Soap Men?

Love it. I truly do. I get home on Sunday evenings and try to make sure that I catch the rerun of Mad Men at 1am, like clockwork. Characters are dynamic as is the growing plotline. And this season finale: pretty heavy stuff indeed.

But all the same, I'm scratching my head.

The drama, the infidelities, the heated office politics, and all those gorgeous people -- despite the extremely clever writing -- leaves me to question just exactly how Mad Men is not much more than a primetime soap opera.

Let's be honest: the storyline is right out of a mid-afternoon soap. But is it the writing alone that "elevates" it from the dregs of soap-hood? Perhaps so. Maybe it is just the writing of the program, how the plot twists and turns, compelling its audience to experience slight twinges of discomfort just when we thought we "liked" the characters.

In short, I guess it comes down to the exact way in which Mad Men is promoted on its network, AMC. All I can say for the prospects of the new season is that I hope they get dark; I mean, really dark.

Child Super Heroes

In the past week I watched both Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Kick Ass. Now, I regard both of these films as very fine, most welcome, reductionist installments to the genre of SuperHero motion pictures. But, I'm troubled.

Yes, both films -- in a similar vain as Watchmen -- problematize the whole notion of mere mortals prancing around trying to rub-out bad guys. These two films were very fun to watch, and both featured really great music and action sequences, as well as taking the time to delve into the array of emotional and physical dilemmas that might face such unwitting social justice gladiators.

Scott Pilgrim, in a dramatic sense, allows the hero (Scott P.) to learn that his past injustices are not that dissimilar to those of his object of desire: that is, all the pissed-off Exes that he must fight are harboring issues that are not so foreign or distant than the sentiments possessed by his very own list of ex-girlfriends. In all, it's a sweet, intelligent, and vibrant little film. But his emotional education comes too late in the film; his self-realization about his past seems tacked on.

But with Kick Ass we have some serious emotional and parental issues that deserve sincere treatment but then just get dropped. I'm no prude, but having a pre-teen girl curse like a sailor and engage in some ultra-violence "in the name of the father with a vendetta" raises some concerns; not just regarding how the young female is being raised, but also for how the wee actress convincingly (to her credit) played this role.

In all, I think that both films are fun to watch and do provide a refreshing "take" on the superhero genre. My concern rests in how Hollywood both represents and constructs such films that deal with the purgatory of adolescence in a manner that "adulticizes" young people who just aren't ready to be grownups. The catapult to maturity is treated too flippantly for my taste.

CineMenu at The Dirty Truth

As a means of marking the anniversary of the CineMenu at The Dirty Truth, I'm providing a listing of the weekly themes, films, and descriptions for what has been showcased on Sunday evenings at the fabulous pub-restaurant, The Dirty Truth, in Northampton, Mass.

Here's the gig: Basically, four to five films are projected on Sunday evenings at this venue. The films are shown without sound (MOS, for those in the know) but the visuals are coordinated with Shane (or one of the other key staff members at TDT) so that the music played on the sound system complements the films.

Come on by on Sundays for a viewing of some rather obscure, or uniquely visual, motion pictures -- and a pint, of course.

About Cinesthetic Memory

Cinesthetic Memory – presents news on my film/media work, publications on film, and blog posts/reviews on film and culture.

Cinesthetic Memory, as a concept, borrows from both physiology and film studies. The site has a similar synthesis due to my background in anthropology and cinema studies and the posts often blend these two perspectives on media and culture, with a particular interest in representations of the body.

The working definition that I've arrived at for Cinesthetic Memory follows:

Cinesthetic Memory can be defined as follows: corporeal and cognitive resonance existing during and retained after the film viewing process. This concept draws, theoretically and linguistically, on two other terms: kinesthetic memory and synaesthesia. Kinesthetic memory refers to bodily knowledge of how to do something, derived, in part, from memory retained in the body due to the repetition of motions, such as those learned in dance, playing a musical instrument, or craftwork (Seitz 1989); or bodily memory (ghost memory) sustained through a traumatic injury, such as the sudden, unprovoked feeling of localized pain long after an injury has healed. In essence, kinesthetic memory is the way in which the body “remembers” and “memorizes” a particular somatic experience.

