Doinel in Tokyo
Jul. 27th, 2004 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIn Paris a couple of weeks ago I made an appointment to meet someone in the Taschen shop on the Rue de Buci. My friend was slightly late, but that didn't matter, because Taschen were projecting one of Francois Truffault's Antoine Doinel films on a screen at the back of the store: Domicile Conjugale (1970). It was running with the soundtrack mute, and I found that, in the same way that I understand certain things about Japan precisely because I don't speak Japanese, the lack of linguistic distraction in the Truffault film laid bare some essential truths about French culture. Often, when you switch off your language centres, you suddenly see the elephant in the room.
There it was in Doinel's body language: Doinel is a pierrot. He's also a man who lives entirely for, with and amongst women. There's a scene early in the film where he stands in a courtyard colouring flowers. His movements come straight from a Marcel Marceau mime routine. He has the same manner when, later, he seduces a certain 'Mademoiselle Hiroko', a young Japanese woman called Kyoko. Doinel's face remains grave and distant, for a pierrot always has something lunar about him, even when he's not wearing white face paint, and even when his goal is something as earthly as the seduction of a woman. Leaud's portrayal of Doinel reminds us that 'charm' in Paris is all tied up with the historical presence in the city of the Comedie Italienne, with its direct links to the archetypes of the Commedia dell' Arte, gestural refinements of the medieval theory of 'the humours'. The gestural repertoire of 'the Italians' has spread throughout french culture. The bearing of the melancholy pierrot Scaramouche comes in particularly handy when you're a slim and serious young man who wants to charm a woman with signs of your gentleness, otherness, sincerity and refinement. There's also the fact that the pierrot seems schizoid, childlike, beyond normal moral constraints. Which is handy when, as here, Doinel is betraying a young wife who has just given birth.
Someone made the comment the other day that I am a 'pussy-whipped art fag'. I don't demur (yesterday, for instance, consisted of a visit to a digital art festival in the Panasonic building at Odaiba followed by a rendezvous with a certain 'Misako' at the Cafe D'Eau in Daikanyama, and the inevitable attempts to memorize the names of her sisters) but I prefer not to use such an American phrase. After all, in the language of a culture which dislikes both women and mimes, how can 'pussy-whipped art fag' be anything but a bad thing to be? I prefer to call what I am 'a sort of Antoine Doinel', and to declare that there is no higher calling or greater pleasure in life.
The film I am now living, a film Truffault never, alas, got around to making, is 'Doinel in Tokyo'. I would tell you the plot, but since the film's essence lies in gestures, fleeting expressions, textures, tastes, smells, barometric pressure and subtle effects of the light, that wouldn't tell you much. Suffice to say that it involves gently humorous, lightly romantic action in cafes and private apartments across Tokyo, a number of pretty actresses, a series of amusing deceptions and confessions, some philosophical dialogue conducted entirely by means of diagrams on a napkin, a scene upstairs at the kabuki theatre in Ginza, a trip to the beach, a game of 'Paper, Scissors, Stone', a walk by the Shibuya river involving lanterns and a small crescent moon... And did I mention Doinel's nemesis, the cloud of extras: Tokyo mosquitoes delivering itchy karma from farcical, stabby snouts?
There it was in Doinel's body language: Doinel is a pierrot. He's also a man who lives entirely for, with and amongst women. There's a scene early in the film where he stands in a courtyard colouring flowers. His movements come straight from a Marcel Marceau mime routine. He has the same manner when, later, he seduces a certain 'Mademoiselle Hiroko', a young Japanese woman called Kyoko. Doinel's face remains grave and distant, for a pierrot always has something lunar about him, even when he's not wearing white face paint, and even when his goal is something as earthly as the seduction of a woman. Leaud's portrayal of Doinel reminds us that 'charm' in Paris is all tied up with the historical presence in the city of the Comedie Italienne, with its direct links to the archetypes of the Commedia dell' Arte, gestural refinements of the medieval theory of 'the humours'. The gestural repertoire of 'the Italians' has spread throughout french culture. The bearing of the melancholy pierrot Scaramouche comes in particularly handy when you're a slim and serious young man who wants to charm a woman with signs of your gentleness, otherness, sincerity and refinement. There's also the fact that the pierrot seems schizoid, childlike, beyond normal moral constraints. Which is handy when, as here, Doinel is betraying a young wife who has just given birth.
Someone made the comment the other day that I am a 'pussy-whipped art fag'. I don't demur (yesterday, for instance, consisted of a visit to a digital art festival in the Panasonic building at Odaiba followed by a rendezvous with a certain 'Misako' at the Cafe D'Eau in Daikanyama, and the inevitable attempts to memorize the names of her sisters) but I prefer not to use such an American phrase. After all, in the language of a culture which dislikes both women and mimes, how can 'pussy-whipped art fag' be anything but a bad thing to be? I prefer to call what I am 'a sort of Antoine Doinel', and to declare that there is no higher calling or greater pleasure in life.
