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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Sep 11, 2014 - 07:31am PT
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Must . see . movie .
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Sep 11, 2014 - 07:42am PT
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Some are known with or without a mention.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:29am PT
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Mick, I liked Bisharat’s essay and admire his writing always. I think he should put sharper edges on this piece though, be bolder and less shaded with his themes. It felt like a draft to me, more musings than positions. I want to hear more why there is so much sadness and disaffection and how a couple of Valley eras might have got it kind of wrong. His personal emphases should take more of a front seat, and show us how.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
sawatch choss
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:48am PT
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Judging from the trailer, it's a big helping of the Standard Wisdom on how rad and antiauthoritarian we all are for being rock climbers.
The truth, as ever, is more complicated. I'm looking forward to seeing it and maybe I can tell you more about that then.
As far as AB's piece: he's never been afraid to question the conventional wisdom and I think he nails an important point; namely, nostalgia is practically hard-wired into our collective unconscious and the film takes full advantage. Me, I'm kinda over it.
Ed: Peter- maybe the sadness is there because everyone recognizes that when one is attempting to emulate, or recapture, some ideal which one already knows to be kind of bogus, the whole deal feels kind of fake. Living one's own dream is so much more meaningful. This is why the [yet unmade] movie about the climbers who didn't fit into this whole every-Stonemaster/monkey-is-the-living-reincarnation-of-Hendrix/Crowley/Ulysses malarkey would be so much more interesting.
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nah000
climber
canuckistan
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:52am PT
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i wasn't drawn to this movie, for one of the main reasons that this review focuses on.
based only on the trailer, it appears as if the movie will be focused on more superficial myth building... [obviously, i may be entirely wrong regarding this]
regarding the valley scene [esp. in the 70's], i'm bored with stories told in this manner.
not because they aren't initially entertaining, but because at a certain point once i understand what was done, the question i'm interested in, is why it was done.
every generation has heroic figures, whose stories are worth telling. but there comes a point in the retelling where learning who these "heroes" were intrinsically and why they did what they did, becomes a more important facet to their stories.
for myself, this is because, stories of heroes that we don't learn more about ourselves from [heroes who don't expose their own inner workings or at least their understanding of those inner workings] become at some point in the retelling, ultimately hollow...
while i think climbers [myself included] like to think that there is a purity to our game, and that somehow our heroes, unlike the fallen and complex heroes of so many other sports, are somehow transcendent, it is more complicated and more interesting than that.
if we don't understand some of their humanity, and a bit of why they did what they did, it becomes just one more superficial and/or false history.
we already have enough superficial/false histories in the world surrounding us, than to indulge in them regarding the arena that so many of us have invested so much in. it seems specifically indulgent at this point in history, where, as a general rule, we need more understanding of our preceding histories and fewer self serving myths.
regardless, bisharat's essay made me want to watch the movie. if nothing else so that i can have a better reference point to understand the arguments he is making.
so thanks, andrew bisharat. that is one of the most thought provoking and elucidating pieces of climbing-centric writing i've read in some time.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:58am PT
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witness the last gasp of the stonemaster legend.
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Bullwinkle
Boulder climber
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Sep 11, 2014 - 09:30am PT
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Legends never Die. . .
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JakeW
Big Wall climber
CA
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Sep 11, 2014 - 10:07am PT
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Nice essay with a variety of perspectives.
History and Legends are always created by the storytellers. The climbing world/valley history is no different. The golden age heroes, stonemasters and stone-monkeys were just the folks that wanted to tell a story or have one told about them. Of course there are other stories that aren't told! But if you want a story told, YOU have to tell it.
This movie is Sender's story, and I bet it will be entertaining and high quality. I bet it will have parts and characters that annoy me too. But i haven't made a movie yet, which is the only valid response to something like this if you want something different...make your own story!
Concerning life in the glorious valley. It hasn't been fair and natural for a long time, but that's because of the path of civilized humanity not because of some microscopic decisions by park service people or climbing media folks.
The world is pretty darn overpopulated. Freedom isn't about being able to lay around smoking weed and doing pullups. Its about having a place on the planet to call home. A place where you can make your own shelter and gather your own food. The nostalgic dirtbag lifestyle is a sort of yearning for this, but a confused one. Let's face it, true freedom would involve way too much work and responsibility for most dirtbags, and not nearly enough unique glory for the modern narcissist.
