Contemporary

[ateolf]

Mary Beth wanted to watch one of two documentaries last night, one about Thelonious Monk or one about Richard Pryor, but neither ended up being available on the Criterion Channel as expected (we've had this subscription for forever, the last streaming service we belong to, and haven't really thought to make use of it in this time, so we've just been starting to lately). Instead we watched Contemporary Color, a concert documentary about David Byrne putting together this concert with a bunch of different musicians each playing a song with a color guard team doing their thing along with them. I think I hated it. It was trying way too hard to push this emotional weight that just wasn't there except in a kind of self-congratulatory way (the whole thing felt very stuck in a deep gaze up its own self). I mean, it's pretty cool that these kids got to do their thing at a big concert, but it was trying to make it to feel like some great life-changing to have them doing what they've been doing just at a large-ish one-off music show. And for the whole unique angle of this thing being the whole color guard thing, you never really get a sense of that. The directors are trying harder to force that personal sort of intimate connection with the kids (I'm trying to find a better word to use than "kids", but what do you call someone who does color guard? a color guardist? athlete? I think athlete might work...) and that kinda falls flat given there's at least like two hundred of them altogether, but there are lots of close-ups of them trying to get you to feel their emotions, but the whole point of color guard is how all of the athletes work together to create a visual whole (as seen from a distance in the football stadium bleachers) and there's very little sense of the groups working as a whole, just these stylized close-ups that are edited and super-imposed in ways that are trying to be artistic but feel hollow and try to elide the actual point with what the directors want to make the point of it. Also, I'm often one for elliptical editing in a documentary, I don't think things always have to be straightforward to be effective, but here, all the editing to cut away from the event and performances to random backstage banter and scenery felt, once again, forced. Like it's trying to create this big feeling of the event as a whole, but there's kind of "no there there." It just felt like the directors were kind of bored with the material they actually had and wanted to make it into something bigger and more epic than it was. So you get the actual thing it's supposedly about and there's just no feeling for it. Like to build off the emotions of the event, you'd have to actually have some feeling of the event to start with, not just trying to take a shortcut to "bigger" emotions. I guess that cuts to the essence of what I said about it all feeling forced. The musical performances were for the most part not my thing (they wouldn't have to be for the movie to be good, nor do I even think I'd have to be into the color guard stuff either if they'd ever actually really showed it, for the movie to be good as a movie documenting what happened...I mean, I don't have to like a subject to like what a movie can do with that subject...but as I feel the movie already failed on that level, I'll talk about the music some). Even the artists that I do like on the line-up were for the most part all at their most tepid (not worst, just most middle-of-the-road). And most of the songs (each artist was doing one song they wrote for the event with one of the color guard teams performing) tended to follow the same pattern (not all, but most did this thing where they started off soft and orchestral and then after a little bit the beat drops and then it's now a weak, mid-tempo pop song with a strong beat). I think the best song of the lot may have been David Byrne's...and it was exactly what you'd expect David Byrne in 2015 to sound like and it was pretty bland and forgettable. Oh, and the Ira Glass thing with the interviews chopped up was probably the most cloying and sappy part of the whole thing. And I guess it's not his fault, but David Byrne's "America has changed" comment trying to tie in to Obergefell did not age well at all. Did I have more to say? I guess I've blabbed about this movie way too much already.

Comments

[ifjuly]

i'm still mulling it over, i have push-pull feelings i think. i'm interested in a somewhat unspoken notion of, though i do think it ran througn some of the music performance compositions, something that stemmed from militarist group formation (flags swords rifles brigade) to become sport support and then running underneath all along of its own volition artform, that process, and the tensions there along gendered culture lines (and it was somewhat soft but consistent too, nods to the subtly political project of that, which you get the feeling artists like david byrne would be trying to do at that moment in time, something glossily unitive up at that scale of things...though i know i'm no longer there in heart or mind at all if i ever really was, and haven't been for some time, and i think it's telling there were def. little moments showing the cracks in that facade of such attempts, and in that sense i actually this is a pretty interesting document of why that attitude didn't pan out, in real time, per your oberfell detail thing--this doesn't work, i should have listened to all those more radical folks at meetings and all the sex worker writings 10, 15 years back sooner that already knew this doesn't work and were exasperated, because yeah, now i am exasperated too, who wouldn't be after the proof this go round how and why this doesn't work, as evidenced right here in this movie looking back).

