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animebw · 5 years

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Re-Watching: Angel Beats, Episode 4

In which we take a baseball breather, Yui makes her scintillating debut, and one hell of surprisingly fantastic ship takes form.

Play Ball!

If episode 3 is by far the most important episode of the show, then episode 4 is by far the least important. There’s no progression of the overall plot, no catharsis for any characters, and very little further fleshing out of the story’s themes. Sure, there’s a b-plot about Hinata’s tragic backstory that’s handled incredibly well, but it doesn’t reveal too much about his character that matters going forward (though the implication that he died from a drug overdose is another biting example of how uncomfortably real this show’s acknowledgement of pain can be). It’s mainly just an excuse to kick back, relax, and having fun watching all these goofy personalities bounce off each other, the one episode that could reasonably be considered “filler” by its common definition. And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. The pacing of Angel Beats’ narrative is so fucking perfect that we can afford a brief stop at hangout highway without derailing the story or getting too off base. It’s a chance to get back to the fun stuff after the overwhelmingly emotional send-off for Iwasawa, and consider just how stellar this show’s fun stuff is, I have no reason to complain about it.

Especially considering just how goddamn fun this episode is. Seriously, what this episode lacks in narrative importance, it makes up for by being possibly the single funniest overall episode in the entire show. From start to finish, it’s nothing but cackle-inducing gags following so closely behind each other that you barely have a chance to catch your breath before it’s knocked out of you all over again. The opening gag where Yui accidentally hangs herself with the mic chord and someone in the crowd wonders, “Is this death metal?” Jesus fucking wept, this remains one of my favorite one-liners in the entire show, just such a perfectly stupid question delivered with impeccable timing. It kills me every time. Ditto Hinata’s increasingly pathetic attempts at getting people on his baseball team (”Goddamn!” “Now you sound like TK.” askjdhaskjdha) and Yurippe’s deliciously hammy attempt to lord her victory over Angel (”Yurippe, you sound like a villain.”) This episode also serves as a really fantastic example of just what a masterful handle Jun Maeda has over comedic timing; he loves re-using this one gag where the music abruptly cuts out following one character’s moment in the spotlight to deflate that moment’s gravitas, as their friends all look on in nonplussed silence at what an idiot said character appears to be from the outside. It’s such a simple joke, but it works every time, no matter what the context, and it’s such a perfect way get us to laugh at these characters at the same time we’re rooting for them.

A Burst of Light

But of course, the real secret weapon that makes this episode work so well is Yui, Iwasawa’s groupie and replacement at the head of Girl’s Dead Monster. Yui is by far the most overtly cartoony character in the cast, with the goofiest expressions, most nonsensical character quirks (the demon’s tail, sproingy hair, tiny fang, occasional cat speech), and most over-the-top performance. It was a smart idea to keep from introducing her until we were already well-acquainted with this show’s insanely chaotic aesthetic, and thus could better handle a more outright outlandish presence like Yui. And I especially love the way she’s introduced to the main cast by taking over the goddamn OP, turning the normally haunting and epic grandeur of “My Soul, Your Beats” into a jammin’ rock ballad. It’s like the show itself is bending to give her the splashiest debut possible, putting her center stage so she can state her case in no uncertain terms and sweep us up in her energy right from the get-go before her dorkier, brattier aspects take over shortly afterwards. Here’s your new best friend, the show seems to be saying. Don’t worry, she’s really damn cool.

And it was worth the wait, because Yui is a goddamn riot. Half the fun of this episode is just watching her cut loose, her face deforming and reforming at mach ten with the wackiest, almost 90s-anime-inspired facial expressions I’ve ever seen, while her VA Eri Kitamura blasts through her whip-crack dialogue with the force of a goddamn gattling gun. She’s constantly moving, constantly expressing, constantly getting up in everyone’s faces and forcing them onto her plain of unchecked comedic ferocity. She makes this episode so fucking explosive to watch, yanking us along her unhinged pathway with the scatterbrained confidence of an epileptic gorilla. And her teammates are always there to check her and exert their own power over her, which keeps this rapid-fire barrage from becoming too overwhelming. Bottom line, Yui is fucking amazing, and she makes this already lively show even more energized.

