Super Sad True Love Story: Super Scary Near Future

Super Sad True Love Story is a book about many things but I’m not sure if I can say that love is one of them. We’ve talked a lot this semester about the concept of like, or affect, and if these things really matter when talking about a work as a whole. Since when does it matter if we like something, and what bearing does that have on if a work can be considered good, or important? I’m finally ready to concede it doesn’t have much bearing at all. I had a horrible, knee jerk reaction to the opening pages of this book (by that I mean pretty much everything contained in the first 150 pages), but though I didn’t really like Lenny (our protagonist? antihero?) I did enjoy the book as a whole.

Shteyngart sets his novel in the near future, in a dystopia that is horrifying because it seems all together too possible. The reliance on technology is something that’s paramount in the novel. When the apparat network goes down near the end of the novel the sense of loss is actually palpable. Lenny talks about feeling disconnected without it, somehow isolated without being able to be ranked, to see where he clocked in when compared to the rest of the world. It wasn’t only the terror involved in not being able to get in touch with loved one (a purposeful and effective invoking of some post-9/11 images of down communication lines and people unaccounted for on the part of the author) it was the terror of not being able to connect to the rest of the world. The concept of being networked is something that has a growing importance in our society. Not having a facebook (our GlobalTeens equivalent?) can be met with looks of confusion. A few weeks ago, the Blackberry network was down for over 24 hours and I couldn’t get email sent to my phone. I had to manually check my email for the first time in almost two years. It was jarring, I’m not afraid to admit. The network is becoming all important, and this book made me think about what that growing importance could mean in the long run…and also made me want to turn my phone off for awhile, I won’t lie.

The other part of this book that was a big concern for me was the growing anti-intellectual sentiment. I’m not one of those people that thinks the growing influence of the internet and online culture signals the death knell of reading and analysis. If you know where to look on the internet, analytical discussions are happening all over the place about pretty much any subject imaginable. The world presented in Shteyngart’s novel however is a world that demonizes reading for any reason. Books, actual bound copies of books, are considered passe, relics from a bygone time. That’s…already starting to happen, though not on a wide scale. (Interesting to note though that the smell of books-something loathed by the younger characters in the novel like Eunice-is an argument that people who are against digital reading devices like the Kindle and the Nook use to back up their case. It seems to be an integral part of the reading process for some people.) Aside from that, reading for pleasure is something that no one seems to do anymore. Look at Eunice’s disgust when she finds Lenny reading, and not just “scanning for data.” Can stories be reduced to data though, especially fiction? I don’t think I can agree with that. We might have found my one point of becoming a luddite.

It’s a subtle thing that the author does to bring this anti-intellectualism to the forefront of the book. The warning signs from the government, even the signs of encouragement, attempting to get the general public into a sense of security, contain egregious misspellings and the breaking of rules of proper grammar. The fact that even the people in the highest seats of power don’t have a grasp on basic rules of writing shows fully that the society in Super Sad True Love Story values the superficial (Onionskin jeans, fuckability rankings) over the intellectual. Are we heading in this direction? Maybe, but Shteyngart seems to think that we’re heading there sooner rather than later.

“Because most of us need the eggs.”

Annie Hall is one of my favorite movies of all time by probably my favorite filmmaker ever, Woody Allen. It’s also a repeated motif in Important Artifacts…by Leanne Shapton.

I love the film but I would never want to emulate Annie and Alvy’s relationship. Why? Because (SPOILER) they don’t end up together. The film doesn’t end happily. They, quite simply, have a doomed relationship. Annie and Alvy are my Romeo and Juliet. They’re my Sid and Nancy, my Kurt and Courtney (without all the death and heroin.) They’re tragic and comic and why, why would you dress up as them for Halloween if you weren’t planning on breaking up anytime soon, if you didn’t already know that your relationship wasn’t going to make it? Have you seen the film?

Much like Alvy and Annie’s relationship, Hal and Lenore’s is sweet at the beginning too. In fact I found myself preemptively saddened about Hal and Lenore’s ultimate fate and how they were not going to be able to make it work. Knowing how they’re going to end up before starting the book makes everything be seen through this haze of nostalgia, an almost wistful kind of sadness (sort of like the second time you see Annie Hall to be honest.) But as the story went on and seeing the cracks in their relationship grow I went from sad about their fate to impatient for them to break up sooner. Things were obviously not working, and the shows of passive aggression (letters unsent in the pages of books, the quiet resentment, the correspondence with friends) became increasingly annoying. And, in the fashion of Alvy and Annie there isn’t any big blow up, just a series of little ones before ending completely with real estate listings circled and the somewhat heavy handed edition of the final lot of the auction being dead flowers and four leaf clovers. How…romantic? Sad? Tragic? All three?

The structure of the lots of auction was an interesting one, and the glimpses inside what was important to each of them was extremely interesting. Being

"Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent, of course I - I do, don't you think I do?"

given a peek into what they were like around each other but also in letters to their friends was something that can be achieved through traditional narratives by having an omniscient narrator, but something about seeing things handwritten and tangible added a level of realism (voyeurism?) to the experience of watching these characters get together and fall apart. To go back to my extended Annie Hall analogy, it’s like the glimpses into Alvy’s subconscious, his anxieties and his fantasy sequences. It’s like Annie getting up out of the chair to watch herself and Alvy make love because he says “It’s like you’re removed.” The devices used to get us closer to the characters are remarkably similar and though this is a story told mostly though pictures and snips of written dialogue, I found there to be something incredibly cinematic about it.

I wonder if this was not done on purpose by the author, since a lot of the allusions to cinema are about doomed love. For instance, one of Hal’s favorite things is the script to Godard’s (ugh) Masculine Feminine (about love through political difference) and one of Lenore’s nail polish colors is The Way We Were (about…love through political difference. “Your girl is lovely Hubbel.” My tears. All of them.) Why the romanticizing of doomed love though? Why the distancing from happiness? Is it because these stories are inherently more interesting because they’re filled with strife, or because they allow the viewer/audience a catharsis? Sometimes an unintended byproduct of this is annoyance and frustration, and that’s what I felt by the end of Important Artifacts. Because, well, despite trying to be, it isn’t Annie Hall, and though Hal and Lenore’s relationship was beautiful at moments, their self identification with a doomed couple damned them from the start.

I just realized that Sim was short for Simulation, and other confessions.

If it weren’t assigned for this class, I never would have played Facade. In fact, I never would have heard of Facade, simply because I’m not really interested in gaming. I played Facade to completion a total of three times. The first time, Grace and Trip decided they would stay together; they thanked me warmly and I was able to leave their apartment (though, due to some kind of glitch I couldn’t let my glass of water go and inadvertently stole from them. I’m an excellent friend.) The second time it was revealed that Grace really wanted to be an artist, and Trip never supported her. Trip confessed that he cheated on Grace on a business trip and they realized that they wouldn’t be able to reconcile. Grace left, and Trip looked extremely upset as the game faded to black. The third time through they were especially obnoxious and I tried to hide in the kitchen but Trip yelled at me to come back in the living room so when I did come back into the room I gave him a kiss (something I didn’t realize I could do until I accidentally got too close to him and my cursor turned to lips) and I was promptly kicked out, much to my joy.

I thought that these three were the only outcomes that one could get. I thought that would be a good sample. But then I read the Wardrip-Fruin articles, specifically the parts of Chapter 8 that dealt with Facade, and I was surprised to see the amount of forethought that was present in the game. Of course it would take a huge amount of work to have a third party have a conversation with two automated characters, literally using the entire scope of the English language to have a call and response conversation with them. But the more one spoke with them, the more it was made apparent that they were selecting from their programming. I noticed this especially in a repeated phrase: “Let’s talk about.” At that point I saw that I wasn’t playing the game, the game was trying to control my responses too and trying to steer me back into saying something that the characters could respond to. For me, something about that was unsettling, and the game made me uncomfortable in a way I’m not sure I can explain without sounding bonkers.

I think it might be because I don’t have a background in gaming, and I can’t even really wrap my brain around why something like The Sims is considered an entertaining experience. The articles attempt to explain why people enjoy playing simulation games and why those are important but I still don’t really buy it. When I think of simulation games, I think of those arcade games that only take tokens where you climb in and pretend to be a race car driver. I think of Guitar Hero (admittedly the only game that I am anywhere near proficient at, and I know that real gamers probably turn up their nose at that but to be honest I still don’t have the mechanics of Mario down just yet so, you know, bear with me here) where I can pretend to be a rock star or someone who knows how to play a musical instrument-both of which are things I’m not, nor will ever be. The Sims has always been some completely other thing to me. I know the point of the game is to make your sim character have a successful life, but…why is that fun? I don’t get it! And the article enumerates why people enjoy the aspects of gameplay, but most of the people I know who play The Sims also know cheat codes that get around things like money limitations, and there are hacks one can do to get around time constraints. Is it purely an educational tool or a philosophical exercise? Will people buy anything, even their own life experiences in simulation sold back to them? My lack of understanding about such a cultural touchstone makes me feel outside of the pop culture loop and after the game play and reading this week I’m still left with more questions than answers.

Sympathy for the Devil

It’s interesting that this week’s article “Searching for the Origami Unicorn” dealt with The Matrix and touched a bit on the character of Neo, the man who was sent to save the world. They called Neo “The One,” and in the first film he was just a man, a man put into an extraordinary situation and could adapt to fight it. As the series went on he became less and less that original character and more of an infallible character, someone that the audience couldn’t dare to connect with, a figure of alienation rather than inclusion (and not only because Keanu played him that way).

This is the same problem I have with Echo and her role as the protagonist in not only season 2, but the whole of Dollhouse.

Now, minds can change (literally, we’ve seen them change over and over these past couple of weeks, minds wiped and remolded) and mine is absolutely no different. Remember how I hated Topher? Wanted to punch his face? That went away.

It took 23 episodes, but it happened.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling of dislike I had for Echo. I didn’t see her arc as redemptive or empowering, I didn’t understand why I was supposed to cheer for her as the series went on. The hate that was bringing me through the series dimmed and was replaced by a general sense of apathy. I didn’t care about Echo or her plight, and for me there was no feeling of suspense as the stakes got higher and higher for her and the others around the Rossum conspiracy. Why was that?

Because I had been told at least once an episode for the entire series that Echo is special, and now I was just seeing that play out. She was called a messiah and so she died (a few times actually, and a metaphorical death every time she was wiped) and so a parallel can be drawn there to another Joss creation: Buffy. She died, she was the anointed one, and therefore she was safe. Topher, from the end of the first season was being set up for the redemption arc so his literal sacrifice was not as surprising as it should have been. For all the narrative complexity with the editing, the flashbacks, the twists and turns and moral conundrums, the deceptive characters and comic moments of levity, I still couldn’t dredge up the affection that I was supposed to have for these characters that I was supposed to, and it was because I was told to like them rather than shown why I should.

Strangely enough the one character who I believe we’re explicitly told not to root for in the first season (and then shown why we should love in the 2nd Epitaph episode) is the only one I had any genuine compelling feelings for from the start: Alpha. Can a case be made that Alpha’s arc is more redemptive than Echo’s? She’s special, she was picked because she was special, and she continued to be special thanks to the ministrations of the one person to whom her continued specialness mattered (Boyd). Alpha became special by accident (the “composite event”), worked through his new found special identity (albeit in the most violent way possible) and came out on the side of the greater good at the end, even choosing to leave the Dollhouse before the mass restoration because he feared that his original personality, should it choose to show up, would hurt the people he considered his friends and allies. We got all that through the five episodes that he makes an appearance in.

I never said he worked through his problems in a healthy way, but work was done.

Such is the moral complexity of a show like Dollhouse. For all of the flaws in the storytelling there is always a way to look at the show from a different angle, to make the pieces fit in a different way. Jenkins touches on it in a way when he discusses the different points of entry to a text, something that was also discussed in my beloved Elsaesser. If an audience member is to come at a text like Dollhouse from a different direction, some of the problems with it can be lessened or go away entirely. From seeing what happens to Topher at the end of the first Epitaph (a fate I thought was deserved, sorry, coal where my heart should be etc etc) and learning how he gets there in season two provides a different perspective than someone who maybe didn’t buy the season 1 dvds (where Epitaph was previously only available) before watching the 2nd Epitaph. Reading the first standalone comic before watching Epitaph part 2 provides a different perspective about the characters the audience spends time with in those episodes. And focusing on the parallels between Alpha and Echo can provide a different take on where the sympathy of the audience should lie. Between an accident and a construct, someone who is born not made (remember, Alpha made Echo who she is at first, almost like Frankenstein’s monster demanding a bride), who was the true hero at the end? Someone with all the help in the world, or someone with no help at all?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Season 1 of Dollhouse

