Pastiche

     One of the key terms I got from the "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" essay was the concept of pastiche as distinct from parody or historical fiction. Pastiche has a quality of imitation without the mockery that is implied in parody. I see this in many pieces of art today, there is a sense of nostalgia in much postmodern art, which to me seems a little antithetical to the pull away from this sense of differentiation between high-brow art and art for the masses. I suppose much of pastiche actually makes older pieces of art more accessible or relatable to a wider audience. 

I recently came across a painting from a local artist that was a reproduction (or pastiche, I suppose) of Van Gogh's "At Eternity's Gate". This painting, though had a few alterations and was titled "At Eternity's Gate in the Time of COVID". The subject is modernized to a healthcare worker wearing crocs, but it is unmistakably the within Van Gogh's thick stroked style and color pallet. I thought this was a particularly postmodern piece of art for these reasons and because of the commentary it holds. It uses this sense of nostalgia to inform topical issues and document a pervasive and very current feelings regarding the state of the pandemic. I wouldn't consider this parody as it isn't mocking the original piece or time period, the style is just a vehicle to convey these ideas.

"At Eternity's Gate" by Vincent Van Gogh

"At Eternity's Gate in the Time of COVID" by Patrick Ripp

"Common Sense" aka the dominant ideology

 I thought representations of the dominant ideology were really interesting in this week's documentaries. Starting with "The Thin Blue Line", Morris' main issue is the automatic assumption that a sixteen year old couldn't possibly kill a police officer and thereby leading to the wrongful imprisonment of Randall Adams. He very succinctly summed up the dynamics of the town where the shooting happened as well as the preconceived notions that assured Harris' innocence. This made the whole film (for me anyway) kind of a nail biter. I didn't know what to believe with all the conflicting circumstantial evidence until close to the end. Of course then there was what was essentially a confession that sealed the fate of each of the social agents this story follows in my mind. 

Similarly, I had no reason to disbelieve Michael Moore's experience of his hometown until I read critiques that point out how much of the history he either glosses over or completely shapes by juxtaposing certain shots in his sequence. This was eye opening to me as I still have this belief that documentarians should try to convey a sequence of events accurately. Of course he probably wouldn't have done as well at the box office if the film showed more of the nuances within the dismantling of all of these factories. Of course, there is no one truth and there's a level of subjectivity involved, but I wonder about the ethics of that particular representation. 

Week 13: Believing Is Seeing

 Kali Spencer

Richard Simpson

ENGL 342

11/17/20

Believing Is Seeing

Over the course of the semester we have time and time again been asked to challenge our notion of what constitutes a documentary and by extension what constitutes a fair representation of the truth. This week’s films and essays were no different. Drawing from some of our earlier discussions in class on the writing of Bill Nichols, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris (1988) and Roger & Me by Michael Moore (1989) ask us the examine how editing techniques and narrative structures can affect the audience’s interpretation of a story. 

While the films fall into differing modes of documentary, The Thin Blue Line being reflexive and Roger & Me falling under the categories of expository and at times interactive documentary, they both have a certain viewpoint/argument they wish to articulate to the viewer.  In The Thin Blue Line, this is achieved through Morris’ use of post-structuralist film-making techniques and an “interrogation of the technical and verbal paradigms of innocence constructed throughout the film” (Curry, p.153). This can be seen in verbal monologues and newspaper graphics but also in cinematic techniques like psychological images and sound effects. These techniques remind me of Pudovkin's approach to cinema where the filmmaker guides the viewer in the direction they want to go.

 

Roger & Me uses a different strategy. At first, it appears to be an interactive documentary with its inclusion of subject interviews and the filmmaker's “openly acknowledged and limited understanding”. However, as the film progresses it situates itself firmly in the expository mode of documentary. Once this is established Moore begins to use the editing strategy of  "rhetorical continuity". This means that images shown on screen are there to back any verbal statements made by Moore. The combination of the narration, certain music selections, voiceovers, and images cause the viewers to extrapolate a clear cut argument which seeks to indict corporate malfeasance, by “constantly demonstrating the social and corporate elite's naive or thoughtless conceptions of working-class social realities” (Bernstein, p.8). It almost reminds me in some ways of the theory of intervals, just with more elements. My only concern with this is that technique has very little attention drawn to it and makes me wonder how an editor like Dziga Vertov would react to its use. 

