1. Expressionism
- began in late nineteenth century in Germany.
- the first group of Expressionists was known as Die Brucke and was formed in 1905.
- they believed in individualism and originality.
- Expressionism is about yielding an inner imaginative rather than an impression.
- the second group of Expressionists was known as Der Blaue Reiter(The Blue Rider) and was formed in 1912 cultivating abstract symbols for aesthetic pleasure.
- Expressionistic works are skewed towards the more daring combinations of vibrant and bright colours, distorted and elongated human figures and landscapes.
- Expressionists believed that their art could be a force in the improvement of the human race.
- Expressionism came to an end between 1920 and 1922.

2. Dadaism
- Dada was invented by philosopher cum poet Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings in 1916.
- Dada: nothing
- Dadaists rejected all art forms of bourgeois art (Expressionism).
- Dadaist graphic style evolved from the combination of random methods of Cubists and Futurists with the help of mechanical-reproduction techniques.
- the most lasting innovation of Dada was photomontage.
- After 1922, due to the constant upheavals and chaotic political, social and economic situation, proponents of Dada either branched out inwardly towards Surrealism or outwardly towards Constructivism and New Objectivity.

3. Heroic Realism
- Developed during WW1 in Russia when leaders wanted to use a more down to earth form of art to influence the masses, especially the peasants.
- Hence, the introduction of Heroic Realism in folk art and posters, serving as the perfect medium for political propaganda.
- Heroic Realism is also known as Socialist Realism.
- In German, Hitler and Goebbels replaced modernist art with classic, heroic depiction of a more realist style.
- The crux of Heroic realism was that it was direct and obvious, leaving no room for imagination.
- Heroic Realism only portrayed victorious scenes, hardly any brutality and horrors of the war were shown.

4. Post-Modernism
- Post-Modern art blended art history with new technology together with a more decorative aspect so as to achieve a broad-based commercially acceptable look.
- rejected typography and the cleanliness of Swiss grid-locked designs.
- liked to create weights and dimensions.
- The different forms of Post-Modernist Art include punk (collage and comics), American New Wave (graphics, commercials), American Post-Modern (architectonic style of graphics) and European New Wave (solid graphic forms and unadorned hand-letterings).
Intertext against Intertext (Bunuel and Dali's Un Chien andalou)
by Iampolski, Mikhail

-The surrealists saw the cinema as standing in opposition to high bourgeois culture or the so-called high culture.
- Un Chien andalou was a model of surrealist poetry, would not have existed without the surrealist movement.
- Moon/eye metaphor: reversal of the relations between the constitutive elements of this metaphor, this can be interpreted as purely surrealist.
- Bunuel used his dreams in his film, the usage of dreams this way is surrealistic.
- Cinedandia by Ramon Gomez de la Serna: the substitution of eye for birthmark is a metaphor to describe the importance of the birthmark to the female character and the act of removing the birthmark is compared to extricating her eyes.
- The circle concept: interchangeably (moon and eyeball), this emphasizing on external form ( the circular form) serves to destroy conventional semantic links thus creating a new type of language.
- Un Chien andalou's unification of two or more objects into one single image is made possible by montage effects or dissolve.
- A paradox is created: one must read the syntagm and the paradigm (need for intertextual reading but the semantic links are abolished so we must read in a syntagmatic level.)
- The semantic ungrammaticalities of surrealist texts are consistently compensated for by a grammaticality on the level of structure.
- The writer proposed to investigate the extent to which structure and syntagm are capable of "normalizing" a text that cannot be rendered normative intertextually. In this sense the cinema a good way to lighten semantic level.
- It is easier for cinema than for literature to accentuate the external visual side of an object, stripping the semantic content that the literature imposes.
- One easy way to bring two objects together syntagmatically without reference to their symbolism or other meaning is by relying on their external formal similarity. eg. a common shape like circle. Refer to Robert Desnos's screenplay.
- similarity between Desnos's screenplay and Leger's film: the extensive use of circular form.
- Leger's one is more of a joke in the context of film but Desnos's is different. The circular form in Desnos's screenplay serves not to segment the world but to gather it into one syntagm.
- Surrealists emphasize on the concrete form, the unique importance of the circular objects, served to strengthen the denotative function of the signifier. Surrealists also leveled out the semantic differences between objects that bore any formal resemblance to one another. This is easily seen when the physical or concrete aspect is emphasized, eg. eyes and the moon.
- It is not always possible that desemanticization can be applicable like proposed above. There exist a certain poetic richness that can hardly be totally stripped off.
- Head was a motif commonly used by the surrealists. The severed body parts in Un Chien andalou are also motifs.
- Metamorphoses: vividly used by Benjamin Peret. But metamorphoses (the process of something changes into something else that is completely different) challenged the Darwin's evolution theory.
- The surrealists replaced culture and literature as a whole with nature. The use of animal imagery is one good example. This can be seen in Un Chien andalou's atropos moth and ants crawling out of a human palm, and used by Breton's work too: the butterfly.
- Ants symbolize decaying, erotic fantasies and death and they appear in many different surrealist works. In the film, ants lose their semantic meanings and are then empty signifier, open for metaphorical meanings and substitutive relationships.
- Un Chien andalou: A film that fixed meanings are replaced with various self-implied meanings.
- The more cultural symbolism of an object, the more likely it is too be treated in a manner entirely differed from the intertext into which is normally based on.
- Vermeer was interpreted by the surrealists as a Proustian symbol of death. He influenced a few of Dali's work. Vermeer is the authentic painter of death and his work "The Lacemaker" is seen as the prophecy of death. The pearl motif in "The Lacemaker" acts as a link with the moon which appeared in the prologue.
- Cultural significance attached to the objects prevent viewers from understanding their place in the text.
- The destruction of classical cultural associations is found to be the result of the rapid and intense growth of a new intertext. The struggle of the two texts will create a new type of text, one which respect the law of semantics even though it appears to be dismissing it.
- The decaying donkey's head is a common feature in Dali's work.
- Putrefaction becomes the central moment of the animal eroticism.
- Peret influenced Dali and Bunuel. Peret was consistently connected to the decay of the figures of God, Christ and the various priest. This aspect appealed to the two surrealists.
- In Un Chien andalou, the priests are kept but are displaced in their grave( the piano) by the donkeys. The decaying donkeys signified the attributes of blindness and putrefaction.

