My professor for my Imagining Language class sent us a link to a site by an NYC radio DJ named Kenneth Goldsmith who has recorded himself singing the works of media theorists over music, and I thought it was just too hilarious not to share. If the guy's voice wasn't so awful I could probably learn something from him -- oh, and if I hadn't already taken the time to read most of these works.
I particularly enjoyed his rendition of Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library" and, of course, his musical version of Baudrillard's critique of Disneyland.
I'm not quite sure if my professor thinks this is brilliant or just plain ridiculous. I guess I'll find out in lecture tomorrow.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Benjamin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Benjamin. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The notion of simulacra
The highly-mediated society in which we live finds us constantly surrounded by signs, usually in the form of images which “represent” reality. Baudrillard argues in his essay “The Precession of the Simulacra” that in actuality, this representation of reality is a replacement of reality, for in the process of creating the image reality is completely destroyed, compromised, and in this process the image becomes a simulation, a poor excuse for a substitute of reality. Baudrillard uses some concepts that are similar to Benjamin’s ideas about aura and art in the age of mechanical reproduction, although the similarities end there; Baudrillard is mostly speaking about historiographies whereas Benjamin is speaking about paintings, photographs and film.Let us think about something on a simplistic scale: say, a painting hanging on a wall of flowers in a vase. This image is created with a paintbrush by the hand of a painter, and was most likely a still life based on an actual vase of flowers that at one point in time existed in reality. This image is therefore a reflection of reality since it was based on something similar in the tangible world. At the same time, however, this image also masks or covers up reality, which Baudrillard states “is of the order of maleficence” designed with nothing but trickery in mind (457). Realized and constructed with atoms and particles of paint instead of atoms and particles of flower petals and ceramic pottery, this painted image can therefore be said to be playing with the idea of appearance, masking “the absence of a profound reality” (456); in this phase of the precession of simulacra, the idea of reality has almost completely been forgotten, is suggesting and playing with the idea of appearance, until Baudrillard’s fourth step in the precession becomes realized and ultimately, the image of the flowers has no relation to reality for it is now an iconic image, “it is [now] its own pure simulacrum” (456).
Baudrillard essentially states that the reparation of an historical artifact is merely a restoration of its "visible order"; we cannot, however, restore original mythical intent because it has transferred over into the realm of the unreal, of the simulacrum (459). This concept of visible order and this original intent is quite similar to Benjamin's idea of the aura, which he believes is destroyed in a work of art by its reproduction. One can never replicate the feeling that is created by an original work of art; it is for this reason Baudrillard states "Ramses does not signify anything for us" and he never will, for no one who is alive today ever knew him, nor can anyone ever comprehend his significance fully (459). Only through a recreation, a simulation, of written and oral history can we ever attempt to know the significance or the meaning of a mummy, and for that matter a static, almost mummified work of art. In this case, the simulation of a nostalgia for a past that we as modern day persons can never understand (for even through written or oral history we who never experienced Ramses, never knew Ramses, can never understand his meaning or significance in life) is fairly apparent.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Baudrillard and Benjamin: Media and Experience v. Postmodernity
I found several similarities between Baudrillard's "The Precession of Simulacra" and Benjamin's "The Work of Art..."; at least, I believe them to be similarities. Baudrillard essentially states that the reparation of an artifact is merely a restoration of its "visible order"; we cannot, however, restore original mythical intent (459). This concept of visible order and this original intent is quite similar to Benjamin's idea of the aura, which he believes is destroyed in a work of art by its reproduction. One can never replicate the feeling that is created by an original work of art; it is for this reason Baudrillard states "Ramses does not signify anything for us" and he never will, for no one who is alive today ever knew him, nor can anyone ever comprehend his significance fully (459). Only through a recreation, a simulation, of written and oral history can we ever attempt to know the significance or the meaning of a mummy, and for that matter a static, almost mummified work of art.
Baudrillard also questions what then happens to divinity when there is multiplication of divine icons much like when Benjamin questions what happens to aura (which could be argued to be the equivalence of a kind of divinity, a kind of intangible essence) with reproduction. Is this why Muhammad is not allowed to be turned into icon in the form of a drawing or a likeness in Islamic tradition, because of the fear of the loss of divinity in multiplication and representation? There is a fear in the Islamic religion that visual depictions of the prophet will lead to idolatry, which could also be seen as the worshiping of the simulacra of Muhammad as opposed to the reality of Muhammad.
