Staged reality in Grizzly Man

Grizzly Man presents a very complicated view of reality.  Unlike many of the films we've watched, Mulvey's first two looks are not subordinated to the third--in this film, we are incredibly aware of the camera.  In fact, the camera is almost a character in the film--Tim talks to it, many times as if he were talking to a therapist almost, describing his innermost worries and fears, and at other times we see him wielding a separate camera than the one that is filming him.  This in addition to the fact that his work is documentary, and not fiction, would suggest that the film presents a more authentic reality than most films do.  

However, this idea is very strongly undermined in many ways by the movie.  For example, in many of the shots, we not only see the part Tim intended to film, but also the parts that would almost definitely be cut were he to have edited them--e.g., him setting up the camera, him offering commentary on his own remarks, him saying things after he's done shooting a scene, etc.  These scenes reveal the fact that the "reality" he sought to present with the camera is not an unfiltered one, but rather a highly thought out one that he himself created. Even though he is shooting scenes of nature, and of reality, at the end of the day he will still choose specific scenes and cut others.  Thus, the view he gives is not that of reality, but reality filtered through him, and through what he believes to be significant and important.  

In addition to his portrayal of reality, Tim's portrayal of himself in his videos is also extremely important.  He very much created a persona for himself, many aspects of which were completely false--e.g., his accent, his loner status (as Amy was there, a fact he hid in almost all of his footage).

In addition, just as Treadwell's hand is clearly shown in his portrayal of reality, so too is Herzog's touch very clearly shown in this film.  In multitude ways he appears in the movie, both with his extensive voice overs, and even appearing in the scene himself when talking to Treadwell's ex and listening to the tape of his and Amy's deaths.  His voice overs are also rather heavy handed at times, such as when he said that he did not see nature as being harmonious and gentle, but rather being full of chaos and violence and murder.  In these cases, Herzog is very clearly projecting his own interpretation onto the images he is presenting.

The troubled state of reality in this fill is even further complicated by the fact that in many of his documentaries, Werner Herzog actually introduces fictional aspects.  For example, in his ducomentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly (which I have not actually seen, but I did see Rescue Dawn, Herzog's fictional account of the same story), at one point Dieter tells the story of a dream involving flight that he had had.  However, he never had that dream, and it was Herzog who wrote that part and told him to read it.  Herzog felt that the dream perfectly represented the "truth" of the situation, and accurately revealed a part of Dieter, so it did not matter to him that it had actually not occured.  Thus, the actual reality of the situation is abandoned in favor of a fabricated hyper-reality of sorts.  Now, I don't know if Herzog had any such scripted moments in Grizzly Man for sure, but there are several scenes that I highly suspect might be. For example, when Treadwell's ex received the watch of his from the coroner (or whatever he was).  Why would she not have gotten the watch back before?  How did Herzog happen to be present when she got it back?  Obviously, these questions do have plausible answers, and it's very possible this scene was genuine--but, it's also fairly likely that it is not.  Another such scene was at the end, when the camera watched the airplane pilot as he flew off.  He was singing, mirroring the song that played in the background throughout the last sequence.  The fact that this singing matched the song (which provided an extremely apt soundtrack for the last scene) seems a highly fortunate coincidence--in addition to the fact that he ended his singing with "and Treadwell is gone."  There is something about that scene that struck me as being too perfect, too fitting of an end--and, with Herzog, even when he is shooting a documentary, if something seems too perfect, too real and true, there is a fair probability that it is (i.e., that he made it up).

Photographs

"When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not emerge, do not leave: they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies. Yet once there is a punctum, a blind field is created (is divined)..." p. 57

La Jetee was an extremely interesting film. Since you cannot see the story unfold before your eyes, you are are left with your own interpretation. When we read Mythologies, I didnt quite understand how it was possible for the creator of the image to have control of the emotions the photograph invoked. It seemed like a game in which the meaning had to find the myth, and the reader is the only one who defines this myth. To me in a film, it appears that the creator has several opportunities to create this myth. Not only do you get to see emotions and stories unfold, but the dialog places the desired idea into your head.

Now I feel like photographs only have one chance. In La Jetee, each frame had to deliver a message. The angles and lighting were choosen in hopes that the myth would be invoked. However, the reader finds a punctum. Something in the image that seeks the reader. That catches his attention and helps him interpret what is happening. It is not what the photographer is trying to invoke, and it varies from person to person. Sometimes it can invoke the emotions the photographer wished for or the complete opposite.

I don't know exactly how to explain this. However, The Grizzly Man seems to do what a photograph cannot. Film cannot posses this punctum. There are many scenes in which Tim seems to be acting out a scene in a play, finishes, and corrects himself. This shows that although the scene is supposed to be unedited, the scene is actually planned out. You probably could have believed Tim's argument if the scene had finished a few seconds earlier. Now a photograph cannot do this. It has one chance and hopefully it will work.

Blowup

I love that Barthes references Antonioni's 1966 Blowup on page 85 when he is exploring the boundaries of photographs as a kind of proof or evidence of reality, and what the implications of those boundaries are.  He talks about a situation that arises when he receives a photograph of himself that he does not remember being taken.  "And yet, because it was a photograph I could not deny that I had been there (even if I did not know where).  This distortion between certainty and oblivion gave me a kind of vertigo, something of a "detective" anguish (the theme of Blow-Up was not far off); I went to the photographer's show as to a police investigation, to lear at last what I no longer knew about myself."  

