HANCOX'S MOOSE JAW/MOOSE JAW'S
HANCOX: An Analysis of Richard Hancox's
Moose Jaw-There's
a Future in our Past by Greg Linnell
This brief analysis will isolate the
various sites of mediation that function to structure and define the characteristics
specific to Rick Hancox's mode of documentary practice as evident in his film, Moose Jaw-There's a Future in our Past (Canada, 1992) namely, the evocative hybrid of
the memoir and jour
ney. Although personal remembrance is not new to documentary practice-there is, for example, a long tradition of filmed interviews that function as
forums for the recalling and re-telling of
personal histories-Hancox's film
does not provide the reassuring frame that often accompanies and, therefore,
ensures the contextualization of the
personal within the bounds of the public. Whereas documentary filmmakers, understanding the claims of coherence, objectivity,
neutrality, and comprehensiveness to both underwrite and guarantee the value of their projects, often
employ a series of individual stories in service to the exposition of a
societal issue or cultural debate (= the frame), Hancox's film employs no such
strategy of containment or forced consensus and remains, instead, a highly
idiosyncratic journey or fragmentary investigation that combines and contrasts
both exterior and interior landscapes.' It is apparent that the city of Moose
Jaw in Saskatchewan
serves as the site of an
archeological excavation into the construction of personal identity or the filmmaker's relationship to the circumstances
of his origin, and, moreover, that Hancox's unearthing, documenting and juxtapositioning of a variety of
personal and public strata does not exhibit the neat, linear historiography of,
for example, a photo album. The preceding line of analysis, then, is one way
into the complex of questions that
are the concern of this essay and find their focus in the formal strategies of
mediation that enable, and do not
disable (as the traditional discourse of documentary practice would have it), the film's validity. Furthermore, the claim to
historical truth that remains definitive for documentary practice is not
jettisoned in favour of an auteurist solipsism but is, instead, made possible
and enriched by the willful,
insistent, and ongoing fusion of personal and public interventions that Hancox
structures into the film. In other words, after viewing the film and
confronting its status as one mode
of documentary practice, the
spectator is confirmed in his or her resolution that
Michael Renov's "Rethinking
Documentary: Toward a Taxonomy of Mediation" formalizes some of the key presuppositions that
inform this analysis.' Renov realizes, for example, that the claims to historical truth that subtend classical realist
documentary practice, most evident in the analytical languages of objectivity and neutrality that often accompany
explications of documentary films, can and frequently do occlude the
"range of mediating instances" or the "levels of
intercession" that are inevitable "during the [documentary] text's passage from history to spectator."' Indeed, in
the terms provided by traditional discourse about documentary practice,
Hancox's film - which so obviously
foregrounds its rhetorical and formal strategies of mediation - would be dismissed as a poetic experiment with no interest for those interested in documentary. It is Renov's contention,
however, that any account of documentary practice must find its focus in an analysis of those specific
zones of mediation that, in large measure, account for the
singularity of the documentary film.'
In other words, whereas the traditional paradigm for documentary practice would
quickly become frustrated by and with Hancox's film, Renov allows the spectator
to understand the
centrality of mediation in the director's documentary practice. Although
Hancox's film would appear to be tailored
for this type of analysis in that it readily divulges or presents its marks of
mediation, it is important to
systematize what can, after an initial viewing, appear to be both a confusing
and wonderfully overwhelming
experience.6 One final note: Renov's primary importance for
this essay lies not so much in providing a fixed template (e.g., historical "real," pro-filmic event, film
text, and documentary spectator) that
can be brought to bear on or applied to Hancox's film, but in his defense and
theorizing of the primacy of
mediation in documentary practice.'