Love Makes The World Go Round

This episode also marks the first interactions of Yui and Hinata, a.k.a. the stealth ship that completely caught me by surprise in just how well it ended up working. Seriously, I adored every single antagonistic interaction these two have throughout the show, but it’s not until the ship is actually canonized in episode 10 that I realized just how fantastic a pair they actually were together. Their constant bickering has a way of getting under your skin, of making you care in ways you weren’t expecting. And I think what makes them work so well is that they’re allowed to stand on equal footing. They both beat the crap out of each other. They both get under each other’s skin. They both hate each other’s guts and take every opportunity to shove that in each other’s faces. They’re a chaotic, swirling mess of emotions and antagonism, yet they’re also balanced. They come at each other from the same direction, play by the same rules, see each other the same way. And as a result, despite how painful all the headlocks they share look, it’s genuinely endearing to watch them bounce off each other, because you never get the sense either of them are actually suffering for it. I will have more to say on their relationship in the future, but for now, it stands as a testament to how fucking stellar Angel Beats’ understanding of storytelling craft is that it could get you on board with such a dysfunctional character pairing so easily without you even noticing.

Another episode down! Next time? We finally get a peek under Angel’s hood, and the result is one of the best character reveals ever. See you then!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #angel beats #angel beats yui #hideki hinata #yuzuru otonashi #yuri nakamura #yurippe #kanade tachibana #masami iwasawa #ayato naoi #angel beats tk #angel beats rw

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nelliganmagazine · 7 years

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“Quantum Diamond Impression-Unit”- A Review of Tina Satter’s Ghost Rings by James Oscar Théatre La Chapelle, August 26, 2017

Quantum Diamond Impression-Unit”- A Review of Ghost Rings

“Quantum Diamond Impression1-Unit”: A Review (or Set of Hallucinations Based On) Ghost Rings by Tina Satter Théatre La Chapelle, Montreal, Canada Saturday August 26, 2017

“The scintillation was the spark, It was the smoke streaming, It was after all, at its end ‘A sort of diamond’.”

Godsholle (A Play), James Oscar

I’m definitely into the idea of queering, approaching the object not for what it is actually meant to be used for as a way to engage with it differently, as a way to open up potentialities within the object. Like “This now is not a vase...Queer can mean so many things. I work with queer aesthetics, which is something that has to do with lineage and history. But then to me queer is about outside of the norm, the moment before something is actually defined...A lot of people want to talk about the queer aspects of my work. We can talk about sexuality, we can talk about aesthetics — there are particular expectations of a queer thing. But for me, when it is really queer, we have no idea what the fuck it is."

Cult MTL- September 9, 2016- Interview of Andrew Tay with James Oscar

“Conduire le réel jusqu’a l’action comme une fleur glissée a la bouche acide des petits enfants. Connaissance ineffable du diamant désespéré (la vie).

Rene Char, Feuillets d’Hypnos

Of Ghostrings & Quantum Diamonds:

Tina Satter describes the “ghost rings” of her play of the same name, in much more simple terms - as the name of a “candy I made up in 2011” that ‘her sister’ and ‘her’ might have munched on. But do not be fooled by this simple explanation, because no sooner do we encounter the complex arrow of time that is Ghost RIngs where the play comes to share something of the complexity of an octahedron (like a diamond) such that I could not help but leave the performance with the strange conceptual term (quantum diamond impression ) resounding in my head, as though I had just seen such a fabulated object as the such (a quantum diamond) and that with the such, I had found an analogous" modal being" to what I just had seen in Tina Satter’s Ghost Rings - Ghost Rings ' shapes and forms coming to resemble “something like” a quantum diamond impression/ expression. This imaginary quantum diamond impression/ expression-unit I have fabulated to describe ‘her craft’

That Tina Satter’s Ghost Ring’s appears to me to form some kind of vehicle or rather unconstraining form- one which I might conceptually describe as this imaginary quantum diamond I have fathomed, with all its interpenetrating rays, angles, and affirmations as described above, and in fact seeing the whole of the play forming a kind of vehicle or unit resembling something that might look like a quantum diamond - the assemblage of her Ghost Rings akin to a vehicle/ vehicular rather - with the purpose of what I might call being an “impression or expression- unit”.

