Waterworx
by Philippe Mather
(Experimental
Film Class, Concordia University April 8, 1987)
Waterworx is a science-fiction film. This
sex-word sentence sums up, albeit in a crude fashion, what I will be attempting
to demonstrate in this paper. At first glance, it may seem like a contradictory
statement, and a rather difficult view or position to defend. Certainly, it is
a very personal interpretation of Richard Hancox’s 1982 film, and I hope that
the following pages will show that this is not such a far-fetched notion, but
simply an original one.
First of
all, Waterworx would be classified as
an avant-garde, experimental, non-narrative type of film. Therefore, how is it
possible to discuss it in terms of a conventional, narrative film genre. This
essay will develop the idea of science-fiction as a very unconventional film
and literary genre, from a narrative point of view. My own concept of the
“science-fiction aesthetic” will be coupled with an extensive use of Vivian
Carol Sobchack’s thesis on the American science-fiction film in her book The Limits Of Infinity, in order to demonstrate the appropriateness of my
approach. Sobchack’s notion of the “look” and “feel” of science-fiction will be
particularly helpful.
To start
with, I would like to do a shot-by-shot breakdown of Waterworx, which will then make it a simple matter to refer back to
certain specific shots in the film. As far as the overall structure of the film
is concerned, it is made up of two almost identical three-minute segments, with
the same eighteen shots in each segment, save for the final “terminal” shot
(the pun is the filmmaker’s). The only other differences are the following: the
second set of eighteen shots has a computer print-out of the verses of Wallace
Stevens’s poem A Clear Day and No
Memories superimposed on fifteen of the eighteen shots; also, the volume of the
soundtrack is a little lower for the second segment.
Shot
Shot
Shot 3: 8
seconds. Track forward on small cement road in front of building; cuts just
before the road turns left.
Shot
Shot 5: 8
seconds. Looks like the continuation of shot #3: the camera turns to the left,
towards the edge of the “cliff.”
Shot 6: 6
seconds. Track to the left, with the building farther in the background. A wall
enters the left part of the frame abruptly in the foreground.
Shot 7: 6
seconds. Track right on the building in close-up.
Shot 8: 4
seconds. Track forward towards the building.
Shot 9: 6
seconds. Track right.
Shot 10: 3
seconds. Track left. “Danger Keep Away” sign.
Shot 11: 4
seconds. Track right. Building in long shot (background).
Shot 12: 4
seconds. Continuation of shot #1: the camera moves around the corner of the
building.
Shot 13: 5
seconds. Track right, then forward between the two buildings.
Shot 14: 5
seconds. Track left between buildings. Strong shadow.
Shot 15: 4
seconds. Track forward.
Shot 16: 2
seconds. Track left. Building “exits” in right side of the frame.
Shot 17: 2
seoncds. Track left towards the waterfront. Lynn: “When the world is free…”
Shot 18: 24
seconds. Track forward towards the edge, then stop. Lynn is gone, and the
“buzz” fades out. Only the wind remains.
Shot
19(1a): the sound level drops. Superimposed in the lower half of the frame are
the words: “No soldiers in the scenery.”
Shot 20
(2a): “No thoughts of people now dead.”
Shot 21
(3a): “As they were fifty years ago.”
Shot
22(4a): “Young and living in a live air”’; followed by “Young and walking in
the sunshine.”
Shot
23(5a): “Bending in blue dresses to touch something.”
Shot 246a):
Verse is maintained from previous shot.
Shot
25(7a): Nothing new, except for the soundtrack (lower volume)
Shot
26(8a): “Today the mind is not part of the weather.”
Shot
27(9a): Same as above.
Shot
28(10a): Nothing new.
Shot
29(11a): “Today the air is clear of everything.”
Shot
30(12a): Same as above.
Shot
31(13a): “It has not knowledge except.”
Shot
32(14a): Above verse is maintained and completed by: “Of nothingness.”
Shot
33(15a): “And it flows over us without meanings.”
Shot
34(16a): Same as above.
Shot
35(17a): Nothing new.
Shot
36(18a): “As if none of us had ever been here before.” Followed by: “And are
not now: in this shallow spectacle.” Followed by “This invisible activity.”
This shot is two seconds longer than shot 18, plus an extra two seconds for the
dissolve to the next shot.
Shot 37: 15
seconds. Last verse from previous shot is maintained.” This invisible
activity.” There is a small, quick zoom out from the computer terminal. The
filmmaker and his camera can be seen vaguely as a reflection on the video
screen. First verse in this shot is followed by: “This sense.” End of film.
Thus, the
question is: what makes the science-fiction genre so unusual that its aesthetic
could be applied to the avant-garde cinema? More specifically, how can one
possibly interpret Waterworx as a
science-fiction film? I think the answer lies in the fact that both genres
under consideration (science-fiction and experimental cinema) can be joined in
heir common usage of flimsy forms of narrative. Both genres can conjure up
abstract notions, touch upon certain ideas and themes through the use of images
and print, and not by a conventional use of narrative. Actually, science
fiction films can use conventional narrative modes, and there are many
avant-garde films from which one would be hard-pressed to verbalize an idea.
But we are dealing with the continuum of art, and these two genres both
represent a wide spectrum of forms that have an interesting meeting ground
which has perhaps never been explored heretofore. For example, the use of the
word in avant-garde cinema, as both object and signifier, can be seen in
Michael Snow’s film So Is This, also made in 1982. So Is This is probably a
kind of extreme, but some of the same strategies are used much more subtly in Waterworx. In other words, one should be
careful in stating unequivocally that the avant garde cinema is always, by
definition, a non-narrative genre. To make such a statement would be to reduce
the concept of narrative to a rather narrow area. My definition of “narrative”
would thus go beyond the notion of simply “telling a story,” to encompass the
ability to communicate ideas, no matter how abstract the form of communication
is.
Science-fiction
writer and theoretician Samuel Delany has spoken about the dichotomy between
the “subject” and the “object,” more commonly referred to as “characters” and
“ideas,” and has said that the science-fiction genre offers a unique
opportunity for writers to escape from what he calls “the tyranny of the
subject.” He is of course talking about that annoying necessity in most
narrative forms to construct “well-rounded characters,” around which stories
can evolve. It is therefore no secret that science fiction is a genre of ideas
as opposed to characters, which explains why a lot of science-fiction films
present us non-existent characters, “ciphers” who are mere tools to vehiculate
certain ideas. Unfortunately many people forget this, and criticize the genre
for not accomplishing something which it ws never meant to do in the first
place. One can see how open the science-fiction genre can be as a vehicle for
expressing certain ideas based on the extrapolation of various scientific theories.
The form of this expression is extremely variable, but there are consistent
patterns found in many science-fiction films: the hardware, the iconography,
the sound, the look, the distance, etc… All these elements and terms will be
defined and explored, in relation to the film Waterworx and the science-fiction genre.
Taking a
somewhat narrow definition of the science-fiction genre, John Baxter, in his
book Science Fiction in the Cinema, makes the following comment:
Science
fiction’s concern is not with individuals but with movements and ideas(…)
Contrast with this utilitarian field the fantasy and illusion of film. Even the
greatest of cinema artists cannot do more than approximate in symbols the
intellectual development of an abstract premise on which science fiction
depends so much for its effects (…)Science-fiction film, then, is an
intellectual impossibility.”
To counter
this opinion, Vivian Sobchak rightly points out that it is a “rather naïve
assumption that because a wrier always uses words (which, after all, are
abstractions themselves) he is in a better position to deal with the abstract
than an artist working in another medium.” Furthermore, she adds that both
science-fiction writers and filmmakers
may create
works which can be-and are-as banal, boring, and talky or as significant,
compelling, and profound as the artist’s ability to control his medium. That
medium maybe words or it may be moving images, but both are equally capable of
leading the reader or viewer to abstract considerations. In other words, the
medium is only as good as the talent which uses it, as profound as the vision
which informs it.