There are three voice-overs in Hancox's film that are
determinative for the spectator's comprehension
of the increasingly dense labyrinth of sound and image tracks; the interweaving
of so many strata threatens to obfuscate both the spectator's intellection of
and affective reaction to the film but Hancox avoids such a pitfall via
the insertion and mediation of voice-overs that, if attended to, provide keys
to understanding the import of various aspects of the film. In fact, the film,
as analyzed in this essay, is best understood
if structured around these three voice-overs.
The first
voice-over is concurrent to (and, significantly, is located within the
constraints of) Hancox's slow pan through the "scenic dome" of a train
known as "The Canadian." Akin to Jean-Louis Baudry's analysis of
the cinematographic apparatus or to Michel Foucault's exposition of Bentham's
Panopticon8 this
first voice-over suggests that a museum's cyclorama (and, by extension, the
train's "scenic dome") be
treated metaphorically as not only a visual but also epistemological technology
that structures mand characterizes (that is, mediates) the knowledge
available to the spectator or participant.'As we will see, both the museum and the train are significant spaces within the
context of the memoir and journey and mboth
mediate our knowledge of Rick Hancox and Moose Jaw in different ways. The
second extended voice mover provides a clue as to the motivation or rationale for the journey
into the past and present via the visual mtechnologies evident in the film (e.g., black and white photographs, museum displays, newspaper archives,
etc.) by designating the film as part of a therapeutic treatment
necessary to the reinstatement of the patient's composure. The film text,
then, is a record or memoir of an attempt to recover an existential balance
that, once attained, will once and forever free the patient from the tyranny of
the past.' 10 Finally, and given its
context within a report on the allocating of land to settlers by corrupt
speculators, the significance of the
third voice-over resides in its
recognition of the capricious yet inescapable nature of the world-a state for which a cure does not seem probable nor possible (as was the hope and
promise of the second voice-over)."
The consequence of the preceding three
voice-overs, although contextualized in the form of a personal remembrance and
odyssey, is to posit an inextricable link between the trans-individual domains
of the familial, social, economic, and political on the one hand, and the intimate
and personal on the other." In order to assess the validity of this
analysis, however, it is necessary to work through the film's text. The movement
between the past and the present (harnessed as it is to the purposes implied or stated in the three voice-overs) is enabled and mediated
by a variety of visual, aural, and mechanical technologies that function to create and structure the
spectator's epistephilia-the visual
technologies of the "scenic dome,"
the museum, the photographs, and the movie camera; the aural technologies of
the songs, the television and radio
newscasts, the interviews, the family gatherings, the spoken newspaper stories,
and the science speeches at the
museum; and finally, the mechanical technology of the train which comprises the
cardinal recurring motif in the film. None of these epistemic technologies is,
however, completely free from limitation nor entirely beneficial to
Hancox's quest (as expressed in the second voice-over). The limitation of the movie camera is, for example, foregrounded
when Hancox, unable to secure access to the old train station, places his camera in close proximity to
an old, sepia-tinted photograph of the station. We also become aware of the limits to technological mediation
whenever Hancox juxtaposes black and white photographs or colour slides with spoken commentary by his parents or
brothers - recollections and remembrances,
although partly engendered by the photos and slides, remain fragmentary and
demonstrate the chasm between the past and
the present (as when the past prosperity of Moose Jaw's "golden mile"
is contrasted with present-day
boarded-up shops or Hancox's parents express surprise and disdain at a demolished
dance hall)." Furthermore, the same technologies that enable the journey
become, during the course of the film,
infused with a tangible and brooding malevolence. At the beginning of the film,
for example, we are presented with a
sequence in which Hancox's shadow falls across the train rails that he is walking
with his camera hung at his side. A child's voice speaks a rhyme:
"One crows sorrow, two crows joy, three crows
a litter, four crows a boy, five crows silver, six crows gold, seven crows a
story never to be told, never to be
told, never to be told." The sequence appears initially to suggest that
the main concern of Hancox's film
resides in a journey into childhood. Only at the end of the film do we
recognize that Hancox's is "a
story never to be told" successfully (that is, as fulfilling the hope expressed
in the second voice-over).
