Comedy, Book Two: Cinematic Revolutions

By Patrick McGee

Comedy is a philosophical poem in the form of waking dream, inspired by Dante and William Blake. In book two, Cinematic Revolutions, the narrator, having passed through a cinema screen at the end of book one, arrives in the middle of a World War I field of dying men. An indescribable human figure appears who warns that these cinematic images are not real but projections of the cinematic mind with its power of empathy. Assuming different shapes and identities, this generic being becomes the narrator's guide. Through a series of dialogues and encounters, cinema and the visual culture it generates are identified with a cultural revolution--the nonviolent revolution--that surpasses the violent revolutions of the twentieth century. This view is articulated through encounters with Russian revolutionary Trotsky, twelve modernist writers and the philosopher Wittgenstein, Hitchcock, three dictators (Hitler, Stalin, Mao), a cinematic Jesus Christ, Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Interspersed among these encounters are cinematic visions from directors like Eisenstein, Chaplin, and others. From Paris to Memphis, passing through Pasolini's black and white desert in Gospel according to Saint Matthew, descending into the dark underworld of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, rising into a Hollywood heaven of the forties, and standing on top of the Empire State Building with King Kong, cinematic images channel revolutionary desires and the necessity of nonviolence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666741735

Patrick McGee

Patrick McGee is Emeritus Professor and was formerly William A. Read Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University. He is the author of nine previous books on literary topics, including the recent Political Monsters and Democratic Imagination: Spinoza, Blake, Hugo, Joyce. He currently lives in Seattle.

Book preview

Preface

Cinematic Revolutions, Book 2 of Comedy, perhaps comes closest to Dante’s Inferno, while Book 1 was closer to the Purgatorio, but both are shot through with fragments of Paradiso. Though this is not a poem about movies, it does presuppose that cinema is the defining art form of the twentieth century, and the visual culture it has generated expresses the long cultural revolution that continues to transform human existence—not always for the better. For good or bad, visual culture has altered every kind of human relationship and has made everyone aware of the economic foundation of those relationships. No one born after 1900 can escape the horrors or the dreams projected onto the screens of their minds.

In some ways, the closer we come to the present, the less we can take common knowledge for granted. Consequently, I have created a limited set of notes at the end of this work that will be unnecessary for some but useful to others. The annotations are slanted toward the particular use I make of a reference or allusion. With a few exceptions, I don’t specify which passages allude to which films but merely list the films that are referenced (in order of reference). Also, for each canto, I list the historical speakers in order of appearance but not the ones from my personal history or the imaginary ones. There is one imaginary figure, however, who requires some explanation.

The guide who appears in Canto 1 and whom I variously refer to as strange, the stranger, and finally my guardian—and who can assume the shape and identity of other people, real and imaginary—is my attempt to give symbolic form to a subject of truth as the philosopher Alain Badiou understands that term. For Badiou, a subject is a point of truth, while a truth is both infinite and generic and a radical exception. In other words, such a subject cannot be discerned by any category and could be thought of as what remains after the subtraction of all categories. Any appearance of it is rare. Perhaps you can think of it as a kind of soul, though not in the religious sense but like in the blues. It is universal, an aspect of being to which everyone is attached even if they disavow the attachment. Such a disavowal is what it means to kill the universal, the infinite.

For Book 2, I thank again all the people I thanked in the preface to the first book, especially Rick Blackwood, Tim Fitzmaurice, and Tim Paulson. I also thank Jay Paulson for his enthusiasm and offer special thanks to Robert Con Davis-Undiano who has been a generous reader and whose own artistic endeavors have helped to inspire my own.

Canto 1

Having passed through the screen I was blinded

By a flash of light and knocked down to the ground

By a turbulent blast with a deafening sound

And then silence enclosed my head around.

For some moments I felt a comforting calm

As if I’d been bathed in a soothing balm,

Though my brain told me it must’ve been a bomb.

Slowly I lifted my head to learn where I

Could be but all round me as far as my eyes

Could see were bodies and nothing could disguise

The horror of so much death and pathetic cries

That came from the mutilated who had not died

But screamed out to the heavens to tell them why

They should be punished for the sins of men

Who in their lives had never spoken to them

Or extended a hand to say they were a friend.

At least in the dying voices that’s what I heard,

Though it wasn’t words but feelings I deciphered,

And wondered—did they express the things I feared

More than the horrors others had endured?

Then standing up I saw what looked like a man

Crossing the field of corpses through which he ran

Until he stood before me out of breath

But managed to say, "Welcome to the Twentieth

Century, which some might call the kingdom of death,

When humankind became a plague to itself.

But don’t think what you see is something real,

For you’re in the land of images that conceal

An experience no image can reveal,

Something only those who were there can feel

And only in death know the end of the ordeal."

The face I saw was impossible to describe

For with each passing second its appearance belied

The one a second before, so I couldn’t ascribe

Any stable form to this strange human

Or be certain he was man or woman,

For the face somehow had the traits of all in common.

So I asked, Who are you and why are you here?

It replied, "I am nobody, that something queer

That exists in everybody, arousing their fear

When they see me as the void where they thought a soul

Should be and misconceive me as the hole

In their being that undermines the goal

Of their dream of becoming spiritually whole.

They take as something blank what has no name

Because they hate what never stays the same.

