The Art of Misnarration

Neo-benshi is the art of (mis)narrating a film. I encountered it for the first time in January of 2007, when I saw David Larsen's "Paris of Troy," a verbal deformation of the 2004 Brad Pitt vehicle. Larsen then steered me towards Walter K. Lew, who has been performing neo-benshi pieces since the 1980s. He also introduced the method to his students at Mills College in Oakland. Although Lew's excited by the increasing popularity of this technique, and applauds many of the performances, he's uncomfortable with the term "neo-benshi," since it exoticizes and orientalizes, he feels, a method that had to be widespread during the silent film era. Lew explains:

A fascinating, oft-neglected fact of world film history is that nearly everywhere movies have been regularly shown there was an era in which they were screened with live speech by orators or voice actors. The katsuben of Japan and pyônsa of Korea were the most celebrated forms of this once-global practice. Sometimes praised during their heyday as “poets of the dark,” in Korea the most iconoclastic “movietellers” risked imprisonment or worse to share their interpretations of films with local communities.

Perhaps they would have approved of the wit and freedom with which [contemporary] poets have chosen to recast the 20th century’s most powerful and oppressive artistic form.

More recent antecedents to neo-benshi include Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? and Beavis and Butthead. As a relatively new and evolving genre, neo-benshi is in its exploratory (and perhaps most exciting) stage, with almost no critical attention as yet. To paraphrase Kent Johnson, its aesthetics haven't caught up with the practices.

After watching performances in NYC this weekend, I'd say that a neo-benshi artist's two main tasks are, in order of importance, A) Compose a narration B) Perform this narration in public. He or she also has the option of recutting the film and/or inserting new footage and/or soundtrack, which requires a third set of skills, that of the filmmaker's. Pivoted on a film, a successful neo-benshi narration surprises and enlightens viewers with a series of verbal tangents that riff on, play with, subvert the shown images. A weak narration insults us with obvious observations. Literalness annoys. The thrill is in the divergence.

[...]

David Larsen and Neo-Benshi

Three blocks from Independence Hall in Philadelphia is the Powel House, named after the city’s first mayor, Samuel Powel, who bought it in 1769, four years after it was built. George and Martha Washington dined there. So did John Adams. On the evening of January 26th, 2007, San Francisco poet David Larsen took over, owned the Powel House with his amazing reading, capped off with a neo-benshi finale. It’s a mystery why David Larsen doesn’t have a larger following. K. Silem Mohammad wrote me in an email, “LRSN embodies just about everything I value in contemporary poetry: raw wit, savage intimacy, urgent strangeness. His frequent use of handwritten text is one material index of these qualities, and his near-monologic immediacy of address is another. It's impossible to feel unscathed by his work, to remain aloof from its confrontational embrace. In addition to his incomparable book The Thorn (Faux Press, 2005), he has published dozens of striking handmade chapbooks that showcase both his graphic and verbal artistry (which are often inseparable one from the other). Much of this creative work reveals the influence of his groundbreaking doctoral studies in pre-Islamic Arabic literature and culture at UC Berkeley. He is a tireless supporter of his poetic community: he was the editor for several years of The San Jose Manual of Style, possibly my favorite poetry journal ever, and he currently curates the New Yipes Reading Series in Oakland, CA. If LRSN did not exist, it would be necessary to cut off our own heads with wickedly curved scimitars and dump them in a river.” Projecting 11 minutes of the film Troy (2004) onto a dining room wall, including its windows and yellow velvet curtains, David Larsen narrated this Hollywood version of the Iliad, book 3:

It is the clitoral tip of Asia.
You don’t believe me?
that’s a Hittite word, Assuwa
for the windy NW corner of Anatolia
where stood gleaming Tarawissa
the Hittite word for Troy

[…]

She stands there for 60 seconds exactly
which you would know if you were
sitting there with me
watching and re-watching this scene from Troy
wearing out the remote control

That’s Paris on the right, the
dreamy abductor
his brother’s trying to tell him something
Yeah whatever

[…]

oh wow
what a bad scene
I just realized I’m going to die learning
about myself in the hardest way
this is no pony party
actually it kind of is, is
what makes it all so horribly real
as if the sound were cutting back in

how much more time is this
going to take
my heart is in my ears
its every report a separate agony
the fight is in my heart
my heart is upside-down

[…]

I am entering my most suggestible period
just now so check it out

the sound has gone out
the arrow shot heavenward has shivered
into a quarter of a million
Fuck Face Advances
boasting of his scratch upon my thigh
but I am ready for the cut from
both our bodies
the raised welts in anger
the severing blow

Not even the leopard’s fury is such
nor the lion’s
nor the ravening boar’s
as the peacock’s at his mirror
with his feathers all pulled away
so pick your battles, grandpa
I don’t think you’re ready for this

[…]

I’m sick of it
and the tap-tap tapping of the
spear-points all around
what the hell for
why should I care what this stupid
armored turtle thinks
I’m like the grinning crescent on the
flying flag flying over these ruins
face down in front of my community
the hero done with acting like
a can of cat food was a kill

Some say it is the violent
death of an opponent
others the soothing touch of ointment
to a fissure in the skin
while others name the first cigarette
at the end of a long illness
of all things out on the black earth
the most beautiful
but I say
I say
I

I emailed Larsen to ask him about neo-benshi. He explained:

The art form’s acknowledged starting point is in Korea and Japan of the silent film era. Benshi is a Japanese word referring to the oral "interpreter" who performed a live narrative accompaniment to silent movies, in lieu of showing intertitles with dialogue, etc. In Korean the practice is known as pyônsa. "Neo-benshi" is the name that's been popularized by Konrad Steiner and others for the current practice/genre/game of producing alternate voice-overs for "talkies."

Linh Dinh: How long have you been doing it? Where did you get this idea?

David Larsen: I was approached by Konrad Steiner through Roxi Hamilton back in 2005. At first I said no because it sounded like so much work (and sure enough it took 3 days solid to write that 11-minute piece you saw). Without their urging it never would have occurred to me to do it.

LD: How many people are employing this method? Can we call it a trend? A fad?

DL: The same night I performed it in Philly, there were eight people in San Francisco doing exactly the same thing. Among experimental poets in the Bay Area it's definitely a fad, and they're doing it in Los Angeles too. I performed it the next night at Betalevel in LA's Chinatown, where they do a series called “Da Benshi Code.” New problems with sound & projection come up every time it’s performed, but that just adds to the “live” effect. The only thing I’ll never try again is a throat mike. I'd rather perform with no amplification.

LD: Who are the better practitioners of this?

DL: Hard to say as I haven't seen more than one performance by a single performer. (Hopefully someone will write a notice about the January 26th performances in San Francisco.) The best neo-benshi performance I’ve seen was Mac McGinness' reading of a script by Norma Cole along with a segment of the film JUDEX (1963) by Georges Franju.

LD: Has this phenomenon been critically appraised?

DL: I think Walter Lew has written something about it.

I phoned Walter Lew and was told that he's been performing neo-benshi pieces since the 1980s. He has also introduced the method to his students at Mills College in Oakland. Although he's excited by the increasing popularity of this technique, and applauds many of the performances, Walter's uncomfortable with the term "neo-benshi," since it exoticizes and orientalizes, he feels, a method that had to be widespread during the silent film era. There are certainly antecedents closer to home, such as Walter K. Lew himself, Beavis and Butthead, and What's Up, Tiger Lily? It's clear that neo-benshi needs to be examined more critically since, to paraphrase Kent Johnson, its aesthetics haven't caught up with the practices.