The young girl, the cinema, the revolver, the night
January 1, 1987 – November 12, 2016
Mélanie:
It is half past midnight and the Bar is still full of customers. The music takes hold of everything. Everything is fluid and slow in Angela Parkins’ arms. I lack time to understand. There is no more time. Time has entered us in a minute detail like a scalpel, time compels us to reality. Time has slipped between our legs. Every muscle, every nerve, every cell is as music in our bodies, absolutely. Then Angela Parkins’ body moves slowly. Her whole body is pulled downward. Her body is heavy in my arms. My arms are heavy with the body of Angela Parkins. There is no more music. Angela Parkins’ sweat against my temple. Sweat on my hands. Angela, silence is harsh. Angela! A tiny pattern on the temple, a tiny little hole, eyespot. Angela, we’re dancing, yes? Angela Parkins has no more hips, no more shoulders or neck. She is dissolving. Angela’s eyes, quick the eyes! There is no more balance between us. My whole body is faced with disaster. Not a sound. The commotion all around like in a silent movie. At the far end of the room, there is longman’s impassive stare. The desert is big. Angela Parkins is lying, there, exposed to all eyes. Angela is dissolving in the black and white of reality. What happened ?
[…]
Of course Mélanie is night teen.
Simon, April 13, 2016
As you know, Mélanie the teenager has been with me for a long time. That being said, I realize that, generally speaking, the image of the young girl has fascinated me for a while now and this interest extends beyond the scope of Mauve Desert. There’s nothing original about it. Many men before me have been interested in her. There’s Little Lili or even The Little Thief by Claude Miller. And then there’s Manon of the Spring by that other Claude, Claude Berri. In these films, gazes lack nuance. Multiple perspectives (mainly masculine) converge on the young girl. Looks charged with desire, but also, for some older characters, with nostalgia or resignation. Of course, Miller and Berri are of another generation, a time when a girl became a woman in a man’s arms. It seems to me, however, that this image transcends masculine desire. It overtakes it and, in doing so, it becomes an object of fascination in what becomes an artistic quest for those filmmakers. That being said, it also seems to me that in those films, the young girl is more of a plot device than an actual character. Through her, various male characters discover themselves or even break against her. Even if the young girl has an effect on them, they are the true subjects.
In your writing, desire is present too, and is one of its driving forces. Not only in Mauve Desert, but in most of your work. This inclination is what brought you to Mélanie, but unlike Miller and Berri, your relationship with her is twofold; desire and self-identification merge, and Mélanie gains depth. The stakes change and incarnations of desire (also seen in Little Lili) shift completely. It may be a question of perspective, but it’s more likely a question of positioning. In your writing, the image of the young girl takes on new proportions. She is the protagonist of her own story and the concerns of the text are her concerns. It’s about her desire and her point of view on her reality.
Nicole, April 26, 2016
The young girl. There’s only one young girl in Mauve Desert. It’s not Mélanie, but her cousin Grazie, whom Mélanie would very much like to sleep with. At this point we could obviously lose ourselves in conjecture or have a long discussion about the masculine-feminine that’s in all of us or promoted by society in the form of passive/active roles and behaviours. Every “young girl” is given this label because of the male gaze alone. She is the object of desire and a thousand other imaginary systems that at times rejuvenate and at times make one reflect on his or her life. You understand this very well. Why do you say “young girl” when words like “teenager” or “girl” exist, words that are ambiguous, but dynamic, like a group of girls? Mélanie is Mélanie, at best a teenager who, as you put it, “is the protagonist of her own story and the concerns of the text are her concerns.” She could also be a teenager in the sense that James Dean was a teenager.
Simon, April 13, 2016
I’m looking at the image of the young girl from a heterosexual (“straight”) perspective and adding a few words. Why? Why is she fascinating? Maybe it’s because the young girl’s time (or the adolescent’s time) is one where possibility overwhelms determinism. The euphoria induced by an unlimited, uninterrupted horizon is charged with youthful energy that is almost as boundless. But there’s more. For a long time, the image of the young girl has also been paradoxically fragile. The young girl possesses strength she must develop precisely because of her vulnerability. The young man is more fragile, less self-assured. More awkward too. The young girl knows she is being observed and she knows she bears the age-old (and unjust) burden of violent desire and fertility.
Nicole, March 30-31, 2016
Revolver: from the Latin revolvere = revolution
A revolver is essentially an expression of ever-present danger. The danger we carry within ourselves and the danger that surrounds us. In Mélanie’s glove compartment, it is a form of protection. In the hands of Longman, it’s a looming threat. To me, the ability to use and bear arms in the United States is abhorrent. Morally, but also because it’s an affront to my way of thinking. A firearm is dangerous for all kinds of reasons. It’s violence and death waiting to happen. How could generations of poets appropriate Breton’s phrase “The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd”? No doubt literature and real life were not as intertwined then as they are today.
We come full circle: from the gleaming body of the Meteor to the shining barrel of the revolver. Two symbols of spectacular virility (as a stand-in for seduction and intimidation) that belong as much in the domain of freedom-escape-exploration as they do in the domain of destruction.
Simon, April 13, 2016
Fortunately, your character still escapes me and lives between the lines I write. I’m still aware that it’s your Mélanie and that, although I pursue her in my writing, she breaks free and reclaims her liberty in the end. Even though they are fictional, characters end up acquiring a sort of autonomy. They are never entirely ours. They are composites.
Nicole, April 26, 2016
You’re right. Characters, though spun from our fantasies, convictions, or brief narratives that justify everything, end up acquiring a certain autonomy. I’m thinking of a writer (whose name escapes me) who used characters from fiction when he started out. He preferred incorporating these characters into his fictional world to choosing from the real beings around him.
Characters: I never think of the characters in my novels as being characters. They are products of desire and of writing as a screen for self-projection, but also of a whole array of existential positions and personalities ranging from good to bad, generous to petty, stimulating to dangerous.
We all know that we have problems with vision, since the invisible is at work as much as the visible in our present lives. This explains why we distort our reality in so many ways.
Simon, November 12, 2016
At night, it’s up to us to discover the contours of reality simply by shining light on it.
Night brings out the variable, personal dimension of reality.
The landscape cut up by the beams of headlights.
[cocoon, shelter, introspection]
A room exposed by the conical light of a lampshade.
Open space inside of night.
At night, the landscape is replaced by an image. A projected, mental image.