MY BLOG #1
04/13/15
Corporeality, Sensation,Affect.
A few nights ago I saw a film, Silence of the Palace, and the only way for me to see such a film is because of my one tract visor has been removed not too long ago; being accustom to the mainstream commercial cinema all my life- One that has been pounded in my brains in all my western upbringing. It excluded the ‘other’ narrative. So why is it mostly that these ‘other’ narratives are not spoken of in a larger circle and only in a close venues housing just a few people, mostly in academic circles. This subject has a wide speculation, and in my opinion it is mostly political. On a personal note, this film, and another that I have seen a few weeks back “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” is the ones that I watch and not the recycled narratives that commercial cinema provides. These two films have such a great impact on me like many other films that has themes of oppression and stifled movement of the human being.
Having said the above it brings me to my point. Why are these scenes haunting me still? It is not until I read an article that deals with this onscreen/off-screen suture. And it was in an article that this writer talks about this phenomenon in the ‘Piano,’ that there is a connection that holds on to the spectator in one way or the other, it is like the event on the screen has taken hold of my being. In the Palace of Silence, The Bey Family has a household of servants, mostly women, whom they suppress in one form or the other; the male members of this family would have their nightly tryst with a woman of their choice, which has become such a habit that the oppressed women are immune to such a trauma. The filmmaker lingered camera holds the spectator (me) to these scenes penetratively, bringing an onscreen/off-screen synchronization. It is as though what is happening on screen is being realized by me. I had always wondered why this feeling is so often felt by me, and it was not until I read this article that it has really unveils my uniqueness as a shared feeling.