For the better part of a week I have been spewing hatred in 140 characters or less on my twitter feed. I stand by it. I stand by my opinions on Topher (his ultimate fate at the end of Epitaph One? Almost comic in its delicious poetic justice) and I certainly stand by my feelings about this show’s absolute hatred of women and rape as a plot device and/or character building exercise for both sexes. The whole affair left a bad taste in my mouth.

However (and this is a however of weight and difficulty that songs should be written about), an extremely problematic and angry show can have moments of borderline brilliance and clarity. This show had three such moments for me: Episode 6, Episode 11, and arguably the only narratively complex episode of the first season, unaired episode 13 Epitaph One.

Pictured: my hero

I think the reason why I liked 1×06: Man on the Street so much was because Paul Ballard FINALLY got the verbal smackdown from someone who, granted was a client of the Dollhouse and therefore just as morally reprehensible as everyone else, but also could see himfor the hypocrite he really is. I didn’t really understand why I couldn’t get behind Helo Paul as our hero until this episode. I thought maybe it was Tamoah Penikett’s acting (which could fill up a whole other blog post, let’s be real) but it was this: Paul is just as bad as the people who go to the Dollhouse. It’s all wish fulfillment. His wish is named Caroline. Sure, she’s a real person and not an imprint, but the only contact that he has had with her is one video from when she was in college before she was involved with the Dollhouse. He becomes obsessed with the idea of Caroline, and that’s just as bad if not worse than what the clients of the Dollhouse are doing. Paul just wants his fantasy for free.

Pictured: acting

On the same token, I thought I was going to hate 1×11: Briar Rose with the same vitriol that I had reserved for all of the other episodes of the show aside from 1×06. And at the start it was that way. I thought they were setting up Paul Ballard as Prince Charming to rescue Echo, which would be par for the course for this show. But! But! The powers that be surprised me by having Alpha being the great rescuer and also the great corrupter in the next episode. Alpha should have been a visible part of the show from the beginning because he presents a great big bad from outside the Dollhouse for the audience to root against (or for. Morals are difficult on this show to say the absolute least. No one is innocent.) I thought it was great to have Paul blunder and bungle this and then get drafted into service of the Dollhouse with Boyd. As we all know the best way to take down an establishment is from the inside, and I think that everyone involved with trying to take down the Dollhouse movement knows that too.

Pictured: Wash and Faith about to make out. Not pictured: Whedonites heads exploding, Scanners style

Finally, Epitaph One which I just finished watching; I say this is the only narratively complex episode because I believe it’s the only one that can fully conform to what we’ve come to see as a form of puzzle entertainment. Story lines jump back and forth, side to side and it felt more like J.J. Abrams than Whedonesque, if that makes any sense at all. Yes, 1×09 did have three different threads that jumped time, but I don’t think it had much to add to the mythology of the show. Mythology is a term that was used a few times in the Mittell piece, and I think that’s what sets apart the standard “Personality of the Week” episodes of Dollhouse (terminology tweaked from my beloved Monster of the Week X-Files episodes) from the rest. Epitaph One feels like an entirely different show and because it was so heavy with the mythology it finally made me excited about the possibilities of where this show could end up going. The one thing I’m excited about is to see how the dominoes stack up in season two to fall down so abysmally and turn Los Angeles in 2019 into a dystopia (a dystopia with widely available eyeliner, but I digress). Is Dollhouse still incredibly problematic? Absolutely. Turning Echo into a self aware warrior woman is not enough for me to forget how she still needs Paul to come to her aid (it’s heavily implied that they’re in a relationship or have been in one before when they return to the Dollhouse in 1×13 and yeah, the power dynamic in that relationship still doesn’t sit right with me despite Echo being all but deprogrammed) but with the new focus on mythology in season two maybe some of the more problematic, rapey aspects of the show will fall to the wayside.