If you haven't seen Blowup, the idea put way too simply is that a photographer thinks he has unwittingly witnessed and taken photographs of a murder in the park, but he is not sure if it really happened or not.  Because he sees a vague image of a body as he is developing his film, he becomes obsessed with determining whether it is really there and blows up the image larger and larger but it becomes decreasingly clear each time.  The film never really resolves whether the murder actually happened, but it does raise the question: is photography surreal, or more true than our own knowledge/memory?  I think that is part of what Bazin is talking about too.

To connect Blowup with Barthes more overtly, it seems that the studium of the photograph is the couple frolicking in the park (what the photographer was intentionally shooting), while the punctum is the murder.  It is a small detail captured accidentally that pricks you.  I think it is interesting too that the specific punctum itself is a violent scene in Blowup, considering that Barthes uses violent language like "prick" and "wound" to describe the concept in Camera Lucida.

Does theater need to break Hollywood's rules to make its audience think?

A few people have already brought up my critique of counter-cinema, which is, what is the point? By deliberately setting out to break the rules of cinema, counter-cinema is just as bound by these rules as Hollywood. And since counter-cinema isn't aiming to please an audience, and actually often tries to be the opposite of entertaining, it isn't even valuable as a form of entertainment.

Peter Wollen, in his article "Godard and Counter-Cinema," compares Godard to Brecht, saying that both are "suspicious of the power of the arts-- and the cinema, above all-- to 'capture' it's audience without apparently making it think, or changing it." I do think this is a valid suspicion. Films have the power to capture our attention, so it seems somehow wrong that they should spend two hours in charge of our brain without inspiring us to think about something.

But I'm not sure I believe that counter-cinema films do a better job of this. For example, the first difference Wollen lists between Hollywood and counter-cinema is narrative transitivity vs. narrative intransitivity. The article suggests that narrative intransitivity somehow forces the audience to pay more attention. But I found the opposite to be true-- while I can easily follow a consistent narrative in a film, breaking the film up into little pieces serves only to distance me from the film and make me less interested in what is going on on the screen, so that I actually pay much less attention.

Purpose of Foregrounding

Agh. I just managed to delete my blog post.... time to start from scratch!

What I found most striking about Godard's counter-cinema was the way in which the hierarchy of the three looks was destroyed. In Weekend, the audience is made fully aware that they are watching a film, because of internal references to the film itself, writing on the screen, and the camera movement and angles. This idea of foregrounding leads the audience to be more critical of the content in the movie, but it does not provide the audience with much empathy or involvement with the characters or the

In traditional, first cinema & Hollywood movies, the audience is fully immersed in the film. The audience is not aware of the presence of the camera. The camera serves as a "technological means toward achieving a perfect perspective construction" (Wollen). This coincides with the idea of cinema as providing a window into a different world. Godard chooses to expose the camera. He uncovers the means through which the audience is able to see through this window.

Godard does so to transform film into a "process of writing in images, rather than a representation of the world" (Wollen). It is necessary for the audience to become aware of the camera, aware of the separate worlds, and critical of the differences between reality and film/language that is being presented to him or her.

I wonder, though... does this foregrounding work to further engage the audience by forcing them to think critically about the film? Or does it simply detach the audience, thus negating its very purpose?

Counter Cinema

I was also confused about the ultimate goal of counter-cinema. It seems that the only motivation for counter-filmmakers is just to go against the mainstream. In this way they are bound by the conventions of Hollywood cinema just as everyone else is, because they deliberately do the opposite of mainstream filmmakers. They basically take all the conventions of Hollywood cinema, including narrative transitivity and identification and does the opposite of them. However, there is no indication that the conventions of mainstream cinema are inherently bad while the opposite are inherently good. Furthermore, while mainstream cinema at least has the goal of entertainment, counter-cinema does not attempt to be entertaining, and in some cases deliberately tries to deny the audience pleasure. Under these circumstances, who are counter-filmmakers making their films for. Are they for other counter-filmmakers? Are they for the mainstream audience in an attempt to disillusion them from mainstream cinema? Is there no audience in mind, and the only point of making it is to be revolutionary and against the mainstream? If the goal is to ultimately destroy mainstream cinema, then counter cinema would just become the mainstream, but with the opposite conventions? Would this be any better than the current mainstream? Would conventions that were once mainstream become the conventions of the new counter-cinema?

Counter Cinema, I mean what's the point?

As a wannabe film maker with the desire to genuinely entertain people I find Counter-Cinema to be fairly annoying. Under pleasure vs unpleasure in his establishment of counter-cinematic values Wollen describes the attack on entertainment cinema: 

"Cinema is concieved of as a drug that lulls and mollifies the militancy of the masses, by bribing them with pleasurable dreams, thus distracting them from the stern tasks which are their true destiny"(79)

And of course this attack is valid but I don't really see the point of the attack because this to me is the point of cinema. Mankind has been dependent on different art forms to do achieve this for him, culminating with the film. Wollen goes on to write about Brecht and Horace " in favoring pleasure as the purpose of the arts combined with instruction," and this is what I absolutely agree with. But then Wollen goes on to explain that cinema can't show truth but can show meaning and that Godard is creating important meanings because they exist in relation to other meaning. What I fail to see is this meaning exactly...

