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Stop Applauding Charles Dickens: A Bigoted, Aimless, and Opinionated Rant

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Daniel Blanton

About five minutes ago, I just finished the very last paragraph on the very last page of one of Dickens’s most beloved novels, Great Expectations: I confess sadly it was too much of a struggle for me to finish it when it was first assigned to me in high school, and even now as I lay the book down I must admit the British Literature course I am currently taking required me to have the book finished a good two weeks ago. So even though I had already taken the test and written a paper or two on the novel, I thought since I was so close to the end it might be a good idea just to finish the darned thing, if only to avoid having to read it again in the future. Upon finishing the novel once and for all, and evaluating it in context with every other Dickens novel I’ve ever read, a startling conclusion presented itself before me: a teacher who makes his students read Charles Dickens and then wonders why their writing is bad is like a mother who decides to live next to a nuclear power plant and then wonders why her children have cancer. So if you come across any particularly bad writing as you read this, please excuse me, as I have been studying Dickens intently for the purpose of writing this and may have been infected.

Now, I do not mean to say Dickens was a bad writer. Instead, I simply mean to say Dickens was a good writer who did a lot of bad writing. Many literary scholars wonder at what kind of great works Samuel Taylor Coleridge may have produced if he had never gotten himself addicted to opium: they see Coleridge’s genius shining through the few poems he did write, and lament he was kept from writing much more. Fans of Dickens will read his work and see the mind of a genius, and when I read something like Great Expectations, I also see the mind of a true master of language. The difference, however, lies in the fact these fans will often perceive Dickens as a visionary in complete control over his creative faculties, whereas I, on the other hand, see him in the same way I see Coleridge: as a writer whose great potential and talent was largely spoiled by unfortunate limitations.

First off, it’s important to remark the following — although an informed opinion — is merely an opinion. With this in mind, you’re now probably at the verge of throwing this rant down to the ground. Who am I to criticize Charles Dickens, after all? Surely I can have nothing of real value to say — but hold on a moment. A few years ago, I would have been incredulous at the thought Charles Dickens produced anything less than high-quality work. One cannot think of classic British literature without his name leaping to mind; as far as 19th-century British literature is concerned, his popularity is matched by no other. The difference between the way I looked at classic novels then and the way I look at classic novels now is now, having read considerably more novels from the time period, I have a standard by which to evaluate new works I encounter. I reference specifically the Russian authors — in fact, I am of a very strong conviction everything written in Russia during the 19th century put together holds more inherent quality than everything written everywhere else in the world during that same time frame. It is rumored in literary circles Hemingway remarked his chief goal as an author was for the very best of his works to surpass in quality the very worst of Dostoevsky’s works; toward the end of his life, he declared he had failed. Finally, of all the novels I have read, I have only encountered five I consider to be perfect: two of them are from 19th-century Russia. I bring this up only to eliminate the argument I am holding Dickens to too high a standard and I must change my usual criteria when evaluating 19th-century works. For if Dostoevsky and Turgenev were able to write what they wrote in their circumstances, then I must hold their contemporary Dickens to the same plumb line and question why he did not produce works of equal measure.

But now an entirely different problem arises: how does one measure literary quality, or any kind of artistic quality in general? To do this, we must examine certain examples individually and parse out positive and negative elements. While we have so many differing opinions on what good music is, somehow bad music is far easier to recognize: so I’ll begin with passages from Dickens that strike me as “bad music.” Let’s begin with Great Expectations.

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself pip, and came to be called Pip.

Okay, not a bad start. This concise opening clearly informs us about our character’s real name and the origin of his nickname. But then we move down only half a page and we get this gem:

To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine — who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle — I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Just when I think I’m beginning to like the book, a sentence like this comes along and makes me want to punch myself in the face. This process repeats itself about every two or three paragraphs on average. First, let’s address what is grammatically wrong with this sentence. Halfway through reading this sentence, I found myself struggling to remember exactly what the sentence was trying to say. This happens because Dickens places the subject of the sentence after the sentence’s midpoint, instead beginning the sentence with a prepositional object. And as if this didn’t disrupt the flow of the sentence enough, Dickens separates the subject from the prepositional object to which it refers with not one, not two, but three dependent clauses and a compound usage of the same “being” verb were. By making you rush through the sentence to discover the significance of the prepositional phrase at the beginning, Dickens makes all of the elaborately melodramatic prose he sets up (“gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle” … oh, how pithy) entirely superfluous. Rereading the sentence becomes something one does not of admiration for the sentence, but out of a struggle to comprehend it. This is the definition of bad writing. And what is more, the sentence is entirely irrelevant in the grander scheme of what’s going on in this opening chapter. When we begin a book, we care about learning a little bit about a main character, and information relating to the main character’s family is certainly helpful. It’s certainly beneficial here to know Pip has deceased relatives, and in Pip’s five deceased siblings we can see Dickens smuggling in some sly social commentary on Britain’s high infant mortality rate. However, at this point in the novel, do we really care enough about Pip’s inner imaginings to read a ninety-word sentence about fantasies of dead children with their hands in their trouser pockets? Absolutely not! In theory, a child’s whimsical daydreams might certainly enhance the intimacy the story has with our character’s thoughts. Such passages might even provide special insight into the child’s perspective of the world. Yet just as Dickens allows endless phrases and clauses to disrupt the flow of his sentences, he allows his sentences to disrupt the train of thought of the whole paragraph, and by extension the whole narrative he sets up.

I could dig up an example sentence like this from nearly every page in Great Expectations, and I could do the same for nearly every other novel I have read by him. Even the grand opening to A Tale of Two Cities, which I remember liking, fails on the same level. Though grammatically incorrect (it mashes together no less than 14 independent clauses in a row without any kind of conjunction — take note semicolons had been around for at least 300 years at this time, and Dickens still refuses to use them here), the opening to this sentence works because of its contrast:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….

I can’t help but admit this is poetry. It speaks a kind of mournful nostalgia for a time Dickens clearly yearns to have known but was born too late to take part in. But just as the sentence sets itself up for greatness, it has to spiral into this:

— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Wait … what?! This is the kind of sentence where you can know the meaning of each individual word, but when those words are put together, the obtuseness of the language becomes an indecipherable mess. Like, “being received in the superlative degree of comparison only”? What does that even mean? I would have to diagram this sentence to pick it apart, and I would even have considerable difficulty doing that. And before someone goes off saying, “you ignorant dolt, how can you assume just because you have difficulty understanding a phrase, everyone else does as well?”, I’d like to point out I searched that exact phrase on GoogleTM and immediately I found page after page on all sorts of different sites where people were trying to piece apart that specific phrase. So I’m sorry for insulting this beloved sentence, but the phrasing is just downright awkward.

So why is Dickens’s prose so bizarre? Well, earlier on I mentioned how I viewed Dickens as a genius constrained by limitations — it’s about time to explain what I mean by that. Dickens’s sentences are long because he was paid by the word, thus incentivizing him to write longer sentences. Wait. What’s this? Ladies and gentlemen, someone has just called and informed me Dickens was in fact not paid by the word. But, surely that can’t be true! I’ve had three different English professors confirm it to me! After all, there’s no other explanation for how someone who commands language so beautifully could write so poorly! … Well, turns out those three English professors were wrong. The “paid by the word” story is actually a popular myth generated by frustrated readers trying to explain Dickens’s awful prose. In reality, Dickens was paid per installment, a policy that encouraged him to write very long and bloated novels. And yet, this doesn’t explain his strange sentence structure. The only reason I could provide for that was Dickens, as a writer, was, as many readers believed in the first place, in full control of his faculties …  and he made the decision to write that way consciously. Looking back at these passages I’ve analyzed, a picture begins to emerge — a picture of a writer who goes back and revises his sentences with 100% craft but 0% restraint. It’s like if he comes up with a phrase he perceives as clever, he can’t let go of it. When you’re writing like Charles Dickens, anything that possibly could be said about the subject of your sentence must be said.

Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

That was the opening sentence to one of his most beloved stories, Oliver Twist. It’s not enough to say there is a building in a town. He feels he has to say he can’t tell you the name of the town; he has to avoid addressing the fact directly the building is a workhouse by prefacing it with “anciently common” and so on; he has to tell us he deliberately avoids telling us the birthday of the main character; he even has to tell us the reason he omits the birthday of Oliver Twist is because at this point we don’t care about what his birthday was! If you know we don’t care, then why are you including this information?! So let’s say you’re writing a novel, and you’re deciding whether or not to provide some piece of interesting exposition on your main character. These are your options.

A) Include that information.

B) Exclude that information.

C) Exclude that information, except tell your readers explicitly you’re not sharing that information with them.

