Rewriting (of a Kind)

Writer/director Michel Gondry is known for his visually stylistic music videos, advertising spots and films. He will often shoot stop-motion, but rather than using animation, he will use miniature sets made from different art media such as Legos. He has also written and drawn his own comic books. Through his website, Michel Gondry.com, you can purchase a personalized portrait sketched and autographed by him. Clicking the appropriate links from his site, a user is rerouted to Flickr.com and can view the numerous sketches of he made of his fans.

Gondry shot his film Be Kind, Rewind, in two weeks in the town of Passaic, New Jersey. The notion behind this film was to make a low-budget film using the scenery and the people of this town, as well as make a social commentary on how history is often overlooked but is essential part of a community. By using a narrative plot in which the two protagonists have to remake numerous films after the VHS in a rental store have been accidentally erased. As the demand for these quirky remakes escalates, the two men solicit help from members of their community. As the plot thickens, the community assembles to help save the site of the rental store, which itself is the historic landmark of jazz musician, Fats Waller (information which Wikipedia claims to be untrue).

The films are dubbed as “Sweded,” as in “they are a rare type of video that comes from a faraway, expensive country.” Since the protagonists are filming these remakes themselves, there are a limited number of movies that they can shoot in one day. Even the hardest of the town’s thugs enjoy these movies and end up watching films they wouldn’t have otherwise seen and, naturally, learn life lessons from these narratives. When the Sweded project grows too large, the protagonists encourage the community to Swede their own favorite movies and to make an original biopic of Fats Waller’s life in a meaningful story of their town.

Sweding (the act of making a Sweded film) is a way of inviting a fan into the authoring of a pre-existing narrative. First of all, Gondry is paying homage to the original film narratives by including them in his film. Secondly, the film sets up specific guidelines when a character wants a film Sweded: it has to be low budget, the film has to be made within the last 30 years, and it has to be kept between eight and ten minutes in length. Herein lies the opportunity for fans of Be Kind, Rewind to create their own Sweded film. As a promotional tie-in to the movie, there was a website in which fan-made Sweded movies were hosted. Even though this site is no longer active, this concept of Sweding has produced a YouTube channel dedicated to Sweded television shows, various websites hosting Sweded films, and an annual Sweded Film Festival held in Fresno. Some of the sites that host Sweded movies are swededcinema.com, swededfilms.com, and swededmovies.org. Gondry has also made a book, You'll Like This Movie Because You're in It: The Be Kind, Rewind Protocol, that discusses " the appropriative and participatory practice 'sweding,' which is to say, 'putting you into the things you like'" (quote from editoral note on Amazon).

While the actual film, Be Kind, Rewind is a comedy, Gondry is also making a social commentary about the media industry in large and how, in this era of digitalization, it is hard to keep the fan at bay and by doing so, effectively eliminates today’s audience – which is an interactive one. Retelling/co-authoring and re/co-creating narratives is a way in which to keep storytelling interactive and even if it is something as silly as Sweding a film, it creates a space for community, human interaction, and the exchange of ideas.

In the Web of 2.0

In the 1930’s, Vannear Bush had an idea of a “device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” His essay, “As We May Think” delved into the concept of “associative trails” that would link common thoughts and themes together so that when someone would go to use a Memex, they could follow the trail to retrieve additional information. If one chose, they could let others use their personal Memex machine and link their own associations to another’s store of information. Even though this device was never seen into production, Bush’s was conceptualizing was the internet and hypertext.

One of the flaws of the Memex was that the associative trails could not be widely published. These trails would stay on the deskbound device. The invention of ARPANET and sequentially, the internet as we know it today, allows users to publish “associative trails” through hyperlinking, tagging, bookmarking, “liking,” sharing, and all the other ways Web 2.0 can help tell the story of the human race at large. At the end of this video, the author notes “Web 2.0 is not just linking information… Web 2.0 is linking people.”

When comment or “like” someone else’s post on a social networking site, blog, or even an NPR story, I am telling everyone that “this means something to me; this is part of who I am.” I am leaving a part of my personal narrative. Of course, Web 2.0 could not work without the technology supporting it, but likewise, the narratives we are accessing in the digital age rely on understanding the analog narratives and their mediums that have come before. Many of us run to the computer to gather more information on something we have heard on the radio or find the background story of a film and its actors. The narrative of stories, fictional or not, is obviously no longer linear but do I think that the traditional narrative is still and it is integral that we continue to understand both to understand the world at large. Perhaps Web 3.0 is how we access the network of communication and information in both digital and analog forms?

