Surrealism

Surrealism is a movement that became very popular between the 1920s and 1960s, especially in France. Surrealists were intrigued with the subconscious and the endless possibilities that the imagination could portray through art. They valued Sigmund Freud’s work with the subconscious and dream analysis as a way to “liberate the imagination.” Surrealism presented a way of escaping the everyday mundane parts of life and exploring the endless possibilities of the imagination.

Similar to the way a video editors in today’s day and age would juxtapose two contrasting images to create meaning, surrealists believed that combining two elements not normally found together could create “startling effects.”  In 1918 a poet by the name of Pierre Reverdy stated, “The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be -- the greater its emotional power and poetic reality."

            Surrealism still has its impact in movies to this day. When I think of surrealism, I think of the “Magical World of Disney.” Everything about Disney is surreal and fantastical. They create these dream-like or fantastical worlds, which pull the audience out of the mundane reality of everyday life and into the surreal. In “Alice in Wonderland”, Alice goes into a surreal world after falling through a rabbit hole. Tim Burton is notorious for creating surreal settings and characters in his films. Newer examples of movies like “Avatar” contain parts of surrealism where the protagonist enters a completely different world by falling asleep in a “chamber.”  All these movies would not be considered “Surrealist’ movies but contain elements of “Surrealism” in them.

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is a movie that was on a list of more recent films in the category of “Surrealist.” In this movie, a lady named Clementine falls for a guy named Joel. They fall in love, but after a nasty fight, Clementine decides to have all her memories of Joel erased.  The most recent (and in my opinion the best) movie with surrealistic elements is the movie “Inception,” which dives into the concept of the sub-conscious and distinguishing between dreams and reality.  In this movie, the dreams are created through imagination of the individual’s sub-conscious. There is a girl in the movie, who is recruited to build the dream levels, and when she is first learning how, she experiments with the laws of physics and learns about weird paradoxes that separate the dreams between being surreal and reality. Eventually the dreams become so realistic, the individuals had to bring something with them into the dream so they know they are in a dream and not reality.

Sense in Censorship

There is and always will be a never-ending battle between those who are for and those against censorship. Everywhere we look we find censorship. Censorship is in movies, television, video games and music. We live in a country that has constantly fought for freedom: freedom of speech, religion, assembly and petition.  Because of those values instilled in Americans, there will always be an opposition to censorship. People will strongly rebel against censorship because they feel they are trying to uphold those freedoms. So, where did censorship in movies begin and why was it instituted?

Censorship in movies was a reaction to what was becoming popularized and consistently shown in movies. Since the creation of fiction movies, filmmakers continued to push the envelope of what they could show in their films. It all began with May Irwin’s “First Kiss” where there is a man kissing a women several times. Of course there would be contrasting reactions to this. Some felt that this public display of affection was disgusting. On the other side, there were many imitations of the scene produced soon after. Like everything over time, things began to progress. Filmmakers realized that sexuality on film is what people wanted to see and that is where the money making would be. Once again, filmmakers pushed the envelope of what they would show in their films. Sexually driven movies began as “peep shows,” eventually emerging into scenes with full-scale orgies like the one in “The Ten Commandments.” Eventually, iconic male and female actors arose as sexual Hollywood superstars. These stars would become the cash crop for the film industry.                                                                                                                         1

                                                                                                                                   

Throughout the progression of graphic sexuality, violence and language in the movies, a demand for censorship sprang forth. Some people felt movies had gotten out of control and were glamorizing immoral behavior. From this objection to the immorality being displayed in movies came the Hays Code. Will Hays wanted to preview every movie before it was released. This regulation on films only caused filmmakers to try even harder to push the limits of things they would show in their films. The Hays code was adopted and enforced by the Motion Picture Association of America until 1968, where it was replaced by the MPAA rating system. 

The MPAA rating system attempted to please both crowds—those that pushed the limits and those who weren’t comfortable with the pushing. However, even with the rating system there are disagreements about what is acceptable within each particular rating. I believe that we can agree to disagree. I believe the rating system is a good replacement for complete censorship. I believe parents should be able to know what kind of subjects a movie has, as well as the filmmaker has the right to express freely those subjects.

Since the earliest films, filmmakers have continued to push the limits of what is shown on film. Because we live in a world whose consistently pushing the limits of morality and what is acceptable, censorship will always be strongly opposed. People in America will forever hold on to the idea of freedom of speech. Censorship is oppression to those who believe in their freedom of speech. There will always be those who want to censor what is portrayed in films, and those who want freedom of expression. Because of these conflicting interests, there will always be a conflict over censorship.

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Early Cinema Achievements

          

                      In a world full of computer generated and special effects, trick cinematography, fast editing and complicated story lines, it is hard to imagine how revolutionary the early cinema achievements truly were. We might look at the earliest two-minute silent films of people dancing in the yard and think, “What’s so amazing about that?”  But the majority of the audience had never seen moving images before.  In order to understand how amazing these silent films really were, we must place ourselves in the time period of the audience. We must erase our minds of the technology used in today’s filmmaking in order to better understand some of the ingenious breakthroughs that were made throughout the 1800s.

