Anyway, beautiful double rainbow in the sky this afternoon. Bright, vivid. Tried to capture some of it.
They stretched from horizon to horizon.
You can see how bright it was.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Rainbows
Ain't Got Time to Blog just crept past 3,000 views in the last couple of weeks.
Anyway, beautiful double rainbow in the sky this afternoon. Bright, vivid. Tried to capture some of it.
They stretched from horizon to horizon.
You can see how bright it was.
Anyway, beautiful double rainbow in the sky this afternoon. Bright, vivid. Tried to capture some of it.
They stretched from horizon to horizon.
You can see how bright it was.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
New Books
It's always a nice surprise when books appear, unbidden, in my mailbox. And if they are interesting and useful books, so much the better! So thanks to Oxford University Press for sending these on.
Jason Mittell, Television and American Culture looks great, chock full of interesting examples and approaches to television studies from economics to production to critical analysis. It makes me want to teach Television Studies again.
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. A second edition of this excellent and influential text.
Jason Mittell, Television and American Culture looks great, chock full of interesting examples and approaches to television studies from economics to production to critical analysis. It makes me want to teach Television Studies again.
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. A second edition of this excellent and influential text.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Lecturing in the Age of Distraction
Following on from Jonathan's comment on my post-before-last. I recently ran across an article on lecturing within the context of proliferating technologies of attention. Eric Gordon and David Bogen (Spring 2009) "Designing Choreographies for the 'New Economy of Attention.'" DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly, 3(2).
It's an interesting article arguing how we should try to leverage the advantages of the new technologies to enrich lectures, rather than just fighting against them. Though in some ways it's like saying that the bucket has holes and the water is pouring out. Rather than plugging the holes, we should explore what the leaks have to offer the situation. Teachers should be sensitive to the means of communication and habits of thought and life of their students and be somewhat adaptable, flexible, and creative in that regard, but at the same time the students need to meet us at least half way. When they're signed up for a class, they should be in the class and make every effort to participate and pay attention (though perhaps I'm just old-fashioned). The article presents a number of suggestions for choreographing all these means of distraction and attention as part of the lecture. But I think there's a fine line between creatively engaging the situation and catering to rude behavior (electronically based or not, passing notes is passing notes).
Just my 2 cents.
It's an interesting article arguing how we should try to leverage the advantages of the new technologies to enrich lectures, rather than just fighting against them. Though in some ways it's like saying that the bucket has holes and the water is pouring out. Rather than plugging the holes, we should explore what the leaks have to offer the situation. Teachers should be sensitive to the means of communication and habits of thought and life of their students and be somewhat adaptable, flexible, and creative in that regard, but at the same time the students need to meet us at least half way. When they're signed up for a class, they should be in the class and make every effort to participate and pay attention (though perhaps I'm just old-fashioned). The article presents a number of suggestions for choreographing all these means of distraction and attention as part of the lecture. But I think there's a fine line between creatively engaging the situation and catering to rude behavior (electronically based or not, passing notes is passing notes).
Just my 2 cents.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Surveillance (2008)
To be disappointed in Jennifer Lynch's film, "Surveillance," which I just saw on DVD, would mean that I actually had high expectations in the first place. Since I had none (given some of the critical responses I've read), I was not disappointed. For a film that tries its hardest to be disturbing and shocking and brutal, it ended up being fairly affectless I thought. It's a mess, and not in a good way. It's got great actors, but the performances are all twitches and eccentricities (and not in a good way). The plot is predictable, the images gruesome in a fairly banal way (which is precisely the way death and pain and gore and brutality should NOT be represented, IMHO) or so studied that one finds oneself looking at it saying, "oh, I see, that's supposed to be creepy the way he leans in to the camera that way." Comparisons with her father's work are perhaps not fair, but the film keeps referring to her father's work and trying to mine the same territory. Even if I had not known she was David Lynch's daughter I would have found myself saying, "Wow. David Lynch did that so much better, and on broadcast TV to boot!"
