“In his later works, Klee began to erase the lines that typically distinguish a painting’s foreground image from its background, and he populated this background with numerous other figures that enter into a viewer’s awareness to greater and lesser degrees. Thus Klee’s late works… paint the usually inconspicuous tension of emerging and withdrawing, the usually unnoticed opposition of foreground and background which allows painting to work.”

—Iain Thomson, “Notes to Heidegger’s Aesthetics”

Room 237 is a documentary covering fan theories that have surfaced around Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Costume design, background posters, and the brand logos of pictured food items all receive thorough readings from the documentary’s featured fan theorists, who see each as a crucial clue to the movie’s “real” plot or theme. What struck me most, when watching Room 237, was how different, rather than similar, this world of film fan theory felt from literary interpretation. Continue reading “Backgrounding Techniques in Cinema and Literature”

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There is a hand-drawn tram simulator, beautifully drawn. You are in the role of some entity, appearing and not appearing human, and you walk him toward the waiting tram. He is — you are — not its passenger but its conductor, controlling the forward and backward movement of the tram. Along the tram route there are stops. At the first such station, you slow too late, having seen it not in time to ease in. This is no serious problem. You merely reverse the tram a few meters, slowly, back into the station, and pause, so the tram doors can open and waiting passengers step on. You do not pay much attention yet. The scenery is beautiful. You can hear birds chirping. Continue reading “Short Trip (Alexander Perrin)”