The logical, simple choice for a writer would be A or B, and this would be correct. But if you happen to be a young and impressionable hardcore Dickens fan, I’d put my money on your choosing option C, which would give you this sentence:

On this fine day — and it was as fine a day as any other, as far as fine days are concerned — our hero was born, and as no good child is born without being christened, he was christened with a first, last, and middle name, the latter of which surely would be no matter of interest to you, and for this reason I provide the first and last name of this character only, which you already know because I named this book after him.

Does anyone see for any reason at all why a sentence like that could be somewhat problematic? So as much as it pains me to say it … *breathes in* … it certainly seems as this point Dickens was a … let’s just say “less-than-excellent” writer. You know, at least on some level.

So now a new mystery arises. If Dickens is indeed a … “less-than-excellent” writer … then why is his work so popular? In the end, it all really boils down to his characters. Now why did I say “characters” and not “great stories”? Truth is, despite the fact the “paid by the word” thing was a myth, Dickens was still paid by installments, so even though he told great stories, it takes a heck of a long time for him to tell them. He deliberately stalls for time focusing on minute events and then tries to attach significance to those minute events 200 pages later when he brings characters back around in the most contrived way possible. Oh, remember Jaggers’s maid? I bet you were wondering why he included her in the story and spent such a long time describing her and her relationship with Mr. Jaggers, considering she had no significance to the story at the time. Well, turns out she’s actually Estella’s mother! And Magwitch was the father! Bet you didn’t see that coming, considering it’s the most unbelievable coincidence ever.1 And I understand the same could be said of modern TV shows, how everything is all about building suspense over time and developing and exploring characters — and you know what, writing a 1,000-page novel where characters come back around and interact with each other in extremely coincidental ways over a long period of time is perfectly fine! I mean, Victor Hugo does it in Hunchback of Notre Dame and he does it even more successfully in Les Misérables and neither time does it feel contrived, because the novel is well-paced and way more entertaining (you know, aside from those Grand Canyon-sized detours where Hugo feels there is no possible way he could tell you this story without giving the most in-detail description of the Notre Dame cathedral and the philosophy of architecture in general … but maybe that’s a subject for another rant). I can’t say I don’t have a soft spot for Oliver Twist, but that was mainly because I watched the movie religiously when I was a kid — I shiver in fear knowing some day I’ll have to force myself to read the book. But I have read David Copperfield, which is basically the same semi-autobiographical rags-to-riches story told in both Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, except this time barely anything happens at all. And I also read Great Expectations, of course, which you know my thoughts on. And on top of that, I have read A Tale of Two Cities, which had a pretty touching ending, despite the fact I can’t really remember at all anything that happened during the rest of the book. And then, of course, there’s A Christmas Carol, which is probably the most popular of Dickens’s works, and which I can say is legitimately good; that one gets a free pass. The bottom line here is I believe the specific details of Dickens’s stories are generally not culturally remembered all that well — their characters, rather, are what receive more discussion. We may not remember exactly what happens in a story like Oliver Twist or Great Expectations, but we remember Oliver, Pip, Miss Havisham, Magwitch, Fagin, Bill Sykes, and Dodger. Dickens’s characters are memorable because they are caricatures — and such striking ones at that. Oliver and Pip are exceedingly pitiful and meek; Miss Havisham is exceedingly decrepit and crazy; Dodger is exceedingly friendly, Fagin is exceedingly stingy, Bill Sykes is exceedingly violent, and so on, and so on. Dickens heightens this notion of caricature not only through the behavior of his characters but also through his physical descriptions of them. This certainly creates entertaining and memorable characters, which is why they’re well remembered. But something tells me it limits these characters’ dimensionality. And of course two-dimensional characters would be fine if Dickens were writing merely comedy, but Dickens’s satire is more than light-hearted politics; it is a biting discussion of poverty and terrible working-class conditions, a discussion which oftentimes gets undercut by the light tone and happy endings Dickens prefers to use.

Which brings us to my final point: the seriously underrated Hard Times. Oh, so you think you were reading a long boring rant vilifying a time-honored and popular author? Well, in fact this was all an elaborate ruse: a trap to lure you into a carefully concealed book recommendation. Hard Times is one of the least talked about Dickens works, possibly because it is as every bit as depressing as the title seems to indicate — as if getting people to read a book entitled Bleak House wasn’t hard enough. But the difference between Hard Times and something like Great Expectations is while both make equally apt points about contemporary British society, Hard Times hits these points much harder through its pessimistic attitude. Most of its characters end the novel in an unhappy position, as opposed to Dickens’s lighter novels in which characters will come across good fortune by chance. Within Hard Times we see the full horrific consequences of a defunct social mindset, hence out of all the Dickens books I have read, Hard Times emerges as my personal favorite due to its absolutely jarring impact.

Consider the way the book is divided up: the first segment is entitled “Sowing,” the second “Reaping,” and the third “Garnering.” This is a story in which the behaviors of particular characters are set up, and time is given for their behaviors to result in consequences that extend far beyond their own sphere. “Reaping” and “garnering” often mean the same thing, but here a distinction is made: the “reaping” is the simple cutting of the grain, the emergence of the consequences. By contrast, the “garnering” is where the tragic hero of the story must walk out into the field and gather up the wheat that has been cut: in other words, he must fully face and acknowledge the events taken place are the consequences of his own actions in the past. This book has been praised for its social commentary, but it is far more than mere cultural satire because it dares to fully explore and develop the painful struggle of each of its characters. More specifically, it is a story about characters slowly discovering their own humanity; a cautionary tale about allowing strict reason to rule so supremely emotions are seen as weakness, illustrating how a society founded on such austere principles will ultimately come to ruin. This is demonstrated through the character of Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolteacher who instills this philosophy into the children in his classroom and the children under his own roof. The result: his daughter Louisa suppresses emotion to the extent she resigns herself to a loveless marriage with a man thirty years her senior, and his son Tom entirely loses his emotions altogether, becoming a criminal and encouraging his sister to enter into the aforementioned union for his own financial benefit. Louisa and Tom see absolutely nothing wrong with their actions because they were instructed to see the world that way. And then, all at once, Mr. Gradgrind and children watch their world collapse around them. The book is highly cathartic, as it concludes in such a way we see every character receiving a fitting end, but even more important, it’s delightfully short. Though nowhere near as good as A Christmas Carol, it’s important to point out why this book stands out amongst Dickens’s oeuvre.

My goal here in writing this has not been to defame a great author. Rather, I write this as a means of calling attention to literary flaws we may not notice when we’re not reading an old text as carefully as we could. I don’t wish to see Dickens removed from any school curricula, but I caution any young students interested in writing well to take extra special care as to how they are reading Dickens. And amidst all of these negative points, I want to call attention to my one positive: I have been able to find a great book I like by an author I greatly dislike, and if you feel the same way I do about Dickens, maybe you should give Hard Times a chance. After all, take into consideration while critics who enjoyed the novel have called it one of Dickens’s best, Dickens himself is reported to have disliked it. Perhaps, then, one might conclude Dickens is at his best when what he writes is the least Dickensian.

1I did not make this up. This is actually what happens at the end of Great Expectations.

8 ½: Art as an Act of Love within Cinema’s Quintessential Künstlerroman

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Julian Rhodes

It’s hard to think of an Italian director on the same level of fame and influence as Federico Fellini, and though a good number of modern filmgoers may not be familiar with him by name, it’s quite likely they’ve experienced him secondhand through the countless modern filmmakers he’s inspired. Elements of his style can be seen in the witty social commentary of Terry Gilliam, the surreal imagery of David Lynch, and the emotionally conflicted dialogue of Charlie Kaufman, while other films are just shameless exercises in homage, such as Kaufman’s own Synecdoche, New York, Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty — even that ending scene from Big Fish. And for good measure, I guess I should throw in that one short film Wes Anderson directed for Prada. Fact is, without this guy, we wouldn’t even have the word paparazzi, which comes from the character Paparazzo, a photographer from his 1960 classic La Dolce Vita, arguably the most well-remembered of his works. And while La Dolce Vita’s cinematic beauty and iconic status may have won it the rank of #39 on the BFI list for the top 50 greatest films of all time, 8 ½ surpasses it by miles, ranking within the top #10 on the same list.1 So, the question is … why? Why is 8 ½  considered to be such a great film — and, more specifically — why is it an important film for the film lovers of today’s audiences? The answer is simple. It is because 8 ½ remains to this day not only the definitive film about filmmaking but also quite possibly the definitive film about the life of the artist in general. Unfortunately, this is the kind of answer that only raises more questions, so let me explain exactly why I believe that to be true.

