I haven't slept for ten days, that would be too long.

'The starting point of a philosophical thought has to be the contingency of one's own language as the "substance" of one's own thinking: there is no direct path to universal truth through abstracting from the contingencies of one's "natural" tongue and constructing a new artificial or technical language whose terms would carry precise meanings.  This, however, does not mean that a thinker should naïvely rely on the resources of his own language: the starting point for his reflection should rather be the idiosyncrasies of his language, which are in a way redoubled contingencies, contingencies within a contingent (historically relative) order itself.  Paradoxically, the path from the contingency (of one's natural language) to the necessity (of speculative thought) leads through the redoubled contingency: one cannot escape thinking in one's language, this language is one's unsurpassable substance; however, thinking means thinking against the language in which one thinks -- language inevitably ossifies our thoughts, it is the medium of the fixed distinctions of Understanding par excellence.  But, while one has to think against the language in which one thinks, one has to do so within language, there is no other option.  This is why Hegel precludes the possibility (…) of purifying our natural language of its "irrational" contingencies and constructing a new artificial language that would faithfully reflect conceptual determinations.  Where, then, in language itself, can we find some support for thinking against it?  Hegel's answer is: where language is not a formal system, where language is at its most inconsistent, contingent, idiosyncratic.  The paradox is that one can only combat the "irrationality" of language on behalf of the immanent notional necessity if this necessity itself relies on what is most "irrational" in language, on its redoubled irrationality or contingency. (…)

What Hegel has in mind here is often uncannily close to Lacan's notion of lalangue: word-play, double meanings, and so on-- his great example in German are words with opposite or multiple meanings (like zu Grunde gehen, "disintegrate/fall apart" and, literally, "to go to, to reach, one's ground," etc., not to mention the notorious Aufhebung with its three meanings: to cancel/annihilate, to preserve, to elevate to a higher level).

(…)

There is no conceptual clarity without taking lalangue as a starting point -- (…)

Does not Freud intend something strictly homologous with his notion of symptoms, jokes, and slips of tongue?  An inner necessity can only articulate itself through the contingency of a symptom, and vice versa: this necessity (say, the constant urge of a repressed desire) comes to be only through this articulation.'

Zizek, Less Than Nothing, Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, pp. 470 - 71

Magritte, Le Principle du Plaisir, 1937

BLacken Why?

I was thinking about reading/watching films last night.  For all the txts I've read, they helped me v little in terms of understanding images.  

The concepts and abstractions in an image, the ideas contained in them, yes, mos def, what's symbolized in some of them can be made clearer when one understands/absorbs them first through the written word (maybe).  

These past few days, after watching a couple of films in B&W, I've wondered why I've such trouble with it, and decided it isn't to do with its Idea. 

It is just harder for me to apprehend, understand and see, really, what B&W images depict in fim. It's a physical constraint.  Objects lose their immediately recognizable quality to me, in B&W, and I have to make a lot of effort to see what is there, even.  I find B&W works v v well for photos and film when the object depicted is a human being; faces, bodies, both. No problem there, at all. 

But when it is a scene in a room or outdoors, with a lot of "things" (tables, walls, trees, chairs, bottes...shelves; dresses, decor; even celestial bodies-- is it the moon? the sun?) not only do the things themselves become more difficult for me to identify, but what really requires my attn (and thus removes it from the narrative, from the art, from the dialogue- it 'kidnaps' my attn) is depth and perspective.  I lose most of my ability to see it at a glance.  

There are scenes I can barely "read" because of this. "Are they indoors? Outdoors? Is that a table or paint on wall? Chair or sculpture?  Is it the sky or the sea? Grass or sand? Are they standing on something? Are there stairs?  Is it daytime? Night?"  These details suck me out of the film proper and back into myself, my thoughts about the material world of objects, and the consciousness of my own thoughts about the scene/object(s) over which I'm puzzling.  

The mysterious pact between viewer and actor/director - a tacit understanding that that is fiction but it nevertheless manages to make the viewer "forget it" for the duration of the work (when it's good) - is interrupted, switched off.  

There are moments where B&W is better than colour.  

For instance, the one scene in the beginning of Stardust Memories by Woody Allen where ppl finally leave his flat, and he walks from the door toward the bookcase/bookshelf... on the big wall to the left, there's a blown-up photo of an Asian man with a gun pointed at his temple.  Here, I was truly impressed by the use and effect of B&W.  It highlighted the thing that needed to be highlighted, but also I suspect that photo is already in B&W anyway; if it is, this is a fun thought to me: the beauty of a B&W photo is made invisible by B&W.

What I dislike when watching a film is spending time thinking about what objects are and what colour they might be, and miss what the characters are saying/doing, and trying to figure out where they are, or if they're standing in the background or the foreground, etc etc. And I like B&W so much! the colours themselves, their juxtaposition!  I like it in animals, clothes, photographs, paintings, drawings, and I'd love few things better than a B&W Kaleidoscope.  

Up till colour in film was possible, there was no alternative.  Now there is, and I'd very much like to know what the justifications are for using it instead of colour, in commercial films.  I consider all films released in cinema commercial.  Films made to be shown only in museums are not commercial at inception, and usually do not tell a story in the sense of fictional narrative, so if theyre B&W it doesn't remove from the purpose of the film in the first place.  

Provocatively, the thought I'm left with is that contemporary commercial directors who use B&W in a film where the form doesn't require it for one reason or another, end up making anti-modern (AKA post-modern) films, rejecting stylistic and formal considerations, instead of adding to them.