KINO SLANG: May 2025

Citizens:

Care for us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich; and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear us.

Menenius (friend to noble Roman Coriolanus):

Either you must

Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,

Or be accus'd of folly. I shall tell you

A pretty tale: it may be you have heard it;

But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture

To stale't a little more.

Citizens:

Well, I'll hear it, sir: yet you must not think to fob-off our disgrace with a tale: but, an't please you, deliver.

Menenius:

There was a time when all the body's members

Rebell'd against the belly; thus accus'd it:––

That only like a gulf did remain

I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive,

Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

Like labour with the rest; where the other

instruments

Did see and hear, devise instruct, walk, feel,

And, mutually participate, did minister

Unto the appetite and affection common

Of the whole body. The belly answered, ––

Citizens:

Well, sir what answer made the belly?

Menenius:

Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,

Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus

For, look you, I may make the belly smile

As well as speak—it tauntingly replied

To the discontented members, the mutinous

parts

That envied his receipt; even so most fitly

As you malign our senators for that

They are not such as you.

Citizens:

Your belly's answer? What!

The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye,

The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,

Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter.

With other muniments and petty helps

In this our fabric, if that they, —

Menenius:

What then?

'Fore me, this fellow speaks!

What then? what then?

Citizens:
Should by the cormorant belly be restrain'd

Who is the sink o' the body,—

Menenius:

Well, what then?

Citizens:

The former agents, if they did complain,

What could the belly answer?

Menenius:

I will tell you;

If you'll bestow a small,––

of what you have little,—

Patience awhile, you'll hear the belly's answer.

Citizen:

Ye're long about it.

Menenius:

Note me this, good friend;

Your most grave belly was deliberate,

Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer'd:

'True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he,

'That I receive the general food at first,

Which you do live upon; and fit it is,

Because I am the store-house and the shop

Of the whole body: but, if you do remember,

I send it through the rivers of your blood,

Even to the court, the heart, –– to the seat o' the brain;

And, through the cranks and offices of man,

The strongest nerves and small inferior veins

From me receive that natural competency

Whereby they live: and though that all at once,

You, my good friends,'—this says the belly,––

mark me, ––

Citizen:

Ay, sir; well, well.

Menenius:

'Though all at once cannot

See what I do deliver out to each,

Yet I can make my audit up, that all

From me do back receive the flour of all,

And leave me but the bran.' What say you to't?

Citizens:

It was an answer: how apply you this?

Menenius:

The senators of Rome are this good belly,

And you the mutinous members; for examine

Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly

Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find

No public benefit which you receive

But it proceeds or comes from them to you

And no way from yourselves.

What do you think,

You, the great toe of this assembly?

Citizens:

I the great toe! why the great toe?

Menenius:

For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest

Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost:

Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,

Lead'st first to win some vantage.

But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs:

Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;

The one side must have bale.

AMERICAN TEETH

Bramkamp: The acting of the American Christine Whittlesey is especially interesting as an enlargement on how you're working with gestures and expressive means. This irradiates also backwards and opens another possibility to perceive your earlier films. Regarding the end of PARIS, TEXAS, you once critically remarked that Nastassja Kinski far too often played with her hair....

Straub: Like this (gestures, shoving his hair back repeatedly), she's doing this 10 times...

Bramkamp: You only said that: Something is wrong. It seems to me that the acting of Christine Whittlesey is near to this question of mimetic repetitions. She fully opens her eyes, closes them, and lets a smile follow. Then she repeats this sequence almost like a ballet. Until one recognizes: there is a rule to this mimic. But at the same time she's playing with the features of American expressivity. Now something strange is happening: when this mimicking goes together with the music and her simultaneous singing in front of the camera.

Straub: These are repetitions which are structured and not happening arbitrarily. Precisely as she's American we reached this. And that's why we tried it. We wouldn't have tried it with a European vocalist.

Bramkamp: Because she already had the training?

Straub: (Nods). And as, for example, she likes so much showing her teeth. That's how we always bantered with her. During the work we told her "Now here you wouldn't show your teeth all the time. But only here, and there," and so on. Now when are walking in the street and we see (certain) women in their cars, I'm always saying to Danièle: "Again! Another one who likes so much showing her teeth..."

(Interview)