Pop and Culture

I remember learning about this in college, as a philosophy major. I’ve learned in a very difficult book, tutored by a very intelligent and rigorous professor, some things about its author, Martin Heidegger. The book is called The Question Concerning Technology (1954). Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve studied it for a long time and read his book twice, but I still consider myself coming out short in this one, given that I only partially understood stuff that I read in it, even after essays, seminars and help from my professor. The book or what I understood of it isn’t relevant to the story, nor are my former tutors, so we are going to focus on the important part: the relationship between Heidegger and cinema, more specifically, between Heidegger and Terrence Malick. There are other, better written, articles out there on this topic, so in reason of that, we are not going to dwell on philosophy for too long.

Also, briefly mentioning, there are several other books worth talking about, but for the sake of making this a succinct read, I’ll name one more: Being and Time (1927) which was one of the main Ontology basis for Malick.

Before we continue on Terrance, I wanted to point out how powerful and subtle pop culture actually is and how many times it shaped some aspects of our culture. The first of two examples is Friends (1994–2004). Many things came out of their dialogue, and jargon, but also plots that we see in Western society present’s influence even today, from simple things like how Chandler’s family is handled or showing a gay marriage back in 1996, which was revolutionary for its time. In some other cases, however, there are weird coincidences, like in our second example, which is in the 1968 movie Barbarella. It is a sci-fi film that does its goofy job somewhat well, with cool (and at the same time terrible) effects and always astonishing acting from Jane Fonda. Even when her “goal” in the movie is just to be portrayed as a sex symbol, her work is unparalleled. In this movie, around the 1:11:25 mark, you can see two members of the revolution, which was trying to take place in their world, saying a password out loud. This password is the same as we have in a viral video, where a weatherman makes an exemplary pronunciation of a Welsh village, on the northwest coast of Wales, a Welsh village called “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”. There is no intention of making a point here, just bringing up that pop culture is present, whether that’s intentional or not. It also shows our utmost tendencies.

Now, back to T. Malick and one of my favorite movies from him, Badlands (1973). His take on how to depict and narrate his characters was, in my very humble opinion, sublime and perfect in its own flaws. The form the scenery takes with the character development, also with the ever-escalating situations, with lots of unpredictability, you can notice the film’s presentation of ontological landscapes. This philosophical view comes from his professor years and also from studying Martin Heidegger’s ideas. Upon studying it for years, with the episode of even translating one of Martin’s books (The Essence of Reasons — 1969), he chose a filmmaking career rather than academic life. In all of his films you can see the study of the being, his presentation of human nature, be that in the mentioned movie, or other works, like The Thin Red Line (1998).

Some of his others had a lot of meaning in it too. If you take a look in essentially every single one of his films you can notice his tendency to mixture philosophy with his style on how to present you to the story. On the other hand, he also repeated several of his shots, being that wind, trees, and overall nature shots are present in almost every movie of his. With that, you can either love or hate his work, but the amount of thought put into it is certainly respectable.

Just as a comparison, we can take, for example, French Director Éric Rohmer. Now, this is personal to me, because not only he is one of my favorite directors, but he also interprets and illustrates several of Charles Baudelaire’s ideas in his creations. Here we have another example of the mixture between philosophy and filmmaking, but this time in a more indirect way than before, given that Baudelaire was, if nothing else, an inspiration for Rohmer.

This is nothing but a simple observation, but you can notice in his filmography, throughout the characters' thoughts and the city’s landscape, almost as if you were hearing Baudelaire himself. You have shows of it mostly when he goes into the city streets and sidewalks, filming the motion of the crowd with his characters, mostly using a small crew of only five or six members, and giving us Baudelaire’s ideas and vision. This paragraph doesn’t make it justice, so if you liked it, check L’Amour l’après-midi (1972) to see and also pay attention whenever he goes to describe the motion of the crowd.

The same as with Terrance, Baudelaire is shown in several of Rohmer’s movies. If you know little about him or even never watched any of his classics, here lies my recommendation.

The whole reason I brought this up can be divided into two main explanations. The first is that we tend to find certain things interesting, no matter the culture or the time. You can take the movie Battle Royale (2000), for example, which is taken with its dystopian world from Japan to Hollywood, being filmed and written under the same premise, just more romanticized, in The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008–2012).

If you read until this point, you probably have the same conclusion as I do. The more you study about the world, the more references you get. This helps, if nothing else, you to understand things that are shown to you. With that, you can either appreciate it more or simply be aware of it. Either way, we can live how Denis Diderot would want us to: think for ourselves, knowing how the cogs in society work so you can be a hypocrite and live among them, instead of not understanding it and trying to run away. Although, having this conscience, the option lies with you whether you want action or not. I added that last part.