Baudrillard also questions what then happens to divinity when there is multiplication of divine icons much like when Benjamin questions what happens to aura (which could be argued to be the equivalence of a kind of divinity, a kind of intangible essence) with reproduction. Is this why Muhammad is not allowed to be turned into icon in the form of a drawing or a likeness in Islamic tradition, because of the fear of the loss of divinity in multiplication and representation? There is a fear in the Islamic religion that visual depictions of the prophet will lead to idolatry, which could also be seen as the worshiping of the simulacra of Muhammad as opposed to the reality of Muhammad.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Explain what Walter Benjamin means when he writes that the film camera introduces us to “unconscious optics.”
(Again, I've written a lot on Benjamin. But this is a little bit different than my other posts, also from the same midterm.)
Section XIII of Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” could easily be titled Revelations Of The Camera as it spends much time addressing the nature of the camera to more easily focus on detailed aspects of a performance and an event (this is in comparison to the stage play). According to Benjamin: “by means of this apparatus [of the camera], man can represent his environment” (30) to a more explicit, usually unseen extent through the use of the close-up, slow motion and other technical manipulations of the film, the camera and the lens. Benjamin believes that these manipulations cause a “deepening of apperception” since “behavior items shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely…than those presented on paintings or on the stage” (30) through the use of a close-up of extended duration on an object, for example.
For Benjamin, the close-up on any object functions twofold. Not only does the close-up “extend our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives” (30), it also allows us to acknowledge how truly limited is our field of vision. While the close-up “reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject” (31), the use of slow motion displays certain elements of movement that are not prevalent in the day-to-day routine. Think about Edward Muybridge’s experiment (that ultimately lead to the development of the moving picture) of a horse running on a track: how would one be able to visualize, or even capture, the moment that all four of the legs of the horse leave the ground? (See Figure 1 below)
The nature of the camera to display these unconscious optics exemplifies how mechanical apparatuses allow for the combination of art and science. With devices such as the microscope and the telescope human beings were allowed to peer into different aspects of the human body and the expansive universe respectively and thus became privy to aspects of our selves and our relationship in the cosmos that were before unavailable to the normal human perspective. Much is the same with the film camera: a close-up on a portion of the human body can act much like a microscope in that it reveals details unavailable to the naked eye.
It now becomes a merger of two interests, whereas before the devices for magnified sight were simply used in the scientific field: if one were to focus on the example of one’s calf muscle, for example, Benjamin makes the argument that “it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science” (30). Now that the muscle is being viewed on screen or in a photographic print, its aesthetic qualities are able to shine. This new purpose of representational art is much like the Renaissance painters that Benjamin mentions (see endnote 23) such as da Vinci who used anatomy as a subject in his work, thus merging the fields of science and art. That these two realms have now collided in the media of photography and film represents a major shift in the singularity and isolation of each field of study, a major technological advancement that can be used not just for art’s sake but also for methodical research and experimentation. For Benjamin, the ability of the camera to reveal “unconscious optics” represents “one of the revolutionary functions of the film” (30).
Figure 1: An example of the unconscious optics that photography and film can capture that might otherwise remain unseen.
Section XIII of Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” could easily be titled Revelations Of The Camera as it spends much time addressing the nature of the camera to more easily focus on detailed aspects of a performance and an event (this is in comparison to the stage play). According to Benjamin: “by means of this apparatus [of the camera], man can represent his environment” (30) to a more explicit, usually unseen extent through the use of the close-up, slow motion and other technical manipulations of the film, the camera and the lens. Benjamin believes that these manipulations cause a “deepening of apperception” since “behavior items shown in a movie can be analyzed much more precisely…than those presented on paintings or on the stage” (30) through the use of a close-up of extended duration on an object, for example.
For Benjamin, the close-up on any object functions twofold. Not only does the close-up “extend our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives” (30), it also allows us to acknowledge how truly limited is our field of vision. While the close-up “reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject” (31), the use of slow motion displays certain elements of movement that are not prevalent in the day-to-day routine. Think about Edward Muybridge’s experiment (that ultimately lead to the development of the moving picture) of a horse running on a track: how would one be able to visualize, or even capture, the moment that all four of the legs of the horse leave the ground? (See Figure 1 below)
The nature of the camera to display these unconscious optics exemplifies how mechanical apparatuses allow for the combination of art and science. With devices such as the microscope and the telescope human beings were allowed to peer into different aspects of the human body and the expansive universe respectively and thus became privy to aspects of our selves and our relationship in the cosmos that were before unavailable to the normal human perspective. Much is the same with the film camera: a close-up on a portion of the human body can act much like a microscope in that it reveals details unavailable to the naked eye.