Again: the 1960s promotional material lauding the
"kaleidoscope of colour in motion" of "The Canadian" train service is a far cry from Hancox's experience at the close of the film
when the train figures promi
nently in his "escape" and
seemingly psychotic break with the past and present Moose Jaw (e.g., the image of Hancox's
open-mouthed face pressed up against the train window in a silent
scream)." The initial promise of the
train as an instrument or medium by which Hancox can bridge the troubling gap
between past and present is also
thrown into disarray by the fragment of a newscast at the conclusion of the
film (just before the image of Hancox's face against the train window):
"...dismay across the West today. No longer any passenger service crossing the southern prairies through
Moose Jaw and Regina."" That is, the means of Hancox's investigation is terminated abruptly (although, not
without warning as we shall see below)
and he is left without recourse-in
the words of the second main voice-over he will not be able to alleviate "the urge to go back" and his
"experience" of return to Moose Jaw and all that it represents is not
"digested." Finally, there
is one aural element of the film that also undergoes a transformation from
pleasant recollection to horrific
repetition and that is the calling out of Hancox's name, Richard. Initially a
fond remembrance by Hancox's mother of how she used to locate and
recover him when he was a boy roaming Eaton's,
at the film's end the calling out has assumed the insistent, staccato hammer of
a past that will not let him go.
The Moose Jaw Museum of Transportation and the Saskatchewan
Treasure Vault of Time are also important mediations in the spectator's
comprehension of Hancox's memoir." Given the fundamental importance of transportation in Hancox's film, his
visit to the Museum of Transportation is revealing and full of irony. The exhibits of automobiles,
airplanes, boats, and train cars together with the voice-over fragments that celebrate the achievements of science
and human progress" stand in dramatic and ironic contrast with the
reports of both the automobile and tractor accidents and the mid-air collision
of a Northstar passenger plane with a Harvard airforce trainer. The assurance
and boldness that accompanies the panegyrics
to scientific accomplishment is undermined by the ominous organ chords, sounds
of crashing and burning planes, and
the howling wind that attend the reports of tragedy.' 8 The
irony takes on greater magnitude when we realize, at the film's end, that
Hancox's trip to the museum is an abridgment of his journey to Moose Jaw in its entirety and, in fact, presages
its endpoint. As the technological advances of humanity are evaluated with ambivalence so, too, and in a
similar fashion, does the spectator evaluate the success Hancox's journey. The Saskatchewan Treasure Vault of
Time intensifies the association of Moose Jaw with the imposition of (personal
and racial) death, particularly in its juxtaposition of Native presence and
Royal visit, Native drumming and song
of the Empire. The ingenuity of Native myth (the Pleiades cluster as seven lost brothers) is contrasted with an account of the
Royal visit that described the "noble red men" and the "grotesque
and gaudy costumes in which people of an inferior race clothe themselves."
Also indicative of the passage of time and the coming of death is the
comparison of the roar of a Tyrannosaurus Rex with the thundering overhead pass of jet fighters: the might of the dinosaur, like
the power of a jet fighter, was and is
no guarantee against extinction. To make the thrust and meaning of this part of
the film undeniable Hancox also chooses to film tombstones and add the
soporific voice of Brian Mulroney: "It is important Canadians understand why this has happened ... why this has happened... why, why, why..." At the conclusion of the film the spectator, like Hancox, doesn't
understand and the "explanations" proffered by scientist and politician alike fall short of any true or lasting
comfort.