If I had paid money to see "Weekend" I honestly might have cried. It was nuts. I don't know when I would ever watch a film like that unless I was in a class(such as this). When I go to the movies I, like most people, want to be entertained and I want to be in a state of suspended belief due to my cultural and societal definitions, etceteras. So as a film maker I dislike counter-cinema, but I guess that's the point of it, but I still fail to see this deep meaning.

Now as an artist I do appreciate counter-cinema in the way I can appreciate a Pollack painting. I would prefer to look at a Rembrandt, but Pollack is different and presents me with alternative and choice, which I assume is comparable with counter-cinema, but see counter-cinema isn't even original in that it is mutilated cinema....that annoys me as well

But despite how annoying Weekend was to me, I still was able to derive some pleasure, some Identification, and some suspended belief. In this sense is Weekend an incomplete counter-cinema? Would a successful counter-cinema drive me to walk out of the theatre? Is there a definition for counter-cinema or is its purpose to be undefined? I'll stop there...

Film as a Process of 'Image- building': Actors as a Signifier/ Agent

"Godard... is more concerned with 'image- building' as a kind of pictography, in which images are liberated from their role as elements of representation and given a semantic function within a genuine iconic, something like the baroque code of emblems... the construction of an adequate code can only take place if it is glossed and commented upon in the process of construction." 

I find this quality of film as a process of 'image - building' very intriguing. In order to read the film as a constructed image than a set of representational moments, I viewed the scenes not as object- oriented/ figurative but rather as purely passing imageries; I considered certain principles that fulfill the quality of an image such as colors, composition, positive/ negative space. Through this way of viewing, I noticed a number of examples of such throughout the film, most notably the constantly changing appearance of the actors. Actors being considered as a main agent that carries along the scenes (regardless of the non-narrative, destructive nature of the Counter- Cinema), the changes of their presentations are very curious. 

Imagine a scene from the film in your mind (such as the one above), and reduce the complexity and details of the image to an amalgam of colors. The two protagonists (Corrine and her husband Roland), in their various journeys different moments within each event, constantly change from one outfit to another, one color to another. Consider the following: Corrine's discovery of "trousers," the couple's savage- like hunt and search for clothes from the dead in the accident and their non - hesitant change into these new presentations. We see these protagonists, who are main carriers of the film, as constantly changing in their form, their frame. (For example, remember the yellow scarf: Corrine holds on to it at all time - whether wearing around her neck while seated in the car, carrying it around the field, the fire, damage, in the midst of chaos, and later on it is spotted on Roland as wearing it at the parents' house.)

Relate this idea to that of Saussure in regarding the signification as the union of the signifier and the signified... The actors, the main agents, are signifiers within the image, a color x within the coded set of colors. Then how do we as audience understand the constant change in a signifier, constant change of colors within a certain system of codes? Where is the signified, where is the essence? What does Godard intend to say?  The signifiers that do not hesitate a moment to change, thus affecting the signified/ signification... or is there any?  The abundant, dominant use of primary colors in the actors - and the changes within this pool of colors of the scenes...  

Furthermore, how do we understand the image of Corrine in bath against the background of a painting? The film is heavily inundated with sexual references and yet in fact there is not much of the actual presentation (in fact the actors are always so exhaustingly, heavily dressed), except for this particular scene where Corrine reveals a relatively considerable amount of her body.  Besides the idea of "high art - low art," "object/ subject of desire," how do we view this scene in terms of an image, a set of iconic codes that are colors? 

There are a lot of other facets of the film that evokes much curiosity and that I would like to touch upon... The scene with a flock of sheeps, role reversals between actors, the role of gaze, the notion of "collectivity," ... so much to discover and see - dans ce film!  

The Hollywood-Indie Hybrid

So I almost prefer IMDB as a method of procrastination to facebook. Almost. That said, yesterday I noticed an article on IMDB's independent film page called "What's So Independent About American Independent Films?"

It was very interesting. The subheading read: "The current crop of American independent films have indie style but a Hollywood soul. Where's the integrity?" It listed films like Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Sideways, and Me and You and Everyone We Know as "dark comedies done in a light comedy way which have intelligence to spare but nary a bollock between them." It then went on to identify such films as out-of-place Oscar nods that "are all basically Hollywood films in terms of both funding and ethos."

The article then gave the genealogy of the indie film, starting with the low-budget 1950s film, Marty. It discussed the work of John Cassavetes, Robert Altman, and Richard Linklater, which can be "loosely defined" as "featuring everyday or highly plausible situations, naturalistic dialogue and character driven plots," rich with "social, political or philosophical implications." It equated realism with the audience's "voyeuristic discomfort."

A recent trend in indie films, according to the article, is to "flaunt 'authenticity,'" to use "troubled characters, inner city settings, post-rock soundtracks and conversation heavy plots."