It now becomes a merger of two interests, whereas before the devices for magnified sight were simply used in the scientific field: if one were to focus on the example of one’s calf muscle, for example, Benjamin makes the argument that “it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science” (30). Now that the muscle is being viewed on screen or in a photographic print, its aesthetic qualities are able to shine. This new purpose of representational art is much like the Renaissance painters that Benjamin mentions (see endnote 23) such as da Vinci who used anatomy as a subject in his work, thus merging the fields of science and art. That these two realms have now collided in the media of photography and film represents a major shift in the singularity and isolation of each field of study, a major technological advancement that can be used not just for art’s sake but also for methodical research and experimentation. For Benjamin, the ability of the camera to reveal “unconscious optics” represents “one of the revolutionary functions of the film” (30).
Figure 1: An example of the unconscious optics that photography and film can capture that might otherwise remain unseen.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Mapping the Roads of Education and Influences: An Intellectual Autobiography
As far back as my brain will take me into the history of my educational career, I am able conjure up the memory of sitting at my windowsill in Irvine, California at the age of five with my mother cutting images out of a magazine that start with the letter “K”. There was a kitten (snip snip snip), here was a kangaroo (snip snip snip).
Alright, Katharine: what else can you find that starts with the letter K?
This weekly project was an attempt to enrich our knowledge and comfort level with the alphabet. We kept a small, lined journal in which we could paste these images to keep as a collection and for further personal and educational reference.
Look Mom, there’s a kite! That starts with a K, doesn’t it? (snip snip snip)
What I find compelling about this example of my intellectual history is that my education has literally come full circle back to its onset. Almost twenty years later, during my first week of classes in graduate school at The New School’s Media Studies program, I am asked by my Media Practices: Concepts professor Brian McCormick to cut images of design preferences and prejudices out of a magazine and paste them in a large (albeit unlined) sketchbook to keep as a collection and for further personal and educational reference. Just like when I was in kindergarten, I sat now in my New York bedroom judiciously cutting and pasting images that best represented the assignment at hand. Not since I was five years of age have I been allowed so much creativity and flexibility. While I certainly blame Mrs. Renden, assigner of aforementioned alphabet exercise, for my love of collage, I can also credit The New School for allowing me a forum in which I can express my long-suppressed imagination and creativity in visual arenas.
Somehow, a number of things between the ages of five and twenty-four have guided me to become the thinker, writer, reader, media theory- and analysis-obsessed person I am today. I will now attempt to define, explore, and reflect upon those years in terms of my intellectual, educational, and developmental history, for it is these twenty years that have molded me into the person I am today.
Throughout high school I sincerely thought I would become a theatre actress(1). Actually, that urge and passion began around the same time I was cutting alphabet-themed images out of newspapers. As a result, I took numerous acting, improvisation, dancing and history of theater classes up until my young adulthood when I was completing my general education at Orange Coast College(2). Needless to say as an aspiring actor, I fancied myself somewhat of a movie buff, partly due to my mother and her love for the cinema. Raised on classics ranging from American film noir to the hilarious Mel Brooks to Chaplin to Gene Kelly musicals, it seemed only logical (and, I’ll admit, an easy A) to take a Film as Literature class concurrently with my Intermediate Drama course during my last year in community college.
A cross-referenced class of the Film and English departments, Film as Literature spent 4 hours a week watching and picking apart movies, taking a minimum of eight pages of notes per film, and usually watching each film twice. We watched films ranging from the American The Shining (dir. Kubrick, 1980) to the French The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste, dir. Haneke, 2001). While the text we read focused more on film form and history than theory, stimulating and exciting class discussions made up for lack of textually based analyses(3).
After finishing my Film as Literature course, a basic History of American Cinema course, and a Video Production and editing course I moved on to finish my Film Studies degree at the University of California Santa Barbara. Now that basic math and science requirements were out of the way, here I was able to really focus on what I loved, taking classes as widespread in topics as The War Film, Italian Cinema, Auteur Theory, and Documentary Studies. The required core classes, however, were the place where I really fell in love: we were required to take Film Studies 101 A (invention/conception to 1927), B (sound film to the 1950s) and C (history of New Wave cinemas), as well as two heavy theory courses, one classic and one contemporary (and cultural) based. Deeply fascinated by the work of Eisenstein, Münsterberg, Benjamin, Bazin and Arnheim, I became obsessed with theories surrounding montage, the close-up and direction of attention as well as semiotics, linguistics, and what is not being said when it comes to film and new media. My final extensive paper of my undergraduate career involved an analysis of new media discourse, language (especially internet lingo and “leet” speak) and its effects on societal interactions, a project that marks the shift of my interest from strict film studies to that of media studies.