One final space mediates and helps to
form our knowledge of Hancox's quest namely, his downtown Moose Jaw hotel room. The
spectator's first experience of the hotel room is in the context of a homecoming
and the promise it represents. After acquainting the spectator with the layout
of the room, enhanced by the accompaniment of
CBC Toronto's "Happy Gang" and a laid-back rendition of "Slow
Boat to China," Hancox introduces us to a series of black and white
photos held up against the background of coloured
film stills of various Moose Jaw locations. The question posed is how to
contextualize the black and white
memories of childhood (e.g., sitting
on a porch, on a swing, and on a snowbank) with the richly coloured present-day reality. At this early point
in the film, however, the question is not problematic and the chirping of birds seems to herald an
expectancy that will be, or so we believe at this point, met. The next portrayal of the hotel room occurs after the
first two main voice-overs and we are now aware of the purpose
motivating Hancox's investigation. It is night and Hancox is perched on the
edge of his bed watching the television
news when he (and we) hear our first indication of trouble, given the
importance of the train (both as means of transportation and metaphor
for knowledge). Apparently, the news has come down that the government is to
cut specific VIA train lines and there is speculation that some Western cities
will suffer as a result-specifically, and ironically given the title of the
film, there is the question of what the "losing [of] this important piece of the past could mean for their
future." The next morning we hear Hancox brushing his teeth and leaving the room for another day of
investigation. From this point onward the hotel room loses its warmth and
becomes not a centre from which to launch a search or inquiry but a means to
withdraw and retreat from the distressing revelations bound up in Moose Jaw's
past and present. The next major sequence
involving the hotel room, for example, begins with yet another news report on
the demise of some VIA roots and
then involves the filming of a parade in such a way as to suggest Hancox's separation, distance, and alienation from the
community (i.e., we view the parade either from over his shoulder from the high vantage point of the hotel
room or from a very low angle so that the individuals involved are
filmed against the backdrop of a blustery, overcast, and grey sky). Also
important to note about the space of the
hotel room is that the ambient noise of Moose Jaw's main street is increasingly
displaced by what sounds like water gurgling through a pipe and other
heavy industrial sounds which together sound so out of place that they lend to
the sense of unease pervading the second half of the film (the same sounds are
also present in full strength in the train compartment at the conclusion of the
film)."
It
is all too apparent (and thankfully so) that the pleasure of the film exceeds
the ratiocination practiced in this essay and, in conclusion, it is hoped
that the foregoing analysis of some of the key mediational spaces and technologies operative
within Moose
Jaw - There's a Future in our Past has helped to enlighten and augment the spectator's experience of the film.
FOOTNOTES
1. Derrida's
critique of the frame can help us understand part of what sets Hancox's film
apart (i.e., the density, movement, and fluidity of its text) from other modes of
documentary practice. Although somewhat lengthy, the best annotation of
Derrida's critique that I have found thus far is in Mike Bal and Norman
Bryson's review of semiotics and art history. Since it illuminates
some aspects of the analysis to follow, I believe it to be worthwhile to quote it at
length. "The first move, the drawing of a nonpermeable perimeter around the
work of art, is the subject of Derrida's lengthy excursus on ‘framing'.... It may
be essential to the structuralist project, as well as to many others (including ‘formalism' in
art history) [and, we might add, classical discourse on documentary practice - G.L.] to maintain the fiction that the work
of art is characterized by its apartness, that
it inhabits an area of autonomy and separation from ‘extrinsic' concerns. But for Derrida semiosis is a process
that can never be placed within a logic of enclosure ... Where
Saussure theorizes the sign as a fixed and static entity, with each signifier
stitched to its stable signified, Derrida argues for the dynamism of signs: that a sign is not (as in Saussure) the conjunction between a signifier and its single, univocal
signified, but the movement from one signifier to another, the motion between
them. As motion, visual signification is
therefore incompatible with the
ideas of boundary, threshold, frame...
