Paul Dukas, Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, Dan Robbins, AND ME

Here begins a set of posts that are slightly autobiographical in nature. They have to do with how certain people, toys, games, films, books, devices, events, etc. have influenced my life. They will be in no chronological order, so you can jump into any of them at any time. As I am learning early in retirement, the clock and calendar are chains that lock us into an unnatural existence. They are essentially levers of power, used by the powerful, against the powerless.

But, as David Copperfield (much more on him in a later post, he had an enormous impact on my life) once famously said... (address updated January 15, 2021) and I don't think it can be said any better than that. So, I will begin at the beginning. I actually was born on a Friday, at 11 o'clock in the morning. I believe I probably began life just like David, but, though I was there, I don't remember.

In any event, one of my earliest memories is rocking in a rocking chair, listening to music on albums that my parents received through their membership in the Columbia Record Club. It was an attempt (successful, I think) to bring a little culture to the South Side of Chicago. Every month we would get a new album. One of the albums had a really evocative cover. I used to listen to it over and over. My mom would play it whenever I asked for it. I still hum it when I walk without a musical device implanted in my ear. It was Paul Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice. I thought the whole side of the album was that one piece. It turns out that SC was one of two tracks on side A, the other being Jaromir Weinberger's Schwanda: Polka and Fugue from his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper (for the music in context, scroll to near the end of the opera). On the other side of the record was Salome: Dance of the Seven Veils, by Richard (pronounced Reek Hard) Strauss and Franz Lizt's Les Preludes (which was the background for the Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe 1940 serial (link updated January 15, 2021), which I later watched on Saturday mornings (Flash Gordon also had an influence on my life--he made me, for one day, into a TV star--but that is for another AND ME post).  Probably one of the reasons I was so into FG (dont' laugh too hard, George Lucas was into him also--what else is Star Wars but Flash Gordon brought into the future?) was because I resonated with the Liszt music.

Parenthetically, It is the Liszt and Weinberger that I am much more drawn to now, and that I hum much more than the Dukas. But it was the Dukas that got me into film.

What was it about the Dukas music? Hmmm. I wonder. During my time as an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I found out that one of the theaters in town played a revival of the Disney Classic Fantasia every year. So one year I went out to see it. I settled back into my seat at the old Hilldale Theatre (long since demolished and replaced by an "art" cineplex). The hall darkened and the film began. Even though I had never seen it, I had a feeling I had seen it. I'm pretty sure Fantasia was the first film I ever saw.

The fact that the record came as part of a mail order subscription was serendipitous, I think. Something about the film really imprinted on me. Watch the Sorcerer segment here. This isn't a Youtube copyright violation. It is distributed by the Disney Company and is pristine. The animation is amazing. Imagine watching it on a 40 foot screen as a 5 or 6 year old, which must have been how I saw it on one of its revivals. It was 15 or so years old when I saw it.

Something about looking at the album cover while listening, about rocking in the chair, got me going, and it wasn't until much later that I realized all the music on that side of the album wasn't Dukas. That was my favorite album well into my 30s before I gave it up when CDs made albums obsolete. Who knew they would come back?

As to Sorcerer's Apprentice, it tells a story that resonates today, I think. About hubris, about overproduction, about rushing into technology without understanding the possible unintended consequences. There is a small segment of it, "Mickey's Dream Sequence", where he controls the Universe, and makes the stars blink on and off with the pointing of his finger, causes the weather to change, etc. That too resonates with me. We think we can do anything, right up until the moment we destroy ourselves, and possibly the planet with us. I hope our sorcerer comes back in time, like Mickey's did, but fear he won't. Anyway, it's more than a cartoon, A cautionary tale, perhaps. And, ironically, told to us by one of the most right wing reactionary capitalists in history. Did he know something we don't?

When I was a senior in college, I took a "blow off" class, Introduction to Film, taught by a now legendary professor named David Bordwell. I say "blow off" because I took it pass-fail and because at the time (in the early 1970s) film was not considered a real academic subject. It was usually the orphan child of either the English Department or, as in the case of UW, the Communication Arts Department. When I went "back to school" after age 60 (which, by law, any resident of the state can do as a "senior guest auditor", for free or a very nominal fee depending on the campus), the first thing I did was clean out the Comm. Arts Department's Film offerings--eight classes over 3 years (Film History 1890-1960; Film History 1960-Present; Documentary Film; Russian-Soviet-Russian Film; European Art Cinema; American Film History 1970-present; Film Noir; and German Film (through the German Department). That's 14 free films a class. Free. Film has grown up as a discipline in the last 40 years. It has its own language and theory now. And a lot of that has to do with David Bordwell. If you check out his site above, you'll begin to see the scope of his scholarship and vast knowledge of the field. Also his love of film. I looked at a blog piece he had done on Walt Disney because I remember him teaching Disney to us. You can read it here. Note from the first epigram that Sergei Eisenstein took Walt Disney very seriously. It was from Bordwell that I learned the scope and power of Disney's vision.

