Reading Comments Week 3 Battle of Algiers
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January 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Comments on Mirzoeff’s “Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib
1) I was curious as to whether torture pictures were shown to other prisoners. Part of the nature of humiliation and degradation in the Abu Ghraib photos is present outside of the line of vision of the prisoners forced to participate. Though I acknowledge that these humiliating gestures were present for other guards to see, they seem like they would have more resonance with other potential victims in the perverse mind of the American military.
Mowitt’s “Battle of Algiers-Pentagon Edition”
1) I was thinking of the incredible political impact “Battle of Algiers” has had on shaping current foreign policy. It seems obvious that it hasn’t had the impact perhaps intended by its makers, but I was interested in unearthing other films that have had the same currency to governments in shaping foreign policy. Other than films that have had social impact (i.e. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and its role in reshaping the mental hospital system in the States) I can’t recall any cinematic representations that have shared the privileged status of this film.
2) I had a thought while reading Mowitt’s discussion of Marx and Engels assertion that theory addresses ruling ideas. Though there is some debate about which thinkers and philosophers are relevant to Marxist theory it is nothing compared to the divisiveness of establishing the important works of Film Theory. Is this because we can establish a foundation of Marxist thought while film theory owes its inception to a variety of sources? Though I would contend that Eisenstein is the Grandmaster Flash of film theory, it appears to me that establishing a film theory cannon is a more divisive prospect than it is for Marxist theory. I suppose the establishment of all “cannons” has become a divisive subject.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Comments on Mirzoeff’s “Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib
1) I was curious as to whether torture pictures were shown to other prisoners. Part of the nature of humiliation and degradation in the Abu Ghraib photos is present outside of the line of vision of the prisoners forced to participate. Though I acknowledge that these humiliating gestures were present for other guards to see, they seem like they would have more resonance with other potential victims in the perverse mind of the American military.
Mowitt’s “Battle of Algiers-Pentagon Edition”
1) I was thinking of the incredible political impact “Battle of Algiers” has had on shaping current foreign policy. It seems obvious that it hasn’t had the impact perhaps intended by its makers, but I was interested in unearthing other films that have had the same currency to governments in shaping foreign policy. Other than films that have had social impact (i.e. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and its role in reshaping the mental hospital system in the States) I can’t recall any cinematic representations that have shared the privileged status of this film.
2) I had a thought while reading Mowitt’s discussion of Marx and Engels assertion that theory addresses ruling ideas. Though there is some debate about which thinkers and philosophers are relevant to Marxist theory it is nothing compared to the divisiveness of establishing the important works of Film Theory. Is this because we can establish a foundation of Marxist thought while film theory owes its inception to a variety of sources? Though I would contend that Eisenstein is the Grandmaster Flash of film theory, it appears to me that establishing a film theory cannon is a more divisive prospect than it is for Marxist theory. I suppose the establishment of all “cannons” has become a divisive subject…
January 27th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Eli my boy, you hit upon an important topic to me: canons and power! I know it is an abstract question, but I would love to hear about people’s opinions on who/what has the power to dictate canons? It also ties into our conversations on archiving: who has the power? Who/what decides what is treasured and what is forgotten?
Does anyone else think that an opposing case can be made for canons and archives in the digital age? So many things that were previously unseen are being restored (a great satire is Scorsese’s short film about finding 3 pages of a lost Hitchcock screenplay and shooting—restoring—a film based on these pages), and not all of the material is canonical. Will society restore every piece of footage available until we can see home videos of Edward Norton’s birth? It is almost like history is reappearing through digital reconstruction, allowing “the man” to create the cinematic canon all over again.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I think that in any form of democratic society, no canon really ought to acquire any weight of definitiveness, and the interested parties will ideally buck hard to prevent the imposition of one. Canons ought to just vaguely coalesce by common consent, and always be open to revision — like the IMDb’s Top 250 Chart.
From that perspective, I think we’re in an somewhat advantageous position in film studies: we don’t have an obvious intellectual geneology to attach ourselves to even if we wanted to. We’re compelled to think for ourselves rather than being presented with a “Father of” figure whom we may either grow to venerate uncritically or chafe at undeservedly.
How man of us have dutifully seen a canonical classic film once and then grown averse to the idea of it for being too established and well-known to be hip? I think this perversity in film viewers will ensure that there’ll always be an informal canon of some sort lying around, if only to be triangulated against.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I just wanted to make a quick comment about what Jarett said in class about why use rape as torture? My thoughts are:
- The psychological torture of it is possibly more useful/effective as a control mechanism than just getting beaten up. (As Ang mentioned the soldiers are trained on how to break people down)
- They’re using the tools available – they have lots of men, can easily threaten their sexuality, and can easily threaten the prisoners emotionally.
– Using homosexuality as a threat because it is seen as the most socially deviant
- It’s also funny how performing these acts is somehow supposed to reaffirm the heterosexuality and normality of the guards while at the same time destroying the prisoners and making them “gay”.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Sorry for the late reply Malcolm. I totally agree with interested parties and their refusal of a definite canon. I can’t help but feel that we (as students) are the interested parties and, I know for me personally, the idea of a cinematic canon gave me a sense of security when I first started watching film (ie. Knowing what to watch), but now-a-days I try to make my viewings as diverse as possible. I like your idea of our ‘perversity’ also, in that we do stray away from the more known films toward films that suit our interest, and as film students that possibility is wide open to us. We are like Jimmy Steward looking out the window in “Rear Window,” expect instead of room and people, we see over one hundred years of cinematic history to make up for—at least we’ll never be bored!
