TMA 691 Online Response #10: Star Wars Uncut & Jenkins

Considering the near-sacred status some die-hards hold of the original Star Wars Trilogy, one might wonder about the purpose of Star Wars Uncut, the recent brainchild of Casey Pugh and soon to be succeeded by Empire Uncut.  Hundreds of fans submitted over a thousand recordings of reimagined 15-second segments in an attempt to “[reshape] George Lucas’s mythology to satisfy their own fantasies and desires” (21).  Given that Lucas himself has met significant resistance in reshaping his own vision of Star Wars in his various Special Editions, a collective reimagining by fans might seem transgressive.  Why mess with a beloved text?  Why not redo one of the lesser Star Wars prequels, each of which failed to satisfy fans’ desires?  The explanation on the homepage of Star Wars Uncut answers this question by shifting the emphasis of the project from the text to the fan: “We cut the movie into 15 second clips; You claim a scene and re-film it however you like; We all become famous in the best films ever.”  Star Wars has invited a participatory culture since its inception—merchandise alone has allowed fans to inhabit roles, albeit in a “top-down, corporate-driven” manner (18).  Emerging technologies, though (Star Wars Uncut being a perfect end-product), allow the consumers “to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other consumers” (18). 

Technologically speaking, a shift in protocols made Star Wars Uncut possible.  The value of protocols, according to Jenkins, is in recognizing the changes in production and consumption of media (14).  With regard to Star Wars Uncut’s format—the DIY web-based video—the following trend applies: “new media technologies have lowered production and distribution costs, expanded the range of available delivery channels, and enabled consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (17, 18).  Production costs for the 15-second clips in Star Wars Uncut were as expensive or inexpensive as each participant wanted them to be; the developers claim, “You can re-create your scene however you want: live action, stop motion, flipbooks, action figures…animated ASCII art, whatever!  The more creative, the better.”  Creativity is prized over budget.  The cost of distributing an uploaded home video was free.  For those wondering why the film was split into 15-second scenes, the protocols associated with the website dictated the maximum length of high-quality video.  From the website FAQ: “Make sure your scene is under 200MB in size.”  The implications of a small file size are obvious—they either needed many people to make one (or a couple) of video(s) or a few people to make many short videos.       

As a testament to consumption’s “collective process” (4), the former occurred.  Many people participated in Star Wars Uncut, adding their own original take on individual scenes.  The rules of the game were loose enough to allow creativity, as mentioned, and tight enough to allow continuity: “Make sure the beginning and end of your scene matches up closely to the original.  That way, the final piece will be smoother than Jabba’s backside” (the results of which are debatable).  Despite the inevitable alienating nature of cut-to-cut scenes every fifteen seconds, Star Wars Uncut surprisingly demonstrates a degree of humanity in its shots that mirror the original film while also revealing the relationships of amateur actors, whom at times are obviously family members.  Several scenes intersperse when Luke eats a meal with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.  The conversation turns to old Ben Kenobi:

Luke: Well, I stumbled across a recording while I was cleaning him. He says that he belongs to someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. I thought he might have meant old Ben. Do you know what he's talking about?

Uncle Owen: Uh-uh.

Luke: I wonder if he's related to Ben.

Uncle Owen: That wizard is just a crazy old man. Now, tomorrow I want you to take that R2 unit to Anchorhead and have its memory erased. That'll be the end of it. It belongs to us now.

Luke: But what if this Obi-Wan comes looking for him?

Uncle Owen: He won't. I don't think he exists anymore. He died about the same time as your father.

Luke: He knew my father?

Uncle Owen: I told you to forget it.

            In the original Star Wars, the framing of the shot shows Luke in the rear, close to his aunt, who is leaning in closely, concerned.  Uncle Owen is farther away but closer to the camera, detached from the other two.  He hands down commands, but not from the head of the table; he lacks the authority of a father.  The fan scenes, in contrast, change the dynamic of this scene.  This black-and-white still shot shows a Luke who holds more control; equally spaced between his aunt and uncle, he calls the shots.  