it reminded me of tristan taormino's manuscript/drafts on her memoir about her dad's old army diaries, how they'd do these drag shows without of course calling it that, chock full of racist and other empire fronting almost as if to help cover/excuse the allowance to finally be a little soft/pretty/as women (you can do it as long as it's propping up your hegemony through hate satire, per jane ward), and he'd talk scathingly of bob hope and patriarchy/empire and its culture but also that thing of, something always yeah, runs underneath or alongside it because it has to, because it always too exists, all the humanity and connection not allowed to be direct/open yet inevitable. which kind of reminds me of the parallel sewing editing in the gospel according to eureka, how those plays were in some functional way the christian constricted way to be able to be a drag queen diva whether seen as such or not. because that aspect of being a person and a group of people together, that yin stuff, makeup/glamour/beauty/spectacle/color and play, fantasy/pretend/imagination and escapism, flights of fancy and "safe" drama, always exists whether we openly allow it to or not. so.

...but of course, there's also the radical question that all this brings up too: what about letting it just balls out be that, without the supposed "real"/"origin" (which, no it isn't not really but it wants you to think so) "reason". as in, you don't need a prop rifle anymore (that is, you don't need the masc-empire etc. support supposed "origin", you can let the thing it seemingly allowed to happen just be because frankly it always was, and is, it can have its independence/freedom in the world without excuses for its being rooted in masc-coding or hegemony or empire or violence--maybe i'm reading too much into the lyrics/projecting but i felt that was subtly-enough-to-be-allowed-to-come-through strategically (or its opposite, subconsciously) implied in the st. vincent and zola jesus songs for example).

(though, that too again speaks to the tensions along gendered support/power/funding/attention--you spend a lot of the time marveling at the usually-for-them-unfamiliar scale/size, how unused to that this sort of thing is, right, and through the lens of power and gender and all that it's pretty stark. colorguard and cheerleading in their femme-y and queered (modern maybe, though perhaps it was always like this, wouldn't be a surprise) iterations only get to exist really at all as they are bc of the "real" event of (masc-coded) sport. and will always be relatively anonymous (i'm glad they had that moment where ad-rock's naming all the celebrity sportsmen on the walls.) but they're supposed to be grateful they get to the one time exception let into the walls of the castle we're always excluded from unless we're humbly propping their "real" thing (sport in this case) up. there's a way to look at that dynamic that well, i've gotten used to looking that way and i'm glad i have, that some scales have fallen and i see through the lens of that rendered invisible/normal inequity...though, this too also raises tensions i had watching, what i used to call lana del rey syndrome, where a person's apparent failure/awkwardness and being a turn off flop for almost like opposing factions can be interesting, what it illustrates. i couldn't tell while watching if it was like, the reason it feels weird/awkward/off is, it's too half in half out, like if it was full on queer diva pop star madonna type stage show it'd be more pleasing, but being a sort of weird half sport but half not and always trying to please the sport/masc-coded value dimensions can kind of muzzle the glinting femme/queer brilliant moments, and isn't "enough" on the sport side to please those people enough either, always an also-ran faint shadow sister. i dunno. interesting notions to mull over though. i often have sympathy for those positions--we've talked before about how i sometimes think that's on a personal level our problem, you and i, we didn't go full on rubyfruit jungle from our origins so we're half in half out and hence nowhere fully coherent/strong enough to be. hm.)

...they played a lot of nico on new sounds years back when i was spending a lot of time with that, and he composed a scent opera!! which i am so bummed i will never get to experience daww.

(and speaking of the group power thing--which again, militarism etc. wants you to think, it's the "real" and solid origin of that feeling it causes, but it's likely per ehrenreich feinberg et al very much the opposite, like church can be argued to be the opposite historically--those institutions took a more anarchic/unruly group exuberance from pagan and dionysian festivity and learned to harness it to their doctrines bc those feelings are indeed powerful and group-unitive--it makes me always think of what chelsea said 30 years ago, about the indescribably powerful feeling of being part of a choir singing with many many others together, and i always wonder if you have band halftime memories like that, of that unitive bigger-than-any-one-of-us transformers/mighty morphin sensations.)

...i was definitely reminded, felt acutely watching it though too, the whole, i've learned this is not my scale, this sort of production by its very logistical nature weeds out what moves me and what's left standing often yes, feels relatively hollow. like, it's almost impressive you can take such a spectacle-luar thing full of color and motion and costume and bodily expression and have it feel so flat, and have yes, the music all feel slickly emptily flattened too. the nature mostly of arena scale production value stuff, which you've already alluded to.