| Author | Message | ||
     Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
Does/should knowledge of the personality/behaviour of a writer or director affect the way you look at his or her work? I'm thinking about this because of the reference I made in another thread to Clownhouse. For those who don't know, Victor Da Silva, while making Clownhouse, made an extra private short film featuring himself and the twelve year old male lead. This film then led to his imprisonment for child abuse and pornography. After release from prison he went on to make the two Jeepers Creepers films. I only found out about this after I'd watched and really enjoyed all three films. Now I feel kind of guilty about liking them, especially Clownhouse. Discuss | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
Victor Salva. Not Da silva | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I knew about him before watching Jeepers Creepers, but I still quite like the film. And Polanski's alleged sex crime has never precluded my admiring a good many of his films. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I echo Ramsey's comments, but it is often difficult to seperate a creator's private life from his art when you already know some of the details. An interesting thought: if Polanski's wife hadn't been murdered by Manson's followers, would his version of Macbeth been any less bloody and intense? I think the art and the artist are fundemantelly linked - life and art; one informs the other. Weber - have you seen Victor Salva's film "Powder"? It's his most interesting work, and his private life makes it moreso. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.42.193 |
' And Polanski's alleged sex crime has never precluded my admiring a good many of his films.' I'd agree with that. Although I've read about the alleged incidents I still enjoy his work. I certainly don't avoid it. I'm in the middle of Roman Polanski -Odd Man Out by Denis Meikle. Chapter Five - Death and the Maiden which covers his making of Macbeth. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
There would be no need for any ethics if all art was anonymous until after one had experienced it. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
But that takes away part of the pleasure for me, Des, as I feel that an artist is is art, and visa versa. Like body and soul, the two cannot be seperated. IMHO, of course. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.227.106 |
"And Polanski's alleged sex crime has never precluded my admiring a good many of his films." Same here. If you were to condemn an artist's (best) work by virtue of his behaviour, then you would probably be willing to eulogize a piece of crap solely because its author is generally known as a Good Egg. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.72 |
Graham Greene didn't allow an author biog on his books for years because he'd rather no one know anything about him, lest it affect the reading of his books. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
And I was never put off Heidegger by the fact that he was a stinking Natsi. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
But that takes away part of the pleasure for me, Des, as I feel that an artist is is art, and visa versa. Like body and soul, the two cannot be seperated. IMHO, of course. ================ That's a very interesting concept and one with which I can empathise. But what happens when the two sides of a work - the work itself and the work's artist - are not possible to bring together as part of the same experience? Isn't there then a purer experience of the art? The art has all that is important to it within it or, otherwise, the art is incomplete. Or is there always something else, something extra we need other than the work of art itself to fully appreciate it? Can you also conceive of occasions where bringing the two sides together would be counter-prouductive or misleading? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Art needs an artist to create it. if it is true art, then the artist unavoidably uses some of himself to create it. I honesty think the two are mutually dependant; however, you can have an artist without the art but not the other way round. (I've even lost myself with that twaddle). | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
In Clownhouse, there's a scene where young Nathan winters (the boy he was abusing) bares his backside to the camera. When I first saw it, I thought nothing about it. Now I know that scene is there to tittilate the paedophile market it really colours the film. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
Gary, does the art embody the artist or embody something that the artist is but does not want to be, or is not and does want to be. I don't think I can conceive of any argument whereby a work of art is actually incomplete becuase you don't know (sometimes cannot know) about the artst or his unknowable (mis)-intentions. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.197 |
Even I can't be bothered to get involved in this one.  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Des, at the risk of sounding thick, have no idea what you're asking me.  But IMHO art is born of something within the artist - something of the artist. Otherwise it's just paint on canvas/ink on a page/images on celluloid. I'm fascinated by the people who created my favourite art. Art alone is incomplete; it needs the presence of the artist to become a whole. (I might walk the land, like Grasshopper, spouting this shit to whomever I meet) | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.163.6.13 |