But before I move on to some of the film’s deeper themes, I have to take a moment to talk about exactly what kind of a film this is. In his 1947 film Bicycle Thieves, Fellini-contemporary Vittorio di Sica shows us the human condition through the struggle of a simple, innocent lower-class man driven to desperation. Fellini shows us the same kind of desperation, but in an entirely different environment, as he chooses instead to focus on the depravity of Italy’s lavish upper class. Here are the people who have everything the starving families of Bicycle Thieves lack, even to excess, and yet they’re entirely corrupted, left empty, searching for a sense of purpose and meaning that ultimately evades them. La Dolce Vita and 8 ½  both carry across these themes and ideas, but they do so in entirely different ways. La Dolce Vita is a stinging social commentary on celebrity lifestyle, a journey through seven days and seven nights of sin and debauchery. Not surprisingly, it happens to be the second saddest film I’ve ever seen — the saddest film I’ve ever seen being the aforementioned Synecdoche, New York, a story about a neurotic self-absorbed genius who begins an artistic project so grand and expensive it consumes his life entirely and physically and emotionally estranges him from everyone and everything he really cares about. Not coincidentally, this is also the exact same plot of 8 ½ . But going back to Fellini, I’d like to point out though 8 ½  and La Dolce Vita both produce entirely different feelings in the audience when each film ends, both films keep the same emotional tone for a majority of their respective narratives. Their endings really are the only thing that separate them into the genres of comedy and tragedy — whereas, on the whole, Fellini’s writing style floats in a balance between the two, so each film can reasonably be seen as a tragicomedy. Now 8 ½  is surprisingly funny, but note that with the amount of distressing dramatic content within the story, Fellini found it necessary to consistently remind people it was supposed to be funny, to the point where he had “ricordati che e un film comico” taped under the viewfinder of every camera: “remember that this is a comic film.”2 To pull something like this off — this interplay of painful realism with absurd humor — requires a series of emotional maneuvers of which only the most skilled writers are capable. Fellini is able do this by masking painful information beneath clever wordplay and snappy and detached delivery — which again, brings us back to Kaufman, who does this so often it you may as well consider it his trademark. The effect of this balance is though the entire film could be seen as one man’s psychological breakdown, the movie’s light tone and airy music keep you from being too worried about what you’re seeing on screen — except, of course, for those few moments when Fellini really wants you to be worried.

One of the first things you’ll notice with this movie is its use of bizarre imagery — even from the very first shot, it seems to be speaking its own kind of symbolic language. Fellini’s biographer Tullio Kezich writes at toward the middle of his life Fellini became fascinated by the writings of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and his respective theories on the subconscious — the director began to keep a dream journal and subsequently his films began to illustrate qualities of the oneiric.3 Oneiric film theory aims to interpret film in a way that emphasizes the parallels between the film and the dream, so the film can literally be seen as a dream shared by the artist and the audience — as French critic Roland Barthes beautifully points out, do we not walk out of the movie theater feeling almost as if we had just awoken from a long sleep?4 While it’s true not every film lends itself to this kind of psychoanalysis, many directors who view the medium in this way will deliberately work surreal elements in their movies as a means of guiding the audience to reconsider the film from this perspective, and many films are better enjoyed and understood when you watch the film as if it were a dream, the product of our collective subconscious. Films that operate on this idea can be found everywhere you look. such as Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and pretty much everything by David Lynch — and yet when it comes down to it, all of these directors’ uses of surrealism can be traced straight back to Fellini.

The symbols we see in Fellini’s dream sequences are by no means arbitrarily chosen. In fact, the fears and desires symbolically present in the opening scene are carried throughout the rest of the film, and just as much can be said for the reappearing visual motifs. In the first sequence we see Guido trapped between the glass windows of a car, just as his dead father is shown to be trapped within the glass mausoleum within the second dream sequence; the steamy bath house also refers back to the steamy car from the same opening scene. When I first saw the film, I was amazed when I first saw the sheer magnitude of Guido’s film set — unaware I had actually seen it within the first three minutes of the movie! And it’s hard for anyone to miss the unsettling similarities between Guido’s harem fantasy and his childhood memory of the wine bath. Within the dream, the environment is understood as a manifestation of the character — how that character interprets his own reality, and what he or she sees as important. Yet with Fellini ensuring the lines between dream, reality, fantasy, and memory stay blurred, the audience is forced into a deeper level of involvement with what they’re presented with — you have to figure out what’s going on in any given scene.

At the center of 8 ½ , is of course, Guido — dreamer and director. Guido is interesting because he is at once likable and repulsive. The movie introduces him as someone beset with stress, surrounded on all sides by producers and actors who never cease to barrage him with questions, and we can immediately relate to his frustration. But just when we feel we like this guy, the movie suddenly begins to explore in depth every single one of his flaws — contemporary critic Alberto Moravia describes Guido as “obsessed by eroticism, a sadist, a masochist, a self-mythologizer, an adulterer, a clown, a liar and a cheat.”5 He is a charlatan, attempting to mount his magnum opus at a time when he is, as Roger Ebert writes, “artistically bankrupt,”6 perhaps not unlike Fellini before the film entered development. When Guido begins working on his film, it is a story about a nuclear apocalypse, about a rocket-ship and mankind’s evacuation of a dying world — and yet when we see the screen tests, all of the characters are simply mirror images of the key players in his own life. In choosing to make the film, he desires to do something important, something beautiful, something to be remembered, but as he retreats into himself further and further, his massive science-fiction epic eventually devolves into self-gratifying autobiography. Here is a man who hides behind his sunglasses because he is afraid of the world around him, afraid of women, afraid of vulnerability, afraid of being disappointed and afraid of being a disappointment. Thus Guido creates art as a means of controlling a reality beyond his control, processing reality through his artwork in the same way dreams process our reality in a way we can understand. But in doing this, he distorts reality and ultimately loses touch with it. Guido’s very character is constantly defined by lies and deception, but more damaging than any of the lies he feeds the other characters are the lies he feeds himself, to the point where even he, and therefore the audience, can no longer distinguish between reality and fabrication.

In the midst of his trials, Guido seeks for answers in his wife’s medium friend, Rosella. He is free, she tells him. Free to do what, though? Free to choose, perhaps? For certainly, the entire ending of the film seems to hinge on one climactic choice — where he crawls under the table at a press conference, pulls out a gun, and points it towards his head. A gunshot is heard, but we see nothing. And though there is some level of ambiguity, most are convinced this doesn’t imply he kills himself — no, the upbeat optimism of the film’s final images conflicts with that idea too strongly. According to Fellini analyst Frank Burke, what Guido shoots is not himself, but his ego.7 When we encounter Guido at the film’s beginning, he is making art for himself — not exposing his weaknesses, but to hide them — even though what Guido primarily desires is a relationship built on vulnerability without judgment. He craves true self-expression, but also true acceptance. What he discovers at the end is the love he was searching for, almost unconsciously, and when he puts his own pride and selfishness to death, he discovers a glorious afterlife where he is able to live in harmony with everyone he has wronged. The film’s ending then redefines art as a gift to others, a bridge to unite artist and audience — so that the artist is noblest when he is most honest. Art is no longer, then, a burden or a duty. Art is an act of love.

Endnotes

1 “The 50 Greatest Films of All Time.” Sight & Sound. British Film Institute, September 2012. Web. Retrieved on 24 September 2015.

2 Walter, Eugene. “Dinner with Fellini.” The Transatlantic Review, Autumn 1964. Print.

3 Kesich, Tullio. Federico Fellini: His Life and His Work. London: Faber & Faber, 2007. Print.

4 Barthes, Roland. “En sortant du cinéma.” Communications, 23. 1975. pp.104-107. Print.

5 Moravia, Alberto. L’Espresso. 14 February 1963. Print.

6 Ebert, Roger. “Fellini’s 8½,” Chicago Sun-Times, 7 May 1993.

7 Burke, Frank. “Modes of Narration and Spiritual Development in Fellini’s 8½.” Literature Film Quarterly. 1986. 14:3. p. 164-170. Print.

The Music of Radiohead: A Contemporary Response to Postmodernism

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Julian Rhodes

Any fan of British alternative/progressive rock, or at least rock in general, should have some measure of familiarity with Radiohead, which, along with bands like Oasis, Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and The Verve, has over time become one of the most successful and influential British rock bands of the late ’90s and beyond. Radiohead’s style has changed over the years, as they began with a rougher grunge feel with their debut album Pablo Honey and afterwards began a transition to a melodic unamplified feel with the seven albums that followed. Upon the release of their iconic and well-received album OK Computer, they began to incorporate electronic elements, thus creating a fusion of acoustic rock and mellow electronics that evolved into their trademark sound. Radiohead has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, with the band’s work appreciated among critics and audiences alike, placing them as one of the greatest rock bands of all time.1

In this analysis I plan to focus on the stylistic traits of their music, with a large emphasis on the philosophy of the band through examination of their lyrics, particularly dwelling on the three albums they released between 1997 and 2001: OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac. Radiohead’s music tends to capture a particular emotional mindset of teen angst and paranoia toward the advancements of the modern age, whilst borrowing ideas from philosophies such as spiritual existentialism, nihilism, and postmodernism. It is easy to mistake the band’s image as catering to the teen angst mindset, but upon further listening experiences and examination of their material, I have realized the popularity of their content has stretched far beyond that assumed target age group. If angst is their primary emotional channel, it is not a juvenile hormonal angst, but rather an existential angst that stretches beyond circumstantial situations and addresses the basic human fears and emotional trials that confront us on a daily basis. There is a great deal of maturity in both the ideas and craftsmanship: the music itself is beautiful, but most importantly, the poetry is well-written.

