Robyn’s Blog

So, I felt that I didn’t have enough time to sufficiently express my appreciate for Muybridge in my presentation today.  He developed instantaneous motion picture capture, and let me tell you why.  You see, in the late 1800s there was a popular debate going on about whether or not horses ran with their four legs all suspended at the same time.  This view was called “unsupported transit.”  It was apparently a big deal.  Anyway, in 1872, the future governor of California Leland Stanford, who owned race horses, hired Muybridge to prove that horses had all four legs suspended at once.  Muybridge uses a series of 50 cameras along the race track that were triggered to go off by the horses hooves, which you can see here.  Turns out horses have all four legs in the air when they are UNDER the horse.

This sort of technology inspired the U2 video for the song “Lemon,” which you can see here.

Techniques of this sort were also used in the Matrix, which you can see here.

And we should also mention Joseph Plateau, because he’s intense.  (This was the guy that invented the phenakistiscope.)  This guy was intense.  He was so interested in the effects of light on the retina (in your eye) that he did an experiment where he gazed into the sun for 25 seconds, and he went BLIND as a result. 

These people are awesome.

“The fanatics, the madmen, the disinterested pioneers, capable, as was Berard Palissy, of burning their furniture for a few seconds of shaky images, are neither industrialists nor savants, just men obsessed by their own imaginings.  The cinema was born from the converging of these various obsessions, that is to say, out of a myth, the myth of total cinema”( Bazin 173).

So I just happened to be talking to a friend about the meaning of life over hookah this evening, and I figured I’d share his opinion since I’m curious as to whether you all will buy into this.  Friend (let’s call him Al) tried to convince me that the point of everything is to follow through with some sort of natural progression of life.  For instance, Al tells me he thinks that people should eventually have kids and have a good home/property to leave to their kids so follow the “natural order of things.”  Like, human beings are designed to have raise offspring.  Or something.  To make something new, and add to the world, and leave something of yourself that is permanent. The whole point was to leave behind something, to accomplish something that transcends your life.  Like inventing the cure to the common cold for the good of mankind.  It’s sort of late (or rather early) so I feel like I’m not really making coherent sentences.  I told Al that I didn’t care what I left behind–screw the kids.  (what kids, are we serious?) Al was also trying to convince me that it was “natural,” for human beings to believe in a God, or some sort of deity.  And even if logically it doesn’t make sense, it must be a good idea because it’s human instinct.  Or something.  It was a long complicated discussion but it’s all about the meaning of reality, which is what we are talking about, so what do you guys think?

I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow and realize that this blog looks like it was written by a four year old.

I’ll be honest, the real point of this blog is that hookah is amazing and inspires good discussions, so you should all get on that.  I’ll take you.  Promise.

I think that Errol Morris hasa really unique take on the issue of the death penalty.  Instead of citing some of the typical arguments against the death penalty, Errol Morris suggests that people become obsessed with the idea of vengeance.  In their eagerness to see the prevalence of justice, they become less concerned with the actual facts and evidence of the presented case, and more concerned with simply giving a killer what he/she deserves.  In doing so, people end up creating their own facts.  Morris says that the “need to believe what we want to believe is stronger than our need to understand the truth.”

The ability of people to convince themselves of things is absolutely amazing.  But in the end, there is a set reality.  W edo not exist inside our own consciousness.  There is a truth.

Or is there?

I don’t know the answer to that question, but I don’t think that I need to.  I think of it as something akin to Pascal’s Wager.  For those of you who are not familiar, Pascal’s Wager is an atheist argument for the existence of God.  According to Pascal, you might as well believe in God, because if you believe in God, and there is a heaven, you can get there, and if there isn’t, no harm done.  On the downside, if you disbelieve in God, and there is a heaven, you’re screwed.  Here is a little illustrative diagram:

The way I see it, we might as well believe that there is a truth, using the same logic as Pascal. 

Hmm.  Seems like our lives might make more sense if we believe in truth.  That is, unless we just want to hang out at the 7/11 with our slurpees all our lives, in the words of Dr. Campbell.

Vernon, Florida.  I thought I’d seen the best movie ever after witnessing the genius of Gates of Heaven, but no.  Vernon, Florida managed to do so.   There’s a lot I want to talk about, but I’m going to start with the guy who was holding the turtle, but called it a gopher.  The animal was harmless, he liked sandy ground, and various other characteristics of a gopher.  It was a gopher, not a turtle.  Obviously.

This man unknowingly brought up the question of what constitutes what something is?  If the animal is acting like a gopher, isn’t it a gopher?  How do we define something, or someone for that matter?  If we have all the characteristics of one thing, it seems to me that we are that thing.  If one was raised by a wolf, they would be a wolf.  Not a human.

This brings me to an involved discussion that I was having with someone this weekend on this weird condition where a baby is born with really, really small male anatomy, and they are missing some of the genes of a male, so they just cut off the male parts and raise the baby as a girl. 

This blew my mind.

So this baby, who is really a guy missing some chromosomes, is raised to think that they are a girl, and they think they are a girl, and they look like a girl, but they are not.  Or are they, because they think they are?  I don’t understand how this works.  This old guy, who is just innocently talking about a turtle/gopher, is really bringing up the question of what it is that constitutes someone’s identity.

I think the question of identity was also brought up later in the film where a man was talking about diamonds and rain.  He wad that “after a rain, you see those drops in the woods and it’s almost more beautiful than the diamond.”  We like diamonds, because they are diamonds (well actually, I don’t like diamonds, but whatever most people do).  But what about the fact that a lot of times other things that cost nothing at all, like raindrops, are more beautiful, and more special.  But because they aren’t diamonds, most people wouldn’t pay thousands of dollars to see rain drops.  And it’s for no more of a reason than the fact that it’s a raindrop, and not a diamond.  This man (I think it’s the turkey man, who I could also talk about for ages) recognizes the fact that it’s not what something is, it’s not what it’s called…a rain drop might as well be a diamond if it is as beautiful as one.  A turtle might as well be a gopher if it is acting like one.

This is totally irrelevant but I have to throw in this quote from the movie, just because it’s awesome.

“He said, ‘that’ll be the last thing I ever do, is shoot myself.’ Which it was.”

I’ve been away all weekend in Georgia, so I just got to watching Gates of Heaven tonight.  And let me tell you, it is one of those things where I have hope for this entire universe and all of mankind because Errol Morris shares our oxygen supply.  Gates of Heaven was brilliant.  It was brilliant because it is real, and Morris manages to perfectly capture the absurbity of reality itself.  He has managed to catch a piece of life itself and put it on film.  I am infinitely impressed. 

Brad was saying today how Morris had the power of editing, and the difference that probably made in the documentary.  I agree with this–he has created the movie, rather than it really being just life.  But I think it is justifiable for him to do so.  Every shot, every scene–everything about the way the movie is set up is so perfectly and horribly real.  I loved the old lady on the porch, the stream of consciousness, these people…I need to own this movie, and watch it all the time.  Let’s keep discussing it!

I understand what Dr. Campbell was saying about how if we don’t distinguish a difference between taste and judgement, we essentially have nothing to talk about.  My previous blog, while relevant as far as bringing up some interesting questions, is largely unsophisticated because it is based on pure taste rather than acknowledging a sense of quality of a movie, judged by some sort of universal standard.  There is a difference between taste and quality.

But does it actually matter? 

 Well, to some, maybe not.  But to people devoted to the study of film, it happens to matter a great deal.  And what makes something matter more than something else?

Absolutely nothing.  So then don’t we chose what matters to us, what we “obsess” about based on taste, not judgement?  Don’t we choose our obsessions based on exactly what we’re trying not to do with movies, based on what we like, what we enjoy doing, what we want to dedicate our life to?  Or do we choose our obsessions and interests based on what we think is of importance, of a quality, whether or not we actually like it.  And if that is the case, do we like the feeling of doing something important?  Even if we don’t enjoy watching Citizen Kane, do we enjoy the fact that we can appreciate a great work of film, even if it doesn’t appeal to our taste?  Enjoy the feeling of being accomplished, of having done something to be proud of?

I’m completely talking in circles and hopefully I’m making some sort of sense.  If not, I’ll try again later.

At the risk of sounding annoyingly philosophical, how do we decide what is a “good” movie?  Dr. Campbell commented that he now reads movie reviews before going to the movies so that he doesn’t have to watch a “bad”  film.  But personally, I rarely agree with movie critics.  A movie can have the best acting, the best scenery, and an amazing plot, and fail to interest me, while sometimes a horrible, overly-cliche movie is exactly what you are looking for.  Now, I don’t credit myself with knowing enough about movies to fully understand whether or not the 1933 version of Little Women is “better” than the 1949 version.  But I can tell you, I enjoyed the 1949 version a hell of a lot more, and that’s all the standard I need for a good movie.

Things that Rocked about 1949 Little Women:

*the actors looked like children and not middle-aged adults

*their voices were less annoying

*I was always wondering what inappropriate thing Amy would say next

*they didn’t make me gag because they were too nice

*Beth’s death was less drawn out and boring

*Laurie didn’t look/act as homosexual

*the colors were pretty

*when Jo jumped over the fence the music jumped with her

* the girls acted more like people and less like stage actors

*Amy made up more really funny sounding words

And I could continue.  Okay, maybe none of those things are characteristics of a “good” movie.  If that is the case, I can only conclude that I like “bad” movies, after all.

