicate economics for ordinary people. The ultimate goal, then, is to demystify economics, uncovering the ways in which free-market economic ideas create their own logic and embed themselves within society. For one, The Age of Uncertainty employs animation to visually articulate Galbraith’s lectures.  In the first episode, “The Prophets and Promise of Classical Capitalism,” Galbraith notes how the computer “can be made to reach back in time,” before revealing an elaborate metaphor for serfdom using an animated village. In the animation, buildings represent individual power and status, with a castle atop a hill equalling the state, a less ornate castle representing the landlords, and small houses representing agrarian villagers. The animation is arranged in the form of a pyramid, with the poor villagers at the bottom and houses slowly increasing in size as they move up the hill. The point of the animation, Galbraith explains, is to convey the strict nature of precapitalist society, wherein peasants were locked into their position at the bottom of the pyramid. The animation, however, is rather difficult to understand at first, as the various buildings don’t have obvious meanings. This invites a degree of ambiguity on behalf of the audience. If Galbraith’s goal is to connect on a human level with his audience, his visual materials should probably be more explicit.

The Age of Uncertainty also takes advantage of grand, expensive sets. In the fourth episode, “The Colonial Idea,” Galbraith tries to convey the turbulent and brutal nature of 19th century European politics with a massive, life-sized map of Europe painted on the floor. Atop each country stands a soldier, played by a real actor, dressed in a military uniform appropriate for his particular country and weilding a sword. The actors, apparently representing the military of their respective countries, take turns clashing swords with one another in an almost rhythmic, dance-like fashion. The scene is clearly meant to portray 19th century Europe as rife with aimless, nonstop bloodshed, but mostly comes across as silly and cheesy. Only several minutes later in the episode, Galbraith discusses British Empire, and in particular the 1947 partition of India. Outlining the chaos and bloodshed that occurred in the subcontinent, Galbraith uses what appears to be real archival footage of mass migration and human displacement. Spliced into the archival footage, though, are scenes of actors clashing swords. The juxtaposition of real, tragic archival footage with more obviously fake scenes filmed on set, both following the comical “map of Europe” scene, seems rather tone-deaf.

The public reception to these visual techniques, and The Age of Uncertainty at large, was mixed at best. Some critics dismissed Galbraith’s lectures as overly complex, despite his efforts to use relatively simple language. Others favored his speaking style and appreciated his command of language. The main criticism of the show, though, focused on the sets and animations. Critics tended to dismiss the visual style of the show, which rather than aiding understanding, actually “distracted” them from Galbraith’s message. The Historian Angus Burgin has written about the reception to The Age of Uncertainty on both sides of the Atlantic:

The extravagant and self-conscious visuals in The Age of Uncertainty seemed to have done little to make Galbraith’s arguments more rhetorically compelling for his audience. In America, George Stigler (1977) wrote that the documentary had fulfilled his “fears about the effective use of television” as a  medium for economics, as Galbraith “made no observable attempt to use visual methods to illuminate ideas”: in England, one observer noted that Galbraith’s visuals seemed as though they had been “mischievously” devised by a conservative think tank “to distract attention from his message.” Silent reenactments and composed dances, it seemed, were a disruptive complement to Galbraith’s narrations; in a series on the social sciences, viewers manifested a preference for visual economy rather than excess.

Criticism was also directed towards the ideological content of The Age of Uncertainty. For the most part, ideological criticisms were divided along partisan lines. Prominent figures like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, for example, dismissed The Age of Uncertainty as left-wing propaganda. Notably, the American economist Milton Friedman released a ten part series entitled Free to Choose: A Personal Statement as a direct response to Galbraith’s program. Released in 1980, Free to Choose features a loosely similar style to The Age of Uncertainty, with Friedman narrating a variety of historical case studies of economic thought and policy. The main difference is Friedman’s focus on an explicitly political agenda. In contrast to Galbraith’s chronological, step-by-step history, Friedman organizes his program based on specific, hot-button policy topics. Episode titles range from “What's Wrong with Our Schools?,” to “Who Protects the Worker?,” to “How to Cure Inflation.” Where Galbraith maintains a pretense of objectivity, Friedman openly confesses his biases, and essentially outlines how the free market is the solution to the problem of each episode. At the end of each episode, Friedman engages in a debate with a prominent expert on the opposing side of the issue. Friedman’s debating style and overall charisma were praised.

