Ethics in Film
Teacherjh
Anything that is not explicitly questioned is endorsed by omission.
For example, in current mainstream American cinema, a whole series of
convictions about how men and women should behave -- notions that some
people would regard as highly contentious -- are taken as given.
<<
Uh... isn't that a bit strong?
Something taken as given is not necessarily endorsed... there is just too
much background one needs to accept in =any= film in order to comprehend
the foreground. There just aren't enough frames of film to question
everything, even if one wanted to.... and the result would not be very
entertaining (or enlightening) anyway.
Jose
Michael Katz
<<<If you're content to be a grip your whole life, then getting paid is
>probably your only concern. But if you aspire to have a creative impact on
films, you should be
>concerned about the quality of any project you work on>>>
Could it be that you believe "aspiring to have a creative impact on films"
obviates the possibility of being a grip? Or a gaffer? Or any technician?
A good grip makes important aesthetic contributions to the movie that cannot
be made by anyone else, especially an impossibly elitist, or ridiculously
foolish child like yourself. To pronounce, as you have done, that a person
who is content to be a grip his or her whole life believes "gettiing paid is
probably [one's] only concern" comes from a child's brain. Many good
technicians would rather work on a movie of substance, wherein a chance
exists that their craft, along with that of others, will approach art and
being even more gratifying than they hoped for.
Michae...@pop.com, internet
--
Donald Hounam
No, I don't think it's too strong. What I'm trying to suggest is that
you might cast a more sceptical eye upon the assumptions underlying
all those films that do not proclaim themselves as addressing "social"
issues.
The most frightening film I've seen in the last year or so was "The
Little Mermaid". I watched my sister's two daughters (3 and 6) sitting
there soaking up all the messages about how they should dress, how
they should behave, what they should aspire to.
All that "background one needs to accept in any film in order to
comprehend the foreground" is part of a process of softening up,
telling us the sort of people we should be.
Michael Katz
I've had further exchanges with Ron Rice clairying his post. He readily
admits it was hasty and ill advised and not at all what he meant. He allowed
as how technicians could have aesthetic gratification from their jobs and he
profusely apologized for any offense he might have caused. And I happily
accept it. There is an elitism in filmschools that mass produces scads of
wannabes who have never learned what it takes to make a movie, though they
know more than anybody about what goes into a movie, what historically has
been made into a movie, and who makes movies they like. What this country
nees, now that the studio system has all but been destroyed by the rise of
the independents (namely, me) is a technical institute for properly training
career minded technicians who can elevate their crafts with studied
expertise.
Michael Katz IATSE728
--
ALANT24FPS
>> Every frame of a film expresses a world view, and that world view can
go along with the dominant culture, critique it, or present an
alternative
that is then implicitly subversive (in the same way that most films are
implicitly reactionary). Presenting as valid an art work that breaks
accepted rules of form or content is to subvert the status quo. This
has been the history of modernism in art, always accompanied by the
anger of conservatives and the excitement of innovators.
- films that do offer a critique or an alternative can be highly
enlightening and entertaining. They certainly don't have to be boring
and didactic.<<
To which I can only offer the following, which I snipped from some long
ago thread on another newsgroup:
"So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance
conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear logical
thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of
the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of
knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused
thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be
indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world."
-- Stanislav Andreski, _Social Sciences as Sorcery_ (quoted in Gross
& Levitt, _Higher Superstition_)
I would suggest that the neat equation of art which is 'subversive' in
content or style with actual subversion of the status quo is specious. The
history of modernism in art is one of continual cooptation by Big Money.
Best wishes,
Alan
Doug vanderHoof/Modern Media
commercial artists) want to use their immense influence for
more than making a living. If they do, then one of the
greatest and potentially most paralyzing judgements to make
in art is guessing about the mind-set of the audience. Are
they ready to hear a new idea or do you have to soften them
up first?
For example, a strong feminist message for some cultures
might be the idea that women might be better at some things
than men. But another audience would take that as a useless
fantasy and the most you could hope for them is for them to
actually see women doing something they don't usually do and
see it in an acceptable, compelling, realistic light.
You need only worry about this if you're making propaganda.
If you just want to make personal art and aren't worried
about your influence, western tradition dictates that you
ignore your audience and make your art as individual as
possible, socio/political effects be damned.
