Video Review's of Burroughs & Kerouac

Cats and the Beats

As I watched the first video of “A Junky’s Christmas” I couldn’t help but notice how profound the message is given when presented in film using model clay forms as characters. What stood out at the onset of the film was the cat that jumped out of the closed gift box. This registered as something of importance to Burroughs. After a curiosity trail of questions in search for answers, I found an article that I felt gave me the answer I was looking for. There is no doubt that many of us in class understand Burroughs to be in search for something and pin point it to be either, love, freedom, desire, acceptance, or even a sense of belonging. The article (The Cat Offers Itself) stresses how Burroughs’s “cat fancy” brought him to a form of redemption in his search of love through his feline fetish. He viewed them as a gift, exactly how he portrayed it at the beginning of the film.

The Junky Who Gave it All

In this video, I see Danny the protagonist searching for a fix because of his physical and psychological struggles of withdrawal. He finds himself alone, searching, stumbling across inanimate objects hoping to get an opportunity to make a sale and earn that buck that will bring him closer to the score. The video provides a better understanding by the use of facial expressions the characters are molded to create. What I enjoyed was how the music became the cue for presenting the different emotions and moods that gave meaning to a specific circumstance; thus creating some form of connection with the viewer. For me, the climax of this mini film was when Danny was shown levitating to portray his high. His high was not because he consumed the drug, but because he did a good deed. He felt a form of satisfaction by using the pill the doctor gave him to aid a helpless young boy in excruciating pain. It helped me understand that this junky was not merely consumed with his own desires but actually found satisfaction and relief in caring for someone else in greater need. To actually have a moral to the story was unexpected; this junky had a heart of gold. At the video’s conclusion, there is merriment of feasting with Burroughs surrounded by his beloved guests in a celebration like gathering which I find to be a reflection of Danny’s delight, but of course in a different level.

Pulling My Daisy

 (Pull My Daisy) is a video with a different taste of the beat life. It's a clear take of 

a microcosm of a world inside the apartment. “Early morning in the universe” is the first thing Kerouac says to describe the world inside of the apartment as he narrates the entire mini film. The music used in this video segment captures the essence of the beats as it is arranged throughout. As the camera pans through the apartment showing the elements that make a home and yet are questioned by Ginsberg to the Bishop as being holy. This film captures the beats under a different “light” because they are trying to connect their thoughts through poetry but have no grasp of what to write. Questioning and imagining are a constant. 

As the camera pans, you see a glimpse of the guys on the sofa acting like little boys always talking about writing poems. An outside look from the window is always gloomy and distant. The camera shows at close proximity the laps of two individuals sitting side by side; feeling an awkward stare the girl adjusts the skirt. Then Kerouac says “ignorance is rippling up the latter.” What does he mean by that? Is he talking about the guests or about the beats? Kerouac talks about the things in the apartment as the camera pans through glimpses of the maniacal imagery of “madness” the guys portray in their looks and momentary visual fixtures (not only on each other but with the girls in the room). This film created a birds-eye view of the beat life; adding the jazz beats was a means of inspiration and their curiosity of holiness on the objects surrounding them gave me an understanding that they were trying to expand on their knowledge of life for the poetry they constantly congregated about. This was similarly presented in the way he described his book, leaving the reader or viewer to draw conclusions through their interactions.