To write is to start anew. But if we find ourselves stuck in this procedure, or if something within us decides to halt us – for whatever reason – is it not more sensible to ‘’put our heads in the pillow?’’ Where we leave our less-than-pleasant thoughts the moment we lift our skulls?
By opening with such a saying, one cannot do otherwise than to act according to what it wants to incite. Thus I will.
Recently, I saw a largely animated film which laboured more than four years to restore the value of the ‘’actual’’ images used near the end. A film that actually might have caught thinkers like Baudrillard by surprise. But despite this incredible achievement, I tend to see this achievement as its sole one. Consequently, registering it as a political film. Which is a compliment, sure, but films that accomplish their political ‘’set of objectives’’, almost always cannot help doing so much more at the same time. Something which eludes some of its viewers, since we all have the natural tendency to categorize things, ‘’political films’’ form no exception to this (not insolvable) problem.
The same thing applies to writing about films politically, millitantly. In the piece I initially wrote, but which I replaced by the one you are currently reading, I expressed my decision to stop writing about the combination of male directors and cinema in a didactic way to such an extend that it suffocated almost all of its proofreaders. Allow me to quote one paragraph:
‘’Maybe I need to see this page as a space where I can re-think what is needed to write differently and more respectfully about the unique and particular aesthetics brought forth by these genders that carry with them such wholly different sensibilities. But there are more questions that demand to be asked. How can I establish a critical discourse? Firstly, by simply writing. Alot of the upcoming pieces will possibly be bad, flimsy and not thorough. But they will build and WORK towards something which I cannot yet foresee or predict. It is necessary. One does not simply break through a wall in just one go. Maybe neither in a hundred or thousand. But that does not concern me. I shall proceed.’’
How to grapple with this? How to proceed in the furtherance of an idea without losing the ability to write texts that contain a mixture of feelings? Of self-doubt and uninterrupted consideration? Texts that allow themselves to snort and snivel? Nearly, but thanks to the rightful interference of the editor, I managed to prevent a come-into-being of a mean attitude towards anyone who read the (unpublished) article in question. We as men have been angry and hostile for way too long, going way back, whereas now it is up to us to be, instead: deeply vulnerable, transparent, and full of doubt.
Because, after all, there is a reason why we write the things we write, in such and such a way. That much is clear. Our initial intentions contain plenty of (mostly) raw and intangible emotions. But that is, as with any impulsive action, no more than usual. A dear friend of mine once told me: ‘’A ‘’but’’, is like a reverse gear in the car.’’ Which is a saying that (ought to?) appeal to youngsters such as myself. Not necessarily meaning that it should be seen as the only possible attitude. And, also not uninmportant, definitely not how my friend thought it would be interpreted. One should know when one is on the race track, and when one is not. (or if one should be there at all, which is something else altogether)
My apologies for not providing you with a very cinema-related text, but I deem a declaration of intent indispensible before being able to allow to proceeding into a direction where one tries to establish something in which the ‘’thought-attempter’’ in question is not very experienced.
In the article following this one, I hope to elucidate and free a film from its genre plus framework in which it has been, perhaps unintentionally, barred. Until then.
