# Writings ## *You are on Indian Land* and *Paris is Burning* The subjects of ***Paris is Burning** and ***You Are On Indian Land***, the Akwesasro:non and the Manhattan Trans/Queer People of Color (TQPOC) are both communities staging decolonial resistance. The street blockade and the drag ball are both demonstrations, though the two events have different approaches to decolonization. The two filmmakers responsible for the films, Mike Kanentakeron Mitchell and Jennie Livingston were both young activists, but they had different positionality and consciousness of their subjects, different means of production, different audiences and incentives, and they documented and transmitted these performances in formally and affectively different ways. ### Performance The blockade is an outward act, intended to send a clear message of political power to the Canadian government. It is meant to be seen by outsiders, the Akwesasro:non are performing their agentivity, demonstrating commitment to maintaining their identity and sovereignty in resistance of dispossession, erasure, and genocide. The blockade is an open rejection of the colonizer’s power, the protesters are quite literally rejecting commuters from passing through their lands. The ball is an intimate event, intended to establish safe space for liberated self-expression and mutual support of transgression, allowing the participants (and spectators) to freely cross hegemonic racial and gender boundaries. It is a subversion of the colonial mentality; drag liberates participants from internal surveillance and self-doubt by allowing them to demonstrate their creativity, expressivity, freedom, and ability to pass. As bell hooks says in ["Is Paris Burning?"](http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/gustafson/FILM%20165A.W11/film%20165A%5BW11%5D%20readings%20/hooksparis.pdf "http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/gustafson/FILM%20165A.W11/film%20165A%5BW11%5D%20readings%20/hooksparis.pdf"), “To cross-dress as a woman in patriarchy... was also to symbolically cross from the world of powerlessness into a world of privilege.” ### Positionality [Mike Kanentakeron Mitchell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kanentakeron_Mitchell "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kanentakeron_Mitchell") was a member of the Mohawk Nation and the film depicts him as one of the primary leaders of the 1969 protest at Three Nations Crossing. Throughout the film, his positionality, artistic and political goals are clear. He is visible frequently on camera, and has a central role at both the protest and at the community meetings which serve to frame the highway blockade. In voiceover, Mitchell uses “we” when describing the decisions and actions of the tribe. [Jenny Livingston](https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/12333/paris-is-burning-director-jennie-livingston-rupauls-drag-race-pose-bell-hooks) was a graduate of Yale University, an outsider to the ball subculture, and approached it first as a photographer, then interviewer, then eventually as a filmmaker. Livingston does not appear on screen, and in the years since the release, has had a complicated relationship with the NYC TQPOC and Ballroom community, facing scrutiny and accusations of cultural appropriation and voyeurism, while also receiving many awards and fellowships from the white academic and artistic communities. ### Production *You are on Indian Land* was publicly funded and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) [Challenge for Change](https://www.nfb.ca/playlist/challenge-for-change/). It is freely available for streaming on the NFB website. After the film’s release, Mitchell became a Mohawk Council member and was elected Grand Chief of Akwesasne. He has also produced and directed a number of other films focused on the First Nations. *Paris is Burning*’s primary photography [was funded](https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/12333/paris-is-burning-director-jennie-livingston-rupauls-drag-race-pose-bell-hooks) by black film producer Madison D. Lacy, and additional production costs were covered by WNYC. It was presented at Sundance, and according to [IMDB](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100332/awards/?ref_=tt_awd) it received 17 critical and festival awards.[ Miramax reported](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html) its commercially and critically successful theatrical release earned around $4 million. Only a little more than 1% of that was distributed among the onscreen subjects. ### Affect *You are on Indian Land* feels to me like it is equal parts documentary, and court document. The film could be attached to an "incident report" filed by a legal observer. The long takes offer an observational sense of spatial and temporal continuity to the events and contribute to a sense of fidelity and participatory witness. The voiceover of Mitchell and the voice from behind the camera make it clear the film is not attempting to provide objectivity; but it is performative, intended to show the Mohawk's legal claim of rights, experience of suppression, and their de-escalatory and nonviolent response. The close-up quality of the footage gives a sense of intimacy in its depictions of the Mohawk and of the Canadian Police. The camera operator appears to be using a wide lens and close proximity to the subjects, placing us in the middle of the “action”. The activists seem quite comfortable with the gaze of the camera, approaching it as an ally; it seems to reassure them that the world is watching. The police seem apprehensive and the camera reminds them they are being surveilled. *Paris is Burning* is a freewheeling poetic-associative montage constructed by an outside observer. The film presents Livingston’s subjective experience of her time observing the subculture. The visuals of the ball are juxtaposed with voiceovers assembled from interviews by[](https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/12333/paris-is-burning-director-jennie-livingston-rupauls-drag-race-pose-bell-hooks "https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/12333/paris-is-burning-director-jennie-livingston-rupauls-drag-race-pose-bell-hooks")[](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100332/awards/?ref_=tt_awd "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100332/awards/?ref_=tt_awd")[](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html "https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/style/paris-has-burned.html")the filmmaker, footage of wealthy white society, fashion photography, and the choice of associations was made afterward by the director and the film’s producers. The quick cuts and lack of temporal or spatial continuity gives the audience a feeling of immersion in a subculture of spectacle, but without providing necessary historical context or community landmarks for us to form our own informed perspective. The standard-length lenses used in the ballroom scenes likely enabled filming in the low-light conditions, but also serve to balance the depiction of the human figure, movement, and the extravagant fashion, and offer a comfortable distance for the audience. The filmed interviews feel a little more intimate and occasionally claustrophobic. The subjects themselves claim to be thrilled to be on camera, but it is always unclear how much of their presentation is earnest and how much is deceptive — camp as performative resistance to disarm the white-voyeur gaze of the filmmaker. ### Reflexivity *You are on Indian Land* is an excellent documentary and a document of its time. The filmmaker’s participatory practice was clearly part of an ongoing effort of resistance and Mike Mitchell has continued to engage in that work. The now renamed “Three Nations Crossing” border crossing is the site of continuing decolonial struggle and counter-occupations, and the film has inspired other indigenous filmmakers (Ginsburg 66). The film still reminds us that we bear a responsibility to resist and dismantle the systems that dehumanize and commodify us, even when it puts us at risk of displacement and fugitivity. *Paris is Burning* is still an entertaining film, empathetically documenting endearing characters, but it has been appealing to white audiences possibly because it simplifies the ballroom to ablack, trans subculture desiring and emulating white patriarchy; and it frames their resistance as a critique of the boundaries which exclude QTPOC from the exuberant commercialism of the American Dream. Livingston presents the subjects of the film as colonized subjects whose only hope is in successful “passing” or cultural appropriation; rather than representing the performed decadence, superficiality, and degeneracy of the ballroom “children” as a way of reading the decadence, superficiality, and degeneracy of the white culture which oppresses them. The film is ultimately an affirmation of the white position as stated by Junior Labeija and an appeal for participation: **“You own E V E R Y T H I N G!”** --- ## Everything Everywhere All at Once In considering the Myth of Total Cinema, I noted Bazin's reference to Icarus and the fulfillment of the human dream that we might call the Myth of Flight. In that myth, Flight offers an experience of exhilarating and terrifying freedom -- giving us power over reality which we may apply to the pursuit of discovery, adventure, liberation. However, in our current age, commercial aviation offers us the opposite of our dream of Flight. We become mechanized. We tread interminable lines, offer our bodies and personal belongings for impersonal inspection so that we may be approved to sit anonymously in cramped, featureless rows of airplane cabins, where we try desperately to dissociate from ourselves so the voyage can be over as quickly as possible. Today's Cinema is another industrialized commercial machine. Media which is profit-driven by the incentives of Celebrity, Marketing, and Propaganda cannot offer access to the mythological possibility of true Cinema, any more than commercial airlines can offer the possibility of true Flight. It may be that even an idiosyncratic, personal, entertaining film like Everything Everywhere All at Once, contributes by its success to a system of colonization, one which promises an eternal Myth, and presents a pale shadow. If we allow the shadow to replace the myth... corruptio optimi pessima ### Sequence Analysis (time code: 18:33-18:56) A medium tight eye level shot with a relatively short depth of field centers Evelyn in a drab, grey, 20th century office environment, the orthogonal lines of the cubicles behind her place the vanishing point perfectly aligned for her third eye. The only color* in the shot is Evelyn, a wine red jacket vest, flowers on a blouse underneath. Her simple gold wedding band shines, without a visible stone. There are colorful stones on the lanyard for her reading glasses. Her skin tones are warm, though her hair has started to turn grey. Pizzicato strings and building synthesizer pads add an unsettling intensity to the scene. As she closes her eyes and presses the button on her earpiece, a notification-like chime rings. Something needs attention. Evelyn’s look of pure determination is immediately replaced by one of open mouthed surprise. The tension being built by the soundtrack collapses into sub-bass. The dolly zoom pushes the background away, widening the shot to include the fluorescents overhead and more cubicles around her. A gust of impossible wind causes her hair to flutter. She convulses strangely. A jump cut to a side view reveals the name “Tyler Dunn” on a nametag (possible fight club reference) and Evelyn has her arms stiffly in front of her in a classic zombie walking fashion. The chair swivels and she is pulled backwards via pixilation. Radial blur of the office and her hair moving accentuate the speed of her travel as the camera keeps her framed while she rolls screaming toward the janitor closet. She waves her arms at first, then braces for impact. Screaming noises in the soundfield, possibly screeching tires, are broken by the sound of glass shattering punching through the sound of legato strings. In the dark closet Evelyn is even more tightly framed, similarly to the beginning of the sequence, but she throws her arms upward and the camera dollies back as she recoils violently, apparently from her sudden motion. Optical distortion resembling cracked glass emanate from the bottom center of the frame, and the frame splits. On the left side of the image we now see Evelyn (A) with her head thrown back in the original shot from this sequence. On the right side we see Evelyn (B) (posed the same way) in the janitor closet. Her violent motion continues and the cracks are now clear. Two refracted versions of each Evelyn are visible, each in a different world. Their movements are the same, looking left, then right, until Evelyn (A) looks toward the center while evelyn (B) keeps her face cheated left but looks directly into the camera. Both Evelyns ask desperately “What’s Happening?” and the shot of Evelyn (A) takes priority. At this point a rotating dolly shot around Evelyn gives us the first view of other characters since the beginning of the sequence: Deirdre behind Evelyn’s beautiful mess of papers looking exhausted and Waymond looking anxious. The sequence serves effectively to depict the suddenness and totality of the interruption of Evelyn’s life, a life she seemed to be exhausted by, but unable to change. It shows that she decided to “do” something, and that the results were unexpected and bewildering. ## *Paris is Burning* ### Sequence Analysis (time code: 40:44- 43:20) “O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E – Opulence. You own everything.” Junior Labeija spells it out. He turns his black cadet hat forward for emphasis, his eyebrows arched over his Wayfarer horn-rimmed glasses. He puts his hand on his