Brakhage\'s Paradoxical Atemporality

Bruno Ladouceur December 3rd, 2014 Brakhage’s Paradoxical Atemporality Coming from the literary tradition of Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, Stan Brakhage was a fervent modernist who worked relentlessly to defy the production and exhibition practices of the mainstream film industry. He was particularly concerned with the way in which the eyes and the mind were – and still are – trained and institutionalized to register light, movement and colours in a regulated way, as stressed in his essay “Metaphors on Vision”, which he wrote during the production of the series Dog Star Man (1961-1964): “how many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of “Green?” (12)1 Through his writings, he exposes a new way of perceiving art, and through his films, he pursues to reformat the viewer’s perception with non-narrative experimental films. In the spectre of the Cold-War, Brakhage’s postwar existentialism manifests itself in the duality of awe-inspiring micro- and macroscopic phenomenons whose contrasts contribute to the reimagining of symbolism – mythopoeia. Accordingly, in Dog Star Man, Brakhage's search of a greater truth in the deconstruction of myths explores the question of artistic and human existence which is at the apotheosis of the avant-garde movement. Through his radical/negation use of form and aesthetic, he challenges the audience's very sense of vision and assessment of cinematic productions so as to recreate, reappropriate, and ultimately reform the politics of the film medium. 1

This excerpt from an interview offers a more comprehensive account of Brakhage’s view on perception: “only at a crisis do I see both the scene as I’ve been trained to see it (that is, with Renaissance perspective, three-dimensional logic–colors as we’ve been trained to call a color a color, and so forth) and patterns that move straight out from the inside of the mind through the optic nerves. In other words, in intensive crisis I can see from the inside out and the outside in…. I see patterns moving that are the same patterns I see when I close my eyes; and can also see the same kind of scene I see when my eyes are open…. What I was seeing at the birth of Neowyn most clearly, in terms of this brain movie recall process, were symbolic structures of an animal nature.” (Sitney 153)

Amongst other avant-gardists, Brakhage’s defiance of conventional form and aesthetic was motivated by a rejection of cinema as mass entertainment and by a desire to re-appropriate the medium as an art form. Annette Michelson, in her essay “Film and the Radical Aspiration”, identifies a conflict in the shift from silent to sound cinema where filmmakers and intellectuals anticipated the revitalization of the medium to be one of exploitation. This, she argues, led these artists to reject its aesthetic purpose and to form a movement of resistance that will transform the nature of the medium (409). In reference to the introduction of sound, Walter Benjamin stresses that cinema’s transformation into a product of mass consumption challenges the very nature of art itself and the way it is perceived by its public (409). Thus it is by reassessing the aesthetic, formal, and narrative possibilities of cinema that Brakhage intended to counter the exploitative practices of the film industry and, by the same token, to suggest an alternative consideration of the medium. Brakhage’s negation of sound in Dog Star Man acts in accordance with this principle, avoiding to produce entertainment, but instead allowing the isolated images to captivate the audience solely based on their artistic value and their juxtaposition with one another. This refusal stands on its own as a statement against the film industry whose use of a soundtrack have literally annihilated silent films and, as previously established, transformed the viewer’s perception of the medium. This is one of the ways in which Brakhage affirms his position towards mainstream cinematic practices as it is the most effective meta-commentary on the screening experience. The viewer is then compelled to question this artistic statement and to consider the product as opposed to consume it. This ultimately leads to the intellectual stimulation of the viewer’s mind rather than to its alienation, rejecting the screen as “a window into illusion” (Sitney 142).

