Showtime: All That Jazz

Showtime: All That Jazz

Or perhaps you’re not into Star Wars. You might not have seen it at an impressionable age, or it didn’t affect you—or it did, but you’ve since outgrow...

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Or perhaps you’re not into Star Wars. You might not have seen it at an impressionable age, or it didn’t affect you—or it did, but you’ve since outgrown it. Even so, the appeal of Star Wars can be easily understood. At its best, the films pit a small group of plucky, funny, likeable misfits against a whole evil empire. Technically, it’s very accomplished film making: the scale is spectacular, the effects second to none. But the soaring music underlines what really makes Star Wars effective: its raw appeal to our emotions. Our heroes suffer and we feel it, but we also share in their ultimate victory. For those of us deeply affected by Star Wars, especially when young, the Identities exhibition is an emotional experience. Standing among original props and costumes, the wildly imaginative fiction becomes tangible, real. Given the low lighting, this is hallowed ground. An impressive wealth of material is on display, the design sketches and maquettes revealing paths nearly taken, or explaining in stages why Jar Jar Binks seemed a good idea. The original 2012 version of the exhibition has been supplemented with items from The Force Awakens (2015), but not from Rogue One (2016). The exhibition culminates in a face-tomask encounter with evil Darth Vader, complete with heavy breathing. Turn your back on him and you can watch other visitors step into the room and their mouths drop open. But what about the character you’re building? At regular intervals, you’re asked to make choices from a given selection. You choose the species, occupation, personality, and outlook of your new character, and at the end of the exhibition the resulting creation is emailed to you: a picture with a text biography, fleshing out your choices. A 400-word legal disclaimer explains how you’re licensed to enjoy what you’ve made. The whole exhibition is framed around this idea. “The construction of our identities starts the moment we are conceived”, proclaims the first text panel. “Our unique genetic makeup [sic] interacts with the family and cultural environment into which we are born, giving us a kind of start-up [sic] package for our journey towards identity. Though we have little control over these ingredients, their influence on the person we are becoming is significant.”

2012 Lucas Film Ltd & TM

Insight

The exhibition blends Star Wars with psychology—using science fiction to explore real science. Yet I found myself uneasy the moment I saw this first text. It’s accompanied by a huge picture of young Anakin Skywalker, the boy who grows up to be Darth Vader. The claim, that “we have little control over these ingredients” that make us who we are, suggests Anakin never had much of a choice. At the end of the exhibition, we choose whether our character will be good or evil. But apart from our emailed biography, there’s no consequence to our choice. We establish a character, but not what that means. Perhaps this is taking a fun exhibition of props from a series of popular films a bit seriously. But the exhibition is very serious, lacking the irreverent humour that’s fundamental to the best of the films. Furthermore, the exhibition doesn’t discuss how much of a formative influence Star Wars had on people watching, or why it would have such an effect. Despite the thrill of seeing the artefacts on display, Star Wars Identities doesn’t appeal to our hearts.

STAR WARS Identities— The Exhibition O2, London, UK, until September 3, 2017 For more on the exhibit see www.starwarsidentities.com

Simon Guerrier

Movies of the Mind Showtime: All That Jazz “I drink too much, I smoke too much, I take pills too much, I work too much, I girl around too much, I everything too much”, the choreographer Bob Fosse once told a friend. In his 1979 film All That Jazz, co-written with Robert Alan Arthur, he expanded on that thumbnail sketch, showing us what Fosse knew about Fosse. As autobiographies go, it’s as brutal and unsparing as the open heart surgery it famously depicts. www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 4 August 2017

Fosse’s alter-ego in All That Jazz is Joe Gideon, played by Roy Scheider. Gideon is a director and choreographer struggling simultaneously to finish the edit of a film and rehearse a new stage show. He hurries from mornings in the edit suite to afternoons in sweaty rehearsal rooms, fuelled by tobacco, alcohol, Dexedrine, and a work ethic so intense it shades into addiction. This scenario directly reflects Fosse’s own, intensely stressful, experience of cutting Lenny