            Before the first silent films came out, there were only still images.  It was Peter Mark Roget who first noted the “Persistence of Vision” phenomenon in 1820.  Roget discovered that there is a certain length of time that the retina will obtain an image. Because of this “Persistence of Vision,” when there are several photographs taken in sequence and shown in rapid succession, the eye and brain fill in the gaps in between each image and creates motion.  Soon after, there were several inventions that would demonstrate the effects of Persistence of Vision.  The first breakthrough that paved the way for motion pictures was the zoopraxiscope.  Other inventions included the thaumatrope, zoetrope and kinetiscope.  All these inventions brought to life the still images by creating movement in between them.  Another person who proved persistence of vision was Eadweard Muybridge.  In 1872, a man by the name of Leland Standtford, hired Eadweard Muybridge to figure out a way to get a sequence of photographs showing his horse running.  Eadweards set up several cameras in a row attached to wires that would snap pictures as the horse ran by. The end result was a horse running and picking up all four feet in full stride.

            Now that you have a better understanding of the technology available during these silent films, pretend that you have never seen movement between two images before and are seeing a motion picture for the first time. You pay money to see the motion picture, with no idea what it is you are going to see.  When the film starts, images on the screen have motion as if they have come to life right before your eyes.  It is like going to a magic show and being completely dumb founded by the illusion the magician has created in front of you.  A train on the screen is coming towards you, and you wonder if it is going to come through the screen and crash into the audience.

Because audiences were thrilled with the idea of seeing motion pictures and their popularity increased, the quantity and length of motion pictures increased too.  The first films, called “actualities,” were non-fiction.  As people grew tired of these actualities, the idea of writing fictitious stories and capturing them on film exploded.  Over the years there were several major advancements in motion picture films: they developed new editing styles, added cinematography elements, included special effects, added sound and color.

People in the early stages of motion pictures claimed it was a dead end hobby. Well over a hundred years later and thanks to those early cinema pioneers, that dead end hobby is still a major form of entertainment throughout the world--and will probably be for generations to come.    


Images courtesy of  inventors.about.com, www2.brooklyn.liu.edu, courses.ncssm.edu

Dances with Stereotypes

As I was reading a chapter on Native Americans in film from the book America on Film, I was disturbed, though not shocked by the treatment of Native Americans in Hollywood films.  I say “not shocked” because the treatment of Native Americans since the earliest settlers and founding of the country is certainly disturbing.  

According to the book, European explorers considered the native people to be “less than human” and “godless heathens.”  They stripped them of their land and forced them to live in unfamiliar and undesired territories.  The Manifest Destiny allowed early settlers to justify the stealing of Native American land and the murdering of the Native American people.  These settlers created stereotypes of the natives as being “ blood-thirsty savages” and portrayed them as “aggressive, violent and demonic, bent on destroying white settlers, including women and children.”  These stereotypes were created to stir up fear and justify the cold-blooded murdering of the natives--simply because they stood in the way of the settlers acquiring the land. The other stereotype given to the natives was “”benign and noble savages”, merely a minor upgrade from the “blood-thirsty savage.”  It was, and is still derogatory because it suggests that although the natives were noble and helpful, they were still savages who would not assimilate to the early settler’s demands.

It is throughout the nation’s and Hollywood filmmaking history to glorify white people while oppressing and stereotyping people of color. The early settlers didn’t care for the Native American’s dignity--why should Hollywood?  Many of Hollywood’s early films were racist, so why would they do anything but reinforce the stereotypical “less than human” Native American?  According to the book, Hollywood has a formula for creating heroic, white male, super hero role models.  Well, every super hero needs a villain.  Since it was the Native Americans who got in the white settlers way and tried to prevent them from obtaining their destiny, it only made sense to portray them as the villain.   What better way to instill the ideology that white represents good and color represents evil than through using Native Americans as the antagonists?  Film was meant to entertain its audience and, because Hollywood companies were large corporations only interested in making lots of money, the films were ultimately meant to entertain the wealthy.  Who made up the majority of the wealthy class throughout the early part of the 20^th century?  White people.  

Hence, the rise of the great American Western movie, the genre that notoriously glorified the white, male super hero stereotype, while portraying the Native American as either being violent and savage or noble and savage. These films purposefully had close up shots of the white, male protagonist, in contrast to far shots of the Native Americans, signifying whom the  “good guys” and “bad guys” are. They also misrepresented and over exaggerated the customs and culture of Native Americans for exotic appeal and entertainment value. The films often would not even have Native American actors in them. Whites would wear make up in order to have the appearance of Native Americans. Sometimes films would cast Latinos to play the roles of Native Americans.  Eventually when Native Americans had roles in these Westerns, they would exemplify the “noble savage” role and were always supporting, not lead roles.

 It wasn’t until much later in films like Dances with Wolves, would we begin to see more accurate depictions of historical events and attempts to change the “bad guy” Native American image that Hollywood had painted throughout most of the first half of the 20^th century. Even though this film caused the audience to contemplate who the “bad guy” really is, the hero is still played by a white, male actor, once again underlining and adhering to Hollywood’s golden rule. 

Images Courtesy

Pageshubpages.com/hub/The-Interpretation-of-Native-American-Indians-in-Hollywood, www.manataka.org, wikimedia.org, foodcourtlunch.com, freemoviesonline.com