Finally, somebody manages to make 9/11 funny.
I like the 2nd comment there: "He should have gotten into his invisible box. That would have protected him."
Finally, somebody manages to make 9/11 funny
With the Enya soundtrack providing the requisite note of horror.
I'm laughing, but, man, is that an unfortunate video.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with making something funny about the WTC attacks--indeed, it is high time we were slightly less overwhelmingly solemn about it--but I missed what was funny here, beside the general absurdity of mimes.
So let's have some good 9-11 jokes. How about this:
Q. What is the real tragedy of the WTC attacks?
A. That there were not more law firms on the top floors of WTC I and II.
I missed what was funny here, beside the general absurdity of mimes.
No, you got it.
I'm laughing hard, and the Enya is a brilliant touch, but I'm impressed by some of those moves and the emotions they momentarily evoke. Hackneyed? So was the presentation at the time and our collective memory of it.
I mean, pretty decent miming, though, right?
Yikes.
I can see how the subject lends itself to "going down lots and lots of flights of stairs" acting.
But oh geez.
If you lose the Enya, and the whiteface, the bit at the end where the towers fell was a good bit of abstraction.
Who can say
Where the road goes
Where the day flows
Only mime
I love all the disclaimers: This is SERIOUS! Not FUNNY! Stop laughing, all of you!
I mean, pretty decent miming, though, right?
He had a good affect, and did a nice job portraying bearing weight, but I think he leaned too heavily on the trapped-in-a-box routine.
9: No, yeah, the guy's good, it's just that most people's reaction to whiteface mime is "uh oh, this is gonna be twee." Because a lot of the subject matter is really small and literal, and the face gets into it with a lot of indicated emotion, and that pisses people off because they feel manipulated. But that doesn't mean it's easy to do. I like corporal mime a lot better.
I'm picking apart the aesthetics of mime.
(Kills self)
Are mimes required to wear the getup? I mean, as IDP says in 11, there are definite moments of effectiveness, but it's all overwhelmed by the simple summary: "mime does 9-11."
I'll state/admit that, as an architect, my first response (before either tower fell, and before I'd seen a picture) was, with some bitterness, "those shitty-ass buildings will probably survive anyway." It's very surreal how those spectacularly dull behemoths have become such beloved icons. Before 9-11, I'm not even sure you could buy standalone tchotchkes of them (except in the WTC gift shop, I suppose).
I like corporal mime a lot better.
I'm actually an advocate of capital mime.
it's just that most people's reaction to whiteface mime is "uh oh, this is gonna be twee."
As opposed to emome?
I like corporal mime a lot better
I can see how major mime and general mime might be too establishment, and private mime to subservient, but Gunnery Sergeant mime might be interestingly macho.
(comes back from dead) corpoal s/b corporeal
it's just that most people's reaction to whiteface mime
As opposed to white collar mime.
15: One doesn't have to be an architect to have disliked those buildings.
In "Shakes the Clown" Bobcat Goldthwaite, a clown fleeing from his enemies, tries to disguise himself as a mime and is outed immediately in the most snotty way. Normally clowns beat up mimes, just as rodeo clowns beat up ordinary clowns.
Yes, I do like that kind of thing.
22: I'm reassured to hear that. But I doubt a lot of non-architects viewed 9-11 primarily as the ultimate design critique.
Like this bunch. Sorry no video. Got hands full.
http://www.mimeomnibus.qc.ca/index.html
23: Anyone got video of Bill Irwin? Teh awesome.
Ok here ya go, Bill Irwin in what appears to be 1985:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LH2on1fKp8
That was the best mime reenactment of the events of 9/11 that I have ever seen.
The video in 29 provides yet more evidence that dancing and only dancing will heal racism.
15: Are you kidding me? I loved those buildings. "Fuck you, we'll build two"—genius.
32: Could you identify their merits beyond their undeniable success in furthering the NY metro area brand of "Fuck you"?
I thought that Channel 11 used them well.
It was the 70's, you're lucky they weren't bell-bottomed.
31: Yes, that is problematic. I like the stairs in the trunk move though.
Also like this double architecture/mime thread.
We can't discuss the history of architecture/mass murder and leave out Charles Whitman. Astute critique of university architecture, understandable response to the pressures of arch school, or something else?
But man are you going to miss the middle fingers once Libeskind has replaced them with the well-nominated World Trauma Center: "Life's Victorious Skyline", the "Park of Heroes", the "Wedge of Light", the "Garden of the World", "Memory's Eternal Foundation".