All That Jazz Directed by Bob Fosse, 1979 Running time: 123 mins

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Insight

Twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Pictures

(1974), while staging the musical Chicago, which opened on Broadway in 1975. The situation gave Fosse a heart attack and it gives Joe Gideon one too. Fosse survived his, eventually dying of a second heart attack in the arms of first wife Gwen Verdon on a Washington sidewalk in 1987, but Joe Gideon isn’t so lucky. That’s where the gap creeps in between Fosse and Gideon. All That Jazz is the work of a man—post-heart attack Fosse—powerfully engaged with the prospect of his own death, even if it means talking about painful things. For his alter-ego Joe Gideon, the wisdom of Fosse’s hindsight is necessarily unavailable. Gideon is so busy he scarcely has time to spend with his daughter. We see his morning routine: music, eyedrops, Alka Seltzer, Dexedrine, shower, then “it’s showtime”! He has an ex-wife who knows where all the bodies are buried, a disappointed girlfriend, a succession of one-night stands picked up at auditions. Show business is ruthless and dirty: when Gideon is hospitalised, his backers calculate the insurance benefits his death might bring them. Yet Gideon, too, finds it hard not to exploit his power: he crushes a dancer’s hopes of stardom and vulnerable as she is, she still offers to sleep with him. He doesn’t say no. It’s often pointed out that All That Jazz, with its dream sequences, jump cuts and free-flowing approach to the

passage of time is influenced by Federico Fellini’s 8½. That certainly feels true, but 8½ is a more gentle, funnier movie by far. There’s a sense of Fellini shrugging at himself, smiling wryly, saying “what can you do”? All That Jazz, in comparison, offers very few laughs. Fosse’s biographer Sam Wasson told Vanity Fair that the director “got clobbered by sex too young”, suffering abuse at the hands of some dancers in one of the Chicago burlesque clubs where he worked as a 13-year-old. The scene in All That Jazz in which this is depicted is fleeting, but it feels central to what the director wants to tell us about himself. Fosse, says Wasson, “made movies about corruption”—corrupt Nixon-era America: yes; corrupt show business: certainly; but All That Jazz gives us corrupt Fosse too. So excoriating is the director’s vision of his own shortcomings that he can never quite show us why the people around Joe Gideon love him. Beyond a pair of touching scenes where Gideon dances with his daughter, and his daughter and girlfriend dance for him, this is a portrait of a man at a loss to say why he is loved. All That Jazz is a dazzling, virtuoso film, but at times its cold self-hatred is enough to make you turn away.

Laura Thomas

Essay A history of the ward in 10½ objects Curated 2016 Radiant Art Studios/Science Photo Library

The first time I was admitted to a psychiatric unit my preconceptions were challenged. It was not scary, or at least not most of the time. It was, however, boring, something I hadn’t really expected, and above all, it was odd. Experiences that staff and more seasoned patients took for granted were to me surprising, even bizarre, catching my attention and making me a participant observer of my own care. Here I have curated several objects representing the closed environment of the ward. This essay is based on various encounters that I have had. Details of individuals and institutions have been combined, altered, and anonymised out of respect for patient privacy.

1. Store receipt (till roll paper, print)

During a fitful, miserable sleep a scrap of paper has been pushed under your door, with a message scrawled on the back in what looks like eyeliner. “Dear Charlotte, I hope you are OK. Me and Aiesha missed you at lunch, we had cottage pie. Do you want to watch TV with us later? Love, Donna.” You are thrilled by this proof of your day-old friendships. The female patients have cared for and nurtured you through your first night and you feel passionately affectionate towards 592

them. This might seem unhealthy, but other people just wouldn’t understand. Hospital is a type of friendship glue. When people ask about the ward, you will tell them the truth: it is 20% hospital, 50% prison, and 30% boarding school.

2. Drug chart (light card, black biro)

You have to learn that the drug chart is always right. No matter how wrong it is, it is right. Even if you’ve managed medications your whole life, counting and cutting and filling up boxes, if you and the chart disagree, the chart is seen to speak the truth. “Quetiapine!” says the nurse, popping out the pills, using the supply you brought in with you. You shake your head. “I don’t take it until eight.” The nurse puts her glasses on and scrutinises the chart. “It says here you take it at evening meds.” “I do take it in the evening, just not this early.” “The doctor says six o’clock. We can’t change the ward routine just for one patient.” “Look. I have been on this drug for five years. You are taking it out of my own box. If I take it now, I’ll be asleep before it’s time for lithium.” The nurse turns to the chart again. “I’m writing here www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Vol 4 August 2017