Beyond categories I am what remains—

Not man, not woman, not even human,

But in each singular being I am the lumen,

Both a light and hollow space through which passes

The dreams and hopes that drive all the masses

And stay alive through the disastrous crashes

Of civilization that decimate the flesh

While shedding images that imprint afresh

On the transindividual mind the thing that arrests

The drift into disastrous unconsciousness.

You could say I’m the soul of multitude

Though such a formulation is quite crude,

For in each brain I am the mental screen

On which is projected what others have seen,

And through a process like a time machine

We imagine the horrors that have been,

And though we cannot know what others have felt

Who in brutal, inhuman conditions have dwelt,

Those images interpenetrate our own

Histories and reawaken what we have known,

Perhaps when we felt betrayed and alone,

And though our sufferings may not with theirs compare,

This emotional montage forces us to share

The pain of others and even their despair,

And sometimes teaches the worst of us to care.

What you see here are such things as you have seen

Projected onto a thousand movie screens,

Then reflected in a thousand human minds,

And this passage creates a tie that binds

Us and shatters the scales that make us blind

To other lives that on our own have shined.

Behind every spectator’s passive gaze,

I am the active force that never stays

The same and keeps the door open to ways

Forward to what some call our wildest dreams,

Though these may show us something beyond what seems

A world to which we feel we must conform.

To some I appear like an unwelcome storm

When they don’t know who they are or why they were born,

But out of this chaos can emerge a bourn

Beyond whatever they imagined before.

I am the unclosed gap, the infinite store,

The inner voice that always asks for more,

The space for images that have no place,

The ground from which regenerating grace

Comes to the multitude as its own thought,

Though it takes time before it can be brought

To consciousness with images not fraught

With terror that can leave us all distraught.

I have come to you now as the image of

The art form you’ve always loved, the cinema,

And some way through your memory I’ll guide

You, though not as some ethereal ghost inside

You, since the deepest memory is outside,

A theater of the multitude that projects

Visions we all have shared as the effects

Of a culture that unconsciously directs

Us toward the thing we secretly desire."

To this long speech, I replied, "You’re no liar

When you speak of the art that always inspired

Me more than any other, that I’d prefer

Even to books, since the power of literature

Itself came to me first through the adventure

Of cinema, as I tried to recapture

The images that took away my breath

In the words of writers who somehow gave depth

And more thought to what those images meant,

Even when they seemed like something I’d dreamt.

But looking round this ground with bodies spent

And into contorted shapes so viciously bent,

It makes me wonder why I’d want to see

Images of a world so sick without remedy,

For this first holocaust of the century

Led to one that did even more injury

And others came in this unrelenting history."

The one with no name was quick to reply,

"As long as you’re alive you’ll wonder why

Evil exists and so many have to die,

But the screened visions you and others are forced

To see give you knowledge of events accursed,

And art can never save us from the worst

Unless we join to it the power of thought.

The truth is not hidden from those who have brought

The full force of reason to learn what they ought

To be and to do, but they need imagination

In order to escape isolation

And restore to the multitude its obligation

To make what seems impossible possible.

Those dreams that may seem to us fantastical

Can be the gateway to what is feasible

When we learn to share the common dream of all

And refuse to accept the legacy of our fall

That makes us bow to ideas that enthrall

Even those who think they’re above it all.

But now let’s change this scene through a simple cut

That may lift us out of this deadly rut."

Canto 2

In the blink of an eye we stood on the bank of a track.

Rails covered in snow and the frozen white landscape

Seemed to clutch us with its brutal winds that scraped

The flesh on our faces as if to reshape

Our bodies like pliant clay in the hand

Of a cold impersonal artist-god whose land

Trembled with the deadly force that over it spanned.

Then a whistle stung my ears as a locomotive

With a red face plowed toward us and made me believe

I was in something more than an image conceived

In my head, so I turned to my guide to question why

But saw in his face only the mirror of my

Confusion, which led me to say with a sigh,

"Surely you know something more than I do

And about what we see could give me a clue,

For this appearance can’t be totally true."

He said, "I only tell you what you know

Already, this scene is like a moving tableau

Of history, though the events that are on show

Here are more like the dream of a dream once seen

By you years ago on a movie screen,

And only you can say what it must mean."

Before I could respond, I felt the vibration

Of the train coming to a stop at our location.

Armed men suddenly appeared, each one with a gun

Pointed at us—as if we were dangerous ones—

And forced us without compunction into the car

Where we stood before a man with a scar

On the left side of a face that seemed familiar

Until guessing I shouted, Strelnikov!—

Which only had the effect of ticking him off

As he raised up his head from his desk and scoffed,

Suggesting he’d just as soon put a bullet

In my brain, but I instinctively knew he couldn’t,

Nor did I feel the need to be prudent

With this cinematic apparition.

Then in an instant a different cognition

Struck my eyes as the face of the man became

The face of Lev Trotsky who once inflamed

The minds of Russian multitudes who proclaimed

An end to the long tale of human oppression,

Though they soon had to learn a harsh lesson—

That revolutions are not divine creations

But human acts that easily go off track

Through leaders whose vision sees only black

And white and a multitude that tragically lacks

The patience and will required to take command

Of itself and through fearless resistance demand

What their leaders think they can’t understand.

Then Trotsky spoke, "Why does my image echo

Through your dream, with words that sound like the libretto

Of a tragic opera with some antihero

Who seeking to do good creates the monster

That kills everything he loves until after

All is lost he must confront the disaster

Of his