Who's your daddy?

I recently returned from attending a Frenchy conference on “Alterity and Memory in Cinema and Literature,” where I was surprised not to hear the name Proust come up more often. In fact, it was only on the very last day that two references were made to him and one was from me.

By the way, if we are proustitutes, is Proust our pimp daddy? I think this needs to be clarified...

Okay. Although I had planned to simply listen to the talks, I ended up giving a conference paper at the very last second. A speaker who had planned on speaking about alterity and memory in the cinema of Nanni Moretti failed to show and so I offered, the day before his scheduled time, to give a paper on the exact same topic, having kept a few Moretti movies on my computer and able to retrieve an essay (somewhat dealing with the topic) from my “sent” e-mail folder to a prof back in Scotland... I was randomly sifting through scenes to show from Palombella rossa, the story of a professional water-polo athlete part of the Italian Communist Party who gives a most riveting political speech, has a car accident and gets amnesia. The rest of the movie is his attempt to retrieve his memory (as well as unveil a collective, politically charged “short term” memory). He tries everything: he’s interviewed by a number of people, a sports journalist, a philosopher, Catholic groups; he recounts his dreams, but to no use. Most of the movie takes place in the enormous womb-like pool in which he is competing and in which many flashbacks occur as well.

One scene sticks out more than others and if Proust was already present in an earlier film of his, Sogni d’oro, where he dresses up as Swan(n), in white from head to toe reading A la recherche in a canoe on the lake, in Palombella rossa, one of his dreams exposes Moretti’s obsession with cakes/pastries (he names his Production company “Sacher” after the german chocolate cake; he’s also extremely interested in psychoanalysis: Moretti even plays a psychoanalyst in La stanza del figlio... I think you’d like him Natalie). Back to the scene: billboards of cakes and pastries (their names and pictures) are floating on top of an Olympic pool, each occasionally dipping itself into the tea/pool, an enormous, grotesque representation of the madeleine scene, Moretti’s (parodic) attempt to retrieve his memory.

I know we’ve yet to understand the complexities of Modernism, its “genre” if there even exists one, and that adding postmodernism on top of this is a disaster waiting to happen, but I can’t help but wonder whether or not postmodernism can ever get over parody, satire, pastiche. I mean, I’m always interested in adaptations and transformations of given texts, whether cinematographic, literary, musical, and diachronic dialogues between artists. However, where does the line exist that divides parody from homage? I had the feeling, while presenting this scene, that by means of the grotesque, Moretti agreed with our class that the madeleine scene is not in fact about triggering involuntary memory (although I’m still struggling with this at times) as much as about the work, research (recherche) or quest in the present that goes into reaching knowledge of the self and, in essence, reaching happiness.

After re-reading Jonathan’s post on postmodernism, inverted commas around that scene would be the solution.
Sorry that's so long!

Antonio