Whiplash does for Jazz what Black Swan did for Ballet.Neither film is especially concerned with the art forms they represent, rather they both explore the dynamics of corrosive and abusive relationships. Whiplash could as easily have been about a sadistic athletics coach moulding a young athlete into being the next Usain Bolt as it is about a novice drummer learning the parts for the Ellington-Tizol composition Caravan. Hollywood has a long tradition of glorifying the Romantic notion of the artist as a supreme individual, pursuing his or her art and ego to physical and psychological extremes often courting insanity and corporal collapse. From Vicente Minnellis 1956 film Lust for Life starring Kirk Douglas as Van Gough through to Amadeus (1984), Bird (1988) Hilary and Jackie (1998) and Pollock (2000) Genius, whatever that might be, is lethally allinged with addiction, self destruction and mental instability. Popular culture seems to crave and perpetuate the myth of the artist who sacrifices himself on the altar of creativity;soaking canvas, manunscript or keyborad with Gethsemane sweat and blood. This is ultimately quite a Christian-Capitalist myth as it elevates the individual above all else and proposes a very narrow definiton as to the function of art. Until the Romantic era music and art had a mostly communal function they were not about the pedestal placing of the individual and they certainly didnt romanticise addiction and mental breakdown. This myth persists within Western culture beacuase it appeals to the doctrine of the triumph of the individual at all costs and it also satisfies the voyeuristic desires of the modern age; to witness first hand the suffering and humiliation of others.(Contemporary television is all about this, every subject under the sun is presented in a gladitorial fashion, so called competition and inevitable defeat and sneering and gloating from the viewers, not unlike a family day out at the Colosseum). The unfortunate spanner in the works of this Romantic notion of art is that for every Charlie Parker there were Dizzy Gillespie and Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins and Duke Ellington ,artists who didnt end out in the gutter or freezing garret. Billie Holiday is accorded special status as much for her voice as for the tragedy of her life,(Edith Piaf is very much her European counterpart in this regard) but what of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald? Masters of their art who never ended out seeing the needle and the damage done. For every Behan,Myles and Dylan Thomas, who in their booze sodden demise became pale parodies of their formal selves, there are a legions of writers who have lived relatively unremarkable lives. (Most artists I know are grafters and craftsmen, honing their skills on a daily basis, ploughing through silence and the terrfiying field of an empty page to compose and write music. They are not the idiot savants or naturally talented tortured souls beloved of Hollywood.) This myth is very damaging as it often facilitates a tacit acceptance of extremely destructive behaviour, allowing mediocrity to ferment in a vat while masquerading as creativity but crucially it is extremely patronising to the thousands who populate our psychiatric hospitals and addiction centres, who have no desire to compose, perform, paint or write that Zeitgeist novel; they want mostly to return to an even keel and live with a certain dignity. Mental illness is for the most part dreadfully dull, painful and repetetive. The musings and ramblings of the ill are not usually, the as yet undecrypted words of a masterpiece waiting to be born on a page, they are rather the stammer and stutter, the quiver and quaver of people bruised by experience, groping for some compass towards clarity. One of the features of Jazz that has always appealed to me is its celebration of collective effort and its simultaneous appreciation of individual talent. The soloist soars on the foundation laid down by the rhythm section;in the classic Jazz formation, say a quartet, each individual musician gets his moment to solo and shine while at the same time forming a crucial cog in a collective. This has always struck me as a beautiful, utopian metaphor for life itself. A compromise between rampant individualism and collective effort; Ellingtons orchestra could be the model for a new hip society! Jazz is also a music that requires huge levels of empathy; when played to its highest level the musicians have an almost telepatheic communication on stage which comes from listening very deeply to eachother. It is also a joyful, rigorous music. None of these aspects of Jazz are touched on in Whiplash(other than the rigour!) It is though, an unnerving portrayal of bullying and submission; the fictional NYC music school in the film is called Shaffer College, it might as well be called The Full Metal Jacket School of Music. J K Simmons is a Tutor de Sade, one of the most compelling portraits of a bully I have seen on screen. In a sense this film is a Jazz themed Fifty Shades of Grey, except that in Whiplash there is no safe-word for the punishment to stop. (The student cant just say Art Art Blakey to halt the grueling assaults on his own self worth). The film raises uncomfortable questions around submission, the student does not walk away from his tormentor but rather continuously seeks his approval at the expense of his family and his girlfriend. It also invites the audience to side a little with the bully, it directly taps into that Lord of the Flies side of ourselves, that ugly side of human nature that delights in cruelty. At first the audience laughed along with Simmons devestating-homophobic one-liner put downs(what in Ireland we causually dismiss as innocent slagging), it wasnt until quite a bit into the film that the audience stopped aquiescing with the bully and saw him for what he was; painfully enough the movie points to that side in all of us. The music throughout is stunning but joyless as it is created in a furnace of fear. In the mean time if you want to see some great live Jazz you could a lot worse than watching this stunning BBC footage of Dizzy Gillespie. https://youtube/watch?v=euyjzhLF-gg
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 13:40:16 +0000
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