This still shot shows a female Luke, not with “Uncle” Owen but with “Father” Owen, much more authoritative.  

Lastly, this still shot shows a culturally different interpretation of the meal scene.  In much closer quarters than any other version, this Luke cedes control to his uncle. 

            The subtle differences in the meal scene (and even the very different shots before and after) underscore the “lives, relationships, memories, fantasies, [and] desires” of the fans that filmed them (17).  They are not trying to make a better Star Wars as much as they are trying to show how Star Wars has made them better, or at least how it has enriched their lives.  Therein lies the difference between this particular project and an individual fan reimagining (e.g., Gus Van Sant’s Psycho).  While some could mistake Star Wars Uncut as an unnecessary and indulgent endeavor, those participating could point to its diversity of content and presentation as a sign of its collective intelligence; it tells one story while also telling many stories.  The process (i.e., the convergence) is as important as the product, for its “implications [of how] we learn, work, participate in the political process, and connect with other people around the world” (22, 23).

TMA 691 Online Response #9: hollowdocumentary.com and The Medium is the Message

The Hollow experience offers an explanation and an invitation very early on: “McDowell County, West Virginia is the story of America.  Of boom and bust economies.  Of small towns facing changes beyond their control.  And of challenges and triumphs of every size.  Explore this corner of America through the stories of over 30 residents who live here today.  Hollow is the story of their home.”  These stories unfold multidimensionally, as the spectator scrolls through hollowdocumentary.com at his or her own pace, stopping to engage in the story through scrap-book-style photos, interactive charts, video clips, quotes, and background information about the people featured.  One might perceive Hollow simply as the text it claims to be—a story of home, of struggle, even of America—while ignoring the fact that it uses a very specific medium to tell its story.  Many texts, after all, claim to be the story of America, struggle, and home, among other topics, but they might tell their story in the form of a novel, a folk song, or a newscast.  In McLuhan’s opinion, the content, or what we typically consider story, of a text is not nearly as important as the medium through which it is expressed; hence the adage, “the medium is the message.”  To fairly consider the message of Hollow, one must define its medium as precisely as possible: more than a movie, database, or photo collection, it is a website. 

Various options of hollowdocumentary.com: scroll through pictures, watch a video, read information about the person featured, or none of the above

The fact that it is a website does not make it any less of a documentary.  Alan Johnston—one of the first people featured—emphasizes his role as documentarian in the project: “I felt that someone ought to document this area now.  So that’s what I have been doing for the past couple of years.”  A video shows him driving in his truck, taking pictures of the community and the wilderness; there is even a link that allows viewers to browse his photo collection.  “The content of any medium is always another medium,” states McLuhan, which proves true in Hollow documentary, be it Johnston’s photos, Nessie Hunt’s music, or Josh Clevenger’s skits.  The particular presentation of this collection of documents, however, has a different effect than the same documents would have in another medium.  For example, consider the same photos (but in physical form), the same music (but burned onto a CD), and the same skits (on a DVD) bundled together in a shoebox.  In this scenario, one might struggle to see the connection between each subject and his or her hobby.   Organized as they are on the website, these documents appear more united—more indicative of McDowell County’s rich culture—than they might otherwise appear.  Like McLuhan’s explanation of movies, the website presents these documents as “a world of triumphant illusions and dreams.” 

  This narrative cohesiveness is underlined by its un-web-like linearity of stories.  Despite the menu at the bottom of the screen, seen when first entering hollowdocumentary.com, the viewer has little choice in the order of what he or she watches.  True, an option is given at the end of each chapter to either go “Back to Start” or proceed.  Otherwise, one must go through each chapter in the following order: The Way it Was, These Roots, For Each Other, For the Land, When Coal Was King, and Around the Bend.  The key word, though, is “go through;” the loophole this website offers to mandatory viewing is the ability to scroll past any content.  Consequently, the viewer who doesn’t want to explore For Each Other can go through it in a literal flash. 