What I *am* disappointed about concerned the film is that it's really not about surveillance. Yes, there is a conceit that witnesses in three separate rooms recount their stories while being filmed by Bill Pullman (who supposedly is closely attending to all three people talking at once), but nothing is really made of it. It's not really even a device. The only bit that is really about surveillance is the realization that the little girl is the real surveillor, who watches and understands much more than everyone else.
What I *am* disappointed about concerned the film is that it's really not about surveillance. Yes, there is a conceit that witnesses in three separate rooms recount their stories while being filmed by Bill Pullman (who supposedly is closely attending to all three people talking at once), but nothing is really made of it. It's not really even a device. The only bit that is really about surveillance is the realization that the little girl is the real surveillor, who watches and understands much more than everyone else.
Distraction
"Workers on average spend just eleven minutes on a project before switching to another, and while focusing on a project, typically change tasks every three minutes....Once distracted, we take about twenty-five minutes to return to an interrupted task and usually plunge into two other work projects in the interim....Nearly 45 percent of workplace interruptions are self-initiated. (And when workers interrupt themselves, they take slightly longer to resume their original work--about twenty-eight minutes on average."
Maggie Jackson, Distracted, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp 84-86.
Jackson is referring to Gloria Mark, Victor Gonzalez, and Justin Harris, "No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work," Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (Portland, OR, 2005).
You mean it's not just me?
Maggie Jackson, Distracted, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp 84-86.
Jackson is referring to Gloria Mark, Victor Gonzalez, and Justin Harris, "No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work," Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (Portland, OR, 2005).
You mean it's not just me?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Get a Master's in Surveillance
City University London now offers an MA in Surveillance Studies, starting this semester.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Random Quote
This wasn't a meme or anything. I was dusting and randomly pulled off the shelf Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (which I've never read; I'm not a big Dreiser fan), opened to a random page and was drawn to this paragraph:
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
p. 115, Signet edition, (1961)
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
p. 115, Signet edition, (1961)
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Books/Reading
Stack of last minute, late summer reading (less than 2 weeks before school starts).
Alva Noe, Out of Our Heads: Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. Hill & Wang, 2009. Just about done with this. Whereas Clark (below) still, in the end, separates consciousness from the world, Noe does not. Noe: "Notably, neither Clark not Chalmers has sympathy for the idea developed here that consciousness itself can be explained only if we make use of such an extended conception of the machinery of the mind" (p. 196)
Andy Clark, Supersizing the Miind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford, 2008.
Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The erosion of attention and the coming dark age. Prometheus Books, 2008. Got this last summer, but finally sitting down to work my way through it. It really brings in a broad range of research.
Winifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. The Penguin Press (2009).
Somewhat disappointed in this; it's more "lite" than Gallagher (which is more densely researched). Though as an argument for the need to pay attention in life, especially to others in one's life, to meditate, &c. it's a useful book.
Hal Niedzviecki, The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. CityLights Books. Just starting on it; it seems a fun read. (Thanks to Greg S for the recommendation)
And I've been lapped by Thomas Pynchon. His latest, Inherent Vice, is on the bedside table. Just six pages, in, but it's reading fast and seems lots of fun. Meanwhile, I'm still only on p. 322 of his last one, Against the Day, which I really like, but don't get great swaths of time to read. 763 pages to go (and the font's a couple points smaller than Inherent Vice, too)!
Still haven't cracked Neal Stephenson's Anathem, and am just over halfway through Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, which doesn't quite have the spark of the earlier ones in the series. Every few months I pick it up and read a couple of chapters.
Alva Noe, Out of Our Heads: Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. Hill & Wang, 2009. Just about done with this. Whereas Clark (below) still, in the end, separates consciousness from the world, Noe does not. Noe: "Notably, neither Clark not Chalmers has sympathy for the idea developed here that consciousness itself can be explained only if we make use of such an extended conception of the machinery of the mind" (p. 196)
Andy Clark, Supersizing the Miind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. Oxford, 2008.
Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The erosion of attention and the coming dark age. Prometheus Books, 2008. Got this last summer, but finally sitting down to work my way through it. It really brings in a broad range of research.
Winifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. The Penguin Press (2009).
Somewhat disappointed in this; it's more "lite" than Gallagher (which is more densely researched). Though as an argument for the need to pay attention in life, especially to others in one's life, to meditate, &c. it's a useful book.
