Nathan for You & Bazin

This is a bit late, but that’s generally how I work. As it is, I think it’s worth remembering how innovative and hilarious the second season of Nathan Fielder’s Nathan for You was this year. Nathan was on a serious crusade against the complacent, modern-day film-going public in Season 2. I’d like to single out a particular episode—“Souvenir Shop; ELAIFF”—that was not the most lauded or headline-grabbing but which, for the purposes of this writing, proved fascinating and expansive in its scope. In fact, this particular episode may have successfully encapsulated the entire scope of cinema history by deliberately asking the wrong question—or asking the right question, as the likes of Bazin before him (as I’d like to contend and compare/contrast, if time serves), but deliberately doing so for all the wrong reasons. That question being: what is the minimum requirement for motion pictures/cinema/film to be considered as such? Nathan provided a wry, cynical, updated twist on Bazin’s query, “what is cinema?

Bazin sought to cull the full-potential of the medium, the essence of the form that only film or motion pictures could and can elicit. His conclusion, to poorly summarize, was the capacity to envisage “reality”—to portray existing (at the time of filming) objects in time (which can be experienced by the viewer in a mode akin to the manner in which we perceive time in everyday life) and construct a recognizable, habitable realm that in turn reflects back on the world in which we actually live, for better or worse. As you can tell from this rambling summary, this is not an easy question to answer if only for the reason that film/cinema can take so many forms and functions and thus becomes difficult to describe in any single way.

Nathan Fielder, in asking a similar if inverted version of this Bazinian inquiry, subsequently inverts the entire progression of cinema over the last century-plus, and brings the medium full circle, with a 22-minute TV show no less. Not half-bad. So, where to begin? It is important to note, off-the-bat, that the purpose of his experiment is unabashedly commercial, as is the Trojan horse premise of his program. On Nathan for You, our eponymous “hero” approaches middling businesses, usually in the Los Angeles area, with cockamamie-but-still-within-the-realm-of-the-possible marketing strategies. For example, he created a near impossible rebate return system requiring patrons seeking cheaper gas to climb a mountain and answer riddles, he also staged a viral-video creating a hero-pig for a flagging petting zoo, and, recently, he hooked a mechanic to a lie-detector test for customers, and convinced a real estate agent to guarantee her homes “ghost free”.

In his scheme for “Souvenir Shop; ELAIFF” he attempted to help an off-strip souvenir store spur business by setting up a fake movie set outside the shop. The mounting problem becomes: how does one make this legitimate so as to avoid fraud? Since he is coercing patrons in by labeling them “extras” and instructing them to buy large quantities of items, he is skirting legality. So, he must make this fake set-up into something legitimate or open himself up to legal action. The business angle is crucial here. By making his entry-point from a marketing angle (approaching the shop as a marketing consultant), the film set itself is thus purely an extension of this and thus becomes a business tactic designed to make money. There is no contention that this is meant to be a creative outlet or an art piece. The product is not the focus; it is the afterthought. This is the basis for his critique of modern filmmaking, but, things dig deeper from here.

So, how does a movie production draw people in? Here it obviously begins with location shooting—bringing the process to the people, thus spreading the word of mouth. So, here, the actual production process doubles as a marketing strategy, both literally—as they are one and the same in the program—and figuratively—on a theoretical/analytical level within Nathan’s veiled meta-critique. Once the location is strategized for maximum impact and set, what comes next? The material set-up of a movie production is also a large component of this scheme. In the program there is a particular set-up necessary to identify this as a film set. Naturally, you need an area cordoned off (to separate crew and spectators). This division becomes heavily symbolic within the episode as it represents the divide between the people who understand the set-up and those being duped. This dynamic heightens that which exists in real life between the industry insiders and the consumers to which they ostensibly cater. The manner in which Nathan sets up this dynamic is revealing in multiple ways. The fact that within this construction the difference lies in power and knowledge is significant for understanding Nathan’s criticism and analysis as it plays out here. In this construction, the industry (by which I mean mainstream Hollywood cinema, which is exactly the type which Nathan is recreating on a smaller scale) is essentially tricking the consumers/public into purchasing a product. Nathan literalizes this transaction within the episode by, in his role as “director,” ordering patrons/“extras” to buy more and more. In this way the criticism is clear and skews into dark recesses of consumer capitalism (again this resurfaces, probably not for the last time).