And it should indeed be called poetry — the important thing to remember with all art is it inevitably is laden with connection to all art that came before it, and the poetic medium undergoes rebirth through every century and every decade. I do not doubt the greatest poets of our day are hiding behind the masks of musicians. This is why it is important to examine their work because it has achieved that perfect balance of cultural recognition and artistic value. It is poetry popularized, and therefore gaining an understanding of the artistic statements the band presents will further an understanding of it has contributed to the shape of the music world today, and by extension, postmodernist culture, if indeed their music can be considered postmodernist.

The song that originally catapulted the band into fame, “Creep,” is still their most well-known song, despite the fact they have produced eight albums since the song’s 1992 release. The most down-tempo song on their debut album, Pablo Honey, gained popularity perhaps because of its simple but powerful description of the universal unrequited love theme. The song depicts a basic unrequited love scenario: the insecure and self-loathing dreamer is tongue-tied in the face of unapproachable beauty. In the song’s second verse (I don’t care if it hurts / I want to have control / I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul) there is such a perfect rhythm of ubiquitous human desire, the nagging and ever-present feeling we are imperfect, followed by (I want you to notice / when I’m not around / I wish I was special / you’re so very special) — the same mistake we always make, in thinking we will find personal happiness and fulfillment in someone else’s validation of us. The scene crumbles beautifully as the second chorus fades into the bridge: (…she’s running out the door / she’s running out the… run, run, run, run…). The story ends here, in the same way it has ended for many of us lovers, at one point or another in our lives. Ironically, the album Pablo Honey has scarcely met with the same success as its hit single; it is often derided by true fans as Radiohead’s worst album, featuring generic and undeveloped tracks more referential to earlier styles of rock than anything else. Nonetheless, it has been named as one of the most influential albums of the decade by Classic Rock2 and one of the best rock debut albums of all time by the BBC.3

Their second album, The Bends, has met with even greater success, charting at #4 at the UK upon its initial release, reaching triple platinum status.4 The album is full of high points, beginning with the wobbly pianos of “Planet Telex” and ending with “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and its beautiful closing line (Immerse your soul in love / immerse your soul in love), chilling when sung in context with the rest of the song. But the song that stands out to me more than any other on this album is Radiohead’s second celebrated hit single, “Fake Plastic Trees.” As can be inferred from the song’s title, the lyrics focus on the ways in which modern life has become superficial, hollow, and plastic. In the song, a woman owns a watering can rendered useless to her because all the trees in her house are fake, while her husband sits and muses on his former job as a plastic surgeon. Their relationship, like the plants they have surrounded themselves with, has grown plastic and devoid of emotion. They put up façades as they try to fulfill the wishes of those around them (…if I could be who you wanted / If I could be who you wanted / all the time…), yet the strain of constantly trying to maintain the artificial images they construct exhausts them (…and it wears her out / it wears her out…). The song, at its beginning, sounds just as tired as the feeling it is trying to convey- only an acoustic guitar and a soft organ, so our attention is drawn to the strained voice of the storyteller. Yet the song has an amazing buildup. As the couple’s emotions build, drawing nearer and nearer to a genuine and passionate love, the guitar changes from acoustic to electric, bringing to the song to its apex. To describe it further would be pointless; I will leave off here and say it is a song no one should go without hearing at least once.

Now to draw attention to the band’s most famous album: OK Computer, one of the greatest rock albums of the 1990s, and possibly the best example of postmodernism in pop music. I use the term postmodernism here in reference to not only the nihilist atmosphere produced by the album but also the chaotic electronic musique concrete elements that find their origins all the way back in the folds of the late Dada movement. The album even shares part of the purpose of the musique concrete genre itself — to use electronic sounds to create a kind of music that illustrates the presence of technology in modern life. The link is evident, and the theme was even more relevant at the time of OK Computer’s release. The end result, however, is far from chaos. It speaks madness, but there is method in it. The chaos is tied together with a strong beat, mellow guitars, and piercing lyrics. It is described as containing themes of “rampant consumerism, social alienation, emotional isolation, and political malaise.”5 Even lead vocalist Thom Yorke comments on the album’s fragmentation. “I’m just taking Polaroids of things around me moving, too.”6 He continues, “It’s like there was a secret camera in a room and it’s watching the character who walks in — a different character for each song.”7

I’ll begin by addressing a song often referred to as the “Bohemian Rhapsody” of the nineties: “Paranoid Android,” the second track on the album, is its masterpiece. It is also the most musically complex; a true classic of post-Britpop approximately six-and-a-half minutes in length dynamic in melody and tempo throughout while remaining coherent on the whole as a piece of music. The song begins with a gentle guitar riff and a feeling of discomfort — lyrics speaking unfulfilled desire for solitude amidst the buzz and confusion of noisy company (Could you please stop the noise? / I’m trying to get some rest / From all these unborn / chicken voices in my head…). The final social withdrawal is triggered when a random stranger begins to launch into an unsolicited tirade against him (Off with his head, man / off with his head, man / why don’t you remember my name?). It is helpful to know: this segment of the song was inspired by an unpleasant experience Thom Yorke had at a bar in L.A., as he watched a woman explode into a violent tantrum when someone accidentally spilled a drink on her. The tension in the song mounts with the buildup of the feedback, tearing down the mellow feel the song had constructed in the first verse, signaling the increasing hostility of the forces closing in on the song’s narrator. Then comes one of the most beautiful moments in any rock song, ever: the electric guitars cut out, the beat slows the pace of a heartbeat, and the acoustic guitar strums softly like rain on a roof, and voices in the background sing a capella as if in a choir. As this steady tempo is kept, the lead vocal sings repeatedly and desperately: (Rain down, rain down / Come on, rain down on me / From a great height / from a great height). The hero of this song is broken and opening himself. He is reaching out for communion with the Divine, longing for a religious experience, for God to rain down love and mercy upon him. Yet the divine moment is interrupted — as the connection is nearly made, the faint bond is severed as all the worries and cares of the world seep in like water seeping over the top of a dam, whispering in his ear: (That’s it sir, you’re leaving / the crackle of pigskin / the dust and the screaming / the yuppies networking / the panic, the vomit / the panic, the vomit / God loves his children / God loves his children). The last remark is made sarcastically, as the narrator believes God has abandoned him. The song then descends into a violent chaos of sound, treading backwards through all of the melodies from the beginning of the song, bringing things to a dramatic and explosive conclusion as the narrator loses himself in nihilism.

“Subterranean Homesick Alien” is simpler; it tells a story of a man who fantasizes excessively over UFO encounters. The imagery of the song is conjured up for us by a beautiful guitar intro accompanied by celestial synthetic vibes reminiscent of an old ’70s sci-fi film. The following song, though, “Exit Music (for a Film)” is not only one of my favorite Radiohead songs but is also in my top three songs of all time. It was written for the Baz Luhrmann film Romeo + Juliet and plays after the end credits, and the song was reportedly inspired by the chilling moment when Juliet kills herself at the end of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet. No matter what version of Shakespeare’s play the song aligns itself with, the words and the melody remain the same, ready to attach themselves to any tragic tale of young star-crossed lovers choosing to die together rather than live in a society that forbids them to be together. Not that I’m a huge fan of this, absolutely not. It’s simply how the song tells the story. Recorded in an echoing hall with a stone staircase, the song begins with a sad guitar strumming borrowing a tune from Chopin’s Prelude No. 4, along with Yorke’s resonant vocals whispering the poetry into the mic. As the first chorus begins, a synth choir enters in the background, signaling the curtain of night falling over the elopement — but it is not until the chorus ends and the second verse begins when we first feel inescapability of fate. For in the second verse, played behind the vocals are noises that sound like the universe is literally caving in on the two of them — to create these sounds, Yorke went to a playground and taped small children playing on the equipment, and then reversed it in the studios. The stanza for this verse appropriately reads (sing us a song / a song to keep us warm / there’s such a chill / such a chill) for what happens next is truly chilling. The moment that next trembling note hits, there’s not a single time I’ve listened to it I haven’t gotten goosebumps. It’s rare a song is as immersive as this one is; few make you feel as Romeo and Juliet are passing through death’s doors you are passing through with them. As the vocals shout out the words (now we are one in everlasting peace) there’s a serene triumph and beauty to the story never there before, and in spite the two lovers mutter out to their families they hope they choke each other in the senseless feud. We forget so easily Romeo and Juliet never discovered the feud was resolved after their death — they died believing the fight would go on until the bitter end. In any event, the song is in a word: haunting. It deserves multiple listens.