Hal Niedzviecki, The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. CityLights Books. Just starting on it; it seems a fun read. (Thanks to Greg S for the recommendation)
And I've been lapped by Thomas Pynchon. His latest, Inherent Vice, is on the bedside table. Just six pages, in, but it's reading fast and seems lots of fun. Meanwhile, I'm still only on p. 322 of his last one, Against the Day, which I really like, but don't get great swaths of time to read. 763 pages to go (and the font's a couple points smaller than Inherent Vice, too)!
Still haven't cracked Neal Stephenson's Anathem, and am just over halfway through Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, which doesn't quite have the spark of the earlier ones in the series. Every few months I pick it up and read a couple of chapters.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Peeping Tom
Just finished watching Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). I’ve noticed that the film is often mentioned as an early and influential film regarding voyeurism and surveillance. However, I haven’t seen it discussed much in the surveillance literature beyond the fact that it’s about a disturbed individual who stalks women with a specially prepared camera with a knife in the tripod leg so he can film them as they die. The film is obviously quite Freudian (in fact, the writer and director had initially wanted to do a film about Freudian thought, but someone else was doing it so they did this instead). Mark, the filmmaker who is the murderer, was abused by his father, a psychiatrist who was studying fear and using his son as a case study by terrorizing him and coldly watching his reactions. But not only is he watching his son’s reactions, he is filming them. Indeed, Mark is subject as a young boy to constant surveillance. He says he was filmed constantly, even while he slept, and his entire house was wired for sound. In this way the film plays an interesting articulations between obsessive voyeurism (of the father) and the scientific gaze. These traits are passed down to Mark: his father gives him a camera of his own, another psychiatrist tells the grown up Mark that he has his father’s eyes, and Mark now controls his father’s house and his father’s instruments. What makes this really creepy is that Mark’s father is played in the old films that Mark shows by the director, Michael Powell, and the young Mark is played by Powell’s real son, and in the scene where child Mark is shown by the corpse of his mother—that’s his real mother (Powell’s wife) on the bed (presumably alive).
The commentary track on the Criterion DVD is by none other than Laura Mulvey. If you want a master class in psychoanalytic film criticism, watch the film with this commentary. There’s also a documentary on the writer, Leo Marks, which connects the film with the bookstore at 24 Charing Cross Road and WWII cryptography.
The film was incredibly controversial, universally panned by critics, who were shocked by its content. Carl Boehm, who plays Mark, comments in the accompanying documentary that after the press screening no one would even look he or Powell in the eye as they left the theater. The film was pulled from theaters after a week and promptly forgotten; Powell’s career ended. Apparently we know of the film today because Martin Scorsese discovered it and championed it in the 1970s as a masterpiece. Since the film is really about being a filmmaker (voyeurism and sadism and the camera), it’s an interesting self-reflexive exercise that unnerves the audience (and perhaps the early critics). It implicates us, the audience, in the voyeurism more directly than even a slasher film since it is self aware (this film keeps reminding us that we’re watching a film, since it makes us watch films in the film). The content of the film was also shocking for the time: the first shot of the film is of a prostitute being stalked by the killer; and from the underground pornography sold at the newsagents to the first shot of nudity in a mainstream British film its content pushes boundaries. The fact that we may feel sorry for this tortured man is also controversial.
Alfred Hitchcock (with whom Powell worked at one point) refused to do a critic’s screening for Psycho (which premiered a few months after Peeping Tom) because of what they had done to Powell’s film. Hitchcock thought his film was much more shocking. [This was mentioned in some of the supplemental material]
Ebert's got a discussion of the film here
Scorsese writes about the film here
The commentary track on the Criterion DVD is by none other than Laura Mulvey. If you want a master class in psychoanalytic film criticism, watch the film with this commentary. There’s also a documentary on the writer, Leo Marks, which connects the film with the bookstore at 24 Charing Cross Road and WWII cryptography.
