point of contact

i.
you call me for no reason today
    i was in a meeting
check my phone and see yr face

yr message says you're calling to see how i'm doing
   ask me to call you back

my heart sinks
    boils in my stomach
    my throat tightens
    my face scowls
    my body shakes + sweats

not because i'm excited to hear from you
you calling must mean you have something to say
and i don't want to find out what it is



ii.
you don't get to check in on me like you're doing me a favor
like you're such a noble dude
like you're doing a good thing
walking out and hurting me in the deepest possible way
and then call me in a few days as if that will make things better
you don't get to break into my life again whenever you like

you don't get to ask me how i'm doing
pretending like you care again
when yesterday you acted like i'd done the worst possible thing
by falling in love with you

you don't get to check up on me
when you're the reason i am this way
and you're the reason i'm here
and you're the reason i'll never the be same

you don't get to call whenever you like
and disrupt my world
just as i'm learning to live without you

you don't get to feel better by patronizing me
as if all i've needed is to hear from you
FUCK YOU

because you're not helping
and though i still love you
i kinda hope you rot

Bill Moyers is my elvis

as i usually do in the summer, i've been setting my alarm to wake me up to Democracy Now (sometimes it's the only way i can get up in the mornings).

and today, in a foggy half-sleep state, i thought i was dreaming of the '60s and listening to a poet, back from the dead, encouraging us to revolt and revolution. i was confused.

but as i gradually gained consciousness and listened more closely, i realized what i was actually hearing was a journalist's plea to the American ppl, and that this was actually the keynote speech at the National Conference for Media Reform which i was invited (and now regretting declining) to attend.



the speech itself was beautiful, the pace reminiscent of Ginsberg's "Howl", the urgency appropriate for our times. the post-speech was pretty awesome, too. as Amy Goodman explained, Bill O'Riley (yes, i spelled that wrong. no i'm not gonna change it. that's how much i care) and his slugs were "outing" Dan Rather and Bill Moyers as "leftwingnuts" for speaking at this conference with "these people" (read: progressives, liberals, media critics. oh my, indeed.)

apparently, they dispatched an O'Reilly factor producer to "ambush" and accost Mr. Moyers after his rousing speech. this is the verbal pounding that ensued:



it occurs to me that my generation has had the pleasure and honor of seeing several inspiring media moments in recent years:

Jon Stewart on CrossFire (2004):

"I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media and they're hurting us..." (transcript here)

Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents dinner (2006) [click to play]:
"...And as excited as I am to be here with the President, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of FOX News. FOX News gives you both sides of every story: the President's side, and the Vice President's side." (transcript here)

these have had the collective impact, for me anyway, of revealing the spectacular theatre of mainstream news media, and encouraging citizens' critical investigation and dissent.

as Bill Moyers said: "it's up to you to remind us that democracy only works when ordinary people claim it as their own."

-stephanie

dangerous familiars

hi to all you patient and adoring darlings!

thanks for your patience these past few days. i've been busy traveling all over West Virginia and Kentucky, and have just recently returned to being settled and having all my things in one small room again.

that is, i'm back at Miami University for one final year. and as i'm shopping around for the most interesting and compelling classes to take, while i'm stressing out about my undergraduate thesis and studying for the GRE's and planning student actions for all my various activisms, i've also found, in the blissful off-time, a surprising nostalgia and reminiscence creeping over me.

even as i look around the campus, at the frightening droves of willowy blondes and preppy jock boys, their polished exteriors enough to make me insecure, and despite the inexplicable phenomenon of cornhole that seems to proliferate here, i can sense that i'm really going to miss this place next fall, when i will surely/hopefully be somewhere far, far away.

i know it's merely because i've gotten familiar with the place, have become accustomed to moving back to the same dorm for the past 4 years, am grateful to see the same familiar faces, to have such a strong community in which to wallow, enjoy coming back each year geared up and ready to fight for a cause i've been devoted to for over 5 semesters.

but...

this familiarity has me kinda scared too. comfort is overrated, even dangerous. keeping on your toes becomes kinda like floating, when you get good at it. and who doesn't want to defy gravity?