The main problem with independent film today is that "indie has been swallowed up by Hollywood and with it so has its identity...the line between indie and Hollywood has bee erased along with the significance once attached to it."

A lot of this sounded familiar after reading Corrigan's "Glancing at the Past." As Corrigan notes, "The movement from a modernist to a postmodernist film industry remains, of course, part of a historical logic: the relative failure of an art cinema and avant-garde in the United States and to a lesser extent in Europe to create new institutions and audiences encourages the dispersal of that counterculture into the mainstream." According to Corrigan, mainstream Hollywood cinema absorbed counter cinema. I couldn't help but wonder if this absorption is what caused the undeniable present Hollywood absorption of independent cinema OR if what we are currently seeing is a separate but parallel occurrence of contemporary Hollywood absorbing what is essentially the 21st century manifestation of counter cinema in the independent film.

Another connection this article had to "Glancing at the Past" is independent film's attempt at mass appeal. Corrigan writes that with the onset of multi and megaplexes, studios were attempting to appeal to virtually everyone. Is current independent film trying too hard to satiate the cravings of both counter cultural 'youngins with trendily obscure soundtracks (à la Garden State and Juno) and more mainstream spectators with a happy ending (à la Garden State and Juno)? It seems to me that are definitely parallels.

Lastly, I couldn't help but wonder if postmodernism in its entirety hasn't set the stage for this current Indie-Hollywood phenomenon. Is it possible that during the 60s our culture incorporated counter cultural values into our collective mentality? Is it possible that we now inherently crave to "go against the grain" even when this desire is one of the masses?

On a different note, in the Godard screening and article, I was interested in the parallels between second and third cinema. The article used the word "revolutionary" several times to describe Godard's work. Godard himself even had a period - during the 70s, I think - where he didn't release any films commercially. His work resembled that of Third Cinema. I was wondering what Godard tells us about the mutual exclusivity, or lack thereof, of second and third cinema.

Single Digests v. Multiple Digests

"In Hollywood films, everything shown belongs to the same world, and complex articulations within that world-such as flashbacks--are carefully signalled and located."(77)

Time and space in cinema must follow a consistent order. It must be coherent and integrated, yet it does not need to observe compulsory, statutory constraints. (77) It's very interesting the only multiple digesis that is allowed is a "play within a play."

Take Week End for example, although you are wondering why there are so many crushed cars and dead people in the roads, you can still understand the story because of the timeline it follows. You can still understand that the couple is going on a trip to her mother's house to secure an inheritance, and that that does not end too well. You may not understand why certain things are happening because you are not informed of the political aspects, but even the times when the fictional bizzare characters appear, their stories are interlocked with the main story.

Thanks to this instead of saying "WTF?", you simply end up saying "No idea what that was for".

Film as Language

“Godard [. . .] is more concerned with ‘image –building’ as a kind of pictography, in which images are liberated from their role as elements of representation and given a semantic function within a genuine iconic code.”
While constructing films as something that can be read as a language, is an interesting idea, it is thoroughly problematic. Due to the innately subjective nature of vision, and processing images, it is highly difficult to create images that express the same thoughts to different people.
Wollen suggests that by “foregrounding” the equipment, the machination behind the film, one can create such a language. However, this does not remove the subjectivity in an images meaning. It acknowledges the image as an image, and something to be commented upon directly, more directly opening up the discussion of meaning, but does not provide a solid definition. More realistic, it seems to me, would be the construction of filmic language within individual films. Within a film, and image can grow to represent something through repetition. This, however, does not remove it from the construct of the film, and does not help with the construction of a language at larger, transferable to the readings of other films.

Hollywood vs. Counter Cinema

After reading Wollen's article, it is obvious that counter cinema is vastly different from Hollywood cinema.  Narrative intransitivity, estrangement, foregrounding, multiple diegesis, aperture, unpleasure, and reality are the seven distinguishing techniques used in counter cinema... but I'm not sure how it is that these combine to make a "good" movie.  While it is an accomplishment to break from the traditional language of cinema, is it true that counter cinema devolves into "audio and visual sentamentalism"? 

Are the filmmakers of counter cinema attempting to redefine the purpose of movies?  If Hollywood movies are entertainment, meant to be absorbed by the masses and sold as commodities, what are counter cinema films striving for?  If they are looking to produce art uncorrupted by the Hollywood system, why does narrative intransitivity, estrangement, etc. lead to good art?  If you do not evaluate the films according to pleasure or popularity, by what standards should they be judged?

I dunno.  Food for thought.

Corrigan, blockbusters, etc.

One thing I found interesting about Corrigan's discussion of the major studios producing movies that appeal to the lowest common denominator, and are more about marketing than substance (case in point: high-concept films), is how incredibly applicable it is to other art forms, even though Corrigan discusses it as a uniquely cinematic phenomenon.  A particularly good example of this is novels.  Much as how Corrigan explained, the mainstream blockbusters that attract the highest amount of viewers are most frequently movies that are dumbed down and try to appeal to everyone (thus, appealing to no one really), while the movies that are generally considered to be better crafted, deeper, and more artfully done, while often critically acclaimed, do not receive anywhere near the same level of viewership and often aren't even shown in many theaters--and it's largely the same way with books too.  The writers that are most popular in any given time often are completely forgotten to history, while more obscure ones that did not attract much readership in their lifetime often become the geniuses of the generations succeeding them.  An interesting illustration of this is Herman Melville's works: his earlier works were rather typical adventure novels, and did very well commercially.  However, Moby Dick, which both he and the literary scholars who rediscovered him in the mid 20th century (and most people now) consider to be both by far his finest work, and a work of genius in general, was received with extremely little enthusiasm at the time of it's release, and did far worse than his earlier work.  

