Comments on: “Dear Sister” and Avant-Garde Video

By: RM

RM — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:03:56 +0000

What is the name of the group singing “Ooh what you say” on the Dear sister/ SNL spoof??

By: Hunter

Hunter — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:41:24 +0000

They say (I don’t know what they’re parodying) “you restored my faith in humanity,” in exaggerated response to something good.

In this case: “you restored my faith in the humanities.” Amy Essigmann called me, forced me to download the OC clip and watch it, forced me to download “Dear Sister” and watch it, then forced me to read your blog entry out loud to her (to make sure I actually read it). The best non-consensual blog experience yet.

By: Tyson

Tyson — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:17:07 +0000

Brendon, I would add to your response to Max’s comment that for me, “reduced” also connotes relying on a single, premade pop song as the sole aural component—an approach that “Dear Sister” obviously adopts as critique, but which otherwise suggests pure laziness on the creators’ part rather than a consciously minimalist manipulation. I could make a semi-parallel argument about “neomelodramatic” musical cues: that creating an ambient synth bed is simply *easier* than composing a layered classical melody with counterpoint, harmony, and all that. By “easier,” I mean that such music takes less time to create and that more people can do it to some ostensibly “professional” standard of competence. Hopefully, in my own film “Open Shores” I will avoid using either kind of music (self-call).

By: Brendon

Brendon — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 01:31:25 +0000

I say “reduced” because a film that relies on sound alone is necessarily an inferior film to one that integrates visuals and sound in their production of meaning. Cinema is a visual medium - sound, yes, comprises one component of the medium, but remove sound and you still have cinema. Sound is an additive element of the cinematic experience, which is to say that it enhances, but is not essential to, a film. Certainly sound can enhance and give nuance to meaning in a work, and you’re correct that works which rely on music exclusively often betray as much aural inarticulacy as visual, but fundamentally, these works I refer to largely fail to impactfully convey meaning on a visual level, which is a failure at the most basic level of cinematic syntax.

There are hundreds - thousands - of important film works which exist without soundtrack. Silent cinema, for example, much of which was produced without compositions in mind, and much of avant garde cinema. There are no examples of films which completely eschew the visual, because film is at its core a visual medium - the closest I can think of is Jarman’s Blue, which is nevertheless a remarkable visual experience because of the implicit and explicit meaning of the single color tonality that makes up the film’s visual component.

By: Max

Max — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 01:10:53 +0000

i agree with much of what you write, but hugely object to one statement you make, an extension of a fundamental assumption: “Unable to forge a connection on the basis of the visual and narrative, we are reduced to relying on the aural to cue us to emotion.” Why “reduced?” The visual-centric approach to film criticism you implicitly embrace is stifling and demeaning to what essentially compromises half of the medium. Is the emotion we feel from great music less than that of a great painting? Then why is the element of sound or music in cinema any less valid than the element of the visuals? I would say that the aural inarticulateness of these filmmakers you describe mirrors their visual inarticulateness - good filmmakers manipulate sound with as much craft and creativity as they do the image.