Are You A Sponge??

That's got to be the main question asked in hundreds of debates on the levels of screen violence. Are human beings sponges when it comes to viewing violent behaviour, do we simply absorb what we see and emulate it in the real world. Of course we bloody don't! But there is always a few that do therefore we have censorship. Screen violence was the topic of conversation in Bill's latest lecture. It did make me laugh as some people had complained about the graphic violence in the clips from 'Alien' 1979 and 'The Thing' 1982 in the last lecture which if I'm being honest is really not that bad, its monsters committing violence against humans not humans committing violence against other humans. Scenes from say 'Saving Private Ryan' 1998 were much more traumatic!


Here have a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOC-E3qIsUQ Now that's screen violence, don't god damn complain next time, if you don't have what it takes to be on the course then leave and stop wasting time for the rest of us. Rant over!

Back when i started doing this blog i read on Sean's blog about 'A Serbian Film' 2010 http://babysfirstcoffin.tumblr.com/post/1341189800/first-blog-post-for-media-histories-cultures-a
I also heard about and watched the trailer to 'The Human Centiped' 2009 when i see these kind of films being advertised i do realise that people are being desensitised to violence in the media it is being glorified and dramatised. As Danny said in our seminar, its like its taking violence and blood shed and making it sexy. This is pretty much true people don't die in real life like they do in films, the fight seen at the end of 'Kill Bill Vol 1' 2003 is so over dramatic it actual take away from the actual horror of the actions that are being perpetrated.

Is screen violence a bad thing? No it isn't but there is a boundary between screen violence that  is an integral part of the plot and screen violence for that sake of violence. Blood shed for the sake of blood just doesn't really work on an entertainment level for many viewers.

Bill Schaffer's first two lectures

 Part 1
Three weeks ago we had a change of lecturer from Ivan Phillips to Bill Schaffer. I wont lie i was far from pleased with the change, this was not bill's fault but i did hold it against him, and as a result have kind of neglected this blog. Yesterday Bill's lecture finally hit the spot with me and so Ive decided to go back and talk a little bit about the first two lectures before i move onto the one from yesterday.

Bill's first lecture was mostly about video games and filming styles, he did present one interesting idea for me however. Bill spoke about two types of filming method the first telling a story from 1st person perspective this was done a lot in early cinema and has now started to creep back in to modern cinema in short action scenes such as 'DOOM' first person shooter scene and 'Natural Born Killers' in the diner scene. 1st person filming has also become popular in TV 'Peep Show' for example. The second Filming technique, which is much more common today is that told from multiple perspectives allowing the audience to have an all most god like perspective as if the audience is omnipresent within the narrative.

These ideas also transfer over to video games, most commonly action video games that tend to follow either a 1st person or narrative style of game play. Both styles often follow a linear path of game play but its the users perspective that changes.

Part 2

Bill's second lecture was supposed to be on Sci-Fi, little bit sad that most of it was spent on flicking through his photo album and then talking about genre. But on Genre he was right you cant classify something with any kind of total one word description. If you label something like 'Alien' 1979 as Sci-fi then your only half there as its also could be covered by Horror. Its never clear cut!

sorry this second part has been a while coming, as its really rather short and i should have just sucked it up and got on with it.

The Black Hole 1979

I decided to use this clip as it showed the film in a better light than any of the trailers that were available.

The Black Hole 1979

Just the other week i was reminded of this truly brilliant film. I can say with total confidence this was my favourite film when i was young. I think is saw it when i was maybe 7 years old and i still love it. There are massive inconsistencies in it, the zero gravity scenes are more than silly, really just people walking funny with the occasional bit of cable work. I don't care though its a very good film and has some really emotional moments. The score is inspired and at times extremely eerie. Its all most like a sci-fi horror film at times with concepts much darker than any you would expect to see in a Disney film almost a children's version of something like Alien. It certainly has more menace than any of the Star Wars episodes at the time.

Structuralism Part 2

Judge Dread as represented in the film is a character that is truly law full, good and honest. He has no obvious vices though he is not entirely inhuman.

This is V.I.N.C.E.N.T a robot from the Disney film 'Black Hole' 1979. The Film was very heavy on the whole good and evil theme, what you would have expected though from a Disney film though.

Structuralism

This concept is linked to Semiotics in that it works with symbols that we use all the time. One thing covered in the lecture recently was that idea of Binary Opposition, which is the idea that things can be divided into two areas of description.

Good - Evil

Right - Wrong

White - Black

Day - Night

etc.

A good example of binary opposition in cinema is Star Wars. The concepts involved are based very heavily in Good vs Evil and Right vs Wrong. It is not total in its description however, there are Evil characters who have some good traits, Darth Vader for example still has some vestige of humanity in him, enough to resist the dominant personality of the emperor and save his son. (if that spoiled it for anyone serves you fucking right!)

Another example is that of the comic book heroes and villains. Batman - Joker, Spiderman - Carnage. The idea being that to have a super hero you need a super villain. They balance each other out and also give substance to the other through there own existence. You could say that they put things into perspective, but maybe it is us that simply put them into pre-designed categories.

What ive done before this

For the people on my course who I'm sure have been looking at this blog (thanks makes me feel liked, delusion i know but keeps me afloat). Here is a link to the new more personal blog Ive just started working on. I'm going to be showing some of the things that Ive done myself, and talking more about what makes me tick, and less about the lectures. Please have a look see what you think and post comments. :-)

*edit*

This is what happens when you do things when your falling asleep at the computer,here is the link http://mechanical-sorcery.blogspot.com/