The effect of the viewer-centric selectivity—an implication of its medium—clashes with the content message, which, after all, is to call attention to a forgotten, poverty-stricken town that is fast dwindling to nothingness.  How much is Hollow really about McDowell County’s people when so much attention is given to the viewer’s subjective quality of experience?  Before seeing anything else on hollowdocumentary.com, visitors of the site are greeted with this advice:

Focus is given to the medium (and the importance of its optimal setting) before anything is said about the 30 residents and their stories.  Along those same lines, can Hollow claim its subject’s stories are important if the viewer can so easily skip them?  Granted, Bogost’s (citing Battle) rebuttal works well here, for “dipping and skimming” is not a phenomenon exclusive to the web.  However, one could also argue that the scrolling feature of Hollow lends itself to getting through the material quickly or picking and choosing stories based on superficial page layout rather than watching all of the stories in a more traditional documentary format.  

            No one could argue that Hollow does not “eliminate time and space factors in human association.”  Its medium makes it accessible to a larger number of people than any other digital media could; one need not buy a movie ticket to see it in a limited release, nor is its primary medium the ever-alienating written text.  Anyone who spends time in hollowdocumentary.com sees a portrait of a downtrodden yet resilient people—actual faces, rather than unflattering statistics.  The very medium responsible for its accessibility might also be responsible for its ultimate ineffectiveness in garnering interest, for the public may not be conditioned to dive deeply into a website.  This is not to say that online discourse is impossible; rather, the way people interact with similar media (e.g., Facebook) might crossover in unexpected and detrimental ways when visiting this website.  Hollow's ultimate success depends on at least one factor: does its interface encourage depth, selectivity, or something in between?  

TMA 691 Online Response #8: Bamboozled, Fanon, and Stam and Spence

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon states, “We believe that the conscious and organized undertaking by a colonized people to re-establish the sovereignty of that nation constitutes the most complete and obvious cultural manifestation that exists” (1445).  Speaking generally of colonized nations and more specifically of Africa (and even more specifically of Algeria), Fanon calls for the “re-establishment of the nation,” which will give life to a national culture, molded by struggles, eventually leading to “national liberation” (1446).  Necessary in any re-establishment, though, is an original establishment—an original nation in this case, which is non-existent if one considers the state of the oppressed African-American in the postbellum age.  An uprooted people made up of diverse tribes and nationalities cannot be considered a native people; therefore, such a group struggles to define itself in terms of national character, given that it helped colonize its new nation, albeit in an oppressed role.  While descendants of white European settlers can subscribe to notions of independence, ingenuity, and determination, among other American characteristics, descendants of slaves struggle to define themselves outside of the constrictive bounds of the oppressor. 

Spike Lee’s Bamboozled demonstrates this struggle narratively and formally.  Different perspectives of the black struggle come from different characters: Pierre Delacroix strives to be successful in a systemically racist institution; Sloan fights for power within the same institution with the additional disadvantage of being a woman; her brother Julius—a.k.a. Big Blak Afrika—takes a much more militaristic stance, disavowing any culture, including his name, of his slaveholder ancestors; Manray and Womack simply want food on the table, and if they can accomplish that through their talents, all the better.  Motivations stated, a closer look at the formal presentation of characters better reveals why their goals are frustrated. 

The most glaring formal aspect of Bamboozled is its predominating “home-video” camera.  The majority of the film has a quasi-documentary feel, alternating at times (most notably during the Mantan segments) with a more cinematic, traditional clarity.  Camera style, along with narrative structure and genre conventions, are mediations essential to Stam and Spence’s methodology (884).  “One mediation specific to cinema is spectator positioning,” inclusive to camera style (885).  At first glance, the documentary style camera belies a realness to the subjects not available in a traditional fictional film; Delacroix narrates, mostly, as the real audience gets a supposed unscripted, inside look of a TV studio.  The first Mantan show, in contrast, is obviously constructed the moment Manray and Womack enter the stage in blackface.  The camera swings incongruously from audience to stage, the former blurry and of lower quality, the latter crisp and well lit.  Granted, the Mantan show is being filmed in front of this studio audience to be aired on television, but it does seem ironic that the real spectator only sees the crispness of a constructed performance through the eyes of the diegetic audience, who are all watching it live, not through a screen as we watch Delacroix, Sloan, and the rest of the brains of CNS. 

