Avant-garde is technically defined as “a group active in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field, especially in the arts.” Seemingly innocent and ambitious enough, this description falls well short of explaining the mental and visual anguish that comes with the territory of viewing avant-garde films.
The majority of America refuses to accept avant-garde as an art form or even as a means of strange entertainment. The amount of weirdness that radiates off such films is nearly indescribable and it is quite possible that that is the filmmaker’s primary goal. Yet after watching nearly an hour and half worth of what I assume to be widely respected and established avant-garde films in one of my film classes, all I am left with is sore retinas and undying feeling that I was just mentally jobbed. I also have a deeper understanding of why most of the world makes fun of the French.
We as Americans have been programmed our entire lives to expect structure in all forms of communication, especially when viewing classical Hollywood films. Starting with “Citizen Kane” and continuing with films today like “Mulholland Dr.” and “Memento,” mainstream moviegoers are now willing to take a chance on plot and story manipulation. This is the closest thing anyone who wasn’t fathered by Andy Warhol has to compare avant-garde to; only avant-garde rarely has elements of traditional narrative and if it does it probably doesn’t make sense.
If these films purpose is to make one think, then they clearly achieve their objective. However, when given limited logical content to analyze something, further examining it can cause feelings of anger. A film by Peter Kubelka titled “Arnulf Rainer” is nothing more than seven minutes of alternating shots of a black and white film roll, strobed rhythmically to physically punish your vision and is accompanied by a boisterous sound of chaos, similar to the one you experience when you plug your ears under a shower head. Making the experience worse, comments from the cutting board of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” were rampant from several guys in class who wouldn’t even give the oddities a chance and whose most risky film experiences under their belts include “Policy Academy 6” and “Top Gun.” Several brilliant verbal interventions like “The snow storm of 1958 killed hundreds” poorly voiced like a newsreel narrator gave the artistic community such amount of validity, as these were the simpletons they had the daunting task of pleasing. Breakouts of laughter are also common but to be expected when you are watching literally nothing with loud noises.
After several people simply got up and left out of frustration or perhaps because they had better things to do, (which might include everything else life has to offer … maybe even suicide) the short film finished and sat there feeling like I had just been violated. Should the entire class have gotten and demanded a four percent tuition refund for the one and a half hours University of Wisconsin-Madison just stole from their lives? Or should they just think about the artistic merit they do or don’t have and appreciate the unforeseen stimuli to ponder about? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, most likely depending on how recent you went through this painful process.
Another film that figuratively beat my mental stasis with a rusty pick-ax was “Passage a l’acte” by Martin Arnold. The short took about a seven-second clip from the American classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” and through stark pause cuts stretches it out to an excruciatingly long 12 minutes. Constant repetition of ostensibly ordinary body language was distorted to represents themes ranging from family structure to masturbation. The amount of patience it takes to view this short in its entirety makes Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment under the South African apartheid look like a FunJet vacation. Its only purpose must be to question its own strangeness and how much illegal hallucinogens the director must have took to come up with the idea.
I realize avant-garde is a well-celebrated art form over seas and is active in the communication arts curriculum here at the UW, but the frustration that builds up over one’s first experience with avant-garde is crazy and makes you crave for things as simple as black and white. These films venture so far into the gray they make Chomsky look like a diehard Bush lobbyist. And even I as I say that, I picture a smelly French artist with a color pallet and a film student with too much facial hair and not enough melanin in his skin tone grimacing at my ignorance. I feel used, mentally violated and angry. Perhaps that’s part of it.
Rick is a junior majoring in Journalism and Radio/TV/Film. After this column he rented “Bambi” to ease the pain. He can be reached at [email protected]