hip and leans forward. “Everything is yours.” A tiny dog dwarfed by a comically large string of pearls appears to agree. La Marcia Trionfale* plays as a man in a white linen shirt with shining brass buttons, and a white peaked yachting hat twirls; his bright patterned silk scarf fluttering. He sits and meets the audience’s gaze through oversized aviator sunglasses. His gold anchor necklace gleams. A woman in a velvet dress is the only one not dressed for a summer party on a boat. A quick left pan reveals this boat has another captain. And another. Binoculars allow him to get a close reading of his rivals. Is that *real* champagne? “This is white America...” ** Outside the ballroom, on Fifth Avenue, an american flag in the background, a white woman in a whiter blazer allows a mustached man in a double breasted coat and a doorman’s cap to open a vivid red door. His hat looks surprised that her shoulder pads can fit through the doorway. A couple of day traders spin in unison. “...that is everybody's dream and ambition as a minority, to live and look as well as a white person is pictured as being in America...” Cymbals clash and Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and other rich white men glower from the cover of Forbes magazine beneath the title: “WHAT I LEARNED IN THE 1980s” Inside the ballroom a thin young black man walks the runway in a tasteful suit. His only “tell”, the only thing that dents his realness, is that he is smiling as he struts. The white men outside do not smile. He realizes his mistake and drops the smile as he spins and raises his hand in the air caught for a moment somewhere between a power fist and hailing a cab. “...When they showing you a commercial... everybody's in their own home. The little kids for Fisher-Price toys, they're not in no concrete playground... They're riding around the lawn... This is white America.” More white people on parade outside. Enter Captain Black America. Wrapped in an American flag, hand over his heart, wearing aviator shades and a military peaked cap, a tall, extremely upright man walks the runway. George Patton would envy this man’s boots. He drops his cape and the flag flutters to the ground revealing an olive overcoat and a white, opalescent silk scarf. The golden zippers on his black leather driving gloves flash as he pirouettes. “That is why in the ballroom circuit, it is so obvious that if you have captured the great white way of living... or looking... or dressing or speaking... you is a marvel.” As Junior wraps his rap, General Captain Black America has strutted back to where he started, and he stands triumphantly atop the flag. \* from ***La Marcia Trionfale*** > Hither advance, oh glorious band, > Mingle your joy with ours, > Green bays and fragrant flowers > Scatter along their path ## A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night ### Sequence Analysis (time code: 38:48) Iris opens on a street in bad city. First we see only streetlights, glowing orbs forming a V (for Vampire? Vendetta? Vanishing point?). The pulsing roaring of skateboard wheels rolling on asphalt grows louder as the scene gets brighter; and a figure is moving towards us from the dark horizon. Behind the Girl, her fluttering cape is a Chador, even blacker than the night, seemingly engulfing the lights as it grows larger. The shot cuts to a low-key medium close-up of the Girls face, gazing dreamily and blinking a few times as she is haloed in one of the street lights. The gauzey diffusion gives her face an unearthly glow, like Marelene Dietrich in the eyes of Josef von Sternberg. The hood of the chador frames her face, and the stripes of her shirt are the only thing keeping her head attached to a body. Those stripes take center stage as we see her floating through the frame, headless, and as she flies past us, the fluttering cape drapes itself over the lens, possibly the last vision of her prey before darkness takes it. The Chador may be seen as a technology of controlling the body or one of controlling the gaze, and its use has been tightly constrained in many different ways, but the Girl seems to have the power she wishes, and if she wishes to wear the Chador she must have her reasons. "There are three different looks associated with cinema... the camera... the audience... the characters." according to Mulvey. Mulvey tried "examining patriarchy with the tools it provides", and her path forward to dismantling the sexist system of Hollywood cinema was attacking the camera's gaze directly (see Riddles of the Sphinx). bell hooks took the approach of first addressing the spectators gaze, turning it into a critical practice for resistance, where the spectator could discover or invent themselves through opposition. Ana Lily Amirpour offers a third approach in A GIrl Walks Home Alone at Night, she offers us a vision of the Girl gazing into the night, not towards Arash, Atti, or even the little boy, but the Character's gaze, looking into the abyss and beaming. i wanted to make an irma vep Fuilliade joke but i ran out of time. ## Riddles of the Sphinx If you are curious what Mulvey's own ideas of an ascopophilic cinema would look like, you might take a look at Laura Mulvey's and Peter Wollen's [Riddles of the Sphinx (1977).](https://orbiscascade-washington.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UW/1juclfo/alma99162628484301452) The [script](https://orbiscascade-washington.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UW/db578v/cdi_proquest_journals_1311468030) is also available. The film is divided into 7 parts, and the fourth part contains the "narrative" aspect of the film, and doesn't begin until about 12 minutes in. That narrative is told entirely through a series of 360° pans of domestic, commercial, and workplace environments, with an acousmêtre (offscreen voice-over), a hypnotic electronic score, a small amount of diagetic sound, and dialog. **Part One** is a long-take of the pages of a french cinema journal, *midi-minuit fantastique* No 2, as someone flips through it past several articles and lingers on some images of Women as Monsters (sphinx, mermaids, etc). This denies "a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience," and instead invites the viewer to see the film in its context, by explicitly acknowledging its experimental and theoretical peers and grounding it in social reality. **Part Two** is an introduction by Laura Mulvey, seated with a microphone, reading from her notes and explaining the choice to use the sphinx as a thematic device for the film. Again there is the rejection of a cinematic convention toward mimesis and maintaining a sense of mystery. Mulvey appears onscreen, and says very plainly: "i am the director, this is what i am here to say and why I am saying it" **Part Three** is a montage of images of the Egyptian sphinx which introduces the musical vocabulary of the [excellent score](https://mikeratledge.bandcamp.com/album/riddles-of-the-sphinx-mm066) by Mike Ratledge (Soft Machine), and sets the pace for the film. It also depicts clearly the limits of the photographic medium as zoom into detail causes the legibility of the image to break down to the constitutive grain. **Part Fou**r is the real innovation and main part of the film. Just over an hour total, the section - titled *Louise's story told in thirteen shots* is an exploration of 1970s middle class motherhood in London. Themes include domesticity, isolation, divorce, capitalism, labor power, and developmental psychology, but the mise en scene of every shot is constructed in the same way. The camera is placed centrally in the environment, that is in the middle of a room, a park, a traffic circle, or whatever the location is; somewhere around eye-level for a seated figure, and then is panned in one direction for the entire shot. There is no effort to center the human figure, but the narrative and environmental qualities don't feel secondary to the formal structure. For example, the rate of the pan changes for timing purposes, so Riddles never feels as alienating as something like *Wavelength*. For instance, in the penultimate shot, at around 1:07, we see the camera and operator (Mulvey?) in a mirror, but the intrusion feels playful and secondary to the writing, performances, and other formal elements. After impressively constructing a location in a room filled with mirrors strategically angled to avoid reflecting the camera, the choice to show the camera in some sense exposes the voyeur. Of the hypnotic voice throughout part four, Mulvey says "the Sphinx represents, not the voice of truth, not an answering voice, but its opposite: a questioning voice, a voice asking a riddle." **Parts Five and Six** In *Acrobats* and *Laura listens*, we have the corollary of parts 2 and 3, implying a kind of palindromic structure **Part Seven** the film completes with another long take, this time of a dexterity puzzle being solved. The viewer must sit patiently and wait for the off-camera operator to complete the puzzle; highlighting the powerlessness of the spectator's position, in contrast with the sense of power promised by patriarchal cinema's voyeurism. The riddle *this* sphinx asks does not have a one word answer. A narrative of what wishes what it wishes it to be -Gertrude Stein *'Regular regularly in narrative' in How to Write* 1. Opening pages - *midi-minuit fantastique* No 2 - Vamps Fantastiques juliet-Aout 1962 - le mythe de la femme - Labisse - la fiancee de Frankenstein - Elsa Lanchester - rene clair - ma femme est une sorciere - les sorcieres au cinema - images of cat women and mermaids - ![[Pasted image 20231017171153.png|450]] 2. Laura speaking - ![[Pasted image 20231017171819.png|475]] - "the Sphinx represents, not the voice of truth, not an answering voice, but its opposite: a questioning voice, a voice asking a riddle.", - "The riddle confuses and disorders logical categories and the monster is a hybrid of human, animal and bird." - 3. Stones 4. Louise's story told in thirteen shots 1. Louise's Kitchen 2. Anna's bedroom > If only I hadn't minded, I used to say, but I did mind very much. I minded more than very much. I minded more than I could ever have dared. Mind the door. Mind the glass. Mind the fire. Mind the child. I never minded the warmth. I minded the need. It was needed to have minded, I used to say, but was it needed to have minded more than very much? More than I could ever have dared? 3. Hall with Front Door 4. Day Care Nursery 5. Switchboard 6. Canteen 7. 5. Acrobats 6. Laura listening 7. Puzzle ending movie shot in a mirror with Rip Torn neither the point nor hidden #book Men women and chainsaws ## Truman Show ### Sequence Analysis (time code: 2:45-3:15) Cinema is synesthetic, consisting of two simultaneous sensory illusions, a "moving" image and a "reproduction" of sound. Sound may seek to produce "a picture of life and a faithful copy of nature" and sound recording may serve as an aspect of the "mechanical reproduction of reality" (Bazin, Myth of Total Cinema, 235-236). Sound may also "cease merely to record realities..." and seek to "create a total experience" while abandoning the "timid imitation of... causal logic" (Deren, Cinematography, 167). In thirty seconds of The Truman Show (2:45-3:15) there are several sounds which serve to build the sense of the scene’s reality: the creak and slap of a screen door, the clatter of garbage cans, the dog barking, Pluto's feet pattering on Truman's briefcase, and its toenails clicking on the sidewalk. These are denotative sounds, they mean only what they depict. If our attention is drawn to a sound functioning in this way, it subverts its own purpose of allowing us to forget the illusion. During the same sequence (2:45-3:15) we hear a house sparrow insistently chirping. The chirping may represent a real bird, we can assume that it is audible to Truman, but the sound is connotative of an idyllic suburban life. If the chirping was replaced with the cawing of crows, we would read this scene differently, even if everything else in the image and soundtrack remained the same. A sound which disrupts our immersion may also be a sign from the filmmaker which carries meaning. At the 3:15 mark, the scene is pierced by the whistling of a falling bomb. This disruption of our sense of reality provokes awareness that something is going to destroy Truman's world. When the light hits the ground and shatters (3:18) the shot cuts away from the light to Truman's reaction. When the camera angle changes, the volume of the shattering sound drops. This restores our sense of the acoustic space in the scene to be "real". But, as Truman walks over to investigate the light, we hear the sparrows again. We expect to hear silence as the birds react to the loud noise, but this expectation is subverted. We may read from this that these aren't real birds at all, and our sense of familiarity is unsettled. In the following scene, after Truman has a short dialogue with the Radio DJ, we hear the third movement from Mozart's Piano Sonata 11. This piece is widely recognized and commonly used to connote refinement, excellence, and complexity. The score serves as a sound bridge for about a minute and a half, during which time Truman manages to buy a paper, advertise a chicken restaurant, try to sell some insurance, navigate a revolving door, and sit listlessly at his office desk. The music serves to bridge the discontinuity in the image and the time compression in the sequence, while also signifying that the choreographed reality Truman lives within is highly refined and flawlessly executed. ## *Moulin Rouge* and *Cabaret* In a time of cultural upheaval, a naive English writer travels to the continent to escape his bourgeois culture. There he becomes involved in the decadent bohemian underworld of the film's eponymous nightclub, hosted by a garishly painted and ambiguously genderqueer master of ceremonies. He falls in love with a vampy femme fatale who turns out to be a courtesan with a heart of gold. They first become lovers and then part of a love triangle, their relationship complicated by a wealthy suitor. Finally, the woman and the bohemian counterculture all come to an unfortunate end, and the writer has lost his youthful belief in the power of joie de vivre. Parallels between Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Cabaret (1972) show a genre's capacity for reproducing virtually interchangeable plots and stories, offering minor differences to great audience satisfaction. These films both fall into a subgenre we might call Bohemian tragicomedy. Its conventions were established in the cultural vernacular by the operas ***La traviata*** (1853) and ***La Bohème*** (1896) and have since been reproduced in films including ***The Blue Angel*** (1930), ***Reality Bites*** (1994), ***Rent*** (2005), and ***Saturday Church*** (2017). Documentaries that explore the same themes include ***Paris is Burning*** (1990) and ***Kiki*** (2016). These stories are set in a magical underworld, where young poor artists explore issues of creativity, agency, decadence, class, and may ultimately pay the costs of rejecting the dominant moral order, especially gender roles. They are not all musicals, but music typically plays a significant role in the film. **“Wilkommen!”