Vehicular:

For at the end of the minimalist presentation, a web has been created that has been entered into and travelled with - something vehicular- something like a unit that we step out of having been profusely interpenetrated by at every angle - by first Tina Satter’s dialogue about her sister Samantha’s all the time reckless/ sometimes numinous life. (I have to say that I immediately thought of Anne Carson’s experimental fold out novel project Nox about her all-the-time drifter brother “Michael, who in adulthood fell into drugs and, finally, drifting under false identities. (In her words, he “ran away in 1978, rather than go to jail.”) He died in Copenhagen in 2000, doing who knows what.”

As in any vehicle, we first spot the "starter", and this might come in the form of musician Chris Giarmo’s “ceramically -pristine” slip-on shoes (see Dorothy ruby red shoes and their status as a sort of wind-up or "inciter") that he wrests to the side as he begins the deep sounding opening music. (He consequently also wears a diamond spangled baseball hat.) Satter 's Ghost Rings via the nod of an object* and via musical " incantation" then announces that we will be entering into the psycho-geographic territory of her crazy-eyed sister Samantha, who much like Anne Carson’s brother seemed to have the soundings of being one of those hyper-sensitive/ hyper empath/ beautiful souls who get lost to the contemporary (world) (see Valerie Solanas et al) .

Blood Sisters:

To narrate this life of her sister Samantha with whom she pledged an epic blood sisterhood4 promising to “grow up and have corner apartments in the same building and raise their (future imaginary) baby daughters” together (no men necessary) , she decided to make 'this kind of band’ on stage headlined by the actresses, and then as in most of Ghost Rings’ journey, she reveals that after having formulated this imaginary play, she had recalled that actually she had been in a band with her sister, “I remembered I was in a band with my sister”.

Ghost Rings has this constant breaking the fourth wall (ellipsis) with Tina (director and writer- not actress) sitting behind the drums watching her own life drama of her sister unfolding in front of her on stage. As we get deeper into the story (see the quantum spheres of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, NY) , there is a kind of almost quantum feeling as the stories about her sister confound one upon another upon another until the drama feels like a vessel we have crawled into and are watching from inside- the various spheres and facets of Samantha's "life-styles" splayed throughout an imaginary geodesic dome. The ghost rings appearing again and again, and soon attaining a greater significance than just that of an imaginary candy TIna Satter fabulated up as part of her on-stage /or ”real” childhood stories..

They Ride Haunted Canoes/ Peter Doig's Haunted Canoes:

Tina imparts to us the task of understanding what she might actually mean by “ghost rings” beyond being just simply an imaginary candy her and her sister chomped on as young girls. Satter does describe an actual vehicle as her introductory device to move us through her sister (and her own) circles of hell (and more). In this first story of her sister and her during her teenage years (rather that is moreover the first 'on stage story' during "their" teenage years), crazy-eyed teen Samantha gulps down fourteen ghost ring candies “cause it it was making too much of a bulge in a cool bag she had" (paraphrase), and then the always hyper-aware, hypersensitive, hyper empathic Samantha or her sister embark on a haunted canoe - the first of several vehicular lieux/ devices of Ghost Rings.

