Assignment 2 Artists

I am going to go with Maya Deren, since I like the idea of doing a study and filming it.

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

It seemed to me that this reading was simply repeating itself but in different ways. Plain and simple, it all said one thing: in cinema women are sexual icons.

Of course. Everyone knows this. It's the oldest trick in the book. Sex sells. Everyone knows. But what seems to sell the most is the visual of a sexy, 'you can't have me' woman. The man on screen, and the men (and sometimes women) in the audience, are entrapped by the woman's appearance. This is the intent, of course, the draw the viewer into the film to want to know more. The director accomplishes this by not showing the woman as a woman, but as a sexual object. Something a man can have, can own, but must strive to get. He, and the audience, lust for her, want her with every fiber of their being. They must have her, control her. Then, in the end, he gets her. Now she isn't any fun anymore cus she wants him, too. Sure, he has 'control' over her now, but she isn't so hot anymore now that he has her.

This makes me think of a child wanting the latest, greatest toy on the market. They want it so badly that they'll beg, plead, even bitch at their parents until they get it. When they do, they suddenly don't think it's all that great anymore.

However, some people are happy to simply own it whether they do anything with it or not. 'It' being pretty much anything, living or inanimate.

And then there are those who obsess over something to the point of being pretty darn scary. This doesn't help when the woman on film is purposely turned into an object of desire. Not only can the man on screen become obsessed with the woman on screen, but the man in the audience can as well. The audience member would desire the woman on screen to the point of stalking the actress. He no longer sees the actress as an individual, but as the character portrayed on screen as an object to be had. He doesn't really care about her, even if he says he does, he simply wants to have her. Having her will fulfill a desire within him to have an object that will help him to live out his 'phantasies', whether she complies or not. Granted a woman can obsess over a man, a man over a man, a woman over a woman, and so on and so forth, but the majority of the time it is a man over a woman.

Woman has always been obsessed over by men. It's a story as old as the world itself, maybe even older. God originally was viewed as a woman until men took over religion and turned God into a man (mainly Christianity, but that's beside the point). Point being, when God was a woman, men wanted her love and power. Since God became a man, men still want His love and power, but others are also more aggressive towards Him than they were 'Her'.

I feel I'm beginning to ramble, but my main point is that man always wants what he can't have. Once he gets it, it isn't fun anymore. The woman as sexual object is the best example and the most overused. Hollywood may 'censor' this more than Indie films, but it is still plain as day what they're trying to do.

Readings Website (Finally!)

Hey guys, this will be the website for locating future and past readings. I still haven't been able to get a hold of the John Cage text, so you're getting a freebie there, but we will read him later in the semester. Skim his wikipedia page if you're not familiar with him, he's fascinating and his thought will serve you well as an artist and human.

Ok right, so that link: http://www.michaelalexandermorris.com/readings2.html

Frampton

I found Frampton's 'A Pentagram for Conjuring the Narrative' to be a lovely read. I do not know if I fully understood everything Frampton was trying to get across, but it was still a very nice read.

At first it seemed that every Roman numeral was going to be a new mini-story trying to explain narrative. It was not until Roman numeral III that every new 'chapter' began to be about the same thing.

Narrative, from what this bit of writing is telling me, is more difficult to fathom than we think. Frampton uses all sorts of mathematical equations to help explain narrative. I, myself, am a math person but I found this to be very confusing. It would have helped if he was more clear with what parts of the equations were representations of. Such as if x=x, a=story, b=plot, and c=narrative, then what is x? That probably is still quite confusing, but if he had done something similar with his examples, I believe I would have understood better what he was trying to say.

Again, what I get from the whole of this reading is that narrative is difficult to come up with and it is different for everyone. So, does this mean there is no wrong way to come up with a narrative? I would think so as we are all individuals with different ways of thinking.

My favorite 'chapters' were I and II as well as the end of V when he begins to mention what is at the ecliptic of our universe. I wish he had used these in some way in his equations. I feel that would have made much more sense than... well, rambling.

Kino Eye and Methods of Montage

Honestly, before I read the excerpts, I had never even heard of the term "kino eye" before. And I never thought of the camera as being "better" than the human eye. Vertov mentioned how normal film makers' ultimate goal was to achieve as close a "copy" to what the human eye sees as possible. I myself was always part of the group that thought cameras were more perfect when the images they produced were as close to what the eye sees as possible and I always thought straying from that was a flaw that cameras have.

I also never thought of montages in technical terms before. I always just thought of them as a random assortment of images that "go together". I never thought of them in terms of tone or rhythm or the effect that different techniques can have.

Kino-Eye and Methods of Montage

I found Kino-Eye to be a much easier read than Methods of Montage.

Kino-Eye was like reading a poem and everything flowed so nicely. What I gathered from this was that looking through a camera lens and looking with our naked eye can sometimes obstruct the reality we are looking at. I have noticed this all my life how different films look from the every day. I am not talking about story matter, music, fantasy, or anything like that. Film simply LOOKS different than the every day. I have always wondered why hasn't anyone ever made a film that looks like the way we see things with our naked eye? Even with home movies, I do not feel we are looking at things as we would if we were really there.

One example I've always used to show my curiosity of this subject is to hold my hand up to the television screen. If a character in the film held their hand up to obstruct the scene, it would appear 'normal' since that hand is within the film. However, when I raise my hand to the screen, it stands out as though it is not supposed to be there. It does not belong in that world. Again, I have always wondered why a lens, or something, has not been created to where when I raise my hand to the screen, it looks as though it belongs there.

Are we simply not meant to be apart of the film's reality? Or is the film industry more focused on creating another world than putting the viewer into it? Or am I thinking too much?

As for Methods of Montage.... I really do wish I could say more about it. I now know that there are five types of montage, or methods on how to go about making a montage. However, I have not retained much of the information. I have the reading in front of me, true, but nothing inside of it stuck with me. Could we talk about this some next class? Thanks.