[Note: Reeler editor S.T. VanAirsdale is taking the week off, but the blog is in the good hands of trusted friends and colleagues; click here for other entries in the series. James Ponsoldt’s debut feature, Off the Black,” will be released Dec. 1 by THINKFilm. He blogs at MySpace and at OffTheBlack.blogspot.com.]
While in my third-grade art class, Karen–the girl who I thought was my girlfriend, but wasn’t–“accidentally” spilled glue and glitter all over my drawing of a mountain lion squatting on top of a mountain. Our teacher walked over, saw the sparkly mess, and asked, “Trying to make Dadaism?”
Eight-year-old me replied: “What’s Dadaism?”
Exactly.

From MoMA’s Dada exhibit (L-R): Kurt Schwitters, by El Lissitzky, 1924; Entr’acte, by Rene Clair, 1924.
Well, right now (and through Sept. 11), the Museum of Modern Art has a sprawling, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition that tries to answer that question. And this exhibit is a must-see for New York film lovers.
Really? Yes, really.
Born at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich as a reaction to the horrors of World War I, Dada quickly jumped to New York, then found root in four other cities around the world: Paris, Cologne, Berlin and Hanover. An art movement constructed out of nonsense and chaos, claiming to mean nothing, Dadaism managed to use humor to tackle weighty topics of the day, with an emphasis on anti-war messages. Dada thrived only for a short period in the teens and early 1920’s before giving way to surrealism and other art movements. But the effects of Dadaist artists and filmmakers–like Man Ray, Rene Clair, Viking Eggeling, and Hans Richter–still influence today’s filmmakers (whether they’re aware of it or not).
Clearly not an art historian, I sometimes become lost in the art-soup of Dadaism, Surrealism, Modernism, and whatever -ism is currently in fashion. As a fascinated layman, I’ve waded through Tristan Tzara’s Seven Dada Manifestos as well as Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, and while there are certainly differences, it is sometimes tough to say where Dadaism ends and Surrealism begins. As far as it applies to film and popular culture, I’m not sure that it matters. (But I would argue that the silliness and nothingness that Dada brandished as an anti-war tool 90 years ago still has relevance today–especially today, while we find ourselves lodged in the center of a Middle East quagmire.)

It’s easy to watch masterpieces like Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel (co-written by Salvador Dali), El Topo by Alejandro Jodorowsky (right), or Mullholland Drive by David Lynch, and recognize the obvious influence of Surrealist art—they feel like filmed nightmares. Not quite as easy to spot is Dada’s influence—but it’s there if you look closely. Perhaps best used for comic effect, I can’t help but think of Marcel Duchamp’s sense of whimsy when I watch a Marx Brothers film like A Night at the Opera, where many of the funniest lines are utterly ridiculous (“I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.”). The same is true for the jabberwocky of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or anything by the Pythons. Their humor doesn’t always make sense, but that’s OK. These are films where non-sequiturs are abundant, and the refusal to be wrestled down by logic is part of the film’s brilliance.
As the stakes get higher, gallows humor can becomes sublime. For example, wartime always seems like a ripe target: films like Dr. Strangelove, King of Hearts, Three Kings and Wag the Dog are most successful when they’re most absurd. As Oscar Wilde said, “Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about.” Leave it to a director like Stanley Kubrick to deal with the issue of mutually assured destruction by plopping Slim Pickens on a bomb and letting him ride it like a mustang.
And in an age when a quirky screenwriter like Charlie Kaufman appears to have a following that rivals that of many actors and directors, it would seem appropriate to suggest that Dadaism helped give birth to a new kind of weird. With allies like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, Kaufman is able to see his odd, fantastic and sometimes-illogical fantasies come to life on screen.
But before you think that this Dada-is-everywhere suggestion just applies to art/indie films, let me throw out one name: Will Ferrell.
In just two movies–Talladega Nights and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy–Ferrell and co-writer/director Adam McKay have managed to make incredibly successful mainstream films that also happen to have some really strange moments. They just come out of nowhere–suddenly a bear talks to a dog, or a weatherman tosses a trident during a street fight. Sure. Why not? We accept it because, well, we’ve been conditioned by other mainstream comedies featuring Ben Stiller, Mike Myers or Adam Sandler that also happen to be peppered with nonsense. If you don’t believe me, re-watch some of their films–you’ll be surprised by how bizarre they are at times. Babble has virtually become the norm for comedies. In the post-9/11 world, where film audiences have, for the most part, stayed away from direct attempts at addressing the world we live in (United 93 was an excellent film that for most people, apparently, “came too soon”), thoughtful yet silly comedies about adults behaving like children have flourished.

What’s a little rock-flute without flames? Will Ferrell in the contemporary Dada masterpiece Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Yes, perhaps this is far-reaching, but I don’t think it’s possible to limit Dada to its glory years (approximately 1916-1923). Dada casts a long shadow, and has been used, since its beginnings, as a tool not only for picking apart the status quo, but also coping with pain: Nonsense art thrives during wartime. I think Dada was a hugely important counterculture movement that developed into many other counterculture movements. And it’s a far more interesting world for it. Though, as Dada itself was a simultaneous, worldwide movement, connecting the invisible cables through time and ending in a multiplex in Phoenix at a Will Ferrell movie might take a bit of imagination.
Dada wasn’t the first movement to use humor and art to attack necessary targets (political or otherwise), but it certainly had a ton of gusto and flair. And that’s worth something. You should go to MoMA and check out the well-curated exhibition, because there probably won’t be another Dada show like it anywhere for a long, long time. It includes well-known works by Duchamp, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst and Francis Picabia, as well as much more obscure pieces. There’s even a section including landmark short films called Dada on Film (that’s being screened separately through the Department of Film and Media).
And as you finish reading this perhaps-indulgent essay (thank you, by the way), please remember what Dada’s grandfather, Tristan Tzara, said: “Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.”

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