Silent Light - Carlos Reygadas (2007)

Carlos Reygadas's third feature following his brilliant Battle in Heaven, Silent Light marks a dramatic aesthetic departure from his usually more unpredictable, showy, but very exciting works. Here, Reygadas follows the footsteps of formalist masters Bresson and Tarkovsky, using long takes and slow tracking shots with stark attention to composition. Despite some wonderfully poetic moments, the beauty and meticulousness of every shot at times detracts from the organic unfolding of the story. That being said, the shots are absolutely gorgeous. Screensaver gorgeous.




Somewhere in a Mennomite community in Mexico (who knew there were Amish in Mexico?) Johan, a married man with a bunch of children falls in love with another woman, Mirianne. He is completely open to his wife, Esther, regarding his infidelity and is very conflicted with the situation. This betrayal results in his wife's heartbreak and eventual death. And that's pretty much the entire story. Rather than concern itself with plot or character, Reygadas is fascinated by the environment, man's place in nature, and nature as a mirror of man's emotional states. There is one outstanding scene which, to me, serves as a perfect illustration of what the short stories of Chekov would look like if adapted for the screen. It is a perfectly understated snapshot of the small gestures and details in the surroundings during an emotional fallout, in this case a scene where Esther cannot take any more of Johan's split feelings. To be honest, these screen captures don't do this scene any justice.


Esther: Remember when we would love traveling like this? We wouldn't stop singing. We were always happy. Or just remained silent or I would fall asleep. However it was, just being next to you was the pure feeling of being alive. I was apart of the world. Now, I am separated from it.


Johan: I feel the same.
Esther: How I wished it was all a bad dream. To close and open my eyes and be back in that time. In that feeling.



Esther: My chest is hurting.
Johan: We're almost there Esther.
Esther: Stop the car, Johan.


Esther: I'm cold Johan.



Heartbreaking.

An Affair of Love - Frédéric Fonteyne (1999)

An unnamed man and woman schedule purely sexual encounters, no strings attached and no baggage, after they meet via an ad placed in an erotic magazine. Things begin to get complicated when they develop feelings for each other. During this realization of their mutual affection, their feelings are put to the test when the death of an old man outside the hotel room they frequent challenges what it means to dedicate one's life to a person they think they know (in this case, the character's don't) and serves as a reminder of the volatile nature of relationships.

The film opens with terribly cliched interview segments of our subjects (voice behind the camera intact), situating the viewer in an awkward position of trying to believe the characters' accounts while tackling with the fact that it's obviously a fictional narrative. One could argue this makes sense on a formal level though, as it reflects the characters' uneasiness and the superficiality of first impressions. But once the film moves onto their story without the hokey questions and documentary tactics it begins to pull us in. As the characters recount their experiences of getting used to their weekly sessions and becoming more familiar with each other, wonderfully poetic moments captured by the filmmakers reveal a tenderness and real empathy for the characters' feelings.



The film shines when it portrays their sensuality with grace and innocence. Foreplay underneath clean white sheets and playfully suggestive banter in a bathtub (what's going on beneath?), despite the scenes' carnality, portray the joy and purity of physical intimacy when shared with someone you respond to emotionally.




The film eventually charts the insecurities of a newly developed relationship and the fears of commitment. While both parties feel strongly about each other, their thoughts on how the other feels are completely misjudged. Out of fear of expressing their true feelings and leaving themselves vulnerable, the characters opt for an end to their tryst, leaving behind only memories of their brief but passionate affair.

Stylistically and thematically, An Affair of Love evokes a mix of Godard and Wong Kar Wai in terms of thematic content and some of the aesthetic choices. The film is wonderfully lit, though some of the compositional choices were a bit forced, with an over reliance on symmetrical/center framing for an "arty" effect. The film works best when it opens itself to spontaneity, featured most prominently in the love sequences. Nathalie Baye as "Elle", in particular, gives a wonderfully organic performance. Also, it's use of the post-rock band Rachel's "Lloyd's Register" from their LP The Sea and the Bells (1996) is absolutely fantastic and integrated seamlessly with the narrative. Check out the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkuUaHLZRds



Definitely worth checking out again.

On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan (1954)

Kazan's passionate film on loyalty and justice on the docks in New Jersey still packs an emotional punch despite some heavy handed sequences involving the social injustices inflicted upon the dockworkers. Some of the highlights include Marlon Brando playing a blistering wounded ex-boxer, Terry Malloy, hanging onto his dead-end job as a dockworker headed by the mob. What makes his performance so wonderful is the tightrope act he juggles between a muscle head bully and a sensitive loner who's in love. It's definitely easy to see how so many think Marlon Brando single handedly changed the direction of acting in cinema from his raw performance in the film, though it should be noted that many other of the supporting cast were trained by Stanislavski (precursor to Method acting). Also of note is the wonderful Eva Marie Saint (most known for her role opposite Cary Grant in North by Northwest) as his love interest, Edie Doyle. Despite, or perhaps because of, her image of innocence, therein lies an erotic charge hinted at in her steadfastness.

One of my favorite sequences:

Edie: I want you to stay away from me.
Terry: Edie, you love me... I want you to say it to me.
Edie: I didn't say I didn't love you. I said, "Stay away from me."



The neo-realist aesthetic, helmed by Boris Kaufman, gives the picture a layer of authenticity and dramatic heft. We get a really strong sense of place, from the layers of pigeon stool on the rooftops to the water worn dock (an excellent shot of a beaten Brando. The benefit of B&W, blood and water are visually interchangeable):

Kazan is a brilliant actor's director and a subtle visual stylist. His editing is disciplined, almost spartan. And there aren't really that many stylistic flourishes that distract from the story, so excellent balance between content and form.

On Kill Bill Vol. 1

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a giant homage to Asian cinema. From the opening Shaw Brothers studio logo to the employment of Meiko Kaji’s music (who in turn also acted in Lady Snowblood, an obvious influence in the creation of Lucy Liu’s character as well as being a staple female revenge picture popular in 60’s-70’s Japanese cinema), the film serves an excellent model for a collage of eastern stylistics and media filtered through a Western (Tarantino and Hollywood) mindset. Perhaps one of the more memorable segments is the anime-styled flashback of O-Ren Ishii, which I feel exemplifies the cross-cultural interplay between eastern and western media. The segment was animated by Japanese studio Production IG (most known for their Ghost in the Shell films). Japanese anime is itself a product of post-WWII Western influence and many of its earliest creators were inspired by Disney cartoons (Osamu Tezuka, for example). This film is the ultimate geek-fest, brimming with references and tributes left and right. It’s a testament to Tarantino’s direction that it remains very much his film.

On Trinh and Ito

On Trinh

Trinh discusses the role of the consumer and creator, with a specific emphasis on representation of the Other and the complex relationships it has with imperialist Western ideology. She adopts a mainly critical approach to popular media, pointing her finger specifically at Hollywood cinema, for imposing a specific language and model of media that mainly exhibits Western attributes, a symptom of what she calls the remains of the white imperialist mindset. For the most part, however, Trinh adopts a very self-reflective/critical stance on the role of media in general, acknowledging the potential of every image in spreading its own ideology. She calls for an alternative cinema that breaks down what we feel comfortable watching, best exemplified by her invocation of filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (considered to be the foremost intellectual filmmaker) in his condemnation of TV and Hollywood and its capitalist principles and a call to disrupt that with media which “disrupt[s] sound and image”.

On Ito

Mobile phones – Ito does an ethnographic study of the use of mobile phones among teenaged youth in Japan. She reveals that these devices have changed how people interact in a space. For example in the past, people would decide on a time and place beforehand and respect that. Nowadays, with instant communication, a time and place can be decided later according to other people’s wishes. Things are much more flexible. It also opens up a space for communication when otherwise it would not be possible. Thus the urban space has become personalized, people are never alone.

Yugioh – Ito does an ethnographic study of Yugioh, a multi-media phenomenon not unlike Pokémon. She explores specifically the effect of these new media on the imagination of today’s children. Citing Appadurai, Ito claims that imagination is now more integrated into everyday living. She breaks down the Yugioh phenomenon into different parts: Media Mixing, hypersociality as social form, and remix as cultural form.

Media mix – virtual and real are converging. The narrative of the anime/game/manga is experienced in the real world by those who engage in the card playing as well.

Hypersociality – this game encourages social encounters. People bring the game out with them and are encouraged to with the help of portable gaming platforms.

Remix – The emphasis on personalization allows certain flexibility on how Yugioh is played. On one level, it creates its own economy and systems of exchange, exemplified by card otaku and their dedication to acquiring and selling of rare cards.

Comments: Trinh’s writings emphasize the importance of alternative approaches to media consumption and creation that resonate with me. With the mention of filmmakers as Godard and Tarkovsky, many of the points that Trinh makes are made clearer when being exposed to highly personal alternative “art house” cinema. In contrast to Trinh’s highly self-reflective and self-critical essays, Ito’s ethnographic essays emphasize changing modes of communication but not so much the negative implications. In relation to Trinh’s reading, I feel that the use of mobile phones and portable gaming devices in a way that also reinforces a limiting mode of communication with its own set of rules. Portable communication technology may be the way of the future, but what are the setbacks that come with it?

On Hobbs

Visual Literacy - How factors like selection, framing, composition, sequence, and aesthetic dimensions of images affect viewers’ interpretation and emotional responses.

Information Literacy – A set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use it. This allows users to identify useful media in the abundance of new media. Critics highlight this method’s de-emphasis on meaning being constructed through interpretation with its insistence on finding “facts” for organizational purposes.

Digital Literacy – The ability to understand, evaluate, and integrate information in multiple formats.

Media Literacy – Emphasizes inquiry and learning by doing/creating media, with an emphasis on cycle of awareness, analysis, reflection, action, and experience in a community context that is responsive to individuals, particularly in relation to social and political injustice. Media literacy advocates push the incorporation of media literacy studies into English classes as new media increasingly permeates our lives.

Critical Literacy – An examination of how various texts, including pictures, icons, and electronic messages are used to influence, persuade, or control people. This mode stresses that meaning is created through interaction and involvement, in the context of social, historic, and power relations. The critical in critical literacy refers to texts as a site of oppression and exploitation, as this mode of reading texts emphasizes that identity and power relations are always a part of the process interpreting texts, and that these processes occur in a socio-culturally and historically bound framework. Advocates believe that you can control your experience of the world through constructing messages as a part of transforming society.

These are all differing modes of reading texts, each with their own set of ideologies, strengths, and weaknesses. Hobbs sees that figuring out these modes and how they work and compromises will impact education greatly.

Hobbs discusses how a plethora of distinct modes of literacy are emerging due to the developments of new media, and how more modes are being developed, or dwindling as consensus among scholars increases. Despite this, everyone agrees that visual, electronic, and digital media is reshaping knowledge, skills, required to participate in contemporary society.

Luke reiterates many of Hobbs points about the role of new media in our lives, especially in relation to new methods of education for youth growing up in this era of new media.

Comments:

On Lister pgs. 119-179

Lister discusses the relationship between cyberspace and everyday life, how nowadays, they are constantly informing each other.

Smart house – future where computers are hidden, and things within the house are all maintained and controlled via computer. From a critic of the technological deterministic view, it is reflection of “a commercial technological imaginary of domestic control, comfort and security” (223), which are not intended for social change.

Popular new media is primarily sold as commodities (DVD’s, videogames, etc). Lister mentions “black boxes” which package various technologies in a single product, that is never entirely a “coherent, discrete device, but always a more or less arbitrary (and temporary) closure on a diverse field o uses, technologies, and meanings” (226).

Lister than distinguishes different modes of consuming media:

1) Cyberculture – a celebration/embracement of new technologies. Cyberspace as a realm where social divisions can be transcended.

2) “Business as (or even worse than) usual” – Technology serving primarily to preserve the existing economic and social order. Exemplified by video games being a model for keeping consumers under control.

3) Populists and Post-modernists – Consumption and leisure determine texture and experiences of life. Consumers play a more active role in shaping their identities through their choices in media. Like cyberculture, but media/consumer society as a whole is the realm where creativity can flourish.

4) Cultural and Media Studies – Academic discipline involved in theorizing everyday cultural consumption. New media are not fundamentally distinct from old media. And consumption and production are both important, the relationships between the two create meaning.

Lister also blurs the distinction between the consumption of technologies as instrumental use and play, using the cellular phone as an example. The PC is also mentioned, particularly highlighted is its chameleon-like nature, and how its design and function reflects the user’s personality.

Also of note is how relationships are defined or revealed by the placement of the computer within a household. Lister also discusses how the computer was thought of as a haven from the dangers of playing outside, but with the introduction of the internet, the threat of pedophiles/pornography/etc has infiltrated the domestic space. Thus, access is “constrained by socio-economic factors, established household politics and relationships of gender and age, by material constraints of space and time and by anxieties about the relationships between everyday space and cyberspace” (239).

Lister spends time discussing “edutainment”, the phenomenon of using entertainment, toys, and games as learning utilities. Despite its early criticisms, it has been adopted by many organizations, hinting at the dissolution of boundaries between consumption of commercial media and education. Also being changed is the increasing bond between knowledge and capital. This blurring has many inherent contradictions not easily resolvable.

The act of constructing an identity is strongly tied to media construction and consumption. The Webpage functions as an avenue to the outside world, and how you construct your designs on the web heavily reflects the identity you wish to reveal. Lister reveals a study of girls and their web pages and how those sites were texts that revealed what girls wanted to become and how they wished to be viewed. It also functions as a “safe” space where they can put up personal insights and experiences.

The notion of identity is blurred on the web, because users can’t see other users. Bodies are essentially not involved. Lister mentions how this aspect of the internet can create the feeling of “disembodiment”. Thus, in the future, there lies the potential to experience different levels of reality, if not already.

Identity and Technology + postmodern theories:

1) Postmodernist cyberculture – assumes overthrow of passive consumption by interactive communication and creativity. New technologies are free from ‘master narratives’ and hierarchies of modern era.

2) Postmodernist politics of identity – identity is constructed and also contested. Media constitutes only one of many historical/cultural forces influencing changes in subjectivity.

3) Reading of postmodernity as crisis – postmodern world is hyperreal – place where information and images circulate such that real world is not tenable. Another reading is that real world exists, but we don’t have access to it.

4) Theories of postmodern media subject – identity is shaped through dominance of consumer and media culture.

5) Post-structuralist theories of self or subject as constructed through discourse – Self is viewed as a product of symbolic systems, thus new media has potential for challenging subject positions.

6) Cyberpunk – the emergence of individuals’ disembodied interaction/fusion with digital technology and networks.

History of the “subject” – emerged during Renaissance, beginning of modern world, away from God-centric fixed hierarchy of individuals and social classes to one that is attached to the self at birth. As time went by, social relationships change, thus this new model of defining the self helped make sense of it all. In modern era, post-modern notion of self = identity is not fixed; it is movable, changeable, etc.

Cyborg – blurring between machine and organism and other binaries. Thus, gender is also ambiguous. Difference is eradicated. (think of Neo from The Matrix being an androgynous hero in contrast to the hyper-masculine Arnold in The Terminator) From a cyber-feminist stance (Plant), women and machines are in a binary opposition to men, being that woman has been linked to being in service to men. Thus this new wave of technology marks a revolution that sweeps the male modern subject into the female world.

Videogames – Using Doom as an example, this dark visceral anti-social experience is painted in contrast to spontaneous play world of outside interaction in a natural environment. Thus, in critical studies, videogames have often been sidelined and criticized as being a conduit for violent, soul-less behavior.

Lister reveals the integral part computer games played in the development of personal computer, as finding innovative uses and testing the functionalities of computers was strongly linked to play. Programming and hacking have roots in gaming. This is exemplified by the game Doom, which allowed its users to go into its design and change things according to their own uses, promoting its own kind of creativity.

The phenomenon of Pokémon blurs the distinction between play and consumerism due to the franchise’s exploitation of children’s culture of collecting by creating its own distinct economy. This aspect of the game, however, also makes it a sociable game, perhaps promoting other aspects of human interactivity that could be considered productive.

Lister goes deeper into the significance of play in society by highlighting “play” as creating an arena separate from real life. A distinction is made between the types of play ludus (games that adhere to strict rules ie. videogames, chess) and paidia (games that are active, tumultuous, spontaneous ie. children’s make believe). Drawing from Caillois, Lister mentions how both are important, specifically the value of ludus in developing our ability to function or act creatively within society that has its own rules and confines.

Lister discusses the role of identification in gaming and notes the difference between playing a game and watching a film or TV. There is the possibility to intervene which changes the spectator’s expectations. Also, who we identify with is different. In a film, one usually associates with a protagonist. In games like SimCity or Civilization, one associates oneself with a multitude of roles, thus identifying with a network, perhaps the computer itself.

Comments: Lister goes really in depth into the complexities of relations between computers and their users. Of interest to me is the genre of cyberpunk, its implications of the blurring of distinction between humans and computers. Of note is the idea of the cyborg being androgynous. In contemporary cinema, depictions of the hero have moved towards the way of the cyborg, androgynous features being the norm. Examples including Neo from The Matrix, Jude Law's character in A.I. The popularity of the hyper-masculine hero has declined dramatically since the 1980's, giving way to the non-descript cyborg. Compare Superman of days past to the Superman of today. Of course, changing representations may not be so easily attributed to our relationship to technology, but it is a trend that is interesting to point out and perhaps function as a springboard for further discussion.