Spectators

"Oh dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes, sir. How's that for a bit of home-spun philosophy?"--Stella in Rear Window

I must begin by saying that this week's screenings were very enjoyable. (Despite the fact that I completely forgot two movies meant almost four hours). My favorite connection among them was the character's prying curiosity mixed with the need for visual pleasure. As Cowie says, “[it] invokes the specifically sexual pleasure of looking that is identified as exemplary of classical Hollywood." (492)

It's true we love watching other people and sometimes for no good reason. Jeff had been sitting in his apartment for six weeks and considering that he nicknamed all his neighbors, he must have done nothing but look out that window. Looking gave him a pleasure that hypnotized him one way or another.

"Rear Window explores the limitations such voyeurism produces in our relations to others. Instead, it demands that we recognize our implication, and pleasure, in voyeuristic looking and what this makes us blind to." (492)

This visual pleasure does blind us to our surroundings. Take for example the scene where King Kong is being photographed by reporters. The audience just loved looking at the drama and did not become aware of the danger they were in.* Or just Carl’s curiosity about King Kong, and how that led to him capturing King Kong, despite the fact that King Kong had killed half the crew.

Which this all just leads my mind to Third Cinema. If we weren’t yearning for more drama then maybe we’d realized that those stories are based on real facts that need to be solved.




*(Did King Kong's rage at being photograph not remind anyone of Britney Spears and her umbrella?)

Panoptic Neighborhoods

So I haven't gotten to the response readings yet, but I want to talk about a few thoughts on my mind coming from tonight's screening. I'm going to mostly focus on Rear Window, but I've got a few things to say about King Kong too (outside of smarmy humorous remarks).

I'm wondering why we didn't screen Rear Window against Keenan's article, except that it's extremely relevant to Mulvey's work too (but than again, what movie isn't?). The window in Rear Window sets up various displays, frames, narratives; the lives of the people inside are given narratives by their framing, a sort of cinematic Mulveyian display. The people become a sort of language, their actions carrying meaning to the spying LB. Barthes talked about how images signify on the level of connotation; in Rear Window the lives of LB's neighbors become images to be seen and received as language. That image only exists if light passes from within the window to the outside (the darkened window or room carries no meaning, a projector that is not turned on). That language of window images transmit troubling information, and if anything Rear Window demonstrates a panopticon where it's inhabitants do not realize that they are being watched.

Honestly the first time I saw Rear Window it bored me out of my mind. Now, I still enjoy all the other Hitchcock films I've seen so far more (doesn't mean they are better), but Rear Window is much more interesting to me now, just because of my theoretical background maybe. Perhaps what is exciting to most people who see the film didn't excite me, which is watching an audience construct a narrative out of performances happening outside their own encapsulated private world. It was only when LB's world transgressed upon the private home of another, and when the Salesman transgressed onto LB's home was a really interested the first time I saw the film. And any sort of transgression or travel outside of LB's home is done by females. The first time I saw LB pull out his camera lens I couldn't help but notice how he lay it right down on his crotch. Rear Window is almost (or perhaps just outright is) parodying the way phallus is tied to vouyerism, yet it is female bodies that must perform actions for the male. Although this includes making him a sandwich in the kitchen, this also includes investigating, bringing about justice, and doing things that LB is powerless to do. In a sense, he is emasculated. After all, with that huge cast covering his crotch I imagine sex is very hard to do.

These are my scattered thoughts about the film (it's almost 3AM so perhaps I'm not in the best of shape to be replying currently) but I want to see what people think. The fun thing about King Kong was that at the time it was a film of technical brilliance, and the fun of the film was to try and almost figure out the apparatus behind the picture, to see how it was made. Now it's quite obvious how that works, but it removes a level of reading that can be made, which is when we realize that the actors really are "standing in front of and watching a screen" during sequences where stop-motion occurs in the background and live action in the foreground. Again, windows stare out at King Kong, and King Kong has the power to break past those windows and reach into the private domain for his woman. In short, the questions I want to ask are these: In what ways does this film support or deny Keenan's thesis? To what extent is the window also a cinematic screen - in both Rear Window and King Kong? At first in King Kong, we objectify the women, tribals, and monsters but is there a moment perhaps where we empathize with each of them, or resist the classic notions of cinema? In Rear Window, the woman is clearly in the position of the to-be-gazed according to Mulvey's theories, but at the same time that awareness is made clear through the woman inserting herself into the narratives behind the windows LB watches, and also as a sort of physical extension of the man (just as the camera lens, wheelchair, flash bulb, and binoculars become mechanical/cyborg extensions of LB). Does Rear Window somehow resist classic cinema portrayals or reinscribe them in a new way?

