C I N e B u D S

it looks like...an execution in a death-penalty chamber

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:16:26 GMT

Here we take a look at how an execution looks like. Not by a firing-squad, not outside, and not by terrorists. State-controlled, indoors, executions in a death-penalty chamber. Since most commentators said that Saddam's execution looked like a job done by terrorists (and I think their reaction shows [[how grainy footage equals cruelty today]]), I immediately wondered: "what does an execution look like, anyway?" My hunch is that it's going to look horrific, regardless of who does it. But the initial reaction to Saddam seemed to suggest that there would have been a more visually acceptable way to hang him.

I'm not the first one to wonder, either. As far back as 1928, a daring reporter secreted a miniature film camera [img[http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42406000/jpg/_42406921_camera_museum_203.jpg]] (quite a technological wonder by itself) to an execution to show what really went on inside a death-penalty chamber (where's that film?). I myself do not remember seeing a real hanging before, or any execution either. Fictional lynchings, yes (if you want to catch up on lynching techniques, //Hang 'Em High// is a good place to start). I've seen photographs of an empty electric chair, or prisoners walking to the chamber (but usually it stops there). About the most realistic reenactment I've seen is the straight-on, eerily undramatic short Edison film for the execution of Czolgosz (that's in [[the gruesome spectacle of death]]).
[[Slate has an explainer on how a hanging takes place|http://www.slate.com/id/2156656/]], with details on how many feet the body should drop, and what technique is used in Iran. But no images, beyond a link to a grainy image of Washington State [[execution room| http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/walla1.jpg]]. More photographs of gallows can be found at [[http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/|http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/]].

After a little research around the web, I think we'd agree that in film at least an execution probably looks like this.

* [[execution of Japanese WW2 war criminal|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTTgXqfV8dE]] with technical comments. I'm sort of glad that we didn't get the shot of executioners taking the noose off Saddam's neck, I can hear the comments already...
* [[execution of Austrian WW2 war criminals|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgPsUytsLmY]], and the Austrian Nazi has that far-away, life-longing, dignified look on his face, wouldn't you say ? And what about the gruesome holding of the head (probably to prevent decapitation) at the end, pretty cruel looking, no ?
* [[execution of German WW2 war criminals in Germany, 1946|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DacWUQCGslY]]. Here everybody does a good job of looking impressively bureaucratic, bringing dignity of some sort to the whole proceedings -- and efficiency. But whoever shot this had a good eye for side-shots, such as
[img[http://cinebuds.online.fr/images/executionwomanlaughing.jpg]]
this woman laughing in between two executions
or
[img[http://cinebuds.online.fr/images/executionchaplaughing.jpg]]
this chap talking amiably with his friends, in between two rounds.
Even the guard
[img[http://cinebuds.online.fr/images/executionguardbored.jpg]]
is caught feeling a bit distracted and bored.
It's just hard to sustain dignity, you see.

Ignorance of representational codes may prove fatal ?

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:19:00 GMT

[[CBS reports|http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/04/national/main2329468.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2329468]] that a 10-year old boy has accidentally hanged himself after watching the now infamous footage of Saddam's hanging on TV. A sad play-reenactment. On the uncle's reaction, however, one could say more:
<<<
"I don't think he thought it was real. They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"
Julio Gustavo
Sergio Pelico's uncle
<<<
I doubt the child did not know. The uncle seems more confused about the power of TV images, and that confusion is pretty widespread among adults--if I judge by the fuddle around the notion of film realism, by the troubled responses to [[lonelygirl15]], or by the overall critical reaction to Saddam's hanging ([[how grainy footage equals cruelty today]]). The adult supposes the child did not know representational codes and therefore, because his most frequent use of TV is to watch fiction on it, all that is on TV is taken as fiction -- that any hanging, regardless of context, is staged, untrue, and therefore, not really harmful.
The same, albeit reversed, concept was at work in the the early part of the 20th century when films were analyzed: because it was on film, it was real (or had been when filmed). This lie, shamelessly exploited through advertising, is for instance behind the exploitation of the footage of the execution of anarchist Czolgosz (see [[the gruesome spectacle of death]]), and of countless other reenacted newsreels (or behind much of World War I film coverage), and in the 1920s it is a staple of exploitation tactics for historical romances. And then, back then, how cinema was supposed to ruin the youth of the world, imperil the white man's rule over colonies, and so on. Remember how Jack Johnson's fight films were banned: a black man shown winning, now that's dangerous...

Yes, there is a kind of [[violence that does not beget violence (Slate, nov. 3, 2006)]]: that's violence in films. After all, our brain uses so many images, every second, that either all of them have a bearing on our actions, or none of them. Cinema's influence is upon our imagination, not our actions. Our imagination, in turns, influences our actions, of course. Cinema's influence is at best indirect, but mixed with so many other influences...TV did not kill that kid: an accident, a slip, a real rope did.

what does that look like: the project

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:31:00 GMT

I'm sick and tired of reading that this //looked// like that, or that this //didn't look good//, and so on. I want to ask: what does it look like, anyway ? How do we know what anything looks like ? So I'll try to come up with visual catalogues on a few topics where I think anyone would be hard-pressed to know what it looks like -- a condition that however precludes ''no one'' from taking appearances for reality...

Google Image and Google Books will be my tools, at least for a first try. Maybe I'll ~YouTube a bit, too. To be continued...

Realism will come back to bite you

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:29:00 GMT

A story of the early days, for the showing of //Life of a New York Fireman// in New York:
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To enhance the realism of the fire scenes the operator was required to bend over, while turning the projector, and hold strips of colored gelatine in front of the lens for the purpose of coloring the scenes. While thus occupied, he felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find a stranger beside him.
"I just came up from my seat," said the man, indicating the orchestra, "to tell you that something's wrong down there. That film has been running all over me."
The operator, still with his hand at the crank, bent over the balcony railing to discover that the film was silently running into the audience below. Instantly the operator abandoned his color scheme and began pulling up his film as fast as one hand would let him. When the end was reached, the operator was shaking as he realized how easily the ending of the film could have been quite a different story, with real firemen in the building where only shadows had been carrying on thrilling adventures.
(Homer Croy tells this anecdote in //How Motion Pictures Are Made//, 1918, p. 60
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the brute idea of natural reality

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:26:00 GMT

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the very strange staging of Munro sending Magua to deliver a message to the next fort

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:26:00 GMT

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why Masai ?

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:26:00 GMT

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other examples of lying

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:25:00 GMT

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story consistency

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:25:00 GMT

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midget and xoxo

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:22:00 GMT

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authenticity

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:21:00 GMT

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journalistic ethics

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:21:00 GMT

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lonelygirl15

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:20:00 GMT

I particularly enjoy the efforts made at spotting elements in the videos that are tell-tale elements //in spite of// the film.
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''The Grass Beneath Her Feet:'' Extensive research has gone into analyzing the plant life lonelygirl15 tramps through on her swimming trip. An investigator calling himself "The Curious Botanist" spots in one frame the telltale Nolina parryi, an herb native to and found only in California.
The fact that the video may have been shot in the home state of the entertainment industry is a near-smoking gun for those who believe this is a professional or semiprofessional hoax.
In an e-mail to ~ToLD, Jessica, a 23-year-old law student who is an active driver of the lonelygirl15 forums sums up her further environmental studies thusly:
"The 'indoor' location is a structure somewhere in the San Mateo/Mountain View area. We are 100% confident of this much. The 'outdoor' locations were filmed in the Sierra Mountains. Several people claiming to be botanists have credibly concluded in the forum that the 'hiking' video was filmed in the northern region of the Sierras (hence closer to the Mountain View area), and the 'swimming video' much farther south, in the southeastern part of California. In either case, then, the outdoor videos were filmed in the Sierra Mountains"
The smoking gun here being the "Mountain View" connection — not far from home of ~YouTube HQ.

''The Eye of the Beholder:'' The nature of the content in the new video has sounded alarms among many and provided further evidence that there is driving force behind these videos other than lonelygirl15 herself. The allegedly lascivious camera angles from which lonelygirl15 is photographed are said to be those from which no shy 16-year-old would ever display herself.

