A bag of thoughts on Eames

After watching the selected Eames films in class, I now have a rekindled love for the childish notion of plain and simple entertainment. Objects stripped down to its core and purely enjoyed for what it is, not what it is trying to be. Blacktop, Kaleidoscope Jazz Chair, and Toccata for Toy Train all demonstrated, to me, the primitive and childish nature of viewing, and how that can be replicated in film. Eames, through his distortions of perspective and scale, replicated the eye level of a curious child, and forced all of us to partake in that childish stage of discovery. These short films are not childish for their immaturity or amateur-like productions, but they are in that they are able to bring the viewer into a naïve and basic mindset. The viewer is not caught up in decoding an overcrowding of symbolism (like The Fountainhead) or plot, but engaged in a kind of pure visual pleasure that eradicates all preconceived notions of what a film should do. We come to these films expecting something, but we forget that very quickly. Somehow each one of these short films resonate a childhood memory in my mind, bringing me back to the distant thing of childhood play.

Beginning with Blacktop, the sometimes chirpy and sometimes moody music of inconsistency reflected the spontaneous mind of a child. The mindset of seeing what you see and taking it as purely a subject in itself. The first minute into watching this short film, I was in a critical distance and kept on expecting something alive, something more interesting to come up. As the music moved, I expected the camera to come up and reveal the man behind the cleaning or perhaps some children on the playground. None of these happened, so I ceased expecting and begun viewing it as purely what it was. Throughout the film I found myself trying to decipher shapes, animals and figures out of the moving foam and water. Like a Jackson Pollock painting, the meaninglessness of the substance came to life and amused me more than real figures and shapes could have. This moving substance of water and foam came to life and had a different story in every edit: the body of water as an ocean-like matter, a snake crawling through the playground, an iceberg moving swiftly… The whole experience of this film made me think of bubble bath times as a kid. The nostalgia of spending hours in the bath making things out of the foam and creating small narratives with each manipulated bubble.

The other two films had similar effects on me. Kaleidoscope Jazz Chair embodied the experience of curious child and kaleidoscope. This short film sounds and looks like a 80s kids show. Its repetitiveness is not boring at all; in fact, the colours, shapes and objects mesmerize us. Eames, using the ‘bossy’ music, kept us interested. We were forced to fascinate over something so trivial and simple.

Toccata for Toy Train was probably the most obvious example of a child-like short film. The instant those toy trains shot out of the tunnels, with the slow but didactic narration, I thought I was watching Thomas the Tank Engine. The narration is teaching the adult about processes of replication, the meaning of toy trains and the progress society has made in producing for cheap replications with a deceptive exterior. The movement of the trains, with the matching of rhythmic music, bring to life these objects. We are watching a lively town, a cheery day of transportation and the business of life.

Overall, the short films of Eames are visual pleasures for the adult. It makes the trivial exciting, and all is done without any form of digital editing.

Another thing, I found this ridiculous version of Blacktop on Youtube. This video used the short film as a music video for a soppy love song. Watching it made me realise how significant Eames’ music was to my experience.