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October 30, 2003
We Interrupt This Broadcast....
Speaking of haunted media: today is the 65th anniversary of Mercury Theater's presentation of War of the Worlds, as directed by Orson Welles (who has suddenly been on my radar a lot lately). Go to Metafilter for more details and links to the original broadcast.
Posted by chuck at 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fair and Balanced Education
Reading the Atlanta Journal Constitiution this morning, I came across an article reporting that Senate Republicans held a hearing on "liberal" universities (props to the headline editor who put scare quotes around the word "liberal"). The hearing takes place one week after Georgia Republican Congressman Jack Kingston introduced a bill stating that colleges and universities are too liberal, and at issue was the fact that "universities intimidate students and faculty into liberal ways of thinking."
At issue are the usual conservative hobgoblins including "diversity training" and "academic freedom," which the hearing redefines against what Anne Neale, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, calls "bastions of political correctness hostile to free exchange of ideas." Of course, by imposing a certain approach to teaching from above (i.e from Congress), this group is enforcing even more extreme limits on academic freedom.
Courses on multiculturalism also come under attack by conservatives. According to the article,
Anthony Dick, a student at the University of Virginia who helped found the Individual Rights Coalition, a student group that opposes what it charges are abuses of individual freedoms by college administrators, complained about the campus instituting diversity training for students. He said that, by its nature, the training asks people to assume discrimination against certain groups is a problem.The word choice here is interesting (discrimination against groups, especially based on race, ethnicity, or religion is, of course, a problem that our government ostensibly recognizes), but because the article writer is paraphrasing, not quoting, I'm not sure what Dick's actual stance might be. Still, courses in women's studies or postcolonial studies are common targets for conservative writers who assume the mantle of objectivity in these debates.
In that context, I think academics and/or liberal thinkers (who are not identical at all, although both are attacked in this hearing) should reclaim the terms of discussion as George Lakoff recently suggested, to more carefully "frame" the issues at stake. The conservative use of the term "diversity training" to describe a broad set of courses (postcolonialism, women's studies) focused on a more objective portrayal of contemporary culture is one such example. [Brief aside: I am suspicious of his framing things in terms of the "strict father" and "nurturing parent" models, in part because I think his model glosses somewhat the economic forces that reinforce the abilities of conservatives to frame these discussions.]
In an attempt at objectivity, the article does offer one professor's (Judith Wegner) response to the charges of academic harassment, but she makes a "power move" that, I think, makes things worse, commenting that some of these cases boil down to unprepared teaching assistants who "have not yet developed adequate skills for presenting all sides of an issue." Teaching assistants already have their credibility challenged enough without offering them as a sacrifice in this particular debate.
I find this discussion partciularly threatening under the current climate in which our civil liberties are being threatened by the Patriot Act. I realize that this is nothing more than a hearing, but it still has the quality of an attempt to police thought by these conservative politicians and lobbyists.
Posted by chuck at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 29, 2003
The Magnificent Ambersons
After rewatching The Royal Tenenbaums the other night, I decided to take a break tonight and watch Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, which I hadn't seen in several years.
Anderson's film riffs nicely off Ambersons, but I really enjoyed going back to Welles' film. I'd forgotten how effectively Welles uses space in the old mansion, with that fantastic curved staircase, and the low-key lighting in the mansion captured the family's decline very effectively (of course I'm a sucker for low-key lighting). I also enjoyed Welles' ability to map the Amberson family's decline against the developing technologies of modern life, most notably the automobile that appears as a novelty at the film's beginning when Eugene, Isabel's longtime suitor (Joseph Cotten, a favorite actor of mine), takes several of the Ambersons for a drive in the snow. By the end of the film, the quaint town has been transformed into an industrial center, with tracking shots of smokestacks reinforcing the family's decline.
Of course Ambersons is a very flawed film (the studio slapped on a happy ending and trimmed nearly 50 minutes (now lost) of the director's cut while Welles was out of the country), but there are certainly some cool moments.
Posted by chuck at 1:08 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 28, 2003
Hitting the Pause Button
Sometimes I think my blog needs a rewind button, or at least a pause button, so that I can go back to those topics that I've wanted to address but the timing wasn't right. Of course, just as you can't fast forward through the "boring bits," I suppose real time narratives (no matter how simulated) can't have a pause button either.
My blog silence hasn't been due to a lack of interesting experiences to relate or work through. I've simply found myself caught up in other things (a huge cycle of grading has just begun, among other things). But I still have so many other things I want to blog about.
For example, I wanted to blog about Georgia Congressman John Lewis's editorial on gay marriage in the Boston Globe, which I found courtesy of Atrios, but never really found the time. I don't think I have much to add to Lewis's observations (he's always been one of my favorite local members of Congress), and I'm not going to make any promises to come back to this topic later.
