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?