HOWL

BY ROP EPSTEIN
- Poetry works at the level of symbolism. There are not many films based on poems, but
there are many about poets.
- Non-linear poetry in this film. Based on several sources to elaborate the content, not
only connected with poetry, but deals with many film genres. Based on a quite
complex poem, sometimes bypasses explanation. It is done in an old way of
constructing poems, experimental poetry from the 50s. It is similar to oral poetry,
when poetry was closer to theatre. Howl is thought to be a read aloud poem, because
you realise the great deal of rhythmic patterns, similar to musical cues in rap and hip-
hop.
- First poem that dealt openly with homosexuality, trying to be transcendental, as that
was illegal he needed to use language in a clever way.
- Written and published in 1957 and there was a trial at the end of the _______ in
America due to it, because the author discusses homosexuality and other controversial
topics. It was accused of pornography. The whole trial was about freedom of speech
(morality, art, state matter in those topics, what is literature, limits of humour…)
- What the director did was to condense not only the meaning of the poem in the film,
but also the trial itself and the controversy around it. Good film to discuss these issues
from a modern perspective. It is similar to a documentary style of film
- The director worked with Drucker. They used animation to talk about the poem, used
to recreate the poem itself: good to represent symbolism in the poem. Drucker did a
graphic novel about Howl as well, so the film is not only an adaptation of the poem
itself, but also of the graphic novel.
- The final lines of the introduction of the book… William is the link between Howl and
Patterson (?). William defends that there is also poetry in looking at simple things
- The film begins with something, with the genre, documentary style, black and white,
nit framing, nit lighting, a club at night, people are smoking, smoke raising up, also
drinking. This is like a club, alternative style of life. Recreating the very first time Allen
read the poem aloud
- And suddenly when the guy pronounces ‘jazz’ we have jazz music breaking the stage.
- The credits are highlighting everything that is important in the film: b&w, animation,
different shots, close ups. There is no order, resembling the way that poetry was
composed, you need to approach it from above, have an overview of pictures… if you
only take one picture is like isolating a word, but meaning comes from the whole of
pictures (as from notes)
- Resembles quite much the poetry itself
- Resembles quite well the way we have to interpret that particular poem
- Music is a nice symbol to understand poetry in the film
- The genre of biopic. The directors are using references to biopics (biography in films)
- It adapts real interviews, some info at the beginning is given, it explains how the
footage for the film was gathered (animation, info from trials, info from the writer and
the poem itself)
- Moments in which the poem itself talks about the moment of creation. He says that
the poem is like sculpt, the poem is there and you have to work on it. It uses
vocabulary of other arts, same words, mechanisms, comparisons…
- The way they handle animations, instead of presenting the whole poem, the very
structure serves the director to provide bits and pieces, we progress through the text,
the creation, the trial… and the poem is the story.
- The Supreme Court established what is considered legally as obscenity: connected
with sex, with social issues, with social importance.
- In criticising the poem itself, he is also praising it (the woman felt disgusted by the
poem, but that is what the poet wanted you to feel). The woman gives a canonical
definition of the poem, so Howl fails to be in that group but the poem did not try to be
in the group, it was a breakthrough one. The view of the woman was the social
conception many people had of this book
- ‘Step down’: the woman is not prepared to argue with the publisher about the book,
she is not morally prepared to it so it is easy to just flip out and forget about it
- ‘Beat generation’. Beat is the essence in a rhythm in music and poetry. They always
refuse to be part of that particular generation
- He is describing what was about to be considered the poetry of experience. He talks
about his influences. Poe, Bodelair, alucinatory poetry.
- Poetry that was interesting and connected to the way he approached to that
experience. He wrote about a chair, a box of patches
- There is something behind (a structure/method), this is like an hallucination, very
visual. It has a structure but a different one
- Automatic writing: you start writing what comes to your mind, but that’s not true, this
doesn’t come in this way. You get to the final version after many writings. The really
good poetry comes after careful consideration of what you feel, going over the form
many times
- The main idea: sometimes there is no need to understand every single word. That
poem tells something to me. I am able to empathise with the poem. The previous critic
was comparing the poem with the form of the past. This guy says something different,
this is contemporary poetry.
