Well, as I look back it seems to me that Citizen Kane was one of the first movies where the camera moved all over the place. There's an old saying that lawyers were taught by their professors: "When the law's on your side, talk about the law; when justice is on your side, talk about justice; when nothing's on your side, talk!" In movies, if nothing is happening on stage, move the camera. And nothing was happening in Citizen Kane, so the camera kept roving all around the place and looking through keyholes and that introduced the style of illustrating which was very popular at the time where you'd have a couple of people necking seen through an.ornate candlestick in the foreground or through a keyhole, or reflected in a glass of wine or something. All trick stuff, move the camera, make up for the lack of action. (CC Beck, TCJ #95, 1985)
This interview so long gone gets more subtle as time goes by. Throughout it, Beck espouses naturalism - unforced and free-form - against what he calls "realism".
The question, "how do you portray reality?" is quite vital since, clearly, we now live in a world of lenses (HB 56) which simply copy what is there.
But, as noted previously, lenses represent logic and light and detect the logical side of things such as DNA (x-ray diffraction, prev.) Going back to the ancient Greeks, they lived in a works of spontaneous metamorphosis which is fundamentally fertile.
In other words, a world of lenses emphasizes sterility and inertia. It looks real, but is still a type of illusion (the mirror of illusions).
This question of "realism" was picked-up by the symbolist playwright Maeterlinck (Pelleas and Melisande, prev.) He came to think that the human passions blind us to deep truths that are seen through a twilight world of stillness.
He called it "static theatre", and explicitly likened it to ancient Greek theatre whereby actors wore masks. The resounding, clarion voice is heard, the lyre sings eternal, on the stage where imagination is invoked by dramatic gestures.
This suggests something like Max Romeo's lyric, "the more you look, the less you see" (Tan and See, prev.) Again, this harks back to CC Beck's comment on stopping action and letting the imagination take over.
The contradiction contained in Maeterlinck is that being still causes the imagination to soar and become active. I'm s bit like CC Beck and not impressed by watching actors' heads. The pulp films I prefer (including Jean-Luc Godard and Blaxploitation) have a naturalism partly owing to low budgets. In, for example, Black Mama,White Mama (P168) the acting is all pretty low-key , camera work by Justo Paulino is relatively static, and the battle on the waterfront at the end is colorful, convincing and bloody.
What does passion add to that except more ham acting? I think one has to be very careful of passion in the modern world in that it can be copied by AI (see Japanese example, prev.)
"They" then write stories that divert us from the strength of living in nature, which is essentially fertility. Maeterlinck was a classicist, but his main concerns were death and the meaning of life. "The Bluebird" could be likened to the evergreen "It's a Wonderful Life".
Meaning (epistemology) and being (ontology) have somehow to be related to eschatology. Maeterlinck was influenced by his fellow Belgians Bruegel and Bosch, where the dances and frolics of life are intertwined by the macabre and frightful.
This was also a preoccupation of decadent artists, like Huysmans. In a realistic situation vis-à-vis fertility, there are foul-smelling waters and the presence of decay (see Jaime Hernandez, prev.) This is the milieu depicted in Bosch.
In the prudish, sterile world of today, people wrinkle their noses at a compost-toilet, when it is a pretty perfect example of dirt and cleanliness. Compost is clean-smelling and gives strength (to land).
The decadents and the symbolists were crude in the ancient sense of Aristophanes (prev.) Life realistically lived is crude (see Roman graffiti). The traditional agricultural practice of Fulling (HB60) involves the thrashing of limbs in relatively sexual movements.
Dirt and cleanliness are part of one process. As Robert Robertson said in HB60, stale urine was the original detergent. It cleanses by means of the strength of dirt, as does Fuller's earth.
Ancient civilizations whether Roman or Christian lived in cyclical agricultural systems where there was an abundance of squalor that was washed clean by the rains (see Shanghai and "Dead Pigs" prev.)
As was said previously, the carbon-cycle is the global system of circular decay that renders earth fertile. Fertility is vastly more fundamental than competition, but the fact is that logical science (number, algorithm) props up Darwin as the figurehead or bulwark of a competitive order.
That order is for sure not fertile - not crude, not vulgar or life-affirming - but "they" are convinced by the mirror of illusions into the numerical pathway of "fact". Only in the realm of popular culture is there coherent opposition (next).