So far we have a set, and division between insiders and outsiders, then you need the apparatuses—large cameras, the larger the better, so as to attract attention. If you have large cameras it lets spectators know this is a larger budget affair and thus higher spectacle-potential. You also need your set personalities—director, actor, crew, etc. Nathan plays director, keeping his scheme in line. As such his job essentially becomes coordinating, organizing, and ensuring the marketability of the product. He is playing dual roles here and as such they coalesce and further color the underlying criticism of the piece. He is both freelance marketing consultant and film director, and as such he argues that they are, within this particular dominant portion of the film industry, one and the same. Of course, you can set up a set with cameras, but you still need the spectacle to draw people in—you need a big name actor at the least. Cue Johnny Depp impersonator (and a worse Johnny Depp impersonator to make the first one seem better by comparison). Spectacle is the key word, and Nathan puts all the components in place, but tries to cut as many corners as possible to reveal the artifice and absurdity of each piece.

Nathan strives for nothing close to this. His piece strives for ludicrousness and patrons buying in wholesale. Nathan is largely unconcerned with audience experience, whereas this is Bazin’s main focus in setting up his argument. Nathan must eventually achieve some rudimentary response (and this becomes another sticking point in his overall argument and critique of the system) but ultimately he seeks to undercut audience reaction as well by setting an improbably low-bar for what qualifies. Nathan acknowledges the various, frequently compartmentalized nature of the modern viewing experience. He watches his creation in solitude in his small office. He shows his judge confidant on the man’s back patio via his laptop, seeking approval. Finally, he shows his work on a screen at a small, local theater where he is holding his film festival. Even in this setting, the bleeding and coalescing that occurs between the settings is made apparent. The turnout is minimal, and those who do show sequester themselves in the back corner of the room. Viewership may still be associated with the theater and a communal, public space and display, but it is certainly not an overwhelming, interactive experience, and the cordoned viewing experiences of the expanding, fragmented viewing spectrum have not expanded the experience but rather flattened the process of viewership by association.

Once Nathan has created his work he decides he needs the acceptance of the industry community to feel truly safe from accusations of fraud. So, the next level of creating a legitimate work in the film industry is validation from awards. He tries to enter in well-known festivals but is denied so he decides to create his own (all he needs is the title of award-winning film, after all). So, he creates the titular film festival, finds a venue, creates a logo, and finds an industry vet to judge (the second-unit script advisor from Bonnie and Clyde). He also needs competition so he finds a short, unflattering, and repulsive video from YouTube and the festival is set. Nathans film, The Web (which I’m flattering by giving it the prestige of italics) follows (for about 5 minutes) the main character, who is a hacker (Johnny Depp played by Johnny Depp impersonator) operating out of the back of a souvenir shop (Nathan plays his colleague), trying to break the code to login to an asteroid headed for earth that was sent by Bill Gates (another impersonator). Nathan steals away while Johnny hacks to say one last goodbye to his girlfriend. They succeed in the end and earth is saved. At the end of this long, strange trip from marketing consultant to film festival creator, Nathan has defined what is necessary in the modern industry to have a film perceived as legitimate: spectacle, movie stars, narratives (doesn’t have to make sense), and awards, to name a few of the elements touched upon. This description is noticeably removed from the neorealists’ idealism and cahier du cinema writers’ criticisms, and has no interest in catalogues of technique and style by the likes of Rudolf Arnheim or David Bordwell. One might even say it actively affirms the worst postulations of the Frankfurt theorists by stacking layer upon layer of commercialism and manipulation and backing this up with evidence of real consumer behavior.

The response of spectators/consumers in at the bookend of the process is instructive. The patrons revel in the superficialities of the process—the celebrity, the spectacle, the disparate accoutrement—but the experience of the end result is humdrum (due in no small part to the finished product, but still). The contrast is stark and speaks to the potentially unsatisfying, displaced pleasure of modern cinema—as a concept, an idea, a grouping of superficial components and signifiers, that ultimately produce an unfulfilling experience. To paraphrase Dudley Andrew, who asked of Bazin’s conclusions (his optimism even): What would Bazin think of the cinematic formulations/constructions of today? Would his theories dissolve in what film has become? By way of conclusion, perhaps we can consider Nathan not simply as inversely proportional to Bazin, but rather updating Bazin, and his titular question for our modern conception and expectation of cinema. In this way he is perhaps asking exactly the right question to re-square our perspective on the matter—right, in the sense that it reveals changes, inequities, and degradations/devolutions (potentially subjectively) in the medium, but also in that it is perfectly calibrated to express the tenor, attitude, skepticism, and weariness of our modern (postmodern) vantage.