Investigating the conceptual
structure of the frame in aesthetic discourse, Derrida allows that it is both
fundamental to that discourse, and
at a profound level absent from it. Fundamental, because without the idea of the frame, there can be no object of aesthetics... Yet even though it is the
idea of the frame that calls the
discourse of aesthetics into being-for
without it, that discourse could
not open itself, could not define what it discusses-that discourse, according to Derrida, cannot adequately theorize the frame or describe its
opening move. What it can, of
course, discuss is the ‘outside' of the work of art, which comes into being as outside once the
concept of the frame is in place; and
equally well it can discuss the ‘inside,' what is proper to the work of
art. But the frame itself is consigned to a kind of conceptual limbo, for the reason (Derrida argues) that the frame is the one thing in the discourse
of aesthetics that escapes the categories
of ‘inside' and ‘outside.'
In fact, the frame is both at once, a
hybrid, a categorical aberration-which
might be manageable if the discourse with which
the frame operates, and which it also establishes, could permit a mediating
zone between its two extremes ... But
the discourse of aesthetics,
exemplified for Derrida by Kant, cannot allow such a zone of aberration to be admitted, since that would be to call into question its own primary
move, the division of the field into ‘inside" and ‘outside.' Instead, the frame is conceptually disavowed and repressed, becoming an ornamental supplement, an unnecessary and optional
accompaniment to the work of art. Nevertheless, this relegation of the
frame to the place of a mere incidental in aesthetic discourse cannot conceal, in Derrida's analysis, that the latter's
central area of interest, the
‘inside' of the work of art, depends for its very being on the conceptual operation of the frame; that
is, on an operation that threatens
the clean separation of ‘outside' and 'inside' on which all else is predicated. Derrida's argument aims to
expose the persistent logic of
enclosure that allows there to be
found in painting [and classical conceptions of film - G.L.] the
stasis of transcendental contemplation (Kant), stabilized reference (Meyer Schapiro), or ontotheological
presence (Heidegger). Against such a
logic, and by pressing hard on the contradictions
and incoherences of its fundamental moves, [Derrida's] The
Truth in Painting shows visual
semiosis to be a matter of disframing: an unending dissemination that,
nevertheless, as repeatedly pointed out,
always occupies specific social and
historical sites." Mieke Bal
and Norman Bryson, "Semiotics and Art History," The Art Bulletin 73.2 June (1991): 192-193,
bold emphasis mine. One way in which to understand Hancox's film is to
see it as a challenge to the "logic of
enclosure" found in classical documentary practice. The visual and
aural cacophony of the film is analogous to Derrida's "unending dissemination" in that the text is hard to fix or
hold in a stable position - yet it
also "occupies specific social and historical sites" (e.g.,
Moose Jaw, the 1950s, the old and new
VIA train stations, the Museum of
Transportation, the Saskatchewan
Treasure Vault of Time, etc. ).
2. See Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary
(Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991) 178-180 for an explication of this
foundational dynamic in documentary practice.
3. The article can be found in Wide Angle 18, no. 3/4 (1986): 71-77. There are
elements of Renov's article, however, that remain
problematic and these will be examined when appropriate.
4. Renov 72.
5. "In the case of the documentary,
four distinct sites or signifying instances are distinguishable which, in their
interaction, create the meaning effect of the documentary film: the
historical ‘real,' the pro-filmic, the text and the spectator. At each juncture of this
relational sequence, the naturalized or immediate continuity of elements must
be interrogated with the result that the documentary film, treated by many
as a kind of semi-permeable membrane that connects the spectator to the world,
becomes a deliberately confected presentation of material photographed,
recorded and arranged in a precise way, experienced by a determinate
audience at a particular moment of history via a specific mode of
transmission." Renov 72.
6. A friend of mine, after his initial
viewing of the film, commented on how it was a bewildering and, in some ways,
numbing experience (e.g., a sensory overload). The film demands and makes
imperative the analysis and deconstruction that language and conversation
afford so that the spectator can begin to control and shape his or her
impressions of the film; discourse is a necessary intervention.
7.
It is evident that Renov's account favours, for example, the movement from the
pro-filmic event to the cinematic text itself "The second focus of mediation, occurring in
the interstices of pro-filmic and text, constitutes
without question the
most complex and
varied field of intercession." Renov 75, italics mine. This emphasis on
the construction of the text is also revealed, despite his preliminary recommendation that
Derrida's critique of the metaphysics of presence or immediacy needs to be brought to the conceptualization
of documentary practice, in Renov's laudatory evaluation of Stan Brakhage's
creative control over
the formation of his film, Deus Ex: "The image [of an open-heart surgery] beats to the
rhythm of Brakhage's own heart: the mediation of the filmmaker's presence is measurable ... For such film practice, 'truth,' insofar as it can be attributed to the text, is an expression of a personal vision. For such a brand of documentary
practice, mediating processes are the vehicles rather than the encumbrances to its claim to
veracity." Renov 76, italics mine. Derrida's critique of presence, which
enables Renov to
note Brakhage's marks of subjectivity, results in a statement that is
reminiscent of auteurism with its protocol of reading a text for the "truth" of a
"personal vision" and its admiration of a director's control over the
formation of his or her text. Contrary to Renov, the contemporary use of Barthes' aphorism on
the death of the author ["...the birth
of the reader must be
at the cost of the death of the Author"] and Derrida's critique of
presence has engendered contemporary investigations into theories of reception that
effectively cancel out the commonplaces of auteur theory that Renov here finds
to be so appealing in assessing Brakhage's film. It is not necessary that a focus on the
pro-filmic and the textual should outweigh a consideration of a film's reception but it is
revealing that Renov's article concludes with a weak and insubstantial
explication of spectatorship. The Barthes' quote is from "The Death of the Author," Image - Music - Text trans. Stephen Heath (New York:
The Noonday Press,
1988) 148.
8. See Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects of
the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus" Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Fourth Edition eds. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, Leo Brandy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992) 302-312
for, among other items, an exposition of an optical metaphor for knowledge.
Chapter three, "The Panoptic Gaze and the Anamorphic Archive," of Donald Preziosi's Rethinking
Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989) contains a brief consideration of Foucault's analysis of the
Panopticon particularly as it serves to illuminate the conflation of power and knowledge operative within the
institutions and visual technologies of art history (e.g., the
museum, the archive, the slide
presentation, etc. ). In fact, Preziosi begins chapter three with an
extended meditation on the epistemological and evaluative significance of a
well-known painting that, in its function, is similar to the cyclorama mentioned
in the first voice-over.
9 I
was able to discern the following in the first voice-over: "...very
important in the kind of ritual learning of history that goes on within
museums. In that sense it is a cyclorama, it is an area where you can recreate
the atmosphere which is very important
in Canadian history. But you can also recreate mythology so that, in fact, the
actual fabric of the history than you can touch and feel blends with the filmic mythology. So its a kind of juxtaposition
of reality and mythology." 10
Once again, the remnant that I
was able to isolate is as follows: "...proved to be a crucial one in the
analytic process. The patient needed to go back and experience the past
instant in more than a simple recall verbal form. It had to have the affective
impact of being in the actual physical place. These examples are marked by a
certain compulsive need to carry out the given investigation. Eventually, when the experience is digested, and this may
take one or more trips, the urge to go back dissipates."
11. The voice-over: "It was as
if I had fallen through a manhole into a dark, underground world of archaic
brutality. Thenceforth I never lost my awareness of the existence of that second universe into
which one might be transported without warning from one moment to the other. The
world had become ambiguous ... invested with a double meaning. Events moved on two different planes at the same time."
This two-tiered reality is strongly reminiscent of that explored in David Lynch's
Blue Velvet (USA, 1986) wherein the main protagonist travels between
the Norman Rockwellian Americana of Lumberton-by-day and the nightmarish and
foreboding underworld of Lumberton-by-night. Another point of comparison
between Lynch and Hancox is their use of popular music: both undermine the sweet innocence
of old tunes by providing disturbing and violent contexts that cause spectators to re-examine
the meaning of well-known lyrics. In fact, the treatments of Lumberton and
Moose Jaw share a lot in common and it would be rewarding to compare both films.