** Christian and his company swirl on a cloud of absinthe through the windmill that separates his squalid apartment from the Moulin Rouge nightclub. The grotesque face of Zidler looking directly into the camera and the bright red crotch of a dancer welcome the spectator into this decadent autonomous zone. Zidler, like Cabaret’s Emcee, addresses the camera directly and we are introduced to the internal cast of the follies to come. An extravagant and confusing number then upends the clear relationships between the spectacle and the spectators, the tuxedoed onscreen audience becomes a chorus line, shattering Feuer’s proscenium; as she described the same process in Top Hat: “Stages are created in order to be cancelled… ”(p. 241) Zidler clearly reinforces the set-apartness of the nightclub: “Outside it may be raining, but here it’s entertaining”; or as the Emcee admonishes us: “Leave your troubles… Outside! …In here, Life is Beautiful.” Despite superficial diversity, in this underworld, tuxedoed vampires feed on the exuberance of the poor, queer, creative youth. The chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” reminds us that wealth and fame from creative success do not preclude exploitation and tragedy for a young artist. **“Money, Money”** Cabaret and Moulin Rouge! both use musical numbers to set audience expectations around the female lead's financial motivations and her relationships with men. The numbers are played for laughs, but our expectations bring the freight of tragedy. It is expected for women to trade on their affections through marriage (i.e. obedience and service) not by seeking success. Poverty is not kind, especially to women who seek to retain agency while bargaining with their bodies. Satine enters in a top hat, cooly lit, an easy coding for her rejection of “feminine” values. Sally first appears on the Kit Kat stage wearing a bowler hat. The stage is transformed into a circus ring. A wide two-shot of Christian and The Duke, surrounded by their dueling seconds, facing away from each other at the edges of the frame, threatens a mortal conflict. The spectator is asked, will Satine choose the poor, passionate, creative, writer? Or the money, security, and gullibility of the aristocrat? **“We’re all relying on you, gosling”** The lyrics of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” suggest that Satine seeks the personal security of wealth, but after crowd surfing the Hermes Pan equivalent of a mosh pit, an onstage/backstage conversation/costume-change with Zidler clarifies her goal. The Duke is offering the whole community economic security and access to a “real” stage in a “real” theater with a ”real” audience. The values of “realness” are covered at length in Paris is Burning. “To be able to blend. That's what realness is. If you can pass the untrained eye, or even the trained eye, and not give away the fact that you're gay, that's when it's realness.” Satine’s dilemma isn’t an adolescent choice between love and money, but a developmental task, particularly of marginalized people — learning to navigate a spectrum of questions about Realness, balancing her individual desire against mutual support, her authentic resistance against reproduced normativity and security. Or to put it another way, Satine must decide how to wield her twin powers of passing and oppositional solidarity. There is no simple answer. Satine is reduced to a character in Christian’s novel, Luhrmann apparently believes playing the masculine game of capitalist exchange is too taxing for women’s frail bodies. Sally has the chance to make her own choices; the spectator is left to speculate on the outcomes. Hopefully in future revisions of this genre, we will see fabulousness like we do in Paris is Burning. Dumas warns in La Dame aux Camélias (1848) “The material world coexists alongside the ideal life, and the purest intentions are bound to the earth by ridiculous threads, but they are threads of iron and they are not easily broken.” But as promised in Hair (1979), the bohemian life offers an alternative vision: > “I got life, mother. > I got laughs, sister. > I got freedom, brother. > And I got good times, man.” ### Notes - [Melodrama](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Melodrama "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Melodrama"): Done spectacularly right. It fits all the requisites for the melodrama genre: orchestraic music and songs to accompany the action (Victorian melodrama), simplistic yet exaggerated character archetypes (Christian is the [Naïve Newcomer](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NaiveNewcomer "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NaiveNewcomer"), Satine the [Hooker with a Heart of Gold](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HookerWithAHeartOfGold "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HookerWithAHeartOfGold"), the Duke is the Villain, etc), the story plays up on emotion more than clever plot twists, most obstacles are minor but played up by the characters as insurmountable mountains, the story is an internal affair between a few characters (a [Love Triangle](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoveTriangle "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoveTriangle") between an [evil rich suitor and idealistic poor suitor](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RichSuitorPoorSuitor "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RichSuitorPoorSuitor") for a tragic ill girl) in a set location (the Moulin Rouge), there's an [aristocratic villain](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AristocratsAreEvil "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AristocratsAreEvil"), etc. And it manages to be engaging for modern audiences due to its [Framing Device](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FramingDevice "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FramingDevice") and shameless, balls-to-the-walls energy, stylization, and passion. - [Reprise Medley](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RepriseMedley "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RepriseMedley"): A rather epic example: "Come What May", after Toulouse reveals the truth about Christian's life being in danger, morphs into a recapitulation and dueling medley of most of the movie's main themes, with "The Show Must Go On", "Your Song", "I'll Fly Away", "Children of the Revolution", and even a bit of "The Pitch" (the part about the "sitar player's secret song") all showing up. - - [The Show Must Go On](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheShowMustGoOn "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheShowMustGoOn"): Despite love triangles, narcolepsy, assassins and consumption. Not to mention a [cover of the Queen song](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSongBeforeTheStorm "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSongBeforeTheStorm"). - [Show Within a Show](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShowWithinAShow "/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShowWithinAShow"): _"Spectacular Spectacular!"_ If you follow the opening of the movie, it's really a movie depicting a stage performance of a movie about a man singing about a man writing the story of his involvement in a musical about a man whose involvement in a musical mirrors the writer's. ## Deren on Bazin, the Joys of (hyper)realism > "[Film's] profusion of potentialities seems to create confusion in the minds of most film-makers... an artist, however should not seek security in a tidy mastery over the simplifications of deliberate poverty; he should, instead, have the creative courage to face the danger of being overwhelmed by fecundity in the effort to resolve it into simplicity and economy." While Bazin's ideology of photographic reality is impoverished, it is still a landmark on a tour of cinema's transcendent and decadent moments, when the ontology of the sign and the meaning of the signified achieve a stable superposition and hyperreality emerges. To follow the evolutionary course of cinema's language toward the desert of the real, keep going — past Bazin's idealized Italian Neorealism; take a sharp left détournement at the situationists, and keep your hands and arms inside the car as you pass through the nouvelle vague, as auteur theory becomes license for directors to commit themselves unashamedly to automythography.  When you see, on the left, Brakhage trying to film himself climbing a mountain and cutting down a tree (_Dog Star Man_ 1961-1964) and Warhol's grainy _Empire_ (1964) on the right, pull over for a pit stop with Yoko Ono and the Maysles (_Cut Piece_, 1966). You might see Hollis Frampton having a strange breakfast with Michael Snow (_Nostalgia_, 1971) while John Baldessari is making art (_I Am Making Art_, 1971).  Now, before you say "look, Vito Acconci pointing into a camera for 20 minutes may be _real_ but it isn't really _cinematic_" (_Centers_, 1971) let's take a minute and consider the question of ontology through Herzog's _Aguirre, the Wrath of God_ (1972).  If the film _Aguirre_ is anything, it is cinematic, and Herzog uses long-takes and deep focus to unearth a "deeper strata" of "ecstatic truth" within the film; but _Aguirre_ (the film) can't be discussed without a consideration of Lope de Aguirre (the historical figure) AND the meta-cinematic fable of _Aguirre_ (the film)'s' production. The "real" Lope de Aguirre was a conquistador, nicknamed "the Madman" and self-appointed as: "Wrath of God, Prince of Freedom." Aguirre was reportedly sentenced to a public flogging for violating the rights of indigenous people. In response (according to Wikipedia), Aguirre followed the sentencing judge "on foot and without shoes" from Lima to Quito to Cuzco until he eventually found and murdered him in his sleep. Later, on his final expedition, Aguirre travelled to the Atlantic, seized Isla Margarita, killed the governor there and then tried to take Panama. When he was finally surrounded by loyalists, he murdered his own daughter before he was killed and then dismembered by his own soldiers. His skull remained in the town square for forty years as a warning. These claims about Lope de Aguirre take the aspect of legend. Regardless of what events took place the supposed historical person Aguirre disappears into the historical character Aguirre(α) as written by historians, biograpers, and novelists. The character of Aguirre(β) as written into the screenplay by Herzog meets a different (but no more pleasant) fate, while the character of Aguirre(γ) as performed by Klaus Kinski, meets yet another bad end due to the limited budget and constraints of filming. By Herzog and Kinski's accounts, the production of _Aguirre_ — filmed on a stolen 35mm camera, shot in chronological order, on location in the Peruvian rain-forest — forayed into the realm of madness, complete with airplane crashes, floods, hundreds of stolen monkeys, assaults, and threats by the director of murder-suicide against the star. This can be read as another kind of performance of Aguirre(δ) by Herzog. Bazin extended the reality of cinema beyond the composition, beyond the narrative, and beyond the sign-system of representation, to include the temporal reality of that which is captured on film. I think a theory of cinematic ontology approaching truth needs to continue expanding to accommodate the Droste effect of ALL these performances of Aguirre(α,β,γ,δ) without centering any of them as the origin or "reality". There is no center to infinite recursion, so while Bazin may seek to claim reality itself, and Herzog may be willing to settle for "ecstatic truth", I'm going to suggest accepting hyperreality as a more accurate model. ## The Mirrors of Janus: Let Us Rehearse Reality for You ***The Rehearsal*** is a successful critique of the limits of simulation and effects of derealization on identity and agency, because its reflexivity to those same conditions causes it to fail; thereby confirming its premise and creating a strange loop – a failed critique that proves its premise. ### I. Bad Boundaries: Consent, Power, and Agency in “The Rehearsal” > Fake Angela: Yeah, you're saying that we're talking, but this is your project. It's not like I really have a say. *The Rehearsal, Ep. 5: Apocalypto* #### Questions: **What are the issues and implications of limited consent, misrepresentation, and fabrication when presenting a public performance of the process of agential and identity development?