I've also been trying to find some time to write a review of Kill Bill, Vol 1 (IMDB), which I rather enjoyed, especially in its sheer film geek joy at the obscure references to the Hong Kong action cinema that Tarantino obviously relishes (most of which were completely lost on me). The "sampling" of so much popular culture, implied in both QT's references to cinematic memory and in his reinterpretations of popular music plays out a "database" aesthetic characteristic of new media. I enjoyed Kill Bill almost completely, but left the film feeling somewhat unsatisfied, in part because the playful dialogue of many of his earlier films seemed missing.
I've also wanted to provide blog props to misbehaving.net, a cool new site dedicated to issues pertaining to women and technology.
Finally, I once had the good intentions of reviewing Lost in Translation, but Jason Rhody has done a fantastic job of that already, so I'll just send everyone there, and say that like Jason I really like how sound operates in the film, especially during the "obscure" final scene.
Light blogging may continue for the next few days unless someone can find a pause button for me...
Posted by chuck at 9:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 24, 2003
Student Expelled for Writing
Just read in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a local high student was expelled for the rest of the school year for an entry in her private journal. I'm still waking up (only one cup of coffee so far), but I needed to express a little frustration about this decision.
Rachel Boim, a 14-year old freshman, had written a short piece of fiction in which a student dreams about killing a teacher. One of her teachers--an art teacher, no less--confiscated the journal and kept it overnight. According to the article, the piece is completely fictional: no specific teacher is named and the student in the story isn't clearly identified as the author herself (after all, it's fiction). Boim, who grew up near Columbine, claims that her story was merely reflecting the violence that many high school students face in their daily experiences. Several prominent authors, including poet David Bottoms, have testified on her behalf, but Boim was still expelled.
I know that teachers and administrators must be pretty sensitive right now to any threat of violence, but this action really disappoints me. In part, I'm somewhat troubled by the action of the teacher. If the student's sharing her writing with her friends was a distraction, I undertsand the teacher's choice to temporarily confiscate the journal, but his reading through the student's private (unintended for him, at least) writings seems a little invasive. From what I understand, there was little effort to place Boim's story in a context with the rest of her journal.
More than anything, the "zero tolerance" policy is having the effect of silencing her--decding what she should and should not write about. I just happened to graduate from this high school (a long time ago, in a building not too far away), so that only increases my disappointment.
Posted by chuck at 9:13 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
October 21, 2003
We Await Springfield's Tristero Empire
Via Unfogged: Reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon, author of The Crying of Lot 49 (one of my favorite books) will appear on an upcoming episode of The Simpsons. Pynchon has, of course, resisted book signings, television and radio interviews, and publicity photos, so it's interesting to see him "appear" on an episode of The Simpsons. True to form, Pynchon's animated image will be wearing a paper bag over his head. That's one episode I'll make sure to watch.
Posted by chuck at 8:01 PM | TrackBack
The Future of Blogging
I've been planning to reflect on some of the questions raised by the Perseus White Papers' The Blogging Iceberg, in part because I think it speaks to some of the concerns I want to address in my "Blogging and the Everyday" paper, which is constantly shifting focus as I continue to write, read, and reflect. Warning: random thoughts ahead. I mostly wanted to collect some links to some really interesting posts.
I won't address the many critiques of Perseus' methodology, other than to note that by ignoring non-hosted blogs, I'd guess that any information about user demographics would be considerably skewed (as would the percentage of abandoned blogs). I'm intrigued by the growth rate, although I think that is also hard to predict, especially given the unpredictable role that AOL blogging tools will have, but more than anything, the survey indicates to me the extreme difficulty of making too many quantitative claims about blogging.
Instead, I'm more intrigued by what blogs are doing (how people are "using" or understanding them) and what they will or may become. In that regard, I'm especially intrigued by David Weinberger's discussion of the future of blogging. I think he's probably right that distinctions between high traffic bloggers and "the rest of the world" (note: Clay Shirky's discussion is highly relevant here) will probably increase to the point that their sites will begin to look less like blogs and more like something else, a perpetually updated op-ed page, perhaps. Now that I've gone back to re-read Liz's post about this topic on Many-to-Many, I think she articulates what I'm trying to say quite well:
The big difference, to me, is that when you’re at the top of the “power law curve,” you’re in broadcast mode. When you’re at the tail end, you’re in private diary mode. But in the middle, that’s where the interlinking and dialog and community-forming are happening. Those are very different modes of communication.In my experience, my status (presumably somewhere in the middle) has provided me with the "dialog" and "community forming" that Liz describes, and now that I think about it, that experience considerably regulates my interpretation of blogging as a medium.
Unlike other observers, I'm not sure how much more popular blogs will become, in part for some of the reasons that Alex Halavias describes: (1) blogging takes time away from other forms of communication, work, and entertainment; (2) only a limited number of people write for pleasure (and many of those people prefer not to write publicly or choose other mediums for their writing); and (3) blogging is still intimidating for many non-techies, something I didn't initially realize when I incorporated blogging into my freshman composition course this semester.
I'm somewhat optimistic that blogs may be of "increasing value" to democracy, but I don't think this value will necessarily be recognizable in campaign blogs (although I think campaign blogs are very important) as much as it is in blogs as alternative media or media filters. Blogs that create coalitions of citizens invested in various political issues (copyright law, anti-war protests) seem to have more potential in creating long-term alliances.