From that
kind of comment, it is easy to hypothesize that the experimental cinema could
indeed by science-fiction when it wanted to. Why not? Besides, given the
intellectual nature of the genre, it is interesting to note that in the very
word “experimental” a cerebral connotation can be extracted.
Sobchack
makes an interesting point which can help in tying in the science-fiction genre
with Waterworx. She writes, “Although
it lacks an informative iconography, encompasses the widest possible rang eof
time and place, and constantly fluctuates in its visual representation of
objects, the SF film still has a science fiction ‘look’ and ‘feel’ to its visual
surfaces. This unique look and feel embraces all the films of the genre(…)” Of
course, this ‘look’ and ‘feel’ is heavily dependant upon the context of the
entire film, and only a close analysis of the various elements of Waterworx can
illuminate my thesis. One of the most vivid impressions one gets from viewing
Hancox’s film is a strong sense of nostalgia. Many elements combine to give
this impression: on the soundtrack, one hears echoes of children playing, as
well as old radio waves from the forties, including excerpts from Vera Lynn
songs: “I’ll never forget,” “I remember when,” and “Tomorrow.” The very title
of Stevens’s poem “A Clear Day and No Memories” is quite evocative, as are the
following verses: “No thoughts of people now dead (referring to the past); “As
they were fifty years ago (which gives us a specific time frame); the next
three verses, as well as the first, continue to refer to the past, and seem to
illustrate the visuals they accompany in the film. The seventh verse, “Today the mind is not
part of the weather,” as well as the last six, discuss a present state of
affairs with melancholy (“this shallow spectacle”), and always in relation to a
pas either forgotten or at least gone. There is a strong sense of loss: what is
suggested is that there were many beautiful (or perhaps not so beautiful)
things in this place “fifty years ago” The poem thus takes place in the past
and the present; the future tense is never used. There is a feeling of
hopelessness, of futility (“nothingness”), which renders any possible future
meaningless.
The theme
of memory is therefore quite important, and I think it is a central theme to
many science-fiction films as well. Critic Richard Hodgens, in a Film Quarterly
article, defines the genre this way, “Science fiction… may be simply fiction
that takes place in the future or introduces some radical assumption about the
present or the past.” The medium of film also happens to be an excellent form
in which to explore and develop the notion of time, for the three basic
components of the viewing processes are, as Richard Hancox has rightly pointed
out, memory, perception and anticipation. Tied in with the concept of memory is
the well-known science-fiction ‘object’ which is the ultimate memory bank: the
computer. One of the basic characteristics of cybernetic intelligence is its
‘coldness’ or, as Mr. Hancox has said, its “uncaring attitude towards memory.”
For instance, one might remember the central computer in Normal Jewison’s Rollerball, which is unable to store the
vital card containing all known historical data on the thirteenth century. The
card is thus torn by the computer assistant.
In
Waterworx, Stevens’s nostalgic poem is shown via a computer print-out which may
seem like a paradoxical way to present a poem. The very graphics of the letters
convey that feeling of dry, computer data. The flashing dot at the end of each
line, in paricular, has a detached, direct, video-programmed feel to it. this
kind of device is specific to the science-fiction genre, it would seem, as
Sobchack points out.
Except for
the purpose of ironic comment, most films other than SF which use language
visually do so for economy’s sake, for narrative compression. Nowhere does one
have the feeling that the print we are looking at is meant to be beautiful in
its form, in its graphic appearance and colour. It is only the SF film (and
fairly recent SF film, for that matter) which has created a visual poetry
composed of letters, words, numbers and formulae-originally meant to be spoken
aloud or read in a book, but made magical, made runic by their transformation
into something seen and unspoken on a screen.
The text in
Waterworx seems to serve a double
function: it is an illustration and an interpretation of the images themselves,
but since we are already familiar with the images (having seen them once
already without the poem), we can appreciate the word’s visual integration into
the image as well. Had there not been this initial presentation of the visual
material minus the words, our attention would presumably have been more divided
between the two elements, which would have impoverished our appreciation of the
gaphic quality of the type, since the primary act of reading would have taken
up all the time remaining from our watching the images, or vice-versa. Once
again, Sobchack outlines an interesting distinction in the use of print between
science-fiction and non- science-fiction.
