I

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Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing

• City Vision 4 Female Artists
• Sites and Sights in a City

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Outline

• General Introduction Toronto New Wave, Patricia
  Rozema and the Film
• Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing
• Female Artists in a City
• Individual vs. Institution the Intertextual
  References
• Growth of an Artist Reality vs. Fantasies
• Pollys vision of Toronto
• Patricia Rozema Her visions of a city
• Conclusion

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Ontario/Toronto New Wave

Left to Right David Cronenberg, Don McKellar
(writer/actor/director), Patricia Rozema, John
Greyson, Ron Mann, Bruce McDonald, Atom Egoyan
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Ontario/Toronto New Wave

• From Art-House to popular theatre
• Young Toronto-based filmmakers starting in
  1980s,
• Rejected both Hollywood films and their
  tax-shelter predecessors.
• urban, intimate, underdog, migrant. Educated
  and art-fueled. Not political. Not commercial.
  (Cameron 10)
• Two major breakthroughs Mermaid (1987)
  Exotica (1994)

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Patricia Rozema

• Born to a Dutch immigrant family in a Calvinist
  town, Sarnia, southern Ontario
• B.A. with double major in philosophy English
  literature.

Patricia Rozema on the set of Desperanto source
(image source)
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Rozema Filmography

1. Mansfield Park (1999)
2. "Yo-Yo Ma Inspired by Bach" (1997) Bach Cello
   Suite 6 Six Gestures (1997)
3. When Night Is Falling (1995)
4. Montréal vu par... (1991) (segment "Desperanto")
5. White Room (1990)
6. I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) Prix de la
   Jeunesse from Cannes 17 awards
7. Passion A Letter in 16mm (1985)

1. Diary-writing
2. Male artists confession
3. Acrobat artist
4. Self-titled dancer
5. Death of female artists
6. Growth of an artist
7. successful female artist

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Rozema Themes Styles

• Canadian feminist Issues of institutional
  control vs. fantasy, lesbian/sexual identity
• gender inequality vs. sexual pluralism
• self-reflexiveness
• Filmic (use of frames, subtitles, cameras)
• Textual fairy-tale other intertext
• Artistic-- of artists and critics
• Flâneuse -- Interest in architectures, city
  scenes and female artists position in a city.

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Rozema Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing

• Polly Vandersma Sheila McCarthy
• Gabrielle St-Peres Paule Baillargeon
• Mary Joseph Ann-Marie McDonald
• Canadian feminist Polly (position in Toronto,
  identity, gaze, institution)
• self-reflexiveness Polly talking to us the use
  of many intertexts (Bible, fairy tales and poem).
• Flâneuse Pollys photography.

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Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing Starting
Questions

• How is Polly characterized? And opposed to
  Gabrielle? Does she fit into the institution she
  works for?
• Does Polly learn and grow in the film? What does
  she learn and how?
• What do you think about her fantasies? Are they
  just a matter of self-indulgence?
• Why does Polly speak to us?
• What is the role of Toronto in this film? What
  are the major signs of the city?

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Ive Heard the Mermaids Singing Outline

• Female Artists in a City
• Individual vs. Institution the Intertextual
  References
• Growth of an Artist Reality vs. Fantasies
• Pollys vision of Toronto

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I. Female Artists in the City

• A. Polly
• Social Position---clumsy and a misfit
• Organizationally Impaired Typing
• Lack of social manners e.g. the Japanese
  Restaurant the birthday Party
• Language
• Doesnt speak French, a sign of elegance
• G Acute awareness ?P a cute face
• G Im dying. ? birthday
• G I dont want to die in my body ? Then whose
  body?

