What is the difference between Dada and Surrealism?
Let me know when you have an answer because I’m not sure.
I would say that Dada is more likely to shock for the sake of shock (I.e. Lynch) while Surrealism is based in more concrete subconscious impulses, often sexual.
There is nohing Surreal about Synecdoche, symbolic maybe, 8 1/2 remake likely but I don’t believe it is at all surreal.
New York within a warehouse in New York within a warehouse in New York, a woman whose tattoo falls off of her body after aging 20 years in what seems like three weeks, a therapist whose book can actually read your mind. You’re right, it’s not surreal.
DADA stood for nothing – Surrealism was created out of the nihilism of DADA so as to root an artistic movement within a very concrete political ideological framework.
Also,
Move on over to this thread
Well, I would like to think that surrealism isn’t seemed to be forced, it just is. Dada on he other hand you get this weird vibe like the film maker thinks he is so much smarter than his audience, and he needs to make a movie only he can understand, and when people come to him and say “This makes no sense!” and he responds “Well I’m an artist! If you don’t get it then your just not as smart as me.”
Now I’m not saying being weird to be weird is a bad thing. I think of John Waters, and his weird tongue in cheek type of movies, because they work! Mostly because they are consistently weird. Which is another thing too watch out for? If there is a weird moment in a movie and it kinda seems out of place in terms of mood, or atmosphere, with the rest of the movie, thats “Dada”.
Lynch is a great film maker, their have some times when he has flew over the rails into self indulgence (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway), but I still say his best movie is still Eraserhead which many people would say that a weird movie just for the sake of being weird. Eraserhead while yes being very weird justifies itself with its mood, and atmosphere. This isn’t the real world, this is David Lynch’s nightmare, and he spent 5 years to film his nightmare in theaters.
As for Synecdoche, New York it’s just so easy to call it self indulgent because of the epic scale of it, and for its dark and sometimes depressing look on life, but for me it was a film of ideas, and it’s been so long that I had that type of sensation where a film was daring me to go to places I was afraid too go. Fellini, and Bergman would have loved Synecdoche, New York.
A lot of student film makers today make a lot of DADA, because they feel the need to impress people with either their intelligence, or convince people that they have a lot of ambition. But like Doinel said surrealism feels more personnel because it sometimes can come from the subconscious impulse the artist has, DADA seems artificial, and is cold.
Dada didn’t stand “for nothing.” It was about the demolishing of culture to start over. Surrealism, in a way is an attempt to internalize dadaism’s project—it’s trying to get at true perceptions by capturing them preconscious.
Matt, I respectfully beg to differ. Tzara himself proclaimed time and time again that DADA stood for “nothing”. Have you read the DADA manifestos or any of the initial works by the creators of the movement?
I have, yes. As I recall it, Tzara wrote that “dada is nothing,” but Tzara’s writing is (intentionally) self-contradictory in an attempt to break away from society, but also to take the critique of society further than either the Symbolists and the Futurists (movements that strongly influenced the Dadaists). But that should be misunderstood as not standing for anything, Dada was something, it’s just that what it was couldn’t be fully or adequately expressed in the cultural vocabulary of the day. But if you read it closely, there’s definitely an aesthetic program there:
“There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups. Behind them a crippled world and literary quacks with a mania for improvement.”
“But the Nothing can be uttered only as the reflection of an individual. And that is why it will be valid for everyone, since everyone is important only for the individual who is expressing himself.—I am speaking of myself. Even that is too much for me. How can I be expected to speak of all men at once, and satisfy them too?”
“Dada is a state of mind. That is why it transforms itself according to races and events. Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing, it is the point where the yes and the no and all the opposites meet, not solemnly in the castles of human philosophies, but very simply at street corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.”
Dada is the deconstruction of art. It stood for a lot of things actually because it did not stood for anything.
Anyway Inland Empire is a masterpiece. That is not a decontruction of art but a study in emotions and dream atmosphere.
Yeah, not just of art, but of the historical/cultural pedestal art sits on.
Matt,
Yet the whole reason Tzara abandoned DADA was because it stood for nothing in the end (much like nihilism’s solipsistic uroboros like fallacy) – It was the rejection of all previous attempts at rational thought and yes, in that sense it stood for something – but the whole intention was to let it stand for nothing and “everything” thus rebelling against the standard and accepted modes of thought which found it not only necessary but required to live in a “rational” society. DADA longed to simply be sufficiently the opposite of the hypocrisy they saw permeating their society (and the world at large, really) – but in order to do that, in order to be sufficiently opposite, they had to do away with meaning completely – so that is what I mean by saying DADA meant nothing.
