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From the Black Death to AIDS: cinematic visions and community in Book of Days.

Article Excerpt
Conceived and directed by Meredith Monk, Book of Days (1988: Tatge/Lasseur Productions and The House Foundation for the Arts) represents "a film about time" (Exploration), notably a cinematic depiction of "today [as] seen through the Middle Ages" (Interview). Filmed both in New York City and in Cordes, a French town reflecting its rich medieval coloring and heritage, Days is set in the 1348-50 age of the Black Death, "a time of upheaval, plague,... and premonitions of spiritual apocalypse" (Exploration). (1) Such a period is juxtaposed in Days with contemporary anxieties--"the possibility of nuclear destruction,... the alienation ... of the individual within the community" (Exploration) (2) as well as "the AIDS pandemic ... and modern genocide" (Harty, Reel 37). Since Monk believes that black and white imagery evokes "a more haunting quality ... a newsreel kind of quality" (Interview), the medieval town sequences are shot in black and white, thereby shaping the idea of the past's alterity. (3) Contemporary settings (usually color photos of New York City residents and streets), however, highlight at once the links and "chasms between the past and the present" (Sheehan 53). At times, the separation between the medieval and the twentieth-century worlds is so tenuous that "words and objects ... drop from one to the other [era], and repetitions or the occasional slight dislocation between what we see and what we hear impart a surreal shimmer to everything" (Jowitt 83).

Furthermore, such planes of time always "overlap as a modern-day (offscreen) voice" (Menell 18) poses questions to the medieval townsfolk "as if the Middle Ages were being recorded by a television-oriented society" (Exploration). (4) Although the twentieth-century interviewers clearly probe the psyches of both "modern inquisitors" (Lynch 43) and medieval figures, the contemporary reporters often pose queries or employ language that bewilders the townspeople (Jowitt 83).

Intercut with the plot of Days, such question-and-answer sessions are valuable, for they provide insights into both the socioeconomic conditions that fuel the Black Death and the psychic tensions that mirror twentieth-century fears. Despite the significance of these interviews, the central narrative thread entwining Days remains the uneasy relationship between Christians and a small Jewish enclave in a medieval walled town, a society reflecting the isolation of modern gated communities. As the film opens, twentieth-century construction workers dynamite a brick wall bridging the medieval and modern worlds. Once the camera scans "several darkened doorways" (Menell 10)--liminal passages to a distant past--what appears suddenly is a fourteenth-century European town peopled with two separate groups, Christians (dressed in white) and Jews (garbed in black). As an overhead camera scans a map of the town, strategic areas (church, market) are delineated along with a Jewish quarter (5) positioned outside the gated walls. (6) While a church bell tolls and the town marketplace bustles with the sounds of commerce, the status of Jews as outsiders resonates with the appearance of mandatory "yellow circles" (James 61) attached to the shoppers' black robes. Foreshadowing the Nazi demand during World War II that Jews wear golden or blue stars of David on their clothing, these "yellow circles" are emblematic of the estrangement of medieval Jews from their fellow Christians. This emphasis on color/shape as difference is formalized when "Innocent III in 1215 decreed the wearing of a badge, usually in the form of a wheel or circular patch of yellow felt, said to represent a piece of money" (Tuchman 112). (7)

That the Jews are singled out for both derision and alienation...

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