The more I mature as an artist (late adolescence now), the
more ambitious I get to combine many ends in a single
project: Making beauty, advancing my social agenda, growing
as an intellectual and aesthete (getting so full of myself I
can hardly work...hold all calls, I'll be at the mirror.)
Doug
Scott Dorsey
>- someone can believe that the depicition of sexuality in
> porn movies is ethically ok. Many of the most famous
> avante garde films of the 60s/70s made their impact in
> the context of fierce debates about depictions of sexuality.
I am certainly in favor of the depiction of sexuality in porn movies. What
I am upset about is that most porn movies depict sexuality in an inaccurate
manner. I do, however, consider this secondary to the fact that they
invariably have lousy lighting and camerawork.
> The makers argued that this was a free depiction of,
> typically, "free love", or just the subject matter of
> sex and its many variations, where establishment moralists
> argued that they were just porn movies (... and therefore
> should be banned).
Nothing wrong with depicting sex, even unconventional sex, but how anybody
can find some of this stuff sexy is beyond me. To depict sex accurately
strikes me as requiring that the actors be able to deliver lines well enough
that we can identify with them, and that they be lit well enough that they
appear to be real human beings and not made of plastic. The poor quality
of porno flicks is much of what has ghettoized them.
Most porno films do dehumanize the characters, both women and men. I will
argue that this makes them poor films by any standard, but that this is
unfortunately not a problem specific to pornography. It makes them less
sexy, in my opinion.
>- one could equally argue that films like Forrest Gump, or
> any of a myriad of Disney films (and cartoons) are kitsch
> affirmations of a dehumanising, oppressive, and exploitative
> socio-economic system, and therefore much more damaging
> (even by virtue of their wide acceptability) than any
> pornographic or violent film.
Yes, this is absolutely true. It's more dangerous, in fact, in that we
identify with these characters and consider them to be real, which is
much easier to do because of the better technical quality of these films.
Films that present unrealistic people who can be believed are somewhat
more alarming than those which are more difficult to believe.
> Any of the huge number
> of media productions that depict traditional sex roles,
> and affirm ideas of sexual chasteness and decorum as
> appropriate behaviours for women, or conversely the
> stud image of men, can be seen as morally reprehensible,
> reinforcing the property value of women, and denying
> emotional dimensions of masculinity.
Yes, but again, these are just affirming the cultural values, not creating
them. The more seriously they are taken, the more dangerous they are. I
claim that pornography is not taken seriously enough to be dangerous because
of the low quality of the material, in most cases. I also claim that as
the production quality increases, the degree of dehumanizing has to
decrease slightly.
>Work of any kind involves an at least implicit affirmation
>of the values motivating, following from, or expressed by
>the work.
If indeed the people involved know what the work is. My lab processes
thousands of films a year, and I doubt the folks who crank the film
through the rollers and time the negatives have any clue what the films
are about. They're still happy, though.
--scott
As for me, I am in the process of making a humorous film advocating
private ownership of nuclear weapons, so you know where that puts me.
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Teacherjh
alternative viewpoints, challenge hidden assumptions, etc, etc, etc,....
This means that film is good for propaganda, and also can be used to
counter propaganda. So what? Not all film is propaganda.
In a film =whose purpose is= to advance some societal view or other, then
one must be mindful of the intent of each scene and its subversive
influence on the audience.
In a film =whose purpose is= entertainment, one can still be mindful of
the reinforcing influence the "background" has on the audience... however
pressenting something is not the same as endorsing it.
"Goodfellas", for example, or "The Great Gatsby", present the criminal
aspect of society. Neither film endorses criminal behaviour, and the fact
that in one film the bad guys get away with it, while in the other film,
they don't get all the donuts, is irrelevant. The "background" still
presents, as a canvas, the criminal world.
Film can do many things. One of them is to tell a story, plain and
simple. To entertain, plain and simple. Lets not read too much into it.
At the same time, I do agree that society will absorb the background, and
there are some instances where one would not want this. I'm not sure I
would take a clever and impressionable small child to see The Great
Gatsby.... or that I would want my little girls to absorb much of the
stereotype role models that are part of so much of the literature... but
for people that can think for themselves, (and I hope that includes most
of us), the fact that a film CAN say something, and CHOOSES not to, does
not ENDORSE the converse.
You can't say everything... don't read too much into what is not said.
Jose