12 Of course, it is possible to evaluate
this linkage either positively (e.g., Hancox avoids an
introspective solipsism by recognizing
that individuals always exist in a context) or negatively (e.g., Hancox is a narcissist who has the audacity to
suggest that Moose Jaw's problems mirror his own).
13. It is here, of course, that we become aware of the
irony in the film's title in that the past prosperity and industry of Moose Jaw has been unable to secure a reliable future
for the city and its citizens. This is also expressed when Hancox asks a town councilor about the prospects of the city and
does not receive the promise or reassurance of economic re-vitalization but, instead, a homily to tradition and family values.
14.'The
device of the train as a transport between the past and the present is used in
a similar fashion in Lars Von Trier's Zentropa (Denmark/France/Germany/Sweden, 1991) in
which the main protagonist, a young American of German heritage, returns to
post-WWII Germany to work as a conductor on a train. The same trains used to
restore a ravaged Germany were those used by the Nazis to transport the
victims of the holocaust and Von Trier's film places the young American on a
hallucinatory, surreal and frightening journey that culminates in a madness
akin to that experienced by Hancox at the close of his film.
15 Notice that the
"scenic dome" of the train is now empty and that there is no one to
take in the panoramic view and its promise of knowledge.
16
Hancox's use of museum spaces is analogous to Donald Preziosi's recent
analysis of the museum as a powerful framing device: "Above all, museums are
social instruments for the fabrication and maintenance of modernity.
Historically coterminous with our modernity, they have served as one of its
central and definitive institutions and instances. Museums frame history, memory, and
meaning through the patterned deployment of artifacts abstracted from our own
and other societies, choreographing these together with the bodies of beholders. In
so doing, they labor to stage, define, and discipline desire, erect templates for the
composition of our interpersonal selves, finalizing the past as ordered,
oriented, and arrowed. Museums have always, everywhere, been teleological
machines and landscapes of geomancy.
In
the museum, the past is staged as prologue to our presentness, predisposing
that presence to a telling and narrative order: in a line of fiction. In producing the past
through retroaction, and the future through anticipation, we are storied,
movied, and made to reckon with ourselves as subjects in the performance of
modem life - as
agents of modernity and as celebrants in the service of that sanctimonious
aestheticism that in our own time masquarades as History. One of the spaces of
memory par
excellence in the West since the eighteenth century, the museum is one of our
premier theoretical machineries, and in many ways the very emblem of dersires set into play by the
Enlightenment, providing us with yet another powerfully canny displacement of
religiosity." Donald Preziosi, "Modernity Again: The Museum as Trompe
L'Oeil," Deconstruction and the Visual
Arts: Art, Media, Architecture eds. Peter Brunette and David Wills (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1994)
17. There are two quotes that are highly
ironic given the circumstances: "Here science serves the worker, making
machines more automatic and the men that govern them more human" and
"...we grapple with brute chaos. Who shall be master? Things or Men?" It
seems that the purpose of Hancox's film, expressed in the second main
voice-over, is to overcome the threat of
chaos and
confusion but that, eventually, Hancox must concede the ongoing existence of
the "dark, underground world of archaic brutality" mentioned in the
third main voice-over.
18.
The cavernous, echoing, and empty (recall the empty "scenic dome" of
the train at the film's conclusion) museum space also renders the bravado voice of
human progress indistinct, booming, and grotesque.
19 When I first
viewed the film this aural element reminded me exactly of Lynch's Blue Velvet wherein several locations - all
of them sites of danger - are also marked by heavily filtered industrial
noises like clanging metal or gurgling water, etc. I could not watch the Hancox film, therefore,
without bearing in mind the background significance of Lynch's film.