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August 1996, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Pip Chodorov <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 9 Aug 1996 07:22:49 -0400
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> Speculation:  if speeded-up action, as in Keystone Cops sequences, is for
> comedy, does slowing down the action, whether via slow motion or repeated
> action, suggest the opposite (whatever we want to take that to be)?
 
There are plenty of examples of slow motion in comedy. The most memorable one
is Peter Sellers as inspector Clouseau, sailing through the air into the
kitchen in slow motion as pots, pans and bits of ceiling fall on him. Monty
Python also stretches time in HOLY GRAIL using repeated action, when John
Cleese as Sir Lancelot runs interminably towards the castle, from very far
away, with drum rolling, as two castle guards watch and wait, eating an
apple, until suddenly he runs past them, slitting one's throat while the
other says "hey!"
 
There are plenty of examples of accelerated motion being serious, as in
Koyannisqaatsi which uses sped-up traffic or crowds in Grand Central Station
to make a cosmic statement about natural systems, people's place on Earth,
the chemistry of humans as particles, etc.  Accelerated motion is often used
to show us a world normally invisible in our time frame, such as time-lapse
photography of plants growing. In fiction too, accelerated motion can be
serious: 2001's astronaut Frank Poole, in space, his oxygen hose disconnected
by HAL's pod, frantically tries to stick it back into his ear in accelerated
motion, and after trying to rescue Frank's body, Dave Bowman must explode
himself through vacuum space without a helmet into the emergency airlock,
which he does in accelerated motion.  I would also argue that the stop motion
sex scene in CLOCKWORK ORANGE is not meant as comedy, and that the
accelerated motion is meant to create a time axis in opposition to the slow
motion violence scenes and the fantasy orgy scene at the end of the film.
 
I would also posit that slow motion, which renders consecutive frames more
similar, tugging cinema towards a still image, photography, it's historical
roots, is often used to simulate regression, going back in time, and
eventually death, the death of movement as time is slowed down to a
standstill. Some more Kubrick examples: the freeze-frame at the end of Barry
Lyndon; in 2001, Hal's regression and death is realized through a slow-motion
effect (though this is not a slow-motion -- his singing remains in key, and
is thus merely electronically filtered -- thereby HAL can be revived in
2010...); in THE SHINING, Jack, too, regresses, becoming child-like, then
ape-like in the snowy maze, losing his language like HAL, and finally,
literally, frozen, into a photograph taken many years previously. These ideas
are not limited to Kubrick, and I think many examples can be found in which
slow motion and freeze frames stands in for death (the last shot in THELMA &
LOUISE comes to mind).
 
However, given the many counter-examples, I think there is no general rule
defining slow or fast motion as a rhetorical figure for death, for comedy,
for cosmic statements. I have never been able to find a satisfactory theory
about time in cinema that even comes close to critical writing on spatial
effects (zooms, deep focus, close-ups, shot-countershot, etc.). Again,
seventy years ago Jean Epstein wrote convincingly about slow- and fast-motion
as being like microscope and macroscope, but this does not go far enough. Any
ideas on this would further film theory enormously, as film is a temporal art
form.
 
-Pip Chodorov
 
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