** Current use of the French-derived word rehearsal suggests "practic[ing]… in private to prepare for a public performance", but its original meaning was a “restatement… a repeating” or going even further back, “‘to rake over, turn over’ (soil, ground)”. Like the two-faced Roman god of time, Janus, who looks forwards and backwards; the subjects of Nathan Fielder’s 2022 television series The Rehearsal are portrayed performing their identity in both of these senses of rehearsal – attempting to adjust their performance in anticipation of the reactions of others and reflecting on and repeating their own actions again and again. These memories and projections are presented as maladaptive daydreams, a personal, imagined reality of crisis or paradise, where Kor, Angela, Robbin, Patrick, and Nathan are either trapped by or seek escape from their lived realities. They do not seem to have the sense of agency needed to either relinquish their regrets or enact their dreams. **The solution offered by the show’s premise is that they should “consent” to being coached by Nathan but under unclear terms with boundaries that he then repeatedly pushes, causing them to further relinquish their agentivity**. The show ambivalently depicts this as “clever” and “inappropriate” but ultimately settles on portraying this kind of transgression as unnecessary, or pointless, and leading to regret. 1. What are ways that other Reality programs have attempted to address these issues? 2. How does The Rehearsal explore and respond to these issues within the show? 3. How does the failure of The Rehearsal to mitigate these issues within the show inform the audience? #### Close analysis: Episode One encapsulates many of these issues succinctly, particularly when considering the issues of consent around the gas company inspection, Nathan’s introspection around cheating at trivia, and the anticlimactic resolution. ### II. Door City: Metalepsis and Misdirection in “The Rehearsal” > Nathan Prime: “Door city over here” Kor Skeete: “Yes, it’s basically, it’s like a portal, I guess, on some levels” The Rehearsal, Ep. 1: Orange Juice, No Pulp #### Questions: **How do the multiple levels of diegesis presented in The Rehearsal clarify the limits of simulation and the effects of derealization? How do metalepsis, the multiple identities of Nathan, and the multiple levels of meta performance serve as misdirection that allows the generation of empty dramatic irony?** Janus also has dominion over boundaries and serves as a guardian of gates, and frames. Fielder and crew concretize the fantasies of The Rehearsal’s subjects as simulations using the techniques of cinema and stage magicians or con artists. **The Rehearsal presents narratives framed within these simulations as nested levels of narrative diegesis, and the audience is invited to follow several versions of “Nathan” through ascending and descending metalepsis into and out of these levels.** Through the careful use of misdirection, especially memory misdirection and reasoning misdirection, as described in the 2014 paper “a Psychologically-based Taxonomy of Misdirection”, multiple levels of dramatic irony are created, between the audience, performers, meta-performers, and even between different presentations of Nathan, particularly autodiegetic (voice-over) Nathan. #### Consider the many Nathan Fielders: - Nathan the autodiegetic narrator - Nathan the performed director - Acting Coach - Acting student - Acting student performing - Nathan the subject (participating in the rehearsals) - Nathan rehearsing for the rehearsals - The audience’s projected Nathan the Creator who directs the series. What does this instability say about the nature of identity and how does it comment upon the premises of the show? 1. What are ways that other Reality programs have attempted to address these issues? 2. How does The Rehearsal explore and respond to these issues within the show? 3. How does the failure of The Rehearsal to mitigate these issues within the show inform the audience? #### Close analysis: ***Episode 4, The Fielder Method*** is a deep dive into the many Nathans and the dizzying effect of metalepsis. ***Episode 6, Pretend Daddy*** illustrates the effects of derealization on vulnerable subjects. In conclusion the folk-tale of The Stone-Cutter depicts identity development as a Strange Loop, or an intransitive game. ### Citations: Brenner, Reut, Eli Somer, and Hisham M. Abu-Rayya. “Personality Traits and Maladaptive Daydreaming: Fantasy Functions and Themes in a Multi-Country Sample.” Personality and Individual Differences 184 (2022): 111194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111194. Kuhn, Gustav, Hugo A. Caffaratti, Robert Teszka, and Ronald A. Rensink. “A Psychologically-Based Taxonomy of Misdirection.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01392. Kukkonen, Karin, and Sonja Klimek. Metalepsis in popular culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. ## Beau Travail Maybe because it is Autumn, but the spectre of Hauntology keeps casting shadows on the films I see. The closing scene of Beau Travail is glorious. After being rebuffed, and repeatedly shut out from the inner world of the troop, the film has refused us the "shift into interior perspective." (Brinckman, 112). Galoup makes his bed, pulling and smoothing a blanket the colors of the wet underwear and uniforms hanging on the clothesline early in the film. Having made his bed, Galoup must lie in it. But finally, when the photography has reached detachment to the point of clinical evaluation, when we are literally checking Galoup's pulse, we are suddenly admitted into "his" world, the interior of the nightclub. And there, we see Galoup is alone. And when Galoup dances we see why; there is no room in this world for anyone else. Finally free -- from the imaginary observer, his commander, his crew, his girlfriend, Seintan, free from his own surveillance and repression, the audience is freed as well. When Galoup returns from the dead a second time (after the regimental first credits) we know now that he is a ghost. he is an immortal dancing phantom who will return and haunt us. But if you listen closely to the 'Rhythm of the Night' you can hear the echoes of a creaking voice from the crypt, recorded on tape, whispering "...Mauvais Sang..." ... " ...Modern Love... " and we are sure that somewhere Bruno Forestier has been reunited with Veronica. and holds whispers of - mauvais sang (1986) - denis levant (1961) 25 - juliette binoche (1964) 22 - michel picolli (1925) 61 - opens with a suicide - voiceover by unreliable narrator - chatterbox: never made a sound - father was teaching him to shoot a gun - brooding, shirtless but not the outsider this time - adam and eve in the garden - you're not in love - little sphinx - invited on job - "to open press" - 3 card monty - gun enters first act - friend also shirtless - boxing bag - man on train conspires - leaves Lise - starts punching himself - leaves her the bike - Anna (binoche) reappears looks like (hitchcock? fellini? reference) - leads him to shirtless men - looks like a bathhouse - shirtless driving - they'd lost touch - anna parachuting - does opposite of anythingalex says - passes out - intimacy while she is unconscious - smoking between alex and Marc - say i love you. I cant tonight - shirtless man fight - anna caught between - hit in the eye - hypo shot in the ass - no one can split up marc and anna - ventriloquism magic performance - 42:46 looked at me with an inventor's eye, scienists eyes as if i were a priceless discoverym the solution to something inside him that is still there and that i sometimes come clse to, other times, i'm light years away from it. it's exhausting, i havent even a minute for myself. It's my life, that thing. like an enigma that glues us togther... he loves me so much - quick, before gloom envelops everything. - i'll turn on the radio - j'ai pas d'regrets serge reggiani - modern love - second same walk as after leaving lise, before seeing... anna? - punching, cartweel, shouting - silence - return form on bed red sheets smouldering ashtray - 49:38 think theres a love that burns fast but lasts forever? she shakes her head frantically. - close up of hair, cigarettes, paper from ventriloquism magic scene - more ventriloquism - if you see two little yellow moons in my eyes it means im coming - you look at me too much - i like women in mirrors - its convenient - i feast my eyes to feed my dreams. - that;s what's awful there - prison - my head doesnt, but my gut - silent men make people feel uneasy - you always think they are geniuses or idiots - the neighborhood voyeur (carax 1960) 26! - he reminds me of my first love - he hasnt aged at all. we drank each others blood - mystical little girl - at the start of each love a cemetary - you can't love or make her happy - ... - by the time you learn to live its too late - a hole in the gut - girls always told me to be simple - the american shot the kid - please get me out of here. - holding stomach like dance - rescued by lise the motorcycle angel - the kiss of speed - ill talk from inside... itl be easier - and close my eyes - hold back your tears - but it's not over - itll be like we already lived - one day you would have found each other again - one day or two maybe. - speed - running accelerates - - - beau travais (1999) - ends with a suicide - Michel Subor (foretier) - la petit Soldat (godard) 1963 - jules et jim - - the return during the credits implies a cycle, or the dancing continues - I'm still thinking about the film: In Billy Budd, both Budd and Claggart die. If we read Galoup's dance as taking place in the realm of the dead, it occurred to me we could also consider Sentain's blanket is a shroud and the djibouti are playing the psychopomp. If both men are dead, their experiences are quite different. One is alone, one is in a community. Sentain is in relationship, not with his troop, but with others who are "different" than himself. Galoup is dancing and admiring himself in the mirror. There are three active characters in the film. Despite constantly moving, ironing, painting, digging, dancing, the others hardly speak, and their identities have been reduced to "Pierre, the Corsican"  they seem to have no more internal life than the stone graves and the cross we see at the funeral of seaside.  two different responses to alterity, both men feel themselves to be "other" sentain looking outward develops compassion bravery connections galoup looking at himself # Lecture Notes # "real" /= Reality /= Realism - ## Cinema and reality: - intersections of tech, culture, ideology - nothing natural about cinematic conventions - not a tidy historical continuity from literature or theater to cinema - media and mediations overlap - incentives and capabilities have shaped - early debate between 'window' or 'frame' - ## Indexicality - artists decisions about depictions - expressing reality around us - camera is fixing "this moment" into place - these exact lillypads - Mechanically reproducing - "Exactitude" - discourses of genius - "Objectivity" 310 silent cinema ## the real of our cultural landscape - circulation of symbols - vs Bazin's interest in storytelling - two major pulls - overlap in - theater - on couch - on phone - we negotiate these quickly every day - collective frameworks - real is not a given - REAL : is it power invested in frameworks that structure our lives - eg. the law. collective social agreements - we may oppose or critique - we are still embedded in the frameworks - REAL: is it Spatio-temporal conditions - mindfulness o r reality of present moment - REALISM - stylistic representation - given choices to create the illusion of familiarity - a sense of coming back to reality - forgetting self in a movie theater - IMMERSIVE? - ## Stuart Hall - ### background - born in jamaica - marxist theater - cultural studies - take popular culture and impacts seriously - activist - ### RE-presentation - slippery, depiction of frameworks that support life - shared discourse - #### all representations are constructions - never just "as-is", require interpretation - a mode of structuring democracy (culture-formation) - ##### never fixed in meaning - supported by ideology - how do interpretations (and therefore meaning) change? - ##### because we can oppose a media-landscape we can - diagnose and change - frameworks - power structures - Try to percieve outside of time and place. - cosby depicted in "positive" images of black celebrity - ### Nontheatrical vs theatrical media - cinema - news media - advertising - Circulation digs into power differentials - social media - decentralized networks - ### Meaning and Absence - image is being read by "what isnt there" - differences from expectations - confirmations - subversion - ### meaning is interpretation - ### interpretation is expectation - ## Barthes "Death of the Author" (1967) - the image of literature is tyrannically centered on the author - person - life - tastes passions - explanation of a work is sought in the producer as if it were the author 'confiding' in us - We have a say in how a text IMPACTS us - ## Baudrillard - `If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly [...] this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacrum [...] It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.