At least I hope.

YouTube Curation Project- Chapter 2: YouTube and the Mainstream Media (Sarah La, Melissa, and Brianna)

This chapter was about a young platform trying to find its footing in media culture. The chapter places YouTube in the discussion by wondering out loud if it’s only a place for kids or if it’s a new way for people to connect with each other using the mundane details of their lives (the concept of the vlog, in its infancy).

(A how-to-vlog video from the popular users VlogBrothers, who function within the realm of YouTube fame by relying on vlogging elements like honesty, fan interaction, and raw comedic talent.)

It is also noted as a place where celebrity can be born, but there is also a glass ceiling where YouTube is not considered to be a place where actual celebrity is born: there must be some crossover appeal with more legitimate and dare I say mainstream forms of media. The chapter also calls into question what it means to be considered an amateur. Can someone really be an amateur at anything if their videos are getting thousands of hits or they have a million subscribers to their channels? A common perception of amateur videos found on YouTube is that raw talent and this wide exposure will equate to “legitimate success and media fame” (21). Celebrity is not always gained in this way. Instead, YouTube celebrity follows similar rules as the mainstream media. The success of YouTube hopefuls is not only measured by the popularity within this amateur world, but whether or not the content can pass through the gatekeepers of old media. Within YouTube culture there are certain markers of fame that don’t always match up with mainstream media, but that does not make the system more democratic. Instead, they are famous based on their talents in advertising and capability to gain attention.

(A South Park skit featuring various YouTube ‘celebrities,’ focusing on individuals who stumbled into fame rather than those who sought it out.)

The quest for celebrity, when it goes awry, often leads to the media panic Burgess and Green analyze, particularly when kids are involved. The mainstream media often portrays YouTube as a reflection of popular fears about the risks of digital media in relation to young people. The anxiety related to the misuse of internet and mobile phones translates to YouTube in a way mainstream media often seeks to amplify. Burgess and Green comment, “In media coverage of YouTube, stories exhibiting the characteristics of a moral panic draw on and amplify two existing strains of public anxiety: youth and morality on one hand and new media and its ‘effects’ on the other.” (18). Exposure to inappropriate content for young people as well as the effects of cyberbullying become the main stories the media portrays.

(11-year old YouTube user Jessi Slaughter’s video, after she was targeted by the website 4chan and Anonymous. Her story received television coverage as an example of extreme cyberbullying, and remains an example of how internet fame can go wrong. [I'm not sure if we need a disclaimer for strong language, but you've been warned.])

Copyrighted content is always going to be a problem, but the prevalence of fanvids and the use of YouTube in fandom in general lends itself to the re-purposing of copyrighted content. The redistribution of copyrighted materials has put YouTube in the position of being considered a platform merely for the distribution of illegally reproduced material, such as television shows and films. Burgess and Green point out, however, that YouTube users are actively creating new content as opposed to simply recycling it, therefore allowing users to create new, artistic content using copyrighted materials. The book uses the example of Viacom filing a lawsuit against YouTube for the use of clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, despite the fact that both shows gained popularity from having their content distributed online (33-34). Stephen Colbert even encouraged users to remix his shows to create new content. Burgess and Green sum up their discussion of YouTube’s copyright issues by explaining that YouTube needs to be seen not only as a business, but as a “cultural resource co-created by its users” (35), where copyright laws are not as definitive.

(An example of remix video submitted by one of Stephen Colbert’s viewers.)

Burgess and Green admit that time is a factor in understanding YouTube as a platform for mainstream media. Other forms of media, like television, filter YouTube “through their own values”(36), temporarily stalling YouTube’s perceived legitimacy. But as YouTube continues to evolve, it becomes more legitimate, with the book citing the joining of YouTube and CNN to cover the 2008 presidential debates as an example. Finally, YouTube can be used as part of mainstream media in that videos posted on YouTube can literally be used as evidence, at least within the social justice community. Look at any of the cellphone videos that have been uploaded from Occupy Wall Street. YouTube is scooping some major news outlets much like Twitter is, and the fact that there isn’t much of a restriction on the content that can be uploaded plays a tremendous role in that.