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Polly a female artist on the margin of society
(2)

• . . . tiny hovel almost lost in the
  industrial section of Toronto (before it got
  groovy) under the enchanting shadow of a giant
  Kentucky Fried Chicken barrel with the CN tower
  in the BG (Rozema)

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Polly a female artist on the margin of society
(2)

• a private space with multiple functions (clip 6)
• restroomfor fantasy, art work

• Open to endless possibilities

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I. Female Artists in the City (2) Pollys Sexual
and Artist Identities

• Identity in formation sexual Interests
• Discovering homosexuality
• Peeping at the love-making couple
• Posing in front of the mirrors in public (clips
  8, 9 )

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I. Female Artists in the City Pollys Sexual and
Artist Identities (2)

• Artist Identity her personal approach as a
  photographer
• Interaction with the photographed objects
• Curious and affirmative.
• Generosity as an artist accept the fact that
  you cant do it. (clip 16)

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I. Female Artists in the City (2) Gabrielle the
Curator

• B. Gabrielle her social position
• With good social manners and elegant dressing
  styles good at talking and art dealings (clip 10
  )

elegant and stylish large ear-rings Big words
oblique pragmatism, whimsical sociological
references contextual destruction
internal/external transformation)
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I. Female Artists in the City (2) Gabrielle the
Curator

• B. Her Artistic Career
• Supported by chocolate business
• Her taste and judgment Pollys trite made
  flesh

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I. Female Artists in the City (2) Gabrielle the
Curator

• C. Her Aspiration
• Fear of mortality want universal respect,
  eternal youth, etc.

• Frustration
• gets kicked out of an art lesson
• to want one thing that she never has talent or
  one painting beautiful undeniably,
  unequivocally, universally.
• Is she wrong in using Marys painting?
• In what ways is she wrong in using Marys
  painting?

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I. Female Artists in the City (2) Mary Joseph

• C. Mary Joseph
• artistic judgment like it or not like it
• Another misfit hidden behind Gabrielle I paint,
  you talk.
• Why is her work glowing but without shapes?

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II. Individual vs. Institution The Intertextual
References

• A. Mermaid
• 1. T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred
  Prufrock a poem about people in the upper class
  who measure out their life in coffee spoons, and
  Prufrock who grows old but lacks the strength to
  force the moment (of marriage proposal) to its
  crisis.
• In the room, the ladies come and go, talking of
  Michelangelo.
• ? Polly about Gabrielle Talking and laughing
  and interfacing, like a ping-pong game.
• "'I have heard the mermaids singing, each to
  each. I do not think that they will sing to me'"
• ? Polly hears the mermaids in one of her
  fantasies, and later she has Gabrielle and Mary
  listen to her.
• ? Process of growth and self-assertion of a
  female artist.

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II. Mermaids Individual vs. Institution the
Intertextual References

• A. Mermaid
• 2. Fairy tales---In between two worlds
• 3. Lesbian association

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II. Mermaids Individual vs. Institution the
Intertextual References

• B. The meaning of names ? plurality vs.
  institutional limitations
• Polly poly
• Gabrielle arch angel
• Mary Joseph bisexual
• Church Gallery representing an art institution
• C. Theme Song ? individual spaces
• Lakme ??? The Flower Duet
• D. Shooting Style ? confession and self-creation
  outside the institution (gallery, police,
  society)
• Film camera Video Camera (monitor ?
  confession) (clip 15)

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III. Pollys Growth Reality vs. Fantasies (1)

• (After getting her job at Church Gallery)
• A. Flying in the air
• Climbs and overcomes power structure
• Flyingsurpass social constraints

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IV. Pollys Fantasies (2)

• (After the discussion of painting)
• B. Walking on the water (clip 11)
• Religious symbol
• Desire
• social manners elegant, big words (relativism
  is complex politically, aesthetically,
  religiously and even in terms relationship)
• her ideas relativism polymorphous perversity

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IV. Pollys Fantasies (3, 4)

• (While choosing the photo work to send to G)
• C. Tour on the bus (clip 13)meaning?
• smooth transition from the City to Nature, and
  back to the city.
• hears the mermaid.

D. Being a conductor of symphony ) (clip
18)meaning? Differences from the other
fantasies -- Fantasy merged with reality -- in
the church gallery -- active conducts the
orchestra -- success both in conduction and
stealing the video camera.
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Ending

• (clip 19) meanings?
• The photos are miraculously back
• artists/ lesbians moving beyond the institutional
  and social limits
• also beyond the limits of the film to a world
  not known or gazed at by us.
• introduction and endingthe whole film is
  Pollys creation and self-creation.

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Pollys vision of Toronto

• (clip 3)
• Admiration bottom up at the architecture from
  without (outside the power structure).
• Imagines having an overview.
• Pollys vision of Toronto

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Pollys vision of Toronto (2)

1. individuals
2. fragmentary views which are implicitly
   deconstructive of power.