If these walls

............

The light from my alarm clock is glaring at me, marking each minute i lay here about to burst at the seams of my existence. The walls are whispering of things they’ve seen and heard although it happened one night far way and long ago. Their murmuring gossip passes behind coats of paint and reminds me of little old ladies early in the morning with their coats and shawls and empty baskets over their arms waiting to be filled. The walls and these old birds choose to speak of what they’ve never dreamed of and fill the emptiness in their lives with nonsense and chatter about the choices i’ve made that fulfill my life.....

All of this is rather none of their business, but walls will be walls and continue to provoke me, making me long for a sound-proof, light-proof box to sleep in. For a minute, this box is my coffin, a bed of feathers where i am weighted down by bricks. For a minute, I am dreaming so vividly i know it can’t be real but i enjoy it so much, my dreaming self feels it must be wrong and so i create people to save me and pull me back to reality. I want to stay with the vampires in my dreams and they want me to stay with them. They invite me to a ceremony where I am pulled in by a sweet song and when my monomythical saviors think I may fall for their tricks, I strain to keep these notes within me. I am chasing my monster down street after street clogged with grass, rain, ice, snow and grass, rain, ice and snow.....

As my breathing and thoughts become heavier, so do the walls continue to breathe their thoughts to each other and ebb and flow dangerously close to my body. The pen beside my bed grows larger and larger and i want to scrawl dirty words on the walls, to call out the unmarked space, to give them something to talk about once and for all. If i mark their empty spaces as my own, perhaps they would not be walls any more, but become art or graffiti and therefore have no right to hold my darkest secrets against me. These are my stories to tell, to draw out and create. I am afraid of sleeping for fear that as soon as i doze off, my secrets will spread like wildfire amongst these walls that keep me contained so i lay awake, marking each minute of my existence with words that are bursting at the seams of this notebook.....

weekends

I remembered my past about a stroke past midnight. I was a gypsy and he was my lover. All the memories that had past had suddenly come up to remind me love does not last nor is it anything to write home about.

“Do not ask me to spend eternity with you,” she whispered with one closed eye. “otherwise else we are only going to see half of anything for the rest of our lives.”

She saw her future, muted. Silenced by jogging, running, being a drone in front of the t.v., or listening to everything… remixed. It was not original but it could never be. This is she. She saw it unfinished in her thirties, just like that one show that everyone talked about fictions so long ago but she had no idea of it would be close to reality. This is the end of the twenties. Fighting for the place on the next rung, everybody killing to the great unsung song. What is life? what is the future? Here are we and we do not want to mature.

“I want you to tie me up against a tree, to rape me, to let me know who is in control. This is my fantasy and it is breaking my soul.”

Reality is what i am afraid of. This typing and making characters out of nothing seems all that is what of life made of, but, perhaps if i make spelling mistakes, it will not come true. Who knows? Who knows that it hasn’t all been said before, that i am not knocking on the same closed door which never lets myself in? Is it because my antecessors sinned? I hope to Allah it is not, i fight for what i’ve got and to make a new future for me… without great apathy or great regrets may be the only outlet.

However, it was once said that the mountains love me, that they are calling my name: “away we go,” they cry, “here is your infinity.”

Running, walking, watching t.v. in the hum that all else calls oblivion... working, drinking, pretending my friends are my own. These are the things that keep me awake, that keep me preserving. Perhaps if i feel nothing for ever, so that nothing i can forsake.

untitled

i want to be released and for all my
inhibitions to dissipate.
i want to know the feeling of no
pain and sincere emotion.
i dream of pure nothingness and sleep
for this alone.

pain is my rapture, on the cusp of lifelessness
and ghostly apparitions.
waking surreality brings me to
the brink of pleasure and i admonish
consciousness and am convinced only those
with no purpose should walk the face of the earth.

i deserve nothing.

who am i to say i am meant to change my own existence?
Is this not the job of fate and destiny?
who was the jerk that thought of flesh and mortality?

I prefer to sink in empty skies and float in endless seas.
I long to sleep in a bed of feathers, weighed down by brick.
my silent screams awaken me to the wish of one more
minute of unadulterated loneliness. i face the day
with my hands covering my face in hopes to be
invisible to the light radiating off of humanity.

