MADness—the Blog

Here’s a book that’s caught my eye.

Tim Wu’s “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” has been out for a few weeks now and has already become one of those books that prognosticators and opinionators feel obliged to respond to. It’s also a substantial and well-written account of the five major communications industries that have shaped the world as we know it: telephony, radio, movies, television and the Internet. Wu believes that all of these industries have moved through cycles of diversity and consolidation, and that if we think the Internet is immune to a takeover by some massive monopoly promising a more perfect (and more profitable) experience for users (and itself), then we should look to history, and think again.

 If you’re at all interested in net neutrality and maintaining the Net as we know it, this may be the book for you.

Don DeLillo:

Everybody remembers the killer’s name, Norman Bates, but nobody remembers the victim’s name.  Anthony Perkins is Norman Bates, Janet Leigh is Janet Leigh.  The victim is required to share the name of the actress who plays her.  It is Janet Leigh who enters the remote motel owned by Norman Bates.

That’s from DeLillo’s new novel, a slim volume called Point Omega.  The opening and closing sections, “Anonymity” and “Anonymity 2,” take place on consecutive days in a museum gallery exhibiting Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho, a screening of the Alfred Hitchcock film that slows the events of its 109-minute running time so the action extends one full day.  It’s an interesting experiment—both the book and the Gordon installation.  DeLillo fans will want to check out Point Omega, but Psycho fans may want to also.  It’s just 117 pages—it flies by in any case.

You can read it while listening to Bernard Herrmann’s frightening score featured on the front page today.  But DeLillo got me thinking:  is it true that “nobody remembers the victim’s name”?  I do.  It’s Marion Crane, and the point of course is that she’s the bird.  That’s an important point in understanding the film, and in understanding Hitchcock, for that matter.  Sir Alfred had a fascination with birds and with actresses of a certain type, especially at that time in his career.

Perhaps “nobody” is overstating it then, but DeLillo does have a point.  People are more likely to describe the victim in the shower as Janet Leigh.  She’s a real person.  It’s more scary that way.  Marion Crane’s death is unfortunate, Janet Leigh’s is tragic.  People often confuse actors for their roles, and when a character experiences sheer terror, we’re more apt to identify with the actor than just the role.  Norman Bates, on the other hand, is more scary than the real-life Anthony Perkins.  Bates is the stuff of myth.  We love to demonize—to make the monster non-human—and it’s easier to do that with Bates than with Perkins.

I had seen this item in the L.A. Times this week but didn’t get a chance to look at collector Ira Resnick’s site till tonight.  If you’re a fan of art from classic Hollywood (and how could you not be), it’s certainly worth a look.  The book is Starstruck. I think I know what I want for my birthday.

Dan Callahan at Slant, on Carole Lombard:

At her breathless, frazzled, sexy best, Carole Lombard defined the screwball comedy genre of the 1930s. A hot blonde made for clinging white satin, she was most distinctive when encouraged to be slaphappy and out of control, working up a full head of steam and building comic sequences to crescendos of hysteria. Her basic good nature always shone through her performances, so that even when her work was uneven (which was often), she always managed to get a viewer rooting for her. With her high forehead and penetrating blue eyes, Lombard was obviously intelligent, yet she had a talent for playing none-too-bright, childish women who lived exclusively and triumphantly in their own world.