i got to thinking about this in one of my classes today. i was sitting in a class full of Education majors, a class called "Cultural Studies, Power, and Education," a class filled with typical Miami-types, feeling a little on edge because everyone in there was so white bread [sic]. the professor had been trying all of class to ease us into a radical mindset (which i gratefully dived right into), while we examined ads from the 90's that proffered 40's gender politics to preschool aged consumers. i glanced around the room to see students rolling their eyes, grimacing at the mention of atheism and Marxism, the girl beside me scrawling the word SOCIALIST in big letters across the first blank page of her notebook, and underlining it.

i give the professor a lot of credit. to open with that kind of radical leap in student expectation is truly courageous. i'm counting on a smaller class next time around.

anyway, this moment turned into a huge realization for my research into the practice of critical pedagogy:
for me (and i consider myself fairly radical, surprise, surprise), this first class wasn't unusual or myth-busting at all. in fact, it was too easy to agree with the professor, too natural to nod along, to laugh at his leftist jokes, to feel grateful for and, yes, comfortable with a liberal bias in the classroom.
on the other hand, my peers were noticeably unnerved, even perturbed, by the professor and what they must have perceived to be Commie rantings. and so, they were reluctant to engage, hesitant to open their minds to the possibility that advertisers care less about the consumer than about selling products.

and then i realized, looking around, everyone in this class was wearing nice Polo Ralph Lauren polo shirts, J Crew khakis, their heads gelled and kempt, glistening examples of Miami's "squarely in the box" reputation. of course they couldn't open their minds to cultural studies and critical pedagogy! it made them uncomfortable!

when capitalism is working for you, when you're comfortable with it, you see no need, no reason, to challenge it. comfort and capitalism are closely related, in fact, they are co-conspirators. in a society used to instant gratification, it becomes hard to get people used to stepping out of their comfort zones. why would they ever have to, if they can find a KFC wherever they go? same goes for ideological comfort zones.

existential discomfort = the worst kind.

thots!
-stef

---
speaking of familiars, you should get familiar with the guys over at Said the Gramophone. they keep one of the most beautifully written music blogs out there. in fact, it's one of only 2 i actually read on a regular basis. this post was particularly striking and appropriate for the approaching end of summer. FUN TIMES FOREVER.

blabracadabra

= the magic that ensues from a deluge of talking.

sorry for the lack lately, things have been unusual.


how unusual? perhaps they start by being undescribably so. mostly i'm depressed b/c i wish i had done something else with my summer. i blame Mongolia and China for this. after spending such a short amount of time in such beautiful and stimulating environs, it is hard to return to my home in Kentucky and not fill with consuming regret. and regret is one of my top least favorite feelings in the world. i'd say "an itch you can't scratch" and water-logged shoes are pretty close behind.

i've been seeing doctors to try to sort out some nagging pains in my legs and stomach. that hasn't helped things, i suppose. i've always harbored some vague suspicion i won't live beyond 40, but feeling like it is worse than thinking it.

early mortality is ok, once you learn to accept it. you just learn to think about things differently. for example, i'm 21 now, past middle age. that means i feel even more entitled to go out and party than a normal 21-yr-old, because i'm also going thru a midlife crisis. (what this means in actual practice is that i party half the amount a normal Miami girl does (while wearing twice the amount of clothing, i might add), get drunk maybe half that time, but can outdrink most of my friends. considering my size, i have an astounding tolerance. go figure.)

speaking of freedoms, i registered for classes this morning, and found out most of my classes fall on tuesday/thursday. which means, amazingly, a four-day weekend. that is, if i decide not to take Elementary Chinese. the thought of taking Mandarin in a formal educational setting is exciting and terrifying at once. i fear reliving my high school French days, when the awkward pedagogical stylings of one Madame Keegan made me drop out of French classes before my time. i love learning French now, and still speak and write at an acceptable proficiency, but i hate to think of that happening to my mother tongue. the very idea of studying it brings me back to Sunday afternoons cooped up by the window of the language building on the UK campus, wishing my Chinese School classes would be over so i could go home and play in the yard.

on my list of classes for the fall?
-Cultural Studies of Power and Education
-Human Development and the Learning/Educational Environment
-Studies in Educational Issues
& Senior Sem (or, as i'm lovingly dubbing it, "The Extraavaganzaa." or "XG" for short. kinda like exegesis. haha, oh stop it.)
+ possibly El. Chinese
(that's 17 credit hours, 5 of which are to the intense wrapping up of my senior thesis, another 3 of which are a capstone. is that too much for a senior year? sounds like i'll be needing the 4-day weekends!)

