> My problem with what you write is that I wish you would not use words
> like realism and genre.
>
> I do not think they have meaning.
>
> "Genre" simply does not exist -- other than as an academic conspiracy.

Interesting.

I'd certainly go as far as saying that realism is a relative concept:
that there's no such thing as an absolute standard of realism in any
representation. There's a well-known book called MIMESIS by Erich
Auerbach that goes through the history of literature and examines the
impact of successive concepts of realism. It constitutes a pretty good
demonstration of how realism only seems to have meaning relative to
existing standards. But it also shows that art does feel the impact of
these shifts in representational convention.

As for genre, I guess I need more info from you or Croce. Academics
didn't invent genre. People say, "Let's go to a Western." And then
they go and say, "That was a good Western," or "That was a strange
Western," of "I've never seen that in a Western before."

> Do you really believe that someone writing a story or directing a scene
> or playing a part is studiously contemplating what everyone else has
> done and deliberately striving to do it differently? Isn't this a
> shoddy kind of "originality," "being yourself" or "being unqiue" --
> when actually one is simply conforming to conventional models?

Well, yeah, people think about what went before. But I'm not really
interested in getting into Hawks' head - God knows what you'd find
there. Looking at the films, I see a collision between a background
that is a bunch of signs that say "genre," and a more playful, reflexive
set of actions in the foreground. I think this is what David Thomson
was referring to when he compared THE BIG SLEEP to a home movie, and
made a connection between Hawks and cinema verite.

Certainly there's nothing conformist about this. No one else does it,
except maybe for people influenced by Hawks (Tarantino, Dan O'Bannon).

> The problem is that this sort of thinking assumes that poetry is a sign,
> whereas (says Croce) a sign stands for something other than itself,
> poetry stands only for itself.

Poetry isn't just a representation of something else, of course. But it
uses signs, it's full of signs. Everything is. The idea of poetry is
to arrange them so you haven't just wound up representing when you're done.

> Can you imagine, in real life, having a conversation with a beautiful
> woman who constantly consciously strove to contrast her actions with our
> expectations of what she was going to do?

This happens to me all the time....

> How long before the game gets
> stale?

There's infinite variety in the ways one can play off of other things.
It certainly doesn't diminish one's individuality. Hawks is a quirky
guy, and he gets opportunities to indulge all his quirky pleasures when
making films.

> When? I mean: okay, maybe they "assert," but do they ever do dominance?
> Am I wrong, or don't they all fall down rather frequently?

Sure they fall. But Bogart takes complete charge of the action in TO
HAVE AND HAVE NOT; Grant never stops calling the shots with Jean Arthur
in ONLY ANGELS; etc. There are various male-female motifs in Hawks, and
they aren't all to the male's disadvantage.

>>Hawks' comedies tend to put a comic, devastating, larger-than-life id
>>figure next to a representative of normality
>
> Who? for example? Usually such reps are also outrageous, no?

Sometimes they have an aspect of the outrageous. David Huxley in BABY
starts out as an eccentric comic type, but he quickly develops into a
Hawks hero using exasperation and humor to keep himself level against
Susan's destabilizing effect. Henri Rochard in MALE WAR BRIDE is more
or less exclusively concerned with self-stabilization; Hildy in HIS GIRL
FRIDAY knows that Walter Burns is a force of nature and narrates the
conflict for us.

In TWENTIETH CENTURY, I'd say the reps are both outrageous. And so a
whole lot of weight is thrown on Roscoe Karns and Walter Connelly -
because they are trying to cling to sanity, they become more important
to the film.

> Is sanity truly a goal or even a desideratum in Bringing Up Baby, The
> Big Sky, Red River ... ?

I'm talking about a model for the comedies, so I'd like to throw RED
RIVER and THE BIG SKY out of court. In BABY, I'd say yes, absolutely -
what makes the film feel like Hawks is the way David Huxley reacts to
his plight.

> I've always felt that Hawks was a bit gay. In His Girl Friday isn't the
> girl perpetually destablizing the boy?

You mean Hildy destabilizing Walter? Not much, I'd say. What are you
thinking of? - Dan