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SubText 2 comments

September, 1982. I was 18, about to turn 19 in moments. A kid off the farm, starting undergrad in a decidedly urban discipline (theatre) and being completely and utterly naive about everything, including myself.

I attended one of those small Ontario universities that sprang up in the 60’s as an almost counter-culture response to the staid, traditional schools like U of T, Western or Queen’s. Permanent buildings were not funded until the mid-70’s and, as such, had that horrid 70’s concrete slab look to them. Garbage receptacles were concrete. Even the “furniture” in the halls were concrete – I kid you not. Between classes, students lounged about on concrete slabs covered with naugahyde cushions in varying shades of purple, orange, and amber. The lecture halls themselves were decked out in orange and amber plastic “chairs” and were steeply raked, so that the instructor stared up at what appeared to be a near-vertical wall of students. There was even a slightly theatrical element to the design that was, wisely, rarely used by professors. You really could enter stage right, or left. Most profs just came in the huge double doors way up in the “theatre” and picked their way down the stairs with the rest of us. In any case, the buildings had vaulted high ceilings supported by vast grey walls, and were the antithesis of “welcoming”.

As with most majors, there was a selection of mandatory courses and a handful of electives. I had to take one science and, like most of my science-fearing confreres, I picked Astronomy as being, possibly, the easiest to swing. I wonder if the very sweet, stereotypically corduroy-jacketed prof ever clued into the little troupe of Fine Arts majors that wound up in his intro class every year?

One other popular elective was Intro to Film. I mean, really, how hard can that be? Watch movies and write about what you liked or didn’t like, right? If there was popcorn, I was “in” for sure.

I’ll never forget the first class in Intro to Film. Students were assembling in the mid-sized lecture hall that seated, perhaps, 250 people. Minutes before class was to begin, a person entered the class. I didn’t notice her until she was receding away from where I was sitting, appearing to float regally down the wide concrete “stairs” that led to the lecture area. She seemed to have layers of diaphanous material that floated around and behind her … I realize now that this was some kind of scarf or pashmina or some such. She walked slowly and deliberately, carefully muss-coiffed reddish hair and this purposeful gait drawing our eyes, collectively, to her. She may have been wearing some kind of designer boots or something – I remember, eventually, tuning into the sounds her footfalls were making. It took her some time to get to the lecture space at the bottom/front of the room, by which time the room was effectively silenced. I’m not sure if anyone in the room had seen any person like this person – I certainly hadn’t, and I hadn’t even seen her face yet.

These lecture halls were outfitted with portable blackboards on wooden frames with wheels. Still not facing us, Professor picked up a piece of chalk and slowly, deliberately, with care, wrote the following on the blackboard.

B – I – R – D

She put the chalk down and wheeled to face the now quite attentive room. Quietly, firmly, she said, “If anyone here has signed up for this course anticipating that it is a ‘bird’ course, please leave now.”

And then, she just stood there, staring at us. Inspecting us. Maybe daring us. We were all frozen in our seats, of course. No one dared move or scarcely even breathe. After what seemed like an interminably long time, she gave a quick nod and began to talk about what this course meant. Thus began my journey into visual literacy, and my connection to Professor.

Professor is, of course, a real and intensely private person whom I’ve had the pleasure of being connected to, on and off, ever since that first day of Film Studies. If she allows, I may be able to publish her real name here but, until then, Professor will do.

Is it sacrilegious to suggest that, of all the courses I took in my four years in the snug embrace of fine arts academia, Intro to Film was the most valuable and has had the longest-lasting effect? I often wish I’d followed my gut at the time and switched my major to Film Studies, but I was too well-trained to finish what I’d started. Also, Film Studies majors had an air of elitist intelligentsia about them. Pale-skinned (perhaps from a lack of natural light 🙂 ), always wearing black, sitting in outdoor cafes, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and morosely debating the use of chiaroscuro effects in German Expressionist films of the early 20th century. The pre-goth goths. The Visu-Goths. Only other Film Studies majors understood what the hell they might be talking about and I guess I’m just too proletariat for that.

Actually, as I think about it, I’m a huge hypocrite. I remember wearing a lot of denim and getting into screaming fights over nachos at the London Arms about Brecht as a precursor to the Open Theatre Movement in Argentina. Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I revelled in where Intro to Film, and Professor’s insistence on disciplined critical thinking, took me.

