Welcome, ENG 1131, Section 1801 students, to the blog supplement to our Fall 2012 semester course. As you'll recall from both the introductory class and the syllabus outline, each student will be required to post on this blog once a week in response to course readings, discussions, and screenings. In order to post you will need a gmail account. Once you send to me your gmail addresses (but NOT passwords) I, as the blog administrator, will assign posting privileges to students. You will then be able to access the blog through your gmail account and post at your convenience.
For this week's post I would encourage you to consider the film we watched last night, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) in relation to your recent readings from Critical Terms for Media Studies and Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Attempt to answer some or even all of the following questions:
-- McLuhan writes of the power of the camera "to be everywhere and to interrelate things." How is this concept made manifest in Blow-Up? How does the main character bring disparate elements, events, and people together through his photography? How does the main character exercise power over the world through photography, and how is that power undermined over the course of the film?
-- How does Blow-Up depict what McLuhan identifies as the photographic (and perhaps cinematic) camera's tendency to "turn people into things"? What does the film depict as the consequences of such a transformation?
-- Though photography is often associated with a pure "capturing" of the external world without adding, subtracting, or revising it, McLuhan writes of photography as a producer of illusion or fantasy. In what ways does the main character of Blow-Up produce both documentation and illusionism through his work as a photographer?
-- In his essay "Image" from Critical Terms, W.J.T. Mitchell writes of "contradictory tendencies" arising from the relation between images and media. Such contradictions include images as representational or referential yet also abstract, as strictly defined yet also jumbled. Where can such contradictions in the possibilities of the image be seen in Blow-Up, and what do they suggest about the nature of photography, cinema, and any media that disseminates information through images?
-- Mitchell writes, "[A]ll images, no matter how public and concrete their staging, are mental things, in the sense that they depend upon creatures with minds to perceive them." How is perception portrayed in Blow-Up? How is the main character's perception of the world around him, of his relation to other people, of his understanding of photography, challenged by the mystery he uncovers in the images produced in the park?
The main character exercises power over the world by controlling the fashion models and making them do what he wants. The models don't question him but do exactly as they are told. Once he takes a picture of Jane in the park his control over everything changes. After looking at the photo very closely Thomas figures out that there is more going on than just two people embracing. It actually turns out to be a murder. Then closer to the end he realizes that he can't control everything around him and becomes a little humble. This is especially expressed when the mimes are playing tennis and the ball bounces out of the court and they look at him expecting him to pick the ball up. He picks it up and throws it. At this point he is accepting that he is just a normal person like everyone else and does not stand on top of them. Blow-up shows that it is easy when photographing to "turn people into things". As Thomas photographs the models he does not interact with them what so ever, only to move them into another pose. He treats them as if they were manikins being manipulated. Thomas's perception of the world is so narrow until he uncovers the murder in his photos. That challenges him because he is so used to being in control. He always knows exactly what he is photographing and what it must look like. But when he went out that day in the park everything changed. I think he was tired of photographing the same, old, still models. He wanted action and real life. I think he felt like something was missing. That is just what he found in the park and it ended up waking his senses about his own life.
ReplyDeleteBlow-Up is ambiguous in many ways, especially in regards to the camera’s treatment of the characters within the scenes. Frequently, new characters are introduced who bare little or no relevance to the plot at all. In this way, these characters function as part of the composition of the image created by the camera. The people have become objects rather than becoming the central subject of the film. We see this effect in play in the way that the lead character is introduced. A group of down-trodden men are gathered together and none of them is highlighted to the viewer’s attention. Only later do we become aware that one of them is the character who will act as our guide through the sequence of images.
ReplyDeleteThe people within Blow-Up are often passive, with the exception of a few central characters, invoking the viewer to draw their own perception of the person’s function. If we consider the role of the painter, we have little interaction with this character yet, for a brief moment he is brought into the spotlight and occasionally referred to. However, as with many films, background characters help to create atmosphere. This can be clearly seen in the party scene where the photographer goes to tell his friend about the corpse and we see many characters milling around. In many ways people do function as though they are being purposefully arranged for a photograph, a creative yet representational image is created for our consideration.
If we consider the content of the film which looks closely at this aspect of photography we see the consequences of turning people into things. The photographer uses the power of capturing a specific time over a range of different people. He elevates himself to a status of superiority. This reflects in his treatment of all the models in which he works with. It can even be seen with his encounter with the woman in the park. He took photographs in the park of all kinds of things and no boundary was drawn between the objects he captured and the intimate moment of the couple. They were simply part of the scenery. This is further emphasised as the central character himself is made part of the scenery, turned into an object, as the camera fades out to the credits.
Throughout the film, Blow-Up shows scenes where things seem to stand still as if like a photograph. In scenes like the Rock concert in the back alley to when the mimes freeze in anticipation of him throwing the “ball” back to them, the people and time seem to stop as David Hemmings’ character passes through or around them. The people are not really there to him. They are just the clutter distracting him from his goals. A consequence of this is that he tends to treat the people in photograph or sort of pose for the camera as less them him; they are his play things, his toys. For example in the park scene, he feels because it is his job to photograph people he can photograph anyone he wants no matter the situation or even if the people want to be photograph. It can sort of be related to today’s paparazzi.
ReplyDeleteMcLuhan’s idea of photography as the producer of illusion or fantasy is illustration to be true in main character of Blow-Up. The photographer in the film gives himself the ability to add meaning or create meaning in photos that were never there to begin with. How he treats the people in front of the camera and how he photographs them delivers a meaning to the audience that may not have been there in the first place. The film shows us this through the way Thomas, the photographer, takes his fashion pictures as well as his real life photos. At first he sees the couple in the park as just that, but as he continues to distort and redefine what is in the photos he says he saw a murder he never saw.
