Scopophilic Convergence

      In 2008, then Presidential candidate Barak Obama had a picture taken of him that was eventually turn into his ubiquitous Hope poster.  This poster became synonymous with his campaign.  For good or ill, people remembered his campaign for the poster; muted red, white, and blue, a face looking at something in the distance, and the simple word ‘Hope’ emblazoned across the bottom.  The poster was designed by a street artist and became the icon of the election.  Countless media outlets showed the poster and image when talking about the soon to be president.  But something interesting has occurred.  The image has taken a life of its own.  In 2012, a Provo High School student created a T-shirt that aped the Obama poster but with his own face in its place.  He gave these shirts away to the students as part of his bid to win student body president.  He won by a landslide.  If you want you can go to http://www.obama-me.com and make your own photo into an imitation of that poster.  Various websites have adapted that concept into a means of distilling a face into a single idea.  One such replaces Obama with a skull and the word ‘Hope’ for ‘Fate’ perhaps making a commentary on the expected doom of the Obama administration.  Others have taken that image and applied it to completely unrelated things, like an image of Flappy Bird, or crazy ol’ Nick Cage (with a simple ‘Cage’ at the bottom’).  What was once a very specific image for a unique purpose has grown to pervade multiple media as it has been appropriated and adapted by consumers.  This example represents the idea of convergence.  According to Jenkins’ work Worship at the Altar of Convergence, Media convergence is when “Old and new media collide, grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media consumer and the media producer intersect in unpredictable ways.” (2)  No one probably expected that a poster of a presidential candidate would eventually evolve into a poorly rendered graphic of a bird from an addictive app.  Yet these things are inevitable when media convergence occurs.

      The Star Wars Uncut project represents another interesting example of media convergence.  Firstly old and new media have collided.  The film consists in almost 500 15 second cuts of Star Wars Episode IV: a New Hope that were then taken by fans of the film and re-shot using whatever means they had available.  Then the clips were sent in and edited together with the original sound track as a connecting thread.  What resulted was the film as a mass of individual perceptions and interactions with the original text.  The film is the old media and the new work is new media.  They converge in the space and create something very interesting (albeit, difficult to watch) that while it has the impression of the original text, is also something new and unique.  It also shows the convergence of grassroots and corporate media in that the film.  The original film coming from the corporate and the uncut from the grassroots.  The individuals who made the cuts of the film received no remuneration for their efforts and is therefore done out of the powerful desire of the individual to connect themselves with the project.  Unpredictably, the film has won awards for its work as an interactive experience, representing the ability of the consumer and the producer to intersect.

      There is something about this that is disconcerting.  For thousands of years media consumers have only been engaged with the text on one end.  Projects like this allow consumers to engage on the producer end of the project.  However, the place of the consumer has always been as audience.  In connection with Mulvey’s work from a few weeks ago, it was made clear that the role of the audience is to look at fetishized gaze, and then look with the protagonist through their narcissistic gaze.  This creates a strong connection to the subject/object relationship established by certain cinematic elements.  What seems to happen is when the consumer (audience) is given the power to produce and adapt the text, he or she does not know how to navigate the subject/object relationship, or rather they go nuts.  

In Star Wars Uncut, there are several scenes in which Princess Leia is portrayed by one of these fans in which her clothing bears little to no resemblance to Carrie Fischer in the original film.  In many cases the actress is significantly less dressed than Ms. Fischer.  The most extreme example being with the recut trash compactor scene shows a man and a woman in a bathtub, with the woman in a bikini.  The bikini has nothing to do with the scene, and relates in no way to what Ms. Fischer is wearing in the original film.  The makers of this recut scene have replaced the character in the original with a more extreme sexualized object.  As with the fetish gaze, the plot ceases for the purpose of looking at the female form.  This seems to be the case several times as the consumers take the subject of the audience and treat them to a more sexualized object.  This indicates that when consumers are given the reigns, they do what they know how to do, look at the object.

