September 2006 - Postmodern Critic

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Postmodern Critic - September 2006

Shanghai's Quirky Architecture

September 29th 2006 06:23

If you live in the Occident your image of the city probably involves a lot of skyscrapers with perhaps one or two prominent, distinguishing landmarks (usually the main tourist draws). Can you imagine a city where almost every feature is as salient as the Sydney Harbour Bridge or the Los Angeles Disney Concert Hall? Shanghai happens to be the most architecturally adventurous of a few up-and-coming (post)modern Chinese cities that make their Western counterparts look frighteningly dull in comparison.

This image of One Kooky, Futuristic Setting was taken from http://www.windrose.de/reisefinder/reise_ universal.asp?rid=1337&loc=/city_ breaks/city_result.asp

Shanghai is like a postmodernist's Disneyland, where old colonial relics mingle with modernist-style high rise buildings, giving 'anything goes' new meaning. What is very ironic about this esoteric level of eclecticism is that it conjures up thoughts of a postmodern metropolis, yet the typical Shanghainese who is required to support the Communist state isn't familiar with what postmodernism involves. I hope that China becomes a democracy someday and is able to use its innovative cityscape to reinvent its conceptual identity.

This image was taken from http://www.13amp.com/sparkblog /blogs/Xyberia/blog.cfm/.id.15

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Is Mexico to the States what Greece is to Europe?

September 27th 2006 07:01

So writes Italo Calvino in a collection of his autobiographical works in 'Hermit in Paris'. I'm not sure exactly how he situates Greece in relation to the rest of Europe, but I would see it as the cradle of civilisation and democracy, so it would be a pretty neat role reversal if he meant it that way.
How does this phrase come up in the text? The full sentence is:
New Mexico, that tremendous reserve of escapist, Lawrencian exoticism for intellectuals and artists from the United States (though most of them prefer the more robust and genuine Mexico itself, which is by now an obligatory destination for all the holidays intellectuals take, and a rich source of decorative furnishings which means that New York intellectuals' houses are all more or less small-scale Mexican museums; and Mexico hasbecome for the USA something that fulfils the role Greece has for Europe)...

This brings up a few very interesting issues about how developed nations learn from and extract knowledge (and possessions) from developing nations, and the various inter-relationships created by this process.
On the other hand, a poster on a Canadian forum once told me that Americans see Canada as their respectable, well-to do cousin, but Mexico as their untrustworthy, trouble-making neighbour.
These two views explore two different sides (both by 'foreigners') of the US-Mexico relationship, with lots of room for something in-between. I believe there are a lot of people who regard Mexico as both lively and dull, innovative and too traditional, extraordinary and mundane, and this generates a lot of (desirable) ambivalence.
What do you think?

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Broken Flowers Film Review

September 26th 2006 01:28

In Search Of A Climax

This was taken from my side of an online correspondence:

Which brings me to Broken Flowers, which I had very mixed feelings about - an intimate portrait of a man determined to elude intimacy.
Let's start at the end - I don't think I can call to mind an ending more indignantly 'open' than that. I imagine if JJ had been in my audience he would have been thrilled at the lady who rose from her seat the moment the credits began to play and announced "it didn't even end properly!" I liked the concept of the camera giving Bill Murray a stern 360 degree treatment, as he stands, now static- but moving underneath for the first time, uncertain as to how to grapple with the moment. And yet, for all my postmodern film technique worship, I can't deny my fervent wish that the storyline had been more lenient on my idealist tendencies in the search for that moment.
Australian audiences hum, ohh and ahh a little more than the American - there's less of a self-conscious, politically-correct pacing to people's personal responses, and it's more okay to go with your visceral reaction than it is in the States (talk about a blessing and a curse)... so over the course of the film I became intrigued by the way the audience members were managing their responses on the film's multiple representations of dysfunctionality. Personally by the time I left the theatre I was too overloaded by both the spoken and unspoken messages in the film to be emotionally invested in its outcome, which explains my heightened focus on the film's techniques (which were truly a pleasure to watch - one my my favourite shots was when Don's shiny silver car slid to a halt, perfectly positioned in the left-hand corner to hug the edges of the frame, a lone presence of a bystander suggested by the camera's side-walk perspective).
I'm rarely this visually comfortable with a movie (though it could have used some of The Constant Gardener's excessive switch of camera modes mid-scene). Congrats are due as it takes a lot of work to keep your palette so consistently cool yet vibrant ... even the pinks were gorgeously blue-tinged!

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