"I could've sworn I saw a yellow submarine. But that's not logic now. Is it? It must've been one of them "Unidentified Flying Cupcakes." Or a figment of me imagination. But I don't have an imagination." Ringo, Yellow Submarine, 1968
In the archaeology of counter-culture, this film remains one of the most elegant fusions of the popular and the experimental.
Preview, synopsis, persuasion(?)
A read of the title sequence of one of my current film infatuations.
The dynamic of this animated film depends on the marriage of the visual and the auditory. Think adult swim inside of itunes visualizer based on Aldous Huxley's 1954 essay "Doors of Perception."
On the scene catalog screen, we are introduced to the feel of the film. A yellow submarine seemingly hovers over a background of radiating and bright color-morphing sunbursts. Spatial, ambient sounds intermittently create a still and slightly eerie tone.
After selecting "play" on the DVD, a large, blue cartoon hand sweeps across the bottom portion of the screen from the left and a colorfully attired cartoon man pops into the screen from the bottom right. The tone immediately changes from one of waiting and uncertainty to confusion and chaos.
The film begins with a black screen which reads "Once Upon a Time." A narrator then says, "Or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland," and the black screen gradually dissolves into a petri dish of swimming pastels. The language mirrors the content. The visuals and music are certainly "unearthly."
As the pastels become lighter, they transform into a cloud-covering that soon reveals a colorful landscape. Six cartoon men in tuxedos stand in two groups facing opposite directions. Chimes sound in the background. Then bands of color pour out of their top hats and form a rainbow.
The camera zooms in, through the top hat rainbow, and "Love" appears on the field behind the men. The word is striped in flashing/alternating bands of bright colors. Symphonic music plays.
The scene cuts to green tree tops. Birds striped in small bands of rainbow color perch among the foliage.
The scene cuts again to butterflies dancing among tropical-dream vegetation. A manifesto for the creative spirit.
The narrator says, "Beneath the sea it lay." The camera pans across the sky from a moving kite, to a young boy, to the people of pepperland. A pink and red reptile with yellow teeth chomps his ways across the screen from the left. On his back sits a clown-attired four-legged creature, the green trees with the striped birds and a white logo for "Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band."
The camera pans left to four string musicians playing. The camera pans again to two a piano with two men. Piano music plays in the background. A main picks flowers. A lady plays a harp. Two children dance for a woman in a rocking chair.
The scene cuts to a concert of brass musicians. A crowd sits in folding chairs below the stage.
The scene cuts again and we are introduced to the antagonists of the film, the blue meanies. The meanies resemble blue cotton balls with large claws, blue boots, and black elongated Mickey Mouse ears.
The first character dialogue begins when the chief blue meanie argues with a meanie-pawn. The chief blue meanie says, "we only take no for an answer." This scene's dialogue and the expressive, toothy-faced, swirly-eyed meanies sets up a key feature of the film. How do we interpret the meanies? What do we do with the potential Disney/commercialization/government reference? Do we take the dialoge as serious?
It's completely possible to listen to the words and watch this film without paying careful or questioning attention to the meaning or the plurality of possible interpretations the visual and auditory content potentially holds; however, by this point in the title sequence, the audience is asked to make a choice. Will the film be real or Other this time? The animated nature of the film, similar to metaphor in literature, allows for the author to safely present a message that might not be, if it were more exoteric, within discourse conventions.
Again, adult swim inside itunes visualizer based on Huxley's Doors of Perception. Though different modes, they all contain the possibility for seemingly infinite interpretations, but we are asked to choose whether or not we'll allow our imaginations to look out the periscope of our yellow submarine.
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