Adoxography: Skilled writing on an unimportant subject

In keeping with the theme of last week, I feel that sometimes, the title of this particular post could easily apply to me. I often wonder what the term is for skilled speaking on an unimportant subject.

I've been pulled into the world of buzzwords, procedures, processes, customer service, etc, and I find myself dabbling in adoxography less and less. And it pains me. Because my writing on those subjects isn't that skilled.

After reading interviews with Eli Roth and thinking he was going to reinvent the horror film because he's a filmmaker who really knows his generic conventions and therefore his films will be awesome, and being subsequently disappointed (you know I love you, Roth. Right?) I realised that perhaps it's true: critics talk better than they film. The exception to that rule is of course the critics of Cahiers du Cinema who would go on to create the Nouvelle Vague. But apart from them, who else? Scorsese is a film historian - does that count, I wonder?

My directorial debut (student of course) required me to go into detail about my infleunces and what I wanted the film to communicate and I think that what I wrote about the film promised something I ultimately couldn't deliver. And I remembered that my last project for my degree in Australia was much the same - my exegesis (document of creative practice and creative process in regard to a particular work) was about genre and genre transformation and if you hadn't seen the film you'd probably think it was some amazing work. The term 'new Simon Pegg' might be thrown around (a gal can dream, can't she?). But it wasn't. We saved it from being a complete disaster but in the end I was still embarrassed to show it to my peers in Manchester. Which brings me back to the subject: is my own analysis of my work simply a form of adoxography?

I've started reading yet another book and hopefully I'll finish this one (and then finish Brideshead Revisited, Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Brothers Karazmazov, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Mrs Dalloway). It's called Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. As a lover of fiction and hence buying it in its most accessible and economic form (cheapskate) - it's a Popular Penguin edition (you know, the orange and white one you can pick up for a tenner while lamenting the fact the prettier edition next to it in Borders is almost three times the price?) and it had a little bio of Waugh. The thing that caught my attention was a quote from Mr Waugh himself, which is the following:

"I regard writing not as an investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me."

What I think he was saying here is not that character is of no consequence to him in his writing, but more that he writes as someone with an interest in the structure of how we communicate - that is, it is the structure of the novel that primarily moves him; language, words, sentences, chapters. Psychology and motivation are secondary, but nonetheless important.

Which made me happier about the way in which I approach my own work. I'm often inspired by the language of film before characters. I like to place my characters in a particular film world and the filmmakers I admire all use their films primarily as an invetigation of the structure of film just as much as the stories and the characters who inhabit that world; Hitchcock, Tarantino, Scorsese, and Wright in particular.

And it is rather nice to be able to say to people, 'well, my approach to my work is in much the same vein as the likes of Evelyn Waugh.' Because I'm white.

Waugh has given some delicious delicacies for thought, but the advice I think I always come back to came not from a famous novellist or groundbreaking filmmaker (yet!) but from a friend of mine in Manchester,a fellow writer who helped make me realise that writing is my passion. Whenever I told her I was stuck on a scene she would say what do you want it to say?

Anyone who knows me will say I have too much to say - maybe that's my problem and I always wonder if what I'm saying is actually of any value in this world, but I'll say it anyway. And I figure that if I'm speaking the language of film, which is primarily visual, at least I'll be saying it without opening my great big trap of a mouth.

They shoot film critics, don't they?

I was reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair and in it was an article about film critics and their deteriorating status in the arts and media community. Many high profile critics have found themselves unemployed, such as Andrew Sarris (I have quoted this gent in a few essays and was shocked - though if I recall I was disagreeing with him. Ahem.). The article discussed a debate these firings had raised regarding whether or not film critics are even necessary.

It's an interesting point if you think film criticism is merely a matter of deciding if a film sucks or if it's totally flipping sweet. Some people for a long time have probably resented the idea of someone telling them what movie to see. Others need to be told. I must say I have stopped listening to my beloved David Stratton regarding which new release to see - but I would go to one of his classes in a heart beat.

And it did make me wonder when I've spent most of my time recently watching films that you may argue are hardly the stuff of serious or high art; films like Sex and the City 2 and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Or even my beloved Step-Brothers or The Hangover...but these films are not without interest to the earnest film critic. Ahem. I would like to say that I am neither Team Edward nor Team Jacob. I am staunchly Team Bella's Dad, for the record.

I wonder if this same argument is turned upon art criticism or theatre criticism. Is it the same hierarchy of art forms all over again? Literature with a capital L as opposed to literature? Does a Global Financial Crisis mean that we suddenly start deciding what is necessary and what is a luxury and we've decided that since film and television isn't really art the practice of analysing it is also now redudant? I protest loudly, because the last time there was a similar economic depression, the movies did a roaring trade. And if you want a perfect summation of why something considered 'escapist' is not a bad thing but a wonderful thing, please read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

What we're talking about is taking art and attempting to find meaning within it, or to translate the images in terms of what they are expressing about our culture and society. Sure, I'm trying to justify one of my chosen careers (well, a future career necessitates that the career still exists in the future). If we think there is no value in film criticism, we may as well pack up half of the humanities department of every university in the world. Why don't we all do a Commerce degree and talk about the economy for the rest of our lives? Dear lord, take me now.

My field's endangered existence got me thinking about my goals and what I would like to do in this area both right now and in the future.

So here it is:

Some sort of superhero exploration - I find Watchmen such a fascinating superhero film and I have an article about it bookmarked and ready to read. But I found myself thinking that superheroes tend be quite an American phenomenon. Or rather, the Hollywood superhero expresses something quintessentially American. It would be ridiculously easy to say it's a fantasy designed to perpetrate the myth of America's control over the world. And I think it would be wrong. I think there's something more to be gleaned from the likes of Iron Man and their context in contemporary society and contemporary warfare. So I'm a gonna research this and try to write something meaningful.

The masculinity thing - I wrote a post about all this stuff I was researching and subsequently lost it all and being too lazy to write it over again, I did some bullet points and included pictures of boys holding hands. Would like to explore that and make it more intelligent.

Blog combining fashion and film - Russh magazine did a fashion spread based on Badlands and I wrote a post a while back about how my style influences are usually movie characters, not models or trends. I want to combine that and style looks from films, hopefully using clothing that is both affordable and available now. My friend was thinking of almost exactly the same thing so we need to put our heads together and write that shit!

Film and television scripts - I'm working on several ideas for television series with friends and a feature film that's a cross between gossip girl and sartre's nausea. Read more about one of the television projects, The Innocents, over at Hell Is Other People.

PhD - yes, for a while now the plan has been to do the old doctor of philosophy business. I'm interested solely in the relationship between the screen and the viewer and how that relationship has developed. Completely afraid that it has all been done and I am completely irrelevant. And a lecturer suggested in a seminar (not directly at me but I still felt the sting) that it was shortsighted. Fuck you! Says I. Maybe. Not really.

Teach in Uni - so I probably need to achieve the goal above first before I do this but I would dearly love to teach film studies at university. I've already designed two courses in my head, one of course on spectatorship (I don't think it's been taught as a subject in its own right very much) and one on music in film that is more about music as mood, genre convention and so on. I also would love to teach a course about horror - of course that's been done but I'd love the chance to make it my own.

So there you haves it! I think I'll achieve at least one of the things on this sucker before I die. I am an optimist, after all!

A word to all those naysayers re: film critcs: Cahiers Du Cinema (well, that's three, but you get my drift). And Wikipedia tells me Martin Scorsese is a film historian. So, go die.