` - On Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. - '…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. —Suarez Miranda,Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658' - ## bell hooks - reel to Real - movies make magic, not reality - they give an interpretation - a reimagined - All this slavish mirroring of the human condition feels like a bird singing in front of mirrors - Brakhage - the less a work reflects "film must be free from imitations of life" - liberatory - ## Brakhage - All this slavish mirroring of the human condition feels like a bird singing in front of mirrors - Brakhage - ## Bazin - ### ontology of the photographic image - indexicality - mummification - preserving a moment - Wilde - the desire to see reality is a mental need and realism is caught between aesthetic and the deception aimed at fooling the eye - Bazin with cat - ### Myth of total Cinema - #### pursuit and aspiration for perceptual experience that can always be improved - b&w > color - silent > sound - predictions and hope - towards complete illusion of life - "image unburdened by the freedom of interpretation of the artist or the irreversibilty of time" - THE TOTAL CINEMA HAS NOT YET BEEN INVENTED - #### Simulation/simulacra - - - # MEDIA is INEXTRICABLE FROM CELEBRITY - parasocial relations/power - credibility - interpretation - social capital - - ## Resources - [The Truman Show for class purpose ONLY.mkv_eames](https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1664342/modules/items/19293804 "The Truman Show for class purpose ONLY.mkv_eames") - [Bordwell and Thompson_Continuity Editing.pdf](https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1664342/modules/items/19292564 "Bordwell and Thompson_Continuity Editing.pdf") - [bazin_the evolution of the language of cinema.pdf](https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1664342/modules/items/19292565 "bazin_the evolution of the language of cinema.pdf") - [Deren_Cinematography.pdf](https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1664342/modules/items/19292562 "Deren_Cinematography.pdf") - [Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren.mp4_anderdou.mp4](https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1664342/modules/items/19293839 "Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren.mp4_anderdou.mp4") - ## Deren Cinematography - photography is "easy" - photography has been subservient to other mediums - Animated paintings - "graphic arts school of film" - diffrs from - [[Fischinger]] - [[Hans Richter]] - interest in time - rhythm - spatial depth (3d illusion) - "they put their graphic skills at the service of the film medium" - Fred Moten speaking ASAP Study of arts in the present # representation and the real - prescient - foreshadowing parasocial relationships - reality TV/influencers - theoretical/satirical/parodic approach - challenge - how do we tackle Re-Presentation? - ethical considerations - first baby adopted by a corporation - complicity as viewers - watching the Always On - RESPONSE CARD - manufacturing consent - RAwilson Fnord - ### truman's first step - effects of montage - "endeavor" of the truman show - re-presents what we already know - logical to have montage to generate interest in viewers while T is eating a meal - Montage offers a sense of scale. - constructivity - not proximal - budget requirements - heroic effort required - emotional appeal - capitalism at large - pleasure of satirical format - mystery man Christof - ## Evolution of the language of cinema - shift from silent to sound - new possibilities for HOW to depict 'reality' - not just [[indexicality]] of film but choices and effects of aesthetics - fixed camera watching world going by - two approaches: - faith in the image - Bazin: inferior, manipulative form of cinema - plastics - montage - verisimilitude of space - position of actor is determined - even when close up eliminates the decor - developmental PIAGET - Kuleshov KOULECHOV Effect - framing of information - projection of the viewer - dramatic or analytic montage - dramatic logic of the scene - "shaping the mind of the spectator quite naturally accepting the viewpoints of the dr" - faith in reality - Bazin: - spans silent and sound - formal elements - deep focus - long takes (duration) - mental stimulation (active viewer) - eg citizen kane - depth of field allow whole scenes to play out - respect for continuity of dramatic space and duration - eg dolly shot from Kane childhood - snowball through window - choice for viewer - frame within the frame - father closer to son - compared to shot/reverse - "mental stimulation" - eg Nanook of the North - the actual length (duration) - the waiting period is the substance (subject) - eg Touch of Evil crane shot (1958) - more realism? - authentic? - artificial elements? - bombastic (attention seeking) - hitchcock rope - one film may contain certain sequences of each - Caligari vs Potemkin - refining Montage - unity of time and space - enjoyment of reality - active mental attitude - "montage rules out ambiguity of expression" - vs preserving "ambiguity of reality" - ## [[Continuity Editing]] - Pair activity (film analysis shot types) (extra credit) - noon tomorrow google doc (two comments per term) # "real" /= Reality /= Realism - ## Cinema and reality: - intersections of tech, culture, ideology - nothing natural about cinematic conventions - not a tidy historical continuity from literature or theater to cinema - media and mediations overlap - incentives and capabilities have shaped - early debate between 'window' or 'frame' - ## Indexicality - artists decisions about depictions - expressing reality around us - camera is fixing "this moment" into place - these exact lillypads - Mechanically reproducing - "Exactitude" - discourses of genius - "Objectivity" 310 silent cinema - Basic narrative continuity techniques in cinema coalesced from early experiments at end of 1910s. - Continuity Editing aims to transmit information in an organized way over a series of shots - editing plays a role in the narration - graphic qualities roughly continuous - figures are - balanced - deployed - Symmetrically - consistently - lighting is consistent - action is in the central zones of the screen - Rhythm of the cutting matches scale of the shot - long shots are on screen longer - more time to take in - broader views - more detail - Quick edits for - closer views - absorbed quickly - spatial continuity: the 180° System - space is - built around AXIS OF ACTION - center line or "180° Line" - area where camera can be placed is - contained in 180° half-circle - ![[Pasted image 20231003182225.png]] - Relative positions in the frame remain consistent. - left is always left, right is always right. - ensures - consistent eyelines - consistent screen direction - minimal disorientation for viewer - allows greater focus on content - typical sequence - Establishing shot - Breakdown shot - Reestablishing shot - reminders for audience of the space/mise en scene - # Lecture - being as clear as possible - historically dominant mode - "smooth flow over a series of shots" - contrast: "Montage by attraction" - ## invisibility of continuity system - "range of skills we have learned so well they seem automatic" - doesnt require mental stimulation - perceptual planning - Rhythm of the cutting matches scale of the shot - long shots are on screen longer - more time to take in - broader views - more detail - ## the real of our cultural landscape - circulation of symbols - vs Bazin's interest in storytelling - two major pulls - overlap in - theater - on couch - on phone - we negotiate these quickly every day - collective frameworks - real is not a given - REAL : is it power invested in frameworks that structure our lives - eg. the law. collective social agreements - we may oppose or critique - we are still embedded in the frameworks - REAL: is it Spatio-temporal conditions - mindfulness o r reality of present moment - REALISM - stylistic representation - given choices to create the illusion of familiarity - a sense of coming back to reality - forgetting self in a movie theater - IMMERSIVE? - ## Stuart Hall - ### background - born in jamaica - marxist theater - cultural studies - take popular culture and impacts seriously - activist - ### RE-presentation - slippery, depiction of frameworks that support life - shared discourse - #### all representations are constructions - never just "as-is", require interpretation - a mode of structuring democracy (culture-formation) - ##### never fixed in meaning - supported by ideology - how do interpretations (and therefore meaning) change? - ##### because we can oppose a media-landscape we can - diagnose and change - frameworks - power structures - Try to percieve outside of time and place. - cosby depicted in "positive" images of black celebrity - ### Nontheatrical vs theatrical media - cinema - news media - advertising - Circulation digs into power differentials - social media - decentralized networks - ### Meaning and Absence - image is being read by "what isnt there" - differences from expectations - confirmations - subversion - ### meaning is interpretation - ### interpretation is expectation - ## Barthes "Death of the Author" (1967) - the image of literature is tyrannically centered on the author - person - life - tastes passions - explanation of a work is sought in the producer as if it were the author 'confiding' in us - We have a say in how a text IMPACTS us - ## Baudrillard - `If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly [...] this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacrum [...] It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.` - On Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. - '…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. —Suarez Miranda,Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658' - ## bell hooks - reel to Real - movies make magic, not reality - they give an interpretation - a reimagined - All this slavish mirroring of the human condition feels like a bird singing in front of mirrors - Brakhage - the less a work reflects "film must be free from imitations of life" - liberatory - ## Brakhage - All this slavish mirroring of the human condition feels like a bird singing in front of mirrors - Brakhage - ## Bazin - ### ontology of the photographic image - indexicality - mummification - preserving a moment - Wilde - the desire to see reality is a mental need and realism is caught between aesthetic and the deception aimed at fooling the eye - Bazin with cat - ### Myth of total Cinema - #### pursuit and aspiration for perceptual experience that can always be improved - b&w > color - silent > sound - predictions and hope - towards complete illusion of life - "image unburdened by the freedom of interpretation of the artist or the irreversibilty of time" - THE TOTAL CINEMA HAS NOT YET BEEN INVENTED - #### Simulation/simulacra - - - # MEDIA is INEXTRICABLE FROM CELEBRITY - parasocial relations/power - credibility - interpretation - social capital 2023-10-10 match on action - ## recapping - continuity editing - direction match - suddenness - implication - movement match - graphic match - glue between disparate elements - jump cut - jumping time - discontinuity editing - creativity of cinematography - 500 word writing prompts thursday - due after weekend - ## Maya Deren - background - ukraine > New york - father (psychol) mother (dancer) - Pol sci journalism dance, organizing - ethnographic films late in career - culture/spirituality - reading - camera > maximum results, minimum effort - enthusiasm and progressive value to populism of photog - deren respps to "laziness" - operator - audience - what makes cinema different? - radio is not a louder voice, - airplane is not a faster car - cinema is not a faster painting or a more real play. - to mature, - cease to "merely record realities" - relinquish narrative disciplines - causal logic - narrative plots - find newstructural modes - photog is "virtually transparent" - susceptible to servitude - def. and develx of motion pictures - creative action in its own terms - plastic art = visual composition on 2d surface - dance = arrangement of movement - theater = dramatic intensity - music = rhythm snd prharses - poetry = jusxtaposition of images - literature = use of words - find the creative courage to face the danger of being overwhelmed - creative courage - move beyond continuity editing - effort to understand what the medium can do - simplicity/economy of form - love of structure - "shaping" with alternative forms (dancer) - Creative uses of the medium - What cannot be seen with the naked eye - Slow motion - reveal actual structures of movemants that cannot be slowed down - time-lapse - reveal integrity and intelligence of movement - watching: - continuous act of recognition in which we are involved - like a strip of memory unrolling beneath the images of the film itself - to form the invisible underlayer of an implicit double exposure - "Personal cinema" - not "losing oneself in the cinema" - photographic authority - controlled accident - delicate balance between - what is there and unpredictable - and the persons and activities which are deliberately introduced - film can "borrow reality" - jonas mekas accuses deren of falling on the side of - orthodoxy - artistic law and order - traditionally defined - Deren - critique of amateur burglar of reality - was that he was not a good thief - one must start with a concept - jonas mekas: walden - sitney - juxtapositions - title cards - spontaneity - Deren: Ritual in transfigured time - yarn - constraint of interiors - structure - Manipulation of time and space - not just continuity techniques - flashback, - condensation - these affect the "revealing" of time - creation of relationships between separate times places and persons - made continuous by a continuity of identity and of movement. - creative assignment on th - ### Meshes of the Afternoon - ### At land - offers template for multiverse - ## using construction of the image > viewing positions - how do cinematic reps engage subjectivities - how do conventions shift (why? cultural historical analysis) - historical approaches to spectatorship - what new forms and medium specific evolutions create new forms of spectatorship? - ## creative assignment - due 10:30am 11/2 - studying formal elements and replicating them - speculation involved (more? differently?) - in the diagesis of the film - upload and submit list of formal elements noted and reproduced - will accept storyboards as supplement - uw technology loans - CMS department loans (tech library, lighting, sound, etc.) - ## Mulvey