La Strada, ending scene:
So, I am all for buying that Fellini's Zampano is not represented or alluded to in House of Leaves, but that the Zampano is in Danielewski's work is the same as in La Strada. They do have a great deal of similarities in personality as discussed in the article given in class, but also I just can't find a good reason for it not to be the same person (I say person and not character because prefer to lend Danielewski's work more realness than other books for the reason that it so questions and acknowledges its own layers of falsity). For a book presented by a "real" man, compiled by a (fictional?) mad young man, the work written by a (fictional? imagined by fictional character? = fiction X 2) blind man about a film he "saw" about another man (fictional? or is it fiction X 2?), the use of a dichotomy of real and unreal is a complete oversimplification. With all of these layers, I find it much more interesting to simply "just go with it" (quote not to be ironic just quoting).
While I can understand that interpretation, I much prefer to conclude that Johnny has not invented Zampano and additionally that Zampano (or Johnny)has not invented the Navidson Record. As my copy's personal author, that is how I author it. The strange parallels, slip ups, and-oh- the blind man describing a film, doesn't mean it all can't be real within the book. To me, that is much more interesting than one man having psychotic delusions of his deteriorating self. It's a little too M. Night Shyamalan to me.
The article states that if Zampano is the same in La Strada as in House of Leaves that we must automatically assume that all of Johnny's narrative is imagined- "even in the sense of the imaginary 'real' posited in most works of fiction." My response is: What? and No. First off if we are going to work off the fact that there is already a "real" in the fictional realm that that should be enough to solve the argument. Why is it that the real of the book cannot be connected to the real of other pieces? Zampano being shown in a different work does not detract from his reality in Danielewski's work because it is all the same level of real.
Finally, I posted the last scene because besides being an incredible moment, if you watch from 45 seconds in to around 1:25, Zampano looks blind. When he is looking down, the angle and tiredness in his face, make his eyes look like hollows and then when you can see his eyes they look dead as though they are seeing nothing. He raises his head and stares at the sky (presumably just a large blackness) and the sight comes back to him, his eyes travel and he collapses clawing at the sand.
To end on a funny note: La Strada was made into a musical which premiered on Broadway in 1969. It closed after one performance. thank the gods.
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Not only does he look like he's going blind, but think about the reasons here: he's crying because Gelsomina is dead, and he let her die, when she might be the only person in the world willing to love him. This feels so much like so many of the issues of abandonment in the book, Navidson and Delial, Karen and Navy, Tom and Navy. Even Johnny and Pelafina: Johnny is the only person who can save his mother (at least in her eyes), the only person who can possibly be able to get her out of the whalestoe, yet she was the one who tried to kill him. And in turn, does Johnny abandon her? What are the implications? At any rate, I feel like there are plenty of parallels between the relationships in the book and the relationships in the movie. i think this is the only zampano.
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