Black and White

I'm writing this sitting on a toilet in a Montreal hotel. No, not a severe case of constipa- tion, but the bathroom is the only place in this room where I can get decent wifi reception.

Back home, the broadband connection is very slow - 128 kbs, which makes the downloading of large files impractical. So whenever I come to Montreal I look forward to many hours of downloading at a less frustrating rate. Lately I have been prowling the Internet Archive site, which makes available many films, recordings and pictures whose age has pushed them into the public domain, so no worry about DRM and copyright laws, which I find particularly baffling.

I have a number of films on my wish list this time around - Murnau's Nosferatu, Melies' Le Voyage dans la Lune, and any of Max Fleischer's Betty Boop cartoons, which I find engrossing. His version of Snow White with Cab Calloway as Koko the Clown is particularly psychedelic, especially the "St James Infirmary Blues" segment.

All of these classics are, of course, in black and white which I find is one of the greatest gulfs in the generation gap between myself and my children. You see, they steadfastly refuse to watch anything not in colour. Any television made before the mid-sixties is immediately switched to something more understandable, such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force, while they believe cinema only began with the invention of Technicolor.

In my way of thinking, this "divide" can be best described as the difference between blatancy and nuance. On one hand, all the information required to understand a particular work of art is provided for them, and viewing becomes a passive "cold" experience. But with black and white in the hands of artists the viewer must interpolate and supply the missing information, drawing them into the narrative, scenery and atmosphere.

Anyways, my butt is getting numb sitting on the toilet seat cover for so long, so I'll get on with my downloads.