As an aside, I also found the discussion on aldon of the research on "blogging as a genre" intriguing, but I'm still tempted to reserve the term medium to describe the blog itself (or the various "levels" of blogs) and genre to describe various types of blogs (academic, personal, journalism, political, etc). Obviously most (perhaps all) blogs don't fit into such discrete categories, and I have mixed feelings about categorizing blogs, anyway.
I believe that my project will be operating in this mid-level space, for the most part, the spaces where academic bloggers are making connections, exchanging ideas, and sharing experiences. Now what any of this has to do with original topic, blogging and the everyday, I'm not sure...
Posted by chuck at 3:01 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 19, 2003
Ringu
I watched Ringu, the Japanese horror film on which The Ring is based. Like Steven Shaviro, I found the film to be "an effectively creepy horror film." In fact, after finishing it last night around 2 AM, I double-checked my doors and saw movement behind every shadow. Having watched the American remake a few times recently, I was struck by a few of the differences between the two films (although I genuinely like and recommend both).
The Japanese film is rather minimalist (as Shaviro observes), and I enjoyed the use of black-and-white flashback to explain the cursed video. I was also surprised at how "faithful" the American film was to the plot of Ringu, while still being a much different, much "cooler," film in the sense that it felt more self-conscious (I don't necessarily mean that as a critique or compliment, but in the more neutral sense of "hipness" or "stylishness"). Both films also negotiate narrative closure in remarkably similar ways (although that may be due to the constraints of the horror film genre).
The Ring also attempted a more explicit commentary on a media system that preys on other people's emotional pain, especially through the implicit critique of the Naomi Watts character, who initially sees the mysterious deaths as nothing but a headline story. The American remake mines the European-American avant-garde for most of the images in the murderous videotape, and of course it more explicitly plays out the supposed attenuation of the traditional American family.
There are a few things I'm still trying to sort out: I'm struck by the fact that the American film is made in 2002, after the DVD revolution, while Ringu was made in 1998 before DVD players were nearly as commonplace. In the American film, when the hotel clerk mentions that his cabins have VCRs, it almost sounds quaint or obsolete, and the old, discarded videotapes in the hotel clerk's collection reinforce that observation. There's something specific about the materiality of the videotape that appears to be significant here in the American film, while in Ringu, the videotape seems closer to a "return of the repressed," emphasizing the revival of a forgotten past (the emphasis on specific haunted locations might reinforce this thesis).
The other significant moment, to my mind, would be the use of photography. In both films, photographs play a key evidentiary role in showing which people have seen the videotape. After a person sees the tape, her face is blurred in all future photographs (it also seems crucial that in the Japanese film, the main characters test this hypothesis with a Polaroid). I'm still thinking through the precise problem that The Ring opens up, and I do think that electronic media create the conditions of possibility for the videotape, although the matreial tape itself (the hard plastic casing, the fragile tape inside) seems important, especially in the American film (in which Naomi Watts tosses the tape into a fireplace and burns it).
Posted by chuck at 8:37 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
October 18, 2003
More Blogging Panels I Wish I'd Attended
As promised, more detailed comments on the reports from Liz at AOIR: Alex Halavais gave a paper drawing comparisons between cities and blogospheres, drawing heavily from Robert Park's argument that cities should be studies as "institutions."
In the same panel, a question I've been trying to address: to what extent cn hyperlinks (within blogs) be understood as disruptive? Do trackbacks change linking in any fundamental way? The panel/discussion doesn't really come to a clear answer, and I'm not sure there is a simple answer. I think it depends in part on the nature of the "encounter:" Are we talking about the author of the blog making the link? The author of the linked blog? The reader of the blog? What exactly is being disrupted by the link? The individual entry? The reader's experience of a given blog? In my own experience, I certainly feel a much greater sense of control over my online experiences now that I blog. My blog is a means for me to organize my fleeting, often disorganized thoughts as I have them, feeding into a certain experience of immediacy.
Another important question, especially for my own work:
Question: perhaps content is too ephemeral on blogs; are weblogs more like newspapers in their balance of ephemerality (of individual pieces of content) and persistence (of the vehicle for that information)?I've actually found this metaphor enticing. I think it's why there are so many blogging journalists and pundits who can focus on the immediate, disseminating information in an overwhelming maelstrom that can be difficult to navigate (or at least escape). I think TV works as a metaphor, too, especially given that both TV and blogs thrive on immediacy (although their definitions of this term might be slightly different).
I'd also agree with Liz that the general discussion of blogs as neighborhoods could certainly be informed by Steven Johnson's Emergence (especially his discussion of Joanne Jacobs).
I also need to find a way to sift through Pierre Lévy's incredibly dense keynote address (as blogged by KF), especially the question of cybersapce as a "memory repository." Still sorting.