I believe that a lot of the critique surrounding these films is for this exact reason. The audience is left completely in the dark on the editing strategies used, the manipulation of the timeline, and the underlying psychological messages hidden within certain images/scenes. This feels, in some ways, deceitful.

Jeff Holley

ENGL 342

Prof. Richard Simpson

November 17, 2020 

Believing is Seeing

There is little doubt that documentary filmmaking tells a story, and that story may or may not be biased and subject to compacted, highly edited slant that intends to sway the audience one way or the other. Filmmaker Wiseman states, “I think my films are fair—[and] accurate accounts of the experiences I had when making the film rather than an imposition of a preconceived point of view.” Similarly, in Roger and Me, filmmaker Michael Moore has a story already panned out since the beginning of his filming process. His small guy performance against the giant GM chairman who is all-powerful takes this journalistic symbolism style to another level, mostly fabrication. However, the point is that it is significant because “he is fashioning a highly personal document, not a dispassionate academic treatment of a complex subject” in such a way as to make the filmmaker likable and the chairman “Roger” the villain. Moore’s treatment of journalism is undoubtedly unconventional. 

In The Thin Blue Line documentary, the non-fictional story tells a tale of real convicts, interrogations, and how the police in Dallas exact revenge by charging “the wrong guy” for the murder of a police officer. According to the film and how it portrays the fateful night events, Adams said he was asleep in a hotel room and couldn’t have been the one to kill the officer. Subsequently, his death sentence and subsequent interviews take place at the prison. At times the scene transitions to the electric chair, while Adams steadfastly continues to declare his innocence. 

Morris effectively portrays how the events differed from the narrative that convicted and sentenced to death Adams. His construction of “intersubjectivity in the footsteps scene—a reenactment depicting the final steps of the murdered officer, shows a different point of view that leaves considerable doubt that Randall Adams was innocent of the brutal officer slaying. 

The “inconvenient truth” defies telling a story that sometimes the information we want to hear isn’t the story that should be heard. Nobody likes a cop killer, but what if Adams didn’t kill the officer that night? Would the system be content with justice if justice wasn’t served? And how a justice be served if the “truth” isn’t the truth after all?

                                           Works Cited

Richard Bernstein, “Roger and Me: Documentary? Satire? Or Both?” (1990)
Harlan Jacobson, “Michael and Me” (1990)
Renee R. Curry, “Errol Morris’ Construction of Innocence in The Thin Blue Line” (1995) 

The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris (1988) Roger and Me, Michael Moore (1989) 

 

 Jeff Holley

ENGL 342

Prof. Richard Simpson

November 10, 2020

Week Twelve

In documentary films like Tongues United (1990), gay black men are presented as stereotypically oppressed among white gay men because they are "sexualized by being viewed as hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine," leading to the reality of such an "infinite authentic situation." 

The documentary film Sink or Swim (1990) takes on a different approach to narration. The "girl" who is the daughter born in 1953, has a younger sister and brother whose father-daughter relationship has many nuclear typical family issues. The narration is in the third person, oddly but sets the stage of how the film portrays this relationship from the girl's childhood to adulthood and how the girl's father summarizes his understanding of the hierarchy that caused so much trauma in the lives of the family. This film, for me, contradicts the bland, stereotypical public awareness of the word "documentary" the facetiously describes "the art of talking a great deal during a film, with a commentary imposed from the outside, to say nothing and show nothing" Louis Marcorelles, (Minh-ha, 95). In reality, these are "powerful living stories, infinite authentic situations. There are no retakes. [where] The stage is thus no more no less than life itself" (Minh-ha, 94). 

            It's essential to come to some realization that through the absence of imposed meaning or the denial of such, that documentary film is in itself an avenue that "creates a space in which meaning remains fascinated by what escapes and exceeds" reality and truth (Minh-ha, 105).

~Jeff