Open Journal Montreal

Theory in the Fan Voice. Part 1.
by R.D.

1: Shinichiro Watanabe directed and storyboarded Samurai Champloo. This is the show we are currently watching. Before this we watched seasons 1 and 2 of NYPD Blue. Samurai Champloo is glowingly, astonishingly beautiful. It’s about hiphop-flavoured and brazenly anachronistic Samurai rebels, traveling with a funny and tough girl to find the Samurai who smells of Sunflowers. In each episode of Samurai Champloo there are scenes that I’d like to hang across my wall, and out my window, and across my front and back.

A few days ago I interviewed Barbara Layne, an artist-researcher in the Fibres program at Concordia University and director of Hexagram about wearable technology. She showed me a huge Mimaki printer that she uses to print photographs of storm clouds and lightening onto huge stretches of cloth, which she and her grad assistants then electrify with their bioluminescent thread. The wearable technology article and the interview with Barbara Layne will appear in the next issue of Worn, but I bring it up here because all I could think about yesterday was using that printer to print scenes from Samurai Champloo. I also thought about scenes from Nausicaa, and Spirited Away- (remember the train running through the water and the reflections of the white clouds?) But in these films, by Miyazaki, the moments of beauty are more intense, religious almost, less funky. Today, I want to hang out with funky.

2: In Samurai Champloo episode 11, Gamblers and Gallantry, one of the main characters spins off from the group into a mini plotline with a woman who is forced into prostitution to pay off her husband’s debt. The law has her trapped- she gets sold to her husband by her parents and now gets mauled by perverts because women aren’t allowed to get divorced. The system does not treat men and women equally, and our soft-spoken Samurai hero rebels. I never get tired of seeing good guys (or ethical badasses) defending human rights. Warms the cockles of my heart it does, and fuels my desire to hang out with Watanabe.

3: The music is so genius in Samurai Champloo: the long musical segments between episodes are actually increasingly pleasurable. Tsutchi, a hip hop artist who worked with Watanabe on Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop, says :

“There are similarities between some aspects of a director’s work and a DJ’s work, you know? Choosing which song to use in which scene is similar in feeling to how a DJ selects a record by watching the reaction of the audience. (…) During some magazine interview some time ago, he said: “I re-did the editing because the music was distorted. I decided to do that only by listening with my ears” (…) Rather then saying he did something because it was OK according to the meter, he valued the point at which he felt thoroughly good. That is an extremely important thing. That part of about him that creates while valuing that kind of a sense is musician-like or music-like, and I feel that’s what’s different from regular filmmakers.”
(from the liner notes for DVD volume 4.)

I don’t know much about dj’ing or editing film, but I know that feeling when something is good. And I also know it’s hard to stop and recognize that feeling when you’re in the midst of creating. Once you get a ball rolling, it’s hard to stay objective- or maybe what’s hard is staying quietly inside yourself (extra subjective?) so you can really feel the feeling of a good thing when it comes- either way, Watanabe knows something about it, and I want to meet him.

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[ originally posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 9:50 am and is filed under Everything, Illustrations, Music, One Neck. ]