Ending
published in Stuff No.4, Melbourne,
1983
The end to anything is a tautological event constituting
a temporal gap by virtue of its lack of finite measurement,
it is a period that either beckons, forecasts or introduces
the more material (i.e. measurable, notable) "end". It is
often a period that subliminally gives the feeling of an
imminent ending: the music swells, the plot thins, the moral
unfolds, the hit single is played, the conversation dies,
etc. These periods tend to almost operate like a matter
transferal process between fiction and reality by "transporting"
one back into the real world, gently slackening one's suspension
of disbelief. The ending is when we are told that the end
is coming. The sudden ending be it the song that abruptly
shifts its melodic cadence into a full stop, or a film that
violently cuts its plot dead does not tell us that the end
is coming. It is a jolt not only because of its shock value
to the reader of its narrative, but also because reality
swallows up the space it (the textual object) was previously
inhabiting. Confusion arises from the probability and conditionality
of the event "should this be how it ends?" The fake ending,
on the other hand, confirms its ending only to deny it.
One is told that the ending is coming allright, but rather
than the text dislocating us in its unpredictability, it
merely and deliberately lies to us, the subversion of its
logic being the means to its end.
The
end proves to be a whole world in itself for Modernism in
general, in that it like the start provided a contextual
and formal delineation of what constructed the textuality
of a given object. An archetypal structuring of this sort
is the type of ending often used in Warner Brothers cartoons.
Bugs Bunny, in particular, provided a cascade of endings,
each swallowing one another up.
First,
the cartoon an episodic "block" ends with all the trappings
of resolutions, gags and punchlines. Then, the cartoon as
the mode of its construction ends, through a literal closing
of the visual fiction, where a graphic lens apparatus shuts
down in a tunneling hole decreasing in size till blackness
fills the screen, signifying (at least) a construction with
a construction. Then the Warner Brothers departmental logo
of "Looney Tunes" fills the screen complete with its counterpart
signature tune. Together they function as a reinstatement
of who or what presented you with this cartoon, in that
logos generally operate as a space where a particular identity
is inserted. To archeologically compound this further, television
stations then usually flash up their own graphic card that
incorporates their logo as encompassing a visual fragment
of Bugs Bunny with his cartoon show title captioned underneath.
Bugs
Bunny (and company) are an example of a modernist stretching
of the materiality of structural form. But perhaps what
is against the historical grain of modernism here is that
Bugs takes pleasure in playing his trumpet loud without
any real desire to blow down the walls of Jerico. There
is a realization that in order to play with the ending,
you need an ending to play with. A similar realization exists
in Marguerite Duras' film "Nathalie Granger" in that an
ending is quite simply absent. The film just ends, leaving
one powerless to substantially describe the mechanics of
its ending. Whereas Bugs Bunny entertains its ending, Natalie
Granger ignores it.
What
could be posited against Nathalie Granger would be a film
like Monte Hellman's "Two Lane Blacktop", where the film
fictionally though not materially catches fire and burns
up, visually conveying the effect (the circumstantial instance)
that the projector has actually burnt a hole in the film
stock's image. Within the confines of textuality, the film
manipulates itself as substance, generating its end through
"ending" its physicality. In essence, it is a fictional
illusion.
Such
is the nature of modernist gestures: they often amount to
being serialized inversions and retrogrades of existing
conventional modes. But, their effectiveness lies in the
shifting of such conventions into a wider field of arbitrariness.
Bowie laces up the tape on "Its No Game" and Hayzee Fantayzee
press the stop button on " Shiny Shiny ". In such examples,
it is not simply that we are being told "nothing" (meaning
we all know that the music is recorded on tape) but that
we are simply experiencing the effect of someone talking
without receiving any directed communication from their
speech. It is as though the act of telling overides the
conventional meanings of the words. These types of gestures
form a mode of speech that is directionless, as the gestures
(for the moment) axe partially emptied. Conversely, when
Alice Cooper's "Schools Out" slows down, he is "telling"
us that "school's been blown to pieces."' (the effect of
the malfunctioning record player working as a metaphor).
Bowie and Hayzee Fantayzee speak to us in a different way,
centring on a different problematic of speech.
Still,
one is left to wonder, by implication, where and when this
type of directionless, partially emptied speech starts and
ends. Surely all songs (for example) speak in terms of a
meta narrative, telling us that they "are" songs, with all
the structural components that constitute the song as being
a song? All textual objects appear to be bound up some way
in this dumb tautological existence which by nature short
circuits any modernist gesture performed on their anatomy.
All endings state themselves this being one of the many
indivisible qualities of textuality.
The
constructual organization of the cadence in Western diatonic
music (from Beethoven to Bill Haley) involves all modes
of statement in its endings, be it the awesome powerful
tone of finality that closes The 5th Symphony, to the spastic
spluttering of an arhythmic drum burst that punctuates the
end of "Rock Around The Clock". Even though the former is
based upon a dogma of harmonic rationality while the latter
is based upon a sense of compositional absurdity, both examples
are involved in the statement of their ending.
As
if in answer to such an historical problematic, the "Fade
Out" became increasingly prolific (through the technological
nature of the recording medium) as a subtle twist on the
conventional options for ending a piece of music. Although
its musical antecedents are historically blurred, the silent
cinema provides us with a textual forerunner of it as a
narrative effect. Interestingly enough, as the Fade Out
became an understated mode of ending popularly used in the
realm of recorded music, the bloated drawn out over climatic
ending became a prominent feature of live music. The Fade
Out provided a dissolvement of the musical text, a fairly
uncontroversial form of ending, because whereas the effect
of the tape suddenly stopping (or the record player slowing
down; the film stock burning; etc.) is based upon a violent
intrusion of technology rupturing the fictional surface,
the Fade Out illusionistically recalls the acoustic phenomena
(one that has been historically naturalized) of the music
realistically decreasing in volume as the listener moves
away from its spatial point of occurrence. Thus, the listener
is defined within the parameters of realism: a form of comfortable
bondage.
Realism
is probably the most pathetic socializing agent of the workings
of Narrative. Its nature in this light can take on extreme
proportions. When Channel 10 ends its transmission usually
around 2am on comes that old familiar shot of Melbourne's
"skyscrapers". It is a banal yet seductive scene, disorientating
because of it being shot at dusk, which accounts for the
strong light and glittering buildings : a mixture of night
and day. A possibility exists whereby Channel 10 is attempting
to end its transmission as a metaphor for the naturalistic
socialized ending of the "average working day", one that
"ends" with night fall, a period that welcomes in leisure
and relaxation (i.e. television watching). In its voice
over bidding us "goodnight", Channel 10 does not acknowedge
its lie, in that people who work nine to five (like the
family depicted in all the current station I.D's) are hardly
likely to be watching TV at 2am. This type of ending is
not far from the luscious fantasy ending (read: stuff to
fool kids) of the Disneyland TV show, where Tinkerbell pulls
the blanket of a star filled night across the sky, ending
simultaneously the day, the show, and the kids' viewing
time. But of course, that's just corny kids' stuff. We know
better. And that is the end.