If I have any responses to the readings I will post those also.

Mandabi by Ousmane Sembène, 1968

For any of you who is interested in Sembène's works, Mandabi is a good film to try - perhaps a bit more accessible and relatable, in my opinion. Sembène, the Senegalese filmmaker who passed away just an year ago, is often said to be "the father of African cinema." He was a significant figure not only in post-colonial cultural awakening, but also in the Négritude as a radical, uncompromising critic. (*a literary and political movement developed among the Francophone African world to promote black heritage against French intellectual domination.) I watched this film for a french literature course last year titled The Francophone World; the film, compared to Ceddo, is a bit more modest in delivering its narrative and in addressing issues that may be slightly more relevant to the general audience. (largely in regarding social injustice, post-colonial political issues, gender issues, etc.) 

Mandabi ("Money Order") 1968

Quite humorous, powerful and effective in its message and aesthetics. Enjoy!

"A Filmmaker Who Found Africa's Voice"

The New York Times article on Ousmane Sembène, June 12 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/movies/12semb.html

3rd Audience

I professed last week (when I mixed up sections) that I am a Barthes fanboy, and this week I want to expand on that claim a little bit by tying in some of the ideas of the participatory and interactive media from lecture today with the discussion of Barthes and Benjamin these past two weeks. I remember distinctly in Walter Benjamin's essay that he claimed that eventually through the media of mechanical reproduction would allow the audience to take the role of producer: "Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into writer" (232). Barthes also would become an advocate of the reader's ability to "write" text, and although we covered his pre-Death of the Author writings last week, his own method of disassembling and reassembling myth (the process of connotation) involves some level of reader creativity instead of absorbent passivity. Thus, it piqued me in today's lecture to hear Philip Rosen discuss how 3rd Cinema was an active event, something made "from the bottom" that got people potentially arrested and involved...well, involvement from the viewer. This is much different than Benjamin's discussion of the bored passivity of the public in his assessment of the film, but I think both Solanas/Getino and Benjamin are concerned with the possible participatory and revolutionary potentials of cinema. Are the writers of 3rd Cinema trying to respond to the commodification of film (the reinscription of aura into the film) by talking about this revolutionary cinema as a possible solution to the failures of Benjamin's visions for machine reproduced film? Is 3rd cinema created by a rebellious audience that refuses to consume 1st and 2nd cinema? Where does that line between producer and audience lie for something like 3rd cinema? Finally, looking at today's YouTube, DIY Video, grassroot media, and other participatory free exchange/information media groups that exist, where does their cinema fall?

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.

Third Cinema

One of the topics that I found most interesting about third cinema was the ways that it presents alternative histories. Philip Rosen comments on this as specifically related to Ceddo. Twice in the film, characters have visions of alternate realities. First, there is the imagined scene of the Catholic mass. Next, when Dior's kidnapper is killed she has a vision of offering water to him. Rosen says that these examples are "cinematically coded as subjective." The audience knows that these events do not actually occur in the narrative of the film. However, Rosen also notes the final scene, where Dior kills the imam, signifying the unity of the old nobility and the ceddo. This event actually happens in the world of the film, so it is different than the imagined scenes. However, Rosen shows that this is another alternate version of history, because this unity of the nobility and ceddo is not something that happened in Senegalese history. In terms of revolutionary cinema, this "objective" change of history is more useful, because it is presented as a real event. It also promotes active viewership, because the audience is forced to remove themselves from the world of the film in order to see this ending as an alternate history.

The notion of the audience being active in the watching of a film was also intriguing. Solanas and Getino note how different mainstream cinema is from third or revolutionary cinema in terms of the viewers. When watching a mainstream film, the viewer is ultimately passive. In contrast, Solanas and Getino state that the act of simply attending the screening of a revolutionary film makes one active, because the viewer is there with full knowledge that his attendance is not condoned by the system. Because of this the audience of a revolutionary film is a political community, and the film will be the beginning of debate and potentially other revolutionary actions. As viewers of mostly mainstream cinema, is it possible for us to become active viewers, or is the act of watching mainstream films inherently passive?

