Andy Hardy Gone Oedipal

Martins Arnold’s experimental film, Alone, Life Wastes Andy Hardy, is a playfully manipulated version of the classic Andy Hardy films. In this film, Arnold uses forward-and-back looping as he speeds up, slows down, reverses, and reorders images and sound to convey subversive subtexts and satirize the original version. The storyline suggested by Arnold revolves around an Oedipal romance between Andy (Mickey Rooney) and his mother and the love triangles created by Andy’s father and Judy Garland’s character. The film shows this through the collaboration of manipulated fragments of the original film of Andy engaging in suggestive play with his mother who seems to enjoy it, Andy’s father smacking him afterwards, Judy Garland coming between Andy and his mother, and Andy’s mother’s jealousy.

Andy’s underlying sexual attraction to his mother can be seen in the first part of the film. In this scene, Andy casually kisses his mother’s cheek. This seemingly ordinary and innocent scene suddenly turns into a drama of sexual excitement and yearning when the film manipulates Andy’s body to seemingly thrust into his mother back and forth while his mother’s twitching lips expresses longing and desire.

When the father slaps Andy violently, Andy decides to give up his lust for his mother by saying “alright.” This part portrays Freud’s Oedipal model, the male child who desires his mother but fears being castrated by his father displaces his desire onto another woman. That is where Judy Garland comes in. Once she enters, the mother can no longer keep her place in Andy’s sexual fantasy. Yet, Andy still can’t seem to get rid of his compulsive sexuality that exists in his relationship with his mother as his romantic kiss with Judy Garland turns into nervous breath that indicates his animalistic sexual desire.

I thought the way this film was edited is closely related to Manovich’s The New Temporality: The Loop as a Narrative Engine. By using numerous repetitions and loops from the original film, a new narrative of the film is created. The traditional optimistic film that idealizes family and the domestic sphere turns into a naughty and provocative Oedipal drama.

I also find it interesting how the techniques that were used in this film made humans look unattractive. Constant looping and repetition makes humans resemble robots. In her singing scene, Judy Garland, who is normally beautiful and talented, looked mechanical, silly, and even dumb. Also, the kiss between Andy and Judy Garland’s character was presented as an automatic action, one that was programmed in them, in humans, void of any meaning or purpose.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film. I thought it was very clever, unique, witty, and entertaining. I loved Arnold’s sarcastic humor towards classical Hollywood films that absolutely worship the ideal of a perfect family at home with a happily-ever-after ending.

The World Is More Than 0's and 1's

In Database, the author overly criticizes our world that has become database-oriented as a result of computerization. He claims that due to the database, the narrative aspects of the world have disappeared. He supports his argument by discussing the information collecting process, the structure of video games, and the database in cinema. Although some of his claims seem to be reasonable, I disagree with many of the author’s accusations against our culture following computerization. After reading the whole chapter, I found myself getting frustrated with what the author had to say about the modern world and its trends.

The author’s belief that our world lacks narrations and that we are only left with data is rather extreme and invalid. He states that all the information that we obtain in the modern world “are collections of individual items, with every item possessing the same significance as any other” (218). This claim devalues our intelligence and the education system. We do not simply accept the information that we learn without giving a different significance to each item. Also, whether these items are of the same value or not depends on different individuals. We are not machines. We are humans with different traits, therefore, we all think and judge things differently unlike a computer’s data system. If we just gave the same significance to all information we gain, we wouldn’t be attending this university, taking this class, and learning how to closely analyze to share our different ideas. Even with a computerized society, the database won’t make anything the same nor meaningless, given all of mankind does not become robots.

The author also asserts that “the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database” (219). This statement is weak and absurd. This society has always been structured since the beginning of civilization. Even animals have their own systems of hierarchy, hunting techniques, seasons for mating, etc. It is derived from nature that this world will be structured some way or another, even with the rapid flow of excessive information.