Perhaps the obvious constructedness of Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show is what makes it so easy for the audience to embrace it.  During the pilot episode, a look of shock pervades an audience that eventually cheers by the show’s conclusion.  It does not take long for an ethnically diverse (but mostly white) audience to don blackface when they come to the shows.  Their appropriation of blackface should not be taken as a validation of black culture, but rather an attempt to “help the traditions of the indigenous society” by taking the role of “defenders of the native style” (Fanon 1441).  The audience—including the producers, Dunwitty and even Delacroix—believes it can wear blackface because it is only mocking something that was ridiculous in the first place.  In Delacroix’s words, what they are doing is satire. 

The studio audience would (wrongly) claim its detachedness from the actual practice of minstrelsy to justify their wearing blackface in order to mock it.  However, the spectator positioning of the studio audience does not make them equal with Manray and Womack.  As seen through point of view camera, they look down at them, laughing at them, not with them.  The real audience has an equally hard time relating to the doc-like, behind-the-scenes narrative.  It does not take long to realize that it, too, is just as constructed as the Mantan show.  Despite its gritty, real-to-life look, certain elements emphasize a Brechtian detachedness, especially apparent during a scene in which Delacroix hurls accusations at Sloan (and fires her).  Any realness created by the camera lens is cancelled out by the melodramatic music, the hammy dialogue, and the mise-en-scene when he sits down in the chair behind his desk.  A gigantic circular window overlooks the cityscape, making Delacroix an all powerful, comic book villain.  What this entire scene really suggests is a soap opera.  Like documentaries, they employ similar camera work, if not in style then in appearance. 

That particular Delacroix scene—not atypical of the rest of his scenes in Bamboozled—proves “the granting of point-of-view shots to the oppressed does not guarantee a non-colonialist perspective” (888).  Neither do scenes with Mau-Mau—though shown from their perspective, the audience struggles to identify with this group in all of their intimidating close-ups.  This film is arguably an anti-Battle of Algiers, a film in which everything contributes to the impression and expression of a unified people (886).  Though the audience identifies (through point of view camera) with the three Algerian women disguised as French women who plan to plant bombs, they fail to identify with any of the oppressed black characters in Bamboozled, which is kind of the point.  How can African-Americans promote a culture that is not somehow constructed by the oppressor?  While not nearly as obvious as the minstrelsy of the Mantan show, the black experience, as presented by Bamboozled is a construct—one in which someone can find success only by mimicking white preferences (Delacroix) or by defining oneself against them (Big Blak Afrika).   

TMA 691 Online Response #7: Vertigo, Mulvey, and Midge

In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey illustrates “the look” in Vertigo, which “[oscillates] between voyeurism and fetishistic fascination” (2092).  Through his use of subjective camera, Hitchcock draws the audience in via ego libido, the process by which viewers come to identify with the protagonist.  Without dramatic irony, the audience is as clueless (and later, mesmerized) as Scottie is about Madeleine/Judy.  Her role as fetishistic object is flipped when Scottie discovers a familiar necklace on Judy, exposing her as a conspirator in a plot in which he was merely a pawn.  Scottie sees to it that she is punished immediately, thus providing Mulvey with a perfect example of the twofold “deeper problems” belonging to the looked-at, passive female. 

Lost in Mulvey’s analysis of Vertigo is the non-example of female “to-be-looked-at-ness:” Midge.  Rather than contradict Mulvey’s concept of “the look,” Midge strengthens it by demonstrating the effect (or better, ineffectiveness) of the female attempted look.  Her overt activity is in contrast with Madeleine’s subtler machinations; the audience, having already identified with Scottie as the protagonist, fails to consider Midge as an effective agent in the plot of Vertigo. 