Essay (1975) - ### Using freud to understand and intervene in state of filmmaking - Background - 1972 ERA - 1973 Roe v Wade - women's movement - Social Mobilization - identifying sources of oppression - pinpoint places where patriarchy is structurally codified - *Screen* journal (Oxford) - psychoanalysis in film theory - foundational for feminist film scholarship - *Another Gaze* interview with #Mulvey - used Freud's vocabulary to articulate questions and issues around gender and sexuality - politically relevant, interesting, and immediate - *Psychoanlaysis and Feminism* Juliet Mitchell 1974 #book - ## the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form - not neutral - not free of power relations - ## Counter cinema needs to create a "new language of desire" - destruction of Pleasure is a radical weapon - Film FORM as a site of oppression and engagement - ### Freud key concepts - #### unconscious - largest part of mind - requires commitment and help to connect with - #### preconscious - tied to formative experiences - early memories - #### Conscious - waking active mind - #### Sexual Difference - moment of realization of physical difference - #### Oedipal Complex - sight/blindness is important - power dynamic - #### Castration Complex - threat to remove (power) - #### Phallus (age 3-6) - jealousy of the power of the phallus - desire to keep power - #### Sadism - punishment and cruelty as formation of castration complex - #### Fetishism - fragmentation - symbolism (standing in for) (synecdoche) - ### Interventions - in the realm of the visual - *Peeping Tom* - fragmentation - spectatorship - woman as passive - man as active - woman as image - man as gazer - Presence of woman is - spectacle - works against the development of story - freezes flow of action - #### Scopophilic voyeurism - pleasure in looking - can be fixated into voyeurism - #### Narcisistic Identification - focus on the self and desires - identification of the ego with the object on the screen - self recognition (like) - ### Looks of Narrative cinema - three looks - Camera (produce male gaze) - Audience (identification) - Characters (viewing each other) - deny the first two and subordinate them to the third - aim to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness - USE TO ORGANIZE THOUGHTS for analysis - Masculinity - illusion of activity, strength, presence - by constructing - Femininity - as passivity, weakness, and absence - this formulation posits masculinity as precarious and anxious - Woman as threatening - handles by - Sadistic punishment - Fetishistic over-valuation - ### Proposition to destroy pleasure - free the look of the camera - materiality in time and space - look of the audience - dialectics - detachment - this destroys the pleasure and privilege of the "invisible guest" - highlights dependence on voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms - Legacy of the Male gaze - colonial gaze - straight gaze - white gaze - etc... - Female gaze? - magic mike xxl - cheetos and water - romantic? - intimacy? - for mulvey, libido/objectification/power is definitionally coded into the "male" gaze - destroy the structure? - AGWHAaN - clip of Saeed and - The Girl - finger as castration - power of penetration - reversal - - ## Lacan - ### Mirror stage - ### recognizing self in a mirror - ### Identity - look may not match feeling of self - we appear stable and composed, symmetrical - the image in the mirror is less dimensional than the beholder - - ### *Gilda* (1946) - Musical Genre - Put the Blame on Mame - distracts from the narrative - Gilda possesses the audience - who "possesses" Gilda? - 2023-10-26 Film club: Physics Aud 118, 7:30pm Argento's Suspiria - ## Logistics - sequence analysis #2 - unit 3, 4 - changes to unit 4 films (documentary) - swap S21 - unit 3 viewing - genre - horror, musicals, westerns, - choose one of each - Class catch-up Oct 31 - Unit 2 - Unit 2 Creatives due before class - Unit 2 Assessment due 11:59pm sunday - spectatorship - history of analysis - getting films made - stories from - engagement with filmmakers - no longer compartmentalized - I love cinema, black film and speculative practice in the era of online crowdfunding - Samantha N Sheppard - ## JAGotIRT - Leslie Harris - next film - i love cinema - black professor experiences in the classroom, cinephilia - sheppard/crowd funding - platform - paratexts of kickstarter for I love the cinema - what about films that should be made but are not - #speculation - #wonderment: #what-if? - not merely conjecture but critical process grounded in - what is legible - what is unknowable - Allyson N Field - speculative film history - "makes form out of absence" - "historiography that tries to account for that which we do not know and cannot see" - ## #todo note about Seance - speculative film - ## hooks - how does "representation matter" - Moonlight music video - friends - whodini - jerrod carmichael - lil rel - Hannibal Buress - Pirates of the Carribean - Cruise Line - parrot with a heart of gold - "who asked for that?" - Aspect ratio change - IN THE TIME OF PLASTIC REPRESENTATION - Kristen J. Warner - cultural politics of colorblind tv casting - makes blackness superficial and friends universal - hooks - rejecting universality - representation - positive - increased QUANTITY of BIPOC cast automatically a positive? - easy workaround for studios - hiring black actors - no need to develop new/complex characters - negative - obscures the challenges in booking roles - writing staff - see past visible actors to the apparatus of filmmaking - where did i see/hear "i'm one of the few who figured out how to use the masters tools... \[to tear down the masters' house\]"? - Dyer "Whiteness" #book - as long as race is only applied to non-white peoples, whiteness is the norm - racing whites dislodges from the position of power - undercutting the \[supposed\] authority with which WP speak and act in and on the world \[people\] - WP unable to see their own particularity and construct the world in their own image - "whiteness needs to be made strange" - Lighting for Whiteness - technology built around WP - range of hues "conformed to prevalent ideas of humanity" - Vox "Color Film was built for WP" - from shirley cards to facial recognition - "idealized international skin tone" - 1970s wood furniture - chocolate makers - LDK cameras comparing skin tones - "photographing the dark horse" - AI and Race - film as a for profit "enterprise" - big money in portraiture and snapshots - lighting relates people to each other - aesthetics of - moonlight - tangerine - small groups discuss lighting - analysis of the assigned sequence - Individual and the environment - Individual - as primary western viewpoint "valorized" - WP have found it hard to see NWP as autonomous individuals - Lighting separates the individual from others and from the individual - Environment - world as object of disembodied human gaze and control - backlighting - ensures figures distinguished from their ground - stand out from setting - view of humanity pioneered by White Culture - responsible for technology - price paid by the environment - climate change - film industry/carbon footprint - Settler Colonialism - separating individual from environment/lands - ## What kind of lighting is used in Tangerine? - available light - stage lighting (on stage) - neon sign in bar - christmas lights - "practical" lighting - uniform lighting - very warm - ## Does the film rely on individualism to light its characters - relied on technology - probably reflectors - color grading - ## Does the film separate out individuals from the environment through lighting? - was the environment a character as well? - used many locations and characters were very situated in their environment - integral to the city - accurate depiction of the area - and individuals - individuals shine through regardless of the lighting - lighting integrating into the environment - LaVelle Ridley - "imagining otherly performing..." Subgenres of melodrama, designed to articulate and explore the particular concerns of an identity group, may misrepresent the experience of the identity group when evaluated by outgroup spectators. finding historical examples of discrepancy between identity representation and experience aesthetic construction of representation of identity reductive Jane Feuer, “Spectators and Spectacles” Shohat and Stam, “The Imperial Imaginary” Linda Williams, Learning to Scream - nostalgia for the light - poetic relationships - juxtaposition of search for - lost - stars - truth - knowledge - wonderment - observational - lack of engagement? - long shots of desert - unmediated environment - history - scale - Participatory - directors experiences in Chilean election - interacting with subjects who know the history of the filmmaker - strategies that form and shape - memory - history - retrospection - biography and history are significant - Reflexive - bridging distance between - ### fields of knowledge production - sources of information - materiality of desert - what has been displaced to form the current state? - student creative work - Documentary Expectations - voiceover - learning - landscape (location) - interviews - suspense/mystery - perspectives - creative treatment - shift in perspective - future/history - objectivity - deep history - Bill Nichols - relx docx and social change - diff in desire for narrative fiction vs doc. - Creative treatment of reality - didactic/educational/objective - Concepts (taxonomy) - expository - authoritative voice of god narration - assumes a logical argument and a right answer - Poetic - associative arrangement of footage - subjective rendering through - mood - tone - texture - Observational - letting camera roll and not interrupting subjects - fly on the wall - Maysles - Participatory - invites subjects to engage with filmmaker - filmmaker becomes part of the event - film process is often celebrated (part of the subject) - michael moore - Reflexive - emphasizes relationship between filmmaker and audience - draws attention to artifice of making a documentary - destabilizes sense of objectivity - ## man with a movie camera (1920s) zigo vertov - Performative - Showcases the relativity of 'truth' and favors personal lens over objectivity - filmmaker significantly participating in topic of documentary - Marlon Riggs (tongues untied) - Diana Taylor - not necessarily theatrical - clip - silhoutte planet in sky - distance and cosmicity - reference - values - strength - long shots - talking heads - silent close-ups - two - single - family albums - condensation of astronomer's perspective and loss - valentina - very concrete/coherent perspective - biographical - larger stakes - reflections - tying things together - potent - intensely personal - transpersonal - choice to focus on grandparents first - not responding - artifice vs poetic - posed? - poetic? - questioning? - constructed? - cultural reproduction - grandparents living memory - valentina subject without memory - epistemology - poetic mode - brought out? thinking through artifice - affectively access embodied memory - voice - filmmakers position - methods of storytelling - authorship - subjectivity - strategies and styles have a history. - they change - expectations about authenticity change - letter may be - despise - adore - specific details about *why* - 500 words ## Genre - life cycle of genre - "primitive" - classical - revisionist - introducing new - aesthetics - themes - parodic - totally familiar - studio system generating genres - culturally dominant - commercial success in a particular theme - repackage with similar - characters - plot points - visual style - themes - unique films sold better so starting in late 1930s - balance repetition and innovation - Who creates genre? - marketers - analyze trends - reliable speculation - targeted marketing - film workers - screenwriters use genre template for script - casting directors follow character archetypes - DPs and cinematographers follow conventions - Audiences - making choices around consumption - easy to spot - particular type of experience - pleasure in expectation and surprise (twists) - scream (1996) - rules one must abide by - no sex - no drugs (sin) - never say "i'll be right back" - horror - characters - monster - likable - knowledgeable - plot - home invasion - chase scene - love interest - murderer - murdered - investigation - style - iconography - mask - weapon - monster/ghost/killer - blood - music - screams - thunderstorms - old dark house - chiaroscuro lighting - mis en scene - closeups - camera work - depth of field - sound - music - conventions - #### the other - gender sexual racial religious - disrupts "normality" - monstrous feminine - monster queer - #### return of the repressed - - shift from urban to rural - punishment of women's sexualities - virgin/whore dichotomy - - final girl - type of analysis - comparative - titles - genre - iconography - subgenres - apocalyptic horror - body horror - crime horror - occult - psychological - rural - surreal - slasher - creature - there are more genres yet to be invented - duration (short ass movies) - videodrome - danger of technology - paranoid thriller - clip - love and tv - the one you take to bed with you - don't make me wait - game cartridges - awful lip smacking - pulsing inanimate object - close-ups of face - tony oursler - music - uncanny/pornographic - linda williams - body genres (physical response) - horror - melodrama - pornography - screening sex - hard core - on the wire - figures of desire - psycho - audiences enjoying losing control - what do you know about caring - have you seen the inside of one of those placses - the laughing - the crying - she's harmless - as one of those stuffed birds - people always mean well - we all go a little mad sometimes - before its too late for me, too. - crane/samuels - bernard hermann strings - panopticon - surveillance - learning the