- The widening of the range of possible comparisons is also realized through the destruction of cultural symbolism.
- The rotting donkey is a kind of "hypersign", a symbol of hyperconvertibility: to convert one to the other. Dali loved to have something to represent for the other.
- The piano keys are compared with the bared jaws of the donkey. The piano is then compared with the skull on the basis of remotely similar shape. The piano is also seen as the donkey's coffin.
- It is difficult to realise the similarities between what are being compared. This is due to the cultural symbolism that are inherent in them.
- Problem of textual construction can be resolved by ignoring the semantic weight, on the basis of external formal traits.
- Un Chien andalou's plot reflects the evolution of surrealist metaphor from the pole of form to that of formless.
Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist film
by Williams, Linda

- Un Chien andalou is the first film that explore surrealism in a greater depth.
- According to Freud, condensation and displacement were binding forces of desires in dreams.
-Similarly, this is compared to Roman Jacobson's metaphor and metonymy, which are the binding forces in the poetic sense.
-However, dreams and poems are in the unconscious and conscious minds respectively.
-here, the author attempts to discover how the usage of rhetorical procedures resembled that of the unconsciousness.
- According to Ferdinand Saussure, there are 2 axes in language- the paradigmatic axis and the syntagmatic axis.
- Paradigm is the linguistic choices made by every speaker of a language.
- Syntagm is the arrangement of words such that they make sense.
- At the same time, Jacobson proposed the similarities between metaphor and metonymy to paradigm and syntagm.
- Hence, the inability to identify with similarities (in relation with metaphor and paradigm) is termed 'similarity disorder'.
-on the other hand, the inability to recognise contiguity in relation to metonymy and syntagm is termed 'contiguity disorder'.
- In metaphor, there is the tenor- the underlying meaning/idea (signified) and vehicle- the signifier in which both are based on the ground of their shared characteristics.
- While in metanymy, it is about the contiguiously relations between objects or ideas.
- Jean Mitry suggested that there are only metonymies in film.
- Film do not have the ability to portray diegesis, otherwise known as the imaginary world unlike language with this prowess .
- Mitry identified the metaphor substitution only on a verbal level (the usage of one word to substitute for the other) but Christian Metz proposed that there were actually two levels of substitution. The first way is to arrange metaphor or metonymy in a syntagmatical way in the verbal or image sense. The second way is to arrange them paradigmatically.

-Metz developed a four part classification consisting of :
(a) metaphors place in syntagm: similarity on the level of referent and contiguity on the level of discourse.
(b) metaphors place in paradigm: similarity on the level of referent and comparability on the level of discourse.
(c) metonymies place in syntagm: contiguity on the level of referent and similarity on the level of discourse.
(d) metonymies place in paradigm: contiguity on the level of referent and contiguity on the level of discourse.