      They also know how to look with the protagonist.  Interestingly, in most cases this gaze becomes homoerotic.  If the sexualization of the object is part of the narrative, the object is the receiver of the gay gaze (gayze?)  In one striking animated sequence, C3-PO is shown rubbing his body with oil and wearing a red g-string (all dialogue in sequence is from the film).  He gazes at Luke with lust and thrusts his pelvis rhythmically ultimately removing the underwear.  I this case, the audience gazes with instead of at.  The result a homoerotic sexualized gaze, though in this case the placement of the characters implies a shot/reverse shot of placing Luke in the power position that could be a lack of cinematic prowess on the part of the maker.  There is no scene playing out a sexual relationship other than those that already exist in the original unless they are homoerotic.  So either we are looking at the body of the woman or looking with the man at the man.

      This is seen in many instances when a consumer takes the work of the producer and adapts it with their own articulation.  Many fan-fiction sites focus almost entirely on changing the object of the sexualized gaze or inventing new ones. It is not likely that anyone predicted that that would be the result of this kind of convergence, but it is not surprising as the role of the consumer has always been to gaze with scopophilic pleasure at and with the characters on screen.  There are other ways in which the consumer converges with the producer, but this is obviously the most striking, and perhaps concerning.

The Inter-webbed Mental Pattern: How the New Mental Thought Process Affects Reception Of Cinematic Content

     I am naturally resistant to technology.  This is problematic for me as I am surrounded by it everyday.  I use it.  It has saved my life.  Why do I resist?  What is my fear of this ubiquitous resource?  Perhaps it is my inability to adapt to what McLuhan calls the “change of scale, or pace, or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” (130 emphasis added) I adapt poorly to change.   Be that as it may, the changes that have come to the way we think as a society as a result of pervasive internet, computer interface, and cell phone use are significant.  The pattern of human thought has been influenced by the media by which narratives are shared.  With the advent of the epic poem, the Greeks began to formalize how stories are told.  This medium led to the creation of the tragic form and the medium of theatre.  But what remained constant was the linearity of the narrative.  This linear nature of storytelling continued for centuries in Europe and was present in myriad media: novels, oral ballads, plays, etc.  These media affected the way people thought about their world, the mental pattern.  Time was a line.  Lives were a line.  History was a line.  Relationships were a line.  All with a beginning, middle, and end.  We start in one place and finish in another.  We are moving forward, progressing, as a society.  One could argue that Hegel’s dialectic approach to history existed as a result of the mental pattern created by the linear form of narrative media.  What has happened to us in our modern day is that computers and the internet have changed our mental pattern, the way we think about the world.  

     The internet is not linear.  It is a complex web of interrelated texts and images that is navigated by a user.  While plays force the audience to engage with the text in the order that it is given, the internet affords the subject the freedom to engage at will. They can stop or start whenever they want to, or consume the media in whatever order and to what extent they feel motivated.  The effect on the mental pattern is two-fold: 1) The subject is no longer on the outside of the story looking in, watching and following but never directing.  He or she is now in the center looking out.  A play is like a transparent sphere into which the audience looks.  The internet places the audience inside the sphere and they look out into the universe.  This has the effect on the mind of making the audience believe that the world is there for them, that the world should react to their whims as individuals.  ‘My views are important, and all should respond accordingly.”  2) The linearity of thought is replaced with inter-webbedness.  No longer are audiences at the mercy of time, but time bends to our wants and desires.  We do not follow we lead.  The story is about us.  Multi-tasking, shorter attention spans, and impatience could be considered results of this mindset.