- You can’t translate poetry into prose. You can’t explain every single meaning.
- If you have access to that society, we recognise who the hipsters are. A very well
edited version. If you live in the world, although you haven’t entered to a bar like that,
you know what is referred to
- There is also a technique, every time that Allen goes back to his own memories we
have this b&n very similarly to those films in the 50s. Cinema verité
- Conception that anyone trying to criticise reality of having a different point of view of
life is put in an asylum
- He does not answer that question: his mother was also in an asylum. The director
chooses to go back to the poem being recited. Reality triggers memories
- Question of considering homosexuality as a disease that has to be cured. Mental
disease
- Every time we go back to the poem, is after we saw something that happened to Allen
in real life. Even though it is not autobiographical, Allen is also using his own
experience, their wrong experience to put these things into poetry
- How much real footage we have. Every time he mentions his mother or himself when
he was a kid, we have real pictures, real home movies. Sense of reality by mixing real
footage with the actual fictional footage of the film. What is real and what is not?
- Highlighting in a way the way society treated people with illnesses. It is still a taboo
- Graphic match between the ending of one reality and the beginning of other (cuando
el otro lo deja) and then we jump to the fictional adaptation of that conversation. It
melts from one to another with the image of the car
- We go back to the trial section of the film. Connected with what we have seen.
- Howl- cry of Ginsberg’s mind
- Poem- adapting jazz way of composing ( b bop) and the fact that he is attentive of the
things he experiences as a person (places he’s been to, his inner self- words he heard
in clubs and pubs). The bad reaction of the poem came from the highest classes who
understood poetry as a high art, mundane people got it because it talked about their
own life
- Prosecutor always tries to find the meaning word by word, that is prose, and there is
no way you can understand Howl by using that method. The importance does not
come from each word but from the bigger picture and the interpretations everyone
gives to the poem
- Generation that felt PTS, they talked about it and no one could understand. America
has idealized war like experiences and no one could understand PTS (post traumatic
symptom)
- The prosecutor gets part of the poem but as it disgusts him, (pornography) he wants
another reading of it to get another meaning. But pornography forms part of who we
are
- When critics don’t like something: are these words necessary? If these lines are
eliminated, you are losing something. These words are essential to define the
character of the poem
- Every word works in constructing the poem, so using euphemisms would be dishonest
- ‘A rhythmic articulation of feelings’ is the definition of poetry by Ginsberg. It does not
matter the structure of it, the significance comes from the rhythm
- Theme- art. After reading and revising and seeing art we end up comprehending the
meaning. Sometimes we need time for understanding art (as happened with Howl).
And the time it has passed since that piece of art was created it not important, we can
still empathise with authors. Sth similar happened with expressionism (Monet, Van
Gogh). No one could understand their art back in time but they do now and are
considered masterpieces
- You can’t avoid death by escaping life. If you reduce your life to what ifs, you never live
- Ginsberg explains how he constructed a part of the poem, it may seem as he did not
have a structure but he had an idea and he built on in, the same as classic authors did
- Mathematical formula to analyse the poem
- Back to the trial. Criticism. The poem is not valuable bc it is not original (similar to
Whitman’s)
- Reducing everything to something scientific
- The film comes to a point in which they all realize that the trial is absurd. The
prosecutor is failing in his own traps and there is no real case behind Howl
- Importance of the performative aspect of this poem, it is a poem to be performed and
not to be read
- Trial- Some books draw attention to visible things that go unseen. Everyone knows
that the world Ginsberg describes does exist but they do not want to know about it
and try to hide it. Because this poem puts things in front of us, much controversy
arose.
- The final statement by the judge can be related with that of 1984, no one is tailored by
the same patterns as humans, there are no two people who think the same so people
should not be forced to use the same words.
- Liberty of expression should be preserved if we want to remain free
- At the end of the film, after we understood what the poem is about, now we get these
things. The animation explanations are no longer needed, now what the poem is
about, the words give enough meaning for us. No need for any extra thing. In Howl this
is under the ‘’footnote’’ name, beautifully done because footnotes give explanations.
- Images of biopics, with real images of the characters from the movie
- Mix of genres, documentary style, biopics, animation, trial style- given an
interpretation to what happened