i found a guy who's starting a media collective in LA and wants me to work with him. i'm considering it, having no other really exciting things in my life right now. only problem is, he wants me to go in the fall, which means i won't get to finish this thesis 4 years in the making. i always get commitment-phobia this time of summer, though, so i'm feeling highly at risk of flight. i get this way too with a job that's almost done. when i'm getting to the last page of a term paper, that's always the hardest one (after the intro paragraph) to sit down and write, because i know i have the necessary words in me, it seems pointless to do it just to do it. i suspect i prefer to leave the last pages off, rather than finish them. isn't that more seductive anyway? the welcoming openness and potential of halfness, rather than the rigidity and futile arrogance of mistaken completion.

i've been reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (the pre-Oprah's book club version, thank you very much). i'm loving the suggestive implications on human nature and the tension between nature and nurture. it has me wondering if everything we are, everything we do, the way we think, if our primordial unarticulated languages are indeed inherited. if perhaps, nothing is really possessed or uniquely "ours." if we are only mirrors reflecting endlessly into ourselves.

i am 21 years old, my own kind of middle-aged, but i am still afraid to grow up. the idea of going to grad school, or possibly getting a job, is terrifying. i find myself envying all the high school graduates, like my brother, who get to experience college for the first time. i've realized that college itself has become a new kind of security for me, that i will miss the familiar buildings and people after every summer. Summer itself, like Childhood, seems to be a constructed concept. no longer will i experience the clear divisions between school years by the blissfully relaxed laziness of Summer.

unwittingly, i have styled my life after the movies. this week, i painted the nails of one hand a sunny, daffodil yellow. the other hand, an icy, chrome-like blue. like the priest from Night of the Hunter, it seems i've polarized myself into love/hate. or i guess in my circumstance, sunny/cold. it seems i only have two options in these last days of Summer vacation.

BLABRACADABRA!
-stefan!e

the hits they keep on coming

as is my usual practice, whenever my favorite student activist group (Students for Staff) has events on campus, i plug it like hell in all my classes and daily conversations. i send mass emails to everyone i can think of, and make (perhaps) excessive use of all the BlackBoard class email banks, where i've discovered i can easily send one announcement to something like 400+ honors kids at a time.

after doing this for the last 2 events, i've gotten to expect maybe one or two angry responses to my spamming. most are wondering who i am, and how i got their email, not realizing that Miami has a history of favoring spammers over the privacy of its students (in fact, Mother Miami sells our information to spammers and telemarketers. ironic since one of the frequent complaints of the Miami student specious is the excessive barrage of Barracuda Spam Quarantine Summary emails.)

well this most recent spam session resulted in the quickest deluge of responses yet. those clever honors kids! they're so sun-starved and attention-hungry, just chomping at the bit to engage in meaningful interaction with any fellow human being, that their anger pours forth like effervescent steaming magma, spewing in my face.

but no matter. little do they realize that i'm more than willing to bite back. mine is a rhetorical fight, and i am ruthless.

below, a sampling of the rantings i found pleasantly awaiting me in my inbox, a mere 5 minutes after the first wave of emails. [angry Honors kid's response, followed by mine]

but first, the context:

----

The campus org Students for Staff, in conjunction with the Center for American Progress and the Bishop Debate Society, has organized a week of events for discussing and taking action for a living wage in our community. We invite you to attend the following events on April 10 & April 12 as we explore the intersections of work, wages, class, and economic disparity at Miami University.

TUESDAY, APRIL 10TH
LIVING WAGE FORUM
- talks by living wage expert Dr. Stephanie Luce and economist Dr.
Christian Weller
- discussion with students and staff to follow
Fisk Lounge, Ogden Hall, above Bell Tower Dining Hall
4:30 PM
FREE FOOD AND DRINK PROVIDED

---

THURSDAY, APRIL 12TH
LIVING WAGE RALLY!
come show your support for a living wage!
4:30 PM, the patio behind Shriver
FREE DINNER

----


chomp chomp,
stephan!e

--- Matt Kern [email removed] wrote:

Stephanie,

You realize this is two days, and not a week's worth
of events, yes?

Can I also ask how you got my email address?

and who is the Bishop Debate Society? I've never heard of them
before. Do they have meetings?

thanks for your response...whenever it comes.
-matt kern

--- Stephanie Lee wrote:

Matt,

The Bishop Debate Society is, in my most basic
understanding, a funding source that provides
assistance to student groups who bring speakers
to campus. It was created, I assume, in the spirit
of dialog and community-engagement.