In his essay “The Camera Eye”, Brakhage openly rejects all that constitute the Hollywood film industry by promoting his idiosyncratic views on cinema: “and here, somewhere, we have an eye (I’ll speak for myself) capable of any imagining (the only reality). […] And then we have the camera eye, its lenses grounded to achieve 19th-century Western compositional perspective” (15). It is undeniable that literary canons have influenced the threedimensional narrative space of 20th century cinematic productions. However, Brakhage considers that these canons have constrained cinema to an illusion of reality where images have been reduced to metonymic symbols. The most obvious example of this principle would be Brakhage’s insertion of visceral close-up shots of organs which are devoid of their repulsive and disgusting imagery, and instead are considered as a statement of the protagonist’s ontological condition. In practice, his opposition to the literary tradition can be observed through many different techniques. Throughout Dog Star Man, as previously mentioned, the negation of sound corresponds to a formal decision which prevents the audience to situate themselves in time and space, thus rejecting its dialogic and spatial use in mainstream cinema. Brakhage accentuates this disorienting effect by splicing together unrelated succession of shots which have a priori no relation with each other, deliberately discarding any construction of narrative continuity or frame of reference. Considering Brakhage’s theoretical knowledge of modernist literary movement, one can assume that, in the tradition of the Imagist movement, these moving images are not to be considered for their individuality, but they must be analyzed as an ensemble from which emanates a clear vision or idea.

By looking at Brakhage’s process of creation, one remarks that each section, except for Dog Star Man: I (1962), is composed of superimposed layers of film which could possibly be associated to Blake’s “four realms or states of existence” (Sitney 177): “the vision of the child” (177), the Freudian dream, and “the damned and liberated alternative” (177). Accordingly, in Dog Star Man: Prelude, Brakhage intended to recreate a dreamlike sequence which would justify, according to the previous reference, the use of two superimposed layers onto which he scratched and painted lines and patterns in order to reproduce a closed-eye vision and to reappropriate the very nature of the medium as a creation of art (174). From the very beginning of the first film, the black frames are slowly exposed to reddish blurs which attempts to reproduce the vision captured by someone’s retina as light passes through the blood vessels of their eyelids. Intermingled with these shots, are rapid subjective flashes colliding with each other so as to recreate a dreamlike experience. From this superficial analysis of Brakhage’s stream of consciousness, one can clearly understand how he wishes to dissociate himself from the mainstream industry. His peculiar approach to the film strip needs to be considered as an effort to bridge the gap between art and film, which has been created by the commercialization of the medium. Furthermore, the expanded vision and infinite possibilities of cinematic experience stressed in his writings and his direct manipulation of the celluloid contrast with the industry’s almost sacred consideration of the print. Though for Brakhage, the real art is not what is projected onto the screen, but what resides in the process of making and in the object itself. In the search of an organic fusion between the artist and the medium, Michelson situates this practice in the “independent film-makers who compose something of an American avantgarde” (409). One could easily venture into deconstructionism to observe the recurrence of a

hyphenated “film-maker” as opposed to “filmmaker” in the writings of avant-gardists and academics such as Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, and Michelson which may exemplify this intimate relationship between the makers and their films. In 1958, two years before the making of Dog Star Man: Prelude, Brakhage wrote a letter to a friend in which he stated, “I am now considering a second feature-length film, which will dwell cinematically upon the atomic bomb” (Mekas 100). It is no coincidence that Samuel Beckett’s existentialist play, Waiting for Godot2, deals with the atrocities of the Second World War in a similar fashion by omitting to situate his characters spatially and temporally. Indeed, Beckett’s Chaplinesque protagonists are stuck in a three-dimensional loop from which their sole exit is suicide. Likewise, Brakhage’s protagonist, Dog Star Man, is caught in a cyclical narrative as his visions explore winter in Dog Star Man: I; advancing into spring and summer in the following films; and he finally comes back to winter at the end of Dog Star Man: IV. The shifting seasons indicate a sustained atemporality for which the contrast between the human finite existence and the infinite cyclic temporality of the universe is represented through recurring time-lapse shots of the nature. These shots symbolize the passing of time, though they do not relate to the Dog Star Man whose existence in the cosmos is then questioned. To come back to this concept of negation/omission, Brakhage’s concerns with the omnipresence of the atomic bomb in relation to the past and future are translated into dual symbolism of micro- and macroscopic imagery from which there is only suggestive reference to the destructive power of war. Again, his writing offers an interesting approach to understand the significance of certain symbols, as he situates himself in relation to “an age which lives in fear of 2 According

to my edition, Waiting for Godot was written between 1948 and 1949, but was performed for the first time in English in 1955. (Beckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press, 2011. Print.)

