Oversight
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Hauntology is a concept in nascent state. That's why it is still flexible. Any good music with the word "burial" in it deserves to linked with the concept. Not including Basic Channel's Burial Mixes has been an oversight. I just set that straight.
Some background info on Basic Channel and its reggae releases labeled Burial Mix. If Wackies Records is the natural heir to Lee Perry (the same laid-back percussion, flying cymbals en relaxed groove), then the Burial Mix releases are the natural heirs to Wackies. There, we've just connected the 1970s to the 2000s
Deutsche Grammophon's Recomposed, Burial Mix and hauntology
Beginning with John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" sermon in 1630, American culture has been informed by a sense of its own exceptional nature. The notion of the Western hemisphere as a new world, a place filled with possibility and even magic, goes back to the initial voyages of Columbus, while the American Revolution gave even more impetus to the idea that the United States was a special place with a unique mission. As a result, America has always attempted to define itself through a network of invented myths and national narratives. Red, White, and Spooked: The Supernatural in American Culture details the development of our national myths which can be seen underlying the genres of country and film noir, the characters of Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, television hits like ...
My previous post provides me with an opportunity to provide you with a new instance of gratuitous nudity: a beautiful still from Africa Addio.
Africa Addio is a 1966 Italian documentary film about the decolonization in Africa. It was shot over a period of three years, by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, two Italian filmmakers who had gained fame a few years earlier (with co-director Paolo Cavara) as the directors of Mondo Cane in 1962. The image was taken from the Captain Trash[1] site somewhere in 2005. This site is a treasure trove of "trash culture". See its Google gallery here. See for example this image, of which I do not know the provenance.
Intentional and unintentional similarities in fiction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrV1sfJHLHg
- "All events, characters and institutions in this motion picture are historically documented and any similarity to any person, black or white, or to any actual events, or institutions is intentional and anything but coincidential." --from the credits to Goodbye Uncle Tom, see fictionalization and fiction disclaimer.
Thus opens or closes Goodbye Uncle Tom of which a clip is listed above and it provides an excellent introduction to the tenuous relation between fiction and reality.
Two more quotes provide further food for thought:
- "It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction." Fiction has to make sense - Mark Twain
- "The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed." --Edgar Allan Poe, 1840
If we represent the relationship between fiction and reality on a sliding scale we find on the left hand side: fiction which makes no claim to reality. This kind of fiction is nowadays always preceded by the fiction disclaimer:
- "Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental."
The above is sometimes preceded by "The characters in this film are fictitious,".
This kind of fiction is helped by Poe's quote in its theoretical approach. If done well, this kind of fiction is called the fantastique, that area of literary theory which provides us with an unresolved hesitation as to our position on the reality/fictitiousness scale. Another growth of this kind of fiction is the roman à clef a novel and by extension any sort of fiction describing real-life events behind a façade of fiction. The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include satire and the opportunity to write about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel.
On the right hand side of the scale we find fiction that does make claim to reality. This kind of fiction is nowadays usually preceded by the claim based on true events:
This kind of fiction is helped by Twain's quote in its theoretical approach. Real stories are often so unbelievable that we need to make the claim that they are based on actual events.
As a narrator of fiction, one is always aided by this claim to capture the audience's interest. This is true in the case of a joke (tell it as if it has happened to you), in the case of novels (Robinson Crusoe was soi-disant based on actual events) and film (Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) was supposedly about Ed Gein)
A whole range of concepts falls into this category, listed under the heading fictionalization: faction, based on a true story, false document, nonfiction novel, true crime (genre), histories (history of the novel), stranger than fiction and mockumentary.
The funny thing about the right hand position on the fiction/reality scale is that the act of narrating alters reality by default. I always illustrate this point by going back to your youth. You had a brother or sister and you fought with him over something. You went to your mother or father or any other judge-figure, who gave you both the opportunity to tell the story. You both came up of course with a different version.
Which brings me to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the observer effect. If the act of perception alters reality, the act of telling a story alters reality. That is why I dislike films such as Schindler's List because in this case, "real" documentary material is available. Maybe this is also the case for Goodbye Uncle Tom, but boy, I sure would like to see that film.
On May 7 1922 French writer Georges Bataille, during a trip to Madrid, supposedly witnessed the enucleation of the eye of the famous young bullfighter, Manuel Granero.
