Specific Reactions to Cornell & Cocteau Part I.

Rose Hobart

If I were to characterise Rose Hobart as anything, I would suggest that it is a film by Joseph Cornell, about Joseph Cornell.

It has been suggested in class that this film is the first fan video. That Rose Hobart fits into that genre which is, essentially, the re-editing of a film to create an homage to a single character or characters within it, or in fact, the actors that play those characters. It has also been suggested that Cornell is thereby creating a commentary on the institution of the star system in Hollywood. The footage of the film is almost entirely taken up with images of Hobart. It has been given a dream like atmosphere through the use of the blue tinting, the pacing of the editing, the repetition of specific imagery like the volcano, and the strangeness of the jazz soundtrack. It can be concluded from this that the film reflects Cornell’s obsession with Rose Hobart on an unconscious level.

To follow this further towards the issue of the star system, I would suggest that the film offers two ideas. One, it shows that the bulk of a film can be ignored purely on fascination for a single person within it, and two, that that fascination functions on an irrational level of the human psyche.

If Cornell’s aim was to use this social phenomenon of ‘stars’ as his subject for the film, then he has wasted his twenty minutes. Those two insights are not profound. It is the consequences of those insights that are actually of interest for an analysis of the star system. What does it mean for the process of film watching, that we care only for a single actor? How does it determine our understanding of a film to have a known entity (i.e, a star) assuming a role within it, as opposed to a completely new face for each character? And so on.

Instead, it appears that the true interest of Rose Hobart is its attempt to recreate Cornell’s own unconscious fascination with Hobart herself on celluloid. It is an experiment in recreating the unconscious on film.

This is why I don’t like Rose Hobart. It is a work of art that holds absolutely no interest for me. I am not interested in Joseph Cornell’s unconscious. Perhaps if I were stalking a celebrity, it would be easier to relate to. But I am not. Why is that a reasonable objection, you might then ask. It is of interest to someone else, therefore it is valid. Perhaps. But if it is going to be so intellectually restricted; that is, of interest to such a specific group and of no interest to anyone else, it cannot rank highly on my list of good art. It is deliberately obscure. It is deliberately obscure because the unconscious is by nature obscure. Moreover, it has absolutely no intrinsic beauty to it; it is a recutting and recolouring of someone else’s work, with new irritating music added.

The purpose of this class is not to review or place value judgments, I suppose, but as it may be of some incidental use in judging my analysis of the film, I’d give it half a star.