Application of Metz's classification using Un Chien andalou
- the slicing of the eyeball and the cloud slicing the moon: a metaphor is placed in a syntagm. The moon and eyes with the cloud and razor is the similarities between the referents. The horizontal movement of the cloud and razor is arranged syntagmatically.
- The similarity of round shapes of the hole in the cyclist's hand resemble the round shape of the sunbather's armpit. It is metaphor placed in syntagm.
- Usually, the diegetic action of the tenor is followed by that of the vehicle. But in the case of Un Chien andalou, it is the reverse, it is the slicing of the moon followed by the slicing of the eyeball. (The vehicle which is usually the non-human aspect is supposed to be secondary or the background element but in this case it is put primarily before the tenor)
- The arrangement of the cyclist garments on the bed is an example of metonymy placed in paradigm.
Salvador Dali: The Early Years
By Raeburn, Michael
? 1929, Dali's entry to Surrealist Movement.
? Greatly influenced by Simund Freud and other French Psychiatrists.
? Works were overwhelmed by sex, phobia, obsessions and problems of sexual identity.
? He had a fascination with morphology i.e. the intensive study of the forms and structures of plants and animals, and language.
? Dali believed in the existence of a hidden force within all matters and compared it to the hidden force of the unconscious mind.
? Subsequently, he proposed the idea of the hard and soft, form and formlessness, the conscious and the unconscious.
?
'Mineral Cadaques'
? In the early 1920s, his works displayed bright, poster-like watercolours and were mostly characterized by gypsies, market scenes and his own involvement with the locals. But within these catalanist paintings, there were always disdain and contempt.
? At that time, his paintings were of different styles. There were those that were clean and picturesque. On the other, there were those with a tinge of impressionism and post-impressionism.
?
Purism, Measure and Mathematical Lyricism
? In mid 1920s,Fali's paintings constantly swung between Cubism and miniaturist.
? Dali's precision in his painting, for instance- 'Basket of Bread' was so precise to the extent that it was being described as unnatural and frozen.
? Purism, Cubism and Realism belong to the 'hard' and the world of 'senses'- something that was tangible and was easily under Dali's control.
? Dali thought that art and nature were 2 different things, refusing to embrace nature, which to him is confusion and mystery.
? Soon, he distanced himself away from the belief of Mathematical Lyrism.
? Later, he had the tendency to pull away from 'order', moving towards disorder, dispersion and non-cohesion
Putrefaction
? This is a category of decay and formlessness, identified with sentiments rather than the senses (similar to Dada).
? Rotting Donkey is a representation of destruction and abolition. (Platero y Yo)

Saint Sebastian (patron saint of Cadaques)
? For Dali, St Sebastian was a symbol of objectivity.
? In 1927, he tried to distance himself from surrealism event though he admitted that he was experimenting with the subconscious.
? He tried to be objective and direct, discarding any pre-conceived ideas what things were.
? Despite his supposedly distancing, his painting seems to be embedded with surrealistic themes.
? To Dali, his painting were anti-artistic as they were perfectly understood by the general public since artistic paintings were those that depended on preparation and convention.
? It was a period of expression crisis.
? In 1929, he 'formally' declared commitment to Surrealism.
? In his paintings, there were always the repetition of motifs like the grasshoppers, the rotting donkeys, flying thumbs and breast.
"They have an important function in terms of the identity of the subject and the character of what is being depicted"
? The flying thumb and breast were symbolic of the fear of castration and 'vagina dentata' as discussed by Freud.
? Like Freud proposed, being able to fly would mean the capability of sexual performance.
? His paintings were very real but characterized by dreamscapes. He treated dreams as the hidden force of the unconscious mind.

?
'Steriliser'
? Then in Nov 1929, his exhibition was backed by Surrealist Movement.
? 'Steriliser' is the opposite of putrefaction i.e., it opposes decay and prevents collapse and death and the belief in 'steriliser'.
? 'Steriliser' could be viewed as sterilization of sentiments and artistic ideas.
? In his works, he advocated formlessness and the transcendental. To Dali, love and dream were actually closely related to destruction. Sleep is like a form of dying and reality dies in love and dreams.

Week 7 - Soviet Montage and German Expressionism

Reading : Film Languages
Author : Turner, Graeme

I. Introduction

Film generates its meanings through systems which work like languages.
- eg. Cinematography and sound editing

Film is a form of communication.

Film communication is a subset of the system of culture.

II. Culture and Language

Culture: A dynamic process which produces the behaviours, the practices, the institutions, and the meanings which constitute our social existence. (Turner)

Language system of a culture carries that culture's system of priorities, its specific set of values, its specific composition of the physical and social world.

Language constructs, not label reality for us.

Language provides us with a central mode in which culture produces its meanings.

Language carries connotation, and so does image.

Hence, there is a system of codes and conventions for visual representation.

Semiotics: Sign = Signifier + Signified

- Sign is made up of 3 components; the signifier (image),
Signified (social meanings) and the sign itself.

