http://www.nicolasprovost.com/#/work/6/Gravity
Not only does Provost compile a bevy of extremely relevant examples to highlight some of Mulvey's ideas (women representing lack, the use of women as transactional objects, and especially a focus on the three looks-the camera, characters within the narrative, and the viewer) but I found Provost's exercise in precision editing to be particularly pertinent to our conversations on suture and identification, particularly de Lauretis's idea of the narrative promise.
Initially, as a viewer I felt resistant
to identify with any of the subjects in the video, because the point
of view perpetually flickers back and forth between characters, there
was no “stable object” to cling to (Silverman 226). This is part
and parcel of Provost's project. While exceptionally alienating, the
rapidly interchanging shots beautifully coordinate shot/reverse
shots, eyeline matches and even the same actors from different
movies. The beginning of the video is essentially a montage of
shot/reverse shots from multiple movies, edited together. The rapid
fire editing takes suture to a new level. Provost not only
articulates subjectivity via “interlocking shots” (Silverman 220)
in one narrative, but sutures multiple narratives from multiple films
together. The “absent one” is then constantly referenced by
alternating between not one, but two or more paternal characters from
different movies. There are multiple speaking subjects, which
complicates While there is no classic Hollywood narrative in the
video, Provost relies on a priori, or overdetermined knowledge of
classic hollywood cinema of the viewer. Relying on the fact that many
american viewers will be familiar with the plot structures that place
the subjects in these situations. By over saturating the
“interlocking of visual and narrative registers effected by the
cinematic apparatus of the look” (de Laurentis 88), Provost
highlights both the “image of the woman” and “the image of her
narrative function”. This fulfillment of the narrative promise
brings the tension between filmic mechanics (camera movement, angels
and editing) and narrative to the forefront. When thinking about this
tension I find the example of a camera panning up a woman's body
really helpful. This motion of the camera doesn't necessarily move
the narrative forward, in fact it interrupts the narrative with the
image of the woman, however it fulfills the narrative promise of both
narrative and visual pleasure for the male spectator (both within and
outside the fictional narrative). Provost's project is essentially a
super voyeurism, (de Lauretis 87) in its extreme combination of
visual and narrative pleasure. We are inundated with visually
pleasurable images, and a narrative spoken by the paternal subject.
The many characters become interchangeable narrative motivators that
can stand in for and replace each other. The viewer can transfer
identification from character to character because their functions
are sutured together enough to speak the same subject position and
the narrative promise constantly fulfilled through this image and
narrative position of the female; the subject is highlighted through
camera mechanics but also situated in a familiar narrative.
This post reminded me of the different found footage films we watched throughout the semester and made me think of Donald O'Finn's “re-purposed video constructions”.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.themusicdrop.com/donaldofinn/
A lot of these films deal with some sort of glitching or abstractions of the physical body. Though some of the videos were just strange, I thought they still had compelling representations of male/female forms. The first video I watched was called Cyclops, ( http://www.themusicdrop.com/donaldofinn/video09/cyclops.mov ) and had a large cyclops figure “watching” as a woman did her laundry. The video had little to no temporal development, and mostly just repeated a scene over and over, sometimes reversing. It's definitely possible that I'm reading too much into the short video, but there were a number of aspects of it that I thought worked well with theory we've studied. The juxtaposition of the large male figure and the smaller female washing her clothes was accompanied by the color of the cyclops and the black/white of the female. Additionally, cyclops tends to be defined by his singular gaze and is known as something of a monstrosity. Although the video is not particularly long, it is long enough for the motion in the video to become tedious and for the woman's rhythm to get abstracted in a way.
Another video called “Models” (http://www.themusicdrop.com/donaldofinn/video09/models.mov ) is quite a bit longer. This found footage has a more post-production effects such as making the images negative, overlaying images on top of each other, and inserting chunky frames into some shots. The pace is frenetic and though the images consist primarily of the female body, there are very few shot that let viewers see more than the general movement and shapes of the bodies. There is a definite foregrounding of the medium of film in this case, and the models that are otherwise completely objectified become little more than abstractions. At a certain point, the complete excess of bodies was just numbing and the video then was showing “sexy” weight-loss ads that just seemed a bit comical. The performance that runway models were putting on became more affected (especially because of the way O'Finn edited the colors) and the clothes and “high fashion” they were showing just seemed goofy. The idea of looking and gazing at the models as examples for fashion lost its power. As the video at some point threw out the phrase “anatomically correct” over and over again, it became obvious that no, they weren't and that they had been carefully constructed.