OMG A MAN IN MY FRONT YARD. read on to find out who he is, why he is there and what happens next!
This week in class we were looking at other people’s blogs. Besides wishing I had made an amazing diagram of film style and narrative I am fairly content with the CONTENT in my blog. I think this week’s entry will be dictated by the movies we have been watching during class.
This week between the blood and the tiffany lamp construction I’ve had school. It is the place I go when I’m not living my life, a calm pace and breath of fresh air, we sat in a dark studio and watched Pleasantville, submerged completely in shadow and craning to see the movie from behind the projector. Ah photography, you are quite the subject.
This was interesting in the context of the cyclical way Pierre Bourdieu suggests we understand texts. Pleasentville I have been watching since I was a child. On an old VHS tape we recorded the entire movie (with some of the adds removed) from the TV. I’m used to this film from my perspective as a eleven year old. And curious to watch the reflexive effect happen so overtly. The film I can now read with three years of film theory shoved down my throat, plus a broader knowledge of history. I see to kill a mocking bird, I see the apartheid, I see middle America and the consumerist society of the 90s. I see the idea of the same problems and different mask in every decade. And I can see how a theory like that of Richard Dyer in Heavenly which postulates that stars who function as particular social categories often find that this image projected to the public is off kilter in comparison to their real life persona makes watching Rhys Witherspoon and Toby Maguire as teenagers rather a strange experience.
I walked around my suburb today looking for something. There are lots of deep laneways to get lost in. I walked quite far down one today; they usually come to an end. This one kept going, it smelt like piss and there were used towels and paint everywhere. The sun was searing off the high tin shed walls which narrowed the further it went. Too small for a car to fit, I saw a bunch of stray cats mewing and then fleeing on my intrusion. The lane sort of turned a bend, I was walking faster in hope of finding an end, surely just around the corner, and these always end with a crossing to another road. This corner went forever; vines had burnt against the walls making a webby tunnel, which crackled as I brushed hastily past. Covering my ears for fear of unwanted, eight legged intruders trying to lay nests in my brain. A dog snapped at my heels from under a particularly scarce fence which made me jump, the dog snarled and I broke into a run. What if the lane hits a dead end and the dog gets out and mauls me to death and five weeks later someone will find my charred remains burnt from the reflection of the sun on the hot tin. I stopped. Someone had painted at the very dead end of this mammoth lane a face, laughing on the very last fence. All in red and crudely painted, broken glass littered the ground. What a horrible, nightmarish place. I turned around to face an almost vertigo effect, the lane stretching out before me to walk back past the dog, the spiders and the piss. The suburbs are awesome.
I don’t even want to write about this but it keeps coming up so I guess I will. Suckerpunch. Is it a sexist piece of crap or a liberating romp for women? You know what, it doesn’t fucking matter. All this infantilism talk came around with Lolita (both iterations) as well, and omg shockhoror that actually was about a paedophile (well, a nymphette lover ) you know what society, we have been wanting to have sexy time with young people forever BECAUSE biology dictates you towards wanting someone who has the best chance of making a healthy baby. Granted we should be able to be aware and thus change these desires to more socially acceptable. Big eyes, red cheeks, soft lips and a young face- its not infantilism it is just sexualizing.
Articles that keep on keepin’ on:
http://www.thevine.com.au/entertainment/movie-reviews/sucker-punch-_-movie-review20110405.aspx?s_rid=age:rainbowstrip:box3:campaign3:content2:05-04:sucker%20punch%20-%20stupid,%20offensive%20and%20sexist:suckerpunchreview-stupid,offensiveandsexist
BEST PART:
Here's a different way to experience Sucker Punch: open a bunch of tabs; in one, go to YouTube, load up Leeroy Jenkins; load up Suicide Girls in another tab; then take a bunch of downers and flick furiously between the two tabs while you play theGodzilla and Spawn soundtracks.
Then punch yourself in the face. Particularly if you're a woman - that gets Zack Snyder really hot, baby ;)
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/incoherent-fantasies/Content?oid=2635095
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/browning-defends-sexist-sucker-punch-20110403-1cszf.html
http://media.theage.com.au/entertainment/pick-of-the-flicks/pick-of-the-flicks-manic-manga-music-video-2290788.html
This week I’ve been watching Freddy Mercury documentaries, Twin Peaks, Season 11 of the Simpsons, My wife and Kids, Glowpinksah on youtube, Playing titan quest, eating stir-fry and reading about neurosexism and tiffany lamps. And you know, I can’t really think of anything to say. Over stimulated, over mediated OVER REMEDIATED. This shit is whack.
The man was just my landlord snuffling about. thanks for staying with me. :)
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Bibliography
Bourdieu, P. 'Outline of a Theory of Practice'Cambridge: Cambridge University
R Dyer Heavenly bodies: Film stars and society - 2004 - books.google.com
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