     The interactive documentary Hollow at hollowdocumentary.com utilizes these shifts in mental pattern to teach audiences about the struggles of the poor in the southern United States.  Instead of a traditional documentary that must be engaged on the director’s terms, which supports the ancient outside-looking-in philosophy and linear thinking, Hollow is an interactive experience which utilizes the capabilities of the internet to tap into the non-linear inside-looking-out mental pattern.  One can scroll any direction to view photographs or video or access links to other information.  Some videos show automatically, while others must be click to begin.  Their is layering and more than one media can play at a time.  Music from the film can be downloaded and drop-down menus  give access to news stories and factoids.  Much of these individual articulations are used in traditional documentary film (see Supersize Me) but the important distinction is that the user/spectator manipulates the text and images as they wish.  If one is watching a video about a woman who plays banjo for fun, he or she can stop and go back or forward and read a drop-down about the murder of the Mayor or download a track of her band playing a song.  This power of choice and manipulation supports the new mindset that the spectator user is the center looking out into the world.  They are in control of what happens.  

      This interactive approach to documentary could be counterproductive to the creators intent.  Since the medium is what changes the thought process, this medium works against any real change.  Without linearity there is no deadline, time does not factor in as having any real influence.  The documentary doesn’t follow that line and therefore doesn’t end.  Without the end, there is no threat, the audience does not feel any urgency about the problems presented by the documentary.  The content has no sufficient force to outweigh the influence of the medium.  

     Additionally, placing the user/spectator at the center reduces the importance of the message.  It also feeds the impatience of the user/spectator, as they don’t have to finish anything that they don’t want to.  With traditional film, the relationship between the creator and the audience is built on the audience watching for as long as the creator has their film going.  The film is the center, with us on the outside.  But with this documentary, no such relationship exist.  The artifact does what we want, so the message can be easily and readily ignored.  It implies a lack of importance to the content.  Film feels that the content is so important that we must watch all of it.  No such claim is made by this interactive medium.

Ultimately, the most moving and engaging aspects of this interactive experience are the short video clips about people.  This is essentially because for those moments the interactive experience ceases and it moves into traditional linear narrative.  Unfortunately, as soon as the clip is done it is brushed aside for something else.  That is what the real danger is.  The medium of the internet does not encourage the high valuation of content by the viewer.  By giving the power of selection to the viewer, they are implying a superior position to the viewer and devaluing their content and perspective by comparison.  The medium of the internet, by its nature, invites it content to be treated lightly.

     Perhaps my aversion to modern technophilia is that it does nothing to account for the potentially detrimental effects that the media can have on the relationship of the audience to the content.  It plays to the greater weakness of my nature.  I have been diagnosed ADHD (surprise!) and my natural tendency is to slip from one thing to the next.  I love linear narrative because it forces me to narrow my focus and give value to one thing, media like the internet feeds my weakness (though some would argue that it is not).  More importantly, artist who use the medium for the sake of the medium (to be current, perhaps) may find that the message they intend is undermined by the medium itself, like LDS religious filmography encourages linear thought about gospel topics when  circular or circuitous thought might be best (the course of the Lord being one eternal round and all).  The medium is the message and can overpower any overt message of content or form.

Resistant Spectator vs. Defensive Spectator: a White Man's Response to Spike Lee's Bamboozled

     In discussing my recent production of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera with a former student, I disclosed that I had received an angry letter from a parent.  This parent was so offended by the content of the play that he was concerned that my intent was to corrupt the youth of the school.  Unfortunately, he was unfamiliar with satire and walked away from the play having learned nothing.  I commented to my former student, “If people would just stop being offended and just listen, then they might actually learn something.”  As I thought about that, I couldn’t help but think of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and its fiery satire of media portrayals of African Americans.  The film has been vilified by many and currently holds a lowly 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Considering that the majority of film critics are white and male, I can’t help but wonder if the low scores are a result of what Diawara calls “resistant spectatorship.”  This principle identifies the tension between what the film tells us to feel and what we know from a historical perspective.  Basically, if a film portrays a historically recognized bad as good, the informed viewer will not go along , but resist the film.  It seems that satire would utilize this principle to its advantage.  In Beggar’s Opera women are called sluts, whores, jades, jilts, hussies, baggage, strumpets, and property.  One of the complaints of the parent who hated Beggar’s Opera was that the viewers would be led along to think that objectifying women is a good that should be emulated.  As satire, that was actually the opposite of the intent.  By portraying the bad as good, it attempts to inspire in the spectator a resistance, to look at historical fact (the systematic and institutionalized objectification and oppression of women) and fight against what the play is presenting.  The difference between satire and what Diawara states is that the author of the text in satire wants you to resist, while the texts to which Diawara refers assume compliance.  The negative response from this father of a student and from the critics of Bamboozled  seems to stem from this interrelationship between satire and resistant spectatorship.

