Film Art vs. Practices of Looking

So. Here is a photo. How would David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson interpret this verses Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright? Let's take a look.

Sturken and Cartwright believe that meaning is comprised of three components, 1) The codes associated with and inseparable from the image, 2) the viewer's own interpretation made up of all their past experiences and opinions, and 3) the context of the location and setting the art is observed in.

For the following photo, the structure is on the surface quite simple; a place middle aged woman is holding a white baby on a street corner. It is a photograph taken in black and white with a shallow focus on the woman and baby. However the symbols there attached give us a little more to chew on. Obviously race becomes an issue; the woman seems to be taking care of the child, but her stationary position suggests that perhaps the child's mother is inside shopping while the African American servant waits with the child. Looking deeper we can see that she has an expression of mild discontent combined with a certain acceptance that this is how things are. We could even look deeper and notice that the baby has almost an identical expression, but perhaps with the acceptance replaced with confusion. This could say that the child is being ushered into the world the nanny has come to sadly accept.

These themes of race are supported in the context as well; if honoluluacademy.org is to be trusted, then this photo was released in a controversial album in 1958 when the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. At the time it was taken as a scathing criticism of the glorified image of American in that decade. In that light the simple composition of the photograph mocks this time period in addition to the content by differentiating itself from the busy merriment of artists like Norman Rockwell.

S&C also put a huge emphasis on artwork which challenges our assumptions, citing such examples as the Fred Wilson Guarded View exhibit of 1991 where he dressed mannequins in the clothing of art museum security guards. In that light (especially when seen by me, in this modern day) the photo could be seen to challenge the assumptions I made based around what I know about the period in American history which to me has, essentially, become mythology. Seen nowadays it would not be out of the question to imagine that the woman had adopted the child and was simply waiting for the cross signal to change. Even my initial assumption that the child was male could be challenged; did I see it as a boy simply because, due to their skin colors? These are questions S&C would want me to ask, not only because of the emphasis they put on assumption-challenging artwork (a good seven pages), but because they believe that the meaning is inextricably bound to the viewer, and thus changes over time.

Thompson and Bordwell's interpretation would doubtless contain many of the same elements as S&C's did. However rather than focusing on the questions the viewer asks themselves when observing art, T&B looks at the process of observing art and the structure art can be explained by. In addition, T&B broke down meaning into slightly different categorizes.

T&B would break down the photo like this:
1) Referential meaning: the bare bones description of content.
An African American woman stands on a street corner holding a white baby in a black and white photograph.
2) Explicit Meaning: what the art comes out and states its purpose is.
This is trickier with a photograph where nothing is ever 'stated'. One could argue that the nature of race is prevalent and coded enough that it could qualify as a statement. Other places to look would be an accompanying artist's statement or the title of the photo.
3) Implicit Meaning: meaning which is not implied but which must be determined by the veiwer.
Everything I wrote above could qualify, from the racial perspective to the chalenging of racial assumptions.
4) The Symptomatic Meaning: This is the cultural context in which the piece was presented.
This would relate to the time it was published, the book it was published in, who it published it, etc. as described above.

T&B would also examine the way we look at the photo to decide what meaning it could contain; our eyes naturally jump to the part of the photo which is in focus, the woman, and then skirt to the periphery to see if the rest of the photo is consistent to what we observed about its core. They argue that the periphery must be consistent with the bulk in order for a good opinion to be formed; how does the blury street match up with our ideas about race? Perhaps it is the idealized past of America drifting into memory. Perhaps it is the road the baby is destined to walk down, leading away from the black woman who is caring for him into the bury, sterile, inhospitable whiteness. Perhaps it is the blurry gray in which they are both encompassed as human beings. In any case, T&B believe that it must be examined if a valuable opinion is to be formulated.