I probably got your email address from one of the
many BlackBoard sites. Miami makes it easy for all
student groups to advertise for their events this way,
and it is no form of trickery on my part.

And you are correct, 2 days does fall short of a week.
Thank you for pointing that out to me.

-Stephanie


===========

---Tim Nordquist wrote:

The more we pay them the more they will charge us to
go there. [sic]


---Stephanie Lee wrote:

That is definitely not true. Tuition has been rising the maximum amount every year, regardless of increases in wages.

As someone concerned about rising tuition, you should be wondering where all your money is going, and asking why your money is being used to pay sub-poverty wages.


=========

--- Preston Parry wrote:

Have you done any research into the economics of
living wage laws? There's a lot of factual research out
there, available widely on the internet, or through the
library's databases. It would be wise of you as the leader of
this movement to know any and all arguments you will
come up against.

Also, how much work have you done with the actual
staff members themselves? Have you tried hard to
understand their position, to get to know them as
human beings, or just as a single entity that serves
as an outlet for you and your group? I'm just curious,
because not once have I ever heard a staff member
mention to me that they weren't getting paid enough,
or that they in any way disliked their job. Maybe my
sample's just too small, but I was curious how much
research you had into this area as well.


---Stephanie Lee wrote:

Preston,

I have indeed been speaking to workers, as have other members of Students for Staff. It is our invested conversations and relationships with workers that drive many of us to continue working toward a living wage. While we could not possibly speak with all 1,600 of the Classified staff (hourly employees) at Miami, we have made an effort to get to know as many as possible, and have been working diligently in conjunction with many staff liaisons, and have met with staff advisory committees such as CPAC, in order to better understand the staff as a whole.

As someone working diligently on writing and researching my thesis, I can assure you that we do not do this for our own amusement, but because we care very much for the health of our community, and the individuals therein.

I'm glad to hear you've been talking to staff on your own, and that you've been "getting to know them as human beings." I encourage you to continue doing so.

I also encourage you to attend the Forum on Tuesday April 10th for the economics research on living wages. There will be two prominent economists from Washington DC and U Mass-Amherst who will speak to the very concerns you mentioned.

-Stephanie

rhizomatic

sorry for the lack of posts, but lately i've been working on my thesis.

in fact, i'm making some impressive progress in gathering my resources. though no actual research has commenced yet (i haven't read a lot of the information i've found due to the sheer volume of it), i have some very interesting plans for the future, once the motivation strikes me.

allow yrself a small peek into my world, if you dare...

my recent research, as bookmarked on del.icio.us, includes some interesting theoretical discussion of Situationist, anarchist, and Marxist applications in daily life and practice.

-> has inspired much fevered and passionate writing, the makings of the beginning of a chapter of my thesis! sample below:


"Students for Staff [has] created an educational grassroots movement from the ground up, cemented with bonds of friendship and respect. We learn by doing together. Students for Staff (re)writes its text every day, and preserves/sustains itself through the passing down of histories of experience through individual relationships. The content of these experiences are found in the web of interactions extant among the members of this community. Because of the lack of a hierarchical power structure (as in the capitalist model), every individual has responsibilities and potentialities, multiplied by their roles in the community, and their commitments to its individual members. The potential for growth within such a community is thus exponential; as each member interacts and forms relationships with every other member, the strength of the connecting fibers mushrooms. The power in grassroots organizing is its rhizomatic potential: lateral roots whose blossoms continually reappear, never able to be stomped out."

--> this inspired by the philosophy of the rhizomatic:

[from Wikipedia:] The term rhizome has been used by Carl Jung as a metaphor, and by Gilles Deleuze as a concept, and refers to the botanical rhizome.

Carl Jung used the word "rhizome", also calling it a "myzel", to emphasize the invisible and underground nature of life:

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost the sense of something that lives and endures beneath the eternal flux. What we see is blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. (Prologue from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections")

Furthermore:


Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari used the term "rhizome" to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they opposed it to an arborescent conception of knowledge, which worked with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with horizontal and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.

so, as you can see, i'm keeping busy.

back to the grindstone,
stephan!e

chance imagery

i read part of George Brecht's "Chance Imagery" [.pdf] today. i found the part about "randomness" particularly interesting. allow me to indulge:

"chance images are characterized by a lack of conscious design. [...] in general, the reason for the importance of randomness for purposes of scientific inference will be the same as the reason for its importance in the arts, that is, the elimination of bias." [Brecht, p.17, emphasis added]

this got me thinking about the relationship of randomness and sense, and how meaning is derived mostly from the proximity of certain images and sounds, the creation of contexts.

this is why experimental film can sometimes frustrate me, b/c it seeks to explode these meaning webs, drawing attn to the mind's assumptions by playing with them, with arbitrary constructs.

if art as i understand and conceive of it is unique in that it presents the artist's meaning, that there is a message hidden within for the viewer/audience, then the frustration i have with chance-imagery IS the very fact that it removes bias.

bias is what i go to art for. if i wanted to go to something cold and free from personal perspective, i'd go to science.

but anyway, the thot i had that would change my understanding of chance-imagery would be something along the lines of the jots pictured on my hand:
if i were to film an ordinary day in the ordinary life of an ordinary person, nothing spectacular, nothing worth judging, just something simple that ppl would watch and think, 'oh, how ordinary...' that is, if i could capture on film something that would not elicit strong bias or intimations of bias, just an omniscient passive observer lens recording an average daily occurence, then i could invert its meaning (or lack of meaning) with a parallel chance-imagery version of the same day.

that is, it would be two complementary film records of an ordinary day:
1. the linear (real) version, which would be conventional, and free of bias. &
2. the nonlinear/ subconscious (surreal), which would use chance-imagery. in this film, i would record footage of all the random things i find along the day while filming/ things my subject might come across randomly on an average day: magazine ads strewn on the street, a lost scarf strewn on the grass in the lawn outside, the used condom found in the parking lot, the sign blinking "cookie ugh" instead of "cookie dough" and etc. these chance images would provide meaning, rather than erase them, and would instead construct a narrative that perhaps wasn't even there to begin with.

what kinds of thots come to one's mind as one finds trash and treasures on city streets while walking about in an ordinary day?

that would be the subject and crux of such a film exploration.
-stephan!e

meaningful moments

this is the last stretch before the semester ends, and as i was scrambling away and chipping away at various tasks, i remembered that i had multiple posts that i'd been trying to write over the course of the year that i'd neglected under a pile of other obligations.

i thot i'd resurrect them now, in incomplete forms. but i think the intent in their conception is plain to see and certainly makes them no less real, so let them be. perhaps later i will find time to fill in the holes. until then, allow them to be the living non-dead.