     The satire in Bamboozled is my no means subtle.  It is clear that Lee intends for us to see the Minstrel Show and be horrified, to resist the portrayal of that entertainment as well executed and funny.  When we are shown the entire audience wearing black-face (white, black, hispanic, italian, asian), he is indicting us as a culture of both creating the image of the black man and then adopting it to show how ‘accepting’ we are.  There are many critics who consider themselves liberal, accepting, and loving of ‘black culture’, not unlike the PR representative stating that she has a PhD in african studies (whatever that means), who would take offense.  They are being implicated in the creation of a false culture, and acceptable culture, of what blacks are supposed to be like, and then the embracing of their own creation.  They love black culture but that culture is a myth, it is burnt cork and fire-truck red lipstick.  So they resist.  But their resistance is based on a false history.  As Diawara indicates, the understanding of history is what leads to resistant spectatorship, we see that what is represented on screen is not congruent with the oppressive realities of history.  The resistance of the white population to the implications of this scene is therefore really a form of defensiveness.  The black-loving whites have written a story about themselves, that there is a culture of blackness that they appreciate and thereby are no racists.  But that culture is the culture that they have given to the African American peoples.  It is akin to giving a recipe for a sandwich to a black person with the instructions to follow the recipe exactly and then saying, “Ooh, Black people make the best sandwiches.  Here, I’ll buy it from you.  See, I love black people.”  But this narrative is faulty and in reality part of the hegemony that oppresses blacks.  That is why the critics were so offended.  They were being told that they were racist for the very reason that they believed that they weren’t racist.  So they resist.  And their resistance is a show, a mottled mirror of the true resistance that black people experience watching their portrayal in film and contrasting it to the true history.

     Maybe the satirical approach to this film is what complexifies the issue.  The cognitive dissonance of satire combined with the false history of the white man leave him no place to stand.  What makes this so difficult is that it places the white critic in a limbo-esque space between resisting and proving the film right or wholeheartedly embracing the film and proving the film right.  If they resist, then it is resisting based on a false history which the film decries.  If they embrace, they are like the audience putting on the black face.  Really, there is no safe place for a white audience watching this film.  There is not supposed to be.  It is a damning piece of work.  The racist tradition the film mocks is a historical reality, in which whites are complicit in maintaining.  There is nothing to be done to make us okay with what is seen.  But maybe if we stop being offended and listen, then we just might learn something.

She's Naked in the Bed: Vertigo's Fetishized Gaze

     Much has been made of the objectification of Kim Novak’s Madeline/Judy by James Stewart’s Scottie in Vertigo.  While this is much justified based on the behavior manifest and the narrative itself, it misses a fundamental and perhaps more significant subject/object relationship.  Laura Mulvey describes in her landmark paper Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema the means by which the apparatus of cinema creates a subject/object relationship between the audience(subject) and the female character(object).  Scopophilia is defined as the pleasure that is derived from looking at the human form as an object.  Film plays on this desire by allowing us to look into the lives of others and objectify them without the  guilt associated with voyeurism.  In essence, then, spectatorship fulfills a voyeuristic fantasy.  Not only does the audience act in the role of the subject, as a viewer of the object from their seats but they also project themselves onto the male subject in the film who in turn sees the woman as object.  This converts spectatorship into a form of narcissism.  The female in the film is then an erotic object for the character in the film and an erotic object for the spectator.  By looking at this subject/object relationship in Vertigo one can see that the Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy conglomerate becomes the object of the spectator/protagonist mediated by the apparatus.