Jackmormon, I've go to go, but I'm counting on you to unite the topics of dance-off and architecture/mass murder by the 60th comment. can you do it?
39: At this point, it seems more likely that the actual replacement for the Towers will, in fact, be a giant fucking hole in the ground. Which is fitting on a number of levels.
36, meet 5:
Q. What is the real tragedy of the WTC attacks?
A. That there were not more law firms mimes on the top floors of WTC I and II.
Yes, JM, dance about architecture for us.
Yes, dance until your little feet bleed, slave girl. We are indisposed and require distraction.
How did I miss the fact that Whitman was an architecture student? Attending school in the shadow of the world's tallest academic building, we sleep-deprived developed quite elaborate fantasies along those lines....
33: My objection to large rectangles of smooth glass is there's nothing much to look at once one gets beyond "Wow, that's big!" The first one in I saw in NYC (the Seagram, I think) was interesting because it was different. Now those are a waste of rods and cones. Give me gargoyles and such.
It is possible to dance about architecture without resorting to mimes walking down stairwells.
44: No one leaves Texas without an exhaustive knowledge of the history of the Tower. I was in school there when they reopened the Tower for the first time in a couple decades; after the Whitman murders they closed it, then years later closed it after a brief reopening when a couple students committed suicide by leaping off.
42: I was always a bit offended by that line. Why wouldn't/couldn't one dance about architecture? One of the last Gehry buildings that looks like a building (as opposed to a titanium-plated turd) was supposedly inspired by Fred & Ginger; presumably the causality could run the other way.
45: What's funny is that architects still talk about the Seagram's, as if it still has lessons for us (other than "don't do this!"). Neither pictures nor drawings nor visits have lead me to any sense of anything good in that. By contrast, I rather like Lever House, which has cool, restrained detailing contraposed to a (relatively) dynamic composition.
I can't deal with mimes. Some genius hired mimes to work Springfest, my college's sex, drug, and rock 'n roll festival, my Senior year. I was altered three different ways from Sunday, and this fucker kept following me around, doing the "I'm pulling you towards me with an invisible rope" move over and over, and I just freaked right the fuck out. I'm halfway into a cold sweat just typing this comment.
Fucking mimes.
52 just made me laugh loudly in the ear of a client. Thank you, Chopper.
48 makes me feel less like a sick fuck for knowing as many details about Whitman as I do.
Well. Surely there's something like progressive mime?
No?
I'm not understanding the hating on mimes (someone's said that already, no?) except in terms of its calcified forms. Mime's a form of acting/dance, needn't be done in white-face, and so on and so on.
I can only shrug. It would be too bad, shall we say, if that art form has become so circumscribed that it's eschewed by cultural sophisticates who are themselves circumscribed. I doubt it's the case; check in with the professional circus crowd, I guess. They are over there -------->
Whitman showed efficiency and competency, but unlike PhD-level killers, he did not carefully choose individual targets but just sprayed. His education was not complete.
45: It looks like a dessert, I think. Yummy.
Rowan Atkinson has some old but good stuff where he's dressed as a mime, in front of a bunch of teenagers. "I am a mime," he says. "My body ... is my tool."
I seem to remember that Punk Mime killed off the progs. But it soon devolved into a sick self-parody of obscenity and puking in airports.
But now Free Mime, that's where it's at. Truly, um, outside the, oh never mind.
Mentioning Rowan Atkinson .... Mr Bean's just mime, isn't it? And that's ok, and some of it was very funny. (I'm not counting the films.) But having a white face just makes you look stupid - I'm sure that could have been moving if he'd been dressed in a suit.
I like Harpo Marx. He's basically a mime.
54: Did you go to UT? If you didn't, you're back to sick fuck status.
I like Harpo Marx. He's basically a mime.
Whose last movie was released half a century ago.
I think 61 & 62 are a bit off-track. What's so tragic about the video is that mime is such a circumscribed art form that this guy felt obliged to mime 9-freaking-11 in whiteface with a stripey shirt, suspenders, and a goddam beret.
Saying that there are noteworthy performers who don't use words is no more an endorsement of mimery than using Steve Earle to defend Toby Keith. The similarities are damning, not justifying.
If you people don't go back to talking about architecture, I'm going to start taking out pedestrians.
64
Hardly his fault, if it's a fault at all.
