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Debunk
By Inbar Haft
When
asked to predict what my reaction would be to a sudden, untimely death – that
is, would it be one of relief or resistance? – my immediate inclination was to
first assess my approach to life in order to make a more accurate
determination. One's attitude toward life is a likely means of predicting what
one's attitude towards imminent death may be on the basis that: life and death
are symbiotic, integral aspects of one another. I put my personal translation
of this experience into the form of a poem, entitled "debunk", and
remaining true to the original spark that fostered it, the poem focuses more on
life than it does on death. The short film, which acts as a visual counterpart
to the poem, is an abstract, loose interpretation and merely aims to keep in
line with the general flow of the original piece. I hoped that the combination
of both would be a body of work that could resonate on a personal level for
those who viewed them, without necessarily trying to ascertain authorial
intent.
The definition of the
title of the poem gives a general idea of the aims that it harbors. To
"debunk", or in other words, "to reveal the truth about a
person, idea, or institution, by stripping away false sentiment, traditions,
etc." is concomitantly both a facetious and realistic endeavor. On the one
hand, a Derridian analysis would refute the possibility of stripping away false
anything without stripping away the person in the process. There is no central
core, but rather a limitless construction of layers. On the other hand, we are
all, at one time or another, mislead by the false assumption that hidden somewhere
inside is our ideal self, waiting to be chiseled into form, much like the
process in which a sculptor creates a work of art out of a block.
The poem is a
juxtaposition of both of these attitudes, reflecting the ways in which they
engage.
/debunk/
My Self said to myself, "keep turning," keep jumping, leaping,
crouching. "You're no dummy, or a puppet on a string,” self said. The
horizontal strings of others may pull at you, fierce as a tiger, fierce as the
stench of a rotten egg frying on the pavement in the heat of the noonday sun.
Pull, pull, pull you into the push of others into the undulating tryst of
others. At about the time that 4 became 5 those others revealed themselves. No
longer the others outside, they became the others inside. And still, I have no
choice but to keep skipping, hopping, dragging the keys of an imaginary
typewriter beneath my feet, typing the narrative as I go along, spacing myself
out in time. And, I guess that I should mention the vertical strings that need
no mention. They’re of the kind that don't pull you in any direction apart from
your own. Unless the Drone takes on a guise, whereupon the horizontal strings
mislead, mis-pull, mis-push you into thinking otherwise. In time, the queen
cut, cut, cuts, the strings with her royal scissors. All I can do is keep
slinking, swinging, rising, like a wind-up doll with a key in my back,
turning...and where it stops nobody knows. Walking down the street – turning –
now it is time to cross – turning – and all of a sudden the key STOPS turning.
"Well!" says me, the wind-up doll – me, the queen bee: "I've
been turning, jumping, leaping, crouching, skipping, hopping, dragging,
slinking, swinging, rising – now it's time for me to sleep", says me, the
wind-doll, me, the queen bee
At the risk of sounding
self-inflated, a line by line analysis of the poem would most likely distort
the unified picture that it aims at presenting, just as looking at dismembered
parts of a human body would not reveal much about the character of a person.
Nonetheless, shedding light on some of the key aspects that are present, and
giving background as to why and how certain lines were composed, may help the
reader to understand the completed body of work.
There are two main
themes that are interwoven into the metaphoric lines of the text; they are
movement and self-reflection. Movement is delineated by the ten
"active" words that are positioned in various points throughout the
poem: turning, jumping, leaping, crouching, skipping, hopping, dragging, slinking,
swinging, rising. Together, they are meant to encapsulate a wide range of human
experiences. They also reflect a survival instinct that propels us to continue,
which is why they are proceeded by such words as "keep...", still I
had no choice but to keep..." and "all I can do is keep..."
The movement words are
the instinctive or primal forces that are at work, regardless of our intentions
and interferences. There is a sense of comfort that accompanies this
realization, in that it is an automatic safety net of sorts that remains at
work even when our ideally projected self is not properly functioning the way
that we would like it to.
The self-reflective
aspects of the poem are meant to express the fluctuating interface between
self-deception and self-illumination. So, in other words, "my Self"
says to "myself" in order to emphasize the difficulty in discerning
between the different aspects of ourselves. The "horizontal strings"
are the external factors that manipulate us, while the "vertical
strings" are the internal moral, spiritual, or religious factors that also
motivate us. The "4" that became "5" is a direct reference
to
The general overtone of
the lines are meant to reflect both an existential angst, and the conscious
realization that it is precisely that angst that we can come to depend on and
which we do not wish to let go. The statement of this realization is first
encountered in the lines "In time the queen cut, cut, cuts the strings
with her royal scissors." At this point in the poem the transition into
death is beginning to take place, and can be met with a sense of equanimity
that is a direct result of the conscious realizations described above. The
final identification as both the queen bee (a powerful controller) and the
wind-up doll (a domicile pawn that is moved by external forces) is the peaceful
fusion of these two forces that had hitherto been opponents.
The short film, which is
basically a visual translation of the poem, was originally meant to be a word
for word, picture for picture equivalent to the original. Luckily, I was
advised early on in the production stages, that such an attempt would result in
a poor representation and an even poorer film. Therefore, some of the images
remain consistent in both mediums, for example: the sequences of movement
pictures, the egg frying on the pavement, the swinging feet above a typewriter.
Yet, most of the images were conceived independently, such as the parading Jesus/chickens,
with their heads cut off, which are symbolic of the different modes of
propaganda, both by what they are and by the way that they are visually
presented. (The reasons why I chose those specific images as propaganda were
mostly because I found them to be striking in terms of their aesthetic appeal).
The chase scene, in which I am being followed by the camera, is meant to give
off a sense of paranoid fear and anxiety. The final scene, in which the entire
sequence is played backwards in fast forward mode, visually unites all of the
fragmented shots, and complete things in the same way that the poem ends.
Both in writing the poem
and in making the film, I adopted a stream of consciousness method as my
guideline. The interpretations that I have included in this paper are a result
of thoughts and ideas that arose while making the film, and personal
impressions after having read and watched both. Yet, for the most part, the
words that I wrote in the poem were not so much chosen as a means to a descriptive
end, they are just what sounded right at the time. Similarly, the visual images
in the film do not necessarily "make sense" per se, because they
represent what I felt were the relevant interpretations to what I was trying to
convey, and were decided upon randomly and instinctively to reflect my own
specific experience.
Video – Debunk
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