Libraries and Librarians in Film

EW did a thing on 18 movies with libraries, but I thought I'd add to the mix with just 3:

Citizen Kane

The Library Matron

Citizen Kane (1941)

William Thatcher's diary in the famous Citizen Kane library scene
A stern-looking librarian leads a reporter into a cell containing a diary by Charles Foster Kane's guardian William Thatcher that may give him leads to the infamous newspaper magnate's sudden death. The journalist in the film plays the part of the dogged researcher who seeks out every possible avenue to sort out why did Kane spout out before he died, "Rosebud." He arrives at a fortress (or what appears to be a prison) that turns out to be an imposing archive. Granting permission to the journalist to peruse Thatcher's diary, The librarian tells him he can only read pages 83-142 and that he must leave the library premise by 4:40 sharp. I watched Citizen Kane for the first time with a librarian and she was quick to point out how librarians are erroneously depicted in popular culture as stern "guardians of the stacks." The mantra, it seems, is "the book shan't leave my sight!" I chuckle because the Kane library scene is sometimes true. I knew a librarian who went to the grocery store one afternoon and saw a patron in line and instead of telling her hello demanded to know why she had not turned in her overdue library book. True story. Anyway, I still consider this scene the quintessential library scene in film history even though it stereotypes librarians as "sole proprietors" of knowledge, I still love it. I think I was mesmerized by Greg Toland's brilliant cinematography: the way the light shines from above, illuminating the manuscript on the spare table, the way the camera makes you feel trapped inside the library walls, chained to nothing but a book. Then the camera focuses on a page in Thatcher's diary, I first encountered Mr. Kane in 1871." The book morphs into a flashback scene of little Charlie Kane playing in the snow with his sled. It's a stark effective scene as well as a metaphor for the increasing mystery of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane's mysterious life.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

The Library Know-it-All

Obi-Wan is surprised that not even the library has it!  
Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to the library to look for a planet in the star database in the Jedi Archives.  Obi-Wan has the right information but cannot find the planet. The librarian insists the planet does not exist because it does not appear in the star charts where it is supposed to be located. If it is not in the database, then it does not exist, the librarian remarks. Coincidentally, I was with the same librarian I saw Citizen Kane with when I saw this movie and she pointed this out to me with the same chagrin on her face as she did when she pointed out the Kane librarian trope. The Star Wars librarian is another variation of the Kane librarian: not only does the knowledge not appear in the record, if the knowledge is not in the record then it does not exist. So, does that mean if I do not have a birth certificate I do not exist? I become a tad bit nervous when librarians began messing with my existential priorities. The flip slide is the student researching a term paper: "I cannot find anything on my topic." It doesn't exist? Even Obi-Wan knows that; in case you were wondering, it was the Sith who smudged the planet from the star charts to hide their nefarious plans to create a clone army. So it just goes to show you, if it is not in the database, and it is supposed to be there, someone bad took it out, like a Sith Lord.    

Ghostbusters
The Library Catalog Haunted by a Ghost

I ain't afraid of no ghosts

 If you thought an archive powered by the Force was cool, what about a card catalog haunted by a slimy ghoul? Ghostbusters has a fun opening sequence that features none other than the famous New York Public Library (although the interior shots were filmed in a library in California). I like the part when the green slime emits from the card catalog. Priceless shot!

EXTRA! EXTRA! See my post on the library scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

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photo credits: Star Wars Holocron, Ghostbusters stacks

Poem: Secret/Poet

As an adolescent,

I learned the art of poet/secret;

I would climb into the bedroom closet on all fours, enough space between the smelly, discarded shoes laces to

stretch out my body; I would somehow find comfort, if that is what you’d call it, more like respite, a kind of shelter

              to be with my secrets,

              stowed away porno’

O              masturbation never was so great as

              the closeted days,

shielded from reality,

              the ceiling gathered immense freedom

              around its enclosed haunches and

              I had secrets to bare, to the wooden

              old filing cabinet stuck, where I stowed

              my poetry, my scribbles — under

              hanging sports coats and sweaters,

              secrets being such a burden —

              they had to go somewhere,

              born from my self-imposed compulsion to translate suffering into poetry —

Poetry is couched in metaphor but never becomes what it was,

like a closet,

it still remains closed,

like a secret it is never meant to be shared.

              To put into words something about

              myself that I am unable to transcend

              is a secret/poetry like a poet makes,

              for isn’t that what the poet does?

              reveal secrets,

              lay bare the state of affairs?

the poet in me, crashes into state of affairs, crashes into a secret,

to lay bare.

© 2010 Greig Roselli

Poem: Rotten Avocados

rotten avocado

the avocados were not yet ripe when I bought them.
but I found them ensconced in their own avocado skin, black as printed words;

and I remember the faint smell of hunger I had when purchasing them,

thinking they would be ripe and plump to eat.

© 2010 Greig Roselli

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image credit: Wikimedia

Poem: Holy Water Font

when they come to the water on sunday it barely touches skin, smoothed over and onto the next thing,
honey, darling, sweetheart, dear, let’s park the car close, don’t forget the lights
    but when this child touched the water
        he slowly extended his arm and advanced
        toward the font as if time itself, punctuated by the deliberate movement of his hand, slowed down
    for him, so it

 was very important
    to dip into the water in this particular way, middle finger first,
        then the rest,
    a little playfully, but not too much so,
enough
to withdraw
his hand and cross himself
enough to convince that he saw something in the depths that I didn’t see, not before not since, only scant reflection: once after reading something from the 19th century did I ever feel similar
        but he did see something of

    the trinity

        and I suspect the whole revolving sphere of fluid stood still like in some mediaeval astronomy book
and he was able to stop time, for a bit,
because he was grinning,
        drops of holy water falling to the granite floor
and someone like his dad picking up his five-year-old body to the pew, replete with a jesus coloring book and an entrance hymn.

3.14.2010

The Iron Rail: Community Library, Art and Music Center in the Marigny Neighborhood of New Orleans

The Iron Rail is an out of the way community library, art center, music center, and volunteer bookstore in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans.

The Iron Rail hosts a community library in its building on Marigny Street

This out of the way community library, art center, music center, and volunteer bookstore in the Marigny is a really cool place. People come and go talking about music, and Michelangelo. In a studio in the back of this World II era warehouse, guys practice experimental music.

My buddy Airplane introduced it to me on Friday. For ten dollars or through volunteer hours, members have access to a nice collection of philosophy, literature, art, back issues of zines, anarchist tracts, and other good stuff.

If you have a paper to write for college in a humanities course, you have pretty much everything here. I found an Iris Murdoch book I've been wanting to read. Also, I lost my original Of Grammatology and they have that too. Items in the collection are organized by subject and author. The library is a browsing collection so don't expect a card catalog.

Hours are sporadic but the place seems to be mostly open after 1 until like 7.

Movie night is on Tuesday. Meetings are on Wednesdays.

The Iron Rail
511 Marigny Street
New Orleans LA
United States

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Caravaggio at the Quirinale in Rome

Caravaggio's The Annunciation (c. 1608)

The New York Times has a write up on a new Caravaggio art exhibit in Rome's Quirinale. Caravaggio may trump Michelangelo in popularity. It used to be people posted pics of the David's classic ass on their refrigerators, but it seems people are out with the classical, refined body and want their art rough, and out of the bed. I compared Michelangelo's Last Judgement with Caravaggio's "Boy with a Ram" along with Michael Kimmelman's quotes.

Detail of Michelangelo's Last Judgment (1536-1551) 

"[Michelangelo's] otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric."

John the Baptist (Youth with a Ram), c. 1602

"Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven."

credits: wikimedia

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