terrifying "sexual" secrets of psycho, produces a "discipline" for spectators ## Illusions - julie dash (1952) MFA 1985 illusions (1982) LA Rebellion Daughters of the Dust (1991) - Representation and the real - role of spectators - continuity/discontinuity - diagetic/acousmatic sound - Acousmetre and Illusions (1982) - Diagetic/Acousmatic (non-diagetic) - what is at stake? - space for creativity - blazing saddles - Count Basie and Orchestra - gucci bag - horse and suit same color - subverts trope of the "lonesome" - highlights sheriffs class and style - macarthur fellows raven "checkon" chacon? - victory? - Mission Impossible - empathetic/anempathetic sound - Empathetic - signal who you identify with - signal what the experience is supposed to be - helping us "feel" how the characters feel - tempo/rhythm/mix of diagetic sound - heighten - meaning of choral/operatic music (themes of vegeance) - connotative/denotative - horizon of expectations - cultural attachment - anempathetic - disco "good times" - sarcasm - limits your empathy with the victim (shallow) - duration is key - eerie/uncomfortable - doesn't fit - tiktok car crash radio music trend - motif - scary sound vs scary scene - disco (vapid empty oversimplistic, lacks social consciousness) - neutralization/naturalization - type of hierarchy establishing relation to visual and aural - Norman McLaren - Dots (1940) - syncresis - - synaesthesia - graphic score - hearing shapes - merged and timing - color choice - contrast and complementing - sets expectations (rules) then subverts them - formalism - power to decide what things sound like - limiting the world with sounds - create understanding - inventiveness/organicness - fischinger - graphic music - degenerate art (nazis) - playing with meaning - worked for disney (fantasia) - rejected actual objects - wanted abstraction to carry the experience - communication/framing/experience - [_Synchresis_](http://filmsound.org/chion/sync.htm) is at work when a stream of random _audio_ and visual events are played. Certain audiovisual combinations will come together through _synchresis_ and ... - sound bridge - audio version of object match - orientation/disorientation - ## Michel Chion - diagramming/charting/diagnosing - Acousmatic zones - offscreen/nondiegetic - visualized zone - onscreen - ![[Pasted image 20231012113325.png]] - perceptions are cultural - taught - historical change - positionality - sound is neglected but immportant - Sight comes into play after birth - most highly structured sense - highly elaborated language - dwarfs the vocabularies for - touch - smell - hearing - Acousmatic describes "sound heard without being seen" - commonplace mode of listening - radio - phones - records - Acousmetre - a voice that has not been visualized - cannot connect it to face - **special being, talking and acting shadow** - HAL - what about illusions? - overdubbing - SORRY TO BOTHER YOU - PUTNEY SWOPE - dubbing scene - engineer in reflection - hard lighting on esther - doubling - eyelines - no food or drink on the stage - listen for the click track - fade to tattered score - mise en abyme breaking 4th wall - esther breaks 4th wall only at last instant - Phone call - mother not audible - music, horn (oboe?) - assume its gender barrier - zoom in to anti - Religious/Racist Hate - how does acousmatic function in the clip - how aware are we supposed to be, as a viewer? - fitzgerald dubbing - mignon - no more shadows on a white wall - acousmetre on the phone - special beings - black students graduating from UCLA - LA Rebellion - daughters of the dust (1991) - - Sonic color line - jennifer lynn stoever - racism - discourse of power that thinks with the eyes - politics of looking - sound is a repository rendered secondary to visual - Sound is the doppleganger/everpresent - forms of acousmetre - types - already visualized - complete (not yet seen but who might appear) - Commentator (never shown) - keep it generic on purpose (hide and seek game) - seeking a place to settle - powers - being involved - isnt merely an observer - possible inclusion - power - possession - entire story can hang on the epiphony of acousmetre - ubiquity - panopticism - omniscience - omnipotence - why power? - pleroma (natal) voice was everything - archaic original state (perinatal) - human development - psych. development - De-acousmatization - embodying the voice is a symbolic act - acousmetere reduced to fate of ordinary mortals - when it is embodied, loses its proportions, deflate, speaking as a human. - film club thursdays 7:30 police story oct 27 3:30-5pm HUB Bowling Alley : CMS profs - case study to develop skills - other avenues for analyizing - addtl reading for AGWHAaN - cw: implications - Gaze - colonial - straight - white - replicating power structures that enforce dynamics - differentials in power - tropes/genre - ## AGWHAaN as vampire film/horror - fem/queering - transnational and postcolonial vampires - dark blood #book - from monstrous evil to alterity (fraught victimized otherness/sympathy//identification) - twilight - industrial context - affect on genre/lit. trope - if vampires solicit sympathy > speak to historical coding of Mid Eastern commty in US: - ### invisible - ### threatening - tropes - industrial city - time period of film speaks to moments - Queer utopia - monstrosity - not always visible - but perceptible - Chador (afeminist/abject) - allows - visible - hidden - as superhero cape - embracing contradictions of - queer life - iranian experience - other avenues, consider from lens of: - in light of Mahsa Amini's murder - Study of minor characters - framing - power - relevance - economies of sex work - cap/anticap - addiction - isolation (western) - hostile environment - Choosing analytical lens - what cultural contexts ideologies and political implications - connect interests - others understandings - larger phenomena - new understandings in the **current** moment - balance approach to find meaning in mediation - core concepts of psychoanalysis - What might Mulvey say about Beau Travail - eroticism and desire to frame militarism - psychoanalytic process of developmental blockages - father relationship with commandent/Forestier - paternal yearning - Sentain/Galoup - class response - active/passive men - hierarchy/intimacy - inclusion/otherness - work of the camera - new "type" of film work being made - production history - agnes godard - Claire Denis - history with colonialism - consider title - belle trouvaille (a beautiful find) - quote by forestier - play on words - quote from melville - consider adaptation - billy budd 1924? - beau geste 1924 - film 1939 - film 1962 - intellectual prodding - weighing comparisons - finding stakes in this approach? - production information - film crew - thematic approaches - incorp. historical information and formal analysis - film crew - shadows - scarlet tablecloth - memory images - object of jealousy - landscapes - ecstatic dance - what information do we have? - "circuit of looks" / closed eyes - resistance to entering the world - shutting us out - alternative modes of spectatorship - no narrative authority - wandering eyes - disinterest in spectator - "different" observational mode - does not invite empathy - lacking shift into interior perspective - the images of the desert take on hallucinatory quality - replace memories - overcompensate for unreliable narrator - not individual standpoint of the outcast - but the camera's point of view - typical cinematography: - image drives plot - BT use of cinematography: - function of image is itself - poetic presence - emotional charge - Narrative comes later - camera is its own subject - willfulness - aesthetic power - 'subject-like presence' - erotic attention - how alterity produces repression > cruelty - Bertrand Bonello - Zombi Child - Durational heft - long takes - little dialogue - sublime of Djibouti - women rescuing seintain - compassion despite colonizing occupation - making the bed (ironing scene/rhythm of laundry earlier) - domestic duties - Heavy gold chain - shoes on bed - feel of cold gun on skin - serve a good cause then die - rhythm of the night/my life/pulse of aarm - spats smoking mirrors constrained - first freedom then restraint/repression then abandon - flashing lights behind - dancing (behind) the women in the beginning - Not Choreographed (liberatory) by staying with galoup beyond the narrative completion of the film our position is defined, while the character/identity/alterity of galoup is deconstructed when he is finally free from observation and repression. his individual All of the men are other, galoup is even other to them. hauntology stealing liberation love and murder According to the material we have covered thus far, describe two different ways that the relationship between sound and image have been theorized in cinema. Illustrate your response with at least two examples from your choice of films in Unit 1. Clear expression of core concepts Synthesis of ideas discussed Adheres to prompt stipulations Grammar, spelling, formatting Grade: ## Sound --- Cinema is synesthetic, comprised of two simultaneous sensory illusions, a "moving" image and a "reproduction" of sound which combine to create an *olam*, the illusion of an immanent reality bounded within our larger reality. In The Evolution of the Language of Cinema, Andre Bazin identifies "two broad and opposing trends" in filmmaking; those filmmakers who focus on "image" or on "reality" (Evolution, 24). From this perspective there are two primary functions of the relationship between sound and image in cinema. Sound and image interrelate to either draw the audience further into the illusion of the olam by building the sense of reality, or detach the audience from it by drawing attention to its unreality. Sound may seek to produce "a picture of life and a faithful copy of nature" (Myth of Total Cinema, 235), and sound recording may serve as an aspect of the "mechanical reproduction of reality" (Myth, 236). When we hear diagetic sounds and believe the characters are hearing the same sounds, our immersion in the scene and our identification with the characters tends to be heightened; a clock ticking, the tapping of a pencil, a sound of footsteps may amplify the sense of a scene's reality. We are drawn into the olam and our expectations about its time, materiality, acoustic space are confirmed. On the other hand, sound may "cease merely to record realities..." and "create a total experience" while abandoning the "timid imitation of... causal logic" (Deren, Cinematography, 167). This is sound which subverts expectations and heightens our attention to the unreality of the olam. A sound which disrupts our immersion may also be understood by the audience to be a sign from the filmmaker which carries meaning. It offers liberation from the olam, reminding us that the olam has boundaries. Our identification with the characters may be tempered, but our understanding of their situation may be expanded. In thirty seconds of The Truman Show (2:45-3:15, after the intertitle "Day 10,909") there are a series of sounds which serve to build the sense of reality: the creak and slap of a screen door, the clatter of lids placed on garbage cans, the dog Pluto barking, Pluto's feet pattering on Truman's briefcase, and its toenails clicking on the sidewalk. These are denotative sounds, they mean only what they depict, a door is closing, a lid is being placed. The denotative sound resists exemplification because if our attention is drawn to a sound functioning in this way, it subverts its own purpose of allowing us to forget. These are also diagetic sounds, but not all diagetic sounds are primarily denotative. During the same thirty seconds (2:45-3:15), we also hear a house sparrow\* insistently chirping. The chirping bird may represent a real bird, we assume that it is audible to Truman, but due to our cultural apperception, the sound of this particular type of bird carries the connotations of "idyllic suburban life" or "springtime". This sound is diagetic but also *primarily* connotative. If the chirping of sparrows were replaced with the cawing of crows, we would read this scene differently. A different expectation would be created in the viewer, even if everything else in the image and soundtrack remained the same. At the 3:15 mark, the scene cuts to a spotless blue sky, which is immediately pierced by a falling light and a whooshing sound. The whooshing sound becomes the whistling of a falling bomb. This whistling sound is entirely artificial and the sound breaks our immersion, rather than deepening it. We must assume it is non-diagetic, as falling objects like lights do not make audible noise in most circumstances. Bombs whistled mainly because they had whistles attached to them. This disruption of our sense of reality serves to point out the artificial world that Truman is existing in, and to provoke the concept that the intrusion of a larger world is going to destroy Truman's world. At 3:18, when the light hits the ground and shatters, the shot cuts from the light's impact to Truman's reaction. When the camera angle changes, the volume of the shattering sound drops, to restore our sense of the space in the olam to be "real" and draw us into our empathetic connection to Truman. As Truman walks over to investigate the unidentified falling object, we hear the sparrows again. We might expect to hear silence as the birds react to the loud noise, but again this expectation is subverted. We may read from this that these aren't real birds at all, and our sense of familiarity is unsettled. In the following scene, after Truman has a short dialogue with the Radio DJ, the DJ invites Truman (and the audience) to "let this music calm you down." At 4:09, we hear the third movement from Mozart's Piano Sonata 11, the Alla Turca (Turkish March). This piece is widely recognized and commonly used to connote refinement, excellence, and complexity. The score