Lisa: you articulated the point I was trying to make in class, that homosexuality is viewed as this ‘ultimate’ deviance. Personally, I find it very interesting how, when we think of it, our identities really tend to boil down to our sex (and then I can’t help think that Freud’s theories we dismissed too soon—sorry Torri ). But as Ang mentioned, there is a method to the madness (literally, a text that teaches soldiers how to break people down). I think somewhere, however, that some kind of insecurity (sexual?) on the soldier’s behalf has to come into play. I know I can say this now, but “I could never imagine myself doing that to another person.” But I guess a lot of Nazis also believed this too. I guess my idea of ‘torture’ is the drill scene in “Marathon Man”—physical versus psychological pain.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Sharanpal Ruprai
Contemporary Film Theory: The Image Now
GS/FILM 5230
Dr. Hayashi
Blog Entry # 3
January 29, 2008
Blog Entry # 3: Mirzoeff, Nicolas, “Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and Abu Ghraib” I will focus my blog entry on this article and on our class discussion.
Reflections/Questions:
I have been thinking about the image from Abu Ghraib and our discussion in class. It occurs to me that within the photos there is a resistance. The Iraqi men are performing a type of resistance – they would not be in the photos if they agreed to corporate with the U.S soldiers. Their, subaltern body reads as resistance - they will not give in, they will not cooperate with the U.S soldiers therefore their bodies must perform acts that are deemed deviance by the U.S soldiers. These “acts” are sexualized abuses that attempt to resubject the subaltern body so that it “reads” as comic – something to be laughed at. I use the word comic here because in the history of the west, the body becomes a site of comic. Think of all those T. V shows that use humor about the body to get a laugh (southpark or hospital dramas – grace anatomy or ER). By re-positioning the subaltern body the U.S soldiers have attempted to “hide” the resistance of the subaltern body.
If we read this images as forms of resistance rather forms of pornography then where is the location of power? How can we begin the see these images not as sexualized or erotic but rather as forms of resistance or images of violence on the subaltern body?
I think Language around these images must be careful because there is power in Language. I have difficult time attaching words such as “erotic” “same-sex erotic” or “desire” to these photos. I suspect that we need a new language for this type of horror. Or do we?
February 1st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Hey Guys, so I know this reply is bit late in the game but I jsut yesterday manged to log into the blog.
Essentially what I hoped to achieve in my presentation was to look at the photos from Abu Graib in a way may not have previously looked at them. Specific issues I wanted to raise related to the blurred nature of the photos as spectacle. These phots were not a form surveillance as performance is clearly a part of the imagry. However as we noted, there issues of surveillance, in particular with the way the camera was at distanced from the action as if some of the shots were “caught unawares”.
These phots were kept as screen savers and circulated as spectacle and what I wanted to get at was the psychological and emoptional reasons behind these images. For me personally I can’t help but feel that what these images so difficult to grasp is the fact that “the two biggies”, sex and violence, are being merged together and one cannot simply see these images either or. Thats not to say that they arouse us sexually, but that sex, sexuality are central to these images. They are basically the Freudian Id actualized, were domination, submission, sex, violence, pain, pleasure, fear and desire all mix in together.
The last thing I want to do is reiterate my entire presentation in this blog (because trying to do so may make the internet explode), rather I just wanted to point is how everyone reads these images differently and that there is no cohesive way to “see” the events transpiring within the frame. If anything, these images tell us more about ourselves as people, rather than as a society.
April 13th, 2008 at 5:41 am
Some impressions on an earlier discussion thread regarding Eli’s response to the Mowitt reading:
Canons do not suggest finality to me, though they are so tied to a notion of ‘definitiveness’. If one has the power to research outside of canon (in any discipline), does that make the canon fairly irrelevant? Or does it not? In my own work, Canadian film canon has been especially exclusive, and not just in print but in the archives where acts of exclusion are dangerous and are decided autonomously, those acts become anti-democratic, and without the benefit of decades of private benefaction, there are objects as recent as 1975 that have been judged and discarded by the Canadian liberal media, and by extension the archivists, and their exclusion has led to their demise.
Angelo’s presentation: in the months since, we’ve now seen public announcements of Errol Morris’s new film Standard Operating Procedure, which I hope will give some further glimpse to the complex psychology of your subject. http://youtube.com/watch?v=BPOgaDZVYBk
One thing that I did find disturbing about your discussion was this focus on sex and violence that you state here - the focus on the word ’sex’ as opposed to ‘rape’ or ‘assault’, in particular, as though what was done to the prisoners at Abu Graib was somehow a consensual act (also I believe you used the word homosexual to describe the activities - but I think that’s irrelevant, because even if it doesn’t imply that the act was consensual, it does suggest that the act was associated with sexual orientation, which I do not believe it was). There’s one uniting term to these two branches of your discussion and it’s humiliation - and there’s something to be said for the commonly held belief that sexual assault is about power and not sex or orientation - the most psychologically interesting (and as a viewer, damaging) thing to me about this whole situation is the way in which even the dead prisoners had to be humiliated to satisfy the power lust and ego of their ‘keepers’.