To follow, “Karma Police,” one of the more successful singles on the album, is powered by a piano, acoustic, and drum lead for the verses and chorus, in which the song’s narrator, feeling irritated with other people, starts wishing they would get what they deserve, that the “karma police” would catch up to them eventually. What’s really beautiful about this song, though, is its spiteful tone makes a complete turnaround and the song redeems itself after the second chorus. After the vengeful (this is what you get / when you mess with us) the narrator immediately shifts into a joyful and melodic moment of (phew! For a minute there / I lost myself, I lost myself) a refrain that repeats until the end of the song. There’s a feeling of relief that is always welcome, that feeling when you’ve been doubting your own integrity and good nature because of negative feelings you’ve had toward yourself, toward other people, because of insecurity. That line (for a minute there / I lost myself) has always been extremely powerful for me because it’s in small epiphanies like this people find their identities; they say “No — wait. That’s not me. I’m a better person than this,” and then they pick themselves up and start making themselves something more like who they really see themselves as being, or who they really want to be.

Following the electronic decay of “Karma Police” are the abrupt computer generated words (Fitter / happier / more productive…) which begin the song “Fitter Happier,” if it can even be called a song. It’s really a monologue narrated by a computer that sounds like Stephen Hawking’s voice panel. It is perhaps the most depressing track on the album, but it is the most powerful because it says so much more than could be said with mere songs. The track consists of a series of disconnected sentences and slogans strung together in short succession. Halfway through, a soft yet ominous piano comes in and begins to grow louder in sound, building up along with other ambient noises only to fall out at the very end of the track to allow the listener to close in on the harrowing final statement. The lyrics are too good to not post here in their entirety: Fitter. Happier. More productive. Comfortable. Not drinking too much. Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week. Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries. At ease. Eating well. No more microwave dinners and saturated fats. A patient better driver. A safer car. Baby smiling in back seat. Sleeping well. No bad dreams. No paranoia. Careful to all animals, never washing spiders down the plughole. Keep in contact with old friends. Enjoy a good drink now and then. Will frequently check credit at bank. Favors for favors. Fond, but not in love. Charity standing orders. On Sundays Ring Road Supermarket. No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants. Car wash, also on Sundays. No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows; nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate. Nothing so childish. At a better pace; slower and more calculated. No chance of escape. Now self-employed. Concerned, but powerless. An empowered and informed member of society. Pragmatism, not idealism. Will not cry in public. Less chance of illness. Tires that grip in the wet. Shot of baby strapped in backseat. A good memory. Still cries at a good film. Still kisses with saliva, no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick driven into frozen winter s***. The ability to laugh at weakness. Calm. Fitter, healthier, and more productive. A pig in a cage on antibiotics.

Of course the album has its other small rarities — for example, “Electioneering,” a song about political compromise, (When I go forwards, you go backwards / And somewhere we will meet), or “Climbing up the Walls,” which was written based on the murmurings of mental patients Thom Yorke encountered while working in the asylum as an orderly. But the last jewel worth mentioning is the bittersweet lullaby “No Surprises,” the album’s ninth track. The lyrics tell of a depressed and lethargic life in its dying throes, yet it’s played with relaxing and nostalgic chimes and a sorrowful yet optimistic melody (A heart that’s full up like a landfill / a job that slowly kills you / bruises that won’t heal / You look so tired, unhappy / bring down the government / they don’t, they don’t speak for us / I’ll take a quiet life / a handshake of carbon monoxide / no alarms and no surprises, please). We feel there is both sadness and disappointment with the present world and happiness in the glimpse of a beautiful afterlife on the other side (Such a pretty house, such a pretty garden). Its melancholy poetry paired with the sleepy instrumentals bring for a very exquisite kind of sadness I have never seen achieved elsewhere, making “No Surprises” my favorite “sad song” and one of my ten favorite songs, ever.

The album opens and closes the same way, with a song about a car crash. The glitchy opening song “Airbag” uses the lyrics (…an airbag saved my life / in an interstellar burst / I am back to save the universe) to describe the feeling of wonder and empowerment one gets from realizing one has survived a near fatal car accident. To bring it back, the album’s closing song appears to narrate the thoughts of perhaps the same driver moments before the crash that happened prior to the beginning album, thus creating a cycle. The song’s soothing acoustics seem to narrate events in extreme slow motion, while the lyrics in contrast speak of going too fast (Hey man, slow down, slow down / Idiot, slow down, slow down). At a first glance, these may be the words that the man is shouting at the other driver — but perhaps it’s more likely the man is shouting at himself. Realizing he is on the brink of death, he sees he has not only been driving too fast, but he has also been going through his own life too fast. He’s been hurrying this way and that without stopping to take in the scenery, and now his short time on this earth may be over.

Kid A is an album I consider to be, in many ways, OK Computer’s close brother. The music and themes are similar, but Kid A has a darker, colder, and more bizarre feel to it — there’s not a song on the album with the kind of loud guitar choruses you hear in songs like “Electioneering.” The album creates a similar atmosphere of paranoia and reclusion, yet it bears a feeling different from the frantic buzz of the present; rather, it seems to reflect the emptiness of the digital cities and empty wastelands of a distant future. Yorke describes it as a speculation as to the possibilities of life after the modern age passes away, of a generation after the apocalypse. The title “Kid A” is a reference to the first cloned human. The sounds are experimental: primarily electronic, with a few soft guitars and often computerized vocals. If I mentioned OK Computer conveyed postmodernist ideas, Kid A illustrates this even further. The artwork for the album is bleak and abstract, the band’s style is in many places minimalist, and the lyrics for some songs like “Idioteque” were produced through what Tristan Tzara calls “dada poetry” — writing down phrases and pulling them out of a hat. What I find most interesting about the album, however, is its peculiar success. Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the UK and became the first Radiohead release to top the charts in the United States. OK Computer was an album that demanded a worthy successor, and for one of the few times in rock history, a band has produced a follow-up just as good as, if not better than, the first. Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and The Times all praised Kid A as the best album of the 2000s, and both Rolling Stone and TIME magazine name it as one of the 100 greatest albums of all time. Kid A introduced rock listeners to new styles of music previously unrecognized and changed the course of the band as it moved to the electronic ambient sounds it would use for the next decade and a half.

The album has a superlative opening: a beautiful C-minor chord on an electric keyboard, followed by a short succession of glitching vocals, then switching over to a major chord to begin the lyrics. The song “Everything in its Right Place,” and the main refrain, is nothing more than the words in the title itself: the song is a frenzy, detailing mankind’s incessant need to bring order to everything and simultaneously his incapability to do so. The music itself presents this wonderfully, as he sings for the need for everything to be in its right place, divided into black and white categories (There are two colors in my head / there are two colors in my head), the music slowly begins to spin out of control amidst the buzz of electric equipment — yet as the vocals dissolve and the cacophony takes over, there’s suddenly a uniting melody that wasn’t evident before, a final major chord rising up amidst the madness to show disorganization can be beautiful. The next song, “Kid A,” begins with the space age sound-effect of an electric whirr, something sounding remotely like a spaceship passing over head. It then changes to a pattern of notes played out on chimes, soon accompanied by deep low notes. All of the vocals on the song are computer distorted, and for a reason: Thom described the subject matter as “brutal and horrible,” within the softly spoken and easy to miss lyrics we find the words (We’ve got heads on sticks / you’ve got ventriloquists). The words no sooner arrive than they leave, and we are greeted with a sudden rush of instrumentals, as the gentle Congo drumbeat rises and the strings pour down like a waterfall. As the chimes from the beginning make a reappearance, we have one final phrase before the beat picks up and the piece falls apart: (rats and children follow me out of town / rats and children follow me out of town).