The film I am now living, a film Truffault never, alas, got around to making, is 'Doinel in Tokyo'. I would tell you the plot, but since the film's essence lies in gestures, fleeting expressions, textures, tastes, smells, barometric pressure and subtle effects of the light, that wouldn't tell you much. Suffice to say that it involves gently humorous, lightly romantic action in cafes and private apartments across Tokyo, a number of pretty actresses, a series of amusing deceptions and confessions, some philosophical dialogue conducted entirely by means of diagrams on a napkin, a scene upstairs at the kabuki theatre in Ginza, a trip to the beach, a game of 'Paper, Scissors, Stone', a walk by the Shibuya river involving lanterns and a small crescent moon... And did I mention Doinel's nemesis, the cloud of extras: Tokyo mosquitoes delivering itchy karma from farcical, stabby snouts?
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-26 04:57 pm (UTC)Les enfants du paradis
Date: 2004-07-26 07:27 pm (UTC)On another note, are the Tokyo cafe society still creating the latest 'kei' ( or is too premature to ask )?
Richard G
Re: Les enfants du paradis
Date: 2004-07-26 08:30 pm (UTC)I don't think the TYO youth are really making much more than delicious cakes in their cafes at the moment. You have to go to Paris to find a contemporary music scene that'll really shiver your timbers, in my opinion.
Glitch 'n' Gateaux
Date: 2004-07-27 09:14 am (UTC)I shall look forward to checking out some cutting edge glitch and gateaux when I go to Paris next year. For some reason I was reminded of your Essay on Cafe scenes and the gentrification of Nakagmeguro. In LA sadly, the most dominant cafe scene is situated around Starbucks where sad scriptwriters on laptops can be spied trying to write the next blockbuster . Musicians and Pierrots are all busy working in Las Vegas...
Richard G
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-26 07:28 pm (UTC)Today's entry reminded me of Lafcadio Hearn. May
I recommend a little book, probably out of print, of his
entitled "Exotics and Retrospectives"? It contains a wonderful
piece called "Insect Musicians" about the mushiya
(insect sellers) of Edo. Probably can be found over in used book stores of Jimbo-cho.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-26 08:43 pm (UTC)One imagines a mirror-world elite, opposed in turn to each of the bullet points of a given Momus manifesto; plotting aesthetic revenge whilst avoiding fornication and programming their reflex responses with decidedly unsubtle and abrasive musics.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 01:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 12:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 02:48 am (UTC)Your gestural repertoire seems to have some direct links to Morning Musume and burikko too!i still remember seeing you at transmediale greeting people with your feet together, slightly bowing and waving your hand like a cute girl and finding it completely charming
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 03:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 04:58 am (UTC)though one
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 05:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 05:52 am (UTC)Are you sure?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 07:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 05:20 am (UTC)j'etais captivee
Date: 2004-07-27 06:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 07:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 07:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 03:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-27 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-28 07:28 pm (UTC)Vice Magazine & Mimicry
Date: 2004-07-28 12:40 am (UTC)Anyone read the following review of vice magazine from
amazon.com?
Here it is:
***
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Neo Conservative Propaganda for Skaters, February 16, 2004
Reviewer: A magazine reader (Ogunquit, ME)
I just want everyone to know that "VICE" is selling you out: It's run by a hardcore Republican who uses it to push a conservative agenda. It's not like "Might" magazine at all. Check out the column that the editor of VICE wrote for "American Conservative", where he says, among other things, "I run a $10 million corporation called VICE that has been deep inside the heads of 18-30s for the past 10 years."
Wow, how "counter culture". How "hip." If you're a hipster that wants to embrace a right wing magazine, you've found it, but everyone else should be careful. This is "The Wall Street Journal" for young neoconservatives and has nothing to do with true counter culture.
***
I've never seen vice magazine, but it's surprising to me
how a bunch of gits (albeit fellow countrymen) manage to
pull in such big bucks from the backers. Looks like a case
of mimicry, where a magazine posing as a venue for the
counter-culture is actually a vector for neo-con memes.
How insidious. How banal.
So is this their agenda or are they just in it for the ride?
Most likely the latter.
What's Momus the Maoist doing mixed up in there?
Re: Vice Magazine & Mimicry
Date: 2004-07-28 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-28 06:10 am (UTC)and someone told me in my youth that flattery gets you everywhere, though i have not decided upon a destination.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-28 09:02 am (UTC)our slogan: We Hate Women AND Mimes!
Date: 2004-07-28 10:04 am (UTC)vivian r.