I had quite a few things swirling through my mind during the three-hour film lecture yesterday, some related to what we were talking about, some not. I thought that this morning I could give you a quick spin through those musings. (By the way, one way to assure that one will be healthy again is to apparently just make a doctor's appointment - by the time it rolled around, I was feeling healthy and didn't need it anymore! :) All is well.)
1. So, the first thing I have to say is not an original question, nor is it one to which I can significantly contribute, considering all the philosophers and other thinkers who have explored this same thing. We were talking about a few films last night which are indisputably works of art and even considered some of the best films made for the time that they were created - in terms of editing, cinematography, set design, etc. A lot of these films that were so "incredible" also happen to be the most reprehensible in nature - whether it's the pure propaganda of The Battleship Potemkin or the blatant racism of Birth of a Nation. My head took a slightly different thought path, curving away and connecting with some of the discussions in my Women's Studies class as well. What exactly is racism or prejudice? Is a thought racist? Let me rephrase: is a thought, when it comes unbidden to a mind ( as so many thoughts do, we all know it), inherently prejudiced? More importantly, is the mind that holds that thought prejudiced for this sudden creation of a thought? Sometimes, I think our brains like to produce things, thoughts, ideas that we know are wrong/stupid/impractical or prejudiced -- like the desire to throw my Algebra book across the room at the person who can't seem to think with her mouth closed. Does that mean that I'm a violent person? Does that mean that I am intolerant of people? I don't think so. We cannot be so harshly judged by the knee-jerk reactions of our brains. But - that's a difficult line to draw. For a little refreshing frankness on the subject, please have a listen to this song. But believe me, I know the subject demands seriousness as well. But we can't take everything too seriously - we're humans, for goodness' sake.
2. The second thing I wanted to mention is something that will seem quite silly based on the content of the above paragraph. Still, it's something that I never thought about before but that deserves mentioning! We were talking in class last night about a scene in the movie Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) where a clever camera trick involving a mirror with a corner that was just glass and not a mirror at all, a painting, and some actors was able to create a fantastic backdrop - not just for the audience, but for the filmmakers as well, since they didn't have to go back and cut every single frame and make a stencil of where the background would be, shoot film of the backdrop, cut out appropriately sized pieces, and then glue them back to the shots of the action happening in the foreground. Which is, of course, what they had to do before green screens. Two words: Mary Poppins. Yes, that film was from the 60s and some technology had improved, but not when it came to trying to put animated things next to real people. So, watching Mr. Van Dyke dance with penguins? Can you imagine the amount of time that went into that? I am just blown away.
3. We have reached the point in our timeline in Film class that we've started to discuss the first censorship boards that erupted all over the United States as "pictures" became more and more popular. A few of you may have heard me discuss American film censorship before. If not, get a cup of tea. No, I promise not to be long-winded. I just have to say that I think it the purest kind of absurdity to allow 12-year-olds to see all the blood and gore of the Lord of the Rings (because it's "fantasy violence") when at the same time, if there had been a single bare bottom in that movie, the rating would have jumped up to R, only for seventeens-and-up, or in the presence of a parent or guardian. Or, a movie like The King's Speech - one that I would have loved to see in high school, in the 14-16 age range. That one was rated R. But don't you know, he SWEARS in that movie. We can't expose our poor children to that. (Admittedly, there is a rather fantastic amount of swearing in one scene of the movie, but our censor doesn't distinguish between types of swearing. In The King's Speech, I swear it's art - not the case in all movies) We see naked bodies in the shower every day. Profanity is a fact of life, just like sex, drugs, and "adult content". I feel like we're raising a nation of know-nothings, here.
The pinnacle of this above discussion came to my knowledge a few weeks ago. Thanks to the brilliant invention of YouTube, I have come to know (through his video-blogs) an author of a series of young adult books. His name is John Green (no, I don't know him personally, I'm one of the thousands that watches his videos, but still) and he was recently recognized for his book The Fault In Our Stars. Having a youtube channel allows this man to give an insight into the writing industry, along with doing lots of other silly things that youtubers do. However, the thing I want to mention to you is about his book Looking for Alaska. The content of the book doesn't matter for this remark. The only thing you need to know is that several of the main characters smoke cigarettes in the novel. The cover of this book in the states has smoke swirling around and underneath the title. Mr. Green informed his viewers over the course of years now that at the beginning, he wanted that smoke by itself on the cover - the intelligent reader can infer cigarettes if they think about what's happening inside the book. But, you must understand (says the industry) - this is a children's book. What if they think the smoke is coming from a cigarette? So they put a candle on the cover. In various vlogs from John Green, we heard about how much he hated the candle. Finally, after a very long time, the candle has been removed. But the fact that that has to be a battle in this country pisses me frankly the hell off.
Do we think teenagers don't think that cigarettes exist? Do we think that they will be under the impression that they don't exist if we don't put them on the covers of our novels? How -- how stupid and blindly impressionable do we think they are? This makes me very, very angry and frankly not all that proud to live here. Who are these young adults going to be in twenty years?
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Whew! Well, I went for it, I suppose. I really ought to have breakfast and work on my Algebra review sheet (exam this Friday) - I heard rumblings of interest in what we are doing in Algebra. I'll see what I can do this weekend or next week for you on that front.
Also, a final note - we watched a clip from a movie called The Fall last night (I'm sure some of you have heard of it) and since the clip was very short, I don't know much about the movie - but I know a musical piece that they used. It was a piece that was on a cassette tape that I listened to with my sister as a kid, "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" - and I hadn't heard a piece from it in such a long time. Now, thanks to that clip from the movie, I know what one of my favorite classical pieces is called and can finally look it up and listen to it! So I did. Here it is, if you want something beautiful to listen to today.
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