Bondprick

[imomus]

My column in Wired today is about one of the key struggles of the 20th century. No, not communism versus capitalism, but a series of aesthetic and ethical struggles: modernism versus populism, minimalism versus decoration, the planner-intellectual versus the maverick agent. The piece is inspired by three things:



1. Something that came up on Neomarxisme a couple of weeks ago: "According to the audio commentary on the DVD release of George Lucas' 1971 debut THX-1138," Marxy reported, "Lucas originally wanted to shoot the film in Japan because its unique mixture of authoritarian social order and rampant consumerism matched his creative vision of a future dystopia." This got me thinking about the strange paradox by which many of the films presenting the most glamourous visual images of modernism have a distinctly anti-modernist thematic going on in their plots and ideologies. Those of us who just want to see nice furniture often have to sit through anti-modernist moral lessons from directors and screenplay writers in order to see the cool work of set and costume designers with no axe to grind. (Is this something to do with the difference between going to university and going to art school? Does a film set unite two cultures with totally different attitudes to modernism? Am I going to have to watch this DVD with the sound turned down?)



2. My visit, last week, to an exhibition in Milan about Italian designer Joe Colombo. Colombo's last piece (he died of a heart attack in 1971) was a "Total Furnishing Unit", an "interface" for all human needs, a kind of space capsule for Earth living, molded from yellow and white plastic. Although I personally love the idea of designers planning cool stuff for me to interface with, this "Total Furnishing Unit" is precisely the kind of "total solution" many individualists and right wing libertarians mistrust, and associate with Totalitarianism.

3. Which brings us to Ian Fleming, and the tale of the two Goldfingers.



The Guardian takes up the story:

"Erno Goldfinger was one of the 20th century's prime advocates of London tower blocks. He designed the often reviled Alexander Fleming House at the Elephant and Castle, Trellick Tower in Ladbroke Grove and Balfron Tower in Tower Hamlets. Erno - like Auric - was a British-naturalised foreigner and a Marxist who spent much of the second world war raising money for the Soviet cause.

"Fleming turned the dominating, 6ft 2in Erno into the 5ft imperious megalomaniac Auric Goldfinger, who nearly succeeds in stealing the US gold reserves at Fort Knox for the Soviet Union.

"One story explaining Fleming's animosity is that he lived for a time in Hampstead and disliked Erno's design for terraced houses in Willow Road. Fleming knew of Erno through a golfing friend who was related to Erno's wife.

"Erno somehow heard about the novel when it was in the publisher Jonathan Cape's presses in 1959... Erno ordered solicitors to act. Cape agreed to pay his costs and agreed out of court to make clear in advertising and in future editions that all characters were fictitious.

"Fleming... was livid. He asked Cape to insert an erratum slip in the first edition changing the character's name to Goldprick, a name suggested by the critic Cyril Connolly. Luckily for the film posters and theme tune of the future, sung by Shirley Bassey, Cape demurred.

"The real-life Goldfinger, however, deserved to be remembered as a visionary architect who wrote in 1941: "Cities can become centres of civilisation where men and women can live happy lives. The technical means exist to satisfy human needs. The will to plan must be aroused. There is no obstacle but ignorance and wickedness."

The will to plan versus the license to kill; the ethical choice seems quite clear. Here at Click Opera we say: Erno Goldfinger is not Goldprick. But Ian Fleming is Bondprick.

Comments

[nickdoro.livejournal.com]

This got me thinking about the strange paradox by which many of the films presenting the most glamourous visual images of modernism have a distinctly anti-modernist thematic going on in their plots and ideologies.

The concept that "a film set unites two cultures with totally different attitudes to modernism" is an interesting one, but out of curiosity, what films were you thinking of?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Here's my original comment from the Neomarxisme thread, which answers your question:

"If we look at the genre of dystopian films, where are they shot?

Truffault's "Fahrenheit 451" looks like it's shot in Holland. In fact it's Chateauneuf, a suburb south of Paris which had an experimental monorail.

"1984" is filmed in London using famous 1930s landmarks like Battersea Power Station and Senate House, part of the University of London, to represent authoritarianism.

"Sleeper" (Woody Allen) is filmed on location in California and Colorado, some scenes at Rutgers’ University Busch campus, and the scene in which Woody plays the robot servant to a gay couple (and enters a Wilhelm Reich-like orgone accumulator) is shot in a futuristic Charles A. Haertling house.

I guess this goes back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, but it's always struck me as odd that film-makers tend to set their "dystopian" epics in some of the most excitingly futuristic environments, places with the most advanced transport, architecture and technology. (And a worryingly high number of university campuses.) It may be that these directors are somewhat conservative and anti-intellectual, and harbor a populist mistrust of designers and architects whose ideas seem too freaky. Or it may be that their script-writers (or the novelists whose ideas these films are based on) are intent on making a moral point about conformity, but their set-designers get carried away with the futurism and make it all look just too damned attractive.

One of the most critical articles I ever wrote about Japan was for Metropolis magazine in New York. It's called Hell's Furnishings and it's about another of these dystopian epics, "A Clockwork Orange". In the piece I professes to be staggered and outraged that Tsutaya put this film in a section of their store labelled "Good Furniture". How could anyone watch such an ethically critical film for the furniture? But, you know, if we see these films' mistrust of Modernism as something retrograde, a kind of sentimental humanism in the script that the set designers don't share (and the dystopia in "Clockwork Orange" looks great, pure Verner Panton), then this reaction on the part of the Japanese is actually a very liberal and right one. I compare it in the article to Andy Warhol's stance: he watched films for the shoe styles. This stance is not without politics, but it's a very different politics from the reactionary humanism of the scriptwriters and novelists who craft the film's moral core, and who always associate Modernism with totalitarianism. The Warhol line (which I think is also the Japanese line) is more like: "Gee, everything's great" and "Everybody should have money" and "I love shopping" and "The peripheral is just as important as the central, and the boring is an interesting as the exciting".

Posted by: Momus at November 2, 2005 02:51 PM"

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

I was over at the Thamesmead Estate this weekend (where much of A Clockwork Orange was shot.) It looks a bit rough. It would be vastly improved with a bit of piped Wendy Carlos.

I live very near to The Barbican Estate at the moment, which I love. It doesn't really work, you never see the residents, it's a colossol waste of space, it's very easy to get lost in - but this is something I personally like to do, and will always use any excuse, (out of fags, sugar, butter, whatever) to wander through there and get lost in it.

I find it difficult to get involved with modernist/antimodernist arguments. I like a lot of old buildings I like a lot of new buildings.

I like concrete and fresh tarmac.

I should imagine making a building's a lot like making a record, you don't really know what it's going to be like until it's been made - by which time it's too late.

Also: you make some great big tower block thing and stick a load of poor people in it: the building's going to be one thing, you make some great big tower block thing and stick a load of rich people in it: the building's going to be another thing.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It is odd how the rich (in the UK especially) have avoided modernism like the plague, whereas the poor were frog-marched into towerblocks up until the 80s. In the Bond films, modernism's fine for gadgets, but M is sitting in an ultra-conservative, 19th century Whitehall office. Only the villains have modernist pads. (Hmm, link between communist villains, the poor, and communism, surprise surprise.) UK politicians and even rock stars tend to live surrounded by the yukky goldflake tat I call "hotel baroque", not modernism.

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

I think most of these modernism/antimodernism arguments are all pretty subjective.

I mean: It somehow feels far more modern to me to sit around listening to J.S. Bach all day than it does Coldplay or something.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the Walter Carlos versions of Bach would be a better example of modernism than Coldplay.

Here's a virtual tour of 10 Downing Street (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page2895.asp). I think the Victorian decoration is not unrelated to Tony Blair's Victorian values (imposing "civilisation" at the point of a gun, and so on).

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

Well, the Walter Carlos versions of Bach are now Classic.

If you're poor, everything looks like a dystopia.

Post Prince Charles born-again Victorian Architecture is probably as modern an idea that you could think of (or at least was twenty years ago).

It's funny how it's dated in much the same way as everything else (it hasn't just stayed 'classic')

The Joe Columbo stuff is great, but the negative associations really start swarming when I looked at the stacked-chairs. (Late '70's Lambeth Jobcentre).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

Classic!

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

If we look at the genre of dystopian films, where are they shot?

Then there is Paris as "Alphaville". Although the dystopian feel in the film comes mostly from the way it was filmed (available light, fast b&w film.

[serotuning.livejournal.com]

Joe Columbo is the don. I have an imitation version of one of the desk organizers he designed next to me. (Yellow plastic).