Midge's First Appearance

Midge is certainly presented as an active character, even from the moment of her introduction.  The camera cuts from an earlier scene in which Scottie is hanging from a gutter, having just witnessed the fall of another police officer, to a shot inside of Midge’s apartment.  A long shot shows Scottie and Midge together, the former passive, the latter active.  Psychologically and physically damaged, Scottie balances his cane while resting (his legs spread out on an ottoman); Midge, meanwhile, is leaning over her desk, busily sketching a strapless bra.  Keeping with female undergarments, Scottie cries out and reveals the source of his pain: “It’s this darned corset.  It binds.”  Tongue-in-cheek, Midge responds, “No three-way stretch?  How very un-chic.”  The content of their conversation continues to emasculate Scottie, as Midge directs it towards Scottie’s failings: “Well, what are you going to do once you’ve quit the police force?”

Scottie regains some control in the active-passive tug-o-war when he abruptly changes the subject to Midge’s love life.  “Aren’t you ever gonna get married?” he asks, countering her seeming handle of the conversation with a question outside of her control.  In fact, she turns the question of marriage back onto Scottie with her answer: “You know there’s only one man in the world for me, Johnny-O.”  Midge is still in love with Scottie (whom she affectionately calls “Johnny”), but try as she might, she cannot successfully gaze upon him. 

Midge’s gazes, unlike Scottie’s, are fraught with disappointment.  Though he is being played by Madeleine/Judy and Gavin Elster during his entire voyeuristic assignment, Scottie (and the audience, by extension) at least has the illusion of control.  When Midge drives by Scottie’s house at night, she realizes she is not in control.  Rather than look upon an objectified Scottie, she finds him more deeply involved in the case of Elster’s wife than she prefers.  Midge sees Madeleine walk out of Scottie’s house and infers more than what actually happened.  During this whole scene, Scottie is basically absent, unable to “bear the burden of sexual objectification” (2089).  His brief appearance after Madeleine leaves only spurs Midge’s exit, whose attempt to gaze through a car window ends much differently than it does for Scottie. 

Scottie as sexual object does not work at this point of the film (nor does it work during his first exchange with Midge) because the audience has already identified him as protagonist and, consequently, they have identified themselves in him.  Mulvey states, “As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence” (2089).  If the audience has not already identified with Scottie during the first scene in which he, through first-person camera perspective, sees the death of a comrade, they surely identify with him as he follows Madeleine in his car and on foot to her mysterious destinations. 

Once Scottie speaks to Madeleine and begins to develop a relationship with her, the audience (now invested in Scottie’s obsessive pursuit) could make the mistake of forgetting about Midge.  Though directed at the looked-upon female as spectacle, Mulvey’s statement about female static-ness gains new meaning when applied to a character like Midge, who is trying to drive the plot in a certain direction: “her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story-line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (2088).  Scottie, at least, believes that his flow has been disrupted when Midge invites him to her apartment midway through the film.  Annoyed, he asks her, “Since when do you go around slipping notes under men’s doors?”  He is bothered partly by her imposition on him, but also by the idea of a woman being the aggressor in a relationship. 

Wanting to be the object of gaze

What really unsettles Scottie during this visit, though, is Midge’s painting of herself in the style of Carlotta Valdez.  In a move that predates McRobbie’s Post-Feminism and Popular Culture, Midge seeks empowerment by objectifying herself, or at least attempting to.  The subjective camera reveals Scottie’s gaze—Midge is sitting in nearly the same pose as her painted self, minus the old-fashioned dress, the bouquet of flowers, and most importantly, the identical necklace of Carlotta/Madeleine.  The intentionality of the gaze is what angers Scottie; that he is being forced to gaze negates any looked-at-ness for which Midge is aiming.  Anything intentional is unacceptable in Scottie’s eyes, even if it is the name he is called.  When he first talks to Madeleine he gives his name as “Scottie,” but explains that friends call him “Johnny.”  By calling him “Johnny,” Midge is presumably using the name she has called him for years, but she is also feigning a closeness to him distinct from Madeleine.  Midge would never know how she differs from Madeleine in her interactions with Scottie, but the audience sees a woman actively trying and failing and another woman, mentioned by Mulvey, who figures as both a fetishistic and punishable object.  Like many examples from classic Hollywood cinema, neither is too flattering to women.