Another good example is someone like Stephen King: he is enormously popular, churning out bestseller after bestseller and has had dozens of movies made from his work, but does anyone really think that someone like him will be considered the greatest writer of our generation?  Does anyone even think that he will be considered as even an important author of his generation?  Another interesting point that his example brings up is the connection between blockbusters and the modern popular novel.  The focus of these books is all on story, and on keeping up a fast pace, with very little attention paid to language.  In a similar way as the blockbuster movie, these mainstream novels also appeal to the lowest common denominator and do not have anywhere near the same level of artistic precision (as ultimately, profit and marketing, not art, is the aim of such movies and books).

Now, I only used the example of books, but I feel like the same logic (i.e., that the mainstream version of a medium is profit driven, and therefore appeals to the lowers common denominator, etc.) applies rather easily to most other art forms.

On a separate note, this article reminded me of one I had read recently about the recent trend of American networks taking already popular foreign shows and making remakes of them (e.g., The Office, ABC's new remake of Life on Mars--the first episode of which looks almost EXACTLY the same as the original series--many reality tv shows, and countless other examples).  While I know that's TV and not movies, it shows the same motivation on the part of the studios: since they are mostly focusing on receiving reparations or the cost (and also profit obviously), they like an already neatly packaged product that is sure to sell.  And what easier way to do that than to take a show that has already had commercial success and simply tweak it a little?  

I love OldBoy

I fuckin' love it. Lovelovelovelovelovelove LOVE that movie.



So with everyone talking about TV in that film, I thought I should mention that more but what I find more interesting for myself (and in the future when we watch The Conversation) is that idea of surveillance, private/public, and emasculation not just through gazing on the television but through being gazed at by the mechanical apparatus.

Let's start with the hotel room. So here is a place where light is paradoxically both denied and allowed. Keenan talked about the Panopticon imprisoning through an excess of light, which is what occurs in a certain sense for Oh Daesuh's 15 year home; he's under constant surveillance, constant watch, and we see later the man at the desk having a television monitor peering into every room. Also, although he lacks literal windows his room contains one very important window which everyone is talking about, the TV, the window into the public world. That TV informs OhDaesu of everything he learns, but the TV in the film also shows us the spectator moments of Korean/International history happening over those 15 years (death of Princess Di, the scandal of Korean presidents, etc). So just as much as it's a nurterer, emasculator, and companion, it is also "light" bleeding from the outside to the inside, serving to make his prison public and private. So just as his entire life in the prison is public, his companion in a sense is the public conscious, Korean TV. What does Korean TV do? As everyone said before me more or less, it emasculates/hypermasculates him.

Now his life is a "larger prison". He is still watched, there is an excess of light (and color) in his new prison, his private actions are recorded, gazed at, in a sense public. He is still under panoptic gaze, still subjectified. Just as he is being followed by the diegetic gaze of the photographic camera and the recording device. But at a meta level, the film camera is also following his movements, he may or may not be on display but cannot escape our gaze, the camera gaze. At the same time, he has to enact punishment, sexuality, etc. on the female; throughout his relationship with MiDo he almost rapes her, ties her up and distrusts her, and alternates between punishing and loving her until the sexual act is commited between the two (but even then she is still punished, locked up 'for her own safety'). But those actions turn to punish HIM in turn, that those vouyeristic pleasures/fetishizations and classic hollywood romances serve as his ultimate punishment, where we finally watch the long drawn out process of the male being punished. And as we reassure that the female is castrated in classic cinema, we see OhDaesu "castrated" as he cuts out his tongue on screen. And just as the older brother in The Aimless Bullet turns away, so do we all cringe at the cutting of the tongue, perhaps the most intense moment of the film. But then what I'm not sure about is this: does Oh Daesuh enact a 'reverse' oedipal fear? Or perhaps he is afraid of MiDo realizing she's enacted some transgressive Oedipal process, that she has not followed the 'proper' Fruedian process? Or made love to an emasculated man (is somehow a deviant sexuality, not just in incest but also a homosexual)? Perhaps then his castration means less if he is already monstrous, like the crippled men of The Aimless Bullet.

See, this is just coming off the top of my head. If I sat down for like, half an hour longer I could have 15 more pages of crap to say about this movie.

In conclusion, I love OldBoy. But perhaps not as much as Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.
Good Stuff.