(//Los Angeles Times//, [[Aug. 31, 2006|http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-lonelygirl31aug31,1,653379.story]])
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This is exactly what was going on in the 1920s with audiences engaged in hunts for clues that the movies were really fakes and not real as the prevalent illusion sold by producers was. Are we going back to a time when the desire to be fooled will be so strong, and the technology so new, that the illusion of reality will once more engulf our perception of film? When suspension of disbelief, because of the newness of the technology, will be so easy as to create perceptual ambiguities ?

Other "jarring" details were noticed along the way:
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Fans soon started to notice jarring details. A music clip from an undiscovered L.A. band was mixed in to her well-edited montage sequences. Her room was movie-set neat. Above her bookshelf hung a photo of famed occultist Aleister Crowley. Thin already, Bree talked about an upcoming religious ceremony that she would participate in, even though it involved going on a diet.

(//Los Angeles Times//, [[
Sept. 8, 2006|http://www.latimes.com/business/custom/admark/la-et-lonelygirl8sep08,1,6702325.story?coll=la-headlines-business-advert]])
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And this reads like "Hollywood realism 101": the first tell-tale detail of some unrealistic production, in a Hollywood perspective, is the inconsistencies. Not that "reality" is always consistent, or cannot be presented as inconsistent. But Hollywood has clearly blended the two to the point where "film [[realism]]" could be equaled to "[[story consistency]]", a value established in the film industry very, very early on. This was the lesson already learnt in [[Dick Tracy, chapter 4]]. I'm saying more than just that the plot must cohere, which is the case of all dramatic standard artform. This inner coherence in films is made to apply to the visual and material world too. In this case, a teenager's bedroom presented as a real teenager's bedroom must look like our notion of a teenager's bedroom: bright, smallish, cluttered, with cultural references visible on the wallls and bookshelves. This creates a mental back-and-forth whereby the illusion of reality is maintained (again, the back-and-forth is not between the film and reality, but between the film and our notions of reality, which makes it more powerful as it remains a very mental game). As soon as any inconsistency is revealed, and sustained across several segments of the audience, then the "mystery" of the film production (is it real ? Isn't it ?) is destroyed, and [[as appears to be happening here|http://stats.agentidea.com/]], no mystery - no audience.
And there you have the reason for such popular news items as "Why do they do it?" in //Photoplay// issues in the 1920s, a regular feature that exposed, and mocked, unrealistic inconsistencies in Hollywood films. It is fun to see us going back to this naïveté after all this while of moving images.
(for conflicting views on this, see [[lonelygirl15 debated]]

lonelygirl15 debated

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:19:00 GMT

A few comments gleaned mostly from //The New York Times Screen Blog// by Virginia Heffernan ([[link|http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=77]]), and //Silicon Valley Watcher//, link [[here|http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/09/lonelygirl15_fa.php]:
Peeved:
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September 12th, 2006
10:09 pm
I don’t think i’d ever go to see one of their films, this isn’t a “new art form.” This is deception, manipulation, and bad acting from the get go. Most people recognized the farce from the start.
— Posted by G.North
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Not naïve at all, but still somehow fighting to defend the "mystery" (let me dream about a somewhere else that looks more real than where I am for the time being--and let me dream that it is real):
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September 12th, 2006
10:24 pm
I never really cared if the videos were authentic or not. They were entertaining, and far more entertaining than most of what is on TV. She and Daniel alone were far more captivating than the cast of any ‘must-see’ sitcom.
I understand that people have a ‘need’ to know that what they’re watching on a DIY service is real, especially when the assumption is that the videos are real, like Nornna’s or thewinekone’s, but I don’t think that people who outed Jessica Rose and the actor who plays Daniel are better people than those who scripted and produced the lonelygirl15 series. Why dispel something so harmless? No one was injured because a few young adults wanted to get movie contracts or break into the business, and thousands of people were entertained.
Killing the mystique behind lonelygirl15 was basically pointless. It was so obviously scripted after a while that identifying bookcases bought at Ikea or areas in Southern California where they went swimming or hiking was about as productive or intelligent as trying to find the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield on a map of the US. No one cares which Springfield it is, or in which state it’s located. We just like watching things that happen somewhere we’re not.
— Posted by Vanessa
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Uncharitable, but correct:
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September 12th, 2006
10:56 pm
Haha, the geeks got played.
No Feynman loving, Diamond quoting, lonely girl out there for you all to dote over.
She played you all the way to a hollywood career.
Suckers.
— Posted by Kyle
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Peeved, in the Vanessa-way quoted above ([[realism]] is not what's real but what I (want to) believe is real, remember. Why the fury, otherwise, if this was just a diversion. There was more here: something Steve, and Vanessa, and the million others wanted to fervently //believe// in):
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September 13th, 2006
3:20 am
Frankly, I was feeling rather jaded by home-grown videos until lonelygirl15 came along. She instantly popped out with her rubber-faced expressions and giddily winsome looks. I knew from the start she was a performer and a very bright one at that, I mean, c’mon!
So now that the curtain’s been pulled all the way back thanks the meddlesome overachievers/cyber detectives who couldn’t leave well enough alone, this charming video series will most likely shrink away. I’m mad as hell it had to end like this. I don’t think I’ll watch very much post-Bree ~YouTube.
— Posted by Steve
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And a bit of historical perspective:
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September 13th, 2006
4:58 am
This is all vaguely unnerving. Will it be divulged that Nelson Mandela is a character in an elaborately-planned, lifetime-long dramatic work? Did the actor who played Abraham Lincoln live a quiet, secluded retirement after his character’s “assassination”?
I am reminded of the British actor who, decades after World War II, reported that he had masqueraded as Winston Churchill for the Prime Minister’s most famous radio addresses.
— Posted by ~RLaPuma
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And I'd agree with Kyle[1] here:
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September 13th, 2006
7:10 am
I think the real lesson here is that the internet’s primary usefulness is in tearing things down and/or apart.
— Posted by Kyle[1]
<<<