Internet culture, podcasts and the fate of YouTube

This weekend I had a bunch of niche comedians deface property that isn’t really mine just yet. I had them sign my Youtube book by Burgess and Green. I figured, who better than the men of the Nerdist podcast to give their two cents about Youtube culture and what that really means. The signage that was most intriguing was Jonah Ray’s. Above the small Youtube title on the title page he lists Friendster, Myspace, and makeoutclub.com. Those are all mostly defunct social networking sites whose only real purpose it seems is to be punchlines in jokes about how quickly fads move on the internet. Could it be that Youtube could be on the way out as a site that has a social networking component?

Until reading the Burgess and Green book I never thought of Youtube as a social networking site, only a place for videos to be hosted. But it’s not the only source on the web for video hosting. Places like photobucket and even flickr have their own uploaders, and blogging sites like Tumblr are even attempting to remove video embedding all together by having users upload their content directly into their blog rather than copying and pasting an embed code. Doing this also helps ease down some of the barriers that the youtube book specifically sites, that being the restrictions places on certain videos based on the geographic location of the person who wants to watch that video. Also it becomes more difficult to trace the copywritten material that youtube would be forced to take down.

Though there are people who still use the platoform to have conversations back and forth by uploading videos, most people are doing things like using Skype to chat with having a video component. There are many ways to get around the restrictions that have been placed on youtube both as a platform and as a community. So this all begs the question, does the internet move too fast? Youtube is a relatively young site in a span of years, having only gotten online in 2005, but it already seems sort of antiquated in terms of how quickly the internet moves. When something becomes too mainstream on the internet it normally falls by the wayside the way Friendster and makeoutclub did. Myspace is trying to rebrand itself as something totally interactive like facebook is but it’s not working out for them because arguably there is a better site out there that is doing the same thing. Is there any danger that this fate might befall youtube if it doesn’t evolve?

The Vevo service, the offshoot of youtube that just shows music videos might be a good sign, but how far into the specialized channels will the site go to drive their traffic up? Will amateur content totally be phased out while more sponsored and featured content continues to get more support from the programmers? I don’t think youtube is ready to burn out and/or fade away just yet, not when things continue to go viral and it’s still the easiest platform on which to see and be seen, but that little piece of commentary made me think…probably more than even Jonah intended.

Saying it to my face: the audience alienation of Elephant

I know I should be talking about story structure and narrativity.  I want to talk about those things too. I want to talk about how Gus Van Sant overlaps the stories in his 2003 school violence film Elephant. I want to talk about those little stolen moments where one part of a conversation is heard differently because of perspective. I do want to talk about how the threads come together in a way that might not be entirely expected at the end. I want to point out that what works (sort of) and is (entirely) frustrating is that because of the way the film ends it turns it into two- thirds of a story rather than something complete. I’d love to talk about the title and the reference to the story of the blind men and the elephant in relation to the threads of the narrative, which when you think about it within the context of the film is actually kind of amazing. If I were better at watching a movie and turning it into a text then I think I could probably type your ear off about all these things to make it so class relevant you’d think I was made for this.

Instead I want to talk to you about faces. I want to talk about faces and how Elephant isn’t a film about them.

The prevailing visual motif in Van Sant's Elephant

There is a really easy way to get the viewer of a particular film to feel like they are not included in the narrative. That is to not let them see your characters having anything that even comes close to an emotion. One way to do this is to rely entirely on the flat affect of the performances themselves, another-and this is the way Van Sant chooses to go-is to never let the audience see the faces of your characters. The first frame (top left) of the above graphic comes from a technically brilliant tracking shot that clocks in at about 2 minutes. What Van Sant chooses to do with his camera is frankly quite interesting: the camera is always moving, very rarely static and yet not much is ever captured in his lens. What he chooses to do instead is to show the viewer the character’s POV. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the first person shooter and it takes a lot of getting used to. To not see a person’s face when they’re talking to you relegates the audience member to the eavesdropper, and the fourth wall is never stronger than when a character’s back is to the audience. (Personal note: this is my least favorite thing a director can choose to do with his camera ever, that’s up to and including that awful thing Zack Snyder does with the speed of his film and the overused Matrix bullet time.)