My own instantaneous visualization that this quantum canoe could look something like the Scottish painter Peter Doig’s celebrated “canoe-reflection” paintings like “100 Years Ago” jived very well with the underlying fact that Satter was steering us towards something more than ghost rings as an imagined named for a candy from her childhood5. It is here after the haunted canoe ride that she reveals that beyond having just recounted the teenage worry of the candies bulging and making her bag look uncool, that we (the audience and her) will now enter into the realm of “private inner being” - “a thing we are scared to touch, but inside of you, something soft…..something you try to translate out.” It is here that she professes an inner fleshy chasm of loss (inner being as soft and furry); she seems to have never felt she tried enough with this lost soul who would drift in and out of her life, always desperate, always wanton.

Uncanny Valley

Throughout Ghost Rings, Satter with the wondrous acting/ singing of Erin Markey as "Samantha" and Kristin C Sieh "Samantha's friend" , continues to build this world (of a quantum diamond expression unit, as I have named it) somehow able to consistently access a kind of uncanny valley we are consistently subject to; whether we are focusing on ceramic shoes, looking at bedazzled scintillating tops, Satter’s own strange presence/ absence on stage watching a story about “her”/ “her sister’s” life unfold right in front of her, or in the almost impeccably anthropomorphic employment of the toy animals as speaking beings which is never kitsch or contrived but rather gives us the greatest feeling of a "comfortable" uncanny valley. It is an uncanny valley we are made to feel all the way until near the end, where it becomes really hard to not consider Sealy (the stuffed seal ) as nothing but a real entity that is speaking (see Amazonian Perspectivism). There is of course always the persisting uncanny valley seen through Erin Markey’s intense crazy eye facial expressions (almost ceramic glazed at times and coming alive at other times) (B), or through the incredible virtuosity of the actress-singers turning what we are looking at on stage into a literal musical right before our eyes, yet still riding the rail of contemporary performance art (and somehow masterfully not betraying either genre through their virtuoso ability to move between both musical and drama, without falling into “irony” or “tragedy”), and finally this uncanny valley remains consistent throughout thanks to Markey’s delivery of a masterful and paced intensity vis a vis Sieh’s all-along building-up to an eye-popping cacophony- her trained slowly upward rising visceral physicality till its explosion at the end.

Denouement- Staging

There is a denouement that spell-binds us as we watch what feels often like a soft masterpiece (soft-piece) of dramaturgy (Think La La Land and how its own tight dramaturgy and transitions rendered it into “art”, not just film), in what first starts out as the empty uber-minimalist space soon to become before our very eyes populated with the "real" memories of two lives. Two "real" emotional lives we can grasp onto. Tina playing Tina and Erin Markey playing her sister or Samantha or whoever’s world we have been drawn emotionally into onstage. There is certainly a gust of uncanniness to have come from this nothing (black box with minimal decor) in the play’s opening, to this now seething ‘history of two’ we had never seen or heard of before; two that might have never actually been seen or heard before in actual fact, despite what we have been told. Yet, we still hang on to all of the stories as having been true ( another uncanny valley)- stories, first that Tina Satter actually had a sister, and then whether that sister had actually led a wayward and troubled life?

Chiasma/ Intermingling:

As is clearly said of these two beings (”Tina” / Satter and “her sister”) intermingling of their own place at the hearth of/ inside this quantum diamond unit we might call their life (or just in the play), “ Just because we’re private inner beings, when I feel you, you get me. “ And as Tina remarks that a friend once remarked in one of these accidental running into Tina would have with her wayward sister in the later years (Tina in New York/ Samantha everywhere) -” he said our echo was eery”.