Lastly, a word from the childhood neighborhood: they're //not// amused, and not very proud (but why should they care ? Don't all images lie ?)
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by: Nicole on September 13, 2006 02:39 PM

i'm from mt maunganui and actually know jessica rose. I was stunned to see her on the nz news last night and had no idea that all this youtube stuff was going on, i'm sure if anyone else who knew her was aware of what was going on they would have said who she was. As for me: In my opinion I am rather disappointed in Jessica for lying and doing what she's doing. It is creative, I will give her that, but how sad to have to resort to pretending to be a 15 or 16yr old when you're only 19 yourself. Sorry Jess, but it really is a shame all this happened, the country is laughing at you.

Longfellow's Hiawatha (1855)

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:16:00 GMT

<
"Intro." "A song of Nature, and of Ruins" "Hiawatha intro."

"I" "The Peace Pipe -- and Gitche Manito takes a hand" "Hiawatha 1"

"II" "The Four Winds" "Hiawatha 2"

"III" "Hiawatha's Childhood" "Hiawatha 3"

"IV" "Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis" "Hiawatha 4"

"V" "Hiawatha's Fasting" "Hiawatha 5"

"VI" "Hiawatha's Friends" "Hiawatha 6"

"VII" "Hiawatha's Sailing" "Hiawatha 7"

"VIII" "Hiawatha's Fishing" "Hiawatha 8"

"IX" "Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather" "Hiawatha 9"

"X" "Hiawatha's Wooing" "Hiawatha 10"

"XI" "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" "Hiawatha 11"
>>

obvious

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:14:00 GMT

''obvious''
<<<
Etymology: Latin obvius, from obviam in the way, from ob in the way of + viam, accusative of via way -- more at ~OB-, VIA
1 archaic : being in the way or in front
2 : easily discovered, seen, or understood
synonym see EVIDENT
(The Merriam Webster Online)
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Yep, you guessed it. This is right up there with [[verisimilitude]] and [[realism]] as being both in your face (aesthetic realism, not verisimilitude), but also perfectly acceptable (aesthetic verisimilitude, but not realism). Maybe that's film realism ?