Off we went, on a journey through D.W. Griffith, Potemkin, Caligari, Fritz Lang … later, Truffaut, Godard (often shortened to GOD) … eventually Canadians like Snow and Wieland. We were challenged to observe the relationship between how a message was conveyed and what the message was. How does this communication really work? What are the conventions, the signifiers? Can we identify the language? How do our brains, and our varied cultural perspectives, interpret the visual? What does dark “mean”? What does light “mean? Why? How does cultural context change meaning, especially meaning we take for granted? What does movement, gesture, positioning do to our interpretation? What can a shifting camera angle do to these very things? Who are we, the viewer, beside the camera? Who are we intended to be? What is our perspective?

We looked at print and television advertising. This is not, strictly speaking, “film”, but incredibly accessible as a way of teaching visual literacy. Tableau, shape, positioning, colour, gesture. Who are we, the intended partakers of the images? How do the creators’ assumptions about us, the viewers, drive their decisions? At what point is the advertiser’s understanding of the viewer so profound that the use of image, text and subtext becomes manipulation?

Professor was the first seriously smart person who reassured me I could write, and think critically. I remember one of my first submissions in this course. We were given a strict page/word limit and, try as I might, I couldn’t stay within it. I edited, cropped, trimmed … I was really worried about this. Frankly, Professor scared the bejesus out of me. I don’t recall how far over the limit I went, but I recall adding a hand-written note apologizing for the excess length. The paper was returned, with a B+ or an A- or thereabouts and a hand-written message, saying, “I don’t mind reading over-limit papers when they are of such calibre.” Whoa. This woman, who took this discipline of study so seriously, who clearly took her own intellect and intelligence seriously, was prepared to take me seriously, too. That was astounding to me.

Learning from Professor didn’t end after this particular course, I’m thankful to say. Although she wasn’t formally my instructor for any further courses, she was part of a circle of creative types that I was also grateful, over time, to find myself part of. Her bearing and clarity of purpose, always confident and almost regal in nature, still inspires me. I recall her repeating some advice she received when it was her turn to take over the quasi-management role of Department Chair for two years. She was told to “always respond – never react”. I can see this fitting her perfectly and, I must admit, it has served me well, too, in many scenarios.

Understanding subtext, and context, and, for that matter, text are Professor’s main gifts to me, and no doubt to hundreds of other students who signed up for her B-I-R-D course. Dig deeper … look inside the messaging … ask questions … analyze the “how” of the message being conveyed with as much, if not more, rigour than the “what”. View from all perspectives. I now teach communications, and work directly with communications tools and techniques in my consulting work. I really don’t think I’d be doing any of this, at least not doing it with any level of applicable understanding, without Professor’s incisive insistence that visual literacy is Important and Useful.

Out of Africa 6 comments

I’m about to either treat, or torture, my readers with an avalanche of posts about music, provided my life opens up just enough to allow such activity. Before I get to the, oh, 140 or so songs I put together for my 45th birthday party several weeks ago, I feel I need to start with one musical memory in particular.

There are some pieces that, for me, wind up having layers upon layers of meaning. The piece I’m concerned with this evening is just such an example. I have found it on YouTube and will be posting a link at the end of this entry. But please do bear with me for the long tangled story that accompanies it before you jump down, ok?

It was 1986, I was 23, and I was smitten, consciously and openly, for the first time, with a woman. Sure, I’d had crushes before but never anything I could acknowledge, even to myself. It was pretty heady, intoxicating stuff, those first conscious acknowledgments of what I was feeling, and the thrill of finding out that she was also attracted to me was almost too much to bear. She was (is) a movie and music buff and exposed me to so much that still resides happily in my musical repertoire … The Pretenders … Propaganda … The Cure … And, as far as movies go, there were many. The one that stands out remains one of my all-time favourite films: Out of Africa, with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. A powerful, rich story, beautifully told. The soundtrack, by John Barry, could almost be considered a character in the film – so many scenes would seem completely empty without the support, or urging, or comfort of the music.