Posted by chuck at 5:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Homeless Guy
Via Liz's extensive reporting of AOIR, I found The Homeless Guy (THG), a blog authored by someone who has been homeless off and on over the last twenty years. He lives primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, and provides an intrguing narrative about his experiences as a homeless person. The Homeless Guy, Kevin Barbieux, comments that he first discovered blogging on a public library computer (a little over a year ago according to his archives).
Like Liz and Laura, I was rather surprised (and disappointed) to learn that one class who saw the site became angry, complaining that the author should not solicit donations online. Donating is obviously voluntary (there is a discrete PayPal icon located somewhere on the page), and the author is clearly offering a valuable service--providing a first-hand account of his experience of being homeless (rather than merely panhandling). As Laura points out, several middle-class bloggers have PayPal or Amazon links, but I think the mentality must be that the Homeless Guy should "just get a job" must be pervading their logic. More importantly, Laura highlights the thin line between having a home and living on the streets, especially with so many people living from one paycheck to the next (I know from personal experience as a volunteer at a homeless shelter that many homeless people are, in fact, employed, but face other problems).
No matter what, THG is an interesting read, an intriguing life narrative that uses the blogging medium very effectively.
Posted by chuck at 4:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
A Decade Under the Influence
I just rented the very cool Independent Film Channel documentary, A Decade Under the Influence, which examines the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. The film, directed by Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme, mixes talking-head interviews with prominent '70s filmmakers and footage from some of the decade's most influencial films.
The three-part documentary offers an effective overview of the decade starting with the decline of the studio system in the late 1960s, which allowed young Hollywood filmmakers, such as Scorsese, Coppola, Ashby, and Rafelson, to enter the scene. I also deeply enjoyed the archival footage of John Cassavetes directing several scenes in his classically improvisational style. In general, the narrative of the films follows a relatively standard account of the 1970s focuisng on a decline of the studio system followed by a re-entrenchment due to the success of Jaws (which also marked the success of that newly dominant genre, the high-concept film). I think it's a pretty accurate narrative, and I was pleased that, for the most part, the filmmakers tried to counteract the "Heaven's Gate myth" of overly excessive filmmakers.
The documentary does uphold the "Rocky myth," the argument that mainstream audiences had simply tired of moral ambiguity after all of the scandals and crises of the decade (Watergate, Vietnam, Three Mile Island). I'd point, instead, to the studio practice of larger budgets tailored toward huge opening weekend gross profits, which tends to obscure smaller films (with a few notable exceptions).
Still, the documentary had several great moments, including William Friedkin's explanation that an exterior shot of the family home in The Exorcist was inspired by a Magritte painting (I think it might be The Empire of Light, but I'm not certain). Also enjoyable were the interviews with Julie Christie and Ellen Burstyn who challenged the gender politics of New Hollywood. More than anything, the documentary made me wish I subscribed to IFC.
Posted by chuck at 12:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 17, 2003
Grabby Fan's Fifteen Minutes
To Chicago's infamous "grabby fan:" welcome to your fifteen minutes of fame.
Less than a week after an overly enthustiastic Cubs fan deflected a foul pop hit by Florida's Luis Castillo, allowing the Marlins to come back and win the game (and eventually the playoff series), Revolution Studios (owned by 20th Century Fox, the same company that broadcasts major league baseball) has accepted a pitch for a movie based on the fan's experiences according to cnn.com.
Chicago Cubs fans have been waiting for over fifty years for their team to return to the World Series (the Cubs haven't won the Series since 1908), and because the fan deflected what might have been a key out, he has become Chicago's latest villain. Several Chicago papers also released the fan's name (when I first saw the fan's last name, Bartman, I immediately thought of Bart Simpson's alter ego, which somehow seems apt), forcing him to change his phone number and basically go into hiding.
As Jason points out, the collective frustration of Cubs fans has produced some strong reactions (including an elected official who'd like to see the "grabby fan" exiled to Alaska). To be honest, I'm apparently one of the few people outside of south Florida who was cheering for the Marlins, mostly because of my own sour grapes. But when I lived near Chicago during graduate school (in both Illinois and Indiana), I generally preferred the White Sox instead of the Cubs. I think it was their outsider status, the fact that the Cubs generally received a lot more press in the city's newspapers.
Anyway, I hope "grabby fan" endures ("enjoys" might be too much to ask) his brief fame. After all, as Cubs fans know well, there's always next year, and with their talented pitchers, I think the Cubs will be competitive for a long time.
Posted by chuck at 11:50 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
AOIR Supply: Blogging Panels
Jason and Liz have blogging their experiences at AOIR, specifically their experiences at several panels on blogging. Liz discusses one panel on "Authors and Consequences," which offered a range of statistical analysis. Perhaps the most important point is the conclusion that "the blogs featured in public representations are not representative." I think Liz is absolutely right to be suspicious of their predictions about how blogging will be used in the future in the sense that blogging is still a nascent medium and will find a variety of uses, many of which I don't think we can yet imagine. Jason also attended this panel and commented that their attempts to break blogs down into subgenres seemed "counter-intuitive," given their status as a hybrid, boundary-blurring form.