The author believes that due to the algorithm working as a form of database in videogames, the users will try to “build a mental model of the computer model” (233). The human brain is very different from a computer brain; it is unpredictable, flexible, and always changing. The human brain is always able to accept more information, store that information, and have emotions and form opinions about that information. The computer brain cannot do these things. It is a machine brain; you will always get the same result. The human brain will always be superior to the most advanced computer brain, therefore, humans won’t try to build their brain to be like that of a computer. Instead, humans use these consistent and predictable tools to improve their lives rather than trying to turn into them. Furthermore, the author seems to forget that it is the humans who created the computers. By presenting such comments, the author is degrading the power of humans and their ingenuity.

When discussing the difference between database and narrative, the author expresses his idea: “As a cultural form, the database represents the world as a list of items, and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (event). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies” (225). I don’t believe that database and narrative are enemies, instead, they work together as they always have. A database creates narrative and narrative creates a database. Look at fairytales for example and let’s not forget that fairytales existed way before the computer was born. Fairytales are clearly narratives; they all tell stories in a linear form. However, they all have lists of the things that they must have in order to be categorized as fairytales. There is always that “once upon a time … happily ever after,” good vs. evil, unfortunate princess and the prince charming, magic, etc. These are the lists (database) of the fairytales (narrative). This symbiotic relationship between database and narrative has always existed in human history.

Lastly, the author talks about cinema’s quality of being the only narrative that can also contain a database at the same time. First of all, this sole idea contradicts what he has been talking about the whole time. In the majority of the chapter, he claimed that the database and narrative cannot exist together. However, in this section, he states that this mutual existence is possible in films. He says that almost all fictional films are narratives with “the linear pursuit – one story at a time told chronologically—is the standard format of cinema” (237). Then he praises Man with a Movie Camera, the film most famous for not having a linear narrative, by mentioning its unique characteristics of conveying database with narrative. I agree that Man with a Movie Camera definitely carries some kind of narratives despite its atypical film editing. However, the author clearly contradicts himself by claiming that most films have a chronological narrative while saluting Man with a Movie Camera for having a narrative with no narrative. Some might argue that Man with a Movie Camera is different since it is a documentary, not a fictional film. But look at the recent film, Babel, by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. It is a fictional film with 4 different databases. It has a list of 4 completely different stories that make up one big narrative connecting them all together. For these reasons, I absolutely disagree with the author’s main argument. If he wants to convince me, he needs to provide more compelling evidence that will invalidate my counter-arguments to his own.

Essay Proposal Feedback?

Has anyone received essay proposal feedbacks from Irene and Josh?

La Jetée, Photographs of Death

Chris Marker’s unique film La Jetée greatly parallels many of the concepts of photographs in Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. The film presents the devastation of humans’ desire to go back to the past by means of experimental time travel, in order to seek help following the destruction of WWIII. The protagonist’s obsession with a particular childhood memory at Orly Airport, where, as a child, he was captivated by a young woman while witnessing the shooting of a man, leads him to his own death. This fate of the protagonist relates to the idea of a photograph as death in Camera Lucida. In Camera Lucida, Barthes claims that a photograph “produces Death while trying to preserve life … With the photograph, we enter into flat Death” (92). According to Barthes, while the photograph tries to preserve life by capturing the past, it “tells [one] death in the future” by providing “the absolute past of the pose” (96). Similar to this notion, the protagonist of the film tries desperately to preserve his childhood memory by giving up the future that is full of other possibilities. However, as his past becomes almost tangible to him, the past brings death to him to show that one can never have the real past back, even through photographs. Marker plays with Barthes’ perception by creating a film almost entirely composed of individual photographs in various still shots and close ups, and long shots. Therefore, the protagonist literally tries to preserve his past in the photographs of the day of the Orly Airport incident in his memories, which leads him to “flat Death.”

Furthermore, the film emphasizes the idea of the photograph as death by presenting contrast in the one scene that does have short and subtle motion. When the protagonist spends the day with the young woman from his childhood memory, the woman falls asleep in the sun. The film then shows a long and silent sequence of the still photographs of her sleeping as the protagonist narrates, “Now she is asleep in the sun … she is dead.” As the noise of the birds chirping gets louder, the woman (sleeping or dead) in a frozen photograph suddenly wakes up, and blinks her eyes in animated motions as in a regular movie. The reason why the woman can move, become alive, as in real life in this particular scene is because she is not captured in a photograph. This relates to Barthes’ beliefs about the difference between cinema and photograph, “Like the real world, [in] the filmic world … ‘the experience will continue to flow by in the same constitutive style’; but the Photograph breaks the ‘constitutive style’; it is without future” (89-90). With this notion, La Jetée delivers death in photographs in this short scene by contrasting it to life in motion pictures that are more like the real world.