One of the most moving movie moments of all time occurs about two thirds of the way through the film. Denys (the character played by Redford), shows up unexpectedly at Karyn Blixen’s (Meryl Streep) farm in a biplane. She is excited and taken aback and, as he hands her a pair of flying goggles, she asks, “When did you learn to fly?” He responds, “Yesterday!” and away they go, into the African sky.

Much earlier in the film, this moment is foreshadowed by Karyn saying that Denys gave her gifts, one of which was seeing the world through God’s eyes. This is that moment. Denys has been on a mission to show Karyn Africa as it existed before white men spoiled it. It is becoming spoiled so quickly at this point in history – the film is set in 1913 – that he has to resort to desperate, dangerous flight to accomplish his task.

But we don’t get any of that explanation in words. We get music.

The three or so minutes of John Barry’s variation on the main theme are heart-stopping, as are the visuals which it accompanies. The first 1:47 is almost choral in nature, a deep drone holding the foundation of a single muscular line of melody that is almost addictively hummable. Strong, extremely compelling. I’ve always wondered why it is so compelling and, as I listen to it again tonight for the multi-thousandth time, I hear that the deep woodwinds and strings are blended with human voices for added depth. The voices, almost like Geogorian chant, are hiding behind the instrumentation. At 1:47 the whole piece opens up into its own complexity with now many instrumental lines working in concert to draw you on, the main theme bursting forth in glorious richness, sadness and depth.

In the film, as Denys and Karyn journey over plains and impossibly beautiful vistas, she finally understands what he has been trying to show her, to tell her. She is seated in the forward seat in the plane and they are unable to speak or even see each other. She needs to communicate to him her understanding, her “a-ha” moment. She does. Only Meryl Streep could pull this off with such grace, clarity and intimacy. This particular piece of music, Flight Over Africa (Track 7 off the soundtrack), helps cement this moment in the memory of most people who have seen the film.

Just as Karyn was able to later articulate the gifts Denys gave her in their short time together, I can say that my first amore granted me many gifts as well, one of which was this film. She helped me see the world, briefly, through her eyes which, interestingly, helped me eventually see more clearly with my own.

Years later, I was in a quirky little used bookstore in Vancouver, enjoying my one and only visit out there. It was one of those dingy, slightly suspect places that make you wonder how they can afford to survive with only dusty old used books on disorganized shelves and practically no customers. I had the luxury of being able to take my time that day -I think I was killing time waiting for someone – and I suddenly found myself welling up with tears and just, well, emoting all over the place. What was going on? There was no one else in the store and I realized that the clerk had turned the music up a few notches. It was the soundtrack to Out of Africa. I hadn’t heard the music for ages. I had no idea one could actually Buy The Soundtrack to such a film. I stayed in that store much longer than I should have, wiping tears off my cheeks as they emerged, as each track took me to a new place of memory.

This film handles even the non-original music so beautifully. Have a listen to the treatment of this two minute excerpt –Mozart -Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in A (K. 622). The pace of this version is much slower and more deliberate than it is normally played and yet the more deliberate pace doesn’t add any heaviness to the interpretation.

Film is the ultimate collaborative enterprise. All the pieces have to work together, in concert (pardon the pun), for the ideas, nuance, even narrative to be communicated to the audience. If Meryl Streep doesn’t do her thing in the plane on at least one of the takes, then the director hasn’t given the editor what he/she needs to move the story along. If all that doesn’t happen, the composer has very little to go on to add his polish and punctuation. On the occasions when it all works, film is an art form to be much admired.

Africa is a mysterious place to me. It strikes me as the ultimate collaborative disaster. Having experienced Africa only from a distance, my perception fed on media and popular culture only, it seems that outside influences have worked only to fail the people and the creatures there. I am happy to get information from my friends who were born and raised there, who are there – or close by – now, or who are about to be there, that tell different stories. The workshop I did this summer on drumming/singing from Ghana also told a different story. These are stories that need to be told. Stories that give my knowledge of that place more depth and context.

Yet, somehow in my mind, I when hear stories of Africa … I hear this music in the background, bringing tears to my eyes.

Here is a link to the Flight Over Africa scene.

Here is a link to a 10 minute edit of the film that showcases the soundtrack as a whole. (Gotta love YouTube! Some other music headcase has done this for me!)

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