Aesthetics

What is aesthetics? For me aesthetics are sensory and sensori-emotional values that we each hold. It can also relate specifically to reflecting on the arts, the style of something and then how we percieve it.

“We perceive the thing minus that which does not interest us” ( Deleuze 1986)

This week our Film class was shown Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash (1991). The film is set in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina at the turn of the 20th Century, and focuses on three generations of Gullah women planning to migrate from their home, to mainland America. The film employs an unusual narrative device, as the story is told by three main narrators. Nana Peazant, the matriarche of the family, a second generation Peazant and an unborn child; who is a force that will address the aesthtics of change in the Gullah family within the film. She is the force that will drive the past into the future.

A recurring theme in Daughters of the Dust is the relationship between tradition and modernity. Because Gullahs were isolated in the Sea Islands from the rest of America, they managed to create and maintain an African American culture. Viola Peazant is uplifted at the idea of travelling to mainland America, and has lost touch with the African traditions that Nana Peazant still practices. Some of the Gullah women even wish to turn their back on it completely.

“I’m tired of Nana’s old stories. Watching her make those root potions … and that Hoo doo she talks about. Washing up in the river with her clothes on, just like those old ‘Salt Water’ folks used to do. My children ain’t gonna be like those old Africans fresh off the boat.”

Here, Haagar is criticising Nana for not looking towards the future. However, the film also looks on the philosophy that old African traditions can be mixed with newer American ones, shown when Nana uses the Bible (a symbol of Western Christian ideoligies) to make a charm for her family.

Some key points about the aesthetics of my own community-

• Urbanization- “Manchester was the poster city of the Blair/Brown Labour governments, put forward as a glimmering example of ‘urban regeneration’… But the plush, luxurious apartment blocks and trendy wine bars were not built for the ordinary Mancunian. A result of slum clearance and the pre-2008 speculative property boom, their sky high prices attracted only the super-privileged; many remain empty.”
• Multicultural- Manchester is a city that has a culturally diverse population. That is something that I really enjoy about the community which I live in.

War on screen

‘War is an openly declared state of organized violent conflict, typified by extreme aggression, societal disruption, and high mortality.’

‘Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or “irregulars”) use military tactics.’

This week our class watched The Battle of Algiers (1966 Gillo Pontecorvo). The film is set between 1954 and 1962 in Algiers during the Algerian war of independence. The film is striking because of its almost documentary style portrayal of war and also its ability to address the brutality of the French Colonists. It was banned in France for a time after it’s release as it showed the French occupation as a mass oppression of the Algerian people.

The opening scene of torture from the French towards an Algerian man is one of horror, but eaqualy shocking is the scene where a group of ordinary people are relaxing in a cafe when a rebel bomb suddenly explodes among them. Here the Algerian people are using the controls that are used against them. They persue urban guerilla warfare as a way to regain control of their land and to fight for freedom.

Pontecovo’s use of a hand-held camera to capture manic crowd scenes depicts war in such a real way that as an audience you would be forgiven for thinking some of the footage was from the years when Algeria was at struggle. However this leads me to think about Naomi Klien’s ‘Shock Doctrine’. The violence in The Battle of Algiers is explicit, but is it still as shocking today as it was in 1966? In Klien’s Shock Doctrine she talks about the way the public is taught to accept ‘shocks’ or crisis as normal, even if it affects their way of living.

“The dumping of private debt into the public coffers is only stage one of the current shock. The second comes when the debt crisis currently being created by this bailout becomes the excuse to privatize social security, lower corporate taxes and cut spending on the poor.” (http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/now-time-resist-wall-streets-shock-doctrine)

Klien’s arguement can relate to modern culture, for example film. We are exposed to images of extreme violence in a way that normalises this kind of dehumanisation. The Battle of Algiers was shocking in it’s day because it showed the violent conditions that the Algerian people had to struggle against. It also has relevence to today’s events in the Middle East and North Africa, which are in many ways, a continuation of the struggle against colonialism.

The approach used in The Battle of Algiers contrasts to the ‘shock tactics’ imposed by modern mainstream cinema which are more stylised and offer little in the way of reality. In a critique of Quentin Tarantino’s use of violence, Marty Jonas writes:

“Into this closed system, little of reality can intrude. Neither Kill Bill nor its director shows any interest in or consciousness of what motivates human beings, how they live and (especially) how they really die.” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/kill-n11.shtml

Sound and History.

When Marie Antoinette was made in 2006 (Sophia Ford-Coppola) it was the rise of the ‘Paris Hilton’/Hollywood excess era.  Can Coppola be forgiven for creating a war movie that almost entirely focuses on material history, even though it may have been contextual for the time?