The film was incredibly controversial, universally panned by critics, who were shocked by its content. Carl Boehm, who plays Mark, comments in the accompanying documentary that after the press screening no one would even look he or Powell in the eye as they left the theater. The film was pulled from theaters after a week and promptly forgotten; Powell’s career ended. Apparently we know of the film today because Martin Scorsese discovered it and championed it in the 1970s as a masterpiece. Since the film is really about being a filmmaker (voyeurism and sadism and the camera), it’s an interesting self-reflexive exercise that unnerves the audience (and perhaps the early critics). It implicates us, the audience, in the voyeurism more directly than even a slasher film since it is self aware (this film keeps reminding us that we’re watching a film, since it makes us watch films in the film). The content of the film was also shocking for the time: the first shot of the film is of a prostitute being stalked by the killer; and from the underground pornography sold at the newsagents to the first shot of nudity in a mainstream British film its content pushes boundaries. The fact that we may feel sorry for this tortured man is also controversial.
Alfred Hitchcock (with whom Powell worked at one point) refused to do a critic’s screening for Psycho (which premiered a few months after Peeping Tom) because of what they had done to Powell’s film. Hitchcock thought his film was much more shocking. [This was mentioned in some of the supplemental material]
Ebert's got a discussion of the film here
Scorsese writes about the film here
Monday, August 03, 2009
CCTV at home
Newest intervention into "problem families": put CCTV in the home to make sure everyone behaves! This isn't control society stuff, this is simply the swarming of disciplinary mechanisms Foucault talked about. If you're a "problem" ("the worst families in England"; the Daily Mail calls them "Yobbish families"), now the State will tell you how to behave and watch you so you learn. They're calling the set up "sin bins." The papers like the Orwellian metaphor (The State placing cameras in the home; in England) though Big Brother watched everyone. This is discipline, pure and simple: render visible, document, differentiate.
How I wish this were April 1.
Sigh
Got the link from WIRED via Huffington Post originally.
How I wish this were April 1.
Sigh
Got the link from WIRED via Huffington Post originally.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Summer Heat
This is what happens when one leaves unopened soda cans in a car in the sun when the outside temperature reaches close to 115 degrees F. One can literally blew its top (kinda messy). All the others in the case are distended like the other one pictured here.
Hmmmm... do you think these are still drinkable?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Bookstores
I was reading Ted Striphas’s The Late Age of Print and came across a passage where he writes, “This discovery helps to explain the motivation behind the aggressive campaign by Waldenbooks in the late 1980s to bring its warehouses and 1,000 plus retail stores online…” (100).
Working, as I was, at a Waldenbooks (Summer and Fall 1988 in San Antonio), it made me reflect on the changes I was seeing in our little mall store at the time. This was the year between my undergraduate degree and starting grad school, when I was actually shopping for grad schools. I had just been to ICA in New Orleans to meet Larry (and James and a number of other folks) to talk about Illinois (and to talk about Wisconsin with Fiske). Anyway, I worked full time at a Waldenbooks in a mall in San Antonio. I liked the store because the manager had customized the stock a bit—we actually had copies of Foucault and other critical theorists on our shelves, and other more esoteric volumes tucked in with the usual wares. We were not computerized in those days. We hand entered ISBN’s, I think, into the register. Then we actually got our first scanner so that we could scan bar codes (and spent too much time playing with it). To look up something for a customer meant pulling out microfiches from Ingram or Baker and Taylor to see if they had things.
At some point in my six-month tenure at the bookstore (around Thanksgiving I quit and went to work for a small mail order company, Haverstick and Ballyk, selling classical CDs) we started getting inventory lists from the main office. These were lists of what we were to have on our shelves and we had to go through and pull anything not on it (bye bye Foucault). I got the sense that our store manager was getting increasingly frustrated by the controlling nature of the corporation (trying to rebel at one point by shelving an entire display of a new bestseller, dictated by the corporation, upside down--the Assistant Managers put them right). Anyway, the store became much less interesting after the purge.
One of the things that Waldenbooks did was run a deep discount of all New York Times bestsellers. What surprised me is that the company seemed to know what a bestseller was before a book was even released. So that the new Ludlum (for example) was discounted right out of the box even though, technically, it hadn’t been sold and couldn’t therefore be a bestseller.
