Hey! Mister Breton!

Self-portrait: Automatic Writing by André Breton

This is a photo collage by André Breton including images by Man Ray.  Behind the figure of Breton is a picture of a movie actress who was at first thought to be Clara Bow but is now identified as Phyllis Haver, the star of the 1927 silent film version of Chicago. In my imaginary encounter, Phyllis tries to get Breton to explain what she is doing in his self-portrait.

Hey!  Mister!  Whatcha doing?  When you gonna let me out?  Here!  Behind you!  Who are you, anyway?  Wait, I know you.  You’re that French poet aintcha?  André Breton.  Ah, now you hear me.  Well, don’t look at me like that.  I heard of you.  Just cos I was one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties, don’t mean I’m ignorant.  I read.  Not so much as my friend Louise Brooks.  She brought down a curse on Paramount and high-tailed it to Berlin with that old guy, Pabst, who put her in a different kind of movie.  The kind of film intellectuals like you talk about.  But it’s all the same.  In Pandora’s Box, Lulu gets her comeuppance just like Roxie Hart.  That was a hint, see, about who I am.  Oh, not interested, Mister Breton?  No?  Just you keep looking at whoever’s out there and fiddling with the stuff on your table then.

What is all that?  Move over, Mister, so as I can see.  No?  Oh Brother, you know how to ignore a girl!  Why’d you put me here if you planned on ignoring me?  Do I stand for something?  Is it one of those tableaux with a heavy symbolic value?  Cecil was fond of those, Cecil B. DeMille, you heard of him, I’m sure.  Or Dave Griffiths in those awful Biblical epics with elephants and such.  Let’s see.  What could I be?  Louise once tried to explain Freud to me—she read all the time, well all the time she wasn’t taking a new man to bed or working on set—and she might even have mentioned you.  Don’t you do that stuff called surrealism? 

Am I your unconscious, Mister Breton?  You sure as hell wouldn’t interest me in the conscious world.  I can’t stand a man who’s a stuffed shirt like you.  Am I in your dreams?  Is that why I’m behind these bars in your crazy photo picture?  Hey!  Mister!  I’m talking to you.  Oh, I give up.

What a sight you are.  You make me laugh.  So serious!  Wait, I see the table.  I knew you’d have to lean back some time.  What is all that?  Looks like some science stuff.  A microscope, that’s it.  Yes, I was educated.  I took a diploma from the Polytechnic before I got into films and my teacher said Phyllis, what have you been hiding under all that hair?  My hair was longer then, all the girls had long hair till the 1920s.  Blame Clara Bow for that.  Now any movie girl with a bob gets mistaken for Clara, the It girl.  Even me.  But my teacher back in Kansas, he knew I had brains.  Trouble is, brains don’t help a girl.  It’s looks or money you want.  Preferably both.  Louise had the looks, but I’d say for sure she’ll never have the money.  Guys don’t like a girl who behaves like them, having one-night stands and not being ashamed of it. 

I’m gonna marry a millionaire, you’ll see, so I’ll never again have to stand up to my knees in ice-cold sea water for hours just so Mack can pull off a joke about Santa Claus at the seaside.  The things they make us girls do!  Lillian Gish never could see properly after all the sand they blew in her eyes for The Wind. 

But I digress, as John Gilbert would say.  From the glimpse I got, that microscope isn’t there so you can look at a drop of pond water like we did at school.  Looks like there’s some kind of critters coming out of it.  Wait, are those rats?  No.  Strike that.  They’re tiny horses with pointed heads.  That’s got your attention—anteaters, you say?  Boy, are you screwed up!  See, I wondered if it was that story about the soul from Plato of the chariot pulled by black and white horses.  No need to look at me like that—I told you I was educated.  I thought maybe it was just the black horses, meaning you went for the dark side of things.  I don’t have anything on anteaters.  I never even saw one.

Any chance I can come out for a visit, Mister?  If you have a cool drink, I’ll take it.  I can dance if you like.  Looks like you could do with cheering up.  Why so serious?  It’s the folk looking at us, isn’t it?  You have to appear a certain way.  I know how that is.  But why did you choose me, did you see me as Roxy in the film Chicago?  Do you like girls who kill people?  Maybe you do.  Is it because you’re too refined to do the deed?  Well, I never killed anyone, only on the silver screen, so you got the wrong girl here.

Seriously, Mister, when am I getting outa here?  I’ve been representing something or other for a long time now and I got my own life to live.  More movies, for a start.  And I’ve got to find my millionaire before I lose my looks.  Fine for you to age, it’ll only make you look more brainy, but for me, I gotta get a wiggle on.  The movies are a young person’s business unless you’re one of the old guys with money who put up the funds.

Maybe the modern women won’t be so keen to keep me locked up back here.  They won’t care what this picture is meant to mean.  As for what it’s called, I have no clue what automatic writing might be or how a microscope is involved – what’s that? automatic writing is a photograph of thought?  Well, fine, if that makes sense to you.  I’m sure making your poetry all about science makes it seem more respectable.  I once knew a man who pretended to be a doctor so folks would have some respect but when he asked me to undress so he could examine me, I told him where to go.

But I can’t be waiting around here.  We women have got things to do.  Some of us want to make our own mark on the world, even write a little poetry, automatically or not.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Louise wrote something good one day.  I’m gonna have to wait for a smart woman, or a man who listens to what smart women say, to get out of this cramped-up place.  I don’t wanna be your unconscious, Mister, or to decorate your serious picture by being out of place.  I got my life, and it doesn’t involve hanging around helping out a clown like you.

Hey!  You there!  You, looking at me from outside the frame.  Help me get out!  Give a girl a helping hand, wontcha, and get me out of this god-awful picture!