We read the words which supply us
with information and then apply that information to the seen image. The process
is, of course, incredibly rapid, but the distinction is still made; we do not
see the print so much as read it, and we do not read the rest of the image so
much as see it. Implicit here is the separation of reading and seeing, the
separation of the processes of intellection and perception… In contrast, more
recent SF films have generated tension and wonder by their refusal (however
conscious or unconscious) to separate reading and seeing, by their fusion of
the two processes into one. What results is wondrously alien to our everyday
experience. W are made self-conscious of our one-sided response to print as
content and are asked by images to consider print graphically and aesthetically
as well. Letters, words, numbers, diagrams and formulae create designs, move in
screen space, convey colour and light as well as content.
Another
important concept in science-fiction is that of distance. One could also refer
to it as distanciation or alienation, but the grenre does have this unqiue,
anthropological quality of looking at Man’s condition from a distance, of not
getting all emotionally wrapped up in the state of mind of certain individuals,
or at least not for too long. Indeed, this distance permits us to consider the
puniness of our presence on a cosmic scale. In Waterworx, this impression of
distance is created in many ways. First of all, let us consider this quote from
Sobchack, once again: “Because the emphasis in the SF film is so often on the
external, because it does not usually concentrate on internally realized
characters, our interest in these types of films is objective and often based
on scale.”
Of course,
in Hancox’s film, the “external” and “objective” qualities are fulfilled partly
by the computer print-out. In an article from Words and Moving Images, Hancox
explains that “something was needed to block penetration into the
images-something flat across the screen, to draw attention instead to a kind of
transparent partition…” Interestingly, this parition is not as invisible as it
might seem because since the poetry is shot off a video scrnee, as wel find out
at the end, theverses are visually slightly warped: a normal television screen
is never perfectly flat, and I found this to be a slightly noticeable quality
in the wy the sentences were laid out on the film screen. But of course, the
important thing to note is thatthere is indeed a partition, especially seince
we may try to imagine the images without the text in the second part, as we
remember that the first part was devoid of any superimposed words. In other
words, the twp-pars structure of the film is central in our understanding of
the distance which is created between us and the images. As Hancox has said,
the first half of the film may create a strong emotional impression, but the
second half is a distance removed. Lowering the volume of the soundtrack for
the second half also contributes to this distanciation: the sounds seem
“farther away.” The last of the film is particularly important as well. Not
only is it self-reflexive in the sense that we see the filmmaker and his camera
reflected on the video screen, but we see additional verses shot off that very
terminal, superimposed on an image of the same computer but at a slight
distance. Also, the zoom out is not a slow, unobtrusive backwards tracking
shot, or a smooth, illusionistic zoom out: it is a slightly jerky camera
movement that calls attention to itself, thus contributing to further this
notion of distance, to de-romanticize the visuals. One may call it a Brechtian
device. In the poem, the eleventh verse contains this feeling of distance, of
newfound self-awareness: “As if none of us had ever been here before.” The
verse seems to be saying: let’s not kid ourselves, the air may be uncaring, but
there were people here. The question is: what happened?
This is
where the science fiction interpretation comes in. I would posit that we are
traveling on a post-apocalyptic, post-nuclear terrain, and there are several
elements that I will use to back up my interpretation, later. Back to the
notion of distance, however. The last two verses mention “this shallow
spectacle, This invisible activity,” which suggests a sense of illusion, of
“things are not as they appear to be.” The words: “this invisible activity” are
superimposed on two shots: number 36 (or 18a) and number 37 . Therefore, they
are maintained during the dissolve between the two shots, which is quite
evocative. It is as though the “shallow spectacle” of shots one to thirty six
is finally revealed as being the kind of illusion that it is, and the
“invisible activity,” that of the computer, is unveiled. Once again, I find the
use of the dissolve very appropriate: knowledge of “this invisible activity” is
shown as a slow revelation, no a sudden discovery (a straight cut).
