lwe3207@acf4.UUCP (Lars Warren Ericson) (04/19/85)
[] Here is another response, mailed to me and not posted. Since our "mail" is not smart enough to compute workable return paths (neither am I), but our "notes" does know its stuff, I will reply via post. Hence, i.e., there you have it, and here it is: . From: harvard!panda!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!csl!munro . (Paul Munro -- UCSD Inst. for Cogn. Sci.) . To: sdcsvax!dcdwest!ittvax!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo! . cmcl2!acf4!lwe3207 (Me) . Subject: Re: Purple Rose of Cairo . . I think you are being unfair in your assessment of PROC. Wife beating is . a fact of life that WA uses to impress upon us the misery of Mia Farrow's . character's existence. He does not make light of it at all. Your problem, . I think, is that you want to categorize the film as light entertainment . and therefore subject to certain arbitrary restrictions regarding . issues that are politically or emotionally volatile. I must disagree . with your criticism on two counts: (1) The film is not a comedy in the . sense of the Three Stooges and (2) It is valid to make use of a tragic . set of circumstances in fiction provided that the situation is handled . sensitively. Are you happier seeing a filmmaker use a banana peel to get . the audience to laugh at someone's pain and humiliation than seeing one . use wife-beating to provoke sympathy? Would you object to the same sort . of treatment in literature? My response: Woody Allen's best movie was Sleeper. Truly good. I even named a cat after this movie. It was inventive, funny, visually interesting, and prior to the refining-out of all other creative details beyond the shtick. This creative history is identical to that of Kurt Vonnegut. Some pretty good stuff, kind of fun, original in its time, which was then refined and refined until you could see that all Kurt Vonnegut would really have to say after a certain point could be summed up in the following sentence (paraphrased from Breakfast of Champions): "See this:" * "This is my picture of an asshole." I don't really care if he is on or off of his shtick. But it distresses me to see people going on about the subtle sensitive ironies of the auteur at his finest moment when really all he is doing is plodding along the same dull track, with a few plot devices to distract people from the repetitiveness of the message. The essence of my apparently Politburo-like prior messages was to attempt to express some of what might be missing in Woody Allen's picture of reality, and to say why it is interesting and important to be able to notice that he is going around in circles.
tracy@hcradm.UUCP (Tracy Tims) (04/23/85)
It's really interesting that Lars Ericson's method of debating some comments about one movie (The Purple Rose of Cairo) is to talk about other Woody Allen movies, without coming back to TPROC. What, he expects us to forget the original issue? > The essence of my apparently Politburo-like > prior messages was to attempt to express some of what might be missing in > Woody Allen's picture of reality, and to say why it is interesting and > important to be able to notice that he is going around in circles. OK, now we have the abstract of your article, where is the evidence? You *don't ever say* just how he is going around in circles. You haven't yet said anything that was interesting or important. Politburo "claims" are boring. Proof by legerdemain. Unfortunately, I can see the hand. Tracy Tims ihnp4!utzoo!hcr!hcradm!tracy Human Computing Resources Corporation utcsri!hcr!hcradm!tracy Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 416 922-1937 dciem!hcr!hcradm!tracy
lwe3207@acf4.UUCP (Lars Warren Ericson) (04/25/85)
[]
It is uninformative to look at a single piece of work by an artist in
isolation. If PROC was Woody Allen's first movie ever, it would be a
distinguished effort.
To talk about it in isolation. I think what I object to is the following view:
1. This movie is about fantasy vs. reality.
2. It would be nice to escape into fantasy.
3. But gee, you really can't, you always have to go back to reality.
The source of the humor, in this view, comes in empathizing with the need for
an escape and with the joys of what an escape might be like, and also in
realizing "Gee, yeah, nobody's perfect, I guess I will have to go back to
dropping mashed potatoes and getting my face pushed in."
My problem with all this is simply that it is totally confused, because the
"reality" is not realistic, and the "fantasy" is not entirely fantastic.
It is possible to find everyday people who are more "good" than the hero.
It is probably not possible to find wife-beaters who never leave bruises.
It is also possible to deal with family violence without simply repeating
a cycle. PROC, to the un-hyper-educated individual, will leave the
impression that family violence is not a serious problem -- and also that
it has no solution.
Face it. For a non made-for-TV or made-to-hit-HBO-in-5-days film (at least,
I don't think Woody Allen would want to see it put in that category),
this film is total lumpy oatmeal.
Lars Ericson
Arpa: ericson@nyu
Usenet: {floyd,ihnp4}!cmcl2!csd1!ericson