The Mailer Review/Volume 5, 2011/Making Masculinity and Unmaking Jewishness: Norman Mailer’s Voice in Wild 90 and Beyond the Law: Difference between revisions
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mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers. | mother’s voice all that is unassimilable to the paternal position.” {{sfn|Silverman|1988|pg=81}} Mailer is a case study in this relationship to the maternal voice; when Mailer first sees himself on film, he hears the adenoidal, Jewish, maternal voice within himself. Because the paternal position Mailer strives to create is distinctly not Jewish, or at least one that allies itself with Jewishness without performing it, the mother’s voice becomes unassimilable (or in his words, “unsupportable”) to his identity. Thus, while Mailer asserts that he will “[stay] away from further documentaries of himself,” he returns to film as both actor and director in order to refine his voice by expunging its maternal layers. | ||
Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild'' | Norman Mailer’s film career, often dismissed as vulgar and/or irrelevant, was short but intense; he directed four films, two of which were released in 1968, ''Wild'' and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987.{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' | ||
and ''Beyond the Law'', one in 1970, ''Maidstone'', and, after a long break, ''Tough Guys Don’t Dance'' was released in 1987{{efn|Mailer was also featured in several documentaries during these years, including Dick Fontaine’s ''Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?'' (1968) and ''Norman Mailer vs. Fun City U.S.A.'' | |||
(1970); the former is a filmic companion to Armies, documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s | (1970); the former is a filmic companion to Armies, documenting Mailer’s actions during the March on the Pentagon, and the latter produces a record of Mailer’s | ||
New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} | New York City mayoral campaign. Mailer was also documented in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s ''Town Bloody Hall'', a film of the debate between Mailer and Germaine Greer about women’s liberation at Town Hall in New York City.}} Mailer’s first three films were largely influenced by John Cassavetes, although Mailer predictably argues that his mastery of what he calls “existential acting” makes him a much better filmmaker than Cassavetes. {{sfn|Mailer|2006|}} In his essay, “Some Dirt in the Talk,” Mailer defines existential acting by addressing each of the terms that comprise the phrase. He notes that existentialism and acting exist at two opposite “poles,” writing, ''“If existentialism is ultimately concerned with the attractions of the unknown, acting is one of the surviving rituals of invocation, repetition, and ceremony—of propitiation to the gods.”'' {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=104}}{{efn| It is quite possible that Mailer is thinking in part of Kenneth Anger here, the word “invocation” invoking Anger’s ''Invocation of My Demon Brother''(1969), as well as the ritual and ceremony of highly-stylized films like ''Kustom Kar Kommandos''(1965) and ''Scorpio Rising''(1964). Incidentally, in the Boulenger interview, a copy of Anger’s book Hollywood ''Babylon'' can be see on the bookshelf over Mailer’s shoulder, almost like a cartoon devil egging him on.}} His theory of existential acting, then, strives to collapse these two poles, freeing acting from repetition and ceremony, and liberating his actors (and himself) from the propitiation of the gods. Existential acting, he argues, works because in our daily lives we always pretend, lie, and act, and works by more effectively representing the chaos and “complexity of our century” than mainstream Hollywood cinema. {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90,108}} Unsurprisingly, from the man who gave us the genre-bending history as novel/novel as history, the true life novel, and the novel biography{{efn|''The Armies of the Night'', ''The Executioner’s Song'', and ''Marilyn'', respectively.}} existential acting collapses the cinema and the outside world, documentary and fiction, acting and existentialism, and masculinity and performance, the last of which Mailer explicitly connects, writing: “There is hardly a guy alive who is not an actor to the hilt—for the simplest of reasons. He cannot be tough all the time...[s]o he acts to fill the gaps.” {{sfn|Mailer|1972|pg=90-1}} Thus, armed with the theory and methodology of existential acting, Mailer returns to the cinema as a filmmaker for the same reason he considers turning away from it after his | ||
{{pg|185|186}} | {{pg|185|186}} | ||