So that is how Paul Dukas, Walt Disney, and Mickey Mouse came into my life, Music, art, and film.

As an addendum to this piece, I found out today that Dan Robbins, the man who invented "paint by numbers", one of the big fads of the 1950s, had passed away at age 93. My mom, who recently passed away at age 97, did one of his paint by numbers. It was hung proudly in a conspicuous place in our houses in the 1950s and 1960s. Robbins tackled all sorts of subjects, and I was able to find the Paint by Number Museum. Would the great painting she did hang there? I had to search to find out. The key word was "nude." Presto. There it was. My mom. Nurse for nigh on half a century, mother and family woman, painted this and hung it for all to see.

Take a look. Would your mom paint such a picture? And hang it for all to see? A bit of Greewich Village on the South Side of Chicago.

Claude Debussy and Rudolf Nureyev meet Quentin Tarantino.

What could Debussy and Nureyev possibly have in common with Tarantino? Nothing. And that is a bit of a story. Care to hear it? OK.

I'm taking two free University courses as a senior guest auditor (over 60=free classes at my university). They meet back to back at 11:00 am--(The Symphony--my first non-film class) and 12:05 pm--(American Film--1970-Present). It has been a difficult juxtaposition all semester and today it was so difficult that I had to write something.

First, let me say that the instructors in these classes are top notch. Fabulously knowledgeable. Very enthusiastic. Have a deep and abiding love and respect for their subject. A very enjoyable break in my  Mondays and Wednesdays. So wonderful that the University has a place for art for its own sake. No questions about how it helps the economy of the state. Not as (as Harvey Goldberg used to say) "a vendible commodity." Just art. Universities have a great civilizing function. We shouldn't forget that in the darkness that is today's world.

That said, many of the American films of 1970-present have an unmistakable streak of violence and mysogyny. Of the films we've seen so far, examples are Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Die Hard, The Silence of the Lambs, L.A. Confidential, and Jackie Brown. These films are all demonstrative of other trends in American film in the time period. In that way they are important indicators of different concepts, which I need not go into here. But the undercurrent of violence and mysogyny, and the all too often romanticization and fetishization of that undercurrent wears me down. After seeing these films, I often wonder what being shot must feel like. It must hurt. I wonder if all the watching numbs me to the pain. But I watch. And watch.

The music class offers me nothing but great classical music, deconstructed. It is beautiful and soothing. Most of my friends took this class when we were undergraduates, some 40-45 years ago. I resisted because I felt it might be too difficult for me. I was correct. I am far beyond the power relationships of a university class, the judgement that goes with exams and papers. Been there. Done that. Three times. But the class is difficult. Music is mathematical. I am not. It is a language. I am fluent in only one language. There is a depth to it far beyond what I can comprehend. It has always been background in my life. Good music gets my mind into a riff and I fantasize and forget where (and sometimes who) I am. I am learning there is lots more to great music than that. But mostly it is just beautiful to listen to. Always puts me in a great frame of mind.

Then the class ends and I go to the film class. And that's where the juxtaposition problem begins. So far, Mozart's Symphony No. 40 has been juxtaposed with a deconstruction of Die Hard. Beethoven's Ode to Joy with The Silence of the Lambs. Etc. The mood swings are difficult.

Today, I think, was hardest of all. In the music class, background on Claude Debussy and the end of Romanticism. The beginning of modern classical music. The example was Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn. About 12 minutes of the most beautiful music I've ever heard. And not just the music. The instructor found a video of a balletic interpretation that was choreographed by Nijinski and danced by Nureyev. Prelude is a sensual piece. Nureyev, it seemed to me, made love with it. It was beautiful. My feet barely touched the ground as I made my way to the film class.

And there was a deconstruction of Tarantino's Jackie Brown. The instructor absolutely nailed the deconstruction. After 10 weeks, I expect no less, and he always delivers. Makes you think in many different ways, with many different concepts about these films. Almost makes me forget the brutality that is Tarantino. Jackie Brown is actually, of the Tarantino films I've seen, one of the more thoughtful and sensitive. But it's still Tarantino. The deconstruction was perfectly timed, and reached a crescendo with a clip of one of the murders in the film. Below I have linked to both the Debussy and Tarantino. Both are art. Both are done by artists who are almost impossibly gifted. One brought me to heights of joy. The other crashed me on my head against the concrete. Art is complex and difficult. These two classes are dialectical in a way. I haven't figured out what the synthesis is yet. Maybe there isn't any. 

Claude Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. Joffrey Ballet.

Choreography: Vaslav Nijinski. Principle dancer: Rudolf Nureyev.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GqGVkfUip8

Jackie Brown, Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Murder of Louis:

Part 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh-7WQr_daM

Part 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e7wbs_xfas