There are few moments when i feel absolute well-being and
pleasure. i am affected to live for these moments.
it is then i can open up and release all my inhibitions.

i consent to be consumed by you.

Remediation in it's finest form!

After reading The Orchid Thief and viewing the film Adaption, I came up with these similarities and differences.

Connections:

Adaptation – Orlean is adapting real people to fit in her non-fiction accounts just as Kaufmann wrote real into his screenplay; all characters are adapted for these spaces through what is included and what is left out.

Anthropomorphization – Often the orchid in the book are described as having features of animals or people. This is shown visually in the film by a montage of people at an orchid show while stating physical features or by stating a type of animal in conjunction to the orchid it resembles.

Idea of Research – Just as Orlean surely researched her topic before writing her book, so did Kaufmann onscreen which hints at the idea that there is no new story to tell, just different ways to convey it.

Temporal Stability – Neither the film nor the book is chronological in narrative but rather slip into different stories which may or may not be sequential.

Themes of Evolution and Mutation – One of the first sequences in the film is the story of evolution which takes from the book the idea that orchids are one of the oldest living things on earth.

Differences:

Auditory Elements: Part of the story line of the movie was the Monkee’s song “Imagine You and Me” which moved character development along although music does not play a role in the book.

Exclusion: While Orleans writes long segments on other “characters” other than Laroche or herself, these Seminole Indians, other orchid lovers, and historic explorers, these people are largely left out of Adaptation.

Fictional Elements: Orlean had a journalistic responsibility to hold to the truth in telling the story while Kaufmann did not and thus was allowed to write his fictional twin into the movie who served as a plot point whereas the book is said to have no plot at all.

Interpretation: In Adaptation, we see the world of the Orchid Thief through the lens of filmmakers and the interpretation of the actors instead of using the imagination that comes with reading a book.

Underlying Themes: The humanistic and existentialistic themes are easily inferred from dialogue-heavy movie whereas the reader has to assume these themes from description-laden book.

whisper

His friend leaned to whisper in his ear, “that is the girl that disappeared a while ago and now she is back.”
He didn’t believe him nor was he ready to feed into the fantasy that long played in his mind. His fixed a disinterested gaze on the television screen that was mounted on the tavern’s wall. A sports game was playing and in the brief moment the camera panned to reveal the crowd, the image of a woman reminded him of someone he once knew. His friend insisted the girl across the bar was the same one he once felt for and put his life on hold for some time ago.
The girl across the bar resembled the girl in the camera’s eye and in an infinite amount of torrential bits, he tried to make some kind of connection but his mind had a hard time linking that physical being with the person he reveled with in his memory. Her hand was in her hair and she was in casual conversation with a group that seemed to be her friends. He wanted to be the person she smiled at.
Although her bright eyes shone, he saw something more passionate in her than this moment in the crowded tavern and for that brief second, he thought that he could understand. The crowd erupted in appreciation of a good play and he lost sight of her as he tuned his attention to the collective roar.
Hours later, he stumbled back inside after gulping fresh air between drags of cigarettes and slouched back into his assumed position on the bar stool. His friend was swearing up and down that the meaning of existence could be found in slice of fruit at the bottom of his glass to the girl next to him. It was her.
“you’re you,” he said to the girl on the other side of his friend.
“i am” she answered.
“i heard that you went away for a while.”
“i am back.”
“how did it go?”
“there is something to be said about getting away from all of this,” she raised her hand to indicate the surrounding rowdiness. “but really, it is all the same anywhere. I came back to feel more out of place than I did before.”
Her hair was different than the last time he saw her and her completion radiated atmospheres of sun and high altitudes. He wanted to confess that he couldn’t stop thinking of her and that his dreams were tormented of times they never spent together. He wanted to confess that she was too erroneous for him, he was too dependable for her, and that eternity was better left for fiction and films where adoration, reality, and consciousness were better left unaccountable to each other.
“there were things I missed, though, and some part of me is happy to return and to find my place is here,” she continued. “I tried to escape but I can’t imagine ever leaving and not longing to be home.”
His eyes returned to the game on screen and as much as he tried to focus on the plays between teams, his mind wandered to the struggle within him and the desire to make the game of her and him begin again. He felt the gaze of her affection was possible and wondered which of them would win this fight.