Photography's novelty in simply capturing and depicting images is challenged in the movie Blow-Up as the main character is forced to revise his sense of entitlement as a photographer. In his fashion photography the photos are straightforward and reflect the direct "showing" nature of the camera. He had apparently not found anything to attract his interest until he photographed a couple in the park, and then studied the film of them in order to piece together a more complex event- in this case a murder. The vital characteristic of a camera is that it can shoot things from a defined point of view. This allows room for illusion because the event may not be portrayed objectively, and thus our perception through the POV is completely suggestible. The main character's initial belief that he intervened in the murder at the park is invalidated when he focuses on a blur in one of the pictures and realized that it's the man's body. This unfamiliar moment of defeat exemplifies the power of illusion in media.
ReplyDeleteThe ending scene seemed contradictory in message because the moment of clarity about the main character's relationship with the mimes is then followed by uncertainty when the sound of the tennis ball hitting the court is heard, and then the main character himself fades away. The use of this as the final scene left motif of illusion hanging in front of the audience.
Blow-Up reveals the tendency of photographs to “turn people into things.” The main character, Thomas, treats people as objects that need to be manipulated so that he can get the shot he wants. This is especially evident with the modeling pictures he takes. The poses that he makes the models do are not natural in any way. A consequence of this is that Thomas is able to use his photography to create illusions. His ability to create illusion through photography gives him a sense of superiority to everyone he knows. Thomas feels that he is invincible in a way, and is able to call the shots on anything and everything. This quickly changes when Thomas takes the photographs in the park. When Thomas develops the pictures he took of the couple in the park, he finds that while he was trying to photograph one thing, he unintentionally photographed another—a murder. This realization that photographs can capture more than what the photographer intended makes Thomas realize that his perception of the world has been incredibly small up until now. Before these pictures, Thomas felt he was in charge of everything and nothing and nobody could take that away from him. After looking at the pictures, he realizes that nothing is ever stable in life. The impact of this experience is that it makes Thomas more humble than he had been before. He begins to treat people as equals rather than inferior objects, which is evidenced by his behavior towards the mimes at the end of the movie. Rather than blowing off the mimes when they ask him to get the tennis ball in the field as he would have in the beginning of the movie, Thomas retrieves the ball and throws it back indicating that he is more accepting of people and respects them more than he did before.
ReplyDeleteIn Blow-Up, the photographer believes that he is always in control of everything around him, and his camera is the tool that allows him to do this. When he does his fashion shots in the studio, this might be true, but that's not the real world. He later goes out into the park and uncovers the man in the bushes. It's then that he realizes that he is not always in control of everything, especially when he's taking these "action" shots. When he sees this, his big head is brought back down to size.
ReplyDeleteThe photographer produces both illusionism and documentation in his photography work. Illusionism is produced by the way that he controls whoever is the subject of his art to create illusions. An example of this would be with the models in his studio, who are all dressed up with gaudy outfits and caked-on makeup. He can create whatever illusion he wants with these "dolls", because he is the master and they are his puppets. However, when it comes to documentation photography, or at least the one instance of documentation in the park, he becomes more meek than before. Since he realizes he can't control everything in documentation photography, he comes to see himself as less superior than previously reckoned. This change, as stated prior to this post by almost every other contributor, can be best illustrated by the photographer's interaction with the mimes at both the beginning in the end of the movie. At the beginning, he sees himself as better than them, and by the end, he participates in their follies.
The photographer in Blow-Up consistently creates illusions in his studio while working with the models. In first scene when he's shooting the model, he uses sexuality as a way get the expressions he wants out of her to portray those emotions onto the photographs. Another example of his illusory work is when he is photographing the multiple models on set with the extravagant outfits and makeup. While illusionary photographs seem to be the core of his work, the main character also shoots documentary scenes, such as the one at the park which certainly grasp his attention and he emerges himself into these photographs rather than the ones from his work with illusion.
ReplyDeleteThrough his work in photography, the main character in the film has attained a sense of entitlement, which has led him to perceive himself as better than those around him. This is shown when he is in the studio with the models dictating their every move. He seems to view the world around him as a stage he directs according to his wants and needs. However; once he realizes what he has photographed in the scene at the park he begins to realize there are uncontrollable events happening around him. Discovering the murder photographs certainly alter his perception of the world around him causing him to become less narcissistic and narrow-minded by the end of the movie, as depicted in the tennis scene with the mimes when he joins them in their illusionary game.
In the film Blow Up, the concept of the camera being everywhere and interrelating things was clearly manifest. With so many point of view shots, the viewer was able to see the world through the eyes of the main character. Who clearly had a keen eye for detail as a photographer. Elements were brought in to play by the main characters keen eye that we saw through the camera.
ReplyDeleteThrough photography, elements that were invisible to the innocent bystander taking voyeur pictures were brought to the surface. The cameras ability to capture and freeze a moment in time revealed the true nature of the lovers in the park. Instead of being two lovers for a day in the park, it became apparent that it was one lover, and one woman setting him up for his death. Without the camera being controlled by the main character, we would have never found these things to be real.
The camera in this film bring to light things that would be unknown. The camera filming through the eyes of the main character, as well as the camera controlled by the main character. The combination of the two brings out elements invisible to the untrained eye, and sheds light upon the true nature of characters whose intentions at first seemed innocent.