yours,
stephanie

~~~
[from Nov 18, a Saturday]
i have had the most productive day, in the most unproductive way.

-----

i have developed a habit of doing little to no work on weekends, piddling my days away at parties, and in aimless wandering. i've been on a 20 year search for meaning in my life, and with little to no feelings of success.

dreams aren't enough to grow meaning from, and they only float for so long. when you try to cover your holes with feathers, they only get swept away. i've been learning to pack the feathers tight, and building them into wings...

-----

i've learned to actually enjoy my life for the first time. i've quit frittering toward meaningless ends, and have found pleasurable meaning in my own self-determined ways. while i used to feel accomplished because i did well in the university and formal educational system, now i realize the value of an external education. and i firmly believe that more can be learned in brief transitory exchanges with strangers than can be read from the pages of a textbook.

and forging a lasting friendship out of a meeting with a stranger can be the best tutorship one will ever receive. for instance, i have two professors this semester whom i owe a great deal of thanks to, especially my Satiric Film professor. the wonderfulness of this individual is beyond my descriptive abilities, but let me explain what is truly remarkable: our educational system teaches us to value professors as authority figures. this immediately calls into existence a relationship of power, which holds the student in the receptive role. there's no room for interaction in this relationship. in fact, it's not a relationship at all, but a very limited manufacture of knowledge. it's a mechanical view of human value and exchange:

IN: prof's knowledge/experience, student's attention
OUT: knowledge/experience

the products of this exchange are limited and not very profitable. from a capitalist standpoint, this would be a shit-poor business. there's no profit, no gain, the amount you put in is the same as what you get back. there's no room for growth or development, no progress, just a stagnation. it conceptualizes education as a producer of intellectual capital and pretends that capital is all we need.

call me a hedonist, i think i am one.

but for the first time in my life, i feel at ease with the uneasiness, comfortable with the discomfort. which isn't to say that i've become complacent or that i've resolved to accept things the way they are. surely not. but i've found pleasurable ways to deal with them. rather than agitate myself, rather than try to limit

i slept for 11 hours for the first time in years last
night, and it was amazing. i woke up and felt like 20
years had passed me by. the sun was shining off the
dew on the grass outside and lighting up the dark
little corner in my room where i rest my head at
night. i wanted to take a picture of it, but i just
put my head back down and fell asleep again.

luckily i have a mind camera and i wasn't too sleepy
to use it.

i've been seeing everything in vivid cinema lately.
that is, i've been lucky enough to pause and watch
things, and they're somehow fitting together in this
on-going screenplay i have in my head. hard to
explain, but maybe when i see you again it will all be
clearer.

how's this for an educational focus?

I am an Interdisciplinary Studies major, focusing in the intersections of mass media and education, and how these two systems may be better utilized to include and empower marginalized groups in cultural production.

yea buddy... ;-)

critical distance: how woody allen's fear of getting close draws us closer

hello hello.

i've decided: i am going into film! it's the only thing that brings joy to my life now. i love watching and critiquing and thinking about film. i want to write and direct. maybe even act.

until i get there, i am content to write about films and film technique.

and here's one of those now: a review of woody allen's ANNIE HALL...

(this appeared previously as an assignment for my satiric film class, but what the hell. the internet can stand one more review by a non-authority (yet) on the subject...)


ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)

Voice-over is a frequent satirical device, in that it creates a critical distance between the viewer and the subject matter. With this distance comes the freedom for critique, and the opportunity to consider the follies or foibles of the characters depicted.
This critical distance is perhaps especially important when dealing with matters of the heart, and particularly, love. We are, as Woody Allen might say, schmaltzy to a fault. We too easily lose ourselves in romantic narratives and find ourselves hoping for happy endings, wishing the two main characters would just give in to Romantic conventions and fall in love. Unfortunately, relationships don’t always work out, and life is miserable and short.
And in ANNIE HALL, Allen doesn’t try to convince us otherwise. Rather, Allen would have us believe that we are witnessing the most miserable of individuals, Allen’s on-screen persona Alvy. He is unlucky in love and unluckily in love. Endearingly neurotic, self-deprecatingly funny, and irritatingly brilliant, Alvy is at once so idiosyncratic that he pushes everyone around him away.
What results is a film of dissonance and distance, removal and remoteness. Not only are the characters alienated from one another, they exude their isolation outwardly, such that the audience is removed from the narrative just enough to appreciate Allen’s satirical view of human relationships. While the characters Annie and Alvy are falling in and out of love, the audience is being drawn in and pushed away by Allen’s unconventional style.
As the audience soon sees, Annie and Alvy’s relationship begins to fall apart as they fall away from each other. When Annie is denied her ritualistic grass before going to bed, she becomes removed. We watch as her inner self floats out of her body and takes a bedside seat, literally, physically, and visibly apart from the Annie with whom Alvy is in bed. Interestingly, Allen’s Alvy is then aware enough to look up and notice what has happened, to point at Annie’s inner self across the room and remark, “now that’s what I call removed,” and then proceed to ask her to give herself in her entirety, rather than just her body. It is a poignant scene, and a familiar one to most waning love stories, the acknowledgement that your significant other is merely going through the motions, while you believe you are in love. In reality, such a realization would bring cause for remorse, but in ANNIE HALL, it draws laughter, the impossibility of the situation (the physical impossibility of Annie’s split self) underscoring the impossibility of the relationship itself.
It further reinforces critical distancing. While Annie literally splits and removes herself from the bed, we are forced to remove ourselves as well and take a critical glance back at the two characters and their relationship. Allen’s use of innovative film techniques (switching to cartoon, incongruent and distracting subtitles, split screens, and direct address, to name a few) are so jarring to the film’s flow that the audience is forced to suspend their complete immersion into the story. Rather than become lost and invested in the characters and their relationship, the audience is consistently reminded that they are watching characters on a screen. Allen’s use of innovation in the visual medium has the effect of spectacle, resulting in surreality, separateness from the reality on which Allen comments.
This creates a detachment of the viewer, enabling us to enter into the narrative only so far as to criticize the characters and to turn our attention to satiric elements. Whereas a romantic film would allow for a happy ending with an escapist/idealist resolution, the characters’ awareness and interactions with the viewer create commentary on Allen’s subjects without becoming lost in the narrative and lost to Allen’s message: that life is miserable and short. And love is no exception.