UCA Collective Writing project

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Alphabet for the Pandemic (1/2)

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A collective writing project with UCA students

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A collective project with UCA students

To wear or not to wear (a mask)

A series of Shakespearean questions:
To be aware that the virus is not gone or not
To accept the scientific evidence or not
To continue to pay tribute to the effort of health care staff or not
To help limit the spread of the virus or not
To be careful or not
To acknowledge the presence of others or not
To be mindful of a shared space or not
To accept the momentary discomfort or not
To surrender short term freedom or not

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BALANCING INNER AND OUTER FICTION

Inner fiction (the means): the details: what are they? What do they do? When and where?

Outer fiction (the end): why are the details there? What do they mean? What is their purpose?

To show and/or tell

To revisit assumptions and quick interpretations

An image can lead from one to the other

I will use this dynamic as a lens to read two elements of our post lockdown-ongoing pandemic life starting with two images:

A monkey climbing up a dead tree/A mask

1- PLANET OF THE HUMANS: the short range/long range

The title is programmatic, and clarified throughout the documentary. The critical review of renewable energies is the means to a larger end indicated in the title: we continue to behave as if the planet has unlimited resources, and current alternative solutions have removed the guilt. They do not really question the status quo—not only in terms of our ways of life but also in terms of the logic of our economy still heavily reliant on fossil fuels. The goal of the documentary is not to scapegoat or target one group or another for the sake of doing so, its point is to reveal that “you cannot rebuild the house with the master’s tools” in poet Audre Lorde’s words.  The question raised early on—“can machines produced by an industrialized culture take us beyond that culture?”—launches a very systematic and well-documented critique. Capitalism has hijacked the original vision and resources. It is urgent to come up with new bold ideas. With renewable energies, humans have already shown that they can tap into other parts of their creative powers. As these solutions are not perfect in terms of the impact on the planet, it is urgent to rise to the occasion again.

Beyond the wink to “Planet of the Apes, the final image represents a possible state for our humanity on the planet if we keep on denying the crisis. We will be climbing up that last tree, noticing that there are no leaves and that the landscape below is totally barren, but hoping we can escape to the end of the tree, expecting something better up there for us.

The monkey is about to die under the scorching sun. Until it is rescued, and saved.

Who will rescue us?

The question is for us to consider. Today. When the land is not barren, when trees still have leaves, when we can still live in their pleasant shade.

If we miss the deep underlying question raised in the documentary, we will miss the call to act. Collectively.

There is time still to attend to that tree and to the ground below. Before we are forced to climb up to nothingness.

2-THE AFTERMATH OF THE LOCKDOWN (the short-term/the long-term)

To wear a mask in the open air might appear useless.

But such an analysis confines (no pun intended) the mask to the inner fiction ring.

In the outer fiction dimension, to wear a mask reveals its pedagogic function: with a mask on, we are reminded of the ongoing extraordinary context.

Awareness of the virus must have an impact of on our ways of interacting and socializing. This simple but essential tool facilitates overall social distancing rules in a world that looks the same but is still being shaped by a virus that is anything but gone.

When wearing a mask, we are protecting others. We take care of each other. The mask is only fully operative if reciproquated and framed within the protocol of all the other sanitary measures (hand washing and physical distancing in particular).

A short-term surrender of our immediate and individual comfort.

A long-term collective benefit if we contain the spread of the virus.

What model will prevail on the planet? The mask-off or the mask-on model?

MARIE LIENARD-YETERIAN

It is an extra-ordinary anniversary in so many ways.
Perhaps not the way Earth would have wanted it…
And certainly not the way we, humans, would have imagined it a year ago.

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SCRIPTS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY:  1917, A HIDDEN LIFE AND JOJO RABBIT

Allegedly dealing with wars and conflicts of the previous century…

1917

An opening shot: two men talking, by a tree.

And the final shot: Schofield alone, by another tree.

The gap opened by loss and death

Beyond the bridge created by a promise made and kept.

The family photograph: a welcome artifact that bespeaks other layers of life.

Other times, other places.

A narrative and visual technique that forces the “groaning ground” (to use the word of the script) on us. Its weight and unfriendly texture, its traps and deceptive shapes.

The elements take center stage, and reclaim the ground left by humans.

The overall destruction of the land and the lunar landscape betray what humanity is doing to itself.

Green pastures suddenly appear on screen and take on an unreal dimension: are they the gentle meadows of our dreams and aspirations?

Can the cherry trees of the orchard cut to the ground grow again? What is the collateral damage inflicted by war to the soul and its blossoms?

The earth is littered with human limbs and covered with severed hopes. Life surrenders to death.

The collective madness and the individual choices still at hand.