Vogue- "Teen queen who rocked Versailles" or "Madame Déficit"? The nickname given to her in the summer of 1787 as a result of the public perception that she had single-handedly ruined the finances of the nation.

I admit, the aesthetics of this film, and the sounds do make it very approachable and at times enjoyable. But pretty colours and songs don’t seem quite enough to carry such a historical narrative. Coppola uses the New Order song Ceremony during the Birthday scene and Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie and the Banshees plays as digetic music when Marie is dancing at the masked ball. The affective nature of the sounds make you feel as though you can relate to the film because you may know the songs. Particularlly during the masked ball sequence, the music is lively and upbeat and you do feel yourself enjoying what you see and hear. The stark juxtaposition of modern sounds together withh 18th Century French royalty is interesting for a while but to me it seems almost irrelevant. You can enjoy New Order a lot more when it isn’t part of this film.

The theme of history is also very interesting when looking at Marie Antoinette. I did enjoy the way in which Coppola defies your usual ‘costume drama’ by focusing on the interior of the doomed Antoinette, and the way the people in power are living in an isolated bubble (of decadence). History can mean different things for different people, and Coppola focuses on Antoinette’s personal history rather than entirely on events surrounding her and what became because of her actions.  She also critically addressess  the roles of men and women of the time and how they are seemingly born into a God-given state, and how women must perform under societal control. While watching the film I didn’t like Marie, but you can’t help feeling sorry for her.

As the Revolution draws nearer and messages of poverty for the French people reach Versailles, it barely makes a tear in Antoinettes lavish lifestyle. “To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.” (Oscar Wilde)

For me, the film’s use of sickly aesthetics and modern soundtrack is at points enjoyable and fun, but in the end it takes away from the real historical context, merely to please our eyes and ears. The scene where Steve Coogan, Antoinette’s advisor, is attempting to warn her of the ever-growing crisis that her people are facing, and she just turns to him and asks which sleve on her dress he prefers, is cringe-worthy. “With ruffles or without?” Style over substance anyone?

Semiotics in film.

What are semiotics? Semitoics is the analysis of images, signs, language and genre. A viewer can apply cultural codes to an image, linguistic rules to language or dialogue and conventions and rules to a story and it’s genre and symbolic meaning.

Run Lola Run (Twyker 1998) was a good film to look at with regards to semiotics. The main theme that stood out for me was the important choices the characters had to make throughout. Lola and her boyfriend Manni must make the right choice out of a series of options. But what is the right choice? This is a question we are all faced with everyday. The semiotics of the film guide the audience through the cinematic reality. Some may argue that cinema is not a reality, perhaps only a reflection of one, but cinema creates it’s own conscious world.

Twyker’s filmic world in Run Lola Run affects the characters and also their actions. They must constantly make a descision or choices and are then affected by positive, creative choices and also negative choices. Lola is shot as a result of the latter, and the ‘game’ must begin again. Lola’s reality is punishing and intense and the style of the narrative is almost like that of a video game. Twyker manages to subvert the exhausted action, thriller genre by enableing his characters to begin again and choose other paths, or make different choices, for a specific narrative effect. His filmic rules are different also in the sense that he uses an upbeat techno soundtrack, animation and there is very little dialogue throughout.

What next?

The Gleaners and I.

When watching Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, (Agnes Varda 2000) I found the experience insightful, interesting but also incredibly sad. Varda enters French country side and cities armed with her hand-held camera in search of ‘gleaners’, members of the community who use what others waste. This is usually food, sometimes TV’s and fridges etc.

Varda captures many different people in the film, young, old, rich, poor. But what was very striking was that the gleaners were almost always poor and treated as lower class citizens. The film presents very important issue to its audience, that of waste and how members of society or communities are treated because of their chosen, or in fact absolutley necessary lifestyle.

Social rejection is rife in the film. The members of society who ‘glean’ are treated negatively.

With this film I feel Varda can alter your relation between a preconceived idea and the truth. Why is unnecessary waste tollerated? Why are gleaners prosecuted and looked down on? Varda captures the community in a way that puts the average consumer to shame. “Resistance to consumerism.”

Gleaners

I think the film also conveys the material culture of our time. The gleaners in the film are living in a different world, and the dominant belief system that is operating is that of a consumerist culture driven by capitalism.

Food is made unobtainable for those who need it most, even though it is only to reside in a bin. And the harsh laws that deal with gleaning reiterate the way it is not a socially accepted activity.

Consumption and Production.

Dogtown and Z-boys was a great film. Directed by Stacy Peralta (2002) you can’t help but get drawn in by the soothing tones of narrator Sean Penn and the vintage style the film adopts aesthetically. The film was mostly shot in sunny California and you can almost feel the heat from the screen. I really enjoyed the escapism style of film making and the chance to experience a little piece of the subculture that the skaters and surfers of the 70’s made so popular today.