So perhaps here, in the larger picture around all of this, there might be shadow-lessons of how to engage in a kind of complicity with Another (the kind of problematic, pleasures, and pains of founding a new ethics this might delve into looking at that is ( C)- and thus that ultimately as equally for the philosopher Levinas “ethics come to pass between two persons: oneself and the Other. These ethical claims are absolute; one is obliged to the Other to the point of being …” (D) And as I might amend Tina Satter’s line- Dear diary, I’ll draw you a map of being - that would be the inner and the outer and all the points that intersect between, or in fact as Satter/ her sister says at one juncture in Ghost Rings,” I put my legs over yours the other day.” 6

Transversalizing- the Quantum -Diamond Unit, Profusion, “Luv”:

So here, we return to how I began speaking of this conceptual extrapolation I made after being in the world of Tina Satter’s Ghost Rings, the space of a quantum diamond unit “at every angle and line 'transversalizing' cross-referencing, ‘cross-lining’ lines of light; and perhaps at its center, a kind of in/animate being that emit/s light and the light coming towards it from every point - interpenetrating rays all cross sectioning at its center, perhaps an inner being at the center of all things- cut right through, right at it” and at its imagined center a smoker’s blown smoke ring- and from here one might see of Satter’s great offerings with Ghost Ring’s, and perhaps something to speak about in terms of an “aesthetic of queer“ - the idea of profusion7. For, as with the smoke rings at the centre that ultimately disperse out through every angle of the quantum diamond's slight pores- so do Tina Satter’s words, song, and gesture. For, if as she, in fact, does say that “Dear I’ll draw you a map of the area. There are trees I don’t know.”, the key might be to 'go there', to be profuse, to live in a kind of continual profusion- to be there, “thereness”. And this is both Satter’s regret - that she had not been “there” for her wayward sister, and now that at once right now in this play which speaks of not having been there, she can now in Ghost Rings be here - she is being “here”. And we as an audience might also be “there”- right there. We (who had also been lost) are all there this time around for the lost and wayward Samantha or for Another.

Je Regrette:

Those lost regretted moments, the ghost rings that try and follow and persuade us of some immutable past done circumstance, “This is your person before you were a ghost”, she says of her sister. And of the immutable lost moment she says, “ How could we have stayed in that moment”. But alas, TIna Satter is not interested in some theatre of the absurd type penury. Instead, Tina Satter seems to literally hold the heart - so to speak.

Tina Satter says of that haunted canoe she/ and or her sister travel/ed in- Tina as lost as Samantha, Samantha as lost as Tina:

“Row to the centre. Cross to the edge.” “Row to the centre. Cross to the edge.” “Row to the centre. Cross to the edge.”

1Or alternatively “Quantum- Diamond Impression Unit”.

2 I would like to make a not so neatly divided observation of what I have encountered as various types of theatre . For instance, a “vehicular theatre"- theatre that acts as vehicle -unit”, infinite theatre (Hanna Abd el Nour, Robert Wilson), theatre as trauma unit (Jocelyn Pelletier’s Permanent K-O, Marie Brassard’s Nely Arcan Fureur), theatre as hologram (Marie Brassard- Nely Arcan -Fureur), theatre as “private hallucination” (Dana Michel) theatre as recounter of genealogies/ time immemorial (Faulkner, Benjamin Kamino - M/Other Untied Tales-Clara Furey, Peter Jasko, Chouinard Sacre de Printemps ) , theatre as new forms (Andrew Tay, Dana Michel, Untied Tales), theatre as meditation space (upcoming “When Even The” by Clara Furey “ for Leonard Cohen, Sankai Juku, theatre as exploring "new forms"- Andrew Tay, Dana Michel, Benoit Lachambre).

Ghost Rings, as a vehicular unit is executed through a serial set of episodes ‘in a life’ and it would translate well into contemporary experimental television that has been appearing more and more on platforms like Netflix. Ghost Rings with its various devices of “meta”, voice over (a life told), recurring characters and talking heads like the seal and deer would lend well to television today.

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/review/Ratliff-t.html?mcubz=0

4 Joan Jonas’ own evocations of the necessary re-kindling of lost secret sistren societies and all the requisite aesthetic choices that might come with that. As with Satter, there might be an affinity with certain characteristics like “translucence”, “the mirror”, twinship”, “mirror reflection”, melding with the other, self-same, “radiance”, scintillating aesthetics. Joan Jonas: From Away at DHC ART by James Oscar http://www.dailyserving.com/2016/09/joan-jonas-from-away-at-dhc-art/

This recent article by Hannah Black seems relevant in the sense of isolating a historical manner of female oral traditions and specifically the speaking of “gossip” among women as part of the history of women resistance, https://tankmagazine.com/issue-70/features/hannah-black/.