Sexism in Media

After reading Katie's entry, I started thinking of what she wrote.
"To me, it seems very complicated and ironic that the consumption of a classic Hollywood film depends upon that film's ability to appear masculine, to provide the male spectator with a male character, with whom to identify, and a female character to be an object? "

I had certain video in mind shown during TWTP. This video analyzed an ad for woman. It said something along the lines of " Do you often feel your breasts are too small, too big, too flabby, too pointy... Well don't worry atleast your make up will always look great. " The person presenting explained that it seems that society would however not approve of a similar ad for men. "Do you often feel your penis is too small, too big, too flabby, too pointy... " I couldn't find the video, but did randomly encounter a video analyzing how female characters are merely seen as objects in Disney movies. It's an interesting video to watch if you have the time.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY

Even More on Oldboy and TV

Looking down on what other people have written, I noticed like everyone wrote on this...but, I'll try to bring something new to the table.

Oh Dae-Su embodies in a literal way one of the principles that Joyrich talked about: his reaction to the emasculating influence of TV (and also of being held captive--not even able to decide when he would sleep, as they gassed him) is the hypermasculinity he exhibits through the rest of the film.  However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the TV not only plays an emasculating role, offering visions of mundane situations and consumerism, but also plays a role in his training, which greatly aids in his later masculinity: there is an image of a boxing match for example, and later he is shown dodging punches and throwing them himself very much in the style of a boxer at times.  So it seems the TV plays an odd dual role, both acting as tranquilizing agent of emasculation, and hypermasculine fighting instructor.

Oldboy and Hypermasculinity

One thing that really struck me about Oldboy as being hypermasculine was the way in which it granted male characters with multiple sources of sexual power. Though we commonly associate male sexuality with the penis, in Oldboy the tongue takes on a distinctly male sexual connotation. Woo-jin tells Oh Dae-su something to the effect that it was "Oh Dae-su's tongue and not Woo-jin's dick" that impregnated his sister. In this sense, when Dae-su cuts off his own tongue as an act of submission and repentance, he effectively castrates himself. This link between the penis and the tongue seems to grant males with greater sources of power - both sexual and non-sexual - with which to act upon the female. It is then easier for the male to render the female a victim.

In Joyrich's article, I had difficulty grasping this relation between consumerism and femininity. She distinguishes between the role of a producer and the role of a consumer, identifying the former as typically male and the latter as typically female. While I understand that television is more consumer-based than cinema - given commercials and the lack of commitment to a linear narrative - I had a hard time grasping cinema as something other than a product to be consumed. While Third Cinema is a clear exception, isn't classic Hollywood cinema produced primarily for the sake of consumption? Isn't commercial success a huge factor with film production and distribution? To me, it seems very complicated and ironic that the consumption of a classic Hollywood film depends upon that film's ability to appear masculine, to provide the male spectator with a male character, with whom to identify, and a female character to be an object? This seems somewhat contradictory.

Oldboy

In regard to Oh Dae-Su and the effect of the television, his relationship to it can be looked at in a number of ways. In Lynne Joyrich's article, she describes the television itself as female, with its "gaping wound" that "tapes are thrust into." Under this interpretation, the television can be seen as Dae-Su's female companion during his imprisonment, allowing him to hold on to his sense of masculinity. However, Joyrich also writes about how the television spectator is thought of as female, because of the lack of distance between the spectator and the television. The look is feminine because it "is too close to the object to maintain the gap essential to desire and full subjectivity. This way of thinking would suggest that the constant watching of televesion feminized Dae-Su, which he combated by training himself physically and becoming hyper-masculine. His desire for hyper-masculinity is also driven by the emasculation that he feels because he is so hopeless and at the mercy of his captors. This leads to his need for revenge, and the violent avenger is an archetypal masculine character. Dae-Su attempts to prove his masculinity throughout the rest of the film through extreme violence and sexual conquest. However, it is revealed at the end that ll of Dae-Su' hyper-masculinity was in fact part of Woo-Jin's plan to manipulate him. Dae-Su is again hopeless and at the mercy of Woo-Jin, begging at his feet and cutting out his own tongue. This is a particularly emasculating encounter, and the ambiguous ending leaves it unclear whether Dae-Su has regained his masculinity in the end. If the monster is truly gone, perhaps the hyper-masculine side of him is gone also.

The Stray Bullet: Spectatorial Desire for the "Other"

I find the portrayal of masculinity and of the post-colonial nation in The Stray Bullet very intriguing - a hybrid of South Korean aesthetics and Euro- American influence. Apart from the incorporation of cinematic techniques (detournement, film - noir, hollywood melodramatic tropes), the film is heavily inundated with signifiers and imageries that allude to the increasing presence of "the other" in the post-colonial era. "The other," in this case, refers to Hollywood cinema and the US - on a much broader scale than specific artistic techniques. This influence seems to play a significant role in numerous themes/ imagery choices of the film. (For example, the idea of masculinity in threat in relation to the nation in damage during post-war period.)  The notion of "spectatorial desire for the 'other' within a postcolonial setting" adds to the complexity of the national and cultural formation in the period of growing globalization. Consider the following passage by Hye Seung Chung. 

" ...not only the cross-cultural translation and adaptation of particular scenes and star-imges but also Korean audiences' unique cinephilic fixation on often overlooked Hollywood films. Korean audiences' infatuation and identification with Hollywood cinema should be historicized in the postwar cultural context rather than being simply frowned upon as a symptom of US cultural imperialism. The post- korean war generation's intense nostalgia for sentimental Hollywood melodrama is a significant indicator of the cultural displacement that occurs when spectatorial desire for the "other" operates within a postcolonial setting." 