Skating a drained pool

The Zephyr surf team featured on the film were the first group to take surfing to the streets when they discovered skateboarding. Their effortless style and low, flowing skating technique was to them, like surfing the concrete. To most, the skateboard was just another commodity, but skating and surfing went hand in hand and was more than just a hobby. They had created a youth subculture.

Marx states that a commodity is an “external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.” Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1.

When Marx uses the term commodity he also uses it closley with the term use-value. However, something that has use-value does not always mean it is a commodity.

“He who satisfies his own need with the product of his own labour admittedly creates use-values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values”. (131)

The commodity therefore has a natural form and a value form.

Under capitalism the exchange-value is more important than the use-value of something, so skating brands such as, Vans or Etnis are selling commodities. But is it fair to say that the Z-boys of Dogtown were subverting this notion? They did indeed buy into the commodity of a skateboard to satisfy their needs, but admittedly built their’s from old cupboards or doors for the love of the sport. Stacy described skating as “an athletic stream of consciousness.”

Some of the Zephyr team did however enter the business world, becoming involved with advertising and creating skating equipment and merchandise. And these brands can be criticised for making money rather than providing something entirely useful for people.

Culture as Commodity

Culture is becoming more and more commodified, and it is all about profit. People should not have to pay ridiculous prices to see a film or a play (something that is the product of human thought or creativity) but artistic value is usually secondary to the exchange-value of a product. An example of this is the Lost series. The series was supposed to run for only one series but continued to run for six as there was more money to be made. Culture shouldn’t be a commodity.

Commodity fetishism is the tendency to attribute towards commodities. Could the remake of the Dogtown and Z-boys documentary into a feature film adhere to this notion? Peralta gained funding (400,000 dollars) from Vans to make his film. But what was the need to create a Hollywood remake, Lords of Dogtown? More money?

Affect…?

In week one our Film and Media class was faced with the term, affect. My initial thought was that ‘affect’ was just the way in which you are affected by something and the way it affects everything around you, be it culture or society. Jeremy Gilbert writes, ‘To think affect is to think the social.’ So perhaps it is not simply how you are affected but but also how something relates to your society and every body elses. Affect then, is not merely feelings but reflections and consequences.

To me ‘affect’ relates to the engagement between subjects and texts.

Jan Svankmajer. Food.

The first film we have been shown is Food, by Jan Svankmajer (1992). The film is in three parts, breakfast,lunch and dinner.

The film uses food and eating habbits as a metaphor to approach political and social values.

Breakfast depicts the human as a machine, the repetative nature of the characters and their robotic sounds and movements perhaps allude to the thought of modern society being very mechanical. Mechanical in our day to day lives, and also in our work-ethic. Do we work like machines? The idea of consumerism is also relevant. The way the characters devour their breakfasts one after another, with a seemingly endless line of customers outside waiting to do the same  reiterates this theme.

Lunch was a very interesting part of the film. My initial thought was that of the rich-poor divide. The two main characters are clearly from different social backgrounds and we see the well-mannered rich character devouring the shabbier dressed man’s belongings and then the man himself. The clear class divide portrays the rich man as greedy and unstoppable, taking from the poor man. I also picked up on the theme of eating habbits. The characters respond to the same stiuations differently so we know about their eating habbits. The upper class man uses a knife and fork and has a serviette, but the lower class man eats his ‘food’ without, and in large gulps. This structuralist technique helps us as an audience to learn about the characters.

Dinner was perhaps the strangest part. Some themes we noticed as a class were:

• Attitudes towards consumerism
• You are what you eat
• Consumption and production
• Anti meat
• Cultural differences

What effect do you get as you watch this scene? Squeamish, horrified, confused, intrigued? Maybe all, but what stands out for me is the thought that the characters could be consuming what they value. For example, the athlete who eats his leg and the woman who eats her breasts. Is Svankmajer making his audience think about what they consider important in terms of the body?

 

Theory as Practice.

What is ‘Theory’ and what is ‘Practice’?

The word theory was origionally a technical term meaning “a looking at, viewing or beholding”, and refers to reflecting on rather than to act upon. Practice, is usually described as a method of learning and of acquiring experience. When concerned with the Film and Media course, Theory as Practice to me, means obtaining knowledge of specific areas, topics and theories to do with the media and utilising this knowledge to broaden our understanding of different types of media, and the way in which we read these.

Bob Dickinson.

Bob Dickinson is a freelance radio 4 producer, broadcaster and journalist who has worked for Radio 4 for over 10 years. He came in to talk with the group, and was one of my favourite guest speakers yet.