Burgin has written about the relative success of Free to Choose compared to The Age of Uncertainty. Overall, he attributes Galbraith’s failure to a few main elements: Galbraith’s “stiffness,” the “cheesy” production techniques, and perhaps most importantly, the lack of a strong “unifying” theme to encapsulate Galbraith’s ideas. On the latter, Burgin sees Friedman’s message as concise enough to resonate with audiences in a single sentence: the free market works. He explains how Friedman’s charm was based around this simplicity:

“At the center of his appeal, however, lay the force of the market metaphor. While Friedman’s rhetoric aligned well with the requirements of late twentieth century modes of transmission, Galbraith never found a way to distill his views in such simple and broadly applicable terms. As one journalist wrote before the release of either documentary, to be an “economic superstar” it was necessary to arrive at a ‘fixed view of the world, learn to state it forcefully and cast unremitting scorn on those who disagree.’”

Burgin expands:

“Galbraith, as one might expect, was horrified by Friedman’s means of  persuasion. He found the arguments Friedman adopted “simplistic” and perhaps even “purely rhetorical,” relying “almost wholly on passionate assertion and emotional response” (Galbraith 1981b). He marveled at the “radicalism” of economic ideas in the early 1980s, labeling himself a dispositional “conservative” by comparison.”

Burgin’s analysis of the problems that plagued The Age of Uncertainty helps to explain much of why the show failed to gain traction. In addition, his comparison with Free to Choose, a more critically and commercially popular program, helps to underscore the public’s lack of interest in Galbraith’s lecturing style. However, Burgin’s analysis is incomplete insofar as it fails to consider what the proper role of an economist should actually be. Perhaps Friedman is better at concisely communicating his ideas to the public, but is this necessarily better for the public? What is the proper relationship between an expert economist and their audience?

These questions have been debated constantly by economists for decades. It might be useful to view the debate in the context of television history. Galbraith, as evidenced by his show, clearly favored some role for economists in connecting with audiences and ensuring that their ideas received a wide public hearing. However, his “horrified” response to Friedman’s rhetorical style also suggests that he opposed any oversimplification of complex ideas. The scholar George Stigler, cited by Angus Burgin, agrees with Galbraith. Like Galbraith, he sees the economist as needing to straddle a line between maintaining authority and fulfilling a social need. In turn, he sees economists as inherently in conflict with vested interests – be it corporations, or labor unions – who seek to manipulate the public agenda through more sly, unscrupulous tactics. For Stigler, though, the economist ought never sacrifice personal integrity, as academic truth will win out in the end.

One contrasting view on the role of economists, particularly relevant to The Age of Uncertainty, comes from economist Samuel Bowles in his essay “Economists as Servants of Power.” Like Galbraith, Bowles sees economics as inherently political from the outset. In particular, both are interested in how “social constructions” of power shape material realities. However, Bowles takes the discussion further by exploring how the state apparatus, monied interests, and professional economists feed off of one another, and in turn develop ideas symbiotically. Bowles argues that experts, in their close proximity to power, either “figure out ways to ameliorate social conditions which run the risk of being politically explosive,” or outright “obfuscate the roots of inequality and hierarchy,” which in turn “constricts the range of policy alternatives.” As a result, Bowles argues that economists should drop all pretenses of being apolitical, and should assume more activist roles in pursuit of egalitarianism. In short, Bowles not only believes that economists should consider both how power shapes the world, but also that economists’ priorities are shaped by power. The conclusions are significant. While Free to Choose connected Friedman with the public on the surface level of his rhetoric, deeper down, his methodologies were still informed by his close relationships with institutions of power like the Republican Party, the US Treasury Department, think tanks like the Hoover Institution. Thus, in reality, Friedman’s conclusions were actually developed at a distance from the public.

Over the course of twelve episodes and three one-hour special interviews, The Age of Uncertainty explores the history of economic thought since the 18th century. Galbriath’s ultimate objective, which forms the entire trajectory of the show, is perhaps best conveyed in the opening chapter of The Age of Uncertainty’s accompanying book. “What people believe about the workings of markets and their relationships to the state,” Galbraith argues, “shapes history through the laws that are enacted or discarded.” In framing economic thought this way, Galbraith hopes to demonstrate the close proximity of “economics,” broadly understood, to real peoples’ lives. In turn, he hopes to make the economics discipline more participatory and open.

