sure, I’ll tumblr my essay.

Sixty Seven Years

I dragged an old friend on a Friday night who otherwise had no interest in black and white films, let alone silent ones. The crowd was few but invested as a re-mastered acid jazz soundtrack followed the jagged wall patterns and fluid movements of the somnambulist. I believe it had been years since most of us sitting in the theater had watched a film as exactly that- a film- opened from it’s dusty canister and fed into an analog projector, hand cranking and a consistent fluttering sound if done right, grainy black and white with an occasional crackle and pop from the screen. Though released in 1920 , Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari is arguably the most modern film I have seen, and refreshingly still “ahead of it’s times” for lack of a more articulate term. 

German Expressionist film was born in a city with an avant-garde character, a city consumed by passion, both politics and art, a little known city named Berlin. Berlin’s gem lived for only a brief period, roughly the years between The Great War and The Second World War, but what felt like a scene cut too short in film history proves to be a poignant reflection [of the then current times] as critical examinations of the fundamental nature of society and it’s relationship to social injustice, existential fulfillment, and the perils of extreme nationalism. As commonly expressed in these years of relative peace (in Europe), total war had disillusioned many artists who were once on the front line, positivism as we know it was rejected, and a bourgeoning interest in psychology flourished the art scene. Consequently, the groundbreaking topic of Sigmund Freud’s subconscious theories permeates throughout this surrealist piece, as Cesare the somnambulist who awakens at night at the verge of rape and murder, is principally the id component; Dr. Calagari, Cesare’s master who exhibits him from carnival to carnival as the ego; and Jane the pure - morally rigid- girl as the super ego. Though radical in dramatic lighting, set design, and elements of horror, Calagari can be read as a conservative film, warning the audience of the id’s desires when released.

Sixty seven years later, the world had survived total war again, progressed in great social strides, and entered a long tension of Cold War conflicts, making a dichotomy of a once whole Berlin- a clash of philosophy on either side. Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin or Wings of Desire (1987) radiates a similar spirit of that of the Expressionist age, detesting a Hollywood frame, and presenting film as an art, an intellectually engrossing experience, perhaps abstract in the sense of aesthetics, though wholly human in concept. Viewing Wings of Desire provides mirror for the audience, as one may identify with any given  worn human soul from Homer to Marion to a failed father whose regretful thoughts fill a silent metro ride. Shaping the pace and development of the film’s characters around Peter Handke’s “The Song of Childhood” pleasantly melds the subject of Humanities across all boards- art, philosophy, psychology, and history, rather than leaving them in rigid separate boundaries, as the iconoclast Freud would often advise. 

In CIvilization and its Discontent, Freud’s views are not too far off from the feel of the film, as he attempts to describe the episodic event of the ever so “oceanic feeling” of wholeness, which Marion searches and searches and reaches at the climax in her union with Damiel.  Freud explains that he cannot articulate accurately the sensation of the “oceanic feeling” because of it’s unique composition and touch, though speculates that it is a regression to a childlike state where the lines of ego, super ego, and id blur. Hence it’s possible influence on the first stanza of “The Song of Childhood”

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

The literary comparisons between Freud and the film’s touch goes on as the physical manifestation of walls illustrate the borders in which man has built civilization, to protect himself from discontent, a thick skin which regulates behavior, emotion, sensation. One of which pain cannot penetrate, and in many ways true pleasure as well.  Thus a greater objective identity is created while the individual’s self awareness is sacrificed, and so consequently is one even aware of it’s numbness, is this when the masses turn to material possessions to cloud our unearthly desires?

 This is when we come to terms with 1987, at the tired end of the Cold War,  three years prior to the union of Berlin, though fierce nationalism between capitalists and the said opposing “communists”  deprive brothers from brothers, and mothers from children without consent of the individual, but for the will of each respective civilization.  This is when Freud’s ideas become perplexing, as he asserts that exploration into the id is self indulgent, and a danger to one’s self and surrounding. It is frustrating at the least to present the subconscious as a self destructive, and unfit to trust the average man with, though simultaneously Freud accuses the reader with ignorance.

History’s cyclical but progressive patterns indicate that all revolution’s are combustion-able flames which at one point may dwindle. For example, the revolutionary aspects of French nationalist in 1793 would be considered inadequate by contemporary standards in western civilization, though it did ignite widespread national identity and patriotism throughout Europe. And though revered as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud must too become dated approaching the 21st century, for awareness of the subconscious and repression is groundbreaking, but no longer enough.  Wings of Desire, perhaps unplanned and unknowingly, is a portrait of transition from Freud’s psychoanalytic foundation into Abraham Maslow’s “Third Force Psychology,” essentially the Thomas Hobbes to Rousseau, the Copernicus to Kepler, an evolution in thought and interpretation that furthers man’s position where he initially discovered “right.”

The Humanist diction of Maslow’s Peak Experiences in Education and Art re-introduces the “oceanic feeling” or peak experience into being more relevant.  Maslow does not warn the individual of self exploration, though encourages it, dissolving the rigid molds of Freud’s id, super ego, and ego, asserting that the interaction with the subconscious is not destructive, but an existential need to our own self actualization. Self actualization is what tears the seam’s of Freudian and pre-Freudian civil construct from a preemptive barrier into (theoretically) becoming a society of advance potential, with fewer borders, laws, and colds holding us back. Self actualization is not indulgent because it is universal, thus right for the external and internal, as Marion breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience about the importance of wholeness, of being alone, but together. Marion and Damiel may not be together, if Marion was not self realized for she deprives both herself and Damiel of authenticity and potential. Maslow’s peak experiences animates the film into one fluid movement. Or further metaphor may convey the angel’s as Freudian theory, and Marion as post Maslow exploration in human experience, Damiel is the mere young scholar who grows to defy his teaching.

Must we mention’s Carl Jung’s collective unconscious on the prayers and cries of the human’s burdens?

agoraphobia sometimes.

i [SECRETLY] wish i could drop everything now, and pursue the life of a hip hop dancer. i am in awe of dancers, expressive in a sense of which I lack- physicality and movement. If you think about it, the allure of a hip hop dancer is everything I am not, FAST- in motion, in thought, in sociopolitical action. 

I usually drift on the carpet floor, unable to keep with the times, or even my own generation and am barley discovering vinyl of yesteryears. I sit alone on a saturday night and watch films deemed boring by the average human attention span, because i get my literary fullfilment out of them.

my pace is all to slow, though i enjoy the cliche of being a melancholy stereotype and dragging by at my own speed, though sometimes i (or all the time) i’m locked in my own _____realm?  

i dont know to who or why i’m writing this, but the weight of a journal can hold so much. just imagine thousands of pages upon wasted youth, filled with this nonsense and pathetic insecurities.

good night.