So why does the film choose to keep the viewer at arm’s length? I think that’s a very conscious decision on the part of Van Sant. We can’t feel too much for these characters because in the last third of the film they’re all going to be shot or lost to us entirely-I’m thinking here of how John’s thread is dropped once he finds his father. Van Sant knows we’re not going to get closure with these characters in this situation (my earlier point about this being 2/3rds of a film) and so he doesn’t allow us to be properly introduced to them in the first place. Instead, the face time we do get is with the killers who are arguably the most important people in the film. Instead of showing them with their girlfriends or boyfriends we very literally watch Eric and Jared love each other. We see them-in a shot from the POV of their map-make their plans. We see their faces at home but never the faces of their parents (never show the source of evil is an old film making technique, instead we get a full on shot of an actual first person shooter game which begs the question of where Van Sant thinks the evil actually lies) which gives the sense of a sort of Charlie Brown world where the parents don’t have a bearing on the children’s lives at all. The only parent’s face you do see is that of John’s well meaning but drunken father-the only face is that of ineffectiveness.

While it works thematically, I don’t think it helps the cause in regards to the audience’s ability to connect with the film. Because of this choice though in the structure if his film, I wasn’t able to feel anything for anyone. When their deaths came, and come they did, I was strangely numb because I didn’t really know who this kids were and therefore I couldn’t be asked to care. In film the face is the medium, right back to the earliest silent films the face is how you knew how the characters felt and arguably the emotions, not the text, are what drove the story forward. This film didn’t have much of a script to speak of and the back of their heads were apathetic and therefore so was I.

The final shot of The Great Train Robbery, 1903. A hundred years prior to the release of Elephant the face was important. Why abandon it now?

The Mind Game Film: Thomas Elaesser, an expertise project by Melissa and Sarah (La)

Expertise Project

The Thesis: Mind game films are a phenomenon instead of a new genre in and of itself
because they represent an evolution of the film genre. They expand on the solely visual
narrative into a text that both shows a narrative and forces the audience to interact with
the production, making mind game films an evolution of film as an art form (especially
genres like science fiction, horror teen film and film noir), not a genre of its own.

What is a mind game film?
There are two levels:
1: Information is withheld or ambiguously presented in order to play games with
the character (The Game, Se7en)
2: Information is withheld or ambiguously presented in order to play games with
the audience (The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, Memento)
The film may also combine 1 and 2 to withhold from both the audience and the
character (The 6th Sense, The Others)
This also refers to unreliable narrators that are mentally compromised
All mind game films intend to play a trick in some way on the viewer.

Motifs recognizable in Mind Game Film;
-A suspension of cause and effect if not outright reversal of linear progression
(Memento, Donnie Darko, Lost Highway)
-Lines are blurred between reality and imagination, reality is questioned, said
reality tends to be nothing more than a simulation. Sometimes protagonist has a friend,
companion or mentor that turns out to be imagined (Fight Club, A Beautiful Mind,
Donnie Darko)
-Protagonist questions existence of himself (The Sixth Sense, The Others, Blade
Runner)
-A character is unsure or mistaken about the existence of parallel worlds based on
mistaken cognitive perception. Character is often convinced by family, friends or doctors
that someone, often a child, does not or did not exist.

A mind game film must suspend the contract between film and viewer, which is that the
film will not “lie” to the spectator, but are truthful and self-consistent within the premises
of their diegetic world.

Argument:
A mind game film cannot be its own genre because it brings no new stories to the
table, but presents them in a different way. “Narratologists tend to perceive mind-game
films either as occasions for refining existing classifications or as challenges to prove that
there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to storytelling” (21)

“Computer driven and internet demands for more “dynamic” and “real-time” feedback
and response are putting pressure even on (post)-modernist narrative.” (23).

The demand by consumers for surprises and interpretation to be readily available,; the

consumer needs the film to ask them to rise to the challenge, but also to give a motivation
to interact with the film.