Is the public indifferent to reality or "reality"?

In reading Solanas and Getino’s “Towards a Third Cinema” and Keenan’s “Publicity and Indifference,” I was interested in the two articles’ differing accounts of the role an audience plays.

“Towards a Third Cinema” describes Hollywood cinema is making man a “passive and consuming object” (64). The way in which Keenan describes the public in his article somewhat implies a consuming entity; the way in which a camera “[waits] patiently for things to happen [at] particularly dangerous crossroads” (107) made me think of journalists as using elements of reality to create a product. Keenan admits that “the camera” effectively “[mutates]” what it normally “means for [an] event to occur” (107).

When I think of the broadcast news that Keenan describes as having a cinematic counterpart, documentary cinema is what first comes to mind. Solanas and Getino view documentary cinema as the “main basis of revolutionary filmmaking,” which is of course itself the antithesis of the consumerist world of Hollywood cinema. There is a blatant distinction between the depiction of real events which Solanas and Getino describe and that which Keenan describes.

Additionally, a certain quote from “Towards a Third Cinema” seemed to have much resonance in light of Keenan’s article.
“There is no knowledge of a reality as long as that reality is not acted upon, as long as its transformation is not begun on all fronts of struggle” (69). How does this quote affect Keenan’s arguments? If the news audience failed to act upon events in Sarajevo, does this mean they are interpreting the events as a not-quite reality? Is the audience’s response – or lack thereof – indicative of an understanding of their own consumerism, an understanding of the fact that things are happening in dangerous locations where cameras “coincidentally” and patiently lurk?

Third Cinema and Accessibility

"In our times it is hard to find a film within the field of commercial cinema, including what is known as 'author's cinema'-- in both the capitalist and socialist countries-- that manages to avoid the models of Hollywood pictures. The latter have such a fast hold that monumental works such as the U.S.S.R.'s Bondarchuk's War and Peace are also monumental examples of the submission to all the propositions imposed by the U.S. movie industry (structure, language, etc.) and, consequently, to its concepts."

This statement, and most of the other material we read about Third Cinema, suggests that cinema can only be truly revolutionary if it completely breaks away from the standard conventions of film-making. But whatever the content of the Third Cinema piece, this seems to me to be a dubious strategy for igniting the masses with revolutionary fervor. The sad truth is that the common person is so accustomed to the "Hollywood" film's method of communication, that a film composed in a completely unfamiliar way becomes quite inaccessible. I actually found Ceddo to be an extremely difficult film to watch. After it was over, I was able to think about the issues it raised and feel I took something away from the story that was told, but while I was watching it, every half minute felt like five. I seriously doubt I would have sat through it if I weren't studying it for a class. So, how do you get the everyman to watch a movie like that?

I guess my question is this: What would you lose if you allowed your political film to conform to the Hollywood model, as opposed to using an alternative, Third Cinema style of narration? Why is it important for some stories to be told specifically in this way (the Rosen article talked about how Ceddo's long takes and minimal editing mimicked African oral storytelling)? What is more important to a film seeking to effect actual change-- this Third Cinema integrity or accessibility to a wider range of people, who have probably already been conditioned by Hollywood to expect certain film conventions?

Effects of Third World Cinema

Third cinema rejects the ideas of Hollywood, and the idea of film solely as a means of profit. Third cinema came about as a way for the 'other' to speak, instead of having their story told as a narrative from an outsiders point of view. I wonder, though, who is truly able to give a completely objective portrayal of the insiders point of view.
Also, by rejecting the idea of cinema as a means of personal expression, does third cinema lose its ability to evoke the emotions necessary to stir up a change, or to sway the viewers opinion on anything-- and is emotional imagery necessary to do these things? I wonder if this idea of influencing the viewer is the most important aspect of Third Cinema, or if it is simply the true portrayal of the 'other'-- the portrayal of the past from the bottom, instead of as a narrative-- that is important.

I wonder if Gabriels is not simply creating yet another myth by his portrayal of the Ceddo. By telling their story, is he not putting up yet another frame around their story? What really constitutes a true insiders point of view, devoid of mythology?