There's just a very naturalistic style of performance in the mainstream right now, so much so that it's seen as "real", not as a style at all. So there's less chance of a Harpo getting onto the screen than when the Marx Bros. stage shows were selling out. And non naturalistic styles get represented superficially and badly and made fun of a lot. It's a strange time to be any kind of performer other than television-y. But there's good people out there. And there's toe-curlingly bad stuff, but the ratio of (bad:good) is always about 9:1 in art, or seems so to me. Maybe worse odds than that, even.
I don't understand why the suspenders et al persist as a uniform though, even if this kind of mime is your thing. Maybe it's like a tutu, though you don't see those as much now either.
If mimes wore tutus, they'd be more entertaining. Or maybe not.
Before 9-11, I'm not even sure you could buy standalone tchotchkes of them
I don't know why this surprises me, but it does -- it never occured to me that one could buy little WTC replicas. Yuck.
With regard to ugly architecture, I've always been partial to the supposed Frank Lloyd Wright line: A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.
I suppose an understanding of the history of mime, and its seeming relation to puppetry, might help. It seems strikingly similar to ventriloquism. Think Charlie McCarthy.
There, a visible human manipulator projects or subvocalizes his or her voice onto a human-like puppet. In mime, the strings, or the active hand, are invisibly visible, demonstrated through the staginess (boxiness) of it all. And of course the agent's, or actor's voice is missing. Puppet without master. Kind of obvious, now that I've written it out, actually.
70: Well, I'd say there's 2 categories of WTC replicas - maybe 3.
1. Mawkish/exploitative, usually with some sort of flag and/or FDNY decoration. Yuck, indeed.
2. Traditional cast metal replica, identical to what has always been sold of the Empire State Bldg, Eiffel Tower, etc. To me, perfectly respectable - yes, you're only buying it because of 9-11, but fundamentally it's a tasteful reminder of what once was, and now is not.
3. Like 2, but with "Never Forget" or some such stamped on the base. I suspect that decadent coastal elites would lump this with 1, but I think it's really functionally identical to 2, but for people who like a little less subtlety in their lives.
I can't remember - do they sell any keepsakes at the Holocaust Museum? Because that, to me, is the parallel that leads to "yuck." Like, imagine if they sold little metal gates with Arbeit Macht Frei at Auschwitz. Obv different, since we built the WTC while the Nazis put up the gates, but conceptually.... But it seems to me that relics are important to people - and legitimately so. Whether you come from a religious or an anthropological viewpoint, it's clearly deep in the race. And to me, whether the WTC was part of your daily landscape or something you never got to see, it's totally reasonable to want a little memory-piece of what they were.
LB, or someone who lives in NYC - are these things still ubiquitous in Times Square? I know residents have (largely) moved on, but the tourists, presumably, haven't.
72: I just checked the museum on-line shop. There's nothing that bad. One mawkish Teddy Bear named "Refugee" tho'.
I'm a little bit biased, because the classical Indian dance I used to do and hope to do again soon consists, in great measure, of "miming," and so I had a lot of admiration for the moves and the expresion. To me the white face and the costume is silly, and limiting, but perhaps no more silly and limiting then a girl dressed in silk and jewels and bells miming a warrior, yet that comes completely naturally to me and mine. So I have to imagine he has a small community---very small--which will appreciate this.
71:
http://www.mimefest.co.uk/intro2007.html
See, this is more like what I think of as mime. There's no white face here at all.
A lot of performers we think of as naturalistic actors are pretty highly physically trained too, we just never see them doing that abstact stuff. I'm thinking John Malkovitch and Jessica Lange, for example.
72: That is a very graceful, and generous, interpretation. It actually makes sense to me, at least on an abstract level. Maybe part of the problem was that I never buy that sort of thing, so I couldn't imagine people just buying, say, a generic Empire State Building. But I guess they do.
It's funny; I have a very deep sentimental attachment to one building that I can think of, but I still would never think to have a replica of it. Huh.
Continuing my thought -- did anyone see The Namesake? Many small, affecting moments in that movie, and one of them happens at the Taj Mahal.
You clowns just go on ridiculing mimes. It's OK, they're helpless.
My wife told me that the sincerity was so obvious that she couldn't laugh, and in fact found it moving. There's a difference between us: I laughed, in the privacy of my workstation, but saw the performance as affecting. We can live with differences like that.
74: Saheli - I didn't know, before looking up these mime links, that classical Indian dance is also mime. I liked your comment too.