But other than that ultimately empty puerility directed towards a culture that it feverishly denounced through scandalous absurdity it had no real ideology. Nothing deeper beyond knee-jerk petulance – so in that sense it really did “stand for nothing” even if at times people expounded on what they thought it meant to them.
But that’s why it endures and why it was a significant movement – because of its’ inherent ironic duality – everything and nothing – but that’s a thin reed to hang one’s hat on… so Tristan Tzara went over to the Surrealist movement with Breton who had developed a coherent movement that built off of the basic premise of scandalous absurdity – they managed to combine it with a structured political ideology.
i think Inland Empire is great precisely because it’s so off the rails, though i’m told a second viewing will make more sense. then again, i don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with strangeness for strange’s sake.
OK, SG, I understand what you’re saying now—just a difference of perspectives. I guess what I was objecting to in phrasing it as “stood for nothing” is the implied finality of “standing for.” Basically I see Dadaism as an indefinite suspension of “somethings” rather than true nihilism. In the long run, it works better as a mode of critique than as an ideological position or an aesthetic position.
dada tried to suspend conflict; hence, it could not be a position, ideological or aesthetic.
This is a nice topic thread that I can get behind, because I’ve always had strongly mixed feelings about Mr Lynch, and I’ve been following his career since the 80s. Yea, the dividing line between powerful surrealism and pointless and silly “weirdness for weirdness sake” is perfectly illustrated by the difference between MULHOLAND DRIVE and INLAND EMPIRE. As meandering and difficult to follow as Mulholand is, it all feels like very powerfully realized and primeval dream imagery, and people generally respond strongly and emotionally to the film, even when they can’t make any wit of sense of it. I actually quite enjoyed INLAND EMPIRE, it was a silly hoot to watch, but its no more meaningful or serious of a film than the latest Will Farrel comedy. Its quite simply Mr Lynch going very far up his own arse, and while that can still be enjoyable on a superficial level, it has none of the primeval dream power of his best works (ERASERHEAD, BLUE VELVET, MULHOLAND DRIVE, parts of TWIN PEAKS). Of course, I thought the same of WILD AT HEART and LOST HIGHWAY, especially the latter, which is his most ridiculous and a borderline unwatchable film; though I guess Wild at Heart is pretty great purely as an off-the-rails comedy.
Come to think of it, David Lynch is very comparable to his his most obvious influence in that sense, Federico Fellini. Fellini, in his later surrealist mode, could work absolute dream-imagery magic (8 1/2, AMARCORD, CASSONOVA, etc) or just get completely lost up his own arrogant and overly-indulgent arse (SATYRICON, JULIET OF THE SPIRITS, etc). Either way, its still fun to watch, but I’m not likely to ever revisit the silliness of Satyricon again in my life, but I revisit 8 1/2 and Amarcord almost on a yearly basis. That’s the important difference.
I can’t speak very authoritatively on the surrealist-to-dada comparison, but from my simplistic understandings, it does seem an apt comparison and I agree with most of the previous commentary on it, as it pertains to Lynch.
There is no dividing line between surrealism and “weirdness for weirdness sake”. Besides, the latter category is problematic for so many reasons. You might as well ask what is the difference between surrealism and art I don’t like.
Lynch himself couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about Inland Empire anyway. He challenges himself first and foremost and it’s crucial to do so for an artist or in this case, an AUTEUR, to elevate his craft to the next level. Whether you "get " Inland Empire is irrelevant.
This is all bull shit.
Inland Empire is not a surrealist film. It is, at best, psychological impressionism.
Lynch is obsessed with moods and tone.
Surrealist were, implicitly, hoping to attain an honest signifier through means that were not condoned by mainstream society. They were enthralled by the concept of the unconscious and ultimately felt their methodology would lead to a truthfulness not found through overtly conscious processes.
Ultimately, it is a movement that undercuts itself by rearranging the meaning of meaning through apparent meaninglessness. Take Un Chien Andalou for example, the use of intertitles suggest that, inherent in the films production, were signifiers for the audience to link to.
There is no such thing as a surrealist film.
Every film has context and an insurmountable basis upon which it is developed.
Surrealism cannot bypass this, only rearrange it.
We would all be better served to reevaluate our understanding of the word and determine, democratically, whether it has any function of value in aesthetic evaluation anymore.
That said, there is no such thing as strange for strange sake either. Certainly not in Inland Empire, though it is fucking strange.
I see INLAND EMPIRE as nothing more than an experiment, a project that does nothing more than push the boundries of what can be done with cinema. I wouldn’t consider it a “surreal” film or “strangeness for strange’s sake”. If you read anything on the way Lynch conceived the whole project, I think then you may realize that the whole thing was just a big experiment.
I loved it by the way…
Furthermore, be confident in your own assessment, If you feel Inland Empire is the greatest “surrealist” film ever made, then trust your judgement. Feelings are as valid as any semi-cerebral discussion you can get involved in on a forum.
Also, I am not trying to discredit the Surrealist movement entirely. Its break from the rational and celebration of the irrational is wholly welcomed by me. I am just saying that the term has memed itself into something not clearly understood and should be reevaluated. I think “surrealism” is a shadow term for much more interesting things in art in general. It is like that cousin at a family reunion that said something really wise right before he got drunk and interjected a bunch of non-sensical bullshit into every conversation for the rest of the night.
I am so that cousin…
I like the poster who referred to Inland Empire as psychological impressionism. That’s what many Lynch movies are.
IMO, Dada is mean to shock and to be purposefully senseless; surrealism takes realism as its starting point and goes on from there.
I wonder where the perennial Lynch-critique of strangeness for strange’s sake came from. Did he ever say something to the effect in an interview? I never understood the intentionality implied in that criticism.
@Daniel-
I think much of the issue with Lynch is twofold.
1- Lynch is notoriously obtuse about his intention. I just read Lynch On Lynch and he never directly explains his thought process about any of his films in a direct and communicable manner. I think this is because he operates intuitively and he started out as a painter (he came into film trying to do moving paintings). I don’t think desires to tell his “thought” process, but I also don’t think Lynch really can explain his thought process. This has led people to think his films consist of many elements the director doesn’t quite understand himself. However, I think it is more accurate to describe him as someone who works intuitively and is not tied to filmmaking in a classical way.
2- The term “surrealist” adds confusion to the debate because surrealism, as a historical movement, was dogmatic in its intent. It has also had a hard political bent. Lynch does not and is not dogmatic. Therefore people claim he is “supermarket surrealism”.
People usually use those two things in their criticism if Lynch and basically come to the conclusion that he is pulling things out of his ass just to appear “arty”.
However, that is not fair because Lynch never claimed to waive the flag for the Surrealist movement and no one handed him a rule book on filmmaking. He stumbled into the medium and became obsessed with how it conveys the moods and tones he expressed in his paintings. That is why I think we are better served discussing him outside the realm of the surreal. He is not in line with a “movement” so to speak. Yet somehow he is criticized for not being something he never tried to be in the first place!
His films take narrative threads and explore the inner lives of its characters through unusual occurrences and the variety of other tools film provide. Therefore I think it is better to view his work as a form of psychological impressionism and dropping the hostility many people feel towards him for whatever reason they come up with.
double post
The term “surreal” of course has long ago passed into common usage beyond the confined of the Surrealist movement proper (which, although he has certain affinities with, Lynch is not an adherent), so it’s not really helpful to focus to narrow of Surrealist practices per se.
@Daniel
I suspect the “strangeness” reputation is the partly the legacy of the film’s past life as a “midnight movie,” in which its strangeness was its chief commodity, and has lingered partial due to, as BKNIGHT23 has suggested, Lynch’s unwillingness (inability?) to offer a paraphrase of what the film “means.”
From someone uneducated on the subject, my view is that a work is surreal when people like it and connect with it, and it’s strange for strange’s sake when they hate it and can’t connect.
Cameron Cook
After seeing Inland Empire by David Lynch, I claimed it (perhaps out of a strong emotional response) to be the greatest surreal film ever made. Almost killed by the shock, the people around me went on to explain how the film was strange just to be strange. This made me wonder…What makes a film “surreal” to one person, and just “strange for no reason” to another person? What are some examples of both? Surely there’s an answer to this question… Did anybody have the same experience after seeing Inland Empire, or this last decades other surrealistic masterpiece, Synecdoche, New York?