Liz attended another blog panel that sounded incredibly stimulating (other than the fact that it was scheduled for 8:30 AM). The comparison between blogs and cities was particularly enticing and may help explain why bloggers sometimes group themselves according to geographic proximity (citywide webrings, etc). Too many questions to handle right now, but the discussions here sound really promising.
Update: I'm guessing that KF attended some of these panels, too.
Posted by chuck at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 16, 2003
Confidence
I'm still working through my interest in heist movies, and with that in mind I watched James Foley's Confidence (IMDB), which stars Edward Burns as the lead con man, Jake, who begins the film acknowledging (a la Sunset Boulevard) that he is a "dead man." He then begins telling the story of his latest scam, which he is pulling on behalf of a local mob boss (played by Dustin Hoffman) who proudly embraces his hyperactivity. As the film develops, Jake draws story illustrates the connections between a successful scam and an effective narrative. Both requires figures within the "story" to play their roles properly, to work according to the script. Both require a set of moves to reach a desired end (later in the film, Jake uses (surprise!) a chess metaphor).
This self-awareness is perhaps the film's greatest strength, but as Roger Ebert points out, it also makes the film feel a little like a hollow exercise. Unlike Ebert, I don't think a successful film has to make us care about the characters, and in fact, Jake's cool distance fits effectively within our expectations for the genre, and because I do enjoy several of the character actors (Paul Giamatti, Luis Guzman, Andy Garcia, Donal Logue) who are involved in the scam, I enjoyed the game to a limited extent. This cool distance is reflected in the film's cinematography, which uses deep blues, greens, and reds to create (as Ebert observes) a postmodern noir city filled with lonely streets and back room deals in dirty strip clubs. However, even the cinematography felt unnecessarily ostentatious in places. During one sequences, Jake converses with Lily (Rachel Weisz) in medium-close-up, with her face lit blue and his face lit green, but these visual pyrotechnics felt unnecessarily flashy, as if the film were constantly reminding us of its goal of reinterpreting film noir.
The New York Times review also recognizes the film's slavish dependence on David Mamet films and Elmore Leonard novels for its narrative twists and criminal milieu. I've been pretty critical of this film, but I did enjoy watching it in general. I'm just not sure it's breaking any new ground. In terms of the heist film genre, I found that several of the key twists were telegraphed, which may also have made the experience less than satisfying. I'm still trying to think about the significance of "narrative mapping" in heist films, about what desires are being enacted and fulfilled.
Stay tuned. I might have more to say about these issues later (then again, maybe not).
Posted by chuck at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 14, 2003
Books on Video
I've been flipping through Richard Dienst's Still Life in Real Time: Theory After Television and just wanted to remind myself to revisit these books when I'm researching my paper on The Ring:
- James Lardner, Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the VCR Wars, 1991.
- Jane Gaines, Contested Cultures: Image Properties in the Industrial Age, 1991.
- Sean Cubitt, Timeshift: On Video Culture, 1991.
Posted by chuck at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spineless Books
Just had one of those "small world" moments. Via Nick Monfort of Grand Text Auto, I was happily reminded of the fantastic work being done by William Gillespie in his "Spineless Books."
I once met William through a mutual friend and enjoyed the opportunity to discover what he was doing with online publishing. Especially enjoyable for me was revisiting William's Newspoetry, some of which I had the opportunity to hear on his show, Eclectic Seizure, on WEFT, Champaign-Urbana's amazing community radio station, a fantastic example of local grassroots radio.
Posted by chuck at 4:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ghettos in the Wireless City
I've mentioned William J. Mitchell a few times on my blog, usually with some degree of skepticism, but Anne recently raised an important critique of his brand of techno-utopianism that I think I've been neglecting:
His talk was far too utopian for me - there was absolutely no critical awareness or discussion of the social implications.More later, perhaps, but I've got a full plate today--I'm moving towards drafting my paper on blogging.I asked him: If we are to focus on people rather than technology, which people are we talking about? If being mobile is the way of the future, what will happen to people who are not? And what will ghettos look like in the wireless city?
He had no answers. Well, actually, he said that all technologies have raised these same issues, that these are policy problems ...
Um, okay. Thanks.
Posted by chuck at 1:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Conference Paper Accepted
Just had a paper on The Ring accepted to the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. Fort Lauderdale in March--not a bad gig at all.
The paper will focus on the film's treatment of video as a "haunted technology," something I've been working on in other contexts. I'm also intrigued by the content of the videotape. The Surrealist imagery, including references to Un chien andalou and Meshes of the Afternoon (not properly Surrealist, I know), seems really signifcant.
Posted by chuck at 12:49 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
October 13, 2003
Template Games
I've just taken a few cautious steps towards playing with the appearance of my blog. I like the changes that Jason and Anne have recently made to their blog templates. The privileging of the calendar on my blog by placing it at the very top of the right column has always bothered me conceptually, especially since recent entries and recent comments seem more relevant to frequent (or even infrequent) visitors to my blog. The original placement of the calendar also felt a little impersonal, but I think my template seems impersonal anyway (in part due to my lack of confidence in my own HTML skills). I don't really like having the "contact" section so near the top, so perhaps I'll add a short self-introduction. The bottom now looks a little cluttered to me, but I'm still thinking about what I want to do with the calendar and the archives sections. Any suggestions about changing the "look" of the chutry experiment?
Posted by chuck at 1:37 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 12, 2003
Heist Movies
Just a very tentative gesture toward a potential future project: I've been fascinated by the recent popularity of heist films (Heist, Ocean's Eleven, The Italian Job, The Score, and the popular re-release of Le Cercle Rouge, just to name a few). I'm not sure if I can offer a clear definition of the genre that I'm trying to describe, but these films usually align our identification with a crew of master criminals who are trying to cash in at the end of their careers, whether out of desperation, exhaustion, or some other need. Given the amount of money involved these films are almost always about get-rich-quick fantasies, and our identification with the criminals is partially a desire to share in their cleverness, their ability to "control" the narrative of the crime, as well as the narrative of the film itself (in this regard, The Usual Suspects might be seen as a complicated cousin of the heist film, especially given the revision of our identifcation with the Kevin Spacey character over the course of the film).
More significantly, I think that heist films are about the symbolic power of money in the age of digital reproduction. In a conversation with Mike this afternoon, he mentioned Walter Benn Michaels' argument about the decline and end of the gold standard (which produced a previous generation of heist films), but I'm beginning to think there might be another representational question at stake in the more contemporary cycle of these films, one based on the "virtualization" of money associated with ATMs and day trading, for example. I'm not sure how yet, but I'm also hoping to distinguish these heist films, which usually entail some physical risk, from hacker films, which usually involve only mental dexterity (although I think there are some connections).
This idea has been simmering for a few weeks and came back to the surface when I was re-reading William J. Mitchell's City of Bits while working on another paper, specifically when he discusses e-commerce. I'm still sorting these ideas out, but if anyone has any suggestions (books, movies, connections), I'd love to hear them.
Posted by chuck at 6:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Soderbergh's Solaris
I've delayed watching Steven Soderbergh's Solaris (IMDB) for a few months because I had originally planned to revisit both Stanislaw Lem's novel and Andrei Tarkovsky's haunting film, but I decided to watch it tonight. Like Steven Shaviro, I enjoyed the film's ability to create a contemplative, claustrophobic atmosphere, with its dark lightling and use of blues and grays and its slow pacing. I'm not familiar enough with the earlier versions of Solaris, but I think Shaviro's description seems about right. I was also disappointed by Soderbergh's ultimate affirmation that "love conquers all," reflected in both the film's conclusion and the repeated reference to Kelvin's (George Clooney) favorite line of poetry.
The film opens with an interesting sequence focusing on Kelvin at work on earth as a pstchiatrist. Despite the prominent use of earth tones (brown and yellows), there is a certain sense of decay or decline, partially reflected by the rundown spaces where we sometimes see Kelvin. Kelvin is running a group counseling session involving a married couple, and their responses to the various artifacts or souvenirs of their relationship diverge completely, suggesting an inability to relate to or know the other person. These scenes initially seem detached from the rest of the film, but they ultimately reflect on Kelvin's relationship to his dead wife Rheya.
After staying out a bit late last night, I'm not sure that I can really develop a clear reading of the film. I liked the use of the flat, almost immaterial "screens" used for communication in several key scenes--they helped to reinforce the overall coldness of the film. I do think Sodebergh was picking up on some of the interesting strands from the original text regarding the limitations of human memory, especially in the sequence in which Kelvin is confronted with the flaws in his memory of his dead wife, Rheya. Significantly, this memory "problem" is situated around a single photgraph of Rheya that Kelvin has prominently displayed on his refrigerator door, calling attention to the ways in which photographs capture partial, fleeting images, rather than providing us with complete experiences, but the weight of the "love conquers all" ending overshadows this particular focus on memory.
The more I think about this film, the more it has grown on me. It's certainly impressive that Soderbergh managed to get such a reflective, cerebral film produced within the Hollywood system, and I am disappointed that it will likely be forgotten or neglected because it doesn't conform to the expectations of either an art house or a high-gloss science-fiction sensibility.
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October 11, 2003
All Publicity is Good Publicity
Check it out: my use of blogging in my freshman composition courses was prominently featured in an article in the Georgia Tech newspaper, The Technique, the south's liveliest college newspaper. One of my students, Jeff Wei, wrote the article, and I think it generally turned out quite nicely. Enjoy.
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October 9, 2003
Destination Digital: Where do You Want to Go?
I'm not sure how to relate this entry to my previous one other than to link them and to comment that I read both essays this afternoon and evening...