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Rozema on the City (1) love of architecture and
height

• SettingToronto, frequently its architecture and
  its bird-eye views?????????
• ("I adore height. My father built apartment
  buildings and I remember sitting at the top,
  dangling my legs, just loving it. I'm attracted
  to all forms of danger." Johnson 1995)
• Johnson, Brian D. Sex and the Sacred Girl Film
  Director Patricia Rozema. Maclean's 108
  (05-08-1995) 93-96.
• ( Flight as a major motif in her work.)

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Rozema on the City (2) architecture as an art
form

• The Royal Bank Plaza. A modern cathedral, a
  marvel of sculpted form. It's windows have been
  coated with a small amount of gold leaf, it's
  different from every angle and yet it is unified.
  I'm sure lots of what goes on in there is less
  than holy but the structure can claim, I
  believe, a little bit of the divine.

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Rozema on the City (3) its multiple lives

• As much as I try to give importance to "place" in
  this article, it is the deeds that make a temple
  sacred or not. The halls, the streets, the
  condos and the palaces will always be filled with
  women, men, and children and their miseries,
  rebirths, half-dreams and dreams,shared love,
  wasted love, echoes and footsteps of the dead and
  half-dead, and sometimes brief, unbearably sweet
  smiles. It is all our pathetic little attempts
  at generosity, heroism and holiness that define
  us. In our fictions, as in our lives, it is the
  concrete steps towards or away from our ideals
  that say who and what we are. (A Place in the
  Sun )

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Rozema on the City (4) her flaneurial observation

• Flâneur strolling, anonymously, on the street,
  in the crowd and observing fast-changing scene
  around him.
• Visual organization and/or physical embodiment of
  urban modernism from artistic observation to
  commodified existence (e.g. window-shopper).
• Artist-Flâneuse the very boundary-lessness of
  the metropolis gives her. . . an impulse to see
  beyond the limits of the self, to occupy
  imaginative positions other than her own.
  Introduction Women Writing the City. Heron,
  Liz, ed. City Women.

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Rozema on the City (4) her flaneurial observation

• Rozema 1. Multiple, De-centering
• 2?Re-creation of the architecture from without
• The system of architecture from within is
  characterized by an idealistic logic that can
  assume neither contradiction nor negation and
  therefore its based upon the suppression of
  either one of two opposite terms. This is best
  represented by the consistent repression of
  women. Woman is excluded. . . .
• It is in that outside that she stands. It
  is from that outside that she can project better
  than anyone the critical look. (Diane Agrest
  366)

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Rozemas City Vision e.g. White Room image of
the city as a commercial system

• White Room????????

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White Room dangerous for women ????????????

• 1. 3.
• 2.
• 4. ???????????

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Six GesturesMultiple perspective on Bach

• ????

• ?????

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Six Gesturesmultiple perspectives of the truck
drivers and graffiti

• Some artists complete an era some artists begin
  the next

• The six suite was the first work thats ever
  written for the cello.
• Ya, but you know theres no record of this cello
  suites ever having been performed.

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Six Gestures ?Re-Creation of architecture from
without ???????

• 1?(Bach in Cöthen,
• serving his patron,
• Prince Leopold)
• ?????????
• (????,????)

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Six Gesture ????? ??

• ????? (our little polite and dutiful dances)

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Rozema???)???????????????3)

• ?/???????? ??????)

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V. Conclusion (I) City Vision

1. A city is a space with multiple texts and
   multiple possibilities of viewing/writing and
   being gazed at/written.
2. A flâneur--as one wanders leisurely on the
   street-- can be a shopper or an Internet surfer.
3. But an artist/an intellectual as a flâneur
   organizes and make sense of the fragmentary
   images s/he gets from walking and looking at a
   city.

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V. Conclusion (II) the Film

• A. Reality V.S. Fantasy (The latter, though
  imaginary, can help empower the weak to bring
  changes to reality.)
• B. Process of self-assertion (real changes in
  reality)
• C. Are the images of the lesbian positive or
  not? e.g. Gs use of Mary Pollys peeping
  desire

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Reference

• A Place in the Sun http//www.patriciarozema.com/
  a_place_in_the_sun.htm