District 9

My experience leading up to watching D9 was mixed--I was a fan of Neil Blomkamp back when all I knew him for were some brilliant commercials and it was good to see Peter Jackson back in action. However I was aware of the somewhat sticky issue that nothing he had ever directed had much plot--more of a mood than anything else. As anyone who likes trailers can attest, it is much easier to love a piece of filmmaking when there is no icky progression and story to deal with. When the film finally came out the reviews did nothing to ease my ambiguity. Either they applauded it as a bold new standard in sci-fi (you know you are in dark territory when the highest praise available is "not like the things its based on"), rolled their eyes at another nerds attempt to artistically justify their love of childish things, or worse, wrote something so incredibly condescending that all I wanted to do was stay away.

Well, I finally saw it. Instead of writing a formal review, these are simply the things I left the theater thinking about.

District 9 made me think further about a number of things which were already on my mind; 1) The art of making science fiction into art, and 2) what exactly it is that makes a good movie.

It is easy to lose perspective on what the building blocks of any art form consists of, especially with something as diverse as film. A few weeks thinking about anything from cinematography to the three act structure without actually seeing a movie and I won't even remember what I like about them. This forest for the trees mindset is often exposed when science fiction or fantasy come up. What exactly does it add to a story to place it in impossible circumstances? My mind always wanders back to what is likely the origin of all story telling, the legend.

Legends do what really just about any story should do to an extent; take something to its logical extreme to illustrate a point. Including impossible elements also prompts the listener to think a little more carefully about what is being said; if my anecdote about the summer includes dragons you will know instantly that what I'm saying bears some investigation.

There is a modern and in my opinion misplaced idea that fantastical stories are not to be taken seriously. Presumably this is because many such stories are intended for the most imaginative members of society, children, who are also subject to an arbitrary and frustrating lack of modern respect.

I wish that these doubters would take the time to read J.R.R. Tolkien's brilliant 1936 essay "Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics" where he brings up a fascinating and resonantly true perspective. Up until that point Beowulf was widely regarded as good except for the Dragons, both as a story and a historical document. Tolkien points out, without ever breaking the rules of rigid academic writing, that Dragons are cool and everyone knows this weather they will admit it or not.

Believe it or not, he manages to support this argument in a convincing enough way that it has permanently changed the way scholars look at Beowulf as a piece of writing. Instead of focusing on the historical value of Beowulf as a document he analyzes the narrative. The grandeur of the story, the fact that the story is about mysterious things and change in the world, these elements are improved by the presence of fantastical things.

What I like about this argument is that it doesn't rely on the cheat argument that all good science fiction is allegory. While it is true that brilliant films like District 9 and Blade Runner do refer heavily to real events, they do not rely on that connection to reality as a crutch towards artistic value. I think fantasy should refer to real life in some way, but when it is most effective it is most general; what these films have in common is that they use a made up setting to describe some human truth in a way for which there is no earthly vehicle. In other words the form changes from a film like the Godfather to a film like Blade Runner, but the function does not. After all, the Godfather really posses no more "truth" than District 9--both refer to events which never took place.

Many people cite a film's distinctiveness as positive; after all this is one of the foundations of Auteur theory. This is of course an incomplete way to look at a film; as Thompson and Bordwell say in Film Art, "Ninety minutes of a black screen would make for an original film but not a very complex one," (Thompson, Bordwell 59). However we all know that seeing something we have never seen before is often more stimulating and fun to watch.

I have never seen a movie quite like District 9. It was a combination of the documentary footage which slowly fades away but is never entirely lost (it is exhilarating the first time the viewer realizes what they are seeing cannot have been recorded by a human) and how little we get to see of any of the characters. Though the 72 hours we see are thoroughly documented, we are always aware that these characters have had whole lives before now, and we really don't get much of a sense at all of where they came from.

This doubt makes the progress of the characters and the films ambiguous ending much more powerful; the film doesn't ever come out and tell us if it will all work out, if the characters are selfish or compassionate, and just like in the real world the documentary footage constantly reminds us of, we never will know for sure.

I found myself wondering if the only reason I loved the film so much was because of its originality; I dread making bold statements I will retract later, and as a result I spend a lot of time deciding if I truly like a movie before I recommend it. But, as the previous paragraphs attest I think that these unusual traits simply tell the story in a better way than existed. If nothing else, it prompted me to think about it enough to fill this entire immense entry.