The reach of Radio 4 is around 10.37 million listeners, Radio 2 around 13.68 million, and the gender ratio is 50/50, a much bigger platform than I had expected, as I don’t listen to the radio nearly as much as I used to, and Bob mentioned that Chris Moyles and Chris Evans were both losing listeners.

Radio 4 is based in London with various control units around the country. One of the major ones is situated in Manchester that offers positions for freelancers, permanent staff and non permanent staff. I would love to try and get some work experience here, but the competition must be fierce as I have so far been unsuccesful trying to get the BBC interested. However, some big BBC departments are moving from London to Manchester in 2011. Aiming smaller has helped though, and I reccomend others in my position to try and get some work experience with a local radio station first.

Bob really sold a carrer in Radio production to me, you can work as art of a small team (eg, you and your presenter) or on your own. He mentioned how you can taylor your own interests into getting features commissioned for a show, and the time and attention to detail that is involved when crafting a show was very intriguing. Sometimes a feature must be planned over a year in advance prior to when it is to be broadcast.

An interesting example of a feature on Radio 4 was the ‘Art of Pop’, presented by Jarvis Cocker. It would be great to write something like this for a show and have a great presenter broadcast your work.

Printworks

Today we were out of the classroom and off to the cinema! The Odeon cinema in the Printworks is a multiplex boasting 20 screens over 7 floors, 3608 seats and an IMAX screen. Impressive as this is, it’s a little pricey for me, at over £6 for a student ticket I’d rather go down the road to the Great Northern and pay £4.50, that’s £2.25 on Orange Wednesdays!

The talks we were given from the members of staff were very interesting.

Sarah – Marketing and Events Manager, covered a wide range of things such as,

• The distribution of films
• The exhibition of films
• How does a cinema create awareness? –
• P.O.S
• Radio
• Press
• Online
• Local events

• Retail –
• RPH
• Up-selling
• Suggestive selling
• Min stock loss/theft

She also mentioned how customers are treated as guests not just customers to maximise the amount of guests who will return to the cinema.

• Guest Service –
• Friendly and efficient staff
• safety for guests (CCTV)
• At least 150 team members
• Screen hire–
• Conferences
• Meetings
• Stag and Hen parties
• Birthdays
• Big screen gaming
• Alternative content

Until now I was unaware that cinema screens could be hired out, wwe were told that in the past, the screens had been used to host a karaoke night, and that they could be used to show alternative content such as ballet, opera and major sporting events. A hit with many people was how the screens could be hired to host big-screen gaming.

Alison- Regional Marketing Executive.

Alison used to have Sarah’s role but is now one of three of the countrys regional marketing executives for Walt Disney Pictures UK. Her main role is to create a good relationship between the company and all the cinemas in her section of the UK. There are around 75 distribution companies world wide and each has different branches, for example, Pixar is a branch of Disney. The most recognised names are, Fox, Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers and Disney, and each company can release between 0 and 20 films per year.

The release date for a film is also very important. Films are usually released on a Friday as the opening weekend figures are the most important, and other than an Orange Wednesday, the weekend is a cinemas busiest time. Alison also highlighted that if a major blockbuster is about to be released then no other film should dare to be released on the same day. All films beware of Harry Potter!

Some signs that a film is about to be released:

• POS items (posters, standees etc) appear in the cinema around 4-5 months before release.
• Trailors are shown 3-4 months before.
• More POS items appear 2 months before.
• Retail promotions 1 month before.
• The cast of the film do a publicity tour appearing on TV, radio, press junkets around 2 weeks before.
• The UK premier of the film is held 2 weeks before cinema release.

Ben- Technical manager.

Ben talked to us about the technical aspects of screening a film at the Odeon, his talk was very interesting as he touched upon things we as an audience may never even think about. At the Odeon there is a variety of ways a film can be screened.

• 35mm
• Began in 1892
• Was used as standard in 1909
• Every projection system runs the same
• Print costs £3000
• Made up of 4-9 reels
• Takes an hour to make up
• Can be damaged easily

• Digital
• Film comes as a hard drive
• Only costs £90
• Takes 30 minutes to ingest
• Can be shown in 3D

• IMAX
• 15/70mm
• Digital
• Print costs £150,000
• Film comes as 60-90 reels
• Takes 24 hours to make up
• Offers the largest screens with the most powerful sound system

Now the bit we were all waiting for, the screening of Let Me In. The American remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In. As a fan of the origional film I was interested to see what the American director Matt Reeves had come up with. Unfortunatly it was as I’d thought, not a patch on the Swedish film. Watching the film it seemed there was no point to it, a stunning version had already been made, so why try and do it again? It felt as though you were being shown the same film you had already seen, but of a much poorer quality. Let Me In was definitly upstaged, I reccomend Let the Right One In!