Third Cinema as a Window of Vulnerability

I find the sense of vulnerability of "windows" resonant in the Third Cinema.

In the text "Windows: of Vulnerability," Keenan describes a house of a particular film as an object of vulnerability, imposed by the lighting, scenes, camera, etc. While Keenan's idea stems from the humanist window, it is certainly applicable on a much broader term, such as a form of signification - the Third Cinema itself.

Third Cinema is a different form of language, or a mode of production, that is created in the context of "struggle" of neocolonization. While it strives to serve a certain function - such as to bespeak the desire of national liberation -, to what extent is it a complete picture, a reliable source for understanding the situation? Consider that the Third Cinema's role parallels to that of "window" in a sense that it provides a view of interior to the outsider.  Then, (in Keenan's words,) "when a window 'gives a light [donner de la lumiere],' what happens? What is the force of the gift, and what arrives with this light?" (Keenan, 125)


Consider the following ideas on "windows":

"...what if the opening of the aperture that allows sight were to become uncontrollable, if the regulated light that makes seeing possible were to overexpose the interior? ... the opening risks the more violent opening of the distinction between inside and outside, private and public, self and other." (Keenan, 124) "the excess of windows both opens the house to surveillance from the exterior and allows interior scenes to be shot with all the brightness of the open sun."

"Human knowledge stems from the gaze, and the window perhaps even more than the mirror gives form to this tenacious ideologeme." (Keenan, 126)

How do we come to realize the ultimate reality, as opposed to the one introduced through Third Cinema that is in the end a kind of a filter or a representation? What ensues - when one "gives light or let the gaze pass through?" (Keenan, 127) According to Rosen, "the third a cultural code, the embodiment of a sociocultural function. ... connotes a public act, hence the performative, theatrical, proclamatory nature of speaking in Ceddo." (Rosen, 730) As said above, the window can hold a stronger signification - a product/ created image through a filter - to disseminate knowledge to the audience. However, how do we, as a spectator, perceive the message, when the depicted scenes are of "the performative, theatrical, proclamatory nature of speaking?"   I just attended a reception of an art exhibit titled "A Varried Terrain" in Providence.  In dealing with the role of human beings/ individuals situated in an ever changing environmental/ industrial community in the age of globalization, the show suggests to the audience that the community, when exposed to stimulation, faces the necessity of change.  What position do the subjects of the Third Cinema take, for example the community depicted in Ceddo? By being captured in the scenes, their struggles are shown but coincidentally they become an object of a representational image. Then what does the Third Cinema become, fulfilling its purpose but with issues that ensue subsequently? A window through which the inner world is shown, and yet because of such accessibility it takes a nature of vulnerability? 

Third Cinema today

All three articles this week talked about the definition of Third Cinema, and it's motivations and ideologies.  Some of these descriptions got me wondering about movies today, and if any could be classified as Third Cinema films--or, more accurately, as being Third Cinemaesque.  One movie that immediately jumped to mind as fulfilling many of the criteria for Third Cinema is Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.  While it is an American film, and not from the third world or a postcolonial society, it was made by a member of an oppressed minority, and is very much about the struggles of African Americans, and more largely about racial tensions between groups in general.  There was even much speculation at the time that there would be riots in New York when it was released (even though there did not end up being any).  In addition to being made for a similar purpose as Third Cinema, it shares many other aspects that were talked about in the articles.  For example, it does not have a normal plot structure by any means--honestly, there is very little plot, with the only important action occurring in the last ten minutes or so of the movie.  In addition, while there is a main character--Mookie, played by Spike Lee himself--the story does not seem to revolve around him, but is much more focused on the idea of community.  It focuses largely on the different groups, and the tensions both between the groups, and within them.  It is not about Mookie's personal journey, it is about the journey of the community he lives in (which he happens to be a part of).

So then, can it be said that Do the Right Thing is an example of Third Cinema?  While technically it would not exactly be accurate (the concept of Third Cinema is tied with liberation movements and postcolonial struggle, and a specific period of time), would it be fair at least to say that it very much embodies the spirit of Third Cinema (i.e., the ideology and technique), if not it itself?

On a similar note, here's another question: what would embody Third Cinema better, a film such as Do the Right Thing, which borrows many of the devices of Third Cinema but takes place in a different (if similar) context, or a film that is made in the third world today and still speaks of postcolonial struggles--i.e., in a more literal sense is closer to Third Cinema--but does not emphasize many of themes that the articles attributed to Third Cinema (community, oral tradition, closeness with land, etc.)?

Windows: sight v. glare

Keenan posits in his "Windows: of vulnerability" that windows are either a means of sight, or a means of light, as he calls it, "glare". He states that

The more light, the less sight, and the less there is in the interior that allows 'man' to find comfort and protection, to find a ground from which to look. The light, while not exactly absent or available for representation, is not present either--it surprises and blinds the present, disrupts teh space of looking and opens an interior, opens it to a force over which it can exert little control (127).

What draws me towards Keenan's discussion of windows and public, is his dichotomization: he claims that looking is owning, but being shown something is to be owned. How can these be mutually exclusive, and how is there no interplay?

His later discussion of framing, and the media in "Publicity and Indifference" also seems to contradict this initial division. If "no image speaks for itself" (113), it follows that the viewer must take an active role in understanding and interpreting the image. At least part of the framing must be subjective. Ultimately, is it up to the audience to decide how much glare and how much image any window presents?

Some Problems?

I noticed a couple of potential contradictions in this week's reading/viewing.  

First of all, Rosen emphasizes how a major difference between Third Cinema and mainstream cinema is that while mainstream cinema tends to be individual and psychological, Third cinema is community and collective oriented.  This seemed to hold true throughout Ceddo, with dialogue being not just between characters but between groups.  At the end, however, when Dior shoots the imam, I really got the impression that she was acting out of her own agency.  While I understand that she was essentially uniting the nation (regardless of class divisions) against the muslim foreigners, she made this decision not by committee vote, but seemingly based on her own, personal, psychological choice.  I wonder what the significance of this is for the understanding of women in the film, as well as for individual agency in general.

On another note, the Keenan Sarejevo on Television article takes the position that perhaps the problem with televising horrors is that we (the public) wrongfully assume a connection between knowledge and a specific, fitting political action/response.  The more the public became exposed to images of Sarajevo, the more they assumed something MUST have been being done to help.  How can Third Cinema, which relies essentially on the same medium and techniques of exposing horrific, disturbing, emotional images avoid this pitfall?

News in Your Television

"Giles Rabine, reporting live for France 2 from Sarajevo just after the fall of Srebrenica, on 13 July 1995 commented simply that, after thirty nine months of televised siege, "the Sarajevans have had enough of being interviewed, being filmed, being photographed; they've had enough of us watching them die, live, without trying to do anything to save them. And who's to say they're wrong?" pg 110 Publicity and Indifference (Sarajevo on Television).

This particular paragraph made me stop in my tracks, grab a pen, and write "Wow!!" right next to it.

Just hours before reading "Publicity and Indifference" in my first year seminar, we were discussing the disappearence of over 50 Americans in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, a border town. Not many people are aware of the on going drug war in Nuevo Laredo, let alone the many Americans who continue to be missing. After a long discussion through the eyes of my La Frontera/The Border class, these Americans of Mexican decent were concluded to be seen by the American society and by television networks as not "American enough" to make headline or any type of news in American television.

Of course, that is coming from 20 students who have been studying segregation in the border, and can possibly not think without these facts popping into their heads. Now what if we take the same situation and look at it through the eyes of Screen and Projections? Why isn't this horrible situation making news?

Keenan mentions the cliche that things don't happen unless a camera is there. The images reporters gather around the world "shame governments into action, armies will undertake humanitarian rescue missions for the publicity value alone, and publicity can bring the mission to an end." (108) So I'm left wondering if the underexposure of this situation, makes the situation unexistent to the public?

We could search the web for news instead of our televisions, but how would we know if that information is even real? If it's not regulated by some network, then it's most likely inaccurate in one way or another (not that it wasn't before). Our only hope is Third Cinema. Some neglected film maker must make a movie for us to be exposed and become aware of what is truly happening among us. But then in order to make a movie, won't this have to be regulated?

Perhaps the film maker can remain true to the cause, get the message across, and start some sort of revolution, but if his movie becomes too Hollywood-ized then we can have hope that the situation won't ever reach our televisions and that we will never have to feel guilty about something we don't know is going on.

Ceddo, "Third Cinema," and Keenan

For the week of September 22nd, we’ll be discussing Ceddo, the articles on “third cinema,” and Keenan. For the articles on “third cinema,” in particular, you should try to relate the readings to scenes or sequences that you found relevant in Ceddo. That is also true for the Rosen essay, which is a great place to start for any analysis of the film. Finally, think of what Keenan’s observations about the nature of TV images might mean for the kind of revolutionary action that “third cinema” advocates. How does Keenan’s theory complicate the relationship between revolutionary ideology and revolutionary film and video aesthetics?

Mythologies

The one topic that confused me the most was when Barthes started talking about the difference between Left-Wing myth and bourgeois myth: "Yes, myth exists on the Left, but it does not at all have there the same qualities as bourgeois myth. Left-wing is inessential." This is where I went from kind of getting it to being completely lost. Presumably Barthes is talking about the left wing of of politics in France at the time he was writing this. Is the left wing the same as the poor that Barthes mentions who also have inferior myths? If myth is a social fact, how can myth as used by some people be more important or essential then when used by others? Does he mean that while bourgeois myths like the wedding become naturalized, left wing or poor myths do not? It seems to me that categorizing the linguistics and myths of an entire class of people as inferior is a very broad generalization. Can't the working class have their own myths separate from the bourgeoisie?

The Subjective Nature of Myth

When reading Barthes' Mythologies, I was somewhat confused about the nature of myth, particularly whether or not it is subjective.

On page 116 when describing the picture of the French soldier, he writes:
"On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But, whether naively or not, I see very well what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any colour discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors."

His use of the first-person pronouns "I" and "me" brings forth a few questions. The signified is what Barthes describes as his personal perception; the language he uses made it difficult for me to view the signified as an objective entity (As a side note - the whole emphasis on language and connotation in these readings gives me intense anxiety regarding my word choice). Barthes then uses the words "signified" and "concept" interchangeably, but in the language the concept is more concrete than the abstract and mental signifier.

I guess my question is if a myth is so largely composed of what we perceive as the signified, then how can a myth be as objective as Barthes seems to insist that it is? From my reading, the myth seems to be entirely more subjective, more mental, affected by so many more variables than language. The myth seems to be somewhat metaphysical by nature, which, Barthes states, semiology is not (112).

Structuralism in relation to the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

I find the mechanism of myth to be similar to that of camera in the age of mechanical reproduction. If I understand correctly, the qualities of myth -- the versatility, mutability, distortions that lead to possibilities of characters of the signification -- strike a resemblance to the possibilities of film  and the reproducibility as discussed by Benyamin. Consider the two passages that follow: 

p123, Mythologies by Barthes; 

"Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an 'elsewhere' at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning."

p228, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Benyamin  

"The film has not yet realized its true meaning, its real possibilities... these consist in its unique faculty to express by natural means and with incomparable persuasiveness all that is fairylike, marvelous, supernatural"

"...The sequence of positional views which the editor composes from the material supplied him constitutes the completed film. It comprises certain factors of movement which are in reality those of the camera, not to mention special camera angles, close-ups, etc. Hence the performance of the actor is subjected to a series of optical tests... The audience's identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera" 

(As discussed by Professor Chun, such analysis implies that an actor is merely a 'prop,' but nonetheless allows for opportunities for the mass to become an actor. 

I would like to explore the idea of possibilities behind myth and camera of mechanical reproduction. (And their adaptability to history and situations.) Perhaps it is a bit farfetching and requires further elaboration - but I think the logic is worth comparing. 

change in language vs. mythology

In reference to Saussure and the nature of linguistics-- the sign is arbitrary. There is no reason why a tree should be called a tree. The signifier is brought upon the sign slowly, because of passing time, repetition, and tradition. Because language is based on arbitrary signs, there is no logical founding in the sign, and this renders language virtually impossible to discuss and/or change intentionally. Rather, language changes slowly, as a product of the slight day-to-day differences and modernizing community.

This makes perfect sense to me. One cannot purposefully change language, because there is no sensible reason for this change. Change comes about by chance. I am confused, however, as to how changes are brought about in mythology. Myth, as we have learned through the lectures and readings, seems to be a reflection of history; history is embedded into the structure of the existing mythology. If myth is supposed to be a product of history--a "radical denial or transformation" of history, then I am confused as to who, what, when and where the changing and embedding of history into the myth occurs.

Does this parallel the change that comes about in language? Or does it contradict it?

What images make good myths?

"What the concept distorts is of course what is full, the meaning: the lion and the Negro are deprived of their history, changed into gestures. What Latin exemplarity distorts is the naming of the lion, in all its contingency; and what French imperiality obscures is also a primary language, a factual discourse which was telling me about the salute of a Negro in uniform. But this distortion is not an obliteration: the lion and the Negro remain here, the concept needs them; they are half-amputated, they are deprived of memory, not of existence: they are at once stubborn, silently rooted there, and garrulous, a speech wholly at the service of the concept. The concept, literally, deforms, but does not abolish the meaning; a word can perfectly render this contradiction: it alienates it."

I was rather intrigued by the idea that in a myth, the signification is deprived of the original historical context of the signifier. Professor Chung touched on this in class. She showed us three images from presidential campaigns. The image of John McCain standing casually with some anonymous "local law enforcement officials," all of whom happened to be black, functioned well as a myth because of the anonymity of the image-- the people in it and the specific place did not seem important, so it was easy to focus on its message. The same went for the image of Obama, looking friendly and posing for a snapshot with two elderly, white women. But the image of John Kerry in Vietnam did not work so well to convey the message of Kerry as a soldier, precisely because it was too easily placed back into its original historical context. It sparked a debate about what was actually going on at the time the photo was taken, and what was Kerry's career as a soldier actually like.

This got me thinking about what kinds of images make good myths, and what we do to images to deprive them of their historical context so that we might use them more effectively as myths. The first image that came to mind was this ubiquitous one of Che Guevara.

Here, the signifier is Che Guevara, and the signified has to do with communism and the Cuban Revolution (although, lately, the image has lost a lot of its power due to overuse-- I'd go so far as to say that in our particular historical moment, seeing Che on a t-shirt is more likely to evoke thoughts of counterculture and anti-capitalism). The signification, therefore, is Che seen through this lens of communism and counterculture, or Che as a symbol of revolution and communism. The cropping of this image, seen not just on t-shirts, but on posters and all sorts of other things as well, not only cuts him off at the neck and deprives him of background, but also sort of washes out the details of his face with heightened contrast.

The original photograph from which this famous image was lifted looks like this.


This image sends a completely different message. To begin with, his face has all the detail of a human, as opposed to an icon, and he is given back the rest of his shoulders. But, more importantly, there is a palm tree in the background, and there is someone else in the photograph. Whether or not you know that this photograph was taken in 1960 by Alberto Korda at a memorial service in Havana for victims of the explosion of a freighter ship in Havana harbor, Che is immediately placed in an historical situation. He is standing in front of a palm tree. There is someone next to him. He is looking at something, not just into the distance.

The image of Che as we think of him functions well as a symbol of communism and revolution because its historical significance was literally cropped off the sides.

Anyway, I hope I haven't strayed too far from the original reading. This was just something that popped into my head while I was reading about images functioning as myths.

I Think I Get It Now?

After struggling with this text for a good portion of my day I came across this lovely analogy on page 123 which I feel compelled to share out of its incredible illustrative powers:

"And there is never any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place. In the same way if I am in the car and I looked at the scenery through the window-pane. At one moment I grasp the the presence of the glass and the distance of the landscape; at another, on the contrary, the transparence of the glass and the depth of the landscape; but the result of this alternation is constant: the glass is at once present and empty to me, and the landscape unreal and full...its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full."

I love this passage because Barthes illustrates the illusory trap of the myth to the reader. As I interpret it, the form is the window to the meaning while at the same time the two blur/mask each other's presence by forcing the reader to focus on one aspect at a time, allowing the myth to be in a constant state of variable interpretation. Thus the two can only be put together by recognizing the myth as a whole, or by becoming the "mythologist" as Barthes puts it. I found the whole glass landscape thing to be a perfect segue into film as a visual myth which controls the focus of itself by manipulation of the lens focal depth and angle :D

     Along the lines of what miz stone said about myth being countered by another myth, I get the gist of the concept but I need some clarification on Barthe's whole bouvard-and-pecuchet-ity thing on page 136...Forgive me if I'm being an idiot but I think the main issue was cultural references to which I'm oblivious like Viollet-le-Duc...

Naturalization

“Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. [. . .] Entrusted with 'glossing over' an intentional concept, myth encounters nothing but betrayal in language, for language can only obliterate the concept if it hides it, or unmask if it formulates it. The elaboration of a second-order semiological system will enable myth to escape this dilemma: driven to having either to unveil or to liquidate the concept, it will naturalize it.” (129)

Barthes' focus on the myths' propensity to naturalize history, or as I interpret it, make historical context appear at the only possible formation of a system, is particularly interesting. It implies first, and foremost, an instantaneous processing of the myth. One must absorb and accept the sign instantaneously for Barthes' naturalization to occur. While this is a reasonable expectation, it raises the question of whether a myth exists to one who analyzes a form presented to them. Doesn't the act of analysis involve enumerating all the possible concepts embodied in that form, and therefor a blurring of the naturalized history?

And the writer only knows...

" Take a bunch of roses: I use it to signify my passion. Do we have here, then only a signifier and a signified, the roses and my passion? Not even that: to put it accurately, there are here only 'passionified' roses….. Naturally, there are between the signifier, the signified and the sign, functional implications (such as that of the part to the whole) which are so close that to analyze them may seem futile." (113)

After reading "The Romans in Films" , I was particularly intrigued with the idea of how the creator (or anyone with authority over the matter at stake) can add a meaning to what he is controlling. For example, the smooth-faced, unperturbed and water tight Caesar, who seems to remain this way because he is the only one who does not know what is to happen to him. While Marc Anthony, Brutus, Cassius, and Casca are perspiring through every pore with the intensity and emotion of the situation. We can immediately relate to what is happening; we feel the intensity as they do, and yet, remain completely clueless like Caesar.

However, how is it that we interpret it the way they want us to see it? Like Barthes said, "it is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which defines myth." (118) He then goes on to say that "it is the reader of myths himself who must reveal their essential function." (129) This is true. When we see Marc Anthony's face of anxiety, we all jump to our own experiences. Someone remembers the time they forgot the project which counted for half of their grade was due and had to skip two class periods and lunch to get it done; while someone else remembers that dreaded March 31st as they waited for midnight, hoping to log into their Brown account and getting good news. Whatever we think of, we get the idea of anxiety, and the creator accomplishes their job which I find truly fascinating.

The creator can not always succeed and sometimes the reader reveals a different definition. This reminds me of 2004's democratic hopeful Howard Dean's infamous scream . If you don't recall, Dean was the only person with any probability of beating Bush. However, one "Yeah!" and a hoarse voice gave Americans a scream that they related to their worst demented experience. Just one different interpretation lost him the election (or at least ruined it enough for him that Kerry could now take the lead.)

Perhaps I'm missing the idea behind this lecture, but one thing is for sure, isn't it just fascinating how the separation of myths from history can help us relate to them in our ways. Imagine what you could do with that!

Mythologies

Barthes defines mythologies as second-order myths. 

He writes on page 135: "Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will in fact be a mythology."

To mythify a myth, Barthes suggests that we must use the signification of our first myth as the first term in a new semiological chain which will ultimately result in a mythology.

This seems to make sense, but I wonder if motivation is a factor here.  I was under the impression that meanings could be emptied into forms due to the arbitrariness of first-order language.  Because myths are always necessarily motivated (not arbitrary), how is it that the signification produced by a first-order myth may be converted into empty form for a mythology?  

Response to Barthes

In the section The bourgeoisie as a joint-stock company (p. 137-142), Barthes repeatedly refers to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois ideology, but never does a very good job of defining either.  I know what bourgeoisie means in a general context, but I feel like he is using it in a very specific way--and one which he doesn't seem to adequately flesh out (either that, or I just missed and/or misunderstood it).  He gives a brief description of what he means on page 142, towards the end of this section:

"bourgeois ideology is of the scientistic or the intuitive kind, it records facts or perceives values, but refuses explanations; the order of the world can be seen as sufficient or ineffable, it is never seen as significant."

Though this and a few other parts in this section give a bit of an explanation of what Barthes means, I'm still not entirely sure how he's defining bourgeois ideology.  It definitely has to do with this scientific viewpoint as he mentions in that quote, and also is tied with the concepts of capitalism and consumerism.  But, does he mean anything else in addition to that? Is there any way to formulate in a concise manner exactly what he means by bourgeois ideology?