Another
theme developed by Sobchack, which I would relate to he very structure of Waterworx, is that of the “alien” versus
the “familiar.” Sobchack writes:
The visual
connection between all SF film lies in the consistent and repetitious and
therefore emblematic use of specific images, but of types of images which
function in the same way from film to film to create an imaginatively realized
world which is always removed from the world we know or know of. The visual
surface of all SF film presents us with a confrontation between and mixture of
those images to which we respond as “alien” and those we know to be familiar.
I would say
that the two parts of Hancox’s film work in that way: the first half would be a
familiar, more direct emotional presentation of the visual material, helped in
part by the sounds of children playing, as well as the Vera Lynn song excerpts.
The second half, with the sounds more in the distance, and this de-romanticized
presentation of poetry, would be the alienating side or aspect of the same
images. Sobchack elaborates on this duality, by adding that “in every SF film
there is a visual tension which exists in such earnestness in no other genre-a
tension between those images which strive to totally remove us from a
comprehensible and known world into romantic poetry and those images which
strive to bring us back into a familiar and prosaic context.”
Less one
should think that the “alien” in science-fiction is always a wondrous and
fantastic setting, Sobchack rightly points out that “the visual movement of such
films is not towards a neutralization of the alien and abstract, but rather
toward the viewer’s alienation from the familiar and concrete.” A similar
strategy is employed in Waterworx, I
would argue. The images are very clear and sharp, and the colours have an
almost postcard-like quality to them. In the Words and Moving Images article,
Hancox writes about the “precisionist clarity of the image,” which demonstrates
a deliberate effort at controlling, manipulating the visual texture of the
images. So how are we alienated from these beautiful images? Not only through
the poem, in the second half of the film, but also byu one element on the
soundtrack, which is quite prominent in the first half: that disturbing
electronic sound, with its rhythmic beeping quality as well. Why is it
disturbing? Because, like the computer, it is a sound produced by a machine, or
by technology, more generally, which makes it inhuman. Of course, once again, a
science-fiction interpretation comes into play. I made a direct link between
the buzzing sound and the camera movement. After all, it is only in the first
and the last shots (1 and 18) that the camera is still (excluding the
‘terminal’ shot), and in those same shots, the electronic sound either fades in
or out. Therefore, there is something in the movement which is connected to
that sound. Since the sound is inhuman, or simply non-human, I figured that the
source of the movement would be non-human as well: either a robot, an
automaton, or an alien vehicle of some sort. Therefore, the film would be seen
from that object’s point-of-view. This is also a device common in a number of
science-fiction films. Sobchack remarks that “the use of (subjective camera
shots in SF film) has been discussed in reference to the subjective robotic
vision which punctuates 2001, Silent Running and Westworld, cinematographic instances which are quite powerful.)
Since I am
also suggesting a post-nuclear scenario, the protagonist of the poem, the air,
would be riddled with “radioactivity,” which is an interesting pun, given the
fact that we hear old radio waves on the soundtrack. The kind of radioactivity
I am referring to, however, could be described as silent activity, not to
mention an invisible one. On the level of iconography, Sobchack mentions a number
of science-fiction “objects” that evoke the genre, among which the “robot” and
“radioactive isotopes.” Relating the idea of the robot to Waterworx, it is interesting to read Sobchack quote Parker Tyler’s
book The Shadow of an Airplane Climbs the
Empire State Building when she writes about the previously busy City, after
a nuclear catastrophe: “To see it robbed of that motion (which is, after all, a
visual sign of life) is to see it as something devastatingly strange, to see it
“as if some robot camera had continued to unwind film and photograph the world
without man’s help.’” Also, in a nice interpretative description of the film War of the Worlds, she writes about the
martians’ individual war ships in the following terms: “Their silent movement
over city and countryside metaphorically turns Earth’s atmosphere turgid, their
inexorable progress is punctuated only by the hissing of their incinerating
rays.” I’m not suggesting that Waterworx
has the same plot as War of the Worlds.
