I don't even know what to say...

I just got home from the screening of “Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy”, and am completely unsure what to think or where to begin. Through looking at the film’s website for more information on the film’s background, I found a quote from Martin Arnold that changes my entire interpretation of the film: “The cinema of Hollywood is a cinema of exclusion, reduction, and denial, a cinema of repression. There is always something behind that which is being represented, which was not represented. And it is exactly that that is most interesting to consider.” Arnold demonstrates his ideas in the most literal terms, in the same way teens in the sixties played rock music backwards with the hopes of hearing Satan. In the first scene, when the boy Andy kisses the back of his mom’s head while she’s working at the sink, her voice sounds almost lost a compilation of animal noises, with distinct bird chirping and sheep sounds. The idea of noise is made ridiculous and obnoxious when the girl is shown singing, and each note seems mismatched and a painful transition from the previous one. The compulsive juxtaposition of noise, more than anything else, satirizes the probably cheesy original version by making a joke of romantic songs in general.

Besides the inhuman sounds that come from Arnold’s looping, repetition, and speed manipulation, his editing also emphasizes different emotions within the characters, completely bastardizing the meaning of what is being shown. The most obvious example of this is seen in the first scene, where the repetition that Arnold implements makes an innocent scene seem almost incestuous. In the simple shot of a boy kissing the back of his mom’s head before going out, the kiss is magnified and given a much more dramatic sense of emotion; in slow motion, the mother’s response appears to be full of longing and sexual drive. By speeding up the movement of the boy leaning into his mom, and then playing it forward and backward, the simple kiss becomes almost a repeated thrusting motion, which carries obvious connotations.

Databases don't need narratives

Manovich's The Database seems to be critical of the fact that "many new media objects do not tell stories," in contrast to the novel and cinema, which were completely based on narratives. Though this is true, it seems to be a little too obvious, and seemingly irrelevent. The two forms of new media that this article explores are CD-Roms (more often educational CDs; for example, those that give museum tours or bibliographies) and the Internet. These have completely different purposes than novels or movies.

Yes, it might be valid to consider narrative "as the key form of cultural expression," but this is only because humans are entertained by stories. Even for nonfiction stories or filmatic bibliographies, narrative structures make the texts more entertaining (in some cases, just bearable). But this is kind of a tangent from my main point: to explain it in cliche terms, comparing novels and the Internet is comparing apples and oranges.

The Internet does not give narrative because it offers so much information (which is constantly changing and being extended) that the only way it can stay organized is by keeping every piece of information -- every link, every dictionary definition, every historical period -- as a separate entity. When a user logs on to Google, he is not looking for an entertaining story, he is looking for a quick answer. Having the Internet organized enough so that search engines can sort through ALL of the web's information in a second or so involves sacrificing a more permanent order or narrative.

Unfortunately, this article seems to consider this as a bad thing. Manovich argues that in new media, "the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records." Yes, the Internet structures the world as a database. But there is nothing wrong with the world being organized in those terms. It seems to me that the world is more an unstructured collection of people, ideas, and statistics than it is one traceable storyline, so why shouldn't it be outlined as such. The Internet helps us navigate this huge web of information.

Manovich also seems critical of the database's refusal to order its list of information. That, to me, is one of the beauties of the Internet: we don't need to browse through subject name or alphabetical lists to find information. The Internet can search through itself.

In short, this entire book seems to be focused on explaining why the Internet and CD-roms are databases, and that they don't have narratives. Nowhere does it explain why this is a problem, only that it is so. While I completely agree that this argument is correct, I don't see why it's an important one. In the same way, he explains that video games and film both have narratives. Again: so what? Though this idea might have been further developed in other chapters of this book, I think that the argument being made is hardly an argument at all, and could definately use some more explanation for, as Josh and Irene would say, "why it's telling."

Le Jetee vs. subtited films and Edward Muybridge

In watching Le Jetee, I couldn't help but see the parallels between the photo-based film and a subtitled one: both rely on the viewer to put each frame together and create a sense of flow and movement between scenes. Also, I appreciated the way Chris Marker used several different photos of the same subject matter in a row, to have the same effect of Edward Muybridge on animals: he gave the characters movement even though they were not actually moving on-screen. Specifically in the final scene, where the main character is running toward the end of the peir to reach the woman he loves, there is a fairly long series of photos that show him progressing down the pier, and then falling to his death. I think that by not showing the fluid movement, Marker was able to place more emphasis on his facial emotions, which are more important to the scene than seeing him actually run. Also, by showing him run in a series of photos, it was more dramatic to see him fall to his death, because the movement didn't offer a transition into his fall.