Several following songs bear interest: “Treefingers” and “Motion Picture Soundtrack” are both largely instrumentals-focused, and both “Optimistic” and “In Limbo” feature vocal echoes and rich acoustic guitar rhythms. “How to Disappear Completely” is the most sorrowful track on the album, something like “No Surprises,” but more straightforward, and more chilling (I’m not here / this isn’t happening), perfectly capturing the desire to simply leave your environment by dissolving into thin air. The frantic jazz riffs of “The National Anthem” along with the tense and eerie lyrics of “Morning Bell” (Where’d you park the car / where’d you park the car / Clothes are all alone with the furniture / Now I might as well / I Might as well / sleepy jack the fire drill / running around around around… / cut the kids in half / cut the kids in half) all serve to create a sense of building tension in the songs. Yet the most interesting and noteworthy track on Kid A would have to be “Idioteque,” which begins with a simple disco-reminiscent beat followed by a four-chord synth progression borrowed from electronic composer Paul Lansky’s experimental computer piece Mild und Leise. The postmodern style of songwriting affords the opportunity for a variety of interpretations, as the song as a whole is literally a collage of ideas. The song’s tone is slightly more ominous than some of the other tracks on the disc, the lyrics beginning as follows: (Who’s in the bunker / who’s in the bunker / women and children first / and children first / and children / I laugh until my head comes off / I swallow till I burst / until I burst / Until I…). As the chorus changes to a major key, we hear the words (Here I’m allowed / everything all of the time). Modern society aims to have no limits; the happier a society is, the easier it is to control. We forsake absolute values to allow minorities the rights they feel they deserve, as long as they’re consuming goods to grease the economic wheel. Meanwhile, factions scream for attention as they proclaim the existence of impending environmental disaster (Ice age coming / ice age coming / throw it in the fire / throw it in the fire / throw it in the / We’re not scaremongering / this is really happening / happening…). And yet we’re perfectly ready to ignore serious issues because we don’t want to be removed from our comfortable bubble of consumerism and gluttony. The album ends with the sad but beautiful lyrics of “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” which begins with a quiet organ but in its dying throes bursts forth into warm harp scales. This may be the song heard at the last remaining campfire in an ever-growing snowstorm. The album ends with the words (I will see you in the next life), closing off with a character declaring their belief in reincarnation, a concept that will be explored in the following album Amnesiac, possibly a “reincarnation” of Kid A.

Having gone on for so long, I don’t know how much I can say about Amnesiac. While Kid A is about the distant future, Amnesiac seems to point to the distant past, and as can be implied from its title, a past forgotten by the souls reincarnated. The album draws heavily on ancient mythology and historical themes: “Dollars and Cents” mentions “wandering the promised land,” “Like Spinning Plates” says (you feed me to the lions), “You and Whose Army” references the Holy Roman Empire, and “Pyramid Song” was inspired by an exhibition of Egyptian artwork Thom Yorke visited. In his comments on the album, Yorke compares London to the labyrinth of Minos, and on the cover of the album is the weeping minotaur. We are not Theseus. “Dollars and Cents,” a song with wavering guitars and tingling percussion reminiscent of the clinking sounds of the currency in its title, describes how as members of society, we are always trying to be constructive toward each other in conversation, in our careers; yet, at the same time, human beings seem to destroy everything they touch. No, we are not the hero wandering the corridors of the labyrinth — we are the beasts placed in the labyrinth to devour him. Amnesiac is more than just an analysis of the past, though. It ties together the themes of the past with modern imagery, it plays with our memory as it gives a reprise rendition of “Morning Bell” put on the album to sound like a “recurring dream”; we’re remembering something from an earlier album, but it’s distorted, stretched out like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, as if our memory of it is conflicting with what we’re currently experiencing. That’s why the alternate title of the track is “Amnesiac.” What the album does is it brings the past, the present, and the future together. It includes within it echoes and reflections of OK Computer’s present and Kid A’s future. Humanity is not always dealing with the same problems, but it is always dealing with problems. We still feel, we still laugh, we still love, and we still weep. Time is irrelevant. We are the same.

Amnesiac begins with a song entitled “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box,” a title so cramped there’s not even enough space for all the letters in some of the words. The song begins with a metallic beat, followed up with low synthetic tones, and the lyrics (After years of waiting / nothing came / after years of waiting / nothing came / I’m a reasonable man get off my case / get off my case / get off my case). The song is supposedly about rush hour in the London underground, and though I really should examine it further, I would like to turn most of my attention to the second track, “Pyramid Song,” which Yorke hails as the best song the band has ever recorded. With songs like “Exit Music,” “Paranoid Android,” “No Surprises,” and “Idioteque,” it’s very hard for me to agree with him, but “Pyramid Song” is a worthy contestant in the running. The song romantically and poetically handles the Egyptian view of the afterlife and infuses it with modern emotion, beginning with a stony piano chord progression, haunting vocals, and strings and percussion that fall like water during the instrumental chorus. The lyrics read (Jumped in the river, what did I see / black-eyed angels swam with me) the river is the River Nile, the River Styx, or both — it is the river crossed in the voyage of death. The narrator of the song is already dead; the black-eyed angels are the black-eyed crocodiles that swim in the river. (And all my lovers were there with me / all the past and future / and we all went to heaven in a little rowboat / and there was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt.) This originates from the Egyptian belief a man’s possessions, servants, and wives will travel into the next life with him. For an Egyptian, life was spent in preparation for the afterlife — the Egyptian culture was death-centered. In that perspective, this is not a sad song; this is a happy one. It describes the fulfillment of an event one has spent one’s whole life preparing for. As a Radiohead song, it is the only one I can bring to mind that treats death optimistically. There is a great element of peace in it and possibly an element of hope as well. But better than that, the song is beautifully orchestrated — it has an exemplary progression and a pining atmosphere with it that most alternative music today cannot compare to.

The following song, “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors,” is a mixture of electronic sounds that don’t seem to follow any specific beat, paired with words spoken through auto-tune that describe the various types of doors, symbolic of the different people, opportunities, and decisions we encounter in life. The song ends on the echoing warning (But there are trap doors / that you can’t come back from). The song after that, “You and Whose Army?” is one of my favorites on the album, as it begins with a muffled and timid voice calling out threats and challenges (Do you think you can take us on?) but then, as the confrontation escalates to a fight, the soft strumming guitar is quickly joined by a drumbeat and piano, and the voice raises to a full shout — when the song is through, both sides have been bluffing, and both sides have broken promises. Another notable track, “Like Spinning Plates,” starts with the most dizzying musical intro I have ever heard: a series of whirling electronic notes, growing suddenly loud, suddenly soft in quick succession as the background instrumentals slowly come in, present Radiohead’s trademark paranoid feel, but this time in a different way than ever before. The album closes with the song “Living in a Glass House,” where the band achieves the jazz sound they always wanted to, but never could, produce. The jazz is not the smooth jazz of lounge radio but the harsh jazz used in Duke Ellington’s music, the kind of jazz Radiohead paid homage to in tracks like “The National Anthem.” The style is intended to replicate that of a New Orleans funeral, and the lyrics concern the impossibility of privacy in the modern age, as a woman tries to paper her windows, but this is futile because she lives in a glass house, where every passerby can see her daily activities. The last two lines sum up the growing transparency of modern lifestyle despite our efforts to prevent it (Well of course I’d like to sit around and chat / but someone’s listening in).

While I’d hesitate to call Radiohead one of my favorite bands due to subject matter and perspective, I do not hesitate in the least to recognize the quality of the work they have produced. They are one of the best bands to have emerged within the past twenty years, continuing the tradition of alternative/progressive rock, forging ahead by experimenting with styles, and illustrating that music can still be meaningful and thought-provoking.

References

1 Jonathan, Emma. “BBC Worldwide takes exclusive Radiohead performance to the world.” BBC. 3 May 2011.

2 Classic Rock/Metal Hammer. “The 200 greatest albums of the 70s, 80s & 90s.” March 2006. Archived at muzieklijstjes.nl.

3 Spicer, Al. Radiohead Pablo Honey Review. BBC, 2008. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/j5xm&gt;.

 4 “1996-02-10 Top 40 UK Albums Archive”. Official Charts Company. <http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/albums-chart/19960204/7502&gt;.

5 Wikipedia. OK Computer. (13 Mar 2015). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer&gt;.

6 Sutherland, Mark (24 May 1997), “Rounding the Bends”, Melody Maker.

7 Sutcliffe, Phil (1 October 1997), “Death is all around”, Q.

Is Fight Club the Quintessential Modern Film?: A Critical Analysis of David Fincher’s Turn-of-the-Millennium Cult Classic

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Julian Rhodes

“What is the greatest film ever made?” This is a question that continually challenges film enthusiasts throughout the world. For with this question comes a greater question — how are we to evaluate greatness and excellence in a film? The answers to both questions vary from person to person, as standards for art critique are vastly subjective. But beyond individual response, there is also a cultural response to these questions — for fifty or more years, Citizen Kane (1941) was hailed as the greatest film ever made, holding the top spot on polls taken by multiple film institutions. Only just recently was it ousted from the #1 position on Sight & Sound’s “50 Greatest Films of All Time” list. The film that replaced it was Hitchcock’s colorful and haunting masterpiece Vertigo (1958). Is Vertigo a better movie than Citizen Kane? Absolutely; though at the moment it’s best not to explain my reasons for believing so. But is Vertigo the greatest movie ever made? Most likely not. Vertigo is a perfect movie, in many senses — but in order for a movie to be given a ranking that places it above all others it must be more than perfect — it must be quintessential, “quintessential” meaning in this context a film that portrays key facets of the human experience, relating them to classic archetypes while staying within an original and consistent aesthetic, in short, the purest example of a film.