To extrapolate a bit on why I adore these five writers and theorists, I will attempt to explain Eisenstein’s concepts of montage and why I think it is so important to keep in mind: Eisenstein explicitly states that “cinema is, first and foremost, montage”(4) in several of his writings, and this fact is personified in the films he created(5). Similar to the way that Marshall McLuhan compares film to cubism in his article “The Medium is the Message”, Eisenstein believes that the filmmaking would be nothing without the use of montage, and that a film is not a film without it(6). Think about it: a theatrical play that unfolds before the camera without any change of camera angle, zoom or focus is nothing more than a recorded play; just because this play is being documented on film stock does not make it a film. Editing (and montage), if done well, evokes feelings, implies ideas, and can be the element that makes a film a piece of art. While there are many formal elements that allow film to be a unique narrative form, some could argue that editing sets cinema apart from painting, literature and theater, for it allows for multiple possibilities in continuity and focused spectator attention. Much like the stylistic brushstroke of a painter or the turn of phrase of an author, the unique approach to editing that a filmmaker employs speaks volumes about their narrative and formal style of preference. I think it is important for any filmmaker to keep the ideas of Eisenstein in mind if they plan to produce an effective, strong piece of cinema.
Now that I’ve spoken a bit about one of the theorists I find incredibly important, I will attempt to explain more of my interests in the realm of film and media. Within the field of Media Studies, my interests range from the very general to the fairly specific. While I want my emphasis to remain on film, I want to branch out a bit more than strict analysis and criticism of the cinema. Before I came to The New School, my aspirations were to become a film critic, or at least write about film for a publication in some capacity. This inspired me to begin my blog, which I have been working on for about 6 months, where I now collect everything I write that is related to media or other areas of interest in my life (occasionally sports, politics, personal stories) much like the journal I’ve been keeping for my Practices class(7). Self-archiving and collecting are certainly passions of mine in my personal as well as academic life. I still have aspirations of being a writer (I have loved writing papers, stories and poetry from a very young age), and The New School is a forum where I might learn to do so in a more academic, professional and educated manner.
In a bit more specific realm of interest on which I have yet to take any professional action, I am also passionate about archiving efforts and restoration of damaged and forgotten works of cinema. I blame this on my antiquarian nature. Inspired by an essay read in my History of Silent Film class at UC Santa Barbara, I wrote a paper on actress Cleo Madison in undergrad in which I focused on her virtual erasure from filmic histories, even though she was one of the first female directors in early American cinema and made 14 films during her career(8). Also, the fact that a mere 10% of the thousands of silent films produced before the 1930s remain today is a testament to early sentiments about film as trash and spectaculars, film as a commodity, and film as fleeting. I believe we know better today, and archiving efforts of older filmic works need to be viewed as just equally important to modern day databases.
After brief discussions with my theory professor Paolo Carpignano as well as my academic advisor Rafael Parra, I am interested in possibly performing a research (and maybe my thesis) project around the interweaving of film and new media that is occurring and changing daily. From the integration of You Tube videos in the early primary debates to embedded portions of interviews and discussions within online articles to the accessibility of television, film, and music videos via sites like You Tube and Hulu.com either for free or for a small fee, the internet that was once a literary landscape is now becoming more and more of an oral one. This also extends into personal devices like the cellular phone (BlackBerrys, iPhones) and myriad MP3/DVD players (the iPod Video, the new Fisher Price Kid-Tough® DVD player(9)), but this could constitute an entirely different area of research. Ideas from Marshall McLuhan(10) along with Jack Goody and IanWatt’s writings on orality and literacy in their article “The Consequences of Literacy” have informed my proposed research, and I’m sure that the more I continue to read in my Media Studies: Ideas course the more I will become inspired to incorporate past theories into my modern day quest for answers and analyses.
When I think of my future beyond my Masters degree, I am currently fancying the possibility of a PhD in Media Studies that could someday enable me to be a professor at a University or community college. Some of the people responsible for my shift from Theater to Film Studies were teaching at the community college level, and I would like the chance to give back to eager learners and thinkers and possibly inspire creativity and critical thinking. I think it is essential for young adults to understand the mediated world in which they live, and provide them with ways to successfully navigate through the murky waters of morality, “truthiness” and accuracy. I am also hoping to complete a thesis during my time at The New School, and possibly submit other papers and works to conferences around the world in the hopes of one day being published and recognized.
But for now, in this first semester as a Masters student, I am completely comfortable sitting down in my room with a pair of scissors prepared to cut and paste illustrations of the Gestalt principles and list examples of design prejudices (come on, Ed Hardy, you can’t be serious with that website!(11)) in my highly personalized, and now quite beloved, sketchbook. The bigger ideas will come, and my research ideas will form themselves with each passing week of reading, lectures, and discussions. So here’s to scissors, glue and unbridled creativity!
____________________________
(1)Woodbridge High School in Irvine, CA; 1998-2002.