Film narratives have developed their own signifying systems:

- Codes: shorthand methods of establishing social or narrative meanings.

- Conventions: sets of rules which audiences agree to observe and which they allow the film to overlook certain realism in the world.

Film Genres: Composed from sets of narrative and representational conventions. To understand, audience must bring a set of rules with them into the cinema.

III. Film As A Signifying Practice

Written and spoken languages have a grammar.

How grammar works in film:

- each shot is related to those adjacent to it.
- viewers often defer their understanding of a shot after seeing the one after it.
- Dependent on audience's competencies and film-maker's ability to construct any relationships which are not governed by conventions.

IV. The Signifying Systems

The Camera

- Manipulation of the camera.
- Positioning of camera (through which audience is informed of the changing relationship between twp characters).
- Angling of camera (character's point of view: Rolling, panning and close-ups).
- Alterations in focus.
- Composition of images within te physical boundaries of the shot and the frame.

Lighting

- 2 main objectives: expressive and realist.
- Expressive: setting a mood, giving the film a 'look'
- Realism: to ensure that characters are lit naturally and unobtrusively.
- High-key lighting is realist, low-key lighting is expressive.

Sound

- Seems to fix the meaning of images than to motivate it.

- Uses: Narrative, enhances realism and as a transitional device.
- Music amplifies the mood or atmosphere and also tries to convey the 'emotional significance' of a scene. It also assists in the construction of the reality of time and space. (Simon Frith, 1986).
- Music and images have a lot in common as media of communication. They are not understood in a direct, linear way but rather, irrationally, emotionally and individually. (Frith)
- Music must be understood in terms of its subjective effect. (Barthes)
- "one function of film music is to reveal our emotions as the audience…" (Frith).

Mise-en-scène

- as a term to describe a theory about film grammar, a shooting and a production style.
- To emphasize on set design, costumes, arrangement and movement of figures, spatial relations and placement of objects in contributing to the overall effect of the image.
- Narrative is advanced through the arrangement of elements within the frame; characters can reveal themselves to the viewers without revealing themselves to the other characters.

Editing

- Realism is the dominant mode of feature film production.
- Editing is thus required to generate the illusion that the film is unfolding naturally.
- Techniques: Fade-out, dissolve and wipe etc.
- Speed, pace and rhythm of editing is important.

V. Conclusion

Active reading of film is essential due to its complexity.

Intertextuality: We understand a film though our experience of other film texts.

Film serves a cultural function through its narratives.

Soviet Montage and German Expressionism

Reading : Film Narrative
Author : Turner, Graeme

I. Introduction: The Universality of Story

Feature films are narratives - they tell stories.

Narratology: On that which constitutes the structure and functions of narrative.

Story-telling

- consists of myths, legends, ballads, folk-tales, rituals, dance, histories, novels, jokes, drama etc.
- part of our cultural experience.

Story provides us with an easy and unconscious way of constructing our world. Hence, we are able to make sense of what that is happening and are able to share it with others. 'Universality' in human communication is thus achieved.

Structural similarities exist in stories from different cultures.

Modern feature film and the primitive fairy-tale serve similar functions for their respective audiences.

II. The Function of Narrative

Myths were used to deal with the contradictions in experience, to explain the apparently inexplicable, and to justify the inevitable. (Lévi-Strauss)

A feature of mythologies is their dependence upon 'binary oppositions.

III. Structuralism and Narrative

Structuralists look at films to see how they fit into or help to define a genre, style or movement.

IV. Codes and Conventions

We ought to look at the specific relations established between one film and the whole context in which it is viewed. The context includes other films and a full range of media constructions that frame the particular film.

Myths, beliefs, and practices preferred by a culture or group of cultures will find their way into those cultures' narratives where they can be reinforced, criticized, or simply reproduced.

Hence, social trends can be observed through changes in thematic or formal trends in narrative over time.

A wide range of conventions are used in the cinema to assist the film-maker in his attempt to communicate.

Conventions also result in the polarization of the sexes. Female form is always portrayed as a spectacle, and exhibit to be scanned an possessed by the male viewer.

Such conventions can be broken down when the audience realize that the portrayals are the results of conventions.

V. Genre

Genre: A system of codes, conventions, and visual styles that enable an audience to determine rapidly and with some complexity the kind of narrative they are viewing.

Function of genre is to make films comprehensible and familiar.

Genre is the products of at least 3 groups of forces - the industry and its production practices; the audience and their expectations and competencies; and the text in its contribution to the genre as a whole.

It is one of the considerations determining the audience's choice of film.

Audience make genres as much as film-makers do.

VI. Structuralism, Genre and the Western

Evolution of the western genre by Will Wright.

- Follows a chronological order.
- 'Classic' western, 'transitional' western, 'professional' western, 'vengeance' western.

Audience influences the direction of genre.

Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures

Beginning:
1. People were delighted that things seem to move regardless of what they were.
2. Films began as a product of genuine folk art.
Films added movement to works of art originally stationary.
Stationary works enlivened in the earliest movies appealed to:
? Sense of justice and decorum
? Sentimentality
? Blood and cruelty
? Pornography
? Crude humor - slapstick

Films are different from stage. Film has the dynamization of space and spatialization of time. Not only does bodies move in space, but space itself moves.
Stage - time, emotion and thought can be expressed by speech regardless of visuals.
Film - the visuals are more emphasized than the speech, although both must match (co-expressibility).

Movies developement
In the days of silent movies, means of clarification was by printed titles or letters, and fixed iconography.
In these early movies, events took shape with a certain predictability according to Aristotelian logic.
Today, we still follow some aspects of Aristotelian rule. E.g. we prefer happy endings and expects a story to have beginning, middle, and end.
Acting in silent films was very different from stage and reality of life because there is a need to establish an organic relation between acting and cinephotography.
When the introduction of sound came into the movies. It changed and reduced that difference.

Main difference between film production and stage production
Stage Film
Characters have aesthetic existence outside its actors Aesthetic existence independent of its performance: characters have no aesthetic existence outside its actors
Playwright hopes to have his work presented in variant performances Script-writer writes for 1 producer, director and cast; a different director or cast will result in a 'different' play
Character can be played well or badly and lives with the actor Character lives and dies with the actor
Stage work is continuous and transitory Film work discontinuous but permanent
Natural sequence of events: production rehearsed and performed in consecutive time Individual sequences done piecemeal then put together

Dialectic of Film - Eisenstein

Being - a constant evolution from the interaction of 2 contradictory opposites.
Synthesis - arising from the opposition between thesis and antithesis.

Conflict - fundamental principal for the existence of every artwork and art form.
? Art's Social Mission
Art is to make manifest the contradictions of Being, and bring about intellectual concepts through the dynamic clash of opposing passions.

? Art's Nature
Art is a conflict between natural existence (which is passive) and creative tendency (which is active).
The limit of organic form is Nature, while the limit of rational form is Industry. Their point of intersection is Art.
The clash between the 2 creates the dialectic of the art form.
Their interaction produces and determines Dynamism.
The quantity of interval determines dynamism.
(E.g. Human expression is a conflict between conditioned and unconditioned reflexes.)
This dynamism arises from irregularity. (E.g. Poetry is charming because of conflict.)

? Art's methodology
The whole, as well as the least detail must be penetrated by a sole principal. This creates rhythm and inception of the art form.

Film
Shot and montage are the basic elements of cinema.
Eisenstein: montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots, even opposite ones to have the 'dramatic' principal.
Movement is created by showing a sequential of still images at a required speed.
Each sequential element is perceived not next to each other, but on top of another.
The process superimposes on the retained impression of the 1st image. It is thus possible to create spatial depth by the optical superimposing of 2 planes in stereoscopy.
Degree of incongruence determines the intensity of impression and tension which becomes the element of authentic rhythm.

Painting
The dynamic effect of painting comprises the direction of an element in the painting, which the eye follows and retains visual impression, which then collides with the impression of the direction of another element.

The conflict forms the dynamic effect.
? Linear - purely elementary element
? Anecdotal - retain unity & anatomical correctness
? Destroy naturalness, not abstract
? Irregularity, spatial disproportion

Other elements in a painting includes color (shade or tone) and size.

Cinema
There is a synthesis of 2 counterpoints - the spatial counterpoint of graphic art and the temporal counterpoint of music, i.e. visual counterpoint.

Conflict
Conflict with a thesis - formulates itself in the dialectics of the subtitle - forms itself spatially in the conflict within the shot - and explodes with the increasing intensity in montage-conflict among the separate shots.
Different types of conflict:
? Conflict of motives ( 3 phrases )
? Verbal utterance - speech
? Gesticulatory expression - mimic-intonational - body movement and intonation
? Projection of the conflict into space - zigzag of mimic expression arising from spatial division caused by man moving in space.
? Conflicts within the form - graphic conflict, conflict of planes, conflict of volumes, spatial conflict, light conflict, tempo conflict
? Conflict between matter and viewpoint - spatial distortion through camera angle
? Conflict between matter and its spatial nature - optical distortion by the lens
? Conflict between an event and its temporal nature - achieved by slow-motion and stop-motion
? Conflict between the whole optical complex and a different sphere (acoustical)
? The conflict of the optical and acoustic experience produce sound-film, which is capable of being, realized as audio-visual counterpoint.