My impression is more that of an observation. Perhaps there is an alien vehicle
involved, but whatever happened in this
place occurred half a century ago, we are told. I don’t want to give the
impression that I’m trying to impose any kind of conventional narrative on the
film, either. The science-fiction genre operates on a grand scale and can work
with various metaphors to contemplate the human condition. I think that the
avant-garde cinema can do the same.
Another
theme to consider is that of emptiness or, to use Stevens’ word, nothingness.
Sobchack points out that “there are images in certain SF films (most often
those dealing with postatomic holocaust) which show us emptiness on a scale
which is psychologically as well as visually awesome.” This science-fiction
sense of desolateness permeates Stevens’ poem. “No soldiers in the scenery:”
there are indeed no people in the images. But why mention soldiers? I would sa
that highly-ranked soldiers would be the principle protagonists in any nuclear
wipeout. “No thoughts of people now dead:” I think the word “people” is not
exclusive: it encompasses everyone, as in Mankind. “As they were fifty years
ago:” One element that I did not point out in my discussion of time, is the
fact that there are many intriguing time-travel stories in science-fiction. In Waterworx, not only do we travel back in
time to see all eighteen shots over again, so to speak, but within the
individual halves, there are two instances where we regress back in time, as I
noted in my shot breakdown. Shot five looks like a continuation of shot three,
as though it had been momentarily interrupted. This is when the camera movement
is moving forward on the road and is about to turn left. Also, a more important
delay occurs when shot twelve seems like a continuation of the very first shot:
the camera moves around the corner of the building with the red fireplug in
front. This kind of strategy is very common in science-fiction on a narrative
level, but there are also avant-garde films which go back and forth in time.
Chris Gallagher’s Seeing in the Rain (1981)
is a good example. “Young and living in a live air:” I suppose one can
understand the expression “live air” as an opposition to “deadly air,” and
perhaps “radioactive air.” “Young and walking in the sunshine:” the adjective
“young” is used twice to start two consecutive verses and connotes life and
liveliness, which is in opposition to the adjective “dead” in the second verse.
Similarly, the first two verses start with the negation “no” verses seven and
eight both start with the non “today,” which is used in opposition to “fifty
years ago.” The last words in verses six, eight and nine are “something,”
“everything” and “nothing(ness),” which is an interesting play with nuances in
the context of the poem. “Bending in blue dresses to touch something:” the
colour blue is significant on several levels: it is a “youthful” colour
(“baby-blue”) and the sky in Waterworx
is particularly pure in the texture of its blue colour. The youth, of course,
are heard on the soundtrack. “It has no knowledge except of nothingness:” this
is a kind of tautology, but it suggests a soulless void, a terrain, an “air”
with no conscience. “And it flows over us without meanings:” “us” might be
people dead and buried, or merely evaporated in the post-nuclear scenario. The
amorality of the protagonist is underlined in the last three verses.
The last
element I would like to discuss is the soundtrack, and more specifically, the
sound effects: the electronic “buzz,” and the wind. Both sounds are staples of
the science-fiction genre. Using sound as a kind of music, to create a specific
ambience, is a strategy which can produce some truly eerie effects. In a
somewhat similar fashion, Louis and Bebe Barron’s celebrated score of
‘electronic tonalities” in Forbidden Planet works quite well. Sobchack writes
about these sound effects, saying that the ‘music’ of machinery, in contrast to
twelve-tone or electronic music, is ‘found’ rather than created music (…) The
strange tonalities of the wind and surf are also ‘found’ in the external world
and although they, too, can be used emotively and dramatically, they do not
appear imposed from without, they do not call attention to a film’s fictional
structure.” In Waterworx, none of the
sounds seem “imposed from without,” save for the children playing, which is a
strongly suggestive sound. Indeed, the electronic humming is associated with the camera movement, as
I’ve indicated, so it isn’t “extra-diegetic,” if you will. The radio transmissions
feel like they’re simply waves carried by the wind, like forgotten echoes.
