more on Odradek

W Benjamin sees Odradek as the 'the commodity that survives to no purpose' and through whom 'surrealism may come to an end' mutating into kitsch which sustains itself on an outlived world of things. Surely the point about Odradek is that it does survive and persist-in attics, doorways and at the bottom of stairs in various houses. For Odradek to be a kitsch object it would have to had a earlier purpose or immediacy since lost or outlived. Kafka says: 'anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek'. Odradek has not lost shape or broken down having once been new and complete; 'nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface' to suggest it is a 'remnant'.It is eternally complete and unchanging. That is what makes the Householder anxious when he bumps into it leaning against the banisters. Odradek endures yet he and his family will not. What if Kafka's householder had bumped into one of Orozco's yellow scooters while wandering round Prague in that period? More fun that meeting Odradek again. According to Benjamin when Orozco places his yellow scooters around cities his hand is catching hold of these objects (as if in a dream) at their most threadbare and timeworn point. But if someone walks past one of the yellow scooters surely he/she is able to see it as a use of kitsch itself. What would Benjamin have made of Svankmajer's A Week in the House?  Svankmajer is a fully paid up surrealist who hardly deals in the 'decrepit' aspect of objects-he may even be inspired by the 'threadbare and the timeworn': they have eloquence and a latent sensibility through being touched and heard- 'these objects are not dead artefacts to me. I lovingly give them starring roles in my films'. Svankmajer is an alchemist animating and reanimating the secret life of objects.

kafka, fritz lang and melancholy

Melancholy is not a mental state, ie it is not tortured stupidity; it is a condition made up of two parts. In Kafka's work the condition is one of extreme distortion: the distortion of time and space; Orson Welles shows this in his film of The Trial: K can barely fit in the room; Samsa, once metamorphosed, is too big for his room.For a more complete treatment in the cinema of these distortions see Sokurov's Faustus: the characters in the film are constantly struggling to find the space to move past each other-or see any of Svankmajer,s work especially The Flat.  Expressionism represents extreme states of being just as this. In film it is an extremity of gesture eg the M on the clenched claw-like hand at the beginning of Lang's film. Kafka's Trial has many gestures like this; a man presses himself against a woman, gazing up at the ceiling and shrieking; a woman fetches a handbag dragging herself across the whole length of the room. Imagine all this in the graphic setting of M. Imagine further a language of gestures in Kafka: on the one hand there are graphic, extreme situations; on the other there are responses to these situations: responses that befit a gentleman jockey or Red Indian; whereas the woman 'drags herself'' these figures are light and airy almost taking flight like the bucket rider. That is not to say these lighter touches are solutions. They are melancholy gestures. The condition may be inescapable but it calls for an imaginative, airier response.