The mind game film is advantageous for the young mind to interpret the world in varied
ways. They teach appropriate ways to navigate issues of automated surveillance and
control. (33)

The appeal stems from a duality of interpretation. These films can be viewed from
an outsider looking in, academically dissecting the film and therefore the world it is
situated in. It can also be discussed as its own world with presupposed rules that aren’t
questioned. These discussions ignore the fictional contract and accept the world as real
life, focusing on what internally goes on there, not addressing the world itself. (45)

Pathologies:

Often used as a device to “reboot” consciousness. What we later find out to be insanity
is presented to the audience as normal. The audience originally accepts this unstable
character’s perception and therefore the later discovery heightens the mind game.

3 Types:
Paranoia
-Conspiracy theory movies. They can represent the “paranoid women”
movies that the motif section discussed who are assured by family and friends nothing is
abnormal, but the protagonist is suspicious. (The Forgotten, Flight Plan)

Schizophrenia
-Where the protagonist’s delusional or imaginary world becomes melded
with the “real” world. The audience, like the narrator is unable to distinguish between
real and imaginary. (A Beautiful Mind)

Amnesia
-An amnesiac hero is easy to program by other characters, he retains basic
instincts and therefore can be used for others’ purposes. The audience, like the hero, is
programmed to emotionally react with the hero and does not know they are being
deceived until the hero does.

These disabilities are not always represented as hindrances, but advantages in the
world the movie creates by tapping into some other world, intuitive thinking or protest
movements. Within the world of the film, they are treated as “productive pathologies.”

In conclusion:

The new contract between audience and film no longer relies solely on passive
voyeurism, instead it is based on engagement between film and audience where specific
rules are established.

Richard Powers is kind of a creep and other observations

After finishing Galatea 2.2, I was struck by a few things. Firstly, throughout the book I was constantly moved by the style of the writing. Something about the way that Richard Powers the author voices Richard Powers the character really hit me hard. The description of the death of the love between him and C., the literal death of Taylor, the heartbreak of Audrey Lentz’s deterioration due to Alzheimer’s; all of these moments were beautiful and terribly, terribly sad.

Secondly it was strange how, by the end, I didn’t care so much about Helen. As Powers grew to love her more and more and become increasingly consumed with teaching her the ways of the world, the less I cared about her as a character. H0w could I really? After all the lessons there was no denying that despite her name and her ability to converse, she’s a computer. The book never lets you forget that she’s a computer either. Though I don’t think audience members were supposed to be on Lentz’s side when he wanted to tinker with Helen’s “brain” to see how much the connections really worked, I was. Because this whole thing started off as an experiment about teaching a computer how to read. That’s it. There was no stipulation in the bet that said that the computer had to be human too. Helen’s symbolic shutting off after learning that the world can be an ugly place despite how beautiful words are I didn’t see as an emotional, human moment. I saw it as a teenager choosing to ignore that the world has problems rather than getting over it or processing it in a healthy way. In that way Helen worked exactly as she was supposed to: she’s a computer after all, she can shut off, and she didn’t owe Richard or Lentz anything at all.

On that same point, I thought it interesting that Helen had to learn about the news and culture at all. I think that all stemmed from the scene where A. points out to Richard that The List is out of date, that there really isn’t that much of an agreed upon canon anymore. Though this book is sixteen years old, that’s still true. You can get up to at least the Masters level without having read all the classics. The canon can be rearranged depending on who is teaching what class and what level of esteem any professor has for a writer from any age. A. thought that lack of cultural context would be the downfall of Helen when in fact it was her knowledge of the world that effectively killed her.

Finally, and probably looming largest of all, my feelings on Powers the character changed from the beginning to the end of the book, and not in an entirely positive way. By about 50 pages from the end it hit me: I am reading a narrative of a man that has broken with reality. Think about it: Powers kind of has a mental break towards the end. I think my interpretation of that character has a lot to do with his obsession with A. It’s not a sweet story of unrequited love. It’s actually pretty creepy and took me right out of the story. I understand that by the end of the book and after seeing the heartbreak he went through trying to make things work with C. that he might be a man who is desperate for love, but that’s no excuse to essentially stalk a girl and then confess your love to them. Nope, sorry. I lost a lot of sympathy I had for that character based on those scenes alone.

Perhaps I’m interpreting this book incorrectly, or having misplaced feelings of affection for characters that I shouldn’t. But the point remains that I didn’t make the connection to Helen that Powers did, and I didn’t make the connection to Powers that I feel like I should have had with a narrator.