The second foundational term is both phonetically and conceptually linked to the cinesthetic. The phenomenon of synaesthesia, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), is defined as a “sensation in one part of the body produced by a stimulus applied to another part.” For example, synaesthesia exists as the cross- and inter-stimuli process where by glancing at a photograph of dew saturated pine needles can arouse in the viewer the undeniable scent of pine, or when a particular sound or musical pitch causes us to “see” a distinct color in our mind’s eye.

Conceptually, cinesthetic memory is akin to Laura Marks’ (1999) notion of “haptic visuality” and Vivian Sobchack’s work on the phenomenology of film viewing, and particularlProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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her notion of the “cinesthetic subject” (1992). Crossbreeding the synaesthetic with the kinesthetic, by fusing the etymology and the phonetics of “cinema”, makes the necessary heuristic link between movement and sense in order to discuss the inter-stimuli process of film viewing.

The etymological roots to the word cinematographe, the name the Lumiere brothers assigned to their late-nineteenth-century motion picture camera-projector, derives from the Greek kinema: meaning motion. The Greek term kinetikos (of or resulting from motion) is the etymological root to the term kinesthetic, i.e. “The sense of muscular effort that accompanies a voluntary motion of the body” (OED 1989). The cinesthetic, therefore, refigures the relationship between motion and cinema; originally pertaining to the perceived movement of photographic images on the screen, cinesthetic memory is concerned with the phenomenon of the affectivity associated with film viewing: the movement of the audience.

If the process/experience of viewing motion pictures has lasting effects on an individual that are later acted upon in private and social settings, it requires us to examine the preconscious domains of body and mind initially affected by this experience in order to better understand the outward, enacted and consciously demonstrated acts (in thoughts, conversation, mimicking, etc.) that occur in various environments, thus creating affectivity and, in part, shaping our understandings of cultural phenomena.

Film Autopsy

Now you can listen to MP4 movie reviews by my colleague, Salman Hameed, and myself by following the link below:

http://filmautopsy.blogspot.com/

We go to the theatre about 3 times a week and then sit down at a cafe and conduct an autopsy of the film we've seen.

The procedure is often quite funny and insightful, other times it gets a bit messy and there's movie blood and guts everywhere. But we always strive to be irreverently relevant.

We welcome your feedback on our reviews -- good, bad, or ugly.

--Kevin Taylor Anderson

Film Review Podcasts -- NEW

A good friend and colleague of mine and I have been reviewing films and are in the process of creating a new blog that features links to our cine-conversations. These are unrehearsed and off-the-cuff, but still insightful. We don't discriminate: the range of films we review go from art-house docs and foreign films to mainstream blockbusters.

Once the site is up and running I'll post the link to this blog.

Keep an eye out...

Kevin

Update

There's been a little bit of a gap in the entries for the Cinesthetic Memory Blog.

A lot has happened in the past few months, so here's an Update:


Currently shooting a documentary in Nigeria, Tokunbo.
The film explores entrepreneurship and the senses in the Lagos used care industry.

Why is this of interest?

-- Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities on the planet and within the next ten years could have a population of 20million -- and everyone wants a car.

-- To describe traffic in Lagos as chaotic gives chaos a bad name. I'm not being squeamish about driving styles here only, but vehicle emissions, lack of road maintenance, lack of electric lights and road signage all make traveling by car in Lagos to be dangerous, stifling, and confusing.

Yet, the rate at which people are buying and registering cars in Lagos is overwhelming.

-- The importation of Tokunbo (or, "fairly used" cars) makes up for 80% of the cars on the road in Lagos.

-- This entrepreneurial industry is a vibrant local economy: from auction houses in New Jersey and New York, to shipping companies, to the mechanics who modify, touch up, or even rebuild these cars, to the dealers and buyers. There are peripheral actors as well. The Tokunbo sites are filled with hustlers (sub-dealers), vendors, hawkers, and even medicine men.

In short, Tokunbo embody elements of Nigerian diasporic transnationalism, highly innovative forms of local entrepreneurship, and a vibrant micro-economy. Therefore, each Tokunbo car reflects a social and visual aesthetic that connects multiple cultural aspects.


Coming Soon
When I return to the States I'll get some film reviews posted along with some PodCast film reviews I've been doing with a friend and colleague.