The lack of leadership: some want the fight anyway,

Other try to rescue dignity and honesty from the clutch of human blindness or arrogance or despair.

The toll enacted on the body and the soul runs a deadly tab.

The individual’s reluctance to kill runs counter to the diktats of war,

And devises strategies of retreat put to the test when the enemy is encountered, and retaliates mercilessly.  

Yet the family picture on the bunk bed is what is left of the enemy’s presence, like some afterthought of love.

The supernatural scenes in the ruins: the theatre of war, its madness rendered through the light bleeding through a cacophony of sounds.

The chase takes on allegorical dimensions: a landscape of the mind, with the intrusion of fear and anger, of pain and trauma?

The encounter with the woman and the little girl: real, or fantasized?

The singing line provides a welcome interlude in the pervasive commotion and auditory hysteria.

The military beyond the ideological machine: individual stories and comradeship before fear and weariness return.

Pawns on the big chessboard of power trying to play their own move, and survive?

History will tell.

The jump in the water: a reminder of Skyfall,

The river scene: full immersion and rebirth, a pagan baptism,

And a mission accomplished indeed.

Schofield alias WW1 James Bond

A moment of relief.

The movie combines many codes and genres (the thriller, the buddy movie, the war movie) to orchestrate a powerful plea against war

And pay tribute to humanity as it survives through acts of Love.

A HIDDEN LIFE

The camera work, the soundtrack, the ability of cinema to conjure up visually powerful scenes.

The parallel editing, an occasional dream-like quality and mood.

The appeal to the senses

The magic of moving images on screen.

The increasing darkness, the gathering clouds.

The mountains and the farm scenes

The jail scenes and the trial scenes

The newsreel scenes.

Shouting, heard or just mimicked; angry faces,

Torture and intimidation.

The judge and Franz: “do you judge me?”

The unflinching decision, the iron will.

The well running dry back home.

People’s meanness, and retaliation.

Scapegoating.

Former friends turn against you

While others show mercy.

Acts of gratuitous love: giving food away even when you are starving.

Voices trying to use all arguments to make you surrender.

 “I feel I cannot do what I feel is wrong”

Declaring a separate truth from hatred.

Love redeemed. Redemptive love.

Those who have eyes, may they see.

Those who have ears, may they hear.

JOJO RABBIT

The subtitle on the script provides a guiding hand through the bold scenes : an anti-hatred satire.

The youth camp.

Forms of bullying and hazing

Peer pressure.

The inoculation of hatred.

The caricatures, and the reality.

Ideas are formed and upheld,

Prejudices generate caricatures, and more.

As Elsa tells Jojo: “you just want to belong to a club”.

Yet Jojo takes a chance on other being another human being.

Befriends the avowed enemy.

Questions arise, and can no longer be silenced.

Individual resistance:

“what did they do?””They did what they could”.

The mother keeps her secret, the son begins to wonder and think.

Elsa and the mother, in the shadow of the lost sister Inge.

The single loyal friend, the buddy, confider and supporter.

Captain K: how to make do with evil when you still have goodness in you.

A mother’s love despite it all.

A dance, a bike ride, and then a hanging.

A brutal epiphany in its wake.

The allegorical scene of destruction ushers us into another register.

The tonal shift signals a different agenda

The landscapes of our nightmares and the daily images of warfare on the Internet overlap with the fiction of the movie.

Questions arise for us too.

What can we do to avert the destruction engineered by our contemporary hatreds? And protect the Jojos and Elsas of our times,

Jojo’s final kick to the imaginary friend turned bully: a deliverance.

Love of the other prevails over a desire to possess and control.

The legacy of his mother’s altruism lives on in Jojo’s own act of compassion.

It is up to him to free the caged rabbit. And he will.

The movie is likely to end on a dance, off stage, after the credits. Elsa’s desire was to dance to celebrate her recovered freedom and life.

Satire and beyond, the film has risked bold and original steps to perform for us an unusual dance. Let’s imagine music to it. And leap on.

Marie Lienard-Yeterian

OF DREAMS AND MORE: PROXIMA AND LITTLE WOMEN

PROXIMA

An exercise in distance and proximity.

Being close, or far.

People in orbit, planets to be discovered

In the infinity of space, in the infinity of the human heart.

Training in spite of different forms of inevitable and unrelentless obstacles.

Taming fear, and guilt. 

A sense of discipline and purpose.

Tapping against glass ceilings, expected and unexpected.

A fine balance, losing your gravity when unmoored from your usual habitat.

What is the nature of our attachments? What happens when they get in the way?

Loyalty to others, and to oneself: defying gravity.

A mother and a daughter,

A daughter and a father. 

A family, and what makes it comes together, and mean something.

A dream deferred, and retrieved.