Galbraith’s argument, rooted in an explicitly neo-Keynesian, left-of-center ideological background, rejects mainstream economic thought, viewing power, institutions, and outright “social constructions” by academics and policymakers as crucial in human decisionmaking. A variety of techniques, including animation, skit acting, are used to make this case. These techniques had a mixed reception among critics and audiences, mostly coming off as stiff and tone-deaf. Especially compared to the more charismatic, plainly rhetorical style of Milton Friedman, Galbraith largely failed to fully involve the public the way he wanted, and to connect economic ideas with lived realities. However, the notion of involvement with the public is complex. As scholars like Samuel Bowles have argued, there are different ways in which an economist can be “close” to the public. More important than an easily-accessible communication style is a research methodology that invites participation from various stakeholders from throughout society. In this sense, Galbraith’s desire for a more participatory economics discipline, and one that connects ideas with the material world, might be the more authentically “public” style after all.

Theodore Molina

1 Angus Burgin, Age of Certainty: Galbraith, Friedman, and the Public Life of Economic Ideas

2 Chirat, Alexandre. “When Galbraith Frightened Conservatives: Power in Economics, Economists' Power, and Scientificity.” Journal of Economic Issues 52, no. 1 (2018): 32

3 Chirat, 33

4 Chirat, 35

5 Galbraith, 45

6 Galbraith, 213

7 Galbraith, 342

8 Chirat, 31

9 Burgin, Angus. Age of Certainty: Galbraith, Friedman, and the Public Life of Economic Ideas. In: Tiago Mata/Steven G. Medema (eds.), The Economist as Public Intellectual (= History of Political Economy, annual supplement), Durham 2013. 51

10 Burgin, 50

11 Burgin, 30

12 Bowles, Samuel. "Economists as Servants of Power." The American Economic Review 64, no. 2 (1974): 129-32.

[scotchfields]

Finality and The 400 Blows

The ocean is not just a space for Doinel. Outside of fleeting, passing mentions of how much he longs to see it, it’s never set up in any regard to be the apotheosis of The 400 Blows. Doinel instead has a certain regard for the feeling of freedom. Much of the film is shown in relation to his point of view as a character, allowing the viewer to see not only emotionally the perspective of the main character, but spatially as well. When the audience is forced to empathize in a sort of physical, material way, we’re more likely to contextualize with the faults and sympathize with the motivations of the protagonist’s characterization. With respect to the leitmotif of closed and open spaces, Truffaut manages to make the trapped sets feel claustrophobic even without sacrificing the cinema-scopic wide viewing angles. This method of filming was crucial to the theme of the movie. Seeing the world in a wide, bright eyed fashion through the trappings of what is adult-like to a child gives better insight into our protagonists actions without the use of dialogue. That isn’t to say that the movie presents them in a mature, adult like way, however. Every action that drives Doinel further into delinquency is presented with extremely clear whimsicality, preventing the spirit of youth from leaving the film. Even while Doinel is drinking, smoking, stealing, or discussing sex, his childishness never leaves him, which was a clear point of Truffaut’s vision for this film. Although the world may be seeming increasingly more adult, every character has what seems to be more childishness in them than the main child in the film. It’s hard to, as a child, look up at the mistakes of those who are older and more experienced than you, and expect to be pushed in the right direction when accepting discipline. Doinel spends a good majority of the film trying to escape the spaces that close in on him. It’s no coincidence that his family’s apartment is extremely reminiscent of the jail cells he later spends time in. The biggest theme concerning spaces that spans the entirety of the film is that Doinel doesn’t seem to ever have a space of his own, even though he occupies so many new and unfamiliar spaces. Doinel’s emotions become the plot driver, whether or not he is going to fight for his freedom through to face another consequence is always the question, and although we know the eventual slap or chewing-out will happen, we secretly root for his struggle through to the end. Doinel is the perfect symbol for youth, managing to show us parts of ourselves that we wouldn’t have the guts to show. Secretly we all crave for his lust for freedom and individuality but we are also not willing to make the same sacrifices that he did. Although, in his case, the act of being caught meant that he would always be put into the same closed-off and impersonal situation. The stakes were lower for him, leading him to aim higher for the satisfaction of achieving what he really wants. Doinel is even reprimanded when he plays by the rules, being accused of plagiary, although it was clear he just had a love for Balzac’s writing. At every path for him he sees the same ending, so the consequences for taking bigger risks is moot. It’s almost as though Truffaut managed to figure out how to film a scene with the direct intention of showing not only the struggles of a child through adolescence, but also what it means to truly grow up. Doinel doesn’t have to sacrifice his freedom to appear even more mature than the adults around him, and the mistakes he makes are ones that he makes on his way to achieving his final goal. Speaking generally, the ending we got was the best that Doinel could manage for himself. At his most trapped moment, entirely alone locked away at a detention center, he seizes his moment for freedom and takes it all the way to achieve his final goal. The ocean represents freedom, it represents childhood, and it represents the finality in coming of age.