The wind
itself, of course, needs no justification. It is the protagonist (the “air”) of
this poetry-film. Writing on Howard Hawks’s The
Thing, Sobchack points out that “the geiger counter’s ‘found’ sound by
which the creature’s presence is detected becomes a recurrent and sinister
aural motif; (…) its accelerating static is grating, irritating, and
discomfiting to the listener(…).” I would say that the electronic sound in Waterworx is not irritating but it is
disturbing: we can only guess as to its source. The sound of radioactive wind
in the film Five is described by
Sobchack when she writes that “here-in what later becomes typical
post-nuclear-holocaust-film fashion-the sound of some unholy, but wholly
natural atomic wind predominates. (And if it’s not an atomic wind in later
films, it will be a desert wind or a seacoast wind; they all sound mournfully
identical.)” It is interesting to note that the wind in Waterworx would be both an “atomic wind” and a “seacoast wind.”
Also, the opening narration in the film Five apparently makes a reference to
“the deadly wind,” which is fitting, since the theme of death permeates
Stevens’s poem.
Sobchack
writes about the two major “sounds” of science-fiction and it interesting to
notice that both are used in Waterworx.
The one is
the sound of machinery, alien in its buzzing and zapping, its mechanical
ticking or clicking, inhuman in its effortless humming or in its metronomic
mockery of human heart-beats; the other is the sound of natural forces which
are usually out-shouted in modern life by man-made noise, natural forces like
the wind and the sea made alien and threatening by the amplification and
isolation of their sound on the track-crashing surf, screaming wind, both
become aural icons, metaphors for extreme desolation.
Also
powerfully suggestive is the sound of the giant ants in Them! which, according to a review in the magazine Twentieth
Century, sounds like “a shrill, ear-splitting whine curiously reminiscent of
air-raid warnings.” Sobchack uses another example from a 1959 film to
illustrate the recurring element of radioactivity.
And the
atomic wind reappears, along with emotionally effective an disproportionate
echoes, in the postholocaust The World,
The Flesh and the Devil, a film whose selective soundtrack emphasizes the
wind sighing through an empty New York City, blowing newspapers, whining around
corners, and uses it as an aural metaphor for the folly and death of men.
In a more
recent film, George Lucas’s THX 1138,
the dislocated sounds in the computerized society are described by Philip
Strick in Sight and Sound as “a multi-layered stir of electronic echoes, in
which individual voices are often lost among the simultaneous transmissions.”
It is interesting to note how Hancox’s soundtrack works in a similar fashion.
What I have
attempted to demonstrate is that there exists what I like to call a
“science-fiction aesthetic,” which is not dependant upon an elaborate narrative
situation, but simply a subtly suggested SF-related context. Therefore, and
given the nature of the genre, which I’ve discussed earlier, this aesthetic is
easily applied, I would argue, to the avant-garde or experimental film. My
conclusion, then, would be a slight refinement on the opening sentence of this
essay: Waterworx is an experimental
science-fiction film.
Bibliography
A.G.L.
“Review of THEM!” Twentieth Century (September 1954) p. 197.
Baxter,
John, “Science Fiction in the Cinema” New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1970. 240
p.
Hancox, Richard,
“Engaging Poetry with Film: A Personal Statement” in Words and Moving Images,
(Montreal: Mediatexte, 1984) pp. 97-103.
Hodgens,
Richard, “A Brief Tragical History of the Science-Fiction Film,” Film Quarterly
13 (winter 1959), pp. 30-39.
Sobchack, Vivian
Carol, “The Limits of Infinity: The American Science Fiction Film” New York:
A.S. Barnes and Co, 1980. 246 p.
Strick,
Philip, “Review of THX 1138,” Sight and Sound 43 (Summer 1973), pp. 177-78.
Tyler,
Parker, “The Shadow of an Airplane Climbs the Empire State Building,” New York:
Anchor Books, 1973.
I would
like to thank Richard Hancox for lending me a video copy of his beautiful film.
P.M.