In some instances, I would rather not have known certain biographical details about artists- their politics etc. It colours your perception of a piece of art; however knowing certain things about the artist also enrichens the experience. Knowing certain biographical details of two writers in particular, really spoilt my enjoyment of their work quite recently, and made me then go back and find all sorts of unpleasant things I didn't catch on the first reading. Not happy about that. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.230 |
Once you've read Zed's next book I'll tell you what he did to that badger in Bramley one time. You'll never read his love stories in quite the same way again. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
You're riight Gary when you say "art is born of something within the artist" and I feel the unresolved debate between us concerns not this truism but the use we make of the perceived connection between art and artist. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I need the art, not the artist. But I'm sometimes interested in the creators of work I admire. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.163.6.13 |
'Once you've read Zed's next book I'll tell you what he did to that badger in Bramley one time. You'll never read his love stories in quite the same way again.' _____ I thought the internet rumours circulating suggested that it was a furry moose, not a badger- there you go, the internets are not to be trusted. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.72.14.113 |
In a word... NO. The time to give up on any human being is never... can't remember who said that but it's true no matter how difficult to put into practice. Having said that if I had the chance of travelling back in time to assassinate Adolf Hitler or save Christ from the crucifixion - I wouldn't hesitate. Apologies to Richard Matheson and Stephen King, etc... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I'm so fascinated by the artist that I'm standing outside your window right now, Ramsey. That's me: the naked bloke with a laptop. Waving. But not with his hand.  | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
He's used to you doing that Zed. That's why you've got the ASBO's and the restraining orders against you - remember | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110 |
Some of my best reading experiences were as a kid, when I didn't have a clue about the writers. But then I started reading work by my favouriote authors and enjoying them a lot, then becoming sort of limited in what I read. It's only lately that by dabbling outside my field of interest that I'm having that childlike 'lost' sense again, finding the likes of Capote. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
With me, I tend to read the book/see the film/look at the artwork first, and if something about it really grabs me, then I want to find out about the writer/artist. In some cases, that certainly enhances the experience for me, but in others - especially if there are some murky secrets around a person - it can make me feel a bit guilty for enjoying their work. Like someone above said, you can't separate the art from the artist, and what ever art-form a person creates, it's borne out of all the experiences they've had - good or bad, right or wrong - prior to creating that work. Hmm, I'm starting to confuse myself about what I'm trying to say here - am I making any sense? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110 |
I used to think that a person's work was the best of them, that it comes from the part of them that is OK, behind the fence. I know - that sounds dumb. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.201.238 |
In some cases, Tony, I think it's true. But not all. People who give the best of themselves to their work, not to their lives, are likely to be quite damaged people. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.203.110 |
I think they do have 'fences' up against the world usually, but that the writing creeps through. They're talking to others clearly when they write, under the radar. It also makes me think; who do you write for, all of you? It's easy to say for yourself but I don't think that's true. I used to think it, but now I think it's a kind of confessional, a reaching out. This doesn't apply to all writers, of course. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.12.98 |
Knowing the mental duress Sylvia Plath was going through while writing her last poems, enhances the experience of those poems so much more; the same with knowing what mental hell Nietzsche was in writing his final books. Knowing that Flannery O'Conner was a devout, believing, and unapologetic Roman Catholic, makes reading her work so much more fascinating. Knowing what James Taylor was really singing about in "Fire and Rain," renders that song more meaningful - without destroying the ambiguity. Reading the letters of Van Gogh to his brother, Theo, totally enhances Van Gogh's artistic vision (let alone his person). And so on and so on and so on.... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
I agree with the pleasures Craig just oultlined. But that is a different pleasure (experiencing art as a historical or biographical supplement or complement) from the pleasure of experiencing pure art for its own sake and interpreting it in isolation. Both pleasures are valid for different reasons. I pactice both as a receiver of art. I proselytize the latter pleasure simply because I can ... and because it gets a raw deal. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