I’ve barely even touched on the film itself, which speaks to the thematic density of the set-up and the notion that the specifics of the work itself are ultimately immaterial and ancillary to most everything else, but there is more to discuss about the actual text, and once it is considered more, additional implications are sure to arise in the context of its creation and exhibition. Additionally, it is worth noting that the very presence of a failing souvenir shop, marginalized from more ideally located, successful operations, speaks to the sheer volume of the consumer industry within the area and within the film and entertainment industry as a whole. There are so many shops and outlets selling the same miniature plastic Oscar statuette that it comprises its own industry and place within the overall scope of the modern-day entertainment experience. Nathan has clearly aimed for the outside fringe of what can be considered “part of the industry” to display the absurdity of its reach. From this perspective, his brazen attempts to minimize, belittle, and define the lowest common denominator could be seen as cleansing and necessary for an unmoored industry seemingly hopelessly displaced from its history and potential. Of course, in all the schemes that Nathan pulls it is easy to forget that he too has his agenda and we too are consuming a piece of entertainment, constructed and crafted to elicit pinpointed responses. It is important not to conflate film and TV but in many ways the two become almost inextricably intertwined within the episode in a way that is explicitly (post)modern. There are many more layers to this onion. 

Stitched Time Patchwork: An Introduction

I’ll sporadically write about a variety of media forms/topics and specific texts whenever I come across something interesting; but, let’s stick with film as a whole to get things started. Film is an uncanny medium—at once familiar and recognizable but alien and abstract. These forms that flicker before us feel relatable and substantial. These are humans (often) before us, though they are flattened and non-existent. they are recordings of past actions, words, and feelings. So too are these environments they inhabit; they are given the illusion of depth and inhabitability but they are flat projections of light on a blank screen. These records are experienced at different times and in different ways (different environments, company, and visual forms, etc.). Time becomes fluid.

All this was clear from the beginning of the form. Purveyors diverged nearly immediately from the outset. Things were never concrete and categorizable. The Lumieres embarked on “actualities,” setting out to document and capture images and scenes from around the world and making them move before audiences’ eyes. They strove to document that which already existed; such was the unique capacity of these moving pictures (shared with photography, plus time). Edison, on the other hand, set about staging scenes, bringing in stage actors and the like to “studios” and having them “perform” “scripted” actions—dancing, strong-man presentations, make out sessions, …sneezing. From the beginning, film abided and sustained dualities—artificiality/reality, multi-dimensional settings/flattened environs, public/intimate, etc. We’re still parsing and reconciling the significance of this divergence and the many other complications, contradictions, complexities, and capabilities that have arisen subsequently. We should be so lucky to be confronted with clear dichotomies in this day and age.

So what is (are?) Loose Sutures? A rambling media blog where I attempt to make my difficult, knotty thoughts coherent. The title comes from the term/concept put forth by Kaja Silverman, among others, referring to the manner in which film is “stitched” together to create a perception (illusion) of a livable, physical realm. This concept extends in a number of directions based on this broad definition of suture. It could refer to the physical process in which series of still photographs are flitted across a light source to create the impression of movement (though this is sadly less applicable these days). Suture could also refer to Stephen Heath’s conception of the manner in which we (as viewers) align our experience of this illusory physical space with a particular character’s experience—a series of images sutured together by the desire to see. A physical world is continually mapped through roving desire.

Suture is revealing of how we watch film, how films are constructed, our culled voyeuristic desire, and the manner in which these intersect and interact to create a complex grid of interlocution. Generally, Suture represents an individual spectator’s relation to a text. How and why does one find relation, empathy, and other ambiguous/subjective feelings as physical or psychological responses to inanimate rays of light producing recognizable but skewed images before ones eyes? And, can we pinpoint specific triggers? We feel impulse responses as if we ourselves are a part of the narrative. We are inserting ourselves in a constructed scenario and we are relating, fusing our consciousness, perception, and response, with an “other.” In this scenario our understanding of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is in flux and complications of identity emerge, producing radical implications in many directions (psychoanalysis, epistemology, gender studies, ideology) and relating back on the very nature of film (visual media) and, even further, to the nature of discourse, culture, and desire at the essence of human existence. All this sounds sobering, even melancholy, but, on the contrary; it’s quite transcendent.

But loose…? Well, I’m looking to pull things apart, break down the illusion, and tease out meaning in the means of concealment. Film and media become more fascinating once you poke holes and dissect the innerworkings—just another paradox of modern media and modern expression. There you have it. Stay tuned.