How movement is achieved by superimposition of 2 differing immobile images.
? Each moving fragment of montage
? Artificially produced image of motion
? Logical
? Illogical
? Emotional combination - visible elements of shots with chains of psychological associations (association montage)
? Liberation of whole action from definition of time and space (juxtapose 2 disparate events)

? Intellectual dynamism - conflict between a preconception and a gradual discrediting of it in purposeful steps.

CS205 Presentation on Crisis of Representation

Crisis of Representation - Arises from uncertainty about adequate means of describing social reality. (Marcus and Fischer)

Visual Anthropology (Ruby Gay)
Visual anthropology logically proceeds from the belief that culture is manifested through visible symbols embedded in gestures, ceremonies, rituals, and artifacts situated in constructed and natural environments. Culture is conceived of as manifesting itself in scripts with plots involving actors and actresses with lines, costumes, props, and settings. The cultural self is the sum of the scenarios in which one participates. If one can see culture, then researchers should be able to employ audiovisual technologies to record it as data amenable to analysis and presentation. Although the origins of visual anthropology are to be found historically in positivist assumptions that an objective reality is observable, most contemporary culture theorists emphasize the socially constructed nature of cultural reality and the tentative nature of our understanding of any culture.
The readings discuss various difficulties in accurate representation of culture in the field of visual anthropology.

The inadequacies as stated by Marcus and Fischer, stems from three areas:

1) The authors or creators of visual records.
a. Different authors will produce different records because of the differing motivations that determine which aspect of the subject matters that the authors choose to focus on.
i. Worth pg 192
b. That the anthropologists approach their subjects with a pre-conceived idea of how their subjects' cultures operate and will angle their work from particular directions, which may not represent accurately, the subject matters at all.
i. Mead as cited by Worth 189
2) The mechanical process involved in the recording
a. Photographers must interact with the subject matter, in that there is a possibility that events may be staged or that the subjects become "performers" when they are aware of the presence of the camera.
i. Flaherty Pg 22
b. Technology that exists to provide accurate depictions of the subjects may also be used to enhance images aesthetically, and is in itself, a distortion of reality as the images may not be appealing in the first place. Music and narrative voice-overs can also be used to achieve the same effect.
i. Flaherty Pg 23
c. The view of the world through the camera is limited by the camera's frame and does not show an entire, overall picture of the subjects. Details may be omitted in this way, thus leading to misrepresentation.
i. Worth Pg 194
d. Editing, a necessary step in the process of contemporary filmmaking, introduces the potentials of omissions, which are subjected to the decisions made by the authors, again, a limitation in using films as records for visual anthropology.
i. Worth Pg 195
3) Roles subjects play in the recording of film.
a. The agendas of the subjects affect the portrayal of themselves, in that they may choose only specific areas to be presented and this is done for a cause and as a means to circumvent official channels in their struggles, whether or not the author knows. Ie Self-presentation to the majority others.
i. CVA review Pg 1 and 2
b. Appropriation of film technology by certain factions in the community would result in the exclusion of voices.
i. CVA review Pg 5

The Way We See Things and Illuminations

The way we see things are affected by what we know and believe
? We only see what we look at; to look is an act of choice. Looking at the relation bet things and us.
? What we see is brought to our reach
? As we see things, we know we are being seen as well. These make up the visible world.
? Whatever seen by the human eye is very subjective.

Images in paintings and photography
? Every image embodies a way of seeing
? Image is an appearance that is detached from the place and time.
? Images in paintings are man-made: recreated and reproduced from reality. Authentic would simply mean it is the original of a reproduction of reality rather than real. There can only be one original, hence unique
? Images in photographs, too, are selected sights from an infinity of other possible sights. It embodies a way of seeing; our perception or appreciation of images depends upon the way we see things. However, it would not be unique, as there can be multiple copies.
? Images were first made to record. It provides a direct testimony about the world that surrounded other people at other times. (No words or literature could substitute this.)

How the original is seen after the invention of camera.
? It is the original of an image, a reproduction from reality
? A new status: The first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but in what it is (original/authentic).
? The majority believes that original masterpieces belong to the rich.

Pictorial Reproduction
? When a painting is put in use, its meaning is either modified or totally changed.
? Reproduction isolates a detail of a painting from the whole. The detail is transformed
? Photographs, meant for the masses, are often reproduced with words around them. The images would now illustrate the sentence, rather than images giving the first meaning. The words guide the reader to how they should look at the images, thus imposing verbal authority. Photograph and original paintings that are rich in meaning are seen from a definite light due to the words.
? It becomes information.
? It lacks the element of its presence in time and space
Changes in physical conditions
Changes in ownership
? The original preserved all its authority, while the reproduction is branded with forgery
? The quality of the reproduction is always depreciated

Photography and Film seen in modern days

The mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence
? The desire of contemporary masses is to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly
? With our desire to see all things, we overcome the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction; to get hold of the object at close range by way of likeness, reproduction through picture magazines and newsreel
? Perception (found in photographs) is marked with a sense of the universal equality of things. There is no sense of urgency or seriousness

? Photography's exhibition begins to displace cult value
Cult value- remembrance, record, aura
Exhibition value- for the purpose of establishing evidence for occurrences and acquire a political significance; captions give directives to those looking at the pictures.

? Film- not exposed to cult value
Performance of actors is subjected to a series of optical tests: special camera angles, close-up
Audience's identification with the actor is an identification with the camera
The aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays
The film takes on a functional role; a capitalist mode

? The film industry is trying to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculation
? The illusionary nature is the result of cutting
It consists of multiple fragments, which are assembled under a new law
The film extends our comprehension
? Distraction in films
- Shock effect
- Promoted a demand for the film, the distracting element
- Destruction of the aura of their creation.
- present a scene and disrupt it with moving images- not allowing the
viewer to think

Way We See Things and Illuminations

? The way we see things are affected by our experiences, traditions, backgrounds, knowledge, beliefs, values, etc

Example: When in love, we see our beloved as a completeness which no words or embrace can match; a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate

? Invention of camera

? Changes the way men see paintings

Example: Virgin of Rocks

Original Reproduction

Authenticity Common- Not special
Beauty No human touch
Unique Lack of presence of time and space
Aura Only copies of originals
Impressive Travel to the spectators
Respect Depreciated Quality
High market value Low market value
Authoritative Captions will give extra meanings
Loss of uniqueness
Multiplication & fragmentation of meanings

(Authenticity : essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which its represents)

? Invention of film

? characteristics of the film lies not only in the manner in which man presents himself to mechanical equipment but also in the manner which, by means of this apparatus, man can represents his environment

? leads spectator to the author's conclusion, to see things author determines or defines to be the truth. This can be done with the following:
? camera angles
? focus on hidden details
? close-ups
? slow motion
? special effects

? Painting vs film

Painting Film

A total picture Multiple fragments
A natural distance from reality Illusionary nature
Enjoyed Criticized
Viewed by one or few people Viewed by masses
Concentration Distraction
Cult value Exhibition value

Visual Pleasure and Orientalism

? Gender Representation

Men Women

Active Passive
- scopophilia - being looked at/ displayed
- taking others as sexual objects - connote to-be-looked-at-ness
- looking a source of pleasure - as sexual objects, hold the look and
signify male desire

Occident Orient
? representation of power - weak
? control events, make things happen - submissive
? consuming passion, independent - dependent
? civilized - uncivilized, wild, useless
? owner (domination) - property, owned by others
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
In Screen 16.3 (1975) Mulvey

The Patriarchal Culture

? Function of woman being twofold
? Symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis
? Raise her child into the symbolic, ie, turns her child into the signifier of her own desire to possess a penis

? Women stand as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of women still tied to her place as bearer of meaning.

Pleasure in Looking/Fascination with the Human Form

? Scopophilia
? Taking other people as objects, subjecting them to controlling and curious gaze
? Looking and being looked at as sources of pleasure
? Pleasure arose from using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight
? Function of sexual instincts
? Cinema gives the illusion of looking in on a private world

? Narcissism and constitution of ego
? Curiosity and wish to look intermingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition
? Identification of the ego with the object on the screen through the spectator's fascination with and recognition of his like
? Function of ego libido
? Cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego

? The above two interact and overlay each other
? Tension between instinctual drives and self preservation continues to be a dramatic polarization in terms of pleasure
? Both are formative structures
? Both have no signification but have to be attached to an idealization.
? Both pursue aims in indifference to perceptual reality, creating the imagized, ercoticized concept of the world that forms the perception of the subject and makes a mockery of empirical objectivity.

Women as image, Man as bearer of the look

? Women as passive and Men as active
? Women are being looked at and displayed
? Connote to-be-looked-at-ness
? As sexual objects, holds the look and signifies male desire

? Controlled narrative structure
? Man's role as the active one forwarding the story, making things happen
? Men control the film fantasy and emerges as the representation of power

? Tension between modes of representation in film & conventions
? Allowing spectator to possess the actress through the actor within the diegesis
? Yet her lack of a penis implies a threat of castration and hence, unpleasure
? Women, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified

Orientalism Said, Edward
Orient (European)
? Almost an European invention
? A place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscape, remarkable experience
? A place of Europe's greatest, richest and oldest colonies, source of its civilizations & languages, its cultural contestants and one of its deepest and most recurring images
? An integral part of European material civilization and culture
? Expresses and represents culturally and ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles
Orient (American)
? Interdependent : serves in a number of \fields. Anyone who teaches, writes about or researches about Orient is an Orientalist, even if the person is an anthropologist, sociologist,etc
? A style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between "the Orient" and the "Occident". A basic distinction between the East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, "mind", destiny, etc
? Analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it : As a western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient
History of Orient
? From 19th century until WW II -- France & Britain
? Since WW II -- America
? Occident -- British, French or America

Man-made Orientalism ?
? Men made own history, that what they can know is what they have made and extend it to geography
? Locales, regions, geographical sectors as "Orient" and "Occident" are man-made
? Orient-- as an idea that has a history and a tradition of though, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West
? The two geographical entities support and reflect each other.

Some Qualifications :
? West have an all-consuming passion of the East. Creation of consistency and constellation of ideas as the pre-eminent thing about the Orient and not to its mere being
? Ideas, cultures and history cannot be seriously understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configuration of power. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony. East is being submitted to being -made Oriental. Little consent from the East
? A created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued investment made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness.

Gramsci's analytic distinction
Civil - made up of voluntary affiliations , eg schools, families and unions
- Rational & non-coercive
Political - made up of state institutions , eg army, police and central bureacracy
- Direct domination
? Culture in the civil society where the influence of ideas, of institutions and of other people, works not by domination but instead consent. However, certain culture predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential; this cultural leadership (or hegemony) is a way of understanding of cultural life in the industrial West. As a result of this hegemony, Orientalism can be so durable and strong to have last so long becos it acts as a collective notion identifying "us" Europeans as against all "those" non-europeans. Reiterating European superiority compare with the rest. In addition, there is the hegemony of European ideas over the Orient -- European authority over Orient's backwardness.
Post-Modernism

? Modernity: begins with the Renaissance, often equated with the scientific worldview of the Enlightenment.
? Post-Modernity: incipient or actual dissolution of social forms associated with modernity (Sarup, 1993). Post-modernism derived partly from the disillusionment of the power of the Enlightenment dream to bring about an envisioned utopia.
? 2 Schools of Post-Modernism: Skeptics & Affirmatives.

Schematic Differences
Modernism Post-Modernism
Romanticism, Symbolism Paraphysics, Dadaism
Design, Hierarchy Chance, Anarchy
Synthesis Antithesis
Creation, Totalisation Deconstruction
Objective Subjective, Intersubjective
Depth Surface
Signifiers always point to Signifieds Only Signifiers, No Signified
Transcendence Immanence
Reductionistic Systematic, Functionalistic
Referential (Language) Meaning in social context through usage

Identity
? Modern identity focus on occupation & social roles. Post-modern identity focus on leisure, looks, images and consumption.
? Modern: collective, fixed, solid, stable, unchanging, essential (Descartes: "cogito ergo sum")
? Post-Modern: individual, mutable (often with awareness), multiple, fragmented/discontinuous & self-reflexive ("being a relation that exist between an entity & itself" ? conscious of the process of knowledge creation)
? Need to gain recognition for a socially validated identity
? Loss of self ? existential angst. (Incapable to handle multiple identities ; Nietzsche: "God is dead !" ? lack of a central authority figure)
? Anxiety allegedly will vanish in euphoric indulgence of identity changes.
? "Modern, overloaded individuals, desperately trying to maintain rootedness and integrity... ultimately are pushed to the point where there is little reason not to believe that all value-orientations are equally well-founded. Therefore, increasingly, choice becomes meaningless." (Baudrillard, 1984)
? Anomie (Durkheim): social instability due to a breakdown of standards & values, controlling influences of society no longer effective, people in relative normlessness, loss, loneliness and purposelessness. ? accounts largely for teenage suicides.
? Lacan: "The self is a fiction, it doesn't really exist."
? Post-Modern: Queer Theory ? gender and sexual identities are not fixed.

Post-Modern TV
? Surface-oriented: images are flashed so rapidly that they lose any signifying function
? Discontinuity: images suffer from disconnected flow
? Pretty Woman: self-transformation through fashion, diction and style.
? Miami Vice: lead characters have multiple identities and pasts, often conflicting with each other. They also assume looks, roles and behaviour from show to show.
? Natural Born Killers: identity transformed through murders, guilt over accidental kill vs no guilt over intentional kill, villiany & heroism blurred, discontinuity in marriage scene, comedy vs tragedy.
? Identity of characters ambivalent (eg. crime vs business), beyond "good" and "bad"
? Identity becomes artificial, constructed rather than innate.
? The fragile state of post-modern identity suggests a possible loss of control when one radically shifts identity at will.