Working, as I was, at a Waldenbooks (Summer and Fall 1988 in San Antonio), it made me reflect on the changes I was seeing in our little mall store at the time. This was the year between my undergraduate degree and starting grad school, when I was actually shopping for grad schools. I had just been to ICA in New Orleans to meet Larry (and James and a number of other folks) to talk about Illinois (and to talk about Wisconsin with Fiske). Anyway, I worked full time at a Waldenbooks in a mall in San Antonio. I liked the store because the manager had customized the stock a bit—we actually had copies of Foucault and other critical theorists on our shelves, and other more esoteric volumes tucked in with the usual wares. We were not computerized in those days. We hand entered ISBN’s, I think, into the register. Then we actually got our first scanner so that we could scan bar codes (and spent too much time playing with it). To look up something for a customer meant pulling out microfiches from Ingram or Baker and Taylor to see if they had things.
At some point in my six-month tenure at the bookstore (around Thanksgiving I quit and went to work for a small mail order company, Haverstick and Ballyk, selling classical CDs) we started getting inventory lists from the main office. These were lists of what we were to have on our shelves and we had to go through and pull anything not on it (bye bye Foucault). I got the sense that our store manager was getting increasingly frustrated by the controlling nature of the corporation (trying to rebel at one point by shelving an entire display of a new bestseller, dictated by the corporation, upside down--the Assistant Managers put them right). Anyway, the store became much less interesting after the purge.
One of the things that Waldenbooks did was run a deep discount of all New York Times bestsellers. What surprised me is that the company seemed to know what a bestseller was before a book was even released. So that the new Ludlum (for example) was discounted right out of the box even though, technically, it hadn’t been sold and couldn’t therefore be a bestseller.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Surveillance and TV
Forgot the list of TV shows about surveillance.
I should note that I'm looking for fiction (which eliminates documentary, reality TV, etc.)
The Prisoner
The Wire
The Last Enemy
I should note that I'm looking for fiction (which eliminates documentary, reality TV, etc.)
The Prisoner
The Wire
The Last Enemy
Surveillance Films
I'm compiling a necessarily incomplete list of films about surveillance. That is, films which are primarily about surveillance, where surveillance is a key element of the film, the atmosphere of the film, or plot of the film, not just films with shots of people watching each other, or occasional images of CCTV cameras. Potentially this is quite a large genre if we include police procedurals and spy films where surveillance is a matter of course. But are there specific films which seem to reflect on the act of surveillance?
I haven't categorized them, just put them alphabetically. I've included a very short list of TV programs about surveillance as well, though I'm primarily concerned about film.
Additions to the list (or objections for the inclusion of certain films on the list, I haven't watched them all) most welcome.
1984 (1956)
1984 (1984)
Blowout
Blowup
Blue Thunder
Body Double
Bourne Identity (&c)
Brazil
Cache
Code 46
The Conversation
Deathwatch
Deja Vu
The Departed
Disturbia
The End of Violence
Enemy of the State
Final Cut
Gattaca
The Good Shepherd
Hackers
The Handmaid’s Tale
Hi, Mom!
The Lives of Others
Look
Minority Report
The Net
The Net 2.0
Oceans 11
One Hour Photo
Panic Room
Peeping Tom
Rear Window
Red Road
Der Reise
Sliver
Sneakers
Stakeout (& Stakeout 2)
Surveillance (2008)
Surveillance 24/7
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
THX 1138
Timecode
The Truman Show
V For Vendetta
Winter Kills
I haven't categorized them, just put them alphabetically. I've included a very short list of TV programs about surveillance as well, though I'm primarily concerned about film.
Additions to the list (or objections for the inclusion of certain films on the list, I haven't watched them all) most welcome.
1984 (1956)
1984 (1984)
Blowout
Blowup
Blue Thunder
Body Double
Bourne Identity (&c)
Brazil
Cache
Code 46
The Conversation
Deathwatch
Deja Vu
The Departed
Disturbia
The End of Violence
Enemy of the State
Final Cut
Gattaca
The Good Shepherd
Hackers
The Handmaid’s Tale
Hi, Mom!