If what you want is to go to yosemite to climb, laugh with friends, smoke weed, and sleep under the stars...this is easy to do! You just can't cluster like sheep in the meadow, line up with tourists at campgrounds and cafeterias, and think freedom is that feeling of doing something right in front of someone that doesn't like it, and then posting it on facebook.
Really though, I remember reading about the stonemasters when I was a kid, and I got INSPIRED! I didn't know sh#t back then, and their stories helped me realize that despite the oppressive restricting feel of modern culture, FUN CAN BE HAD!
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Sep 11, 2014 - 10:59am PT
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Are Bisharat's criticisms aimed at the movie or are they aimed at the subject of the movie?
"Again, I’m not critiquing the filmmakers but rather building a case that Valley Uprising is more about satisfying our nostalgia for Yosemite in the 1970s than it is about providing an accurate depiction of the evolution of big-wall free climbing."
But that sentence is exactly that, a critique of the filmmakers.
I'm left thinking that Pete and Nick must have done a fantastic job with their movie to have stirred such a plethora of tangled, powerful emotions that sometimes inform, sometimes obscure Bisharat's analysis.
Looking forward to watching it, Friday!
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James
climber
My twin brother's laundry room
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:01am PT
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Jake- nice thoughts
James
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:04am PT
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Luckily for my forgiving movie loving mind, I can simply enjoy the movie for what it is, and the characters I have known from it.
I will be blissfully un-bothered by too many deep philosophical questions.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:09am PT
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Good thinker, god-awful writer.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:10am PT
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Legends never Die. . .
just ask 'em.
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kaholatingtong
Trad climber
Nevada City
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:11am PT
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Good Art is always provocative.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Sep 11, 2014 - 12:05pm PT
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here's a thought:
For a range of climbers of then,
what did they get out of it in the long term - what impact did it make on what they went on to do later?
Of course there will be a variety of answers, and some selection made of which are more interesting or meaningful.
Sometimes supertopo posts have this insight.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 11, 2014 - 12:24pm PT
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what did they get out of it in the long term spl
People do what they do for their own very personal reasons. The great majority survive.
But some don't.
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Sep 11, 2014 - 12:36pm PT
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These guys are our Bruce Lee, our Myth. Our Camelot.
I remember first getting into martial arts, wondering just HOW RAD was Bruce Lee. He was invincible, and with no yardstick to measure against in the modern era (ONE INCH PUNCH!! not really applicable..) the novelty surpassed the depth. Later on I would learn about Rickson Gracie, Kimura, Bas Rutten - only after being 'roped in' by the lore of martial arts, though far from reality.
Climbing is no different. In high school I searched for any climbing video and Dean Potter, John Bachar, Dan Osman - these guys represented the sideshow attraction that hooks laymen. The stonemasters were the outliers, the young kids with amazing accomplishments who smoked grass and said F U to the Man.
Well, those are nice things, but they don't really reflect your climbing accomplishments. Later I would learn about the quieter ones, the Charlie Porters and Todd Skinner and a whole cadre of international climbers who have just as much claim to greatness as the stonemasters - but none of the frosting on top.
For those who lived it, I can understand the nostalgia. For those of us who are looking at a time long ago where we have no measuring stick to accuarately put these feats in perspective, where there ISN'T an easy way to solve "who would win in a fight, King Kong or Godzilla?" - Many climbers can't put the accomplishmetns of the stonemasters into a box of reality and that air of invulnerability and seemingly otherworldly talent is a little island of magic in a world that is static.
I look forward to the film, but I know it isn't for me. It's for the guys at the gym looking at a poster of Caldwell on El Cap as a foreign language, wondering how his 10 foot boulder in the gym is the same, wondering where this all really came from and what pieces of the puzzle he is missing to realize what it is he is taking in as T.C. is a thousand feet off the deck.
Great article, and I agree - the hero worship can get trite. But that's the beauty of good entertainment, reality can get so damn slippery...
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Sep 11, 2014 - 12:54pm PT
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Later I would learn about the quieter ones, the Charlie Porters and Todd Skinner and a whole cadre of international climbers who have just as much claim to greatness as the stonemasters - but none of the frosting on top.
Quieter? Guess you never met Todd!
I'd suggest the the true "quieter ones" as it relates to the Stonemasters would be folks like Tom Gilje, Maria Cranor, Mari Gingery, Mike Lechlinski, Rick Accomazzo, Mike Graham, et al.
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Roots
Mountain climber
Tustin, CA
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Sep 11, 2014 - 12:55pm PT
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I think his perspective is good. Why not question it (movie) a little...or a lot in his case?
Looking forward to seeing the movie!!
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