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The Planets
Author: Gustav Holst
Year: 1916 Edit Add
Book: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
The Planets
Author: Gustav HolstYear: 1916 Edit Add
Book: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
…ultramodern hotel or office building lobbies with escalators rising in all directions and at various angles; shots of a street corner with sparse traffic, a child on a big wheel and a few pedestrians carrying groceries; a haunting closeup of detritus and children's blocks on the lakeshore (in one of which the Magritte hat reappears, in real life: poised on stick in the sand); Beethoven sonatas, Holst Planets, disco music, funeral parlor organs, outer space sound effects…
…ultramodern hotel or office building lobbies with escalators rising in all directions and at various angles; shots of a street corner with sparse traffic, a child on a big wheel and a few pedestrians carrying groceries; a haunting closeup of detritus and children's blocks on the lakeshore (in one of which the Magritte hat reappears, in real life: poised on stick in the sand); Beethoven sonatas, Holst Planets, disco music, funeral parlor organs, outer space sound effects…
Lawrence of Arabia - Theme
Author: Maurice Jarre
Year: 1962 Edit Add
Book: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Lawrence of Arabia - Theme
Author: Maurice JarreYear: 1962 Edit Add
Book: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
…the Lawrence of Arabia theme accompanying the arrival of flying saucers over the Chicago skyline; a grotesque sequence as well in which friable orange oblongs (that resemble Hostess Twinkies) are dissected with scalpels, squeezed by vises, and shattered by fists; a leaky container of milk; the disco dancers in their habitat; shots of alien planets; closeups of various kinds of brushstrokes; ads for 1950s kitchens; and many more. Sometimes these seem to be combined in longer sequences, as when the sheet lightning is overcharged with a whole series of opticals, advertisements, cartoon figures, movie music, and unrelated radio dialogue.
…the Lawrence of Arabia theme accompanying the arrival of flying saucers over the Chicago skyline; a grotesque sequence as well in which friable orange oblongs (that resemble Hostess Twinkies) are dissected with scalpels, squeezed by vises, and shattered by fists; a leaky container of milk; the disco dancers in their habitat; shots of alien planets; closeups of various kinds of brushstrokes; ads for 1950s kitchens; and many more. Sometimes these seem to be combined in longer sequences, as when the sheet lightning is overcharged with a whole series of opticals, advertisements, cartoon figures, movie music, and unrelated radio dialogue.
La Dolce Vita
Author: Federico Fellini
Year: 1960 Edit Add
Book: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
La Dolce Vita
Author: Federico FelliniYear: 1960 Edit Add
Book: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Sometimes, as in the transition from a relatively pensive "classical music" accompaniment to the stridence of a mass-cultural beat, the principle of variation seems obvious and heavy-handed. Sometimes the accelerated flow of mixed images strikes one as modeling a certain unified temporal urgency, the tempo of delirium, let's say, or of direct experimental assault on the viewer-subject; while the whole is randomly punctuated with formal signals -- the "prepare to disconnect" which is presumably designed to warn the viewer of impending closure, and the final shot of the beach, which borrows a more recognizably filmic connotative language -- dispersal of an object world into fragments, but also the touching of a kind of limit or ultimate edge (as in the closing sequence of Fellini La Dolce Vita). It is all, no doubt, an elaborate visual joke or hoax (if you were expecting something more "serious"): a student's training exercise, if you like; while such is the tempo of the history of experimental video that insiders or connoisseurs are capable of watching this 1979 production with a certain nostalgia and remembering that people did that kind of thing in those days but are now busy doing something else.
Sometimes, as in the transition from a relatively pensive "classical music" accompaniment to the stridence of a mass-cultural beat, the principle of variation seems obvious and heavy-handed. Sometimes the accelerated flow of mixed images strikes one as modeling a certain unified temporal urgency, the tempo of delirium, let's say, or of direct experimental assault on the viewer-subject; while the whole is randomly punctuated with formal signals -- the "prepare to disconnect" which is presumably designed to warn the viewer of impending closure, and the final shot of the beach, which borrows a more recognizably filmic connotative language -- dispersal of an object world into fragments, but also the touching of a kind of limit or ultimate edge (as in the closing sequence of Fellini La Dolce Vita). It is all, no doubt, an elaborate visual joke or hoax (if you were expecting something more "serious"): a student's training exercise, if you like; while such is the tempo of the history of experimental video that insiders or connoisseurs are capable of watching this 1979 production with a certain nostalgia and remembering that people did that kind of thing in those days but are now busy doing something else.