The Lives of Others
Look
Minority Report
The Net
The Net 2.0
Oceans 11
One Hour Photo
Panic Room
Peeping Tom
Rear Window
Red Road
Der Reise
Sliver
Sneakers
Stakeout (& Stakeout 2)
Surveillance (2008)
Surveillance 24/7
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
THX 1138
Timecode
The Truman Show
V For Vendetta
Winter Kills
Monday, June 22, 2009
Tinkerbell
Introducing Tinkerbell, the newest family member. She's a 2-year old Poodle/Poodle-mix. Very mellow.
Friday, June 12, 2009
So Long Analog
The last day of analog TV in the US.
This set still works after 50 years*, but as of tomorrow we'll need a digital converter box (which I'm half tempted to get for it, just because).
*(OK, I think we busted a tube last time we moved it and the sound's out, but the rest still works),
Monday, June 08, 2009
limiting Backscatter
From Epic.Org. For more on this story, see their website.:
=======================================================================
[1] House Approves Bill Limiting Whole-Body Imaging at Airports
=======================================================================
The House approved an amendment bill that will limit the use of Whole-
Body Imaging machines in US airports. The Transportation Security
Administration had earlier decided to replace the walkthrough metal
detectors at airports with whole body imaging devices. These devices
enable a virtual strip search that produces detailed naked images of
individuals, including females and young children. The technology
provides little additional security beyond other screening techniques,
including magnetometers, physical examination, and baggage inspection.
The amendment, put forward by Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), aims
to establish limitations on the use of this invasive technology for
aircraft passenger screening. The bill prohibits the use of these
devices as the sole or primary method of screening aircraft passengers,
unless another method of screening, such as metal detection,
demonstrated cause for preventing such passenger from boarding an
aircraft.
=======================================================================
[1] House Approves Bill Limiting Whole-Body Imaging at Airports
=======================================================================
The House approved an amendment bill that will limit the use of Whole-
Body Imaging machines in US airports. The Transportation Security
Administration had earlier decided to replace the walkthrough metal
detectors at airports with whole body imaging devices. These devices
enable a virtual strip search that produces detailed naked images of
individuals, including females and young children. The technology
provides little additional security beyond other screening techniques,
including magnetometers, physical examination, and baggage inspection.
The amendment, put forward by Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), aims
to establish limitations on the use of this invasive technology for
aircraft passenger screening. The bill prohibits the use of these
devices as the sole or primary method of screening aircraft passengers,
unless another method of screening, such as metal detection,
demonstrated cause for preventing such passenger from boarding an
aircraft.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Pollution
This is absolutely devastating. Pollution piling up amongst the world's poor. The second link is to a gallery of discarded computer waste (which is highly toxic).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/jun/05/waste-world-environment-day?picture=348339024
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2008/may/06/computer.waste?picture=333898276
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/jun/05/waste-world-environment-day?picture=348339024
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2008/may/06/computer.waste?picture=333898276
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
"Look"
Adam Rifkin’s 2007 film Look is the latest in a long line of films that take surveillance as their central theme. I wish it were a more distinguished entry into this category, but films about surveillance often cross over from criticism to exploitation.
This is a film with actually little pretension to a message, just a general statement that there are surveillance cameras everywhere and we have no privacy (especially it seems in our most private moments of vulnerability or anguish). There is a vague gesture towards the fact that cameras can be both positive and negative, but this is not pursued in any depth. If it were attempting to be a more serious message picture, there would be more serious issues with it. As it is, I think it uses the issue of privacy and surveillance as a simply a conceit, a hook to bring in an audience to watch this sensationalist fare. It plays like a compilation of FOX surveillance camera TV specials except with better quality footage and without the pixellations.
Look is a film about disparate lives in Los Angeles, all of whom interconnect at some point, at theme that has been much better done by other films. The unique angle here is that the movie is filmed as if it were captured entirely by CCTV cameras—if CCTV cameras were all high def and had sound (and having a microphone on a CCTV camera is actually illegal in places—capture an image, but not sound too). Of course, this (a film based exclusively on CCTV footage) was done back in the 1980s with Der Reise, but no matter.
