2013, image on screen and on computer.
Manipulative force of movies: What are movies wanted to make us think?
Passion described in contemporary world
My interest in Marilyn is interest in how the dilemma of gender culminates in one person so perfectly
What is spoken of her and why. What do people want to know, what is of interest for anyone in a beautiful woman. What do we pay attention to and why she is seen via her sex which seems to dictate all she can do, how she can be and must do, how she must do to make an effect. She is an effect, a special effect on the set. That is her purpose. Her value seems pretty infinite despite she is ripped off her value as a multi talented person. Her value is partly in the tragedy of not having achieved enough professionally that she is diminished no matter what she accomplished and modelled to be something to which she contributes voluntarily because it seems she had no other choice. This no other choice to succeed but via the sexual part of a blond shell is part of the puzzle for me. To have a lot but be limited as an artist by the system and the way women are seen.
Those are the terms to succeed is like a plan given. Do as you are told and this is what is wanted of you. This is what the public wants to see, you are for yes only (I mean eyes), to pleasure others. Why is this what is thought the public wants or are we so simple-minded it really is what we want? It puzzles me still although it is clear in a way that the public is infinitely narrow-minded and seeks to be entertained in the simplest of ways. That is also what gossip is all about. That is also the trap in to which entertainment industry constantly steps: repeating the same imagery and narrative which is luring, attention seeking, fabulous visually and repeating the gender roles and stereotypes as if nothing ever changes, and yes things do change slowly. Something else than the real life and not so much.
My interest is in how someone is talked about. What becomes of this tale which is continued, passed forward. What is the story people like to give, they believe it themselves, what are their motives, what is the truth and what are the reasons for telling the story. Who knows the truth and who is a reliable witness. Because what is being said and what is the reality can be very different from each other so much so that surreal is the reality. What people believe is the truth is bound to bias and what is wanted to be seen as the truth. How personal experience of someone is true and what is the value of telling this personal view forward.
A person who is dimensional but does not show all of her dimensions is infinitely interesting obviously applies to women. To believe women are able to achieve excellence takes work for some men and women. Simplicity and less are easier to believe to be true and accept than someone who is much. Much is difficult to control and tolerate.
Manipulative force of movies: What are movies wanted to make us think?
Are movies like malls where we can wander and pick things of our choosing up in a chart, pay and leave happily for having found what we came for? What are our reactions to movies, especially to those which get a lot of advertising and space in media. Do we expect something of movies we choose to watch? Enjoyment, escape, dreams, stories, anything else? A surprise or something specific which we are paying for not to be disappointed but leave the theater content and entertained. Movies play an important role not only as something to be shown in theaters and on TV to pass the time but something very complex, maybe more than meets the eye. The help to create an empire of merchandise, news, extra on top of the cake and it is fun to make movies, I’m sure. So I am not spoiling the fun, I am just wondering visuals among which we live, power of business and how well organized can a machinery to make profit be. Are visuals used making our perspectives more narrow? Our possibilities in making pictures, thoughts of what can be done, why something is done and what is good?
As it is always in action movies there is good vs. bad, probably the most used juxtaposition as is the all mighty solitary hero and heroine against a mass of ordinary folks who cannot keep up the speed. Heroes and heroines can make a good story with turns that interest a crowd enough to pay to see it, if that is what is enough. What interests to such extent that up to repetition story of all mighty hero has to be told similarly repetitiously with similar kind of twist as American fathers bond with their sons by throwing ball? That a movie makes a blockbuster as planned and how a concept of blockbuster movie is so luring that it over and over again finds viewers making hundreds of millions of dollars? One can question the buzz around it but one can hardly stop it. Just like that, impossible. We are in a whirlwind of media and its choosing of visuals. Is it too obvious and more importantly are we as viewers and consumers that obvious? So it seems. To see something that could actually happen but is bigger than we are, still somehow within reach, attractive as a fantasy and a dream, maybe not as every day scene in real life but saving first America and then the World. Something already may be lost.
What do viewers witness or are viewers being used?
Jurassic Park never did it for me in any way, but here are couple of interesting articles concerning women in science, role models and movies, how movies impact the viewer:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/in-praise-of-jurassic-parks-dr-ellie-sattler “ When the park’s power fails to come back on as expected, she doesn’t sit in the emergency bunker waiting for rescue. She makes a plan and grabs a walkie-talkie, heading out to find the power switch.”
http://www.vulture.com/2015/06/jurassic-world-feminism.html
Interesting case of female action heroes.
And that there are many, most of them though are styled to follow idealized female heroine of cartoons with large breasts, revealing outfits, high heels, long hair, standard western beauty characteristics for a perfect active woman under forty. Something which perhaps the fitness culture of today and competitions in bodily beauty have had advantage of. Muscles still equal to strength, health, certain kind of attitude towards life and how people should look like, obsession over bodily perfection and gaining such perfection with hard work out tell something and stand for a way of life.
As I recall character of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and her transformation into muscular fighter, maker of her own destiny, world’s destiny and dissident who was right all a long, was the first one to make the fashion of muscles acceptable for women. This was in the beginning of the 90′. Celebrities began to work out to get the same biceps and bodily tone as Sarah Connor. Movie Terminator 2 was a huge hit and it made an impression on me as well. Not with sense of fashion but as I have mentioned earlier because of the woman character who is determined and destined to do her all to save the world.
Influence of movies is not to be undervalued. The movie stands in my record one of those worth digging into. A cyborg who was sent by John Connor from the future to save John Connor in the present becomes a father figure to fatherless child. As Sarah Connor thinks to herself how a cyborg is in an insane world a sanest choice for a child.
She does not see herself a hero. What does she feel of herself can be irrelevant because she does not look in the mirror nor weigh her inner emotions. Bleeding wounds do not stop her from accomplishing her mission and she is ready to die for it. Only thing that is sane and doable is the mission, to stop the inevitable destruction. Same kind of features apply to Ellen Ripley in Alien series. She takes lead as others fail to do so. She is a decision maker and she knows what to do. She is an expert without need to please nor be given a prize for her excellence. To survive she has got what it takes. She is omnipotent and her gender does not make her weak. Gender does not play the major role as it is not emphasized by camera angles, clothes or flirtation. She just is what she does, a person who is good at what she does, knowing good and right and what to fight against even if it means doing it on her own.