Sunday, February 6, 2011
kafka and THX
When you read “In The Penal Colony,” you may find yourself tripped up by the prose and the lack of clarity of description. That is, it may not make any sense to you. Stay with it, however, so that you can at least ask informed questions about it (either over this blog or in class). Perhaps, its intentionally obscure language adds to the disorientation the reader feels toward the text. You may also find yourself wondering what these texts have in common, why I would have put them together for discussion: "Geez, THX is a dystopian, cautionary sci-fi film and Kafka's thing...well...it's..a...hmmmm..." Legit frustration. I assure you, though, that there is no “hidden” connection that I want to see if you can find, and there will be no big revelation in class about such. There are, though, ideas that link the two. I encourage you to look at the discussion questions on the class webpage (near the link for the reading), which should point to some such. And, I strongly encourage you to strike out on your own with ideas and questions (to which you should offer some sort of response, no matter how underdeveloped).
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I found a few connections in the two pieces actually. I thought the way in which the device was described in “In The Penal Colony” was kept intentionally vague, making me, just like The Visitor, wonder what the hell the machine was, how it looked and operated, and exactly what it did to the victim strapped inside. This mystery gave me a larger sense of menace about the machine and when it was finally activated on The Condemned, the pain I imagined him suffering was stronger, I think, than what I would have imagined had Kafka described a real world machine that I would know more about from history, or other fiction. The lack of definite shape gave my imagination more room to add details, and I think the imagination of the audience is stronger than what the author can write.
ReplyDeleteTHX-1138 did the same thing with its technology. We know computers and video surveillance to be everywhere. If we can put ourselves in the minds of the audience of 1971when the film was released then the endless hallways of computer banks, cameras, and endless printouts of data would spin our heads, and overwhelm us with the sheer size of the machine in which the characters are trapped in and a part of. This does the same thing in a different way as “In The Penal Colony”. The audience, having few references either real or fictional, are bewildered by the complex mysterious machines, fearing the unknown.
A connection I can recognize between "In the Penal Colony" and THX 1138 is that the audience of the film essentially mirrors the experience of the Traveler in Kafka’s story.
ReplyDeleteWe have been conditioned as a culture and society to recognize that the world of THX’s is barbaric and "unnatural", consisting of a government that forces drug inducement and judges and tries those who dare engage in sexual activity. We begin to instantly judge this world as we understand that this particular society is inhuman and lacks any sort of natural, understood compassion and disallows any personal freedoms.
Much can be said of the Traveler's reaction in Kafka's piece. He is a foreigner, an outsider – someone who has an objective view of what has been taking place in the Officer's world. The Traveler cannot fathom accepting the savagely primitive and brutal torture that comes from the apparatus that seems perfectly "OK" to the Officer.
Although the Officer's and THX 1138's societies are distinctly different, both have similar takes on what is acceptable and normal, a connection that the Traveler and the film's audience find distasteful and in violation of moral principles.
I was just thinking about how both THX 1138 and In the Penal Colony place the audience in a strange position initially. When the film started, I was pretty lost and I had no idea what was going on; I felt the same way when I began reading In the Penal Colony. For both of these mediums it took a little longer than normal for me to situate myself within the story so I could care about what was going on. It's harder to attach yourself to a story when you aren't immediately fed all the details you need to know...
ReplyDeleteIt's a little late, but I came across this quote while reading tonight:
ReplyDelete"A requisite for success in a feature is a sympathetic protagonist. A short film, however, may succeed primarily because it examines an unsympathetic protagonist who is fascinating. The reason this works in a short and not a feature is you're asking the audience to invest a shorter amount of time in your character, not the traditional 90 minutes to two hours. It's difficult to maintain interest in characters we don't care about past the half-hour mark."
I know this has little to do with any class discussion we had on THX, but I think beside it being a dystopian film, the reason people have a hard time sitting through it is because Lucas stretched a character from his short film into an underdeveloped character (that I personally couldn't have cared less about) for a feature length film.