The film certainly has critical promise in that we are made to identify with the cameras (we certainly don’t identify with these caricatures of characters) and participate in the violation of privacy, the voyeurism. That discomfort of being made to watch could be turned to social critique (how can this happen? What can be done to protect us?). But this is not the case here. The violation is made entertaining. Let me give you an example. The opening scenario is of a scene that represents one of the more disturbing invasions of privacy: a young woman changing clothes in a mall department store fitting room being recorded without her knowledge. Though this makes one feel immediately uncomfortable, something else happens here. As she strips down to a thong, she begins posing in front of the mirror, to be joined by a friend who also strips down. They start engaging in a teasing play, bumping and grinding in front of the mirror. It reminded me of a point John Berger made a number of years ago about the history of the nude in oil painting. One of the themes of nudes in oil painting was Vanity. There would be a picture of a nude woman, but she would be shown admiring herself in the mirror. This would ostensibly give the painting some moral purpose as a critique of character, while it’s real purpose would be to give the wealthy owner of the painting a nude woman to look at. It’s OK to look at her because she is already looking at herself (and besides, she secretly wants to be looked at). The painting would present a nude woman and then critique HER for her moral failings (as vain). Since the girls are performing for the mirror themselves, they obviously want to be looked at. This all makes our voyeuristic invasion OK. It distracts us from the point that we are invading their privacy. The film seeks to make this scene familiar, safe, and titillating, comfortable for fans of teen sexploitation films. In the end the scene leaves me feeling disturbed but not that I have been made complicit in violating the privacy and dignity of a vulnerable individual, but that somehow I’m watching this adolescent misogynist junk.
And the film proceeds from there.
This is a film with actually little pretension to a message, just a general statement that there are surveillance cameras everywhere and we have no privacy (especially it seems in our most private moments of vulnerability or anguish). There is a vague gesture towards the fact that cameras can be both positive and negative, but this is not pursued in any depth. If it were attempting to be a more serious message picture, there would be more serious issues with it. As it is, I think it uses the issue of privacy and surveillance as a simply a conceit, a hook to bring in an audience to watch this sensationalist fare. It plays like a compilation of FOX surveillance camera TV specials except with better quality footage and without the pixellations.
Look is a film about disparate lives in Los Angeles, all of whom interconnect at some point, at theme that has been much better done by other films. The unique angle here is that the movie is filmed as if it were captured entirely by CCTV cameras—if CCTV cameras were all high def and had sound (and having a microphone on a CCTV camera is actually illegal in places—capture an image, but not sound too). Of course, this (a film based exclusively on CCTV footage) was done back in the 1980s with Der Reise, but no matter.
The film certainly has critical promise in that we are made to identify with the cameras (we certainly don’t identify with these caricatures of characters) and participate in the violation of privacy, the voyeurism. That discomfort of being made to watch could be turned to social critique (how can this happen? What can be done to protect us?). But this is not the case here. The violation is made entertaining. Let me give you an example. The opening scenario is of a scene that represents one of the more disturbing invasions of privacy: a young woman changing clothes in a mall department store fitting room being recorded without her knowledge. Though this makes one feel immediately uncomfortable, something else happens here. As she strips down to a thong, she begins posing in front of the mirror, to be joined by a friend who also strips down. They start engaging in a teasing play, bumping and grinding in front of the mirror. It reminded me of a point John Berger made a number of years ago about the history of the nude in oil painting. One of the themes of nudes in oil painting was Vanity. There would be a picture of a nude woman, but she would be shown admiring herself in the mirror. This would ostensibly give the painting some moral purpose as a critique of character, while it’s real purpose would be to give the wealthy owner of the painting a nude woman to look at. It’s OK to look at her because she is already looking at herself (and besides, she secretly wants to be looked at). The painting would present a nude woman and then critique HER for her moral failings (as vain). Since the girls are performing for the mirror themselves, they obviously want to be looked at. This all makes our voyeuristic invasion OK. It distracts us from the point that we are invading their privacy. The film seeks to make this scene familiar, safe, and titillating, comfortable for fans of teen sexploitation films. In the end the scene leaves me feeling disturbed but not that I have been made complicit in violating the privacy and dignity of a vulnerable individual, but that somehow I’m watching this adolescent misogynist junk.
And the film proceeds from there.
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