structuring absences

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the title of "elephant"--which seems to promise a kind an absence that isn't delivered--got me thinking about structuring absences. a la the films of ozu and hou, or the later books of henry james where key events are elided or rendered opaque.

is this a key modernist device or something fundamentally older? and is there such a thing as a structuring absence in music? examples?

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 00:26 (twenty-two years ago)

this seems fundamentally different from minimalism as an approach. "elephant" seems just a gesture, something like "city of sadness" is extraordinarily complex and purposeful partly because of what it leaves out.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 00:30 (twenty-two years ago)

p.s. i am not using this term in the lacanian sense.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 00:32 (twenty-two years ago)

have a glass of local wine.
silently sip.
have another,
there is your structure, in the space between the sips.

― Orbit (Orbit), Monday, 27 October 2003 00:34 (twenty-two years ago)

What do you think of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, am? The pivotal rape scene occurs between two letters; we never see it directly. Actually, we never see anything directly. Everything that "really" happens is in the gaps between the bits of text we get.
Is this along the lines of what you mean?

― Prude (Prude), Monday, 27 October 2003 00:43 (twenty-two years ago)

"Sorry, Wrong Number" might be a good one to watch with this question in mind

An example in music could be "talkin" guitar a la Mississippi John Hurt? After the first couple times through his guitar finishes the end of the chorus for him, and we fill the words in ourselves.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 27 October 2003 02:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Just about any cover could be included in this, too. I'm thinking in particular of Cat Power's cover of "Satisfaction," which leaves out the riff and the chorus. It's not there, but it is; all the extra-musical information we're given ensures that we don't forget what we're supposed to be hearing.

― Prude (Prude), Monday, 27 October 2003 02:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Dante does this but the absences are fairly pointed and obvious; the damned are damned because they can't own up to what they've done, so as they explain themselves their sin is elided, they flinch from the final key detail. Francesca goes on and on abt reading love poems w Paolo and then stops with "we read no more that day." Ugolino similarly talks at length about getting locked in a tower with his sons, having them offer themselves as food as they starve to death, but he stops with "then fasting overcame my grief and me." (I FUCKED MY HUSBAND'S BROTHER/ATE MY OWN CHILDREN, DO YOU SEE??)

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Monday, 27 October 2003 08:10 (twenty-two years ago)

i think the cat power example is good....

with hurt, the little talking guitar thing is more a flourish than a structuring device, except maybe in some versions of "lovin spoonful."

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

An example in music could be "talkin" guitar a la Mississippi John Hurt?

I read that as Melissa Joan Hart.

― Mark C (Mark C), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:44 (twenty-two years ago)

at the biennale this year, just at the end of the jardenie (by the washrooms), there is this little wood cabin, covered by persian rugs, out of which blasts loud 50 cent records. you see all these people (including italian grandmas) wandering around the cabin wondering what's up. if you go inside there are beach chairs set up before a screen showing what looks like sloppy home video of a bunch of roughneck teenagers in... amsterdam or something... trying to drag race, throwing gang signs and drinking malt liquor.

i think the absence here would have been better if were more pronounced, though.

(x-post)

the structuring absence in "sabrina" is the missing parents no?

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:46 (twenty-two years ago)

'Elephant' title originally because day-to-day violence in N Ireland is, in England, the 'elephant in the living room' that we all ignore.

Clarke's film had absolutely zero characters, motivation, plot. This was in part because of the censorship that basically exists in re N Ireland on the BBC, in part because I suppose he didn't want to get into the 'blame game' a la Ken Loach's 'Hidden Agenda'.

In this sense Clarke is like Hou who faces similar probs from the authorities. However, simply to applaud ellipses (very common in US criticism) seems kind of misguided. It's no different than applauding 'beautiful camerawork' or 'sterling performances' -- these are means, not ends.

― Enrique (Enrique), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:48 (twenty-two years ago)

i don't think the structuring absences in hou's films can be attributed to problems with the authorities. the films before "city of sadness" were all made under the martial law government but their absences tend to be something like those of ozu--missing life events, deaths and marriages, people who leave town, a romantic breakup, etc. in "city of sadness"--made after the removal of martial law and the beginning of democracy in taiwan--the idea of absences takes on the political cast. although i'm sure in all these films the unspoken--which is to say taiwan's violent prehistory--was very much on his mind.

of course they are means. i'm not "applauding" them but searching for more examples and trying to imagine the various uses to which such devices can be put.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Maris in 'Frasier'.

― Enrique (Enrique), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:58 (twenty-two years ago)

van sant's film evokes the meaning it had in clarke's film--which as i noted in another thread got a whole sidebar in "cahiers," though other critics' indifference to this particular source of inspiration is less because of snobbery i think than the film's recent unavailability--but also the one about the blind men feeling different parts of an elephant.

it's rather puerile actually when you look at the way van sant actually engaged that idea.

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 12:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I haveta say -- I am up for this film, once all the hype has gone. As I said, unless you've lived in the US, the 'full horror' or whatever of the Columbine mascara is hard to sus, because it's like, in a country with legal guns + big drug problems + poverty + insanely materialistic/individualistic culture and all that, Columbine itself is a bit of a 'sidebar' to the real homicide situation. But I'm hoping that Gussy is gonna take this stuff on.

― Enrique (Enrique), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:03 (twenty-two years ago)

hahahahaha

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Wha?

― Enrique (Enrique), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:11 (twenty-two years ago)

"take this stuff on"

― amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Does he not then? Worra cop-out.

― Enrique (Enrique), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

the structuring absence in "sabrina" is the missing parents no?

Maris in 'Frasier'.

Both of these comments reminded me of the dead father in The Glass Menagerie, whose imposing portrait hangs center-stage but is never spoken of.

Also, I thought Sontag's essay "The Aesthetics of Silence" might have something to say on this, but either it doesn't or I'm not reading it right.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 27 October 2003 16:44 (twenty-two years ago)

"take this stuff off" - his horrifying mascara?

hah biggest invisible elephant in the room = MR SNUFFALUPAGUS!!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 27 October 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Sesame Street jumped the shark when everyone was able to see Snuffie.

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Monday, 27 October 2003 17:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I couldn't remember what Elephant was exactly so I went to IMDB. Scroll down to the 'review'; obviously I haven't seen the film, so sure, I suppose it's possible the complacent/defensive author is absolutely right--whatever that'd be worth. But hahaha, talk about structured absence, offstage action, selective omission! Bonus points for indicting Moore, Van Sant, etc on these grounds while failing to offer so much as one particle of qualitative description, analysis, etc. Double bonus points for how loud and clear the reviewer's agenda--despite the attempt at more calculated omission--comes through nonetheless.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0363589/

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Monday, 27 October 2003 23:36 (twenty-two years ago)

As far as the question itself, though: is The Castle not the apotheosis [insert hollow laugh] of this device?

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Monday, 27 October 2003 23:39 (twenty-two years ago)

do you think that "in the mood for love" counts - the absense being the love affair or the declaration of love or any kind of honest emotional communication?

― jed (jed_e_3), Monday, 27 October 2003 23:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Rebecca - particularly the film - is all about this. Actually Daphne Du Maurier does this a lot with crucial pieces of information in her short stories though I guess if all is revealed in the last sentance it isnt playing that role (just a plot twist)

― isadora (isadora), Monday, 27 October 2003 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

hills like white elephants

musically, this happens all the time... unresolved melodies several verses introduced earlier in the song. dropping out of guitar/bass/drums on oft-repeated passages within a song.

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 27 October 2003 23:57 (twenty-two years ago)

The suitcase in Pulp Fiction, the box in Barton Fink, Decker himself in Blade Runner ...

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

...the plot in Lost In Translation...

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 00:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Be careful not to structure an absence btwn that bit of neck btwn your muffler and your coat. You may catch a cold.

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 00:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Or lose the preciousss.

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 00:54 (twenty-two years ago)

a red herring is not a structuring absence, i don't think

thanks mary

― amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 08:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Rather than giving us pat answers, Van Sant bases his approach on the elusiveness of truth, and our insatiable desire to know more.

IMDB reviewer. I used to have no problem with this line of argument, and it has its points: but through overexposure I'm plain bored with it. You get the sense that for some people any attempt at analysis is 'pat'; that there aren't any answers, truth being so 'elusive'. At a certain point, this stuff breaks down into solipsism. There might be no simple solution, but gun crime is something that could be reduced; I don't know why this requires the metaphysical works.

― Enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 09:17 (twenty-two years ago)

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