Other dreams in its wake, articulated, acknowledge and acted upon.

A promise made and kept.

The movie provides a reservoir of images and metaphors to address the theme of motherhood—biological and other.

The mystery of delivery, the wonder of birth (s)

Beyond what the body can imagine for the light years of our inventive distances.

LITTLE WOMEN

The discussion and conversation on and around writing

And finding a voice.

To be empowered by a passion of your own making.

Question of authorship and identity.

Family and belonging:

Women’s agency or lack thereof outside marriage,

Romantic love and its ideal(s), or illusion(s).

To be in enamored with some idea of the beloved at hand, rather than his/her actual reality.

Blindness and sefl-delusion.

But awareness eventually wins the day.

The discussion(s) with the publisher: closing the loop, perhaps bringing some closure to the writer’s journey. Her growth and transformation. A trial of self-assertion and honesty.

Sisterhood as a lifelong commitment and achievement.

The dreams entailed in our family attachments.

The role models we find, and those we become.

The figure of the aunt: indomitable and unforgiving.

A form of resilience, or a calling?

Laurie’s grandfather and his own loss:

The emotional intimacy of the piano sequence when Meg’s music conjures up his beloved daughter.

The fine texture of our emotional lives, the occasional rupture which has to be mended with care and patience.

The Civil War and its theatre of destruction and horror. is evoked indirectly.

No actual battle scenes,

Yet there are allusions to the forms of terror generated by the antebellum South, in particular the horror of slavery.

The aesthetic and visual power of the movie.

The artistic design created by the bold narrative technique.

The flashbacks/use of fiction in fiction, like a mise en abyme: some scenes appear unreal, and turn the script into a self-reflective process.

Some scenes (such as the school with the pupils) are poised between fiction and reality, providing a welcome and nurturing space for the viewer to take his/her own stand as to what is imagined or real, possible and achievable. On screen and in life.

OTHER CONTEXTS, OTHER DREAMS

FRANKIE

The theatricality of the actress’s gestures

The setting like a stage

Individual portraits

The landscape and its metaphoric undertones

The folklore and the legend, the fountain and the miraculous waters.

A young girl initiated into the fragility of life and the transiency of things.

The vulnerability of the body, and the unquenchable thirst of the soul.

A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK

A series of theatrical scenes: the reference to Shakespeare (very much like the reference to T. Williams in Jasmine Perfume)

And New York as a wonderful protagonist, or witness!

The landscape of the mind: rain and sadness.

Mini dramas

Witty dialogues, good and bold lines.

Ambition and jealousy,

The fragility of some loyalties.

The naïveté, yet the desire to explore an unexpected opportunity.

Cheating and honesty.

Our flaws and our redemptive dimensions.

In Arthur Miller’s image, our fragile galaxies of endless possibility.

Marie Lienard-Yeterian

SHOW AND TELL: BOMBSHELL AND GARABANDAL

Recent releases have given us much food for thought in terms of revisiting human agency.

Little Women and Bombshell might first come to mind as these two films constitute powerful tributes to women’s empowerment and resilience.

Another pairing opens other lines of inquiry to consider how committed cinema can be rebranded as a form of moral ecology that questions regimes of abusive power.

In Bombshell and Garabandal, the viewer discovers women who struggle with powerful institutions that hijack truth and reality. Mechanisms of coercing and silencing work to undermine the action of individuals who strive to balance loyalty, accountability and responsibility. Whether they cover the news or testify to a religious experience, these women bear witness to a version of reality that challenges and disturbs established forms of authority. Their individual mission collides with the collective agenda, and pries open ruling ideologies. Yet, their words are distorted and weakened; their influence is undermined, their testimonies are dismissed. People around them lack of courage to stand with them even as they see and know that they are right. A few engage in blatant lies to invalidate their work, more turn a blind eye.

Some victory comes at a cost, but the complete happy ending is deferred.

It will be up to the viewer to find some closure, and peace.

These films celebrate individual courage and boldness. They invite the viewer to consider the power of cinema as a tool to investigate the challenges of present by revisiting past events, and consider the tragic legacy of intimidation and fear, silence and hypocrisy, complacency and ignorance.  

Perhaps they function as truth-telling mechanisms when news has become fake, and fiction no longer is where you expect it to be.

AN UNLIKELY ADDITION: KNIVES OUT

A gothic house and its gallery of grotesque characters

Suspense and reversals. Creaky steps and a dark park. Terror with the spice of humor, horror with the buffer of wit.

Daniel Craig, alias James Bond, presides over a script which stages moral conflicts where good prevails without compromising itself.

And where enjoying a cup of coffee with the right mug in the right hand on the right balcony provides happy vantage point and felicitous denouement.