Archive for November, 2008
{ November 27, 2008 @ 4:44 pm }
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{ Power, Spectacle }
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LARS VON TRIER 1995
Von Trier’s manifesto was a violent reaction to Hollywood.
“The Five Obstructions” with Jorgen Leth.
Trier challenged Leth to remake his “The Perfect Human” with obstructions and limitations on creativity. Once Leth had completed this challenge successfully he had to edit within a strict list of rules;
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12 frames per second (change angle)
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Answer the questions posed in voice over in the original film
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Had to be shot in Cuba
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No set was allowed to be built.
His next task was to challenge the ethical dilemmas of controversial media work;
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Had to be shot in a miserable place – Bulgaria
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Not to be made for exhibition, for own personal documentation.
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Film a child dying of war wounds and not help
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Eat a plentiful meal in front of a starving family.
Leth agreed to become part of the experiment, but why does he concede? Surely a moral response would be to argue against the more severe regulations.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 4:19 pm }
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{ Spectacle }
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Spectacle is a way of distracting mass audiences from realities of power. Spectacle is usually created for and by power, but may sometimes be detourned.
Spectacle is something the audience watches passively, although often with the illusion of participation.
Spectacle is usually, but not always, made by the powerful for the consumption of the disempowered. Spectacle can be used by the disempowered to make points or claims about the powerful.
Spectacle can be used to make people or objects seem to have much greater power and significance, for example Royalty is largely sustained through spectacle.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:52 pm }
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Manifesto of the surrealist movement towards revolutionary free art.
Influenced others such as; Leon Trorsky, Andre Benton, Diego Rivera.
“Little Otik” (2000) was a political statement about desires in Eastern Europe at the time.
“Alice” is Svankmajer’s surreal version of “Alice in Wonderland”
Dreamlike quality
External concrete forms to relate to internal states, creating a surreal world to reflect on the real world
Portraying logical in an odd or non-logical way
Influential to David Lynch, the Cohen Brothers and the Brothers Quay.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:43 pm }
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{ Power }
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DAVID MORLEY
Morley investigated how audiences from different social classes, ethnicity, age etc respond to television programmes; he found that there were three main reactions.
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Hegemonic reading: the audience held the same attitudes and beliefs
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Negotiated reading: the audience only share half of the same attitudes
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Oppositional reading: the audience agrees with none of the same beliefs.
He established that it mostly depended on social class and up-bringing.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:39 pm }
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{ Memory }
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ALBERT BANDURA
Bandura’s study involved showing a group of children watching a video of adults behaving violently and aggressively towards Bobo dolls.
They were then placed in a room full of toys but were instructed not to play. The children were moved to a third room with the same Bobo dolls and mallets, told to play and were observed.
Bandura found that 88% of children acted aggressively, when the experiment was repeated 8 months later without showing the video 40% still behaved in the same way.
His study uses social learning theory, learnt through observation; we are more likely to imitate actions if the same age or sex, or admired models do it. This shows us that television does have a physical reactive affect on its audience; however the experiment still has issues of bias.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:33 pm }
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{ Power }
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YALE 1961
The Milgram experiment involved a teacher and a student in separate rooms. The rooms were opposite one another with a one-way mirror dividing the subjects; this allowed the teacher to see their student. All ‘student’s were actors, but the ‘teacher’s were unaware of this.
The task was for the student to answer questions from the teacher correctly, if the student gave an incorrect answer the teacher had to administer an electric shock, and the student would act as though in pain.
Most teachers shocked their pupils without question, but some were uncomfortable causing physical pain. The scientists observing were only allowed to say “please continue”, and usually the teacher would carry out their absurd task.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:29 pm }
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{ Memory, Power, Spectacle }
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PHILIP ZIMBARDO et al 1971
The Stamford experiment was a study of the psychological effects of being a prisoner or a guard.
The task was to live in a mock prison and carry out a ‘normal’ routine, the guards were allowed to punish where they saw fit.
The experiment only lasted six days as it was unexpectedly stopped. Prisoners were losing their identity, however only one rebelled still understanding that it was an experiment, the others simply conformed to the guards abstract rules.
After the experiment was conducted, the guards said they were surprised to see how they acted in a simulated environment.
We can see similarities to this in modern day media, reality television shows, such as ‘Big Brother’ (Channel 4); the producers encourage conflict in the house for public entertainment.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:25 pm }
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{ Power, Spectacle }
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JOHN BERGER 1972
What is the nude, why does it exist? Berger argues that art should not be questioned.
Says men were jealous of women being openly nude, so they created vanity as a sin.
Some religions use nudity to demonstrate sexual activity and love.
Read ‘seeing’ as looking, not as a display; there are differences between paintings made for display or personal gratification (hedonism).
The woman’s positioning in the paintings is demonstrating the male’s sexual pleasures; it has nothing to do with her own. Women in these paintings are always laying in wait for their male judge, however, her look is one of calm content; she knows an audience/painter is looking at her. The gaze is for the viewer. Both modern day and ancient medias use this for male voyeurism.
The only rival for a man usually shown in these renaissance paintings is Cupid or cherub type small boys.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:04 pm }
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{ Memory }
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SIGMUND FREUD
For Freud, Memory is the foundation of the development of the individual psyche, even if this can occur both ‘normally’ as well as in pathological (unhealthy) ways. He believed that people ‘repress’ painful memories deep into their unconscious mind. Freud argued that the act of repression did not take place within a person’s consciousness. Thus, people are unaware of the fact that they have buried memories of traumatic experiences, and these repressed memories continue to function in the unconscious as the represses motivations of actions and are manifested in pathological symptoms; as in cases of hysteria. Some individuals, as a result of repressing the memory of specific traumatic events either fail to progress through the ‘normal’ stages of infantile psycho-sexual development becoming fixed in, or regressing to these stages results in neurotic behaviours – fetishes and obsessions.
Freud believed human memory expresses or reveals the dual ‘magical’ capacity of our mental apparatus for unlimited receptivity and the preservation of durable traces, though deformed. The psychic system which receives sense impressions from the outside world remains unmarked by these impressions which pass through to a deeper layer where they are recorded as unconscious memory.
{ November 27, 2008 @ 3:01 pm }
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GUY DEBORD 1967
“The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated through images” (Debord).
Debord draws on Marxist theories of Alienation, Commodity Fetishism and False Consciousness. In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation, reality has stated to become a representation. With other means of communication available such as MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook, and mobile phones, human contact and communication is increasingly restricted.
The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance. The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible, but it is all one sees.
The consciousness of desire and the desire for consciousness are identical, the project which in its negative form seeks the abolition of classes, the workers direct possession of every aspect of their activity. Its opposite is the society of the spectacle, where the commodity contemplates itself in a world it has created.
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