When I was stirring this question around in my head about a year ago, searching for the “quintessential” film, I was trying to find something that would have artistic excellence, unique ideas, popular appeal and cultural significance. Then I saw Fight Club. My immediate response was confused, but elated — I felt in a way I had found the greatest film I had ever seen because it was “quintessential,” but at the same time, was it “perfect”? No. The pacing seemed off in some parts, and the plot was so insane and twisted at times the film appeared to lose its own coherency; even the framing and the aesthetic could have been a bit more finely mastered. Could a film that is quintessential but flawed be better than a perfect one? Perhaps. But then I had to wonder, could the film ever be considered as one of the greatest films of all time by any respectable institution? Despite all the good questions of ethics and sociology a film like Fight Club raises, it was marketed as a violent blockbuster and will hence be viewed as such. And yet some films on many lists were once seen as nothing more than simply really good blockbusters. Does age change a film? In the future, will Fight Club be looked at with the same fondness with which we look at films like, say, The African Queen? No one can really say — but why are films like Fight Club brushed aside by many respectable critics? Why not put Fight Club in the top 10? I am not saying the film is the best film ever made, that it deserves to outrank films like Vertigo, Apocalypse Now, or Aguirre: The Wrath of God. However, I do aim to encourage you to challenge your own conceptions of what a perfect film looks like. The argument I hope to make here is as a film, Fight Club is the a keystone example of the union between thought-provoking artful cinema and popular mass-market action-suspense cinema and therefore is a culturally valuable piece of art that deserves more recognition within the world of film analysis. I will do this through examining first: the storytelling and narrative, second: the use of aesthetic, and third: the philosophical themes presented within the film.

Narrative. The film captures our suspense from the opening shot. It begins through a stunning visual effects sequence of painstaking CGI — the nerves of the brain, electronic impulses passing back and forth through a tense mind. Immediately this tells us what to expect — this is going to be a film of the psychological, perhaps of the psychotic. The camera pulls back further and further until it passes out through the skin pores and pans back to show us the narrator of the story, sitting in a chair in a dark room, with the barrel of a gun stuck inside his mouth. We are soon informed he is being held hostage by one Tyler Durden — we are also informed through another visual effects shot there are vast quantities of explosives surrounding the foundation pillars of several skyscrapers surrounding. Now that the stakes have been placed on the table, the narrator feels it’s safe enough to take us back to the beginning of the story and explain all the events that led to this moment. We are hooked, and then very abruptly reeled in, held in curiosity until the end of the film. Chronologically, the story really begins with the main character’s insomnia. Note that the narrator and protagonist is never named — he is the hopeless everyman on the quest for truth and enlightenment — a truth that constantly eludes him. Though, for the sake of convenience, we shall call him Jack, as he is called in Jim Uhls’s script.

Through clever uses of visual montages and special effects, we are shown the protagonist’s world — he is living in a state of apathy, trying to give his life meaning through his IKEA purchases — to quote the film directly, “Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct. If I saw something clever like a coffee table in the shape of a yin-yang, I had to have it … I flipped through catalogues and wondered: what type of dining set defines me as a person?” He consults a doctor about his insomnia, where he complains he is in pain because of his sleep loss. The doctor’s response: “You want to see real pain? Swing by First Methodist Tuesday nights. See the guys with testicular cancer. That’s pain.” Having nothing else to do, he takes his doctor’s suggestion and visits “Remaining Men Together.” This phrase resonates throughout the film: remaining men. The character Tyler Durden’s entire fight against society is built upon the idea society is slowly emasculating us — the struggle is to not sink into apathy, but rather to feel the vibrancy of life, the feeling of freedom and strength men are intended to feel. Our unnamed protagonist becomes addicted to these support groups, to people sympathizing with him because they believe he’s been through some tragic circumstance. This is his first experience of “hitting low” — another theme that resounds throughout the film.

What disrupts this empty bliss? Marla Singer — a cigarette-smoking, punk-goth, neo-noir femme fatale. We get a picturesque image of her face as she smokes indoors, while wearing sunglasses — her mouth is an empty abyss, we are staring into the endless darkness of something that looks, by all appearances, utterly hollow. Marla brings chaos into our hero’s life because she reflects the lie he is living — she exposes him to himself, his deception. He has an attraction toward her he is afraid to admit, and he feels inadequate because of her presence in his life, she is a reminder he doesn’t stand a chance with her.

Now he feels empty, powerless. Hence a new force steps into his life — Tyler Durden, a charismatic stranger he meets on a plane, who claims to make a living by selling soap. Tyler claims the oxygen masks on planes are to make passengers high so they don’t panic in an emergency situation, and equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate can be made into an explosive. Strangely enough, that very night Jack’s apartment explodes. Having nowhere else to go, he calls Tyler up using the number on his business card. The two share a drink, after which Tyler invites Jack to his house. On their way out of the bar, Tyler asks him to hit him as hard as he can. “You never know yourself until you’ve been in a fight,” Tyler says. Neither of them have been in a fight before. They fight, with no reason between them for doing so — and they find it strangely therapeutic. Soon it becomes a group activity: other people join in, and before long, a fight club is started. People meet once a week, fight, and then go back to their normal jobs, pretending like none of it ever happened. This becomes a new therapy group for Jack, his second “Remaining Men Together”; at one point he compares the group of hollering men to a Pentecostal Church.

As Jack lives with Tyler in his dilapidated house, Tyler slowly begins influencing him with his principles — the life they embrace is so disconnected from the rest of civilization their behavior and ideals become closer and closer to a naturalistic animal-instinct state. They go out and start “sizing things up” with their life-or-death survival-of-the-fittest logic, looking at people and wondering how well they’d fare in a fight. The fight club is compared to “a Pentecostal church”… the experience of hitting the ultimate low is described as “enlightenment.” There is a very masochistic nature to Durden’s philosophy — it is only from giving up and realizing there is absolutely nothing left to live for that true knowledge of the human condition comes: to Tyler, this is “enlightenment.” “Self-improvement is [self-stimulation],” to quote/paraphrase Durden, “now self destruction.” Durden slowly evolves Fight Club into something beyond a therapy group, something resembling a fascist terrorist organization, through which he wreaks anarchist havoc on the city’s symbols by destroying corporate art, smashing car windows, blowing up computer displays, etc. As the chaos caused by Tyler’s organization “Project Mayhem” increases, Jack tries to distance himself from Tyler — only to discover he and Tyler are the same person: Tyler’s aggressive personality was his own mental projection. Tyler is the person Jack secretly wishes he could be. Now Tyler has evolved into a threat to himself and others, and he must find a way to seize back control before Tyler takes over his life entirely. Jack discovers Tyler plans to demolish all the buildings belonging to major credit card corporations, in an attempt to set everyone’s debt back to zero. Jack has a final climactic confrontation with Tyler, during which he diffuses only one of the bombs. He finally finds a way to rid himself of Tyler, by putting the gun in his mouth and shooting through the cheek — the bullet does not kill him, despite the physical damage it causes the trauma of the gunshot is enough to give him the mental shock he needs to restore his sense of objective reality and bury Tyler down in his subconscious forever. In the final moments of the film, he is reunited with Marla, brought back to him through unfortunate circumstances. They stand on the balcony of the building, looking out the window. “Everything is going to be fine,” he says. No sooner has he said this than the buildings in the background explode, and the song “Where is My Mind” by the Pixies begins to play as the skyline crumbles. The narrative choice to end the film on a note such as this indicates while his life is back to normal, Project Mayhem continues. Does this mean Tyler’s philosophy was correct? Society needs to be destroyed and rebuilt? Not necessarily. It meant Tyler was, in a way, successful — not that he was necessarily correct. The film presents the opposing views objectively and asks you to interpret the events and decide for yourself whose side you’re on.

Style/Aesthetic. The director David Fincher (known for Se7en, The Social Network, and most recently, Gone Girl) was highly particular on the aesthetic to his film — it’s a look that’s hard to describe. When the film prints were sent to the studios, there were complaints about dirt and smudging on the film. This was intentional. The film was tinted to become darker, browner, greener, or bluer in some sections — all to establish a neo-noir effect; that the frames are smudged, shaky, intercut establishes a sort of grunge. “Fight Club presents Tyler’s stylized, designer-grunge-aesthetic as the alternative to Jack’s erstwhile affluent IKEA-appointed environment and constructs an excessively squalid mise-en-scène as a lifestyle choice. Tyler delivers an agitational address to a large Fight Club residency that meets illegally in a dank basement during the midway plot-point discussed above” (Bedford 8). The settings and mise-en-scène, especially in the basement where the fights take place and the house on Paper Street, are consistently associated with low-key lighting and the feelings of wet and dry. As it rains, water drips through the floorboards of the house. Dust cakes in the windows on a hot day. In the fight club, puddles of blood form on the floor — yet later we see Jack looking at the dry floor and thinking of the feet that scuffled there the night before.

