The weird
Goddamn it, John Foxx has just articulated something important, something I've been edging around with the piece on "Into Temptation" and the commentary I've posted here:
I now think [Robot Monster]’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, partly because it had no regard for plot or anything else recognizable as conventional cinema of the time. This of course made it an event of inestimable importance to me, because, as a child I took it all literally – swallowed it whole, like Alice’s potion.
And like that potion, it allowed entry to an unexpected universe. One which had unfathomable logic and laws which were endlessly flexible. A deeply exhilarating experience. I still dream sequences from it, or rather I seem to have permanently incorporated sections of it into my dream grammar.
Growing up with movies as a child and being subjected to them before I could understand the adult preoccupations and motivations involved in the plots, pitched me into conscripting these films as a personal grammar. I had no choice, so I ended up with this Lynchian reservoir of sequences that carried every dread and joy and everything in between.
These events are still imbued with unfathomable, inexplicable, tantalizing mystery, because I couldn’t really understand them at all. It was hallucinogenic and vivid, and provided me with an image bank and a gorgeous range of emotional tones I still haven’t managed to exhaust.
I've never seen that film, and of course it couldn't have the same effect on me now at 25 as it did on him as a child, but this is exactly what I was talking about. I tend to focus more on the way this kind of experience opens up the world (or a world) for you as a kid, but Foxx is quite right about the voraciousness of the child worldview, how able we are to take the weird as a starting point and build from there. Considering how interesting a guy he's turned out to be, though, I think Foxx is another argument for allowing kids access to the kind of thing that over-zealous parents tend to assume will damage them.
(There's also a fantastic bit further down in the interview about the "positive side, almost an enjoyment of longing and ache")
I now think [Robot Monster]’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen, partly because it had no regard for plot or anything else recognizable as conventional cinema of the time. This of course made it an event of inestimable importance to me, because, as a child I took it all literally – swallowed it whole, like Alice’s potion.
And like that potion, it allowed entry to an unexpected universe. One which had unfathomable logic and laws which were endlessly flexible. A deeply exhilarating experience. I still dream sequences from it, or rather I seem to have permanently incorporated sections of it into my dream grammar.
Growing up with movies as a child and being subjected to them before I could understand the adult preoccupations and motivations involved in the plots, pitched me into conscripting these films as a personal grammar. I had no choice, so I ended up with this Lynchian reservoir of sequences that carried every dread and joy and everything in between.
These events are still imbued with unfathomable, inexplicable, tantalizing mystery, because I couldn’t really understand them at all. It was hallucinogenic and vivid, and provided me with an image bank and a gorgeous range of emotional tones I still haven’t managed to exhaust.
I've never seen that film, and of course it couldn't have the same effect on me now at 25 as it did on him as a child, but this is exactly what I was talking about. I tend to focus more on the way this kind of experience opens up the world (or a world) for you as a kid, but Foxx is quite right about the voraciousness of the child worldview, how able we are to take the weird as a starting point and build from there. Considering how interesting a guy he's turned out to be, though, I think Foxx is another argument for allowing kids access to the kind of thing that over-zealous parents tend to assume will damage them.
(There's also a fantastic bit further down in the interview about the "positive side, almost an enjoyment of longing and ache")