total annihilation” (13). Brakhage’s conscious reference to the sociopolitical climate of the ColdWar can be associated to the repetition of close-ups of solar flares which resemble the iconic atomic mushroom cloud. Deprived of any surrounding war imagery and locality, these shots are contrasted with living organisms such as our protagonist, his dog and his baby from which the audience is obliged to assess the causal relationship between their existence and an imminent fear of death caused by the uncertainties of the Cold-War. Moreover, considering the paradoxical micro-framing of a macrocosmic element (sun), these shots raise some ambiguities or “conflicts of scale” (Sitney 180) as they are juxtaposed with microscopic close-ups of blood vessels in which the blood circulation confirms the existence and living state of the individual. The collision of these two sequences appears to enter in a systemic pattern of representation from which one can extrapolate that Brakhage aimed to consolidate the link between the nature of time and existence. Ultimately, what links these two symbols is the omnipresent anxiety emanating from their collision or conflict. Since “the lyrical film postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film” (Sitney 142), it is possible to associate this anxiety to Brakhage’s own stream of consciousness. As P. Adams Sitney notes, “one could go on for pages enumerating the visual connections rushing by on the screen” (180). Clearly, there is more to Dog Star Man than this analysis of the subtext, but it may be the first step to undertake for someone who wishes to understand the historical context in which Brakhage’s career spurred. It is through his opposition to the mainstream film industry that he reiterates his mandate as an artist. Moreover, his fight for the cultural survival of a purist art form is not only expressed through his unorthodox practices, but also through his treatment of existentialism which positioned the artist, through the first-person

subjectivity of the lyrical film, in relation to time and the universe. By different internal (shot) and external (juxtaposition) conflicts, a felt-anxiety is sustained in a cyclic environment so as to emphasize the day-to-day human experience of living under the constant fear of total annihilation. In that sense, Brakhage’s attempt to create new myths by reimagining the metonymic symbolism which influenced the cinematic production of Hollywood (narrative continuity) can be linked to the search of a greater truth that happens to be a recurring theme in existentialist literature (Beckett). Answering the critic’s accusation that the new artist is nihilist, Mekas states that “the American artist could sing happily and carelessly, with no despair in his voice–but then he would reflect neither his society nor himself, he would be a liar like everybody else” (103). Thus, the Cold-War era is one of existential nihilism as expressed in Brakhage’s Dog Star Man where the artist is in constant search of meaning. As the Dog Star Man’s position himself towards the universe, he then highlights his own insignificance and lack of meaning.

Word Count (not including footnotes): 1971


Bibliography Brakhage, Stan. “Metaphors on Vision” and "The Camera Eye.” Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking. Ed. Bruce R. McPherson. Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson & Co., 2001. 12-23. Print. Mekas, Jonas. “Notes on the new American cinema” Film Culture Reader. Ed. P. Adams Sitney. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. 87-107. Print. Michelson, Annette. “Film and the Radical Aspiration” Film Culture Reader. Ed. P. Adams Sitney. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970. 404-421. Print. Sitney, P. Adams. “The Lyrical Film” and “Major Mythopoeia.” Visionary Film: the American avant-garde 1943-1978. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. 137-227. Print. 


Filmography Dog Star Man: Prelude. Dir. Stan Brakhage. By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion). 1961. Bluray. Dog Star Man: I. Dir. Stan Brakhage. By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion). 1962. Bluray. Dog Star Man: II. Dir. Stan Brakhage. By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion). 1963. Bluray. Dog Star Man: III. Dir. Stan Brakhage. By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion). 1964. Bluray. Dog Star Man: IV. Dir. Stan Brakhage. By Brakhage: An Anthology (Criterion). 1964. Bluray.