Film Review--CAS'L' (2010)

Is Bruce Bickford even human? I’ve seen pictures of the guy and he appears to be of my species, but what Earth-bound mind could possibly conceive of the monstrosities born of his work? Between his hands and a ton of clay lies a magical, undulating world of Bickford’s unique vision that is, at once, violent and sexual, disturbing and beautiful, and always complete genius.

Bickford’s public body of work is unfortunately slim, but by no means does this indicate a stagnant artist. Instead, the detail needed to create these figures and landscapes demands extreme labor and patience. Eighteen years of that patience resulted in the astounding CAS’L’, forty-five minutes of contained insanity and animated wonder. While Bickford’s style hasn’t changed much since his word first appeared to a relatively mainstream public in the Frank Zappa film, Baby Snakes, the scope of CAS’L’ is far more broad and fully realized than anything he has ever created.

Trying to glean a plot from CAS’L’ is a fool’s game, one that I won’t pretend to play. Bickford works off of themes and blunt-force imagery, not story. CAS’L’ moves like a river as clay overtakes clay in waves on mayhem, rising up to consume what came before and waiting to die by the grostesquery that follows. The style lends an impression of stream-of-consciousness while being anything but spontaneous. Bickford’s clay animation is as deliberate as you’ll find; it had better be because once a figure is gone, it’s destroyed forever.

Bickford’s morphing, bleeding style isn’t some gimmick he uses to overshadow second-rate work; he has it down to a science. It’s often said that, in art, it’s important to have a broad enough perspective to kill your babies. On that level, Bickford is a serial murderer. Committing gleeful infanticide with every meticulously constructed frame, his figures are born and eat, then killed and eaten to make way for a rebirth in a different, equally hungry form. Giant nude women wielding swords yield to tiny versions of themselves, who are then smashed into hamburger (or, more accurately, a hamburger) to be eaten by a living human and have their insides poured onto the landscape to recollect as a group of gun-toting Sandinistas built to wreak even worse havoc on the next generation.

We get four loose slices of this world that have only a tenuous connection to one another. The interpretation of each scenario is certainly up for debate, but themes of war and consumption are ever-present. Whether you’re watching a rendition of the Globe Theater or perusing the outskirts of the “Crum’L’ Brand Criminal Cigarette” factory, you can be guaranteed of three things: swords, blood, and clay devouring clay. Everything moves in and out of each other; it’s an awe-striking thing to behold. Colorful and creative on one hand a virtuosic level of detail on the other, CAS’L’ is a nearly perfect balance between the aesthetic and the technical.

Great as Bickford’s images are, CAS’L’ is silent on its own and would be slow to watch, let alone to market, without a top-notch soundtrack. In 1979, that was provided by Zappa. Today, that duty falls to Greg McClellan, who edited the film in addition to writing the music, playing bass and keyboards, performing the sound effects, and appearing in the film as “Giant with Swords.” Fairly, McClellan is no Zappa (who ever has been?), but that doesn’t change his impact on the film. Along with Bill Barkley on guitars and Daren Pullen on drums and percussion, McClellan provides a Carl Stalling-esque mash-up of styles, from flamenco to jazz to metal and just about anything in between. The seconds-long snippets of music remind me of Mike Patton’s Fantomas or John Zorn’s Naked City projects (comparisons that couldn’t be more complimentary), and add levels of humor and irony that do nothing but enhance the often nasty, always hilarious effect of the film.

I loved CAS’L’ from top to bottom and start to finish. I can’t say I understand every little thing about it, but I don’t want to. CAS’L’ is an aesthetic feast, a film that should be seen by far more than ever will. No matter how many eventually witness Bickford’s greatness, art like this is two decades well spent.

Animated Soviet Propaganda: Shooting Range (1979)

In 2 parts:






Wow.

I barely know what to say. My first question is this: how much access did Soviets have to LSD in the 1970s?

While "Shooting Range" clearly fits into the broader themes of propaganda, with the evil American capitalist taking advantage of massive unemployment to exploit workers, the political message really seems beside the point. I guess that's not surprising. By 1979, who really believed in doctrinaire Marxism anymore? Were the Soviet people really buying the political messages at that time? I'm not a Soviet expert by any means, so I don't really know. But certainly the political message here is obscured by the artistry.

The animation here is really interesting. Great use of shadows, color, and other techniques to create a very interesting cartoon. The music is also fantastic. Again, we see the Soviets employing American music to make a point. As is frequent, these cartoons use jazz as a whipping boy. "Shooting Range" uses dissonant free jazz to hammer home the point of American corruption. But as is frequent in Soviet attempts to slam jazz, it backfires because it's an utterly compelling and effective soundtrack to this film. Given the relative popularity of experimental jazz and other out-music in eastern Europe, I suspect audiences definitely did not take the negative message about jazz with them.

