Browsing by Author "Mason, Matthew Raymond"
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- (Re)viewing the ‘Children of Marx and Coca-Cola’: the ‘Cultural Revolution(s)’ of Jean-Luc Godard’s Early Political Cinema (1966-1967) and the spirit of a new eraPublication . Mason, Matthew RaymondI claim that Jean-Luc Godard’s last few pre-1968 (pre-Dziga Vertov group) films offer us a fascinating account of, and commentary on, the changing nature of Western society during a period of great transformation and, ultimately, mark the emergence of a whole new era (Postmodernity/Globalisation). By exploring the notion of ‘cultural revolution’ – through its various understandings – an interesting picture of this tumultuous era can be usefully painted via these films. One can decipher, for example, at least 3 fundamental interpretations of the notion of ‘cultural revolution’ which featured importantly in 1) the theories of the Situationist International (SI) at the time, which 2) draws directly upon the events of the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ in China (1966 - 1976) and which also 3) serves as a useful (and not uncommon) description of the ‘postmodern turn’ itself characterised by the emergence of mass consumption, designer fashion, Pop Art and colour TV to name but a few. I see Godard’s films of the period 1966-1967 as depicting each one of these elements in some detail and thus capturing the various shades of a period of great historical importance. The films made by Godard during 1966-1967 mark a decisive moment in the director’s career (MacCabe, 1980; Morrey, 2005) in which ‘politics’ became a central concern while the films remained (broadly-speaking) within the mainstream context of a commercial cinema. This study intends to show how Godard’s interest - during this period - in everything from an exultation of Maoist China to a critique of urbanisation and an obsession with the car crash, in retrospect, seems to brilliantly capture the paradoxes of an era in which Western societies were at once increasingly prosperous but increasingly and ever-more violently in a state of war. Did Godard’s ‘Children of Marx and Coca-Cola’ (Masculin Féminin, 1966), then, prophetically characterise the phenomenon of ‘postmodernity’ (Jameson, 1991, 1998; Anderson, 1998; Harvey, 1989), or, as later defined, ‘globalisation’?
- Spectres of (post)marxism? "Cultural revolution’ and the sino-soviet split as entertainment in Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967)Publication . Mason, Matthew RaymondThis paper seeks to draw on scholarship which acknowledges the ability of film to capture and/or articulate a particular historical or theoretical ‘moment’ (Shapiro, 2020) as well as its unrivalled capacity to effectively represent ‘geopolitics’ for a popular, mass audience (Dodds, 2007). It will be suggested that Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 film, La Chinoise, compellingly (if comically) captures the evolution of Marxist theory in the West as well as its ostensible practice in the East through its fascination with, and treatment of, the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (1966-1976) in Maoist China and through its provocative posing of grand theoretical questions (on utopia, on violence, on human agency) through radical cinematic techniques involving a subversive use of language, colour and sound. In short, while the film draws on the revolutionary events in China (as entertainment!), in so doing, it also problematises the notion of what constitutes a revolutionary cinema, and, at least in retrospect, appears to harbour a somewhat difficult and complex view of ‘revolution’ as at once a fundamental and farcical act. Godard’s subsequent disavowal of all his previous work and his attempt to produce a genuinely ‘revolutionary’ cinema from 1968 onwards sheds even more light on La Chinoise’s complex account of ‘cultural revolution’. I suppose that behind Godard’s uneasy, complex view of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ lies the historical shifts in theorizations of Marxism itself, both in the West (the emergence of the Frankfurt School, the critique of Stalin, Trotskyism, etc.) and in the East (the notion of the peasant rather than the worker as principal revolutionary agent) as well as attempting to capture culturally the material geopolitical tensions which had developed between China and the USSR at the time (with each nation claiming closer proximity to Marx’s original ideas!). In addition, Godard’s use of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ as the central theme in La Chinoise also points to the growing interest in the ‘Third World’ - or so-called Third-Worldism – which was gradually being exhibited by intellectuals in West at the time (e.g., Sartre, Foucault, Kristeva). Returning to Godard’s ‘long ‘67’ - and La Chinoise in particular - then proves a fruitful object in which to analyse a critical historical and theoretical ‘moment’ in which the political theory of Marxism began to evolve/decompose in both theory and practice and on a global scale.
- Spectres of populism and postmodernism in the documentary work of Adam Curtis (2015-2021)Publication . Mason, Matthew RaymondA spectre haunts contemporary art and culture. The spectre of postmodernism. Nowhere is this observation more striking than in the recent documentary work of Adam Curtis. This paper seeks to offer an analysis of three recent works – Bitter Lake (2015), HyperNormalisation (2016), Can’t Get You Out of My Head (2021) - by the British documentary filmmaker, Adam Curtis, and will suggest that they reflect much of the trappings of postmodern theory. It will be argued that the films can be deemed ‘postmodern’ both in terms of their content (narrative structure, central themes, historical context, etc.) and their style (film composition, image arrangement, use of music/sound). ‘Postmodernism’, whose influence on the history of ideas arguably reached its peak around 20 years ago, at the turn of the millennium, before falling from favour in the early 21st century, should be understood as a ghost which haunts such work as its societal implications (on politics, art, culture, etc.) have remained largely ignored or overlooked. It will be argued that despite the term’s relative fall from grace in recent years, its influence looms large in the films, as well as in so many aspects of 21st century life in general. This paper suggests that the films contribute to building a conceptual framework of the contemporary world which chimes with the visions of the postmodern theorists of the later 20th century (Lyotard, Baudrillard, Jameson) yet, at the same time, the films themselves serve as postmodern ‘artefacts’ which proclaim the loss of “any alternative vision of society” (HyperNormalisation, 2016) and whose hypnotic musical excerpts and endless flows of images also paradoxically contribute to a postmodern ‘crisis of historicity’ (Jameson, 1991). In addition, and perhaps not entirely unrelated (?), the equally influential concept and political technique of ‘populism’ emerges as another ‘ghost’ which seems to haunt much of the director’s work and his compelling extradiegetic commentary. Thus, this paper will also attempt to sketch a vision of ‘populism’ as seen through the films in which an image of the ‘people’ (as a collective) powerfully (yet dangerously?) emerges which casts them as lost in a complex tapestry of interconnected events and as the potential victims of manipulation. Finally, and somewhat optimistically, the paper will try to suggest how the two concepts - ‘populism’ and ‘postmodernism’ - can be understood as vaguely symbiotic; the former (in its contemporary form) emerging out of the ideological abyss left by the latter.