Camera Lucida?

Why is it that no one posted responses for Camera Lucida? Did I get the hw wrong or is something wrong with my blog account? I'm confused.

Man with a Movie Camera: Cinematic Masterpiece and Artistic Propaganda

Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera uncovers the life of a cameraman who explores a city full of machines and technology as he documents the everyday life of ordinary people in Russia in the late 1920s. The film is full of excitement, originality, and revolutionary camera techniques including fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, split screens, and jump cuts. With the emphasis on the concept of Kino-Eye, the movie claims to break away from traditional filmmaking “without the use of intertitles, without the help of a script, without the help of a theatre.” The film focuses on the portrayal of city life after the introduction of machinery in Moscow and Odessa, yet it also contains an important political message behind the industrialization and modernization of the society. In the end, Man with a Movie Camera is an artistic piece of Leninist propaganda with a big appreciation for the industrial revolution.

The movie begins with a slow pace with slow, flowing images depicting the city waking up in the morning. The streets are peacefully deserted and quiet, representing the old world, a world without machines. Suddenly the pace of the film changes to fast images flying across the screen, so fast that it becomes impossible for the audience to see everything that is happening. This is the beginning of the new society, the modern society with advanced technology. In this process, the film gives birth to a unique relationship between men and machines. Millions of artistic and avant-garde images of men with machines testify how humans not only control the machines, but are also a lot like machines. Fast-paced moving shots that show the city functioning like a factory, with humans’ exploitation of technology and their movements synchronized with the machines, show that men are the driving forces of modern society.

This phenomenon can also be seen through the very concept of the making of this movie, namely with Kino-Eye. Kino-Eye represents the perfect production of an image as a result of the collaboration between humans and camera (the machine). The multiple recurring shots of the interlaying images of the camera lens and the human eye symbolize Kino-Eye as they indicate this concept as a window to the new world. Vertov uses fresh and unique styles of capturing images and editing in inventive ways to demonstrate the positive outcome of the combination of humans and technology. The train scene demonstrates how this new window can deliver pictures that were impossible to be captured before the development of the new camera techniques. The camera was set up so that the train seems to be coming right towards the lens, creating fear and anxiety in the viewer. As the train is about to seemingly collide with the lens and the cameraman, the screen moves under the train as the shot turns into the train’s point of view by displaying the fast moving railroad tracks beneath it. This initiates a series of intense rapid images through various jump cuts and fast motion, resulting in a shocking and powerful moment for the audience. Additionally, the frequent use of split screens when exhibiting parallels in life such as young and old, marriage and divorce, life and death, and work and recreation illustrates the film’s intention to show the duality of everything in life.

While presenting the perfect marriage between man and machine through the unconventional use of the camera, Man with a Movie Camera subtly conveys Lenin’s political ideology in that era. The movie puts a great emphasis on a Proletariat-oriented society under the rule of Lenin. The members of the upper class enjoying the horse-carriage ride is portrayed pejoratively as old and outdated compared to the automobiles and trolley cars. Most of the scenes of the film show the unity among the common people en masse, mostly proletariat, enjoying and participating in the same activities, whether they are working or playing. The film expresses the pleasure and satisfaction resulting from a society where everyone shares and works together equally and fairly. The film also constantly highlights the idea of a structured society that functions properly, like a machine, through repetitive images of factory workers and their machines. This stresses the society’s dependency on the working class and the importance of every society member as the backbone of achieving and maintaining the prosperity of their society. With its creative portrayal of everyday life in 1920’s Russia and the hidden political meaning through Vertov’s progressive camerawork, Man with a Movie Camera is both a lasting cinematic masterpiece and a paradigm of artistic propaganda.