Other notes:

The scene at the beginning of part 2 where they fall in love might as well come straight from some sort of counterculture animation. The rabbit spewing rainbows out of his violin, two of the Seven Dwarfs hitting an anvil, just complete random psychedelia.

The use of American products and corporate brand names strikes me throughout many of these cartoons. I guess this cartoon is saying Coca-Cola is a bad thing, but it's not really expressing that clearly, it's directly using the brand logo, and it's basically free advertising. You have to feel that this cartoon made Soviets want American products more, not less.

I actually would really like to own the soundtrack. 

Most of this just really leaves me speechless.

Animated Soviet Propaganda: Black and White (1933)

This extremely powerful piece of animated propaganda from 1933 attacks U.S. race relations. It's hard to argue with this--the Soviets were right about American race relations. Paul Robeson's voice adds great power to the message. The scenes with blacks lynched from the telephone wires like Sparatcus' army leaves a haunting image in the mind. The film does make some attempt to place race relations within the general corruptness of capitalism; after all, the overseer whips both the black and white worker. But given that African-Americans were almost entirely working class and the upper class almost entirely white, talking about race and capitalism made perfect sense.

During the Cold War, the Soviet analysis of American race relations had great importance. As the nations of Asia and Africa threw off their colonial chains in the 1950s and 60s, and as Latin American nations began to choose governments less tied to the United States, American treatment of black people proved a powerful tool in the Soviet arsenal. Why would a newly freed African nation side with the U.S? After all, their president would have to stay in a segregated motel when visiting Washington! I don't know if the Soviets sent these race-based cartoons to their allies in the developing world, but they certainly played up each racial incident. And as Mary Dudziak convincingly shows in her book Cold War Civil Rights, the knowledge that segregationist violence was hurting the U.S. in the Cold War helped move presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson to move more aggressively on civil rights than they otherwise would have.

Finally, the animation is pretty first-rate for 1933. Between the simple figures of lynched blacks to the expressive face of the man at the end of the film to the rich capitalist who kills the black man who won't shine his shoes, this is first-rate art as well as effective propaganda.

Animated Soviet Propaganda: We'll Keep Our Eyes Peeled (1927)

This very early piece of animated Soviet propaganda is great. The Soviets are facing down the capitalist threat (Britain, not the U.S.) and is calling upon its workers to join the cause.

Pre-World War II Soviet propaganda is particularly fascinating because the U.S. often plays a relatively small role. The Soviets saw the British as the real threat. In fact, Ford executives were working in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, helping spur its industrialization.

The artistry of the animation impresses me. For 1927, this is advanced animation. There are many things to love here--the capitalist's checkered pants, how he pops in the live-action shots of Soviet factories, how the Soviets turn the British ultimatum into fighter planes, how the capitalists cries at the end in the face of Soviet power.

It's also worth noting how little Soviet propaganda during these years differs from American propaganda. The call for Soviet citizens to buy government bonds could come straight out of the United States during either World War II. Much Soviet propaganda has mirrors in the U.S. Watch Alexsandr Dovzhenko's 1930 film Earth and then watch Pare Lorentz's 1936 state-sponsored film about the Dust Bowl, The Plow that Broke the Plains. They aren't that different in many senses, particularly in connecting nationalism to the land. In both, lots of plowing scenes, lots of fetishizing farm technology.

I'm also fascinated by the Soviets asking their citizens to buy government bonds. Isn't this an acceptance of the capitalist system the nation is supposedly fighting against?

Animated Soviet Propaganda: Someone Else's Voice (1949)

Someone Else's Voice, from 1949, builds upon yesterday's discussion of the Soviets and music. In this tale, the little peasant birds are singing their traditional songs. So pretty, so Russian. But along comes a magpie from a long time abroad. While abroad, the magpie has learned foreign ways and bringing foreign music into the motherland.



This foreign music, of course, is jazz. The magpie makes fun of the traditional bird music, calling it old-hat and talking about how foreign birds sing so much better. The magpie then puts on a performance of modern music. The magpie squawks and squawks. Some of the stupider birds like it. But the good peasant birds reject this noise as cultural imperialism. They attack the magpie and kick it out of the forest in a stand against foreign intervention.

The idea that the Soviets respected local musical traditions is absurd. A hallmark of totalitarian socialism is to marshal art for state purposes. These cartoons are a prime example. It wasn't much different than music. The Soviets can claim they based their appeal in Russian peasant traditions, but first, the USSR was much more than Russia and as any Ukrainian can tell you, Stalin didn't exactly foster their contributions to Soviet culture. Second, they didn't respect those peasant traditions to begin with when they challenged the goals of the Soviet state. We can start with collectivization and go from there.

A word on the animation. I'll talk about this in upcoming days, but Someone Else's Voice uses far more traditional animation techniques than many Soviet cartoons. One of the fascinating things about Soviet art is how artists managed to remain ultra-modern, pushing the envelope in any number of artistic genres, while working in a Stalinist and post-Stalinist state. Someone Else's Voice doesn't really do this--this animation would make any American cartoon viewer in 1949 comfortable--but many others do.

Also, the idea that the Soviets promoted a bucolic environment is completely absurd. The least believable thing about this cartoon is that birds could even survive in much of the USSR. Where's the massively polluting factories, hillsides of dead trees, eroded landscapes, and dead seas?

Animated Soviet Propaganda: The Millionaire (1963)

This is a classic piece of Soviet animated propaganda.



Long before Leona Helmsley actually did leave her fortune to a dog, this cartoon follows the fortune of a dog whose millionaire owner leaves him all her wealth. He then leads the life of a rich capitalist, eventually using his money to become a senator.

Of course, for the Soviets, the difference between a bulldog and a capitalist is essentially nil, which is the less than subtle point to this exercise.

I'll talk about this again during this series, but I have to wonder about the efficacy of this propaganda. It assumes that the Soviet population actually doesn't want to live the high life of the capitalist. And I don't think that's true. Certainly the, how shall we say, less that subtle conspicuous consumption of the post-Soviet Russian elite suggests that the USSR didn't exactly kill materialism.

So it shows this capitalist dog riding around in a big Cadillac, drinking fine drinks, eating meat at every meal, seeing showgirls at clubs, etc. Are you telling me that the Soviet audiences in 1963 didn't want that as well? I have an awful lot of trouble buying that assumption. And how much meat was the average Soviet eating in 1963? Did they look at the dog with anger or with jealousy?

I consistently find these images of American capitalists missing their mark. Of course, I'm not the target audience, but who doesn't want to live the good life? The Soviets apparently assumed that their people didn't (never mind the obvious point that the same people approving this propaganda were also driving big cars, eating great food, and living in luxurious dachas on the Black Sea).

Another theme I want to discuss in these cartoons is that of music. It's very interesting how music and nationalism run together in these cartoons, particularly jazz. Here we see the jazz at the club represent the corruption and self-indulgence of the capitalist classes. As we'll see throughout these cartoons, the Soviets often used jazz to signify the evils of America.  Ironically, they also frequently discussed how poorly the U.S. treated African-Americans, completely missing or ignoring the fact that jazz was African-American music and was part of a long tradition of developing music in part to deal with or fight against racist oppression. We'll touch on this more later.

Finally, the dog drunk is pretty awesome, particularly when he pees on the policeman's leg while the cop salutes him. Second most awesome moment is when the dog and the capitalists are smoking cigars; the first image you see is just the tips of the cigars which look like missiles.

Animated Soviet Propaganda

I've been watching a great many Soviet propaganda cartoons this year. This week, I showed a set to my students in my Cold War film class. I think it'd be interesting to discuss them here. Many are on You Tube, which will make it easy. Each day next week I'll be discussing one cartoon. Please watch and discuss. Here's the trailer below.



To analyze this trailer a bit, one thing I consistently find interesting is the lasting power looking at the US-USSR rivalry in terms of good and evil. Certainly that was on both sides, which is understandable in the context of the time. However, we often slip into that language today. This trailer talks about the "disinformation" the Soviet state gave to the people. That may be true, but it's not like Americans were having open and free discussions of communism in 1950, 1980, or even 2010. If we are looking negatively at how the USSR blinded its people with propaganda, we should be honest and admit the U.S. was doing the exact same thing. The Cold War was a war of ideology, fought with great vigor on both sides, both internally and externally. These animated Soviet films are just one, albeit very interesting and sometimes extremely weird, aspect of this broader multinational media war.

RIP - Art Clokey

Art Clokey, better known as the creator of Gumby, has died. Though I was in no way of the original generation that grew up with Gumby, by some strange twist of fate (and lazy programming), I was able to watch many of the original Gumby shorts as a kid (prior to the 1988 revival, which I also watched). I have always marveled at the technique of claymation, and loved the results (even going so far as to adore this video game in the early-90s), and Gumby was my "gateway" to the joys of claymation.