5 In her NY Times article, Laura Collins-Hughes does right in citing Ghost Rings as an “elliptical tale” and in realizing the aspect of the two actresses Erin Markey and Kristen C Sieh playing fictional characters (Satter’s sister and her sister's friend, one is led to understand) but I do think that the interesting possibility of Tina Satter having perhaps fabulated the story of this particular sister should have been considered even more, and not just actually assumed. s Collins-Hughes says “One strand of the show is Ms. Satter’s real story…Tina and her sister had a band together, once upon a time”- for, in realizing the possibility of fabulation (whether done or not) this increases the even larger quantum and meta aspects of this presentation, which as I have said, for this writer begin to feel like an almost hologram like quantum diamond that we as the audience become couched inside. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/ theater/review-tina-satters-ghost-rings-an-elliptical-tale-of-lost-connections.html?mcubz=0

6 “I was your ghost when you…” Tina Satter - Ghost Rings

7 The jazz musician Sun Ra might be an interesting example of this idea of profusion - in his aesthetic and musical composition. The 1980s British filmmaker Derek Jarman’s films are classic examples of profusion in the literal use of scrims and overlay, for example. And it is key to put it that Tina Satter’s own deadpan bare narration employs an effective “flat affect” as a counterpoint to the some of the "profusion" being presented. See Crossing over with Tilda Swinton— the Mistress of “Flat Affect”, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, September 2015, Volume 28, Issue 3, pp 243–271

8 I am thinking of such a tradition that goes against the grain like Joan Jonas in the 1970s, Laurie Anderson in the 1980s, filmmakers like Julie Dash in the 1990s, or Ayoka Chenzira s Alma s Rainbow in the 1990s. A new radical refreshing tradition of ( experimental) storytelling is quite apt right now- Tina Satter s experiments are very interesting in this respect. To again cite contemporary television, there have been various attempts to adapt the such, of recent.

(A)In 1970 Masahiro Mori discovered an emotional response that humans have when faced with lifelike replicas of human beings (robots, dolls). He discovered a cognitive dissonance/ a negative emotional dip that would occur increase (with the greater ) the greater likeness the more life like (when encountering ) the more life like the human replica encountered Increasing with the greater lifelikeness of the human replica (robot) encountered.Eeriness and revulsion would increase the more life like the dolls etc encountered "region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem "almost" human."

(B) See OF FLESH-RADIOS, “PERMANENT” HYSTERIA, AND LIFE AS STATUES: A Review of Marlene Monteiro Freitas’ Marfim-e-carne-as-estatuas-tambem-sofrem (Of Ivory And Flesh- Statues Also Suffer) at Festival Transmériques theatre festival - June 3, 4 2015my http://nelliganmagazine.tumblr.com/post/120786035640/of-flesh-radios-permanent-hysteria-and-life

(C) The questions of “sameness” and “difference”, and how ultimately reconciling with one might be a reconciling with the other. But then there is this split, this almost palpable sameness of her sister’s dark energy which is at the centre of her own being. They are, to put it, softly - intermingled. Facing our own complicities as posing of our own status as prey and predators, predators and prey. Not seeing ourselves outside the whole circle but inside and possibly a participant in all aspects of the circle of predator, prey, subject, object. Samantha’s “permanent hysteria” is Tina’s permanent hysteria. Ingmar Bergman has shown these glacial continguous and common valleys better than most artists in his time, in his Persona and The Silence. The slow seething seamless beings we often are- one to Another.

(D) http://gunkelweb.com/environment-ethics/texts/other_face_ethics.pdf

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