the McConville scenario

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:13:00 GMT

[[Bernard McConville|http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0566338/]] had been at work in films since 1916, notably with Norma Talmadge (//The Missing Links//, 1916, and //Going Straight//, 1916, also directed by Sidney Franklin -- the [[Variety review of that film|Going Straight (1916)]] is a good example of the demand by 1910 critics for psychological realism in the plots...). He will only cooperate again with Mary Pickford on [[Little Lord Fauntleroy|http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0012397/]]. in 1921.
The [[film notes coming with the 2005 DVD release of Heart o' the Hills|http://www.milestonefilms.com/pdf/HeartPK.pdf]] (.pdf) explain well how the scenario:
- dropped a lot of subplots, incest, assassinations, political doings from the book;
- permuted the situations of Jason and Mavies (in the book he lives with his mother, she lives with her father)
- brought out more clearly the theme of child abuse (Mavies and Jason show each other their scars)
- offered some comic scenes to Pickford (the train)
- brought out in sharper relief some of the more dramatic moments (the night-riding in white robes, yikes)
- and did what it had to do
<<<
to turn a long-winded soap opera with a fatalistic streak into a prime Pickford vehicle
(Daniel Eagan)
<<<
My hunch is that by cutting out too much scenarist ~McConville ended up by taking out the backbone of the story -- ending up indeed with just 6 major moments worth of drama.

Heart o' the Hills

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:12:00 GMT

<
"The 1919 film" "1919, the film" "Heart o' the Hills (1919)"

"The 1912 novel" "1912, the novel" "the 1912 novel"

"scenario" "the screenplay" "the McConville scenario"

>>

Heart o' the Hills (1919)

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:10:00 GMT

[[Production details|http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010227/combined]]
Mary Pickford in the Kentucky Hills, among the hillbillies, a hillbilly herself...
Well, almost, since the film was shot in the San Bernardino mountains, East of Los Angeles...(according to the [[notes from the Milestone release|http://www.milestonefilms.com/pdf/HeartPK.pdf]])
Yet the film does try to give some idea of quaint Kentucky ways: the language of the intertitle ("you uns", "he aire", and so on....), the shingy, the tall pines. But it remains more quaint than Kentucky, and if that's [[regional realism]], then one understands better how much more realistic Flaherty's [[Moana (1924)]] is. //Heart o' the Hills// fails in conveying more than a few Kentucky postcards (as opposed to [[M'Liss (1918)]] for instance) because of spatial and plot discontinuities inherent in the tableau aesthetic. In terms of [[the tourist's gaze]], this film is more impressions than immersion. //Moana//, by contrast, is all immersion -- even if, as usual with [[realism]], this is no guarantee of truth.
This tense drama, based on the 1912 novel by [[John Fox Jr.]] which may be read [[here|http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/hrthl10.txt]], is not quite Mary Sunshine in ways -- yet still follows a familiar pattern with her of poor girl making it rich (here she is adopted by a southern gentleman who had partnered with some Yankee who'd swindled poor Mary of her Kentucky, coal-rich, mountain land). The story may have been too complicated to fit in a short 6 reels, so that all that remains are the main tableaux from the plot, unconnected from each other:
*Mary's memory of her father's death
*fishing with Jason
*dancing at Grandpap's
*Dispossessed--night riding, and vengeance
*the "trial"
*6 years later: a lady returns to her mother--closure
The only connection, in terms of plot and linear structure, occurs early: the first image shows Jason told to take care of the garden by his father (Sam de Grasse: see note on [[Sam de Grasse and Stroheim]]). But the boy finds a worm in the mud, and pockets it to run out to fish. Later, he finds Mary at her home where her mother is making ready for the father's visit, and takes her fishing indeed.
Otherwise, the scenes are temporally, and spatially, disconnected. The dance at grandpap's seems to occur at night (all lights are on inside), yet when Mary joins it it is broad daylight outside (and is that one day after the fishing trip? Later that afternoon?). Spatially, the disconnect is even more jarring: where is Mary as she embraces her father's boots after that dance (supposedly home, but how do we know) ?
The film simply refuses to show us all the in-between stuff of life in the Kentucky hills. Rather, it shows us the main moments of the drama. This strategy also tones down the drama of this tense story, as we are made to watch -- and not participate in -- the severall tableaux. The literary equivalent would be rather awkward indeed: "Next, we are shown..."; "and next, ...". Except that here, indeed, the intensity of Pickford's acting (her father's death in her arms, the night arrest at her grandpap's, etc.) contradicts this detached, discontinuous narration.

Moana (1924)

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:10:00 GMT

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