Nothing more sadly epitomizes the clash of utopian ideal vs. the common man quite so extremely as the Tricorn Centre (http://www.bbc.co.uk/southampton/webcams/tricorn.shtml) in Portsmouth. Walking around it felt like being an extra in an Archigram sketch. Portsmouth City Council explained the fact that it was given planning permission on a BBC2 documentary by stating that they "didn't understand the plans." That misunderstanding was possibly the only stroke of genius where architecture and Portsmouth are concerned, (even if all of its inhabitants disagree)...

heehee

[zenmonkeykstop.livejournal.com]

"The start of the £2m demolition work was accompanied by a rendition of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture."

Smashy Smashy Smashy Smash Smash Smash *Boom* *Boom*
Smashy Smashy Smashy Smash Smash Smash *Boom* *Boom*

Take that, modernism.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have another idea about why modernism gets a bad rap in films. It would be a mistake to think of films, as they've developed in Anglo-Saxon countries, anyway, as "90 minutes of nice stuff to look at". No, what we call films / movies are more often depictions of murder linked to an ideology about the right way to live. I'm not quite sure why this came about, and I deplore it, but it seems to be the case.

As a result, it's not just modernism that gets dragged through a bloody mire in movies, it's every backdrop to the eternal tale of blood and morality. For instance, if Venice rather than modernism is the backdrop, Venice is tainted by the sinister goings-on in films like "Don't Look Now", "Death In Venice", and "The Comfort Of Strangers". Want to go to the cinema just to see some nice pictures of Venice? Forget it, you're going to have to sit through gruesome slayings and emotional manipulation for 90 minutes. Want a brief holiday in beautiful Transylvania? The count has been expecting you...

[serotuning.livejournal.com]

space vs. place (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859840515/ref=pd_sim_b_dp_3/202-5339592-5312667)...

but is the cinema a non-place space?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That link is interesting, I was planning to write something for Click Opera about competing conceptions of space in cities, mainly the different points of view of motorists and pedestrians, and specifically the way one man's transit is another man's arrival.

One thing I'd say links cars and cinema (both modernist non-place places): lack of tactile and scent contact with the things seen.

[serotuning.livejournal.com]

I'd second that certainly for cars and travel, although when I think cinema, it's quite specific. I can sense the smell of popcorn and fabric of the seats, the lights dimming and the confusion of leaving - this is very much a place.

vs.

When the film rolls - everything else is non place space..

The interaction issue is interesting, especially when you consider interface vs. place / sense of space.

The book previously linked is brilliant - and unlike rather a lot of architectural theory; quite a page-turner. I've been meaning to get on to The Art Of Travel (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140276629/qid=1132065467/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/202-5339592-5312667)...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I should have been more specific about the smell question. It's not that cinemas and cars lack smell, it's that there's a disconnect between the smell of the place and the view on the (wind)screen.

Here's an article about how New car smell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_car_smell), while a positive association for some, is full of toxic chemicals. I'm sure popcorn is deadly too!

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not convinced that modernism actually does get a bad rap in the movies. Modernism is in fact a way in which the baddies are glamorised. Modernism is glamour, only it's naughty glamour. A bit like kinky sex (and how often are the uber-baddies linked with transgressive sex, overtly or obliquely?). It's impossible not to be seduced by the modernist stuff in a movie like Clockwork Orange, and impossible not to think that Kubrick realised this. It's a reflection of Alex, who, in a way, it is impossible to dislike as well. There's a fundamental ambiguity in it all.

Another interesting angle is the deliberate conflation of staid, conservative style and super-futurism that one finds in so much of sixties TV and film, particularly in the UK (think Bond, but also The Prisoner, The Avengers). Bond in a way is the paradigm here - he's a high-tech killer in a dinner jacket. And Steed & Emma Peel are like mirror images of each other in this respect.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I was associated for a time with some New Urbanist planners. I have to say I'm still shocked by the extent to which their often irrational rejection of modernism will trump all of their otherwise laudable design goals.

Clean lines just make them so angry.

dyshysteria as the new future

[(Anonymous)]

Have you seen code 46, by Michael Winterbottom? The movie depicts a dystopian future of cloning, in a smooth general space that could be just a few years ahead, or 50, or ten years ago.

