does anybody yet recall danish director lars von trier's dogme95 jawn?
if not, here's a quickie overview of the dogme filmmaking movement, as well a nice primer on the dogme mission. i saw the first few of the dogme movies, and it was clear to me that it had been a "worthwhile" experiment - in that it created some really good films and told some really good stories.
people bristle at "limitations". particularly, it seems, voluntary ones. often, people see "limits" as vacancies (or worse, perceive them to be presented as "virtues" by those practicing them). but a rule to "use no additional or effect lighting" in a film is a decision to use natural lighting. it's not an absence, it's a presence. it's not a rubicon, but a way to look at new options.
also, it usually is a tacit expression of the fact that whatever one is turning one's back on is not complete anathema to the person shunning or questioning its use. it's something that tempted that person, or something that person did embrace at one time. what do you think it was that got f. scott fitzgerald in the position to claim, "I only wanted absolute quiet to think out... why I had become identified with the objects of my horror or compassion." ?
when i stopped buying yarn, it was because i was overwhelmed with the commercialism of it. at the time that i became overwhelmed with the commercialism of the handknitting industry, i had been participating within it.
i don't think that new "movements" are necessarily intended to be subject to the law of diminishing returns, in the way that the first hit single released from a pop album is almost invariably better than the third and fourth singles, if they even present themselves. truly, i think that in most cases, people willing to subject their work to such experiments want the next generation of experimenting, whether enacted by themselves or by others, to move things yet again forward - and forward means somewhere new, or with new understanding of something old. but it all does begin with one fumbling, semi-blind step. who would you rather be - the one taking the step, or the one standing over to the side saying "well smartypants! it's not so PERFECT, is it, doing it your way! look at the problem you're having! you didn't think of that, did you?"
i ask "which would you rather be?" as a rhetorical question, but clearly, it has two answers, both of which have active camps, although i suppose one side is more easy with admitting it than the other.
here is a question that i hope is not rhetorical: what do you end up with if, as a knitter, you - as stated in the tenets of dogme95 -"refrain from personal taste" in your knitting, or create a set of rules for it that denies the use of certain materials or the ways you might gain those materials?
one of the first things that would happen is that someone, somewhere, would bluster, "well then what's the point?" of course, the presence of that voice is a good thing, because it gives everybody the luxury of not having to lift a finger to figure out who lacks so much imagination and vision that they can't even see what is left. folks like that identify themselves quickly. they will ask questions as though they are rhetorical questions. "well why not just knit invisible things? well why not just knit with spaghetti? well why not just stop knitting?"
there also seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that, if someone says they are going to do a thing a certain way, or within a certain set of rules, that someone finds it clever to suggest that if the little knitting bodhisattva may as well just throw out the baby with the bathwater. "well if you're going to do it this way, and hope to make a difference, why don't you just do it this (exponentially radical) way?"
in the process of our impending adoption, i have heard story that has really stuck with me: a caucasian mother was in the grocery store with her cambodian-born daughter, and was approached by a pregnant, caucasian woman, who asked "why didn't you just adopt a needy child from your own country?" to which the mother replied, "why didn't you?"
i can certaintly argue that lars von trier did not entirely "refrain from personal taste" by his adherence to the dogme "VOW OF CHASTITY", since he invented the vow. but nor do i tolerate the attitude that "if a person says they're going to do A, i'll just suggest that A is meaningless unless they also do B, and then they will hopefully feel foolish and overwhelmed enough to just go back to what everybody is 'supposed' to do - and this stringency shall not even begin to apply to any of my choices, which invite no scrutiny and therefore do not necessarily beg admiration."
nobody else gets to tell anybody else "in for a penny, in for a pound." we may wonder why people do things a certain way, and may ask questions - because we are curious or because we want to be a bigger part of the action ourselves - but those questions are entirely different from the ones just meant to scare or shame people into quiet. it's important to be able to hear the difference.
it would have seemed certain to some that a filmmaker who abided by the dogme "VOW OF CHASTITY" was, perhaps, not interested in making a movie at all. but those films were not accidents. they weren't even reductive. they had new, and valid, concentrations of effort applied to them, and it showed in the finished work. lars von trier applied his "personal taste" to each of those movies by creating the dogme95 movement itself. and, if upon announcing his intentions, anyone had asked him smartly, "what's the point of making a movie if you can't use the artistry of props, sets or additional lighting, or additional sound or music, or the beauty of black-and-white film, and you have to use a hand-held camera? what's the point of a bunch of arbitrary restrictions like that?" lars von trier or any of his coterie would have had an answer.
so much for rhetorical questions.
what would the answers be if the same questions were put to knitting? and what would the restrictions be if the same practice was put to knitting?
because i have to admit, i believe in something i've never seen, when it comes to knitting; something utterly pure and beyond what i know. it has practical applications and beautiful ones; something organic, but which requires all the finesse of human intelligence. it's something i can almost see, like a double-exposure on a snapshot, or a bonebreak in an x-ray. but it's not something i can quite get at yet, although i'm trying to find it.