The title of this blog is one of my favorite quotes from the movie “Adaptation.”  I believe this movie almost directly addresses everything Group one was presenting on Monday on, hey, presto, adaptation.  If you havn’t seen this movie, rent it immediately.  It’s directed by Spike Jonze and is based on the book by Susan Orlean The Orchid Thiefand the screenplay by Charlie and Donald Kaufman.  Not only is her book adapted into a screen play, then the screen play is adapted into a movie–and a rather bizarre movie at that because the entire movie is about Charlie Kaufman trying to adapt the book into a screenplay.  Talk about trying to transcend forms of text!

There is also a quote in the movie from this lecture by a famous playwright that Charlie attends where he says ”

…and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character. ”

Which sort of sucks for Charlie because he whole play is based on a voice overs, and the whole movie about the play that he is trying to write is a voice over.

If you’ve watched the movie this post probably makes sense.  If you havn’t, stop being confused and watch the movie so it will make sense to you too. 

By the way Dr. Campbell was going on about the 1949 version of Little Woman, I thought it would be something that could contend with “Punch Drunk Love” or “Marie Antoinette” for the most worthless movie ever.  But I was pleasantly surprised!  (I won’t be at the screening tomorrow so I watched it today) I think the LeRoy version of Little Woman had a lot of really good things going on.  Okay, the use of music, weather, and scenery to relate to the plot was extremely cheesy at best.  And Elizabeth Taylor as Amy was obviously insane.  She was tremendously awful.  But besides that, I really had little to complain about.  I don’t know that much about movies–maybe it’s not technically up to par or something, but I really loved the portrayal of the characters and their interactions with one another (again, with the exception of Amy).  Joe was no Katherine Hepburn, but I thought she was much more realistic, in an unrefined way.  And younger.  The characters were generally more believable. The 1949 version I think really captured the fact that they are just kids.  The girls have these high aspirations and standards for themselves, but they are just kids. 

 I enjoyed the chemistry between Laurie and Jo too.  It was lighthearted and jovial with some subtle deep meanings behind it–I could really see the complicated web of emotions that was going on between them–their friendship, Laurie falling for her, her uncertainty and general avoidance of romance and growing up, etc.  The characters and their interactions aren’t one dimensional, and I saw the varying levels of personality in this version of Little Woman.

Beth was adorable too.  I didn’t like Beth in the book or the first movie; but she seemed like an actual human in this movie.

Can I just say, my favorite quote from the movie was that random weird guy who asked Jo to dance.  She said that she wasn’t fond of dancing, and he replied with the goofiest grin imaginable, “I’m enthusiastic for it!”

Wow.

Also–the BEST character was Sophie.  I mean, what was her deal?  I just couldn’t figure her out.  She was great.

And of course the ending.  For those of you who havn’t seen the screening yet, I won’t give it way, but oh boy.  That was beautiful.  Just beautiful.

I didn’t get a chance to watch the Academy awards because I was doing about 30 hours worth of an Arabic midterm (and it’s doubtful I would have watched them anyway–too much clapping) but I was catching up on everyone’s blogs like a good student might and I came across a listing of all the awards.  I don’t know that much about real films and actors, because I’m relatively uncultured, but let me tell you, I know my animated films, I’ve got all my Disney movies memorized, and Happy Feet was just awful.  It’s pretty difficult to screw up a film with singing, dancing, AND cute penguins, but Happy Feet managed to do just that. 

It started out tolerable enough; adorable animals, cookie-cut plot–it seemed like it was going to do really nice, entertaining, predictable things.  And then they threw in all the political bullshit “oh my gosh save the planet” oh my gosh let me turn my brain off and watch a cute animated film without having to deal with liberal global warming propaganda.  Can’t I just watch some dancing penguins without having to listen to the voice of the Green Party?

On the other hand, Cars!  was amazing.  I added the exclaimation point because that’s how I say the title every time I mention it, because it gets me excited to think about such a fantastic work of film.  “Cars!”  Cars!  I love Cars!  That was the most beautiful animated movie ever!  It was completely captivating!  I could not tear my eyes from the screen!  I’ve never been so convinced of the obvious personality of such lifeless objects as cars.  Cars!  And you know what was the best part about Cars!, now that I really think about it?

It was basically the animated anti-environmentalist movie.  Yeah fossil fuels!

I have no faith in the Academy Awards.