serves as a sound bridge for about a minute and a half, during which time Truman manages to buy a paper, advertise a chicken restaurant (and try to sell some insurance in response), navigate a revolving door, and seat himself listlessly at his office desk. The music serves to bridge the discontinuity in the image and the time compression in the sequence, while also signifying that the choreographed reality Truman lives within is highly refined and flawlessly executed. another sound \*(according to Merlin Bird ID) . This is the sound of To Bazin, the sound of a clock ticking means only "there was a clock in the room where this film was made, and it was ticking." and its comouflage An alternative articulation of the same distinction is those filmmakers most concerned with capturing construction, or reproduction. through the construction and manipulation of image and sound. The olam's Sound in cinema plays two semiotic functions, sound as sign, and sound as signified. A sound may be literal or symbolic, that is connotative or denotative, or both. in this [article](https://www.mixonline.com/post-and-broadcast/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-part-3-bagel) the the Chime sound in EEAaO This semiotic distinction has been articulated by the analysis of sound as diagetic or non-diagetic -- sound which exists "in" or "out" of the cinematic world, i.e. is the sound something the characters can hear? or only the audience? We are drawn into the olam. Music, surprising or symbolic sound effects, ... often when percieved in generic conventions, give us clear instructions on how we should think, or feel about a scene. Apperception of any sound object in film may be understood connotatively or denotatively, but we can assume every sound in-or-not-in cinema reveals some intention of the filmmaker in its inclusion or omission; even unintentional sound or poor sound reproduction may connote a film-maker's innocence, spontaneity, or an act of resistance; or denote lack of access to tools, time, or expertise, depending on the context. Does the sound serve to draw us into the olam, or to pull us away? primarily to reinforce the audience's immersion? or extend their comprehension? In the case of diagetic sound that has more (or different) meaning for the audience than for the characters (e.g. the ticking of the bomb in A Touch of Evil) this difference of knowledge can be used to increase tension. This process imbues the olam with direct and allegoric meaning. the perceptual and conceptual gestalt of an emanation (re)creating the dimensions of space (currently typically projected into two-dimensions), time, and identity olam/olamut, Sound as signifier is embedded in the gestalt to reinforce the illusion of reality or presence. Sound as Sign extends the world to include Is it the Bazin seemed to long for a cinema which objectifies life, capture reality; in the "Ontology of the Photographic Image" he claimed "described it as embalming time, embalm and preserve it like a In Bazin's formation of cinema, Sound should function denotatively, to "- A sound must never come to the help of a image, nor an image to help the of sound." -R bresson The cinematic soundtrack is schizophonic. A but it is constitutive of the image. Does the sound confirm or subvert audience expectations? does it increase or release tension? is it empathetic or anempathetic? - sound identities - may be obscured - may be misrepresented - may be presented as Sound as sign is intended to communicate some information that is not otherwise conveyed in the audio-visual gestalt. the distinction lies in whether the viewer is queued to attend to the source of the sound or impute meaning. although the case can be made that the distinction has no difference. Even the clatter of projectors The only sound acoustically generated in the modern cinema is the whir of a cooling fan textual or paratextual diagetic (telling) or mimetic (showing) sound as sign sound as signified - sound identities - may be obscured - may be misrepresented - may be presented as schizophonia Illusions In - ## The Relationship Between Sound and Image - ### Emphasizing the Contrast between Onscreen and Offscreen Space - ### Emphasizing the Difference between Objective Images and Subjective Sounds - ### Emphasizing the Difference between Diegetic Details and Non-diegetic Sound - ### Emphasizing the Difference between Image Time and Sound Time - ### Emphasizing Differences in Image Mood and Sound Mood reinforce or subvert expectations realism/formalism increasing immersion schizotypy and synaesthesia soundtrack: three elements voice music sound "effects" Vitaphone standard chosen in 1927. by 1929 nearly 75% of hollywood films included a soundtrack need to record dialogue changed mobility of the camera so that composition and movement were "severely restricted" changed emphasis from visual inventiveness to dialogue, "robbed of visual energy and movies would be reduced to "highly cultured dramas" and photographed performances of a theatrical sort economic impacts sound does not reproduce reality but provides an expressive aesthetic experience surround rene clair: "conquered the world of voices but lost the world of dreams" murnau *Sunrise* angst about sound angst about video angst about AI in human evolution two primary biological systems of sensory redundancy, hearing and sight, or audience and vision. touch is reserved for that which has been first scrutinized at a distance. In a basement on the UW Campus are tens of thousands of hours of [audio recordings](https://soundcloud.com/uwlibraries) which have seldom (if ever) been heard since their initial recording. Many of those recorded and those conducting the recordings are dead, and the sounds are identified by brief notes about when and where the recording was made. Despite the best efforts of climate control, the ferric oxide is slowly falling off on the polyester tape. You don't need to get special permission to visit the ethnomusicology archives to find unheard sound. Forgotify.com offers from Vitaphone to sound on film optigan ** Berberian ss Memoria Expedition content Conversation Blow out Stone tape? Hauntolpgy Ethnographic archives Personal sound Supernatural sources Hieroglyphics Ruins Sound and darkness Closing eyes for storytelling Anxiety over sound vs anxiety over AI ** ** Berberian ss Memoria Expedition content Conversation Blow out Stone tape? Hauntolpgy Ethnographic archives Personal sound Supernatural sources Hieroglyphics Ruins Sound and darkness Closing eyes for storytelling Anxiety over sound vs anxiety over AI The cinematic soundtrack is inherently schizophonic. We can assume every sound in cinema reveals intention in its inclusion or omission. Apperception of sound may be empirical or transcendental. Unintentional sound or poor sound reproduction is a hallmark of Sound in cinema plays one of two primary roles, sound as sign, or sound as signifier. Does the sound serve primarily to reinforce the audience's immersion? or their comprehension? This semiotic distinction has been articulated by the analysis of sound as diagetic or non-diagetic -- sound which exists "within" or "outside-of" the cinematic world, i.e. is the sound something the characters can hear? or only the audience? If we hear a sound and understand the characters are hearing the same sound, our immersion in the scene and our identification with the characters tends to be heightened; a clock ticking, the tapping of a pencil, a sound of footsteps may amplify the sense of a scene's reality (and it's stakes). In the case of diagetic sound that has more (or different) meaning for the audience than for the characters (e.g. the ticking of the bomb in A Touch of Evil) this difference of knowledge can be used to increase tension. If it is a sound that is only for the audience, our identification with the characters may be tempered, but our understanding of their situation may be expanded. Music, surprising or symbolic sound effects, ... often when percieved in generic conventions, give us clear instructions on how we should think, or feel about a scene. Does the sound confirm or subvert audience expectations? does it increase or release tension? is it empathetic or anempathetic? - sound identities - may be obscured - may be misrepresented - may be presented as ** ## Oppositional Gaze Chronicles of a lying spirit (by kelly gabron) Cauleen Smith, 1995 bell hooks oppositional gaze film sounds typ i tell ppl my name is KG I never went hungry a day in my life "cauleen dies in the middle passage" Glenn Ligon repetition, audio manipulation, palimpsest, collage, scrapbooks textural quality, sync points, frenzied struggle, hauntings, ruins crumbling layers of history, temporal layers, speaking back surf punk dread scene how does the OG fit into this film? ![[Pasted image 20231024110540.png]] synchronicity, authoritative? control of the medium, distracting from what "he" is saying? dr owens virtual assistants and race and gender of design - bell hooks - relations of power - foucault - relations of power and replication of domination - panopticon - collective power vs - sovereign power - madnesss - stuart hall - agency in recognition through representation - frantz fanon - psychic resistance - anti-colonial struggle - how ppl who have been colonized relate to one another - madness as symptom of colonial conditions - Manthia Diawara (contemporary) - resistant spectatorship - "moment of rupture" - break with the illusion on screen - "I am not the target audience" - apparatus of cinema industry - mobilize power of spectators - recognizing self on screen - ![[Pasted image 20231024112216.png]] - Critique of Mulvey - depends on white, cisgendered hetero assumptions about spectators - women do not **see** the whiteness of the image? - process of denial that eliminates need to revise psychoanalysis - participating - jack halberstam - transvestite position? - whiteness is a nonaccidental structure of power. - suggested reading: - Nick mirzoeff - [white sight: visual politics and practices of whiteness](https://orbiscascade-washington.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UW/db578v/cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_9780262373104) - right to look: counterhistory of visuality - Fatimah Tobing Rony - the third eye: Race cinema and ethnographic spectacle - Simone Browne - [Dark Matters: On the surveillance of blackness](https://orbiscascade-washington.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01ALLIANCE_UW/1juclfo/alma99161921055701452) - Summary (primo) - In Dark Matters Simone Browne locates the conditions of blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted. She shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws. Placing surveillance studies into conversation with the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlife, Browne draws from black feminist theory, sociology, and cultural studies to analyze texts as diverse as the methods of surveilling blackness she discusses: from the design of the eighteenth-century slave ship Brooks, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, and The Book of Negroes, to contemporary art, literature, biometrics, and post-9/11 airport security practices. Surveillance, Browne asserts, is both a discursive and material practice that reifies boundaries, borders, and bodies around racial lines, so much so that the surveillance of blackness has long been, and continues to be, a social and political norm - Just another girl on the IRT - not just resistant spectatorship - oppositional gaze - defiance and critical interrogation - history - looking relations - history is a better approach than psychoanalysis - histories of enslavement segregation and survival of bipoc who mobilize gaze against WS - how look is gendered sexualized and racialized - male gaze still offers black men access to scopophilia and identification - White suprmacy prevents Black Women from adopting - Male Gaze or - "to-be-looked-at" - ### BW - neither bearers nor objects of the look - uniquely alienating - ### OG offers - #### new ways to look outside of WS and sexism - #### Analyzes ruptures in BOTH White Gaze and Male Gaze - #### Visual pleasure produced by "interrogation" - #### looks for and creates images that make the possibility of BW freedom legible - Synchronicity - address to camera - agency and pleasure - rejection of attempts to diminish Chantel's desire - One learns to look a certain way to resist. - shopping spree. - Quotes - not only will i stare, i want my look to change reality - ### breaking 4th wall - interrupting jewish teacher teaching about holocaust - solidarity - structural dynamics that replicate power - classroom structure is insufficient - doesn't "change" the reality - there is a critical gaze, one that looks to document that is oppositioonal - one learns to look a certain way to resist - looking like a brooklyn girl - looking tough - be seen standing up for hesrelf - Shopping spree, Jeep. - living in the projects - Respectability politics - cinematic visual delight is the pleasure of interrogation - interrupting the WM teacher - interrogating structure of the class - looking and looking back, black women... see our history as counter-memory, using it as a way to know the present and invent our future - affective shift - you may want to be like everyone else - ### Filmmakers create lines out of the diagesis of the film - breaking fourth wall - # Your Diagesis is Leaking films that acknowledge, interrogate, or depend on other films. [[mulvey riddles of the sphinx]] "a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience," and instead invites the viewer to see the film in its context, by explicitly acknowledging its experimental and theoretical peers and grounding it in social reality." (from Yomi Braester) Tsui Hark - Butterfly Murders the Birds Branded to Kill exceptions for horror, ghosts, etc. in PRC for films based on chinese mythology