Sunday, 29 January 2012
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Friday, 20 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Table Etiquette
The film begins with a rapid succession of shots depicting a variety of cooked meals, including poultry dishes, desserts, and casseroles. Despite the rapid pace of the shots, the food is recognizably lavish and appetizing; this is followed with the title of the
34first segment, Breakfast. Next, a medium establishing shot of a man sitting in a sparsely furnished room sets the stage for the following interactions. A man enters the room and shuts the door behind him; both men are elderly and dressed alike in clothing that is sensible and unadorned. For the sake of clarity, the man who first appears in the shot will be referred to as “sitting man” and the man entering the room as the “active man” (see Figure 6).
Figure 6: Jan Švankmajer, Breakfast (active and sitting man)
The active man enters the room and has a seat at the table across from the sitting man. The active man takes a look at the table and swipes a paper tray with left over bread and mustard onto the floor, he then looks around the room and notices that many of these trays are scattered across the floor. A quick series of close-ups depicting trash items within the room and tally marks on the wall foreshadow the following acts of repetition. Upon his inspection he notices a set of instructions placed around the sitting man’s neck; he takes a handful of change from his pocket and counts out three coins, he then looks for a place to insert the coins on top of sitting man’s head. He takes another look at the instructions and proceeds to squeeze the sitting man’s nose until he is forced to open his mouth for a breath. This act is depicted in a quick series of shots that create an image of
convulsion; this image is accompanied by the sound of rattling change. 35
Once the sitting man’s mouth is open, the active man pulls up his sleeve and sticks his hand into the sitting man’s mouth and pulls out his tongue. This act is a particularly grotesque representation of the mouth and head, because as the active man places his hand in the sitting man’s head it deforms by getting larger and misshapen; in addition, the tongue is pulled very far from the mouth almost to the point of detachment (see Figure 7).
Figure 7: Jan Švankmajer, Breakfast (cow tongue)
For these shots, Švankmajer depicts the head of the sitting man with an exact clay replica that he is able to grossly shape and manipulate with stop motion animation. According to Bakhtin, “In the example of grotesque, displeasure is caused by the impossible and improbable nature of the image” (305). It’s unimaginable that a man’s tongue can be pulled this far from his mouth without being detached. This type of imagery certainly presents the spectator with something that causes “displeasure”, thus Švankmajer depicts and emphasizes the act of consumption with grotesque imagery. This type of grotesque imagery continues in the following shots.
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Change is placed on the sitting man’s tongue and it slides back into the sitting man’s head. The active man then hits the sitting man on the head in an effort to push the change into the sitting man, as though he were a vending machine. The active man reads the instructions again and proceeds to lift the sitting man’s glasses from his eyes, opening one of his eyes, and pushing his finger into it. At this point the sitting man begins to shake, the sound of rattling change is heard. The clothes on his chest begin to open; this reveals a cavity that resembles a dumb waiter. The pulley slowly pulls up a metal bin with a paper tray on it. The tray has one cooked sausage, some mustard and a small piece of bread on it; next to the tray there is a paper cup filled with beer. The active man proceeds to read the instructions again and punches the sitting man in the jaw, thus facilitating the projection of plastic ware from the sitting man’s ears (see Figure 8).
Figure 8: Jan Švankmajer, Breakfast (utensil dispenser)
The active man’s consumption is portrayed in a rapid succession of close-ups. Again, he reads the instructions and proceeds to kick the sitting man in the shin, which in turn produces a napkin from his coat pocket. After wiping his mouth, the active man
37
takes a seat and begins to move in a robotic manner; this movement is accompanied with the sound of metal squeaking and change rattling.
The active man becomes still and the sitting man becomes active as he begins to get up from the table. He gathers his belongings, takes a crayon and tallies one line on the wall before exiting the room. Just before the door has time to shut, another man enters the room and the same process begins again. This man, just like the last, has the laborious job of reading the fine print instructions placed around the sitting man’s neck in order to obtain a meal. When this process comes to an end, he becomes still and the sitting man gets up to leave, makes a tally on the wall and exits the room; only this time, the door stays open for the spectator to see that outside of the room there is a long hallway filled with men waiting in an equally long line.
When considering the sequence of events described above, it’s evident that the grotesque is most noticeable in the implausible interaction between the two men. Take for example the sitting man’s stomach turning into a dumb waiter; while all of the items in the shot are formally represented, the image of a dumb waiter within the man’s torso is impossible, and therefore creates a sense of uneasiness in the spectator. The source of this uneasiness can be found in the way in which the body is typically portrayed as being closed off and separate from the outside world. The implausible grotesque imagery used in this segment calls attention to the act of consumption and lays emphasis on the laborious nature of the act. The active man is forced to use the body of the sitting man in a series of unimaginable ways, but this doesn’t happen all at once, it is a long and arduous process of physical force, that results in minimal compensation. The
impossibility of the image can be found in the following segment as well. In addition to 38
the elements of the grotesque listed above, the image of the grotesque body is found in the cannibalistic nature of this act of consumption. By literally eating food that has come from within his fellow man, the active man is provided with nourishment; he then takes his turn as the provider, thus continuing the renewal of life.7
In the segment titled Breakfast, the spectator is presented with an act that emphasizes the laborious nature of consumption, but it is important to remember that this act isn’t taking place between a man and machine; rather it takes place between two men. These men have to wait in line for a very long time before they have to go through the arduous process of receiving their meal from their fellow man. Once they receive their meal it is minimal at best. This scenario would be quite familiar with a Czechoslovak audience due to the conditions set in place by their socialist government. Socialism supports the ideology that every citizen should have access to resources provided by their government, and that each should be compensated according to their contribution (Kenez 96). In both the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc, this ideology unfortunately led to a lack of resources such as adequate housing and consumer goods (Kenez 105). In addition to a lack of resources, the resources that existed were available through what was perceived by many as an unnecessarily bureaucratic process. The arduous act of cannibalism between the two men serves as a metaphorical language that speaks volumes to the unfortunate nature of the socialist ideology “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Kenez 14). Švankmajer is drawing attention to and criticizing how ideological beliefs, regardless of their good intentions, can produce a negative effect on citizens.
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