Fincher’s work on the project gives it a distinct out-of-the-box feel: there are bizarre and surreal moments like the meditation scene, where Jack imagines himself in a cave of ice, confronting his chakra animal, a penguin that looks at him and says nothing but “Slide!” in the voice of a child and then slips away. Strange moments like this would not happen were it not for Fincher’s unique touch; his creative insanity. The film is full of odd moments like this, little treats for the audience, that give it a multi-flavored and zany feel. The best of these are what Fincher calls the “subliminal Brads” — moments before Tyler Durden is introduced, he appears five times in the film, for one frame only. This subliminally introduces the character to the audience before they even meet him (Smith). This parallels the film editing Tyler does when he works as a film projectionist and splices single frames of pornography into children’s movies — it is as if Tyler himself is editing the movie we are watching.

This is not the only instance in which flash-frames are used within the film. The use of brief and passing frames are used to great effect in the “chemical burn” scene in which Tyler pours lye onto Jack’s hand and forces him to deal with his pain. The narrator attempts to retreat into meditation to imagine away the pain, but Tyler tries to awaken him back to reality. “The excruciating bodily pain caused by the chemical burn immediately catalyses a visceral thought-image montage that vies for prominence amongst the action images,” writes William Brown, “The narrator initially attempts to apply meditation to escape the intense pain, and viewers are presented with serene images of a green forest. After returning to a close-up of the hand, now bubbling as his flesh chemically dissolves, mental images of fire and intertitle-like images isolating words like ‘searing’ and ‘flesh’ intermix with sounds of intense burning and crackling. These compete with Zen-like images of trees, birdsong and the narrator’s healing cave as he attempts to escape these overwhelming feelings and sensations” (288). The pain and mental urgency of Jack’s situation is communicated effectively into the minds and hearts of the audience through stark imagery we are forced to process very quickly.

Philosophy. The film discusses a wide variety of philosophical topics, namely consumerism, authoritarianism/fascism, Übermensch/nihilism, masculinity/gender roles. All of these tie together into one unifying theme — as humans living in the 21st century, what do we find our identity in? What do we use to define ourselves? The essential problem presented in the film is we have a society that bases self-worth on achievement, that encourages us to communicate our identity to other people through what we buy, that having a job is the end, not a means to some higher goal. While this is not always true, it is largely accurate and therefore concerning. The fight clubs Tyler starts are attempts to solve this problem; when people connect to their primal selves, they come alive. To quote Tyler, “In the world I see, you’re stalking elk through the damp canyon forest around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn. Laying down strips of venison down on the carpool lanes of some abandoned superhighway.” In the film, Tyler performs what he calls a “human sacrifice,” in which he points a gun to a small-time store clerk’s head, asks him what he studied for in college, what he wanted to be in life. He responds saying he wanted to be a veterinarian. Tyler takes his license and says, “I know where you live. I’m going to check back on you in six weeks. If you’re not on your way to becoming a veterinarian, you’re going to die.” The scared man runs off, promising to pursue a degree in biology again. The narrator stands befuddled, looking at Tyler and asking why he did that. Tyler responds, “Tomorrow will be the best day of that man’s life. Tomorrow, he will eat breakfast and it will taste better than any meal that you and I have ever tasted.” Tyler’s goal is a destruction of society, but what will he profit from it? What are his ideals? From these two scenes, it seems what is important to Tyler is people look at themselves and feel they are doing something important. As Christians, we derive our sense of worth from our connection to God, our purpose in living comes from His mission to us. Christ is our identity. What Fight Club demonstrates, albeit unintentionally, is deriving a personal sense of worth from anything else will lead to disastrous results.

Tyler is a poster-child of nihilism — Nietzche’s Übermensch. “Our fathers were models for God, and they bailed on us. Now what does that tell you about God? We are the middle children of history — God’s unwanted children.” Thus is Tyler’s perspective on reality. The schism with the father figure and the mother figure is what defines the entire subversion quality within the film (Gunn 287). Jennifer Barker makes the connection between Tyler’s “Project Mayhem” and fascism in her article “A Hero Will Rise”:

[Jack] becomes addicted to submission, first finding the freedom of “losing all hope” with self-help groups and then replacing this with the freedom of losing all control with Tyler. He destroys his past and his identity upon Tyler’s arrival and submits completely to the meaning Tyler creates. This experience, not only of submission, but the feeling of freedom through submission is a process required of fascism’s political agenda. Hitler, in Mein Kampf comments that the masses, by giving in to the strong man, engage in a complex game of denial: “They are equally unaware of their shameless terrorization and the hideous abuse of their human freedom, for they absolutely fail to suspect the inner insanity of the whole doctrine. All they see is the ruthless force and brutality of its calculated manifestations, to which they always submit in the end.” Or, as the narrator points out: “Sooner or later, we all became what Tyler wanted us to be.” This process is fundamental to fascist subjectivity, requiring a misconstruction of the self in terms of an ideal other, and for the narrator, manifests itself in a literal misrecognition of Tyler Durden.

It is only through the loss of identity the authoritarian submission-based state Tyler starts is possible.

Critical reception of Fight Club can go to one of two extremes — critics have either lauded it or hated it. It would not be a lie to say it is one of the most controversial films of the past twenty years — the mistake to make while analyzing the film is to believe it advocates the violence and rebellion it portrays. “In one of the more apoplectic slams, Rex Reed, writing in The New York Observer, called it ‘a film without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in hell.’ More than one critic condemned the movie as an incitement to violence; several likened it to fascist propaganda. (‘It resurrects the Fuhrer principle,’’ one British critic declared.) On her talk show an appalled Rosie O’Donnell implored viewers not to see the movie and, for good measure, gave away its big twist” (Lim). The film does not advocate violence — in fact, the entire point of the ending of the film is to laugh in the face of Tyler’s agenda and beliefs — it is those beliefs that are destroying us, that must be opposed. The film complains about the consumerist apathetic society, yes, but it is just as much about the counter-reaction to that society, and it shows how both are wrong. Who we are is something for ourselves to decide. When we simply allow ourselves to be defined by the material and the physical, we degrade from humans and become more like machines or animals.

To conclude, if Fight Club is not one of the greatest films of our time, it is one of the greatest films of our era — I have not seen another film made since 1999 that has equaled it in sheer impressiveness. Why is it great? Because it is important, because it provokes heated discussion amidst the film world. The movie is analyzed extensively, so surely it is finely crafted. And it is also debated extensively, so it must have left an impact. Dare I even mention its massive cult following? It has become an icon of popular culture. Unlike many critics, I do not believe it is pseudo-intellectual. Though it is clever, it is not as pretentious as some would argue. It does not market some new panacea-philosophy, but rather encourages us to look around us and rethink things. Are we allowing ourselves to be deceived by the popularly conceived notion of masculine ideal? What do we find purpose in, in a world caught between a deluge of marketing and a violent counter-culture? Where is the world going from here, as a new millennia begins and the world becomes more and more populous and more and more technology-inundated and culture-inundated?

Having nothing more to say, my final urge is this: if you have seen this film, I encourage you to pay attention to these things if you choose to see it again. And if you haven’t, I hope I’ve helped you to rethink your ideas about what you’ve heard about it. And as a last safe reminder: keep hydrated. It’s cough & cold season.

Bibliography

Barker, Jennifer. “A Hero Will Rise: the myth of the fascist man in Fight Club and Gladiator.” Literature-Film Quarterly. July, 2008, Vol. 36, Issue 3, 171.

Bedford, Mark. “Smells Like 1990’s Spirit: The Dazzling Deception of Fight Club’s Grunge Aesthetic.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. 2011, Vol. 9:1, 49-63.

Brown, William. “Deterritorialisation and Schizoanalysis in David Fincher’s Fight Club.”  Deleuze Studies. 2011, Vol. 5:2, 275-299.

Gunn, Joshua and Thomas Frentz. “Fighting for Father: Fight Club as Cinematic Psychosis.” Western Journal of Communication. May/Jun 2010, Vol. 74:3, 269-291.

Lim, Dennis. “Fight Club Fight Goes On.” New York Times. Nov 8, 2009, Vol. 159:54853, 18.

Smith, Gavin (Sep–Oct 1999). “Inside Out: Gavin Smith Goes One-on-One with David Fincher.” Film Comment 35 (5): 58–62, 65, 67–68. < http://www.edward-norton.org/fc/articles/filmcom.html&gt;.