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

While I'm not a Christian, I do occasionally find beauty in the design of Christian churches. I also find beauty in modern designs (although usually not in low income housing projects). But I think it's not unreasonable to consider that if a modern rectangle shoots up into the sky to obscure a building that has for so long given a nation its identity, perhaps something is lost there. Certainly, if a modern tower sprung up in front of the pyramids in Egpyt the same group of progessives in the West would go on lamenting the spread of globalism and the ruination of national identity. The difference here is the hostility felt toward England's national identity (due to relativistic tendencies).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The thing is, though, you're condemning national identity to be forever associated with the past. There are local flavors of modernism and postmodernism which must be encouraged, otherwise national identity will become increasingly anachronistic, a kind of picture postcard atavism. What are our pyramids and our churches going to be? What do we leave to the future for them to wax nostalgic about, if we lose the confidence required to build in a style that answers contemporary needs?

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't the idea of local modernisms a little oxymoronic, given modernism's avowedly internationalist aspirations?

Movies where modernism doesn't get a bad rap = a lot of sci fi stuff. The interior of the Starship Enterprise is modernist heaven. In fact practically all spacecraft interiors are presented as modernist. I also think you can find a lot of movies from the fifties with a positive modernist aesthetic. It was the sixties/seventies where modernism went out of favour, both in the real world and in the movies.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Isn't the idea of local modernisms a little oxymoronic, given modernism's avowedly internationalist aspirations?

No, I don't think so. There are some universal elements to modernism, but within those, quite strong local identities. For instance, last night on Arte there was a documentary (http://www.arte-tv.com/fr/semaine/244,broadcastingNum=481156,day=3,week=46,year=2005.html) about Moscow's vesotkas, or Stalinist skyscrapers. There are seven of them, and on my trip last year to Moscow I stayed in one (the Hotel Ukraina) and visited a private apartment in another (the one studied in this documentary). They are quite unlike skyscrapers in any other country.

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

I see your point. But whereas design in Britain had basically been a steady progression throughout the centuries--with each subsequent style borrowing from or improving on the last--modernism arrogantly rejected all that came before it and started anew.

You of course get the sense that designers such as Goldfinger, by virtue of their political ideology, were hostile towards England and its "Victorian values." Their rejection of traditional British design is also a rejection of its politics and history. It shouldn't come as a surprise that some might see Goldfinger's work as an attempt at a hostile takeover.

"Cities can become centres of civilisation where men and women can live happy lives. The technical means exist to satisfy human needs. The will to plan must be aroused."

Cities are, and always have been "centers of civilization." This is just a silly, meaningless quote. How does his definition of the city (and its purpose) differ from any other going back to the time of Ancient Greece? Human needs haven't changed much. Has modern architecture really addressed human needs in any unique ways other than making the exterior of buildings look different?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I read that quote as being quite explicitly Marxist, in other words, he's saying "Thanks to industrialisation and technological advances we can eradicate poverty. But we need egalitarian planning to make sure that everyone, even the poor, benefits from these advances. This is a political question, one of planning." I don't think that point is meaningless at all. It's a point we can't make enough in these high-Gini (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/113269.html) times, and applies even more now than it did in 1941.

design in Britain had basically been a steady progression throughout the centuries--with each subsequent style borrowing from or improving on the last--modernism arrogantly rejected all that came before it and started anew.

I don't see it as that kind of long, clear story. Sure, modernism was a disruption, a break with the past, but so was each preceding style. 2000 years ago Londinium was a Roman city, with terracotta and temples to Minerva. Then all sorts of Norman and Gothic and Germanic half-beamed styles came along. Then there was a neo-classical revival, and Greek pillars came back. And so on. It's hardly a discrete national tradition, is it? More of a hotch potch, with all sorts of borrowings and impositions resulting in radical changes every couple of centuries.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Of course, when we get to postmodernism the fun—in terms of national attribution—really starts.

Here are two Japanese buildings.



This is supposed to be a in a "British style", but I can't imagine it anywhere but in Japan.



And this is the "German beer hall" at Yebisu Garden Place in Tokyo. Again, it's Nihon-Deutshy rather than anything I'd expect to see here in Berlin.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, and how could I forget the French chateau (http://www.dkolb.org/sprawlingplaces/index/ebisugar/thechate.html) nearby?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Apologies for the non sequitur, but it gets a bit "boxy" around here at times.

~W

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Momus: cultural conspiracy theorist?

[(Anonymous)]

You are confusing the issue. Goldfinger is not reviled because he represents some sort of facist centralized design paradigm (according to your view of the British populace, they should be lapping it up). His architecture just plain stinks. It is truely unlivable and unsuitable for human use. Just take a look at a floor plan before you start calling him a genius.

High Rise

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

I work very near Goldfinger's Trellic Tower. When I read Ballard's "High Rise" it was always this building I imagined.