Ekphrasis in reverse: The use and abuse of poetry in popular films

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Ekphrasis in reverse The use and abuse of
poetry in popular films

• Bent Sørensen
• Aalborg University, Denmark

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Abstract
This paper discusses the uses and abuses of
poetry in two recent, popular American and
British films. Poetry in some instances travels
from the field of high culture and is recuperated
from obscurity by being quoted in mainstream
feel-good dramas. However, along the
transtextual path something is also lost, and
rather than simple quotation, what happens to the
poems in question is something beyond the list of
relations suggested in the call for papers
quotation, allusion, plagiarism, pastiche,
parody, counterfeiting
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Abstract contd
In 4 Weddings and a Funeral (1993) we all share a
common tear at the death of one of the minor
characters, especially when his male lover
recites a W.H. Auden poem at his funeral. Poetry
is thus used to heighten emotional expression and
character empathy, but is only present in this
one interlude in what remains a quintessential
low culture product, a romantic comedy. In
contrast a thoroughly melodramatic film such as
Dead Poets Society (1989) uses Walt Whitman
throughout as a poetic beacon, whose poems and
life are suggested as a model for the young
protagonists to follow in their quest for
individuality and Bildung. In this film poetry
functions as a metaphor for pedagogy and guided
self-expression. 
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Abstract contd

• Despite the contrasts between how poetry is
  represented in the two movies, both can be
  regarded as instances of ekphrasis in reverse.
• In these films the presence of poems as high
  culture manifestations is further used to signify
  queerness, which in the English case is safely
  bracketed via its status as the one funeral among
  four weddings, and which in the American film is
  only suggested as a deeply buried subtext (a
  homosocial rather than homoerotic bonding).
• Why is poetry queer and Scottish, or mad and
  Indian when used as reverse ekphrastic interludes
  in popular films such as these?

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Poetry and Film

• Poetry as paratext Titles etc.
• Poetry as accompaniment Quotation
• Poets as subject matter Biopics
• Poetry as subject matter Theme (or Metaphor for
  Life)

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Ekphrasis

• ek (out) phrasein (to speak) speaking out
• Give a full account
• Make a vivid description
• Perform a translation from one medium to another,
  for instance image into words

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Poetry as Ekphrasis

• Poem about an image (portrait)
• Images about a poem (portrait in words), i.e.
  reverse ekphrasis

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Ut pictura poesis
Ut pictura poesis as is painting so is poetry,
isoften either implicitly or explicitly reversed
to as ispoetry so is painting, to indicate an
extended analogy,if not an identification,
between the two media. Thisclassical theory of
parallels between the arts waswidely held and
developed, especially from the MiddleAges
through the Enlightenment, and served as
thetesting ground for theories of imitation and
as theincubator for systematic aesthetics. The
discussionsoften revolved around natural
(painting) andarbitrary (language) signs and
symbols, and the ques-tions, usually unstated
until the eighteenth century,were How does
painting or poetry communicate?and What are
the limits of each medium in time andspace?
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4 Weddings and a Funeral, 1993

• Directed by Mike Newell, written by Richard
  Curtis
• Comedy of manners, happy ending, tragic interlude
  featuring poetry

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4 Weddings
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Funeral Blues

• Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
• Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
• Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
• Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
• Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
  Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
  Put crepe bows round the white necks of the
  public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear
  black cotton gloves.

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Funeral Blues

• He was my North, my South, my East and West,
• My working week and my Sunday rest,
• My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song
• I thought that love would last forever I was
  wrong.
• The stars are not wanted now put out every one,
• Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
• Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods
• For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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W.H. Auden, 1907-1973
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Auden caricature
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Auden in the garden
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Isherwood Auden
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Auden as his own double

• Photo by Cecil Beaton

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Auden Chester Kallman
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Another Auden poem
O but he was fair as a garden in flower,As
slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,When
the waltz throbbed out on the long promenadeO
his eyes and his smile they went straight to my
heart'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and
obey'But he frowned like thunder and he went
away. O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my
lover,You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on
the other,The sea it was blue and the grass it
was green,Every star rattled a round
tambourineTen thousand miles deep in a pit
there I layBut you frowned like thunder and you
went away.
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Sexuality in Auden
Auden did not categorize himself a gay poet, but
had no trouble with his sexual orientation.
Knowledgeable readers and associates knew Auden
was gay, despite the fact that he never
published any of his blatantly homoerotic work
under his own name. Among that blatant work
were sexually explicit poems written in German
in the 1920s, Pleasure Island and a poem not
included in any of his collections called A Day
for a Lay which describes the process of picking
up and performing oral sex on a 24-year-old
mechanic named Bud.
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Reception of Auden
Auden's early poetry breathed an air of
revolutionary freshness. In language at once
exotic and earthy, alternately banal and elegant,
colloquial yet faintly archaic, Auden's verse
diagnosed psychic disturbances with an
extraordinary resonance. Although most of his
early poems have their origins in his personal
anxieties, especially those related to his
homosexuality and his search for psychic healing,
they seemed to voice the fears and uncertainties
of his entire generation. - Claude J. Summers
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Dead Poets Society, 1989

• Directed by Peter Weir, written by Tom Schulman
• Drama, tragic ending, comic interludes featuring
  poetry

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(No Transcript)
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Sweaty Toothed Madman
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Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
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O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is
done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the
prize we sought is won, The port is near, the
bells I hear, the people all exulting, While
follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and
daring But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding
drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain
lies, Fallen cold and dead.
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O Captain! contd
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the
bells Rise up--for you the flag is flung -- for
you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and
ribbon'd wreaths -- for you the shores
a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass,
their eager faces turning Here Captain! dear
father! This arm beneath your head! It is some
dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and
dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are
pale and still, My father does not feel my arm,
he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd
safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From
fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object
won Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I
with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain
lies, Fallen cold and dead.
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Song of Myself

• 52
• I too am not a bit tamedI too am untranslatable
• I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the
  world.

