"I could tell you some stories . . . ": Barton Fink, narrative, and listening

"What's in the box?" indeed. Image found here.

Barton Fink (1991; dir. Joel Coen)

[Spoiler alert: I do talk explicitly about certain important scenes in the film, especially below the fold, but my sense, given the nature of this film, is that it's unspoilable. Knowing what's coming will make it no less mysterious.]

Last night, I decided I needed some weirdness in my life, so I watched Barton Fink. In the article I linked to just above, the consensus of the three post-ers on the film is, "It's about heads." Yup: I got that, too (the film is filled with references to them). And?

And that, I realized this morning as I was walking the Scruffmeister and thinking about this hermetic film, the echo-chamber that political dialogue has become in the blogosphere, and Winnie-the-Pooh, is precisely why this film is so hard to talk about: It needs a verb.

At the level where most films and, by extension, narratives function, Barton Fink is as inscrutable as the box Charlie Meadows puts in our hero's "good hands." Most films, even Coen Brothers films, are "about" Something. It's not a derogatory thing to say that someone has given shape and direction to the vast majority of narratives such that, when the reader/viewer comes along, s/he follows a pre-determined, marked-out path that, if the maker(s) has/have done well, the audience won't be aware of--or, in the case of certain genres that carry familiar expectations with them, won't care or will even demand be present. Barton Fink, though, feels more like a surveying of a surface of events and images that someone--the viewer--is required to make some sense of. It's a film about a theme, as opposed to most films, which "just" have themes.

The box is inscrutable because it remains unscrutinized, at least by Barton. This member of the audience, at least, scrutinizes it more than he does.

The verbal analogue to the box is Charlie's catch-phrase, "I could tell you some stories"--a phrase which, each time he utters it, Barton not only doesn't invite him to share one, he cuts him off. The occasion of their first meeting, in fact, is Barton's complaining about Charlie's noise and Charlie's wanting to confirm that Barton was the one who complained--in effect, Barton wants to shut Charlie up before he even meets him. Of course, the irony in all this is that a) Barton reveals that he (apparently) has only one story to tell; and b) doesn't even recognize this fact. To put it another way: Even as Barton tells Charlie that he wants to "write about people like you. The average working stiff. The common man," we get the strong feeling that Barton is, at least during the time of the film, only able to write about writing about them.

More below the fold.

From a transcript of the shooting script:

BARTON
Well, I don't mean to get up on my high horse, but why
shouldn't we look at ourselves up there? Who cares
about the Fifth Earl of Bastrop and Lady Higginbottom
and - and - and who killed Nigel Grinch-Gibbons?

CHARLIE
I can feel my butt getting sore already.

BARTON
Exactly, Charlie! You understand what I'm saying - a lot
more than some of these literary types. Because you're a
real man!¹

CHARLIE
And I could tell you some stories -

BARTON
Sure you could! And yet many writers do everything in
their power to insulate themselves from the common man -
from where they live, from where they trade, from where
they fight and love and converse and - and - and
. . . so naturally their work suffers, and regresses into
empty formalism and - well, I'm spouting off again, but to
put it in your language, the theater becomes as phony as a
three-dollar bill.

CHARLIE
Yeah, I guess that's tragedy right there.

BARTON
Frequently played, seldom remarked.

Charlie laughs.

CHARLIE
Whatever that means.

Barton smile[s] with him.

One way to talk about Barton Fink is as a dramatization of the Death of the Author². Here, though, I want to talk about Barton the character as someone who is dead as an author. It might as well be his head in that box . . . assuming, of course, there's a head in there.

Accompanying the film's obsession with heads is one about listening--or, more accurately, not listening. "Listening" would extend here to include attentiveness to visual noise, of which the Earle Hotel is full (such as, to give a couple of examples, a hall full of shoes waiting to be polished yet whose owners, with the single exception of Charlie, remain invisible and all-but-unheard, and the picture of the woman (a Siren with no song?) sitting on the beach--accompanied by the sound of surf when the camera turns on it). But Barton asks no questions of any of these things; instead, he stuffs things into his ears to keep from hearing them³.

The producing of narrative requires listening--to language, to circumstance, to a place and time--and out of that listening derive meaning, or at least a point. Barton has an ideal he wants to achieve through his art, but ideals are not plots. The result is pretty but ultimately empty language. Once a (traditional) narrative is produced, though, it can't "listen"--that is, it has to keep out at least some competing possibilities or else it will collapse under the weight of negotiating all of them.

Charlie, unlike Barton, hears too much: even though Barton's room is located between Charlie's and the lovers who disturb Barton (they're barely audible to us), Charlie not only hears them in his room, he says he can practically see what they're doing. It's no surprise that Charlie is the one with the stories to offer an ear-plugged Barton. But Charlie's problem, we learn, is not that he has a surfeit of stories; it's that he has one that subsumes all those other stories, one he can't keep under wraps but which oozes out of him like the pus from his infected ear.

