Media: Windows To Another World

The subject that struck me most throughout the assigned articles is how different media presents images of war. In the aspect of mass media, Keenan illustrates Instant Media and News to be this powerful body which through interpreting images of war can effectively initiate humanitarian effort by causing emotional uprising in individuals and somehow bypass law and government and rationality. Keenan then goes on to say that this body tends to overexert itself with image to the point where its movements become so predictable that it can be manipulated into doing the exact opposite of its goals:

"images...can shame governments into action, armies will undertake humanitarian rescue missions for the publicity value alone, and publicity can bring the missions to an end" (108)

Keenan's argument about how the predictability of the media and its power lulls the audience into a state of comatose maybe because they believe that obviously something is being done already, that I myself need not take action, image overload overwhelms and desensitizes because of the displacement of reality film inherently possesses. Keenan's Panopticon popped into my head, the prisoner who guards themselves by constructing an inner prison. A thought: Is a person who watches One Tree Hill guarding themselves by indulging in a completely false reality (looking through a one way window) as opposed to a person who watches CNN who is watching interpreted images that represent a true reality, a still filtered reality (essentially a two way window)? Or are they both the trapped in the panopticon cell because light can only come through the TV as manipulated, filtered, images? Keenan argues that the interpreted image will always have more power than the uninterpreted image and this is where I disagree with Keenan, I believe the uninterpreted image is the key to reality and freedom, though definitions of "power" and "interpretation" come into discussion.

This is where Third Cinema and Ceddo come into play because Keenan's Media ascribes to the laws of First Cinema and Western aesthetics. When we watch the news we see professional, unnaturally good looking, unnaturally well spoken people (thats why its fun when they mess up their cues) with colorful banners and music, like its a movie in itself. Professionalism seems to detract from reality and this is what makes Third Cinema and Ceddo so incredibly powerful. Ceddo is full of unknown and not great actors, bad edits, in and out sound, slow subtitles, an at times incomprehensible plot, and cultural references to which I was certainly oblivious...and because of this I loved it. It was so cultural, so unorthodox, and so goofy that the message was emboldened. Its unprofessionalism  added a sense of rawness and reality to Ceddo for me. Again the image of war appears with the two nobles who attempt to kill the rebel Ceddo, they are images of war in a traditional (aesthetic?) sense with their traditional war attitudes, colors, and jewelry (Big Budgets?) including the mirror, which is slightly blingish though meant to blind the enemy...when put into practice all these aesthetic qualities are meaningless (First Cinema?), they are dominated by experience and a reality of the situation (Third Cinema?), although the end of the film promotes a return to tradition...

What is so revolutionary about the "True" unbiased Documentary is that it is designed to be a clear window to the outside your self prison of manipulated beliefs. Third Cinema is also designed to be a clear window, the director wants you to look out of yourself so that you may see the true cell which encloses you.