Knowledge of the author is just one factor among a million others you've got to consider when reading an artistic text for the first time. I'm rereading IT for the first time in nearly 20 years and since the book is about the difference between being a kid and being in your late-thirties, you can probably imagine how different it all feels to me, given all my experience since then and now. So not only am I wrestling with some info about King and his life, with knowledge of the TV adaptation (annoyingly, I can't see the fiction without at least a passing nod to the images in it) and various other textual stuff directly related to the book, I'm also processing it according to other factors far too innumerable to list. So the phrase "the pleasure of experiencing pure art for its own sake and interpreting it in isolation" means little to me. It seems to presuppose a kind of discursive vacuum, a 'clearing' in the stream of experience. Yes, knowledge of the author is going to affect your reading, but lacking knowledge of the author does nothing to strip away a billion other factors that makes "interpreting in isolation" utterly impossible. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
It's a goal, that I often fail to reach. And perhaps I should fail as part of the process. But I contend that the fullest satisfaction is reached when with the GOAL of exeperiencing the thing itself in isolation. All else is potentially misleading and/or extraneous to the thing itself that you're experiencing ... self-evidently. The 'extraneity-creep' is perhaps part of the process of failing, OK, and that needs to be accepted or even embraced when it inadvertently happens, too. So I don't think we're too far in disagreement. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
You're Husserl searching for that transcendental interpretive place. I'm Heidegger saying, "Not possible, guv. Now, a far more important question, what is it to be? ...Pint of lager, mebbe?" | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
>>The 'extraneity-creep' is perhaps part of the process of failing You see, you see external information as violating the 'space' between you and the text, as 'creeping in'. I see the external information - discourse, etc - as being the very foundation of your ability to engage with the text, and without which there is nothing, no meaning, no understanding, no response. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
What would Merleau-Ponty say if he came into the pub and overheard our discussion, (if I recall his name correctly)? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
If it is a FOUNDATION, as you say, it's quicksand. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
Merleau-Ponty would say some beautiful things about this. They would involve embodiment and the lived world. They would involve neither objectivity nor subjectivity, but some fundamentally ambiguous place between. He'd be as slippery as a Frenchman, but necessarily so. Then he'd light up a cigarette and glower at you sinisterly. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
>>>If it is a FOUNDATION, as you say, it's quicksand. I like that. I think Merle would have liked it, too. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
Well, figuratively, I like it, too. It's horror material to be buried in quicksand. But to enjoy Horror to its fullest extent one mustn't surely be lost in subjectivity but try to exercise objectivity. Objectivity is the last bastion. And if Horror permeates even that, then it's good Horror. So yes Merle, Oberon, you and me would all enjoy the quicksand as a beatnik beatitude but would inevitably regret enjoying it and then try to get back to my GOAL. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I see the external information - discourse, etc - as being the very foundation of your ability to engage with the text, and without which there is nothing, no meaning, no understanding, no response. That's exactly what I was trying to get at, but in fancier terms. You old fancy-termist, you. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.26.61.140 |
Bollox to yez with brass nobs on, jizz face. That better? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.235.76 |
I think both of you (Des/Gary) are failing to be ingenuous to a slight degree: We all love the pure objectivity of art - BUT, after its pedigree and/or credits have been thoroughly explored and proved sound. It's great to pick up an author named Ramsey Campbell's short-story, and objectively bask in its horrors. Not so much, an author named Campy Rambsell. First we have to know a lot about the art; only then, can we stomach knowing very little. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.159.146.201 |
I don't know. I think Campy Rambsell is underrated. I loved his book: "Shut that Tomb Door". I loved your: First we have to know a lot about the art; only then, can we stomach knowing very little. Still working on it. Thinking about it. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.252.32 |
Des, the blurb for the Virgin imprint of THIEVING FEAR comes to mind: 'Who could have believed that a night's camping on Thurstaston Common would lead to a haunting of such power and reach?' It took weeks to get the muck off those platforms. 'Common' is indeed the word. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.6.181 |
I do believe it, Des. Your "Nemonymous" anthos are reliant upon the readers believing there's some filter of quality: you, as editor; also, the authors are listed there, and some/many have their own pedigree. If a famous Picasso were suddenly revealed to be not a Picasso at all, everyone's opinion of it would suddenly alter, negatively.... So too, if some dashed-off piece of fluff were revealed to be a Rembrandt, would that same fluff be soaringly revered. |