The Film "Howl," or Why Kristin Matthews is the Female Jon Hamm

Last night I finally sat down and watched "Howl." This film didn't see wide release; I think it might have come to SLC at The Broadway, but I don't remember exactly. Anyway, I was able to find it in, of all places, the library in Gila, New Mexico. I guess that is one of the advantages of living in an area with so many retired hippies.

For those of you not in the know, IMDB provides a nice synopsis of the piece:

As Allen Ginsberg talks about his life and art, his most famous poem is illustrated in animation while the obscenity trial of the work is dramatized.

The passages focusing on Ginsberg are superb. Obviously, everyone loves James Franco, right?(Personally, I have admired his work ever since he appeared in that low-budget, sleeper hit, Spider-Man 3.) But Franco's prowess lies in his ability not only to make us believe that he is Ginsberg, but in his ability to make us believe that the words of the poem burst forth from his soul, the soul we see on-screen, as well.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the animated representation of the poem. After having read a review on Slate, which described

Forests of penis trees burst from the ground, then shoot forth spermatozoa that wriggle up into the sky and turn into stars,

I was a little worried about how everything would play out. But I think that everything, sperm stars included, works to make sure that the poem holds center stage (although at times I did catch myself thinking about the animated segment in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One). In this sense, I would have to agree with Stanley Fish's assessment that the literature, and the act of literary interpretation, are the real stars of the film:

After a movie you usually want to talk about the actors or the direction or the cinema-photography, but when you leave this movie what you want to do is go directly to a bookstore and buy a copy of “Howl” so that you can do some literary interpreting yourself; and then you want to go back and see the movie again (as I did) in the hope that this time you have something of your own to offer.

Finally, the lawyers in the film provide two points on which to anchor the history of my own interactions with the poem. My American Heritage teacher, Matthew Holland, is like the desperate prosecutor in the film, Ralph McIntosh (David Strathairn). McIntosh inadvertently created more interest for the poem through the obscenity proceedings. Similarly, Dr. Holland was the first person to introduce me to the poem; he played an clip of Ginsberg reading it as an example of the despair and angst of the Beats. I found my notebook from that class and all I had written on the matter was a simple

The Beat Generation--inner city--wacko.

What a great takeaway.

I think I would have had more respect for Dr. Holland if he, like McIntosh, would have admitted that he didn't get the poem. He could have even gone further than that, too. For example, he could have stood in front of the class and said, "You know, I don't think I grasp the symbolism of this poem. It's not exactly to my taste. But we shouldn't cower from the depravity and desperation depicted inside and use it as some excuse to pat ourselves on the back for our supposed righteousness. To do so would be to let a sincere act of communication from our brothers and sister fall on deaf and unchristian ears. Censorship should never be used as a social flyswatter."

But he didn't. And you would think that he would be more savvy when it comes to censorship. I mean, Dr. Holland is a man who told us that he was forced by his father to replace the words "whiskey and rye" with "triscuits and pie" whenever he would sing Don McClean's "American Pie" on road trips.

On the other side of the spectrum is one of my English professors, Kristin Matthews--the Jon Hamm of all of this. Now she didn't go toe to toe with Holland in a courtroom (although that is an interesting fantasy), but she did use the poem in our seminar on 50s lit--even though a few doe-eyed students would have rather discussed The Talented Mr. Ripley. My notes on this are much more extensive and deal with the idea of obscenity. In fact, one line in my notes reads:

Obscenity is American.

I can't really make out the rest of what I have typed, but I think that thought comes from Norman Mailer. Regardless, what I was able to take away from "Howl" in Dr. Matthews' class amounted to much more than depravity and despair. I think that she effectively made the case that we can't just stop when something puts us out of our comfort zone. Obscenity forces us to recognize those unseen and marginalized elements of our world that, thought structurally necessary for the status quo, must remain unseen for polite society to maintain any illusion of legitimacy.

I can't help now but think that a line from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried would be an appropriate finish:

If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth...