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July 28, 2004
A Sound of Thunder
Very frustrating night. I was writing a blog entry late last night about Barack Obama's speech before the Demcoratic Convention when lightning struck my modem, which means my modem is pretty much toast (by the way, Atlanta readers, if anyone happened to videotape Barack's speech, I'd love to borrow a copy--I'll be happy to buy you a beer or a coffee for your trouble).
Fortunately, I was able to figure out how to blog from my computer here at school without any problems, but blogging and commenting may be infrequent, at best, for the next few days.
The good news: I'm going to Urbana-Champaign to visit some friends, which will make for a nice mini-vacation.
Posted by chuck at 11:15 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
July 26, 2004
Six Degrees, Blogger Style
Just found out through a rather convoluted chain of events that one of my new colleagues is a blogger. E. David Morgen is the author of Scrivenings, and it looks like we'll be working together (hopefully with the collaboration of many others) on organizing a September Project event (or two) here in Atlanta. Very cool.
Posted by chuck at 4:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
French Press
A few questions about France:
- Does Bill O'Reilly's French boycott extend to the Tour de France? Is he disappointed with Lance Armstrong for defending his Tour championship?
- Has anyone seen the documentary film, Le Monde Selon Bush (The World According to Bush), by French filmmaker, William Karel? It came up recently in a list-serv I follow, and I'd like to see it (so far, no U.S. release date or DVD/VHS info available on IMDB).
Posted by chuck at 1:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 25, 2004
Orwell Rolls in His Grave
In the wake of the controversial Federal Communications Commission decision to allow further media consolidation, several documentary films have emerged to explicitly or implicitly challenge media deregulation. Perhaps the most prominent (and problematic) recent example is Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed, which sought to uncover Fox's distortions of the news. However, I left my screening of Outfoxed somewhat unsatisfied (despite my original positive review). By focusing solely on FoxNews and Rupert Murdoch's media empire, I felt the other Big Media companies (Time-Warner, Viacom, etc) essentially were handed a "get out of jail free" card. I'm well aware that Fox wears its Republican agenda on its sleeve, and it's necessary to crticize Fox for its distortions, but criticizing FoxNews actually plays the game they want to play, allowing them to spin CNN and network news as "liberal." In a sense, it gives FoxNews a permanent home field advantage.
In that sense, I found Robert Kane Pappas's documentary film, Orwell Rolls In His Grave (IMDB) to offer a far more important and powerful critique of media consolidation. Grave is a much more somber, serious film than Outfoxed, and instead of targetting a single media organization, Pappas's film takes on the media system in general.
Pappas underlines his arguments using concepts taken from George Orwell's 1984, which I'm embarrassed to note I haven't read (although I can talk about it in vague terms). Using the Orwellian concept of double-speak, Pappas takes on the language used by many mainstream media outlets to re-frame how audiences will perceive certain news events. Perhaps the best example of this is the sequence in which Pappas traces the coverage of Bush's repeal of the so-called Death Tax, which was portrayed as effecting middle class families when only the wealthiest 1-2% of all estates pay any tax. However, Bush portrayed the estate tax as the state ransacking small business owners and middle class families of their small savings.
More importantly, he discusses the ability of mainstream news media to bury news events that might be harmful to the interests of the corporation that owns the news network. Grave illustrates this ability using the example of the 1980 version of the "October Surprise," in which people working for Ronald Reagan's election team secretly met with the Iranian government to negotiate a delay in the release of American hostages until after Reagan's election was secured. Pappas also uses Greg Palast's (blog) important research on the nightmarish election controveries during the 2000 election in Florida (including, but not limited to, the conflict of interest represented by Katherine Harris's positions as Bush's campaign manager and Florida's Secretary of State).
Perhaps the major weakness of the film is that it is a little too soft on Democrats, as this excellent review by Ron Kaufman points out. After all, the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which gutted media regulation, was passed on Bill Clinton's watch, and many Democrats have helped pass legislation that was supported by lobbyists from the National Association of Broadcasters.
The film's argument that the problem is systemic is effectively supported by interviews with media scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Robert McChesney, as well as Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders and Center for Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis. Orwell Rolls in His Grave is an important film and desreves to be seen more widely. Unfortunately, this film will not likely receive the publicity given to a star vehicle such as Fahrenheit 9/11 or an anti-Fox screed (and I mean that in the best possible way) such as Outfoxed. Orwell is playing right now in a few major cities (including Washington DC's AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center). I had the good luck of seeing the film at a special screening here in Atlanta organized by Georgia for Democracy, and it was great to connect with others after the movie over coffee, ice cream, and other goodies at Ashtons, where the screening was held.
Update: It's also worth noting that the Big Networks will only be showing just a few hours of coverage of this year's political conventions. Talk all you want about cable broadcasts or lower ratings for the conventions, but this is important stuff. Lots of people can't afford cable or choose not to subscribe. I refuse to pay for cable or satellite TV, and getting access to news about the conventions is going to be more difficult for me as a result. We're about to elect the leader of the most powerful country on the planet, and a large perceentage of the U.S. population is only going to have access to just 3 or so hours of made-for-TV coverage from each convention. [End rant.]
Posted by chuck at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The September Project
I've been meaning to mention The September Project for several days now ever since learning about it on Michael Bérubé's blog earlier this week. As Michael points out, The September Project is a great idea:
Free, public discussions about democracy, all to be held in the nation's public libraries on September 11 (which, this year, falls on a Saturday).You can find out more information about this project in this Seattle Times article. The questions about citizenship and patriotism raised by The Septmber Project are important, especially in the midst of a war on terrorism and in an election year. According to the Times article, the goals of TSP are to address three big questions: "What do you like about America? What do you think needs to be fixed? What are you going to do about it?"
So far, according to the list of participating venues, there are no libraries in the entire state of Georgia listed as participating in this important event. I'd like to see that change. If anyone would be interested in helping to organize a TSP event here in Atlanta (or if anyone knows of any libraries in the Atlanta area that are participating in TSP), let me know by leaving a comment or by sending me an email at charles[dot]tryon[at]lcc[dot]gatech[dot]edu. I'll update this entry when I have more information.
Update 7/28: George offers a link to a Chronicle interview with David Silver and Sarah Washburn about the September Project. One point I failed to emphasize before: David and Sarah are encouraging participants to set up voter registration booths. I know that some of my Atlanta readers are voter registration deputies, so if you can attend and bring some registration forms, that would be terrific.
Update 8/3: There are now two September Project events scheduled in Georgia, one at the Dekalb County Library and another at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville. David and I are currently working on setting up an event here in Atlanta. More information coming soon.
Posted by chuck at 5:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Preserving Atlanta
I've written fairly often about the ecology of Atlanta, specifically the city's drive to bulldoze downtown buildings and thereby erase much of its own past. This erasure of a city's past is certainly not unique to Atlanta (as Mike Davis's amazing City of Quartz illustrates), but because I've called it home for so much of my life, Atlanta's problems are particulalry interesting for me. Via Jen, I've just come across the collectively-authored Bloglanta, which addresses many of these issues.
Of particular interest to me: Robert's entry on five destroyed and five endangered Atlanta buildings. Robert alludes to the work being done by the Atlanta Preservation Society, but notes that they have little power against some of the city's real estate giants. I was intrigued to learn that some of the threatened buildings include the Winecoff Hotel (1913), the site of America's deadliest hotel fire, and the Crawford and Company Building, I. M. Pei's first commercial project.
Posted by chuck at 3:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
July 24, 2004
Atlanta Blog MeetUp
Can't sleep tonight. Too much caffiene too late at night perhaps. Or maybe watching a Billy Bob Thornton movie (IMDB) is giving me nightmares. At any rate, I'd forgotten to mention that I attended the Atlanta Blogger MeetUp on Wednesday night. Really interesting, diverse crowd. Titus Barik, a student here at Georgia Tech, has all the details.
Posted by chuck at 2:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 23, 2004
Academics Anonymous
Collin recently linked to a convergence between/among several academic blogs attempting to come to terms with the public nature of blogging. The conversation grows out of an observation made by Graham Leuschke about the number of academics who blog anonymously, usually out of concern for their professional reputation. Within the comments, I came across ~profgrrrrl's~ explanation for why she chooses to blog anonymously, and Collin also led me to Lori's post on "Stepford Blogging," where she explains the potential risks of blogging while engaged in an academic job search.
Before I begin, I think it's important to note that lots of people outside the academy maintain anonymous blogs. The desire for anonymity isn't limited to fearful academics, but is true for people in other professions as well (and Graham acknowledges this point at the end of his post). And there was a valuable discussion of this issue several months ago, during the peak academic job search season, at Invisible Adjunct (I'm too lazy to find it, but I'm happy the archives are still up--thanks IA!). But Collin, Graham, ~profgrrrrl~, and Lori all rase some important questions about how blogging fits within the academic world.
From the very beginning (now about 16 months ago counting my original Blogger blog), I chose not to blog anonymously, and although I'm not sure I really considered the effects of that choice at the time, I am happy with that choice. I know that it has limited what I'm willing to say. You get very few details about my personal life here (some might say that my personal life *has* very few details, but that's another story). I usually don't talk about classroom experiences or conversations with students, friends, and colleagues in very much detail (in part, I avoid talking about them simply because these people haven't asked for their stories, ideas, or anecdotes to be mentioned in a public place). Sometimes that feels like a major loss, and I've considered starting another anonymous blog where I can talk about that stuff (and, no, I don't have a secret blog under another identity). In fact, I've really enjoyed reading ~profgrrrrl's~ blog today because she is able to talk more directly about some of the issues that confront (single thirty-something) academics on a daily basis.
Collin also discusses the "relative comfort" from which he writes:
I don't have tenure, no, but I'm finishing up my first book, get pretty good teaching evaluations, contribute to the department in a range of ways, and I believe that my colleagues are quite pleased at having hired me. I'm also a big, white man, who hasn't had to worry about unwanted attention, who is comfortable screening the material that appears here, and who doesn't really have to worry about the kind of surveillance that some of the comments discussed. In other words, there's a certain amount of privilege involved with the fact that I can write as myself here, without much fear of official reprisal or risk.I'm not yet tenure-track, so it's hard for me to guess how much my comfort level might change if I were to get a tenure-track job, but with the summer quickly coming to an end and this fall's job market gearing up, I'm beginning to face some of the same questions as Lori (and my own experience is still mildly shaded my own unexpected publicity last fall when my use of blogging in my freshman comp class became topic du jour in the blogosphere).
I'm not sure yet how much my blogging pratcices will change during the next few months. I do know that I've been able to network/make connections both professionally and personally using the blog, and that's something I don't want to change. I'd also wonder if academic blogs might not have the effect opposite of what most people imagine. Instead of making a candidate appear to be a colleague who is not engaging in "real" scholarship, or someone who is too opinionated, isn't it equally possible that a blog might convey that a job candidate is committed, friendly, creative, and dynamic? Maybe I've already sipped the blogging Kool-Aid, but I know that if I came across a job candidate's blog while on a search committee, I'd be more interested in that candidate.
Posted by chuck at 3:12 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Blogging on CNN
I just learned that CNN and Technorati will be working together to analyze the "political blogosphere" during the Democratic covention in Boston. David Sifry, one of the founders of Tecnorati, will be providing regular commentary on CNN. I'll be interested to see how this commentary is framed. This news is a few days old, but I've been distratced lately (my film students just took their final, and I'm still working through the "Time" issue of Screen). More information on the "bloggers at the convention" story:
Update: The Wired article, by Adam Pennenberg, is quite good. He notes, for example, that less than 1% of the media members in attendance will be bloggers and addresses many of the reasons that mainstream journalists might be threatened by and/or fascinated by the presence of bloggers at the convention.Now fully awake and caffienated: I think that part of what is missing in the story, however, is the fascination with power that comes across in the spectacle of political conventions, and that fascination will be part of the story when political bloggers find themselves on the convention floor. This is not to suggest that political bloggers will be unable or unwilling to criticize the political spectacle, but instead I think there's something intriguing about a person who attempts to negotiate their relationship to these images. In fact, I think that blogging the covention may hold a fascination similar to political documentaries such as Robert Downey, Jr's The Last Party and Alexandra Pelosi's Journeys with George (my review). While Pelosi and Downey are closer to the mainstream media thn most of the bloggers, their narratives tend to downplay that connection, focusing instead on their personal attempts to navigate the American political scene. We connect to the filmmakers on a personal level, seeing the world through their eyes. This is what I think political bloggers may be able to offer their audience. I'm looking forward to following their stories.
Posted by chuck at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2004
Cinematic and Televisual Time Machines
While doing some unrelated research at Emory's library this weekend, I came across the most recent issue of the academic film journal, Screen, and the entire issue is devoted to cinema and time (or, more properly, media and time). It looks like a great issue, with lots of heavy hitters, but more importantly, it's getting me excited about my book project on time-travel films again. So far, I've only read Bill Schwarz's essay, which I may discuss here in detail later, but his discussion of how various media organize human time and historical time seems crucial to my work (as my currently abandoned project on the temporality of blogging suggests).
I think that his comments point to why I find time-travel films and TV shows so interesting. In time-travel films and television, this process of temporal organization is completely on the surface, becomes an issue within the narrative itself. I'm still sorting through some of these revised ideas about time-travel films, so I don't want to expose them in much more detail here just yet. Even so, I'd like to sort through a few points from the Schwarz essay below the fold.
Looking back at my blogging essay, I think it would have benefited from a more careful connection with the temporality of television, specifically as it is articulated in John Ellis's "Television as Working Through" (which is quoted extensively by Schwarz). Ellis writes:Television can be seen as a vast mechanism for processing raw data of news reality into more narrativized, explained forms. This can be likened to the process of "working through" described by psychoanalysis, a process whereby material is not so much processed into a finished product as continually worried over until it is exhausted. Television attempts to define, tries out explanations, creates narratives, talks over, makes intelligible, tries to marginalize, harnesses speculation, tries to make fit and very occasionally anthathematizes. [...] Television does not provide any overall explanation; nor does it necessarily ignore or trivialize. Television itself, just like its soap operas, comes to no conclusions.
I initially liked the connection to working through quite a bit, especially in the way that it might have better framed my thoughts about the temporality of blogging, in which narrators are constantly processing the material of their personal lives, or in many cases, the historical and political world (no, I don't think the two are completely separable). Bloggers go back over the same material, constantly offering new explanations, trying out new narratives, to explain a historical event (the investigations of the causes and effects of 9/11 are but one very important recent example that I won't even try to address in detail). Because blogs are updated daily, I don't think they can be seen as offering an "overall explanation" of this historical moment. Obviously, many of the most rigorous bloggers have a well-defined interpretation of the world, guided by their intellectual commitments, which guides their blog entries, but I think that stops well short of an "overall explanation."
Looking further at Schwarz's citation of Ellis, I find it interesting that Ellis cites "chat shows" as his primary example. Ellis comments thatThe chat arena constitutes a continual process of speculation on human behavior and motives. Everything that was news will pass through this process in some way or another; connections are made between discrete and separate news items. Stories from the news arena are misremembered and misinterpreted, bringing forward the subterranean preoccupations of the indivudal speaker.
Ellis adds that such a logic "is a fact of the whole audiovisual sphere," so I don't think it's a stretch to extend these points to blogging. In fact, I'm not quite sure what it adds to the discussion to include blogging under this reading. Like Schwarz, I think it would be "equally convincing" to re-read most versions of TV "chat" negatively, under the term "acting out" (105), the "pathological repetition" that Freud opposed to "working through." Schwarz adds that the conclusions here ("good or bad") aren't as important as the conceptualization of TV and media time. In this sense, TV, rather than serving as a social or collective archive, actually funcstions as a "relation" or "process" of making sense of the world as it happens. I'm still sorting through this point, and it may be the pace where TV and blogging differ somewhat. TV, of course, runs 24 hours a day (even if late night broadcasts are repeats of earlier shows), while bloggers publish less frequently (with the exception of stunts like Blogathons). The construction of time is somehwat different, with each media constructing its own time, although I'm not prepared to go into much detail here--this entry is long enough.
Finally, as I read this essay, I couldn't help but think about my attendance at a recent screening of Outfoxed, not to mention the recent popularity of other "news" documentaries, such as Control Room and F9/11. First, I'm less sanguine than I was a few days ago about Outfoxed, especially given its specific targetting of one network rather than the deregulation of media in general. More crucial to the issues at stake here, I've been thinking about the different mode of address in the documentaries, most of which were produced very quickly in order to be released before the election (the most fascinating recent example of which is this documentary inspired by the ideas of George Lakoff, mentioned in a GreenCine Daily blog entry). Even though these documentaries are made rather quickly, there's still a much different temporal mode at work, one that seems implcitly connected to a cinematic time associated with reflection and retroactivity, something that these documentaries almost seem to struggle against. I'm still trying to sort through this concept, though, and I think I'll save that for another blog entry.
Posted by chuck at 3:01 PM | TrackBack
Linklater Symposium
I've been writing about Richard Linklater quite often lately. Like many reviewers, I really liked Before Sunset, and Linklater is one of the few filmmakers whose films I can watch multiple times. In fact, I have an annual tradition of watching his Dazed and Confused every school year after the first day of class, even though I find Ben Affleck's presence in the film rather painful.
So, I'll no doubt find mysef spending most of an afternoon reading the Summer 2004 issue of reverse shot, which is devoted to Linklater's career, with an interview, four reviews of Sunset, and essays on each of Linklater's films. Thanks to the cinetrix for a great find.
Posted by chuck at 11:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
Outfoxed Review
In Jehane Noujaim's Control Room, at least two of the film's major participants, Lt. John Rushing and Al Jazeera senior producer Sameer Khader, use FOX News as an example of conservative media, unwilling to criticize the US war effort in Iraq. In Noujaim's film, FOXNews becomes a kind of shorthand for the opposite of what Al Jazeera is doing. I bring up Control Room because it introduces a concept that is picked up, in a much different way, by the recent Robert Greenwald documentary, Outfoxed: both films call into question, in much different ways, the objectivity of the news media images we encounter on a daily basis.
I just returned from one of the Outfoxed house parties in Midtown, where there were over one hundred people in attendance, and as usual, the experience has given me a lot to think about. MoveOn's ability to orchestrate a media event is still rather impressive. According to MoveOn, approximately 30,000 people around the US attended screenings of Outfoxed. Like other MoveOn events, the screening was in part a tool to persuade people to become more politically active. In this case, people were encouraged to volunteer for one of several media watchdog organizations, including FAIR, Media Matters, Citizens for Media Literacy, and Common Cause. And as I watched the film and the post-film "teleconference," I tried to read the event as an argument, or series of arguments, and I'm still trying to determine the effectiveness of both the film and the subsequent call to action.
Before I begin my analysis of the film, it's absolutely crucial to recognize the hard work that Greenwald and his crew, many of whom were volunteers, invested in this project. Putting together a documentary of this scope requires a tremendous amount of labor, and in a seamless final product, that labor can often go unacknowledged and unrecognized. I wish there was a "more visible" way in which that kind of labor could be recognized.
Aesthetically, the film still conforms to the relatively standard documentary tropes of talking heads, illustrative graphics, and evidentiary footage, in this case clips from FOX News shows (with the amount of documentary footage clearly challenging fair use doctrines, which could be one of the most important effects, positively or negatively, of the film). In a conversation after the film, Chris suggested (in conversation) that Outfoxed had a televisual style, and I think he's right, especially given Greenwald's "guerilla" approach, which is based on producing a film quickly about what is happening right now. I do think the traces of televisual time and televisual editing remain visible on the film's style.
The film itself didn't really show me anything I didn't know. I was aware of the many studies that showed that FOX News viewers perceive the war in Iraq differently than people who get their news from more reliable news sources (pretty much everyone else). I knew that FOX News uses talking points to hammer home perceptions of public figures (y'know, come to think of it, John Kerry does look French--I'll bet his real name is Jean). And of course I knew that Bill O'Reilly is a blowhard who shuts down people who articulate liberal or left points of view (although the O'Reilly "shut-up montage" was very funny).
Perhaps the most powerful segment in the film, in my experience, was the section that told the story of Jeremy M. Glick, a signer of the "Not in Our Name" petition, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. When Glick appeared on O'Reilly's show, he knew that the Hard Blowing One would treat his views with hostility, and Glick prepared by timing out short soundbites in order to get his message across, which he was able to do with some success. On a subsequent program, O'Reilly suggested that Glick had been "out of control and spewing hatred" and that Glick had claimed that the Bush family "orchestrated" the WTC attacks, both of which were false. The specific example is pretty effective in showing how O'Reilly stifles dissent while also providing some room for optimism (Glick's ability to put O'Reilly in his place). But, even with this specific example, I still felt that most of the material in the film was relatively familiar to me, at least.
Then again, I'm not sure that the documentary's specific goal is merely to inform us that FOXNews is bad news, even if it might have that effect on some viewers. I think there's a larger argument at stake, and I think Outfoxed is aware of that. Greenwald's larger argument, that FOXNews has changed the discourse throughout the mainstream commercial media, was more significant, but may have been lost in the noise of the "gotcha" sequences. This is where media critiques often seem to run into problems. It's crucial to establish that FOXNews purposefully uses the mask of objectivity ("fair and balanced") to promote a conservative agenda, and the film marshals ample evidence to support such a claim. But at the same time, to attack FOX News as partisan, as offering only a partial truth isn't enough. The second level argument, calling for more public control over the airwaves is more crucial. The gestures towards the debates about media deregulation were helpful here, but I would have liked to see more analysis of the workings of the media (and I realzie that the term "media" in this context is impossibly broad) by people like Bob McChesney. I would have liked a clearer discussion of how to create something closer to a true public sphere, or even whether or not it's possible to create an "objective" media outlet. In this context, I would have liked a clearer sense of how FOX News is received. I don't believe that we are all mere ideological dupes who are simply and easily fooled by the messages we receive. I don't believe the film is suggesting that FOX News viewers are dupes, but media critiques of this sort often fail to acknowledge the possibility for "resistant" or even "negotiated" readings of FOX News.
Finally, I had a difficult time gauging how a regular FOX News watcher might interpret this film. Or someone who didn't already have a strong opposition to Hannity's histrionics and O'Reilly's obtuseness. Many people who have criticized Outfoxed have done so on the level of "objectivity," commenting that Greenwald did not provide FOX with an adequate time to respond to the charges in the film. All of the employees who discuss FOX's policies are former employees, and it would be easy to argue that their complaints are mere "sour grapes." People who believe that FOX News is "fair and balanced" are noticeably absent from the film (a comparison to Control Room which I watched again last night, might be relevant here), and in that sense, I think the film could appear to be painted with the same brush as FOX, albeit with different colors (blue instead of red, I suppose). I do think that these arguments can be effectively countered, especially if we were to empahisize the film's real argument about the need for more democratic media, but such charges are probably inevitable.
The next question is probably tougher to answer. Will Outfoxed encourage more people to become involved in grassroots media criticism? As I've discussed with my rhetoric students, it's much easier to convince people of the validity of your position than it is to convince them to take action. I do plan on volunteering for at least one of the media organizations. I've been thinking about this for some time, and it's something that comes more naturally to me than most other forms of activism, in part because it overlaps so readily with what I do for a living, which is to study film and media and to help students develop the critical tools to do the same. That being said, I couldn't get a good read on whether or not others at my house party had the same reaction.
No matter what, the film event has provoked me to think, to consider the role of documentary film, to reflect on my own position as a media and film studies scholar, and to seek out forums for discussing these issues. In that regard, I think Outfoxed has been a major success.
Posted by chuck at 12:20 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
July 18, 2004
Still Digging in the Archives
Rashomon also directed me to the very cool blog, Life in the Present, which I'll be checking regularly from now on. Regular visitors to the Library of Congress site may know about their Dream of Flight exhibition commemorating the centennial of flight, but it was new to me. Even cooler was the exhibit, Doodles, Drafts, and Design: Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian.
Other interesting links: vintage posters advertising travel to Cuba, San Francisco, and New York, and perhaps my favorite, Kings of New York, a website that documents New York City Graffiti (I like this picture in particular).
Posted by chuck at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Digging in the Archives
Matt of Rashomon has been digging up some incredibly cool links lately. Two sites well worth checking out: "Silent Ladies & Gents: Photo Galleries of Silent Movie Stars" and this site, featuring World War I military posters from the U.S., Germany, and France among other countries. Nice happy accident for these two very different, but contemporary, sets of images to come across my radar screen at the same time.
I'm also shamelessly going to steal from Rashomon the link to "Look at Me," a collection of found photographs. It's a fascinating collection of photographs found at flea markets, on the street, pretty much anywhere:
These photos were either lost, forgotten, or thrown away. The images now are nameless, without connection to the people they show, or the photographer who took them. Maybe someone died and a relative threw away their photographs; maybe someone thought they were trash.The other link in Matt's entry, to Found Magazine, looks pretty cool, too.Some of the photos were found on the street. Some were stacked in a box, bought cheap at a flea market. Showing off or embarrassed, smug, sometimes happy, the people in these photos are strangers to us. They can't help but be interesting, as stories with only an introduction.
The LOOK AT ME project started with a few photos found in a Paris street in 1998. Hopefully, the collection will grow.
Posted by chuck at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2004
Friday Top 6 List
In the spirit of Byron's Top 5 Updates, I give you my Top 6:
- I've been teaching Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing this week. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy DTRT, and it teaches well.
- Finally made it to The Tumultuous Fifties Exhibit at the High Museum this week. Many of the images were fairly familiar, but it's still well worth checking out if you live nearby.
- I've been watching a lot of classical Hollywood movies lately. In the last week, I've watched Out of the Past, Asphalt Jungle, and To Have and Have Not (screenplay by some guy named Faulkner). All highly recommended, especially Asphalt Jungle (love the gritty cinematography). Currently watching Rebel Without a Cause,
- I've also recently watched Gus Van Sant's Elephant (IMDB), which I found incredibly powerful. I'd resisted seeing the film because of the Cannes hype, but Van Sant builds tension beautifully. I was hoping to write a full review of the film, but probably won't get around to it.
- Finally, I found John Sayles' Casa de los Babys (IMDB) to be an impressive film, one of his best (and I really like Sayles). Very cool to see several very talented actresses over 30 playing such interesting characters.
- I'll be catching Outfoxed on Sunday at a MoveOn House Party, and I'm definitely planning to write a full review.
Posted by chuck at 8:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2004
Identity Correction
I've just learned about an intriguing new documentary, The Yes Men about a group of prankster-activists who impersonated members of the World Trade Organization on television and at conferences. Riffing off the concept of identity theft, they describe their concept of "identity correction" here:
"Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."Filmmakers include Chris Smith (American Movie, American Job), Sarah Price, and Dan Ollman. Not much else to say here, but it sounds like a fun film.
Posted by chuck at 4:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Crazy Like a Fox...
...at a MoveOn (Hen) House Party. Despite the fact that I've been suffering from mild to acute Liberal Outrage Fatigue, I've been fascinated all morning by the controversy surrounding the latest Robert Greenwald documentary, Outfoxed. Like Mel at Blog for Democracy, I've been wondering about MoveOn's delay in allowing people to RSVP for screenings of the film (note to Mel: when registration opens, I'll certainly shoot for your house party).
The controversy surrounding the film has been building all weekend, especially after a long New York Times article by NYU journalism professor Robert Boynton this weekend discussed the challenges of what Greenwald calls his "guerilla documentary" style. The article raises some important questions about fair use and copyright infringement, illustrated by several examples of the filmmakers struggling to get rights to certain clips from a CBS interview with Richard Clarke and footage from a PBS new show (the latter refused out of fear of appearing "too political"). More recently, Lawrence Lessing, one of the copyright lawyers working with Greenwald on the film has commented on the story in his blog, and a Washington Post story adds to the controversy, not-so-subtly accusing the Times of political slant in their article on Greenwald. According to Irena Briganti, a Fox News spokeswoman, Fox was only given 24 hours to comment on the story. Lots of "he said-she said" follows. I'm just going to link to the article and let my readers decide.
But the Times article also celebrates Greenwald's ability to mix grassroots political action with new media technologies, including the Internet:Jim Gilliam, a 26-year-old former dot-com executive and a producer of ''Outfoxed,'' is enthusiastic about the way Greenwald's projects meld grass-roots politics with the culture of the Internet. He predicts a future -- augured by events like MoveOn's competition for the best 30-second anti-Bush advertisement -- in which young political filmmakers will be as likely to wield a camera phone as a digital camera. ''It won't be long before people will be shooting and editing short documentaries that they'll stream from their blogs,'' he says. If the Internet, as media critics like Jon Katz have suggested, has resuscitated the fiery journalistic spirit of Thomas Paine, guerrilla documentaries offer to put that polemical attitude in the director's chair.
I have to admit that I'm a sucker for this kind of populist rhetoric. Every time I read this kind of comment, I find myself wanting to do more of that kind of work or at least to promote it on my blog.
Posted by chuck at 1:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2004
How Can We Teach Them to Read Stephen King When They've Never Read Danielle Steele?
Harold Bloom has an op-ed piece in the LA Times (subscription required) lamenting the fact that fewer people are reading novels, poems, and short stories than in the past. He cites a National Endowment of the Arts study that reports that "fewer than half of all Americans over the age of 18 now read novels, plays, short stories or poetry, and that only 56.9% have read any book at all in the last year." Bloom acknowledges that these numbers aren't exactly newsworthy. At the same time, a Boston newspaper has reported that one local high school district has included the poetry of controversial rap artist Tupac Shakur on its summer reading list for their students (link below).
To be fair, I've never been a fan of Harold Bloom's work in constructing a "western canon." I am, by nature, suspicious of the practices of exclusion that canon formation entails. I am aware that teaching literature and film classes automatically requires such a practice (there's a reason I teach Citizen Kane and not the Bennifer film, Gigli, for example), but it's often not clear what motivates the decision to confer canonical status onto one novel or film and not another. Attempts to exclude certain novels or poems, such as the work of Tupac Shakur, on the basis of taste seem designed to perpetuate the elitism that conservative critics accuse the people who taught Shakur of perpetuating.
Bloom attributes the decline in reading in part to the rising popularity of television, computers, and video games, and to a certain extent, I think he's probably right that these technologies compete with reading novels and poetry for our finite attention span, but the implications of that competition are far from obvious. Bloom suggests that because of these new technologies, "it's no wonder that the heads of so many Americans are stuffed with pointless information." The implication is that knowing Shakespeare or Chaucer is worthwhile, but knowing Super Mario Brothers, Seinfeld, or The Simpsons isn't, and this is where I find myself most resistant to Bloom's position. I realize that my disagreement grows out of my own position as a film and media studies scholar, and to be fair, Bloom has acknowledged the significance of a few films, particulalry the end of the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, to what he calls the "western canon." But, as Kevin Drum points out, Bloom's comments, intentionally or not, seem to suggest that the study of (great) literature is lost precisely because of the new emphasis on science and technology, or more preciely on the new media that are radically transforming literacy.
I'm going to be absolutely clear in saying that I love literature, Shakespeare and Chaucer included. We should have more focus on literature and the humanities at the high school and university level, but I also believe we should be conscious of these new forms of literacy (cinematic literacy, televisual literacy, gaming literacy) and provide students with a langauge for understanding the texts and media they encounter on a daily basis. Having a better understanding of how these media operate would seem to be one of the crucial problems of 21st century citizenship.
There are specific reasons that students respond to Tupac Shakur, and it's essential that students understand that appeal, that they undertsand their investment in the work of such performers and artists. This doesn't mean that I believe we should ignore texts written before 1990 or 1980 or some other arbitrary date, but I think the decision to reject certain texts (often the very texts that students find most appealing) runs the risk of making the humanities appear even less relevant. Besides, if students find that they like reading Tupac Shakur, they might then pick up a novel by Alice Walker or Toni Morrison, James Baldwin or Ralph Ellison. Instead of seeing Tupac Shakur as an impediment to literacy, why not see his poetry as a "gateway drug," a way of getting students invested in the practice of reading, in the relevance of literacy.
Update: More information from the NEA, Joanne Jacobs, and Critical Mass.
Posted by chuck at 12:02 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Before Sunset
I really enjoyed Before Sunset (IMDB). I'll admit that I'm very much a sucker for Richard Linklater's talky, meandering, philosophy-lite films, and I've always had a special fondness for the romance in Before Sunrise. I watched the original in my tiny, drafty attic apartment while I was in graduate school deep in the heart of Indiana, and Sunrise gave me a wonderful escape. Of course, as a graduate student/wanna-be novelist, I identified pretty deeply with Jesse, the Ethan Hawke character, but the film itself felt "timeless," like Jesse and Celine (Julie Delpy) had somehow stepped outside the world for just one night, and of course, I'd appreciated the original film's ambiguous ending (I'll try not to be too specific).
Because I had such fond memories of the original, I worried that the sequel would dissapoint me, but Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke have managed to update Celine and Jesse's story in a powerfully effective way, and like the cinetrix, I'd love to have an Antoine Doinel-style series. The sequel begins with Jesse giving a talk at a bookshop in Paris on his novel, a thinly fictionalized account of his night with Celine. Celine, who has spotted an advertisement for the book signing shows up and the two immediately begin talking, reconnecting after nine years apart, and like the original film, Celine and Jesse have a limited amount of time, in this case about an hour and a half, before Jesse has to catch a plane. The film uses the Paris setting nicely (I even remembered a spot along the Seine where I ate a sandwich one afternoon), and the use of real-time adds to the intensity of their reunion. In fact, I think it would have been a mistake not to tell this particular chapter of their lives in real time.
I won't say much more about the film, or its plot, other than to note that it presented characters who had clearly endured the last nine years developing, growing, and struggling. Stuart Klawans' review in AlterNet conveys the spirit of the film nicely. It's a movie about lost opportunities and alternate selves, about the desire to regain the open possibilities they had when they were 23. It's also a movie about the worlds or lives they're escaping. Although their lives and jobs are generally satisfying (he's a novelist, she's an environmentalist), there's a clear sense that something is missing for both of them. As Stuart Klawans points out:The trick here – an excellent one – is that the lovers know they're in a time bubble. When it pops and life's mess pours in, Celine and Jesse won't seem so admirable.
But will the bubble pop? A movie builds suspense; and as the minutes tick by in Before Sunset, the people on screen and in the audience alike wonder more and more intently if Jesse will catch that airplane.
I will say no more, except that time has rarely passed in a film with such apparent ease and spontaneity, yet with such rightness in every moment. Working with the very rudiments of movies, Linklater, Delpy and Hawke have sustained a flawless performance – one that's warm, thoughtful, funny, sexy, charming and in all ways alive.
Posted by chuck at 1:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 10, 2004
Democratic MeetUp 7/13
Just wanted to pass along some information about the upcoming Democratic MeetUp. This looks like a good opportunity to meet the Democratic candidates running for Zell Miller's Senate seat.
*******
Next Tuesday is July's National Democrat Meetup Day, and tens of thousands of grassroots Democrats (who may or may not be members of local Democratic Parties) will be gathering in restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, etc. - just as we will be doing:
Tues., 7/13 at 7:00 p.m.
Ashton's
314 E. Howard Avenue, Decatur 30030
Our meetup will last only one hour (7-8), but you are welcome to have a bite to eat, a soft drink, latte, or ice cream, hang out and talk politics as long as you want.
This month is dedicated to the US Senate race to fill the seat Zell is vacating. We now have rsvp's from all 8 of the Democratic Candidates for this Meet & Greet - please be sure to be there and invite other Democrat-leaning friends to join us. This is your chance to decide first-hand which candidate you want to help with get-out-the-vote efforts for the July 20th primary. With this many people running for the Democratic nomination, there is likely be a run-off election on August 10th of the two highest vote getters. Next Tuesday evening will also prepare you to make a decision 7/21 on whomever those two end up being.
The US Senate Democratic candidates will be given the mike for 2-3 minutes each to make sure we collectively meet each of them. Also, while mixing and mingling during the meetup, you'll have the chance to talk, ask questions one-on-one. Georgia's US Senate seat is extremely important, and we want to get our strongest possible candidate to go up against the Republican in November. Please get excited about the things that will be happening between now and August 10th!
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I don't think it's necessary to RSVP, but it might help the people who organize the event if you do. Here's a link to the Democratic MeetUp site.
Posted by chuck at 11:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 9, 2004
Friday Aftrenoon Film Reads
Just collecting a few links to recent film articles and blog entries for future reference. First, GreenCine Daily directed me to Mark Richardson's "Polemical Posturing versus Feigned Naivety in Documentary" in The Film Journal. Richardson favorably compares Nick Broomfield's use of reflexivity in Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer to Michael Moore's use of it in F9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. I haven't seen Aileen yet (it's on the list), but it's an interesting take on how these two directors use reflexivity in different ways, although I'm not sure I entirely agree with Richardson's conclusions (I found Broomfield's Kurt and Courtney incredibly manipulative).
J.D. Ashcraft, an indieWIRE blogger, reports on an F9/11 panel he attended at the Enzian Theater. he notes that the panel debated some of the Big Questions, such as whether or not Moore's film should be considered a documentary and whether or not that label matters much, with one panelist noting that the classification might matter when it comes to the Academy Awards. Ashcraft does note an interesting phenomenon, in which one conservative guest took a lot of heat from the audience for what seems like a benign observation about the film's use of humor:
More than once, the seemingly conservative Peter Brown expressed contrarian views and was already getting grumbles when he offhandedly called the film humorous. The audience pounced, "What's funny about death and war?!" some members angrily shouted. People stopped asking questions and started just shouting out and stirring in their seats. All the panelists looked confused and it seemed to me things were on the verge of getting very ugly when Mr. Brown responded and, with help from fellow panelists and the moderator, calmed the crowd a bit.I've found these responses to F9/11 increasingly frustrating, in large part because they seem to prevent real dialogue about the war in Iraq and Bush's foreign policy. I don't think it's possible to produce an objective documentary or non-fiction film about the war (or on any topic for that matter), but the true-false debates that have framed the discussion of the film are missing the real questions raised by the film about the decision to go to war in Iraq. Note to self: the F9/11 buzz will no doubt fade before summer's out, but a panel at Tech on a similar topic (documentary film, media and elections) this fall might not be a bad idea.
The cinetrix mentions a new book that I'd like to read, Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies. The book "details the pernicious level of cooperation between the Pentagon and Hollywood. That's right. Your tax dollars at work." Interesting that Forrest Gump, a distinctly patrioitic film, did not receive any cooperation from the US military. She also mentions the new documentary, Gunner Palace, which focuses on a group of US soldiers stationed in a palace that once belonged to Uday Hussein (she also makes an excelelnt case in the comments that Three Kings is the first hip-hop combat movie). Also check out the interview with Michael Tucker in The Guardian.
Finally, I saw Spartan last night. It's an interesting take on the political thriller, implicitly critical of the Bush administration (although the presidential sex scandal may seem more Clinton-esque). Mamet still has trouble writing parts for women. Spartan very much presents a man's world, and none of the female characters, including the kidnapped president's daughter (she is kidnapped by a group in Dubai involved in the sex slave trade), are given mich depth at all. The Arab characters are all pretty much without depth and completely corrupt as well, which is another major problem in the film. It's still a pretty compelling movie, although while I was watching the final act I felt like the film was unravelling a bit. His other films that revolve around various schemes and conspiracies, such as The Spanish Prisoner, Heist, and House of Games are a little tighter narratively speaking. Of course the conspiracy in Spartan is so much "bigger" (in that it involves the President, the CIA, the Secret Service) that it simply can't hold together. Has anyone else seen Spartan?
Posted by chuck at 1:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 8, 2004
The Big Ones Vs. The Last Typhoon
Also via GreenCine: two very different narratives about the state of things in the Hollywood film industry. In "The Last Typhoon," Bruce Feirstein (IMDB page) describes a Hollywood business that "isn't working anymore," and sees a "perfect storm" developing that will transform the entertainment business. A slightly different story emerges from Ed Halter's Village Voice article, "The Big Ones," which discusses the relationship between internet communities and film audiences.
Feirstein's narrative is relatively familiar: he points to the relative box office failure (we'll soon find out if I, Robot continues the trend) of some of this summer's biggest event films and the declining Nielsen Ratings of the major networks (and the subsequent reliance on cheap and easy reality television) as mere symptoms of larger technological and sociological changes that might produce major changes in entertainment as we know it. These changes include the proliferation of cable networks, the popularity of home entertainment systems, the rise of computer games, and the expense of movie tickets.
With so many entertainment choices now available, audience attention is splintered, and films that don't find an audience quickly are consigned to the dustbin of cinematic bombs, or at least quickly shuffled off to video where the studio can try to recover their investment. More crucially, other media, specifically computer games now challenge film, competing for valuable human attention, with games having the advantage of being more openly interactive, not to mention being more time-consuming. These changes set the stage for major changes in the way that Hollywood does business. Feirstein notes, for example, that Disney is already scaling back motion picture production and speculates as to whether or not advertisers will be willing to pony up bigger bucks for increasingly small audience attention on the major networks.
I think he's right that were going to see major changes in the entertainment industry in the near future and that it's difficult, if not impossible, to predict how those changes will look. I think we can see how some of these changes in human attention and moviegoing cultures are already being felt today, and Ed Halter's Village Voice piece addresses some of these changes, notably the role of fansites and Internet communities, ranging from Ain't It Cool News to MoveOn.org to fundamentalist Christian film sites, in creating audiences for certain films.
Specifically, Halter is interested in the F9/11 juggernaut, noting that it might be ushering in "a new category of high-concept Hollywood product: the activist blockbuster." Of course the success of F9/11 is the product of a number of factors, including the film's ability to give voice to increasing disgust with the Bush administration, particularly during an election year. Moore's own controversial star persona (note that Halter provides a great overview of past Moore promotional activities) also contributed to what the authors of Global Hollywood would call "the cultures of anticipation" that have built up around the film. Of course, Moore's film feeds back into these "cultures of anticipation," creating what might be called "cultures of reception," (I can't recall if the authors of GH use this term) represented in part by the MoveOn house parties on opening weekend, which were attended by an estimated 55,000 people and provided people with strategies for defeating Bush in 2004, including voter registration drives.
I'm not sure I'll be able to weave these two narratives together as neatly as I would have liked, but I think that the popularity of Moore's film (whether you agree with him or not) illustrates one possible alternative in the crowded media landscape. While I'm aware that Moore's unprecedented popularity cannot be duplicated, I imagine we'll continue to see a renaissance of documentary films for some time. Now that an audience, or a culture of anticipation, has been created through the convergence of online communities and successful films, I think the tatse for these kinds of narratives will continue to develop. Most documentaries have the added benefit of being cheap to produce, comparatively speaking. And while the urgency of this year's presidential election has been noted many times, I think the resistance to Bush may be an outgrowth of a political community that was developing even before he was "elected" the first time.
In short, I think we'll see an increasing convergence between film and media event, between politics and entertainment (or vice versa), between the anticipation for a film and its reception. I hadn't planned on taking these idaes quite this far, and they still feel incomplete. I've become a little less comfortable lately with viewing my blog as a place where I can write first drafts of incomplete ideas, but this entry feels more like a starting point than anything resembling a conclusion or a complete, resolved idea or concept. Perhaps it feels too big for a single blog entry....
Posted by chuck at 1:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 7, 2004
Cinemocracy
Cinemocracy focuses on "Movies about politics. Politics about movies. Hollywood and Washington, hybridized." I think it's a safe bet that I'll be visiting there frequently from now on. Their July 6 entry includes a photograph of a church bulletin board that seems, well, a little critical of our current president. Lots of great coverage of F9/11, too. Via GreenCine.
Posted by chuck at 11:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Outfoxed House Party
Note to self: be sure to attend the Outfoxed house party on Sunday, July 18 (via Blog for Demcoracy).
Outfoxed is the latest documentary by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, whose production company made Uncovered, Unprecedented and Unconstitutional. It investigates the news media's "race to the bottom," exemplified by Rupert Murdoch and the folks at Fox News and includes interviews with Walter Cronkite, Robert McChesney, David Brock and other cool people.
Posted by chuck at 9:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 6, 2004
Blogger and Me
From documentary filmmaker to blogger: Michael Moore now has a blog (Via Eschaton).
Posted by chuck at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Kerry-Edwards 2004
As most of you will know by now, John Kerry chose North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his running mate (I just got my email, about half an hour after the newspapers got theirs). It wasn't a big surprise, but I think it's a good choice. And the delayed announcement did manage to create a little buzz about the campaign today.
I'm running late, so here is John Edwards' "Two Americas" speech, one of my favorite speeches of the Democratic primary season, and a link to the New York Post cover story announcing Gephardt as Kerry's VP choice.
Posted by chuck at 9:18 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Precarious Life
Interesting Salon review of Judith Butler's latest book, Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence, a collection of five political essays on the post-9/11 world. The reviewer, Astra Taylor, introduces the oft-repeated argument that theory is dead (long live theory), but instead of participating in theory's burial, Taylor argues that Butler's latest book actually makes a powerful case for why we need theory more than ever. According to Taylor, Butler's essays address a range of serious contemporary concerns:
Our government's response to Sept. 11, the charge of anti-Semitism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Guantánamo detainees.Not much to add here because I haven't read the book yet, but Butler's concept of a "hierarchy of grief" seems particularly relevant in thinking about the US response to the September 11 attacks, and I'm intrigued by Butler's attempt to define an alternative response, besides violence, to the very deep grief many of us felt in the aftermath of 9/11.
Posted by chuck at 12:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 5, 2004
Steal This Movie
Okay, it's hardly an original title, but I'm in a jumpy mood today (summer budget woes). Just came across Krista's reference to this Michael Moore comment (via Boing Boing) in the Sunday Herald, in which he encouraged people to distribute his film online for noncommercial use:
I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that," he said. "I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy this is happening."
Posted by chuck at 4:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Michael Moore, Superstar
Here's an interesting New York Times article by Sharon Waxman about the current popularity of documentary films. Waxman's main subject is (surprise!) F9/11, which broke the $50 million barrier this weekend, but she also notes the popular success of last summer's documentary mini-hits, Spellbound and Winged Migration as part of the larger trend of the popularization of the "nonfiction film."
Harvey Weinstein compares the F9/11 phenomenon to the popularization of indie film by sex, lies, and videotape and the breakthrough of foriegn film represented by Cinema Paradiso and Life is Beautiful, all Miramax releases (Harvey, you must be so proud!). Others have attributed this new-found popularity to a greater patience with documentary or nonfiction due to reality television, although I think the "popularity" is somewhat overstated (like Matt Dentler, I'm a little troubled that reality TV is being used as an excuse to declare televised fiction dead).
To some extent, I think F9/11 is a special case of documentary success, based largely (no pun intended) on Michael Moore's status as "star," someone who can guarantee a specific audience. I'd imagine that unless Moore deviates considerably from his muckraking style, he's going to have this built-in audience for some time (notice that previews for The Corporation have not been shy about pointing out Moore's presence in that film). And of course, the timing of the film's release is absolutely perfect. The issues at stake in terms of the elections and the various scandals in Iraq have also mobilized audiences to see the film.
Still, it's fantastic to see documentary film being debated so intensely in the newspapers, on the Internet, and on television. The article addresses the Big Question about F9/11, about whether or not it should be classified as a documentary, or whether another term (nonfiction film?) might be more appropriate. Errol Morris (who is set to direct a series of anti-Bush advertisements for MoveOn.org) addresses this question in the Times article:
"There are a whole number of really important questions here," said Errol Morris, a documentary pioneer whose Fog of War, about former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, won the Oscar this year. "Does it makes sense to talk about a movie being true or false? I'm not sure it does. In fact I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Movies are movies."I'm not sure if Morris's comment about using other people's misery as entertainment is a veiled critique of Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans, but that's one of the questions I've been mulling as I prepare to write my SAMLA paper on that film. I'll also be thinking about this boundary between "true" and "false" in that paper. I don't have any clear answers yet, but I do think that Morris is asking the right questions. And, as the documentary or nonfiction film continues to evolve (and continues its popularity), I think we'll be looking at these issues for a while.Still, he said, investigative documentaries have a responsibility to seek clear facts and clear answers. His 1988 film The Thin Blue Line contributed to the freeing of a man wrongly convicted of murder.
"It's not a question of the movie but of the ethics of the person making the movie," Mr. Morris said. "Journalism is not infallible, but we depend on journalists to do something of a good job in investigating a story, whatever that means — to be motivated by a desire to find out stuff."
Otherwise, he said, "you're just using the legal troubles of people as fodder for entertainment."
Posted by chuck at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 4, 2004
[FC] The Spirit of Terrorism
I've stumbled across Baudrillard's "The Spirit of Terrorism" a few times since its publication soon after the September 11 attacks but didn't have a permanent link to it until now. I haven't re-read the essay today (still working on Implicating Empire, which has been very useful), but I'm trying to track down essays that read the attacks in terms of the connection between the World Trade Center and representations of globalization.
I'm already relatively familiar with the DeLillo and Zizek essays on 9/11, especially after teaching 25th Hour (which may make a cameo appearance in the essay I'm writing). My arguments in this essay are still very tentative, so I'm not really ready to share too many details.
Posted by chuck at 6:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 3, 2004
More Music I Can't Afford
Listening to the Quintessetinal College Show on Album 88 this morning, I mean afternoon. Deerhoof is very cool.
Today's reading project: Implicating Empire: Globalization & Resistance in the 21st Century World Order, Ed. Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney.
Update: Just found out that Juliana Hatfield is playing at the Echo Lounge tonight. If I get enough work done, maybe I'll go...
Posted by chuck at 12:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 2, 2004
[FC] Very Early Notes on My Fight Club and Globalization Paper
Written (or at least started) just seconds after Nick Green's game-winning home run for the Braves....
Thinking out loud....
I think I've weathered the psychic turbulence I always feel whenever I turn from one project to another. It usually takes me a week or so to shake off the mad rush of finishing one article (my horror film paper) and to refocus my energy on something new (my Fight Club paper), and that turbulence feels like two weather patterns colliding with thunder, lightning, rapid temperature changes, the whole bit. I'm also recovering from the fact that my summer is disappearing rapidly, with classes at Tech starting in something like six weeks.
Below the fold, I've included some very tentative notes about where I'm heading with this paper.
I'm finding that the Fight Club paper may turn out to be especially challenging for me. Part of my anxiety may be due to the fact that I'll be writing about my teaching experiences, which makes this paper more personal than anything I've ever written for academic publication.
I did find the experience of teaching Fight Club to be rewarding, and (here's where another challenge comes in), I think it could be a useful (but limited) way of teaching some of the issues pertaining to globalization. One of the Big Questions that I've been trying to negotiate is the fact that Fight Club can only tell part of the globalization story, and of course, it looks at globalization from the perspective of the US, as told by a major Hollywood studio. For example, a more informative approach to globalization would look at the film Life and Debt, a documentary about the effects of globalization on industry and agriculture in Jamaica (and the first film I saw after defending my dissertation), but I'm not sure that I could bridge the gap between those two texts (or others like them) in a short essay, or in the cofines of a composition class.
Right now, to get around some of these dilemmas, I'm planning to structure the essay around Fight Club as a kind of "hypertext," in which I'll be able to point to various "nodes" or "questions" that the film introduces (which is essentially how I taught the film and novel the first time). This approach will allow me to frame some of the questions the film raises whether in terms of globalization and a masculinity crisis, or in relationship to culture jamming (just finished Naomi Klein's No Logo), to name a couple of possibilities. My students' papers essentially grew out of these "nodes," and looking back on the semester, I think that's one part of the assignment sequence that worked particularly well. Lots of questions right now, but I'm enjoying the research. Klein's book is an interesting read, and I read a significant chunk of Michael Denning's Culture in the Age of Three Worlds, which I've also found to be of great value so far, especially in his use of classroom anecdotes to illustrate arguments about globalization (more on that later--I'm fading fast).
Posted by chuck at 11:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Living Room Candidate
Via GreenCine: Alessandra Stanley's New York Times review of The Living Room Candidate, an online exhibition of the American Museum of the Moving Image. The site allows viewers to browse through a collection of TV and web advertisements for presidential candidates dating back to 1952.
As Stanley notes, it has become widely accepted that presidential campaigns are won on television (and now on the Internet), and this collection is invaluable for anyone interested in how images of candidates are constructed (Reagan's 1984 "Morning in America" and "Peace" ads are particularly compelling here). These ads also have powerful implications in terms of how America views itself as a nation, as David Schwartz, the museum's chief curator of film and a co-curator of "The Living Room Candidate," suggests.
They can also cast new light on the 2004 election ads, including the Bush campaign's semi-hysterical attack advertisement, "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-Eyed," which I discussed a few days ago, and Bush's more recent ad, "What If," which William Saletan reviews in Slate. Saletan's critique of the buzz phrase "show leadership" is quite good, and it might make for a useful discussion in my freshman composition classes this fall.
Side note: While I was watching the "What If" ad, the theme song from Barbarella came on the radio, and I discovered that I enjoyed Bush's advertisements much more (and they made more sense) when I turned down the volume on the ad and cranked up the Barbarella theme instead.
Posted by chuck at 5:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I Can Run...
...but I can't hide. The movie meme is everywhere. And I'm feeling kind of lazy today. Not surprisingly, even though I watch movies all the time, there are lots of films on this list I've never seen. The movies I added are all films I'm teaching this summer in my film class.
Bold the ones you’ve seen, and add three to the end.
01. Trainspotting
02. Shrek
03. M
04. Dogma
05. Strictly Ballroom
06. The Princess Bride
07. Love Actually
08. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
09. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
11. Reservoir Dogs
12. Desperado
13. Swordfish
14. Kill Bill Vol. 1
15. Donnie Darko
16. Spirited Away
17. Better Than Sex
18. Sleepy Hollow
19. Pirates of the Caribbean
20. The Eye
21. Requiem for a Dream
22. Dawn of the Dead The original.
23. The Pillow Book
24. The Italian Job
25. The Goonies
26. Baseketball
27. The Spice Girls Movie (Spice World)
28. Army of Darkness
29. The Color Purple
30. The Safety of Objects
31. Can’t Hardly Wait
32. Mystic Pizza
33. Finding Nemo
34. Monsters Inc.
35. Circle of Friends
36. Mary Poppins
37. The Bourne Identity (both!)
38. Forrest Gump
39. A Clockwork Orange
40. Kindergarten Cop
41. On The Line
42. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
43. Final Destination
44. Sorority Boys
45. Urban Legend
46. Cheaper by the Dozen The original.
47. Fierce Creatures
48. Dude, Where’s My Car
49. Ladyhawke
50. Ghostbusters
51. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
52. Back to the Future
53. An Affair To Remember
54. Somewhere In Time
55. North By Northwest
56. Moulin Rouge
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
58. The Wizard of Oz
59. Zoolander
60. A Walk to Remember
61. Chicago
62. Vanilla Sky
63. The Sweetest Thing
64. Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
65. The Nightmare Before Christmas
66. Chasing Amy
67. Edward Scissorhands
68. Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert
69. Muriel’s Wedding
70. Croupier
71. Blade Runner
72. Cruel Intentions
73. Ocean’s Eleven
74. Magnolia
75. Fight Club
76. Beauty and The Beast
77. Much Ado About Nothing
78. Dirty Dancing
79. Gladiator
80. Ever After
81. Braveheart
82. What Lies Beneath
83. Regarding Henry
84. The Dark Crystal
85. Star Wars
86. The Birds
87. Beaches
88. Cujo
89. Maid In Manhattan
90. Labyrinth
91. Thoroughly Modern Millie
92. His Girl Friday
93. Chocolat
94. Independence Day
95. Singing in the Rain
96. Big Fish
97. The Thomas Crown Affair
98. The Matrix
99. Stargate
100. A Hard Day’s Night
101. About A Boy
102. Jurassic Park
103. Life of Brian
104. Dune
105. Help!
106. Grease
107. Newsies
108. Gone With The Wind
109. School of Rock
110. TOMMY--I've been planning to watch this one for years!
111. Yellow Submarine
112. From Hell
113. Benny & Joon
114. Amelie
115. Bridget Jones’ Diary
116. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
117. Heavenly Creatures
118. All About Eve
119. The Outsiders
120. Airplane!
121. The Sorcerer
122. The Crying Game
123. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
124. Slap Her, She’s French
125. Amadeus
126. Tommy Boy
127. Aladdin
128. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
129. Snatch
130. American History X
131. Jack and Sarah
132. Monkey Bone
133. Rocky Horror Picture Show
134. Kate and Leopold
135. Interview with the Vampire
136. Underworld
137. Truly, Madly, Deeply
138. Tank Girl
139. Boondock Saints
140. Blow Dry
141. Titanic
142. Good Morning Vietnam
143. Save the Last Dance
144. Lost in Translation
145. Willow
146. Legend
147. Van Helsing
148. Troy
149. Nine Girls and a Ghost
150. A Knight’s Tale
151. Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
152. Beetlejuice
153. E.T.
154. Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
155. Spaceballs
156. Young Frankenstein
157. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
158. American President
159. Bad Boys
160. Pecker
161. Pink Floyd: The Wall
161. X-Men
162. Sidewalks of New York
163. The Children of Dune
164. Beyond Borders
165. Life Is Beautiful
166. Good Will Hunting
167. Run Lola Run
168. Blazing saddles
169. Caligula
170. The Transporter
171. Better Off Dead
172. The Abyss
173. Almost Famous
174. The Red Violin
175. Contact
176. Stand and Deliver
177. Clueless
178. William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet
179. Dangerous Laisions
180. I Am Sam
181. The Usual Suspects
182. U-571
183. Capricorn One
184. The Little Shop of Horrors (the one with Jack Nicholson)
185. Die Hard
186. The Flamingo Kid
187. Night of the Comet
188. Point Break
189. Chatterbox
190. Secretary
191. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
192. American Beauty
193. Pulp Fiction
194. What About Bob
195. Roger and Me
196. Fahrenheit 9/11
197. Bowling for Columbine
198. The Professional (aka Leon)
199. The Fifth Element
200. La Femme Nikita
201. Heathers
202. Bull Durham
203. The Scorpion King
204. The Thin Blue Line
205. Do the Right Thing
206. Lady From Shanghai
Posted by chuck at 12:37 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Marlon Brando, 1924-2004
From Reuters:
Marlon Brando, one of the most influential actors of his generation, has died, according to media reports on Friday. He was 80.Found via Greg Pak's Film Talk.
Here's Brando's Associated Press obituary.
Posted by chuck at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack