Looking Back

It feels weird remembering my high school career now. I'm starting to question the logic of eyewitness accounts; memories warp so easily. People change, events happened and the moment may be structured that way now and forever, but what comes to pass afterwards can quietly change the moment in your own head. You look back on things you once thought were a good idea with a feeling of sadness for your naivety, a twinge of regret for what could have been, and maybe a bit of laughter. Remembering isn't easy, and if you can't really remember your own experiences how can you possibly begin to remember history? Is it even really your place to "remember" an event you weren't alive for? Does that make it easier? We have our memorial days. We have our petty "thank you's" and "remember when's" but in reality, no one knows exactly what we're saying thank you for, and no one remembers the same event. The same things may have happened, yes, but in each person's mind its just a little different. So now I'm sitting here, thinking about my past five years, my one last class, and just wondering "how much can I really say I know about my own life?"

The Film

The Zapruder film is probably one of the most well known films in existence. It has millions of hits on YouTube today, in countless "enhanced" variations and stabilizations. It was played for the public upon its release by the CIA, and a massive bidding war was fought over who would get the film first. CBS ended up losing to Life magazine, who bought it for $150,000. Life subsequently published around 30 frames from the film in a special Kennedy Memorial edition, where Zapruder insisted that they leave out the notorious 313 after having a nightmare of a headline reading "See the President's head explode!" But what about the physical film?

The reel itself lasts for about 26.6 seconds, totaling 486 frames at 18.3 frames per second. Zapruder filmed with a standard home shooting Kodachrome on 8mm film. The first observable reaction to a gun occurs sometime before frame 170. Governor Connally turns his head sharply from left to right between frames 160 and 170 as if reacting to sound of the shot.The second shot occurs between frames 223 and 224 when Kennedy was visibly hit initially and raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and throat. The next recorded shot occurs at notorious frame 313, with the visible effects of Kennedy's headshot. 

Today, the film is valued at around $16 million. In 1999, the Zapruder family donated the film to the Sixth Floor museum, selling all copyrights to the museum as well. However, due to the poor quality of home video film itself, the original is beginning to head toward the end of its fifty year lifespan. Over time, the acetic acid in the cellulose acetate film begins to break down on itself, causing the film to become brittle, shrink, and develop strange pigmentations. There is not any known process for halting or reversing the rate of degradation, but it can be stalled somewhat by cool dry climates. Thank goodness for digitalization, eh?

And the plot thickens...

Recently, while browsing Reddit I stumbled upon a delightful link that sketched out the live and times of the eyewitnesses of the Kennedy plot/assassination. Of course this is the work of a conspiracy theorist, and there isn't a proliferation of sources, but supposedly one would be able to find records of all of these deaths. Especially considering the huge number of gun-related deaths, surely someone would report the shooter!

Nah.

Turns out it may be sensationalized after all, at least according to Jim Marrs who counter argues nearly every one of these deaths. The site looks equally shady, but the information seems a bit more sound and backed up.  These are just a sampling of the numerous JFK-assassination sites I found on this particular prowl, but it's indicative of just how much theorizing and controversy there is, even today, surrounding this event. I came away even more firmly rooted in the belief that we are never going to know what really happened, and I would probably be better off believing The Onion's take on the whole situation.

Just Can't Get a Break...

If there's one thing I've done this break (besides sleep fifteen hours a day and finish Kindred, oops), its been watch movies. By which I mean three-- fifteen hours of sleep doesn't leave time for a lot of other activities. But those three movies set off all of my new-found postmodernist radars; Django Unchained, The Wind Rises (not so much postmodern, but historical-fiction so still relevant), and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

We've already discussed Tarantino a lot in class, so I won't dwell on that one. Needless to say, it was over the top, hyper self-aware, and postmodern in the essence of postmodernism. The Grand Budapest Hotel was somewhat similar, though perhaps not as blatant. A very well-to-do hotel concierge gets involved with a 92 year old woman who is murdered, leaves a very valuable painting to him, the family is outraged, and there is a long police "investigation" that mainly comprises of pastries, mush, and chopped off fingers. The number of tropes that were played on were myriad, from the innocent in prison, to the refugee story, to the nostalgic mysterious man who has an important story to tell.

The Wind Rises was perhaps my favorite of the three, but that's probably because I have a massive Hayao Miyazaki bias. It was strange, revisiting WWII from the Japanese perspective. For those who haven't seen it, it follows the story of Jiro Hirokoshi, a boy who dreams of creating beautiful airplanes in the vein of his idol, Caproni. He takes this aesthetic beauty with him through his life and goes on to create the single man plane primarily used by the Japanese in the Second World War. What we see however, is a country struggling to even produce a single plane. "We have oxen to drag the planes out to the test field. How backwards can you get?"

It was interesting to think about the people behind the design of the planes that would go on to kill thousands of people. Jiro's planes would eventually go on to be the most versatile carriers in the world, and later adapted to Japan's last ditch kamikaze fighters. Yet behind that, Miyazaki paints a picture of a man who doesn't really want to be creating planes for war (actually, nearly all of Miyazaki's films are anti-war), but instead just wants to bring more beauty to the world. Some of the planes, such as Caproni's Caproni Ca.60 look ludacris and an idea from Miyazaki's boyish fantasies, but in fact they too were real. It was a strange break to say the least, and it felt more like I was living through class for a week.

Subjectivity

We've been throwing around this idea in class about Billy's reliability as a narrator. Is is really lying if the things Billy is talking about did happen, just in his head? Just because it didn't happen for us, doesn't mean it didn't for him. And how much does that undermine his credibility? It reminded me a lot of a conversation I had been having with Kathryn about color sensitivity.

It's hard to explain, but essentially the idea is that none of us quite sees the same color. Our eyes are all different-- different shapes, different sizes, and so the light we intake is all going to be slightly different. There are of course scientific ways to determine what a color is, X number of nanometers corresponds to red, and so on. Perhaps this isn't so much of a comment on color, but a comment on the failures of language...

Nonetheless, the idea goes like this: perhaps the colors we all see aren't only slightly different, but drastically different.

As opposed to this...

Something like this.

What if we have all just agreed that some color is called "blue"? Maybe the color of "my blue" is on the complete opposite end of the color wheel from the "blue" that Kathryn is seeing.

Kathryn's "blue"

My "blue"

Is there anything less legitimate about Kathryn's blue than mine? There's no way of proving which one is the actual blue, because if we point to an object and agree "That's blue," then we're both right. We're each seeing our respective blues.

I think that this plays in a lot to what Billy Pilgrim means to us as a character. Just because he is telling us things that seem completely absurd, like UFOs and Tralfamadorian time travel, in his mind he is telling his reality. Just because the description of his blue doesn't perfectly match the blue that we see, it isn't any less real to him. He is telling it how he sees it, and just like with colors, there is no way of being certain that his perception of reality isn't the same reality that we are actually living in. 

The Family Story

I'd like to start off by noting that this is actually the third time in my Uni career reading this book, and two chapters in there's still a lot I could say that would end up being spoilers. Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but I'm hesitant to respond in-depth yet for the sake of the other half of the class that hasn't graced the pages of Billy Pilgrim's adventures. What I was trying to figure out how to share in class, but never found a place to is in fact a well preserved Bild-family tale. Let us set the stage...

It is 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. A vigil has been set on the campus of the University of Chicago. In the center is Henry Moore's Nuclear Energy statue, commemorating the Met Lab, a part of the Manhattan Project that did research toward the atomic bomb.

A number of famous anti-war protest leaders have been invited. My grandparents are among the leaders of a Chicago group of activists known as MetroSeniors. It is they who have organized this assembly. Among the leaders is the humanitarian, Kurt Vonnegut. He gives an impassioned speech in some assembly hall on campus, or as impassioned a speech as Vonnegut can give. Word has it that in person he was a bit of a downer. But I think you could grasp that from his books. 

Afterwards, there's a small party at my grandparent's house. The same one that my father grew up in. The one that I stayed in every time I went to Chicago until I was 11. 4819 South Kimbark St. in Hyde Park. Look it up-- it's a beautiful house, though at the moment there are some renovations going on. More of a construction site than a house right now. But I digress. The party. 

Ah, but first there's a bit of information that I've left out. Depending on your version (as we discussed in class today), the title page may differ. There may be a part in the sub-title that says "By Kurt Vonnegut, a fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod [and smoking too much]..." and so on. 

So, the party. It's... well, seniors and middle aged people such as my parents all around a vast dining room table, talking, whatever it is you do at parties. The smoking too much part wasn't an exaggeration. Vonnegut was in fact as close to a chain smoker as you can get without actually being one. So by this point, he's really craving a cig. Pulls one out. Quick as a flash, my grandmother (bless her heart) is there.

"There's no smoking in this house. Take it outside," she says flatly.

Vonnegut looks at her in astonishment. I mean, he is Kurt Vonnegut after all.

"I don't care who you are. No smoking here. The door is right over there if you must."

And that is the story of how my grandmother almost literally kicked Kurt Vonnegut out of her house for trying to smoke. (I believe he did eventually come back in, two or three cigarettes later, but he was nonetheless a bit miffed)

What is Art? (baby don't hurt me...)

I'll begin with one of the most confusing pieces of performance art I've ever seen.

...That is, if I could ever find a video of it. In essence, it involved a very large piece of paper over a hole, and then having the artist walk through it. There was wild applause, and the paper remained in the gallery for a few weeks, if not months. So the burning question is, was that art? What was the art anyway? Was it the man walking through the paper? Was it the paper in the moment of being torn? In that case, would every single particle of paper that was separated a work of art in itself? Or was the art what remained-- the shreds of the paper on the floor, the parts that clung to the hole still, and the memory of the man who had destroyed it..?

In my opinion, art is a combination of process and purpose, but the biggest part is not what is physical, but what takes place in the minds of the viewers. Art is the reactions people have to the physical piece. I suppose that's postmodern in its own right-- you have to be self aware of your own reaction to the piece in order for the meaning of the piece to exist in the first place. The art is in your own head, and the process by which you create the art is as much of the art if not more than the final piece that gets framed and hung somewhere. The art is what cannot be created or recreated-- your initial feelings and the process of the artist. The final piece is a sort or memory of the art; a logical conclusion.

Of course that brings in arts that don't create physical remnants, like dance or theatre. I feel those better highlight the importance of purpose in art. The performer is highly self conscious of the fact that they are doing art. Any movement done in the span of time considered a part of the performance is considered art. Let's go back to my first example of performance art. The artist enters the gallery and stands in front of the crowd. He bows. The act has begun. But he is still several paces from the work itself; the paper. He takes those paces and stands before it, contemplating his actions. Pause right there. The artist takes several paces. Are those steps considered art?

In a day to day context, those would just be steps. I'm sure that thousands of people have taken nearly identical steps in the exact same gallery. But the steps taken by the artist are special. They are a part of his work. Yes, they are necessary in order to get closer to the stunning act itself, but would we consider the introduction any less a part of the book than the climax? I suppose that the difference with performance art and dance is this postmodern idea: the creator is INCREDIBLY self aware. Each movement is meticulously planned-- you are aware if your actions on a level you wouldn't be in day to day life. Your actions have a purpose, an end goal, some kind of rhyme and reason. And that is the difference between what is and isn't art.