The film's climactic scene (a still from it leads off this post) is one that will feel familiar to fans of the Coen Brothers, drawn as they are to apocalyptic moments involving figures who locate their actions beyond good and evil: think Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona, the sheriff with the mirrored lenses in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. There is no arguing, either literally or figuratively, with these men. Their actions are in service to a narrative; what's more, that same narrative creates a white noise that drowns out all else--which is, of course, what is so frightening about apocalyptic narrative. Of these figures I've listed, though, Charlie is an exception. His actions are no less evil; but, even as he explains why he does what he does--just "help[ing] people out," he says--he also says, "I just wish someone would do as much for me" and berates Barton for--guess what?--not listening.

Regular visitor Sheila, a big Coen Brothers fan, comments here that she thinks Barton Fink is the Brothers' finest film. I think personally that I would give the nod to Fargo; having said that, though, I will say that their work is full of ideas and that, if one likes that sort of things in one's films, Barton Fink surrenders fully over to the exploring of its ideas and does so with extraordinary complexity and subtlety. It's like that box, yes--but shake it around more than Barton shakes around his box, and you'll marvel at that box.
__________
¹Maybe it's just me, but I hear here an echo of the Grandmother's exclamation, "Because you're a good man!" in Flannery O'Connor's short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Surely, though, the scene that follows is a rewriting of The Misfit's exchange with the Grandmother at the end of that story (about which, if anyone's interested, I had some things to say here):

CHARLIE
How you been, buddy?

He props the shotgun in a corner and sits facing Barton, who stared at him.

. . . Don't look at me like that, neighbor.
It's just me - Charlie.

BARTON
I hear it's Mundt. Madman Mundt.

Charlie reaches a flask from his pocket.

CHARLIE
Jesus, people can be cruel . . .

He takes a long draught from his flask, then gives a haunted stare.

. . . if it's not my build, it's my
personality.

Charlie is perspiring heavily. The fire rumbles in the hallway.

. . . They say I'm a madman, Barton,
but I'm not mad at anyone. Honest I'm
not. Most guys I just feel sorry for.
Yeah. It tears me up inside, to think
about what they're going through. How
trapped they are. I understand it. I
feel for 'em. So I try and help them
out . . .

He reached up to loosen his tie and pop his collar button.

. . . Jesus. Yeah. I know what it feels
like, when things get all balled up at the
head office. It puts you through hell,
Barton. So I help people out. I just wish
someone would do as much for me . . .

He stares miserably down at his feet.

. . . Jesus it's hot. Sometimes it gets so
hot, I wanna crawl right out of my skin.

Self-pity:

BARTON
But Charlie - why me? Why -

CHARLIE
Because you DON'T LISTEN!

A tacky yellow fluid is dripping from Charlie's left ear and running down his cheek.

. . . Jesus, I'm dripping again.

He pulls some cotton from his pocket and plugs his ear.

. . . C'mon Barton, you think you know
about pain? You think I made your life
hell? Take a look around this dump.
You're just a tourist with a typewriter,
Barton. I live here. Don't you understand
that . . .

His voice is becoming choked.

. . . And you come into MY home . . . And
you complain that I'M making too . . .
much . . . noise.

He looks up at Barton.

There is a long silence.

Finally:

BARTON
. . . I'm sorry.

Wearily:

CHARLIE
Don't be.

²In the film, Barton's name often gets shortened to "Bart"--perhaps a nod in the direction of Roland Barthes (pronounced "Bart"), author of the essay "The Death of the Author" (see Wikipedia's discussion here)). To fully explore the intersection between the film and that essay would take another (lengthy) post or, even, article. Surprisingly, a quick Google search turned up no such article, but the link seems blatantly obvious to me. But, you know: consider the source.

There's also this: I had a friend at Rice who made the argument that the tight shot of Barton's typing the word "postcard" at the end of his wrestling-movie script (the same word, by the way, ends Barton's play that we see performed at the opening of the film) is a nod to Derrida's book The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Maybe. It does seem to be the case that this little passage, from the introduction, is echoed by the fact that Barton isn't aware that he's essentially re-submitted his stage play as the screenplay: "You were reading a somewhat retro loveletter, the last in history. But you have not yet received it. Yes, its lack or excess of address prepares it to fall into all hands: a post card, an open letter in which the secret appears, but indecipherably." The ultimate indecipherable text would be the one which its own author cannot even recognize as his/hers.

³I need to watch (and listen) again before I comment too fully on this, but this film's use of ambient noise in the scenes set in Barton's room, much of it barely audible, is fascinating to me. It's surprising that, so far as I know, it is available only in stereo; a 5.1 mix would, I suspect, be quite a treat to listen to.