      There is a significant scene in the film that demonstrates this relationship.  After having jumped in the bay to save Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy, Scottie takes her back to his apartment.  We, as audience, are introduced to the apartment through a slow pan from right to left.  The camera starts on Scottie putting logs into a fiery fireplace (and we could discuss the phallic nature of this, but I digress).  He sits on the couch, and glances up.  He sips his tea and looks.  He is looking at something and based on his expression, his gaze is indulgent.  The camera pans to the left.  It passes over the doorway to the kitchen and frames clothes hanging on a line, to dry.  They are Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy’s clothes.  This clearly indicates to us that she is no longer wearing them.  The camera pan continues and settles on the bedroom door, open, and revealing Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy lying on the bed.  She is naked, though under the covers.  She is asleep. The camera cuts back to Scottie.  Who looks some more.  It cuts back to Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy.   The phone rings and Scottie runs to answer it.  Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy suddenly awakes.  More of her body is revealed and Scottie gazes as he speaks on the phone.  Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy is fully framed and glances down.  That glance is ostensibly for her realization that she is unclothed.

     The audience plays their dual spectator role through the course of this scene.  In the seats of the theater they are subjects observing the action.  Simultaneously, they identify with Scottie.  Narcissistically they place themselves in the place of him.  The pan is in the role of Audience/Subject.  We are looking around the room to see what Scottie’s apartment looks like.  The shot/reverse shot cutting between Scottie looking at Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy and what he sees (Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy) places us in his place as the protagonist/subject of the story.  In the case of seeing Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy in the bed we are as audience allowed the scopophilic fetishism of looking at the partially covered body.  The voyeuristic fantasy is fulfilled (it helps that initially the camera is placed far from the object through a door, heightening the voyeurism).  Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy’s glance downward when she awakes in the bed, though narratively indicates realization that she is naked, serves the audience in this relationship to remind them “hey, I’m naked under here.”  The audience converts the character into an actress (Kim Novak) and an object of their gaze, a fetish devoid of narrative device.  

      This is also a time of narcissistic identification.  When the camera panned across the kitchen doorway to reveal the drying clothes it opened the door to identification with the protagonist.  There is no one else here.  And Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy is asleep on the bed.  It is implied then that Scottie is the one to have undressed her.  In doing so he of necessity saw her naked before placing her on the bed.  His look to her in the bed is not one of spying, but of reminiscing.   It stops the narrative and invites the audience to fetishize the form of Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy and to reminisce  with Scottie on that experience of undressing the female form.  Our identification with Scottie in that moment places the Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy as the object of creative memory gaze: the look into a memory not shown on screen but experienced by the subject/protagonist and created by the subject/audience.

     Vertigo is often regarded as Hitchcock’s finest film.  It is a remarkable study in the nature of obsession.  It also is an exquisite study in the use of the male gaze and the subject/object relationship.  The film makes Kim Novak/Madeline/Judy an object to be desired and fetishized and gives ample opportunities to relish that gaze.  The audience spies, watches, looks, and truly obsesses in their seats and alongside Scottie and the protagonist/subject.  The female loses her identity and becomes merely a form to be desired and gazed at.  She has no volition, she is there, while we and Scottie gaze on her, and we are absolved of the guilt of voyeurism by the apt cinematic apparatus.

Interlaced Postmodernity and the Birth of Hyper-theoretical Life in Community

     For the past four years I have taught a student who relates to his world through movies.  Diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, he struggle connecting on a real world level with those around him.  On more than one occasion he has alienated people by quoting a movie when they didn’t know that he was quoting a movie.  Though he says that he understands the difference between movies and reality, there are times that I am not so sure.  Abed, the ambiguously ethnic character in Community, shares some similar traits with this student.  He relates to everything in terms of the films he has watched.  In the show, he often will comment that the activity in which he and his friends are participating is like a film, either title or genre.  This behavior is a simulation of the type of behavior exhibited by my student.  Baudrillard, when speaking of simulacra and simulation, indicates that when a simulation then is simulated in reality the reality shifts and what was once real becomes a hyperreal by means of that simulation.  Interestingly, upon mentioning this character to my student, he became very excited and expressed a kinship with this simulation of Abed.  He stated that Abed was him and he was Abed.  So he reduced his own identity to be a simulation of that simulation.  

      When discussing the theories of these prominent Post-modern and post-structuralist authors (Baudrillard, Barthes, Derrida, Lyotard) it is helpful to view them through the lens of Community.  Though one might think that it is mistaken to use a media artifact to interpret a theory since theories are designed to help us understand other things, I think it entirely appropriate to use the simulation to interpret this ideology given our state of hyperreality.  Mythological systems, according to Barthes are created by taking a sign, devoiding it of its signifier and signified, and making it a form which can then be given a concept working together to make a signification.  What community does is it becomes a mythological system to about post-modernity itself.  So when Community shows a party in which the characters eat tainted food and become zombies, the signifier is that set of images and the signified is the ahistorical event (remember this is hyperreal) then that sign becomes a form to express the concept of pastiche.  While pastiche is mentioned almost in passing in Lytoard’s Defining Post-Modern it is made into the concept of this mythological system: the halloween party turned zombie apocalypse is a pastiche of the zombie genre therefore referencing of another art form for the sake of doing so is a pastiche.  Lyotard’s theories expressed in his work become absent and what remains is the myth: post-modernism=pastiche=referencing other shows in a show.  Communities simulation of theory becomes the theory and this is where Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Barthes become interwoven.  What mythological systems do is scaffold the structure of simulation which leads ultimately to our hyperreal.  Indeed this mythological pastiche of zombies is also simulation; Community simulates other simulations (zombie films, which could also work as a mythological system itself) meaning that there is no reality to simulate, we are then in the hyperreal.  This interlacing of the theories is what makes Community  the authority on Post-modernism.  We understand Baudrillard or Lyotard because of Community not visa versa, therefore it is the authority on the theory.

     Similarly, the self-reflexivity of the show defines what it means to be hyperreal.  In a conversation between Abed and Jeff as things become emotional Jeff expresses concern that it will be a “very special episode”.  This refers to the sit-com tradition of occasionally having episodes dealing with serious issues instead of the light fare (this originates with an episode of Punky Brewster in which Punky and her friends have a run in with a child molester which was advertised as a “very special episode”).  This is done to draw attention to the mechanism, the show is a show and people on the show know that it is a show.  This is done to tell us as an audience that it is a show and our lives by comparison are therefore real, occluding the fact that it has long been replaced by the hyperreal.  Our understanding of what it means to be hyperreal comes then from Community.  The second-order semiological sign of that very special episode reference becomes the signification of hyperreal, replacing the original theory of Baudrillard.  Baudrillard no longer explains Community, Community explains Baudrillard.

     In this sense, our hyperreal has even been replaced.  These theorist wrote to reveal the simulation in the hyperreal, to show us where the mythological systems lie.  But now their theories have moved from the position of sign interpretation to a concept in a mythological system.  Myth was once about creating an image/text to express a greater signification about the world.  Now myth is replacing the theory that created it.  Our means for understanding our postmodern condition has become part of that condition, a meta-hyperreal.  So where does that leave my student/Abed hybrid?  He has moved beyond the material simulation, or even ideological simulacra to hypertheory.  Meaning, identity, theory are now mediated, simulated, hyper-theoretical concepts representing the absence of the knowledge of the theory that created them.