The film, with a number of Euro- American signifiers and imageries, portrays the incoming western influence in the postcolonial setting. However, the frequency of the appearance of these imageries in the scenes particularly near the end of the film seems to suggest something more. For example, the name of the dental clinic that the protagonist helplessly sought out for - "International Dental Clinic," a place named "Bar - New York," and many other signs of stores/ restaurants in the street that indicated western identification (in korean letters). What does the director suggest through these imageries? While following the western manner of film production (techniques, scenes, etc.), the director, aware and acknowledging the korean audience's "nostalgia for sentimental hollywood melodrama," seems to lament upon this cultural displacement, the spectatorial desire for the other. In a way, the image of the protagonist rejecting the script/ actor position in opposition to the actress and the director (pipe- smoking in a rather pompous manner) seems familiar - perhaps how the director himself would appear to be at the time: as a director producing a work through an artistic medium that is primarily western- origined, facing the cultural scene of the moment - the desire of the mass for the other over the national identity/ cultural values. As a producer of this time period, it is necessary for him to accept the reality of having to follow certain conditions in order to remain being engaged in the field of cinema. Apart from the projected ideas of gender divisions, national crisis, societal issues - how do we perceive this position of the director - as an artist in struggle against the societal/ artistic expectations? (consider the history of the film - having undergone censorship by the government.) 

Shemen and Mangirls...interesting

Playing off of elizabeth's idea in Oldboy, the TV is in fact Oh Dae-Su's only companion. Though it also becomes his source of visual and sexual pleasure which intimates the TV as a purely feminine outlet of his masculine needs. The TV also in a sense becomes his mother, it nurtures him, educates him and yet he takes on a hypermasculine persona due to his building rage and aggression(could show content play a role in his development?). 

Another concept that popped into my mind was the gradual rise of big screen TV's. In our society we tend to refer to machines, such as nice cars, as being "she," due to what I assume to be their delicate nature and artistic beauty, a purely objectifying notion. This combined with our, or male obsession with big things because they are deemed as masculine and the petite as feminine creates an interesting idea: the rising popularity of big screen TVs to perhaps compensate for this concept of femininity? 

I digress...

There was a quote from Joyrich, "As dialectics collapse, the oppositions which maintain sexual difference and the stability of the sexed gaze seem to shift, if not fully disappear"(159).

This reminded me very much of Professor Chun's analysis of the shot of the "good brother" who is now a broken man, he is feminized by his emasculating situation. The shot of his legs up to his torso, a traditionally feminine shot is applied to this man along with a very depressing overture that leads to his tooth extraction and the extraction of his last shred of masculinity as well.

I'll leave you with this last image...

I was home this weekend and went to the mall with my mother and two sisters. They had a gift certificate to the GAP and I had one for Abercrombie & Fitch, both were stores we rarely shop at due to their incredibly high pricage. We parted ways and I proceeded to walk into Abercrombie. Initially, I walked in and proceeded into the female section because I honestly could not differentiate the two sides. The music was very loud and disorienting at first with various remixes and club beats that I noticed were fairly feminine. I was later redirected to the appropriate side by a female employee wearing a loose rugby shirt...I proceeded to the male side where the male employees had very tight and accentuating shirts, which felt a little awkward...especially when they started dancing to the music...after a brief period of looking I realized the most practical thing I could buy was cologne and I proceeded to smell a bottle with a half naked woman on it...I was notified that this was perfume and was directed to the cologne which depicted a half naked man on it and I felt that this was not quite right...and very confusing advertising.....I purchased the cologne and proceeded back to the gap where I waited for the females to finish picking goods....I couldn't help but notice that the female mannequin's were dressed very boyishly, and I initially took them to be men's clothing....

This all to say, do you think that TV and general consumerism utilizes feminization for economic gain...does hypermasculinity perhaps attribute to this feminization by being something accepted but unattainable for real men? Cuz I definately do....

As much as I'd love to write about the incest in Oldboy...I think my blog is long enough already

Old Boy

Throughout the film 'Old Boy', it is difficult to discern who has control over the characters. During his fifteen year incarceration, our protagonist finds himself close to the television. He finds that the television is his only real friend. The television, however, puts one in a very vulnerable position. One is distracted and separated from the outside world. It is a powerless, feminine way of looking. This seems to be a metaphor for the violent response to becoming the object of gaze, instead of the spectator who holds power. Then, our protagonist becomes a hyper-masculine character-- training and becoming almost a monster. Even though he tries to hold power... he is constantly followed and spied on upon release from his prison. Does he ever truly regain his power--masculinity-- ability to objectify rather than to be objectified?

In The Aimless Bullet, women seem less helpless than men.

I found Eunsun Cho’s argument about the crisis of Korean masculinity in The Stray Bullet to be extremely persuasive. The objectification of the wounded veteran’s bodies and the loss of the voyeuristic gaze to the American G.I.’s were both made very clear in the film.

But I thought it was interesting that in light of this crisis of masculinity, the article did not spend more time looking at the women in the film. Because while almost all of the men are depicted as overburdened and powerless (Chor-Ho), despairing (Kyong-Sik), frustrated (Yong Ho), or crazy (the poet), the young women, with the exception of Chor Ho’s wife who dies in childbirth, seem to be somewhat self-sufficient. Sor-Hui, one of Yong-Ho’s two love interests, is able to keep herself in school and pay the rent on a room because she has a job, while Yong-Ho, who was released from the army two years ago, is unable to find work. She also seems capable of wielding a gun, which is traditionally thought of as a man’s job. Myong-Suk’s prostitution, though motivated by nothing short of financial crisis, is nevertheless an independent source of income, and even without the respect of the Korean men and a marriage to her fiancé, she is, in the end, the only adult member of the family who is not dead, arrested, crazy, or passed out, bleeding, in the back of a taxi cab, which does suggest a certain strength of character and self-reliance. And Miri, Yong-Ho’s other love interest, not only has a successful career for herself, but even goes so far as to try and get Yong-Ho a job.

I wonder how this feminine self-reliance plays into the larger theme of Korean crisis of identity and occupation, and if it further affects the symbolic emasculation of the men in the film.

The Gaze in Oldboy

In viewing Oldboy I found myself drawn to the idea of self-viewing. This image reappears throughout the film: Oh Dae-Su’s hypnotism at the end of the film, his ‘watching’ his own memory self run around the campus of his school, even the motif of incest plays to this concept to some extent (who is more like the self than a relative?).
The biggest question, to me, is how does one gender self-viewing? Can one self be male, and the other female, as seems to be implied at the end of Oldboy? Is self-viewing scopophilic? Voyeuristic? Fetishistic? Narcissistic? One can read self-viewing in so many ways, that it can’t help but brings the very concept of how we analyze the gaze into question.

Television as Feminine

I'm interested in the gendering of Television as feminine discussed in Joyrich's article.  The argument she explores seems to go like this:

Women are too close to the television image (which is inextricably linked with consumerism) to assume a subjective position.  On page 158 in her discussion of McLuhan's piece, Joyrich writes, "the 'irrational' media of the electric age, particularly television, return us to the mythical form of the icon in which distance--the distance between subjects as well as distance between sign and referent--is abolished."  This sort of primitvism aligns the televisual form with the feminine.

I don't necessarily find this gendering compelling.  Certainly there have to be ways in which Television is masculine.  Gaze aside, perhaps TV can be seen as an imposition into the household, implanting images from the outside into the domestic sphere.  There's something phallic there, right?  Maybe?

This gendering is also complicated by the existence of Spike TV and Lifetime Television for Women.  BET, for example, emerged with the assumption that television was inherently white, so if television is inherently anything with regard to gender, why does a market exist for both special men's and women's programming.

All that said, if I had to choose a gender for Television, it would likely be feminine.  But, as Joyrich says, "while such tropes of analysis are seductive, they are also potentially dangerous."  I think we need to continue to question whether television is feminine before we start operating under that assumption.

Macho Man

It seems that through out both films, the characters are trying to prove their masculinity.


Take for example Yong-ho's acting audition where he is enraged at the director using his wounds to sell the movie. Since actors are clearly used to sell a movie, we know the reason Yong-ho is mad is not the one he claims. Instead he is mad at being the object looked upon. In allowing people to see him wounded, or in Cho's words, in allowing "a mark of his impaired masculinity, to be spectacularized on the screen." Then Yong-ho tries to regain his masculinity by robbing a bank thus trying to become an outlaw hero, a very manly image.

There are other areas where there is gender role reversal, and the man are in a position usually occupied by the female. Ch'or-ho constantly suffering from family crisis or his rotten tooth, Yong-ho being the object of gaze, and even Myong-suk's fiancee losing his leg.

It seems that the character's delay into regaining their masculinity brings about trouble. Mi-ri, for example, cannot see Yong-ho until he has obtained a job. Ch'or-ho's trouble also seem to end once his impairment, his tooth, is fixed.

What I'm trying to say is that masculinity seems necessary for things to go right and the characters fantasize in obtaining this by imitating Western/Hollywood stereotypes.
I think Cho summarizes it best in the following:

" The Yong-ho plot is therefore , the representation of the fantasy of a South Korean man who dreams of regaining his lost masculinity by identifying himself with a male figure modeled on Hollywood iconography. [...] The colonized male who is feminized and disempowered by the colonizer fantasizes his empowerement through mimicry of the image of the colonizer, believing that he can recuperate his masculinity through irritation."

It seems this is necessary in cinema and perhaps society too. Alot of people seem to look at Hollywood for an adequate standard. In one of Luis Urrea's books, Across the Wire, Urrea speaks of orphan children living in "dompes" or landfills in Tijuana, Mexico. To help these kids Urrea and friends got a company to donate shoes. Unfortunately none of these shoes matched so Von, one of Urrea's friends, devised a plan to get the boys to wear the shoes. Since mismatched shoes seemed to hurt the boys' masculinity, they told the boys that mismatched shoes was a trend in Hollywood and that all the actors were wearing them. Urrea and friends also started wearing mismatched shoes.

In this situation, the male ego is impaired (the kids have no shoes), and the problem seems to be fixed when they start imitating what they believe is the Hollywood standard.