(2)Costa Mesa, CA; 2002-2005.
(3)Phillips, William H. Film: An Introduction (Second Edition). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.
(4)Eisenstein, Sergei. “Beyond the Shot” from S.M. Eisenstein: Selected Works, Volume I. 1929.
(5)Most notably Battleship Potemkin (1925), especially in the Odessa steps sequence.
(6)McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the Message.” From Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964.
(7)My blog’s title is “You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet!”, which can be found on the web at http://aintheardnothingyet.blogspot.com.
(8)The article that inspired me to write a paper about Ms. Madison: Hastie, Amelie. “Circuits of Memory and History: The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blache” in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002.
(9)Go to www.Fisher-Price.com and search for Kid-Tough DVD Player to see images and product information. This media player is meant for kids as young as 3 years of age.
(10)McLuhan, Marshall. “The medium is the message” from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964.
(11)http://www.donedhardy.com/
Alright, Katharine: what else can you find that starts with the letter K?
This weekly project was an attempt to enrich our knowledge and comfort level with the alphabet. We kept a small, lined journal in which we could paste these images to keep as a collection and for further personal and educational reference.
Look Mom, there’s a kite! That starts with a K, doesn’t it? (snip snip snip)
What I find compelling about this example of my intellectual history is that my education has literally come full circle back to its onset. Almost twenty years later, during my first week of classes in graduate school at The New School’s Media Studies program, I am asked by my Media Practices: Concepts professor Brian McCormick to cut images of design preferences and prejudices out of a magazine and paste them in a large (albeit unlined) sketchbook to keep as a collection and for further personal and educational reference. Just like when I was in kindergarten, I sat now in my New York bedroom judiciously cutting and pasting images that best represented the assignment at hand. Not since I was five years of age have I been allowed so much creativity and flexibility. While I certainly blame Mrs. Renden, assigner of aforementioned alphabet exercise, for my love of collage, I can also credit The New School for allowing me a forum in which I can express my long-suppressed imagination and creativity in visual arenas.
Somehow, a number of things between the ages of five and twenty-four have guided me to become the thinker, writer, reader, media theory- and analysis-obsessed person I am today. I will now attempt to define, explore, and reflect upon those years in terms of my intellectual, educational, and developmental history, for it is these twenty years that have molded me into the person I am today.
Throughout high school I sincerely thought I would become a theatre actress(1). Actually, that urge and passion began around the same time I was cutting alphabet-themed images out of newspapers. As a result, I took numerous acting, improvisation, dancing and history of theater classes up until my young adulthood when I was completing my general education at Orange Coast College(2). Needless to say as an aspiring actor, I fancied myself somewhat of a movie buff, partly due to my mother and her love for the cinema. Raised on classics ranging from American film noir to the hilarious Mel Brooks to Chaplin to Gene Kelly musicals, it seemed only logical (and, I’ll admit, an easy A) to take a Film as Literature class concurrently with my Intermediate Drama course during my last year in community college.
A cross-referenced class of the Film and English departments, Film as Literature spent 4 hours a week watching and picking apart movies, taking a minimum of eight pages of notes per film, and usually watching each film twice. We watched films ranging from the American The Shining (dir. Kubrick, 1980) to the French The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste, dir. Haneke, 2001). While the text we read focused more on film form and history than theory, stimulating and exciting class discussions made up for lack of textually based analyses(3).
After finishing my Film as Literature course, a basic History of American Cinema course, and a Video Production and editing course I moved on to finish my Film Studies degree at the University of California Santa Barbara. Now that basic math and science requirements were out of the way, here I was able to really focus on what I loved, taking classes as widespread in topics as The War Film, Italian Cinema, Auteur Theory, and Documentary Studies. The required core classes, however, were the place where I really fell in love: we were required to take Film Studies 101 A (invention/conception to 1927), B (sound film to the 1950s) and C (history of New Wave cinemas), as well as two heavy theory courses, one classic and one contemporary (and cultural) based. Deeply fascinated by the work of Eisenstein, Münsterberg, Benjamin, Bazin and Arnheim, I became obsessed with theories surrounding montage, the close-up and direction of attention as well as semiotics, linguistics, and what is not being said when it comes to film and new media. My final extensive paper of my undergraduate career involved an analysis of new media discourse, language (especially internet lingo and “leet” speak) and its effects on societal interactions, a project that marks the shift of my interest from strict film studies to that of media studies.
To extrapolate a bit on why I adore these five writers and theorists, I will attempt to explain Eisenstein’s concepts of montage and why I think it is so important to keep in mind: Eisenstein explicitly states that “cinema is, first and foremost, montage”(4) in several of his writings, and this fact is personified in the films he created(5). Similar to the way that Marshall McLuhan compares film to cubism in his article “The Medium is the Message”, Eisenstein believes that the filmmaking would be nothing without the use of montage, and that a film is not a film without it(6). Think about it: a theatrical play that unfolds before the camera without any change of camera angle, zoom or focus is nothing more than a recorded play; just because this play is being documented on film stock does not make it a film. Editing (and montage), if done well, evokes feelings, implies ideas, and can be the element that makes a film a piece of art. While there are many formal elements that allow film to be a unique narrative form, some could argue that editing sets cinema apart from painting, literature and theater, for it allows for multiple possibilities in continuity and focused spectator attention. Much like the stylistic brushstroke of a painter or the turn of phrase of an author, the unique approach to editing that a filmmaker employs speaks volumes about their narrative and formal style of preference. I think it is important for any filmmaker to keep the ideas of Eisenstein in mind if they plan to produce an effective, strong piece of cinema.
Now that I’ve spoken a bit about one of the theorists I find incredibly important, I will attempt to explain more of my interests in the realm of film and media. Within the field of Media Studies, my interests range from the very general to the fairly specific. While I want my emphasis to remain on film, I want to branch out a bit more than strict analysis and criticism of the cinema. Before I came to The New School, my aspirations were to become a film critic, or at least write about film for a publication in some capacity. This inspired me to begin my blog, which I have been working on for about 6 months, where I now collect everything I write that is related to media or other areas of interest in my life (occasionally sports, politics, personal stories) much like the journal I’ve been keeping for my Practices class(7). Self-archiving and collecting are certainly passions of mine in my personal as well as academic life. I still have aspirations of being a writer (I have loved writing papers, stories and poetry from a very young age), and The New School is a forum where I might learn to do so in a more academic, professional and educated manner.
In a bit more specific realm of interest on which I have yet to take any professional action, I am also passionate about archiving efforts and restoration of damaged and forgotten works of cinema. I blame this on my antiquarian nature. Inspired by an essay read in my History of Silent Film class at UC Santa Barbara, I wrote a paper on actress Cleo Madison in undergrad in which I focused on her virtual erasure from filmic histories, even though she was one of the first female directors in early American cinema and made 14 films during her career(8). Also, the fact that a mere 10% of the thousands of silent films produced before the 1930s remain today is a testament to early sentiments about film as trash and spectaculars, film as a commodity, and film as fleeting. I believe we know better today, and archiving efforts of older filmic works need to be viewed as just equally important to modern day databases.
After brief discussions with my theory professor Paolo Carpignano as well as my academic advisor Rafael Parra, I am interested in possibly performing a research (and maybe my thesis) project around the interweaving of film and new media that is occurring and changing daily. From the integration of You Tube videos in the early primary debates to embedded portions of interviews and discussions within online articles to the accessibility of television, film, and music videos via sites like You Tube and Hulu.com either for free or for a small fee, the internet that was once a literary landscape is now becoming more and more of an oral one. This also extends into personal devices like the cellular phone (BlackBerrys, iPhones) and myriad MP3/DVD players (the iPod Video, the new Fisher Price Kid-Tough® DVD player(9)), but this could constitute an entirely different area of research. Ideas from Marshall McLuhan(10) along with Jack Goody and IanWatt’s writings on orality and literacy in their article “The Consequences of Literacy” have informed my proposed research, and I’m sure that the more I continue to read in my Media Studies: Ideas course the more I will become inspired to incorporate past theories into my modern day quest for answers and analyses.
When I think of my future beyond my Masters degree, I am currently fancying the possibility of a PhD in Media Studies that could someday enable me to be a professor at a University or community college. Some of the people responsible for my shift from Theater to Film Studies were teaching at the community college level, and I would like the chance to give back to eager learners and thinkers and possibly inspire creativity and critical thinking. I think it is essential for young adults to understand the mediated world in which they live, and provide them with ways to successfully navigate through the murky waters of morality, “truthiness” and accuracy. I am also hoping to complete a thesis during my time at The New School, and possibly submit other papers and works to conferences around the world in the hopes of one day being published and recognized.
But for now, in this first semester as a Masters student, I am completely comfortable sitting down in my room with a pair of scissors prepared to cut and paste illustrations of the Gestalt principles and list examples of design prejudices (come on, Ed Hardy, you can’t be serious with that website!(11)) in my highly personalized, and now quite beloved, sketchbook. The bigger ideas will come, and my research ideas will form themselves with each passing week of reading, lectures, and discussions. So here’s to scissors, glue and unbridled creativity!
____________________________
(1)Woodbridge High School in Irvine, CA; 1998-2002.
(2)Costa Mesa, CA; 2002-2005.
(3)Phillips, William H. Film: An Introduction (Second Edition). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002.
(4)Eisenstein, Sergei. “Beyond the Shot” from S.M. Eisenstein: Selected Works, Volume I. 1929.
(5)Most notably Battleship Potemkin (1925), especially in the Odessa steps sequence.
(6)McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the Message.” From Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964.
(7)My blog’s title is “You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet!”, which can be found on the web at http://aintheardnothingyet.blogspot.com.
(8)The article that inspired me to write a paper about Ms. Madison: Hastie, Amelie. “Circuits of Memory and History: The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blache” in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002.
(9)Go to www.Fisher-Price.com and search for Kid-Tough DVD Player to see images and product information. This media player is meant for kids as young as 3 years of age.
(10)McLuhan, Marshall. “The medium is the message” from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet, 1964.
(11)http://www.donedhardy.com/
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
A quick comment on aura
Just a quick comment: I wonder how Benjamin would feel about the colorization and digital restoration process that is often applied to old black and white films. If it indeed enhances the look and quality of the film, is there still something lost? But then again, who's to say that digital restoration enhances anything or makes anything better? Sure, it makes films look more like others of today, but isn't there something to be said for maintaining the original quality and essence of the original film stock? Who really wants to see Chaplin in HD? Something of the essence of the film is definitely lost.I didn't think about this before, and was taking film as an unchanging medium, but with more and more restoration software available (ie: Film Fix 1.0, products by DIAMANT) there is a proliferation of old films that have been "enhanced," usually meaning that the colors have become more saturated, the overall look of the film more clear and sharp. Does this cause an addition decrease in the aura that Benjamin speaks of, or is film a medium that contains little aura to begin with?
Sunday, October 5, 2008
More on Benjamin
I find interesting the modern day decline of theater attendance and the rise in popularity and some might say the superiority of watching a filmic performance vs. a live one. This goes into matters surrounding portability, accessibility, potential for reviewing, presentation of a concrete entity, etc. which I do not wish to argue at this time...
Because of the nature of film, an actor's performance is split into episodes, and is thus never a cohesive unit. Scenes can occur in different times and places but be made to look as one time, one place. This is a contrivance of authenticity.
I am taking authenticity as Benjamin utilizes it throughout his work to mean "original intention." In this same way, the Mona Lisa that has been mechanically reproduced and printed on, say, a t-shirt or postcard is not authentic; it is authentically a replication, authentically a t-shirt or a postcard. But it is in no way being presented with the original intention of the image in mind. If da Vinci were to see his image reduced or enlarged to fit on a postcard that will eventually be discarded or a t shirt that will eventually fade and meet the same demise as the postcard, who knows what he would think.
Back to the cinema: while a film is presented as a narrative, it is never filmed as one, with minor exceptions (think of Hitchcock's Rope [1948], but even this has 3 or 4 cuts.) Rope, as with most early films, was originally intended for the stage. One could say that Hitchcock attempted to stick with the authentic version of this script, one that was originally intended to be presented on the stage.
But a story that was writing for the stage, in Benjamin's opinion, should stay on the stage. Moving the theater-intended script into the realm of screenplay, moving on-stage action into the realm of on-camera action is reproducing a piece of art without authenticity because its original intention has been lost. The Odd Couple works great on a stage; translated into film it is not authentically what Neil Simon's original intent was, even though he had a hand in rewriting the play for the screen. I am not saying that a mechanical reproduction that is not "authentic" (that is, used or presented in terms of its original intent) is good or bad, and I don't think Benjamin is either. He is, however, saying that there is a definite loss of aura, a loss of original time and place, and therefore a loss of original intention of the piece of art.
Because of the nature of film, an actor's performance is split into episodes, and is thus never a cohesive unit. Scenes can occur in different times and places but be made to look as one time, one place. This is a contrivance of authenticity.
I am taking authenticity as Benjamin utilizes it throughout his work to mean "original intention." In this same way, the Mona Lisa that has been mechanically reproduced and printed on, say, a t-shirt or postcard is not authentic; it is authentically a replication, authentically a t-shirt or a postcard. But it is in no way being presented with the original intention of the image in mind. If da Vinci were to see his image reduced or enlarged to fit on a postcard that will eventually be discarded or a t shirt that will eventually fade and meet the same demise as the postcard, who knows what he would think.
Back to the cinema: while a film is presented as a narrative, it is never filmed as one, with minor exceptions (think of Hitchcock's Rope [1948], but even this has 3 or 4 cuts.) Rope, as with most early films, was originally intended for the stage. One could say that Hitchcock attempted to stick with the authentic version of this script, one that was originally intended to be presented on the stage.
But a story that was writing for the stage, in Benjamin's opinion, should stay on the stage. Moving the theater-intended script into the realm of screenplay, moving on-stage action into the realm of on-camera action is reproducing a piece of art without authenticity because its original intention has been lost. The Odd Couple works great on a stage; translated into film it is not authentically what Neil Simon's original intent was, even though he had a hand in rewriting the play for the screen. I am not saying that a mechanical reproduction that is not "authentic" (that is, used or presented in terms of its original intent) is good or bad, and I don't think Benjamin is either. He is, however, saying that there is a definite loss of aura, a loss of original time and place, and therefore a loss of original intention of the piece of art.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Walter Benjamin
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
((To read this essay, which I highly recommend to everyone, scroll down to the line that starts with "Our fine arts were developed,..." here. While it's long, it's certainly worth reading. Don't ignore the end notes.))
This text says much on film, actors, the apparatus of the camera, spectatorship and the politics of evolving art. I'm very exciting to be rereading Benjamin, especially since most of what he has to say relates directly to film. In order to get a better understanding of Benjamin's overall message I went through and attempted to title each of the sections for the sake of extracting his many ideas. Here is what I came up with:
I - Reproduction
II - Time and Space
III - Changes in History and Nature
IV - Ritual, and Purity
V - Cult Value vs. Exhibition Value
VI - Aura
VII - Is Film Art?
VIII - Identification with the Apparatus
IX - The Actor as a Shadow
X - The Cult of the 'Captured'
XI - Detachment, The Surgeon vs. the Magician
XII - Collective Experience
XIII - The Camera's Revelations
XIV - Dadaism, and Shock Effect
XV - Distraction, Architecture
(These titles help me organize the essay into segments)
While his thesis is centrally surrounded by the concept of the changing nature of "the politics of art" (19) in times of technological development, these fifteen subsections can very well function as his other central themes.
The question Is film art?, however, comes up several times throughout the piece. Benjamin quotes Duhamel both in the main text and in the end notes. Duhamel says of film: "[it is] a past time for helots...a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence" (32). On the other hand, Benjamin calls Duhamel "[a man] who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance" (32). Benjamin stands up for film as art throughout this entire piece while also going on to say more; Benjamin recognizes the things that the camera opens to us are far greater than those things available to the human eye. He believes that mechanically reproduced work can be art with photography and film, and it redefines art. In the endnotes Benjamin extrapolates on the idea that "the boldness of the cameraman is indeed comparable to that of the surgeon," (39) recognizing the artistry, the nibble hand work, and the intricacies involved in the making of a motion picture.
I can't wait to explore the concept of the aura further in a future post...
((To read this essay, which I highly recommend to everyone, scroll down to the line that starts with "Our fine arts were developed,..." here. While it's long, it's certainly worth reading. Don't ignore the end notes.))
This text says much on film, actors, the apparatus of the camera, spectatorship and the politics of evolving art. I'm very exciting to be rereading Benjamin, especially since most of what he has to say relates directly to film. In order to get a better understanding of Benjamin's overall message I went through and attempted to title each of the sections for the sake of extracting his many ideas. Here is what I came up with:
I - Reproduction
II - Time and Space
III - Changes in History and Nature
IV - Ritual, and Purity
V - Cult Value vs. Exhibition Value
VI - Aura
VII - Is Film Art?
VIII - Identification with the Apparatus
IX - The Actor as a Shadow
X - The Cult of the 'Captured'
XI - Detachment, The Surgeon vs. the Magician
XII - Collective Experience
XIII - The Camera's Revelations
XIV - Dadaism, and Shock Effect
XV - Distraction, Architecture
(These titles help me organize the essay into segments)
While his thesis is centrally surrounded by the concept of the changing nature of "the politics of art" (19) in times of technological development, these fifteen subsections can very well function as his other central themes.
The question Is film art?, however, comes up several times throughout the piece. Benjamin quotes Duhamel both in the main text and in the end notes. Duhamel says of film: "[it is] a past time for helots...a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence" (32). On the other hand, Benjamin calls Duhamel "[a man] who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance" (32). Benjamin stands up for film as art throughout this entire piece while also going on to say more; Benjamin recognizes the things that the camera opens to us are far greater than those things available to the human eye. He believes that mechanically reproduced work can be art with photography and film, and it redefines art. In the endnotes Benjamin extrapolates on the idea that "the boldness of the cameraman is indeed comparable to that of the surgeon," (39) recognizing the artistry, the nibble hand work, and the intricacies involved in the making of a motion picture.
I can't wait to explore the concept of the aura further in a future post...
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