At any rate, I came across Andrew Utterson's essay, "Destination Digital: Documentary Representation and the Virtual Travelogue," in QRFV, in which Utterson argues that Internet webcams and virtual tours offer a useful means for addressing several key issues pertaining to the status of the documentary image. Utterson drwas the comparison between virtual tours and the actuality films of early cinema, which I think is a useful move, especially when he ties the "generic aesthetics" of early cinema to the "introduction and marketing of new technologies" (194). I argue the experimentation with time in early cinema is intimately bound with the marketing and reception of these early films, especially in the "trick" films of Melies, for example.
But when Utterson turns to digital technologies, to webcams and virtual tours, I become suspicious of his claims. He writes:
An infinite series of remotely situated cameras gives us instant access to multiple, simultaneous sites of geographical actuality. Negotiating the limits of physical travel, the webcam's immedaitely relayed streams of images, like the cinema before it, begin to break down the primary constraints of physicality. However illusory or hypothetical, the sense of global connectedness associated with the webcam arouses the possibility of existing simultaneously within multiple locations, as we logon to a transglobal, hyperreal alternative to everyday life and domesticity. (194 emphasis mine)Perhaps I'm being picky (it's been known to happen), but I don't feel like his description of the illusion of immediacy offered by webcams sufficiently distinguishes itself from television's appearnce of immediacy, especially the satellite systems that offer hundreds of channels and convey themselves as "live" transmissions. Of course, there is the matter of "control," in that webcam surfers may be able to control the direction of the camera, whether it pans, tilts, or tracks across a given space, but I don't think that the liveness of the digital per se can be seen as crucially different than the liveness of television (at least as it is explained here).
I'm equally skeptical of Utterson's observation that webcams offer even the "illusory or hypothetical" experience of existing in two places simultaneously. When I click on (my originally word choice, visit, might undercut my own argument, BTW) EarthCam or Armchair Travel Company, I don't have the sense that I exist in two different places. I am aware of the fact that my radio is playing in the background, that crickets are chirping outside my window. If I'm in the computer lab at school, I worry that someone might walk up and look over my shoulder and think that I'm being lazy by surfing to look at the webcam sites I just mentioned. I think that what Utterson describes is a useful and popular fiction, one that might be used to market web technologies (if I read correctly the Armchair Traveler requires a paid membership), for example.
His larger question about the ability of digital technologies to sustain the veracity of the image that is so important to documentary forms also needs to be challenged. Cinematic documentaries have always been prone to manipulation. Even the early example of The Execution of Czoglosz combines actuality footage with a re-enactment of the execution. Every cut, every movement of the camera, involves a choice to exclude something else.
I didn't intend to be so critical of Utterson's essay, and I'm still trying to articulate why I'm so resistant to these claims about the digital. I know that my resistance relies somewhat on my ambivalence about claims about the immersion and immediacy of the digital, but one answer might be found here in Jason's discussion of studying games, specifically when he refers to the decision-making processes required in role-playing games. I don't have much experience with RPGs, and the degree of identification one has with one's character might indicate one version of this type of immediacy.
Andrew at Grand Text Auto also seems to be tackling the problem of "immediacy" in the gaming world (Wow: I didn't realize GTA was affiliated with Georgia Tech).
Posted by chuck at 9:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In the Ruins of the Future
Today has been devoted to getting myself back on track (to the extent that I imagine my life to be track or a course or whatever linear metaphor one can recall). With Fall Break approaching and a temporary respite from grading, I've had an opportunity to think in a slightly more focused way about my research than usual....
In that context, I flipped through the most recent issue of PMLA and came across Marco Abel's article on Don DeLillo's Harper's essay on 9/11, "In the Ruins of the Future." Abel's essay emphasizes DeLillo's preoccupation "with the question of how to narrate and thus see the event" (1240), noting that DeLillo's account responds to the aftermath of 9/11 "without reducing it to simple explanation or meaning" (1240).
I haven't yet read the DeLillo essay (available here in the Guaridan archives), but what I found more interesting about Abel's essay was his attempt to read DeLillo's essay through the lens of neorealism, the cinematic movement associated with post-World War II Italian cinema (The Bicycle Thief would be the most prominent example). Abel's argument reminded me of my own discussion of Spike Lee's post-9/11 film, 25th Hour, which I associated at the time with Deleuze's crisis in the action-image. Deleuze identifies this "crisis" with Italian neorealism and emphasizes the inability of the neorealist characters to take decisive action, a connection that I made in my original review. The connection between a cinematic aesthetic and DeLillo's writing never quite developed for me, but that may be my suspicion toward that kind of analogy. I simply don't think that narration can be reduced to seeing or vice versa (but I wouldn't mind being convinced otherwise).
But with that connection in mind, I'm thinking about expanding my blog entry on Hour into something larger, either a conference paper or something larger. I know there are some complications in terms of Lee's rapid-fire editing (against the long takes associated with neorealism), but as Abel argues, "the neorealist mode of seeing emerged from the destruction permeating Europe at the end of World War II. DeLillo's narrative begins with and responds to another, albeit different ruin" (1249). The shot of Ground Zero (which, if I recall, is relatively static) seems pertinent here, and I am still convinced that Lee succeeds in not placing 9/11 into a simple narrative, that, like DeLillo, he "avoids reducing [9/11] to a moralistic lesson" (1248). I wasn't planning on going back to Lee's film, but now I'd really like to revisit it.
