R.I.P. Al Jaffee

There goes a very funny man. When I was 13 I liked to read books about mathematical physics and MAD Magazine. And Al Jaffee likely was the most proficient and comprehensive of the MAD artists. MAD does not exist anymore and most of the Usual Gang of Idiots are deceased. But it was a significant cultural phenomenon and one of the best things to happen in the last century. Only a very sophisticated and reflected culture can achieve such a thing. German MAD probably was even better than the American original, thanks to the congenial supervision by Herbert Feuerstein, who died in 2020. This is now gone, alongside a cultural peak that will probably not happen again anywhere soon, a romantic memory remains, nostalgia, lest we forget. Working at MAD magazine in the 1960s or 1970s must have been very funny. When I was 13 I wanted to become a cartoonist or a physicist. Both things did not work out, due to lack of mathematical and artistic talent, running out of ideas at that time, switching to other topics and finding both cartoons and physics as too unimportant to permanently stick to. Al Jaffee made a wiser career choice. I like iconoclasts. Thank you, Al Jaffee.

Al Jaffee, Mad Magazine cartooning legend, dies at 102 – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Shortcut On Godard

An illustrative example for a stupid intelligent person – with a claustrophobic-claustrophiliac, confined, prison-like mind and emotionality (typical for political „revolutionairies“) – is Jean-Luc Godard. All his films are prisons. The stupidity of the neverending talks and dialogues in his movies, logorrhoeic and moving in circles, equate to the stupidity of his talks and lectures as a person. Regardless of his musings about the „liberation of women as a necessary precondition for the liberation of men“ he is misogynistic and the female characters in his films are even more despiceable than the male ones. Usually Godard´s stories end up in failure or something that is cringe. Despite his obsession for „revolution“ he never offers any vision about how a revolutionalised humanity could look like; whereas Tarkovsky, Antonioni or Ozu, despite being pessimistic concerning the difficulties involved, exhibit possibilities for openness, progress and personal growth. Likely because at the core of Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Ozu there is humanity whereas Godard´s basic motivation actually is „contempt“. Contempt he had also had for Hollywod cinema. But the New Hollywood era from the late 1960s to the late 1970s produced better and creatively more independent, less formulaic movies than did Godard. Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Ozu made great films, whereas Godard – always remaining „subversive“ – never made „great“ films, because there was no great emotionality nor intellect behind. Even the sky and the sea in Pierrot le Fou are drab and prison-like (not by mistake, granted, but because Godard likes it that way or can´t think of anything else). Never mind, Godard remains interesting, (mildly) fascinating, stimulating. Because he is a genius.

I like Masculin Feminin though. And, to some extend, also Alphaville. Maybe because of the superior machine intelligence.

UPDATE AUGUST 2023

I have inspected Godard now more extensively and I may say that the most substantial thing he brought on screen was Jean Seberg with her tomboyish haircut in Breathless. Even though she portrays an obnoxious character, as is common in Godard movies, I think it is one of the most magnificent epiphanies of the feminine in the history of cinema.

The second coolest thing Godard brought on screen is Le livre de Marie, a short film by his spouse Anne-Marie Miéville. It serves as a prologue and was shown together with Godard´s Je vous salue, Marie in 1984. I like Le livre de Marie because it depicts a highly gifted child that recites Baudelaire and dances to Mahler.