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Calamus poem
We two boys together clinging, One the other
never leaving, Up and down the roads goingNorth
and South excursions making, Power
enjoyingelbows stretchingfingers
clutching, Armed and fearlesseating, drinking,
sleeping, loving, No law less than ourselves
owningsailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening, Misers, menials, priests
alarmingair breathing, water drinking, on the
turf of the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching,
ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing, Fulfilling our foray.
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Calamus symbolism
Whitman's symbol for gay love is the calamus
plant, calamus acornus, colloquially called the
sweet-flag which he refers to as the flag of
my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff
woven. It is a hardy perennial that grows by
ponds in the mid-eastern States, and
has three-foot high tufts, long pointed leaves,
yellow-green spikes, and huge sprawling rhizomes
(tubers or roots) that closely resemble penises
in various stages of tumescence. It is named
after the river god Calamus who grieved for the
death by drowning of his boy lover Carpus.
Rictor Norton
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Song of Myself
45 O span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity! O
manhood, balanced, florid and full. My lovers
suffocate me, Crowding my lips, thick in the
pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and
public halls, coming naked to me at night, Crying
by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river,
swinging and chirping over my head, Calling
my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled
underbrush, Lighting on every moment of my
life, Bussing my body with soft balsamic
busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their
hearts and giving them to be mine.
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Song of Myself contd
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of
cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make
it impatient, They are but parts, any thing is
but a part. See ever so far, there is limitless
space outside of that, Count ever so much, there
is limitless time around that. My rendezvous is
appointed, it is certain, The Lord will be there
and wait till I come on perfect terms, The great
Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be
there.
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Whitman nude?
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Whitman with Doyle
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Whitman in a sea of poems
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Sexuality in Whitman
Themes of sex and sexuality have dominated Leaves
of Grass from the very beginning and have shaped
the course of the book's reception. The first
edition in 1855 contained what were to be
called Song of Myself, The Sleepers, and I
Sing the Body Electric, which are about
sexuality (though of course not
exclusively) throughout. From the very beginning,
Whitman wove together themes of manly love and
sexual love, with great emphasis on intensely
passionate attraction and interaction, as well as
bodily contact (touch, embrace) in both.
Simultaneously in sounding these themes, he
equated the body with the soul, and defined
sexual experience as essentially spiritual
experience. He very early adopted two
phrenological terms to discriminate between the
two relationships amativeness for man-woman
love and adhesiveness for manly love. James
E. Miller, Jr.
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Reception of Whitman
Betsy Erkkila relates the case of a public
service announcement dealing with Whitman's
sexual orientation (in an attempt to offer
support to lesbian and gay teenagers) that was
refused by all six Philadelphia television
stations, in two cases on the advice of the
director of the Walt Whitman Poetry Center, who
feared that the announcement would be
detrimental to the Center's educational
efforts. Leaves of Grass still appears on the
usual lists of banned books, and anyone who has
taught Whitman knows that both of the objections
current in 1855 remain firmly entrenched his
poems are not really poems, and whatever they
are, they are dirty. Jason Paul Mitchell
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An All-American Queer?

• Whitman is America's greatest embarrassment,
  because if what he says about democracy is true,
  then the American ideal of universal equality is
  inherently homosexual, and homosexual love is the
  physiological basis of democracy. Whitman is a
  much more subversive and radical poet than even
  Jean Genet, and American school children for the
  past half-century have been carefully protected
  from exposure to America's greatest poet. -
  Rictor Norton

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4 Weddings and a Funeral

• Primary objective in life is to love and marry
  (in fact marry the one you love)
• Marriage only temporarily pauses in the face of
  death, but love persists
• To the marriage of true minds we admit no
  impediments (cf. Shakespeare)

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4 Weddings contd

• Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit
  impediments.
• Not even queerness!
• (Although the vast majority of the characters are
  straight.)

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Dead Poets Society

• Carpe diem
• To thine own self be true
• Dont be afraid to be different
• Dont be too different, if you can help it
• Its OK to be different as long as your father
  doesnt know how different you are
• Acting out/Coming out can be fatal!

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Discourse Hierarchy in 4 WeddingsQueer -
Straight

• Queerness is an anomaly but acceptable if
  bracketed by hetero-sexuality
• Queerness is punishable by death in a figurative
  sense

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Discourse Hierarchy in 4 WeddingsSexuality and
nation

• Queerness is related to Scottish-ness, a form of
  primitivism
• English-ness and American-ness can go together,
  but not without prolonged negotiation
• Scottish-ness is therefore the excluded middle in
  that equation

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Discourse Hierarchy in Dead Poets SocietyQueer
- Straight

• Queerness is an anomaly, but homo-social
  behaviour is acceptable if bracketed by
  hetero-sexuality
• Queerness is punishable by death, but suicide is
  sufficient self-punishment
• Queerness is related to art, poetry and teaching
  (cf. pederasty)

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Discourse Hierarchy in Dead Poets
SocietyNation/Ethnicity and Sexuality

• Queerness is always already inscribed in
  American-ness, but covertly
• Primitivism (Native Indian) is equated with
  virility, but still a bit queer
• Bonding and mating rituals are closely intertwined

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The (happy) end

• Its all straightened out now