Posted by chuck at 7:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 7, 2003
It Happened Tomorrow: Posting to the Future
It's not quite time travel, but it still plays with time and memory in an interesting way. Via Jill: A fascinating website called FutureMe.org that allows you to send an email to yourself at some point in the future.
Jill found this website through Ratchet Up, a site that suggests using "Future Me" as a memory tool for building a vivid image of the here and now, with the goal of creating an eidetic image. I originally was going to promise to post my letters to my future self, but I think I'd rather send them and "forget" about them until I receive the emails later (update: in fact, I'm actually starting to find FutureMe strangely addictive).
You can send the message privately or post it publicly (but anonymously) on the Future Me website. It's certainly worthwhile just to flip through some of the messages that people send to themselves, to see what they imagine they will find important in the future.
It also has the makings of a great Philip K. Dick-style story about someone who sends herself dozens of emails not knowing that she will eventually develop some form of amnesia....
Posted by chuck at 1:40 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
October 6, 2003
Spectacle in Atlanta
Anne Galloway's comments on John Thackara's discussion of the post-spectacular city remind me of Atlanta, specifcally my morning commute into Georgia Tech, when I glance out the window of the elevated train as it smoothly tracks over abandoned spaces (some of which are now being retro-fitted as loft apartments). The train window, with the dimensions of a movie screen (or, coincidentally, a postcard), frames the distant skyline much like a tracking shot in a film, creating a strange distance (aura) that always translates the city into an image. This sense of Atlanta as image originally became distinct for me in the mid-1990s, when Atlanta began "cleaning up" for the Olympics. An attractive facade along the Interstate highways hid the city's disenfranchised populations, many of whom were literally displaced by venues for the Olympics. It still persists, especially as the city attempts to refashion itself through all of the city's urban renewal projects.
Like Anne, I have serious doubts about how it is possible to get beyond the spectacle:
What remains most unclear to me is how all of this will create a "post-spectacular" city - one in which we move beyond commodified experiencesThe "semiotic pollution" that Thackara describes has less to do with a so-called "creative class" than with a cultural logic hellbent on capturing and containing the attention of the individual subject. In fact, instead of saying that "the creative class has optimised the society of the spectacle," it might be better to say that spectacular society has "optimised" the creative class. Atlanta, for example, continues to hide its own past (both recent and long term) as well as any city I know...
This concept of the spectacular city--and its "semiotic pollution"--comes back to me when I walk from the subway station to my office when I walk past a small tower, probably 8-10 storeys at most, situated beside the "downtown connector," the interstate highway that runs through the center of the city. From the street, the tower offered the glorious dream of a visually fascinating city in its status as both object (the tower as object to be looked at) and subject (the tower as vantagepoint for looking at the city) of a gaze. The building now sits abandoned, a locked gate preventing admission. If you look carefully through the glass doors, you can still see the advertising fliers promoting various tourist attractions around the city.
What strikes me about the image of this tower is its status as a relic from Atlanta's recent past, especially as it is connected to the Olympic dream of international harmony. I'm not quite sure how to bring these points back around to Anne's discussion of the spectacle, which leads me to believe that I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, but I think I see the tower as a small fissure in the city's image, but it's a fissure or gap that I might never see without the benefit of walking (rather than driving) past it every day on my way to work.
Posted by chuck at 1:08 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 5, 2003
Recommendation Letter Checklist
Matt offers a handy checklist for his students who have requested or will request recommendation letters. I've written a few recommendations in my very short career, and this is the information that I generally try to pass along to my students. The last point--letting me know how things turn out--is pretty important to me. Some of the letters I've written have supported students who were quite successful (which in all likelihood is not related to my letter writing skills), and it's always satisfying to hear the good news.
In other news, I can't stand the Cubs.
Posted by chuck at 10:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Swimming
Still in the mood for low-budget, independent films, I rented Swimming last night. Swimming focuses on Frankie (played by Lauren Ambrose), a teenage girl who works in and co-owns a restaurant on the main drag of Myrtle Beach. The plot itself risks appearing to be a cliche coming-of-age story about the summer when everything changed (she meets an awkward stoner who sells tie-dyed t-shirts; she befriends a sexually confident woman who comes to work in her restaurant; and her old friendships are tested by these new relationships). But like Roger Ebert, I think the film is saved by Ambrose's subtle performance in the lead role, and the script avoids simple moral platitudes about "growing up."
Perhaps the most interesting detail about the film is that it was directed by film professor, Robert Siegel, from a script by one of his students, Lisa Bazadona.
Posted by chuck at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 2, 2003
Comment Spam: Shock and Awe
More later, but I was hit by about 25-30 identical comments from someone advertising a company's website. I suppose I should feel honored that they wanted to piggyback off my pagerank, but it really just ticks me off. It looks like I'll have to find some way to police comments now.
Posted by chuck at 9:44 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack